Episode 168: “Debunked by Nature” and Lessons from Farm Life with Mollie Engelhart

Hi friends, welcome back to the Regenerative Agriculture podcast. This is John and we're back with Molly Engelhardt. But I wanted to have you back because I think your current work and the book that you're in the process of releasing is so relevant for our times where we have this increasing polarity and this division between farmers and their consumers. And there is this moment following what happened with COVID and with growing awareness of food supply chain issues and collective public health issues over the course of the last three or four years that people, there's an openness to asking questions that hasn't existed for quite some time it feels like. And your message and what you've been working on here over the last year or two addresses this so directly. So I don't want to, to put, to use my words to describe what you're doing. Tell us a bit about your book and your message and what it is you're working on.

Well, my book really came out of my relationship with nature and I was living, I grew up on a farm, so I have like a farming childhood background. And then I moved to Los Angeles and lived a very modern LA life for many, many years. I was, I would say, a feminist and a workaholic and all of the strive to do, I can do what men can do. All of that was very loud in me and I built up this empire. And at the beginning of COVID before COVID started, I was selling it for between 25 and $31 million. And so I thought I had succeeded, I had done, I had built this thing, I grew it bigger, I, I sold, I'm selling it to a venture capital firm and I could just be a full time mom and shift what I was doing. And somewhere along the way I'd learned about regenerative agriculture and really had shifted what was important to me away from veganism and what I had was doing to regenerative agriculture. But I'm no dummy, like if I'm going to sell my business and get out and then do that. But Covid not only robbed me of that deal and that opportunity, but it robbed me of my income and my business that I was running for those 15 years. And in that time I spent a lot of time on the farm, a lot of time observing. And I started to realize in a world where everybody was talking about truth.

And misinformation and what's true and my truth and there's subjective truth and like.

All this I started to ask like what is truth?

And I realized that nature was an expression of God's perfection. And so in being a seeker of truth, could I take these constructs that are being thrown through the air all the time for division, for dividing us? And could I take it to the savannah, the woods or the farm, and ask, does this exist in nature?

And it really started with veganism. Like, there is no veganism. It doesn't exist. My whole life was based on that. And then you get to the farm and you see that, well, blood meal, bone meal, feather meal, chicken poop, all coming out of the consolidated feedlot system. Organic fertilizer in the degenerative organic system is literally just byproducts of the death industry. And I say that in quotation marks that vegans hate. And so all of our vegetables energetically are feeding on that death. And so there is no plate of food without death. I cannot have an animal on my plate but my avocado toast. There was ground squirrels killed to have that avocado toast. When those avocado trees were young in.

The toast itself, there was rabbits and squirrels and foxes and whatever snakes and frogs that were got up into the combine, and there was cats and rat traps to protect the grain. I mean, there is no food without death.

Every what's a part of there is no life without death.

It's a part of two sides of the same corn. It's not actually a failure. It's a function of life. And so my book is called Debunked by Nature. And essentially I take these ideas that I was taught in college in Los Angeles, in Ithaca, New York. I grew up in the most.

Liberal.

Ideas and I just say, do they make sense? And not all my ideas are political that I, I question. I talk about co sleeping, I talk about breastfeeding, I talk about, you know, why would we think we could. Nestle's company could make something more nutritious than the mother's milk. It doesn't make any sense. And would a lion sleep far away from her child where she can't see it, or. Only time that happens in nature with mammals is when the deer, when bovine are first born and they no longer, they don't have the scent of the animal yet the mother will sleep close by where she can see it, but that the predator would come for her rather than the baby. Until the baby can run, that is the only time we see a mammal sleeping away from their young. And so we have created a culture where we put the baby in a separate room and watch it with a digital monitor or whatever. So not all my ideas are Political, they're just kind of about societal norms. And are these things normal or have we lost our way? Has God shown us the perfect design and we are ignoring it?

A bit ago, you, you mentioned some of the, the truths that you observed emerging from nature when you started paying attention. I've always been intrigued by the, I've always been intrigued by the analogs between the way plants develop and livestock develop and our own spiritual growth as well. So this, this one example that I've mentioned before is the process of, the very simple process of photosynthesis and its 24 hour circadian rhythm. You have plants that are collecting energy from the light during the day while the sun is shining and storing and conserving that energy to grow at night. 80% of cell division happens between 3am and 8am or you could say during the darkest time of the night and at dawn. And when you think about that from a spiritual perspective, there's a powerful analog here that we are to collect energy from the light during the bright times of our lives so that we have conserved energy and stored energy to develop and grow during the trials and tribulations that come. And so my question you mentioned, you've touched on a few. But what are some of the truths that you observed in nature that, what were some of your memorable moments that you look back now, you say, aha, that was a breakthrough.

