Root Simple is 10 Years Old

July 13, 2016

...g a chance on two first time authors. The book that they commissioned, The Urban Homestead, published in 2008, went through many printings and is still selling copies. After the success of the first book we got a lot of offers to write a sequel (or just another version of the same book for bigger publishers!). We ended up writing a how-to book for Rodale called Making It. Thank You! Root Simple is a group effort and there are many people to thank:...

Read…

Why Urban Farm?

Mr. Homegrown

June 10, 2007

Animals, Chickens

2 Comments

...r total up to four. Such are the cycles of life and death on the new urban homestead. Bryan Welch, who raises livestock and is also the publisher and editor of the always informative Mother Earth News, wrote an editorial in the February issue called “Why I Farm” in which he says, “There’s a Buddhist wisdom in the stockman’s cool compassion. The best of them seem to understand that our own lives on this Earth are as irrefutably temporary as the liv...

Read…

Are Miniature Books the New Smartphone?

Mr. Homegrown

October 17, 2016

Thoughtstylings

10 Comments

...internet in your pocket. But long before Snapchat people carried miniature books. Prayer books and the bible were popular in miniature form. In the 19th century, improved printing technology brought a wider variety of tiny books aimed at travelers. In the 20th century the miniature book became an end in itself. Rather than utility, miniature books are now objects to collect. This is not what I’m interested in. Rather, I’m looking for books that ar...

Read…

What Will Be the New Kale?

Mr. Homegrown

October 31, 2014

Food, Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

9 Comments

...ve its fifteen minutes of fame as the new kale. The Salinas, California based Foxy Organic is, quite sensibly, marketing broccoli leaves. Broccoli leaves are indeed edible and tasty. Foxy has the recursive media to prove it, a Facebook photo of someone Instagramming Broccoli leaves: Now I’ve just blogged about someone Facebooking about someone Instagramming Broccoli leaves. How far can we take this? Will broccoli leaves act as the gateway vegetabl...

Read…

More on our gardening disasters

Mrs. Homegrown

January 21, 2013

Gardening, Mistakes, Thoughtstylings

15 Comments

...nd wanted to plant cabbages in our first proper vegetable bed because storybook gardens always grew cabbages. I’m glad I did. It was so much fun to watch the cabbages grow. I’d just hang out with them, watching their huge, gorgeous purple, blue and green leaves unfold (and dutifully picking the slugs off said leaves). I’d never seen cabbages in their natural state before, and they were a wonder and a marvel to me. Somewhere we have a fourteen year...

Read…