Soil Formula, FPJ From Lemons, Herbicide Drift Protection
Drake explains the IMO soil formula Master Cho recommends: food, cleanser, medicine, and structure (calcium phosphate) at roughly 1:500 to 1:1000 dilution, plus protectors and seawater minerals at 1:20. Fuel and reproduction are left out on purpose, since extra fuel can make microbes overheat in the pile or get lazy instead of foraging into the soil.
Questions from viewers: George asks about using fine gravel for IMO4, Mark asks about sugar ratios for fermented fruit juice made from lemons (Drake says equal parts by weight, since juicy fruits need more sugar than leafy plants), and a market gardener in Belgium asks how to protect a one-acre plot from neighboring herbicide drift (get IMOs established in the soil so they can digest incoming chemicals).
Drake also shares news: KNF support moved servers from Natural Farming Hawaii to Pure KNF's own servers, a friend is 3D printing corn-based (PLA) seedling pots, and a new 2023 edition of the KNF recipe book is coming before Drake's trip to teach on Maui.
The back half covers Master Cho's presentation on the origins of natural farming: his four spiritual teachers (the Bible, nature, the 4-H club, and his own conscience) and his three human teachers (Yamagishi Miyozo, Shibata Genji, and Yasushi Inoi).
Questions answered
- 27:02 Is KNF structure left out of the maintenance formula for IMOs? — No, structure (calcium phosphate) stays in; only fuel and reproduction are left out so the pile doesn't overheat and microbes don't get lazy.
- 38:21 Can you use fine gravel to make IMO4? — Drake didn't give a direct answer, he pointed to Master Cho's in-person Korea trainings, then got sidetracked hunting for the video clip.
- 39:54 Making FPJ with lemons, more sugar or less? — Equal parts by weight, since juicy fruits like lemons pull moisture out fast; leafy plants need less sugar, about a half to a third.
- 41:22 What is natural farming, according to Master Cho? — An agricultural method for protecting the environment and life, using local natural resources and indigenous microbes instead of pesticides.
- 47:58 One-acre market garden, neighbors spray herbicide, how do I protect against drift? — Get IMOs established in the soil so they digest incoming drift, and work with neighboring farmers to keep spray off your edge.
- 49:15 What are natural farming's three laws of nature? — Balance with water, heat, and air; Drake notes over 70% of a plant's mass comes from air, not the ground.
- 56:45 Who are Master Cho's four spiritual teachers? — The Bible, nature itself, the 4-H club, and his own conscience.
- 1:01:54 Who are Master Cho's three human teachers? — Yamagishi Miyozo, Shibata Genji, and Yasushi Inoi.
KNF Office Hours is a free live Q&A every Sunday at 9 AM HST. Bring your question to pureknf.org/learn/questions or join live.
In this episode
- 0:00 countdown
- 4:15 Intro and Welcome
- 5:18 "Earth Day"
- 6:12 I Ching: The Taming Power of the Small
- 8:30 Young People Caring About the Environment
- 11:20 Moving KNF Support to Pure KNF's Server
- 14:00 3D-Printed Corn-Plastic Planting Pots
- 18:46 (technical difficulties)
- 20:40 Kapila's Nuts YouTube Channel Preview
- 27:07 What's Left Out of the Soil Formula, and Why
- 31:10 New 2023 KNF Recipe Book Coming
- 35:36 Finding Master Cho's Potting Soil Video
- 38:29 Can You Use Fine Gravel for IMO4?
- 40:25 FPJ From Lemons: How Much Sugar?
- 41:22 Master Cho's Natural Farming Introduction
- 48:23 Protecting Crops From Herbicide Drift
- 49:15 Three Laws of Nature: Water, Heat, Air
- 56:45 Master Cho's Four Spiritual Teachers
- 1:01:54 Master Cho's Three Human Teachers
- 1:05:33 Closing Thanks
Transcript
Auto-transcribed with Whisper. Click any timestamp to play from there.
5:00 hey aloha what's up for office hours today april 23rd 2023 for 23 23 um yeah earth day yesterday hopefully y'all did something for the earth not just one day but every make everyday earth day right isn't that the saying um since forever right it's not just like you know like we have all these like you know this month or this thing but earth gets one day how about the earth year the earth century um you know the thing that sustains us all making that a higher priority
5:49 for all of us i don't know um i guess if you're here you probably are tuned into that but wishing you, you know, happy also the other day, you know, 420, happy spring holiday to everybody but before we get into all that, great to see a good group of folks getting in here let's get a little bit of higher wisdom because lord knows I need it and today is the taming power of the small taming power of the microbes maybe this hexagram oh it says you're temporarily restrained it's time for taking small steps this hexagram signifies a time
6:40 when darkness has temporarily enveloped the light the creative power is present in the background however and will come forward in time Your responsibility in this moment is to accept the restraints quietly and remain content with taking small steps. The obstacle to success can only be removed now by gentle measures. Inside yourself, be focused and determined. On the outside, non-action, adaptability, neutrality, and tolerance are the orders of the day.
