Speaker 1: The principal elements that compose us and that compose soils
Speaker 1: are effectively the same elements. I really think this is
Speaker 1: the best tool we have to improve our planet soil health.
Speaker 1: Soil health. On this episode of the Bear Grease podcast,
Speaker 1: we're going to the very footing of natural systems and
Speaker 1: human existence. Empires have risen and fallen because of it,
Speaker 1: and the equalizing grasp of the topic at hand is
Speaker 1: inescapable from both the wealthy and the impoverished people of
Speaker 1: the Earth. Will be discussing the bewildering complexity of the
Speaker 1: soil in our connection to it. Will nerd out with
Speaker 1: my old soil Sides professor Dr David Miller, exploring soil uniqueness.
Speaker 1: Will also talk with Dr Grant Woods and learn how
Speaker 1: he transformed a degradated cattle farm into a white tailed
Speaker 1: paradise through building soils. And we'll talk with an Arkansas
Speaker 1: farmer who has been inspired to live close to the
Speaker 1: land because what he saw in the Middle East. Understanding
Speaker 1: soils will upgrade us as woodsman and will understand more
Speaker 1: about the heartbeat of wild places. I've got some questions
Speaker 1: that need answered about the dirt. You're not gonna want
Speaker 1: to miss this one. Even though we have this advanced
Speaker 1: industrial society, the fragility of our soils is something that
Speaker 1: we can never forget about and that we need to
Speaker 1: continue to pay attention to. My name is Clay Nukelem
Speaker 1: and this is the bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore
Speaker 1: things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places,
Speaker 1: and where we'll tell the story of America who lived
Speaker 1: their lives close to the land. Presented by f h
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Speaker 1: I'm forward slash bear grease for a special code. If
Speaker 1: you're buying stuff from f h F Gear, check it
Speaker 1: out Fish Hunt Fight f h F Gear. I want
Speaker 1: to introduce you to a friend that we both know.
Speaker 1: That may sound oxymoronic, but I think you'll understand what
Speaker 1: I mean. This friend has played a part in defining humanity.
Speaker 1: No man has escaped its sculpting grip in the literal
Speaker 1: and physiological sense. Every great beast that has walked the
Speaker 1: planet has been swallowed by it, and the so called
Speaker 1: great men of the Earth have amassed wealth from its bounty,
Speaker 1: but also intimately met it in the end. Oddly, it's
Speaker 1: a persnickety bedfellow and easily offended, often distributing poverty in
Speaker 1: its anger. It's the great equalizer of man kind. No
Speaker 1: amount of power excuses a man from its authority. Men
Speaker 1: arise from it and return to it when the spark
Speaker 1: of life leaves their body. What I'm talking about is
Speaker 1: the soil. I want to read for you some ancient text,
Speaker 1: even removing any sense of its religious context. I'm astonished
Speaker 1: by the scientific accuracy of the primitive writer as he
Speaker 1: tries to interpret and understand his existence. Genesis to seven
Speaker 1: through nine. Then the Lord God formed the man from
Speaker 1: the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of
Speaker 1: life into the man's nostrils, and the man became a
Speaker 1: living being. Then the Lord God planted a garden in
Speaker 1: Eden in the east, and there he placed the man
Speaker 1: he had made. This text is extremely simple and complex.
Speaker 1: At the same time, the knowledge of the chemistry of
Speaker 1: soil and the makeup of the organic matter of human
Speaker 1: flesh is kind of wild. I bet that we can
Speaker 1: all agree that mankind's original and deeply innate connection to
Speaker 1: the land is unique. We're the only species that practices
Speaker 1: agriculture and manipulates natural systems to grow and produce food.
Speaker 1: I want to read a short excerpt from Daniel Hillel's
Speaker 1: book titled Out of the Earth. You'll hear more about
Speaker 1: this book soon from my old soil science professor. These
Speaker 1: are Hillel's words. Readers of the Bible and translation miss
Speaker 1: much of the imagery and poetry of the evocative verbal
Speaker 1: associations in the original Hebrew. The indissoluble link between man
Speaker 1: and the soil is manifest in the very name Adam,
Speaker 1: derived from a dama a Hebrew now and a feminine
Speaker 1: gender meaning earth or soil. Adam's name encapsulates man's origin
Speaker 1: and destiny, his existence and livelihood derived from the soil
Speaker 1: to which he has tethered throughout his life, into which
Speaker 1: he has faded to return at the end of his days. Likewise,
Speaker 1: the name of Adam's mate, Hava rendered Eve in translation,
Speaker 1: literally means living in the words of the Bible, and
Speaker 1: the man called his wife Eve because she was the
Speaker 1: mother of all living together. Therefore, Adam and Eve signify
Speaker 1: soil and life. The ancient Hebrew association of man with
Speaker 1: soil is echoed in the Latin name for man, Homo,
Speaker 1: derived from humus, the stuff of life in the soil.
Speaker 1: This powerful metaphors suggests an early realization of a profound
Speaker 1: truth that humanity has since disregarded to its own detriment.
Speaker 1: Since the words humility and humble also derived from humus,
Speaker 1: it's rather ironic that we should have assigned our species
Speaker 1: so arrogant a name as Homo sapiens sapiens wise wise man.
Speaker 1: It occurs to me as I ponder our past and
Speaker 1: future relation to the Earth that we might consider changing
Speaker 1: our name to a more modest Homo sapiens curans, the
Speaker 1: word curans denoting caretaking or caring, as in curator. Of course,
Speaker 1: we must work to deserve the new name, even as
Speaker 1: we have not deserved the old one end of quote.
Speaker 1: First of all, I've got to say that my name
Speaker 1: means from the earth. I've always felt like that was significant.
Speaker 1: Juju says. They almost named me cole, but in the
Speaker 1: last minute, audible, they named me a formal soil science.
Speaker 1: Now in college, I studied soils almost by accident. Sand, silt,
Speaker 1: and clay are the three architectural definers of all soil eils.
Speaker 1: We're gonna meet my favorite professor in just a bit.
Speaker 1: But the seed thoughts of the soils importance was put
Speaker 1: in me by my grandfather, lew and Nwcom. He would
Speaker 1: grin ear to ear and sarcastically proclaim that he was
Speaker 1: a farmer as he stood overlooking a small twenty by
Speaker 1: twenty garden in his backyard. As a young boy. He
Speaker 1: talked to me about the process of soil composting as
Speaker 1: he throw banana peels and watermelon rinds in his garden.
Speaker 1: I'd be shocked if he realized how impacting those moments
Speaker 1: were for me, because I don't think I gave many
Speaker 1: visual cues of my interest. Later in college, as a
Speaker 1: student in the soil science department, those early sensations of
Speaker 1: fascinations stirred by this complexity in natural systems, came to fruition. Curiosity,
Speaker 1: I believe is a key part of the definition of
Speaker 1: being a woodsman. Daniel Boone taught us what a woodsman
Speaker 1: was and that it is a noble idea entity. I
Speaker 1: think we have the right to continue to add complexity
Speaker 1: to the idea of being a woodsman. To understand the
Speaker 1: flora of the woods, wild beast, untamed rivers, and the
Speaker 1: overarching ecology of wilderness, we have to possess a fundamental
Speaker 1: understanding of where it all begins. Dr. David Miller was
Speaker 1: my advisor in college, and honestly I was a poor student. However,
Speaker 1: in his soil science class he had us read a
Speaker 1: Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, and secondly he had
Speaker 1: us read a book called Out of the Earth by
Speaker 1: Daniel Hillel, which discusses the importance of soil health on civilizations.
Speaker 1: It was fascinating. Dr Miller's passion for soils and his
Speaker 1: engaging lecturing style stood out to me, and I never
Speaker 1: forgot the basics of soil science. It had been fifteen
Speaker 1: years since I had seen him in his office looked
Speaker 1: almost identical as it did in two thousand five, though
Speaker 1: his hair was a bit longer. It was actually a
Speaker 1: way longer. I want you to meet Dr David Miller
Speaker 1: of the University of Arkansas and Daniel Hillel's book, the
Speaker 1: book that you had me read twenty years ago. I'm
Speaker 1: glad you. Hey, I was underlying stuff back then, I've noticed.
Speaker 1: But he talks about the rise and fall of civilizations
Speaker 1: based upon how they treated their soils, which is bizarre.
Speaker 1: Like if you if you were to ask anybody and say,
Speaker 1: show me that what are the key factors of a
Speaker 1: civilization success? I mean, they would name every single thing
Speaker 1: except soils. But it's fascinating to look back across history
Speaker 1: and and look back across the footprints of humanity across
Speaker 1: the globe and you see this. Can you talk to
Speaker 1: me about that? Yeah, I mean a number one. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm impressed that you still have the book. It's a
Speaker 1: great little read, isn't it. It really is the wonder
Speaker 1: I didn't lose it and little dirty trucks well or
Speaker 1: sell it for two dollars to buy a hamburger or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, Hillells book is is really good about that.
Speaker 1: He goes back and documents and he tries to warn
Speaker 1: us not to oversimplify that. Of course, take the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of factors that went into
Speaker 1: the decline of the Roman empature. It wasn't just so us.
