Organic Market Gardens

Market Gardens

There are a few ways to grow vegetables that I know of, and we have tried them all over the last 50 years, starting with when I took  over my mums backyard in Melbourne with a pumpkin plant, which went on (and on) to bear several QLD Blues. I took a large one on a weekend surfing trip and shared it with my friends raw, BBQ’d and stir fired. No one else was enthused ( they preferred hot chips)  but for me the growing obsession had begun. 

And so it was with great interest that I attended a field trip of the Organic Growers of W.A. last Saturday. The very fine Peter Langlands welcomed us to his parent’s  historic Guilford property where he tends a small market garden on the banks of a creek. Peter read “The Weather Makers” by Tim Flannery several years back and was horrified by what humans are doing to the planet. Like when I read the book, he had to skip over the terribly depressing middle to get to  the end for (hopefully) solutions.  He decided to take action and growing organic veges was  his act.

This delightful young man showed us 20 or more perfectly straight rows of gorgeous vegetables of nearly as many types, most under row covers, all meticulously weeded. He had a veritable arsenal of tools: broad forks, stirrup hoes, a mini rotary hoe which was turned by a cordless drill, 3 types of seeder, etc etc. There was weed mat on the ground with holes burnt into it at regular spacing for the plants. Micro greens were growing thickly in other rows, which he cuts regularly with a tiny motorized cutting and catching machine.  

Photo by Organic Association WA

Peter finds he is not big enough to consistently supply restaurants and wholesaling to shops was tying up too many days of the week, but he has landed on selling his gorgeous produce every Saturday on the verge outside, for a set hour.  Family, neighbors and friends are flocking to his popup green grocery…. now supply and demand are dovetailing nicely.   

So this is method one, intensive growing in very good soil enriched with compost, kept stirred and weeded by hand and/ or small tillage machine. He has been disappointed that a certain certified organic compost he has purchased has contained plastic and glass. He is also mindful that the plastic- based row covers and weed mat will have to be disposed of before breaking down .

Let me say now, on my soil I could not get away with method one, and in most soils of the world the constant disturbance to the fungal component would not work. Bare soil exposed to the sun after weeding on our North west slopes  leads to fungi death and subsequent soil degradation. I am always telling Stewart never bare the soil, put the weeds back where they came from. Once fungi is gone, tilth is only achieved by heaps of work. However, in a shady place on a river flat, in a humid climate and with a good supply of quality compost and fine mulch for top dressing , Method 1  works, maybe for many decades, and is extremely productive. Obviously many young people like Peter are embracing this in their own locale and growing clean food for their community,  cheers to them!

If you are not so blessed with rich compost- like soil built up over years of “pasture and grazing”  or forest cover, or alluvial soil… indeed if you have been gardening like this and notice a decline in fertility leading to ever- more weeds and pests, let me describe method 2: Full Mulch Cover.  Sheet composting is another name, and permaculture founder Bill Mollison espoused it. You can let the weeds go mad in the rainy season. Preferably just before trouncing the lot with a heavy layer of wet mulch, you will allow a flock of ducks to graze it down and rid the area of molluscs and their eggs. Traditionally you start by layering 5 or so sheets of damp newspaper or cardboard over the grass,  and piling at least 4 inches of weed free mulch over that. A mix of Leaves, straw, woodchips and a little poultry manure would be perfect. Emulate the forest floor! Add all your detritus: vacuum cleaner dust, dog fur, eggshells, small amounts of wood ash. To plant seedlings you make a hole in the mulch and add a few handfuls of compost . After a year the soil is transformed, and the garden tightly packed with a diversity of plants.

There is no room for weeds.

 In reality, with our extremely long ( 10 month now) dry periods, the garden will need regular watering, but nowhere near the amount needed by method 1 on the same soil. A year on it will probably be needing more mulch where plants have failed and there is a bare patch.  Initially, plucking protruding kike could be laborious, but it will dwindle if starved of light so keep plucking or piling ( on the mulch) .  In any case , whenever it is wet is the time to mulch again, because  microfauna are always  converting mulch to humus in damp conditions. If they are kept fed on plant sugars and plant debris you won’t have to bring in more mulch. You will find yourself growing more and more perennials to save the work of gathering and spreading mulch. Again the ducks will come in handy mid- winter when they could be let in for a few weeks on snail detail.   

Method 3    Raised beds. Wicking beds? Well mulched paths leading around planter boxes. No bending . Neat! Fill with quality compost, spread an inch of mulch, plant out. Great. In the case of wicking beds ( please google search for my article on these in right hand top corner)  you may eventually have to empty everything out and find the leak but happy days for many years after the expense and hard work they are to build. A large deciduous tree or trees that provides light shade (thornless honey locust?, Jacarandah?) over head would be a blessing for any garden in summer and mulch provider in Autumn

Method 4, follow moving poultry cages…I ‘ll call this “the Joel Salatin method”.  We have made bamboo cages with tarp or “Gilligans Island” thatch roofs which are hanging together so far and I am never so happy as when seeding a freshly ploughed , de- bugged, fertilized and mulched area where the chicken tractor has been for a day. I keep a lidded bucket full of  groovy perennial pasture mix, my Hoe Mi , a bucket of compost and a  bag of mulch for thin areas near the tractor. By this method the chooks and I  have transformed kikuyu, cape weed and Guilford grass  infested dirt into chocolate soil capable of growing deep rooted perennial prairie.  

In time we will be growing tons of biomass year round to feed tons more chooks who will lay golden eggs or chunky roosters for the sustenance of you and your family, or allow robust cell grazing for a herd of swine. Mmmmm Mother’s pork chops……I salivate. Im off to grow more rain.

Please buy organic food !    XXX Bee

Dr Elaine Ingham saves the world yet again.

Hardly news, but climate change is real. We caused it. What may be news is we could solve it in 3 years. However, we only have 12 years to solve it or the window of opportunity closes, and we all die.
Soil scientists mired in the chemical approach measure soil carbon (C) from conventional farms and conclude that soil does not contain much carbon, and that soil is not much of a carbon sink. That’s what Tim Flannery says. Nothing to see here.... soil won't save us.  Life processes are misunderstood and disregarded by the fellows who are making calculations about climate change. If these supposed experts read the recent scientific literature about what the beneficial soil biology is doing down there, they'd find they are misleading us. Flannery and his ilk say that our burning of fossil fuels is the main cause of the elevated atmospheric C ( the  driver of global  warming).
But LIVING  soil is rare, and it is FULL  of Carbon, and in fact, most of the excess atmospheric Carbon came from agriculture. For as long as the civilization of humans ( about 10,000 years) the ploughing or tillage  done to the carbon rich earth, (by hand , with animals and lately with machines) has been  oxidizing the soil carbon, sending it off to the air as carbon dioxide ( Co2). Only very recently have   CO2 contributions from agriculture massively increased, now including fossil fueled farm machinery, haulage,  packaging, refrigeration and, worst of all, microbe  damaging pesticides and fertilizers.

