The Ultimate DIY Guide To Growing Your Own Food And Living Green.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And as you probably know, if you've been reading the BenGreenfieldFitness.com blog, my wife and I actually traveled to Israel last month as part of a tour of the burgeoning wellness scene in Israel. And today you're going to get to listen in as I interview one of the most amazing individuals I met on that trip, a man named Alik Pelman. And Alik actually completed his PhD in Philosophy at the University of London. But then he took a break from academic life and he went to learn how to grow food. And he actually became a professional organic farmer for a couple years. And when I visited him in this tiny village in Western Galilee, I met him in this small hut that he built almost entirely with his own two hands and with the help from some friends from local natural materials. And now he lives there. He grows pretty much all his food from this little garden that he's able to water in this really cool way that you're going to learn all about. During today's show. He spends most of his working hours doing farm chores and reading and writing and hosting curious visitors like me. And really, during today's episode, you're gonna get a little bit of a DIY guide to living in an eco friendly way to growing your own food. Whether you want to live completely off the grid and build your own home, or you're just interested in doing a few little things to be able to live a bit more sustainably and to take care of yourself rather than relying on, say, the grocery store or someone to deliver food to you. You're gonna learn about that in today's ep. Alik is Skyping with me straight from Galilee. Alik, how are you doing?

Yeah, great. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, no problem. So are you actually at your little hut right now?

Yes, I am in my living room. And even the stove is burning, which is quite unusual in Israel, but it's winter, so. Great.

Yeah. And of course, during the episode, I want to get into some of the cool ways that you're heating and cooling your home. And in that same living room where you're at right now, that's where you served us bread that you Made from your own harvest. And I believe we had figs, we had carob, we had this fantastic artichoke and fresh olive oil, amazing meal. And I'd like to get into some of the things that you do to grow your own food too. But before we jump into that alik, how did you come to where you're at today? Why'd you go get a PhD in Philosophy and then wind up living in this little hut in Galilee?

Well, it's been a very long dream of mine for many years and I had to wait and I actually, my long wish was to. So my aim for the long term aim was to get to live in a balanced way because I do think that producing your own stuff, like your own, whatever you consume is important. And I try to explain why. But I also think that this need not be everything you do. So this is just the sort of the foundation for living. And then you should do whatever you think. So this is how to live. And then you need to fill in.

With.

What the content of life is. And to me it's philosophy. It could be, to you it's something else. And everybody. And so I had to do the way the modern world is. I had to do one thing at a time. So first I got my degree and I did the philosophy bit. Then I did only farming and learning how to live sustainably. And then now I'm very happy to say that I kind of managed to combine the two and I, I produce my food, I built my home, and there's more to be done and also do my philosophy. So that's just the general background.

So for you, it wasn't that you became disillusioned with the modern world and said, screw this and moved off to this little hut. This has just been a dream of yours to be able to kind of live sustainably and marry that to modern life.

Well, I must say that I have my reservation about the modern living. And I do feel that the way the world is, so the way most people live is, and the system we are all part of is not going in the right direction. And I. Yeah, it is. It is my belief that, that the way I live now, and that's why I tried so hard to get there is a better way for the planet. So there is. What you said is part of what drives me.

Okay, gotcha. Well, on today's show I want to focus on home, on food and gardening and on water. Some of the really cool things that you've done that I think people can learn a lot of lessons from. So, first of all, if you're listening in right now, Alik was kind enough to send over a PDF that's pretty much a step by step walkthrough of some of the things that he did to create this little hut with his own two hands, using all local natural materials. And it is absolutely fascinating. So, Alik, let's start there. Let's start with how you built this degradable house that you basically call a compost heap. But actually it's a beautiful wooden lodge out here on the side of the hill. So can you go into how you actually built this, kind of walk us through it?

Yes. Well, the basic idea is that I wanted it to be made of local material and natural local material. So as much as possible, it's not like 100%, but as much as I could. And the local materials we have here is stone, which is pretty much true of most places in the world. This is stone and mud. And here I used sheep wool for the insulation. So that's also a very common stuff that you can find easily around here. And some wood. So this is what I used to build my house and since. And then I had to look, look for some info because I had no idea how to make a house out of those materials. But fortunately I spent quite a few, quite a time at various farms over the years, volunteering at various farms around the world, mainly in Spain and in the uk. And so I had a rough idea.

Of how to.

Make it. But, you know, when you come to do it actually, then you have to. There are as many, many points at which you have to make the decision because you have no idea how to carry on. So I had to invent quite a lot. But yeah, it stands here for three years now and hopefully it will stand here for quite a while, quite a while more.

