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Speaker 1: The principal elements that compose us and that compose soils

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Speaker 1: are effectively the same elements. I really think this is

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Speaker 1: the best tool we have to improve our planet soil health.

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Speaker 1: Soil health. On this episode of the Bear Grease podcast,

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Speaker 1: we're going to the very footing of natural systems and

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Speaker 1: human existence. Empires have risen and fallen because of it,

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Speaker 1: and the equalizing grasp of the topic at hand is

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Speaker 1: inescapable from both the wealthy and the impoverished people of

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Speaker 1: the Earth. Will be discussing the bewildering complexity of the

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Speaker 1: soil in our connection to it. Will nerd out with

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Speaker 1: my old soil Sides professor Dr David Miller, exploring soil uniqueness.

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Speaker 1: Will also talk with Dr Grant Woods and learn how

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Speaker 1: he transformed a degradated cattle farm into a white tailed

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Speaker 1: paradise through building soils. And we'll talk with an Arkansas

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Speaker 1: farmer who has been inspired to live close to the

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Speaker 1: land because what he saw in the Middle East. Understanding

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Speaker 1: soils will upgrade us as woodsman and will understand more

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Speaker 1: about the heartbeat of wild places. I've got some questions

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Speaker 1: that need answered about the dirt. You're not gonna want

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Speaker 1: to miss this one. Even though we have this advanced

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Speaker 1: industrial society, the fragility of our soils is something that

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Speaker 1: we can never forget about and that we need to

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Speaker 1: continue to pay attention to. My name is Clay Nukelem

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Speaker 1: and this is the bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore

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Speaker 1: things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places,

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Speaker 1: and where we'll tell the story of America who lived

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Speaker 1: their lives close to the land. Presented by f h

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Speaker 1: gear system. So go to f h F gear dot com.

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Speaker 1: I'm forward slash bear grease for a special code. If

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Speaker 1: you're buying stuff from f h F Gear, check it

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Speaker 1: out Fish Hunt Fight f h F Gear. I want

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Speaker 1: to introduce you to a friend that we both know.

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Speaker 1: That may sound oxymoronic, but I think you'll understand what

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Speaker 1: I mean. This friend has played a part in defining humanity.

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Speaker 1: No man has escaped its sculpting grip in the literal

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Speaker 1: and physiological sense. Every great beast that has walked the

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Speaker 1: planet has been swallowed by it, and the so called

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Speaker 1: great men of the Earth have amassed wealth from its bounty,

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Speaker 1: but also intimately met it in the end. Oddly, it's

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Speaker 1: a persnickety bedfellow and easily offended, often distributing poverty in

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Speaker 1: its anger. It's the great equalizer of man kind. No

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Speaker 1: amount of power excuses a man from its authority. Men

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Speaker 1: arise from it and return to it when the spark

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Speaker 1: of life leaves their body. What I'm talking about is

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Speaker 1: the soil. I want to read for you some ancient text,

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Speaker 1: even removing any sense of its religious context. I'm astonished

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Speaker 1: by the scientific accuracy of the primitive writer as he

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Speaker 1: tries to interpret and understand his existence. Genesis to seven

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Speaker 1: through nine. Then the Lord God formed the man from

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Speaker 1: the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of

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Speaker 1: life into the man's nostrils, and the man became a

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Speaker 1: living being. Then the Lord God planted a garden in

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Speaker 1: Eden in the east, and there he placed the man

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Speaker 1: he had made. This text is extremely simple and complex.

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Speaker 1: At the same time, the knowledge of the chemistry of

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Speaker 1: soil and the makeup of the organic matter of human

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Speaker 1: flesh is kind of wild. I bet that we can

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Speaker 1: all agree that mankind's original and deeply innate connection to

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Speaker 1: the land is unique. We're the only species that practices

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Speaker 1: agriculture and manipulates natural systems to grow and produce food.

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Speaker 1: I want to read a short excerpt from Daniel Hillel's

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Speaker 1: book titled Out of the Earth. You'll hear more about

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Speaker 1: this book soon from my old soil science professor. These

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Speaker 1: are Hillel's words. Readers of the Bible and translation miss

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Speaker 1: much of the imagery and poetry of the evocative verbal

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Speaker 1: associations in the original Hebrew. The indissoluble link between man

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Speaker 1: and the soil is manifest in the very name Adam,

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Speaker 1: derived from a dama a Hebrew now and a feminine

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Speaker 1: gender meaning earth or soil. Adam's name encapsulates man's origin

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Speaker 1: and destiny, his existence and livelihood derived from the soil

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Speaker 1: to which he has tethered throughout his life, into which

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Speaker 1: he has faded to return at the end of his days. Likewise,

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Speaker 1: the name of Adam's mate, Hava rendered Eve in translation,

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Speaker 1: literally means living in the words of the Bible, and

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Speaker 1: the man called his wife Eve because she was the

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Speaker 1: mother of all living together. Therefore, Adam and Eve signify

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Speaker 1: soil and life. The ancient Hebrew association of man with

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Speaker 1: soil is echoed in the Latin name for man, Homo,

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Speaker 1: derived from humus, the stuff of life in the soil.

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Speaker 1: This powerful metaphors suggests an early realization of a profound

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Speaker 1: truth that humanity has since disregarded to its own detriment.

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Speaker 1: Since the words humility and humble also derived from humus,

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Speaker 1: it's rather ironic that we should have assigned our species

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Speaker 1: so arrogant a name as Homo sapiens sapiens wise wise man.

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Speaker 1: It occurs to me as I ponder our past and

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Speaker 1: future relation to the Earth that we might consider changing

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Speaker 1: our name to a more modest Homo sapiens curans, the

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Speaker 1: word curans denoting caretaking or caring, as in curator. Of course,

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Speaker 1: we must work to deserve the new name, even as

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Speaker 1: we have not deserved the old one end of quote.

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Speaker 1: First of all, I've got to say that my name

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Speaker 1: means from the earth. I've always felt like that was significant.

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Speaker 1: Juju says. They almost named me cole, but in the

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Speaker 1: last minute, audible, they named me a formal soil science.

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Speaker 1: Now in college, I studied soils almost by accident. Sand, silt,

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Speaker 1: and clay are the three architectural definers of all soil eils.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna meet my favorite professor in just a bit.

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Speaker 1: But the seed thoughts of the soils importance was put

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Speaker 1: in me by my grandfather, lew and Nwcom. He would

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Speaker 1: grin ear to ear and sarcastically proclaim that he was

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Speaker 1: a farmer as he stood overlooking a small twenty by

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Speaker 1: twenty garden in his backyard. As a young boy. He

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Speaker 1: talked to me about the process of soil composting as

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Speaker 1: he throw banana peels and watermelon rinds in his garden.

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Speaker 1: I'd be shocked if he realized how impacting those moments

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Speaker 1: were for me, because I don't think I gave many

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Speaker 1: visual cues of my interest. Later in college, as a

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Speaker 1: student in the soil science department, those early sensations of

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Speaker 1: fascinations stirred by this complexity in natural systems, came to fruition. Curiosity,

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Speaker 1: I believe is a key part of the definition of

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Speaker 1: being a woodsman. Daniel Boone taught us what a woodsman

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Speaker 1: was and that it is a noble idea entity. I

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Speaker 1: think we have the right to continue to add complexity

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Speaker 1: to the idea of being a woodsman. To understand the

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Speaker 1: flora of the woods, wild beast, untamed rivers, and the

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Speaker 1: overarching ecology of wilderness, we have to possess a fundamental

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Speaker 1: understanding of where it all begins. Dr. David Miller was

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Speaker 1: my advisor in college, and honestly I was a poor student. However,

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Speaker 1: in his soil science class he had us read a

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Speaker 1: Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, and secondly he had

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Speaker 1: us read a book called Out of the Earth by

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Speaker 1: Daniel Hillel, which discusses the importance of soil health on civilizations.

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Speaker 1: It was fascinating. Dr Miller's passion for soils and his

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Speaker 1: engaging lecturing style stood out to me, and I never

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Speaker 1: forgot the basics of soil science. It had been fifteen

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Speaker 1: years since I had seen him in his office looked

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Speaker 1: almost identical as it did in two thousand five, though

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Speaker 1: his hair was a bit longer. It was actually a

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Speaker 1: way longer. I want you to meet Dr David Miller

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Speaker 1: of the University of Arkansas and Daniel Hillel's book, the

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Speaker 1: book that you had me read twenty years ago. I'm

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Speaker 1: glad you. Hey, I was underlying stuff back then, I've noticed.

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Speaker 1: But he talks about the rise and fall of civilizations

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Speaker 1: based upon how they treated their soils, which is bizarre.

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Speaker 1: Like if you if you were to ask anybody and say,

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Speaker 1: show me that what are the key factors of a

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Speaker 1: civilization success? I mean, they would name every single thing

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Speaker 1: except soils. But it's fascinating to look back across history

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Speaker 1: and and look back across the footprints of humanity across

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Speaker 1: the globe and you see this. Can you talk to

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Speaker 1: me about that? Yeah, I mean a number one. I'm

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Speaker 1: I'm impressed that you still have the book. It's a

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Speaker 1: great little read, isn't it. It really is the wonder

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Speaker 1: I didn't lose it and little dirty trucks well or

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Speaker 1: sell it for two dollars to buy a hamburger or something. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, Hillells book is is really good about that.

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Speaker 1: He goes back and documents and he tries to warn

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Speaker 1: us not to oversimplify that. Of course, take the Roman Empire.

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Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of factors that went into

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Speaker 1: the decline of the Roman empature. It wasn't just so us.

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Speaker 1: But he does point this out that the Romans, as

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Speaker 1: technologically advanced as they were, they were actually sort of

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Speaker 1: stupid when it came to agriculture. You know, I mean,

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Speaker 1: the Italian uplands are not flat. There tends to be

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Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of slope to many of the soils

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Speaker 1: on the Italian peninsula, as hill Hill points out in

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Speaker 1: his book. And so the Romans go in there and

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Speaker 1: start clearing the native vegetation that cut down the trees,

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Speaker 1: start planting crops. Originally I suspect it was wheat and

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Speaker 1: other grains. Well, those kinds of crops are notoriously irrosive

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Speaker 1: when you try to grow them on slopes, because when

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Speaker 1: you plant the seed it takes a long time for

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Speaker 1: the for the for the plants to emerge and to

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Speaker 1: close the canopy and protect the soil, and so they

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Speaker 1: had massive amounts of erosion, according to Hillel. And I've

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Speaker 1: never been to Italy, so I can't speak to this firsthand,

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Speaker 1: but you go to the Italian Peninsula these days and

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Speaker 1: there's hardly any soil left on any of the hills.

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Speaker 1: It's just a bunch of bare rocks. And the evidence

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Speaker 1: of massive amounts of erosion is still evident to this day.

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Speaker 1: And so, according to Hillel, one of the things that

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Speaker 1: the Romans did not realize was that exposure of soil

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Speaker 1: to rainfall after clearing of the native vegetation resulted in

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Speaker 1: massive land degradation as a result of water erosion. Now

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Speaker 1: you would think wouldn't but the Romans would be able

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Speaker 1: to figure that out a barely not. And they just

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Speaker 1: continue to do it until the soils were so eroded

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Speaker 1: that they wouldn't even grow crops of wheat and barley

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Speaker 1: and so forth anymore, and they had to resort to

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Speaker 1: what uh permanent crops like olives and grapes, and so

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Speaker 1: they switched over. And so where did they get their grain.

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Speaker 1: They started to import their grain from North Africa, Egypt,

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Speaker 1: in particular their empire, and and this is one of

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Speaker 1: the things that Will argues is that they were forced

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Speaker 1: to expand their empire in order to acquire lands that

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Speaker 1: were capable of producing sufficient quantities of food for their

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Speaker 1: people because they had ruined their soils to the extent

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Speaker 1: that they were no longer able to grow enough grain

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Speaker 1: to feed their own people. As one example of the

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Speaker 1: inability of a civilization to take care of their soils,

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Speaker 1: so that decentralization caused them to spread and expand out

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Speaker 1: and basically become I mean they were they were prosperous

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Speaker 1: for a long time, but became vulnerable because of that.

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Speaker 1: And so there, yeah, I mean that of growing their

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Speaker 1: quote own grain, their importing grain from foreign countries. Another

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Speaker 1: good example was the Mesopotamians, who tended to salonize their

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Speaker 1: lands with inappropriate irrigation techniques. So this was even before

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Speaker 1: the Romans. This is the Fertile Crescent and all that, right,

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Speaker 1: some of the first civilizations in Babylonia, they irrigated so

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Speaker 1: heavily that they rose their water table. When it reached

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Speaker 1: the surface, it evaporated and deposited salt. It left what

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Speaker 1: was in it left water leaves, but the salt stays.

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Speaker 1: They salonized their lands by improper irrigation. That particular example

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Speaker 1: would have been like the cradle of life Tigris and

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Speaker 1: Euphrates rivers that are referred to in Genesis. And is

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Speaker 1: that in modern day Ira? That is correct? And the

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Speaker 1: area that we're talking about here is down in that

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Speaker 1: southern town near Bosra. It's a southern town and the

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Speaker 1: fields around north of bo are still water logged in

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Speaker 1: sale as a result of improper irrigation thousands of years ago.

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Speaker 1: Is it clear that the soil usage is what has

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Speaker 1: what attributed that to becoming like almost desert like. Yes,

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Speaker 1: they are, the archaeologist in particular, and I think hill

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Speaker 1: El says are pretty convinced that's why that area is

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Speaker 1: as desolate as it is now. And as a result

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Speaker 1: of Babylonians continually moved north as they screwed up their

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Speaker 1: soils with too much irrigation water and finally um civilization disappeared.

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Speaker 1: Terrell Spencer is my longtime friend and a thought leader

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Speaker 1: in our region for pastured poultry and family farming. He's

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Speaker 1: always had a unique insight into the soil, and it

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Speaker 1: came from a unique place far from northwest Arkansas. I

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Speaker 1: want to learn about his operation, how he builds soils,

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Speaker 1: and where he became inspired to be a farmer. And

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Speaker 1: me my friend Terrell Spencer, also a student of Dr Miller.

