The Rich Roll Podcast - Soil Whisperer Hendrikus Schraven On All Things Permaculture

Episode Date: December 9, 2012

In today's episode I sit down with “soil whisperer” Hendrikus Schraven — a noted expert on permaculture, soil biology and rejuvenation, sustainable agriculture & lifestyle, factory farming, GMO's, Monsanto, Proposition 37, nutritional density and what “organic” really means. Hendrikus is a wealth of information and inspires with his unique and in depth perspective on the core and fundamental nature of food and nutrition and leaves us with some tips on how to be a better food consumer, and person in general. [NOTE: Getting feedback from folks listening on iTunes that the audio levels are low. Apologies — looking into it. We are still very new to this and working out the kinks, so I appreciate your patience and understanding.] Thanks for listening. Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below. And if you haven't already, you can subscribe on iTunes. [Apologies for the poor audio & production issues with the trailer video. We'll do better next time.] SHOW NOTES * Hendrikus Organics * Hendrikus Sustainable Environments – Design Gallery * Dairy Council “The Science of Imitation Milk” Anti-Nut Milk Campaign * “Big Dairy's Latest Smear Tactic” by Andy Bellatti for Grist.com. A look at the truth behind the Dairy Council's “Real Milk Comes from Cows” Campaign * Hendrikus Media – Videos & Articles * Hendrikus: Compost Tea: A Superdrink for your Garden Read more HERE. Enjoy! Rich

The Rich Roll Podcast. All right. We're back. The podcast. I'm here with Julie. How are you doing? Doing well. How are you doing?

I'm doing pretty good. Glad to be back in the studio recording yet another episode of our brand new podcast. We're having a lot of fun. We're having a great time. Yeah. Thanks for everybody out there who's been supporting the show. We are off to an amazing start, and we really appreciate all the early support, the great comments that you guys are leaving on the iTunes podcast page. So keep it coming,

and we promise to continue to try to deliver some solid content. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately,

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I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. That's right. We have an amazing guest today.

We do. Today we have. Today we have. I'm very excited about this guy. I have a lot to learn from what this gentleman has to deliver. He is the soil whisperer. That's a good one. Yeah. Hendrikus, how are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for the intro there. Thanks for coming today. I appreciate you taking the time to be here. Hendrikus Schraven, although he just goes by Hendrikus. You got it. It's like Madonna. He's that iconic. And I look a lot like Madonna. Yeah, you do. For the listener out there, he's a beautiful gentleman with long flowing blonde hair, very handsome. And Hendrikus is an amazing talent. He is an expert in sustainable agriculture, permaculture. He's a wizard when it comes to

soil. And we're going to get into talking about what's wrong with our soil how it can be rejuvenated we're going to talk about factory farming we're going to talk about gmos and a lot of these kind of hot button political and health issues that are in the zeitgeist right now and hendrikus is the man to set us straight and educate people. People ask me, so what do you actually do? I say, well, I'm actually in the health business, in a sense. It's true. It's true.

At its very root core, the foundation. The foundation. Right. So tell us its very root core, the foundation. The foundation, that's right. So tell us a little bit about what you do. Well, what we do is a lot, but the soil and organic fertilizer aspects. I'll lead you into it a little bit, how it all came about. I grew up on a farm in Holland way back, right after the Second World War. Right after the Second World War, of course,

the chemical revolution took place, so to speak, because of all the leftover stuff of bomb making, which was then used for agricultural fertilizer. I didn't know that. So they had to repurpose all this sort of chemical? Yeah, you know, it's obvious how you can actually get a truckload of fertilizer and add some diesel fuel and blow up an entire building in downtown Kansas. Yeah, we've seen the results of that.

Yeah, we've seen the results. that. Yeah, we've seen the results. So the stuff was bomb-making material. So, of course, lots of leftovers. What are you going to do with it, right? And, of course, if you have pure nitrogen, you start throwing that on your soil, and all of a sudden, kaboom, lots of stuff started growing really fast. So they thought, oh, awesome. You know, we can use this stuff. We can use this. We can sell it. So, and that's what they started doing really fast. So they thought, oh, awesome. You know, we can use this stuff.

We can use this. We can sell it. So, and that's what they started doing, basically. And that's what I call the chemical revolution. You know, they just started literally telling farmers they could get more production faster, more for an acre of land, et cetera, et cetera. So, of course, that also happened where I grew up,

and I was just a kid, and we were spreading this stuff with our bare hands because nobody told you any different, you know, you don't know. It's the same as with asbestos and all these type of things. So, what happened is, you know, like, I mean, my, literally, I was bleeding around my fingernails. So as a kid, you were working on the farm. It was the family farm. Oh, yeah. It's a very old-fashioned farm. We didn't even have a tractor. We had horses and a plow.

So I grew up like most people's grandparents did, you know. So, you know, plowing the fields with two horses before you went to school kind of thing. And then after you came from school, you're back to plowing the field. But then this chemical thing was really, really bad. And I looked at my dad at one point. I said, you know, growing food shouldn't hurt. And I said, this is something wrong here. But the food's growing. I mean, is the farm more productive? Are you selling? Is it more profitable as a result of this?

Well, I mean, when you looked at it over a period of years, and this is how the chemical stuff works, right? So it's like if you're really tired and you drink a cup of coffee, you get extra energy. But that doesn't mean you're not tired anymore. Yeah, there's a yin and a yang. Right. So if you keep on drinking that coffee to keep getting that energy, but instead you

need nutritional food to sustain your body, your immune system slowly goes to hell, right? Let's look at it that way. And when the immune system goes to hell you get diseases so if you if you compare that to to the chemical farming if you keep on adding those chemicals slowly surely or in some cases fast depending on what's pesticides are being used you're killing off all your microbiology. That microbiology in the soil keeps the soil aerated, keeps the cycle of life going. Basically, one eats the other.

You know, the transformation from plant getting the sun, excreting sugars out, attracting bacteria around their root system. Other bacteria eat those. They discreet the amount of ammonia, which turns into nitrogen. And all of that stuff happens, right? You basically kill that with using those chemicals. So slowly, surely, in order to grow what you are growing, you need to keep using more and more chemicals.

Right. And you're getting more and more diseases because there's nothing to combat it anymore. So then they come up with all these solutions from one chemical to the next. This will kill this disease. This will kill this disease. It's like if you're getting sick because you're only drinking coffee and eating Twinkies, and you go like, oh, my God, maybe I'm eating the wrong Twinkies. No, you're not getting the nutrition here.

And that's why you're getting the diseases. But what's happening throughout, especially in America, is everybody is sick all the time. And because there is no nutritional value in the food, right? So you get diseases, and then they come up with all the pills to so-called heal you. Well, there is absolutely no way in the world that they want to heal you. The pharmaceutical business is over $600 billion business. No, they're very invested in people getting sick and remaining sick.

Yeah, I never thought about that, but it really is analogous to, I mean, you know, we're addicted to all these pharmaceuticals. I saw some stat the other day, like 65% of people are on prescription medication. 70%, 70% as of right now are on prescriptions. And one begets another, and then you have to take another to treat this. And they're all basically symptom-based. Yes, and they're symptom-based. So that's what I was saying.

So instead of going to the origin of the problem, you're trying to subdue the results of the problem. So if you have naturopathic medicine, that goes to the origin of the problem. It's like, okay, where is it really coming from? If you have a headache all the time, is it your head or is there something wrong with your liver? So you go to the liver, you go like, oops, liver needs cleaning, headache gone. And that's what real medicine is all about. You go to the liver, you go like, oops, liver needs cleaning, headache gone. You know, and that's what real medicine is all about.

And real growing of nutritional food is the same. But to get back to this farming thing with all the chemicals, so we actually stopped using these chemicals on the farm. You convinced your dad, or how did that go? Well, it was my brother, my sister, who are a year older than I am, they're twins, and it was the three of us who basically said, you know, this is no good.

We used to do just fine, what's the problem? Wisdom from the children. Yeah, but the old man goes, you know, well, yeah. I said, well, plus you're using more every year to get the same results. How long is this going to last? At that point in time, I didn't really know anything about microbiology or anything like that. I had no clue, but I did know

that if I went to the fields with my father, he would just take a handful of soil and smell it. Of course, I'm a little kid, you know, I'm four years old, and you go like, okay, why is he smelling the soil? So I would grab a handful of soil and smell it. It's the scent of the soil that will tell you how healthy it is. Because if you go into a forest and you go into the duff and you smell that, it has a particular scent to it. And it's a real fungal-dominated scent.

Right. If you go to a field where you're growing vegetables, it has a different scent. It's sweeter because it's more bacteria-oriented and not fungal-oriented. So you have difference. So you have the. So you have the fungi, you have, you know, of all these different guys that do all their different work.

And so I didn't know about all of that, but I did know that when the soil smelled right or when I didn't. And as we kept on using the chemicals, that scent started to go away and my my dad he got that part he goes like damn it just doesn't smell the same anymore right i'm going like yeah the stuff is if it's if it's making my fingers bleed around the fingernails so what the hell is it doing in the soil you know and we're growing food on this something's is really wrong with this picture. And we stopped. We stopped using chemicals. And so all of a sudden, we were called, probably one of the first, if not the first,

organic farm in Holland, because we stopped using chemicals. And before that, you weren't called an organic farm. Before that, you were just a farmer, right? Everybody was just farming. And now all of a sudden it's you are an organic farm or a non-organic farm what i see for the future is that it will just become farming again that day will come where it just becomes farming it's not called

organic or non-organic it's simply how life is supposed to be so you think you're you're you're optimistic that we're heading in the right direction, irrespective of corporate interests and factories, the factory farming behemoths and all of this that's going on. They will hang themselves. I mean, they're already in the process of that, right? I mean, you can't sustain what they're doing. It comes to a breaking point.

