Episode 109: From Urban Organizers to Organic Pioneers with Julie Rawson and Jack Kittredge

Hi, friends, this is John. Welcome back to the Regenerative Agriculture podcast, where we talk about all kinds of fun conversations related to agronomy, plant nutrition and soil science, and really all the pieces that can contribute to regenerating our food system, our general collective health, our livestock health, our ecosystems, and this beautiful planet that we live on and that we call home. I've really been looking forward to this conversation today. I have with me Jack Kittridge and Julie Rawson from Many Hands Organic Farm. Jack and Julie have been pioneers in the organic agricultural space, and they have been working with some of our products on their farm for, I'm not sure exactly how long, let's say roughly a decade or so. And I've been looking forward to this conversation because of the very interesting pathway that they have been on, the journey they've been on. And they also have a new book that is now available, I think for the last half a dozen months or so, Many hands Make a Farm. I would highly recommend it. Jack and Julie, welcome. Thank you for being here.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah, thank you, John.

When you asked me to review your book, and we were talking about that just a bit before I hit the record button, and when I reviewed your book, I, of course, am most familiar with your work in the farming context, and it was a delightful book to read, but it was not very much about farming. And so I'd love for you to both tell us a little bit about your journey, your pathway, what got you to the work that you're doing today and what you found intriguing along the way.

Well, I was in my early 30s and Julie was in her early 20s when we met in Dorchester, which is a community in Boston. We were both organizers. Julie was doing community organizing, I was doing more kind of state policy organizing. But we were definitely out to work in causes and try to, as Julie puts it, sometimes try to save the world. And we met and moved in together. We had a tenement house in Dorchester and had a little lawn to it. And when Julie first became pregnant, it was clear that she wanted to raise as much food as possible for our kids as they came along. And we decided we needed to go into the country and have some kind of a farming situation, which we didn't have a whole lot of money. But I had for several years been on the side developing a hobby business where we made board games with some friends of mine. And we actually tried to sell them. And we were very modestly successful, but we were able to put aside the money that we made doing that and Kind of made that a lockbox as they say, and didn't touch it until we had enough money to buy some land. So that took us about two years. And we drove around finally to find it. We recount some of that experience in the book about meeting and having. Beginning to have kids and looking for land and so forth. And some of the, you know, we couldn't afford to have really good soil and so forth. We found land that we. That was adequate for us in a town called Barrie in Massachusetts. And we saved up our money again for another couple years and came out here and built a house. And we couldn't afford to have somebody build it, so we built it ourselves. And we used some principles of using the earth in terms of passive solar and having a root cellar and earth berming the basement so that would be warm and so forth in the winter. And a number of aspects that had just been popularized by the fact that we had just come through two oil embargoes and everybody in the country was all upset about energy and how we needed to save energy. And we began our soil and farming work when we came out here on this land in 1982. We spent, you know, a couple years building the house and getting used to the community and having a garden. And Julie started a farmer's market in our town in 1983, 85. And we began selling at a very low level. I tried to find work and support us in some other way than farming. And very slowly we built up the farming, began selling to institutions. There was a retreat center, a hotel store that would take care of stuff. Still wasn't adequate living for the, for the family, but it was beginning to make, make that. And we built that very slowly until we had a, you know, in 10 years we had enough money to build a barn and get a walk in cooler that we got from a, you know, secondhand from a food co op and begin to do a CSA which required the cooler to keep things fresh until the people could come pick them up in the afternoon. And we just slowly built our, our farm on that basis. The lucky factor was that we were here when NOFA Massachusetts, the Northeast Organic Farming association, formed a chapter in Massachusetts. And we were at the founding meeting and Julie was elected to the board. And so we became very involved in that. She eventually became the executive director of the organization for 30 some years. And I was the editor of the newsletter for the whole seven state organization. So we were quite involved in that. And part of our book goes into some of the issues we dealt with there some of our support for organic and some of our questions about organic, but hopefully that begins to show you what happened. We're basically a young, relatively young couple that, you know, wanted to go into farming and have our kids. And there was many other people at our, at that time of, in that decade or so in the 70s and early 80s who were very interested in doing. I think people were upset by the Vietnam War, upset by what they considered a lot of things that were distasteful about modern society. And they wanted to try to have a more holistic and moral life, you might say ethical life, doing something that was valuable and good. So we joined that, rode that wave for quite a while and I think it's still out there. And we've spent our life doing it and have four kids now who are grown and gone. But almost all of them are doing something pretty similar to what we were doing. And hopefully that will give you a sense of how we got our start and where we went with it.

