Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #178: Joel's Diary of the Inaugural Ball & The Lunatic Farmer Documentary

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Episode #178: Joel's Diary of the Inaugural Ball & The Lunatic Farmer Documentary · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: And to be there when suddenly this group of people who have been, I call it wandering in the wilderness, suddenly had a champion.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: They had somebody who cared, who said, Yes, you do matter.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I do hear you.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, we should look into this.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: It was like the the emotional floodgates of being validated, affirmed, understood, like like I have value suddenly.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: That emotional flood just permeated the entire thing in the in the in the euphoria, the euphoria of release, of emotional release.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it was it was powerful, just really, really powerful.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Cena McCullough, and I'm here with our famous, ultra famous now farmer, Chel Salatin.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: So Joel just recently got back from the inaugural ball.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I almost feel like we're access Hollywood now, but I have to know like, what did you wear?
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: What did Teresa wear?
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And how did it go?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, uh, as most people may know, uh, the inaugural balls, there's um there's about, I think they said this year there were 29 of them.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: So the inauguration was on January 20, and the first balls were on Saturday.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: January 20th was a Monday.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so the inaugural balls started on Saturday and then went Sunday and Monday.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: So there were three nights of inaugural balls, 29 of them.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and Trump, Trump attended, I think three.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: He only went to one a day.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um and we were there.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: So um this this look straight up, you know, this is not Teresa and I's thing to do, but we had a we had a um a functional medicine doctor friend who called me and and asked me to help.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: He he wanted to put together a table of of people who uh that that that he could recognize farming.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: He won he wanted to put there were tables of 10, or 50 tables, tables of 10.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was at the Waldorf Astoria in uh DC, very uh hoity-toity, high cotton, as they say.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so he um these tables, they're you know, they're they're expensive.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know where all the money went to, but anyway, uh I guess it's Washington, D.C., so you don't have to ask those kind of questions.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: But uh anyway, uh he he it was very, very, very expensive.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and um and he asked if we'd be his guests uh to come uh to fill out this table of ten.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: He had he had, for example, the uh the founders of the the series, the video series Farm Heroes.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's kind of a new series that's just kind of started.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: So he had them and us.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so you know, we said, well, I you know, I guess we can do that.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: And the nice thing was that he lives in Bethesda, uh, Dr.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Eric Berg, uh, some of our our listeners may know him.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and he he has a house uh just two miles outside the beltway there in Bethesda.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we were able to go to his house because I was speaking at a homestead conference in Cleveland, Ohio, that day.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I had to change my flights to get out early enough, and they had a blizzard up there the night before.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't know if we'll be able to get out.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: I got out, got back here to Charlottesville, and dashed home.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: I met Teresa in Stanton, so I didn't have to come out to the farm.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: She brought our clothes, and we just jumped in the car and headed up to Bethesda, got there in time to get our clothes changed, and um, and of course, you know, I had to go get a I went and got a tux and she went and got a beautiful black long-sleeve uh gown, and uh, she looked stunning in it, of course.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so we we got up there, um, got to Dr.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Berg's house and got her clothes changed, and he had several other people staying there as well.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so we all there were about 11 of us, and uh he called, he had uh organized a limousine.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: They had actually been to a couple of other of the balls, and so uh this was kind of the last one for them, uh, he and his wife.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so the limousine came, and we all 11 piled into the limousine.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: This thing's like 40 feet long, you know, this big white uh limousine.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: We all pile into this and go down there.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, all the streets are closed.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: You can't, you you know, they you can't get up where they're close.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: And uh our driver was this little, you know, um little African-American gal, you know, and um and at one time I looked out the window and we were going the wrong way on a one-way street.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: I did notice that.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: We all laughed, and then um, and then we got into a uh uh a detour situation where she finally six lanes of traffic and she does a three-point U-turn in front of three lanes of traffic, you know, with this massive 40-foot limousine.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was quite wild.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, to make a long story short, the cops would not let us get within about eight blocks of the Waldorf Astoria.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, here all of us men, we figured, well, you know, they're she's gonna pick us up right here at the house, drop us at the door.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: We don't need to wear over overcoat.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was like 10 degrees, remember, on that night.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and and so here we are.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Now we got to walk, whatever, 10.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: It was probably not a mile, but it was certainly over three-quarters of a mile a long way.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, so we all finally get out and we walk all this, and got to go through.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: There's like three levels of security.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: It made it made getting on an airplane look like, you know, um nothing, and all this security, and finally got in there and um got our arm bands and you know got into the the room.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: There were about 500 people, and um the meal was ah, okay.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: Can you see?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Can you see the picture?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the meal for the folks who are listening, I just put up on the screen a picture that Mass Congressman Massey posted on his social media.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's Congressman Massey with Joel in a tux.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: You look awesome.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: But Teresa's missing.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't get to see what Teresa looks like.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, she's look, we don't carry smartphones, we don't do all this stuff, and so we're she's she's trying to get uh some pictures were taken of her, and uh, so we're trying to get those to where we can post them uh as well.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and so yeah, I mean that that picture you just showed actually Thomas Massey took, and and he he had all of his kids there.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, that he's he's just so wonderful.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in one year, he's lost his father-in-law, his wife, and his mother-in-law all in one year.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Man, and uh so we we had it, we had a chance to talk a little bit.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: He's he's certainly one of my heroes, and uh just a wonderful, wonderful man.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, anyway, of course they you know they had a band that was you I I I hate these things where you can't even carry on a conversation.