IMO1-4 Explained, Pig Pen Roof Design, Mold on IMO2
Drake tests his first YouTube Live stream and starts with a reading list. Master Cho's original book has no ISBN. He recommends JADAM (978-89-89220-13-8) for cheap pest control, Mycelium Running by Paul Stamets (978-1-58008-579-3) for the fungal basics of KNF, and Rudolf Steiner's Agriculture (0-938-250-37-1) for the esoteric side.
He walks through IMO1 through IMO4. IMO1 is seed IMO buried in soil for about five days, longer if cool, as little as three days in hot climates like the Philippines. IMO2 stabilizes it with equal parts brown sugar. Four cups of rice yields eight cups of IMO2, enough for eight IMO3 piles at one cup each. For IMO3/IMO4 substrate he now uses wood chips and Pedigree dog food, roughly 60% wood chips to 40% dog food by volume, mixed to moisture in a cement mixer. Mold on IMO2 means it wasn't stabilized enough with sugar; smell it, and skip it if it smells rotten rather than like koji.
For pig and chicken pens, he recommends a metal roof about 10 feet up for pigs and 8 feet for chickens, with a vented ridge and a gap at the bottom (a foot for chickens, two feet for pigs) so hot air rises and pulls cool air through, drying the floor. Logs in the base layer should run six feet or longer so pigs can't root them up. On biodynamics, Drake hasn't run side-by-side trials but says KNF adapts to any region while biodynamic preps lean on specific materials like cow horns.
He also covers fridge storage (anything not resaturated with sugar, and OHN per its 1-15°C spec), sourcing OHN herbs from Mountain Rose Herbs, desert KNF (pointing to Microbial Secret Society podcast episodes 24 and 32 with Sam Bevins), making FAA from freshwater fish like tilapia or ahi, and why fermenting a whole cantaloupe vine at once is less effective than fermenting growth tips and fruit separately.
Questions answered
- 1:08 Suggested reading list with ISBN numbers? — Master Cho's book has no ISBN; Drake recommends JADAM, Mycelium Running, and Rudolf Steiner's Agriculture, all with ISBNs given.
- 10:45 Is a rice box buried in the forest basically making koji rice? — Not exactly koji — burying the box in soil gets diverse soil fungal microbes, not just air microbes.
- 17:19 Do you check every IMO3/4 batch under a microscope? — No, after years of practice Drake reads smell, sight, and temperature instead, though he still checks new substrates.
- 21:17 What does mold on IMO2 mean? — It's the forest fungal microbes you collected, which you propagate through IMO3/IMO4 like a skin graft for damaged soil.
- 24:37 How should I build the roof on my pig pen and chicken coop? — Metal roof with a vent slit, walls about 10 feet up for pigs and 8 feet for chickens, with a gap at the bottom for airflow.
- 28:44 Have you compared biodynamic prep 500 to KNF inputs? — No side-by-side trials, but KNF is simpler and adapts to any region while biodynamics leans on items like cow horns.
- 31:48 What carbon material should I use for my IMO3 pile? — Drake recommends horse feed since it's mostly mill run and horses need a clean, consistent diet.
- 33:32 Can I add pecans, or is juglone in green hulls a problem? — Pecans should work if your mix lacks fat, but avoid antimicrobial woods like pine, eucalyptus, or ironwood.
- 36:39 What are IMO1 and IMO2 for, versus IMO3 and IMO4? — IMO1 is seed IMO from the forest, IMO2 preserves it in sugar, and IMO3/IMO4 propagate and tune those microbes.
- 40:52 Is it okay to use IMO2 with mold on top? — Check the smell — fine if it still smells like koji, skip it if it smells rotten.
- 45:34 What solutions need to be stored in the fridge? — Anything not resaturated with sugar, like single-ferment FPJ, plus OHN per its 1-15°C storage spec.
- 53:36 Where can I source hard-to-find OHN ingredients? — Drake now buys from Mountain Rose Herbs in Eugene, Oregon, though Angelica alone can run about $30 a batch.
- 59:11 How do I run KNF in 125°F desert heat like Arizona? — Drake points to Microbial Secret Society podcast episodes 24 and 32 with Sam Bevins on desert KNF and irrigation without water.