Speaker 1: But he does point this out that the Romans, as
Speaker 1: technologically advanced as they were, they were actually sort of
Speaker 1: stupid when it came to agriculture. You know, I mean,
Speaker 1: the Italian uplands are not flat. There tends to be
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of slope to many of the soils
Speaker 1: on the Italian peninsula, as hill Hill points out in
Speaker 1: his book. And so the Romans go in there and
Speaker 1: start clearing the native vegetation that cut down the trees,
Speaker 1: start planting crops. Originally I suspect it was wheat and
Speaker 1: other grains. Well, those kinds of crops are notoriously irrosive
Speaker 1: when you try to grow them on slopes, because when
Speaker 1: you plant the seed it takes a long time for
Speaker 1: the for the for the plants to emerge and to
Speaker 1: close the canopy and protect the soil, and so they
Speaker 1: had massive amounts of erosion, according to Hillel. And I've
Speaker 1: never been to Italy, so I can't speak to this firsthand,
Speaker 1: but you go to the Italian Peninsula these days and
Speaker 1: there's hardly any soil left on any of the hills.
Speaker 1: It's just a bunch of bare rocks. And the evidence
Speaker 1: of massive amounts of erosion is still evident to this day.
Speaker 1: And so, according to Hillel, one of the things that
Speaker 1: the Romans did not realize was that exposure of soil
Speaker 1: to rainfall after clearing of the native vegetation resulted in
Speaker 1: massive land degradation as a result of water erosion. Now
Speaker 1: you would think wouldn't but the Romans would be able
Speaker 1: to figure that out a barely not. And they just
Speaker 1: continue to do it until the soils were so eroded
Speaker 1: that they wouldn't even grow crops of wheat and barley
Speaker 1: and so forth anymore, and they had to resort to
Speaker 1: what uh permanent crops like olives and grapes, and so
Speaker 1: they switched over. And so where did they get their grain.
Speaker 1: They started to import their grain from North Africa, Egypt,
Speaker 1: in particular their empire, and and this is one of
Speaker 1: the things that Will argues is that they were forced
Speaker 1: to expand their empire in order to acquire lands that
Speaker 1: were capable of producing sufficient quantities of food for their
Speaker 1: people because they had ruined their soils to the extent
Speaker 1: that they were no longer able to grow enough grain
Speaker 1: to feed their own people. As one example of the
Speaker 1: inability of a civilization to take care of their soils,
Speaker 1: so that decentralization caused them to spread and expand out
Speaker 1: and basically become I mean they were they were prosperous
Speaker 1: for a long time, but became vulnerable because of that.
Speaker 1: And so there, yeah, I mean that of growing their
Speaker 1: quote own grain, their importing grain from foreign countries. Another
Speaker 1: good example was the Mesopotamians, who tended to salonize their
Speaker 1: lands with inappropriate irrigation techniques. So this was even before
Speaker 1: the Romans. This is the Fertile Crescent and all that, right,
Speaker 1: some of the first civilizations in Babylonia, they irrigated so
Speaker 1: heavily that they rose their water table. When it reached
Speaker 1: the surface, it evaporated and deposited salt. It left what
Speaker 1: was in it left water leaves, but the salt stays.
Speaker 1: They salonized their lands by improper irrigation. That particular example
Speaker 1: would have been like the cradle of life Tigris and
Speaker 1: Euphrates rivers that are referred to in Genesis. And is
Speaker 1: that in modern day Ira? That is correct? And the
Speaker 1: area that we're talking about here is down in that
Speaker 1: southern town near Bosra. It's a southern town and the
Speaker 1: fields around north of bo are still water logged in
Speaker 1: sale as a result of improper irrigation thousands of years ago.
Speaker 1: Is it clear that the soil usage is what has
Speaker 1: what attributed that to becoming like almost desert like. Yes,
Speaker 1: they are, the archaeologist in particular, and I think hill
Speaker 1: El says are pretty convinced that's why that area is
Speaker 1: as desolate as it is now. And as a result
Speaker 1: of Babylonians continually moved north as they screwed up their
Speaker 1: soils with too much irrigation water and finally um civilization disappeared.
Speaker 1: Terrell Spencer is my longtime friend and a thought leader
Speaker 1: in our region for pastured poultry and family farming. He's
Speaker 1: always had a unique insight into the soil, and it
Speaker 1: came from a unique place far from northwest Arkansas. I
Speaker 1: want to learn about his operation, how he builds soils,
Speaker 1: and where he became inspired to be a farmer. And
Speaker 1: me my friend Terrell Spencer, also a student of Dr Miller.
Speaker 1: Terrell Spencer, also known as Spence to me for decades.
Speaker 1: Tell me what you do. Tell me about your farm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a pasture poultry grower. I raised chickens out on
Speaker 1: pasture and then I have a process and plant that
Speaker 1: I partner with. We butcher them deliver them to customers
Speaker 1: across northwest Arkansas eastern Oklahoma. Um. I also am a
Speaker 1: grass farmer. I cut hay and sell it. Just more
Speaker 1: than anything, man, I just I love working with nature.
Speaker 1: So they're there are independent growers like you, and then
Speaker 1: there are people that grow chickens under contract with some
Speaker 1: of these bigger companies. Talk to me about the systems
Speaker 1: that you have in place, and particularly how soil really
Speaker 1: is kind of a foundational part of it. I'm like
Speaker 1: one of the one per centers when it comes to
Speaker 1: just raising poultry, right is nine point something percenta pols.
Speaker 1: You're one of the billionaires that other into that spectrum too.
Speaker 1: If I could find a way to flip flop them,
Speaker 1: we'd be doing pretty good now. Like most chicken growers
Speaker 1: are growers, they grow for someone else. They grow someone
Speaker 1: else's birds. About in the eighties, poultry companies realized that
Speaker 1: the least profitable part of the chicken industry was actually
Speaker 1: the risk of raising chickens in that and so they
Speaker 1: kind of outsource that people that sign up for it.
Speaker 1: You know, no one makes you do it, and it
Speaker 1: works well for some folks and for some folks it doesn't.
Speaker 1: And we're just not in that system at all. We're
Speaker 1: we're just independent. It's just right now. Myself, my boys,
Speaker 1: my daughter, my wife across the creek farm. Talk to
Speaker 1: me about the sequence of moving these pins, Like, describe
Speaker 1: past your poultry how it works. Yeah, it actually works
Speaker 1: really well. Chickens lay down manure, right like we we
Speaker 1: bring in feed and then they eat it and it
Speaker 1: goes out the back end and about half of what
Speaker 1: they eat becomes chicken and the other half goes out
Speaker 1: the back end. If you went to your farm, you
Speaker 1: would see these mobile pins that you move every day, yeah,
Speaker 1: or every every every couple of days. Yeah, so you're
Speaker 1: getting two crops. You're getting hay, which round here is
Speaker 1: very valuable, but you're also getting chickens. But the catalyst
Speaker 1: of it all is this soil. Yeah, because chicken new
Speaker 1: is going down in and then the grass comes up
Speaker 1: very nutrient rich, grows fast, grows good. We don't spray.
Speaker 1: The edges of our fields are intentionally messy, which is
Speaker 1: hunters like I don't personally hunt. I love hunters because
Speaker 1: beer constantly grazing down stuff for other critters, you know,
Speaker 1: popping Kyle, tell me your true, unfiltered thoughts on raccoons, man,
Speaker 1: I think, let me start a sance for you. A
Speaker 1: good raccoon is a dead raccoon, or is is on
Speaker 1: someone's wall or a hat a good rat cane. And see,
Speaker 1: I don't even like the word rat can. I like
Speaker 1: the word trash panda. But and you know, a good
Speaker 1: rat and that's why friends long lived the beast. But
Speaker 1: not on your farm. Yes, Now that we understand the
Speaker 1: process of soil inputs from the chickens and the subsequent
Speaker 1: grass harvest, I want to hear about where and how
Speaker 1: Harold decided to be a farmer. My first realization of
Speaker 1: the destructiveness of human beings, like just to the soil was.
Speaker 1: I was in Iraq. My job was as a gunner,
Speaker 1: and we'd go in the U. S. Military in the U. S. Military, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was back in two thousand and four, and we
Speaker 1: would go down and escort convoys and stuff. That was
Speaker 1: one of the things we did. And we'd go down
Speaker 1: to quait bring them back up. I was in Baghdad
Speaker 1: and we would go through these areas that were like
Speaker 1: they had irrigation ditches, they had pumps, I had, you know,
Speaker 1: all this stuff for agriculture. And at the time, I
Speaker 1: kind of had my eye on some rice farmer's daughter
Speaker 1: in East Arkansas. So I knew like a good setup
Speaker 1: for going rice, right, and so I thought we'd head
Speaker 1: south and I would be like, they're gonna plant rice here,
Speaker 1: you know. And one day, not to digress, but she
Speaker 1: did become this woman became the rice Queen. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: Cross County or ice Queen. Okay, take us back to
Speaker 1: and so like we uh, one day we were heading
Speaker 1: down and the fleet all these fields were flooded. I'm okay,
Speaker 1: they're gonna grow rice. And at the time I did
Speaker 1: zero about farming. I had been a punk rocker before
Speaker 1: I went into the the military, you know, no agricultural background.