There is not a lot of consideration either, by same experts, of the microbial life in ocean sediments. Marine mud is not the “lifeless plain” as underwater photos suggest, but is full of algae, bacteria, zooplankton, protozoans, etc, all eating each other, taking up and releasing C by turns.   There are hot spots on the ocean floor where long ago a whale or massive school of fish died, these materials  ultimately became squashed into sedimentary rocks and formed natural gas and petroleum deposits which, millions of years later, we extract  and  burn for energy, putting the old whale's blubber carbon up into the air.

The Basics of Climate Change ( CC) 

Greenhouse gases ( GHG) such as carbon dioxide, methane and Nitrous Oxide act as a blanket which traps the heat coming into our Earth from the sun every day, holding in the  heat and preventing it from escaping back into space. We are holding so much more energy in our atmosphere suddenly , that the energy fluxes from the poles to the equator are huge. These differences in temperature are expressed as savage windstorms, monsoonal rains, droughts, hurricanes, extreme cold and of course record breaking temperatures as being experienced around the world daily. All this is having impact on human beings, to put it mildly. Im trying to be mild. 😌 There will be fuel company trolls who deny all this and will slam Dr Elaine just as they continuously slam Al Gore. They will try to make you question your understanding of the science you learnt in school, they will make out the fires, floods, droughts and cyclones are nothing unusual, when of course they are. Way back when I first heard of the greenhouse effect in school,   no scientist  questioned these facts. But we just hoped it would never happen.We thought the world was a big place and human beings could have no influence on it. When CC finally started to happen, some notorious scientists curiously  piped up, belatedly debating the facts. 

 That terrible Tillage slices and dices the fungi and higher level organisms, taking us back to an earlier stage of succession, leaving just bacteria in the soil.  Bacteria alone do not hold on to CO2. When soil is tilled and the organic matter (OM) is suddenly exposed, a bacterial bloom feeds on it, releasing huge amounts of CO2.We can always measure elevated CO2 whenever we mix, stir, or break up soil.  Bacteria are relatively unharmed by tillage but bigger organisms are often torn apart and become food for the bacteria, in addition to the newly exposed surfaces for the bacteria to grow on. Previously unavailable food such as the bacterial glues which held soil particles together into micro-aggregates add to the foods which make bacterial populations increase. Certain groups of bacteria proliferate in the presence of oxygen and the absence of competition (from say, destroyed bacterial feeding nematodes, ciliates, amoebe and flagellets).  Bacteria will always consume and convert Soil Organic Matter  into CO2. 

To summarize, tillage is the main cause of C  leaving the soil and floating above it. 

But if we apply soil health principles and  stop the disturbance, we start to get more fungi back in the soil, then we have the ability of holding and building carbon reserves to MASSIVE levels.  Many enduring tribes of humans, including the Australian Aborigine, practiced humus care, as the name suggests....we humans are "of and for the Earth" deep in our  hearts. But we have lost our way and if we fail to drastically change the current moronic practices, our demise will be swift as the soil goes ever-more anerobic, as the structure-building bacteria and fungi are killed by synthetic fertilizer and pesticides. Resultant compaction and water logging leads to not only salinity and acidification but  production of very potent GH Gases such as Methane and Nitrous Oxide. These get produced whenever improper, anerobic decomposition of plant and animal residues takes place.
Nitrous Oxide is 300 times worse than CO2 as a GHGas !

In addition, if we continue to burn the bush in  ignorant belief   this will protect us from wildfire, we are not understanding Nature and we are sticking loads of CO2 into the sky as well as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, benzene, aldehydes, respirable particulate matter, carbon monoxide [CO], nitrogen oxides [NOx],    mercury, ozone precursors and volatile organic compounds [VOCS]. The pollution coming from 1 acre of bush burning equates to the exhaust emissions from 6000 cars ( running)

Fungi could deal with fuel load, given half a chance.

 Here's the thing. Those same experts think soil only goes down about 100 mms  (4 inches). This  may be true on conventional farms which have strictly bacterial soil. But its perfectly do- able to apply soil health principles and build the soil food web up,  deepening the topsoil. The process of soil building accelerates over time. That 4 inches is going to become 40 inches, in time it could become 40 feet deep or even 400 feet deep. How far down can we go, building soil, holding onto Carbon? Well organisms are found alive and functioning at 12 miles ( 30 kms) deep. Given these facts,  we could accidently store too much carbon in the soil, lower the atmospheric C too much, and bring on an ice age. We have to know what we are doing. 

How rapidly can we store C in the soil?  In one growing season we can store 10 to 20 times more than any of our experts would ever suggest could be held in soil. We have not even begun to take account of how much carbon could be stored in soil or marine sediments. There have been some massive mistakes in calculations on this topic so far.

Soil organisms release Co2 . Live plants release Co2, dead plants give off Co2 as they decompose. Every insect, worm, fungi and protozoa respires Co2. If you are an aerobic organism you respire Co2. During the day time, PLANTS are doing the opposite. They are doing photosynthesis, taking up that CO2 gas and turning it into oxygen and carbohydrate   , pumping half of the latter  underground from whence it came, to feed the biology there at its  roots.

We want to promote the organisms which store bulk amounts of Carbon in the soil.

 How much C  is in soil? We are at less than 0.5 % Carbon  in most farm soil in Australia, down from an average of 8% at white colonization.   If society required that agriculture increase the carbon, every year, by ceasing to till, ceasing to use fertilizer and pesticides,  we would increase the fungal biomass, we would get back the whole soil food web,  we would get better production and better nutrition in our food, we would be keeping loads more water in the soil because of the structure, and every year we would be  increasing the humus present. The carbon compounds that are putting away/locking up 500 carbons for every one Nitrogen are being formed under good management and  the percentage of carbon in soil would go up and up and up.

Climate Change –How Big is the problem?

