Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #83: Farmers Gain Political Seats in Netherlands: Joel's Not So Happy

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Episode #83: Farmers Gain Political Seats in Netherlands: Joel's Not So Happy · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: For example, I mean I uh and I'm I'm certainly not trying to be difficult to the Netherland farmers, but I'll tell you what, I've been there and I've met, you know, this young couple comes up, you know, they're they're in their 30s, and what do you do?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you we dairy.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, okay, so how many cows do you have?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we have a hundred cows.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh 100 cow dairy.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: How much land do you have?
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we have 10 acres.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Folks, you can't have a hundred dairy cows on 10 acres and practice any kind of ecological uh uh uh uh recycling.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: It it it can't be done.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh the other thing that's happening is all the tillage that's happening in the farmland, the farmland is subsiding.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, a lot of this land was peat moss, it was boggy, boggy peat moss.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the all of Europe drains through the Netherlands.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at a at a at a satellite photo, you'll see all the big rivers in Europe, they drain through the Netherlands.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: And this was all drained, and it was it was peat because the the marshland, the water uh made everything anaerobic, and so there was no, there was very little decomposition.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it would just build up and build up and build up.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome everyone to the Beyond Labels Podcast with Farmer Joel Salatin.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: That would be me, and our favorite researcher, Dr.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Cena McCullough.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: We want to remind you at the top of the uh podcast today, again, to be sure to um share this with your friends.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: We are again uh just reminding you about our our censoring issues with YouTube and are encouraging you if you like this tribe and you want this tribe to grow and you think this information is important, to pass it along to your friends so that we can grow uh grow the tribe and grow the strength that we have in our own knowledge base.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, with that little uh encouragement, I'm gonna pass it on to Dr.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Cena to kind of introduce our first uh topic of discussion.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, thanks, Joel.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so first we have a quick update.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: This is on the situation um overseas that we've been following about farmers rising up against the government.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: And this just happened, well, for us over the weekend.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it says there's a headline that came out saying Dutch farmers storm to victory in regional elections, set to become the largest party in the Senate.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: So the article goes on to say that the success of the farmer citizen movement will further undermine the Dutch government's plans to impose radical agricultural reforms that campaigners say will destroy rural communities.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um voters dealt a hammer blow to the Dutch establishment in the regional elections on Wednesday, which propelled the farmer citizen movement to become the largest party in the Senate in just its first election.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: The exit poles are projecting the movement will win 15 seats in the Dutch upper chambers.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they're saying voters are sending a clear message to the government over its planned nitrogen emissions laws that campaigners say are going to devastate the country's agricultural sector.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of breaking news at the time that we recorded of this podcast.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to toss it back over to Joel because you have you have a unique take on this.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because someone from my perspective, I'm looking at these articles and I'm thinking, yeah, goat farmers, like let's take back our country, right?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, more power to the farmers.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then I got excited.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: I sent you an email and you're like, uh, not so fast.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like yeah, well, yeah, um, and and I certainly don't know all the ins and outs, but I have been to the Netherlands uh many, many times doing a lot of seminars.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: I've met a lot of farmers there, and um, and and this is not as as cut and dried as you might think.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, there's a lot of um uh worldwide, there is there is a growing divide as as the world has citified, uh, and we've emptied the countrysides, including in the US.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: The the the demographics are quite you know profound that people go to the cities and and the countryside is emptying out.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's actually changing a little bit here since uh since COVID, but um uh there there is a there is a real divide between city and country, uh pretty much in every country of the world.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh uh so so here we are in the Netherlands.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: I've been there numerous times, and um one of the big issues there is the manure management from all the the livestock.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there's almost nothing there out on pasture, nothing, it's all confined.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh, you know, dairies, pigs, chickens.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the confinement houses are not as big as the ones in the US, that's for sure.