When we found this "Visible V8 Engine" building kit from 1960 in my in-laws’ basement, in near-perfect condition, in July 2020, the dog days of the pandemic…we figured it'd be a good opportunity to keep busy and learn the basics of how an engine works. Won’t you join us on this journey of frustration and super glue…

Around Weeks 10-14 it’s probably time to harvest your cannabis. This is not as simple as cutting and consuming, it’s a multi-week process, a stage unto itself. You’ve come this far, and it really pays to properly CHOP, TRIM, DRY and CURE your product, so you can avoid any last-mile problems and get the most quantity and quality from your harvest.

Sometime around Week 5, your ladies will begin to flower. In case it’s not clear, the cannabis plant’s flowers or “buds” are what most people harvest and consume, so this stage is all about maximizing the yield, size and quality of these flowers to ensure the best possible harvest.

By week 3, your cannabis plants should have entered the vegetative stage. This means you’re starting to see more of those laughably stereotypical fan leaves, and the plant is doing its job, and your job is to try to create the best conditions for it to keep growing and producing those leaves. Here’s what that means and what you need

Ok, so you’ve got some cannabis seeds that you found on the side of the road, or were maybe gifted from a friend in the same state. Nice job! The next step is to germinate these seeds. Again, I’m growing outdoor, in soil, and was gifted three autoflower strains, so everything below is specific to those parameters.

Laws vary greatly from state to state, and some of them are draconian or downright silly, and it’s important to only undertake this effort legally and responsibly, or at least know exactly what you’re getting yourself into.

Tomatoes ended up being one of our most successful crops during our first growing season (2020). We spent the early months of the pandemic building raised beds, filling them with our hugelkultur/soil mix, and getting Spring plants in the ground, so with that late start we ended up buying some seedlings or “starts” from some local garden stores. You can plant seeds (see below) but the main reason to use starts is TIME.

The Zone Map looks at our property in terms of use and accessibility. Our Master Plan is a flexible, sketchy vision of what we want to do at Thunderbird Disco.

I enjoy a good brine. So for the holidays I got this beginners fermentation kit from Soligt Fermentation. I get incredible bread from Wholly Schmidt Sourdough so don't need to dip into those waters, but I tried my hand at pickled vegetables, sauerkraut, and hot sauce. It's easy, a fun way to get kids involved, and mostly involves doing nothing.

Most permaculture sector maps mark the pathways of natural elements like: wind gusts and flowing water, manmade products like noise or smoke or crime, destructive animals, insects or plants, underground networks of utilities (water, cable, electrical, etc.).

At the start of pool season, Jack got it in his head that we could heat up the water with some combination of pumps and tubing and buckets and fire. He gets a lot of these ideas—they keep him up at night—and sometimes he organically shifts to a new project or else I can redirect his energies, but this one stuck around for weeks. He kept presenting me with new hand-drawn schematics and eventually I had to admit, "I. DON'T. KNOW. HOW. TO. DO. ANY. OF. THAT." Nevertheless, he persisted.

Jack and I wanted to make something for Rose's 3rd birthday, and we settled on this DIY mud kitchen because the girl loves to cook. We used salvaged wood pallets, and a few other inexpensive materials, here’s a step-by-step.