Practical Backyard Chicken Biosecurity

June 29, 2015

...e decided to increase the times I change out the litter. Trips to the feed store The place I get my feed from is, to put it charitably, dirty. They also sell chickens, and pet birds that don’t look healthy. Unfortunately, it’s the only place that carries the feed I like (Modesto Milling). From what I learned at the conference, you need to be careful about trips to the feed store. I should change clothes, put them in the wash and take a shower befo...

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Mulch, mulch, mulch!

Mrs. Homegrown

May 14, 2015

Back to the Garden, Garden Design, Gardening, Permaculture, Soil

11 Comments

...n leaves. Get your neighbor’s leaves, if you can. Spread them in place, or store them in bags until you need them. Pine needles work, too. Pull weeds before they go to seed and leave them on the ground to dry up and vanish into the mulch layer. I swear, it might look strange to see them laying there at first, all green and bright, but they’ll be pretty much invisible in a few days. Practice “chop n’ drop”. When you’re pruning bushes or trees, chop...

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Day to day, our decisions count

Mrs. Homegrown

April 30, 2015

Back to the Garden

6 Comments

...unity doesn’t have a food co-op of any other sort, or a decent health food store with a good bulk bin selection, this might be a good way to buy cereals and oils and cleaning supplies at all those other sorts of things you can’t get at a farmers’ market. In the kitchen We can commit to not wasting food. We waste about 1/3 of the food calories we grow, worldwide. Not only is that a waste of our soil wealth, water, money and fuel–not to mention a hu...

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Everything Must Go Part 5: The nitty gritty

Mrs. Homegrown

January 21, 2015

Domesticus, Tidying up

34 Comments

...ral dusty old 12 oz bottles of homemade mead–a few of which were helpfully labeled, “Bad Mead?”–which have sat on a back shelf unloved and undrunk for many years, for so long the printer ink on the labels was fading. Far longer than any aging period. Erik caught me draining the bottles and just about had kittens. He’d planned on carbonating these bottles…someday…to see if that would improve the flavor and now I’d gone and ruined all of his work. H...

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094 The American Woman’s Home

Mr. Homegrown

October 26, 2016

Domesticus, Podcasts

6 Comments

On the podcast this week Kelly and I discuss a 19th century urban homesteading book written by Catherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, The American Woman’s Home. The book was written mostly by Catherine, with some contributions from Harriet (author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin). It’s likely that Catherine realized that attaching her famous sister’s name would sell more copies. Published in 1869, The American Woman’s Home covers a great deal of terri...

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