Podcast 741 – Eat what you Grow

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Okay, so this is a free-for-all podcast thing. I've got so much to talk about. Samantha's here. She's doing something.

I just finished making a soup for everybody. Do you help me with harvesting some of the sunshoaks?

You just stepped right outside and grabbed sunshoaks and walking onions right out of the garden.

Yeah, and so it's in there with some chicken and you brought us a bunch of goose eggs today, but we'll get to that later, but okay.

I feel like I'm about to be a very whiny bitch. I hope that that is not the case. I will do my damnedest about a positive spin, but there's just been so much just in the last week.

It's like I keep thinking like recording podcasts. I don't know. I don't even know how many people listen anymore. I mean, it's maybe we're recording podcasts and putting them out there and then they just sit there.

Once in a while somebody will say something, you know, but maybe I know we have a thread at permis for each podcast.

And so maybe for this one, people will reply, say, here, present.

Yeah, reply if you hear it. Something like that or, you know, that's such stupid shit that you said.

And it's like, okay.

I've got, I swear I can fill 20 hours in a podcast and I'm not going to do that. Let's start with eat what you grow versus grow what you eat.

Because we were just talking about that. And of course it's because somebody on the internet is wrong.

But it starts with, I saw, I think it was last fall. I saw a beautiful video made by, I believe it's a family of six.

And, and they were, and they were, they were showing off their harvester like we're, we have enough food.

We're putting up enough food to get us through the winter.

Yeah. And that is a, that is wonderful. That is wonderful.

It is really good. And yeah, I have feels.

The thing, so I'm like good for them. That is, it is beautiful. It's good. I'm so proud of them. It makes me so happy.

And then they said a thing which kind of is like, you know, I made, it made me upset.

We grow only food that we eat. None of that crazy hippie shit.

I, I'm paraphrasing. I can't remember what they said. Weird things that people don't actually eat.

And, and I'm kind of, and so, but it's thinking to make thrown video. I want us to be supportive. I didn't comment and say,

dog, dog, dog, dog, dog. Maybe they donate weird stuff.

Well, which I, I, I fully support them. Only eating the things that they think are yummy and delightful. I, that I support.

But the thing is, is this like, okay. So that would mean that they're growing a lot of corn and wheat in soy, which I saw a lot of corn.

I didn't see any wheat or soy, but maybe they are. I just didn't see it.

They don't eat those things. That is, that is a really good point. I suspect it is not true.

But, but, but the thing is, is that I kind of feel like how much bread will a person eat if it costs a hundred dollars a loaf.

How much, how much spaghetti, how much cake, how much, well, how much pie.

If it's going to be like 10 to 20 times more expensive because these things are really subsidized.

So then, if you're going to grow wheat, it's like, it's going to be, and you don't have a combine.

And I've, I used to drive combine. I don't know if anybody knows this. My name is Wheaton. I, I used to drive wheat combine and wheat truck.

I used to work the wheat harvest. So I, for years, I worked the wheat harvest, but I also worked the pea harvest.

I, I can tell you a lot about peas. They do not smell good when they're on hot hydraulics.

That is a weird ass nasty smell. I got to tell you. All right. But, and, and in harvesting wheat, you know, there was a lot of thought put into the quality.

Oh, okay, I'm sorry. I'm going off on a tangent.

The, the big thing is, is that, um, if you're going to eat a lot of sugar, and don't get me wrong, sugar is so delicious.

And, uh, you know what, you know what, delicious is croissant. Oh, oh, when I, so I'm doing food is medicine still.

But one of the things I've been craving, which in August, I'm going to go, you know, it was, I, and I want to say, I got it.

So I'm going to change it. I don't have my list. I don't have a list of things to talk about. So this is all, so help me to stay on tracks, Samantha.

Okay. But I went and test drove an electric truck. Yeah.

And there was a guy there, Donald. Hi, Donald. Thank you so much.

And, and I was like, so I had to go piece. I went into the restroom and I came, when I came back, there's a guy there.

You're a Paul Wheaton. And, and I said, I knew that. I already knew that.

And, and it's like, he started quoting all my stuff. Yeah, it was, it was lovely.

And so then I did, I did that, so Donald with, with me, because he was dropping his rig off to get a little maintenance or something. I don't know.

And so he went with me on my test drive and told me all about it. It was great. It was great.

Okay. Why did I bring that up? Okay.

Well, he listened, he listens to podcasts. Somebody out there. There's at least one guy. They're Donald.

There's other people because, you know, they're, they come by here and they mention things or they do reply in the thread.

Eat what you grow versus grow what you eat. And, and I kind of feel like when you try to, if you're like, okay, I eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

And I'm pronouncing it incorrectly on purpose. Like that is the right way.

So, I think we should spell it that way too, because it's funny here that way, because mostly because it pisses off people that are like the spelling police.

Ha ha ha! Look at them squab! Ha ha! That's not the way they spell it! This is wrong with you!

Children can see that. This is better wrong. And it's like, ha ha ha!

Tell me more. Keep going. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

So, I eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. So, I'm going to grow peanuts. And I'm going to grow jelly.

Ha ha ha! And I'm going to grow bread. And it's kind of like, um, okay. So, growing wheat, you know, you can grow it.

And it's easy to grow, but getting it from the outdoors into your bread has a lot of challenges. So, tonight you have, you have like what?

10 tons of wheat through magic sources. I started winter. Someone gave me 400 bushels of white wheat.

And I am working my way through it. I have made a dent. And we grind all our own bread and every possible baked product. I grind it myself.

Okay. Okay. Alright. Alright.

But you've got a magic source. I do. Already thrashed and winnowed.

Yes. Well, it's just been through the combine. Yeah.

Combines are magical things. And it was his seed wheat. So it is the cleanest wheat that he grows. So a dear friend gave it to me.

