Essential System #3 – Sew Your Own Damn Clothes

...tart spinning and weaving your own fabric). Some recommendations for brave urban homesteaders who want to take up sewing. Don’t start with stretchy fabric. Don’t even think of using velvet (we learned this the hard way). Choose patterns carefully so you don’t end up looking like, well, folks who sew their own clothes. Consider purchasing a used serger, which cuts the fabric and finishes the seam all at once, which folks in the know tell us makes l...

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018 Wendy and Mikey of Holy Scrap Hot Springs

...ting Their adventures in biodiesel production 6x6x10 Remesh as a framework for shade cloth over vegetables What failure teaches Wild desert foods How they juice prickly pear fruit “Mad skills” Mikey’s temperature controller for fermentation and sous-vide You can find their store at: store.holyscraphotsprings.com. If you want to leave a question for the Root Simple Podcast please call (213) 537-2591 or send an email to rootsimple@gmail.com. You can...

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Daikon Radish Pickles

...ith creating a brine, which is the is the way pickles used to be made–most store bought pickles are now made with vinegar due to unwarranted safety concerns over lacto-fermentation. Today, sauerkraut is the best known lacto-fermented food. Dill pickles are traditionally made this way too. In an old country store pickle barrel, lacto fermented pickles would sit out all winter long. All they’d do is make sure the brine always covered the pickles. Th...

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How to Make a Bee Skep

...ldn’t pass this one up. In my mind it goes into my pantheon of epic thrift store finds along with Mr. Spock’s Music From Outer Space and a classified 16mm film rocket test film from the 1950s. Should you not be so fortunate as to find a skep in your local thrift store, Modern Farmer Magazine has a post on how you can build your own. Looks like a fun project. How skeps are used The following series of videos show how skeps are used. Part 6 document...

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2008 . . . a year of luxury

...their Roman herb garden and ancient tchatzhahs. The reason to hit the feed store was a return of schoolyard bully behavior from our pushy Rhode Island Red hen. We bought a bottle of Rooster Booster Pick-No-More Lotion™ to keep her from pecking the araucana hen. Thankfully the lotion, combined with a few other measures we’ll post about, seems to have stopped the problem. The lotion has lessened the amount and severity of the pecking and turned the...

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