- 1:00:49 Can I use freshwater fish instead of oily sea fish for FAA? — Yes, Drake has made FAA from tilapia and yellowfin tuna, but avoids adding IMO4 since it eats up the fats and oils.
- 1:04:39 Is it bad to make FPJ from every part of a cantaloupe vine at once? — It works but isn't optimal — ferment growth tips and fruit separately, then combine up to three FPJs at 1:500.
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 setup and technical test
- 1:08 Book list with ISBN numbers
- 2:51 Master Cho's book and his story
- 6:00 JADAM book for pest control
- 7:38 Mycelium Running by Paul Stamets
- 8:20 Rudolf Steiner's Agriculture
- 10:45 Soil microbes vs koji rice
- 17:19 Microscope checks vs smell and sight
- 21:17 What mold on IMO2 means
- 24:37 Pig pen and chicken coop roof design
- 28:44 Biodynamics vs Korean natural farming
- 31:48 Carbon source for IMO3 piles
- 33:32 Pecans, acorns, and allelopathic woods
- 36:39 IMO1 through IMO4 explained
- 40:52 Mold on IMO2, revisited
- 45:34 Fridge storage for OHN and FPJ
- 53:36 Sourcing OHN ingredients
- 59:11 KNF in desert heat
- 1:00:49 Freshwater fish for FAA
- 1:04:39 FPJ from multiple plant parts
Transcript
Auto-transcribed with Whisper. Click any timestamp to play from there.
0:00 hey so i think um i think this is going live i'm trying to do it through um open broadcast studio and um using youtube live instead of going through zoom so kind of figuring out the technical capabilities of this stuff and trying to figure out if zoom is a better way to do this or if going through YouTube live is a better way to do going about what I have here. So, hey, how's it, Tara? Yeah, I guess I am coming through here, and it looks like there's
0:46 like a little bit of lag there coming through, but that's good. I'm glad to be figuring this stuff out. And yeah, I do. I do got that chat up here and I can see you saying that stuff. And I think the first question here was from Steven and he was asking about, do I have a suggested reading list with ISBN numbers? So let me just go to my shelf back here and grab a few books so I can suggest a few things. Okay. Yeah. You like zoom. Maybe, maybe next time I will do a zoom. I, uh, I'm just trying to figure this out and see if even the technology works and what I can do.
1:34 Um, it's nice to have zoom cause people are in the room and it's kind of nice to share that way. So hang on one sec. Let me go grab a few books. I'll be right back. I'm going to go ahead and put it in the middle of the room.
2:19 okay so back here at the desk it looks like it's lagging like about a minute behind um what i'm doing here so yeah i'm open to doing interviews for sure i've done a few with um all kinds of people doing blogs and things. Um, but here for the, for the books, um, recommendations, um, I recommend first, um, of books that are possible to buy right now. Um, this natural farming by master Cho. Um, and it's actually, you asked for an ISBN and there's not even one on here.
3:15 There's not a barcode on here. But let's see. And there's no ISBN inside. So I think that this thing was published in Master Cho's original printing facility when he had an educational facility in Korea. interesting thing was the story of Dr. Park, who I interviewed at the beginning of this year. And I'll be publishing that. I don't know. I'm kind of doing a mini documentary series. But Dr. Park knows the original story of how Master Cho came to be. He was the person who
4:08 brought Master Cho to Hawaii and the person that, um, that discovered Master Cho actually in Thailand, uh, with no smell pigs. And then, um, later found out that he was Korean and went to go visit him in Korea. And, you know, he, he brought Master Cho to Hawaii 2005. And, um, so it's a, it's a good story to hear from Dr. Park in the story. So anyway, this, this book, I'm sorry, there's no ISBN. Um, you know, the, it's actually, that's one of the harder things in natural farming is to find good information that it's like written in books and out and published. I'm, I'm working on
4:52 a few projects that, that with that regard. Um, but it's, it's always a challenge to take, um, what is this information into encapsulated into a book so much of the information is about um like tasting and touching and smelling and feeling that you know a simple book would be like cook rice and put it in a box and put it in a forest and collect forest mold but there's so many subtleties to it that that's what makes it hard to put it into a book and even if it's in a book it's hard to have it translated properly and, um, and to have, you know, to, to convey the information
5:35 from them to you, which is why I do, I do trainings here at my farm. Um, just put up a couple more of them for, um, January and February, um, decided on those dates and put those up. And those are at knffarm.com. And also my YouTube has a bunch of videos to, to train folks. Um, but let me finish here with a couple other books um this is the um jadam book um and i highly recommend this it's it's a it's not korean i mean it's korean natural farming but it's not master cho's korean natural farming as we say what i tend to call this one is um disgustingly
6:20 cheap microbes. And actually I'm holding up, I think, um, the Korean version of this. Um, I have, I have it written in many languages, but this version regardless, um, even, uh, I do have an English version on my shelf. I just grabbed the wrong one. Um, but this kind of goes through, um, step-by-step how to, how to make things like, um, and it's really about the pests control and soap, which, and a cheap way to do microbes. And I don't necessarily think you need that. If you're doing Master Cho's Korean natural farming here, your ecosystem should be so healthy that you don't
