TAKING IT TO THE ROOTS! ORGANIC FARMING PT 2

So when it comes to food, food is one of those things that inherently requires a local community, a local network. We cannot continue, given greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, all that stuff that people have been talking about, we cannot continue to ship food overseas from other continents. We must start to grow it locally. Here in San Diego in particular, we have a year long growing climate. We have an abundance of farms and farmland. But we need more people involved to recreate this little model. Here in San Die, we need to find access to land, we need to raise money. We need to basically collectively make food more of a priority. And when we think about what we eat and the fact that we are what we eat and the extenuating impacts that food has on the environment and each other, I think it's a wonderful thing to rally around. And people really are.

Yeah, you're getting me stoked on it right now. I'm ready to help out, man. Well, I'm definitely going to spend some time here in the next couple months and definitely put some of my sweat and why don't we go do a couple things that you do to sustain the farm right now? All right, Put me to work. Okay. Okay.

We're gonna dig this hole right here so that we were prepared to plant the roses.

How am I doing right now?

You're doing pretty good. You're doing pretty good. If I were doing it, I'd have done it a lot faster.

Dude, what are you doing? Huh?

Gone too far. Oh, that's okay.

Are we good? We're done? Yeah.

Maybe we'll just.

Okay. Nice. This is my first time as a farmer.

More manual labor.

What are we?

We're gonna spread wheat on a field.

Spreading wheat.

This is just covering it up. And reduce the growth of weeds. This is a wheat harvest from a friend's farm of ours containing organic wheat kernels. And the spares will just naturally seed themselves.

Why the cardboard? I see the cardboard on the ground.

Cardboard you can actually use as a ground mulch as well. Mulch is any kind of organic material that you cover the ground with. Sorry, I'm a little out of breath. The purpose of mulch is to cover the ground, to suppress weeds and to maintain moisture.

So we're gonna turn some poop.

We're gonna turn some poop.

Turn some poop. Yep.

Guys, remember that book, Everybody poops?

Is that where this came from?

Kind of.

All right.

It's where everything came from. Everything poops, too.

Oh, that smell. It's like floral. It's like a bouquet. Yeah, it's very good.

That's light. Ooh, this kinda smells good.

This is like one of those moments that your parents made you do work, and you're like, why am I doing this? But in your case, it's because you want to eat the food.

Exactly. It all starts up here.

It's legitimate work. Think about that the next time you get your food from somewhere. How much work actually went into being on your plate.

Hey, man, what are you doing? We gotta go turn the compost. Ready?

Yeah. One big pile of poop, and we're gonna shovel it. The main purpose of the poop and the compost is really to feed the plan, which then we eat. So that's the whole cycle of life, right?

Exactly.

See, this is what would make a zookeeper jealous. Huh? If you go to the zoo. Well, I mean, it's not like this is probably not as bad as elephant poop at all. Elephant poop's gotta be worse.

Yeah.

Elephant poop is probably ridiculous. But this is horse. Goat. Yeah.

This is a mixture of horse and rabbit manure from a local ranch friend of ours.

I think I got some in my mouth.

It's probably okay.

I'm saf. I'm safe.

I really have noticed a positive difference in my poop. I don't get constipated at all. And that's one of the best. That's one of the best ways to judge how your own personal health is. How your poo looks, how it feels, how it comes out. Does it smell a lot? Does it feel good?

Exactly.

It's kind of a gross subject to talk about, but it's something that I think we should be talking about.

Like you're saying, I mean, everything poops.

Everything poops.

So we don't need to spend billions of dollars in our country on laxatives. We just need to eat things that grow from great poop.

Exactly. Yep.

Simple organic farming. Simple.

So so far today, we. We talked a lot about where our food comes from, why it's important to care, and some things that we're doing. I was hoping to encourage all of you to get involved in your food system in whatever way you see fit, be it by supporting local organic farmers at the farmers market. Supporting organic markets or getting involved on a farm volunteer at your local farm, help out. One of the things that we have going on here is the San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project. Roots was formed to educate, cultivate, and empower sustainable food communities in San Diego. And we're doing that through a whole bunch of different projects, Our different educational farms and food initiatives. Help the community to make more active and conscious choices to promote a healthy lifestyle, healthy economies and healthy communities. My name is Matt Finkelstein. I live and work here at La Milpa Organica and also work with the San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project. San Diego Roots can be found at www.sandiegoroots.org La Milpa Organica can be found at www.milpaorganica.org Guys, thanks for watching.

We had a great time here at La Milpa Organica Farm. I really want to thank you a lot Matt and I hope you guys can come volunteer and check out Matt's Farm and do something that goes into the food that you put in your mouth. See you.