Eight Things to Consider When Saving Vegetable Seeds

September 24, 2013

The directions for seed saving in our last book, Making It, almost got cut. Perhaps we should have just changed those directions to “Why it’s OK to buy seeds.” The fact is that it’s not easy to save the seeds of many vegetables thanks to the hard work of our bee friends. That being said, Shannon Carmody of Seed Saver’s Exchange gave a lecture at this year’s Heirloom Exposition with some tips for ambitious gardeners who want to take up seed saving...

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George Rector: M.F.K. Fisher’s Dirty Old Uncle

Mrs. Homegrown

February 11, 2016

Recipes, Reviews

5 Comments

...or, c.1937. Rector (1878-1947) was a restaurateur and popular author. This book is ostensibly a cookbook–I don’t know what else it would be–but it doesn’t have recipes per se. Instead, he just mentions how to cook things as he’s steaming along. I’m in love with the hardboiled yet strangely comforting prose (though I do have to ignore the casual sexism and racism of the period). Seems most cookbooks these days range from bland to, at best, passiona...

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The Connection Between Human Health and Soil Health

Mr. Homegrown

September 20, 2013

Food, Gardening, Soil

2 Comments

...ian and author Dr. Daphne Miller discusses in the lecture above and in her book Farmacology: What Innovative Family Farming Can Teach Us About Health and Healing. In the research for the book Miller visited farmers who, as she put it, “farm in the image of nature,” who approach the farm as a living organism. While she cautioned that there is little research behind the connection between farming practices and health, she suspects that biodiversity...

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Alektyomancy: Divination by Rooster

Mr. Homegrown

August 8, 2013

Animals, Chickens

4 Comments

...sed, and the letters were read in the order in which the rooster pecked the seeds. The interpretation of the oracle is unknown.(1) Thankfully you don’t need to own a chicken to practice alektyomancy. There’s an online version. 1) From I.P. Couliano’s book Out of this World: Otherworldly Journeys from Gilgamesh to Albert Einstein. Couliano was, incidentally, a gifted scholar whose life was tragically cut short by an assassin’s bullet. His book Eros...

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The Hen: An Appreciation

Mrs. Homegrown

January 2, 2013

Animals, Chickens

10 Comments

...ver really changes: From “The Hen: An Appreciation,” which is found in the book of essays, The Second Tree from the Corner, by E.B. White, 1944: Chickens do not always enjoy an honorable position among city-bred people, although the egg, I notice, goes on and on. Right now the hen is in favor. The war has deified her and she is the darling of the home front, feted at conference tables, praised in every smoking car, her girlish ways and curious hab...

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