7:01 even need the, um, to kill the pest. You, you, they should just be kind of in symbiosis, but certain operations where you're going for market quality, you do need to kill those. and this one does have an ISBN on it. Um, and it's nine, seven, eight dash eight, nine dash eight, nine, two, two, zero dash one, three dash eight. And I'm sure if you go to that ISBN, it'll link you to the English version of it. I believe this is available on Amazon. Um, and that's, yeah, that's good. Um, other, other books I recommend that are on similar vein. If
7:41 you haven't read them um paul stamets mycelium running he talks a lot about the fungus and how you know the fungus interacts and that's really the basis of korean natural farming is this fungal um fungal microbes and those types of things um and so if you understand this you really help to understand korean natural farming at its basis and so this isbn for paul stamets book is 978-1-58008-579-3 for mycelium running. Highly recommend that. And then if you want to get into the super esoteric bits of natural farming, which is kind of what I prefer to do
8:32 and get into the spiritual parts and more of this deeper bits than just recipes and growing amazing vegetables which is always fun but there's a real almost like spiritual thing of when you really get into nature and start to understand it especially like the microbial secret society and and these ideas of of how this is actually life living like the Hawaiian idea of akua which is god which is fungus and and go into that aspect I recommend this book which is the agricultural lectures by Rudolf Steiner he was a mystic that
9:21 did all kinds of stuff most like famous for Waldorf school and educating holistically children but this he did agriculture right before he was he died the last year before he died he got into agriculture and took this knowledge and put it ag wise and this ISBN for the soft edition is 0-938-250-37-1 and it's always worth having that in your collection it's it's just a it's a collection of his lectures that someone compiled. And I think there's 12 lectures, something like
10:06 that, maybe seven, eight lectures. Let's see. Yeah, there's actually eight lectures that were transcribed. And then they have some discussion of how to actually apply this stuff. And what's funny is most of it was actually like biodynamics itself was designed kind of posthumously after rudolph steiner was dead he just kind of gave the outline for what was going on and that's that's how it worked so they kind of made that up after he died so there's a question here from super life about when we cook rice and then take it to get the mycelium from a forest are we basically making koji rice
10:51 and so to answer this um are you basically getting koji rice um i'm not sure what um koji is specifically it's probably a specific microbe um but you're not getting like standard types of fermentation. It's a similar process, but what you want to make sure when you bring that cooked rice in your box, whether you're using a cedar box or what I use is a lau hala box, like a woven material, or another excellent thing to use is something similar to like an Easter egg basket,
11:40 those woven wicker baskets, and then to be able to cover and create an atmosphere over it. But what you're wanting to do is to create direct contact with the soil. And in fact, if, let's see here, let me pull this up on this diagram. Because a lot of times, and there's even some videos out there where they'll show you the box just sitting on the surface. And the whole idea is you're trying to collect soil microbes. It's not just these ones in the air. It's not just these things that are out there. You're actually trying to collect like
12:23 a diverse set of forest microbes. And in this forest fungal microbes, it may be a better way of calling it than IMO. So let's see here. Pull up my book. And let's see, where's the latest one? Here. Sorry, I should have had this stuff preloaded up here. But I think this one will show it here and let me see if I can transition this stuff properly. Get this to go. Let's see. Full screen that bad boy. Is it going to work? No, full screen is not the best idea for this. So
13:13 I really, it's interesting to use, use this OBS studio, super powerful, but, um, kind of zoom made it just simple and easy. I see why that thing took off, but this is the picture that I want to show you. So I'm going to transition. Let me transition that back because I don't think you have my audio while I do that. And so let me see if I can add in audio while this happens. Sorry to kind of do this live while you guys are here. I know I should probably should have dealt
13:59 with all this technical stuff off the side, but I am able to do this now. Okay, let's see. Transition this guy back. Okay, so you can still hear me and you can see this screen. Okay, so what you want to be looking at is this idea of the hard-cooked white rice and do you see the soil here it's kind of dug into the soil if you just place this box on the top you're not gonna get the microbes to the soil microbes to colonize into your rice if they're just colonizing through the bottom they don't have that same idea so what you're doing is you're actually digging down a