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: So where we have a hundred thousand in a house, uh say chickens, uh, they may have they may have uh 40,000 in a house.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: So they they are smaller and they're they're so that and they're more spread out, you know, across the countryside.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: But the the the problem there is that they import so much feedstock, especially from Paraguay and Uruguay, where the Dutch have historic, um, you know, historic uh relationships back in the you know uh the Dutch East Indies, their trading empire, and even uh their piracy days, uh, when they were pirates, that they they they built alliances around the around the world, and um so they're bringing in so much feedstuffs into these uh uh animal structures, they're overrunning the ecology with manure.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I can tell you that when you go out in the countryside, um you can you can pretty much you know it smells like you're in a septic tank.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's that much manure in the canals, you know.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: The Netherlands is a low kind, they've got these canals running everywhere to duct water away, and they're they're full of uh of manure.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so, for example, I mean I uh and I'm I'm certainly not trying to be difficult to the Netherland farmers, but I'll tell you what, I've been there and I've met, you know, this young couple comes up, you know, they're they're in their 30s, and what do you do?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you we dairy.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh okay, so how many cows do you have?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we have a hundred cows, uh, a hundred cow dairy.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: How much land do you have?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we have 10 acres, folks.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: You can't have a hundred dairy cows on 10 acres and practice any kind of ecological uh uh uh uh recycling.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: It it it can't be done.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh the other thing that's happening is all the tillage that's happening in the farmland, the farmland is subsiding.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, a lot of this land was peat moss, it was boggy, boggy peat moss.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the all of Europe drains through the Netherlands.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at a at a at a satellite photo, you'll see all the big rivers in Europe, they drain through the Netherlands.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: And this was all drained, and it was it was peat because the the marshland, the water uh made everything anaerobic, and so there was no there was very little decomposition.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: So it would just build up and build up and build up over time.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: You had these these these large uh kind of uh uh you know uh uh marshy places.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they drained it.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, now with uh with uh agriculture where they're tilling and they're planting stuff, that tillage injects oxygen into this formerly anaerobic, uh, you know, water-based swampy stuff, and and the the carbon, the organic matter, this old peat, this old legacy, legacy bulrushes and stuff that's been there for centuries is now decomposing.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's oxidizing, and that land is subsiding.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and I met farmers who, you know, uh 40 years ago, they could go out and they could, you know, go out with a big tractor and a and a plow and they could plant, you know, barley or wheat or or corn or whatever.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now that those fields have dropped eight, nine, ten, twelve inches.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in the Netherlands, 12 inches is huge.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so then so then what happens is the water starts seeping back in because it's getting too low, and the tractors uh uh the the land won't hold up the tractor anymore.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so I remember really well, probably one of my biggest uh whatever uh shocks ever doing a doing a seminar was I had this room full of farmers.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: There were, I don't know, 100, 150 of them in the room, and I was talking about our composting program and how we chip trees and you know do all this composting.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I said to the room, I said, now, you know, I'm trying to make this applicable to you guys, and I'm I'm a little embarrassed about you know how we do this carbon thing because you know, you you you guys probably don't have the carbon that we have, and and uh so you know it it's a little more difficult for you.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it was hilarious.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: The whole room started laughing.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: I said, you know, what's you know, what's so funny?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, um uh they said you you couldn't be more wrong.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: I said, really?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: They said, because all the sewage in the canals grows so much vegetation from from you know willows and and and and and little trees to cattails and and just you know uh uh biomass that that we can get all the carbon we want for free.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: There are mountains of it.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: I said, well, that's what you need to be putting on your fields to stop the subsistence.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Put put all that back on your fields.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now you complete the cycle, now you build the soil up and you're back where you were.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so so uh this was revolutionary, I can tell you.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: This was revolutionary thinking for them to actually go to what I call a carbon economy.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, for me, it's it's a no-brainer, it's the way everything works.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, if you're a chemical, chemical-based uh uh system and and you've never really been touched with you know the carbon economy at a biomass program, you know, it never enters your mind.