Mark Shepard | Restoration Agriculture, Wild Profit, & Nature’s Intelligence

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Because we know they're lying to us, just don't know to what degree Where would we be without THC? The highest-side chat show, Greg Carwood and company Well, it is a beautiful day in the neighborhood, people From the Sunshine State, I'm Greg Carlwood And where some people see progress in our bright, friendly suburban communities Tucked in tightly with small, consistently manicured grass patches All nestled under the loving wing of a whip-cracking HOA dictatorship I see the fruits of a long-running program aimed at engineering society To find comfort in system dependence and take pride in obedience While being blissfully ignorant of both A nation brainwashed into outsourcing the fundamental necessities of life To an industrial monstrosity Churning out the lowest-quality chemical-coated crops Barely passable factory-farmed meat And an endless array of well-marketed frankenfood That oftentimes even insects won't touch They destroy the natural ecosystem Kill the soil, pollute the water And extract any and all value At the expense of basically everything and everyone And it's a set of problems that seems almost too monumental And ingrained to even begin unraveling But today's guest, Mark Shepard, is certainly making a big dent He's the CEO of Forest Agriculture Enterprises Founder of Restoration Agriculture Development And the award-winning author of the book Restoration Agriculture Real-World Permaculture for Farmers Mark has also been a member of the Organic Valley Dairy Cooperative The world's largest organic farmers marketing cooperative since 1995 But he is probably most widely known as the founder of New Forest Farm The 106-acre perennial agricultural savannah Considered by many to be one of the most ambitious Sustainable agricultural projects in the United States Located in southwestern Wisconsin A living example that it's possible to work with nature and profit to From the front lines of the food sovereignty fight And showing the rest of us a better way The agroforestry educator Restoration agriculture advocate And certified nutman Mark Shepard Welcome to the higher side Thank you very much Of course What else is there to say after what you just said? Well that is an attempt at summarizing the wild career you've had and the long road you've walked And you probably get a sense from that intro that we're not really a permaculture audience per se We're more just of the mindset that we see the problems We see the damage of the conventional system And we don't have faith in the so-called leadership and industry on which our dependence has been nurtured And we want out I think a lot of us are pissed and we want better And that's really your whole mission Giving people a true assessment of the broken system And providing a model for a better way, right? And what's interesting is If you think about Where human beings have gotten their food for the past 10,000 years It's from annual crops agriculture You know hard seeds that you plant in the ground Three or four months later the plant dies You harvest these things Now you have to protect them with soldiers So you started to have this class stratification You had to have people who were willing to work Because it takes work to grow all those annual crops The rice, the wheat, the corn, the beans, potatoes Those are like the big five It sucks growing those crops It really does It's a lot of work Whereas it was a lot better deal Hanging out in the woods waiting for a deer or an elephant to go by And then poking it with a sharp stick And then hanging out and partying with all your friends and neighbors forever And one of the things that you had said just really got my attention Is people don't have faith in the system anymore That's what it is The whole annual crops civilization is a faith system You have to believe that it works And once upon a time Our ancestors could say Well screw this It's not working for me anymore I can't afford to pay for my home I can't afford to buy food And you're not paying me enough in the first place Why bother go to work anymore? Once upon a time We could go out into the woods and get by There's no place left to run anymore We have to create the resource base of the future We have to create it in front of ourselves in time And walk into it As we walk away from Rome As it collapsed on its ashes Well said And around here I have a pretty wide range of guests But when I have someone here who researches ancient civilizations And some of the earliest writings we have from the Sumerians They talk about all these big changes like mathematics And the sciences and agriculture As gifts from the gods And it seems like If there's any truth to those sorts of terms You would consider this agricultural knowledge And this move away from Hunter Gathers As more of a time-released curse than any kind of gift Is that accurate? All right I think that was programming by the machine In air quotes That's programming To make us think that it was horrible You know, living as a quote-unquote savage Out in nature It's like, you know what? Nobody who has ever actually attempted to grow their own food Will think that it's a better deal It was a better deal through all those years Since the advent of annual crops agriculture It was based on some sort of slavery Either other human slaves working for us Animal slaves working for us Or machine slaves that are working for us If you're living in Florida You go to a store and you buy food Who actually does the work of growing that food? Well, in a large percentage of the cases If you're eating any kind of vegetables It's people usually that speak Spanish As their first language That are not necessarily entirely here legally Or they're only here temporarily And we get to send them back As soon as there's another election that comes along It's all based on slavery And if you actually tried to grow your own food You would starve And so that's the dilemma that we find ourselves in Is that the system that has told us That agriculture is a better deal Was based on enslaving others To give the dominant society the better deal The people who actually did the work For the mega machine They're the ones that benefit from it And the slave class doesn't and didn't And so one of the things that has persisted Since before human beings were around During the dawn of humanity When we were possibly not as conscious as we are now And we were hunter-gatherers, etc And then once we went into this agricultural mode And we went to war against nature The one thing that has been working Continuously since day one Is nature itself The natural plant communities And associations of insects And annelids And birds And all that kind of stuff All of the plant and animal fungus Archae community Has created the soils of this planet Maintained the fertility of the soils of this planet And they are adapted To survive the disturbance of their location And if you're in Florida Where tsunamis might be possible Because you're near an ocean All of the vegetation can survive that You're in Florida Hurricanes and tornadoes All of the natural vegetation could survive that So all that restoration agriculture is Is mimicking the natural plant community types of an area Cherry picking the foods, fuels, medicines, fibers You know, useful materials, etc And planting that ecosystem And then allowing it to show its own evolution Its own emergent properties And then to manage it for its optimal function Not necessarily its maximum production But its optimal functioning Through time Is we're going to set up ecosystems And we're in the process of doing it Setting up natural ecosystems Again, all over the place That are food Everywhere I mean, you're making a great sales pitch And saying a lot of things That most people probably don't hear that often I know you're used to Being the odd man out Or the voice on the outside of the box And that's great I guess give us a little bit more about your story For people who don't know I heard you talking about Growing up Guessing what color the river was going to be As a kid Due to the pollution And now you have this gold standard 106 acre model system That is still bucking trends Even in like permaculture spaces So you really are doing some unique stuff Talk to us about how you went from Polluted river color guessing To where you are now How much time do you have And maybe we should pour a cup of coffee One of the things too That I want to address is In the intro You used a line from one of the If you do a search for me And it looked for a bio It's like the top hit Just because it's the most popular bio Doesn't mean it's the most accurate It means more people hit it And then the more people hit it The more people hit it the next time And one of the things was that This is like the most ambitious project That's like well This farm is only part of what The actual ambitious project is The ambitious project is Revegetating the planet in 15 years At a profit That's the ambitious project And it's farms like this That