It Quacks Like a Duck

...of the line was an old comrade of ours, one of the proprietors of Petaluma Urban Homestead, who we know from Mr. Homegrown Revolution’s post grad school sojourn in the dull city of San Diego. In the ten years since we lost contact it turns out that our lives have taken similar paths, including the appreciation of Xtracycles and poultry. Except that the folks at Petaluma Urban Homestead have had the brilliance of exploring the world of ducks in add...

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Steal this Book!

...s illustrations, project ideas, resources, and first person anecdotes from urban homesteaders across the country. Authors Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen happily farm in their Echo Park bungalow and run the urban homestead blog: www.homegrownevolution.org. By the way, that’s not us on the cover–those be models. Since we’ve just about given up on privacy here’s a photo of us on the right (by Caroline Clerc). And, for the record, we don’t have a modern...

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Nursery Customers From Hell

...20 minute rambling conversation scared us away from ever wanting to do any landscaping at all. I am struggling to remember if she was even slightly encouraging about a single topic, but honestly, I don’t think she was. From a business perspective, I could not have imagined a worse sell. I am kicking myself, because I tried them once before a year prior (without my wife), and had the EXACT same result. I even had the same two workers providing the...

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Our new front yard: history

...ith our barren slope. As first time homeowners new to the whole concept of landscaping, we were stumped by the problem, but dutifully read our Sunset gardening guides and determined that we should plant the slope with Mediterranean plants. Through this process we began to learn the common names of plants, as as well as their exotic, hard to pronounce scientific names, and we began to pick up on basic vocabulary: terms like root ball and perennial...

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Book Review: The Urban Bestiary

...estiary is an exploration of the intimate intersection of humans and other urban animals, such as coyotes and raccoons and opossums and squirrels. In The Urban Bestiary, Haupt introduces us to our close neighbors, the animals which share our land, and sometimes even our homes. She gives us a naturalist’s overview of their behaviors, physiology and life cycles, interspersed with personal anecdotes and interviews with wildlife experts. The resulting...

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