[SPEAKER_04]: You know, food is our deepest connection to nature.
[SPEAKER_04]: On a daily basis, it is our deepest connection to nature.
[SPEAKER_04]: And when 70% of the American diet is highly processed, that's problematic.
[SPEAKER_03]: Your listening should good dirt podcast.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a place where we dig into the nitty-gritty of sustainable living through food, fashion, and lifestyle.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're your host, Mary and Emma Kingsley, the mother and daughter founder team of Lady Farmer.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're sewing seeds of slow living through our community platform events and online marketplace.
[SPEAKER_03]: 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_03]: One that is regenerative, balanced, and whole.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to put the microphone in front of the voices that need to be heard the most right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: The farmers, the dreamers, the designers, and the doers.
[SPEAKER_03]: So come cultivate a better world with us.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're so glad you're here.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, let's dig in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello, Mom.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, Emma.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Summer.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really a beautiful summer day out there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know it's so, so beautiful.
[SPEAKER_02]: I believe it's supposed to get hotter towards the end of the week, but we're recording this on Tuesday, and it's just, it's perfect.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's lovely.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been like more or less living outside every day.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in hours and hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's planting and weeding and playing in my place base.
[SPEAKER_00]: I call it, it's more than a garden.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and also it's famously June, which is famously your favorite month on the farm, I feel like.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the weather's just really, really nice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Spring here can be.
[SPEAKER_00]: really rigorous rainy and wet and cold until finally when day you wake up and it's a beautiful, cool, but sunny day.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like that for several weeks in June and then, you know, then it hits.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, today on the podcast on our conversation with Jill Dimmers, we are talking about food.
[SPEAKER_02]: As we do often on this podcast, and Jill does a lot of work with reconnecting people with the source of their food, and that's I was just thinking about this today when I realized this is our first week, not going to our CSA that we've been a part of for many years now, and we've talked a lot about on this podcast, and we had our farmer mo on the podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, yeah, that's just a big adjustment for us.
[SPEAKER_02]: The reason we are stopping the CSA or our participation in it is many fold.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's lots of reasons.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we've found other replacements and CSA's closer to us really is one of the biggest reasons.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I was just thinking about that and how you're feeling about it, huh?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, well, one of the reasons I've been out there so much is because we're not participating in the CSA
[SPEAKER_00]: I really want to grow as much of our food as I can and we've talked so much on this show about how you can grow your own food.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can grow a little bit or a lot and you know I've been in the kind of little bit category because I'm dependent so heavily on the CSA like for instance.
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't grown tomatoes in years and years.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think I've really grown tomatoes since we've been on this farm.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe many years ago before the CSI, they're a messy and they're high maintenance and they get bugs and stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got buckets of tomatoes at the CSI so I'm really out of practice on this.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this year, this morning, I was out there planning lots of tomatoes and growing vegetables is different from growing a
[SPEAKER_00]: pollinator, native plant, centric landscape.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like another task.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of a separate task.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I've added that into my gardening fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's been my focus is that, yeah, I wanna get food results.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also this is the first year I have had
[SPEAKER_00]: a greenhouse in time to really start seeds last year.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was completed sort of late in the spring.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this year I got an early start.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I've been planting a lot more from seed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then in the past I'm learning so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very challenging, but I'm learning a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we have a couple of garden beds here and it's so great to have my resident gardener, my mom come.
[SPEAKER_02]: and help me with mine.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I know we have a few things coming in, but besides that, I'm so lucky to live in an area where there's many CSAs to choose from.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we've joined another one that's actually her farm is not far from your farm mom and they do deliver to the house, which is great.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I'm excited to see how that goes and how that sort of changes the rhythm of life and cooking and all that because it took a really long time to get used to the other one.
[SPEAKER_02]: There was a lot of things eating a part of a CSA isn't necessarily convenient either and it kind of feels like this one really slightly more convenient.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm interested to see how that plays out, but anyways, that just wanted to chat about that for a second since it's field on topic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I did too, you know, people might think, why are they stopping their CSA, but you know, as Emma said, there are a lot of factors, but one of them is that it's almost an hour drive to get there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have, you know, been reconsidering the carbon footprint to that, especially with the increased cost of gas coming up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, as Emma mentioned, there are more and more sources closer to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we love the family, we love the mood too so much and they understand why we're going in a different direction.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, can't be afraid to evolve and reevaluate and just you should have things up a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Totally.
[SPEAKER_02]: Also, this one that at least we're joining, you can pause it for a week to week, which feels a little more convenient.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was happy to pay
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it does add up.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's nice to be able to get through it more and another big reason to let her own your own.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can, as you can, because a lot of talk about how things are going to be more and more expensive this summer, and we're already seeing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, big time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just, my jaw dropped in the thing when you tell me what you paid for those berries for Johnny.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah, like I paid $20 for a big box.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was $20.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we talked about this on the podcast with Jill coming up.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll hear it, but Johnny loves strawberries.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the local strawberries were rained out this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's no local strawberry.
[SPEAKER_00]: So does he not get strawberries?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we had that discussion.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you got to consider that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, or at least be conscious of the question, I think, is valuable?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, that reminds me, I think that something that gets in the way of a lot of conversations that are meant to be about progress and about thinking differently is this sense that, especially in this space, we're trying to lay out like a good and a bad or a right and a wrong and I just want to like say it front that that is not at all and our intention or what we're trying to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: we're just talking about different possibilities and different ideas and if we're using words like good and bad and right and wrong it's related to how we feel personally and maybe that's reflected in how we feel as a collective and in the very like feeling world of Lady Farmer using our internal guides as like how is this feeling?
[SPEAKER_02]: to sort of figure out how we want to be in the world.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's where that stems from.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you hear any of that, hopefully we'd never come across as preachy or guilt trippy, but that's because that's never what we're trying to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Particularly with the strawberries, you'll hear it, but it's like, well, should we even be eating strawberries?
[SPEAKER_02]: If we can't get them locally and pesticide free, and it's like, who are you to tell me?
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't have my strawberries.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was my first feeling, so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: I had told this story before and I'll tell it again about the raspberries and February that arrived at our house in a plastic clamshell.
