Brewing Demo

Hogarth’s formula: beer=good, gin=bad

Homegrown Evolution will be conducting an informal beer brewing demo as part of an art opening in Eagle Rock this weekend. Curated by Nate Garcia, Needle in a Haystack brings together an eclectic group of artists exploring community and public space, including our comrade Ari Kletzky of Islands of L.A., with whom we’ll be interacting during the course of the show.

At the opening, on Saturday January 24th we’ll be demonstrating how to make a batch of beer with malt extract, a process that anyone can do in their own kitchen. The beer will ferment in the gallery and be served on February 28th at the closing party. We’ll be setting up around 6 p.m. and we should be finished brewing by 9 p.m. or so. The event is at the Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock which is located at 2225 Colorado Boulevard.

Stay tuned for more fermentation workshops in the near future.

Make a Garden Work Table from a Pallet

Pallets are a ubiquitous building material, your free lumber yard in tough times. Homegrown Evolution patched together the garden work table above for use with seedlings and storing pots and watering cans. Hopefully the picture is all you need to put one together yourself.

Some tips for working with pallets:

1. We prefer projects that don’t involve disassembling the pallet. The nails in pallets aren’t meant to be removed. Trying to take one apart with a crowbar will, in most cases, result in a lot of split, useless wood. A Sawzall reciprocating saw would work better if you must take one apart. For the table above we simply cut the pallet in half with a circular saw and handsaw.

2. Use screws not nails and predrill all holes. Pallet wood is very brittle and splits easily.

For some other design ideas check out:

This nice coffee table. Note that you simply use the whole pallet.

And this cool idea: an art/architecture collective Municipal Workshop has a nice way of avoiding the problem of pulling pallets nails. They cut pallets apart and use all the small pieces of wood like tiles. Here’s some more info on their “Autotron Unit”, pictured above.

A Transportation Cocktail: Bikes, Trains and Buses


It’s the best kept secret in mobility. Bicycles, buses and trains go together like gin, vermouth and olives. Ride to the station, chug along to your destination and then ride off. You’ve got your wheels on both ends of the trip. We’re especially fond of the trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco on Amtrak’s lumbering San Joaquin train. Sure it takes ten hours, but it’s a small price to pay for having a bike in San Francisco. Once in SF, there’s no searching for parking or waiting for those slow-going north-south buses.

Note:

1. Some Amtrak routes let you take a bike on board but on the longer hauls you have to box up your bike, which can be a major inconvenience. The California trains that don’t require boxing are the San Joaquin, Pacific Surfliner and Capital Corridor. On the painfully slow Coast Starlight you’ll have to box the bike. However, a friend found a loophole on the longer haul box policy in the form of a waiver offered by a baggage handler that, once signed, allowed my friend to put his bike in the baggage car without a box (note, the worker at the counter did not mention anything about a waiver and refused to accept an un-boxed bike). Avoid this hassle by taking the above mentioned California trains.

2. Amtrak Thruway buses accept bikes on, as far as I can tell, the San Joaquin, Pacific Surfliner and Capital Corridor routes. You just stash the bike below in an empty cargo hold.

3. I’ve also taken my bike on board Metrolink trains up to Ventura.

4. For you folks pondering a trip to California, the train/bike combo would be a whole lot of fun.

5. Yes, a folding bike would be more convenient, but I like my road bike.

6. Get a copy of the San Francisco bike map to avoid the big hills and find the best routes. I got my copy at the Rainbow Market.

For more info on bikes on California Amtrak routes check here or call Amtrak, but always remember that when you bring up bikes with a customer service person it will be the first time they’ve ever heard the question.

Now back to the slow, but entertaining San Joaquin train. While it takes longer than driving or flying, the views of the Central Valley can’t be beat. You’re well off the highway for most of the trip, and get a god’s eye view from the upper deck. Glimpses of farms, backyards and small towns flash by as if in a series of dream-like snapshots. Some sights from my trip on the train:

Some older Asian men crouching on a backyard patio while chopping up a big side of beef (or game?) with an axe while a teenager looked on in pajamas.

A large, shirtless white man with a Mohawk standing outside a junk strewn and isolated compound somewhere north of Fresno.

A luxurious pool plopped, incongruously, smack in the middle of an empty two acre yard, at an unreasonable distance from the house. Adjacent to the house, the largest outdoor fireplace I’ve ever seen. Can you say second mortgage?

Speaking of mortgages, the territory of sub-primelandia: endless rows of abandoned suburban tracks on former agricultural land sitting empty, tattered real estate flags flapping in an unseasonably warm winter breeze. It brings to mind the boom town expression of mortgage agents, “drive until you qualify.”

A for sale sign hanging in front of a 1920s era dilapidated shack with a equally dilapidated pier jutting out into the northeast corner of the San Francisco Bay near the town of Pittsburgh, CA. Ready to tie up that Zebra boat for a memorable daily commute into San Francisco.

Canada geese kicking back in a Fresno drainage pond.

The world’s most aesthetically challenged hot tub enclosure, also spotted in Fresno.

And along the way, in backyards, the Central Valley has two of my favorite signs of civilization: backyard chickens and nopales. At the dramatic end of the line for the San Joachin train lay the forlorn streets of Bakersfield, immortalized in Buck Owen’s song,

“I came here looking for something
I couldn’t find anywhere else
Hey, I’m not trying to be nobody
Just want a chance to be myself

I’ve done a thousand miles of thumbin’
I’ve worn blisters on my heels
Trying to find me something better
On the streets of Bakersfield”

Video of that song here, but beware of the distracting mullet on the bassist.

Secondary and Edible

Homegrown Evolution is headed to San Francisco for the week on business and will be away from computers (thankfully). Along the way we’ll be enjoying the agricultural vistas of California’s Central Valley via Amtrak’s lumbering San Joaquin train. In the meantime, please take a look at this fascinating link, the secondary edible parts of vegetables. Cucumber stem tips and young leaves for dinner anyone?

The Squirrel Menace

In our garden squirrels are a serious problem. Their worst offense is grabbing avocados off our tree, taking a few small bites and then dropping them on the ground for our Doberman to finish off. This year only five avocados made it into the kitchen. Today’s New York Times has just about the only effective solution. Anyone for squirrel tacos with guacamole?

“With literally millions of squirrels rampaging throughout England, Scotland and Wales at any given time, squirrels need to be controlled by culls. This means that hunters, gamekeepers, trappers and the Forestry Commission (the British equivalent of forest rangers) provide a regular supply of the meat to British butchers, restaurants, pâté and pasty makers and so forth.

The situation is more than simply a matter of having too many squirrels. In fact, there is a war raging in Squirreltown: invading interlopers (gray squirrels introduced from North America over the past century or more) are crowding out a British icon, the indigenous red squirrel immortalized by Beatrix Potter and cherished by generations since. The grays take over the reds’ habitat, eat voraciously and harbor a virus named squirrel parapox (harmless to humans) that does not harm grays but can devastate reds. (Reports indicate, though, that the reds are developing resistance.)”

Two tangents here:

1. Please note the dapper gamekeeper photographed for the story. Here at Homegrown Evolution we think it’s about time the work clothes with tie look, such as this gamekeeper’s traditional hunting attire, makes a comeback. No more walking around in pajamas!

2. We’ve got another excuse to replay this old video:

Thanks to neighbor Lora Hall for the link to the New York Times story!