RawPetMedics Tuesday night live: Thought for Food!

Good evening, everybody. Good evening. Excuse me while I put my headphones in. We've just been chatting and didn't even realize it was 7 o'clock.

Oh dear. Oh dear. Brady's somewhere off chuckling at us going, yeah, you see, it's never him. It's always us.

Yeah. Yeah. Like he's really on time. That's for sure. Brendan, my dear friend, how are you?

Oh, look, you know, with all the challenges, realistically great. New kitten to play with. Oh, wow. Goats, you know, bottle feeding lovelies. I just, you know, I've got to say I'm really enjoying sitting down and just sometimes having a moment with the animals. Although Artemis is a little jealous right now. She's actually taken that when I sit down and the little goat comes running over for her bottle, Artemis will come in and literally sit down and try and get between between me and goat. And then if I still don't pay her enough attention, she'll try and butt the bottle out of the goat's mouth.

And you're going to go with a bit of pulsatilla or something there? She's quite a gentle type, isn't she? Are you going to go there with something?

Oh, I don't know whether I need to. She's lovely. She's, you know, she's not, you know, she's, I think it's just when you've got all of these animals competing for your space. And, you know, sometimes you just got to learn to distribute it a little bit more.

Yeah. Fiona says, show us the kitten.

Show you the kitten?

Have you got the kitten? Yes. Would anybody like to see some fluffy kittens?

You take it away. You talk about your week, Nick, while I just get the little video of the kitten up. And this might be a little—

Oh, you get the video.

Yeah.

Yeah. All right. So what am I doing this week? It's been— oh yes, look at that!

Okay, so let me show you a video whilst you carry on. Sorry, Nick, I keep diverting everybody away.

Um, so, uh, it's been, it's been super, super busy, but we did have the, the show, the Slaughterford Fair, this weekend, and we had a, uh, a dog show, and I compared the dog show, and there's days gone by, sometimes it's been, it's been— oh look, eating good food. Look at that, I love that. And sometimes there's been 6 and a half people watching this dog show and it's still been really miserable and people are with, with umbrellas and oh, it's just, you know, but not— but we had really beautiful sunshine and, and we must have had, we, we must have had 300 or 400 people at the show, of which probably 100 watched the— watch me perform doing 6 classes from the most beautiful boy to the most pretty girl and and dogs, by the way. And it went absolutely very, very well. And the organizer, Pam, lovely Pam, married to lovely Simon, came up afterwards. She said, 'Yeah, it was fantastic. I loved it. It was brilliant.' It might have been because I gave her dog a third rosette. I didn't give it a first because I would get lynched by everybody else in the showground. Because it's favoritism. You like that, don't you? And I gave the second and the first to, uh, some children who had cute dogs. So it was good and it went well, except my microphone didn't work, and so I had to just shout. And so by the end of the day, I was completely, completely hoarse. So absolutely great. Got lots of people here this evening. Paula is here and Annie Mac is here, and Marisa is here, and Fiona's Loves the puppy. And Lois is there, and Lynn. So wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. It's great to see everybody. Conor is, uh, busy. Um, he's gone to the memorial service for Trish, and we are thinking of him and her this evening. Apparently it's on tomorrow, and, um, he is feeling the pressure there. So, mate, if you're watching this— you're probably not, he's probably in the airport bar as we speak— um, but mate, we're thinking of you. Hope it Hope it all goes well. So Brendan, very impressed with your title of Thought for Food. I didn't even get it because it's actually, you may not have even seen this, it's a twist on food for thought. Actually, it took me 10 seconds. I know it did take me about 10 seconds to go, oh, oh, that's clever. No, right.

It was early on a Sunday morning. I think it was. Give you your dues.

So hats off to you, my friend. Thought for Food. I think it's brilliant. That's a great name for a book, perhaps. So absolutely brilliant. So I just want to say this is something I'm really, really passionate about and I would be happy to answer any questions, but I don't want to bore you because not everybody gets turned on by soil and mob grazing and Allan Savory and Joel Salatin and Gabe Brown and all these amazing people and Nicolette Hahn-Niman. And what have you. So if we're boring you, please say so and we'll tell some jokes.

