Goats in a Tree

From Morocco, sixteen goats in a tree. More info on the phenomenon here.

Thanks to Gloria and Steve for the tip on this bit of goat magic. Do any of you Root Simple readers have goats? Leave a comment.

Happily ever after

A slightly belated update: The kittens I blogged about a while ago have found a great home with a Root Simple reader. Go team! Thank you so much, Reader, for making a place for them in your home. May you have many, many happy years with your new kitties.

Spore 1.1

Spore 1.1 from matt kenyon on Vimeo.

From artists Matt Kenyon and Doug Easterly of S.W.A.M.P.(Studies in Work Atmospheres and Mass Production), “Spore 1.1.”

It consists of a rubber tree plant, purchased from Home Depot, that is hooked up to a self-contained watering mechanism and calibrated on a weekly basis, according to the performance of Home Depot stock. If the Home Depot stock does well, Spore 1.1 gets watered. If Home Depot stock does poorly, “Spore 1.1.” goes without. Because Home Depot guarantees all of their plants for one year, if one rubber tree dies, another will be substituted in its place.

The Beer Archaeologist

Via Boing Boing, a long article on ancient brews at Smithsonian.com--well worth reading for anyone who loves beer, wine and history.

Tassajara Cookbook

Mrs. Homegrown here:

A quick cookbook review for ya'll. I'm having lots of fun with the Tassajara Cookbook which I have out from the library. So much fun that I'm considering buying it. Tassajara Zen Mountain Center is a Buddhist monestery here in California. This book is based on their famous bagged lunch offerings for their guests. This means it's all picnic/finger food sort of stuff. This suits me fine because summer is here, and I like making meals that require chopping rather than cooking, and that keep well in the fridge.

I love the simplicity, the pure pleasure and endless variety, of chips n' dips, bruschetta, tapas, mezza... I could live entirely on appetizers and finger foods. This is why I like this book so much. Mr. Homegrown is not as happy--he's a more of a three-square meal a day sort of guy. But he's surviving, because for now, in the heat, he'd rather scoop up pesto with crudités than break down and cook.

This book is vegetarian, with plenty o' vegan recipes. It focuses very much on spreads, dips, pestos, tapenades, sandwich fillings--that sort of thing, as well as various composed salads. It also has a large cookie section, which I've not allowed myself to explore yet. The tone of the food is cheerfully high end California hippie: healthy, vibrant, and heavy on the nuts. (No, that's not a California joke!).

I was surprised by all the haters at Amazon when I checked the reviews of this book. The primary objections are that it's 1) all snacky stuff--to which I answer they should read the cover and 2) that it's poorly edited--to which I answer it hasn't bothered me yet. For instance, if the recipe says preheat the oven at the start, and then goes on to say something has to marinate for two hours before it bakes, I'm not going to blow a gasket. I'll just hunker down and ponder my way out of that deeply confusing situation.

Which fruits and vegetables should I buy organic?

Want the rest? You'll have to visit the site.

Mrs. Homegrown here:

My recent post about tomatoes reminded me that I needed to post this--I've been meaning to for a while.  The Environmental Working Group's 2011 Shopping Guide has a listing of foods most contaminated with pesticides, and those least contaminated: the Dirty Dozen and the Clean Fifteen. Keeping this list in mind help you make choices as to where laying out the big bucks for organic--or growing your own--is going to make the most sense.

Tomatoes don't appear on either short list, but they do appear as #34 on the EWG's ranked list of 53 fruits and veggies, #1 being the most pesticide-laden (apples) and #53 being the least (onions). So tomatoes are sort of middling contaminated.

I should note the EWG wants to make it clear that you should not necessarily flee screaming from the Dirty Dozen. This is about awareness, and choices. From their FAQ:

  Should I stop eating celery or blueberries or other produce items on your Dirty Dozen list?

No, that has never been the Shopper’s Guide message. We would certainly recommend produce from our Dirty Dozen list in lieu of other, less-healthy foods or snacks, like fat-, sugar- or additive-laden processed products. But with the Shopper’s Guide you can have all the benefits of eating more produce while substantially reducing dietary exposure to pesticides.

Shop well, and prosper.

Easy to Make & Delicious Fermented Veggies

Inspiration hit at Camp Ramshackle and I finally made fermented vegetables. I loosely followed the Golden recipe from The Versatile Vegetable by Miranda Barrett and Colleen Pollard with cabbage, golden beets, carrots, celery, ginger, lemon and garlic. I omitted the Granny Smith apple because every person/book I consulted said use only the freshest apples and my stash had been sitting for quite some time.

I made a stop at Culture Club in Pasadena and spoke with super helpful Elaina who set me up with a Pickl-It jar, some Caldwell's Vegetable Starter Culture and some guidance (reiterating to use only the freshest apple).