are going to look different Whether they're in Wisconsin Or Florida Or Arizona Or Serbia Or whatever It's going to look different No matter where you do it That's the ambition of the project Is to revegetate the whole entire planet Now how did I get here? Oh my gosh Went to school The polluted river I was 12 When the oil embargo of the 1970s Kind of hit And we were put on gasoline rationing You could only get gas Like if the last number of your license plate Was an odd number You could only go on odd days And you could only get like 10 gallons at a time Then it went down to 5 gallons at a time And at one point in time You know I mean the gas lines were crazy You'd wait for hours in line To go get 10 gallons worth of gas And this one gas line It was probably a half a mile long When the car ran out of gas I was 12 My next younger brother was 10 And I had a baby brother in the front seat After a while he's throwing Cheerios All over the place And screaming and hollering So mom makes me and my brother Get out and push the car on the gas line Now I don't know if you've ever had a little brother But older brothers typically think That the younger brother never does anything So that was my impression at the time As I was the one doing all the work And he was slacking And it was while I was doing that I realized how vulnerable we were That we depended on this car for transportation So my dad could go to work To get the money To buy the bread To get the money To put gas in the car To go to work To get the money It's like What the hell are we doing? And then one Little political disruption That happens And the whole thing can come crashing down My dad started to garden In earnest He actually had quite a history It's too long to go into here But he was only one degree removed From Ernfried Pfeiffer Who was a student of Rudolf Steiner And so he learned how to make compost Biodynamic style When he was a little boy Working for a doctor Because back then Doctors were botanists And you don't put poison on your medicine And blah blah blah And so he started to garden in earnest Being the oldest boy Larger than most of my cohort actually I was one of the biggest kids in school It fell on me to do most of the work The slave laborer out in the garden So I was the family slave And I would make compost And you pile all this stuff up You turn the compost You put it in wheelbarrows You bring it out You throw it on the garden It's like a couple of black crumbs Fall on the top It's like what the hell good is this doing? All that work for a couple of black crumbs And all we're doing is we're growing Tomatoes and carrots And amazing vegetable gardens At one point in time I think he probably had an acre or so Of gardens in the backyard We had a pretty big suburban backyard And when I was finished with my chores Which involved growing food That kind of really didn't feed us much Because we still went to the store to buy meat We still went to the store to buy vegetables Important things like coffee And sugar Simply because we didn't have enough maple trees To make enough maple sugar I would go down in the woods Because I'm now off of my slave duty And I run down in the woods And there was more food Out and around me I started to become an incredible forager And I started to realize That well why should I just Go to where the berry patch is Why don't I dig up some berry plants And put them over here Why don't I put some nut trees over here And I would go around collecting Plants that had the highest yield The most regular yields etc And I amassed quite a Accumulation of genetic material Of all these perennial plants And not all of it was even on our land It didn't have to be There was these high tensile power lines Going down Whatever you guys call those So I put them underneath there Everything from blueberries and hazelnuts One of the largest concentrations of hazelnuts In central Massachusetts right now Is on those power lines In central Massachusetts And I know where they came from But what I realized Is running around in the woods Getting your livelihood From being a free human being Was a lot less work Than working in the garden And it was a lot higher quality food It was a lot higher in protein A lot more you know Really wild and crazy flavors The berries were not necessarily as big And not as bland And so I pondered Why on earth did humanity choose To start planting the garden like that And why did they walk out of the Garden of Eden In order to do that And then doing enough historical research You come to learn that it was all coerced The big bad guys who wanted to have All the wealth and power in their tribe Get a gang of you guys together And then you can run roughshod Over all the other people Who are just peaceful people Wanting to live a happy life And it's no different today So yeah it was the oil embargo And gardening that got me into that That started me on this path And that's when I discovered this book By J. Russell Smith Called Tree Crops Written in 1926 I believe it was And in his day 50% of all annual grains And legumes went to feed livestock And it was grown on hillsides And stuff like that And the hillsides were eroding It was when the whole Soil Conservation Service First got started And erosion was a big deal The dust bowl was a few years Before it had happened And he proposed Why don't we grow the animal feed From the seeds from trees And shrubs And why don't we save the flat land For human feed And he proposed a system Where we grew tree crops Up above grassy pastures So a wide open savanna type Silvopasture system And let the pods and the berries Feed the animals Then we can eat the animals And the milk And the eggs And all that kind of stuff And then we can grow Our staple crops Our grains and legumes On the flat ground And that was the first time I ever heard the words Permanent and agriculture Next to each other Which later on Bill Mollison Abbreviated into permaculture Yeah, I mean That's a lot of the cliff notes To the story To a long, long story And the things that seem To set you apart Because we have talked about Food forests And permaculture before Because we spend so much time Staring at these massive problems Eventually I want to talk to guests Who have some solutions To such problems Otherwise, what are we doing here? But when it comes to your approach To agroforestry Permaculture Use your buzzwords Kind of situation The things that are different Is you talk about mass selection And you talk about Perennials over annuals Perennials over annuals Makes sense You plant fruit trees They yield every year They yield more as they go on Rather than the scorched earth Start again every year cycle But there's a lot of buzz In ag tech And the genetics And all this kind of stuff In the lab And you're just like Look, you don't need that Nature Will do that for you Talk to us about Mass selection As a simplified process That shows nature's intelligence So I'll do that And I'll also contextualize it Back with more of my own story There was a hill In north central Massachusetts Where the river That looped around The bottom of the hill You go down the road this way You've got to cross the river that way You've got to cross the river this way So no matter which way We left the house We had to cross the river That was the one That would turn All these different colors From chemical factories That were upstream Well on one side of the hill On the south side of it Was the birthplace Of Luther Burbank And Luther Burbank Was a plant breeder Who worked with The technique That sometimes Is called Burbanking But it's mass selection Which is you just put out Like a metric shit ton Of plants And then you select The ones that have The traits that you want And you go plant them somewhere And then you cross breed Them with themselves Then you do the same thing again With their seed And you keep selecting For what it is that you want And you can rapidly accelerate Genetic change in a population And Luther Burbank Is responsible for More plant varieties Than any other human being Ever period Even to this day And that was like In the early 1900s That was before we even knew What a chromosome was Let alone DNA And he did all this Incredible breeding work So that was one side Of the hill This was part of my upbringing He was a hometown hero He was somewhat notorious Then on the north side Of the hill Was the birthplace Of this gentleman Who was It was a lot earlier In history John Chapman Later on Better known As Johnny Appleseed And what he did Is he would go Around gathering up All the seeds From apple cider operations Now we have to remember Back then Apple cider You squish The juice That's called Apple juice Well there was no such thing As refrigeration So two things would happen If it was exposed to oxygen It would turn into vinegar Which is fine Because you need vinegar For preserving a lot of your foods It's a great household cleaner So you would let some of it Ferment with oxygen Turn it into vinegar Well the other stuff You seal it up So no oxygen gets in there And it turns into What we call hard cider So he actually Got seed