Ep. 156 Jim Gale: Food Forest Abundance

This is the You Winning Life Podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, winner and certified entrepreneur coach, Jason Wasser.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the You Winning Life podcast. I'm really excited to introduce today's guest. He is Jim Gale and he is the founder of Food Forest Abundance, who has a mission to build a free, healthy, and abundant society for generations to come through using food forests that will be growing in every community and every yard around the world. He is the chief storyteller. He is a passionate agriculture and permaculture expert, and he is going to share his passion and his insights on how, wherever you live, no matter what size home you have, where you can grow and build a sustainable permaculture garden for yourself. You can grow your own food for yourself, for your family, for your neighbors, and for your community. Hey everybody, welcome back. As you heard in the introduction, we're going to have a really awesome conversation about permaculture, agriculture, food, nutrition, creating a sustainable lifestyle. We're probably going to knock around some different words. So, you know, our guest is going to hopefully give us a better description and a better understanding of what all of those things that I just mentioned mean. But first of all, Jim, thank you so much, and I'm so glad you're here hanging out with us.

Oh, thank you. I'm very glad to be here. I'm coming to you from Galt's Landing here in Central Florida, where we are creating a demonstration site to show what true freedom looks like. We've got so much food growing here, it's absolutely incredible. Cows and chickens and fish and bees and over 200 different types of edible plants already in the ground.

It's incredible. So right off the bat, I mean, just the fact that there's this wide variety of things that are available to us. And, you know, let's break through a few of those definitions first, right? Agriculture, permaculture, permaculture, sustainable living. Let's knock out some of these definitions first. So those who are hearing about what we're going to get into for the first time at least have some context of what these different things mean?

Awesome. Well, I'll start with permaculture. Permaculture was founded by David Holmgren and Bill Mollison about 50, 60 years ago, and it started out as an agricultural design science. And what does that mean? That means observing natural systems and then starting to find out what works and what doesn't, and then designing our human habitat to have the highest amount of yield with the lowest amount of energy input. And I'll give you an example. So, a fruit tree, for instance, is a perennial food-producing plant. A perennial plant is something that you plant once and it can grow for generations, even thousands of years. There are olive trees around the world that have been producing olives for over 2,000 years. So perennial edible landscapes are my favorite because it's like literally living in like the Garden of Eden or a food forest where you can literally just walk around and there's food growing everywhere.

I love it. So based on where people are at, I mean, I know there's so many ways that we can, we can break this down. But right now, right, you and I'm also in South Florida, I'm in Hollywood. So, you know, land isn't abundant.

Here.

Most people could be living in condos or living in apartments, right? That's the South Florida lifestyle. I know a lot of people also love going to— now, you know, it's been leaned into organic, non-pesticides, non-chemical, non-hormone grown foods, stuff like that. But they're expensive. And they're very, you know, price fluctuates depending on what's going on, what's available, what's the season. Let's talk a little bit about just the basic, because you have the side of growing it and creating your own experience. Let's talk a little bit from your perspective about the nutrition, about the health sides, about the benefits that lead into someone wanting to get into this type of experience.

Well, so permaculture, within the science of permaculture, is the solution to all of the world's biggest problems. And I'm gonna say that again, because people go, what? Within the permaculture science, We solve deforestation and mass extinction. We will reverse cancer, diabetes, and heart disease trends. We will end hunger, and we will end tyranny. And it's all right there. And this is not a hypothetical thing that I'm talking about. It's a fact. It's proven. So for instance, there are 44 million acres of lawn in the United States alone. When we take out the poisons and we grow food instead of 50% of our lawns, we do all of that and more. The health of society will skyrocket. People will live to be over 100 as the norm, as the average, because we will no longer be consuming foods that are grown with poisons.

Right. So let's talk that about that. Cuz I know, uh, you know, there's a famous company out there that has millions and billions of dollars of lawsuits against it. And, uh, it's known, it's a known fact that, um, If you're an organic farmer, and somehow they find a seed from that company in your farm because wind blows it, they will come after you and they will shut down your farming and your company and what's with, right? How, you know, and even there's organic companies, I know this is also to be a fact that organic companies of wine in California that are labeled organic, right, bioavailable, right farming, all the different things that they're doing that are the highest level of organic farming, still show up pesticides and most specifically glyphosate.

Yeah. So that's right.

Yeah, go for it.

Well, that's absolutely right. Glyphosate is now in everything. It's everywhere. Here's the good news. Well, there's two bits of major good news. One is the farmers now have started suing that company for their wickedly toxic crops infecting their fields. So they've switched it around. They're saying, wait a minute, we don't want this, and now your crops are affecting our crops. And by the way, these, these non— these GMOs that do not produce seed for next year's crop, that is against everything natural, right? Normally farmers will save 10% of their crop and let it go to seed, and then that becomes the seed for the following crop. Well, of course, GMOs, the way they hook you is they say you have to use our seeds because those crops don't provide new seeds anyway, right? The other piece of good news is that nature is so powerful. Some people call her God or Source, nature, whatever you call this amazing foundation of life that we have. It's so powerful that if they quit spraying the poisons, nature will— the bacteria, the mycelial network, and all of the different amazing things found in nature will break down the poisons and make them inert within 1 or 2 seasons.