[SPEAKER_00]: I has been had done the grocery shopping and it was just a very small amount.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was barely enough raspberries to fit in the palm of your hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: The cost of it was I don't remember it was like six eight dollars or something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was about two bites.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had in a homo of, is this right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's February.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was kind of the beginning for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's kind of the same thing with the raspberries.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to your point, Emma, we're never telling people what to think or do, but we do try to bring people to the point of at least asking the questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's all kinds of reasons for you to make the decision you make.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we stand firm and I believe that if you're being intentional,
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're doing the best you can and your circumstances, then it's okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then even the fact that you're asking these questions is a start.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, so I don't want to put off this conversation any longer because it was so great.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you guys are so lucky to hear from Jill the day.
[SPEAKER_02]: She is the founder of ReWild Ranch in Montana.
[SPEAKER_02]: Jill is a regenerative farmer and certified nutritional therapist who is dedicated to helping humans rediscover food as their deepest connection to nature.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in this conversation, you'll hear about the question that brought Jill to where she is today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's Jill Demers of Rewalt Ranch.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Jill Dimmers, I am the founder of Rewild Ranch.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I started Rewild Ranch as the answer to a question I've been asking for over two decades.
[SPEAKER_04]: Why are Americans so disconnected from our food and at what cost?
[SPEAKER_04]: And Rewild is our solution.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, rewild is it a farm?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it a teaching plate?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, can you explain a little bit what it is?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so professionally my background.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm a nutrition therapy practitioner and a former collegiate professor.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I take my background.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I also studied the test bowl and sustainable agriculture and graduate school.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so, rewild is this really unique intersection between regenerative agriculture and wellness and education.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's kind of like accidental education, which is my preferred means to teach people.
[SPEAKER_04]: So there's three ways that we have people interact with rewild and at any experience, any of these three experiences.
[SPEAKER_04]: The idea is
[SPEAKER_04]: It's something that doesn't wash off.
[SPEAKER_04]: So when people go on vacation or they go and they stay wherever it is they're going, typically they have a great time while they're there and then they go home and then they're back at it on Monday.
[SPEAKER_04]: The same person they were before they left and so at re-wild, the idea is when we help people reconnect to food nature and each other,
[SPEAKER_04]: That's something that you don't unlearn.
[SPEAKER_04]: And clearly, it's something that we are craving as a culture.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so when people come to re-wild, they can come three different ways.
[SPEAKER_04]: One way is passive, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So they can just rent one of our glamping TPs or our 2,000 square foot log home.
[SPEAKER_04]: And they have access to all of our facilities.
[SPEAKER_04]: So they can hang out and play games on the lawn.
[SPEAKER_04]: They can sit in a hammock and read.
[SPEAKER_04]: They can use the sauna in cold plunge and then they have access to our U.P.
[SPEAKER_04]: garden where they help themselves to whatever it is they're going to cook and eat that day.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's modeled after the Italian concept of agrarterismo or a farm hotel where the farm is the center point.
[SPEAKER_04]: everything pivots around it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So people without choice are very connected to where their food comes from because they can't unsee it.
[SPEAKER_04]: They have to go pick it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's the past of experience for them.
[SPEAKER_04]: The active experience is something that they work with us.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we host workshops or this summer, for example, I'm running women's retreats and I keep them intentionally small because I want them to be
[SPEAKER_04]: So 12 women come, it's 40s and 3 nights and it is intentionally slow and the reason for that is when people typically go to retreat it's packed you know at nine you're doing this at nine 45 you're doing this and
[SPEAKER_04]: We do that all day every day.
[SPEAKER_04]: And this gives them an opportunity to slow down.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we kind of wake up and rewile this also kind of cool.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like it's kind of a cool place to hang out, you know?
[SPEAKER_04]: So you're on the river, you border the national forest, you can go for leisurely walks, people can go for runs or bike rides or do whatever it is they want.
[SPEAKER_04]: But the idea is it's intentionally slow.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have one workshop a day.
[SPEAKER_04]: So an example of a workshop would be going to the neighboring farm.
[SPEAKER_04]: for a U-PIC flower experience and then coming back to re-wild and making arrangements.
[SPEAKER_04]: or I have a practitioner friend who's coming in and going to take us foraging on site and then we bring back our plants and steep them into tea and then talk about the medicinal properties and so those are things you can't unlearn.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then the main event every single day is dinner.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so it's a combination of a nutrition therapy, like a group nutrition therapy session led by me and also an instructional cooking class.
[SPEAKER_04]: And people, if they don't want to cook, they don't have to cook, they can just sit there and sip wine or observe or participate at whatever level they want.
[SPEAKER_04]: But the idea is, I will take farm fresh eggs and stone ground flour grown in Montana and artesian well water on site.
[SPEAKER_04]: and teach them how to make probably the best pasta they've ever had simply because they did it with their own hands with the freshest ingredients available.
[SPEAKER_04]: So everything is focused on either aggregating ingredients from local producers or is produced right on site at rewild.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then they go home and those are experiences you just don't forget.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so everything is designed to connect people
[SPEAKER_04]: And then the third way that people connect is they can come and they can host their own larger event on site.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we're really particular about this and not because of a money grab piece, but because we only allow for larger events annually, and it's because the design of rewild isn't just about regenerating the soil for the sake of our farm,
[SPEAKER_04]: and for the sake of re-wild, it's for the sake of the entire ecosystem.
[SPEAKER_04]: So our fences were designed to be opened in the off-season so that our elk herd that lives in the mountains that border our property, they can come down and they can forage and eat in the off-season.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's really, we're in a riparian area, so it's to improve the entire ecosystem.
[SPEAKER_04]: So yes, we allow people to come in and host their events and experience re-wild,
[SPEAKER_04]: But we're very selective.
[SPEAKER_04]: They have to be aligned with the values that we really hold dear at well.
[SPEAKER_02]: It sounds so amazing that, I mean, all of this is going on and you seem to have arrived at this place of all of these things happening.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I want to hear a little bit more about how you got there and I really love the thread of you mentioned it briefly that you studied the dust bowl and then you've also mentioned that you built rewild from basically a gravel pit and so I love sort of the comparison of that and so.
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you talk a little bit about that in the evolution of your space?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, and can I tag on to that a bit and say, you don't give a timeline.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure how many years ago you entered graduate school, but you said you went in with the question, why are Americans so disconnected from their food?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm curious to know is how you had that insight,
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, looking back, my favorite childhood memories were all in the garden.
[SPEAKER_04]: I remember weeding green beans with my Pepe, and I literally remember the moment a first smelled fresh chucked corn from my dad when it was ripe in August.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just remember how old you were?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, yeah, I put it down more than three.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was amazing memory.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was a smell.