I shredded up the vegetables, stirred in the starter and left the vegetables to ferment for ten days. When I pulled the jar out and popped the lid, I had a brief flash from the Monty Python's The Meaning of Life when the Grim Reaper visits the farm house to inform the dinner guests that they died from the salmon mousse. I told my family I loved them and took a forkful. A delicious forkful and then other. I live to tell the tale.

I am enjoying the last of my first batch and plan on starting another. I even brought some for a camping dinner for friends on Santa Cruz Island. I'm happy to say not only did all the dinner guests survive, they also thought it was delicious.

Waiting for our tomatoes/Tomatoland

grow! grow faster!

Mrs. Homegrown here:

Via Boing Boing, I found this excerpt on Onearth Magazine's website, from a new book called Tomatoland by Barry Estabrook, which is apparently a document of all the indignities suffered by the industrial tomato--the tomato that sits, bright red, useless and flavorless, on store shelves year round, country-wide. Here at the Root Simple compound, we choose to eat tomatoes seasonally--when they're coming out of our yard--and make do with canned and dried tomatoes for the rest of the year. Basically, we believe that fresh tomatoes are a privilege, not a right. Right now our tomato plants are covered with blossoms and tiny green fruit, and I'm almost frantic for fresh tomatoes. (The basil is in! Where's the tomatoes?!?) Yet I know better than to buy a tomato at a store. I haven't for years.

In this excerpt, Estabrook explains why Erik and I avoid store-bought tomatoes like a plague. I haven't read his book, so can't comment on the whole, but I liked the excerpt. It focuses on the tomato industry in Florida. Here in California, we're not often offered Florida tomatoes. Ours seem to come mostly from Mexico at this time of year--and I have no idea how those tomatoes are grown. Are they better than Florida tomatoes, which are coaxed reluctantly from nitrogen-free sand beds, with massive inputs of chemical fertilizers and pesticides?

...they must be protected from competitive weeds, disease spores, and especially nematodes, which thrive in Florida. Growers have a ready solution to these problems. They kill everything in the soil. To do so, they fumigate the beds with methyl bromide*, one of the most toxic chemicals in conventional agriculture’s arsenal... The chemical is injected into the newly formed beds, which are immediately sealed beneath a tight wrapper of polyethylene plastic mulch. Then the growers wait while the chemical does its lethal work. Within two weeks, every living organism -- every insect, fungus, weed seed, and germ -- in the beds is dead. "It’s like chemotherapy," said Ozores-Hampton. Once the soil is suitably lifeless, it’s time to plant tomatoes.

And methyl bromide is just the start--it's just soil prep. The tomato growers use a large chemical arsenal to bring their crops to fruition:

U.S. Department of Agriculture studies found traces of thirty-five pesticides on conventionally grown fresh tomatoes: endosulfan, azoxystrobin, chlorothalonil, methamidophos, permethrin trans, permethrin cis, fenpropathrin, trifloxystrobin, o-phenylphenol, pieronyl butoxide, acetamprid, pyrimethanil, boscalid, bifenthrin, dicofol p., thiamethoxam, chlorpyrifos, dicloran, flonicamid, pyriproxyfen, omethoate, pyraclostrobin, famoxadone, clothianidin, cypermethrin, clothianidin, cypermethrin, fenhexamid, oxamyl, diazinon, buprofezin, cyazofamid, deltamethrin, acephate, and folpet. It is important to note that residues of these chemicals were below levels considered to be harmful to humans, but in high enough concentrations, three are known or probable carcinogens, six are neurotoxins, fourteen are endocrine disruptors, and three cause reproductive problems and birth defects.

Yes, it important to note that "residues of these chemicals were below levels considered to be harmful to humans" but I dunno...I'd rather skip them altogether, thankyouverymuch.

And is the result of this chemical onslaught a delicious tomato? A "well, it was worth all that methyl bromide" sort of tomato? No, indeed, it is not. All of the resulting tomatoes are picked while green and hard and reddened by application of ethylene gas, eliminating any possibility that they will ever develop flavor. Taste plays no part in the equation. As one of the growers says:

"People just want something red to put in their salad."

I grew up on flavorless, industrial tomatoes, and as a child, I assiduously picked them off everything I was fed. In retrospect, I don't blame my young self--they were horrible. Believe it or not,  I didn't know what a real tomato tasted like until I was 20 or so, not until an aggressive fruit vendor foisted a slice of heirloom tomato on me and I was too polite not to eat it in front of him. The flavor exploded in my mouth. It was--truly--a life changing revelation.

I wonder if more people grew up eating the real thing whether the bottom would fall out of the market for these ghastly Franken-tomatoes? Or are we really satisfied just to have "something red" in our salads?


*Reading the latest scientific literature, Erik has learned that methyl bromide is being phased out of the FL tomato biz, not because of toxicity, but because it generates too much greenhouse gas. (What a charming substance!) There's no saying it will be replaced by anything less toxic.