7:28 Ambitious behavior is to be avoided. Think of planting seeds rather than harvesting fruit. Don't forget that the inferior elements within yourself and others and the time itself may only be restrained now, not fully removed. Do not be tempted into any engagement which will serve to unbalance you. instead hold quietly to the center and take small steps until the higher power has tamed the obstacles in your way so yeah that's uh i guess maybe that that dovetails on what i was saying about the earth day
8:17 i want it just to be every day but it's really small steps it's a lot of us small people doing the right things to do the right, um, the right things. Um, and, um, got an email yesterday from, um, uh, young, she, uh, Lizzie, um, and she, she was inquiring about our, um, teachings here, our classes here. And it's always nice to get an email from somebody, um, interested in classes and I get them, you know, so email her back here today and get that, uh, clarified. But it's just nice to see a young person that like really cares about the earth. And she was like, just talking about the environment.
9:04 I watched, she linked, she actually had a website and everything. And like a college student, really pretty Akamai if you ask me, but, um, really cared about the environment. and she would say sometimes she would get a little, um, you know, lose faith that it's going to happen, that we're going to change anything and that we're actually going to, you know, as a young person, be able to have kids and have your kids have any thing around. You know, I was listening to something the other day and the guy was saying, you know,
9:33 when I was a kid, there was fireflies and there were bugs and there were all these, you know, things. And now there's, there's Instagram and TikTok and the earth is completely dead. You know, there's no bugs, there's no anything. It's just, um, you know, it's all dead. So, um, you know, just the youth don't have the same richness that the, the elder folks like, you know, had, and it's kind of a dismal reality, you know, when you look out and there's like no whales and dolphins are dying and the ocean's really gross to go swim in. And when I remember
10:04 when I was a kid, I would go and I would look and there was all these fish and everything. Now you go out there and there's like a few fish, you know, a few, but it's not the same. It's not the same. Um, you know, and what's up. Okay. So man, there's a great group assembled here today. We got, we got Daniel coming in from Hawaii. We got to have faith from Illinois a cyclopath from I think New York. I want to say New York. I'm not sure. Um, Cheryl from Idaho. What's up, Cheryl? Um, divine hands, the goof man from New York and the goof man. He sent me,
10:42 um, some inspiring things. I'll get into that in a minute here, but he sent me a email this, uh, oh did I minimize that didn't I um he sent me a little interesting thing it's always cool I love when you guys reach out and talk about things um maybe I'll jump into that right now actually while going through these but it's good to see you guys Joe what's up stonemason Illinois in the house. And yeah, beautiful. If it's raining, it's time to put microbes out there. It's spring. And George, hey man, I saw you were trying to get into the KNF support, but the email
11:24 has been down. In other news, I've been, well, before I get into the goofman's photos, I spent the last two three days transferring knf support from natural farming hawaii servers over to the pure knf foundation servers and whoa what a task that is to dump a mysql database because all all the all the databases there were storing it in the same database and so the database had grown to be like 400 megabytes or something because of the um the russian bots that i purged out the
12:10 the week prior that i was talking about and so then i had to separate out the database then dump it then filter it then re-upload it and drop all these tables and if you know anything about my sql you know that there is not a drop table like something in a pattern that you can just put in you have to manually drop each table or use a tool like php my admin then you have to click a whole bunch of boxes and it's not that fun um so yeah and i do notice because i do get to see the server logs in the back and i do notice these errors and things so um but anyway i was able to completely
12:45 move the server over and then i had all these issues with upgrading from php 7 to php 8 and then with php 8 certain functions don't work properly because not everything's written for php and oh my gosh so anyway having the technical expertise to do this and to like sit there at the terminal in SSH and be like which may sound like gibberish to most people which I assume Korean natural farming sounds like gibberish to most people that's why I translated down that I moved the server real simple and now it's operating perfect I think perfectly I gotta
13:23 double check the emails are working um but it's now on the pure knf um web servers and also been working on getting a pure knf community thing up and it's getting out there uh um soon and i've been actually i'm going to launch it as soon as my dns which is a domain name server transfers over and And then I can get a certbot, open SS, or not, let's encrypt, cert, cert, SSL certification. Cert certificate is what it's called. So anyway, a bunch of nerd stuff. But speaking of nerd stuff, check this out here. Let's see, this is the one, that's the one.
14:09 And then I'm going to slide this sucker over just a hair here, bring that into view. and it's uh this one's titled nerd stuffs and this one is from the goofman and he thought i might be interested in this and get a kick out of it um and definitely um so he is 3d printing all of his starter cells so um using a pla which i think is plastic laminate I don't know, adhesive, maybe, I don't know what the A stands for, but it's, you take these little filaments and you load them into this 3D printer here. And this is, you know, this is his little 3D printer. Talk about a futuristic, amazing guy.
