Shoemaking Advice?

...ave any of you made your own shoes? I’m looking for good resources on shoe making: books, videos, etc. I’d also love to hear stories of successes or failures or lessons learned. I’d like to make leather, soft-soled shoes as first project perhaps moccasins, perhaps something more structured. I have two books right now. One is Shoes for Free People, by David & Inger Runk, published in 1976 in Santa Cruz. As you might expect, it is highly groovy. And...

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Instant Soup Stock=Happy Flavor Bomb

...ause I want to. Back in 2013 I linked to this post by our friend Pascal on making instant soup stock with foraged greens: Wild Food Soup Stock. It’s great! But foraged greens have a short season here, and lately I’ve been using a more domestic recipe from the great blog Food in Jars: Homemade Vegetable Soup Concentrate. Check them out. You’ll see the ways in which they are similar. Basically you’re just taking all the tasty, aromatic parts of soup...

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Grub

...(Hermetia illucens) grubs as poultry and fish feed. “If we offer the grubs 100 pounds of food wastes, for example, they will reduce it to 5 pounds of residue usable as a superior soil amendment, in the process generating 10 and possibly up to 20 pounds of live grubs that can be fed to livestock; in addition to liquid effluent (how much depends on the moisture content of the feeding materials) which can be used to feed crops. Hey, wait a minute–wh...

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How to Make Amazake

...ecked the temperature and added a little more hot water as needed. 5. After 10 hours check for sweetness. If it’s not sweet enough continue the incubation process for a few more hours. 6. Once you’ve reached the desired level of sweetness you must stop the fermentation process by boiling the mixture, otherwise you’re heading down the road to making sake, something we plan on attempting in the fall. Taking a tip from the guru of fermentation Sandor...

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Pasture Standards for Laying Hens

...on. f. Water temperature must not be less than 50° F (10 C) or greater than 100° F (38 C). g. Birds must be outdoors 12 months per year, every day for a minimum of 6 hours per day. In an emergency, the hens may be confined in fixed or mobile housing 24 hours per day for no more than 14 consecutive days. h. Shade, cover and dust bathing areas 1. There must be sufficient well-drained, shaded areas for hens to rest outdoors without crowding together....

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