[SPEAKER_04]: I've written about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I took a lot of writing classes in graduate school.
[SPEAKER_04]: I did a lot of environmental writing.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I've written about that moment because that's exactly the essence that we're trying to capture at re-wild is those things that you can't forget.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like that you can't on no, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like my when my dad shoved that corn and handed it to me and told me to take a bite.
[SPEAKER_04]: That was like lighting up some knowing or some DNA inside of me that has been awakened over millennia from our generations.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like we know deep down the difference between what
[SPEAKER_04]: fresh ripe corn, smells, and tastes like versus something we bought, it wrapped in cellophane and plastic at the grocery store.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like in theately, we know these things, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: And then of course I loved Charlotte's web.
[SPEAKER_04]: That was my favorite book as a child, not the firm who went and got a boyfriend and went to the fair, but I wanted to be the firm who was best friends with the pig, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So there's this nostalgia that I've had
[SPEAKER_04]: and these deep memories from childhood.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then, fast forward, when I started graduate school, I don't know what perpetuated the intrigue there or my area of inquiry, but I just couldn't understand how we arrived at this disconnection from our food.
[SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, this was probably
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you recall in a ha moment when this idea came to you that we are disconnected from our food as a society?
[SPEAKER_04]: I wouldn't say it was like a single aha moment.
[SPEAKER_04]: I would say it was like a series of, like it was compounding, compounded interest in the particular category of thought.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I do have a specific moment that I remember, I was sitting along the banks of the Laxa river.
[SPEAKER_04]: And seasonally, it's open for salmon fishing.
[SPEAKER_04]: And my husband is an angler, loves to fish.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't, but I love to be a nature.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I was sitting and I was doing some reading.
[SPEAKER_04]: I put together a reading less.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think I was reading my story as told by water by David James Duncan.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was watching my husband cast and he caught this salmon and we brought it home and we ate it and there was something really special about that salmon because my husband caught it and also salmon are amazing right they they like live in the ocean and we're like eight hours from the ocean and so these beautiful fish and they swim up these ladders to come back to return to where they were born to spawn to birth.
[SPEAKER_04]: their children, the little children, little, you know, baby fish, and there was something really special about that.
[SPEAKER_04]: A lot of me had to do, I think, with my husband.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, went and harvested wildestparagus, like those were the things that we did for fun.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, went and picked mushrooms.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, and you were like aware that other people didn't find this amazing joy in it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I think that there's a subculture in Montana.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, sure, where there's this innate connection to land and with that connection to land and nature is a connection to food.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I would say that moving to Montana perpetuated some of that, you know, and so yeah, specifically during grad school was a catalyst for intrigue in that.
[SPEAKER_04]: particular moment.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I lived in the bitter valley, which is just south of Missoula, very agrarian, and really forward thinking in terms of their agriculture.
[SPEAKER_04]: So they were doing things like Western Montana growers co-op.
[SPEAKER_04]: When I'd gone to undergraduate in Colorado, Colorado was like, all the focus was on organic.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I got to Montana, and the focus was like, we don't need to be organic if we create our own sort of parameters around food that's beyond organic.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then it becomes more profitable to the farmer because they don't have to pay for certifications.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, there was, there's culturally here where I live is, it's more well connected.
[SPEAKER_04]: to food, then I would say any place else I've ever experienced honestly other than Europe.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's so cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: And sorry, there's like so many threads and we also interrupted you before and I want to go back to that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But at what point does the nutritional therapy come in?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I mean, that's so well-related.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, was that like something that you picked up along the way?
[SPEAKER_04]: So initially, in graduate school, that was the area of inquiry as why are Americans so disconnected from our food?
[SPEAKER_04]: And the second part of that.
[SPEAKER_04]: question is, and at what cost came later.
[SPEAKER_04]: So when my middle son was born, he was diagnosed with autism at age three.
[SPEAKER_04]: He was nonverbal age five, he was kicked out of four or five preschools.
[SPEAKER_04]: And there was just a moment where I literally was like, I have two choices.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm gonna build a garage so I can build an apartment for my child who will be an adult child with the disabilities and never will be able to leave home.
[SPEAKER_04]: Or I can figure out what's causing this for him, because I never looked at him like you have autism and you are autistic and that is like authentically who you are.
[SPEAKER_04]: I looked at him and I saw a sick child.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm a problem-solver, and so I wanted to know what was causing him to behave that way, what was causing his inability to function in like society.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I did a deep dive, and because I decided I didn't want to build a garage apartment, I wanted him to live the
[SPEAKER_04]: I was an autism one conference and I met one of the speakers who is now a dear friend of mine.
[SPEAKER_04]: She's actually one of the people coming to as a practitioner to speak at my retreat.
[SPEAKER_04]: And she had recovered her son from autism and I found that there was this contingency of really motivated super intelligent women who refused the narrative that this is just how it is.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I had hope.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I worked with her in after three years.
[SPEAKER_04]: He lost his clinical diagnosis for autism.
[SPEAKER_04]: And now Alder is 16.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's getting his driver's license.
[SPEAKER_04]: And despite all of it that he's overcome, I'm just going to say to see the terrible driver.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm terrified for that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So all that to say you, you basically his clinical autism diagnosis sort of fell away through changing his food.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that what you mean?
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, it was changing it was food.
[SPEAKER_04]: food and lifestyle modifications, and interestingly, we already had really solid foundation.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I had my own garden and chickens and pigs and turquoise at a greenhouse, and you know, so we all ready were had buy-in over our relationship with food, but it was when I studied this in graduate school, it was more from,
[SPEAKER_04]: an ecological, economic, and social perspective.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like the onset of industrial agriculture and how it impacted those things in our country, but it wasn't until older and his situation that I started thinking about the health repercussions.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so that kind of closed the loop for me.
[SPEAKER_04]: And Kathleen, after she helped him, and we saw what was possible, I then went back to school to study nutrition therapy and open my own practice six years ago, which was timely because it was right about COVID, you know?
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, and does that bring us to then?
[SPEAKER_02]: the beginning of rewild ranch as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so we had, you know, our five acres and our neighbors were going to sell and I just I mean it was 58 acres on the river borders national forest and I just thought there's no way this is.
