(Watch video: YouTube, Dotsub, or download MP4.)

A quick little goodie from Boing Boing Video. Last night, I sat in on a live recording session at Santa Monica's Village Studios with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, described as "African-American string band revivalists." They were amazing: I have never been so emotionally moved by someone playing a musical jug (and banjos, fiddles, cow bones, and kazoos). Their performance was witnessed by a handful of music biz folks and oldtime music enthusiasts, and made me feel deeply homesick for Appalachia (I'm also craving cornbread and butterbeans today - there's a song for that).

The Chocolate Drops have a new record coming out in 2010, and Boing Boing will be all over it like gravy on grits. If you dig R. Crumb, Smithsonian Folkways recordings of pre-blues and pre-bluegrass banjo music, and love folks who bring new life to authentic American music, you will flip out.

So, the video above: after the Drops' performance and recording session ended, Dom Flemons (of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, seated in center in the video), Blind Boy Paxton (seated at left in the video), and Frank Fairfield (seated far right) sat down together and jammed pure, sweet magic for a spell. I wasn't prepared with a proper camera or crew, but I grabbed my iPhonetraption out of my pocket and got to shootin'. I hope you enjoy it as much as everyone in the room did. Pure magic, these guys.

[R]ather than spending tons of money and time on diesel-powered machines, filing the proper permits, and administering dangerous herbicides, the Seattle-based Rent-a-Ruminant organization will loan your a team of 100 goats for all your brush-clearing needs--all at a very modest rates. As Serious Eats explains, the benefits of goats are numerous: they eat just about anything, they can work on uneven ground, you don't need permits to use them, and they can clear a quarter-acre in about three days.

A face mask with which to attract hungry, curious hummingbirds, $80 from heatstick.com. The masks do look silly, and the website is nothing if not homebaked. But if the maker's YouTube videos are to be believed, these contraptions do attract the little buggers and make for amazing eye-to-eye encounters with one of the most magical winged creatures on the planet. I'm kind of dying to try one out.

Using and enjoying the feeder is a two step process. The first is to acquaint the hummingbirds with the feeder. We set an old can of paint on a small shelf on the side of the barn and slipped the feeder onto the can. It wasn't long before the hummingbirds found it, and after a little searching, found the feeding station. Then we let them get familiar with the feeder for a few days. Finally we set a chair next to the shelf, removed the feeder from the can, slipped it on and waited. One never forgets the first time a hummingbird suddenly arrives at the feeder right in front of your eyes.

Product: "Eye to Eye Wearable Hummingbird Feeder." The guy behind it lives in California's Humboldt County, and has invented some other neat earth-gadgety stuff, too, like the Veg-a-Lot growing shelter [heatstick.com].

(Thanks, Dean Putney!)

Boing Boing guestblogger Connie Choe is a health and culture writer by day and a professional kimchimonger by night.

Having lived in suburbia for the past 20 years, I often hear desperation-tinged fantasies (my own, mostly)of wanting to flee this neatly manicured existence to someplace that is rather different and very beautiful, but that's not too expensive and preferably not mucked up by other travelers.

For anyone else who seconds this emotion, I believe the answer to our yearnings is WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms). Here's how it works: You choose a host organic farm in whichever country you like and arrange a temporary stay (ranging from a few days up to several months) during which you will work without pay in exchange for food and shelter. It's all the fun of being an indentured servant or migrant laborer without all the obligations!

Ransom Riggs, over at the mental_floss blog, has a great pictorial tour of Bodie, California--America's quintessential ghost town. I remember reading about Bodie in my Childcraft Encyclopedias back in the day, and I'm excited to finally see the whole thing up close...

A mining boomtown, it was the third most populous city in the state of California in 1880. By the 1940s sickness, wars, bad weather and exhausted mines had led to the town's desertion, and its isolated, inhospitable location made certain that it stayed that way; no one eyed this high desert waste, 8,000 feet above sea level between Yosemite and the lonely Nevada border, and imagined a shopping mall in its place.

Only five percent of Bodie's structures are still standing, but considering how large Bodie was, that's still a lot for a ghost town -- more than two hundred. And unlike Tombstone, Calico or any number of other "preserved" ghost towns in the West, it's not a tourist trap where you can buy cotton candy from gunfight-staging actors playing oldey-timey cowboys; the town is kept in a state of "arrested decay,"

Gloriously haunting photos (pardon the pun) and some nifty history await. Check it out.

Image courtesy Flickr user mulmatsherm, via CC

Homegrown Evolution has an interesting story about Asian citrus psylid, and ant-sized insect that could spell doom for California citrus.

The Asian citrus psylid is not a problem in itself, but carries an incurable bacterial disease called huanglongbing (HLB). HLB, first reported in Asia in 1919, renders citrus fruit inedible and eventually kills the tree. Parts of Africa, Asia and South America are infected with HLB and in some regions of Brazil the disease is so bad that they've given up growing citrus altogether. HLB is in Florida and is adding to a nightmarish collection of other diseases afflicting citrus in the Sunshine State. Now California growers are panicking with the appearance of the psylid.

Seneca [author of Letters from a Stoic] would say, do what is in your power to do and don't worry about what you can't fix. Taleb [author of The Black Swan] would advise always maximizing upside potential while minimizing exposure to the downside. My unsentimental conclusion: don't try to grow citrus. If I had a mature tree I'd leave it in place and rip it out at the first sign of HLB. Despite the state's offer to replace any HLB infected tree with a free citrus tree I wouldn't take them up on the offer. In our case we have three small, immature citrus trees that are already chewed up by citrus leafminers. I'm pondering pulling them up and replacing them with fruit trees unrelated to citrus. This follows our stoic, get tough policy in the garden. Planting a tree entails a considerable investment in time. It can take years to get fruit. Why not plant pomegranate instead and let other people worry about citrus diseases? If a pomegranate disease shows up, rip it up and plant something else. Following this approach will eliminate habitat for the psylid and negate the need for pesticides.

