Search Results for: label/uses for used tires/page/4/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

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The Pinnacle of Permaculture: Tending the Wild

Mrs. Homegrown
Foraging, Permaculture
10 Comments
Book review: Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources by M. Kat Anderson, University of California Press, 2006 When the white man came to California, he found a verdant paradise: meadows thick with wildflowers and clover, stately groves of nut trees, abundant, healthy game and rivers full of fish. It was a land of endless bounty. The natives, often derogatorily called “Diggers...

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A Lacto Fermentation Kit Made With a Canning Jar

Mr. Homegrown
Fermentation, Food
15 Comments
Chef Ernest Miller gave all of us in the Master Food Preserver class a very clever lacto-fermentation kit he designed and sells at the Farmer’s Kitchen in Hollywood. As a class, we’re all making a batch of sauerkraut. Made out of a Le Parfait canning jar with a hole drilled in the lid to fit a fermentation lock, I already know this handy device will replace the large ceramic crock we have used in the past for pickle and kraut makin...

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Bread and Transformation

Mr. Homegrown
Bread, Fermentation, Food, Thoughtstylings
7 Comments
I’ve not tried Reinhart’s baking method (even though I once had one of his books out of the library), but I like this 2008 Ted talk on the alchemical symbolism of bread. If you’re either a baking or brewing geek like me it’s worth a view. The baking method I’ve used for over a decade is from Nancy Silverton’s book Breads from the La Brea Bakery. You use a sourdough starter and at least half the flour must b...

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Root Simple Video Podcast Episode 1: How To Make a Sourdough Starter

Mr. Homegrown
Bread, Food, Videos
23 Comments
Here’s the first in a series of Root Simple how-to videos. Look for them on the blog and, soon, on your mobile thingies. I started with a little edit on how to make a sourdough starter. And I take requests–if there’s a topic for a video you’d like to see just leave a comment.  Making a sourdough starter is as simple as mixing flour and water. There’s no need for all the crazy things I’ve heard suggested:...

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Grub

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens, Composting
11 Comments
Why start the day with the Wall Street Journal when the real excitement is to be found in periodicals such as Backyard Poultry Magazine? While our broke nation can’t afford missile shields or moon trips anymore, at least it’s comforting to read in the pages of BPM that the citizens of Bonner Springs, Kansas can visit the brand new National Poultry Museum. This month’s issue of BPM also has a fascinating article by Harvey Usse...

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Other People’s Poo: Biosolids in the Garden

Mr. Homegrown
Composting, Gardening, Thoughtstylings
18 Comments
It’s people! Why not use city compost in your garden? Ecological designer Darren Butler, at a class I was sitting in on, showed a soil report from a site that had used compost from the city of Los Angeles. LA’s compost contain biosolids, a euphemism for sewage. The soil test showed high levels of: zinc 196 ppm copper 76 ppm sulfur 5,752 ppm The problem isn’t human waste, it’s all the other stuff that ends up...

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This Is Why Mint Is Invasive

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening, Herbs
12 Comments
Mrs. Homegrown here: That’s me pulling out a mint plant from our garden, as part of The Great Renovation. Check out those amazing roots! This container was filled with a 5 inch thick mat of thick, tangled roots. No wonder mint is unstoppable. I adore mint, but we had two big mint plants, and under the new scheme, I’m trying to be more efficient about the way space is used in the yard. So this guy had to go. I thought I’d be di...

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The Upside Down Fire

Mrs. Homegrown
How-to, Preparedness
17 Comments
This is how I make a campfire fire now. I used to use the teepee method, or some half-assed rendition of the teepee method, and I often had trouble with such fires. They required babying, rebuilding, etc., and they burned fast. This fire is built in the opposite direction: heavy stuff on the bottom, lighter stuff on top, tinder on the very top. Basically, the finished product looks like a bird’s nest sitting on a log cabin. This style...

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SurviveLA becomes Homegrown Revolution!

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
3 Comments
For the kids out there, the woman in the picture above is operating a ditto machine, what we children of the 60s and 70s used before the internets came out. Perhaps we’ll revert back to it when the shit goes down. In the meantime, SurviveLA is in the process of going international and to facilitate this we’re changing our name to Homegrown Revolution (www.homegrownrevolution.org). Stay calm, our content will stay the same. All the ol...

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Simple Tech

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
RLeave a comment
At the intersection of third world need and our first world’s gadget obsession lies a number of non-profit organizations attempting to help poor folks through the development of clever low-tech interventions. The rocket stove we featured earlier exemplifies this approach. With a rocket stove, which is made out of simple, easy to repair materials, you can burn twigs, newspaper and scrap wood rather than cutting down whole trees to make char...

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