Text Us
There is a change in the air around Kansas City. It’s not just the smell of backyard grilling that is wafting through neighborhoods. It is the smell of fresh baked pies and cakes made with hand-picked berries. This is berry picking season and savvy residents know all the best tricks of the berry picking trade. If you’ve got a big enough backyard, you might even have your own berry patch and know what a simple joy it is to fill up a basket of fresh strawberries, blueberries, raspberries or blackberries. For those who don’t have their own patch, there are plenty of pick-your-own farms all around Kansas City.If you’re heading out to the berry farms, here are a couple of tips to insure your picking time will go without a hitch.
– BYOB or Bring Your Own Buckets. While most farms will provide buckets you don’t want to get caught empty handed waiting for the return of other pickers. Best to bring your own and if you’ve got kids in tow make sure everybody gets a bucket.
– Freeze the Blueberries First: If you’ve pitch a peck of blueberries the best way to keep them fresh is to freeze them up. Spread the berries out on a cookie sheet right out of the bucket and slide them into the freezer. Don’t wash them! Once they are frozen, chuck them into a Ziploc bag and store in the freezer. When you’re ready for them, then you can rinse them off.
– Go Early, Go Often: The best time for berry picking is in the early morning hours before the noon day sun rises high in the sky. An even better time would be during the week to avoid the crowds and get your best pick on.
Once you get those berries home, there are all kinds of tasty treats you can whip up. Even just sprinkling them with a little sugar and munching on them in the backyard is a good way to go.
Of course, these means you also have to get your backyard ready for summer. What shape is your patio furniture and deck in? Refurbishing a deck might prove to be a daunting task but you can certainly replace that old patio furniture with the help of a Kansas City furniture removal crew like Junk King. They can swoop in on the scheduled day and haul away your old patio furniture to make room for the new.
It’s a safe bet that any patio furniture you’ve had out all winter has taken quite a beating. Between the snow, rain and winds it’s a wonder it is still standing. If you didn’t have the chance to cover up that furniture or haul it into the garage, it might be in serious trouble. Unless you plan on taking that furniture apart piece by piece it would be extremely difficult toss that furniture out in the garbage. That’s why hiring a professional team of haulers is the safest and most efficient way to clear out your backyard and get ready for berry season. Make this a summer to remember!
We have now officially reached the age of the internet. Need a recipe for mashed potatoes? Forget thumbing through the “Joy of Cooking.” Go to the internet. Need to buy a new car? Read the reviews and compare prices first on the internet. Looking for a new pair of eyeglasses? Plug in your webcam and go to the internet for a virtual mirror to try on virtual glasses. And now thanks to all our cell phones and personal data devices we can carry the internet with us wherever we go.
There is a sad epidemic spreading across Kansas City and that is the rise of vacant homes. Since 2007 the number of vacant homes has increased by 20%. This means around 12,000 homes are vacant which is leaving a few Kansas City neighborhoods about a quarter empty. Mayor Mark Funkhouser recently commented on this situation to the Kansas City Star. “The hole in the urban core is deeper and bigger than even I thought it was,” Mayor Mark Funkhouser said. “It’s like an ocean, and we’re trying various sizes and types of teaspoons to bail it out.”
As a way of promoting Earth Day, Kansas City’s Loose Park has a Twitter account with a very unique user: a tree. Penny Oak “speaks” from the perspective of what a tree might be experiencing and gets a little help from the Heartland Tree Alliance who are promoting the growth and benefits we get from trees. Penny is located on the east side of Loose Park near 54th Street and has accumulated many followers who are engaged in a conversation about practical approaches to supporting the environment. This brings up an interesting question. What if other inanimate objects in your home decided to open their own Twitter accounts? What might they tweet about?
A recent study found that the average American generates up to four pounds of trash each day. That’s each day! Luckily for us, we live in a town that provides for trash pickup. Can you imagine what would happen if those four pounds every day were forced to pile up uncollected? Kansas City provides its residents with a weekly pickup of garbage on a designated day from Monday through Friday. As with every other city across the country, Kansas City has their own way of doing things especially when it comes to garbage pickups.
Are you ready to “go big or go home?” Actually, you would already be home. We’re talking about finally getting that big screen high-tech HDTV for your Kansas City home. All the networks are making the switch to high definition. Simply put, this means that the signal broadcast into your home will have more lines of data. In other words, you’ll be getting an incredibly shap and more vibrant picture. This works for television shows and the movies you play back on your Blu-ray player. The issue you now must confront is twofold: 1) how to get rid of your old television and 2) how big to go.
There is a fine line between a vintage antique piece of furniture and a piece of junk furniture. That might seem like a silly comparison to make. After all, you can obviously tell the difference between an antique sofa versus a junk couch, right? But when you get down to specifics you’ll find that it could be easy to confuse an antique for junk. For instance, an antique is something that is several years old. Technically, so is a junk piece of furniture. An antique is often passed down through the family. That holds true for a junk piece of furniture, too. An antique can be very expensive to buy. Well, that’s where the antique and the junk actually part company. If you want to appraise your antique you’ll want to take them to a professional dealer. If you want to get rid of old furniture in Kansas City then you should consider contacting a company who specializes in this kind of removal, such as 
Take a look out of the window of your Kansas City home. What do you see? If you live in an apartment, you’re off the hook. You don’t really have to worry about what is outside your window unless it is bad weather. However, if you’re living in a home you’ve probably got a back and front yard to contend with. Keeping these spaces managed becomes your second job. At least, it’s your weekend job.
How green are you? If you have kids you’ll probably be asked this question sooner or later (if you haven’t already!). Middle school science classes around Kansas City are teaching kids the benefits of recycling, repurposing and reusing. That’s the cornerstone of the green movement. Perhaps your Kansas City neighborhood already provides for recycling pick up with the weekly garbage. That’s going to mean everyone is the household can get in on the green act by separating their plastics and papers. It’s a good first step, but did you know you can kick that up another notch? When it’s time to get rid of your big junk items make sure the junk hauling crew you hire is up on their green junk removal – Junk King Kansas City.
Crime scene investigators can tell a lot by a person’s footprint left behind at the scene of the crime. In fact, there have been entire books written about footprint evidence. You can tell how much a person weighs from the depth of the imprint. You can also tell how tall they are by the stride of those footprints. Most importantly, you can get a brand of shoe from that print to match it with a pair found in a suspect’s closet. Imagine all of that coming from one footprint. When it comes to our carbon footprints, we could probably do just as much “investigating” into our lifestyle. Are we wasting energy by keeping lights on? What about keeping the water running longer than it needs to be? And don’t forget all those trips to the corner store when we could have walked.