[SPEAKER_04]: Montana in particular it's a really unique place.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's one of the most expensive places to live in the country according to the American association of realtors based on our median household income and the cost of housing were the most expensive place.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I just assumed there's no way that 58 acres.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, our neighboring ranch sold for 27 million.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, it's a thousand acres, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and I was like we can't play ball in in this.
[SPEAKER_04]: But we asked them what they wanted for it and it was half of what they could have gotten for it and we made it happen we closed 30 days later, but it wasn't like we just like bought this beautiful farm and just immediately got to work and started growing things and raising animals quite the opposite actually.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was a former gravel pit.
[SPEAKER_04]: Even the pasture was used to move dirt and hold material.
[SPEAKER_04]: When we got this property, there was seven or eight abandoned cars, a 60-foot crane out of above-ground septic tank that still sits in the gravel pit.
[SPEAKER_04]: We don't know where it came from or why.
[SPEAKER_04]: A septic system that was working.
[SPEAKER_04]: had a dead deer floating in it because it was left open.
[SPEAKER_04]: There was a cave didn't trailer house.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, very trash and I want to be really careful because it makes it sound like the people who own it just totally rallied it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if that's actually not the case.
[SPEAKER_04]: 58 acres requires an intense amount of upkeep and finances in order to be able to maintain that, and they didn't have either.
[SPEAKER_04]: This was four generations of this family had lived on this property.
[SPEAKER_04]: and after decades of trying to keep up with it they just couldn't.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I like to be really careful with that because this land means a lot to this family and I promise them that we would do right by them and I believe we have.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I want to make sure that that's clear that it wasn't they were just negligent.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is a massive amount of work.
[SPEAKER_04]: that takes resources in time, and they didn't have either.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we didn't really either.
[SPEAKER_04]: We just made it happen, like just sheer grit, you know?
[SPEAKER_04]: When we originally bought the property, that was in graduate school, and I moved the farm that we started onto this five acres where we lived in a tenth first, then we lived in our Volkswagen van again, and then we built our house ourselves in this process, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So we understood the kind of work that was in front of us,
[SPEAKER_04]: experience together of just grit and bootstrapping whatever it is we wanted to do.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we've been cleaning up this property for the last five and a half years and I apply those same philosophies that I know as an NTP because my area of expertise accidentally became the gut microbiome that is how we addressed.
[SPEAKER_04]: Alder's experience with autism, the main area of focus that we took with his recovery was creating a healthy internal terrain.
[SPEAKER_04]: Those same philosophies are how we've been able to restore the ecosystem at re-wile because we're looking at microbial ecosystems here.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so all we're doing is trying to encourage growth of things that we want to see growing, discourage growth of
[SPEAKER_04]: as an interconnected web of living organisms sharing in life, essentially, exchange of life, rather than, you know, coming in and just annihilating the six foot weeds with spray.
[SPEAKER_04]: which is what was recommended to us by the weed district and by the NRCS.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was so disappointed by this.
[SPEAKER_04]: You guys have somebody who deeply studied the Dust Bowl and know that the NRCS was founded as a result of that ecological catastrophe.
[SPEAKER_04]: The NRCS was founded as a result of the Dust Bowl.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I just, I mean, so naively, I was like, the NRCS is gonna love me.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, we're, they're gonna see my project and they're gonna wanna,
[SPEAKER_04]: help might like fund the restoration?
[SPEAKER_04]: No.
[SPEAKER_04]: You see what NRCS stands for?
[SPEAKER_04]: National Resource Conservation Service.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so this is fascinating.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so the decibel, can you tell the audience like you studied it so thoroughly?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and for someone who just like read that little chapter in there, seven great history book, can you give a little refresher?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, cause the dust ball, and I'm particularly interested in what you mentioned there was.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's still a hundred years later, recommending the practices that caused it, so talk about this.
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow, the dust ball is the largest ecological catastrophe perpetuated by humans till now.
[SPEAKER_04]: literally the plow, the plow, and then a chemical agriculture.
[SPEAKER_04]: But essentially what caused the dust bowl was excessive plowing.
[SPEAKER_04]: And here's what's so crazy about this, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So the bison were integral in creating what we refer to as the breadbasket of America, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: The great planes and the Midwest and into the West.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the reason that soil was some of the most nutrient dense soil on the planet was because the cycle of the bison.
[SPEAKER_04]: What they would do is they would come in and massively disturb an area and then predators essentially would push them along and native people's hunting patterns as part of the predation.
[SPEAKER_04]: But predators would push them along and they wouldn't make it back to some areas for sometimes up to two years.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so what we're talking about is essentially what regenerative agriculture mimics today, and interestingly, bison co-evolved with the grasslands so that there are literal enzymes in bison saliva that stimulate growth of native grasses in the Great Plains area.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, it's this power evolution of these species, in these ecosystems, and that's how this beautiful gorgeous dirt was soil was created.
[SPEAKER_04]: And you think about that cycle over a millennia almost overnight completely destroyed by completely turning over and killing that soil microbiota without without rebuilding it right it's okay to disturb soil to a certain extent soil wants that just like tomatoes like to be transplanted they like that disturbance it's what creates resilience.
[SPEAKER_04]: We.
[SPEAKER_04]: destroy without recreating.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so with the onset of the plow, that's essentially what happened and then it was perpetuated by the consolidation of large and industrial farms and chemical agriculture.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I would argue that the practices we use today are more catastrophic.
[SPEAKER_04]: then they were during the dust bowl, because there's no monoculture in nature.
[SPEAKER_04]: Even if you walk into a grove of aspens, there's still tens of thousands of different species, probably more are growing all around that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then you roll into an industrial farm that only grows strawberries.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like that is massively destructive.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then you perpetuate that with, I don't know if you've ever driven into California and seen the way strawberries, for example, are raised, but it's hazmat suits and plastic everywhere and crazy amounts of spraying.
[SPEAKER_04]: and a lot of bare land.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so you're just watching all of this carbon, leave the ground and like you can see it in the heat, like you can see that, that, that, that, that, that.
[SPEAKER_04]: All I can say is you could see heat coming up off of the ground.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so it's somewhat terrifying when you look at this on a global scale and how we now rely almost exclusively on these industrial agrochemical forms of food production.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, so backing up just a little bit just to clarify for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So prior to the dust ball, we didn't have the chemical agriculture, so the dust ball was created simply by the removal of the animals in the plowing of the land so that the microbiota of the soil was over time.
[SPEAKER_00]: just died off.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you had dead soil that turned into death and blew away.
