Search Results for: label/water%20conservation/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

822 results

Injera

Avatar photo
Bread, Fermentation, Food
2 Comments
...by fermenting overnight a mixture of sourdough starter, whole wheat flour, water, salt and teff flour. Teff is an extremely fine grain grown in Africa. It’s so tiny in fact that a handful of seeds is enough to plant a small farm. Teff is grown in the US by the Teff Company of Caldwell Idaho and is available (though somewhat expensive) at Whole Foods via Bob’s Red Mill. The teff growing folks claim that the iron from teff is more easily absorbed by...

Read…

Kent’s Composting Tips and Secret Weapon

Avatar photo
Composting, Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
...me I add new kitchen scraps, I add 1-2 shovels-full of dry leaves and some water if needed, turning and mixing the old and new stuff with a cultivator or shovel to aerate the pile. The proportion of dry to wet material is important. There should be enough dry leaves so the compost is kinda’ fluffy and moist, not soggy, but the dry material shouldn’t overwhelm the wet either. Now the secret. I cut a piece of black 6 mil vinyl to approximately cover...

Read…

Clever Canadian Shitter

Avatar photo
Design
1 Comment
...Way back in 1998 the Canada Mortgage and Housing association sponsored a “Healthy Housing Design Competition“. The winning house included this novel waste composting system as shown in this thrilling video. OK, so SurviveLA has a weakness for industrial video, but you just can’t beat the combination of rotating shit and peppy music–we just wish he’d drink the water in that glass....

Read…

Make an Aluminum Can Lamp

Avatar photo
Preparedness
8 Comments
...e these lamps back during the war. You can also use these lamps to heat up water. Making one is easy: 1. Remove the top off a can. We like to do this by scoring the inner ring of the top with a razor blade and then using a pair of pliers to bust it out. The fastidious and safety conscious may want to file down the sharp edge. 2. Cut a 2 1/2 inch square window out of one side of the can with a pair of scissors. 3. Now cut the bottom 1 1/2 inches of...

Read…

California Buckwheat

Avatar photo
Food, Foraging
...ltiple uses–it provides cover and nectar for animals, grows with almost no water, and best of all it produces edible seeds. We’ve gathered the seeds we’ve found in fields and baked it into bread and added it to cereal to both boost nutritional value and to add a nutty flavor. The local and resourceful Tongva Indians used the roots and leaves for headaches and stomach problems, among many other uses including using the stems to pierce ears. Califor...

Read…