I really wanted to have this discussion with you because of the length and depth of your experience and your tenure in the organic agricultural space. Let's talk a little bit about what your journey and pathway has been on the farm. Julie, you described your desire to grow really healthy, nutritious food and how your farming operation slowly grew and tell us a bit more about the, the journey of the farm itself and how the farm has expanded and where you are today.

Back in the 50s, conventional farms hadn't been around that long, you know, because they really didn't start using a lot of chemicals until right after the war. And my mother, bless her soul, got really excited about the environmental movement and she started reading the Rodale stuff. And, you know, by 1971, when I graduated from high school, she had been to a couple conferences and was doing everything organically. So she was way ahead of her time, you know. And this is in very, you know, how it's like in the Midwest in a small farming community. People there aren't. There's not a whole lot of diversity of opinion, I guess. And so when I was launched, you know, and then I organized for about 10 years in the city, but had had a garden in Dorchester City Starting in 77, we had a little plot and I started reading Organic Gardening and Organic Farming, you know, from Rodale and we got involved in nofa. So anyway, I was well into and we joined the food co op and we're buying organic food, the whole thing. So organic was definitely where I wanted to be. And when we came out here, you know, we started, you know, learning through NOFA a lot of how to do all these things. And by 1987 I was organizing the summer conference, NOFA summer conference. And had did that for 24 years. But as the conference workshop coordinator, I got a chance to really call all the best growers all around the region and really learn from them. And, you know, I. Not only did I sign them up for workshops, but I would talk to them about all their best practices. So that was really good. And so I got, you know, I got a lot of help that way. My mother was big into roostout and mulching, so. So I was always doing the mulching thing. We were using organic fertilizer from North Country Organics. I think early on, actually Jack was a rep for them for about a year or two, sold fertilizer for them. So we were using organic fertilizers and we were mulching. But I think the next step in my growth was when Dan, our son, Dan Kittredge, who many of your listeners know who he is, I'm sure, got into remineralization. And that was around, I think 2005, 2006, I think he went to the ACRES conference and came back and we were. So we started doing rock dust, you know, trials. We put rock dust on some areas and not on the others and started noticing, you know, better. More of a sheen on the. On the plants and, you know, better health. And. And so we were, you know, we went through this process from. And NOFA was involved in it. You know, he. Dan is the guy from the Bionutrient Food association and I, from nofa Mass. Put together these wonderful conferences and we invited in Arden Anderson and we invited in. Who's the old guy who was. Used to work for Paul Dettlaff. Yeah, he came and you came and Jerry Brunetti came and all these people came and we had these three day events and we really started going deep into mineralization and how it all works. And you.

Church basement operations.