14:42 bit, digging into the soil. And that soil that you did remove, you can actually replace on the top of your box. So you have your hard cooked white rice, you have your airspace, you have the lid of your box or a cover of it. And you can take that soil that you remove there and put it on top so that the microbes will come down. And then also notice how this box is cocooned into the ground. it's not just sitting on top it's actually dug into the ground and the leaf litter is cocooned around it and um in in other places like like um not in other places but here what i do is i
15:28 actually make about a like a foot and a half layer like if i'm burying it under a bamboo or a banana or some sort of tree, I take, pile it up and actually cocoon it in there. So I'm, so when you ask if it's just like koji, it's, it's like, it's more like, um, like not koji. It's the soil microbes and you have to kind of set it up in that scenario to get real good soil microbes. If you just have it set on the surface and microbes are coming in, you're getting stuff,
16:01 But is it the soil IMO? Is it the stuff you want to be propagating? Is it those things? And it's like, not necessarily, there's all kinds of microbes. So, and then let's, I'm going to go back to the other image here just to show. um and then down here towards the bottom um in fact i scrolled it up for you guys looking at um this failure collection which is um you know it didn't um it was collected in plastic so the microbes didn't come through and all this tie-dye indicates that it was too wet this one here that was set was an okay collection but most likely they didn't bury this one in
16:45 and they didn't put it down. And when you bury the microbes deep, you actually get like white mycelium like this. You get these great grow outs because you're not just getting the air microbes, you're actually getting the soil fungal microbes that you're trying to get from down below. So if that's indicative of like, what's the difference? What's the point? Why go through this process? It's again, you're burying it underneath the soil and then you're trying to get these nice microbes. And these aren't the ones you're looking for. They're the ones you're
17:19 looking for. You can't see. These are just friends of the ones you're looking for. So when you see these white like Bacillus simplis and other microbes in there, it's an indicator that you have the diverse microbes from the forest system that are so innumerable and so minute and so hard to study that we don't even know their names. And that's the wild part of natural farming too, is you can't even scientifically study this. So another question here from Dami. Do you check every batch of IMO3 or 4 with a microscope for fungal and bacterial dominance? Do I check every single batch? No.
18:05 Have I checked batches in the past and do I check them somewhat often? Yes. at this point, it's like the microscope is an introduction to the invisible world. So using a microscope at certain times in my life was super useful to me to understand what I was doing. But once now at this point in my life, and I've learned the macro signs of when I was I have a good collection. So what do I mean by that? And why do I not necessarily need a microscope each time is what I'm, I'm learning about is the smell, the sight, um, the, the temperature gradient,
18:57 all of these things to know and to, to see a good IMO, um, to collection. So see, you know, understand when I got a great collection, then to mix them, then to mix them with the proper substrate. Now, when I was doing substrate testing to find out, because in Korea, the recipe comes across as to use wheat or to use rice mill run, meaning the holes that were the difference between brown rice and white rice, and that's ground up to be, um, it's kind of a brand slash the holes, um, and they call it mill run. Um, that stuff, if you're not using that and you're using something
19:45 else, then you need to know that it's growing the proper, um, uh, microbes. So, so to test when I'm growing those out. So often what I'm using now is I'm using, um, I'm using wood chips and dog food. And, and so that seems kind of weird, but the idea is that the wood chips are providing that tons of carbon and the dog food is providing the fats, the oils, the nutritional component that the microbes need to break down the wood chips. And so as combined together, they form this really good substrate. And so when I'm trying a new substrate, for sure,
20:32 I will check the microbes to see how did my fungus grow out? How did my bacteria grow out? You know, I want to know and I want to see. But now that I found this substrate, and it's about it's about um half half or from from about half dog food to half wood chips by volume to about um maybe a 60 40 being 60 wood chips 40 dog food by volume and i found you know and then getting that to the proper moisture content which is the same as using mill run and what i use is a cement mixing machine. So I pour the water in and I run the dog food within the cement mixer
21:17 with the liquids with my IMO2 mixed in. And that gets it moist enough. And then I'll blend that either with my BCS with a mixer attachment or by hand with a shovel to make batches. So I do use the microscope to see in those cases, but now I know the smell is good enough. So another question here is, JC was asking, what does the mold on the IMO2 mean? The mold, so like mold is a broad term, meaning tons of different things. um and so what you got to understand is that it's not um what you're trying to get is forest