And he's out of the wheat business now. He retired. So this was his last run and it's organic, best ever wheat.

I watched it grow, but this is it. So I'm saving a lot so I can grow it myself.

Oh, now. Now, how? So when you go to bake your wonder bread? Yes.

Because that's what people eat. I heard. Then how does your, how does your bread compare to wonder bread?

Well, I would guess that it is very dissimilar. I am using white wheat. So it would be light and fluffy. I wonder bread probably uses white wheat for what amount of grain is actually in the bread.

Well, that's true. But then I don't know. Okay. So it's it's a hard wheat that you're growing. I mean, well, this is actually soft white wheat.

And so it's not typically what someone would use for bread, but it's what I have.

And I did. I was grinding the red wheat, but I used it all. I guess. Okay. The big thing is is that when you go to grind the wheat, it doesn't come out quite as fluffy.

No, it is much more of a coarse product. This is the whole wheat. So the germ is in there. And I have a stone grinder and it grinds it pretty, pretty fine.

But the bread is much more solid than bread would be if it was from the store. But I do add a lot of eggs and other things that make the bread fluffy, a lot of eggs in milk. So it's good bread.

Okay. No, no, no. I have not tried your bread because I'm still doing the food as medicine thing. But I don't even eat bread actually right now.

I make it for my family. Okay. All right. All right. And bud, it is going to be different. I mean, there will be breads that you can buy that'll be like the bread that you made.

But it's the it's the crushing and winnowing that are a bit of a challenge. And so if you. All right.

I'm talking about the cute video where we only grow what we eat, none of that hippie stuff. And so it's like, and I don't know if they said hippie stuff. I can't remember.

I think it's fun to say hippie stuff. I don't know if you're seeing there's videos on YouTube, better by Z, Frank. And whatever it says things scientists, he says hippie scientists, which I love that.

I love that those hippie scientists. And so anyway, all right.

The thing is is that getting that wheat into your belly when you've grown it and you don't have a combine.

I mean, have you done any threshing? I've done a lot of manual threshing.

Oh, yeah. I'm just like beat on it and then winnow it. And it, you know, you can do it. It takes a long time.

You can do it by hand. It'll take you fucking forever. But with just your hands, I, by the way, use gloves, consider what your hands will get so raw so fast.

But winnowing is easy. Kind of. I mean, you got to try to not have the fan blowing too hard.

We have wind where I live. So I winnow all the stuff that I get out of this. Then I do winnow it many times.

I just keep pouring it and pouring it because there's still chaff. Okay. So yeah, winnowing is something I always do.

But I hear we use the pillowcase threshing technique now. I think that's the best. And I like that.

All right. What the thing is is that after a lot to fill a five gallon bucket with just wheat,

I would say with the pillowcase method, which is our best method. And we got three or four people working on it.

We can fill a five gallon bucket. And it's like, well, wait, if we're going to include like if we've got a bunch of grain heads here already.

And then we're going to make a bucket of just grain. I would say a solid four hours.

You're making a weird face. You think it's longer than that?

I think it's less than that. It doesn't take me that long to make a five gallon bucket.

Starting with just green heads. Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. What's your method?

Just with my hands. Yeah. That's so slow.

But maybe what I have is nicer wheat because it doesn't doesn't cut me.

Okay. All right. All right. So the and then of course now it's now you've got grain in a bucket.

And you could just cook it, but that's not what these people eat is wheat that's been like boiled.

Well, just wheat boiled up as a cereal is really good. I eat that.

But that's not what they eat. That's not what they eat. That's not what they eat.

And what what they eat is bread. And so it's kind of like and you can and so now it needs to be ground.

Do you grind it just once or do you end up grinding it more than once?

I run it through stone grain or I just grind it once. Just grind it once.

Okay. And it's like, it's a coarse grind. I mean, you tried to you tried to do a fine grind.

It grinds it really fine. It's a first grind. Yeah.

Okay. And it still ends up being kind of a coarse bread.

Well, it's much heavier than store bought flour. Yeah. Because boy, they've got magic to do that.

Yeah. I don't know exactly how they make it so fine. I have a sense that they may be sniffed out some bits.

Yeah. Because they do have like it grinds. The actual grain has been ground extremely fine.

But there's still kind of the, I guess it would be the what's the outside part called?

The brand is still there and it's flat, but it is still a hard piece.

So I think if I wanted store bought flour, what I would do is put the whole thing through a sifter and then have a regular flour.

Which years ago, decades ago, everybody had a sifter.

So how would I have no idea what happened to it? Yeah.

Always sniffed your flour before. Oh, yeah.

Then now I don't have it anymore.

Okay. All right. The thing is, is that going from wheat on the hoof outside,

and then the other thing is you have to harvest it at the right time.

You have to have the, you have to have that human discipline to go out there and get it.

All right. And it's like all I'm saying is is that it is a lot of work to get it from in the field to being bread.

And, but however, all of all grains are deeply subsidized in many, many ways.

And so what you end up with is is something where it's like, oh, here's a, here's a beautiful loaf of bread for five bucks.

And it's kind of like, you know, but you know, there was a lot of money poured into that to exist.

And there's reasons why they subsidized grain. And it's because grain lasts so long,

it used to be that, that's how wars were fought, whoever had the most grain wins, stuff like that.

Okay. The thing is, is that they're saying we, we only grow what we eat, not that hippie crap.

And so it's kind of like, um, on the, you know, and then this morning we went and we harvested sunstrokes.

And we've been able to harvest sunstrokes here for eight months so far this year.

I mean, we're getting close to the point where you can no longer harvest.

And you have to, you have to leave them alone. They get soft.

They're starting to sprout too. Yeah.

And so, um, but it's like, we can pluck it out of the ground, rinse it off and eat it raw.

I, I suppose you could try to eat wheat raw.

I'm sure you can jump on it.