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's so loud, you're screaming into the ear one inch away, and you still can't hear.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's I don't understand, I don't get it.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't get it, you know.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: But um anyway, everybody's screaming at each other from one inch away because the music is well, I guess you can call that music.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you can, maybe you can't.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: You said, have you ever seen that movie up?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: That that cartoon up, and he's kind of like the old crotchety guy, and he's like, get off my lawn, you kids, and you know, you remind me of that guy in up, like right now.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Or it's like it's too loud, I can't talk, it's late, we gotta wear these clothes, like, but no, but it's funny because um my husband jokes around that our 15-year-old is actually um like a he's his body's 15, but he's like a 90-year-old inside because uh I will he likes things quiet.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I like to rock out to my 80s music.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: So what especially when I'm in the kitchen or if I'm cleaning, so I'll put I'll like blast the music just like I did when I was a teenager and I'm dancing, I'm rocking out, and he will come downstairs and he'll say, Mother, the music is too loud.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Turn it down.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like a teacher saying that.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like an old, like an old, like an old sage, like a sage just descending from his um from his guru pinnacle, you know.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Mother, the music is too loud.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love it, love it.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so so we're in there, and um, and the the to cut to the chase for me, uh you know, they they had numerous people, Del Big Tree, of course, spoke, and and uh they had and of course RFK Jr.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: uh was there and um but that so this was the Maha ball, okay.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, the thing is like there's a I don't know all the names of them.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: You can look at them all.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure there's like a petroleum, a petroleum ball.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there's a you know, um uh Charlie Kirk had a turning point ball.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, so so anybody that wants to do one of these can do one of these and um and you know try to get their base excited.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so this was the Maha ball.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: And um the turning point or the the revelation to me was when uh Del Bigtree, who is the founder of Highwire, um uh uh got up and he asked, he said, I want to I want to see a show of hands for all the parents that have vaccine uh whatever uh adverse effect adverse effect vaccinated children.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: And Cena over a hundred hands went up and my light suddenly went on as to the as to what what's the energy, what's the what's the the the fuel of this Maha movement?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: And and these parents, I I mean I get teary and chill bumps just thinking about it, you know, look, if you if you have healthy kids and you got healthy grandkids, a lot of this stuff is kind of, you know, it's out there.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's somebody else's issue.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: But let me tell you, these parents who had these perfectly healthy, happy, normal two-year-olds, and in 48 hours suddenly went to a listless automaton, and suddenly they are faced with a lifetime, a lifetime scene of dependency.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of being able to launch their child, they're now having to babysit their child for the rest of their life.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: And the and and then when they go and try to speak about this, oh, it's all in your head.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you're you know, you're crazy, and they're marginalized, they're demonized, they're deplatformed, censored, mocked.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and to be there when suddenly this this group of people who have been, I call it wandering in the wilderness, suddenly had a champion.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: They had somebody who cared, who said, Yes, you do matter.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I do hear you, yes, we should look into this.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was like the the emotional floodgates of being validated, affirmed, understood, like like I'm I I have um I have value suddenly.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that emotional flood just permeated the entire thing in the in the in the euphoria, the euphoria of release, of emotional release.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it was it was powerful, just really, really powerful.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think in those moments, I it it it's I understood.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: Look, I've been up, I've been after this, you know, clean food and and all that, you know, for all my life.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: But in that moment, it it went to another level for me.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: I I I I appreciate I understood and appreciated the the um just the emotional trauma that all these parents have been under, many of them for years.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, a lot of these parents, they were, you know, look, they went to this expensive ball.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, they were they were in their 40s, and they've got kids that are 20 that still can't can't survive, you know, on their own.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and that burden is it's it's almost I mean, it's one thing to care for your elderly parents.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, almost everybody's gonna go through that at some point, but to have that burden of caring for your child for the whole your whole life is just um man, these folks are saints.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: They're just they're just beyond the pale.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: And um my my heart goes out to them, and I saw in that moment what the RFK Junior Maha movement, what what's the you know, what's the fuel, what's the gas on that?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that gas is this core of people who have been looking for a champion, looking for a knight to take their cause forward, and they have it now.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was truly profound.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, you just gave me goosebumps.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because I mean, I can relate because as you know, uh my child was vaccine damaged and developed, he was on the autism spectrum.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, fortunately, we fully reversed it, you would never know.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: But we went through something very similar.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And for us, it was not only just that you're going to have to now be a caregiver for your entire life, and then what do you do when you become older, like elderly?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: What who takes care of your child then, you know, but it's also like, oh, am I I'm tearing up, just remembering what that was like.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's also when you have children, you have high hopes for them.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: You want them to have a better life than you had.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: You envision things like, oh, they're gonna grow up and I'm gonna give them a great education and they're gonna meet somebody and they're gonna get married and have kids and they're gonna be happy.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you see them in this state where they're withdrawn, where they can't really connect, they can't interact with anybody in what we perceive as a meaningful way, that they won't have any of those things that you longed for them.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like this, it's like a that piece of you dies, you know, knowing that that dream will never be realized for your own child, which is just it's devastating.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can't understand it unless you're actually walking through it, you know.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, uh, so it's it's a blessing because you guys have been very blessed with great health throughout your entire family.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I think this is such a blessing that you were able to feel that from and witness it and feel them.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you were part of affirming them, witnessing them, validating them, which is really what all of us want.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's just to be heard, just to be validated that, you know, we matter, like our opinion matters, we as humans matter.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I didn't plan on talking about this today, which is why I was searching for this as you were talking, but there's actually a new study, a peer-reviewed study that just came out.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it says, this is the headline.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's a jaw-dropping study that finds vaccinated children have 170% higher risk of autism.