18:35:30 You should be able to turn on or off and auto generated live feed of subtitles for tonight's discussion. We apologize in advance if the transcription service captures any of the words incorrectly. The entire transcript will be saved and posted with the recording if people want to come back to it later and don't have access to it now.
18:35:37 If you have any questions for us, please submit them through the zoom chat box.
18:35:44 We would like to open this evening with a land acknowledgement.
18:35:49 This land acknowledgement for what is referred to by some as the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, and the North Country of New Hampshire has been shared with us and others by Chief Don Stevens of the know he can band of the Coosa Avenue machination.
18:36:03 Many of us are on the land which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange among indigenous peoples for thousands of years and is the home of the Western Avenue Q people.
18:36:14 The team organizing this event today honors recognizes and respects these peoples, especially the avid hockey, as the traditional stewards of the lands and waters on which we gather today.
18:36:26 And that spirit today will begin by acknowledging that we are guests in this land. We need to respect and help protect the lands within our use.
18:36:36 Additionally, we would like to take a few moments of silence to honor and respect the elders of the past and the present, who were and are stewards of this land.
18:37:03 Thank you.
18:37:05 In making this series, we wanted to create a community for all together safely. We created a list of community values and guidelines that are being shown on your screen now in this space we agree to respect and recognize all voices lived experiences perspectives
18:37:20 and worldviews we seek to create a safe space for learning and sharing and we ask that we all include, we all use inclusive and respectful language violations of these values and guidelines will lead to removal from the event this evening by our team.
18:37:35 Thank you for understanding with those in mind, let's get to know each other as you feel comfortable please introduce yourself in the chat box if you haven't already, you're welcome to share your name, where you're participating from tonight.
18:37:48 And if you feel inspired a response to the question, What do you love most about partnering with plants.
18:37:55 We'd also like to announce the winners of our last sessions raffle those individuals are Marsh Hudson nap.
18:38:05 Pauline Chris alias and Enrico credo, and I apologize if I mispronounced anyone's names.
18:38:14 While you're all filling out your introductions if you're inspired, I'll tell you a little bit about tonight survey and raffle. We do have a post event survey that shouldn't take more than three minutes to complete and will be sent out with the recording
18:38:26 of tonight's event, the event right. If you fill out the survey within one week of tonight's event, you will be entered into our raffle for prizes, the four separate prizes tonight are a $40 gift certificate to small acts online farm store, one entry
18:38:45 level online workshop offered through karma trolling Michael result planet by Michael Phillips, organic revolutionary by Grace, Grace uni and compost and worm castings from black dirt farm.
18:38:56 So, I have to say that's a really excited raffle bundle.
18:39:00 And we really do value the survey responses as we continue to develop the next four events in our series.
18:39:07 In addition, Chelsea green publishing has generously offered all participants of this series, a 35% off discount code off of their books and more on their website, Chelsea green.
18:39:30 The code is listed should be listed on this slide, but it's PWEB 35, and it is good for all participants here tonight and watching the recording this spring. Thank you, Chelsea green.
18:39:33 With that I am finally excited to introduce our speakers this evening, we will be hearing stories from Evan Perkins who cultivates small experiment Barnett Vermont.
18:39:42 He and his partner Heidi have been farming for 19 years in a high steep slope in the Northeast Kingdom so they have a lot to, or he has a lot to share with us tonight about that experience.
18:39:56 Nancy and Michael Phillips of heart song farm and Grove to New Hampshire, who have dedicated 35 years to cultivating organic medicinal herbs, apples, vegetables and the mycelium and soil life that supports them, and yon and Tobin who has spent 30 years
18:40:09 gardening a karma Choling bringing mindfulness a deep connection to plants and community together to create stunning gardens.
18:40:17 With that all said, I would like to pass on the conversation to Evan Perkins. Welcome.
18:40:29 All.
18:40:31 I'm really excited to be here tonight, I'm, I'm representing myself and my wife Heidi, we own and operate small acts farm and barn in Vermont.
18:40:42 We are excited to share our relationship to our soil and our community.
18:40:48 Those are two things that are deeply into related.
18:40:54 I have a few slides to show and they're in there just pictures but I'm going to try to share my screen now and see what happens.
18:41:19 Okay, is that working there.
18:41:20 Okay, great.
18:41:22 This is a picture of our farm in early spring picture of our cabin here.
18:41:29 I want to say, first, just a few things about our farm so you know, our perspective and where we're coming from where I know till Farm Market farm.
18:41:39 We sell our food to local businesses and customers within 30 miles of our farm.
18:41:47 We. Another thing that's interesting about our farm is we are now and have always been off grid, power, primarily by renewable energy with solar panels with limited use of fossil fuels as part of our farm operation.
18:42:03 And we're an owner operated farm.
18:42:06 We, we started our farm without capital and have slowly built our homestead and farm over the years.
18:42:13 That's really important to us because we we set out to prove that without a lot of resources, but with some skill and luck, that this.
18:42:29 This kind of life was open to many different people and not just folks to have the money to buy in right away.
18:42:36 Um, in terms of soil health there. This is kind of everything to us it's our, it's our livelihood. It's our, our own health. And it's also our life's work.
18:42:55 So I want to explain a little bit about how we work with the soil, and in the things that have made us successful as a farm and also made us successful in our lives in terms of being able to live by the values we set out to live by.
18:43:13 which is always a work in progress.
18:43:16 So we're a note Hill Farm, meaning that we only disturb the surface of the soil we don't. invert soil layers as part of our farming practices, so we don't use a rotor tiller or plow.
18:43:32 And we also leave all the roots of our crops in the ground as much as possible.
18:43:38 As part of our no till process.
18:43:43 What that what that allows is for really excellent soil structure and excellent soil structure is great for growing plants, great for having a profitable farm, and also a path forward towards sequestering carbon in our soil to help to mitigate the effects
18:44:01 of climate change.
18:44:04 We add organic matter to the surface in the form of compost but most of the carbon that is built up in our soil over time comes from root accidents, from our from the roots of our plants our beds are continuously crop throughout the growing season.
18:44:18 And so there are always living plants plant roots in the soil and our beds
18:44:24 main benefit of no till agriculture is that allows us to use less water, and less soil amendments.
18:44:34 And, and fertilizers, as part of our process then, then we would in a traditional salvage operation, having like an intact soil structure is really important to allow plants full access to what is in the soil, and
18:44:51 let's see here.
18:44:55 The other, the other thing that happens over time is that we are continually growing the, the level of organic matter and our soil and organic matter, allows the soil to hold water during dry times, and it also allows the soil to manage really wet times
18:45:16 without overwhelming the roots of the plants. So these are other benefits of, you know, till agriculture.
18:45:22 So as our climate changes and we have exceedingly long dry spells, and then rain that comes all at once.
18:45:30 No till our farm is well situated to deal with that and we've been through, you know, several big flooding events while we've been farming here and at our farm come through those with very little damage in that.
18:45:46 And we also farm on a steep hillside so that's saying a lot.
