Yucca!

November 14, 2006

...ntal irrigation and have multiple uses and the yucca plant, in addition to making rope, can also be used for basket weaving, as a detergent, a white wool dye, a quiver for your arrows, and it also produces edible flowers, seeds, and fruit. Some important distinctions here. First of all we are not talking about “yuca” which is another name for the cassava plant, a tropical shrub of the spurge family. There are also many species in the yucca family,...

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Ikea Karlstad Couch Hack

Mr. Homegrown

March 23, 2015

Design

9 Comments

...pf noted, I would have been better off just getting a sheet of plywood and making the arms from scratch, which is what I ended up doing. To make the new plywood arms I put the project in Sketchup to figure out the dimensions. I’m a big believer in Sketchup. It has helped plan a lot of projects and prevented waste. It took just a few minutes to figure out the arm dimensions. I don’t have a table saw, so I used my circular saw and some guides to cut...

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Prickly Pear Fruit Chips

Mr. Homegrown

September 7, 2009

Food, Recipes

15 Comments

...r fruit has a leather-like consistency, enjoy. You swallow the hard seeds, making prickly pear fruit somewhat an acquired taste for some. Chumacero also mentioned that the young pads, “nopalitos” in Spanish, can also be dried for later use. A note to the permaculturalists out there. It’s worth emphasizing that the prickly pear cactus, Opuntia ficus-indica, in my personal experience, is the single most productive plant in our small lot. It’s also t...

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Vote Yes on 2 (if you’re in Cali)

Mr. Homegrown

November 3, 2008

Thoughtstylings

4 Comments

Homegrown Evolution ain’t making any political endorsements regarding that little election thingy happening tomorrow, with the exception of California’s Proposition 2, a measure that would, “prohibit the cruel confinement of farm animals in a manner that does not allow them to tum around freely, lie down, stand up, and fully extend their limbs.” Whether you are left, right, center, libertarian, carnivore, vegetarian or none of the above we think...

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Home Baked Bread in Five Minutes

Mr. Homegrown

December 24, 2008

Bread, Food

10 Comments

...d a wooden bread form. This month’s issue of Mother Earth News has a bread making solution for those of you unwilling to make the investment in the mixer or unable to fit the long rise times of wild yeast bread into your work schedule. The article, “Five Minutes a Day for Fresh-Baked Bread” by Zöe François and Jeff Hertzberg, explains their simple recipe. Combining just flour, water, salt and yeast, with no kneading, you make up a very wet dough,...

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