Taking Back Urban Homesteading

February 21, 2011

Posted by Lisa Sharp under Gardening

By now you may have heard the Dervaes family (the Path to Freedom people) have trademarked the terms “urban homestead” and “urban homesteading.” They are sending letters to bloggers, libraries, and more telling them to stop using the terms or they must give them credit. Facebook pages using the terms have even been shut down!

The Dervaes have been playing victim and saying it’s better them than some company trademark the terms. But if they really were just trying to save it from companies couldn’t they still let bloggers and such use the term without sending them cease and desist letters and making them add a trademark?

This past week Crunchy Chicken posted a blog about the trademarks and it got the blog world pretty worked up. There is now a Facebook page called Take Back Urban Home-steading(s) (the weird spelling is used to keep it from being shut down). There is also a petition to cancel the trademarks.

In addition to all of the above today is a day of action, the goal is to blanket the web with the terms urban homestead and urban homesteading. If you have a blog join in and let’s tell the Dervaes that these terms belong to all of us! If you have backyard garden, compost rotting in your backyard, make your own pretty much everything, then you have as much right to use these terms as anyone!

You can read more of the blogs being posted today over at Crunchy Chicken’s blog.