From the booze industry And what he did Is he would take the seeds And he would go Out in the Ohio River country Where it was The western reserve And he would claim land Make nurseries With all these apple seeds And one of the ways That you as a settler Could prove to the federal government That you have intent To reside on your claim Is by setting up an orchard And so he would set out All these seedling orchards And if you've got like A hundred different Seedling apples Not all of them Are going to taste good A lot of them do A lot of them Are going to be Pest and disease resistant So the ones that are great You go ahead And you cut off a branch And you graft it onto the root Of the ones that don't taste Really all that great And over time You eventually have an orchard Of pest and disease resistant plants That are adapted to your place That produce great fruit Their primary use for apples Was for vinegar and hooch Then what happened As the internal combustion engine Was created If you had your hard apple cider That tasted terrible You would rectify the situation And rectification Is a chemical process Also known as distillation So you would make Serious moonshine Out of your apples And then you would use that As fuel In your internal combustion engines So homesteaders Were growing their own fuel By distilling their own alcohol From squished apples But the innovation That a lot of people Leave aside And don't talk about it One Johnny Appleseed Was planting Hooch orchards He was planting Alcohol orchards And two He was also Claiming land He was a real estate investor He had real estate Claimed all up and down The whole Ohio River Valley And he could go From place to place Not having to stay At other people's places He could just stay At his own places And it's actually The real estate investing Side of Restoration agriculture That has the greatest Return on investment Of what we can do We go ahead And we acquire A really degraded Piece of real estate Eroded Clear cut You name it You know Played out No more nutrients Left in the soil Now We help this piece Of property Go through natural succession And if you've ever seen Like a parking lot Somewhere That eventually grows up With weeds And eventually bushes And brush And then trees Etc That's the process Of natural succession Or ecological succession And then over time That will turn into The mature Plant community type That's local to your area With tall trees Medium trees Short trees Some of them Because of lack of moisture Will be wider apart Or because of You know Extreme cold So what we do And what Johnny Appleseed Did is he would go Into a place Plant these systems And let it grow To maturity And how the real estate Works on the Restoration agriculture The D in development Is we take Properties that are Below market value Because they're really Degraded We put an ecological System in place And an ecological System by definition Doesn't really need us In order to thrive So it now turns Into this Park-like setting And I already mentioned That we Front load the system With all the food Fuels, medicines And fibers So by managing Our long-term Call it a timber resource We're managing Our long-term Timber resource We're harvesting Agricultural yields In the meantime We have cattle That are grazing Grasses So the weed control For our trees Is coming from The cattle The manure And the urine Is now fertilizer For the cattle They're also eating Diseased leaves And stuff like that And getting rid of A lot of the Disease pressure Pigs can come in And eat all of The fruits and the Nuts that have Weevils and other Types of worms And insects in it So we reduce The pest problems You know the pest Pressure by eating The larvae with pigs And I don't know If you know anything About beef and pork Is they're for sale In every state of the Union at a pretty Good price And if you all of a Sudden have no Expenses because we're Not buying grain to Feed these things They're eating from The ecosystem When you have Zero expenses I like this line Behind me All I have to do Is earn a dollar And if I got Zero expenses That's an infinite Rate of return On investment Because it had No expenses in it Now there are Little expenses And stuff like that But nowhere near The expenses Of what it would Require So if I am Raising cattle And hogs On a piece of Property To take care Of the property It's like having A guy downstairs In your Triple-decker Apartment building Who's a Maintenance guy He gets a Reduced rent And he fixes up Your apartment Building So you The owner Of the apartment Building Your asset Increases in value Disproportionately Because you got Somebody improving It all the time For cheap So that's what My animals are And that's what The trees and the Shrubs are Is they are the Maintenance program Making my asset More valuable for me And they're delicious So if the cattle And the hogs Are paying Their own way Now I've got All these trees What do I do With the tree Crops Well before The animals Go in Because for food You have to have A certain set Aside when the Animals aren't In there So we go Through and We'll harvest From the trees First for human Consumption Then send the Animals in Afterwards to Clean up If there's an Apple with a Blemish on it That I can't Sell at Whole Foods I just throw It on the Ground I just pick The perfect Stuff And then when I throw it On the ground After I'm done I walk out I move the Fence and the Pigs come in They clean Everything up And so they're The natural Sanitation So the Apples that I Got were Picture perfect I didn't need A packing shed With a sorting Table with Five different People trying To figure out Which ones Are the good Ones Which ones Are the bad Ones I only Pick the Perfect ones I may only Get one Bushel of Picture perfect Fruit per Tree But what Were my Expenses My mowing And my Fertilizer My pest Control My disease Control Was all Taken care Of at a Profit So my Apple Maintenance Was profitable It wasn't an Expense It was a Profit So I don't Have to make A ton of Money And I don't Have to get High yields Off the Apples Because there Was no Cost really In producing Those fruit And so one Of the things That some People like The big Ag people Will complain About Is that Oh but You're just Not getting The yields And that's True You know I may Only get Possibly one Bushel of Picture perfect Fruit per Tree Sorry about That so I'm Teaching you How to get Lower yields But the Cost of Getting those Yields is It's a Negative cost Taking care Of it It's out of Profit So my Return on Investment Is infinitely Incalculable It's imaginary Numbers You can't Use it And so Anything that I do With the Apples It's a Freebie Or the Chestnuts Or the Hazels All the Other crops That are In there I don't Have to Sell as Much Because the Expensive Taking care Of them Was actually A profit And my Real business Is the Real estate Investment I buy A piece Of property I make It better And it Disproportionately Outperforms The real estate Around it Because I Built a House Now it's Worth more I can Refinance To go Either Do more Improvements Until that Farm is Fully Improved Then I Go ahead I borrow Against it To buy The next One And rinse Repeat Rinse Repeat Rinse Repeat One point In time I was up To 13 Different Properties That was Being Managed This way And now That I'm About to Turn 62 I've Started To Divest Of Properties And so Now my Job is To like Sell real Estate That's Outperforming The market That's Pretty cool Too Yes it Is And that's One of The things That I Liked Most about The first Presentation Of yours I heard As I Wrote it Down You do Earth Repair Work As a Real estate Business And it's Just so Smart And you Really Buck the Perception That we've Been given That the Farm life Is not Only Extremely Hard Backbreaking Daily Work But you're Also prepared To be Poor Forever That's The two Things we're Always told That's why Like you Are so Incentivized Against that Like it Doesn't even Seem like an Option because That archetype Is so burned Into our Heads but The mass Selection Thing is Just so Smart I don't Like the Show to Be Necessarily About me But I'm Just getting Started on The first Sizable Piece of Land I've Ever Been Able To Have And the Process Is you Go to The nursery You get A couple Of things You want To plant And you Put them In the Ground And they Don't all Last And some Of them Go better Than others And it's Kind of Dumb to Do that To scale Your mass Selection Process Down to Like a Typical Homeowner With a Little bit Of land If you Want to Plant Five Apple Trees Well you Should plant Maybe Twenty Ones That Survive And now You're Working With a Little more Pest Resistance And climate Resistance And that Sort of Cold Resistance Kind of Thing And I Think that's Just so Smart When a Tree Produces Seeds It doesn't Produce One seed It produces A thousand Seeds And then a Couple of Them Grow And so You're just Doing what Nature's Already Tried to Hint at Us Should be Done And just Doing it A little More Directly I think That's Really smart What other Things About your System Two things I want to Interrupt There but That you Really hit