Yeah, I've told this story before, but, you know, I was breastfeeding my two, my second child and my first child was a toddler. And I was vegan and my mindset was vegan. And I was feeding my toddler oat milk. My father had given me a cow. Her name is Una. I still have Una. Um, and she was bred when I got her and she had a bull calf and her udder is very, very big. She's a European big. And her back two teats were too low to the ground for the calf to nurse on. So he just focused on the front two and we were milking off the back two and we had got her for compost. It was, I was still in my vegan mind, I was going to have a cow is going to set off my compost with her poop and. But my uncle was drinking the milk from those back two teats. And so I go to get the oat milk out of the refrigerator. I'm holding my infant, nursing in my mind, I'm nursing the infant. That's perfect food. It's divine. It's, it's all the nutrients, everything that it needs for this area has the microbiology, it has the, the immune stuff for this exact area. And I look at the oat milk in the tetra pack from Costco and I look at this glass half gallon ball jar of Una's milk in my refrigerator and I think, why would I think that that is death, that is pus, that is gross, that is bad for you. And this oat milk sterile tetra pack from Costco is somehow good for my kid. Like it just broke my head at that moment because obviously the breast is best. And then Una is living in the same environment as I am, but dirtier. And so her milk has to be healthful and nourishing for my toddler cannot be harmful. And I just like secretly I didn't.

Even want the vegans to know that I was secretly feeding my toddler raw.

Milk from my cow because I was afraid.

So what happened, what happened in the, in the shift from that moment? You, you. At this realization, in that moment you were afraid. And now you stand on the eve of releasing this book which hopefully is controversial in the very best sort of way. Controversial in the sense that it inspires lots of conversations and inspires people to reevaluate what happened from that moment of, of being afraid to speak out to now.

I'm still afraid, torch bearer. I, I mean I, I think I'm still afraid. I think, I don't, I don't think anybody's not afraid. I think it's either you can be afraid and you can still take action or you're afraid and you're in inaction. And so just the other night at me and my husband went somewhere and.

Then we stopped on the way home and I went to the restroom and someone stopped me in the restroom of.

And said, I know who you are, Mama. Mama. And I said, oh, thank you. And I all of a sudden had this like fear come over me because I wrote this book in, in the wee hours of the morning from 4am to 6am that time that we're supposed.

To be growing, right?

I got up at 4am for six.

Weeks every morning when my kids were sleeping, no kid on the boob, no nothing. I could just focus and did it from 6 4am to 6am so it was very intimate. It was me in the living room.

Of my home in very dark kind.

Of cave like experience.

And I just told the truth, the truth came out of my heart and I felt like it was just coming.

Out of me, coming out of me, coming out of me.

And then I sent it to Taylor and He gave it to Paul, and Paul and me went back and forth, and that's the editor from Acres. And then it's just me and Paul, and so that's pretty intimate, too. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh, we need some blurbs. So it's like we're going to give it to a few people to get a blurb. And then all of a sudden, I had this realization in the restroom as this woman. Oh, my God, Molly, I follow you on Instagram. And I just had this thought like, oh, my God, my. I just felt so naked, like my whole soul is on display. But I believe that I was led to do this because the way I tell this story is not didactic. It is not telling people what they must believe, but in the most honest way and sometimes looking bad. How did I believe this thing? And now how do I believe this thing? And connecting those dots. And I'm hoping that it is controversial in that people find out about it and I can connect those dots for other people because the. The idea that I jumped out of bed five days after having a baby and strapped my baby to me and went to work to prove that I was just as strong as a man, that's broken that idea. And that harmed. Harms my body, it harms my children. And that. And what kind of idea is that? Like, I need to be as strong as a man who cannot push a baby out of them, grow a baby in them, and bring it forth into this world. Five days later, it's. And I'm just like, there at work, pale as can be, bleeding, proving how strong I am. That mindset that I can do anything he can do instead of that. We are a bond. And we are two halves of one whole, each perfect in our shortcomings and our strengths to complement each other. I was indoctrinated and. And I spent much of my life trying to live up to these ideas that I was told. And if I can give a woman a permission at a much younger age to start having children at a much younger age to decide to let her husband be the breadwinner, I. I will love to cause just that little transformation if I can. I had abortions when I was younger. Like, I'm gonna have to live with that sin that I did that.

But if I can lead someone through my experience to where I am at 47 and where I was at 22 and let them see my mistakes, maybe they don't have to live the mistakes I did. And maybe God can use my shortcomings and my missteps to help other women feel strength in being the feminine that they are.

And that's just one part of the book.

But in the feminine and masculine, if I. If just that could help people, I.

Feel like that would be great, because I feel like way. The way I pushed my body for my first two children, what was not right? And especially at the age that I was Molly.

