La Alternativa

September 17, 2006

...k, a flan made with fruit or vegetables rather than scarce corn starch and eggs, and laundry soap made from the jaboncillo tree. What we like most about Gálvez is that she is a strong proponent of urban gardening, maximizing every available space for food, a contrast to Martha Stewart’s useless pesticide and fertilizer drenched flower gardens. See the the film Power of Community How Cuba Survived Peak Oil for more on Cuba’s inventive urban gardeni...

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Revolutionary Rusks

Mr. Homegrown

November 5, 2006

Bread, Food

3 Comments

...baking powder 1 cup chopped almonds Wet ingredients ½ cup melted butter 2 eggs ¾ cup buttermilk 2 teaspoons pure vanilla 2 teaspoons pure almond extract preheat oven to 400º In a large mixing bowl, mix the dry ingredients In another mixing bowl, mix the wet ingredients Pour the wet into the dry and stir until you have a soft dough Turn the dough onto a well-floured surface and roll or pat it to a ½-inch thickness Cut the dough into 2×4-inch recta...

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Why Urban Farm?

Mr. Homegrown

June 10, 2007

Animals, Chickens

2 Comments

...ide as much simple comfort and dignity to our fellow creatures as we can. After all, aren’t simple comfort and dignity among the most important things we wish for ourselves and our children?” It is with this desire to know the food we eat–if just for eggs in our case–that we’ve begun our own urban small stock journey. Welch concludes his essay eloquently, “I have a lot more death in my life than I did before. And, ironically, that’s part of the re...

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The Perfect Chicken Coop?

Mr. Homegrown

November 28, 2012

Animals, Chickens

8 Comments

...esting box from the outside so you don’t have to go in the coop to collect eggs. It has a roof over the run to keep your chickens dry. It’s the basic form I used for our coop with a few refinements–I ran hardware cloth under run to keep out burrowing predators. I also extended the run to keep the chickens from pecking at each other (the more room they have the better). To paraphrase Nassim Taleb for the second time in a week, if a given design has...

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How to Remove Bees From a Tree

Mr. Homegrown

February 17, 2017

Animals, Bees

...per sets up a bee box next to the exit and places a frame of comb that has eggs and brood (bee larvae) in it, taken from another hive. The bees in the tree will exit, not be able to get back into their old home and then, over the course of several weeks, move into the new box with the brood comb in it. If all goes as planned they will make a new queen in the box. The beekeeper will come back in six weeks, take the box away and then seal up the cav...

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