The Vostock ice cores go back in history 420,000 years. We can see the 100,000 year ice age and warmer period cycles in this graph of what the  ice core tells us.  The amount of CO2 in parts per million ( ppm)  in the air and the global temperature  track along together for half a million years. The graph spans 4 ice age cycles. For most of the last 450,000 years the CO2 has been fluxing between about 190 and 270 ppm, and  temp. has been cycling between minus 8 in glaciation periods and reaching 2 in warm periods. Humanity settled from a nomadic hunter gatherer life to agriculture in the nice warm Holocence era which has been around for the last 12,000 odd years. We should be heading into an Ice Age by now, but in fact the atmospheric CO2 level, as depicted by the blue line  has suddenly  shot up the side of the graph to 400 parts per million, completely off the chart, over 30% greater  than anything seen in the last 3 million years. 

We can safely assume temperature,  which has always followed CO2, is going to continue to do that. Humans were not around 3 million years ago.
We are in deep doo doo.

 Should we be pulling the CO2 back down to 350 ppm? We could still be in danger at that. Could we bring CO2 down to back down to where it was before we burnt fossil fuel and started agriculture, to where we know it is safe?  Elaine is certain we can.

The Soil Carbon Pool.

At what rate can we pump Carbon into the soil?

Humans manage 5 billion Hectares world wide. We know we can sequester up to 10 Ton/ha/per year
 ( shown by research of Dr Richard Teague) * 

*While it may not be realistic to assume that we can achieve this on all soils today, this may be a possibility in 3 years, from my experience with the most difficult soil and climate in the world.  But we need  further investment in research.

This equates to a maximum of approx  50 billion tons a year . Current global emissions are approx., 18 billion tons per year.    That leaves about 30 tons /year in additional sequestration ….working toward CC reversal. To sequester 450 Billion tons ( thus getting to “safety”)  would take 15 years. Factor in reductions in emissions and the prospects become a little more optimistic.

SOIL CARBON SEQUESTRATION CAN BE VERY IMPACTFUL. 

How does C sequestration work?

Atmospheric CO2 is absorbed by plants during photosynthesis and is used to produce exudates. The exudates feed microorganisms which then multiply and then, continuing their symbiotic relationship with the plant, form  soil aggregates, and build humus within those aggregates.

We need to be growing forests which are a fungal dominated soil systems. Tree roots go down hundreds of feet, and carbon can be pumped down to grow 25,000 km of fungal hyphae per meter cubed of forest soil. The older parts of the  hypha are often covered in a solid carbon material, forming a pipe which remains for hundreds of years, even if the fungi dies. Imagine the possibilities for CO2 re uptake by the soil!  At a guess, only about  3 dozen scientists know about all this. An Ag Department guy once told me Dr Christine Jones had lovely ideas but they were hopelessly optimistic. I know he was sincerely sad about that, as I was a friend of his daughter. This man believed what he had been told. Turns out his bosses in the Ag department ridiculing Dr Jones had only  factored in the carbon a tree stores in its biomass, not the carbon it sends out into the soil to remain forever as stable humus, once complexed by soil food web critters. He had not heard about the LIQUID CARBON PATHWAY.

We need to be growing Prairies . Let us mimic the grasslands where hundreds of pasture species fed millions of ruminant animals to produce 20 or more feet of carbon rich soil. Got to have the right fungi, got to stop buying fertilizer in order to stop the one of the most polluting industries we do: manufacture of fertilizer. Those factories uses massive amounts of fossil fuel and water in fertilizer production. I know, because the Perdaman urea plant was planned for Collie. The proposal fizzled  because of the  carbon tax introduced by Julia Gillard. I will be forever grateful. And yes, you guessed right, urea fertilizer  kills many fungi when applied.

Elaine's figures go like this:

Pre-industrial safe levels of CO2 .....280 pp million. 

Current annual GHG emissions total approx 19 billion Tons ( net of natural absorption factors)

To get from the current level of 410 ppm down to 350 ppm ( deemed the SAFE level by a consensus of climate scientists) we need to deal with the backlog and sequester 60 ppm, or approx. 450 Billion Tons plus the additional ongoing 18 Billion T /year 

CAN THIS be DONE? 

The amount of Carbon that has left the Earth's soils in 12,000 years of cultivation  is conservatively estimated at  133 billion tons. The soil carbon pool is currently approximately 2,500 Billion tons.

It is perfectly possible to put back at least the 133 BnT into this relatively large Carbon pool, and would be an increase of only 5.2% in the carbon pool. 

 Could we put back the 450 Bn T into soil to get us to that "safe " level? That would represent 18% of the carbon pool. Of course we can! This would be a walk in the park for soil fungi! Better to die trying than not try at all. 

 If we manage 5Bn hectares world wide, and we know we can sequester up to 10 T/ha/yr when just considering the top 100 mm,  think what could be absorbed all the way down desert tree roots 80 meters long. 50 (Bn Tons) becomes 500 at one meter, 40,000 Billion tons at 80 meters. 

 If Elaine's calculations are correct, and assuming all arable land goes organic tomorrow, within one growing season we could put one third of the elevated CO2 back down in the soil. Within 3 years, if we can mobilize human beings to grow forests on all the steep land and perennial pastures on the flat and low lands, we could get all that carbon excess back in the soil.   Dr Ingham is no fool.  She holds enormous knowledge of soils and is one of the great minds of our time.  Cell grazed grasslands, are determined to sequester carbon even faster than forests by another great -brained and  lovely person Dr Christine Jones.  Allan Savory agrees and says we can only do this with the help of grazing animals.

 Oh, btw, another little mission, we must also treat the polar ice caps with fungal compost tea to prevent the thawing organic matter from going anaerobic , to build the structure as the permafrost melts, so catastrophic amounts of nitrous oxide and methane are not produced in stagnant, poorly drained, thawing peat.

A few weeks ago I would have felt all this was idealistic to the max. As steward of the worst non- wetting dirt in the world, in a region experiencing 30 years of rainfall decline and extremes of temperature thrown in,  I would have believed the task of growing forests and perennial pastures to be impossible in the short time we have left ( 12 years on the current path before we reach the point of no return, according to Ingham ) . I couldn’t even grow weeds in some places over winter. That is shocking.

