Is the Urban Homesteading Trend Over?

December 14, 2015

“Bread Recipe” searches In a segment on KCRW’s Good Food, host Evan Kleiman interviewed Celia Sack, the owner of Omnivore Books on Food in San Francisco. Sack noted a trend this year: fewer books on baking, bread and beer, which she linked to a rising economy. As she put it, people don’t have to make their own jam anymore, they can just buy it at the store. She is correct that interest in DIY homesteading books wane during good economic times. Bu...

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I’ve Flown the Coop

Mr. Homegrown

June 26, 2015

Animals, Chickens

...I’m at a two day poultry seminar sponsored by the California Department of Food & Agriculture. The point of my attendance is to learn good husbandry practices and share them with you, our dear readers. I’ll break down the voluminous information into a series of future blog posts. The takeaways from yesterday’s session: Buy chickens that have been vaccinated for Marek’s disease. This is the most common problem with backyard chickens and it’s entire...

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Summer Solstice Celebration at Holy Nativity

Mr. Homegrown

June 18, 2015

Events

...ire campus. I will be speaking about saving water and greywater (three 15-minute talks, at 10, 11, 12) The open house will feature garden tours, oven explanation (the oven mud is now drying), highlights from other campus organizations like Teri Roseman’s LiveYoga Wellness, Patricia Rose’s Fresh-food-in-a-flash cooking classes, the Food Forward gleaning program, art tours by Steve O’Laughlin, and much more. Steve’s band will be performing 12-1, and...

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What does the loving landscape look like?

Mrs. Homegrown

April 16, 2015

Back to the Garden, Gardening

18 Comments

...“less attractive” life stages of plants, we also deny our fellow creatures food and habitat in the form of seeds, stems and roots. And, of course, Oudolf is well known for doing the planting design at the High Line park in New York, a mile and half long section of abandoned elevated train track which first, was transformed by nature into a sort of secret park known only to urban explorers–and then, beginning in 2006, was refashioned into a much lo...

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Thomas Pynchon on Pizza

Mr. Homegrown

September 30, 2021

Food, Thoughtstylings

2 Comments

...I do remember Pynchon’s spot-on description of 1970s era California health food cooking, Prairie worked at the Bodhi Dharma Pizza Temple, which a little smugly offered the most wholesome, not to mention the slowest, fast food in the region, a classic example of the California pizza concept at its most misguided. Zoyd was both a certified pizzamaniac and a cheapskate, but not once had he ever hustled Prairie for one nepotistic slice of the Bodhi Dh...

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