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Speaker 1: Terrell Spencer, also known as Spence to me for decades.

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Speaker 1: Tell me what you do. Tell me about your farm. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm a pasture poultry grower. I raised chickens out on

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Speaker 1: pasture and then I have a process and plant that

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Speaker 1: I partner with. We butcher them deliver them to customers

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Speaker 1: across northwest Arkansas eastern Oklahoma. Um. I also am a

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Speaker 1: grass farmer. I cut hay and sell it. Just more

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Speaker 1: than anything, man, I just I love working with nature.

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Speaker 1: So they're there are independent growers like you, and then

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Speaker 1: there are people that grow chickens under contract with some

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Speaker 1: of these bigger companies. Talk to me about the systems

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Speaker 1: that you have in place, and particularly how soil really

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Speaker 1: is kind of a foundational part of it. I'm like

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Speaker 1: one of the one per centers when it comes to

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Speaker 1: just raising poultry, right is nine point something percenta pols.

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Speaker 1: You're one of the billionaires that other into that spectrum too.

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Speaker 1: If I could find a way to flip flop them,

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Speaker 1: we'd be doing pretty good now. Like most chicken growers

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Speaker 1: are growers, they grow for someone else. They grow someone

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Speaker 1: else's birds. About in the eighties, poultry companies realized that

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Speaker 1: the least profitable part of the chicken industry was actually

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Speaker 1: the risk of raising chickens in that and so they

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Speaker 1: kind of outsource that people that sign up for it.

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Speaker 1: You know, no one makes you do it, and it

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Speaker 1: works well for some folks and for some folks it doesn't.

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Speaker 1: And we're just not in that system at all. We're

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Speaker 1: we're just independent. It's just right now. Myself, my boys,

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Speaker 1: my daughter, my wife across the creek farm. Talk to

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Speaker 1: me about the sequence of moving these pins, Like, describe

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Speaker 1: past your poultry how it works. Yeah, it actually works

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Speaker 1: really well. Chickens lay down manure, right like we we

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Speaker 1: bring in feed and then they eat it and it

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Speaker 1: goes out the back end and about half of what

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Speaker 1: they eat becomes chicken and the other half goes out

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Speaker 1: the back end. If you went to your farm, you

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Speaker 1: would see these mobile pins that you move every day, yeah,

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Speaker 1: or every every every couple of days. Yeah, so you're

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Speaker 1: getting two crops. You're getting hay, which round here is

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Speaker 1: very valuable, but you're also getting chickens. But the catalyst

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Speaker 1: of it all is this soil. Yeah, because chicken new

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Speaker 1: is going down in and then the grass comes up

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Speaker 1: very nutrient rich, grows fast, grows good. We don't spray.

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Speaker 1: The edges of our fields are intentionally messy, which is

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Speaker 1: hunters like I don't personally hunt. I love hunters because

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Speaker 1: beer constantly grazing down stuff for other critters, you know,

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Speaker 1: popping Kyle, tell me your true, unfiltered thoughts on raccoons, man,

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Speaker 1: I think, let me start a sance for you. A

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Speaker 1: good raccoon is a dead raccoon, or is is on

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Speaker 1: someone's wall or a hat a good rat cane. And see,

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Speaker 1: I don't even like the word rat can. I like

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Speaker 1: the word trash panda. But and you know, a good

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Speaker 1: rat and that's why friends long lived the beast. But

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Speaker 1: not on your farm. Yes, Now that we understand the

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Speaker 1: process of soil inputs from the chickens and the subsequent

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Speaker 1: grass harvest, I want to hear about where and how

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Speaker 1: Harold decided to be a farmer. My first realization of

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Speaker 1: the destructiveness of human beings, like just to the soil was.

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Speaker 1: I was in Iraq. My job was as a gunner,

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Speaker 1: and we'd go in the U. S. Military in the U. S. Military, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this was back in two thousand and four, and we

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Speaker 1: would go down and escort convoys and stuff. That was

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Speaker 1: one of the things we did. And we'd go down

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Speaker 1: to quait bring them back up. I was in Baghdad

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Speaker 1: and we would go through these areas that were like

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Speaker 1: they had irrigation ditches, they had pumps, I had, you know,

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Speaker 1: all this stuff for agriculture. And at the time, I

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Speaker 1: kind of had my eye on some rice farmer's daughter

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Speaker 1: in East Arkansas. So I knew like a good setup

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Speaker 1: for going rice, right, and so I thought we'd head

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Speaker 1: south and I would be like, they're gonna plant rice here,

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Speaker 1: you know. And one day, not to digress, but she

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Speaker 1: did become this woman became the rice Queen. Yeah yeah,

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Speaker 1: Cross County or ice Queen. Okay, take us back to

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Speaker 1: and so like we uh, one day we were heading

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Speaker 1: down and the fleet all these fields were flooded. I'm okay,

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Speaker 1: they're gonna grow rice. And at the time I did

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Speaker 1: zero about farming. I had been a punk rocker before

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Speaker 1: I went into the the military, you know, no agricultural background.

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Speaker 1: And then over time we'd passed it again and it

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Speaker 1: was all white. I don't know what's going on here.

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Speaker 1: And then we came back, you know, like a couple

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Speaker 1: of days later, and they were all these families filling

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Speaker 1: bags of salt, and it just like what is going on?

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Speaker 1: And then I got back. I went to the University

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Speaker 1: of Arkansas and got a degree and to all science

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Speaker 1: and and it just like blew my mind because this

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Speaker 1: is the fertile Crescent, right, like we all learned that

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Speaker 1: in school. And as I started thinking back and as

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Speaker 1: I kind of went through pictures and like southern Iraq, man,

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Speaker 1: that was like where they think the Garden of Eden was,

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Speaker 1: you know, like and it's just a waste land. And

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Speaker 1: it's all because humans, well intentioned humans, their actions like

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Speaker 1: just destroyed the foundation of life in that area, you know.

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Speaker 1: And it's crazy even looking at like here in the US,

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Speaker 1: we've been here kicking around for like a hundred and

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Speaker 1: fifty years doing agriculture and we're seeing the same problems,

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Speaker 1: you know. And I guess what I'm passionate about is

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Speaker 1: just like not leaving that mess for someone else to

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Speaker 1: leave it better than I found it. Especially coming back

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Speaker 1: from the war. It was like when I realized what

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Speaker 1: through farming you could be creative instead of destructive. Man,

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Speaker 1: I was hooked, and that's why I raised chickens an pasture.

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Speaker 1: I want to jump back to Dr Miller. I think

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Speaker 1: we need to go back and try to understand the

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Speaker 1: fundamental aspects of soil. Welcome to Dr Miller's Soil Science

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Speaker 1: class one oh one. Here's Dr Miller. Dr Miller talked

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Speaker 1: to me about how soils, this thin layer on the

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Speaker 1: outer crust of the Earth is so essential to not

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Speaker 1: just human life, but every part of life, because it's

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Speaker 1: kind of bizarre when you think about this big rock

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Speaker 1: floating around the star and this, you know, whatever the

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Speaker 1: volume of the Earth is, it's massive, and this this outer, tiny,

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Speaker 1: tiny fraction of that volume of the crust of the

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Speaker 1: Earth is this brilliant, intricate wild thing called dirt, which

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Speaker 1: is what humans disdain in so many ways. But to

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Speaker 1: talk to me about about the uniqueness of that, you know,

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Speaker 1: it is there saying it's a good point that you

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Speaker 1: bring up to. By volume, the Earth is a minuscule

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Speaker 1: fraction soil right, because as most of us know, it

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Speaker 1: can range from oh gosh, six inches thick too. I

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Speaker 1: don't know. Down near the equator there are probably soils

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Speaker 1: that are fifty or sixty feet thick, but in general

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Speaker 1: two to three four five ft thick is all soil is,

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Speaker 1: and it has unique properties. It's more than just crushed

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Speaker 1: up rock. A lot of people say, well, dirt's just

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Speaker 1: you can take rock and crushed up and you have dirt. Well, no,

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Speaker 1: you can't. Crushed up rock is not soil. It's crushed

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Speaker 1: up rock. You need to undergo what we think. What

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Speaker 1: we scientist is what we saw a scientists called petagenesis,

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Speaker 1: which is the process by which this stuff called parent material,

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Speaker 1: which can be rock, or it can be sediment, or

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Speaker 1: it can be plant tissues for that matter, petogenesis is

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Speaker 1: the process by which that materially is converted into this

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Speaker 1: special stuff that we call soil. And yes, it does

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Speaker 1: have minerals in it, but it also has organic materials

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Speaker 1: in it. And then incredibly importantly, it has lots of pores,

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Speaker 1: and pores is where the water is held, and then

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Speaker 1: of course they're the other thing that's special about soils

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Speaker 1: is the fact that it's so biologically active, it's got

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Speaker 1: some much stuff living in it. So I mean there's

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Speaker 1: this combination of factors I think that leads to the

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Speaker 1: uniqueness of soils. Its composition. Clearly, it's chemical composition. It

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Speaker 1: has a very interesting and unique chemical composition, sand, silt

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Speaker 1: and clay, poor size distributions, biological activity, and then this

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Speaker 1: organic fraction is incredibly interesting. Those features combined to make

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Speaker 1: soil unique in its ability to support plant life. But

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Speaker 1: then there's these other things that soils do that are remarkable.

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Speaker 1: And most people when they think of soils, they think

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Speaker 1: of soils support plant life, and that is true, but

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Speaker 1: they also help control the composition of the atmosphere through

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Speaker 1: what through their CEO to production and or sequestration. Methane

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Speaker 1: is produced by soils, Nitrous oxide is produced by soils.

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Speaker 1: So soils through their production and consumption of gases, helped

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Speaker 1: regulate the composition of the atmosphere, which these days with people,

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Speaker 1: you know, talking about global warming, that's an important thing

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Speaker 1: that soils do. Hop out um the ability of soils

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Speaker 1: to hold and purify water. Every drop of rainfall pretty

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Speaker 1: much interacts with soil and the quality of the soils

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Speaker 1: then tends to impact the quality of the water. Where

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Speaker 1: would we be without soils to hold water? We would

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Speaker 1: have massive floods. We would have no mechanism by which

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Speaker 1: store water for plants to take up. Later on, I

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Speaker 1: asked Dr Miller about the composition of soils as compared

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Speaker 1: to the human body. Here's what he had to say,

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Speaker 1: Dr Miller. In the Book of Genesis, it talks about

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Speaker 1: how man was formed from the earth. But I remember,

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00:26:02,080 --> 00:26:07,080
Speaker 1: when i've because hellel first chapter he talks about that event.

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Speaker 1: Can you explain to me just about how literally the

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Speaker 1: human body is made of the same things that the

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Speaker 1: soil is. There's no question that's true. I mean, there

408
00:26:16,480 --> 00:26:19,640
Speaker 1: are only what I don't know how many naturally occurring

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Speaker 1: elements there are in the periodic table these days there

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Speaker 1: used to be ninety two or something like that. The

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Speaker 1: principal elements that compose us and that compose the soils

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Speaker 1: are effectively the same elements. In fact, interesting story and

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Speaker 1: that is that some people are proponents these days of

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Speaker 1: what are called green burials. Are you are you familiar

415
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Speaker 1: with green burials? Okay, instead of embalming the human body

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Speaker 1: and instead of putting it in a casket which then

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Speaker 1: gets put into a sarcophagus. The green burial lists will

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Speaker 1: call them advocate non preservation of the body and burial

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Speaker 1: within twenty four hours. Directly into the soil and the idea.

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Speaker 1: It's and of interesting idea, but rather to allow the

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Speaker 1: elements that are in the human body to return to

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Speaker 1: the soil in a natural way, interesting stuff, Dr Miller.

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Speaker 1: In modern times, soil degradation continues to define our existence.

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Speaker 1: Dr Miller will now go into a modern example of

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Speaker 1: a soil issue that nearly snuffed us out here in America.

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Speaker 1: Hang on with me, boys were about to get out

427
00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:30,880
Speaker 1: of all this nerdy soil stuff and talk about whitetailed deer,

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00:27:31,560 --> 00:27:34,680
Speaker 1: or maybe soils have a ton to do with white

429
00:27:34,720 --> 00:27:40,280
Speaker 1: tailed deer. Stand By, I think a lot of people

430
00:27:40,400 --> 00:27:43,880
Speaker 1: probably would say, well, the Romans and the Messopotamians, they

431
00:27:43,920 --> 00:27:45,800
Speaker 1: lived thousands of you. They didn't know any better. We

432
00:27:45,920 --> 00:27:48,239
Speaker 1: know better. They might say that the gym on the

433
00:27:48,280 --> 00:27:50,480
Speaker 1: street or marry on the street. You tell them about

434
00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:52,800
Speaker 1: the importance of soils, and they go, we got nothing

435
00:27:52,800 --> 00:27:55,560
Speaker 1: to worry about. The scientists have figured this out. We

436
00:27:55,600 --> 00:27:57,959
Speaker 1: know how to take care of our soils well. It

437
00:27:58,040 --> 00:28:00,600
Speaker 1: wasn't that long ago in this country that we had

438
00:28:00,640 --> 00:28:06,040
Speaker 1: a massive erosional event called the dust bowl, right, I

439
00:28:06,080 --> 00:28:11,679
Speaker 1: mean nineteen thirties, early nineteen thirties, south central United States.

440
00:28:12,680 --> 00:28:15,840
Speaker 1: We had plowed up from from Fence Road to Fence

441
00:28:15,960 --> 00:28:19,399
Speaker 1: Road because suddenly we had tractors. I mean that was

442
00:28:19,440 --> 00:28:22,320
Speaker 1: kind of the same time that tractors were becoming available,

443
00:28:22,880 --> 00:28:26,080
Speaker 1: and we had had plentiful rainfall over a period of

444
00:28:26,080 --> 00:28:29,920
Speaker 1: several years, and so people just planted wheat right and left,

445
00:28:29,920 --> 00:28:32,240
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden one spring, there was no rain,

446
00:28:33,240 --> 00:28:35,800
Speaker 1: and so they had pulverized the soil. They had cleared

447
00:28:35,840 --> 00:28:39,640
Speaker 1: those southern prairies of all native vegetation. So here they

448
00:28:39,640 --> 00:28:44,360
Speaker 1: were over tilled, powdery, dry as a bone, and these

449
00:28:44,480 --> 00:28:47,920
Speaker 1: huge Santa Anna winds came out of the west, and uh,

450
00:28:48,000 --> 00:28:50,360
Speaker 1: I wasn't there. I'm old, but I'm not that old.

