Nicole Alderman

I just added nettles to the list! Being a wild food, I hadn't really thought about it as a crop. But, I've been tending my wild patch for years, and now have enough to eat a meal or three each week during the season of nettles. They're so yummy! (They're a fun source of fiber for spinning, too!)

This is frankly one of my favorite topics--and there's some awesome threads on it, too.

Staple Crops

How Many Of Each Plant To Grow As A Percentage Of Total Calories

The Annual Staple Crop Calculator

Practical 1-Acre Staple Foods

Human Energy Spent Versus Kilocalories Harvested.....

Ideas about Growing All Your Own Food

Most productive perennial vegetables?

Staples

Perennial Sources of Starch and Protein

I thought it might be fun to have an apple poll...which also ends up being a spiffy way to list all of the different staple crops mentioned by people over various threads, so that those crops can be seen in one spot. I tried to organize them a little, but our apple poll program makes it really difficult to rearrange things. If you have more crops you'd like added, post below! There's no closing date on this poll, so hopefully we'll be able to adding to it for years to come

[applepoll]

I went and reminisced on my old thread, and noticed that, after just one year, my comfrey was already taller than my 2.5 year old!

My established comfrey is about 4 feet tall. I don't fertilize mine at all.  Mine is even wider than yours. I think comfrey just likes to get big? My plants are 11 and 8 years old (planted on my kids' first birthdays).

I'm not sure what type of comfrey mine is (mine is blocking and has purple flowers, and I got it from a local permie and didn't ask what type it was). Hopefully someone else knows comfrey better and can tell you what type you have!

This thread, about gluing leather naturally also goes into using hide/gelatin glue.

Chelsea Mae wrote:Hi, does anyone know if an original Ants cabin is still in existence? It was built by Jesse Grimes in 2018. An Oahler style, since he lived with him for awhile, it looked like a huge bike ramp with an indented front.
Jesse passed last year and I just want to sit in the only house he ever got to build. Thank you for any info!

I checked with Paul Wheaton and found out that, since it's not one of the normally rented cabins at Wheaton Labs, you only need to pay the camping price. It looks like $250 gets you up to 15 days of camping. If you wanted to install something to memorialize him there, you could do that (as long as it's "organic or better," so no plastics, chemically treated wood, synthetic paint, etc).

I'm not at Wheaton Labs, so I'm not sure how good of condition the house is in. It might be good to bring a tent, too? The most recent picture I found of it was from 2021:



I hope that helps, and I'm so sorry Jesse has passed ♥

I hadn't realized that I'd never uploaded my version with pictures! Better late than never, I guess!

Chelsea Mae wrote:Hi, does anyone know if an original Ants cabin is still in existence? It was built by Jesse Grimes in 2018. An Oahler style, since he lived with him for awhile, it looked like a huge bike ramp with an indented front.
Jesse passed last year and I just want to sit in the only house he ever got to build. Thank you for any info!

Oh my goodness, this is so sad. I loved watching all of Jesse's videos of building his house. He was a huge inspiration to my son (who was only 5 at the time). I'll see what I can find out.

I'm looking at his old permies thread, and I found a video of him finishing it up.

Maybe someone at Wheaton Labs can see if this is still standing?

I got ya covered...or uncovered, in the case of the naked mole rats!

Here's the Smithsonians Naked Mole Rat live camera

And some highlights from it (from 7 years ago):