Essential System #6 – Fire

On the crazy path of life you may someday find yourself needing to build a fire. When it’s wet and when kindling wood is lacking this can be a challenge. Which is why we always have fire starting implements on hand including a butane lighter and waterproof matches. Most importantly we carry something to really get the fire going – our homemade wax and dryer lint fire starters. To make a wax and lint fire starter, save up the ends of a few candles...

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Saturday Tweets: Too Many Tweets!

...i Kraut! https://t.co/og1x4tenop — Root Simple (@rootsimple) March 9, 2019 Build a Border Wall? Here’s an Idea That’s Better for Communities and the Climate https://t.co/uLJ6KbXkpa — Root Simple (@rootsimple) March 9, 2019 I’m a sucker for simple, traditional Midwestern architecture – It’s still beyond me why we stopped building this stuff. Here’s where to buy prints: https://t.co/GU0X0ESg8W pic.twitter.com/zvNxNkdr25 — Nate Hood (@natehoodstp) Ma...

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How to Organize a Small Workshop

...to go a lot more smoothly. In the past few months I’ve decided to focus on making my tiny workshop both useful and pleasant. The challenge has been that our 1920s garage is tiny–sized for two Model-Ts–and must also accommodate our Honda Fit. At the risk of seeming like I’ve come down from the mountaintop with stone tablets, permit me to share a few things I’ve learned about tiny workshop design: Put everything on wheels. Get some locking wheels at...

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What laundry detergent should I use for greywater applications?

...l because they are essentially salt-based (look for the word sodium on the label). They play well with aquatic life, bless them, and they’re a fantastic alternative to more toxic detergents if your laundry water is going to the sewer, but they aren’t good for soil microorganisms. Surely you’ve heard that salting the land is a bad idea? You don’t want to salt your garden. It’s worth adding that the drier your climate, the saltier the soil, because...

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Plum Lemon Tomato Power’s Heirloom Tomato

...gardening efforts, we somehow mislaid the names of the tomatoes we planted making our reporting efforts incomplete. We do know the name of the wondrous plum lemon tomato pictured above, well worth planting again next year. It’s a meaty, sweet, yellow tomato delicious both fresh and dried. Allegedly the seeds for this tomato originally came from an elderly seed seller in a bird market in eastern Moscow which the Russian police have since shut down...

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