Brown Rice Vinegar Cleanser, Moldy Vinegar Fix, Latvia KNF Delivery
George, a KNF farmer near the Latvia-Russia border, joins by Zoom to talk through a season of trials. He is running a side-by-side microgreens test, spraying one tray daily with a KNF solution against a plain-water control, and admits the difference is not yet visible. He is also building no-dig market garden beds by piling about 20 cm of two-year-old decomposed manure compost on top of the soil, mulching paths with broadleaf wood chips, and sprayed a neighbor's field with JADAM microbes mixed in a one-cubic-meter batch, though he never confirmed the results. George's biggest project is a decentralized delivery system: a local dairy already trucking goods to Riga now drops off and picks up packages at a rural point, letting neighbors move food locally without a dedicated trip to market.
Ben asks about vinegar that has grown a scoby with mold on top. Drake says the vinegar below can still be salvageable, though moldy vinegar gets pretty gross. That leads into a full read-through of Master Cho's brown rice vinegar (BRV) teachings: Drake translates sterilization as sanitizing, explains neutralization as bringing acid and alkaline back into balance, and works through diuresis and synthesis. For plants, low concentrations of BRV boost early leaf growth and tree flexibility, restrain bad bacteria, and maximize calcium absorption when combined with water-soluble calcium. As a cleanser, Master Cho's ratios are 1:500 on juvenile leaves and 1:200 to 1:300 on adult leaves.
Drake closes with his own KNF Cleanser recipe: one part finished KNF fruit or grain food mixed with two parts water, fermented three to six months under a breathable lid until the pH drops below 2.4. He notes BRV lowers sugar content, so it gets left out of the harvest formula but used throughout the soil, seed, vegetative, and reproductive stages.
Questions answered
- 19:05 Does spraying KNF solution on microgreens show a visible difference? — Not yet - George's sprayed and unsprayed trays look similar; the effect may need more time to show.
- 21:24 How is George building his no-dig market garden beds? — He piles about 20 cm of two-year-old decomposed manure compost onto beds and mulches paths with broadleaf wood chips.
- 29:20 Did spraying JADAM microbes on a neighbor's field make a difference? — George mixed a one-cubic-meter batch and had it sprayed by tractor, but never confirmed the results before time ran out.
- 40:41 What is the decentralized delivery system George is building in Latvia? — A local dairy already delivering to Riga now drops off and picks up packages at a rural point instead of driving back empty.
- 47:06 Why isn't George's IMO collection working well? — His scraped forest-floor mycelium was too wet; Drake says rehydrate dried IMO lightly, damp like forest duff, not soaking.
- 52:44 Ben's vinegar has a moldy scoby on top - is the vinegar below still good? — Drake says it can still be salvageable, but moldy vinegar gets pretty gross.
- 55:08 What do sterilization, neutralization, diuresis, and synthesis mean for brown rice vinegar? — Drake reframes sterilization as sanitizing, neutralization as rebalancing acid to alkaline, and synthesis as helping nutrients absorb.
- 1:00:28 What does brown rice vinegar do for plant growth? — It boosts early leaf growth, improves tree flexibility, restrains bad bacteria, and maximizes calcium absorption.
- 1:02:09 How does Master Cho say to make brown rice vinegar? — Make rice wine, then leave it exposed so acetic acid bacteria turn it into vinegar over time.
- 1:08:33 What dilution ratio should I use for brown rice vinegar as a cleanser? — Use 1:500 on juvenile leaves and 1:200 to 1:300 on adult leaves for sanitizing.
- 1:09:35 What's Drake's recipe for KNF Cleanser (brown rice vinegar) from fruit? — Mix one part finished KNF fruit food with two parts water and ferment three to six months until pH drops below 2.4.
- 1:11:43 When should you stop using brown rice vinegar on crops? — Stop before harvest - BRV lowers sugar content, so it's left out of the harvest formula.
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 Stream Start
- 4:58 Intro and Welcome
- 6:09 I Ching Reading: The Gentle Wind
- 8:48 Welcome and Who's Tuning In
- 10:44 Weather Check-In
- 12:32 Drone Route Map of the Farm
- 19:05 George Joins From Latvia: KNF Interview
- 52:43 Ben's Vinegar Question
- 52:59 Viewers Connecting Worldwide
- 53:45 Master Cho's KNF Cleanser (Brown Rice Vinegar)
- 1:09:35 Drake's KNF Cleanser Recipe and Book
- 1:12:12 Thank Yous and Sign-Off
Transcript
Auto-transcribed with Whisper. Click any timestamp to play from there.
5:30 hey aloha welcome to office hour korean natural farming and um hope everything out there is going well for you so welcome So today is February 26th to 2023. So let us get started with a bit of higher wisdom here. And today is the gentle, the penetrating wind.
6:15 Consistent correctness turns every situation to your advantage. The image of this hexagram is that of a gentle wind dispersing storm clouds. A wind that changes direction often, even a very powerful one, will disperse nothing. It only stirs up the sky. The wind that causes real change is the one that blows consistently in the same direction. There is an important lesson for us in this example. When faced with a difficult problem to resolve, or a goal we wish to achieve, we are often tempted to take striking and energetic actions.
7:00 Though it is possible to achieve temporary results in this fashion, they tend to collapse, when we cannot sustain the vigorous effort. More enduring accomplishments are won by gentle and ceaseless penetration. like that of the soft wind blowing steadily in the same direction. The truth of the sage penetrates to us in this way. And this hexagram comes now to remind you how you should seek to penetrate others. The advice is given to you by the I Ching is threefold. First, establish a clear goal. The wind that continually changes direction has no real effect.
