The Sevan Podcast - #389 - Joel Salatin

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

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Sometimes I forget to put myself up there before we go live two minutes early today how come because i was two minutes late yesterday and there has to be balance in the universe if you know what i mean if you know what i mean right now there's crossfit press conference going on i requested to get into that press conference and i was denied i was told that the press conference is for media only i responded with i am the largest media coverage CrossFit Inc. and CrossFit Games has by several metrics, including fastest growing, I suspect, if it wasn't for that damn Andrew Hiller. So I didn't get into the press conference, but I can't wait to hear about it. It's almost better that I didn't get into it because then I can talk about it like hearsay.

Oh, I got some fun will be stuff for you guys in crossfit stuff people are sharing with me tonight oh tonight's gonna be fun we're gonna move alex stein to uh 6 p.m no to sunday night and tonight at 7 p.m pacific standard time i think it's 7 p.m i've checked the schedule i'll be going live with andrew hiller it's gonna be fucking fun i want to say it's gonna be fireworks but i don't know if it's gonna be fireworks but it's gonna be fun you guys will like it i will be in rare form i'll be amped um i like i i like the fact that i i requested to go to the crossfit uh press conference today and their response was it's only for the media i mean that's a jab at me right that's like it's not quite it's good though i appreciate it i wanted to write back nice one andrew because it is pretty funny it's like it's like if i were to ask a girl out and

she were looking at me i only go with straight guys i know gotcha uh we have joel salatin on this morning pretty excited i did not know a lot about him. Uh, and now I've know a shit ton about him. What a small world this is. He spoke at, um, one of the DDCs that's used to be cross what he spoke at CrossFit health when CrossFit health was CrossFit health. And Oh buddy, Dick butter shots fired. You don't even know. It's going to be not. Thank you, Jeff. It is going to be a wild one this evening. It is going to be fun.

It is. I'm going to come out. I'm going to come out shot out of the cannon. We talking about the whoopee. We'll be talking about Justin Berg. There's, there's no point in talking about Dave Castro anymore. Oh, let's just,

let's just look at the facts. Everything bad that's happening at CrossFit Games right now is because of the leadership, Justinberg. And whether it's true or not, it doesn't matter. He's the leader over there. That's the guy. Every step of the way has been a colossal shit show. They got their second biggest sponsor tiptoeing out of the room. I have verification on why they are tiptoeing out of the room. I have verification on why they are tiptoeing out of the room. And, Ooh,

it's just, it's crazy. It's exactly what I speculated. Okay. Back to Joel Salatin, back to Joel Salatin. This guy, not only has he been on a gazillion podcasts,

including Joe Rogan, but he is also, Oh, you know what? I should give him my phone number in case he's having trouble getting it. Let me see. Um, excuse me. Sorry. While I do a little house cleaning here. Uh,

uh, Joel. Here's my number in case you have any issues. My favorite part is I can't wait to find out who was at the press conference because they're going to claim that everyone that they're claiming who went to the press conference is straight and I was banned because I was gay. And I just can't wait to look around the room and be like, no, those guys are gay too. And before someone writes something stupid in the fucking comments, that's a simile. That's not like, that's a simile. That's not like that. That's a simile based on the joke I cracked earlier. I know YouTube keyboard warriors don't get that stuff.

What? Did they ban gay people from the press? I had no idea. No, they don't ban gay people from the press conference. At least not that I know of. Austin, last night I didn't sleep. I didn't sleep much at all. Last night I was like hovering over my body all night. It was weird. I try never to sleep. I just do a energy body every night. That's where you, I just put all my attention on my body. And then usually I am, um,

and then usually I fall asleep pretty quickly, even though I'm trying not to, I sleep on my back with no pillow when i fall asleep and then when i wake up i don't know when that is an hour later two hours later i turn on to my side and i put a and i use a really thin pillow at that point it's like right next to me and i put a really thick long like body pillow between my knees put my arm around it like that what's up with all the attention my forearms are beginning they're just the same forearms i've always had good morning eric whoopee says you should sleep though i know i know and you probably should sleep i do um i i in the middle of the day almost every day i i go vertical also vertical sorry horizontal oh he joel joel um uh i'm trying to get on, but it's asking for camera and mic settings, and I have no idea how to proceed. Wow.

Okay. Oh. oh um oh damn and you know what he warned us i think he warned us he said he said uh can we do zoom i always have problems with other platforms i was like fuck no this will be fine. Shoot. Oh, shoot. Can you call me and I will walk you through it?

Let's see. Uh-oh. Don't give away your phone number on the air that's bad i don't know if that would be bad okay here we go uh send him an email back um i wonder what it's gonna say what we're gonna do here i'm starting to get a little anxious i I'm not sweating yet. That's good. Thick and long. I thought Fikowski was at mayhem. I know me too, but I guess he's not. He's in the back of mayhem.

It's not exactly accurate to say he's at mayhem. He's in the back. The mustache is getting long enough that when I put wax in it, it's starting to like, I'm able to brush it to the sides. Oh, we were supposed to have Alexlex stein a couple days ago um he had a tummy ache then we rescheduled them to today and now i'm going to try to reschedule alex to um um sunday night isn't it funny that the uh while i wait while i wait for joel to respond isn't it funny that the, while I wait for Joel to respond, isn't it funny that the Morning Chocolate posted that article

saying that there was going to be a press conference today? I think that that's the kind of inside information you get. You get to be the guy that leaks the information about the fake press conference because you're the guy who printed the fake story about E. coli and smeared Dave. You get how that works? So I'm speculating, of course, but let's say CrossFit Inc. reached out to Morning Chalkup

and was like, hey, we fired Dave and we want to smear Dave now. We post this article making some shit up about Dave being a bad guy. They then print that article and then to scratch their back in return, they get to post a notification about a fake press conference. And why is it fake? Well, because I was told that I couldn't come. And I'm pretty sure Andrew Hiller is not there.

And I'm pretty sure we're the, we're the biggest guys in the space when it comes to press. Just a little teeny drop compared to the, compared to Matt Fraser, but he's not press, right? Just a teeny little drop. Teeny drop.

Alyssa Carr. Dang, guess I'll have to be the guest. You guys can watch me do dishes and homeschool my kids. Oh, no. I can't believe we're going to drop the ball on this. I did so much fucking research. For those of you guys who don't know, Joe Salatin is...

He's a minister of the land. He's a minister of the land, and he takes that shit seriously. Oh, wow. Okay, well, I'm hearing that the press conference was no bueno. That it was tough to get through. And that the games will be in Madison in 2023. Alright. Alright.

Alright. He's a minister of the land, Joel Salatin. What does that mean? Let me tell you what it means. I wanted to read this when he was on there. I thought it was – let me see if I can get this exact quote. Let me see if I can get this exact quote. He's a Christian libertarian environmentalist.

Don't screw this up, Seve. This is the line I saw in one of his videos or it was on his website. If we devote ourselves – and I finished the show last night with this, as you guys recall, if we devote ourselves to sacredness in our vocation, and you could translate that to if we are present in our day-to-day job, if we treat our job like we're servicing God, that's how I take that. If we devote ourselves to sacredness in our vocations, the world will rise to meet us. And for me, the only thing that the touch point for that is, is when I set my expectations high for my kids, they reach them.

They reach them. I expect them to be kind to people. I expect them to be aware of their surroundings. And when you do that, when you live your life like that, when you devote yourself to the sacredness in your vocation, and the world rises to meet you, that becomes your personal ministry. And what I mean by that is everywhere you go is your church. You treat everywhere like it's church. I'm going to say all this again when he comes on. I'm just rehearsing now.

Thank you guys. Have you met Joel in person before? I think I did meet him in Santa Cruz once, but I don't know. But I know my mom speaks so highly of him. She saw him speak there at that conference, and I was there too, and speaks so highly of him oh man this is not good he is not responding to the email can i facetime with joel uh can i facetime with jo Joel Salatin and see if I can get him on? Gandhi said this thing somewhere, somehow, someday. You cannot separate religion and state because your life is your religion.

