Cat Litter Compost, Installment #3

...n down all the way through. I still wouldn’t put it as it is anywhere near food crops, even though it is two years old, just to be safe. To make it extra safe — and useful — I’ve been letting the worms have at it. I’m using it as part of the mix that forms the worm bedding, so cat poo will become worm poo and the garden will be delighted. That’s how I plan to dispose of all of it, bit by bit. If I didn’t have the worm bin, I’d call it done and spr...

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Loquat Season

...of these trees live in public spaces, the parkway and people’s front yards making them prime candidates for urban foraging i.e. free food. The tree itself has a vaguely tropical appearance with waxy leaves that look like the sort of plastic foliage that used to grace dentist office lobbies back in the 1960s. In short it’s a real tree that looks fake with fruit that nobody seems to care about. The loquat tree invites considerable derision from east...

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Buddy Burner

...s a huge wick. That inferno effect is what you want. Control your flame by making a damper out of a piece of aluminum foil folded into a long rectangle three or four layers thick and as wide as the can, but much longer so that you can use the excess as a handle. Slide the foil back and forth to expose or repress the flame as needed. To recharge the BB, place chunks of wax on top of the BB while it is burning. The wax will melt down and refuel it....

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The Tiny House

...of your urban homestead, leaving plenty of yard space for growing your own food. And these small building literally sip utilities making them ideal for hooking up to solar power and very cheap to heat and cool. They are also expandable as your needs or family grows. And perhaps most importantly, they prevent expansion of all the things we don’t need, the giant plasma screens, the inflatable Christmas decor and all the other clutter causing detritu...

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A Review of Masanobu Fukuoka’s Sowing Seeds in the Desert

...ing Seeds in the Desert: Natural Farming, Global Resotration, and Ultimate Food Security is now in English in a beautiful translation published by Chelsea Green. Fukuoka’s writing deals with the tricky practical and spiritual issues involved with our place in nature’s synergistic complexities. To intervene or not to intervene is often the question when it comes to what Fukuoka called his “natural farming” method. Fukuoka councils a humbleness befo...

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