Help Us Find the Ideal Urban Chicken Breed

Townes Van Zandt with chicken

We are in the market for new hens and lately it has occurred to us that the best breed criteria for our situation is not a breed which lays most frequently, but a breed which maintains its egg production as it matures--even if that means that it doesn't produce as many eggs per week as a typical high production hen.

Does that make sense? Because Erik is such a soft touch, we have to maintain a nursing home for hens. It would be great if our ladies would continue to contribute eggs into their dotage. It is less important that they are daily producers in their youth, because the two of us can't eat that many eggs.

This is not what hens are bred for--I understand that. Laying hens are bred to give as much as they can for two years, after which they are usually culled. Long term laying isn't much of a consideration. But I thought this trait might be more apparent in some of the heritage breeds.

Let me know if you have an old hen still laying, and what kind of hen she is.

Erik adds this: In The One-Straw Revolution Masanobu Fukuoka mentions he has just such a hen--but he doesn't go on to tell us the name. Anyone know about Fukuoka's chickens?

Compost pail failure

We have one of those standard, stainless steel compost pails--the kind you keep on your countertop to collect scraps. It's a couple of years old. Last week, it began to leak from the bottom. This mystified me because a) it's stainless steel and seemed a quality item and b) it had no seams on the bottom. For a while I wondered if there was a miracle at work--you know, sort of the composting version of a weeping Virgin Mary. But today I took it into strong light and found one teeny tiny hole and pits that look like they soon will be holes, too. I assume the pitting is a caused by the acidity of the compost juice?

Has anyone had something similar happen?

Our consultants agree it smells fascinating.

Los Angeles Earthen Oven Class – May 25-27, 2012

We're very pleased to announce that adobe master Kurt Gardella will be leading an earthen oven building class at the Root Simple compound. We've both taken classes with Kurt and he's an amazing instructor. Details and registration information:

Earthen ovens are inexpensive to build, fun to use, and provide baking environment impossible to recreate in the kitchen.  This May, Kurt Gardella returns to California for three days to teach you how to make your own earthen oven.  Kurt has built dozens of these ovens in New Mexico, and has great expertise in both adobe construction and earthen plasters and finishes. Attendees will leave the class with the knowledge necessary to built an oven of their own, with materials that you may already have in your yard.

The class is suitable for bakers, building professionals and do-it-your-selfers, and is a great introduction to adobe construction and earthen plasters covered in more depth in adobeisnotsoftware’s other classes.

Topics Include:

• Local considerations and the siting your earthen oven
• Soil and material selection, sourcing and testing
• Foundations and oven base design and materials
• Sizing
• Sand Form and Oven Domes
• Natural oven plasters and finishes
• Firing and baking in your oven.

Instruction Type:

This is a hands-on class. Attendees will have the opportunity to get dirty and use tools and equipment typical of adobe construction and earthen finishing. Due to the course format, enrollment will be limited to 10 individuals.  In the unlikely event of inclement weather, instruction will occur indoors.

Instructors:

Kurt Gardella teaches adobe construction at Northern New Mexico College, is Director of Education for Adobe in Action, and is certified as an earth-building specialist by the German Dachverband Lehm.

Ben Loescher is a licensed architect, founder of adobeisnotsoftware and principal of golem|la, an architecture firm specializing in adobe construction.

Location:

The class will be conducted in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles, and hosted by Root Simple.  Coffee and nibbles will be provided at the beginning of the day; lunch is included.

Registration:

Click here to register.  Early bird tuition is $190/person for registrations before April 20th, standard price registrations will be $220 after that date.

Questions?:

Please do not hesitate to contact Ben by email at office@g-o-l-e-m.com or by phone at (760) 278-1134.

Cheap and Natural Handsoap--and a rant

 

This is just a quick tip. If your family prefers liquid soap to bar soap, one easy way to avoid all the creepy, expensive, colored, perfumed, anti-bacterial liquid soaps on the market  (and all the plastic they come in) is to just use liquid castile soap to wash your hands.  Ah, but yes--liquid castile soap is runny. Indeed. I can hear the complaints already. 

The way around that problem is to use one of them fancy-schmancy foaming soap pumps. You can buy them at specialty retailers, but it's probably cheaper to buy one at the supermarket, use up the soap and then start refilling with liquid castile soap. The one in our bathroom is an old Method pump and is still working fine after three years.

