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**GREEN Organic Garden Podcast**

The GREEN Organic Garden Podcast will inspire, teach, and promote earth friendly techniques by interviewing organic gardeners who share their journeys, tips, and tricks to simplify the process of growing your own delicious healthy food. Whether you want to have a small bed in your backyard or a full grown farming operation, our guests will help you reach your gardening goals and offer you resources and solutions to everyday gardening challenges, and inspiration to dig down in the dirt and get growing!

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325. I want this garden to work for me and not me work for it |Patti Armbrister | WiseGrowerGuru.com Jul 05, 2020

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https://youtu.be/SVHh5wS-cLEHey there, green future growers! Thanks for joining us today. If you're new to the show, I hope you'll subscribe on iTunes or your favorite Android app and let's get growing. The amazing Patty Armbrister is going to offer the most incredible composting class you'll ever take completely online.Saturday, July 18th, 2020, it's only $37 and you will get a seat. You will get a copy of the replay. You will get to pick her brain question in the answers. We're just gonna rock the composting, how to do composting the most efficient, effective, and best way to improve the results in your garden today. Yeah, there we go. All right. Welcome to the GREEN Organic Garden Podcast. It is Friday, June 26, 2020, and Patti Armbrister talked me into doing a video live. So here we are doing video, but she's going to do some screen share and I'm going to turn it over to her so she can tell us all her amazing golden seeds. So welcome to the show. Patti, welcome back to the show Patti. 00:01:380Well, yes, thank you, Jackie. I just see later that we are going to get to have a conversation to share and listeners posted about coming to visit.I haven't posted the advice you gave me, but I talked about, well, maybe I recorded it.It was one we met with Robin in Whitefish. Actually I recorded it on the way home. So I haven't done an episode about you coming to visit. So I guess listeners you'll hear that soon, but in the meantime, what are we going to talk about today?00:02:130Yeah, they'll be good. Oh, we're going to talk about all kinds of stuff for one thing. It's here in Eastern Montana. It is like the most phenomenal growing season you've ever seen or I've ever seen. And I've been here since 1990 to give you an idea that then every single season has been different, right? But this year, this spring is just unbelievable. The plants can't ask for anything more than what they've received this year.00:02:470So they're just looking amazing and producing!So, yeah, I'm pretty excited that I've been able to eat kale out of my garden for the month!Previous to that, I was eating out of the passive solar greenhouse as a school.My goal is to eat kale year round, growing in Montana.So that's what I want to be doing. So I'm getting closer and closer to it. I would just keep trying to tweak it, figure it out. When do I need to plan it? Where does it need to be in the wintertime and how to get it done? But we're getting really close.I had a plant at the school garden in the passive solar green house this year and that plant, I was harvesting it in March,I was wondering if you were eating it? When did you plant it?The little kids and I planted it in September, right in September.00:03:481And so we I planted a seedling and then they transplanted it into these containers, which we tried five different varieties when we did that. And we only had the one variety, make it all the way through and be where that I could harvest it. I do have another variety, which is the red Russian that is, I'm still producing right now, but I wasn't able to harvest it for the three or four months that I was harbored minus this curly kale, that type.00:04:181So there's more of a cold Hardy kale. So the ones with the real crinkly leaves not to dinosaur kale, but the real crinkly leaves are in, you know, and they're, they're kind of the curve celled plants. So they, they, they really it's done really well. Now it's produced them seed. So I'll be collecting seeds, hopefully sharing them down the road with the Good Seed Company.I planted seeds with my students on like March 2nd. Cause it was like right before school, we had to go home and I did send her home with the kids that I took home that I planted a container didn't really grow any faster. That whole time to the ones that I ended up putting in the ground outside. And then those ones took off. They both, like, I just felt like maybe it was too soon or trying to plant them in the container. I don't know what I did wrong. They didn't do very well.Well, sometimes it's just timing. And sometimes it's the depth of the container.Like these are in a pot that's probably 20 inches deep. These, these kale were, so it was kinda mimicing and we play another plants in with them.So in the beginning it was a poly planting, which I promote, right. Diversity all the way around as much diversity as you can put in.And so they had diversity through the fall, but then when it got really cold, those, those guys got fall out of the system. But yeah, it makes a big difference. I think that the plants really know how many daylight hours is going on out there. And so they, they are triggered by that.They're doing all kinds of communication that we have just barely, barely starting to learn a little bit about. And so that's what I've been honing in on, especially when it comes to some of the pests in the garden.Like for example,our favorite friends are slugs, which I've been really working on dramatically the last couple of years to try to figure out how, how do we live with them? Because they are one of the key decomposers, right? So it doesn't like we want to anialate them. What I want to do is figure out how I can get imbalanced to live with them. And so anything that finishes out it, so life cycle and soil, which they do, I think can be controlled in the soil. So that's where I've been attacking them. Along with our flea beetles.Our favorite friends are flea beetles, but attacking them with, with beneficial nematodes.And so my population of slugs this year is like hardly nothing compared to what it was a year ago with just time. And so I know I'm gaining, but I'm going at it in multiple, multiple ways, not just the nematodes, but the nematodes I think, are really helping to keep the population reduced.So, and those plants, so, you know, we'll have one plant right side by side or another in one plant is viciously getting attacked and it looks fine.1It doesn't look any different than the one next to it. The one next to it is not getting attacked. And so that plant that's getting ate is sending out signals to come eat me.We've got to figure out, okay, how do we get this plant to be happier or healthier? Which I think a lot of times it's healthier to not send those signals because if it sends those signals. It doesn't matter what I do. I'm not going to be able to stop the attack.I've been trying to use like, I'll break the lower leaves off of, especially the cabbages they've they just love cabbage.1So break the lower leaves off the cabbages, especially the ones that are touching the ground. They're already getting hammered by either slugs or other pests. The seconds, those plants are not attached to the plant. They're sending signals to usually through chemical signals that they need eight and decompose.And so decomposers come in, which is the slug is going to be the first responder. And so they're going to go get out of those leaves. So I just take a bucket with a little bit of water in it, take those leaves and dump them into the bucket.1And for some reason in nature, or God did not allow a slug to swim, right? Most, every creature on earth swims, but not a slug, they cannot do that. So it's a quick, easy way to get rid of them. They're dead. There was be a few tries to crawl out of the bucket. I just give them a good little swirl in there they're out of there.And so that's been working really well versus, you know, handpicking them or whatever, but so yeah, I know.1Awesome! So that's one of the questions I get over and over what do I do about pests and bugs and especially slugs!Yup. Yup. And so I think planning a lot of diversity really helps. Like I have kale planted kind of in pods right now where there's three and four, maybe five plants together for the cabbages, kale, beets, stuff like that. So that I've got other plants in there amongst them flowering plants. I've noticed that the, none of the slugs like anything to do with the garlic or onions and they seem to stay away from those beds better than the others.00:10:031And so I think figuring out some combinations of what to be planting is going to be helpful for gardeners instead of when we plant one straight row of something and, that plant sending a signal for the pest to come in, there's nothing a gardner's going to be able to do outside of using chemicals that act actually is just a bandaid. It didn't fix the problem. It might've stopped a problem for that right then, but it's not gonna solve the issue. You're just asking for it!00:10:341So we got to start thinking, okay, how do we do this different? Okay. If I plant, I plant a few kale here, a few cabbages and other locations, the slugs love the radishes. So does a flee beetles.So I use the radish and the mustards as a trap crop, plant them far away from where you want to put your key cabbages and kale. I haven't noticed them on a kholarabi, which is funny, cause it kind of same family, but, but anyhow, plant that trap crop way away from them, which you draw those pests to those other plants. 00:11:131Especially if you water, if you're going to water overhead, you water your trap crop overhead, do not water the rest of the plants overhead. That's going to really pull the slugs over in that direction. Cause they just love a damp, wet environment even when they can't swim. So that will pull them that way though, in a way from your, your target crop. But I just really think a lot of gardeners need to get to the three year Mark with their no till and regenerative practices.00:11:451Because when you do, it's like the tipping point. When you get to that point, your plants are so healthy and so strong and sending out positive signals and they have a defenses of microbes all around them that you don't have any pests.And so we got to get to that point.And so a lot of people maybe like for instance, I had a gardener that was going on the no till they were going pretty good there in a year and a half of no till and something went wrong with their clover, their clover winter killed.00:12:191So they had Clover in their walkways. And so they decided to till it, instead of just receded and when they did, they just opened up the box to start over again, because now the flea beetles have come in and just literally wiped out their whole garden!Even green beans and all because they had the serve, the predator that was going to eat the flea beetles, eggs in the soil!So when we, till or disturbed that soil we're killing out beneficials, that would have helped us with most of these past that if they live out their life cycle in the soil. 00:12:581So that would be our slugs or flea beetles, which are our two biggest enemies in Montana that I've discovered for gardeners is those. So if we can not disturb that soil and figure out ways that we can do it, like I've been buying these nematodes, right. I'm creating nematodes in my compost, but I buy these nematodes that are beneficial nematodes online that will eat flea beetle eggs. 00:13:301Right? So that's, that's what I've been doing. And then I put them out twice a year becaue your flea beetles have 2 seasons, because a lot of people don't understand that either. So they did this year and then they go lay their eggs. They, they reproduced now you have massive numbers of flea beetles come from that first for the places like where he was going to plant the <inaudible> early in the spring and keep those numbers down.00:14:081And then, you know, green beans and we get that summer match really will come into the numbers down. Like right now I have goals in mind to just go a little garden, which you couldn't do anything you'd have to really growing in there from last winter. Usually be an idea here. I can show you a picture we end up having to dig up. So I thought that worked awesome this year.1I'll tell you I scored a billboard tarp, and they were taking it down and I said can you give that to me. and Mike did half the minifarm in tarps this year and it was just awesome!And so you were doing it to suffocate out the plants so that you Solarize?He did it for like places where he was gonna plant the green beans after frost. Things that can't go in till later, usually those places are full of weeds and just a huge ordeal, everything else growing from March till June, this year it seemed early, but to be able to just pull those tarps off and just maybe turn it with the broadfork a little but to not have anything growing there was so much labor intensive. Usually in the spring he would usually have to clean up.Yeah. And that works really, really well for both market gardens and small gardens. If a small gardener knows, okay, I'm having grass invade in this garden or whatever, man, get it tarpped in. I'd like to tarp it when that plant, that grass is still growing, right? So if you tarp it in the fall, but when the plant is still doing photosynthesis, it's still trying to grow up above andgather sunlight. And so you tarp at them, it's going to really knock things back really, really hard. 00:16:151So, yeah, that's a good idea.[gallery ids="136937,136938" type="rectangular"]So IDK Can you see, this is, this is some of the kale, kholaRabi and broccoli. And then of course it's inner inner planted withPhacelia, which is called <bee friend> is its nickname and the bees just love it. https://youtu.be/GfTdwt5mVwQAnd then in a way background, there is a puny back there, but on the fence is a honey crisp Apple that I'm going to be training to go flat across that fence.So it won't, won't be taking the sunlight up from these beds, but this bed is a four foot by 16 bed and it's got a whole row of celery on the backside of it.And it's already produce a lot of food in it.Doesn't have any Pests, no pests of any kind whatsoever going on in there because of it.Ît looks super healthyYeah, because of the diversity and, and you know, people think in, you know, all of my lifetime of up until the last 10 years! I was always thought in my grandparents, parents, myself, always thought, okay, the plants are competing thatI need to have just broccoli here or just kale here. 00:17:311But that's just really false. That is so far from true!And I'm like, Oh my gosh, the plants are helping each other. And the more diverse of plants you have, the more they help each other. They're not only helping each other with pests, but they're helping each other with nutrients and water!And so they're sharing through the roots and the fungi and organic matter that it's just, amazing!I was just can't stress enough we need to plant morediversity.00:18:10So this is another sorry for the sunlight. I took these right before we got on the computer here, but I have some perennial plants in here. Oh, this is perennial grasses are two different kinds of grasses that are in front of the screen. One is our blue bunch wheat grass, which is our state grass, just awesome grass, but really getting to be hard to find out on the range because we overgrazed it in the next grass to it1The taller one is actually a native grass too. And it's on basin based on ryegrass. And so both grasses are benefiting the bees. The bees spend quite a bit of time in grass, which I don't know exactly why, but I think they do go after the pollen when, when the, when the flowers are blooming, we don't always yes.00:19:15Î was just out in the mini farm and it was lik…

