Search Results for: label/mead/2011/04/making-it/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

821 results

Mistakes we have made . . .

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Animals, Chickens, Permaculture, Thoughtstylings
13 Comments
...t is too prodigious, and that’s the kind of problem you can hope for as an urban homesteader. 3. Newspaper seed pots Those newspaper seed starting pots we linked to earlier this year . . . well, there seems to be a problem with them. I think the newspaper is wicking the water away from the soil. While in Houston recently, I took a class from a master gardener in plant propagation and we used regular plastic pots, a thin layer of vermiculite over t...

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The Great Sunflower Project

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Animals, Bees
6 Comments
Help determine the health of urban bees with a citizen science experiment called the Great Sunflower Project. It’s simple and free. Just register at the Great Sunflower Project website and you’ll be sent a package of wild annual sunflower seeds (Helianthus annuus). Twice a month you’ll get an email to remind you to time how long it takes for five bees to visit your sunflowers. Sounds like it has drinking game potential, though that might lead to...

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Climate Change and Personal Responsibility

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Age of Limits, Thoughtstylings
63 Comments
...en so much positive change on this front, even just in the last few years. Urban homesteading, slow food, organics, bikes, car share, DIY, all of it — it’s blossoming. It’s very hopeful. I’m going to put the next part in italics because it’s so important: The pleasure and satisfaction that we all receive from living this way is the positive counterspell to the dark enchantment of consumer culture. When we live this way, we become positive examples...

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DIY Outdoor Shower

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Water Conservation
6 Comments
...r will soon separate your real friends from superficial hangers-on. But we urban homesteaders don’t need to be stinky since it’s possible and easy to build an outdoor solar shower. There are two reasons this makes sense, particularly in a place with as warm a climate as LA. First of all, you can direct the water straight into the garden and in so doing irrigate some plants and keep that water from uselessly running down the sewer line. Secondly, p...

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New Sill Plate and Joists

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Design
13 Comments
...ld have spent doing the things that normally take up the time of glamorous urban homesteading bloggers in the big city such as pondering avocado toast recipes or dehydrating loquats. After much all caps thinking, I came to the conclusion that we need a kind of time traveling Dr. Who character whose sold mission would be to stop misguided remodeling projects in the past. He’d spend a lot of time in the 1960s and 70s halting bad patio pours, stoppin...

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