[SPEAKER_04]: Is that kind of some kind of perpetuated drought, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Because if you look at soil, it's kind of like a sponge.
[SPEAKER_04]: It holds water, but then when you just dry that, you're talking about massive erosion and massive runoff.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it was this cyclical and compounded practices.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then after war war two, which as I
[SPEAKER_00]: and maybe you can shed some more light on this, but the chemical agriculture really kicked in in the years after war were two.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they were putting chemicals on top of our ready destroyed soil.
[SPEAKER_00]: So explain that a little more.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, you know, glyphosate is all the craze.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like it's all over the news, media, social media right now.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's interesting because Bermont Santo have had a relationship for a really long time.
[SPEAKER_04]: They've been sharing patents for decades and decades.
[SPEAKER_04]: So this is not a new relationship.
[SPEAKER_04]: glyphosate has been problematic for a long time.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm glad it's getting attention.
[SPEAKER_04]: But the reason I say this is because glyphosate, one of its original patents was as an antibiotic.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so what's so interesting about that is it literally kills microbiota, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: one of the ways it functions and it was patented.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you can only imagine what it's doing to all these microbes in the soil and then what it does to our internal ecosystem.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so, and that's where my mind went was immediately to what is happening when something like glyphosate is sprayed.
[SPEAKER_04]: And again, it's a really heavily utilized chemical in wheat farming.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, and here's why, it increases production.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, traditionally, when you farm wheat, you let it die off on its own.
[SPEAKER_04]: Just like any plant, it's going to produce seeds as it dies off so that it can continue to reproduce as perennial plants do.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think we support.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_04]: I certainly could be, but the point I'm making is glyphosate is used in that specific industry to quickly.
[SPEAKER_04]: kill wheat so that you can continue to plant so that you can get additional harvests.
[SPEAKER_04]: The problem with that is that quick die-off is not how the plant evolved and so what we see is a complete chemical structure change, whether it's in the gluten or in the amount of seeds it's producing because it's producing seeds quicker and more prolific.
[SPEAKER_04]: so that it can survive as a species.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's how it works.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we have not evolved along side the wheat at the same rate.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so now we're seeing this change in the gluten of the wheat, and then it's heavily soaked in the chemical glyphosate.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think we're fully aware of the
[SPEAKER_04]: all of these compounded choices we have made over the course of the last century.
[SPEAKER_04]: In agriculture, I think we're just scratching the surface of what we have done ecologically and what we have done from a personal and public health perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just in recent years, I'd say sometime in the last 10 years, I had a landscaper come out here to help me with some decisions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was aware of glyphosate, then, and this person said to me, you can use glyphosate anywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't affect humans.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought, well, I'm not too sure about that, and I started reading about it and how it works.
[SPEAKER_00]: And correct me if I'm wrong, but it affects the mechanism in a microscopic organism that allows the nutrition
[SPEAKER_00]: literally feed the bug.
[SPEAKER_00]: The little organism.
[SPEAKER_00]: The humans have a different method of getting the nutrients into the cells.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when they say it doesn't affect humans, what they're saying is, oh, it doesn't interrupt our ability for our bodies to convert food to nutrition.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I just sort of came to this conclusion by myself, what they're not saying is that it's killing the microbiome and you're gut.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now, it's just what you said.
[SPEAKER_00]: The soil is so related to our gut.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what we do to the soil, we do to our bodies.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is the piece that I want everybody to understand, like the soil is a reflection of our bodies.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we talk about, you know, humans disconnected from nature, humans disconnected from,
[SPEAKER_04]: the source of our nurturance.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're all in there with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to me, it was a lightbulb in law offices.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, this is how they get away with saying glyphosate is not harmful to humans because you can eat it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's no, you know, you're not poisoned.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's poisoned is the micro biome in your gut.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, in the Shikamei pathway, which that bush talks about all the time.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I leave the really deep scientific study exactly what glyphosate is doing to those guys because they're the experts.
[SPEAKER_04]: I kind of look at it more from an ecosystem's perspective.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I kind of pan out and say, like, these are the areas of inquiry that I like dive into.
[SPEAKER_04]: On a daily basis, it is our deepest connection to nature and when 70% of the American diet is highly processed, that's problematic.
[SPEAKER_04]: Spring with glyphosate just compounds that foundational issue, right, but for me, I'm looking more at.
[SPEAKER_04]: What is the root cause?
[SPEAKER_04]: Because this is what blows my mind.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think I've learned over the years that I wake up worried about things that most people don't wake up and worry about.
[SPEAKER_04]: And what I wake up in the middle of the night and can't stop thinking about is how we are the only species on the planet confused about what to eat.
[SPEAKER_04]: You don't see a tree that is confused about the sun and water, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: You don't see a bee confused about
[SPEAKER_04]: going to a flower and then creating honey, like there's no confusion there.
[SPEAKER_04]: It is very straightforward.
[SPEAKER_04]: We on the other hand are extremely confused.
[SPEAKER_04]: And what I'm determined about that is one, a confused consumer buys more.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's extremely profitable.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's to keep people confused about what it is they need.
[SPEAKER_04]: the other piece to that is we've forgotten that food is our deepest connection to nature.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because if we were deeply connected to food and therefore nature we would never let life a safety spray to begin with.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, but somewhere in the 50s we were told that it was our responsibility in America to feed the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the only way we were going to do that
[SPEAKER_00]: the world.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's been very confusing to us as a nation and our role in the right of the unity, the tension between us all great and everything if you have access to a beautiful regenerative farm and you can support your family on that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But how do you scale that?
[SPEAKER_02]: And sure, we can say like maybe things aren't supposed to be scaled, but the reality of the world that we
[SPEAKER_02]: how do we all eat and I understand the logic behind oh well strawberries we can get really great strawberries if we grow like this and all you have to do is wrap everything and plastic and spray this thing and you get great strawberries though so I can sort of see how this all happened but yeah how do you sort of like navigate that tension.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that it's dogma, and it's inaccurate.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not our job to feed the world.
[SPEAKER_04]: Our job is to feed our community.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I actually really do believe that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And my husband talks about this at length.
[SPEAKER_04]: So interestingly, my husband's a land surveyor, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So a lot of people think land surveying they think development, they think,
[SPEAKER_04]: subdivisions and whatever.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he's a conservation-based land surveyor but I love his perspective because he works in the woods with a forest service and he's looked at gridded plots of land from the land exchanges between logging industry and forest service and the reason I even bring this up is it's a checkerboard system and that's how he sees
[SPEAKER_04]: agriculture.
