Seawater Dilution Ratios, Restaurant Waste for Pigs, Powdery Mildew
Drake opens with an I Ching reading on "Preponderance of the Great," then answers a listener question on seawater: dilute it 1:20 to 1:30 depending on the recipe (soil, seed, bloom, fruit, harvest formulas), aiming for 0.1% to 0.3% salinity, and only go as concentrated as 1:10 for the enhanced ripening formula two days before harvest.
Mao from Indonesia asks whether pigs can eat 30 kilos of restaurant food waste a day. Drake says yes, but the scraps are too fatty to feed straight — blend in rice hull (mill run, or "dirac" in the Philippines) or run the waste through black soldier flies or red wiggler worms first, then feed pigs, chickens, or both. Restaurant waste should stay around 10-20% of a pig's diet. Drake also covers fish amino acid, made from Ellie Girl Fishing Company scraps fermented with brown sugar, and gives chicken coop advice: skip enclosed "house" coops and use a simple open floor design with a feeder, roost, and nest box.
For powdery mildew, Drake recommends spraying KNF protectors (lactic acid bacteria) early and often so they occupy leaf surface space before the mildew can establish — full strength in soil and leaf formulas, diluted 1:3000 in bloom formula. He also describes tweaking the recipe during an outbreak: less food, more cleanser, same medicine and structure, less fuel, more protectors.
The back half covers Master Cho's presentation on why natural farming cuts production costs: pigs eat about 10% of their diet straight off a fermented deep litter floor, their organs can be trained to digest grass and banana stalk, and good IMOs on the floor cut antibiotic and vet bills. Drake explains deep litter construction — logs on the bottom (about 2 feet, deeper for cows and horses, shallow for chickens), then rice hull or wood chips on top — and Master Cho's floor ratio of 100 parts sawdust to 10 parts local soil to 0.3 parts sea salt.
Questions answered
- 9:16 How often can you use seawater when drenching? — If it's properly diluted (1:20-1:30), you can use it often, even daily, without causing salinity problems.
- 13:52 What's the deal with farming using fish waste? — Drake ferments fish scraps from Ellie Girl Fishing Company with brown sugar into fish amino acid, one of the best inputs around.
- 15:36 My friend's restaurant makes 30 kilos of food scraps a day — are pigs the answer? — Yes, but blend the oily scraps with rice hull or mill run, or run them through black soldier flies or worms first, since straight restaurant waste is too fatty.
- 31:31 Can you help with a small coop for three to six laying hens? — Skip the enclosed 'house' style coops from farm stores; use a simple open floor design with a feeder, roost, and nest box.
- 37:55 Should I dilute KNF solutions more during drought? — You can't go wrong diluting more — there's a real relationship between dilution and how well nutrients get absorbed.
- 44:26 How do you prevent powdery mildew with KNF? — Spray protectors (lactic acid bacteria) early and often so they occupy leaf surface space before mildew can establish itself.
- 53:33 What are natural farming's agricultural byproducts worth? — The IMO5 'bio' harvested off a pig pen floor is prized microbial material — a friend sells it by the barrel for around $500.
- 57:08 How do you build a deep litter system for KNF animals? — Layer logs about 2 feet deep on the bottom, then rice hull or wood chips on top, scaling the depth to the animal's weight.
- 1:03:13 What are the ratios for the IMO pig pen floor? — Master Cho uses sawdust, local soil, and sea salt at 100:10:0.3; Drake substitutes wood chips for sawdust.
- 1:06:31 Could the pen walls be an old stone wall foundation from a burnt-down structure? — Yes — an old stone or concrete wall foundation works fine, since aeration comes up through the open floor.
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
- 1:56 Intro and Welcome
- 4:04 I Ching Reading: Preponderance of the Great
- 9:16 Seawater Dilution Ratios for Drenching
- 13:52 Fish Waste and Fish Amino Acid
- 15:36 Feeding Pigs Restaurant Scraps
- 26:03 Promoting KNF Under Different Names
- 28:01 Microbial Secret Society Podcast Update
- 28:50 The Great Simplification Podcast
- 31:31 Small Scale Chicken Coop Design
- 37:55 Diluting KNF Solutions During Drought
- 42:37 Class Testimonial and Upcoming Classes
- 44:26 Using KNF Protectors for Powdery Mildew
- 46:47 Master Cho's Presentation Continues
- 48:18 Characteristics of Natural Farming: Reducing Costs
- 57:08 Building a Deep Litter System
- 58:39 Utilizing Manure as Pig Feed
- 1:01:07 Self-Supplying Feed for Pigs
- 1:03:13 Constituents of the IMO Pig Pen Floor
- 1:09:54 Thanks and Sign-Off
Transcript
Auto-transcribed with Whisper. Click any timestamp to play from there.
2:30 Hey, good morning natural farmers around the world. It's 9am in Hawaii and the KNF office hours have begun. I'm sour. Today is June 11th, 2023. Getting into the middle of the year now. Thanks everybody for tuning in. We got Cheryl from Idaho. Tyler from Oklahoma.
3:16 Smokey Floyd from, not sure, but the Goofman in New York. Partita all the way from Spain. Ben in Arizona or South Carolina. I'm not sure exactly where he's at these days. Printer Bear, what's up, yo? It's good to see you all here. And yeah, checking in. Sterling, Illinois in the house. Yeah. And eyewitness down in Florida, medically minded. Oh, Germany. Yeah, 9 p.m. Yeah, it's kind of nice to tune in at 9 p.m. That way you're not... Oh, North Carolina in the house? Dang, we got both the Carolinas maybe today. Maybe we can get East Carolina,
3:59 South or West Carolina. No, those don't exist. Okay. So today, today, today, today, a little bit higher, higher wisdom for us all here is the preponderance of the great. Hey, what's up, Willie from New Zealand. Yo, preponderance of the great. There are great pressures at At work, by meeting them with modesty and patience, you avoid misfortune and meet with success. The image is that of a beam under great load. It sags in the middle and is in danger of giving way.
4:45 You are in a similar situation now. The pressures of the moment are enormous. And there is a temptation to wiggle away and flee or to resort to plotting, conniving, or aggressive action of the ego. It is by resisting this temptation and holding firmly to proper principles that you survive and succeed. this is in fact a moment for which you have been preparing yourself for some time a powerful energy has been accumulated imagine a flood pressing against a dam
5:32 and it's up to you to direct its flow if you succumb to fear desire anger or resort to incorrect behaviors, the dam bursts, and the pent-up energy causes destruction and misfortune. If, on the other hand, you cling to what is correct, modesty, balance, patience, independence, and gentleness, you will obtain the aid of the higher power, and the accumulated energy energy will be directed towards a profound success.
