The Root Simple 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

...ht I’d offer some suggested gifts, mostly obtainable online, for the urban homesteady types in your life. Most of the links are to Amazon, and we get a small cut of the proceeds, which helps keep our webmaster in kibble. But First . . . Charity Of course, rather than buying unneeded crap that will only clutter our already messy houses, we could agree to give to a charity instead. This season, due to our national “orange swan” event, Kelly is favor...

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Food Storage Revisited

...e a big vegetable garden you will need a larger pantry or basement. We are urban dwellers with, at best, a tiny vegetable garden (which has been neglected this year while I work on the house). That said there are some big differences between the kitchens of the 1920s and the kitchens of today that present new challenges. Some of those changes: We have a lot more kitchen gadgets and consumer electronics. With the ascendancy of the personal automobi...

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Welcome to the Summer Fruit Season

...ll of peach flavor. The peaches all have the most wonderful aroma. Grocery store fruit never has a smell that intense and lovely. Yesterday I ate my first plum of the season as well, a variety called Beauty. It was super sweet and delicious. I am very happy to begin the summer fruit season. I will continue to gorge myself on these sweet treats while they are at their peak over the next few months. And now for the shameless plugs- I’ll be at the Ol...

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Rain- The Best Gift of All

...I recently saw a display from Bushman Tanks who offer water harvesting and storage tanks suitable for the average homeowner. I thought the prices were reasonable and I love the slim line tanks that are designed to store a lot of water in a small footprint. I know what I want for Christmas next year….. [Mr. Homegrown here–hopefully Santa will bring us a Bushman Tank too–in the meantime, see our rain barrel here.]...

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Fermentation Update–Filmjölk

...! The next day we had a jar full of kind of chunky, yogurty stuff, which was not rancid, but really quiet tasty. We shook it up to remove the lumps before drinking it. We must confess that only one of us partook of that first glass, since our other Homegrown Revolution compound comrade is a bit of a, dare we say it, pussy when it comes to drinking questionable milk products. As of now we’re treating the stuff like a salty lassi –meaning we pimp it...

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