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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Plum Lemon Tomato Power’s Heirloom Tomato

...s. Again, urban homesteading revolutionaries, GROW YOUR OWN! We found that label and it’s a tomato called “Power’s Heirloom”. Here’s how the Seed Saver’s exchange catalog copy describes it, “First offered in the 1990 SSE Yearbook by Bruce McAllister from Freedom, Indiana. His seed originated in Scott County in southwest Virginia over 100 years ago. Heavy yields of 3-5 oz. yellow paste tomatoes. Similar to Amish Paste, great flavor. Indeterminate,...

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Is Facebook Useful?

...sh me and shunt them to the bottom of my friend’s feeds. I have a Facebook page for Root Simple but Facebook wants me to pay to promote posts. So instead I mostly use my personal page to promote stuff with limited success. But, worst of all, Facebook has distracted me from responding to comments on this blog and, instead, focusing on comment threads on Facebook. It may be futile, but it’s time to fight back. What I’ve resolved to do I’m not going...

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LA on Fire

...harred page from a screenplay that landed on his roof over the night. That page likely drifted from the Eaton fire twelve miles northeast of us. Other than horrible air quality we’re safe but I made the mistake of checking the news on the cesspool known as X, hoping to check on some friends in Altadena. Instead of helpful information, I found right wing misdirection and conspiracy theories, blaming the fires on political enemies, water policies an...

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Making Beer in Plain Language

...home brew shop and found the process relatively simple, but the thought of making an all grain batch (extracting our own fermentable sugars from the grain rather than using the extracted syrup in a kit) seemed intimidating. Thankfully comrades Ben, Scott and Eddie showed us how to do an all grain batch a few weeks ago. Here, in plain language and crappy pictures is how it works. To the possible horror of beer aficionados, we’ll substitute plain En...

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