Latest / The Shed Organics Show / #23 - Biochar, Living Architecture & Beyond | Erik Van Zuilekom [United Natures]

Transcript

#23 - Biochar, Living Architecture & Beyond | Erik Van Zuilekom [United Natures] · The Shed Organics Show

• 0:00
  Hey everybody, what is going on? Welcome back to another amazing
• 0:05
  episode of the Shed Organics show.
• 0:09
  My name is Jordan and I am still in a bit of a blown away state
• 0:15
  after that conversation. Eric, who has joined us on the
• 0:18
  show today, is an incredibly fascinating gentleman with an
• 0:23
  absolute wealth of knowledge from so, so many different areas
• 0:27
  and facets of not only nature and natural systems, but life in
• 0:31
  general. And the way in which Eric is
• 0:35
  able to disseminate this information for us today and to
• 0:39
  really help shine a light on all of these things from a totally
• 0:44
  different perspective, something that we're not used to hearing
• 0:48
  in these ways, it's really remarkable and it's really blown
• 0:52
  me away and really opened my mind to so many things.
• 0:55
  It's very quickly moved into my top three conversations so far
• 0:59
  on this podcast. And I'm sure you'll you'll see
• 1:03
  exactly why once we dive into the conversation.
• 1:06
  Now, Eric is a botanist. He is also a bit of a design
• 1:11
  consultant, not only for all of our wonderful gardens, our
• 1:15
  permaculture land and spaces like this, but also in terms of
• 1:20
  buildings and cityscapes and architecture, where we're
• 1:23
  integrating both our modern architecture and buildings and
• 1:27
  natural spaces. And how you use ecological
• 1:31
  systems and natural evolutions to build the best gardens that
• 1:36
  you can in these spaces. Not only for what people may
• 1:40
  want or what people may need, but trying to balance the two of
• 1:44
  those and try and figure out what they don't know that they
• 1:48
  need or they don't know that they want.
• 1:50
  And it's such an interesting conversation that dives into all
• 1:53
  of these topics. So sit back, enjoy the
• 1:56
  conversation And here is Eric from United Natures.
• 2:18
  Well, a long time ago, in a different country, a different
• 2:22
  land, I got introduced to plants.
• 2:25
  And I realized that, you know, the question came to mind, the
• 2:29
  chicken or the egg. Did plants?
• 2:33
  Do plants keep us alive or do we keep plants alive?
• 2:35
  How does it work? And then I realized humans are
• 2:38
  part of habitats. We're not separate.
• 2:40
  We're not masters over it. We in it, we integrated into it.
• 2:44
  When you separate the two, it doesn't work.
• 2:46
  You're taking cogs out of the machine and then it doesn't
• 2:48
  work. So I launched into that and I
• 2:53
  studied botany and then decided that I had to study sociology
• 2:57
  because there's no use just becoming the plant name that I
• 2:59
  am today. It's integrating.
• 3:02
  And then I realized, you know what?
• 3:04
  It's not just how we live now, it's how we used to live where
• 3:08
  we come from. So I also studied archaeology.
• 3:11
  And then as all of these things came together, it became
• 3:14
  apparent that the plants aren't separate to the rocks in the
• 3:18
  water. And so I studied climatology and
• 3:21
  geography and environmental studies.
• 3:22
  So I did a whole heap of stuff. And over decades, I moved from
• 3:28
  plants to gardening, horticulture, and then design.
• 3:33
  So I've had my own wholesale production nurseries.
• 3:36
  Then I got into revisitation works and ecological works.
• 3:38
  And then I realized I wanted to do design.
• 3:42
  And I had to design not just for the part, but for the people.
• 3:46
  And it all just came together. And permaculture is part of
• 3:48
  that. And then I, I landed the job as
• 3:50
  a living architecture designer and I was actually brought into
• 3:54
  an industry that was struggling and failing, testing diseases.
• 3:58
  How do you put plants on a building and it's so artificial.
• 4:01
  And then I realized it's not artificial.
• 4:03
  We asked them the wrong question.
• 4:05
  Go to habitat, find Cliff faces, look at plants growing up,
• 4:09
  trees, epiphytes that have evolved the ability to do this.
• 4:13
  And I said, why start from scratch and rebuild the real
• 4:16
  plug into ecology and evolution and nature and just learn from
• 4:21
  it and start. And I realized you can't just
• 4:24
  take a snapshot and recreate it. I'm not trying to recreate
• 4:26
  nature. I I'm bringing it's online in
• 4:30
  the layers and you look at the environment, you look at the
• 4:33
  people, what are their expectations?
• 4:35
  What are their needs? And then you look at nature and
• 4:37
  you say, well, what is nature actually doing?
• 4:39
  It's evolving this crustace, it's changing this forest, it's
• 4:43
  going through succession. And then I realized when you
• 4:46
  look at the bigger landscape and you see the trees become the
• 4:50
  shrubs, become the grassland, become the sand dunes, it's a
• 4:55
  constantly changing dynamic. And it is warfare.
• 4:59
  Everything's working symbiotically and sympatrically
• 5:02
  together. But they're all competing for
• 5:04
  resources. But they've been doing it for
• 5:06
  such a long time that competition is no longer a
• 5:10
  concept. It's, it's a sharing and
• 5:12
  cooling, but an extraction. And part of that extraction is
• 5:16
  killing, which is entropy, but a huge portion of this entropy.
• 5:21
  And you can't separate the 2. And that's how permaculture and
• 5:24
  syntropics and all of this come together.
• 5:25
  And that saved the day because I was able to get into living
• 5:28
  architecture. And I reduced the pest issues
• 5:33
  not by spraying or controlling the pests, but by actually
• 5:37
  refining the nutrient inputs and reducing them.
• 5:41
  And then I realized it's part compatibility.
• 5:44
  So I started designing ethologically.
• 5:45
  And then I realized, wow, the plants are actually agents have
• 5:49
  changed that are not here just by chance.
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  They're changing the environment.
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  So a layer of one plant paves the way for the next and they
• 5:58
  get absorbed into it. And then you get a crossover.
• 6:02
  And it's this movement that I think is the genius of it all is
• 6:07
  that when you stop looking at a plant as a thing, as a product,
• 6:12
  as a nursery label with, you know, the dating site
• 6:15
  statistics, you see it as a process.
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  Then you can apply it as a living technology and then you
• 6:22
  plug it in you're. Absolutely right.
• 6:25
  I think there's so many interesting things that you've
• 6:26
  already said. It made me think straight away
• 6:30
  of something like our, our weeds, for example, as something
• 6:35
  that most of us tend to see as this unwanted and irrelevant
• 6:42
  bunch of plants or, or species. But the, the weeds themselves
• 6:47
  can tell us so much about what the land either needs or what
• 6:51
  it's trying to work towards. And you've got these seed banks
• 6:57
  of, of weed seeds that can stay in the earth for years and years
• 7:01
  and years. And when the ecosystem itself
• 7:06
  needs those certain things, this is when they start to come up to
• 7:11
  try and bring that back to the land, whether it's like the soil
• 7:14
  needs holding together, whether the soil needs, you know, deep
• 7:19
  tap roots to start breaking up compaction.
• 7:22
  These are the types of things that are coming in.
• 7:25
  And as you say, they are technologies.
• 7:27
  That's it's a ever changing and evolving landscape where these
• 7:33
  plants are coming in to serve a purpose and to to have a role in
• 7:38
  bringing the ecosystem back to where it needs to be.
• 7:41
  And you're right, and, and imagine and on all of these
• 7:45
  buildings and where these beautiful gardens integrated
• 7:48
  with our, our cities and, and concrete jungles that we, we
• 7:52
  have, there would be this kind of neat.
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  Well, people would want to be spraying things and going, oh,
• 7:59
  that's just, we want this garden to fit in this certain
• 8:02
  environment because we like it, but we're going to battle
• 8:06
  against what nature wants to do in its own cycles to try and
• 8:10
  create something. Whereas you're coming in and
• 8:13
  going, let's actually learn from what's out there and try and
• 8:18
  best supply that or those conditions for them to thrive.
• 8:23
  And maybe you could go into a little bit, I mean, there's so
• 8:26
  many directions where you go, but maybe you could go into a
• 8:29
  little bit about having a bit of longevity in one of these
• 8:33
  gardens because as you say, it's always evolving, it's changing.
• 8:37
  There is a certain layer of succession.
• 8:40
  How are you trying to make sure that that garden looks good long
• 8:44
  term and provides and functions in the way that you want it to?
• 8:52
  One of the big learning curves for a designer is to realize
• 8:59
  that a good designer doesn't design what they want.
• 9:02
  They design a solution for what the client or the space needs.
• 9:08
  And sometimes that means putting your desires aside and becoming
• 9:13
  very humble and opening your eyes.
• 9:17
  Not to look through the lens of what you would like to see there
• 9:21
  or aspire to see there, but to read the landscape, to read the
• 9:26
  ecology, to read the soil, and until you can put your hand on
• 9:31
  the soil and just feel not its condition, but where it's going.
• 9:36
  Because remember, nothing in nature is static.
• 9:39
  A grassland is only experienced as a grassland for a certain
• 9:44
  period of time. And then it becomes scrub and
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  the scrub becomes woodland. The woodland becomes closed,
• 9:49
  woodland becomes rainforest, etcetera.
• 9:51
  And then it goes backwards because nature doesn't have a
• 9:54
  mind of progression or gain or loss.
• 10:00
  So when it's time and the trees die, they absorbed and it it,
• 10:06
  it's not de evolution, it's just shifts and it kills the whole
• 10:10
  forest off and it reverts back to open woodland or then
• 10:13
  scrubland or to grassland. And it's all resource movement.
• 10:17
  So I think the what we have in today's society is a capitalist
• 10:25
  machine and that's natural. We build cities, we build
• 10:28
  houses, we pour money into it, we work for it.
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  And you grow veggies to save you money or to produce wonderful
• 10:35
  food for you to eat. And there's like an ownership,
• 10:39
  give or take. Nature doesn't have that.
• 10:41
  So we've got to work with clients in my mind and with
• 10:46
  other designers in terms of education and lecturing,
• 10:48
  etcetera, to shift our consciousness from that to
• 10:56
  understanding that the land is moving.
• 10:59
  And if you want to grow vegetables, you've got to look
• 11:02
  at your site and say, OK, what kind of habitat or ecology have
• 11:06
  I got here? I've got open soils.
• 11:08
  It's there, it's exposed, it's lots of wind, lots of sun.
• 11:10
  It's probably a bacterial based soil ecology.
• 11:14
  Look at the weeds, it's grasses, it's primary colonizers.
• 11:18
  Oh, these ones move quickly. They're really rapid nutrient
• 11:22
  cyclists, cyclists. OK, so if I want to try plants,
• 11:27
  a jobotic copper or a rainforest tree from Brazil or or
• 11:32
  Australia, I've got to create an environment that's suitable for
• 11:37
  that. But what if I stopped thinking
• 11:40
  about the tree as a product? And I think, OK, this is what
• 11:43
  I'm starting at, base soil. All right, let's plug into what
• 11:47
  nature's trying to do. And you start adding lemongrass,
• 11:51
  different grass species, you fill it up densely planted with
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  bio accumulators that like high exposures and bacterial based
• 12:00
  ecologies. And you harvest, if you're
• 12:03
  really clever, you make more edibles and herbs and you feed
• 12:06
  your family out of it. And you cut and chop and drop
• 12:08
  and you cut and chop and drop. And you let the seeds spread.
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  And you go to Tarnum and you just with a little bit of
• 12:13
  patience, look and read. And you observe your soil
• 12:16
  opening up a little bit. So you let the weeds come in
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  with a deep taproot. And by the time you see the
• 12:21
  weed, nature isn't just telling you what the ecology wants, it's
• 12:26
  doing it by the time the seeds germinated and you see a view
• 12:30
  way behind the start point that race has started and nature is
• 12:34
  saying the soil is compacted and starts bacterial.
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  This weeds going to come up and I'm aerating, I'm opening it up.
• 12:40
  I'm bio accumulating and drawing nutrients and carbon dioxide
• 12:43
  down into the soil. So plug into that, start
• 12:46
  planting more, start planting more, start planting more.
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  And then in time you can change the nature of your soils and
• 12:52
  increase your organic matter. And then you say, OK, it's 5050
• 12:56
  fungal bacteria. Maybe I'll introduce brassicas
• 12:59
  and maybe I'll put a carrot in there and you know, then I'll
• 13:02
  play around with these and slowly over you can.
• 13:05
  That's the magic of humans is we move through multiple ecologies.