Yeah. So for your foundation, you didn't really want to disturb the soil. So how did you put together a foundation without using concrete and without disturbing the soil when you put this home together?

Right. This is actually the bit that most people were so had reservation about the way I decided to do it. They thought that. So this is the most risky bit as far as other people, like professionals are concerned. But I had no foundation at all. I just compacted the soil with just the tractor driving on it until it was really compacted and then started building on that and that was it just making a frame for the, for the bottom layer so that the frame is like one piece and then if should anything happen and it will lean towards one side, then I can just lift it, and the whole thing will lift together.

So you can pretty much mill it solid. Yeah, I've got a picture. Oh, and by the way, for those of you listening in, if you want to download this PDF and see some pictures, because Alik has a bunch of pictures that he took along the way, so you can kind of see this. I've got them all over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com Alik that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com A L I K so you mash down the ground, basically, with a tractor. So you didn't lay concrete. You just pushed down the ground. You made it really hard, and then you created your entire frame, your entire foundation. I know you used mostly pine, correct?

Yes.

And so the whole home is built on this foundation that would allow you, if you needed to, to basically pick up and move the home anywhere around if you had to. That's amazing. That's really, really cool. So then as far as your. Your siding, I know that you use, like, sheep's wool and some of these things for your insulation, but before you did that, what. What exactly did you do as far as, like, siding and what went underneath the insulation?

Well, I had to have the frame. So the house frame first was just poles of pine poles, and then the roof stood and then start building the walls. So from the inside, I had just like, mud plaster, I think you call it. Just.

Yeah, mud plaster.

Yeah. And then on the outside, I had this. Just pieces of local pine that is from thinning of woods. They, you know, they plant more than they need, and then they thin out trees in order to make enough space, enough room. I mean, the forestry commission, enough room for each tree. So there's plenty of wood tree coming out. And then I just sliced it in a way that people will see in the slideshow if you. And then it's. It is actually. It is being applied slightly, like a few. A couple of inches away from the house so that it can breathe and get air from all sides. And in that way, I didn't treat it, which is also very uncommon to do with wood. The wood is completely untreated. It's just natural wood, cut wood, and no chemicals in it. And the worry in this case is that it will rot with its contact with water. So what I have to. So I realized that it's okay if it gets wet as long as it gets dry, completely dry. So I had to have the air circulated around it all the time. So it's a little bit.

How do you do that. How do you get the air circulated around it all the time?

I just leave. Just doesn't touch anything from its side. So from the outside, obviously, the sun dries. And from the inside, it doesn't touch the house. It's a little bit further from the house. It's attached to just thin poles that are in between the house and this cladding, this external.

Wood.

Okay, so then you. Then you have the cladding, and that's like the external wood that you've put outside the actual frame.

Right, okay, that's what I meant.

And that's like the. That's used a spruce for that.

Yeah, I think it's beautiful. It's much better than pine because it doesn't sweat. It doesn't have the. What do you call it? Sorry, I can't remember. The thing that would give away SAP. Yeah, the SAP, exactly. It doesn't have much SAP, and it's pretty strong. So in terms of the local stuff we have, that's probably one of the best choices I could make.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cool. Okay, so then you've got this crazy insulation that's made out of sheep's wool. And I think that that's kind of a novel concept that a lot of people in the US at least, and maybe many of our listeners, aren't aware that you can use things other than common commercial insulation. So when you use sheep's wool, how'd that go? Did you just have to, like, shear a bunch of sheep or did you hunt down a bunch of wool? Did you mix it with stuff? Or how did you end up using wool for insulation?

You see, the thing is that with advanced commercial industry of keeping sheep, we have two breeds of sheep. Now.

There is.

The sheep that are being raised for meat are not the ones that are being raised for wool. So all the wool of the sheeps for meat is going to. Is just being discarded, just dispensed with, so it's free stuff. And I just went to one of those farms and asked the wool, and they were happy to give it to me because otherwise they would have to drive it to the. You know, to the landfill or whatever. They throw it away. And I just saved them work so I could take the wool. I read about it, and I realized that it's, you know, the details of insulation of this stuff are better than the ones of the commercial. It's better in terms of insulation, this wool, than the synthetic wool. I said, yeah, why not? If it's good for the animals, why wouldn't it be good for my house? And yeah, I just put it. It's dead material. It's not, you know, it's. The fiber is dead. So it's not food for any animal or anything.

Did you have to mix it with mud or anything like that?

Do what? Sorry?

