Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #342 Getting To Know The Garderners Of Eden Boyz

Episode Date: February 15, 2024

The Boys!!! Brent , Eric , and Fox finally sat down long enough to tell y’all about our life at Gardeners of Eden! They’re the main hands, hearts, and souls behind the farm in Lockhart. Brent is our head of Plant Ag, Fox is our Animal whisperer and Eric and I stitch the rest together. I finally got them on the mics to fill y’all in on the journey so far as well as some of our day-to-day life. Stay tuned in to get deets on our upcoming “Day In The Life” event we’re still dreaming into. Please go give them a follow and some kind words. Love y’all!   FIT FOR SERVICE  I will be putting on free webinars this Friday the 16th and another on Wednesday the 28th on mitochondria and systemic energy, both will be at Noon CST and last 90 minutes. Please come learn some of the foundational knowledge I’ve used to optimize my health.   Connect with Gardeners of Eden: Website: GardenersofEden.Earth  Instagram: @gardenersofeden.earth    Show Notes: "Sepp Holzer's Permaculture" - Sepp Holzer "Regenerative Agriculture" - Richard Perkins   Peia Spotify - Blessed We Are  iTunes - Blessed We Are  "The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic" -Martin Prechtel Austin Dillon’s Farm CounterCulture.farm   Daniel Firth Griffith’s Farm Timshel Wildland KKP #304 Get Involved in Your Food Supply w/ Joel Salatin Apple Spotify KKP #320 Finding Longevity in Relationship w/ Cathy Courtenay Apple  Spotify    Sponsors: Energy Bits Head over to Energybits.com and stock up. Use code “KKP” at checkout as they’re hooking us up with a whopper 20% off! Bioptimizers To get the ’Magnesium Breakthrough‘ deal exclusively for fans of the podcast, click the link below and use code word “KINGSBU10” for an additional 10% off. magbreakthrough.com/kingsbu  Tushy Over 3 Million Butts Love TUSHY. Get 10% off Tushy with the code “KKP” at https://hellotushy.com/KKP  #tushypod  Happy Hippo Kratom is in my opinion the cleanest Kratom product I’ve used. Head over to HappyHippo.com/KKP code “KKP” for 15% off entire store To Work With Kyle Kingsbury Podcast   Connect with Kyle: Twitter: @KINGSBU  Fit For Service Academy App: Fit For Service App  Instagram: @livingwiththekingsburys - @gardenersofeden.earth  Odysee: odysee.com/@KyleKingsburypod  Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast  Kyles website: www.kingsbu.com - Gardeners of Eden site    Like and subscribe to the podcast anywhere you can find podcasts. Leave a 5-star review and let me know what resonates or doesn’t.

Welcome to the show, everybody. Today's episode is one that I have been dreaming into for some time, actually for the last couple of years. And due to the pace of life and the pace of the farm and everything that we've had going on, it's just been put on the back burner until now. I'm super stoked to bring you our first of many farm podcasts where I bring in the whole team of the farm boys. We always have a much larger team than that's on this podcast of people that are helping in various ways. But as far as the guys that are on the ground, getting shit done in the field, harvesting, hunting, making sure the animals have the best life possible, making sure the food forest is proper and running perfectly. These are the guys and including myself, obviously Kyle Kingsbury, part of that. But we have our general manager, the operations manager, Eric Vaughn.

We have farm manager and expert, Brian Fox. And we have our plant manager and expert, Brent Newman, all on the show today. We did experience one hiccup with fucking technical difficulties. So they had to pass the headset back and forth. Fox and Eric, which is hilarious if you guys watch the YouTube video, shouldn't be that noticeable though other than a slight pause when they go

from answering questions. This was a warm-up really to see how the boys would do. All of them were excellent. They are fantastic speakers. All of us come from a wide variety of backgrounds. One of the things we really wanted to illustrate on this show was none of us other than Brent had any farming experience prior to going into this. My wife was the only person who grew up on a farm and, you know, growing up on a farm is different than running one. So we really want to prove the point that

this is doable for anyone and you don't need 118 acres to do that we talk about that on the podcast our food forest of 400 400 fruit and nut trees is on three and a half acres and we've got 120 chickens that we rotate through there with 20 ducks and four geese much of this can be accomplished on very little land and i live right now on a tenth of an acre in south austin and the backyard is spectacular i first got into gardening when I was at my mom's house and living in my mom's detached garage, fighting in the UFC. Plant medicines drew me to nature. I wanted to start planting things and watching them grow. And so that's what we did on a quarter acre in California. And it was absolutely stunning

when it was all said and done. So if you live in an apartment, there's shit you can do. If you have a small backyard, there's shit you can do. If you're renting, there's shit you can do. And the point is to build the connection back to nature. And if you've got questions and things of that nature around like, what is it like homesteading? We're going to try to offer our play-by-play on where is we fucked up, who we've learned from, who are the giants that we've stood on the shoulders of to learn at a very rapid pace. Guys like Daniel Griffith, who's been on the podcast, Chad Johnson, who's been on the podcast, Asep Holzer understudy, and many others. So I'm stoked for this one. I'm also going to get the boys on individually. So you'll get more of a background of where they come from

because each of them has unique, fascinating stories. And we allude to some of that just because I like that as an arc of a show. I myself want to know who these people are. I know them personally, but I want to deliver that to the listener as well. So super stoked for this. Like I said, we'll probably run this back once every two or three months because shit happens all the time and there's learning. And there are conversations to be had with these guys because you see a lot every single day.

We learn a lot every single day and they're great at what they do. So support this podcast, share it with a friend. If anybody you know that's into gardening, planting, food forestry, animal husbandry, any of these things, if they just want to learn about it, this is a place to start.

And go to gardenersofeden.earth. We'll link to that in the show notes. Gardenersofeden.earth is our website. There's not a ton of stuff on there, but if you're interested in upcoming events, just sign up at the very bottom of the page for our newsletter and enter your email. We will not bombard you with shit.

I promise you there's very few newsletters that go out. But when we have a cool event coming up, like some of the ones that I'm alluding to at Day in the Life of, you'll be the first to know. So if you're interested in what we've got going on there, you want to come volunteer, all that's on the website. Just sign up for the newsletter at the bottom. There's a place to click to volunteer. There's a place to click to donate. All that's there at gardenersofeden.earth. Also want to tell you guys about what's happening in Fit for Service. I alluded to that a bit because everybody that I've met that works at the farm

has come in one shape or form through Fit for Service or what was prior to Fit for Service and Eric. So lots of cool stuff in that, but we are making huge changes going forward and we've created Fit for Service Academy. We're gonna have six different core teaching modules, which will run one per trimester. And these six are the six, the big six, the ones that we find to be the most important in changing your life. And so I'll be teaching

physically fit. I think that's a no brainer. And I'm going to be teaching a lot of great stuff within that. Eric Godsey is going to be teaching mentally fit. Caitlin's going to be teaching emotionally fit. We're going to have a round table with all the coaches for spiritually fit. No one single person could hold that. Aubin Vi will be teaching romantically fit and Aubin Clay Herbert, our new, uh, our new, uh, CMO will be teaching financially fit and Clay's got a lot of experience in the field. So we're super stoked for that. I'm going to be doing two webinars coming up, one on Friday the 16th and another one on Wednesday the 28th. Those are absolutely free. I'll be deep diving mitochondria and deep diving a number of other things

related to health and wellness and systemic energy. So most webinars suck ass. You're forced to listen to some painful story about how dude lived on his mom's couch for 20 minutes. And y'all know, I lived in a garage for five years. We got that part covered. And then you get like five minutes of something useful. And then you get like 30 minutes of people hard selling their product. That is not what these webinars are about. These webinars are meant as a giveaway. I'm going to teach you what I know. And I had already spoken on this topic years ago at Paleo FX and had a huge response from it. Jack Cruz, Dr. Jack Cruz, who I'm having on the podcast, not too far from now, he's coming up next week, a release before the end of the month. This is his specialty. This is his wheelhouse. And I've

learned a lot from him around light therapy, cold therapy, what to feed the mitochondria, all the good shit. So again, you So again, just by listening to that podcast, you're gonna learn a ton on it. But I really wanna deep dive that and give that to people. And that's a taster, that's a taste test of what you're gonna get in the Physically Fit class. I'll have you for 13 weeks. There's a teaching day that's gonna be about an hour and a half.

And there's going to be a Q&A day. And if you can't make it to those, everything's recorded. You have access to it. We have small breaks intermittently throughout so people can catch up, so no one's left behind. And then the real thing about Fit for Service is when we meet up, it's these meetups that happen that really have the ability to change and transform us.

And for sure, the thing that builds community. When you go through something challenging with one another, like fasting and full temple reset, you're there with 24 people, everyone's starving themselves, everyone's in the sauna, nice bath. That's gonna move some shit inside you. It's gonna stir up some emotions, some feelings,

and it's gonna ground you into a new reality. And when you come out of that with your brothers and sisters in arms, you've effectively done something very challenging together that bonds you together. And our big events are similar. We can't starve you guys there with the big group, but at the same time, we are going to do things that push the envelope from holotropic breathwork all the way into ecstatic dance. Things that get you are designed to get you outside of your comfort zone and back into feeling comfortable in your own skin. And in doing that, that can form lifelong

friendships. 100% of our, I don't want to say student, 100% of our members that have been with the program for more than one trimester all say that they've met a lifelong friend or partner that they'll have, they imagine to have until the end of their lives. That's huge. Another big stat that I loved is we have quite a few businesses start from this where people have ideas, they find other people that are like-minded and they start really awesome businesses. Spiritual Narcissist is a phenomenal clothing company

that was birthed through Fit for Service. And then my personal favorite are, you do find when you're with like-minded people, someone that you really gravitate towards. And even though it's not the purpose of this, I imagine a lot of people taking Romantically Fit will be single. And we've had people get married in Fit for Service and now have kids. So we have Fit for Service babies. And that to me, being a father, there could be no greater stat than that. And of course, that's not the vast

majority. That is a very small percentage, but it does happen. And it's absolutely fucking beautiful when it does. So I'm stoked. First trimester is going to start in March. You can sign up now, go to fitforservice.com, click on physically fit. If you want to jump in with me, if my class sells out and there's something else that interests you, sign up for another class because it's going to put you first in line in following trimesters to get the class of your choice. There are huge discounts if you sign up for the whole year, choice. There are huge discounts if you sign up for the whole year, and there's even bigger discounts if you sign up for two years.

Obviously, we're teaching one thing at a time three times a year, so in order to finish every one of these modules, it will take two years, but we're stoked. At the end of the first trimester, we're gonna meet in Montana in May, and it will blow your fucking mind. I guarantee you, we went there last year,

and we're so blown away, we said we gotta run this one back. So we've got Montana in May. We've got Sedona in September and we've got Malibu finally, which we'll head back to. We head there year one to Malibu. It's this beautiful place.

And we'll be there in January of 25 to finish out year one. So all this info is up there. Go to fitforservice.com, read through it, watch the video, the short video Aubrey did on why we've reconstructed Fit for Service in this way. I'm absolutely ecstatic. And then tune into the webinars.

