Stern Sprouted Wheat Vegan Cookie or Health Bar Type Things

...closest I’m going to get to dessert for a while. The recipe comes from the book, From the Wood-Fired Oven by Richard Miscovich, where the recipe is used as an example of what you can cook in a bread oven which has almost cooled off, because these bake at very low temps. Actually, they’d be good candidates for a solar oven. Or even dashboard cooking in the summer! There are four ingredients: sprouted wheat, raw almonds, dried fruit and a pinch of s...

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Fruit Tree Maintenance Calendars

...pful page of fruit tree maintenance calendars for us backyard orchard enthusiasts. The calendars cover everything from when to water, fertilize, paint the trunks and many other tasks. You can also find them in one big handy set of charts in UC’s book The Home Orchard. The permaculturalist in me likes our low-maintenance pomegranate and prickly pear cactus. But I also like my apples, nectaplums and peaches–and those trees need the sorts of interven...

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Happy Halloween!

...Halloween greetings from all the denizens of the Root Simple compound, living and dead. (I believe this lovely old photo that I found haunting my hard drive is from the book Haunted Air a collection of old Halloween photos. Halloween used to be homemade–and a lot more scary.)...

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Picture Sundays: Doberman Chariots

...ve forms of transportation. Our late dog was a Doberman and I remembered a book we used to have about the breed that showed some unusual events that used to be held in South Africa in the 1970s: harness racing with Dobermans and kid jockeys! Remembering just how powerful and fast our Doberman was, I imagine these races were quite a thrill for the kids in those carts. Try this in the US and, no doubt, child protective services would shut down the f...

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A Primitive Bow Workshop

...re respect for our distant ancestors. Paul Campbell author of an excellent book Survival Skills of Native California was along to co-teach the class and help us all shape our bows. The first step was to find some suitable wood. We used willow, a wood used by Native Americans in our region. It’s plentiful and makes an acceptable if short lived bow. Ash and oak and bay trees are local woods which are better for the purpose, but our goal for the day...

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