Thoughts On the Egg Recall

August 24, 2010

An AP reporter just called to ask for my comment on the recent egg recall. He asked if I thought more people would start backyard chicken flocks. I said yes, adding that I believed that a “distributed” form of agriculture, i.e. many more people keeping small numbers of animals rather than small numbers of professionals in charge of tens of thousands of birds, would lead to greater food safety. Backyard flocks can get infected with s...

A Parvati Solar Cooker

Mr. Homegrown

March 24, 2008

Solar

4 Comments

Damn, is solar cooking easy! Put some rice in a pot, place the pot in this simple panel cooker, made with cardboard and aluminum foil, stick it out in the sun and two hours later you have lunch. We built our “Parvati” solar cooker with plans designed by Shobha Ravindra Pardeshi that can be found here. Pardeshi, who runs an “appropriate technology” company with her husband in India has another design for a similar dish-sha...

Planting a Mini-Orchard

Mr. Homegrown

March 19, 2008

Gardening, Water and Power, Water Conservation

2 Comments

Ignore the bucket in this illustration! See update below. Update 3/13/2011: I met Brad Lancaster last night and he told me that he and Art Ludwig no longer use the upside down bucket described in this post. The reason is that detergents can build up in the hole. In my experience the bucket was also an unnecessary step. While I have a clay soil, the hillside drains fairly well. A properly sized mulch basin should suffice to allow greywat...

The Pinnacle of Permaculture: Tending the Wild

Mrs. Homegrown

August 17, 2010

Foraging, Permaculture

10 Comments

Book review: Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources by M. Kat Anderson, University of California Press, 2006 When the white man came to California, he found a verdant paradise: meadows thick with wildflowers and clover, stately groves of nut trees, abundant, healthy game and rivers full of fish. It was a land of endless bounty. The natives, often derogatorily called “Diggers...

Damned Figs!

Mr. Homegrown

March 14, 2008

Gardening

4 Comments

“In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.”-Matthew 21:18-19 We find it hard to cut down a mature tree, especially a fruit tree. But after living with a substandard fig tree for ten years we finally understood t...

Rain- The Best Gift of All

Homegrown Neighbor

December 27, 2009

rainwater harvesting

14 Comments

Homegrown Neighbor here: It is Christmastime, I am stuffed full of food and my house is brimming with yet more stuff. I have enjoyed the holidays, but I’m even more excited about the rain we have had and that there is perhaps more in the forecast. When it comes to what really counts, well, rain is pretty high up there. The past few years have been extremely dry here in the West. The year before last we literally had 3 inches of rain in...

Cutting a Beehive Out of a Wall

Mr. Homegrown

November 18, 2009

Animals, Bees

6 Comments

to Sue’s garden we put the frames into a hive box and dumped the loose bees in. While we won’t know for a while if the hive will take to its new home, we all felt a great sense of accomplishment. Hopefully, other urbanites around the world will take up beekeeping and put more exterminators out of work. For more info on Kirk Anderson’s natural beekeeping methods see www.beehuman.blogspot.com. Got a beehive that needs to be remov...

Geoff Lawton Soils Video

Mr. Homegrown

April 4, 2011

Gardening, Soil

10 Comments

Help, I’m turning into a soil geek. I just spent an evening viewing a video entitled Soils featuring permaculturalist Geoff Lawton. What I like about this video is that it’s not just about soil, but Lawton actually shows you what you can do to improve your soil. In the DVD he demonstrates how to build a compost pile (lots of carbon material), contoured vegetable beds, a compost pile heated shower and a simple vermiculture system usi...

The Sundiner–A Groovy 1960s Era Solar Cooker

Mr. Homegrown

February 28, 2013

Appropriate Technology, Solar, Water and Power

5 Comments

Backywards beekeeper Dennis of The Buzz in the Dale, was nice enough to gift me his vintage Sundiner solar cooker that he found at a garage sale a few years ago. Resembling a cross between a portable 1960s record player and a satellite, the Sundiner is compact, light and easy to carry. A built in thermometer lets you know when you have hit cooking temperatures. The unit is so efficient, that when I set it up at noon it hit 350° F within minut...

Tree Spinach – Chenopodium giganteum

Mr. Homegrown

October 23, 2007

Food, Foraging, Vegetable Gardening

RLeave a comment

For most of the country planting time is far off but for us, here in the Homegrown Revolution compound in Mediterranean Los Angeles, it’s time to start the winter garden. The billowing clouds of apocalyptic smoke from the fires ravaging the suburban fringes of our disaster prone megalopolis are the only thing that keeps us inside today, giving us time to contemplate one of the seed packets that has crossed our desk, Chenopodium giganteum a...

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Search Results for: label/food/page/3/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

Thoughts On the Egg Recall

A Parvati Solar Cooker

Planting a Mini-Orchard

The Pinnacle of Permaculture: Tending the Wild

Damned Figs!

Rain- The Best Gift of All

Cutting a Beehive Out of a Wall

Geoff Lawton Soils Video

The Sundiner–A Groovy 1960s Era Solar Cooker

Tree Spinach – Chenopodium giganteum