Meaning that everywhere you walk around, that's your presentation of how you what you think of your existence you guys get that oh my goodness oh my goodness yeah My, my brains here got me on. I don't know what you did. Well, I just unchecked boxes and then rechecked them. Oh man. Drives me nuts. Stream yard is so finicky for us for some reason. And Joel warned me in the arrogant,

pompous little man that I am. I was like, no, no, it'll be fine. Oh yeah. Yeah. Now,

you know. Okay. Thanks, Wendy. Oh, yeah. Now you know. Okay. Thanks, Wendy. Thanks, Wendy. Thank you, Wendy. You're welcome. He's a minister of the land. As I was just sharing with the live viewers, if we devote ourselves to

sacredness in our vocations, the world will rise to meet us. And then he goes on to say that your life is basically your personal ministry. That's how I took that. And I was just breaking it down for the people, Joel, that if we devote ourselves to sacredness in our vocations, meaning a new agey way maybe to say that was, is everywhere we went, we were present. If everywhere we went, we treated the world as if we were interacting with god for maybe those christians the world would rise to meet us the only thing i can think of there is is that i set expectations for my kids and they live up to them and when i set them low they don't live up to them but when i expect them to say thank you and to be

pleasant human beings they live up to that And then that is your personal ministry. And that's where Gandhi says, you cannot separate church and state because your life is your walking religion. Yeah, that's exactly right. Another way that some people say this is intentionality. So you do stuff with intention. And I'm convinced that most of us go through life kind of unintentionally. We do what somebody else thinks we ought to do. We do what society expects us to do. We do what friends tell us to do. And we, we buy a car because everybody's buying a car. We buy a house because everybody's buying a house and, and the type of house we buy is because everybody buys that kind of, you know, we just, we just kind of go with the, you know, go with the thing. And

I, I think that we need to really step up here to the plate and be intentional about the things that we do. I mean, for me, for example, I just got back from two weeks of traveling and speaking at conferences and doing some farm consults and things. And so I had in the last two weeks, I've had 10 airplane flights. I've had 10 airplane flights, and I try to make a point not to take the water, the drink, the whatever on the plane in general. I mean, sometimes I'm just stuck and I can't get anything. But why have to use a cup? We shouldn't have to use all those cups. I don't know where they all go.

Probably not the best place in the world. And so, you know, I don't, I don't want to be a cultish about this or, or be too anal, but, but you know, it, it, it does, it does matter. You know, what we do, how we live and, and, and that sort of thing. And being intentional about it is, I think it's a, it's a power, it's a powerful tool of, of affirmation of, of affirmation of our responsibility and privilege here, you know, on the planet. I think that's the first time I've heard the word privilege used correctly in,

in three years. Yeah. Yeah. We, we get it. We get it a lot of other uses, don't we? You know, Joel, this wasn't my intention to go down this avenue, but I think what happened coming from a man who is a diehard tree hugging do good or liberal that I used to be, I think a lot of it comes from the fact of words and just a confusion of what we think actually good means. And the example that I'd like to use, I'm coming from Berkeley, California, which has been in sort of the whole Bay Area, which has been decimated. Imagine we're sitting at a restaurant, you and 300 other people. And I think it would be cute to feed a seagull that's

flying over a breadcrumb. Right. And what's wrong with that? I'm feeding a seagull. It's a benevolent action. I'm sharing food. I'm sharing sustenance. I'm sharing it with this other creature of God that shares the planet with me. And I throw up this piece of bread to the seagull. And within 30 seconds, the whole restaurant is fucking destroyed because a thousand seagulls have descended on it and shit on everyone. Yeah, they all found there was a free lunch somewhere, didn't they? And we call it good. And so for years as a liberal, I could hide behind that word, but I'm doing good. Yeah.

And it's kind of like sorcery. It's like that magic book that you think in the second grade exists, right? It's like Harry Potter shit. It's actually happening here. Spells have been cast on our, on our, um, on our fellow human colleagues. Yeah, you're exactly right. I think a perfect example, uh, for, for in California, I just spent a week there. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I live here. I met you here in Santa Cruz, California once, by the way, very briefly. Yeah, it was a great, great time. And but, you know, when I go there or see what's going on there, it strikes me, for example, the need to cut trees.

You know, it sounds so good to let the tree, you know, not cut trees. And yet trees are living things just like anything else. They get old, they get died, they get crotchety, they get diseased. Some of them are really, you know, really not healthy. And, and so, you know, do we, do we just, do we just let, let it proliferate, you know, to where you have huge, huge wildfires? Or do you, for example, get on in there with some, with some goats and some cows and prune down the biomass, some chainsaws, and as permaculture would say, you know, more forest and fewer trees, weed the trees so they're not quite so compressed. And you start exercising that ecology. And, you know, what we have right now is ecology by abandonment. As you look back on the human experience, anyone who's thinking realizes that we do have a lot of shame to carry the way humanity has interacted with the ecology.

The deserts are man-made. The erosion, the dead zone the size of Rhode Island in the Gulf of Mexico. I mean, you look at the civilizations have risen and fallen based on ecological conquistador mentality. So let's all repent in sackcloth and ashes about that. But then let's not stay there. Let's use our intellect and our mechanical ability to now use our hands and our heads to interact with nature in a healing capacity. Let's throw all of our healing capacity at it, just like we've thrown our exploitation capacity at it. And, um, and we can have a whole lot better, uh, place, place to live.

And, and that takes, you know, that takes really thinking through intentionality. And I understand, I understand why thinking, caring people say, well, I don't want to touch ecology because whenever humanity touches it, it seems like we heard it. understand. I understand why thinking, caring people say, well, I don't want to touch ecology because whenever humanity touches it, it seems like we hurt it. You know, I totally get that. And I get that burden. But the fact is that we have harmed and it's time to heal. So let's turn our harming into healing and let's interact it. What that means is that we maybe don't have to have as much fire as our ancestors did, say, in California, where, you know, what it was at four four million acres a year burned, you know, pre-European.

But what we now have are chainsaws and we have wood chippers and we know how to compost aggressively. And we have wood chippers and we know how to compost aggressively. And we can and we can begin, you know, using this biomass to grow earthworms and build organic matter in the soil. And and that means a real direct visceral interaction, participatory, a participatory persona, you know, with the ecology. participatory persona you know with the ecology uh that true four million acres of california would burn every year and you know in the stone age uh that that's my understanding yes i mean people go back and forth on that but yeah it was it was a dramatic a dramatic amount and um and a lot of those fires of course were lit by by the Native Americans who were living there to not only freshen up the vegetation, but to bring the large, the megafauna, the bison, the elk, the deer,

and the things that were there, they would be drawn to these fire areas to lick the charcoal. That was a source of mineral and mineral and supplementation for them. And so while certainly the fires did kill some wildlife in general, fires were a strategic way to attract wildlife to an area, you know, in order to make sure they had minerals and that sort of thing. And to just, you know, to freshen up the landscape. So there was this kind of rotation, this strategic, I mean, the Aborigines in Australia did the same thing, you know, in The Greatest Estate, which is a wonderful book about how the Aborigines, you know, developed and maintained that Australian landscape, again, there was a very strategic

burning system. They didn't have chainsaws. They didn't know about aggressive scientific composting today. They didn't have front-end loaders. They didn't have manure spreaders and plastic pipe to ensure water. I mean, you know, there were a lot of things that they didn't have, but their systems actually built soil and guaranteed, you know, an abundance system for a long, long time. I'll get back to California here in one second, those 4 million acres. Colton Mertens, who's one of the top 100 fittest men in the world, writes, I read a few of Joel's books, mostly good stuff. Mostly.

Well, that's very nice of you, Colton. Colton works on a pig farm in the middle of the country with 16,000 pigs. He does that by day with his father, Joel. And then in the morning and night he trains to be the fittest man in the world which uh is his goal he's he's a regular listener good dude so california is 100 million acres of land 43 million acres are used for agriculture insane of this 60 million acres are for grazing and 27 million acres are cropland of those 43 million i just looked that up really quick on google who knows if it's uh correct yeah well that's uh that's that's a lot of

that's a lot of land and in fact um a lot a lot more should be used uh you know america has america you know we're we're in this time of supply chain issues, you know, empty store shelves, lots of, you know, food inflation, things like that. You know, America right now has 50, I'm sorry, has about 35 million acres of lawns and 36 million acres housing and feeding recreational horses. That's 71 million acres. That's enough to just about feed the whole country without a single farm. So, you know, this notion that agriculture devastates the landscape is kind of axiomatic within the culture now. But I would suggest, and that's, of course, where Bill Mollison and Dave Holmgren developed the term permaculture to say, can we have a production system that is permanent, that is a permanent agriculture that doesn't wear out, abuse, or destroy the land base? And that was, of course, the impetus for the idea of permaculture.

destroy the land base. And that was, of course, the impetus for the idea of permaculture. And, and so what we've demonstrated here, certainly on our farm here in Virginia, is that we can absolutely have an agriculture that is, that builds soil. I mean, we came to a gullied rock pile that wouldn't, you know, that wouldn't feed 10 cows. And today, you know, it's a, it's a hundred and the rock piles are covered up with soil that we did not, we did not carry soil there. The soil actually just built up like, like a, like a scab, like a scab on a wound on your, on your hand. And we just watched it gradually, the soil just grow over the rocks over, you know, over half a century. So I know it can be done.

