Saturday Linkages: Cheese Powder and Torpedo Bikes

...-than-this-crowdfunde-1458308873 … Berlin workshop on “Unpleasant Design”: urban design that bullies it users: http://boingboing.net/2013/11/11/berlin-workshop-tomorrow-on.html … It’s Time to Rethink America’s Corn System http://ensia.com/voices/its-time-to-rethink-americas-corn-system/ … Cheese powder: What is it?: http://boingboing.net/2013/11/14/cheese-powder-what-is-it.html … My Vintage Apron Collection http://hencam.com/thevintagehen/2013/11/...

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Campfire Cooking: Fish in Clay (& Vegetarian Options!)

...ls, you should use clay packs instead. Pascal said that cooked this way, carrots should be done in about 15 minutes, small potatoes in about 25 minutes, full sized potatoes in an hour. To find out more about Pascal and Mia’s classes, check out Urban Outdoor Skills and Transitional Gastronomy. It’s worth a trip to Los Angeles to take a class. Their Meetup groups are The Los Angeles Wild Food and Self-Reliance Group and Foraging Foodies LA. Friend t...

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How Much Can You Carry on a Bicycle?

...s to climb hills even with heavy groceries. One need not be car-free to enjoy a cargo bike. For many years Kelly and I shared a car. The Xtracycle was a big part of making that car-light arrangement work. When people ask if urban homesteading saves money, the first thing I point to is the cargo bike, not the chicken coop. The problem? Cargo bikes are not nearly as sexy as the Playboy Land Yacht. That’s a problem I’ll get to in a future post....

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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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