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: 170% higher risk of autism from people, children who are vaccinated.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: The study also found the vaccinated children had a 212% greater likelihood of developing other neurodevelopment disorders like ADHD, um, epilepsy, seizures, brain inflammation, um, you know, and learning disabilities.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so it goes on and on about you know how they did the study and what they found out.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: But there's authors of a study that concluded um planned additions to the vaccine schedule should be delayed until research to just to determine the safety of its impact on children's overall health is completed.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: So again, this is a new peer-reviewed study.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, which is that high you have that's the highest level you can go through is to getting this peer review.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: It is showing that there's these associations, and even scientists, uh some scientists are now coming forward and basically saying stop adding more vaccines to the vaccine schedule until we really figure out what's happening here.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a I don't know if it, you know, which one came first, like, you know, the JFK on this movement, and now you have these studies coming out, like, or you know, whatever the studies came out and it got, you know, whatever, whatever that getting more momentum.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I can tell you this that at at the ball, at the ball, of course, there were there were, I don't know, you know, five or six different speakers that they didn't talk long, you know, they were just little whatever 10 minute, 10, 10 minute vignettes.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: But um uh one of the things that was that was thematic throughout the speakers was that they're gonna open the vaults.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: See, a lot of people don't realize that the the pharmaceutical companies, their trial tests are not public and they don't have to share them.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the Department of Health and Human Services, HHS, also has not shared the what I'll call the the guts of these of these trials.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so as a result, all of this, I'll just say the adverse reaction, or but all of this, you know, trial information has been locked up for all this time.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: And and and remember, every and I'll just for those of folks that are still, you know, um askance at this, let me just say that in 1987, when President Reagan and Senator Ted Kennedy, yes, a Kennedy, when those two men, Kennedy of course was the Democrat, Reagan was the Republican, when those two men hammered out the um the uh product liability exemption for vaccines in 1987, it was because the vaccine companies, see that this is this is identical to what happened in 1906 when Upton Sinclair wrote the jungle and people quit buying meat from the seven great big meat packers.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: And they went to Teddy Roosevelt and said, Hey, we're gonna go bankrupt.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: We need a government agency to put a stamp on on meat so that we get credibility back with the American consumer.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: Teddy Roosevelt being a socialist, he said, Yeah, I'll do that.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: So he did that, and and you know, we got the federal the the the food safety inspection service, and um and and here we are, you know, a century later uh with what we what we have.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and so when these companies, when these pharmaceutical companies went to Reagan and said, Look, we can't continue to make vaccines because all of our profits are being eaten up in litigation from adverse reactions, you know, wouldn't you think, wouldn't you think a reasonable person would say, really?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, really, well, maybe we need to look at these.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: And remember, that was in the day when kids only got three.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it wasn't today when they get 70, all right.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: That was back when they just got three.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: And the companies couldn't make a profit because they were constantly being sued for adverse reactions.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: You would think that a reasonable person would say, Wow, um, maybe we ought to take a look at this.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: But instead, of all the products produced in America, paint, cars, you know, um, lipstick, okay, of all the products produced in America, they said, okay, vaccines, you're gonna get a carve out, and you will never have to be like Liable for your product.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna pick you among all the products produced in America, and you're exempt from liability.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, we know what happened.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they just that's when this whole thing went.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you can trace the rise of autism, the rise of a lot of these things.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: If you, if you, I'm not saying causation, but man, when you've got when you've got identical graphs and you can overlay those lines, and they have a starting point and a developing point, and they're synchronous.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Where there's smoke, there's fire.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's all I'll say.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: And certainly and and so for these parents to hear RFK Jr.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: say, we're gonna open the vaults.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the place went crazy, Zena.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: The place went crazy because suddenly they could envision the the truth, the truth coming out, and and Lord willing, there will be uh even the New York Times will do stories on here's what we're seeing, here's what we're finding, here's what was hidden, you know, for all these years.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: And and so the the emotional the emotional uh floodgated, I don't know how else to say it, uh, of that was just it was something to be there and and just feel that um that that yearning, that finally that that yearning that was affirmed and the aspiration of truth.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because I would love to see us start helping these families and instead of basically telling them, no, that can't be it, no, that's in your head, like you know, um, I know have a friend whose doctor said, Oh, the kid will grow out of it.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, to to just dismiss them and turn them away when it's one thing to to debate studies and to debate methodology behind it, or you know, there was there wasn't a good control group or whatever.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: But when you have so many parents who, like you said, the child was healthy 24 to 48 hours after they're vaccinated, they're a totally different child, you know.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: These are like we, you know, we we talked about end of one experiments and how now people that that movement is growing, like the end of one experiment movement is growing, that people are becoming more aware that we are so unique, each of us is as unique as a fingerprint, like in our biology, that these studies don't really apply to all of us.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, who is this average person that's represented in this study?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: We are usually outliers in them.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so there is recognition that we are these N of one experiments, and we should validate and value those as a society even more so than the double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trials, um, because it really matters what happens to you.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: But now I see it as we have a lot of these N of one experiments in just this particular space.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's not even like an N of one anymore, you know, it's like the end of hundreds of thousands that this is happening to.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: And yet we still dismiss these people.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: We we still dismiss their their cause and their struggles, you know, as though that can't be true because we'd rather stick our head in the sand, or like like how you were saying, they'd rather not evaluate, oh, why is this happening to some people?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's all right, how do we keep the status quo?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was there any mention at all about them like removing that carve out for the vaccine industry?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, yes.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: There there was there was talk of that.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: And um, but I I I but I think I think that that that is is like phase three.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: Phase one, well phase one is get RFK Jr.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: affirmed, yeah, and and and that's supposed to happen this week.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Phase two is open the vaults and let this information out.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: Phase three is well, phase three, we could say, well, what happens next?