On that Were really Close Okay so Instead of Planting five Trees which You can Afford you Really should Plant 50 Or maybe A hundred Trees Then all Of a Sudden You're like Oh my Gosh the Price goes Through the Roof Well here's What you Do You contact Forest Agriculture Enterprise As a Nursery Say hey I'd like To order A thousand Trees You're like What Wait I Only need A hundred Exactly Right Now you're Going to get Them at Discount So you Only pay X bucks Per tree And then Now you Find groups Of friends That will Buy you Know their Own homestead Scale amount From you Now the Profits from Selling them Trees you Put out the Financial risk You bought That rootstock Of the trees You brought Them to your Place you Repacked them You sold Them to Friends and Neighbors You took On a risk So yes You expect A little Bit of a Profit as A thank You Because they Can still Get it At below Catalog Prices Because you're Such a Nice guy And then What happens If you Can't sell Them all Now you Have extra Trees you Have to Stick in Your Backyard So now Your trees Go in On your Place At a Profit Instead of At as An expense That's One thing And then One thing That most People never Think about It's like Oh yeah An apple Tree Lasts 500 million Years Or whatever It's Perennial Lasts Forever Well how About saving Your seed What about The next Generation Because when These apple Trees pollinate One another These chestnut Trees Or bread Fruit Or whatever You're using When cross Pollination Happens You have A new Genetic Combination That has Never Existed Before And that's Why Sexual Reproduction Is so Successful On this Planet Is because Of the Variability We don't Want uniformity We want Variability Because you Personally Might have Genetics That's Immune To some Kind of Next bug That hasn't Come by Like doggy Pox Or whatever It is And somebody Else Wouldn't Have that Resistance Gene Now if This doggy Pox Comes along Everybody Who is Susceptible To it Dies You can Now propagate And that Doggy Pox Resistance Spreads Through the Gene Pool You've Basically Cured The species Of that Disease By allowing It to be Infected By the Disease So only The genetic Variants That can Survive That Disease Will Survive Instead Of what Annual Crops Agriculture And the Monocrop Mindset Does Whenever A pest Comes into An orchard Or disease Comes into An orchard It's a Problem Now you Now you Fight You fight Against It Human Beings Have Never Fought Against Pests And diseases In one We've Not Been Able To Do That So why Bother And I'm Going to Use chestnuts As an Example There are Chestnut Orchards All across The USA The popularity Is increasing And people Are being Encouraged To buy Cultivars Which are Genetic Clones Of one Another Plant Them Out 30 Feet Apart You Got To Spray For This Prepare The soil A year Ahead Of Time You Know All These Different Things Your Expenses Getting Wired Into The System Ahead Of Time Look Up Michigan State University Chestnut Enterprise Budgets And read About It And After Five Years You Have Yet To Produce A Single Chestnut And You're $150,000 In The hole How Are You Going To Get Profitable After That Well Good It Starts To Pay Back And 20 Years Later You've Paid Back Well What If You All Of A Sudden Got All Those Chestnuts Put Them In Seedlings Not Cultivars You Can Put In Some Cultivars Because We Want Their Positive Traits You Put Them In The Ground And When The Pests And Diseases Show Up You Don't Do Anything About It You Let Nature Today This Is The Third Cycle That This Diseased Chestnut Tree It Grew And It Started Producing Seeds Within Three Or So Years So I'm Harvesting It Seed And It Becomes More Trees So That Really Fast Reproduction Is Now In My Gene Pool And It's Slightly Susceptible Chestnut Blight Because It'll Grow For Five Maybe Seven Eight Years Gets Chestnut Blight And Dies To The Seven Or Eight Years It's Going To Get Blight And Fall Apart Again But The Next Suckers Are Coming Up Again And So I Have A Really Hideous Probably 50 To 60 Percent Dead Material Out In My Chestnut Orchards It's Not An Orchard It's A Forest And Orchardists Will See This And Their Stomach Turns I Actually Had One Guy Who Was An Apple Orchardist That Was Apples He Literally Threw Up At The End Of My Tour Because I Had A Successful Apple Business And He Was Barely Making Ends Meet Because He Had This Image Of Perfection Of What It Had To Be So Now I'm Producing Chestnuts Commercially And Hazelnuts Commercially For 20 Plus Years Using Trees That Are Diseased And Dying It Doesn't Have To Look Perfect There's Pests Talking About Herd Immunity For Fruit Trees And Exactly Right It's Funny Because I've Listened To You Give 90 Minute Presentations Breaking Everything Down And Then When You Open It For Questions People Still Ask So What's Your Cash Crop And You've Got To Say Again It's Not About A Cash Crop It's A Cash System It Makes Money In Aggregate Talk To Us About Profitability And The Creative Array Of Income That Comes From These Very Little Inputs Compared To The Standard Process Things That Might Not Be Obvious To People Well And Let's Go Back Even One Step Further Is On The Whole Agriculture Does Not Pay It Has Been Designed That Way Most Of The Big Farms That You're Seeing Are All Getting Government Subsidies Even If They're Calling It An Insurance Program Agriculture In Taking Government Payments Is On Welfare Period Hard Stop Okay So That Means That Type Of Agriculture Doesn't Pay So The Conversation About Economics Is Not Valid Because They Can't Make It Pay Why Should We Be Forced To Make It Pay And Why Should We Beat Ourselves Up If It Doesn't So The Agriculture Doesn't Necessarily Pay And I'm Using Hazelnuts As An Example This Year I Couldn't Find People To Harvest Hazelnuts To Get It Done And If I Was Dependent On That For My Income I Would Have Been Screwed Because I Only Got As Much As I And A Couple Friends Could Pick In Order To Sell Well My Expenses We've Already Mentioned Are So Low That It Still Ends Up Being Profitable Because The Cash Outlay Was Less Than The Income And Then When You Start Doing The Flip It Around And If I'm Putting Trees In The Ground At A Profit Because I'm Selling Trees To Other People Now I've Got Negative Expenses There's That Line Behind My Head All I Got To Do Is Make A Plus One At The End Of The Year And That's Profitable I Didn't Make 50 Million And I Didn't Make All Of My Money From One Crop Now There Is A Principle That The Agroforestry Community Uses Called The Land Equivalent Ratio And I'm Going To Use Apples And Black Walnuts Because You Can Do Some Research On That The PhD Candidate A Number Years Ago Named Kevin Wolves Did His Thesis On Basically The Land Equivalent Ratio With Walnut And Corn If You Take A Acre Of Corn That's One Acre It's 100% Corn That's One If You Have A Acre Of Walnuts You Can Put These Many Walnut Trees In There You Get An Acre Of Walnuts That's One Well If You Take Your Acre Of Corn And Now Remove 20% Of That Land In Strips You Get Lower Yields Of Corn Oh No Because You Took 20% Of The Land Away And Now 20% That You Took Away Because They're Widely Spaced You Can Put More Trees In The Row They'll Get The Sun On Either Side And They Could Be Touching One Another Here You Now Have 80% Of A Corn Crop That's 0.8 And Now You Have 50% Of Walnut Crop That's 0.5 On One Acre Of Land You Got 0.8 Plus 0.5 You Got Lower Yields Of Corn Lower Yields Of Walnut More Total Yield And Basically What They Have Figured Out And This Goes To Ecological Research Photosynthetic Yield Per Acre The Total Quantity Of Photosynthate That Occurs On An Acre Is Absolutely Related To The Number Of Species Present The More Species You Have There The More Sunlight You're Capturing And Turning Into Biomass Well Now As A Farmer The Challenge Becomes How Many Species Can I Manage For One And Then How Many Species Can I Put On A Piece Of Land Before I Got Too Many I Don't Have Enough Volume To Access The Markets That I Need To Access And So What Ended Up With Me Is I Can Basically handle Three Or Four Above ground Species And I Prefer Only Three So Let's Say We Get And I Use An Example In My Book Restoration Agriculture There's Actually A Picture Of It My Son Was Maybe Ten At The Time He's Holding A Green Pepper We Shipped Green Bell Peppers Wholesale Like Pallet Quantities A Week And Also Acorn Squash So There's An Acre Of Acorn Squash On The Same Acre As Acre Of Peppers On The Same Acre As Acre Of Sunflowers On The Same Acre Where There's An Acre Of Chestnut Trees And I Got Half A Yield Of Squash Half A Yield Of Peppers Half A Yield Of Sunflowers And Half Yield Of Chestnuts That's How Many Total Yields That's Two Total Yields But I Got Half The Yield Of Everything And Then What Were My Input Costs The Certain Amount Of Weed Control More Fertility So I Had Some Mineral Amendments That I Had To Put On The Soil But As The System Got More Mature I Became Less And Less Dependent On Those Alley Crops In Between The Rows Of Trees But That's Part Of How We Can Do The Economics Of It Is Try To Have Our Inputs Become Revenue Streams And Have More Things Happening On The Same Acre So We Have A Higher Land