Those will also be available on fitforservice.com. So you can get in there and see when and where to be for my webinar. All it takes, it's absolutely free. Just punch in your email, you'll get access to the webinar. Again, I'll be Friday the 16th at noon CST. And again, Wednesday, the 28th at noon CST, we'll be running that back. Both of them will be 90 minutes. You're going to learn a ton for free. So highly encourage people to check out the webinars, highly encourage people to go into fit for service.com and, and just sign up. If you're curious, sign up, figure out what's going

on. And we've got a lot of support team that can really help you understand what it up if you're curious. Sign up, figure out what's going on. And we've got a lot of support team that can really help you understand what it is that you're saying yes to. And it will change your fucking life. There's no two ways about it. Last but not least, support our sponsors. They make this show possible. And I'm extremely excited to talk to you guys

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This isn't going to be like a Rogan fight companion where we're all talking shit over each other. I'm going to try to feed you guys questions one at a time to really talk about your experience. This is the first of many that we'll do, the first farm podcast where we're going to talk about our experiences here. And because it's the first,

we'll keep this to generally around an hour to 90 minutes. We can fuck off and occasionally do one where it is like a fight companion where we have some drinks, maybe a little kratom, maybe we're watching a fight and we just shoot the shit for three hours and that's fine too. I'll wait to hear what you, the listener, actually enjoy.

So, and if you're not into farming, don't worry. We're going to talk about a whole bunch of shit. We're going to talk about basically our lives, how they've changed for the better, maybe some for the worse, and what we do here. That's not just moving cows and cleaning out stalls, but really what we do here from the community standpoint

to fit for service and also to what we do on the regular from sauna and ice bath to team runs to outdoor lifting and fucking all the fun shit that we do to really build up our internal community and keep us fucking a tight-knit glove which we become. One thing I want to preface with this with is a question around, you know, what brought us here? What brought us into this? Because it's different for everybody. And a lot of people on the outside, I mean, a question I get consistently, I just did an interview with a guy named Candy Ken, who's from Austria. He's got 16 million followers on TikTok. He's awesome. He's been following me and Tosh for a while and what we're doing at the farm he moved here from LA for a lot of the similar reasons

a lot of people came from out of California and you know he's a father having grown up in Europe where he was forced to be an EMT by law they all have to go in and do a red cross work where you actually learn how to save lives and you do like nine months as an EMT

you don't have to stay there but that's a part of your contribution to society completely different fucking way of growing up than what we got. But he came here and, you know, he had a lot of questions around the farm where, you know, did you have experience? Did you grow up on a farm? He asked me that twice. And I'd already told him I would grow up in the city, had just a little bit of experience. My great uncle, Larry, who we named our, one of our emus after, he had 40 acres of peach orchard in central California, Modesto. And so I'd go up there once or twice a year. He had a bunch of mules. He'd enter into the mule days contest, won tons of blue ribbons with this one mule named

Fred Layton. Actually that, that fucking mule saved his life on a hunting trip, got him out of ice cold water and then the mule died. So it was a pretty, pretty devastating for the family to know that. But, um, that was my only draw to country life. My only draw to one form of farming. And he's, you know, it's central California, they're spraying, God knows what they're doing flood irrigation. They're doing all the shit that we don't do today. But, um, there was a piece that I had riding mules through the fucking peach orchard for 40 acres and being able to pick off a fucking ripe peach and eat it right off the tree. And just this year, last spring,

we had the ability, it was the first time where I ate an organic biodynamic peach that got to ripen on the tree. And it was like, there is no comparison. I understand a lot of you listening will be like, yeah, well, that's nice. You got 118 acres and that kind of shit. And really one of the missions of our farm

is let people know you can do this on a 10th of an acre. You can do this on a quarter acre. You can do it on three acres. You can do it on five acres. Most people that get into homesteading start with three to five acres. Our entire food forest is on three and a half, four acres, 400 fruit and nut trees, all of our fucking birds.

And we'll dive into that in a little bit, but let's dive into our background. You know, each of you will get your own podcast. No question. Consider this a fluffing for the real deal. You know, you have a little fluffing action to get you warmed up to it. But give us a brief background around like, what was life like growing up and what drew you here? Because, you know, we all come from completely different backgrounds. I think my wife is the only person that grew up on a farm out of all of us. And Brent, I think you're the only person who actually studied this shit ahead of time before getting into it. So we'll just go down the road right here. Brent, lead us off. Tell us your name, where you're from, what life was like, and what drew you to this kind of living. And we'll just

take turns. My name is Brent Newman. I spent my first 25 years growing up in Wisconsin and asked the question, like, how did you get into this? I was kind of born into it. And when I was seven, my folks bought seven acres. And so I was just always outside playing in the stream, noticing what was around me. And the modern education system kind of had me convinced that like, you can't make a living doing that. And so there was a moment in time where I didn't do that. And I kind of came back to it in school. I looked up to my cousin a lot who had got a biology degree and I was like, oh, Kent's really happy and he's got a family. And it was a model that I knew I felt good following. So I went and got my agrobiology degree at Wisconsin. I spent

the first couple of years doing landscaping and farming. And then my partner at the time was a travel nurse. So we went to Vermont. I was working on a sweet platoon on hemp farm. I was like, wow, this is different. This is really cool. Got to experience what life was like, like Southwest Vermont when they got hit by COVID, nothing really changed. There's like one Walmart there.

And so the farmers really came together and it was cool to see that. Yeah, Vermont is really rural, right? Like there's quite a few gun owners. Like it's a different thing from most of the North, the Northeast. People don't expect that. Uh, there's pockets in Southern California where they're, you know, they never closed their business. You know, Chervene took me to a couple of restaurants where they had never shut down and they turned people away who wore masks. And I was like, this is exist in California. Like what the fuck? But yeah, keep going on Vermont. It's a really,

I'm fascinated with Vermont. Yeah, so we were living right outside of Rutland, which is the third biggest city, 35,000 people. We were on the Appalachian and Long Trail, covered bridges, really badass streams and rivers. The farm that I worked at was about an hour from there. It was in Pulteney, Vermont. And Timothy Hughes

Muse was just doing it right. He was Hughes Muse. Yep. It's hyphenated. Yeah. He is a, he is a fucking legend. And so he farmed about 24 acres of sweet potatoes that year. And that was Covington's Beauregards and a sweet rubies. And so I spent about three months with him. He also did one acre of hemp, which a California expert came out and told him, yeah, you need about a one third of your barn to do all the cut flower and do it right and make a profit. And we filled that one third of the barn within 30 minutes of harvesting our first round. So, and you travel around Vermont and you see all these, cause this was the year the farm bill was, um, was laid out. So everyone's growing hemp and there's like these little Christmas trees

that are about three, four feet tall max. And then you get to Tim's farm and these things are like seven, eight feet tall by October. And so we just had more product than we knew what to do with. And it was really the first time that I got to experience that abundance of like, he was, when I left, we hit the road. And like mid-October, he gave me just like a pound of hemp. It's just like a going away present. He's just like, here, he's like, go harvest it yourself. Like he wasn't even going to harvest it. And he only really harvested like the eight nines

and 10 out of 10 sweet potatoes too. So people were gleaning all the time. And every year he used to have a pig too, that he would just feed the extras too. He didn't do a pig that year. So he's a family man. He has four daughters, Magnolia, Rowan, Cypress, and Willow. And so he spent a lot of time with them and it was awesome. It was really hard to go, but the weather turning was like, all right, let's go try to find something else. So, um, started farming in Hawaii. I was on the big Island for two years. Um, it's when I got into like Korean natural farming and just different ways to do it on that small scale that you're talking about. Um, I was on like an

acre homestead and you didn't really have to do anything. We were in the bread belt. Ulu and breadfruit is a staple in Hawaii. So breadfruit on the property, lots of avocado trees, jackfruit trees, like all these exotic fruits. It was really cool and really neat to be there when no one was there. Tourism was not a thing. And then really, I just, I wanted to experience more. Hawaii was very abundant in the vastness of volcanoes and oceans

and different sorts of farming and communities. And, you know, really I was attracted to Fit for Service and it had been on my radar for about two years, right when you guys started. And then I did Sedona with Foxy in 21. And I remember walking with you, Kyle, and being like, hey, like, would you be open to bartering massage for some work in the weight room? And you're like, hell yeah. So- You say that to all the boys, by the way. I do. I do. Take a bite for everybody. No, and that's what it felt like too. I do. Take a bite for everybody. I'm special.

No, and that's what it felt like too. I was just walking with you. I remember being super nervous, but I was like, he's just a fucking real dude. Who needs body work. Who needs body work, yeah, truly. Yeah, so that's what brought me here. And I was doing work on Tosh

and we were talking beekeeping and she's like, oh, well you got to see the farm and away we went. Fuck yeah, brother. That was dope. Eric. Uh, I, my experience couldn't be further from that. Um, I grew up in a neighborhood just like a lot of other people with no idea where my food came from. I grew up in Austin, and I just had a normal life as a kid, you know, family. My parents were separated like many other people, and just stumbling over my way through school. And so because of that, I didn't have any future, according to my parents. And so it was like, hey, you got to either go get a job or you can join the military, but you got to get out of the house.

And so I joined the military, got out of the house, and I spent 11 and a half years in the Navy. And after that, I moved to California and started working in concrete construction, and I did that for seven and a half years with my brother-in-law, who's one of my best friends, and I'm very close to, and that was, that was, it was nice to be out of the military and be able to have my own freedom and not have somebody telling me where to go or what to do. But there was a certain point living in the desert outside of LA near Palm Springs. And this was probably like back in maybe 2017, just before I met you in 2018. And I started

to have the dream of like, I got to get out of California and no idea what that meant. No idea what to do. No idea how to move on. Never written a resume because I never got to get out of California. I had no idea what that meant. No idea what to do. No idea how to move on. Never written a resume because I never had to get one. I joined the military right at 18. I turned 19 in bootcamp. And so I was just a kid at the time. And I just started taking little steps and it was a long road. But 2018 I went to, was it Santa Monica? Yeah. It was our first event before we had fit for service. Aubrey did like a, a one-off, like a tester for a mastermind. I can't remember what it was called, but it was at Lowe's in Santa Monica. And we bumped into each other at the very end. It was funny. Cause you were nervous. You were like,

Hey, I don't want to take your time. And I was like, what do you mean take my fucking time? We were waiting for Tasha and I were waiting outside or I don't know if take your time. And I was like, what do you mean take my fucking time? We were waiting, Tasha and I were waiting outside. I don't know if Tasha was there actually. We were waiting outside for an Uber. And you're like, my wife knows your wife. And I immediately recognized because I think Tasha told me that Leah was saying that you were going to come to the event

or something like that. And I was like, oh, fuck yeah. You were in the military, right? And I was like, let's chat. So continue. But yeah, it was funny looking back on that. But I've always been like that. Like just more of like a fly on the wall, observe.

Never wanted to bother people. I feel like I've come out of that a little bit, but for sure, super nervous because I didn't want to take up your time. I think I met Tosh actually, it was like the last day. And she was walking towards the hotel. And I was like, even in my heart, I'm like, damn, I got to say something now. Because she was like face the hotel. And I was like, even in my heart, I'm like, damn, I gotta say something now.

Cause she was like face to face with me. And anyway, long story short is that was kind of the start of the journey. I didn't really know what to do. I have three kids. So like I couldn't, in my mind, I couldn't just jump into the deep end and move. I didn't know where I wanted to move.