A Common Sense View of Invasive Plants

Via the Garden Professors blog a sensible letter in Nature from Mark Davis and 18 other ecologists on the tired, in my opinion, native vs. invasive species debate:

It is time for scientists, land managers and policy-makers to ditch this preoccupation with the native–alien dichotomy and embrace more dynamic and pragmatic approaches to the conservation and management of species — approaches better suited to our fast-changing planet.

Clearly, natural-resource agencies and organizations should base their management plans on sound empirical evidence and not on unfounded claims of harm caused by non-natives. Another valuable step would be for scientists and professionals in conservation to convey to the public that many alien species are useful.

Amen.

More from that article here.

Congrats Denver!

From the Denver Post:  

Denver City Council eases way to own chickens, goats at home

Apparently it was previously legal, but more difficult because you had to pay steep fees and inform all your neighbors. Now, thanks to citizen action by urban homesteaders, the fee has been reduced to 20 bucks and you don't have to inform your neighbors in order to keep 8 chickens or ducks and up to 2 pygmy goats. No roosters, natch. Congrats Denver! I'm proud to say you're my home town.


via The Lazy Homesteader's Facebook

Our favorite way to cook zucchini

It's that time of year again.

Put aside those zucchini bread recipes and try this instead.

This recipe--or technique, rather-- sounds too simple to be good, but it really works. As one friend said of the dish, "It tastes like there's a lot going on, but there's not."

All you've got to do is shred your zucchini up on the large holes of your kitchen grater. Saute the shreds in an uncovered skillet with lots of olive oil and some chopped up garlic, until there's no water in the pan, and the volume of the zucchini is reduced by about half.

This transforms the zukes into a savory, glossy, succulent mush. Maybe that's not the most elegant way to phrase it, but it's the best I can do. Yes, it does have a baby food texture, but it's really, really good, so you don't care.

I can't begin to tell you quantities--we've never measured. Just guesstimate. It will work. The one rule of thumb I can offer you is that you will lose about half the volume of the zucchini through cooking, so grate up more than you think you can eat.

The central idea here is to cook off all that water. This can't be emphasized enough. That's what makes this dish taste good. The zucchini will release a lot of water as it cooks--at least ours does, because it's very fresh. Older zucchini may be more dry. So keep it simmering at a good clip, stirring occasionally, until the water bubbles off.

Saute until there's no water pooling at the bottom of the pan. Until you start to run the risk of browning the zucchini. Then take it off the stove. Add salt and pepper to taste.

How long will this take? It varies by how much zucchini you're cooking, and how wet it is, how deep the pan is, etc., but for a general guideline, when we shred up one big boy, enough to fill a 11" skillet, it takes 20-30 minutes to cook it down.

Starting out...

Reducing...

Done.

Note: This year we're growing a type of zucchini called Albarello di Sarzana (Little Tree of Sarzana) from...as usual...Franchi. We're really liking it. It's a pretty, light green, spotted squash, and the leaves have silver patterning on them. But more important that looks, it's tasty, and seems to be resistant to powdery mildew.


ETA: Love all the recipe suggestions we're getting in the comments! Please do tell us how you like to cook zucchini.

Ridiculous Press Release Tuesday

I'm not making this up

I'm getting so many off-target press releases clogging my inbox that I've decided to share them until the publicists who send them get a clue and actually spend some time reading this blog. One release in particular should get an award for crassness.

The American Dietetic Association has, apparently, teamed up with industrial food giant ConAgra (am I the only person who sees that pairing as a conflict of interest?) to bring us a condescending website about home food safety that I won't link to so as not to give them free publicity. The ADA is promising bloggers a chance at winning a free iPad or Starbucks gift card for pimping a food safety website that includes things like the "cookie rookie pledge." The pledge, aimed at kids, suggests "Wait until cookies are ooey-gooey and fully baked before digging in, " and "Remind grown-ups to use two separate cutting boards for raw meat, like turkey, and ready-to-eat-foods like carrot sticks."

At the risk of losing the chance to win that iPad, I can't resist suggesting a few food safety tips for their corporate partner ConAgra: give your poultry space, sunshine and monitor their health. Compost their waste in a thermophilic (hot) compost pile. Follow these several thousand year old farming concepts and maybe we wouldn't need the "cookie rookie pledge." According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, ConAgra ran the most salmonella infested turkey plant in the country. The CSPI also has a nice rundown of what other food giants are in bed with the ADA.

The good news is that we can take yesterday's stoic flow chart to heart and develop an entirely parallel food system by growing as much of our own food as we can. We might also--and I want to hear from parents on hard this would be to do--try to run this propaganda out of our schools. Perhaps it's just time to settle down and develop some of our own memes. I have a feeling they'll spread better, in this internet age, than the work of the ADA's publicists.

Stoic Flow Chart

I love this Stoic flow chart posted by Mark Frauenfelder of BoingBoing. It will work for life's thornier issues as well as all the frustrations of gardening, brewing etc. covered on this blog.

