How to sprout mung beans easily in your kitchen (this method doesn’t use any specialized tools – just a colander, a bowl and a pot cover). Not mentioned in the video but most people, if they plan to eat the sprouts raw, rinse their sprouts a few times in clean water and some even use a food grade hydrogen peroxide solution to rinse the sprouts.
The newsurvivalist gives a detailed walk-through of his urban rabbit raising set-up (he houses his Florida white rabbits in his one-car garage). Newsurvivalist recommends Bob Bennett‘s books on rabbit raising and has based a lot of his rabbit raising operation on these books. “Don’t say you can’t grow your own livestock because you live in a city, because I have proven it here. I live in a city,” he says.
Watch for the water distribution system he has set up for his rabbits. It’s really interesting.
Note that the last two videos are about slaughtering, skinning and butchering the rabbits and show these processes.
This video looks at the decline of West Oakland, California and how the community has started to bounce back in part through community and backyard gardening initiatives. The video looks specifically at the work that non-profit City Slicker Farms has been doing in the community.
Urban farmer and author (Farm City:The Education of an Urban Farmer and The Essential Urban Farmer), Novella Carpenter talks about urban agriculture and shows us around her reclaimed-from-vacant-lot farm in the “Ghost Town” neighborhood in Oakland, California. She grows vegetables and raised poultry, rabbits, goats, bees and at one time pigs in a relatively small space.
Stuff she touches on in the interview: Raised beds, apiculture, livestock farming, dumpster diving for animal feed, community gardens, food deserts, slaughtering, most productive vegetable, how growing your own food can save money, lead contaminated soil, soil testing, urban predators, seed starting, starting small, books she uses for reference, the power of online how-to videos…
Novella Carpenter blogs at http://ghosttownfarm.wordpress.com/
Warning: Some of the graphics around animal slaughter and Novella’s stories about her pig’s eating habits and her confrontation with an opposum may be too much for some.
The Allotment Vegetable Growing Guy shows us how to build an easy-to-make netted garden cloche — a kind of crop protection frame.
He uses pressure treated wood and PVC in his construction. I’d be wary of both near my veggies and would probably used bamboo, but the design seems great.
California seniors Myrna and Earl Fincher are organic market gardeners who dug themselves out of financial hardship through farming.
In the video Earl and Myrna show us around their farm operation: Earl’s unique electrical germination set-up, the seed sowing boards he built out of plywood and wine corks, the bird and bathouses he uses and sells (the couple try to attract birds and bats to eat insects, since they don’t use pesticides on their crops). Myrna also shows us her preserve storeroom. She cans and freezes a wide variety of foods. Earl and Myrna also keep chickens.
Myrna says “People can really take care of themselves if they are willing to do the work.”
The Real Know How 