24 Comments
Jun 17, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

Holycow...i contend that you do not have a green thumb,but are green up to your armpits!

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LOL, More like tick bites up to my armpits...(from the orchard - not the garden.)

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Jun 18, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

I'm desperately hoping the EO based flea/tick collar I got my old girl works as we as advertised. If it does, I should seriously consider getting some to wear around my ankles 🤔

Ps- ticks and leeches creep me out SO badly 🥴😬

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I handle ticks the way I handle Colorado Potato beetles, with prejudice. Any time I think to complain I remember the 18 or so different varieties they have in Missouri. Some dear friends down in the Ozarks told me, "In August you don't go for a walk in the field without duct tape. There is a tick that hunts in packs of hundreds. You look down and your leg is covered, and duct tape is the only way to deal with it."

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Jun 18, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

Literally...im now nauseated

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We have ticks in NM but I am now grateful not live in places with nicer weather and vegetation! I am glad your garden is doing so well though! The updates are such a treat!

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I worry about the continuous decline of pollinators, as every year it seems like fewer and fewer are making the rounds. I hope more people realize how critical this is for ecological stability, and reconsider the constant pesticide use and reckless mosquito-extinction campaigns. It's hard to pretend that that's not a factor in the rapid decline. Insects are an important part of the entire cycle! (except those potato beetles of course heh). Garden looks beautiful, you've a cultivated a great space

there :-)

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Thanks!

Government rules are set up to protect something. It seems to devolve into protecting criminals, polluters, corporations at the expense of people, kleptocracy, etc pathology. Meanwhile people seem to think government is going to do something to fix pollinator decline, if they think about it at all. But I have not heard a gov agency or media outlet even mention it in a long time, there seems a willful ignorance all throughout the culture about it, with hardly a shred of intent to do anything about it. Here in Minnesota people are fond of saying we have some of the strongest environmental protections in the world, and yet our water has never been more polluted, and pollinators are effectively extinct in the state. When there is that broad of a disconnect between reality and our beliefs, that is the stuff of the collapse of civilization, that is inexorable, there is only dealing with the ramifications at the personal and local level.

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Pollinators decimated by mainly monsanto's poisonous weed & bug killers.

Deliberately done as their evil GMO crops do not require pollination.

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Jun 17, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

Nice tour, thanks. Everything looks fab. Transplant a few of the husk cherries into good sized pots and put them on a table. They grow oddly horizontal in a snarly way and drop their fruit when they're ripe. Raised up in pots the fruit are just waiting for you on the table. Yum. (Also woodchuck proof.)

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Good advice. I will let L know. She loves them. I have never had one.

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Jun 17, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

Congratulations on your milestone, and happy birthday! Welcome to the latter half century of your life. Your garden looks wonderful. Way to build some slowpocalypse skills!

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Thank you! Yes, many have questioned my life choices over the years, but the reasons for those choices seem more clear day by day.

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Jun 19, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

Amen. Same here! We spent the weekend picking sand cherries and elderflowers and making them into sugar-free chutney and syrup, instead of seeing a movie, which would have cost us money and not yielding anything terribly lasting... especially these days, as there's just not much out there worth the money.

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Sugar free local chutney? I was just thinking recently I would like to make a big batch of chutney to can. Recommended recipes? Yes too, the natural world is endlessly fascinating and diverting if you know how to look.

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I’ll post the recipe - my own - to Substack soon.

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Jun 18, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

Wow! Gardens are miraculous. Yours makes me envious.

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Jun 18, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

Your garden/orchard excitement continues to wow us readers, and your birthday/Substack celebration sounds wonderful!

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Jun 18, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

All looking great, thanks for the update!

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Welcome!

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Jun 23, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

The pics are great!!

I've been going through my file of notes about vaccination and found a discussion of William Albrecht (1888–1974), PhD, Chairman of the Department of Soils at the University of Missouri, he was the foremost authority on the relation of soil fertility to human health and earned four degrees from the University of Illinois. As emeritus Professor of Soils at the University of Missouri he saw a direct link between soil quality, food quality and human health.

Have you read any of his works? I admit I have not. But I am fascinated by this:

He found the micro-organisms (bacteria) in the soil have been decimated in the aftermath of the “Green Revolution” which employed industrial NPK nutrients to fields.

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Thanks!

I haven't read him, but that is a great resource. And I totally agree there is a causal relation between the way we treat the water and soil and our general chronic ill health in America.

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Thank you WHD. Every garden update is pure joy for me!

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