→ 2010-04-16 07:04:59 (13 Comments)
August 6, 2010
We can’t sing the praises enough of clay pot irrigation, an ancient method of plant irrigation – considered the original drip irrigation system. And yes the ollas are 100% LEAD-FREE
May 7, 2010
The other day we received our spring shipment of ollas – so ya’ll who have been waiting for them we are shipping them out this week! Thanks for your patience.
For you local yokels, if know someone who is an avid gardener/homesteader and
April 16, 2010
by Anais in Clay Pot Irrigation, Garden, Greywater Reclamation, Homestead, Posts by Anais, Water, Water
Water! Water is vital to the all aspects of the urban homestead and, though we are dependent on the municipal water source for most of our water (digging a well is out of the question – looked into it), we do our best to conserve what water we do use.
On the homestead in New Zealand, there [...]
March 10, 2010
by Anais in Barnyard, Bees, Clay Pot Irrigation, Garden, Garden, Goats, Homestead, Posts by Anais, Skills & Crafts, Water
Continuing our pictorial peek into life here on the urban homestead. As for the previous entry with the fish: FYI, we won’t be naming them anytime soon in case you are wondering!
Weekend Wanderings
Farmers Justin & Sergio visit the local nursery that’s right across the street from our urban homestead and check out the vegetable selection [...]
February 15, 2010
Plant Pottery That Works
The buried clay pot or pitcher method of irrigation is one of the most efficient systems known and is ideal for gardeners and small farmers. Buried clay pot irrigation uses a buried, unglazed clay pot filled with water to provide controlled irrigation to plants as the water seeps out through the clay [...]
May 13, 2009
Our summer Freedom Garden is taking shape complete with our collection of Freedom Seeds. We can proudly say that “Freedom Grows in Our Garden”
How’s your summer garden shaping up? Care to share?
The weather has been pleasant, even on the cool side. The day starts off overcast with slight to partial clearing around lunch. Looks like [...]
April 29, 2009
For those customers who have been waiting patiently for their ollas, happy to say the wait is over! We just got our latest shipment of ollas and will be packing and shipping them out this week.
I still can’t get over the simple beauty of these clay pots, they just look so lovely all together with [...]
April 8, 2009
“There is a myth that there are agricultural societies, and then there are industrial societies and service societies, as if when you become an industrial or service society you don’t need food,” she says. “As we hit climate chaos, as we hit peak oil, assuming that you can get your food from far away and [...]
March 5, 2009
Our water saving ollas were featured in the latest issue of NATURAL HOME (pg 65)
PLANT POTTERY THAT WORKS
If you live in an arid climate or an area that suffers from drought, try giving you garden a sip from a bottle. OLLAS are unglazed pottery jugs that can be “planted” alongside your veggies or flowers, then [...]
May 29, 2008
We received another shipment of ollas today. For those of you who have ollas on backorder – the wait is over! Thanks for your patience.
We’ve been increasing this effective clay pot irrigation method here on the urban homestead. To conserve even more water this season, we are adding ollas many of [...]
March 24, 2008
Olla gardening by Curtis W. Smith, NMSU Extension Horticulture Specialist
Irrigation of plants by means of ollas, unglazed pottery jars, is an ancient practice. It was brought to the American Southwest by Spanish settlers and adapted to local gardens by Native American gardeners as well as by the Spanish settlers.
Over time, modern systems were adopted, [...]
February 27, 2008
Shipment of ollas arrive at the urban homestead
With temperatures in the upper 80’s this week, garden work is in full swing.
Getting ready for the spring plantings with a shipment of ollas that were delivered on Monday. This will be our third season integrating the ancient, yet very efficient, clay pot irrigation method in the [...]
September 24, 2007
Rerun
Last week Hallmark channel’s New Morning reran two clips from the urban homestead that were filmed in late January after the record breaking freeze where temperatures dipped below twenty degrees for nearly a week – Living Off The Land &How to Build A Simple Solar Oven (scroll down to the bottom of the page)
Goodbye Summer, [...]
September 16, 2007
by Anais in Clay Pot Irrigation, Garden, Homestead, Menu Planning, News, Posts by Anais, Supplies, Water
Homemade vegetable lasagna
Diet of an Urban Homesteader
To answer a reader’s question: “what’s B, L & D stand for?”
Answer: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Highlights, this week on the urban homestead we enjoy the return of mixed greens to our diet, and for a special Roshashana dish, made two large pans of vegetable lasagna. Since we are [...]
August 3, 2007
by Anais in Clay Pot Irrigation, Community, Garden, Homestead, Journey Reflections, Kitchen, News, Outreach, Solar Oven, Supplies, Updates, Water, Water
Both Sides Now
When we have time we sneak a peek through the referral statistics from the PTF website and it’s great to see the many sites that link to ours (and if you are one of those linkster who’s reading this post – thanks for spreading the word) Besides the insane amount of traffic (46,000,000 [...]
July 2, 2007
by Anais in Clay Pot Irrigation, Community, Garden, Homestead, Kitchen, Posts by Anais, Water, Water
- short and sweet. Because of all that’s going on these days (good & bad) we (I) just don’t have the time any more to write decent, in depth post. I figure these highlight of some of the goings on is better than no posts at all? Estimating less than 1/2 of what actually happens [...]
April 10, 2007
by Anais in Clay Pot Irrigation, Garden, Greywater Reclamation, Homestead, Posts by Anais, Rainwater Harvesting, Supplies, Water, Water
Ollas making a comeback in dry regions
Water Water Everywhere?