You'd probably still want to at least, I mean, you were like with the sunstroke, you got to clean it off,

but I could clean off a sunstroke really fast.

But getting, uh, threshing wheat, it's like to get a mouthful, to get a handful.

We used to do that in the field all the time, just like, just pick it off the, off the stock and just grind it up on our hands and just eat it all the time when we were out there.

Oh, yeah. I've done that quite a bit, having worked on wheat fields.

And, um, and it is like not easy to chew.

That is a challenge to chew it.

But it's something to munch on when you're out there.

I don't know about you, but I don't have a crop as in a muscle in my throat with a bunch of rocks in it, like a chicken does to kind of bust that stuff up.

Um, I remember one time, in fact, I think it was with the Alexia Allen video.

Uh, apparently there was a broken windshield in the field.

And so all the chickens, or putting broken windshield glass in their crop to bust up the, yeah.

Yeah.

And to bust up the, the grains, I thought that was kind of a kick.

All right.

Um, the other big thing is is that we, you've got a fairly narrow window to harvest, like probably three weeks.

I would guess you've got to get it when it's dry enough, but not too dry.

And certainly before it gets wet again.

Yeah. Yeah. I know that working the wheat harvests, we, there was some tricky stuff in order to get it harvested.

Oh, yeah. It goes field by field.

And I mean, usually the guys are like, we're going to do it this weekend.

And they'll sometimes work late and start early.

And it's kind of, you know, you can't have too much to and you can't have it too hot.

And you got to, you got to have it just right.

Yeah. We worked 12 hour shifts, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Because the do, the do would get started.

And it's like, and then, of course, at 7 a.m. it's been light out for a couple of hours.

And the do is pretty much gone.

So we can get started. So 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

We don't get it soon enough. It actually gets too dry.

And then it becomes at all kind of like splinters as they try to harvest it.

It shrivels a little bit.

It kind of, it kind of goes from being people food to animal food.

Yeah, that's a real hazard.

Because if you, if you don't do it right or it doesn't, it doesn't make protein,

or it doesn't get fat enough, they count it as feed instead of food.

Yeah. And then you don't get paid as much.

Yeah.

My God.

There's anything wrong with it. There's too many stones.

If there's too many weeds, whatever might be about it,

you can get docks for that. And if you get docks too much, that's feed.

And so you can still sell it, but you probably don't make any money.

I'm discouraging the growing of corn.

I mean, we're going to grow a set of poultry grain for a bunch of different reasons.

But I kind of feel like the best way to eat grain is when it tastes like eggs.

Yeah.

It is a great feed for animals.

And when it tastes like bacon, that's what I'm using a lot of my grain for,

is to feed, feed pigs, feed chickens.

I don't feed the sheep grain, but I do use it if they get out.

It is a great treat to get them back in.

And when you're telling the sheep that you're holding grain, do you say sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep?

I do, and they come running from as far away.

Everybody's got a different word for calling the critters in.

Well, I call them...

You've got to know that there's candy in the bucket for them.

I call ram rams, or I call sheep sheep, so that the sheep don't get all excited when I'm trying to bring rams in.

Okay.

So everybody knows their name.

Everybody actually has a different song.

It's like cheers.

It is.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I was trying to make the point that I would rather than grow what you eat,

which I really take a strong...

I mean, you can't do it if that's what you want to do.

Go for it.

But I kind of feel like I don't want to grow wheat.

I mean, I don't mind growing it for chickens if they're going to self-harvest it.

And they're going to leave me out of it.

That sounds great.

But if I go out and harvest wheat, then...

And you know, a lot of it is too.

A lot of my philosophies about a lot of foods have changed in the last three years since I've been doing the food as medicine stuff.

And it's like all grain and sugars on the naughty list.

And then there's a bunch of stuff that I normally grow that's on the naughty list.

And so it's like, oh, I'm going to grow more of these other things then.

But, okay.

Back to the whole grow what you eat.

I kind of feel like there's a lot of foods.

I mean, what I...

Another thing is, is like, if you can have...

So we're growing skeer at this year.

And parsnips. These are new for us.

We planted parsnips once before but they didn't take.

But this year we're putting more love into parsnips and skeer it to add into our winter harvest.

Because I kind of feel like a big part of when I watch this little video in a way...

I don't want to say a thing that's probably not true.

They are desperate to preserve their harvest.

Because if they don't, they won't have any food and winter.

Okay, I don't think that's really true.

I bet that they could just take money and go buy food.

They could subsist out of the grocery store.

Yeah.

But it's more fun to grow your own food.

And I kind of feel like if they had, let's say, six winter crops that they could harvest in December, January, February...

Then whatever food they preserve is for funzees, not out of desperation.

And desperation might be too strong of a word.

I mean, a lot of people are kind of getting very nervous about food systems coming up for political reasons.

I think it depends on how important it is to you.

Like to me, it's desperately important to eat my own food.

It's just something I really care about.

So I'm going to work really hard to make sure it happens.

If I have to go to the store, I will, but I don't want to.

I think another thing is that a good farmer's soil has 2% organic matter.

And a good gardener's soil has 10% organic matter.

Yours might be more like way above 10%.

It's pretty high in organic matter.

A lot of animals.

Yeah.

And it's like you go in your harvest and you're like, yeah, I got my food.

And it's like, hey, did you guys want the leftovers?

And it turns out they totally do.

And it's like, you know, while I'm here, I'm going to leave some fertilizer for next year.

So all right.

Grow what you eat.

And so I think that a lot of people eat pizza.

So I wonder if they grew dairies.

It's good to grow dairies.

It costs a lot of time.

It's a lot of work.

But it's also a lot of calories.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so because pizza has the cheese on it.

And so did they grow pepperonis?

I don't know.

I imagine that when they say we only grow what we eat.

Not that crazy hippie shit.

Then I imagine that they probably left out wheat.

I did see corn.