The Smithsonian Institution has an online collection of seed catalog art. If King Corn ever runs for president, I'll vote for him, because his crown is cool. (Via City Farmer)

About 160 heads came to Kraut Fest 2009, held at Machine Project in Los Angeles on Sunday, September 6.

Of those 160 heads, 40 were human and 120 were cabbage. The humans were there to learn how to change the cabbage into sauerkraut (based on my Russian grandmother's recipe), kimchi, and choucroute garni (a "meat fiesta" from the Alsace region in France).

I recognized the nice couple in the photo above from Picklefest 2008, which was held last year at Machine Project. The couple that ferments together stays together!

Many thanks to Machine Project founder Mark Allen for hosting the event, Slow Food LA for sponsoring it, Urban Homestead authors Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen for organizing it, Granny Choe for the kimchi lessons, and Jean-Pail Monsché for the mouth watering choucroute garni!

Photos of Krautfest 2009

If you want to learn how to make sauerkraut, kimchi, and choucroute garni, head over to Machine Project in Los Angeles this Sunday, September 6, for Kraut Fest 2009!

I'm teaching how to make sauerkraut (ridiculously easy) but I really am looking forward to learning how to make kimchi from Granny Choe!

UPDATE: the class is now SOLD OUT. If you signed up, I'll see you there!

Taught by Mark Frauenfelder, Erik Knutzen, Kelly Coyne, Jean-Paul Monsche, and the winner of Critter’s 2009 Kimchi Competition, Oghee “Granny” Choe.

Come learn how to make your own sauerkraut, kimchi, and choucroute garni, the signature dish of Alsace (described to us as a ridiculous meat fiesta).

11am - Making Sauerkraut - click HERE for a list of ingredients to bring!

12pm - Making Kimchi - click HERE for a list of ingredients to bring!

1pm - Choucroute Garni presentation & sampling

You can register to make either kimchi or sauerkraut for $10, or both for $15. Registration gets you a “kraut kit” consisting of a bucket, a plate to fit in the bucket and a limited edition, hand-silkscreened poster (see here).

Participants will need to bring their own ingredients (we’ll provide the shopping list). Funded in part by a grant from Slow Food LA. Thank you Slow Food LA!

Alan Graham's home made automatic chicken door has mine beat by a country mile, because he can run it from his iPhone. His hens sure are cute.

"Beautiful coop built by Jeff Taylor and his granddaughter, Jayda, pictured."

My Pet Chicken (the place I ordered my baby Barred Plymouth Rocks hens from) has a gallery of chicken coops built from scratch.

Also, My Pet Chicken has a great "Cash for Cluckers" sale. They'll send you 25 chicks (all hens) for $41.50 with free shipping. That's a great deal, because the regular price is $100.

Chicken coops

Kirk, the leader of our Backwards Beekeepers club here in LA, shows how to harvest honey. Film made by fellow bee club member Russell Bates.

Backwards Beekeepers TV: The Honey Harvest

Here's a quick video snapshot I took over the weekend from one of my favorite local hikes here in Southern California: the Solstice Canyon trail above Malibu. The video's nothing special, but as I was shooting it (on my iPhone 3GS, with a twig for a tripod) I thought "this might be an inspiring little ambient morsel for BB readers to zone out to during their work day. So here it is. I mention the device used because I was pretty wowed by the video and audio quality. Here's my Flickr set of more video snapshots from the waterfall (others are higher-quality and less compressed than this).

There are some spots on the trail where you can look out over the Pacific, and if the season's right you may view a migrating gray whale or two. According to an LA Times article published in 1988 when this land became a state park,

[The site] was formerly used as a laboratory to test payloads for space shots for TRW Inc. and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. (...) [T]he aerospace firms picked the site because they needed a "non-magnetic setting," or an area far removed from telephone lines and electrical cables. One of the buildings had a removable roof so that heavy equipment could be lifted from the structure.

Happy mutant architect Wilfred J.O. Armster designed this fabulous spaceship/boat/floating orb residence from steel, copper and concrete. One of the factors that influenced the design of this building was the need to fit it within a very narrow site. The home was even featured in a 2002 Zippy the Pinhead strip. Snip from NYT profile of the man and his house, by Penelope Green:

"Monstrous," is how a few described the project in an article in The New Haven Register. In the local public school, an eighth-grade teacher held up the article, which was accompanied by a picture of the building's design, and proclaimed, "This is the kind of building that should not be built here." What the teacher didn't know was the name of the architect -- perhaps she hadn't read the article carefully -- so she was unaware that his daughter, Nicola, was in the classroom. "Nicola stood up and debated her," Mr. Armster said proudly.

The public hearing to approve the project has become a local legend, said Mr. Portly, the engineer, who remembered it vividly.

Guilford residents packed the town hall, and stood up one by one to announce their objections: that the structure wasn't Colonial enough, that it didn't fit into the town's heritage, that building it was a kind of heresy. One woman said it would ruin her view as she sailed on the sound. When the litany of complaints had finished, Mr. Armster began to speak.

"I said something like: 'I know you're all Republicans and businessman and I know you think I'm a communist or a socialist. But it seems to me that you are objecting to this building because you don't like the way it looks.' "

Yesterday, Mister Jalopy reported a swarm of bees under the seat of one of his bikes for sale at Coco's Variety in Los Angeles. Upon hearing the news, neighbor Amy Seidenwurm headed over to the store, donned her bee suit, and bravely herded the bees to a cardboard box, transferring them to "greener pastures where the flowers are dripping with nectar and hives are clean and commodious."

