There are TONS of opportunities for fun, making and learning in The HOMEGROWN Village at Maker Faire Bay Area 2012. Thank you to all of the exhibitors and presenters who are bringing their expertise to the Maker Square Stage and The HOMEGROWN Village Workshop Stage! Below is a simple schedule of events. Follow the links for more detailed information.

Saturday On The Maker Square Stage in The HOMEGROWN Village

10:30 AM	Worms, Worms, Worms! How to Compost County of San Mateo/RecycleWorks.org
11:00 AM	DIY Chocolate: Break Away from the Bar Karen Solomon
12:00 PM	Mushrooms on Coffee Jared Abbott
12:30 PM	Sustainably Sourcing Specialty Coffee Steve Ford
1:00 PM	Milkin’ in the City – Urban Goat Keeping Heidi Kooy .
2:00 PM	Organic Beekeeping: Saving the Honey Bee One Bee at a Time Tyler Henthorne
2:30 PM	Backyard Beekeeping 101 Mike Harrel
3:00 PM	Extracting Honey 101 G&M Honey
4:00 PM	Sweet Maria’s Home Coffee Roasting Byron Dote
4:30 PM	The Happy Chicken – Chicken-keeping Basics Rachel Brinkerhoff
5:30 PM	Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter. Lloyd Kahn, Shelter Publications, Inc.
6:30 PM	Low Tech at Home: Simple Projects to Boost Your Household’s Resiliency and Independence Erik Knutzen
7:00 PM	Habitile Modular Living Wall System Aurora Mahassine

Saturday in The HOMEGROWN Village Workshop Area:

10:30 AM
Herb Spiral Revolution — learn to make an herb spiral. Nik Dyer

12:00 PM 
Butter! Shake it and Make it! Farm Aid / HOMEGROWN.org 

1:00 PM 
Chinese Noodle Maker Mr. Wang

3:00 PM
Direct Trade Coffees Taste Better: Ritual Coffee Tasting – Steve Ford

4:00 PM 

Kraut-a-thon Happy Girl Kitchen Co.

6:00 PM

Guerrilla Gardening: Making Seed Balls Edward Cabral

Sunday On The Maker Square Stage in The HOMEGROWN Village

10:30 AM	Worms, Worms, Worms! How to Compost County of San Mateo/RecycleWorks.org
11:00 AM	Farming FOR Mother Nature – Organic FarmingPaul Kaiser  garden!
12:00 PM	Beer Brewing Basics Anthony DeFerrari , Anthony Tsangaropoulos
1:00 PM	Backyard Beekeeping 101 Mike Harrel
1:30 PM	Extracting Honey 101
2:30 PM	Barista goes to Guatemala!
3:00 PM	Herban Creations: Cordials & Syrups Dawn Zaft
4:00 PM	Sonatas of the Soil Lily Films
5:00 PM	Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter. Lloyd Kahn Shelter Publications, Inc.

Sunday in The HOMEGROWN Village Workshop Area:

10:00 AM

Seed Catalog Crafts! – Cornelia Homegrown

12:00 PM

Butter! Shake it and Make it! Farm Aid / HOMEGROWN.org

1:00 PM

Chinese Noodle Maker Mr. Wang

 3:00 PM

Kraut-a-thon Happy Girl Kitchen Co.

 4:30 PM

Guerrilla Gardening: Making Seed Balls Edward Cabral

We are so excited for Maker Faire this year! The HOMEGROWN Village — the food and sustainability area of the Faire — is better than ever!

Here is a list of the exhibitors participating in the Village. For more about Maker Faire, and The HOMEGROWN Village at Maker Faire, you can check out the links, but it really must be experienced to fully “get” it. Hope to see you there!

Beekeepers Guild of San Mateo

The Beekeepers Guild of San Mateo is an organization dedicated to educating both new and experienced beekeepers. Our exhibit will be staffed by experienced beekeepers to answer questions, offer support and provide products form their hives for sale.

Build A Bug Habitat!

Create a wildlife habitat full of nooks and crannies for a variety of insects. Re-purpose materials such as wooden wine boxes, used lumber and natural organic materials. Attract pollinators!