And ask a different question.

Yeah.

If we suddenly see loads of new questions come up that are nothing to do with where your food comes from, then we know that you want something else.

Where were you born? And why? Why?

Can we see your inside parts?

Yeah, exactly. Okay. So I find it difficult to know where to start with this one, Bren. What are your thoughts? Talking about regenerative agriculture, just to hit the nail on the head before we start.

Well, I think we're also talking about provenance to some degree, because, you know, how many kids still, still to this day do not know where food comes from? You know, milk comes from the supermarket. You know, if you're lucky, meat comes from the butcher. You know, it's not even, you know, they think they're being clever if they don't say supermarket again when you talk about meat. And so, you know, it's like, hold on, you know, we need to really be pushing that it's not just about where does your food come from and having a bit of respect for that environment that they're raised in, but actually how we can make that better, but actually how important it is Um, even for the vegetarians out there, I think, you know, actually this is, this is not just about are you a meat eater, are you a vegetarian. And even for vegetarians out there, I would absolutely endorse that we need to look at high welfare animals being part of, you know, growing the, the earth, effectively growing the earth. And that's what it's about. And, and I think that's where we're on the same page, isn't it, Nick?

Oh yeah, totally, totally, totally, totally. So for me, an ideal food production system in the future is going to look a little bit like it was 200 years ago. You can have lots of small mixed farms. They can have cows and sheep and pigs and lots of, lots of happy, free animals, mostly in the sunshine and with adequate shelter for the, for the winter and trees and, and lots of grass. Because there's a lot of land out there. And whether you eat them or not, they are the quickest route to building soil. And for me, the key thing is that we have been murdering, degrading, whatever the word. We've been, you know, every 10, 20 years, there's— with modern agriculture, there's a little bit less, a little bit less, a little bit less, a little bit less soil And what happens, guys, when you haven't got any soil or not even when you haven't got any soil? What happens when you've just got just a crappy layer of dry, sandy muck that you can't grow quality food in? The answer is you're going to get mineral vitamin deficient because your veggies are not going to be as taking up as much goodness from a very biodiverse soil with worms and bacteria and nematodes and viruses and fungi and all these things in them. That's, that's how it— that's how the system is designed to be. But modern industrial agriculture, because we, we, we non-farmers want cheap food, modern industrial agriculture is saying, okay, we can provide you with cheap food. And it's called using loads of fertilizer, loads of herbicide, loads of fungicide, loads of Roundup, loads of plowing. Because that's the quickest way to get as much weight of food from a certain hectare of land than growing it— than using grazing ruminants to graze, stimulate the grass, poo and pee on the grass to fertilize the grass and engender this, this biodiversity. And Whether you eat those animals or not, totally up to you. But I think that they need to be there because let's face it, Mother Nature has been doing it for what, since the dinosaurs went 63 million years ago. She thought, I know, now I'll invent sheep and I'll invent cows and I'll invent pigs and chickens and what have you in order to make the whole thing work properly and as effectively as possible. So That's it. There you go. I didn't even mean to say that, but that's kind of a little introduction of where I think we are. And I think it's a dire situation because we're running out of soil very rapidly.

Yeah. I mean, we had a little bit of a quip, didn't we, over the weekend? We were talking a little bit about how we're going to grow that soil if we can't use animals, you know, and we've mentioned about using human fertilizer, humanure, a few, few months back. And actually, you know, as Conor pointed out, and I'll favor him with this, that actually the diabolical state of contaminants within our own manure, that of antibiotics, of resistant bacteria, of hormones, of of, you know, chemicals and all of the other things that actually get flushed down the loo as well. Um, you know, plastics, microplastics, all of that stuff that's going in into that, that actually we can't lose our shit anymore because at the end of the day it's too contaminated to put out on the land. You know, they're sort of in that, that scenario. I mean, is that, is that really the truth? Is that where we're at? Do you think the only place we can do is to flush it into the Channel for the French to deal with?