6:19 What is called for now is quiet integrity with others, no matter how they may assault you. Remain modest and patient in your actions. Seek to penetrate gently and steadily rather than forcibly and explosively. meet the difficulties of the day cheerfully and resolutely. By taking great care now, by remaining correct in every moment, by embodying the principles of the sage, you make possible the arrival of good fortune.
7:07 so oh feels like i just ate some taro that was undercooked and the back of my throat slash nose is like tingling not exactly sure what's going on but Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay, well, the whole world community has assembled. We're here to do more Korean natural farming. There's great pressure upon us. And if we stay balanced, true, proper principles, keep doing our things, we will make the Earth better, at least in our own microcosm.
7:56 if not the whole macroeconomic ecological system. And if you liked to get fired up from a rant type thing, if you check out last week's episode, I got all up in that of empowerment and all those things. And people, folks out there were like, hey, that was really inspiring. That was really great. I don't want to do it every week. but if you do want to check out inspiring and great one of understanding how natural farming leads us to sovereignty and to better governance and better you know things for everybody um because free independent people that are responsible and um caring for the earth and
8:45 the economy all that makes sense right um unless you just want slave drones i don't know maybe you do. I don't think that would be better for us. So Ben is headed to South Carolina for the first and spending two and a half months there. I hope the first thing you do is make some liquid IMO and get that out on the land because it looks like it could really use it and revitalize that beautiful space he has out there. Um, and, um, there's, uh, just answer this question from eyewitness here right now. He's down in Florida and he's asking quick questions since I'm on the
9:29 field about to do it. So he's listening from outside in the field. Awesome. Way to go, Thomas. how often can you use seawater when drenching? And the answer is that if you properly dilute the seawater, you can use it a lot of the times. There probably is some maximal usage to it, but if you're diluting it properly, it shouldn't matter too much. And if you look at this here, we'll go over to the book here. Let me see. I'll pull it up. Hang on one sec right here. I'm going to switch this one to this one and then this one to this one and we'll go to the sea
10:08 we'll go to this prescription section here and look that you know the seawater which is represented by these minerals here is used in soil formula it's used in seed formula it's used in bloom it's used in fruit it's used in harvest so it can be used a fair amount of time it really comes down to the practicality of when you can put it out there but as long as you're diluting it in these ratios where this one's diluted 1 to 20 1 to 25 1 to 30 1 to 25 1 to 20 primarily you know if you're using it a whole lot the 1 to 30 is the safest dilution to have it in
10:50 because if you are you know putting too much seawater out there all the time I don't think if you dilute it properly it shouldn't cause salinity issues it's all these minerals that are going out there and when you're feeding your microbes you're getting more humic acids you're getting more fulvic acids those tie up salts and so if you can improve your soil and you have good IMOs you should be able to put down this stuff on a weekly basis on twice a week basis on a daily basis I don't know I've never done Korean natural farming on a daily basis
11:24 but I really do am looking forward to getting to that level where I can do it on a daily basis so I don't think you can overdo the seawater as long as you're diluting it and if you're doing it all the time I'd recommend the safest dilution here is the 1 to 30 because if you always if you go here down in the book a little bit further and you look at the seawater page itself it talks about that if you to make a 0.1% salinity dilute seawater 1 to 30. A 0.3% salinity is diluting 1 to 10. So you want to, you know, somewhere between this 0.3 to 0.1 is valuable for your land,
12:11 for the plants, for everything. And, you know, 0.1 salinity may be slightly better for you. it's only recommended to go down to this 1 to 10 here two days before harvesting. And if you go down to below like 1 to 15, 1 to 10 dilution, you're going to stress out your plants. And that's okay right before harvest, but you don't want to be doing that otherwise. So this is the enhanced ripening formula down here. so um yeah we got some other folks in the house coming in um cool out in the count country medically minded yes new york joe in the house
13:04 northwest connecticut in the house yeah you guys east coast hold it down um romania what's up adrian we got some international folks coming in that's so cool the internet connects me from hawaii over to romania live um and new jersey yes you guys we have all the people we need um to do this and to make the difference and you guys are showing up doing the right things i can hear my voice hearing back how's my mic it's all good Um, yeah, York and Rock Hill, let's meet up. Yeah, you guys, the more you can meet up, the more you can do this, the better off we're all going to be.
13:50 How's my light? It's really good. Yeah, I'm looking good. I got my pink hat on today. Usually I wear my orange hat, but I'm representing the Ellie Girl Fishing Company. These are the folks that I get all of my fish amino acids from, or not, well, I get all my fish from them. and then I mix it with brown sugar and then I make fish amino acid from it. I also put it directly on the land and put IMOs on it and because I'm in the tropics I just you know put wood chips and fish and IMOs and protectors out there and you know make them all good but this
14:26 fish amino acid fish waste brown sugar this is some of the best stuff around and I was talking to my mom about it and if we can get out and spray more often like there's no point to just putting the fish out there we're better off to make fish amino acid and just spray this hang on i'm gonna turn off my mic for one second and cough kind of like a sharp hair or something in the back of my throat like huh but this fish amino acid this is going to be just epic for us so looking forward to getting our spring going better and um talking about that today having a pure knf foundation board meeting
15:16 and seeing how we can be set a good example and pioneer so anyway i wanted to get to a few questions that I had came in via email. If you did want to email me, drake at pureknf.org is the email that definitely works. It's my foundation email. And also I had, before I get into that, I had another email come in from Willie and he was trying to email me at drake at knffarm.com. And not every domain that I have has an email address associated with it. So drake at knffarm does not work. However, you can email me at drake at pureknf.org.
