What’s for dinner? It seems like a simple enough question, yet the answer to it can have profound impacts on my personal economy, my health, my energy use, and our overall environment, not to mention the living capital of my little homestead. So it’s a question I’ve been putting more thought and effort into, trying to shift my answers with the goal of improving all these elements. I imagine some of you are cringing already, fearing I’m going to break out with some militant screed instructing you that MY diet is the BEST diet and you must follow it too or you’re some morally inferior poopy head. Don’t worry, that’s not me. I feel like what you chose to eat is up to you, just as it is your own responsibility to determine what sort of diet your body functions best on. I’m merely offering this up as information about my personal journey in the realm of food in the hopes it might help you too.
Continue reading “What’s for Dinner?”Author: David Huang
Building a Better World in your Backyard instead of being angry at bad guys
Final Update (I think). The book is now done and available in print, ebook, and as an audiobook. If you are interested in purchasing a copy you can do so here.
Update. The campaign just ended with phenomenal success! A total of 2768 people supported it with $153,983.05! Thanks to all of you who joined me in helping make it all happen. If you missed out I’ll be sure to make one more update to this post when the book has gone through the final editing processes, been printed, and is available for anyone to purchase. Odds are good I’ll do another blog post too reviewing the book after I’ve got my copy and read the whole thing.
So I’ve known the Kickstarter campaign to get this book printed was coming up for months now. I’m excited to see it finally happen! Paul Wheaton and Shawn Klassen-Koop have been working on this for over a year. I’ve read a few sections they’ve shared in various threads on the Permies.com forums and it looks like it should be an excellent book that is essentially right along the lines of what I’m aiming to do with this blog.
Continue reading “Building a Better World in your Backyard instead of being angry at bad guys”A small garden project
I’m working on a more substantive post about my efforts to change my personal food culture which I had hoped to post today, but it’s just not going to happen. I’m too tired to focus well on that sort of writing. Why am I tired? Well since one of my goals with this blog is to share the various projects I’m trying around the homestead it seems appropriate to throw together this post about the reworking of one of my garden beds which has been today’s prime task.
Continue reading “A small garden project”An Incredible Tool for Splitting Kindling
I just finished making what is known as a kindling splitter today, and oh my goodness is this a freaking amazing tool! Anyone out there who has a wood burner or uses kindling should probably think seriously about acquiring one. It makes the tedious, dangerous job of splitting wood into smaller sized “kindling” pieces quick, easy, and MUCH safer.
Continue reading “An Incredible Tool for Splitting Kindling”Studio Snippet takes over: Specific details on chasing a small section of a vessel
The studio snippet is taking over again! Over on my FaceBook page someone was asking for more detail about how I’m going about chasing in some shell-like forms on a piece in progress I shared. As I set about doing that I realized it was going to be a bit more of an involved effort than I normally put into such posts, since anything on FaceBook is essentially a flash in the pan, all but forgotten in a couple days. As this information might be something of perennial interest to at least a few people I thought I’d post it here instead. However, it is likely not of much interest to most people as it’s kinda technical geeky stuff about the metalsmithing technique known as chasing. Perhaps you non-chasers will find some interest in getting a deeper understanding of just what goes into such work, but you might also just want to skip this post.
Continue reading “Studio Snippet takes over: Specific details on chasing a small section of a vessel”New Shoots
The snow is nearly gone, the sap is running in the maple trees, and the sun is making its return after a typical cloudy winter. For me this means it’s about time to start the first harvests of the year.
Continue reading “New Shoots”Copper Tongs: a simple beginner project
For those of you metalsmiths reading this, have you noticed how the quality of copper tongs seems to have degraded in the past decade or so. They used to be of good quality with reasonably thick metal. Now, to me anyway, they all seem like flimsy, cheap things made of such thin copper stock. I’ve wondered for a while why we would purchase such things? I mean, aren’t we metalsmiths? Wouldn’t making our own pair be a very basic project, a project suitable for suitable for a beginning student on the first day of class? I’ve never purchased any for my own studio, rather I made a hefty set back when I was in college from some scrap plate copper I had. I actually made a second pair for the university’s studio, which somebody stole rather quickly! I guess that’s one indication they were considered good, probably also a reason why school studios only have crappy ones!
Continue reading “Copper Tongs: a simple beginner project”Has a quiet revolution been happening in the realm of education?
A while back as I was hammering away in the studio on my vessels I was thinking about the whole idea of a free, or really cheap, college education available to everyone that I’ve read about many people desiring. Just how feasible is that? Sure it sounds nice but if you look at the world as a whole interlocking matrix of systems, material, and energy flows one has to recognize there is no “free”. The costs get paid for somewhere. Never the less, wouldn’t it be nice if this was a priority for our culture, something we collectively and willingly put our personal efforts into making happen.
Continue reading “Has a quiet revolution been happening in the realm of education?”A Trick to Reduce Heat Loss Through Windows
I’m going to be traveling off to teach a couple workshops soon. When I’m away from home I also drop out of the cyber world, so don’t expect much to be happening in the blog for a little bit. Still, before I leave I wanted to cover one other winter themed item. My wildly optimistic hope is that by the time I’ve returned March will have made its shift to spring like weather! Yeah, I know, we’ll probably all be laughing about this under several feet of snow at the end of the month, but a guy can dream.
Continue reading “A Trick to Reduce Heat Loss Through Windows”Snow Shoveling Made Easier
It was a dark and stormy night, or so the proverbial first line of a story goes. This particular dark and stormy night must have been punctuated with a tremendous “whump” as one of only two massive oak trees on my property came crashing down. I was quite depressed the next morning to see that beauty laid out in the drainage ditch and up onto the road. Still I wasn’t that shocked as it was half dead by that point after the road crew which dug that ditch a few years earlier took out a major root of the tree in the process.
Continue reading “Snow Shoveling Made Easier”