The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City, by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen is one of the most inspiring books I've ever read. It's honest, non-utopian, approach gave me the courage to try my hand at raising chickens, composting, growing vegetables, and practice old school food preservation methods.
In my 2008 review of the book, I wrote, "Unlike many self-sufficiency books, this one isn't preachy, unrealistic, or dogmatic. Instead, it's honest and often humorous. Kelly and Erik (who run the Homegrown Evolution blog) are wonderfully lucid and accessible writers. They also walk the walk — I visited their Los Angeles home and spent a wonder couple of hours touring their abundant vegetable gardens and henhouse filled with clownlishly entertaining chickens."
I was pleased to learn that The Urban Homestead has been expanded and revised. The new projects include:
• How to sterilize jars and bottles
• How to make infused oil
• Six ways to preserve a tomato
• How to make soda bread
• How to store grain with dry ice
• How to make a tomato can stove
• How to make a Viet Nam light
• How to make a Euell Gibbon's crock
• How to make L'hamd markad, or preserved, salted lemons
• How to make a bike light
I'm looking forward to trying some of these new projects myself. Congratulations, Kelly and Erik!