If your soil flows away in the winter when it rains and it blows away in the summer when it's dry, and there is only one thing that keeps that together from happening, and that's your microbiology. They form a glue. So if you look, I have a good video. It's called Life in the Soil. And it's actually taken by a Japanese farming community.

And they used $250,000 microscopes and filmed all this stuff, which you cannot see with your bare eyes and it really goes into what's really happening in that soil live and what really happens when you use these chemicals it's it's a no-brainer at that point in time and so so this is the good part and these these videos and i've gotten permission to use them in my talks and things like that, as long as I don't charge for them. We'll put links up to some of these videos in the show notes. But, I mean, if you look at kind of what's going on right now,

and you educate yourself, and you watch Food Inc., and you kind of have a general sense of what's going on right now and you educate yourself and you watch food Inc and you kind of have a general sense of what's going on. It's pretty clear that the system is very entrenched and the lobbying groups and the corporate interests, et cetera, are, are, you know, extremely powerful, um, hold sway over everything. There's a, there's a seamless integration between these interests and government policy. And, and that is quite, you know, that's quite an aircraft carrier to turn around, right? So where is this,

you know, where is it going in the short run and where is it going in the long run? Well, in the short run, it's disastrous. In the long run, it's if you, what just happened in California, you know, with getting the labeling and gmo thing happening right so just for the listener um if you're in california you're probably aware of this and i've been talking about it a lot and tweeting about it a lot but prop 37 um was on the ballot uh was on the ballot this year and it was a measure that simply, it was a pro-information

measure. Basically, all it said was, if it passed, that food manufacturers would be required to label their products as to whether they contained GMOs, genetically modified organisms, or not. And it seems to me to be a no-brainer. It doesn't even need to get into the ills or the pros or the cons of GMOs. It's just a right-to-know thing. And yet, you know, Monsanto and these other behemoths were able to, you know, spend enough money and lobby successfully enough to defeat this measure, which is extraordinary to me. The good news is it created a dialogue around this issue, which is very important, and we're sitting here talking about it today, so that's a good thing.

But the fact that it didn't pass was really shocking to me. And so I want to get into GMOs and what is a GMO? Is it bad? Is it good? Well, you know, first let me… But let's backtrack. I didn't mean to interrupt your train of thought. What's happening, if they are spending $40 million, right, in advertising, right, that means they're scared. Okay? So that hasn't happened before right it's definitely

an indication of running scared and this is going on we were talking about this before the show uh and also i tweeted about it like two days ago the uh dairy council is in a similar position right now where uh you know they're they're seeing dwindling market shares for milk products as a result of people wanting to get healthier and being more interested in almond milk and coconut milk and rice milk and hemp milk and soy milk and the like. I mean, I remember even a couple of years ago, you would have to go to a health food store or Whole Foods in order to find these alternative milks. Now you go to Ralph's or any, like, basically in the States, like a typical grocery store, and they have these products.

They're readily available. So it's definitely, there is something going on, and people are interested in this, and it's eating into their market share in a big way. So they've launched a couple campaigns. The second one just came out this past week, and I'll put a link up in the show notes. If you just go to gotmilk.com, it's a very crafty marketing message

that is trying to dissuade people from drinking these nut milks and trying to convince them that it's imitation milk and it's not the real thing. And while it takes you through this kind of real fun, um, kind of retro, uh, sort of cartoonish. Yeah. Like let's, well, yeah. How do you explain it? It's sort of like those old educational films when you were a kid, like in the fifties, like it has a very fifties vibe, like, you know, you know, in the imitation milks, guess what's in there and they try to make

it sound like these things that are in these milks are are bad for you and and all these chemicals and all that kind of stuff um but they don't really turn the turn the microscope on themselves and the truth of the matter is if you just put almonds and water in a bite it makes you've got almond milk so yeah pretty much simple yeah but but anyway sorry I interrupted you again it's it's the amount of what they need

to do now and what they're trying to do to counter what the people want so if we if we have

programs like this and and there's many you know where people are talking about it and some people might know

you know have seen a light flickering somewhere but they don't know exactly where it's about you know where people are talking about it. And some people might know, have seen a light flickering somewhere, but they don't know exactly where it's about. They can listen to programs like this where people come on and say, okay, this is really what's happening. So the reason I say it might be a positive thing, but all hell will break loose before it happens is because we're on the edge of that razor's edge

where our society will either go one way or the other, or some of this society will go down and the others, you know, go into the future on a completely different level of consciousness. So that also has to play with it. It's not just all the pros and the cons of this and that there is a consciousness that is happening where people are getting more aware

as that grows they will fail there is no other option because it doesn't click with nature like what I said in my talk too if a book and nature don't agree throw away the book.

Because basically, you know, it doesn't function. And once people understand that what's going on, and if you're out there and you're popping pills left, right, and center because of every disease known to mankind that is harassing you, your family, and your friends, you might just stop and think, how in the world is that possible? Why wasn't this happening 60 years ago? Why all of a sudden every four Americans dies of cancer? That's an epidemic, and nobody talks about it. And there's cures that come available and then those people are harassed, like using hemp oil for fighting cancer. And these are

amazing things that are happening, but they're all being subdued. So they're waging a war, so to speak. They're putting an enormous amount of money into that war to keep their bureaucracy and their pocketbook alive. And that's what's going on. So I'm saying it will fail. It's just a matter of time. Well, and I think that's why it's all the more incumbent upon the consumer to vote with their dollar um like we talked about

with when we had chris jabe on the show the other day and also uh mediums you know like this show you know i mean for example you know it is becoming increasingly more and more problematic to rely on mainstream conventional media for your information because they are as conglomerate as any big company. There are a lot of vested interests in controlling the flow of information and the news that we receive. Podcasts and technology and the internet and all the resources that are available to us are almost like radio free europe i mean you really need to um you know you got to seek it out and

you got to want it you got to you know find it but we're in an amazing place uh we have an amazing opportunity to to truly educate ourselves um well beyond you know kind of what's in the textbook and you know what we what we tune into on you know the nightly news on one of the three or four major broadcast networks. And so, you know, I think that, you know, it's great to be able to I mean, listen, you're not going to, you know, Peter Jennings or 60 Minutes is not going to have you on to tell your story. Right. And so but we have this opportunity here where, you know, I'm going to let you talk for as long as you want to talk and speak the truth, and hopefully we can start to tip that scale a little bit. Because I think that because these interests are so powerful, there is a groundswell of public interest in change. But until it reaches a certain condensation point, like a tipping point, nothing's going to change. We have to keep spreading the word and keep connecting and keep reaching out.

But I think people are ready to take responsibility for themselves and stop listening to some organization or a government or something they've been told their whole life. So, yeah, I mean, you look at, you look at these so-called elections and stuff like that. It's, it's, it's, it's just a freak show, you know, let's face it. And I don't care who's running for that matter. You know, they're all crooks as far as I'm concerned, but, you know, I've had my dealings with the government over the years, you know, and I know what takes place. The fact that people need to understand is you do not become president of the United States without paying the piper. Yeah, absolutely.

And that's just a fact, you know. So it's either the unions are paying a guy's way in with the chemical companies, Lantman Santo, and they are feeding them the money. Now, what do you think that means? They have to return the favor. Exactly. So all of a sudden, you got somebody from Monsanto running the Food and Drug Administration. I mean, and you all think that Obama is the saving grace and the change. Well, he says he is for change, but he never said what kind of change.

Right, exactly. So it might be taking you right into the dungeons. It's true. change. Well, you know, he says he's for change, but he never said what kind of change. It might be taking you right into the dungeons. It's true. He's well-intentioned. And, you know, I think that he, you know, in his first campaign, I think he was genuine, but I think that the system is so entrenched. He doesn't really have that much control over changing that many things. I mean, if you look at all the things he wanted to do and what he actually was able to accomplish, you know. I mean, it's true. But for me, I just always simplify it down. And it's exactly, you know, what we've been talking about this morning. It's like, it's about what ingredients do you begin with?

Like, what are the ingredients that produce the energy, whether it's soil, whether it's food, or whether it's an organization or a government or a political party. So it's like you can't make an amazing soup with spoiled food. You just can't. And no matter how much you pray to it. No matter how much spice you put in, it's not going to be good. It's going to be a bad soup.

So it's about taking that awareness to sort of the purity. And I mean, what touches me so deeply sitting here with you. And I mean, I could spend hours with you. I'm just, this is such an honor to have you here and to be able to have this conversation. Is just the sort of connection to the soil as a pure model of our own connection to life. It's your intuition. See like i'm i might as well spill the beans you know i was i had just turned 15 for like three days which was my last day in school ever that was it never went back um and the one of the reasons were first of all i couldn't

learn where to darn and i couldn't figure out what they were talking about most of the reasons were first of all I couldn't learn we're at the dorm and I couldn't figure out what they were talking about most of the time because I lived in my world and in my world everything functioned the animals functioned with me the plants

functioned with me and I'm going like and I had no idea what they were actually talking about most of the time and what I do now in my talks you know I tell and I'm going like, and I had no idea what they were actually talking about most of the time. And what I do now in my talks, you know, I tell people, you know, it's about intuition. You know, so all my soils and the fertilizers that we came up with and all the goodies I do are all based on intuition. I will sit somewhere and something will come to me and I go, ah. And then it takes me literally five minutes to do the actual so-called

invention, but it takes five years to prove it. Because you have to go to all the scientific. So when I was telling you before, we have this book called Soil Dynamics. So we developed all these erosion control soils that will stay on extremely steep slopes and it can pour down rain and it will not erode. And even without growth on it, you can watch our videos on that. And people say, oh, so what's the secret ingredient?

