The David Knight Show - INTERVIEW Growing Food When Government Steals Your Farm

Episode Date: March 14, 2023

A system born out of necessity when commercial techniques failed became the lifeline when Zimbabwe stole farms from white farmersgardening without plowing or tillingthermal compost & natural organic fertilizerseight simple questions to create an easy, but effective garden planand much moreYour best prepping may be in training neighbors to grow food, thereby building community. Noah Sanders, RedeemingTheDirtAcademy.comFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.com If you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here:SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation through Mail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @[e-mail] App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money is only what YOU hold: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

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Take your business international. Enterprise Europe Network is the world's largest network providing free support and advice to SMEs with global ambitions. With over 450 partner organisations worldwide, we bring together unparalleled expertise to serve businesses like yours. We can help you discover partners in new markets, advance your digitization and gain valuable insights into EU funding opportunities. Take advantage of free expert advice and innovation resources. Visit een-ireland.com and take your business global today. joining us now is noah sanders and he has i think something that all of you are going to be very interested in his site is redeeming the dirt dot r-e-g-f-o-x dot com and he's talking about farming and he's also talking about pulling community together and even talking about sharing God's gift of the early spring,

showing God and the growing of this food. But he's got a lot of details. There's going to be some seminars that are going to be coming up. He's got April training, May training, and we'll talk about that, where you can go there and get hands-on experience in doing a lot of these things. It is something I think is incredibly valuable, something that I look at with jealousy of the people who are able to do this type of thing. I come from a different background where this is all new to me,

and so we're trying to get our family up into the Foundations for Farming. But that is the name of his training, his Foundations for Farming. So joining us now is Noah Sanders. Thank you for joining us, Noah. Thank you. I appreciate you having me on the show today. Let's talk a little bit about some of the things that you cover, talking about scaling up for homestead level food security.

What do people need to do? Because that's what a lot of people are looking at. Home, you know, food security of people are looking at home you know food security people very concerned about that uh a lot of uncertainty but it's better to be able to grow your own than to stash it i think and get better quality stuff as well talk a little bit about what people need to think about for food security yeah so in the u.s we have you know kind of a generational disconnect now from a lot of that connection with the land. Historically, God's provided, you know, an amazing way that you can put seeds in the ground

and they'll produce food without any huge complex industrial, you know, economic system. And throughout history, that tends to be what people always revert to, whether it's in World War II at the Victory Gardens. You had that in the Civil War in the South here. You had people have to go back and learn how to grow flax and make their own linen all the way back in the Revolutionary War. It's the only way that we were able to separate from Great Britain. So food has always been linked to freedom. And I think it's encouraging to realize that this is something that has been when times are good people tend to to move to other disciplines from agriculture tend to get disconnected from the soil and then have to rediscover that it's not unique to our generation that maybe we have unique circumstances because of

our technological you know situation but it's something that's that's had to be done over and over again and i think the biggest key for all of us in trying to get back to improving some of the food security in our own areas is to be willing to do what God loves to see, which is to be faithful with little first before we try to do everything. And a lot of people get burned out trying to do that. So that's what we really focus on with Foundations for Farming is teaching people the basics of success so that they don't burn themselves out trying to do that. So that's what we really focus on with Foundations for Farming is teaching people the basics of success so that they don't burn themselves out trying to do too much too fast to underestimate how much skill it takes to grow food.

Yeah, and I've talked to people in the past. They said that's the rookie mistake is that you go out and you try to grow all your food simultaneously at the same time. You got to pick something and you got to start with that. simultaneously at the same time, you got to pick something and you got to start with that, pick something as simple. So what is simple? What do you tell people to start with? Yeah, so we kind of break it down to three different levels of agriculture. One is, you know, growing some of your own food successfully. That's like your first, you know, thing. And normally that's a garden is the best place to start with that. The next level up is what we would call a homestead where you're trying to actually

grow a lot of your own food, you know, maybe a larger percentage. And that is more of a lifestyle commitment. Like you're really going to have to make some sacrifices to do that in terms of maybe where you live and how free you are to travel. And then the third is where you're actually getting other people to pay you to grow food for them. And that's when it's actually like a business venture. A lot of people, we try to, you know, we get right into farming when we start a business. And anybody can learn to farm, but it's kind of like I love to play the fiddle or the violin. And anybody can learn to play one. But you don't quit your job tomorrow and buy a violin and a how to play violin book and expect to make a living, right?

