“The average kid can recognize 50 corporate logos and only knows two plants, if one of them is a banana.”

Merriwether Vorderbruggen from ForagingTexas.com has spent 20 years trying to fix that, one foraging class at a time. Merriwether joins me to share about foraging.

The prepper world treats foraging like an emergency skill you pull out when things go bad. Meriwether treats it as a way of seeing. Reconnecting people to the world right outside their door.

We’ve been told to love, respect, and protect nature but not to interact with her. Eating wild plants is one of the most intimate ways to change that. Foraging forces you to actually observe - matching the structural features of a plant before you eat it.

This is a Tier 1 skill using pattern recognition and observation, and it’s a challenge, like a puzzle.

Take a hands-on class where you walk the field or buy a book. You will be learning how to really see what’s around you, not just walk past it. And this knowledge compounds the more you practice it and the longer you stay in one place. Soon you will start to see food around you!

"My parents were children of the Great Depression. They quickly figured out the only way they were gonna survive us is if they took us out into the woods every day. And when we got hungry, they said, 'Well, go eat that, go eat that.”

You don’t have to go deep into the woods.

One of the biggest misconceptions about foraging is that you need wilderness. The best foraging is at borders - where field meets woods, where water meets field, where your suburban lawn meets the neighbor’s. That’s where the plant diversity is (the permaculture edge effect). Deep in the woods there is actually less variety because everything is shaded and protected. Most people look at the outdoors and see a sea of green. You have food right outside your door, even in the suburbs.

"Just this thrill that, 'Oh my gosh, I can eat this? I have this in my yard. I see this all over the place.' Hearing that several dozen times during the class... it warms my heart."

The Weeks of Want are still real.

We just came out of what historically would have been the Weeks of Want - when your stored food ran out and your garden wasn’t ready yet. Foraging would have been the thing that tied you over. That craving for fresh greens, vitamin C, and nutrients you cannot get from dried meat drove people to the earliest spring plants. Wild mustards like shepherd’s purse and field pennycress taste like horseradish - Merriwether blends them into a paste and puts them on jerky. Chanterelle mushrooms are coming in. And mulberry leaves, and tender shoots of many plants are all good eating.

How did our ancestors know to eat these things?

We discuss how our ancestors learned to eat plants of they are poisonous or killed the person who first ate it (like pokeweed). Merriwether shares about the Doctrine of Signatures, and how our ancestors made a best guess based on how it looked and what it seemed like it needed.

Caveman Health - Fighting the mismatch.

Our bodies didn’t evolve for the world we built. We sit instead of move. We walk on flat surfaces when our brains are designed for uneven, rocky, stumbly terrain that keeps the core engaged and the brain constantly adjusting. We weren’t made for processed food. Merriwether talks about his Caveman Health principle: Do more of what we used to do thousands of years ago. Meriwether calls it “cavemanosity” and he preaches it.

Your Next Steps

Learn 10 edible plants in your area before you need them. Don’t wait for a crisis to figure out what’s around you. Meriwether’s book covers many plants across all of North America with a regional calendar showing when to look for each plant depending on where you live, because “spring” in Texas is not “spring” in Minnesota.

Look at borders, not deep woods. The edge where your lawn meets the neighbor’s, where field meets tree line, where water meets land - that’s where the diversity is. You don’t need a forest to start foraging. You probably have edible plants growing within walking distance of your front door.

Match the structural features before eating anything wild. Leaf arrangement (opposite or alternating), edge pattern (toothed or smooth), vein pattern, flower and fruit location, root type, scent. Not just “it looks like the picture.” If you’ve matched eight features, you’ve separated it from the lookalikes. This is the kind of observation skill that makes you better at everything else too.

Where to Find Meriwether

* ForagingTexas.com

* Facebook: Foraging Texas

* Merriwether’s Substack

* YouTube: Foraging Texas

* Or just go out in the woods and yell, “Hey, Meriwether, can I eat this?”

