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A few weeks ago, I wrote about Agritopia a unique subdivision in Gilbert Arizona.
In this vdeo, my friend Jay Thompson - AKA The Phoenix Real Estate Guy - brings us some video of the houses in Agritopia:
Click Here to read the entire post on Jay's blog.
Rhode Island has granted a New Jersey-based renewable energy firm the right to develop a wind farm in Narragansett Bay that would generate 15 percent of the state's electricity needs in the coming decade, officials said.
Click Here to read the article
Schwinn and Toshiba have teamed up to produce a bicycle that could revolutionize the electric bicycle market.
Schwinn has incorporated Toshiba’s new Super Charge ion Battery (SCiB) technology into the Schwinn Tailwind, a brand new electric bike it formally unveiled yesterday in Las Vegas at the Interbike International Bicycle Expo.
Click Here to read the entire article on Alternative Consumer.
Click Here to go to Schwinn's electric bicycle website.
Thanks to EcoRenovator.org for pointing us to this list from consumer reports:
Toree on The Urban Farm School wrote a great article 10 Things We Love about Autumn and I thought I would add a very Arizona-centric reasons of mine:
1. It's the start of our second growing season. Time to plant arugula, broccoli, bok choy, leeks, peas, spinach, swiss chard, and other stuff - all laid out on Greg's Desert Planting and Harvest Calendar.
2. Open the windows. For the first time in months, I'm sitting here in my den with the windows open, listening to the sounds of the outdoors. I love the feeling I get laying in bed at night in my upstairs bedroom with the windows open, listening tot he street sounds below. I feel so connected with what's going on around me.
3. I can actually touch bare metal with my bare fingers without searing off my fingerprints. If you live here in Arizona you know what I mean. :-)
In 1972, Jules Timmerman had a dream: a full-fledged co-op selling locally grown fresh produce to the Mt Airy neighborhood.
A few months later he rented a store front and his dream became a reality. Jules stocked the store with a good selection of deli products and fresh produce and opened for business on January 13, 1973. Produce bins lined the right side of the store. Big glass deli cases and a counter for cutting and wrapping lined the left, with one aisle in between. Six shoppers made it as crowded as 40 in Weavers Way today. Jules rented 557 Carpenter, next door, as an office space.
The store was so small in its first incarnation that there was no space for any check out. You’d go next door to 557 to pick up an order pad. You’d go back to 555 to select your groceries, and you’d write every product and price on the order pad. Then you’d return to 557 and pay for the groceries. Finally, you’d go back to 555 to pick up your order. Talk about ping-pong shopping!
Weavers Way is a true co-op. Members are required to work in the Co-op at least six hours per year. The work requirement is of philosophical importance to the Co-op. Working puts the members in touch with each other and serves to strengthen community ties. It also makes members more fully aware of how the Co-op functions, and its problems and possibilities.
Sound interesting? Then consider an afternoon of fun on Saturday, Oct. 11, as they celebrate their first Harvest Festival at the Weavers Way Farm, located in Awbury Arboretum, 1101 Washington Lane in East Germantown. Festivities will take place from noon until 4 p.m. and will feature musical entertainment, a hay ride, a raffle, plenty of farm fresh food, and much more.
For more information Click Here
Your existing shower head may be as good or better that that snazzy low-flow shower head you've been eyeing in the building-supply store.
Eco-Renovator tested a low-flow shower heads vs his existing shower head and found the existing one out-performed the low-flow shower head.
Read the article and you can use his simple technique for testing your shower head's flow rate.
One of the blogs I read every week is Rachel's Tiny Farm and this week she planted new six trees.
"We now have 27 or 28 different varieties of fruit trees for a total of around 32 trees on our 1/5 acre lot.", she said.
By using preservation techniques like canning and freezing, such an orchard should keep you supplied with fruit year-round. Add a small vegetable garden, and you can eat far healthier, far better, for far less money. Think about fresh fruit smoothies for breakfast every morning!
It's always a joy to see people making a living from doing what they love. It;'s even better when involves urban farming.
One of the newest ways I see this happening is experienced gardeners are becoming Gardening Coaches. In fact, there is a blog dedicated to this new profession.
This article contains some great advice for budding gardening coaches.
Ecotality Life brings us pictures of the new Honda Insight. It's gorgeous.
I've heard people comment that it looks like a Prius clone, but the nose is pure Honda.
From the NYT:
Red Hook, an ancient finger of city waterfront that is lined with the husks of faded industry and old piers, sits two clear miles across New York Harbor from Wall Street. It is another galaxy.
There, on nearly three acres of asphalt that have been covered with 18 inches of topsoil, the Red Hook Community Farm operates in an economy that rises from the actual, not the imaginary: lettuce, spinach, chard, kale, collard greens, arugula, dandelion, radicchio, Chinese cabbage, tomatoes, peppers, beets, radishes, squash, cucumber, zucchini, and beans and herbs — oregano, sage, thyme, mint, six different basils.