That has to be that pill, right? And it's not a pill. It's a balance between all things that make it work because that's what nature has been doing for the last millions and millions of years so all i'm really doing is listening to nature and and then applying modern technology to speed up the process so you know if if we put that soil down that you know if i'm on a steep slope and it had a landslide for instance well that soil took tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of years to get there it takes nature an enormous long time to build up a really healthy soil layer it's it's

like you might get like half a millimeter a year if you're in a really healthy place. Because you might see leaves there and the leaves are like a foot thick on the ground. But once they start to decompose, you literally have no more than half a millimeter of that. So if you start counting, if you have a region that has, say, a foot, two feet of topsoil, start doing the math. How long that took to get there. So if we start messing with nature, where we don't have the microbiology to hold stuff together, we have water running off in the wrong places because we do too much hardscapes,

we have chemicals, we have pesticides, we have chemicals, we have pesticides, we have buildings, we have streets, the creeks are contaminated and everything else. It ends up in one major disaster after another. So what happens is when we go to one of these places and we blow our soil back on these steep slopes, what we're basically doing is doing in one day what it would take nature tens and tens of thousands of years to do. Right. So just so people are clear, Hendrikus has a company called Hendrikus Organics, HendrikusOrganics.com, where you can find out all about

what he's doing. There's a lot of great information there. But essentially what you do is you offer organic fertilizers and soil rejuvenation programs, and you will go to a site like you just described and help to repair the damage that has been done by whatever was there before, right? Right, correct. Help the soil get back to the natural state and the balance that it needs to flourish.

And whether that's on a farm or whether that's on a steep slope, it doesn't really matter. It all has its own characteristics, and soil should be abundant so you could grow high nutritional food in it. Not just organics. I've eaten organics that don't taste very good. And why? Because it might not have chemical fertilizers or sprays,

but the nutrition isn't, the balance isn't in the soil for the plant to uptake the necessary nutrition. So I believe in high nutritional organics, not just organic. That gets into a whole thing that I think people are really wanting clarity on, which is the average consumer goes to the store and says, I know I'm supposed to buy organic, but it's more expensive. Is it really that different? And there's been a lot of debate about whether, yes, something that's organic doesn't have the pesticides in it if it's properly labeled because there's a lot of misuse of that label and confusion around that as well. There's a lot of manipulation there.

But let's just presume for the sake of this conversation, there's a banana that's purely organic and then there's a conventionally farmed banana. And there's been a lot of debate over whether the organic banana actually has more nutritional value. And there's studies going back and forth on that. But what you're saying essentially is it's unclear because it depends on whether that organic soil is properly composed to allow the food that's growing out of it to absorb the minerals properly and incorporate that into the blossomed fruit or whatever. You got it. That's about the problem. Yeah, so it's not an easy answer. Just because it's organic, you don't know.

It's a much more complicated thing. Yeah, so the best thing to do is, like if you have a big grower, like we're selling our fertilizer to Al in California. He's not too far from San Francisco. And he's got a 158-acre orchard, you know, food farm. And he was already really high on his BRICS testing. So if anybody wants to know what BRICS testing, BRICS testing, in short, the simple version is

it shows the sugars in your fruit, your vegetables, etc. So the higher the sugar content, that means the more nutrition. That's where it's based on. So a larger firm can do the bricks testing and they can they can see right there and then what their nutritional value is right so if you and you with your mouth can do the other one you can right you can you can you can take a tomato or a strawberry or whatever else and take one that's chemically grown take one that's, and take one that's chemically grown, take one that's organic, and take one that's organic,

and try them all. And then when your taste buds go like, wow, this is the one. The smell is right. The taste is right. Your taste buds don't lie. So do you think that's a reliable indicator, you think, the taste?

Well, of course. That's why we all, you know, we have to start understanding something in this world we have become so reliant on on on technical equipment and so-called science right we've been living mankind and animals have been living on this planet for a long long time there was no labs a couple of hundred years ago. There was no scientific books. There was no, how did those people know what was good for them?

They knew because they still listened. They still had the intuition. They didn't need all the proof. The proof was in the pudding. You eat that apple, the proof is in the pudding. If it tastes like wax, it looks like an apple. They didn't need all the proof. The proof was in the pudding. You eat that apple, the proof is in the pudding. If it tastes like wax, it looks like an apple, it shines like an apple, but it don't taste like one,

like, go figure, because it has no nutritional value. Then you go and get an apple somewhere that is just juicy and sweet, and you go like, wow, now that's the apple I remember from when I was a kid so so your taste buds don't lie so instead of having to read all these books all the time you know or do a do the arm testing which with your with your partner or with you with your friends you know hold one in one hand and and and do the arm testing your muscles will be stronger if it's the

right stuff versus the wrong stuff it's a simple there's so many simple ways of testing well we had this experience we stayed when rich raced last year for ultraman we were on big island and we stayed in this farm in javi and we, I was cooking right out of the ground. So I just walk a couple steps, pick, you know, whatever I wanted to and cook. We were having like vitamin K overload. Like one kale leaf, we were just, you know, completely maxed out. I mean, yeah, we buy, you know, organic kale from the farmer's market in California or from Whole Foods or whatever.

And we would use that in our salads and in our Vitamix blends or whatever and it's good and all that but it was literally like one kale leaf out of this ground you know and you were like whoa that's enough you know like it was enough like back off on the vitamin kale so and then also at Common Ground same thing so we're having the same experience so is that just the island is it's the soil it's the island weather like the balance well i mean obviously it's it's nice so you can grow stuff 12 months out of the year here you know this is the best part of it right but but to get back on on on this this this tasting and and how this all functions. If you're killing your soil, it can't possibly grow stuff the way you...

I got a good story. I went to China. I was invited by the delegation of the Chinese government, and I traveled around China for like six weeks with the former secretary of the chairman of China. And we went to all these regions I mean talking about hustling you know we I was all over China we're tourists and never go and looking at farmland and they would put feast up for me like you wouldn't believe I mean you

know I was like treated like a god. And they had these big dinners. And I don't eat a lot. I don't need it. I ate like a horse there. I mean, literally. And I was always hungry. Why? Because the food looked like food, but it had nothing in it.

And the reason I was in China is to look at the devastation of soils. That's why they traveled me all to China. And I encountered thousands of acres that look like the salt flats. They had salt on top of the farm soil. They see what also happened, everybody has to understand, when something gets banned in America, for instance,

like a chemical, these guys, sure, okay, well, damn, can't do it in America anymore. They just ship it to China, to India, to wherever else, and start pounding it on the ground. So they were using three times the amount of urea, which is a chemical nitrogen, than they were doing in the States. basically they destroyed their wells they couldn't pump anything but salt water and they were going four or five

hundred feet deep right and and i told them i said there is only one way you are going to get rid of that salt and that is you stop with your chemical fertilizers right now and you have to find organic matter to put in here. Well, we're in China and when I was there, I'm constantly going, what's wrong here? What's wrong? There's something missing.

No birds. Really? No birds. They've either all been killed by the pesticides or eaten. And so there was a whole Really? No birds. They've either all been killed by the pesticides or eaten. Interesting. And so there was a whole factor missing out of life there. It's like, there was no birds. I'm going like, wow.

This is disastrous. The rivers looked like sewers. The land was completely depleted. So in order for them to grow that food they would just pound more nitrogen on there so they could get food to grow it was basically growing straight off of the chemical so there was no nutritional uptake so you could eat like a horse and you're still hungry you know so so you see how that works and they wanted to they wanted the golden pill to go and fix this

because they have over, you know, God knows how many billions of people sitting there. And sooner or later, people are going to start dying off because of starvation, you know. And in America, the funny part is we have like, what is it now? 60 some odd percent is obese, but they're malnutritioned. Right. And I think it gets like malnutritioned obese people. Yeah. Like I want to talk about that. So it's sort of like, you know, are we, uh, you know,

yeah. Are we hungry or are we fat? You know? And it's like, we're both right. Like we're both, we're hungry. You know what? Like we have this epidemic of obesity and we have an epidemic of malnutrition and hunger. And that is the most bizarre, freakish thing, right? But it goes back to something that you said that I want to go back to, which is this idea that, you know, you said, I don't eat very much because, you know, you're eating these foods and they, you know, they sate you, they sustain you. And you go to China and you're eating like crazy and you're always hungry. And it goes, and the reason for that, obviously, is nutritional density. And I don't think that the subject of nutritional density is addressed enough. There's a lot of talk about, you know, in the sort of health and weight loss and diet world, you know,

there's always talk about calorie restriction and your proportion of carbs to fats to protein, et cetera. And people get really, you know, into that kind of thing. And yet they're not talking about nutritional density. And I think that you can sort of, you know, in my opinion, you can forget about, you know, all these proportions and you can, you know, let go of worrying about, you know, your calorie count if you just focus on eating the right nutrient dense foods. And when you do that, you don't have to eat that much because your body will tell you, that's it. I'm done. I'm done. I had enough. Thank you. Yeah. No, when I eat nutrient dense foods, my cravings and my hunger go down and I feel good.

And when you're eating nutrient-poor foods, you can be putting a lot of calories in you. You'll feel full and lousy for an hour or two, and then you're going to be hungry again. Because your body is saying, you haven't fed me. I am lacking the nutrition that I need to function properly. And again, you do not need a book for that. No. Your body will tell you. You just have to know yourself.

But the thing is, and this goes to another thing. Sorry, I keep interrupting you. Go ahead. But we're disconnected from our bodies. We're sort of plugged into a fast-paced urban society. It's like, get up in the morning, have a cup of coffee, got to get in the car and go to the job. And so we're focused on all these externalities. And so we've gotten away from being acquainted with ourselves enough to even begin to listen, let alone trust what our bodies are telling us. And so our bodies,

alarm bells will be going off in our bodies. And then we just reach for whatever thing to kind of make that go away or feel better in the short run. Well, it's just like the earth that we live on, we've created imbalance. We have the imbalance within us, and it all is because all of a sudden we are technologically rich, but spiritually poor. So if you, again, there needs to be a balance. East needs to meet West.