However a Phenomenon has occurred. There I was struggling to keep cactus alive with daily watering in what we are now calling “Little Egypt”, but I decided to have a go at planting some Chief Seattle Corn, which was in danger of losing its viability, in an area previously grazed every afternoon by chooks. I also dreamed I might grow some pepita pumpkins with it, as I had been able to germinate a few of some organic ones I bought. Beans would make it the traditional “3 sisters” of Native Americans. So I went into the dusty dry patch we call pink locker, and made some furrows in the dry, grass- covered soil. The dry grass mulch was there because I had allowed the bulky winter cover crop rich in legumes, to dry off and die there.  I placed the mixed seeds in furrows, covered them with a cm of very nice MBOFDV compost, watered and waited.We put a misting of compost tea on a few days after the first photo was taken. 

Wow, the 3 sisters have grown! In gutless sand with only a cm of compost placed over the seeds in the furrow, out in the fierce sun all day, limited water, one misting with compost tea. Im sure this soil is storing the carbon being pumped underground by this  happy polyculture plants. 

I dug a hole in the kikuyu to show the soil is bone dry, although the kike is lush and the sprinkler reaches this area.

Carbon Neutral  is a company buying up farms and selling them to business people very cheaply who are planting trees all over the farms, and in so doing are obtaining $ carbon credits.  I met a couple who have purchased 3 such farms in a planned wildlife corridor. Their trees are growing well, some were direct seeded, others were planted as seedlings.

Would be ever so grateful if you could look in to how you can build topsoil by growing plants. It is going to take a lot of  growing plants to save our bacon. Towards this grand goal of saving the human race we have volunteer jobs aplenty here:  seed collecting and saving, composting,  watering , nursery construction, potting, planting, tree guard install, rodent trapping and animal care to name a few. Please talk to 10 friends about this and work out a plan or hook up with  someone else’s plan. I don't know about you, but I'm galvanized. Elaine's leadership could  Save  the World yet again.

 

Matilda looks electrified not because of the climate change implications of being able to grow big healthy green solar panels pumping carbon underground in any crap dirt with a wiff of compost after growing winter cover crops with compost tea for 2 prior years, but because i have a pinecone in my pocket and i promised to throw it after the photo shoot .

Carnivore diet....another fad or the polar opposite of the vegan diet (with a myriad of benefits).

Ive been known to wield hoses around this place for so long that I get blisters on my palms, but there is one large place I never have to water, and that is the 1000 square meter  “humungus” garden. That’s where the perennial grasses have grown really tall with hardly any rainfall and  no irrigation. They were germinated in a furrow of compost and survived their first year, they are now taking that soil to the next level in fertility, and their roots should eventually go down 60 feet !!! Liquid carbon ( as they photosynthesize the carbon in the air into carbohydrate) is leaked out through the entire root system to feed the bacteria and fungi attached to those roots. This is how the hugely fertile soils of many the United States were built..... a combination of millions of animals ( bison, horses, deer,Caribou etc) and  1000’s of  species of pasture plant, and dazzing diversity of soil life from micro to macrofauna.

Grasses wave  over Stew's head  as he picks berries

Boysen berries and raspberries grow near my few species of special grass and we have not had to water ONCE this season, and the soil is still damp. It takes a while to find the soil as it is covered by a foot of biomass. This is what we hope for over the whole farm. Imagine, the animals will never need hand feeding again as they feast on abundant green biomass year round.  It won’t happen overnight but it will happen. With climate change now being talked about every time I turn the radio or TV on, it must be really bad. And yes, it is. We planted seeds late today into the lane way the pigs have been in for a few days. They've been eating down the previous crop of peas and oats, and digging as they do. It is early spring and I expected that soil to be damp. Sadly it was dusty dry. We threw copius amounts of compost over the mixture of seeds. We were doing this in some light rain, and gathering darkness, and tomorrow morning I will mulch the lot with grass clippings. Then we will hope the sunflowers, beans , pepitas, corn, millet, lentils  and chickpeas come up and grow . Might get just enough rain over night on that super absorbent compost to make some magic happen. 

The hummungus garden soil developed over 3 years by applying compost, compost tea and the soil health principles. What are these principles?  

Armour on the soil...keep it 100% covered , 100 % of the time.
Minimal disturbance
Biodiversity above and below ground
Keep some living green plants all year long ( go the perennials!)
Animal integration

For a full explanation come to our soil course, Nourishing Soil in November : https://www.facebook.com/events/539099406833694/

As we are regenerating the soil over the whole farm using grass, microbes and animals, we are extremely grateful to those who buy our pork, beef and lamb  at Margaret River farmers market (unless its our monthly market @Perth’s City Farm.)  To find out our next market and to order sides of meat   please contact us.

We wish it were not so, but at some point it became  shameful in today's world to eat lots of meat, as our ancestors did. Why is the mention of "the carnivore diet" repugnant to many, and where and when did the VEGAN MOVEMENT  start?  Well it started  decades ago and stems from religious ideology and propaganda by the breakfast cereal manufacturers.   You know the old fire and brimstone preachers? One such preacher was female  founding figure in the Seventh Day Adventist church. I don't care to remember her name, as she was a nutter who scared young children. One youngster who at a tender age of 12 went to work for her, typesetting her messages to the Adventist church members , was a certain master Kellog. He spent 4 of his early teen formative  years in her employ, during which time he developed a fear of sex that lasted his lifetime. He grew up to be a doctor, who mutilated boys and girls genitals to prevent them from committing the "sin" of masturbation. Dr Kellog and his brother followed this religion and believed a vegan diet helped people of all ages to stay free of the "desires of the flesh". The bro's Kellog later invented a pile of plant based food products including soy milk and flaked and high heat extruded grains which they later marketed as breakfast food. No doubt Kellogs cornflakes and the rest did disrupt one's hormones, therefore  rendering  one  lustless and infertile.  
Later on, chemical companies supplying inputs to Agri business, notably oilseed, grain and sugar producers, soon saw the opportunity this religion afforded them. Under their considerable influence, Nutritional  Guidelines went from being animal product based to almost entirely plant based. The result? The masses indoctrinated by TV commercials joined the devout Adventists in having their   " base desires"   curbed along, with their lust for life. A woeful litany of chronic illness including depression, anxiety , obesity , type 2 diabetes and auto immune disease is being seen in the cornflake /weetbix  eating population.

Weston A Price is one of the few mobs out there who have been championing fatty meat consumption  for ever, and copping considerable flack. Despite their science backed activism for nutrient dense food,  the vegan trend is not going away. However I predict a rapid crash of the vegan wave. You see, over the festive season I have managed to get some reading in, and what I am about to share just may turn your world around. Researching this I realized my own programming, and I am not one to absorb very much mainstream media at all. Drum roll , clashing of cymbals and gongs…..