No, I think we could probably, you know, you know what, mate, if we can get a man on the moon, I think we can probably deal with human poo and turn it into something that we can then safely use to fertilize the land. I think that's a brilliant idea. It really, really is a brilliant idea. And, you know, people say to me, oh well, you lose a bit of soil, then, you know, who, what, who, who really gives a damn? I'm just going to give you an example. Of just how much soil is being lost. Okay, so this is an example from Matthew Evans. He's written a lovely book called Soil. I will get lynched from that, I know, but there you go. It's a great book, even though he's an Aussie. For any Aussies out there, I'm teasing you. I really like Aussies these days. I'm teasing you. Okay, so if you take all the topsoil which is lost in Australia, which is a fairly big island, But if you take all the topsoil that's lost from wind blowing it off or water erosion, and you took all of that and dried it and stuck it in those, you know, those kind of wagons that go through train stations at night, you go one after the other after the other carrying coal or grain or something like that. You know that. Do you know those kind of things? What would you call them? Cargo trucks, they're open top, so you can dump things in. So if you took— so each year in Australia, this is the amount of soil, which is good quality soil, which is lost. Okay, so you fill up one of those things with whatever, 60, 80, 100 tons, right? And then you go to the next one, you fill that up. And you carry on filling them up until you have a train that will circle the globe every year. This is how much soil is lost every year. It will circle the globe 15 times.

Wow.

And that's just Australia. Something similar, if not worse, is happening with our friends in the States because they're very keen on producing, you know, maximum, maximum, maximum tonnage of wheat and soya and corn. And it's happening in Europe. We are not, not really any better because we're all about let's grow as much quantity as possible because it then makes cheap food cheaper. But also you've got this commodity which you can turn into pet food, for example, kibble. Okay, why do you think they love Cereals, because there is an excess of them. You know, the Nestlé's, the Mars Corporation's, the, you can name it, the Procter Gamble's. Would they out of choice use really high quality, high nutrient ingredients when they can get away with— because they're in cahoots with AFCO and FEDIAF— would they use the cheap stuff? Or would they use the best stuff? Would they use real meat, even if it's just offcuts from real animals that are grown beautifully and happily and slaughtered respectfully? Or are they just going to go for the cheapest possible commodity that they can possibly find anywhere on the planet? Have a little think about that one as to which you would do if you were trying to pay your shareholders as much as possible.

I mean, that's, it's an indictment, isn't it, of where we're at today, that actually it's more about cost, monetary cost, that seems to have importance rather than environmental cost, rather than, you know, cost to health, all of those aspects. And, you know, that's just the way we hope things will change. You know, I think, you know, Charlie Arnott, that you are a great fan of, I think you've got some— I'm in touch with him. —hopefully coming on. Yeah, I think—

Watch this. Space, watch this space, guys.

So we're going to do a little bit more on this. And, and he's Australian too. You're going to have another Aussie on?

Yes. What's going on? I'm a lot happier with Aussies these days. I've got cousins who are Aussies, okay, and have done, in Brisbane and, uh, and are all around the place. Uh, my best man was an Aussie, okay? So it's kind of tongue-in-cheek. Yeah, my love-hate But, you know, I do think they are now. I think they are. I'm in awe of Aussie regenerative farmers. I think that they are the cleverest people in the world because they are working in the harshest environments and they are going to make a massive difference to how we get through the next 30 years. I think I really do. Yeah. Somebody say Caroline Brockdorf said why we should go back to the feudal system. What do you think about that, Bren? If you just explain the feudal system, if you know. I didn't do history, so I've only got a very, very loose—

I think we should just send her a little link and should we see if we can get her on live, see whether she's up for that to explain?

