GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

  • Replace the Front Wheel Bearings On Your Car GF.TV video


    Yes, you can learn how to replace the front wheel bearings on your car or truck. Eric shows you how to repair your own truck wheel bearings, using his Ford F150. The front wheel bearings of his truck are making that classic wheel bearing ‘whorl’ sound, so we take an afternoon to make a wheel bearing video.

    Front wheel bearings are usually easy to replace, but can be a bit messy, wear latex or nitrile gloves and save your hands from grease. Buy the new wheel bearings and new wheel bearing grease before you start, and work on one wheel at a time. It helps if you have a car repair manual, we like the Haynes manuals, available here.

    You need only basic car tools to do this, it helps to have  few wood blocks to prop up the hub while working on it. You might also consider changing the disc brake pads while you’re replacing the front wheel bearings, since you have to remove the disc brake calipers to remove the wheel hub anyway. here is a video we did on how to replace your disc brake pads.

    Consider having the disc brake rotors turned, or replacing them also, again, since you have to remove these to work on the bearings.

    Be sure to safely raise the front of the vehicle off the ground using jackstands.

    Have some suggestions or questions? let us know below:

  • No, I will not fix your computer GF Radio

    more on road rage and walking away from it.

    pinball history, mike talks about the influence on pinball by Steve Kordek, Eric reads from Mr Kordek’s obituary in the NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/business/steve-kordek-innovator-of-pinball-game-dies-at-100.html

    mike shreds his paperwork and sets off the alarm at work and eric used to have long hair and a mowhawk, photos of which are out there.

    more on using baking soda to wash your hair and using hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, water, and  few drops of dishwashing soap to get rid of the funky smell of labrador fur

    eric has disconnected the camera and microphone on his computer

    viewer mail and itunes reviews.

    eric reacts to a cranky comment by someone who does not like dogs

    iTunes review: ” if you’re looking for a tightly structured podcast, GardenFork is not for you. ”

    eric has started to post things on Pinterest.com, its a great way of sharing pictures and ideas from people’s websites. Gardenfork’s page on Pinterest is here: http://pinterest.com/gardenforktv/

    Mike goes on cooking: mike tells how to make pizza at home using a super easy way with a large flat pita that you can keep in the freezer. Mike uses spaghetti sauce, olive oil, cheese and vegetables.

    Eric talks about things he is doing to lose weight, talking about posting his weight each day publicly would help to keep one focused.

    Mike and Eric talk about the diplomacy and social etiquette of asking a friend to fix your computer. its summed up by: “No, I will not fix your computer”

    photo by mconnors

    Finally, Eric likes the word ‘ somnolent ‘

  • Maple Syrup Season Update GF Radio

    Eric talks with Bill of Maple Knoll Farm about tapping Maple Trees for sap, making maple syrup, and how this warm winter is affecting the maple syrup season. Bill can be seen in our GF Video Make Maple Syrup here. Bill has about 150 trees tapped, using metal buckets. He and his family collect the maple sap, and boil it down in the evaporator in the family sugar shack. This warm winter weather has thrown a wrench in the usual maple syrup making process. Sap runs in sugar maple trees when the nights are cold and the days are warm. This year we’ve had just warm weather for the most part.

    In the sugar shack, Bill and his family fire up the evaporator and boil down the sugar maple sap to syrup. Its very cool process to watch. There are several maple syrup operations in our town, and we visited another one recently and made this how to make maple syrup video there. Each sugar shack is different, reflecting the interior design sense of each sap house owner.

    Some additional maple syrup posts on Gardenfork:

    How to make Maple Syrup at Bill’s Sugar Shack

    How to tap sugar maple trees

    How to make maple syrup at the Norfolk sugar shack

    Summer Salad with Maple Blue Cheese

     

    photo by earl53

     

     

  • Winter Bee Check & Sugar Feeding – Beekeeping 101 Video

    Getting your honeybees through winter is a challenge. We feed our bees sugar in the form of a sugar cake, (sugar cake recipe below video) and show you in this video how to feed your bees sugar in the winter.