Disconnect from the Water Grid: Greywater, Rainwater, Composting Toilets

From Greywater Action: Learn how to reduce dependence on the water grid with simple, low-tech, low-cost options. Greywater Action is a collaborative group of educators, designers, builders and artists who educate and empower people to build sustainable water culture and infrastructure.

East Bay Urban Agriculture Alliance

EBUAA: educates on sustainable practices for growing and raising healthy food in an urban environment; develops infrastructure to support agriculture throughout the East Bay; and advocates for policies that enable productive use of urban land. (Plus you can meet Tom and Rachel from Dog Island Farm and The HOMEGROWN Life column!)

Farming FOR Mother Nature

Find out what organic agriculture really means and how including Mother Nature in our food production is both mutually beneficial and necessary for our future; learn ecological farming techniques for your own backyard garden! From Singing Frogs Farm.

 

Guerrilla Gardens

Become a modern Johnny Appleseed, spreading seed balls to restore natural beauty! These guerrilla gardens are full of wildflowers native to North America, enjoyed by humans and wildlife alike. Just throw & don’t mow! Also, don’t miss Edward’s seed ball-making workshops happening each afternoon!

Hacking Agriculture

Meet Pilar Reber and Rick Wesson a husband and wife team living a sustainable, organic life while hacking seven acres of local urban biodynamic farmland in Richmond, CA.

Happy Girl Kitchen

Happy Girl Kitchen Co. makes a variety of preserved goods using locally harvested produce and is a part of the DIY local food revolution. Happy Girl Kitchen Co. is making change in a delicious way, “one jar at a time”.

Letterpress Printing The Old-fashioned Way

Letterpress printing has been around since Johannes Gutenberg invented it in the mid-15th Century. Visit Peach Farm Studio to learn about letterpress printing the old fashioned way and print a letterpress label or recipe card to take home with you.

Milkin’ In The City

Goat milk? Learn how you can have some too with your very own urban goats. We’ll discuss the ins and outs of keeping dairy goats in the city. From Heidi Kooy of Itty Bitty Farm In The City.

Poo Garden

Feed greedy plants – not greedy banks!
This composting toilet was designed for the Occupy movement. What started out as a urine-diverting, dry-composting toilet ended up as a permanent fixture that reclaims a place for nature.

Ritual Coffee

At the Ritual Coffee booth, you’ll get to taste different coffees and learn about how varietal, processing and origin contribute to the natural flavors of a particular coffee. All brewing will be done on equipment that is available for home use. Ask the experts how you can improve your coffee at home.

Sonatas of the Soil

Lily Films (makers of the documentary, The Future of Food) will show three shorts from their new film project, Symphony of the Soil. These short Sonatas of the Soil are each 10-15 minutes long and delve deeply into one topic.

Tiny Homes

There’s a grassroots movement in tiny homes these days. In this book are some 150 builders who have taken things into their own hands, creating tiny homes on land, on wheels, on the road, on water, even homes in trees. Be inspired to MAKE your own. From Shelter Publications. Also see Lloyd Kahn’s presentation on Tiny Homes

Trackers

Trackers is an education organization dedicated to teaching old school outdoor skills: wilderness survival, wild plants, homesteading crafts, kayak building, tracking, and more. We run weekend programs for adults, summer camps, and after school groups.

Tumbleweed Tiny House Co.

Tumbleweed Tiny House Co. will teach you how to reduce your carbon footprint, eliminate reliance on mortgages and have the freedom of living with less “stuff” by building your own little house.

Urban Biofilter

Our Mobile Greenbelts are fabricated out of upcycled and palletized totes. The plants we select for these modular systems grow quickly and provide dense foliage for air filtration and wastewater reuse and treatment.

Worms, Worms, Worms!

Did you know that there are hundreds of millions of microscopic soil critters in a teaspoon of healthy soil? Learn how to grow a healthy garden by feeding these soil critters. Compost and create a garden that is life sustaining. The County of San Mateo/RecycleWorks Master Composter Program encourages composting, IPM and reuse for sustainable gardening in San Mateo County.

