[SPEAKER_02]: That's sort of the direction some of these next projects are taking, which is really helping children and families in schools.
[SPEAKER_02]: grow things and just learn that relationship that we can have that transcends all the other things is just knowing that you can cut out so many other things when you just grow this nappy and eat this nappy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And these things feel so impossible until you just start doing them.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really just a matter of just start doing them.
[SPEAKER_04]: You're listening to the Good Dirt Podcast.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is a place where we dig into the nitty-gritty of sustainable living through food, fashion, and lifestyle.
[SPEAKER_05]: And we're your host, Mary and Emma Kingsley, the mother and daughter founder team of Lady Farmer.
[SPEAKER_05]: We're sewing seeds of slow living through our community platform, events, and online marketplace.
[SPEAKER_04]: We started this podcast as a means to share the wealth of information and quality conversations that we're having in our world as we dream up and deliver ways for each of us to live into the new paradigm.
[SPEAKER_05]: One that is regenerative, balanced, and whole.
[SPEAKER_05]: We want to put the microphone in front of the voices that need to be heard the most right now.
[SPEAKER_05]: The farmers, the dreamers, the designers and the doers.
[SPEAKER_03]: So come call to be a better world with us.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're so glad you're here.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now let's dig in.
[SPEAKER_05]: Good morning Emma.
[SPEAKER_05]: Hi.
[SPEAKER_05]: So Emma this morning I thought it might be good for us to reflect back on the last
[SPEAKER_05]: week or two, how we experience slow living in the midst of so many things happening all around us.
[SPEAKER_05]: We've had a lot of events here in the last couple of weeks and it's important and interesting to reflect back and see how do we experience slow living even in the midst of all of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a great question.
[SPEAKER_04]: For me, I think through everything that I've learned in the past few years, especially doing this podcast and talking to all these amazing people,
[SPEAKER_04]: For me, it really comes down to being in the present moment.
[SPEAKER_04]: So as much as I can, if I'm starting to feel stressed or overwhelmed, especially by everything that's going on in the greater world, I come to the present moment and I try to find something outside to look at or I try to get outside and breathe deeply and
[SPEAKER_04]: just coming back to the present moment.
[SPEAKER_04]: It seems so tight and simple, but it really does make such a difference.
[SPEAKER_04]: The more that you do that, the more a little space that you create, then you let in room for like really grand, wonderful ideas.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like the ones that we talk about every week here.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: It just really means trying to turn off my monkey brain.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like meditating.
[SPEAKER_05]: So, you know, the past is past and we don't even have the future yet.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right?
[SPEAKER_05]: It's not even guaranteed.
[SPEAKER_05]: The wisdom is that the president is all we have.
[SPEAKER_05]: The way I try to seize the slow living moments, even in the midst of everything, is taking a walk, feeling the air.
[SPEAKER_05]: I was just out front and noticing the blue chickery flowers are still in bloom.
[SPEAKER_05]: They show up in the morning.
[SPEAKER_05]: I was so happy to walk out there and see them.
[SPEAKER_05]: They're so cheerful and just so, there's so many of them.
[SPEAKER_05]: They're all over our front paddock.
[SPEAKER_05]: So do you mean they show up in the morning and then they like go away every day?
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, that's sweet.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: So if you're not out there at the right time, a day you miss them.
[SPEAKER_05]: But I caught them today and it's really delightful.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's sweet.
[SPEAKER_04]: And are the chickery flowers?
[SPEAKER_04]: Is that the same chickery plant?
[SPEAKER_04]: That's like,
[SPEAKER_04]: and the coffee in New Orleans.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I believe so.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's fun.
[SPEAKER_05]: I might be wrong about that, but I think it is at the same point.
[SPEAKER_04]: Anyways, this is fun.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're here today.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're actually in the same room for those listening who might not know.
[SPEAKER_04]: We usually record separately.
[SPEAKER_04]: I am at my house in DC usually and my mom is here at the farm, but this morning we're both here at the farm and it's lovely to sit in the same room and chat.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is a special intro recording because this will be our last intro for a while.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're not going to be super specific about timing because we're not actually sure, but we are going to be specific that we know we're going to come back.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's going to be sometime in the new year and hopefully earlier than later, but we can't make any promises.
[SPEAKER_04]: But like the little chickery flower outside that blooms and then needs to go away and like everything in nature needs to have a little break.
[SPEAKER_04]: We are going to take us about to call the rest of the year on the podcast on publishing.
[SPEAKER_04]: We've taken little breaks in the past and for a long time listeners, you might notice that we've kind of been slowing down in recent
[SPEAKER_04]: weeks and months by publishing new interviews every other week.
[SPEAKER_04]: But with just everything going on, we are going to do a grand experiment, really turn it down and we just have some quiet.
[SPEAKER_04]: So there won't be anything published over the next few months.
[SPEAKER_04]: What this means for us is on RN, we're going to have a lot more time and bandwidth to really
[SPEAKER_04]: root down and dig deep and dream up all of the things that we want to be exploring here that we haven't had the mental capacity to look at.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're going to be reading and being inspired and we still want to hear from you guys.
[SPEAKER_05]: We've been doing the podcast since January, twenty twenty and that first year we had an episode every other week and then
[SPEAKER_05]: the next year to twenty twenty one we started a weekly episode published on Fridays and for a long stretch of those were all new interviews for years probably year no when the baby was born last year we started utilizing some of the past episodes which has really been I've really enjoyed that going back and visiting our past guests and reaching back out to them and seeing where they are
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, there's over two hundred episodes.
[SPEAKER_05]: So that's a, that's a lot of great stuff in there.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I've really enjoyed mining that.
[SPEAKER_05]: But now it's become a more apparent to both of us that as all things evolve, we really want the podcast.
[SPEAKER_05]: to evolve.
[SPEAKER_05]: We have new ideas.
[SPEAKER_05]: We have exciting things we want to explore, but you really need to step back and let that stuff percolate.
[SPEAKER_05]: Percolate, germinate, incubate.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, germinate, incubates better.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was, you know, lady farmer.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, these things need space.
[SPEAKER_05]: Just like, just like the seeds in the ground.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: The bears and the caves.
[SPEAKER_04]: Hi, we're dating animals.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, these things need time and space and pause.
[SPEAKER_05]: We talk about that all the time.
[SPEAKER_05]: We talk about observing how you feel.
[SPEAKER_05]: And we feel like we want more time.
[SPEAKER_05]: We want more time.
[SPEAKER_05]: And we went to explore other aspects of the good dirt.
[SPEAKER_05]: Of the good dirt.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're not going anywhere.
[SPEAKER_04]: We are not taking a pause.
[SPEAKER_04]: I've been calling it a sabbatical.
[SPEAKER_04]: That sounds right to me.
[SPEAKER_04]: time to step away and see what emerges.
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, I'm so excited.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's lots of things that I want to dig into.
[SPEAKER_04]: In our time away and come back refreshed and full and it might look structurally different.
[SPEAKER_04]: We might be doing shorter seasons of releases.
[SPEAKER_04]: We might be doing different formats of episodes besides just interviews.
