How I Built a Greenhouse from Recycled Windows

Greenhouse recycled windows

Extend your growing season with a greenhouse and start new seedlings earlier in the spring The first frost in NE Kansas averages around Oct-20. The last frost around Apr-20. That is 6 months of no growing season. I had setup grow lights in my basement to start plants earlier, but it was starting to take … Read more

How to Grow Chestnut Trees From Seed

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Step by Step – From Seed to Garden Bed You want to grow chestnuts from seed, but don’t know where to start? You have come to the right place. This will give you a step by step guide to grow chestnuts from seed – from foraging the seed, to sprouting, to transplanting. Cross posted from … Read more

How to Save, Store, and Stratify Persimmon Seeds

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How to grow your own persimmon trees The wild American persimmon is a puzzling fruit. If you pick it when it looks ripe, it will taste like alum – weirdly bitter and chalky. Your mouth puckers up, but not like from a lemon. Yet if you wait until your senses are telling you that they … Read more

Foraging and Pottage – Moving Foraging from a Skill to a Mindset

Foraging and Pottage Title

How to Use Foraged Veggies to Extend Your Oatmeal – Without the Blood Sugar Spike This year I have been more mobile than usual.  I am very close to location-independent.  I am extremely thankful to friends and family that have let me stay with or house-sit for them while I work through this time of … Read more

Fight the cold and flu season with Autumn Olive Oxymel Medicinal

autumn olive oxymel

Autumn Olive is a superfood Autumn olive berries have a high amount of Vitamin C. The Ruby red variety has more lycopene than even tomatoes. I have autumn olive growing in my pasture, the Ruby Red, Amber (yellow), and the Punch Bowl varieties. I harvested the berries in October and froze them for use in … Read more

Don’t Let Inspiration Keep You from Getting Stuff Done

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The Myths of Creativity “Sing in me, O Muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending, the wanderer, harried for years on end” – Homer’s “Odyssey”. People want to be inspired. We have an entire myth around creativity that anything artistic in our lives is the “creative spark”, … Read more

A Perfect Day – Sometimes it’s the Little Things that Make the Perfect Day

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Editor’s Note: As Perpend related in Ep. 14 of Thriving the Future Podcast, his Perfect Day looks like a fairly average day that many would not see as anything special. But it has space, it has room to think, to relax, to breathe, while still Getting Stuff Done. “The whole point is living a life … Read more

How I created an Apple Guild – Permaculture

Turn a corner of your garden into Hassle-Free Permaculture Perennial Production Look at this picture. What do you see? A mess of plants and weeds? This is a permaculture apple guild, with multiple perennials, in the corner of my garden area. This has two apple trees on dwarf/semi-dwarf rootstock (an Arkansas Black, and a Golden … Read more