Our New Open Floor Plan

May 7, 2018

Design

...ared them a “death trap.” Then the good natured Will Wallus of the Weekend Homestead came on the podcast to gently defend open floor plans. Naturally, I’m spending this month making our house, gasp, more open. Let me explain. When I installed the floor in the living room in the aughts I discovered an opening that used to exist between our living room and what we use as our bedroom. Back in 1920 this house was a one bedroom with a kind of sitting r...

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009 Artificial Turf Wars and Fashion Disasters

Mr. Homegrown

July 23, 2014

Podcasts

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...in New York City and Playa Vista Park in West Los Angeles. Fashion on the Homestead In the second part of the podcast we discuss the homesteading fashion conundrum inspired by a quote from dapper film director (and cat lover) Alexandro Jodorowsky. Kelly talks about her strange uniform idea and I mention Johannes Itten’s uniform for the Bauhaus (that, during the podcast, I mistakenly attribute to Kazimir Malevich–oops!). We also mention Soviet art...

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When the Cat’s Away the Mice Will Play

Mr. Homegrown

May 22, 2014

Thoughtstylings

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...mple compound. I took the opportunity to make a slight modification to the homestead. I don’t think she’s noticed yet. Consider this post an inside challenge. Kelly–I dare you to find what I did. No hints yet. Readers–have you done any projects while your significant other is out of town? Kelly’s Response: So no, I did not notice his “intervention.” Worse, I didn’t even see this post. Bad blogger, bad. He had to call my attention to it. Then I sea...

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Steve Solomon’s Soil and Health e-Library

Mr. Homegrown

October 23, 2012

Resources

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...ntains books on “holistic agriculture, holistic health and self-sufficient homestead living” You can download the books for free, but Solomon requests a modest $13 donation. You can find this amazing resource at: www.soilandhealth.org. The “Radical Agriculture” part of the archive contains many early organic ag classics by authors such as Sir Albert Howard, J.I. Rodale and Ehrenfried Pfeiffer. The “Homesteading” part of the library contains tomes...

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Build a Ghetto Solar Cooker

Mr. Homegrown

September 29, 2006

Preparedness, Solar, Water and Power

Using crap we had laying around the homestead, SurviveLA fashioned a solar cooker based on plans from Backwoods Home Magazine, the Dwell of the Ted Kaczynski set. We just substituted an old cooler for the cardboard boxes, and we finished it off by using one of Los Angeles’ ubiquitous abandoned car tires as a cradle to keep the cooker oriented towards the sun. It ain’t pretty but it works. In our first test we reached 160º inside the oven, but we...

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