Video Sundays: Doberman Outsmarted by Chicken

November 10, 2013

...berman was deathly afraid of chickens, for some reason. Addition from Mrs. Homestead: I wouldn’t characterize our dog as having been deathly afraid of chickens. Rather, I’d say he let the chickens push him around–very much like this video. Once I found him trapped, unable to get to the house because the mean chickens were blocking his path, so I had to rescue him. But often enough they’d all coexist peacefully, with the chickens pecking right unde...

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When the Cat’s Away the Mice Will Play

Mr. Homegrown

May 22, 2014

Thoughtstylings

8 Comments

...mple compound. I took the opportunity to make a slight modification to the homestead. I don’t think she’s noticed yet. Consider this post an inside challenge. Kelly–I dare you to find what I did. No hints yet. Readers–have you done any projects while your significant other is out of town? Kelly’s Response: So no, I did not notice his “intervention.” Worse, I didn’t even see this post. Bad blogger, bad. He had to call my attention to it. Then I sea...

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That ain’t a bowl full of larvae, it’s crosne!

Mr. Homegrown

January 21, 2010

Gardening, Self Watering Containers, Vegetable Gardening

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...n, justifiably, gives me a hard time for growing strange things around the homestead. This week I just completed the world’s smallest harvest of a root vegetable popularly known as crosne (Stachys affinis). Crosne, also known as Chinese artichoke, chorogi, knotroot and artichoke betony is a member of the mint family that produces a tiny edible tuber. While looking like any other mint plant, the leaves have no smell. The tubers look all too much li...

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009 Artificial Turf Wars and Fashion Disasters

Mr. Homegrown

July 23, 2014

Podcasts

5 Comments

...in New York City and Playa Vista Park in West Los Angeles. Fashion on the Homestead In the second part of the podcast we discuss the homesteading fashion conundrum inspired by a quote from dapper film director (and cat lover) Alexandro Jodorowsky. Kelly talks about her strange uniform idea and I mention Johannes Itten’s uniform for the Bauhaus (that, during the podcast, I mistakenly attribute to Kazimir Malevich–oops!). We also mention Soviet art...

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Build a Ghetto Solar Cooker

Mr. Homegrown

September 29, 2006

Preparedness, Solar, Water and Power

Using crap we had laying around the homestead, SurviveLA fashioned a solar cooker based on plans from Backwoods Home Magazine, the Dwell of the Ted Kaczynski set. We just substituted an old cooler for the cardboard boxes, and we finished it off by using one of Los Angeles’ ubiquitous abandoned car tires as a cradle to keep the cooker oriented towards the sun. It ain’t pretty but it works. In our first test we reached 160º inside the oven, but we...

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