My Urban Homestead Kitchen

This post is a contribution to the Urban Homesteaders Day of Action – a response to the Dervaes family’s attempt to trademark the terms “Urban Homestead” and “Urban Homesteading” and deny their use to an entire community of people who grow veggies, raise chickens, milk goats, keep bees, preserve fruits, make cheese, bake bread, and generally attempt to live a traditional and sustainable semi-agricultural life in the middle of the city or suburbs.

My apartment has a long way to go before I could even call it an Urban Homestead. After all, this is my “back forty”:

And this is my livestock:

But I think my kitchen, and the things I make there, at least come close to capturing the philosophy of Urban Homesteading. I’m talking about cheese! This is one place where I go straight to tradition to make a food product that any (sane) urbanite would just pick up at the store. I still do buy cheese at the store, but I can imagine if there were no store; if I lived on a farm, in the middle of rural America, and was expected to grow my own food and kill my own meat. My daily homesteading life would require me to milk the cow morning and night. And what would I do with multiple gallons of milk a day? In addition to drinking some, baking with some, and churning some into butter, I’d certainly make some cheese. Just like pickling and making jam, cheese is a method of food preservation. It was a way to take very perishable milk and turn it into something that would keep in the root cellar through winter, when Bessie’s milk production lagged. Farm wives of days past gave us fresh farmer’s cheeses and Farmhouse Cheddar. All other fancier cheeses just evolved from there.

While my cheese production is purely hobby, I find that making my own cheese has taught me a lot about the history of food, past and current issues of agriculture, and today’s interest in getting back to the land and being sustainable. Making cheese connects me to the past, but is also a step towards a future – for myself and others – that includes better food. Food that comes from clean, honest places like Urban Homestead gardens and Urban Homestead kitchens.

Someday, I hope to have a true Urban Homestead… or, while we’re dreaming, maybe even a rural homestead. I want to be able to grow my own fruits and vegetables, raise some goats, and use their milk to make my cheese. For now, I’m envisioning a better balcony garden for the summer, more sourdough bread, and cheese that captures the essence of tradition and supports the ideals of my very own Urban Homestead kitchen.

Where the magic happens...