No, because then it turns into history. I think the feudal system is you have a lord and then you heard of all the serfs, and the lord is really healthy and he eats really well, and all the serfs just eat bread and you know, the scraps that whatever might be, um, might be left over. I think that's the feudal system. I think there's a lot more to it.

I think it might have related to this earlier comment of human slurry. So I don't know whether that's actually slurry made from humans rather than—

well, that has been, that has been mooted, but I think that that's a little bit, that's a little bit extreme for—

oh, rather than cremation, let's just, um, yeah, and spread them.

Nice. Recycle. Yeah, maybe I don't think even I could go there, to be honest. So, um, so should it be a feudal system? Yeah, I'm no communist, I can tell you, but I think that if we can all work together and you have a farmer— so it, like I say, in an ideal situation, you've got lots of little farms all over the country, all over the states, just like it used to be, all over the UK, just like it used to be, and you knew where you got your carrots and your beef and your chicken and your potatoes and your old-style wheat grains and what have you. You knew him because you couldn't, you know, you would only have to travel 5 or 10 miles in order to go to that, to the potato farmer, to the beef farmer, to the whatever, or to the mixed farmer, because farms work best actually, as demonstrated by Joel Salatin in Folks, This Ain't Normal is the book. And he just said, look, ours is the most profitable farm in the entire county. We haven't used antibiotics for 40 years. We haven't used a pesticide for 40 years. We haven't used a worm, a chemical wormer, on the— on any of the animals for 40 years. And he's got the most profitable farm in the region. So it is profitable. People say, oh, we need, you know, farmers need to make money. Yes, they do. But this is just a different way of making money. People say, oh, we need cheap food. And when I hear that thing about the cheap food, it's like, okay, in the '50s we spent 40% of our income on food. Now we spend 10 and we whinge if it goes to 11, you know. And I know that there is at the moment there is a bit of a food crisis and there is definitely an economic crisis. I'm very sensitive to that. But unless we come together somehow to think very carefully about a positive future— yeah, it's not the end of the world in 50 years if we do things right. It's a very positive future if we can get over some of the old thinking and work towards feeding the soil, giving farmers a profitable income. Because think about conventional agriculture, it's about killing stuff— herbicide, pesticides, plowing. Yeah, it's kill, kill, kill, kill, kill. And then you use artificial input, which the companies who make those artificial inputs are very, very happy about because they can sell them to you and you then become dependent on them. and you are then in a position to kill, kill, kill more in order to make room for another monocrop. The other thing about monocrops— a monocrop is where you've got all wheat as far as the eye could see, or all corn, or all soil, or whatever, as far as the eye can see. And nowhere in nature is there a monocrop, and yet we think that's the way to do it. And I really think that that's, you know, that's—

I think Doris has a good point. Yeah, the big farmer. Okay, it's interesting, isn't it? Because actually that's a little play on words itself. They're the people that actually make all of those fertilizers and, you know, pesticides and everything else. They're coming into, you know, exactly what Nick was talking about. I think we are going to touch on— I love this by Susie Greaves— and actually it's what we can do in our own back garden. Garden for growing veggies. And some of us get a bit grossed out by this, but actually, I think if you think about it carefully and you're doing your worm egg counts and you're doing all of your other things and you're feeding healthily, that actually, yeah, recycling this stuff, even the litter, even if it is a gravel or an expanded clay, but certainly there's wood pellet and there's other things available, even newspaper pellets now. For litter, that all can go in the compost. And actually, if it's composted for a year, you know, you're not having to worry about, you know, oh, it's going to be gross, I'm going to be sort of going through dog poo and the smells and everything else. All of that goes, it just becomes earth. And I really like that idea, Suzie. Well done for, you know, pointing it out. You know, actually, it is something we should be doing more of. Less poo bags, more composting. I think. Although, what would you think? So come on, what's your take with all of this regen stuff? Yeah. On the composting of vegetable matter and the impact that has, because I'm sure there's loads talked about. I've come across stuff, so I'm sure you've—

