Search Results for: label/book reviews

334 results

Al Pacino Closed My Bike Lane

Mr. Homegrown
Bikes, Thoughtstylings
10 Comments
...the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition. He called the police who looked up the permit and found out that, indeed, this film company did not have a permit to block the bike lane. Now, on my last trip to Portland during our book tour I snapped a picture of what happens in that city when a truck blocks the bike lane. Portlandians put up some cones to route cyclists around work vehicles: Now here’s how we do it in Los Angeles. LAPD head...

Continue reading…

Of Makers and Bowyers

Mr. Homegrown
Design, Events, Thoughtstylings
7 Comments
Film One: Harry (Archer & Bowyer) from Dylan Ryan Byrne on Vimeo. I had a great time yesterday as a guest on a panel discussion at the LA Times Book Festival with Mark Frauenfelder and David Rees (thanks to Alisa Walker for being the best moderator ever). We talked about DIY culture and the ethos of being a “maker”. I think it’s safe to say that all of us on that panel have great admiration for talented “makers̶...

Continue reading…

Stoicism as a Toolkit for Modern Life

Mr. Homegrown
Age of Limits, Thoughtstylings
10 Comments
...w from an earlier post of ours. It’s an oversimplification, of course, but it gives you the gist: Wish we could credit this properly, but we got it off of Boing Boing. I was introduced to stoicism by Nassim Taleb in his book The Black Swan (nothing to do with the movie!). Taleb says, “My idea of the modern stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertak...

Continue reading…

Deep Bedding for Chickens

Mrs. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens, Composting
42 Comments
We’ve got about 5-6″ of loose stuff on the floor of our chicken run. Underneath that, it’s black gold. Around this time of year, folks are getting chickens. Some for the first time. So I figured it was time to talk about deep bedding again. I know we’ve written about it before, in our book, or on this blog, but this advice bears repeating: Nature abhors bare ground.  Line your chicken coop and run with a thick l...

Continue reading…

Humanure Dry Toilet Made From a Milk Crate

Mr. Homegrown
Composting, Design, How-to, Humanure
41 Comments
...wobble when you sit on them. For these reasons I designed a sturdy dry toilet making use of a scavenged milk crate. Even if the idea of humanure grosses you out (and it’s definitely the most controversial subject in our book), our milk crate toilet would be great for camping, emergencies or your remote cabin. Putting this toilet together takes just a few minutes. First, find a milk or beer crate and a five gallon bucket. Make sure that the...

Continue reading…

My Trip to Maker Faire

Mr. Homegrown
Bikes, Solar, Thoughtstylings
3 Comments
...wing pictures of solar cookers. And, after all, maybe it’s time we retire PowerPoint. Some of the things I spotted at Maker Faire: Long lines for the tiny house. I’ll review Lloyd Kahn’s awesome tiny house book later this week (he gave a talk just before me). Not sure what’s up with the white robe outfit in the foreground. Also spotted: bamboo bikes! Cornelia Hoskin, who curated the Homegrown Village part of Maker Fai...

Continue reading…

Capparis spinosa – Capers

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening
6 Comments
Capparis spinosa When we changed the name of this occasionally updated string of musings from SurviveLA to Homegrown Revolution to make it more national, as the publisher of our upcoming book the Urban Homestead requested, we had one big challenge. While Mrs. Homegrown Revolution hails from the snowy mountains of Colorado, Mr. Homegrown Revolution has never lived anywhere else other than sunny Southern California. And neither of us have tende...

Continue reading…

Stinging Nettles and Cat Allergies

Mrs. Homegrown
Domesticus, Herbal Medicine, Herbs
40 Comments
...s are supposed to be good for allergies. Andrew Weil recommends taking capsules of freeze dried nettle extract instead of antihistamines for seasonal allergies (See his Natural Health, Natural Medicine . Here’s a Google Books link.) Do nettles really work for allergies? I don’t know. It may be all in my head–but you know what? I’m all for the placebo effect. That’s not a negative term in my book at all. Self-healing...

Continue reading…

Author and Urban Farmer Novella Carpenter Rocks Los Angeles

Mr. Homegrown
Resources, Urban Farming
3 Comments
Yesterday, Homegrown Evolution had the great privilege of meeting urban farmer and author Novella Carpenter who was in Los Angeles to deliver a lecture and sign her new book Farm City. She’s a phenomenal speaker, both hilarious and inspiring. What we like most about Carpenter is her honesty in describing the ups and downs of raising pigs, goats, chickens, turkeys, rabbits and more on squatted land next to her apartment in Oakland. As she p...

Continue reading…

Keeping it Local

Mr. Homegrown
Miscellaneous
7 Comments
.... The Edendale Dinar failed to catch on, spoiling my fantasy of becoming a ghetto Ben Bernanke with the power to manipulate the carne asada rate. Writer Douglas Rushkoff has been talking a lot about local economies in his new book, Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back and on his radio show The Media Squat. One of the topics Rushkoff mentions often is time banking, an alternative to currency and bartering where ho...

Continue reading…