And the balance is in everything. When I look at the work we do, and you say, oh, I have this organic company, but actually what we have is my main part of what I do is extremely creative. I create landscapes. You know, I create living spaces. And these living spaces, when I'm done with it, they have to give an aha moment when you walk into them. That is also food for the soul.

That's also food for the body. It's not just food. It's everything. It's all interconnected. So in our society right now, all the schools tunnel vision into a particular thing. He's a scientist. He's a welder.

He's a truck driver. He's a carpenter. And nobody knows anything from each other's world. Bad scene. Because that never used to happen. If you were a farmer way back when and you needed to fix something, you better know how to be a carpenter also. You better know how to be able to lay a brick. You better know how to be able to fix a piece of equipment or know when your horse was sick. It's like, you know, you had to be multi-talented. So you had to put your feelers out in all different directions all the time. But it was a natural phenomenon because that's what

life expected from you. If you start cutting that off and you drum this garbage into these kids in their so-called schools that don't teach them really anything except the tunnel vision, where is the balance? You don't have a balance. And so I deal with architects. I deal with engineers. I deal – and it's cookie cut. Everybody's gone to school. They get a PhD, whatever that might mean. And so now they are an expert.

No, you're not an expert. You basically learned a format, and that format has been in place for X amount of time. And frankly, folks, a lot of these formats are wrong. And you have to wake up and smell the coffee because it doesn't work. If you have different regions, you have different soil conditions,

you have different wildlife habitat, you have to pay attention to these things in order to make your world function in the place you live. If you take an area and you move into that area to go live as a human, you have to have respect for what's around you so you can work with it, not against it. It's not an enemy, right?

But this is how things are viewed. It becomes the enemy, and it's not the enemy. It's just the challenge of life. And I think that's just the challenge of life. And I think that's pretty much what's happening. If schools would actually educate people in both learning things and using their intuition, you would have a balanced school. Absolutely. And I think in the future, because this one is failing miserably by the way

this this this process we're into now in the future that is how balance is going to happen okay yeah and i mean within your creativity i mean you're really talking a lot about this intuition so the intuition is listening listening being aware you know being conscious actually you know taking a minute to stop and it's really the answer is not in the mind the, you know, being conscious, actually, you know, taking a minute to stop. And it's really, the answer is not in the mind. The answer, you know, the answer is really in your heart. Yes. And how you function. And, you know, you, you love, you love the rock work I do and stuff like that. And people go, how do you do that? I'm going like, well, the rocks tell me where they want to go. No, but let me just take it but let me just take this opportunity to just say that as a designer and artist

and as also a being who is very connected to intuition and very into the flow of things, when I came upon your extraordinary work at Chris Jabe's house, I said I think this is the most beautiful pool and landscaping i have ever seen in my life and uh you're just extraordinary you're very tapped in you have an amazing ability to work in harmony with nature and all the natural elements and bring this sort of simplistic just iconic beauty to what you're doing integrated Integrated and in harmony with the environment. It's incredible. Not disruptive to what was there before.

And we'll put up a link in the show notes to some pictures of some of your work. Yeah, cool. Yeah, some amazing stuff. He really is an artist. It's really cool. But also getting back to what you were talking about, education and learning.

And, you know, our system is set up so that we're focused upon, you know, absorbing an incredible amount of information in a short period of time and then regurgitating it on a test and sort of then forgetting about it and moving on. I failed every test I ever did, by the way. Whatever you're studying, and, you know and I'm a product of this system, but I think whatever you're studying, it's like you said, there's a format and you're learning a program. And sometimes that, and then when you sort of complete that

and go into the world with your quote-unquote level of expertise, that can create a closed-mindedness or there's an ego attachment to that saying, you know, I did this, so I know, and you don't. And I think that we would all be better served if our education system put a greater emphasis on, on, on, on, uh, the, the, on how to think and how to, how to critically approach problems and how to look at, at a situation expansively and how to think and how to critically approach problems and how to look at a situation expansively and how to challenge authority and create people who are self-sustaining and able to have the gumption, I guess,

to take a look at something and say, this isn't right or that isn't right, as opposed to just repeating a program, repeating it. And what does your heart tell you? I mean, we can't separate ourselves. I mean, your gut, your heart, I mean, everything comes in here. Does it feel right? Does it not feel right? Start to listen to that again.

People go, well, I have this premonition. Well, good. Use it. Activate it. Delve into it because you will get more and more of it. And that is part of you. And you will actually feel when it's right or when it's wrong. And sometimes, you know, like I have a no flow day.

You know, I'm setting my rocks and the rock doesn't want to go in. And the rock will definitely give me one hell of a hard time. He's like, oops, sorry, I was not flowing right now. It's like, better put that rock aside. Just doesn't want to go there, right? It's like, what was I thinking? You know, I was trying to take control and that was not good. Rock says, no, that's not my spot.

I'll come later. And so I've learned to trust that. And then it wants to be beautiful. You know, the world wants to be beautiful. It's just us that is like fighting tooth and nails, like, no, we want it ugly. But yet a society we have accepted the fact that that's normal so when you are so-called normal right you throw the people that have vision into the nut house because they're too scary for you because they're all over the map and you can't handle that you need somebody who stays focused you know and but focused in the wrong way. We're not talking focused about life. We're talking focused about what works for your corporations or for your politics or for your religion.

And that's not it, you know. I mean, don't follow these things. I mean, follow yourself, you know. Just listen to what it says. And that counts for all these things, I mean, follow yourself. You know, just listen. And that counts for all these things, you know, and since we're talking the whole thing about the organics and the taste and the buds and, you know, your fingertips are

sensors. You know, when you grab that soil and you smell it and you feel it in your hand, if you start trusting all of that stuff, it will start telling you things. It really does. And everybody can do this.

I mean, when I was a little kid and we were on the farm and my grandpa was dousing for a well, because we needed to dig a well for getting water to our cows. And so I was just a little kid. And I'm going like, wow, this looks pretty awesome. And I go, can I do this, you know? He goes, oh, yeah. He was kind of a grumpy guy. He hands me the willow sticks, and I'm walking around, and bingo, right?

And he goes, well, that means you can do it. He took things back, and that was the end of it. I'm going like, wow, this is cool stuff. And later on, I didn't do much with it for a long time, and then I started really getting into it. And so I doused for wells. I doused on maps for people. I call it long-distance dousing.

Because your energy is on the map, you know, like if you would send me a map from California, and you say, hey, I want to do something on my property, and I want to know where my power points or power spots are, or if there's water, or if there's ores I have to be careful of, because I don't want to be sleeping on them and get myself a tumor later on. All of the above, which our ancestors commonly did, which is normal. They sensed these type of things. Now it's called something special, but it's not special. But I'm kind of a speed freak, so these little

two sticks thing wasn't working very well for me because I want to move right so i got myself this dowsing rod it's about two feet long and it's a single dowsing rod so i can actually run with it and it will give me my signals and and i use a pendulum and things like that on on drawings or also on on the land and you just simply become a channel to where that is. It's not you doing it. You're just opening yourself up to be a channel to do the dowsing. Then you can do the body, the etheric body.

You can check for diseases. So the dowsing goes a lot further than just looking for water. Most people are familiar with somebody looking for water. But it goes much, much further than that. I mean, and there is some really amazing dowsers on this planet. I worked in Arizona. And this old American Indian guy, he didn't use a stick. He didn't use a rod.

I go, God, this guy is awesome. He would just walk and he would just stop. And he goes, here. And it's like, wow, this is pretty cool. I can't do that one. You know, I mean, so he went. Just so, if people don't know, dowsing is where, when you're looking for water underneath the soils. Well, that's one of the things. Those two rods that are like at a right angle, right? Right. There's numerous different ways.

It's either two copper rods or you can use like willow sticks because willow is connected to water, right? Willow, water, because they always grow where the water is. So you use the willow sticks. They're already more tuned into water than using a juniper stick, for instance. Copper also, because copper, why do we use copper on our roofs to ground into the earth? Because it's one of these grounding type of things. So you can use the copper rods very, very easy.

Everybody can do this. It just takes a little bit of patience sometimes. Don't make it a mind thing. Don't make it a mind fuck. Don't think about it. No. Feel it.

When I went to the pyramids and I doused the pyramids, I mean, don't make it a mind thing. Let it come. And even no matter how strange it is, because that's, you know, the pyramids were a good one. You know, that was, you know, wow. You know, and, you know, I have a whole story on the pyramids. I wrote a at one point but I didn't put it out because you know I'm just

artist businessman you know and I need to keep my company going yeah well to a point where everybody thought oh this guy is totally freaked out and he's nuts and this is not how the pyramids were built you know so like I set big rock okay I work with real big

rock I mean I there's some like you know heavy discussions's some, like, you know, heavy discussions going on right now about, you know, when the pyramids were actually built and that they're actually far more ancient than people thought. Oh, they are so far more ancient than they were never... We could go down the rabbit hole

on that. No, there were never tombs. No mummy was ever found in the pyramids. You know, Not even one. Everybody knows that. And they were tombs. They are amazing things. I spent six, seven weeks there dowsing.

And if you ever want, I'll tell you the whole story. I want to know the whole story. We'll have you back for a special pyramid edition of the podcast. It's pretty incredible what really happens. So let's get back to food a little bit. You split your time between the Seattle area and here in Kauai. And tell me a little bit about, you know, what your company does in the state of Washington and how you work with farms and the activism role that you've played in kind of, you know, speaking out and going around and working with farmers and trying to, you know,

help people repair the soil and kind of coming up against, you know, this sort of corporate resistance that's going on right now. Well, I mean, it starts back, you know, this sort of corporate resistance that's going on right now? Well, I mean, it starts back, you know, when I first came and I ended up in Seattle, started a landscape construction company, you know, and I couldn't buy any organic fertilizer that didn't exist. You know, there was only chemicals. So I started going to feed and seed stores and bought like rabbit food, cattle food, you know, in bags. And I would mix that so I could get the right amounts of everything. And that's what I would then use on my landscapes to fertilize my soil. Because everybody says, oh, you're fertilizing the plants. Actually, you're fertilizing the soil that fertilizes the plants.