18:45:55 Um.
18:45:55 We also feel our no tail system has allowed us to farm on a steep hillside successfully without having soil erosion and all the problems associated with farming on a slope for us that's really important because most of the lower income people with the
18:46:09 world only have access to heal the land.
18:46:14 only have access to hilly land. The, the large expanses of flat farmland in most countries in the world, are, are owned by larger farms or increasingly by large corporations and wealthy individuals in hilly land is actually the place where people have
18:46:28 access to land, and if I look at the two other farmers on the screen here they both farm on hilly land, even though they might have a little flat spot where their garden is
18:46:43 as far as community resilience, we feel that our that our farm is part of a really important infrastructure that has been built around our around in this area.
18:46:57 We believe that small family scale homestead farms, how have a lot of efficiencies that are built into them, that larger farms just don't just as an example when we go out and we do our deliveries.
18:47:11 We're also doing our family errands. We're also recycling boxes from all from the stores and markets and from our customers, so that all the, the vessels that we used to deliver food in our used over and over again to deliver deliver food.
18:47:27 We will also spend.
18:47:32 You know, take that time when we're out to do the other things that we need to do in the world including recreating so our mountain bike is often in our vehicle.
18:47:40 When we're when we're headed out to do our, our deliveries or we might end up at a great place to hike or ice skate. And that's important for for our family as well.
18:47:53 There's always an inclination to want to grow bigger and whether that's a profit driven and inclination, or just the desire to produce more healthy food for your community and we understand that inclination.
18:48:08 But for us, we think that small is really important.
18:48:31 As an example for for our family that the the scale of our farm allows the more of the percentage of money that people spend with us to go to support ourselves living a good you know a good life, making adjust livelihood.
18:48:33 And we do have employees and we pay them as much as we can but farm employees are generally low paid employees, and the more employees a farm has, the more of your money goes to paying will pay the employees, the less people are making adjust likelihood
18:48:45 from your livelihood from your food dollar. So that's another way that small farms are good, you know, if all these hills were, were filled with thousands of small farms instead of a couple big ones.
18:49:01 It's a great benefit to the community. And in many parts of the country. There's a couple of big farms, doing the work that 1000 small farms could be doing probably better.
18:49:11 So we feel that the more small farms as part of our agricultural system is is going to lead to a more resilient society. We've all felt the impacts, when a large business shuts its doors and all those people lose jobs all at once.
18:49:29 Instead of the natural flow of small businesses coming and going, without enormous impacts on the economy.
18:49:35 So, this is all part of community resilience which is always has always been a goal for us.
18:49:44 And lastly about that i think you know our style of small scale bio intensive farming produces far more food per acre than traditional tractor road cropping farms, we don't need to provide space for tractors to turn around to go through the beds to cultivate
18:50:01 and so we can grow a lot more food on a lot less land.
18:50:06 And that's important because if we want to really step up as a community, and grow more food.
18:50:12 It's important that we also do not continue to encroach into our wild space into sustainable forest habitat.
18:50:21 And so small bio intensive farms have a really critical role to play.
18:50:26 And that's important to us.
18:50:31 See, in terms of what we've been we've been farming for we've been homesteading for a couple decades and farming for about 12 years now as as like an official business, although we were growing large gardens and farming before that.
18:50:46 It is hard work it's challenging, it's hard on our bodies and.
18:50:51 But we do have a lot of things that continue to drive us forward and will, as long as we can do this work.
18:51:01 First of all, we came through farm to farming through homesteading. We wanted to live closer to our values and homesteading was a way for us to do that.
18:51:12 We start, we farming was the natural next step for us once we kind of built our little cabin, and we're trying to figure out how to make a living on our land and not have to work out.
18:51:24 Farming was was, you know, kind of always in the plan we just didn't know what it was going to look like.
18:51:30 So we built our farm slowly over many years learning as we went.
18:51:36 We had interns for many years in the in the early days and we traded our time teaching them, our farming practices and systems and exchange for in exchange for their labor helping us.
18:51:48 And that was a great relationship but as soon as our farm became economically viable enough to pay people we did, and we continue to and every year we're trying to pay our employees more, and that's our kind of priority goal is to have high skilled higher
18:52:03 paid employees as part of the farming network, as opposed to a lot of lower scale, lower paid employees.
18:52:12 So that really drives us is it now is just trying to create better jobs for those employees and better and better livelihood for ourselves as well.
18:52:22 So that someday we may be able to when we can't do this work anymore, will have something to show for efforts at the end.
18:52:31 The other thing is the movement that we're part of that has been
18:52:37 really critical for us as we have, as the years have gone on to know that we're part of this amazing small scale bio intensive farming movement that is all over the world, and to know that we can contribute to that, through our knowledge and through just
18:52:54 being practitioners, which is most important.
18:52:57 And so we do a lot to share information.
18:53:02 Picture of Heidi after deliveries one day.
18:53:06 I think this might be out of order but this is Heidi nae up in the top of our fields on looks like early summer day.
18:53:16 And this is one of many different workshops we've had on our farm where we share.
18:53:24 You know, do our best to share the knowledge that we have come upon.
18:53:29 So, another part. Another thing that has been really important to us as part of our farming is, is, is the tools that are part of this movement, and we use a lot of small really cool battery power tools that have been invented over the years for small
18:53:47 scale bio intensive agriculture and the great thing about these tools is that they are often made in small machine shops and rural part rural parts of the US and providing good jobs in those four people in this kind of small scale manufacturing industry,
18:54:10 and being a part of that is really important every time we buy one of those tools. We're, we're happy to do it and we're excited that our money is going there.
18:54:18 And, as opposed to some mass produced thing that is not impacting a community that's near and dear to us
18:54:27 the tools I mentioned the tools because they're really in their first generation just like our farming practices. We're in the early days, and a lot of amazing things have happened already but these tools are only going to get better our farming practices
18:54:41 are only going to get better, and they're amazing as they are right now.
18:54:45 The tools work well, the farming works well. And so, we, you know, we're just excited to be be part of something that we see as an integral to the future of our society.
18:55:01 We often have people ask us, you know, um you know how they can kind of get involved in.
18:55:10 Also, you know, work to live a life that's a little closer to their values and I think a few things are really important one is we all, and, you know, we, we definitely need to do better than this better at this as well, is to be involved with our with
18:55:25 the, with the federal the state and our local governments, anytime there is an issue that you think is important to move our society forward. When it comes to agriculture soil, the climate.
18:55:39 Another great way to for people to get involved is just go out of your way to support you know small know till farms work shirts grass fed meat producers.
18:55:49 All the people in your community who are working super hard to produce amazing food and spread the word about that amazing food.
18:55:59 Because although in your little community, it may be known, well known and you may be part, part of part maybe part of your life it's not part of everybody's life and we're still producing a fraction of the food that has eaten in our area.
18:56:16 And there are tons of resources books podcasts, you know, as I'm sure you folks know but you know just when I think I know maybe they'll skip listening to another podcast today.