And we can farm in a way that actually, you know, actually build soil, just like the millions of bison and the, you know, the two million wolves and the elk and the deer. I mean, Audubon sat under a tree in 1830 and he said, I couldn't see the sun for three days because the passenger pigeons blocked out the sun for three days. That was before Tyson and Pilgrim's Pride and Foster Farms and all the other outfits came along. You know, we had 200 million beavers pre-European. That ate more vegetables. I mean, beavers are herbivores. That ate more vegetables than all the people in North America today. So, you know, it should give us all pause

to realize that 500 years ago, North America grew more nutrition than it does today, even with, you know, with irrigation, John Deere tractors and hybrid seeds. uh you know with irrigation john deere tractors and hybrid seeds uh one of the um uh listeners is making fun of us um he jim jim says a sebon has met his match for not paying attention when other people are talking hey asshole listen i'm taking notes and he's taking notes so we don't forget stuff we're old okay now you know how old people were. Are you Venezuelan immigrant, Joel? No. Come on. Be honest.

You're born in Venezuela. No, I wasn't born in Venezuela. I was born in Ohio. Oh, like my mom. Like my mom. I was only there for six weeks before our family went back to Venezuela. So my dad, my dad went to Venezuela in, you know, 19, whatever, 49 or 48, and wanted to have a farm there and did in fact buy a, buy a thousand acres and then he married mom and we went down, but you know,

this was cold war McCarthyism, 1950s. They didn't want to have, you know, problems with us, citizenship and all that. So they came back to the States briefly to have each of us, my older brother and myself. But Pan American wouldn't let you fly unless you were at least six weeks old. And so they came back to have me and I wouldn't come and wouldn't come and wouldn't come. And so finally they, they had to induce mom. So we had our return plane tickets, right? I had to be six weeks old. And so they induced mom to get me out in time to make the flight back to Venezuela. So I was only there for, I was only there for four years. I was four when we came back to the States, we, we got caught in a, in a junta, you know, with uh pettis pettis jimenez there in 1959

and basically we we fled the back doors the machine guns came in the front door and uh and lost it was it that close was it really that close yeah it really was well you know what happened how old were you at that point i was was four. My older brother was seven. Our younger sister hadn't been born yet. But, you know, a lot of people don't realize that when there's anarchy, when there's this kind of anarchical disturbance in a country, it gives license to settle a lot of scores that otherwise wouldn't be settled. And so what happened was we had already started raising, we were out there on the land, we were raising chickens. And, you know, in those countries, not as much today, but certainly more then, you didn't have electricity.

And the way the cities got food was the farmers would come in to their stalls, you know, to their to the square city square and and set up, you know, and the vendors vendors would buy the papayas, the bananas, the chickens, the whatever. And then and then take them through town like a like an ice cream truck, except it wasn't an ice cream truck. So the families then, you know, normally the lady, the senora, the lady of the house would then buy, you know, she wants papaya, pineapple, banana, you know, chicken, coffee beans, whatever. And so she buys from these different vendors who come to the door and they all had their routes and their customers and all that stuff. Well, the indigenous chickens at that time all had sub-therapeutic pneumonia due to the very unhygienic, unsanitary way they raised them.

The chickens ran through the, you know, human, human feces, the open sewers and, and just ran everywhere. And they all had this kind of, this kind of sub-therapeutic kind of respiratory drainage from just low grade, you know, low-grade lack of hygiene. And when we started with our chickens, ours were nice and clean. They didn't have any of that because we didn't let them run. You know, we had them in a different situation. And so the bottom line was that in that culture at that time, everybody knew about this kind of mucus, this snot, this mucus drainage from the chickens. And the chicken with the driest beak always commanded the most money because they were

the healthiest. Everybody knew what a healthier chicken was. And so the vendors were always looking for healthier chickens. So very, very quickly, dad cornered the market, the local market on chickens because ours were nice and clean and had dry beaks. And the vendors wanted one of that. Well, the other farmers, they accused us of witchcraft and practicing voodoo, you know, because they didn't know that there was another way to do this. And these people must be into witchcraft and voodoo. So when the junta and all that broke loose and there was basically lawlessness within the – more lawlessness than normal in the countryside, It gave license for some of these folks to exercise their unhappiness with us.

And so we don't know how much of it was targeting this American family from the top down, or actually let's settle some scores from the bottom up. We actually don't know what all those, uh, entailed, but, uh, the bottom line was, uh, we, we fled for our life as we got overrun by the, you know, by these, uh, revolutionaries. And, um, do you have any memories of it? Actual memories? Uh, I have, I don't have any memories of the farm. What I have memories of is the trauma. I remember, um, dad, uh, turning around in a, in the, on a jungle road. Uh, there was a roadblock with a bunch of these, um, you know, these rebels and, um, and he flipped around the, the, the Jeep to, you know,

to not go to the roadblock. Uh, I remember, uh, you know, being sprayed with water, uh, you know, like water cannon, like them, like water, water cannons. Um, uh, and, and then I remember some of the final days there in, uh, in Caracas. Uh, we were in a little town named El Limon as well, uh, for a couple of months while dad tried to get protection. We had a deed, we tried to get protection, we tried to get something and everything. A, the government officials were primarily, they were afraid they were going to be assassinated. And of course, all the local constables, everything is run on bribes. It's all a payola system. And so we just finally ran out of options. Every door closed

and it broke dad's heart. Dad never got over it. I think that's one reason he died so young. He left his heart there. He loved the people. He'd been there for 12 years. He loved the people. He loved the language. He loved the culture. I mean, how can you not love a place where you can have pineapples and banana trees in your yard? And I still- And you guys lost the land? The land's not in the family anymore? No, we lost everything. I still have the deed rolled up here in a little canister here on this bookshelf behind me. The deed is there, but no, we lost it all. If I could just kind of, yeah, you're so, I'm not used to somebody being interested in that story. But the reason we came to Virginia was because dad was still hoping to go back. He hoped that once things settled down, that we'd be able to go back. He hoped that once things settled down,

that we'd be able to go back. And so he wanted to be at that time, this is 1961. He wanted to be within a day's drive of, um, of Washington, DC so that if things settled, we could, we could immediately within hours, be at the Venezuelan embassy, get paperwork and go back. And so that's why we settled in Virginia rather than where mom and dad's roots were out in the Midwest. And so we came here. Now, interestingly, about a week or two before we left Caracas and came home, dad got an audience with a journalist named Drew Pearson. Drew Pearson was equivalent to whatever, like a Wolf Blitzer today or a, you know, name any of the top, you know, the top commentators from any of the major channels. And, and he, the US as this want to do was pouring a bunch of foreign aid into Venezuela, trying to prop up the regime and all this saying that they were friends and all this. And he'd gone down there with his entourage on a fact finding mission to determine as a journalist,

you know, is this really true? Dad got an audience with him and, and told him our story. And he was just incensed about it. He just said, well, obviously the government is not taking care of American interests and freedom and that sort of thing. And so he said, I can't do anything right now, but I'll do what I can when I get back to the US. Well, meanwhile, we came back as well, bought this old rundown rock pile farm here in Virginia.

And about a month after moving into the house, sure enough, we got a call from the Venezuelan ambassador in D.C. He didn't say he didn't say you can go back. What he's what we found out was the Drew Pearson. Good to his word. This this is why I still love journalists. good to his word. This is why I still love journalists. I have a deep, deep love for good journalism. Drew Pearson called the Venezuelan ambassador. This is the way the story came to us. We don't know if it's exact, but this is the way the story came to us. He called the ambassador and said, look, I found out that you are not taking care of freedom and liberty and property and things like that, and certainly expat Americans that are in your country. So if you don't give the Salatin family a settlement for stealing their land, I'm going to feature them on next week's broadcast all across the

nation. I'm going to feature them on on next week's broadcast and you will not get another dime of us aid to venezuela and that scared them enough that they quickly capitulated and they they wrote out it was a it was a token check it wasn't nearly what we'd lost but for dad it was at least you know a recognition that they they had done us wrong and with that little joel in my in my notes here it says that they had done us wrong. And with that little check – Joel, in my notes here, it says that they actually didn't send you any money. They sent you a barrel of oil, two parrots, and a pineapple. Sorry.