16:04 I know it's kind of confusing. I've got multiple domains. But that does work. So Mao reached out to me. He's in Indonesia. and he was saying, I know you'll be talking about pigs today, this Sunday. I was wondering if you could cover this question. So he says, my friend owns a restaurant and produces about 30 kilos of food waste and scraps per day. She wonders if pigs are her solution. What do you think? I know very little about pigs, so maybe you could share some wisdom. FYI, where we live, the waste collection system is not very good and organic waste ends up in the landfill
16:49 which is why she's looking for an alternative solution so that's a great question i don't know if you guys can see that i can make it bigger well it's making that bigger does it go it's gonna make this go away oh yeah i can okay cool um yeah so if you're getting 30 kilos of food waste every day, um, number one is yeah, you could feed that to pigs. One of the problems that you'll end up with is that restaurants, um, tend to produce pretty fatty food. And even though pigs like to eat fatty foods, fatty, oily foods, uh, one of the problems here
17:37 in Hawaii is that if you feed them just restaurant scraps, it's almost too, um, too rich, um, too, you know, like if you look at the people and they're eating that stuff, they're usually pretty obese. You feed it to the pigs, they get that same obesity problem. So one of the things you can do since you're in Indonesia is maybe get a bunch of, um, rice hull. Uh, they call it, um, like, like mill run i mean yeah mill run but they also call it dirac in the philippines so i'm not sure if they call it their same thing but and blend that in so that you are not just feeding them
18:16 just the restaurant waste you're feeding them also more carbohydrates and blend it in so it's not as oily in hawaii if you're picking up restaurant waste and feeding it to pigs they require that you um cook and heat your slop i do not recommend that because cooking and heating it all the oils congeal and everything it gets pretty gross and they want you to do that so I don't recommend cooking it just straight to them blending it in so it's more healthy for them to enjoy and 30 kilos is a fair amount of food to be processing pigs would eat it but the other thing
18:54 you can look at is two things one is feeding it to black soldier flies and getting a black soldier fly farm where they these insects will help you digest it and then instead of the the pigs eating the fatty oily waste you can then take the black soldier flies once they're mature pupating and feed that to your pigs and that will be a good proteinaceous source of richness is feeding the pigs you know processing it through these insects first and then feeding it to your pigs so if you
19:33 If you're consistently getting 30 kilos of waste every day, you can have a huge black soldier fly operation and have all those little grubs going through, eating their thing, digesting it, feed that to your pigs, as well as blending some of the food to them and getting a little bit of Duroc in there to just blend it up and make it nice. You can also use something like banana stalks. You want to essentially utilize a waste product to feed to your pigs. And so having banana stocks where the, you know, banana farm nearby, something where you can get something to blend in there and or the insects.
20:11 Second option to utilize all this 30 kilos of food is to develop long windrows and do worms like red wiggler composting worms. And the key is to grind the material. So getting like some sort of grinder, like, I don't know, 30 kilos is a lot to send through like a garbage disposal type of thing. But like maybe a big industrial garbage disposal to grind it up real small. And even for the black soldier flies, it would help if you grind it smaller. However, they'll just eat it. Black soldier flies are pretty gnarly.
20:48 The thing is, you want to just add small layers each time to your windrows to do worms. And the same with the soldier fly. You don't want to put a huge layer on top because then it'll start to heat up and compost. You want to just put thin layers that these insects can digest for you. And then you can do red wigglers, which would make great soil. And then you could sell the worm castings. So if you don't want to go the hog farm raising route, you could do worms and have worms be your animals. the other thing with the um with the 30 kilos of food waste is that chickens chickens will eat a
21:28 heck of a lot of this so you know if your restaurant's using eggs or chicken meat you could raise a whole bunch of chickens on this you know you got to check with your local regulations and or you know bribe the right people um to look the other way but then you can just process this waste through animals. I would say, you know, soldier flies, pigs, chickens, soldier flies, worms, and maybe you could do all those with that amount of waste and just alternate where you're putting the waste each day. Like one day the pigs get it, one day the chickens get it, one day,
22:01 you know, the soldier flies get it, one day the worms get it. And you're probably going to need to hire someone to do that, to handle that bit of it because, you know, you want to have the animals, You know, I mean, it's actually not that much to do, but having someone be responsible for your animals by the time you get them and raise them properly and all those things, I would think all those would be a good way to basically keep those, you know, those animals or that food, that valuable food from going to the landfill because it's worth a lot.
22:34 and I would say your least um the least efficient thing would just be to compost it because then you're going to need to bring in a whole bunch of other like wood chip type materials and to to compost it and it's going to take the longest but processing it through some sort of animals and doing some sort of fermentation um through the feed which I think we'll get into in the pig recipe uh covering it but somehow processing it through these things first I would think would be great great. And then you can feed the worms to the pigs. You can feed the black soldier flies,
23:06 the pigs, you can feed the chickens to the pigs. You can feed pretty much anything to pigs. Um, so all that together. Um, awesome. And then, um, so I hope that answers your question, what to do with 30 kilos of food waste. Um, you know, cause, cause on a daily basis, getting that much food waste, uh, was that like 60 some pounds? I mean, you, you could have a few pigs and do all this too. I don't know. Um, but, um, my pigs probably eat 30 kilos of food, but the only problem is that like the food is so rich. You don't want to feed that directly to the
23:41 pigs. You want to blend it with something else. So I'm just saying restaurant waste tends to be too rich for pigs to eat directly. That's, that's why I mentioned these other solutions as well. Um, but all that combined, um, you know, pigs, it sounds like some sort of animal insect, um, thing is, is what you're looking for. Yeah. It's a lot of waste. Um, but it's not that much. I mean, when you see how hungry pigs are, I mean, my pigs between the four, uh, four pigs now I kept, I kept, um, I did sell off my pigs by the way. Um, and I kept Gigi, the little girl, um, out of