Merriwether’s book: Foraging: Explore Nature’s Bounty and Turn Your Foraged Finds Into Flavorful Feasts

I grow chestnuts in Kansas. Why? Because the chestnuts I bought from elsewhere struggled or died. Now I collect local chestnut seeds and grow them into seedlings. I sell the extras that I don’t use. If you want Midwest Memory trees that will survive in Midwest Zones 5 -7, go to Grow Nut Trees.

Order now for Fall shipping!

I am a guy who grows chestnuts in Kansas, where we can go from 33 degrees to 96 in two days. Sometimes it feels like the odds are against me.

Seeds have a memory. They thrived and reproduced in a certain climate. And they remember that place. A tree bought from GA will leaf out earlier than a local tree. And that can be a problem.

This weekend I culled trees. Trees that didn’t make it and ones that did not thrive.

I had ones that had tip die-back - they had leaves halfway up the tree seedling and then it was dead above that. That usually happens because of Winter, but it also can happen when growing trees in tree tubes in a pasture.

I first cut off the top and said, “I can save this!”. Then I thought: I don’t want a tree in my orchard that will die back halfway in the Winter, and I certainly don’t want to sell a tree like that and get a bad reputation.

Not everyone feels that way. I heard a story this week of an online nursery that sells chestnut trees, but also sells culinary chestnuts to eat. They pull the best, largest chestnuts to sell to grocery stores and they sprout out the small inferior chestnuts into seedlings and then sell the seedlings. The result will be trees that create smaller chestnuts! I was shocked when I heard that story, but maybe I shouldn’t have been.

A guy came over to buy chestnut seedlings yesterday. He is from Nebraska and was passing through and came as a referral. He wanted 4 Qing and 4 Peach seedlings. I looked at the Peach seedlings and straight up told him that I wasn’t completely comfortable with them. They had delayed coming out of dormancy and several of them had tip die back. So I sold him something else instead. I am not bragging, it’s just how I feel about it. I don’t want to be like that big nursery.

I planted out several chestnuts and trees in my back orchard. Qing, Peach, and a Butterball crabapple that I got my friend Mike at 39th Parallel Nursery. That crabapple will hold apples on the tree into November or December. I planted it near the deer trails in the back pasture. (You can read more about it in What I’m Planting in My Pasture to Feed Deer Through Every Season).

I grow chestnuts in Kansas. Why? Because the chestnuts I bought from elsewhere struggled or died. Now I collect local chestnut seeds and grow them into seedlings. I sell the extras that I don’t use. If you want Midwest Memory trees that will survive in Midwest Zones 5 -7, go to Grow Nut Trees.

I am now taking orders for Fall.

The Meadow Creature broadfork is my go-to garden tool, a must for my clay soil. I use it for creating new in-ground garden beds - I just turn over the sod, add some compost, seeds, and cover it with woodchips.

How to Create a New Garden Bed with Milpa

Matt Derosier shares about his new project - The Water Dev.

When he heard of a weekend workshop with Zach Weiss and the Water Stories team, he signed up immediately. He was playing in the mud like a little kid again.

He found his calling and purpose. A true career that he would never want to retire from.

Listen how he is healing the land for future generations. It all starts with water.

Matt shares about his project with a lady who is creating a horse apothecary - planting herbs that the horses would eat as needed to deal with what ails them. He helped her map the water across her land.

Living in Montana, Matt is also “on fire” about fire prevention by “planting water” and hydrating the land through infiltration to make the land more resistant to fire danger.

You can see his work at The Water Dev.

I’m a guy in Kansas who grows chestnut trees and writes about building a real life instead of borrowing one.

Skills Over Stuff. Plant trees, Grow Food, Build community.

Join me. Let’s Thrive Together.

I grow chestnuts in Kansas. Why? Because the chestnuts I bought from elsewhere struggled or died. Now I collect local chestnut seeds and grow them into seedlings. I sell the extras that I don’t use. If you want Midwest Memory trees that will survive in Midwest Zones 5 -7, go to Grow Nut Trees.

I now have Qing chestnut seedlings available!

Jill Winger, from The Prairie Homestead recently posted: “What the Hell happened to Homesteading?”.

Homesteading became a “movement”. A title and a brand. The Instagrammers arrived and co-opted it.