I must have read that wrong. Yeah. No. We would have enjoyed the bananas. I can assure you of that. But, no, they sent us a little check. And with that little check, Dad us a little check and with that little check dad bought a little a little herd of hereford cows oh that's a good story yeah yeah

that that that's how we that's how he was able to you know to pay for because i mean he dad was 42 uh prime of his career and he and and he he lost he lost everything um we going to get I'm going to have to have you back on again. We're never, ever going to get to the main reason why you're on. There's no fucking way. OK, I want I want to ask. I want to ask why your dad bought 550 acres if he planned on going back. But before we go there, do you ever think that you are becoming your dad, that you are your dad? I just there's a story you tell about your dad riding his bike to work for a couple years at the age of 50

and as i'm hearing you tell this story i'm like oh man we all do turn into our parents i wonder if this dude knows he's his dad because in that story in that story there is a there were three components that i heard in um uh your dad in his 50s rode his bike to work during the gas shortage um it appears that's who you are today mr joel salatin you have a level of conviction logic practicality and community contribution i mean you're the same dude right yeah absolutely uh i wish i could be half the man that dad was he he was such a man of conviction and again this this intentionality you know when that arab oil embargo hit he was yeah he was tell a man of conviction. And again, this intentionality, you know, when that Arab oil embargo hit, he was, yeah, he was- Tell me about that really quick. Give us, for those of us who

weren't around back then, what happened? All right. Well, you know, when the Arab oil embargo hit in the 1970s, you couldn't get gas. Gas went real high. They rationed gas. I remember that your license plate had to have a certain odd or even. Okay. Now you can only get gas on odd or even days. You couldn't get gas whenever you wanted it. You had to think about this. It was a huge, huge disruption. And I remember very well, Dan sitting at the table saying, well, we'll just let them keep their oil. Then we just won't, we just won't buy it. And he went out and bought, he, he was his office where he worked at that time. He was a, worked at a metal fabrication place as a bookkeeper, estimator, blueprint, you know, a reader and, and the, and the financial end of it. And, and it was 13 miles away from the house, he went out and bought a, bought a 10 speed bicycle and he began riding

the 13 miles to work, uh, every day. He said, if everybody, if everybody would just do this, the Arabs can just keep, he didn't hate the Arabs. He, it was just a matter of what, what can I do to, um, to just whatever boycott the abuse. Right, right, right. Well, he's part of the solution, one man at a time. Be the solution you want to see in the world. That's exactly right. And that's what you're doing.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I don't know whether I'm more or less, you know, we all have our little hypocritical things, but, you know, I all have our little hypocritical things, but, you know, I'm really aggressive on this, and I think that we need to be thinking about what, well, on our farm, our mantra is healing the land one bite at a time. We want people to understand, when you look at your plate in front of you and you kind of, if you blurt your eyes and squint and look through that plate, what kind

of landscape is represented by what's on that plant, on that plate? Is it a landscape that encourages hydration, that encourages rain cycles, that encourages pollinators, that encourages earthworms? Or does it only encourage Wall Street and a short-term financial gain? And those are the kind of questions that I think it's worth asking and wrestling with. I don't have all the answers, and I certainly have my hypocrisies, but goodness, can we at least wrestle and try to work through some of those things? And so that at the end of the week, we look back, there's an old Chinese proverb about this child that asks his grandfather, he's got these two dogs, which dog will thrive? And grandpa says, the dog that you feed. So, you know, the question is, when I look back at the end of the week, I don't want to be a cult about this, but which dog did I feed this week?

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Collect more moments with more ways to earn. Air Mile. And let's think about that. Are your parents Jewish? No. But there were a lot of Jews in Venezuela whoenezuela who had escaped um yes a big jewish community there right yes yes yes uh that whole tier from you know down through argentina had big ones uh yeah all all down through there yes that is correct but no we we're not we're we're german

we're some sort of swiss german i think okay Okay. Were either of your parents first generation? No, no. First generation, you'd have to go back to my great-grandfather to go to first generation, yeah. And where did your parents meet? Well, dad was in the Navy. He flew in World War II He flew in World War II in the Navy. And so mom, dad had grown up in Indiana. Mom had grown up in Ohio. And mom went to college and then was at Indiana University getting her master's in health and phys ed. Oh, wow.

Wow. and health and phys ed. And, and, uh, so dad, dad then came back after the war on the GI bill to IU and he majored in business, uh, business administration. And so they, they met at Indiana university, but listen, I've got, I've got rebelliousness on both sides of my family. My mom, uh, not to leave her out of the story, Please don't. Mom, in college, she had- She was a woman for starters. She was a woman and she'd become a Christian. And she had grown up in a home, in an alcoholic. Her dad left her when she was a very, very small girl. in an alcoholic. Her dad left her when she was a very, very small girl. And so she grew up, her mom, my grandmother married three different guys in her life, all of whom were alcoholics.

So mom had a, grew up with a hatred of alcoholism. And so when she went to college, and of course she was, you know, very well-liked. Everybody wanted to join the fraternity. Well, she went to the administration and said, I want to start a brand new women's sorority that is alcohol-less, where the parties that we have and the things that we do have no alcohol. And so they kind of let her do it, but they put in her school records, this is a troublemaker. This is a troublemaker because she wants to do things that aren't normal. And so I have these convictional roots on both mom and dad had these, if you see something you want to change or do, we'll just, just do it. And I'm not dependent on peers. When people ask me, what's your greatest gift that

your family gave you? I think the greatest gift my family gave me was I am not peer dependent. I, I, I don't care a lick what the neighbors say. I don't care what I am. It has stood me well to be able to not worry about the whatever, laughter, scoffers, condescension, whatever other people do and say. I mean, in school, in high school, I wanted to be a farmer, but I had good grades. I was in the Honor Society. I still remember the last time I was with the guidance counselor as a rising senior. She's looking at my curriculum, and she said, what do you want to do? I said, I want to be a farmer. She about went into apoplectic seizures.

You know, what? We're going to waste all that talent and all those brains and all that. I said, well, yeah, I want to be a, I want to be a, you know, a farmer and I'd walk down the halls, you know, and, and, and the students, you know, would, would, uh, sneer, you know, chicken man, chicken man. Cause I had chickens, everybody knew I had chickens and, um, and, and, you know, they, they, they'd sneer and all that. And it, you know what? Um, I am so thankful that I wasn't whatever scarred or, or deterred. I wasn't deterred by that kind of, um, that kind of peer pressure. I, I had a goal. I knew what I wanted to do. And, um, and I just, I'm so thankful neither mom nor dad, um, listened to, I mean, to venezuela in 1950 who goes to you know what what middle-class

american goes to goes to venezuela in 1950 you know to to farm with the monkeys yeah that's the part i want to add i've got a question about that so i'm trying to imagine i i i got a my wife's beyond cool so i could easily be like hey we're moving to venezuela and she'd do it but how do you how does he how does he meet this woman who's highly educated beyond her peer group and and maybe she talked him into it and say hey i want to go to venezuela i mean he went there to do farming right he went there to do permaculture he went there to homestead right well um that's where its story is a little bit uh a little bit squirrely oh please tell me he went there to grow tobacco and get diamonds and come back a billionaire no no he did he did go to farm he did go to farm but uh i think in the early romance of it all you know we we sweep red flags under the under under the rug,

you know, in early cocaine distribution, he was going to do cocaine, please. Something good. No, no. What he went for originally, the reason he went down there was with Texas oil company as a bilingual accountant, um, which was a very, very high paying job at that time. And, and that's how he earned the money to buy the farm. So he's sitting here in the U S as a teenager wanting to farm. He wanted to farm as a teenager, but he didn't have any money. Family didn't have any money. He wasn't going to inherit anything. He didn't have anything. How do you, how do you start? Did he get money from the Navy from his time in the Navy? Like a little check or something? Just the GI bill, nothing else. GI bill.

