I recently picked up Crafted With Pride. It is basically a directory for brands who actually manufacture stuff in America (with a section for Canada, too). There are many many tiny brands making great stuff that you'll never hear about because they dont advertise. It's not "BIFL" necessarily as much as it's "buy local", but obviously there's a lot of overlap in those sentiments. A lot of them are literally 1 man shops.

The book is just clothes, bedding, shoes, bags, and other accessories. It's arranged by category, but there's also an index by state.

The appendices are great, though, because they also have a section for private label manufacturers (so you can have stuff made if you want), material suppliers (including a dedicated "union-made" section), repair shops, advocacy groups, and educational groups.

The appendices are mostly aimed towards businesses, but I'm going to go through my copy and mark which suppliers sell direct to consumer.

I wish they had an online index, cause that would make it way easier to search for stuff, but this book is clearly a labor of love from a small team, so I understand they want to make some money on sales. If you want me to look anything up for you (e.g., a leather goods company in Alabama), leave a comment here (or message me) and I'll get back to you.

It's the time to harvest green black walnuts. Typically, I'm able to get a handful per tree that are accessible from the ground. I just came across a tree that had the top blown off in a storm, so I was able to collect ~10 kg almost entirely from one tree.

This is probably way more than I need, so it's time to track down some alternative uses for them.

Last year I made nocino and walnut syrup. This year, I'm going to do more of that as well as some vin de noix.

Let me know if you have any other suggestions.

Cross posting this here if anyone has thoughts.

I replaced my fridge ice maker a few years ago because part of the circuitry burned out. The replacement has also now burned out (though not nearly as badly). For reference, the burned part is supposed to hold onto the end of a copper peg that leads to the heating element (which melts the ice slightly so it can be popped out of the mold).

It seems silly to spend $60 on a new one when it's just $0.05 worth of copper that needs replacing. Is there a safe way to fix this? Unfortunately, I can't just solder the connection because it is enclosed when assembled. For reference, those tabs aren't just fouled, they are burned completely through. My first thought is to pull out the whole trace, solder on new tabs (not sure where I'd get the material), and put the trace back in.

A post about the problems with climate change leading to extreme rainfall events reminded me of this concept. I saw a great video about it years ago, and I couldn't find it, so I am just linking a journal article about the concept.

The TL;DR is that we need to be doing as much as we can to slow water down on the land.

Giant dams across rivers, while useful for flood mitigation and power generation, are ecologically harmful. Small structures, essentially providing resistance to flow of temporary streams, have a whole giant host of benefits, from decreased erosion to increased water infiltration and water sequestration.

If you live somewhere arid (or honestly in many places that are now experiencing more eratic rainfall), you should think about where you could potentially use one or more of these strategies.

Like much of the world, the weather is getting much more inconsistent where I live. Unreasonably warm weather starts earlier, but the risk of a frost still stays relatively late.

If I have plants outside right now, some days it's too hot for cool season plants, and some nights it's too cold for warm season plants.

I'm still very jealous of people who have space for a traditional garden, but one benefit of balcony gardening is that almost all of my plants are movable, so I can really dampen the effects of the weather.

Plants that can't survive the cold, I can bring in at night. Plants that can't survive the heat, I can move to a place that's sheltered from the midday sun.

This has allowed me to grow for a much extended season. I have pepper plants that are already forming peppers because I've had them outside for over a month now and just brought them in when they needed it.

It's the time of year to collect green walnuts for making nocino or vin de noix. Ive never done it before, but figured I should try since I have so many black walnut trees growing near me. Apparently, you should only use nuts you've picked yourself, not the immature fruit on the ground because the tree has rejected it, and it likely has pest damage.

I made a fruit picker out of a plastic bottle cut to have a notch at the top to hook around stems. What I've learned so far is that most walnut trees are either too tall to reach the nuts, even with a long pole, or they are too young to produce nuts. It seems like the best place to gather them is on the edge of fields/paths/etc, where big trees may have low branches. Standard fruit pickers will likely not work, either, because they are designed for larger fruit like apples, so they cant grip something as small as an immature walnut. Since they are not ripe, the tree also does not want to release them. I was only able to get a few to start, because I need to modify my picker to have a cutter or something like that.

Since I only gathered a few, I figured it wasn't worth doing nocino as it takes 6 months, so it did "walnut molasses" while I figure out how to modify my picker.

https://foragerchef.com/green-walnut-honey/

I recently booked some backcountry campsites in a national park (in the USA). My plan is to hike from one town to another over a few days, and the camp sites are by reservation only. These sites are not accessible by road. When i made the reservation, it required me to put in the make, model, color, and license plate of my car. I will not have a car with me, nor could I (since there are no roads), yet this information was required of me (no opt-out).

I'm assuming this is just because the system (recreation.gov) is run by a giant defense contractor (booz allen hamilton), and they want to harvest as much information as possible. It made me wonder what other government services are only available for car owners that are completely unrelated to car ownership. I'm inspired by seeing a post about while ago that talked about government services that require you to have social media accounts.

I'm sure there are other examples of this phenomena.

P.s., luckily, the sign up form is dumb, and it didn't use dropdown menus for car make/model/color, so i just put in gibberish.

Chaco sandals are generally fairly durable and a good buy from a longevity standpoint. They have many variants, but of the standard sandals, there are 3 components: an outsole, a midsole, and the webbing.

The outsole is usually rubber, and I've heard conflicting info on the durability of the chaco branded outsoles vs the vibram outsoles that are also available, but i can't comment on that personally because my chaco branded ones have seemed fine. The outsole is something that will slowly wear down, but it is replaceable through the company (and independent cobblers).

The webbing is polyester, which is strong, soft, and UV resistant, but it can eventually wear through. The webbing is also repair/replaceable through the company.

The midsole, however, is not repair/replaceable (ship of theseus problem). The "classic" chaco midsole is a hefty chunk of polyurethane that is very durable. I know people with them that have had them for over 15 years, wearing them throughout the warm half of the year, replacing the outsole multiple times, and really putting them through the wringer. The "cloud" midsole, however, is designed to be more comfortable out the the box. It's mainly made of the same polyurethane, but it has a 5 mm layer of a softer, blown polyurethane on top. Polyurethane can suffer from hydrolysis, where it breaks down over time, but the "classic" chaco soles are dense enough that it's not a problem. The softer polyurethane is far more susceptible, and once it wears down enough to open up pores in the foam, it accelerates due to moisture getting trapped in the pores.

My cloud chacos started getting porous after 3 years of ownership, and basically unwearable after 4 years. The breakdown of the material combined with the moisture retention means that they stink so badly, I cant even keep them in the house. I will likely have to dispose of them if I cannot find a way to smoothly remove that whole layer of polyurethane.

I will also note that this can also be an issue with some boots such as blundstones that are built from the same material. Allegedly, making sure to wear shoes that have this material can help to extend life by driving out any moisture that has worked it's way inside, though i cannot verify this.

TL;DR, be wary of any polyurethane shoes, particularly if they are soft/squishy

https://www.chacos.com/US/en/zsandals-101/

Does anyone have a good method for dealing with plant debris? I'm thinking about things like stems from plants, or even just pruned bits. I don't have a place to compost effectively. My normal method for woody debris is to cut it to little pieces with garden shears, and for leafy stuff to just let it dry out and crunch it up. After, I'll just stick it in the bottom of a pot that I'm going to put a new plant in. It gets a little broken down, but not as well as I'd like, and I can only do it when I have a new plant to pot, so I end up with a random pile of stuff that sits around for a while.

I wish I had like a tiny woodchipper or something.