Equivalent Ratio And Plant Species That Are Part Of Your Natural Plant Community Type In That Area So They're Already Adapted To The Climate And The Disturbance Regime Of Your Area And Those Things Are Really Helpful They Go A Long Way For Profitability And Once Again Profitability Is A Plus One At The Year Yeah I Just Think You Do Such A Great Job Of Flipping The Conventional Script On What It Means To Tend Land To Be A Farmer It's Really Great And I Didn't Expect You To Mention A Knowledge Or A Loose Connection To Biodynamic Agriculture And The Steiner Stuff We've Done Whole Shows Break It Down Rudolf Steiner Really Interesting Guy And A Whole Host Of Subjects I About Planting A Spiral Cowhorn Of Manure And That Increases Yields Just Very Esoteric Applications Of His Work To Increasing Yields And I Do Think Some Of The Most Interesting Stuff I've Got From Listening To You Is Talking About The Intelligence Of Nature Probably Because I Spend So Little Time Engaging With It That It Seems Very Bizarre And Foreign But Talk To Us About Some Of The Stuff You've Learned Just The Intelligence Of Plants And Nature's Own Processes That You've Picked Up On By Engaging With It And Any Biodynamic Stuff That You Could Add To That List Well I'll Tie The Biodynamic Stuff Into It Right Away I Not That You Went Right To The Esoteric Cow Horn And Manure And You Put It In This Time Of Year You Bury It You Dig It Up You Swirl It Around A Vortex And All That Kind Of Whatever That Is A Part Of What I Call Sparkly Object Syndrome That People Are Fascinated By The Newest Tech The Newest Technique Compost Compost You Put A Bunch Of Stuff In A Pile It Rots That's What Compost Is And Yet There's A Johnson Sioux Bioreactor There's Bokashi There's This And That It's Like Come On You Put Stuff In A Pile And It Rots Well The Biodynamic Agriculture Course That Rudolf Steiner Did All Throughout It The Goal Is To Create A Self Contained Farm Entity That Acts As An Individuality Now In Modern Day That's Called An Ecosystem Ecosystem Is The Only Things That We Know That Are Somewhat Self Contained And They Don't Really Require Any Inputs From The Outside They Don't Require Any Cash Outlay In Order To Function So By Saying We're Going To Create This Self Contained System We're Going To Create An Ecosystem Well Then He Says We Need To Have The Proper Amount Of Animals Present You Know He Mentioned Bovines He Mentioned Pigs You Also Need The Proper Amount Of Herbs In Your Meadows And Flowers The Proper Proportion Of Trees Shrubs Bushes And Vines You Need To Have The Proper Mix Of Fungi And He Scattered That All Throughout The Agriculture Course And Yet People Are Like Yeah But What's Your Best Cash Crop What's Your Best Cash Crop He Is Like Look If You Really Need To Do That Take A Cow Horn Shove Some Manure And The Whole Entire Ag Lecture He Telling You To Do A Permaculture Restoration Agriculture System But Because You Want To Ask A Question With The Stupid Sparkly Answer He Gave Sparkly Answers Now I Grew Up Within The Biodynamic Community And The Topic That Has Wasted More Human Mental Activity And Creativity Than Anything Else Is How To Make The Proper Box To Store Your Preparations In And If You Look At Lecture Four The Discussion Afterwards One Guy Says Yeah But Okay So If I Dig It Up And I Don't Use It All What Should I Do With It It Is No But You Know The Ground Gets Frozen Over The Winter Time And Rudolf Steiner Says Leave It In The Ground He Says Well You Know And He Comes Up With Another Reason And Rudolf Steiner Is Like Look There's Absolutely No Harm Whatsoever Leave It In The Ground And Go Dig It When You're Going To Use It Next Time And The Guys Yeah But This And The Thing And He Says Fine Okay You Make A box About This Big About This Wide You Line It With So Ever Since I Was 10 Years Old I've Been At Biodynamic Meetings Over And Over And Over And The Conversation Still Goes On Today How To Make The Best Box For Storing Your Preparations In And Right In Here Chapter 4 Discussion Verse 29 Or Whatever It Is Steiner Says Leave It In The Ground He Says Make An Ecosystem And Leave The Preparations In The Ground Because All Of The Different Life Forces And The Forces Of Sentience And The Forces Of Consciousness That Come Into Our Food Stuff That's The Process Of Ecological Succession As A System Changes Through Time When You Have An Ecosystem A Full Intact Ecosystem You Haven't Destroyed The Life So If You Cut Down The Forest Plow Up The Ground Any Life That Was Here And Up With All The So Either Go Through Succession Plant All These Things And In The Meantime You Got A Sick Farm Put Some Manure In A Horn Swirl It Around Spray It On It Make These Compost Preps You Know The Bladder From A Buck And All That Kind Of Stuff There's Going To A Conference At Red Boiling Springs Tennessee Jeff Poppins Place I Believe It's The Fifth Of October They're But They're Going To Go Through The Day The Same Way That The Agriculture Course Did Back In 1924 When Rudolf Steiner Did The Agriculture Course So Check It Out Red Boiling Springs Tennessee Very Cool Very Cool I Know I'm Guilty Of Having Shiny Object Syndrome And I Was Also Curious I Just Had A Guy Here Talking About Electroculture Now That's A Little Bit Less Maintenance If You Just Stick A Wooden Dowl Covered In Copper Into A Food Forest But Apparently There's Some Real Principles Of Atmospheric Energy And If You Use These Things It Works What Do You Think About That Have You Ever Gotten Into The Electroculture Stuff Well One Of The Things That I'm A Fairly Firm Adherent Is That I Shouldn't Have To Believe Anything Sure I Should Be Able To Go Out And Test And Verify Let's Take Gravity It Doesn't Matter How You Describe It It Can Be This Force That's Sucking Us To The Ground It Could Be The Bending Of The Space Time Continuum It Could Be These Little Gnomes That Take You Apart And Reassemble You Once You Hit The Floor I Don't That You Did Then If I Can Do It And Verify It It's True There's A lot Of Things With Orgone Accumulators And Stuff Like That Those Are Legit Electronic Devices And One Of The Things That I Find Fascinating Is If You're Familiar With Orgone Accumulators It's An Alternating Layer Of Organic Compound Metallic Organic Metallic Organic Metallic And You Put It Out Here And It Shit But Nobody Tells You What Kind Of Woo Magical Shit It Does And No One Actually Wants You To Test That Because They Don't Know What It Is Either Well If You Take A Device And You Do Alternating Layers Of An Organic And A Metal And An Organic And A Metal And Organic And It's Called A Capacitor And That's Been Used In You Radios And Televisions For 100 Years Almost That's An Actual Device That Has An Actual Function That Actually Does Something It Actually Accumulates A Charge Between The Two Different Materials And You Can Utilize That Charge It's Like A Battery In One Sense And If You Do Like The Chem Busters And The Cloud Busters Those Are Actual Functioning Electronic Devices That If We Only Studied Them And Figured Out What They Do We Would Learn A More Maybe We Could Use Them Instead People Want To Go Into The Woo Woo And All The Kind Of Weird Hype And So Something That Has A Potentially Amazingly Useful Application We Don't Know Anything About Because The Weirdos Have Got It And I'm Going To Go Back To The Capacitor Take The Cowhorn And So Cowhorn Is Obviously Organic Matter It's Made Out Of Keratin To Protein So If You Cut Off The Tip Of It Now You Have Down It Concentrates The Temperature Plummets It Creates A Little Micro Electrical Charge At The Tip Of The Smallest Part Of The Vortex Well Then As It Comes Out Of The Hole Which Is A Real Trip To Watch This It Comes Out Of The Hole Spinning In One Direction Then There's A Point Where It Crosses Over And It Spins Out In The Opposite Direction And Comes Out As A Spray So That's A Real Thing That You Can Do At Home If You Can Get A Cow Horn And Just Check It Out Well Then Let's Turn This Cow Horn Into A Capacitor Let's Now Take Some Thin Copper Sheets And Wrap It Around That Cow Horn And Take Some Wool Felt And Maybe Some Hide Glue To Hold It In Place Go Cow Horn Copper Felt Copper Felt Copper Felt Copper And Then Put Two Leads Up On Either Side Of The Outermost Shell Now Pour Water Through It We Can Actually Derive How Much Electrical And Magnetic Energy Will Be Imparted Into That Water As We Run It Through Because This Is A Capacitor It Is A Device That Can Be Measure Or You Can Take It It It's All Woo Woo And Get All Carried Away And We Can Distract About It Not Talk About It We Can Talk About This Crazy Stuff With Clear Rational Minds There's Something Going On What Is It Let's Examine This Right Right And I mean I'm With You Like Terrence McKenna Said If It's True It Can Take The Pressure Like You Can Study Something You Know You Don't Have To Hide In The Mystique But It Is Still Mystical And At Least It Is To Us Because We Don't Understand It What Would Our Ancestors Think Right Of A Smartphone Oh My Gosh Yeah That's Magic It's True And In Terms Of Other Forms Of Nature's Magic Like That's Kind Of What I Was Going To Get Into Before This Segue