Did you have to mix the insulatory material with like mud or anything like that?

No, no, nothing. And actually the way to put it is not to.

Not too compacted to leave it as fluffy as possible. So then the insulation is even better. So sometimes less is more in this sense.

Wow, cool. Okay, so you've got the sheep's wool for insulation. You have this pine frame that's covered with the local spruce for cladding. And then on your roof you're actually growing food on your roof. And this is amazing. So if you're listening in, Alix roof is like this amazing green flourishing roof where he's growing food and he's also got. Got a bunch of carpets up there. Can you explain what you're doing with your roof?

Yeah, well, basically it's just. It's like a big pot and I grow, you know, you can use your pot for many things. You can just. I decided to put food on it. So this year it's lentils. Last year it was wheat and it's really nice. Firstly, I. Well, I like very much the looks of it. It's very nice to come back to a living room. And it's very. Also very good in terms of insulation. So I have this one layer of sheep wool and above that then I have like the, what do you call the waterproof layer which is just plastic. This is where it's maybe the only non natural material that I have at home. And then on top of that I wanted to do this big pot to grow stuff in. So in order to have a pot I had. And my roof is, sorry, I can't remember the word, it's not straight, but it leans, you know, it has two, what do you call them? Slope downwards slopes. Exactly.

Thanks a lot.

So it has two slopes and I had to keep the soil from sliding down.

So I put.

First layer was on top of this waterproof sheet, which is just one big sheet. All over the roof I put this layer of old carpets which is also. You can, you know, it's quite easy to get. I paid a little bit for it, but it's very, very cheap. And then it helps to keep the soil because it's not as slippery as the plastic. And I also applied a grid of just thin wood pieces that I built. I built a Grid on the ground and then I put the whole thing on top. And then you can imagine that once I put the soil in, it doesn't slide because the wood from the sides and carpets from below keep it in place. Yeah, that's all very important just for the first stage. So when the soil is empty of plants, but once the plants grow and you have roots, then the roots keep the soil in place and then you have nothing to worry about anymore.

How do you water? How do you water food that's growing on your roof?

Well, right now I don't have any watering system. So basically I only grow in the winter and then in the summer it's kind of yellow. What I like about it is this way is that it really blends in the view. If I go to have a walk on the hill around and I try to look for my house, I can hardly spot it because it just blends in so nice. It always looks like everything around it. When everything is green, it's green. When everything is yellow, it becomes yellow. But I do have thoughts, I have to admit, of using it better by watering it in the summer as well. And then I'd be able to grow in the summer as well. We'll see about that. Right now it's green in the winter, yellow in the summer.

Nice.

So I don't water it, it's just rainwater.

Cool. I like it. And so you've got wheat and lentils growing on your roof and then indoors, when you walk into your house, obviously you've got this exterior wool based insulation. But it appears that you use just pebbles from around your house, like rocks and pebbles to make your walls with inside your house in between the framing.

Right.

Well, did you just stack them all together or did they stick together? How did you do that?

Well, I put two metal nets on both sides. So I have the studs, I think they're called in English, just opposed the wood pole, the studs standing. And then on each side I put metal net just. Yeah. And then in between. So I had like this space in between the nets and then I could throw stones inside. And there were actually two kids doing it, the children of a friend of mine. And they were so happy they couldn't stop. It's just such a fun throwing stones.

Did you have to use like a mortar?

No, because they just follow one on top of the other. And at the end I did not a mortar. I filled the gaps with mud. Not to keep it in place because it would keep this way. No problem. It's just that in order to have more mass. We call it thermal mass. That's how it's professionally called, because it has a very important role in the passive cooling and the heating of the house. What it does, basically, it functions like a sponge. It absorbs. So say in the summer, which is most of the year for us here, that's the climate. It's pretty hot. So the bigger worry is cooling the house. And in the summer, when I open all the windows at night, it just absorbs the coolness that over all the very nice and cool hours of the night. And then it gives it off during the day. During the day, I just close all the windows. It becomes pretty dark here, so I keep the sun out. My insulation keeps the sun, the warmth out. But some will get in, of course. And the walls give off all the coolness they absorbed over the night and make it very pleasant to be at home, even in the extremely hot days.

Yeah. And so then you've got these stones in between all this metal wiring that's in between all the stud in the home, and then on top of that or layered over that. How'd you actually build the wall? Because I know you didn't use Sheetrock.

No.

What do you mean? So this is the wall, basically, what you just described. The stones in between the.

Well, yeah, that's. That's the wall. But what's covering that?