And then it's kind of like, OK, if you're going to grow field corn.

Then that's the kind that's going to do well being converted into.

Well, I was thinking more like corn meal.

Uh-huh.

Flunder or something like that, you know.

We grow a sweet corn.

And it is, I'm leaving on the stock.

Well, it just dries out and it grows and makes a great corn flour or meal to lenta.

Yeah.

So that one species or one variety does both.

And you can do vice versa too.

You can go field corn and eat it like fresh corn if you like.

OK.

Yeah.

That's great.

It just tastes a little different.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I did see corn corn.

I saw them do a lot of potatoes.

I saw them with a shelf like a wire shelf.

And the potatoes were all spread out the cure.

Yeah.

And I was kind of thinking like, OK, don't leave them like that.

You know, but usually just throw them in the root cellar.

Just pull them out of the ground and throw them right in because they don't really want them to change much.

Like they were in the dirt.

And I'm going to cover them with dirt.

So I just kind of sneak them in there so they don't notice.

But curing is interesting.

I don't actually do that.

OK.

OK.

And the idea is to dry off the skin so that they'll last longer in storage.

OK.

But I kind of wonder if potatoes would continue to do well if you kept them like, I've never tried this.

But like if you were to leave them in dirt or sand or something like that and then refrigerate them, like that would be kind of a lot of real estate in the fridge.

But you could have a root cellar.

Yeah.

I keep them in a barrel of straw and dirt in the root cellar.

And they stay great.

OK.

But it's cold.

Yeah.

It's going to be cold but not too cold because it seems like it will be ruined.

Yeah.

Then they turn to a weird mushy thing.

And then if they start to sprout at all, then they kind of turn into little shriveled things.

Yeah.

If they stay dark and cold, they don't sprout.

But as soon as you get them out and they see the light, they'll sprout.

Yeah.

OK.

But I just kind of feel like rather than we only grow what we eat, I want to suggest to eat what you grow.

And that's going to include like lamb's quarters, you know, which...

All your weeds that come up on their own.

You didn't have to do any work.

And if you learn what they are and learn what Todd eat them, you can just eat them.

Yeah.

It's a free garden.

Free food.

Yeah.

We went on a walk here at your place about a week ago.

And I just showed everybody all the stuff that's just out there for free, growing on its own.

And we made a huge bowl and a huge salad because it's so easy.

Yeah.

We grabbed some stuff to make the soup.

Yeah.

Just follow.

Look, there's...

Can we pull a daddy land?

Yeah.

We'll shove that in the soup, too.

There's tons of stuff out there that just comes up on its own, plantain, lamb's quarters.

That'll come up in a lot of places without anybody doing any work.

About two weeks ago, I read about...

Because we talk a lot about sunshooks.

And I read about Sakajui.

Oh, by the way, I want to say a thing.

Help me remember Sakajui and the sunshooks.

But about...

I'm going to guess it was 12 years ago, 11 years ago, 10 years ago, something like that.

We were playing Pinyani poker at this table.

Uh-huh.

And I got my little mug, my little Mel St. Helens, Ash mug.

And I've got a bunch of coins in there so we can play Pinyani poker.

So some people can buy in for a dollar.

And I put the dollar in the mug and give them a dollar and change or whatever.

But somebody showed up and they were all bold as brass.

Uh-huh.

And I am not a good poker player.

I just...

For some reason, some twisted reason, I just like Pinyani poker.

But somebody brought Sakajui dollars.

They brought three Sakajui dollars.

And at the end of the night, I had all three.

Nice.

And I was very proud of those.

And I just left my little mug out here in the kitchen with a little sheet of the variations of Pinyani poker.

And that we would play.

We made up a couple.

We made up one.

It's called Black Locust.

Yeah.

And so I wanted to describe it for you.

But that would be...

That's another day.

I don't know if anybody cares.

But...

So one day, we're going to play Pinyani poker.

And I wanted to show people my three Sakajui dollars that I'm so very proud of.

And they weren't there.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

But that's part of community living.

Sometimes somebody needs the money more and that's gone.

So I'm going to ask for Christmas this year for Sakajui dollars.

I really like the Sakajui dollars.

I'm very proud of Sakajui.

I've got some Native American, but it's a different tribe.

Uh-huh.

But Sakajui came through here, right here.

And so part of...

Now I'm remembering to go back.

When she brought Lewis and Clark through Missoula.

Down the Clark Ford River.

Yes.

Then they were...

They were hungry.

Yeah.

And she harvested sun chokes on the way.

She found them here.

They were here.

When Lewis and Clark were here.

And when the Native food people go all crazy, they draw the line at when Lewis and Clark came through.

Oh really?

So if the food was here before Lewis and Clark.

Yeah.

It is perfect and flawless and native.

If it arrived after Lewis and Clark, it's evil and invasive.

And so...

It was a really good record of what Lewis and Clark found because they took extremely good notes.

Well, there's a bit of that.

Yeah.

And there's other ways.

I guess there's some things been around a while.

If it's like Lewis's woodpecker or the Clarks, not cracker or any of those animals that are named for them.

It's been here a while.

There is a lot of truth to that.

There's a lot of truth to that.

And of course, I've written about this extensively.

And the key is that now we've all been eating a lot of sun chokes.

I think a year ago, I was doing food as medicine and I worked the sun chokes in.

I was eating sun chokes every day.

But right now, I'm right today, I'm going to start eating sun chokes again.

And we'll see how my health does.

But a bunch of ridiculous silly crap.

Okay.

This all started with the whole idea of eat what you grow versus grow what you eat.

And I feel very passionately about, oh, one more angle.

When you grow what you eat, then you're kind of saying, okay, here's foods that I eat because this is what I can get at the grocery store.

And or at the restaurant or something like that.

So therefore, this is what I eat.

And which is, I think for most Americans, it's going to be tacos, pizza, and hamburgers.

