A few years ago when I was feeling quite flush with income and not nearly so focused on saving money as I am now I observed a new, and fairly pricey snack food at the local grocery store called kale chips. I think it still took a good sale price to entice me into trying them for the first time, as I have pretty much always been frugal by nature. I found them to be quite delicious and eventually sampled pretty much all the flavor varieties. My only complaint besides the cost would be that they were so delicate. Once the kale leaf was dried it got so thin there was almost nothing to it. That got me to thinking about alternatives that might solve this.
Continue reading “A stupendously healthy “snack cracker””Blog
Rebuilding the dry stack fieldstone wall of the art studio.
Sometime last fall after some heavy rains really softened and fully saturated the soil there was a deep rumbling heard in my house. At first I thought maybe it was thunder and disregarded it though the sound was a bit different, yet somehow still familiar too. Going out to the studio later I realized what I’d heard, the roll and tumble of boulders falling as my west side rock wall collapsed!
Continue reading “Rebuilding the dry stack fieldstone wall of the art studio.”The Garden Project Continued
A while back I did a short post about a small garden project I was starting, rebuilding a couple raised beds with cinder blocks and raising them higher. Today’s post is an update on the continuation of that project, which as so often happens with projects, became more time consuming than I first expected.
Continue reading “The Garden Project Continued”A quick status update
I want to apologize to those of you patiently waiting for the next blog entry. I have been buried with other work lately in preparation for a couple trips. Unfortunately I expect it will be another couple weeks before I am able to post anything due to that travel. If I can write something earlier I will, but I don’t anticipate it. Rest assured I do plan to get back to writing here.
If you are going to the SNAG conference then I will see you there!
A healthy cure for a sweet tooth
I’ve been continuing with my food goals as I wrote about previously. Some days I succeed, other days I fail, but overall I think I’m doing better at eating healthy, nutrient dense, whole plant foods, with an emphasis on using what grows on the homestead first. One struggle I have is my serious sweet tooth! I thought that today I’d share one of my solutions to this in case others struggle with the same thing. Whenever I’ve made versions of it for potlucks it has always been a real hit, even with those who could care less about the healthy part!
Continue reading “A healthy cure for a sweet tooth”Heating during the edge seasons
Yesterday while I was chasing away on my latest vessel I realized I hadn’t had a fire in the rocket mass heater all week, nor has the regular propane forced air furnace turned on in probably a month, yet I was comfortably warm! That got me to ruminating a bit about heating my home in what I think of as the edge seasons, those periods in spring and fall when some heating is still needed, but not a lot. I had intended this to be the post for yesterday, but while I did manage to finish chasing that vessel I obviously didn’t manage to get the post written. So here today instead I’ll share some thoughts, observations, and ideas about heating in edge seasons.
Continue reading “Heating during the edge seasons”Harvesting from the greenhouse
It’s been a long day of chasing work on the vessel you’ll see in today’s Studio Snippet. I’d like to call it a day, but I promised I would try to get a short post out each day and I want to keep that promise until the end of the week at least. So this evening I’m going to share a few things I’ve been harvesting already from the greenhouse.
Continue reading “Harvesting from the greenhouse”Transplanting a bed of onions
The garden project of new raised beds I wrote about previously has progressed a bit more. Earlier this week I was able to get the cinder blocks laid for the second bed. I’ve also put in a call to get a truck load of topsoil that I’ll use to fill these new, taller beds. (I haven’t gotten a call back yet though. I might have to try someone else.)
Continue reading “Transplanting a bed of onions”Can I have fresh salad greens grown at home year around?
Spring fever has hit, along with its annual increase in work load. It seems like I’ve always got a ton of metalwork to do in order to meet deadlines around this time, compounded by the equally time sensitive pressures to get the garden prepared and planted. This year I’ve added the task of composing posts about these activities for this blog. I’m struggling to figure out how to handle it all.
Continue reading “Can I have fresh salad greens grown at home year around?”What torch do you use for annealing?
I won’t say it’s a frequent question, but it’s one that comes up often enough, “What torch do you use for annealing your vessels?” Answering it often involves composing some long emails, with lots of research time to hunt down links and such. So I thought I’d put together this post to provide a convenient place to refer people to for all the information. Those blog readers who aren’t much interested in metalsmithing stuff may want to skip this. Today’s post is another instance of the Studio Snippet taking over! (Jargon tip for non-metalsmiths, annealing is a fancy way of saying “heating up the metal to the appropriate temperature in order to soften it, allowing it to be worked further without breaking.”)
Continue reading “What torch do you use for annealing?”