[SPEAKER_04]: All of these things that we thought about a lot and versus just so excited to piece it all together.
[SPEAKER_05]: I just became a grandmother for the second time.
[SPEAKER_05]: I just named aunt for the first time.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes, this happened earlier this week.
[SPEAKER_05]: And just more than ever, it gives us a chance to recognize what needs to be happening now, what needs to be paused for now.
[SPEAKER_05]: and how we want to proceed.
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, we're at the height of summer right now.
[SPEAKER_05]: The flowers are at their height.
[SPEAKER_05]: The plants, the foliage, everything is just bursting, just bursting with life.
[SPEAKER_05]: You just squat there and it's just a surge of a life force.
[SPEAKER_05]: And it's so exciting.
[SPEAKER_05]: But at the same time, there's that little bit in the air that let you know that
[SPEAKER_05]: Things have shifted, there's a little tinge of autumn in the atmosphere.
[SPEAKER_05]: And it tells us that the season is changing.
[SPEAKER_05]: Things are going to be winding down, slowing down, moving into the dormancy of winter.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so we're taking a cue from that.
[SPEAKER_05]: With this episode, we're winding down, slowing down, and we're going to be taking a pause on the good dirt podcast after
[SPEAKER_04]: Just about six years here, we admit we didn't actually plan this out too much, but it turns out to be a great episode to pause on because for this reason our dear friend, Janna, who is a long time listener of the good dirt, has become a dear friend since being a listener, reached out to us and said, hey, I love your podcast and inspired me to start this early childhood education program.
[SPEAKER_04]: We had her on a little while ago to tell us about her program, Earth Friends.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we have just recently had a conversation with her again as a follow-up to see where that has developed and where that has gone.
[SPEAKER_04]: And this conversation really became a wonderful sort of reminder for us about just what it means to go out and do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: be it and live the good dirt.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so it feels very apropos that we would be pausing on this episode, leaving you all with these words.
[SPEAKER_04]: So for those unfamiliar with Janna or Nita refresher, let me want to introduce her.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes, so, Jenna is founder of We Are Earth Friends, which is an environmental education program designed for children ages three to eight.
[SPEAKER_05]: And yes, we first expected Jenna about a year and a half ago, which was an earlier phase of the Earth Friends project that is really great to circle back.
[SPEAKER_05]: to see how that is evolved and also to hear about the progress of the food forest that she and her husband have been working on it.
[SPEAKER_05]: There's a bourbon home in New Jersey.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's just so exciting to hear a talk about that.
[SPEAKER_05]: And we didn't really realize it at the time, as Emma said, but in listening back, it's apparent how this conversation really sets the perfect tone for this pause as we prepare for the next phase of the good dirt.
[SPEAKER_05]: Because, like so many viral listeners, Jana really lives out her passion for the earth and everything she does from her work and environmental education to her home and her table.
[SPEAKER_05]: And actually the very rhythm of her family life.
[SPEAKER_05]: Our mission at Lady Farmer has always been since the very beginning to encourage everyone that there's a better way for us to live on the planet.
[SPEAKER_05]: We have so many choices that can impact our own existence now and the future for every child coming along to take us forward on this human journey we're all on.
[SPEAKER_05]: So we hope you'll listen into this lively discussion about all the lady farmer things and all the ways and reasons for us to care about the good dirt and we're so grateful again for all of your interest and support and please be assured there will be more in the meantime
[SPEAKER_05]: You can subscribe to the Almanac, our online community and sub-stack.
[SPEAKER_05]: You can get our newsletter there.
[SPEAKER_05]: You can get articles, updates, and announcements to see what we're up to.
[SPEAKER_05]: And again, please continue to write in at our email, thegooddirtpodcast at gmail.com or call us and leave a voice now at four, four, three, four, five, nine, one, nine, five, oh.
[SPEAKER_05]: Love all your thoughts and suggestions and ideas.
[SPEAKER_05]: Tell us what you'd like to hear more of on this platform.
[SPEAKER_05]: But for now, here's our wonderful conversation with Janahawk and Joss, founder of We Are Earth Friends.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you, everyone.
[SPEAKER_05]: We'll be back.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hi, I am Janahawk and Joss, and I'm really glad to be here today with both of you and Emma.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm coming in from
[SPEAKER_02]: The Jersey Shore, so specifically South Jersey, a little town called Pine Beach.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's about a block from a river and
[SPEAKER_02]: twenty minutes from the ocean, which is why I love it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_02]: But also what's really exciting about where we live in New Jersey is its right next to the pine barons.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I don't know if anyone's familiar with the pine barons ecosystem, but it's one of the largest forests on the eastern seaboard.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's extremely biodiverse.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I feel like it's a little bit understated because the first time I learned about the pine barons, I was a New Yorker to living in New York City for a while.
[SPEAKER_02]: Jersey was like that, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Bridges double.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here I am.
[SPEAKER_02]: I look here.
[SPEAKER_02]: But all I knew about the pine bearings is there was a Jersey devil and then it was haunted and full of like backwards people.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's so the opposite.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just this beautiful ecosystem of trees and people and just generations of
[SPEAKER_02]: people here in South Jersey that really truly know and care about this land.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's like a lot we can learn from when we look at some of where we have the oldest forest or the lakes.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there whatever, who are the people who've been living around them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, indigenous cultures, absolutely, but just all the people who've been
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say like stewarding and tending to this land and sometimes honestly it's like a lot of hunters and fishermen that care a lot yeah along have you lived in this area I've lived here since
[SPEAKER_02]: March of twenty one, technically January of twenty twenty, just not in this house.
[SPEAKER_02]: So my thing is from Central Jersey, East Brunswick, but I'm from Western P.A.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm from like the countryside.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, country.
[SPEAKER_04]: So this, getting to know this land and this place is if relatively recent.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, yeah, we've gone on just some short hikes because I have a five-year-old in a three-year-old.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was only extended so long.
[SPEAKER_02]: So then you throw a golden retriever puppy into the mix which we have now and still gets more chaotic.
[SPEAKER_02]: But just discovering just the land.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's all kinds of, it's a very, it's a wetland.
[SPEAKER_02]: environment.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's cranberry bugs that go back for centuries.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's just all kinds of history with the land and the people here.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's pretty cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so many birds species and so many plant species.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the soil is specifically acidic, which is why blueberry bushes grow so well at New Jersey because they have so many pine needles that drop on the ground.
[SPEAKER_02]: But then if you're going to have a food forest like we do in the backyard, you have to figure out how to build soil.
[SPEAKER_02]: So even though I'm here to talk about earth friends today.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll talk about building soil any day too, but earth friends, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it tells about earth friends that it that's my organization, which is a nonprofit that brings environmental education.
[SPEAKER_02]: or let's say the umbrella of that, which would be climate change, education, sustainability, earth education, but the most important thing is whatever that education is to our youngest generation.