18:56:29 Oftentimes like those days are the days when I find that one little piece of information that drives me forward in the whole new whole new area and excites me for for the next couple months or years.
18:56:42 And lastly, I'd like to leave folks with just the advice to develop your connection with the soil wherever you are, I think, your, your ability to advocate for a better future is really based on your connection to a positive path forward.
18:57:00 You know we it's hard to convince someone when we don't really believe in ourselves.
18:57:07 And finally I think the joy and abundance that healthy fertile soil brings is a universal language that smile on a farmer's face, or someone eating just amazing food, it's it's the same everywhere on the planet.
18:57:24 And so, go and get some of that for yourself in your backyard if you can.
18:57:30 All right, thank you all.
18:57:32 I'll pass it on to you I believe Michaels next
18:57:39 Nancy's next for Nancy's next Okay great.
18:58:00 Nancy Are you able to unmute yourself okay there we go. Yeah, no, not muted anymore. Thank you
18:58:09 for having us appreciate it and I just want to say thanks to Evan that was really fascinating and inspiring what's great, and I'm just happy to be a part of the group tonight.
18:58:20 This is a fun topic for us partnering with plants because our paths have definitely intertwined with the plants throughout her life to our great blessing.
18:58:29 And I also have a little slideshow here I'll see if I can get it up.
18:58:49 Okay so yeah so.
18:58:55 Melissa said, we've lived on our farm for pending it all those years so I feel like in some ways.
18:59:18 I'm married to Michael but I'm also married to my land and he kind of has evolved over time as gardens and legs do and we've done a lot of different things over the years when we first moved there we were, Again, we were homesteaders and hope to grow
18:59:20 most of our own food and we started out mostly growing vegetables, and we helped start the local farmers market in Lancaster, and then after a while we decided we'd rather move into a CSA model so we were one of the first CSA is in New Hampshire.
18:59:38 And then we did that for a while we decided actually we rather just switching divert our energy mostly into going apples and medicinal herbs. So, I'm just kind of evolved over time, I
18:59:58 just wanted to throw this into speak being a mom has been a great pleasure for me to have been able to raise my daughter on the land and have a love for the plants with her I think that partnering with plants from an early age is important, and sometimes
19:00:11 we've also had nature and spirit camps where I lead groups of children and did lots of plants and activities and ceremonies with the kids and that's been a great pleasure for me.
19:00:24 Right now we have about three acres of apples on the land Michael's loves to choose have over 100 varieties of apples and unique and with lots of character and qualities each one of them, and really blessed with that.
19:00:41 And all throughout our time on the land we've enjoyed us being teachers as well as learning, you learn something we like to pass it on and we've done that in different ways with apprentices and interns and and written some books and like to share those
19:01:08 and and
19:01:06 teaching classes.
19:01:09 So, our farms always been diversified we have some wild places where we do well class. Well crafting and many of our troops look pretty wild actually compared to where they used to be quite well groomed and then Michaels found out that they really grow
19:01:20 much better when they have a lot more diversity, And this is just a picture of just the herbs and Apple, herbs and vegetables and extend together.
19:01:33 And my main love is over the years as far as partnering with plants is the medicinal herbs and and food for medicine too and I take great pleasure in just
19:01:48 using them for myself and over the years we've grown a lot of herbs and dried them as part of our livelihood. Right now we're really focusing more on teaching and passing on the ability, I think it's important for everybody to have a herbalist in the
19:02:02 Homer Homer blessed in the home and community herbalists in each village and community. And to me it's a life skill that we are able to just walk outside our doors and be able to find foods that are an herbs that are going to help build our health, but
19:02:19 also to treat common ailments. And I feel like when we live that live that way, we're less apt to get involved with maybe some.
19:02:32 Whatever the conventional medicine which is good for some purposes I'm all healing modalities are great but being able to take care of in charge of our own health is really a blessing.
19:02:43 It's a quote from Wendell Berry I'm really like that and, as I mentioned, I think, in an herbalist it's just a blessing to have this communication and work with the plants and also learn from them.
19:03:00 And our ecosystems.
19:03:02 I'm finding that so i doing mostly a lot of teaching now teaching, one of my favorite classes is called ancient wisdom for modern women. So, I love teaching that class and what I find is, there's a little magic that happens, people come and they want
19:03:18 to want to be learning skills like plant identification or making tinctures or making herbal pills or hostesses and different things like that but the magic is that simultaneously.
19:03:31 They're also just connecting more deeply to the land, and to the plants, and to just realizing that, you know, we're not separate from nature, or made from the same elements, and
19:03:47 just this deep connection to the elements the spirit, and really to our own inner wisdom when we connect with the plants in that way. So to me that's one of the blessings and really enjoyed that.
19:03:58 This is a some homework lists are budding community herbalist is making medicine our home. And as I said I feel that's like a life skill that everybody should know how to swim and so and read and and identify some of their local plants and use them for
19:04:13 food and medicine.
19:04:16 And I put the pop this in here as our kitchen I think it's the heart of the home and the food is really important to our health as well as putting up food fermenting fermenting food and using the herbs for food and medicine and that was really our first
19:04:29 classroom. Lately in the last few years we invested in 30 foot your, which is makes a glorious classroom because we have a lot more space and we can it's a three season three cities in Europe, so we can offer opportunities for bigger classes and retreats.
19:04:49 And we still teach outside, Michael teaches some plant some apple intensive in the spring where we just pretty much goes through the whole year, sharing how to graph and pruned and and hear his teaching how to say that's one of his favorite pastimes.
19:05:06 And we still teach outside I like to bring in guest teachers that I love and like to learn from and then that shares their teaching with the community as well.
19:05:17 And I just wanted to add this one, I don't have too many pictures of ceremony, but this is one in a little bit I don't take pictures when we're doing ceremony, but it is definitely one of the things that I think is really important to share with others
19:05:37 and just that idea of get back to the land for compost and our green winners and those types of giving back but also just honoring the land through ceremony and and gratitude and simple blessings could just be blessing your seeds when they arrive in the
19:05:55 mail, whatever. I just want to advocate for that. Here people are Lighting a candle for a loved one and then also went for the earth.
19:06:03 And this is just another picture of the farm and.
19:06:06 So, just great to be here I tried to go through it kind of quick but I'm happy to answer any specific questions and we're open for classes and workshops and retreats and love to have some of you join us.
19:06:23 We'll pass it on to Michael.
19:06:29 Hello everybody.
19:06:32 And, including the woman in the other room.
19:06:35 So I want to
19:06:38 kind of Delve Nancy's done the farm thing and you've gotten a sense of what we do here. I want to actually take you down below ground, and then talk a little about the soil life and, and how that relates to the plants and what the choices we make and
19:06:55 kind of a mini five minute lesson but it'll it'll be a whirlwind ride and I think we're going to have a lot of fun.
19:07:01 So, things begin.
19:07:06 I think we're seeing everything now right things begin with the soil food web.
