Via Change.org’s Sustainable Food blog, I just learned that the phrase “urban homestead” (think chickens, canning, and vegetable beds) is no longer up for grabs. A Pasadena-based group called the Dervaes Institute has trademarked it:
In what can only be described as a blatantly capitalistic move, the Dervaes Institute has successfully registered as trademarks such generic terms as “urban homesteading,” “freedom garden,” and “grow the future.” Despite the claim on the Institute’s Web site that the Dervaes “believe in giving freely to others,” they recently sent out a barrage of letters to Web sites, bloggers, and authors that use these terms, informing them that they are legally required to either attribute these terms to the Dervaes Institute or replace them with supposedly more generic terms like “modern homesteading” or “urban sustainability projects.”
Dervaes has forced Oakland’s Institute of Urban Homesteading, which offers fascinating-sounding classes on topics like cheesemaking, quail farming, salami making, and coffee-bean roasting, to disable its Facebook page. Another one of the group’s targets was a homesteading class at offered at the Santa Monica Public Library.
The weirdest part? Aside from the trademarking shenanigans, the Dervaes Institute seems like a pretty cool organization. The people behind it appear to be a family that decided to grow their own vegetables, and got hooked. Now they maintain a useful blog and website and run workshops geared toward urban homesteader (that’s right, I said it!) wannabes.
Anyway, the irony of these folks claiming to have invented, and now own, the concept of self-sufficiency is just too blatant even to comment on. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going out to my backyard™ where I’m planning to build a chicken coop™
so I can have some eggs™
.
Via OC Weekly.