    Note: I know use the Mountain Camp method of winter sugar feeding, but the video below is a good visual on checking your bees in winter.


    Another benefit of sugar cakes on top of the hive is that they sugar absorbs moisture, reducing the chance of condensation forming on top of the hive and raining down on your bees, killing them.

    winter beek check list watchWe use these insulated inner covers in the winter, which help greatly in reducing condensation. So the combination of a winter cover and sugar cakes, I believe, really helps with moisture buildup in the hive.

    Many books talk bout using fondant in winter, but I’ve found it is hard to make, and I’m not sure what the exact benefits it has over just plain sugar cakes, which are super simple to make with re-useable foil pans you buy at the store. We add a homemade essential oil mix to the cakes.

    Read more of our beekeeping posts here and watch beekeeping videos here. Thx!

    beekeeping-sugarcake-vid-thumb

    Do you use sugar in your hives in winter? let us know below:

  • How to find a new job, Rich Gee talks GF Radio

    Wondering how to get  job in this economy? You’ve just been downsized, and you’re thinking to yourself, how do look for a job? How do I market myself?

    I met Rich Gee, executive and business coach, at a great diner for breakfast, and after we had eggs, hash, toast and coffee, we recorded an impromptu GF Radio show about how to look for a job. Rich gives some great suggestions on marketing yourself and how to talk about yourself in the present, not ‘what you used to do’.

    The diner we met at, The Laurel Diner in Southbury, CT is neat. Michael Stern of RoadFood.com says:

    A vintage diner with terrific corned beef hash and even more terrific hash brown potatoes. Dine at the counter and watch the cooks juggle a dozen orders as breakfast perfume fills the air.

    When Rich and I sat down, I knew I was in a New England diner, as kielbalsa was on the  menu. I had the hash special and it was good.

  • Sugar Cake Recipe Winter Beekeeping 101 Video

    Here’s a video on how to make sugar cakes to feed your bees in winter. Overwintering your honeybees is  challenge, here is one way I help the bees overwinter, feeding them sugar cakes with this recipe. You can make these at home. I use foil pans you can buy at the grocery store.

    Note: I know use the dry sugar aka Mountain Camp method of providing sugar to honeybees in the winter. Watch our dry sugar Mountain Camp video here.

    winter beek check list watch

    The sugar cake recipe:

    • put 5 pounds of sugar in a large mixing bowl
    • add 7.5 ounces of water
    • add a teaspoon or two of essential oil mix if you choose
    • mix together and then spread out in a 9×13 or similar foil pan
    • allow to dry overnight
    • take off the inner cover of the hive
    • carefully turn the cake upside down onto a thin plastic or wood board
    • slide the sugarcake onto the top of the hive, and either put on either a shim or an insulated inner cover, and then the outer cover.

    Here are some photos of how to make sugar cakes for bees.

    You can add a homemade honeybee essential oil mix to the sugar cake recipe, you can see the essential oil recipe here. Update: I know buy the pre-mixed essential oil mix, its not that expensive and saves time.

    To put these cakes on top of your hive, you must use a spacer – shim, or an insulated inner cover.

    There are many opinions on how to get your bees through the winter, this is one way we make sure our honeybees have enough food to get through the winter. What I like about sugarcakes is that the cakes absorb moisture in the hive, which reduces or prevents condensation in the hive.

    Many beekeeping books say you should open the hives only when it is 45-50F, but I’ve found if you act quickly, you can pop the top of the hive to slide in sugarcakes when the temperature is in the 30s. Obviously you aren’t going to do a hive inspection at 30F, but you have a few seconds to open the inner cover an add sugar above the supers.

