New Project: Making Bitters

December 16, 2013

...I’ll share the recipes I develop as I follow this path. In the meanwhile, making your own bitters is really easy. You may be able to throw a few experiments together just using things you find in your spice cabinet. Since these are flavoring, not medicine, you don’t have to be as careful with the quantities and timing as you must be when tincturing herbs for medicine. Yet at the same time, it’s a great introduction to that essential herbalist’s c...

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Have We Reached Peak Kale? Franchi’s Cavolo Laciniato “Galega De Folhas Lisas”

Mr. Homegrown

November 6, 2013

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

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I’ve heard murmurings of a kale backlash. Apparently, too many restaurants have kale salads and fancy city folks like us are losing sleep worrying what the next hip vegetable will be. I have a proposal. Let’s keep with the kale for awhile longer. I propose a Franchi kale “Galega De Folhas Lisas” as the new big thing. Translated, the variety name is something like “Galacian smooth leaf.” To add to the confusion I get the feeling that Italians don’...

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Initial Thoughts on the Age of Limits 2013 Conference

Mrs. Homegrown

May 30, 2013

Age of Limits, Thoughtstylings

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...ipped to deliver detailed reporting from the event. Here are links to the speakers so you can check them out, if you’re curious: John Michael Greer is the author of approximately a billion books, including The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age, The Ecotechnic Future: Exploring a Post-Peak World, The Wealth of Nature: Economics As If Survival Mattered and Apocalypse Not. He blogs at The Archdruid Report Carolyn Baker, a...

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Making the Shed Great Yet Again

Mr. Homegrown

February 17, 2020

Design, Thoughtstylings

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Here’s a picture from May of 1999 showing our late doberman Spike guarding me while I worked on our then 90 now 100 year old shed. Guess what I’m doing over 20 years later? Working on the same shed. Me in 1999. In 2020 I need glasses. The shed has gone through two previous improvement battles starting with shoving a foundation under it, electrification and strengthening the floor followed by a somewhat misguided attempt at insulation and ceiling...

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Adventures in Extreme Making: The White Rose

Mr. Homegrown

February 9, 2017

Design

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For reasons I can’t fully articulate, I often think about an obscure film by the artist Bruce Conner called “The White Rose.” Conner’s film documents the moving of a huge and mysterious painting by the artist Jay DeFeo. The painting is so large that the moving company had to cut a hole in the wall of DeFeo’s second second floor apartment to get it out. Perhaps the appeal of this film is the problem solving or the obsessiveness of DeFeo. Or maybe...

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