We had talked about moving to Montana. We had talked about moving to Wyoming or wherever, just somewhere out of California. Then fast forward to 2022 after a few trips here and gosh, when did I, when did I break my neck? When was that, 2021? 21, I think. Yeah, 2021. Did we go hunting before it or after it? Hunting was after. Okay. Right, because that hunting was in 2022, I think.

Okay, that was snowpocalypse. It's snowpocalypse, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. So anyway, I, like a dummy, dove off a boat into shallow water and landed on my head. It's surprisingly crazy how many close friends i have that have done that exact thing parker died from it and we all know parker rest in peace dr dan engel who wrote the concussion repair manual shattered every part of his spine doing the exact same thing you know like it's it's fucking bananas how often that

happens yeah so to to that point is like, that's kind of, I might get choked up saying this, but it's kind of like where I started to recognize some divine timing was taking place. And I knew the only person I knew to call was you because I remember Dr. Dan's story and I didn't know what to do. Like, I didn't want to do surgery, but you have one side of surgeons who are like, that's what they do all

the time. Surgery, surgery, surgery. I'm looking at my CT scan and my freaking backbones like this, you know? So in my mind, I'm like, dude, I got to do surgery. I ended up doing the surgery because I think I, at the time and probably not even now, I don't know that I have the, um, mind power or cognition or soul that could overcome something like that. To dispense the back. To dispense the back. And I totally think those things. Dispensa also doesn't have three kids, young kids, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. They had that back injury. So like the responsibilities are completely different. Yeah.

So anyway, lo and behold, I get surgery and go back to California. We make the hunting trip in February. And then I think we came back a second time. You had asked me to come, you know, do we want to come out and work when the farm was starting? Yeah, that's right right when we were getting ready to do the food forest and really break ground. We got this place at the end of 21 in September, move in was November, even though no one moved here yet.

And it was that first spring of 22, we were like, hey, we got Chad Johnson coming here. We're gonna do this big thing. I need all volunteers that are down. So we stayed for two weeks. And at the time in 2020, I sold my house in California because I saw what's happening in California. And I was kind of like, I need to get out of here. I don't want to be tied to a house. I can get out of a

rental. I don't want my house to sit on the market mistakenly because my house like doubled in value after I moved out. But, um, we were living in a rental that was our friend's rental. And I'm out here in the spiral, moving dirt around, sitting in the skid steer. And Leah calls me, goes, hey, our friend, Nikki, Nikki and Mitch. Nikki and Mitch just called and said, we got to move out of their house. They need to sell their house. I don't know what it was. It's obviously, I think it's God, but something that I'd never had a more clear message of like, it didn't matter if I had something to do or not. I will starve, but I'm moving. I can learn how to feed my family. I can get a job. I'll do whatever it takes.

That moment of time is like, hey, I'm moving. I'm moving to Texas. My whole family's still in Texas. We had gotten really close at the time. Obviously, Tosh and Lee are super close already. And go back to California, literally start packing my stuff. And I was in my garage.

I don't know if I've told you this yet, but I was in my garage and you called me and I was like packing our gym stuff in the garage or something. And you said, you offered me a part-time job. And it was just another thing where it's just like, what's happening right now? I got nothing to do. Luckily I had some extra funds coming in when I first moved here, but I'm like, I'm putting resumes together. I'm doing, doing the thing. I'm just like, I'm going to go to Texas, start working here part-time. Things start evolving in a way where we're like, oh shit, we need more help. Like there's a lot of shit going on here. We need a lot more help. Um, and so Kyle offered me a full-time job and I'm here now full-time and there's a lot going on still, but man, is it a blessing?

It's a huge blessing to be here. Okay, brother. Thank you. Yeah, so I love hearing your guys' stories. Like I know tidbits of that, but not all the detail and nuance like that. And it's amazing how- You're Brian Fox. I'm Brian Fox. Just go by Fox. Yeah.

But it's been divine timing for me and just intervention. So I grew up in Ohio. I grew up in a neighborhood, but my family was all from Amish country. And I would go to my great grandma's house till I was eight years old every Sunday. And the whole family, big German family, would come down and we'd all have meals. And my great-grandmother would go out and she would forage everything in town. She'd come home with

nuts and mushrooms and berries and all that stuff. And I still remember her, she'd have an apron and she'd sit out with a hammer and just crack the nuts on the porch and just be making food for us all the time. I was really blessed to have two grandmothers that also were very influential in my life. My paternal grandmother raised me in a big way. My dad worked for my grandfather for an HVAC company. So he was in the trades and I'd go over there all the time to be watched. And my grandmother always cooked good whole food for us. And as I got older, I was in sports and running was a big thing for me. So being conscious of what I was eating and putting into my body and how I was working out and staying in race shape was a big thing. And so I always stayed really conscious of that, even though eating at that time was just, you know,

eat a bunch of peanut butter and jelly before you go have a workout and carb up and- Chocolate milk. Yeah, right, like garbage eating good. And so that stayed with me, but it was this push of like much like Brent's family of you've got to go make money. My family didn't have a ton of money,

but they didn't struggle either. And it was go make money. My family didn't have a ton of money, but they didn't struggle either. And it was go do business. And so I got into sales and I did corporate IT sales for 11 years. And I made great money and you would think that it was awesome, but I was just dying spiritually. I had no path forward. I worked all the time and it really came to a head where I was in a relationship with a woman that I really thought that I was going to be with. And I just wasn't ready. I was still just very much a boy, very much somebody who didn't express. And she was over that and left and it really devastated me. And I was in this place, I remember she told me the hard truths of like, you really need to go heal yourself. And I didn't know what that meant.

And I have a very dear friend, Miranda Motlow, who lives in Florida. She's a member of the Seminole Indian tribe. And she was there for me and I was talking to her and she was like, well, I've been doing a lot of plant medicine with my family and with the tribe. I'm like, tell me more about that. Like, what does that mean? I'd done mushrooms and acid recreationally and shit like that and never with intention, never ceremonially.

And so it came time and it was just, it felt right. I really started investing in myself. I really started saying, how am I going to make myself a man who is ready to serve, who is ready to have a family, who is ready to be a partner to someone else and who actually loves themselves?

I didn't love myself at the time. And so I went down to Florida and I did ayahuasca for the first time and it changed my life. Chokes me up every time. It was like a rebirth. And I got, I had started to apply for Fit for Service. I had seen Aubrey and an advertisement and you guys had just been in Austin. You did the elemental games. I'm like, that's so fucking dope. Like I need tribe. And so I got in the car and left ceremony.

And I had stopped my application because I was like, oh, I need to have these great answers and really like wow them and get into this thing. And I remember just firing off the answers in the car and submitted my application. And a week later, I got accepted. Claire called me and she's like, you're in. And so then I went to Sedona

in 21 and I met Brett and I met Kyle and Brent and I instantly became friends. And I, you know, I'd love all the coaches, but there was something about Kyle that just resonated with me and just a person that was very near to my philosophies on things. And so I left there and continued to talk to Brent and Brent had gotten linked up with Kyle, like he talked about. And so he was like, yeah, you know what? This ranch is awesome. I'm on this ranch. It's so cool. I can't wait for you to see it. And Kyle was doing full temple reset. I was like, this sounds awesome. I want to like learn how to invest in myself more physically. So I'm going to go do this. And so I did this and I remember I got an Airbnb at Autumn's and Brent calls me and he's like, Hey, I'm coming over. You want to just come to the ranch tonight? I never went back to the Airbnb. I stayed at the ranch the whole time

and basically stayed for a month, went home. And I called Kyle or Kyle and I had our coaching call for a full temple reset. And I was like, at the end, I was so nervous. I'm like, hey dude, I heard you're like gonna build the farm. I really wanna learn how to do this. And I'm like, I just love to volunteer and

come help you guys. And you're like, sure, dude, you know, if you're going to lend some hands, get down here. Yeah. You were, it was great though, is that you were adamant. You were like, I'm not just blowing smoke up your ass. I want to put my hands in the ground. I want to get dirty and I'll work my ass off. Yeah. And you back that up by actually doing it. Yeah. You know, cause we had a lot of, there's a lot of people just, I just want to frame this for people. There's great people that come from fit for service. Every one of them is great. Some of those people want the social aspects of being here and volunteering where they just want to chat and they want to have the community and that's okay. And there's other people like, like the three of you, which really stood out because

you could fucking grind. You got what was required from endless hours of work to get done. And it really fell on our backs. Even my old man was 72 years old, was out chainsaw one day for 12 hours, right? Just powering down monster energy drinks until he had a goddamn heat stroke. He did have a heat stroke. We were rolling lime from our solar pump down and he goes, I don't feel so good. I go, dude, sit down. He goes, huh? I go, sit down.

I could see his fucking tail as it goes. I was like, dude, those energy drinks are no good. He was like almost black. He was like, whole world's just closing in on me. But, you know, the old timer had that too, right? But that's why the three of you stood out was because, you know, I remember that call and there was something about the way

you were talking about volunteering that let me know internally, like, oh, he's serious. He's about it. You know, I could trust that. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely was. I had this vision of like, when I heard it was going on, I was like, I don't care much like Eric, like, I don't care. I'll live in a fucking teepee. It just feed me and I'll work. And I just want to learn how to do this. And to rewind, the reason I wanted to do it was after my relationship ended, I started getting really sick. And I started getting alopecia areata, hair in my beard was falling out. And I was like, how am I going to fix this? And I was like, I need to change my lifestyle and my diet. So I was getting into food and what was real quality food. And then understanding that that's basically coming

direct from farmers and farmers who are doing it right in this regenerative way. And then I started spending all my time driving to farms on the weekends. And I was like, this is great. I'm eating great, but this fucking sucks because I have no free time. And I go, screw it. I'm just going to do it myself. And that was why I wanted to learn how to farm and get more back to my roots and what I had grown up around and seeing people actually do that. And so, yeah, I came down and we built the garden and it was, yeah, I stayed for two months. My mom wanted to kill me. She was watching my dog Marlo and she's like, when the hell are you coming home? I'm like, eventually. And it was just the best experience getting to learn from

Chad and Austin and Dustin and just be with you guys. And that's where I got to meet Eric and work alongside you guys. And I had never been happier or felt better in my life. And I was like, this is it. And as I was wrapping up, I'm like, okay, Kyle, I'm like, I kind of, I got to go home. You're like, can you give us another week? I'm like, yeah, I'll give you another week. And then eventually you're like, yo, dude, I want you to, I want you to come and do this thing with us. And so I went home and in two months I sold my house, um, and packed up my whole life and moved down and we've been doing it ever since. And it's, it's the greatest experience of my life so far. Fuck yeah. I love these stories and this is the first time getting to share them, you know? And

for me, there's a lot of, I think I think of, I can just count, it's a weird thing. Like on certain plant medicine experiences, you see that everything fit perfectly together. Like every sequence of your life, good and bad was synchronicity. So without doing that, without, without actually counting that as truth, but still there's a lot of, a lot of things that led me from my first experience getting into health and wellness was through Paul Cech. Many people know that and listen to the podcast. He used to wear, I love dirt shirts and was talking about soil quality and the microbiome fucking 20 years ahead of before the curve. Also butter in the coffee. He was 20 years ahead of fucking Dave Asprey doing that,

you know, and he's really just been a legend and a mentor of mine in so many ways. But that change, you know, like fighting was a way where I could put anything to test. It was the ultimate test. Because in football, I could snort Coke, stay out till fucking 3 a.m., come home, sleep, not sleep for two hours, get up at 5am and run sprints with the team and bench press and be fine. I'd sleep during the day, you know, at 20, 21 years

old, I could get away with that shit. Fighting, I'd get away with none of it. In between camps was a little different, but having the demand of that physically on the recovery, on the fucking endurance, on all things testable. When I changed my diet and I got into how to eat, move and be healthy, it was night and day different. And I was like, holy shit, my knees don't hurt. The inflammation's gone away. My neck doesn't hurt.

