Susan Mernit: February 2009 Archives

I've been a part of three principal communities in my life so far: the poetry world, the online news/media world, and the tech/social media world.  In each case I can point to a phase where I read and studied and met people and planned and experimented and got completely absorbed, and then my life started to shift. 

There was that moment I got out of college and started working for a poetry non-profit and teaching Poetry in the Schools, then the one where I went from a print journalist at Scholastic to creating one of the first education online communities and one of the first consumer web sites, then the move to Advance and New Jersey Online and then to Netscape and into the product development/tech world.

I feel like am heading to a new place again, but this time the obsessions are making our cities sustainable, food justice, urban homesteading, permaculture and a host of related things, including supporting access to Web 2.0 tools and making sure we have free media and multiple viewpoints online.

What I am doing about this interest right now is reading, thinking, learning, and, slowly, talking to people. Soon, I will also be taking action, as I'm going to do the following:

• Create a composting system in my backyard and build a worm bin to do vermiculture
• Plan a food-focused container garden
• Sheet mulch and remediation plant the dirt beds I do have
• Plant that garden, tend it, and have food to eat/share/put by
• Trade for eggs; try making my own bread, pickles, jam
• Follow more of the eating principles in Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Real Food by Nina Planck; i.e., less industrial protein and more pastured, free-range, grass-fed, all organic eggs, (raw) milk, dairy, no or little soy
• Create a space to grow food in front of my house and see what happens when I plant it
• Work with the Public Media Collaborative and interested people to teach every mission-driven organization in these categories of interest (and others) how to use social media tools to promote their events, campaigns, and programs.

The outcomes I want to have are to be less reliant on the current infrastructure and to get to know my neighbors and make deeper ties with people living around me.
 
So, Oakland Homesteaders starts as a place for me to chronicle this journey from a newbie to, hopefully, a practitioner. I may not post here more than once a week, and I have no idea how these plans will turn out, but I'd like to document my learning, my successes and my failures right here.

SIDE NOTE: This could be a group blog.  If you are an Oakland/Berkeley/East Bay resident involved in urban homesteading, sustainability, foraging, greywater, rainwater harvesting, bike transport, peak oil and/or transition teams, or related topics, and you're interested in posting at this blog as a group member please contact me at s mernit  gmail
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People who want to post ads for their services, or relink back to their own blogs as promotion are not what I am looking for as group members, but if you send me info about your product in this category I will look at it. 

If you already have a blog you'd like me to add to a blogroll (I am building one), please send me that and I will try to include you. There are some wonderful blogs in Oakland, and I'd like to point to them.

A welcome home dinner, cooked by Miz. Nesting(me): seared tuna, roasted squash and the first Caesar salad I ever made, courtesy of The (older) Joy of Cooking.

Recipe (adapted) Leave 1 clove garlic, peeled and sliced in 1/2 cup olive oil (don't use any other oil) for 24 hours. Or press garlic and just throw it in the dressing, which is what I did.

Saute 1 cup cubed French bread in 2 tablespoons of the garlic oil.

Break up into 2-inch lengths: 2 heads romaine

Wash and dry well. Place the romaine in a salad bowl. Sprinkle over it: 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 1/4 teaspoon dry mustard A generous grating of black pepper. Few drops of Worcestershire sauce)

Add 3 tablespoons wine vinegar and the remaining 6 tablespoons garlic oil.

Cook one egg gently in simmering water for 1-1/12 minutes. drop the egg from the shell onto the ingredients in the bowl.

Squeeze the juice of one lemon over the egg.

Add the croutons and 2-3 tablespoons Parmesan cheese. Toss.

Housemates were thrilled.

I don't know if I would have gotten as obsessed with urban homesteading, sustainability, permaculture, eating right, and becoming less dependent on peak oil and the urban infrastructure if I hadn't no moved to the house I am now living in in Oakland.

First of all, we have a decent-sized kitchen, a basement we can store things in, and adequate shelving.  Second of all, we have--like most of our neighbors--a big backyard; in our case, with just about nothing in it. Third of all, we have folks already in the neighborhood who clearly are biking instead of driving, planting food on front of their houses, and working to improve their soil. 

Within three miles of my house, there are at least four community gardens--City Slickers, Temescal, Ashby Community Garden and the new Oakland Roots and more nurseries, places to learn about gardening, and green organizations than I ever imagined.

The goal of this blog is to have a place to share what I am learning about making and growing more of our food, getting into barter, creating spaces to grow things, and ultimately, creating community with others with similar concerns. 

Please note, I am NOT an expert, and in fact am prepared to make alot of pretty stupid mistakes, so regard this as the journal of an observant student, not an expert teacher.