Extracting Honey with a Home-Made Extractor

I have three hives, with four honey supers, chock-full of honey. But how to extract it? What I did two years ago, just cutting off the capping with a knife and letting it drip, takes a long time during which the hygroscopic honey will absorb a lot of water, making it more prone to fermentation …

The Long Memory that is Lost to Us

And now for something completely different… Here are two interesting thoughts I read today: Rees quotes Antonio Damasio (here, p.6): [For humanity to survive the sustainability crisis] we must rely on highly-evolved geneticallybased biological mechanisms, as well as on supra-instinctual survival strategies that have developed in society, are transmitted by culture, and require for their …

It’s a Two-Fer! Solar Oven and Solar Cooker

We are having a friendly competition here on Robin Hill. DH built a solar parabolic cooker and I built a solar box oven (we helped each other, of course). You can’t really compare the two because the oven is, of course, vastly superior in that it has many more functions: it can cook as well …

Riot for Austerity – July 2012 – Month 45

Here it is, the Riot for the month of July of 2012 for the three of us plus my parents-and sister-in-law. My summary of our first three years is here. Edson fixed the calculator: all go tither to crunch those numbers! Gasoline.  Calculated per person. DH and SIL have been driving into Boston every day for work (shuttle …