Full show notes at the publisher

White Homework Podcast | Why you must listen | real #WhiteFragility explained | JMB Social Justice Rant Jul 03, 2020

Show notes

I am totally loving Tori Williams Douglas' podcast White Homework! It is exactly what I was looking for. Forget reading #WhiteFragility if you want to know how racism exists around you this is the podcast to listen to. She's authentic, knowledgeable, insightful, and manages it to do it with humor and passion at the same time! Her laugh is almost as contagious as Jill Angie on the Not Your Average Runner Podcast.

Anyway in one episode I listened to Tori says imagine what life would look like if we were going to restore justice. Would we give North America back to the Native Americans? Would we quit leaving our homes to our children? Almost all white people plan to inherit their home from their parents. Where would we go? If we didn't give our home to our children. What would it look like?

So after thinking about it for a short while, I thought most of all, we need to start by rethinking our incarceration system. We need to turn that upside down. IDK where I read it but someone said once we could put every prisoner through a Harvard education for the cost of keeping them in jail. IDK if that's true but it sure seems like if we took the money to incarcerate so many people and put that into our schools and communities we would see real change.

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/04/30/2018-09062/annual-determination-of-average-cost-of-incarceration

https://www.scholarships.com/news/prison-incarceration-costs-more-than-harvard-university-tuition

To me the biggest problem in our country is pure ignorance.

I blame the media for much of it, but our schools are pretty bad too. When I tell colleagues that the average person on food stamps is on it for 6 months and gets $1.72 per person per meal, they say really, I didn't know that. I have worked side by side next to so many hardworking parents.

https://www.snaptohealth.org/snap/snap-frequently-asked-questions/

The other one, oh we can't change minimum wage and the only people who work for min wage are college kids or stupid people. Well when minimum wage is $7.75 or whatever it is, that means businesses can pay managers with college degrees $8.75.

When I worked at Head Start it drove me crazy that they had teachers who had no college education being a child's first experience with schools and dealing with parents who are already struggling.

I have said Head Start is segregation ever since I worked there. We need universal pre-school for every child everywhere, in our country, and everywhere in the world. We need to help every mother everywhere have access to healthy food, clean water and an education.

I am so sick of people telling me well why do they have so many children? Don't they know about birth control? Duh, of course they don't have access to birth control. We hardly have equal access to birth control in our country.

I hate people who say oh, people don't have health insurance because they are too lazy to get a real job or go to college. I'm so sick of Republicans that say I am not going to have my money that I work so hard for go to people to rip off the system and lay on their couch.

I have seen so many parents I have worked side by side with that work day shift and night shift so their kids have a parent home, barely see each other and still have no insurance option. Now some of that might have changed thanks to Obamacare.

Anyway my point today was about restorative justice. If you want a good primer on restorative justice and an easy read I love Ben Mickaelson's Touching Spirit Bear. Without a doubt incarceration isn't working in our country.

When I went to college back in 2003, I can still remember my reading teacher, Jan LaBonty drawing a circle on the board, and she said, 2% of the country that was the amount of people who really didn't understand right from wrong and belonged in jail. The other 20% just needed social help. That lesson has always stuck in my head. Most of what leads to people not being successful in life, turning to crime or whatever is a lack of HOPE. It really comes down to that.

I've said the same thing about parents who drink. It comes from a lack of confidence that the person themselves is able to provide the life their children need or deserve.

Anyway, enough of my rant, check out Tori's podcast, support her on Patreon and order the homework. Then do it. Yes it takes a long time. Oh, well. And THEN SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS.

Things I've learned so far. Most people in Montana jails are pre-trial and won't even be convicted of a crime. Montana has a lot of people in jail. And IDK if we have criminals from other states because we have a lot of Black people in jail?

In the US black people make up 13% of the population but 40% of our inmates?