 ANNOUNCEMENT :  

 Many very sick people are consuming an all meat diet and recovering from years of chronic auto immune disease in less than a month. Yes. Do not let this powerful knowledge slip through your fingers! Any person or friends/relations of people suffering years of osteo or rheumatoid arthritis, schizophrenia, depression, bi-polar, severe acne, asthma, food allergies , Chrones, ulcerative colitis, inflammatory bowel, SIBO, cancer, diabetes, obesity, autism, anxiety conditions, OCD, ODD, ADHD, ADD, Hashimoto’s, coronary heart disease, or any other of the 200 auto immune diseases plaguing the civilized world, get this:  The front runners have been living on nothing but various fatty meats,  salt and water for more than 14 years. They found relief from their symptoms within a month, some in just days, and if they add just a tiny bit of well- cooked vegetable to their diet, their symptoms return immediately.

Dr Natasha Cambell McBride in her Gut And Psychology Syndrome lectures says exactly this, that an autistic child can become completely normal, healthy and thriving on a diet of just bone broth, meat, eggs  and sauerkraut JUICE, as long as they avoid all plant fiber. Just a whiff of anything plant brings back their autism symptoms, overnight. The hope is that they will eventually re- gain the numbers of friendly bacteria in their gut needed to properly digest plants but while their intestines are populated by all the wrong bugs, the out of control  opportunistic flora will use the fiber in that well- cooked centimeter of zucchini as  a substrate to proliferate and produce their dastardly toxins that derange the brain.

Our distant ancestors ate plant and animal products, stole eggs, scavenged carcasses and had a brain weighing 300 odd milliliters in size. Along came an ice age, the plant part of the diet was soon gone. We had to learn to follow and hunt the animals that could live on lichens found under the snow. They were fatty animals because they had to have so much insulation. I guess desperation got us working together to bring down animals, and our big brains grew bigger as hunting skills and therefore diet improved. 
Archeologists digging up ancient camping grounds find huge amounts of bones, along with the stone tools used for breaking open  bones to access marrow. Cave paintings from all corners of the world depict hunting scenes, nowhere pre- Holocene did anyone paint a fruit tree on a cave wall. Then there are coprolites …. fossilized human manure. There are no fruit seeds or plant fiber found in coprolites, just all the animal products you can poke a stick at ( eggs shells, feathers, fish bones, other small bones etc)  During this frozen time human brains grew rapidly to be a colossal size ( about 1400ml ) considering   our body size and small gut in relation to other mammals. We didnt evolve to eat meat, we evolved BECAUSE we ate meat. 

The advent of settled agricultural societies occurred about 10,000 years ago and we shrank a little in stature and brain size about then, living on less meat and more grain than hunter/ gatherers. The ancient Egyptions lived as they do today in Egypt....mainly on bread and beans , eggs, chicken and fish occasionally, some honey, salad and tahini. Sounds healthy but compared to their hunting and gathering cousins, the newly settled agriculturalists suffered from heart disease, fat bellies and diabetes. Some doctors blame the grains.

Seems like no one criticized meat until  4 decades ago.  Not only religious ideology but Dr Ancell Keyes came along. He, though not a medical doctor, had a hypothesis, backed up only by the data from countries he cherry picked to include, that animal fat caused heart disease. The hypothesis was never proved, but it gained as much publicity as pro GM scientists do today. These low fat notions came to dominate our lives. Eggs were out, margarine was in, vegetable oils were healthy, fats were blamed for every disease. To make low fat food palatable, sugar was added. We now know Ancell was paid by the oilseed, sugar and grain producers, and the “healthy eating food pyramid” that persists to this day, is upside down. Recall that Monsanto /Bayer sells chemicals and big agricultural machinery to the cropping industry. What's a bet They are behind todays  government backed push for veganism. This may seem a stretch too far, but not if you watch

The Oiling of America  here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ0WJOQzrgg&t=5s

It is sad to realize that after 10,000 years of agriculture, our brains are now smaller than the frozen cave men we occasionally dig up. The vegan diet is so popular,yet is against all science and common sense. There is  evidence that vegetarianism is causing people's brains to shrink. A study was done on volunteers aged between 60 and 83 years old. The cohort’s brain size was measured at the start, then 5 years in to the study. The vegan’s brains were the smallest in the group and had lost 5% of volume over the 5 years between tests. Meat eaters brains remained the same size.

It may surprise some that there is a clinic called Paleomedicina in Hungary, using a ketogenic/palleolithic diet ( mainly meat with 30% “ancestral plant foods)  to resolve chronic conditions such as obesity, epilepsy, diabetes, hypertension, auto immune diseases (asthma, allergy, hypothyreosis, eczema), cancer and those suffering from being medicated…..nb.  

From their website:

“Rehabilitation of chronic diseases is most effective when the diet is limited to our real physiological needs. Eating fruits and vegetables does not form part of our physiological need but are associated with risks. Plant foods can only be regarded as "relatively" safe when certain plant food items are consumed and only in limited amounts. ….. Altogether clinical experience was derived from about 4000 patients.”

Here is their therapeutic tool:  ”A Diet exactly confined to our needs”

•Animal foods include red and fatty meats, fat and offal preferably from pasture-raised animals

•Fat:protein ratio about 2:1 (in grams)

•No nitrates, nitrites or other additives in meat products

•Plant foods only include certain fruits and ”paleolithic” vegetables from organic sources

•No artificial sweeteners but honey is allowed in moderation

 Black and herbal tea are excluded

Coffee is allowed only after full regeneration and in moderation

•Eggs are initially excluded in those with highly elevated intestinal permeability and/or vaccines during the preceding 6 months

“We believe that the Paleo Ketogenic Diet ( PKD) is the only evolutionary adapted diet for humans.”

They perform an Intestinal permeability test at 4 weeks. Tapering of medicines is coordinated by the Paleomedicina team ……

NB :  Overmedicated patient (5≤ medicines and/or beta-blocker, psychiatry drugs, antiepileptics, steroid, biological therapy, immunosuppressant): the patient needs to enter the  rehabilitation center for some time to be tapered off these drugs.

