Search Results for: label/time banking/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

793 results

News From Nowhere

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Bikes, Thoughtstylings, Transportation
17 Comments
...aveling last week for the first time in two years and I flew for the first time since 2013. On our trip to the in-law’s reunion I was struck by how much of this country is made up of liminal spaces, as if the whole landscape were one long, dead mall corridor leading nowhere. It’s common to see these vistas as a kind of moral/aesthetic failure rather than the landscape of a capitalist system that has to always be in motion or it will end up in cris...

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Our hypocrisy revealed

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Design
8 Comments
..., and the house is about to be re-sold at a 100k mark-up. Yet when it came time to finally install a handrail on our staircase (just in time for the holidays, to appease our family, who for some reason find our treacherous staircase problematic) we discovered that arranging the boards horizontally worked best. In short, due to a combination of laziness and skill deficiency and general expediency (the usual deciding factors in our design decisions)...

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The Best Way to Get Bees For Free

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Animals, Bees
5 Comments
...hey settled in the box. I put a bee suit on (swarms are usually docile, but it’s best to be safe) and took the box out of the pot and righted it carefully, setting it near my established hives. I’m going to give the queen plenty of time to settle in and start laying eggs –at least 28 days–during which time I won’t touch or look at these bees. Since I already have two hives, I’m going to give these bees away. Anyone want bees? Have you had a swarm...

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Waxed Cloth Food Wrap (Made in a solar oven for bonus self-righteousness points)

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Domesticus, Food, How-to, Solar Oven Summer
8 Comments
...it rockets up past 200F pretty quickly even without the clips. So, at this time of year, working at midday, all I had to do was watch the time and temperature to make sure the oven didn’t get too hot. I put the tray in the oven, closed the lid (no clips, making the heating is less efficient on purpose) and waited about 10-15 minutes. The temp would quickly rise above 150F and the wax would dissolve, then I’d take it out before it got any hotter. F...

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Going to Seed

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Back to the Garden, Gardening, Nature Awareness, Vegetable Gardening
14 Comments
...plant of any type goes to seed. They taste like radishes, pretty much, sometimes they’re sweeter, sometimes they’re spicier. Radish pods are both a bonus crop and a fine consolation prize, because even if your radish roots end up puny or woody or otherwise disappointing, you can always eat the pods. They’re best fresh, picked a handful at a time as a snack or to put in a salad, but you can lactoferment or pickle them, too, using pretty much any pi...

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