22:08 fungal microbes and so it's not um you know what is the mold it's it's the microbes you're looking for because if you can take those from the forest propagate them through this process i was just talking about, which is like an IMO3 or an IMO4 process, which is just taking that the substrate that I was talking about, these microbes you've collected and some other liquid nutrients, putting them together and putting them out. That is what gets you the same microorganisms that are growing in the forest. And the idea is to spread that evenly over your field in a way where you
22:51 can then get the soil texture and the ability for those microbes to go seek nutrients and bring those into into your field and so the idea is you're it's kind of like a like you know in in in medical things like if you got a bunch of burns on yourself you would do a skin graft you know you if if for instance, my arm was burnt. I would take skin from maybe my chest or my butt or something and take that and paste it onto my skin here. And then it would start to grow and heal and regrow. And so what you're doing through the IMO process with these molds is very similar to a skin graft
23:36 in a certain sense of taking this intact microbiome and bringing it to where it's been destroyed for some reason of, you know, like if you've done chemical farming or you've done high intensive tillage or you've done monoculturing for a while, you can continue to monoculture, continue to do some tillage, although I recommend that you try to avoid it once you really get your microbes growing because you'll constantly be setting yourself back. But once you get those, if you do have damaged soil, go to where it's good, collect them, and like skin graft it back
24:17 to this other area. And that's the idea of what the mold is and those things. Okay. And so next question here. Oh, good. The audio's back. Sorry. It's kind of laggy. I think maybe I should have put it higher, less latency or something. I put it to normal. I think it's buffering for like a minute between my connection and you. And even then it's still buffering. So just kind of learning about this stuff. I mean, I, it was, yeah. So, um, hello, Drake. I know nothing about construction, but I'm currently building my chicken coop and pig pen roof.
24:55 I know nothing about the roofing except for what I read online. okay so key with um pig pen and chicken pen is to put these things on the ground let me let me just pull up a quick website here um website is natural farming hawaii.net and that's that is my kind of blog website that I've been putting info at since 2007 or so. Let's see here. It's kind of lagged out. I wish. All right. And then under livestock and under pigs is an example of the barn.
25:42 And so let me, I'm going to bring this over to the other screen so you can see this. And then transition this guy here over here okay so now you're looking at um this here which is the roof and the idea is that for a pig pen the roof should be up about eight feet or excuse me about 10 feet and for a chicken pen it should be up about eight feet or so above. And what you want to do is have the roof so it has a slit in the top and not block it. And the idea is that what happens is the sun heats this metal roof and metal roofing really
26:28 helps. It heats this. And what happens is the air up here heats. And when it does, hot air rises. And so the air rises out the top. And now what you can do on these walls over here is you can actually extend them down and extend them down just to the nose of your animal. So if you have chickens, it's about a foot off the ground. If you have pigs, it's about two feet up. You can create an opening at the very bottom. And what happens is the cool air is drawn in through the edges and up out the top of the roof. And so the design here is to create
27:04 really good airflow. And when that air is flowing across the green waste that's down below, it's actually wicking out the, um, the water and it's taking moisture with it. And it's helping to dehydrate the floor, which helps the microbes to break down the manure and the waste and those types of things. So the roof design, um, you know, metal roof on top. Um, actually this one right here is a, is a full on design of it. Um, I think you guys can see it. I can see how slow, slow and laggy it is to stream. Um, but here's an actual, um, you know, working copy that was
27:48 put in, um, in mountain view here, here's the plans for it. Um, and what it actually costs the guys, but you know, this was before the inflation and all that. So, um, and then there's also some guides here on how to build the pig pen and the chicken pen is very similar except for it is your floor is only about six inches deep and you don't need wood wood chips i i mean you can use wood chip or you don't need the logs i sometimes use wood chips but i also use um grant just grass clippings um so anyway that's a little bit about that there um hopefully that can help you with the
28:30 building of, um, what you got going. I'm going to see here. Okay. Um, so someone, uh, Shaman King, oh, that's a good name. Um, are you asking, have I compared biodynamic preps 500 to any of the KNF inputs? Um, I've never done side-by-side trials. I am helping a farm on Molokai transition from biodynamics and including biodynamics to bringing in KNF. The one thing I would say between biodynamics and Korean natural farming is that we've done kind of the scientific studies on this. And also it's a little bit simpler.