Into The Crazier Stuff There Are Things Just From Observing Nature I've Heard You Talk About That Our Modern System Of Agriculture Because It Relies On Annual Plants Planted In An Irritated Ecosystem In Vast Seas Of Uniformity It Actually Creates New Strains Of Insect Like That's Interesting I've Talked To People About Why Does The Amazon Have Such Biodiversity It Seems Like Biodiversity Can Be Engine In A Positive Way Or In This Case In A Negative Way Creating New Strains Of Insects And I've Heard You Say That The Vitamins And Minerals That Are Coming From Freshly Harvested Foods Not Only Do They Have Better Color And They're More Vibrant But These Vitamins And Minerals The Content Hasn't Oxidized And The Produce Is Actually More Nutritious Than It Would Be In A Grocery Store I Mean Those Are Things These Are Real Reasons To Take Action In The System Because People Think Oh Well The Apple Looks Fine On The Shelf Like What's The Difference Well There Is A Difference Here's An Actual Measurable Nutrient Difference That's Pretty Interesting It Is One Of The Things About Creating New Species Let's Look At Weeds For Example Because That's A Big Problem That's Going On Right Now Conventional Ag Or Chemical Ag Is If You Have An Herbicide And You Spray The Herbicide It Kills All The Weeds Well It Doesn't Kill Them All Some Of Them Survive Why Did They Survive It Doesn't Really Matter Somehow That One Had A Genetic Predisposition To Survive The Herbicide That You Threw At It Now The Next Time You Go Through Its Offspring Are Going To Be Multiplied And You Can Concentrate The Genetics For Surviving That Herbicide Same As With Insects Same With Viruses The Example I Used In My Book Was The Tobacco Mosaic Virus Is That If You Use This Genetically Modified Tomato It Won't Get Tobacco Mosaic Virus Number One And You Do The Statistics And It's 99.9 Percent Of The Time Because What Happens When A Virus And It Codes Off Of You And It Goes Ahead And It Multiplies That Way Well Sometimes It Takes A Bit Of You With It And So What Happens Is That Is A New Virus That's What's Going On With You Know The Flu Virus Or With What do They Call That Thing That Happened A Couple Years Ago I Forget At This Point The COVID Virus I Know Constantly Changing Why Is It Changing Because When It Goes Inside Of You Sometimes It Takes A Piece Of Your DNA With It And That Propagates Throughout The Population As It Continues To Spread So By Fighting Against That We're Helping To Create More Of Those Super Bugs And Super Viruses Whereas If We Allowed Our Food Crops To Co Exist With These Pests And Diseases We Would Have To Be Changing The Genetics Of Our Plants And That's Okay Because They're Changing Along With The Change In Climate Weather Pest Pressure Disease Pressure They're Evolving Along With The Planet At The Same Time Instead Of Us Humans Having This Idea That We Have To Put This In A Place And Isolate It From The Rest Of The World With All Of Our Sprays And Protective Devices And Try To Grow It Because It Has The Highest Yield Per Acre At What Cost Are We Doing That The Nutrition Thing What Does Actually Concern Me A Little Bit Is I Do A Lot Of Work Like With The Bionutrient Food Association Dan Kittrich Was The Founder Of That And They've Come Up With A Little Mass Spectrometer That You Can Point And Shoot At A Food Item Produce Item Or Whatever And They Have To Code It And Train It For Various Different Foods And It'll Tell You The Nutrient Levels In That Food And What Happened When They Did That They Find Out That A Lot Of The Chemically Raised Food Is As Nutritious If Not More Nutritious Than Certified Organic Stuff And That Has Nothing To Do With The Poisons The Poisons Were Still Used On The Poison Food And Not Used On The Organic Food It Had To Do With The Soil Health And The Nutrients That The Plant Was Taking In And So The Organic Practitioner Where You Got A Low Reading They Actually May Not Have Been Taking Care Of Their Soil As Well As The Chemical Ag Farmer Was Well Then What Really Throws A Wrench In The Works There One That Has The Most Nutrients In It That Is Now Going To Stimulate Farmers To Do Foliar Applications Of Nutrients Directly To The Leaves Of These Plants So If You Got A Harvest Coming Up Tomorrow The Truck Is Coming Two Days From Now We Go Out We Spray The Vitamins On The Plants Now The Plants Take It In Through Their Stomata It Goes Right Because You Sprayed It In There So Now We Can Be Spraying Fossil Fuel Derived Chemistry Directly On Our Plant To Get A Higher Nutrient Reading That Is Radically Different Approach Than Creating Healthy Soils Healthy Soil Process Healthy Soil Life And Ecosystem Function There's All Kinds Of Weird Stuff That Is In The Process Of Happening In This Culture Of Sparkly Object Ways To Game The No I've Heard You Talk About How Plants That Are Allowed To Fight Off Pest Attacks Often Have More Phytonutrients In Them Which Help Us Fight Cancer And Diseases So Their Immunity Kind Of Cascades Down To The Immunity Of The Person Who Eats The Produce Right And Actually Part Of What The Plants Is A Lot Of More Recent Research Is That If An Insect Bites This Plant If It Has An Immune Response It's Not The Same Kind Of Immune Response That We Have But If It Has The Ability To Fight Off Whatever The Threat Is It Also Signals The Plants Near It And They Automatically Start To Produce More Of Whatever The Internally Produced Chemicals Are That Will Repel That Pest Or Prevent That Disease And Like A Lot Of The Bold Colors And Bitter And Astringent Flavors In Food Are Indicators Of More Immune System Response When We Eat That It's Like Purple Grapes And Resveratrol So Of Course What Does Our Sparkly Object Culture Do We Go To Find That One Thing That One Thing That Makes It Work It's Like No Let's Eat Grapes With The Skin On Let's Press Grapes With The Skin On And Drink Nice Red Wine Fine Red Wine Let's Eat Really Good Food To The Salad With All The Different Colors And The Bitter Herbs The Arugulas The Kale And The Walnuts The Vinegar On The Top Let's Eat Really Well We'll Be Healthy Let's Find The One True Chemical That Helps With This Immunity And Manufacture It And Sell To You In Pills In Walmart Right Right That Is What They Do That's A Different Approach Yes And Just To Drive Home That This Isn't Something That We Should Do It Really Is Something We Have To Do I Wanted To Read This Quote From Your Book You Say In Addition To The Curse Of Ceaseless Labor The Adoption Of Annual Plants As Staple Food Crops Have Carried With Them Another Curse Every Human Society That Is Relied On Annual Crops As Staple Foods In Their Diet Has Collapsed Every Single One Every Human Society From The Temperate Zone To The Tropics That Has Relied On Annuals To Feed Itself Is Now Gone And The Rich Abundant Ecosystems Where Their Temporary Societies Once Flourished Have Been Rendered Into Dust And That Is Stark But I Can't Find An Example That Bucks What You Say There I've Thought About It And There's Hunter Gatherer Societies That Still Exist Today That Have A Continuity That Goes Back Longer Than Our History Books Maybe We Should Take A Hint And There Are Probably Some That We Don't Even Know About Right Now I Know Recently Some Folks Walked Out Of Rainforest On An Island Somewhere Down In Brazil I Think It Was That Had Never Been Seen Before There Are Still Real Human Beings Alive On This Planet But That Takes Me Back To The Whole Nature Operating System Since Before Civilization Since Before Humans And During The Whole Rise Of This Destructive Annual Agriculture Civilization Nature Has Persisted Nature Has Survived Every Cataclysm It Survived Ice Ages It Survived Global Warmings There's A lot More Data Out There Now Studying About Way Before 65 Million Years Ago When Carbon Dioxide Levels Were Higher Than This And 90% Of All Life On Earth Was Snuffed Out It Came Back Then The Dinosaur Myth With The Rock Falling Down 65% Of All Life On Earth Was Wiped Out Now That We're In The Sixth Great Extinction Right Now I Don't Know How Many Percent Of All Life On Earth Has Been Wiped Out Human Beings Could Go Away And You Know What Nature Is Going To Be Just Fine Thank You Very Much So The Urgency To Repair The Ecosystems Of This Planet Are More Geared Towards Us If We Want To Live A Somewhat Halfway Decent Life And Have Future Generations That Can Sing Songs Of Us Around The Table As They Drink Their Red Wine We Better Restore The Ecosystems Of This Planet Simultaneously While Producing Enough Healthy Nutritious Food For The People Indeed Cheers To That And The Last Thing I Wanted To Bring Up Before We Do The Promotional Wrap Up Stuff Is Demand So I Recently Moved From San Diego To Florida And One Of The Biggest Cultural Shocks Is That Consumers In Florida Don't Seem To Give A Shit About Organic At All They Like Local We Have All Kinds Of Berry Festivals And Strawberry Festivals But I'm Not Taking My Two For Farmers Produce Stands Or Grocery Stores To Have An Acceptable Organic Inventory And It's Frustrating To Me And It Seems Like A Part Of The Problem Is Consumer Demand Or Consumer Education How Do We Address That When People