Speaker 1: And then over time we'd passed it again and it
Speaker 1: was all white. I don't know what's going on here.
Speaker 1: And then we came back, you know, like a couple
Speaker 1: of days later, and they were all these families filling
Speaker 1: bags of salt, and it just like what is going on?
Speaker 1: And then I got back. I went to the University
Speaker 1: of Arkansas and got a degree and to all science
Speaker 1: and and it just like blew my mind because this
Speaker 1: is the fertile Crescent, right, like we all learned that
Speaker 1: in school. And as I started thinking back and as
Speaker 1: I kind of went through pictures and like southern Iraq, man,
Speaker 1: that was like where they think the Garden of Eden was,
Speaker 1: you know, like and it's just a waste land. And
Speaker 1: it's all because humans, well intentioned humans, their actions like
Speaker 1: just destroyed the foundation of life in that area, you know.
Speaker 1: And it's crazy even looking at like here in the US,
Speaker 1: we've been here kicking around for like a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty years doing agriculture and we're seeing the same problems,
Speaker 1: you know. And I guess what I'm passionate about is
Speaker 1: just like not leaving that mess for someone else to
Speaker 1: leave it better than I found it. Especially coming back
Speaker 1: from the war. It was like when I realized what
Speaker 1: through farming you could be creative instead of destructive. Man,
Speaker 1: I was hooked, and that's why I raised chickens an pasture.
Speaker 1: I want to jump back to Dr Miller. I think
Speaker 1: we need to go back and try to understand the
Speaker 1: fundamental aspects of soil. Welcome to Dr Miller's Soil Science
Speaker 1: class one oh one. Here's Dr Miller. Dr Miller talked
Speaker 1: to me about how soils, this thin layer on the
Speaker 1: outer crust of the Earth is so essential to not
Speaker 1: just human life, but every part of life, because it's
Speaker 1: kind of bizarre when you think about this big rock
Speaker 1: floating around the star and this, you know, whatever the
Speaker 1: volume of the Earth is, it's massive, and this this outer, tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny fraction of that volume of the crust of the
Speaker 1: Earth is this brilliant, intricate wild thing called dirt, which
Speaker 1: is what humans disdain in so many ways. But to
Speaker 1: talk to me about about the uniqueness of that, you know,
Speaker 1: it is there saying it's a good point that you
Speaker 1: bring up to. By volume, the Earth is a minuscule
Speaker 1: fraction soil right, because as most of us know, it
Speaker 1: can range from oh gosh, six inches thick too. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Down near the equator there are probably soils
Speaker 1: that are fifty or sixty feet thick, but in general
Speaker 1: two to three four five ft thick is all soil is,
Speaker 1: and it has unique properties. It's more than just crushed
Speaker 1: up rock. A lot of people say, well, dirt's just
Speaker 1: you can take rock and crushed up and you have dirt. Well, no,
Speaker 1: you can't. Crushed up rock is not soil. It's crushed
Speaker 1: up rock. You need to undergo what we think. What
Speaker 1: we scientist is what we saw a scientists called petagenesis,
Speaker 1: which is the process by which this stuff called parent material,
Speaker 1: which can be rock, or it can be sediment, or
Speaker 1: it can be plant tissues for that matter, petogenesis is
Speaker 1: the process by which that materially is converted into this
Speaker 1: special stuff that we call soil. And yes, it does
Speaker 1: have minerals in it, but it also has organic materials
Speaker 1: in it. And then incredibly importantly, it has lots of pores,
Speaker 1: and pores is where the water is held, and then
Speaker 1: of course they're the other thing that's special about soils
Speaker 1: is the fact that it's so biologically active, it's got
Speaker 1: some much stuff living in it. So I mean there's
Speaker 1: this combination of factors I think that leads to the
Speaker 1: uniqueness of soils. Its composition. Clearly, it's chemical composition. It
Speaker 1: has a very interesting and unique chemical composition, sand, silt
Speaker 1: and clay, poor size distributions, biological activity, and then this
Speaker 1: organic fraction is incredibly interesting. Those features combined to make
Speaker 1: soil unique in its ability to support plant life. But
Speaker 1: then there's these other things that soils do that are remarkable.
Speaker 1: And most people when they think of soils, they think
Speaker 1: of soils support plant life, and that is true, but
Speaker 1: they also help control the composition of the atmosphere through
Speaker 1: what through their CEO to production and or sequestration. Methane
Speaker 1: is produced by soils, Nitrous oxide is produced by soils.
Speaker 1: So soils through their production and consumption of gases, helped
Speaker 1: regulate the composition of the atmosphere, which these days with people,
Speaker 1: you know, talking about global warming, that's an important thing
Speaker 1: that soils do. Hop out um the ability of soils
Speaker 1: to hold and purify water. Every drop of rainfall pretty
Speaker 1: much interacts with soil and the quality of the soils
Speaker 1: then tends to impact the quality of the water. Where
Speaker 1: would we be without soils to hold water? We would
Speaker 1: have massive floods. We would have no mechanism by which
Speaker 1: store water for plants to take up. Later on, I
Speaker 1: asked Dr Miller about the composition of soils as compared
Speaker 1: to the human body. Here's what he had to say,
Speaker 1: Dr Miller. In the Book of Genesis, it talks about
Speaker 1: how man was formed from the earth. But I remember,
Speaker 1: when i've because hellel first chapter he talks about that event.
Speaker 1: Can you explain to me just about how literally the
Speaker 1: human body is made of the same things that the
Speaker 1: soil is. There's no question that's true. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are only what I don't know how many naturally occurring
Speaker 1: elements there are in the periodic table these days there
Speaker 1: used to be ninety two or something like that. The
Speaker 1: principal elements that compose us and that compose the soils
Speaker 1: are effectively the same elements. In fact, interesting story and
Speaker 1: that is that some people are proponents these days of
Speaker 1: what are called green burials. Are you are you familiar
Speaker 1: with green burials? Okay, instead of embalming the human body
Speaker 1: and instead of putting it in a casket which then
Speaker 1: gets put into a sarcophagus. The green burial lists will
Speaker 1: call them advocate non preservation of the body and burial
Speaker 1: within twenty four hours. Directly into the soil and the idea.
Speaker 1: It's and of interesting idea, but rather to allow the
Speaker 1: elements that are in the human body to return to
Speaker 1: the soil in a natural way, interesting stuff, Dr Miller.
Speaker 1: In modern times, soil degradation continues to define our existence.
Speaker 1: Dr Miller will now go into a modern example of
Speaker 1: a soil issue that nearly snuffed us out here in America.
Speaker 1: Hang on with me, boys were about to get out
Speaker 1: of all this nerdy soil stuff and talk about whitetailed deer,
Speaker 1: or maybe soils have a ton to do with white
Speaker 1: tailed deer. Stand By, I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: probably would say, well, the Romans and the Messopotamians, they
Speaker 1: lived thousands of you. They didn't know any better. We
Speaker 1: know better. They might say that the gym on the
Speaker 1: street or marry on the street. You tell them about
Speaker 1: the importance of soils, and they go, we got nothing
Speaker 1: to worry about. The scientists have figured this out. We
Speaker 1: know how to take care of our soils well. It
Speaker 1: wasn't that long ago in this country that we had
Speaker 1: a massive erosional event called the dust bowl, right, I
Speaker 1: mean nineteen thirties, early nineteen thirties, south central United States.
Speaker 1: We had plowed up from from Fence Road to Fence
Speaker 1: Road because suddenly we had tractors. I mean that was
Speaker 1: kind of the same time that tractors were becoming available,
Speaker 1: and we had had plentiful rainfall over a period of
Speaker 1: several years, and so people just planted wheat right and left,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden one spring, there was no rain,
Speaker 1: and so they had pulverized the soil. They had cleared
Speaker 1: those southern prairies of all native vegetation. So here they
Speaker 1: were over tilled, powdery, dry as a bone, and these
Speaker 1: huge Santa Anna winds came out of the west, and uh,
Speaker 1: I wasn't there. I'm old, but I'm not that old.
Speaker 1: But my dad was alive. My dad was born in
Speaker 1: twenty three and as a kid, he remembers dust in
Speaker 1: Indiana blown in from the dust bol and said, the
Speaker 1: morning sunrises in the evening sunsets were absolutely remarkable as
Speaker 1: a result of all this dust in the atmosphere. Well,
Speaker 1: the amount of soil that was removed from the southern
Speaker 1: plains was unbelievable as a result of this wind erosion event. So,
Speaker 1: while yes, we have learned a lot since the time
Speaker 1: of the Romans and the Mesopotamians, we did the same
Speaker 1: thing years ago right here in this country where we
Speaker 1: allowed this tremendous degradation of the land to occur. That's
Speaker 1: a good place to explain to us how soil in
Speaker 1: the span of human lifetimes really is not a renewable resource.