May 28, 2014 - yes this table is 6 years old but the most recent I found.Race/Ethnicity

% of US population

% of U.S. incarcerated population

National incarceration rate (per 100,000)

Black

13%

40%

2,306 per 100,000

Hispanic

16%

19%

831 per 100,000

White (non-Hispanic)

64%

39%

450 per 100,000

Briefing by Leah Sakala

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/rates.html

According to the ACLU:

Indigenous people comprise approximately 6.5 percent of the Montana state population and yet account for 20 percent of the men’s state prison population, 34 percent of the women’s state prison population, and 27 percent of the state’s arrests for failures to appear in court or for probation or parole violations.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/smart-justice/parole-and-release/why-are-so-many-indigenous-people-montana-incarcerated

According to PrisonPolicy.org

Only about a third of the 720,000 people in jails on a given day have been convicted

Since the 1980s, the U.S. jail population has more than tripled

a massive increase in the number of people held before trial (the “pre-trial” population)

two real drivers of jail growth:

an increasing number of jails that run a side-business of renting jail cells to other authorities

Jail growth has occurred predominately — and in the last 15 years, almost entirely — in the number of people being detained pre-trial.

This confinement creates problems for individuals on a short-term basis and also has long-term effects. Research in different jurisdictions has found people detained prior to trial, compared to similarly situated peers who are not detained, are:

More likely to plead guilty.

More likely to be convicted.

More likely to be sentenced to jail.

More likely to have longer sentences if incarcerated.

And these harms accrue quickly: being detained pre-trial for just 3 days can impact employment , finances , housing , and the well-being of dependent children. In fact, studies have found that just 3 days of detention can make the lowest-risk defendants less likely to appear in court and more likely to commit new crimes. There is no question that wholesale pre-trial detention does far more harm than good.

Each of these individual harms can accumulate into community-wide harms when large numbers of individuals in the same community have the same experience.

Jail growth fuels cycles of marginalization, poverty, and incarceration, especially in communities of color.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/jailsovertime.html

Here are some interesting articles. I haven't found the exact gloucester study he was talking about but here's a fact check by Reuters

"Taking respective population sizes into account, and based on the link to 2013 census data at the bottom of the graph in the posts, Nuzzo interpreted the data as follows: If you’re a white person in 2013, based on the FBI data, your chances of being killed by anyone are roughly 13 in a million; if you’re a black person in 2013, your chances of being killed by anyone were 62 in a million, which is almost five times what the odds are for a white person.

If you’re a white person in 2013, Nuzzo explained, your chances of being murdered by another white person are approximately 11 in a million, and your chances of being murdered by a black person are two in a million. Meanwhile, if you’re a black person in 2013, your chances of being murdered by another black person are 56 in a million, and your chances of being murdered by a white person are five in a million."

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-fact-check-bar-graph-black-white-homi/fact-check-misleading-bar-graph-presents-distorted-interpretation-of-black-and-white-murder-rates-idUSKBN23M2SX

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322. The 6 Principles of Resilient Behavior | Robin Kelson | Good Seed Company Jun 28, 2020