And it's actually microbial food fertilizer is really microbial food that's what it really is and so I go like okay I got to come up with something so I started making all these concoctions and and I used them for many many years and everybody goes man you should put this stuff out, you know, and blah, blah, blah. But as opposed to a lot of the organic movement, especially at that time, was like, oh, you use this, and you use that, and half of the time it would stink to high heaven,

and, you know, all of that stuff. I'm going, this is not going to work, because I was doing these multimillion-dollar estates. I was doing, you know, anything from there to just your average neighborhood home. And people don't want that around their house. They don't want to have it smell like a chicken farm or something like that. And if they didn't mind, the neighbor would mind. So that didn't work.

I'm going like, okay, so we're on planet Earth right now, and this is how everybody thinks, so what do we do? So that's when we came up with making it what we have today, which basically means that anybody can stop spreading their fertilizer and their spreader, wash it out, put my product in there, and go. It's done. It's that simple. And that's what makes it simple.

See, you always have to have simplicity to a certain point. You know, when we first started recycling in Seattle, you know, all of us knew each other, all seven of us. And so we would meet at the Safeway parking lot and put our glass and our tin cans and everything in this drum and it would take forever to fill up it's only seven of us now it's being picked up at your doorstep to out entire Washington

so if you look at it and that doesn't necessarily mean that everybody needs to know exactly why they're recycling I'm just happy they're doing it and I don't really need everybody to fully understand what's in the fertilizer as long as they do it so that we we start creating a more healthy environment and

so you have you have the fertilizer issue you know and then you know originally I was mixing this stuff in a, in a, in a cement mixer in my brother's garage. And I, I had this bag stitcher, you know, and I would get the bags from the guys from Starbucks because they started pretty much the same time as, as I did. And I was one of their main guests because I was European. I knew good coffee and I was, yeah. And there was this little, yeah, yeah. This little, this little hole in the wall in Pike Place coffee. And I was, yeah. This little hole in the wall in the Pike Place Market. And I would go in there every time. And they would go like, oh, wow, we have

this and we have that. And we'd just sit around. And I would do the coffee tasting with them. I'd go, yes, this is a good one. They were so paranoid. They'd go, oh my God, we put our last dimes into this thing. I hope it works. I said, don't worry. America needs a good cup of coffee. Trust me.

Because I was having my mom send me coffee from Holland because I couldn't drink the crap they had here. You know, I'm going like, this is unbelievable. They had like B&G and Folgers and all of that stuff. I'm going like, and unless you were in New York, a little Italy, you couldn't get any good coffee anywhere. So I figured, well. It's hard to imagine, you know, America before Starbucks, but it wasn't that long ago.

It didn't exist. I know. It didn't exist. I mean, so you can say what you want about Starbucks, but I mean, at least they got something going that revolutionized us getting a better taste bud. You know, so if you, you know, like with food, you know, like the reason people get fat and obese and mild malnutrition is because of the drugs, of the MSG, which has, God knows what,

30 different names now, so you can't even tell what it is. But it's in that food, so they constantly, it's far more addicting than some of the hard drugs on the market. Yeah, and then people go to Europe and they watch how people eat, eating these very rich foods and living a relatively slower pace of life,

and yet there's not an obesity problem. Maybe there are in the central metropolitan areas, but not like we have. So then Americans come back to America and go, well, it's the diet. But it's actually, it's not, you know, it's not a license to, you know, pour butter all over your food and cream sauce or whatever. I do. I love good butter.

But I think that it goes back to what you're talking about, the way that that food was grown and harvested. And, you know, they're not eating all day. They're eating, you know, a higher nutrition density, you know, meal than we are. And they're not like, you know, eating Cheetos all day long. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Like, ooh, real sustainable food right there. But, you know, everything like that, everything in limits is perfect.

You know, like, I mean, when I was growing up, you know,, we would visit grandma. One of the first things we would get, we were little kids, three, four years old, we'd get a bottle of beer. We were happy kids, trust me. I bet you were. We were getting a bottle of beer. And this was very normal. If you go to

France, the kids drink wine. Italy, there's no problem you know it's not oh my god arrest this man he just give his child alcohol well and you're not drinking to get drunk then so exactly it's just it's one of these meal or part of what does that mean i don't understand that does not rich doesn't understand that he's a recovering alcoholic well you know except you what is the point of that? Yeah, what's the point of it?

Well, because it tastes good and it feels nice. And, you know, like a good red wine will break down the fat cells. So, of course, the French have a lot less trouble with heart disease than Americans because they drink their red wine. It breaks down the fat cells. It balances things out again. drink their red wine and breaks down the fat itself but it balances things out again and

like these people you know when they first came up with all this stuff weren't nuts you know they knew exactly you know and a good beer is good food it's nutritional if it's grown the right way and made the right way it's like drinking some food you know but not with the grains that we

grow today that would go into those kind of products right of course you know so everything has changed you know we all today that would go into those kind of products. Right, of course. So everything has changed. We all know that. But when you look back and you have this stuff happening, and it's absolutely okay to have a beer with your family, or there was no such thing. When you say no all the time, you mean yes.

Right. Look at those evangelists that have been preaching God and damnation, and they had a hooker on the side. Because when you're so dead set on saying no all the time, that's what you crave. So basically, you can read between the lines any time at all, and you know these guys are just full of it. And it takes a mob mentality to follow that kind of system at that point in time, and that accounts for politics,

religions, and anything else, so-called schooling. So that's why I go like anybody who's in school, start questioning the stuff that you're learning and why you do not have your intuition as part of the teaching in your schools. What's wrong with that? Or start homeschooling or start looking for alternatives. Yeah.

I mean, or, you know, at least question, you know, I mean, and if you can't afford to homeschool, I mean, we also have a society where it's not necessarily possible. It's not really set up yet. Yeah, it's not set up. But at least... I think just learning to, you know, think critically is important. And I think that, you know,

when it comes to educating your kids, I mean, that comes, it's from the top down. I mean, that's got to come from the parents to instill that kind of, you know, watchful eye in their children. Not in, like, a paranoid way, but just, like, do your kind of, you know, watchful eye in their children. Not in like a paranoid way, but just like do your own research, you know, take responsibility for your decisions. Don't necessarily, you know, take everything at face value and, you know, learn to look at things, you know, it's sort of like the Steve Jobs apple, you know, think different or whatever,

but there's something to that and, to that. Out of the box. So to speak. Just ask questions. Understanding that the education that you've been told is so important that you have in the current format might not be serving the future.

And so there's a need for a shift in awareness. And the magic pill doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. But we need to question and we need to try to listen to intuition to let those new forums come in so that we can help each other and share person to person. So I did a lot of stuff, you know, talking about all of that. I gave talks all over the States also, and so to farming communities, landscape communities, golf courses, DOTs, you name it, you know.

And one of the main things I would always repeat in a class was intuition because obviously I've come up with some incredible stuff as far as my soil technology and all of these things I have structural soil which can grow a lawn and you can drive a semi over it and it will not sink so it's the balance again and so talking about all of this stuff and it will not sink. So it's the balance again, you know.

And so talking about all of this stuff and all these people in these classes was quite amazing. I gave classes at the ICA, which is the International Erosion Control Association, for many, many years. And some 60 countries would be present, you know. And so a lot of people learned, like,

different approaches to what we have. As an example, you know, if you see freeway work going on and they're trying to keep something from eroding, they will just only look at that, keep it from eroding. I'll put concrete on it or I'll put rocks on it. But what does that mean? You have forgotten about percolation because that area used to be perking.

So where is that water going now? You're basically sending it down the road, creating more problems somewhere else. So you're not only losing that water percolation, you're losing transfer of evaporation, you're losing wildlife habitat, you're losing an enormous amount of stuff. So if you go to a school and they instruct these guys to basically

learn erosion, be a geotech engineer and learning erosion control, and this isch engineer and learning erosion control, and this is what then you come up with, you are lacking in the awareness of looking at the overall picture. And that goes for farming, that goes for landscaping, that goes for anybody who is working with the soil. You have to look at the overall picture, not just one little aspect of it,

because that's what you've been taught in school. And that's where the school danger comes in, I think, and, and because it's one-sided, you know, and it needs to be completely full of humanity, of why we're here, what we're doing, and what our soul's growth is, and what sustains that, you know. That view alone, if you went to life like that, you are going to gain a lot of knowledge because it's simply the universe will just keep on giving. It won't stop. So I want to get back to, you know, you're sitting at Starbucks, the first Starbucks in Pike Place, and you're coffee tasting with the founders. And you're developing these radical organic fertilizers. And you're starting to learn about the biology of the soil. And this sets you on this path towards becoming this sort of artisan alchemist and learning about soil ecology. And so I just wanted to kind of fast forward a little bit and talk a little bit about,

you know, what is this soil biology concept? I mean, you know, isn't dirt dirt? And, you know, what's the difference? And quite frankly, like, why should I be interested in this? Like, why should I care as a consumer? I'll back up for a second because of the bags, right? I used to get the burlap bags from Starbucks because they didn't know what to do with them. They had all their coffee shipped, you know, from Peru and God knows everywhere. And they had all these bags, burlap bags.