“We never experienced side-effects or vitamin/mineral deficiencies due to the PKD. Our longest follow-up is 7 years. The diet is safe in pregnancy and in lactating mothers. Weaning infants onto the PKD is safe and easy too.”

 Intestinal permeability –a key issue

“Normalization of the intestinal permeability is of crucial importance. ….No other medical intervention or diet has so far been shown to normalize pathological intestinal permeability.”

 Efficacy

 “Chronic civilization disorders, including autoimmune diseases, are reversible when highly adhered to the PKD. Reversing autoimmune diseases of the CNS, however, takes much longer. In cancer patients tumor growth can be stopped and formation of metastases can be prevented. In some patients we also experienced decrease in tumor size”.

The ketogenic diet was originated in the 1920s as a therapy for epileptic children and it worked in many cases. It is very high in animal fat,   contains some protein and low carbs from fruit and non starchy veges.  Many people are trying this and/ or the all meat diet and are feeling “AMAZING”. The meat diet certainly is super simple.  A return to the way our distant ancestors ate means no sugar, no processed foods and an organic diet rich in animals fats. That’s got to be a good thing. Within a month all cravings for carbs cease and a sense of calm is noticed, some people find 2 days in this happens. In reality it maybe that withdrawal from processed foods mean Roundup ingestion ceases. This alone has great benefits.      

 Well, like an elimination diet. As the Paleomedicina Rehab states: “Every human is able to eat and utilize animal meat and fat (except for a few genetic conditions which already emerge in infancy and usually cause early death)” .[I would add that there is a mammalian meat allergy triggered by a tick bite.] The take home message is that meat is easily digested and its nutrients well absorbed. Strange then that vegetarians have always banged on about meat being hard to digest and “putrifying in the gut”. Actually it is plant foods that we cannot digest, and undigested plant matter “rots” into formaldehyde and phenols if you happen to lack a good set of gut microbes capable of digesting plant fibers. Thanks to Roundup residues on food for preferentially harming our beneficial microbes, that population is now significant.
Meat is so well absorbed, very little reaches the colon. 

Constipation is also a groundless fear, although during the transition over the first few weeks negative effects on bowel movements and energy levels could be experienced. Dr Paul Mason at the Low Carbs Down Under conference held in Australia showed that a zero fiber diet resulted in zero constipation problems. see here

Our huge brains need short chain fatty acids, and these can come from beneficial gut microbes turning a substrate of indigestible plant fiber from purple fruits and veges  into butyrate, or we can get it more directly from consuming animal fats.

Gorillas are large animals with huge bellies and quite small brains. They have a very long caecum and colon which is full of bacteria, working away on their exclusive plant leaf diet to produce fatty acids. We on the other hand are a primate with a comparatively short colon, an almost non -existent caecum (called an appendix) and a much larger brain which needs a quarter of our body’s energy to run. Organ meats are the most nutrient dense food there is....liver even has vitamin C.  Animal foods provide fat as an ideal fuel for our brains. They supply structure and nutrition for you to make all your hormones, neurotransmitters and replace/rebuild all your damaged tissues including tendons, bones and teeth. Many on the nutrient dense carnivore diet report their teeth get stronger.

If contemplating going carnivore, be assured that science is showing no advantage to being plant based.  In a study of 8000 people followed for 18 years, it was found vegetarian dieters  have higher mortality rates than meat eaters from dementia and breast cancer. 

Published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, a study called   Mortality in vegetarians and non-vegetarians took a decade of mortality data from 28,000 vegetarians from several countries and found no survival advantage to being vegetarian. The Heidleberg study results were  released in 2002. In it, 2000 people were followed for 21 years. Vegetarians lived longer than vegans and occasional meat eaters outlived them all. In another study of vegetarian 7^th Day Adventists, hip fracture rates were twice that of  meat eaters. 

Dr Michael McGregor is the feeble poster child of the vegan movement, he is endlessly quoted by them, but this man some years ago posted one of his lectures entitled " 40 year old vegan dies of a heart attack" . All the preceding statistics come from his talk. He concluded that his plant based followers should take supplements of Omega 3 and B12 to have a chance of living as long as meat eaters. .

On an all meat diet you are getting maximum nutrition and emotional eating doesn't come into it. Snacking on modern, semi- poisonous non- food when feeling low or anxious, is a trap. Who can forget the mars bar scene in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall ( was it ?) 

 A “fast” on meat, or an actual fast on nothing but salty water, seems to be like a factory reset, it brings you back from obsessing about carbs. It eliminates  excesses, addictions and emotional eating.  As meat is  deeply nourishing,  the carnivore diet can reverse the numerous deficiencies most modern people have. In most people,   bones and the brain  have shrunk  from long term malnutrition. 

Reports are rolling in from near and far that just about all health problems get sorted on the meat diet.

Beans, peas, grains  and other seeds all come packed with substances designed to deter critters from eating them: eg lectins, phytates. You can reduce lectins to safe levels by repeated soaking and disgarding the water, and then HIGH HEAT treatment, so boiling rapidly for at least 10 minutes.  You can soak and ferment grains to reduce phytates. Hence Sour dough bread is one of the best ways to consume whole grains. 

People with severe gut dysbiosis who suffer terrible conditions like those mentioned at the outset could give the Carnivore diet a try for a solid month and see what happens. Carnivore  eliminates all food additives, Roundup- laced processed foods, gluten and casein so gives the body a rest from dealing with these toxins. With  boosted  nutritional status,  thousands of people are finding enormous relief  on the simple regime of beef, salt and water. Some then experiment by adding back other meats and fish, then progressing to re -introduction of fruit, then vegetables, one food at a time. As each food is added, any symptoms are noted. 

This is essentially the GAPS introduction diet, but with GAPS we add home made fermented vegetable and dairy  probiotic cultures from the beginning, but at first just the juices of these. No plant fiber is allowed at all while the gut heals and seals on the nutritious bone broths. But this healing only takes a few weeks usually. There are proponents of carnivory that have preferred sticking with nothing but beef, salt and water for 9 years,  to the debilitating disease/s they suffer when trying to add plants back in.

People trying GAPS or the all meat, zero carbs diet often discover food allergies they didn’t know they had, which have been causing their health issues all along.

