We're All Addicted
I've been holding off on this post for awhile, to see how things would take shape before I drew any conclusions. For those of you who don't know me, my favorite hobby for the past few years has been learning how to roast green coffee beans and extract the best flavor possible from them. While I don't drink as much of the stuff as most people assume upon hearing that I've decided to cut out the middle-man and roast my own, it's fair to say that I'd be very sorry to have my supply cut off. In fact, despite trying to find local sources for almost everything we use in daily life - with very mixed results - for me, coffee is one of those untouchable items that are beyond examination. Over the years, I've built several coffee roasters and learned how to make coffee according to the traditions in Cuba, Vietnam, Turkey, and Italy (well, it's real espresso, at any rate). I've roasted in modified popcorn poppers, cast-iron skillets, and most recently a custom-designed drum roaster made from a pasta pot and attached ...
Posted on June 22, 2008 9:49:14 PM EDT
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Assumptions
At the risk of posting something that will sound like an ego-centric rant, I'm interested in responding to something that came out of a comment I posted on Red State Green. Her post was about much more than the thing that I locked onto, but I was struck by the fact that she's growing wheat (I assumed for flour) in her home garden. This made me realize that I've been reading quite a bit from certain blogs (see my sidebar for some of them) about some pretty original attempts to recapture some of our lost agrarian heritage. I have similar conversations with Emily all the time about how many recipes are nearly forgotten in the wake of so many boxed cakes and potatoes. Now, I've broken through the despair that came with the realization that we've created a monster with our fundamentalist free-market philosophies (especially as applied to our food chain, which consists at least in part of living things). As a result, I'm starting to see that what we used to talk about with respect to recipes can be applied much ...
Posted on June 22, 2008 5:20:23 PM EDT
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Rain Barrels: FULL
At the beginning of this past spring, I decided to try my hand at capturing rainwater for use in the garden. I attended a class at Indigo here in Gainesville, and built the first of three rain barrels. Later, I expanded my capacity with two slave barrels that fill using the overflow from the original one. Once we got the gutters installed on the house - apparently this isn't standard equipment in Florida - and I put a few concrete blocks under them to generate some water pressure, it was just a matter of waiting for the rain. You can see a picture of my little rain-capture operation on Emily's Flickr account here. I waited about three months for enough rainfall to make the gutters drain, and yesterday I got it. We got about 1.5 inches of rain as nearly as I can tell, and the gutter that drains into the rain barrel clears probably a little over 20% of our roof. The result? 150 gallons of pure, beautiful rainwater, captured for future use! Now, I have to install that overflow on the third barrel, to keep it ...
Posted on June 11, 2008 6:28:14 PM EDT
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Your Square of Dirt
My mom visited us this weekend, and as happens so often when we talk, our worlds collided a little. It wasn't nasty, or hostile in any way, but it is interesting in some ways. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a True Believer when it comes to the need for serious reforms to our social and political structures, our food chain, and our philosophy with regard to the natural world around us. I've long ago lost faith in my government to guide us responsibly; instead what I see is a large collection of sell-outs, surrounded by corporations and ideologues with very deep pockets...where there's no room for me or mine. My mom, on the other hand, grew up in the 50's, and seems to have a tendency to believe that the brainier members of our species will eventually percolate to the top of the power pyramid, just in time to keep us from facing another Dark Age. I do admire her faith in humanity, but I have a major problem with this approach to things: it erases personal responsibility from the equation. If the ...
Posted on June 10, 2008 12:57:02 AM EDT
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