2 Wheels, 2000 Bees

We covered Doug Fine's radical off-the-grid lifestyle experiment last year on Boing Boing TV -- embed above. He is the author of Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living, and he's still going strong out there on the Funky Butte Ranch. When he's not out in the fields turning the compost heap or feeding chickens, he's working on his next book, which I'm looking forward to reading. Doug has a thought-provoking piece out in this Sunday's Washington Post Outlook section, here's a preview:

I have a fiancee and a son to provide for, so I decided to take a hard look at our prospects for survival if our consumer safety nets went away. For now, my green lifestyle choices at my remote 41-acre outpost in the American Southwest are optional. You know, growing lettuce instead of buying Chilean. Using organic cotton diapers instead of buying Pampers. But what if one morning in, say, 2049, I wake up to milk my goats and find out that supplies are no longer streaming in from China and California? What would I do if both box stores and crunchy food co-ops suddenly were no more? In other words, I'm examining my place in a hypothetical post-oil, post-consumer society 40 years in the future.

Now, I'm not rooting for such a thing. Slave labor, forest depletion, climate change and global resource wars aside, globalization has a lot going for it. I love that I can email a musician in Mauritania and ask to download his latest album. And anyway, lots of people still see globalization as the economic model for the foreseeable future. But when I was covering the former Soviet Union as a journalist in the 1990s, every single person I met told me that they'd thought pigs would fly before the Politburo crumbled.

Pat Race of Alaska Robotics, whose "Buy Back Alaska" video was featured here a couple years ago, has created a new video about crushing absurdity of national economics. It's embedded above, and I think it's sweet and funny in a homey, dorky, "I made this!" way.

From the land of Sarah Palin, meth shacks, and aerial elk-massacres, he emails Boing Boing:

Alaska Robotics is Pat Race, Aaron Suring, Lou Logan, Sarah Asper-Smith, and whoever else falls into our cast of friends and family. We live in Juneau where we make short films, draw comics, and eat halibut. We organize screenings of locally made short films twice a year and also work to bring filmmakers, animators and writers north to teach workshops.

If you're interested, there are a bunch of other films on our site, I like these ones: Socks, The Big Joke, Butterfly Kisses, Town vs. Valley, Nipple Fire, High Five.

Before you make your own kombucha, here are a few reasons why you might not want to:

• Paul Stamets: "The danger of misuse should be a prevailing concern for us all"
• CDC: Unexplained severe illness possibly associated with consumption of kombucha tea
• Journal of Intensive Care Medicine: A case of kombucha tea toxicity

Why do I drink it? Because it's fun to make and the flavor is almost addictive. The benefits outweigh the risks, at least for me. Here's how I make it. (Click on photos for enlargement.):

1. Get some live kombucha. I foolishly paid $25 to an online store that sells the culture in little vials (as seen above). As I later found out, you can buy a bottle of kombucha for a few dollars at grocery store and use that as your starter. If you have a friend who makes it, ask them for a "mother" (the floppy, blobby, disc that floats on top of a batch of kombucha) and a cup of the kombucha tea.

2. Collect the ingredients: sugar, vinegar (or a half cup of the kombucha tea from your last batch), tea bags (any kind). I used green tea for my first batch, but I'm now using decaf black tea.

3. Add 4-8 tea bags into a little less than one gallon of water. I used filtered water and a ceramic crock. I've heard you shouldn't use metal containers to make kombucha. Let it steep for a while. You can use hot water to steep the tea, but let it cool down before you add any culture (to prevent killing it).

4. Stir in 1 or 1 and 1/2 cups of sugar. The sugar is the fuel for the kombucha microbes. I have been using one cup of sugar, but in the batch I started yesterday I used one and one-half cups because I want it to be stronger and more vinegary. I have heard that the more sour it is, the more resistant it is to bacterial infection. (How do you like my hand carved spoon?)

5. Stir in 1/2 cup of kombucha from your last batch, or 1/4 cup of vinegar and a vial of expensive kombucha culture you foolishly purchased over the Internet.

6. Cover crock with cloth for a week. If a "mushroom" (not a real mushroom) has grown on the surface, that means it worked! Save the mushroom and use it to cover your next batch. In a week, the mushroom will have another mushroom attached to it that you can peel off and use, discard, or give away.

7. Transfer the tangy, fizzy beverage into a bottle and refrigerate. Some websites say not to store kombucha in plastic but I like this one gallon bottle.

If you have any tips to share about kombucha, please put them in the comments.

Holstrom's violation is the fancifully painted 55-gallon buckets underneath the gutters of her farmhouse on a mesa 15 miles from the resort town of Telluride. The barrels catch rain and snowmelt, which Holstrom uses to irrigate the small vegetable garden she and her husband maintain.

But according to the state of Colorado, the rain that falls on Holstrom's property is not hers to keep. It should be allowed to fall to the ground and flow unimpeded into surrounding creeks and streams, the law states, to become the property of farmers, ranchers, developers and water agencies that have bought the rights to those waterways.

But the NY Times reports that Colorado passed a couple of laws to make this practice legal.

A study in 2007 proved crucial to convincing Colorado lawmakers that rain catching would not rob water owners of their rights. It found that in an average year, 97 percent of the precipitation that fell in Douglas County, near Denver, never got anywhere near a stream. The water evaporated or was used by plants.

But the deeper questions about rain are what really gnawed at rain harvesters like Todd S. Anderson, a small-scale farmer just east of Durango. Mr. Anderson said catching rain was not just thrifty — he is so water conscious that he has not washed his truck in five years — but also morally correct because it used water that would otherwise be pumped from the ground.

Jim Leftwich says:

"I'm thinking the next step beyond raising chickens in the backyard is to have your own Goat Tower!

"Currently there are only three Goat Towers in the world (which I think you'll agree is not nearly enough!). The original Goat Tower was built in 1981 by Charles Back at the Fairview Wine and Cheese Estate in Paarl, South Africa. The estate has 750 Saanen goats and some of these are allowed access to the tower.

"The other two Goat Towers are the "Tower of Baaa" in Findlay, Illinois and one built in 2006 in Ekeby, Norway, both of which are modeled on the original.

"Here's an interview with David Johnson, who built one in Illinois, and which is interesting because it contains a lot of great details about the Goat Tower's construction."