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh um do do do you fundamentally change the vaccine protocols and just say, I I I can tell you, I can tell you that even more than eliminating the product liability was a an aggressive position about um freedom of choice, that that nobody should be excluded from school, nobody should be excluded from military service.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, name you know, name whatever.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but this idea that you're gonna be excluded from anything on the basis of a vaccine record, maybe that's phase three.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's the definite phase three.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know who is excluding people now who are not vaccinated?
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Pediatrician offices.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: Oh.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: In my area, um, it's really, really hard to find a pediatrician who does not require you to have vaccinated your children.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm talking about the full CDC schedule.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so some a lot of them won't see you at all.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's some who say, okay, we'll see you.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: But to come into our office, you're gonna have to sign a form from the CDC that says you are liable if your kid who's unvaccinated is playing with, you know, or even in the same room as another other kids and they happen to get some sickness.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: We that you now, as the parent, have to claim full liability and responsibility for that.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: And some of them now even fine you.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Every time you go in for like a well check, whatever, if you're not vaccinated, that office will fine you for not being vaccinated, for not for not having your child vaccinated.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Cena, this is simply fueling the alternative health movement.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: I just, I just returned, and we'll we'll do this on another podcast, but I just returned from the Tennessee Health Summit, which was a blue zone, a blue zone initiative in um in eastern Tennessee, where I spent two days with, I don't know, what, 50, 60 doctors, MDs, all of whom are opting out of the system.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: It could be everything from uh from they don't take insurance to they they are trying to work with insurance companies to um to get wellness so so that the this is gonna have to be another podcast to drill into this, but but but essentially there is no incentive right now.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: Think about this.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: In the healthcare industry, there is zero incentive to a doctor who keeps you well.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: If a doctor keeps you well, you don't go visit him as much, you don't go to the hospital, you don't use pharmaceuticals, you you don't need the million-dollar you know, CAT scans and apparatus at the at the hospital.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so a well patient, I mean this was, I mean, I knew it intellectually, but immersed in it for two days, I'm just on fire that the to understand, I mean, I'm a business guy, okay?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: I, you know, I'm I'm a number cruncher, I do business, or I'm a I'm an entrepreneur.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: And to realize that there is zero incentive in the entire industry for to keep somebody well.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Zero incentive.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: The only incentive is the goodness of my heart.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm a doctor, I care about my patients, I want them to be well.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: But but there is there is literally there is zero incentive in the system to keep people well.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll we'll drill down on that on a future one, but but that's that that's profound.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and so the the whole, I mean the whole tenor of the Maha, make America Healthy Again, the the whole philosophy, the theme of it is as a culture, let's let's put emotional, economic incentive on on health.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: We've been fixated on sickness.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: Everything is about sickness.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: We label it, we diagnose it, we we you know, you have stage four.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we you know, um I I was I was just with a with a guy in uh Phoenix, Arizona, uh doing another conference.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: This guy runs a he runs a juicing center.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he not doesn't run it, he's he's part of the part of the staff.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: And he said they routinely get stage four cancer people in this in their juicing center, and 85% of them are cured with their juice protocol.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not here endorsing, I'm just saying this is stage four cancer.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this is not early stages.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and um so I I think, yeah, I think what you're saying is absolutely going to spawn an entire just just like homeschooling took off after parents realized what their kids were seeing in school, uh, and and homeschooling now is just off the charts.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: And charter schools and you know, private and everything alternative is off the charts right now.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: They they can't uh they can't even uh keep up.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: I I was just at a a school in uh outside of Cleveland, Ohio last weekend.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: Started um, it's only in the second year.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: They had 15 students their first year, 90 their second year.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: Next year they're planning for 200.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's just it's just off the charts.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: Ohio, by the way, has a full voucher program.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: So any parent that wants to send their kids anywhere gets a voucher and can send them anywhere they want to.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh wow.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Every place should be like that.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, every place should be like that.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, so at this school, Cena, you'd love this.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: The favorite room in the school is the cardboard room.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: And every every kid um fights to go to the cardboard room.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: This is a room, this is a classroom that is ceiling or floor to ceiling with all different kinds of cardboard, poster board, everything you can imagine, and all sorts of cutting tools and knives and all this.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, elementary kids, yeah, yeah.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: Elementary kids are in there under supervision, but they build stuff.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: And those kids, uh the it's like that room is the is the um uh is like the it instead of if you're if you're good and you and you are and you make progress, it's a benchmark.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you get to go to the cardboard room.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like it's like the ultimate, the ultimate uh um, you know, incentive uh to go.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: And the kids vie for time, you know.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: And and this school is full of problem kids.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um a lot of the students there have are bullies, they've got ADHD, they got all these things, you know, in the regular system.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: They go there.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: I talk to the headmaster, so we don't have any problems, no problems at all.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that cardboard room cures everything.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: Or, or, you know, the they have a worm box.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: They've just hatched a bunch of chicks, they're raising chickens.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: They've got uh, you know, it just they don't have these problems, you know.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: The kids anyway, uh wow.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: So the ma the Maha ball was was fantastic, and uh it really gave me, I think, uh just a very touching personal, almost spiritual uh look into what's been what's been driving this.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm just thrilled.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm coming alongside, I'm just in the vicarious thrill of coming alongside these parents and saying, yeah, we're here for you.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: We get it.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: Just that's cool.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, when you when you've been when you've been demonized and ostracized and ignored for this amount of time, and then suddenly you see the culture actually coming along and starting to, you know, we haven't put their put our arm around them as a culture, but there are there is a movement to put that arm around them.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's wonderful.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, I love that.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to say, I love the cardboard room because we have one of those too.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was one of the best things I ever did for my kids.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: They love it.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: We still have a whole room today for cardboard.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: We've had a cardboard room for about probably 10 years, you know, prompted by my first child.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: And now he actually wants to grow up to be an engineer.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's incredible.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's incredible.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you go back to basics, they don't need all these fancy toys and gadgets and stuff.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like he feels um so accomplished and like he has exercised a sense of purpose by building, creating things, you know, in his own space.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, no, I love it.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of which, you I also want to talk about this today.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: You are featured in a new documentary put on by Angel Studios.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: I believe it's called The Lunatic Farmer.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of parallels, I think, here, you know, of like this alternative lifestyle taking hold, because this is documented.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, while I was watching this documentary about you guys kind of pushing forward this movement of this alternative movement, you mentioned that um you were you guys were accused of witchcraft when you guys were in Venezuela because your chickens were clean chickens compared to everybody else's, right?