Which is so incredible. I just saw the documentary on Netflix. I think it's The Magic—

the—

my—

something about the mushroom. I've got the name of the title, right? Um, and the guys, if you want to look it up, go on Netflix, type in mushroom, and you'll, you'll see it. Um, but one of the things that they talked about, besides just obviously creating the abundance of food that can be grown, you know, whether it's internal, external, and the ways that it's being done. But two, that they did something where they put it on an oil spill, a certain mushroom, and instead of it just being absorbed into the water, into the land, all the mushrooms actually absorb the toxins. And then you're able to just scoop away the mushrooms. Yeah, on the surface. So it's fascinating, right? Just alone, like, we think of food as a food source, as something to supply and to feed us so we can be sustainable as humans from generation to generation hopefully not till the end of whatever that timeframe is. But the other side of the coin is like, what are we feeding the things that if we're, if we're feeding living animals, what quality of food are we feeding them? And then another way I would look at this is, what are we feeding the earth?

Yeah. Then now that is a great question you just asked there, because the soil is like the immune system for our body. When you have healthy soil, then the poisons cannot get through. But when your soil is unhealthy, which is, by the way, when they spray poisons and pesticides and herbicides, the— these are not like laser-guided missiles. They're like nuclear bombs. They kill indiscriminately. They, they destroy the microbiome. So if you pick up a handful of soil, there are more living organisms in that handful of soil than there are humans on planet. But when you kill, you can't just kill one thing when you add these poisons. So it's killing the whole soil network web of life. So that's why it's so important. The number one thing— in fact, somebody asked me the other day, Jim, how will you know when we've won the war? And I said, well, when we look up and they're no longer spraying poisons in the sky and in the soil and in the water and in the minds of humanity.

Yeah, yeah, it's a powerful philosophy. And I'm thinking about this in regards to as a licensed therapist, I've gone into the mind-body world, and I started taking trainings in integrative nutrition, functional medicine. And one of the protocols that they talk about for healing a human is weed, seed, and feed.

Yeah, right.

We got to take out all the junk that's in there, in our microbiome, in our gut specifically, like you were saying, right?

What—

first, what are the foods that you're exposing it to? What are the toxins you're exposing it to? What are the pesticides that are in your shampoos and shaving creams and deodorants, the aluminum, all that stuff?

Right?

We have to eliminate that, right? Number 2 is, what are we now putting the new— what's the new soil that's going in? And probiotics and proper hydration and, right, nourishing food, fermented food, stuff like that. And then letting it grow. What are you doing to enhance, right?

Are you—

other stuff, digestion-based stuff. And it's such an interesting metaphor for the way you're talking, because of course, all that stuff comes from Exactly what you're talking about. So it's the layer under the layer. If our planet is not kept healthy, and we're not— obviously, we know that we're, we're destroying our planet. I don't think this is something that any side that could disagree with that we are doing things that contribute to harm to where we live. I think this from a psychological mindset, from an emotional mindset, from a community mindset, it does change. A lot of things. And I know, you know, over the years, like CSA, community supported agriculture, that's become a thing. And it's become a, you know, first it was a fad, and then it became a thing. But the community, but the community part of it is so important.

It's so important right now. I just did a post the other day. The number one thing that we have to do is come together again as community. And in fact, um, in September we are launching our Freedom Farm Academy. A Freedom Farm Academy is basically a permaculture demonstration site that functions as a nursery and as a completely off-grid homestead. It functions as a community education center where people can come in and let's say it's an acre of land, that's about the average size of a Freedom Farm Academy, will be one acre of land. With a tiny home, or it could be a bigger home, but the— what we have programmed into most of our models is a tiny home, which is completely off-grid with all of the solar energy, the batteries, the water catchment, irrigation, the aquaculture ponds, and surrounded by a massive food production system. So, kids in schools and churches and organizations can go into this system and they can experience what it's like to live in a food forest.

That's incredible. So talk about the financial aspects of this and the time aspects, because usually when people are thinking like, oh, I would love to do this, I would love to have an herb garden, or I would love to have to grow some fruits on my— whatever it may be.

All right.

People think first, holy crap, how much time is this? How much maintenance is this going to be? And then is it really that much going to cost me over the time? That I'm going to be investing this, am I really not better off just going to a Whole Foods or a Sprouts or a Trader Joe's to get the organic food? And maybe, you know, Trader Joe's better because it's cheaper, but right, but getting organic food or fresh, clean food that way, in exchange for my time for money.