451
00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:53,320
Speaker 1: But my dad was alive. My dad was born in

452
00:28:53,360 --> 00:28:56,200
Speaker 1: twenty three and as a kid, he remembers dust in

453
00:28:56,280 --> 00:28:59,800
Speaker 1: Indiana blown in from the dust bol and said, the

454
00:28:59,840 --> 00:29:04,000
Speaker 1: morning sunrises in the evening sunsets were absolutely remarkable as

455
00:29:04,040 --> 00:29:06,440
Speaker 1: a result of all this dust in the atmosphere. Well,

456
00:29:06,800 --> 00:29:09,440
Speaker 1: the amount of soil that was removed from the southern

457
00:29:09,480 --> 00:29:15,280
Speaker 1: plains was unbelievable as a result of this wind erosion event. So,

458
00:29:15,640 --> 00:29:19,360
Speaker 1: while yes, we have learned a lot since the time

459
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:22,040
Speaker 1: of the Romans and the Mesopotamians, we did the same

460
00:29:22,080 --> 00:29:26,000
Speaker 1: thing years ago right here in this country where we

461
00:29:26,080 --> 00:29:30,760
Speaker 1: allowed this tremendous degradation of the land to occur. That's

462
00:29:30,760 --> 00:29:34,240
Speaker 1: a good place to explain to us how soil in

463
00:29:34,280 --> 00:29:38,680
Speaker 1: the span of human lifetimes really is not a renewable resource.

464
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:42,400
Speaker 1: Good point, it is not because we think of we

465
00:29:42,480 --> 00:29:44,960
Speaker 1: think of the soil is well, that's part of the

466
00:29:45,000 --> 00:29:47,760
Speaker 1: beauty of soil, is it. It can be restored and

467
00:29:47,800 --> 00:29:50,640
Speaker 1: you can do things to bring back soil health. But

468
00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:53,800
Speaker 1: it is a long term process. It is in fact,

469
00:29:53,800 --> 00:29:56,120
Speaker 1: and we didn't talk about that, but I mean the

470
00:29:56,480 --> 00:30:00,200
Speaker 1: kinds of times frames that we're talking about here. In

471
00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:03,720
Speaker 1: order to produce one inch of soil, let's say that

472
00:30:03,960 --> 00:30:06,440
Speaker 1: in an under a natural kind of a of a

473
00:30:06,600 --> 00:30:10,800
Speaker 1: setting hundreds to thousands of years to produce one has

474
00:30:10,920 --> 00:30:13,360
Speaker 1: of soil. And so this is a very very very

475
00:30:13,400 --> 00:30:17,520
Speaker 1: slow process. The soils outside our window here, outside my

476
00:30:17,560 --> 00:30:20,920
Speaker 1: office window, have been in the process of being weathered

477
00:30:20,960 --> 00:30:25,480
Speaker 1: and turned into soil for literally millions of years. These

478
00:30:25,480 --> 00:30:28,880
Speaker 1: soils are millions of years old out here yet and

479
00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:32,880
Speaker 1: so how rapidly can soils your road, Well, think about

480
00:30:32,880 --> 00:30:36,400
Speaker 1: it an erosional event like the dust bowl. You can

481
00:30:36,480 --> 00:30:40,080
Speaker 1: remove two feet of soil in a matter of an afternoon.

482
00:30:40,960 --> 00:30:44,680
Speaker 1: And I emphasized this in my course. They are essential

483
00:30:44,760 --> 00:30:48,480
Speaker 1: to life. They are delicate. You have to be gentle

484
00:30:48,560 --> 00:30:52,120
Speaker 1: with them when as soon as you remove the vegetative cover,

485
00:30:52,400 --> 00:30:57,160
Speaker 1: you have exposed that soil to potential disaster through erosion.

486
00:30:57,760 --> 00:31:01,760
Speaker 1: Even though we have this advanced industrial society, the fragility

487
00:31:01,800 --> 00:31:05,560
Speaker 1: of our soils is something that we can never forget

488
00:31:05,560 --> 00:31:08,480
Speaker 1: about and that we need to continue to pay attention to.

489
00:31:11,040 --> 00:31:14,080
Speaker 1: No matter if you live in urban or rural areas,

490
00:31:14,360 --> 00:31:17,840
Speaker 1: whether you're a farmer or an insurance agent, we're all

491
00:31:17,880 --> 00:31:20,640
Speaker 1: connected to the soil. I now want to ask Dr

492
00:31:20,680 --> 00:31:25,160
Speaker 1: Miller about the fertile soils on the earth called mala sols,

493
00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:27,200
Speaker 1: some of which are in the Great Plains of the

494
00:31:27,280 --> 00:31:31,280
Speaker 1: United States, and these soils are very rare. Our mala

495
00:31:31,360 --> 00:31:35,560
Speaker 1: sols in the US developed under tall grass prairie, immense

496
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:38,960
Speaker 1: herds of grazing bison and other ungulates. And the perfect

497
00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:43,760
Speaker 1: mix of rainfall, freezing and thawing of the soil. Freezing

498
00:31:43,880 --> 00:31:47,680
Speaker 1: solid of soils like in the midwestern United States, slows

499
00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:51,600
Speaker 1: down the decomposition of organic matter, allowing it to build

500
00:31:51,680 --> 00:31:54,800
Speaker 1: up over the years organic matters dead stuff that used

501
00:31:54,800 --> 00:31:59,440
Speaker 1: to be alive. Soil in the southern latitudes stays warmer longer,

502
00:31:59,680 --> 00:32:04,000
Speaker 1: and he composes this organic matter, the good stuff, quicker,

503
00:32:04,200 --> 00:32:08,040
Speaker 1: which ultimately makes the soils less fertile. Here's what he

504
00:32:08,080 --> 00:32:12,920
Speaker 1: has to say about malasols. So it was kind of

505
00:32:12,920 --> 00:32:16,760
Speaker 1: like the perfect storm. Indeed, it was to have these

506
00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:21,560
Speaker 1: exactly this incredible soil just in these pockets. And you know,

507
00:32:21,680 --> 00:32:23,760
Speaker 1: you find that in other parts of the world. The

508
00:32:23,800 --> 00:32:26,280
Speaker 1: other place that you can find soils as good as

509
00:32:26,320 --> 00:32:29,840
Speaker 1: the ones they're in central US or in the Ukraine,

510
00:32:30,520 --> 00:32:35,080
Speaker 1: um Central Europe, Central Europe, East East, Central Europe. I

511
00:32:35,080 --> 00:32:39,160
Speaker 1: would say, you know, the steps the steps of that

512
00:32:39,200 --> 00:32:42,440
Speaker 1: would be western Russia. You know, during the Second World War,

513
00:32:42,720 --> 00:32:46,240
Speaker 1: Hitler wanted to conquer the East because they had what

514
00:32:46,600 --> 00:32:48,520
Speaker 1: they had, they had resources. One of the things he

515
00:32:48,600 --> 00:32:52,520
Speaker 1: was thinking about it was the Ukrainian mollosols, these absolutely

516
00:32:52,560 --> 00:32:56,120
Speaker 1: fantastic soils. Germany doesn't have the kind of soils they

517
00:32:56,120 --> 00:33:02,400
Speaker 1: needed to grow their food. Molasolsosils. You're number triggered that

518
00:33:02,400 --> 00:33:07,080
Speaker 1: that's like the buzzword of soils. You had a flashback there,

519
00:33:07,160 --> 00:33:09,720
Speaker 1: I can tell you had a flashback. Mala so I

520
00:33:09,760 --> 00:33:14,600
Speaker 1: mean would like the greatest soil. They are those? Oh yeah,

521
00:33:14,840 --> 00:33:19,760
Speaker 1: soft black, high in organic matter, deep, just grow virtually

522
00:33:19,800 --> 00:33:23,160
Speaker 1: anything without even trying. How many places on the Earth

523
00:33:23,320 --> 00:33:27,160
Speaker 1: have a molasol? Well, that's a good question, Central United States,

524
00:33:27,600 --> 00:33:32,640
Speaker 1: the Ukraine. There are also monasols in Argentina, the Pompous

525
00:33:32,720 --> 00:33:36,560
Speaker 1: area of South America. Again, that would be what on

526
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:39,320
Speaker 1: the other side of the equator, across the same in

527
00:33:39,400 --> 00:33:44,160
Speaker 1: the same latitude south as we are north. Yeah. What

528
00:33:44,240 --> 00:33:47,920
Speaker 1: about Africa? Malasils in Africa virtually none. What about Asia?

529
00:33:48,200 --> 00:33:51,520
Speaker 1: I think there are some monasols in China, but they're rare,

530
00:33:51,800 --> 00:33:53,960
Speaker 1: and that's why we're so lucky in this country to

531
00:33:54,040 --> 00:33:58,200
Speaker 1: have those. Do you feel like that that the the

532
00:33:58,200 --> 00:34:01,280
Speaker 1: the great plains, the bread bass good of America has

533
00:34:01,320 --> 00:34:06,720
Speaker 1: been part of our success questions, Absolutely, no question that's

534
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:09,320
Speaker 1: that have been able to I mean just this huge

535
00:34:09,640 --> 00:34:13,080
Speaker 1: number of tens of millions of hectares of soil that

536
00:34:13,160 --> 00:34:16,520
Speaker 1: are so productive. We've never had to worry about food

537
00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:20,839
Speaker 1: in this country ever. That's really bizarre when you think

538
00:34:20,840 --> 00:34:26,760
Speaker 1: about the incredible, vast differences in topography across the earth,

539
00:34:27,280 --> 00:34:31,200
Speaker 1: and that there's these pockets that jump started civilizations. It's

540
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:33,279
Speaker 1: like it's like they had a they had a pass

541
00:34:33,360 --> 00:34:36,680
Speaker 1: code that nobody else had, and we were lucky enough

542
00:34:36,719 --> 00:34:52,320
Speaker 1: to sit right on top of one here in North America. Dr.

543
00:34:52,400 --> 00:34:55,640
Speaker 1: Grant Woods is a wildlife biologist and is known as

544
00:34:55,680 --> 00:34:58,640
Speaker 1: one of the top dear biologists in the country. He's

545
00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:02,719
Speaker 1: wearing a yellow fire retarded shirt and his pants are

546
00:35:02,800 --> 00:35:06,040
Speaker 1: stained with black ash. He's just walked in from a

547
00:35:06,040 --> 00:35:10,040
Speaker 1: controlled burn on his family property. Twenty years ago, he

548
00:35:10,120 --> 00:35:13,919
Speaker 1: embarked on a land experiment, approving grounds, if you will,

549
00:35:14,160 --> 00:35:17,920
Speaker 1: when he and his wife purchased a large degradated property

550
00:35:18,000 --> 00:35:21,440
Speaker 1: in the ozarks of southern Missouri. He actually named it

551
00:35:21,640 --> 00:35:25,319
Speaker 1: the proving ground, the region not being known for high

552
00:35:25,440 --> 00:35:28,839
Speaker 1: quality deer. I want to learn about his story and

553
00:35:28,880 --> 00:35:37,640
Speaker 1: it's connection to the soil. Dr. Woods, tell me about

554
00:35:38,120 --> 00:35:42,480
Speaker 1: the history of this property. You've worked extremely hard for

555
00:35:42,680 --> 00:35:46,719
Speaker 1: almost last twenty years. I'm interested in your how the

556
00:35:46,760 --> 00:35:51,600
Speaker 1: property started, your overall objectives and ultimately how the soil

557
00:35:51,960 --> 00:35:55,319
Speaker 1: quality tied into that. So it's been it's just a

558
00:35:55,360 --> 00:35:57,799
Speaker 1: fabulous story. My wife, Tracy and I were living in

559
00:35:57,840 --> 00:36:00,319
Speaker 1: South Carolina. I schooled at George and Plan soon and

560
00:36:00,640 --> 00:36:03,120
Speaker 1: got out and we've gotten married and and we were

561
00:36:03,160 --> 00:36:04,960
Speaker 1: looking for land and we scraped up her money and

562
00:36:04,960 --> 00:36:07,480
Speaker 1: about thirteen acres and men I had a food plot

563
00:36:07,640 --> 00:36:09,960
Speaker 1: and my dad's had a little buck was longbow. I mean,

564
00:36:09,960 --> 00:36:12,239
Speaker 1: we're living high on the hog, you know. And I'm

565
00:36:12,239 --> 00:36:14,160
Speaker 1: from the those arts as you know, and back Viston

566
00:36:14,239 --> 00:36:15,879
Speaker 1: family and Trace and I went to get a little

567
00:36:15,920 --> 00:36:18,320
Speaker 1: ice cream and and she picked up real estate Guide

568
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:20,759
Speaker 1: and uh so here's a here's a property self kind

569
00:36:20,760 --> 00:36:22,239
Speaker 1: of sounds like we've been looking for and just for

570
00:36:22,360 --> 00:36:24,800
Speaker 1: even read the ad, just called a realtor. Anyway, we

571
00:36:24,840 --> 00:36:27,280
Speaker 1: got here and there was a guy, a gentleman, had passed.

572
00:36:27,320 --> 00:36:29,200
Speaker 1: He had been a cow firmer and he passed seven

573
00:36:29,239 --> 00:36:32,080
Speaker 1: years previous. Left it to a local hospital and never

574
00:36:32,200 --> 00:36:34,760
Speaker 1: gonna sell some big developer because we're next to Branson, Missouri,

575
00:36:34,800 --> 00:36:36,560
Speaker 1: and I think they had in fact had it so

576
00:36:36,680 --> 00:36:38,640
Speaker 1: but didn't close and just put it back on the market.