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then so I feel like there's this um also this common thread of the movement coming around you, like society is coming around and putting the arm around you as well, saying that you know, while you've been demonized in the past and whatever, that now people are understanding it and people are are seeing the bounty and the abundance that you can actually bring to life and to the food and to the farmer if you practice um this ecologically friendly uh way of farming.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so um I wanted to just to start this off by a quote from you at the beginning of this new documentary.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, if you haven't seen it, it is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's they did a fantastic job, like production quality, laying in photos of uh from Joel's photo album from when he was a child and everything.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was crying.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was so moving.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: It makes you want to farm.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not a farmer, it will make you want to farm or at least start growing something, uh, you know, an herb in your window seal.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's so motivating.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: But this is what you said.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like they asked you like, what gets you up in the morning?
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so you said, um, what gets me up in the morning is I can wake up in the morning and step into a physical expression of God's abundance.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, like that, just already off the top of that documentary, goosebumps.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's so profound.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: People don't talk like that, Joel.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like most of us don't think like that.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, yeah.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: The the the so the the way the documentary developed was um, so Angel Studios has it now has it for, I don't know, a couple of months, not very long, but it was actually produced and developed by uh a smaller outfit uh called Canon, C-A-N-O-N, Canon.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they're actually a religious or a religious uh company, uh Canon, like the the canon of scripture, okay.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's that idea.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so they're they're a conservative um religious group, and they they did a they they're they're working on a series um over time of what they called uh master crafters.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so they've they've done you know, potters and um uh artists and musicians and different people who are who are in this case Christians who are masters of their craft.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so this was the first time they kind of stepped out of the you know, like a sculptor, an artist, a musician, and and and and went to a broader idea of a farmer as craft as as crafts craftsman.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so that's the idea.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh um, so this was this was a little bit of a push for them, you know, in this series, but um uh you know when Angel Studios uh picked it up to for for release, um, that was a huge thing for this little company for Angel to come in and pick it up for release, uh, because they could have never gotten the traction that that Angel did.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm grateful that you know that Angel uh uh picked it up.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: That that was not that was not in the cards, if you will, when they actually came and did the filming.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh and of course I'm not privy to all the you know the backdoor negotiations and how these you know film guys work.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: But it turns out that there are a couple of uh individuals at Angel Studios who know us, me, our work, and uh have followed some, who knows, we might even have a uh a podcast subscriber, you know, in in in their you know, their staff there.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so when this when this was available, uh Angel stepped in to pick it up.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: It was originally going to be released in early December, and they postponed it for about seven or eight weeks.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I I'm imagining that they realized, well, this could this could be part of that whole you know inaugural Maha, you know, this whole you know, uh uh rollout.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, um it's it's definitely getting some traction and people are are enjoying it.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and Teresa and I, when we watched the rough cut back in, I don't know, August or something like that, they sent us a rough cut just to, you know, just to make and I had a couple things, a couple couple little things that were actually, you know, wrong.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so they they fixed those.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but when we watched it, we, you know, we're not we're not big, whatever, documentary movie kind of people.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_01: They got too many things in our life, but we sat right here uh and watched the whole thing, and we just thought they did a they did a fantastic job of capturing our essence.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that's hard to do.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's hard to do because most people, most people, even documentary, they they start with an agenda, you know, and and so they they push, they push the story to match their agenda, if you will.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like these guys, they didn't have an agenda like that.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: They they just wanted to um to affirm affirm what we were doing, affirm our life uh and our mastery of this type of farming.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so it just was, yeah, uh, we're we're pretty overwhelmed by it.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's pretty neat.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I so I wanted to ask you a couple questions from the documentary, and then also answer a couple listener questions that tie into this documentary, in fact.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: So the first one is when you were in the documentary, you're talking about dense forests, and you were talking about like cutting down trees and whatnot, like thinning the forest.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I wrote this down because I thought this was fantastic.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: You basically asked, do we want to be environmentalist by abandonment or participation?