19:07:12 And, you know, in one sense this is totally daunting to us where we're talking about trillions and trillions of organisms the answer to my seats and the bacteria and the separate terrific fun guy that breakdown organic matter.
19:07:27 The mycorrhizal fungi that have a relationship with the roots the nematodes at prototype Zola that eat the other microbes that releases nitrogen and this whole scene is about mineralization and assimilation.
19:07:40 This is where plants are getting the nutrients so it's important to recognize and care about this. I actually have kind of a little bit of arrogance here and that when I am out working in my orchard or I am digging a bit with the broad fork or whatever
19:07:57 you. I'm thinking to myself, I'm the captain of this really great team. Then I also remember, and I have just one job, not to screw up my team, which is the key to becoming a good grower and to really being able to work with plants successfully.
19:08:15 Let's see, get on to the next slide.
19:08:24 There we go.
19:08:26 So I mentioned the mycorrhizal fungi, and these are maybe 400 different species that evolved with plants from the very beginning when the oceans dried up and algae were left in the title pools and oceanic fun guy formed the union because the algae didn't
19:08:45 have roots and, and the basically the supplement the root system of plants.
19:08:51 This is a picture of what are known as RB schools and RB schools are the nutrient transfer mechanism of mycorrhizal fungi, and in herbal ism, there's this tradition, called the doctrine of signatures and, and in the doctrine of signatures you look at
19:09:07 how a plant grows you look at the plant.
19:09:14 The shape of the leaf, different things like that that are suggestive of what the medicinal purpose of that plant might be. So, when I look at these artists skills, and I think you could do the same thing.
19:09:23 And now we went the wrong way. Sorry.
19:09:27 I see a tree, or if you flip it upside down, you see the feet of root system of a plant.
19:09:32 If you've been trained medically see obviously that the parts of our lungs where oxygen gets exchanged. And all of those things are essential to life on earth.
19:09:44 And that really resonates for me and thinking about that the young guy in the soil. There are essential to what's going on on our planet.
19:09:52 So when I plant, a young apple tree, coming from the nursery. I dip that root system and mycorrhizal fungi and knocked them. When I put out the potato is basically follows me.
19:10:06 Our daughter, and she does a little pinch of fairy dust stuff in Knoxville among those potatoes on the same hand we're also doing many things to preserve.
19:10:16 Make sure that the young guy carry forward in the soil itself.
19:10:20 When Evan said about leaving roots in the ground that that is a primary way that you carry the hi fi and carry the spores for the next crop in that soil ground.
19:10:31 One of the things to understand and appreciate about the fungal realm.
19:10:36 Is that the more the merrier. So on a healthy ecosystem there's going to be as many as 50 different species of mycorrhizal fungi at play. And it's important, because the different species have different skill sets, there'll be some fun guys that are really
19:10:52 adept at let's say bringing zinc, or manganese, to the plant, and other species of fun guy is going to be the one who gets a start in the early spring and the colder soils brings plant phosphorus other fun guy Brynn calcium, or magnesium, potassium, you
19:11:11 get the idea. It's a team effort. And a really important aspect understand about this team effort.
19:11:20 Is that Michael Raza fun guy do their thing in relationship with a specific plant. And so, it's a it's a union plant and fun guy together with a magic happens.
19:11:33 So in my orchard. This is a picture underneath an apple tree.
19:11:39 You see a number of different plants here besides grass.
19:11:42 The bigger broad leaf plant is come free, which to me is an understory superstar it's also very important medicinal ally for me.
19:11:52 Um, another plant right there in the foreground is hilarious, which has a very tiny flower that tracks a lot of different parasitic loss. Those wasps and turn go seek insect larva pests, like coddling moth in the apple tree itself.
19:12:09 So, that Valerian plant there on the ground beneath the tree is actually a generator of some of the ways I protect the apples from worms.
19:12:20 But on the same hand, it's also through its roots, connecting different species of fun guy so fun guy have multiple relationships.
19:12:30 They'll have 2050 hundred many hundreds of plants that they affiliate with, and they interconnect. So, when you see all these plants down beneath in that massive roots with a high fee and the mycelium reach out there connecting all the plants and so it
19:12:49 becomes a planned community that's where the magic happens.
19:12:55 This notion of collaboration and support networks.
19:13:01 It's what it's what the soil food web does it's what the fun guy do. It's a real important message for us as human beings to understand that this is how life on work on Earth, really works best.
19:13:15 And for us to start plugging in our own recognition of local farms and food markets and and the health and the medicines that we get from the land.
19:13:26 That's all under that banner of what the fun guy or teaching all along.
19:13:31 Back in the day of Rachel Carson, who wrote Silent Spring.
19:13:35 There was an ecologist named Frank angler and Frank angler said nature.
19:13:56 I'm a humble guy. And I'm just I stand in awe of all the things that happen out there in the orchard.
19:14:01 So, here's a picture of spring you know I wanted to take a little look nose dive into this, because people have this idea that, oh you grow organically you don't spray.
19:14:15 Right. And I want people to understand that the sprayer is just a tool, actually when I do workshops and conferences across the country and this slide comes up I will say to people, and have to be careful because I'm in different states at different times.
19:14:38 But I say this, this, I've come to my NRA moment.
19:14:35 It's not the sprayer that kills, it's what you put in the sprayer so and that's greater there, there's things like seaweed liquid fish neem oil Qurans your boil effective micro organisms, and it's the spraying of nutrients and biology that are helping
19:14:51 me grow really healthy fruit, keeping the trees really robust and healthy, so that they in turn can resist disease, and be less attractive to pass.
19:15:02 And it's a really fascinating thing but, but the driver behind all this thinking that goes into holistic work today is really what do those materials do the fatty acids and the neem oil and then then liquid fish.
19:15:18 All the different minerals and the seaweed. What did they do to the soil life to the fun guy.
19:15:23 They support it. And that's the difference.
19:15:26 I'm not using chemical toxins, to grow fruit that doesn't have as much needed nutritional virtue. I'm working with nature to deliver food, that's good for us.
19:15:38 And I'm doing it by recognizing my partnership my relationship with the soil organisms.
19:15:45 You know this whole world works on photosynthesis green plants, green plant is taking that sunshine and creating carbon sugars, sending those carbons sugars down through their roots to trade with the fungi and bacteria in the soil.
19:16:03 This is how carbon gets into the soil, and to embrace photosynthesis you know that that's like my prime directive, as a fruit growers medicinal herb grower growing vegetables for our family, it's it's the thing we celebrate, one of the principles I outlined
19:16:19 in the book, micro rise the planet was what I call it the non disturbance principle, and you've heard this before. Aldo Leopold has what he's called the land ethic and stressing that we human beings have to learn.
19:16:37 You know we're not in charge here we're not the captains we're not some special species, where we're really just part of a world of many different species, and we're citizens of this land community, just like the fun guy just like the grass just like
19:16:52 the beans and the oats, and the apple trees.
19:16:56 And when we're doing the right thing.
19:16:59 Now for me.