14:58 Got his little 3D printer going and he's printing himself his own pots. Polylactic acid is what stands for awesome lactic acid i wonder if it's oh it's made from corn that is awesome so it's not even plastic it's it's edible these are edible pots corn um pots that he's printing in this 3d printer and look at all these little pots he's made and they're all geometric so they fit together perfectly so that he doesn't, you know, he can tightly stack them together. The hexagon, you know, I think hex, yeah, there's that octagon, octagons, is it octagons? One, two, three, four, five, six,
15:44 no, it's hexagons. Yeah, but look at this, I mean, now he can, he doesn't have to go to the store, he can print pots from corn and get his little starters together, and look at those, and they also have holes in the bottom so they can grow through and you can see his hand there for scale unless he has huge hands they're they're you know nice nice small ones and then they can grow through at the bottom so they're not going to get root bound and he can print custom print his own pots how cool is that um and here's you know and he can print all these different sizes so you can have
16:22 you know, I guess start them in here, move them to there, move them to there, get them so they grow nicely. They feel nice and comfortable. They're tucked in there. How, I mean, how cool is that? And maybe, maybe you could just plant it directly into the ground. I don't know. You'd block some of these surface roots, but maybe if you put little holes like here, here, here, maybe the roots would grow out of that. And then also through the bottom. I don't know. I don't know if it'd hold the potting material as well, but, um, Oh, there's little holes on the sides too.
16:51 So if the roots grow out through the bottom, oh, these are awesome. Um, man, that, that is cool. Oh, Cyclopath is in Belgium, by the way, Belgium in the house worldwide and Mark happy birthday, Bridger. And I know it was your birthday the other day and I hope you're doing well, but look at this, man. So, so talk about nerdy stuff. You know, we got a pretty nerdy crowd here of, you know, if you're, if you're tuned into office hours. You're obviously nerding out on office hours. So yeah, these are pretty darn cool.
17:29 Yeah. And I don't, I don't know how much, how much all this costs, but like once you buy a 3d printer like this, you know, you kind of have it forever. Oh, I can zoom in that way. Whoa, look at that. You know, you buy, buy it once you print forever. Now you never have to buy pots again and all these things, right? So that's pretty cool. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. So he's saying that they take about 80 years to biodegrade. Well, you know. Oh, yeah. Yeah. All that stuff where they have these compostable plastic that made out of corn,
18:12 but it's not and it you know takes 80 years to degrade we're trying right we're trying but we're really you know natural farming doing these other things truly putting out the the good stuff um i don't know maybe increase the microbes train them how to eat this plastic specifically this corn corn pla polylactic acid maybe it would do something better tanzania in the house tanzania Tanzania I don't know how you said um but man wow what a good crowd gathered here and um I have one other kind of share I wanted to share with you um it's just a little action here because this week
18:54 I went out um and worked with my buddy and we're trying to get him a um a YouTube channel going so I just wanted to share a little bit about this with you guys see if you get some feedback what you think. So hang on here. One sec, one sec. Um, so he just got a GoPro and I've been teaching him how to, um, how to use it and how to get into, um, Oh, that's not going to do that. Okay. Well, Oh, cause you know why? Let me, um, let me open it this way. It'll, it'll do better in the, in the actual quick time versus the, look at the spinning beach ball. maybe it'll do better
19:37 I'm trying to load it off an external hard drive as well but you know what, let's just play it here oh, it's not going to play now our heart's thinking, why is my computer oh, did I crash it? I crashed the system no oh no, the beach ball of death what did I do? oh, I've got to relaunch my finder relaunch that come on finder oh you know what it's a hard drive spinning up in the back that lagged everything why why okay so one sec uh let's see here it's here it's there it's there it's there let me launch this okay there we go and this thing to put this over here for you guys
20:28 and um let's see maybe we'll just go to this view here and we'll play this so check this out this is my working with my buddy kapila and we're trying to get him a youtube channel so let me know but what you think I'm going to go.
21:28 so The End
22:28 Will you please get this off of my rope? I'm sorry.
23:58 Oh, my God. so anyway there's a small little preview of what we've been doing i don't know what you guys think
24:55 would you watch that it's kind of like asmr type of uh you know watching kapila do his work he's such an artist to take the trees down that kind of counterintuitive to what i'm doing here of making trees bigger but all those albizias clean them down make more light chip them up turn them into good compost good things everything right you know happy earth day taking down trees but those albizia if you let them get too big um you know it they're they're dangerous they'll fall on your house they'll kill you they'll kill your dog you know just like the police um
25:30 um but um yeah so anyway um let's see here so we got so we got some other natural farming questions so i'll get back to that i just wanted to share a little bit about what i was doing out there this past week getting some film. He did that with his GoPro. I actually worked with him with a drone the other day, but oh man, it's, it's hard to fly a drone while someone's cutting down trees. Um, yeah, yeah. So you watch Kapila's channel. I was thinking of naming the channel Kapila's nuts. Um, just cause he's nuts, man. And he also likes coconuts and you know, if you know
26:11 Kapila, I'd be, I think it's perfect. But he's like, I want to have it serious. So people call my tree trimming service i'm like look call the channel kapila's nuts and then you can say hey i'm kapila i do tree trimming uh if you need help i'll take down the biggest trees you got call kapila's tree service at give his phone number i thought that you know it's a better way of doing it and just name your channel kapila's nuts because you need those views right if you can get you know 5 000 10 000 a thousand thousand views um then you know then it'd make
26:45 worth more of his time to climb those trees and get nuts. Um, so anyway, I'll, I'll, I'll be helping him out this little bit, do a few, a few bits of edits there and, uh, teaching him how to turn on the GoPro and then have someone monitor it so that he's actually getting good footage. And, um, but yeah. Okay. So, um, George is asking, is KNF structure omitted from maintenance formula for IMOs. So let's pull that up and let's look at it. Let's see what the book says because there's ain't no party like the proper party. And let's get that up here and let's see here.