Speaker 1: Good point, it is not because we think of we
Speaker 1: think of the soil is well, that's part of the
Speaker 1: beauty of soil, is it. It can be restored and
Speaker 1: you can do things to bring back soil health. But
Speaker 1: it is a long term process. It is in fact,
Speaker 1: and we didn't talk about that, but I mean the
Speaker 1: kinds of times frames that we're talking about here. In
Speaker 1: order to produce one inch of soil, let's say that
Speaker 1: in an under a natural kind of a of a
Speaker 1: setting hundreds to thousands of years to produce one has
Speaker 1: of soil. And so this is a very very very
Speaker 1: slow process. The soils outside our window here, outside my
Speaker 1: office window, have been in the process of being weathered
Speaker 1: and turned into soil for literally millions of years. These
Speaker 1: soils are millions of years old out here yet and
Speaker 1: so how rapidly can soils your road, Well, think about
Speaker 1: it an erosional event like the dust bowl. You can
Speaker 1: remove two feet of soil in a matter of an afternoon.
Speaker 1: And I emphasized this in my course. They are essential
Speaker 1: to life. They are delicate. You have to be gentle
Speaker 1: with them when as soon as you remove the vegetative cover,
Speaker 1: you have exposed that soil to potential disaster through erosion.
Speaker 1: Even though we have this advanced industrial society, the fragility
Speaker 1: of our soils is something that we can never forget
Speaker 1: about and that we need to continue to pay attention to.
Speaker 1: No matter if you live in urban or rural areas,
Speaker 1: whether you're a farmer or an insurance agent, we're all
Speaker 1: connected to the soil. I now want to ask Dr
Speaker 1: Miller about the fertile soils on the earth called mala sols,
Speaker 1: some of which are in the Great Plains of the
Speaker 1: United States, and these soils are very rare. Our mala
Speaker 1: sols in the US developed under tall grass prairie, immense
Speaker 1: herds of grazing bison and other ungulates. And the perfect
Speaker 1: mix of rainfall, freezing and thawing of the soil. Freezing
Speaker 1: solid of soils like in the midwestern United States, slows
Speaker 1: down the decomposition of organic matter, allowing it to build
Speaker 1: up over the years organic matters dead stuff that used
Speaker 1: to be alive. Soil in the southern latitudes stays warmer longer,
Speaker 1: and he composes this organic matter, the good stuff, quicker,
Speaker 1: which ultimately makes the soils less fertile. Here's what he
Speaker 1: has to say about malasols. So it was kind of
Speaker 1: like the perfect storm. Indeed, it was to have these
Speaker 1: exactly this incredible soil just in these pockets. And you know,
Speaker 1: you find that in other parts of the world. The
Speaker 1: other place that you can find soils as good as
Speaker 1: the ones they're in central US or in the Ukraine,
Speaker 1: um Central Europe, Central Europe, East East, Central Europe. I
Speaker 1: would say, you know, the steps the steps of that
Speaker 1: would be western Russia. You know, during the Second World War,
Speaker 1: Hitler wanted to conquer the East because they had what
Speaker 1: they had, they had resources. One of the things he
Speaker 1: was thinking about it was the Ukrainian mollosols, these absolutely
Speaker 1: fantastic soils. Germany doesn't have the kind of soils they
Speaker 1: needed to grow their food. Molasolsosils. You're number triggered that
Speaker 1: that's like the buzzword of soils. You had a flashback there,
Speaker 1: I can tell you had a flashback. Mala so I
Speaker 1: mean would like the greatest soil. They are those? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: soft black, high in organic matter, deep, just grow virtually
Speaker 1: anything without even trying. How many places on the Earth
Speaker 1: have a molasol? Well, that's a good question, Central United States,
Speaker 1: the Ukraine. There are also monasols in Argentina, the Pompous
Speaker 1: area of South America. Again, that would be what on
Speaker 1: the other side of the equator, across the same in
Speaker 1: the same latitude south as we are north. Yeah. What
Speaker 1: about Africa? Malasils in Africa virtually none. What about Asia?
Speaker 1: I think there are some monasols in China, but they're rare,
Speaker 1: and that's why we're so lucky in this country to
Speaker 1: have those. Do you feel like that that the the
Speaker 1: the great plains, the bread bass good of America has
Speaker 1: been part of our success questions, Absolutely, no question that's
Speaker 1: that have been able to I mean just this huge
Speaker 1: number of tens of millions of hectares of soil that
Speaker 1: are so productive. We've never had to worry about food
Speaker 1: in this country ever. That's really bizarre when you think
Speaker 1: about the incredible, vast differences in topography across the earth,
Speaker 1: and that there's these pockets that jump started civilizations. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like they had a they had a pass
Speaker 1: code that nobody else had, and we were lucky enough
Speaker 1: to sit right on top of one here in North America. Dr.
Speaker 1: Grant Woods is a wildlife biologist and is known as
Speaker 1: one of the top dear biologists in the country. He's
Speaker 1: wearing a yellow fire retarded shirt and his pants are
Speaker 1: stained with black ash. He's just walked in from a
Speaker 1: controlled burn on his family property. Twenty years ago, he
Speaker 1: embarked on a land experiment, approving grounds, if you will,
Speaker 1: when he and his wife purchased a large degradated property
Speaker 1: in the ozarks of southern Missouri. He actually named it
Speaker 1: the proving ground, the region not being known for high
Speaker 1: quality deer. I want to learn about his story and
Speaker 1: it's connection to the soil. Dr. Woods, tell me about
Speaker 1: the history of this property. You've worked extremely hard for
Speaker 1: almost last twenty years. I'm interested in your how the
Speaker 1: property started, your overall objectives and ultimately how the soil
Speaker 1: quality tied into that. So it's been it's just a
Speaker 1: fabulous story. My wife, Tracy and I were living in
Speaker 1: South Carolina. I schooled at George and Plan soon and
Speaker 1: got out and we've gotten married and and we were
Speaker 1: looking for land and we scraped up her money and
Speaker 1: about thirteen acres and men I had a food plot
Speaker 1: and my dad's had a little buck was longbow. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're living high on the hog, you know. And I'm
Speaker 1: from the those arts as you know, and back Viston
Speaker 1: family and Trace and I went to get a little
Speaker 1: ice cream and and she picked up real estate Guide
Speaker 1: and uh so here's a here's a property self kind
Speaker 1: of sounds like we've been looking for and just for
Speaker 1: even read the ad, just called a realtor. Anyway, we
Speaker 1: got here and there was a guy, a gentleman, had passed.
Speaker 1: He had been a cow firmer and he passed seven
Speaker 1: years previous. Left it to a local hospital and never
Speaker 1: gonna sell some big developer because we're next to Branson, Missouri,
Speaker 1: and I think they had in fact had it so
Speaker 1: but didn't close and just put it back on the market.
Speaker 1: And and we looked at it. Men as rough as
Speaker 1: a cop. I mean, you know, locust sprouts in the
Speaker 1: opening where they'd fed hay, and bare rocks showing all
Speaker 1: over the place being grazed to the you know, the
Speaker 1: neighbors have been running cows without the hospital knowing. So
Speaker 1: we made an offer and it wasn't near what they're asking,
Speaker 1: and we just felt what we could take down. And
Speaker 1: they said no, no, heck know, in a real short letter.
Speaker 1: And a year later, nine eleven happened, and uh, they
Speaker 1: wrote us and says your offer still good? Yeah, And
Speaker 1: we said, heck yeah. I like a story with some
Speaker 1: risk involved in it, one that took some guts. The
Speaker 1: woods investing in this property was just that they put
Speaker 1: it all on the table. I want to hear what
Speaker 1: his first step was in working with the property, and
Speaker 1: we'll meet an influential player in Dr Wood's life, a
Speaker 1: man of the land. I called the local co op
Speaker 1: to get some fertilizer because I had been schooled and
Speaker 1: fertilizer and soil tests. You live by that soil test.
Speaker 1: And the guy made one pass around the little food
Speaker 1: plot and said, no, it's too rocky. I'm gonna trip
Speaker 1: my equipment and he drove out my driveway with the
Speaker 1: fertilizer I had paid for in the back of the truck.
Speaker 1: And like many things, you hear about this in hindsight,
Speaker 1: you know, I was a blessing. But at the time
Speaker 1: I thought, I don't beat that guy up something, you know.
Speaker 1: And so it was gonna reign next couple of days
Speaker 1: and you get a food plot it in orth. I
Speaker 1: drove down to Arkansas closest equipment dealer and was gonna
Speaker 1: buy a fertilizer spreader and so I could spread moan.
Speaker 1: And this old boy said, you don't need that. My
Speaker 1: uncle Galen, he makes composts, and I've heard about composting.
Speaker 1: College poultry business is of course really big in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Winner in meadow, Uncle Galen, and he's crazy some men.
Speaker 1: I'll drive your slopes. Ain't no problem for me, So
Speaker 1: sign me up. You know. Here we go and Galen,
Speaker 1: he's a man of the land, and he understood soil.