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I'm torn.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: I uh I'm torn about this whole Netherlands thing because I know how much um how much ecological uh uh devastation there's been.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, in fact, you know, really good farmers, they're they're well aware of this, and they complain about those farmers, you know.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: So it's similar here.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Just because you're a farmer doesn't mean you're you're either ecologically helpful or or even beneficial to you know to the landscape.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there are good farmers and there are bad farmers.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so uh, you know, I I I now having said that, chances are whatever whatever changes are going to occur here from the government, I have no faith, I have no faith that there will be a fair, equitable, common sense uh approach from the government.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, wouldn't it be cool if the government said, all right, from now on, we're gonna quit landfilling all this biomass and we're gonna go to mass composting and build up our soils.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, wouldn't that be cool?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now all the farmers can stay in business, blah, blah, blah.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, um, but but but common sense often doesn't reign supreme.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: You got to realize that the government incentivized, I mean, those farmers in the Netherlands, like a lot of the EU, they get for uh a lot of people don't realize that 80% of the EU budget is agriculture subsidies.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: 80% of the EU's budget is agriculture subsidies.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of that is because Europe, Europe has gone through famine, they've gone through wars, they've gone through starvation.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And way more than America than the U.S., those Europeans understand food security.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: We we do not want to become dependent on other places for our food.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so they put a great attention on this and they pay their farmers a thousand dollars an acre per year just to own farmland, which of course makes the price go way up.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: But it also uh creates a perverse incentive uh on farmland to, you know, uh a perverse incentive to do things that you wouldn't do if you weren't getting, you know, if you weren't getting a prop up of a thousand bucks an acre to do it.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you'd you know take care of your acres a little better if you didn't just get paid to own it.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so there have been perverse incentives in the past that have brought, I think, things to this point.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And now the question is, what kind of perverse regulatory environment is there on the other end trying to get out of it?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: And and and trust me, there is a um what you don't see in the press is you don't see uh, and I know I'm going too long here, uh uh Cena, but but what you don't see in the press is is the nuance that I've just described.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: You you what what you have every everything is simplified.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's the people against the farmer, or it's the Dutch government against the farmer, or it's the farmer against the consumer.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, everything gets simplified in the news media.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And when you go there, it's not simple.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's nuanced, it's complex.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: But in a in a in a 30-second sound bite culture, in a TikTok culture, you don't have time to to you know to suss out the complexity of the situation.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: And and it is complex.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you and I, I wouldn't want to live in a place that smelled like a septic tank all the time.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And and I can tell you, having been there, good farmers complain about you know that guy over there, he's dumping all this stuff in the canal, you know, and and they complain about uh about it as well.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh so it is nuanced and um and and and it's not easy.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and and the problem is most of these kinds of things the uh political efficiency is how fast can we draw the lines and how quickly can we segregate our thinking into bad guys and good guys, you know that's politics.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's unfortunate that we're not getting the kind of nuances that are that are uh that are the truth.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's fascinating.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, from the politician standpoint, right, they need they need to get wins, right?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: They need quick wins so they can keep running on that platform of what accomplishments they've made.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's so true what you're saying because I only am privy to this, uh, like the articles that I'm reading.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, I have a bias toward supporting the farmers, right?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm like, oh yes, anything we can do for the farmers, and then you're hearing the farmers over there saying, Oh, we're not gonna have our farms anymore, like, you know, we're gonna go out of business.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then that ties in the fear that's also going around our culture that you'll own nothing, that they want to take the food supply.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: You've got Gates, uh, Bill Gates, and all these foreign investors buying up our land.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: So that we're like, wait, don't let them take our farmland.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: So you hear the story and you instantly go on to, oh, let me support the farmers.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: But come to find out, it sounds like we're that would be, at least in part, supporting more of industrial farming, right?