• 13:09
  We're not like a tree that is there and has to outlast for a
• 13:14
  long time. We can actually transition.
• 13:16
  We can be agents of change. And you can supercharge those
• 13:19
  processes and you can slowly but surely at the rate of your soil
• 13:24
  changes, you can change all the vegetation because everything
• 13:27
  that's above is just an expression of what's happening
• 13:30
  underneath. So you you shouldn't in theory,
• 13:34
  make your garden based upon what's above.
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  You should start under and emerge out of the soil because
• 13:41
  that's a long lasting investment of putting currency where it
• 13:46
  will stay, where chop and drop vegetation is cheap currency.
• 13:51
  That sense what you put in the dollar is in paper notes in big
• 13:54
  currency. And so they feed off each other
• 13:58
  and that's the thought. But to get there, we have to
• 14:02
  talk to designers and urban planners and architects and talk
• 14:07
  to them about creating environments that are capable of
• 14:12
  hosting succession and change. And that changes our mentality
• 14:16
  about what we see when we look at a park land.
• 14:19
  When you look at the Bush, you know, everyone thinks they're
• 14:22
  trees. And that's the Bush.
• 14:24
  That's the Bush that's going through a dynamic change
• 14:28
  responding to humans. And the trees are trying to
• 14:31
  compete with the carbon dioxide and gas and methane and this and
• 14:34
  that. And that's fine, but we need to
• 14:36
  plug into those processes. Sorry, did that answer your
• 14:38
  question? No, no.
• 14:40
  No, no, that's, that's really good.
• 14:42
  But I'll, I'll bring it because I like the idea of this, the
• 14:46
  design on the structure and like something like a Parkland where,
• 14:53
  as you say, you can somewhat guide it towards this evolution.
• 14:58
  So you're starting with certain species that are going to thrive
• 15:02
  in whatever expression the soil is showing you at that time so
• 15:06
  that you're going to get something really beautiful and,
• 15:09
  and livable or whatever the case may be.
• 15:14
  But you're also thinking, OK, so that's moving the whole
• 15:18
  expression towards this kind of ecological change or it's going
• 15:21
  to want to bring in more of these types of species
• 15:25
  eventually. And, and you're sort of guiding
• 15:27
  it a certain way in a, in a Parkland or something.
• 15:32
  That to me seems like it would be a lot easier than say a
• 15:38
  rooftop cityscape type garden where you're presumably, I, I
• 15:44
  mean, bringing in or creating soil in these instances.
• 15:48
  They're not attached to the ground.
• 15:49
  So you're not part of this, the earth itself, but it does and it
• 15:54
  has a presumably a different environment up on the roof.
• 15:57
  So how are you? How are you thinking about a
• 16:01
  place to start? And are you going through that
• 16:03
  same process of evolution in a rooftop?
• 16:07
  Absolutely. So we look at what kind of
• 16:09
  ecology the host environment can sustain, and if it's a roof
• 16:15
  garden, engineers and the architects dictate that to us.
• 16:18
  How much weight? What is the saturated weight?
• 16:20
  What's the thickness of substrate?
• 16:22
  If you change it from a potting mix, which will be very light,
• 16:26
  that will become sour and agent time and anything implanted
• 16:28
  there needs it removed and refreshed.
• 16:31
  So to make a roof garden long term or sustainable long term,
• 16:38
  it can't have those disturbance events, you can't refresh it.
• 16:42
  It needs to be a solid structure like soils, and then your
• 16:45
  ecologies are the thing that unfold on that currency of
• 16:51
  stability. So what we do is some companies
• 16:53
  would bring in organic mixers. And so I'll add, you know, X
• 16:57
  amount of compost and we'll have decomposed pine bark, which can
• 17:02
  last for three, five years. And it's very lightweight, but
• 17:06
  that'll soar in time. We need to talk about 60, a
• 17:09
  hundred years, the lifespan of building.
• 17:12
  So where do you find that? You go to scree, You go to the
• 17:17
  side of mountains where mountains and Cliff faces are
• 17:22
  eroding, and you get a build up of aggregates and soils that are
• 17:26
  in mineral form that can survive for 10s of thousands of years.
• 17:30
  And you look at the ecologies that survive and they with only
• 17:32
  this much soil. But then you've got to look at
• 17:35
  where your climate is, where your project is.
• 17:37
  And you've got to find your temperate version subtropical,
• 17:39
  your tropical version, your coastal, your inland, your
• 17:42
  desert, your this, your Alpine. And you, you, you find analogs
• 17:46
  within those environments and that gives you the, the global
• 17:50
  macro framework. And then you zoom in down, you
• 17:52
  say, OK, you know, it's classic permaculture.
• 17:56
  Don't try to make a tropical rainforest in the middle of the
• 17:58
  desert because you're going to have to pump in a lot of
• 18:00
  resources. It's unsustainable.
• 18:01
  You know, if you're going to get snowed in, that's not going to
• 18:04
  work. So you look at your altitude
• 18:05
  bands. And for vertical gardens, it's
• 18:08
  really interesting because we can have a building that's 100
• 18:13
  stories high and you've got a different climatic belts with
• 18:16
  each 30m increment you go up. So you might have a a skyscraper
• 18:22
  in Brisbane that on the 100th floor, it's the equivalent of
• 18:26
  Melbourne's climate. And then you find a mountain
• 18:30
  that has that altitude and you look at those bands and you can
• 18:34
  find which species are doing well in that band.
• 18:37
  And then you can drill into the rainforest of the forest on the
• 18:39
  side of it and you can look at those plants which are in the
• 18:42
  core of the protected canopy, those which are in that canopy,
• 18:45
  those which are on the outside edge that have higher exposures.
• 18:49
  And you start reading these ecologies, mapping and putting
• 18:52
  them together. Now that takes a lot of
• 18:54
  experience, but you don't have to do it to that degree.
• 18:56
  I have to because I have to survive 150 in life.
• 18:59
  I mean, storm events, etcetera, etcetera.
• 19:02
  But nature's got all those answers.
• 19:04
  And so our roof gardens became 80% mineral mixes that would
• 19:08
  last for ages. And then we had to investigate
• 19:11
  how do we increase organics in it and create healthy
• 19:14
  environments. And that's what we've been doing
• 19:16
  for 20 or 13 years. And you can apply that to your
• 19:18
  garden, what kind of sort of a gut, how do I build upon it,
• 19:23
  etcetera, etcetera. Yeah, I love that thought
• 19:26
  because you are essentially visiting various different
• 19:32
  ecological systems that are already showing you how it's
• 19:36
  done. So it's not necessarily trying
• 19:38
  to, like you say, reinvent the wheel.
• 19:41
  You're just going and taking from what's there.
• 19:44
  And it made me think of, you know, I've seen quite often in
• 19:49
  the middle of seemingly a concrete landscape, you've got
• 19:54
  these tiny little cracks or really small deposits of soil or
• 20:00
  residue or something. And then there's these plants
• 20:02
  that are able to come out of it and their roots are just kind of
• 20:04
  going and wrapping around and they, they're somewhat healthy
• 20:08
  and like they're able to survive in these conditions.
• 20:10
  And you and you think, how is that able to do that in that
• 20:15
  situation? And then at home, I've got a
• 20:17
  vast, you know, healthy living soil and I can't get the same
• 20:20
  thing to grow there. And it's.
• 20:22
  But it's, it's seeing how those systems are working and then
• 20:26
  replicating those. And I imagine that that the
• 20:31
  thought of trying to make something last 100 years is an
• 20:37
  incredibly daunting, but also probably rewarding challenge to
• 20:42
  try and come up with. You're obviously trying to like
• 20:47
  I imagine you're not picking one or a few species of plants.
• 20:53
  It's going to last those 100 years.
• 20:55
  You're talking succession as well, right?
• 20:57
  So initially when you're planting something, you might
• 21:01
  have it much more exposed and you might want to develop like
• 21:07
  you say, these grasses or or succulents or cacti species that
• 21:11
  are really used to having to hold and conserve that water and
• 21:15
  etcetera, etcetera, until it it develops.
• 21:18
  And you can start bringing in some more species that are then
• 21:21
  going to be able to to last once there's more vegetation or or
• 21:25
  vice versa. Is that, is that the sort of
• 21:27
  thought you're trying to progress species as well as the
• 21:30
  soil? Absolutely.
• 21:32
  Because plants are agents of change.
• 21:35
  They're not there to stay. They're there to colonize and
• 21:40
  live and express their lives. And that means movement.
• 21:43
  Plants just move at a different time scale to us.
• 21:46
  That's all we've got to adjust our mentality of looking at
• 21:49
  something and saying that picture, that framework is what
• 21:53
  it what it is. It isn't.
• 21:55
  It's a snapshot in a movie with where it's going and all the
• 21:59
  frames are just parallel. But like a family probably lives
• 22:02
  for three days. It might experience reality on
• 22:06
  the same level as us, just compacted into instinct living.
• 22:12
  And that's probably the difference between US and
• 22:14
  plants. And you're totally right, I
• 22:16
  might select a species that is known to be long lived that can
• 22:21
  last 100 years, but I can't design A monoculture out of just
• 22:25
  them. I then have to mix that with a
• 22:26
  second line plant that can survive for 10 years.
• 22:30
  But if it dies, I need to think about can it reproduce?
• 22:34
  Does it have rhizomes? Is it stoloniferous?
• 22:37
  Can the mother plant die but it re emerges elsewhere?
• 22:41
  And if that doesn't work, what's the next coping mechanism?
• 22:43
  Doesn't produce a seed plant are the surrounding ecologies where
• 22:47
  I can capitalize on spontaneous colonization by weeds.
• 22:52
  I'm really excited about that. I don't use it because it's just
• 22:55
  one of those things that maintenance teams that follow
• 22:57
  after the designs might be able to look into and explore.
• 23:00
  But I do follow maintenance with decades of installation.
• 23:03
  And so the idea is you try to represent a diverse, dynamic
• 23:09
  ecological approach to design and you would have all your
• 23:14
  different layers and species represented so that if you have
• 23:19
  a stress, for example, the wind blows through, you've just got
• 23:22
  one strong species, it's got to handle the wind.
• 23:25
  But if you put a slightly smaller tussock next to that
• 23:29
  shrub, it spreads the wind load over them.
• 23:32
  If you put a smaller one in front of that, it spreads it
• 23:34
  more and it creates a micro habitat.
• 23:36
  But also in the, the, the windward and the Leeward side
• 23:40
  where the turbulence occurs, that's naturally where you find
• 23:43
  long spin off tails of germinating short term species.
• 23:47
  And if you have a look at sand dunes and deserts, you'll see
• 23:50
  there's long curves, beautiful curves.
• 23:52
  And that's where the seed collects and it lifts in the
• 23:55
  wind. But when it hits a shrub, it,
• 23:56
  the turbulence causes it to deposit and that's where
• 23:59
  organics and leaves collect. And then that's where moisture
• 24:02
  collects and then germination occurs.
• 24:03
  And so you've got these colonizing tendencies.
• 24:07
  And. Part of my job would be studying
• 24:10
  the edge effect of a building and a curve and a a ballast area
• 24:14
  and then figuring out which way the prevalent wind and rain of
• 24:17
  the rain shadows. And then I plant species and
• 24:20
  zone them. So I might have 10% are short
• 24:23
  lived colonizing plants, 20% are long term and I try to represent
• 24:28
  them according to what I think the clients in the host building
• 24:31
  can tolerate or be interested in exploring.
• 24:36
  Yeah. And we radiate art from that.
• 24:39
  Wow, I, I didn't realize so much thought went into it, but I can
• 24:44
  appreciate that it's necessary. And one thing that I'm thinking
• 24:49
  about is, would be so important in this and as it is in in
• 24:54
  permaculture and any kind of land that you're trying to
• 24:58
  cultivate or work on, you, you need to observe what happens in
• 25:06
  that land ecosystem, presumably over a somewhat lengthy period
• 25:13
  of time. I know that most people that
• 25:17
  when they first come to a property, if we're talking they
• 25:21
  want to design sort of a permaculture style property or
• 25:24
  land. They want to observe where the
• 25:28
  wind pockets are, where the moisture is accumulating, the
• 25:32
  lay of the land and where the sun hits it, and all of these
• 25:35
  types of things. I imagine that when you're doing
• 25:41
  consultation and trying to work with some of these people that
• 25:45
  are wanting this, whether it's on top of a building or it's in
• 25:50
  a permaculture agriculture situation, how much data are you
• 25:56
  trying to gather on the ecosystem itself?