    Again, I think the dry sugar method is much better now, check it out here.

    mountain-feeding-sugar-beekeeping-playDo you use sugar in your hives in winter? let us know below:

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  • The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener Book Review

    I was looking forward to reading Nikki Jabbour’s The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener because my farming apprenticeship had a significant focus on season extension, as the farm is currently going into its twelfth month of continuous harvest. But we were growing in Virginia, whereas Ms. Jabbour has succeeded in maintaining a year-round garden in the more challenging Nova Scotian climate. Because of this, her book achieves its subtitle: How to Grow Your Own Food 365 Days a Year, No Matter Where You Live.

    Listen to Nikki talk with Eric on GardenFork Radio here.

    The Year Round Vegetable Gardener Book Review

    The book is chock full of information, from the basics (timing the seasons and intensive planting) to the complex (building structures to capture and maintain heat). It is comprehensive enough that a relative novice could start with The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener as a valuable resource. A more seasoned grower might be tempted to skip over some familiar-sounding sections, but I would urge you to read cover-to-cover as unique and useful tips are sprinkled throughout the entire text.

    The chapter on winter gardening progresses from light protection (like row covers) to using an unheated greenhouse or building your own polytunnel, so a grower in any hardiness zone or variously sized growing space can find techniques to meet his or her needs. The plans to build your own cold frame or polytunnel are easy to follow and call for inexpensive materials. Plus, the chapter motived me with photos of lusciously green vegetables thriving alongside snow and ice.

    Like many other gardening books, this one concludes with a crop index. Ms. Jabbour recommends specific cultivars based on cold or heat tolerance or days to maturity and includes an emphasis on vegetable varieties less talked about in other books; for example, Tatsoi has its own entry.

    watch more mini greenhouse vids
    In short: I love this book. It’s a wonderful resource for year-round vegetable growing knowledge and inspiration. Now, if only I didn’t live in a studio apartment!


    Order from Indie Bookstores here

    Order from Amazon here. (affiliate links)

    Grocery Gardening a new cooking gardening book that works

  • Frozen Brake Calipers & Haybox Cookers GF Radio

    Mike tells us how to buy used truck, buying a used car or truck can be an un-fun experience, Mike talks about how to avoid the pitfalls. Frozen or stuck brake calipers are discussed, what causes a frozen brake caliper? how to fix a broken brake caliper and how disc brakes work are covered.

    Mike's new used Ford F150 truck

    Haybox cookers are next on GF Radio, what is a Haybox Cooker? Listen as eric describes how a haybox cooker is constructed and how it works. The history of these cookers is interesting, and we found several neat blogs while researching this thing.

    We found a great self sufficiency blog, Growing Things and Making Things, that talks about the haybox cooker

    Also on that blog was  post about using only water to wash your hair, and Sarah tells us how to wash your hair using only baking soda. [ i can attest that Sarah’s hair looks great ]

    Yet another viewer has discovered our No Knead Bread video and No Knead Bread recipe adapted from Jim Lehman, and the viewer has some suggestions:

    “Now, you ought to do a video on ALL the possibilities available for the Sullivan Bread. I do
    a garlic/onion, onion, onion and Italian seasonings, garlic and Mediterranean seasonings,
    sun-dried tomato and black olive, and pepperoni and cheese besides the standard recipe.
    My wife wants me to try a roasted red pepper (chopped) with garlic, onion and Italian or
    Greek seasonings. My son is after me to try a bacon/onion and sharp cheddar cheese one.
    At first I had doubts if ANY of the “flavored” Sullivan breads would turn out, but they did and
    BETTER than the expensive bakery Artisans. Of course almost all the add-ins are dried
    or not refrigerated and added with the base ingredients and let rise over night. The cheese is
    added just prior to the two hour “rise”. “

    We then move onto to Steven, of Tiny House Listings‘ photos and plan for brick pizza oven that uses no mortar or rails, you can see the photos here

    Love to get recipes and photos from you all.