So you're infinitely better off growing your own food for, for, for all of those reasons, time and money and health. Right? Because when you walk back into a food forest, and I'll use one fruit tree guild. Let's say it's an apple tree or a peach tree guild. Now, a guild is a community of plants that support each other. So, you'll have some nitrogen fixers in there, which are just legumes or beans or peas. You'll have some flowers in there, which look beautiful. They can also be edible flowers like roses and so on. And then you've got your primary peach or apple tree. And then you might even have 2 or 3 different types of berry trees or berry bushes—rasberries and blackberries and blueberries—around the outskirts of the guild. Now, that one tree, let's say you get a peach tree for $100 and you spend about another $100 getting it planted in a really good hole with good soil and the other supporting plants. Within one year, that peach tree is going to double or even quadruple in size. Size, and that alone is going to make the value of that peach tree go up by 2 to 3 times. So, you just made all of your money back in the value within a year. Now, it starts actually producing peaches. A peach tree can produce about 250, which are vine-ripened peaches per year. So, now what does that mean? Well, it's going to taste a lot better. And it's gonna have a much higher nutrient density because nature knows what she's doing. When a fruit is ready to pick, it not only tastes better and looks better, but it also has the optimal amount of nutrients. So now you've got a much more nutrient-dense food that tastes better and you're making a hundreds of percent ROI per year per tree or plant that you put in the ground. Now times that by a dozen or two dozen or 500 plants, now you've got a real income stream. They say money doesn't grow on trees. That's a bunch of BS. So then let's, let's break that down a little bit more.

So like, because I'm thinking of like the average person, right? We're both in— like I said, we're both in Florida. So you can go to the outskirts of Orlando and you can still find a nice chunk of of land. If you're living here, you're living in a big city, you're living in somewhere where there's not growth to the out— you know, like the outside of town. How would people get started if they don't have a plot of land? They don't have— they have a patio, they have a— like, where, where would you get started even on that level for someone who's listening to us and they're in the Upper West Side of New York City and they have a foot and a half or 2 feet or 3 feet? Is that doable for them? Is that just like do some mint and some rosemary and some that, or—

Yep, it has absolutely is doable. In fact, the cannabis industry has shown us how they can grow weed in a closet with an LED light and some reflective paint, right? So there's— you can grow so many different types of food, and you could do this on a zero budget. So Let's say you have $20 and you want to buy food with that $20. Go to the grocery store and buy organic foods that have seeds in it. Make sure they're the plants that still have the seeds. Buy the fruits or veggies, take out the seeds as you're eating the plants, and then go on YouTube and say, how do I propagate this type of tomato or cucumber or apple or pear or whatever? And even pineapples. You go to the store, you buy a pineapple, you cut the top off of it, You stick the top in the dirt, and now you've got a pineapple plant growing there. Isn't that freaking nuts? It's amazing what nature can do. So, you can start on a completely no budget, or if you want to speed up time, and this is where we help a lot of people around the world, is we will design your landscape to be hyperproductive, and that's what's called permaculture landscape design. That's— we've got 43 designers on our team And we've made a lifestyle by helping people grow food.

So let's get into that because that's the right— that's the Food Forest Abundance Model, correct? Yes. So before you— before we get to going into that much deeper and what that looks like and all the ways that that can do, because I've gone through the website, it's so fascinating. How did you— like, what was the thing on your personal journey that said, this is it, this is my mission and purpose? Because a lot of the times, Right? We know this, and this is one of the reasons why I have my podcast, is that I'm exposing people to different ideas, different ways of solving problems with people who are experts in their area and found their passion and purpose. How did you know that this is what you uniquely wanted to be doing in the world?

So when I grew up, my friends called me Nature Boy. I was always playing with the frogs and snakes and the turtles and the ducks and everything. And so I innately love nature. And you know what, my kids do too. And all kids, the kids that come here and they pick the raspberries and the blueberries and the blackberries and tomatoes and the guavas, they're just in heaven. And I've had parents say, I have never seen my child so happy before. It's really cool. So then I went through, you know, my teen years, my 20 years. And then in my 30s, I had sold a mortgage company that I started from scratch. It did about $1.3 billion in gross revenue in 3 and a half years. And I had time. And I was— this is kind of a fun story. It was my wake-up moment, my red pill moment. I was living in Costa Rica after traveling around the world and doing a lot of different fun stuff after retiring at 35. And I was at a table with a bunch of expats, and the people at the end of the table were saying, "Jim, 9/11 was an inside job." And I went, "Oh, you're freaking crazy!" And I laughed at them, and I, I Basically, I said, you're nuts. And they said, Jim, go watch this movie. And I did. It was called Zeitgeist. And the world radically changed for me because I realized what I always knew to be true, and that is that government is not there to protect the people, but it's there to control and harvest the energy of the people. And so I learned that the world was not as I thought it was. I also had my first two daughters. Mia and Selah. Now that— when you start having kids, then we start asking questions like, what's the world going to be like in 20, 30, 40 years? What's the world of my grandkids going to be like? And then I learned permaculture. So I learned— I red-pilled, I had my kids, and I learned that there are solutions. I actually went through 2 years of cognitive dissonance trying to prove this crazy stuff that I was learning about the deep state and all that. Well, those are tough years because I was focusing so intently on the problem. As soon as I read Bill Mollison's quote, 'Though the problems of our world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple,' I started to sob. From that day forward, which is 15 years ago, I have been obsessed, and now more lately, joyfully obsessed with bringing the solution to all of the world's biggest problems to humanity. Love it.

