Search Results for: label/greywater/page/2/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

445 results

Urban Chicken Classes

Homegrown Neighbor
Animals, Chickens
3 Comments
ens maybe you can share your knowledge in your community. I know that I certainly wish I new more when I got started. But its live and learn. Sadly, not all the chickens lived. But the hens helped me to meet my fellow urban homesteading neighbors…… and the rest is history. The chickens helped us to create community in our neighborhood so now we are helping others to use poultry to promote neighborly public relations and local food...

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Planting a Mini-Orchard

Mr. Homegrown
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...

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Showers to Flowers

Mr. Homegrown
Water Conservation
1 Comment
Here’s the truth, I’m lazy. So when it comes to the aforementioned greywater strategies such as bucket flushing and siphoning, while we might try them for a while we’ll most likely quickly tire of all the repetitive effort barring some apocalyptic water shortage. SurviveLA agrees with Art Ludwig, author of Create an Oasis with Greywater that the best greywater systems are the simplest, and involve the least amount of effort and...

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Laundry to Landscape 2.0

Mr. Homegrown
Water and Power, Water Conservation
13 Comments
I just installed a “laundry to landscape” greywater system at the house of Lora “Homegrown Neighbor” Hall using greywater guru Art Ludwig’s free open-source plans. It was a cinch. And, thanks to a revision in the California plumbing code last year, it’s legal with no permit required. I started in the laundry room by rigging up a three way diverter valve so that Lora can route the greywater back to the sew...

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Bucket Flushing

Mr. Homegrown
Water Conservation
4 Comments
SurviveLA is researching greywater systems and today we’ve got our first tip on recycling your water. First a definition. Greywater is the waste water that comes out of your shower, sinks, and washing machine. Blackwater is the icky stuff that comes out of your toilet and because of the risk of contamination it should not be reused. For now we’ll lump the kitchen sink in with the toilet since food scraps, particularly for meat eaters...

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Homegrown Evolution in Chicago

Mr. Homegrown
Events
2 Comments
for a fun class on how to make a sub-irrigated planter (SIP) out of two buckets. As a bonus, meet Homegrown Evolution blogger and author Erik Knutzen, who will be co-teaching the class and signing copies of his book The Urban Homestead. Bring some gloves and learn how to make and plant your own SIP. Leave with everything you need for a summer of fresh heirloom tomatoes–all you add is about 6 hours of good sun per day in your yard, balcony, or roo...

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It Quacks Like a Duck

Mr. Homegrown
Animals
RLeave a comment
The Happy Ducks of the Petaluma Urban Homestead It seems a new lifestyle is taking shape, in part born of the ashes of the World Trade Center, the aftermath of Katrina, and the endless resource wars our country feels the need to fight. There’s a great desire out there to “do something” and a refreshing DIY spirit of self-sufficiency is beginning to emerge. Two of the indicators of this new lifestyle seem to be the mixture o...

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Author and Urban Farmer Novella Carpenter Rocks Los Angeles

Mr. Homegrown
Resources, Urban Farming
3 Comments
Yesterday, Homegrown Evolution had the great privilege of meeting urban farmer and author Novella Carpenter who was in Los Angeles to deliver a lecture and sign her new book Farm City. She’s a phenomenal speaker, both hilarious and inspiring. What we like most about Carpenter is her honesty in describing the ups and downs of raising pigs, goats, chickens, turkeys, rabbits and more on squatted land next to her apartment in Oakland. As she p...

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Saturday Linkages: Off-Grid Living, Urban Velo, Meat Glue, Home Depot and Dandelions

Mr. Homegrown
Saturday Linkages
5 Comments
Happy Cinco de Mayo! Amazing photos of people living off-the-grid in the United States: http://boingboing.net/2012/05/03/photos-of-people-living-off-th.html This week in TSA awfulness: a recap of recent American airport atrocities: http://boingboing.net/2012/05/02/this-week-in-tsa-awfulness-a.html New issue of Urban Velo: http://www.urbanvelo.org/issue31/index.html Meat Glue (not to be confused with pink slime): http://boingboing.net/2...

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