Climate Change and Personal Responsibility

...en so much positive change on this front, even just in the last few years. Urban homesteading, slow food, organics, bikes, car share, DIY, all of it — it’s blossoming. It’s very hopeful. I’m going to put the next part in italics because it’s so important: The pleasure and satisfaction that we all receive from living this way is the positive counterspell to the dark enchantment of consumer culture. When we live this way, we become positive examples...

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Of Skunks, Sauerkraut and Stoicism

...We were honored when the nice folks behind Stoic Week 2013 asked us to write a blog post. It begins, Practicality is why stoicism works so well as the philosophical operating system of urban homesteading. While Foucault and Hegel might help me navigate the epistemological frontier, when I’m staring at a carefully tended vegetable bed that just got destroyed by a skunk, you can bet I’ll reach for the Seneca. Read the rest here....

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Help us With a Fodder System for our Hens

.../run. Ideally they’d be grazing on green pasture all day. But our abundant urban predators, lack of space and dry climate make the vision of hens clucking on verdant fields a challenge. I’m thinking of building a DIY fodder system but I’m a bit confused by the instructions I’ve seen floating about the interwebs. Which is where you come in. Have you built a fodder system? Do you know any good instructions? How big should it be for five hens? Or do...

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How To Calculate Anything

...ate Ohm’s law? Convert women’s clothing sizes? Calculate the area of a circle? Figure out whether its better to buy or rent a home? It’s all at www.calculatoredge.com. The site has lots of formulas for the urban homsteader even if you never have to perform a Sallen-Key Butterworth Low Pass Filter equation (except, perhaps, for recreational reasons). Thanks to Bruce Nolte, N1BN for the tip....

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Saturday Linkages: Can We Please Have More Underpass Chandeliers?

...fied with recycled bike chandeliers : TreeHugger http://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/ballroom-luminoso-underpass-converted-bike-chandeliers-joe-oconnell-blessing-hancock.html … Yes, the farm bill is politically corrupt. Veto it! http://goo.gl/fb/vhLtK What’s wrong with an ugly winter garden? http://gu.com/p/3mb4a/tw The secret light of plants by Elizabeth Licata http://feedly.com/e/_hlIqNZG California Legalized Selling Food Made At Home And Cre...

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