7:48 Second, apply the principle of gentle penetration to yourself. By eliminating your own inferior qualities, you earn influence over others. Third, avoid aggressive or ambitious maneuvers now. These are rooted in desire and fear. It will only serve to block the aid of the creative. Desirable influence is the one that flows naturally from maintaining a proper attitude. In your interactions with others, bend like the willow. by remaining adaptable, balanced, accepting, and independent. And by steadily moving in a
8:37 single direction, you gain the clarity and strength that makes possible a series of great successes. Hey, everybody. So I was thinking about it, you know, I was walking across the yard to the office. And I was like, man, office hours, what do I, why do I always do this? But look at this, look at this family here of people tuning in, coming in from around the world. George from Latvia, Mitchell, where you at? Goofman, New York, Ben in Arizona, solar gourmet in Germany we got the tasty sun here um yeah living man New Jersey's here
9:27 um where's VA I don't know where VA is um so you know the steady wind the continually showing up someone saying man you're kind of dedicated the other week and um you know i think that's what it takes to continue to grow natural farming in a steady direction or virginia virginia oh i should know that maybe i don't know why i didn't think it va is virginia virginia is for lovers and the guy across the street moose is a virginian who came out here to Hawaii and started to grow Ava. George, if you want to jump in, I did drop the
10:18 Zoom link in the chat. So here today, I wanted to share some small, just little side updates with you. one of those is this here. Let me just pull it up and get the right one on this side. That one. Okay. And Heather and Dan just sent me this of their car being buried by snow. And it's kind of funny because, you know, here in Hawaii, it just rained, I don't know, a couple feet in the past week, two weeks, three weeks since they left. And it didn't rain until the
11:04 whole month before they were here. And now it's just raining. But I forget because I've been farming this whole time since about a month they were here ago, maybe two months ago now, almost. And I've farmed so much in the beginning or since then. And I forget that halfway around the world, the majority of you folks up in the northern hemisphere are looking like this right now. And so here I am farming, you know, out, you know, moving cattle and doing all this farming stuff. And I forget that it's like winter for most folks. I wish this was all like IMOs and it was just
11:39 eating and bio-remedian in this whole land. Imagine this was all white, fluffy mycelium from Heather spreading the IMOs in her neighborhood. I don't know if it would probably eat everyone's house and car and you just end up with a beautiful fertile earth but I don't know the snow and all that's pretty good oh what Mark you're on North Shore bro you gotta come over Big Island at least for a day come say hi um that's nothing okay you guys get more snow than this well for me that's a whole lot because
12:11 you know I don't deal with that snow like that I mean snow is up in the mountain but not down here so anyway just got that shared with me of they're checking in nice nice to hear back from people and then one other kind of update here is this here so I found this software fly lychee lychee and um i set it up so that um here's the farm uh is my house here it's the office where i'm at right now and so i set the drone up to fly outside and fly around this loop here like this
12:59 and fly back like that around that loop and it takes about four minutes to do and apparently it's 1.6 kilometers and it points the drone at these points of interest around but the cool thing is now instead of me having to go out and um and fly the drone around i can just take the drone out and put it turn it on and put load this route in and say go and hit record and it flies this whole route and now then later i can really help me to document my farm a heck of a lot better because it'll be the same shot every time. And so if I fly the drone and I just put it outside
13:43 and I do this exact route each time, it pretty much follows the same route. So let me see here one sec. And if I can pull this up. So I'll show you what it looks like on this drone shot. And there's a couple angles that I maybe could tweak a little bit better just to be really nice and on it. But let's see here. Okay, yeah, this one, I'll bring this over. Oh, no, hang on. Let me open that.
14:31 Bring it over here. and what I want to show you here is, and let me, actually, let me just hear the screen completely and play this. So, so this is, this is that, um, this is that shot. So as, as I'm doing more natural farming is, you know, continuing to, it's just a big piece of land to work on to do. and let me let me just for sake of this I'm gonna put it uh one and a half times just to fly a drone a little quicker here then but this will be the route that the drone will fly automatically without me so it's kind of it's it's now on its course doing its thing and so this is my pasture
15:18 on the um on the roadside right now I'm grazing a mama and her baby in there and not really managing it. So this is kind of like a pretty good pasture that's been not treated that well looks like. This field was a bunch of elephant grass I just mowed. And then this field here is, there's the mom and the baby in the corner there. So they're grazing those two paddocks there. And then we're going to fly over the top. This pasture below is really, it's ready to be grazed. this one right in front of us this pasture is where I am working a bunch those piles are where I drop fish and microbes
16:01 we just sprayed this with bio with IMOT and working on these pastures there's my new dairy cow and then flying over to the barn all the bananas and working on these this planting out here. So it kind of flips around the barn. You get to see, you know, what progress is happening there in terms of, you know, the valley a little bit, the barn, all the bananas, the pigs and chickens are in there, the river.
16:50 And then this pasture I'm working on a lot. And my cows were out. Those two cows are not supposed to be in that field right there. My parents' house. And then flying back over to my house. And all the plantings down below there. So working on kind of, I just grazed the cows through here. but wanting to get this to be a bunch of sugarcane. So below, right at the very bottom where the truck is, all that sugarcane, and then working on this to bring it more taro as the land dries out a little bit. It's been so rainy.
