Community Power! Elect Hugo Soto-Martinez!

February 17, 2022

...s as an organizer for UNITE HERE Local 11, a union of hotel, warehouse and food service workers. Once elected Hugo will represent the interests of ordinary working people. He supports building social housing, jobs programs and making our streets safer for everyone. You can read more about his platform on his website. Electing Hugo is just the beginning. There’s a lot of work to do to turn this city around. Thankfully, more people are starting to p...

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A Low-Tech Experiment in Growing Oyster Mushrooms

Mr. Homegrown

February 3, 2022

Gardening, Mushrooms

14 Comments

My furniture making hobby produces a mountain of sawdust and wood chips. Some of it I give to neighbors who have cabins with composting toilets. A lot of it I have to throw out. A few months ago a light bulb went off. I mostly produce oak sawdust which just happens to be one of the ideal substrates for growing mushrooms. While I love looking at mushrooms and attending lectures about mushrooms via the Los Angeles Mycological Society, I don’t know...

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Master Tinkerer Ray Narkevicius

Mr. Homegrown

October 20, 2021

Composting, Food, Fruit Trees, Permaculture

3 Comments

...hbor Ramutis “Ray” Narkevicius is building something, tending his poultry, making compost, growing hops on the rooftop of a brewery, scavenging materials, grafting a fruit tree or wiring the inside of a Fed Ex cargo jet. Over the years Ray has turned his yard into a elaborate nutrient loop. Spent grains that he gets from the brewery feed the poultry. Poultry manure nourish fruit trees and the duck water waste hosts crayfish. All the water gets pum...

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Backyard and Backwards Beekeeping

Mr. Homegrown

April 16, 2021

Animals, Bees

6 Comments

...Q&A you’ll notice that my desktop computer is installed in our closet thus making my Zoom background a pile of folded sheets. In the talk I give a brief intro to bee biology and then go over the way I keep bees here as taught to me by “backwards” beekeeping guru Kirk Anderson. Beekeeping resources I mention during the talk: Organizations/Websites HoneyLove.org: local non-profit that provides hands-on education and resources for backyard beekeepers...

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Art and Grains

Mr. Homegrown

April 1, 2021

Design, Food, Thoughtstylings

5 Comments

...is launching a new zine, has completed 100 days of small drawings, and is making amazing little animated sculptures that you can see in his Instagram and TikTok. He’s got an interesting technique for creating a 3d illusion in 2d images that he explains here. Sign up for Federico’s newsletter for some joy in your inbox. One last thing about Federico. This tweet of his ends up in my Twitter notifications periodically: My personal rules for social m...

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