Saturday Linkages: From The Woodsman Workout to Crafting With Your Cat

Yes, it’s the woodsman workout. Via the Art of Manliness. Gardening My new favorite botanic garden – in Mexico! | Garden Rant http:// gardenrant.com/2012/09/new-fa vorite-botanic-garden-in-mexico.html  … Deconstructing the cornmeal myth: http:// ow.ly/1Owd1F DIY Build-It-Solar Blog: DIY Solar Water Heating System in Southeastern Pen… http://www. builditsolarblog.com/2012/09/diy-so lar-hot-water-heating-system-in.html?spref=...

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Roundin’ up the Summer Urban Homesteading Disasters

Everyday loaf on the left, “charity” loaf on the right. As we’ve noted in our books, part of the deal with this lifestyle is persevering through the inevitable disasters. Which means it’s time for a regular blog feature, the disaster roundup.   Loafing Around I agreed to bake a few baguettes for a charity function this evening. Problem #1 is that I can’t do baguettes in my small oven so I decided to do a s...

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Homegrown Evolution in the LA Times

Today’s Los Angeles Times Home and Garden section has a story on Guerrilla gardening, “Guerrilla gardener movement takes root in L.A. area”. The article mentions our parkway vegetable garden, which consists of two 6-foot square raised beds with two wire obelisks to support beans and tomatoes. We constructed it in October of 2005 and have grown a few season’s worth of crops. Here’s our parkway garden just after putti...

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All is Fire

...nvoking these stoic philosophers both ancient and modern is along winded and perhaps pretentious way of saying that I believe, along with Taleb, that the “highly improbable” is more probable than we think and that it’s best to do the things within our power to do and not worry about what’s going on beyond what we can change. That China’s Sovereign-Wealth Fund is considering investing in the bearish (to put it mildly)...

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Saturday Linkages: Chicken Hot Dogs and Toilet Museums

DIY Printing press made from IKEA drawers: http://boingboing.net/2012/12/05/printing-press-made-from-ikea.html … How to Build a Gypsy Caravan from Recycled Materials… http://bit.ly/S8pABN Gardening Home Depot’s Leaf Bags and their Eco-Terrible “Tips” | Garden Rant http://gardenrant.com/2012/12/home-depots-leaf-bags-and-their-eco-terrible-tips.html … Design High-Hanging Tea House Offers Suspended Getaway | Designs & Ideas on Dornob htt...

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Erik Speaking at Maker Faire

I’m very excited to announce that I’ll be speaking at the Bay Area Maker Faire on Saturday May 19 at 6:30 pm on the Maker Square Stage (located in the Homegrown Village). The talk I’m giving will be about the appropriate tech projects we’ve been up to around the Root Simple compound–our new chicken run, greywater, solar cooking and Mediterranean edible gardening. I’d love to hang out, after the talk, with any...

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Plantago coronopus, a.k.a. Buckhorn Plantain, a.k.a. Erba Stella

Cruise down the produce isle of a supermarket in the United States and you’ll only find highly domesticated foods. Thumb through the pages of the Silver Spoon (the Joy of Cooking of Italian Cuisine) and you’ll discover entire chapters devoted to the use of wild or semi-wild plants. This summer I grew one of these semi-cultivated Italian vegetables, Buckhorn plantain (Plantago coronopus) also known as Erba Stella and Barba di frat...

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Erik’s 2012 New Year’s Resolutions in Review

...plan out the garden but nature had her own plans including a destructive series of skunk attacks. I’ve switched to a hands-off approach to veggie gardening inspired by Masanobu Fukuoka. Start a podcast (decided to make it a video podcast). You can subscribe in the iTunes store here (it’s freeeeee!). Clean up the graphic design on the blog and organize information better: Thank you to our book designer Roman Jaster for doing this for...

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The Horror

but both make us cranky. Our crankiness leaves us at a loss for words, so instead of a lengthy post we offer a few bike related links: Bike Snob NYC has a nice essay on why cycling is a fringe activity, which may explain why it’s one of the least favorite topics on Homegrown Revolution according to a poll we did last year. Hint: it has something to do with aesthetics. And for the bike fetishists out there, Bike Snob’s deconstructions...

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