27:29 So let me transition this over. Let me switch to this one actually. um person in person uh why not oh that one okay transition is over and let's look at the formula for um i mean for the imos okay so the imos um are going to be here this soil formula here coming across this one. Oh, let me make my mouse better. Um, this one right here. So, or excuse me, no, no, no. This one right here, the soil formula coming across here, soil. So we have food, um, and this is the dilutions. Um, if you were to do one gallon, it would be
28:18 eight milliliters, but otherwise you use this ratio one to 500 for food cleanser, one to 500 medicine one to a thousand structure one to a thousand then there's protectors in there and then there's one to a thousand and then there's minerals in there one to twenty so a little bit stronger dilution of seawater coming in and this is what you consider the soil formula so whether you're making IMOs and mixing this into your IMO pile or after you're done making IMOs and you spread the IMOs out on the land, then you're watering with this soil formula right here.
29:00 So this is the formula that Master Cho recommends to use for those right there. And that's, yeah, so it does include structure, which, you know, is calcium phosphate here. So it does include that, you know, you need food, cleanser, medicine, and structure for those microbes, plus some protectors and bodyguards to keep them safe while they're growing and a bit of mineral so that they don't get emaciated right everything there what is omitted from this is fuel and reproduction those two are not included in the soil formula and reason for that is um
29:43 you're not you're not needing there is calcium and the calcium phosphate here in the structure there's calcium you don't need the extra calcium here and the fuel may cause your microbes to overgrow in the pile and overheat and when you're putting them out on the land as well the extra fuel um they you want them to plug into the ground to start to find the nitro nitrogenous material there you don't if you provide them too much of this they'll kind of overgrow and get fat and lazy. Not that all fat people are lazy, but, you know, out of shape.
30:23 And we want them to go out and find the fuel themselves into the land. And if you put it in the pile, it's too much fuel. You know, it's like throwing too much gas on a fire. If you put too much, it'll just blow up, right? If I'm creating a pile of wood and I put too much gas, too much fuel into there and I light it on fire, it's going to just blow up and really take you out in a huge fireball. And that's not what you want. You want slow, steady growth. You want the soil microbes to really, um, nourish themselves into your soil. So that's why fuel is omitted here. And this is the
31:01 soil formula coming across, which I think I can zoom. I can zoom so you can see it a little better. um and then other thing too here um to mention well since i got the the book up here is that um i've been working on the book um i know a bunch of people have bought the continuous edition of it and so i've been working on it a lot here and i just got a whole um new introduction written really clarifying how everything's used together. And so there's a three page introduction added. And I'm going to get this all together, make a bunch more edits here, and then I'll
31:46 send it out to you guys via the email. And but, you know, obviously this it still has the old date here. The last edition was March 8th, 2022. So it's about time that I put out a 2023 edition. and so this will be out shortly. One of my main motivations for working on the book is I'm about to head to Maui in five days. Wowie, I'm going to Maui and I'm working with the Hawaii Farmers Union through their Farm Apprentice Mentorship FAM program and so I'll be teaching to all their fam program students over there on Maui, which I heard the guys from Lanai and
32:35 Molokai are also coming over because they're part of Maui County, part of, you know, those three islands make up Maui County and they have Maui County funding. So they'll be coming over to learn, be doing an evening class with them on Thursday and then a practical hands-on. And I think we're going to get into microbes and just do microbes. I usually start people with a can of food as a starting point because food is really a better starting point.