19:17:00 It's all about. Beginning in a space of gratitude, but from their understanding how not to Tila screw up.
19:17:10 Just going to say no till lead into that but but when you over till the soil, you poverty is the soil you pulverized the mycelium, you lose that live in connection in the soil, by which nutrients abrupt the plants and carpenters, put down there in the
19:17:38 that that's our driver that's what our goal is. So I like to say, we have to all learn how to do fungal things. So here's here's a picture of Nancy prepping some ground for planting in the spring.
19:17:42 And we are in a sense, lightly disturbing the soil with that Wheel Hoe, but what what's happening here is in the top venture to buy shallow cultivating were disturbing the last we see weed seeds in that top inch, so that when we put in our seedlings or
19:18:00 transplants. We're going to have a much longer time before we start to show up we're deplete thing that we'd see base. So, and there's a slight bit of disturbance but it isn't like pulverizing totally wrecking that mycelium and that connection of fun
19:18:17 guy which are going to find those new plant roots and time into the plants that are growing nearby.
19:18:24 And when we do these sorts of things we're honoring the earth, and that goes right to the heart of the matter for me it's, I want to do things that honor this creation, recognize how nature, ties all these things together, that I have a role to play in
19:18:40 there, but it's it's a humble role, and it's one that's really about supporting my team.
19:18:47 So I'm going to end by just really stressing this notion
19:18:53 mycorrhizal fungal seen and plants. It's the union together it's a symbiosis. It takes two to tango.
19:19:02 This picture that you see here, this is what our gardens look just about the time the apples start to get ripe and I'm beginning to pick. So where we grew the onions that we grew potatoes are we grew garlic or groupies
19:19:18 those crops got harvested in July got harvested in August, and in August, I'll come through, maybe, as much as going into mid September at the latest.
19:19:37 I'll come through, and I'll plan a mixture of things like oats tillage radish and feel peace. These are all plants that are going to continue to be vigorous and green all fall. So rather than the garden soil just sitting there follow the photosynthesis
19:19:47 So rather than the garden soil just sitting there fallow. The photosynthesis engine is still engaged, and that in turn means that carbon is being pumped into the soil that fun guy are being supported, they're making spores, which are going to be put in
19:20:02 the soil and held in the root systems of these plants for next year's crop. But what's beautiful about this is all these plants, but winter kill and come springtime, when I go out where this lush green carpet was is going to be this mulch layer.
19:20:18 Pretty much broken down but it's still going to be a mulch layer, and the weed seed factors can be very minimal because I'm not letting weeds go to seed.
19:20:27 And, I call it biological tillage. You get the idea. You can work with nature and the hazing things can happen. So now we'll take it over to ya.
19:20:49 Okay, I'm gonna see if I can screen share I so far haven't succeeded but I wonder if I can succeed this time.
19:20:59 And if not, Lauren will will be able to share that for you.
19:21:04 Can you see it now.
19:21:09 I don't think so.
19:21:12 It's, it's in my inbox right now.
19:21:16 Do you see though. Oh, there you go.
19:21:19 You got it. Yep. Perfect. Okay, great.
19:21:24 So, I'm going to talk about how I connect with plants and trees and the soil.
19:21:33 You know, it just put my experience that that is and how I feel I communicate and how I feel.
19:21:39 The soil and plants communicate back to me.
19:21:43 So, I want to give this a little context.
19:21:47 I live, and have lifted karma trolling for the last 30 years.
19:21:55 And of course practice it's a Buddhist meditation center.
19:21:59 And of course I've practiced a lot of meditation.
19:22:04 And that in itself has been extremely helpful, but on top of that, the connection with the soil and the land is what I feel has sustained me equally strong.
19:22:19 With all the challenges that I feel that probably we, all of us go to go through in our lives.
19:22:25 You know, psychologically and all the negative news that we hear every day.
19:22:31 So, I want to give you a little background from where I came from. First, I grew up on a farm in Holland.
19:22:43 And before me my father. My father grew up in the Second World War and he started a farm, mainly to just make you know make enough money and food for the family.
19:22:55 And that became a big driving force for him.
19:22:58 And he succeeded very well.
19:23:02 He was a very modern farmer and incorporated all the new farmhouse technologies that were available in Holland.
19:23:11 Back in the 60s and 70s, and by the mid 1970s he would already have hydroponic tomatoes and hydroponic peppers.
19:23:23 Personally, it was much more intrigued and curious about wild plants, and I grew up near the sand dunes so I would often walk through the sand dunes and just be amazed by the beauty that nature would constantly show me, and that interested me a lot more
19:23:41 than tomato plants in the greenhouse, especially when my father moved to hydroponic planting.
19:23:52 So, I worked for a few years on my father's farm in my late teens, early 20s, but then when I was 22, I started my own organic farm in Holland.
19:24:03 And I had a day for five acre farm that did very well for five years, six years.
19:24:12 But at some point. I probably worked a little too hard and I injured my back quite badly and I entered a period of chronic back pain.
19:24:24 And basically sold, I had to sell my farm and started traveling.
19:24:30 And I traveled to China at that time.
19:24:34 I'd already travel for half a year in India and Nepal and for five months on the bicycle in Japan, and this time I went to China, just to see the incredible landscapes of that country.
19:24:50 I learned a little bit of the language, and so I really had a very interesting, eight months in in China.
19:24:56 And then I went to Taiwan. To learn more, Chinese, and to study calligraphy and to teach English as a second language.
19:25:07 But while in Taiwan I grew really very depressed, listening to the news of the world both political and ecological and social life on sociology, France, everything in the world seem to be extremely dark and, you know, full of doom.
19:25:30 In my mind, I didn't realize that the way I was digesting all that news
19:25:41 was that I was basically covering that news in my own mind, and I realized I needed to lighten up needed to work with my mind if I wanted to be able to stay engaged with the world.
19:25:57 So that actually inspired me to come to karma trolling in Barnett for a month.
19:26:04 I had read some books by this teacher to be I'm trooper.
19:26:10 And so, in 1988, I came to karma trolling and started practicing meditation, and as I was spending months the first few months that I discovered how incredibly beautiful the landscape around karma trolling is so I started started hiking the mountains
19:26:32 and
19:26:34 sort of spontaneously for myself, discovered what other people have called Sweet Spot practice.
19:26:43 So, what I would do is I would walk around and just stumble on a beautiful tree a beautiful rock.
19:26:53 Beautiful planned, whatever wildlife that would show up, and occasionally sit down and just appreciate and
19:27:05 be with the energy of whatever I encountered.
19:27:11 Very simple for me.
19:27:13 The trees didn't start talking to me or neither the rocks or the plants, but there was something about feeling the energy of those plants, or rocks.
19:27:27 The river.
19:27:30 The animals that really started to.
19:27:35 I would say transform my.
19:27:37 The way I perceived my world, and really feeling kind of much more alive and seeing how things are more workable than I had assumed Until then, I'm going to try to change to another slide, so bear with me.
19:28:00 Is this visible.
