(Photo from Green Roof Growers)

Later this month: two events with Erik Knutzen, co-author — with his wife, Kelly Coyne — of The Urban Homestead, a how-to handbook for urbanites interested taking a a few steps off the grid.

The book covers strategies for self-sufficient living that range from the unremarkable (gardening, bread baking) to the old-school (canning and fermenting) to the fringe (greywater plumbing, composting your own poop). Based in LA, Coyne and Knutzen do all of the above — and keep chickens — at their Echo Park bungalow.

In the book the pair delivers a lot of practical advice, in low-key, anecdotal style (“A good indicator of chicken health is a fluffy, clean butt.”), with a refreshing lack of didacticism. 

For example, as someone who thinks it’s totally normal to eat nachos for dinner twice a week I appreciated this, from page 17: “Sometimes, when life gets too crazy, we don’t do anything beyond the barest maintenance, and eat a lot of pizza. Nothing wrong with that.”

Knutzen is also a member of the awesomely  terrific Center for Land Use Interpretation, whose projects — which range from exhibits on the history and design of parking spaces to a settlement at an abandoned airbase in Wendover, Utah, the former training ground for the crew of the Enola Gay — share the matter-of-fact, discovery-driven tone of Knutzen and Coyne’s book. (I could go on and on about CLUI, whose work I love for, among other things, its scrupulous — and quite possibly disingenuous — avoidance of any social or political agenda, but instead I’ll just point you to this video, in which cofounder Matthew Coolidge talks about the Center’s origins and mission.)

Anyway. All of which is to say that Knutzen is heading to Chicago next week. On the 20th he’s teaming up with Green Roof Growers for a workshop on making your own sub-irrigated planters — essentially an Earthbox made from a pair of five-gallon buckets (and pictured above). That’s at an undisclosed location in Wicker Park,which will be revealed upon registration. It’s $50, but that gets you not just the skills to build your own SIP, but a completed one to take home, along with potting mix and an heirloom tomato seedling to plant in it. See Knutzen and Coyne’s blog, Homegrown Evolution, for details.

On the 21st he’ll give an informal talk at the Experimental Station on his experience learning to garden, raise chickens, install solar arrays, and what have you. That’s at 7 PM at 6100 S. Blackstone; they’re asking for sliding scale donations in the $7-$10 range.

See you there.