Click Here to read the article
12 Degrees of Freedom has a great post this week on raising urban chickens.
One facet of the discussion that was not covered is that in most cities, omeowners are prohibited from raising aoultry not only by their city zoning regulations, but also by their HOA bylaws.
Micrograineries is a term I invented just now. We've all heard of restaurants with microbreweries that brew their own beer. How about bakeries and grocers with their own micrograineries and micro-flour mills?
In New Mexico, a cooperative of Native American and Latino farmers produce a boutique local flour. In Western Massachusetts, a baking couple has persuaded their customers to plant front-lawn wheat patches. In Vermont, a farmer whose homegrown wheat flour was a curiosity when he began growing it in the 1970s now can’t keep up with demand. And in Pennsylvania, a venerable pastry flour brand from the 1800s has been resurrected, made with local organic wheat.
Why would someone have 360 bags of compost delivered to their apartment? Why, to prepare the soil of their basement marijuana farm, of course.
Click Here to read the story.
Let's face it, we live in a fast paced world and sometimes life gets in the way, so we don't always have the time to read all the top health books that we'd like to. That's where Health Book Summaries come in.
Health Book Summaries is a free service that that can summarize today's cutting edge health books without missing key themes and ideas. Think of them as Cliffs Notes for your health, fitness, and wellness.
The Internet is great, but sometimes there is nothing better than having a fellow urban farmer to commiserate with. Are there other urban farmers in your neighborhood? World Food Garden has published a tool that will help you find out.
Be one of the first to add your garden to the map.
HOMEGROWN follows the Dervaes family who run a small organic farm in the heart of urban Pasadena, California. While “living off the grid”, they harvest over 6,000 pounds of produce on less than a quarter of an acre, make their own bio diesel, power their computers with the help of solar panels, and maintain a website that gets 4,000 hits a day. The film is an intimate human portrait of what it’s like to live like “Little House on the Prairie” in the 21st Century.
Click Here to view the trailer.
Click Here to watch for the screening in your city.
From the Boston.com website:
It may not be the sprawling 50-acre countryside farm he once dreamed of running, but for Newton resident Greg Maslowe, the 2 acres of city-owned property in south Newton is just right.
"I've come to really enjoy this particular situation," said Maslowe, 38, who is completing his third season as the manager of Newton Angino Community Farm. "I like that I can pay more attention to each crop than on a bigger farm."
There is a great article in the Toronto National Post about the growing movement to repeal laws prohibiting the raising of livestock and poultry in urban areas.
Red, Ramona and Daisy, three 18-month-old hens, spend their nights in the enclosure and their days nibbling and digging in the yard. They eat a mixture of chicken feed, grass and kitchen scraps (the house's green bin goes out nearly empty) and provide their owners Chris and Cara (who asked that their last names not be used) with three humongous brown eggs almost every day. His hens utter the occasional cluck, but their poop fertilizes the lawn and the neighbours, far from offended, show up at Chris and Cara's front door with empty cartons.
There's just one problem: the hens are illegal.
Eletta Purdy, manager for Toronto Animal Services admits: "We do need to look at our bylaw. We'd like to update it to address the current day's needs." She says the city may review rules for chickens and exotic pets next year.
Click Here to read the article.
Have your Permaculture Design Certificate? Ready to take your Permaculture practice to the next level? This course is for you. You will learn new skills and a new way of looking at Permaculture design, practice, and presentation:
See the Regenesis website at.http://www.regenesisgroup.com
To register contact Dan Dorsey, 624-8030, dorsey@dakotacom.net
http://www.sonoranpermaculture.org/members/dan-dorsey
You can view our full listing of courses for Fall 2008 and Spring 2009 at
http://www.sonoranpermaculture.org/courses-and-workshops
Do you have a great idea about helping the environment by making your home more energy-efficient? Make a video about it and submit it to Home Depot's Save Money. Save Energy. Win Big contest.
Click Here for more information
I hate mowing. I've hated since I was a kid. Here's a device that you just put out like the cat and it mows the lawn for you.
Energy Boomer has a great article about what to look for when buying windows.
Here in Arizona, you should pay the most attention to the window's Solar Heat Gain Coefficient (SHGC) rating. The SHGC is the fraction of incident solar radiation admitted through a window. SHGC is expressed as a number between 0 and 1. The lower a window’s solar heat gain coefficient, the less solar heat it transmits.
Click Here to read the article.
This page contains all entries posted to Down On The Urban Farm in October 2008. They are listed from oldest to newest.
September 2008 is the previous archive.
November 2008 is the next archive.
Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.
