A Steampunk Homestead

Posted by on November 17th,2011

[For those keeping score at home, this is the second update in as many weeks!  From here on out, we’ll be trying our hardest to bring you unique Steampunk news once a week! — s.sprocket]

“A man’s home is his castle” is the phrase that comes to mind.  Your Castle, YOUR place.  It should be reflective of the lifestyle of you and those who live within it.  No surprise then that we get threads in Tactile like this one where folks talk about steaming up the home.

Many Steampunk apartments can be found with a simple Google search. This apartment for example made it to many blogs and even news broadcasts.  The question becomes then, has anyone ever tried this on a larger scale?  Or more importantly, Has anyone ever attempted to “live the life” as well as the aesthetic? Click more to find out!

Steampunks local to Southern California may know those folks above as two of the founding members of Machina Fatalis, a group of Steampunks in the San Diego region.  They recently left the world of Home Owner Associations and picked up what can only be referred to in Maker terms as a “beater” and they are slowly nursing it not only back to health, but to full steampunkyness [is that even a word?]

When describing her new home to me, BG’s own Fraulein Flieger described their progress like this:

Lately it’s mostly been fixing it up so we can live here and growing veggies in the meantime. We had a terrific crop of pumpkins from the patch this year.  [We’ve] been enjoying many fresh eggs from the chickens as well. The pretty stuff will come soon. Right now we’re just excited to have gotten a dishwasher delivered. Now to get it installed!

Wait a moment, Pumpkins?Eggs?, Dishwasher?! [is it steam powered at least?]  Not only are the plans to make the homestead aesthetically pleasing, but they hope to be self sustaining like many homes in San Diego in the 19th century.  Clearly they believe Steampunk is more than just pretty gears and brass.   Dimitri said it best in an issue of Steampunk Magazine:

“You want steampunk to be a novelty, a LOLcat, a meme. I want it to be my life. Which of us is going to fight harder for it?” –Dimitri Markotin Steampunk Magazine #5

Truer words were never spoke.