17:36 And so, yeah, just looking around, seeing. and it's almost done there and it just finishes up so that's that's what um let's see here um so that's that's what i got um you know that route set so the drone will just do and follow those things and um it's pretty cool uh website and app and everything that i just set it up and it follows that and now i'll be able to you know doc airly aerially aerially it's a hard word to
18:23 say document the farm around around there and um that will work so yeah looking looking forward to that looking forward to sharing more of that with you guys and then I got George here if let's see let's see here if I start that video it's still going? yeah and I can hear you so everybody just let me know can you hear George? can you guys hear George
19:12 hello I can hear him so let's see if we can hear him in the chat here yeah okay they can hear you okay well let me get your in house volume on that side let me know if I need to and can you hear me well yeah all right hey hey so welcome george so we we we talked um i don't know almost was it almost a year ago it's like it was right before winter last year and then now it's winter again this year um and then since then you've been doing a bunch of korean natural farming things
20:01 yeah i've been trying to and uh well this year's i'm uh i'm preparing the all the all the ingredients in the black shelf there and i didn't have really much chance to try them out really but i'm trying them on microgreens since we have like three four months maybe proper summer uh so you know quite a short season so i gotta be prepared so so the microgreens are enabling you to grow like extend your season and grow indoors where you don't have access like it's snowy like that picture i just showed right yeah yeah it's exactly like that right now
20:43 but it's much warmer than any other previous years oh interesting i wonder i wonder why i don't know it's just like the climate is changing like that i remember that it was usually much snower much more snow in uh in the december but nowadays it's like february which is supposed to be the coldest month in a year it's now it's weird that it's not that cold it used to be like sometimes minus 20 something like that sometimes even lower huh we so yeah it's interesting for us here too that's a little bit of um we just had a month and a half of
21:24 complete drought and then now it's we just had a month and a half of you know 40 days of rain basically so kind of that's not out of characteristic but it's just like the weather is very extreme is what i would say yeah true so yeah what i've been working on is like i'm building like uh the garden beds like like intensive market garden so i'm basically piling up like like good 20 centimeters of manure like in the straight beds you probably saw something in the pictures and uh i'm building so the the soil upwards so i'm basically planting into the
22:01 manure not the manure but it's already decomposed like second year now and adding new beds and so the the biology is not that great because the pals were standing there and they've got a rain because we have quite a lot of rain it's like quite damp so the compost quality is not that great so i need to like supplement with something so when korean actual findings seem so like it makes sense that we can produce them and put them into the so they can take care of the compost so make it more more composted so to say so that's why i'm focusing on this one and it
22:39 really makes sense how it works but uh i'm on the micro greens i'm just essentially trying to like have some kind of understanding at least uh how much the effect is is uh possible with this metal but i'm guessing that from the results that i have currently it's like more uh it needs to needs to take more time a little bit like uh in the sense that in the micro greens maybe it's not that visible this one is with a KNF this one's without I try to be somewhat consistent but I know I try to spray this one every every day with the
23:19 KNF solution here but I was not very consistent but at least the water was the same amount so it's really hard to tell if there is like any visible difference at this stage so any any suggestions or or inputs from your experience would be much appreciated yeah no and i'm when i'm looking at that i mean it's they seem very similar yeah they are there's a little bit of like a peat moss underneath it's like the best it's for sewing basically the peat moss uh substrate basically no no uh like uh synthetic ones added to it it's like somehow balanced or something like that so it's a
24:05 decent product but it's not the same as soil and so when you're when you're getting into this is this just your first kind of trial run or have you done these microgreens in in a larger um system prior to this uh yeah we just start we did like two years ago we start we started with microgreens to just to have some some sort of our own business to run but it's quite a cold climate and the price is skyrocketed for energy so we just cancel that one and now we're focusing on what we can do with our land actually because we have a lot of land here so we can utilize that so we are using the
24:49 month winter periods to kind of prepare for for the summer so that's why all the things already prepared I have some every bit of everything what I could get my hands on and make I have some fuel here this one's like like balsam which is like oh and kind of thing because it's like made in Latvia for since 1752 I assume the ingredients that are but approximately the same but I'm not 100% sure. At least I checked the plans that they used. They are all correct ones, but they are like 20 something different ones in it.