Oh, covering. Then I just. So I filled in the gaps in between the stones with mud, and then I had also another layer of mud as a plaster. So just another layer of plastering. So the whole house looks. It's the same plaster that was applied on the external walls. So it looks. The whole house looks the same. You can't see the difference between the walls. When you walk in, you see everything because it's the same plaster.

All just mud stuck on top of metal frame that's filled with rocks. That's crazy. And it actually looks good. Like, I've been in this home. If you're listening in and this sounds like something out of Shrek, it's not. It actually looks pretty good. Once that mud dried, did you have to treat it with anything like, did you use an oil or anything like that?

Well, that was one option. The thing is that the challenge, once you have it dried, is to keep the dust off, because mud is. When it's dry, it's just soil. It's dusty. When you lean against the wall, your shirt becomes white, and you don't want that. So I had to find a solution how to solve this problem. Oil would be one option. But then I wasn't sure whether you get oily or. And I heard. I overheard, like a rumor that in some place, somebody applied just corn flour porridge on it, which, you know, it comes up. It kind of becomes gooey when you.

Yeah, the porridge that you eat.

Exactly. The one that you eat. Have you ever made one?

Ever made porridge?

Yeah, like a corn flour. A corn flour from corn.

Oh, my wife's made corn flour. I've made porridge before. So is that what you use? Just. Just corn flour and porridge?

Yeah, if you. So you know what happens when you start cooking it? It becomes kind of gooey during.

Oh, so you made. You made a porridge out of corn flour?

Exactly, that's what I did. And then once you apply that. Well, yeah, then once it dries, it becomes like a. A very thin film that you can't see it.

And you just painted the mud with porridge.

Exactly. And then whatever was left, we just ate it at the end of the day.

That's awesome. Okay, so you've got your walls made of mud and porridge, and of course, your roof is made out of wheat and lentils and carpet. And then you've got your floor. How'd you do your floor?

So. It's just local stone cut. So normally also, this would also be something that most people tell me, you can't have a floor. You have to have a concrete floor. And then on top of that, you can do whatever you want. Wood, or you can do whatever. But you have to have it first. Concrete, to keep everything from coming up your house. And I said, no, I want this first. I don't want to use concrete because there's not a single ounce of concrete in the whole house. And that was a principle of mine that I, for some reason, I stick to, really kind of radically, I'd say. And then I was insisting on not having any concrete floor because I also. I wanted to be attached to this. To the. Just to earth. To the earth, and then to absorb. So what I explained earlier about thermal mass, it's true for the walls, but it's also very much true for the floor as well. Hence, I just wanted it to be connected directly to the natural ground. What I did, I basically just put sand to level it up. Once it was level, I had natural stone cut into. What do you call them? Just. What is it you're walking on? Just normal floor. It's.

You mean just like dirt or tiles?

Tiles, sorry, Just cut it into tiles?

Yeah.

You cut this rock this local rock into tiles.

Yes, exactly. It's like, a little bit more than one inch thick. And then in order for it to stick to one another, I just. I used mud again instead of mortar. So I used mud as mortar, especially. Like mud mixed with. With horse manure to make it more kind of sticky and stable. Old horse manure, like last year's horse completely. It has no smell or anything, and. And. Yeah, and that's it. And hoped it was okay. As far as I know. I never heard of anyone doing it, and I'm on the YouTube or anything.

It's a beautiful floor. You'd never think those made out of horse poop and rocks.

Well, that's what you don't see. The horse poop.

You oiled it too, right? You oiled the floor to make it, like, cheap.

Once you use natural stone.

Exactly.

Once you use natural stone, the worry is that it's gonna stain very quickly because it absorbs anything. You know, it's like stone. So coffee, wine, whatever falls on oil. And then I had. I started oiling stuff, you know, furniture that I started to make at home, and oil actually fell on the floor, and it made stains. But I noticed that the stains were the most beautiful bits, so I realized, okay, the way to go is just to stain the whole thing. And I just poured oil all over, and it's just a very big stain on it, and I think it's very nice.

I've got several places in my home that are made from stone. As soon as I got home, I treated all my stone with olive oil, and it's amazing. It's got this really cool shimmer. And of course, now, like you say, like, wine, coffee, stuff like that just wipes off it so easily. So it's a. It's a cool trick.

Hey, quick break here. This is Jessa Greenfield, Ben's boss. I mean, wife. I'm not sure if you know this, but Ben, being the complete nerd that he is, keeps track of everything he's ever recommended and found to work for really well and puts it all over at greenfield fitness systems.com from books to lab tests to supplements, he has it all there. So whether you want to build muscle, burn fat, fix your gut, sleep, better, balance hormones, learn about smart drugs, whatever. It's all there. Check it out@GreenfieldFitnessystems.com okay, now back to the podcast.