Yeah, church basement operations, exactly. But, you know, Jerry had started doing liquid fertility and you started doing liquid fertility. And you guys were all working together, I think, to try to figure all this stuff out. Anyway, that was a very exciting time. And I think all of the, I don't want to call them the best farmers, but all the more outgoing or, you know, willing farmers would show up at these things and we'd really share our, you know, experiences with each other. So that was all. We were all doing that. And I was, you Know, doing some spraying, wasn't really sure exactly what I was doing and trying to follow my way through the that, but I. We then had Graham Sait, who's the Australian ag consultant to one of our. Our soil nutrition conferences, and he basically said, you all have to stop tilling. And that was in 2014. And so I came home and I said, jack, we have to sell the tiller. And not only do we have to do that, we have to tell all the people Nova why they should sell their tillers. So, you know, so for about 10 years now, we've been tillage free. And I know you're kind of a. A tillage guy at some level, but I have found that in our small operation, two acres of vegetables and our trees are, you know, all heavily mulched anyway, would never be rototilling around any of our fruit trees that it. It's really been a worthwhile way for us to really lock in the mineral nutrition, the foliar sprays and then the non tillage, and then, you know, more and more mulching than we've done before even. And more cover cropping before season, you know, in season, you know, inter. Inter. Sowing cover crops after the season and then using tarps to kill all the. Whatever you need killed in the springtime so that you can come back in and not have to till. So it's been very exciting for us and we have, you know, our quality gets raised higher and higher all the time. And I think I started working with Nathan Harmon maybe three or four years ago as my consultant for you with you all, and he really helped me. And then I worked with Kyle for a bit. He moved on, I guess. But I'm working with Bella now, and every month we have a conversation about stuff. And last. Last summer when we had. I think it was. I don't know if it was the rainiest summer we've had in recent history or not, but it was very rainy and we started to develop some problems. And, you know, I just. It's really nice to be able to call up Bella and say, okay, look at all this crap all over my beet leaves. You know, what am I going to do? And she says, all right, well, we need to put on more potassium and more manganese. And, you know, so we did it. And then I remember I sent her a picture of the beet greens looking really terrible. And then a week later, the same beet greens were all beautiful. You know, it's just. It's amazing that with proper nutrition and using these Wonderful biologicals, you know, in the, in the mix that we can really make things work. So we, one of the things that we don't skimp on here is we do a weekly foliar on everything that we have and make sure that we get that done. That means people arriving at work at 6 or 6:30 in the summertime before the sun comes out and you know, prioritizing that along with all those other things, along with, you know, good mulching practices. We got a bale chopper so that we can chop up the mulch really small and spread it, you know, on the crops that are a little more difficult to do. No till, like carrots and radishes and you know, all the small things are very difficult to do without tillage and you know, just keep going. But I was once in a workshop with Brian o' Hara and he was just saying how much fun it is to farm now. And it's really true. I mean, it's very, very exciting to go out there and see the kind of the iridescent sheen that's all over these plants. And you just like, oh my God. You know, you get goosebumps when I look at a chard plant. And as an aside, our deer population also gets goosebumps. Wiped us out. We never had problems with deer until this year and they totally destroyed our chard and a few other things. So we have to work on that issue. But Dan says, well, I told you when the wild animals start eating all of your food, you've reached it.

Yeah. So Julie, thank you for sharing that story, the story of your journey and pathway. But it occurs to me that you followed a pathway that is unusual for most of the people that I speak to. Certainly unusual for most of the commercial farmers that we work with at EEA and larger scale farmers, that is. It's my understanding that you first started down this pathway of seeking to achieve nutritional density and disease and insect resistance from a soil remineralization perspective. And it was only after that that you started using the foliar sprays. And you're saying now as a reason it's four years ago. For some reason it was thinking it was a longer period than that.

No more than four years ago, I just started working with you guys as a consultant.

Okay.

I just buying things and haphazardly. Some from Jerry Brunetti and some from you and. And you all were new into that too, you know. When did you start making foliars? What year was it?

2009, 2010. It's been a while.

So, you know. Yeah, but. But it. But in my history, that was. That's, you know, I was 30 years in. Yeah.

Yeah. So I'm curious. I'd love to hear your perspective. With all the work that you were already doing using organic fertilizers and then. And soil amendments and so forth, what was. What were the shifts that you observed once you started specifically using rock powders and remineralizing soil? And then second stage, what were the shifts that you observed once you started using more foliar applications?

Yeah, well, I think one of the important things that Dan brought back from Acres was the. What's the guy from Missouri, you know, the guy who wrote Albrecht?