[SPEAKER_02]: So our three year olds to about six to eight year olds, I would say, definitely though, a really a focus on those youngest learners in preschool and in kindergarten classrooms and even first grade who in
[SPEAKER_02]: My research and then now also experience on the left out of those conversations about learning about our planet, which is as simple as learning about where we live, learning about
[SPEAKER_02]: how we live, so our human impact and of course learning about who we live with, which is each other species, plants, animals, clouds, crystals, everything.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's such, I guess I would say an organization of love and curiosity and discovery where the adults get to be co-learners with the children.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's really important for everyone because we
[SPEAKER_02]: think as a society or civilization of humans we've made things very complex and we have created many systems and we can go into all of the chaos that is today.
[SPEAKER_02]: But with earth friends, because we're working with really young children, it's about getting back to basics.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the basics of loving and understanding what's around you, of once you have an understanding and a love for something, it becomes a lot more natural and inherent to want to take care of it, do or do it, just the concepts of just sharing this home that we have.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's earth friends and since we've last
[SPEAKER_02]: Chatted here.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's it's taken a winding path, but when I could still look back and I can see where it came from.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not super winding.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's still a program that is very specifically designed for this young age of three to eight, which is specifically really childhood.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that would be preschool to third grade.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's still about getting nature into classrooms, but also bringing children out into nature.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's such an important thing for early education because nature in and out but self has the sensory experiences, play, you learn resilience, you learn about something other than yourself.
[SPEAKER_02]: So nature, as we know, is such a great teacher.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what's evolved in earth friends other than just get the kids outside, get them to care, get them dirty, get them in the soil, make them not make them.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're not making them do anything.
[SPEAKER_02]: But have them stand in the rain, whatever it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess what I would say is what differentiates earth friends from the
[SPEAKER_02]: Very few programs for children this age that teach us about, we'll say, environmental literacy, is that there's also a focus on our built environment where human built environment.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is to say, we give as much attention to, or I should say, in the context of the program, which is, it's a five module program, there's different
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll go through them really quickly.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that by sharing what the modules are, there's a better understanding of what kind of information or friends and parts, which would be any adult can teach it, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You can be a parent, you can be a teacher, but we'll just say you're a teacher and a classroom.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the first module is we love our planet.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's all about planetary systems and climate zones and land water and air.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like that simple.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're learning about land, water and air, and really why out of all the planets are as a so special, we could live on it.
[SPEAKER_02]: We can't live on the others.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're awesome, and they have their attributes, but we love Earth.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then from we love our planet, we move to we love our neighbors, all about biodiversity, different habitats all over the world, but also the understanding that all life, whether it's a
[SPEAKER_02]: a panda or an oak tree or you and me that we need save shelter.
[SPEAKER_02]: We need clean water.
[SPEAKER_02]: We need some solid land and we need breathable air.
[SPEAKER_02]: We need all of those things and so that comes into this.
[SPEAKER_02]: the bigger learning of equity, but equity that goes beyond the human race, so that when you're really young children are talking about everyone being safe and everyone having a home that really does translate out into the world of how they see it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we love our neighbors.
[SPEAKER_02]: We move to we love our food, which is all about growing our own food, learning about where our food comes from, soil getting to meet all our soil friends and our pollinators, and just having this
[SPEAKER_02]: this opportunity for children to really see how plants are life and the soil is life and how that life then in a sense, be gets life right, the plants feed the animals, we eat the animals, we eat the plants, but also just the magic of when a four-year-old grows asparagus, they'll likely eat the asparagus.
[SPEAKER_02]: When a four-year-old gets asparagus from the grocery store or grandma's kitchen, that's a lesser likelihood that they eat it because there's just something about getting to grow your own food or just eat the basil leaf.
[SPEAKER_02]: It'll be like, oh my gosh.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, this is yummy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're like, you're eating like a bait, like just a straight up basil leaf.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't even do that, but there's just it's such a nourishing experience and to have young children
[SPEAKER_02]: have that nourishing experience in their formative years, whether it's a pot in a classroom or a garden outside a home or in at a school.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's still that nourishing experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then from we love our food, we go to we love our energy, which is learning about where we get energy and what we do with energy, what we turn it into power and electricity.
[SPEAKER_02]: And our energy can come from the sun and it can come from the heat underground, geothermal,
[SPEAKER_02]: It can come from fossil fuels.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's all there and it's all equal.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just an understanding of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that understanding part of it is that some of our energy we can use again and again, like the sun.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of our energy we can't use once we've used it like fossil fuels.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's helping children see why do we use energy, how much energy do we need, how can we use less energy and why that's important.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that sort of moves us from this natural environment, right, of planet and other species and food, we start to move towards our human-built environment of energy consumption because we are really the only species that consumes energy in this way.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it shows little kids, like,
[SPEAKER_02]: This is what humans do.
[SPEAKER_02]: So how do we do it well?
[SPEAKER_02]: How do we do it kind?
[SPEAKER_02]: How do we do it with respect for a land or water or air?
[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone having safe shelter and a food, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then from energy we move into we love our things, which is talking about all the things that humans make and build and create and do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this tends to be one of the most surprising modules, like why do you have we love our things?
[SPEAKER_02]: And are they really gonna care?
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me tell you how excited I just taught this, the first lesson of this module.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think, well, yesterday.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's a box of materials.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's just like samples of non-descript.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they don't look like an object.
[SPEAKER_02]: So a square of wood, ceramic, glass, rubber, plastic, that's hard, plastic, that's valuable.
[SPEAKER_02]: whatever, ten materials in the box, they get so excited to learn what those materials build and where they came from in nature.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that in the formative years helps children understand that things don't just appear, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: The tree gave us that, the sand gave us that, the sheep gave us that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then they understand that when I'm
[SPEAKER_02]: taking materials from nature and building with it that they have value that I want to take care of this thing because I don't want to keep doing it over and over again and I could go on and on about all these like modules and lessons.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what we've realized when I say we, there's a board of us at Earth friends, there's teachers that teach it my family was to live and breathe it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's that we're helping young children and whoever else is in their lives learn the interconnectedness.
[SPEAKER_02]: of life on this planet.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when we start to explore that interconnectedness, a lot more things have value than perhaps they would when we think of this sort of solo human experience, or the human experience of, I'm here at I'm doing this, but I go on a hike and a care about nature, or I give to the manatees, and I care about manatees, but this we are all in this web of life, and we all play really important roles, and we all affect one another.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I'm curious, we have two young children who are really immersed in it and you're immersed in it.
[SPEAKER_05]: So maybe you don't have much of a sense of this yet, but how is do you see this sinking into your kids that you think might be giving them a new perspective than other modes of education and more conventional modes of education that don't include this content.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I feel a little bit like answering that as a projection into a future that I want to see.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure, but I'll take it as far as the three issues we've been doing our friends.
[SPEAKER_02]: Awareness is shifting for children, which
[SPEAKER_02]: In early childhood education and I have a lot of, I'll say, really great mentors.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the woman who owns and she's the director of the preschool where this program was piloted, she's been very instrumental in helping me understand what early education is and what needs to be in this program and what doesn't belong along with a wonderful professor at TCMJ, which is the College of New Jersey, their education department.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I've had a lot of people keeping my big ideas in check.
[SPEAKER_02]: because I don't come from the world of education.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm learning and I'm going to conferences and I'm taking trainings and I'm doing everything I can to soak it in so that I'm doing this truly developmentally appropriately for these children.