There is a learning curve. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, right? Right. And a lot of mistakes that's right and that's where starting small is is nice because it's a whole lot easier to make a mistake where you lose half your chickens if you have only 10 than if you have 100 yeah yeah that's right yeah and and as you talked about that uh you know lifestyle choices you've got a lot of farm animals if you go real big with a homestead that's going to tie you down on that homestead taking care of those chickens taking care of uh cows we we've done um our first uh dip into this was chickens and we've lost you know a couple dozen two different times uh to predators that were there and that that is our biggest uh concern other than that

we were doing great. We liked the chicken. They liked us and they gave us lots of eggs, but it's, you know, we had some predators in Texas who love the chickens even more than we did. And so that, that was our big issue. But we're getting ready to try to do some, some gardening. But when you talk about just starting to get into it with a garden, what type of things would you recommend that people do to start out in a garden? Yeah, so we really take the approach of trying to understand that a lot of us, when we get started in this day and age of information, some of our biggest challenges is an overwhelm of information. You know, you go on YouTube and you try to be like, what's the best way to grow a tomato plant?

And you get inundated with all these conflicting ideas of what's the best way to do that. And I faced that same situation when I started farming was it wasn't as simple as, you know, when I used to do some blacksmithing and there wasn't a whole lot of controversy on how to make a knife or how to make a nail. But you ask people how to grow a tomato plant or raise a chicken. And there's some real, you know, different battling perspectives, which really boils down

to worldview, whether you view that nature has all the answers or you view that science and man has all the answers and those impact the way that you view life and the way that you make decisions about how life should or shouldn't be treated. And so as Christians, I think it's important for us as we come to the land, not only just to say, well, practically, how can we make a success of this, but we've always really said it starts with the heart of us recognizing that to become the greatest farmer requires the greatest humility. And the farmer that I learned from the most is a guy from Zimbabwe, Africa, named Brian Oldreave, who founded Foundations for Farming. And he actually was a failing farmer who was losing money in Rhodesia in the early 1980s

on their farm. And so he finally got to a point that he just went to the woods where everything was growing perfectly fine without all the plowing and the fertilizer and everything that he was trying to do in his field. And he just asked God because he saw in Romans 120 where it says that God's eternal attributes are clearly displayed through what has been made. And he said, show me how to farm God. And he just felt like God showed him two simple principles that were different than what he had been doing. And one was that there was no regular deep inversion plowing in natural creation and secondly that there was always this beautiful blanket of mulch covering the ground that protects the soil so he just applied those two simple principles to his farm on a small scale

first and then they implemented over the entire thing and they were so profitable and successful that at their height they were he was managing the second largest privately owned farm in Africa. And then as if you know, the story of Zimbabwe, the farmers, you know, lost the white farmers lost all the land. And so the the foundations for farming kind of was born out of some of these white farmers who love Jesus saying, if a man takes away your tunic, you let him have your cloak as well. So how do we apply that? If a man steals our farm, let's teach him how to farm. So they took the principles they had learned on a large scale and brought it down and began teaching it to the last, the least, and the lost. And that's really had a huge impact in the poor.

And so for us, when we teach people about approaching gardening, we build it on three heart attributes of Christ. foundation of foundations for farming is jesus christ and it's his humility his faithfulness and his unselfishness that he displayed when he came so we display the humility by saying like jesus said i only do what i see my father doing so when we face any problem we look at creation we say well what does my father do what kind of way how did he design it to work, you know? And then when faithfulness, recognizing that we've got to reflect who God is in the way that we do things, and we do that by doing things on time, to a high standard, with minimal waste, and then with joy, because that

faithfulness is what God adds to to produce a profit. And then the unselfishness comes into play when we realize that the land God's given us is not just ours to do it for our own, you know, selves and our own benefit, but we want to be able to use that to bless others and to teach others and to pass along what we've learned so that the skill of growing food can be a community thing, not just an individual thing. Boy, that's fascinating. And, you know, that is an example we've seen over and over again uh people copying what god has done in creation you know you take a look at velcro for example right they'd look at stickers and things like that and and copying his design his aerodynamic design uh in terms of um airplanes

or in terms of even submarines uh looking at how he's done the contours. That is really interesting, very interesting. And what you began with, saying, you know, you can go to YouTube and you can get all these different perspectives and stuff. Part of that, you know, you can, the old phrase for that is analysis paralysis. You can do so much analysis that you actually paralyze yourself from actually getting anything done. And so I think that you actually paralyze yourself from actually getting anything done. And so I think that's an important thing as well, to have somebody who has a system