Neil Kinsey.

William Albrecht, Yeah. And his focus on calcium and, you know, and base saturation and understanding all that. I didn't really understand all that. And as it turns out, we were way down there on our calcium. I mean, this is crappy New England soil with very shallow, you know, before we hit ledge. So. And it was played out. It was a hay field when we moved here, and, you know, nobody used any fertilizer on it for a long time because they just, you know, cut the hay and barely get one crop a year, and that was it. But anyway, when we found out that we really. So that was what we first did, was really add a lot of calcium and phosphorus to the soil to bring those kind of bases back into place where they needed to be. And what did I notice then? I think our organic matter, I couldn't keep it up. And I think that the rototilling every year was just, you know, getting rid of any organic matter gains that we had. And so that was helping with organic matter. And, you know, I think more. More quality on our crops. But they were. Some of the stuff was great early on. Lettuce is easy to raise, but oftentimes the tomatoes or, you know, brassicas or whatever would have more. More issues with insects and disease and stuff. So that was the first big shift was. Was getting the bases in place. And I do believe that, you know, everybody should read Albrecht. And it's just really a lot of good stuff to learn there. What was your second thing?

What were the changes, the shifts that you observed at the next stage when you started using foliars? And actually, there's. There's almost a precursor question to that, which is, given that you were doing that remineralization and had observed some progress, what was the motivation for. For considering to use foliars at that point?

Well, I think Dan, I mean, he was Going to all these things and learning all this stuff. And. And he suggested, you know, here's our next step. I mean, he became my mentor, really, about how to really build quality. And I was. He had the ideas and I had the ability to the follow through, to just go home and do it on the farm. And, you know, I was demoing for him a lot of the time, just demoing how this would work. And Jerry Brunetti, you know, he was very instrumental and, you know, and his ascent shield and all these other cool things that he was putting in his, you know, his. His liquid fertility stuff. And it just. Because every time I tried this stuff, it worked better. We had higher quality produce. And, you know, I think I was talking to somebody the other day, you know, about the fact that when we plant a kale plant in the spring, we continue to harvest from it until December. We don't have to do what a lot of organic growers do. They just like, oh, I have to start several successions of all these crops because they play out and they're using black plastic and they're just not building their soil. They're not. Mulch is passe or whatever it is. There's a whole vision, I think, of the young organic farmer who has their. Everything's all just beautiful and black plastic. But they don't follow with the nutritional stuff. I mean, they often look askance at using the kind of stuff that you use. I use it because it works. The food tastes better and it lasts longer, and our customers are really happy. And we just. We're just making more money now. We actually made money last year for the first time.

For the first time in 30 years, 40 years.

We were just breaking even. I was making my money working for nofa, you know, the farm was. And I really just tried to break even. That's all we tried to do and feed our family. And, you know, and we had.

We had. We paid reasonable salaries for staff, too. That was always. Yeah, if we had some extra money, we'd try to give somebody a raise.

Yeah. So, I mean, we were. We felt that we were making enough money from NOFA that we would put any investment into the farm and the farm systems and the people.

So.

But now. Yeah, now I feel like we're actually coming to a new phase yet. And then when you get smarter, when you start eating good food, and then you get.

And then you realize there's another phase yet. What are some of the highlights for visitors? You have lots of visitors and you have a lot of employees that are Coming to the farm all the time. What are some of the highlights that stand out to other people when they taste the crops that you're growing and when they see what's happening in your fields?

Well, they like the lunch. We feed a lot of lunch around here.

We had somebody today who said, this is the best ham and bean soup I've had.

She said, if I had this every day, I would be.

That's why I have to eat every.

