Saturday Linkages: Killer Bees, Bikes and Cold Coffee

November 2, 2013

...17 … Stop Trying to Make Killer Bees Happen http://shar.es/IqK8T Designing Urban Agriculture: http://www.cityfarmer.info/2013/10/27/designing-urban-agriculture-a-complete-guide-to-the-planning-design-construction-maintenance-and-management-of-edible-landscapes/ … Why the Brain Prefers to Read on Paper http://www.notechmagazine.com/2013/10/why-the-brain-prefers-to-read-on-paper.html … HOWTO make a bike-charged emergency battery: http://boingboing.n...

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How to Get Skunks Out of Your Basement and Yard

Mr. Homegrown

March 19, 2014

Animals, Gardening, Pests

4 Comments

Basements and crawl spaces under houses make idea dens for urban critters. If we could charge rent for all the skunks, raccoons and feral cats that have taken up residence under the house we’d have paid off the mortgage by now. Our particular crawl space critter B&B was opened by virtue of a flimsy access door. Some animal, most likely a raccoon, pried it open. The problem with this situation is that you can’t just close up the door. Some poor cr...

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Hipster Compost

Mr. Homegrown

June 30, 2014

Composting, Gardening

18 Comments

An updated, urban version of the soil food web. In the nearly sixteen years we’ve lived here we’ve seen our local stretch of Sunset Boulevard go from boarded up storefronts and auto body shops to restaurants, bars and cafes. Along with those new businesses and artisinal facial hair, comes a great new set of compost sources. Some of my enterprising neighbors, one in particular, have been creating what could be called hipster compost or, at least,...

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010 Erica Strauss of Northwest Edible Life

Mr. Homegrown

July 30, 2014

Animals, Chickens, Food, Food Preservation, Gardening, Podcasts

1 Comment

...n with Erica Strauss, professional chef turned gardener and self described urban homesteading fanatic. Her voluminous and amazing blog Northwest Edible Life offers practical advice on a wide variety of topics: food preservation, gardening, keeping livestock in urban spaces, kitchen tips and home economic hacks. Some of the many topics we touch on in the interview include: How she got started homesteading Gardening in the Northwest United States Fo...

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073 Permaculture From the Inside Out with Rachel Kaplan

Mr. Homegrown

January 20, 2016

Permaculture, Podcasts

2 Comments

...pist, permaculture designer, educator, and author. Rachel lives on a small urban homestead with her family and their many critters in Petaluma, CA. She is a co-founder of the 13 Moon CoLab, an all-woman teaching team offering an evolutionary training, Permaculture from the Inside Out. Her collaborators in this venture are Kyra Auerbach, Delia Carroll and Cassandra Ferrera. Rachel wrote Urban Homesteading: Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living (wi...

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