Show notes

Friday • June 12, 2020Recently Robin Kelson from the Good Seed Company was on the Beauty of Conflict PodcastWhat disruptive change is and why it can be a good thing.How we can tap into the intelligence and resilience in our bodies.What six behaviors we need to become more resilient.How we can thrive in the aftermath of the coronavirus.Why collaboration and cooperation are crucial to our existence.Why engaging the prefrontal cortex will enable us to be more resilient.Why we, as humans, are not as individual or unique as we might think!I can't believe we didn't see each other at Free The Seeds. I was downstairs trying to promote the Organic Oasis Guidebook. I have been so busy. School got out and my goal was to clean for 3 days and be done at noon today for this podcast and then relax before I start my new job for Gregg Clunis of Tiny Leaps on Monday. I have been listening to my new favorite podcast the Clutterbug!Get your copy of the Organic Oasis Guidebook and get started building your own earth friendly garden today!Tell us a little about yourself.Sure! I have worn many hats among them as a biochemist and attorney with an expertise in intellectual property law so I come with that background, and I have always been really interested in what constitutes resiliency, although I didn't call it that back then.I got interested in what was the core of what I saw about 30 years ago an epidemic of chronic disorders in our culturephysical bodies and impacts on our bodies. I didn't understand it, and I couldn't get any satisfaction from the western medicalchemicalscientific approachI looked into it, i’ve led lots of creating soil enhancements re-nourishing the soilnow as the owner of the Good Seed Co that sells heirloom seeds adapted to our region in montana where we live and particularly in the selecting and saving and sharing seeds for common usewithout eating we are not nourished and we don’t keep the species goingI’m also a co-executive director of AEROMTjust metal to the petal particularly in response to the covid epidemic and it's impact on the food system in Montana, all the work so many of our organizations have been doing on resiliency and sustainabilityevery single Montanan has ben impacted by itopportunity to regrow our own food supply1950 we grew about 70% of our own food and now it's down to about 7%a little bit about mein my journey as you mentioneda curiosity about resiliencyexamples that exist in nature. I have been studying that because it intrigues me for 30 years. I have been talking about it recently from my own perspective there's some really good systems for developing a resiliency. I call it developing resiliency intelligence.I didn't really hear the term resiliency till you and I went to the AERO workshop back in 2017? 2018?i think it’s good to start by defining sustainability and lets look at one in naturethey are 2 different terms and both have a placea sustainable system is one that can keep going over time! The more then the inputs to the system are locally accessible and renewable the more sustainable that system!So let's look at a farm and what they need in order to grow food they need seedsnourishment for the soilpower sourcewater underground to power the wellif they save their own seed that means their seeds are locally accessible and renewable. As long as they keep growing and saving them, that’s a sustainable activity.If they make their own compost and use worm castings of that nature that's locally accessible and renewable as opposed to buying chemical fertilizer that comes from Canada by way of Texas that' s just not sustainable it's not local.The third would be if your power for your waterfall is local accessible renewableit's not dependent on getting access to gas or fuelIf you had an electric tractor or it was powered by biodiesel and plants that you growSo that's the definition of sustainableThe definition of Resilientability to be responsive and move through disruptive change Disruptive change is defined as unpredictable and having high risk associated itIn the natural world it refers to shifts of tech platestsunamismeteor that hit the planetice ageAll of those are disruptive changes, not really predictable - maybe the ice age was predictable but you know what I am saying, you don’t have the opportunity to plan for itWe usually look athigh impacthigh risk as a negativedisruptive change can be positiveIf you win the lottery you go from making $2500/month to has high risk and high impact it's really impossible to plan. I like to say when the first baby shows up at your house but there's absolutely no way to prepare for a new person in your life.definitionresiliencythis intelligencestems from an understanding that systems in nature, nature’s been around along timespecies and systems that are still around todaythey are by definition resilient, they have survived and able to adapt to lots of examples of distributive change if we look at them we have some opportunities to say what is it they are doing that has supported their capacity to be resilient and how can we apply that to humans of all the specieswe're kind of the youngest kids on the block by a long shotthat's the conversation and that’s the opportunity I like the way you talk about the baby because that makes it sound more tangible.the reasons I talk about this6 principles of resilient behaviorif you will that have been extracted by really smart peoplethis work has come from lots of peoplebiophysicistschemistsbiologistsmathematicianslooking at the evolutionary record and the ecological recordA lot of this is taken from and synthesized from a book Learning From the Octopus: How Secrets from Nature Can Help Us Fight Terrorist Attacks, Natural Disasters, and Disease an extraordinary human being no longer with us unfortunately, did a great job of applying it in the concept of national securityHow to make our country more secure he did this right after 9/11in our personal livesour communitiesobviously with relationship with the planetfractal you can scope it up or scope it down everything I am telling you, where you can see it applied within a system in a body, or a country or a planet it's all the same.And agriculture is a really big part of it!I want to start by saying this. We have a tendency to think ourselves that way as the youngest kids on the block, but the reality of it is, that almost every part of our system that makes us up as human beings is really ancient and well established system circulatory systemimmune systemocular systemmetabolic systemall of them they are taken from other species that came before us, so they have all that intelligence and resiliency built into thempre-frontal cortex is our executive function, all of the thinkingplannerlogically seriallyputs things into a stacked orderphenomenally successful at creating things, you see all the things we have created. I am not dissing our pre-frontal cortex, is the youngest part of us, the way we think doesn’t the rest of our body doesThe opportunity is to teach to the part of us that does all the thinking, more holistically if you're are willing to accept this, more maturely.I am going to walk you through the 6 principles to send very quicklynot in any particular orderthe order I talk about themResilient systems don’t try to plan for the unexpected or for disruptive changetoo many different ways it can happen and disruption by definition means you can’t plan so why spend any time doing that, it doesn't mean don't try to plan, planning is good it has its place. But instead, what resilient systems do it means they have put time and energy to be observant to unexpected changes in the environment and to be responsive to it.An example I like, you think of a herd of deer white tailed deer, they aggregate as a herd, if one of them hears a noise that is unexpected, ears are fine tuned, they can feel vibrations intensely, if they hear something unusual white tail goes up and they see it and everybody scatters.That is a way to respond to unexpected change.So an example in our bodies is an example with the immune system:Imagine I’m putting my hand, can’t see the gateI get a splinter or somethingI cut my fingerimmediately have this immune system set upthe antibodies in the immune system are just waiting to see if something happens and then a series of events goes into motionunexpected eventthe next thing is that resilient systems respond to disruptive changeability to be decentralizedautonomy to take care of that systems to take care of the unexpected eventnothing has to run up a flagpole with my cut finger in a fraction of a second the nerve endings, I immediately get signal, pain happens, series of chemical send platelets to the cut to patch up the hole, and antibodies to see if antigen needs to get eaten or some adrenaline if I need to move quickly, but all sorts of things that don’t engage brain, until the point I look at until i put water on this, before I think, if I had to coordinate the nerve endings, I'd probably bleed outdecentralized the ability to decentralized you are giving autonomy to all the different systemscommon goalcommon agreementcommon purposeall my systems are in agreement that the goal is to keep me alive so I can procreate and produce progeny to keep the species going, that's the common goalso in nature, there’s lots of examples, there’s a really cool one if you ever saw finding Dori, that was the sequel in finding memo, there was this octopus who can camouflage himself in the drop of the hat.octopi can camouflage themselves to become part of the environment around them, it happens by chromophore on each of their arms that couldn’t be organized by a central thought processless planning decentralization is keyredundancies Redundancy. Resilient systems have redundancy built innumber of 2 copies of DNAplants have 3-4 copiesif something happens to one gene you only need one copy of the gene in the body to move forwardkey to why we are able to be who we are today in our immune system, we don't have one anti-body, we have 5 classes of antibodiescell typewe don't have one kind of immune system we have 2. One in the blood stream that comes out of our blood cells and another in the thymuslots of redundancy built into our systemsin the natural world of centipedes who have 100 feet can probably lose up to 15% of them and be ok, IDK if they actually need all 100 and still be able to move across great and allow some of them to be lost over the course of their lifetimes.That's the first 3that’s the networksthe fastest way to communicate information and change which is a pathway of interconnected links how we communicate everythingelectronicallychemically neurologically how all biological systems workWhen you're thinking about business or your life think networks most effective way to effect change symbiosisif you want to experience transformational change or impact, you must participate and engage other people componentsyou can't do it all by yourselfno species on the planetmost anyone or thing can maximize it's impact by him or herself is additive it's only when you engage and participating with others that you can get exponential change which is essential for resiliencyimpactaround the worldin multiple niches in multiple environmentsThat's keyThese are things we are not doing right?What’s interesting, it is what we do in a crisis if you think about what we did after Katrinaor after covid hereSo many examples of neighbors stepping up and helping out and using networks when we go into fearstructural levelhigher political levelsWe contract and constrict trying to plan out how to prevent and non resilient behaviorsgovernmental level we might have had a higher positive impact in response to covid if we had been more of an invitation for participation between statesmore organized way of learning from what other countries who were experiencing covid before usparticipating with them etcit’s very common at the structural level that we can constrict and go into fearNot just in the US it's a very common response to disruptive changewesaid and wrote his book was the way we responded to 9/11 which actually just didn’t have the impact it intended to have I can go down that road but that's not why we are herelast thing I will say last before we get into ag key to resilient systems is that they are recursive is it learns along the wayleans into what works, thinking about just impacting what didn’t workdisruptive change and how to respond to it you have to realize it's a learning along the waymake change in response to what worksYou can actaually graph this out how nature has done this over time and every example of a spiral is leaning into the yes if you willFibonacci spiral is a graphical expression of learning into the yesbeing adaptive is being willing to learn along the way that's key. None of this is black and white, I'm not saying only one is being good. I feel like one thing you are going to tell us is part of being key to being healthy to begin with and having a strong immune system.sure making food choices that speak to your well beingAll of that is part of it, keeping all your systems working wellthe other thing I will say is that the way our mind works particularly when we are in fear ~ good bad way of thinking ~ that’s not the way resiliency worksLet's take an example from the food growing worldWe have now moved into an approach to ag that is driven by monocultures one of the things we learn when you start growing monocultures is you have disrupted a whole system of organisms that knew how to work together and we're in a relationship to the soil and we are learning. a new relationship with the soilwe're learning so muchelegantintelligentfar more complex than anyone thoughtstart mono-cropping you start to get impacts to the quality you growcall those weedspests or bugsour mindset os we'll just get rid of it,just kill itwhile we just developmentsSpend gobs of money getting rid of that what we don't want,billions of dollars latermindset has been promoted at a corporate and government levelIt worked for 4-5 years or 5-10 years it worked over timeLet's just look at glyphosateGlyphosate is just one of many, many chemcialswithin the first 5 years it was a godsend for farmers they didn’t have to deal with weeds, how fabulous!Didn't have toin our binary world, they’ve come backthey’ve make it strongercocktailWe're still in a binary mindset So if you go down under the soil and look at it from the plant’s point of view, this chemical that is being applied to the plant root or soil, if you look at it from the prospect of the pant or the soil organismthat’s just a disruptive event, nothing more or less, then what will they do?They will say, I have to work with this, it's a new change to my environment, so they will think, I will work with this so the species will survive made up of lots of systems within itthat’s what shows up 3-4 years later, we have glyphosate weeds, they have adapteddoes not matterwhat you dowhat we as humans to “kill” these organismsthey will just adapttoo many systems built into themInstead what would be appropriate would be to work with thempermacultureregenerative agriculture all that intelligence of system agriculture comes fromillusion and non-functional approach to think we have the skill set to get rid of any other system that has been around millions of years longer then usdo you have any questons?I was thinking well what do we do, but is that what we do is practice permaculture and regenerative ag systems?What we do is shift our thinking to one of, to think I as a human know moreWe used to think soil was just something brown, maybe tilth or something, but we did not have...

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Solving Food Insecurity by Building Sustainable Systems | How you can help | Patti Robin and I Jun 22, 2020

Show notes

Join Patti Armbrister for the Composting Not Just GOOD But GREAT Workshop with the Wise Grower Guru!

IDK why it seems to me it's easiest for me to talk when I am either walking or driving, when I have my computer out it seems like my mind is blank! So today I am driving, I am so excited I just got back from having lunch with Patti Armbrister and Robin Kelson and it was so good to see them.

AERO - Alternative Energy Resource Organization

Robin has been so busy! She became one of the co-directors of AERO the Alternative Energy Resource Organization and they are working really hard to help change four food systems to sustainable food systems.

One question people ask me a lot about my Jeannette Rankin book is why do women make better representatives? And it's not necessarily that they are better but they do make up 50% of the population so they deserve 50% of the people and they tend to work more cooperatively finding solutions to problems.

What can we do to help solve food systems?

So we were saying what are the things we can do to help and I think I also talked about this with Bob Quinn, that Americans just don't spend enough of a percentage of their income on food. And that when Americans spent more of their paycheck on groceries they grew more of their own food. That up until the 1950s Montanans grew 70% of the food consumed here and that we need to get back to growing and eating locally.

Also food subsidies, and you might not think that food is that cheap right now but it is compared to what other people pay in other countries and what we have paid in the past. So that makes it really hard for organic farmers to compete. For local famers. We had a big conversation about wheat in Montana, we have huge ranches and none of the wheat grown in Montana is shipped out of Montana, probably none of it is eaten here. So that's part of the problem.

This article from 2015 shows that we export 80% of Montana wheat to Asia mostly Japan.