33:07 But I think we're going to just dive deep into the microbes because I need to switch up what I'm doing a little bit and just teach them a bit about that. I may do a quick food intro with them that day. maybe make food and microbes and definitely be making the disgustingly cheap microbes and definitely be making an IMO collection and then probably an IMO pile as well. So that's a lot to fit into three hours. And usually I recommend when you're teaching to do less, less is more. So we'll see. And, um, but you know, as I get the new recipe book out for this year, um, I'm really excited
33:52 because I'm also going to be traveling across the state. Um, so going, you know, Maui is my first one, but then going to, um, uh, hopefully do, do Molokai, Lanai, or I don't know if I'll go to Lanai, but definitely Molokai, um, Oahu, um, and probably Kauai. um and so if if you're on those islands and you want to hear about that let me know um send an email to drake at pureknf.org and then i also have i'll also be going to kona on the other side of the island um and um into may to be doing a quick class over there oh my gosh someone's calling me
34:36 it's my mom who else calls you other than your mom right i'm glad i still have a mom um and um so i'll be doing you know kind of an island tour type of thing and going going around my you know usually in the summer i used to do a um or spring summer i would do a america tour the knf aloha tour and go to america but all since the covid stuff and all that i i really um i i don't like traveling very far from home anymore i'm just you never know when um you know misinformation is going to attack you and get locked down um so um so anyway on that that's
35:22 you know new new edition of the book coming out here shortly um what else we got going on um so So, you know, you guys are talking about soil and building soil. I did want to mention that here, let me see, let me pull this up. Let's go to, let's actually, let's just go to YouTube. So what I'm going to do here is pull up on my channel. So if you click on the channel below, um, uh, and then here, um, master Cho has talked
36:12 about making potting soil. Where is it? Um, it's not, you know, this is where I need to cut this into a YouTube short and make like a little short thing, but, um, but he has talked about it, um, here. And so on these online courses here, scroll over. Is it not there? Darn. Okay, no. Okay. So, I mean, the thing is, my YouTube is poorly organized. Even when I go to find stuff, I'm like, where is it? But the thing is, um, he has talked about it. I happen to know where all this stuff is cause it's
37:01 in my brain, but, um, but I think I need to go to my playlists here and then, I mean, I don't know how the heck you'd find this, um, without, um, without me here to do this. Um, cause it's not even in that one. Um, Oh, okay. Well, okay. Well, I'll link that here. Oh, you know, I got to click all playlists and then are these the only ones I'm featuring? Oh my gosh. Oh, YouTube is so
37:46 junk at this. Okay. Created playlist here. It's, it's gotta be in these here of, oh man, origins of KNF, Master Cho. Is that all? Come on, there gotta be more than that. Maybe I clicked through it too quick. Oh, okay. Well, I don't blame you guys for not finding this, but, um, I'll make a short on it, of Master Cho talking about making potting soil because it's, you know, that's a good tip. That's a good information to make those things happen. Can you use fine gravel for making IMO4?
38:33 Really fine gravel? So the question from George is, can you use fine gravel? um i guess you guys are talking about the soils here but um he master cho talked you know when we're in korea in fact i mean since i'm on the um the channel here let me pause this and go down here so on the channel i'm in the basic poultry training which i can name basic poultry training it's pretty advanced actually but you know oh no that's at that's at Pastor Lee's farm it's this one
39:20 you know knowing where all this stuff is and indexing and referencing it I mean you could just be a hardcore person and like watch all this and then know where it all is um but man it's hard to find this stuff i don't blame you guys for not being able to find this and not knowing more about it because it's like here it's my own stuff and i can't even find it um but that's why indexing and referencing yeah that's us driving to muju i i know i mean i know because i was there right but if you watch it um here he's talking about
40:01 the IMO. This is his IMO barns where he's making these things. This is the feed mixing day. I really need to cut these things down. It's really what it comes to. So if you drop me some super chats, give me time to get off the farm. Maybe I can cut these things down for you guys all. Or maybe I'll just do it because I'll do it anyway. So Mark's asking making FFJ with lemons more sugar or less about equal parts. So if I have 10 pounds of lemons, I'd add 10 pounds of sugar because it's so liquidy. Those lemons, it'll pull out the material and it'll work well. So if you're
40:45 using a juicy fruit like a lemon, more sugar, so equal parts. So, you know, one-to-one on there. If you're using plants, it's usually a half to a third way less sugar for plants, but fruits, especially juicy fruits like a lemon equal parts and you will find you won't have to super saturate it much at the end but adding more sugar to a juicy fruit and fruits makes a better fermented plant juice can't have food out of fruits for you okay so with all that and let's let's transition over here and get into Master Cho's presentation.
41:32 So Master Cho here, you know, the origins of KNF, getting in there, doing his thing. And what I want to share with you today is this presentation here from Master Cho. So this is his Cho Global Natural Farming, now pretty much defunct organization, largely because his son kind of taken over and there's other organizations that have this name but are not you know have no relation to him at this point so so what is natural farming according to Master Joe right that's what today's presentation's on and you know going through his
42:19 old slides here to get into these, um, these deals. So what is it? Um, according to master Cho. So here's master Cho in his happy place. Um, you know, taking small steps, but he defines natural farming is an agricultural methodology for promoting protection of the environment and life. so it's you know a lot of other things like you know it's like you go to a chemical farmer and you ask them well what's you know agriculture they'll tell you food production but then they do nothing for protection of the environment or life right they're all about pesticides
43:01 killing everything you see dumping neurotoxins developed in the for wartime on on pests and killing everything like monocropping, not respecting any of, you know, the, the life that was there, the diversity, the bugs, the birds, the, the moles, the, um, you know, all the, you know, just walk out into the bushes and look at how many insects there are and especially go back, you know, 20 years and look at how many insects there were. There were a lot and now there's hardly any insects you know and you know talk about the waterways coming down the mississippi
43:40 where parts of the gulf are completely dead zones from so much nitrogen washing down from all of america that you know mississippi river draining most of america down into the gulf and killing things it's the modern agriculture that um doesn't disregards the environment and disregards life you know i mean think about it they're spraying herbicides and then selling that product to you within a few days and you're taking in those herbicides and then they're feeding those to animals that are then aggregating these chemicals and all these things so natural farming is an
44:15 agricultural methodology promoting protection of environment and life and today i don't think you know producing food in vast quantities is very important because there's so many people and we don't want to famine but if we kill the environment and we kill life it's all in vain anyway right what does it matter that you made more food if you killed the environment it's like it's like eroding your foundation to build a higher tower right like oh we're gonna take it's like jango we're gonna take all the bricks from the bottom we're gonna stack them on the top
44:45 and we're gonna have a better tower because it's taller it's like no you're actually eroding your foundation so that's what master cho brings that's why i'm into this um because the environment you know does it scale does it go to all these things it can um but but the main thing is we're protecting the environment we're protecting life and what could be more important today i don't know but so let's go back to this and natural farming utilizes natural resources made locally by farmers themselves with natural farm byproducts aided by locally available indigenous microorganisms
45:26 instead of using herbicides and pesticide. Natural farming results in superior agricultural products with high productivity and minimum cost and labor by maximizing nature's potential. I know it's bad to just read off the screen and read these things, but I'm just reading it for everyone in case you're listening to this. And the idea is that utilizing natural resources made locally by farmers themselves. This is sovereignty. This is empowerment. This means you take the means of production, not only growing the food, but bringing it to you. You can make your fertilizers.