Paper Fire Brick Maker

Another highlight from John Zapf's compound, an African-made paper fire brick mold. You soak the newspaper, press it into the mold, let the brick dry out and you've got fuel for a fireplace. More info on the process here.

Emergency Toilet Sanitation

I was asked by our local neighborhood council to talk about emergency turlets for their public safety committee. Doing some preliminary research about what our government suggests concerns me.

FEMA and, it seems, all the state and local agencies I looked into rely on a poop in a bag, throw in some enzymes or bleach and throw it into a pit approach. In a short term emergency, a day or two let's say, this might work fine. But if the emergency stretched out longer I can see some potential problems. And the cynic in me sees an opportunity for a contractor to sell toilet and enzyme kits to government agencies.

So what's wrong with pooping in a bag? First off, it's disgusting, something I know from backpacking. I have a feeling people might avoid latrines set up with "poop bags" and go do their business behind a bush. And I have a feeling that the government experts suggesting this approach have never tried it themselves.

Secondly, those pits full of bags could become a serious biohazard should rats, let's say, start pulling the bags apart or should the pit get flooded.

As an alternative to the "poop bag" I was impressed with Joseph Jenkin's humanure approach that he explains in a series of videos he shot in Haiti after the earthquake. You can see those videos here. Essentially what Jenkins did in Haiti was to forage carbon material ("bagasse" or sugar cane waste) and use that as a cover material in the latrines. This eliminates smells and maggots. He also set up a large humanure compost pile in a refugee camp using the same bagasse material as the carbon source. The hot temperatures in the compost pile kill hazardous microorganisms in human poo. As long as you've got a carbon source you can keep Jenkins' sanitation system going indefinitely. With the FEMA approach you've got a problem when you run out of those bags and proprietary enzyme mixtures.

One problem with Jenkins' approach could be finding a carbon source in an urban area, but I think that's solvable (suggestions invited!). You also need water for the compost pile but it need not be potable.

I'm no sanitation expert and am interested in opinions on this topic, particularly those who have worked in emergency situations or in impoverished communities. What I like about Jenkins' approach is that it relies more on knowledge (how to compost, set up a latrine) than equipment. The job then is to spread that knowledge. Learning how to compost should be a skill everyone knows how to do.


Jenkins' Humanure Handbook: for purchase or free pdf download.

Rooftop SIP Garden in LA

Got to visit John Zapf's vertiginous LA compound yesterday. He's got an amazing rooftop vegetable garden using self irrigating pots. John has little sun in the yard so the roof is only option for veggies.

He uses drip line to refill the reservoirs. Reminds me of the Green Roof Growers of Chicago (minus the extreme weather).

His two cents on what to grow: chard good, zucchini good, corn in pots not so good.

For more info on self irrigating pots on Root Simple click on the label for this post below.

Animal Tracking

A track trap we laid to capture chipmunk tracks. We got some mice, too. No one wanted our peanuts--the chipmunk actually hopped over them. These critters had an advanced palette, preferring locally sourced pine nuts from the pinon pines. Photo courtesy of one of my classmates, Kurt Thompson.

 Mrs. Homegrown here:

I just returned from an amazing five-day sojourn in the mountains, at the Windy Springs Preserve, in which I learned the basics of animal tracking from a pair of wonderful teachers, Jim Lowery and Mary Brooks of Earth Skills.

Tracking is the kind of skill that you can easily spend a lifetime, or two, developing. Yet it is also possible, with good teachers, for even a neophite like me to pick up a working knowledge of the art over a couple of days. By the end of the class, I was able spend an enthralling hour tracking a cottontail through a maze of sagebrush--all by myself.  Over the course of the class, I was fortunate enough to see the tracks of deer, bobcats, bears, coyotes, cottontails, jack rabbits, grey squirrels, chipmunks, kangaroo rats, foxes, mice, snakes, horned toads, lizards and beetles. We also got to practice tracking people, which is a lot of fun.

One thing I particularly appreciated about this class was that Jim and Mary encourage you to use your intuition as well as the "hard skills" of print identification, precise measurement, gait recognition, animal behavior, etc. For me, this was rewarding--and intriguing. It took tracking out of a purely left-brain zone, into a place of deep connection with both the animal and the landscape.

You can down load a free pdf on tracking basics from their website.

Tracking and Gardening

Now that I'm home, it strikes me that some of these skills I learned could be useful in the garden. Most anybody with a garden has had a moment when they wonder, "Just what kind of critter is digging holes in my beds?" or "Who is eating my cilantro down to nubs?" With my new knowledge set, I can answer these questions by setting up a track trap.

A track trap is an area of soil smoothed flat to capture animal tracks. In this class we used two methods: one was to drag a big, flat sack full of dirt (for weight) across stretches of open ground to smooth and compress the soil. When made in the evening, these clear spaces catch the prints of any animals that come through overnight or in the early morning. The results the next day were often spectacular--a clean, written record of the night's activities. You may have seen this type of trap occur naturally on the bank of lake, or on a beach, or on a clean stretch of ground after a rain.

