Chicken of the Woods

...The very same mushroom pundits suggest thoroughly cooking all Laetiporus. I can report having consumed a lot of the mushroom we foraged with no ill effects. It was, in fact, one of the most delicious mushrooms I’ve ever consumed. But one should not trust the musings of an aging urban homesteading blogger when foraging for mushrooms. Find yourself a local mushroom nerd or run it past your cats. That said, don’t be too fearful either or you’ll miss...

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Go Plant a Million Trees

...trees, a bunch of ponds, enriched soil and wild stories.” In our own small urban yard, we’re beginning to see the fruits, literally, of our own small-scale arboreal efforts that we began over ten years ago. This month we had a abundant crop of Mission figs, avocados, olives and pomegranates. And that pathetic vegetable garden I blogged about? My heretical thinking is to give up annual vegetables entirely and use the space to plant two small citrus...

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Hey New York Times Let’s Dump the Wheels Column

...f communities, thanks to the insatiable hunger for space cars claim in our urban spaces. Failing to point out these objective facts makes your auto columns little more propaganda. Where is your bike column? Where is your transit advice column? Where is your walk-ability coverage? Sure, you touch on these issues elsewhere but these subjects have no dedicated column like “Wheels.” Perhaps it’s time to start treating cars the way you might treat ciga...

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Scooters? Not a New Idea

...8 · New York Herald (New York, New York) · Newspapers.com It turns out the urban scooter craze isn’t a new idea. From a story in an October 8, 1916 newspaper, “Skidding Through Fact and Fancy on an Autoped: Solo Devil Wagon Taken Up in a Serious Way Might Add New Terrors to City Life” is a description of motorized scooter not all that different than the ones we see today: You stand on the cute platform and get your feet neatly fitted on the rubber...

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Spaceship Earth

...what could be more non-essential than hippie avant-garde thespians? For us urban homesteader types, it’s also good to have a reminder that hubris in the face of complexity is an occupational hazard of anyone who attempts to garden, keep animals, cook from scratch or otherwise interact with things other than laptops and iPhones. You can stream Spaceship Earth via the YouTubes for here. If you haven’t seen Adam Curtis’ All Watched Over by Machines o...

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