Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In June, we wake up at 5 am when the sun rises. It’s important to get our outside work done before the heat of the day. Since we can’t afford A/C, we try to take siestas, or at least not move much, from 11 to 3. The ceiling fans help, and we’ve found that our bodies are getting used to the absence of climate control. I’ve seen a lot of lovely sunrises in the past few years from getting up at the crack of dawn.
Permablitz: An event in which volunteers use permaculture principles to transform a suburban garden into a place that produces its own food.
Window Farms: An experiment in urban agriculture
Many Summer Internships Are Going Organic
Washington State University cancels freshman reading of ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’
Watermelons Tapped For Ethanol
Freezers are vulnerable to either localized (and by localized this can be as local as “my husband accidentally kicked the cord out and we didn’t notice until it was too late) or widespread power outages. The reality is that if you keep food in your freezer, sooner or later, you will probably have an extended power outage.
Green (1/8th) Acres sprout in the city
Bay Area’s new crop of gardeners digging in
How a greener city gets growing
From Motor City to Garden City
The Global Food Crisis: The End of Plenty
A new agrarian culture
Michael Pollan rallies Boulderites, businesses
Can a city girl live off wild food for a week in Portland?
The lazy farmer (Australia)
Ecological economics and the food system
Slow Money on the farm
Humanity, good food & animal welfare
Strong opinions about obesity
David Attenborough: Our planet is overcrowded
Recession ‘entertainment’ may beget new baby boom
For urban gardeners, lead is a concern
The sewage plant carries the sweet smell of valuable phosphorus
Back to the “old normal” of domesticity
Going up? Farming in high-rises raises hopes
Transitioning our food from fossil fuel based to sun based
What makes efficiency? Is it clever management? The “productivity” of human resources? Economies of scale? Centralization? Better information and computer systems? The competition of markets? Business people give credit to these innovations, and all of these changes may contribute incrementally to the cheapness of our food, but these are just icing on the cake. The real underpinning of what we think of as efficiency is cheap energy – especially cheap oil.
The most amazing aspect of it, and I don’t know why, is that this “wild” lettuce is ready to eat before the lettuce that I plant early in the cold frame, coddled with compost and protected with a plastic cover on cold nights. The “wild” lettuce grows faster. If I had any brains, I would quit the cold-frame lettuce, but so far I just don’t have enough faith in nature to do it.
The sewage plant carries the sweet smell of valuable phosphorus
Recession leads to big drop in amount of rubbish we are throwing away
Severn Trent sees light at the end of the tunnel for its new revenue plan