Yeah, yeah. I mean, so one of the people who want us all to go plant-based to save the planet They say, well, we can make compost and use that to grow soil. And there's a couple of arguments there. Number one is sheep and cattle are three things. They are grass cutters, they are compost makers, and they are muck spreaders all in one go, and you can eat them, and you can make shoes out of them, and, you know, everything else. So I'd say in, in small-scale operations, you can use compost to feed soil. However, soil really loves getting bugs from ruminant guts, and, and it has a very, very healthy because that's what's happened for millions of years. And so, yep, compost, good. Ruminant, that is to say cattle and sheep poo, better, I'm afraid. And when it's pummeled into the ground by the animals themselves, because they're mob grazing— we could maybe talk about mob grazing— I think that that's a really, really good way to do it. You can— the compost will maintain pretty good soil, but if you want the best soil— and don't take my word for this, you can read Gabe Brown, Alan Savory, Joel Salatin, whoever— there is a lot of work to say the only way really to rapidly accelerate depth and quality and diversity of soil is by using grass-eating animals. And the other thing that— sorry for going on about this, but the other thing that, um, he's not—

he's not sorry at all.

I know, I'm not sorry. 50% of the planet, guys, of the, the land mass of the planet, yeah, so this is the dry stuff, not the wet stuff. 50% of the land mass you can't grow crops on, but you can grow this stuff called this green stuff called grass, and thus you can graze animals on it and derive nutrients and fertility of the soil, um, where you can't grow crops otherwise. So it suddenly turns the planet into a much more fecund, a much more, uh, you know, food-rich environment. And in the UK, it's even worse. The figures I've heard recently is that about 66% of the UK, you can't grow crops on it because it's too steep or it's too high or it's too low or it's too wet or it's too dry. And so 66%. So, and that puts it in context. So, so I think it's, it's It's, for me, it's crazy to not think about how we can use those areas of the country. Yeah, I mean, it's madness. We have done it for hundreds and thousands of years. Why don't we just do it again?

Yeah, I also feel, you know, there is this thing about mixed farm stuff as well that we really need to get to grasp with because there's too many just cattle or just sheep or just chickens. And actually, there is— that's that great film, isn't there, on Amazon? I think it was, um, uh, it was the one where they are producing, uh, they end up starting a whole apricot farm and they get somebody in who starts to design stuff for them in a certain way, but it just starts to fall apart until they actually discover that they had to have a balance of so many different species, like the ducks to eat the snails off the trees, the, um, you know, and actually allow the gophers to thrive so that actually the coyotes would eat the gophers rather than the ducks. You know, to allow, you know, the hawks to be coming in because actually they could have sheep, but then they had to sort of follow it on with the chickens and then follow it on with the ducks and just keep that rotation in. I have noticed the downside to having goats is that although I try, I'm trying to do that whole mob grazing thing. Yeah. Unlike cattle, They're just not quite heavy enough to truly crush the ground, to mix it up, to make it muddy. And it's nice for the neighbors because they used to hate seeing the ground all churned up. But actually, in the grand scheme of things, if you want to build the soil and get the organic matter in, you have to have some degree of churning in that process. And that's an interesting take that I'm constantly trying to figure out how to get the manure not just onto the ground but into the ground.