"Goats love it and people driving by can't believe it," says David Johnson of Findlay, Ill., about his 31-ft. tall, 7-ft. dia. "goat tower" built with the help of the late Jack Cloe, Herrick, Ill. The tower was constructed with 5,000 hand-made bricks, each one a different size and shape. The tower has 276 concrete steps, arranged to form a spiral staircase, that allows Johnson's goats to climb up and down with ease.

Johnson has 34 Saanen milk goats that use the tower. "Goats are the most curious animals in the world so they use the tower a lot. They come and go, passing each other on the ramp as needed."

...

The roof is supported by wheels that ride on a circular steel rail along the upper edge of the tower wall. "I cut a door into the roof and plan to use a garage door opener to rotate the roof and use it as an observation tower. I might even bring a telescope up there to look at stars," says Johnson.

My friends Kelly and Erik at Homegrown Evolution have an interesting post about another one of their least favorite plants -- the poisonous Yellow Oleander.

Thumbing through a book of toxic and hallucinogenic plants, I finally manged to i.d. the neighbor's shrub that looms over the staircase to our front door. The popular name given for this plant in the book was "suicide tree", so named for its use in Sri Lanka, though I've found other plants with this same moniker. The scientific name is Thevetia peruviana, and it's also known as "lucky nut" (can we change that to unlucky nut please), Be Still Tree (presumably because you'll be still if you eat any of it), and yellow oleander (it's a relative of Southern California's favorite freeway landscaping flower).

The Boing Boing editors have been having fun with some guest-writing over at GOOD, and my latest contribution has just been published. It involves NOM. Here's a snip:

When the economy took a nosedive, I did the same thing a lot of other Americans did: I looked at my household expenses and my lifestyle with newly frugal eyes, and began thinking about costs and personal priorities in new ways. That included food.

Rethinking what I cook and eat post-econopocalypse meant simpler, slower food; a more local and traditional diet which, in fact, makes good sense in any economic weather. But I live an urban life. I spend a lot of time online or working in short attention bursts. I don’t have a lot of time to cook or prepare food, and my city apartment doesn’t afford room to raise goats or grow tomatoes.

Despite this, I’ve gradually eased into a number of new rituals and good habits that reduced my grocery bill and make me feel happier and healthier. One of them is making yogurt each week. It takes maybe 20 minutes of actual work and attention, zero equipment beyond stuff I already had in my kitchen, and yields a yummier, healthier, and yes, “probiotic” product that costs five to 10 times less than the store-bought stuff.

Here are the basics of rolling your own yogurt the lazy Xeni way...

(Special thanks to my co-editor, BB founder Mark Frauenfelder, for putting the yogurt bug in my head, so to speak.)

Heart shaped watermelons (Via Japan Probe)

Phil Ross says:

Please come to the first annual CRITTER Kimchi Contest!

All are welcome to submit their favorite version of this spicy pickled delicacy and taste the competition. The people’s choice will win $100, second wins $75, and third will get $50. Bring 1 quart of your best Kimchi to CRITTER on Saturday May 9th at 1 PM. Tasting opens at 2PM.

All varieties accepted! There will be ongoing demonstration of how Kimchi is made, and plenty of palette-cleansing white rice available. So even if you don’t have a favorite recipe for Kim Chee, or you’ve never tried it before—here’s a chance to try the best Kimchi at CRITTER.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine.

I know, I know. The recession blows. The job you may soon lose* is stressful and unpleasant. And beards are more popular these days. But before you abandon your fast-paced lifestyle for a quieter, more-cow-filled one, I recommend consulting my book, Be Amazing. There are a few things you need to think about.

1) Can You Tell the Difference Between Amish and Mennonite?
You're never going to endear yourself to your new neighbors if you can't tell 'em apart from their theological cousins down the road. Historically the older of the two sects, Mennonites believed in plain, unadorned living and adult baptism, making them not all that different from the other Christian groups that popped up in Germany and Switzerland in the 17th century. But, around 1693, one of their members, a guy named Jakob Amman, started to get a little rowdy. Amman traveled around the countryside preaching a more hard-line version of Mennonism that called for, among other things, a return to traditional clothing, avoidance of worldly grooming trends like moustaches, mandatory un-cut beards, and the public shunning of excommunicated church members. Taking their name from Amman's, his new followers called themselves "Amish."

Over the next few hundred years, both groups did their fair share of theological off-shooting. Today, there are numerous sub-groups of both Mennonite and Amish, making it difficult to pin them down with generalities. However, in most cases, the easiest way to tell the two apart is to look for a family car--most Mennonites drive them, most Amish don't. But, just because they enjoy a faster mode of travel doesn't mean the Mennonites are ostentatious about their automobiles. In fact, it's common practice to cover any Detroit-installed chrome with black paint, just to let the world know they aren't trying to be flashy.

2) Do You Know the Best Place to Move?
Obviously, your city digs will have to go, but contrary to popular belief, the geographic epicenter of Amish life is not Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Turns out, several counties in east-central Ohio are actually home to the largest Amish community in the world--population 29,000, and growing. Each Amish family has an average of 7 children, so their numbers have seemingly doubled every 20 years since outsiders started keeping records in the 1940s.

3) Can You Find Where the In-Crowd Hangs Out?
Earn your dirt-road cred by taking a shopping trip to Spector's. This department store in Middlefield, Ohio caters to Amish customers. Since 1937, they've dealt in things like quilting supplies, fabric, and the other necessities of Amish life that can't be easily made on the farm. And with several locations around the state, it may well be the world's first Amish-centric chain store.

4) Will You Be Able to Buy a Farm?
It's harder than it sounds. There are two things working against you. First, that whole population growth issue means that every generation sees even more young men in need of a farm of their own. The other problem, however, comes from the outside. Across the country, the rural areas the Amish inhabit are rapidly becoming exurbs, and what was once farmland is being sold to make way for subdivisions and Wal-Marts--making raw land, even when it is available, prohibitively expensive. In Lancaster County, for instance, 100 acres cost as much as $1 million in 2007. Things may be a bit easier now, though, what with the bursting of the real-estate bubble. So, if you can get your hands on some good farmland, do be ready to build a lot of barns. You probably already know that Amish construct their own, and their neighbors', in massive 24-hour barn raising parties. But, because many Amish groups don't believe in using "worldly" devices like lightning rods, those hand-built barns often end up having to be re-hand-built.

