![\"SIPs!\"](\"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/grgdscn1918.jpg\" "\\"SIPs!\\"")
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(Photo from Green Roof Growers<\/a>)<\/p>\n Later this month: two events with Erik Knutzen, co-author — with his wife, Kelly Coyne — of The Urban Homestead<\/a>, a how-to handbook for urbanites interested taking a a few steps off the grid.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>). Based in LA, Coyne and Knutzen do all of the above — and keep chickens — at their Echo Park bungalow.<\/p>\n 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\u00a0refreshing lack of didacticism.\u00a0<\/p>\n For example, as someone who thinks it’s totally normal to eat nachos for dinner twice a week I appreciated this, from page 17:\u00a0“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.”<\/p>\n Knutzen is also a member of the awesomely \u00a0terrific Center for Land Use Interpretation<\/a>, whose projects — which range from exhibits on the history and design of parking spaces<\/a> to a settlement at an abandoned airbase in Wendover, Utah<\/a>, 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<\/a>, in which cofounder Matthew Coolidge talks about the Center’s origins and mission.)<\/p>\n 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<\/a> for a workshop on making your own sub-irrigated planters — essentially an Earthbox<\/a> 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<\/a>, for details.<\/p>\n On the 21st he’ll give an informal talk at the Experimental Station<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n See you there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (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 … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[129,126,128,127,130,132,131],"class_list":["post-465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-urban-agriculture","tag-center-for-land-use-interpretation","tag-erik-knutzen","tag-green-roof-growers","tag-kelly-coyne","tag-sub-irrigated-planters","tag-the-urban-homestead","tag-urban-homesteading"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":483,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions\/483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}