46:06 You can tune everything you need into exactly the way you need it using byproducts. And so you're not just using the good stuff. You're using things that you would otherwise throw away. For instance, making a fermented plant juice, a can of food out of banana peels. After I've peeled the banana, there's all this banana leftover. I could compost that, sure, but I can also add sugar and extract the goodness, the essential bits of the banana out of the peels, and then spray that back on my bananas, and I'm going to get amazing results.
46:45 So using byproducts to do this, and using your indigenous microbes, what's right around you, taking those, strengthening them, putting them back out into the environment. and instead of importing things and using foreign things you're using what's right there strengthening what's there and making it better and it can result in high productivity assuming you're able able to continue to protect the environment and life right there's there's certain methodologies where you compromise where you say well i don't care i'm
47:19 just going to do this because i'm going to get higher yield but you're compromising the environment It's like you still get the high productivity. If you do KNF and you see it, you'll notice like, whoa, everything's flowering. Whoa, there's way more fruit this year. Whoa, my fruit tastes better. Wow, there's more of this. Everything is one is the best out there. OK, minimum cost because you are basically just buying sugar. You're not having to go to the grow store and buy some chemical stuff for $100 for a small bottle. You're able to go to cost, you know, cost you less or Costco or whatever.
47:52 Maybe don't even go there. maybe go to your local sugar producer, which they probably don't exist, but get sugar. And for a bag of sugar, you know, $25 for 25 pounds of sugar, you now have enough to do way more than that grow bottle would be. Hey, thank you. Thank you. Super chats. You guys are awesome. um oh man okay and um labor and and also saving labor okay and i'm gonna jump to um psychopaths question here which says i'm on a one acre plot planning market planning a market garden the farmers around me are spraying herbicide right now do you have any tips for project
48:34 protection against drift i'm planning a hedge but this will take a few years thanks um you know the the the best thing to do is to get the IMOs in the soil so as that drift comes over IMOs will digest it um other than that I don't know how to stop drift other than you know educate the other farmers about it um you know file a complaint and ban drift you know make sure they spray just down where their thing is where there is no drift I don't know I mean you're gonna have to you're gonna have to cooperate with the other guys around you to teach them not to spray drift
49:09 and not to have that, you know, around you. There's no need for it. So anyway, back to this presentation. Natural farming pursues harmony with nature based on the three laws of nature. So this is, there's actually three heats. Okay, so really where natural farming takes its basis here is coming from, you know, harmony with nature. You're trying to balance nature. I don't, I don't translate this harmony. I translate it as balance. And you're trying to work with water, heat, and air. So, you know, the rain coming down, the moisture in the air,
49:56 the sun, heat, and the air, all these things have vital nutrients. You know, did you know that 70 or yeah i think 70 to 90 90 percent maybe even be 96 percent i'm pretty sure partita can probably fact check me on this but of what you see like if i'm looking at a plant i believe it's it's greater than 70 i know that might even be 95 of what you're seeing came out of the air very little of your plant came from the ground right it's it's the carbon the CO2, the rain falling, the carbon, the hydrogen, the oxygen, all those things are
50:33 gases that come out of the air and the sky. And the plant only like 4% of it, 4 or 6%, something like that comes from the earth, which is your, you know, P and K, phosphorus, potassium, those things come from the ground and the calcium and all the rest of those elements. so respecting the air the water the sky all these things um because yeah you don't need much soil you don't need a lot most your plant comes out of the air um as long as you can get good microbes in there to do it um and then the heat from the sky there's actually three heats the sky
51:13 the heat from the ground and then the heat from the microorganisms um and then the three bodies the sky the earth the air all these things sky earth air huh i don't know what he's meaning by that but but all those things combine make your plant in the center right um of what you got so balancing you know with those things that's where your power comes from very little bit comes from you the farmer most your power comes from the god-given natural resources um then natural farming farmers produce their own agricultural resources materials easily with natural resources
51:55 like agro livestock byproducts from the farm so again natural farming when it shines the best it's with integrated animal farming meaning that you're able to integrate in even on the smallest scale the microorganisms eating you know those animals up to the earthworms eating those up to the um moles and um ground bearing ground boring animals like here we got rats that dig holes um and all the way up to then you know chickens to pigs to cows to other livestock sheeps goats um you know these other tools that have been with us for centuries and utilizing them for their