[SPEAKER_04]: He believes that it should maintain that checkerboard effect, but with small scale agriculture.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so one of the things that he does for work is he works with land trusts and then often larger land owners to help preserve their ranches as agriculture.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I don't believe it's
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that is catastrophically profitable for a handful of people at the expense of everyone and everything around us.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it makes for a good campaign, you know, but it doesn't make for good anything else.
[SPEAKER_04]: It doesn't make for good food.
[SPEAKER_04]: It makes for good industry.
[SPEAKER_04]: And at what cost, you know,
[SPEAKER_04]: I believe that this is part of what is driving this inquiry around the pastoral right now.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, people are super fired up about farming and agriculture in a way that was not even conceived of 20 years ago.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like I remember I worked for a wellness manufacturer in company and I remember being on a group tax and these people's job was to like they were wellness advocates.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I remember being in a group text and saying something about like, oh, non GMO, blah, blah, blah, and they literally and these are not dumb people.
[SPEAKER_04]: But they were like, what's a GOM?
[SPEAKER_04]: I thought it was like, it's not a GOM, GMO.
[SPEAKER_04]: And this was like 12, 13 years ago.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so you go from that place of not even knowing, understanding, not knowing culture.
[SPEAKER_04]: To now, we've got people who were invested in the farm bill.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, so I believe that this,
[SPEAKER_04]: disconnection is like confusion around our species not understanding what to feed ourselves is I think it's coming to a head and I believe that that's what's driving that inquiry and you know to your point Emma not everybody can have a beautiful regenerative farm and not everybody should right not everybody needs a farm but everybody needs a farmer oh and absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we don't believe that American needs to feed the world, but historically this was a shift in the national identity after the war and it's all tied up into fossil fuels as after the war when they were using these fossil fuels these petrochemicals in the war for munitions and then in peace time they needed a market for
[SPEAKER_00]: all this product.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: And all this, I don't know if they made it up or I don't know, just the combination of things created this this national movement in the 50s if I'm not mistaken.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, also not to make it seem like evil like laboratory like textures laboratory like they could if there's a way to look at it where it does seem well-meaning and also how great
[SPEAKER_02]: you stand to make a lot of money from it, and you might not consider all of the repercussions.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it kind of makes sense to me, and I will have discussions with friends of mine in circles.
[SPEAKER_02]: college educated graduate school educated who are like pro chemical and pro know like if we have the science why wouldn't we and I've really understand that line of thinking and I it's not helpful to have the conversation in echo chamber of like that's so bad and the only thing is small farms because that's just not listening to the rest of it I think we have to start talking to each other sure not only like among
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, people who agree with you.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, right.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that's a huge point because yeah, we don't want to live in an echo chamber, and I'm also not naive enough to think that we can wake up tomorrow and have what my husband calls the checkerboard effect of small farms and I also think that we can support that movement while we also identify that.
[SPEAKER_04]: we're not going to completely transition overnight or maybe ever, certainly not without massive cultural shift.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, where is McDonald's going to get all of their potatoes, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, where is Walmart going to get all of their organic products?
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, so there has to be some understanding that it's a yes and situation, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the whole thing, the world thing, I guess what I would pinpoint is maybe a shortage or a lack of a long term thinking because if you look at the last 80 years, it has eroded the potential for local food community food systems to really thrive.
[SPEAKER_00]: And people are trying, they are trying.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is very difficult.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's just an example that in our very own family, we wanted to go pick organic strawberries and in nearby farm.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we had a late frost here about three weeks ago, wiped out everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this young family, that's, it's a beautiful day.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have an organic,
[SPEAKER_00]: Farm, CSA, they do so many things.
[SPEAKER_00]: They do events and festivals.
[SPEAKER_00]: They, you know, integrate the agracherism in.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you got to email no strawberries this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: None.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: A local,
[SPEAKER_02]: food, healthy food, trying so hard.
[SPEAKER_02]: But to that point, sorry, I don't mean to be this person.
[SPEAKER_02]: But someone might say, right, that's why we do the hazmat suits in the chemicals because we don't have to be at the mercy of the frost.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm just hearing what you just said is that system has been made harder for local farms, but then my come back would be while I can still get strawberries in the grocery store.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if I had my question would be, but should you?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but because you want them, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, I mean, I think we have to come to a real place as I refer to humans as a species because we have to really come to a place and understanding that if we continue down the path that we're on, we have fewer and this isn't to be like gloom and doom because I sit from a hopeful perspective, but I also study the science.
[SPEAKER_04]: just with that, like, yeah, we want strawberry so we should affirm them exactly the way we need to in order to get what it is we want.
[SPEAKER_04]: Then we have fewer than 60 harvests left with soil on this planet.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that should concern everybody.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, not to the point where we're going to go like, pull up in a bunker and call it good, but it should provoke a sense of curiosity and inquiry around
[SPEAKER_04]: our demands around food and what we feel like we're entitled to as a species because it's that is what's going to have to shift in order to drive the market.
[SPEAKER_04]: to shift, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: To me, that's like one piece of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: The other piece of it, and again, this is, there's a lot of dogmar around agriculture in general.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the thing that I think I have the hardest time with and maybe because I experienced it first hand as, you know, when we bought the property, I was 42 years old, first generation farmer.
[SPEAKER_04]: We had a ton of equity in our place.
[SPEAKER_04]: My husband owns a land surveying company.
[SPEAKER_04]: We run that together.
[SPEAKER_04]: well established and yet we couldn't get funding to be able to do anything.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so our access to land is limited.
[SPEAKER_04]: Our access to capital is limited even with well established good credit.
[SPEAKER_04]: I like should want to give us money.
[SPEAKER_04]: Couldn't get it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then this is the kicker for me.
[SPEAKER_04]: is that if arms just aren't profitable and I'm just like I refuse that what business would you ever start that you're like well it's just not profitable but it's noble and I mean that is trash
[SPEAKER_04]: Because as long as we maintain that, we will maintain the current status quo.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's literally why we came at it from an agracherism perspective first because we couldn't get funding.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so we had to get creative with how it is we do things.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we used the agracherism piece that we thought was going to be secondary as the center piece.