Speaker 1: I understood soil chemistry. He understood soil, and he started
Speaker 1: teaching me about the soil, not trying to sell me
Speaker 1: this product. And it was too rocky to even this.
Speaker 1: So the county here right lived the NRCS office rents
Speaker 1: no til drills. They're primarily made for pasture, not going
Speaker 1: crops here, and they're beat up from last guy that
Speaker 1: owned rented it, you know, and rented that and playing
Speaker 1: a little food plot and published some pictures and some
Speaker 1: magazine back in the day, and they're like, man, you're
Speaker 1: crazy to be planting those rocks and men crops are growing.
Speaker 1: We started with the grazed out, burned out cattle wrench,
Speaker 1: and twenty years later, in some of those same plots,
Speaker 1: we've built over six inches of rich, black, lush top soil.
Speaker 1: And of all the accomplishments whatever my career, probably the
Speaker 1: one I gives me the most satisfaction is there's no
Speaker 1: plaque on the wall or anything. That's when I walk
Speaker 1: out during those fields and I just reached down and
Speaker 1: grab a handful and smell it, and it smells like
Speaker 1: really rich garden dirt here on top of those art mountain.
Speaker 1: That's that's what drives me. Yeah, So, what were you
Speaker 1: trying to do with this place on a general scale
Speaker 1: in terms of wildlife? Yeah? So so again, I was
Speaker 1: raised in Theose Arts, and I clearly remember the first
Speaker 1: deer I ever saw My oldest daughter is Raleigh oldinlys
Speaker 1: for a dweller by the deer meadow. My youngest daughter
Speaker 1: is ray R a Hebrew for dough deer. Kind of
Speaker 1: a big thing in our lives, right And uh so
Speaker 1: I wanted to have a place that we could see dear,
Speaker 1: that my dad and brought in law and family could
Speaker 1: hunt deer, friends could hunt deer. And in the first
Speaker 1: year I saw one deer, I saw a tail going
Speaker 1: around a cedar tree. We did not hunt deer here
Speaker 1: for five years. Now for Tracy and I, this was
Speaker 1: a investment of a lifetime. I'll just do you know,
Speaker 1: we don't have many stock market this. This is what
Speaker 1: we were pouring into. And I bought a lot for
Speaker 1: deer and they were not dear here. And the deer
Speaker 1: that were here the old statement, but the dear it
Speaker 1: looks like a shepherd dog or you know, a small
Speaker 1: but that's kind of what we were seeing, you know.
Speaker 1: And so my goal was to improve the habitat, both
Speaker 1: then food plots and native habitat and to where we
Speaker 1: could just have some good quality family hunting. That was
Speaker 1: my objective. And food plots were going to play and
Speaker 1: have played a big role in that, but through time
Speaker 1: of learning about soil and the potential of native habitat,
Speaker 1: that's when you came here. We were getting ready to
Speaker 1: prescribe fire, which has big implications for the soil in
Speaker 1: reasons some ways people may not think of. And so
Speaker 1: I got hooked on in this path of having better
Speaker 1: deer hunting, improving the habitat quality. And here in the
Speaker 1: Ozark's of course, Lewis and Claw passing north to here
Speaker 1: the Missouri rivers three fires in north Arapin on where
Speaker 1: you are. But the early explorer to come through here
Speaker 1: is Schoolcraft, and you can buy his journal and reading
Speaker 1: his notes and all the wildlife he saw and the
Speaker 1: lush creek bottoms, and he passed pretty close to right here.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking this land has potential. Some of it's a
Speaker 1: rotor down the White River and into the Mississippi, but
Speaker 1: the potentials here and reaching that potential, which I'm not
Speaker 1: and I would like the state that. I don't think
Speaker 1: any person living right now are very very few have
Speaker 1: ever seen the soil or the habitats potential, because almost
Speaker 1: everyone this planet has been degraded, not intentionally necessarily when
Speaker 1: the early settlers come to this continent. May of fact,
Speaker 1: they're trying to make a living. They're hacking out a
Speaker 1: wilderness and they're plowing of mules and durst going down
Speaker 1: to you know, the rivers like crazy. They weren't all
Speaker 1: gonna cause erosion. They're just trying to make a living.
Speaker 1: There's no anger in me over this. That's hard for
Speaker 1: us to understand, isn't it. Because we walk out into
Speaker 1: a big eastern deciduous for us like this, and we
Speaker 1: just assume that this is what it's looked like for
Speaker 1: the last thousand years, which is just untrue. One of
Speaker 1: the comments from one of the early explorers are really
Speaker 1: stuck in my head. Is that all the forest he
Speaker 1: wrote through, he sa he loved it because he could
Speaker 1: ride a horse there and never knocked the hat off
Speaker 1: his head. And so the Great Forest of the Eastern
Speaker 1: United States primarily have been harvested about three times. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, we're looking at leftovers after twenty years. I
Speaker 1: want to understand what's happened. You'll hear dr woods mentioned
Speaker 1: using a scoring system to measure white tailed deer antlers.
Speaker 1: Many of you would be very familiar with this, but
Speaker 1: if you're not, it's a prescribed way to measure the
Speaker 1: length with and circumference of deer antlers. They're multiple record
Speaker 1: keeping organizations, two of which Dr Woods refers to at
Speaker 1: the Pope and Young Club, which is for archery kills only,
Speaker 1: and the Boone and Crockett Club. These organizations were originally
Speaker 1: designed to incentivize harvesting older age male animals, and their
Speaker 1: influence on North American hunting culture and management has been
Speaker 1: invaluable to the success of wildlife populations here. They helped
Speaker 1: move our hunting culture out of a market hunting quote
Speaker 1: if it's brown, it's down mentality into a selective, management
Speaker 1: based mentality, which prevails in hunting culture today. So what's
Speaker 1: it like today? So I'm not really a score guy.
Speaker 1: I don't mean it's boastful, but I think as a
Speaker 1: majorings dick. When I got here, I was more into
Speaker 1: scores back then. Boy, if I killed a you know,
Speaker 1: one five plus a bow, I was. I was writing
Speaker 1: Pope and Young you know, well, A lot of people
Speaker 1: did back in the day, right, especially in areas like
Speaker 1: this where they were rare and the records still. I
Speaker 1: think last I checked here, no Boone and Crocketts and
Speaker 1: one that made p y and that was like a
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty one. I forget somewhere in there. It's
Speaker 1: pretty common now that we're gonna take you know, one forties,
Speaker 1: one fifty every year multiples, and we have a one
Speaker 1: seventy plus on the wall. So it's change, and you know,
Speaker 1: and everyone wants to laus he shipped in some deer,
Speaker 1: you know, no folks, and and and along that line
Speaker 1: to talk about how important soils are and sun reaching
Speaker 1: the ground. Northern Missouri, of course, is known as record
Speaker 1: book deer country. And the Bulkaals deer were restored. They
Speaker 1: were wiped out. I mean they were gone. There weren't
Speaker 1: even residual populations, and they were restored from one of
Speaker 1: the refuges about twenty miles of crow flies and a
Speaker 1: couple other here in southern Missouri. There Ozart's genetics on
Speaker 1: better groceries, and better groceries requires better dirt, and so
Speaker 1: massive deer there. I got thinking, well, you know, that's
Speaker 1: a big area. People know they grow big deer. They're
Speaker 1: passing up a lot of deer. But what can I
Speaker 1: do here? And I consider, for you know, mountain country,
Speaker 1: timber country man and one forties a dog good deer
Speaker 1: one seventies like a two twenty and I but I
Speaker 1: mean that's cooking with gas right there. So there are
Speaker 1: many indicators in evaluating ecosystem health. But if one of
Speaker 1: your primary objectives is to produce a healthy dear herd,
Speaker 1: analyzing dear antler growth is a great way to do it.
Speaker 1: Where nutrition is poor and animals are stressed, antler growth
Speaker 1: will be minimal. Large antlers, and the presence of mature
Speaker 1: adult males indicates positive herd health. By understanding the historical
Speaker 1: antler development patterns in the region. If you remember he
Speaker 1: said the biggest deer in the county was in the
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty inch range, it's clear that the proving
Speaker 1: ground has a healthy dear herd. In the last few
Speaker 1: years they've taken a hundred and seventy plus buck off
Speaker 1: the property. That's about the difference between the mid sized
Speaker 1: suv and a monster truck in the dear world. But
Speaker 1: how did he do it? The answer might surprise you.
Speaker 1: If you till the soil, you decrease the value to soil.
Speaker 1: There's there, there's I know, and you're staying well man,
Speaker 1: And the only know one I see these farmers on
Speaker 1: sixty shank plows. I mean, that's all true. They do,
Speaker 1: but there is no chance and there's one real simple
Speaker 1: reason and all the other debates, there's just one reason.