Day to eat right. You know, I think people feel very comfortable here because we're, as my friend Anna says, straight, no chasers. You know, we're very straightforward and we're very outgoing to people and we appreciate people when they come. So we actually, you know, when people come, it's like, okay, well, you need to do something to earn your lunch. You have to work a little bit, but you get to meet all these cool people and people can bring their kids. And, you know, we have a targeted population of young men who are. They're in an institution in town because they either got there for sex abuse or violence stuff and they're, they're underage. So they're boards of the state and so they come out once a week and work on the farm. We used to work with former prisoners for a period of 12 years. They'd come out and we hired a bunch of the guys too. So we've worked with a lot of populations of people who are otherwise not going to have much of a chance, I guess. But then we have a lot of old people like me, I'm 70. We have Stu, who's my age, he's turning 71 next week. And we have Danny and Paula, who are 69. And you know, we have some people in their 50s and 40s and 20s too, but we have a lot of older people who are just like, finish their professional career, want to really do what they do really well. I don't know if you've hang around with people my age much, but, you know, they have a lot of. There's a lot of knowledge and a lot of just willingness to just get out there and do what needs to get done.

Got a professor and somebody who had a banking career and, you know, it's people who really were achievers in their midlife lives and now they're, they're done with that and they don't need to make money, but they want to, you know, they want to be involved in something like this, a community. They like to eat well. They believe in the exercise.

So I think it's fun too, that we have a lot of animals. We've always raised animals. We have 150 layers, 250 meat birds, 100 turkeys and six to 12 pigs every year. And they're all part of the whole system. So they're part of that integrated system, which I didn't mention earlier. We first of all wanted to have a homestead. We wanted to raise all of our own food. And so we have every kind of fruit tree and every kind of small fruit, and we have eight freezers that are all full of stuff that we raised.

We go through everything once a year, too.

You know, it occurs to me that when you consider the depth of your experience in organic farming, I asked you what the highlights are for other people, and I was about to ask you the question of what are some of the memorable moments or some of the. The memorable experience and the highlights that stand out for you. But it occurs to me that you have such a different perspective of normal, that what is normal for you isn't normal for other people or may not be. And so before. Well, before I ask that question, I want to ask the question, or just let's talk about some of the fundamentals. The crops that you're growing, the plants you're growing. You just mentioned you have a diversity. You have every fruit that can grow in your fruiting zone, every fruit tree and so forth. But I think in particular, I'm imagining our listeners would be interested, and I'm certainly interested in hearing about what was your historical disease and insect pressure and what was your historical crop performance compared to today? What was it 20 years ago and 10 years ago as you've been on this journey? In other words, what defines normal?

Yeah, well, I remember when the late blight came through and wiped out my tomatoes one year, it's like, wow, they were looking really good and then they were all gone, you know, so tomatoes have been an iffy thing from the start. And certainly cabbage loopers can, you know, really could decimate us in the past. We'd have aphids in the, in the end of the season. You know, with the potato bugs are a big problem. Potato bugs, huge issue. You know, the squashes and cucumbers kind of just implode after a little while. So, like, oh, yeah, I'm done, you know, that kind of thing.

Did. Did you say they used to or that they still do?

Well, no, they used to. I mean, even this year, the squash, I mean, we had squash and cucumbers and. Well, the cucumbers weren't not as well, as the squash, I'm not, haven't gotten that down yet. But the summer squash, you know, we plant them in May and we were harvesting them till, you know, September. We planted another batch and harvested them till November when it finally froze off. But we, you know, I talk to my friends and colleagues, you know, it's like they didn't have any squash last year, so it was too wet everywhere. And on our land, which is low and wet anyway, what I've noticed mostly is on the rainy years is that we really are much better than our neighbors. I remember when our state and federal representatives came for some sort of a farm day in 2017, when it was another what year? And they walked onto the property and they said, wow, you guys actually have crops here.

One of the few farms in the.