[SPEAKER_02]: All that to say that in the beginning, I was like let's show these kids that they're this this whole big world and they should care about this whole big world and how cool and exciting it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone's not not nearly education in early childhood.
[SPEAKER_02]: We talk about the context of the world we can see.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't go beyond that because developmentally that's a big jump that's abstract that doesn't really work with your
[SPEAKER_02]: four in five year olds and that was the place that I pushed back with.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what if what if they could make those connections?
[SPEAKER_02]: What could that be like?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that was so much of my challenge of do I do this traditional way in which you can't really talk about there's no planet B and you can't talk about where oil comes from and you can't talk about manufacturing in a sense because those are all just going to go right over a child tent.
[SPEAKER_02]: But earth friends has evolved into something that's about, which is why I think it's so great for adults too, making the connections of a daily life to a life beyond what you can see.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what I've seen is that's what children who have experienced earth friends are starting to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And an example of this is there was a child who has just had a music festival
[SPEAKER_02]: And he, I think goes in music is a festival, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Lots of stuff, lots of food trucks, whatever with his family.
[SPEAKER_02]: And someone just took his lunch garbage or whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he was saying, no, I'm throwing that away.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, no, it's fine.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll throw it away.
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_02]: So no, I want to throw it away because I want to know
[SPEAKER_02]: I put it into the landfill and I put this in the recycling.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's such a silly thing, but this was a four year old.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like, I want to be responsible for my garbage.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is amazing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: An ownership.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's not really affect the whole.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, probably not that action.
[SPEAKER_02]: But we're not necessarily looking for actions at this age.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're looking for behaviors.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're looking for
[SPEAKER_02]: actually allowing children to instill values within themselves.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when I heard that story, I was like, oh my god, yeah, I just wanted to throw away his own trash.
[SPEAKER_02]: With his hands and make sure it got to where it needed to go, such a small step, but really felt big because how many adults just are like, whatever, it's gone.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's almost like you feel better when someone takes your trash because you don't have to actually be like, oh, you got to sort that and see if that goes somewhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's just little things like that, or I had a child the other day who was talking about.
[SPEAKER_02]: He'd always wanted to be an engineer.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can tell he's just such a, he's just like telling me, well, I'm going to be an engineer that builds these homes so that the bees can come and they have a place to live.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was complete like, what?
[SPEAKER_02]: No, that makes no sense, but the want.
[SPEAKER_02]: to stay in a way, be like, oh, you want to play with some biolithic design and I haven't even used that word, but wanting to be an engineer that was not engineering nature, but inviting nature into whatever building it was they were building.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this was like a, I think it I honestly think it was like a car manufacturing plant that was.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, full for bees.
[SPEAKER_05]: That also suggests the type of thinking that cohabitation with creatures with nature.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I don't think that's in our sensibilities much, right, currently in the larger culture.
[SPEAKER_05]: In fact, it's something that I think traditionally has been discouraged.
[SPEAKER_05]: You seal your houses up, so the insets won't get in.
[SPEAKER_05]: Of course, there's reasons for that.
[SPEAKER_05]: But it cultivates a mindset that we are separate.
[SPEAKER_05]: And we need to stay separate and there's no combingling of these lives, but I love that sensibility that maybe there's a way to share space.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think what it what I've seen is that children are excited at this age to learn that there's more to the world.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that they have a say in it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that say can just be
[SPEAKER_02]: excited about what plants they get to grow, or they come in in there, excited that their shirt has mother earth on it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, these are such small things, but when we think about other formative educational experiences, nobody's learning how to spell yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nobody's learning how to do algebra yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nobody's been going yet, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: But
[SPEAKER_02]: You have these, like, I want to say, teeny, tiny moments of the building blocks of inspiration for that child.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think this has just been some missing building blocks.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we don't really know what it's going to look like.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it doesn't look like anything.
[SPEAKER_05]: No, I think it's profound, really.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I'm speaking about the opportunity to build in this stage of life.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I'm not an early childhood educator.
[SPEAKER_05]: I can't claim to have a
[SPEAKER_05]: any real knowledge of that beyond raising my own kids, but seems like this age group is a fantastic opportunity to build some emotional connection around it has a earth friends has a lot of social emotional learning embedded within the lessons and programs and that is important in early childhood as is
[SPEAKER_02]: universal design learning.
[SPEAKER_02]: So learning for all types of both say brains and bodies, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Not everybody's going to learn in the same way.
[SPEAKER_02]: So all of that is very woven throughout.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not just content information.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's an educational experience around what gives us life.
[SPEAKER_04]: I have some questions around the form
[SPEAKER_04]: exactly it is and currently so I believe when we last spoke, you were either still creating or finishing the curriculum and teaching about it and I believe is it now like for folks listening is it available to literally purchase if they want to bring it into their school?
[SPEAKER_04]: Do they need to be trained in it?
[SPEAKER_04]: What does that look like if I'm interested in this program and bringing it to either my school or maybe I'm a home school mom or maybe I
[SPEAKER_04]: do something in between.
[SPEAKER_02]: The most excited way I can answer that is it looks easy these days.
[SPEAKER_02]: It didn't use to be easy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now anyone can purchase the program and they can choose to do it with the digital content only because maybe they feel they don't need story books and photo books and that's totally fine or you can purchase it with the photo books and the story books.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the great thing is that there's five hours of asynchronous professional development.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you're a teacher
[SPEAKER_02]: And you want to get five hours of PD in for environmental education or climate change, whatever it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's already in there.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's baked in.
[SPEAKER_02]: You would get a if you complete it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You get a certificate for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It will send you.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's like the teacher part, meaning that rather than a signing up and a waiting and getting groups together, which it was before it's if you look at it and you're like, yep, I want to add this to my classroom or
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to add this to my summer camp, whatever, you just purchase the program, either digital purchase or digital plus books, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's one thing for teachers.
[SPEAKER_02]: But as we continue getting to know people, we're like parents, homeschool, anybody can buy it now.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the place that you can start out, if you're like, I just want to like dabble in this and see what this is about.
[SPEAKER_02]: Since a hundred and fifty dollars you purchase the digital program which brings you into the educator portal which is where all our content is where it will always be.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's lifetime access one time.
[SPEAKER_02]: It has the whole entire program and the modules and then as we continue to build and what are the different organizations and resources will continue to add them there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that means that the five modules you can teach them with the framework
[SPEAKER_02]: that it was originally introduced with, which is from We Love Our Planet to We Love Our Things and that goes from September to May.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or you can just pick and choose and say this is a really awesome lesson or we're really focused on our garden or I would love to teach children more about weather and climate or let's get into our materials and natural resources because that's what gosh having been at
[SPEAKER_02]: speaking at and presenting, but also just attending many different conferences across the country and everywhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're not all doing this the same way, just like we're not all gardening in the same way.
[SPEAKER_02]: We might have a very similar outcome or goal, but getting there is a lot of moving pieces.
[SPEAKER_02]: So with earth friends, we wanted to say, okay, what's the easiest way that someone can access this?
[SPEAKER_02]: And once they access it, what's the easiest way?
