Search Results for: label/animals/page/3/2011/04/making-it

609 results

So Much Poultry, So Little Time

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Animals, Chickens
6 Comments
...d maybe training guide dogs. Kids desperately need contact with nature and animals. Let’s grow some food! But we may need to hippify the uniforms a bit . . . -When the economy hits the skids people start thinking about keeping chickens. I spoke to the editor of the always informative Backyard Poultry Magazine about this phenomena. She said that she tries to tell people that you should keep chickens in good times and bad (amen!), but that when the...

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Bird Flu and Industrial Agriculture

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Animals, Chickens
2 Comments
...r asserts that industrial agriculture’s penchant for cramming thousands of animals into sheds is the most likely vector for a host of scary diseases such as bird flu and mad cow disease. Keeping chickens in our backyard has brought home the debate on biosecurity and bird flu. There’s considerable dispute about how these viruses spread, with the industry trying to make the case that wild birds and backyard poultry keepers such as ourselves are a gr...

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What’s Your Personal Food Policy?

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Food, Thoughtstylings
13 Comments
...I’m a guest at another person’s house. I’m not sure I can still do this. As Michael Pollan says, “Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to raise, kill, and eat animals the way we do.” And those walls have become transparent to me. I’ll happily eat meat, but only if I know it was humanely raised or hunted. So, dear Root Simple readers, what’s your personal food policy?...

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Leaf Litter

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Permaculture
1 Comment
...al diversity in ecosystems. Structural diversity provides shelter for many animals for many purposes. In short, when it comes to fall leaf raking, just say no, be a slob and be proud of it. The mulch created by leaf litter serves multiple purposes. All those fallen leaves provide shelter for beneficial insects, reduce water usage by preventing evaporation, prevent weed growth, inhibit soil erosion and may even stop acid rain from penetrating soil....

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California Buckwheat

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Food, Foraging
...asciculatum foliolosum) has multiple uses–it provides cover and nectar for animals, grows with almost no water, and best of all it produces edible seeds. We’ve gathered the seeds we’ve found in fields and baked it into bread and added it to cereal to both boost nutritional value and to add a nutty flavor. The local and resourceful Tongva Indians used the roots and leaves for headaches and stomach problems, among many other uses including using the...

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