[Scpg] LA Times: Urban Homesteading takinbg off in Altadena

[LBUZZELL at aol.com]

_http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-urban-farming-20110310,0,7425170
.story_ 
(http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-urban-farming-20110310,0,7425170.story)    
latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-urban-farming-20110310,0,7425170.story 
latimes.com
Urban homesteaders find ideal ground in Altadena
Neighbors swap produce, honey, eggs and much more in Altadena, where the  
urban homesteading movement has produced much more than sustenance.
By Veronique de Turenne, Special to the Los Angeles Times 
March 10, 2011 
 
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Sometimes, the peach on a backyard tree is just a peach, a sweet, 
home-grown  bonus. In certain circles of Altadena, though, that peach is a gateway  
fruit.

One tree becomes three, which becomes an orchard. The quest for  organic 
fertilizer leads to a flock of chickens, which beget a garden. Before  you 
know it, there's a herd of goats out front, heritage turkeys in back, a  
beehive, a rabbit hutch and a guard llama.

This isn't just growing your  own, a few clay pots on a condo balcony, say, 
or a tomato patch next to the rose  bed. It's full-on urban homesteading, 
people raising fruit, produce and  livestock in the city, and nowhere in 
Southern California has it taken off like  in Altadena.

"There's a lot of hot air about urban homesteading right  now," says _Erik  
Knutzen,_ 
(http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/emeraldcity/2008/06/interview-with.html)  a Silver Lake resident who co-wrote the paperback guide "The Urban 
 Homestead" with his partner, Kelly Coyne, and _blogs_ 
(http://www.rootsimple.com/)  on the subject. "But in Altadena,  they really are doing 
something."

With a strong agricultural past, a  quirky history and relative isolation 
from the L.A. basin's sprawl, Altadena's a  natural for the urban 
homesteading movement.

"Altadena is one of the most  phenomenal agricultural areas because of the 
rich alluvial deposits," Knutzen  says. "And it's the only audience I've 
ever spoken to where there was a live  rooster in the auditorium."

Some urban homesteaders tap into the growing  preference for hyper-local 
products. Others are driven by the merciless squeeze  of this awful economy, 
Knutzen says. In fact, a low-tech gauge of economic  health is the 
subscription list for monthly _Backyard Poultry_ (http://www.backyardpoultrymag.com,)  
which spikes  whenever times get tough.

Whatever that first garden project may be, more  often than not it 
snowballs.

Case in point: Kazi Pitelka, a viola player  with the Los Angeles Opera. In 
the mid-1990s, she bought a house on a 3/4-acre  lot whose garden had been 
neglected for years. As she brought it back to life,  Pitelka planted a few 
fruit trees. Then she planted a few more. Now a member of  the _California 
Rare Fruit Growers_ (http://www.crfg.org/,)  Pitelka  harvests fruit such as 
mangos, bananas, apples, guavas, cherries, apricots,  citrus (30 kinds) and 
star fruit from an orchard of 120 different  trees.

Three vegetable gardens yield year-round produce. A flock of 30  chickens 
provides eggs and meat. Pitelka's foray into chickens led to raising  turkeys 
for the holiday table. (That first year, the turkeys, which were so  large 
they couldn't fit in the oven, were named Thanksgiving, Christmas and  
Easter.) Now she raises smaller heritage birds, which love to roost in her  trees.

The mini-farm takes a lot of work and money, but the results are  worth it, 
Pitelka says.

"Breakfast this morning was bread I made, eggs I  raised and fruit I grew," 
she says. "That happens a lot, and I'm far from alone.  It's Altadena 
itself that attracts people who want this kind of  life."

Altadena, which sits at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, is  at a 
physical and psychological remove from L.A.'s megalopolis, says historian  and 
longtime resident Michele Zack.

"We're at the very fringe of L.A.,  backed right up against the mountains," 
says Zach. She's the author of "_Altadena:  Between Wilderness and City,"_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/Altadena-Between-Wilderness-1772-1939-California/dp/B0
00EBE358)  published by the Altadena Historical Society  in 2004. "The area 
has a strong rural past — it began as a wine-growing region —  and 
boosterism aside, it has this fantastic, granitic soil that grows almost  anything."