24:17 my batch. Um, and so now I have four pigs, um, and which is the legal limit for me. Um, but, uh, having the pigs, you know, I do feed them, let's see, feed them three and a half buckets of papaya. So each bucket weighs about 30 pounds. So I'm actually feeding them, you know, but that's papaya. It's different than the food waste. It's not as fatty. It's not as oily. It's more natural. And if I did have food waste, I would probably make it about 10% of their diet or so, you know, 10 to 20% of their diet. You don't want them to eat too much of that. You want them to feed
24:52 banana or rice hulls or, you know, bread waste or some, something that's not as, um, thing coming in, but yeah, turning. And then, and then the cool thing is if you do go the pig method, then you get into the whole piggy bank idea where you actually have these, um, you know, the P piggy bank is the, um, you're saving your money in a pig. And then when you slaughter that pig, then you get paid back, right? And then you can get high quality bacon, especially if you ferment the foods. If you're just feeding them slop, you won't get the same. But if you ferment
25:25 the food and you blend it and you blend this other stuff, you will get the most high quality meat, especially if they're raised on a no smell system and they're very healthy from all this and the whole living floor. However, I did just have a problem with my living floor. Get kind of, anyway, you got to make sure, I would recommend before you put new piglets in a floor, you inoculate it again with IMO4, fresh IMO, and spray the soil foundation and really get that good because I did just run into a few issues with my pigs and their immune system, but also my floor is
25:58 15 years old, so that could also be part of the problem that I didn't inoculate it before. So anyway, a lot of good stuff with pigs. And then one other thing is that Mao sent me this video here, which I did not watch yet, but it's basically the title of it here. When I hover over it, it says microbiome collection and use easy soil and rice rice method planet healers so it looks like people out there are getting turned on and inspired by the knf and actually maybe even changing the name of it to be something else to try and get it popularized but it looks to me like they're using
26:33 the knf methods and hopefully this will take off and people will then go back to the original sources check out master chose videos um understand knf from its wholeness because oftentimes when someone just learns something they just take a sliver of it and they start to be like yeah this is it and promulgating it and it's like you know coming back to the original source but i haven't watched this video yet so those are all my prejudgments happening of um you know what i think but i'm happy i'm gonna watch this later maybe this time uh you know after sunday my data
27:06 kind of spend some time on youtube and learn more about the world but hopefully that answers your question mal about that and um that's good um what's up kalalea connecting the hawaiian islands here from the east side hilo all the way to kawaii in the west yeah you bro aloha hopefully waila and you guys doing great out there looking forward to maybe coming out there this year teaching on kawaii i don't know gotta coordinate with you yeah sending love to the to the oldest island though that's well i guess ni'ha would be older
27:49 but you know the one that you can fly to on hawaiian airlines unreal okay so yeah so there we go those questions they're coming in and then I did have one other question came in was about the microbial secret society and password retrieval and I just got to make sure all my websites are up and running and doing well and or consolidate them all into one I don't know what I think I'm doing I gotta centralize simplify make my life easier but love the microbial secret society I haven't been making episodes there because I've been doing this office hour every
28:25 week. And it was good when I had, when David and I were working together, but you know, times change, things happen. And so I haven't been making episodes, but if you do want to make a microbial secret society with me and you want to, you know, talk story about microbes for two hours, let me know. And we can make that happen. And I'd love to put out more episodes and get into it because I love listening to podcasts and, um, speaking of good podcasts, uh, I've been tuning into the great simplification. If you haven't heard of it, it is where it's at. I'm going to look it up right
29:03 now. Great simplification with Nate Higgins. He has his own websites right here. The great simplification. I, unfortunately I use Google to do this, but you can look it up. Here's the great simplification, the great simplification.com with Nate Higgins. And man, this has been one of the best, um, best podcasts turning, turning me on lately. I'm just what great ideas because, um, you know, I'm looking forward. In fact, today I'm going to listen to this one, the electric vehicles where he's talking to all these people about EVs and if that's our solutions.
29:39 Um, my dad just listened to this one in Lebanon. He said, um, this one was just beyond great. Um, haven't listened to this one yet, but, uh, this one here with Daniel Schmachtenberger, oh man, AI and the super organism. This one, oh, that it's over there. That one right here, this one, oh man, that was good because it's like, oh, it's heavy what he talks about and all these things. And then this is on the Alex Goldstein, the petrodollar talks about Bitcoin debt, globalization all these folks are just like amazing uh podcasts so if you're looking for
30:16 something else to listen to you want to get into kind of these things i think i mean ultimately i think nate hagan's needs to have knf in there as like a solution because when you talk about simplification getting things simple like nothing's more simple than knf especially when you bring in the damn methods of like that part of the korean natural farming you couldn't get simpler you couldn't get easier and it's a solution everyone's looking for it's carbon sequestration more trees more soil cleaner ocean uh less economic you know whatever it's like that's the solution you're
30:51 looking for nate so anyway um might reach out to nate but i you know it's hard it's hard for me to be like hey you should really have me on your show it's like you know he has to learn about me and start tuning into the office hour and have people tell him hey man you should check this out so what you're looking for? Because I'm sure he listens to podcasts too, just like everyone, you know, has that chance to do it. So, um, with all that getting into those, any other, any other questions? I think, no, not here right now. Um, what else was going on? Oh, looking at this, um,
31:25 bioenergy from the other week. I just leave my tabs open. Um, can I help medically minded is asking, can I help with small scale chicken coops? I'm looking to get three to six laying hens. Okay. Um, you know, it is, it probably is going to be in the presentation here coming up. Um, but let me just, I'm just gonna, um, skip ahead a tiny bit here. What's slide number? Am I on? No, I can remember where I'm at. I'm on. Am I?
32:11 Am I on? Yeah, no, I am. Okay, I'm on slide 217. So remember that for me, 217. I'm just going to skip ahead a little bit in the presentation and show you a little bit about the chickens here. I am going to get into it with this, but I just wanted to show since you're asking about. So basically, you know, you asked about small scale thing.