If you post on “homesteading” on Twitter/X you are guaranteed to get a comment with the “P” word - Privilege. You can count down (3-2-1) to when it will show up in the comments.

Let’s drop the titles and Just Do.

Yes, I have used “Homesteading” content in my podcast. Yes, I have a full time job. No, I don’t get 100% of my food (or even 50%) from my 10 acres.“You’re just Larping!”

No. I grow food because it’s more fresh, no bad stuff, and I like the taste. I graft Asian pears onto the cursed Callery pears trying to take over my pasture.

I grow my own chestnut trees from seed because the trees I bought from elsewhere died. And I like chestnuts. I grew so many that I sell the extra.

I’m not Larping. I’m just Being.

What is Thriving the Future really about?

Thriving the Future is really about Mindset.

Some people say that my content is all over the place: homesteading, side hustles, entrepreneurship, Bloomscrolling over doomscrolling.

No, and here’s why:

Let’s go back to the beginning.

I started the podcast because my friend Perpend and I were having conversations that I didn’t hear anywhere else. We were in the midst of Covid. Vaxx mandates were on the horizon. I was about 2 weeks away from the threat of losing my job.

But Perpend and I were talking about different things - Living Not By Lies. Skills are more important than your two-is-one-and-one-is-none stuff. You need to develop a mindset and worldview to handle change and suffering and struggle.

That was 2021 - 2022. And you know what: We need that message now more than ever.

Here we are at the anniversary of the Lockdowns. And people are trying to deny it even happened.

“2020 was the Tutorial level of the game” - Cyprian

If that was the Tutorial level, we are quickly going to meet the Final Boss Battle.

We need the core Thriving message now more than ever.

So it’s time to go back to the beginning.

Stop Living a Borrowed Life

“I don’t care about the news. I create my own news.”

That was my very first post to Thriving the Future, in Oct-2021.

Many of us are living borrowed lives - stories written for you by the news cycle, the political binary, the Like economy.

We used to call it FUD - Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt is evoked intentionally, to put someone at a disadvantage. That’s what consuming their stories and their worldview is doing to you.

Stop consuming their stories. Start creating yours.

That is what “Just Being” means.

Skills Over Stuff

I don’t need the approved title “homesteader” to grow my own food and trees. I graft Asian pears onto the cursed Callery pears because removing them is damn near impossible. The problem is the solution. I am not doing it for a photo op post. I am just doing it because I like Asian pears. The Chojuro pears that I am grafting taste like butterscotch.

The skill is more important than the stuff.

While preppers store stuff and fret over two-is-one-and-one-is-none, I am spending my money on stuff that won’t easily break. I am developing skills that can’t be lost or taken away. Something that I can show and teach to my grandson.

And the chestnuts will get planted, the pears are grafted, the food is grown. Just not for Likes.

I grow chestnuts in Kansas. Why? Because the chestnuts I bought from elsewhere struggled or died. Now I collect local chestnut seeds and grow them into seedlings. I sell the extras that I don’t use.

If you want Midwest Memory trees that will survive and thrive in Midwest Zones 5 -7, go to Grow Nut Trees.

You are asked to train the new hire. Then they are given some of your projects.

You are passed over for a new position because they want a “digital native”, even though you led the company-wide AI rollout as an AI Champion.

You made it through the last round of layoffs but now coworkers are cutting you out of key meetings.

The writing is on the wall.

You need to own your expertise.

Mantel Featherson of FutureProof50 joins me to discuss how to secure your future by leveraging your most powerful professional asset - your expertise.

We talk about the mindset shift and how to navigate it.

"These layoffs aren't really about performance anymore. It's more about cost savings. It's becoming a numbers game." — Mantel

Build income streams now while you still have a job.

Expertise is three things: knowledge, experience, and perspective.

Knowledge is what you’ve learned. Experience is what you’ve accumulated. Perspective is your secret weapon — it is the judgment that comes from having seen the same movie play out before. You know where the pitfalls are. That’s what you’re actually selling.

Mantel’s four-step framework: Extract, Package, Position, Distribute.

