Search Results for: label/time banking

473 results

The Art of Memory

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
6 Comments
We need a term for superfluous smart phone trivia Googling. After all, with the vast archive of factoids on the interwebs who needs to remember anything anymore? But what do we miss by externalizing all of our memories into an electronic form.  What about those bards of the past who could recite thousands of lines of poetry, or the Greek rhetoricians who could speak for hours at a time without notes? Thankfully the basics of the lost art of mem...

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Elderly and Barefoot–that’s how I plan to be

Mrs. Homegrown
Fitness, Thoughtstylings
17 Comments
...of the biggest threat to the elderly are falls. And falls happen because as we get older, and less active, we lose coordination, strength, and balance. My thoughtstyling, in a nutshell, was that older folks should spend more time barefoot. Being barefoot really wakes up your senses and trains you to be surefooted. Of course it can be hard for elderly people to care for their feet, so they need to take time to build up callouses that will protect...

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Supper for a buck?

Mrs. Homegrown
Bean Fest, Food
16 Comments
...figure out how many more pennies  the salt costs, and yeast or, alternatively, the small amount of extra flour needed for the sourdough starter. But how do you calculate starter costs, since it involves constant feeding over time? And what about energy costs to run the oven? Or the investment in the Dutch oven we use to bake the bread, amortized over time?  This way lies madness. [Note: I have gone a little mad so I just figured out that there a...

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Processing and Winnowing Flax

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, How-to, Vegetable Gardening
18 Comments
We grew a five foot circle of flax this winter in the center of our yard. When it came time to harvest said flax I pondered creating the world’s smallest piece of linen. Lacking the time for that process, I opted to simply harvest the seeds. I used a block of coconut coir to smash the seed heads against a piece of newspaper. Next came time for winnowing the flax. I used a fan and had to winnow multiple times to get the chaff out. Alas,...

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Peat-free Planting Mix Recipe With Coconut Coir

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening, How-to, Soil, Vegetable Gardening
21 Comments
...feeds itself from its seed body up through the formation of the first set of leaves, the cotyledons. After that, it is dependent on the nutrients in the soil. Your seedlings will be fine in this planting mix until around the time of the full unfurling of their first true leaves (the ones that come after the cotyledons). At this time–or no later than the opening of the second set of true leaves–you will want to feed your seedlings by...

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Loofah Sponges

Mrs. Homegrown
Cleaning, Domesticus, Gardening
14 Comments
We talk about the joy of loofah–or luffa– (Luffa aegyptiaca) all the time, but I don’t believe we’ve every blogged about it here. I was reminded of it when we received a letter from Candace, who heard us on a podcast talking about how much fun it was to grow loofah sponges. She said: I wanted to thank you for that part of the interview in particular.  I decided to grow some this summer and it has been a great joy.  It i...

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Greywater Guerrillas in LA this Weekend

Mr. Homegrown
Water and Power, Water Conservation
4 Comments
...eck out their informative website and their new book Dam Nation. We especially enjoy the GG’s project examples. Here’s the 411 on their LA appearances: Saturday July 19th: Hands-On Greywater Installation Workshop. Time: 11am-3pmLocation: Silver Lake (You’ll get an email with directions once registered)Cost: $30-$40 sliding-scaleTo register: email Matt Moses Space is very limited so register early! Workshop will include a presen...

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How to start a chicken retirement community

Mrs. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens
34 Comments
...nd I there were two paths. Either we’d decide to embrace carnivorism and resolve to treat our layers in a more business-like fashion, meaning we would not name them and we would promise to make soup out of them when the time came. Or we’d decide–consciously– to support our old layers in their retirement.  To do this, we’d need to develop a system that would allow us to bring in new layers, but still have room for old...

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Essential System #3 – Sew Your Own Damn Clothes

Mr. Homegrown
Domesticus
RLeave a comment
...tions to this moral dilemma, shopping at thrift stores, in which case you have second-hand slave laborer blood and sewing your own clothes. The big problem with the latter solution is that sewing is a bitch — it’s time consuming and at times incredibly frustrating. Nevertheless this homesteading revolution we propose won’t be a cake walk, and will be as much about rediscovering old techniques as it will be about new technologies...

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White Sage and Bees and our other sage friends

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening, Herbal Medicine, Herbs, Native Plants
19 Comments
One of my favorite plants in the garden (I’ve posted about it before) is in bloom right now: the white sage, Salvia apiana.  Salvia apiana means “bee sage” and boy howdy did they get that one right. This sage puts up tall spikes covered with small white flowers that bees can’t resist. Unfortunately, our white sage is situated right by the garden path. So these days, every time I go into the garden I have to squeeze past...

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