#DIY

Primary Palette

Primary Palette:  Three Powerful Plant-Sourced Pigments Last year, in preparation for my Waste Not Urine blog and workshop I wrote a lot about Japanese Indigo and how regular application of diluted urine can significantly improve growth rate and lead to more frequent harvesting.  I talked about the multi-step process of pigment extraction, and the historically […]

On-Farm Plastic Recycling

From last year’s Cooking with Food Waste workshop to the upcoming installment of the developing Waste Not series, Living Web Farms is making a point to not only reduce waste, but  help change the perspective on waste all together. There is no waste in nature.  As agriculturalists, there is great importance in studying farming practices […]

Making Fish Sauce, Fish Fertilizer, and Garums

By Meredith Leigh The earliest evidence of fish sauces, or garums, dates back as early as the 3rd century BCE, made by ancient Greeks, and much speculation exists regarding whether the practice traveled from the shores of the Black Sea to the many other regions where garums are found, or if people across the Mediterranean, […]

DIY Activated Carbon

Like everyone else, Living Web Farms is adapting to the changing circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Expanded farm operations and food donations are now top priority.  We’ve started a new short-form, rough-edit video series for sharing immediately relevant information and a few weeks ago we offered our first of should be many free webcast workshops.  […]

Back to Backyard Biochar

Save for our WNC Repair Cafe project, and a handful of appropriate technology workshops, we’ve been pretty quiet over here at the biochar facility for a little while now. Lately, most of our work has centered on upgrading the liquid components of our method of biochar production: we’re going deeper with our research in wood […]

Online Q&A: How to Grow Your Own Kombucha or Vinegar SCOBY

Our workshops and YouTube videos can spark some questions that take a little extra time to address. The blog is a great way to answer and to share with a wider audience. Send your questions via email and they might just end up here (with your permission, of course.) QUESTION: How do you grow your […]

Low Voltage Controls: Part 2

Last time I wrote about controls, things got a little dense real fast.  If all of the talk of switches and relays seemed to lack any relevance, then stay put, because this month I’ll skip ahead and show some real concrete examples of ways we use low voltage controls around on our farm.  Review the […]

Low Voltage Controls: Part 1

  Last weekend I had the privilege of leading Living Web’s first workshop for 2018.  Tech workshops tend to work best in the winter, before the growing season kicks in. Cold weather and a stiff wind kept us in the classroom and bundled up tight for a brief tour of some of the low voltage […]

Conducting a Do-it-Yourself Home Energy Audit

by Richard Freudenberger, Living Web Farms Resource & Alternative Energy Coordinator There are two benefits to saving energy in the home. One is the financial gain of allocating less of your household budget to keeping the household humming, and the other is the less noticeable advantage of managing consumption for the sake of our planet’s […]

DIY – Make a TLUD Gasifier

By Dan Hettinger, Biochar Facility Manager Last month I wrote a little about the carbon impact of biochar production, and concluded with the assumption that going ‘carbon-negative’ is likely very possible with simple scale ‘backyard’ biochar technologies.  Bob Wells’ immensely popular presentation on the Tin-Man shows an effective DIY method with a single 55 and […]