I wanted to talk about just a few other unique aspects of your home before we get into your garden and how you're growing your own food and also some of the cool water conservation techniques that using out there. Tell me about, because you mentioned your heater, tell me about how you are heating your home.

Well, for the heating I use something that's called rocket stove, mass heater. It's a relatively new invention, I think a couple of decades and I think it actually origins in the States. So. Wow. It's a bit complicated to explain maybe, but. Well, okay, it uses two principles. One which is to keep the heat as long as you can at home because actually it turns out that a lot of the heat is just escaping through the chimney and we don't want that to happen. We want the air going out of the chimney to be completely cold or as cold as possible. So all the heat stays at home. And the way to do it is just first of all build a very long chimney that going in my case it's going inside a bench. So just a stone and mud bench. So it's going inside and then it makes a little round, a little tour at home and only then it goes up. So all the heat is absorbed in the, in the mud, in the stone, in the bench and also in at home. It warms the air around it makes a pretty quite a journey and only then it goes out. So this is one principle to keep the heat in. The other principle, well, the thing is you can't do it with a normal stove like wooden stove at home because it wouldn't draw. You have to have a very strong draw in order for it to be able to make all this journey. And that's where the other trick goes in, which is the way the stove is built, the burning bit. Actually it's built of like a J shape which for some reason makes, I don't know the physics, but it works. It just draws the wind, the air so fast and so strong that what happens first it enables the smoke, as we said, to go such a long journey and heat many things along the way. And the second thing is that the temperature it reaches because of this strong.

Blow is like 300 or 400 degrees above the normal one. So it burns much more efficiently. So if you'd burn normally about 70% of your stuff of your wood now, you would burn about, I think 90 or more. So I can tell you that for a whole evening of burning wood, at the end of the evening I take out about two cups of ashes. Can you imagine? Everything else burns, it just burns all the way. So it's much more efficient in terms of wood burning. So that's basically it. That's what I Did.

And people are in the rocket stove.

Rocket stove, mass heater.

Okay, cool. Is that something that, that you built or did you have to purchase all the materials for that?

Well, I had two guys that.

That's what they. They just laid the. The metal. So they laid all the.

The, like the heart of the.

The stove because they know, you know, there should be exact measurements and blah, blah, blah. And I felt like I'd better have them do it. And then I made all the building so around it. So I made the bench and all the mud work and stonework, which is most of the work. It's a lot of work. But then I felt more confident. I had enough. But.

I wonder whether. I guess you can't really buy the whole thing. Like, go to the store and buy it.

You'll have to.

It's a style of building and stuff. So it's not like something you can go like grab off Amazon. It's called a rocket stove. Cool. And then another thing I wanted to ask you about was I went and used the bathroom in your. In your toilet. And it's kind of a unique setup you got going in there. It's a special kind of toilet. Can you tell us about it?

Yeah, well, it's. It's. Yeah, maybe it's the most. It's the simplest arrangement you can think of because basically what I have is just instead of using water, I'm using sawdust. And in that way, everything is just biodegrading. But I don't want it to. To happen at my home. So the whole process of the compost. So it basically turns into compost, which is something you can use for your plants.

When you say you're using. When you say using sawdust, what do you mean?

So instead of having like this water tank above your toilet seat, I have like a bucket full of sawdust. And then once you go to the toilet and once you're done, you just.

Pick.

A bit of sawdust and.

Okay, yeah, you like cover. You cover your waste with sawdust that you've got right there beside the toilet. And then. And then that toilet. What's going on? How is the waste actually being removed from the toilet itself?

It's basically it's just a bucket.

Does it stink? Like, do you notice the smell?

No, it doesn't at all. It's not more than any normal toilet. So, you know, if you. It may be a little bit smelly for a while. A little while, for like a few minutes or. But then it becomes completely normal, like normal toilet. I have a Big window nearby, and it has a lid. It closes. So, no, you don't smell anything. And the thing is that once the bucket is full, I just remove it very elegantly from behind. I don't have to go through the house. I just take it from the outside and remove it to a big pile I have far from the house. So, you know, I keep the whole thing happening, the whole composting process away. So I guess like maybe 100 yards, maybe 200 yards away from. From. From home. And in that way, it's perfect. It's a perfect solution. It uses no water at all. I save a lot of. I actually, I won once I made the calculation. And I figured that with the what. The water I'm using for the veg garden, which is pretty big, as you saw, is exactly the same as the amount of water I saved by not using any water in my toilet.

