A White House Vegetable Garden

August 4, 2008

Gardening, Thoughtstylings, Vegetable Gardening

...out that White House putting green? San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom broke ground this summer on a kitchen garden at city hall. Former mayor “slick” Willie Brown responded lamely, “You start having cows and chickens and goats and other things at Civic Center and I’m not sure it’s a good idea.” We’ll see if the next president, whoever he is, has the courage to plant veggies. I would love to see a goat interrupt a press conference....

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Urban Farming in Oakland

Mr. Homegrown

September 14, 2008

Urban Farming

...erview with urban farmer and writer Novella Carpenter. Carpenter has pigs, goats, ducks, chickens and more all on a small lot in Oakland, California. You can listen to the radio interview here (along with some other interesting segments on hunting caribou, cooking pasta, roasting peppers, and more) on chef Evan Kleiman’s show Good Food. You can also check out Carpenter’s blog, meaningfulpursuit.com. We especially like Carpenter’s advice to take sm...

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Looking for Urban Farmers

Mr. Homegrown

January 23, 2009

Thoughtstylings

22 Comments

...he West covered, but we are still looking for some folks to profile who: 1. Live in one of the five boroughs of New York City and grow edibles and/or keep livestock. 2. Live in Detroit. We hear rumors of folks keeping herds of goats in Motown! 3. Have photos of your activities. Send us an email or leave a comment if you fit this description, or if you know of someone who does. All efforts, from the modest to the massive, are interesting to us. Tha...

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Author and Urban Farmer Novella Carpenter Rocks Los Angeles

Mr. Homegrown

July 24, 2009

Resources, Urban Farming

3 Comments

...Carpenter is her honesty in describing the ups and downs of raising pigs, goats, chickens, turkeys, rabbits and more on squatted land next to her apartment in Oakland. As she put it, “I don’t like to sugarcoat things.” As owners of a garden that is often a little rough around the edges, we were inspired by this photo of her squated garden that she showed during her lecture. We could have listened for hours to her stories of dumpster diving for pi...

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

Mrs. Homegrown

January 31, 2013

Domesticus, Herbs, Mistakes

26 Comments

...od beams are always in the fantasy) and a fire in the grate. I’d watch the goats graze in the back yard while I cheerfully sip tea and knit something marvelous out of hand spun angora dyed with Oxalis. (As opposed to the reality of me stumbling around our money pit of house in my exceedingly unnatural and ancient polar fleece robe, desperately searching for a chair to sit on that doesn’t hold a cat, so I can watch the LAPD stalking around the unoc...

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