So she's working on

reducing food miles

trying to get rid of the subsidies to the big cheap corporations for food and helping some of these local farmers

a big piece is the government getting involved and forcing

she was talking about these farm unions that it is not ok for the giant corporations to own all these gigantic farms but no one is really enforcing it

This all leads to the poor health in the US. We could solve a lot of health issues in the US by and this is where Patti Armbrister was jumping in about how a lot of organic farms are struggling with their soil after just tilling and tilling and tilling and their not taking good enough care of the food soil web to keep growing food after 10 + years.

Anyway that's what this is supposed to be about Patti teaches this composting webinar training, that she does and she has done it in Whitefish at the Spirit farm in Whitefish I think she said it was an hour long workshop and then there is 45 minutes of questions people ask. She said at the workshop they go outside and do some things but a lot of it is online and if you are composting properly and creating these worm castings is just the biggest way to be successful

Also getting the most bang for your buck because if you are going to do the composting you might as well be getting the most nutrients you can from it!

And when I just talked to Chrisitina Mcinnis from Soil Kit. Patti said I need to put some gypsum because everyone in Montana has too much calcium in their soil.

So Patti is going to offer the Composting Course on July 18, 2020 from 9-11:00 in the morning for only $37.00! There will be a replay, but if you want the live Q&A. What I want to focus on is Patti is going to do a composting class. If you do it online you can watch the recording, because I think a lot of times you need to go back and re-watch so now that I've seen the ending I know what was important in the beginning.

The brainstorming and talking about positive solutions. I was telling them about the Kaiser Permanente commercial with Allison Janney where she says keep count of all the hugs, dinners, celebrations we are missing because when this is all over we have a lot of catching up to do but right now STAY SAFE!!!

I know you are not going to want to miss this. She has been studying John Kemp from EcoAg, if you want to pick her brain, if you don't have time to listen to his podcast or you want to know how she synthesizes it with everything she knows after studying Elaine Ingham from the Food Soil Web, she's friends with Gabe Brown, she consults on big farms, she has a teaching certificate on teaching agriculture. I guarantee this is the right way to compost and get the most out of your garden!

Robin an I just talked about last week about how she can be gone for 10 days and not worry. You can do it and if you want some secrets to be more successful from the efforts from all the hard work you are putting in. We need food growing!

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321. From Panic to Empowerment | Chloe Lieberman | Wild Abundance | Asheville, NC Jun 22, 2020