The Electric Amish really are a band, and you should listen to their music.

*ETA: Thanks for the heads-up on my grammar brain-fart. It's Saturday. My brain takes the day off today.

I have practiced yoga on and off since I was a teenager, but in recent years, more off than on. Recently, when friends, colleagues, and family all seemed to be pointing out with greater frequency that I seemed particularly stressed (read: a total pain in the ass to be around), I made a commitment to switch that back to "on." It's been pretty great. I'm happier. The more I practice, the more centered I feel, physically, mentally, emotionally. And, the less of a total pain in the ass I am.

Yoga isn't about the accessories, and I loathe the idea that you have to have just the right gear, just the right teacher, just the right whatever to practice. You don't. But a good mat can really help. So when I got back into the groove of regular practice, I checked out a bunch of different mats -- from the ultra-thick black ones, to the "towel" kind folks like to use with "hot yoga," to the thin cheap synthetic ones. I have a stack of 8 of them sitting in the corner in this room, as I type this review.

But I've found my favorite now -- the just-released Revolution "eco" mat by PrAna.

It's sticky enough to help grip your fingers, palms, soles, and toes when you're doing balance poses -- and, truly, every pose involves some element of balance. It's 30" wide, much wider than standard mats and better fit for taller yoga students like myself. It's lightweight enough that I can carry it comfortably on my back in the cool little carrying sack they sell. It's thick enough that I don't feel the need to add extra cushioning during practice on poses that can be hard on the bones. It's made of all-natural materials, so I'm not investing in future landfill cruft. The sticky part took a little getting used to in poses where I tend to drag the tops of my feet accross the mat in transition from one asana to the other, but now that I've been with it for a few weeks -- I don't know, it's like sleeping in a nice new bed, or moving into an awesome new home. It's familiar now, and just feels like an extension of my body.

I recently met PrAna creative David Kennedy, a friendly surfer who pops a mean Adho Mukha Svanasana. We practiced together (it was one of the most enjoyable BB review demos I can recall). I asked him to talk with us about some of the engineering considerations that went into the mat's design.

His reply follows, after the jump.

Every time it rains here, Kris Holstrom knowingly breaks the law.

Holstrom's violation is the fancifully painted 55-gallon buckets underneath the gutters of her farmhouse on a mesa 15 miles from the resort town of Telluride. The barrels catch rain and snowmelt, which Holstrom uses to irrigate the small vegetable garden she and her husband maintain.

But according to the state of Colorado, the rain that falls on Holstrom's property is not hers to keep. It should be allowed to fall to the ground and flow unimpeded into surrounding creeks and streams, the law states, to become the property of farmers, ranchers, developers and water agencies that have bought the rights to those waterways.

...

"If you try to collect rainwater, well, that water really belongs to someone else," said Doug Kemper, executive director of the Colorado Water Congress. "We get into a very detailed accounting on every little drop."

Ever want a wine cellar but don’t have the space or money to build one? The Spiral Cellars design/build firm will dig a hole right in whatever room you want your cellar in and haul the dirt right out the front door. In the remaining void they infill a highly functionally and visually dazzling spiral-staircase wine cellar to fit all your favorite vintages and go with your favorite funky furniture designs.

Over at Craft: Online, Cathy Callahan writes about iron-on patches from the 1970s, taking special note of their packaging design.

Pictured above are a few packages of iron-on patches I found at my mom's house. I actually think she might have used the drawing on that Sturdy Brand package as a style guide for the way she dressed me. There are pictures of me dressed in almost that exact same outfit. I absolutely adore the graphic design, color palette, and illustrations. Wouldn't you just love to walk into Jo-Ann's today and see a whole rack of packages that looked like these?

I am actually kind of fascinated by the Plasti-Stitch corduroy patches. Were they meant to blend in seamlessly and look like you never had a hole in your pants? Or could you go wild and do a little mixing and matching? Perhaps you could tone down your plaid pants a bit by adding a little gray corduroy patch. The back of the package lists purple, olive green, maroo,n and gold as other available colors. Wow!

Let's take a closer look at the Touch O' Magic package: "Use on new jeans for longer wear..." I love their approach to "preventative" patching. But why not wait until you actually have a hole? And isn't the very nature of denim its strength? Iron-on patch sales must have been down in 1968, so those folks at Sandrew, Inc. (makers of Touch O' Magic) of Streetsboro, Ohio, had to come up with new ways to sell their product.

In September 2008, I got six baby Plymouth Barred Rock hens in the mail. They began laying eggs on March 6, 2009. The eggs are about 1/2 to 2/3 the size of "large" eggs I buy in the store (see the photo of the little egg on the left; click to make bigger).

The eggs my hens have been laying have nice thick shells because I give my hens plenty of crushed osyter shells. But one egg, which I pulled from the nesting box on Saturday, had no shell. It was like a rubber trick egg. Enjoy this video of me prodding and squeezing it repeatedly.

On May 19th, 2008, the City of Festus approved our occupancy inspection for the cave. Officially, this completed our project. There are still projects that can be started, completed and developed. Plenty of room in our 17,000 square foot home.

This is now where we live, work, raise our family and celebrate life! Here are a few of the details about the place: Historic, regionally famous cave: 15,000 square feet, divided into three main chambers.

The front chamber houses the main part of the 3-bedroom finished house.

The middle chamber holds the laundry room, storage, and a spare bath. The middle chamber made a great party room. 80 feet by 80 feet.

The back chamber still has the stage where Ted Nugent, Bob Seger, Ike and Tina Turner, the MC5 and many other bands performed.

