Search Results for: label/lead

89 results

Thoughts On the Egg Recall

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
11 Comments
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...

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Goat Worship: A Halloween Exclusive!

Mrs. Homegrown
Animals, Domesticus, Events, Goats
20 Comments
...used her. The goat message boards were full of scary stories. She wants people to know that it’s not hard to keep goats. A lot of it is common sense. Good management goes a long way toward preventing the situations that lead to the scary stories you read on the message boards. As a beginner, what you really need is other goat keepers you can call on, and watch, and learn from. This is why she and Steve are spreading the good word–they...

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Too Much Phosphate

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Soil
6 Comments
Symptoms of chlorosis. Image from the Washington State University Our possible backyard lead situation is a good reason to get a soil test, but if that didn’t convince you the Garden Professors at Washington State University just blogged about another important motivation: the bad effects of too much phosphate. An overabundance of phosphate can interfere with a plant’s ability to uptake iron resulting in interveinal chloros...

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Cat Update

Mrs. Homegrown
Animals, Cats
19 Comments
Last week was fairly traumatic around here. We learned two scary things–the first was that we might be living on a Superfund clean-up site, and the second was that something was seriously wrong with our kitten, Phoebe. As Erik just posted, the lead issue remains up in the air, and will be for quite some time. But we did find answers regarding Phoebe, and while it is bad news, it is not as bad as our worst imaginings, and it’s good...

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More on our gardening disasters

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening, Mistakes, Thoughtstylings
15 Comments
...1;holy climate change–frost!–have played their part. But my gut on this is that it comes down to our lack of true engagement with the garden. In short, it’s an attitude problem. Ever since we learned we have lead in our soil, the garden has been all about containment and management and safety and compromise. And none of those things say “fun.” I think the best gardening comes about through curiosity and joy. We shoul...

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A Question About Gophers

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Pests
17 Comments
Pocket gopher, courtesy of Wikipedia We’re putting together a short vegetable gardening pamphlet and could use some advice, specifically about gophers. Thankfully, we don’t have any experience dealing with them. Something about our neighborhood, either the lead in the soil or the police helicopters, seems to have made gophers extinct here. Standard advice when planting a tree or installing a raised bed in gopher infested a...

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Mud for the People! Building an Adobe Garden Wall

Mr. Homegrown
Design
6 Comments
...rmine percentages. At the workshop, held in the high desert town of Landers, CA the sand and clay were sourced locally and from the site.   The clay got sifted through 1/4 inch hardware cloth to get out chunky bits that can lead to weaknesses in the bricks. To make both the bricks and the mortar, water is mixed with a half a coffee cup of asphalt. The asphalt helps the bricks and mortar resist water. Traditionally, prickly pear cactus soaked...

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In Praise of Disorder

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
7 Comments
...e happy to work something out–keep the front window closed perhaps. Most of us on the block know each other and have never had any problems getting along. But it’s also Los Angeles, a car-centric city where people lead lives of isolation and rage, locked in metal and glass cages, braving hellish traffic on the way to twenty hour a day shifts churning out sitcoms and bad movies. Los Angeles has the community spirit of an anonymous inte...

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Thyrsus: the new hipster accessory

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
16 Comments
...got to visit the secret cabinet in Naples to see this stuff (way not safe for work!). Censorship of these ancient fertility symbols is related in my mind to modern fears of the fecundity of nature. It’s these fears that lead landlords to pour copious amounts of concrete and gravel to smother every living thing. It’s what causes neighbors to launch irrational tree and bush killing rampages over the property line lest any bit of foliage...

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Homegrown Evolution Podcast Episode #1

Mr. Homegrown
Water and Power, Water Conservation
14 Comments
...for canning. We’re all about open source, so feel free to redistribute or rebroadcast. Music on the program is from archive.org: A bluegrass cover of DEVO’s Mongoloid by the Hotfoot Quartet. Bob Frank, guitar and lead vocal, Jim Blum, upright bass and vocals; Paul Kovac, banjo and vocals; Bob Smakula, mandolin and vocals. Available here. Also from archive.org, a collection of surf music....

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