The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City (Process Self-reliance Series)

I've read various books on self-sufficiency in the past ten years, but this one is different. First, it doesn't tell you how to recreate a 19th-century homestead, which is beginning to seem to me like another version of faux chateaux, but which also is not going to work very well if it is not surrounded by other 19th-century homesteads. And it doesn't describe what you can do "some day" when you get your five acres and independence. Instead, it focuses on what you can do right now in your own city to become more self-sufficient and sustainable. That makes it unique.

The reviewer who said that this is not a compendium of how-tos is right. It is more of an idea book, although there are many references to sources of detailed info about, for instance, raising ducks. But the problem with other self-sufficiency books I have run across is precisely that they are NOT idea books--that they become absorbed with one particular way of growing food, for instance, or one particular way of heating your (19th-century farm) house. There is nothing about woodstoves or woodlots in here.

This is the first book on self-sufficiency I have seen that directly addresses the fear that underlies the desire many people have to become more independent of the economy--the fear of some apocalypse, social collapse, disaster, etc., which they here dub "when the zombies come." I loved that they use humor to address that fear. There is a LOT of humor in this book; it's almost worth reading just for that.

Other books on self-sufficiency focus on being isolated and seeing other people as the enemy. I read one that recommended you get a house in a dip that no one can see from the road. They'll tell you how much ammunition to squirrel away with your self-heating lasagne rations. This one tells you to get to know your neighbors, because there is strength not in isolation but in community, where we can trade not only stuff like food, but our skills. In that way, it is similar to Food Not Lawns, but much as I admire the ideas in that book, this one offers ideas that are much more doable, I think, for most people.

It is a bit strange that Amazon is bundling this book with Gardening When It Counts, since that book recommends using extra-wide spacing to grow vegetables in situations where you do not have irrigation, and space is a real problem when you are growing on a city lot. Gardening that is a bit more intensive works better in that situation. But Gardening When It Counts is good in the way it ranks veggies by growing difficulty.

Like many Americans, this past year I have taken gardening more seriously as a means to providing my family with organic fruits and vegetables free of any chemicals. The book covers topics such as edible landscaping, and methods & benefits of creating your own mulch, managing garden pests, urban foraging, and keeping livestock (poultry, rabbits) within city limits, food preservation, bread and cheese making, making your own cleaning products, energy efficiency including use of solar panels and wind turbines and recycling greywater for use in landscaping around your home. There are many ideas in this book, some of which I have been able to implement without major costs or changes to my lifestyle. I do wish I had a bigger piece of property, but the beauty of this book is that you can squeeze every little part of your suburban plot to achieve what you want to do (including gardening on your roof - something I would not have thought of before reading this book). I would not say there is anything new and groundbreaking regarding the content of the book, but I am motivated to become more self-sufficient and do like the fact that a suburban couple has managed to successfully implement these ideas to their home/lifestyle, and I feel that is a key motivator to the reader. If they can do it while living in the city, so can you.

One thing that I wanted to mention here that is not mentioned in the book regarding water conservation. Each day, while I wait for the water in the shower to heat up, I catch it in a bucket. (I would estimate this is 1.5-2 gallons of water). I then use this water for 3 things: 1) to water my garden/potted plants, 2) when the garden is already watered, I pour the water into a water barrel for future garden watering, or 3) I pour it into the washing machine with a load of laundry. These methods have consistently saved me several units of water on my water bill each month. It's not hard to do, but must be diligent to see benefits.

This is a really cool book.

I see several negative reviews that said this book was too "beginner" or was too "basic".

I really disagree with that. I have been gardening my whole life - almost 40 years now - and raising animals for a decent number of those years. And yet, I found this book very helpful.

This book is about a different way of looking at things - about a whole different kind of lifestyle and perspective. While many of the things were familiar to me [composting, raised bed gardening, etc] it was more the *mindset* that I found intriguing and helpful.

And, in addition, I did pick up many new ideas and helpful tips and advice as well. The book covers a broad range of subjects and has been very useful to me.

The book is easy and fun to read. I enjoyed the authors' "voices" and how they wrote. I thought they had a lot of very good advice and some real wisdom to share about living the self sufficient life where ever we are.

The only [very small] thing that I wish they had done differently is that there is a fair amount of swearing in the book. While I occasionally slip the random curse word now and again, generally I prefer my educational reading without "cussing" :) . It seems like an odd choice for the authors and the editor to include foul language in an otherwise exemplary book.

But, that one small complaint aside, I found this book outstanding and helpful in every way!

Like the first reviewer, I too have been long looking forward to this title's release. Unlike the first reviewer I am not at all disappointed with "The Urban Homestead." It's a well-written and engaging resource and I don't find fault in it as a book of ideas and initiatives rather than as all-encompassing encyclopedic volume. In fact I like that I don't have to be entirely dependent on something trying to show me how to be independently sufficient.