[SPEAKER_04]: to then be able to build the farm because the farm itself has taken significantly more time and resources than our glamping TPs and our facilities and it's so complicated and there's so many layers but until we have this cultural shift where we really start asking ourselves why we think it's
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm not saying we need to stop doing that.
[SPEAKER_04]: What I'm saying is we need to maintain a sense of curiosity around our sense of entitlement with food access.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, and that's very threatening for what other reasons.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we should ask, why is that so threatening?
[SPEAKER_02]: Why can't we, why you're telling me I can't just like have whatever I want, whatever I want, and I can don't ask it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that should.
[SPEAKER_04]: So why not, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: And well, I'll tell you why.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is the first time in history where our youngest generation has a shorter life expectancy than their parents.
[SPEAKER_04]: Again, when 70% of the American diet is highly processed and companies like Pepsi and Coca-Cola have exclusive contracts in our high school, so you'll hook them while they're young, that those are the things that we need to be really looking at and maintaining a sense of curiosity.
[SPEAKER_04]: When did we decide that that was good for us or that that was working?
[SPEAKER_04]: Because I'm here to tell you especially as a nutrition therapy practitioner.
[SPEAKER_04]: One in two men and one in three women will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime with a 50% mortality rate.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we are seeing more comorbidities within households two day than ever.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if you look, and again, I told you that I'm a really prolific reader, most people wouldn't want to join my book club because I pretty much only read nonfiction, and it's all in this realm for the most part.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm looking at how did we become complacent with catastrophe happening right in front of us.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like we are living in the age of the
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, the dust just looks a little different, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's where like in it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're like the frogs in the water.
[SPEAKER_02]: The water is boiling.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Something else I wanted to say.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, you just said that our children have short-releafed expectancies, but again, I'm just thinking of the people that I am in rooms with that I would be having a discussion with.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm just trying to think of something that someone would say to me, um, and
[SPEAKER_02]: But my understanding is that right now, we're all living longer than my grandparents.
[SPEAKER_02]: They just passed a few years ago, but they were both almost 100.
[SPEAKER_02]: And my mom is like, she's...
[SPEAKER_02]: what you would have been at the end of your life, like 50, 60, 70 years ago, but now you probably have a good, like, hopefully like 30 more years in you.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's what I would say.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's what I would say.
[SPEAKER_04]: Which is right, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: But we are not living healthier.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're just staying alive longer than, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Modern medicine has helped us do that, which is great, you know?
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, antibiotics, like that,
[SPEAKER_04]: medical breakthroughs have helped support us living longer than we did say a hundred years ago for sure.
[SPEAKER_04]: I would just argue, what is the quality of that?
[SPEAKER_04]: experience here on earth and then just looking at obesity rates in children or type 2 diabetes and adults that's like the single most expensive disease that are country faces and yet we're looking at insane amounts of cases increasing I mean
[SPEAKER_04]: In the age of those epic and it's a little different there and I won't really even jump down that rabbit hole, but the point that I'm making is we are undoubtedly less healthy than we were several generations ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, there's just so many more variables now, like most of them we've created for sure that statistics about how we have 60 more harvest left, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have read that and I have talked it around and I have, you know, internalized that and I think about it all the time, but I probably read it at least five years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: So where does that come from?
[SPEAKER_00]: And does that mean now we just have like 55 harvest left?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I see this around, but I don't see it changing and I wonder where it comes from and talk about that statistic.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if that's real, okay, briefly back to the strawberries.
[SPEAKER_00]: Emma has a little toddler and currently the strawberries are one of his favorite foods.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we wanted to go pick strawberries, organic strawberries, just showing where they came from, and all that and he just, you know, he loves him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we can't go pick organic strawberries this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a few in my garden, but not that many.
[SPEAKER_00]: So does he not get strawberry?
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think it's a moral like you're deviating from a moral compass if you give your kids strawberries.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, right.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I think the fact that we're having this conversation alone is meaningful, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: That we're like, well, how do we navigate this?
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't have all the answers for sure.
[SPEAKER_04]: But the fact that we're curious about this, that makes me hopeful that we can somehow impact
[SPEAKER_04]: the direction.
[SPEAKER_04]: And to answer your question about the 60 harvest, I want to say the first time I heard that, maybe was that autism one from Zach Bush.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know I've heard Zach Bush speak about that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Are you familiar with him?
[SPEAKER_04]: He's in your area.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: Great.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's a great guy and super interesting.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then kiss the ground.
[SPEAKER_04]: Are you familiar with that film and that organization?
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: So they talk about it in their original film, which came out in what 2018.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's where I was originally introduced to those concepts and my initial response was panic, like, oh, like, how, wow, how are we going to fix this, you know, and the truth is,
[SPEAKER_04]: That thought right there, coupled with my 20 years of inquiry around this, that is why we built re-wild literally because the thought around conservation groups protecting recreational spaces is if we can get
[SPEAKER_04]: humans out in a wild quietly recreating, they're going to feel a deeper sense of meaning and connection, and then they're not going to want to exploit those places they're going to want to preserve them.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so that philosophy is what we've applied to re-wild.
[SPEAKER_04]: If we can get people to come and stay and not feel at like afraid to
[SPEAKER_04]: Camp like our glamping teeth these are we got a substantial grant from the Montana Department of Commerce last year.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we're able to get really nice bedding and make it very accessible to people who are afraid maybe to camp or to stay nature right.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now we've made it accessible.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then they can't.
[SPEAKER_04]: not experience the farm because when they come in, they see the goats, they see dexter, they see the operation, they go up and explore the U-pick garden and they're getting their fingers in the dirt, which there's a lot of health benefits literally, just in your fingers experiencing the microbes that are in that dirt.
[SPEAKER_04]: right.
[SPEAKER_04]: So even just that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then they're bringing it back down to the kitchen and they're looking at the mountains and they're breathing in the terpeens from the pine and all of those things they bring home with them without even knowing.
[SPEAKER_04]: I jokingly told my husband in the beginning that this was like a covert experience of like,
[SPEAKER_02]: covert conversion back.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, because then you're provoking a sense of connection and inquiry that we absolutely and lately have because that's how we've survived this long on this planet.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can't survive as a species without having a sense of connection to what sustains you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, and understanding that you are just as much as part of the ecology as all of the things that you're observing and observing it, but also understanding that you're not just an observer, like you're not looking at it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're a participant.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're part of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So every wild you are a participant in the ecosystem around you and a foundation of that is food and clean water and fresh air.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I would argue that even when you're not at re wild.