that they know works and just follow that system without trying to pull this stuff together ad hoc. But talk a little bit about what happened when they had their land taken away. So what did they do to the people there in the local areas of white farmers had their land taken away? What did they do? How did they engage the people there in Zimbabwe? Yeah, so it actually started a little bit before he had his land taken away. He felt like God was like, I gave you this simple system of minimal tillage and using a mulch, I gave you this simple system of, you know, minimal tillage and using a mulch, not just so that you could be a successful farmer, but so that you could share with the, you know, the village across the river here. And so they began to go in and

share, they would take a farmer and they would plant a field for him and show, you know, hey, just take care of this. And you can compare it with your plowed plot. And so she'd see how much better it is. When they came back at the end of the season, they began to realize that every year they would have neglected the field and not taking care of it. And what they found eventually is that because they were selecting one person, they were creating jealousy and the neighbors would have the witch doctor come and curse the field and then the family would be too scared to come and work in it. So they realized it wasn't just a technology issue. There was also a spiritual element that you've got to address when you come, you know,

to looking at some of these broken situations. And there's also, we want to share with everybody and invest in people who are faithful with it. So that's kind of what they began doing is just having right now they have a model farm there in Zimbabwe where they apply these principles. And then they bring in the kind of the forgotten communities, the last, the least, the loss, which is where God loves to start, you know, in rebuilding a nation. And they invest in those people, not only in farming, but in stewardship in general. Foundations for Farming, we're ministry partners with Crown Financial Ministries, which focuses on stewardship of money, because we're teaching stewardship of the land. So when we bring these communities in, and they're discipled in faith, farming, family, and finance, then they're sent back as a community, they really have a huge impact. A lot of times when they've

seen the trainers and the love they have for them and they hear the gospel, many of them will put their faith in Christ and start a church when they go back. And so recently they've developed a very simple model of growing food called Fumvudza. But it's basically a small plot that's about one sixth of an acre where you can grow, where they grow corn, which is the primary staple crop that they have there in Zimbabwe and much of sub-Saharan Africa. And it allows a family for $50 worth of inputs to grow enough food to feed themselves for a year. And most people are trying to grow five acres of corn over there and they can't feed themselves. But when they're done, they do it what we call God's way by looking at God's creation and copying his nature and the way we manage it. It's amazing to see uh that and the government actually came and uh asked them to teach into

the the um you know all the agritechs and they taught it down into the communities and they they had achieved a food security for the first time since their collapse in 2008 two years ago by applying this with a hoe, just this simple principle and simple technique. And, but it started by Brian Oldridge originally went to the top, the president, you know, the minister of agriculture and tried to sell them on the idea. They wouldn't listen. But then he said, well, God's upside down kingdom. Let's go to the poorest of the poor first. And it was actually those people when the poorest of the poor first and it was actually those people when the poorest of the poor were the only people in the nation feeding themselves with enough extra to

sell that that's what got the government's attention and then they you know then pharaoh came calling and asked them to teach you know it into the into the public sector and i think that's an important thing for us as the church to remember is that when jesus came he didn't go to the rich the powerful the educated yeah he went that when Jesus came, he didn't go to the rich, the powerful, the educated. He went to simple, ordinary people, and he turned the world upside down that way. And that means that all of us, in whatever sphere of influence we're in, can have an impact in our nation. That's wonderful.

That is a real grassroots movement. It is. They're putting the stuff in the agricultural. But you're building the society from the ground up. And when you look at what has happened in Zimbabwe, kicking the farmers out, facing starvation. And so they're helping themselves by helping others. In the long term, they're helping themselves.

They would be starving and people would be fighting over food. And so they're showing people how to grow not just their own food, but to grow their independence and to grow their community and to grow their dependence on God. I mean, that's just the perfect way to do this. It's wonderful to hear about that. So they have, how do they, since they lost their farm, how did they survive financially teaching other people to do it? Did they take a share of what the other people were doing?

Is that how they financially made it through? Take your business international. Enterprise Europe Network is the world's largest network providing free support and advice to SMEs with global ambitions. With over 450 partner organizations worldwide, we bring together unparalleled expertise to serve businesses like yours. We can help you discover partners in new markets, advance your digitization and gain valuable insights into EU funding opportunities. Take advantage of free expert advice and innovation resources. Visit een-ireland.com and take your business global today it has been different for every person you know a lot of what the farmers told me there is that

when the you know there were about 5 000 white farmers i think that employed about a million people in zimbabwe and when they got their land taken away uh you know you have three choices you can either fight and those who did died or you can flee, which is what most of them did. Or you can stay and forgive. And only a few of them chose to do that. Wow. And so that's what some of my friends did. And there's been times that these the team, which right now the teams there that are training are mostly black Africans and

