Welcome to Urban ReNEWal, the offical blog of the HeartLand House

The HeartLand House, located in the Bay View neighborhood of Milwaukee, became a reality in September 2012. The house is meant to be a model of urban sustainability, showing how city dwellers can become more self-sufficient when it comes to things like food production, water consumption, and energy use. At the same time, it is also meant to illustrate how local products and services can be integrated into one's home life. We have chosen to buy from local stores, hire local contractors, and even hang local art in the house (and we will be highlighting those we have worked with on this site).

While the idea behind the HeartLand House is quite old (and more on this history to come soon!), the current incarnation was inspired by James Godsil, co-founder of Sweet Water Organics, an indoor urban farm housed in a formerly abandoned industrial building on the south side of Milwaukee. Sweet Water Organics has employed aquaponic systems - systems involving the cultivation of plants and fish together in a constructed, re-circulating ecosystem - as it has grown into a large-scale production center. For those interested in urban agriculture, Sweet Water has become an inspiration and a must-see attraction. But what happens once visitors leave the farm? How can they carry their interest in urban sustainability back to their communities?

It is these questions that HeartLand House hopes to address. Michael Carriere and Shelly McClone, along with their blended family of three children, have moved into a home previously owned by Sweet Water's Godsil - with the goal of using the site as a first-of-its-kind neighborhood "hub," a place that allows Sweet Water's vision to reach into a vibrant Milwaukee neighborhood. The back and front yards will serve as fully-functioning gardens (producing such things as tomatoes, raspberries, peppers, lettuce, and watermelon), while the detached garage will come to serve as a laboratory for smaller-scale aquaponic systems. We also plan to work with a variety of community groups, schools, and others in implementing rainwater harvesting techniques and alternative energy technologies. We will be documenting all of these relationships, with the goal of showing others how this can be done. In the future, we also hope to hold workshops on topics like canning and permaculture at the house itself.

In this election year, we see the creation of the HeartLand House as a political statement. We desire to reclaim the narratives of family, self-sufficiency, production, and entrepreneurialism from the conservative forces that have attempted to monopolize these potent ideas. Yes, the HeartLand House will be a place where our family lives. But it is also meant to be seen as a type of activism, of pushing our cities to re-imagine themselves. For us, the bottom line is that we want our house to work and to be a model of how the home can be a site of production - of actual goods like produce, but also of things like knowledge and community. If not now, when?