Saturday Tweets: Pierces Diesease and Electric Squirrels

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Saturday Linkages
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How to Design and Fabricate Homestead Projects

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Design
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I’m a horrible designer. My music degree (I have a master’s degree in un-listenable noise from UC San Diego), did not prepare me for the rigorous design and fabrication needs required for our two books and this blog. But, over the years, I’ve bugged our art, design and architecture friends for advice. Luckily, I’m also married to a talented artist (also with a UCSD degree–go Tritons!) who can provide 24 hour emergency art and art history advice.

I’ll use the process of putting together my Vegetable Prison as a way of showing what I’ve leaned from my brainy, art-damaged friends:

Go to lots of art shows, museums, take classes, go to furniture stores and watch strange movies
One of the things I love about living in a big city is the opportunity to experience lots of high and low culture. I drew on those experiences when it came time to come up with a cage for the veggies. Due to my fascination with out-of-favor 80’s postmodernism, I remembered Robert Venturi’s Franklin Court from an architectural history class I took as an undergrad:

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Impressed that I remembered a small detail from a slide show in a class I took 30 years ago, I Googled Franklin Court and showed it to Kelly. She countered with Wonder Woman’s airplane:

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I counter-riposted with the set from Lars Von Trier’s difficult Dogville, which takes place entirely on this bare-bones set:

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A trip to a high end furniture store yielded a contemporary example of this “outline” or “ghost” strategy, in this case a fire log holder:

Sketchiness
With these ideas in mind I proceeded to the next step: doodling. As tempting as it is to dive straight into Sketchup, it’s best to draw stuff out on paper first, otherwise you risk letting that 3d modeling program turn you into a “tool of the tool.” I’m not great at sketching things on paper but you don’t have to be a great artist to get some ideas down. And that’s the point. With paper and pencil you can draw lots of ideas out quickly.

For learning how to draw there is no better book than Drawing From on Right Side of the Brain. Once you go through that you’re ready for a fun book I’m currently making my way through called Sketching for Architecture + Interior Design.

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Modeling
Lastly it’s time to get those ideas in the free version of the 3d program Sketchup. You can learn Sketchup in an evening or two and it has really helped separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to my many bad ideas. With Sketchup you can rotate the object and really see if it works aesthetically. You can even place it in a photo and see it it works in context. It’s also cut down on waste as well as those “I forgot something” trips back to the hardware store. Once the object is rendered I can easily determine how much lumber and hardware I need.

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Where do you get your ideas both good and bad?

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The Buzz About Bees: Biology of a Superorganism

072 How to Set Goals

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Podcasts, Thoughtstylings

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In our first podcast of 2016, Kelly and I review play back excerpts from New Year’s resolution show and discover why it’s a really bad idea to publicize your goals. We go on to discuss the “SMART” (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time Framed) way of setting goals. During the podcast we reference an article in Scientific American on the SMART concept. Special thanks to Eric Rochow of Garden Fork TV and Michael Hyatt for tipping me off to the research on this subject.

If you want to leave a question for the Root Simple Podcast please call (213) 537-2591 or send an email to [email protected]. You can subscribe to our podcast in the iTunes store and on Stitcher. The theme music is by Dr. Frankenstein. A downloadable version of this podcast is here.

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Senegal: Modern Senegalese Recipes from the Source to the Bowl

Build a vegetable prison to keep out raccoons and skunks

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Gardening, Pests
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It’s come to this: Vegetable San Quentin. Last year’s Crittercam surveillance project demonstrated the futility of planting vegetables in our yard without serious fortifications. Bird netting? Useless. If we want to grow our own veggies we had to build something that can resist the strong arms and fingers of our local band of late night hipster raccoons.

Once again, I can’t say enough good things about the usefulness of the free 3d drawing program Sketchup, which I used to plan out my veggie prison. It was especially useful for figuring out the angles of the cuts I needed to make for the top. I was able to dial in those angles and dimensions on my compound miter saw.  All that was left to do was screw the whole thing together and staple the 14-Guage welded wire from Home Despot.

The access panels have two positions. Down to protect small seedlings:

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And up to act as a trellis and allow tall plants to grow out the top:

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I’ve noticed that once plants get established and past the 2-foot point I don’t usually have to worry about those midnight raccoon parties. Obviously, if I had to deal with deer I’d have to build a bigger cage. I can also cover the whole thing in floating row cover material if I want to keep out cabbage leaf caterpillars.

If you’re a Sketchup user I uploaded the plans to the 3D Warehouse. Search for “Raccoon Proof Vegetable Bed” and you’ll be able to download it. This bed was designed for the narrow top slope of our front yard and is 3 by 8-feet. I would recommend increasing the width to 4-feet if you build one yourself.

Soil Positive or just Soil Curious? Join Nancy Klehm For a Workshop on Soils

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Events

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Our friend and soil guru Nancy Klehm is coming back to town soon, and will be teaching an awesome day-long “soil truthing” workshop for a small group of lucky people. Come to learn about soil health, life and remediation via compost and mushrooms and mulch. In this era of climate change, healthy soils key to resilience, carbon sequestration and water conservation, so come and learn!

Soil Truthing – A Hands-On Workshop

When: Saturday, February 6th

Hours: 10am – 4pm

Where: Silver Lake, address provided upon registration

Cost: $75

Class size: 6 – 15 people

Facilitator: Nance Klehm, Director of Social Ecologies , www.socialecologies.net  (See bio below)

Class Plan:

1. introductions and bio-remediation presentation

2. landscape reading exercise in neighborhood

~potluck lunch

3. compost bin and soil tour of root simple front and back gardens

4. three soil installations – TBA

What you will learn:

– basic soil structure and biology

– qualitative methods of assessing soil health

– how to sample soil for a lab

– landscape reading skills

– backyard-scale bioremediation strategies including compost, mulch and working with fungi

Participants should:

Bring food to share at the potluck and their own water bottle

Wear work clothes and bring a pair of gloves, a notebook and a pen

Registration Information

Register via Paypal using “Register” button below. Your payment is registration.

First come, first serve: 15 people maximum

Refunds and cancellation: Full refunds available up to 48 hours prior to class, 50% refund within 48 hours.

Email us at [email protected]




Your Paypal invoice will say “Los Angeles Bread Bakers.”

About Nancy Klehm

Nancy Klehm is a steward of the earth. For over two decades she has designed landscape, taught ecological systems and built food systems in collaboration with others. Her approach is one of instigation and activation of already existent communities, and her work demonstrates her commitment to redefining the way human populations coexist with plant and animal systems on this planet.

Nancy has worked on projects for the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Lincoln Park Zoo, the Chicago Park District, the Field Museum of Natural History, the Annenberg Foundation, Heifer Project International, The Center of Land Interpretation in Los Angeles, The Edible Schoolyard (Berkeley), LearningSite (Copenhagen), GiveLove Haiti (Port au Prince) and other private, public, and institutional clients.

She has lectured/taught courses at UCLA, Northwestern University, The Hammer Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Canadian Centre for Architecture (Montreal), The Graham Foundation, Archeworks, MICA, U of Cincinnati, University of Illinois at Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, Dartington College of Arts (UK), Jutland Kunstakademi (Arhus, DK), Machine Project (LA), City Repair (Portland) and a multitude of community groups.