Search Results for: label/time banking/page/5/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

742 results

How to Process Carob

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Foraging, Recipes
6 Comments
Before. Photo by Bill Wheelock. Our neighborhood has an abundance of carob (Ceratonia siliqua) trees that, around this time of year, drop thousands of pounds of pods. Now many of us may have unpleasant associations with carob as a 1970s era chocolate substitute, but the tree has a long history in the Middle East, where it’s used to make a tea, as a source of molasses, as a vegetable and as animal feed. The “locusts” th...

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A Common Sense View of Invasive Plants

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Thoughtstylings
10 Comments
Via the Garden Professors blog a sensible letter in Nature from Mark Davis and 18 other ecologists on the tired, in my opinion, native vs. invasive species debate: It is time for scientists, land managers and policy-makers to ditch this preoccupation with the native–alien dichotomy and embrace more dynamic and pragmatic approaches to the conservation and management of species — approaches better suited to our fast-changing planet. Clearly, natu...

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Our New Straw Bale Garden–Part I

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Straw Bale Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
24 Comments
Straw bales–ready to prepare. Pot in the center will be a solar powered fountain. We’re going to experiment with a straw bale vegetable garden in our backyard, inspired by Michael Tortorello’s article in the New York Times. The plan is to grow in the bales and harvest the resulting compost for use in permanent raised beds (that have yet to be built). We’ll keep growing in bales until we have enough compost for the beds. T...

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Post Petroleum Lecture

Mr. Homegrown
Miscellaneous
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Albert Bates, author of a brand new book The Post Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook will be speaking at the Audubon Center at Debs Park on Saturday March 24th as part of the 2007 Sustainable Habitats Lecture Series. The series is put together by permaculture expert David Khan, and those of you who missed the last lecture, raw milk outlaw and dairyman Mark McAfee, missed an engaging, and provocative afternoon. So don’t miss this next on...

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Sourdough Recipe #1 The Not Very Whole Wheat Loaf

Mr. Homegrown
Bread, Food, Recipes
14 Comments
Whole wheat fetishists will have to wait for our whole wheat sourdough loaf recipe (we’re working on it–whole wheat is trickier to work with than bad-ass white flour). In the meantime here’s the Homegrown Evolution Not Very Whole Wheat Loaf based on a recipe by Nancy Silverton. You can use either our whole wheat starter or our white starter. And though the instructions are long, this is an easy recipe assuming that you have bee...

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Seeding Change

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
5 Comments
Lora “Homegrown Neighbor” Hall is in the New York Times this week in an article by Michael Tortorello, “Packets Full of Miracles.” Tortorello asks six gardeners to pick out their favorite seed varieties. Homegrown Neighbor chose New Zealand spinach, Nero de Toscana kale, Red orach, Sugar Ann snap pea, Crimson California poppy and Verbena bonariensis. I’m sure Homegrown Neighbor would appreciate a reminder that if y...

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Of Gnomes and Peak Oil

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
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What it looks like when I’m “reflecting” on concepts like peak oil. Being momentarily or, perhaps, permanently carless has given me the opportunity to reflect on the long term future of oil. As coincidence would have it I stumbled on CNN commentator David Frum’s delusional editorial, “Peak Oil Doomsayers Proved Wrong,” at the same time as I discovered Renaissance physician, alchemist and philosopher Paracelsus...

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Spreadin’ Seed

Mr. Homegrown
Seeds
3 Comments
The past week was spent feverishly spreading genetic material around. No, we weren’t backstage with Metallica. We’re talking plants. Here’s a few ways we’ve been spinning the genetic biodiversity wheel in the past week: Seed Swaps Yesterday was International Seed Swap Day of Action, sponsored by Food not Lawns. We celebrated the day in Altadena with a bunch of local gardening enthusiasts and countless boxes of seeds. We g...

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Is This Egg Good?

Mrs. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens, Domesticus, Food
14 Comments
From left: Very Fresh • Pretty Fresh • Bad • Cat When you’re wondering about the age of an egg, put it in glass of water. Really fresh eggs lie on the bottom the glass, flat. These are the eggs you want for poaching and other dishes where the egg is the star. If one end bobs up a bit, as does the middle egg above, the egg is older, but still good. The upward tilt can be more extreme than it is in this picture. In fact, the egg can...

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Easy to Make & Delicious Fermented Veggies

Julia Posey
Fermentation, Food, Recipes
13 Comments
Inspiration hit at Camp Ramshackle and I finally made fermented vegetables. I loosely followed the Golden recipe from The Versatile Vegetable by Miranda Barrett and Colleen Pollard with cabbage, golden beets, carrots, celery, ginger, lemon and garlic. I omitted the Granny Smith apple because every person/book I consulted said use only the freshest apples and my stash had been sitting for quite some time. I made a stop at Culture Club in Pasad...

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