Homesteading in LA? Off-the-Grid in Tinseltown?

Here is an upbeat, unabashedly outrageous book about applying the principles of self-reliance, more often associated with rural back-to-the-landers and wilderness campers, to life in suburban Los Angeles. By telling their own homesteading story, the Nyergeses have created a blueprint that will help city-dwellers anywhere live more independently.

The book is organized more like a how-to or self-help book than a personal memoir. The authors present self-sufficient and ecological approaches to commonly defined areas of a household:

• The House
• The Yard
• Homegrown Foods (and wild edibles)
• Domestic Animals
• The Garden
• Water
• Energy
• Recycling

A concluding chapter takes on larger lifestyle questions of livelihood and healthy relationships with money and security.

Although the Nyergeses are "extremists" in many ways, their warmth and humor is accessible to all. They have been widely published (they are frequent contributors to Mother Earth News) and operate a popular School for Self-Reliance that offers courses in wild food foraging, wild food cookery, orienteering, self-reliance, and survival.

Frankly, few city dwellers will choose to live the "extreme simplicity" of the Nyergeses, but many will be inspired by their example. Young people just starting out who are drawn to cities for social and cultural reasons but who don't have the financial means to live comfortably stand to learn much from this book. This book will also find a ready audience among people who live in group houses, or political activists who embrace the anti-globalization movement.