Aren't Demanding Better It Seems Like A Crucial Piece Of This Economic Puzzle Well For One Thing Think About Education Education Whether We Like It Or Not Ends Up Getting Attached To Politics You Can Teach Something To Somebody And They Can Still Choose Not To Do What They Learn And Then Especially In Our Toxic Environment Today We Can Be Taught Something And Immediately Our First Thought Is To Disbelieve What We Been Taught Because It's Propaganda From The Left The Right The Up The Down In The Middle Of Whatever It's All Fake News Anyways So The Education Part Forget It It's Not Going To Work And Then The People Who Don't Demand Stuff That's Better Screw It Why You Think I Grow Cattle In Hogs People Buy Pork They Buy Beef They Buy Vegetables And If They Don't Want To Buy Organic Vegetables That Can Be Sold Conventional It's Not As Good A Deal For The Let's Just Use The Dairy Portion Of Sell On The Conventional Market This Month Or This Quarter Whatever It Is And Sometimes You Just Have To Because The Organic Stuff Isn't Selling As Fast And I Think That's In Part Why The Whole Term Regenerative Was Invented Is That Can We Somehow Stimulate More Sales Of Our Kinds Of Product Because You Get People Excited About Something Different Aspect Of What We're Already Doing It's All Marketing Stuff So If People Aren't Demanding It So What Give It To Them When I Made Hard Cider I Can Make The Most Amazing Complex Really Amazing Cider That You Can Only Get You Like Over In England And Stuff Like That Some Really Complex Stuff And Then You Do Taste Test After Taste Test My Best Cider People Didn't Like It They Wanted The Stuff That Tasted Like Woodchuck Cider Which Is Like City Cup Apple Juice With Fizz In It And So You Know What I Had To Make Fizzy Apple Juice Fizz Because That's What People Wanted Or I Wasn't In Business I Suppose So But We're Not Holier Than Now At Least I'm Not It's Like I Gotta Sell Stuff I'm Gonna Sell Stuff So What And If My Expenses Are Super Low Which Bugs I Don't Have To Make A Big Profit Off Of Whatever It Is And It Doesn't Have To Go Certified Organic It Can Go Conventional Like And Still Do All Right And If I Borrow The Money That I Need In To Get Into That Business In The First Place I Get The Leverage Effect And A Higher Return On Investment Because It Was All Borrowed You Make It Problem And Actually Contributing To Solutions In Some Way If Not As A Producer Then At Least As A Disciplined Consumer And People Really Should Go Watch A YouTube Tour Of Your Place It's Impressive And Inspiring Remind Them Of Some Of The Specific Things You Got Going On That They Can Take Advantage Of Or Utilize Boy Well One Of The Things About The Farm I Think It's New Forest Farm I Don't Really Emphasize That Because Too Many People Want To Show Up And Do Tours And This Isn't A Carnival We Do Tours About Once A Week Close To A Thousand People Have Come Through On Tours This Year So At New Forest Farm So Many Places I've Seen People Do A Critique Of My Work Oh This Is All Good Theory But It's Just Not You Come Out Here You Look At Some Of The Videos Go See The Movie Feeding Tomorrow The 2022 Winner Of The Los Angeles Documentary Film Festival Got Top Honors There And My Farm Is Featured In There This Is A Real Place I'm Shipping Wholesale Quantities Of Product And The One That Was Featured In There Was The Pigs And The Asparagus Because It Was Early Part Of The This Place Is Real And It's Simple To Understand It's Not All That Complex You Don't Have To Be A Genius Brain Rocket Scientist In Order To Figure This Out This Is How Nature Operates All I Try To Do And I Keep Striving To Do Is Figure Out How Can I Farm Following Nature's Pattern Because Nature Is The Ultimate AI Nature Is Actual Intelligence It Has Survived Everything That This Planet Has Thrown At It So Far And It Will Survive Us Yeah I Love When You Frame The Oak Savannas Is Like It's The Most Resilient System So Why Not Use It Why Try To Invent A New System That Has No History Of Use Or Weathering The Many Storms That Come At Us So Why Grow Crops That You Have To Educate People On How To Eat This Thing I'll Just Use Aronia As A Whipping Post So Many People Is Like Oh I Want To Buy Aronia Aronia Aronia Aronia It's Like Wait Are You Currently Suffering From An Aronia Deficiency For One And Two Did You Know That All Those Nutrients Are Available In Blueberries Okay So Not As High A Quantity But You Know What Blueberries Taste Good And Aronia Kind Of Sucks Not Even Sugar Works So Why Try To Educate People To Do Something That's Better For Them When It Sucks Let's Grow Something That's Really Good Highly Nutritious And Fantastically Delicious And It's Time For Me To Fire Up Yourself Hopefully I Can Get Some Of That Cider Sometime And Keep Fighting The Good Fight All Right Thanks Sir Rock Me Like A Hurricane People A Return To The Agricultural Conundrum Well And A Range Of Solutions That Sound Like A Dream Come True To Me And I Do Think About This A Lot I'm So Happy With The Space We Have Here On An Acre Land Obviously A Huge Upgrade From Where I Was And I Regularly Eat Things That We've Planted That Aren't Even Available In Stores Cranberry Hibiscus Barbados Cherry The Cherry That Has More Vitamin C Than Any Other Fruit Jabba Tacabas That Grow On The Actual Trunk They're Quite Weird Kind Of Like A Grape Look Up At Jabba Tacaba It's Odd And Then Also The Moringa The Moringa Tree Because It Has So Many Uses And Just Its Leaves Are So Dense They Kind Of Taste Very Peppery But These Are The Things We Just Grab As We're Putting The Kids In The Car The Kids Don't Like All Of It But That's Fine It's Very Small Potatoes But It Will Grow And Life's Just About Making Progress In That Direction Isn't It But You Can't Go Too Nuts On A Property That's In A Neighborhood With A House On It So Sometimes I Use Websites Like Land.com And Landwatch.com To See What Might Be Available Further Out I Think There's Another Website Like Buy A Cave.com And You Can Find Places Around Appalachia That Have Streams Of Clean Water And Caves On The Property But Here's A Great Example I Just Looked This Up Before Starting This Wrap Up For People Who Think This Is Something Outside Of Their Reach Which Happens Every Time We Talk About A Show That Involves Like Property Or Money In Any Kind Of Way But This Listing Here Is About 45 Minutes From My House And It's 10 Acres For 175 K With Clean Water On It And On Top Of That The Listing Reads Own A 10 Plus Acre Piece Of Land In A Supportive Homesteading Community In Panopolia An Area Of Florida I've Never Heard Of But No HOA Expert Assistance Sustainable Living And Off Grid Potential Prices Start At 175 K With Financing Options Available Join A Community Of Like Minded Pioneers Get Done For You Help Setting Up Your Farm With The Support Of Our Experienced Ranch Hands Engage In Regenerative Practices With Chemical Free Grasses And Man Made Tilapia Ponds For Sustainable Farming Tilapia I Don't Even Like Fish But I Will Eat Me Some Tilapia For Sure So Not Only Is This Place Affordable To Pretty Much Anyone With Moderately Decent Credit But It's Part Of A Community Of People Looking To Do The Same Kinds Of Things So You Go Out There You Just Do A Shitload Of Planting Of Seeds And Starter Trees Maybe Set Up Some Animals To Graze Or You Could Even Rent The Land To An Existing Rancher To Help Make Dents In The Payments And 175k I Can't Be Sure But I Don't Think The Monthly Payment On That Is Much More Than A Car Payment So Maybe Rock That 2017 Whatever A Little Longer And Do This Instead I Know You're Not Driving A $175,000 Car But The Interest Rates On Car Loans Versus Property Loans Are Way Different And In A Few Years You Can Have The Sort Of Property People Take Tours Of Just To See What's Possible For Them And Then You Spend Those Years Saving Up For A Sick RV Or A Modular Home And You Could Be Living On Your Own Private 10 Acres For A Pretty Low Cost These Modular Homes Are Crazy They're Like Lego Blocks You Can Buy Them On Amazon Obviously It's Going To Be Pretty Isolated But Some People Want That I Would Probably Just Take Weekend Trips With The Family To Collect Stuff Like A Long Grocery Store Trip Kind Of Thing But If Shit Ever Got Bad It's Nice To Have A Retreat That You Can Always Go To And It's Something That Can Always Be Passed Down Through Your Family And This Place In The Example Isn't Too Far From Orlando So There's A Good Chance Building Is Going To Be Going On All Around It And Who Knows What It Could Be Worth Down The Road If You're Anywhere Between Colorado And The Carolinas You Can Find These Gems Within An Hour Or So Of You And This Is An Achievable Dream Don't Put Limitations On Yourself But When We Have An Episode Like This I Do Keep In Mind That I Been Pretty Blessed With This Show And What It Affords Me But I Want Everyone To Realize It's Not As Far Fetched As It Might Seem If You're Willing To Not Live On The Land Then It Makes It So Much Easier And I Think This Was Second Hour Stuff But When Mark Would Just Rattle Off The Economics Of It All Man I Wish I Could Make It Sound That Easy But Still It's Something We Could