How to be a Tudor by Ruth Goodman

August 30, 2016

...some craft: blacksmith, brewer, rope maker, dyer, tanner, painter, tailor, bookbinder. And heck, every good housewife had to know how to do a whole lot of stuff, from sewing to cheese making to brewing, and was a master of those crafts as a matter of course. How wonderful it would be to walk those streets and watch it all going on! For those of us who like to engage in this kind of wishful thinking, Goodman’s book is a close second to a long visit...

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2014: The Year in Review

Mr. Homegrown

December 29, 2014

Thoughtstylings

5 Comments

...hat to do with the wild foods they gather. Pascal and Mia are working on a book that I predict will be the foraging book. September Stoicism Today In a very unlikely turn of events, an essay we wrote was included in a book on stoicism. I tried not to let it puff my ego up too much. October I Made Shoes In October we hosted an intense three day turnshoe making workshop with Randy Fritz. This was one of the more commented upon things we did this yea...

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Get Baking and Share the Loaves

Mr. Homegrown

August 7, 2014

Bread, Food

10 Comments

...this bread!” To pick up the basics of home baking I can’t say enough good things about Baker’s book, Josey Baker Bread . Baker’s previous job was in science education which makes him the perfect person to write a baking cookbook. The book is laid out to teach you all that you need to know about bread sequentially. You go from a simple yeasted bread up almost to the Einkorn baguette level. As Josey Baker says, get baking and share the loaves!...

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A Review of Masanobu Fukuoka’s Sowing Seeds in the Desert

Mr. Homegrown

December 4, 2012

Gardening, Miscellaneous, Permaculture, Reviews

4 Comments

...is parent’s farm when he first took it over. And in the second half of the book he suggests a radical interventionist approach to what he calls “deserts” (by which he means areas ruined by human activity). Here he chronicles his trips to wastelands in India and the Central Valley of California. Fukuoka suggests carpet bombing these areas with seed pellets (a how-to for making seed pellets is included in an appendix). And the content of those seed...

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Book Review: The Machine Stops by E.M. Forester

Mrs. Homegrown

November 12, 2012

Reviews

4 Comments

Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk-that is all the furniture. And in the a...

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