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: Do we want to run from his creation um or run or come toward it?
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I would love for you to expand on that because that really hit me.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: That was so profound, because that is the common perception, the common belief in our culture, in my understanding, is that to be an environmentalist, you leave it alone, right?
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: We we put fences around these forests and these areas so that no one can touch it, you know, preserve it exactly the way that we found it.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: But you're contradicting that, if I may use that word.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: Can you explain that?
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then I have um a forest that in question.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, sure.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: So so it yeah, if you look at the story of human civilization, it is not an ecologically friendly story.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: For the most part, for the most part.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: There are there are places in the world where where the uh where the human intervention or or the human um uh manipulation if you will of the ecology has been extremely beneficial but but in the main in the main when you look at the great civilizations of of the world the you know the the the polynesian the greeks the romans the um they they gradu they they they come into ascendancy in resource and ecological wealth and then they gradually collapse in resource um decrease in in resource you know uh deprivation if you will or exploitation and so i totally i i totally resonate and get why at in a cursory glance you would say well well the only way to interact with nature that that is uh responsible is to exclude humans from nature because everywhere thing we touch we mess up all right i i i i you know i totally resonate with that but i also know that there are techniques and things and there are people who are greening the desert there are people who have made turned mountains into you know terraced uh incredible terraced uh productivity areas uh low organic matter into high organic matter and i've watched it on our own farm how our our our management of the ecosystem now we have more wildlife uh we have all eight varieties of bumblebees known to exist in in Virginia uh we have this plethora uh of of uh of life here and soil growth and hydration and water and all these things uh that that have come because of our management and so my challenge is yes uh some people especially ultra conservatives need to repent in sackcloth and ashes and recognize yes our ancestors have done a lot of bad things okay all right well let's repent and and and okay we're done all right but then let's stand up and take this head and these hands that have hurt and use them for healing because nothing can heal as fast as our mental and physical uh our our capacity to massage to interact and so so my challenge is to the you know the the the environmental movement is thank you for recognizing what a lot of ultra-conservatives don't yet but where ultra-conservatives tend to continue down the path of exploitation they have to come to a place of repentance at some point before they reverse their interaction uh mentality you folks you environmentalists you've already come to the repentance point but the next step is not abandonment it is a participatory healing let's put our attention on that oh that's so good such a mind shift too you know it makes it makes so much sense when you lay it out like that it's very logical but that does take a willingness to shift your perception because this has been ingrained I mean from the time we were in schools and you know we were taught like what Roosevelt's efforts and whatnot.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: So along those lines forest thinning why is it important to thin a forest like what does that actually do like from an environmental perspective and then also um Brendan messaged in and he's a little confused about how to calculate um the forest thinning so maybe if you could walk us through that again.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay all right so the importance of forest thinning so one of the uh many of our listeners I know will be familiar with the term permaculture permaculture was developed by Bill Mollison and Dave Homgren in uh Australia during the late uh the the early 70s and um and the idea is a permanent agriculture and there are there are specific rules of that of that um that paradigm uh and one of their concepts is we need more forests and fewer trees because trees um want they want room to grow and and if and if you crowd them uh they the good ones can't grow as well and so just like you can't grow green beans if your garden is weedy uh and you need to weed the weed the green beans and and you can't crowd the green beans too close or they won't grow very well either even if they're all green beans and not weedy because they need room to grow.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so we see this everywhere uh you know uh you know people okay you know we need room to flourish and grow okay as individuals uh plants tree all this stuff and so part of the problem with our forests is that there is way too much trash material you know uh weak crooked uh um weed weed type trees that are hampering the vitality and growth of the good ones and so part of stewardship part of our our massage if you will uh on the landscape is to take out those thin out those weedy ones that are taking sunlight soil nutrients water to allow the good ones to really um to really achieve their achieve their potential and not be uh torn down or or or you know um uh hampered by the competition of a bunch of yin yangs and and so uh so yeah so that's the idea and and and the Native Americans of course they did this with fire they they lit fires routinely which hurt the little weedy diseased and weak stuff and did not hurt the great big trees uh if if they did if they did it often enough and routine enough to not get you know really really hot fires that's a problem in California California you know you talk about fuel fuel fuel what's fuel well fuel is is dead biomass material that has not either been grazed or been uh uh harvested you know dead trees fallen trees things like that that then create when there is a fire it's an inferno as opposed to a nice gentle fire that essentially weeds and opens the the forest the first europeans who came to the to the um North America said they could take a european continental army from the Atlantic to the Mississippi without any roads there was that there there was that much openness in in the forest the Native Americans did not like dense forests the dense forests of Ichabod Crane and and you know um last of the Mohegans you know in in New England those dense forests those were not Native American Native Americans did not like dense forests because they couldn't they couldn't see uh enemies you know uh they they people could sneak up on you you know if you're surrounded by a bunch of dense forests so they didn't like dense forest so they didn't have chainsaws or chippers but they used fire routinely to um to keep the underbrush and the and the and the little diseased and and weak trees down so that the big trees could become what we call cathedral forest.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_01: Today all silviculturalists adhere to this idea and the rule of thumb is when you're thinning pick your so when I go out to thin I take you know survey ribbon and um and I pick I pick my good trees you pick pick nice you know straight healthy you know uh uh trees put a ribbon on them and the idea is to take the diameter of the keeper trees the diameter in inches double it so if you've got a six inch tree times two that'd be 12 inches and then convert it to feet and come out from the tree 12 feet.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: So imagine drawing a circle around that tree that six inch diameter tree 12 feet out all the way around that's how much you can clear without clearing so much that too much light gets in and stimulates epicormic sprouting or suckering on the on the trunk of the tree.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: Every tree trunk deciduous trees not not conifers but deciduous trees hardwoods have thousands of dormant buds all up and down their their trunk that are stimulated by sunlight.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you um if you change the amount of light very quickly suddenly a bunch of those little dormant sprouts that have been shaded will will sprout and the tree will get you know what we looks like fuzzy.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_01: You see this lots of times in um in in new developments like residential developments where they've gone into some woods they've cleared the woods but they left a few trees three years down the road all those trees have little suckers all growing up them you ever you've seen that everywhere okay well that's because they took the shade down and got too much sunlight on that tree trunk too fast and now the tree's destroyed because suckers on a tree are are are um are bad for the tree um and so so this this take the diameter in inches times two convert it to feet and go out that far from the tree don't clear any more than that or you'll get too much sunlight in and destroy the tree with epicormic sprouting okay um I'm trying to get this visualization of when you're talking about like the Native Americans would use fire to thin so I'm visualizing them like lighting starting a fire to get rid of like the little brambles and the brush and whatever and so you're saying that it's almost like you can selectively kill off like burn down those little things and the big trees still stay there?