Speaker 1: When you tell soil or of course, you let more
Speaker 1: air oxygen touch more surfacers soil than if you didn't
Speaker 1: tell it. Think of the great prairies buffalo run around. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: that oxidizes very powerful chemical reaction portions of the soil
Speaker 1: and terminate some of the good microbes that live in soil,
Speaker 1: and allows the microbes that kind of are anti our
Speaker 1: mission of building soil health to populate more. Just that
Speaker 1: one simple thing. No one can defeat that argument. So,
Speaker 1: because it was so rocky here, I started renting the
Speaker 1: no till drill and I've always no tilled. I have
Speaker 1: not disk in over two decades. I've never had a
Speaker 1: disc on this property period, And that's been a big
Speaker 1: secret to improve in our soul's health and growing bigger deer.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, I thought tilling was good. This is
Speaker 1: an ancient human practice. You tell a garden when you
Speaker 1: want to control weeds and ake up the soil so
Speaker 1: that new plants can take root. Well, what dr woods
Speaker 1: and many others are learning. Is that telling has its
Speaker 1: place in some applications, but undoubtedly degrade soil health, creating
Speaker 1: a vicious cycle. And agriculture telling destroys that natural soil
Speaker 1: structure and soil microbes, which are the m v P
Speaker 1: of soil health and plant growth. It's a complex story.
Speaker 1: Standby because we're about to learn the importance of carbon.
Speaker 1: You may be saying, Clay, I don't give a rat's
Speaker 1: tale about carbon, but it's influenced in human life. Is incredible.
Speaker 1: I wonder if Dan boon knew anything about carbon. I
Speaker 1: digress in college port I was called n P and
Speaker 1: K and malybd um and zinc and boron and all
Speaker 1: the men. It's all cool stuff. But you know, we
Speaker 1: humans and deer and most plants, the biggest element in
Speaker 1: our bodies is carbon. Carbon is delimited resource. And there's
Speaker 1: a lot on the news about carbon now, But I'm
Speaker 1: just talking practice. Go boots on the dirt carbons while
Speaker 1: we want you probably know it's you know, really good soil.
Speaker 1: And we talked about EWA some places like that, the delta,
Speaker 1: it's black carbons, black poor soil. You hear your farmers say, well,
Speaker 1: my soil is light and always go light. Soil is
Speaker 1: light colored, it's had all the carbon taken out of it.
Speaker 1: And here's here's this maybe a little heavy. You can
Speaker 1: slap me around a little bit here, But there's an
Speaker 1: economy in the soil. The economy is if you have
Speaker 1: a healthy microbe population, Okay, they need carbon. Plants are
Speaker 1: photosynthesizing see six whole bunch of carbon first part of
Speaker 1: photosynthesis equation. Microbes actually go around the plant root or
Speaker 1: in the plant and trade phosphorus potassium. But we're on
Speaker 1: the libium and want the plant needs for that carbon
Speaker 1: coming out of exudates. That's a beautiful, beautiful economy. It's
Speaker 1: a win win economy. And one disk in putting oxygen
Speaker 1: in soil kills that economy. And therefore we must use
Speaker 1: synthetic fertilizer. We can go wicked cycle there doesn't it
Speaker 1: and we can grow crops. You know, we didn't know
Speaker 1: what nitrogen was or we could produce it anyway until
Speaker 1: World War two, and that was part of building bombs.
Speaker 1: And the German scientists that figured out how to make
Speaker 1: nitrogen escape from Germany and brought it here. And when
Speaker 1: the war is over and when they felt we didn't
Speaker 1: need these bombs while we're gonna do so well, maybe
Speaker 1: we use a fertilizer. I don't know. That's how the
Speaker 1: whole nitrogen fertilizers thing literally got startled. That's interesting, But
Speaker 1: we think about this over every acre on the planet.
Speaker 1: That's a big statement there. There's about thirty tons or
Speaker 1: more of nitrogen in the air. Why would anyone ever
Speaker 1: pay for nitrogen? Or we look at buffalo and we
Speaker 1: think there's about sixty million buffalo on the Great Prairie.
Speaker 1: There's about sixty million cattle now, and no one was
Speaker 1: putting out synthetic fertilizer to feed all these bison. What
Speaker 1: you'll learn when you dive in deeper to this philosophy
Speaker 1: is that chemical fertilizers, though they've been instrumental in modern
Speaker 1: agriculture and feeding the planet, they're also a massive source
Speaker 1: of soil degradation and the fuel of a wildly unsustainable cycle. Dr. Woods,
Speaker 1: along with many others, say there's a better way. In
Speaker 1: a world that talks a lot about excess carbon in
Speaker 1: the air, intact soils have the ability to sequester or
Speaker 1: store incredible amounts of carbon. As you've heard Dr. Wood
Speaker 1: says he's built up to six inches of rich soil
Speaker 1: in his food plots in the twenty years he's managed
Speaker 1: the proving grounds. This is massive. I want to learn
Speaker 1: more about this process, So talk to me about the
Speaker 1: accelerated soil building. So, you know, when I was in
Speaker 1: school and always you know wild if first needs some
Speaker 1: good soil classes, there's always one thing stuck in my
Speaker 1: mind talking about thousand years to make an inch of soil.
Speaker 1: I just seems I can't even really envision thousand years.
Speaker 1: I mean, we through out these big numbers, but a
Speaker 1: decade is a big change for most humans, right, and
Speaker 1: I think a thousand years is true. If you're talking
Speaker 1: about the Green Canyon weathering and making a little dirt
Speaker 1: and the crevice somewhere, you know, it's a so slow process.
Speaker 1: You know, that's probably why humans have such a hard
Speaker 1: time connecting with soil, is it typically is a slow process,
Speaker 1: and it's something that you you you inherit a baseline
Speaker 1: of understanding of what a place looks like. And the
Speaker 1: human life is so short compared to the life cycles
Speaker 1: of Planet Earth ecosystems. Yeah, and when when we got mislead,
Speaker 1: but that place has good dirt or that place will
Speaker 1: never have good dirt. There was never a process talked about.
Speaker 1: And so Galen, back to my friend, Galen was a
Speaker 1: very is a very wise man. And Galen started teaching
Speaker 1: me these principles. And I've just simplified them a lot
Speaker 1: over time, and I've learned from other I did not
Speaker 1: come up on this my own. Maybe I've made some
Speaker 1: observations to tweak it over time, but there's basically a
Speaker 1: couple of principles that work anywhere equator to anywhere plants grow.
Speaker 1: You need to soil covered every day. Out of here.
Speaker 1: When I say covered, maybe it's in the winter, but
Speaker 1: there's a thatch or a mulch on top of it,
Speaker 1: so the soil is always covered. We call that armor.
Speaker 1: So als it wasn't covered. You need a living plant
Speaker 1: as many days out of year. Some plants grow better
Speaker 1: in the spring. It's all due to daylight and soil temperture,
Speaker 1: some in the summer, some in the fall. So just
Speaker 1: having soil always covered minimal disturbance to the soil. And
Speaker 1: that's not only physical we talking about disking, plowing, but
Speaker 1: chemical synthetic fertilizer is we all think the chemicals I
Speaker 1: think is herbiside herbside, but man synthetic nitrogen, foster's potassium.
Speaker 1: Those babies are, you know, I think i'd probably rather
Speaker 1: I don't know if i'd say something air and no,
Speaker 1: but I probably rare drink a teaspoon of life for
Speaker 1: stade than I would suck a teaspoon of synthetic nitrogen
Speaker 1: down because the results of that second one is gonna
Speaker 1: be really bad. I promise you you're not gonna hunt anymore.
Speaker 1: And then this one, it's just an observation, just I mean,
Speaker 1: I used to be uh work as a little naturalist
Speaker 1: out and your stone a little bit in a few
Speaker 1: places like that. And I was young roaming around America
Speaker 1: and uh men, there's a big diversity of plants I
Speaker 1: talked about us. I didn't a find over a hundred
Speaker 1: seventy species of plants here that's native habitat. And that's
Speaker 1: part of my release process of native habitat. But how
Speaker 1: about in our food plots. We're all thinking that perfect
Speaker 1: row of corn, perfect patch of soybeans, perfect clover field monoculture. Well,
Speaker 1: if we go back to the real reason we have monoculture,
Speaker 1: so a combine would work, or the planter would only
Speaker 1: plant one size seed at a time, or guy, should
Speaker 1: you know we can only use this herbicide on top
Speaker 1: of this, it's gonna kill everything else. And I've learned
Speaker 1: through otherwise people. I want as much of life out
Speaker 1: there as I can get. Man, I want bugs and
Speaker 1: earthworms and microbes. And if I got a ragweed and
Speaker 1: a food plot, IDEA can eat that too, you know,
Speaker 1: I just but man, I want diversity, so my blends
Speaker 1: will Typically I always want to at minimum one lagoon,
Speaker 1: think beans, peas in summer, winter peas, alfalfa or something
Speaker 1: like that in the cooler season. I want a broadleaf
Speaker 1: plant that could be a lagoon like a pea or
Speaker 1: a bean. But sunflowers is a great broadleaf, and I
Speaker 1: want a brassica. It can maybe collards in the warm
Speaker 1: sea eason or summer, and turnips rashes in the winter.
