The modern woman-things to put in your apron pocket

Aprons are so cute and oh so functional. I’m often out and about in the yard and around the homestead and I find my apron a very useful accessory. An apron adds a flirty, feminine touch when worn over jeans and is a nice layer of protection for a dress. I tend to get very dirty and need a lot of pockets, so an apron is handy indeed. Whether I am at the farmer’s market, pulling weeds in the backyard or at the chicken coop, here are th...

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Mongolian Giant Sunflower

the native sunflowers that reseed themselves every year I think I’ll plant a few Mongolian Giants each summer. If you’ve got a favorite sunflower variety, either ornamental or edible, please leave a comment. Mrs. Homestead here: Turns out sunflowers can also help clean up radioactive contamination. Good to know! They’re planting them in Fukushima. (via Boing Boing)...

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Plastic or Wood?

plastic on the ocean drives home the point that we need to drastically cut back our consumption of plastics and only use them for essentials] Okay, these are the new rules. We are going to phase as many plastics out of the homestead as we can. We won’t toss what we have in the landfill right now, but when it is time to replace it, this is how it’s going down: Wood and metal utensils instead of plasticGlass storage containers instea...

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Saturday Linkages: Making Things and Herding Ducks

Herding ducks. Via The Tangled Nest. DIY Simple Swiss fences for the homestead: http:// dirttime.com/?p=2687 via Practical Parsimony Build-It-Solar Blog: Comparing the Performance of Two DIY Solar Water Heaters http://www. builditsolarblog.com/2012/07/compar ing-performance-of-two-diy-solar.html?spref=tw  … Build-It-Solar Blog: Using Your Lawn Sprinkling Water to Cool the House… http://www. builditsolarblog.com/2012/08/using- yo...

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What Do Microbes Have To Do With Homesteading?

  So what are the activities that microbes make possible around the homestead? To name just four: Fermentation Beekeeping Soil Fertility Human beings Pretty important stuff. In fact, new systems thinking, applied to our natural word, is demonstrating that things like human beings are really just symbiotic sacks of microbial life. An article in the Economist, “Microbes maketh man” discusses just how important microbes are to human...

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Saturday Linkages: Can Gardens, BOLs and Attack Geese

oard Bike Rack // http:// korduroy.tv/shows/surf-suf ficient/diy-surfboard-bike-rack  … 80ft Tube Made From VHS Tape http://www. dudecraft.com/2012/08/80ft-t ube-made-from-vhs-tape.html  … Prepping Developing Raw Land into a Homestead or BOL Over Time | The Survival Podcast http:// bit.ly/NoacJJ Beekeeping Bees in a Paris park: http://www. backwardsbeekeepers.com/2012/08/viewer -mail-bees-in-paris-park.html  … Yow! Apple granted patent for loc...

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Chickens in the House!

Mrs. Homestead here: I’d planned to give you all a progress report on the backyard redesign, which features such wonders as the Germinator ͐2;, the Trough of Garlic ͐2;, the Fan of Pharmacy ͐2; and the Screens of Discretion (also tm). But the camera crapped out on me. So, until I figure it out (Which means until Erik gets home and I can shove the darn thing at him and say, “Fix your camera!”),  I’m offering u...

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Security

erica. In fact the crime rate in LA is on a par with Denver and nowhere near the high rates of cities like Detroit and Washington D.C. But while we ain’t the gun-toting survivalist types here at the Homegrown Evolution homestead, we do have a security system. It’s a security system developed in the 19th century by tax collector and dog pound proprietor Louis Dobermann – the notorious Doberman Pincher. Last popular with coke dea...

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