An open letter to Trader Joes

October 16, 2007

...ess saturated fat, 2⁄3 more vitamin A, 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids, 3 times more vitamin E and 7 times more beta carotene. It’s too bad that the “all natural feed” that your package advertises does not provide the nutrients of a real pasture. And FYI–we also removed the rooster since that would signify that these eggs are fertilized, making us think that your package design folks were snoozing during their high school biology classes. We repl...

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Out of Water!

Mr. Homegrown

November 5, 2007

Preparedness

1 Comment

...Power on Friday and it was Monday morning before anyone showed up. By that time, mysteriously, the water began flowing again. The DWP worker checked the pressure, said it was fine, and shrugged when we asked what the problem might have been. We welcome comments from readers who want to speculate on the cause of this outage as we like to know how things work or fail around here. While we have a few gallons of water around in case of an earthquake t...

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Doing the doo-doo with you

Mr. Homegrown

November 10, 2007

Composting

4 Comments

...udy to suggest that “the right rhyme for the right crime will get you less time.” For us we’re hoping that Dundon’s compost will give life to the dead soil excavated and spilled out on the front slope of our house during extensive foundation work that we had to complete earlier this year to keep our 87 year old house from sliding down the hill. Dundon says that his “Doo Doo” becomes a sort of life-giving satellite of the Garden of Eden he has crea...

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Chicken Guantanamo

Mr. Homegrown

December 13, 2007

Animals, Chickens

4 Comments

So you want your own backyard hens? Some time ago Homegrown Revolution reader Toby asked about what it takes to keep chickens. While we’re far from being experts we thought we’d share what we’ve learned so far and welcome comments and suggestions from poultry keeping readers to add to and amend our advice. In our opinion the first step in keeping a backyard flock is to figure out where you’re going to house them. We’ll get into more detail over t...

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Using Greywater from your Washing Machine

Mr. Homegrown

December 15, 2007

Water and Power, Water Conservation

9 Comments

...k also slows down the flow of water going out to the garden, allowing more time for it to percolate into the soil. In addition the tank lets the water cool a bit, should we run a load in hot water. Bottom of barrel showing fittings Top of the barrel where the hose from the washing machine comes in For the tank we picked up a used and cleaned 55 gallon plastic drum with two “bung holes”, and plumbed it based on a design from Aquabarrel.com. The fol...

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