Search Results for: label/uses for used tires/page/2/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

702 results

Nuts!

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
4 Comments
As of fall 2007 truly raw almonds will no longer be available in the US or Canada, because the USDA, FDA, and the California Almond Board has released a marketing order that all almonds be pasteurized. This is due to two recent salmonella outbreaks, the cause of which, in Homegrown Revolution ‘s opinion, is the usual poor factory farming practices. But it gets worse, according to the folks at the Weston A. Price foundation, There is an eve...

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Friday Quiz Answer

Mr. Homegrown
Miscellaneous
3 Comments
The answer to our “Freaky Friday Fungal Quiz”: slime mold. And I should not have used “fungal” in the title. Slime molds are no longer classified as fungi. But I’ll stick with “freaky.” According to UC Berkeley, slime molds fall into three categories, Plasmodial slime molds, like Physarum . . ., are basically enormous single cells with thousands of nuclei. They are formed when individual flagellated ce...

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Bicycles and GPS

Mr. Homegrown
Bikes
6 Comments
So at a time when the whole hipster stripped-down fixed-gear bike phenomenon has just passed its inevitable pop cultural zenith, this post will come across as impossibly nerdy. Yesterday I finally got around to strapping my small handheld GPS unit to the handlebars of my road bike and I can say that this particular combination of 19th century technology and 20th century electronics rocks. The only sane way to get around Los Angeles and most lar...

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Great Seeds Grow Great Gardens

Homegrown Neighbor
Gardening, Seeds, Vegetable Gardening
3 Comments
Homegrown Neighbor here: I have a very exciting announcement to make. As you may recall, I volunteer at a school garden at North Hollywood High. Well, it is more than a garden. There is an orchard, a flower and herb garden, a pig and a goat. We are almost done with our chicken coop and hope to get some hens in there in the new year. I have been trying to think of ways to raise money to support our school garden project. So we have partnered wit...

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Going Wired

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
10 Comments
Cat 5 o’ nine tails via BoingBoing The dangers of radiation from cellphones has been in the news lately and, from what I understand, existing studies are either inconclusive or deeply flawed. But it got me thinking about the safety of wireless internet networks–should I be concerned about possible health effects? In terms of a direct physical effect, probably not.  Dr Michael Clark of Britain’s Health Protection Agenc...

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Fava Fava Fava

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
8 Comments
Fava bean mania has descended upon the Homegrown Evolution compound this spring. I can’t say enough good things about fava beans (Vicia fava): they taste good, the plant fixes nitrogen into the soil, making it an ideal cover crop, and it’s attractive. If harvested small you can eat fava raw but I prefer to remove the skins and briefly boil the seeds (around five minutes). Once boiled, fava can be used in a variety of dishes from soup...

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A Sonora and Kamut Wheat Field in Los Angeles County!

Mr. Homegrown
Bread, Events, Food, Wheat
7 Comments
Sonora wheat The Los Angeles Bread Bakers, of which I’m a co-founder along with Teresa Sitz and Mark Stambler, have teamed with farmer Andrea Crawford, of Kenter Canyon Farms, to plant what I think may be the first wheat field in Los Angeles County in many years. Wheat used to be widely grown here, especially Sonora wheat, a drought tolerant variety originally bought to the Southwest by the Spanish. Along with Sonora, we planted...

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Sunday Spam: Automatic Chicken Cage

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens, Picture Sundays, Thoughtstylings
5 Comments
We interrupt the usual picture Sunday feature to bring you the best and most misdirected spam email that has ever graced the Root Simple in-box: Dear Sir or Madam, Liaocheng Dongying Hengtong Metal Manufacturing Co.,Ltd here. Glad to hear that you are on the market for Automatic chicken cage. We are a professional producer of the complete sets of equipment for raising birds. At present, it is an enterprise which has the import-export license an...

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Dome Building

Mr. Homegrown
Design
2 Comments
Drop City Chicken Coop Whenever the entwined notions of sustainability, green building, environmentalism and the lingering remains of the 60s counterculture address architecture and the places we live in, inevitably Buckminster Fuller influenced forms seem to just spring from the landscape like mushrooms after a particularly wet winter. Perhaps the idealism of folks interested in saving the world, especially do-it-yourself types, lends itself...

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Physalis pruinosa a.k.a. “Ground Cherry”

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening
9 Comments
While strolling the nursery seed isle this weekend looking for things to plant for our summer food needs, Homegrown Revolution came across a strange fruit we’ve never heard of, Physalis pruinosa, a.ka. ground cherry, a.k.a. husk tomato. a.k.a. strawberry tomato. Homegrown Revolution hates to throw around scientific names for plants but in this case we have to because the common names get so confusing. The back of the Tompson & Morgan...

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