• 26:02
  And over what time span are you trying to gather this and have a
• 26:06
  look at it? Or is it a matter of trial and
• 26:08
  error in some instances? Well, there are certain vital
• 26:13
  statistics that are quite simple together.
• 26:15
  You know, you can look at what's your average rainfall, your mean
• 26:18
  temperature, your maximums and your minimums to know the
• 26:21
  outlying extremes. You can figure out with a simple
• 26:25
  Google search what is the highest rainfall event ever
• 26:29
  recorded in that particular area.
• 26:31
  Then you go out and you analyze the soil.
• 26:34
  You see what's there. You look at the ecology, you
• 26:37
  walk silently through the site and get a feeling for where it's
• 26:40
  at and what it's doing. Has it been severely impacted by
• 26:46
  human intentions or has it been left?
• 26:49
  Is there erosion, etcetera, etcetera.
• 26:51
  Are there resources available that are already there?
• 26:54
  And these are things that you can quite quickly put together.
• 26:58
  Then you speak to the client and you, you apply that same process
• 27:01
  to their thought happiness. You know, we've, our minds are
• 27:04
  very busy and the noise comes in.
• 27:07
  The chat is in so many levels. I love colour.
• 27:10
  I want change. I, I've moved into this.
• 27:12
  I've got horses and pigs, you know, can you use parts I've
• 27:14
  already got? My husband has different needs
• 27:17
  to me. I've got kids.
• 27:18
  We might have kids who might not.
• 27:20
  The place has to evolve with us. I've got a new job and things
• 27:23
  are going to change. And you listen to this
• 27:25
  scattering and slattering of lots of change and you're trying
• 27:28
  to find what lies at the core of a person.
• 27:32
  Where are they really going? What are the long lasting things
• 27:35
  that will last? And then what are the slightly
• 27:38
  less? It's like zoning and
• 27:39
  permacultural zoning. Zone 0 is the home, the heart
• 27:42
  and what people really want. And often they don't know that
• 27:45
  because it's hidden in the players.
• 27:47
  So trying to learn about a client.
• 27:49
  And then you've got your Zone 1, which are thoughts they quickly
• 27:52
  go to on a daily basis and seem to be a habit.
• 27:55
  And you're going to learn two and three and four.
• 27:57
  The further out you go are the more outlying random ideas that
• 28:01
  they often started the conversation with.
• 28:05
  The greatest excitement is what is the fashion of the day.
• 28:08
  And I've just sold my property in Melbourne and I've bought
• 28:12
  acreage in Brisbane and I've only lived in a unit.
• 28:15
  But now I've got 10 acres and I want, I want everything.
• 28:18
  I don't want it all. It's so exciting.
• 28:20
  That sounds like me. That sounds like me too.
• 28:25
  It's that filtering process and it depends on your time in
• 28:28
  commercial. Reality is you've got a very
• 28:30
  tight budget. People don't like talking too
• 28:33
  long. They want everything handed on a
• 28:35
  platter. The My client for Living
• 28:38
  Architecture is interested in plants, but they actually want
• 28:42
  the vertical garden or the roof garden because it saves them
• 28:45
  $200,000 a year in air conditioning.
• 28:49
  Wow. OK, so that's your starting
• 28:50
  point. You realize that OK, we've got
• 28:51
  to engineer this thought process and it's that's where there's a
• 28:56
  whole designer's journey embedded into it.
• 29:00
  But once you meet like minded people, you can hit the ground
• 29:03
  running and you can sense what's happening.
• 29:06
  And once you've got a feeling for what the land can support,
• 29:09
  then talking to the clients, you can say, I hear you, that
• 29:14
  thought process is great, but you're probably going to need 6
• 29:16
  hours a week or two hours a week or five hours a week to maintain
• 29:19
  it. Can you handle that?
• 29:21
  Is it in the lifestyle you want? OK, well this soil is very
• 29:24
  degraded, so it's going to need two or three times the amount of
• 29:28
  work that you initially would need.
• 29:29
  But that section over there has good organic content.
• 29:33
  It's a bit sheltered, and you can achieve the same level after
• 29:36
  two or three years with half the inputs.
• 29:38
  Would you want to start on the easiest side if you want to hit
• 29:41
  the hard one quickly? Yeah.
• 29:43
  And so as the designer, you've also got to be the psychologist
• 29:46
  that helps to design it all. It's quite exciting, but it's it
• 29:50
  takes a certain mindset. I imagine it does.
• 29:53
  And then you're having to kind of read between the lines of
• 29:57
  where, as you say, what people are most excitedly talking about
• 30:00
  and something that they've heard or seen or I want this as well
• 30:04
  in my property or on my building.
• 30:06
  And you've got a almost be the the realist to the dreamer in
• 30:13
  some stages and sort of say, look, this is kind of what's
• 30:16
  realistic. But then again, some of the, as
• 30:19
  you say, some of these things that you can achieve, but they
• 30:23
  just might take a little bit more work.
• 30:25
  So you're just having to be let them know, are you aware of
• 30:28
  this? And this could be a lot more
• 30:30
  effort to get there. And sometimes they probably want
• 30:33
  to do that, but you never know, do you?
• 30:35
  Yeah, or they might want to do it in stages.
• 30:37
  And the wonderful thing about permaculture and working with
• 30:41
  natural systems is everything is actually achievable.
• 30:47
  You just need to decide what your priorities are and where
• 30:50
  you want to go with, you know, everyone wants us in Tropic
• 30:52
  agroforestry scenario because it's so exciting and there's so
• 30:56
  much happening at the same time. But are you capable of climbing
• 31:00
  a 6m tree and harvesting timber if that's part of your process?
• 31:03
  If it is, we've got a long way of a lot of adventures we can
• 31:08
  apply. But you can then scale that down
• 31:10
  and your tree could be pigeon pea.
• 31:12
  Yes. It's the same ecology, just
• 31:15
  scaled down and changed in different ways and adapted.
• 31:18
  And that's where an efficiency arises from lived experience and
• 31:26
  exposure to a wide range of options.
• 31:31
  And that's where it helps. You know, you can't take a
• 31:33
  degraded soil and you can supercharge it slowly and
• 31:37
  steadily, but you could do it 10 times faster if you know what it
• 31:42
  is. What is life?
• 31:44
  Yeah. Is it the organics?
• 31:45
  Is it the bacteria? Is it the plants?
• 31:48
  Is it the roots? That's right, yeah.
• 31:51
  Because if you as you said earlier about a say like a
• 31:54
  bacterial rich soil, if you understand that that's what the
• 32:00
  soil is, then you can work really hard to bringing back
• 32:02
  that fungal to bacteria ratio or changing it towards something
• 32:06
  else that you might want. But if you're unaware of that or
• 32:10
  even if you don't want to go so hard into it, you can just allow
• 32:14
  for that natural progression and that change to happen over time.
• 32:18
  For instance, in my case, I'm trying to transform this 30
• 32:25
  square meter area in the front of our property and it's right
• 32:30
  by the main road. So it's not a hugely amazing
• 32:33
  part, but the, IT was just bare lawn And I guess I resonate very
• 32:42
  much with that excitement of going, oh, I've got this space,
• 32:45
  I can now convert it into this, etcetera, etcetera.
• 32:48
  But I'm very quickly realizing and reining myself in and
• 32:52
  saying, look, you've got a long way to go to transform this into
• 32:57
  a thriving productive place that you want it to be.
• 33:01
  And I'm trying to work out exactly what I'm dealing with
• 33:05
  currently, what's working well through experimentation and what
• 33:10
  doesn't and does work. And I'm trying to really bring a
• 33:16
  slow, healthy approach to how I'm tackling this.
• 33:20
  So if I say, for example, you were to have me as a client in
• 33:29
  this instance where I'm coming in and we can make this relevant
• 33:34
  to everybody. If it's a brand new property or
• 33:36
  it's a, you know, any kind of space that someone's wanting to
• 33:40
  transform and they've got all these big dreams and things
• 33:43
  before you or without needing to understand where they want to go
• 33:48
  with it, say they're pretty open with it and they don't really
• 33:51
  mind. What are some of the things that
• 33:53
  you're first looking at as your priorities to kind of going,
• 33:58
  this is what this space can handle?
• 34:02
  Or with those first considerations, I'm thinking
• 34:06
  sunlight, rainfall, etcetera. Can you go into a few of those
• 34:10
  things for us? Everything we do is an
• 34:19
  application of a technology. I thought is a technology, a
• 34:22
  part is a technology, analysis is a technology.
• 34:26
  And they're all very useful, but they all take you on a tangent
• 34:30
  if you need to understand the goal.
• 34:32
  But what do you want? We could take this land and this
• 34:37
  water and we can develop a billabong habitat.
• 34:42
  We could look at the surrounding bushland and see what what do we
• 34:46
  need to do to this land to provide the greatest benefit to
• 34:50
  the bushland. Or we could look at it and say,
• 34:53
  how do we feed a family from this?
• 34:57
  Or you've got cars and horses, you know, are are they the
• 35:01
  highest priority? Well, then let's structure that
• 35:03
  to that. Or you're trying to create a
• 35:06
  community where we can design this entire space and look at
• 35:09
  all the resources in here that draw people in or push people
• 35:15
  out. We can take plants, and I tell
• 35:18
  this to clients all the time. I can use all these plants to
• 35:21
  create a self-sustaining ecology, but I can also
• 35:24
  structure these plants to kill all of them cells because
• 35:29
  entropy and entropy are like yin and Yang.
• 35:33
  They're part of each other. And you feed off death to create
• 35:36
  birth and you need birth to create death.
• 35:39
  And the death is the currency that feeds the system.
• 35:42
  But the system only works through the through mixing all
• 35:46
  of those resources. So it really is resource
• 35:48
  management. And humans are uniquely
• 35:53
  positioned that we can get on a We can firstly replace someone,
• 35:57
  take someone else's heart and put it in someone else's body.
• 36:00
  Then we can put them in a spacesuit and shoot them to the
• 36:02
  moon. And then we can start a
• 36:03
  farmland. Yeah.
• 36:06
  Yeah, and if we're clever enough, we can put plants up
• 36:08
  there that self replicate that do the job and autopilot for us,
• 36:12
  and then we can bring babies in. You know, that's so incredible,
• 36:16
  is it? You're right.
• 36:17
  And it so these are all technologies.
• 36:20
  And what you're essentially saying is that it's not
• 36:23
  necessarily the the particular resources or the things that
• 36:28
  we're looking at that matter. It's where you want to take it
• 36:31
  because something all of these things are, as you said,
• 36:34
  probably possible. It just depends on how much
• 36:37
  effort and how long we're talking.
• 36:40
  Yes, yes. A client won't maintain
• 36:43
  something you've designed if their heart isn't in, or they
• 36:46
  don't recognize part of themselves in it, or if it's not
• 36:49
  interwoven into their life story, because then it's not
• 36:53
  integrated. That's a.
• 36:55
  Beautiful point and it's perfect.
• 36:57
  But it's, you can have many cogs in a machine, but unless they're
• 37:00
  aligned and they drive each other, they just make noise and
• 37:02
  they grind each other. So you need the person and the
• 37:05
  landscape to be driving each other and feeding back.
• 37:10
  And the waste comes back and the energy comes back.
• 37:12
  And what gets a person out of bed in the morning to sit and
• 37:16
  turn a compost heap and to plant a seedling into water or or to
• 37:21
  chop and drop is the fuel they get from doing it that ignites
• 37:27
  the flame in them that makes them feel I'm part of the land.
• 37:30
  And that is where we go back to the beginning of our
• 37:33
  conversation. I say I learned that as a human
• 37:35
  being. I'm not imposing myself.
• 37:38
  I am imposing myself on it. But I'm part of the habitat.
• 37:41
  My home is my home, but it's my home habitat.
• 37:46
  And it overflows to my neighbors and any workshops I do probably
• 37:52
  have to be free of charge to my neighbors so that I can pull
• 37:55
  them in. And then they can go out and
• 37:57
  it's planting seeds. But the further out I go, I need
• 38:01
  them to bring resources with them because I'm not covering a
• 38:03
  bigger area. And they're going to have to pay
• 38:05
  for my time and my energy. But I can provide seedlings and
• 38:09
  then they come back with cuttings.
• 38:10
  And then you get this economy of cumulative interest that is self
• 38:17
  generating within your garden and it's one of the few things
• 38:20
  in the world that can generate that combined interest.
• 38:24
  That's plant based, ecological based systems.