County still have crops because we suffer from too wet in this part of central mass. And we've been getting a lot of too wet here. So that's what I find is that of resilience. And also again, building organic matter comes from different. And I totally believe in your, your, your what you posit that, you know, it's the photosynthetic, you know, it's photosynthesis that builds soil. And that's what we have to do is, you know, just make as much photosynthesis as we possibly can. But however, we do have good, good soil organic matter. When we came here, it was five, and now it's, you know, anywhere from nine to 12, depending on what field you're in. So we have that resilience and we don't on a dry year, which don't happen quite so much. But we also don't suffer when people say, oh, it's too dry and drought and we don't water. You know, we don't do anything like that. We used to actually, I think back in 7, 8, 9, 10 maybe we were doing a lot of irrigation with drip tape. We stopped doing that because we didn't need to anymore.

You know, I think this is, this is an interesting conversation. There are many cases, many times, many occasions when growing growers want to make a transition and perhaps reduce their fertilizer use, reduce their pesticide use. This is, I'm speaking particularly of large scale broad acre crops, commodity crops. One of the most common pieces of feedback is that there are almost immediate responses that their crops thrive much better in dry years. In dry years there is, there are very observable, noticeable improvements that these plants, where the nutrition is being managed differently, are much more resilient to drought stress than Conventionally fertilized plants, but the response that you're providing, about the same being true in wet years, is also true to a degree. But there's a threshold of wetness, threshold of moisture, where all of a sudden plants seem to not do as well sometimes. And so I'm curious about the. The basis of what you're describing. Were the plants still doing well in a wet year because they were resistant to disease, or simply because the soil was able to sustain nutrition and nutrients were not washing away?

Well, I think, first of all, we have high organic matter, so they weren't as wet as other places, but there were places where we had pooling on top of the soil. So, you know, the wet feet, they don't like that they go in anaerobic on you. And so I think that the foliar feeding, which I, you know, when it's a difficult time, I notice right after we foliar feed that we have, they come back, you know, and I. What I'm guessing is you can, you know, tell me if I think I'm right. But when you do that, you enhance the photosynthesis again. You get. You get the engines running again, so they're really starting to work back again, and. And so that they can kind of draw that water and use it instead of just sitting there and having it go anaerobic on them. Is that accurate?

Well, that's part of it, but I also think that there are some direct mechanisms where. It's been quite a while since I read this, and I should go read up on it before I mention it again, but I believe there are some direct mechanisms by which plants can actually transfer oxygen or at least transfer electrons to the microbial profile through the root system to sustain them and keep them from losing the facultative anaerobes and the organisms that they really need.

Yeah, no, I don't mess around and not foliar feed. I mean, I just. On a good year, like, 2022 was people. I heard people talking about it being a drought year, which I didn't even. I wasn't even aware of that. But it was. Everything was easy and fantastic in 2022. So, yeah, I guess you could say that in a drought year, we do really well. In a wet year, we do a lot better than most people.

So with the, with the weekly foliar applications and with the progression that you've noticed, what. What significant disease and insect challenges still remain for you?

Well, we had some cabbage loopers, and Bella told me to use some molybdenum I think. Is that right? Yeah. And it stopped them. We were concerned in advance. We were concerned about aphids on our kale in November. And so we, I think also used molybdenum on that. I can't remember. I always just do what she tells me and I try to remember and forget, but. And the kale, we went out there and it was like, oh my God, it was the most beautiful color. And you know, we didn't have any aphids, but we also just, it looked like brand new, you know, brand new plants, like six months later from, from planting.

The fact that you're growing dozens of different vegetable species and varieties and dozens of different tree fruit and you're struggling to come up with different diseases and insects, pests that you have is I think, quite a testament to, to where, to where your farm operation has evolved.

Well, I believe that, you know, and you've said it many times in your advertising or whatever that you know, things should be able to be raised totally healthfully, you know, and when we believe that about their crops and about ourselves too, you know, I think that's the. We just have to, all we have to do is figure out how to make it happen.

Yeah. So you're doing some things quite differently from even many of the small scale farmers with being 100% no till, having sold your tiller and with the intensive foliar application. And it's, it's really interesting to hear how your operation has evolved. What, what advice would you have for other farmers who are on their journey? What are, what are the key pieces that you believe have led to, that are instrumental to the success that you're experiencing?