Sometimes we approach projects because we're passionate about them. Sometimes we approach projects because they're a dream that we've had for a long time. And sometimes we're led into projects kind of inadvertently, and we only realize what we're doing kind of after the fact. And so, as you now stand on this stage, obviously you've completed writing the book. You have a manuscript, you're about to send it out into the world. You preempted part of my question. So now I'm going to expand it. I was going to ask the question, what are the changes that you hope can be inspired in people's lives by raising the book in the world? But now I'd like to broaden that more expansively than just what you described for young women. What are all the possible transformations? What are all the possible things that you hope might come true by putting book into the world?

Well, I feel that we're in a place and in a time where everything is about division. And I think. And we're all consuming so much information, and there's so much. But if you look at all the information we're consuming, whether it's social media, whether it's environmental justice, whether it's regenerative agriculture, chemical agriculture, a lot of the underlying message is, like, us and them, good and bad. Separation, separation, separation. And while we're fighting about all these things, the ability for us to reproduce is being poisoned out of us.

Yeah.

Our ability to even have local, secure food systems is collapsing. We're in an agrarian collapse that has never been seen before. 170,000 farms. You were there when I got corrected, I said 140,000. And Merrill west from the Free Farm alliance said, I think it's 170,000 in eight years. So if that's true, that's one in 15 farms we lost in the last 18, in the last eight years. I just spoke to a representative in Texas. He said that Texas lost 4,000 family farms in the last year. So we are in a collapse. And my hope is that on a greater scale, people can be drawn back to the land. And if not, that may not mean.

They'Re Going to pick up a garden hoe or they're going to pick up.

A shovel or get on a tractor.

But that maybe it means they're willing to drive 45 minutes to pick up raw milk from their local Amish farmer, or they're willing to drive out and get a CSA box or join a CSA or get a meat box or, you know, any of those things.

Because so many farmers are white knuckling.

It, working a second job just to lose money to grow our food.

And this is not right. And although that's not what my book.

Is about, being reconnected to how important healthy soil is and being in the circadian rhythm of life and eating local food and the coherency of local food.

And all of that, I hope that it inspires people to remember that there is more people than there is masters. And so we get to vote every time we spend our money. And there is these resilient communities in parts of this country and in parts of other countries, and there's largely non resilient communities. And I want us to move back to more resiliency. And I was just talking about this with my husband yesterday because he's Mexican and he's indigenous from Mexico. And someone called me last night and said somebody that I went to high school had died of a drug overdose. And I told my husband and I, he said, that seems like you get that phone call all the time. And I said, it's been a lot. And I tried to count and I actually couldn't remember all the people from my hometown that have died of a drug overdose. And then if you add the people I know in Los Angeles from the time I lived there, and he's from this small indigenous village in Mexico. And he said, you know, I don't know anybody that died of a drug overdose. And I said, you don't? And we got to talking and he said he knows one guy that passed out drunk and died of smoke inhalation, but he doesn't have anybody. And he said that it's just starting.

To creep into the villages.

But in Oaxaca, there's largely no government in the municipalities. It's all elders and patrols, men controlling the, you know, and it's all kind of social governance and not big government. And I thought it's very interesting. So I looked it up. We have a 5,800 times the death.

Rate from drugs in the United States that they do in Mexico. It's, it's 31 people per 100,000 here, and it's 0.53 in Mexico and 0.71 in the urban areas of Mexico. So it's still. It's a little higher in the urban areas, but still very, very low. And so my point is that when the family. So in these rural communities in Mexico, still largely governed by the community, and it's still largely governed by the family unit, the mother, father, child as the foundation, and the greater community outside of that, that, that way of governance is the greatest way of government governance that we. That humanity has ever had. And it is not a relic of the past, but it is a reflection of what we need to get back to. And so ultimately, I hope that we can get to more communal living, tribal and not tribal exactly, but living in groups where our wealth is not measured by Bitcoin or dollars in the bank. But how many people can come to our aid when something goes wrong? And how many resources we have combined? And that's what real value is. And that is what I would hope is the outcome of the book. And you might say, well, that's a weird outcome from what you're talking about. But no, I don't think that's the natural way for us to be living. And I would say that this weekend, you know, we're doing this big festival, and so some people quit at the last minute, and people that haven't worked for me in a year showed up and said they're going to work and called their friend who was an IT guy to fix this thing. And, you know, all that goodwill and grace that I have in the community from up just shows back up. And that's more valuable than money.

