Urban Farming in Oakland

Public radio station KCRW has an excellent interview with urban farmer and writer Novella Carpenter. Carpenter has pigs, goats, ducks, chickens and more all on a small lot in Oakland, California. You can listen to the radio interview here (along with some other interesting segments on hunting caribou, cooking pasta, roasting peppers, and more) on chef Evan Kleiman’s show Good Food. You can also check out Carpenter’s blog, meaningfulpursuit.com. W...

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016 The Urban Bestiary with Lyanda Lynn Haupt

...ot Simple Podcast we interview naturalist Lyanda Lynn Haupt, author of The Urban Bestiary, Crow Planet, Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent and Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds. During the podcast Lyanda covers: The effect of the drought on urban wildlife Invasive species How to get along with wildlife such as skunks, possums, raccoons and coytes The problem with relocating animals (except rats!) Moles and gophers Seeing raccoons during the day...

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Reader Feedback About Facebook

...ilding an entirely different internet Adam says, I deleted my FB account in 2010. I use something called Hubzilla to connect to other people. It runs on my own server (it is a de-centralized thing, so it connects to other people who are running compatible software ). That gives me everything I need as far as networking with people. I use a FeedReader to keep track of my favorite blogs and news sites. Hubzilla requires some technical prowess that I...

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2014: The Year in Review

...otices . . . February Advantages and Disadvantages of Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening After a successful straw bale garden in the summer of 2013, I finally got around to building new raised beds to replace some that we had taken out. Our lead and zinc contaminated soil necessitates this, but I wish I didn’t have to use raised beds for reasons I outlined in this post. March Is Ham Radio Useful? The jury is still out on this question, to be honest. I...

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Let’s Democratize Permaculture

...urses are out of the budget and time constraints of backyard gardeners and rooftop apartment growers. Toby Hemenway’s book Gaia’s Garden: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture is a step in the right direction. We need more voices like Hemenway, who can explain the design principles of permaculture to the masses. And let’s take these principles and apply them not just to gardening, but to the ways we arrange our schools, offices, homes and public spac...

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