     

  • Seed Starting How To & Email Reminders GF Radio

    How to start seeds using a heated seedling mat starts the show, using plastic sheeting to build a hoop house within a greenhouse, and using a heating cable buried in the ground starts GF Radio this week. You can watch our seed starting videos here.
    Eric has a healthy respect for electricity, and despite Eric reminding everyone to change the batteries in the smoke alarms, he forgets himself. You should change your smoke alarm batteries every 6 months.
    You can use the calendar in your computer to email yourself reminders to do these things, like flip your mattress, clean your fridge coils, etc.
    The buildup of dust in your computer starts us on a tangent talking about how to clean your computer, Mike gives some computer cleaning suggestions. Keeping your computer on your desktop instead of on the floor will keep the insides of the computer cleaner.

    USB powered outlets are new on the market, and for home offices this might be a good idea. Eric wonders how much vampire power is used by these USB outlets, and you need a deep outlet box to accommodate these USB outlets.
    Valentines day comes up, and mike wants to know why can’t he be romanced. Having Valentines Day at home is a theme at GardenFork.
    If you don’t have enough time, stop watching TV is a quote from this Holstee.com Manifesto poster that Eric likes. “This is our life, do what you love, and do it often”
    The website redesign comes next, be prepared for more changes as we redesign the site.
    Mike is going to buy a used Ford F150, and Eric gives tips on buying a used car or truck.

  • How to make homemade pasta GF TV Video

    Home made pasta, aka fresh pasta, we show you how to make a home made pasta recipe in the GF cooking video. Pasta from scratch is not hard, there’s just a few steps to get it right. Homemade pasta tastes different from store bought pasta, and when you make it yourself, there are infinite variations possible. neat.

    There’s a good chance you have a pasta machine in the basement, an xmas gift from a while back that you never got to, so you’ve got the equipment. If you don’t have a pasta machine, check out these pasta machines
    or the links at the bottom of this article.

    My technique for making home made pasta is based on a method Jamie Oliver shows us in his book, Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook
    – a book I really like, BTW.

    Home Made Pasta Recipe  ©2012 Eric Rochow

    100 Grams all purpose or Italian “OO” flour

    1 egg

    For homemade pasta, you can use either all purpose flour or an italian flour labeled “OO”, i believe its a finer grind flour, but if you can’t find it, all purpose flour works fine.

    The ratio that I’ve found works best is 100 grams of flour to 1 egg. If you are making fresh pasta for 4 people, I’ve found 300 grams of flour and 3 eggs works well.

    Put the flour and eggs in a food processor, and pulse until the flour comes together and looks like small pebbles.

    Dump the pasta dough mixture onto a floured board, and collect the flour into a ball.

    Now knead the dough by stretching the dough out and folding it over on itself. Its best to watch our how to video to see this. Knead for 5-8 minutes

    The dough is kneaded when you press your finger lightly into the dough and the dough fills out the dimple you’ve made again, the dough bounces back.

    Shape the dough into a rectangle, wrap in plastic wrap, and put in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, longer is better.

    Take the dough out of the fridge and cut into square pieces about 3″ x 3″,  3/4″ thick. how many pieces you will have depends on how much flour and eggs you mixed together.

    Take one of the dough squares and run it through your pasta machine at its widest width. Fold the dough back over on itself in thirds, like folding a letter into an envelope.

    You will now run the dough through each width setting on the machine, holding the dough so the folds are on the sides. You may need to flour the dough when rolling it through the machine to keep it from sticking.

    After you have run the dough through the machine at its smallest width, take the dough and fold it back on itself until it is about 4″ wide or so, you want a width that is small enough so you can run the dough through the machine again.

    Run the dough the machine again, starting at the widest width and progressing through to the narrowest setting. Note: some machines  have a real narrow final width, you may not want to get the dough that thin, it depends on what kind of pasta you want to make, and how thick you want it to be.

    You can cut the dough in half if it gets too difficult to work with. And you can flour the dough as needed.


    You are now ready to run the pasta dough through the die cutters to make various kinds of pasta, or you can hand cut it on a board, or you can make ravioli with the dough. I’ve found it works best to let the pasta dough rest under a towel for 10 minutes or longer before running it through the pasta cutters, you may need to flour the dough again, you want it quite dry.