In summing up, my anecdote:  I tried a spring cleanse for a month which was essentially vegan .... and at the end I  sustained a severe knee injury . Later I tried the carnivore diet and when I finally managed to comply  for a few weeks ( it was hard going without fruits ) I noticed at the end  a considerable improvement in my energy, mental clarity , mood and joint mobility. It was scary as I thought I would get scurvy and magnesium deficiency so I started eating plants again.
 Another few weeks of study and I now know that  plants are not the innocent (sometimes super) foods they have been painted. They have chemical defences against being eaten. Plant toxins include the lectins and phytic acid mentioned above but there are more, including:  gluten, acylamides, sulphurofanes salicilates, glycoalkaloids  and oxylates.  Many vegetables are quite new to the human diet.  Many suspect the nighshade family of making their knees play up. Dr Georgia Ede has a very interesting website and does great talks and  should you wish to follow up more on the toxins in plants go here. Oxylates are a particular nightmare hardly ever mentioned but Sally K Norton is an authority on this, and the information is startling. https://sallyknorton.com/
It turns out that your body doesn't need much magnesium when it is not digesting sugar! Similarly with vitamin C, when you are not dealing with  daily plant toxins you dont need much vitamin C ! 

The main message of this post is DON'T be SCARED of MEAT or FAT. Being a classic slow learner, it has taken several weeks of positive report reading on www.meatheals.com to gain trust in meat and somewhat lose my long held, misplaced  trust  in fruit and veges. 

So I will go on this diet again but not forever, because,   as Dr Natasha says, animal foods feed you, plants cleanse you….and we need both. 

Interesting links:

Mikhaila Peterson        Fatigue, Acne, arthritis (Joint pain, joint deterioration)  and depression.

   A life saving diet      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJlCjayk1HQ

Kelly Hogan ,exclusive  beef eater for 14 years https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7U8Qv_0Lrk&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR1nOgUYywnjOMoEJ4iO_pteJuSlAaKV4N_KzpHL80Ak_EF3eSjkZNhVj7A

Dr 

Amber O’herne is another lady who lost weight, regained her fertility and got better from bi polar with a carnivore diet.

Dr Shawn Baker ,  50 year old athlete loving the improvements in physical performance and joint health , also very enlightening thoughts on how we do science https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt3tfLVF7Y0&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR0l3cKG5idOtFQRVMvvqEcDkjtrcU7cI2ZtODwHpUBHySxJZGnGlyksA6k

Merri Bee Organic Farmacy Fungal Dominated Vermicast ( MBOFFDV)

Merri Bee Organic Fungal Dominated Vermicast   ( MBOFDV !)

Oils aint oils, soils aint soils and compost ain't compost! I've heard sawdust and synthetic fertilizer referred to as compost.  So how do you tell a really good compost?  Plant response may be misleading if synthetic fertilizers have been snuck into a poor commercial compost. One thing's for sure, any compost wrapped in plastic doesnt even fit the scientific definition of compost  which is “an oxidative decomposition of a mix of organic materials”.   Dr Elaine Ingham.

In the same manner as traditional European bakers closely guard their sourdough culture, passing it on in the form of a lump of dough to be treasured down through the generations, Merri Bee Organic Farmacy’s fungal dominated Vermicast is a treasure containing living organisms most rare and valuable. 

Since studying  under Dr Elaine Ingham, U S soil microbiologist, in 2014, we’ve been devoted, (some say obsessed) with creating quality compost. Knowing the key to quality is DIVERSITY, we have scoured the seaside, the ancient native forests, visited gifted long- term practitioners of the composting art, sent off to scientists in America and joined secret societies in the quest for  special microbes. Biodynamic preparations  are a recent addition which has taken our compost to the next level.

But the backbone of our compost production is a huge diversity of green plant materials both native and exotic, a plethora of mature complex brown materials   and a myriad of high nitrogen materials …..the manure , hair, scales feathers etc from not only our 8 species of organically fed and managed livestock but untold species of wildlife both land-based and marine. Interestingly it has been noticed by scientists  that Quenda manure makes native plants grow twice as tall . 

All the marvellous ingredients are put together in sufficient volume, in the right ratio and at the right moisture content to be an ideal breeding ground for the organisms which are introduced by inoculating the heap with some compost from a previous batch. We make our compost mindful of air quality at the time and needless to say do not use manure from conventional farms which would likely contain antibiotics, worm drenches and GM, or at least Roundup treated  feed. We monitor temperature, turning when needed to expose all parts of the heap  to temperatures above 55 C to kill pathogens and weed seeds but not exceeding 68 C in order to maintain the beneficial aerobic organisms.

It took a couple of years to achieve the Holy Grail of fungal dominance, and as many years again to breed up significant biomass of fungi, bacteria, protozoa, microarthropods, beneficial nematodes and composting worms  to go to work on a few tons of new materials a week, gradually turning them into the black gold  colloidal humus you now behold . In the famous line from Alan Sandler’s Happy Gilmore, “ this is high quality hand made shi*t” ! 
This fact isn't lost on local farmers who have purchased a 20 liter bucket and made a lot of very effective compost tea with it. They state that the results were totally worth the $100 cost.

How do I  use MBOFFDV ? 

 Here's the The Do’s and Dont’s

Please don’t let your Soil Food Web mini critters dry out!  Neither should they be left in a waterlogged state or stored in plastic to go anerobic, nor should they be exposed to excessive heat or cold suddenly. Care must also be taken not to expose the organisms to ultra violet light. If it dries out slowly , some critters will go dormant and can be enticed to become active again when moisture levels are bought back to something like a wrung out sponge, but many will die. Neither should you store MBOFFDV for longer than 6 months as by then the woody debris, ie the fungal foods, will be digested into humus and your S.F. Web critters will start getting hungry. Rather than being held in storage in a shady place, they would prefer to be active in the garden where mixed mulches will feed them and living plant roots provide food through root exudates. Worms can get on with aerating the soil and transforming organic matter into humus,  the carbon rich storage place for nutrients and water in the soil. 

Merri Bee Vermicast is the ideal inoculant for your own compost heap or worm farm, where the organisms will happily come out of dormancy and breed in the presence of food, water and air, when the temperature and humidity is right for their individual species.  You can put a handful of MBOFDV in a bucket of soil- temperature unchlorinated water, stir one way a while and then the other, creating a vortex then chaos, for 5 minutes or so. Most of the organisms should now be swimming in the water. This extract can be poured on your favorite plants. You should see a response in 3 weeks or so.

