I freaking love these images. They never get old.

(Image by Harry Whittier Frees)

The summery weather has me thirsty. For beer.

Yesterday I stopped by a favorite haunt, Brooklyn Homebrew, with one goal in mind: five gallons of hoppy, summery pale ale. I sometimes dream of cooking up something crazy in my cauldron, like a black ale, or a lager, but I always end up sticking to a good old IPA or, if it's dead-hot summer, a saison. This time around the Brooklyn Homebrew's house recipe pale ale sounded mighty fine, so I gave it a go. It's a partial mash, meaning some grain and some malt extract; I prefer these to all extract brews because they taste better, and they're a lot easier and less fussy than all-grain.

I learned to homebrew from the man himself, Uncle Charlie. Charlie Papazian's book, The Complete Joy of Home Brewing, is known as the homebrewer's bible. It's the perfect book for complete beginners, but it also includes more advanced stuff to delve into over time. Highly recommended. But there are lots of free resources out there online, too. One of my favorites is a forum called HomeBrewTalk, which has lots of info and lots of wisdom for grasshoppers.

In my opinion, one of the best parts about learning from Uncle Charlie is his mantra, RDWHAHB... Relax. Don't worry. Have a homebrew.

Believe me, it really comes in handy. There are lots of moving parts in homebrewing: temperatures to keep an eye on, time to keep an eye on, sanitizing to do to just about everything, did I just add the aroma hops instead of the bittering hops... it can be easy to get flustered, and something(s) will always go wrong-ish. But luckily, barring complete catastrophe, even if you make mistakes here and there your brew will turn out just fine. Trust me. I've had a carboy volcanically erupt in my bedroom... but what was left ended up being pretty tasty.

Why go through the trouble? HB'ing is a great hobby that pays dividends and gives good buzz. You can spend buttloads on fancy equipment or use pretty much all salvaged stuff, and either way turn out great beer. It comes in handy when you can't afford the good stuff as often as you'd like, or when all you've got for options in the neighborhood are InBev brands. And it's fun!

Well, without further ado, here's my home brew how to, photo-essay style.

Equipment and supplies...

Bring water to temp.

Soak grain.

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Check out my neighbor Tom from The Meathook showing suckers how to make an easy, cheap smoker to make bacon and other tasty meat treats in. I'm totally making one this Spring! You should too. You can smoke tofu and veg in it if you're not a fan of the meats! I, for one, will be smoking it all!

(Photo by Alex Brown)

Get yr tickets before they are gone!

Ever wanted to learn how to grow, make and preserve your own food in a small space but need some hands-on guidance to do so?

Join Meg Paska, the "Brooklyn Homesteader", on her own turf as she teaches you how to raise chickens, keep bees, grow a garden, compost, forage, can, pickle, preserve and homebrew all from her tiny Greenpoint homestead.

Coffee and homemade donuts will be served in the morning before the class commences. It will tentatively go as follows:

-Building Raised Beds and Planning a Vegetable Garden
-Composting
-Chickens 101
-Food Preservation (Freezing, Drying, Canning, Fermentation)

LUNCH!

-Beekeeping 101
-Wild Edibles
-Homebrewing basics
-DIY Home and Body Care

WIND DOWN with local beers and Q&A

Attendees will get hands on experience in all aspects of the above mentioned topics and will leave with care packages of assorted goodies! (Books on the subjects covered, seeds, canned and pickled items from the class, etc)
Please email Megan@BrooklynHomesteader.com with any questions.

Students are expected to bring notepads and pens, dress in light color clothes, be able to climb ladders and are willing to sign a waiver, as we will be getting up close and personal with stinging, venomous insects, boiling hot jars of food and eating weeds from the nearby park.

All other materials are included in the cost of the class.

Check out a great video from FairCompanies.com on this lovely couple getting by on their own grit, ingenuity and hard work. This makes me miss my granddad, who was quite a grower and thinker in his day!

Love you, Pop-pop!

(Me and my Granddad in front of his garden and the greenhouse and potting shed he built in his backyard Baltimore. He grew vegetables and african violets)

I met Michael James Meier in passing last year at a Backwards Beekeepers meeting hosted by Brooklyn Grange, where he serves as their farm manager. I had been hearing stories of his resourcefulness and creativity. I also caught wind of how he jokingly refers to himself as the "Brooklyn Homo-steader" which I found totally hilarious and awesome! I recently met up with him to see if he'd want to pick up some of the slack on the blog and contribute some of his own musings to which he happily agreed to be involved! I'm really excited to have a different perspective shared on Brooklyn Homesteader for a change! Welcome, Michael!

You guys will see more posts from Michael in the future, focused on crafting with salvaged materials, homebrewing, beekeeping (this spring will be his first year!) gardening and eventually some livestock adventures of his own. In the meantime, here's a little Q&A with Michael to get you all acquainted!

So, Michael. Where are you from?
I was born and raised in a little town called Stuart on the southeast coast of Florida, just north of Jupiter and even more north of Palm Beach, and even more north than that of Miami. I've been living in NYC for about seven years and have tried out a few neighborhoods along the way: East Village, Financial District, Chinatown, Crown Heights, LES, and, now, Bed-Stuy (where I plan to stay put for a while).

When people ask you "What do you do?", what do you tell them?
Well, I worked in digital media and advertising for a couple years after school, helping big bad companies like Walmart, Kraft, and Goldman Sachs spew shit all over the internet. Mea culpa. The money was great, and I managed to pay off my hefty student loan debt. But luckily the experience was pretty polarizing for me, so I was able to eventually escape despite the material cushiness of it all.

I bit the bullet in early 2011 to make right with the world and pursue a career in urban farming. Right now I'm employed with Brooklyn Grange as farm manager alongside Ben Flanner for the 2012 season. Otherwise, I'm the proud father of two formerly-feral cat siblings (Boy and Girl); an enthusiastic, polite bicyclist; thrift-store rummager; community-gardener; seamster; knitter; found-materials artist; and otherwise homesteader.

Can you tell us a little bit about your Brooklyn homestead? What kind of projects do you have going on right now?
I like to experiment, so I've usually got at least one new project going at any time. But, generally...

Food: Right now I work with about 70 sq. ft. of container growing space on the roof of my apartment building, some clay pots but mostly stuff found on the street... buckets, storage bins, crates, and drawers. I'm also lucky to have two beds at my community garden around the corner (probably should keep that on the downlow). All in, I grow a nice haul of veggies: tomatoes, peppers, onions, beans, beets, carrots, kale, lettuces, and mustards. I'm shooting toward completely covering my veg needs, at least throughout the season, but haven't quite gotten there yet. But I like going to the greenmarkets anyway. I have played around with canning, but never get my hands on enough stuff at one time to make it worthwhile. I save seed. Too much seed.

Tipple: I brew beer year-round with a setup I bought (gasp!) at Brooklyn Homebrew. I don't get too creative unless I'm brewing for holiday presents; I usually stick to good ol' IPAs, or saisons in the summer heat of my un-a/c'd apartment. I'm thinking nice and hard about a still for this year.

Home: There's been lots of renovation and new construction in my immediate neighborhood since I moved here, so I've been a pig in shit. Lots of old wood, new wood, screws and nails. My dad got me a drill kit for my birthday a couple years ago, and boy has it come in handy. I've made lots of shelves and some little decorative odds and ends, but my biggest project so far has been a cabinet made with old red-stained cedar with ikea bed slats for shelves. It's missing doors, but for now it'll do. I also have a thing for taxidermy, and much to the chagrin of my poor roommates, I can really stink up the apartment when I don't know what I'm doing (which is just about always).

Other: I make my own toothpaste and deodorant off and on and make pomade with beeswax (soon enough, my own beeswax). I like to get crafty with my knitting needles and sewing machine, and there is nothing that can't be made out of burlap coffee sacks, let me tell you. My worm bin eats up most of my rubbish, and I use the castings in my garden.

How did you get into doing all of these things?
I was doing homesteady things for the fun of it before I even knew of the word, but I suppose that's how it always goes. Things just kind of developed over time. I guess my first real forays into homesteading were when I grew some veggies and herbs and foraged edibles in my backyard in Crown Heights. Once I caught the bug, it spread to other areas. I'd been doing the thrift store/free-box/craigslist thing, crafting, building stuff, and sewing and knitting here and there for years, but it all seemed to coalesce after I started to take control of my food. Along the way, I had delved deeper into food policy, economic policy, environmental issues, global corporatism, etc. and it began to make a lot of sense for me. What was becoming my homestead had already proven incredibly enjoyable and rewarding personally, so when I started to understand it as a way to rebel against evil, there was no turning back.

Who inspires you to keep living the sustainable life?
Probably the most influential piece of homsteady literature I've ever read is Dolly Freed's landmark Possom Living. Freed - especially as she was, then - is my homesteading idol. Otherwise, I'm particularly inspired by Vandana Shiva, Gene Logsdon, and Will Allen. To my other idols out there, sorry for blanking.

Dolly Freed in Possum Living from Tin House Books on Vimeo.

Want to describe yourself in five words?
Five words are not enough!

(Guest-blogger Ross Brown lives in Boerum Hill Brooklyn with his wife Lisa and teenage kids Tobin and Avery. A still-new urban gardener, he is adding his second beehive on his roof this year and proud to be one of the founders of the Backwards Beekeepers of NYC. An avid runner, you can find him crossing the boroughs with NYC Bridgerunners.)

When I began keeping bees on my Boerum Hill rooftop, one of my main concerns was how my neighbor, whose balcony abuts my roof, would react. Gabe is a lovely young fellow who was thrilled to see the hive being set up. He told me he thought beekeeping was super-neat (maybe those are my words, but you get the point) and that he, too, was a bit of a DIYer. He makes his own jerky. He gave me a bag of some beef jerky with a spicy dry rub he made and I was blown away. As a baseball coach and father to a teen athlete, I spend a lot of time at the ball field and often depend on jerky for quick easy protein snacking. Unfortunately it's typically packaged, commercial jerky, so receiving something so freshly made was a real treat. It was delicious, flavorful, and the freshness was unmistakable. I asked if he could teach me and he was kind enough to spend an afternoon in my kitchen sharing his expertise. And when my mom and step-dad visited recently, my step-dad Bob was kind enough to help me make a fresh batch, and he took these great photos so I could share the process with you.