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like they don't yes wow yeah those are those are called cold fires cold fires as opposed to hot fires.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_01: So hot fires hot fires are the what we're seeing in California where it gets into the treetops and it just it just is completely devastating.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: A cold fire and I've seen I in my lifetime I've seen several of these in in our woods here or or you know nearby I I remember uh dad and art my brother and I going to to help fight a forest fire um years ago and and did the backfires uh in fact there's a there's a controlled burn that they're supposed to do up here they've been waiting two years to do it up here that's gonna uh touch they had to get our permission because it it it our our mountain land our forest goes a little bit into the public land it's going to be a public project but they're gonna burn about I don't know what five or six acres of ours up there and uh and and the idea is to um that a cold fire I've seen them they're pretty amazing they don't get into the trees they're just very gentle they they burn the leaves and especially the the little brush and brambles uh that that really have high uh polyphenols in them that and they burn like torches you know you just see them I mean it's it's it's pretty cool to to watch them just explode almost because they've got like you know turpentine and stuff in them or whatever these these volatile substances are and and so that that fire just goes real slow and gentle across but it doesn't get into the treetops it it doesn't get hot it it it's almost uh you know it's it's a very gentle thing and so the Native Americans they really understood the nuances of fire uh the weather conditions had to be right you know I mean they they they they were very very experienced in this and so they would strategically do this and that and that kept that kept the bottom um you know traversable and somewhat open for for hunting for their own security and for for being able to to walk to move and not get all you know stuck up with a bunch of briars every time they walk somewhere wow that's so cool although I'm not gonna tell my kids about these coal fires because I'm assuming they're gonna go out and try it in our forest but right like that's a supervised thing like very very much so very much so yeah okay and we just have a of just like four or five minutes left.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it just goes by too fast.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: So in these last minutes I wondered if you can talk about ponds because we had a couple listener questions about ponds.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: In the documentary you said that ponds build forgiveness into the landscape and that you've dug over 20 pound ponds on your property which I think is just beautiful.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: So let me piggyback this on a listener's question.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is from Jessica Revis.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: She says can Joel talk to us about ponds can you have too many ponds what are the considerations for pond placement how to keep it healthy should your livestock allow to be able to access that water and can you rehabilitate an unhealthy pond?
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_01: So Joel, you got four minutes to answer to answer all of those okay all right so um so first of all in in general I don't think you can have too many ponds.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_01: You got to realize that 500 years ago North America was 8% water today we're less than 4% and most of this water was uh beaver ponds.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well we don't have the beavers anymore at least not the way they were and the beavers didn't always build ponds where we would want them today because they might flood you know a place where you don't want but today we have excavation equipment so that we can actually go higher on the landscape than the beavers.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_01: Beavers always wanted running water to build a pond in well we can go to a to a dry valley put up a dam with an excavation equipment and we can put water we can put a pond where beavers would never put a pond higher on the landscape that's another permaculture concept you want to keep the raindrops as high on the landscape as possible for as long as possible uh because you you can then use those raindrops you know in their gravitational move to the to the sea and so uh so many small ponds higher on the landscape are better than a couple of great big ponds low on the landscape simply because of the gravitational uh uh ability of water we do not allow our livestock access to the ponds they are all fenced out all of them are fenced out because livestock muddies it they they push the edges in they uh and and they poop in it and they just destroy the the the the pond over time uh rehabbing an unhealthy pond well that's another whole podcast but uh I mean could well because there's a there's a lot of reasons for unhealth unhealth can be uh that there's there's um uh toxic runoff it could be that the sides have been pushed in and it's too shallow it could be that it's been silted in and it's too shallow it could be that a dam blew out and and and so the water level is lower than it ought to be I mean there's a whole lot of things but but in general yes you can rehab every unhealthy pond uh and and in general uh the steeper the sides the better the deeper it is the better and one of the tricks is to always have a pipe overflow uh that's big enough to handle a flood so so the water never washes over the dam.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a flood the the pipe the the overflow pipes are big enough to handle the water so it doesn't wash out the dam you know in a in a flood situation.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_01: The very quick well you know I don't have much land can I build a pond think about this worldwide the rule of thumb is one third of all raindrops become surface runoff and I make a huge distinction between surface runoff and all other water whether it's a creek a spring uh an aquifer okay those are all what I call the commons those are commons if you if you if everybody sticks a a straw into an aquifer and starts sucking then you don't have an aquifer eventually that's what happened that's what's happening in the Ogallala aquifer that's under five states in the Midwest that operates all those big pivot irrigation systems it's still dropping about two feet a year uh and it's dropped almost a hundred feet because we're sucking water out faster than we're putting water in to that to to the Ogallala aquifer it's it's pretty pretty serious.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so I don't want to use groundwater.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to use river or creek water because again I didn't put that water there it didn't originate with me and it's gonna and people downstream are depending on that water you know for their thing.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_01: So so and if everybody puts a straw in in in the stream and starts sucking you know with an irrigation pipe, a straw whatever uh there's not going to be a stream anymore which is you know the Murray Darling in Australia, which is one of the largest river systems in the world um you know in 1820 steamboats went 500 miles inland up the Murray Darling in southern Australia.