25:36 Cool. Cool. So do you, and is that like when you're showing me that it looks like a learning lab? Like do you invite people over to kind of see this? Yeah, I have some people been over and there was like one from magazine to take photos with this stuff and I'm telling people all over the place and people are quite interested in this one. it's just a matter of adjusting it to our climate so that people understand that this works. That's the main, what I'm trying to get out of it to have some kind of set example that I can
26:15 show that, yep, there's a difference that we can visibly see. And I'm going kind of for that one. And when I'm looking at your microgreens, I don't necessarily see a huge difference there. you know like like so but but but let me ask you also like if this um this this screen here this um what's what i'm sharing in the the stream here this is these are your fields um that you do outside right i one second i'll check it yeah because i think yeah yeah yeah those are my yeah this is was like the beginning of second year. And I'm just putting like a small top layer of compost
27:01 that I have available. Here, here. Like we're renewing the top surface, so basically feeding the soil. And I'm using like broadleaf wood mulch in pathways. So it's on the right, you can see there's some green that's dry. I'm just trying to cover it with some kind of growing plants while there's nothing growing in it, really. It's like for late season and early spring, so there's some feeding going on for the microbes. Yeah, and then let's see. So that's a close-up. So these here, this is like some sort of compost
27:46 that you're putting down? Yeah, that's essentially just pure animal bedding. that's the log was laying around i just mixed try to mix it well like remix it with the machinery that i've got and into this did you did you put any um imos or or microorganisms i did uh last summer i did at the very beginning there was some like dusty some dusty uh like kind of a dust kind of a kind of spider web but they weren't necessarily mycelia going there but the places where i have like a tarp on top of like mulch there's like
28:32 plenty of white stuff going on and there i didn't even put much in and did you notice did you notice a difference in terms of the um like the penetration like did your soil get softer um where where you applied microorganisms um no not really because the the top is like basically compost and it's already soft i use the broad fog just to like like lift it a little bit to aerate it like but i'm not turning it in any way i'm not digging it at all i'm just trying to like mix it a little bit because it is raw compost and it needs a little bit more air so it can compost
29:15 aerobically better. Maybe just with the tip of the broad fork you just pokes the top surface a little bit of the actual soil. Kind of like loosening it kind of idea. So I mean you did that and then you also sprayed um your your friend's field with a bunch of um jadam microbes too yeah we did that as an experiment to just see if you can get those microbes going so i've had like a wiring in the one cubic meter of a solution and we sprayed that one and uh i didn't have the chance to check but they said that there was a little bit of difference but it wasn't like i didn't confirm it completely
30:03 we just run out of time and there's a lot of things we need to manage oh oh totally totally i mean yeah no no i get that i mean farming farming so farming is real the real deal man it's like a um so here here's the yeah here's the um part the tractor sprayer and they loaded the nice nice nice boom was that so when you did that was that was that pretty easy to do to get the um the jms in the tractor and spray the field? I mean, how was that process? I don't know how they got it in. I just prepared it at home and then we loaded it on
30:43 trailer and they pulled it to their place and they just loaded up there and sprayed it. Okay. Okay. Basically made this solution for them. That's my idea that if I can learn how to make it, it i can like make a lot and distribute the different forms and and make like a test field like spray one with solution on the water and the rest is nothing and then see the difference so i no no well i i really i really i like what you're up to because you're you're really um almost you're looking for like that scientific proof and that that thing where you can then
31:21 show and demonstrate to people and then you know and then everyone will want what what what you're what you're doing here right like i like it's kind of it's kind of what like what i was doing where you know now i got the drone to fly around and to to do the the land and now it's like it's it's to me it's that documentation it's it's when you're when you're able to um see that right is that what inspires you yes as well because then you can actually see how the land has transformed that's really cool and I love the drone shot I was always wondering where I can find you on google maps
32:02 I want to see your place yeah yeah the google maps is only it's kind of interesting I looked back at my land back to like you know this this area we're taking care of till about 2002 when we when we first came out here and it was just there were no trees it was just pasture and now there's a bunch of trees and it's really it's really transformed but yeah seeing the drone and documenting so um so how how's it how's it been in terms of um people's reception for your efforts, what you're doing?
32:47 Yeah, they're interested in it because I'm basically showing people that in a way that I'm saying that, well, we already have some national parks and the way I see national parks, we don't touch them but we can go there to collect microbes in a sense. and in this way we have our own source of micro organizations of large diversity that we can use to regenerate the land that's how i see it and we don't necessarily need to buy something from the we have like uh by bio bio humus like organization that is making their own like microbes of different
33:31 kind but uh you know that's uh again it's like large distribution and stuff like that and it's not the same as the local because this one's supposed to be used like one two kilometers away from your place to regenerate your land so yeah well so what with the national parks those are just those are like microbe reserves almost like you're thinking of it that way yeah yeah yeah national parks we don't do any like farming there they are just there and that's how i see the the purpose of them it's not just because there was like this one case when one company wanted
34:14 to buy like one of these areas and it just doesn't make sense because uh it doesn't feel right because essentially what they want to buy is to use it as for sort of farming like cutting out trees and stuff like that but um you can see in google maps that basically the farmland is increasing if you move towards south of latvia we have quite a lot of forests and that seems like we should hang on to our forests it's fine that they are there shouldn't abuse it so so more farming farming is growing there but it's growing into the forest yeah but we have quite a lot of
35:03 fields as well like quite quite a lot of grassland as well in in korea it's just the um just the mountaintops have forests and then all the flatland they farm but certain areas they like you know you back up and you get into the mountains and then it's like oh man that's how you know like uh famine is coming because the you're farming way up into the hills where it's not even fertile anymore it's like oh no yeah so how how was your um how was your harvest this year it's pretty good the onions were this big basically inside of my fist they were pretty good um yeah well i'm not a proper
35:49 garden and i i mean i think same as you and the garden is the thing that i want to build and i'm not sure i want to be the gardener itself but i want to make sure that the soil is great and anyone who wants can farm as well but i have to like a set an example and become one to show that it's possible yeah you're kind of like the um the the leader the center person if you can if you can't do it then you can like how can you tell other people yeah yeah exactly oh yeah yeah yeah yeah well so so how how many seasons have you been growing uh food for then uh this was second
36:36 the third is coming up so beginner still wow and then also the um you know the microgreens so So that's like kind of, you know, getting into those two things kind of at the same time. That was your first kind of getting into agriculture type of thing? First thing was I was trying to grow some mushrooms in a home setting, just in an incubator, just grow some mushrooms. And from there, I understood that like mushrooms, like a completely different animal. and from going deeper into that one i understood that nobody else is talking about mushrooms like
37:16 what's going on so i started to research soil as well and then i find different then i found you and i found the different guys that are doing uh uh no dig gardening and uh i learned a lot from them and i went to one to one to learn for four days in sweden that's next to power across the see i went there to to see it in on site how it looks like and i really like and i understand how how it goes and i want to like replicate that in our farm oh yeah that's that's awesome man yeah and learning from good places it's kind of like i yeah and getting into the real um like the living
37:58 soil you know starting starting with mushrooms that makes total sense man you came from like the like i yeah um you know i've i've i haven't ever really intentionally cultured mushrooms but i've been to a few places where they're growing them in bags and things and um you know i just i just do the imos and the other day i was out in my field and i found a huge um oyster mushroom growing just just popped up so In my garden, because I have these raw leaf wood chips, the mushrooms are growing all over it, like different kinds. Do you have edible mushrooms? We have a lot of edible mushrooms.
