Search Results for: label/uses for used tires

405 results

Our New Earth Oven and How We Built It

Mr. Homegrown
Appropriate Technology, Design, Water and Power
5 Comments
and cured in the sun. I’m a big believer in adobe. Making so many bricks familiarized me with the soil I was working with and put me in touch with the original building material of the American Southwest.Though we only used half of those bricks, I’m happy to have some left over for other projects in the backyard I’d like to try. Also, after all of our lead trauma, its great to put the soil from our yard to good use. This was a...

Continue reading…

A Primitive Bow Workshop

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness
10 Comments
pect for our distant ancestors. Paul Campbell author of an excellent book Survival Skills of Native California was along to co-teach the class and help us all shape our bows. The first step was to find some suitable wood. We used willow, a wood used by Native Americans in our region. It’s plentiful and makes an acceptable if short lived bow. Ash and oak and bay trees are local woods which are better for the purpose, but our goal for the da...

Continue reading…

Our Rocket Stove

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness, Rocket Stove
65 Comments
h that we decided to build a permanent one just off our back deck for entertaining and as a backup to our gas stove should an emergency take out our utilities. The rocket stove was developed for use in poor nations where wood used for cooking has led to the vast, wholesale, deforestation of large swaths of the earth’s surface. Rocket stoves can be built out of metal or masonry and consist of a L shaped tube, at the bottom of which you place...

Continue reading…

How to Make Amazake

Mr. Homegrown
Fermentation, Food, Recipes
12 Comments
...form of inoculated rice grains called koji. We found our koji in the refrigeration cabinet of our local Japanese supermarket. Koji can also be found at some health food stores or you can mail order it from G.E.M cultures. We used a brand called Cold Mountain. 2. Bring 1 cup of white or brown rice to a boil in 2 cups of water. Turn down the heat and simmer for 50 minutes. We used sweet rice, but any kind of rice and if fact almost any grain wi...

Continue reading…

Daikon Radish Pickles

Mr. Homegrown
Fermentation, Food
13 Comments
acterias, and there are many different varieties, tend to have a high tolerance for salt unlike their unwanted bacterial cousins. The process of lacto-fermentation begins with creating a brine, which is the is the way pickles used to be made–most store bought pickles are now made with vinegar due to unwarranted safety concerns over lacto-fermentation. Today, sauerkraut is the best known lacto-fermented food. Dill pickles are traditionally m...

Continue reading…

Why You Should Have a Thermometer in Your Refrigerator/Freezer

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Food Preservation
12 Comments
below 40ºF (4.5ºC). (Source: Food Safety Advisor) After picking up an inexpensive thermometer, I discovered that our old fridge/freezer was simply not keeping low enough temperatures. I made the mistake of replacing it with a used fridge, which also did not maintain low enough temperatures. Nor did the loaner fridge, provided to us by the shop that sold us the used fridge, keep low temps. Thankfully we were able to return those units and buy an i...

Continue reading…

Make Your Own Damn Cheese

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Recipes
9 Comments
...oncentration camps out there that produce most of the milk in this country figure that they don’t have to be clean since they are pasteurizing everything. Fortunately raw milk is available at health food stores–we used a brand called Organic Pastures. Making cheese is actually fairly simple and can be done with just milk and rennet, also available in the baking section of health food stores such as Whole Foods. One other nice thing fo...

Continue reading…

The Cat Poop Portal: Litter Box Composting, Installment #1

Mrs. Homegrown
Animals, Cats, Composting
30 Comments
...her. The barrels pile up! The solution is our south-facing side yard. That “yard” is a 3 foot wide strip of sun-baked soil that no one ever sees. It’s divided from our neighbor’s side yard (also rarely used) by a hedge of tenacious jade plants. There is no access to the back yard from the side yard. It has been a wasteland for all the time we’ve been here. This year Erik put in two tiny raised planters there to see i...

Continue reading…

Failed Experiment: Bermuda Buttercup or Sour Grass (Oxalis pes-caprae) as Dye

Mrs. Homegrown
Domesticus, Herbs, Mistakes
17 Comments
...mordant, helping the plant dye to bind more easily to both plant and animal fibers. Oxalis theoretically yields tones ranging from lightest yellow to a sort of acid green, depending on which additional mordants you might use. Used straight, it was supposed to yield a very pale yellow. So I thought, why not play with it and see what happens? My only information source for this project was The Handbook of Natural Plant Dyes by Sasha Duerr. This, al...

Continue reading…

Natural Dyeing with Woad

Julia Posey
Domesticus
18 Comments
Earlier in the month while the boys stayed at home with Eric, I attended a French General workshop on dyeing with woad (Isatis tinctoria). Woad (from the Brassicaceae family, a cousin to broccoli & cauliflower) has been cultivated in Europe since ancient times. Woad was prized by Napoleon and used to dye his army’s uniforms. At one time, the production of woad was the cornerstone of the economy of the south of France. Indigo o...

Continue reading…