Update on Hedge Fund Billionaire Crispin Odey’s $250,000 Chicken Coop

May 30, 2014

...ousing described in Cato the Elder’s De Agricultura. In this early Roman agriculture manual Cato details a live-in chicken coop that provides housing for a worker who collects the eggs and keeps predators away. Maybe he can read Cato while admiring his hens. Just look out for those peasants with pitchforks . . ....

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004 Egg Ethics, Solar Food Dryers and a Question about Earth Ovens

Mr. Homegrown

June 18, 2014

Animals, Chickens, Podcasts, Solar, Water and Power

10 Comments

...our of the Root Simple Podcast Kelly and Erik discuss the tricky ethics of eggs and mayonnaise, what kind of solar food dryer is the best and we answer a question from Ed about earth ovens. Plans for the Appalachian Solar Food Dryer can be found in an article on Mother Earth News. We have a detailed post on how we built our adobe oven here. If you want to leave a question you can call (213) 537-2591 or send an email to [email protected]. The th...

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Problems Part I

Mr. Homegrown

July 23, 2008

Animals, Chickens

16 Comments

...ng food and not engaging in the usual hen chatter. She also stopped laying eggs. At first we thought she might be egg bound, a condition in which an egg becomes stuck on the way out the cloaca. Warm baths and lubricants (I’m going to resist a cheap joke here) ensued with no results. The thought of inserting a finger into the cloaca, or worse, attempting to break an egg seemed foolish for inexperienced chicken owners such as ourselves. As of today...

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How You can Help Dragonflys

Mr. Homegrown

October 17, 2014

Animals

2 Comments

Green Darners (Anax junius) laying eggs. © Dennis Paulson. Want to help dragonfly populations? The Migratory Dragonfly Project is a citizen science project you can participate in. All you need is a pond or wetland to visit and a computer. Participants monitor the timing, duration, and direction of travel of migrating dragonflies, and note any additional behaviors in a directed migratory flight such as feeding or mating. Photos or videos are stron...

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How to Make Great Pizza in a Home Oven

Mr. Homegrown

December 4, 2014

Food

5 Comments

Breakfast pizza with eggs and za’atar. Our cob oven makes great pizzas. Why? High temperatures. You just can’t make good pizza in a home oven. Or so I used to think. This weekend I invited some friends over for an outdoor pizza party but much needed rain put a wrinkle in those plans. I remembered that Josey Baker had some instructions in his book on how to make pizza in a home oven, so I decided to give it a try. I’m happy to report that it works...

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