Our new front yard, part 6: it’s all potential at this point

...y labor, but it also wastes a good deal of fossil fuel what with the power tools and hauling, and if the clippings end up the landfill, the creation of methane gas. It may not be such a big deal in one yard, but it’s happening in thousands of yards, so the ill effects add up. The worst part is that it’s so very avoidable. We just have to learn to be a little bit patient. So, I’m trying to be patient. I hope you will bear with us, too. (And here’s...

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Practical Backyard Chicken Biosecurity

...ng interior coop surfaces to make them easier to clean. Don’t share garden tools or poultry equipment with other poultry keepers. Gallardo suggested being practical not perfect. The goal is to reduce risk while accepting you’re never going to eliminate diseases. He also noted that educational activities such as 4-H are worth the risk. Kelly and I get requests to bring our chickens to public events. We’ve decided that we don’t want to stress our fl...

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We are all gardeners

...ertilizer to weed killer to the gasoline and electricity needed to run the tools necessary to to keep the landscape trim, and in some climates, the water needed to keep the grass green. It is expensive. It is life-denying. The New Way: The Loving Landscape The Loving Landscape invites and encourages life at many levels. Its value is founded on its ability to sustain life in as many forms as possible, from microbes to humans. The focus is not on su...

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Nextdoor: Monetizing Your Neighbors

...). Thankfully it should be easy to create an alternative to Nextdoor using tools provided (ironically) by other questionable Silicon Valley companies like Google. I’d like to create a Google group for our neighborhood with a set of, admittedly, draconian rules: No discussions that would not take place face to face, i.e. nothing that would be offensive to anyone in the group. Offering a few things for sale is o.k. but running an online business thr...

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De-Cluttering the Garden

...ty pots, bags of soil and amendments with no home, gloves housing spiders, tools leaning here, there and everywhere, never where you need them. Our climate alone allows us to (mostly) get away with this behavior. Elsewhere it would all rust or rot if left out like this. I know it’s not the KonMari way to add storage space or devices to deal with clutter, but this is more like having a car with no garage, and then wondering why the driveway is alwa...

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