    The flour you use for dusting can be whole wheat or semolina or just regular flour. I’ve used whole wheat thinking it gives a bit of a nutty taste to the pasta, but maybe i’m just fooling myself.

    Once you cut your pasta, you can drop it into boiling water or let it dry on a dowel or broomstick set between two chairs. Fresh pasta can take 3 minutes to cook, or 8 minutes, it all depends, you’ll have to keep an eye on it.

  • How to remove your name from catalog mailing lists

    We’ve been getting multiple copies of numerous catalogs, and then there are another bunch of catalogs that I don’t want to receive. Its been in the back of my mind to clip out the address label from each catalog, write ‘unsubscribe’ on the label, and mail it back to the catalog company. But with postage costs rising, I thought, what if I just type:

    remove my name from abc company mailing list

    into a search engine? Well here is the answer:

    Type the company name and hit go

    Brilliant! and i saved a bunch on postage. The average person in the United States receives 41 pounds of catalogs and mailings a year, and while I like and buy things from many of the companies that send me catalogs, I don’t usually use the catalog, I go to their website and shop for what I need.

    website form to remove your name from catalog lists

    According to 41pounds.org, junk mail produces more carbon dioxide than 9 million cars. They offer a service where for a $41, they will remove your name from mailing lists for 5 years. This is a great way to keep all those credit card offers from flooding you mailbox.

    I also called my credit card company and told them to stop mailing me those balance transfer checks and offers. It might not be a rational fear, but I don’t want those blank checks they mail me to end up in the wrong hands. And its one less thing to shred and jam our paper shredder. Neat.

    So there you go, type in the name of the catalog company and you will probably find a link to a page on their site to remove your name from mailings. A few of the companies required an email address when filling out the form, I typed in a made-up email address.

    How to you reduce mailings and paper in your house? Let us know below:

  • Pizza Oven Plans & Photos from Steven of Tiny House Listings

    Here is a different take on the portable backyard pizza oven by Steven of TinyHouseListings.com . Steven sent me these photos of the brick pizza oven he built. Here’s Steve’s note to us:

    I love your website and loved the post on your pizza oven. After I saw it I posted a wanted ad on Craigslist for clay fire bricks and the next day went to pick up 100 of them from a fellow for free.

    I played around with the bricks in my back yard and came up with a way to setup an oven with no mortar, no rails, no nothing except stacked bricks. My wife and I cooked 4 pizzas last night and they turned out nicely.

    Since it was my first time setting up something like this it was a little crooked (you can tell especially in the pic from behind) but I plan to take it down and restack it. One other recommendation I would make should you decide to take this approach is to make the oven about two or three layers of bricks deeper to allow more heated air to circulate over the pizza. My oven is only 4 layers deep since I ran out of bricks! Once I get a couple more I’ll make it deeper.

    When building it be sure to build all of the layers of the wall together. In other words, lay all bricks down for each row on the entire side of the wall, then move up to the next layer so they bricks can rest on each other for support.

    I think its brilliant that Steven posted a ‘wanted’ ad on craigslist looking for bricks, I had not thought of doing that, I kept looking in craigslist for people offering bricks. Smart.

    Dry Fit Pizza Oven by Steven
    rear view of pizza oven
    Fire = Good

    Other Pizza Oven Plans and Photos Posts on GardenFork:

    Brick Pizza Oven Video and Plans GF TV video

    Brick Oven Plans and Photos from a GardenFork Fan

    Pizza Oven Photos from John

    Backyard Brick Oven Discussion! GF Radio

    Homemade Pizza Recipe : Christmas Eve

    How to make a bread peel or pizza peel : Gardenfork.tv

     

     

     

  • Aquaponics and Hydryponics How-to GF Radio

    ‘Being pregnant, that will knock you out’ is how Eric describes pregnancy. Hamburgers with eggs and peanut butter is on Mike’s to do list at his favorite pancake place. Mike is enjoying his Zombie Bait shirt.