Jump in and Extract your expertise — nail down what you actually know and what you’re passionate about, because passion matters if you’re going to talk about it for years. Package it so people can recognize you for it immediately. Position it for the right market — who specifically is this for? Distribute it through the channels that fit how you work, whether that’s Substack, coaching, consulting, or courses.

Take action to own your expertise

Take a skills inventory before you do anything else. List what you know, what you’ve done, and where your judgment is sharper than most people’s. Don’t frame it as a resume timeline. Frame it as: What problems can I solve?

Identify the bridge from pain to purpose. What problem are you solving, and for whom? Talk to people in your target market before you build the offer. Let their words shape your positioning.

Package your expertise so someone can recognize it in ten seconds. If you can’t explain what you do and who it’s for in one clear sentence, you don’t have a package yet. Keep refining until it’s that simple.

Build something on the side before you need to. You don’t have to quit your job. The goal is to reduce your vulnerability. One source of income is exposure. A Substack, a consulting engagement, a small course — these aren’t backup plans, they’re the actual plan.

Talk to yourself where you were two years ago. That person is your avatar, your customer. What did you need to know then that you know now? That’s your offer. That’s your market. Start there.

"You're basically your own first client. The challenge you had two or three years ago — that's often the challenge others are having right now." — Mantel

How to connect with Mantel:

Mantel on Substack

FutureProof50

Mantel on LinkedIn

Mantel on Twitter

If you want to hear more positive content like this, subscribe to the Thriving the Future Substack.

If you found this episode insanely helpful, you can show Thriving the Future some love by making a one time (no subscription!) donation.

Leah Ellis from the Society of Child Entrepreneurs shares how asking a child simple questions of “Why?” can empower them to solve problems and even become entrepreneurs.

Because Entrepreneurship is about solving problems.

During COVID, Leah’s 4½-year-old daughter Melody had been watching entrepreneurship training videos alongside her mom. One day she said, “Mommy, I want to start a business too.”

Leah’s gut reaction was no—you’re four, you’re still working on counting to fifty.

But Melody kept asking “Why?” And Leah stood there realizing she didn’t have an answer.

“Every answer I had was stuck on why other people wouldn’t let her do it and not necessarily why a four-year-old in the midst of a global pandemic with nothing better to do couldn’t start a business.”

So they did it. Melody started “Melody Paints”—custom drip art sold through a Facebook page and a Google form. You picked your colors, paid via Venmo, and she shipped you a painting.

Why Leah Started the Society of Child Entrepreneurs

After moving back to Kansas, Leah hosted a children’s business fair at a local coffee shop. Eleven kids showed up. Some made over $300 in two hours. One kid donated everything to his church’s summer camp scholarship fund. The place was so packed they would’ve been fined if the fire marshal had walked in. But then it was over. The kids went home and nobody taught them anything else. That bothered Leah. She wanted to create something that kept going—peers for her daughters to talk business with, a place where entrepreneurship wasn’t a one-day event but an ongoing conversation. So in July 2024, she convinced some friends to help her start a nonprofit.

Now the Society of Child Entrepreneurs has business fairs, curriculum, storybooks, monthly workshops, and a nationwide online platform that just launched.

The Best Age to Start

Leah says the sweet spot for entrepreneurship is 4th through 6th grade. By fourth grade, kids desperately want whatever name-brand thing is cool right now. Parents have already spent four years buying cool stuff that ended up collecting dust, so they’ve stopped. Now the kid has to figure out how to get it themselves. That’s when the scrappiness kicks in—selling bracelets to classmates, weeding grandma’s garden for cash, painting shirts.

By 7th or 8th grade, kids start looking for “real” jobs—fast food, steady babysitting gigs. They drift away from the creativity of entrepreneurship unless they’re already plugged into a program. If they are, they usually stick with it.

Your Actionable Steps

The Dinner Table Question

At meals, ask your kids: “What’s one problem you noticed in your life today that you could solve, and how would you solve it?” It might be something small—getting toothpaste from the end of the tube. It might be something they actually saw—a kid who struggles to get off the bus because the last step is too tall. Either way, ask follow-ups. And if they want to pursue it, let them.