Well, I think people need to not be penny wise and pound foolish and a lot of people balk at the price of, of foliar feeding. But as I was speaking to that person who was saying, yeah, we had to plant three plantings of kale this year. All that time it takes all that land it takes, you know, all that because our crops aren't, you know, aren't holding in the field, that is enough. That's a different kind of expense, you know, and if you set yourself up for success early and get these really healthy plants out there, you've got a lot of crops that are there all season long. Are, can be your tomatoes can go another month, you know, without getting early blight and you know, just kind of skagging out on you at the end and all these things, they, they just last longer and then there's frost tolerance also, as you get closer to the, you know, times when you can, you know, so maybe it goes down to 32. And your crops, our crops don't. They didn't, they didn't notice. They didn't realize there was frost that night, you know, So I think that people need to not be pennywise and pound foolish and they need to. I have found, and I've told everybody at all the workshops I run, this is the smartest thing I've done on top of all these other things. I mean, I think getting rid of the tiller was also a smart thing. We were just staying even if, you know, by tilling all the time. And, you know, I just don't think it works in our system.

You know, I think your comment about being penny wise and pound foolish reminds me of an experience that I had right in your neighborhood neighborhood at one of the soil and nutrition conferences that I attended. It's probably a decade ago at this point or close to that, where a young farmer in the audience asked me a very specific question about late blight on tomatoes and how do you solve late blight in tomatoes? And I answered the question from a perspective of principles and that, well, you need to be prepared to manage nutrition throughout the entire season with the use of foliar spray. And that was his exact question. Just the way that you said it right now brought that memory back so sharply and so clearly. It's like, well, that seems like a very significant expense to be putting on foliar applications every week. And my response to him was, well, you asked me for a solution on how to prevent late blight. What is that worth?

Well, I think people have to get out of the mindset that you're correcting something that's wrong and into the mindset that we are building something so that it won't ever go wrong. That's the big thing. And I think that's the thing about human health, too. If we take care of our bodies and put all the right things into them and we do our exercises and our yoga and whatever we have to do to stay healthy, you know, we won't get sick. But if, you know, we. You can't cut corners with nature. Nature knows. And if you eat, you know, sugar and crap and all that kind of stuff, you're going to get sick. Just how it goes. And the same, same for your plants. You know, we have a, we have this capability to, like, take things to this highest level. If we just, you know, now that we know how we can do it. I mean, I didn't know how to do it when I first started. It's so exciting now that I, you know, I'm surrounding myself with all these people who really can help me get better all the time.

Thank you, Julie. That is such an important piece, such an important aspect of. We need to remind ourselves that we need to strive for the ideal. Don't cut corners. And, you know, I see this, of course, through the. Through the lens of. What pops into my mind at the moment is looking at this through the lens of plant nutrition. You can't cut corners with plant nutrition. It doesn't matter how perfectly good a job you do of balancing calcium and phosphorus and potassium and manganese and zinc and copper and all the others. If you don't address molybdenum, then for some diseases and for some insect pests, nothing else matters. You haven't paid attention to molybdenum. And there are so many aspects in life for which that is true, that when you cut corners in living systems, there are consequences. There are always consequences.

Yeah. And just knowing. Knowing how not to cut corners once we have the information, you know, isn't that wonderful?

Yeah. Yeah. Certainly a very exciting time to be here with the. Just the proliferation of information that has. That has come forward over the course of the last. Even just the last half a dozen years, the last decade or so. It's been very. It's been a lot of fun. So I want to say thank you to both of you. Thank you for your leadership in this space for the last three to four decades. Thank you for being here, for sharing your wisdom and your experiences, both here on the podcast and in your new book that is out there, Many Hands Make a Farm. For all of the people listening, we'll also link to it in the show notes. Thanks for being here and I look forward to chatting with you again.

Thank you, John.

Thank you, John, for being who you are.

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