    Rick updates us on his DIY aquaculture and hyrdroponics project. Aquaculture is like organic gardening in a closed system using fish and the waste water from the fish feeding the plants, and the filtered water is then returned back to the fish tank. If you already have a goldfish pond, you are that much closer to having an aquaculutre system. What kind of fish to use, what is the difference between hyrdoponics and aquaculture, and how you can build an inexpensive hydroponics system using 5 gallon buckets and PVC pipe. Mike’s friend Eric has a site about aquaponics here.

    Rick made a video about basic Dutch Bucket hydroponics system here

    Here is a simple hydroponic setup you can buy
    The advantage of the dutch bucket system is that the PVC pipe runs underneath the bucket to allow easy drainage.

    Eric and Rick both cite Eliot Coleman’s Book Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long

    Rick talks about the GardenFork Radio interview with Deek Diedricksen, author of Humble Homes, Simple Shacks, Cozy Cottages, Ramshackle Retreats, Funky Forts . Rick talks bout several of the projects, Deek is a brilliant designer.

    Following up on the Simple Backyard Pizza Oven, viewers have sent in photos of their Brick Pizza Ovens, and one viewer has made Simple Bread Oven, see the photos here.

    With viewer mail come discussion the video of How to cook a great steak, and propane torches.

    More on winter beekeeping, Eric and Rick discuss the warm weather and winter feeding of honeybees.

  • Minimal Living & Monster Minivans GF Radio

    Sarah joins Eric and Mike to talk about minimal living and how families can reduce their clutter. Sarah addresses how families can reduce their amount of stuff and be minimalist too. Eric thanks Make Magazine for putting the new pizza oven video on their site and Mike talks about the joy of driving through flat land.

  • Setting Up a Dutch Bucket Hydroponics System

    (Sorry about the Auto-Start on the Video. Don’t know how to turn that off–Rick).

    I’ve set up a hydroponics (soil-less growing in an inert medium) system inside the tunnel, which is itself inside my greenhouse. This is a little video on how I did it and how the system works. For early season vegetables, this scheme will work all the way up to Maine…at least that’s what Eliot Coleman says. You can have, however, just one or two Dutch Buckets (also called BATO buckets) in a corner of your house. Just as long as the temps stay warm enough for, in my case, tomatoes and peppers.

    There are some parts coming that are not in the video. One is an aquarium air pump to keep the growing liquid oxygenated. The other is an aquarium heater, which will warm the solution that is pumped over the roots.

    Also I failed to mention that this system doesn’t run continuously, it is On 1 hour, Off 4 hours.

    • It used to be that you couldn’t find drip irrigation supplies at garden centers and the big Orange or Blue stores, but now you can. However, you can order drip supplies from Drip Works online as well.
    • The Dutch Buckets came from Grower’s Supply, but there are many sources (be sure to order the siphons, 2 per bucket, which are separate). There are also videos on how to make home made Dutch Buckets (BATO buckets).
    • the Hydroton came from a local hydroponics store, but is also widely available on-line. You can also use any light medium, such as expanded shale, perlite or even river gravel (anything without limestone. To test, put a hand full of gravel in a jar of vinegar. If it bubbles and sizzles, you can’t use it.)

  • Home Made Pizza Oven Photos from John

    After watching our brick oven pizza video, John in Arizona sent us these photos of his DIY brick oven. Much like our brick oven design, it uses brick and angle iron. I forgot to ask John where he got his angle iron from. I like that the brick oven fits nicely right next to his propane grill, right off the patio, all set for cooking.

