Practical Backyard Chicken Biosecurity

...temperament of my hens and my desire to protect our garden from marauding chickens, I keep our hens in an enclosed run during the day. I rarely see any wild birds in the run, but there are some improvements I could make to keep wild birds out entirely. Obviously, if you free range your hens you can’t keep them away from wild birds, but it was suggested at the conference not to keep chickens near ponds or even small water features since wild ducks...

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An open letter to Trader Joes

...marketing folks some time we’ve done it for you: First off we removed the chickens grazing in the open pasture since it’s highly unlikely that these eggs came from chickens freely wandering outdoors and feeding on vegetation and insects. This might be called “pasture raised”, though this is also a term not defined or regulated by the USDA (largely because the huge companies that control poultry farming in this country and whose political influenc...

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Butter Making Demo at the Natural History Museum

Join us for what I promise will be the Burning Man of butter making this Friday evening at the Natural History Museum. We’ll be doing a hands-on shake your own butter demo with live drummers. Best of all it’s freeeeeeeeeeeee, but you need to RSVP. And there’s more: MUSIC with COASTIN (5-7 pm) and Evan Weiss from Junk (7-9pm) BUTTER MAKING with authors, Erik Knutzen & Kelly Coyne (*timed-ticket required) POTTING SUCCULENTS (*timed-ticket required)...

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Making It Available in Overdrive App

...ecreational library visit, my favorite librarian informed me that our book Making It is available for download in the Overdrive app. Ego boosted! Many public libraries, in addition to books, now have a long list of digital gewgaws, apps and resources. One of those apps is Overdrive, which allows you to download eBooks, videos and audio books to your digital devices for free. Over 30,000 libraries worldwide use Overdrive to distribute materials. To...

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