I mean, maybe there's Chinese food in there somewhere.

That's a challenge.

Like you're trying to grow food the way that you're already eating from the store.

That is going to be a challenging project.

A lot of things that it's going to be a lot easier to grow them.

You know, garden stuff like sun chokes or walking onions that don't take any work at all.

So if you can work that into your diet, I think it'll be easier than trying to match how you eat out of the grocery store to the garden lifestyle.

Yeah. So the grocery store isn't going to have sun chokes because they go,

once you bring them in, they go soft in about three days.

I have them at the proper grocery stores.

They have them at the good food store.

Oh, yeah.

You know, all the organic grocery stores.

And I think those, you can plant those.

You can't.

Yeah, you can.

And I kind of wonder what they do because when we bring them in, they go soft.

But maybe they're keeping them really wet the whole time.

Probably cold.

We've done that technique where you wash them off nice and put them in a glass,

a big jar of water with some salt in it.

And they live in the fridge just fine.

Yeah.

And I had some in a little baggie of dirt for two years in my refrigerator.

And I took them out in the garden and that's what I grew last year.

They did great.

So there are ways.

It can be done.

Yeah.

It can be done.

But I think that, in fact,

it's my whole life is so frustrating because I try to talk about solutions to global problems.

And it seems like, and I would have said, a couple of years ago, I would have said 99%.

But now I really think it's like 99.99%.

Cannot hear it.

Like it just, it sounds so crazy.

It's like, I must be wearing a tinfoil hat and pissing on their shoes.

And like pushing a shopping cart around, singing off-key or something.

Like doing the things that are like repelling people.

And it's like rocking ass heaters, the, you know, grow your own food.

You know, all of this kind of stuff.

I mean, there's a lot of gardeners out there.

Yeah.

But I kind of feel like the kind of gardening that I advocate.

This is another thing too.

And I think I'm not sure if we've addressed it in the podcast before.

But it has, it is 99.9% of the people out there that actively garden.

They are utterly certain of two things.

One, cheaper to buy food at the grocery store.

I disagree.

I think that's the one you call food.

And well, okay.

And the other is, is that it takes so much time to grow your own food.

That if you were to go work a job at McDonald's and use that money to buy the food,

you would be way ahead in hours.

Are you talking about growing and processing and preserving all the food?

They might be.

They might be.

But see, I think once you started adding in the preserving, you know, anything because that

counts for time and money.

And for a lot of people, it's kind of like, oh, look, I made strawberry jam.

Half of what's in that jar is sugar I bought at the store.

And I had a job for that.

Yeah.

Hi, this is Mark.

There are a lot of reasons to get angry these days.

But I prefer to focus on the positive things that we each can do to make this world a better place.

The book, building a better world in your backyard, instead of being angry at bad guys,

is a great resource for just that.

Instead of throwing my arms up in frustration at governments or big corporations,

there's a list of ideas that we each can tackle to affect change.

Information about this book and other resources can be found at permis.com.

So, I kind of feel like, whereas, like, and sun chokes is my go-to example,

with sun chokes, the amount of time it takes to go get the sun chokes and bring them in

is less than the amount of time it would take to go to the store.

Well, I think we filled the bucket in under five minutes.

And we only stopped getting them because the bucket was full.

I mean, I didn't even get all of what was in one plant.

So, oh, yeah, the bucket was full.

I would say, A, we took far more than we needed.

And B, you're saying five minutes.

I'm thinking, like, I think it was under three.

Well, like, from leaving the house to getting back.

Oh, going out the front door.

And it's like, how about that?

Okay.

You're climbing up here.

You're going to go closer with bare feet.

And then I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

I'm going to turn on my baby on my phone.

Just hold that pose while I find the buttons to push.

And then you got the onions.

And that, you know, they just walk over and pick some because you have too many.

So, you might as well pull some out.

Oh, man.

Okay.

Let's suppose we had 20 people here.

If we had those 20 people eat just walking onions and sun jokes and nothing else,

how long until we run out of sun jokes and walking onions?

I don't know that you would.

That's exactly what I was thinking too.

It would be not possible.

Like 50 people, maybe in a couple of years.

Yeah, because they keep coming up.

Like I pulled a walking onion while I was trying to get the sun jokes.

The top of the walking onion had fallen and it was growing new onions.

Like, yeah, you can't keep up with them.

Everything within 20 feet of the door, we just keep pulling all the onions and walking,

all the walking onions and sun jokes out of the ground.

And they just keep making more.

And it's like, well, we got like acres of this stuff.

Well, in a sun joke, if you don't harvest it the first year,

this goes deeper and gets bigger.

So, like, the more you don't happen to harvest it,

and it will fill in, like, I had something that I didn't harvest.

And it filled in this whole area.

There was no dirt even between the sun jokes.

It was just solid food because I had an harvest of it.

So, all right.

I want everybody to eat what they grow instead of grow what they eat.

I think that the food that you get at the grocery store,

a lot of it is grown because it is shelf stable or it's transportation stable.

They need to be able to transport it.

And even if it's like going to be canned or frozen or something,

they got to get it from the field to the place that's going to do that.

And it can be a long haul.

And it needs to be able to make that trip.

And then also they pick varieties where it all comes on at once

because they harvest it with big machinery.

There's so many ways in which the choices of food that you have are diminished.

Because of, like, the processing, it's got all happened at the same time.

It's got to be done with the machine.

It has to be recognizable so that it's for sale.

So, they have to know when they plant that it will be sold.

And that they'll make enough money to go another year as a farmer.

So, they're not going to necessarily try something new.

They're going to try something they have a market for.

So, there's a lot of places where, you know, like if you were to buy broccoli at the store,

that's one variety of broccoli.

Maybe in a fancy store they have broccoli knee.

But that's it.

Where you go into a seed catalog and there's probably 30 or 40 varieties.

