Discover the Magic of Home Milling this Saturday

...l. Why To share the benefits of milling fresh flour at home. Benefits like making fresher healthier more nutritious foods for less money, while supporting the local economy, increasing food security and decreasing our impact on the environment. Where The King’s Roost in Silver Lake is LA’s first and only urban homesteading store and learning center. We believe it is the only brick and mortar store in the country that carries a full line of home gr...

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How to be a Tudor by Ruth Goodman

...ever see that described? Yet somehow, I feel better for understanding the making and maintenance process of these things. Now the ruff seems less like the inexplicable product of an alien civilization. Just think, someone (many someones) made that ruff and all those baubles and do-dads by hand Did you know folks could change the color of their ruffs in and out by treating them different colored starches? Or that there were colored ruffs at all? (...

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Our new front yard, part 5: Constructing a meadow community

...our money is going to a worthy non-profit. So, that’s the end of my excuse-making and complaining. Lets look at a what a meadow community consists of: First, there are layers. As I mentioned my previous posts, Planting authors Rainer and West encourage us to plant densely, but intelligently. The plants are not crowded, but no space is wasted–as it is in nature. As simpleton humans, the best way to approximate the abundant intelligence of natural s...

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Root Simple Reader Survey Results

...a paradoxical problem with a DIY blog. If we’re gardening or in the garage making something we’re not writing and vice versa. It’s been difficult to find the right balance. Looks like you’re all good with where we are. When we first began this blog ten years ago the standard advice was along the lines of, “people are distracted so make your posts short.” Lately, the common wisdom is that blog posts should be long and footnoted. We decided to split...

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2022 in Review: Cats, Mushrooms and Politics

...inez campaign. Thankfully Hugo won in November and has already got to work making our streets safer and helping tenants and unhoused people. Tech I put up a 10 meter and 2 meter radio and did a little bit of amateur radio stuff. I’m not great at it but did manage to make digital contacts as far away as Indonesia with ancient Radio Shack equipment. I also figured out how to decode airline data transmissions but did not figure out why I would want t...

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