There was so much of it that just really wowed me. And I give Paul credit for him planting the seed for me to wanna learn more. That one book changed my life so dramatically that it made me question, what else is out there? What else am I not reading? What else was I not told in school that I can get my hands on

that will really propel me in fighting because I didn't have the skillset Daniel Cormier did. I wasn't an Olympic level wrestler before going to fighting. I wasn't Kane who took fifth in nationals and NCAAs division one before getting into fighting. Um, so I felt like I had to make up a lot of ground and, um, that really propelled me, you know, in the, in the second mountain, which was an education in health and wellness and all things lead back to the land, you know, like the same thing. And I had always, you know, I had wanted it when, when I was fighting, I was living in my mom's detached garage with Tosh for five fucking years. You guys already know this shit, but for

five years, we lived in my mom's attached garage. I worked as a bouncer, bartender, and manager of a pseudo strip club, a bikini bar, a sporty bikini bar in Sunnyvale. Definitely worth checking out if you're in Sunnyvale. And, you know, I'd walk there. It was a quarter mile from the house. I'd walk there. We had no overhead. I think my mom charges 500 bucks for rent, you know, I'd walk there. It was a quarter mile from the house. I'd walk there. We had no overhead. I think my mom charges 500 bucks for rent, including electrical, cable, all that shit. And we just, I made cash to put food on the table. And, you know, in that experience,

there was never a thought of like, well, I'm gonna have a farm one day. But it was like, I did want the connection specifically from ayahuasca to my food. So I asked my mom if I could plant trees. She's like, absolutely. We planted an avocado tree underneath bear's placenta. We planted fucking all sorts of goodies back there. Did a big garden. It was funny because there's no gate.

And we grew these massive pumpkins and massive watermelons and people stole them in the middle of the night. They actually came back with a handsaw and cut them off. And I was like, this was cut nicely. Like some fucker went and harvested this in the middle of the night. They actually came back with a handsaw and cut them off. And I was like, this was cut nicely. Like some fucker went and harvested this in the middle of the night. Josh was irate. I was like, yeah, just tell us we're growing good pumpkins. You know, like we've got a good thing going here. But you know, as, as life moved on, there was still always a draw. And when we had kids, there was a real draw to give them more than city life, especially because when we grew up in the city, I'm sure, you know, we're all at the various ages, but like when I grew up, my mom would say, get the fuck out of

the house and don't come back till dinner. In those words, you know, like stop fighting with your sister, get the fuck out of the house and go come, come back for dinner and don't be out of an earshot. If I went too far, I'd get in trouble for that. Right. But we'd go, go to the big grass. We were in this, uh, condominium, you know, place and most people were renting, we were renting and we just go down the big grass and play free three flies up or smear the queer, whatever the fucking game was. And, and sorry if there's, you know, LGBTQ listening, the queer meant something different then. And you know, it was just, it was fun. And, and now having kids, you know, kids go from one thing to the next. Parents do protect their kids more these days. Smart ones do, but that means they're getting picked up and dropped

off from school, picked up and dropped off from practice, picked up and dropped, dropped off at Timmy and Jimmy's house for play dates. And there's no freedom, you know? So like having the idea, I mean, I remember for one year we we moved to Central California to be my great uncle in Turlock. And we had eight acres of grape vineyard. And it was like forever. Eight acres felt like forever as a 10 year old. I remember just getting there and going on my bike. And we had a big wolf, Malamute dog named Lobo,

155 pounds, he would just sprint with us, never get tired. It was like, we could just go and go and go. And we'd swim in the canals and shit. And I was like, there's something to this. And so all those seeds were planted for me. And then 2020 hit like a Mack truck and everything I know about health and wellness was turned on its head. You know, um, natural immunity fucking is turned on its head. Uh, all this shit, even, even, you know, the, the rush, you know, Operation Warp Speed for vaccines. I had already made the decision five years before that

to not vaccinate bear with a single goddamn vaccine. And we read Dissolving Illusions by Susan Humphrey's MD. We had read a lot of Thomas Cowan's work even before The Contagion Myth, which is a fantastic book. And there was ample evidence. I mean, Aaron Rodgers was just on Rogan's talking about dissolving illusions and how important that book is

for people to understand the history of vaccines and the history of transmittable diseases. Also, The Invisible Rainbow by Arthur Furstenberg, which I was turned on to from Paul Cech. So, you know, five years before that, we make that decision. Our kids are incredibly healthy. 2020 comes, lockdown happens.

We were actually at a state park and they kicked us out of the park to go home. And I was like, this is serious if they're closing parks. And I really took it seriously. And then over time, nothing was adding up. Nobody was talking about D3. Nobody was talking about zinc. Nobody was talking about natural media.

Nobody was talking about sunlight. Nobody was talking about the tenants of what it means to be a healthy human. And of course, now, if you read The Real Anthony Fauci by Bobby Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy has two new books that are great, The Wuhan Cover-Up and Vax Unvax with Brian Hooker, PhD. Phenomenal, phenomenal. I'm trying to get Brian on this podcast, but so much started to verify my intuition and verify the fuckery that was going on. But what became clear to me was,

on some level, there already is a one world government. On some level, there already is a thing that I fear happening. On some level, there already is a socialist push that's beyond our capabilities of saying no to. I remember getting kicked out. I was at Barton Springs and they sent us home because people weren't allowed to be at Barton Springs. If you had a boat or a stand-up paddleboard, you didn't get sent home. And that's when I started learning

about maritime law. And I was like, that is fucking interesting. You can't kick me out of here on a stand-up paddleboard? Fucking bananas. And the cops didn't know why. They were cool as shit, but they didn't know why. Most Austin PDs awesome. But a lot was revealed then. And because of what we do in Fit for Service and because of how powerful Fit for Service is face-to-face, you know, like we really deliver two things. One is the weekly teachings and challenges. And then two is the meetup. Either one of those is worth the cost of admission, right? Most, a lot of people don't take, you know, pay much attention to one or the other. And then they go to the thing and they're like, holy shit, this is what it is, you know? And some people do gravitate towards the teachings and then show up and they're still blown away. Holy shit, this is

what we do when we meet. It's a big deal. And that year in 2020, when we met in Sedona, that was the first time Porongi had played live the entire year. And we couldn't get in more than 20 people in. So we had 150 people in Ob's backyard in Sedona on 50 acres, all ecstatic dancing, watching the fucking moon rise, Porongi playing live, everyone hugging, everyone kissing.

Then we got fucking sick. And this is in October, 2020. And I was like, this thing's gonna die if we don't have a second place that we can guarantee stays open. And so I really got knobs ear about that. Like we need a place where we can keep this alive in Texas. Sedona's great.

It's not great for growing and it's gonna be pretty hard to access our food in Sedona if we're stuck in Texas. And I don't wanna move to Sedona and deal with that. So I really started plugging it in his ear about having a place where we could grow our own food, having a second place where we could bring people to for fit for service events

and other ways to build community and teach. It's a big part of what we're doing here at Gardeners of Eden is bringing in the experts that we've learned so quickly from and showcasing them. Guys like Daniel Griffith, guys like Chad Johnson, you know, Austin, all the guys, right? Austin Dillon, Renegade, what is it?

Counterculture Farms. Yeah, he's phenomenal, right? These are phenomenal people that we've been set up with through other phenomenal people like Taylor from Rome Ranch and Force of Nature guys. They're like, oh, you gotta go with Austin Dillon.

You know, so we've been hand, you know, people that have really Austin Dillon. You know, so we've been hand, you know, people that have really stood out in this space before us, we've been gifted, you know, the ability to stand on the shoulders of giants and we've been gifted to have them. And one of the things we want to do is really reflect that back to people. Like you can fast track this with no fucking experience.

Look what we did. We did it, right? And it doesn't, you don't need 118 acres. You don't need, you't need tens of millions of dollars to be dumped on it. You can do this for cheap if you learn how to do this, right? And these are the people I want you to learn from.

And there's a lot of things you can get out of a book like Sepp Holscher's Permaculture or the homie Richard Perkins, right? Fucking, that's like the Bible of regenerative. And it covers everything from key lime plow to mobile chicken coops and things like that. But so much happened. And then the sale of Onnit happened and I was adamant. And, you know, it wasn't my money, but I was like, you know, being as close as I am to Aubrey, I was like, can we do this? And he said, yeah.

And so we looked around. Parker was actually the guy that found this place first and said, I think this is it. Aubrey came, he's like, it's for sure it. Kyle, go check it out. I go and I'm like, yeah, this is it. And when you come to this space already, there was a vibe to it. There was a feeling of this land as a powerful place that had, we'd lucked out. There's no sprays, no fertilizers, no nothing has been sprayed on the ground here. And so we started from a good spot, but all those things just lined up perfectly, you know, and it made sense. We get here at the end of 21, we break ground in 2022. Just now, you know, I've been building my house just now, I think in a month

or so we'll be able to move here and be here full time, which is really exciting for us. But it's, it has been a fucking absolute ride. And, want to dive into what it is that we actually do. So first let's talk about what we're doing here, some of the job responsibilities and some of the things that we each focus on. And then we'll talk about some of the community building stuff that we do from not just Fit for Service and FTR,

but actually what we do as a team, as a unit. Go ahead, Brent. Yeah, so one of my main roles and responsibilities is to manage the food forest that we've all been talking about that Chad and everyone helped on in 2022. So it's about to be two years old. And like Kyle had said, it's about three and a half acres. And a lot of that has to do with showing people that we can do a 10th of an acre market garden all the way to the giant spiral staircase. And so what we're doing is emulating kind of what we have down in the forbidden forest

of just, you can actually stick your hand in there and there's lush organic matter and hummus and just all of the microbial goodies that we want everywhere. So we're bringing in, we brought in 400 fruit and nut trees. And so maintaining that, rotating our chickens through in that, making sure our chickens are healthy, making sure the trees are healthy,

doing what we need to make that entire area a sponge of fertility. And so on a day-to-day, that looks like walking the garden, monitoring, you know, what needs to happen in there. And a big goal of mine this year is to make it so that we have to use probably like three times as less irrigation as possible than last year. You know, we, we hit the drought and Kyle always talks about like after a long drought, there is a flood. So it's not only drought proofing it, but flood proofing it right now we have puddles out there.

So it's working with the skid stair, working with shovels and pitchforks and just whatever we can to make that area a spot where we can grow enough to feed a lot of people. And it's really neat, the community that we're connected with. We have tobacco seeds from Colorado. We have, Wyra brought in some cotton from South America. We have corn from Pia. So a big part of that too is showcasing this,

really this universal global garden. And so that's what I got going. I want to, yeah, that's beautiful, brother. And I just, I don't want to cut you off, but the corn from Pia, Pia is the musician who we'll link to some of her songs in the show notes. She's brilliant. Maybe one of the most beautiful voices on planet earth.