Property: 2.8 scenic, partially wooded acres provide excellent privacy and the feel of the country right in the middle of town, just several blocks from shopping, dining, and other conveniences.

Energy efficiency: Geothermal and passive solar keep the home comfortable year-round without a furnace or air conditioning. In spite of the vast size of the home, our energy costs here run about the same as they did in our 800 square-foot starter home. The home naturally stays a little cooler than the average above-ground home, but we found that we acclimated quickly and easily.

Caveland US (Thanks Fipi Lele!)

Becky Stern says: I'm using the image data from my knee MRI to embroider pictures. I've just finished the first of many.

I recently decided that I'm going to give things I made as gifts to family and friends, instead of giving them store-bought stuff. There are three types of gifts I'm planning to make: food (honey from my bees, dried figs, and pickles), whittled wood items (spoons and other utensils), and felt creatures.

The green 3-eyed monster on the left is from a class I took a couple of years ago with my daughter. I really enjoyed making it, and it only took about 40 minutes to complete. I made the blue squid on Saturday, using felt purchased from Michaels (29 cents a sheet) and embroidery floss pilfered from one of Jenny Hart's Sublime Stitching kits. Again, I spent about 40 minutes making it. I chatted with my family as I cut and stitched it together, filling it with uncooked (duh) rice. My daughters joined in on the fun, making their own creations. It was a pleasant way to spend time together.

Here's my latest contribution to a series of essays by Boing Boing editors at GOOD -- a review of a "green move" service called RentAGreenBox.com, which I tried when I relocated not long ago. It priced out cheaper than cardboard boxes. The basic idea is to use materials made from 100% post-consumer waste. It was super convenient, they drop it all off, and pick it all up when you're done. Snip from my review:

They send a truck to your home with whatever number of boxes you need (they’ll help you estimate). The boxes are made from recycled plastic containers, and come in various sizes—smaller ones for heavy objects like books, larger ones for more lightweight things like clothes or bedding. The service comes with recycled packing materials, too, so you don’t have to use über-wasteful, petroleum-based stuff like bubble wrap or Styrofoam packing peanuts.

Spencer drove the (100% veggie biodiesel) truck to my home himself, and showed me around the truck and demonstrated the process in person. My dog liked him, and she liked rolling around in the “expandos” and “recocubes.”

Apart from being (surprise!) made from recycled materials, these packing materials also look attractive. The expandos are cute papercraft-oid thingies (like something Buckminster Fuller might fiddle with while bored at his desk), and we found the recocubes serve a second, sinister purpose: they’re great for tossing at whoever’s helping you move, when you’re all sore and tired and frustrated and want to blow off steam.

Previously:
* Boing Boing posts on GOOD!
* Boing Boing on GOOD: "All the Web's A Stage"
* Good: The return of amateur science
* Boing Boing on GOOD: A Mayan Village Reacts to Obama

It's so easy and fun to make sauerkraut that there's really no good excuse to buy it from a store. Plus, home made sauerkraut is full of living microbes that might be good for you. (Read news reports that kimchi -- spicy korean sauerkraut -- could be a bird flu remedy.)

Store bought sauerkraut is often not even real sauerkraut -- it's just cabbage soaked in salty vinegar. Even store bought brands of sauerkraut made from lacto-fermentation have usually been cooked to the point that they're no longer alive.

I've been making my own sauerkraut for years, based on my grandmother's "recipe" (it's hard to call it a real recipe, when the only ingredients are cabbage and salt), which is pretty much the same recipe found in the wonderful book, Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Ellix Katz. This book shows you how to make a wide variety of fermented foods: beer, wine, mead, miso, tempeh, sourdough bread, yogurt, cheese, and other more exotic foods. Katz, a long term HIV/AIDS survivor who lives on a queer intentional community in Tennessee, is a "fermentation fetishist." In the introduction to his book, he writes:

Wild fermentation is a way of incorporating the wild into your body, becoming one with the natural world. Wild foods, microbial cultures included, possess a great, unmediated life force, which can help us adapt to shifting conditions and lower our susceptibility to disease. These microorganisms are everywhere, and the techniques for fermenting with them are simple and flexible.

Wild fermentation involves creating conditions in which naturally occurring organisms thrive and proliferate. Fermentation can be low-tech. These are ancient rituals that humans have been performing for many generations. They are a powerful connection to the magic of the natural world, and to our ancestors, whose clever observations enable us to enjoy the benefits of these transformations.

Tools and ingredients: Sharp knife, 1-gallon stoneware fermenting crock (I bought one online from Simply Natural Foods for $30.50), wooden lid for 1-gallon crock, scrubbed and boiled rock to weigh down wooden lid, large plastic bowl, cutting board, something to mash the cabbage down into the crock (I used a 1-quart mason jar, you can use your fist if you want), 2 heads of cabbage (5 lbs), 3 tablespoons of non-iodized salt (sea or kosher).

You don't need to buy a starter culture -- there are lactic acid bacteria floating around in the air ready to go to work on the cabbage. I find that amazing.

For the rest of the instructions and lots of pretty (and one gruesome) photos, click the link below.

Interesting documentary about a couple of Chicagoans who find and eat edible weeds, wild berries, nettles, purslane, apples, and other goodies free for the taking in the urban landscape.

Urban foragers are people who eat what grows naturally from a very unnatural place— a city. In this all-vegetarian Sky Full of Bacon podcast, urban foragers show us how they find food all around them. Chef-blogger Art Jackson shows us what's growing around his home in Pilsen, and then foraging expert Nance Klehm, Art and I nibble our way through a remarkable wilderness literally in the shadow of Chicago's skyscrapers.

SECURITY CAMERAS vinyl toilet fridge wall or window decal (Thanks, Iain!)

Hate your neighbor? Buy a long-crowing rooster.

According to poultry expert Gail Damerow, writing in the current issue of Backyard Poultry Magazine, long crowers probably have their origins in Japan and have spread throughout the world through deliberate selection. Here's a play list for your listening pleasure, consisting of a Turkish long crowing breed, the Denizli, followed by a Koeyoshi (good crower in Japanese) and the Tomaru (black crower).