Like, what did you want?

And those are things that you would only get to have if you grow them yourself.

Or find a farmer's market, maybe.

Okay.

So, I want to, I'm going to call it good on that one.

I got two more topics I want to cover.

I want to, I want to, recently, I have had thoughts about a different way of thinking about the bootcamp.

Yeah.

And then, so that's one of two.

And then two of two is that I went to an Earth Day thing on Sunday.

And I want to share thoughts about that.

So, okay.

The bootcamp, I think that what, what did it, the Gardening Gardener's program?

I think that what it, what it's one way of looking at it is that it is an attempt to build community.

But only, but it's like an order to be able to mitigate resentments.

Everybody has to bring something substantial to the table.

And I kind of feel like there's a lot of communities out there where people buy in or they join or whatever.

And it says, okay, everybody has to put in four hours per month of helping us to develop our community.

And the feedback I've had is that a substantial percentage don't for one reason or another.

And then, so now, if they don't, somebody has to now be the don't police.

Man, that's a terrible job.

And so, and, and it's kind of like, okay, because if you don't have the don't police, then you have powerful resentments and resentments are poisoned on community.

Yeah, because some people do and they feel kind of it's kind of a bummer to be like working and somebody else is just lounging on the couch and doing nothing and being idle.

It just kind of feels crummy.

Right.

To be the one who wants to do the work and actually accomplish things and get things done and be awesome and fast.

And the person that's that's didn't come, they said, oh, I couldn't because.

And then the person that did do the work is like, what a lying sack of shit.

You're really expecting to believe that. I mean, we know what you were doing. We saw you.

So we know that that's a lie.

And so it all kind of.

Anyway, so there's there's a bit of that.

And I kind of feel like this is a flavor where the so here, the boot camp, the gardening gardeners program.

Is that everybody is putting in 40 hours a week under direction.

And it's like, and I think it's pretty easy, especially the first couple of weeks.

And so.

But people, I mean, if nothing else, attendance is perfect.

I mean, we've had some people where they got sick or.

And we do have a potency of like it's, it's like you're eight.

If you're going to be sick, you better put on a good show.

There better be some puke in or something.

And so, but, but it's about the resentment since about because if everybody goes out.

And they put in the full boot day.

And they were there with great attendance. And they put in some effort.

Then it's like, there's no resentment.

Yeah.

Everybody feels great.

And that's, that's what builds community.

And it's like, okay, so the idea is to build community out of people who respect.

Building.

And so whether it's building gardens or building bunks or whatever.

And I and I does seem like there's a lot of enthusiasm more every year.

A lot of enthusiasm for pure wood projects and round wood projects.

And so, one of the things that we've been talking about the last few days is like,

let's make a wood rack that is pure wood and round wood.

And because all of the wood, all the firewood racks that we have now are all

dimensional lumber held together with screws.

And so, one thing is, is you want your firewood off the ground.

And so, it seems like the sticks need to go down to the ground.

And then there's going to be cross pieces to hold it up.

But it's like, depending on how you do it, when you put the firewood in,

it's going to try to push the horizontal out.

And so, I came up with an idea of like, well, what if you put really thick pieces,

really thick round wood at the bottom, and you cut in some really deep saddles?

Then the weight of the wood on top pushes down.

And if it's sitting on horizontal with deep saddles that are going over the pin pieces,

won't it keep it?

So basically, you could take it all apart and put it all back together again,

and it'll hold all the firewood.

And it's gravity that holds it together.

When you have, when it's full of firewood, if you jiggle it,

it'll become tighter.

That'd be cool.

Yeah.

And so, no screws, no glue, all round wood.

So, we're getting really good at it.

But all right, the key is that I think that it's about building community.

And it's about building community out of people who wish to contribute,

who wish to travel this path.

And then, of course, it ends up being kind of money list,

but I mean, like certain, some people have a belt thread going.

And so, I know that a lot of people listening to the podcast look at the belt threads

and see every day a bunch of pictures about what's being worked on and stuff.

Those are really cool.

That's how I find out what's going on all the time.

Oh, wait, you took a picture of it.

I saw it.

So, anyway, this is, I don't know, I have not yet come up with the right words

for how to say the thing I'm trying to say.

I feel like I need to improve my poetry.

Instead of thing this morning about, it's like 20 people living together

to help each other live off grid.

Because it's hard to do it alone.

But if you can find folks to do it with, then everything is easier.

I think that, yeah, this is also going to be like,

if you try to do a home sitting on your own, I think...

It's hard.

Especially if you have a lot of ambition and you want to make all your own stuff

and do all your stuff and grow all your own food.

And it's just you or just your family.

It's a lot.

It's really, really hard.

But if you just had a few friends who are willing to help

and then you get a few more friends, everything gets easier.

So, yeah, if you're doing it on your own, it really sucks the joy out.

And now, and now you just live in the country

and you were living in the city and you were angry.

Now you're in the country and you're angry.

Well, then all your friends want to be like,

hey, do you want to go out and like hang out?

Are you kidding?

I'm an hour away.

Who hangs out?

There's so much stuff to do.

Do you want to come hang out with me?

And that will be do stuff.

Yeah.

So, and I kind of like the idea of like the bootcamp.

There's no...

The bootcamp only works on stuff when it's easy and delightful.

And so, now granted...

There's a little different than the do-it-yourself home center.

You have to work on stuff when it's top of priority, absolute emergency.

That's when you work on it.

And the DIY home center oftentimes also has to go to their work-y job still.

Oh, yeah.

And then a lot of them...

Oh, that's going to have to wait while you do your job.

And then it's just more work when you get home.

Yeah.

You know, what a mess.

What a mess.

So, I'm working on that.

I'm trying to come up with ways to talk about what is gardening gardeners, what is the bootcamp.

And it is a group of people trying to help each other build a future off-grid, really.