32:34 Well, this is a larger scale. This is, this pen here is designed to hold 120 birds. It's basically, uh, 12 feet, 12 to 14 feet wide by 20, 24 feet long. Um, you know, um, but the basic idea is that you got a roost in the back, you got feeders, you got water on this side, you have a laying box. Okay. And the basic idea is that this enables the chickens to walk back and forth, to go get water, to go eat food and to go to the roost and like hang out in there. And so thinking of the floor layout for the chickens matters a whole lot. Um, but if you just got three to six pen chickens,
33:16 you want to give them an area. Um, like last week I talked about it where I went into the Hubble bubble a little bit. And, um, let me just, since I'm here, I'll just pull that up. Hubble bubble. And I don't think there was anything on the internet about this. I'd have to go directly to the YouTube and then look up the Hubble bubble. but I did talk about it last week I know I did um and you can't even find anything by googling it so you gotta go you actually gotta go to like my my channel here which and you can look it up but
34:00 so you know clicking the thing there go to the thing and let me let me pull it up this way um just going to my channel here because there's a whole whole bunch um so on my channel here um this is just you know canna video.com and or you can search for pure knf dr drake here and then if i go over to my search and i just look up uh hubble bobble um which is weird that it's called that but but these are these this type of design right here or it's this this is designed for about 20 to 30 chickens but I just want to pull that up versus if
34:41 I go to like um chicken coop and I just look up chicken coop on the internet something like like so if I'm looking at it I would recommend something like this like right here where you have this best pet thing let me see can you guys see that I gotta make it bigger yeah I would recommend something like this where it's on the floor and you can put in a thing and you can put in feeders and you can have something like this. And it's only $49 for something like this versus I would not recommend something like this, this house looking thing, like these house things that I see at, um, at
35:20 tractor supply and stuff. I don't recommend these house things, these things where it's like, you look at it and it's like the chickens can go underneath and then they have this claustrophobic thing up here and this run and this thing to go inside like even if it's cold if you have a living floor beneath i don't recommend these like it's it's too much like it's too much human thought of like oh a house the chicken wants the house like they don't really they're oh why why did it go away where's that one that i had oh you know what it it like filtered oh so something like
35:54 these. These are just, they're just simple. They're easy. Um, you know, this one has a little roof in the back, but something like this versus something like this where they're all claustrophobic in there. Like I don't really recommend these, um, like something like this, where it's like a wagon and it has this thing. You're better off just to go with something like this, the cheaper, better one here that you can put these in and, and then, and then in there, put in a few of, you know, um, these, these components here where you can put in your own feeder, you can put in your own little
36:29 roost and you can put in your own little egg box. You know, the other, the other ones, it's not like they're going to crap in there. They're going to make it dirty. They're going to, you know, they're going to spread disease in there. It's like, there's no airflow. They don't want to live in a house and you know um chickens chickens live outside they roost in trees like they live you know if it's you know yeah i don't know if you know if it's snowing and stuff maybe you need a barn to bring them in but bring their cage inside that barn and just have them do a deep litter
37:01 thing um but this is this is what i recommend is you know these types of things here these two versus this type of thing. Although maybe that one's okay. Cause they have enough floor area and they can go up there. I don't, I don't know if that one would be okay, but not, not these, not these, um, or these like this. No, like, I don't know how that's only $31. That seems insane. Maybe it's not the whole thing. Um, but whoever manufacturer that needs to raise their price because $31 seems way too cheap. Um, so yeah. Um, so small scale. Um,
37:48 okay and then um joe is commenting to um to thomas about um during long dry spells and drought which we've been having often in new york i dilute all the all the solutions more than normal to avoid concentrations in the soil. Not sure if that's necessary, though. You can't go wrong by diluting more. You know, as long as you're applying, there's a certain absorption level. There's actually, if you look at, there's like nutrient absorption graphs.
38:39 There are, this isn't, I'm just there, I'll show you what I'm looking at. These aren't, these aren't what I was looking for. but there are certain absorption to dilution did I spell absorption wrong? I guess I did no, absorb I put a B, absorption okay, here, here is this what I'm looking for? photon energy there are certain graphs of maybe this one serial dilutions
39:25 let's see if this is what I'm looking for I am looking for certain I'm actually just looking for a picture but here they're diluting these things 1 to 10, 1 to 1000 come on, show me a graph is this it? here's like absorption with copper example of a standard curve this is like parts per million in absorption concentration uh so there there is a relationship between dilution and absorption is what i'm trying to get at i'm trying to find this here i'm not sure this is showing what i'm looking at what i'm looking for but there is a relationship between dilution and absorption and it turns out
40:13 that the 1 to 500 dilution tends to be where it is. What I was actually looking for is like one curve coming this way and one curve coming that way, kind of where they meet in an optimum. I'm not seeing that type of graph, but I could just go to image source and see if I could see what I'm looking for. pH curve dilution dilution. But there are, I don't know, I don't know where I saw it before, but someone showed it to me, you know, I should probably, maybe it's this type of thing. I don't know. Dilution and then absorption. I don't know. But anyway, there is a relationship
40:56 between where, um, nutrients can be absorbed and how you dilute them. So if you over dilute them, they can absorb them as well as what I'm trying to say. I don't, I'm trying to show it versus tell you about it, but because I don't actually have the data and I'm just trying to look through and see if I could find something that matched what I was looking for. I don't know if these are the ones. Someone might find that science. I should probably be looking at this type of thing and look up in Google Scholar and say, absorption dilution graph. I don't know if that's going to help me.
41:52 Yeah, no, this is way too messy for me to look up live. But there is a certain thing of, you know, how nutrients are absorbed to how they're diluted. So I believe the University Hawaii did that study, but I don't know. I, I'm, it's too hard for me to find live right now, but maybe if you can find it, like get in the comments or, you know, share it in the chat or whatever. Um, cause that way then we could, we could all learn. And I'm sure partita is in the house. She probably knows what's up. I bet she just knows it offhand. That's, uh, you know,
42:25 my amigo, amiga, amigo. I don't know. What's the feminine amigo, amigas. I don't know what it is, but um so yeah man and kalalea is reporting here that his farm has been booming since my class best decision i ever made dude how awesome is that um can't believe it's two years ago already yeah uh definitely see you when you come to kawaii yeah and what's up to you know me and my wife Yeah, and man, Kalalea, that was super fun. I so enjoyed you and Waila and just having your good energy here and learning all about that.
43:06 Let me just show you, since he mentioned my class, there are classes available. knffarm.com. Don't try and email me there, but knffarm.com. And then right here, you can sign up for the classes. We got one in November coming up, 6th to 12th, and January 13th to the 19th of 2024 coming up. And do I got a picture of you, Kalala? No, I didn't even update it. See, so many people have come through the class, and I don't even put their pictures up. I should have a whole gallery of everybody that's come through. I got so many things to juggle of what I do, try to keep it all good.
43:43 But yeah, that was so fun, man. I really we had such a great time with Nancy and who else was there I don't know yeah everybody that came through that class that was that was super fun I really enjoyed that one who else was there someone else anyway they kind of blend together in my mind I'm trying to remember that's why I look at the pictures so so anyway let's go down and scroll here okay chicken coop I just built a coop for my hens. I'm new to it too. I have four where I let it roll out in reds. Yeah, so the chicken's all that. Okay. Okay. Okay. Cool. I was wondering, does anyone know about
44:29 preventing things like PM? Powdery mildew using KNF. I'm guessing the best thing to use is the labs. Yes. Powdery mildew, your best friends are going to be early and often the KNF protectors. So I call them protectors versus labs just because, you know, calling them protectors. They're going to protect you from the PM, the powdery mildew. And so if you don't know, here it is, the lactoacid bacteria, the protectors. Switch this over so you can see what I'm looking at. But these guys, these little sticks, they get up all on your leaves.