I didn't know Feijoas were sold in supermarkets. From my experience, they have a one-day window of peak ripeness, so they don't seem to be good candidates for supermarkets. These puny, shriveled feijoas cost $1.79 each at a supermarket here in Los Angeles. That means I've been eating at least $17.90 worth of feijoas every day. Luckily for me, they're free because I have a tree full of them.

On Sunday, I let our chickens out of their coop to run around freely for the first time. I was surprised by how quickly they took to it. They started scratching around in the grass and dirt, grazing on different tree and bush leaves, weeds, blossoms, and blades of grass. They stretched out in the sun, and gave themselves dust baths. How amazing that this behavior was encoded in them from the time they were single-celled eggs a couple of months ago. How do they know which things are good to eat? Jane and I set up a couple of chairs on the lawn and watched them for two hours in the afternoon sun. When the sky turned to dusk, the chickens lined up and walked back into the coop and up the inclined ramp into the cozy closed off section. Videos: Chickens experiencing their first taste of life outside the coop | Jane bugging our chickens

Amy Crehore found this video of Eddie Thomas and Carl Scott playing "My Ohio Home." Hokum Music on YouTube

Compost is also used as a top dressing during the growing season for hastening growth. In the cities and towns tons of leaves are burned every fall. This is a loss which ought to be prevented. These leaves properly composted with other vegetable waste and earth would be worth hundreds of dollars to the gardens next spring. In planning a permanent garden, a space should be reserved near the hot bed or seed bed, and in this space should be piled, as soon as pulled, all plants which are free from diseases and insects. This applies to all vegetables and especially to peas and beans, as these belong to a group of plants which take nitrogen from the air, during growth, and store it in their roots. When these plants are decayed they will return to to the soil not only much of the plant food taken from it during their growth but additional nitrogen as well. Nitrogen in the soil is necessary for satisfactory leaf growth. The material so composted should be allowed to decay throughout the winter, and when needed should be used according to. the instructions given for using compost. The sweepings of pigeon lofts or chicken coops make valuable fertilizer. Prepared sheep manure, where procurable at a reasonable price, is possibly the safest concentrated fertilizer. It should be used in small quantities rather than spread broadcast. Scatter it along the row before seed is sown or apply by mixing it with water in a pail, stirring the mixture to the consistency of thin mush, and pouring it around the roots of the plants.

I met a couple of young guys who are traveling the country in the Topsy Turvy bus to promote the idea of an organic garden on the White House Lawn.

This video chronicles a day-in-the-life of The White House Organic Farm Project's (aka TheWhoFarm) cross-country tour with Daniel Bowman Simon and Casey Gustowarow, two guys who met in The Philippines as Peace Corps Volunteers.

Their tour promotes a petition to our next president, respectfully requesting that an organic farm be planted on The White House grounds. While Obama is busy with plans to fix everything else in the world, TheWhoFarmers are spending this transition period working to build a coalition of the willing in Washington, DC. This coalition includes local farmers who can help the green-thumbed White House grounds crew get up to speed on organic farming, and a hunger relief organization that will offer to pick up the excess bounty from The White House once the first family is fed.

TheWhoFarm bus was previously known as the Topsy Turvy bus, built by Burning Man art car legend Tom Kennedy. TheWhoFarm purchased the bus second-hand, and converted the roof into a mobile organic vegetable garden, believed to be the first ever garden on top of a school bus.

The bus might be up for sale soon, so if you're in the market for a one-of-a-kind, attention grabbing, food producing vehicle, give the boys a shout. And by all means, sign their petition!

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Campaign to grow vegetable garden on White House lawn
• Redesign the U.S. White House

Chicken owners liken it to having their very own widescreen TV in the backyard, with an always-looping Chicken Channel. Chickens are curious and very involved in their surroundings, following humans and dogs and cats around the yard and seeking attention, even a backrub.

Fiona Mitchell says the four hens she got in July for her Bedford Hills yard fit right in with her two dogs and two cats. "Everybody seems to find their own space," she says. "We're one big happy family now."

Demetra and Sal Restuccia couldn't be happier with the five Rhode Island Reds they got last year. "Oh, I love my chickens," Demetra says. "They have such personalities. They're funny - they talk all the time. They'll tell you everything that's been going on for the day. They're hysterical."

We live in a farm house built in 1930. Even though we're in Los Angeles, our neighborhood is zoned for farm animals and agriculture. Whoever lived in the house before us loved fruit trees. We've got grapefruit, oranges, clementines, olives, figs, persimmons, plums, and feijoas.

The feijoas, also called pineapple guavas, are my second favorite fruit from our yard (the figs are my favorite). They have a perfumey scent, a tart, firm, gritty flesh, and a sweet custardy center. (I'm not sure what kind of cultivar it is.)

This year's harvest came later than usual, and it looks like it's not as bountiful as previous years', but I'm grateful to have any amount. I wait for fruit to drop off the tree, then remove the rind with a vegetable peeler and eat the rest like a pear or apple. I eat up to seven or eight a day. Wikipedia article about feijoa

Previously on Boing Boing:
• It's guava time at my house

(click images for full size)

My six Plymouth Barred Rock chickens are about 8 weeks old. They seem happy in their coop, but I feel sorry for them when I see them futilely scratching around in the wood shavings that are bereft of tasty grubs, beetles, worms, weeds, and seeds. I want to let them roam around freely in my yard, where they can aerate the soil, gobble the weeds and vermin, and fertilize the grass. But I think they’re still too young and small to let loose in the yard. For one thing, a couple of semi-wild, semi-friendly cats like to visit our cats and kids regularly, and I don’t think my young hens would stand a chance against them. Also, even though our property is completely fenced in, the chickens are still small enough to squeeze through openings.

