Moonshine

...preferably from a source that will lend itself to a pretty picture on the label — bottle it, and you’re in the vodka business.” As it turns out there is an art to good homemade moonshine — a far cry from the soulless mouthwash Archer-Daniels-Midlands turns out. Here’s some excerpts from an interview of ex-moonshiner John Bowman conducted by the Coal River Folklife Project from “Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia...

Read…

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...

Read…

Plastic or Wood?

...d, which are, by the way, the signature bacteria of our deplorable factory farming system. But that’s another rant. This rant is about the boards. So as we were saying, it was out with the nasty, old-fashioned, disease harboring wood boards, and in with the shiny space age boards. We fell for it. The Homegrown Revolution compound boasts a set of plastic boards (though not Elvis ones). And now what do we find out? Researchers at both UC Davis and t...

Read…

Stirred, Not Shaken

...ties us to nature and I look forward to stirring preparations and perhaps making them with a few close friends. In fact, I’m much more excited about making preparations than it buying a package through the mail. Steiner’s set of herbs all grow well here and many of them I have already. But a cow is kinda hard to come by in Los Angeles. While it may be heresy to some, perhaps we’ll have to come up with some modifications to the rituals that make s...

Read…

Saturday Linkages: Water Shaming, Scotts and Robot Houses

Smarter urban water: how Denver turned to ridiculing waste http://gu.com/p/4va3t/tw Grid-It: Knoll your everyday carry http://boingboing.net/2014/08/20/grid-it-knoll-your-edc.html … In Our Garden: Four Surprising Fruits http://thehorticult.com/in-our-garden-four-surprising-fruits-that-are-now-in-full-swing/ … Sneak peak of a LIGHT-UP ROBOT-FACE Tree House http://relaxshacks.blogspot.com/2014/08/sneak-peak-of-light-up-robot-face-tree.html?spref=tw...

Read…