45:06 They take up all the sites where powdery mildew could burrow into your leaves. They occupy that site and they say no space here. and so anytime powdery mildew lands it can't establish it can't plug into your your leaf surface and then it can't grow right because powdery mildew is plugging into your leaf and growing but if you cover it with protectors the lactic acid bacterias they cannot get in there so lactic acid bacteria um you know is is good and then um if you look here at the recipes which one has them it has the soil formula it has it in the leaf formula because as you're growing leaves
45:41 you're going to want to put protectors there and it's also in your bloom but it's diluted one to three thousand in the bloom so as you're using it as your plants are blooming you would dilute it a little bit more you don't need as much but anytime you're growing leaves you want them protectors anytime you're doing soil you want them protectors anytime you see disease cropping up it means you probably should have used protectors a week ago but also the other thing if you do have a whole bunch of powdery mildew happening, cut back on your food, increase your cleanser a little bit,
46:14 leave your medicine the same and structure and reduce your fuel and increase your product protectors. And those are ways of modifying the Korean natural farming, which I try to teach as much as I can during my class of these subtleties and these things. And during the office hours, try to tell you all about these, but there's ways to modify the recipes, even though this formula that says this for certain conditions you can modify these so it'll be even better so with that let's go into the presentation uh so this presentation done by master cho here
46:51 he is amazing he's a great guy i really enjoyed the time spent with him in korea and then here's his presentation. So I'm going to go back. Was I had 216, 217, something like that. So we're still back here. We're on the pigs. I know I'm talking about the pigs. So we started the pigs the other day. And I've been going through this one, slide number 211, which means if you go to previous office hour additions at the end, you can find these. We went over the principles. We went over where you should put the barn, why it matters, where you put it,
47:23 the principles of the building itself, some beautiful things where I went to this farm in Korea ended on this slide, which was the characteristics of you bringing in, you know, the airflow, the sunshine, the soft ground for them with that eats their crap automatic and, you know, and then raising them so that their organs function well. So they're healthy and happy. Yeah. Yeah. So in, in, in also understanding that, um, that natural farming is super adaptable to wherever you are. So like taking these concepts, but then understanding how they all fit together.
48:02 Like that's, that's, you know, when you're here, it's just like teach you as much as I can. If you're at the office hours, you probably have learned a ton a bit more than just the basics, you know, cause it's, it's all about the basics. But then once you learn the basics, you understand that they're so deep and there's so much more. So today, um, the characteristics of natural farming, uh, and so what the main thing that of natural farming, the big common denominator between everything we do is reducing production costs, right? Because if you can reduce
48:34 your production costs, then you can produce animals, you can sell them more, you as the farmer can prosper. And it's all about reducing your costs while not degrading your quality, right? If I can get the cost down, but the animals are happier and they're better quality, then heck yeah, I want to reduce my production costs. So number one thing they use to reduce the the production cost is that the manure is utilized as a feed. So does this mean we're just taking pig crap and then feeding it back to the pig? No, what happens is the pig takes a crap,
49:08 it falls on the ground and then the microbes go in there and they actually change the proteins of the poop into different protein, as good stuff. They, they sterilize or not sterilize it. They, they sanitize it, meaning they get rid of all the bad bacterias that are in there. and then they actually change the proteins and it becomes kind of powdery and flaky you'll see it change and then it becomes food so 10 of the animal's food they're actually eating the floor itself so the manures you know there's proteins the carbon it's like they're eating you know
49:46 carbonaceous good stuff it's not that disgusting because there's no disease in there you can you can look it up. You can culture these things. You know, I've had the Texas A&M come and study it. They're like, wow, there's no disease. Wow. It's preserving all this stuff. Wow. This is amazing. Thank you for super chats. Yours. It's good. Good information. Share it. It comes back. But the food, the feed itself, the floor itself is like 10% of the animal's food is right there from the floor. So this enables you as a farmer to once in a while go on a vacation for a day or two.
50:21 and not feed your pigs, and they will just eat the floor. And there's plenty of food. And if you're keeping them in good health, it's fine to skip a meal for them once in a while. Not very often, but once in a while. Although, you know, with a milk cow, you can't really take a vacation. So then number two issue here is plenty of feed resource. Training organ. Okay, so that's pretty cringlish there. But what they're saying is you can use the natural farming. you can ferment all the feed, not just the manure that's on the floor fermenting, but your other
50:55 feed, you're going to feed them. You can take all kinds of things. Like you can basically get the pigs to eat grass or banana stock or these other things that you wouldn't think of as food resources, silage. And you can train their organs to turn these things because their digestive systems are so healthy. They can gain nutrition from eating these grasses. So you don't just have to feed them pelleted, uh, soy proteinaceous stuff. You can train them in their, their stomachs and everything to eat things that wouldn't be normally thought of as food. So it's like, what
51:33 do you feed your pig? Well, grass, you know, a 30% of their diet can be just grass, wild grass. You just harvest off your land, wherever, you know? So this is the way to get plenty of feed resources to reduce your production cost. Imagine if like for me now, like, you know, 20 to 30 to 40 percent of the food is actually banana stocks. And so I've harvested the banana fruit, the banana fruit gets sold, the banana stock goes to the pig and the pig eats this. And it's basically like, you know, not much nutrition, but it feeds them up. And because they have so much fermentation
52:07 going, they actually digest it better. So you can ferment all kinds of things to make them into feed resources. So, and you train their organs and they get stronger, more digestibility index. Number three issue here, reducing production cost is saving antibiotic and medical cost. So I did, I did unfortunately just have to do some antibiotics. Like I said, the floor got, um, got corrupted. I should have put IMOs down on the floor. As soon as I did that, put IMOs and sprayed it and brought the floor back to life. It was fine. But
52:40 my pigs did get a little bit of E. coli issues going. So I did have to juice some of them with antibiotics, which is not usually the case. This is the first time I've ever had to do that in my entire pig raising career. But you don't have to juice them with antibiotics all the time. The floor, when you put good IMOs down, you spray it or you bring it to life with the soil solution and there's lactobacillus in there. It then keeps them from getting diseased. So you don't have to antivirus them you don't have to antibiotic them you can save all that money plus
53:14 then people get antibiotic free meat and um um you know vaccine free meat which today is probably going to be pretty popular imagine in the future people are really going to look for that they're going to be like no i don't want that i want the good stuff with none of that in there right um i would imagine with the trend we're on right now um and then the last number d here number d letter d is utilizing natural farming agriculture material. So I'm not sure what the heck that is, but I think what it is, is that after you're done raising your pigs, the floor, you can then
