The leaves have turned color and the air has become cool. This also means the house is getting chilly, needing some heat for comfort. During these edge seasons when the skies are not overcast and the sun is shining bright I’m generally able to take advantage of all the excess electric power my off grid solar system generates and heat my place with a couple electric space heaters. Once my battery bank is full this surplus power just goes to waste otherwise, so I might as well utilize it. However, the days are going to be getting cloudy and overcast in my region due to the proximity of Lake Michigan and the effect it has on the weather. It’s also going to get much colder. So I’ll soon be feeding the small dragon in my living room that is my rocket mass heater.
Continue reading “Being a Chimney Sweep with a Rocket Mass Heater”Author: David Huang
More Healthy, Decadent Deserts to Satisfy Sweet Cravings
I’ve been working this year to improve my diet and shift my relationships with food as I’ve written about previously. Many days I do well. Unfortunately there are many others when I still succumb to the lure of junk food. The 3 day water fast I mentioned in the last post did seem to help me reset my taste buds and refocus my efforts. Since then I’ve been doing quite well and resisted all heavily processed foods. Still there have been days I’ve been tempted…
Continue reading “More Healthy, Decadent Deserts to Satisfy Sweet Cravings”A Perennial Food Experiment: Stuffed Milkweed Pods
Last week I was off on a camping vacation that you’ll likely hear more about in a future blog post. However, just before leaving I engaged in a culinary experiment I wanted to share with you. I didn’t have time to write up the results before my travels so it waited until now. The experiment is stuffed milkweed pods.
Continue reading “A Perennial Food Experiment: Stuffed Milkweed Pods”The 3 E’s part two: the micro/personal level view
In my last post I explored the 3 E’s (the Economy, Energy, and the Environment) from a wide scale macro viewpoint. This time I want to look at them a bit from the micro view, or that of my own personal household. It might not be a bad idea to reread the previous post, but as a brief recap we have economic systems that require continuous exponential growth to function well. Continuous exponential growth requires a continuous exponential extraction and consumption of energy resources, in particular fossil fuels, as well as a continuous exponential consumption of environmental resources. In other words, endless growth on a finite planet. There are strong indications we are at peak extraction rates for our planetary fossil energy and environmental resources.
Continue reading “The 3 E’s part two: the micro/personal level view”The 3 E’s: Economy, Energy, Environment
This afternoon I was outside splitting firewood in preparation for winter heating. As my body worked my mind got some exercise as well thinking about how to approach this post about the 3E’s, those being the economy, energy, and the environment. I’ve been promising to write more about this pretty much since I started this blog a few months ago because it is such an important framework I use to understand what is really going on around me and to help guide my decisions. The aim is to better take advantage of the opportunities available to me now and leave me better positioned for our likely future.
Continue reading “The 3 E’s: Economy, Energy, Environment”Trigger Point Therapy: a surprisingly effective, cheap, easy, drug free way to deal with most pain
Twenty some years ago, not too long after I bought my little homestead I was fully engaged in a project to raise the roof on what was the first metals studio here, now known as the old metals studio and becoming known as the wood shed. I had a rust bucket contraption of a mini pick up truck and was loading asphalt shingles into the back of it at the home improvement store. With just a few more packages left on the cart to transfer over one of those bend, lift, twist movements resulted in crippling back pain. “Is this what people mean when they throw their back out,” I wondered? It seemed to take a herculean effort to stand up fully and then still somehow manage to get the remaining shingles in the truck and drive home.
Continue reading “Trigger Point Therapy: a surprisingly effective, cheap, easy, drug free way to deal with most pain”A Gathering of Reference Links for my Students
This post is going to be another one of limited interest to most. This past weekend I taught a vessel chasing workshop to a fabulous group of students. During the course of it we were talking about so many items and where to find them that it seemed like it would be a good idea to assemble a post which gathers much of that information together in one place for easy future reference. I expect this post will be useful for all future classes as well and will try to keep it up to date. If you are a metalsmith you might find some of this information useful even if you haven’t taken any of my workshops.
Continue reading “A Gathering of Reference Links for my Students”Excellent Perennial Vegetables You Can’t Buy in Stores
I’ve written before about my project to look to sourcing my food directly from my homestead first. Today I thought I’d share just a bit of what that practically means with a bit about two fantastic perennial vegetables that tend to get ignored by most despite how awesome they are. They both provide an abundant supply of highly edible produce over a wide range of the growing season. As perennials once established you don’t need to do much of anything to maintain them. I don’t even weed around them. They seem to grow in natural polycultures just fine, thus they promote the building of topsoil instead of its depletion. Pollinators love them so in growing these you support the insect populations so critical to our ecosystems. One is extremely beautiful, generally used as an ornamental. The other is super fragrant, in a good way I might add. Oh, and they both taste great too. To the best of my knowledge though, you can’t buy these in stores, or at the farmers market. There’s a decent chance however, that they are growing near you, if not in your own yard.
Continue reading “Excellent Perennial Vegetables You Can’t Buy in Stores”15 Piece Chasing Tool Set
This will probably not be an exciting post for most people. For the vessel chasing workshops I occasionally teach I make a minimal set of 15 chasing tools for each student to use during class. If they’d like to buy it afterward they can. Not all sets get purchased and so I sometimes have them available for anyone to purchase. However, I need a place I can direct interested people so they can see what’s in the set. That’s what this post is going to be, a reference point for information about the tools. If you are interested in chasing work you might get something out of this as I’ll be describing what I generally use each tool for.
Continue reading “15 Piece Chasing Tool Set”Mind the Gap – It’s where the magic happens
I’m challenging myself to reach a bare bones level of wealth needed for me to retire early within the next three years. Naturally that has me considering the nature of wealth, security, and money. With regards to money I tend to fall into two different mental habits, neither of which really serve me fully. The first is to focus on increasing my income. I realized the other day this is almost completely irrelevant on its own. The other habit of mine is to focus on cutting expenses. Again this is almost as irrelevant as increasing income. Reducing expenses does tend to reduce consumption of energy and resources, thus reducing my ecological footprint, but with regards to wealth and security unless I can sustainably reduce it to zero this too is completely irrelevant on its own.
Continue reading “Mind the Gap – It’s where the magic happens”