The first step is deciding if you're going to make a dry-rub or marinade, or both. Think of flavors you like and don't be afraid to experiment. I use a broad range of flavors: cumin, turmeric, ginger, cayenne, chili powder, salt, pepper, brown sugar, molasses (lots of molasses), soy sauce, onion, garlic, orange/ lemon zest and juice, anything you can consider. I mix the rub together and set it aside for application, and I also cook up a batch of fresh marinade.

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There's nothing like a mile marker to give you the opportunity to look back and acknowledge what you lost, learned and gained during an increment of time or place. The real benefit of this moment of reflection is the chance to assess what you hope to learn and gain in the future. I've never been much for New Years and all of the sentimentality surrounding it, but I've recently come to appreciate the practicality of a clear end to one thing and a pronounced beginning to another.

2011 was a big year for me. I feel like I've just begun to come into my own as a backyard homesteader and perhaps even as a teacher and a writer. It's been really difficult to scrape by doing this, but I've managed, which is an accomplishment in itself. I've honed some of my weaker skills and have developed new, valuable ones. I've been given opportunities to share and have met people who seem genuinely interested in supporting and helping me. One of the most unexpected discoveries I've made during my time here is that New Yorkers care about more than just themselves. They care more about just getting ahead. I've never seen a group of people (my friends, specifically) more willing to jump to the chance to bolster their neighbor. Perhaps we are truly starting to understand that we need each other. I consider it an honor and a gift to be amongst so many inspiring, hearty folks. I hope to give to them even a fraction of what I gain from their presence in my life. I'd be nothing if it weren't for them.

There's been much good in this past year. I've only had what I consider to be one major failure this season; I took on more than I could handle and allowed myself to feel overwhelmed and unhappy about it. The excitement of actually being able to do what I love kind of got away from me, but I noticed quickly enough and plan to change. The beginning of this year will be about cutting the fat, so to speak. I plan to eliminate anything from my life that feels like dead weight or a distraction to more pressing matters and possibly hand it off to people better suited to the task if they want it. This year, I aspire to be better at letting go.

It's important to feel like I can depend on people for help more often. I am terrible at asking. I often just end up doing things myself because it seems like less work than explaining to someone how to do it. Perhaps that is true, but taking the time to get someone else on board to lighten the workload means that I'll spend less time crying and pulling my hair out when I feel like there aren't enough hours in the day for all I need to accomplish. People want to be counted on to some degree, I think. But they also want to be treated as though they can handle the job without having someone peering over their shoulder counseling them the whole time. It's a bad habit of mine and it needs to stop.

I don't have particularly lofty goals for the next year. I want to streamline my day-to-day so that it's not so oppressive. I want to perfect my curriculum so that my classes are second-to-none. I want a reputation for being dedicated and pleasant to work with among my clients and students. I want produce an amazing book that people are happy to spend their hard-earned money on. I want to keep challenging myself. I want to plan for the future. I can have these things and I will. I'm willing to put the work in.

I dream for a family and a home of my own one day. I feel myself slinking ever closer to making it real. I am on the right track. I can feel it. Each day I wake knowing I'll be doing something that matters. As a life long fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of gal, the feeling of purposeful living is a new and welcome change. Let's see if it sticks!

To all of my readers, I wish you a purposeful New Year. May 2012 be the year that matters!

-Meg

Hey all!

I just got back from visiting family in Baltimore and took a much needed day of rest yesterday. I was coming down with a cold, but a day of napping and several cups of tea later I am feeling right as rain. The human body is an incredibly resilient thing.

Neil and I exchanged some gifts when we both returned from our respective hometowns. I gave him some old cameras that my Granddad George used to take pictures with. You can still get film for them! He gave me a heavy duty meat grinder and Jackson Landers' The Beginner's Guide to Hunting Deer for Food. My boyfriend really knows what I like!

While I was in Maryland I took the opportunity to look through some of the pictures my mother had on hand, many of which were taken by my Granddad. Some of my favorites shots are the ones taken during his yearly hunting trips.

Here's an assortment of some of my favorites:

(Granddad proudly posing with a young buck he bagged.)

(The men would skin and butcher their kills on the front porch. They would freeze some and make potted venison out of much of the rest, cooking and preserving it in Ball jars)

(Is it just me, or is this photo kinda gangsta? George and an unknown friend after a rabbit hunt.)

(Granddad and my Uncle Johnny outside of Lynchburg.)

Sorry for the quality of the pictures, there was no scanner present. I thought they were good enough to share even still. I'll be posting some other old family photos in the New Year once I catch up on some long overdue writing. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy and if you have any awesome old hunting photos of your family, feel free to share them on my Facebook page!