“Your guide is the person who asks you questions and supports you while you find your journey and you go on your mission.”

I particularly liked this story:

One girl in the program makes decorative pens with sayings at the top. When asked to write a mission statement, she said she didn’t have one—she just makes pens.

Leah kept asking Why. “Why do you make pens?”

“Because I like having a pretty pen.”

“Why?”

“Because it shows people what’s important to me without having to say anything.” That was her mission. For people to share what matters to them, and sometimes without saying it in words.

Stop Solving, Start Asking

Swap out your instinct to fix things for a habit of asking questions.

How would you do that?

What would it look like in practice?

What could go wrong and how would you handle it?

Keep pushing until they work through it themselves. Find ways to create that same dynamic at home or in your community.

“Think about something in your life that annoys you. Chances are it annoys the neighbor down the road too. What can you do to solve the problem for both of you and get some of his money while you’re at it?”

If you want to hear more positive content like this, subscribe to the Thriving the Future Substack.

If you found this episode insanely helpful, you can show Thriving the Future some love by making a one time (no subscription!) donation.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

You can literally start over (maybe with some pain and consequences, but it is still true).

This mindset is real Freedom.

Show notes for this episode

It’s a New Year and statistics, and personal experience, show that most of you will give up on your resolutions by Jan-20. That’s because you are approaching it as a task and not adopting it as a mindset and core identity.

Change Your Identity

Resolutions fail because they try to change outcomes without changing identity. The fundamental problem isn’t willpower or technique—it’s that people say “I’m going to lose 20 pounds” instead of “I am no longer someone who eats this way.”

A resolution is “something I’m going to do.” An intention is “what I am doing.”

It is who I am.

The research on smoking cessation proves this: people who say “I quit” restart more often than those who say “I am not a smoker.” One is a temporary action; the other is an identity shift.

I was on the Paleo diet for 2 years. Then I started bargaining and failed.

A new diet is a new identity –

When you start a diet, you say, for example, “I am on the Paleo diet”. This implies that you can get off the Paleo diet or you can have a cheat day. You start compartmentalizing and bargaining.

Instead of saying “I am on the Paleo diet”, adopt it as your identity. “I am Paleo”. Those who succeed at this see it trickle down to their friends, who know that they will have to have or make alternatives for this person at their dinner, party, or get-together.

Stop making resolutions. Start making identity statements.

Not “I’m going to garden this year.”

“I am a gardener.”

Not “I’m going to start a side hustle.”

“I am building my business.”

Then ask yourself what that person does every single day—and do one small piece of it right now.

It even comes down to your friends

“I am the sum total of the people I spend my most time around.” - Perpend

If your friends aren’t doers, their inaction will pull you back. This doesn’t mean abandoning relationships, but honestly assessing: are the people I spend the most time with aligned with who I’m becoming?

Plan your life with intention so you are moving toward that goal.:

Involving kids in your intentional life

As I shared in You Need to be Bloomscrolling, Not Doomscrolling, no one wanted to clear the weeds from the overgrown raised beds at my daughter’s house. I got my grandchildren excited about gardening by giving them a homeschooling assignment to look at the seed catalog and choose some seeds based on the color and whether they think they would be tasty. Then they pushed those seeds into the ground and weeded and watered them. They grew moonflower, a purple cabbage, stocky carrots, and a watermelon that they thought would be “juicy and tasty”.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

If you found this episode insanely helpful, you can show some love by making a one time (no subscription!) donation below.

If you like this hard hitting content with real tips you can use, then Subscribe to the Thriving the Future Substack!

Scott runs Grow Nut Trees (Midwest Memory chestnut and hazelnut trees and perennials like elderberry cuttings) and is a Chestnut Orchard Architect, designing orchards and food forests for Midwest homesteaders. Currently booking consults for Spring. Sign up for your Free Discovery call where I help you with your Big Picture.

Andy Hickman (shagbark_hick on X/Twitter) has gone viral in recent months as he has tried to form community in Northern New York.

