Bee Fever in Los Angeles

...the radical “backwards” approach to beekeeping advocated by LA’s maverick urban beekeeper Kirk Anderson, Anderson learned from apiarist Charles Martin Simon, who invented the concept of “beekeeping backwards.” Simon’s approach was stupidly simple: Give the bees a clean box, put them in it and leave them alone. If they get sick? Don’t medicate them. Let them die. Then get some more bees. Amen. Selecting for strong bees is an approach that, in my o...

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Saturday Linkages: Cheese Powder and Torpedo Bikes

...-than-this-crowdfunde-1458308873 … Berlin workshop on “Unpleasant Design”: urban design that bullies it users: http://boingboing.net/2013/11/11/berlin-workshop-tomorrow-on.html … It’s Time to Rethink America’s Corn System http://ensia.com/voices/its-time-to-rethink-americas-corn-system/ … Cheese powder: What is it?: http://boingboing.net/2013/11/14/cheese-powder-what-is-it.html … My Vintage Apron Collection http://hencam.com/thevintagehen/2013/11/...

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Saturday Linkages: Incas, Big Rocks and Cool Cucumbers

...m/e/pugEWv4Z Lost Crops of the Incas http://feedly.com/e/9GygG_Yc Reading: Urban Oasis on a Balcony: From Concrete Furnace to Edible Habitat… http://bit.ly/HSeQ6B Look at My Big Rock by Evelyn Hadden http://feedly.com/e/0gB_TOO6 The coolest cucumber you’ve never met: http://modernfarmer.com/2013/11/coolest-cucumber-never-met/ … Food issues Americans – why do you keep refrigerating your eggs? http://io9.com/americans-why-do-you-keep-refrigerating-y...

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Of Skunks, Sauerkraut and Stoicism

...We were honored when the nice folks behind Stoic Week 2013 asked us to write a blog post. It begins, Practicality is why stoicism works so well as the philosophical operating system of urban homesteading. While Foucault and Hegel might help me navigate the epistemological frontier, when I’m staring at a carefully tended vegetable bed that just got destroyed by a skunk, you can bet I’ll reach for the Seneca. Read the rest here....

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Help us With a Fodder System for our Hens

.../run. Ideally they’d be grazing on green pasture all day. But our abundant urban predators, lack of space and dry climate make the vision of hens clucking on verdant fields a challenge. I’m thinking of building a DIY fodder system but I’m a bit confused by the instructions I’ve seen floating about the interwebs. Which is where you come in. Have you built a fodder system? Do you know any good instructions? How big should it be for five hens? Or do...

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