No, that is absolutely fantastic. Isabella Tree in the book Wilding, which is kind of 2018 or so, she— they tried to do it with just, uh, with just turning it over to wild, and then thought, oh, this is not working, so they had to get some sheep in. And then they thought, oh my goodness, this is still not working. Once they got cattle and horses in Exmoors or your native ponies, that's when things really started. Because the cattle, as you say, will trample, will clear, make clearings, will make ways through the trees which allow the sheep and plants and what have you to have a kind of circulation within the trees. So just wilding, which is quite a trendy thing at the moment— wilding being, oh look, here's 300 acres, let's just walk away and leave it to nature— that's not going to do— it's not going to transform this side of 200, 300, 400 years. It's going to take quite a long time to really get that going because you require ruminants, sheep, uh, or primarily cattle or horses, actually, they'll probably do quite a good job to get into that. Yeah, but also get a horse. But also, uh, pigs. Pigs are really important. They will wreck, absolutely wreck your ground if there's too many pigs and too tight stocking density, or they're left for it on it for too long. That will definitely ruin your ground. But if you realize It's all about stocking density, which is how many cattle you have per acre, how many pigs you have per acre, and also moving them on once they've done what they need to do. And with cattle, that's— if you've got quite a tight stocking density, that is only 2 or 3 days. Yeah, you'd leave them on that, they would eat a third, they'd crush a third, and they'd they'd fertilize a third, and then you'd have to move them on. You'd leave that for about 70, 80, 90 days. And by the time you come back, you fixed a whole load of carbon. Because, because grass is a massive, massive fixer of carbon, even more than trees. In fact, you know, everybody's going, oh, let's plant some trees. But actually, there's a vast amount of grass out there, which is fixing, fixing carbon through the action of sunlight, and nobody's even noticing it. It's because it's not being quite managed well. Do you, are you, can you tell us about mob grazing versus set stocking?

Yeah, well, actually, there's a couple of things that you've raised in what you've talked about just there, and I would like to say to Lynn, absolutely right, dark emu. Just sparked one of the memories. I was listening to a Charlie Arnott, um, episode 63, I think, of his podcast. Oh, so just have a look. Um, and he was talking to, uh, somebody who was an elderly farmer who'd gone through just looking at the Aborigines and what, you know, what we were doing to our farm. Oh yeah, Bruce Pascoe.

Bruce Pascoe, who wrote Darkemia. Well done.

So, so, and actually In that podcast, he was talking about, yeah, grasslands can be great, you know, having the buffalo in there can be, you know, you know, would— is even better because actually if you just let the grass grow, it fixes the carbon. But actually then it sets it in a cellulose that can actually take so long to rot down and actually become good humus as it Yeah, but actually you need an accelerant, and that's what— and that's what the ruminants are. They effectively are an accelerant for decomposition and producing great humus of, you know, the humus within the earth to create the organic matter going forward. So that is why there is that essential part. It's not about just letting land go fallow for a rest period. You can't rest land in that way. You actually need to cycle it through. And this is the point of mob grazing, is actually to concentrate the herd for whatever reason. And they used to say that this happened because the predators would concentrate the herd, you know, so if there were wolves or dingoes around and, you know, they could concentrate the, the grazers into an area. For safety's sake, it was actually far more fertile land than if it was just— there were disparate, you know, you've got a low stocking density, that doesn't help. You actually need to take that stock and actually compact them into succinct areas of grazing. Yeah. And then allow them to trample in the, the fecal matter, the, the stuff, so that it's concentrated, and then move them on. And that has great benefits for controlling parasites. It has great benefits for actually getting that organic matter back into the earth as well and actually clearing down. Now, one thing that— going back to the horse side of things— that I find, because I did actually have a great friend who came on, does natural horsemanship, and she came onto the land and brought in half a dozen horses. And what I noticed is are they ravenous. And oh my God, did they, they trimmed my grass to a centimeter tall. I mean, it was, you know, I was like, whoa, I'm not sure this is too much. Okay. They were competing with the goats. The goats were interspersed with them because I was just looking at that. There was a little bit of mixing and that was all good and stuff. But I think it was, you just got to be watch, watch that they don't go too harsh. On what's going on. The horses, I mean, they were great. They'd mow the grass and then the goats would come in and they'd clear the weeds. So it's just like, you know, at the moment they're big on docks, nettles, thistles. Yeah, that's what my goats are really going through at the moment, you know, which is just great stuff.

