Saturday Linkages: Mobile Pods, Soil Erosion and Getting Doored by a Porta-Potty

...come Water-Sustainable http://www.kcet.org/news/redefine/rewild/commentary/report-offers-a-way-for-california-to-become-water-sustainable.html … Man on bike strikes porta-potty door; two hurt: http://bit.ly/1pisQdq Could a medicine used to treat gout also save our citrus? http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/could-a-medicine-used-to-treat-gout-also-save-our-citrus … For these links and more, follow Root Simple on Twitter:...

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How to Carry Heavy Objects with a Two-Person Carrying Pole

...le would work much better for most other objects. The carrying pole can be used to carry people, a use for which there is a word in English: “litter.” Here’s a carrying pole being used in Guatemala to carry an injured man to the hospital: I’m hoping that the litter version of the carrying poll will become Kelly’s new way of getting around the neighborhood during the hot summer months: In all seriousness, I would like to figure out a way to get rel...

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How to Make Stock

...g on the top, which you can lift off. Fish Stock Fish stock is, obviously, used as the basis of various classic fish soups and stews: chowder, cioppino, bouillabaisse, lobster bisque, etc. You can make fish stock with fish bits–bones, heads, tails, scrap meat and other fishy leftovers, or you can make shellfish stock with shellfish peelings, like crab, shrimp or lobster shells. Again, this is about letting nothing go to waste, and these parts are...

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Is Purslane the New Kale?

...le fame. We planted some this year in our summer vegetable garden and I’ve used it in a lot of salads this week. Purslane is a common weed in North America. We’d love to be able to forage it in the neighborhood but, for some reason, it only tends to appear in unappetizing locations: usually the gutter (I think it needs a bit more water than what falls naturally from the sky here). You can eat the whole plant: stems and leaves. It has a salty and s...

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Root Simple’s New CritterCam

.... I’ll share the results on the blog over the next year. The first night I used the camera I pointed it at the grape arbor where I know rats visit. The resulting images, that I strung together into the video above, show at least two rats who set off the camera around 30 times throughout the night between 8:30 PM and 5:30 AM. This is the first year that we’ve got a significant crop off of either of our two grapevines. I think I could have prevented...

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