• 38:27
  Yeah, you're right. And it's such a beautifully put
• 38:30
  analogy how it needs to be integrated because it's all good
• 38:37
  wanting a space that is beautiful or you can be proud of
• 38:42
  and you, you want all of your friends to come around and see
• 38:45
  this wonderful space and look what I'm doing, etcetera.
• 38:48
  But if you're not living and breathing that, it very quickly
• 38:53
  doesn't work for whatever reason because you're not in there and
• 38:58
  living it, so to speak. And like often initially I was
• 39:04
  helping a lot of people with, I guess general garden maintenance
• 39:09
  and trying to help them think about their gardens in terms of
• 39:16
  how we can get what they want in there.
• 39:19
  And it resonates when you say we need to understand the
• 39:24
  difference between what they want and what's possible and
• 39:27
  what's realistic. Because often someone will will
• 39:30
  go to town and they'll fill up their garden full of all of
• 39:33
  these plants that look wonderful and whatever.
• 39:35
  And then a year or two down the track, it's an incredible amount
• 39:39
  of maintenance that they're not willing to be doing, and then it
• 39:43
  doesn't work for them and the whole system breaks down.
• 39:47
  So it needs to be this, as you say, this pool for you to go and
• 39:51
  be a part of the system and play your role in it, as well as part
• 39:57
  of the, you know, I often call humans the greatest pollinators
• 40:00
  because we're able to, you know, go around and spread species and
• 40:03
  share things and, and have our, our ability on, on the earth.
• 40:07
  And I absolutely love that building this kind of economy
• 40:11
  where you can share and 'cause that ripple effect where you're
• 40:15
  influencing the ones around you and, and bringing them into your
• 40:19
  ecosystem and showing them how you can thrive.
• 40:21
  And then that is spreading throughout your community and
• 40:25
  things like that. It's certainly what you did for
• 40:28
  me when we first met and you started speaking about all of
• 40:31
  these things. I was just immediately drawn to
• 40:33
  how thoughtful you were about these systems and, and these
• 40:38
  types of things. Can you talk to me a little bit
• 40:44
  more now if we're going to be going towards, let's say, a, a
• 40:48
  permaculture style thinking because it's tended to become a
• 40:55
  bit of a buzzword in modern gardening and this permaculture
• 41:01
  resurgence that we're seeing where everybody's very excited
• 41:05
  by having a food forest or a, you know, whatever it might be.
• 41:11
  What are some, let's use the word technologies?
• 41:16
  What are some technologies that are either misunderstood,
• 41:23
  underappreciated, or overvalued in a way?
• 41:28
  Like in in terms of what are some things that people are
• 41:31
  putting all their eggs in that basket when it's not very
• 41:35
  necessary? And what are some things that
• 41:37
  we're missing out on in thinking about permaculture where we
• 41:42
  could maybe include that a little bit more?
• 41:48
  Plants and gardens are a small portion of permaculture.
• 41:55
  Permaculture is about human need and about integrating human need
• 42:02
  with what the earth is and how it works.
• 42:08
  So permaculture also goes to road construction and dam
• 42:13
  construction and property development and social need,
• 42:20
  psychological need. Does religion play a part in
• 42:24
  its? Permaculture tries not to be
• 42:26
  religious, but it has to acknowledge that if someone
• 42:29
  comes to you from one part of the world, this sets of needs
• 42:32
  and wants will be culturally different to another sense.
• 42:37
  And what's acceptable in one era and exciting in one era could be
• 42:40
  a terrible sink. And a great example is a wealthy
• 42:46
  Western person looking at an interview with an African farmer
• 42:55
  and saying this is so easy. They need to create compost tea,
• 42:59
  make heaps of compost, put it down there, have chickens do
• 43:04
  this and do that part. All their guilds, you know, make
• 43:07
  their swales and everything's good.
• 43:08
  But what that farm is trying to do is simply get today's food on
• 43:13
  the table for four kids. There isn't a spade.
• 43:17
  They're going through draughts and their neighbors come through
• 43:20
  and eat their produce and so did the goats.
• 43:23
  So their reality is so dramatically different to us.
• 43:27
  But the wonderful thing about permaculture this it speaks
• 43:30
  directly to needs. And so in COVID hits, a lot of
• 43:33
  people had a, a life crisis where firstly they were marooned
• 43:39
  at home and they had to deal with themselves and some people
• 43:43
  thrived and some people didn't, depending on their background
• 43:46
  and their upbringing and their their current way of living.
• 43:51
  And permaculture asks the question, what do you need?
• 43:54
  And then it asks what do you want?
• 43:56
  And then it asks what is there. And then it asks how do you want
• 44:01
  to prioritize doing? And everything is needed, but
• 44:08
  not everything is wanted. But not everything is needed.
• 44:11
  So there's humility as a permaculture designer or an
• 44:15
  ecological designer to question their own themselves before they
• 44:20
  get involved in design. And it's to to humble yourself
• 44:24
  before the landscape and the people and let them be your
• 44:27
  teachers. And then you use your skill and
• 44:30
  hopefully your knowledge to help the clients to understand what
• 44:35
  they're actually asking. And often it involves what
• 44:40
  they're not asking because I don't know.
• 44:42
  And it's the same as vegetable garden.
• 44:44
  So that's a really good question because you can answer it by
• 44:48
  saying what sits in front of you, but you can also answer it
• 44:51
  by saying what isn't asked. And I think that's it.
• 44:55
  A lot of us have a space and we use social media to introduce
• 45:01
  ourselves to concepts and ideas. And a lot of social media paints
• 45:05
  a picture of the successes in the beautiful frames that the
• 45:08
  photos take in the videos. But the honesty is the person
• 45:13
  would sweat in the garden with a hoe, getting a swirl planting of
• 45:17
  plants, making a compost heap out of plants that died, which
• 45:22
  is which is me. I've got some of the most
• 45:24
  expensive compost you've ever seen.
• 45:28
  And The thing is, it changes your mindsets that you can't
• 45:32
  think capitalistic. You can think capitalistically
• 45:35
  and you can explore them and you can you can celebrate them, but
• 45:38
  all your losses are compost and your compost feeds.
• 45:42
  Your next thoughts and your failures are information
• 45:47
  gathering that's teaching you as to what's going on.
• 45:51
  And your weed that you hate is telling you a story about what
• 45:54
  the soil needs and it's all efficiencies.
• 45:58
  The first question really before you do anything is to try and
• 46:03
  honestly sit down and ask, do I understand the difference
• 46:05
  between what I want and what I need?
• 46:08
  And do I understand the difference between what the land
• 46:12
  needs and what I want? And then thirdly, do I
• 46:16
  understand how to achieve it efficiently without wasting
• 46:22
  resources? And you, all of those are
• 46:26
  flexible and all of them will involve losses and failures and
• 46:30
  all of them will be a growth response.
• 46:32
  And I'll probably all of them set you free just by getting
• 46:36
  take your shoes off, walk through your land, steal the
• 46:39
  soil and the mud and the squulch and the pain and the weeds and
• 46:42
  the whatever. Get your hand into the soil,
• 46:45
  smell it, taste it, and Start learning that you're in it.
• 46:48
  And then you've got a really powerful start to the crisis.
• 46:52
  You do, and that's such a the way you say that you need to be
• 46:56
  somewhat of a psychologist is really becoming clear because
• 47:01
  you're 1 primarily. That first point is helping to
• 47:05
  people understand, will look inside and hold up a bit of a
• 47:08
  mirror for them to say, what is it that you're actually wanting
• 47:12
  here? What are you trying to achieve?
• 47:15
  And whether it's, oh, I've just seen all of these fabulous
• 47:20
  gardens on Instagram and I want that too, so I can, whether it's
• 47:26
  have something to show to my friends or whatever it is, or
• 47:29
  whether it's this deep yearning for connection back to nature or
• 47:32
  a spiritual journey of some sort.
• 47:36
  You're really trying to provoke those questions.
• 47:41
  Now how this might be a difficult question as well, but
• 47:45
  I'm loving the way the this conversation is going.
• 47:49
  How do you get somebody to think about those things?
• 47:53
  Or what are some of the things that you can ask yourself if
• 47:58
  you're in that position? Because for myself, in this
• 48:02
  instance with this front garden, I want a place to educate and I
• 48:08
  want a place to integrate. So I have moved all of my things
• 48:15
  that I want into this one space. And this is where I'm going to
• 48:18
  be working from and teaching from and spending my time where
• 48:23
  I get to go and decompress from everyday life out there.
• 48:27
  So the my thoughts are going, I would like to educate on the
• 48:34
  things that I think are important primarily for me that
• 48:38
  soil health and the ability to restore health to the and
• 48:43
  vitality to the land and the space.
• 48:47
  But that for me, I'm still thinking, I don't know which
• 48:50
  direction that could take and it and I'm quite open to which
• 48:53
  direction it could take. But what are you trying to get
• 48:57
  people to think about in that instance?
• 48:59
  How are you getting them to think?
• 49:02
  What is it that I want? But what do I need that I don't
• 49:06
  know that I need? Yeah, life is weird because you
• 49:11
  discover who you are trying to be retrospective and there is
• 49:20
  technically no you. It's once again, it's that
• 49:23
  picture in the frame in a movie. There is no you.
• 49:25
  The moment you you lock on to what you need and what you want,
• 49:30
  that frames moved and you're a different person tomorrow.
• 49:33
  You've got a different budget. The car breaks down, you have a
• 49:36
  baby, you have family. It starts raining.
• 49:38
  The seasons change, the days change.
• 49:40
  You get introduced to a new exciting concept and you revamp
• 49:44
  everything that came before. You've adjusted.
• 49:46
  You've adjusted, adjusted what I try to do because as you can
• 49:53
  ascertain, my brain does not stop.
• 49:55
  It's my heart. I'm I relate.
• 49:59
  I relate. Is when we bought our property
• 50:03
  here for a full year, I did not buy a single plant.
• 50:09
  Hell. And of course, I'll tell you
• 50:13
  retrospectively that I did it by pulling a chair out or sitting
• 50:18
  on the balcony and watching. And I realized my resources are
• 50:24
  limited. And the more efficient I'm going
• 50:26
  to do with this, the more honest I have to be.
• 50:29
  I don't have time and I don't have by resources, I mean time
• 50:34
  and I mean diamonds, but and energy.
• 50:37
  I'm started late as with the family, I'm getting close to 50.
• 50:41
  I have a kid at, you know, my 40s, etcetera, etcetera.
• 50:43
  So I'm a dedicated dad and I've got X amount of time for garden.
• 50:47
  But I thought I have I have to be more honest and I have to be
• 50:49
  more efficient with with everything.
• 50:52
  And the way to do that is to really look at what is what
• 50:55
  about gods, what is here, what's already here?
• 50:58
  And to separate. Do I want to do that?
• 51:01
  Do I need to do it? And do I actually really need to
• 51:04
  do that? You know, if if that sword is
• 51:06
  compact, do I need to go out there now and fork it over or
• 51:11
  plant a cover crop or do anything?
• 51:12
  Or can I just mulch it and then focus on that soil first?
• 51:17
  Can I get a better crop out of that quickly?
• 51:19
  And beauty is a resource and traffic noise is an issue.
• 51:26
  So do I get the hedging first? How do I prioritize what I want
• 51:29
  to do? So sitting and watching and
• 51:33
  observing is probably one of the most powerful things because you
• 51:37
  can sit and worry. There's a lot of people with
• 51:40
  environmental anxiety out there and a lot of people that are
• 51:44
  panicking because they want to get the perfect things done in
• 51:47
  the garden, right? And they don't want to be a
• 51:50
  failure. But if you sit and watch,
• 51:52
  sometimes your worries or the problems actually blow away or
• 51:56
  they the rain softens the soil while you're freaking out.
• 52:01
  You realize I've been sitting looking at hard, compact soil
• 52:04
  because it's bone dry, freaking out.
• 52:07
  And then the rain comes and it's softened and you go, oh, my
• 52:10
  gosh, I didn't even think of that as an option, You know?
• 52:13
  So me, it was my food forest. I planted sweet potato as an
• 52:16
  aggressive ground cover to cover and suppress the weeds because
• 52:21
  while it was producing tubers, it was tuning.
• 52:23
  Yeah. And then I, we ate all the
• 52:26
  leaves. I didn't keep the tubers because
• 52:28
  the rats came in and we realized that the leaves were more
• 52:30
  nutritious than the tubers in any case.
• 52:33
  But then I was chopping and dropping, chopping and dropping.
• 52:35
  I was building organics. And then I started planting
• 52:37
  trees between it and using a weed as a, as a nurse species.