The other type of trap made by dusting a thin layer of dry clay on the rough side of a particleboard sheet, and then arching a piece of something flexible, like thin metal sheeting, over the board to protect the clay bed from wind, birds etc. If positioned correctly, these traps catch the tracks of smaller creatures--rodent types--very neatly.

If your garden topography allows it, you could drag clear the area around your beds in the evening and see what prints might show in the morning. The Internets are full of track pictures that you can use to identify your particular culprit. You probably already have a few guesses about who it is--it would only take a minute of googling to find out the difference between the tracks of, say, an opossum and a skunk. Or a feral cat and a raccoon. Even if the prints are not particularly clear, you can often tell a lot just by their size. Websites with track ID pictures come with notes about standard measurements.

Once you know for sure who is causing the mischief, it might be easier to come up with solutions for how to protect your garden. For instance, you could look up advice from your local Integrated Pest Management program, like the one offered by the University of California.

Note: If you're in the market for a good tracking book, I can recommend the book we used in class, The Tracker's Field Guide, written by one of the teachers.

Making It Book Talk and Signing at Vroman's

A reminder to locals--we'll be speaking at Vroman's Pasadena store this Friday June 17th at 7 PM. We've got a wacky new powerpoint and we'll be signing copies of our new book Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World. Hope you can stop by!

Are Pallets Safe to Reuse?

Now you know. Pallet parts have names.

As a fan and proponent of reusing pallets in building projects, such as chicken coops and compost containers, I'm often asked if I think they are safe to use given that shippers and manufacturers fumigate them with pesticides.

In the United States quarantine regulations require that pallets be treated with methyl bromide, a pesticide being phased out due to its adverse effects on the ozone layer. According to Mary Howland Technical Service Manager at Great Lakes Chemical Corporation, a supplier of methyl bromide,

Methyl bromide products are restricted use pesticides. A certified applicator license is required to purchase and use these products and strict adherence to label directions/requirements is mandatory. Under normal fumigation conditions methyl bromide is a gas and when the pallets are properly aerated according to label instructions, virtually no methyl bromide residue remains on the pallets and wood materials.

Now I'm not a methyl bromide fan and I find it's use as a soil fumigant in agricultural applications appalling.  But I'm not too worried about reusing pallets. That being said, a Tylenol recall was linked to the use of tribromophenol (TBP) to fumigate pallets. Though, depending on if you believe the trade organizations behind wood pallets or plastic pallets (they hate each other), the Tylenol recall may have had nothing to do with TBP which is not used to fumigate pallets in the US.

So, as with most issues on this blog, no easy answer. But I'm still not concerned about using pallets as a building material.

BoingBoing Interview

A BoingBoing "unicorn chaser"

Avi Solomon interviewed me for BoingBoing. Thanks to Avi (who also, by the way, has an interesting blog here).

More Thoughts on Garlic

Homegrown Neighbor here:
So Mrs. Homegrown's post the other day about their not so successful garlic season this year inspired me to weigh in with some of my own garlic observations.

I recall having a conversation with Mr. Homegrown around the time we both planted our garlic in November. I selected three heirloom varieties to grow at a job site and I plopped a few extra cloves into my own garden. Mr. Homegrown said, "You can't grow hardneck garlic here." I of course had purchased only hardneck varieties. Now, we have garden debates like this all the time. Sometimes I am right and often I am completely wrong. I replied that we would wait and see. I hoped my hardneck garlic varieties wouldn't be a total failure.

He planted white softneck garlic, the popular commercial variety here in California. I planted Music, Pskem River and Bogatyr garlic at my work site and Pskem River also in my home garden. All three varieties have done simply okay at my work site. However, the Pskem River garlic in my home garden is big and beautiful. Hardneck garlic produces scapes. The picture above is of the scapes I have removed from my plants in order to encourage them to produce bigger bulbs. Now I am going to stop watering the garlic and hope to harvest it in a couple of weeks. It is best to stop watering garlic at least two weeks prior to harvest to help the papery skins to form. This will also improve its storage quality.

Since I live a block away from the Root Simple compound, I'm quite sure weather isn't the issue. Also, as my other garlic plants at a job site have shown lackluster growth I think I can draw a few conclusions. First, garlic likes fertile soil with plenty of nutrients. My home garden bed with the garlic in it has been amended with a lot of rich compost including worm castings and chicken manure. The native soil in the area also isn't too bad. The pH is pretty neutral to slightly alkaline. Its a little heavy on the clay side but clay holds nutrients well and with all of the organic matter added the drainage is pretty decent. So I'm confident the robust garlic has been growing in healthy, rich soil.

My work garden site has less fertile soil that I am constantly trying to improve. So I'd guess that the garlic that has been slowly plugging along there is suffering due to the soil.