Speaker 1: I want those four I want. I want to grass
Speaker 1: and again summer could be corn or milo. Those are
Speaker 1: all get the grass familiars, other grasses fall, wheat, ryots
Speaker 1: or common When hunters use, people use. And once you
Speaker 1: find out when you get at least members of those
Speaker 1: four types of plants, you stimulate more microbes. So again,
Speaker 1: you know, the textbooks used to say, maybe still say
Speaker 1: takes a thousand years building an inch of soil, which
Speaker 1: I think is true on raw rock. But I think,
Speaker 1: and I've witnessed here, I think it's very possible, very realistic.
Speaker 1: If you're planting a blend of species, not a monoculture,
Speaker 1: a good blend, and you have a decent growing season,
Speaker 1: I think you can realistically build a quarter inch of
Speaker 1: soil a year, and that's cooking with gas. And on
Speaker 1: this place, you've seen how much so so you started
Speaker 1: with more or less rock on the tops of these knolls,
Speaker 1: and you have six inches six inches deep of good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's not a linear because I keep learning, and
Speaker 1: at first I was planting Monaco, and I think our
Speaker 1: rate increases even faster. Now tell me in in short
Speaker 1: the cycle of growing and then crimping and then planting
Speaker 1: into Yeah, our system is really easy and simplified. We
Speaker 1: take way less hours we used to the plant. We
Speaker 1: about acres of food plot. So in the spring, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna always have cereal rye and probably crimson clover. Blanche
Speaker 1: is some really good annual clover, and it's gonna be
Speaker 1: I'm gonna wait a little later, and other people are
Speaker 1: playing football, so I'm gonna play a little later because
Speaker 1: I want those plants to maximize your value. Right, So
Speaker 1: I call it the dose st age. When I can
Speaker 1: take that wheat rye or whatever seed head and squish
Speaker 1: it and it's it's form like it's mature, but it's moist,
Speaker 1: it's not hard, it's obviously not viable. Then I'm gonna
Speaker 1: drill right through that. It's called planting green. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take my notes. You've got a stand of a stand
Speaker 1: of these things you've just said, and you're planning right
Speaker 1: back in right. I haven't. I haven't treated her, so
Speaker 1: I haven't done anything. And I've not done nothing except
Speaker 1: crank the tracker and put the drill on, put a
Speaker 1: good warm season or summer, blend the seed in there,
Speaker 1: and you're find at drilling through standing. I started by
Speaker 1: terminating crop first with a crimper, but then you got
Speaker 1: to stick that. And I don't care how good a
Speaker 1: drill you got, him one hard to cut through there.
Speaker 1: It's not designed for that. So planting green, I learned
Speaker 1: from a farmer in Ohio, is much better. And then
Speaker 1: I'll let that I'll probably let that Germany. I'll let
Speaker 1: my new crop get an inch or too tall, and
Speaker 1: then I'll use a cramper, which is like a flat
Speaker 1: roller a round roller, but has a fin about every
Speaker 1: eight inches and you're dragging this behind your track and
Speaker 1: this rolling. But a cramper is designed to break the
Speaker 1: plants circulatory system every few inches and it terminates. Got
Speaker 1: these ridges. It looks like a tire. It looks like
Speaker 1: a mud tire. It's got ridges, but they're they're six
Speaker 1: inches sticking off, you know, well, just dealing and so.
Speaker 1: But the brand new plants are so pliable they just
Speaker 1: pop back up. If you had a really good fall crop,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have about four inches a thick mulch, so
Speaker 1: you've killed the stuff that was standing, but the plants
Speaker 1: in the dough stage aren't gonna. We started last fall
Speaker 1: and we planned the fall crop a blend had some
Speaker 1: big cereal grains in there and some lagoons and peas
Speaker 1: or whatever. And now spring. The soul temperatures at least
Speaker 1: sixty degrees at two inches deep at nine am sounds
Speaker 1: really picky. So that's how you're building a quarter inch
Speaker 1: of good soil well and everyone men pluted for years.
Speaker 1: We look at Watch up top. Galen taught me to
Speaker 1: look below the soil like an iceberg. Of an iceberg
Speaker 1: is below the water, only ten percent you can see
Speaker 1: above if you didn't catch that all. Dr Woods has
Speaker 1: an incredibly informative weekly show called Growing Dear TV where
Speaker 1: he explains all these processes in great detail for whitetail
Speaker 1: and turkey related land management content. His stuff is incredible. Hey,
Speaker 1: that was a pretty cool analogy on the icebergs and microbes.
Speaker 1: There they were again, diversity of plants species stimulates microbial activity,
Speaker 1: and monocultures degrade microbial activity. I think it's wild how
Speaker 1: something so small and invisible to the human eye is
Speaker 1: the fuel of the soil and thus the heartbeat of
Speaker 1: life on the planet. We can't talk about soil without
Speaker 1: understanding something about erosion. Dr Woods has a pretty wild
Speaker 1: example that will paint a vivid picture. So obviously, you
Speaker 1: can't lose soil and improve its health. You can't have
Speaker 1: erosion because the smaller particle usually the better quality dirt.
Speaker 1: So if you're seeing rivlets or ditches go across the field,
Speaker 1: you're it's being degraded. The best stup's leaving. How can
Speaker 1: you stop erosion? Man? Everyone thinks that's some expensive system
Speaker 1: or people tile fields to let moisture out. You don't
Speaker 1: need to do any of that stuff, right. Plant roots
Speaker 1: should go six feet deep easy, that's your tiling system.
Speaker 1: So again, if we've got the soil always covered, we've
Speaker 1: got thatched from the previous crop. I call that mulch
Speaker 1: and a living crop. The rain drop never really strikes
Speaker 1: the soil. It hits the living crop or hits the thatch,
Speaker 1: and the wind or whatever slows its way down and
Speaker 1: then it infiltrates through that satch and it just soaks
Speaker 1: in the soil. And if you've got a really good
Speaker 1: roots system, it's just gonna run right down that route, right,
Speaker 1: It's just gonna infiltrate versus running off. What are the
Speaker 1: stats for the soil and our agricultural belt for how
Speaker 1: much is running off? Yeah? I know exactly and Iowa
Speaker 1: because they IWA does a great job monitoring these things,
Speaker 1: and they do it through weirds that you know, Little
Speaker 1: Creek have a weird so much sentiments going dn't really
Speaker 1: scientific stuff. Uh. They average about five tons per acre
Speaker 1: per year running running off leaving going to the Missisippi
Speaker 1: River and you say you know again, ahead, you give me.
Speaker 1: Remember that the thickness of a piece of typing paper
Speaker 1: over an acre tune ee feet by tune or eighteen
Speaker 1: feet is a ton, just the thickness. So if you
Speaker 1: see a couple of ditches six inches deep to a field,
Speaker 1: there's tons. It's tons of the tons right there. If
Speaker 1: you start paying attention to soil erosion, you'll see it everywhere.
Speaker 1: And it's pretty eye opening when you understand the value
Speaker 1: of that soil. Dr Woods has a strong opinion about
Speaker 1: the significance that soil help plays on the earth. He
Speaker 1: has strong words about the agricultural systems in this country,
Speaker 1: and I want to reiterate Dr Wood's position. He is
Speaker 1: pro agriculture, He's been a farmer, he was raised by farmers.
Speaker 1: But it's very adamant that there is a better way.
Speaker 1: I'm very excited about this. I think, I really think
Speaker 1: this is the best tool we have to improve our
Speaker 1: planet soil health, soil health. I mean, electric cars are great,
Speaker 1: and all these earth things are great, but practicality pricing
Speaker 1: timing farmers, this is well proven, can make more profit
Speaker 1: and improve the soil at the same time and obvious
Speaker 1: questions why aren't they doing it? And I'll just tell
Speaker 1: you besides white tailed deer hunters, farmers are the hardest
Speaker 1: set as people I've ever tried to work in my life.
Speaker 1: And that's being unfair. I mean, their liveloods this day.
Speaker 1: A big, massive change is a big risk for them.
Speaker 1: That would be like saying, Grant, we want you to
Speaker 1: go be a music composer. It'd be a total life
Speaker 1: change for me to relearn that. Well, the whole system
Speaker 1: is set up for them to be successful by using
Speaker 1: the old system. So what I'm hearing you say is
Speaker 1: there needs to be a reformation in the way the
Speaker 1: whole architecture of everything. Yes, and to take that further.
Speaker 1: And I'm angry about this, not just mad angry. The
Speaker 1: system is absolutely not promoting soil health improvement. It's promoting
Speaker 1: the use of certain products. And I'm not anti herbicide.
Speaker 1: I look at herbicide, as I explained, just like a
Speaker 1: root canal. Man. I don't want to have one, but
Speaker 1: it's better than my jaw rotten out. You know, I
Speaker 1: think farm farmers are I was raised on a farm.
Speaker 1: I'm passionate about farmers they got a hard life. I'm
Speaker 1: not talking to fifty acre corp farm here. I think
Speaker 1: it goes even further than that. If you really want
Speaker 1: to know why, I really think, well, don't you just
Speaker 1: ask me? Here's what I want. I want to hear
Speaker 1: you say in short, why you feel like soil is
Speaker 1: the way that we can turn this planet around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we know, and you're know. I talked about off
Speaker 1: air that when society civilizations harm or soil to society,
Speaker 1: or civilization fails, romans whatever, whatever. I think we can
Speaker 1: turn a society around for a couple of real simple reasons.