We got to meet her in Tahoe, which was August of 2020. It was like right when the shit hit the fan. We were on the Nevada side, obviously, because California was still super locked down. But we spent time with her on the boat and we're just blown away and ended up becoming friends with her. And one of my favorite books of all time

by Martine Prechtel, which I'll link to in the show notes, is The Unlikely Peace at Kuchuma Keek. And I know that's a long list there. So we just have the link there in the show notes for you. We've all read that book or listened to it. He reads it himself and it's great because you can hear him turn the pages. If he fumbles and fucks up words, he doesn't care.

There's no editing. He just keeps going. But he talks about the brilliance of humans as seeds that feed the ground and feed the corn. And as he talks about the brilliance of humans as seeds that feed the ground and feed the corn. And as he talks about that, the death of a human is what's going to give birth to the land that's gonna feed the next several generations of people

from the corn, from that person's body. And in a poetic way, he's describing what ultimately we have to do in regeneration is give back to the soil from ourselves. And we're doing that now through all the different animals and increasing the microbiota of it. But the corn seeds then in that book, you understand corn differently, right? And so to have this corn from Pia, which is from Ireland, you know, her, her homeland, it's really fucking cool. I mean, I'm super stoked for that.

I don't want to, we don't want to fuck it up. Like it's probably shit, you know, like we want this thing to pop and we want to know, you know, we're testing different areas for corn to make sure like we've got the perfect sunlight, the perfect water, the perfect drainage, the perfect everything when we grow that corn. But it is special. It's beyond, you listen to that book, you understand everything a little differently, especially corn, especially the food that we put in our body. And things like that, you know, like getting nicotine aristica seeds, the wild tobacco from South America, getting North American tobacco,

getting, you know, biodynamic cannabis from our homies, some seeds from the Northeast, you know, like really beautiful things that have been cared for for generations, you know? And we'll talk about generational care with Austin Dillon and what you're learning, Foxy, but, you know, when we get into plant medicine work

and we start to, you know, we hear the first time we've heard, like, think seven generationally, right? Like, that's what all the indigenous folks from all over the world would think in that way, seven generationally. It's so hard to do in our world because we've never were raised that way.

At best, we have a grandma and faint memories of a great grandmother, but it's really hard to think that far forward or that far behind us, you know, unless you've got a grandma that memorized shit and could tell you your family tree and what these people were like and their personalities. I don't think many of us had that, you know,

but the second you put something in the ground that's gonna outlive you, like we have a sequoia tree that my buddy got me from California. He knew it, Joe from Fruit for Service, intuited the exact thing I was trying to do. I want one fucking home tree from California that we can put down that'll outlive all of us.

It'll outlive seven generations. I'm talking about a tree that could grow to be 3,000 fucking years old. That's dope. Like that's the Zen koan I'm talking about a tree that can grow to 3,000 fucking years old that's dope that's the zen koan when you plant a tree knowing you'll never experience the shade of it but it will be there for the rest now you've come to your first understanding of why you're here

yeah that's beautiful yeah even Martin Prechtel's a genius he even talks about how even the compost pile which prior to this to me was a compost pile you put things there that were spent, but he really talks about the rejuvenation and even making it like a beautiful u-burn.

So we plant our animals out there that pass away. And so nothing is wasted. And going out there beforehand, it was vertisol soil, it was flat ground. So we're continuing to amend that and grow something really beautiful so i um i probably describe my role as a facilitator um and that's to help sort of be the coordination piece for

foxy with the animals and brent with the plants and then sort of the logistical side of managing the farm. But one thing I want to point out is that it takes all three of us and more. We constantly have Kyle, Natasha, Leah, and a host of other people coming out to help. Jimmy and Dean. Yeah, I mean, the list goes on. Volunteers like Kyle was talking about. So sort of kind of keeping that piece as together as it can be, because aside from Brent,

we're all brand new. And so the way I really see the farm right now is like a seed. So my idea is like tracking all the things that we do, all the things that we fuck up. And those screw ups, like they're hard lessons. Animals die, plants die, things get flooded, things get dried out. And it's not, it's, man, it's harder than I thought it would be in a good way. Like I see it as like, I don't ever want any death, whether it's a plant, whether it's a little baby sheep, whether it's a red deer that gets attacked by a coyote,

I want that to be hard every single time. Because when it's not, then to me, that's the point where it's like, what are we doing? So my goal with that is to write those things down, do things like we fly this drone around that tracks how our grass regrows. So you can see this, I can't think of the word right now,

but it's photosynthetic activity of the ground. It's really amazing to see because when those cows leave that pasture, that thing is red as can be. And all you gotta, you can do the eyeball test, but to track that afterwards and show like, hey, look at how this grass is regrowing. Things like Brent, when you did the soil samples,

it's like we on average doubled the life in our soil by from like, what was the average? Like one and a half percent? Not even, yeah. So it went from that to about three in most places and higher in some. So really seeing like what this impact we're creating and we're creating it based on the knowledge of others.

So people like Austin, Daniel, Chad, really, like you said, standing on the shoulders of giants and seeing like how those things play out because there's no one, what I've learned so far is like, there's no one approach that fits everything. So we're taking approaches from

everywhere and we have to find out what works on our land. Um, and I want to bring that, like, I think it should be our goal, like the permaculture class we did to bring that to other people, because like, I want the hardness to be on us so that somebody goes, oh, okay, I can do this. These guys are brand new. They've been doing it for a couple of years. What does that look like 10 years from now? What courses will we have done? What things have we tried that worked?

And really bringing that to the community, bringing people from the community to the farm to experience it. And I just wanna make sure we never get lost in the daily work that takes place. Like being able to step back and see, look what we get to do. We get to go freaking move animals. Is it hard sometimes? Does it get annoying building fence and turning corners? It does. But like one of my favorite aspects of the job is problem solving. And we're all problem solvers. I enjoy that more than

anything is problem solving. And there are a lot of problems to solve that become solutions. And so really bringing that to the forefront and showing other people, I think that's the problem solving aspect is is such a beautiful thing and and someone had told me once that if there's a solution it's not a problem and you that's something that i internalize and believe every day that we can go out there and we can figure this out. And like Eric's talking about, that's a huge goal of mine because I remember Kyle, when I was like, I think I was in summit or something like that. And I listened to your podcast with Jared Picard and you guys were talking and you're like, we need like one in 10 people farming. And I, and we're all big believers in sovereignty and, you know, given a big middle finger to the government. And it's like, if we're all big believers in sovereignty and giving a big middle finger to the government.

And it's like, if we're gonna do this, we need those localized communities like Daniel talks about all the time. And if we aren't bringing people into the fold, if we aren't showing people that, hey, you don't have to be an expert in doing this, then what are we doing? It's just selfish at that point.

It's not being of service. And so that's one of the key things for all of us, I know, but for just speaking for myself that I always hold in the back of my mind of why we're doing this and what we can bring to the world and make this the more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible. And so for me, my focus is with the animals and that's just been an absolute pleasure for me because I grew up just loving animals. My grandmother that I talked about, she was quite eccentric. She had 10 macaws and I grew up playing with macaws every day. Like what kid gets to do that? But I got to understand this. You teach them to say naughty words?

Oh yeah. We had one. We had one lady bird. She was a cockatoo. She came from a bar and she would scream, get the robbers, cuss and swear and all the things that she would pick up. And they were so cool. And you got to see, I got to see as a child, the unique personality that animals have. And grew up with dogs and cats and really learned how to train them and be with them and love for them. And so here that is just tenfold. And so getting to experience animals that I've never worked with and sit and be still and watch them and watch their nature and learn from them is a huge blessing and a huge lesson because you start to understand that you plan and God laughs and you have to move at the pace of nature.

And I think that is incredibly healing. You talked about, you know, Paul Cech and getting in the dirt. Getting in the dirt, being in nature heals you and being with these animals heals you. It's healed me and changed me forever. And I remember one morning, Brent and I, we had just helped this baby lamb be born. It was a complicated birth. The lamb was stuck and I'm laying, holding the mama e you down and Brent's pulling the baby out and it's like 10 in the morning on a beautiful spring day gorgeous sun grass is green and I'm like spooning this mama you and I go I don't want to be anywhere else like I used to sit at a fucking desk and push

paper and sell to companies that I don't believe in to try and help them do things that destroy our society. Here I am bringing life into the world and there's nothing more beautiful. And so with the animals, it's been really cool to learn, especially from like Daniel and from Austin Dillon. And I really have to shout especially from like daniel and from austin dylan and i really have to shout them out because they're just phenomenal mentors and uh i actually got to go and have the privilege of working for a week with austin dylan up at his ranch and i'll tell you yeah yeah i'll tell you if you ever are afraid of doing this

on your own, don't be because Austin Dillon has 700 acres and he's got 400 plus head of cattle, probably 150 to 200 sheep. He's got maybe 50 to a hundred goats. He's got a hundred geese. He's got livestock guardian dogs. He's got herding dogs. He's got chickens. And he has his beautiful new wife, Casey, and he's building his own family and he does it all by himself. And I'll tell you, we work our asses off here,

but I've never worked as hard as I worked that week of going and working with Austin, you know, 6 a.m. till 9.30 at night and just passing out. And yeah, you had nothing left in the tank. And so I don't know how that guy does it, but just really learning the nuance and Kyle, you had kind of talked about the generational stuff. Austin's family has been doing this for at least three generations and Austin will call himself, you know, a good color, not a breeder, but the importance of

if you're going to ranch like we do and care for animals like we do, where we really let nature take its course. We don't give any antibiotics, any vaccinations, anything like that. Our animals have to be healthy. They have to be the most prime animals. And so it's really stewarding those animals and watching who are the good mamas, who are having twins, who take care of their babies and getting really good genetic animals to start with. That's something that I encourage everybody to look into. Don't just go get animals for the sake of getting animals. Find somebody who's doing it right. Find somebody who really cares about the health of their animals. And some people might

think that it's harsh, but you really have to understand if I'm going to have these animals and keeping them for meat is part of it, and I'm going to feed myself with it, you take the weak ones. And you make sure that the strong ones survive and they continue that really strong genetic lineage so that if they have a hoof rot, they can recover from it. If they get some type of sickness, they can bounce back from it. And we've really seen that, especially in our sheep that we've had from Austin, they're phenomenal. We had two straight summers of extreme drought and those sheep are crushing it. They're crushing it. And we're going to, tomorrow we're bringing in more and we're really going to dive deep into that and really hone our flock. And I'm excited to have the privilege of doing that and really getting to

learn myself of how to do this and then how to bring that to other people. And I forget who he mentioned, but it was somebody who, it's a doctor who is with Gabe Brown often. And he talked about the pioneers and how the pioneers, if they would take an older male or an older cow buffalo, they could work all day long because that meat and that animal that it came from was so strong that it had those nutrients in it. Whereas if they took like a two-year-old bull, it just wasn't there yet. And they would be gassed, you know, working the frontier life that takes everything out of you. And so it's really important to me to not only bring that to us here on the ranch and give ourselves the highest quality nutrients, but to

teach other people to do that. Because as we all see, as the world has gotten turned on its head and the wool has been pulled off, medicine is not really going to do it. There's greater medicine out there and that medicine comes from nature. Everything you need is in nature. And that's really what I'm excited to foster, especially when it comes from an animal perspective. And the dogs too, like working with livestock guardian dogs, it's unbelievable growing up and having dogs, but it's a totally different mindset of these animals are bred for this. They have the instinct and to just let them do their things and watch them protect. They're, they're our greatest asset on this ranch. We wouldn't be able to live the lives that we live