So this food thing, I mean, this is really the core of everything, right? It's our fuel. It's— it is simplicity. And, and, and the more we complicate— and I talk to this all the time with my clients, and they're like, well, I don't know, all these different ways of solving it. I'm Well, of the problem, of the solutions that you've come up with, or at least the attempts that you think of the solutions, which one is the most simple? Which one of those is the most simple, right? And that's really where it sounds like you're saying, like, right, we talked about being off the grid. And for years, I was like, it was this hippie-dippy thing of like, you know, you want to be off the grid and you want to just have a cheaper lifestyle and do what you want and whatever it is. But, but there is, you know, the— it's interesting because I find myself in, in this very general, nicely balanced, like I take from this side, I take from this side. And everything is about integration. And I really do see that I'm, you know, again, as you look behind me, all this is integrative nutrition and functional medicine behind me in the two bookshelves as a therapist. So when people are coming to me, and they're like, but I'm stressed out, or I have anxiety, or I have depression, the first thing I'm gonna say is, well, I don't know what your blood labs look like. And I also need to know what your diet is. And I also need to know how often you go to the bathroom and what's your— not just like, oh, are you sleeping? And, you know, let me refer you to a psychiatrist. In fact, I don't refer them to a psychiatrist, because I also don't take those type of clients. But I think what the idea of like, a therapist asking about food, a therapist asking about what supplementation, right, and obviously, you said the foods are bioavailable to us, But not everybody's body is capable of assimilating it and digesting it in the way, so therefore we do need supplements. But what you're saying is beyond that, if we get to that stage— one, we didn't need to get to that place where we needed all these extra fixes, and two, your, your mission sounds like it's trying to get us back to that. And if enough people participate in even the most simple things of doing these things, we can have that health back?

Oh, it's radically simple and it's good on every single level. The ROI for growing food instead of lawns is not just cash, but the odds of a family getting cancer, diabetes, and heart disease when they can walk outside and commune with nature and feel and experience what nature has to offer and then eat those healthy foods that are nourishing and not poisonous. It is literally the difference between a world that is dying and a world that will thrive. And it's, it's, it's happening so fast. People are— this is the apocalypse, which simply means the Great Awakening. Yeah, right. We are in the midst of the ascension of the apocalypse. Are the people that are— it's kind of like two parallel societies are being created right now. The people who are still asleep and believing in the mainstream media narrative, which is controlled fear porn. And by the way, fear is the ultimate tool of the slave master, right? Fear is, is the foundation of the control of the psychology of humanity. Sure. So the first thing that we get to do is to realize that we're more than this. This is a temporary experience. We are spirit playing a divine game of sorts, right? That's how I look at it anyway. And I love that because it's empowering. I am responsible, able to respond to every single circumstance in my life. Nobody else. There's no white hats that are going to come save me. I'm the white hat. I'm the one who's going to be responsible for every circumstance in my life. And through that responsibility comes empowerment and the ability to make new choices.

I love that because I talk about this often, that really I can You can tell me whatever challenge, issue, theme in the world, whatever it is, good, bad, indifferent. And really, there's two ways to split it into a very simple lens. It's all ones and zeros. It's very binary. Are you choosing to be as empowered as you can in this specific topic? Or are you still finding reasons, or beliefs, or justifications, or excuses to not be fully empowered? AKA, are you allowing yourself or willing yourself into being a victim? And I think that the more successful we become as humans is that we can sit down on a piece of paper or type it out or whatever, and think about all of the aspects of our life, all the main topics that we decide are important to our life, and kind of rate it, right? And it could be on a 1 to 10 scale. And, you know, 10 is I'm fully empowered on this, 5 is like, kind of like I got work to do, and 1 is like, holy crap, I'm I'm still blaming the world. I'm still blaming my parents. I'm still blaming my 5th grade teacher, that baseball coach who benched me that game when I really wanted to, right? I think this goes back to like the psychology, the mindset of saying like, because you call it abundance, right? Yeah. And there's obviously, right, the fact that you chose that word obviously has implications and meanings for you.