577
00:36:38,680 --> 00:36:41,480
Speaker 1: And and we looked at it. Men as rough as

578
00:36:41,480 --> 00:36:44,080
Speaker 1: a cop. I mean, you know, locust sprouts in the

579
00:36:44,120 --> 00:36:47,080
Speaker 1: opening where they'd fed hay, and bare rocks showing all

580
00:36:47,080 --> 00:36:49,719
Speaker 1: over the place being grazed to the you know, the

581
00:36:49,760 --> 00:36:54,040
Speaker 1: neighbors have been running cows without the hospital knowing. So

582
00:36:54,080 --> 00:36:56,640
Speaker 1: we made an offer and it wasn't near what they're asking,

583
00:36:56,640 --> 00:36:58,920
Speaker 1: and we just felt what we could take down. And

584
00:36:58,960 --> 00:37:01,160
Speaker 1: they said no, no, heck know, in a real short letter.

585
00:37:02,480 --> 00:37:05,839
Speaker 1: And a year later, nine eleven happened, and uh, they

586
00:37:05,880 --> 00:37:09,400
Speaker 1: wrote us and says your offer still good? Yeah, And

587
00:37:09,440 --> 00:37:13,200
Speaker 1: we said, heck yeah. I like a story with some

588
00:37:13,320 --> 00:37:16,799
Speaker 1: risk involved in it, one that took some guts. The

589
00:37:16,840 --> 00:37:20,120
Speaker 1: woods investing in this property was just that they put

590
00:37:20,160 --> 00:37:23,120
Speaker 1: it all on the table. I want to hear what

591
00:37:23,239 --> 00:37:26,120
Speaker 1: his first step was in working with the property, and

592
00:37:26,160 --> 00:37:30,239
Speaker 1: we'll meet an influential player in Dr Wood's life, a

593
00:37:30,280 --> 00:37:34,919
Speaker 1: man of the land. I called the local co op

594
00:37:35,200 --> 00:37:37,440
Speaker 1: to get some fertilizer because I had been schooled and

595
00:37:37,560 --> 00:37:40,400
Speaker 1: fertilizer and soil tests. You live by that soil test.

596
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:43,319
Speaker 1: And the guy made one pass around the little food

597
00:37:43,320 --> 00:37:46,000
Speaker 1: plot and said, no, it's too rocky. I'm gonna trip

598
00:37:46,040 --> 00:37:48,040
Speaker 1: my equipment and he drove out my driveway with the

599
00:37:48,080 --> 00:37:50,040
Speaker 1: fertilizer I had paid for in the back of the truck.

600
00:37:50,320 --> 00:37:52,840
Speaker 1: And like many things, you hear about this in hindsight,

601
00:37:53,200 --> 00:37:54,879
Speaker 1: you know, I was a blessing. But at the time

602
00:37:54,920 --> 00:37:56,880
Speaker 1: I thought, I don't beat that guy up something, you know.

603
00:37:56,960 --> 00:37:59,080
Speaker 1: And so it was gonna reign next couple of days

604
00:37:59,120 --> 00:38:00,680
Speaker 1: and you get a food plot it in orth. I

605
00:38:00,760 --> 00:38:04,000
Speaker 1: drove down to Arkansas closest equipment dealer and was gonna

606
00:38:04,040 --> 00:38:07,239
Speaker 1: buy a fertilizer spreader and so I could spread moan.

607
00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:09,319
Speaker 1: And this old boy said, you don't need that. My

608
00:38:09,440 --> 00:38:13,000
Speaker 1: uncle Galen, he makes composts, and I've heard about composting.

609
00:38:13,080 --> 00:38:15,760
Speaker 1: College poultry business is of course really big in Arkansas.

610
00:38:16,000 --> 00:38:18,360
Speaker 1: Winner in meadow, Uncle Galen, and he's crazy some men.

611
00:38:18,400 --> 00:38:20,200
Speaker 1: I'll drive your slopes. Ain't no problem for me, So

612
00:38:20,520 --> 00:38:22,880
Speaker 1: sign me up. You know. Here we go and Galen,

613
00:38:23,640 --> 00:38:26,040
Speaker 1: he's a man of the land, and he understood soil.

614
00:38:26,080 --> 00:38:30,120
Speaker 1: I understood soil chemistry. He understood soil, and he started

615
00:38:30,120 --> 00:38:32,239
Speaker 1: teaching me about the soil, not trying to sell me

616
00:38:32,280 --> 00:38:34,000
Speaker 1: this product. And it was too rocky to even this.

617
00:38:34,200 --> 00:38:37,520
Speaker 1: So the county here right lived the NRCS office rents

618
00:38:37,520 --> 00:38:41,000
Speaker 1: no til drills. They're primarily made for pasture, not going

619
00:38:41,080 --> 00:38:43,600
Speaker 1: crops here, and they're beat up from last guy that

620
00:38:43,719 --> 00:38:45,959
Speaker 1: owned rented it, you know, and rented that and playing

621
00:38:45,960 --> 00:38:49,000
Speaker 1: a little food plot and published some pictures and some

622
00:38:49,120 --> 00:38:51,239
Speaker 1: magazine back in the day, and they're like, man, you're

623
00:38:51,280 --> 00:38:54,200
Speaker 1: crazy to be planting those rocks and men crops are growing.

624
00:38:54,360 --> 00:38:58,040
Speaker 1: We started with the grazed out, burned out cattle wrench,

625
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:01,600
Speaker 1: and twenty years later, in some of those same plots,

626
00:39:01,719 --> 00:39:07,120
Speaker 1: we've built over six inches of rich, black, lush top soil.

627
00:39:08,239 --> 00:39:12,520
Speaker 1: And of all the accomplishments whatever my career, probably the

628
00:39:12,600 --> 00:39:16,279
Speaker 1: one I gives me the most satisfaction is there's no

629
00:39:16,320 --> 00:39:18,120
Speaker 1: plaque on the wall or anything. That's when I walk

630
00:39:18,200 --> 00:39:20,319
Speaker 1: out during those fields and I just reached down and

631
00:39:20,320 --> 00:39:22,359
Speaker 1: grab a handful and smell it, and it smells like

632
00:39:22,640 --> 00:39:25,520
Speaker 1: really rich garden dirt here on top of those art mountain.

633
00:39:25,680 --> 00:39:28,960
Speaker 1: That's that's what drives me. Yeah, So, what were you

634
00:39:28,960 --> 00:39:31,400
Speaker 1: trying to do with this place on a general scale

635
00:39:31,400 --> 00:39:34,799
Speaker 1: in terms of wildlife? Yeah? So so again, I was

636
00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:37,560
Speaker 1: raised in Theose Arts, and I clearly remember the first

637
00:39:37,560 --> 00:39:41,239
Speaker 1: deer I ever saw My oldest daughter is Raleigh oldinlys

638
00:39:41,320 --> 00:39:43,720
Speaker 1: for a dweller by the deer meadow. My youngest daughter

639
00:39:43,800 --> 00:39:46,880
Speaker 1: is ray R a Hebrew for dough deer. Kind of

640
00:39:46,880 --> 00:39:49,719
Speaker 1: a big thing in our lives, right And uh so

641
00:39:49,760 --> 00:39:52,680
Speaker 1: I wanted to have a place that we could see dear,

642
00:39:52,960 --> 00:39:55,160
Speaker 1: that my dad and brought in law and family could

643
00:39:55,200 --> 00:39:58,240
Speaker 1: hunt deer, friends could hunt deer. And in the first

644
00:39:58,320 --> 00:40:01,640
Speaker 1: year I saw one deer, I saw a tail going

645
00:40:01,640 --> 00:40:03,960
Speaker 1: around a cedar tree. We did not hunt deer here

646
00:40:04,040 --> 00:40:06,880
Speaker 1: for five years. Now for Tracy and I, this was

647
00:40:06,960 --> 00:40:09,360
Speaker 1: a investment of a lifetime. I'll just do you know,

648
00:40:09,400 --> 00:40:11,440
Speaker 1: we don't have many stock market this. This is what

649
00:40:11,560 --> 00:40:13,600
Speaker 1: we were pouring into. And I bought a lot for

650
00:40:13,680 --> 00:40:16,680
Speaker 1: deer and they were not dear here. And the deer

651
00:40:16,680 --> 00:40:18,600
Speaker 1: that were here the old statement, but the dear it

652
00:40:18,600 --> 00:40:20,600
Speaker 1: looks like a shepherd dog or you know, a small

653
00:40:20,600 --> 00:40:22,120
Speaker 1: but that's kind of what we were seeing, you know.

654
00:40:22,719 --> 00:40:25,680
Speaker 1: And so my goal was to improve the habitat, both

655
00:40:25,680 --> 00:40:29,080
Speaker 1: then food plots and native habitat and to where we

656
00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:31,680
Speaker 1: could just have some good quality family hunting. That was

657
00:40:31,719 --> 00:40:34,600
Speaker 1: my objective. And food plots were going to play and

658
00:40:34,680 --> 00:40:37,440
Speaker 1: have played a big role in that, but through time

659
00:40:37,880 --> 00:40:42,000
Speaker 1: of learning about soil and the potential of native habitat,

660
00:40:42,160 --> 00:40:44,440
Speaker 1: that's when you came here. We were getting ready to

661
00:40:44,520 --> 00:40:48,640
Speaker 1: prescribe fire, which has big implications for the soil in

662
00:40:48,760 --> 00:40:51,960
Speaker 1: reasons some ways people may not think of. And so

663
00:40:52,000 --> 00:40:54,640
Speaker 1: I got hooked on in this path of having better

664
00:40:54,719 --> 00:40:58,120
Speaker 1: deer hunting, improving the habitat quality. And here in the

665
00:40:58,160 --> 00:41:01,239
Speaker 1: Ozark's of course, Lewis and Claw passing north to here

666
00:41:01,280 --> 00:41:03,640
Speaker 1: the Missouri rivers three fires in north Arapin on where

667
00:41:03,640 --> 00:41:05,960
Speaker 1: you are. But the early explorer to come through here

668
00:41:06,160 --> 00:41:10,760
Speaker 1: is Schoolcraft, and you can buy his journal and reading

669
00:41:10,840 --> 00:41:14,120
Speaker 1: his notes and all the wildlife he saw and the

670
00:41:14,239 --> 00:41:17,200
Speaker 1: lush creek bottoms, and he passed pretty close to right here.

671
00:41:17,560 --> 00:41:20,279
Speaker 1: I'm thinking this land has potential. Some of it's a

672
00:41:20,360 --> 00:41:23,319
Speaker 1: rotor down the White River and into the Mississippi, but

673
00:41:23,520 --> 00:41:26,840
Speaker 1: the potentials here and reaching that potential, which I'm not

674
00:41:27,040 --> 00:41:28,959
Speaker 1: and I would like the state that. I don't think

675
00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:32,160
Speaker 1: any person living right now are very very few have

676
00:41:32,440 --> 00:41:37,160
Speaker 1: ever seen the soil or the habitats potential, because almost

677
00:41:37,160 --> 00:41:41,920
Speaker 1: everyone this planet has been degraded, not intentionally necessarily when

678
00:41:41,920 --> 00:41:43,960
Speaker 1: the early settlers come to this continent. May of fact,

679
00:41:43,960 --> 00:41:45,680
Speaker 1: they're trying to make a living. They're hacking out a

680
00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:48,960
Speaker 1: wilderness and they're plowing of mules and durst going down

681
00:41:48,960 --> 00:41:51,239
Speaker 1: to you know, the rivers like crazy. They weren't all

682
00:41:51,360 --> 00:41:53,600
Speaker 1: gonna cause erosion. They're just trying to make a living.

683
00:41:53,600 --> 00:41:55,600
Speaker 1: There's no anger in me over this. That's hard for

684
00:41:55,680 --> 00:41:58,120
Speaker 1: us to understand, isn't it. Because we walk out into

685
00:41:58,200 --> 00:42:00,759
Speaker 1: a big eastern deciduous for us like this, and we

686
00:42:00,880 --> 00:42:03,120
Speaker 1: just assume that this is what it's looked like for

687
00:42:03,120 --> 00:42:05,800
Speaker 1: the last thousand years, which is just untrue. One of

688
00:42:05,840 --> 00:42:07,799
Speaker 1: the comments from one of the early explorers are really

689
00:42:07,840 --> 00:42:10,080
Speaker 1: stuck in my head. Is that all the forest he

690
00:42:10,120 --> 00:42:12,399
Speaker 1: wrote through, he sa he loved it because he could

691
00:42:12,520 --> 00:42:14,839
Speaker 1: ride a horse there and never knocked the hat off

692
00:42:14,840 --> 00:42:18,320
Speaker 1: his head. And so the Great Forest of the Eastern

693
00:42:18,400 --> 00:42:22,240
Speaker 1: United States primarily have been harvested about three times. And

694
00:42:22,480 --> 00:42:27,960
Speaker 1: so yeah, we're looking at leftovers after twenty years. I

695
00:42:28,080 --> 00:42:31,800
Speaker 1: want to understand what's happened. You'll hear dr woods mentioned

696
00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:35,360
Speaker 1: using a scoring system to measure white tailed deer antlers.

697
00:42:35,840 --> 00:42:38,440
Speaker 1: Many of you would be very familiar with this, but

698
00:42:38,480 --> 00:42:41,400
Speaker 1: if you're not, it's a prescribed way to measure the

699
00:42:41,480 --> 00:42:46,200
Speaker 1: length with and circumference of deer antlers. They're multiple record

700
00:42:46,280 --> 00:42:49,600
Speaker 1: keeping organizations, two of which Dr Woods refers to at

701
00:42:49,600 --> 00:42:52,880
Speaker 1: the Pope and Young Club, which is for archery kills only,

702
00:42:53,160 --> 00:42:57,000
Speaker 1: and the Boone and Crockett Club. These organizations were originally

703
00:42:57,040 --> 00:43:02,200
Speaker 1: designed to incentivize harvesting older age male animals, and their

704
00:43:02,280 --> 00:43:05,480
Speaker 1: influence on North American hunting culture and management has been

705
00:43:05,520 --> 00:43:10,160
Speaker 1: invaluable to the success of wildlife populations here. They helped

706
00:43:10,160 --> 00:43:13,880
Speaker 1: move our hunting culture out of a market hunting quote

707
00:43:13,920 --> 00:43:18,919
Speaker 1: if it's brown, it's down mentality into a selective, management

708
00:43:19,000 --> 00:43:29,279
Speaker 1: based mentality, which prevails in hunting culture today. So what's

709
00:43:29,320 --> 00:43:32,239
Speaker 1: it like today? So I'm not really a score guy.

