056 Winnetka Farms Part 1

...Italian vegetables, breed standard double-laced Barnevelder chickens, bake bread, preserve food and much more. In the first part of our conversation we’ll talk about Craig’s Italian heritage and heirloom Italian vegetables. In the second part, on next week’s podcast, we’ll discuss urban livestock. During part 1 Craig mentions: Spigarello as the new kale Radicchio di Castelfranco Red Pear Tomato Striato di Napoli zucchini Lunga di Napoli squash Mak...

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Root Simple: 2015 in Review

...not optimistic about this but I hope to be proved wrong. Honesty in Urban Homesteading We don’t do nearly enough blogging about the many hair brained notions and failed projects that transpire here at the Root Simple Compound and Labs. We did mange to chronicle a few of our shortcomings, such as our lack of a clothes line (Busted: Drying Racks, Clothes Lines and Cheese Puffs), the train wreck that was our summer garden (Our Disasterous Summer Gar...

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Reject Modernity Embrace Post-Capitalism

...den cataclysm or a steady antagonistic decline — and perhaps as recently as 100 years ago — Tartaria fell. Its great buildings were buried, and its history was erased. After this “great reset,” the few surviving examples of Tartarian architecture were falsely recast as the work of contemporary builders who could never have executed buildings of such grace and beauty, and subjected them to clumsy alterations. Like a lot of conspiracy theories it se...

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2022 in Review: Cats, Mushrooms and Politics

...ty. Apologies for the blurry photo here, but our street, with its majestic, 100 year old palm trees has that iconic LA look and has become a destination for Instagrammers. Behold the most liminal space in Los Angeles, a corridor in the mall that also houses the plastic simulated corn dogs. I correctly predicted the meltdown of crypto, an utterly worthless trend. These things are sprouting up in the neighborhood. I call this one the Death Star. I g...

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094 The American Woman’s Home

On the podcast this week Kelly and I discuss a 19th century urban homesteading book written by Catherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, The American Woman’s Home. The book was written mostly by Catherine, with some contributions from Harriet (author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin). It’s likely that Catherine realized that attaching her famous sister’s name would sell more copies. Published in 1869, The American Woman’s Home covers a great deal of terri...

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