Saturday Linkages: Sedum Stumps, Chicken Steadycams and the End of the World

ist http://econ.st/KAOPVc Cornstalks Everywhere But Nothing Else, Not Even A Bee http://n.pr/Rlasks Why Phoenix is becoming more like Minneapolis: http://nyti.ms/V3Nwlo Central Valley residents tired of receiving L.A.’s urban waste – Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/la-me-central-valley-20121126,0,3069632.story … For these links and more, follow Root Simple on Twitter: Follow @rootsimple...

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Clicker Training Chickens

ere’s a video of a chick learning the basics. You can find others of this sort on Youtube: You might be able to find a chicken training seminar in your area, probably under the banner of dog training. With the rise of urban chicken-pets I think there is opportunity to be had in offering classes for would be chicken trainers. Googling around, I found this one in Lake Oswego, Oregon which is booked months in advance. Have you trained your c...

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City Farm Chicago

for economically under-developed neighborhoods. City Farm is a mobile endeavor. The basic idea is to take advantage of some vacant land and, when the inevitable development comes, pull up everything and move on. Assuming that urban land is contaminated, the City Farm folks simply piled up about three feet of compost, soil and mulch right on top of the broken concrete and asphalt of its current location. All that soil will move when the yuppie con...

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June: National Bathroom Reading Month

who drive somewhere to ride their bikes (note the cover) feature lots of god-awful candy-colored spandex outfits, $5,000 mountain bikes and nutritional supplements. Precisely the items you don’t want for getting around urban Los Angeles. This particular catalog featured something new, however, his and hers matching bikes from Schwinn called, we kid you not, “Sid and Nancy“. Sid and Nancy feature automatic shifting since either...

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A Recipe for Injera

internets for a recipe and our old post about one of the ingredients, teff flour. The recipe we used comes from the excellent book Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz. This is a life changing recipe book that every urban homesteader should own–so go out and buy a copy! So here’s how we made injera based on Katz’s recipe: Ingredients 2 cups sourdough starter (check out our post on an easy way to keep and maintain a sourdough...

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Red Cabbage Kraut

this case. I had never liked the sauerkraut I tried as a child. But now I am converted. I think if the kraut on my hot dog when I was a kid was bright pink, I would have liked it a lot better. This is my weird and wonderful urban farmer breakfast: raw kale, pinto beans, a spoonful of homemade pesto, eggs and kraut. Trust me, its delicious. I need a nutrition packed breakfast to go clean the chicken coop and garden all day. I got my kraut makin...

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Growing Home: Agriculture in the City

er 12, 8:30am-8:00pm Combining talks presenting a range of perspectives with a student poster session and Ranch tour, this one-day symposium brings together academics, students, and professionals interested in the future of urban agriculture. Gary Nabhan, world-renowned ethnobotanist, ecologist, writer, and grower of heritage food crops, will be the keynote speaker.   Tickets and details available through www.brownpapertickets.com...

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The Art of Memory

ary building you’re using. While I’ve got the basic concept of the art of memory I need to do some more practice. So far what I’ve found it most useful for is learning people’s names. And, as an urban homesteader, I always find myself learning new skills some of which require memorization. Now this won’t help you find a lost set of car keys. That’s what the ad Herennium calls “natural” memory which...

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Mitchell Joachim’s Techno-Utopian Future

. Fab Tree Hab. Mitchell Joachim. Joachim is the thoughtstylist in chief of Planetary One and Terreform One, non-profit organizations that, “pioneer visionary socio-ecological and infrastructural strategies for urban environments.” Articulate and entertaining, Joachim delivered a rapid fire PowerPoint lecture showcasing many of his outré notions: floating jellyfish-like mass transit thingies, foam electric cars, strawberry sh...

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How to Memorize Numbers

Giordano Bruno’s insanely elaborate memory system. Yesterday we introduced an ancient memory system that can be handy for learning all those new urban homesteading skills. Today I’ll briefly discuss a way to use a related mnemonic called the Major System for committing strings of numbers to memory. To use the Major System you first memorize a set of consonants that represent 0 through 9. From Wikipedia, here’s a tabl...

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