710
00:43:32,280 --> 00:43:34,759
Speaker 1: I don't mean it's boastful, but I think as a

711
00:43:34,800 --> 00:43:37,319
Speaker 1: majorings dick. When I got here, I was more into

712
00:43:37,400 --> 00:43:39,600
Speaker 1: scores back then. Boy, if I killed a you know,

713
00:43:39,600 --> 00:43:41,840
Speaker 1: one five plus a bow, I was. I was writing

714
00:43:41,840 --> 00:43:43,960
Speaker 1: Pope and Young you know, well, A lot of people

715
00:43:44,000 --> 00:43:46,319
Speaker 1: did back in the day, right, especially in areas like

716
00:43:46,320 --> 00:43:49,239
Speaker 1: this where they were rare and the records still. I

717
00:43:49,280 --> 00:43:51,960
Speaker 1: think last I checked here, no Boone and Crocketts and

718
00:43:52,040 --> 00:43:53,719
Speaker 1: one that made p y and that was like a

719
00:43:53,840 --> 00:43:57,040
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty one. I forget somewhere in there. It's

720
00:43:57,040 --> 00:43:59,480
Speaker 1: pretty common now that we're gonna take you know, one forties,

721
00:43:59,520 --> 00:44:02,080
Speaker 1: one fifty every year multiples, and we have a one

722
00:44:02,160 --> 00:44:04,960
Speaker 1: seventy plus on the wall. So it's change, and you know,

723
00:44:05,040 --> 00:44:07,400
Speaker 1: and everyone wants to laus he shipped in some deer,

724
00:44:07,480 --> 00:44:10,600
Speaker 1: you know, no folks, and and and along that line

725
00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:13,720
Speaker 1: to talk about how important soils are and sun reaching

726
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:17,000
Speaker 1: the ground. Northern Missouri, of course, is known as record

727
00:44:17,000 --> 00:44:20,719
Speaker 1: book deer country. And the Bulkaals deer were restored. They

728
00:44:20,719 --> 00:44:22,359
Speaker 1: were wiped out. I mean they were gone. There weren't

729
00:44:22,360 --> 00:44:25,560
Speaker 1: even residual populations, and they were restored from one of

730
00:44:25,600 --> 00:44:27,960
Speaker 1: the refuges about twenty miles of crow flies and a

731
00:44:28,000 --> 00:44:32,239
Speaker 1: couple other here in southern Missouri. There Ozart's genetics on

732
00:44:32,360 --> 00:44:36,960
Speaker 1: better groceries, and better groceries requires better dirt, and so

733
00:44:37,520 --> 00:44:40,080
Speaker 1: massive deer there. I got thinking, well, you know, that's

734
00:44:40,120 --> 00:44:42,920
Speaker 1: a big area. People know they grow big deer. They're

735
00:44:42,920 --> 00:44:44,520
Speaker 1: passing up a lot of deer. But what can I

736
00:44:44,560 --> 00:44:47,160
Speaker 1: do here? And I consider, for you know, mountain country,

737
00:44:47,200 --> 00:44:50,000
Speaker 1: timber country man and one forties a dog good deer

738
00:44:50,800 --> 00:44:52,880
Speaker 1: one seventies like a two twenty and I but I

739
00:44:52,920 --> 00:44:56,799
Speaker 1: mean that's cooking with gas right there. So there are

740
00:44:56,880 --> 00:45:00,840
Speaker 1: many indicators in evaluating ecosystem health. But if one of

741
00:45:00,880 --> 00:45:03,919
Speaker 1: your primary objectives is to produce a healthy dear herd,

742
00:45:04,280 --> 00:45:07,640
Speaker 1: analyzing dear antler growth is a great way to do it.

743
00:45:07,960 --> 00:45:12,160
Speaker 1: Where nutrition is poor and animals are stressed, antler growth

744
00:45:12,200 --> 00:45:16,080
Speaker 1: will be minimal. Large antlers, and the presence of mature

745
00:45:16,160 --> 00:45:21,600
Speaker 1: adult males indicates positive herd health. By understanding the historical

746
00:45:21,640 --> 00:45:24,680
Speaker 1: antler development patterns in the region. If you remember he

747
00:45:24,719 --> 00:45:26,560
Speaker 1: said the biggest deer in the county was in the

748
00:45:26,640 --> 00:45:29,920
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty inch range, it's clear that the proving

749
00:45:30,000 --> 00:45:32,799
Speaker 1: ground has a healthy dear herd. In the last few

750
00:45:32,880 --> 00:45:36,040
Speaker 1: years they've taken a hundred and seventy plus buck off

751
00:45:36,080 --> 00:45:39,320
Speaker 1: the property. That's about the difference between the mid sized

752
00:45:39,480 --> 00:45:43,160
Speaker 1: suv and a monster truck in the dear world. But

753
00:45:43,280 --> 00:45:47,239
Speaker 1: how did he do it? The answer might surprise you.

754
00:45:51,920 --> 00:45:55,280
Speaker 1: If you till the soil, you decrease the value to soil.

755
00:45:56,120 --> 00:45:58,319
Speaker 1: There's there, there's I know, and you're staying well man,

756
00:45:58,560 --> 00:46:00,080
Speaker 1: And the only know one I see these farmers on

757
00:46:00,239 --> 00:46:02,719
Speaker 1: sixty shank plows. I mean, that's all true. They do,

758
00:46:02,760 --> 00:46:05,320
Speaker 1: but there is no chance and there's one real simple

759
00:46:05,360 --> 00:46:07,440
Speaker 1: reason and all the other debates, there's just one reason.

760
00:46:07,840 --> 00:46:09,919
Speaker 1: When you tell soil or of course, you let more

761
00:46:10,200 --> 00:46:13,959
Speaker 1: air oxygen touch more surfacers soil than if you didn't

762
00:46:14,000 --> 00:46:17,719
Speaker 1: tell it. Think of the great prairies buffalo run around. Okay, Well,

763
00:46:17,840 --> 00:46:22,760
Speaker 1: that oxidizes very powerful chemical reaction portions of the soil

764
00:46:23,120 --> 00:46:26,720
Speaker 1: and terminate some of the good microbes that live in soil,

765
00:46:27,000 --> 00:46:30,480
Speaker 1: and allows the microbes that kind of are anti our

766
00:46:30,560 --> 00:46:33,840
Speaker 1: mission of building soil health to populate more. Just that

767
00:46:33,960 --> 00:46:36,359
Speaker 1: one simple thing. No one can defeat that argument. So,

768
00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:39,560
Speaker 1: because it was so rocky here, I started renting the

769
00:46:39,640 --> 00:46:41,680
Speaker 1: no till drill and I've always no tilled. I have

770
00:46:41,800 --> 00:46:44,440
Speaker 1: not disk in over two decades. I've never had a

771
00:46:44,480 --> 00:46:47,680
Speaker 1: disc on this property period, And that's been a big

772
00:46:47,680 --> 00:46:50,680
Speaker 1: secret to improve in our soul's health and growing bigger deer.

773
00:46:52,000 --> 00:46:55,600
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, I thought tilling was good. This is

774
00:46:55,640 --> 00:46:58,640
Speaker 1: an ancient human practice. You tell a garden when you

775
00:46:58,680 --> 00:47:00,920
Speaker 1: want to control weeds and ake up the soil so

776
00:47:00,960 --> 00:47:04,920
Speaker 1: that new plants can take root. Well, what dr woods

777
00:47:04,920 --> 00:47:07,759
Speaker 1: and many others are learning. Is that telling has its

778
00:47:07,800 --> 00:47:12,160
Speaker 1: place in some applications, but undoubtedly degrade soil health, creating

779
00:47:12,200 --> 00:47:16,880
Speaker 1: a vicious cycle. And agriculture telling destroys that natural soil

780
00:47:16,920 --> 00:47:19,799
Speaker 1: structure and soil microbes, which are the m v P

781
00:47:20,000 --> 00:47:23,920
Speaker 1: of soil health and plant growth. It's a complex story.

782
00:47:24,400 --> 00:47:27,840
Speaker 1: Standby because we're about to learn the importance of carbon.

783
00:47:28,280 --> 00:47:30,560
Speaker 1: You may be saying, Clay, I don't give a rat's

784
00:47:30,640 --> 00:47:35,319
Speaker 1: tale about carbon, but it's influenced in human life. Is incredible.

785
00:47:35,800 --> 00:47:38,719
Speaker 1: I wonder if Dan boon knew anything about carbon. I

786
00:47:38,840 --> 00:47:42,600
Speaker 1: digress in college port I was called n P and

787
00:47:42,719 --> 00:47:45,640
Speaker 1: K and malybd um and zinc and boron and all

788
00:47:45,680 --> 00:47:48,200
Speaker 1: the men. It's all cool stuff. But you know, we

789
00:47:48,400 --> 00:47:52,160
Speaker 1: humans and deer and most plants, the biggest element in

790
00:47:52,160 --> 00:47:56,719
Speaker 1: our bodies is carbon. Carbon is delimited resource. And there's

791
00:47:56,719 --> 00:47:59,040
Speaker 1: a lot on the news about carbon now, But I'm

792
00:47:59,080 --> 00:48:02,239
Speaker 1: just talking practice. Go boots on the dirt carbons while

793
00:48:02,280 --> 00:48:04,280
Speaker 1: we want you probably know it's you know, really good soil.

794
00:48:04,320 --> 00:48:07,280
Speaker 1: And we talked about EWA some places like that, the delta,

795
00:48:07,480 --> 00:48:12,520
Speaker 1: it's black carbons, black poor soil. You hear your farmers say, well,

796
00:48:12,560 --> 00:48:15,400
Speaker 1: my soil is light and always go light. Soil is

797
00:48:15,520 --> 00:48:18,160
Speaker 1: light colored, it's had all the carbon taken out of it.

798
00:48:18,719 --> 00:48:21,160
Speaker 1: And here's here's this maybe a little heavy. You can

799
00:48:21,200 --> 00:48:22,960
Speaker 1: slap me around a little bit here, But there's an

800
00:48:22,960 --> 00:48:25,759
Speaker 1: economy in the soil. The economy is if you have

801
00:48:25,760 --> 00:48:29,839
Speaker 1: a healthy microbe population, Okay, they need carbon. Plants are

802
00:48:29,840 --> 00:48:33,480
Speaker 1: photosynthesizing see six whole bunch of carbon first part of

803
00:48:33,520 --> 00:48:38,680
Speaker 1: photosynthesis equation. Microbes actually go around the plant root or

804
00:48:38,719 --> 00:48:42,960
Speaker 1: in the plant and trade phosphorus potassium. But we're on

805
00:48:43,040 --> 00:48:45,720
Speaker 1: the libium and want the plant needs for that carbon

806
00:48:45,800 --> 00:48:50,239
Speaker 1: coming out of exudates. That's a beautiful, beautiful economy. It's

807
00:48:50,239 --> 00:48:53,520
Speaker 1: a win win economy. And one disk in putting oxygen

808
00:48:53,600 --> 00:48:57,359
Speaker 1: in soil kills that economy. And therefore we must use

809
00:48:57,440 --> 00:49:01,640
Speaker 1: synthetic fertilizer. We can go wicked cycle there doesn't it

810
00:49:02,000 --> 00:49:03,600
Speaker 1: and we can grow crops. You know, we didn't know

811
00:49:03,600 --> 00:49:06,440
Speaker 1: what nitrogen was or we could produce it anyway until

812
00:49:06,480 --> 00:49:08,560
Speaker 1: World War two, and that was part of building bombs.

813
00:49:08,560 --> 00:49:10,799
Speaker 1: And the German scientists that figured out how to make

814
00:49:10,960 --> 00:49:13,279
Speaker 1: nitrogen escape from Germany and brought it here. And when

815
00:49:13,280 --> 00:49:15,359
Speaker 1: the war is over and when they felt we didn't

816
00:49:15,360 --> 00:49:17,200
Speaker 1: need these bombs while we're gonna do so well, maybe

817
00:49:17,200 --> 00:49:19,440
Speaker 1: we use a fertilizer. I don't know. That's how the

818
00:49:19,480 --> 00:49:23,000
Speaker 1: whole nitrogen fertilizers thing literally got startled. That's interesting, But

819
00:49:23,120 --> 00:49:26,080
Speaker 1: we think about this over every acre on the planet.

820
00:49:26,200 --> 00:49:30,239
Speaker 1: That's a big statement there. There's about thirty tons or

821
00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:33,879
Speaker 1: more of nitrogen in the air. Why would anyone ever

822
00:49:33,960 --> 00:49:36,360
Speaker 1: pay for nitrogen? Or we look at buffalo and we

823
00:49:36,400 --> 00:49:39,520
Speaker 1: think there's about sixty million buffalo on the Great Prairie.

824
00:49:39,640 --> 00:49:42,279
Speaker 1: There's about sixty million cattle now, and no one was

825
00:49:42,280 --> 00:49:48,440
Speaker 1: putting out synthetic fertilizer to feed all these bison. What

826
00:49:48,600 --> 00:49:51,400
Speaker 1: you'll learn when you dive in deeper to this philosophy

827
00:49:51,480 --> 00:49:55,640
Speaker 1: is that chemical fertilizers, though they've been instrumental in modern

828
00:49:55,680 --> 00:49:59,680
Speaker 1: agriculture and feeding the planet, they're also a massive source

829
00:49:59,760 --> 00:50:06,480
Speaker 1: of soil degradation and the fuel of a wildly unsustainable cycle. Dr. Woods,

830
00:50:06,520 --> 00:50:10,880
Speaker 1: along with many others, say there's a better way. In

831
00:50:10,920 --> 00:50:13,759
Speaker 1: a world that talks a lot about excess carbon in

832
00:50:13,800 --> 00:50:17,920
Speaker 1: the air, intact soils have the ability to sequester or

833
00:50:18,080 --> 00:50:23,000
Speaker 1: store incredible amounts of carbon. As you've heard Dr. Wood

834
00:50:23,080 --> 00:50:26,080
Speaker 1: says he's built up to six inches of rich soil

835
00:50:26,160 --> 00:50:28,880
Speaker 1: in his food plots in the twenty years he's managed

836
00:50:28,920 --> 00:50:32,880
Speaker 1: the proving grounds. This is massive. I want to learn

837
00:50:33,120 --> 00:50:40,160
Speaker 1: more about this process, So talk to me about the

838
00:50:40,200 --> 00:50:43,600
Speaker 1: accelerated soil building. So, you know, when I was in

839
00:50:43,680 --> 00:50:45,680
Speaker 1: school and always you know wild if first needs some

840
00:50:45,680 --> 00:50:47,640
Speaker 1: good soil classes, there's always one thing stuck in my

841
00:50:47,680 --> 00:50:50,480
Speaker 1: mind talking about thousand years to make an inch of soil.