29:18 And the thing about KNF is it can be adapted to any region, whereas biodynamics tends to be somewhat European centric. So it talks about needing cow horns and you can get cows anywhere in the world, but certain quartz crystals and things like that that aren't indigenous here. the nice thing about knf korean natural farming is that each um each v each um solution can be adapted to any region because it's just a recipe it's not like you have to use this and that it's like it's it's more like a concept of making can of food which is also known as
30:04 fermented plant juice where you are taking plant matter mixing in brown sugar to in brown sugar is necessary to get the osmotic pressure, but you're mixing in this plant material and then extracting out the juice. You can do that with any plant from any region and different plants will have different properties. So understanding what plants do what and what, you know, what they're full of helps you to tune that into your farm and your operation, but it really enables you to be much more independent of having to go to certain, um, you know, like, like getting intestines or
30:44 I'm not even sure there's a lot of different preps and different things. It's also a much quicker process to do the IMO versus the, um, where you're burying the, the manure in the cow horn. Although I do believe it's a similar process in theory of what you're trying to accomplish. and also the similar things to biodynamics is the almost homeopic amount you need to apply you really just put in a tiny amount like diluting one to a thousand type of idea it's very potent things and along the biodynamic lines you're kind of changing the vibration and the microbial energy
31:25 bits and that gets a bit woo and like out there and kind of hard to scientifically quantify and repeat and measure. But if you understand it, it's really the good, you know, it's powerful, great stuff. And when you get into the subtle energies of it, it really is, you know, where it's at. You don't need to change every microbe. You need to create the conditions and the vibrations for good microbes to grow. So hopefully that's kind of a long way of getting to that. But no, I haven't done side-by-side comparisons of biodynamics or Korean natural farming.
32:09 So, Stephen was saying, I'm about to have some time off work coming up and would be able to work on my inputs. I call them solutions. Currently working on my IMO3 pile, good, and my concern is material for my carbohydrate and my carbons. um you know if you're concerned about what you're using for for the different um um things to use i would use um horse feed like um going going because it's mostly mill run with a few other things mixed in to make it palatable and nutritious for horses horses always have a pretty darn specific diet. You can't feed them a bunch of junk. So it's usually
32:56 pretty high quality stuff. Um, and what I've been using here, when I go to the tractor supply and I buy food is I'm buying, um, mature horse food. Um, and maybe I'll get a picture of that or bring in the nutritional profile to see and share with what it actually is. Um, but it's just simple stuff that's in a bag. I open it up. It's 50 pounds, put it into the cement mixer and, um, mix in the liquids to do it. So if you're concerned about what to use, the easiest way is to go to your local feed store, ask them what they feed mature horses and not alfalfa cubes. I'm not
33:38 saying alfalfa, but, um, but use a mature horse feed that's, um, based on mill run. So that's, that's my best recommendation for if you're concerned about any of this and wanting to get a good quality stuff without knowing too much. Um, and you said here, you heard in a podcast, someone was using acorns in their IMO three pile and we had a pecan tree here. And I'm wondering, can I add my pecans to my IMO three pile mixture? Um, my friend down in Texas, Austin from Elgin, Texas. He has a pecan orchard and I think he's experimented with this so it'd be worthwhile
34:21 to follow up with him and see what his experience was. You're trying to get the mix of fats and oils in there so if the material you're using is devoid of fats and oils I could see something like an acorn or a pecan being useful because just like you don't want to eat junk stuff neither do the microbes so bringing that in is a good idea and then he you're also asking or will I possibly have an allopathic issue from jug loan possibly leaching out of the green hole and I would say I'm not sure on this but I wouldn't use things that are known to be antimicrobial