38:42 I'm not sure if the garden has them. They always make the joke that every mushroom is edible once. True, true. at least once you can taste it it's really good up uh yeah yeah they're saying um part partida in spain is saying she grows oysters shiitake mitake portobello that's all that's awesome nice yeah and and someone someone's asking here um where are you located i'm in baltic states next to the russian border it's near the baltic sea we are one of the three baltic states here there's uh finland then there's estonia then latvia
39:34 then lithuania and then ukraine so so you're you're actually like you're pretty close to ukraine and all that like there's the whole um yeah situation happening there too right has that affected you and your your farming at all well a part that we see that's even more relevant now yeah in that sense yeah like like more relevant just to be like more sovereign with your own food like knowing that you have you know yeah resilience around you type thing yeah yeah i think people starting getting into that because now we are we are in partnership with one new
40:20 company that works already two years and they are making a decentralized delivery system it's really really interesting uh concept and we are we are the first one that doing it away from the the capital where they started it out so we're kind of trailblazers for the outside capital distribution points so when we locally help deliveries but we have connection because our no factory is delivering daily to riga and they're coming back empty so when we said okay we make point here in in our uh our town and then you can when you come back you can pick up something some
41:01 stuff and drop it here but it can be not only food uh the idea is that we can our main thing is that it's food that we can deliver because we are making it so that uh the packaging like places where you can pick up and drop off packages are refrigerated in that way we can make it much much easier for the locals to to help to grow and away from capital whereas we have very low population and it's decreasing all the time and uh they want to like like make it viable for the for the locals to have some proper business of their own and have some customers that are in capital mostly
41:40 but it's mainly also for ourselves so we can have our own slew of food delivery system it's nice it's it takes so much time to everyone goes to the market at some days and then spends the time there which we could use actually farming so do you have a good feeling about that yeah that that is actually amazing that's actually when when i was thinking i was actually wanting to write some software and have a depot to accomplish that because for me that's actually one of my biggest hurdles is if i had some place where like i could just drop stuff off like a place and then
42:23 it would you know and be distributed and and that that would be just yeah um yeah yeah it's a basically application and uh you can it's like you put in into the what it's called like a place where you can uh like vote for it for the lower price you can bid and that way the the the discount goes to the sender basically not only is decentralized you can also get the price lower because the people that are delivering it can be anybody and if they can give a better price if they are going there anyway it's like you can pick it up the package and go there just spend a little bit
43:07 time to deliver it and this way you can meet like different producers and meet also the consumers wow wow wow that is like yeah that's revolutionary man that is that is the kind of infrastructure we need to just um to just localize production yes yeah because if yeah if we're relying on like a grocery store or something it's like and then and then but there's so so here i live in hoi right and there's we grow bananas yet when i go into town and i go to target like the the you know the store the bananas are from guatemala
43:53 what yeah or ecuador you know they're they're from they're from central america is a better way of saying and i'm not sure the exact origin but they're from central america versus here we grow bananas so it's it's this kind of thing where i hear this and like and it's like people have bananas but but some sort of decentralized food connection getting you know like why i had this uh i don't know where i heard it but we had this uh idea you should eat what you can get uh one day's walk away like if you and we tested this we walked 60 kilometers that's like i don't
44:34 40 miles maybe so we did that one day together and we did that distance so this is the distance and this way this is where we should eat around this area basically or we can get here but the banana quality is the same uh um no not not not necessarily like i i think the bananas that are in the in the the stores are not as high quality like if you take they've been they've picked green and then they're artificially ripened and they're shipped here and there's all kinds of you know they've tried like like they're they're very they're very consistent is what i would say
45:16 there's like a consistent like not that great taste of banana it's like you know it's like but then there's bananas here of all different varieties and all sorts that are just like amazing and fresh and just have this like you know um but they're a little bit the only difference is the price right it's true it's true the but but bananas bananas here are fairly cheap i mean i'm selling i sell sometimes um a dollar 25 a pound so that's not that expensive of thinking versus in the store i'm not exactly sure maybe it is a
45:56 little bit cheaper though which is crazy because it's come from thousands of miles away yeah and you could like you have such a good weather all year round basically well maybe the rain is not that great 40 days of rain man imagine imagine it raining like four feet on you like that's a lot Yeah, it's significant. And then, yeah, so Hawaii, like here it rains, I think, 150 to 200 inches a year. So you could convert that centimeters. 200? What? 200 inches, which is in feet, like, divide that by 12.