Yeah, fantastic. It's clear. I think you'd have to— great. If you're using horses as your main processor of grass, which is essentially what they are, you would have a different strategy to sheep, to cattle. Yeah, sheep might have to have really tight, cattle pretty tight, horses a little less tight. And you might have to only allow, you know, it depends how many horses you've got. If you've got 100 horses, you can stick them on 100 acres. For 5 days, 6 days, 7 days, something like that. With the same land with cattle, you might only be able to get 80 cattle because they're much more destructive of the land, whereas with sheep you may be able to get 200 on the same sort of thing. So I don't know the figures, but those are the principles. They do— they utilize the ground in different ways. And I think as long as you're just canny, one of the things that um, uh, that they talk about, the regenerative agriculture farmers, uh, including Charlie Arnott. It says, I now— my ability to watch my land and watch my animals is far, far, far greater even than when I came out of agricultural college, even after 20 years. Now that I'm looking at it from a let's promote life on the land perspective, it's a whole different thing. You know, you've got water in creeks that haven't had water in for 50 years. You've got— and therefore you get, you get growth peripheral to the, those, those creeks, the riparian zone, which is what they call it. And, um, and, and, and bird life increases, increases, increases on these places. You know, these— they talk about, uh, Charlie Arnott's place, or, or Massey, uh, Charles Massey's place. You know, there was, there was maybe 20 different, um, uh, types of bird when he first started his regenerative journey, and then 10 years later he's got 125 different types of bird. And that's wonderful, not because of birds— they are beautiful and they're wonderful, great— but that reflects the insect life. Yeah, if you've got a lot of insects because you've got a lot of dung and you've got a lot of really healthy plants and your healthy soil life, then this is a virtuous cycle.

I love— and that's, you know, something that I've seen just over the last, you know, 3 years of managing this, really trying to encourage— I encouraged some longer grass in various areas and you know, the weeds and stuff coming through that people would call weeds, because I really want to get the insect life. We've got lots more bats now. We've got, you know, the barn owls that are coming through to eat on the mice that are there because of the insect life that's in, in the ground. Of course there's rabbits, but they're a crop in their own right, okay? And I've not gone out and out to destroy them all. You know, you just have to control them by allowing my dogs to eat some. And, you know, from a point of view of, you know, I think getting the insect life there, and that's something that I've done, I think really trying to get wildflower on. I do no mow May, you know, restrict the goats away from certain pasture, you know, get the hay crop through has been great just through wildflower development and letting it all bloom, get the, you know, all of that increased insect life. But I mean, we've noticed it. I mean, you can drive down the motorway these days and compared to when you used to get out of the car in the late '70s, early '80s, okay, and your car would be thick on the windscreen or on the front bumper with insects, you know, or if you dared to have a roof rack, you used to have to put something over the over the cases or the bags because otherwise when you open the bags, there used to be insects actually in on your clothes splattered. But yeah, you can pretty much drive. You know, we drove down to Cornwall this summer. You know, that's what, 200-300 miles? Admittedly, an electric car, and I'm sure the electrics wasn't deflecting the insects. There was nowhere near— it was not a film of insects. Yes, there were some, but it was nowhere near the amount that you would remember being out there. So it's, you know, we can see that there's a big problem going on, and that's the food for the birds, you know.

Yeah, it's just not there. Yeah, it all cycles, doesn't it? So Philippa says lots of farms are growing fields of wild— wild feed fields for bees and other pollinators. And I think that's absolutely brilliant. However, my, my thought would be, and what I've seen on regenerative farms, is that they are less neat and tidy than the classic monocrop field, and they have got wildflowers down every hedgerow. They've got hedgerows as well, which is a pretty good start. Hedgerows which are, which are minimally tended They've got fairly wide borders to the hedgerows. Some of the farmers are even planting trees right the way down, north-south down their fields, so that they can still get a combine in and what have you. And what they're finding— this is called silviculture, where you're having— where you're using— or a boreal culture, you're using trees and plants and then trees to try and get the best of both worlds. Now, some people would say, well, that's going to mean you're going to shade your crop. But if you do it north-south, you're going to get a really good blast of southerly sun so that the shade is going to be minimized. But what they're finding— and this is really interesting— so you've got this avenue which is either 1 or 2 combines wide, right? And what they find is that where the, the crop which is nearest to the trees does better than the crop which is in the middle of the avenue, because the mycorrhizae from the trees is talking to the mycorrhizae within the roots of the, of the, the wheat or the barley or the, the oats or whatever it is, and they get a much, much better crop. So you would think that there would be less, uh, less crop from the, the, the field. But actually what they're finding is that there, there is compensatory effects. There may be a bit wee bit less in the middle, but there's a lot more at the outside. But you've also got, you know, you've got, um, timber from the trees, and, um, there are other, other enormous benefits. And, um, So where are we? It's 1943. Time has flown. I, I, yeah, yes. I'm not going to say that joke again. Uh, I could go on about this, uh, all day. If you're interested, please do ping, ping us on Patreon. Uh, what's the Patreon, uh, link? Uh, Bren, um, patreon.com.