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's this it's the same, it's the same issue here in the US when when uh you have this notion that if I say anything negative about farming or agriculture in the U.S., I hate farmers.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: No, I I'm willing to say there are good farmers and bad farmers.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you there in the Netherlands, I met farmers, for example, who were working, they had alliances with, for example, the most radical uh you know wildlife environmental groups, and they were they were adjusting their farming practices so that birds and pollinators and things like that could coexist on their farm, and they were showing good farming can be wildlife friendly.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you got in the US mainline agriculture.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Think of the A the iPath avian influenza thing right now.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the whole narrative is wildlife is is a liability.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want ducks, we don't want geese, we don't want anything around, you know.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: So so we're gonna uh uh we need to have a um a sterility zone, you know, uh around our farms.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and you and I we we take a much more um immersive, we we are immersed in this in this biological uh uh petri dish, if you will.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: And um and and it's all about balancing out that that you can say this a lot better than I can, the biological petri dish, uh, so that you know one thing doesn't override something else.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you, there are really superb farmers in the Netherlands who are who are showing that they can uh that they can work alongside with uh with wildlife, with the ecology, and um and and and sometimes that happens, they have to give up a little bit of production.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, might have to give up a little production, but um, but but it it's not that much, and it it all parties can be happy.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: So there are ways to do this.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um are the proposals that the government is proposing, are they are they the best answer or the only answer?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you and I, we don't have to read much to know, probably not.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, probably not.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: And and it may be that that uh that there are powers that be that are you that are using this to to swing the pendulum over far, you know, uh uh over far the other direction, which is commonly what happens.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: And um and so it it is nuanced, it's not easy, and certainly my heart breaks for a farmer, but you know what?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: When a bad farmer goes out of business, my heart does not break.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, my heart does not break for a bad farmer that goes out of business.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I agree.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: And speaking of good farmers, so as you know, we announced in our bonus video uh for this, I think it was for March, that um I just bought a homestead.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: And we've got such great feedback from that video that we wanted to just chat about a little bit because we got people um email emailing in to us, uh, like Lori Seaborg.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, thank you, Lori.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, she says soon she's gonna be in the Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina corner of Appalachia.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: So she's gonna practically be my neighbor.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but she writes to us that um her her phone autoplayed the bonus episode on finding land.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: She had planned to skip that one because they've already found their land.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: But she says she's so grateful that it autoplayed.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: She had to stop and grab pen and paper for the info on capturing sunlight for heat and on the springs.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: So, for those of you who haven't seen the bonus episode, um I did announce that um I bought land that I'm starting my homestead, um, starting with raw land.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we have to build the house and everything.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: And Joel took us on like this magical journey into all of these things to consider, not only when you're looking for land, but things you can do, things that are kind of unorthodox, right?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: At this for modern, uh for modern society, uh like alternatives to the septic tank, how to tap into a spring and instead of drilling a well and disrupting the soil.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then and then to piggyback on that, we've got several people.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'll just read a couple of the emails.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this is again, this is Samantha Waterloo.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: She said, I love this one.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: I would love to hear project by project how things go and what an expert like Joel Joel would do.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so we are gonna do that.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we're gonna keep providing bonus episodes about my journey uh building the homestead, and Joel will be our guide.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then Samantha asks, can we have Teresa, who is that's Joel's wife, can we have Teresa on the show and do an episode on canning?
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Did you actually ask Teresa that?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Or I know you already know the answer, but did you actually tell her?
