Chicken of the Woods

...The very same mushroom pundits suggest thoroughly cooking all Laetiporus. I can report having consumed a lot of the mushroom we foraged with no ill effects. It was, in fact, one of the most delicious mushrooms I’ve ever consumed. But one should not trust the musings of an aging urban homesteading blogger when foraging for mushrooms. Find yourself a local mushroom nerd or run it past your cats. That said, don’t be too fearful either or you’ll miss...

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Allegedly Squirrel Proof Bird Feeder Not Rat Proof

...cilmen! Just kidding. It was rats. This discovery caps off a busy week for urban wildlife in our backyard. A young coyote visited last week and, last night, our indoor cats got in a full on cat fight on either side of a glass door with a visiting outdoor cat. Our new bird (rat?) feeder has a lever that closes when a heavy animal steps on it. This is supposed to deter squirrels. As you can see from the photos, rats easily hacked their way around th...

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Worst of NextDoor

...h. What could be wrong with a website that reunites people with their lost cats, offers crowdsourced suggestions for plumbers and operates as an ongoing garage sale? But as is usual for anything coming out of Silicon Valley, NextDoor, has gone full Lord of the Flies except instead of kids it’s mostly old folks beating dissenters to death with their keyboards. I’ve used NextDoor to get rid of furniture, give advice on humanely removing bees and pub...

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The Root Simple 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

...ht I’d offer some suggested gifts, mostly obtainable online, for the urban homesteady types in your life. Most of the links are to Amazon, and we get a small cut of the proceeds, which helps keep our webmaster in kibble. But First . . . Charity Of course, rather than buying unneeded crap that will only clutter our already messy houses, we could agree to give to a charity instead. This season, due to our national “orange swan” event, Kelly is favor...

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Saturday Tweets: Date Palms, Clear Ice and Hugs

...Rochow (@GardenForkTV) May 22, 2017 Paint the Town: 3 More Strangely Legal Urban Street Artworks | Urbanist – https://t.co/ld9AjUHzof — Eric Rochow (@GardenForkTV) May 22, 2017 Hippies are the new hipsters: the Silver Lake shaman: https://t.co/twqIDKLmx7 via @qz — Root Simple (@rootsimple) May 22, 2017 A random medieval city layout generator https://t.co/oZX3FkHX2J #procgen pic.twitter.com/YiMCaeQY6X — algoritmic (@algoritmic) May 23, 2017 A Musli...

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