Wow, this is really cool. Okay, so there's some other things that you do. I know that you power this home with solar power, of course, because I saw your solar panels out there in the field, and you built your own furniture from leftover spruce. And there's all sorts of other tips that you have in this PDF that we've got over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com but I want to talk about food, because you've obviously got a garden, too. And one of the things that you told me when I was there is that you have your garden planned out for something like the next 12 years or something crazy like that. Can you explain your gardening methods and how exactly you're growing all your own food right there in as efficient way as possible?

Right, sure, yes, I'd be happy to. Well, the thing is that.

That.

I think, you know, once. Once you decide to grow your own food, I think the main worries, first of all, to have your grain. So, you know, because that's the basic staple food. To have the. I don't know whether it's rice. It depends on when you live, where you live. It's either rice or wheat or corn or, you know, that's. That's. Well, at least most traditions in the world, that's how they. They were behaving. And that's what I did as well. So when you were here, because it's. It's like. It's like a seasonal thing. So it was out, it wasn't the season, so you didn't see any of it. But most of my land is covered with wheat right now. And the veg garden. The next worry, sorry, is you have to have your oil and then you have to have your. Your legumes in order to have the protein and eggs. In my case, I also grow, I keep chicken so I can have eggs for the protein. So the vegetable is really. It need not be very big. It's the most labor consuming because this is something you have to maintain all over the year. And with regard to your question about the 12 years, actually, to be honest, I haven't planned forever because there is like a rotation system. And the thing is, in order for you to be able not to use any pesticides and to have it grown completely and no chemicals at all. One of the most important thing is keep the families of the plants rotating and rotation of plants. So the number. Actually it's the number nine. So the number is every nine years, what happens is that the same crop is being grown at the same place. So I see to it that nothing will. No plant will grow in the same place that it grew unless nine years have passed. And I do it by a method of rotation. So every nine years it starts all over again. So if you will visit me in nine years time, you will see the garden exactly the same as you saw it once you've been here. But if you'll visit me anytime in between, things will be organized differently.

What's going on with the soil or with the plants themselves that makes them grow better or be more efficient when you rotate them into a different area of the garden each year.

Right.

So every plant is a bit different. It needs some different stuff from the soil. It gives different stuff to the soil. It has a different. And also it has different pests, sorry, that will try and get some of it and use it. So by moving stuff around, if, for example, if I grew say a bed of broccoli and slowly they'll start to develop around this broccoli. Newly, newly newcomer broccoli to this area. A pest that like the broccoli. And they will obviously reproduce and you know, breed and become more and more. And. And if I plant broccoli at the same place next year I'll have a much bigger community. Like. Yeah, community, I would say of population. Sorry, a much bigger population of the same pest. And it will be much harder for the broccoli to fight with. And also the ingredients that the broccoli needs from the store will be. There will be less of them in the soil because the broccoli already used it. So the next generation of the broccoli will have nothing. So by moving it around, if I put the next Time, instead of broccoli, I put there, say, beetroot, which is from a different family. Then all the pests that were waiting for the broccoli are very disappointed. There's nothing for them to look for because they don't like beet and they.

Don'T just quickly move over and find the broccoli in a different place.

No, no, it works. No, they're very small, very tiny, and very local.

That's crazy.

If we're talking about butterfly and stuff like that, then you're right. But there's many more stuff that's coming from within, from the soil that, you know, going for the roots and going for the stem and the tiny animals that. Insects that will not migrate that quick.

Yeah. Wow. This is a really cool idea. I've got six garden beds right now outside my house that I just planted my winter crop in. And this is a. This is something I really wasn't aware of, that if you just rotate everything into a different garden bed each year, that those tiny pests are so local that they simply can't keep up. That's a great idea. So one of the things that you sent me yesterday, actually, was a video that shows how you're also growing your own bread from seed to loaf. And I'll of course, put that video over in the links for folks. And I ate some of that bread when I was over. Can you walk through your strategy of basically taking a tiny seed and then later having a delicious loaf of bread? What's your process?

Yeah, well, you know, the funny thing is about bread and about grains generally is that although it's such a basic thing, most people will. I don't know, we have some phobia, you know, even if it comes to.

Cooking.