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, uh this is not the first time.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: And um uh if you want to learn canning, uh uh come and help her in the kitchen.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: She'll show you everything she knows about canning.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: But uh she's not she's not ready to to have an audience.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but she is a she is a Cracker Jack uh uh uh canner.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: She's been canning since she was a teenager, and um, she knows a lot about it.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the you know, my probably emotionally, uh some of my greatest soul satisfaction is coming in.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: I've been out.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: side doing something and I come in and there's there's 40 quarts of peaches or tomatoes or green beans or whatever uh canned there on the you know uh cooling and and I and I I I walk by and I hear the pop pop pop those lids popping it's um that's a that's a that's a great feeling uh you know I feel like you know in Proverbs it talks about you know the ant preparing for the off season and um and that's that's what I feel like so it's a it's a great thing.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh I love that.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: And now we have it on record on recording that Joel has just opened his home to all of us to come to come into his home and spend time with his family.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: So there's no takebacks like and I will add that we have an upcoming um guest on the podcast who has written a book right Joel your friend um on how to can and preserve foods.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so that will be um a show that's released um shortly um okay and then we'll do one last question um and then we'll wrap up here this is from Cheryl Wagner she says I'm so happy for seeing this family on purchasing the homestead land what could be better than having a consultant like Joel here's my subject forest management.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Even though I grew up in forestry um country which was Western Oregon we didn't realize that when we bought a few acres nine years ago that the trees are not static.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: It all came home to me when an arborist called our old white alders biomass trees translation through their lifespan these trees drop lots of biomass in the form of leaves, branches and eventually the whole tree.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: So we have an awesome squishy soil but the trees need to be replaced over time as they die and they fall or they have to be taken out before they fall on a building.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not going to tell you who but one of us loves shade so much that she he digs in the heels when it comes to replacing the yard trees even after they drop firewood size branches on the roof.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: Okay sorry to make this short story long suffice it to say I look forward to hearing about Tina and Donnie's forest management plan.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well Cheryl uh thank you for the email I have no forest management plan like so I'm gonna hand that over to you Joel.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay well this is this is a uh people who who know me well know that um that if I if I had three arms the third arm would be a chainsaw so I you know I I love um I love working with chainsaw and working in the woods uh just as much as you know I'm known for our for our pasture work but um but if you want to see light come in my eyes take I'll I'll take you up to the woods and start talking about uh about forestry and forestry management.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: So the thing the thing about trees is that you know they um they don't grow forever you know they they live they go through a cycle just like everything else and and then they die.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so of course nature you know nature takes that dead stuff and it it either normally it burns it and of course we're seeing a lot of that right now in the U.S.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're spending what five billion dollars a year I'll get on my soapbox in a minute about this whole biomass thing um five billion dollars a year you know fighting forest fires which if we would harvest all those dead trees uh and and and and clean that biomass it would be uh completely different and so yeah in your email uh Cheryl it's obvious to me which one of you uh is concerned about this um obviously you're not wanting branches to fall on your house and and so um so you know the beauty is that you can start over uh you you can start trees there there is a succession all all ecosystems go through a successional um uh an incremental successional cycle and so and they're different whether it's like here where we're in hardwood country um or whether you're in like our the arboreal forests the uh arboreal forest like up out in Oregon where it's uh firs or or conifers uh those are different successional uh cycles um and sometimes fire is necessary to you know to to open up pine cone to open up you know uh seeds and and make things happen uh around here for example we have a a tree called a table table mountain pine and uh it requires fire to open up those seeds and since we have fire suppression here so much uh we pretty much don't have um table mountain pine anymore because it does take take some fire um the the main thing i want us to to uh realize is that trees do go through a cycle and generally as they head toward what I call nursing home phase um unlike unlike humans who we you know who we take care of our elders uh the time to take care of a tree is before it falls and hurts somebody or just uh rots on the stem I mean again I look at it as you know God gave us this tree God gave us this biomass to build things and uh and use the bio let let's use it before the tree actually you know gets hollow and rots and and falls over and and hurts some something um you can tell uh the you can tell the health of a tree uh and I'll uh uh I think this is important you uh how do you tell if a tree is healthy there's two ways one is uh look up in stand at the base of the tree look up well or or a little bit away from the base look up in the canopy and count the number of dead branches that are there do you do you see dead branches interspersed up and through that canopy a lot of dead branches indicates that the tree is starting to fade it's start it's starting to fail the second thing is how vertical are those branches young aggressively growing trees their branches tend to tend to grow you know at a 45 degree angle they're they're reaching for the sun they're you know they're they're going after it as the tree ages it gets kind of like us as humans you know you you you know you you're not quite uh as you're not quite standing upward as well you know and you start to sag a little bit and uh that's yeah that's the way the branches are on the trees as as the tree um heads into its final maturity those branches start to droop and they lose their vertical expression and start to droop down and and and um I would just say go out in in some woods and just look around at the trees look at look at look at the way the branches are are um are elevated in a in a young tree a uh a smaller tree juvenile tree versus one over here that's you know uh what I call a cathedral tree they're majestic but they do they do die and I'm a big believer that they should be harvested before they actually uh decline and fall over and and are not useful anymore.