The secret of the soap formula used in foaming pumps is that it's super-diluted. It has to to diluted because full strength soap clogs the pump.  It's kind of a scam, when you think about it, that when you buy a foaming pump you pay as much or more for diluted soap than regular liquid soap. However, the dilution factor works perfectly with castile soap. As Dr. Bronner says:  Dilute! Dilute! Dilute!

Dilute your castile soap quite a bit for use in a foam pump. Start by filling the dispenser no more than 1/4 full of soap and then filling it the rest of the way with water. See how that works for you. You may prefer it a little stronger or a little weaker. 

In any case, you'll pay less for each full dispenser of soap, and you'll have the comfort of knowing your soap is all-natural, safe and free of additives.

***

Rant Warning:

Speaking of which, I saw the most appalling thing in the grocery store today and I had to rant about it: The Lysol® Healthy Touch® No-Touch Hand Soap System.

This is a twelve dollar, battery operated (4 AA) soap pump fitted with an electric eye, so it spits out soap when you pass your hand under the nozzle. It dispenses Lysol anti-bacterial soap, which comes packed into special cartridges--meaning you can't fill the dispenser with whatever soap you like. The tagline for this product is, "Never touch a germy soap pump again!" 

I love the double-speak of Healthy Touch/No-Touch. Is the underlying logic that no touch is healthy? Time to evacuate to our plastic bubbles!

Three cranky thoughts on this product:

1) First, the obvious. When you touch a soap dispenser, you are about to wash your hands. When you wash you hands, you kill all the germs. It doesn't matter how "germy" the dispenser is--unless you plan to suck on it. This device is about as needful as evening wear for hogs.

2) In 2002, at the urging of the AMA, the FDA evaluated anti-bacterial soaps. The AMA was concerned that these anti-bacterial soaps (i.e. Triclosan-based products*) may be breeding super-bacteria which are resistant to antibiotics. The FDA's findings were, as reported at American Medical News:

"Soaps and lotions that include antibacterial agents have no benefit over ordinary soap and water, but more research is needed to allay or substantiate concern that these substances may be leading to increased rates of antibiotic resistance."

So anti-bacterial soaps are proven to be no better than regular soap and water and maybe, just maybe--there's still research to be done--they could be disastrously worse. Why roll the dice on this one? It just doesn't make any sense. For me, this makes anti-bacterial soaps about as needful as evening wear for hogs accessorized with a doomsday device.

3) And finally, the wastefulness of it all makes me cry. Note the the cheap plastic shell and electronic innards assembled in Chinese factories--not to mention the big-ass clamshell package it all comes in. How long will the average unit be employed? A year? If does last more than a year, how long will Lysol keep making those plastic cartridges?  Oh, and joy! We'll have more toxic batteries to figure out how to dispose of--all so we can wash our hands.

Arggghhhh! I've got to go visit the chickens or something. My knickers are all in a twist.

Thanks for listening.

*I know I have alcohol gel fans in the readership and I don't believe those were part of the AMA's concerns. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Book Review: Attracting Native Pollinators: The Xerces Society Guide to Conserving North American Bees and Butterflies and Their Habitat

How can we save the world? Simple. Get everyone to read and understand the contents of a new book, Attracting Native Pollinators: The Xerces Society Guide to Conserving North American Bees and Butterflies and Their Habitat. Why? There's the obvious--pollinating insects provide a huge amount of our food--but they also have a few unappreciated roles.

Without pollinators, plant communities that stabilize river banks disappear. Mammals and birds that eat pollinated fruits perish. But perhaps most importantly, by raising awareness of the needs of pollinating insects we can better appreciate the damage we cause through the use of pesticides. Do we really want to live in a toxic world? A world, like China's Sichuan Province, so choked with poison that apple farmers have to climb ladders to hand pollinate trees?

And we're not just talking about honeybees. Attracting Native Pollinators delves into the fascinating world of native bees, bumblebees, wasps, moths and flies, providing a detailed guide on how to tell these species apart, what their nests look like and, most importantly, practical steps that everyone from a homeowner to a golf course manager can take to improve habitat. For instance, one of the most important things we can all do is simply to provide areas of open, sunny ground for pollinating species, such as bumblebees, that nest underground.

You'll also find instructions for building nesting blocks for native bees and subterranean boxes for bumblebees. There's also extensive plant lists for North America including both native and common non-native garden plants such as rosemary.