After a little research, I came across two solutions that would allow the chickens to safely spend their days in the yard. One is electric net fencing -- a kind of mesh that has fine exposed wires woven into it. You can move it around anywhere in the yard, and the shock it delivers will keep the chickens in and the predators out. According to Harvey Ussery, the “21st Century Homesteading” columnist for Mother Earth News, electric net fencing “carries an unpleasant (but not harmful) surprise for unwelcome curiosity seekers.” I don’t like this idea, partly because I don’t want to be the cause of animals receiving shocks, but mainly because I’m certain I’d be the frequent recipient of “unpleasant surprises” from coming into contact with the fence while it was activated.

The second solution, a chicken tractor, was much more appealing. These are basically portable pens without a bottom that you can move around to different spots in your yard so your chickens can eat all the scary bugs crawling in the grass and dirt. This seems like a good solution. The top hit on Google is a gallery of 140 chicken tractor photographs, compiled by Katy of The City Chicken. It’s neat to see all of these hand-made tractors. No two are identical. Many are made from salvaged materials.

(The tractors remind me of the coconut scrapers I came across in Rarotonga. Everybody made them from scratch and so they were all different, reflecting the skills, patience, and temperament of the maker.)

After perusing the photos in the gallery and using Amazon’s Look Inside! feature to read a portion of Andy Lee and Pat Foreman’s book, Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil, I went to work designing my own. I liked the A-frame style the best, because it seems easier to make and more stable than a box-shaped tractor.

This was a good excuse to get acquainted with Google SketchUp, a free application that lets you create 3D models. I downloaded it and watched a few of the training videos, which were enough to get me to the point where I could design a humble tractor. My goal in designing the tractor was to come up with something that was very basic, used as few components as possible, used as few different dimensional-sizes of lumber as possible, and provided a comfortable and shady shelter for my hens. Here’s what I have so far.

(It will be made from lumber and plywood. The open areas will be covered with 1/2-inch wire screen.) You can download the Sketchup file here.

If you have any suggestions of how I can simplify or improve my design before I start building it, I would be grateful to hear them.

Fellow named Chad Kimball calls the Chicago police, the city clerk, and the legal department to find out if he can raise chickens in the city. No one really seems to know.

Does My City Allow Me to Raise Chickens? (Via Homegrown Evolution)

After I posted that cover of a 1925 issue of The Plymouth Rock Monthly, a few people asked for a photo of my chicks.

I bought six chicks from mypetchicken.com, which ships them by mail. They cost $2 each, plus an extra .50 each to ensure they are hens, plus a big shipping fee.

The post office called me on my cell phone when they arrived. I was in Illinois at the time, so I called my wife and she went down to pick them up. They were in a little straw nest packed in a small cardboard box.

The chicks are now over two weeks old, and much bigger than the one shown in this photo. They're a little skittish when someone reaches in and grabs at them, but they calm down quickly and are very sweet. Once they get big enough, they'll go here.

What magazine had 40,000 subscribers in 1920? Answer: the Plymouth Rock Monthly, a periodical devoted to our favorite chicken breed. We have two "production" Barred Plymouth Rocks in our small flock of four hens, and we've found them to be productive, friendly and, with their striped plumage, an attractive sight in our garden. While the internet is an amazing resource for the urban homesteader, there are a few holes in this electronic web of knowledge. In short, would someone out there please get around to scanning and putting online the Plymouth Rock Monthly? All I can find are images of two covers lifted off of ebay.

The February 1925 issue, at right, promises articles on, "Selecting and Packing Eggs for Hatching", a poetically titled essay, "The Things We Leave Undone", "Theory and Practice in Breeding Barred Color", "White Plymouth Rocks", "The Embargo on Poultry", and "Breeding White Rocks Satisfactorily". Incidentally, the Embargo article probably refers to a avian influenza outbreak of 1924-1925 that repeated in 1929 and 1983.

By the 1950s interest in backyard and small farm flocks vastly decreased and the Plymouth Rock Club of America, the publisher of the Plymouth Rock Monthly, collapsed down to 200 members from a peak of 2,000. Thankfully, interest in keeping chickens is now on the rise again and an informative magzine, Backyard Poultry has been revived. Plymouth Rock fans can read an article about the breed in the latest issue of Backyard Poultry.

(Click photos to enlarge)

When we moved into our house four or five years ago, I tasted one of the persimmons growing on the tree in our yard. It was a nice orange color, so I assumed it was ripe and ready to eat. I peeled off the skin and took a bite. It was awful, like sticking a spoonful of alum in my mouth. I threw the accursed fruit in the trash.

The next year I read that persimmons tasted better if you soaked them in brine first. I tried it. It was like eating a salty styptic pencil.

The year after that, someone told me to wait until the fruits were mushy. I waited. The few that made it to the mushy stage without being violated by squirrels were delicious, and had a custard-like texture.

This year, I read an article in the Oct/Nov 2008 issue of Mother Earth News, written by Winifred Bird, titled "Finding the Good Life in Japan." Bird is living the self-sufficient good life in rural Japan with her husband. In the article she explains how to dry persimmons the Japanese way.

If you want to try it yourself, use astringent persimmons, such as ‘Hachiya’ or ‘Honan Red.’ Pick or buy fruits when they are orange but still hard and inedible. If picking them yourself, use a clipper and cut the stem twig so it forms a small T above the fruit for easy hanging. Peel the fruit with a knife or vegetable peeler. Use sturdy string to tie the fruits from their twigs in a line, so they do not touch when hung vertically. Hang outside in a place that is protected from rain and snow, such as from nails or a horizontal pole under the eaves of the house. (I have also had luck drying persimmons without stems using clips or on flat baskets — just make sure to turn often.) When the fruit begins to soften (one to two weeks), gently squeeze and massage each one. Repeat this after a few more weeks. They are done when dark brown, leathery and shrunken, but not overly hard — about one or two months. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator or a cool, dry place. Enjoy Japanese style, as a snack with roasted green tea (hojicha) or ginger tea.