53:53 harvest the floor and talk about the best IMOs in the world. You can make IMO 1, 2, 3, 4 all day, and they will never compete with the IMO 5, which I don't call it IMO 5, I'm going to call it bio. the bio because i differentiate different words master joe would say it's im05 but he kills five things im05 so it's hard to know but the bio from the pig pen the animal floors is like gold it's it's my friend daniel anthony is selling it for like hundreds of dollars per kilo maybe not that much but like a barrel he's selling for like 500 it's like so the the imos that the pigs create on
54:33 the floor. It's just barn on the best. So you as a farmer can then take the pig pen floor, put it out on your fields, get better production, grow more wild grass, bring it in. And now you get this synergistic building. And as that synergistically builds, your animals get healthier. The soil gets healthier. Everything gets healthier. It reduces your production cost, right? So these are the keys reducing your production costs. Thank you, Jake. Awesome. Super chats, super chats. Um, I, I, yeah, I really appreciate it actually. It's, it's nice to get that, um,
55:06 flow back. Um, so, um, so sorghum stocks would be good for pigs. Um, no, I absolutely sorghum stocks. You can ferment them every time you ferment them, you're going to get even more microbes, more protein, more digestion, more bacteria, more, more of like the good micro stuff. Um, but sorghum stocks by themselves would probably be great for the fit, the pigs. You could ensile them if you want, but those would be a good idea, feed the pigs. So, again, characteristics of natural farming. Next slide is characteristics of natural farming livestock. I know some people listen to it.
55:49 That's why I read off the slides. Is number one, labor saving. because basically, you know, think of if you're doing a wash down pig pen or some other pig pen, you're up there like spraying it. You're using water. You're spraying it. You're there all day. Your pigs are scared of the water. You're always shooting them down. They're on a wet concrete floor, which proliferates more disease, um, creates a very unhealthy condition. Maybe they're on a metal grate because you're spraying the crap through the floor. Who the hell wants to stand and
56:19 live on a metal grate, right? Like it's so uncomfortable. The pigs are like dying and stuff. So cleaning, um, labor of cleaning labor of removing manure, neither of those you have to do. You just have to make feeds and put the feed in and then pet your pigs and then stare at them and understand the wisdom and the peace they're giving to you. That's, you know, maybe your time is, but there's less labor, labor saving. Number one, a hundred percent. I wouldn't raise pigs if I didn't have this labor saving. Number two, eco-friendly here. It says wastewater, odor,
56:53 odor, and noise is not nearly produced. Reduce damage from insect. So all those things, I don't know. You know, you're not spraying it down. You're not, it doesn't stink. You don't have a manure lagoon, all these things. So here looking at how the heck do you actually do it? How do you build a deep litter pig pen. Number one is you put logs at the bottom. So there's a four foot deep system for pigs. It depends on the weight of the animal. So if you're going to do a cow, it needs to be about six to eight feet and a horse again, six to eight feet.
57:32 Sheeps would be about two to three feet and a chicken is about six to eight inches. but in the chicken you don't need the logs but it's all based on the weight of the animal but you put a bunch of logs down why logs because they hold the good fungus that's going to make this whole system work this this lignin this carbon carbonaceous lignin here it's going to hold it down so put logs all in the bottom two feet of that then next you're going to they're using rice holes and they're covering the logs with rice holes and this is again two feet so you
58:07 had two feet of logs now you have two feet of um of rice holes i use wood chips um wood chips work great uh just blend a little bit of dirt in there with the wood chips so it fits all in there but look at all these different systems you know and they fill this up and then the pigs live on this upper layer and as soon as you're done filling it up then you uh spray this with imo and soil foundation and bring this whole system to life. Um, and then here is utilizing the manure as feedstuffs. Um, so I think this is like looking at the different heights of what's happening in the,
58:55 in the your your layers of your pig pen here I don't exactly understand this slide but full fermentation I guess is happening in this top layer 11 to 15 inches down you have sawdust remain and it remains it is humid as a brown huh so this is helping it compost then deeper down 15 to 27 inches you have sawdust as a brown and then 27 to 35 inches this is your trees down at the bottom mushroom waste tree bamboo so i think this is how all this fermentation is happening these different layers of the carbon and the bacterias and nitrogens all working um uh together here um to to make um the manure
59:48 and fermenting the manure but look at that that's amazing stuff but as you dig down you'll find these different layers happening. And then characteristic of natural farming livestock, as you dig down into this pen, you'll find at the very top layer, it's kind of moist, especially if you use rice hulls, that type of stuff. It'll be very moist up at the zero to 11 inches at the top. And then as you go down, it gets a lot drier and it's a little humid. so um near feed box opposite ground not sure exactly what he's meaning there but it definitely
1:00:27 one side that the pigs make waste on will be a little bit more moist and if your pig pen like mine is drying out i probably should spray it with a little water once in a while just a little bit just to keep it moist but my pig pen is functioning fine it really is actually so but you should have you know, it should be dry towards the bottom. And this is the thing, even though the pigs are urinating and whatever on the top and pooping on the top, it's not getting out the bottom. It's drying up because these mycelia in the, in the logs and in the lower layers are sucking all
1:00:58 that moisture up and they're turning it into micro micro organism bodies. Um, so that's really what's going on here. Um, next one is self supplying feet. So this is to go further into mouse question. This is what you're looking at of like, you could take your food waste and mix it into something like this, where you're mixing in the, this is where I was saying the rice holes, the banana stalks, you know, you want to chip and shred all this stuff. This is even bamboo that's covered with more rice holes on top. But if you mix all this together and you make a
1:01:31 fermented feed here, it will turn into this cake of microorganism bodies. And you can basically then feed this to the pigs. And this is much better than feeding them the raw restaurant waste. You want to put it into a system like this where you're actually making the feeds and it like turns into this feed lasagna. How do you actually do that? Well, in my advanced videos where we went to Master Lee's place, you can see all this. We did it with him, right? I can go over it in further detail another time but um but understanding that you you can ferment all your feed this way and
1:02:10 then feed them that way here's again this is also the chicken feeds each one of these um or goes out to a different uh chicken pen this is how much each 120 birds eats per day and in the chicken workshop you can see how we did all this what we made um but you know you're making nice feed it's all fermented it's all chopped up it's all going into there you are making amazing stuff so i'll go well might save this for next time we've got more pictures of pigs coming up and in the pen and how the pen works so basically cover the you know lowering the cost doing those things making the
1:02:51 feeds i'll have to go over the feeds another time with you guys and really go into detail there but So it looks like next time we're going to get into the interior of the fattening pens. And then we're going to go through, look at these beautiful pigs and all these things. So we will go over the ideas of the principles of how to make a fattening pen. Which, look at these cute little fat pigs. They're so cute. But one thing I'll finish with here is just, you know, looking at the bottom. The actual floor that goes on top. He's using sawdust, local soil, and sea salt.