• 52:42
  And so my viewing of the world and what I needed changed as I
• 52:47
  was sitting there watching. And some of the things I never
• 52:49
  got around to doing it. And they they did self resolve
• 52:53
  but I didn't need to prioritize then it's highly.
• 52:57
  Yeah, I, I, I like that too. The retrospective thought of
• 53:03
  what's meaningful at the time. You know, you don't get to see
• 53:08
  that until afterwards or what you're spending your time
• 53:10
  worrying on, or as you say things every day or every
• 53:14
  situation. Your meaning, your purpose, your
• 53:20
  likes, dislikes, interests are all evolving.
• 53:23
  And you mentioned about showing up as a father and being, you
• 53:28
  know, that's an an amazingly crucial role that you play.
• 53:33
  And my wife and I are having our child in a matter of days or
• 53:39
  weeks, our first child. So it's very relevant that for
• 53:42
  me that my whole purpose is about to shift towards caring
• 53:48
  for another life and bringing them up and integrating them
• 53:51
  into this wonderful world. So my time is going to change.
• 53:56
  The amount of effort that I can put into all of my endeavours is
• 53:59
  going to change. And how can I then best take
• 54:05
  what I have and make the will make it flourish the most?
• 54:12
  And I have limited resources. I have limited time and energy.
• 54:16
  And I want to give my all to every situation.
• 54:20
  And I find myself with a list that keeps growing, Eric.
• 54:25
  It keeps getting bigger and bigger of all these amazing
• 54:28
  things that I want to do. And the priorities though on
• 54:32
  there are always shifting. And it's something where it's
• 54:35
  OK. This seemed very important
• 54:38
  before and not so much now. And initially a lot of my drive
• 54:47
  was to help people understand the basics of good nutrition
• 54:54
  from the food that you grow yourself compared to our vastly
• 55:00
  monocroped agricultures, etcetera, etcetera, our big food
• 55:03
  chain. So trying to separate people's
• 55:05
  thinking from relying so much on that system and being able to
• 55:08
  understand that they can grow healthy food at home.
• 55:10
  Now that's evolved because not only does it not necessarily
• 55:18
  matter to me as much anymore for different reasons, one being
• 55:23
  that I don't actually eat all that many vegetables.
• 55:27
  If I'm honest, I'm quite a heavy carnivore, which I don't often
• 55:31
  talk about, but it's also my shift has become more towards
• 55:41
  understanding the soil health and as you say, the natural
• 55:44
  cycles and trying to tap into what's already there, read the
• 55:50
  land and understand. What can I then get out of that,
• 55:54
  that I can educate people on bringing more of a connection
• 55:58
  back, a community connection as well.
• 56:01
  This is a lot of the reason why I like to do this type of
• 56:04
  podcast, dive into people's stories, meet people, connect
• 56:07
  people, share information. It's a lot of what I love to do.
• 56:11
  So it's it's evolved from me from that initial necessity of
• 56:15
  going, I really want people to eat well and understand that
• 56:18
  where their food comes from and not have pesticides, etcetera,
• 56:21
  to then going actually, this is bigger than that.
• 56:23
  This is more a connection to everything and each other and
• 56:28
  life itself. So that's leading me off into
• 56:31
  all these different journeys. And then obviously with a child
• 56:34
  on the way, it's like, how do I then inspire the next
• 56:36
  generation? Something I think you brought
• 56:39
  your your son along, wasn't it? When you when you're 1st and he
• 56:42
  comes along to certain things. And I think he was there that
• 56:45
  time when I first met you and I loved that he was there and that
• 56:49
  you're bringing, you know, your family along into this journey
• 56:52
  and showing them the appreciation and these types of
• 56:55
  things because that is missing that conversation about
• 56:58
  integration and living within the cycles is missing.
• 57:02
  So if you had to, if you had to kind of talk about for you as a
• 57:10
  father figure and the way in which you're demonstrating and
• 57:19
  teaching your, your, your son, isn't it?
• 57:22
  That's right, yeah. And then is it you just got one
• 57:24
  son, is that right? Just one.
• 57:26
  Yeah, how, how have you approached that and how has that
• 57:29
  changed over your the upbringing of your son?
• 57:34
  You've touched on so many core things.
• 57:36
  I think it's important to acknowledge that your
• 57:41
  expectations should suit your lifestyle and your lifestyle
• 57:45
  changes. Therefore, you need flexibility.
• 57:48
  And sometimes we engage in things, wanting a certain
• 57:54
  outcome and then realize that it was actually the process of
• 57:56
  engaging that was what we needed, not necessarily the
• 57:59
  thing. For some people, gardening is a
• 58:01
  thing and they turn to it because it feels wholesome.
• 58:04
  They get good vibes from it. They know they can be
• 58:06
  productive. They're working with the system.
• 58:09
  They know that they can get a response from.
• 58:11
  It's not a dead tile. He's got to paint the tile.
• 58:13
  If you leave the tile in the garage, it's just going to
• 58:16
  collect dust. But if you can't a seed, it's
• 58:18
  going to do stuff while you engaged elsewhere and you come
• 58:21
  back and you go, wow, that that was my mastery.
• 58:24
  Take it out. Look at my chilies.
• 58:28
  And then you have a child and then you can go very esoteric
• 58:32
  with this, but I'm a very pragmatic, scientifically driven
• 58:35
  person. I'm very spiritual because I
• 58:38
  like, I understand. There's so much after that I
• 58:40
  just can't fathom. So I've got this big box of I
• 58:44
  don't understand. It's too big for me, but I
• 58:46
  respect it and it's there. And my son is my teacher.
• 58:52
  He wasn't born with all the degrees I've got and with the
• 58:57
  life experience that I can see, but he's born without the BS
• 59:02
  that are accumulated. So he doesn't have the onion
• 59:05
  layers of expectation and hurt and learning and gain and wonder
• 59:10
  and all of these things, obligation, etcetera.
• 59:13
  He sees it and he says, and I go, you've got to laugh as a
• 59:18
  parent because your kids are going to show the, the the
• 59:21
  skeletons in the closet very quickly.
• 59:23
  So you learn how to, you know, water or the ducks back, you
• 59:27
  learn to sit and watch and learn.
• 59:29
  And I just like I said, that skill of watching and watching,
• 59:34
  not look, not looking, but seeing, not just talking, but
• 59:39
  learning how to view your words with deep meaning and value
• 59:46
  takes quietness and it takes humility and it takes
• 59:50
  understanding that they're probably all built on losses and
• 59:53
  figuring things out. That's cool.
• 59:56
  But your children will teach you because they will mirror all of
• 59:58
  your vulnerabilities and your garden will throw back in your
• 1:00:03
  face all your expectations because it will say, I won't be
• 1:00:07
  caged by you. You've got a hedge from and you
• 1:00:10
  want square hedges. That's cool.
• 1:00:13
  Trim me and turn your back on me.
• 1:00:17
  And I've got my own agenda and I don't speak your language.
• 1:00:21
  I don't have your expectations and your beliefs.
• 1:00:23
  I'm going to set C, then I'm going to send roots on.
• 1:00:25
  I'm going to grow however my genetics wants me to, which way
• 1:00:29
  the sun angle is and all of that.
• 1:00:31
  So if you learn the currency or the language of the things
• 1:00:34
  you're working with, then you're half the 3/4 of the way there.
• 1:00:39
  The next thing that really struck me was, you know, it's
• 1:00:46
  that old saying it's perfection doesn't exist.
• 1:00:49
  It recreates itself and will tightly mess you up.
• 1:00:53
  It's progress. Perfection is in like the rain
• 1:00:57
  end of the rainbow. Perfection.
• 1:01:00
  It doesn't work like that. The more effort you put in does
• 1:01:03
  not create perfection and the the cleaner your edges and your
• 1:01:07
  lines and the better integrated and smarter you are.
• 1:01:10
  The smarter you are, the more you learn, the less you'll ever
• 1:01:15
  know. So true wisdom isn't gaining
• 1:01:18
  knowledge, it's actually letting go of knowledge and realizing.
• 1:01:23
  I humble myself, but I acknowledge that I'm getting
• 1:01:26
  very clever. But I, I, I've got to watch what
• 1:01:30
  I'm doing because it comes with responsibilities and it changes.
• 1:01:33
  And so the way I survive parenting and expectation and
• 1:01:37
  being efficient and gardening was the progress rather than
• 1:01:42
  perfection. And my wife taught me that
• 1:01:44
  because I've been wanting to do workshops and teach and share
• 1:01:50
  what we're doing here at our Homesteads United Natures.
• 1:01:54
  And I've been holding myself back in procrastinating.
• 1:01:57
  She said, just do it. And I said, what are you talking
• 1:01:59
  about? I've got a little of expectation
• 1:02:01
  and perfection of, you know, I've got all this experience.
• 1:02:04
  And she sets up her macrame business and she just does it.
• 1:02:07
  And it's amazing how she's growing.
• 1:02:09
  And she said, Eric, people don't want to see the end product.
• 1:02:12
  They want to see the guts of how it works.
• 1:02:15
  They want to see your wicking bed not made yet.
• 1:02:18
  They want to see your compost halfway through.
• 1:02:21
  They want to see your veggie patch straight after harvesting.
• 1:02:24
  They want to see you mulching the base soil because that's
• 1:02:27
  what you're learning is it's not just veneer of completedness
• 1:02:31
  because that's not reality. And it's it's this huge cycle.
• 1:02:35
  It's quite wonderful. And nature will do that because
• 1:02:37
  you will have an idea of what you want with your garden.
• 1:02:39
  But what your garden is is never a finished product because
• 1:02:44
  technically your finished product should be in your belly.
• 1:02:46
  Yeah, it's still not in the soil.
• 1:02:50
  That's that's progress. You're absolutely right.
• 1:02:54
  There's some profound wisdom there, Eric.
• 1:02:56
  Thank you. And you're right, because and
• 1:03:01
  sharing the transformation myself of the front garden is a
• 1:03:05
  big part of sharing that authenticity.
• 1:03:08
  And I think your wife said the nail on the head there about
• 1:03:11
  showing what the journey is. And often we like to watch our
• 1:03:19
  really successful people in the world how they got there.
• 1:03:22
  And you know, if you got to see in Steve Jobs's office when he
• 1:03:27
  was first building the company, you know, you'd be really
• 1:03:31
  interested to see how the thought patterns were going in
• 1:03:34
  and how the challenges were managed and, and all of these
• 1:03:37
  problems were being thought out. And it's not necessarily, yes,
• 1:03:41
  here's the picture perfect end goal.
• 1:03:43
  And then everyone goes, well, how do I get to that?
• 1:03:46
  And it's more a matter of come along for the journey with me
• 1:03:49
  and see how we're getting to that, see how we're working
• 1:03:53
  against and with that certain problems and how you can then
• 1:03:57
  transform it. And what rewarding process that
• 1:04:01
  is both both for me and for for somebody else watching, you
• 1:04:05
  know, and that I'll just. Quickly add within that call is
• 1:04:10
  you touched on it, that like me, you've got this goal of what you
• 1:04:15
  want to do. But maybe permaculture is
• 1:04:18
  teaching us that no individual does everything, it's community.
• 1:04:22
  But if you've got a goal, break it down into steps.
• 1:04:25
  And do you have to do all the steps yourself?
• 1:04:27
  Can you integrate people, bring the talent in, bring the labor
• 1:04:31
  in, bring the new ideas, bring the young energy in, bring the
• 1:04:34
  old wisdom in. And just sometimes we're a
• 1:04:37
  facilitator, less than a solution maker, but we host it.
• 1:04:41
  And that could be genius in and of itself as well.
• 1:04:44
  That's a very good point, 'cause you're bringing I, you know, you
• 1:04:49
  might find this as well. I find because nature is, you
• 1:04:54
  know, quote UN quote perfect in its way of doing things.
• 1:04:59
  I feel like I am more of a facilitator and a I'm
• 1:05:07
  disseminating information from so many wonderful people that
• 1:05:12
  I've learnt from and who have learnt from the natural systems
• 1:05:16
  themselves. I'm just disseminating,
• 1:05:18
  disseminating that information in my own authentic way.
• 1:05:21
  I'm not necessarily reinventing or coming up with anything.
• 1:05:25
  It's just trying to put it into a perspective of how I see it
• 1:05:30
  and how that might be able to help other people.
• 1:05:34
  So I'm not necessarily going out there doing anything special.
• 1:05:37
  And you're right, I, I'm, I'm using community, I'm using
• 1:05:43
  somebody like I might, I might steal a quote that you've used
• 1:05:46
  today and share that with somebody else and say, Eric told
• 1:05:49
  me this. It was wonderful.