Bob Wayans who are really taking this on because it's the foundations for farming we have really a discipleship multiplication kind of model of ministry it's not a organizational you know top-down kind of thing and and so they're really the ones rolling it out and and some there have been seasons where they've continued to come to work even though there was no money you know just because they were willing to serve because over there when you have a debauched currency and and and they keep having high inflation and stuff you know they're famous for that yeah right they they're going through it again and uh and yet they just said you know

what it really helps you to invest your treasure in heaven. That's right. Because there was one of my good friends over there and he said that he invest he and his wife invested in several retirement funds, you know, really worked hard their whole life to do that. And when they went to cash those in, it took them out to lunch barely without any drinks, you know, and but it really the freedom then that they have to just serve and the heart change that they said that for them as being very prideful culture that they were

before self-made farmers, they, this one farmer friend of mine said, he kind of got it backwards. He said, he, he thought he loved his workers and his people. He took a good, you know, good care of them and all that, the people that worked for him in his business. But he said, God told us to rule the land and love the people. And he said he actually realized later that he loved the land and ruled the people. And it took losing his farm to get that heart change that he said he was worth losing his farm over. Wow, that's amazing. But that's the way God works, right? It is. He takes the stuff away from us so that it opens our eyes, resets our priorities. And I love the fact that this, you know, what they're doing and what you're doing here, you're trying to do the same thing here, and we certainly do need it.

And it would be good for people to start preparing before something really catastrophic happens here. But the thing that I think is really key is the fact that you're not just trying to come in and help them materially. You're looking at the whole picture, as you talked about, you know, family, creating a strong family, your faith, your finances, as well as the farm. That is the key thing. You're dressing all of this together instead of just focusing on one little aspect of it. And I think that is so important. Yeah, it is. And I think that's, you know, as the church, what people are looking for

in the world is hope. And the hope is not just in some nugget of information, you know, that we can share with them, but it's in a life, a personal life that is experiencing transformation in the same struggles that everybody else is dealing with. And that we are then just passing it along to others. And unfortunately, for me, I'm most, I'm really passionate about agriculture because I feel like it's a agriculture and creation stewardship is an element of what we've been given stewardship of as the battleground that it is the spiritual like either jesus is going to have you know rule and reign over it or the enemy is and when the enemy comes to kill steal and destroy we shouldn't be surprised when when we've abdicated we fail to you know bring uh the the the principles of scripture to bear on how should we view this

as christians how should we not just say well what's permissible a lot of us a lot of christians a lot of the farmers in the u.s are christians but i've realized that many of us are reflect not reflecting our own fate in the way that we farm not on purpose but just because we haven't evaluated it and there's a lot of problems that we don't want necessarily, whether it's poor health or unsustainability or lack of profitability, but it all kind of boils back to if we aren't experiencing, um, increase or profit or like, um, abundance in an area in our life and, and, and not in a prosperity gospel sense, but there's this principle of if you're

faithful with little God will add to you, right? And as you measure, he'll measure to you. So if we're losing money, if we're losing health, if we're losing our kids, if we're losing all these things, maybe we're saying, maybe God's telling me I'm not being faithful because he keeps taking away from me. And maybe I need to reevaluate, you know whether what it's like i was reading the other day if we want to shine as lights in ephesians it says we need to find out what pleases the lord and as farmers we're never going to do everything perfect because we live in a

fallen world and we all have different starting points but are we asking the question when i go out to take care of my lettuce plants when i go to to raise a chicken, when I go to do whatever I'm going to do, am I trying to find out what pleases the Lord so that I can grow in that? And then not only do I get vegetables from my garden, but I also get to experience more of him in the process, which is the real reward at the end of the day. That's right. Yeah, I think we can apply that lesson whatever we do for a living. You know, we've seen with technology and everything that's there, we're constantly being moved in a direction where we're more obsessed with the technology that we're using.

We don't see the bigger picture of things. And I think that, you know, that can happen even to farmers, how much more so to people who are not farmers, who are working on, you know, that can happen even to farmers, how much more so to people who are not farmers, who are working on, you know, outside of, you know, God's direct creation. You know, we're working at many different levels away from it. And I really do think that that is a key part of what we're – I certainly know that the people that I know that have started homesteading

and working on farms are some of the happiest people I have seen, especially because they're doing it themselves or working with their hands or seeing God's creation in what they're doing. And so I think that is – and tell us a little bit about this training sessions that you've got. What do these things look like? You've got one a month that is happening. How long does it last? And give us a little bit of detail about what that looks like. Yeah, so our family, we spent 13 years running a small-scale market farm where we sold kind of organic vegetables and meat and eggs. And then a couple years ago, after some of the things that we've learned, we really felt like God had kind of given it to us to be able to equip the church to be more faithful in agriculture.