1:03:26 at a ratio of 100 sawdust, 10 local soil to 0.3 sea salt. So he's actually putting sawdust on top of the wood. Sawdust is okay. It can get a little hot as long as you're putting in enough soil at this ratio with sea salt, that that will then help the whole system break down, keep it nice, give the microbes an ability to grow. I use wood chips instead of sawdust. I don't know if this is a mistranslation, but wood chips is a really good choice. And then again, they're feeding the pigs grasses, rice straw, and feed,
1:04:08 right? So that combination here fermented for them. So they're using grasses to cut down their food cost. They're feeding them only once a day because you want them to go from hungry to full to hungry to full. So just once a day. If you're always feeding them, they never get empty and then it can cause digestive issues. Just, you know, intermittent fasting is awesome. And then this little guy here is saying manure is decomposed when mixed with bedding. You don't need to clean. So yeah, as soon as they make craps, they are, it mixes into bedding, it ferments,
1:04:40 it decomposes, and then they re-eat it. And then it says over here, apply, apply can of food, IMOs, and fuel sometimes. So sometimes you need to, and this is, I just ran into this problem, is that if you spray pretty much the maintenance solution on there, well, not really, the soil foundation solution is actually the one it is, it will then keep this thing living and boost your floor. And it says you might take out the bedding only when you use it for fields as fertilizer. The longer you keep the bedding, the better the quality becomes. So year after year, it supposedly gets better,
1:05:19 although that's if you're applying this soil foundation once in a while and the pig feces should not be removed as they are being utilized as part of the pig feed so it's kind of this self-sufficient system here that you as the farmer just get to like look at the pigs and see and be like oh do they have enough food do they have enough water and look how cute they are and so So, and then there's a question here from Bean Printed. Could the walls of the pen be from an underground stone wall foundation, say from a burnt down old structure? Yes. Yes.
1:06:03 Building the walls out of a stone structure that's already there, an old frame, sounds perfect. just cement in some steel poles up above and then put on a fence like this. The aeration actually comes from the bottom. So in the University of Hawaii trials, it'd be worth actually showing you some pictures. Maybe I'll get those together for next time. But University of Hawaii put a concrete floor in and no water goes through and it's and it aerates it okay the best is actually to have soil underneath and a and a
1:06:44 stone wall or a concrete wall on the edge you know concrete because it's going to last it's you know but then having it so you can open it to get a um a skid steer in there to unload the stuff make it easier for you you know you've really got to think about how am i going to utilize this um to get the material out eventually um but having something where you contain it with a cement wall. I buried mine down. Um, my, my pig pen, I just actually, it's, it's worth showing you guys. Cause I just, um, I just redid my pig pen not too long ago. So hang on. It's on my phone
1:07:19 here. Let me just pull this up. Cause I do know this is on my phone and I just took a picture recently. Um, but, um, cause I was just redoing my pig pen wall after, um, after 10 years. Um, let's see, there's so many baby pig pictures. Um, okay, here, so here it is. so let's see if i can turn this sideways okay so this sketching glare this is what the logs have turned into after 10 years and then um so here's a picture where you're seeing down at the bottom is is i removed the wall okay so there was a wall right
1:08:09 under this fence i removed it and this is what the logs have turned into on the bottom and you can see the fresh wood chips up top. So, um, so that's what you're looking at. Um, and here's another like kind of side picture of it. So you can see this mycelial just like, you know, brown layer down below and then the wood chips up above with the wall missing. Um, and here's a further out picture of it. So hopefully you can see that, but I removed like kind of the corner and that whole bit of it. You can see where I've removed, yeah, I left in part of the wall and then removed part
1:08:46 of it. Maybe I should load these onto the computer for next time to talk about it a little bit better. But this is, this is what my pig pen has turned into. And you, if you were able to get a skid steer in there and pull some of that material out and or a tractor bucket or some, you know, or, um but that's that's what that's what my pig pen has turned into and um you know the little the logs were pretty much gone I was I was pretty amazed they're just they're not even there anymore but the system's still functioning and maybe maybe it does need to be rebuilt and new logs put in but
1:09:24 it just gets amazing and that fungus lives in there and just eats all that material and it's just wow I can dig down into that stuff and um use it use it on the farm and maybe maybe if I dig down then I should replace the logs I don't know um I'm you know only 15 years into learning uh maybe 2012 till now yeah I don't know I've been raising pigs for a long time but I love them they're awesome I love about their welfare and lowering my labor cost so hope you enjoyed today's episode thanks for tuning in again if you want to sign up for the class
1:09:58 knffarm.com this episode is brought to you by the pure knf foundation pure knf.org making this happen really appreciate all that i may as well show that there you know here making it happen um and but appreciate you guys out there tuning in making it happen make knf happen in your area You can find all these episodes and more at knfsupport.com. You know, all the usual YouTube stuff of like, subscribe, and share. Please like, subscribe, and share. Whatever. You don't have to. I would think you would if you liked it.
1:10:44 But thank you. Yeah. And Suze, myself, signing off for this week. I'll see you next week. I'll be back probably June something or other. And happy birthday to my mom. Woo. and I'll see you last time I had the curtain open this time I'll have the curtain closed let me actually put it to the end screen first and then have the curtain closed so I'll see you next week thanks for tuning in aloha love you