• 1:05:51
  It really changed my mind. And then that ripple effects
• 1:05:54
  into other people. And you're right, it takes a
• 1:05:57
  village to raise a child, doesn't it?
• 1:05:58
  So it's, it's taking this diversity of people and thought
• 1:06:03
  and experience cultural background and bringing it all
• 1:06:07
  together in, in trying to create something wonderful and, and
• 1:06:11
  flourish so. Everything I say, you're welcome
• 1:06:14
  to have. I really appreciate that.
• 1:06:17
  I'll do well to remember it all, Erica, and I'll do well to be
• 1:06:21
  able to say it in the same beautiful way that you have.
• 1:06:24
  But. Yeah, everything I'm saying is
• 1:06:26
  what I've learned from others. Yeah, and that's that's
• 1:06:29
  something I'm trying to embrace and like putting yourself out
• 1:06:35
  there as I do daily and weekly and say I'm here to share the
• 1:06:41
  information, to give you some answers and to try and help
• 1:06:44
  problem solve for you. I'm very aware that I don't know
• 1:06:48
  everything and the battle between me wanting to come
• 1:06:54
  across as a somewhat of a teacher figure, a maestro or a,
• 1:07:01
  you know, whatever it might be versus my humbling lack of
• 1:07:07
  knowledge and lack of experience.
• 1:07:10
  This fine balance of trying to to be that person that people
• 1:07:14
  can look to for that information versus saying, hey, I'm exactly
• 1:07:17
  like you and we're all just learning.
• 1:07:19
  It's a very fine, fine balance. But I've come to realize that
• 1:07:24
  coming out there with the intention to learn and having
• 1:07:28
  people see that authentic intention to learn and grow with
• 1:07:33
  the space, grow with the community, that's what people
• 1:07:37
  are looking for more so. I think you're absolutely right.
• 1:07:41
  I think people want knowledge and they sometimes don't
• 1:07:44
  recognize knowledge or they're talking about subjects that
• 1:07:48
  they're passionate about. It's it's the connection they
• 1:07:49
  want. The answers often come with the
• 1:07:53
  air of progress that accompanies someone.
• 1:07:57
  It's not the answers that they provide.
• 1:07:58
  It's OK, here we are. If you want to be resilient, you
• 1:08:02
  don't have to be knowledgeable. You've got to be flexible.
• 1:08:05
  You can't measure flexibility. You got to test it.
• 1:08:08
  Yes, yes, very, very true. Very, very true.
• 1:08:11
  And then it's it ties in with everything you're talking about.
• 1:08:14
  We're talking about biochar and wood vinegar and everything I do
• 1:08:19
  and design with and apply, I'm happy to drop and not use again.
• 1:08:25
  It's in an instant. If something presents itself
• 1:08:29
  that is integrated better or works better or feels better is
• 1:08:34
  more holistic, then I'll go with that.
• 1:08:37
  And that includes, can I even say that that includes my
• 1:08:41
  personality and my mindsets. I have to be flexible enough not
• 1:08:47
  to try be myself too much to be a good designer.
• 1:08:50
  I really you kind of you have to be you because you're a you're a
• 1:08:53
  profile that's developing expertise that you can apply.
• 1:08:57
  But you need to put that aside, the ego aside to let the
• 1:09:01
  information flow without you filtering and trying to design
• 1:09:04
  what you want. You have to give the client what
• 1:09:06
  they need and you need to help them to find that.
• 1:09:09
  And part of that is a wonderful saying that you teach best what
• 1:09:13
  you most need to learn. Because some gurus will sit and
• 1:09:19
  talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and espouse
• 1:09:22
  such deep wisdom and knowledge. But sometimes the real gurus are
• 1:09:27
  the quiet ones that aren't there.
• 1:09:28
  The the true swordsman, the master swordsman, doesn't wield
• 1:09:32
  the sword. Because when there is genuine
• 1:09:35
  mastery, the sword, the tool, is no longer needed.
• 1:09:40
  It was just a pointing stick directing you.
• 1:09:42
  You put the sword down and you walk naked through life, and
• 1:09:46
  when people attack you, you don't use the salt.
• 1:09:49
  It's not necessary anymore. And it's a tough one to really
• 1:09:53
  wrap your head around or to come to grips with that.
• 1:09:55
  Gardening is gonna Your garden's gonna compost you wondering?
• 1:10:03
  Oh, that needs to be on AT Shirt Eric.
• 1:10:05
  The soil is a hungry mole that is sitting there and you're
• 1:10:09
  feeding it, but while you're feeding it, that's generating
• 1:10:13
  all of the stuff that enriches your life.
• 1:10:15
  But one day you're going to trip and fall into that mall and it's
• 1:10:20
  going to eat you and it's going to feed the trees.
• 1:10:23
  I love it. That is a really good thing.
• 1:10:25
  Your bride, though, very, very poignant.
• 1:10:27
  Let's you touched on on the wood vinegar and now like honestly,
• 1:10:33
  that's something that stuck with me a little while.
• 1:10:35
  I want to get maybe we can get a little bit more into the, the
• 1:10:38
  tactical and less in, in the esoteric or maybe, but I love
• 1:10:45
  all of this deep conversation. It's one of my favorite things
• 1:10:48
  to do. So I'm really appreciative of
• 1:10:50
  you going that way with me. Now if we're talking about
• 1:10:55
  these, these kinds of technologies that that you come
• 1:10:58
  across as you say, it's really easy for us to go, OK, this
• 1:11:06
  works really, really well. And I want to impose that
• 1:11:10
  technique or technology on everything that I find.
• 1:11:13
  And as you said about the, the, the African farmer and you think
• 1:11:16
  just throw some compost down because I know that works and
• 1:11:19
  throw some cover crop down and etcetera, etcetera.
• 1:11:22
  Now wait, obviously you have to let go of a few of those things,
• 1:11:27
  as you were saying, and and pick things that are going to work
• 1:11:30
  really, really well. And we're working towards the
• 1:11:32
  truth, really the most effective solution in whatever situation.
• 1:11:38
  Can you talk to me about wood vinegar?
• 1:11:41
  Three questions. What is it in terms of like, how
• 1:11:45
  is it made and where does it come from?
• 1:11:47
  What is it useful for? In which situations might we
• 1:11:52
  want to use it? And then conversely, where do we
• 1:11:56
  not need to use that technology? Of course, yes, certainly.
• 1:12:02
  One thing that's really useful is to look at what has stood the
• 1:12:05
  test of time that's still there. Look at what's already existing
• 1:12:09
  that works. And I'm an archaeologist, funny
• 1:12:13
  enough, and Tarapreto was discovered in South America in
• 1:12:16
  the rainforest. It was these deep soil, dark
• 1:12:20
  soil deposits that were super rich, nutrient dense.
• 1:12:26
  And people looked at them and thought, you don't fit here.
• 1:12:30
  How, how, where, what are you? Firstly?
• 1:12:32
  So then they analyzed it and they realized, goodness me time
• 1:12:35
  carbon looks like it's ash. It's got clay particles in it.
• 1:12:41
  There's organics in it, and it's generating more organics over
• 1:12:45
  time with no humans. And then they realized, Oh my
• 1:12:48
  word, you know, these deposits are located around human
• 1:12:52
  settlement sites that have been eaten up by the rainforest and
• 1:12:55
  covered up. And they realized people were
• 1:12:57
  practicing farming using broken shards of clay, waste products,
• 1:13:04
  charcoal from their fires that they cooked their food on, maybe
• 1:13:07
  clearing some land to start the initial farming process.
• 1:13:11
  But they were more holistic communities in that way.
• 1:13:16
  And they were using the charcoal as a way of improving their
• 1:13:25
  soil. So slash and burn works because
• 1:13:28
  it's eats up all of the resources that are in plants,
• 1:13:33
  burns them and then deposits a lot of them, some of them into
• 1:13:37
  the soil, which then feeds the next cycle of plants.
• 1:13:40
  But because you've totally got rid of an exhausted all of those
• 1:13:45
  resources in one burn advance and fizzled out over time.
• 1:13:50
  And they've realized, you know, if we've got our farming land
• 1:13:52
  and we can burn wood in such a way that it lasts for longer,
• 1:14:00
  not just as ash, but we can actually create particles by
• 1:14:03
  char charcoal that are carbon stabilized.
• 1:14:08
  It's full of pores. And those pores, goodness me,
• 1:14:12
  they're like a hotel. You can see you can whatever you
• 1:14:14
  put in them, it'll remain and release it to the soil over
• 1:14:17
  time. And so well made char is burnt
• 1:14:23
  in a fire that has is devoid of oxygen because oxygen oxidizes,
• 1:14:29
  breaks up and converts things into gases.
• 1:14:32
  And then you can smoke very efficient.
• 1:14:34
  But if you get rid of the oxygen, then all of the inside
• 1:14:38
  pieces of the wood get burnt off and it leaves the carbon.
• 1:14:41
  And if you're really good, if you've got a machine that can
• 1:14:44
  and that's good pyrolysis, so burning in the absence of oxygen
• 1:14:47
  and aerobic burning, if you've got a machine that can do that
• 1:14:50
  very quickly, you can take any carbon based life form or a
• 1:14:56
  product of that that's carbon based, the cotton T-shirts.
• 1:15:01
  And you can blitz burn it and you'll keep the whole woven
• 1:15:05
  structure of all the carbon particles in the same structure,
• 1:15:11
  but it's converted into charcoal.
• 1:15:13
  And you can create filters out of old clothing that is still
• 1:15:19
  the woven carbon fibers. But when you look under a
• 1:15:22
  microscope, you'll see fibers that are full with holes and
• 1:15:25
  pits that you can store stuff in.
• 1:15:29
  And so this, these clever people did that and they stay these
• 1:15:32
  layers of teracreto, which is the name of the type of soil
• 1:15:36
  they subsequently discovered that in other parts of the world
• 1:15:39
  as well. And you can use it as a storage
• 1:15:43
  medium that holds moisture. It will hold fertilizer,
• 1:15:46
  nutrients, bacteria and fungi would love to colonize it and
• 1:15:49
  fill it, et cetera. So that's what the char is the
• 1:15:53
  process. But when you're burning
• 1:15:55
  something, the smoke is technically everything minus the
• 1:16:00
  carbon. So the fibers that make the tree
• 1:16:03
  trunk or the stem, all of the the juices that are the
• 1:16:07
  nutrients and SAP and lignans of the plant get burnt off.
• 1:16:13
  Yeah, smoke. And you watch it go, but if you
• 1:16:16
  capture that and you condense it into a liquid, then you've got a
• 1:16:22
  very special liquid that is tree minus carbon structure liquid
• 1:16:29
  and that and that is good all the minerals and nutrients that
• 1:16:33
  the tree or that particular species was good at drawing in.
• 1:16:37
  So the those condensates they have discovered have active
• 1:16:42
  ingredients that stimulate things to seeds to germinate.
• 1:16:47
  If you do it, if you use it in very high concentration, you can
• 1:16:50
  sterilize and clean and kill off bacteria and fungal.
• 1:16:55
  You do it at a lower concentration rate, it becomes a
• 1:16:58
  fertilizer. You do it at a very low
• 1:17:01
  concentrate, it becomes a gross stimulus.
• 1:17:04
  And so it depends on the concentrated value of it.
• 1:17:07
  And so that's what vinegar essentially is.
• 1:17:10
  And the science can get deep into that and separate that up
• 1:17:13
  and say there's wood vinegar and there's wood vinegar and there's
• 1:17:16
  wood vinegar. Yeah, different qualities of it,
• 1:17:19
  but that's many. Sorry.
• 1:17:21
  I was going to say, is that the same as how often we have some
• 1:17:26
  species that can only germinate their seeds after being through
• 1:17:31
  fire or through smoke? Is that a similar type of
• 1:17:34
  situation or or because it has those compounds in that?
• 1:17:39
  This is how wonderful ecology is.
• 1:17:41
  Some plants have evolved the need for burn to clear an area
• 1:17:48
  to convert it back to bacterial so that they can flourish.
• 1:17:52
  And this is where nature seems nice, but it is warfare and they
• 1:17:57
  survive through their seeds, but it's also an ecological change.
• 1:18:01
  So in nature, nothing happens with one purpose.
• 1:18:04
  So there's no one person with a grand idea.
• 1:18:06
  And I'm going to do this. It needs 351020 reasons for it
• 1:18:10
  to stand the test of time. And so a burning event not only
• 1:18:13
  stimulates the germination of the species that involved to do
• 1:18:16
  it, it stimulates a whole different growth approach in
• 1:18:21
  soil. So a hot fire will kill a fungi,
• 1:18:25
  but a bacteria can sometimes go dormant or create a cyst and
• 1:18:31
  survive. Hot and dry, hot and dry, hot
• 1:18:33
  and dry. That's why bacterial soils that
• 1:18:36
  have high exposure have bacteria and not fungi.
