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Photo by Jordan Twiggs
What would it be like to create an urban homestead at New Belgium Brewing’s Tour de Fat? A homestead with chickens, gardens, greywater buckets, rainwater barrels, a few Wolverine Farmer’s and a kitchen to center all the hustle and bustle?
Even with an estimated 80,000 dams in the United States, seasonal floods still happen, and this was the case for Wolverine Farm Publishing’s DIY Urban Homestead at the launch of New Belgium Brewing’s 2010 Tour de Fat in Chicago. Thanks to a heavy rain the night before, our homestead was literally under water when we arrived at Palmer Square Park in Chicago, Illinois on June 26th. We scooped and pushed the water off the 25’x 30’ canvas our homestead is painted on. The park was full of bicyclists waiting to go on the bike parade and we were scrambling to salvage our homestead, like so many settlers before us. While the parade took off for a 45-minute ride, we used our Bicycle Water Pump to siphon off the rest of the water, and prepared for the cyclists to return.
We built our homestead to inspire and ignite conversations about self-reliant urban living. We see and read dozens of new books each year at our bookstore about this very subject—why not have a traveling road show, too? When the bicyclists returned we talked chickens, gardening, water conservation, and canning all day long while a full festival of wonderment pulsed around us. Our bicycle water pump proved reliable and awe-inspiring, and while we pedaled to make water fall, we ruminated on how much water it takes to make one automobile (over 39,000 gallons!). Who needs to be involved in an equation like that? We got to show off the new issues of Matter and Boneshaker, and we even had returning customers from last year! Unbelievable joy!
Chicago, thanks for being our first pancake, and good luck with those chickens.
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