When we first started following your work, we assumed that you were in this line for the same reasons as everyone else – to build community, raise awareness of the urgency of getting back to locavorism and radical sustainability, to share skills, to lead by example, to show in living colour how joyful and abundant a simple life can be. And I will say this: you were doing it in style. I was inspired.

Until I heard about this trademarking thing.

We would have some sympathy for wanting to keep your concept out of the hands of corporations and greenwashers. If that were what it was really about.

But it’s not, is it? This is an excuse. What you really want is not to be “confused with other projects”. Talk about corporate tactics. Branding is, if you ask me, a disgrace. Branding a purely descriptive term like “urban homesteading” is, quite simply, wrong.

With sorrow, I am unfriending you today. Co-operation beats competition, folks. Scientifically proven. This act is a mistake.

Helen Thomson

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