Build a Washing Machine Greywater Surge Tank

...ctly to your garden through a pipe. Here’s how to create a surge tank: 1. Get ahold of a fifty gallon plastic drum. Most big cities, Los Angeles included, have businesses that resell used drums. Make sure that you get a food quality drum and not something that held toxic materials. The best kind of drum for this purpose is one that has a lid, both so that you can clean it out periodically, and to make it easier to fit the hose connection at...

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Kitchen Alchemy

...writes about. These symbolic gestures need not be over sized, nor do all of them require land. Cooking homemade meals from scratch, as often as possible, is just the kind of alchemy one can practice anywhere you’ve got food and a source of heat. And what is cooking anyways, but a form of alchemical transformation? As luck would have it, we’ve had a number of visitors to our humble casa in the past week, Pinchbeck included (read his t...

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Michael Tortorello on Urban Homesteading

Michael Tortorello, who wrote that nice piece about us a few months ago, “Living Large, Off the Land,” is one of my favorite writers on gardening and “urban homesteady” topics. He’s critical without being curmudgeonly and manages to separate the truth from the hype (and there’s an awful lot of hype in this movement!). Plus he managed to get an entire paragraph about my thyrsus into the New York Times. Thyrsus...

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Free Introduction to Permaculture

...ded Khan’s introductory lecture last month and found it thought provoking and informative. Here is Khan’s description of this brief introductory talk: Using ecology as the basis for designing integrated systems of food, shelter, renewable energy and community. Permaculture is the perfect solution for creating sustainable lifestyles in the city. Learn how to cope with peak oil and the energy descent society of the future. Become the so...

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Book Review: Attracting Native Pollinators: The Xerces Society Guide to Conserving North American Bees and Butterflies and Their Habitat

How can we save the world? Simple. Get everyone to read and understand the contents of a new book, Attracting Native Pollinators: The Xerces Society Guide to Conserving North American Bees and Butterflies and Their Habitat. Why? There’s the obvious–pollinating insects provide a huge amount of our food–but they also have a few unappreciated roles. Without pollinators, plant communities that stabilize river banks disappear. Ma...

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Kent’s Composting Tips and Secret Weapon

...add a couple shovels-full of rich soil to get things started, particularly with some worms and bugs to propagate the new pile. I’m not fastidious about what goes in, so the occasional fish and chicken scraps and leftover cat food gets into the mix, even oily stuff, but mostly it’s the usual veggies, fruits, paper napkins, etc. Though experts say no fats should go in, I’ve yet to see (or smell) a problem. Each time I add new kitchen scraps, I add...

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Revolutionary Rusks

...stack them all up together for the 12-hour dry-a-thon following the initial 25-minute bake. You’ll end up with about 20 pieces from a single batch, and they go pretty fast. While rusks historically were created as hot-weather food, baking them during the winter is more pleasant because you end up having the oven on all day or night. Recipe:Dry ingredients2 cups unbleached white flour2 cups whole wheat bread flour (the recipe calls for coarsely gr...

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All Haste Is of the Devil: Carl Jung as Homesteader

...e shore of Lake Zürich. I have done without electricity, and tend the fireplace and stove myself. Evenings, I light the old lamps. There is no running water, and I pump the water from the well. I chop the wood and cook the food. These simple acts make man simple and how difficult it is to be simple! Why live the simple life? Jung says, . . . we have plunged down a cataract of progress which sweeps us on into the future with ever wilder violen...

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Interview With Apartment Gardener Helen Kim

We got a lot of emails after posting the image above of Los Angeles based photographer Helen Kim’s astonishing windowsill garden. It’s a great example of what you can do with a small amount of space, and brings to mind William Morris’ advice, “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”. Helen graciously sat down for an email interview to talk about her beautiful and useful garden...

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Saturday Linkages: Can Gardens, BOLs and Attack Geese

...se of new training | barfblog http:// barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/blog/155926/12 /08/28/will-training-change-anything-california-slaughterhouse-reopens-promise-new-tra#.UD7gjmGEwSQ.twitter  … Bill would allow sale of homemade foods http://www. latimes.com/business/la-fi -homemade-food-20120829,0,6759357.story  …   Opposing view: FDA rules won’t do much good – http:// USATODAY.com   http:// usat.ly/O3s3I8#.UDkEpQ RgbAk.twitter  …  Just Pla...

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