Cutting a Beehive Out of a Wall

November 18, 2009

...ss, Sue and property owner Jen When we got back to Sue’s garden we put the frames into a hive box and dumped the loose bees in. While we won’t know for a while if the hive will take to its new home, we all felt a great sense of accomplishment. Hopefully, other urbanites around the world will take up beekeeping and put more exterminators out of work. For more info on Kirk Anderson’s natural beekeeping methods see www.beehuman.blogspot.com. Got a be...

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Without Merit: poison in your compost

Mr. Homegrown

December 7, 2009

Composting, Gardening, Thoughtstylings, Vegetable Gardening

7 Comments

...Dow Chemical under the brand names Merit and Forefront. This herbicide is used to control weeds such as thistle, knapweed and yellow starthistle. The problem is that aminopyralid survives the digestive systems of animals pastured on land sprayed with it, as well as compost piles made from their manure. Most other herbicides break down eventually, but this stuff sticks around. An organic farmer using compost contaminated by aminopyralid could lose...

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Bread and Transformation

Mr. Homegrown

January 25, 2010

Bread, Fermentation, Food, Thoughtstylings

7 Comments

...a baking or brewing geek like me it’s worth a view. The baking method I’ve used for over a decade is from Nancy Silverton’s book Breads from the La Brea Bakery. You use a sourdough starter and at least half the flour must be white to get it to leaven properly. I’ve had great results, but would like to someday make a loaf entirely from whole wheat with a sourdough starter. Reinhart, in his book Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flav...

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Social Media as a Homesteading Tool

Mr. Homegrown

October 18, 2012

Thoughtstylings

34 Comments

...And I’ve learned a lot from what Facebook friends have posted about their homesteading adventures. Yes, the privacy issues are alarming but, having written two books now, our life is public anyways. I think that it’s healthy to look at new technology critically and to take a break both daily and monthly from all the screen time we seem to accumulate. And I’m not a fan of cell phones, even though I own one. They seem like tracking devices with pho...

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The Fine Art of Worm Grunting

Mr. Homegrown

October 15, 2012

Vermiculture

8 Comments

...two videos showing worm grunting in Florida. Worm grunting is a technique used to lure worms out of the soil to collect as fishing bait. Basically, you take a stick (called a “stob”), pound it into the ground and rub a metal rod (known as a “rooping iron”) against the top of the stob. The deep vibrations are said to mimic the sound of burrowing moles, the natural predator of worms. When they sense the vibrations, the panicked worms crawl to the s...

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