Yes. 100%. That's the lifestyle that I'm demonstrating. You know, my job is to live a healthy, happy, joyful, adventurous, wonderful, virile life, a wonderful life. And then to demonstrate that and to really, you know, Napoleon Hill, after studying the greatest minds in business and in different sectors in the history of humanity, came up with this: whatever the mind of man or woman can conceive and believe, it can achieve. Now, I sat with that. I meditated on that quote for, well, for many years now, off and on. I say that quote over and over. Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve. This isn't just the ramblings of some poet. This is the guy who actually studied the most successful people in the history of the world. That's a powerful statement. So then if that's the truth, then the question that we ask ourselves is, well, wait a minute. What do I want in life? What can my mind conceive and believe? And then I got the chills right now because then I started going, well, listen, I know that permaculture has the solutions and I know that we can demonstrate these solutions and I know we can find a way to do it at scale. My obsession, my joyful obsession is to catalyze a shift in awareness, in consciousness, that leads to mass adoption of the most logical and beneficial thing we could do for ourselves. And that's live with faith and courage and joy and live this freedom lifestyle, this lifestyle of abundance.

Love it. And I'll even take it even simpler because I know Napoleon Hill and The Secret and Esther Hicks, right? All the people who have tapped into this. But it's, you know, it is neurology 101 and the idea that if you believe that whatever is then you're correct. And if you believe that it isn't, you're also correct. And I talk about this so often with whether it's therapy clients, whether it's coaching clients, whether it's people, you know, in the young professional singles world, that you can't get anything differently than that which you believe. Yes. And it's biblical. It is. Yeah. Yeah.

As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. And, uh, there's so many quotes about that. The thought process— thought, word, deed, right? It starts with— really, it starts with an intention and identity and a connection. And then you go from there into the thought. And then instead of being programmed— and that's where the programs are coming from. And, and who's putting out the programs? BlackRock and all these entities that are not there for our benefit. BlackRock did $21 trillion last year. If they spent 5%, if they invested 5% of that $21 trillion, which is $1 trillion into the health of humanity, we could have 1 million million-dollar permaculture education sites around the world that would produce massive abundance. That's with fewer than 10,000 cities in the world. That's over 100 permaculture demonstration sites in every city in the world.

And let's, I mean, let's play some numbers on this because this is really like, I always like doing this and I ask my clients, what's the number that will solve this problem, right? So if we're talking that there's approximately 6 billion souls on this planet, right, give or take, what, how much amount of land would actually be needed at what bare minimum cost to feed everybody clean, healthy food? Has that number ever, has that number ever ever been played out?

I love, I love numbers. So first, I want to share this number that population is a problem is a fraud. That is the foundational fraud of these people who are depopulating the world right now. It's not true. When we simply use our resources in a regenerative way, when we use our human ore and we stop using plastics and putting them into landfills, and when we grow food locally, You know, right now our food comes from 1,500 miles away in the United States on average. That's insane. The resources that needs to be in like 5 different vehicles and held, held by 7 different people. And it's picked 2 weeks or a month or 2 months even before it's ready to be picked. And so the number is basically when the individuals start to do what's best for themselves. And that's the biggest message to convey. Is growing— don't grow food because you're trying to save the world. Grow food because it's the best thing you could do for your own life and for the life of your family.

Incredible. I'm laughing because I just discovered a local coffee shop and he sources his beans and he roasts them. And he figured out that in order to make the best cup of coffee for his clients, the batch based on his business and how many people are coming in, he found that he roasts things in 9-pound batches. Wow. So on average, it's every— the coffee, the fresh roasted coffee will be every 1 to 2 days. So you'll either have something that was roasted yesterday or something that was roasted this morning, right? That's amazing. And, and I— and he goes, you know, like, I— before this would last me, like, the most it would last me was up to 2 weeks, but then I would throw it away, you know, whatever, because at that point he, you know, it's, it's— we wouldn't deem that as fresh even though we're buying bag coffees that are you know, that has a sell-by date, not a roasted-on date. That's a little trick for anybody who wants to get into coffee. Always look for a company that has roasted-on date, not the sell-by date. So it could be already 10 months old, if not longer. So he— I go, so why not? This is so in alignment with what you're saying in a different way. He— I go, so why not package it and white label it under a different brand? Because it's still obviously really incredible coffee that you're sourcing, and you're doing, you know, family-owned farm and it's organic and all these different things. And, you know, why not sell it after the 2 weeks under a different thing? He goes, I would never do that to anybody. That's awesome, right? So one, obviously, he's a coffee snob, which is amazing, and he's a purist and all those other things. But the mindset that he has that things have a legitimate shelf life, that things like you said about 1,500 miles away versus locally grown, or even the local grown stuff really isn't necessarily local grown, because it has to come from somewhere. But you're talking about like, local grown at its source, which is walk 15 feet outside your house and pull it off a tree right there.

Yeah, two things. First of all, what's the name of that coffee shop? Because I love shining a light on people who are doing it right.

Yeah, it's Kalusa Coffee in Fort Lauderdale. See, now that's so cool.

We— and that's what we do is we shine a light on the people who are demonstrating what ethics and morality and what these, these logical things like, now we're talking about his coffee shop. Yeah. And that, that's another added function of doing it, of going to that next level.