In our own garden we've planted a lot more flowering native perennials this year. But I'm also inspired to get a conversation going about creating more habitat for pollinators in public spaces. Los Angeles is full of space that could be planted with drought tolerant, flowering plants to replace the thousands of acres of lawn (mowed weeds, really) and Home Depot hedges. Think about the habitat we could create with all those barren parkways. Who's in to help? Let's pollinate a revolution.

Foraging Class with Nancy Klehm, Sunday February 26th in Silver Lake

Join Nancy Klehm for a foraging class in the wilds of LA's urban landscape on Sunday February 26th from 3 to 5 pm at the Micheltorena School and Community Garden (at the corner of Micheltorena and Sunset Blvd.--map). All for $20! Sign up soon as there's only 25 spots. To register email nettlesting@yahoo.com.

Large Tree Supported by Palm Trunk

Photo by Anne Hars. Click to bigify.

This is the stuff of arborist's nightmares. I've been walking by this house for years and never noticed that it has a large tree entirely supported by the base of an 80 foot palm tree. Thankfully Los Angeles' distinctive palms (Washingtonia robusta) can, obviously, hold a lot of weight.

Thanks to HaFoSaFo blogger Anne Hars for the photo. Extra points for finding Anne's husband Bill, their Chihuahuas and the house one of our neighbors decided to paint the colors of my alma mater, UCLA. 

Picture Sundays: The Dapper Beekeeper

From The United States Department of Agriculture Farmer's Bulletin #397, a well dressed beekeeper circa 1910.

Saturday's Quote: Goethe

This one strikes me as particularly pertinent after all the head-scratching about cleaning products and GMO'd cat litter this week:

Doubt grows with knowledge.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

    Proverbs in Prose, 1819

How to Make a Mosaic Stepping Stone

Not liking the pre-fab stepping stone options out there, I decided to take matters into my own hands and make one with glass mosaic tile. It's easy to do using what's called the "indirect method" in which you press the tiles onto a piece of contact paper. You then use that sheet of tile to cast your new, custom stepping stone.

The first step is to come up with a design, either hand drawn or printed out from the computer. Since you'll be working in reverse, you flip your design left-right. I chose the mercury, the symbol of transformation (it seemed like a good metaphor for a garden). No need to flip this particular image, of course. When sizing the design I like to keep in mind the size of the tiles I'll be using so that any lines are about one tile wide.

I transferred the design to a piece of clear contact paper. Next, I taped the contact paper, with the sticky side up. to a piece of melamine coated fiberboard. Melamine is a good material to use because it helps it has a very smooth, even surface and is unlikely to warp. In addition, using melamine for the sides of the mold helps it release more easily. I built this mold out a piece of a discarded Ikea bookshelf.

While I was cutting the bottom piece, I cut four additional small pieces of the bookshelf to form the sides of the mold.The dimensions of these pieces determine the size of your stepping stone. I made a simple box by joining the pieces with screws at the corners. If you wish, you can spray the sides of the mold with WD-40 to help release the mold later. I forgot to do this, but it released fine anyway

For the mosaic itself, I used glass mosaic tile leftover from an old project. The glass picks up reflections and shimmers on a sunny day. The drawback is that it's pretty expensive. The brand we've used in the past is Bisazza. You can also, of course, use broken plates, pebbles, pieces of metal or tile left over from other jobs.

To cut glass tile I use a pair of tile nippers. I like to break the square tiles into four small pieces to simulate the irregular look of ancient mosaics. I wear a pair of safety glasses and do the cutting in a box to keep shards of glass from flying around. I also do this outside or in the garage so little shards of glass don't end up in our house. Once cut, I press the little tile pieces against the sticky side of the contact paper--face down, or "good side" down.  The sticky paper holds them in place.

When you're finished sticking all the tiles down, it's time to mix up some concrete. I used one part Portland cement to three parts builder's sand. I poured my concrete into the mold and used some chicken wire as reinforcement. I just cut the wire into a rough square that would fit in the mold, poured half the concrete, placed the wire in the mold, then finished the pour. 

Once cast, I put the stepping stone in a garbage bag to slow down the curing process. After a couple of days I carefully removed the mold. One advantage of this technique is that it's "self-grouting": the concrete should flow between the tiles during the pour. It worked well, but I will have to do a small amount of grouting to fix a few spots the concrete did not reach.  

You could also use this same reverse method to make designs that could be pressed into a mortar bed when tiling, say, a kitchen or bathroom.

For more garden mosaic ideas see a previous post we did on the subject that includes a link to the stunning pebble mosaic work of Jeffery Bale.