Show notes

May 24, 2020Blog and Newsletter Writer, Instructor for Nutrition, Gardening, and WildcraftingTell us a little about yourself.Wild Abundance is more then a website it's a school, I live here and the school is here in the Southern Appalachian mountains just outside of Asheville, North Carolinacornwinter squashsweet potatoesmicro dairy, one Jersey cow and mostly Alpine dairy goatsflock of ducksbeekeepermedicinal and edible mushroom cultivationmedicinal plantsthe school that i work for is located just down the road campus is run by my dear friend, Natalie dog walkertogetherthis yearwe are walking on an online gardening schoolteaching people all over the worldpretty much becausewe love it an are passionateafraid of breakdown of supply chainssurge and your listeners have noticedinterested in gardeningwhen you first start out gardening it can be overwhelmingdiscouragingsteering them in the right directionfolks who have that inspiration can have that success and keep goingI always think it's interesting, I always dreamed of going to Montana, I knew a girl who always wanted to go to Maryland. She's like doesn't that just sound beautiful?can really20 acreswe have 23 acresbigger farms in this statepiedmonteastup in the mountainsAppalachian mountain chain in the southern part of that mountain chain. It's one of the oldest mountain formations in the worldLots of endemic species that live hereIt's a beautiful verdant jungle in the spring and summertemperate rainforestlots of raingets chilly changing with climate changeA big chunk of that is wooded hillsidefarm per se flatland 3-4 acreswhere we have the animalsharvest timber obviously for wood heat cooking and mushroom cultivation My partner is just dedicated at working away at developing a silvapasture and nut orchard up on the slope.I'm sure your listeners know 23 acres can mean a lot of different things if you have top soil and if it's hilly landso we are somewhere in betweenflat for the mountainsdo grow our vegetablessteep land marshy boggy landThat's similar where we are surrounded by doug fir forest and you can see before and after pics on our website. where he has cut the forest to build the minifarm.Tell me about your first gardening experience?well, I didn’t grow up gardeningI grew up in the suburbs in the bay area in Northern, CAsmall rural western part of the countyalternative school that happened to be a public school, was really a blessing for me and my family getting to go to a private school that was public and freealternativeproject basedinterdisciplinaryopen classroomin marinmore rural partbest friend mom had dairy goatsmade her own beerapple sauceMy other friends momgrew beautiful rosesberries and fruitsI did have early exposurewe had a garden at my schoolearly childhood exposure I was drawn to plants and animalsI didn't tend my own garden till I was in collegeI knew I wanted to studyagri-cologyenvironmental studiessustainable food systemsavid cookvegetarainlove vegetables and cook lotsAnyone who cooks a lot has a visceral understanding of the difference of quality of veggrown in sustainableindustrial food systemwas a driving force for meflavorpleasurenourishmentenjoymentcookingnourishmentsustainablemacro systemsfood justice systemsway that the world worksHow farmers are treated around the worldhow they can make a livingfarmers and gardenscurrent practices and practices that would be more optimal for farmers and land and the disconnectthere wanting to sundercollege and studyingrenting housescollege students domy first garden I spearheadedin front yardnext to the highwaydouble-dug the beds gat I had been observinggrew some tomatoesmost successfulall Th.I had worked on other peoples gardens andvolunteered on harvest daystranslated into doing it myself that was my first experience, it grew from there.Then moving out here to NCOne of my big motivations was to grow all of my food, not that I have to do that forever but just to know what that actually looks likehave that experiential knowledgego to the storelandwaterworkhave that hands on experience of my impact on the earth basicallyThat's what I have been exploringThe listeners know I am going to ask the next question? I'm gonna ask. Are you a rockstar millennial? I think they are all like you! You are like my total avatar. My question is what in the heck made you say I'm gonna go to school to school and study sustainable ag systems and food justice. I feel like we are failing our kids of the opportunities out there still saying you can be a doctor, a lawyer, an architect. I think kids have no what the option are!1983Tell us about your courses? Or what you want to talk about next. I'll answer your question of how I got there because I think it’s an important question to ask!I grew up in the Bay area of Northern CA, I great up in a very privileged and mostly white community of progressivesThese ideas were available to meThe idea of pursuing something passion not the bottom line of needing to support my family were present because of my cultural background. I just want to aknowlegde that fact that I was able to pursue those things, yes was because of my social conscience and my inspiration and my life path but also because of the amount of privilege I lived withwhat kids are exposed to there's kind of this spectrumsome young people have huge amount of privilege like white privilegeDon't ever get asked questions about what is important to them? Or brought into these discussions of how we can wield that power and privilige to the ecological worldand human worldI feel lucky to be at intersection of those things and have the spaciousness to make choices based on my passion not just the need so support myself and my familyprogressive thinking and social consciousnessI want to give credit to my parents who encouraged me to do what I'm passionate about and to learn and ask questions.For folks listening and have childrenI have a young childoverwhelming and look at raising right nowHow can they find their place? this is so crazy right nowencouraging children and young people questions that might not have answers but to pursue those questions. thorough the asking and through their engagement in the world that answers might arrive that might not exist yetI know my listeners are probably interested in the food forest and mushrooms and there are classes they can take.Wild Abundance is a school that used to be until a few years ago where you had to go in personyou had to come here to the campusconnective community buildingannualpermaculture design certification coursein depthhands on8 month program but much more with that digging into earth skillsancestors have used to relate to the natural world to supply themselves with sustenancea lot of amazing classesbuildingre-wildingmedicine makingBut with many in person classes and with brick and mortar businesses we have had to cancel our classes and pivot into online learningfortunately we produced an all natural brain-tanning classsueded leather that is 100% naturalproducing that courseresult to this huge surge interested in food gardening as a result from the pandemic and also to survive as a businessWe have created this online gardening schoolprogram to support new and intermediate in being successfulrelating to gardening as a living systemmentorship calls ansering nitty gritty questions and also our approach for gardeing where gardening is more for people to get foodconnect with the natural worldthat’s what we teachfood forestschatted about them with the garden school members but it is not covered in the garden school programWe are looking to develop more online classesIt's amazing how we can serve more peoplenot easy for everyone to come here where were located in a hot bed of permacultureback to the landaren’t mentors and teachersonline programGreecenew Zealandlots of places in the USmay or may not have teachers availableencourage people to get on our newsletter and mailing listdeveloping more classesmushroom cultivatingorchardingfood forestswhich all fits under the realm of permacultureI think after this is all over your going to find that 3 day course is going to be just packed! I think people are going to love each other and be into workshops!I just want to clarify, the permaculture design courses are longersubject to specificwoman’s carpentry classes and female identified folksconfident with toolsbuilding things for them3 dayre-wilding coursesurvival coursepermaculture courses are a little longer8 month3 days each month awesome way to go deeper but a great longer commitmentI think a lot of women would like that, because a lot of woman write me and say but I don't have a Mike at home to build our beds and mike might say why don't you go because I don't have any of those skills, I kind of gave up after trying to build a few things.That's a really good point, I invite you to come, we have had wonderful feedback about these classesI have cooked for them, we provide lunchpeople come who have never picked up a tool, but others who have a some skills. I don’t want to generalize too much as a gender, but my experience as a woman or female identifiednot just by messing around doing it, in an environment where people have this kind of have this expectationcome togethersupport each otherfeeling really comfortable in commuity“stupid questions”Oh yeah now I feel confidentgone through this processvulnerable receiing help from experienced peoplefeeling good experimentingon my own what questionsmost popular classes are the woman's carpentry classone or twice a year we offer a more advanced classbuilding structuresbasicswork on an individual project like a book shelf in the advanced class we work on something that stands up like a shedThe thing I want to learn, I can't wait to learn is how to build gates.I went to Free the Seeds, I gave a way a book, and the number one thing out of 40 people, I want to see 35 of them said was keeping deer out. My husband is really good at is building a fence. People might think, I just want to grow tomatoes. But trust me, pests, critters,are the biggest struggle and the answers are barriers is the biggest way to keep them out. Of course were still struggling with squirrels.This relationship between gardening and really connecting to the larger worldA lot of people come to gardening because they want something to eatwhich is understandable we want to grow food to eat the food. Main reason I garden, super rewarding and people don't even know when they start out that there are so many varieties of vegetablesthen we can buy in the storeeven to some degree bread for ripening time, so they all ripen at the same time for harvesting easeshelf lifehome scale varietyproductionbread for flavored and beauty varied ripening time so if you just have a couple of plants you have summer squash each day for a month or morecome back and pick them againsmall scaledcontainers on a balconyhuman beings about zoom and snap chatand all of the ways we've gotten so onlineconnectednot connectedconnecting through these unnatural means seperating us from other humans and our connection with the natural worldsuffering becausedepressionanxietyfood related illnesses obesitytype 2 diabetesblood pressurelist goes onsee it as this really appealing way to address all of those challengesnot only getting food to eat this daily reminder of the reciprocal relationship with the natural worldnot just an intellectual wayearth gives us lifeunderstanding of in their particular spiritualor philosophical backgroundthis is not philosophicalWhen you grow a gardengrowharvesteattastesweetgoes into thatas you are digging your garden bed you notice a clutch of baby robins that just hatchedwouldn’t have gone out and been digging doing this repetitive meditative task, if you didn’t go out in the gardenfeel hopefuleven in an urban setting start to gardenopen that door to have an experiential relationship with the natural worldthat some of these big challenges we are experienceing culturaly right now may have a big of a crack in themopeningsolutions overwhelming and complex as they sometimes seem but they are actually small and simpleeach of us can participate in them in a way that is fun and joyfulsense of satisfaction in our lives!TOTALLY! The question I want to know, you said in the beginning, what are some of those decisions you made like having one cow?this is our 7th year of growing here on our homestead before that we were growing a sizable field on our friends place, that was kind of a beginning, so this is 8th year of attemptingdon’t grow and raise 100% of my own foodoccassionally we will get a pizza or go out to dinnernot super hardcoremore of a balance between that experiment and participating in modern lifesize of the place we have to work with and number of people to work the land are huge considerations along with budget in terms of the number of thingsOne cow, she’s a jersey cow, produces way more milk then we need!late lactation, she hasn't had a calf this year, she had a calf last spring, we have since slaughtered himmeat is in our freezergallon and half of milkfirst freshens, term you use for a dairy animal after having a baby, they will have a baby, they call it the first freshen. she will make over 4 gallons of milkWait can I just ask the maybe silliest question but the baby doesn't need to drink the 4 gallons of milk?plenty of butterShe makes more then 4 gallons of milk, basicallywhen we are drinking the milk from the other species but dairy breeds have been bred to produce more milk their babies need, if they didn’t they wouldn’t be able to power a whole industrybaby in commercial dairiesbabies are taken away before the mother sees or licks themif you let them bond they become distressed, either way they become distessedmost commercialraise the calfon milk from the baby or from the motherreplacerless then 4 gallonsbunch of different thingsbaby gets some, still get to spend time togetherworks better with goatswanting a break from milkingcalf didn’t need to keep milking but he wasslaughtered the calfstarted milkingso thats where the gallon and a half come from lots of different ways to do itI knew cows were taking away at the dairy but not all of that i guess.so continuing to answer your questions bout size and scalehow much of each to growfield corn or dried corngrow that to make tortillassometimes we make cornbread ortamalesgrow enough corn in a year to last us a year or two so we alternate sweet potatoes we often grow more then we needsometimes sell themplaying thestorage is a issue, it's not just a question of how many you’ll eatwhat kind of set up you have for storing them and how longI was goona ask about the corn, but I suppose you coulddry as whole kernels so we can store at room temperatureSo you just take the kernels off the cob? Still easier, less space, then saving ears of corn taking up less space?Then what about the goats?yeah do you have specific questions? How many?Do you have goats for milk?we milkabout 1/2 gallon of milkdepends on the breedMostly we makekefirshevfeta cheesewith the cow milk we sell a lot of cow milk and yogurt so that's a nice way to pay for the cow itself.I love feta cheese and it's so expensive! So I hardly ever buy it. I have a friend who makes her own mozzarella cheese is so amazing! I even bought rennet to try to make it the woman near us who had a cow. You can make mozzarrella with store bought milk.Is there something you guys are excited to try this year that you haven't tried before?let me think, yes! we havemy partner really spearhead this, but we have sown different kinds of heirloom wheatWe have this dairy cow so we have a lot of homemade butterdon’t eat a lot of wheat or gluten containing sourdough bread or things like thatsee how that its looking really good in the field…

Full show notes at the publisher

June 8, 2020 Update + Soilkit PRECHAT about Online Teaching Jun 08, 2020

Show notes

Hey listeners. It's me, Jackie on June 8, 2020 and I've been listening to a lot of podcasts and people out there. I've been wanting to make a message, but IDK what to say. I don't understand what's changed. Social distancing is what worked, I don't understand what's changed. In Montana it's pretty much non-existent, people are hugging everywhere.

I'm worried I may never see my mom again. IDK where you are, my cousin has posted this isn't coming out anything like I wanted it to come out. I love Jill Angie and Angela Watson both recommend reading White Fragility.

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

My big bout with white privilege came out in 2013, and we were taking a vocabulary class. I felt like they were trying to instigate something between the blackfeet native americans and the white teachers on the staff. I asked someone and said do you look at me like a white person? and they were like heck yeah! There were other teachers native americans who thought they were trying to create trouble. But I was so wrong and ignorant.

I certainly have experienced white privilege growing up in a very white suburb on long island and then in Montana that is very white.

I'm not even sure what to say, thats why I haven't said anything yet. I am praying for you and everyone. I am sooooo thankful for you my listeners. I feel like you probably feel as much about social justice as caring for mother earth. I try to explain that to friends on Facebook.

We're putting it up because when I see a colleague or a parent clicks like, I feel closer to them when I see them in the hallway or classroom it makes me feel better to see they feel like I do.

