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I think it's kind of a funny term in that none of us could really be called homesteaders anymore. Homesteading means, to me, that you're making a home where no one ever has before and you have to provide EVERYTHING.

I make jam and can it for winter and would have a garden if I only had room but that's not homesteading. It's more something I do for the pleasure of it than any other reason. I'd say it's more my version of the Slow Food movement.

I wish there were a name for this philosophy. Urban homeseading sounds too...extreme. We make our own bread (no-knead, baby!), yogurt, granola, pasta, compost energy bars and sometimes mozzerella. I'm going to expand my garden by half next year to about 600 square feet. I pickle and sometimes can. But we're no pioneers or hippies. I hate patchoulli and the dead, and love staying up late listening to live indie bands who pass through here. I hate sewing and knitting. And I don't think I'm that unusual, but maybe it's just the crowd I hang with. So who are we? DIY foodies? I just don't know.

Although I like this idea, I agree with violet that the term sounds too extreme. In fact, it makes things that should be a pleasure sound onerous and down right difficult.

hello?

oh, good. I tried posting previously and received a "no longer accepting comments from this IP address message."

I do know someone who could be considered an urban homesteader. She forages and process hundreds of pounds of urban produce every year, has a city lot garden and chickens.

But when I think about homesteading I think about providing your own shelter and even energy. I guess urban homesteading should include harness energy through solar panels and reusing gray water as a means to provide radiant heat. Becoming as self sufficient as possible.

urban homesteader makes me think of people that buy produce at the supermarket to can and pickle. using ultra-pasteurized, homogenized milk to make cheese.

it seems like a silly name for people that have lost touch with their rural roots and are trying to invent some kind of nostalgia.

Maybe I am jumping the gun, but yes, I feel like I am. I keep a years supply of food. It is tricky to find places to store it, but it has sure helped as the economy has gotten funky. I can can food, like beans and fruit. I also like to grow herbs in the summer and dry them for the winter. I might sound like "Little House on the Prairie", but being self-sufficient feels great. There is a real sense of comfort when I know I can depend on myself and not the store.

The term "urban homesteading" was originally coined in the '80s to describe young urban professionals who bought and renovated homes in run down and questionable neighbourhoods -- certains communities in Baltimore, Haarlem. These neighbourhoods have since been largely gentrified as a result -- that's the effect of 20 years for you.

Anyways, that is the origin of the term. (I'm an urban planner, and recall even having seen it in MetHome articles at the time).

Seems the term has been co-opted.

p.s. not just Baltimore and Haarlem -- those were just examples

After watching a "Alone in the Wilderness" special last weekend, the term urban homesteading sounds like an oxymoron.

I think urban homesteading doesn't have to be a desperate scramble to reinvent your roots. We're self-described urban homesteaders and live without the aforementioned rootlessness. I think urban homesteading is about applying the concepts of self-sufficiency and improvisation to your life regardless of your geography. We converted our yard into a vegetable garden and raise 80% of the produce we use in a year, we bake all our own bread/cereal, butcher all our own meat (100% wild game!), rely soley on a woodburning stove for heat, build our own furniture from scrap metal (we're talking shelves, etc, here, not a full-metal sofa!). We sew, we build, we can, we dry, we invent. And we live in town. Urban homesteading is not an oxymoron. It's a viable lifestyle.

The term implies "farmer" rather than "gardener" for me--so I wouldn't call myself an urban homesteader, though I do grow some of my own food and most of my herbs, cook, do the odd bit of preserving, etc. My friends with the chickens and fifty-jars-per-day canning set-up, on the other hand...

DSF
http://bokashislope.blogspot.com
small-batch composting for the soil-poor or -less

Um, I think that you might have your words a little bit, mschatelaine. What you are referring to is "urban renewal", otherwise called "gentrification".