[SPEAKER_02]: we're all participants and what sort of stuff.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, for me, that's another, that's another thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: And to me, that's, of course, but are we mindful of that?
[SPEAKER_04]: Are we paying attention to that?
[SPEAKER_04]: Are we experiencing it?
[SPEAKER_04]: Are we slowing down enough to really pay attention?
[SPEAKER_02]: experience that right and until we we are able to experience that a place like rebuild where it's where it's pleasant and that's like really life-giving we don't want to pay attention to it a lot of the time probably because it's uncomfortable it's uncomfortable to be a participant and to recognize our own the role that we play in in what's around us it's very uncomfortable and the way that we escape that discomfort is usually like buying things
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's just kind of like how we were swirling in this in this sea of discomfort trying to figure out how to make it better and unfortunately.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, right now, all we know to do is buy things.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And where I am, I've just read a book that speaks precisely to this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called The Nature and Betted Mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's by Julie Brahms.
[SPEAKER_00]: She came to our cohort and we're going to get her on the podcast here.
[SPEAKER_00]: She is a psychotherapist and it dawned on her some years ago that this perceived disconnection that we have with nature.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a disconnection.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't help but be.
[SPEAKER_00]: connected to nature, we are anager.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the perception that we are something else, something other, is a sort of a mental,
[SPEAKER_00]: condition of the species.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's that's how we're able to exploit things, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like if you're presented, you can't justify killing it, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So if we, I mean, this is like the dichotomy at the root of all environmental studies.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely for in the ever and there's different theories about when did the great separation happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, did it, and was it the agricultural evolution?
[SPEAKER_00]: Was it the,
[SPEAKER_00]: the industrial revolution, 18th century science revolution, so, you know, we could talk about that a whole other hour, but that we're all kind of walking around in this misunderstanding of our place on the planet.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that to Emma's point was she just said is like, it's uncomfortable.
[SPEAKER_00]: It
[SPEAKER_00]: makes us deeply unsettled and you know there's the new trendy word now is dysregulated are you just what are you gonna do regulate yourself um she's not wrong she's not not right I hope no one listening feels dismissed by that I don't really dismiss you but yeah you're dysregulated you are dysregulated yes
[SPEAKER_00]: But I've been reading a lot of Wendell Berry lately.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I realized the reason he's speaking so much to our collective consciousness now is that he is describing a world that has disappeared.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where humans were connected to the land and their place and their food.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he saw it and he lived it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He lived the generation and he's written about the generation and his fiction and his essays.
[SPEAKER_00]: the dissolution of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would just love to discuss that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would love to have like a window berry group.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh my gosh, a window berry book club.
[SPEAKER_04]: I would be like a super man.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't even know where to fit that in.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, as we're talking about,
[SPEAKER_00]: Our, I guess the seed, the world campaign kind of feeds into it where, you know, farmers felt like they had to, you know, go bigger, get out.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was actually a phrase, go get out by the USA and so, you know, kids, they let they didn't want to.
[SPEAKER_00]: bar of their hundreds of thousand dollars for the big machines and went off to do something else and the ones that did want to do it had to consolidate giant swath of land.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, anyway, the result agricultural history which is a lot to get into, but all this made me think of windlberry and sort of a profit in a way of what was happening in the last century.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I see Steinbeck as that as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's why I wrote about the dust bowl.
[SPEAKER_04]: So my thesis was on the grapes of wrath.
[SPEAKER_04]: And you know, when I was in graduate school, I was told by my professors that you had to read all of the works.
[SPEAKER_04]: of the author that you were writing about.
[SPEAKER_04]: And my friend, Judith, who was waste smarter than I am, chose Derek Walcott's Omeros, because it was a narrative poem and it was the only thing he ever wrote.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we both studied ecological criticism, so we were both looking at studies of literature and the environment.
[SPEAKER_04]: My obsession with food, mandatorially put me in the Steinbeck realm.
[SPEAKER_04]: pretty much everything he wrote and then all of the corresponding criticism with that, which you know took way more time than Judith did, but I say that to tell you that I wrote a lot about Steinbeck as an environmentalist, even though he wasn't framed that way, because we weren't looking at conservation or environmentalism from the lens of agriculture really until recently.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so, when they're very prophetically spoke about it in those terms, I think in a way that was in-comprehensible.
[SPEAKER_04]: And tell like now.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's kind of what I was saying in the beginning about how I've been obsessed with agriculture before it was cool.
[SPEAKER_04]: Not to be like, oh, I was so much cooler that like, I don't mean it like that.
[SPEAKER_04]: I just mean that maybe that corn woke something in me.
[SPEAKER_04]: when I was so young that I just couldn't, again, wash off, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like it just doesn't go away.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I've been chasing that same provocative connection since and wondered looking around me, where is it?
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not my office, it's not the grocery store, you know?
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not my car.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not at the bottom of that bag of chips and why?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, what's perpetuating that?
[SPEAKER_04]: I just keep coming back to the two things that are foundational in my practice and in the creation and experiences that are rewild is food is our deepest connection in nature and we're the only species confused about what to eat.
[SPEAKER_04]: and I'm on a mission to remind people to help them remind themselves of those very things and to sift through the fog and stop breaking food down into macros and look at it as that which sustains us and that we desire that intimate connection.
[SPEAKER_00]: Beautiful.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for chatting with us today Jill and I cannot wait to chat more
[SPEAKER_02]: There's so much where I want to say about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: We will talk where I can see and so nice meeting you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't wait to come along to you now.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh my gosh, I can't wait to have you at Rewild.
[SPEAKER_04]: You all love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a tune for part two, everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to do this again because there's so much to talk about with Jill, so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks so much, Jill.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for tuning in, calling in, and spreading the good dirt.
[SPEAKER_03]: We love hearing from you.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can reach our listener voicemail at 4443-459-1950.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's 4443-459-1950.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can find this number in our show notes and in our Instagram profile.
[SPEAKER_00]: This show is produced by Lady Farmer, a slow living lifestyle community.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the original music is composed in perform by John Kingsley.
[SPEAKER_01]: For more from Lady Firmer, follow us on Instagram at We Are Lady Firmer.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's We Are Lady Firmer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or join us online at www.ladyfirmer.com.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll see you next time on The Good Dirt.
[SPEAKER_01]: Goodbye.