without those dogs. And so it's, it's a surreal experience to watch this. Yeah, brother. Thank you. They're fucking incredible. Well, I wanted to get you guys, Eric touched a little bit on death and, um, I obviously have stories, but I'll, I'll let you guys tell them, you know, what comes to mind from a learning perspective being here is that, you know, at the pace of nature, when you fuck up, it can be a very big fuck up. You know, and that was one of the things, uh, when we lost six sheep in one night and we realized like, oh, we just put a bunch of food on the fucking ground and thought that a game fence that doesn't go into the ground was going to stop coyotes from coming in. And remember you guys walked the land, you said there's 27 holes from where the coyotes

went under, 27 on the perimeter of this place. And I was like, wow, that was, how could I fucking do that? You know, like how stupid, you know? And it was just like, oh God, what are we going to do? And like pure panic thinking about that. Cause that, you know, like if a, if a, if a raccoon eats a chicken, they'll just eat one. If a possum or weasel comes in, they'll kill every fucking thing and only still only eat one, but they'll kill them all, right? There's differences with animals. But I remember thinking about the coyotes

and that was such a massive piece that came early on. But talk about some of the struggles because I want this to be real for everybody if they're even considering it, you know, like this, it's not all pie in the sky and death is intimately woven into life. And until we appreciate that, and this is why one of the reasons sacred hunting, you know, like going with Mansell to do a sacred hunt is so powerful because you're intimately drawn back

into the experience of fully being here, of what it takes. And whether you're into plants or animals or everything in between, all of that is conscious. All of that is from spirit. All is of or nothing as Paul Selig says. And you should honor all of it, whether it's a fucking piece of kale or a potato chip or corn or an animal. And the love and the respect that goes into that is felt. Like we had our first ramlam and it was like,

holy shit, dude, there's nothing on earth that tastes like this. So we'll dive into some of the benefits that we've had thus far. But first, bring people into the reality of what this is like. Because I interviewed Joel Salatin. I'll link to that in the show notes. He was great. And he talked about, we got to meet him at Rome Ranch at the Force of Nature event that I spoke at and we all attended. And he said, you know, I think 1.5 to 3 million people have become homesteaders in the last two years. And maybe it was 1.5 had become

and they expect another 1.5 too in the next two years. So about 3 million people homesteading. And a lot of people get a year into this and they're like, what the fuck did I do? Right, like, did I bite off more than I could chew? And so I think part of the education piece is preparing people as fast as possible because some of them already own land

or some of them are about to purchase land and you wanna put animals on the ground quickly. You wanna put plants in the ground quickly. You wanna do all these things because it takes a long time to be able to harvest, right? It'll be 15 years before our food forest is really popping, you know, where the canopies are interwoven and you can shake a fucking tree and fruit will fall on the ground. I mean, 10, 15 years for that, you know, even though we've eaten some fruit thus far, that takes time. And I understand the need for people

to get in there, but talk about the reality of what we're doing here and some of the harder moments for us. Yeah, one thing that comes to mind from a plant perspective is all of the trees that we had to cut down to make it possible for us to rotate these animals. And we brought in this big cedar eater and it kind of looks like the bad guys from Avatar. Like we were mowing these lines and it was incredibly destructive

for the first moment of it because we had to drill these trees down to the ground to make the spine of our property. And doing that, it inherently destroyed a lot of habitat for birds and turtles and even putting in the game fence. Like there is a, there's a cost for doing what we're doing and what we've created there is more

fertility down the road. All of those wood chips are breaking down and creating more bioavailability for everything. It's just more life. And, you know, even, even doing things like the key line plow, like we are taking a scapel to the ground and opening up the earth. And there's this beautiful Native American elder that came out and did a Yopan ceremony with us. And he asked us if we had any conifer trees and we only have about two. So I took him to this juniper

and even taking the smallest branch off of this conifer tree, he was saying a prayer. And so every time we have to go out and chainsaw and every time we have to do a lot of damage in our forests, I do my best to say a prayer. And I do all that I can to trust in what is going to happen after. That death and rebirth is incredibly evident and um

and we're doing we're doing a lot to plant more seeds we're cover cropping we're doing um we're doing a lot to to augment that and to regenerate and um yeah that's that's really what I think about most when it comes to death on the property. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, one thing that comes to mind, a few things come to mind. Like Fox is talking about helping, you know, you guys helping some of the births take place last spring.

And it was interesting because it was right around the fit for service event. So there's people around, right? And so like Fox is saying, we've sort of adopted this philosophy of letting nature take its course. And that can make you question your humanity. When you see a little lamb's head coming out of the female's vagina and it looks like it's stuck there, there's something inside you that goes, I need to help that.

Whether that's your philosophy or not, if you're a human and you have care in your heart, it will pull on your heartstrings very hard. And so we had this, we only had one triplet birth, I think. Yeah. So we had a triplet birth and I think that was right during, it was during the fit for service event, right? Yeah. There's big shit every time we have an event. Yeah. Yeah. So the animals like there, there's an energy to the place and shit happens. Um, so she has the three lambs. One of them is significantly bigger than the rest. And one of them looks like it it's

going to die, you know, for sure. There's no doubt in my mind to this day. And believe me, you question yourself when you make these choices because they're not easy. So we decide to put this lamb out of its misery. And I've hunted, I've killed animals and eaten them. And you're not eating this animal. Sure, it can get returned to the land, you know, in our compost pile, or we can let the vultures have it. It gets recycled, which is a beautiful thing. But having to do that was definitely one of the toughest moments. And another reason it was is because we actually made the choice as a collective team of a bunch of people,

we made the choice to save one of the lambs. And Leah, my wife, she took that lamb to our house. And lambs don't, I live in a little neighborhood, like you don't care for lambs in their house. And I remember feeling like resentment in my heart. I'm like, man, should we have killed this lamb and not let it live? And just the other day, so we ended up taking care of her. And I found this lady, Misfit Farms, Christy. She takes in all these animals that are misfits. You know, she has pigs with like crazy teeth coming out and a goat that's

noses like to the left. It's like a fucking Ren and Stimpy character, you know? And so, but it's really beautiful because like we met her the other day, the first time I met her in person and she's just an animal lover. You know, she's great. But anyway, so we took Esther to her. I went with my kids and Leah and they had a hard time. Like even then I remember, I remember not wanting my kids to feel that at the time, having to leave Esther.

And I felt bad because there was a part of me that was like, man, we should have, I felt like the right thing to do was in this lamb's life because the mom was like pushing it off. We tried to freaking put it in a little, it's actually still down there. We tried to put it in this little kennel, tie Esther's mom to the side and she just wasn't having it.

The reason she's not having it is because she knows. She knows more than likely, she doesn't have the power to take care of all three lambs. And anyway, so Christy sends me a picture of Esker the other day, and she's like a full-grown lamb. She has these crazy ears that go straight out to the side. And I remember feeling then like, okay, well, maybe there's some decisions we make that don't have to fall completely in line with what everybody thinks we want to do. We take what we believe and don't have to fall completely in line with what everybody thinks we want to do. We take what we believe and what others have taught us and we make choices based

on that. But that for sure was one of the hardest things. And I never really thought I'd come back till just before this podcast, like a couple of days ago, you know, it really hit me in the heart. Yeah. like a couple days ago, you know, it really hit me in the heart. Death is a hell of a thing. And in our society, death is covered up and ushered away and we don't really embrace it. We don't really understand how to grieve. Um, I sure know that I hadn't until coming here and, and being with my brothers. And I say that in the truest sense, like the things that we have gone through together and the decisions that

we've had to make that are hard, um, they don't leave you. They don't ever leave you. And I still, you know, I'll have dreams about them. And it is hard to just to be a human that has care in your heart and say, this is what needs to happen. And you watch it happen and it's nature's brutal. Nature is brutal and it is unforgiving. And that's why it's so important to keep strong

animals. But when it comes to death, there's been a lot of many different things from the wild animals to the animals that we have under our care. And that day with Esther's mom and her babies was probably one of the hardest that I had too. And I remember being with you guys and just crying. And, you know, just, it was hard with everyone here to have that experience. And it was just a lot of feelings. It was a lot of feelings. It was a lot of feelings. And there's just times like caring for the animals and having that as my main responsibility,

you have a bad storm come in, you have a freeze coming in and it keeps me up at night. It fills my heart with dread. And it's been a real experience to sit with that and to learn how to deal with that and process that. Because there are times where you go, man, oh man, we've got animals out there and it is a brutal storm or it

is a brutal freeze. And I'm probably going to walk out and find dead animals. And that's not an easy thing to deal with. And when you do, and you come across that, it's hard to remember 14's baby, one of our cows, she was our weakest cow and she had a stillborn baby. And I remember her sitting there and licking that baby and licking that baby and trying to get it to get up. And when I came, she got distracted because of the dogs, because the dogs are great. They'll come and they guard. If there's a dead lamb, we've seen our dogs eat it, but they aren't carnivores. They won't go attack a healthy lamb. They want to protect and they want to get rid of something, the afterbirth, when there's a birth, that's something that's going

to draw in predators. And so the dogs were trying to do that and they distracted her and I picked it up and carried it away and I remember her standing there and looking for it and just you feel that in your heart or you know needing to put something down you have those moments right before when you are going to take that action and you have that choice and you make that choice and you go there's no coming back from this and a part of you you cut away a part of you when you do that and so for people getting into it there is a real reality of these things that I don't want you to shy away from it because of it, but I want you to be prepared that nature is nature and there's nothing we can do to stop it. But we can make those choices. Like Eric says, in the case of Esther, the lamb,

it was great to see her. It was really hard for you guys to Kyle and, and Eric both took her home and that having a lamb inside a house is not a, not a good thing, but chewed through a MacBook pro damn sheep killed the Traeger ate the cord, the rugs rugs are gone. Um, but you have those moments and that, that was a good success i'm happy to see esther where she's at and happy and and really happy that misfit farms is there and chrissy's doing her thing to take in animals it takes everybody and it takes all types of human beings we're all part of the fabric of life um you know eric was talking earlier about taking all of us and more you know bre Brent may be over plants and I may be over animals and Eric stitching everything together, but it takes all of us working together and doing everything because otherwise it's great to have your families there and your families to participate. Kyle, you being out here and having the family out here is going to be awesome to, to really dive into

that and, and be part of it. And it's going to be beautiful. So I'm excited for that. But like I said, death is a hell of a thing and it never gets easier. And I don't want it to get easier. Like Eric talked about, that's, that, that'd be a place that I wouldn't want to feel if I was there ever. Because there are times where you say to yourself, like, this is how it is. And you kind of build a wall because otherwise it's just going to crush you. But there's still a door in that wall. And your heart's still open to it. Absolutely, brother. I'm thinking the first, the first shocker was losing the sheep. And then I

remember getting like night vision goggles and thermals and shit. And we were camping out in teams of two to kill the coyotes. And we, Eric and I drove up and got our first two dogs, Apollo and Athena, which are purebred great Pyrenees. We brought them down, but they were so young that, you know, they just stuck by each other to protect each other. Coyotes came in and killed seven more. And on the first night we took off and I was like, God damn it. So we drove back up north.