How it is watered can also affect how well garlic grows. Garlic likes even, regular watering during its growth cycle. My past experiences with garlic have certainly taught me that if they don't get regular water they will stay puny.

And as to the softneck versus hardneck garlic debate I can say conclusively that hardneck garlic will indeed grow and thrive here in a Mediterranean climate. Garlic is usually planted here in November and harvested in June or July. So its growth cycle avoids the most intensely hot months. Softneck garlic stores better and this is why it is so popular and almost all commercially available garlic is softneck. Supposedly softneck varieties do better in warmer climates and hardnecks do better in colder climates. However, while we are not growing in Minnesota, nor are we growing in the hot and humid tropics. Our climate is very forgiving.

I can't wait to harvest my garlic heads in a few weeks. I'll post some pictures after the harvest.

More Pallet Composters

Thanks readers for sending links to some attractive pallet compost bins. The one above is at http://thriftify.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/easy-to-build-pallet-compost-bin/.

Another nice one at http://www.ecodaddyo.com/node/94, though I like to keep the bottom open and the compost in contact with the ground. Correction: the bottom is open on this composter.

It ain't made of pallets but it looks like it will work nicely and you sure can't beat the scenery. From Devon Morgan.

Compost Bin Project From Our New Book

Natural Home and Garden magazine has excerpted a shipping pallet compost bin project from our new book Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World.

I've been using shipping pallets as a compost bin for a few years now and they work great. A compost pile, in my humble opinion, should be a minimum of a cubic yard in order to jump start the heat and microbial life that makes for good compost. Nail together a couple of pallets and you've got a cubic yard sized pile. 

I've got two bins, side by side, but wish I had three. Mine also look like hell since I put them together in a hurry. I much prefer the bin the folks at Motuv in Kansas City created:

To answer ahead of time a question that always comes up--am I concerned about contaminated pallets? In short, no. A longer explanation will have to wait for another blog post.

Leave a comment on how you store compost. And if you've got an aesthetically pleasing bin I'm especially interested. Leave a link to a photo.

Going Wired

Cat 5 o' nine tails via BoingBoing

The dangers of radiation from cellphones has been in the news lately and, from what I understand, existing studies are either inconclusive or deeply flawed. But it got me thinking about the safety of wireless internet networks--should I be concerned about possible health effects?

In terms of a direct physical effect, probably not.  Dr Michael Clark of Britain's Health Protection Agency, speaking in a 2006 Sunday Times article says,

When we have conducted measurements in schools, typical exposures from wi-fi are around 20 millionths of the international guideline levels of exposure to radiation. As a comparison, a child on a mobile phone receives up to 50 per cent of guideline levels. So a year sitting in a classroom near a wireless network is roughly equivalent to 20 minutes on a mobile.

So I'm probably not going to get cancer from a wireless internet network and the jury's still out on cellphones. But what about the power of suggestion, so often neglected in our materialistic world? What about the symbolism of a world crowded with cellphones, wireless telephones, radio stations and now ubiquitous wireless internet networks? What about a kind of negative placebo effect?

I think we should acknowledge the symbolic implications of the technologies we use as well as the power of the unconscious mind. Even if we fancy ourselves thoroughly modern, what about those lingering doubts buried in our subconscious? Couldn't those doubts cause deleterious effects both mental and physical? The placebo effect is real.

Our wireless modem recently failed, giving me the opportunity to put my theory into action by going "wired." A neighbor gave me a hundred feet of ethernet cable, so all I needed was a few other supplies and a trip through the crawl space under the house to make it work. Initially the clerk at Radio Shack thought that I was insane when I told him I wanted to get rid of our wireless network. After several visits the clerk eventually warmed to my eccentricities and kind of got into the project, looking up things on the internet in the store for me. After a few hours on the phone with AT&T tech support (located in the Philippines!) we went fully wired.

Like the Radio Shack clerk, Mrs. Homegrown also thinks I'm crazy but I hope she appreciates the non-ethereal benefits of our wired network: greater security and higher speeds.

For more on the advantages of an ethernet network see this comparison of wired vs. wireless.

And, as Marshall McCluhan used to say, if you don't like that idea I've got others . . .

Support Locally Sourced Kittens

Mrs. Homegrown here:

Our friend, Anne--who stuck us gifted us with our own kitten a couple of months ago, now has a pair of rescued kitties looking for a home. They came to her in bad shape, their tiny little bodies crawling with fleas, so much so that the water of their first bath turned blood red. One was very, very sick with some sort of intestinal bug. He didn't seem likely to make it, but recovered, thanks to Anne's 24-hour care.

But those dark days are over. These authentic HaFo SaFo street kitties (HaFo SaFo is a neighborhood in LA, and a blog)  are now healthy, happy, darn cute and ready for permanent homes. They are well socialized to humans, as well as other cats, dogs, chickens, rabbits, ducks and turtles.