19:28:06 Yawn you'll have to stop sharing your screen and then reshare, the new picture.
19:28:11 Okay.
19:28:19 Okay I stopped she stopped she stops Yeah, I got it.
19:28:25 Okay.
19:28:32 That's the same one. Sorry,
19:28:40 can see this is new for me.
19:28:45 Well, where is it.
19:28:52 I might have to try it one more time.
19:28:56 No, it doesn't work.
19:29:15 still not very close, can you maximize that that image that window.
19:29:27 How do I maximize.
19:29:31 On the left hand corner there should be.
19:29:36 I think there's three dots, and one of them should be like a plus sign there on the picture itself.
19:29:53 Let me see if my wife can help me, folks.
19:29:56 And, and young you know what we can do to if you want to continue talking, stop sharing your screen and then we can have Lauren, share that next image if you were able to email those to her.
19:30:08 Okay.
19:30:09 Good.
19:30:10 So, I will move to kind of bought the sweet spot practice.
19:30:16 How I actually practice that because originally I feel I sort of spontaneously started just doing that, and
19:30:27 later I developed kind of and step by step practice.
19:30:50 So the first step that I do is, you know, walk around and find
19:30:42 a comfortable spot, preferably near kind of access an accessible place.
19:30:48 And the first step is to really get settled, to feel, feel my body.
19:31:08 Feel how I sit on the ground and brief just naturally and and open my sense perceptions.
19:31:02 So the next step is to set an intention.
19:31:09 Do you want to connect deeper with the earth and the greenery around me so I tell myself or I asked myself how can I connect deeper with the earth, and the plants around me.
19:31:22 How can I feel that energies, and hear the messages.
19:31:29 So the next step is appreciation and gratitude, the same as Michael talked about gratitude and it's very important to, instead of getting focused on the, the kind of the imperfections that you think you perceive you know you might want to change things
19:31:52 you might want to change the weather you might want to change where you're sitting, you might want to change.
19:31:59 You know have a richer landscape, kind of, you know, instead of looking for imperfections you just kind of focus on what you can appreciate in the landscape.
19:32:13 And then make an offering.
19:32:15 Next day make an offering either mental or physical or.
19:32:19 I've learned a lot of songs so I sometimes sing a song to connect with the environment.
19:32:27 It's really song has the advantage that it really touches the heart, and instead of being very mentally active you're more active from the heart.
19:32:38 So the next step is to just be with those colors and shapes and sounds and fragrances fragrance of the soil, and just be with them and let them speak for themselves.
19:32:58 Instead of commenting, and instead of manipulating.
19:33:03 Just notice them and be present with that.
19:33:12 And next day, try to deepen that experience.
19:33:15 And the basic instruction that I followed the address to to do absolutely nothing.
19:33:20 And just listened from the heart.
19:33:24 And that allows me to connect to deeper layers of what the plant is communicating with plant are communicating among each others.
19:33:50 And what the you know the local the insects are constantly communicating among each other, and between them and plants and there's just an awareness begins to grow, about how much alive, that land that I'm sitting on his.
19:33:56 And I become aware that also the plants and the insects and birds around me are aware that I am sitting there, I'm part of that ecosystem part of their world.
19:34:08 And so I feel that isn't mutual communication happening.
19:34:16 Sometimes they ask a question there, you know, kind of a personal question about whether a tree could help me, or in a particular way, or whatever that is, so sometimes I pose a question there.
19:34:33 And then I end with simply about and say thank you and I move on to the next, the next place.
19:34:44 So, I do that.
19:34:48 Sometimes five or 10 minutes, but more often 15 minutes, half an hour.
19:34:54 And if you really enjoy it. You can even sit for much longer than that.
19:35:00 And occasionally I'll write a poem or a haiku at the end, and share it with us.
19:35:10 So that's what I wanted to share with you from spark practice.
19:35:17 And feel free to ask questions if you want later.
19:35:36 Thank you Jaan and I wanted to thank all of our speakers Personally, I am very inspired. I'm a homesteader myself and an experienced gardener and they're already several things that have come up in this conversation that makes me excited because I can
19:35:38 Their additions are new information that I didn't know about and we're going to keep on with that by asking one question to all of the speakers, which is what is one thing that someone can do this summer to enhance their partnership with plants or to
19:35:52 support soil, soil life and Evan if you want to kind of take the lead or or or begin that would be wonderful.
19:36:09 Okay, I think I'm unmuted.
19:36:13 Um, well, the, that's what I'm going to be doing all summer. So, um, but I think for.
19:36:22 As I kind of ended my talk with in my introduction.
19:36:28 I think, you know, finding finding that project that you have the time for the mental space for that you can be successful at that, you know, we tend not to worry, tend not to learn as well when we're stressed when we're hurried when we're rushed.
19:36:48 And
19:36:48 I know at the times when our farm is more under control and we have, you know, we have enough time to do everything that's the time when we learn a lot more so as far as a specific project I think what's more important is, is the, the mental space that
19:37:07 you allow a project to offer it's learnings up to you. So finding something manageable.
19:37:15 Whether it's, whether it's growing a plant on your window sale, whether it's starting a new garden bed, whether it's trying a new gardening practice perhaps not telling part of your garden this summer, or working with that apple tree in your yard and
19:37:30 developing a healthy understory as in. In, Michaels beautiful picture. I think any one of those things would be great but allowing doing a project that will allow you the time to to really understand what it has to teach you and I think this also speaks
19:37:48 a lot to what Jaan left us with is taking that time to understand what there is to learn and that one little spot that you've chosen to focus your life energy.
19:38:01 Thank you. Anyone else wants to answer that question.
19:38:08 This this is the soil takeaway. Question of the night.
19:38:12 One, I just want to chime in here and say, seeing all those green pictures, it's like wow that's coming, this is this is what's coming. This is why we're waiting through all these snowy times.
19:38:24 So, I spoke a little bit there on that last slide about cover cropping, and I introduced to you the fall.
19:38:33 Combination of votes and tillage radish and field P.
19:38:38 I just want to kind of speak up for the whole notion so in one sense, let's say you're a gardener.
19:38:46 Maybe have raised beds, maybe have a plot, but just start thinking about how can I rotate, maybe half my garden or third of my garden becomes somewhere that I cover crop for a year or two, in a sense, you can have much bigger gardens, but just don't get
19:39:03 overwhelmed by that idea but just realize that you're just dedicating some soil building time some of that ground so you can replenish it.
19:39:12 I get a real kick out of growing Sudan grass, Sudan grass is kind of related to corn. It gets like five six feet tall. There's like 50 different species of mycorrhizal fungi that form an affiliation with Sudan grass, if there's any crop that you want
19:39:28 to take a summer to devote to to build soil.
19:39:32 This works really wonderful up here in the North Country.
19:39:36 Similarly, buckwheat winter rye and hairy vetch, you'll learn how to work with these different things.
