How to make your soup wonderful: Wild food soup stock

We’ve mentioned urban foragers and foodie extraordinaires Pascal Baudard and Mia Wasilevic before. They not only forage food, but go on to make really good stuff with it. One of their websites is Urban Outdoor Skills, and I like to go there to check out a section called the Food Lab, where they talk about food products they’re experimenting with, and give how-to’s. A few months ago Erik brought home a beautiful bouquet of nettles. I decided to tr...

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Picture Sunday: Images of Detroit

...s week I discovered that regular reader Jill Nienhuis is not only an urban homesteader, but a talented artist, too. Her paintings and other projects are wonderful – -you can see more at her website : Jill Nienhuis Jill lives in a neighborhood in NW Detroit called Brightmoor. It’s a neighborhood which has fallen on hard times, but is being revitalized, largely through gardening. She and her boyfriend, Michael, are growing a large garden on several...

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Saturday Linkages: Modem Sounds, HOAs, and Hand Counting

...t.co/9s6lQIQc6a — Root Simple (@rootsimple) September 9, 2016 5 Make-Shift Urban Survival Lights When the Electricity Goes Down https://t.co/kSgRehCXAw via @sharethis — Root Simple (@rootsimple) September 5, 2016 Well said, Carol! It's 90 degrees in the shade — have you watered that tree? https://t.co/AJj90FJbTn #drought #LANHM #ilovetrees — Root Simple (@rootsimple) September 2, 2016 New #DIY video, how to install a french drain https://t.co/...

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094 The American Woman’s Home

On the podcast this week Kelly and I discuss a 19th century urban homesteading book written by Catherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, The American Woman’s Home. The book was written mostly by Catherine, with some contributions from Harriet (author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin). It’s likely that Catherine realized that attaching her famous sister’s name would sell more copies. Published in 1869, The American Woman’s Home covers a great deal of terri...

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Paper Wasps: Your New BFFs

...ative European variant is more the wasp you will likely be dealing with in urban/suburban North America, because unlike their native counterparts, Euro wasps aren’t shy. They are the ones who will build a nest by your back door, or on the side of your mailbox. Paper wasps build those distinctive, easy to recognize papery nests made of many cells. There are other types of native wasps which build with different materials, such as mud. Honeybee colo...

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