Not a little check or something uh just the gi bill nothing else gi bill not a lifetime check no no no no what no and so so you know what what is a what does a guy do well he and he was always on to the next thing uh if he had a weakness if dad had he had a couple weaknesses but one of his weaknesses was he got he got tired of the same thing all easily. He was always into the next thing. You know, well, we did that last year. Let's do something different this year. And so as a little child, you know, growing up in the 30s, he read these, they were called big little books, big little books.

And they were stories about Admiral Perry discovering the North Pole and, you know, all these explorers. And there was an explosion of this kind of, you know, global exploration. You know, the Dutch East Indies became Indonesia. You know, you had all this kind of stuff going on during the 30s. And he just was enamored of, wow, that's new. It's a new country. It's a new place. It's a new opportunity. And the U.S. has already completely discovered what else is discovered in North America. And so he saw this as a new frontier, a new place to go and enjoy. And so he went to Middlebury in Vermont for a semester in Spanish and then hitchhiked, get this, he hitchhiked from Vermont to Mexico and spent six months with a family in Mexico to

bone up on his Spanish, came back, sat for the foreign civil service exam in Spanish, passed it his first time, and then went as a very high paid bilingual accountant with Texas Oil Company during the exploration off of Maracay, off the coast there of Venezuela. And in seven years, in seven years was able to earn enough money to buy this thousand acre property in the highlands of of interior uh venezuela and so um so that's you know so mom mom you're lucky you're lucky your name isn't jolito you're lucky your name isn't he didn't marry some uh some six months in uh mexico you how did he wow okay go on on. You might have brothers and sisters. There's time to check. Yeah. Well, so when mom went originally, he was this, you know, very high paid,

you know, American expat in an American business in Venezuela. And so while the farm was the ultimate goal, I don't think, dad might not have presented that as accurately. Oh, to mom. Okay. To mom, as he could have. And she went down as this, kind of mid-management kind of fun. And mom loves to travel. Boy, she's traveled. Man, she has itchy feet. I mean, when you say, let's go somewhere, she doesn't ask you where.

She said, I'm in the car. Where are we going? And so that part appealed to mom. And so that part appealed to mom. And so then as the thing developed, then he was able to move forward with the farm. And of course, we moved out there. The real different thing for us was most of the people who had farms in Venezuela, they lived in the city and the peasants lived out on the land. The people who owned the land lived in the city.

So we were extremely unusual out in the countryside in that we actually owned the land and wanted to live there. That was highly, highly unusual. Did you have a phone on? Do you remember having a phone on the property? No. There was no phone. Our water came from a siphon from a spring up on the ridge behind the house. The water came on us and the monkeys would keep coming down and chewing holes in the siphon.

So dad had a whole batch of patches. He was always having to run up and patch the hose because the monkeys would come and chew holes in it. What a life. Does your brother remember it better than you since he's five years old? Yeah. Yeah. He was, he was seven. And so, yeah, he remembers it a lot more. In fact, in many ways, he has more trauma, trauma from, from the, well, the trauma of the, of the fleeing. And then, you know, he, he understood more of what was going on than I did. And so actually, that's one of the reasons why we didn't continue to speak Spanish in the home. Of course, dad was fluent, fluent. I spoke Spanish before English.

My brother was fluent. You know, we were we were growing there. We were fluent in the language. And when we came back here into this rural conservative community, this was 1961. It was McCarthyism, Cold War. And you'd love this story. So the farm that we bought was purchased in 1949 by a family from New Mexico who bought it for their kids. And they came and they fixed up the house and everything. Well, four years, their kids said, we don't want the farm. So they sold the farm.

They were from New Mexico. A lot of people around here at that time didn't realize New Mexico was part of the US. And so they just heard Mexico. Yes, they thought foreign country. Well, then they sold it to a guy from from from Saudi Arabia who had who had who had made money in oil exploration in the Middle East. And so he bought it. He was here four years. And then a buddy of his that he owed money to in some of their wildcat ventures found him.

found him and in the whatever the the development uh this this buddy then uh got the farm from him and for the bad debts that it accumulated so you had a new mexico a saudi arabia saudi arabia and then and then they were here four years and then we come so four years four years four years and then we come from venezuela so this is remember this is the 1950s, Cold War, McCarthyism. So two weeks, listen to this, two weeks after we moved in, the Ku Klux Klan burned a bale of hay and a cross in our land. Ladies and gentlemen, those are Democrats, just so you know, just so you know. Those are my people. Those are my people who did that. Those guys with the white sheets on their head, those were my people from Berkeley, Democrats. Okay. Now they're now they're called antifa sorry go on i just wanted to make sure anyone who hasn't been around long enough okay so they burned a bale of hay on the on the lane so that we would

know that the community knew that this was a communist espionage uh center because you know what's the what's the period of foreign service four years right you go out four years and you come home four years come home so here four years of new mexico four years of saudi arabia four years of mexico here comes a family from venezuela by that time the community said okay okay we get it we get it now this is this is a communist espionage ring so welcome that was our welcome wagon to the community, you know, was the Ku Klux Klan burning a bale of hay. And, you know, we did not get to the bottom of that whole thing until literally 30 years later when I got very, very friendly with one of our older neighbors

and I'd go over there and visit. And finally, they spilled the beans on that whole thing. The whole community knew it and kept it all as we didn't know the background of all the Ku Klux Klan. So we didn't know about that until literally we'd been here 30 years. The community finally fessed up to what it was now. I mean, I mean, we're still you know, we're still weirdos, that's for sure. But but at least the community knows that we're here to stay. We've been here now for, what, 61 years. And so I think they know we're here to stay and we love them. And, you know, they're not going to, they, we help each other and, you know, it's good that way.

But that's the that way. I was just doing that. Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, that's the reason why. So what I was going to answer was the reason that we quit. When we came back to the U.S., mom and dad intended to continue speaking Spanish in the home so we kids would maintain our bilingual ability. But when my older brother, you were asking about my older brother, he was three years older. So he's seven, I'm four, he's seven, he goes to school.

And of course, he gets, you know, he's just been through this, this unbelievably traumatic situation in Venezuela, coming back here. And, and of course, you know, Spanish, you put upside down exclamation marks and upside down, you know, question marks on the end of sentences and things like that. And so kids would laugh at him, poke fun at him. And so he started having, you know, emotional issues due to bullying, just being laughed at in school because, you know, he would he would he would just break out in Spanish or we go to the store. You know, we kids didn't know not to speak Spanish in the store. So we're in a great- Right, what if one of the Klansmen heard you sitting in an aisle over? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so all these people, they're looking at us weird and all that stuff.

And with my brother's issues. And so they decided, you know, we're just going to lay off of it and let it go. And they did. And I still very, I deeply regret, I still speak my, when I, for example, I don't say Caracas, I say Caracas, okay, I don't say agua for water, I say agua, you know, I've got perfect enunciations, and when I get around Spanish-speaking people, they kind of look, oh, you know, they're not used to a, you a, to a English speaker having that level of linguistic, linguistic command of the, of the language. So I still have the linguistics, but I don't have the vocabulary, which I, I greatly, you know, I wish I had it, but I don't. don't um i just finished um uh listening to um frank brady that's the author he wrote a book called onassis ah uh-huh and uh it's about aristotle onassis sure and i wonder if your

dad worked for him well well i mean dad dad worked for Texas Oil Company, which was not – Onassis was in the ship. Right. He moved their oil. He moved the oil. Dad worked with Texas Oil Company, which eventually, of course, became Texaco. They talk about that in the book. I mean, man, that was a lot of money. That was the business to be in back then. Oh, yeah.

Man, that was a lot of money. That was the business to be in back then. Oh, yeah. Listen, that whole, and especially, see, the reason they wanted a bilingual accountant on the oil, in what they call the oil camps, in the wildcat ventures, was because the managers were American who spoke English, and the workers were Venezuelans who spoke Spanish. And, of course, the workers would come out and live in what they called the man camp. I don't think there were any women around there at that point, but some of them were married, some of them weren't, but the men would come for the week and live in a man camp, and then they'd go home for the weekend lots of times. And the friction arose about the money. You had a company store, you had payroll, and you had all these,

you know, these guys in that, living kind of in close quarters in the man camp. And then you had man, you know, the American managers, they were living, you know, over in different quarters. And the tension was always about money. And so this bilingual accountant was a very, very this bilingual accountant was a very, very specific need that they had in those early days of OPEC, well, you know, before OPEC, in order to, you know, well, just to keep things functioning. I mean, if you had a, well, it is all about the money lots of times. And so, so dad ended up being kind of the, you know, the diplomat, the diplomat and the, the, whatever, the, the relational, the relational masseuse in this, you know, kind of raucous, raucous work setting, you know, between the Venezuelans and the Americans in these wildcat ventures.