 

 

 

 

 

San Francisco is famous for their sourdough bread which runs wild around there. Fortunately we can all catch our own wild sourdough starter, which is also called levain. Levain is the French term for sourdough starter and has been used for centuries to make bread. Bread made with Levain may even be healthier for you than breads made with commercial yeast. Sourdough actually has a lower glycemic index than regular bread. The levain also breaks down phytic acid in grains. Phytic acid blocks the absorption of minerals and vitamins. Levain also shows promise for people that are intolerant of gluten because it helps degrade and deactivate the proteins that adversely affect people.

Nowadays you can purchase commercial sourdough starter, but what fun is that? Plus you can’t boast that you actually caught the wild levain that made your bread. The bonus is that it’s super easy to do and doesn’t take much, but you don’t have to tell others that. Go ahead and let them think it took you days of complicated procedures to obtain.

So are you ready to get blown away? To catch a levain all you need is some flour and an equal amount of water in a wide mouth container or bowl. Yep, that’s pretty much all you need. And all you do is mix the flour and water together and set it outside for a couple of days. Bring it in, keep it in a relatively warm spot and once it starts to form bubbles on the surface you can go ahead and store it in the fridge. The only thing you do need to do is occasionally feed it equal parts of flour and water once a day. It should have a slightly sour smell to it, which is a good thing. You can keep your levain going for as long as you’re willing to take care of it, or if something goes wrong like it gets moldy.

So how do you use your levain? I like to make a nice no-knead artisan bread with it. The following recipe makes two loaves or one really big one if you’re up for it. However, for a larger loaf the baking times will be longer.

In a large bowl mix together 3 cups warm water (about 110 deg F), 1-1/2 Tbs kosher salt and 1/2 cup of your levain. Add 7-1/2 cups flour and mix. It should be a wet dough, but not sloppy. When you measure the flour you want it to be level cups, which you can get by using the flat back edge of a knife to scrape excess flour off evenly.

Cover and allow this to sit for at least two hours in a warm, dark spot. This dough will not rise like breads made with commercial yeast so don’t worry too much. After two hours you can put it in the fridge to store or make a loaf right away. The dough, because it’s wet, is much easier to handle when it’s cold though, so I usually put it in the fridge for about 2 hours before I plan to bake it.

When I’m ready I pull out half of the dough and while working quickly I shape it into a ball by pulling the top down over the sides stretching it. I then place this ball in a bowl that is lined with a heavily floured non-terry cloth towel. Sprinkle a bit of flour on top and then cover with the edges of the towel. Allow it to rest and do a bit more rising for an hour.

40 minutes into the rise place a dutch oven (cast iron of course works the best, but you can use any type as long as it has a lid) in your oven and preheat to 450 deg F. The purpose of the dutch oven is to steam the bread for the first part of the baking. This helps develop a moist crumb while allowing for that real crunchy crust. Of course the heavier the lid the more steaming action you’re going to get, which will further help develop larger holes in the crumb.

When you’re ready to bake pull out the dutch oven and remove the lid. Pick up the towel and bread and quickly (and this can take some practice) and gently roll the dough out of the towel into the hot dutch oven. Quickly put the lid on and put it back in the oven.

Bake with the lid on for 30 minutes then remove the lid and bake for an additional 30 minutes or until the crust is completely browned. Don’t overcook though as the bottom can and will burn if left too long.

Remove the bread from the dutch oven and place on a cooling rack. Allow to cool until you can handle it and then serve. You have now mastered the no-knead artisan bread.

A note about ovens and not getting the perfect loaf. Every time I did this recipe it came out well, but not as good as I knew it could be. I always thought I was doing something wrong. When we got our Wedgewood I quickly realized that not all ovens are created equal. Our previous, cheapo oven just couldn’t do the job and it had made me feel inadequate. So if you have a hard time making that perfect loaf of bread it may not be your fault at all, but rather the oven that you are using.

 

My friends in college used to call me a Renaissance woman. I was always doing something crafty, creative, or utilitarian. I still am. My focus these days, instead of arts and crafts, has been farming as much of my urban quarter acre as humanly possible. With my husband, we run Dog Island Farm in the SF Bay Area. We raise chickens, goats, rabbits, dogs, cats, and a kid. We’re always keeping busy. If I’m not out in the yard I’m in the kitchen making something from scratch. Homemade always tastes better!