Coffee Muses random header image

To Mulch or Not…Too Mulch of a Good Thing.

April 1st, 2009 · No Comments · conservation, farming & gardening

My first house had siding of shiplap cypress. Great wood for building, tough for painting. I often wondered about those bags of cypress mulch at the garden center…seems it really is too much of a good thing…
It seems that in the past ten years or so cypress logging as an industry has taken off. In [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ··

Kitchen Gardeners International

March 3rd, 2009 · No Comments · climate change, economic crisis, farming & gardening, health

Dear Kitchen Gardener,
What’s a home garden worth? With the global economy spiraling downward and Mother Nature preparing to reach upward, it’s a good question to ask and a good time to ask it.
There isn’t one right answer, of course, but I’ll give you mine: $2149.15. Last year, my wife Jacqueline suggested to me that [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ··············

The Ethicurean: All steriled up: Produce safety guidelines throw sustainability out, keep toxic bathwater

February 23rd, 2009 · No Comments · Blogroll, Food, Food Safety, farming & gardening

Good article on the food safety issue from The Ethicurean Blog.
Down on the farm
Here’s a quick backgrounder: After the E. coli/spinach episode in 2006, big leafy greens producers in California (where the toxic spinach was grown) got together and drafted guidelines to reduce the risk of contamination on farms. These guidelines had some issues: they [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ········

Cooking Up A Story: about people, food, and sustainable living

January 19th, 2009 · No Comments · Food

[Read more →]

Tags: ····

The Power of Less

January 10th, 2009 · No Comments · retirement, twitter, video

The Power of Less Video from Leo Babauta on Vimeo.

[Read more →]

Tags: ·

Foie Gras To Sustainability?

December 20th, 2008 · No Comments · farming & gardening, video

This is an amazing story…

[Read more →]

Tags: ·

Faustian economics: Hell hath no limits—By Wendell Berry (Harper’s Magazine)

August 18th, 2008 · No Comments · just musings

Anything Wendell Berry writes is worth the time it takes to digest…My recommendation is to go spend some time today with the man…
The general reaction to the apparent end of the era of cheap fossil fuel, as to other readily foreseeable curtailments, has been to delay any sort of reckoning. The strategies of delay, so [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ·····

Living the Good Life

August 14th, 2008 · No Comments · just musings, writing of place

CARSON, NEW MEXICO—When the wind comes up the mesa, which it often does, there is a particular rusted-out old car nearby that whispers the same eerie, long-toned question every time: “Whoooooo?”
I sometimes think: “Us.”
Out in this remote part of the American Southwest lies the closest thing I have seen to an answer to how to [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ···