Book Review: The Blood of the Earth: An Essay on Magic and Peak Oil

October 31, 2012

...hat you believe you depend on, and that you also know is quite dependent itself on our complex, petroleum-fueled industrial system. Go without it now, so you know it’s possible. And that really, it’s not that bad to go without. Save One Thing: Consider how wide reaching our knowledge base is now, yet how fragile, since so much of our knowledge is tied up in digital media. Choose one thing you want to be able to pass on to future generations. Maybe...

Read…

Picture Sundays: A Chicken Coop Made From a Trampoline

Mr. Homegrown

October 28, 2012

Picture Sundays

2 Comments

...From the Homesteading/Survivalism Facebook page, a chicken coop made from a trampoline. Here’s a little more on the project. This coop appears to be a DIY variation on the Joel Salatin movable poultry pen. I’m assuming there’s a way to lock the chickens in the top part at night to keep out critters that might dig under the run....

Read…

Vegetable Gardening Workshops at the Natural History Museum

Mr. Homegrown

February 5, 2014

Events

...Master Gardener Florence Nishida will be teaching a four part vegetable gardening class starting in March. Florence is a great teacher and there are a number of discounted spaces for people in zip codes surrounding the Natural History Museum. To sign up for the class go to the museum’s event page or call 213 763-3349. Act soon as it’s sure to sell out....

Read…

Shelter

Mr. Homegrown

June 26, 2009

Reviews

2 Comments

...topics anticipated the non-hierarchical structure of the Internet. On one page you’re looking at Turkish rock houses, and on another geodesic domes built out of scrap materials. The lessons I’ve learned from Khan’s work are the importance of context (site, cultural, weather etc.) and the joy of putting hammer to nail to build something yourself even if you don’t know what the hell you are doing. Sometimes the most ramshackled comedies of architec...

Read…

A Purple Dragon Carrot

Mr. Homegrown

February 13, 2009

Food, Gardening

17 Comments

...ets. John clearly has more important things to do than updating a Facebook page. My dragon carrots grew without a hitch in our “guerrilla” parkway garden. As you can see from the photo, the carrot has a deep purple color reminiscent of the domesticated carrot’s wild ancestors, which were probably tamed in what is now Afghanistan. Wikipedia identifies the purple hue of these carrots as anthocyanin a possible source of antioxidants and a common pigm...

Read…