842
00:50:50,719 --> 00:50:53,359
Speaker 1: I just seems I can't even really envision thousand years.

843
00:50:53,360 --> 00:50:55,440
Speaker 1: I mean, we through out these big numbers, but a

844
00:50:55,520 --> 00:50:58,200
Speaker 1: decade is a big change for most humans, right, and

845
00:50:58,239 --> 00:51:00,279
Speaker 1: I think a thousand years is true. If you're talking

846
00:51:00,280 --> 00:51:03,360
Speaker 1: about the Green Canyon weathering and making a little dirt

847
00:51:03,400 --> 00:51:07,080
Speaker 1: and the crevice somewhere, you know, it's a so slow process.

848
00:51:07,280 --> 00:51:09,319
Speaker 1: You know, that's probably why humans have such a hard

849
00:51:09,320 --> 00:51:13,520
Speaker 1: time connecting with soil, is it typically is a slow process,

850
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:17,960
Speaker 1: and it's something that you you you inherit a baseline

851
00:51:17,960 --> 00:51:21,400
Speaker 1: of understanding of what a place looks like. And the

852
00:51:21,560 --> 00:51:24,719
Speaker 1: human life is so short compared to the life cycles

853
00:51:24,760 --> 00:51:28,480
Speaker 1: of Planet Earth ecosystems. Yeah, and when when we got mislead,

854
00:51:28,560 --> 00:51:30,600
Speaker 1: but that place has good dirt or that place will

855
00:51:30,600 --> 00:51:34,080
Speaker 1: never have good dirt. There was never a process talked about.

856
00:51:34,400 --> 00:51:37,919
Speaker 1: And so Galen, back to my friend, Galen was a

857
00:51:38,040 --> 00:51:41,480
Speaker 1: very is a very wise man. And Galen started teaching

858
00:51:41,480 --> 00:51:43,719
Speaker 1: me these principles. And I've just simplified them a lot

859
00:51:43,760 --> 00:51:46,120
Speaker 1: over time, and I've learned from other I did not

860
00:51:46,200 --> 00:51:48,160
Speaker 1: come up on this my own. Maybe I've made some

861
00:51:48,239 --> 00:51:51,480
Speaker 1: observations to tweak it over time, but there's basically a

862
00:51:51,520 --> 00:51:55,839
Speaker 1: couple of principles that work anywhere equator to anywhere plants grow.

863
00:51:56,200 --> 00:51:58,600
Speaker 1: You need to soil covered every day. Out of here.

864
00:51:58,840 --> 00:52:00,799
Speaker 1: When I say covered, maybe it's in the winter, but

865
00:52:00,840 --> 00:52:03,000
Speaker 1: there's a thatch or a mulch on top of it,

866
00:52:03,200 --> 00:52:05,120
Speaker 1: so the soil is always covered. We call that armor.

867
00:52:05,239 --> 00:52:07,720
Speaker 1: So als it wasn't covered. You need a living plant

868
00:52:08,040 --> 00:52:10,719
Speaker 1: as many days out of year. Some plants grow better

869
00:52:10,760 --> 00:52:13,400
Speaker 1: in the spring. It's all due to daylight and soil temperture,

870
00:52:13,480 --> 00:52:16,279
Speaker 1: some in the summer, some in the fall. So just

871
00:52:16,840 --> 00:52:20,080
Speaker 1: having soil always covered minimal disturbance to the soil. And

872
00:52:20,160 --> 00:52:23,279
Speaker 1: that's not only physical we talking about disking, plowing, but

873
00:52:23,480 --> 00:52:27,200
Speaker 1: chemical synthetic fertilizer is we all think the chemicals I

874
00:52:27,200 --> 00:52:33,080
Speaker 1: think is herbiside herbside, but man synthetic nitrogen, foster's potassium.

875
00:52:33,080 --> 00:52:35,239
Speaker 1: Those babies are, you know, I think i'd probably rather

876
00:52:35,280 --> 00:52:36,960
Speaker 1: I don't know if i'd say something air and no,

877
00:52:37,120 --> 00:52:39,400
Speaker 1: but I probably rare drink a teaspoon of life for

878
00:52:39,480 --> 00:52:43,000
Speaker 1: stade than I would suck a teaspoon of synthetic nitrogen

879
00:52:43,040 --> 00:52:44,959
Speaker 1: down because the results of that second one is gonna

880
00:52:45,000 --> 00:52:47,840
Speaker 1: be really bad. I promise you you're not gonna hunt anymore.

881
00:52:48,120 --> 00:52:50,480
Speaker 1: And then this one, it's just an observation, just I mean,

882
00:52:50,600 --> 00:52:52,480
Speaker 1: I used to be uh work as a little naturalist

883
00:52:52,480 --> 00:52:53,799
Speaker 1: out and your stone a little bit in a few

884
00:52:53,800 --> 00:52:56,000
Speaker 1: places like that. And I was young roaming around America

885
00:52:56,719 --> 00:52:58,840
Speaker 1: and uh men, there's a big diversity of plants I

886
00:52:58,880 --> 00:53:00,680
Speaker 1: talked about us. I didn't a find over a hundred

887
00:53:00,719 --> 00:53:03,879
Speaker 1: seventy species of plants here that's native habitat. And that's

888
00:53:03,880 --> 00:53:06,279
Speaker 1: part of my release process of native habitat. But how

889
00:53:06,280 --> 00:53:08,840
Speaker 1: about in our food plots. We're all thinking that perfect

890
00:53:08,960 --> 00:53:14,560
Speaker 1: row of corn, perfect patch of soybeans, perfect clover field monoculture. Well,

891
00:53:14,560 --> 00:53:16,600
Speaker 1: if we go back to the real reason we have monoculture,

892
00:53:16,680 --> 00:53:19,759
Speaker 1: so a combine would work, or the planter would only

893
00:53:19,800 --> 00:53:22,920
Speaker 1: plant one size seed at a time, or guy, should

894
00:53:23,080 --> 00:53:25,000
Speaker 1: you know we can only use this herbicide on top

895
00:53:25,040 --> 00:53:27,839
Speaker 1: of this, it's gonna kill everything else. And I've learned

896
00:53:27,840 --> 00:53:30,439
Speaker 1: through otherwise people. I want as much of life out

897
00:53:30,440 --> 00:53:33,160
Speaker 1: there as I can get. Man, I want bugs and

898
00:53:33,239 --> 00:53:36,400
Speaker 1: earthworms and microbes. And if I got a ragweed and

899
00:53:36,440 --> 00:53:38,600
Speaker 1: a food plot, IDEA can eat that too, you know,

900
00:53:38,640 --> 00:53:41,080
Speaker 1: I just but man, I want diversity, so my blends

901
00:53:41,120 --> 00:53:44,640
Speaker 1: will Typically I always want to at minimum one lagoon,

902
00:53:44,880 --> 00:53:49,319
Speaker 1: think beans, peas in summer, winter peas, alfalfa or something

903
00:53:49,320 --> 00:53:51,719
Speaker 1: like that in the cooler season. I want a broadleaf

904
00:53:51,760 --> 00:53:53,480
Speaker 1: plant that could be a lagoon like a pea or

905
00:53:53,480 --> 00:53:57,000
Speaker 1: a bean. But sunflowers is a great broadleaf, and I

906
00:53:57,040 --> 00:53:59,799
Speaker 1: want a brassica. It can maybe collards in the warm

907
00:53:59,840 --> 00:54:02,360
Speaker 1: sea eason or summer, and turnips rashes in the winter.

908
00:54:02,880 --> 00:54:05,880
Speaker 1: I want those four I want. I want to grass

909
00:54:06,080 --> 00:54:08,759
Speaker 1: and again summer could be corn or milo. Those are

910
00:54:08,800 --> 00:54:12,239
Speaker 1: all get the grass familiars, other grasses fall, wheat, ryots

911
00:54:12,280 --> 00:54:15,200
Speaker 1: or common When hunters use, people use. And once you

912
00:54:15,239 --> 00:54:18,040
Speaker 1: find out when you get at least members of those

913
00:54:18,080 --> 00:54:22,840
Speaker 1: four types of plants, you stimulate more microbes. So again,

914
00:54:22,960 --> 00:54:25,359
Speaker 1: you know, the textbooks used to say, maybe still say

915
00:54:25,520 --> 00:54:27,480
Speaker 1: takes a thousand years building an inch of soil, which

916
00:54:27,480 --> 00:54:29,719
Speaker 1: I think is true on raw rock. But I think,

917
00:54:29,800 --> 00:54:33,640
Speaker 1: and I've witnessed here, I think it's very possible, very realistic.

918
00:54:33,760 --> 00:54:36,520
Speaker 1: If you're planting a blend of species, not a monoculture,

919
00:54:36,520 --> 00:54:39,520
Speaker 1: a good blend, and you have a decent growing season,

920
00:54:39,600 --> 00:54:42,080
Speaker 1: I think you can realistically build a quarter inch of

921
00:54:42,080 --> 00:54:44,799
Speaker 1: soil a year, and that's cooking with gas. And on

922
00:54:44,920 --> 00:54:47,800
Speaker 1: this place, you've seen how much so so you started

923
00:54:47,840 --> 00:54:51,120
Speaker 1: with more or less rock on the tops of these knolls,

924
00:54:51,160 --> 00:54:55,200
Speaker 1: and you have six inches six inches deep of good. Yeah,

925
00:54:55,560 --> 00:54:58,640
Speaker 1: but that's not a linear because I keep learning, and

926
00:54:58,640 --> 00:55:01,359
Speaker 1: at first I was planting Monaco, and I think our

927
00:55:01,480 --> 00:55:05,320
Speaker 1: rate increases even faster. Now tell me in in short

928
00:55:05,680 --> 00:55:10,040
Speaker 1: the cycle of growing and then crimping and then planting

929
00:55:10,080 --> 00:55:13,120
Speaker 1: into Yeah, our system is really easy and simplified. We

930
00:55:13,320 --> 00:55:15,279
Speaker 1: take way less hours we used to the plant. We

931
00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:18,000
Speaker 1: about acres of food plot. So in the spring, I'm

932
00:55:18,040 --> 00:55:22,000
Speaker 1: gonna always have cereal rye and probably crimson clover. Blanche

933
00:55:22,080 --> 00:55:24,239
Speaker 1: is some really good annual clover, and it's gonna be

934
00:55:24,320 --> 00:55:25,880
Speaker 1: I'm gonna wait a little later, and other people are

935
00:55:25,920 --> 00:55:27,719
Speaker 1: playing football, so I'm gonna play a little later because

936
00:55:27,719 --> 00:55:30,759
Speaker 1: I want those plants to maximize your value. Right, So

937
00:55:30,800 --> 00:55:32,359
Speaker 1: I call it the dose st age. When I can

938
00:55:32,360 --> 00:55:35,840
Speaker 1: take that wheat rye or whatever seed head and squish

939
00:55:35,880 --> 00:55:38,320
Speaker 1: it and it's it's form like it's mature, but it's moist,

940
00:55:38,360 --> 00:55:40,640
Speaker 1: it's not hard, it's obviously not viable. Then I'm gonna

941
00:55:40,719 --> 00:55:43,440
Speaker 1: drill right through that. It's called planting green. I'm gonna

942
00:55:43,480 --> 00:55:46,040
Speaker 1: take my notes. You've got a stand of a stand

943
00:55:46,120 --> 00:55:49,000
Speaker 1: of these things you've just said, and you're planning right

944
00:55:49,000 --> 00:55:50,800
Speaker 1: back in right. I haven't. I haven't treated her, so

945
00:55:50,920 --> 00:55:53,560
Speaker 1: I haven't done anything. And I've not done nothing except

946
00:55:53,640 --> 00:55:55,960
Speaker 1: crank the tracker and put the drill on, put a

947
00:55:55,960 --> 00:55:58,239
Speaker 1: good warm season or summer, blend the seed in there,

948
00:55:58,520 --> 00:56:01,120
Speaker 1: and you're find at drilling through standing. I started by

949
00:56:01,280 --> 00:56:03,759
Speaker 1: terminating crop first with a crimper, but then you got

950
00:56:03,760 --> 00:56:05,640
Speaker 1: to stick that. And I don't care how good a

951
00:56:05,680 --> 00:56:07,120
Speaker 1: drill you got, him one hard to cut through there.

952
00:56:07,160 --> 00:56:10,239
Speaker 1: It's not designed for that. So planting green, I learned

953
00:56:10,239 --> 00:56:12,520
Speaker 1: from a farmer in Ohio, is much better. And then

954
00:56:12,560 --> 00:56:15,359
Speaker 1: I'll let that I'll probably let that Germany. I'll let

955
00:56:15,360 --> 00:56:17,080
Speaker 1: my new crop get an inch or too tall, and

956
00:56:17,120 --> 00:56:19,000
Speaker 1: then I'll use a cramper, which is like a flat

957
00:56:19,120 --> 00:56:21,759
Speaker 1: roller a round roller, but has a fin about every

958
00:56:21,800 --> 00:56:23,880
Speaker 1: eight inches and you're dragging this behind your track and

959
00:56:24,080 --> 00:56:26,920
Speaker 1: this rolling. But a cramper is designed to break the

960
00:56:26,960 --> 00:56:30,480
Speaker 1: plants circulatory system every few inches and it terminates. Got

961
00:56:30,480 --> 00:56:32,600
Speaker 1: these ridges. It looks like a tire. It looks like

962
00:56:32,640 --> 00:56:35,600
Speaker 1: a mud tire. It's got ridges, but they're they're six

963
00:56:35,600 --> 00:56:38,400
Speaker 1: inches sticking off, you know, well, just dealing and so.

