Nature’s Guys: Two Brothers, East Coast and West Coast, Home in the Woods

My brother (Gene Kuhns, Jr.) and I (David Kuhns) connect to nature. We have since we were young. Our Dad and Grandma Bertha, as well as aunts, uncles and family members, taught us how.

He's planting and organizing 10 acres on Vashon Island (near Seattle). I recently moved to 5+ acres of cedar and hickory woods along West Chickamauga Creek in Northwest Georgia. We're both working toward natural and self-sustaining lifestyles. Wildflower cultivation; bee, butterfly and bird attracting; organic gardening: In short, getting off the grid and back to the woods, fields and waters as much as possible. He's an energetic, engineering type. I'm the contemplative, creative type. (He gets stuff done. I think and write about it!) We capture -- with photos and writing -- what we observe and learn. Follow the Nature Guy(s) and our opposite coast adventures!

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Good peaches mean wasting fruit if you don't get to them

Peach Is Terrible To Waste: Wasting Fruit Lesson

In my world, wasting fruit seems to be a travesty of the highest order. I can’t seem to throw anything out. Even if it’s molding or rotting, I’ll yank it from the fridge, scrape the mold or rot off, throw it in the blender, and make a smoothie out of it. I might cut it […]

Coon Hunt On The Chickamauga – Haibun

The old coon hunter drove his pickup truck out to my place. Ever since I’d told him that Farmer Sims planted field corn in our meadow, he’d been excited about the possibilities of a coon hunt in my corn field. I’d picked up the phone earlier in the evening: “HELLO, BROTHER!” He practically yelled. “Do […]

Peel Peaches with Nature's Guy -- easy cooking hack, July 2019

Peel Peaches Perfectly Prompt! Cooking Hack

Why peel peaches? If you’re making a smoothy or blending peaches for fruit leather, I don’t recommend it. But if you’re making a peach cobbler, peach crisp or peach ice cream, maybe you don’t want that skin floating around! You need to peel peaches. But wait! PUT DOWN THAT KNIFE! There’s an easier way. In […]

Fruit trade - peaches or tomatoes - everybody wins

Fruit Trade Everyone Wins– Haibun

The old couple’s peach tree up on Mowbray Mountain deep down in Tennessee was so overloaded that a giant limb split off the trunk and crashed to the garden floor. That still left more than two-thirds of the tree that they had planted intact and covered with delicious freestone fruit. A Good Fruit Trade Our […]

Late Season Blueberries from The Blueberry Farm in NW Georgia, July 2019

Finding the Last Late Season Blueberries: Haibun

Picking Redux: The Last of the Late Season Blueberries It was, they said, too late in the season to find even the last of the late season blueberries. For weeks, pickers and birds had scoured the field for the small, blue bursts of anti-oxidants and health and taste. OH! The taste! Our house chef was […]

Etude on a Cool Georgia Summer Evening - Blue Heeler and Golden Retriever dogs.

Etude for a Cool Georgia Summer Evening — Improvisational Piano

On a cool Georgia summer evening I was front porch sitting, watching the butterflies, birds and nodding wildflowers mix with a late July sunset. Suddenly, as though from a distant memory, came the soft, slow notes of a piano. It was a different type of www.FrontPorchSense.com + www.NaturesGuy.com! My wife played / improvised a new […]

What am I complaining about? Gratitude for our lives in modern America.

What Am I Complaining About? Feeling Grateful (A Video)

What are we complaining about? In this video, I’m stealing Marnie’s FrontPorchSense.com idea to talk about gratitude. We live in an amazing time and place. Why do I complain? I should be more grateful. (I’m going to complain about my complaining).  Nature’s Guy video about gratitude (What are we complaining about!?!?)

Cooling Georgia Heat: ImproVerse Prose

I sit deep in my deciduous and cedar woods, shaded, sweltering in the hot afternoon Georgia heat. The still air, like an open oven, stifles me. I must escape. But just as I start to rise, a cool breeze starts from the creek bottom below, racing across the newly-mown fields. Wind rushes like a cresting […]