Water is on everyone’s brains here on the urban homestead – we are praying for a miracle shower, storm or precipitation of any kind before the long hot summer. With the rainfall being the lowest in over 130 years, the outlook and predictions are scary and we [...]
April 10, 2007
by Anais in Clay Pot Irrigation, Garden, Highlights, Kitchen, News, Posts by Anais, Solar Oven, Videos, Water
Filming
Last week we heard from someone working with the Hallmark Channel that one of the DIY clips made it to one of the ‘New Morning‘ episodes. They filmed 5 simple “DIY” clips (homemade toothpaste, bioidesel, pizza box sun oven, using ollas, newspaper pots) and the one that has certainly made it to one of [...]
February 13, 2007
New olla bed, winter garden, Fairlight, baking day, spring!
Snapshots
from around the urban homestead. I had to put in a picture of ‘Lady Fairlight’ (our Nigerian Dwarf) because she was jealous of Blackberry getting all the attention lately.
First Signs of Spring
Looks as if ol’Punx Phil was right. Daffodils are blooming, peaches and apple trees [...]
February 8, 2007
Olla
Q & A – Ollas & Seeds
Q. Hello, a few “olla” questions. Can they be used in colder NE climates without having to dig them up in the fall? How close can you plant to them, or more to the point how far can you expect the water to migrate so that you can figure [...]
February 7, 2007
Green edible carpet
Greens Glorious Greens
Thanks to the unusually warm weather (high in upper 80’s) the greens are on the rebound. The raised beds once again look like a lush green carpet of tender greens. The snow peas are growing slowly but they are growing. Still, we need rain. One can feel that the soil still [...]
January 11, 2007
by Anais in Clay Pot Irrigation, Compost Toilet, Depaving, Garden, Garden, Greywater Reclamation, Homestead, Methods & Principles, Posts by Anais, Rainwater Harvesting, Soil & Mulch, Water, Water
O Water Where Art Thou?
Over the last 15 years on the urban homestead we implemented a few water saving conservation practices (and we still have a ways to go)
around the house
• bucket drain (bathroom and produce packing area sink in the garden) – this water can be used to flush the toilet and in the [...]
November 20, 2006
by Anais in Clay Pot Irrigation, Community, Garden, Homestead, Journey Reflections, News, Outreach, Posts by Anais, Water, Weather
Warm
We’ve been experiencing warm temperature these past few days. So warm in fact that we didn’t bother closing the windows last night and slept with many windows open. Still going barefoot, no need for socks yet.
Stocking Up
Over the past week we just inherited 400 lbs of grain thanks to a friend who’s leaving LA. With [...]
November 3, 2006
by Anais in Barnyard, Clay Pot Irrigation, Garden, Goats, Homestead, Menu Planning, News, Posts by Anais, Soil & Mulch, Water
Kitty on bale
More Straw
We picked up 10 more bales of straw from a local grocery store after its display had to be taken down. Spanky (our tabby) loves playing in the straw – he thinks he’s some sort of mighty hunter or something. While the guys were spreading some of the bales in the driveway, [...]
September 4, 2006
by Anais in Clay Pot Irrigation, DIY Projects, Energy, Garden, Homestead, News, Posts by Anais, Water
Up on the roof once again
The heat and humidity has descended on the Southland once again (see huge white cumulous clouds over the San Gabriel mountain range in bottom right photo). We are not one to complain, but this weather is just horrible and very uncomfortable especially if you have to work outside. You expect [...]
May 31, 2006
by Anais in Clay Pot Irrigation, DIY Projects, Garden, Homestead, News, Posts by Anais, Water, Water
Clay pot irrigation bed
The raised rock bed which we semi-buried three unglazed pots to “drip irrigate” has finally filled out. The herbs are ready to harvest and the peppers, eggplant and tomatoes aren’t too far off.
With all the new changes/improvements to the backyard this year’s garden is going to be a new learning experience. The [...]
May 22, 2006
by Anais in Clay Pot Irrigation, Community, Garden, Homestead, Menu Planning, Methods & Principles, Posts by Anais, Water, Water, Weather
It’s raining! What a tremendous blessing this late in the season. By storms end, we could get anywhere between 1-4 inches. The plants (and people – well, gardeners mostly) are loving it. Waking up this morning and opening the window to look out in the garden, I see that the plants seem to have grown [...]
May 9, 2006
by Anais in Clay Pot Irrigation, Garden, Greywater Reclamation, Homestead, News, Posts by Anais, Water, Water
We got mail!
We received a very thoughtful surprise and “thank you” note in the mail yesterday. What a pleasant gesture of appreciation receiving a copy of the now out-of-printThe Integral Urban House: Self Reliant Living in the City’ ( First published in 1974).
The Integral Urban House {Mother Earth 1976}
For all the current talk about getting [...]
May 3, 2006
by Anais in Barnyard, Clay Pot Irrigation, Fertilizers, Garden, Garden, Goats, Homebrew Biodiesel, Homestead, News, Posts by Anais, Skills & Crafts, Transportation, Water, Water, Weather
Front yard, view from the street. Backyard/garage – patio
A person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has his mind precisely against what is wrong with us. . . . What I am saying is that if we apply our minds [...]
November 29, 2005
by Anais in Barnyard, Clay Pot Irrigation, Depaving, Ducks, Energy, Garden, Health & Beauty, Homestead, Journey Reflections, Posts by Anais, Powering Down, Simple Living, Waste, Water, Water
We spent a day of work finishing up the broken concrete patio in front of the garage and removing the 7 inch layer of decomposed mulch. Over time the countless spreading of tree trimmings and straw has turned into rich and loamy compost. This soil is now being used in the new beds. One [...]