Well, I see it through my lens of core values, right? So when I was working in my old office, as I told you, right, I was previous, I was only doing my podcast by, by Zoom. So when I had that first week in March of whatever it was, I how many years ago already at this point, that I was able to pivot really quickly to using this technology over and over again, because I was already preemptive. But I remember I had an espresso in my office for my clients. It was easy. I would make them a cup of coffee, be a full service. You have your therapy and your therapist is making you a cup of coffee or tea or whatever. But I did not have white sugar. I had either— I had stevia, I had organic honey. And then one of my clients like wanted brown sugar. So I'm like, alright, I'll buy you a box of organic brown sugar, right? But that was like, but you can't get white sugar and you can't get, right? And it had to be like, you know, everything was organic. But I knew that the beans were not organic. So again, I traded off at a period of time simplicity over something because I'm not going to make drip coffee and let it sit and whatever, blah, blah, blah, right? And then when I came home, I kind of finished up those pods that I had left over. Yeah. And I'm like, all right, let me do this search. And I went on and I searched organic, fair trade, small batch, right? I found— so, and I ended up finding this company, Grounds for Change. They're out on the West Coast. They are carbon neutral. They support women who have been abused in third world countries. Like, that meets— like, I made a decision based on my core values about supporting a company. Also, they roast it, you know, they only send it out to you when they roast it, right? So it's— and for majority of the last, I would say, year and a half, every couple weeks I'd order a few bags and you know, whatever. So I think what we're talking about, and I've seen this in some of your other literature when I was, when I was preparing for this, was, was talking, it was about making decisions through values. And I am an ardent, really, I don't want to say religious, but like obsessive person about values-based decision-making. And this really does sound right. Honing this to you can bring your value of of your home, of your community, of your family. You're teaching values, you're teaching lifestyle skills, you're teaching self-reliability. Yeah, it's like, it's like Boy Scouts on steroids, you know, and simplicity.

And simplicity. In fact, if you want, I can go outside right now and I can walk you through some of our food forest elements and see how simple life can be. You want to do that?

Yeah, let's do it. And then those who are listening to this, we're going to be as descriptive as possible. But there is going to be, there is always, so, so you know, there is a full YouTube video available of every episode. So as you hear Jim describing this and you're like, holy crap, what does that look like? Go over to YouTube and you'll find the video of this in, in real life as well. So go for it. Let's do it. Awesome.

And I, I will be extra descriptive as we're walking around the food forest. Hey buddy, feel free to have, have a bite and then I'll be probably 15 minutes. All right. So we're at Gulf's Landing here in Central Florida. This our temporary studio, which is a camper. We just ordered 3 tiny homes, and we're also building some very nice homes here. And this is where I like to blow people's minds. You know, the HOAs all around the world are— the land is treated as a liability in these HOAs. Our land is an asset. So what does that mean? Well, instead of growing lawn, we grow food. And what does that mean? Well, that means we don't share the expenses, we share the profits. Love it. And this is how it could be in every, every HOA community, every golf course, every— all of these communities where you have land, this could all be treated in this type of very logical way. So right here So this is an area— this is a little—

if you're coming back a little, we got you back. Yeah, we lost you for a second, now we got you back.

Okay, I think it was just because I was heading out. Uh, I think I switched over from the internet system there to the, the normal Wi-Fi. So behind me is the first food forest. All along here, these are border plants. They're bamboo and many different types of fruit trees. Now, the reason we put this bamboo here, it's a great buffer as a property line. And by the way, this is the type of bamboo that does not spread. Some types of bamboo, they're crazy to— they spread way too fast. They're hard to get rid of. These are clumping bamboos. So my favorite place, and we're going to go over to the pond. We built a 3.5-acre pond here, and we put 14,000 fish in the pond. And we put 6 different variety of fish. Bass, and sunfish, and catfish, and 3 different types of minnows. And then we're using our pond water to fertilize and irrigate, which is to fertigate. All of the food forest plants around the pond. So can we break that down?

Because there is— I'm assuming— can you see that right there? So that whole thing, guys, if you're seeing that, there's this beautiful, beautiful— it literally looks like a lake that has been there forever. It's got this beautiful little footbridge going across it. Let me ask you about— so the— I mean, I know this is gonna be really hard for people who are listening, but like the, the nutrients in the, in the water, we're talking about chlorophyll, we're talking about other things as well, correct?

Yep. Yes. And so when you have, uh, it's an aquaculture system. So we're growing the fish and you see all the fruit trees, like there's literally like 400 fruit trees around the edge of this pond and there's 200 varieties. So when the fruit trees drop their fruit The fruit go into the water, and then the bugs and the fish eat the fruit, and the fish also eat the bugs. And then we use the fertile water from the pond to fertilize all of the fruit trees. It's just, it's an incredible closed-loop system, and it's all run on solar power.

Isn't that amazing? And so to irrigate, I know one of the things is doing some type of drip irrigation. How are you pulling that water and the nutrients from the water and bringing it over? Is it through irrigation? Is that through hoses? Like, what's the system that's set up to make that happen, to make it easy to feed everything else?