I was like, awesome. So I would get all their burlap bags and that's what I would put my fertilizer in. And I had my bag stitcher and I would sell it to a couple of landscapers that were into changing their ways and stuff like that. Those bags would probably be worth more than the fertilizer you had in them

if you still had them and sold them on eBay as the original Starbucks coffee bags. Yep, that's what we had. And basically I had mountains of those bags and that's what we were using. So it was a process of love. I mean, it still is. I you know i like to make money actually on in fertilized sales is a tough way to go sometimes but uh but you know we do all the other stuff you know so that that that helps out

but you're basically your question on on why and how is is what happened is I was making all these soils, and somebody said to me, hey, there's this woman in Oregon that has this lab, and she's a professor at the university there, blah, blah, blah. And they test stuff. I said, oh, cool. They said, you should send some over there. You know, just, you know, I go, sure, why not?

And what year is this? It's like early 80s or something? No, no, that's later on. I was already doing all of the stuff, but, you know, I was just doing it on my own. I didn't really know anybody else that was doing it. So what I did is I sent a sample out, and I kind of forgot all about it

because I was busy in a job right on Mercer Island, the waterfront and all that good stuff. And this woman calls. She goes, oh, hi, I'm Dr. Elaine Ingham, and, you know, I have a sample of your soil here. I said, oh, yeah, totally forgot about it. I was like, and? She goes, what in the world did you do to that soil?

I go, why? Did I do something wrong? She goes, this is the highest microbial count I have ever encountered in anything that I've been studying. So how did you do that? I said, oh, well, you know, I take a little of this, a little of that. I feel it. I smell it. And I go, that's it.

She got really pissed off because she thought I was a scientist and I was giving her a line of bullshit. I said, no, no, I'm serious. This is how I do this. She goes, I don't believe that. I said, well, you're more than welcome to come out. So they did. They came to that job site a couple, like a week later don't believe that. I said, well, you're more than welcome to come out. So they did. They came to that job site a couple, like a week later or something like that,

and I showed her exactly why and how I did things. She was, like, interested, the unbelief. She goes, well, we would really like to talk to you. We have a couple of people, that was her and a couple of other guys, that were working on the composty brewer and it came from carl rubenberger he was a he was an engineer in detroit for cars came up with a way of a vortex nozzle that could save you lots of gas in the engine so of course he gets oust because that's not what we want you know we don't want to run

an engine you know 100 miles to a gallon so so he had a farm in oregon and he used his vortex nozzle to start creating microbes because he also had a background in in biology and and he was working with Dr. Lane Ingram and a couple of other people and then I got included in this because of, wow, this is awesome stuff. So that is where I really started learning about biology. She's a professor. She's got $100,000 microscopes.

We had them sitting all over our kitchen counter for months and months and months while I was improving brewers, coming up with different recipes. Because the brewing of tea, if everybody knows what that is, it's an aerated compost tea. So basically what you're doing is you're brewing microorganisms. You go from a million to multi-billions in 24 hours. You use that to spray on your land, to reactivate your soil, to spray on your plants for diseases,

numerous, numerous different possibilities. So, oops, sorry guys. We got a cell phone. And it's that old school ring. But essentially what's happening is this professor reaches out to you and you align with her and she's

able to avail you the resources that allow you to take what you're doing to the next level and really learn and study more in depth about how this biology is working and why it's working, right? But, you know, yes. And the reason that I wanted to say something about compost tea also

is it's not a simple matter of just throwing air in a tank with compost. I mean, if you have too much oxygen not good not enough not good so your food source and your oxygen supply have to be very well balanced if otherwise that whole tea can go anaerobic because the the microbes will actually eat themselves out of oxygen start to die off and it becomes anaerobic so we did an enormous amount of testing to make sure that for whatever brewer it was, that the food source was the right amount and that the air would not dissipate out of the brewers. So that's kind of what we ended up with doing with the whole composting thing.

And we're still doing that today we we have a set up here on the island and we have a big set up in Washington where we have what I call the Rolls Royce of spray trucks that has seven tanks I can do any of the mixes I use I use humates I use all different kinds of things in there it's like that it. It's like a driving kitchen, so to speak, where I can go out and say, okay, the salt needs this and this and this. We mix it and we spray it, or we simply do root injections.

It's like having a driving kitchen and being a little bit of a doctor at the same time. It's like vegan hot truck. Vegan hot truck for farming. So the world that we're living in, at the same time. It's like vegan hot truck. Vegan hot truck for farming. So the world, you know, the world that we're living in and how this all came about and how that just kept on becoming

and going into yet something else is quite phenomenal. You know, because now compost tea brewing is done all over the world. You know, and originally it was just five of us that were kind of spearheading this whole thing. Right. But then, you know, word gets out. People are seeing, you know, amazing results with these products that you're generating and refining.

And suddenly you're the guy. Like, you're the go-to guy who's kind of, and you're getting asked to speak. And you're traveling around and consulting and going to China and doing all these sorts of things and yeah and maybe uh maybe speaking a little bit too much speaking a little bit well you know there was there was this thing in in in in Washington and and you know I was I was invited as a keynote speaker. To what? Because there was a problem. What was happening? This is what was happening.

They started composting everywhere. Especially in Washington. But there is a byproduct called cloparalix that was in the compost, which is a chemical produced by Monsanto. And it was in the compost. So when people started spreading this compost,

all the plants would die. Very good. You know, that was a little bit of a problem, right? So what they did is they wanted to get a handle on this. They invited me as a keynote speaker and invited two guys from Monsanto. Of course, Monsanto... You're talking about Washington, D.C., not Washington State. No, no, I'm talking about Washington State.

Oh, Washington State. Yeah, and so governor there, mayors, and all kinds of stuff. And, you know, some scientists and lots of people in the room. And, well, hall. And so I ended up talking, and these guys kept on coming up, and, oh, this is not dangerous, this is not dangerous. And I did my talking, and these guys kept on coming up and, oh, this is not dangerous, this is not dangerous. And I did my research, you know. And that same product had already been banned in Denmark 15 years previous.

This product, this Monsanto product. This Monsanto product was the so-called inert. Be careful for inerts. And you combine a few inerts together, you have a ticking time bomb, right? So they were trying to prove that, of course, that their products were safe and it was tested. And I had all the information right there.

So I kept on hammering on them. No, you already knew about this. And this happened at such and such a time in Holland. And this happened at such and such a time in Denmark. And you already knew about this, and this happened at such and such a time in Holland, and this happened at such and such a time in Denmark, and you already knew this, but you're still putting it out there. This went on and on and on until finally they had nothing left to say,

and they walked off the stage. And frankly, what I told them, I said, listen, you know, I understand that you're probably fathers of children, and you probably want to keep your job. I said, but if you ever change your mind, come and ring my doorbell. I might give you a job for some real work.

Well, they didn't like that very much. They walked off stage, and everybody thought that was the bomb. I did really well. I had an applause, the whole thing. But then all hell broke loose because I was giving talks all over the nation. And every time I went to an airport, you know, I just got harassed. I mean, literally harassed.

I mean, tickets got looked at. Or like I came from Florida, I stood in line to go to the ticket counter. And they already pulled me out, pulled me in a little room, did the whole thing. So essentially what you're saying is, as a result of speaking out against Monsanto, that you believe that that set in motion a situation that put you on some lists, that caused you some problems with the government, and the kind of seamless integration between Monsanto and companies like that with government policy and the government.

It's not, you know, it's one phone call away from putting you on a watch list or causing problems in your personal life that make it difficult for you to just, you know, live your life. Yeah, and that was, you know, quite a few years ago, 10 years ago. And, I mean, then I really came to realize who owns the government who calls the shots

and because this was a you know what does Monsanto supposedly have to do with the government right? So all of a sudden you find out that that's wow you know it's like they can put that much pressure on somebody and it went on and on and i

you know that's scary i mean it's very scary i got called by tom delay at the time this is doing the bush administration i got invited to go to washington dc be on this panel and i'm going like tom delay tom delay is calling tom delay is calling me personally by the way i'm sitting in my office everybody's just staring at me. He's like, what in the world? Tom DeLay called you personally. Yeah. He's like, hi, it's Tom DeLay. First his secretary, and then I got him on the line.

Right. And as always, invited to go and be on this panel in Washington, D.C. once a month. And my first meeting would be dinner with the president. I go, the president of what? He goes, of the United States, of course, Mr. Schraven. I go, okay. Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer.

Yeah, keep your enemies even closer. And so I said, well, you know, I have some contractual agreements that I need to actually take some time out and see if I can überhaupt do this, right? I was all like, shucks, what am I going to do with this one? This is getting pretty hairy. So I called my friends in Washington, D.C., Toxic Coalition, and they said, who called you?

Tom Boulay. I said, run. So I politely declined that I had too many pre-contractual agreements that I couldn't do it. They were very unhappy. But it was like time to get out at that point in time because it was getting, and then St. Helens Chemical Company got, tried to come

into our company and lots of different things happened. So, I mean, yeah, it's scary. So, you know, basically there's a somewhat idle or not so idle threat for you to tone it down and, you know, that kind of thing. i think it it's you know it's important to kind of take a look at that and and i wanted to you know because we're talking about monsanto i wanted to talk a little bit about gmos um you know a lot like we said earlier there's a lot of talk about gmos genetically modified organisms in our food there's a lot of debate back and forth like this is pushing science forward. It's a good thing. No, this is unhealthy, or we don't know yet. There's not enough information or studies.

As a consumer, we don't know yet should already be an alarm. If you still have to figure out while it's already going on whether it's okay or not, you are already stepping on very thin ice. And that is where the problem comes in. But tell us what a GMO is. Genetically modified organisms. So what happens?

Like you're in Monsanto and you're in the GMO department, or you're in the division that's in charge. So what do they do? I mean, are they creating microorganisms in a lab to help with the intention of their gene splicing with food? Or like what exactly, what is going on? All of the above is going on. And the way it works is so they can create these foods

that will only, by the way work with their chemicals right so you have to use their stuff or it won't grow or won't grow and and and or or you know that is your your your pesticide is already built in into the the genetic exactly the food and you are eating that. That's, you know, like instead of going into all the details of how many and what and what got spliced with what, the basic bottom line is that the pesticides are built into the food. Otherwise, that would be impossible for these plants not to get affected by a normal disease. Okay, so you are eating that.