We roll, you know, we make all sort of exotic food and we roll sushis, and we do all sort of complicated stuff much before we're ready to take the risk and start baking stuff. For some reason, people have this. And me too, actually. I had this fear of baking and bread. And also when it comes to growing, people are so much easier with growing tomato or cabbage, you know, than growing wheat. Wheat, actually, for at least also in the States. But here it's. It's very. It's. It's local stuff. It grows so easily. It's. It's, you know, it's a. It's an indigenous of this place.

And.

So it grows very. All you have to do is throw some seed and it just. It will grow. So in this sense, it's very easy.

The challenge Comes later when it's ready, when it's ripe. And then the problem is how to, you know, how to get from a ripe wheat plant to flour and bread later on. So basically what I do is just. I grow the wheat. The good thing, the amazing thing about wheat that it can grow on rain irrigation only. So I have no. I don't have to water it at all. I have nothing. I do nothing. So come November, December, at the end of November, December, I just gently plough the. Not plowing, just the first four inches about. I just turned the soil in order to get all the grass out and all the weeds after one rain. So about the end of December. And then I just spread the seeds as. Even as I can. It's about 20 kilograms, which I guess it's about 40 pounds a dunam.

So you have different measurements.

So if people are interested, they can write to me and I'll give them.

All the exact amounts.

But basically I just broadcast the scene and cover it. It's very important to cover right away, otherwise we have those ants that will take. They are very quick and very efficient. You leave it for a couple of hours and you're left with half. You leave it overnight and you're left with nothing. They just take everything away. So cover it.

That's very important.

With a rake or anything. That's what I do. And that's it. That's it for the next five months. Then you just sit and watch and enjoy how the. You know, the strength and livelihood and.

You know, the.

Essentiality of this crop. And by the time it's right, you know, if it's difficult to bite, once it's difficult to bite and to. Then it's ready to harvest. And if in doubt, just leave it. If you're living like in an area like me which has no summer rain, if there is summer rain, there's this worry that if you leave it too long, it will rot on the stem because of the humidity and rain. But here there's no worry. You can leave it for another extra week or another couple of weeks just to make sure that it's completely ripe. And then come the harvest time, which you know, a sickle will do, I actually, I will tell you about my thrashing method in a minute and that's.

That will explain why I harvest the way I do. And this way is plucking only the very top bit.

So only where the grain is. I don't know the name in English, but it's just not. I leave all the stem and just the very Upper a bit with the grain. That's what I pluck out of the stocks and just fill buckets with it. This is the most time consuming job. So this will take you? I don't know. In my case it takes about a week. The thing is that so few people do it these days, that people are so excited to hear that I'm doing it, that I always end up with 20 people coming over to do the job for me because they're so excited about doing it. And it finishes up within a day. Everything. But even if I had to do it by myself, it wouldn't take me more than a week. So that's most of the work. Once that's done and you have a pile, a big pile of harvested wheat. Now comes the threshing stage which is basically just taking the grain out of the. The grain is stuck in very, you know, steadfast. It's really difficult to take it out. It's very stubborn. And I think it's the same with corn. And now that we have the combine doing it for us. So the combine basically drives through your field and by the end of the row it has one. One of its side is full of grain and the other is just whatever is left packed nicely into big cubes. And I can't have a combiner in, you know, it's a very small plot. So what I ended up doing, after researching quite a bit and finding nothing, I had to invent something. And what I did, I basically just made a big blender. So I have this plastic barrel. I fill it to about a third height and then I use grass cutter. I think it just, you know, this machine that you cut grass with that has a little wire turning very quickly around.

Yeah, almost like. We call it like a, like a weed eater machine.

Weed eater, yeah. Excellent. Thanks a lot. Okay, so I use a weed eater. I just put it inside. Cover the. I cover the, the barrel with its, with its lid with a hole in the center so I can get the weed eater inside and start it. And 20 seconds later I have a very nice mesh of, you know, a mixture of grain and all the rest together. And then all I have to do is just, I think you call it waning or something. Just, just. I just pour it from one bucket to another with the wind against the wind. The wind will take all the shaft away and I'll have all the grain. And doing it three times in a row will have. You will end up with buckets full of clean grain that you can now mill.

And for milling, I Just use my Vitamix machine. It mills very nicely.

If you really, if you're really spoiled.

And you want your flour like very extra fine, you can sieve it through a sieve and then you'll have separated like the semolina, which is the stuff that stays on the sieve that doesn't go through it, which is, it's the heart of the grain, it's a bit more hard and you can use it to make couscous and all that kind of stuff. And on the other side, whatever goes through the net is the very fine bread that you can use for, for baking. And it's the best bread. It's just amazing.

So it really is the whole process.

