A Love Supreme

December 27, 2019

...te developers. I’m also sticking my neck out because I’ve seen some in the urban homesteading movement drift towards what I’d call a fascist and/or alt-right adjacent ideology and I want to distance myself from that contingent. More on that in another post. I believe that the way we treat the environment, our bodies and our households is on a continuum with the way we take care of all people. Everyone has a right to health care, housing and educat...

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Cycling in the US from a Dutch perspective

Mr. Homegrown

September 4, 2013

Bikes, Transportation

12 Comments

...and it gathered widespread support among mainstream commentators and young urban political activists. In Amsterdam in the early 1970s, there were already organisations with the aims of demotorising cities, improving public transport, preventing the bulldozing of heritage sites and controlling pollution. These campaigners opposed the statist interventions of the Left and the laissez-faire economics of the Right, both of which they felt threatened t...

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Federico Tobon’s Kinetic Sculptures

Mr. Homegrown

November 22, 2017

Design

...#MakeNovember, Federico Tobon (our guest on episode 108 of the Root Simple podcast) has challenged himself to make one kinetic sculpture every day and post the results in social media. For inspiration he’s using an 1868 book with the delightful title, Five Hundred and Seven Mechanical Movements: all those which are most important in dynamics, hydraulics, hydrostatics, pneumatics, steam engines, mill and other gearing, presses, horology, and miscel...

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Heirloom Expo in Photos

Mr. Homegrown

September 14, 2015

Food, Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

6 Comments

I highly recommend making the trip next year to Santa Rosa to see the National Heirloom Exposition put on by the folks at Baker Creek Seeds. The centerpiece of the expo is the massive display of hundreds of different varieties of squash, melons, tomatoes and other edibles. It’s inspiring and frustrating all at once since, unless you have your own garden, you’ll never see such diversity at the supermarket. I came back with the will to improve our...

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Diyas: oil lamps from India

Mrs. Homegrown

November 12, 2014

Domesticus

3 Comments

...’s post today–Wednesday. Please don’t miss our regular scheduled Wednesday podcast, below.] As readers of this blog and our books know, I’m a big fan of little vegetable oil lamps–the type that can be easily improvised with any shallow vessel, from sea shells to Altoid tins. If the tabletop aesthetic of oyster shells and recyclables doesn’t quite appeal to you, may I interest you in diyas? Diyas are little clay lamps used in India. They usually bu...

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