[SPEAKER_02]: that they can always have what we're doing forever, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Cause sometimes when teachers roll in something or to get a curriculum, you have to, you get the updates or you pay again in two years or whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're just trying to keep our friends pretty simple stupid.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's awesome.
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you still do trainings for people?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, and I will still absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so if you go into like our store, you'll be able to see this is how I can just get the program for me and start with my two kids on Saturday.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's an option.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or you can go, okay, I'm a school.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to get eight teachers involved.
[SPEAKER_02]: I need a little bit more than this.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to do this professional development, which is then we can do a live training.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, where you work with me and we just go through what the framework is for earth friends, how to teach environmental education at this age and do it in a way that is manageable and sustainable and consistent for the teacher, but developmentally appropriate for the children, meaning how to incorporate play and hands-on activities and everything like that.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm curious how it's going getting it into other schools.
[SPEAKER_04]: Is it, is that happening?
[SPEAKER_04]: Are you seeing that happen?
[SPEAKER_04]: It's slow like the interest really gets there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not one of the ways that we shifted.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there's a lot of interest, but schools are in a tough place right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm playing the game of, you know what?
[SPEAKER_02]: I know there's so many things that even though I feel this is such a priority and a lot of parents might, it doesn't mean it can come to the top of the list when they're sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sundaying and there's cuts and there's, oh yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: so many things happening.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's one of the reasons we're like, you know what?
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's make this affordable for parents.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's make this if you want to teach it at camp because at the end of the day, my biggest goal for earth friends and it's always been this and it sometimes I just don't know quite what it looks like and it's the goal of our board and everyone involved is how do we get this to as many young children as possible?
[SPEAKER_02]: What does that look like?
[SPEAKER_02]: And of course, we're an organization.
[SPEAKER_02]: So unless somebody wants to dump a pile of money in our lap, which I hear is not happening these days, we can't just hand it out for free.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe someday.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's why we're really opening up the portal to all adults that interact with young children.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you want something different and there's a lot of activities that are many
[SPEAKER_02]: don't, there's really no financial cost to many of the activities.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's definitely a program that doesn't require a lot of materials because we don't want to create materials.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there can be a lot of programs that come with kits and boxes and all of that and we try to strip all that away and just say, let's learn truly with the world around us, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Using what we already have in our homes, using what we already have in our schools, using
[SPEAKER_02]: and providing learning with that even means.
[SPEAKER_02]: Also, that way and then of itself helps children learn with the world around them, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's one thing to figure out what in your classroom can help teach the lesson.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a very tangible tactile way to support children to see, oh, in the context of things I already know, now I'm learning a new thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like a new layer.
[SPEAKER_02]: versus when you have a maker space kit that comes in.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's this thing that came in from outside.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we learn about it, but then it goes back on a shelf or something.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that whatsoever.
[SPEAKER_02]: Those things are great.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's great to have both.
[SPEAKER_05]: Do you have a lot of interest in homeschool groups?
[SPEAKER_05]: Have you noticed?
[SPEAKER_02]: I just don't have a lot of connections with homeschool groups.
[SPEAKER_02]: And to be really honest, this is a shift we've made at the beginning of this year because I realized a lot of the first couple years was content creation and getting to know what was going on.
[SPEAKER_05]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were finding what the program is.
[SPEAKER_02]: But now anybody that has it or people that
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, are starting to work with it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we feel really good about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is in a first year of, okay, let's like really get this out there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's do some gorilla marketing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's get as many like these shirts.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's just get people to know what earth friends even is and how it is a little bit different from another, another, a lot of climate change education resources, which might not be as developmental appropriate for me, young age, or they might have
[SPEAKER_02]: Unfortunately, a political flavor to them that isn't really, that people don't always love.
[SPEAKER_02]: So now it'll be an interesting year because this is the year where I'm like, this has been created.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is out there, children who love it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's almost like planting seeds and being like, though, girl, maybe not on your time and maybe not the way you want them to, but I'm also
[SPEAKER_02]: And I have a lot of other friends that are in these not this business of early education and environmental education, but just in the land of the things I would say, the three of us care about things are a little slow right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: People are a little trepidacious right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm not going to have earth friends be the thing that's pushed in everybody's face right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: So opportunities to talk about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's what I have found to the more in-person conversations.
[SPEAKER_02]: the more actual one-on-one versus posting about this or doing whatever, but it's the connections that I've made at conferences and fairs and having conversations with people that they're like, oh, wow, this is really awesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: And those are the places where I see it grow.
[SPEAKER_02]: But for a while, I think I was stuck in this loop of building something viral and realizing after about two years, like,
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a lot of work and I'm tired and I don't even want my kids on the internet that much.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what does this really look like?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so a little bit of a gear shift there, I think, down shifting.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think that's really wise.
[SPEAKER_05]: And what I was thinking when you were saying that and you brought up the metaphor of the seed, you don't know when this might be really applicable.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's like waiting for the
[SPEAKER_05]: soil temperature to be right for the thing to germinate.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I hope you can feel accomplished and satisfied in the creating of it.
[SPEAKER_05]: Not that it won't go anywhere, but you have done that piece.
[SPEAKER_05]: And of course, it's still evolving.
[SPEAKER_05]: But again, just trying to get really impatient with.
[SPEAKER_05]: And that's my trajectory.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is always my life lesson in these patients.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this might sound like a little whew or spiritual, but one day I took a yoga class and
[SPEAKER_02]: like in my bedroom, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and go anywhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, and I was like thinking and thinking about earth friends, I'm putting so much effort into like, where can I go and who's going to that?
[SPEAKER_02]: And what can I do next?
[SPEAKER_02]: And what can I do?
[SPEAKER_02]: And what can I create?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I am in a lot of right now with a couple different organizations in the process of creating and collaborating, co-branding materials, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So that we'll have a bigger free resources section with
[SPEAKER_02]: Other education brands, other environmental that just are earth friends and we're teaching maybe something more specific we love our soil for example, or we love whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there are things still happening behind this means, but I got up from my yoga mat and it was just like I had this voice or thought or something that was like,
[SPEAKER_02]: You've created it calm down, calm down.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let it do its thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Stop touching it, stop fussing with it, stop worrying about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it's here, it's there and it's time will calm.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like just hell of your life, go be a mom, keep doing the things you're doing, but quick creating new things.
[SPEAKER_02]: As if the next thing is going to be like the whoa my God, it's there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I really had to sit with that because I felt like someone like tied my hands and was like, oh my god, I can't do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: What?
[SPEAKER_02]: This is crazy.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to keep it going.
[SPEAKER_02]: But again, gardening metaphor.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's like, you start a garden and you plant the things and you find what plants you're going to start with and you cultivate your space and you earth scape and you plant out guilt.
[SPEAKER_02]: You do all these different things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're always doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then one day the garden said, I've got it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've got it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to actually give you this volunteer strawberry here.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're just like, OK, I don't have to do anything in this moment.
[SPEAKER_02]: And for me, in my personality, in my life, that feels really weird.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it also feels like my own sort of personal evolution.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just, I think we have to have faith in what we create.