For those of you who are listening and you guys are piling in, I'm seeing you guys piling. Just so you know, you can hear all if you if you type in Joel Salatin into YouTube, you will hear a video on any question you have. Should I get chicken? Should I not get chickens? Where should I put my pig? Should I should I bathe him with soap or should I just bathe him with water? Should I not get chickens? Where should I put my pig? Should I should I bathe him with soap or should I just bathe him with water? It's all it's all there. It's all it's it's all there. It's all there. So there is a there is a and he has 12 books. Is it 12 or is it 15? I'm seeing two different numbers. Yeah, it's 15, 15 of them now. Yeah.

OK, I looked at something that was only published last week you must have come out with three new books right well uh you know websites are really hard to keep current you know you put that stuff on and then you oh suddenly oh goodness you know it's been 18 months since i you know since i did something with that so um i thought i wanted to ask you this question and i thought it was such a stupid question I thought maybe you've heard it a thousand times, but I was dying to ask it. And then I went to your website, The Lunatic Farmer, and I see that you also asked the same question. So either we're both dumb or there's other options, so I'll be humble and not say them. Is there no one – this is a quote, ladies and gentlemen, from Joe Salatin's website, The Lunatic Farmer. It's a post just from three weeks ago.

This is at the very bottom. Is there no one somewhere who will take the McDonald's antidote option and offer our nation something real? the way I interpret what you're saying is, can we just have one restaurant where you can look at, like you can know that the cow was, it's fast food, but still, you know, the cow is like was eating grass and it's within a hundred miles of the restaurant and that it can still have a drive-thru. It can look like a McDonald's, but we know the food's like legit. Is that like, can you describe what you mean by that yeah your fantasy i don't care what it is make your fantasy fast food restaurant for

me oh man please yeah so my fantasy fast food restaurant is that that the uh the provenance the the provenance comes from you said it hopefully, you know, within 100 miles or so. So it's kind of a regional food shed kind of arrangement. And so it's still fast food, but the provenance is real. You know, the chickens are on pasture. The grain for the pigs is not genetically modified organisms. They're on pasture. The cows are grass-finished.

The herbivores are grass finished, no grain. And, and all the, all the problems comes in that way. Another, another, you know, dream would be that this would be a fast food place that does not serve any, there would not be any high fructose corn syrup. It's actually the only kind of beverages would be things like kombucha uh you know um water water me not not in plastic water not in plastic not in plastic um you know carbonated uh you can have carbonated juices i mean if you if you get carbonated juices they're fantastic um and and and the, the oil, the, any oils would not be canola oil. You know, they'd be at least sunflower or better. Maybe, you know, maybe olive is a little bit too, too high. You gotta, you know. No, why not? It's our dream restaurant. My wife won't let me go there if it's sunflower oil, please put something else, something else.

Okay. So, you know, so olive or avocado oil or something. And then in my dream world, here's my dream world would be that the people who work in the restaurant, imagine this, Seven, they would be on a rotation. So imagine one week in the restaurant, one week in the processing facility, whether it's the butcher or the tomato, you know, where you're actually, you know, making tomato paste and things like that. And then one week on the farm. So imagine a three-week rotation where they're farming one week, processing one week, and then in the restaurant another week. in the restaurant another week. The beauty of that is think of how vested, how informed, how visceral and participatory everybody in that whole thing would be. Suddenly they're cooking food that next week they're going to be out in the field growing. And you get this incredibly deep sense of ownership and stewardship, stewardship, not only for the food, the land, the whole logistics of the thing.

But then you take that stewardship and you you can project it then on your on the customers. The customers come in and they're not just getting somebody who's throwing something in a bag. They're getting somebody who carried buckets of water to chickens last week, you know, and who then actually took the life of the chickens in the processing thing. And you get this incredibly rich, rich bath of comprehensive, visceral, participatory understanding of the entire cycle of life. Comprehensive comprehension. That's what I thought you were going to do. I thought you were going to get crazy on me. So I would be the- I wasn't as quick as you. I wasn't able to be that quick. I'm going to be the 22-year-old kid, and I'm going to have a tray of four hamburgers, and I'm going to hand them over the counter to you, and I'm going to be crying.

And you're going to go, Savon, what's wrong? And I'm going to be like, last week I was with Joe the cow, and now I'm serving him to you. I'm so sorry. He was a good cow, I swear. Enjoy him. No, no. We'll work through that. We'll work through that. We'll work through that.

You know, it's authentic. It is. It is. It is. I'm making – you know, I'm a city guy. Like I remember being in college in my – and I'm not even really a city guy, but I remember being in college and my friends were fishing off the coast of Isla Vista, California, just north of Santa Barbara, where I went to school. And the whole town was on the ocean there. And my friends would be fishing and they would be like, hey, I got to take a piss, hold my pole.

And I couldn't. I go, what if what if a fish grabs it? They're like, well, bring him in. I'm like, I'll start crying if I see him come out of the water. Meanwhile, 20 minutes later, I'm just down at McDonald's, you know, eating a hamburger, like that's the most abused cow that's ever been alive. I'm eating. Yeah. That's, that's, that's the disconnect. That's the disconnect. And I, and I think what, what, what's happened in our culture, um, is that as we have segregated, as we've segregated ourselves from, uh, from participatory foundations of life, we have lost a sense of

wonder, awe, and mystery, and even deep appreciation. Yes, I was going to say appreciation, yes. Deep appreciation and gratitude for the privileges and responsibilities of being stewards, of being caretakers here, and all that that entails. And so, yeah, so we have, you know, so we have people that don't understand that something has to die for something else to live. Even if it's a microbe, there's no more death, life, sex, and everything else going on in a compost pile, right? A compost pile epitomizes life, death, eating, sex, and everything else going on in a compost pile, right? A compost pile epitomizes life, death, eating, being eaten, and the regeneration, the resurrection of life anew from the energies offered as sacrifice from the old life. A tree dies and its remains rot. And that rot creates mycelium and fungal and organic matter and feeds the microbes. And this is the way life goes. If you don't believe things are eating and being eaten, go lie naked in your flower bed for a week and see what gets eaten. And so this is not a bad thing.

It's just foundational. In fact, when I talk to elementary school kids, I go through this kind of life, death, decomposition, regeneration, life, death, decomposition, this kind of cycle thing. And I say, look, if you want to be fully flourishing as a person, if you want to have your life as full as it can be, then think about others before yourself. Sacrifice your own needs. Sacrifice your own desires for other people. That's the way you bring sacred relationship to your life and meaning to it. This whole, you know, I'm the center of my universe. I'm entitled. I'm a victim. All this, this I, I, you know, I'm the center of my universe. I'm entitled. I'm a victim. All this, this I, I, business, it is not the way, is not the way to actually generate full life flourishing for you or anybody else around you. And, and we see that, we see that when we participate in, in growing

tomatoes or pigs or chickens or avocado, whatever it is, We see that, that cycle, you know, our, our, our culture right now lives in this fantasy world. Our, our young people, you know, live on, on video games that are completely fantasy. You know, if, if, if, if you get shot in your violent game in, in five seconds, the game gives you a new you, a new icon. For only $3.99, you get to come back to life. That's exactly right. And what's that teaching people? It's teaching people that life is cheap. Life is not sacred. Life is replaceable. It has nothing to do with reality, but that's why I'm such a big believer in

children and gardens. You know, when you got that tomato and that tomato, you don't take care of it and it wilts and dies from a disease or lack of care or whatever. You don't just sit there and in 10 minutes, the garden gives you a new tomato. This is for all the marbles. And I think that some of our lack of reason, lack of common sense in the culture is because we have more than any other culture in history, our wealth and our technological advancement has given us the profound ability to abdicate our moorings from our ecological umbilical to such a profound extent that we

now don't appreciate our utter dependency and our responsibility to that womb. That was a mouthful. Wow. Wow. Wow. Do you feel like I sense some urgency in your voice? Yes. Or maybe it's excitement. I don't mean to. I'm trying to understand. It's obviously it's obviously passionate. Yeah, I'm both. Thank you. Yeah, I am excited. I mean, this is the – when people say, what floats your boat? What floats my boat is being able to walk out the back porch and just step in to this ecological womb that I get to touch.

