Lady Urine, Water Conservation and Halfway Humanure

...f those camping toilet seats which snaps onto a five gallon bucket. Or you build yourself a deluxe model, like ours. You put a nice cushion of sawdust or wood shavings or crushed dried leaves or whatever works for you at the bottom of the bucket (maybe 3-4″) and start using it. Top it off with a sprinkle of dry stuff each time you use it. Keep the lid closed. It will not stink. Reserve #2 for the flush toilet. This keeps things simple. If you’re o...

Read…

How to Make a Bee Skep

...your local thrift store, Modern Farmer Magazine has a post on how you can build your own. Looks like a fun project. How skeps are used The following series of videos show how skeps are used. Part 6 documents the steps leading up to the honey harvest. It’s a labor intensive process. To get at the honeycomb, skeps are “bounced” over an empty skep to remove the bees. These bees are then combined with weaker hives and overwintered. It’s easy to see,...

Read…

Video Tour of the Root Simple Compound

...e our chicken coop. The video also features our rocket stove, horno and emergency potty plus a spin around the pantry. But the real star of this video is our 1920 bungalow. I wish they still build houses like this (sorry Dwell). Thank you Ben Loescher and Kurt Gardella for building our horno and thanks to John Zapf for designing our chicken run!...

Read…

Yes, We Do the Pinterest Thing

...o deck over an ugly concrete patio. The inspiration for the trellis came in part from an image I pinned off the interwebs: Not having a natural design sense, I gather images and synthesize them to come up with plans I can build. Google image search and Pinterest are great inspirational tools. But I have not made good use of Pinterest’s social features. Towards that end, follow us on Pintrest and we’ll follow back. Let’s exchange ideas!...

Read…

The Manzanita Miracle, or, why you should love native plants if you live in a dry climate

...hurry this process along, because they don’t cool the city, and they don’t build soil which can capture and hold water. We need to settle down in a comfortable in-between spot. This is not Ireland and this is not Sonora. This is Southern California and we have a whole palette of amazing, largely misunderstood plants which are ready willing and able to green this place up even in the heart of a drought. All we have to do is treat these plants right...

Read…