Richard Kastanie

The soil is probably too alkaline to even try blueberries there, that's true of a lot of dryland areas. Soil can be amended to a certain point but not if it's too alkaline to start out with. However, there should be plenty of other fruit options. Paonia is in the same region and has a number of orchards and vineyards. I've only been out there briefly though so hopefully someone with more direct experience will comment.

I'm not sure where in southern MN you are, but the folks at New Story Farm near Hutchinson might be good contacts to make if you're anywhere near there.

Ames Orchard and Nursery carries fruit trees that they've found to be the most reliable varieties dealing with the climate and disease pressures of northwest Arkansas, not too far from eastern Oklahoma.

https://amesorchardandnursery.com/

Alexis Ziegler has done a lot that may interest you at Living Energy Farm in Virginia.

Living Energy Farm: A Community Free of Fossil Fuels?

This article from one of my favorite health writers that goes against the grain on a variety of topics mentions sunlight and how it's important for more than just vitamin D. Here's a snippet from it,

Sunlight

I believe one of the greatest disservices the dermatology profession has done to the world has been to spread an immense fear that the sun causes skin cancer (even though the most dangerous skin cancer, melanoma, is linked to a lack of sun exposure). This appears to have come about because the dermatology profession reinvented themselves as cancer fighters (which pays a lot), and part of establishing that cultural belief system revolved around neurotic rituals to avoid all sunlight. I think this is quite sad, because avoiding sunlight significantly increases your risk of death from many different cancers (and overall has a danger of the same magnitude as smoking).

One of the major misunderstandings about sunlight is that its only benefit is vitamin D production. Instead, it has a variety of other ones as well, including:

•Producing cholesterol sulfate.

•Producing nitric oxide.

•Directly creating liquid crystalline water.

Note: I have long wondered if some of the benefits attributed to vitamin D are actually due to it being correlated with the above three occurring.

Since sulfates are used by the body to create liquid crystalline water and maintain the physiologic zeta potential, this function is very important. Since cholesterol sulfate primarily resides in cell membranes (where it is recognized to have a "stabilizing role" for the cell membrane), it provides the critical role of coating the cell with sulfates.

It's certainly possible to get too much though, I can't imagine anyone thinks burning is a good thing. Besides the long term risks and the short term pain, I notice that I feel drained of energy if I get sunburnt. I don't use sunscreen and find that as long as I have enough of a tan I don't generally have to worry much about burning. I do tend to wear a hat when the sun is intense, more for my eyes than for my skin though. My hair is long so it keeps the sun off my neck and upper spine.

Also, I notice that my general state of health and energy makes a big difference toward how I react to the sun. The skin is connected to the body as a whole. I especially notice a strong connection between circulation and sun sensitivity.

In my experience, perilla is easier to get under control than most other weeds. That is because it doesn't have any viable seed until the end of the season. In my experience, perilla rarely even shows a hint of flowering until after September 1st, and doesn't have viable seeds until late September. Since its an annual, keeping it from going to seed is all that's needed to reduce the population. If you chop the plants down once in early September when they have just started to flower, they will not have time to regrow and seed before the weather gets too cold. The density of plants in the area should be significantly less even the next year. Keep doing this for a few years and it will be virtually eliminated from the area, unless its an area that receives runoff water during heavy rains that bring seeds from another patch somewhere uphill (perilla patches are common in such areas).

Here's an interesting ecovillage project in Mexico that's looking for fundraising,

https://fundrazr.com/consciousagora

I've noticed the same thing about wild pawpaw stands. I've always attributed it to dense shade. Wild pawpaw stands are typically in the understory of taller trees already, and their density of large leaves means very little of the light at all reaches anything below them. It's possible there's some allelopathy at work too, as allelopathy is actually pretty common. From my observations, if there's any allelopathy it's not overwhelmingly strong, as trees that are taller than the pawpaws don't seem to have any issues. Pawpaws in cultivation as single trees where the shade is less dense can have grass growing right up to them as well.

I find cutting an X into the shell to be tedious and difficult too, so when I roast chestnuts I do it a bit differently. I just cut off the end of the nut that has the paler shell color. On most chestnuts, that takes off a small bit of nut with the shell but not too much. It goes much quicker than cutting an X, and achieves similar results.

The size of my Lofthouse melons varied, but mostly pretty normal size for muskmelons. There was one plant that produced very small melons that didn't ripen any earlier than the larger ones. I didn't save any seeds from that one, as I prefer medium to large size.

My own landrace is only muskmelons. I've tried growing honeydew and a few asian melons here in the days before I started saving melon seeds, and didn't have much luck with them, Even with muskmelons, I always had heavy losses of plants before the fruit ripened before I started creating a landrace. A few years of seed saving with the landrace method have given me much more reliability with my melon patch. I prefer muskmelons/cantaloupes to any other cucumis melo variety that I've had, so I haven't ventured into crossing with honeydew, casaba or anything else, but I'd be interested in hearing if others have had luck with a cucumis melo landrace of greater diversity.