From the California Olive Oil Council Making extra-virgin olive oil (the best of the olive oils) is a time intensive and expensive process. For millennia, growers have monitored olives, waiting for the precise moment of invaiatura when the succulent drupe turns from green to black. Only then are olives harvested by hand and pressed for […]

As a small manufacturer that ships a physical product, I’m always concerned about my ecology footprint when it comes to shipping. That’s also true for products that are being shipped in. For instance, if I have the choice of two vendors, and one has shipped products using polystyrene pellets, and the other has used post […]

When you first get introduced to the addiction that is making soap, it’s easy to buy your materials at the grocery store. But as your addiction grows, or you find that people are throwing money at you to buy your creations, or you suddenly feel a burning desire to do an arts and crafts show, […]

Working with small batches is often trickier than doing the huge batches I often do. But doing small batches lets you get all kinds of creative. Best of all, if you make a mistake, you’re not tossing out hundreds of dollars in materials. It’s fairly easy to “rebatch” a mistake batch when it’s a small […]

As I’ve noted before, Instructables has changed their business model, reducing access to content to non-paid visitors. Since all of my work was published under a Creative Commons non-commercial license, I’ve removed it from Instructables and am republishing it here, so the content stays free. Keeping in mind folks with data stream limits, I’ve used […]

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) will hold a public meeting on Tuesday, July 22, 2008, starting at 1 p.m. EST for interested stakeholders to provide an open forum to solicit feedback on the establishment of the BioPreferred voluntary labeling program.  This program will allow USDA to authorize manufacturers and vendors of qualifying biobased products to […]