The Tiny House

...can find a vacant lot, such a small house could be the ideal start 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 i...

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Campfire Cooking: Fish in Clay (& Vegetarian Options!)

...with a little fat. We were using butter infused with wild herbs, but olive oil is great too. The herbs we were using in the field included a type of wild clover, sagebrush, wild mint, native sage, white pine and watercress–but not all on one fish! I think a little lemon and garlic slipped into our cooking, too, here and there, and of course, salt and pepper — um…all wild foraged, of course. Once the fish is dressed for dinner, it gets tied up in l...

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Who Needs Windows?

...hose Amazon warehouses, or Los Angeles’ hidden and still functioning urban oil wells. Our window free tour will visit some misguided office buildings, a Masonic temple and a trade school. So turn on that glaring bank of florescent lights, sit down in a dark cubicle and let’s take a windowless journey beginning with the headquarters of America’s most mediocre chocolate factory. Hershey’s Chocolate Headquarters 19 East Chocolate Ave. Hershey, Pennsy...

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Spaceship Earth

...what could be more non-essential than hippie avant-garde thespians? For us urban homesteader types, it’s also good to have a reminder that hubris in the face of complexity is an occupational hazard of anyone who attempts to garden, keep animals, cook from scratch or otherwise interact with things other than laptops and iPhones. You can stream Spaceship Earth via the YouTubes for here. If you haven’t seen Adam Curtis’ All Watched Over by Machines o...

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So Cal Alert: Polyphagus Shot Hole Borer

...ark spots appearing on the trunk of the tree, spots which look almost like oil stains. Another sign is white, sugary patches on the trunk. (Again, see the PDFs I linked to above for more pictures) If you look closely at these areas, you may see the tiny entry holes of the beetle, holes about the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen. You will need a professional arborist to confirm the infestation, report it, and determine treatment. The Shot Hole Bo...

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