The authors are obviously well-informed and hands-on involved and thanks to them I'm already planning my first project involving gray-water capture, storage and re-use.

The Urban Homestead was a bit simplistic for my tastes. Living in Seattle ,(where the majority of residents do not live in apartments) I was a little blindsided by how this book focuses strongly on apartment dwellers. However, aside from that standpoint, I feel the book was a bit simple in it's approach. Perhaps the authors tried to tackle too many topics, but I felt a bit shortchanged on many of the topics. At first, I felt as if the authors were only focusing on what they knew - but then I read the portion of the book about beekeeping. The author actually keeps bees in New York City. I bet that could be a book in itself! However, instead, there was about 3 pages dedicated to the topic.

Good effort. Might be good for apartment dwellers. However, there are many books on this topic which do a better job.

This book contains plenty of useful information and unique approaches to home gardening that I have never heard of before. While it isn't strong on the instructional side of things, it is fairly packed with ideas that one can research more fully on their own time. My biggest beef with this book is the sheer number of spelling and grammatical errors. I find it hard to read a book that has a significant number of such errors. It is ridiculous in some cases, like they didn't even bother running the book through a spell-checker before printing. I think it is worth reading, regardless, but be prepared if that sort of thing bothers you.

A lot of green living books assume you have control over use of your surroundings. If you live in a condo or apartment, have a landlord or a housing association watching you, a lot of those books ignore the problem. They also brush off financial limitations. This book's underlying philosophy is "Do what you can where you are." There are things I can't do in an apartment that does monthly inspections. I found a lot that I could manage on a tight budget, and others that I could do by saving up a bit (maybe $5 a week).

One of the reviews criticizes that the authors don't go into much detail on a lot of the how-to's. That is true. The authors in some cases do go on about a project they have done and thus have practical suggestions for. Other sections are brief and refer to a better resource. I prefer that honesty over blathering just to increase the word count. If I decide to go for any major project I would go to the library to do a little research of my own.

How much did I like this book? After reading it I donated it to the 1-room library and saved up to get another for myself.

This is a fantastic book. I just mentioned it to my daughter tonight as we were talking about making some of those stealth seed bombs that you throw into ugly areas in order to grow wildflowers. I forgot what they were called in the book so I turned my ipad on to check my Kindle edition and find out (they're called Seed Balls for Guerilla Gardening - awesome). Well, I happened to flip past BoingBoing and they had just a notice up that these NICE PEOPLE who wrote this GREAT BOOK are being sued for allegedly infringing on a trademark of the term "urban homesteading" by some idiots who don't understand language or community or common sense. What a crock of crap. I'm buying another copy of this book to show solidarity with these authors.

Ok back to the book. The info on foraging was inspiring. Loved the chapter on composting toilets too, it was easy to understand and actually made the topic seem fairly reasonable. The yogurt description is accurate and does work. You can easily skip the thermometer if you are brave enough to stick your pinkie in and count to 10. (If you can keep your pinkie in up to 10, it's 110 degrees.) I still want to build the outdoor shower.

This book is a great resource for urbanites who want to become more self-sufficient and be gentler to the planet.

What this book is not: a detailed, step-by-step of how to get off the grid.

What it is: a fantastic, bountiful resource of ideas, anecdotes and how-to's to get you thinking about your personal goals and situation, and a great bolster to your confidence to undertake these sometimes intimidating goals.

The authors do a fabulous job of taking the place of our long-gone family history of how to grow the stuff we eat (vegetable and animal) and how to store the stuff we grow.

How-to's include: reclaiming, rehabing and repairing your waste of resources call the lawn; dumpster-diving; harvesting "public" crops; building your own raised garden boxes; composting and mulching your everyday household food and paper waste; green household cleaning; storage and preservation of your backyard bounty; grey water use. And too much more to list.

The book is a great jumping-off point, gets your mind going and the ideas flowing. Once you have a basic plan, and a season of trial and error, the referenced resources are invaluable.

On the issue of typos, I found that there are neither typos every page, nor is it free of errors. If you're a stickler or distracted by type errors, either grin and bear it and focus on the information, or pass this one by. I personally value the information more than the misplaced comma.

I bought this book after reading about it on [...] and really enjoyed it. It is written in a casual, easy to read style but full of information. There are some subjects that you might want to research further, as this book is only a general guide, but for the most part they give a great overview of techniques necessary to grow your own food within the city. They even tell you how to raise chickens and other animals! There are several easy projects with detailed instructions, like making a self-watering container out of found buckets. I especially liked the idea of making a potato garden out of cast-off tires. Even if you only do one or two things suggested in the book, you'll be on your way to being more in control of your own food supply. I'm recommending this book to several of my friends.