Urban Homestead Book Signing and Lecture

...to carrying cargo on your bicycle, to canning produce from your garden, to harvesting rainwater, and much more! All very inexpensive and step-by-step instructions. The book is an important addition to the shelf of every Angeleno concerned about sustainability, self-sufficiency, and living a high-quality low-impact lifestyle. For more information, email crsp@igc.org or call 213.738.1254 Admission proceeds will benefit both the Eco-village and the L...

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Nature Fest this Weekend!

...ts, done in collaboration with the Ecology Center, on container gardening, rainwater harvesting, bicycle basics, backyard chickens and food preservation. They’ll be priced to fly out of those boxes in my garage! I’ll also be doing a coffee demo at 1pm on both Saturday and Sunday and dispensing free advice in the booth for the entirety of the festival. Please drop by and hang out. And dig the book racks I built out of scrap plywood! See you this we...

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The Survivor

We interrupt this dull series of articles about rainwater harvesting for important breaking news at our urban homestead–the development of the SurviveLA signature cocktail–the Survivor. For a long time we’ve cursed the previous owners of our compound for their useless, inedible landscaping. One of the plants they left us that we’ve lived with for all these years is an ornamental pomegranate tree (Punica granatum) that, while attractive, we had pr...

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Non-Toxic Cleaning for the Home

...n their travel paths with vinegar or rubbing alcohol to erase their scent, making it hard for them to find their way back in. Block their points of entrance with strong smelling and powdery substances. Start with non-toxic stuff and work your way up to boric acid if you have to. Many people find lines of cinnamon very effective. Other have used lines of baby powder or even lavender buds. If your fruit bowl went bad and now you are plagued by fruit...

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Maintaining a Worm Bin

...These things just linger and are hard to sift out. Harvesting the Castings Harvesting castings is the only hard part about keeping a bin–and it’s not even hard, it’s just somewhat less than convenient. No matter how long you rest one side of the bin, there will always be a few confused worms living in the finished castings. If you bag them up with the castings, they’ll die. So you have to sort out your feelings and responsibilities vis-a-vis the w...

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