I started this because I walked past Mike's minifarm. I was tossing and turning last night worrying why didn't I put my broccolis in. Mike's minifarm the potatoes are growing like crazy. I'm gonna release the woman from soil kit today from Alabama by the

we did the minifarm

yesterday I spent a lot of time looking, googling our soil ph was a 7.8, what does that mean? I think it's all the eggshells we have so much calcium. Lots of things grow good in a 7.8ph like asparagus.

"Vegetable garden plants such as asparagus, beets, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, carrots, lettuce, parsley and spinach grow well in soils whose pH is between 7 and 8."

https://landscape-water-conservation.extension.org/solutions-to-soil-problems-high-ph/

Best thing to add is organic matter, which mike is gonna mulch, if you have not listened to Andrew Mefferd's interview, I would just read the book. You would not beliee how much it helped tim, time and labor, be able to lift that tarp adn turn things over with the broadfork, his soil is so rich. We got very high, or very hgih, there was no average in any of mike's soil. I feel like we should do a test in the regular garden.

I guess the ideal conditions for a soil test is between 6-7ph she talks about Espoma, we actually have Espoma blood meal we bought when he was doing the straw bales, if you listen to the interview with Joel Karsten, but we hd the probelm of the fence got left open and the deer ate the tomatoes.

I have definitely been super depressed. IDK if it's my personality, a very strong leo in the middle of the summer of love outside of NYC back in 1967. It's interesting I declared 2020 to be the year I smiled back in January, I don't feel like I didn't see my kids, because we did see each other every day, but we just didn't get that much work done.

I hope you're well and our planet comes out on a better side of us. I think it's a very scary time, but probably an important time, if something good comes out from it. I made my kids a page of screenshots of us together teaching online and I feel like that's a piece of important history.

I'm standing outside the minifarm. It's so beautiful outside in Montana. We don't have a lot of lettuce, it didn't germinate. My kale did horrible, I hope Mike has better luck in the minifarm. I have realized I'm definitely a transplanter I like instant garden I don't have the patience all of you gardeners who plant seedlings are.

I certainly have experienced white privilege growing up in a very white suburb on long island and then in Montana that is very white.

We're putting it up because when I see a colleague or a parent clicks like, I feel closer to them when I see them in the hallway or classroom it makes me feel better to see they feel like I do.

we did the minifarm

https://youtu.be/0GNaMdyThcQ

https://youtu.be/5RYO_eady0I

Step 3

https://youtu.be/5MouIwwkxnM

Best thing to add is organic matter, which mike is gonna mulch, if you have not listened to Andrew Mefferd's interview, I would just read the book. You would not believe how much it helped tim, time and labor, be able to lift that tarp and turn things over with the broadfork, his soil is so rich. We got very high, or very high, there was no average in any of mike's soil. I feel like we should do a test in the regular garden.

The Organic No-Till Farming Revolution: High-Production Methods for Small-Scale Farmers

I guess the ideal conditions for a soil test is between 6-7ph she talks about Espoma, we actually have Espoma blood meal we bought when he was doing the straw bales, if you listen to the interview withJoel Karsten,but we hd the problem of the fence got left open and the deer ate the tomatoes.

https://youtu.be/FZsQQxqrIpE

Some ph resources:

https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/2076/2017/07/C091-Soil-pH-15a.pdf

https://web.extension.illinois.edu/soil/sq_info/ph.pdf

Vegetable garden plants such as asparagus, beets, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, carrots, lettuce, parsley and spinach grow well in soils whose pH is between 7 and 8.

https://landscape-water-conservation.extension.org/solutions-to-soil-problems-high-ph/

If you aren't interested you might just want to skip over the 6 min prechat at the end and head right to the soilkit interview!

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320. Soilkit.com | Christina Woerner Mcinnis | Foley, Alabama Jun 08, 2020