52:43 byproducts feeding them microbes bringing their manures out and feeding them the byproduct of your farming and getting these cycles going it really when you get this cycle going with natural farming and you get integrated animal farming into your agroforestry or into your areas or even if you're going to monoculture certain areas and do high production gardening you're able to bring the resources around and you have to do a bit more work that's where natural farming really shines so natural farming encourages the combined agriculture and livestock farm to cross utilize
53:21 the byproducts and make the animal feed and natural fertilizers this is pretty much what i was saying on the prior previous slide same thing the integrated animal farming is really where it's at um so yeah getting sheep on there you know getting getting some way to do it with portable electric fence like you're saying here Thomas and to bring those animals around and do rotational grazing and before you move them into a paddock spray it down with IMOs with seawater so that it you know diluted seawater proper IMOs then that the worms everything the grass grows
53:55 better everything becomes cycling much faster much better and animals really really make that happen so natural farming principles and technology has already been established for the livestock farming as well as for the crops so a lot of what you're learning in natural farming um you know there's guidelines there's books there's these recipes there's these ways where master chose books have defined you know the best way to keep animals um and the bet you know i say it's the best ways i don't know if it's the best best best ways but it's the best ways i've seen so far of master
54:33 chose systems with that you know we'll get we'll get into the livestock it'll be one of the things we'll cover here in the future um but it's already been well established right you don't have to go and like make things up you just follow the recipes and then you'll tune yourself in as a farmer and see how you can optimize for your specific location but a lot of it is just you know follow what's out there already. The next slide says in natural farming, the application of natural fertilizers feed is managed based on the nutritional cycle theory, which we covered
55:12 nutritional cycle theory, I think a couple episodes ago. And it's really what this is about is giving the right nutrient at the right time in the right amount. So right amount, right time, right thing, right? All those matter, right? If I, you know, if it needs something and I give it at the wrong time, it doesn't matter. If it needs something and I give it way too much or way too little, it's wrong. And, you know, so all those ideas fit in of that nutritional cycle theory is you know for the animals they're going through certain stages in life you know the juveniles still
55:54 milking so i'm feeding them my my mom my mother pig right now my sow feeding her calcium phosphate to help her keep her milk production up and as the pigs start to eat i can start to make their fermented feed for them in a way that helps them digest it better build their gut microflora so they're going to be better off throughout their life cycle. Didn't use antibiotics on them, so they have their full intact gut biota working for them. And then, you know, same for plants. They go through these different stages where juvenile needs something different than when
56:32 they're going through puberty, than when they're going through maturing fruits. So understanding all these stages and phases are understanding the nutrient cycle theory. And so going a little bit deeper into this, the great teachers in natural farming, right? Who are the origins of Master Cho's natural farming? Who are the origins? Who are the influences for him? and um this is he's talking about his four spiritual teachers um number one is the bible and it says it is not the words of the man but the voice of the omniscient god and um so and if
57:14 you look at master cho he has like you listen to his lectures he has a lot of wisdom that comes directly from the bible and some people would say oh you know maybe it's not true or whatever but he talks about how the in the beginning there was just the ocean right there was just the waters and then the land came up from the waters right and he refers that back he quotes some genesis and then i think also corinthians quotes on this where it talks about how that's one of the reasons when he's talking about seawater why it's so important that seawater is like the
57:48 amniotic fluid is like the minerals it's like it's very similar to amniotic fluid and diluted blood and when the land comes up then the water flows on it and knocks all the minerals off and if you take the the the seawater and put it back on the land you're restoring that the birth you know when you're a baby you have such soft nice skin and it's all good then as you age you become all like old and thin-skinned and um you know not as healthy uh you know but remineralizing your skin remineralizing the earth brings back that youthful
58:24 abundance that youthful growth that and so he gets that you know directly from the bible he's he's he's reading this and understanding how this book talks about you know the origins of earth so like Let's look and see that. Then he's talking about, so his next spiritual teacher, number two is nature. And it says it reveals its secrets when the man stays humble. And this is the most important for it to sit out and to be humble and not to think you know best. And you have some, you know, permanent head damage, PhD, thinking that you know better.
