Kelly and Chocineal

August 31, 2020

...cus) is a scale insect that produces carminic acid which is extracted for use as a red textile and food dye. I thought cochineal dying might make for the perfect quarantine craft project until I did some research. Like many things worth doing, harvesting and dying textiles with cochineal is a process that takes experience and skill. The Zapotec people of Oaxaca have been practicing this skill for a thousand years. In the video above you can see ho...

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We are all gardeners

Mrs. Homegrown

April 2, 2015

Back to the Garden, Gardening, Thoughtstylings

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Pomo woman harvesting seeds, 1924, by Edward Curtis After a break for camping and other things, I’m returning to the series of posts I initiated a couple of weeks ago under the heading, Back to the Garden. While this series is meant to be practical, I have a little more “thoughtstyling” as we say around here before I turn to the hands-on material. Look for new series entries every Thursday. We are all gardeners. What does this mean? It’s a saying...

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024 Water, Wilding our Gardens and Sewing

Mr. Homegrown

November 12, 2014

Domesticus, Gardening, Podcasts, Water and Power

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...to discuss a recent talk I gave to a bunch of Master Gardeners about water harvesting and encouraging wildness in our gardens. On the second part of the podcast Kelly discusses the process of learning how to sew. During the first part of the podcast Erik mentions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoJ0OHWl3b8 Jacques de Vaucanson’s 1739 mechanical pooping duck A University of California study, Hedgerows enhance beneficial insects on farms in Califor...

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Borlotto Bean Lingua di Fuoco

Mr. Homegrown

January 6, 2008

Vegetable Gardening

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...grow enough to collect dried beans and make some soup. For cultivation and harvesting details for dry beans click on over to the Thomas Jefferson Agricultural Institute. It may seem like we’re pimping for Seeds from Italy, but these beans are yet another success we’ve had with the Franchi’s companies seeds that Seeds from Italy imports. We just discovered the competition, Italian Seed and Tool, which imports the rival Bavicchi company’s seeds. We’...

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An Awareness of What is Missing

Mr. Homegrown

June 18, 2015

Thoughtstylings

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..., as this blog has lost ground to the short attention span and creepy data harvesting tentacles of Facebook and other social media platforms. So what can we do? Perhaps it’s futile, but I thought I’d devote some time in the next few weeks to developing skills that run counter to the prevailing technological winds. I’m hoping to, as George Clinton put it, “Free my mind so my ass will follow.” At the very least I’d like to enhance my own skills in t...

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