964
00:56:38,640 --> 00:56:42,080
Speaker 1: But the brand new plants are so pliable they just

965
00:56:42,080 --> 00:56:45,000
Speaker 1: pop back up. If you had a really good fall crop,

966
00:56:45,040 --> 00:56:47,680
Speaker 1: you're gonna have about four inches a thick mulch, so

967
00:56:47,719 --> 00:56:50,240
Speaker 1: you've killed the stuff that was standing, but the plants

968
00:56:50,239 --> 00:56:53,560
Speaker 1: in the dough stage aren't gonna. We started last fall

969
00:56:53,600 --> 00:56:55,799
Speaker 1: and we planned the fall crop a blend had some

970
00:56:55,840 --> 00:56:58,479
Speaker 1: big cereal grains in there and some lagoons and peas

971
00:56:58,560 --> 00:57:02,200
Speaker 1: or whatever. And now spring. The soul temperatures at least

972
00:57:02,239 --> 00:57:05,040
Speaker 1: sixty degrees at two inches deep at nine am sounds

973
00:57:05,080 --> 00:57:07,879
Speaker 1: really picky. So that's how you're building a quarter inch

974
00:57:07,920 --> 00:57:11,720
Speaker 1: of good soil well and everyone men pluted for years.

975
00:57:11,800 --> 00:57:14,319
Speaker 1: We look at Watch up top. Galen taught me to

976
00:57:14,320 --> 00:57:19,120
Speaker 1: look below the soil like an iceberg. Of an iceberg

977
00:57:19,200 --> 00:57:23,120
Speaker 1: is below the water, only ten percent you can see

978
00:57:23,200 --> 00:57:26,520
Speaker 1: above if you didn't catch that all. Dr Woods has

979
00:57:26,520 --> 00:57:31,400
Speaker 1: an incredibly informative weekly show called Growing Dear TV where

980
00:57:31,440 --> 00:57:36,000
Speaker 1: he explains all these processes in great detail for whitetail

981
00:57:36,000 --> 00:57:41,560
Speaker 1: and turkey related land management content. His stuff is incredible. Hey,

982
00:57:41,600 --> 00:57:45,160
Speaker 1: that was a pretty cool analogy on the icebergs and microbes.

983
00:57:45,280 --> 00:57:51,360
Speaker 1: There they were again, diversity of plants species stimulates microbial activity,

984
00:57:51,640 --> 00:57:56,960
Speaker 1: and monocultures degrade microbial activity. I think it's wild how

985
00:57:57,080 --> 00:58:00,360
Speaker 1: something so small and invisible to the human eye is

986
00:58:00,400 --> 00:58:03,640
Speaker 1: the fuel of the soil and thus the heartbeat of

987
00:58:03,760 --> 00:58:07,280
Speaker 1: life on the planet. We can't talk about soil without

988
00:58:07,440 --> 00:58:12,280
Speaker 1: understanding something about erosion. Dr Woods has a pretty wild

989
00:58:12,400 --> 00:58:17,200
Speaker 1: example that will paint a vivid picture. So obviously, you

990
00:58:17,320 --> 00:58:20,520
Speaker 1: can't lose soil and improve its health. You can't have

991
00:58:20,560 --> 00:58:23,840
Speaker 1: erosion because the smaller particle usually the better quality dirt.

992
00:58:23,880 --> 00:58:26,680
Speaker 1: So if you're seeing rivlets or ditches go across the field,

993
00:58:26,720 --> 00:58:29,880
Speaker 1: you're it's being degraded. The best stup's leaving. How can

994
00:58:29,920 --> 00:58:33,200
Speaker 1: you stop erosion? Man? Everyone thinks that's some expensive system

995
00:58:33,440 --> 00:58:36,160
Speaker 1: or people tile fields to let moisture out. You don't

996
00:58:36,160 --> 00:58:37,960
Speaker 1: need to do any of that stuff, right. Plant roots

997
00:58:38,000 --> 00:58:41,040
Speaker 1: should go six feet deep easy, that's your tiling system.

998
00:58:41,280 --> 00:58:43,720
Speaker 1: So again, if we've got the soil always covered, we've

999
00:58:43,720 --> 00:58:46,920
Speaker 1: got thatched from the previous crop. I call that mulch

1000
00:58:47,400 --> 00:58:50,680
Speaker 1: and a living crop. The rain drop never really strikes

1001
00:58:50,680 --> 00:58:53,160
Speaker 1: the soil. It hits the living crop or hits the thatch,

1002
00:58:53,240 --> 00:58:56,040
Speaker 1: and the wind or whatever slows its way down and

1003
00:58:56,080 --> 00:58:58,960
Speaker 1: then it infiltrates through that satch and it just soaks

1004
00:58:58,960 --> 00:59:00,400
Speaker 1: in the soil. And if you've got a really good

1005
00:59:00,480 --> 00:59:03,560
Speaker 1: roots system, it's just gonna run right down that route, right,

1006
00:59:03,680 --> 00:59:07,640
Speaker 1: It's just gonna infiltrate versus running off. What are the

1007
00:59:07,680 --> 00:59:11,720
Speaker 1: stats for the soil and our agricultural belt for how

1008
00:59:11,800 --> 00:59:14,880
Speaker 1: much is running off? Yeah? I know exactly and Iowa

1009
00:59:14,920 --> 00:59:17,360
Speaker 1: because they IWA does a great job monitoring these things,

1010
00:59:17,680 --> 00:59:19,560
Speaker 1: and they do it through weirds that you know, Little

1011
00:59:19,560 --> 00:59:21,600
Speaker 1: Creek have a weird so much sentiments going dn't really

1012
00:59:21,600 --> 00:59:24,959
Speaker 1: scientific stuff. Uh. They average about five tons per acre

1013
00:59:25,040 --> 00:59:28,240
Speaker 1: per year running running off leaving going to the Missisippi

1014
00:59:28,280 --> 00:59:30,200
Speaker 1: River and you say you know again, ahead, you give me.

1015
00:59:30,800 --> 00:59:33,480
Speaker 1: Remember that the thickness of a piece of typing paper

1016
00:59:33,560 --> 00:59:36,160
Speaker 1: over an acre tune ee feet by tune or eighteen

1017
00:59:36,160 --> 00:59:38,920
Speaker 1: feet is a ton, just the thickness. So if you

1018
00:59:38,920 --> 00:59:41,560
Speaker 1: see a couple of ditches six inches deep to a field,

1019
00:59:41,760 --> 00:59:47,200
Speaker 1: there's tons. It's tons of the tons right there. If

1020
00:59:47,240 --> 00:59:51,200
Speaker 1: you start paying attention to soil erosion, you'll see it everywhere.

1021
00:59:51,400 --> 00:59:54,400
Speaker 1: And it's pretty eye opening when you understand the value

1022
00:59:54,480 --> 00:59:58,280
Speaker 1: of that soil. Dr Woods has a strong opinion about

1023
00:59:58,280 --> 01:00:01,800
Speaker 1: the significance that soil help plays on the earth. He

1024
01:00:01,840 --> 01:00:06,200
Speaker 1: has strong words about the agricultural systems in this country,

1025
01:00:06,280 --> 01:00:10,120
Speaker 1: and I want to reiterate Dr Wood's position. He is

1026
01:00:10,240 --> 01:00:14,440
Speaker 1: pro agriculture, He's been a farmer, he was raised by farmers.

1027
01:00:14,720 --> 01:00:18,360
Speaker 1: But it's very adamant that there is a better way.

1028
01:00:19,560 --> 01:00:22,240
Speaker 1: I'm very excited about this. I think, I really think

1029
01:00:22,840 --> 01:00:26,560
Speaker 1: this is the best tool we have to improve our

1030
01:00:26,600 --> 01:00:30,840
Speaker 1: planet soil health, soil health. I mean, electric cars are great,

1031
01:00:30,880 --> 01:00:33,920
Speaker 1: and all these earth things are great, but practicality pricing

1032
01:00:34,000 --> 01:00:37,480
Speaker 1: timing farmers, this is well proven, can make more profit

1033
01:00:37,840 --> 01:00:41,040
Speaker 1: and improve the soil at the same time and obvious

1034
01:00:41,120 --> 01:00:43,360
Speaker 1: questions why aren't they doing it? And I'll just tell

1035
01:00:43,360 --> 01:00:46,080
Speaker 1: you besides white tailed deer hunters, farmers are the hardest

1036
01:00:46,080 --> 01:00:47,959
Speaker 1: set as people I've ever tried to work in my life.

1037
01:00:47,960 --> 01:00:51,080
Speaker 1: And that's being unfair. I mean, their liveloods this day.

1038
01:00:51,480 --> 01:00:53,880
Speaker 1: A big, massive change is a big risk for them.

1039
01:00:54,240 --> 01:00:55,880
Speaker 1: That would be like saying, Grant, we want you to

1040
01:00:55,880 --> 01:00:58,280
Speaker 1: go be a music composer. It'd be a total life

1041
01:00:58,320 --> 01:01:00,640
Speaker 1: change for me to relearn that. Well, the whole system

1042
01:01:00,800 --> 01:01:03,880
Speaker 1: is set up for them to be successful by using

1043
01:01:03,960 --> 01:01:06,160
Speaker 1: the old system. So what I'm hearing you say is

1044
01:01:06,160 --> 01:01:08,520
Speaker 1: there needs to be a reformation in the way the

1045
01:01:08,600 --> 01:01:12,320
Speaker 1: whole architecture of everything. Yes, and to take that further.

1046
01:01:12,640 --> 01:01:17,080
Speaker 1: And I'm angry about this, not just mad angry. The

1047
01:01:17,160 --> 01:01:22,360
Speaker 1: system is absolutely not promoting soil health improvement. It's promoting

1048
01:01:22,400 --> 01:01:26,600
Speaker 1: the use of certain products. And I'm not anti herbicide.

1049
01:01:26,640 --> 01:01:28,960
Speaker 1: I look at herbicide, as I explained, just like a

1050
01:01:29,040 --> 01:01:30,880
Speaker 1: root canal. Man. I don't want to have one, but

1051
01:01:30,920 --> 01:01:33,800
Speaker 1: it's better than my jaw rotten out. You know, I

1052
01:01:33,840 --> 01:01:36,280
Speaker 1: think farm farmers are I was raised on a farm.

1053
01:01:36,320 --> 01:01:38,840
Speaker 1: I'm passionate about farmers they got a hard life. I'm

1054
01:01:38,880 --> 01:01:41,160
Speaker 1: not talking to fifty acre corp farm here. I think

1055
01:01:41,160 --> 01:01:42,760
Speaker 1: it goes even further than that. If you really want

1056
01:01:42,800 --> 01:01:44,160
Speaker 1: to know why, I really think, well, don't you just

1057
01:01:44,200 --> 01:01:46,520
Speaker 1: ask me? Here's what I want. I want to hear

1058
01:01:46,560 --> 01:01:49,520
Speaker 1: you say in short, why you feel like soil is

1059
01:01:49,560 --> 01:01:51,840
Speaker 1: the way that we can turn this planet around. Yeah,

1060
01:01:52,040 --> 01:01:53,880
Speaker 1: so we know, and you're know. I talked about off

1061
01:01:53,880 --> 01:01:57,960
Speaker 1: air that when society civilizations harm or soil to society,

1062
01:01:58,000 --> 01:02:00,920
Speaker 1: or civilization fails, romans whatever, whatever. I think we can

1063
01:02:00,920 --> 01:02:03,160
Speaker 1: turn a society around for a couple of real simple reasons.

1064
01:02:03,200 --> 01:02:07,240
Speaker 1: We can reduce pollution significantly. Agg is the second largest

1065
01:02:07,280 --> 01:02:10,160
Speaker 1: provider of carbon because of disking, not the diesel coming

1066
01:02:10,200 --> 01:02:13,440
Speaker 1: out a tractor, because of releasing carbon from the soil. Member.

1067
01:02:14,080 --> 01:02:16,200
Speaker 1: Soil that's black has a lot of carbon in it.

1068
01:02:16,800 --> 01:02:20,520
Speaker 1: Red gray white soil is depleted a carbon. It will

1069
01:02:20,560 --> 01:02:23,280
Speaker 1: not be productive without a huge amount of synthetic inputs

1070
01:02:23,480 --> 01:02:26,640
Speaker 1: which are leaching into our groundwater too used to farms

1071
01:02:26,680 --> 01:02:28,600
Speaker 1: or hunted acres. T hunted acres, and you were making

1072
01:02:28,640 --> 01:02:31,200
Speaker 1: a living. Mama got a new car every now and then.

1073
01:02:31,800 --> 01:02:34,720
Speaker 1: Not that way anymore at all. Right, Corporate farms with

1074
01:02:34,840 --> 01:02:38,040
Speaker 1: government subsidies, if you're doing your genity vag And I

1075
01:02:38,040 --> 01:02:41,880
Speaker 1: know some beautiful examples of families that got sixty acres

1076
01:02:41,960 --> 01:02:44,400
Speaker 1: hunted acres and they're making a good income because they

1077
01:02:44,440 --> 01:02:48,360
Speaker 1: have such reduced inputs and their land is so healthy,

1078
01:02:48,400 --> 01:02:50,880
Speaker 1: it's so productive. I'll share with you just one, because

1079
01:02:50,880 --> 01:02:53,160
Speaker 1: a lot of count farmers out there right I used

1080
01:02:53,200 --> 01:02:55,360
Speaker 1: to raise cows. Here's an old boy up here north

1081
01:02:55,440 --> 01:02:57,800
Speaker 1: me About an hour I met at at a farmer's market.