He shares about the tension between loving a place yet watching it die. Do you stay? Is there anything left to hold onto?

“People talk about community. There’s already community. There’s already a structure that makes sense. It’s the small town, the city block, the village, the neighborhood. We’ve done this for thousands of years.”

Despite having a difficult year, he is still one of the most positive people I know.

* His plans for the New Year - to travel South. He may even purchase a car (!).

* Some of the places in the Southwest that he loves and wants to visit, to share with his wife Keturah, who has not seen that part of the country.

* His new writing projects, including a potential book deal.

* Andy’s favorite Christmas memory: Being the Yule King and riding the Yule log through the city square.

Hickman’s Hinterlands on Substack

shagbark_hick on X/Twitter

Andy’s love of the Southwest:

"It doesn't even feel like America because it's so American, if that makes sense. It's this weird horseshoe zone where you feel like you're in a foreign country, but you're actually in the heart of your own country."

Actionable steps

Actionable Steps

Stop reinventing community structures. Before trying to form an intentional community with elaborate rules and shared land, consider whether you could just move near like-minded people and be neighbors. Let natural community form through proximity and shared values rather than formal agreements.

Audit why you live where you live.

What’s the one thing that anchors you to your place? If that thing disappeared tomorrow, would you still have reason to stay?

Look for communities with their “mojo” intact. Vitality isn’t about economics or amenities. It’s about whether people gather, whether families are growing, whether there’s optimism. Some declining places still have thriving pockets. Some prosperous places are spiritually dead. Notice the difference.

Reclaim Sunday. Turn stuff off. Sit around and talk. Gather with family. This isn’t about productivity hacks or “intentional rest”—it’s about Thriving.

Thriving the Future Substack is positive solutions (and even bittersweet conversations). Subscribe and get more - over 170 podcast episodes, and many articles on how to Thrive in a challenging and changing culture.

Wyldewood elderberries make some of the best elderberry wine. Plus I make elderberry syrup and cough medicine for when I have a cold.

It’s mid-Winter but it is the perfect time to get some elderberry cuttings. Just poke the stick in the ground and the elderberry will take off right there.

Get your elderberry cuttings to grow your own elderberry for wine at Grow Nut Trees.

You have been thinking about Side Hustles all wrong.

First Know Yourself, then Know Your Customer.

Everyone starts a side hustle to add to or replace some of their income. Good idea.

Because of the online gurus, you usually get into the mindset that “If I can eventually scale this, then it can replace my regular job.”

You jump right to big ticket items. the $99 course, or sometimes even more $$. Crickets…no sales.

Or even worse, you post and post and give away free stuff, hoping for that conversion to buying your PDF, or signing up for your Patreon, or (now) Substack subscription.

“I am getting the likes and engagement, what is the problem?!”

The issue is that you are farming for Likes, not value. You have not identified your customer. What is your customer’s problem that you are trying to solve?

Are you making a difference?

How to know your customer.

Observe actions over words. Don’t just ask people what they want—watch what they actually buy.

For example, go to the farmer’s market. Stand still. Look around. Watch what is going on. Pay attention to what people are buying.

As Homestead Padre and I talked about in Ep.56, people at the farmer’s market are not buying produce. Sure, some do. But most people are there for the experience. They are there for the food truck. They are there for community (even if they don’t realize it).

Most of the produce vendors at the farmer’s market take home their produce or trade it with other vendors for their stuff. Maybe that is the key - the community.

That is a great non-monetary side benefit from being a vendor or the farmer’s market. (But as a vendor that is really not why you are there).

The gap between what people say and what they do is the opportunity. It is the line between where side hustles Thrive or side hustles go to die.

Now let’s look at this problem - a vendor at the farmer’s market doesn’t sell enough of their produce to make it worth their time, and they usually have to pay a fee for selling at the market.

What are some solutions? You could sell value added products, or crafts alongside your produce.

Many people who used to sell at the farmer’s market are creating roadside farm produce stands along the road at the corner of their property. (You need enough traffic, and you need to have a high-trust area for this to work).