Speaker 1: We can reduce pollution significantly. Agg is the second largest
Speaker 1: provider of carbon because of disking, not the diesel coming
Speaker 1: out a tractor, because of releasing carbon from the soil. Member.
Speaker 1: Soil that's black has a lot of carbon in it.
Speaker 1: Red gray white soil is depleted a carbon. It will
Speaker 1: not be productive without a huge amount of synthetic inputs
Speaker 1: which are leaching into our groundwater too used to farms
Speaker 1: or hunted acres. T hunted acres, and you were making
Speaker 1: a living. Mama got a new car every now and then.
Speaker 1: Not that way anymore at all. Right, Corporate farms with
Speaker 1: government subsidies, if you're doing your genity vag And I
Speaker 1: know some beautiful examples of families that got sixty acres
Speaker 1: hunted acres and they're making a good income because they
Speaker 1: have such reduced inputs and their land is so healthy,
Speaker 1: it's so productive. I'll share with you just one, because
Speaker 1: a lot of count farmers out there right I used
Speaker 1: to raise cows. Here's an old boy up here north
Speaker 1: me About an hour I met at at a farmer's market.
Speaker 1: Got talking to him. He's got a hunted acre the
Speaker 1: land here in the those arts. He will sell fifty
Speaker 1: calves a year off a hundred acres of grass pasture,
Speaker 1: no supplemental feed. And he's doing what's called mob grazing.
Speaker 1: He may have the equivalent of a quarter two D
Speaker 1: fifty thousand pounds quarter million pounds of beef on an
Speaker 1: acre for an hour, and it's replicating what the buffalo did.
Speaker 1: And they're urinating and defecating, and a room and is
Speaker 1: full of microbes, are about a trillion microbes to her
Speaker 1: teaspoon and Rouman fluid. So they're salivating, urinating, defecating. They're
Speaker 1: putting those microbes right back in there. Which makes the
Speaker 1: plants grow faster. He's not using any fertilizer, no worm,
Speaker 1: no fly medicines because they're always moving. And then his
Speaker 1: wife has a chicken trailer and she follows the cows
Speaker 1: three days and they're cleaning up all the maggots out
Speaker 1: of cow poop pasture eggs. Eggs are about twelve dollars
Speaker 1: a dozen dollar an egg. That's pretty good money. Rule
Speaker 1: America is dead. There's no doubt about this. It's sad.
Speaker 1: I was raising Rule America. I love Rule America. If
Speaker 1: a fan can move out there and get sixty acres
Speaker 1: eight acres put in a good day's work, work five
Speaker 1: six days a week, they can make a living using
Speaker 1: this process. And to me, if we can get people
Speaker 1: making a good living with no government subsidies, improving the soil,
Speaker 1: improving the water, providing us better food to eat. Did
Speaker 1: you know that a lot of oranges and right now
Speaker 1: I have no vitamin seeing them because the soil is
Speaker 1: sol depleted. Did you know that spinach has less iron
Speaker 1: in it than it did on average thirty years ago
Speaker 1: because of depleted soils. Many of the diseases we're facing
Speaker 1: now to runheard of when you and I were boys
Speaker 1: were probably because of depleted soil health and therefore depleted
Speaker 1: nutrients in the food we eat. Take a pasture raised egg,
Speaker 1: stick your finger and skill it for the heats on.
Speaker 1: You can't hardly break the yolk taking egg of a
Speaker 1: chicken house It's like water. I'm not being mean. We're
Speaker 1: feeding a bunch of billions of people on the planet.
Speaker 1: But if our acres are more productive, we can feed
Speaker 1: even more people. We do not have to have these
Speaker 1: other inputs to feed more people. That is a myth.
Speaker 1: We just need to restore the health in our soil.
Speaker 1: I'm so passionate about this. I've share with you on
Speaker 1: my transplant patient. I go to male clinic once a
Speaker 1: year every year. From my annual checkup, boy's happening me
Speaker 1: with a dietitian, right. But the difference between and those
Speaker 1: are mountain deer that's eating really high quality native vegetation
Speaker 1: we're burning right now. Soon as it rain's gonna be
Speaker 1: really succulent, grow full of nutrients, full of minerals, versus
Speaker 1: the middle of iba soybean deer growing on synthetics. There's
Speaker 1: no comparison bite per bite in the nutrient content and
Speaker 1: my dietitians that the Male Clinic tell me keep eating
Speaker 1: what you eat. I'm twenty nine years alf a kidney transplant.
Speaker 1: I've been so blessed in life. Part of that is
Speaker 1: eating a healthy diet of wildlife. This is really affecting
Speaker 1: your the quality of your life big time. And at
Speaker 1: the end, I mean, I'm a hunter. I'm alive when
Speaker 1: I'm hunting. I'm in tune to everything around me when
Speaker 1: I'm hunting. But a hunt for me, I feel great pride,
Speaker 1: not in you know, a vacuum packed role. I feel
Speaker 1: pride of being a provider for my family of high
Speaker 1: quality meat. Man, that's just so cool when your family's
Speaker 1: involved and you kind of feel good. So I could
Speaker 1: be stack of firewood going in to fall man, you
Speaker 1: feel good right out. Olipil said it. You know, good
Speaker 1: oak warms you twice, once when you cut it and
Speaker 1: once when you burn it. And the thrill of having
Speaker 1: a buck or dough or turkey or whatever after. And
Speaker 1: I got a thrill at one time, and then we
Speaker 1: get it out and cook it. And that thrill to
Speaker 1: me has become at this season my life just as
Speaker 1: big as the first thrill. Yeah, I made up with it, man,
Speaker 1: no pun intended. And I think I think of America
Speaker 1: had healthy venison, healthy pheasants, healthy whatever to eat that
Speaker 1: wasn't loaded up with her beside pest side fungicide. Man,
Speaker 1: that'd be cool for America's healthy. No matter what we
Speaker 1: do as humans, it's hard to get away from the
Speaker 1: importance of soils on the quality of our everyday lives.
Speaker 1: But I'm still amazed at how little most of us
Speaker 1: actually think about it. The soil is literally the foundation
Speaker 1: of our existence, Hillel wrote, Perhaps our most precious and
Speaker 1: vital resource, both physical and spiritual, is that most common
Speaker 1: matter underfoot, which we scarcely even notice and sometimes call
Speaker 1: it dirt. I continue to be amazed at the complexity
Speaker 1: of natural systems. Will never know all the answers, but
Speaker 1: an internal bewilderment in the fact that we're players in
Speaker 1: a complex and ancient system should cause us to pause.
Speaker 1: When we look across a vast landscape, whether it be
Speaker 1: in the Ozarks or Montana, or in the Adirondacks of
Speaker 1: New York, whe our eyes we see the ten per
Speaker 1: cent of the iceberg, and it's spectacularly decorated with mountains, trees,
Speaker 1: plants and animals, the things that we love. But beneath
Speaker 1: it is the soil which gives it all life, if
Speaker 1: nothing else. Next time you're in your favorite wild place,
Speaker 1: scratch back the leaves or the grass and take a
Speaker 1: handful of dirt. Roll it through your hand, and while
Speaker 1: you do, think about how it's the rocket fuel of wildness,
Speaker 1: and consider how it's often the unseen things that define
Speaker 1: the things that are visible. And while the dirt touches
Speaker 1: your skin, also considered the incredibly short lifespan of a
Speaker 1: human compared to its ancientness, and at the very atoms
Speaker 1: of your body, will one day return to it and
Speaker 1: see if that changes the way you live today. Thank
Speaker 1: you all so much for listening to Bear Grease. We've
Speaker 1: got some cool stuff coming up this fall, so please
Speaker 1: tell your buddies about our podcast, and feel free to
Speaker 1: leave us a review on iTunes. Hey, if you're in
Speaker 1: the northwest Arkansas region, check out Across the Creek Farms.
Speaker 1: My friend tear Old Spencer's pastured poultry and eggs are
Speaker 1: off the charts. It's some good chicken. Keep the wild
Speaker 1: places wild. And hey, here's what Gary Newcomb does with dirt,
Speaker 1: all right, Dad, tell me your your philosophy on cleaning
Speaker 1: your hands. What's the best way in the world to
Speaker 1: clean your hands? It depends on where I am. If
Speaker 1: I'm in the house, I like to use soap, okay,
Speaker 1: if I'm at it camp. If I'm deer hunting, I
Speaker 1: use dirt. And I have no idea why, but just
Speaker 1: my gut feeling is that dirt is about to clean
Speaker 1: sling around and oh yeah yeah. If if I'm just
Speaker 1: if I clean a deer and I'm I don't have
Speaker 1: water and soap. I prefer really dirt. It takes the
Speaker 1: odor away. Uh you know, I might eat a sandwich
Speaker 1: after using the hurt. I mean, you never brush your
Speaker 1: teeth with dirt, never have, never have mm hm