[SPEAKER_02]: And even as adults quit falling into the instant gratification category because, oh yeah, it's tough.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everything is supposed to the second you wanted.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's supposed to be here right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: You work with writers.
[SPEAKER_05]: You are a book editor.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, this phenomenon people work on their books and they work in finalizing them and then they get them out there.
[SPEAKER_05]: And then there's
[SPEAKER_05]: a real period where it's, you have to really let it go.
[SPEAKER_05]: And you don't know what's going to happen out there.
[SPEAKER_05]: But for me personally, Mike's experience of that has been telling myself and reassuring myself that I did the job.
[SPEAKER_05]: I got, I did the thing that I was sent out to do.
[SPEAKER_05]: The rest of it, what happens to it or who gets it or whatever.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's really not, that's out of my control is really kind of out of my realm of concern.
[SPEAKER_02]: The thing that drives me
[SPEAKER_02]: to be like, I want this out there in all the places is that I will meet people who will say, oh my gosh, there's nothing like this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my gosh, I never thought of it this way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my gosh, this is brilliant.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my gosh, kids need this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then all of a sudden that's refueled in me and I'm like, oh my gosh, how do we get it to all the kids?
[SPEAKER_02]: What can we do?
[SPEAKER_02]: school administration officials are tough and they've got a lot going on and parents are bombarded by this program, that program, this parenting technique, this product, this whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so being very aware that, you know, this is the world.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I tried to think of like how would be if I was a parent, what would I be interested in for my kids, but definitely I can say,
[SPEAKER_02]: I really would like this to be much more in schools because I do know the education that my children will be getting and it doesn't include very much of learning about this.
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, they'd be going to a public school.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: So back in the nineties, when there were beginning to beat the environmental education programs, it was called Green School and our little school.
[SPEAKER_05]: And it was seen very much as an ad on.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_05]: I volunteered in that program a lot because it's something that spoke to me very much.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I was even head of it for a couple years in the school.
[SPEAKER_05]: And we were constantly hearing the same thing you were just saying the teachers are bombarded.
[SPEAKER_05]: They have so much content to cover and everything.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I'm worried that not much has changed in thirty years in terms of that kind of attitude about integrating this.
[SPEAKER_05]: But I will say this on a more positive note as we've discovered in Lady Farmer.
[SPEAKER_05]: doing lady farmer and creating a community and speaking to people.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's not a giant audience at all, but it's an audience that that responds to this and wants it and is very passionate about this subject area and they seek it out and you have the same.
[SPEAKER_05]: You have the same audience for this.
[SPEAKER_05]: I know that as a new grandmother, I'm like, oh, I can't wait to dive into this very program.
[SPEAKER_05]: I guess I have to wait until he's three.
[SPEAKER_05]: Are you really not?
[SPEAKER_05]: Even as it is, I put him out in the grass every morning.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure you're already, you're doing all these things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, some of it, my impatience is just as apparent.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're children in this world.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I suppose my fervor for earth friends sometimes is the antidote to my heartbreak.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, Greece.
[SPEAKER_02]: But like we were, I think we were talking a little bit earlier.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're in a time of so much opportunity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're in a time like when anybody is talking to me about when to make these sustainable changes in their home, whether it's chemical free, bad cheats to starting a garden to replacing their laundry to turn it right.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that the best time to make those kind of changes is when something is already changing, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: We're out the bed sheets, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to get new ones.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the opportunity to say, okay, if I have to get new bed sheets, then I'm going to get these kind.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or you move into a new home and you have this yard to work with.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a great time to say, okay, what relationship do I want to have with this land?
[SPEAKER_02]: You have new children in your lives.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's also so many changes, so many routine changes and eating changes in this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think in times of change,
[SPEAKER_02]: That is when you can actually make change.
[SPEAKER_02]: That feels very redundant to say, but that's when I've had the most success.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I have to put diapers on my kid anyway, cloth diaper.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I have to, I don't know, replace this, our HVAC system, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to do it anyway.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's look into what it looks like to have a heat pump.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that right now, I think the world is full of the necessity for change.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what we can empower ourselves with is we can choose the change.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that does mean a lot of times working outside of these systems that I think a lot of us feel are broken or corrupt or failing whatever you want to call it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But outside of that with what we buy and what we teach and what we share and what we do, that's the place that is that we can have the most effect.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think we're told a different story.
[SPEAKER_02]: for sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's when it can be frustrating, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, for as a parent, the only education, your kids, like, they go to school.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's their education.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, they get educated in so many different ways.
[SPEAKER_02]: So many different ways.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've learned so many things outside of the things I've learned in school.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when we can remember that, I think that's also like the antidote to the frustrations that are felt right now about the direction things might be going.
[SPEAKER_04]: I also want to say that back to what we were talking about, the frustration around getting it out there and having people know that it even exists and making it available to everyone possible.
[SPEAKER_04]: I really do what you were just saying, which is where when it comes down to it, all we can really do is start with where we are and our own two feet and the ground that we're standing on.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the idea of infiltrating the education system and like giving into schools is like that is just such a, like, yeah, a gargantuan, how do you even start to do that?
[SPEAKER_04]: But you can do it first of all, even before your own school, you can do it in your house with your kids.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then you can do it at your
[SPEAKER_04]: kid school, of course.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then, and I think it's just we can't underestimate the ripple effects of just like doing it where you are with what you have in the moment.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's kind of everything.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: Just starting where you are when you're in backyard.
[SPEAKER_05]: And as we said, everybody has their own opportunity to make good dirt and whatever that means to people.
[SPEAKER_05]: And this is one of the ways.
[SPEAKER_05]: And
[SPEAKER_05]: speaking of starting in your own home.
[SPEAKER_05]: I want to hear about what you're doing there with your suburban food forest.
[SPEAKER_05]: You live in the suburbs and you I know you're you and your husband have taken on this project at the same time as your cultivating the earth friends curriculum.
[SPEAKER_05]: So talk about that.
[SPEAKER_05]: That sounds exciting to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like
[SPEAKER_02]: you need to talk to my husband on here because what I realized in our years at this home together with this food forest like he's really just a genius out there with the land and it started as a process or a pathway of healing for him to go be out
[SPEAKER_02]: in the garden and his bare feet getting frustrated, getting fascinated, learning what our soil was and wasn't.
[SPEAKER_02]: And doing some things like one day, oh, hey, I ordered thirty fruit trees.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's do it in my mind and like where are these fruit trees going to go on this little plot of land?
[SPEAKER_02]: But now we're about four years in and it's like in the racist, a forest back there and it feels so good and it feels so possible.
[SPEAKER_02]: But now it's just this place that's teaming with life and it's an opportunity.
[SPEAKER_02]: We hope for our children to see what this could be like because I think it's just as important
[SPEAKER_02]: to have this type of connection with nature as it is to go hike Bryce Canyon or something like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: What does it look like when we live with nature, inseparable from nature?
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's what this is for us.
[SPEAKER_02]: And each year has been the new layer, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So just like this food forest, all the things that he wanted or that we envisioned, absolutely did not happen right away.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when they did unfold, it wasn't even the way they thought that they would for the most part.
[SPEAKER_02]: But now, I'd say we'd have over two dozen fruit trees.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is the year that we really hope that they will have fruit for us last year.