Yes. So down at the end, you can barely see it from here, but we have, we have solar panels with a pump and a water extraction system. So we're— we've got these two floating fake geese and they have the intake valve floating there underneath about, about 10 feet down. That water is being sucked out then, that fertile water, and then it's going into the— you can see every— see, here's a bubbler system right here. Every fruit tree has a bubbler on a timer. So all we have to do now— well, we don't have to do anything now. It's all automated watering with really fertile water.

It's insane. It's so cool. So we're just— so right now we're walking, there's this beautiful, beautiful lake. There's all these little trees and little, uh, these are what type of plants right here that we're walking by?

There's, uh, peaches and avocados and mamonas and mulberry and banana, and, um, there's actually 200 different types. There's loquat and there's kumquat, there's, um, apple. There's all of the citrus, grapefruit, and, and tangelo, and lots of different mulberry. So people in like certain states—

would this depend on if you're living in the Southeast, right? You're in, you're in Central Florida. But would this be any different based on someone who's in the Pacific Northwest, or if they're in upstate New York? How much of these things would be similar? And because I know, right, we have— I mean, you're not in South water so you're not hitting limestone right off the bat. So I don't, you know, right, knowing on all the different things if you're going deep into the ground, if you're certain things at certain seasons. So I'm assuming these are much more for the closer to the equator type trees.

Yeah, so in permaculture, the first thing that we consider is what agricultural zone is the property in. Because like my buddy up in northern Minnesota off the tip of Lake Superior where really cold. He has 300 different species of edible plants growing on his property in a permaculture way. He could leave. I asked him the other day, I said, Chad, what would happen if you would just leave the property? And he said, well, it would— if I came back in 30 years, it would expand and it would now cover many miles of area around it because that's what— here's some guava on the ground. Food forests are expansive, right? Because the animals and the wind and the elements will come into the system and it'll take the seeds from the guava and from the strawberry plant and it'll start spreading the seeds in the forest around the property.

Isn't that amazing? It's incredible. So we're basically refeeding the land above and beyond just ours, right? So another, like, so I know they talk about honeybees, right? Or any type of bees as the functional representation of a healthy society. And basically, the, you know, a society will collapse otherwise. Yeah, exactly. And so if they're coming, they're going to see that, that fruit on the floor, they're gonna maybe pollen, you know, however that process is, they're going to take something from that. Ah, what are we looking at right here?

Papaya. And, and these are like sweet potato vines all over here. We've got hundreds of pounds of sweet potatoes out of the ground within 12 months. This is yuca or cassava. You can cut one of these cassava, you can cut it in 5 different places, and now you stick that in the ground and you'll have a new cassava plant. Talk about simplicity. You could take this— now these are edible as well, these are sweet potato leaves— and you could take the sweet potato vine You could chop it up into 10 different pieces and you stick each piece in the ground and now you've got 10 different new sweet potato plants.

So this is an infinite, like you said, a resource loop of infinite value that just starts off with a simplicity here. So, so those people are not watching, right? He's just snacking away on pretty much everything you walk by. You're just grabbing it and pulling it and eating it. So everything pretty much there is just live and walk.

It's, it's— this is the ultimate simplicity. This is a Moringa tree. Moringa has more vitamin C than an orange, more potassium than a banana, more calcium than milk, more protein than an egg, more iron than spinach, all in the leaves of this miracle tree.

And has so many medicinal purposes as well, which is really, really, really cool. And that's the thing, right? Oh, people don't realize that some of these, some of these plants or their trees, that the fruit might be be one thing, but the plants or the leaves or the, the other aspects might have an antifungal or an antiviral, antiparasitic, right? And so there's so many different ways to break this down. Jim, this is, this is so cool. So as we're, as we're walking back, I want to talk about how people can, can start. I know there's, right, the Food Forest Abundance, uh, is the company that, that you're doing. And let's talk a little bit about the multiple ways that one, people can start learning about this? Like, where would— you know, obviously there's the two aspects on the website. There's the Verge Permaculture Course, there's a School of Permaculture. Let's break those down for a second, and then let's talk a little bit about, um, the consultations, the designs. And love it. Yeah.

Okay, so if anybody out there wants to be in the business of helping your, your family and your community and your neighborhood be free and be healthy and grow food. So, we have the Food Forest Cooperative. We're one of the fastest-growing cooperatives in the world right now. We launched 15 months ago, and now we've got partners in about 8 countries and almost every US state. We have many people in Canada and Mexico and Europe and Australia. And so, that's the business. If you simply want to grow food at your own home, then everything starts with design. And we have the 43 amazing permaculture designers. They— the right one will be assigned to your design. It's very much like architecture where you start out by saying, you know, how big of a house do you want? How, you know, how much annual beds do you want? Do you want more perennials? So we ask a bunch of different questions, and here's where it gets to be extremely fun, is when we start sharing with customers what's possible. So that's the first part.

