Search Results for: label/smallstock (other than chickens)

175 results

What Are Your Favorite Compost Materials?

Mr. Homegrown
Composting
20 Comments
Root Simple’s new composting game for your Xbox! I wish I could source compost pile materials from our yard. But lead and zinc contamination in our soil make that a dodgy proposition without doing a lot of expensive lab tests. And I never seem to have enough materials even for our modest vegetable garden. So in the past I’ve used: horse bedding chicken manure from our own chickens alfalfa hay (kinda spendy these days) str...

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Arduino Homesteading Projects

Mr. Homegrown
How-to
5 Comments
...cken coop door opener. I thought I’d compile a list of Arduino based project related to the “low-tech, home-tech” subjects covered on this blog. I’ll keep updating this list as I hear of more projects. Chickens Chicken coop controller Gardening Garden Bot (information about “an open source garden monitoring system). Includes links to other Arduino based gardening projects. Gardening moisture sensor/watering control...

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To each hen her own egg

Mrs. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens
9 Comments
...Unfortunately, these four ladies look so much alike–and tend to visit the nesting box in pairs–so we haven’t been able to ID their eggs yet. Closer surveillance is required! *** And while we’re talking chickens – Update on chicken integration: Regular readers may remember that we had to integrate Handsome, the surviving elder hen from our last flock, with this new flock. This involved many stages, but no violence, th...

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Urban Farming in Oakland

Mr. Homegrown
Urban Farming
RLeave a comment
Public radio station KCRW has an excellent interview with urban farmer and writer Novella Carpenter. Carpenter has pigs, goats, ducks, chickens and more all on a small lot in Oakland, California. You can listen to the radio interview here (along with some other interesting segments on hunting caribou, cooking pasta, roasting peppers, and more) on chef Evan Kleiman’s show Good Food. You can also check out Carpenter’s blog, meaningfulp...

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Nominate Your Favorite Complainer

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
20 Comments
West Los Angeles neighborhood who successfully delayed a much needed light rail line for 20 years. Or the mayor of Toronto who is busy ripping up bike lanes. Or the countless folks who have complained about vegetable gardens, chickens, bees etc.  Do you have a favorite complainer who should be nominated to participate in our complaint competition?  Comments!...

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Your Questions Answered

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Bees, Chickens
1 Comment
...and maintain a Yahoo group. See the website for details. If you’re not in the LA area the Backwards website has lots of how-to videos starring the always entertaining Kirk Anderson. Question from Katie: How do you keep chickens on a small lot? In a run or with a chicken tractor? How do you keep the smells down? A: From our limited experience with our first flock of four hens, they definitely are happier when they have space to run around....

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Waking up on New Year’s Day with the world of long crowing roosters

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens
9 Comments
...minder that people have been placing fun and entertainment before utility for a long time. An anthropology professor I once had speculated that the musical bow came before the hunting bow. Other anthropologists theorize that chickens were domesticated for fighting before people figured out the whole egg and meat thing. Far from a defect in human behavior, for me things like long crowing roosters prove that innovation comes out of play. Thanks to...

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Doomsday Preppers: Exploitative, Uninteresting, Unreal “Reality”

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness, Thoughtstylings
25 Comments
interesting was the family of Dennis McClung in Mesa, Arizona and the Kobler and Hunt families, who share a rural homestead. McClung has built an amazing tilapia farm in an old swimming pool in their backyard. They also have chickens and goats and have integrated the livestock into the greenhouse/tilapia project. It would have been interesting to see how the system McClung created works as a whole. But the producers were more interested in filmi...

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