How to Get Skunks Out of Your Basement and Yard

March 19, 2014

Basements and crawl spaces under houses make idea dens for urban critters. If we could charge rent for all the skunks, raccoons and feral cats that have taken up residence under the house we’d have paid off the mortgage by now. Our particular crawl space critter B&B was opened by virtue of a flimsy access door. Some animal, most likely a raccoon, pried it open. The problem with this situation is that you can’t just close up the door. Some poor cr...

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Cycling in the US from a Dutch perspective

Mr. Homegrown

September 4, 2013

Bikes, Transportation

12 Comments

...and it gathered widespread support among mainstream commentators and young urban political activists. In Amsterdam in the early 1970s, there were already organisations with the aims of demotorising cities, improving public transport, preventing the bulldozing of heritage sites and controlling pollution. These campaigners opposed the statist interventions of the Left and the laissez-faire economics of the Right, both of which they felt threatened t...

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3 Mules Update

Mr. Homegrown

February 23, 2018

Events

1 Comment

...pearing. More and more cars are filling up the roadways, and the expanding urban infrastructure seems to serve only one purpose: accommodate more automobiles. His words resonate with me, and I realize then and there that I am about to embark on a filmmaking journey like none I have ever experienced. Now, five years later, my journey is far from over. In 200 days of filming over a 27-month period, I shot 300 hours of footage. A ten-minute short fil...

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Poultry Outlaws: Chicken Laws Around the U.S.

Mr. Homegrown

February 13, 2008

Animals, Chickens

29 Comments

...versies in Missoula (see our post on that dust-up) and Chicago, prove that urban poultry is still controversial. Albuquerque: Zoning allows the raising of unlimited poultry if penned at least 20 feet from neighboring dwellings. Atlanta: Up to 25 chickens may be kept if adequately housed, i.e. 2 square feet per adult bird, and their enclosure is 50 feet from the nearest neighbor. Austin: Up to 10 fowl per household, but keep in an enclosure that’s...

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Let’s Pedal Together in this New Year

Mr. Homegrown

January 7, 2021

Thoughtstylings

2 Comments

...positive for COVID. In the past week my great desire was to get back to my urban homesteading/appropriate technology lane. A journalist called me on Tuesday to interview me for an article on urban homesteading in a pandemic. She asked me what I thought of as the most important activity in the homesteading tool basket. I said that it’s not growing vegetables or canning things it’s getting to know your neighbors and forming communities of mutual sup...

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