Friends Charlene and Richard in Forest Grove let me sleep in their Garden while I was attending Aikido Summer Camp. They have converted their one-acre suburban lot into a beautiful permaculture garden and food forest that not only feeds them (and a local Latino family that uses part of it for their own market garden), but has also given them the means to develop an interesting educational program. They had talked to me about teaching spoon carving up there, so one evening they showed me their collection of spoons and kitchen utensils. One jar of spoons they had gotten from a friend who had . . .
Increase wood stove efficiency with a Heater Hat: Free plans!
Free plans to increase wood stove efficiency Lovely friend Erica Wisner (she's the cute one on the right w/out the fuzz) put the heater hat details down on paper and gave them to us to share -- and I've finally figured out how to post them as a new "product" in the bookstore -- available as a free download, here. If you wonder what the heck I'm talking about, a masonry heater hat is a smallish amount of masonry (300 lbs or so) that you can add to a conventional metal box stove to improve performance, reduce wood consumption, and increase your comfort. Downloaders beware: this is an . . .
Earth-Art: Maia’s Mud Mural
Earth Art in Oregon Maia Fischler and friends made this mural on Maia's house using local earth and powdered concrete tints mixed with waterglass. Maia said "I hadn't planned to paint the brown areas but as time wet by the mud turned a pretty boring color so I decided to do it at the last minute. Sadly, [the masonry supply place] was closed for the weekend, so I went to Home Depot and got some liquid concrete tint, which wasn't as nice. (You couldn't control the consistency so it was pretty runny when mixed -- a little less than 1 to 1 -- with the waterglass.) Beautiful work! Her account . . .