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: Today that river doesn't even go to the ocean because of all the irrigation they keep sucking water off of it, sucking water and and by the time it gets to the ocean it's not even a river anymore.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_01: So so I I make a huge distinction between surface runoff and all the other water because surface runoff by definition only happens when there's too much rain at one time for the soil to absorb it or it's coming too fast for the soil to absorb.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_01: So surface runoff is um is excess okay the the the cup is full the cup of the commons is now full and it can't carry anymore and this is excess which then you have a flood all right so P.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_01: A yeomans who wrote Water for Every Farm in 1950 he's Australian developed the key line plan he said every farm should aspire to two things one never allow surface runoff from your farm catch it trap it for future use and number two never end a drought with a full pond in other words use the water in a drought to maintain uh to maintain photosynthetic activity in the vegetation so um how much water so if you're if you're east of the Mississippi let's just make it real simple east of the Mississippi you're gonna get at least 30 inches of rainfall a year even in the driest areas Rabong Georgia gets 100 inches a year all right Lancaster Pennsylvania gets 52 Cherokee North Carolina gets 52 Charlottesville Virginia gets 42.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_01: We get 31 here so let's just use 30 because it's divisible by three one third of 30 is 10.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_01: 10 inches per year well what's 10 inches per year on an acre one acre inch of water is 30,000 gallons 3000 gallons so 3000 gallons times 10 is 300 000 gallons so if you have a one acre watershed east of the Mississippi you are generating 300 000 gallons of surface runoff per acre per year.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_01: Wow so what if you have five acres well that's 1.5 million gallons okay so my point is it doesn't take a whole lot of land area to generate uh to to generate enough water for at least uh you know a a small pond and when i say a small pond i mean something that's you know maybe you know 50 50 feet you know 50 feet edge to edge round you know eight nine feet deep um there's there there's more there's more water and and so most of our ponds are not in creeks um they're not in streams they're they're in valleys that are dry all year except for maybe you know eight or nine years you know when there's a big snow melt a big rain event uh the edge edges of a hurricane but when you go out in a flood situation you know there is water everywhere and so these dry valleys you know eight to ten days a year I mean they're running you know enough to fill a a six inch pipe Well, a six-inch pipe running for 24 hours is a lot of water.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of water out of a six-inch pipe.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm just trying to get a visual, you know, so people can appreciate the visual.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_01: And um and so that that then fills the pond, and then and then we, you know, we gradually use that throughout the year.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_01: And there are few things that make me happier than to have used my ponds during a dry time to maintain grass and and biomass activity.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then the rain suddenly comes, you maybe you have a hurricane or something, and there's water everywhere, the river's full, almost flooded, you know, and there's water everywhere.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I jump on a four-wheeler and run up to check the ponds, and I've still got two feet of uh of head on the pond before it's even full.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that gives me great satisfaction because I know that from this place we are not adding to the flood problem downstream, and that's that's a joyful thing.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna start calling you encyclopedia, Joel, because seriously, it's like it is, it's like you have an encyclopedia in front of you, and you're just listing out all these facts and you know, like historical comments.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, where do you keep all that info?
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think we should do a whole episode just on ponds.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, all you want to know about ponds.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to build a pond.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe this will be my first real homesteading adventure is building a pond.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that would be so fun to do with my boys.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_00: But anyhow, we are out of time.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: But this was fantastic.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_00: I love getting these little insights, you know, being access Hollywood for a moment, uh, you know, in the life of Joel and Teresa.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, do you have a community question for today?
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I was afraid you were gonna ask that.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_00: So um you love how I always push it onto you.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, you do.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_01: You do.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_01: This is my contribution to the deal.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I I I I would ask, I would ask, um uh this is a this is maybe pushing people a little bit, but do you have or do you know someone who has a vaccine adverse condition child?
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_01: And how do you feel about RFK Jr.'s um pledge to open the vaults?
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_01: Express your emotional, your your emotional feelings about how that is making you feel for yourself or for a friend who has gone through these uh this situation.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_00: All right, that well, that can really elicit a lot of emotional reactions, but that's that's good.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_00: We you know, let's get it out.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's stop holding it in.
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is the time, our time to kind of release, you know.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I love that.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is great.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_00: All right, thank you again for joining us all today.
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_00: This was such a fun episode, I think, for me, um, especially because the next one we're recording is much heavier than this.
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_00: So this is always a nice, fun little break for us.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we we are grateful that you guys are here and we look forward to connecting with you again uh next week.