The kittens are siblings. They have very similar markings, the difference being that one has crisp-edged markings, the other blurry-edged markings. Therefore, the kittens are provisionally known as Sharp and Blurry, or Dodge and Blur. Sharp is a girl, Blurry a boy.  I believe they could be adopted together or separately.

Anne is happy to give them free to a good home. If the adopter wanted to make some contribution toward medical expenses, that would be cool--because Blurry needed about $100 worth of medicine--but it's not at all required. Most important is that they get a home. 

Remember, kittens are a most excellent source of low-tech entertainment and chemical-free rodent control, an ideal addition to any homestead--guaranteed to be useful throughout the zombie apocalypse!

If you're interested, send us email at rootsimple@gmail.com, and we'll pass you on to Anne. 

Please be sure to pass this on to any cat-susceptible friends you might have, too. Thanks for your help finding these little guys a home!

Note: Erik is worried this sets a precedent, and that Root Simple will soon become Pet Simple, because we'll be inundated by requests to advertise pets. So let's lay this out now--we won't. That's not our mission. But Anne is our friend, and she lives just few blocks away from us, and rescued our cat as well as Blurry and Sharp from the immediate neighborhood. Therefore our kitten and these are siblings, of a sort.

Speaking of which...

***

Update on our kitten:

 

Our kitten is now confirmed to be female. She's about 12 weeks old now, still very small, compared to adult cats, but all graceful and cat-proportioned (as the photo above illustrates). The toddling, cuddly kitten stage is far behind. Now she spends 80% of her waking hours practicing killing things in ever more spectacular ways, and the remaining 20% getting into trouble by exploring where she should not (knocking over things, missing jumps, falling off ledges, getting coated with dust bunnies). As I said, kittens are excellent source of low-tech entertainment.

As for a name, we've been having trouble naming her. Nothing sticks. As of now, she's named Phoebe, after the formidable, insect-eating birds that stalk our backyard. She's as much of a hunter as any phoebe--and black, too. Her surname is WoadNyx, because she really needs a witchy name, since she seems to be born of 100% pure Halloween cat stock: Phoebe WoadNyx.

My allergies were really doing well, but just in the last couple of days I've turned into a walking snot factory. However, it may be seasonal allergies. It's so hard to tell. I have faith that this will pass. It has to, really, because Phoebe and Erik are in the midst of a shameless love affair, and I don't think I can make him choose between us. When she hears him come in, she runs to greet him, like a dog. She sleeps on top of him, purring like an outboard motor. It's ridiculous. I--I am nothing but the sniffling human who brings her dinner, a fine enough thing to sit upon when The Great One is not around. 

Cats.

[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[p

(the above is a contribution to this post by the demon herself)

SoilWeb: An Online Soil Survey Resource

One of the highlights of the California Master Gardener Conference I just spoke at was a lecture by Toby O’Geen, Ph.D., Assistant Soil Resource Specialist at UC Extension. O'Geen mentioned an amazing online soil resource called SoilWeb, avaliable at http://casoilresource.lawr.ucdavis.edu/drupal/node/902.

SoilWeb overlays detailed soil information on Google Maps and Google Earth. There's even a SoilWeb iPhone app allowing you to use the GPS capabilities of your phone to assist in shopping for, say, the perfect vineyard location.

SoilWeb maps cover most, but not all, areas of the US (Los Angeles isn't included for some reason). While highly technical, terms are explained via hyperlinks. You click on the table to the right of the map for more detailed information including suitability for farming.

Of course in urban areas you never know what unpleasant surprises lurk beneath the surface such as concrete chunks and lead. SoilWeb won't tip you off to those things, but it does give a good overall picture of the kind of soil you'll be dealing with.

Advances in Gardening Series: A Garlic Mystery

 

One of the new features of the garden this year is a long, trough-shaped bed that Erik installed along the edge of our patio. Its inaugural crop was garlic, which is generally a very easy plant to grow. We've done it before, many times, successfully. This year it didn't work. The stalks failed to thrive. Many plants did not set bulbs at all, looking instead like green onions. The heads that were formed are quite small. 

We're not sure why this happened. All spring Erik scoured books trying to find an obvious solution, but couldn't make any clear diagnosis. Our winter/spring weather was strange: torrential rains and cold interspersed with heat waves. Our best guess is that this irregularity created conditions ripe for various sorts of molds and bacteria which garlic does not get along with. Another possibility is that the soil in this bed, which was transferred from another bed, may have pre-existing problems. C'est la vie, as we say around the compost heap. We'll be buying garlic this year. 

We may send the soil in this bed off for testing, or just plant a legume cover crop in it for the summer, and decide what to do with it in the fall.

The bed newly constructed and planted. Alas, those were hopeful days...

It started off good, but just sort of declined steadily.

The original post about the garlic trough here.