It's amazing the difference in the taste and also the way you feel after eating that kind of bread. And I'm actually interviewing, I met a food historian when I was over there in Israel. I'm interviewing him in a couple weeks and we're going to talk about the difference in like, you know, the wheat that a lot of times we're eating from the grocery store here in the States and the wheat that you grow in your own backyard and kind of the difference in the concentration of gluten and gliadin and all the things that people complain about sometimes in bread. It's simply amazing, like the difference in taste when you're using this procedure, like Alika is talking about and doing all of your self growing and self milling and obviously you're not getting, getting a wheat that's been sprayed with herbicide or that's been genetically modified. It's just like the real deal. And then I know that, of course.

Can I add something small?

Yeah, go ahead.

I just wanted to mention in terms of time consumption, it's important for me to know that the whole thing takes. So growing all wheat for the whole year takes just about a week of my time. And the rest will take so all my oil and all the protein will take say about another week or so. And vegetable garden is taking about half an hour a week. So all together it's about two weeks plus half an hour a week for growing all your food. And I think that's an important fact to know.

Yeah, that's what I'm finding too. Once you set up these systems in place, it's so easy to just basically put things on autopilot and it doesn't take that much time. And the time that it does take is extremely enjoyable. Getting in touch with the planet and the earth and growing your own food and living sustainably I mean, you took things to the next level. You built your own freaking house out of cow poof and stones. But either. Or horse manure. But either way, I mean, it really is amazing. I mean, you're a perfect example of how with a few little tweaks, I mean, you can do everything from making your own home to perhaps just putting a composting toilet in your house, to actually getting out in the garden, rotating your garden crops, making your own bread. Amazing things that you can do. One last question, because we're running up on time here, Alik, and of course I know that in Israel water conservation is a big, big issue because water is not that plentiful there. How have you found a method for making sure you're not using too much water for your garden and your home?

Well, I'm very lucky to be living. So sorry. I guess what's more relevant to most of the your listeners is that I think the biggest and most significant decision is to replace your toilet with composting toilet. That saves a huge amount of water. The toilet is the biggest consumer of water in the house. And once you give this up, then you made the most significant step towards water conservation savings. In my case, I'm very lucky to be living just near a. What do you call it, relics. So I have a very old cistern, it's about 1,000 years old, just very near, like about 30, 40 meters away from my home. And it collects, it's actually, it collects rainwater. It doesn't go to, it's not going to the groundwater, it collects the rainwater. Because it's in the middle of kind of a natural rocky area and it's the lowest part of it. So they carved those people 1,000 years ago, which were pretty quite so we assumed that they were Byzantine Romans and they dig this well, it collects water, about 35 cubic meters of water, which I just use a solar pump and I use it to water all my, all my trees.

So you're pretty much just like pumping water out of a cistern and it's going into your garden.

Exactly, that's what I do. So I'm not.

Is that what you use for the food that or for the water that you're drinking as well?

No, I wasn't as brave. I didn't know the quality of water. So I am connected to this village. Although we have no main power and so no electricity and everybody has their own and no sewage system like central. But we do have central water system. So we are connected to the main water system of the country, and I have it, but I use it only for drinking and a shower. That's it. All the rest from the well.

Yeah. Well, your wealth of information, we could go on and on, I'm sure, about everything you've done. And I would actually love to if I didn't have to get on another call. Those of you listening in, I'll open the Kimono on podcasts and tell you that I've got another call to talk about sports nutrition with Tawny Przak from Endurance Planet coming up here. So Alik and I are going to have to wrap up. However, what I have over at the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com Alik is the PDF that Alik and I discussed Alix video that he created that's really cool. It documents all stages of growing your own bread, from seed to loaf, if you want to get into it even more. And then also, I know a lot of people wonder how I personally put together my own home as far as some of the things that I've done in the home that I live in. And I put a little book in there, too in the Show Notes where it's called how to Biohack the Ultimate Healthy Home. And it talks about some of the things that I've done in my own home, from lighting to, to flooring to heating to the wiring and some of the things that make it a healthy place to be. So if you want to get any of that stuff, head over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Alik Alik, thank you so much for coming on the call today and sharing all this really cool and inspirational stuff with us.

Thanks so much for having me, Ben. Thanks. It's looking great.

Yeah.

And folks, of course, leave your comments over there at the Show Notes if you want to ask Alik or myself questions and we'll be happy to help point you in the right direction. All right, Alik, I'll talk to you later, man.

Okay, cheers.

Okay, bye.

Thanks.

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Sam.