19:39:45 But even in the garden context just just get it in your head. You took out the garlic within a week, plant and your I put something back in, get those plants those green plants, doing the photosynthesis thing, and you really can fit it in it's not some
19:40:00 big daunting thing. I got to have a tractor I'm about to plant 40 acres of buckwheat. No, it's a little bit of hand sewing, a little bit of garden rake to cover the seed and, something is now growing where last week you took it out of the soil, and you
19:40:17 left the roots ideally if you can obviously with garlic, you're not going to, but you can do it, I guess that's my message, you can do these things you can do a lot more with plants and you think, and that's where the magic happens.
19:40:32 And that's where the magic happens. Thank you, Michael. Nancy are Yon Are you interested in answering this question.
19:40:43 Could you repeat the question, sorry, I can't no problem. And I'm just going to make sure that I were to properly. What is one thing that someone can do this summer to enhance their partnership with plants or to support soil life.
19:41:02 Well,
19:41:05 everything that Michael said is, is completely want a second that I personally have the first 20 years that I was gardening here I would have small parts of my land and cover crop of the garden that we have a one acre garden that curve of trolling.
19:41:24 And I will do quite a bit of mulching but relatively few, you know, a little bit of cover cropping and the last, especially the last five years, I would say, about half the garden is being cover crop now.
19:41:37 And I have found that the soil gets so become so alive, that even though I'm growing a smaller part of the garden. That's actually the production is, is, is only slightly less than it used to be, and I feel I'm less busy.
19:41:56 So, that's how I thought of entering that so I just want a second. The first two speakers.
19:42:03 Thank you. And Nancy, would you like to share.
19:42:16 Yes.
19:42:17 Me too. Oh yeah, which happy to go. Yeah, would you like to answer that question.
19:42:22 Sure, I'll just take it a little different route, because we've covered some of the things I think as an herbalist to lots of times people.
19:42:32 They feel a little bit overwhelmed thinking they need, they want to learn all these herbs and it's just a little bit overwhelming. So I just want to encourage people to just, it's really like people you know you can have 100 acquaintances and you might
19:42:45 see them at a gathering or something and say hi and you know a little bit about them but it's really important I think to just take a few plants, maybe less than 10 for sure but maybe just choose three or something for the summer to, you're going to work
19:43:08 with a lot of plants but you're really good and become close intimate allies with just maybe three.
19:43:09 Don't share something and then you just try doing all kinds of things with them and especially herbs you can try using them for tea, you can start using them for a heritage to learn how to use them for POTUS find out their different facets because they're
19:43:21 just like people in a sense that they, you know, sometimes I'll think I know one herb and somebody will tell me how they use it nothing. No, I don't think that's true, but then when I look at the constituents are the actions, I think, Oh course you could
19:43:33 use it that way. So just really delving deep and becoming intimate and practicing some of your own suggestions and just being with the plan, and sometimes we don't even need to use them for physical ailments or anything just spend time with them and get
19:43:49 to know them and so I guess that would be my suggestion, pick a few go deep.
19:43:56 Great, thank you. And now we're going to ask them specific questions for each speaker from the audience and we're going to start with Evan. Evan what direction does your Hill face.
19:44:09 Our Hill faces south.
19:44:12 When we were looking for property we didn't have a lot of money and I always went with a shovel to look for property and normally it was some place way out on the class for road.
19:44:25 And I was looking, you know, so I had a shovel to look for good soil and then I was looking for southern exposure, which I knew we wanted to farm and it is not crucial but the farther north you live, the more important it is.
19:44:39 And, as an example, our greenhouses where the soil is actually slope to the south, with the slope of the hillside are generally about two weeks earlier than our green, a greenhouse we have on our property that is on our one of our few pieces of perfectly
19:44:55 flat ground.
19:44:56 So in the shoulder seasons is when that southern exposure really helps in the spring in the fall, to extend our farming season which makes our farm, more profitable and also allows us to provide food to the community.
19:45:11 In times of year, when it's really hard to get local food. And so for us, those are like the most important times of year for offsetting food being shipped from other parts of the country can be here.
19:45:24 So, so it, and Michael, where do you get your micro rises their particular brand or resource that you recommend
19:45:40 Sure. So
19:45:40 there's a quite a number of companies doing this now, and probably the main thing to key in on is to get a knock to them product that has a diverse range of fours, and the best ones, typically have nine of the endo micro riser so endo that means going
19:46:01 within the room, like I showed you that picture of the artist school brands like mycorrhizal applications.
19:46:08 Bio organics out of Pennsylvania. Rescue up in Ontario.
19:46:16 There's some of the companies that go for the gusto, and you get all those sports but I also want to make sure everyone understands that.
19:46:25 There are fun guy in the soil.
19:46:28 If you're not talking about a highly degraded abuse soil situation, you can start to work with that and by introducing diversity of plants, you're going to introduce more fungal players.
19:46:40 Another thing that you can do is you can go to healthy wild places, I like to ask permission when I do something like this but if you, if you go to a wild apple tree where there's a diversity of plants around, and you go down at just a couple inches,
19:46:58 where there's feeder routes, and you bring back like a court of soil from near routes there's gotta be some root fragments and that close vicinity roots is important.
19:47:10 And you come back and you bring that to your newly planted apple tree let's say or in the last couple of years, and you move aside and ensure to have the mulch, put the soil down, putting spores and fungal hi fi fragments that are going to find the roots
19:47:27 of your plan so that there's many risks on this, but if you're purchasing an oxymoron, you know, one of the greatest things to do is mix that your potting soil and the greenhouse because that little tomato seed that little pepper sheet and that onion
19:47:41 and what have you, are all going to get a fungal start. They're going to be much more resilient transplants, when you put them out in the ground, and the fungal nature that mycelium will bloom as root mass grows.
19:47:57 It'll connect with other plants, tie your transplants then, and then you're off and running.
19:48:05 Great, thank you. And this question is for anyone who's interested in answering. Do you clip weeds that are a bit too large, but they're not overcrowding roots, like chop and drop.
19:48:19 And if anyone can speak to that.
19:48:22 Well, I'll do it.
19:48:25 So, I'm
19:48:30 obviously in an orchard with fruit trees and I take that sigh I'm doing chop and drop, so to speak, right around the drip line of the tree in the garden.
19:48:40 When I am pulling weeds that would be aggressive cedars.
19:48:46 I can take them and mulch out on the orchard because they're not going to have that open soil ground situation and utilize that.
19:48:53 But now I'm going to go to my, my country plant I pointed out that there was come free underneath that apple tree.
19:49:00 So country is this amazing plant that gets about two and a half, three feet tall, it blooms right after the apples do, and bumble bees just go from the apple tree to the country blossoms, and it's really important to be thinking about your pollinators
19:49:15 and various things and flower throughout the whole growing season.
19:49:20 Anyway, then come free starts to reach the point where set seed. Now I grow a type of country called the barking cultivars, which do not set fertile seed, if you actually get the sci fi deficient Alice European country, which does set fertile see your
19:49:38 ecosystem may become all come free so you actually don't want that. Anyways, Bucky cultivars.