• 1:18:39
  The fungi are gentle and and not gentle more prone to dying back.
• 1:18:43
  They need cover, protection, moisture and nutrients.
• 1:18:47
  And so you can use liquid, you can use wood vinegar to
• 1:18:51
  stimulate those species. So if you've got a driveway and
• 1:18:54
  you sprayed with wood vinegar, chances are you're going to get
• 1:18:58
  frontline colonizing bacterial basal weeds germinate like
• 1:19:01
  crazy. Wow.
• 1:19:02
  Really. OK but your fungi will be
• 1:19:05
  suppressed. You have nutrients released but
• 1:19:07
  you could also The samurai used to use wood vinegar.
• 1:19:11
  They used to bathe in it because all their cuts and wounds and
• 1:19:14
  bruises. Your body would absorb it.
• 1:19:15
  Get a nutrient hit by folio. Feeding helps with your immunity
• 1:19:19
  and your resilience. But it will cleanse A wound,
• 1:19:22
  sterilize it, and help it at the right concentration to feed the
• 1:19:27
  skin, to repair and to to grow. If.
• 1:19:30
  They use, if they used it at full concentration, they might
• 1:19:32
  get cancer. And if they're very sick, not
• 1:19:34
  cancer, but they might have a adverse, just like digitalis can
• 1:19:38
  kill you, but it can also help people with heart condition.
• 1:19:42
  So that's wood vinegar and you can use it as a pesticide or a
• 1:19:46
  fungicide at a high concentration, but you can dial
• 1:19:49
  it back to fertilized plants. You could use it to, if you've
• 1:19:54
  had nematode issues, you can use it on soils to reset them, kill
• 1:20:01
  off, and then recolonize because once it breaks down, it breaks
• 1:20:05
  down into lignans, amino acids, all the sugars and stuff that
• 1:20:09
  were in the plants on natural products.
• 1:20:11
  And then that feeds everything. And they've done research in
• 1:20:14
  agriculture and realized that with vinegar applied.
• 1:20:18
  Can increase fungal regrowth by up to 700%, so this isn't
• 1:20:25
  insignificant. This is significant and
• 1:20:27
  bacterial too and you can find a balance of your ratios of your
• 1:20:32
  concentrations of of wood. Vinegar use to to create a quite
• 1:20:36
  a holistic soil management. So would would vinegar and
• 1:20:42
  biochar come hand in hand because it's a byproduct of
• 1:20:45
  biochar production? I've got so many questions.
• 1:20:49
  This is fascinating. Let's go first one does.
• 1:20:56
  OK. So when you were talking about
• 1:20:58
  having the specific material that was burnt draws out those
• 1:21:04
  nutrients that that particular plant was good at drawing in.
• 1:21:09
  So my knowledge tells me that when you've got a tree and it's,
• 1:21:16
  you know, losing its organic matter and it's dropping on the
• 1:21:19
  soil and that's being broken down to then feed that plant,
• 1:21:21
  usually what's coming off that plant is in the right
• 1:21:25
  concentrations to feed itself and create this self perpetual
• 1:21:28
  system. For the most part.
• 1:21:29
  That's my understanding. The soil that it's growing in
• 1:21:32
  has an inherent nutrient deficiency than the tree.
• 1:21:36
  Will it express that deficiency and its growth too?
• 1:21:40
  Right, OK, that makes a lot of sense.
• 1:21:41
  Say let's optimum conditions it has, it has everything it needs.
• 1:21:45
  So if you're if you're using wood vinegar to fertilize or
• 1:21:53
  provide any kind of nutrients to your garden, does it matter what
• 1:21:58
  was used to create that wood vinegar and wood local species
• 1:22:03
  or similar species to what you're growing be beneficial to
• 1:22:09
  use? If you're practicing re
• 1:22:14
  mineralization, so balancing your soils and addressing
• 1:22:18
  deficiencies, then the plants you use, if they are grown at
• 1:22:22
  optimum health will have high SAP sugar levels with a diverse
• 1:22:29
  range of nutrients, high bricks levels which will reduce past
• 1:22:35
  pressure because the plants are saturated with strong growth.
• 1:22:42
  Then those plants would produce a well balanced with vinegar.
• 1:22:49
  But remember, when you're looking at a landscape, you're
• 1:22:52
  not seeing perfection. You're seeing progress because
• 1:22:56
  those plants that are growing there are an ecological response
• 1:23:01
  to the type of spoil that is there, and certain plants will
• 1:23:07
  not be triggered to grow. When there's an iron deficiency
• 1:23:10
  or a boron deficiency, you'll see the plants that can survive
• 1:23:14
  without it and might be able to, through multiple generations,
• 1:23:19
  slowly alter the soil conditions that free a boron that could be
• 1:23:24
  present but not accessible. Or they can mine it from further
• 1:23:29
  and bring it in. Or they bring in animals that
• 1:23:33
  are eating and foraging from outlying areas that don't have
• 1:23:37
  that deficiency that bring them in.
• 1:23:40
  Because humans are not separate from their habitats.
• 1:23:44
  Plants are not a habitat on their own.
• 1:23:47
  Plants need, humans need the animals born in for a need to
• 1:23:50
  solve biology, to crater the shifting holistic system of
• 1:23:57
  transition. So it's quite interesting.
• 1:24:00
  That's very interesting. So then it you can somewhat be
• 1:24:04
  selective in the plants that you use for your wood vinegar based
• 1:24:10
  on what you might want to add to the soil to to guide that
• 1:24:14
  towards a homeostasis and and that type of thing.
• 1:24:18
  Absolutely. Now the challenge is that with
• 1:24:22
  biochar production, you collect and produce a very small
• 1:24:28
  quantity of wood vinegar. It's like a nectar, magic
• 1:24:32
  nectar, gummy Berry juice. It's really special stuff.
• 1:24:36
  And the reason behind that is when you look at a trio of
• 1:24:39
  plants, there's often an assumption that that plant is
• 1:24:42
  made-up of minerals and nutrients brought out of the
• 1:24:45
  soil. But up to 80% of the plant is
• 1:24:48
  actually made out of there. You know carbon dioxide, it's
• 1:24:51
  carbon and the carbon is the carbon based life form, meaning
• 1:24:56
  the carbon creates the structure of the stems in the leaves, the
• 1:25:01
  skeleton that hold it up. Those cells which have walls
• 1:25:06
  made from carbon and Xylem and flu made from carbon get filled
• 1:25:10
  with liquids through water that can harvest and hold the
• 1:25:14
  minerals and nutrients in the soil.
• 1:25:16
  So when you burn them, 80% might be the carbon and only 20% is
• 1:25:21
  the liquids. Those liquids change through the
• 1:25:24
  burning process and where it was a sugar and amino acid, it gets
• 1:25:28
  denatured and broken down into it's mineral components and
• 1:25:32
  that's what you get condensed into your with the.
• 1:25:36
  Yeah, OK. So sometimes chopping and
• 1:25:39
  dropping, well, it's a that's the most holistic and quickest
• 1:25:43
  value balanced soil. But you've got to remember that
• 1:25:47
  if you keep chopping and dropping the same plants in the
• 1:25:49
  same place, you're just going to recirculate the same manure
• 1:25:52
  deficiency. That's why you need diverse
• 1:25:54
  range of species growing in that same soil with different
• 1:25:57
  capacities to harvest and hold nutrient profiles that are very
• 1:26:03
  different. So you're introducing new ones.
• 1:26:05
  And sometimes it's best to chop and drop there and, or chop here
• 1:26:08
  and drop there and chop there and drop there.
• 1:26:10
  And your compost should be diverse, made from diverse
• 1:26:13
  species and your wood vinegar, hopefully your bio chart is made
• 1:26:17
  from a diverse range. Many people look at, you know,
• 1:26:21
  hemp or hardwood Timbers because they've they're hard because
• 1:26:26
  they've got lots of carbon and they've got very thick carbon,
• 1:26:31
  which makes a very dense structure that can hold.
• 1:26:36
  It's got many rooms in it with ores in it that can hold a lot
• 1:26:40
  more they hold. All of that.
• 1:26:42
  Yeah, but they'll be as research goes on, you'll find that you
• 1:26:45
  probably need some soft woods mixed in with a range of
• 1:26:49
  different things, seed coatings, stems, wood roots.
• 1:26:53
  And holistically, A diverse biochar would create a diverse
• 1:26:57
  wood vinegar, which would create a diverse range of outcomes of
• 1:27:00
  your sort. Yeah.
• 1:27:01
  And that's, that's really it, isn't it?
• 1:27:03
  Because that's the central, you know, the central stem, I guess
• 1:27:07
  to nature is diversity. Like it, it works better every
• 1:27:11
  time when there's more diversity.
• 1:27:14
  So, so having any kind of diversity in any of your
• 1:27:18
  products is going to be beneficial going back to Terra
• 1:27:23
  Preda because that's something that's interest me a lot.
• 1:27:26
  And I actually did a small video on Terra Preda kind of
• 1:27:30
  introducing people to the idea about that discovery.
• 1:27:33
  Can you talk to how it is a self perpetuating soil without human
• 1:27:41
  contact? Because that's something that I
• 1:27:43
  didn't quite understand. Because I understand that
• 1:27:46
  obviously if you've got carbon in the soil or any kind of
• 1:27:51
  organic matter that breaks down slowly over time, it's gonna
• 1:27:54
  generally feed that soil over time.
• 1:27:56
  But how is it then being added to or how is it self
• 1:28:00
  perpetuating in that way without human intervention?
• 1:28:05
  Rainforests are well known for leaching and losing minerals and
• 1:28:10
  nutrients very quickly. The high rainfall just simply
• 1:28:13
  carries nutrients away and that's why a lot of life in the
• 1:28:18
  rainforests inhabits often a very narrow band.
• 1:28:22
  Now that's a bit of that's a bit inaccurate because we can find
• 1:28:25
  microbe activity to kilometers underground, specialized
• 1:28:29
  microbes that live right on there.
• 1:28:31
  But that's a hyper dense layer in rainforest.
• 1:28:34
  The more deciduous and cooler the forest, the deeper down they
• 1:28:38
  can often penetrate too. Because it's slow composting.
• 1:28:42
  You know, tropics are hot composting.
• 1:28:45
  Hot composting is quick, rapid turnover, rapid release, you
• 1:28:49
  know, grow quickly, die young scenario in time.
• 1:28:55
  When they produced biochar and they introduced it to terapredis
• 1:28:59
  oils, they added clay, they added bones, they added a
• 1:29:02
  diverse range of species and those biochar deposits and the
• 1:29:08
  clay, which holds a lot of minerals and nutrients and
• 1:29:10
  breaks down very slowly, work well together.
• 1:29:13
  They would feed the microbes, they'd hold minerals and
• 1:29:16
  nutrients and stop them leaching out and the whole ecologies that
• 1:29:21
  are associated with that change. So species.
• 1:29:24
  The way the rainforest is structured is usually based on
• 1:29:29
  nutrient management. You get a turnover in succession
• 1:29:33
  that suits that. But if you suddenly create a
• 1:29:34
  soil that's impregnated and hold them to minerals and nutrients
• 1:29:37
  in a different way, plants will grow differently and it's maybe
• 1:29:41
  the carrying capacity of the rainforest would increase.
• 1:29:44
  And So what you have is this system where more plants, more
• 1:29:48
  species, greater biomass is constantly cycling because that
• 1:29:52
  soil can sustain and so that the ecology fluctuates and changes.
• 1:29:57
  And they found that soils in areas where Terra preta was
• 1:30:03
  generated accumulates organics at a higher rate for longer than
• 1:30:09
  those without. Now it's not probably not a
• 1:30:12
  perpetual machine, because nature will always use excesses
• 1:30:17
  and processes and move it. But if a well made biochar could
• 1:30:23
  last they say 800 years. But some Terra predisols are
• 1:30:26
  over 2000 years old. Goodness.
• 1:30:29
  Me. That's a long time for trees and
• 1:30:31
  genetics and epigenetics to recycle and repeat and repeat
• 1:30:36
  and repeat and evolve different coping mechanisms.