You know, there are political elements to what you've written about in your book, only largely because so many of these issues and these stories have become politicized over the last decade or two. But there is this. There is this element of being on the conservative end of the spectrum at its very foundation. Part of being a conservative is that there are values and morals and things that you have a desire to conserve, that there is a desire to conserve things and preserve them for the future. And perhaps I shouldn't have framed this question quite in this way, but I'll just. I'll ask it from a very open perspective. What are the things? I love your title. I love the title Debunked by Nature, because I think if we went back to the foundational spiritual principles that are. That are evidenced in nature, that are displayed in nature as God's creation, then I just lost my train of thought. What was my question going to? Oh, my Question was going to be with that, with that title and with some of the things that you've written about. What is it that you want people to know about the book?

That I'm totally honest, that I share exactly where I was and how I got to where I am. And when I say Mother Nature is conservative in the byline of the book, I do mean that in that there is things that want to be conserved, that nature is always healing itself. It's always trying to get back to a homeostasis. It's not. And so I don't mean like nature is trump, Vance. That's not what I mean. I don't think nature cares one bit. What I mean is there is ways that are just foundationally part of God's design that we can see in nature. And when we're being told things, socialism makes no sense in nature. I mean, if you were to take socialism and it doesn't, you never see your cows being like, you know what? Really think I should be sharing my grass with the neighbor's cows? He's over grazing down there. We should break the fence in and let them come in. This not. Is not how it works. Do trees, do plants share information, share food underground? Yes. And that's like all for the benefit of the whole. And. But it is in all of us to have survival and not to be selfish or that we should be narcissists or selfish or whatever, but you can look that everything is going to want to survive. And so this idea that we shouldn't, that like survival of the fittest or wanting to be strong or wanting to be successful or wanting to be entrepreneurial is bad. I think it's in nature, it's in us to want to do that. And that doesn't. It's not in us to want to do.

Some people get hard jobs and some people get easy jobs and everybody gets paid the exact same amount.

That's not. Yeah, it's not. Doesn't make any sense.

Yeah, exactly. When you look at plants and the way that they share information and that they share resources, plant communities, microbial communities and so forth. And. And one of the foundational aspects of that image is that they are all producers.

Yes.

You don't just cons. You don't just get to just consume without producing in a natural ecosystem and expect to survive in the long term.

No. And that's the craziest thing. When people say, I just got an argument with someone on Instagram the other day. They were like, do you think that people's income should be directly related to their outcome. And I was like, yes. And I was like, do you think the person that is greeting people at Walmart gets paid the same as the CEO? No, because they're like, if that greeter was gone. I largely think that greeter job is a kindness to give people jobs that can't otherwise work at another job. So this is not. It's not. It's not an integral part of the whole thing. If the CEO is gone, then things are going to start to fall apart. And this idea that this person said, well, every. You believe everybody was made in God's image and everybody, yes, in God's eyes, everybody is of equal value. But you can't expect the odor of a business who's trying to support their family to. To pay every single person. Even when we say diversity in our culture, we mean diversity in the way you make love or in the way that you identify as your gender or the color or how much melanin you have in your skin. But those people can do those things, but largely agree on everything else and have the same ideas. So they're not a diversity of function, they're just a diversity of like on the outside. And so for me, true diversity, like exists in nature is all these different things, different species, different plants, different things all together functioning for themselves and for each other.

Molly, where can people find your book?

You can go to debunkedbynature.com you could go to Acres website, because Acres published my book. Or you could go to Amazon. I know people hate Amazon, but I know people love free shipping, so people like free shipping more than they hate Amazon. That is what I know about life. And so. And I also write for Epoch Times, like three times a week. If people want to hear my weekly rants about whatever I think about is going on in the world, you can find me in the opinion section of Epoch Times every. Every week. But can I ask you a question?

That was the first one.

Okay. Can I ask you. I'm going to ask you another. So I have this idea. So do you know what oakwill is?

Yes.

Okay. So you know there's oak wilt going on like crazy in the hill country of Texas. So I have a theory and I have some preliminary evidence that my theory could be correct. But I want to run my theory by you. So oakwill is happening in all these areas with highly alkaline soil, very little ground cover. It's mostly these trees are growing in just limestone or caliche as we call it, like crushed up and so I put six inches of just regular mulch from the cedar trees, which are really juniper ash. But here in Texas, if you call them juniper ash, they look at you like you're an alien. So cedar trees mulch down, and it's largely reversing oak will. And so I have a theory that there's oak will. There's not enough diversity of mycorrhizal in the soil. And so one thing is taking over, and that is why the oak will is happening. Because I. And I think what I'm bringing up the fungal load by adding 6 to 8 inches of mulch and then watering it is reversing in two years total. Like, you can't even tell the trees had oak wilt. And I think that that is reversing oak wilt. But everybody's like, you if you could just reverse oak wilt with doing that, then everybody would doing that. And I'm like, well, okay, I don't know if anybody else has tried it, but now, I didn't take pictures at the beginning. It was literally just the. The realtor said, you're gonna have to take out these trees. They're almost dead.

They.

They were really bad shape, and I was like, well, they're giving me the littlest bit of shade at the late afternoon sun. So I planted pecan trees underneath them. And I thought, we'll just leave them here until the cod trees get a little bit bigger. And that was my plan. But I put down a bunch of mulch and water because I planted the pecan trees. And now you can't even tell that they ever had oak will. They're just totally shade, totally filled in, totally beautiful. And. And then the other one that's like the best looking tree on my property is next to where the guys drop all the mulch. You know, the trucks come and drop the mulch on my property, and this one is totally healed as well. So now I want to go and I look on my property, and all the most sick trees are in the most caliche soil. No ground cover, just white soil. So I think I want to try.

This and take photos and document it is my next. I'm trying to get some of the. Try to get a TCQ permit so I could get all this mulch from the floods. I'm in Kerr county, where all those floods just happened, and I'm trying to see if I could just put 6 to 8 inches of mulch a couple times a year and if I could reverse oat will. So what do you think of this theory.

Well, it doesn't really matter what I think. It sounds like you already have some preliminary evidence that's worth pursuing.

Yes, I do, but I don't know if I, you know, the science part that I, I'm just going to.

Well, anytime. You know, it's. Once you start digging into the multitude of possible interactions and synergistic effects that a healthily functioning microbiome can have. I mean, look, the reality is, well, you go to citrus greening and citrus in Florida as an example. Here we have a bacterial infection of a plant's vascular tissue. And they're now one of the more recent innovations. I use the word innovations loosely. Here is they're injecting antibiotics into the tree trunks and. Okay, let's pause and ask for a second. Where do antibiotics come from? They come from fungus in the soil.

Yes.

And what are, what group of. Or what type of microbes are oak trees particularly dependent on? They're dependent on fungus. They thrive in a fungal dominant system, which by the way is very challenged in an oxidized calcareous soil such as the ones that you have. And so there are dozens of possible, probably hundreds or maybe even thousands of possible mechanisms and modes of action of different things that could be contributing to that do that regeneration. The reality is we, we could spend a lot of time trying to identify them and understand them, or we can just go ahead with a cultural practice that has observed to bring results, try to measure and document those results and say, here's what we did and here's what worked and let, let the research catch up with the, with the practical application which seems to be the recurring pattern in the most innovative landscape stewards.

Yeah, And I'm seeing it. I think it's everywhere, not just on the oak trees I bail grazed last year on my fields because there was little to no rain last winter. And so you can see where the round bales were right now. The swargum is like as tall as I am and been grazed once or twice already and. But grow it's that tall and everywhere else it's like calf ankle, knee high, wherever. And it's not even like, oh well, I was feeding sorghum hay so it's extra seeds got dropped in that area because I was feeding Bermuda grass. So just the residue of the circle, the. Where the bale was, just that carbon being left on the soil has these circles on my whole field that are as tall, that the hay is as tall as me versus below my knee. And so my thought, and I don't know the economics and how I that's why I want to try to get this. All the waste from the, the river flooding if I can get that carbon. But I think just putting a little bit of carbon on my fields is going to be far more useful than any kind of application of nitrogen fertilizer or manure. Because I have done that. I've done manure. I've done this and seen very little to no results. But you can literally see these circles exactly the size of the round bales all the way across my field where the hay is so tall. And so I don't know, but I think it's the same kind of thing.

That'S happening with the oak trees.

And I want to figure out how.

Can I get enough hay or wood.

Chips to cover the whole field. I also had this dead spot we couldn't heal where water was just sitting.

And I put six inches of mulch there. It was like dead pan. Water would not go down into it and there would not. Nothing was happening and, and nothing was growing because it was just like concrete basically.

It was like mud puddle that would.

Last very long time and then concrete once it was dried. And I put wood chips there and Bermuda grass filled in over it in a matter of five weeks. Even though there's barely any Bermuda grass in that field. And so I think there's plenty of nitrogen in my soil. There's just no fungal load to make it available. And that's my observation, not like a fact or whatever, but that's what I'm noticing is that what we need here in this caliche soil is any kind of organic matter that's just desperate for organic matter.

Well, I want to ask you about the bale grazing just so that I understand it clearly, you're saying right where the circle where the hay bale is, you're having this response. Is it in that immediate. Like is it a five foot diameter circle or is it all of the area surrounding that where the livestock were trampling?

Because just like the five or six foot circle, really?

That is intriguing, weird.

I'll try. I'll take a picture for you and text it to you.

Well, what is interesting in. In, in your caliche soils? I was just an interesting converse serendipitous conversation because I was just writing an article about this in response to a number of different questions that I received. But anytime we have soils that have high levels of carbonates or bicarbonates and so forth, there is this idea that in order to regulate ph, we have to acidify the soil. And of course, acidifying the soil with a chemistry approach is. Requires a very expensive sledgehammer and a very big one as well, with elemental sulfur applications or what have you. And the approach that you're describing underneath the oak trees and possibly also with the hay mulch residue, is when you have an availability of food source carbon, that fungal populations can begin to thrive. Fungal populations produce substantial quantities of acids. Like they are acid. They convert carbon, high carbon residue into. You could almost think of them as being an acid generator if that is what the environment requires for them to thrive. And in this environment, that is what the environment requires for them to thrive. So they generate a lot of acid and create a lot of acidity, which creates a pathway for lots of nitrogen fixation, other types of microbial activity. So you can generate nitrogen by supplying adequate levels of carbon in the type of environment that you're describing and in many other environments for that matter.

And you can see it in the people that clear cut. You'll be like, wow, why does their grass look so good? And you realize they clear cut a cedar forest and just had it all shredded down. And so the reason that their grass looks so thick compared to say, my grass is that it has all that carbon. And so I totally agree with what. And in California, it's totally was different. If I had put the amount of mulch that I can put here, like wood chips on anything, it would steal from the plants and the plants would turn yellow. But in this environment, it seems that the soil just the more carbon I can put on top of the soil, the better the plants are doing, which is a totally different thing to what would be happening in California if I'd put that much wood chip mulch.

It would steal carbon, it would steal nitrogen from the plants, and it would.

Be a totally different thing. And that's why I think it does.

Have to do with what you're saying is the acidity and that. And everybody here told me when I moved here, don't put cedar chips, don't put juniper chips, it's going to kill everything.

And I was like, so weird.

Why would God make this thing that comes into this arid environment and grows everywhere? If it drops its needles? I look underneath the juniper trees and there's like this much black soil on top of rock. I can't imagine God would design this thing that would kill my planes. Just chip it up and see what happens. Like, but there's a lot of folklore about the cedar. Like, oh, if you cook pizza with it, you're gonna Die, it's poison you or whatever like all these things. And we were ignorant and we had already been cooking, making pizza and our, and bread in our bread oven with the juniper ash when we were told it was that you couldn't do it. And as it turns out, it's totally fine.

You can totally eat.

It's not ideal because it burns fast. It's very good wood starter, it's very good oven starter. It's not very good like coals last long lasting coals.

But yeah, it's interesting because it's that kind of ideas where we're so disconnected from nature. Where you're looking at these white cliffs and the only thing that's growing on them is these juniper ash. And then you're looking right below and the mulch that's being dropped from those cedar needles and you're saying, and it's this beautiful black mulch soil decomposing under those trees. And then people are saying, oh, it's very bad for your garden. Okay. Seems very good. It's making soil on top of a white rock shelf that nothing else is on.

Well, the key to what you're describing is actually observing and paying attention to what it is that you're looking at. Seeing what you look at it is.

And, and we don't, we don't. And, and I've, I've made those mistakes too. I've, I've made an assumption like I planted $40,000 worth of pecans in a field because there was pecans growing around the edges, wild pecans that seem prolific. Great, I'm going to plant pecans here. The truth is the way that that field slopes those pecans and the gullies around the edges are totally fine on the field. There's just not enough rain here. And So I lost $40,000 worth of pecans and we had 100 days, over 100. Even with irrigation, those young pecans couldn't survive. And people are like, oh, well, it was just an anomaly. Well, no, I wasn't actually being that observant and seeing that the field is, was pretty arid and not that much grass growing on the whole high side of that orchard. And on the whole low side there's Bermuda grass and there's a lot of pecans growing. But it's all in this area that's collecting water and off of a greater watershed. And so I didn't then replant all those pecans. I put in pear, Asian pears and peaches and things that are doing better in this environment with less water. But even I've been, yeah, made mistakes, ego driven mistakes where I'm just like, looks like not really observing, kind of, I don't know, like observing on the outside, but not looking deeper than, oh, I see pecans, plant pecans.

Like.

Well, actually the environment from. At least on my property here in Texas, the environment in a hundred feet from each other could be a totally different thing. And I have these big beautiful fields with black soil that's all ran off the hills for years, right. This big valley. But you go right across the farm road and it's just white caliche. So I can't expect that whatever's happening on this side of the road can also happen on this side of the road. And that's just how it is here. It's not all the same. And so we have, we can't just say like in Arkansas you can grow this in Florida you can grow this in Texas, because we have to. Look, even I have an orchard that has these almost like a river of red dirt that goes through the black dirt or a river of white dirt that, where it's these veins of totally other soil. And you'll see the trees planted in a row and then there's this one little tree that's in that clay dirt or in that caliche dirt that there's just, you know, it just isn't growing. It's.

It's surviving like, but it's not growing. And so you have to observe all those things and not just try to, like you said, sledgehammer it out.

This is one of the, this is one of the things that learning from others and learning what other people are working on and what they're observing is so valuable to train our own observations. But also we have to really understand their context and how their context differs from our own. You know, there's. In, earlier in our conversation you were talking about how you, one of your desired outcomes is for a return to more resilient communities where you have this strength within communities. And one of the things that I'm challenged by is that there are many people who have a deep and authentic desire to be successful homesteaders or smaller scale producers. Perhaps they want to put out a couple acres of orchard or whatever the case might be. And they. There is this, I don't know quite how to frame it, but there's this geographic experience bias where they say, well, there's this experienced grower five miles down the road who has had a lot of experience with this peach variety or that walnut variety or whatever the case might be, and therefore, that's what I'm going to try, or I'm taking a certain approach to fertility management or irrigation management. And I really appreciated your anecdote about the differences. And within 100ft, because those, those differences do exist. And in fact, they exist in the majority of ecosystems. There are some exceptions, but the majority of ecosystems, there is a significant variation. And the experience of someone a few miles away who has had experience with an awesome variety might transfer to your situation, or it might not. And the, the piece that I'm particularly frustrated by, frustrated might be a strong word, but the piece that I'm particularly disturbed by is that people then try a local recommendation or an expert recommendation and they don't have success with it. And their first conclusion is, this variety doesn't work here. This variety didn't work for me. Well, it might be worthwhile asking the question of why not. Was it planted in the shade? Was it in a different environment? Like. So there's. I'm using a variety framework to describe this particular question. But I think it's so easy without, without a lot of experience. It's so easy to fall into a ditch on both sides of the road. One is venerating local experience excessively and the other is being too dismissive of whatever didn't work for you without really trying to understand why. And I'm using the variety framework for this conversation deliberately because I see so many varieties that are clearly superior. They're superior varieties of apples and tree fruit, and just there are very superior varieties who are not in commercial production because they have a flaw of some type. Perhaps they don't store particularly well, or they're not as sweet. They have a remarkable flavor, but they're not as sweet as people are used to. But you can compensate for those things with nutrition management locally in your context. And so I see people working with these varieties that are just having incredible, amazing experiences, and it's because they have learned how to manage them in their context, and that knowledge can be transferred. But in far too many cases, people try to transplant the genetics and the variety without transplanting the associated management that is required to make it to thrive. So, anyway, I'm going on a rant here. It's time for me to shut up.

No, I think that, that, you know, my husband grew up in Mexico, which in some ways has a similar environment to where we are in Texas, but in other ways, not at all. It's much colder here in the wintertime and stuff like that. And he got very frustrated with corn squash and sesame seeds, which are what he's accustomed to be able to grow very, very easily. And this last year, so twice he planted sesame seeds and either not enough rain, and you don't need very much.

Rain for sesame seeds, but we had 100 days, like I said, over 100, and other situations. And then there was a grasshopper year that was just so crazy that the entire field was left with only three stocks of sesame because the grasshoppers were just so crazy. But, well, because the rain has been so erratic and all this stuff. Instead of giving up, what my husband did this year is in one of our orchards that has pretty wide rows, 25ft. He decided to take the no till seed dra out every two weeks and plant a couple rows of sesame. And then he was like, so he's go. He was basically hedging against the rain and hedging against the.

Grasshoppers. So did we lose some to grasshoppers? Yes, we lost a few rows to that. Did we lose some to not enough rain? Yes. But does he have several rows right now that are going to be able to be harvested? Yes. And so I think that that was a unique way to look at it. Instead of saying, like, okay, I'm just going to keep planting a whole field and then something bad is going to happen now, he marked this down. I said, well, are you going to plant this exactly the same next year? He goes, no, I'm probably going to do the same thing until I have more knowledge, because it doesn't make any sense when we don't, because the rain can be sporadic. And how the rain comes is going to impact how the grasshoppers come. And we need it to be coming up in rain after the major grasshoppers have already been eaten by some of the predators. So I don't know how to exactly measure that. And so that's what he's been doing. And this. And then this year he's planted. We've had not very great success with corn. And he just had this idea, I'm going to plant corn really late in the year. And so he planted corn a month ago. And it's actually looking really great. And we're going to be able to have it as decoration for the pumpkin patch. We're going to make a maze through it, and then we believe it'll be a harvestable crop of corn. We don't. I don't have any. Can't say for sure, but right now it's as tall as I am and starting to look like it's Going to head out. This is very late in any way that I have ever thought of growing corn. I've never thought of planting it in the end of August. It's just not something I ever would have thought. But he was like, it's not working in the spring, we're having all these issues. I'm going to try to do it in the fall. And so anyways, it's just an interest. He's. I think when there's nobody else doing a lot of agriculture around us except for cows, this is like, cows, cows, cows, cows, cows. And because the terrain, not many people have these valley fields that we have. So because it's mostly all hills, the majority of everybody's land is hills. And so because of that, when we went to the Texas A&M Ag extension, nobody had. They were like Bermuda grass and cows, just. Bermuda grass and cows. Just stick to that. And so in some ways it's been a little bit freeing because my experience is in upstate New York and in California and his is in Mexico. And then nobody had a lot. There wasn't a lot of local experts to tell us anything. So it's been a little bit freeing for us to just have to try things.

And of course there's been some major.

Losses, but I do think that we're gaining valuable knowledge that can help other.

People in the area.

And we just started propagating trees because people always come and go, oh my gosh, your fig trees are so beautiful. Oh my God, this is so good. So we've started ordering extra trees and.

Propagating trees and we've made a little garden center on the ranch.

So when people come to the restaurant and they see these beautiful figs and I can say, well, yes, at least.

We know they grow in this environment.

Because I noticed that the grocery stores and the garden centers are selling these.

Varieties that are actually not conducive to growing in this environment at all.

I don't think that there's not enough chill hours. Not, you know, just like factually not.

And I'm actually open to experimenting things like in different environments. I'm super into that. I did a coffee experiment in California with a university and I've done some longer chill hour apples in California as an experiment. But I'm just saying when you're garden.

You go to the garden center, you.

Expect that they are picking stuff that is for your environment, that it's not an experiment. And I've noticed that that's not true. So I do think that we're coming up with Valuable information, me and my husband, in this experimenting time. And of course, it's scary and dangerous and financially, but I do feel like valuable information is being collected out of it.

What you're describing is the. The essence of a lot of what needs to return to many different communities. There is a great deal of knowledge that is still held by people who've been on the land for a long time. But there are also a lot of things. There's a lot of information that we've lost, and there are also many things that we haven't discovered because we've not been willing to try. So kudos to you.

There is a little bit of that happening in Central Texas of like kind of a rigidness and some information being forgotten and some people failing, and then people get scared and they don't want to fail. But I looked up 100 years ago, before refrigeration, the Central Texas area, because of the mild winters, was growing a lot of vegetables, was growing a lot of food for this area. But that's not the truth anymore. And we put in 1500 fruit trees, 20 of each variety. And so I think that we will have a lot of information. They're only four years old right now, so. But I think moving forward, we will have a lot of information that we can share with other people. And the other day, this older gentleman drove up onto my ranch and he said, what made you put that orchard there? And I said, oh, it was the best piece of place on the ranch for an orchard. It has a slope, so the cold air will fall down off of it, and it's protected on both sides by trees and the angle for the sun. And he said, do you know that my grandfather and great grandfather grew their vegetable gardens in that five acres? They grew their corn. And he said, it's interesting that the first thing you guys planted when you got here. I noticed the first thing that you guys planted was that area. And I said, well, it was the best area to plant anything on the ranch. And he said, well, but I just.

How did you.

How. Like, he just couldn't imagine how. I knew generations later that his grandfather and great grandfather had used that area. And it was very interesting to him. And he said, the people that bought it, they ignored that area they use, just used the big fields because they're flatter and easier. Nobody ever planted anything there since we sold the property 30 years before you bought it. And I said, I saw it right away that it was an excellent place to plant. And so I think that there is information in our communities and I actually took to driving around and looking in people's yards at varieties of trees when I first moved here because and asking people can I take a cutting? I I've like snuck under fences and taken cuttings of like a rogue pomegranate tree growing in no water out the side of a hillside and like taking some cuttings. But I've really just taken to trying to observe because there is very little information specifically for my region that's been preserved.

Well, Molly, I want to say thank you for all the work that you're doing. Thanks for the book. I hope that it becomes very popular and that lots of people read it and it can contribute to a shift in awareness.

I hope so too. Thank you so much for having me.

On the team at AEA and I are dedicated to bringing this show to you because we believe that knowledge and information is the foundation of successful regenerative systems. At aea, we believe that growing better quality food and making more money from your crops is possible, and since 2006, we've worked with leading professional growers to help them do just that. At aea, we don't guess, we test, we analyze, and we provide recommendations based on scientific data, knowledge and experience. We've developed products that are uniquely positioned to help growers make more money with regenerative agriculture. If you are a professional grower who believes in testing instead of guessing, someone who believes in a better, more regenerative way to grow, visit advancingecoag.com and contact us to see if AEA is right for you. Thank you for listening and we look forward to working with you.