Say . . . Smart Gals Speakeasy

Homegrown Evolution will be making a special appearance on Sunday August 17th courtesy of the Smart Gals. We’ll be doing a hands-on apartment homesteading demo and delivering a crazed Powerpoint (hint: more info on the Texas Centaur). Here’s the 411: Sunday, August 17th, 20087:00 – 9:00 p.m.Mt. Hollywood Underground4607 Prospect Avenue, Los FelizAdmission $15.00More information and the passwords: www.smartgals.org (don’t...

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Eco Blogging, Tin Foil Hats and Convention Mania

...actually quite good. They had a bunch of great speakers and interesting exhibitors. Unfortunately, when I went to review my notes the next day I realized I had written down only the wacky stuff in the form of a diary. I chalk it up to the way my cynical Gen-X brain works. So, in the end, I guess I’m the one wearing the tin-foil hat. For what it’s worth, here’s what that diary contained: 10:15 AM Way overdue for a haircut I thro...

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I like my chamomile stressed

This poor, abused little seedling is flowering like crazy. Mrs. Homegrown here: I made a mistake–I predicted a while ago that this would happen, and here it is. When we remodeled the yard and I set aside space for The Phan of Pharmacy ™ my goal was to maximize the production of herbs and flowers.  I prepped the ground in the fan like a fine flower or veg bed: double dug and richly amended. It was only aft...

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LED Light Bulbs

The geeks over at BoingBoing have jumped on the LED light bandwagon with a post about the C. Crane Company’s CC Vivid and CC Vivid+ LED light bulbs. While it’s great that folks are beginning to think about conservation, it’s disappointing that this interest seems to be about chasing the latest new techno-gadget. As concerns about impending climate and ecological disaster increase, it’s prudent to greet all new technical s...

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The Big To-Do List

...iece of taped together paper to come up with our version of Heinlein’s skill set. Most of the subjects on that paper, everything from vegetable gardening to cargo bikes, ended up in the book or in our second book Making It. Now, we don’t expect everyone to master all the things in our books, but it doesn’t hurt to have a cursory knowledge of, say, greywater plumbing or compost pile construction, even if you live in a Manhattan a...

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Trapping bees out of a kitchen vent

...c” box (a cardboard box that holds five frames) that contains open brood comb, cells with eggs and larvae, from another hive. The workers can’t get back into their old home, adopt the brood comb in the box and use it to create a new queen. The process takes at least four to six weeks since you have to wait for the old queen to stop laying eggs and for all the bees in the wall to make their way out. At then end of the six weeks the bee...

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Roughin’ It

SurviveLA is off to Joshua Tree this weekend for the graduation ceremonies of the Sierra Club’s Wilderness Travel Course. We took the WTC class earlier this year both for tips on backpacking and for gaining general self-sufficiency. The Sierra Club’s approach to roughing it is to, well, not really rough it but to go down to REI and load up on all the latest stoves, tents and “technical” fabrics. This contrasts starkly wit...

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Boycott Hollywood!

Photo by Carlos Morales from LA Streetsblog In a story that made international headlines last month the film industry voiced its disfavor with a bright green bike lane the City of Los Angeles painted downtown. Hollywood’s complaint? An editorial in the LA Times claims that “the green lane spoiled the shots that made Spring [Street] the perfect stand-in for Anytown, USA.” To add insult to injury, film production vehicl...

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Vital Farms: Pasture Raised, Organic Eggs at Whole Foods

...Whole Foods and they have expanded into meat chickens. Now, hopefully, I can recover from the spectral celebrity hallucinations induced by downing hundreds of free samples of things like pro-biotic frozen pizza (I’m not making this up) and caveman power bars. Perhaps a pasture raised egg omelet will wipe away my açaí berry hangover. Thanks to Dale Benson for suggesting attending this event and for driving, spending a half hour finding a par...

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Fermenting culture wih Sandor Katz

Katz chats up Master Food Preserver and author Kevin West Last night Erik and I went to see a talk by fermentation guru Sandor Katz, hosted by the Environmental Changemakers. Being a huge Sandor Katz fangirl, I was thrilled to get a chance to see him in person. These days he’s sporting a charming 19th century mustache! His first book, Wild Fermentation, was one of those really important, life-changing books for me. It might sound...

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