We ended up getting five more dogs to bring down a team of seven. And, you know, we've lost a couple of sheep here and there, but that was the first time where we actually see the seven. And, you know, we've lost a couple of sheep here and there, but that was the first time where we actually see the balance point tip, you know? And we never ended up killing coyotes. It's funny, because we had Montsel out here. We did a tobacco prayer on the land, and I really wanted to tap into coyote medicine.

Like, what is that? I know it's the trickster. I know it serves a purpose here. And really finding out more about the coyotes was like, oh, it's pointless to kill them. They're like cockroaches. They're apocalypse proof. If you have 20 in a pack and you kill 18 and the remaining two are male and female, she'll go into estrus the next day and be fucking pregnant with another litter that probably is close to matching what they lost, right? They

might have fucking 20 pups. They might have an absurdly high amount or get pregnant again until that is replenished. And then some, which really speaks to their resilience and the awesome nature of them. You know, it's like the balance point isn't, you know, camping like Elmer Fudd and trying to fucking blow them away. The balance point is actually having lifestyle guardians on the land where they're still here. You know, we couldn't, we didn't barricade the 27 holes. We took our snares down. They can come and go as they please.

But now that we have the Life Start Guardians, there's balance there. They know they can't take to stuff. They can help us clean up if something else dies, you know, and we put it in the corner for them. It's an offering for them. So it was, that was a huge learning thing. But, you know, to your point,

to a lot of your points, the, I thought about that right when we first got this place, biggest little farm was such a massive influence and they have 200 acres. And I remember walking the land with all of us. We get to walk the land with Charles Eisenstein. We got to walk the land with Zach Bush. And I asked them both, our land is half the size of that. They've made it a very profitable place, but to really produce, you know, like do we burn the whole thing to the ground? Like, and I thought about that

because death, you know, fires actually have been used from Native Americans for thousands of years to clear the land when planting corn or fruit trees or anything. And even just making more grass available for the bison. And that death and carnage brings rebirth. It's one of the very best things you can do for the soil. It's why we do the biochar, right?

Like biochar is fucking superfood. And you could biochar the whole land, but part of me didn't want to do that. You know, both of them said it would be highly beneficial and it would allow you to, without clear cutting clear cutting and clear cut would position the soil in a really good spot and you can grow whatever you want then. And on the other side of that coin is there's a fuck ton of things are going to die. And so, um, because of that, you know, we meditated on it and decided like we had this nice flat ground that was a nine acre field, um, that the guy

previous had just used for, for wild sunflowers. And that's part of how he got his ag exemption. And like I said, never sprayed anything in there. I was like, well, if we can move this around and do some stuff in here. And then we met Chad. It was like, he's like, I can put 400 fruit and nut trees right here. It was like on three acres. It's like, that's fucking dope. We still got a pasture there and we still have all this other room for other stuff. And I was like, cool. We don't have to fucking mow it down. But yeah, to Brent's point, even just coming through with the cedar eater, like you understand, all right, this tree is getting gobbled up. It's being spat back out as mulch on the land. That's going to help grass grow. It's

going to knock down weeds. It's going to ultimately be a huge benefit for what remains. And certainly our grass eating ruminants will greatly appreciate that. And there's a cost, you know, in doing so. You know, the thing about the animals, there's the, what popped into my mind was the turkeys. I don't think I would have been as upset with the turkeys, except like, you know, the kids wanted to see it. They wanted to be a part of it. And I think, you know, I don't know how old Wolf was

when she was there for that. You know, mom would protect her from seeing gunshots and stuff. But we had raised, we got 20 heritage turkeys from Rome Ranch and we put them in the incubator. I think 17 popped out alive. A couple died pretty quickly and put 15 on the land. And as they grew, two or three at a time would just go missing. And we found out later, like they could jump that eight foot fence, no problem. They could fly above it as the ones that remain were flying up about eight feet into a tree at night. And the last three that remained,

we've since discovered that they were walking the property and going different places. Like all those birds made it in a sense in our free range. They're out in the wild now if they remain living. But the last three had a really fucking weird turkey pox disease. Yeah, and it was like, we're fucking looking up everything.

We're calling people. Like that's a death sentence for any other birds you have. So the turkeys were there to protect the chickens, but we've got 100 plus chickens, 20 ducks and geese, like that we couldn't afford to let them wipe out all of the fucking fowl that

we have by simply trying to keep them and the disease was fucked up i remember like really just holding off and giving them apple cider vinegar and trying all the fucking the homeopathic remedies and these blisters and boils would grow on them to the point where they couldn't see they were just walking around blind with these giant, nasty pockets all over their face. And thinking about that, getting to the chickens, you know, we made the decision to remove them and not, you know, we can't eat them. They're diseased, you know? And so that's a different thing when you have to kill something out of necessity and it's not going to be food and a different feeling, you know? And God, every day for like three weeks, Wolfie would ask me, daddy, why did the turkeys die? Daddy, why did the turkeys die? And that's a part of it, you know, it's a big part of it. And I don't think I'd give two shits about turkeys, you know, before I was farming. It's like,

whatever, turkeys are ridiculous, you know? And then we raised 40 chickens at our house in Austin before bringing them here. And we knew them all by name. They all had different personalities, you know, like the connection point. If you're there, you see it, you see it in fucking everything you have. We have hella personality in our emus, you know, like they're just, they're, they're their own being and they, and they have their own consciousness. And, um, yeah, that, I think the turkeys is one that really hit me harder than I thought it would for sure. All right, let's lighten up a bit. You know, one of the biggest things that I have here amongst us, because we've worked in close proximity to one another, you know, like Brent and Fox were living together for some time.

It's a lot to be homies, and it's also a lot to have to work and depend on each other to the degree that we do. You know, a lot of times where I see this work, like our homie, Daniel Griffin, his father helped him with the purchase of their 400 acres,

you know, and they are 50, 50 owners, but it's just Daniel and his wife running the whole show, 12 hours a day, 16 hours a day, right? And they got three kids that are younger than mine. Shout out to Morgan. And they're fucking gangsters, dude. But that's a full, that's all they do.

You know, and he still manages to write incredible books and he's a fucking poet and a polymath and he's cut from a different cloth than most people. But, you know, like everyone there has to be on board. And so I think about things like, what are the ways in which we enrich ourselves? When we first started in Fit for Service, I think part of what made it special

was everyone that worked together loved each other. And we came out on it. You know, my desk was next to Caitlin and Godsey and Aubrey's office. All of us were cluttered next to them. So like we could bounce around and be like, team walk and walk outside and powwow something and talk about a new psychedelic or talk about a new supplement or any of these things. And we had that, that little beautiful little think tank

that we had. And we brought that into fit for service and we hired only people that we really cared about and loved. And that as that team grew, we always had the events together, you know, and fit for Service has grown so much now that that's been an actual complaint is that we don't all stay in the same Airbnb anymore. The team's too big. We couldn't possibly do that. There's no 30 room fucking Airbnbs with three kitchens, right? And even then it would still be hard to make the amount of connections, the rounds that we used to diving into ceremony together, doing different, you know, having fun and partying together

has become more challenging with the amount of people we have. So having felt that through the life of Fit for Service, and there's things we're doing to remedy that in April. We're going to have, you know, all teams get to come here and shoot guns and have fun and, you know, get to live the farm life and eat yummy food and party if they want, you know, that's all available. So I'm super excited for that as a team building bonding thing, because that's something we have been missing. But it's something that was poignant to me from

the very beginning. And we've had, you know, our own internal struggles. Kathy came in and really helped us. She's a fucking brilliant woman. She's been on the podcast, Kathy Courtenay. I'll link to that in the show notes. If somebody wants to work with her, she's phenomenal for relationships, phenomenal. And work relationships are just as important, you know, as our, as our home relationships, but she really helped us out a lot. But I think one of the main things that continues to drive us is the fun shit that we do, the challenging shit that we do together, you know, and that's something I'm most excited about doing when we move here is like, I have a three car garage. That's not a garage, it's a dojo. And we've got mats, 3,000 bucks

where the rollout mats from Fuji, free shipping, shout out to Fuji mats. They didn't really give me a deal, but that was the best deal in town and I love their shit. I've got three different heavy bags and a bunch of stuff on the wall, an uppercut bag, a speed bag, all these things.

We were traveling up North every week to go to Black Sheep Boxing. And it's been awesome doing that. But the fact that we're going to have that here, you know, the fact that we could say Wednesdays and Saturdays is boxing mornings, Mondays and Fridays is the run, Tuesdays and Thursdays is the lift, you know, like whatever you can, this is open. And it's open, not just to us, it's open to the rest of the homies in FFS and people that want to come to it. You know, we've already sprinkled that in, in a way where like we even just started doing team meetings in the sauna. I can feel the jealousy from the folks that have just called in on Google Meet, you know, but it's like, why not kill two birds with one stone? Why not get a fucking sauna session while we're sitting and chatting and discussing the weekly events?

And so there's lots of little things like that, but that's one of my contributions that I'm really excited about. Talk a bit about the things that excite you that you get to do and some of the things that you want to create while you're here. Yeah.

That's a good question. Um, just continuing to, to create, um, an education center here, but, but really for everything, like you, you talked about it, Kyle, that this is, this is a taxing job as a taxing job. It is a taxing job on the body and on the mind and on the heart. And having space where you create space for yourself, for your health is not just essential to your own wellbeing, but essential to your ability to do this job and to run something like this. So having the focus that we do where we're getting our mind and our body right, as well as our spirit is incredibly important. And for me, it's just, it's continuing to dive into that, to learn more from you and, and really become even, even more physically healthy as I've suffered from a lot of, of back issues. And, um, that's still something that plagues me like, well, we'll have a really hard day at work and it's, I'm crushed at the lot of back issues and that's still something that plagues me.

Like, well, we'll have a really hard day at work and I'm crushed at the end of the day from that. But learning new things, like I've never had any type of fight sport that I've ever been a part of. So learning boxing and, you know, getting on the mat and I want to start doing jujitsu and really understanding those aspects and having that, that competition with you guys, like really like getting on the mat and grinding together. That's, that's going to be awesome. So I'm really looking forward to you being out here and, and getting in the dojo and doing that work and having that fun where it's all centralized here. And, and this ranch is, is kind of like our play place as well as our workplace. Because the relationship aspect can be hard because there's no delineation. And that's something that I really want to grow in

is really stopping because I'm a workhorse to a detriment where I'm like to hell with everything else. Like I'm getting the job done and I'm not making enough time for myself right now. And that's really an area where I want to grow and create because that's something that as now that I'm engaged to Kat, I'm looking to start my family and I want to have my kids. And it's this dawning of,

I'm not just going to have kids and then wake up the next fucking day and just be rocking out workouts and all this shit. It's like, I have to be that person and live that ethos and be that example, not only for the children that I want to have, but being uncles to your guys' kids of really showing them like, this is how you live life. Like, I don't want to dictate what your life is, but I want to give you the examples of what being a good person and being of service and being of service to yourself most importantly

because we can't do anything. Caitlin said it one time, what is good for you is good for the world. It's like filling your cup up and letting it run over and then watching them do that. That's the real magic for me is planting the trees that we'll never get to enjoy but they'll get to enjoy, but they'll get to enjoy and their

children will get to enjoy. And they'll get to do it for a long time because they grow up strong and healthy, eating the right food and moving their body and understanding what that's like and having that relationship and interplay with each other. It's really, really beautiful. And I love you and Eric are phenomenal examples of fathers and your kids are wonderful. And that's something that I strive to be in my life as well. So that's really what I want to create. So Foxy touched on a couple things, like the blending of personal, professional, the blending of just life, period.