1082
01:02:57,840 --> 01:03:00,160
Speaker 1: Got talking to him. He's got a hunted acre the

1083
01:03:00,240 --> 01:03:03,280
Speaker 1: land here in the those arts. He will sell fifty

1084
01:03:03,360 --> 01:03:06,880
Speaker 1: calves a year off a hundred acres of grass pasture,

1085
01:03:06,920 --> 01:03:11,080
Speaker 1: no supplemental feed. And he's doing what's called mob grazing.

1086
01:03:11,520 --> 01:03:15,120
Speaker 1: He may have the equivalent of a quarter two D

1087
01:03:15,240 --> 01:03:18,120
Speaker 1: fifty thousand pounds quarter million pounds of beef on an

1088
01:03:18,160 --> 01:03:22,560
Speaker 1: acre for an hour, and it's replicating what the buffalo did.

1089
01:03:22,800 --> 01:03:25,520
Speaker 1: And they're urinating and defecating, and a room and is

1090
01:03:25,520 --> 01:03:28,120
Speaker 1: full of microbes, are about a trillion microbes to her

1091
01:03:28,120 --> 01:03:32,080
Speaker 1: teaspoon and Rouman fluid. So they're salivating, urinating, defecating. They're

1092
01:03:32,080 --> 01:03:34,160
Speaker 1: putting those microbes right back in there. Which makes the

1093
01:03:34,160 --> 01:03:38,280
Speaker 1: plants grow faster. He's not using any fertilizer, no worm,

1094
01:03:38,280 --> 01:03:41,720
Speaker 1: no fly medicines because they're always moving. And then his

1095
01:03:41,840 --> 01:03:44,800
Speaker 1: wife has a chicken trailer and she follows the cows

1096
01:03:44,840 --> 01:03:46,800
Speaker 1: three days and they're cleaning up all the maggots out

1097
01:03:46,800 --> 01:03:50,520
Speaker 1: of cow poop pasture eggs. Eggs are about twelve dollars

1098
01:03:50,560 --> 01:03:53,800
Speaker 1: a dozen dollar an egg. That's pretty good money. Rule

1099
01:03:53,840 --> 01:03:56,840
Speaker 1: America is dead. There's no doubt about this. It's sad.

1100
01:03:56,880 --> 01:03:59,360
Speaker 1: I was raising Rule America. I love Rule America. If

1101
01:03:59,480 --> 01:04:02,280
Speaker 1: a fan can move out there and get sixty acres

1102
01:04:02,320 --> 01:04:04,600
Speaker 1: eight acres put in a good day's work, work five

1103
01:04:04,680 --> 01:04:06,680
Speaker 1: six days a week, they can make a living using

1104
01:04:06,680 --> 01:04:10,920
Speaker 1: this process. And to me, if we can get people

1105
01:04:11,000 --> 01:04:15,240
Speaker 1: making a good living with no government subsidies, improving the soil,

1106
01:04:15,320 --> 01:04:18,960
Speaker 1: improving the water, providing us better food to eat. Did

1107
01:04:19,000 --> 01:04:20,680
Speaker 1: you know that a lot of oranges and right now

1108
01:04:20,720 --> 01:04:22,520
Speaker 1: I have no vitamin seeing them because the soil is

1109
01:04:22,560 --> 01:04:26,520
Speaker 1: sol depleted. Did you know that spinach has less iron

1110
01:04:26,560 --> 01:04:28,680
Speaker 1: in it than it did on average thirty years ago

1111
01:04:28,800 --> 01:04:32,440
Speaker 1: because of depleted soils. Many of the diseases we're facing

1112
01:04:32,480 --> 01:04:34,640
Speaker 1: now to runheard of when you and I were boys

1113
01:04:35,080 --> 01:04:38,720
Speaker 1: were probably because of depleted soil health and therefore depleted

1114
01:04:38,800 --> 01:04:43,920
Speaker 1: nutrients in the food we eat. Take a pasture raised egg,

1115
01:04:44,160 --> 01:04:46,120
Speaker 1: stick your finger and skill it for the heats on.

1116
01:04:46,560 --> 01:04:48,840
Speaker 1: You can't hardly break the yolk taking egg of a

1117
01:04:48,960 --> 01:04:51,560
Speaker 1: chicken house It's like water. I'm not being mean. We're

1118
01:04:51,560 --> 01:04:53,480
Speaker 1: feeding a bunch of billions of people on the planet.

1119
01:04:54,040 --> 01:04:57,520
Speaker 1: But if our acres are more productive, we can feed

1120
01:04:57,560 --> 01:05:00,440
Speaker 1: even more people. We do not have to have these

1121
01:05:00,560 --> 01:05:03,320
Speaker 1: other inputs to feed more people. That is a myth.

1122
01:05:03,560 --> 01:05:06,120
Speaker 1: We just need to restore the health in our soil.

1123
01:05:06,320 --> 01:05:09,720
Speaker 1: I'm so passionate about this. I've share with you on

1124
01:05:09,800 --> 01:05:12,040
Speaker 1: my transplant patient. I go to male clinic once a

1125
01:05:12,160 --> 01:05:14,440
Speaker 1: year every year. From my annual checkup, boy's happening me

1126
01:05:14,440 --> 01:05:17,760
Speaker 1: with a dietitian, right. But the difference between and those

1127
01:05:17,800 --> 01:05:21,160
Speaker 1: are mountain deer that's eating really high quality native vegetation

1128
01:05:21,200 --> 01:05:23,080
Speaker 1: we're burning right now. Soon as it rain's gonna be

1129
01:05:23,080 --> 01:05:26,120
Speaker 1: really succulent, grow full of nutrients, full of minerals, versus

1130
01:05:26,160 --> 01:05:29,800
Speaker 1: the middle of iba soybean deer growing on synthetics. There's

1131
01:05:29,840 --> 01:05:34,120
Speaker 1: no comparison bite per bite in the nutrient content and

1132
01:05:34,440 --> 01:05:37,640
Speaker 1: my dietitians that the Male Clinic tell me keep eating

1133
01:05:37,680 --> 01:05:40,240
Speaker 1: what you eat. I'm twenty nine years alf a kidney transplant.

1134
01:05:40,400 --> 01:05:43,360
Speaker 1: I've been so blessed in life. Part of that is

1135
01:05:43,360 --> 01:05:47,440
Speaker 1: eating a healthy diet of wildlife. This is really affecting

1136
01:05:47,480 --> 01:05:50,880
Speaker 1: your the quality of your life big time. And at

1137
01:05:50,880 --> 01:05:53,160
Speaker 1: the end, I mean, I'm a hunter. I'm alive when

1138
01:05:53,200 --> 01:05:56,200
Speaker 1: I'm hunting. I'm in tune to everything around me when

1139
01:05:56,240 --> 01:05:59,720
Speaker 1: I'm hunting. But a hunt for me, I feel great pride,

1140
01:05:59,760 --> 01:06:03,160
Speaker 1: not in you know, a vacuum packed role. I feel

1141
01:06:03,240 --> 01:06:05,720
Speaker 1: pride of being a provider for my family of high

1142
01:06:05,800 --> 01:06:08,440
Speaker 1: quality meat. Man, that's just so cool when your family's

1143
01:06:08,480 --> 01:06:10,520
Speaker 1: involved and you kind of feel good. So I could

1144
01:06:10,520 --> 01:06:12,600
Speaker 1: be stack of firewood going in to fall man, you

1145
01:06:12,680 --> 01:06:15,600
Speaker 1: feel good right out. Olipil said it. You know, good

1146
01:06:15,600 --> 01:06:17,360
Speaker 1: oak warms you twice, once when you cut it and

1147
01:06:17,400 --> 01:06:20,640
Speaker 1: once when you burn it. And the thrill of having

1148
01:06:20,680 --> 01:06:23,480
Speaker 1: a buck or dough or turkey or whatever after. And

1149
01:06:23,640 --> 01:06:26,080
Speaker 1: I got a thrill at one time, and then we

1150
01:06:26,160 --> 01:06:27,920
Speaker 1: get it out and cook it. And that thrill to

1151
01:06:27,960 --> 01:06:29,880
Speaker 1: me has become at this season my life just as

1152
01:06:29,960 --> 01:06:33,200
Speaker 1: big as the first thrill. Yeah, I made up with it, man,

1153
01:06:33,200 --> 01:06:36,680
Speaker 1: no pun intended. And I think I think of America

1154
01:06:36,840 --> 01:06:40,000
Speaker 1: had healthy venison, healthy pheasants, healthy whatever to eat that

1155
01:06:40,160 --> 01:06:43,240
Speaker 1: wasn't loaded up with her beside pest side fungicide. Man,

1156
01:06:43,520 --> 01:06:48,920
Speaker 1: that'd be cool for America's healthy. No matter what we

1157
01:06:49,040 --> 01:06:51,760
Speaker 1: do as humans, it's hard to get away from the

1158
01:06:51,800 --> 01:06:55,800
Speaker 1: importance of soils on the quality of our everyday lives.

1159
01:06:56,120 --> 01:06:59,080
Speaker 1: But I'm still amazed at how little most of us

1160
01:06:59,160 --> 01:07:03,320
Speaker 1: actually think about it. The soil is literally the foundation

1161
01:07:03,520 --> 01:07:10,160
Speaker 1: of our existence, Hillel wrote, Perhaps our most precious and

1162
01:07:10,320 --> 01:07:15,360
Speaker 1: vital resource, both physical and spiritual, is that most common

1163
01:07:15,400 --> 01:07:21,320
Speaker 1: matter underfoot, which we scarcely even notice and sometimes call

1164
01:07:21,400 --> 01:07:26,040
Speaker 1: it dirt. I continue to be amazed at the complexity

1165
01:07:26,080 --> 01:07:29,480
Speaker 1: of natural systems. Will never know all the answers, but

1166
01:07:29,560 --> 01:07:32,680
Speaker 1: an internal bewilderment in the fact that we're players in

1167
01:07:32,720 --> 01:07:35,880
Speaker 1: a complex and ancient system should cause us to pause.

1168
01:07:36,480 --> 01:07:39,120
Speaker 1: When we look across a vast landscape, whether it be

1169
01:07:39,160 --> 01:07:42,080
Speaker 1: in the Ozarks or Montana, or in the Adirondacks of

1170
01:07:42,120 --> 01:07:44,920
Speaker 1: New York, whe our eyes we see the ten per

1171
01:07:44,960 --> 01:07:50,000
Speaker 1: cent of the iceberg, and it's spectacularly decorated with mountains, trees,

1172
01:07:50,200 --> 01:07:53,920
Speaker 1: plants and animals, the things that we love. But beneath

1173
01:07:53,920 --> 01:07:59,960
Speaker 1: it is the soil which gives it all life, if

1174
01:08:00,080 --> 01:08:02,800
Speaker 1: nothing else. Next time you're in your favorite wild place,

1175
01:08:03,200 --> 01:08:06,080
Speaker 1: scratch back the leaves or the grass and take a

1176
01:08:06,160 --> 01:08:09,800
Speaker 1: handful of dirt. Roll it through your hand, and while

1177
01:08:09,880 --> 01:08:14,240
Speaker 1: you do, think about how it's the rocket fuel of wildness,

1178
01:08:14,280 --> 01:08:18,320
Speaker 1: and consider how it's often the unseen things that define

1179
01:08:18,479 --> 01:08:21,599
Speaker 1: the things that are visible. And while the dirt touches

1180
01:08:21,640 --> 01:08:26,160
Speaker 1: your skin, also considered the incredibly short lifespan of a

1181
01:08:26,320 --> 01:08:30,479
Speaker 1: human compared to its ancientness, and at the very atoms

1182
01:08:30,520 --> 01:08:33,920
Speaker 1: of your body, will one day return to it and

1183
01:08:34,080 --> 01:08:42,760
Speaker 1: see if that changes the way you live today. Thank

1184
01:08:42,800 --> 01:08:45,599
Speaker 1: you all so much for listening to Bear Grease. We've

1185
01:08:45,640 --> 01:08:48,599
Speaker 1: got some cool stuff coming up this fall, so please

1186
01:08:48,680 --> 01:08:51,760
Speaker 1: tell your buddies about our podcast, and feel free to

1187
01:08:51,840 --> 01:08:54,600
Speaker 1: leave us a review on iTunes. Hey, if you're in

1188
01:08:54,600 --> 01:08:58,639
Speaker 1: the northwest Arkansas region, check out Across the Creek Farms.

1189
01:08:59,040 --> 01:09:03,120
Speaker 1: My friend tear Old Spencer's pastured poultry and eggs are

1190
01:09:03,240 --> 01:09:07,360
Speaker 1: off the charts. It's some good chicken. Keep the wild

1191
01:09:07,439 --> 01:09:12,160
Speaker 1: places wild. And hey, here's what Gary Newcomb does with dirt,

1192
01:09:13,800 --> 01:09:18,639
Speaker 1: all right, Dad, tell me your your philosophy on cleaning

1193
01:09:18,720 --> 01:09:21,280
Speaker 1: your hands. What's the best way in the world to

1194
01:09:21,520 --> 01:09:24,599
Speaker 1: clean your hands? It depends on where I am. If

1195
01:09:24,640 --> 01:09:28,120
Speaker 1: I'm in the house, I like to use soap, okay,

1196
01:09:28,720 --> 01:09:32,160
Speaker 1: if I'm at it camp. If I'm deer hunting, I

1197
01:09:32,320 --> 01:09:36,280
Speaker 1: use dirt. And I have no idea why, but just

1198
01:09:37,400 --> 01:09:40,719
Speaker 1: my gut feeling is that dirt is about to clean

1199
01:09:40,760 --> 01:09:45,439
Speaker 1: sling around and oh yeah yeah. If if I'm just

1200
01:09:45,600 --> 01:09:49,400
Speaker 1: if I clean a deer and I'm I don't have

1201
01:09:49,479 --> 01:09:54,080
Speaker 1: water and soap. I prefer really dirt. It takes the

1202
01:09:54,160 --> 01:09:58,320
Speaker 1: odor away. Uh you know, I might eat a sandwich

1203
01:09:58,360 --> 01:10:01,400
Speaker 1: after using the hurt. I mean, you never brush your

1204
01:10:01,400 --> 01:10:15,439
Speaker 1: teeth with dirt, never have, never have mm hm