Kickstart the North Memphis Farmers Collective

...o, a high school math teacher in Memphis whose garden got him in trouble in 2011 (and whose cat allegedly damaged a neighbor’s 1991 Cadillac Seville–the horrors!). As often is the case in these stories, there’s a happy ending. What began in one yard has grown into an urban farming movement transforming vacant lots into sources of food and jobs. There’s a Kickstarter: The City of Memphis faces many challenges. Among them are blighted vacant lots, f...

Read…

020 Emily Green on the Mow and Blow Landscape Paradigm

...d the Independent. She blogs at Chance of Rain. Writing in the Los Angeles Times in 2011 Emily says, What would you do if a neighbor came to you and asked, “For 20 minutes every week, may I turn on your vacuum cleaner, smoke detector and garbage disposal and run them all at once?” Holding that thought, consider if the neighbor added, “Ah, may I also blow noxious dust your way for those same 20 minutes?” Imagine that not just one neighbor on the st...

Read…

Primitive Grain Storage Technique

...es of the pit sucks the moisture out of the soil at the edges, and uses it to attempt to germinate. The germination process sucks up oxygen and releases carbon dioxide, effectively clearing the chamber of oxygen. At that point, as Neil puts it, “Time stops.” Nothing can grow, nothing changes. The grain cache keeps for at least a year, perhaps two years, and provided a very handy safety backup for hard working iron age farmers. And some very basic...

Read…

I Spent a Year Making a Bed

...bait title? But I really did spend almost a year on this with most of that time eaten up teaching myself how to do marquetry and inlay work. As I mentioned before, my first attempts didn’t go well and I spent a lot of time searching for advice on how to do this particular style of Art Nouveau work that almost nobody does anymore. Sanding and finishing metal and wood right next to each other also proved difficult and I’m not entirely satisfied with...

Read…