So one of the things that we've done and trying to take some of what we've learned from Foundations for Farming and implement it here in the United States is we're trying to develop some very simple tools, very simple kind of recipes for people to be able to get started on a good foundation if they're going to get, you know, start growing some of their own food. So our tool for that with gardening is what we call the Wellwater Garden Project. And that's a very simple 20 by 20, 20 foot by 20 foot garden that teaches all the principles of observing God's creation, of good management, of sharing, you know, genuinely your faith in the way that you do it intentionally. And it's a kind of a paint by the numbers thing. Here's how you space your crops. Here's how you put in your bed. Here's how you take care of them. Because not everybody needs to be an expert in every area. You know, God's called each of us to different domains. I'm not a, you know, self-defense expert, but I love learning from somebody who is so

that I can be adequately prepared for whatever responsibilities I have in that. So I kind of feel the same thing with agriculture. You don't have to be a chef to cook lasagna. You just need to have a good lasagna recipe and how to follow it doesn't mean it's the only lasagna recipe or the best lasagna in the world but it does help more people to be able to share around their community the joy of making and eating lasagna so that's what the well water garden project is and we've got some free pdf at the well water garden project.org that people can download to be able to walk through and plant their own and then our trainings in particular we are focused on helping impact as many people as

possible to grow some of their own food by training trainers so we really are encouraging every family who grows a garden to pray that god would bring two people a year for you to teach how to grow their own garden using yours and your experience so far. And at that rate of multiplication, you would have a million gardens starting from one in 10 years. So when we look at how many millions of people around the world are on the verge of real food insecurity, it's really normal everyday people being faithful to do what Jesus said, not just do, you know, like do good works, do what Jesus said, but it says, blessed are everyone who practices and teaches these commands. And I think the commands of Jesus apply even how do we take,

how we grow food in our own backyard. And that's, that's what the training that we do in April and May is a training for trainers. So it is equipping people to plant a garden, to follow, you know, to learn the whole process that we teach of, like you said, a simple system, and then also how to go back and teach people in their own community and to do it even if they have no agricultural experience. And of course, that's one of the, you know, one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it to others as well. So it really drives at home to you. If you, if you know it well enough to teach it to somebody else. And, uh, if you're, if you're watching them try to do it, uh, you talk about how, um, let's give a couple of, um, uh, samples

of, uh, the type of things that you're talking about. simple questions to create an easy but effective garden plan what type of questions yeah so planning we always tell people is you know daunting to some people and it's like what everybody else sometimes lean on too heavily but planning is just a part of faithfulness because it's trying to answer ahead of time the questions that you're going to have to ask anyways right there's a lot of questions when you plant a garden where you're going to plant stuff what you're going to plant when you're going to have to ask anyways, right? There's a lot of questions when you plant a garden, where are you going to plant stuff? What are you going to plant? When are you going to plant it? So planning is trying to answer those questions ahead of time so that when you're actually in the moment, you don't have as many decisions to make.

So we've kind of boiled it down to four questions about the garden itself and then four questions about the crops that you're going to grow. So the four questions about your garden is why are you planting it? Because the motive behind it is really important. Is this, who is this for? Why is this? Is this food security? Is this just nutrition? Is this for beauty? Is this to teach somebody else? That's going to determine how you design your garden. The second is who's going to take care of the garden. A garden is just a reflection of the gardener. So you can't have a garden without a gardener. And you need to make sure you match the garden with the labor and the skill level that you have at your disposal to take care of it.

Then the fourth, the third is where will you put it? And then what are your space, you know, space limitations and those kind of things? And what's your site? And then how big will it be based on you know some of the previous questions then the last four questions once you got your garden in you've got a good site and you've got a good foundation for that is who are you growing uh the food for when i was growing for market a big part of our success was knowing how to identify what our customers value because you can be a really good farmer and gardener and if you grow something that at the end of the day was 100% successful crop and yielded a huge harvest, but nobody wants it, you haven't added value to anybody's life, right? So overproduction is the

worst form of waste. So identify who it is you're growing for and make sure that you're not growing something that you're going to drop off or they're going to harvest and be like, I don't care about this. I had a friend of mine who was trying to serve a community with a garden and he realized nobody cared about the food at this point in time. Right. And he grew flowers again the next year. And it was one of the biggest, most popular things in the community because everybody wanted flowers because he was able to identify better, like what it is that this, that garden

was for. And then, you know, based on what, what who it's for what are you going to plant that's the second you know the second of the four questions and then where will you plant each of your crops and that has to do with rotations and you know organization of the garden we give tools and help people understand how to lay that out simply and then there's just the scheduling when you're going to plant it and for for me, like I'll have a calendar you can see in my back wall here. And I just write down once I get all this plan, I'll just write down this week I'm planting spinach. And I can look at the way I have all the questions I've answered.