46:45 30 inches, like times 2.5. It's 16 feet. 16 feet of rain. That's a crazy amount. Yeah. So anything else, Korean Natural Farming, you want to share? Zoom's going to kick us off here in like four minutes. And then, so we got four more minutes. One short thing. I didn't manage to get a good IMO one yet, I was trying to like collect it in here. Oh, nice. But, but I tried to do it here, but still didn't have a good result. There's some mycelium here you can see. uh did you did you moisten that up before you um yeah it was too moist when i got it because i
47:35 scraped it off the floor of the forests in very wet weather so it's kind of drying out now maybe i should rehydrate in plain water yeah just just a little bit of um rehydration with water before you um before you just just so it's it's um not not like not dripping wet but like more you know like like like a forest you know not not but not sopping wet because because it's going to be in that bucket and down there like don't make it like sopping wet where it's a pool of water at the bottom you know it's like i missed it a little bit i'll try that yeah i still need to learn how
48:14 to cook the rice right yeah i don't know maybe maybe uh gotta take a trip to hawaii or japan I was thinking maybe next year I can get to your place yeah yeah we'll cook some good rice and some ulu and all kinds of good food bananas cool cool alright do you got a message for folks you want to share what's your message to the world I guess go for it and just go for it. Yes, I mean, in your story, you weren't very much agriculture.
49:00 I'm curious, if you're IT, what made you go agriculture? I was kind of depressed doing my work. It was like a hard experience, like mentally. and then i just reduced myself back to back to childhood home at my parents place and then they're just starting to reconnect with the locals and my one old friend and then i knew get to know his friends and then i tried the mushrooms growing and then i started to think okay what i have around what I can do and then I just naturally gravitated to this one. So that's all. Well, you seem happier to me, man. I really enjoy you tuning in and just this whole
49:49 connection we've had, man. I really appreciate you, George. Thanks for sharing with everybody. Thank you. Cool. All right. Well, I'll let you go and I'll go back to the thing. So thank you. cool let me see this and then i'm gonna turn this one off uh and then quit that okay i think we're back right yeah over here all good yeah thank you george man that was that was cool right yeah thanks and um thanks for super chat bird awesome it's great to have the show be so supported and everyone tuning in staying steady towards the wind continuing to you know
50:40 experiment to see these um see the practices being adapted around the world everyone putting it into practice continuing to like um you know check in here to like share with the community and everything it's just like what a uh what a good things good things happening it's it's it's cool for me to see um see that um you know community form from just you know here office hours or however you find natural farming right he was he was in the mushrooms they got into soil and he found this and it's like everyone everyone has these stories of how they found it and then
51:20 coming back to being um you know here to share and yeah part partita has a place near you and now now like making you know physical connections too across the way and if um you know um working with each other to build this up i you know so yeah sometimes um i guess yeah like i started talking this morning it's like oh why don't you know why don't do this office hour but it's like stuff like this where we can really um see and and share and and um you know get get together this way. So, um, so let's see, we got about 10 more minutes or so here. Um,
52:06 we went through the calciums. Let's see here. I do it this way. Uh, do we have any questions? I mean, I guess you guys did. Um, okay. So questions, questions. no well Ben yeah Ben was saying something oh okay he's making vinegar and he has a scoby forming spots a mold on top at what point is it gone vinegar below still salvageable vinegar gets pretty gross
52:52 you should like it'd be interesting the time lapse of vinegar and see, but it gets pretty, pretty gross. What Russia in the house? What's up? Hey, wow. People from all over the world here. And you guys are like near each other and stuff and connected through, through this channel. You've found other mycelial people around you that are into natural farming. That's kind of a trip, right? Um, yeah, I guess, you know, that's one of the things that happens at natural farming gatherings is you're able to find,
53:26 um, find other people that are into this stuff. Cause it's kind of weird, even in this world where there's all this around us. Okay. Well, um, Ben, you're, you're in luck here because today, um, let's, let's do, let's do a cool transition. This one. Yeah. Burst slide slide. sorry anyway entertaining myself with this thing um so yeah um what if the news did that they're just like playing around with their effects welcome welcome to the news welcome to the news um yeah we have we have a mystical web well awesome i'm glad you're tuning in and um i won't
54:17 play around with effects too much, but today we can get into brown rice vinegar, which is kind of funny because Ben was just talking about this, right? He was just like, hey, what about the brown rice vinegar? He's making some. And so why not drop into Master Cho's presentation on brown rice vinegar from Master Cho. This is slide 137. Wow. We've been at this for a while and there's still more to go. So let's see here. Brown rice vinegar. Slide number one is sterilization. Oh, excuse me. Start with the characteristics of brown rice vinegar. It works for sterilization,
54:58 neutralization, diuresis. I got to look this word up. Diuresis. Diuresis. I think that's like pulling water out. I don't know. I will look up diuresis. That's one thing I'm not familiar with. and synthesis to prevent and cure various diseases. Okay. So, you know, we're talking about KNF medicine, KNF food to prevent and cure various diseases, right? I don't even know if you can say that on this channel, on this YouTube, cure various diseases. You know, this is going to be an edgy episode, right? We talked about a couple of different things. You know, always
55:35 interviewing people in real life gets an edgy YouTube. Is it? So, I want to jump right into this first point of summarizing sterilization. It's not necessarily sterilization. Vinegar is not going to sterilize something. Vinegar itself is actually living, so it's not sterile itself. So how the heck could something that's living sterilize something? But what it does is it gets rid of a lot of bacterias that are disease-causing. So what I would say instead of sterilization here is I would say sanitization. You can use vinegar to clean up molds. You can use vinegar to clean
56:11 countertops and prevent bad bacteria after like cutting chicken or meat. You can use vinegar for cleaning. It's a cleaning product. You can go to a cleaning aisle and get vinegar, right? Concentrated vinegar. And so vinegar is a cleaner. And that's what I would say is a cleaning. That's why I call it KNF cleanser, right? They say sterilization. I say sanitization, cleansing, cleaning. Neutralization is going back to where sometimes things get out of balance. Like for instance, in your body, you can get too acidic. And by taking a shot of brown rice vinegar