Maybe join together with other people at the farmer’s market and have a local food co-op. Some small farmers and gardeners do this with a CSA. Create a Facebook page or a simple app. Now you see the thought process to start solving problems.

But be careful not to wedge yourself into a solution with no problem, or a solution that everyone else is trying to solve (if “everyone is doing it” then you will be treated like a commodity, with commodity pricing).

Start with your Intention

So stop just building side hustles—and start building skills.

Before you do anything else, complete an analysis of your life and your life intention.

Clarify what you actually want your life to look like. Your side hustle should move you toward that intentional life, not just generate random income.

Start with: What are you good at?

Use the eight forms of capital framework to inventory what you have and what you can do — skills, materials, living capital, financial capital.

* Financial Capital

* Material Capital

* Living Capital

* Social Capital

* Cultural Capital

* Intellectual Capital

* Experiential Capital

* Spiritual Capital

Listen to Thriving the Future Podcast Ep. 3 - You Are More Wealthy Than You Think for more information on the 8 forms of capital.

What are you good at?

What solutions have you solved for yourself and others? That is your sweet spot.

The best approach - Sell to people like you.

Speak to yourself - where you were 2 years ago. Speak to that person, with their problems. You now have the solutions.

I started Grow Nut Trees because the chestnut trees I bought from the Pacific Northwest or Northeast did not survive the harsh Kansas climate. The seeds and trees had a “memory” of where they originally grew. They were successful there. A tree that is used to the wet, cloudy environment in the Pacific Northwest would not thrive, let alone survive, in Kansas. So I grew my own trees, and culled the ones that did not do well.

Likewise, the easiest customer to find is someone who shares your values. You’re not looking for people just like you —you’re looking for a shared worldview. You’ll naturally attract these people through how you go about things.

Grow Nut Trees Success Story

Yesterday I received a $100 order for chestnut trees. The customer said in the notes, “If you have any questions, call me on my cell phone rather than email.”

Since it is the last week of Fall shipping and I am now transitioning into Spring orders, and he lives in the midsection of the country, I called him to ask him if he wanted me to ship immediately or hold onto them and ship to him in the Spring.

This was an excellent opportunity to ask him what problem he is trying to solve: Why is he planting chestnut trees and how does he plan to use them?

He just bought 20 acres of pasture and he wants to plant chestnuts. He asked how close to plant them, and what to do about deer pressure? I shared my experience and my recommendation - in his case I recommended 20 - 25 feet spacing between trees because it was important to him to be able to run a bush hog mower between the trees and rows. And adding tree tubes for the first year or two to counter the deer pressure.

He asked how many more chestnut trees I had available and he bought many more, even ones that I did not have on my website. I didn’t have to upsell to him.

Depending on his problem, I could have offered him a more in-depth consult or even a permaculture design.

When you share you experience and knowledge one-on-one it creates a social “debt”.

“The more value you give them, the more they owe you. And they will know subconsciously.” - Perpend

This social “debt” doesn’t happen in e-mail or online ordering. It doesn’t happen when someone reads your blog or Substack (that’s why they are not subscribing).

If possible, move toward a personal interaction. But don’t force it, and don’t give it away too easily (don’t spend all your time on Free Zoom consult calls).

Sometimes your customer is not who you think it is

One of the most surprising things about my Grow Nut Trees side hustle/biz is that nut trees are not my best selling product. Elderberry seedlings sold on FB marketplace are my best selling product. They are also the easiest to create: Take some elderberry cuttings, poke them into the ground or into a pot of soil and the elderberry will grow really fast. I can also dig up offshoot sprouts where the elderberry is spreading, stick those in spoil and it works very well. No messing with seeds.

I can grow them into 2 gallon $20 plants from Spring into early Fall. I can even buy some sprouted elderberry cuttings in late Summer and grow them out more to sell later in the Fall.

Most of the elderberry that I sell are Wyldewood variety. This year I will try some other varieties to extend my market. I am really excited about growing more Black Lace elderberry, although it is not as vigorous as the Wyldewood variety.

(By the way, Elderberry cuttings are now available at GrowNutTrees.com)

Not everyone is your customer.