    “My wife and I love your show. We put this together and wanted you and your wife to see it”

    Cool! This is the second set of pictures I’ve got from a viewer. A big thank you to John for sending these. love it. See the link at the bottom of this post for links to other pizza and bread oven photos.

    home made brick pizza ovenJohn tried out his oven with a pizza stone, and I’ve talked with a few people who have tried this method, its much better to just slide the pizza right onto the hot bricks. The bricks are about 700F, so its pretty sterile. And bricks are made out of clay, which is what pottery is made out of, so i’m thinking its pretty safe to do.

    home made brick pizza oven

    brick pizza oven with pizza baking in it

    pizza oven

    brick pizza oven videoMore Pizza Oven Plan Photos Here
    Love that roaring fire in the photo there, and the pizzas have a smokey hint to them when using wood. Do you have a backyard oven? send us photos or a link to your site, thanks!

  • Build a Tiny House with Deek Diedricksen GF Radio

    Tiny House Designer Deek Diedricksen joins Sarah and Eric to talk about how to build a tiny house of your own, how to use recycled materials in your tiny house, and how he published his book of Tiny House Designs,Humble Homes, Simple Shacks, Cozy Cottages, Ramshackle Retreats, Funky Forts
    Deek and Eric talk about green building techniques, aka ‘Curbside Culling’ and how you can build a house with stuff your neighbors throw out. Eric’s Plywood Boat video is based on Deek’s design for a plywood boat he did for Make Magazine and on today’s show a discussion of how to build a boat from one sheet of plywood with zero skills, and how one can modify the plywood boat that we built on GardenFork.
    Deek will be teaching at several Tumbleweed Tiny House Workshops in Miami and perhaps Boston.
    Treehouse plans and how to attach a treehouse to a tree comes up next, Deek tells us a few different ways to secure a treehouse up in a tree, using recycled materials, of course. Plans for a tree house workshop are in a the works, and a tiny house houseboat is in the nascent stages.
    Deek’s advice for how high to build a treehouse is not build it too high in the tree, and hardwood trees are better to secure tree houses to. Overbuild your tree house while keeping the weigh to a minimum is the mantra.
    We name drop with Deek, talking about Andrew Odom, tiny house building and blogger, who was on this GF Radio episode, you can check out Andrew’s site here, and Eric talked about Gennaro Brooks-Church, green building contractor who talked about green building techniques in this episode of GardenFork.TV
    The dilemma of curbside culling is next, what to do with all the recycled materials one picks up? Deek says to go ahead and build stuff with them.
    We do a book review of Deek’s book here, take a look at some of the drawings inside Deek’s Tiny House book.

  • Humble Homes; Tiny House Plans Book by Derek Diedricksen

    Looking for tiny house plans? Here they are. The Tiny House or Small House movement has a number of well known thought leaders, Derek Diedricksen leads by building Tiny Houses. Derek is the author of a new book of tiny house plans and ideas, Humble Homes, Simple Shacks, Cozy Cottages, Ramshackle Retreats, Funky Forts
    .
    The best way to describe Deek’s book is a mash up of Tiny House Architecture meets Comic Zine.

    Reviews of the book describe it in a similar way, Mad Magazine meets This Old House meets Wayne’s World.

    And the book is very GardenFork; unpretentious and not afraid to be who he is, Deek fits right in in the GardenFork world. Taking found materials, stuff you find in your neighbor’s garbage, and building Tiny Houses with fun names. “TV Viewing Fort Cube” and “The Yeehaw Spa” are just two of the many small house designs in the book.

    Deek’s book is an idea starter, not a book of finished tiny house plans, its a book to start you on 100 ideas of how to build a tiny house that fits your world. Each page is jammed with what comes out of his head – which is similar to how my head works, i just can’t draw or drink as much caffeine.

    Derek “Deek” Diedricksen in one of his tiny houses

    You will read each page more than once, you will forget what page your were on and it wont matter, because whatever page you land on is filled with more cool ideas. If this book were designed like most how-to books, it would be 400 pages.

    This book will take you on many tangents and you will land somewhere unplanned, but that’s a good thing, I think.

    Deek was on GardenFork Radio talking about how to build a tiny house and other fun tangents, you can listen to the show here. Deek’s website is RelaxShacks.com