I know I know the spinach goes here and this is how much I'm planting because this is how much we need. And here's the spacing is going to be. And I just go do it. And it's a whole lot of fun because there's not a whole lot of stressful questions to answer once I actually get out into the garden. That's great. You mentioned the thing that was a fundamental insight was that he could do the planting without any plowing, without any tilling. So how does that work? How do you, what do you do instead of that? How do you get the seeds in the ground? Yes. Well, it's amazing. All the plants that we see growing out here that's not part of my garden in Alabama, they grew without

any plowing or any fertilizer or any chemical sprays or any of that. And they look a whole lot better than most of my stuff. So God already has in place an amazing natural fertility system. And the plowing and tilling that we tend to see today is different than what, like when the Bible talks about plowing, their plows were more of like a pointed, you know, you talk about you beat your plows into, you know, your plows into sorts and you're, you know, it's just, it wasn't like this huge thing. Yeah, I can't remember. There's one verse where it goes one way and one where it goes the other. And, uh, and so it was just, it opens up the ground and scratches it where it's a minimally disturbing it just like the birds do, or, you know, when an animal goes

and roots up in the forest, a seed that's laying on top of the leaves will get in touch with the dirt and that seed to soil contact all of that's all it needs to grow. And what we often share with people as we go out and we just show, we look in depth in natural creation and the soil and look that natural soil has life in it. It has an amazing system of microbes that are continuously fertilizing the plants. It has strata. It functions in layers. It has a continuous application of organic matter on the top and all these amazing things that, yeah, it's not sin necessarily if you plow it, but what we're doing is we're destroying that natural fertilizer factory that's in place. And we have to come in with a lot of synthetic fertilizers and kind of over, you know, overcome that. So

when the simple method is all we do is when we're putting in our garden is we say, how can we remove the weeds initially without disturbing the soil as much as possible? So we'll do that by either just cutting them off right at the surface and like you'd remove sod or we'll smother it. You ever left something out in the lawn too long? Yeah. Coming, the grass is dead, right? And then we'll add compost on top of that and mulch on top of that. And then the worms and the bugs come in and they make the structure of the soil kind of like a loaf of bread or a slice of bread. It's got air. It feels firm, right?

It doesn't feel fine, but it's got up to 70% air in it. It will wick moisture up and keep it near the roots of the plants. It's stable so it doesn't wash away. It's got plenty of channels for the microbes to do their things in what we tend to do is plant in flour just straight flour you know that's pulverized and it seems loose and nice but it actually is more ends up being more of a growing medium that we have to inject fertilizer into and becomes more and more dead over time. So it's, it's a very simple system that is incredibly effective, even here in our Alabama red clay soil, that seems like you would have to break it up and plow it to be able to

grow things. And you don't, it's amazing. It really is counterintuitive. Every time I do it, I'm like, this should not work. But it does. That's really interesting. How do you keep the birds from eating the seed that you put out? Or do you just put out more seed knowing that they're going to? What do you do about that? Well, we do cover the seed up. And we teach people that, you know, from understanding a biblical worldview, a biblical worldview is just knowing the story that we live in, right, of history. We live in a world that was intended to be one way. God had And then for some of those, that heart to then

apply a degree of redemption to creation currently, but we're still in the midst of this broken world looking forward to the ultimate like restoration of anything. So we're not going to have the Garden of Eden right now. We're still going to deal with death, decay, disease, disorder, all that kind of stuff. But we will, there is a beautiful picture of that redemption when we come and apply that so part of our job as gardeners once we plant the garden is we've got i always teach you there's three p's that you've got to do once you plant your garden you've got to provide for it so that means you know maybe it's support maybe it's water like a trellis to grow up or you have to water it you got to maybe add some extra fertility through some more compost or a chicken manure tea or something you give it and then the second p is you got to protect it there's all sorts of things that want to you know threaten your garden and so i've got

a fence around mine i've got some frost cover on it right now i've got to watch for the bugs i've got to watch for all sorts of things because the reality is a lot of us are growing vegetables that are not native to the climates we live in. So they require a little extra babying because they're from the Mediterranean or somewhere. And then the third P is you got to pick it. You got to make sure you get out there and take care of it. But as far as the birds go, we cover the seed up so that we make sure that they can't actually see that. But we also expect when I was doing my market garden if i can get 70 of what i plant to harvest then that's a good you know i'm always factoring in that that 30 margin