Like, this is no nine-to-five job. Nothing wrong with a nine-to-five job, but weekends, weekdays, there's no set schedule. Colonized families are out here. Hopefully, it's not to the point where Fox and Brenner, like you guys are here too much, but I just love this place. And really doing things together, build this sort of trust. When I was in the Navy, I was part of a small community that had the same aspect. It's like everything was blended. Like you said, brothers, like you're brothers in the truth and sisters in the truth, sense the word to a point where it's like, I, and this is nothing against my family or my brothers, but

when you share something that is struggle, that is hard and tough, there's a bond created that can't be paid for, can't be bought. And it creates this deep level of trust. Whereas like, I really do feel like I would give my life to this place and the people here. And that's something that when you get out of the military, you think that that's lost forever. So it's, man, I can't describe it to you.

People that know, know even things like fighting or doing farming or things like that, they build those things. You build something that is unbreakable. And I remember coming here and not really having that on my radar. And then I remember the, like one of the first few times we actually went to boxing together and I've, I've never been more excited to go do something like that together, even knowing that I completely suck at boxing and Kyle could rip my head off in one second

and still can. But it created this simple boxing workout, learning how to jab, like all those things, their struggle. When, like Kyle said, we do workouts here and we often get in the ice bath and sauna, whether it's doing FTR, like being included in that struggle creates something that,

man, it's just so amazing. And to your point of uncles and aunties, I never, I grew up with my aunties and uncles, you know, my dad's family, my mom's family, but I never grew up with anybody outside of that. That was like, oh, this is my family too. And I remember Kyle, like I'd never heard of calling, you know, Brent uncle or Foxy uncle or you uncle. And I heard you saying that, you know, whether it's a Christian or somebody that you're close to, like, it seems like just a little name, uncle.

But to me, it's much deeper than that because it's this reciprocal trust where it's like, I trust you guys with my kids completely. And Leah, there is no part of me that is wondering about anything. And man, the trust that creates is amazing. Yeah, I echo that. I'm excited for all of that and another thing I really love doing that I hinted to earlier is body work and I just can't wait to make that more of a thing where there's multiple tables and we're just working on each other because god do we need it and I'm very excited for that I'm excited for yoga in the garden.

I'm excited for team cookouts. We already do those and just more of that in different places, creating these little pockets and ecosystems out in the forest to just hang. You know, we're not cutting down trees. We're chilling. We're enjoying our work. And the peace and the serenity that goes along with that. And I'm excited for a volleyball court to go in and having something competitive and um and the you know the fighting

all the things along that working in the kids um something that we're just planting the seed right now is this this idea of having school out here and having the kiddos get a wholesome, just full education, the full spectrum of like, hey, this is life EDU. And yeah, I'm really stoked about that and excited to just continue expanding what we've already started. Fuck yeah, brother.

Yeah, there's so much there that you guys have brought up for me. Like there's, there's so much going on and this is one hat that I wear as being the caretaker of this land. And it's one of the most important hats, but I also podcast. I also coach people. I'm also in fit for service as a coach. I also have to dad and husband and all those things. So I get stretched thin at different points. But if the thing that I'm doing fills me up, then it's self-propelling, right? It's not as taxing.

Even when we're doing 12 hour days with the old timer, I was out there with the old timer for 12 hours a day and you guys busting our ass and eating sandwiches and fucking pounding energy drinks. And that filled itself. So I think about things like that. And one of the things that came up, you know, as I don't always track them,

but right when you're talking about the school, it was like, yeah, I remember, I forget where I was flying. I was listening to Tim Kennedy on Rogan's and, you know, Tim's a good buddy of mine. We've done a lot of sheep. That's another thing we do is we take the whole fucking team to do sheepdog.

Sheepdog response has been absolutely incredible. And I've trained these guys myself, you know, Eric's got a great military background, same with Jimmy. And, you know, we could lean on them, but it's really cool when you also get to go have someone else coach you, you know, like, and I think of that too, like back, back when we first started boxing, I wasn't the one teaching, you know, and he no showed us on so many times. And I was like, all right, the one teaching, you know, and he no showed us on so many times. And I was like, all right, we're going to do kickboxing and Muay Thai now because the boxing coach is gone. And I know that better, but, um, there is something nice about that. You know, when you show up and somebody else has a program waiting for you and we did the tactical trauma

response, which was fucking awesome. That's why all of us have tourniquets on us at all times. And I think that's important. Even if we don't see some apocalyptic ending, there's a lot of heavy machinery here. Arms could get fucking ripped off. Legs can, you know, you can get fucking pinned from something and have some serious injury where now I feel much more comfortable in keeping someone alive, especially our little ones, you know.

But that too, team building, you know, and I want to offer things like that to people. Like we do full-tempo reset here once a year. I think you guys have been at every single one of them, which is rad. Cause I opened that up, you know, like, unless we max out at 50 people, I'm always like, yo, if you, if you work for the team, you're in freebie, come, come plug and do it. And it's really only you guys that say yes to that. Dave, Diamond Dave from FFS. Dave did the first three. So I'll give Dave mad credit. He did three years in a row. But it's not one where people are like, yeah, I want to go fast with you guys. There's always some excuse, you know, and different people have shown up. I don't want to say there's nothing

but excuses. Claire's done it. Amy's done it. Madeline's done it. Clayton's done it, you know? And so really, yeah, Kat's done it. It's really cool to see when they do say yes, but it's fucking hard and it's hard by design. And we're doing, you know, getting into fucking weird stretches and mobility work from Kelly Sturette and Aaron Alexander and doing shit that doesn't feel good when you first get into it. It's necessary, but doesn't feel good at all. The first time you get in a super couch stretch, sauna, nice bath, super beneficial. Feels like shit the first week you're doing that, right? You're not like, yeah, fuck yeah. I'm gonna get high from sauna, nice bath. You're like, oh God, I got the sauna, nice bath, you know? And so I think combining all those things has been a real treat. And we'll still offer that every,

every January or February when it's coldest here. Cause people can just jump in the pool. We don't need, you know, 30 people waiting to take an ice bath two at a time, you know? So I think that makes the most sense to keep that there. One thing that I'm really excited about too, is, is opening a school and being buddies with Kim or Tim, he opened up something called Apogee, which is a Socratic style school. And he has it up north in Cedar Park. They're opening several. And I heard him talking to Rogan about this and it just pinged me like a fucking sword through the heart. We will open an Apogee with Tim. And we're farther enough south from him. You know, he's about 45 minutes north of Austin. We're about 30 minutes south of Austin. That's an hour and 15 minutes. We can easily be a sister school here. And what's

cool about the Socratic education is that parents are required to read the same things the fucking kids are. There's a divorce in modern education. In fact, many people had to sign waivers that said they wouldn't spy in the online classes. Parents had to sign a form in California and different places that said they weren't going to look over and watch what the kids were learning. That's pure fuckery. And it's like, it's really easy to see that from the outside looking in, but so many people just said yes to it because they feel trapped in modern education.

There's no way out. And so that's been a big thing for us is like really repping our kids are homeschooled. Eric's kids are homeschooled and we have them in jujitsu and we brought in a private teacher for piano lessons for your girls and private teacher for violin lessons for bear.

And there's a lot we can do there. And at the same time, I think a proper education can be done if you have a certain degree of adherence to principles and values and you understand what is the job of the education and how important is that for the parents to be involved with that.

Super important. So I love what Tim's doing. We went to a couple of things with his school before it opened, but it was too far north. And so like now, like really considering that we have 118 acres, we do events here, we have two barns that are giant, we could have our own school. And so synchronistically, Tosh just went on a hunt with Mansell and Nate and I forget if his name's Heath or Ethan Ethan yeah Ethan was a guy that Mansell wanted to introduce me to who's a principal in Lockhart and who's also trying to start a school like we're talking about right Socratic education Waldorf inspired you know all the things that bring in the arts they bring in archery practice and and and shooting and all the things you want in martial arts, they bring in archery practice and shooting

and all the things you want in martial arts. All these things are available to the kids along with painting and sculpting and different forms of art. But I think about that like the martial arts changed my life for the better. And it's something where I still consider myself a lifelong martial artist.

I will always practice martial arts to the day I die because it scratches an inch. Weightlifting and running can never touch. And, and it is, it does help me sleep better at night knowing that short sort of stayed sharp, you know, but, but it does, it does more than just make me feel comfortable, you know, like, oh, okay, now I can protect people if shit, if I get way more than that. And, um, having that for our kids has been a huge blessing, but I think really bringing that here is going to be really special. And then that for our kids has been a huge blessing, but I think really bringing that here is going to be really special. And then, you know, lastly, cause I'll wrap us up here. It's

been a little over an hour and 40 minutes. Amy had the idea and Tasha at the same time in their own way of us doing a day in the life. You know, we, we have different events here. We did our permaculture event with Chad Johnson, you know, and that was a high level event, which cost a decent amount of money, you know, because of Chad and what we were teaching. But really offering, you know, like Paul Cech has these monthly things and I highly recommend you get on Paul Cech's list

because everything he offers is fucking fire. I've talked about the mandala workshop I've done with him before. He did a tarot workshop that is mind blowing. And once a month, he'll just have people out at his spot for a day or two. And I think quarterly or at least twice a year this year, but eventually I want that to happen here. Once a month, we have people out, we have a different theme. And early on, it's literally just a day in the life. Like you want to know everything we're doing? Come do it. Come clean a chicken stall with us together as a team. Come move the cows with us together as a team. Come harvest

an animal and we'll eat together. We'll have a bonfire and we'll eat that animal or one like it, you know, that's already been dry aged, a little bit tastier, you know, but to get to experience all those things, the fullness of what we're creating here and to put food in the ground, to plant with your own hands and to see that come to fruition. Like that's a big one too. That was one of my first connection points back to nature was watching something grow that I planted. You know, to have the ability to do all that and to play, right? We're going to hit the sun on the ice bath. We're going to do a team run. If you can't run, that's cool. Ride a

fucking bike. If you can't, ride in the gator and watch the team run, like everyone's included on that. And, um, and we'll lift weights and we'll talk about fitness and movement and the four doctors that Paul preaches, Dr. Movement, Dr. Quiet, Dr. Diet, and Dr. Happiness. And, um, really give people a taste of what we do here on a weekly basis, crammed into two fun days. So I'm excited for that. If people are interested in that, it will have a much lower price point than the other things we offer because we want more of you here for it, you know, and we want people to experience this firsthand.

Gardenersofeden.earth is our website. If you go there right now and send us an email that you're interested in the day and the life, we will send you guys dates once we have that, but we're looking to do something in May and likely something again in September or October of this year. So I'm really excited to be able to roll that out to people.

I'll talk about it more as it's coming up too. But that's it, dude. I'm fucking stoked. We are absolute family. You know, we've been through the fucking, we've done the firewalk together in many different ways. And we continue to do that by saying yes to FDR and saying yes to ceremonies

and saying yes to the grind that this entails. You know, and so I've never felt more blessed than having this land to work on 118 acre canvas with you guys and having you guys to do it with. I love you all. Thank you. Okay. you