Extension Service Webinars on Organic Agriculture

...just discovered a treasure trove of Extension Service webinars on organic farming practices that you can watch here: http://www.extension.org/pages/25242/webinars-by-eorganic. You can watch archived sessions or sign up to participate live. While the webinars are aimed at small farmers, there’s a lot that gardeners can learn. Having co-founded a bread baking club, the Los Angeles Bread Bakers, I was particularly excited to watch the webinar on anc...

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Modern Farmer Magazine

...I haven’t seen a print copy of this magazine, but they sure have a great blog going. The blog has an interesting article on citrus greening as well as evidence that modern farmer’s writers have a sense of humor. And it’s nice to see farming connected with good graphic design....

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Hops in Southern California

...g attached to the east side of the building. Homegrown Evolution’s own hop farming experiment ended in the spring of last year after we accidentally plopped some home built scaffolding on top of the tiny vine while undertaking the heinous task of scraping and painting the front of the house. Planting it in terrible soil doomed it to failure anyways. We’re experimenting with growing both Cascade and Nugget hops in a big self irrigating planter with...

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Permaculture Design Course at the Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano

...: Each weekend will focus on a different theme and associated topics. MARCH 29 / INTRO TO PERMACULTURE – Design philosophy, ethics, basic principles, site observation, zones, and sector analysis, climate, seasonal weather, micro-climates, site observation of The Ecology Center, zone 1 design exercise and more… MARCH 30 / ECOLOGICAL DESIGN – Intro to design process, elements of design, presentation graphics, interview, site analysis, group brainsto...

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The Chicken and the Egg

...ntails more risk (mainly from predators such as hawks and loose dogs) than confining them to a cage. It’s definitely easier and more economical for commercial producers to confine chickens. But consider the consequences of the economic and quality race to the bottom of factory farming’s economy of scale–an abundance of cheap, tasteless and nutritionally deficient eggs that like the endless flood of shipping containers full of plastic crap from Chi...

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