[SPEAKER_02]: They had a lot of fruit for squirrels.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we have to learn about how to share or the squirrels do.
[SPEAKER_02]: But we eat.
[SPEAKER_02]: are one fruit that we were able to harvest last year and it was the persimmon and it was like, I don't even know how to describe it.
[SPEAKER_02]: The most amazing experience eating this persimmon that we grew that tasted fantastic and it kind of is always like having those moments and we've had them again and again and again with just growing our own food has been one of the most healing things and with growing our own food, it's also been
[SPEAKER_02]: watching our soil dream like it's it was sandy sad suburban soil when we started and now it's just like you can dig your hand in and just like chocolate cake like it's just anywhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's all these pathways that wind around all these different guilds of fruit trees and annual vegetable beds and it's just like a little mini adventure back there and sometimes like when we water the garden because we've had some really dry days here in New Jersey we also just shower the kids and they just run around back there and run through the water and it just feels like this experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so hard to describe the sort of magic of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: because it feels like, oh, how could anybody just have this?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, can.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what we wish other people could know.
[SPEAKER_02]: You just, you can.
[SPEAKER_02]: You might not watch as much Netflix as night and you might be actual physical tired when you go to bed, but it's such a fulfilling thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's such a fulfilling way to exert effort in life.
[SPEAKER_02]: But also just, are we always doing something that invites life?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's been such a really awesome experience because it's like getting to know all these new earth friends.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I'm right now, I'm like really into stinging nettles and all the things you can do with them and like the tease you can make and we tell you, I am not a tea person.
[SPEAKER_02]: I pretty much make fun of tea.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm favorite of coffee.
[SPEAKER_02]: But tea from my backyard wins over any coffee any day as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's so true, especially in the summer when you can do like iced tea.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I know I'm just like, oh, this whole new world opened up.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're just making these little evening teas after kids go to bed and we're like, this is so great and it's so simple.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we just want so many more people to experience it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Not because it's do what we do, but it's like, we found something that feels good.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think we all just want something that feels good.
[SPEAKER_02]: Being a couple years in, yeah, there was some work, there was some structural work, there is some earth escaping, there is some, okay, this worked, this didn't, this died, this lived, this isn't, yes, there, there is that, but now that we're with it, and we can walk around it, and we can eat from it, and we can enjoy it, and the birds come, and the creatures come, it's just like anybody could have this, it's really true.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what we kind of wish is just like, how can we show people that any regular working family in suburban wherever with a plot of land can start to get to know that land and
[SPEAKER_02]: plants and trees and plants and perennials and salvage some materials and make some vegetable beds and heal the soil which also means way less garbage in the house because you're composting and these things they feel so impossible until you just start doing them.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really just a matter of just start doing them and I think the challenge is that when you look around
[SPEAKER_02]: not a lot of people, probably in a vicinity like this, they're doing them.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there was some interesting moments in the beginning where our neighbors were like, what are they doing?
[SPEAKER_02]: What's happening?
[SPEAKER_02]: What's going on?
[SPEAKER_02]: But now we're the house that people walked on the street and they're like, oh, we always look at your house.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we always wonder, and what's back there?
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's been this cool shift.
[SPEAKER_02]: But
[SPEAKER_02]: The truth is, yeah, we don't watch as much TV and we go to bed earlier because we're tired, but it's just so fulfilling and it's just so worth it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the coolest things that takes its time, but then when it fruits, it fruits, it's wild as my husband just started growing mushrooms on logs and
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, we can, we have shatakees, we have oyster mushrooms, like we've had pounds and pounds of them, and they're just growing from this mushroom garden.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's once they get going, it's so easy.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he's now incorporated these logs into the actual garden.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they're part of the guild.
[SPEAKER_02]: So all the guilds, you'll see these like little logs, and that's where the mushrooms start to grow.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's just this amazing place that has fruit and vegetables and mushrooms.
[SPEAKER_02]: Amazing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you have to grow them in shade, don't you?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they like to be in shade and moist and wet.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the garden is under these two big pints that have always been in our yard and it's this little like grotto of logs from our fallen oak tree that have turned into the mushroom garden and he inoculated them all.
[SPEAKER_02]: But then what you do is as long as they're in some sort of shade so they can even be in your house or basement or wherever.
[SPEAKER_02]: as long as you keep them moist and wet, so you just water the mushroom logs.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's been really cool because we'll just come in and get here and look at this oyster mushroom.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like bigger than my head.
[SPEAKER_02]: What do we do for dinner?
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just such a, it's such a cool thing to have as a family.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's really so much healing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that we are missing the comms from a relationship with the land.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: With earth friends, that's sort of the direction some of these next projects are taking, which is really helping children and families and schools garden and grow things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And just learn that relationship that we can have that transcends all the other things is just knowing that you can cut out so many other things when you just grow the snappy and eat the snappy.
[SPEAKER_05]: It almost seems too simple to be really true.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh yeah, growing things.
[SPEAKER_05]: How can that address so many of our issues?
[SPEAKER_05]: But when you sit down and you think about it and you're with the idea and you actually are doing it or are experimenting with it, exploring, growing things and whatever capacity you are, whatever scale, then it's a real unfolding.
[SPEAKER_05]: You start to discover all the ways that it is healing and it addresses
[SPEAKER_05]: things in our lives that feel out of balance and not so great.
[SPEAKER_02]: It makes me think of a time to explain, for example, what it's like to grow your own food, trying to explain the interconnectedness that a reference introduces to children for someone who is a writer myself and an editor, it still gets so
[SPEAKER_02]: lost in words because I feel like we've come from these very mechanical in a sense explanation of how we live life.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's process and there's product and there's production and there's yield and there's all of these things that look so good on paper and they look so good in excel sheets and whatnot and these are just not the things that belong there.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's just like to have people experience it, it's just do the program.
[SPEAKER_02]: grow the food because it's so hard to figure out how to tabulate it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when you start to do that, it weirdly loses what it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's also interesting for me too, because I think just as a family and as a person and the people I interact with, shifting away from that hyper productive, digitized, monetized world to be like, how do we just get back to connecting with each other?
[SPEAKER_02]: How do we get back to healing together and living together and loving together and being in community?
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's really hard to explain that on paper.
[SPEAKER_05]: We were just going to ask you, what can you say about slow living?
[SPEAKER_05]: Now, that you are a few years into this project and the project in your home and with earth friends.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I think you just said it beautifully.
[SPEAKER_05]: What else would you add to that?
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, slow living.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think for me right now, slow living is allowing ourselves
[SPEAKER_02]: to be in the experience without constantly trying to change the experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: And sometimes that's just exactly what you want it to be and it's right on pace and it's wonderful and it's flowing and it feels great and you're aligned with everything around you.