And that becomes the intellectual property of Monsanto. They own that. They own that. Once you grow it, you have to continue growing it. You've got to buy their products in order to get it to grow and to grow again. Yeah. There is a farmer, and this was, I forgot the talk I was giving in the East Coast.

What is it called again? I'll pop in, you know, old-timers age disease here. I forget things. My computer doesn't function quite right. Sometimes I go like, oh, what was that again? But I was on the same speaking circuit as this farmer who happened to be growing his food, and it got all taken because the stuff

from Monsanto blew into the sea. That's the thing that people don't realize is that the air carries these seeds and then it seeds new land but you don't have the permission to be growing these seeds. Exactly.

And these laws got passed I think during the Bush administration, that then it's their owners of it. You have broken the law. And yet the wind carried the seeds in. This poor guy that I was talking with. What's he supposed to do? I mean, it's insane.

It's insane. But you have to understand that all the seeds on this planet that have been there for God knows how many years, Monsanto is patenting these seeds. Are you like retarded here? And nobody is doing anything about it. There is the biggest seed bank in India. I gave a talk with her in Texas, in Austin, Texas once. She's got now the biggest organic seed bank in the world, I think. And she is really saving all these seeds because basically what these corporations want to do is have like three potatoes, three apples, three oranges, three, you know, two or three and the rest has to go.

And then it will just eventually just take over. I mean, in the kind of... But the danger of it is, if anything goes wrong, your potato is gone. Your apple is gone. I mean... Distinction of a potato. You are playing with a time bomb. Well, and nature always finds a way. I mean, you know, the human being wants to think

that it's conceived and created this perfect food or whatever that is pestilent,ent resistant and all these sorts of things but it's sort of like getting uh you know uh inoculated against a bacterial infection or a disease or something like that like you know these genes these viruses these bacteria they mutate constantly so you get your flu shot and you know by the time they figure out like the strain to create the flu shot, and then it gets manufactured and shipped and you do it, there's an amount of time that transpires. And during that period of time, that flu strain has already evolved

and may even already be resistant to that shot that you're getting. I'm not saying all the time. I'm not a doctor. But I'm saying that nature finds a way, and and and it will it's always changing it is not a static thing and so when you create this genetically modified food stuff and think this is the perfect thing that is not static that will continue to evolve and we don't know where that is headed right right of course while you you do know you know it's like for instance you have the monarch butterflies who who depend on the milkweed that grows with the corn. And their migration depends on them being able to eat that milkweed. And that's non-existent anymore because of that type of problem

that they're creating with all their pesticides. So that right there is a major imbalance. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. These tiny little things, I mean, these ecosystems are so delicate and fragile that you tweak one little thing and the whole thing collapses. Exactly.

And that's continuously where I'm talking about. It's like, and some of these people, some of these scientists actually might even think in their head that they are doing a good thing. Who knows, you know? I don't think they're just downright black and evil. I think that somewhere along the line,

you know, a wire went crossed and they actually think they're doing something good while they're actually destroying the planet. So, which is a very, very dangerous thing. I mean, if you have all that stuff going down into your creeks, rivers, ponds, oceans, killing reefs and everything else under the sun into your water supplies, I mean, you have to start thinking about something.

It's like, why would I have to improve on something that nature did and why would I be doing it now if you have an answer to yourself I want to help humanity out your best is again you have to be a balanced individual with your intuition and your science because if you are not, your mind will tell you you are doing the right thing.

Because you have long ago forgotten to listen to your heart and your intuition. There is the imbalance. So what you're getting is you are getting a creation from people that are imbalanced. Period. Period. Right. It can never go right. It always starts, it always, you know what, it's an interesting, I mean, basically you're saying it's an inside job.

It starts with inside yourself. And that's from which all of this sort of thing emanates. And in the same sense, you're saying the same thing about the soil and the land. It starts with the unseen. It starts with the microbes in the soil that create the foundation for everything that comes from it. And similarly, inside ourselves. It starts with our relationship with our inner self.

And our planet, the soil, is our biofilter. Everything we put in there has to go somewhere, right? So it purifies. It does all these different things. But if we keep killing what is purifying it, then it won't purify anymore. That's why our drinking levels and our wells get polluted. So, and then you need to come up with all kinds of chemicals

to kill what's in the water so you can still drink it, but then has an effect on your body that you can't handle, so you need to take more pills. And it just goes on and on. How about not starting it to begin with? Has that ever dawned on anybody? I don't know. That's pretty radical. That's pretty radical, right?

Too simple. But has anybody ever stood still and said to himself, what am I really doing here? What does my heart tell me? What does my gut tell me? Am I really helping humanity out here? Or am I playing with fire I have no idea about? If you are a scientist and you start cooking up this stuff,

you have to start questioning yourself, am I really doing the right thing? And how does my gut feel? Or do I just want that big paycheck? Right. Why are you doing this? Am I a prostitute to a financial status and a so-called piece of paper

given to me by some university somewhere along the line? Yeah, that is sick in my eyes. It's hard to look in the mirror, though. Well, that's why they probably don't have mirrors. I don't know. But you see, so it's not necessarily what they're mixing. It's why they're mixing. Right.

And what is the end result of it. And that's where everybody has to be careful of. result of it. And that's where everybody has to be careful of. And why would you, as a Monsanto, spend $40 million to not get a label on a food? Why? Because they know it's frigging bad. They already know that. That it's a bad scene. and if they put that darn thing on the label, that half of the people might not buy it and they're not making the money anymore. And it takes their ability to control the message away from them and in the people's hands. And, you know, people need to also understand that, you know, even some of these supposedly

kind of health food companies like Bold House Farms or Odwalla Juice and all these products that are in the grand scheme or scale of things are on the healthier side. They are owned by huge conglomerates like Coca-Cola. And those huge companies are basically on the same page as Monsanto. So Odwalla actually spent quite a bit of money to defeat Prop 37. I know. You know what I mean? It goes deep. It goes way down a rabbit hole.

The very fact that we're sitting here talking about it is already like out of this universe. The very fact that your so-called free America, you need to know what's in your food, and you're not legally allowed to have that,

that in itself is totally probably against your constitution. But then the people of California said, you know what, we really don't want to know. We voted. But it's probably, okay. The people of California said, you know what? We really don't want to know. They voted. But it's probably, okay. Let me explain something else about nutrition. What do you think brain function needs?

It needs nutrition. So the less good nutritional food you give people, the more of a good soldier they become. So you can send them off to fight your wars and get all shot up and then come back and you're being called a hero because that feeds the ego. In the meantime, you're raping, plundering, and pillaging all over the place and you're being called a hero.

It's like it takes a particular mindset or none to do this. And if you get that train going and you get that non-nutritional and there's no brain development happening here, we are in trouble. So I'm not saying this is a conspiracy. You could be saying

are they doing this on purpose it's some matrix shit this is the matrix that we're talking about that's another podcast getting back to what can we do about it it seems such a monumental

wave and again we're always talking about what to do and we're always advocating get in touch with your heart. We're doing it right now. We're talking

and people are listening. Sorry about that. I don't even know how to turn this thing off. That's okay. Chris, you can do it. I want to... you know, we've... Turn it back on. Whoops.

Back on. You turned it back on again. I just gave it to a technician here. Yeah, we got to kind of head towards wrapping the show up anyway because we've kept you for... This has been fascinating, amazing. But I want to be able to give people who are listening something that they can take away with them when they go to the grocery store.

We've given them a lot to think about, but there's still so much confusion about they just want to make the right choice. What can we tell them? What can you tell them that can help guide them so that they can make better choices to feed themselves? And also, I want to get into, like if somebody wanted to plant a garden, how could they begin? And we can talk about some of the stuff that you do. Let's first do the food and buying at the store.

So the more local you can buy and that you know it's grown by local people around you, which is kind of hard to do when you're in the middle of LA or New York, obviously. But the more you can buy from local, where the trip from farm to your plate is the quickest, good. Whenever you go to a health food store and you have all these things that say natural, read the label. Yeah. Because that's- Never believe any, Jeff Novick told me, never believe anything on the front of a package.

Ever. Go right to the label and educate yourself about how to read a label. I'll put a link up on the site about, you know, some information

about how to better read a label. But yeah, never believe anything on the front. Yeah, because when it says natural, it doesn't mean anything.

Right. I mean, you can have naturally pesticides inundated peaches. But, you know, if you look at the natural, go, oh, I'm doing good now for my family.

I'm buying natural. It's like, what do you think it is? It's always been natural. You just put a lot of crap into it. It's occurring on our planet. Right, yeah. It makes it natural. It's occurring on our planet,

so it's natural already. But it's a psychological thing that they're trying to play on you. And that's where the problem comes in and so I look at buy food that is definitely organic certified wherever you can

and buy as much as possible fresh that comes from the farm right in your neighborhood if you can or grow your own and to grow your own you have to grow your own, you have to, of course, you know, where are you, what's your soil conditions, you know, and you might have to do a raised bed and bring in a good foot and a half or two feet of good, of good topsoil to grow your

vegetables in. Four inches won't do, folks, by the way. You know, I mean, and and and most construction say you're you're living anywhere in urban america most construction is is done in a way that that the clearing happens most of the soil is being removed the duff i call it the black gold and scraped down to hardpan the building happens there's lots of contractors coming in and out with trucks. Paint gets spilled. A little paint thinner here and there. All that crap goes on the ground. And then all of a sudden your landscaper comes in.

And your contractor grades this with a D3. Right? So it's nice and clean. And now the landscaper can come in. And he is allowed to put maybe a couple inches of soil down. Those couple inches of soil will do one thing, 100% guarantee, that is create diseases, because nothing can grow in four inches of soil.

