The How to Homestead series offers a year's worth of skill sharing, potlucking, dancing, and live music, all designed to bring communities together.
It turns out there are lots of community centers just waiting for people to take advantage of them. One in each of San Francisco's 11 districts, in fact. So Stone, who, when she's not teaching or tilling soil, directs (and often stars in) how-to videos on everything from composting to greywater systems installation to DIY Kombucha for the How to Homestead website, decided to organize a yearlong, hyperlocal series in the city that aims to bring neighborhoods together through food, music, and sharing of the unique skills she's documented over the years.
In planning the How to Homestead programming, Stone worked directly with the community center to see what they were keen to host, learn, promote, and also to determine what works seasonally. Participants can now sign up to learn a variety of useful skills from basic mending to plant propagation, tincture and salve making to solar oven building. Each demonstration is followed by a potluck, live music, movies, and dancing including a contra dance with caller Mavis L. McGaugh at the end of February and a Hootenanny in August. (If you've got a skill to share, let Melinda and her crew know here.)