56:52 or apple cider vinegar, you can return back to alkaline. And so it brings you back to this neutralization like like a point we could look up neutralization a little bit more of what they mean but it basically it brings again things out of balance into balance or into neutral so that they can be put back into balance so if something was out of whack over here it brings it back to a point where then it can be put in its right place that's more neutralization bringing balance is what brown rice vinegar does for your plants. So anything out of balance, neutralization,
57:31 sterilizing, you know, sanitization, balancing is what it, you know, this cleanser does. It brings it back so you can, new growth can occur after things are clean. And let's look up diuresis because this is, what is diuresis? I just didn't even spell it right. Diuresis is the condition in which the kidneys filter too much bodily fluid. Well, that increases your urine production and the frequency which you need to use the bathroom. Most adults will urinate about four to six times a day with an average output between three cups and three quarts of urine. Hmm. So diuresis is in a condition
58:15 in which the kidneys filter too much bodily fluid. so apparently it helps if your plant is like peeing too much oh and synthesis um so synthesis is always like a harmonization like helping things synthesize helping them integrate right what is what else is synthesis it's like you have like for instance you get a new can of food coming in the vinegar helps it absorb it and neutralize and and and metabolize it and turn it into energy. So it's a synthesizer. That's what the vinegar does. It helps things, you know, like, yeah, bonding. That's a good word. Um, so, um, Hey, cool.
59:10 So, so these are all these products, right? So, so this is what vinegar does. It does all these things. It's, I want to say sanitizes, cleanses, balances, helps absorption of other things, helps synthesis. These different words, these different ideas, if you can understand what I'm saying here. I don't know about the diuresis, like helps it not pee. Maybe it helps it retain better nutrients the way and like not get rid of them and like retain them better. I'm not sure what the diuresis exactly means in this context. So next is functions of
59:44 BRV. So what does it do for your plant? Basically, it facilitates vegetative growth. It affects the initial growth of the leaves greatly. So hey, take note of this, George, initial growth of leaves greatly, vinegar. I don't know, maybe this is the one. I saw your trial didn't do that much. Maybe increase the vinegar. I don't know. Improves the flexibility of the tree. So anything that's, you know, instead of snapping, it becomes more flexible. So vegetative growth, you know, all these early things and flexibility. It actually
1:00:28 does a whole lot more than this. And we'll see there. We'll pull up Master Cho's things on vinegar. But that's what he says here. So basically, you know, helps, helps grow leaves, helps things spread out in, in, um, then it says ability to sterilize. Again, I want to say this ability to sanitize. It restrains bacterial growth. Yes. Maximizes the effect of calcium. So if you want calcium absorption to be better, throw a little vinegar in there, It'll help maximize the effect of calcium. And BRV of high concentration accelerates reproductive growth.
1:01:08 So maybe if you're wanting to have things reproduce a little bit more, more vinegar toward the end while things are reproducing. So while your fruits are forming, a little bit more BRV maybe, perhaps. so how to make it he says make makkoli or make rice wine vinegar or excuse me rice wine and then it is possible to collect yeast from the content that has been in fermentation process for two to three days so get yeast from an fbj that's been going for two to three days and if right makkoli
1:01:53 as left as is, BRV produces due to acetic acid bacteria. So basically he's saying just leave alcohol out and it will turn to brown rice vinegar. So leave rice wine out and it'll turn to BRV, especially if you put a little yeast in there. So, oh, I'm not sure I read number two correct. Don't, don't take me in front. It is possible to collect the yeast from the content that has been in fermentation process for two to three days. So maybe you can grab yeast off of a in process BRV is what he's saying. I'm not sure. Be careful with this one. Um, even my translation might be more confusing. Um,
1:02:45 so, and then thank you. He's done. So that's all you get with BRV, how to make it. You take rice wine. However, I teach a different method of making it. Let's go check out what I do. It's not that it's different. It's just different for me in the tropics. I can't race. I can't grow very easily. I mean, Master Joe would slap me for that. But let's see here. This one. And then let's go check out two things. Let's check out. Well, before we get to mine, let's go to. Let's go to Master Joe's one here. Let's go pull up brown rice vinegar. And here he talks about it.
1:03:32 Let's make this a bit bigger here. He talks about brown rice vinegar and he says, oh, okay, so let me just read this. We'll go a little bit over time to get into this full brown rice vinegar here. but characteristics brown rice vinegar the acetic acid bacteria of brown rice vinegar affects liver cells and supports them for sterilization neutralization, diuresis, synthesis and work to prevent various diseases which I don't think you can say on YouTube so it works on the kidneys to do that excuse me the liver cells to do that
1:04:18 Um, BRV, so now you're getting a little bit more into this because it said that another without context of liver cells. Um, BRV is weakly acidic or alkali. Um, and wait, BRV is weakly acidic and alkali as well. What the heck? It's acid and base. Watch out. Um, BRV is an acid, but when it decomposes in the body, the remnants will become alkali. Okay, there you go. There's the clarification. Therefore, it is called an alkali food. Even though it's acidic, it's called an alkali food. As the BRV shows, acid material and acid
1:04:58 foods are different. Cereals and fruits which produce vinegars are typically alkali foods. So you want to make the vinegar from cereals or fruits because it'll be an alkali food. BRV itself is an acid, but it also changes to a base when it is absorbed by humans, livestock and crops. So BRV functions to change the physical constitution from acidic to alkali, which means it renews the body into a pure and healthy condition. So it flips when it hits the body and then you become healthy apparently, pure and healthy. So if you want to be pure,
1:05:35 that vinegar. Because BRV contains phytic acid, it helps to neutralize poisons, to sterilize and to improve physical constitution. It is effective in preventing and curing various diseases. So phytic acid prevent you from poisons? Cool. BRV has more amino acids and organic acids which are antidotal than any other food. therefore it has an excellent for decomposing lactic acid which prevents aging. So this will eat lactic acid and prevent aging.
