Search Results for: label/book reviews

326 results

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Beekeeping

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Bees
15 Comments
...ems than their over-bred and drugged commercial sisters. But walk into most beekeeping clubs or supply shops, tell them you want to keep bees this way and they’ll think you’re crazy. And pretty much all beekeeping books have devolved into little more than timetables for applying chemical and biological treatments in the hopes of staving off all the problems that have plagued beekeeping in recent years. Even the organic beekeeping book...

Continue reading…

Salvia Means Salvation: White Sage

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening, Herbs, Native Plants
18 Comments
Salvia apiana, photo by Stan Shebs Mrs. Homegrown here: Today I was lucky enough to be able to take part one of a two part class taught by Cecilia Garcia and James Adams, Jr., authors of Healing with Western Plants at the Theodore Payne Foundation. I’ve blogged about their book before, and was thrilled to be able to see them in person. Cecilia is a Chumash healer. James is a professor of pharmacology and a botanist. In both the...

Continue reading…

The Construction of Secret Hiding Places

Mr. Homegrown
Design
33 Comments
I love alternate views of our normal notions of domesticity and home economics. On a recent trip to the book section of a large surplus store I noticed our first book The Urban Homestead right alongside books on burying weapons caches, wiring solar panels, acting as your own dentist and assembling SKS rifles. We certainly have exciting company on this journey. One book in particular caught my eye, The Construction of Secret Hiding Places by Cha...

Continue reading…

Hay Boxes or Fireless Cookers

Mrs. Homegrown
Appropriate Technology, Food, Preparedness, Water and Power
23 Comments
Illustration from The Fireless Cook Book Mrs. Homegrown here: Jessica from Holland sent us a letter recently praising our work, but very, very gently scolding us not including the hay box, a groovy old energy saving technology, in our book. We do stand corrected! And her enthusiasm for hay boxes has reignited our interest, too. We actually considered hay boxes for Making It, but didn’t end up building one for a variety of reasons...

Continue reading…

Failed Experiment: Bermuda Buttercup or Sour Grass (Oxalis pes-caprae) as Dye

Mrs. Homegrown
Domesticus, Herbs, Mistakes
16 Comments
...information source for this project was The Handbook of Natural Plant Dyes by Sasha Duerr. This, also, was a mistake. I usually use more sources when I start a project, but I felt lazy. I don’t know if this is a flawed book or not–I’m not judging yet. It’s on probation. It’s a pretty book, and inspirational in that it makes you want to dye everything you can lay your hands on–hell it makes you want to raise yo...

Continue reading…

Dr. Chase, 19th Century Mixologist

Mr. Homegrown
Fermentation, Food, Recipes
1 Comment
And I thought book titles were getting too long. Root Simple reader David Stentiford sent me a link to an online collection of recipe books, Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project, maintained by Michigan State University. David especially wanted to call attention to a book, published in 1864, Dr. Chase’s Recipes. The full title of Dr. Chase’s book? Dr. Chase’s Recipes; Or, Information for Everybody: An Invalua...

Continue reading…

Be a question. Be an answer.

Mrs. Homegrown
Miscellaneous
44 Comments
Kotex Ad from 1971. Is that Susan Dey Cybill Shepherd? And what’s that oddly eroticized blur in the foreground? Okay, time to wrest the blog out of Erik’s hands. He’s gone crazy with the geek-boy subject matter of late. I’m going to bring this baby down to earth with a resounding thud. Let’s talk menstruation. We’re writing a new book, as we may have mentioned. It’s a project book focused on making som...

Continue reading…

Question for Folks in San Francisco, Portland and Seattle

Mrs. Homegrown
Miscellaneous
26 Comments
Our new book will be coming out in the spring, and we’re thinking about doing a small book tour up the west coast this May. Stodgy old-fashioned book signings make us miserable–we much prefer to be interactive. We prefer to do talks, panels, workshops and demos. We really like meeting new people and seeing what they’re up to. For this reason, we’d love to leave the beaten track for this book tour. We’re looking to h...

Continue reading…

Revolution: A New TV Series About Extreme Suburban Homesteading

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
35 Comments
...fore Mahmoud Imadinnerjacket causes a big electro-magnetic pulse.2 Said EMP knocks out all the power, iPhones, cars and jumbo jets in the entire world. Fifteen years pass, civilization reverts to an approximation of our first book The Urban Homestead, and we pick up the story with the now grown-up daughter of the dude with the flash drive. One groovy HOA The daughter lives in a suburban development. All the home owner’s association...

Continue reading…