Problems Part I

The road to urban homesteading ain’t smooth and involves more than a few potholes along the way. Some of those potholes will swallow a bike tire while others are big enough for a Hummer. But with persistence it becomes easier to deal with the occasional bump, lessons can be learned and future mistakes avoided. With the popularity of our earlier blunders post, I’d like to begin regularly sharing problems as they develop. Here’s...

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La Alternativa

...r gardens. See the the film Power of Community How Cuba Survived Peak Oil for more on Cuba’s inventive urban gardening. While we hope that the US does not face a Cuban style economic crisis, we at SurviveLA believe that it’s time for la alternativa for other reasons, namely reducing our environmental impact and rampant consumption. If you speak Spanish, please enjoy Gálvez’s recipe for vinegar made from pineapple rinds or banana...

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Saturday Linkages: Lemon Peels, Shrub, Duct Tape and the Art of Relaxing

Air dried lemon peels from Food in Jars. Preservin’ Air-Dried Lemon Peel http://www.foodinjars.com/2013/02/air-dried-lemon-peel/ … Drinking Vinegars: The Other Kind of Shrub | Garden Rant http://gardenrant.com/2013/02/drinking-vinegars-the-other-kind-of-shrub.html … EDC Solutions for the Everyday Carry of Duct Tape | The Art of Manliness http://artofmanliness.com/2013/02/14/solutions-for-the-everyday-carry-of-duct-tape/ … Relax! Relax!...

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Boulder man faces $2000 fine/day for guerilla garden fencing

Via BoingBoing (complete with video): “[L]ast month, an enforcement officer from Boulder’s Environmental and Zoning Enforcement office showed up and said a neighbor had complained about the garden. “She said to take it all down — the tomato cages, the trellises, the posts, the basketball hoop, everything,” Hoffenberg said. … Hoffenberg has until July 14 to take down the trellises and fencing. At that point, Arthur said, he could be c...

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Moringa!

...from more mature pods and eaten like peas or roasted like nuts. The flowers are edible when cooked, and are said to taste like mushrooms. The roots are shredded and used as a condiment in the same way as horseradish, however it contains the alkaloid spirochin, a potentially fatal nerve paralyzing agent, so such practices should be strongly discouraged. The leaves are highly nutritious, being a significant source of beta-carotene, Vitamin C, prot...

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Free Postmortem Exams for Backyard Flocks in California

It’s too late for us now, but if I had another two chickens die in close succession, I’d consider rushing the bodies off to one of the California Animal Health and Food Safety’s labs run by the University of California Davis’ School of Veterinary Medicine. A Root Simple reader who is a veterinarian tipped us off to this service. You don’t need a veterinarian (though you might need one to help interpret the results...

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Plastic or Wood?

Some time ago the folks at the FDA and USDA recommended that we replace our wooden cutting boards with plastic ones (such as the fine Elvis model on the right). This injunction rose out of rising fears of salmonella and e-coli poisoning in our food, which are, by the way, the signature bacteria of our deplorable factory farming system. But that’s another rant. This rant is about the boards. So as we were saying, it was out with the nasty,...

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Raw Milk Talk With Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures on the Homegrown Evolution Podcast

that might need to be clarified is that when McAfee mentions the two kinds of raw milk he is referring to his own milk, meant for consumption raw and most other dairies whose milk is only raw for the brief period between when it leaves the cow and when it is pasteurized. Click on the player above to hear the podcast. You can also subscribe to the Homegrown Evolution podcast in iTunes or download an mp3 of the podcast via archive.org here: http:...

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Urban Farm Magazine

We have a article on urban farmers across America in the premiere issue of a magazine bound to appeal to readers of this blog, Urban Farm. Our article, Where Urban Meets Farm, profiles the efforts of our friends the Green Roof Growers of Chicago, Em Jacoby of Detroit and Kelly Yrarrazaval of Orange County. All of these fine folks have repurposed urban and suburban spaces to grow impressive amounts of food, a common sense trend popular enough to...

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