• 1:30:39
  That's so true. OK, That makes a lot of sense
• 1:30:41
  because, yeah, I thought, you know, indefinite perpetual
• 1:30:44
  systems would mean that you probably would need to introduce
• 1:30:47
  more biochar. So, but eventually the system
• 1:30:50
  might cause a fire somewhere, it might dry out, the ecosystem
• 1:30:54
  changes, You then have all of this biochar return back to the
• 1:30:57
  soil and then it changes again and comes back.
• 1:31:00
  So that's part of these maybe these natural cycles is so in
• 1:31:06
  terms of biochar for for us in our gardens and things like
• 1:31:10
  that, how we to introduce biochar and what are some
• 1:31:18
  methodologies or reasons why we would want to what do you
• 1:31:22
  suggest to people? Yeah, sure.
• 1:31:24
  Well, biochar is technically a storage mechanism.
• 1:31:28
  I mean, it introduces carbon, which is great for the
• 1:31:31
  environment because it's, instead of having costumes going
• 1:31:34
  into the environment causing greenhouse gas issues, you
• 1:31:38
  storing it in a very stable form.
• 1:31:40
  So there's a there's a tick there for environmental
• 1:31:44
  mindsets. If you want to do something that
• 1:31:46
  I've lost to you and you want to help the environment for
• 1:31:50
  generations and putting biochar into the ground is great.
• 1:31:53
  But if you creating biochar with a waste of fire.
• 1:31:57
  Yeah, it's putting it all into the atmosphere that's.
• 1:31:59
  Right. So you need to think it through
• 1:32:01
  and create an efficient closed loop if you can, as much as
• 1:32:06
  possible way to do it. Now there are people out there
• 1:32:09
  like Rob Thomas from Australian Hardwood Charcoal that's got a
• 1:32:13
  tightly enclosed environment. He can store the energy from his
• 1:32:18
  biochar production and he can produce hyper, hyper, hyper high
• 1:32:22
  quality biochar that's paramagnetic that's got in view.
• 1:32:27
  There's so many qualities that your standard person using a
• 1:32:30
  retort in the garden or a you know, it killed outside, killed
• 1:32:34
  cart. So there's the Ferrari biochars
• 1:32:38
  in this non Ferrari. But a little bit of biochar in
• 1:32:42
  soils is better than no biochar. If you've got a soil that's
• 1:32:45
  compacted, let's say clays, if you add biochar to it, you'll be
• 1:32:51
  adding a media that's got air space, like perlite, but opens
• 1:32:56
  it up. It keeps the air flow doesn't
• 1:32:58
  compact. Oxygenate the soil a bit better.
• 1:33:00
  It'll drain well, it'll oxygenate, and any nutrients
• 1:33:03
  that are wonderful nutrients in your clay instead of draining
• 1:33:05
  out will have the storage space within the biochar.
• 1:33:09
  So your roots would love it in your soil.
• 1:33:11
  Microbiology would love. Yeah, because they live in that,
• 1:33:14
  don't they? Yeah, exactly.
• 1:33:16
  So you go to the other side of the scale, which is a sand
• 1:33:20
  that's it's very open that drains, that gets dry.
• 1:33:24
  And it might be very rich in silicates, but it doesn't hold
• 1:33:27
  minerals and nutrients much. So you either need to put lots
• 1:33:30
  of compost in there to make it spongy, or you can put biochar
• 1:33:33
  in there that'll hold moisture and minerals and nutrients.
• 1:33:40
  And there's a magic balance. They say 2% by volume of your
• 1:33:44
  sulfur carbon is all you really need to create a a holistic
• 1:33:50
  ecological result that works quite well.
• 1:33:52
  But with biochar, sometimes they are looking at this in some
• 1:33:56
  research that suggests between 10 and 15% is the pinnacle.
• 1:34:01
  Anything beyond 15% creates a soil that is always hungry and
• 1:34:07
  you could have problems with not being able to feed it enough.
• 1:34:10
  So it becomes a very intensive soil that you constantly have to
• 1:34:14
  recharge this hotel, biochar hotel with minerals and
• 1:34:17
  nutrients. If you, if you're up to that,
• 1:34:21
  you're a market, market gardener, then you can
• 1:34:24
  hyperdrive your production. But the moment you start
• 1:34:27
  stepping back, you might start getting a few nutrient
• 1:34:30
  efficiency. So 10 to 15% is maybe as high as
• 1:34:33
  you should go. But if you've got a soil that
• 1:34:36
  drains well, that is high CC or high nutrients holding capacity,
• 1:34:45
  and you've got good compost levels in it, high organics in
• 1:34:50
  it, you might not need biochar. But I find the potting mixes in
• 1:34:54
  raised beds are always hungry, always decomposed, they
• 1:34:58
  breakdown. So biochar.
• 1:35:01
  I go to town and I'm currently planning, I've got red crasness
• 1:35:05
  and soils in the red lens of the red soil.
• 1:35:08
  I'm aiming to achieve 10 to 15% by volume biochar.
• 1:35:13
  Yeah. OK.
• 1:35:14
  And is this a top dress or are you trying to turn this in?
• 1:35:19
  How deep does a rabbit hole go? True.
• 1:35:21
  I'm I'm no, there's liquid biochar.
• 1:35:25
  Oh, OK, right. That you could use to water your
• 1:35:27
  soils to impregnate it with micronized biochar that can get
• 1:35:31
  deep without turning or turning. Wow.
• 1:35:34
  OK, there. There's magic in there too, but
• 1:35:37
  it's difficult to get hold of it.
• 1:35:39
  Rob produces it now. Been running trials with him
• 1:35:42
  comparing productivity in three vegetable spaces and seeing what
• 1:35:46
  happens. But I am also using bi chart in
• 1:35:54
  a range of sizes. I'm finding that between nought
• 1:35:57
  .3 mil and five mil offers a broad spectrum, a balance.
• 1:36:03
  If you've got very big chunky BI chart, you're going to be a huge
• 1:36:07
  chunk and the core of it very rarely gets full than used.
• 1:36:11
  It'll. Be the perimeter.
• 1:36:12
  So you really want to try and mash it up and break it into
• 1:36:15
  smaller than 5 mils, preferably one mole if you can.
• 1:36:20
  And then you've got a nice balance between surface area,
• 1:36:23
  etcetera. I'm using a range of different
• 1:36:26
  ones. I'm using different sizes
• 1:36:29
  micronized, but I'm also working with log with using liquid
• 1:36:32
  biochar to, to charge it. Now it's important to remember
• 1:36:37
  that there is a huge challenge nowadays where people think that
• 1:36:41
  char charcoal is biochar. It's not.
• 1:36:45
  You could have straightened your soul.
• 1:36:47
  You can create all sorts of imbalances that can last for a
• 1:36:49
  while until your souls recharge it.
• 1:36:52
  But you need to take char, charge it with minerals and
• 1:36:56
  nutrients and then you need to inoculate or impregnate it with
• 1:37:00
  life living soil biology to make char bio char that virus.
• 1:37:07
  I can't understate it. It's missing, yeah, exactly.
• 1:37:12
  Because that's that. Honestly, that's where my brain
• 1:37:14
  first thought when I heard the term biochar, I thought, is that
• 1:37:17
  just charcoal? And it's not, it's not at all.
• 1:37:20
  It's as you learn, it's certainly not that, but it can
• 1:37:24
  be. I guess you can, you know, you
• 1:37:26
  can create your own and all that sort of thing.
• 1:37:28
  But biochar is something that I'm introducing into the garden
• 1:37:32
  myself. And I have got a hold of a, a
• 1:37:35
  wonderful product from Red Soil organics during the paramagnetic
• 1:37:39
  biochar, which is, which is wonderful.
• 1:37:41
  But I haven't, you know, I, I just trust their process and
• 1:37:45
  that was my first introduction to it.
• 1:37:47
  But I'm going to introduce that and see how I go into the, the
• 1:37:51
  soil, the compost that I'm creating for this front garden
• 1:37:54
  area. But it's, it's such an
• 1:37:57
  interesting topic. And, you know, I feel like I
• 1:37:59
  could talk to you about so many of these things for a long, long
• 1:38:02
  time. Now I want to wrap up this
• 1:38:05
  conversation because I'm aware of how long we've been going and
• 1:38:09
  I feel as if we could do another conversation down the track and
• 1:38:12
  kind of really dive into so many of these other topics.
• 1:38:15
  But Eric, what, what can people do to follow you or follow your
• 1:38:20
  journey or dive into the things that you're talking about?
• 1:38:23
  Because I certainly want to myself a little bit more and
• 1:38:26
  keep up with what you're doing and see into your day-to-day,
• 1:38:32
  your perspective, your garden and, and all of those types of
• 1:38:35
  things. Where can we find you?
• 1:38:36
  Certainly. I've got a business called
• 1:38:39
  United Nature's. United Nature's design follows
• 1:38:45
  my living architecture. United Nature's edible garden
• 1:38:50
  follows my home shenanigans where I'm learning it's the
• 1:38:53
  homestead, United Nature's homestead.
• 1:38:55
  We're here in Thornlands on the Redlands coast and I've got
• 1:39:01
  Instagram and Facebook pages. I'm not very tech savvy, but I
• 1:39:05
  share stories, I share updates and ideas and concepts there.
• 1:39:09
  And I'm going to be hosting workshops because I've received
• 1:39:13
  a lot of feedback that's it would be helpful to start
• 1:39:17
  condensing a lot of these different subjects, bringing
• 1:39:21
  them together for people into a central place, a hub where we
• 1:39:25
  can discuss it and explore it. And just as you mentioned, it's
• 1:39:30
  so important to have a space that you can physically take
• 1:39:34
  people through, a demonstration site where you can look at the
• 1:39:37
  pros and cons and the process. You can look at the failures and
• 1:39:41
  how to build on those failures to make different outcomes that
• 1:39:46
  are very helpful. And so United Nations is
• 1:39:49
  probably the the first starting. Brilliant, brilliant.
• 1:39:53
  Thank you. And I'd love to, as you
• 1:39:56
  mentioned, come and check out your space and possibly
• 1:39:59
  highlight it a bit further of what you're doing and and kind
• 1:40:04
  of do that. So I'd love to stay in contact
• 1:40:06
  about that, but. Thank you.
• 1:40:09
  Thank you so much, Eric, for your time today.
• 1:40:13
  I absolutely find what you're saying totally invaluable.
• 1:40:17
  I think it's just a fresh perspective that not too many of
• 1:40:21
  us are hearing these days and I'm really appreciative of you
• 1:40:25
  sharing that with with us today. It's.
• 1:40:28
  My, my pleasure, everything you're saying resonates with
• 1:40:34
  everything I'm also trying to embody in in life and work.
• 1:40:38
  And I think we need lots of voices covering that, lots of
• 1:40:42
  perspectives. It's a rich space to play in,
• 1:40:44
  isn't? It is.
• 1:40:45
  It certainly is, you're right. All right, everybody.
• 1:41:04
  And there we have it. Unfortunately, we had to put an
• 1:41:08
  end to that conversation. I could have spoken to Eric for
• 1:41:11
  a long, long time and I'm very excited to go and visit Eric at
• 1:41:16
  his place and to dive into exactly what he's got going on
• 1:41:20
  there. So hopefully stay tuned for that
• 1:41:23
  content as I'm going to take you along for the ride and go and
• 1:41:27
  see what Eric is up to and really get an idea of how all of
• 1:41:30
  these concepts are coming to fruition in his garden with the
• 1:41:35
  challenges that he's facing, the successes, the failures and all
• 1:41:39
  in between. So I'm sure that you're going to
• 1:41:42
  find just as much value as I am selfishly from going and
• 1:41:45
  visiting Eric. But please go and check out his
• 1:41:50
  channels. They will be LinkedIn the show
• 1:41:52
  notes in the description below as always, and follow along
• 1:41:55
  because Eric's perspective is something that we're greatly
• 1:41:59
  missing in today's society. And I'm taking on board as much
• 1:42:03
  as I possibly can to approach my gardening life and life in
• 1:42:08
  general. So that concludes today's
• 1:42:12
  episode. If you enjoyed the episode,
• 1:42:15
  which I really, really hope you did, please leave it a review.
• 1:42:18
  Give it some stars, whether it's on YouTube, Spotify, wherever
• 1:42:22
  you're listening or watching this, let me know because your
• 1:42:25
  feedback really helps me to improve the show, to get it to
• 1:42:30
  more people, get more listeners, and hopefully to inspire and
• 1:42:34
  empower more people to get out there and into the garden and
• 1:42:39
  creating a natural life using natural cycles.
• 1:42:43
  So thank you very much. That's it from me.
• 1:42:45
  I'm going to leave a very happy man and I'll see you again very
• 1:42:50
  soon on the next episode. Take care.