Saturday Linkages: Wind Maps, Wildlife Gardens and Other Obsessions

September 27, 2014

...Abstract) http://barfblog.com/2014/09/fast-facts-about-cutting-boards-and-food-safety-in-your-kitchen-from-the-abstract/ … Beautiful Cat Shelter Designs from Architects for Animals LA Event – http://go.shr.lc/1punQx4 For these links and more, follow Root Simple on Twitter: Follow @rootsimple...

Read…

Who’s Visiting Your Garden While You’re Not Watching?

Mr. Homegrown

September 30, 2014

Animals

16 Comments

...am on for a period of five days, pointed at our backyard shed, to see what animals are visiting. The motion sensitive camera picked up seven visits from a possum, six birds, four skunk visitations, two rats, one raccoon and two house cats. I need to let the camera run for a longer period to get a better sense of what times of the day or night are the most active, but so far the hour of 2 am picked up the most activity (after the bars have closed o...

Read…

“Interstellar”: Leaving the farm for the stars

Mrs. Homegrown

November 14, 2014

Thoughtstylings

18 Comments

...ng monocrops going. We seem to be living on an all-corn diet. There are no animals to be seen, anywhere. Not even a cat. I’m assuming we ate them. There seems to be plenty of gas left, perhaps because there are so few people. At any rate, things aren’t good–there are constant dust storms and disease threatening the crops. It seems that humanity isn’t out of hot water quite yet. And our hero, Cooper, who is a ex-NASA pilot forced to play farmer, di...

Read…

Is Industrial Ag to Blame for the Swine Flu?

Mr. Homegrown

April 27, 2009

Thoughtstylings

12 Comments

...int we’re in the wild speculation phase of the swine flu narrative and I’ll add that the press does a particularly bad job with anything that has to do with science. However, we’ve been trying to make the point that distributed agriculture, more people tending small numbers of animals, is most likely a safer practice than large factory farms. The exotic strains of E-coli and swine flu that have emerged in recent years could be the unintended conse...

Read…

Behold the Ant Lion

Mrs. Homegrown

November 20, 2014

Animals, Insects, Nature Awareness

17 Comments

...Tracking Team (if you live near Ventura, CA and want to learn how to track animals for fun, look them up). We were under a tagged-up bridge, in a dry river bed. Someone pointed out a hole or divot in the sand and quizzed us: what made the hole? I had no idea. It was a divot that could have been made by a big man’s thumb. I might think it was made by dripping water, if there was ever any water anywhere in this dry land. The answer was “ant lion” —...

Read…