Show notes

Welcome to the GREEN Organic Garden Podcast it’s Friday, May 22, 2020 and I have the most awesome guest online. I feel bad we were chatting about school. She is from SoilKit.com They sent Mike and I a sample I got the results back already, I made videos of me using it. Here today a rockstar Millennial is Christina, I don’t know your last name! That was a great intro! Thank you Quick thing just about myself, my name is Christina Woerner Mcinnis. I am a Mom of 4 born in the 80s. My family has been farming for over 100 years. I am a 5th generation farmer. I just got my bicentennial membership for the state of Alabama.I am very proud to be a farmer! I love raising kids to be farmers.My passion if I were to tell you my hobby!#1 would be politics#2 would be international agI am fascinated about traveling around the world and learning about it! As a tid bit, the most fascinating country I have been to with organic farming is:CUBA organic practice I have ever seen!hands down, most fascinating organic practices!That’s my hobby those are my passions.now to tell you about SoilKit.commy dad is the Woerner family fromWoerner.com he has farms all over fromHawaiiColoradoSouthEastgrows everything fromavocadoscacaoturf grassI kept having homeowners come in and saying somethings wrong withcitrus treesmy lawngardenWhat should I be doing?It’s just like going to the doctor, you can come in for a well checkup and he wants to take a look at your blood results.They come in and there’s a diagnostic? I say what is the soil sample what did it look at.Homeowners here have a soil sample but the process was difficult for a homeowner to understand.I asked dad, I wanted to do this project. I want to make this a digital process, it's too difficult for the homeowners to understand. let’s take this the pain point out of the market place, it’s the most important test you can do.I aligned with a very talented person, Michaal Raines who did tech for the medical industry if you can dot his for them you can do it for dirt so come on let's get this project off the groundpaired the agronomy offarmingchemistryand the tech side with his engineering and digital sideSo now we have rolled out SoilKit, turned out to be a more extensivelawngardensSo you get soil kit what you do, it comes in the mail. You can get it with or without a trowelYour listeners probably everybody has a trowelhttps://youtu.be/0GNaMdyThcQ#1 thing to do is register kiteverything will be populated to you, you will get a google satelite imagegardening in the soil land you can go drop the pinscalculate with google satellite imageryclick confirm and a little tutorial will be there.go take your four samples from a 10,000 foot areaWhen you are gardening I need it at leastgrass will reside2-4 inches deep4 inches with the root leveltake the soil at that levelraise the red flagAll you have to do is put in your information is put in your information, then the lab knows the second it gets there they know this is Jackieit’s a gardenwe’re gonna go the basic testb3 testThen the lab will cut it open and they bake that soil overnight. The next day it comes out run it through all these impressive equipment that they have there, top of the line.Nationwide, third party lab, same lab our farms use.Then they populate, digitize, they throw all the info up to the cloud. The cloud talks to ours and we put it into a beautiful customer dashboard so you can view your results.We can do organic, Jackie we didn’t have you set up as organic. But we do organic, pretty much it’s just a quick easy way to do a soil sample. We really know the importance of it and we really wanted to make it simple and painless as possible.It could NOT have been more painless. People send me things, and they sit on my shelf, and I got that thing and had it sent off within the hour. It was so easy! And that trowel is not just a trowel, It is a really nice trowel! It’s heavy duty. Didn’t it say it helps to keep it from contaminate it I suppose you could just wash it off.Galvanized trowels have heavy metals and other things so the stainless steel is a clean trowel so there are no heavy metal contaminates in it.That’s always been my big hang up, it was IDK why I thought I had to put it in a glass jar and it was the mailing of the glass jar thing that has held me back from doing it all these years, it’s been recommended on my show so many times how important a soil test is! It can make such a big difference! Anyone who is a market farmer has said that's so important.The ease of it, the funny thing was the tech for me, IDK why but getting into the dashboard to see my results somehow it just popped in the morning! Let’s go back to you. What's the next step? What do the results tell us!Say for instance you are an organic farmer.We have the Espoma products.So, let’s say there’s a garden center, ABC garden center and they purchase solikit and they carry it in the store so what will happen then:That customer’s dashboard with populate with ABC logo at the topthe websitethe addressphone numberWhen the customer gets back, it’s not just here’s your problem, but it connects the problem to the solutions. The fancy part of the whole backside is we take the chemistry analysis and recommendations from the lab and we align them to the guaranteed analysis that’s on the back of the nutrition product.I marry those two results together so when the homeowner goes back to ABC garden center they will know exactly let’s say this is for their lawn. They will know what they need:Espoma lawn foodThey will knowhow many pounds to usehow many bagseven the store personnel can say, oh you need two bags of the Espoma lawn feed and they can grab it.We try to make it even broken down by the pounds. Let’s say there is lime issue with the garden. You’ll know exactly. One point I need to point out, I want to talk aboutSometimes people can’t go till the lime into the soil, we get some low phs, we get as low as 4.3I’ve seen some come back saying you need 500 lbs of lime for that area.Sometimes you can’t go till it in, we help the homeowner understand, I want you to put X amount and then do this every 6 months so you start spoon-feeding of the lime to bring the ph.Sometimes you can’t just go dump things out because it will go wash off into watershed, it’s important that we be mindful of if it is not optimal plant uptake we take in the consideration of the environmental effects, because if it is not utilized by the plant we don’t want it washing into the watershed!I love all of this, that is so important and it can happen a lot.Yes, It's concerning because IDK if you follow but there are 13 states that feed into the Mississippi River that feed into the Gulf of Mexico. I am in Alabama at the very southern tip, of the Gulf of Mexico.We’ve had largest dead zone we’ve ever had, just drastically affect the seafood industry and others.It goes back to if homeownersgardeners farmers would just start with a soil sampleLet’s not just do what’s best for your plant but let’s remember there’s an environment out there too we should be protecting!That’s why we changed our name from to the GREEN Organic Gardener Podcast because we’re not just about growing the biggest vegetables, there are plenty of places you can learn that. We’re about growing a whole organic oasis and teaching our neighbors and growing things to care for our environment creating a sustainable planet for Mother Earth. This is just right up our alley.I wanted to look at my results. What is a soil ph of 7.8? And it tells you what is VH and H.It’s got phosphorus it says rating V, VH...We have high categories, and very high categories there’s things you should be mindful. When you get into very high.Let’s talk about phosphorus. Too much phosphorus can be a bad thing, and it is one of the most regulated items in a fertilizer. So yours is very high, do you know how many people just go out and get a 13-13-13? Let’s say that phosphorous is there. We can compound the issue maybe the ph istoo lowtoo highlocked upthen you go put down 13-13-13, you're very high,then your compounding the problemspending money on the problem making the problem worseimportant that you take into considerationyou’re buying the right product for the right reason at the right rate and even more so at the right time!So we had a little thing with mine. They said they recommend lawn food? I sent you one of my generic sample kits. Is this gonna be different for a garden then a lawn?We can actually customize, you Jackie, a GREEN ORGANIC KIT. And everyone who purchases this kit can purchase the Jackie Kit. They will all be written to an organic food.When they look at the front side of it. I can call it Jackie Gold Fertilizer. But on the backside is nothing more N-P-K and the microbe guaranteed analysis.So you are married to the analysis on the back.But the analysis is the same aren’t gonna change for a garden or a lawn, it’s just what we do right? I mean even if we look at it, everything is still so high, what do we do about it, nothing is adequate? What do we do about this? It said we should add nitrogen, is that it still? Or is that only if it’s a lawn?No, you married to nitrogen. The garden season is gonna want to eat, it’s a growing season, the garden is going to want to eat nitrogen while it’s growing. And then so let’s use the example, let’s say the soil kit is aligned to…Plants don’t see the brand on the bag, what they see is N-P-K and all of the microbes. So a lot of the time, people will label:palm foodrose foodlawn foodgarden foodbut inside, when the plant receives those nutrients they can’t tell if that was a lawn food on the bag, but the plant doesn't see if that is a garden food, what they see is like a900or0060so they use that form that chemistry analysis.What kind of organic fertilizer is organic?You know do like that Espoma, mostly because that is at our store. If I buy something that is generally what I buy, partly what I buy because it’s at our store. Mostly we use compost or chicken manure, we rarely buy fertilizer. You derinitly want to make sure your soil kit has the right ph to align with your compost or manure.You're aligning to EspomaYou call me up and say hey Christina this are my Jackie soil kits I want you to customize them. I want it to say Jackie's favorite. On the backside of our system, take that guaranteed analysis and put in the microbes all of those 0900s, 0060s comes back to us and populates how much of thatEspomaproduct to put back to them.This is just gold!How often do you do a soil sample?his is what I said, IDK why I thought sending in a glass jar, I love the USPS, I sent my book to Florida for a Thank You, went media mail in like 3 days, I always wondered where exactly do I send it?I have talked to extension agents, who said they would walk me through it once I got the reults back, and I still have no idea what these numbers mean? I mean our calcium it says is 7000+ but what is it supposed to be? So we have never done it before!Isn’t it amazing! It’s like getting a blood test back from the doctor!You should see the anomalies I get throughout the US. I’m surrounded by farming families.I’m gonna tell you a quick story about my parents family!One farming family, of course there’s like 4. They did NOT do soil samples, and they had a formula for what they did. I’m gonna do 2 tons of lime per acre, and this is how you do it and this is how it’s always been done and this is how I’m gonna do it!My dad has been doing soil sampling from the farm since the 70s and he’s done it ever since! We do 100os a year. He says we get 30% higher production using less product all because we start with one simple test! Anyone who has been a gardener for a long time or a market farmer who has been on my show says you have to do a soil test.It drastically changes everything! It really is like going to a doctor and doing a checkup, let’s go look at your blood to see if you are iron deficient. It is the exact same thing.My listener’s have told me and he is in my head on every episode, especially Alan Denko, Jackie remember, what your listener’s want to know more then anything is how to be more productive! And a 30% higher production is what they want to know.But it’s not just about being productive, it's also aboutidentify a problem and provide the solution.Don’t just tell me I have a problem.The hole dashboard iswe can because of the engineering and technical part of it, we can even link it back to the store to make the problem connect to the solution.fascinating about itdashboard is customized according to wear it is purchased from.Let's say someone buys it from ABC garden center and the other one buys it from XYZ garden centerSo ultimately it saves everybody this, I'm having a problem. I can tell you, when it comes to ph especially when it is really low, we don’t want it to be vague. We live in a society with a lot of fake news, we want scientific datawe want things to back our23 of me of your DNA data, it's the 23 and me for you lawn.So not only that, questions I get:how to be more productive?what do I do about pests and disease?what do I do put on my organic lawn?No matter how many times I say, you don't need to put anything, just use water and mow it, maybe increase the health of your soil, add manure or clover, and it's always:No. What do I go to the store and buy? And Yes, but what do I go to the store and buy? And you've got that solution and that. You have nailed it! I keep thinking of Jason Batemen in Up in the Air saying it's only a problem if you have a solution. I get a lot of compost customersthey will actually test their compost soilI can say this, sometimes too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. I've had to call people and say that compost has a 8.9 phwe are going to need to address this, you have a lot of good thing but they are trappedexecution is a little off, and just a little tweak, a turn of the knob, makes all the difference.I wonder if we have too much calcium because last summer I worked at a cafe and I took a 5 gallon bucket of egg shells every day till Mike finally said, stop. I'm curious if that would have happen, I'm curious what would it have been the year before.that’s why the USDA recommends everyone does an annual soil samplethat gives you the intitial its not a oe and done and everythings gone awayevery six months lets do thatanother year form do another montior testat that point that soil really begins to turn for youmonitor what theygarden recommendationLet's say you naturally struggle with the ph level in your areanatural preexisting issue you find in the soil.your 7.8you're starting to get on the edge of uncomfortableknee jerk reactionhydrangeas and blueberries like to bring down really lowEspoma has a acidifier productand we put that now in the spring after stuff has been plantedI'd have to see what stage your crops are in and I would also ask my agronomy team.That's what we need is more acid?I'm technical, I'm very scientificSee this one lowers the ph, it's an organic soil acidifierturn the hydrangeas could turn them a different color! It makes all the difference on a blueberryour CEO was struggling and went out and did a testhe struggled for 2 cropsnot getting the deep flavor taste and he went and made a little tweek and he made a very specific one our agronomists like with blueberries, he treated it with an acidic.My listeners are like that's what Jackie wants blueberries! We didn't do the beds by the house where the blueberries are we tested the mini-farm.if the blueberries were sitting where you took the soil sample, they would not be happy at all. Your ph is a 7.8 they would not be happy. I would be surprised if it wasn't similar.so here’s a great example Jackie:you had great...

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