And so, I got to come up with words for that.

The last thing, maybe, and maybe it'll be the last thing we'll see.

So, a few days ago, I went into Missoula to an Earth Day event.

I was not asked to be a speaker.

And which is fine.

That's totally fine.

And so, I just went there as an attendee.

I kind of wanted to see the love.

I mean, I kind of feel like I'm permeated every day as Earth Day.

And we do this.

This is what we do all the time.

And so, I went to the event to just see the people and see the things.

So, I arrived and they had a cob oven that they were firing up.

They were going to make pizza.

So, it was filling the neighborhood with smoke.

And, of course, I think, use a rock oven.

Now, if you're going to use a cob oven, there's a double chamber cob oven,

which has, like, much less smoke.

Right.

But they add up standard cob oven.

Oh, just loading the neighborhood with smoke.

Just that is a lot of smoke.

So, give a good name to the cob oven or the permaculture or anything.

Have you ever seen a cob oven getting warmed up?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, can you verify a lot of smoke?

I think it depends on the materials.

It's really dry wood and not used bark and used, you know, be careful about the material and you care.

But, yeah, otherwise, it is going to be a smoky mess.

But it just kind of gives a bad name to all of that.

So, I remember something about how Native Americans would use a very particular kind of wood.

I think it was service berry.

Is it a service berry that burns really clean?

But, okay.

Anyway, they're going to use whatever they can get their hands on.

Yeah.

And they did use whatever they could get their hands on.

It was so smoky.

But I've seen, I have a video that I've put up of Ianto Evans with a cob oven.

Yeah.

And that was a smoke show.

That was like, you know, I think smoke show is a word that means something else.

I'm not sure.

So, as I say, smoky.

It was so smoky.

It was just billowing enormous amounts of smoke.

But he was out in the country.

He's way out in the know-wares.

I would think he wanted to be as smokeless as possible when you do that.

So, maybe that's a little bit of the skill.

But I think the double chamber makes it just so much easier.

The rocket oven is smokeless.

It's smokeless and it's easier and better in every way.

Yeah.

So, all right.

I'm glad that's okay.

Yes, they had a smokey oven.

It went hard.

It was the whole event to me was kind of heartbreaking.

And I almost bit my tongue clean off because I was biting my tongue so much.

But I felt like I'm here to observe.

I'm not here.

And I don't.

And I kind of feel like almost everything that I felt or wanted to say just would be poison on their event.

And so, I'm just, it's like the cob oven.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Look at all that fucking smoke.

What the fuck?

But they're so proud of themselves.

You know, we're going to make pizza with just burdens of wood.

And they burn a fuck ton of wood because that's everything to do.

You're going to do a cob oven.

I would have to say almost every pizza I've seen made in a cob oven does two big things.

First, three hours of warming up the oven, smoking out the neighborhood.

That's step one.

Step two.

You got to leave some coals in the back of the oven while you're cooking.

So, it's a black oven.

It's not a white oven.

So, the pizza that comes out is going to be a little, it's going to have, it's going to have like some ash and some black bits on it.

It's a, yeah, a little smoky.

It's going to, yeah, because that's everything, too, is once, once the pizza's in there, you're going to cork it.

Yeah.

And now your burnables aren't getting enough air.

Yeah.

And so, now it's going to smoke.

And it's going to be, it's going to be smoked.

Pizza.

So, so, pizza, we're one of the toppings is carcinogens.

So, and now everything in my mind is about carcinogens everywhere for reasons.

Okay.

So, if you tried to share with those people the rocket oven, there'd be too many steps above where they are to get it.

Do you think?

I would just be raining on their parade.

They are feeling joy at this.

Because they made a thing, which is really cool, feeling of my made a thing.

And I'm using it.

This is happy.

It's made out of cob.

That's so cool.

And so, there's definitely a high cool factor of making a thing out of cob and using it and like, look, it works.

It works.

I didn't use natural gas.

I didn't use propane.

I didn't use electricity.

I just used some sticks that were just lying around on the ground.

Yeah.

So, they're very proud.

Yeah.

And I don't, and I'll grant it.

I can make more pizza with what maybe about, I'm going to, I'm going to make a guess here about 140th of the wood.

Well, in the time, right?

I mean, it only takes a few minutes to get your rocket pizza oven up to temperature.

Yeah.

Like, maybe 10 at the most.

Yeah.

And then you just keep putting sticks in as you can have a thermometer.

And so, if you need it a little warmer, add a couple more sticks.

But it doesn't take hardly any wood.

And there's zero smoke in the cooking area ever.

Your food never is in a smoky environment.

And the thing itself doesn't smoke.

So, one of the events, it's going to be like a half day long.

Six hour thing or whatever.

So, I showed up at the beginning.

Oh.

Because I'm old and apparently this is what old people do.

Because we always show up at the beginning.

You guys do your party and later.

But they're like a series of talks and things like that.

And one of the things that they were going to do was about darning socks.

So, Opalyn was here a couple of months ago and she taught us a whole bunch of things

and she taught me how to darn socks.

So, now, and I didn't find out that, you know, you get this little thing called an egg.

And it's like, this must be for people with tiny feet.

And so, I went and I bought a big wood ball.

Cool.

And I put that in my sock and I use that instead.

And so, this was, so, when Opalyn taught me how to do it, I was using the egg.

And it was like challenging because for me, it's like they don't even make my socks anymore.

And so, I got the, it used to be the Maggies Organics.

And they had socks that were like 3XL.

And so, that's what I would get.

But now they don't make them anymore.

And so, and everything else I could find is like got a lot of plastics and rubbers and stuff in it.

So, it's like, okay, I'm going to try to, you know, I'm going to darn these socks to keep them, you know, for what I need.

All right.

So, Opalyn taught me how to do it.

And then I got the, so I went, so this is what I went in to this event.