So that means, and the neurosis of the American lawn, for instance, say for instance, you're taking your lawn out to put in a vegetable garden, you got the neurosis of the American lawn, it has to be sparkly, no weeds in it, and what have you now, right? So you're trying to grow that on a couple of inches of topsoil on hard pan. Well, those roots aren't going to bury themselves into that hard pan not happening so what you're doing is they're constantly short of food they're constantly diseased because they can't sustain themselves so you're constantly putting your pesticides on so you already inundated that soil with pesticides and god knows whatever else in in the world so if you have one of those houses

and you say okay lawn goes i'm putting in vegetable garden, don't try to use that soil. Let it sit way below. Let whatever filters through your good stuff that you're putting on top get into that soil because the worms will eventually go in it. And as the worms go in, I use this in erosion control all the time. People say, what do you use? I said, I have a slide going. I have hard pan clay. I can't amend that. It's so steep at 60 degrees, forget it. So what do I do? I bring thousands of worms in. Those guys go to work for me,

and they don't take sick pay or holiday off or anything. They're the best workforce I've ever come across. So I put them in. They will bore into that hard pan and discreet their worm castings in there. Then roots follow. So I use the analogy, for instance, if you have one hair on your head and you pull it out, it's easy. If you grab a whole handful and try to pull, it's not easy. So if you have an erosion control thing and

these millions of roots go through the new soil I put on into the subways, it starts to hold everything together again. So if you have a garden that you're trying to build, you want to get a very, very good topsoil, not full of wood chips or bark, you know, especially not like cedar bark or juniper or something like that because it's so high in acid, it's going to rob your soil from nitrogen.

Bad scene. So you want to get a really good soil, very, very airy. Make sure you use a really, really, depending on where you are, otherwise you can buy my stuff online and ship it. But make sure you really create a vegetable garden that is going to function. So your first try is going to be successful. Because what happens with a lot of people, they start trying, and they're kind of Mickey Mousing around around and everything looks a little anemic

and it's like, oh my god. It's none of that stuff. It should be successful from day one. And if you do it right, if you sort of create that foundation with the soil first, then the actual growing part is going to be simple. It's easy. It's a picnic,

frankly. So you invest the time up front in that part and then it becomes easier after that. How many feet down do you like the soil to be treated? I mean, to be your beautiful soil? Oh, I mean, if I amend soil, I amend it a good two, three feet down. Two or three feet. Yeah, if I add soil, like in an area where it's been scraped off, in an area where it's been scraped off.

In all my landscapes that I've installed, my minimum, minimum depth is a foot and a half. That's minimum. But my soil will grow root systems three foot deep in three months. I mean, if you, this is a good one. I did this talk for these landscapers in the Midwest, and there was hundreds and hundreds of people in my talk,

and I asked a question. I said, and these are professional landscapers, all of them. I said, how deep do you think grass roots grow? And I wanted to hear from what they thought. Everybody goes, two inches, four inches. One guy goes six. Everybody looked at him like like is he retarded i said how about like 20 feet and everybody goes what are you talking about i said how about 20

feet how about 30 feet i said have you ever gone in a cave way on the ground and you see little hair roots coming to cracks. I said, roots will grow wherever they can unless you stop them. I said, and here's the example. So I think I sent you this. You know, I'm holding grass and the grass is only an inch and a half tall. But the roots are three or more feet long. And we grew that in three months.

And it's that. So when you have, and you have to start understanding what happens. If you are in a region, and you have a drought, right, and you are constantly watering your lawn, because it can only grow four inches or two or three inches deep, it will dry out within hours. So you're constantly pumping the water on it. And then everybody goes, see, here's that thing. Don't go to the source of the problem.

Try to fix the wound. Oh, we are going to use a cheap irrigation emitters that puts out less water. That's not the problem. The water is not the problem. Your heart pan is the problem. Your roots can not the problem. Your heart pan is the problem. Your roots can't go down. They can't absorb enough nutrients and water to see if you constantly have to be

feeding them, watering them. If you have your root system three feet down and you have a drought, you know how long it takes for nature to dry soil three feet down? A long time. I had lawns in Seattle and they had a ban on watering because they lost all their water. three feet down? A long time. So I had lawns in Seattle, right?

And they had a ban on watering because they lost all their water. And so my lawns were still green. So they thought that I was secretly pumping water out of the lake to water the lawns. So everybody's lawns dry up in Seattle? How is that possible?

Because there is a drought, and if you only give it four inches of good soil and they can't penetrate, you're still in the same. So everybody's lawns dry out except Hendrickus' lawns. So same with your vegetable garden. If you have a vegetable garden and you have good soil that goes two feet down, those root systems are going to retain a lot of that water.

There's a lot of microbial activity happening. And you're not depleting the soil. And you're not depleting the soil. And you're not depleting the soil. So if you cannot get, say, a foot and a half to two feet of good soil for your vegetable garden, don't do it. Don't even try. Don't try. Get a planter pot or something. Do what you can afford, but don't have acid because then

you're basically frustrated. Nothing happens and it's a waste of time and energy. My option is always do it right the first time. Do it right the first time. All right. I think that's a good place to end it here. Hendrikus, you're an inspiration, man.

You're a fascinating guy. Thank you for coming on the show. So if people want to learn more about Hendrikus and his mad skills and products, where do they go? Boy, I have a list here. I know you can go to Hendrikus Organics, and Hendrikus is spelled H-E-N-D-R-I-K-U-S? Yes.

Organics.com. So I have a list here, but I can't read very well. You don't mean to read it for me? Go for it. Well, we'll put all this stuff up on the website. Oh, good. That's a good idea.

And you have a book, right? Well, I don't have a book. I have that, but it's basically to give to geotech engineers because it's very technical. Okay, super technical. Yeah, because I did the testing

in California and, you know, in San Diego at the time. Gotcha. And if somebody wants to learn a little bit more about how they can rejuvenate their own soil or start their own vegetable garden and do it right like you explained, are there any online resources that you can think of, like some good websites where people could start and, you know, just begin the process of educating themselves? Or should they just go to your website? Well, they can go.

I mean, we have links to lots of things. They can go to my website. And if they have questions, they can always call my office, you know. The numbers are on there. And that would be very helpful. I mean, we've rejuvenated a lot of farmlands, even here, you know, that are, because of the growing of the sugar beet and the pineapple and all the pesticides used, you know, there's a lot

of leftover. So we use like things like micro-trol to, it's microbes that literally eat the pesticides, you know, that rejuvenate that land. And then we start adding our compost tea and all our organic goodies and build that land back up in about anywhere from four to six months.

Okay. Where it's healthy again. So it's a fast, fast game. So, yeah, and if you can tell people where to go. We also do a – I'm on a TV program in Washington a lot with gardening with Cisco. I talk a lot about how to do things and the links are all here.

They're all on the site. Go to HendrikusOrganics.com backslash media. You can find that link on his website. You have quite a few shows on there. There's a lot. 50 or something.

Yeah, 50 or so. It's incredible. Media darling. And then please, please. Why put those handsome looks to waste? I mean, the man needs to be on television. I'm going to be on the silver screen. I just came back from Iceland,

and I did a big job for Ben Stiller, and he asked me to be in one of his movies. Oh, excellent. So I just went. I knew he was shooting out there. Oh, and he asked me to be in one of his movies. Oh, excellent. I knew he was shooting out there. Oh, that's cool. That's fantastic. Are you playing like a Viking or something? Yeah, the name of the film is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

Yeah, yeah. And I have a very, very small part, but it's a speaking part, and I had a great time doing it. So cool. And Iceland is beautiful. I can't wait to go there. Was it incredible? It's incredible.

Amazing. You've you gotta check it out that's amazing alright cool alright so let's we gotta get out let's wrap it up alright so Hendrikus

thank you so much you're welcome keep doing what you do man the world is a much better place with you in it so I appreciate you spreading your message

and best of luck man thanks for being on the show alright thank you alright cool thank you all of you guys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's it for today. You want to find out a little bit more about what Julie and I are up to. You can go to Jai lifestyle.com J A I lifestyle.com. We've got some nutritional supplement products there. We've got an e-cookbook.

We're coming out with a vitamin B12 supplement soon. Still not up yet. And you want to, you know what? Julie needs more followers on Twitter. She deserves more followers. Thank you. At J-I-C-J-A-I-S-E-E-D. Thanks so much. And also don't forget our meditation program to connect you to your heart. Yeah, that's on Jaya. Everything Indrinkis was talking about today. We're totally in alignment with that. Exactly. It all begins there, man. Right in the heart, right? And I'm at Rich Roll on Twitter. Thanks for the support on the show.

We're having a lot of fun doing this. Very excited. In a couple days, I'm going to have the fabulous Dr. Michael Greger on the show. We're going to Skype him in. He is the man behind nutritionfacts.org, which is an incredibly helpful nutrition resource where he basically puts up almost a video every single day. They're like two to four minutes long, and he looks at the peer-reviewed research on this issue or that, this disease, this kind of food or whatever,

and just gives you what the research is telling him. It's a nonprofit organization. it's a nonprofit organization. He's a fantastic guy. I had the chance to get to know him a little bit this past summer. So he's going to be joining us. I think we're going to do that show on Wednesday, today's Saturday, right? So in a couple days. So look forward to that.

He's got a lot to say, and I want to give him the forum to do it. And that's it. We're out of here. I want to thank my boys, Tyler and Trapper for producing today's show. They're manning the audio controls. So it's a family affair here. You want to support the show. You can if you're going to go buy something on Amazon, just go to richroll.com. And there's an Amazon banner ad on the blog page and the podcast page so just click there first it'll throw a couple nickels in our pot and help keep this little thing going keep the lights on and it won't cost you anything else so until then until the next episode adieu peace plants

have a good one see you next time Thank you. you