Search Results for: label/book reviews

330 results

Coffee Chaff Chickens

Mrs. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens, Composting
14 Comments
...n house, and as we all know, trees don’t grow on trees. But what’s a good alternative to shavings? Yesterday, Lyanda Haupt, author of Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness , a beautifully written book about crows and the path of an urban naturalist, posted about an intriguing chicken bedding possibility: coffee chaff, a byproduct of coffee roasting. You should go read about it. Maybe we all can’t access the ch...

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Press

...s Angeles. They are the keepers of the popular DIY blog, Root Simple, and the authors of The Urban Homestead (2008), which the New York Times calls “…the contemporary bible on the subject” and Making It (2011) a project book for post-consumer society. In addition to their writing and blogging, Kelly and Erik teach and speak on the topics of self-reliance, urban gardening and sustainability. Other Info: Contact us: [email protected] Coyn...

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Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands

Mr. Homegrown
rainwater harvesting
RLeave a comment
...ques Derrida Homegrown Revolution loves cheap low-tech solutions (not to mention pretentious quotes), which is why we especially like “bricoleur” and Tucson rainwater harvesting guru Brad Lancaster and his ongoing book series Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands. Volume one is already out and volume two is due out this summer. Landcaster’s ingenious methods involve little more than careful observation and some work with a shovel. H...

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Jujube and Goji Fever

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Gardening
8 Comments
...r backyards could produce and Alex just might be Southern California’s exotic Johnny Appleseed. Homegrown Evolution took a trip to Papaya Tree two weeks ago with bench pressing spotter, activist and blogger Creek Freak (whose book Down by the Los Angeles River is on my must read list). Creek Freak detailed his experience here on the Eco-village garden blog, and came back from Papaya Tree with an unique variety of jujube (Zyzyphus jujuba) which Al...

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Injera

Mr. Homegrown
Bread, Fermentation, Food
2 Comments
...drive our big-ass SUVs to the mall. In the meantime we’ll enjoy the teff while we can as we declare March the month of fermentation. Homegrown Revolution got our injera recipe from the astonishing and highly recommended book Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz. Katz offers recipes for every imaginable fermented food, from kimchi to Andean chewed-corn beer (a recipe that involves gathering a bunch of friends to chew corn kernels, spit the...

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Avatar: I’m not lovin’ it.

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
34 Comments
...spends his last days on earth deep in the woods at his fathers remote cabin. Once in space Kelvin loses touch with reality. His dead wife appears to him, simultaneously real and virtual. Jerry Mander describes Solaris in his book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television: “Without concrete reality, which is to say, contact with their planetary roots, they are adrift in their minds: insane. All information has become believable and n...

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Easy to Make & Delicious Fermented Veggies

Julia Posey
Fermentation, Food, Recipes
13 Comments
Inspiration hit at Camp Ramshackle and I finally made fermented vegetables. I loosely followed the Golden recipe from The Versatile Vegetable by Miranda Barrett and Colleen Pollard with cabbage, golden beets, carrots, celery, ginger, lemon and garlic. I omitted the Granny Smith apple because every person/book I consulted said use only the freshest apples and my stash had been sitting for quite some time. I made a stop at Culture Club in Pasad...

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Pee on your Compost

Mr. Homegrown
Composting
RLeave a comment
...s and bushes. Applying it to root crops is more controversial, and frankly seems like a practice best left to hippies, so if you try this at least cease application at a respectable interval before harvesting. There is even a book called Liquid Gold on the subject of pee as fertilizer and the ever more resourceful Europeans have developed a number of urine diverting flush toilets similar to the one we profiled earlier to take the labor out of uri...

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Laundry to Landscape Legal in LA

Mr. Homegrown
Water and Power, Water Conservation
4 Comments
...s. Kinda like prostitution in Holland–keep it out in the open and you’l have less . . . shoddy plumbing. See Art Ludwig’s excellent website to see how to install your own laundry to landscape system. His book, Create an Oasis with Greywater is also highly recommended. And, if you’ve got a laundry to landscape system, make sure to use Oasis Biocompatible Detergent ....

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More Washing Machine Greywater Fun

Mr. Homegrown
Water Conservation
6 Comments
...u live in a place where it freezes. This is not a problem for us in sunny LA. 8. Since the water is under pressure it’s possible to rig up fancy distribution systems in the garden. For ideas on this see Ludwig’s book, Create an Oasis with Greywater. 9. Lastly, a note to our rentin’ homesteaders–this is a greywater strategy you may be able to get away with. And if you burn out the pump, and the machine is owned by the lan...

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