[SPEAKER_02]: But other times you have to sit with yourself like you just have to be just you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's what I've realized from
[SPEAKER_02]: taking a lot of the mobile computer apps off my phone recently, which is a headache, depending if you care if you can post right away from your phone or you can do this that and the other thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the most interesting thing that I learned from not having a mobile computer, so to speak, was that I had to spend so much more time with myself and how
[SPEAKER_02]: uncomfortable that is for so many people today, not because of the people that they are, but because of everything that our life includes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Every way we're hyper connected to this app and what's going on and getting pinged for this and and that I find is slow living is just being with yourself and it
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, like you were saying before it sounds so like too simple.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think too simple is maybe the direction we could start.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's a good point.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, because then we start to trust ourselves again.
[SPEAKER_02]: then we start to enjoy ourselves again.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then we can actually parse out what you actually might want to change about your own life versus what you think you should because of the way someone else you're watching is living.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's really important too.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I feel like this is one of these conversations that I was like, maybe it should have been happier.
[SPEAKER_02]: I should have been like, oh, everything is thriving and everything is growing and it is and I think it's doing so, whether it's the garden or whether it's earth friends, I think it's doing it at the exact pace that it should be and that pace is not the pace of life right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: It feels backwards, but
[SPEAKER_02]: as it's own entity, it feels like everything is going just as it should for the times that we're in.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, things are growing and thriving, then things also have to be composting and we have to be pruning them and we have to be like just like sitting and waiting a long time for the right conditions.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like all of that's part of it, too.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, both things, I'm extremely proud of.
[SPEAKER_02]: And being proud of something is like a space that's very uncomfortable for me, because I'm used to like, let's fix it, let's change it, let's do this.
[SPEAKER_02]: So part of my like, right now is, oh, I just have to say, this is good.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is exactly what you want to get to be.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is wonderful and amazing, now just trust it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's almost like I feel better when I'm fixing something, but who wants to fix things?
[SPEAKER_02]: They're whole entire life, all the time.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's so good to stop and recognize when something's working.
[SPEAKER_05]: How often do we do that?
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm not that often.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't think.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: So, since we've talked to you, which was last year, early last year, how is your feelings or thoughts about the good dirt evolved?
[SPEAKER_05]: I know you've had some real direct experience with good dirt.
[SPEAKER_05]: It sounds so what can you say about what the good dirt means to you now from this vantage point?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh gosh, first I can I was like your podcast, which I love and I've had some cool connections from.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's amazing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then just dirt itself.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just have such a deeper love and respect for soil.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've always known what good dirt was thanks to my grandmother who always called it earth.
[SPEAKER_02]: She always had this distinction of the soil on her property from just the dirt that was by the cornfield and it was dusty and you could blow it away with your
[SPEAKER_02]: on breath.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was just dirt.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then there was like the earth that was what you found when you were digging a planting flowers in her flower garden or under the daffodils, which you like moved bulbs one year.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was like this spongy, hummus, wonderful soil.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was knew what it was.
[SPEAKER_02]: And maybe that's why I took it for granted.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's everywhere, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, it grand Mary's house.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, no.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Learning about gardening and permaculture and many episodes on the actual good dirt where people talk about soil and soil health is that we're losing that.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're really losing our good dirt, but we each have such an opportunity for those of us with the means and that that live on land that we can work with, such as myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: to bring back that earth, to bring back that kind of soil, and how incredibly important it is for life on our planet, how many more life forms exist below our feet than above our feet, and it's always just so astounding to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: and I definitely have to think my husband for this because I've been able to see him get so excited as like the quality of our soil changes and how we had to start out by supplementing, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we had to get bags from the store and we had to get amendments and we had to get all of these things to really bring back the health in our soil and then we would mix it in with our compost and
[SPEAKER_02]: Now we have the kind of soil that we're like, oh, hey, does somebody want our soil because it's really good.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like a bag from the store and it's been so many process of what we plant and come free in nitrogen fixtures and wood chip drops and the coolest thing though that he did this year that we've been able to see like in this growing season was playing around with our own
[SPEAKER_02]: version of terra preta, which is we have a wood stove and what we did is cook the ashes from the wood stove and spread them over the garden beds during the winter.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm when they were like hot, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So that whole concept of there was control burns that people did and then the Amazon where they don't their coals and
[SPEAKER_02]: just to play with what does this actually do for the soil.
[SPEAKER_02]: After doing that for winter season in the spring season it's like the happiest soil for direct sewing that we've had yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: And just that cyclical thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: We, yes, there is an amount of air pollution that comes from burning wood in a stove.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nothing is perfect, but the fact that we can then take what was left over from our wood stove and bring it into our garden in the off season and then see how that
[SPEAKER_02]: happen.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's so many ways that we can cultivate really healthy soil.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And just got to start doing them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like those of us that work with soil, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Not everybody's going to work with soil.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is not everybody's Dharma and life path to have grubby fingernails.
[SPEAKER_02]: I did not think it was mine.
[SPEAKER_02]: Turns out it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: But if you are doing things and planting things and working with the land, then work with the soil.
[SPEAKER_02]: Get to know the soil.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's really fascinating.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes, and whatever you're living situation, whatever capacity, you can always do a little something to cultivate the good dirt, even if it's just composting your coffee grounds or growing an herb on your porch or on your windowsill and cultivating any kind of pollinator if it's one, one that you get to set out on your front porch or whatever.
[SPEAKER_05]: I guess we should say our goodbyes and stuff that thank you for coming back and giving us an update on what's going on with earth friends.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's very exciting to hear about and also in your own project going on in your home.
[SPEAKER_05]: You're such a wonderful example to everyone who cares about the good dirt.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's so lovely to chat with you always.
[SPEAKER_02]: Likewise, it was really wonderful being here and just having these real conversations with the two of you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that so much about the podcast and just the opportunity to share the VR Earth Friends program on the anyone truly anyone can purchase it and teach it and share it with their children in their community.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm so excited to get it to for Johnny.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, that is so exciting.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think to win, you know, this building that community of people talking to people, which I know that, you know, with Lady Farmer and both the good dirt that you both do so well.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes, and just remind everybody where to go, if they wanted to look into it more.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so if you want to learn more about the program, it's all on the website, you can go to earthfriends.us.
[SPEAKER_02]: And everything you will find there, you will find the program, you will find what we do.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can join our sub-stack, which has lots of free resources.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can go to our free resources page.
[SPEAKER_02]: Instagram is our friends everywhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: And also, you can just reach out to me directly.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm happy to chat with anyone about what this could look like for the children in your life because what we found to is
[SPEAKER_02]: This is just happening in so many different ways and people have different needs and different wants and we really want to meet parent schools, homeschools and children where they are.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you, Jenna.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_05]: We'll talk again.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you for tuning in, calling in and spreading the good dirt.
[SPEAKER_04]: We love hearing from you.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can reach our listener voicemail at four, four, three, four, five, nine, one, nine, five, oh.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's four, four, three, four, five, nine, one, nine, five, oh.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can find this number in our show notes and in our Instagram profile.
[SPEAKER_05]: This show is produced by Lady Farmer, a slow living lifestyle community.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the original music is composed in perform by John Kingsley.
[SPEAKER_03]: For more from Lady Firmer, follow us on Instagram at We Are Lady Firmer.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's We Are Lady Firmer.
[SPEAKER_03]: Or join us online at www.ladyfirmer.com.
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll see you next time on The Good Dirt.
[SPEAKER_03]: Goodbye!