Be Proud Rather Than Just Chunking Monthly Lump Sums Into The S&P But Before We Go Too Far With This Wrap Up I've Got To Throw Out The Rest Of His Links We Said Goodbye A Bit Too Soon But Acres USA Dot Com Is His Publisher It Has The Largest Archive Of Written And Recorded Information In The Whole Biodynamic Permaculture Space Going Back To The 1950s And It's All In The Process Of Being Digitized And Made Available Online An Amazing Educational Resource Restoration Ag Dot Com Is His Design And Consulting Business So They Design And Install Large Scale Water Management Agroforestry Systems And Then Forest Ag Dot Com Is The Mass Selected Edible Woody Crop Nursery So He Sells In Bundles As Per The Philosophy If You Think Mass Selection Seems Logical Then You Can Kick Start That By Buying These Bundles That Have Already Been Mass Selected By One Of The Best In The Game And I Should Have Started That Way But I With Action And I And A Process Of Continual Refinement But I Find Mark To Be Super Inspiring He Says All The Right Things To Get Me Jazzed Up And Has A Ton Of Knowledge He's Living Proof That This Model Works I Love The Flip On Hunter Gathers And The Development Of Permanent Settlements Raw Egg Nationalist Was One Of The First To Spend Time On Hunter Gatherers Being The Better Way And Civilization Coming Through Force Rather Than Some Big Aha Moment On A Never Ending Path Of Progress But When You Fold That Into The Idea Of Humans Being Taught This From Some Higher Being It Just Becomes More Provocative And It Seems Like They're Fucking With Us But In The Second Hour Like I Mentioned We Did Talk About The Economics Of Buying Land Using Loans And Borrowing Against Assets A Bit Over My Head But I Will Re-listen To That A Few Times Leverage Does Make Our System Go Around And You Don't Want To Get Caught Over Leveraged But A Lot Of People Don't Even Realize What Could Be Available To You If You Took Just A Little More Risk Than You Do Now I Also Loved That Need To Learn About Why These Things Work Adjust Our Model Of Reality And Get Past The Mystique Of Things That We Have Yet To Just Accept And Fold Into Our Larger Understanding And It Does Get Quite Grandular Whereas Mark's Whole Thing Is Just Like Let Nature Take Over But There's No Reason Why You Couldn't Combine Both Philosophies In That Plus Show We Also Got Into Natural Pre Colonial Abundance That Was Here Fungus And Mushrooms Foraging Partnering Investors With Land Purchasers And People Who Want To Do This Kind Of Thing And How To Transform America's Food System Step By Step Become A Plus Member It Helps Me But It Provides You Twice As Much Content That's Why You Do It And We Leave The Advertisers Out Of It As A Nice Bonus The Highersidechats.com To Make All Your Dreams Come True Or You Can Click Those Links Right In The Show Notes As The Intro Song Says In Higher Side News I Put Out A Couple Of Posts Recently Instagram Twitter All That About Buying A Pig Which Is Awesome You Can See All The Meat That Buying One Full Pig Provides Definitely Enough Pork For A Family Of Four For At Six Months I Think We Should All Be In That Game Of Having A Freezer And Buying One Pig And One Cow A Year It Actually Forces You To Eat At Home Because You Got To Get Through It And It's So Easy These Days To Look Up A Recipe For Any Odd Cut Of Meat You're Unfamiliar With And Experiment We Get Better As We Go Support Your Local Sustainably Raised A Post About How The THC YouTube Channel Was At 99,900 Subscribers And Given That I Have Two Strikes I Just Wanted To Say We Hit 100k Before It Went Away And Big Thanks To Everybody Who Jumped On That I Can Now Say Achievement Unlocked And Yeah I Doubt They're Going To Send Me The Play Button Plaque That So Many Others Get That You In My Cap I Got To 100k With A Conspiracy Show That's Really Just Audio Yeah I Use It For Video Clips Now In The Last Year But For 95% Of The Time It's Just Been An Audio Show On A Video Platform And I Think That Adds A Level Of Impressiveness To It Kind Of Dumb I Know YouTube Is Such A Small Thing Barely Even Worth Mentioning When It Comes To My Overall Podcasting Infrastructure But Now If It Gets Removed I Can Say That We Got There To That Sweet Six Figure Number And On Those Posts There Were A Lot Of Comments How I Should Move To Rumble Or Odyssey And I Don't Think Those People Understand I'm Not Looking To Replace YouTube I Don't Really Care I've Tried Rumble And Odyssey It's Not A Podcast It's Distributed Through RSS And Available On All Podcasting Apps That's Enough YouTube Was Fine For Growing Things But Clearly They've Changed From Where They Were When I First Started But Thanks For Pushing Me Over The Top To 100k In Spite Of All That Moving On Let's Do That Thing And Check In On The Last Episode Rating SSRIs And Predatory Psychiatry With Dr. Roger McFillan You Already Know It Was Good But How Good 4.9 Wow I Don't Think I've Ever Called A 4.9 Since I Started Doing This Jesus That Is Great To See I Personally Think THC Episodes Have Been On A Roll Lately It's Been A While Since I Wasn't Thrilled With One And They Are Very Diverse Dan Luzatter And Mockingbird Media Matt Roski Electro Culture And Basically Everything Else Ufology With Ram X Yuga Shift With Bibu Dev Misra And Analog Before That I Love All These Interviews Become A Plus Member That's A ton Of Good Stuff Just Right There Seven Day Free Trial To Get You Started You Don't Have To Be A Member Forever But Throw Me A Bone If You Like This Show Download Some Older Episodes You're Curious About And Let That Be It Why Not Hear A Bit More Of It But Yeah Things Are Good I'm Very Happy So Lucky To Be Doing What I Do And I've Been Diving In A lot More Enthusiastically Since The Astro Gnosis Conference I Still Got That Charge But Speaking Of Events Let's Do The Calendar Thing It Has Been Light Probably Still Is But On Deck We Have October 14th Galbrath's Ale House In Auckland New Zealand October 23rd Corner Bakery Cafe For A Natural Law Meetup In Pasadena California November 7th A New One Montana Tap House In Whitefish Montana They Say Let's Do It Again Flathead Valley Cure Your Post Election Blues By Meeting With Like-minded Individuals Not Caught Up In The Two Party Duopoly Gotta Love That November 9th Trails Cafe In LA And November 13th Another New One Athens Ohio West End Cider House You know I love A good Cider It came Into Play With This Interview And They Say Not Really Any Details To Give I Guess I Don't Know How Many People Are Even Going To Show If Any At All But Here's Hoping To Some Well Look I Appreciate You Putting Yourself Out There It's Great There's A couple New Events Since Last Episode Life Is About Just Diving In And These Events Could Be The Start Of Something Cool With Very Little Downside For You So Please Don't Leave These Hosts Hang In If You're Near Any Of These Are Just Go Have A Drink Say Hello And Talk About Your Favorite Episodes To Break The Ice Go To Higher Side Meetups Dot To Make An Event Of Your Own Or RSVP It's Nice To Let The Hosts Know They Are Going To Have At Least A Few People Coming And These Are Usually Pretty Small 5 10 15 People Is What I Usually Hear There Are Guidelines On The Site Largely Ripped Off From The No Agenda Site Because They Did Nail It But There's No Need To Make It A Big Thing You Thing Just Pick A Place With Standing Room That's Why Breweries Are Such A Good Pick Again No Need To Inform The Venue Or Make It A Big Thing Just Think About A Local Place You Like Where 10 People Can Meet Up Easily And Put It On The Calendar And When I Call It Out Any Local Fans Will Know A Lot Of Small Or Local Businesses Are Struggling And Sometimes I Think About Just All The Free Advertising We've Given To Local Places Around The World And The People We've Brought In It's Not A Ton But It's Pretty Cool It's Got A Few Stacked Benefits And I'm Proud To Continue Doing It Even If It Is A Rip Off From No Agenda If Adam Curry Really Did Start Podcasting Technically We're All Ripping Him Off Why Stop It Podcasting I Kid I Love That Show Never Miss An Episode But That's About It Mark Shepard Let Him Know If You Had A Good Time Buy Some Trees Check Out His Place Support Organic Valley Milk If You Don't Already Have A Source For Local Raw Milk You Should See It In Your Grocery Store And You Can Be Reminded Of This Interview When You Pick That Up And We Could Even Johnny Appleseed This Country Just Plant Stuff All Over In Obscure Places We Have Everything We Need To Make This A Place Of Abundance And We Don't Have To Wait For Some Big Movement Or Political Momentum And That's What I Love About This Kind Of Solution Anyway I'm Getting Out Of Here I've Done My Part Your Move Unsustainable Annual Crop Engineers Big Ag Corporate Consumers And Sowers Of This Sick System Your Fucking Move The Shepherd Leads The Way Towards A Better Brighter Day And All That I Can Say Is It's About Damn Time So Many Hurrying To Wait So Many Rushing To Complain That Play But They Don't Really Try It's Simple Addition Trition While The System Clings Shrinking Market Share That Doesn't See These Things We'll Re- Secure Our W Cause It's About Time