19:49:45 The plant gets top heavy, and falls over and or I might push it in a certain direction steer it, keeping the grasses from getting too thick underneath the tree.
19:49:55 But I don't cut it off, and this is the key point. This is the living mulch plant.
19:50:00 And by letting that part of the plant that fell over, stay green.
19:50:05 It truly smothers and opens up exit the mulch that opens up the soil a little bit more. And meanwhile, new stocks arise, they flower bumblebees find them.
19:50:16 We might take some of the comfy leaks at different points, and I make fermented plant extracts countries very rich in calcium that's a very important part of my spray for the apples to get help them get calcium into the fruit.
19:50:30 But this this construct of living mocks plant. You have to think about how does the plant grow and how can I utilize it like that, and company is a good teacher in that respect.
19:50:43 Hey, thank you for sharing Michael especially you know in permaculture chopping and dropping come free is is all the rage so thank you for sharing that alternative way of working with it.
19:50:56 Melissa.
19:50:57 Oh, can I just interject Well yes, definitely.
19:51:02 A little thing since he has my husband.
19:51:05 I'm just fearful that people might get mistaken and you can use the country like that in the orchard, but you wouldn't want to plant it whenever you plant Humphrey, you just really can't transplanted because it can grow from just an inch of the route
19:51:19 You just really can't transplanted because it can grow from just an inch of the route and the tap roots can be like six foot long so I just didn't want people to get like a little confused and think, maybe I'll just put a few of these in this garden bed
19:51:32 this year because they're, unless you always want them to be there for the rest of the duration. Anyway, I just had to maybe nobody else would have considered doing that but okay.
19:51:38 Oh, thank you, thank you, Nancy that's an important consideration and my next question is actually specifically for you.
19:51:44 Somebody asked, What have you learned from your connection to one place over so much time.
19:51:59 Um,
19:51:59 Well I think maybe just the different
19:52:06 little ecosystems that are on the land itself you know I have favorite spots that are in the woods by the broker. I know, you know, even just talking about all these cover crops that Michael spin and, and people have been mentioning, I noticed that I
19:52:22 have a like a lot of perennial beds that are a lot of flowers and herbs that don't get, you know, the weaker, in some ways because they haven't had that rich cover crops in them so I guess just knowing more
19:52:40 about the land and the trees and the different ecosystems in a certain field or familiarity with the, with the energy of the land and.
19:52:53 thank you and this might be our last question and it's for Evan, and a few people were really interested in this specific tools that you use or what are your favorite tools, including the battery powered options.
19:53:12 Well, we use, we use several tools and, you know, as, as, you know, as we've grown older, you know, we've just needed to find ways if we were going to be a productive profitable farm that supported our family to, to, you know, to use you know appropriate
19:53:36 technology to help us to do that because we started out with, you know, a bucket and a rake and a wheelbarrow that a flat tire most of time, and eventually we realized, well we gotta upgrade from this if we want to keep doing this.
19:53:51 And so, um, as far as tools we use a bunch of different tools. One tool that we use to clear beds, is a battery powered essentially weed whacker you can put all different kinds of blades on them.
19:54:04 But that allows us to chop, chop, like say a bed of greens off right at soil level, all those greens mulch right in our pathways, with some soil mixed in so they don't create an anaerobic kind of rotting pile there they they fired a great if they decompose
19:54:24 very quickly because they're mixed with soil, and that allows us to leave all the roots in the soil and we can plant again that same day. We don't have to wait a couple weeks after we've killed something in for it for, for it to for the nitrogen robbing
19:54:38 aspects of the composition to stop, we can tell again that we can plant that same day without having to till the soil.
19:54:45 And so that allows our farm to be really productive in kind of going along with the theme that Michael was talking about of like always keeping that those, those that soil active, so that's one tool that we use.
19:54:59 That's not an, you know, that's a more commercially available tool. We also use a tool called the filter which just kind of a bit essentially tells the top inch of the soil, and that will allow us to use mechanical cedars, which are another tool that
19:55:14 we use.
19:55:15 And so they really, they often don't work well unless there's some good tilth so fairly loose soil on the surface. We use a little tool called the Tilly, which is a battery operated tool which we basically because we're on a hillside soil will road from
19:55:33 from the top of our beds down into the pathway. Our pathways run across the hillside. And so the Tilly allows us to bring that all that soil compost or dirt decomposed.
19:55:45 You know crops because most of our crop matter actually stays in our field we don't take it off and compost it we compost it in the pathway when we can.
19:55:54 So, once a season will go through with that Tilly and it actually will shoot that soil back up onto the bed, which is a really critical part of farming on a hillside erosion will happen.
19:56:06 We've just managed it in a way where it just goes downhill to the pathway below, and then it gets brought back up onto the bed using this Tilly which is made, which was invented by a farmer.
19:56:18 You can you can also use it for like cultivation as well and other things like that.
19:56:24 And then we have greens harvester that's powered by a drill by a battery power drill that was invented by a 17 year old kid who now has a fairly sizable company, which has helped to make growing baby greens profitable for us, and has helped us to from
19:56:44 our very small farm which is about an acre.
19:56:48 Distribute greens to many many local stores and businesses.
19:56:54 And it saved us a lot of time on our knees with it with a knife cutting greens, which at some point we would have just had to say yeah, this is as much as we can grow because of the physical nature of the work.
19:57:05 So those are some examples of the tools that we use, but there's a few more.
19:57:10 And as I said they're, they're just in their beginning stages they're only getting better from here and we live off grid and we have solar power and they can all be charged using our solar panels, which we also use for watering so that works really well
19:57:25 for an off grid situation that battery operated to us.
19:57:30 Well thank you and I wanted to thank thank all of the speakers again personally I feel both inspired and also like I need to rewatch this this recording, which will be sent out I think tomorrow within the next few days.
19:57:44 Because there are so many practical details that I really would love to glean for my garden season this year, and we did have several questions from the audience that we weren't able to get to tonight.
19:57:56 But like I said before, we can really keep the conversation going. If you join the listserv for Vermont healthy soils coalition and some of the speakers tonight and in the other events that we have as part of the series are part of that conversation as
19:58:10 as well along with numerous wonderful experienced gardeners homesteaders farmers in Vermont.
19:58:18 And so I also wanted to mention that you'll have that opportunity to join the listserv when you fill out the post event survey that will be sent along with the recording of today's event via event bright and again if you fill out that survey you are entered
19:58:34 to win the amazing raffle prize. And finally, I just want to make a note to say this is not your last opportunity to. To learn more about this topic of sustaining the soil and building resilient communities, our next event is on March 10, that's 630 to
19:58:54 8pm and other Wednesday night and that and the name of that event is closing local nutrient loops and building soil that event will feature Donna from Green State bio char Tim for metal stone farm.
19:59:08 Brian from Agra lab technologies and Eric from Tamerlane farm, and I wanted to thank everyone who joined us tonight.
19:59:15 This was truly a gift to be here with all of you. Thank you.