of just some things aren't going to make it and that's okay and that's part of the the process of humility that's great uh you you have uh wellwateredgarden.org is that is that correct that's a website where you talk about? Yeah, that's the resource, the free resource where people can download that. And then redeemingthedirt.com is where people can go to learn more about the trainings if they want to get equipped in that resource more in depth and actually learn to teach people in their own communities because we really need an army of biblically um of christians with a biblical perspective on creation stewardship where we can teach people to use what they have at their disposal in their own communities to feed themselves because once you get to the point in our nation where food shortages affect people's meal today there's going to be so much demand for

people wanting to know how to grow their own food that it's going to be unmeetable. That's right. And so I really want to focus in this season of time that we have of equipping as many people to be in these communities to say, I can serve you. I'm not in the same boat you are. I've started with my family and I'm here with what I have to serve you. It's so easy to fall into this mentality of protect ourselves from the poor and the people who might not have anything in those kind of situations. But in Psalms 41, it actually says, if you make a plan for the poor or if you consider the poor, God will protect you from your enemies, provide for you in the land in times of trouble, deliver you from your sickbed. All the things that we as preppers sometimes are trying to attain, God said, I'll take care of those if you have a heart for the poor, if you use what I've given you to share with the same people who were in the boat you were just a little while ago before Jesus started

helping you in these areas. And I think that's the DNA that I want to equip the church with so that we are in a position to really have an army of harvesters for the harvest, both of people that want to return to stewarding the land well and rebuilding our local economies, but also that then are hungry for hope spiritually when what they've normally been hoping in has failed them. It's so true. And if you look at what the plan is, the plan is to isolate us. The plan is to shut us down and to have us all in our fed, whatever they want to feed us, in our own little cubicle, small micro apartment or something like that. They don't want us meeting together.

They don't want us going to church. I think this is the perfect counter example to that. Teaching people how to, you know, understand how to provide food for themselves, building a community, building faith in each other. I think it is the perfect counterbalance to everything they've been trying to push and are going to try to push against us. That is one of the ways that you've got to push back in terms of building a community, building things up from the grassroots level,

and it ultimately is going to be the food. I mean, we can talk about people storing all types of things to protect themselves and to be able to barter with, and all that is important, but you've got to have that food, and at the same time, you're building a community. I think it's a great plan. Tell us a little bit about, um, uh, why the well watered garden.org. Is there something specific about the way that you're saying,

setting that up or is that just the title that you came up with in terms of keeping, taking care of the garden? No, I love, I love that question. The well-watered garden comes, that term is not really referring to the way we irrigate the garden or anything. It really refers to the heart behind the garden, which comes from Isaiah 58, which that whole part of Isaiah 58 is where the nation of Israel is saying, you know, God, we're having all these problems, and you're not blessing us. It's like you're not hearing us. And we're rending our clothes and fasting and doing all these religious things. You know, why don't you hear us and heal our land? And he basically comes back and says, the fast that I'm looking for is that you clothe the naked,

that you feed the hungry, that you have a heart for the poor. You have the same heart that I have for others, to show that you belong to me and that you care about me for the poor you you have the same heart that i have for others that you to show that you belong to me and that you care about me and he says if you do that then one of the things that he promises is that we'll be like a well-watered garden um in like an arid area in an arid place like this beautiful vibrant example of life of light in the midst of darkness and that's the heart we really want to have behind the Well Water Garden Project is where it's really an others-centered motive for planting a garden. This is not a fear-based self-preservation idea, but it's an idea that if I'm faithful, and if I share with others, God will then be the one that provides for me. And at the end of the

day, that's our only hope, right? In all these kinds of things, because everything's out of our control much more than we think. And we want to be in a position where God says, I will add to you if you're faithful. I will add to you if you're generous. And if you have, if you prioritize what I prioritize, which is the last, the least and the lost, because that's really recognizing that's all of us without Jesus. And as we experience that hope and change, if we're really experiencing it, then we'll want to pass that on to other people. And so the idea of that well-watered garden is really referring back to that heart based in Isaiah 58.

I really love that. And, of course, we saw that with the farmers that began all this stuff in Zimbabwe. What a different approach than you would expect, right? Rather than fighting it or running from it. Okay, you're going to take the land. Let me show you how to grow food on it so we can all eat. That's just amazing to me. But it is really the heart of Christ and the heart of God.

