TV Turnoff week April 23 – 30, 2008

April 25, 2008

We don’t come from the sackcloth and ashes wing of the urban homestead movement. There’s no forced austerity around the Homegrown Evolution compound, no sufferfests, no “more-meek-than-thou” contests. It’s about pleasure not denial, after all. But, to use the “d” word, one thing we denied ourselves for many years was television. And during this TV Turnoff week, we thought we’d share our struggles with the tube. Ten years ago, when we moved into o...

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Maggots!

Mr. Homegrown

July 29, 2006

Composting, Gardening

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Like a lot of the agricultural duties around our urban homestead, composting requires time and initiative. Unfortunately both our garden and our energy level are at a low point, both sapped by the record breaking heat – anyone see Al Gore’s movie? The result of this lack of effort has been the maggot party currently going on in our compost pile. The best compostin’ revolutionary I ever met, photographer Becky Cohen maintained a three pile system...

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I Made an Enzo Mari Table and So Can You

Mr. Homegrown

October 24, 2023

Design

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...s fantasy plays out in the furniture I’ve build for the inside of the house. Such is the fate of attempts at revolutionary design within our post-modern age. Everything gets subsumed within a vast parade of styles and one can easily imagine this table on sale at Urban Outfitters at your local mall. Mari, who we lost to COVID in 2020, had the genius and grace to acknowledge the contradictions in his own work while not letting this discourse get in...

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Appropriate Technology

Mr. Homegrown

June 29, 2008

Appropriate Technology, Preparedness, Rocket Stove, Solar

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...at these technologies have a place in developed western countries as well. Here’s three of our favorite appropriate tech ideas and websites: 1. Rocket Stoves: our brick rocket stove and a link to a video on how to make a simple metal version. 2. The glorious Solar Cooking Archive which has links to dozens of simple solar cooker plans that you can build yourself. We built our cardboard and aluminum foil Pavarti cooker with plans from the solar cook...

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Essential System #8 – Nutrition (Extra Food)

Mr. Homegrown

August 23, 2006

Preparedness

...ab and go bags we have a few Clif Bars – they taste alright, don’t require cooking, and have a relatively long shelf life. The problem with Cliff Bars is that they prove tempting when we have the occasional sweet tooth attack. This is why some people keep MREs (meals, ready to eat) on hand, because they taste so foul you won’t be tempted to bust them open. They also don’t require cooking and some even come with a chemical heating packet. As for th...

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