I'm thinking like, okay, they're going to have this half hour long darn your socks thing.

And so, I brought my sock darning gear and four socks.

And I was just kind of, so while I'm sitting there waiting and looking at all the smoke pouring out of the cup of them,

I start to darn my first sock.

And throughout the event, I kind of kept darning trying to keep myself occupied and to shut the fuck up.

I'm reminding myself every 10 seconds to shut the fuck up.

But, there was a presentation where a woman said,

does anybody know?

For us in Montana, what is the biggest carbon footprint?

Heat, home heat.

I said it. She asked.

It's home heat.

Anybody else?

And somebody said cars and somebody said something else and somebody.

And she said, it's home heat.

So it was like she didn't even hear you.

Well, she was, she wanted, so then she kind of gave me the credit for saying it's home heat.

Like, I got it right.

Lucky gas giant man and overall.

Lucky gas.

Then she went on her campaign about electrification.

But it needs to get off of natural gas and switch to electric heat.

The most inefficient way to create heat.

The biggest carbon footprint of them all.

Now ground granted, if you switch to the in ground heat pump,

it'll cut your electric bill by 70%.

But of course, that's $35,000.

Like, if you ever hang out with somebody like, I thought one of those houses,

like their house isn't warm, it's like, okay.

So, but they're still polluting like crazy.

And they're loud.

Yeah, I mean, is this the thing you have here?

And they break down.

Wait, nicer.

I think, I wish to express, I was proud of myself.

I did not say rocket mass heater even once.

What?

Now, I'm trying to not rain on their parade.

Poor heat people and they haven't even heard of a rocket mass heater.

And it'll just sound crazy to them.

And this is kind of realizing, this is my life.

I am the crazy guy.

I, the only people who might think I'm only a little crazy or not crazy,

are listening to this podcast right now.

All seven of them.

Well, a rocket mass heater, to me, is the best in the whole world.

And you can be as warm as you want, so quickly,

and doesn't use hardly any wood.

I mean, I ran your heater this morning, and it was, I think it was two handfuls of kindling.

All I put in there, and then I forgot to feed it.

And the fire went out, and it's like, well, whatever, it's already 72 degrees in here.

I guess, I guess we're done.

Yeah.

I mean, we do have like, we're kind of getting to the end of our big experiment.

Tell us about your experience.

Yeah, I should, I don't know if I've shared this,

but we're trying to heat this building all winter with nothing but cardboard,

and paper garbage, and woody garbage.

And then branches you got within 100 feet of your front door.

So, I think that first box, which is what I was pulling out of,

I think that's what they swept up off of the shop floor.

Yeah, it just looks like, like, forest and wood debris.

I've learned before grabbing a handful of that to put on my gloves,

because otherwise, I'll be picking slivers out.

That's a little stabby.

Yeah, it's a lot of pine needles.

Yeah, all that stuff.

That's great.

Put on my gloves.

I grab a handful of that.

But first, you know, I got a box, like a, I don't know, three or four days ago,

and it had that paper stuffing on the inside,

and that's what I started the fire with this morning,

because you came out, I think, after I'd already had the fire going.

Yeah.

And so, we're kind of, we're out of cardboard.

We have used up all of our cardboard.

Wow.

But on the other hand, like we went, probably a good five days without a fire,

and then we've hit a cold spell.

And so then it's like, oh, a couple of cardboard boxes piled up.

No problem.

So I rip them up, throw them in there,

and then grab handfuls of the, the woody debris.

I think, you know, shop floor sweepings.

One of them had some branchy looking things in it,

but it's down to one stick now.

And one of them's got, like, wood shop scraps,

like things that are too tiny to be made into something.

That's what I was using this morning.

Oh, is that what it's like?

Okay.

All right.

All right.

I know it's really nice when they do the round wood stuff,

and they've got that mortise tool,

and it kind of shaves off the outside of a stick,

and it makes these beautiful shavings.

And then they throw that into a crate and bring it up here,

so that it sit on the, um, the mask for like a couple of weeks.

But when you go to burn it,

boy, does that burn nice?

Yeah.

So, but we've made it through the entire winter

with nothing but cardboard and garbagey things.

You heated your regular home.

That's not crazy insulated.

It's just a regular house.

Yeah.

We're free, basically for free,

because you didn't buy anything,

and the Amazon boxes come on their own.

And the branches fall off the trees on their own.

You just have to pick them up.

You know, and the big cardboard bounty is,

is when we get a package from Thrive Market.

Oh, really?

I don't know if you ever shopped with them.

But boy, did they use a lot of paper and cardboard

to make sure everything is safe.

Uh-huh.

And it's like, okay, this is,

this is going to heat my house for a day.

Wow, that's really cool.

It's a lot.

And it's like, so I imagine somebody's like,

that's too much.

And it's like, that's why I'm by me.

Yeah.

That's really cool.

All right.

Anyway.

So there you go.

There's, there's, there's a,

there's a, there's a, there's a,

there's three things that I mentioned that the,

the, the Earth Day event,

I got to say there was like eight people

who were putting on the event.

Uh-huh.

I think that there were eight people attending the event.

Oh.

Yeah.

Like, when you go to the Saturday market in Mizzoula,

there'll be eight thousand people.

I mean, like, they counted.

It's literally eight thousand five hundred people

attend every Saturday.

Yeah.

And there's like 300 booths.

So I thought the Earth Day event will be packed.

And it was like not packed.

And so, uh, I don't know, what's up with that?

And, and as much as I wanted to transform it

to the Paul Wheaton show,

I kind of think everything I had to say

would probably have been a little overwhelming.

Like rock and mass heaters are a good level five

kind of thing.

Yeah.

And if those are like level one people,

level five is too crazy.

So, all right.

My bladder tells me it's time to end the podcast.

If you like this sort of thing,

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where it's Earth Day, every day.

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