Early in my Grow Nut Trees journey, a guy contacted me by email to ask questions about chestnuts. I was kind of green at that point, and didn’t understand the need for the interaction that I just discussed. After the third email I internally grumbled: “Are you going to buy or what?”

Eventually, after 4 or 5 emailed questions, he came back and ordered over $150 worth of trees. That was the biggest order I had at that point in my journey.

Don’t go chasing after a person who is not your customer. Leave some space. (maybe they will be your customer some day).

“The biggest word in the English language is no.”

Buffalo Ron from The Buffalo Wool Company shared on Twitter/X a customer horror story:

That lady was not his customer. She is a Walmart and Amazon customer.

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Teach Your Kids Foundational Skills

Can your kids point out North, South, East, West when they are outside?

In this episode I talk about teaching foundational skills.

Jeff Putnam on Twitter/X posted that he had a team leader guy lamenting on how one of his junior team members did not know how to read a tape measure. On a Construction job!

Someone didn’t learn Foundational Skills.

Foundational Skills

Foundational Skills are ones that stand the test of time. (Also called Tier 1 skills). They are good 100 years ago or 100 years from now:

* Pattern Recognition

* Learn how to Learn

* Growing food

* Foraging

* Building and Making - Basic construction

* Repairing stuff - Fix what breaks rather than replacing it

* Cooking, including cooking from scratch. You would be amazed how many college kids graduate college and do not know how to cook (other than ramen).

* Basic first aid

* Herbal/traditional medicine

Ben Falk’s Skills to Set up a Child for Success

Can your child point out North, South, East, and West when outside?

Ben Falk’s “The Resilient Farm and Homestead” book has been my homesteading Bible for over 10 years.

In his new edition of “The Resilient Farm and Homestead, Revised and Expanded Edition: 20 Years of Permaculture and Whole Systems Design”, Ben Falk has a new section on teaching children skills - How to set up a child for success.

For smaller kids, it is the basics: Don’t walk on the garden beds, Tool safety. But he then goes into recognizing animal tracks, Plant Identification.

He then has a long list of the High-School-level graduation competency requirements that he plans to use for his child, including both pattern understanding and hard skills. Lots of permaculture skills, but also recognizing cardinal directions (North/South/East/West), and “can ID fifteen wild edibles within 1 hour in midsummer and explain one or more ways to use each one”. (This is a challenging skill that I would like to learn/refine myself).

Some of the things on the list:

* Can cook from scratch (and his requirement is on a wood stove)

* Can read a map (not just Google maps).

* Can identify contours and water movement across land.

* Can tie a variety of knots.

* Can safely and competently use all of the tools in the shop or garage.

* Can run a mile in a specific time.

* Can swim and hold his breath underwater for a certain length of time.

* Basic first aid and wound care.

* Can get anywhere on the property without a headlamp on a cloudy night in the Winter.

* Knows gun safety and use of different firearms.

* Knows basic self-defense.

* Can identify how to make money in the local area. Create a business plan. Use a spreadsheet and ledger.

Conflict resolution skills will be important

* Conflict resolution and de-escalation will be very important skills in the future.

* Managing Tradeoffs. Not everything is Winner-Take-All or Zero-Sum. There are seldom 100% winners or losers. This is one of my Top 5 most important skills to teach. It is all about mindset.

* “There are no solutions, only tradeoffs” - Thomas Sowell.

* Negotiation Skills

* Learn how to build trust with someone.

* How to interact with neighbors.

* Build community.

* How to listen instead of talking or thinking about what to say next. The importance of space and contemplation in the conversation.

Teach Worldview, Faith, and Values

Teach a kid where he or she “fits” in the world, in the family, and in life. If we did this then a child would feel more purpose, and would feel “whole”.

Have discussions about family life when you grow up. You would think that this would be common sense, but schools, consumerism and pop culture, and climate anxiety have downplayed family and kids. Many kids do not understand that the purpose of life is to grow up, have a wife, a family, and kids.

Teach Faith and Values. Don’t only outsource it to church. Live those values.

What other Foundational skills can you think of? Tell us in the Comments.

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