So yeah, that's Raw Pet Medics. So patreon.com/rawpetmedics, and you will find us there. Supporters, and, uh, thank you, great. Thank you so much to all our new patrons who've said hello. Um, hopefully answered a few questions as well this week. So we're, we're in there. So, you know, if you've got questions, you want, uh, and something for us to talk about, please go on there. Thanks to the few businesses that have already started, uh, messaging us with their little elevator pitch. It's great to see. And if you like what you've heard tonight, we've got Nick's hidden parts coming up. I'm sure you're going to hear more to do with that. Not sure what we're going to get out of Conor's hidden parts because I just got this image of nipples again. I just can't. Be careful what you ask for. So here we go. So yeah, we've got those things to come. And I must say, you know, 16th, we're talking renal disease. So if you want to see more cute kitten videos, we've got Feline Fridays. That's actually on the 16th. I think I got it wrong last week. I think I might have said it was this Friday and it's not. It's next. I'm losing my marbles. So sorry, Julianne. But they're going to join me on that day. So watch out for the posts. And yeah, it's been great to go through all of this.

It's really nice stuff, isn't it? It's like trying to describe an ocean by saying, yeah, it's kind of wet and you get these frothy kind of white things called waves. It's very difficult to describe the enormity of it or the beauty of it as well. But hopefully, I think we've, we've done a fair old job, uh, Bren. Are we— are we— what we were planning, guys, is we were going to stop at, at, uh, 7:45 and then just to have a few minutes of reflection, but just for our Patreon people. We're going to, we're going to record that, and that's going to be especially for the Patreon people to say thank you very much. We really appreciate you giving us the price of a cup of coffee or what have you. each month just to, to help us, uh, do this stuff. So thank you very much. So is that Karen?

No, can I just say, uh, that 15 minutes will not be nipples again, okay? So that is literally— that is just going to be talking a little bit more, um, and, you know, with, uh— and thank you for Diana talking about I think there was a couple of great longevity interviews, so that was great. Um, it's good to see. Don't forget, I think you can still get on to their link, um, if you want to see the, um, on the petparentslongevity.com. I think you can now see the recorded videos of all of that. I'm sure that, uh, they'll be more than pleased to see you if you want to still get on there and have a little look at about those. Yeah, great. So thanks, guys, uh, all of that. Yeah, so for those of you who are on Patreon, you can, uh, you'll probably see in the next, uh, couple of hours the extra bits. Okay, um, and, uh, it's been great to see all of you guys on Facebook.

Certainly you again next week. Yeah, and, uh, we'll get Brady back here again, and, um, and it's going to be, uh, looking at what makes me tick and what made me come to where I am today. So I'm not quite sure what I'm going to say, but we can go through that. And then week after, then Conor is going to be doing his bit so that you've got a little bit of background on us. We thought we'd give you a little bit of depth on what makes us tick. So there we go. And you can ask any questions. We can probably ignore all the rude ones or not. But you can ask any questions you fancy. So not a lot to hide here these days. So brilliant. See you next week. Thank you, everybody. All the very best.