Cat Litter Composting

Pocket Nitrogen Generator

 Mrs. Homegrown here:

Apologies to you googlers looking for solid answers. This is what Erik calls a probe. I've decided to compost our kitten's litter box waste, and this is how I plan to go about it. However, I'm sure I'll learn a lot as I go, so this post isn't instructional. I will post a report once the system gets going.

The real reason I'm posting is because I'd love is to hear from any of you who do this already--tips are much appreciated! I'm particularly interested in finding a good brand of litter that composts well.

The basic gist:

Okay, first, anyone who's gone through Composting 101 knows they say not to put pet waste, especially dog and cat waste, in your regular compost bin. This is because cat and dog poop contains pathogens. We never composted our late dog's waste, and for 12 years we sent at least two big plastic bags of poop to the landfill every day. Parents who use disposable diapers got nothing on me in terms of environmental guilt.

Now we've got this cat, and I'm looking in her litter box and seeing nothing but carbon and nitrogen. I can't stand it. I'm disregarding Composting 101 rules because I know this can be done, if done carefully. Over the years I've learned to be amazed by the Cleansing Power of Compost & Time, especially since we started doing some humanure composting. Check that link for more info on Jenkins' good work in that area--research, technique, message boards, etc. It's all there. Human, cat and dog waste are all more tricky to work with than your more benign chicken and bunny waste. This isn't something one should do in a half-assed way, but it is possible.

The plan I'm going to follow is the basic humanure model, which is classic composting, but with lots of attention and care, followed by a 2 year rest period for the full bin, during which time worms and bacteria do their scrubbing magic to help remove any lingering nasties. When the first batch is done, I'll have a sample lab tested, just out of curiosity.

Whatever I do, I won't spread my finished compost on food crops, but instead under our trees and around our perennials. 

I have considered doing this via a worm bin, but as I understand it, the worms don't like the fresh pet waste--and understandably, too! They like to come in when it's broken down a bit. I'll definitely add worms to the bin when the rest period begins. But if anyone has a pet-waste worm bin, let me know how that's going!

Now I have to find a spot for (yet another) bin of poo in our yard.

(Do I hear the soundtrack to Deliverance playing, or is that just my imagination?)

What you control

Erik cited a Terence McKenna quote deep in his last post on bacon. It's a good one, and deserves more attention so I'm giving it this space.

If Erik and I have a single message to offer, it is that you can't control the world, but you can control your life. There's plenty in this world to be outraged over, or worried about, but those feelings don't get you anywhere. What you have to do is tend your own garden: Your body, mind and soul. Your family. Your kitchen. Your yard. Your neighborhood. See to those things. In making those things better, you do make the world better. At the very least you've improved your own life. Or, perhaps, you might be one of the many pebbles that makes an avalanche.

And here is McKenna saying something similiar in his inimitable style:

"We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world." --Terence McKenna

(I'm sorry I don't know where this quote comes from--but I snatched it from Goodreads.)

Well howdy! We're in the New York Times

We're pleased and flattered to be in the Times today, spouting off at the mouth and waving our freak flag (or freak thrysus) high. Michael Tortarello interviewed us, and he's a helluva a writer. You could spend your time in worse ways seeking out his other articles, like this one on hybrid seeds, which is one of Erik's favorites. And kudos to Laure Joliet for taking such beautiful pictures.

Bacon Bits

Van Gogh's Starry Night rendered in bacon (via Doug Harvey)

With the death of print advertising venues, publicists are, apparently, desperately reaching out to bloggers to hype their client's offerings. The result? Take a look at this tempest over garden bloggers taking ad revenue and going on junkets. Normally I compost publicist's attempts to get mentioned on this blog into April Fool's Day hoaxes. But, at the risk of dispensing free publicity, I had to share this one:

River Run Village in Keystone, Colorado is going whole hog this summer when the Blue River Bacon Tour comes to town . . . Over 3,000 pounds of bacon from a variety of purveyors will be on hand for sampling at the Bacon Showcase alongside live music and bacon lectures compliments of Leo Landis, Professor of Baconology. Yes, that’s his job!

The Blue Ribbon Bacon package is available for $35 and includes admission to the three-day event, a commemorative hat, $10 in Bacon Bucks, a beer koozie, unlimited bacon samples at the Bacon Showcase, live music, bacon educational lectures, and a free drink. General admission tickets are also available for $30 per person.

Keystone’s award winning golf courses are extending special offers to bacon lovers who wish to burn off some of those delicious calories. Tee off after 5pm on June 24-26 and the cost is $55 per person.

While indulging in all things bacon, Keystone Resort is offering rooms from $109 per night.

Bacon bucks? Is this a currency backed by bacon? Will this result in a mass "quantitative easing" at the Keystone Resort after "indulging in all things bacon?"

A note to publicists: While I enjoy your creativity, I'm guided by this quote from the late Terence McKenna. Do a little reading before clogging up my in-box with press releases. I'm not against advertising, but if we ever take on any sponsors they have to gibe with our goals and must be kept separate from our editorial content.