W-O-M, like like uterus like ecological womb you're saying like your your property is a place where like there's an explosion of growth like inside of a woman giving birth okay okay that's right w-o-m-b that's right okay uh you know so so uh i mean how many how many people get to actually uh put their hands viscerally on life every day. Not enough people get to put their hands on life every day. And so to be able to sense that I can bring more earthworms. I can bring more abundance. I can bring soil building microbes and nutritious food. That's both a privilege and a responsibility. But the urgency is that the old Chinese saying that if you keep going the way you're going, you're going to end up where you're headed.

saying that if you keep going the way you're going, you're going to end up where you're headed. And, you know, every civilization has destroyed its basic, its resource base. You know, China, China is now trying to make amends for now, you know, a century of exploitation under, you know, Mao and then Chao. And so they're on a massive tree planting campaign. I mean, it's amazing what they now realize has happened here in the U.S. We're desertifying. We're desertifying as fast as any country in the world. We've got a dead zone the size of Rhode Island and the Gulf of Mexico. When you say desertifying, you're talking about all the obese people at disneyland eating desserts no i'm talking about deserts i'm talking

about drying out the land that other desertifying we're just certifying them too okay i'm not talking about the chocolate chocolate chip cookie okay all right because we've just sort of we've dessert of desertified our fucking entire population i was just at disneyland and like it's just people sitting around eating ice cream it's not an amusement park it's a giant fucking sugar factory yeah yeah okay no it sure is so back to the urgency sorry sorry so we're we're drying out the landscape in fact look you know um california is certainly symptomatic of that as well and um and so you know uh people like me and people who are smarter than me, we actually believe that we can hydrate the landscape, that we can actually do very, very specific things that actually

rehydrate the landscape. There are projects that are being done in Lebanon and Australia and all over the planet in very, very dry places that are reversing, that reverse the, you know, the drying out of the landscape. And so I don't want to get in a big, you know, climate change and all that kind of thing. What I do know is that we are losing thousands of acres a year of productive soil, productive capacity on the planet. And we need to reverse that. Otherwise, we're like the Chinese proverb, if you keep going the way you're going, you're going to end up where you're headed. And that's not a pretty place. And I want a legacy for my grandchildren where I leave the place more abundant and more functional, more flourishing than it was given to me. And that's a wonderful... If that is not a mission that can attract and magnetize millennials and young people, I don't know what other mission could possibly be more, whatever, more. We're back to the original. But fuck those people, Joel.

Fuck those people. You have kids? Yes. How many kids do you have? So we have two. We have a son and a daughter. And Daniel, our son, he'll be 41 here in a couple months. And he actually runs the farm.

He runs the farm so I can run around. And you have grandkids too? Yes, we do. We have three of those, 18, 16, and 14. Wow. And my mom is 98. And so here on the farm, we have four generations 98 and so here on the farm we have four we have four generations uh right now here living on the farm so so i i don't mean this in any with any disrespect

i mean this with no disrespect but fuck the young people go out and party have fun enjoy yourself the people who should be doing this shit is people like fucking bill gates yeah zuckerberg like like take your fucking like you don't have to give it away you can still be rich as fuck i'm all for you being rich yes yeah put these let give these millennials jobs to rehydrate the land so that they can go out and smoke weed and bang chicks on the weekend but let's make let's give them jobs to rehydrate the land exactly oh instead of these cockamamie ideas of like um uh trying to get rid of uh reinvent the mosquito or or or genetically modify meat or like get out like why can't you just um why can't you just reinvest in what's already here the earth is working is it's a perfect fucking mechanism yeah spins every 24 hours it goes around this big ball of light that's just

hammering it with love 365 days a year and forever yeah i just don't get why those are the guys it's the old guys like me and you who should be concerned about our grandkids yes exactly and and uh i just mentioned two things on that point. One is that there is not a single problem on the planet that isn't being solved due to lack of money. There is plenty of money in the system, plenty of money to solve any problem. Money is not the weak link. That's number one. Number two is as far as, you know, Bill Gates and this whole artificial artificial food development. There are few endeavors that are as as elitist and undemocratic, anti-democratic as as labgrown food. As long as the sun shines and I have a blade of grass, I can grow a cow, I can grow a chicken, I can grow a tomato. That is all accessible to me. But as soon as my food comes from a lab and it's artificially manufactured, suddenly I can't do that in my

backyard. I can't do that in my backyard. I can't do that in my kitchen. In fact, I can't even make high fructose corn syrup in my kitchen, let alone monosodium glutamate and all the other, you know, phenoxyhydra, whatever, you know, unpronounceables are on labels of food. And so the entire techno-sophisticated, unpronounceable lexicon that's in our food has been just a gradual march away from personal access and independence. And it has been a centralization and a a reduction in access, in individual access to sustenance. If sustenance has to come out of red dye 29 and a bunch of preservatives and hormones and chemicals and pharmaceuticals, and I mean, look at the whole terror now over Russia and Ukraine. We can't get fertilizer.

We can't get wheat. You know what's cool? The greatest thing about our farm is we don't buy any of it. You know, if there's not a bag of fertilizer produced on the planet, it doesn't affect us one little bit. Because we're running on solar energy through compost and decomposable biomass. That's an authentic carbon economy. It's not some cap and trade deal. It's not.

No, it's an authentic carbon economy. And if we actually took all the biomass that's currently burning, especially out west, and we took that biomass and ran it through chippers and ran it for composting, we could completely disconnect the entire chemical fertilizer industry and instead create stewarded, forestal, productive, forestal ecosystems that were not as prone to fire, that had more diversity. And we would employ thousands and thousands of people looking for sacred, you know, mission-oriented work that they could come home. And little son or daughter says, well, you know, mommy, daddy, what did you do today? And they get to say, well, we massaged our ecological womb so that you will have a better planet to live in than we've had if that's not a righteous vocation i don't know what is when you when you when you say um uh the burning the burning of what did you say? Basically, you said out west, the burning of.

Well, I mean, right now we're we're we're spending what is it? Almost five billion with a B billion dollars a year fighting fires out west. Oh, right. I'm talking I largely the result of an ecological abandonment mentality. Okay, okay. I'm going to shift here because I'm going to abandon you in three minutes. I'm going to be like, you know what, Joel? You know what? Do you play musical instrument, Joel?

Uh, in high school and college, I played a trumpet, but, um, I, I can't, um, I can't do it anymore. Cause I had a, I had a logging accident. You know, they say there are old loggers and bold loggers, but no, I didn't know that. No, I didn't know that. I live in California, but go on. Old, old, old, bold. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. Right. Uh, no old, bold lawyers. I had a tree hit me in the, hit me in the mouth and I have, I have some, uh, I have some leftover, uh, gristle in my, where they sewed my, sewed my lip back together. And, um, because of that, I can't play my trumpet anymore, but I, you know, I grew up playing the piano and, um, and, and trumpet. Yeah. And, and did your parents stay together until your dad passed away?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And are you still with your wife? I sure am. We're 42 years, August 9th. achievements you've had and all the passions you've had, where does that fall your relationship with your wife in terms of like, when you reflect on it, where do you put it on the trophy case? Well, it's the best decision I ever made because I married a lady who was more frugal than I. And, and, and, and so, so, you know, we, for us, you know,, look, it hasn't always been roses. No intimate relationship at this level is perfect. But we've never even mentioned the idea of separation has never even entered our mind.

It's not an option. You have to punch through. You have to work through it. Otherwise, you just take your problems to your next relationship. You never work through them, and they just compound. I hear you. I hear you, and I'm a sober man like you are sober. By that, I mean I don't have a polluted brain. I have 100 fruit trees in the backyard. I dug every hole. I walk around barefoot every day. I love my kids. But what about – but I'm not – you say punch through, and I want to say that to everyone too. That's a beautiful thing. Just push through. my kids but um what about these people who would like they're they're crazy they're sick they're they live off of um you know milkshakes their tesla and no dig on teslas but milkshakes teslas and then spending time working at the at the spaceship up here in silicon valley the apple thing sitting all day and their brains are like and i this isn't to dig at any of these things as a small piece, but their brains are polluted with the news and porn and text messages and social media.

And it's just like can those people punch through? Whew. What a – Do you know what I mean by that? Can I get healthy meat from a sick cow? Can I get – can I stay with this person if we're both just fucked up? Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, the quick answer, and I'm not a psychiatrist, but the quick answer I think is yes, but you have to work at it.

