I Made a Bee Vacuum

...tially dangerous if the bees are in a cranky mood. For years I’ve resisted making a bee vacuum with the idea that it’s a crutch, somehow an excuse for bad technique. You can use a smoker to herd bees off the comb and, if you’re careful, once the queen is in the bee box the workers will follow. But if a tool makes things go more smoothly, why not give it a try? There are a lot of different bee vacs that you can make or buy. I built mine using instr...

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In Praise of Disorder

...club presents just the right level of civic inattention to allow the urban homesteader to get away with many of the illegal projects profiled in this blog: greywater, backyard poultry, and front yard vegetable gardening, to mention just a few. Ideally you have a balance between order and disorder–neither gunfire nor the prying eyes of city inspectors. Where I’m staying in Houston, with its flocks of loose chickens, packs of feral dogs, and broken...

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Grab and Go

...elf life. 9. Hydration We have both extra water and a ceramic water filter. 10. Emergency shelter We have a very lightweight backpacking tent. This ain’t about paranoia – while our grab and go bags contain modern tools, we appreciate the ancient, and almost lost art of travel by foot. Remember kids, back in the days before SUVs people used to walk long distances without the benefit of convenience stores and fast food joints. Stay tuned for a detai...

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June: National Bathroom Reading Month

...are a water quality report like this one to what kind of water is good for making beer. Performance Bicycle Catalog. We get a lot of these catalogs since every few months we break a bike tail light and have to order a new one. They just don’t build bicycle accessories to last! These bike catalogs, aimed at recreational cyclists who drive somewhere to ride their bikes (note the cover) feature lots of god-awful candy-colored spandex outfits, $5,000...

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Loquat Season

...of these trees live in public spaces, the parkway and people’s front yards making them prime candidates for urban foraging i.e. free food. The tree itself has a vaguely tropical appearance with waxy leaves that look like the sort of plastic foliage that used to grace dentist office lobbies back in the 1960s. In short it’s a real tree that looks fake with fruit that nobody seems to care about. The loquat tree invites considerable derision from east...

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