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's important stuff you can you know you can build eggmobiles and houses and sheds and um uh you know uh um outbuildings and things and and uh or or you know or or or or burn it for heat to displace petroleum um there's there's any number of things you can do with the tree prior to it actually you know falling over uh and dying of old age so use it while it's in its prime that's use it while it's in its prime that's what it's there for and that then creates a new spot for a new tree to grow uh we've certainly planted a lot of trees you know I'll just tell you this interesting story when we built the um apprentice cottage back whatever it was six or seven years ago we built the apprentice cottage and the lumber that we we have a sawmill here on the farm a band sawmill and we the the lumber most of the lumber that we used for that project and it's a you know it's a it's a whatever a uh I don't know 2500 square foot structure uh so it's not tiny at all um the lumber we used we milled from trees that I planted with dad when I was seven years old.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: Wow I wish you I want you to think about that so when I was set six and seven years old we were in a tree planting uh campaign here and we planted we planted about uh uh 40 acres actually of of trees uh here on the farm when we in those first like five years when we were here and um and so you know I wouldn't I wasn't I was a little kid I wasn't big enough but but I I would carry the seedlings dad would do the dibble and I'd hand him the seedlings and we'd plant these trees and um and we finally and and and what happened was they started to they started to um to go down with ice storms and things like that and the branches started to sag they were mature they were ready to go uh they they were you know we planted them to be fast growing you know uh um um conservation trees you know heel up a hillside you know get get it rolling and so they did grow fast and uh so I mean you're talking about I planted them when I was about seven so we're talking about 50 years well 60 years 60 years uh well between 50 and 60 years let's not quibble about that the point is that when you think about a tree going from a little seedling you know that you wrap with a rubber band and going to a harvestable millable you know uh 18 inch diameter lumber tree that's pretty cool and um and so uh let's you know let's not squander let's not squander something as precious and cool as uh as trees that have been um you know uh sequestering carbon for a long time let's utilize those and let a new tree uh let a new tree grow that's so cool it's it's like your family history and energy is wrapped up in those trees so I'm just visualizing it you know we passed down a lot of like materialistic things right as heirlooms and you now have this structure that's like it's been passed down from your dad I mean that's remarkable just just the high vibrational frequency that now is you know um energetically imprinted in that it's just so beautiful and and um we're about out of time but I'll I'll close my part on this the other thing I was thinking as you were telling this story is that you were out there planting like these you know acres and acres of trees with your dad at like six or seven and I'm contrasting that to today like what are most of our six and seven year olds actually doing like I mean video games or whatever you know I mean like totally totally different you know universe there it's really like a parallel universe.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um but um I hope to not do that like right that's one reason why we're buying this homestead to get out there and so here's my little closing um takeaway for for everybody.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: My my two year old is in a forest school with us and the other day they built worm like a little house for worms like we basically went out and dug soil to we found worms and then put them in a container right I mean she's two and it was like hey we made a a home for the worms and worms are great.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like that was the take home.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: So they gave us these worms to take home and I'm like these are gonna die on my kitchen counter like you know she's gonna squish them or whatever.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: So once we got the land we actually drove over there and we gave it the worms to the land as our offering gift of here welcome like like you're part of our family.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I totally was thinking of you the whole time I was like this is probably the best gift I can give this land well that and to not pollute it but but we did it we like put the worms out and she actually have a video of her actually dumping the you know the worms out there and she was like I love you worms like well that that's wonderful.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean just that that that that that resonance in our in our psyche to understand uh that kind of immersive immersive dependency on an ecological womb is um is is profound it's powerful and to take those moments to take those moments and um and let them you know let them touch us uh deeply um yeah that that'll be something that uh you'll remember and you'll remind her of she may not remember she might not be old enough to remember it but uh you'll be you've got it captured on film and picture and you'll be able to you know remind her of it that'll be part of her you know um uh part of her persona which is really cool yeah well cool well we're about um out of time for today but we want to thank you for joining us and as always we're showing you that you've got to look beyond the labels right everything is not black and white there's oh it's always more complex than than what meets the eye but that's what Joel and I are here for is to break down that complexity and to give you some practical tips.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we're excited that you joined us today and we're thrilled to join you next week.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much.