1:06:20 BRV raises the calcium absorption ratio. If the body fluid tends to be acidic the body tries to neutralize it. When this happens the body needs calcium. It is difficult for calcium to be absorbed in an acidic condition. But combined with the citric acid in BRV, the calcium can be easily absorbed. So there you go. That was a lot more explanation on all those other reasons. It says in low concentrations, it facilitates vegetative growth in the leaves greatly. If BRV is applied to the leaves, it helps them form a wax layer, which creates a thicker layer, fastens foliation,
1:07:00 and increases resistance to diseases and insects. So, BRV improves the flexibility of a tree and it increases the absorption ability when natural farming materials are spread. Due to the activity of acetyl acid bacteria, BRV has the ability to sterilize and restrain bacterial growth. Because it is used with water-soluble calcium, BRV maximizes the effect of calcium. BRV in high concentration accelerates the reproductive growth okay almost there are we almost there we're almost there I switched the wrong one okay and then how to make it again he
1:07:44 says make warry swine no it's the exact same recipe so we'll skip that and then he and then he goes into oh okay so then he goes this lasts a little bit so practical usage of BRV put the eggshells or oyster shells in BRV to make water soluble calcium dissolve bones in BRV to make water soluble calcium phosphate we covered those two last week for the purpose of sterilizing use brv with the dilution ratio of 1 to 500 at the juvenile leaf stage and the ratio of 1 to 200 to 300 in the adult leaf stage so if you need to sterilize or clean something you can put it 1 to
1:08:33 500 for small plants and 1 to 200 1 to 300 for adult plants if you need to clean leaves like mold or whatever something gnarly stuff on there dilute it that way use it that way brv is used for making soil foundation seed treatment treatments of vegetative growth period crossover period and reproductive growth period so it's used in almost all the formulas is what they're saying it's used when making im034 and mixed compost brv is used for the matured plant brv decreases sugar content if the fruit or hot taste in the case of the pepper
1:09:14 so brv will actually decrease the sugar content so be careful okay so that is what master cho has on that and then i'll go lastly to um this book here my book which is available at KNF support. And so it's all these things. Um, then let's go to my BRV recipe. Where is it at? This one cleanser. I call it cleanser. I'll call it BRV cleanser from fruit or grain vinegar. And so what you do, how my recipe, instead of having the, um, the alcohol from the other one is to step one, mix in one part of KNF food from fruits. So one part there,
1:10:07 and then two parts of water. Okay, so you need to make the food recipe first. You need to follow this recipe first, make food, finish it, supersaturate it, get it completely done, and then go on to this recipe because the way I just follow this recipe, the food makes the cleanser as the next stage. You're just taking one part of the food here, two parts of water, mixing them together, fermenting them for three to six months. It can be quicker than that if you do it right. Um, and then test and pour off the finished vinegar. A finished vinegar will have a
1:10:41 pH of two, less than 2.4. So, um, so that's, you know, again, he took, took alcohol and put it out. I just take a can of food and add water to it and then let it ferment and leave air space and put a breathable lid and leave it out and it will turn to vinegar. Um, so that's how I do it. And the a thing will float to the top. Every food is a vinegar. Yeah, 100 for sure. So, and then in terms of usage, how to use these things, of course, they always go to these formulas, which are, you know, maintenance formula. It's used here. It's used in soil formula, used in seed, leaf,
1:11:22 bloom, fruit. It's not used in the harvest formula because again, it lowers the sugar content, right so it's not used right before harvest you stop using it right before harvest but every other time it's used along with these other things to make these formulas and those are then watered out there so here it is can and i call it can f cleanser it's a fruit or grain vinegar acts to flip the polarity of a cell upon the metabolization of it going from acidic to alkaline thus enabling the cell to clean itself and be open for absorption and new foods many other exciting functions so
1:12:00 that's how i describe it real simple real easy pure k enough you know um making it happen so anyway i want to thank you guys we're over time we're over everything so um so i want to thank you guys for tuning in i really appreciate george there sharing um the super chats from bird and anyone else who wants to drop a super chat or thanks you know hey um but if you don't that's Google to, um, you know, uh, pay it forward, do natural farming, teach it, spread it, grow it, uh, share it with your friends, neighbors. Apparently I saw here, it was growing in Russia.
1:12:34 That's pretty cool. A maybe you can interview you, somebody else, anyone else that wants to be interviewed. Let me know. Um, like, like how we did with George can drop you the link. I usually, and, um, we can get into that and find out what's going on. You can share talk story. Um, yeah, all that and appreciate it appreciate the pure knf foundation making this happen um and you the viewer like share subscribe or don't it's your choice but um cool well thank you thanks master cho don't forget him cool aloha long live the natural farmer bye aloha uh closed garden