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 […]

Indigo Sig Vat

Waste not: Urine – Part 2: The Indigo Sig Vat This post is part of a series exploring the historical and modern applications for human urine.  Part 1 is available here. At the end of the previous post I left off with a short anecdote about how last year I set out to grow my […]

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.  […]

Waste Not: Wood Ashes

In the fall of last year I led a short workshop covering some homestead applications of common wood stove ashes.  It was the first of what I hope will become one of many “Waste Not:” workshops hosted out of the Living Web Farms’ biochar facility.  Later this year I’ll discuss the myriad applications – of […]

WNC Repair Cafe and the fight against Planned Obsolescence

It’s been over a year since our last blog post, but the Biochar Facility at Living Web Farms is still a busy place.  In addition to keeping our batch biochar retort system in production we’re constantly exploring the nexus of all things sustainable technology and regenerative agriculture.   Our 2020 workshops are covering a boggling […]

Return to Atomizing Oil Burners

Part One available here The nexus of appropriate technology, circular economy and agriculture is a buffet of challenging, interesting projects.  In 2017 and 2018, our continued work in biochar and gasification, and among other esoteric projects, our work with small-scale plastic recycling, – not to mention organizing the WNC Repair Cafe project – have kept […]

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 […]