What Vegetables Are You Growing This Winter?

...beautiful and much stronger tasting than the stuff at the supermarket. And store bought lettuce wilts instantly. What are you growing this winter? If you’re in a cold climate, do you grow year round? Note: if you’re in the US, Franchi has several distributors. I got my seeds from the Heirloom Seed Store, run by a very nice family that has a farm in Half Moon Bay in Northern California. The seeds I bought are not listed on their website, so you may...

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Measuring With a Shaft Key

...ved, square and tapered. We’re looking for the square ones. Every hardware store has a set of shaft keys in a dusty, seldom opened drawer. My local store carried shaft keys between 1/8″ and 1/2″. You can buy a whole set for mere dollars. I used a sharpie to mark the dimensions of my set of shaft keys. I use them mostly for setting the depth of my router and table saw. Using your sense of touch, aided by a shaft key, is much more accurate than usin...

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Cartrivision: The Netflix of 1972

...tuff on blank tapes but if you wanted more recent films you had to go to a store, choose from a catalog, and then have the tapes mailed to the store for you to pick up. So, basically, it’s 1970s Netflix with no rewind. Unfortunately you’re all too late to get in on the Ebay auction since the beauty above sold for $1,525. If you’d like to get it working you’ve got to have some serious analog repair chops and any existing tapes will likely disintegr...

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Too Good to Go?

...u see something appealing you reserve and pre-pay. When you show up at the store you display a code on your phone and they hand you a bag of food. You don’t get to choose, so the bag is a surprise which adds to the addictiveness of this app. In our hipster neighborhood Too Good to Go’s offerings center around cafes, so you mostly get pastries and bread but you can also find vegan groceries and Armenian flat breads. Until recently, we would eagerly...

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Practical Backyard Chicken Biosecurity

...e decided to increase the times I change out the litter. Trips to the feed store The place I get my feed from is, to put it charitably, dirty. They also sell chickens, and pet birds that don’t look healthy. Unfortunately, it’s the only place that carries the feed I like (Modesto Milling). From what I learned at the conference, you need to be careful about trips to the feed store. I should change clothes, put them in the wash and take a shower befo...

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