So then let's talk a little bit more, right? So someone wants to do this, they have an 8 by 10 piece of land, and there's a consultation process, right? Yeah. So walk, walk us through what that looks like. Someone who wants to do it themselves, they want to build their own thing for their home, um, right? They're going to work with someone from the team. There's, right, that would be a starter food forest, I guess we would call that, right? And then there's the idea of going back to a guild. So there basically would be like, okay, so this is like, here's what your backyard is, we Basically, the person would give them what, a map of what it looks like? Yeah, exactly.

So we start by asking what the goals are. And then we take measurements of the land. We get a video, like a couple 30-second videos from different angles of the space, or a minute long, you know, just enough to really give an idea. Then we also Google Earth it. And then we take all of the different data points and put them together along with the agricultural zone, and then we do a custom design. Every single design we do is custom, and it takes about 3 weeks, and it's like, it's the foundation of the Freedom Blueprint for, for society.

Amazing. And then going back to what you were saying, to have these farms in multiple places as places to show, to train, to— is there retreats? Is there other events that are up in the future about this that are going to be happening?

Yeah, constantly. We've got trainings and events going on really all over the world. It just depends on the time of year and different things. We've had several permaculture classes here and we will have many more in the future. In fact, that's why I just ordered those 3 more tiny homes so we could bring more people in and teach them what it means to have these types of landscapes.

Whoa, pumpkins and squash. Yeah, what are we looking at? It looks like we're looking at some watermelon.

Yep, some honeydew, some squash, some, some watermelon, some cantaloupe.

Uh, it was probably what we would say there was about 75 to 100 there sitting on the ground, probably.

Yeah, I'd say you're about right. Yeah, yeah.

Wow, there's just a pile, literally just looking at 2 piles of about 75 or so different, different fruits. And just again, you're just still walking and snacking as you go, which is, which is, which is so incredible. So I just want to give, as we, as we wrap up with our time, one, right, foodforestabundance.com is the place to go. There's so many cool blogs and videos. And obviously there's the learning side that you can do. There's the consultations and then there's the getting involved, becoming an ambassador, becoming a co-op installer and becoming a designer.

Yep. And then the Freedom Farm Academy. If anybody wants to own— basically it's a nursery business on the good kind of— on natural steroids, um, where it combines all of the elements. It's a completely off-grid homestead on an acre of land that will be an education demonstration site. And by the way, even things like ham radios are included and cordal nodes. Like, we're going full off-grid communication. So if the communication grid ever goes down, our Freedom Farm Academies will be able to be central hubs for communication and education on the next phase of humanity. Wow.

So it's basically nutrition, food-based— yeah, survivalism, which is incredible. And Jim, so, um, just as we— again, as we wrap up, any other places, any other books that you recommend for people, especially regarding the farming? I know that would be a cool place for people to— if they're interested in this. I know that you mentioned a person in the beginning about permaculture, the founder of that. Um, is there any, any other awesome resources regarding food and food farming and food design and permaculture that you— that scream out to you?

Yes. Oh, there are so many. Um, David Holmgren's, uh, RetroSuburbia is fantastic. It's like It could be 3 books. He put it all in one book because what I've learned about permaculturalists, money is a byproduct of creating value. All right. So in other words, RetroSuburbia is an incredible value all in one book. It gives you all the solutions to if you want to start doing this yourself. The other thing is become involved with us. If you'd like to. We are all about collaborating and creating a better world. Absolutely love it.

So Jim, I know, really want to thank you for all this amazing time. So really do want to appreciate, I really do appreciate the time that we have. I know that we're, we're at that point and I really looking forward. So guys, if you want to get more about this, please, please, please go over to the, to the website. It's thefoodforestabundance. There's so much cool stuff there. If this is anything that intrigues you, right? This is just proof of how you can have a mission and a purpose and then bring it to other people in a way that just aligns with everything that you believe. And again, going back to our things about mindset and health and wellness and being in nature, all the things that I love talking about. And Jim, really do appreciate you spending your time with us today.

Well, thank you so much. Thank you to everybody listening. And, uh, Yep. Let's love, let's grow food and have an awesome time through this transition.

Thanks, my man. Hey everybody, hope you really enjoyed my conversation with Food Forest Abundance founder, Jim Gale. I wanted to share with you that if this is something that you yourself are interested in learning more about, and you actually are thinking about going ahead and doing something like this in your home, or you know someone who is, I wanted to share with you that there is a coupon code for 5% off of Food Forest's services and planning, and you can check that out by going to the link in my bio, but it's shop.foodforestabundance.com/jasonwasser. And again, for the 5% off coupon code, type in YouWinningLife. If you have any other questions, we always look forward to hearing from you. If you want specific topics, uh, or specific categories, uh, more in line with our past interviews. Please let me know if there's anybody out there that you would love for me to connect with that you personally know that you think would be a good guest. Please reach out to me and please also send me a message on Instagram, either on the Jason Wasser LMFT 🎗️ or You Winning Life Instagram 🎗️ or directly at jason@thefamilyroomsfl.com. Looking forward to hearing from you. And hope you enjoyed today's episode.

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