Howdy from Texas, @dansgardening! I'm Nate, and I'm here to leave you a quick intro/welcome comment :) I live the birdwatching/gardening relationship. It's very cohesive and.cooperative, like Toby Hemenway talks about in Gaia's Garden. Yours will be a fun feed to watch, I'm sure.

Welcome to steem :) We're very glad you're here, and I hope you can dig yourself in and get pretty well established here! You'll find there's a good group of folks here with homesteading and sustainability on their mind. Not the least of which are @riverflows (creator of @naturalmedicine), @sagescrub (creator of @homesteaderscoop), @freedomtowrite and @freedompoint (creators of @ghscollective). They're the ones driving the sustainability bus on steem. Lots of others like @porters, @walkerland, @mountainjewel, @sustainablelivin (@mariannewest's profile for her Sustainable Living Podcast), @squishysquid, @senorcoconut, @vanessamidwife, @ppmsilver, @allyinspirit, @makinstuff, @minismallholding, @simplymike, @craigcryptoking, @papa-pepper, @pennsif, @wildhomesteading, and many many more are the ones in the community making it such a great group to be with. They're all well worth a follow.

Most communities on steem currently meet on discord, so that's a really handy app for steemians looking to get into the swing of things. It offers a simple, user-friendly messaging place where we can all talk and keep up off chain. There are hopeful developments coming for on-chain options, but those are probably a few forks away. Til then, our three main groups are Natural Medicine, Homesteaders Co-op, and Global Homesteading Collective. The NM and GHSC ones link to discord, the HSCO link is to the marketplace built by @sagescrub where we are able to buy and sell sustainably produced goods using steem, SBD, and USD as well as gift and barter economics. It's the first marketplace of it's kind, and we're all quite excited about it.

Another great tool for steem interaction is @ginabot. A splendid notification service that works through discord to let you know about steem interactions on chain. She'll let you know when you're mentioned, when people send you money, when certain folks make a post, or when posts are made with your favorite tags. Very very helpful, and I think most steemians use Gina.

One thing you'll find is that there are a lot of interfaces with the steem blockchain. There's steemit.com, busy.org, steempeak.com, partiko.app, d.tube, steepshot, dsound, and many others that all boast different features and benefits. I prefer steempeak, but it's a fun learning experience to try a few for yourself, as steemit is a very basic interface that leaves much to be desired. Thats an intentional situation though, as Steemit Inc (Stinc) has bigger things to worry about.

I hope this little introduction can help you a bit. Things like this weren't being done much during the hectic time when I joined steem. With the price of steem being down (you'll find nobody cares much about that), things have calmed down as the moochers and weak hands have left. The folks you encounter here are the ones that truly desire to be here and see promise in the platform. We're here for the long haul, and we hope you find value here as well. :)

Welcome,

Nate and the whole sustainability community of steem.

P.S. @dansgardening, I've set you to be the beneficiary of 75% of this comment's earnings. Guys, if y'all upvote this one, he'll get a bit extra ;)