Have you ever wanted a uniform?

...which suits all of my needs (fit, comfort, pockets, good fabric etc.) and making it my very own. I also like to think that having a uniform would eventually save in laundry and reduce material waste over time. It would harken back to the days when people simply didn’t have more than a handful of outfits to wear, but those outfits fit them well and lasted a long time because they were made of quality materials. Lately I’ve been obsessing over the...

Read…

Looking for Chicken Coop Plans

...s our needs. Please feel free to share this message with any chicken-owners you know. A little bit about me: I’m a writer and chicken owner living in Minnesota. I’m the author of Eat More Vegetables: A Guide to Making the Most of Your Seasonal Produce, The Minnesota Farmers Market Cookbook, and the Moon guides to Minnesota and the Twin Cities. This is my first chicken-related book. Thanks! Tricia Cornell...

Read…

Dave Miller on Baking with 100% Whole Wheat

...ed by Chad Robertson’s first cookbook. Results were better but I was still making white bread. My new bread baking adventure began this weekend when I took a workshop taught by Chico, California baker Dave Miller. His breads are almost all 100% whole wheat. He mills his own flour from carefully sourced heritage grains. Using a levain (a starter), he creates loaves that foreground the flavor of the grain. In short, he shows that bread can have as m...

Read…

Connect with Nature Project #2: Rediscover Your Feet

..., natural splay. My foot size also increased by an inconvenient half size, making it newly difficult to find shoes which fit. Next came barefoot walking. As has been oft mentioned in this blog, Erik is a barefoot runner. I don’t run, but I am a barefoot walker. Barefoot walking woke me to a world of forgotten sensations: the warm softness of asphalt, the fresh coolness of a sprinkler soaked sidewalk, the delicate slide of wet leaves beneath my toe...

Read…

Maintaining a Worm Bin

...ent that Chicken Powered Terror Dome for Worms, I have to sort the worms myself. There are various tricks for this. None are foolproof. I believe I’ve blogged about them before. After trial and error I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just as easy to pick them out by hand as to do anything else. The pyramid system and the like work, but are not any faster. Worm sorting would be most fun with someone else–sort of like shelling peas–but today I l...

Read…