Author: Mr. Homegrown

Motuv-ated

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Thoughtstylings
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We received a very nice letter from Amanda Lazorchack who, along with her partner Dane Zahorsky, are teaching a 7th grade sustainability class at the Kansas City Academy. They’re using our book The Urban Homestead as a textbook and sent a long a few pictures of what they are up to with their group, Motuv.

Lazorchack wrote, “It’s almost as if we woke up one day and realized that we didn’t know how to grow our own food and that that was a huge problem so we better get to teaching ourselves.” Amen!

We’re inspired by what they’re doing, and hope you might be, too.

Thanks, Motuv, for showing us what you’re doing!

Here’s some pics:

Pallets make great compost bins–I really like the paint job–much nicer than ours.
Motuv’s corn!
Motuv’s tomatoes!

Hops Growing Resources

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Herbs, Hops
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Reader Matt sent a couple of detailed links on growing hops. First an organic hops growing manual (pdf) by Rebecca Kneen of the Left Fields organic farm in British Columbia. Secondly, a PowerPoint presentation by hops farmer and breeder Jason Perrault here (pdf) along with the transcript here (pdf). I’m going to go through these resources before transferring the hops I’ve been growing in containers to the ground in the spring.

Thanks Matt and happy brewing to all!

Backyard Rebirth

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Thoughtstylings
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Our shack as spied by Google.

Our yard is a disaster. There’s some randomly planted natives, vegetable beds lying fallow after a mediocre summer and large areas of, well, nothing. However, this ongoing landscaping disaster brought a valuable lesson: sometimes it’s best to bring in someone from outside the household for design advice, particularly if that person knows what they are doing. Thank you Tara Kolla of Silver Lake Farms for being that person.

Yards develop emotional baggage and it’s easy to get stuck in a rut. Kolla came up with a lot of simple ideas that we would never have thought of in a million years. We’ll document the changes we make as we begin planting and hardscaping over the next few months (our quirky Mediterranean climate means that late fall is one of our prime planting seasons). Now, I gotta go fetch the machete.

Behind the Scenes of a Euell Gibbons Grape Nuts Ad

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Foraging
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Every decade has its celebrity forager. The aughts gave us Survivorman, but back in the 1960s and 70s Euell Gibbons stalked all that wild asparagus. This odd film, from the Academic Film Archive of North America, takes you behind the scenes of the creation of an iconic Grape Nuts ad staring Gibbons.

And the branding synergies between foragers and marketers continues–Survivorman pimps for auto insurer Geico–but, personally, I’ll take Gibbons and his wild cranberries, thank you.

Another gem from archive.org.

Lloyd Kahn on Shelter

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Design
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SHELTER from jason sussberg on Vimeo.

Jason Sussberg has made a nice film about author and publisher Lloyd Kahn. In this short film, Kahn sums up exactly what our dwelling places need, “Shelter is more than a roof overhead–it’s a feeling of warmth and security.”

And, incidentally, how many people do you know who can skateboard that gracefully at the age of 75?

For more inspiration head over to Lloyd’s Blog.