A twenty litre sack of MBOFDV could be applied to a damp garden bed of about half a square meter . Make sure it is damp throughout the profile, not just on top. Gardening is best done in the early morning or at the end of the day, to avoid UV . Mulch well, plant seeds and or seedlings, water well and stand back! The plant growth hormones, humic and fulvic acids in MBOFFDV can cause a flourishing that seems quite magical. The nutrient density of your plants demands you fence out any birds or animals that may raid your crops. The value of this produce in health dollar terms will certainly make it  cost-effective to build a fence.

Using our vermi cast on your garden will begin or enhance a process that might take 3 years or more to complete.....the process of transforming poor, dysfunctional soil into a fully functioning fertile soil. MBOFFDV is a slow release fertilizer and works as a pesticide and fungicide. It contains predatory nematodes that feed on root feeding nematodes. The heaving throng of beneficial aerobic organisms will cover soil particles and plant surfaces, protecting them from disease and pest.  At the same time the VAM Mychorrizal spores contained in MBOFFDV will germinate, grow towards plant roots, latch on and begin to grow out into the soil, thereby extending plant roots to obtain so much more nutrient and even funneling water to the plant. The plant, well fed with every trace element and macro mineral it needs (which the fungi and bacteria have unlocked from the sand,silt,pebbles, clay and  presented in plant available form)  will resist pest attack, frost damage and drought. The plant will make sugary root exudates out of atmospheric CO2 to feed the fungi in exchange for specific minerals it dissolves from rocks. This means your soil is now a carbon sink feeding your family nutrient dense foods whilst addressing climate change. WOW!  Special pseudomonas bacteria will decompose toxins.  Many of the billion bacteria per teaspoon full of vermicast will create bio slime or glues which  form the  microaggregates present in good soil. These "building bricks" of soil are joined by fungi and their glue "glomalin" in to macro aggregates and voila! The all- important crumb structure is created, ensuring your soil  will soon absorb and hold  water better, dramatically reducing  irrigation costs . At the Farmacy we have gone from daily watering to weekly or even monthly at the 5 year mark. Placing a trowel full of MBOFFDV at the bottom of a planting hole is good practice to build the structure in the deeper layers of your soil.

Just a wiff of our product will start the 3 year process, and will usually give a noticeable plant response in under 3 weeks, but a 50 mm layer of MBOFFDV on any soil will pretty much immediately transform a difficult, dysfunctional  soil into a fertile one. As usual, cost versus time applies. If you spend a lot, you don’t wait so long. 

Pricing 

500 ml of MBOFFDV costs $5.00 plus postage (express postage to anywhere in Australia ) of $8.55  if required .    3 kgs will cost you $ $22.00  plus postage of  $15.00  Fifteen liters weighs approx. 10 kgs, costs $70 and 20 litres $80 and weighs approximately 13 kgs. A cubic meter costs $2000.00
To proceed either contact us.

 Just one application of a compost solution made in a bucket as above will begin the regeneration of good soil as long as you maintain a mix of green living plants, a mulch cover and water. Those plants could very well initially be weeds. Welcome them, embrace them, be glad they are hosting your mychorrizal fungi and creating shade and plant residues. Do not use any icides or synthetic fertilizers but let your greenery grow. Mow or graze them off just before they set seed or go rank

. Soon they will have improved your soil so much they will not be needed any more and fruit and  veges will flourish instead of weeds. It is the trio of soil microbes, animals and plants that co-evolved and built the soil on which all life depends, and all 3 are needed to regenerate deep, loose,  fertile soil with ideal PH, good drainage yet water holding capacity, resistance to erosion and the ability to grow plants with health building  properties.  You and/ or friends and family will  flourish as you eat salads covered in probiotic organisms. They are hard to wash off as they stick on with those carbon based glues.

SAFTEY precautions.

None!

 We stand by our product so much so that we will happily eat a spoon full in front of you, rub it on our face and drink an extract, if you insist.  The billion bacteria contained in a teaspoon are all beneficial as pathogens were killed at 55 during the composting process.  The slime on an earthworm’s body is a supreme sanitizer and wipes out bad guy e coli and other such pathogens.

Soil borne probiotics are becoming recognized as having medical applications.   Read more here

Conclusion.

A man ( it would be) suggested I should just let my let my beetroots do the talking.. Here is my equally non- verbal male Stewart with a formidable bunch of beets grown in MBOFFDV.

If you would like to learn more about soil regeneration with soil health principles, using a microscope to assess compost, making a compost tea over many acres, and creating your own quality compost please consider doing our 2 day course "Symphony of the Soil in May" which will be held on May 25th & 26th, 2019. You receive my e book Nourishing Soil on sign up. Please email for further details merribeefarmacy@gmail.com

MBOFFDV  does contain composting worms and eggs and thousands of other soil dwelling species
more numerous than humans on the planet. I entrust them to your care. If  you treat them well   they will bring you great joy through good health from beautiful plants which will in turn attract beautiful birds, insects, darling little reptiles that eat slugs eggs, and many more. Wishing you a thriving inner and outer ecosystem based on the Soil Food Web.
PS     We are really happy to receive your  empty vermicast sack  back for a discounted re - fill. 

Symphony of the Soil

A forest requires no human maintenance and no inputs of fossil fuel energy, pesticides, herbicides or fertilisers to create an abundance of life. By modelling our edible and medicinal gardens on the principles of a forest, we too can also have low maintenance, low input gardens – gardens with all the diversity, resilience and beauty of natural systems

We have been growing a permaculture here for many years, and severe climate change has been experienced in the time, scientists say to bring back lush and rainy climate we need to plant heaps of vegetation. Dr Christine Jones stressed over and over that we need to have green plants all over the ground all summer, plants of any kind will do. If all you have is weeds, be glad you have something. I've been saying the same. But its highly likely you would prefer strawberries and walnuts to double gees and paddy melons. So, in attempts  to grow yummy and nutritional stuff, we came up against the fact that our soils are too poor now to grow anything much but weeds. If you add fertilizers and non wetting agents and any number of other products designed to help grow good looking plants, you in fact make things worse and stuff up the waterways and oceans as well. Plus the produce lacks flavour. Thanks to CC we were struggling to grow food and fodder from 2008 until 2 years ago. We had implemented lots of great strategies but the final (?) piece of the soil improvement puzzle was making  really great compost and compost tea.

Now I have my  garden back, in spite of the climate. 

 Growing  greenery is the best thing we can do about climate change, and growing food organically  is the only way to be healthy besides buying all organic produce. 
 Please join us in growing soil and tons of biomass.We'll tell you everything we know at our workshop in February: