Pete Kanaris on Building an Edible Landscaping Business

So tell me, why do you think Diego Futter from Permaculture Voices, when I reached out to him and said, is there anybody I should visit on the Great American Farm Tour, why were you on that list?

Uh, probably because we're one of the first, you know, to kind of get into this edible landscaping type of business and actually turn it into a business. I would, I would guess, you know, we kind of, we came up with it, you know, we didn't have anybody else to copy, anybody else to mimic. We kind of coined it on our own and just, you know, the simple transition from a standard landscape to an edible for me was a no-brainer. I was already playing in the dirt. I had already been in business for myself for 10 years.

That was in 2017 when we went and visited you almost 6 years ago. And you, how long had you been in edible landscapes at that point?

2011, I think it all started for us.

When you guys went, right, to originally, yeah, traditional landscaping. That's when somebody transitioned in 2011.

Might as well tell everybody how that happened, how you, how you transitioned from traditional landscaping in Florida to putting in edible landscapes.

The honesty and reality of it all is it kind of started with fear-based economic collapse. You know, kind of just looking at what was going on in the world, watching economic collapse.

What year?

Fear of economics.

Oh, it was before the 2012, you know, it was pre-2012 and everybody thought something was happening then.

Okay.

Um, and I think I got to watching a little bit of Alex Jones and, you know, I think I got to—

he says, I don't watch a little too much Alex Jones.

I'm fully committing to that. Thank you.

Well, if you don't remember, I might have had a couple of sleepless nights And, you know, I think we quickly realized that fear is no place to be. Oh, you know, and he was selling fear.

Yeah.

But the one thing he—

not solutions.

The one thing he was selling that put us on the right path was a survival seed pack. So we ordered some survival seeds.

Why are you laughing, Mel? Why are you laughing?

Just the difference in where we are now and just how bright-eyed and bushy-tailed we were in the beginning and had no concept of what we were doing.

So you ordered a seed pack. So you're a traditional seed tuber. You ordered the seed tube.

Don't, aren't you supposed to like bury that or something?

It was one you could put underground, you know, when things got really bad.

Did you?

No, no. I actually tried some of the seeds and most of them were junk. You know, and right around, what does that mean?

So this is like you're safer because you can't even get into community.

They were the wrong seeds for Florida.

You know, annuals.

Oh, it was a general seed pack, you know, that probably for the rest of the United States and not for Florida. Yeah, Florida's different than the rest of the United States or the West.

It probably wouldn't have worked out west.

Timing, seasonal timing in Florida is different. And if you don't have somebody to show you the ropes or if you don't know the right books to buy, especially then in 2010.

Yeah, I was going to say, like, was there even any good information out there at that point?

Not really.

You know, we, we knew references, you know, we just We were kind of alone in this and hadn't really met the network yet, hadn't met the people. So yeah, we were flailing a little in the beginning.

I don't do anything half-assed, you know. This is, as soon as we kind of came up with the idea, I was like, all right, two feet in, you know, we're jumping into this. And that's where, you know.

But how'd the CPAC give you that idea?

Well, Melissa, obviously we had a transition in company names. I was originally Clean Cut Lawn and Landscape. That's all I knew.

Clean Cut, that's such a good name for you.

Could be the bald head.

You know, I only hired bald guys, and they were all clean-cut, clean-shaven. I had a lot of bald guys working for me. I did.

Let's get that straight on record.

We were, you know, we're up one of those nights when we were kind of in that state of, uh, fear, which I realized was no place to be. It was horrible. And we started thinking about company names and decided we wanted to do something different. And Melissa came up with The Green Dreams, you know, and it kind of covers everything we want to do. I mean, you know, we want Now we're inspiring people to do this, but we're also helping people do this, you know.

At the time, it was more about the buzzwords, you know, because those were new to us, like sustainability and green living and that sort of thing. Honestly, when we first started, we didn't even know the word permaculture. We had started this business and didn't even know that word yet until we met Jim.

Yeah, you were starting Animal Landscapes.

And when did you meet Jim? What year was that?

2012.

Jim Kovaleski, the nomadic garden.

So much in just a very short amount of time. I mean, it was just our obsession for a while.

During our research and coming up with this name, we found the Victory Garden Movement. I didn't know anything about it. So we actually modeled Green Dreams after the Victory Garden Movement, trying to inspire people to grow their own food. And it was kind of our business model in the beginning. We called ourselves a sustainable solutions company. That's actually our legal name. But we've come so far today.

Sustainable solutions.

We've realized that sustain though is just to keep this current system.

Yeah. And it's not working as is, it's just sustaining things where we're wanting to improve upon things. So that's, you know, the whole regenerative agriculture part came later and it just makes a lot more sense for what we're doing.

Did you quit all your gigs?

Eventually.

So, you know, we slowly started phasing them out. What—

because in the traditional landscaping you're just like cutting people's yards, monthly accounts, consistent income coming in. It's a hard thing to let go of.

Yeah. That was the big thing for me. You know, when I looked at the waste in what I do, and it was good. I mean, it paid the bills, it kept me busy, you know, and I loved what I did, you know. I mean, I got on a mower.

How many employees did you have?

The max I think we got up to with Clean Cut Lawn and Landscape before the economy crashed was probably about 12.

Wow.

We were doing a lot of—

2 crews.

2 crews, you know, commercial maintenance. I was out with the guys every day and it was fun. I mean, I get on a mower, it was like Mario Kart, you know. I've always loved machines and making straight lines and cutting stuff. I mean, I always loved what I did. Even before and after? You know, until I realized there was another option, another possibility out there. You know, here I am putting all these plants, all of these trees in the dirt, hardly ever native, um, just to look at, you know, just to come back and prune every single week and to cut just to look pretty.

Um, that's what you were having a problem with.

When I really looked at what I was doing and realized there was a better option out there, it was like everything just made sense, you know. Somebody somebody turned the lights on for me, you know. It gave me this new lens, you know, when I'm—

purpose. Yeah, purpose.

What was the moment that you figured out that you could plant a tree that was edible instead of pretty?

Well, I think we were watching a lot of videos and— okay, you know, getting into the organic gardening videos and the veggie garden videos that way, and had been for a good while, a few years at least. A couple years.

Yeah, we, we fell into the spending a fortune at Whole Foods and the health food stores every week. So that was just like another push for attempting vegetables in our backyard.

We tried being vegetarian for a while. We were vegan for a little while.

Why?

We thought it was healthier.

Healthier.

You know, we've learned a lot.

How'd you figure out it wasn't?

I think my body told me, you know, I started feeling a loss of energy, brain function. Just memory. I mean, just all the way across the board, I wasn't feeling good, you know. And if, you know, we were eating mushroom-based chicken and—

yeah, I think it was like—

did you ever go that low?

No, I think the one we used was Quorn.

Q-U-O-R-N. Yeah, I don't want to—

I don't want to make them pop up.

Yeah, mushroom-based protein.

I don't know what you think it is.

We thought it was Mycoprotein mushroom-based, and then we had a helpful friend who says like Yeah, I did some research into that company and it's laboratory produced. It's not even from fungi. It's like a, they call it mycoprotein, but who knows actually what it is. And just the fact that it's made in the lab and it's not really natural.

Um, so then is that when you guys were like, that was just hard to find things to replace the protein or just, you know, fulfillment with food.

So it sound like you guys are all So far, you're on the same page at all these turns, surely.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

You were exactly on the same page every time.

Thankfully.

Pretty much, yeah.

Nobody, so nobody had to say, maybe veganism isn't a good idea, and there wasn't a little bit of resistance on somebody else's part?

I don't think so.

Wow.

I don't think so.

We both kind of transitioned up quickly.

I don't feel like, have we had any?

I kick and scream sometimes.

Oh, you definitely do.

Old habits die hard.

When I tried to do it to fill my appetite. Oh, when I switched this to paleo.

Hey, I was okay with that, but I said I was still gonna eat sugar.

You did some kicking and screaming.

He did. He was like, he was like, we're not gonna eat any sugar anymore. And I was like, well, you and the kids can do that, but I'm still gonna eat my candy bar.

But it never lasts.

Not anymore.

Sugar.

That's true.

Okay.

So yeah, I'd say after the survival seeds, you know, we slowly kind of started bumping into some perennial vegetables. And the first one I found was moringa, which is the most nutritious terrestrial plant in the world. I mean, I sold thousands of them before I sold any other plants. And then I started funneling with blueberries. And sometime around that same time, I was just looking for fruit trees and buying bare root trees and—

Wholesaling.

Yeah, and you know, to be honest with you—

Selling at farmers markets.

When I knew I wanted to get in this, I never really— I thought— I never thought I could do it in my backyard, you know. I thought I needed a big farm. I thought I needed 10 acres. I thought I needed 20 acres. And, um, at the time I had a good friend who was also in the landscaping business, Steve, who's like, hey, my brother has this farm. If we take care of the grass, we can use it. So we bought hundreds of bare root trees, um, put them in pots. Half of them died.

They were not the right specimens for Florida.

Uh, you know, just, it's just a lot of learning, a lot of trial and error. And I think it was sometime while we had been starting those trees at the farm and I'm selling the moringas that I'm coming back home. And where I lived in downtown Newport Richey, around the corner from Jim, and here's this farmer's market on the corner where I turn every day and I pull in, you know. And Jim was the only legit farmer there. There was, you know, everybody else is like a lot of farmer's markets, just, you know, they're selling arts, arts and crafts crap, you know, one real farmer. And, um, you know, I was looking at what Jim bought. I asked him where's his farm, and he said, it's in my front yard. I'm like, in your front yard? And I honestly—

minutes away.

And I laughed just like you laughed, you know. And I bought some stuff from him, and I went home and told Melissa the story. Hey, there's this guy that grows in his front yard, kind of laughing about him. And, you know, we're like— I think we realized the veggies were like really good. A week or two later, I was going back by and I stopped by the farmer's market again, and I'm like, where do you live? You know? And he's like, oh, right across the street from the police station. You know, stop by sometime. And you know Jim, he's very open. And it was maybe a couple days later, I got on my bike and I went for a ride. And as I'm going down Jim's street, I almost broke my neck. Like, I about wrecked my bicycle when I saw his front yard because it just— it was the most beautiful sight I've ever seen. Like, I was like This needs to be on the front cover of Better Homes and Gardens. Like, this is like, veggie garden can be beautiful.

Yeah.

Um, yeah.

Is that where he lives now? He still lives where you saw him?

That's the farm.

We actually— no, so he was farming his mom's house, and he was farming his little house across the street.

Okay.

Um, in the last few years, he bought the house next to his mom's house. His brother bought his little house, so he has a lot more space to grow. Um, you know, and I just— I would hang out with Jim until he would tell me to go, you know.

And he would tell you to go?

Yeah, yeah. It's nap time, you you need a break.

That's what he would say.

Yeah, it's been a good exit.

Yeah, so I would go over there and go over there and go over there until I got kicked out. And he's like, he's like, you really need to check out permaculture. And I'm like, what the heck is permaculture?

Right.

You know, at the same time, we had just hired this kid that was in the sustainable food movement, Eric, and he had been telling me about permaculture too. So now I'm like, all right, I've heard permaculture from two people, you know, and I was instantly on my phone Googling permaculture course. And what do you know, couple weeks later, there's a course in Florida with Wayne Wiseman. It was, um, 2-week intensive. I got a couple of friends to go, and I went down and took this course. And, and I wasn't in the course 2 days, and I was like, it just started turning all these lights on for me, um, realizing all of these different aspects of the business that we could be transitioning in a, you know, a direction that aligned with permaculture. Um, and I knew right then and there, you know, that was my future. That's what we're going to do forever. And I was on my phone already Googling the next course before we got out. I found an advanced course in Miami with Eric Tonesmeyer, and I registered for that while I was in the first course. So it was one course after another, after another, and just taking what pieces of it that I thought we could apply. Originally, I wanted to just do food forests, but I've realized that a lot of people today, you know, not everybody's ready for a full-on food forest. You know, they live in HOAs, they live in communities, they live in front yards with rules, you know.

They're worried about the upkeep.

We have to hide this stuff in the backyard. So I tried veggie gardening, I would say, for—

yeah, that was the beginning. I just wanted to clarify, that's what we thought it was going to be in the beginning. We thought we were just going to be full-on just organic farmers and just growing fruit trees, maybe selling some fruit trees and doing annual vegetable production. That was the original concept until—

oh, you didn't think you were going to do installs?

And we didn't really know. We didn't even realize that the landscaping was going to transition into a whole different form of landscaping.

But we knew we were going to do gardens for people. We started off bringing it to our current clients.

But up until learning about permaculture and learning about food forests and designing the landscape with animals—

You didn't know that was something—

We didn't even know that was an option. I mean, that's kind of how Green Dreams manifested.

Tell me more about that night that you realized that fear was not the way. It seemed like it was a moment. Was it a moment? Or was it a buildup?

Fear without a solution is no way to live. It gave me a feeling in the pit of my gut. You know, I've never been in fear my whole life. You know, not like that kind of fear, like, you know, fear of the future, fear of what could happen, um, you know, fear of where things were going. And, you know, fear without a solution to me is, you know, it's a dead-end road.

It's a hamster wheel, you know.

It's not like Alex Jones is pushing, you know, here's what's going on in the world, but here's what you can do. He's just scaring you with what's going on and then selling his water filters and seeds, you know. Like, he's not offering a solution for everything that he's, you know, telling us about. He's selling fear, you know. And instantly I was like, I never want to watch this guy again, you know. Here's my solution, you know. Why be scared when you can have the food security in your backyard, even if you don't need it? I mean, in a state like Florida, whether it be economical collapse, whether it be hurricanes, you know, I mean, the whole idea of being able to, to grow something you could eat was just like, it makes sense, you know. And I think that's what a lot of my, my clients get too today, is like, wow, if I'm going to grow something, if I'm going to put water on it, which is a finite resource, You know, why not grow something that we can eat? You know, why have all of this?

It's independence, even in a small amount.

Wasted space, you know. And it really— I think I got angry, you know, when I realized that the same company that made Roundup, you know, made Agent Orange and DDT and aspartame. I was just— I was, I was angry. I was mad. I wanted to do something different, you know. My dad, um, he died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, you know. It could have been from the heavy chemical use. It could have been from the fertilizer use. I mean, who knows, you know. And I just knew that Hey, I could never put that stuff down again.

Um, were you using that in Clean Cut?

Oh yeah.

Oh, okay.

Backpacks every day. Wow. Yeah, I mean, backpack full, you know.

It's non-toxic.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, they said you could drink the stuff when it first came out. Um, you know, I'd love to see them drink it, you know.

Right, you first.

Yeah.

Well, fear is an acute motivation, don't you agree? Like, it does have a place. When you get afraid, you can act quick and fiercely and adrenaline But it doesn't last, does it? You can't be waking up afraid every day and that lasts.

It does keep you alive for a moment.

Yeah, it does.

So it does have a place. So maybe it got you to where you could then transition. Because what would be the more sustaining motivator emotion would be hope. That's what you guys finally got to.

Yes.

Did you buck this idea of, I can't live like this in this fear, Before you had the solution or had you come upon the solution?

Can I say, I think for us it was probably just as much anger as it was fear. Just—

You just get mad.

When you're taken advantage of and used as a consumer pawn and you realize what's happening, you realize our kids are getting sick as a result. I think our son was very sick at the time, so we kind of took it personal. We were angry, and I think, you know, the one good piece that came from Alex Jones was that part about the dangers of Roundup and the fact that it's being aerially sprayed on the crops and the GMOs. You know, all those years before when we started eating organic, somehow we missed the entire chapter on genetic modification. So until, like, listening to Alex Jones talk about genetic modification and just finding out how sick and twisted it's become. We just, we wanted to be part of the solution, I guess.

Be the change you want to see in this world.

Yeah.

You know, and here I am playing in the dirt and just planting stuff you can look at. You know, now we're planting stuff to attract beneficial predatory insects.

We don't like feeling helpless.

No, it was, yeah, it was nowhere to be.

It was like that movie Food Inc., kind of leaned towards the negative, the fear.

Yeah.

They did, to be fair, they did at the end offer a solution. Basically vote with your dollar. Because if you started voting for organic with your dollar, everybody's gonna be following that and going after that.

It's been nice seeing it tip that way over the last, mm-hmm.

There was another movie called Fresh Inc. Did y'all hear that? No, it wasn't called Fresh Inc.

It was, yeah. It was just called Fresh.

Fresh? I think we've seen them all almost.

Probably.

Fresh was half.

Fresh was good.

Fresh was good. A little, it was the opposite. It was a little bit of the negative and the fear and then mostly the answers.

Okay.

Like the people who are just being the answer, being the change that we want to see and like inspiring people. We saw both, those came out basically at the same time and obviously Food Inc. had a bigger budget because it ended up in movie theaters. Yeah, movie theaters. And Fresh, I believe, was like released on DVD basically.

Okay.

And so we, I don't know how we ended up with it, but we watched Fresh and we were like, yes, yes, yes. Like, this is what we want. And then we went and saw Food Inc. in the movie theater and we were like depressed.

Yeah, we were like—

I remember crying at Food Inc. like just because it was so depressing.

Like the dark side of it all.

Yeah, I mean, it is. I mean, I think it is good to know, but right. So Fresh was amazing.

How did you get your first edible landscape gig?

Well, we started originally sending out flyers to the clients that I had still retained.

Okay.

And, you know, telling them we offer fruit trees and veggie gardens now. Um, and I would say Ken Thomas, maybe 5, 5 or 10 of them bit. Yeah.

Smile.

Out of how many? Out of 120 probably at the time.

Yeah, that's actually pretty good too.

That's actually really—

that's like a 4% conversion rate.

It wasn't, yeah, it wasn't too bad. A couple of them loved the idea and the fact that we were offering the service now, they're like, let's give it a try. And Leanne Brown, there was a couple of really good clients.

Wait, they had you install gardens?

Yeah, whether it be a raised bed garden.

Were you helping at this time?

Yeah.

Yeah. And y'all remember their names?

Yeah. Most of these clients I worked for for years.

They were his landscaping clients for years. So just seeing their names go out every month with the billing and Are they still part of helping with the design process and picking out plants?

So no, when I finally let go of Clean Cut and, you know, completely made the transition to the Green Dreams was probably '15, '16.

Yeah, when—

yep, about '15. We bought the farm in '13. It was maybe 2 years after that. Yeah, about 2015, you know. And, um, I hired this young guy out of Naples who I met at my permaculture design course. It was a Encyclopedia. He was a botanical freak. Yeah. Like we could drive down the road and he could speak in Latin to every native plant and tree. Like just mind-blowing. And, you know, he worked with me for about 2 years and I learned a lot from him. I sponged a lot off of him. He had already had a food forest at his house down in Naples.

A mature 30-year-old food forest.

That he bought into.

Wow.

It was really, yeah, I mean, 35 different types of mangoes on half an acre with like probably 200 fruit trees. You know, I was like, you know, he was just blowing my mind everything he told me because I'm still learning to this day. But I learned so much from him in that short period of time. It was priceless to say the least. It was definitely nice.

He went to school for it. They had a program, I guess permaculture program.

Yeah, FGCU.

Florida Gulf Coast University.

Has a food forest. I think you've been there.

He went to school for it.

They have a food forest there and it says FGCU on the big shipping container. You were on top of it.

You're talking about that. Food forest. Yes, that's the one that had been 30 years old.

He did his—

uh, no, no, that's a younger food forest that was built.

Oh wait, did we go to that guy's yard that he's talking about? We had a host down there.

He was—

there was some dude that's got a jammed out yard.

Did you do a video there?

30 years old.

That was the teacher at FGCU's house you went to, correct?

We went to the teacher's.

Yeah, I forget what his— Alex.

Yeah, that sounds—

yes, we went to Alex's house. It wasn't a very old food forest, I don't think.

No, it wasn't.

He teaches a PDC program at the college. So long story short, you know, Taylor came up to live on the farm with us and it was burning him out. Um, the landscaping, you know, doing grass for 3 days. He was helping me cut grass and, you know, Thursday and you were still doing—

you were transitioning.

Yeah, Thursday, Friday we would put the food forests in, um, you know, whether it be raised bed gardens, fruit trees in the ground, deliver compost. You know, in the beginning I did a little bit of everything. I was spread very thin. Anything to just pay the bills, whether it be mulch deliveries. I do compost tea applications. We were selling We were selling all kinds of crazy stuff. I mean, we sold grow towers, we were selling nutrients. Um, you know, I originally opened a store, so when I— when we figured out this is what we want to do—

oh, like, yeah, we had a retail location in the very beginning.

Wow.

Yes.

What happened?

We were selling fruit trees and nutrients, and we had classes there. People would come and take classes.

I mean, we sold Berkey water filters, we sold rain barrels, we sold all that sustainable—

yeah, we didn't really have that direction yet, right?

Anything in sustainable realm. Exactly.

You know, and where you going, babe?

Okay, so I think we realized—

where was your store at?

Uh, Odessa.

It was in Odessa.

Just—

okay, well, it didn't have really great frontage.

Um, you know, and Facebook advertising, but there just wasn't a lot of social media advertising yet.

The internet was so different.

Money on the retail shop. I'm sorry, you lost money on the retail shop?

We did. He probably broke about even. I don't know if we lost money. Um, just not a ton of sales, you know. We had a lot of appointments come up there. I'll never forget the first load of fruit trees I ordered from, uh, Hopkins— from Hopkins Nursery in, in South Florida. I didn't know a single tree coming off the truck, you know. I'm like, I'm reading the tags as they're coming off, looking at the leaves, you know.

And, uh, he's like trying to memorize, you know.

It's, it's so funny. But here we come full circle again. We, you know, we, we got out of the store, we realized that we don't need a storefront to do what we want to do. And, you know, here we are 8 years, 10 years later, and we're opening a store again. You know, yes.

I don't think she knows about this.

Yeah, so it's been a dream of ours for the last few years. You know, we didn't realize, you know, buying into the neighborhood we bought into on ag land, um, there was other businesses in the neighborhood when we moved in there. There was a lawn company. You know, I thought I could have tours, I thought I could run a business, I thought it was very low-key and It was probably a month after I moved in, they took the neighbor with the lawn company to court. Um, he had to move his business out.

For having a business?

For having a business, yes. So, you know, originally we were doing tours, what, once a month?

I remember some of the stories.

We had monthly tours at the farm, and we started getting complaints from the neighbors, you know, too many cars on a Sunday, too many people coming into the neighborhood.

Um, and now neighbors showing up at the wrong house and knocking on the wrong door.

So you give them the best directions in the world, you tell them not to get there early, and they show up an hour early to your neighbor's house, you know, waking them up in the morning. It didn't work out happy. No. So, you know, now we're at a point where it's even gotten worse with our neighborhood. Um, some of the neighbors have voted to put a gate in at the entrance to the community.

Yes.

To make it even tougher for us to bring clients in on the— under the radar, which we've still been kind of doing.

Yeah.

Um, but by appointment, and it just makes it very difficult. So we've realized we need this retail outlet. People want to come and shop, people want to look at the plants.

Because you're doing a good plant business.

I mean, so your retail shop will be mostly plants.

Mostly plants. But I want a miniature version of ECHO. So I want to have the demonstration area. I want to have—

you got to tell people what ECHO is. They don't necessarily know.

So ECHO is Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization. They're based out of Fort Myers, Florida. They're about a 30-acre demonstration site.

We went there on the Great American Farm Tour.

Yes. Check out your video.

You can see the video on YouTube.

Is that where they killed the goat or is that somewhere else?

That was Heart.

That was Heart.

That was Heart.

We went to Eco. Eco is super legit.

We went to Eco before we went to Heart.

They have different countries.

Eco has a lot more stuff.

You can go to different countries at that place.

Yeah, Eco is great.

Yeah, so they're famous.

Climate simulation, right?

Yeah, they're very well known for bringing in like moringas and chaya and cassava, a lot of these perennial super fast growing vegetables into third world countries and teaching people how to survive, how they can grow food, how they can, you know, sustain themselves. So I just want to have a mini version of what Echo has. The educational aspect, the demonstration aspect, and the retail aspect. You know, we've just been waiting for the right opportunity now for, you know, 3 or 4 years. And finally something popped up within just a few miles of my property. And, you know, it's right down the road. Ideally, I'd love to have everything in one place, but right now—

What do you mean something popped up? You actually bought it?

Yes. So we purchased 7.5 acres on Highway 41. With a couple thousand foot of road frontage. You know, I mean, there's 50,000 cars a day that go by. So we have a real good opportunity for like the retail drop-ins. I mean, we've only had the property since March. I put a sign up by the road that said mulch wanted, and I probably have more than, you know, 3 or 4.

What are you going to do with all that?

1,000 yards.

Yeah, we'll get used to it.

4,000 yards.

3 or 400,000.

Oh Lord.

I have probably one of the tallest mountains in my county. And it's mulch.

What are you gonna do with all that mulch?

Well, you know, it's free money.

Well, it's gonna break down and to be soil.

Yeah, it's gonna eventually become soil. And I don't want to tell them not to come, you know, I can't shut them down. So we're, right, we're dealing with it. But, um, we, you know, so on a lot of these projects I do, we're bringing in 500, 300, 1,000 yards of mulch. Um, you know, I'm buying it, I'm semi-hauling it in so that the idea is that we'll haul from our own site to the job. You know, obviously less purchasing costs because I will already have the product on site and it'll just be a hauling fee. So, you know, not only in developing that 7.5 acres, we'll probably use half of it there and the other half just to go to clients. Um, you know, it's just, it's breaking down to be the best soil there is. You know, we have no soil in Florida. It's all pure sand. I mean, the site I bought, it looks like a beach. I mean, it looks like concrete.

It did look like—

yeah.

So have you spread that mulch all over it? It's wood chips basically.

Right now it's just wood chips. We're trying to get our, our site plan in place so this way So as we're spreading mulch, we're also planting at the same time. We're not just kind of guessing where things are going to go. So we're in the process of laying out nursery mat areas, figuring out where the garden areas are going to be, the demonstration area.

When you do installs and designs, do you make all the nice drawings?

I scribble. Do you like the trees with like the—

So you don't do a technical drawing?

So I do a scribble drawing.

Real scales.

And we do, no, so—

We have a team.

For years, for years.

Other people do it.

Yeah. So for years I've had designers and, you know, for his scribble. Yeah. Where I could just, you know, I would take the survey, I would draw in where I want stuff, I'd send it to my designer and he would digitize it. And it was not to scale.

You would take the survey. I always—

so that's a requirement, you know. So the way when we have clients come in, we kind of have them a couple of different funnel ways. We have a consultation and we have CDI, which is consultation, design, and install. So if they're doing the CDI, that means it's going from the design to the install and a survey is required. You know, we have to have it for our boundaries to scale the property.

What is the survey?

It's just boundary lines.

In some cases, you're actually getting a real legit survey surveying.

Most of the time they've had it. Now, if there's a situation where there's a lot of trees, we make them call in a tree survey company. You know, this way we're not trying to guess where the trees are when we're laying things out. And I'd say within the last 3 years, we've shifted everything to scale. Maybe even 4 years. Most of my designers all now use AutoCAD. Okay. So it's, yeah, it's very high-end.

For the installation process, it's a lot more accurate.

Yeah. I mean, for me to be able to look at a bed and say this bed and, you know, we use curvy paths, not everything's square, you know, not everything's straight. So to figure out measurements like that, you know, it's having a program like that's amazing. You know, you can look at this bed and say it's 730 square feet. It needs, you know, 14.6 yards of mulch. You know, so we can figure out our materials for the site that way a lot easier. This way I'm not guessing.

I see. You know, do you think that a regular homesteader needs to learn how to—

if they're doing it themselves, I don't— they have the time, they, they're afforded the time to be able to lay things out as they go.

I think they could do it with the hand sketch though.

Yeah, I don't know if, you know, because yours is more like trying to figure out how much you're trying to get and how to lay out the path properly so that they can get it done in a few days to a week time.

They don't have to wait 3 to 4 months to install. Hardscapes for paths, edging, you know, all these linear measurements, all of that stuff is very important where I was just kind of guessing before and it was working, but now we've just got it fine-tuned, you know, to where we're better.

It's like what Seth put in our sidewalk. Like we had to literally tell him exactly where we wanted everything. So, you know.

He knew how much concrete to order.

Right.

Yeah.

So he knew what to bring in. Yeah. And it's a little different with us because like we're always home, but like your clients may not be home to tell you what they want. You need to get that all together.

Well, you're working with a team too. It's not only you installing.

Right.

Yeah.

We'd like to start catering more to that DIY audience though too. And that's going to be our next—

With the store.

Our focus next year.

We're just trying to figure out how.

With the store and also we're creating an online course for that.

Okay.

A do-it-yourself food forest course. So somebody can kind of get the entire layout process of you know, how to plan for it, how to take those measurements, how to eyeball, you know, how big things are going to get. So, you know, making sure that, you know, your garden doesn't get shaded by some massive tree you didn't realize gets, you know, so that—

Will that apply outside of Florida?

Uh, of course, a lot of light.

Maybe eventually. We're going to focus on Florida-based, I think, at first, just because that's our expertise right now. And it's such a niche market where a lot of Floridians are a little lost. I mean, you can find a lot of books on planting fruit trees and gardens for the rest of the climate all day long.

Yeah, I think the basics and the layout really apply countrywide. You know, when I, when I actually went to Jeff Lawton's course a couple years ago and saw one of his designs, he never puts the variety of the tree. It says fruit tree.

That's right.

You know, and I can easily say fruit tree, what fruit tree works in your climate?

Bush. Yeah, vine.

Yeah.

Ground cover.

Natives.

Yes.

You know, to where when I'm doing a design now, we're putting, you know, this mango's Glenn, this mango's Carrie, this mango's Juicy Fruit, this mango's Sweetheart.

You know, we're thinking about what would you do here? Well, what's the guild here? You can't spit that out.

Fruit tree, fruit tree, fruit tree.

Well, I mean, you know, apple or peach.

Obviously I know apples, persimmons.

And then your bush would be raspberries or blueberries.

And then your lower level would be asparagus, strawberries, kiwi, asparagus, party kiwi. What's the— you have it in a pie. Why am I not thinking about this?

I have it in a pie.

Apple?

It's poisonous if you don't cook it. Rhubarb. Rhubarb, right.

Yes, that's a perennial.

Yeah.

So you— rhubarb, asparagus, strawberries. Those would be your ground cover perennials.

Yeah, I think—

why don't we have this?

I think the courses—

because I love meat.

You know, we—

oh, you love fruit too.

I'm at a point where I don't do any designs for regular consultations, and they want them. We turn them down weekly, you know, clients.

Where you like, you would consult and tell them what to do in a plant?

You don't want to do that?

And then they would plant it themselves? Is that what you're saying?

Exactly.

Okay.

And I want to do that. We're just not there yet. Right now we're so spread thin I don't have enough designers. We're only turning around designs in this limited amount of time. I don't want to back them up anymore with the ones that aren't actually turning in.

So what kind of projects do you get behind right now? What kind of excitement? What excites you?

Oh, I mean, if I'm ripping out grass, I'm excited. You know, it's, uh, don't be a grasshole.

Don't be a grasshole.

Yeah. So you like to do the installs?

I do. I like, I'm kind of torn. I love the little jobs and I love the big jobs. Um, I, I—

you just like tearing out grass?

Just like tearing out grass.

Yeah, you guys like tearing it out and composting?

Yeah, sometimes. But what I have found, because we've moved towards machines, you know, we— machines— there's no way I could do what we do without appropriate technology.

Yeah.

Um, you know, tractors and Bobcats and dump trucks. I mean, it would take us 10 times longer.

Yeah, it wouldn't It wouldn't work as a model.

You had to start that way though.

Well, so that's—

did you rent it in the beginning?

That's my benefit, Justin. You know, coming from this, and you know, for people that want to get into this business, start with plants, start in the nursery industry. But, you know, coming from a landscape industry, I had the trucks, I had the hand tools, I had a tractor, you know, I had all of these things, you know. So it wasn't like I started everything from scratch. I didn't need to buy wheelbarrows, you know. I already had big diesel trucks. I'm not starting here like a lot of these guys today that are, you know, trying to start out of their back of their little Tacoma, which is great, all power to them.

We love it.

I had that edge. Yeah, that really helped me out a lot. Um, you know, I, I didn't do a lot of sod replacement even as a standard landscaper. It was never something I was very fond of. So now I own 3 sod cutters. That's our easiest way to get the grass up.

You do like getting rid of that grass?

Well, grass in Florida is tough. Um, we don't really have a native grass. It's not native.

It's hard for our ecosystem in Florida. So as environmentalists, so you're a real grasshole if you have grass in Florida and not animals on it and not—

if it's irrigated. Yeah, yeah. I mean, most of these HOAs—

Florida is the number one state for cattle. Did you know that? Over, over Texas.

I did. But the sad part is, and I think some things have changed since Corona, they don't finish them there, right?

They get shipped off.

They all go to the feedlots for the last tail of their life.

There's a huge market in Florida to, to finish beef there, and it has started to happen since Corona. You know, I think a lot of these guys have realized, like, we can—

we just sell local, keep it in-house. Yeah. Instead of selling it.

And they're not feeding them anything. It's all grass because we have grass all year long.

Yeah, I know. Right.

Animal that's been free to graze all year round and then finish them on corn.

Don't you think grass-fed beef is going to be the thing because fertilizer is going up, grain prices are going up? It's going to switch just because it's going to be more—

it's going to be actually cheaper. Yeah, it's going to be actually be affordable.

Whereas like the grain-fed stuff is not going to be affordable because corn's got so expensive.

Yeah, let's go back to nursery. If you were saying if somebody were starting out from nothing, you would recommend a nursery, do you think somebody should just start a nursery and even like grow plant— start plant starts, like veggie starts, and go to the farmer's market and sell that? Or, or what are we talking about?

You know, I get the question all the time, and I usually tell people to get a job at like a native nursery.

Get a job. You need to be the get a job guy on TikTok.

No, but go work places and go get education.

I sound like that guy.

Have you ever seen that guy on TikTok? Says, go somewhere where you can glean information. You need to be, get a effing job.

Get a job.

Effing job at a nursery.

Get a job.

But you're going to learn so much, you know, you're going to learn. And I think starting with natives, most nurseries are just standard crap. In Florida. So if you get into a native nursery, a lot of those plants already mix into our, you know, our ecosystems that we're trying to create. You know, there's not a lot of fruit tree nurseries. There's maybe, you know, a couple. And where we have a lot more native nurseries, we're going to start to learn the plants. Once you find out if this is what you love, you know, that's what you start. You start propagating these plants, you start these plants on the side, you start your own business on the side. You know, maybe you're doing it on the weekends, native installs. As it's growing you're transitioning away working for this other person to your own thing. And then, you know, at that same time, hopefully you're studying fruit trees and perennials and learning these other things and experimenting. Because I can tell you, for me, I can read all the books in the world or read about all these things, but I learn from doing. I learn from failing. I learn from trying. You know, I'd rather, you know, try better, fail and try better. You know, it's— for me, I— that's the way I learned.

It has to be experiential for him.

Yeah, get out in there and try. Like, I, I found out that starfruit trees will not grow unless they're in deep shade by planting them in the wrong place. You know, they are pretty much wind intolerant. Like, I had one in my farm for 2 years, it never grew. I moved it, within a year it was fruiting and 3 times the size.

Move the tree that was already growing for 2 years, and you'll never forget that.

Yeah, just like, you know, with bamboo. I mean, you know, like a lot of this stuff, I jump right in like I said, and I think about it, but I don't really realize what could potentially happen. You know, like we've, we've planted some things we wish we didn't plant. Like when we first bought the farm, we wanted to do a big market garden. You know, that was my last market garden.

Okay.

That was the year we went out with a bang. Yeah.

You're a full circle guy because you cursed that market garden when I was there in 2000.

And we're back again.

'17. That's what I'm saying. Now you're back now. Now you're not in that location.

Are you?

No, he is.

Same property.

He hated it.

But he's on the back 40 with the—

Oh, you're not on the same property.

Same property, just the back side of the property.

Yeah, but I'm just saying like that location on the property wasn't a good spot. You found a better spot.

You forsook the market garden for a while and you cursed it when I was there. And now you're about it.

I think it was just the comparison. You know, we were in like a standard backyard in the house before we had moved into this one. And our entire backyard had been completely converted into all annual vegetables, raised beds, our little grow towers and all of that. Everything was busting. It was just like we had no problems getting anything to grow. And then we move out to this new property where, you know, honestly, we let the land sit fallow for a little while before we put that market garden in. But before, you know, it was pure sand. So we try to put these annual vegetables in and they were just completely destroyed by grasshoppers. We just had a whole new list of contenders to deal with, I guess.

You don't have any grass on your— at your house?

No, I do. We've got a couple hours of grass to cut. It is— do you?

Non-irrigated over by the high tunnel. So I have a couple acres of grass, and then in the back you have some grass.

Yeah, there's a time and a place for the grass I have, but it's not—

you're not St. Augustine.

It thrives on neglect.

Most people in Florida lay St. Augustine.

Okay.

And that probably the worst grass you could ever use in Florida because it requires heavy, heavy amounts of water and heavy amounts of fertilization and pesticides, fungicides. All of it.

What kind of grasses are on the pastures?

Like probably 90% of the grass that's in Florida, typically bahia.

Is that what the Seminoles would have seen? Bahia? So the buffalo—

bahia was also imported. You know, I know there's a lot of clumping grasses that are native in Florida. We have a lot of native gamma grasses and stuff like that. So that's probably— I mean, it was probably more trees too back in the day.

Yeah.

You know, we have as much—

you have that, that opened my eyes when I went to your place and you have these majestic oak trees. You have this little microclimate there that's just an amazing place. It's a little oasis that is a lot cooler there.

That, you know, that was something that I found through permaculture and food forests, you know, that these plants don't need full sun. You know, that, you know, most of these species that I'm here trying to grow, subtropical species, and, you know, just everybody knows you hear Florida, we get frost, we get freeze. You know, we're kind of in this weird place in Florida where I can't really grow mangoes, but I can grow bananas and starfruit, you know. But we can get zapped and they're going to turn brown, but they'll grow back, you know. So finding this perennial-based system where you are in Florida, if you go further south in Florida, yeah. So we're north of Tampa, we're like, we call 9B Central Florida, you know.

If you, if you go in like Fort Myers.

Oh yeah, they could grow all those things easily.

Typically, but they get the occasional frost and freeze too. I mean, it happens even in Homestead. Homestead?

Yes.

Which Homestead is south of Miami, just so people know.

Yeah, I mean, they get it there too, you know? So we've got kind of a tough growing climate between our rain, our humidity, the hurricanes, the tropical storms.

It is a tough climate.

Cold, frost.

Sand.

Yeah, it's—

The sand, I don't know.

Okay, so how does somebody—

You have to surrender.

I'll get this question. What does somebody do doing sand. If somebody's wanting to homestead and they want a garden, how do they deal with the sand?

Oak mulch, hardwood mulch.

The number one thing is obviously building soil. Yes. So we've, you know, found that the tree mulch— and not all mulches create equally, you know. When you go to a box store, you're getting the bagged mulch. It's pure wood, it's typically cypress that came from a swamp.

That's not a good idea.

No, not a good idea at all.

Not for a garden.

It doesn't break down right.

Well, you know, A, it doesn't have the leaves and the twigs in it, so it's just pure wood. And also, you know, that bacteria, that fungi from that cypress tree is not likely going to be present, especially in my soil where it was an oak base, you know. So most of Central Florida, that climax species, that pioneer species is oak. You know, it's mostly oak-based.

You want local mulch.

So that's the crazy part. The free stuff, you know, the stuff that these guys are paying to dump, trying to get rid of, you know, trying to get rid of. It's a waste product for them.

Dump it on your place.

It was gold for us, you know. So that was another thing that's changed with the property. They put up the gate, we stopped getting the mulch, you know. Luckily we have mulch again at this new property, um, you know. But going back to kind of the annual transition, Justin, you know, when I started to take off with Green Dreams and we started to get busier with installs, it really just became more of a time thing, you know. That's why I kind of started hating on the annuals a little bit, just personally, because I had no time for it. You know, when I found the food forest type system where it's really just if you plant it properly, you set it and you forget it, you're just going in to harvest, you're just going in to prune. It doesn't need to be replanted every year. That's what I really fell in love with about this perennial garden system.

Surely you got to add mulch every year.

Not if you're planting it densely. So a lot of the areas on my farm that we've planted, like, it's great. So we're planting, you know, chop and drop species. You know, we're planting, you know, like the Mexican sunflower that we talked about when you came down. That's pound for pound equal to chicken manure. It grows 6 foot a month. Like, things grow fast in Florida. We get a lot of rain. If you come in, you prune these systems, you're dropping it down, you're growing your mulch, you know. And then that's, that's the differentiation in the clients I get today. The ones that don't want to chop and drop, the ones that want the prettier type system. And I think that's the real blend I've tried to take with Green Dreams, is to take this knowledge I had of pretty standard landscaping and herb appeal and do it with edible plants, right? You know, so we might get some flack here and there from the, the purest permaculture people, you know.

That's not permaculture.

That's not permaculture. But it's so much better than what they would have done, what they would have installed, you know.

And they were never going to do a pure permaculture design anyway.

So it's like, it just makes sense.

Yeah, it does.

You make so much Because not everybody's going to be like Alex and just jam out a yard.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of people who don't take care of their food forest and leave it messy, so it kind of gives the whole thing a bad, bad rap.

Yeah, that's the biggest thing I've seen.

So do you go back and, um, continually like take care of people's stuff that you install then?

We try to, um, so we do offer maintenance and service calls. You know, my— the difficult part for me on that is, you know, we were the only one that did this for a while. And I'm still one of the only ones probably in the state that does this and travels statewide. You know, like my next, my next project when I get home is on the East Coast. We just finished one up in South Florida in the heart of where the hurricane was. This property was underwater for weeks before I got there. You know, ideally my perfect situation is the client is highly involved during the install on, on some of the bigger projects that we've done that are multi-acre. The homeowner will actually hire somebody to do the install with us and that person becomes their caretaker. Um, in a perfect world, ideally, I never want to go back and do maintenance. I want to go back and make a video and say how awesome this looks, you know. I'd rather have a homeowner just takes it and runs with it rather than me always coming back, you know. We'll do that, sure, we offer that, but ideally I want them to take it and run, you know. I want them to make it their passion, make it better than I even did it.

That's why they hired you, is to like get, get, get the main frame in.

Yeah, like, because bulk of it that could slow you down or completely halt you, right, because it's so overwhelming and you don't have the manpower of the machinery or the machinery.

Yeah, but that is the tough part on the smaller jobs. I can't get the machinery in, you know, so then we're stuck with wheelbarrows and everything else, and the machine's in the front yard, and we're loading the wheelbarrows into the machine, then up into the dump trucks. We're not pushing them up a ramp. I mean, we try to use machines to our advantage whenever possible, right? But sometimes a little quarter-acre job can take me longer than a 1-acre job because, you know, just because of accessibility, fences being in my way and everything else. It's all about, you know, how quickly can you move to move the stuff on the ground. You know, how quick can we get the grass out? How quick can we lay our main lines for irrigation?

If there's invasives there that you didn't really plan on and you're ripping root systems out, you know, that's by hand manually.

You know, it takes the machine in there 2 minutes with the tractor, 2 hours by hand. You know, it's all, you know, so sometimes a little job can be just as much as a bigger job just because of the amount of labor that it actually takes to do it. Um, and labor is everything. I mean, running a business is— that's probably the most expensive part, is, you know, having these employees and having the insurance and paying the workman's comp and the fuel and the maintenance. I mean, that's what all, you know, tends to add up and make it difficult.

How many employees do you have?

We were at, in the peak of summer this year, I think I counted 26.

Wow.

Um, that's counting subcontractors. So I have some contractors for editing, uh, subcontractors for design, that kind of stuff.

I mean, do you have that you wouldn't have to lay off if you had to?

Lay off for what reason?

No, they count on you for like most of their work.

Yeah.

Oh.

Well, you know, we probably have 15 that count on us. Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, that's, that's a lot of pressure, you know. It's a lot.

You've had to lay people off before, I imagine. Um, no, for financial reasons. You haven't?

Not yet.

We've suffered through it.

Never.

We've suffered through it. Yeah, you know, I mean, we really, uh, that's amazing. Yeah, a little up and down roller coasters here and there, you know. And that's the worst part, because when we run into slow spouts like a hurricane and a job gets canceled, yes, great, all of a sudden I have this time for my own farm. But all of a sudden when you have, you know, 10, 15 people working at your own property and you look at the end of the day like, this isn't making me any money, you know, my bottom line's dropping. And I love getting these projects accomplished, but yes, it does add up. So we have to have a balance between installs, plant sales, you know, which since Corona, the plant sales have gone through the roof. You know, now we've really grown our online sales and shipping plants in the mail, you know, nationwide, which is really kind of neat.

If you've never had to lay off anybody financially, then, then you've done You've probably been conservative in hiring people. Is that right?

Yeah.

I'd probably say that, yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

We're never taking on more than we need. We're never really investing into new adventures in the business unless we know that it's gonna— That it's gonna start out. Right, it's gonna plan out. And I think we're, I mean, smart with the money with the business too. When we have really good months, We're not, you know, gonna go out and buy another machine right away. We're just going to keep it for coasting should we ever need. So being responsible with your finances is—

y'all say it's like a roller coaster. Where are you right now? Are you on a high? You want a low? You want a middle?

Where are you? The hurricane might have dipped us a little.

We're coming out of a low.

Yeah, people are still recovering right now.

So this last year has been very draining with purchasing the new property. I didn't realize what I was getting myself into. You know, the land clearing in itself, the whole property with the county was covered in invasive species. Um, a lot of cherry laurels, a lot of Brazilian pepper.

You're clearing it?

Well, luckily, machines, tractors, chainsaws. You know, I had 2 guys over there for about 4 months straight.

Wow.

Every day in Bobcats and chainsaws, just, you know, ripping stuff out, cutting stuff, burning stuff. And, you know, I got a lot of flack like, why aren't you mulching all this? Well, You know, I can get free mulch to come in from trucks.

Yeah, you brought up a good point today. Haven't shared it with Rebecca yet, but we've been piling up our brush to then hire a crew to come in with a mulch mulcher. But that's $2,500 a day to run the machine. I could probably buy wood chips. It's cheaper to purchase the same amount of wood chips for $200. 100%. I don't know. We have to find that. Yeah.

Especially once you get your own dump truck. Truck, you can go get it probably for dirt cheap and bring it in. Um, you know, I get—

we used to have a free source, but it dried up.

I get the question from clients all the time, you know, should I buy a chipper?

No.

And it's the first thing I say to you, no.

Ask you that?

Yeah.

So they could literally chip from the moment the sun comes up to the moment the sun goes down with the typical homeowner chipper. We're talking like a 6-inch, not a big 24, $200,000 piece of machinery, and have a pile that's just as big as that truck that gets dumped for free.

Right.

You know, I'm like, it wasn't dangerous. Exactly. So, you know, chippers call these guys, bug these guys.

That's why we don't do the chip work, but we just hire people. That's not, but I was thinking about it.

They brought in a Mini X this last time and they were loading it with the Mini X, which made me feel better because I was like, I don't want anyone to die on my property.

Here's some things I catch myself in sometimes. So I'll think, well, Polyface, they have their own chipper. They have their own commercial chipper and and, and, and they do it themselves and they've been successful. But you've got to remember, they're a market, a mass market farm.

But they also—

we're homesick.

People come in, people drop chips there.

Yeah, they take the free chips.

They get the free chips too.

I think you have to look at, like, after that day you bring these chipper guys in, how much mulch do they leave you? Yeah, is it worth comparison, the cost of what it would have cost you to buy it? You know, I mean, is it gonna— is it a mountain?

Yeah, we have to see if we can— yeah, we can get a hold of it.

You know, I've found being just the thorn in these tree guys' side, bugging them, texting them, calling them, offering them $50, whatever it may be, we'll get them here. You know, they're paying to dump it. You know, you're really saving.

The problem is, is that they don't want to drive all the way out here because we are so far out that— and we're not on like a through road. Right.

You got to call.

So you could have—

you come all the way in and you have to track all the way back out, which I love that you're there.

We call a tree service company and say, hey, we'll give you $50 if you drop—

start with finding a relationship with the local company.

Okay.

But the big— best thing that I have found, because they're having the big companies that do the power lines, they got to come through every few years and do these power lines.

Yeah, that's how we got—

we got them.

We got loads, and then they came back a couple times and dumped them.

They knew you would take it. Yeah.

Well, this might be all fun in theory. We just have to figure out if we can some chips.

Yeah, I mean, I think if we can't find chips, then we rent the chipper because we obviously need them.

But if not, because you were saying the problem is the little brush that you're chipping just doesn't turn into a lot. And let's— you know, you guys are saving the big logs for lumber, you're taking the good stuff for firewood.

Yeah, Jim's planting raspberry canes right in the brush. No soil, huh? Right.

Somebody see— our deal is we like beef and lamb a lot more than raspberry canes.

Well, you gotta have variety.

No.

But I ordered a bigger kit. Let me tell you, we have like 90 trees planted in our backyard. You wanna come?

We plant our silvopasture. So we're foresting our pastures and pasturing our forest. So we're planting the fruit trees in the pastures.

Okay.

And I got apple trees that Justin's dad had planted. Over at his place.

Now somebody listening, they can go for it, right? That's a good tip.

This is the edge of the forest and just lays the brush down right there on the edge and puts his raspberry canes right into that brush.

In Maine.

Yeah, in Maine.

But you could use the edge.

We can burn it and have the ash, which would bring our pH up, right?

Yeah, we use ash on all of our plantings, so it's just a great amendment whenever we're planting.

And we couldn't buy ash if we wanted Could we? I mean, we can probably find wood chips.

Yeah, we can probably. I'm pretty—

Now, are wood chips going to be toxic? See?

And you guys might even have a different situation here soil-wise than we do in Florida. We need that.

Don't worry about the trees. I'm spraying the underbrush. You've got more of a clay base.

So I don't know if really mulch is a friend with clay-based soil. You could create mud.

That's right.

Too much moisture in the soil.

It becomes too much.

We tried the back to Eden thing.

Well, you know, in our front yard. It doesn't work.

Back to Eden and you were here. That was 18 inches of rain in that week, and that's where we did the raised beds.

Yep. So we just go to the market style garden, KCL Switch, JM Fortier style garden for our big gardens, and then cover crops. So, uh, grass clippings for in the raised beds.

Yeah, I put grass clippings in my—

whatever you have available is what you should be using.

And I think, well, that's what Jim says, right?

When he's up in Maine, it's grass. When he's in Florida, it's the wood chips. It's whatever you have, it's your availability.

Because I started teaching, uh, I went away from teaching the wood chip mulching in the garden because a lot of people can't get them. Like, if you have a big lot where you could put out a sign, yeah, but for most homesteaders, chip drop isn't available. There's not getting wood chips.

It's also—

but everybody has a lawn. Everybody's a grasshole a little bit. Yeah, I know. So it's needed.

They can trim.

You can, you can harvest grass and put it, use it as mulch. So let me ask you this.

In the places we have grass is where we get my mulch from.

So Rebecca, we're, we're heartbroken that our yard is gone, right?

I know, I'm so heartbroken.

The remodel, because of the pulling out the dirt, and we used to— we finally got that grass.

I finally got the grass.

We go out there and lay in the sun.

They literally came the next time.

So next time you come, we're gonna have a heck of a yard.

I'm excited.

You're gonna be judging us?

No, I told you.

Well, because the love is unconditional because we're not irrigating it.

It's, it's like native grass. We're not irrigating it. We're just letting it grow and just taking the clippings off of it and putting it in our raised beds.

Oh yeah, we don't fertilize it or anything. We don't water it.

Next time I come, you'll have Jonah scything this whole place, right? Yeah.

No, Jonah will be running the— he'll be getting the brush on the tractor. Loves him some machine.

Those kids are amazing.

Okay, so what, Mel, how has your job changed from the very beginning? Describe your job in the very beginning with Green Dreams and what it is like now.

Well, clean cut.

Clean cut.

From clean cut to Green Dreams.

Oh, really? With clean cut, all I was ever doing was just helping with the billing. I just ran the invoicing every month, and I was still doing hair at that time too. So, um, with Green Dreams, it was everything. I wanted to be involved with every single step of it. I think it gave us common ground too. It was really good for our marriage to learn something together at the same time. So, however, I mean, it was very interesting for me to learn too. It just, it was epiphany after epiphany. So, you know, my role in the beginning was all about the marketing, getting our name out there, putting together the classes, you know, telling everybody about the classes, all those email newsletters, you know, whatever we had at our fingertips chips then in 2011, even helping with a little bit of the design back then. Uh, now I've let go a bit. We've got such an awesome team, and I've realized once you let go of control and you let somebody else do their job, they can do it even better than you ever did.

Um, really? You found that to be true?

It took a long time to get there. To finally let go. Um, it doesn't let go easy either. There's still some things that I— yeah, there's still some things that I feel the owner of the business should have their hands on, and I probably would never outsource that to somebody else. I feel like the integrity of the business wouldn't be the same if I did. But, um, I was editing the videos, you know, after you came out to visit us. For, I think, the first 300 videos, I did all that editing. That kept me busy for a long time until it was hard to get that editor. It was, yeah.

Do you have to confront and coach these new people, or what do you have?

Robbie is amazing, our current editor now, who's been with us for I think a couple years. It's like, I feel like he's, uh, an extension of myself. He's got the music, um, okay, he's got the— he's got the finesse, the touch.

You found somebody that would edit it like you did, and you found our style.

He found our style and matched it.

Yeah, you didn't have to train him much. No, no, that's the key.

It was very refreshing.

Got very lucky there.

We attempted with a couple editors before that, and, you know, after feedback a couple times and not wanting to— okay, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, but it's just not what I needed.

This wasn't a fit.

Yeah.

Uh, have you ever hired anybody that's smarter than you in a certain area?

The designer?

Okay.

Yeah. Which designer?

Ben.

Oh.

Having that capability, the architecture capability.

Some of it is, I need to outsource this because I need to be doing other things. Some of it's that.

Nick. Yeah, we've got a lot of people that can, yeah. We learn from each other.

Nick is your gardener now.

That's why we have a gardener.

What's his handle?

Growing Back to Eden. So, you know, he's 23 years old. He has a ton of experience, a ton of knowledge. And, you know, gardens are beautiful. Obviously met Casey from you coming down in the videos. Yeah. And, you know, Casey came down to visit me after the video and he kind of wanted to do something similar. You know, I think he was interested in the edible landscaping. He was already an arborist. He wasn't sure what he wanted to do. Yeah. Um, you know, come down for 2 weeks and he was legit. You know, he helped me, we worked, we hung out. He didn't want to camp for 2 weeks. I think it was like 2 weeks, wasn't it?

Oh, because then he learned he didn't want to do edible landscaping.

Yeah, he was considering edible landscaping. Yeah, so he ended up being a market gardener. Um, we've obviously stayed in touch and been close friends through the years. And, um, last time I went to visit Casey, I just happened to be— Nick was there about 2 years ago, and it really got to hang out with Nick in person. Like, we had been just friends through online and social media I sold Nick one of my, uh, cameras when he was just getting into YouTube. He bought my Canon when I went to Sony, um, and we had just been friends. And, you know, I got to sit down with him and actually just like realize how smart he was, realize who he is. Like, wow. I'm like, hey man, if you ever need a job, like, give me a holler, come to Florida, you know. And I finally got the call. He called me, you know, and back in May and said, things are falling apart here. And I'm like, what does that mean, you're coming to Florida? You know, I don't even think he called with the idea. I was just like, I threw it right at him. I'm like, you're coming to Florida? He goes, well, I could. I'm like, well, think about it, let me know, you know. And, you know, next thing you know, we're having a couple more conversations and he's down in Florida. It worked out great. He stayed with Jim for 6 months, you know. Now he's actually on the farm. And, you know, I think there was a little intimidation there for Nick, you know, going from Washington and Virginia and a lot of these colder type climates to Florida with heat and humidity, not really knowing how much—

very different—

how different the growing would be.

Died in the heat of the summer outside in the full sun every day.

Yeah, we— you know, he's— he learned— he learned Florida is pretty hot. Um, yeah, I feel bad for him, but, uh, he's adapting. He's got the big furry dog who's obviously got—

do you adapt or do you just start working in the morning and take a siesta and work in the evening?

No, I think your body adapts. The more you're in it, then you can do it. Yeah, your blood thins out.

Honestly, Florida, that's why when y'all showed up, when y'all showed up to— showed up, you were in coats and we were in short sleeves.

It's true.

You were complaining about how cold it was.

Yeah, my blood—

I think Mr. Brown was probably in shorts.

He was barefoot.

Yeah, he's not wearing shoes and he was in a short sleeve shirt.

It's true. I didn't know that. Okay.

Yeah, I think you adapt. I think if we moved to Maine or Alaska, we would adapt. I mean, it would be a tough transition.

The hardest part for me every year is probably May, June, you know, it's going out of winter, getting used to the heat again, just adapting your body to—

I'm not ready for this.

I mean, you walk outside and you put your boots on in Florida, you're sweating, you know, it's 6:30 in the morning, it's so humid.

That's also good for you, but it's so good for you.

I'm not saying it's not, but it's good.

Stay on top of the magnesium, you know.

Tricky in the afternoon.

When I came to you, your name was Peter. That's what it still is. You are Peter Canaris. And now you're Uncle Pete. Uh, we showed up and then somehow you gave us— okay, so here's this total stranger saying, hey, we're gonna come and stay with you and film, and we're gonna have our converted school bus.

And all of our children.

How'd you sell this to Mel?

Hey Mel, there's some YouTuber that wants to come make some videos here.

No, I think you said, there's this guy that I met briefly, the PDs, or Permaculture Voices.

It's funny, he said you met me.

No, maybe it's because, is that how you knew him?

No.

Diego Futter. Diego Futter.

Diego told me about him and I looked up his YouTube.

He might have had to fudge a little bit.

Maybe it's just how I remember.

That's how I sold it, you know?

Yeah. And that he and his wife, who've got a YouTube channel, want to come here for their stop on their tour.

Yeah.

And I think I had told you when you guys came, like, I hadn't— I didn't know anything about it until just days before you got there. And I just watched a couple videos and how adorable the kids were. That's fine. The whole lifestyle was just the sweetest.

So he came and met us on his little go-kart.

On his little golf cart.

Golf cart. With Gavin at the stop sign. One thing I remember about you, and we were still early on the tour, but it still stands. You could, especially compared to me, unlike me, you can go through and just start rattling off about a plant. Okay.

It was very impressive.

And not need any notes, not have any stutters, not have any pauses like you had an outline in your head or something. And I said to you, you need to just start YouTube and just do this. And I said, you know, you can get it on your phone, right? And we got the app right then and there. And I said, just put it on the tree limb as you're trying and just go to town. Do you remember what was the first plant you did?

Oh yeah, Comfrey of the South.

Comfrey of the South. And you did, you put up together, you put together right then and there like a 3-minute video or something.

The phone fell out of the bush. It's still in there like that.

Is that video still up?

It is.

That's good.

The original.

And that launched it. And you, from then on, you've been consistent putting up videos.

Thank you for that. I've had a lot of fun on this path.

I tell that story a lot. Not just that you knew all those plants. I never would have come. I didn't know it meant that much to your business that now you get a lot of your business from that. That's a big marketing force for you now.

Dare I say all of it.

Yeah. Wow.

Most people, you know, because I think we don't really have a huge Google presence under a lot of these, what are the words I'm looking for? Like the, you know, if somebody searched organic gardening or something, there's a lot of other pop-up companies now.

Vegetable gardens or something.

Right.

We don't really show up for that.

How are people finding you then?

Mostly YouTube.

What are they searching for?

Mostly YouTube.

I know, but on YouTube, what are they searching for or looking at?

We were trying to figure this out the other night.

We don't know. Yeah, if you knew, you could lean into it a little bit.

A little more. Yeah.

Designing the website and trying to figure out the keywords that people are even searching for. And we're just—

I think it's coming up in recommendations.

Don't know what anybody's looking for anymore. It's just so natural part of our language. We don't really know what somebody who's newer and is looking for help, what those keywords would even be. So if you guys have suggestions—

I don't think it's about that. I think it's recommendations, uh, type of video, how long people are watching the video. It's definitely, we definitely, the analytics have definitely veered away from keywords and stuff.

I think that's the coolest thing about the videos though. And not only is it bringing in jobs, it's, you know, I really try to keep it as educational and inspirational as possible.

Helping people that are never even gonna work with us.

Right.

You know, but it's given people the inspiration. Like I get messages every single day, you know, like you inspired me to plant this in my backyard. I've ripped out my backyard because of you, you know? Yeah, awesome. So even if they can't afford us, or, or they're not local for our service, right? We've gotten excited to do something like we've got them playing in the dirt, we got them pounding dirt, right? And that's the goal. Like, I never imagined being able to hold a camera and talk into it, Justin. Like, it was a pretty awkward thing for me to get.

I know you did that in front of a complete stranger.

I know. I've always been counting anybody to be able to do that.

Now there's nobody else without multiple takes or plans or—

yeah.

And I've never—

You just got to have that. You just got to have that. Just forget all the fears and just embrace the awkwardness and fear and just do it and be consistent. Now, I didn't know it was going to blow up your business, did I? I didn't know that. You didn't know that. But I did know that there are assets, real estate, Cash money, stocks, these things are assets. There's also a new one that is more easily— it's always been around, but having an audience. But now more than ever, anybody can do it. Before, you had to go through a network and get on one of the 4 channels on TV and have a producer and an agent. But now you just take the phone out of your back pocket and hit make beneficial content and hit publish.

It's pretty amazing.

It really—

that is one of the benefits of technology.

Yes, right?

It really is.

I remember when Justin told me, yeah, I'm gonna tell— I'm gonna get Pete to make a YouTube channel. And I was like, I mean, yeah, because you— I mean, we were so impressed when we came to y'all's house. Like, it was like right off the bat, it was just like you knew like so much, and we were just like, whoa, yeah, this is crazy.

Like, you had putzed around with something because I saw a video saw a video with a drone shot of your farm or something.

Oh yeah, it was Appalachian Rising.

Rising Appalachian.

Rising Appalachian. Okay, so they had come to your farm, I guess?

No, they allowed us to use their music. Okay, we just did a drone video and there was somebody else's drone. I had a friend that wanted to fly his drone at the house, and we had probably a few little videos. I was taking down most of the cheesy ones that were made prior.

Private.

Um, but I think my basic biggest excuse when you came to me was I didn't have time, Justin. Like, you You know, your challenge to me was 30 videos in 30 days.

Wow.

2-minute videos is what you said.

Did you do that?

They quickly evolved. Yeah, they went from 2 minutes to 3 minutes.

Well, that was something about you too is that you didn't do too many of those stick it in the tree and talk.

No.

Although I think—

Bought like a little stand.

I do think that— Mic for my phone. But that made it exciting. And that would be the other thing I would teach somebody is just try to get 1% better every day. I will watch a vlog and making notes still. Justin, stop moving and talking. Stop swinging the camera when you're talking.

You notice? Yeah.

Or, Dan, do this about the edit. Or should we hire— we've hired an editor. Now should we hire a filmer? Like, always trying to make it better.

You got to constantly be looking for the next level up. I think that's That's like, for me, from going from the phone to the Canon to the Sony to a drone. Like, you know, it's always— when I saw the drone shots, I think that was probably my most exciting.

You do a lot of drone shots.

I love it.

Yeah, but drone shots make so much sense for what you're doing though.

They do. The before, the after, once we're finished, you know, it just gives that whole other eye in the sky perspective, you know, which I think people— it's like mind-blowing, you know. It really kind of gets people like, wow, it gives the wow.

And then YouTube pays you too, so you get ads. You're getting ad money.

Get a little bit of ad money. Yeah.

But then mostly it's beneficial because it's bringing in clients and inspiring.

Like, so we'll make a video about plants and plant sales will go up 100% that week.

You know, you don't even have to pitch it.

No, no. Just putting a plant video out.

How far out are you? How far out are you? Like, if I was living in your city and I was like, hey, I want Green Jeans to come and do an installation on my property. Oh yeah.

Like, how many weeks do people have you know, $40,000, make it look good, we could do it within a couple of weeks.

Okay.

Now, if it moves into the CDI where if they want to have a design, that's usually a process. So that's more of like a 4 to 6 weeks.

Okay.

But I do get some clients like we just did a couple of jobs. We just did one in Sarasota, you know, where the client said, this is my budget, this is the space, use, use your, you know, just do something. And the guys loved it.

That's awesome.

You know, because you got to remember, I'm not— I don't, I don't just have employees.

I do measurements.

Like they're not just employees. They're not there for just a job.

Have you had any like—

They're into it.

They believe in it.

Yeah.

They eat, sleep, and live this, you know?

Have you had any exciting clients that you can tell us about? Like famous or—

I mean, rich founders of Boar's Head, you know, founders of Publix.

You know, shopping is a pleasure.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, some really—

Yeah. Is that going by word of mouth among their community?

Or are they finding you on YouTube?

Yes, yes, finding me through YouTube.

Yeah, small garden for a baseball player.

Okay, yeah, small garden for a ball player.

Um, I have to say, I really do got a lot of ball players following you, like on Instagram and stuff, because you're on there showing like, this is where we're at, like this is the installation, this is— and then like you kind of like follow it through the whole thing. So like, I don't obviously— I mean, obviously I'm your friend, So I enjoy that aspect of it. But just watching your— the evolving, the difference, because, you know, you're on a different job all the time, you know, like doing different things. It's just really neat to watch.

YouTube has also allowed you to do that. YouTube has allowed you to now travel because you do a lot of travel videos and Instagram content of exotic fruits.

Yeah, so I kind of got into the fruit hunting a little bit. You know, and I haven't done any of that since, uh, well, I went for a short trip to look at some property over the summer, but mostly kind of pre-corona I did a little bit of traveling, mostly around the state of Florida, coming up to see you, Casey, um, Maine, you know, Maine to see Jim, that kind of stuff. Yeah, I, I, if I love traveling with the camera, I could do it full-time. You know, we, we've kind of started branding everything in a— we just, you know, we own the domain for Green Dreams TV, um, kind of started branding all the social media platforms into Green Dreams TV. You know, this way we're like, we're kind of like our own network. Work, you know, like the, the kind of stuff you want to see, you know, not the regular mainstream.

Um, if the audience was bigger, I think you would do more of that full-time, but because that's not like the huge—

it's not where you bring your income, right?

We have to kind of focus on local jobs to show people the, you know, what you can do, right?

Is that the dream? Now that we're, we're here wrapping up towards the end, 15 more minutes, what is next? What is the dream that you would be be able to travel and film, or that you would have this retail shop, or what? Or all of it?

All of it, you know. And I really see the, the travel film thing growing beyond me, you know. Like I said, almost like a TV network, you know, where there's people that, you know, that also go out and interview under this kind of Green Dreams TV brand, you know.

Maybe there's similar to your abundance, but more plant knowledge-based.

Plant knowledge, traveling of these type of sites, you know. Um, I just missed out on an install for Tom Brady. Another local company did it. Like, so to going back to famous people, you almost got Tom Brady. It's happening, you know, they're, they're getting it done.

That website and keywords is important right now. Yeah, we missed the Google search, YouTube channel, the people who are looking for those kinds of things. We're missing out on that opportunity.

Yeah, I want to have the education site open here this next year, um, because Tom Brady's team probably would have just Googled something.

Yep. And they found somebody, but they were more interested in the annual vegetables.

And why not? I take that back, he's got both.

He's got a food forest and annual vegetables one, I understand, you know. And he found this cookie cutter company that's Very interesting.

New.

New and kind of, I don't know if I say anything else about that, but yeah, quite interesting. Yeah.

We'll talk about that off camera. Yeah.

Watch how it unfolds. But yeah, I think next time you come to Florida, you get to see the commercial site.

Yeah, I'm excited about that.

As everything grows. Really?

It's going to happen that fast?

Are you going to, you're going to have a building on it?

Is there a building on it? We're going to get nursery mat on it.

We're probably going to go about—

You already have a contractor?

No, I'm just going to put up a pole barn.

Oh, cool.

Like just to be able to do farmers market sales and plant sales until—

You can do that in Florida.

Our long-term goal is to put a red iron building in with a commercial kitchen, 2 stories, a cafe. Like we want to have everything right there.

Ooh, a cafe.

Tea room, whatever.

We'll finally have a place we can eat down there.

Right around the corner. Yeah. So you won't have to just eat at our place. But yeah, that would be nice.

That's not what I meant. I meant someplace as we can go.

There's a couple places, but it is slim pickings. It's really sad, you know, the food movement is sad. These places pop up and they go out.

It's—

they do try. They—

we try. There used to be a couple places just not there.

I don't know. Yeah, there's used to be a couple places in Greenville, and people don't—

aren't voting with their dollars yet on that.

No, they're not. And now that the economy is kind of tanking—

I'm a big— I stand behind that one. I tell people all the time, I mean, you get 3 votes every day, you know. But with your mouth, that's the vote that actually counts, you know.

Oh, tell me more about these 3 votes.

Well, I mean, who you support with where you're buying your breakfast, where you're buying your lunch, you know, who you're supporting locally.

Where's that money going through the funnels?

You know, it's going to stay within the community when you spend it locally. When we go to these crappy chain places and everything else, we're just supporting these big corporations, you know, or, you know, we literally get 3 votes a day. What do you want to support? Do you want to support fast food? Do you want to support the local farmer that's you know, raising grass-fed beef that's doing it right, you know. I've— I'm not scared to spend a couple bucks more for something higher quality and better, you know. And food is the medicine, and health is wealth.

You're gonna pay for it. Yeah, in the end, you do.

Now or later, pay the doctor or the farmer, right? That's what they say.

Yeah, I like that one. Where can folks find you? Green Dreams TV.

Green Dreams TV.

Okay, on YouTube, Instagram.

We're still greendreamsfl.com. We own the domain for the TV, we just haven't transitioned. We're kind of thinking about switching everything up. You know, we've got so much going on— nursery, installation business.

When they come to the website, what do they do?

Right, there's a—

we got a lot going on.

Eventually we'll have an education website, a plant website, an install website.

That'll be the answer. You'll have 3 different brands.

Yeah, gonna have to start dividing this stuff.

Yeah, and it won't all be under Green Dreams TV. What's your hat say?

That's the Green Dreams. Okay, we haven't added the TV on the end of that one yet.

TikTok.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, you've been going in.

I have a lot of fun on TikTok, you know, because, you know, when you look at trying to fix the problem in the world today, the kids are the roots.

We need to go, you know, we got to start with the kids.

If we can inspire the kids, much younger audience, you know, I think it's so important, you know, give them an option for when they're getting out of school. You know, all the kids today are junk. I don't know what they want to do.

Give something else besides the junk.

Yeah, you're getting some traction there.

I've had a lot of fun on there.

Are you getting any jobs from TikTok?

Oh, all the time, actually.

Yes.

Okay, so I'm about to say that 25% of my jobs probably come through TikTok. Yes, they found me on TikTok, which is pretty amazing. So I do—

they're amazed by that way more. I found you on TikTok.

Are they younger people?

Yes, yeah, most of the time.

Yeah, not our age, or I mean, it can be like the somebody younger, like, oh, you know, they know somebody who has more money.

People message him saying that they were able to break their drug addiction because they found a healthier hobby or a healthier obsession. He's got, you know, dudes that are growing vegetables in the projects and that were inspired by him.

It's—

I like, I like the broad range of people that were connecting.

My dream is to put a food forest in, in Joe Rogan's backyard and create a show on MTV like Permaculture Cribs, but yeah, where we're converting Snoop Dogg's front yard into a food forest.

Weren't you gonna be on Magnolia or something? I'm sorry, weren't you gonna be on—

we've been interviewed a couple times. Nothing's—

nothing's— nothing's panned out. You're gonna just have to create your own shows.

It wasn't for just our business though. He would be— he was going to contribute with a— a bee girl friend who does bee work.

So I do the food for her, she brings in the bees. It just— the two didn't— it didn't match.

So why don't you produce your own show on, on this?

That's what we've realized. Why not?

Cribs.

Yeah, why not?

That's what we did with Abundance Plus.

We've been interviewed by HGTV, a bunch of these places.

Just hire your own, call one of these production companies, sell it to HGTV yourself.

If—

yeah, you know, you can put it up yourself on YouTube or somewhere.

You know, I think if we want to inspire the mainstream, that's where we got to go, you know.

I mean, I would like to network with those people though.

Yeah, I feel like, like, they—

the people in those major networks need a little piece of what we are all doing.

Yeah, as well.

I feel like it—

I feel like some of it is going that way. I mean, I feel like, like, Magnolia does have— I know, it's trendy. I mean, Magnolia does have some good stuff where people are like really growing, right? Yeah, you know, and so that's great. And But they need you guys.

One day, if it was meant to be, we'd be there.

That's right.

Well, I don't know. Our time is coming. Yeah.

You're a huge inspiration. I know that. So.

Okay. Thank you, guys. Anything else you want to add?

This place reminds me of The Biggest Little Farm, my favorite documentary. It really does. You guys could have your own version of it here. That's my most inspiring movie I think I've seen.

Yeah, it's a good movie.

Put my kid in tears.

There's a sequel now too.

There was a second one. Yeah, we need to watch it.

Good. It was just a lot of— it was a lot of clips from the original, I think, for people who hadn't seen the original, but just updates, watching their little boy grow up. And it's a lot of reiteration, really, just catching up.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you, guys.