FromSoil2Soul Urban Homestead
From hands-on workshops to ritual gatherings, our events celebrate the art of living sustainably and connecting deeply—with the land, the food we eat, and one another. We’re excited to share this vision with thoughtfully crafted experiences that are as unique as the individuals who visit us. This homestead healing garden is a sanctuary we return to time and again to ground in gratitude, and to reweave ourselves into wonder.
The land that my family stewards in Sherman Oaks is in the unceded ancestral territories of the first people of Tovaangar, the Tongva-Gabrielino and Fernando Tataviam people as the original stewards of this land. Our Jewish experience as a Diaspora people gives us a unique perspective on the ongoing heartbreak that is the loss of ancestral homelands. Our family respects the first people of Los Angeles, the traditional stewards past, present, and emerging.
The Tongva call this neighborhood Siutcanga. As homesteaders, we acknowledge that part of our responsibility is to help heal the trans-generational trauma experienced by indigenous Tongva people, and this sacred land. As a result of historic genocide, erasure, and systemic oppression, we tend this land today. We recognize that Native communities have higher rates of illness, poverty, houselessness, and systemic violence than any other minority group in the US, and we support the return of land to indigenous stewardship through #landback. We are committed to dismantling systems of oppression that continue to sever the fundamental connection between indigenous justice and climate justice across the globe. Please support the local Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Conservancy, or your local indigenous land trust.
Having witnessed firsthand the near complete erasure from the forced displacement of Bedouin in Israel/Palestine as a frontline organizer for two decades, I actively support land rights for indigenous people. As a land steward, I strongly believe in agitating for the safety and prosperity of indigenous nations and their right to steward natural resources, federal forests and national parks. I encourage support for indigenous land trusts, as well as voluntary land-use taxing, and community food sovereignty through indigenous-led nonprofits like Honor the Earth, Sogorea Te Land Trust. I am in strong solidarity with water keepers, land rights activists, farmers, food and environmental justice stewards and organizers advancing #landback, with womxn leading steps to ReMatriate through healing justice for indigenous nations.
Today I urge my friends, students, and clients to learn what native lands you are on, and learn how indigenous peoples are disproportionately impacted by the historic and ongoing expropriation and confiscation of land, labor, and finite resources through settler colonialism. Learn how to write a Land Acknowledgement and follow #landback to stay current on struggles for land return. Consider diving deeper and read As Long As the Grass Still Grows (Dina Gilio-Whitaker).
Today it is crucial to support the indigenous-led fight for #landback.
Regenerative Urban Homesteading and Climate Resilience
In 2010, we transformed a conventional landscape that was a bleak “blister in the sun” into urban homestead growing 27 fruit trees, and raising chickens through urban agro-ecology and regenerative farming practices. Here, we grow small-scale, bio-intensive perennial crops on a parcel of less than 1/5 acre. We partner with our neighbors to compost their food scraps and feed the land to grow living soil in reciprocal relationship with nature - minimizing water-use, and rebuilding soil organic matter to increase biodiversity and soil fertility. By actively farming soil microbes, we feed the Soil Food Web; use less water; cool the grounds; and avoid chemical inputs and synthetic fertilizers!
By optimizing the photosynthetic drawdown of atmospheric CO2 to feed and regenerate living soil, this form of agriculture grows an abundance of nutrient-dense crops in harmony with nature to adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change.
Click below to join the FromSoil2Soul What’sApp Forum for Urban Homestead, gardening tips and tricks.
FromSoil2Soul Urban Homestead
This space is a hidden gem, a beautiful, unique location for creatives to film content, have a photo shoot, host your favorite podcast, or gather your community for an awesome workshop or intimate party.
On Wednesdays & Sundays you can drop off your food scaps to divert waste and #makesoil!
Rent our homestead: PeerSpace. Here is a discount code.
Rent our pool: Swimply.
Rent our gardens: HealingGardens
Our Urban Homestead History
NOT gifted land in 1862 as part of the Homestead Act, we use this term conscious of the impact of US land reform legislation responsible for distributing over 270 million acres of land to 1.5 million white settlers, and some 6000 former slaves. Our stewardship is also met by organizing for and supporting land redistribution to BIPoC organizations and indigenous #landback.
Originally, the San Fernando Valley hills and valleys were lush with oaks and walnut trees, and were later planted with diverse citrus groves and many invasive species. In 1769, Spanish conquistador Gaspar de Portolà and explorers arrived.
We purchased land and transformed a conventional home (sun-bleached, compacted slab of dirt) built in the 1950s into a vibrant food forest. This is also known as a BUSTAN (Hebrew/Arabic) a polyculture orchard reminiscent of the traditional Iranian polyculture of the Middle East.
Today we tend 27 fruit trees, a water-wise greywater food/herb garden, an aquaponic farming system, two 9x50 vegetable gardens, free-range chickens, five composting sites with tens of thousands of Red Wiggler worms and food we grow for our chickens. By growing perennials and dry lands vegetable and fruit varieties, our homestead is entirely pesticide-free and uses no synthetic fertilizers. On our good days, we aspire to be mostly zero-waste and even get off-screen a bit. Along with my husband and our two children, this thriving urban homestead is home to a heap of happy hens and a school of hardworking fish that power an aquaponic medicinal herb garden. We compost for 18 of our neighbors through our FromSoil2Soul Super Soil Site. Click here to drop off your scraps: MakeSoil.org, or find us on ShareWaste. Here, we alchemize waste into resource and literally compost anything possible.