And I love what they did. I love what you're doing with this stuff. I'm anxious to see, uh, your well watered garden, uh, dot org website. I really do appreciate what you're doing now. Thank you so much. And, uh, people can find out about, um, and I'll just give you, uh, give people a couple of bullet, uh, uh, points that are here because I think it's very important and we didn't talk a lot about a lot of the specifics here, but you did

mention the eight simple questions about creating an effective garden plan. And of course, there'd be a lot more detail in that with the seminars, uh, clear a spot for your garden without plowing or tilling make thermal compost and natural organic fertilizers. Cause that's a key thing. Uh, that's one of the things that everybody is, uh, you know, when they're trying to put the farmers out of business in the Netherlands, they're actually turning fertilizer into contraband.

It's like, you know, trying to smuggle drugs across here. We don't want your fertilizer in here. That's the way they shut the farmers down. And so, you know, making your own. Lay out garden beds with a simple system. Allows for ease of management, space for a variety of crops crops plant seeds or transplants with simple spacing system easy to follow easy to remember care faithfully for your garden with three simple tasks train others what you've learned all this stuff as well as alternative off-grid

energy and backyard chickens give us a tip for protecting our chickens well i have yeah i could probably write a book on how to how how chickens can die because there's a lot of different ways that they can do that um but no just a really good uh fence a really good shelter a really good dog there's a lot of different ways that you can you know provide physical or you know biological ways to protect uh those those chickens but a lot of this just has to do with go out, and when you have a problem, God sometimes gets our attention through these things because he wants us to come back and ask him. There were some, one more story, some guys in Africa

were in a village situation. They had been trained by my friend Brian Oldreef on how to put in a garden and some plots. And one of the questions he had taught them is, you know, to ask God when they faced a challenge, you know, to say, what does my father do? And they had the problem of elephants getting into their garden. That would be hard to take. Yeah, like you can't even build a fence for that kind of thing, right? And so, they just said, all right, well, we'll just, Brian taught us to praise and ask God. So, we'll just ask God. Well, God showed them that elephants don't go near their own manure. So, they went and collected some elephant manure, put it around their field, and they had no more problems with elephants. Wow. So sometimes, you know, it's just that's why I say to become the

greatest farmer requires the greatest humility. Because, you know, Joel Salatin is one of the greatest recent modern day livestock innovators. And he is always like, how does God design things? Brian Oldreave went back he kept to a point of i don't know how to do it how do you do it lord and like you said in so many other areas but most of the time you know how it is i'd rather go to my phone then stop and pray there's just a spiritual block because it requires a humiliation of degrees for us to say i don't know it and ask god but if we can learn to do that, God is just waiting. He's the master farmer.

He has the solution to every problem and he is ready to share that with us. And if we knew personally the best farmer in the entire world, and he said, you can call me up anytime. Why wouldn't we do so? Right. And we do, we do have that. And that's those kind of testimonies is then what gives us the opportunity when we share with other people about our own garden that we can point back to that experience

where it's not just a oh by the way let me tell you about jesus but it's like i was at my wit's end and then i asked and the lord showed me this and then it's genuine yeah that's amazing i've seen seen pictures of elephants just for fun pushing down trees. I mean, there's not anything that you're going to do to stop an elephant, but they don't like their own excrement. That's interesting.

That's great. I love that story and the other stories and I love what you're doing, Noah. And again, people can find this at redeemingthedirt.com. That's where you can find out about the training sessions. They have them coming up on a regular basis. If you want to start building your community, think of a better way to do it than to help other people to grow food and to all the other aspects of this. And, of course, you have the free site at wellwateredgarden.org.

Thank you so much, Noah. Great talking to you. Yeah. Can I share with you one more resource for your students is redeemingthedirtacademy.com is a free online training platform where it has a community and training videos and all that. If people want to get a sneak peek and go ahead and get started in some of the material, we have hundreds and hundreds of farmers and gardeners and homesteaders from all over the world that love Jesus and love farming and gardening on there, sharing resources, learning together. And if anybody wants to really get plugged in that community,

they can go to redeem their academy.com and sign up for free. That'd be great. Okay. Super. Yeah. We'll definitely check that out in our family. Uh, thank you so much. No, I really do appreciate what you're doing. It is a real blessing to see something that is positive like this. We talk about all the different problems. We talk about the threats that are coming. Here is a solution, folks, an amazing solution. The common man. They created common core to dumb down our children.

They created common past to track and control us. Their commons project to make sure the commoners own nothing and the communist future. They see the common man as simple, unsophisticated, ordinary. But each of us has worth and dignity created in the image of God. That is what we have in common. That is what they want to take away.

Their most powerful weapons are isolation, deception, intimidation. They desire to know everything about us while they hide everything from us. It's time to turn that around and expose what they want to hide. Please share the information and links you'll find at thedavidknightshow.com.

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