As an unincorporated part of L.A. County, Altadena is free  from the 
restrictive zoning laws of nearby cities. It's OK to keep poultry and  many kinds 
of livestock, a task made easier by the community's large lot sizes.  Add in 
a history of being home to artists, musicians and assorted free spirits,  
and you've got the makings of a back-to-the-land movement.

Among  Altadena's more colorful characters was _Jirayr Zorthian,_ 
(http://www.zorthian.com/ranch.html)  a painter and  sculptor who traded art classes 
on his 48-acre ranch for lessons in physics from  his neighbor, Richard 
Feynman, a Nobel laureate. Zorthian, famous for his annual  birthday bash, a 
bacchanal of food and drink and naked dancing girls, willed the  ranch to his 
son, Alan, after his death at age 92 in 2004. Today, a fledgling  homestead 
is taking shape.

A pair of dairy goats roam the ranch's steep  hillsides. There's a horse or 
two and a flock of chickens, of course. A neighbor  keeps about a dozen 
beehives on the property and pays his "rent" in honeycomb.  After a mountain 
lion ate two milking goats, a llama was purchased and put on  guard duty. But 
the steep mountain slopes favored by the goats proved beyond the  llama's 
abilities, so now it fills the role of ranch mascot.

Overseeing  it all is Gary Dawson, who moved from Pittsburgh in 2004 and 
became the ranch's  caretaker. He cares for the vegetable gardens and fruit 
trees, makes wine from  the honey, pickles olives from a small grove and 
dabbles in chicken  breeding.

"I want to make a new breed, between an Americana, that lays  blue eggs, 
and a Barnevelder, a Dutch breed that lays brown eggs," Dawson says.  "I want 
a Barnevelder that lays blue eggs, and that would be the Altadena  chicken."

Farther from the mountains, Gloria Putnam is having great luck  with goats. 
A search for a source of fresh cow's milk led to owning the Mariposa  
Dairy, a herd of nine milk goats. Putnam and her partner, Steve Rudicel, live in  
his family home, an 18,000-square-foot house once owned by _Zane  Grey._ 
(http://historylosangeles.blogspot.com/2009/08/zane-grey-estate-altadena.html) 

"For the first year we were here, all we did with our time and  income was 
fix the leaking roof," Putnam says. "When we finally looked outside,  we saw 
we had all this land."

The couple put in raised vegetable beds,  added chickens and bought two 
goats. Two goats became nine, and the friendly,  funny, strong-willed animals 
soon became the focus of their homesteading  enterprise. The couple milk the 
goats twice a day, and Putnam makes cheese. Last  year, she entered the 
International Dairy Competition at the Los Angeles County  Fair and won an award 
in the mold-ripened goat cheese category.

Now  Putnam's considerable skills as an organizer have led to a monthly 
_Urban Farmers  Market_ (http://www.facebook.com/AltadenaUrbanFarmersMarket)  
in Altadena, a hit with growers and shoppers alike. At its inaugural  meeting 
in October, 330 people attended. The number grew to 550 in November. In  
January, a holiday weekend, close to 400 people braved drenching rain to buy  
hyper-local produce.

None of which surprises Gail Murphy, the founder of  _RIPE,_ 
(http://www.ripealtadena.com/)  a local fruit-swapping  group.

"People build [kinship] around church and school, and here we've  had that 
come out of our backyard produce," Murphy says. Members meet regularly  to 
trade and share excess produce from backyard trees and gardens.

"There  were four or five of us at the beginning, and now there are close 
to 200,"  Murphy says. The food swaps have led to an information network, 
potluck dinners  and a sense of living among neighbors.

"Growing our own food has led to  sharing it, which has led to something we 
knew we needed but didn't know we  had," Murphy said. "A true community."

_food at latimes.com_ (mailto:food at latimes.com) 
Copyright © 2011, _Los Angeles Times_ (http://www.latimes.com/) 
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