59:03 And if you do have permanent head damage, that's okay. You can recover. Um, um, but to understand that you can get humble and you can humble yourself to, to look and to see and to really understand and to forget all this, you know, knowledge that comes in from certain ways and not forget it, but to like understand that nature is truth. Like what's happening in nature is true. There's no lies. There's no misinformation. There's nothing wrong in nature. You just have to observe that. and but it's hard to see sometimes because um you have to be very humble to understand these things
59:41 um and so that if you can just sit and observe nature even for in computer science um the best some of the best algorithms even this new ai technology is coming by studying how nature works how brains work how um you know you have these units like like my brain is a bunch of associative binary switches essentially of these neurons and then it sends a ripple through and it you know and that's what our tensor processing units tpus these these different ideas the most advanced ai is just mimicking what's happening naturally in a brain right and how to teach it
1:00:20 how to learn this iterative associative properties so nature is truth nature is the most sophisticated thing out there. And then we try to make all these other technologies fit on top by like extracting and isolating and doing these things. But nature is actually true. So if you can humble yourself to study it, it can actually advance our other technologies. And then his third spiritual teacher is the 4-H club, which their ideology is head, heart, hands, and health. And I used to be to, you know, work with the 4-H program, doing an after-school program with kids.
1:01:01 And I really love that, you know, head, heart, health, hands, heart, you know, these principles of understanding this. And if you want to study more, look up the 4-H, join your local 4-H club, get into it. And then his last, the last spiritual teacher, number four, which I think he put this last because it's there is his own conscience, meaning that I chose to follow my conscience, not my greed, meaning that if you have a good spirit and you work on yourself and you make yourself a moral, just and upright person, that you will learn more than anybody else.
1:01:41 And so it's self-improvement, these things that really make it where you're learning today, you know in those are you'll learn from the spirit so um his and so going into master cho's human being teachers his first one was yamagishi myozo and um to him the spirit and the mind were very were more important than the technology and the management meaning that you know he really valued you know if you're a moral upright just person and you're you're truly working on yourself then you're going to learn more than technology and the other management and it's like the simple
1:02:22 farmer like you ever you ever heard of the guy where he's um a guy a guy is in a in a boat out out there i think i think or i don't know anyway and the guy was like uh saying the mantra wrong and he's like no no it's like this and the guy was walking on water and he's like oh okay like anyway it doesn't matter if you're moral upright just like master chou said if you have the right enthusiasm you're going to be better than the most studied and learned person so improve yourself and you will find that everything else around you will improve which is kind of
1:02:56 always talk about that um his next teacher was uh the second teacher was shibata genji and he opened Master Cho's eyes to the remarkable world of enzymes and microorganisms and he still cherishes his book The True Aspect of Enzymes which if anybody has that in Japanese I would love to get a hold of it because I really want to read that but understanding what enzymes are. Zymes are like the bits of life and enzymes are something I really need to learn more about. Partita was talking about it one time, but really need to get into there and understanding these
1:03:39 subtleties of enzymes, how they power life and then the microorganisms and how they build from there to become macro organisms. And even inside me, you'll look and you'll find a 90, 95% microorganism. Even though my human cells are much bigger and outnumbered, they're a minority, I look human, but I'm really a microorganism and majority of my proteins and everything are functioning with enzymes. Enzymes are the drivers of almost all of this stuff. So I really need to learn more about this, but I wish I had a Shibata Genji in my life. And then his third and final,
1:04:17 not final teacher but when his third major teacher was inoi yasushi yasushi um and he also read his book more than a dozen times titled the theory of new cultivation technology so i would also like to get a hold of this book they're both in japanese um i don't know where that you know where they are out there but um but get into that and to understand a little bit more of um these these things because if those those were the three teachers and the vast majority those two other teachers in master chose life um genji and yasushi were um posthumously i don't think he even met them
1:05:03 but he studied and then he went to japan and met his disciples and worked with his wife and stuff and learn from them, but he mainly read their books. So for you, don't fret if you haven't met Master Cho. You can read his book, you can read his disciples' books, and you can then learn to understand all of this stuff and become, you know, work on yourself and become a better person and understand all these things. And before, next time we'll pick up here on the natural farming methodology because it's, you know, it's 10 o'clock office hours over for me. And Hey, thank you.
1:05:43 Thank you for the super chats. Thank you guys. I want to thank, um, stone Mason, psychopath, Ben all for, for, you know, putting their money where their mouth is given, you know, helping, helping me out. I'm going to work on a bunch of good stuff for natural farming as always between now and then I'm always trying to better, better on the world and bring these things to you. I'm working on indexing my YouTube channel, working on cutting the shorts, working on getting more information, better packaged out there so that we can make it easier to spread the word.
1:06:17 But big thanks to Master Cho, you know, right here behind me. Thanks to Pure KNF Foundation and knfsupport.com, the project that the foundation runs, which is up and going, I think. I'm going to double check the emails are going out. but all this thanks I really appreciate all you guys tuning in all you girls all you folks out there I should just say folks right tuning in making the world a better place and doing what you can and yeah ask me questions whenever email me drake at pureknf.org if you want sign up for a class I'll have more listed soon if you're in the islands let me know
1:07:01 I do need help coordinating these classes around the islands just because man it's it's always better to have more help and more people involved and anyway looking forward to you tuning in next week thanks Ben and I'm gonna go water my cows and get out of here and do a few things and enjoy the rest of my Sunday and be a good person. So I'm gonna, again, long live the natural farmer. Aloha. Love you all. Bye now.