So you have to work. have to work at it. So you have to, you have to work. Here's, I would say that you have to work at disentangling people that are entangled in this, in the, whatever it is, you know, the, the wokeness, the, the. Professionally offended. Yeah. And, and, and not, and just the consumer, the consumer goods industry. Yeah, and just the consumer, the consumer goods industry. Okay. I mean I did a little thing one time where I said, what if the world spent money like I do? And there would be entire swaths of things that would not exist. Meaning because you're frugal and the airbag would have never been developed because enough cars wouldn't have been purchased to develop the airbag.

If everyone was like frugal like Joel, is that what you mean? No, I don't mean that. I think the airbag would have been developed because because I think the airbag is a perfect example of something that's that has market value. I want to protect my family, my kids. And so I'm going to buy a car with an airbag. What I would say would not exist are perhaps Las Vegas. Certainly, we wouldn't have a soft drink industry. Coca-Cola wouldn't exist. And look, I'm not saying that they're going to hell. And look, I'm not saying that they're going to hell, you know, or they're what I'm just saying.

When you sit down and say, what does a flourishing, vibrant, better world look like? Yeah, I think it would look better without a Playboy magazine. I think it would look better without, you know, a lot of the things that we do to titillate our lives because we don't have enough meaning under our fingernails. And by that, I mean like dirt under our fingernails. You know, listen, the average American male right now between 25 and 35 years old, the average American male between 25 and 35 spends 20 hours a week playing video games. Wow. Wow. All right. So just for the record, I've never touched a video game. I've never touched a video game.

I don't mean not playing. I mean, I haven't even touched one. And, and, and partly it's because I, I think, I think I have more important things to do. Right. Literally there are more important things to do. I'd rather read, I'd rather read a book by Seth Godin on, on how to improve my life or Stephen Covey, seven habits of highly effective people, Dale Carnegie, you know, when friends and influence, I'd rather read something like that than further away my time blowing away, blowing away icons on a fantasy screen. And so I think that,

I think that, that what we lack, I think that what we lack is deep soul, meaningful, legacy-based mission in our lives. And the more you work in a fantasy world, the more you have to work at not being co-opted by that world. So me, I have to work at not embracing celebrity culture and consumerism and, and having a bigger house and a better car and a big, I'm a minimalist. I'm a minimalist. I mean, Teresa and I still, you know, we don't, we don't buy, we don't, we don't buy new cars. We, you know, we've sometimes talked about what if, what if we ever really got wealthy, what would change? And I'd like to think, you know,

we would still be the same thing. Maybe we'd give a lot more money away. I love giving money away to, you know, charitable groups and charitable causes and my own team members. I mean, we've got 25 of us earn a living here from the farm. Some of them make more money than I do. And I get great joy out of that. You know, CEOs, why should any CEO get more than whatever, 10 or 25 times the lowest paid employee in the place? Who needs $10 million a year? Who needs $8 million a year? And I'm not saying that getting that money is wrong and I don't want a law

and I don't want taxes to redistribute it. I'm just saying I'm appealing i'm appealing to personal integrity and the humanity of it all and oh i'm glad you clarified that by the way we were we were meaning i was about to we mean you were about to no no no absolutely not no absolutely not i i not. I am totally into you do whatever. But I do think that if you're, I think this, I think that if some of these CEOs that get $10 million a year, I think if some of them took a million on principle and gave it to some of their team members and on personal recognizance, okay, said, I'm going to do this. Do you know how much their team would love them? How much they would be loyal to them? They wouldn't be looking at the clock every day. They would say, man, this is the greatest

germination tray for ideas, innovation, and mission that I've ever been in. That's where I am. And so, no, I don't want any of this to be governmental, arbitrary, taxate. Isn't this amazing to hear you talk like that? Some people think that it's so crazy, the misunderstanding of libertarians. You're like one of the most generous people in thought that I've ever met. And I personally like to spend all my own money. I like to tip the kid at Starbucks $10 when he smiles and thanks me.

I am a huge – I want to spend money. When my gardeners are mowing my lawn on Christmas Eve, I want to go out there and give them each a hundred bucks. And like, I want to spend my money. And when you take my money from me, I just don't, I just, it goes to government. That's right. And, and, and look at how the government spends it. And so, I mean, well, they feed seagulls going back to the beginning of the show. They feed seagulls over restaurants. That's what they do. They destroy. They destroy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And in in the better world, I think would be to, you know, drop the federal government by about 90 percent in size, remand almost everything the federal government does back to the states. And then we can have and we're going political now. But but then then we have the 50 state experiment. You know, what if state says what if state says we think education should be a complete

function of the government and another state says, no, we think education should be a function of the parents. Well, then you could have two side by side examples and people could look at the one state that says it's a government option or government responsibility. And the other one says it's a parental responsibility. And pretty soon, you know, five to 10 years, you start seeing the outcome of those two different policies. The reason the country is so bifurcated right now is because we have irrigated to the federal level all of these things that were supposed to be done experimentally at the state level with a lot of variety and diversity and experimentation at the state level. And now it's all being administered through the federal. So it's a winner-take-all.

It's a one-size-fits-all. And so the risk and the need to win the game, the game is so much bigger now than a game in your state. And so, anyway, I didn't mean to get all down on that. No, no, no, no. This is my, this is, I love this. I mean, these folks that say they want diversity, they don't really want diversity.

If they did, they would embrace one state, I'll go back to the education, one state having a, and maybe a third state says, well, we think the government should be responsible for it, so we're going to collect taxes for it, but what we're going to do is we're going to give every parent with a school-aged child a voucher to spend into the private sector wherever they want. Of course. And so, you know, if you want to go to the atheist school, you go to the atheist school. If you want to go to the Muslim school, you go to the Muslim school. The Christian, you know, if you want to go to a military school, you go to military. And what happens then as you come into adulthood, you have this wonderful eclectic, eclectic mix, mix of people with different experiences you on the Sevan podcast, and you were so amazing.

And it stimulates your ego. It makes you so prideful that the next time I ask you to come back on, you come back on. Because I have five pages of notes, and I didn't get to jack. But you know what I have to do? I'm going to take my boys to the skate park. and I didn't get to Jack, but you know what I have to do? I'm going to take my boys to the skate park. I have to tell you, there's a few guests now and again that basically – a normal guest, I have two pages of notes, and the more pages I have,

I tell my listeners this all the time, that's not a good sign. That means I'm scared of the guest. And with you, I had six pages. That's terrifying of you. I don't know why. No, you are delightful. Just so delightful. Well, thank you. You're a beautiful human being. I really enjoyed hanging with you. Well, same here. And I do a lot of these. Tell me, tell me, tell me.

And you're just the best um you know some people do these because they just want to hear themselves talk yeah that's me and you have this no no it's not you have this perfect balance you have this perfect thing where you tease out um you know i've never had somebody you know drilled down into that whole v whole Venezuela, the politics of it and the evolution of it. And so thank you for that. I don't get that very often. And it's such a, it's every time I get asked to drill down into that story, which is not very often. I'm just, I always finish it realizing with a new sense of gratitude of what an unusual background I had. To be not as old, any more older than I am, 65. So to be that young and have had that kind of foreign political grassroots,

you know, scrounging up entrepreneurial, all those things struck together with this background. I'm just so, I'm just so grateful that I can't stand it. And thank, thank you for, thank you for teasing that out.

That's. I was so excited to hear about it too. And that was Teresa who, who helped us get the show started. No, that was Wendy, my personal assistant. She's, she's our – no.

Tell Wendy thank you. We call her my work wife. All right. Tell the work wife thank you. You got your work wife and you got your real wife. And Wendy's my little – she handles all that stuff. She's real sharp. All right, brother. I will give you some time to hear how

great you were on the podcast. And then I will reach out to you again and we will dig into some of the stuff. I want to do an entire show on you talking my wife into letting me get chickens. I have a half acre here. I have my own well. I have the smallest plot of land around me. Everyone around me has one acre to a hundred acres. I'm sitting on the coast here. I have my own well. I have the smallest plot of land around me. Everyone around me has one acre to 100 acres. I'm sitting on the coast here in California, and my wife knows that she's going to have to take care of them. I'm not going to do shit, but we need to do a show where we talk her into it. Okay. That sounds like a great challenge.

You've thrown the gauntlet down. Let's go there. Wonderful. Thank you. Joel Salatin, thank you for your time, brother. Thank you. Joel Salatin. Thank you for your time, brother. Thank you.

And we'll chat soon. Yeah. Great.