35:09 for instance if i was to do my wood chip dog food mixture i i probably wouldn't want to use a pine tree where there's going to be a lot of um um like resinous um material which those pine trees tend to be kind of um antimicrobial even though it's it's not necessarily it's but they they have inhibitors. Like I think you're saying that's allopathic, allopathic, what? Yeah. Um, part, part of it. And that's the, I wouldn't want to use something that's known to be that way. So what I'm using is things that are broad leaves, um, just kind of rubbish trees that are chipped
35:56 up along, um, along the highway that I get, um, probably would also try to avoid doing that with something like eucalyptus or, um, like ironwood type of things. Um, those, those grow around here and I probably wouldn't try to use those. Um, and the question is what type of dog food I use pedigree. Um, not that I'm sponsored by them or anything, but shout out to pedigree. And, uh, you know, it's probably the worst shit out there, but I figure I'm just, you know, I, I wouldn't feed that to my dog for sure. Um, unless I wanted my dog to get cancer, but, um, but feeding it
36:34 to the microbes in this case, I'm really just looking for the nutritional profile. And I know I just talked some stuff about trying to feed them the best things. Um, it really comes up to a matter of scale. Um, some other dog foods have other probiotics mixed in pedigree certainly does not. And I just buy like a 50 or 60 pound bag and mix that up in the cement mixer. So it's pretty easy to do. So another question here, you said IMO3 and IMO4 is basically about propagating microbes. What then is IMO1 and 2 about? Okay, so this is a great question. And
37:20 And the IMO1 is what I call seed IMO. And actually in my vocabulary that if you checked out last week's office hour, I was talking about how, or maybe it's two weeks ago, I was talking about how I kind of have redefined these terms to be simple and into our understanding instead of esoteric like IMO1234. it really means nothing to us. Other than it's kind of obvious it's a stage going through. But what IMO1 is, is your seed IMO. So you're going out to your forest and you're trying to collect a fractal of your forest microbiome. So if you saw the diagram earlier, you're burying this box
38:11 in the soil and you are getting every microbe that was living there and it they are attracted to this starch source in this atmosphere that you've created so this this IMO box that you've created is this perfect kind of like nursery so to say for the microbes to go in so you're trying to invite all these microbes that are soil that are very subtle that you can't cultivate in a lab that you can't get bugs in a jug that only exist in the soil and you're getting them to go up into your starch. And then the IMO2 process is immediately after you've collected that box.
38:48 And for me, it's about five days is my sweet spot. But if it's cooler temperatures, it may be up to 10, 11 days. And in really hot temperatures, it may be just three days, like down in the Philippines and stuff. And the IMO2 process is once you've collected these things, they're ready. You see that white mycelia, you're mixing it with brown sugar and brown sugar acts as a preservative process. So you're now stabilizing these microbes so that you don't have to use them right away. You can store them in the sugar. And now you just take a cup of them out to mix them into
39:28 five gallons of water to then go to your next stage. So by collecting like, you know, I cook maybe four cups of rice in a box that's appropriately sized. And each time I'm only, and then I add equal parts of sugar in the IMO2 stage. So I end up with eight cups of usable IMO number two. And then each time I go to make an IMO3 stage, I'm only using one cup. So potentially I can make eight piles of IMO from that one IMO one and two collection. So hopefully, um, you know, kind of understanding what those are and how they're, how they're going.
40:08 Um, but that's, that's basically what you, what you're, the stages are. I call IMO one and two seed IMO, and you, you could call IMO two preserve seed IMO. And then three, I, IMO three, I call propagated IMOs because you're propagating those microbes to huge numbers. And then I call IMO4 activated IMO and or tuned IMO. So what you're doing in the IMO4 stage, those microbes to know how to work with your soil and in your area. And now they're super effective when you spread them out. So hopefully that's kind of bringing some clarity into the whole IMO stages
40:52 and those things. And so the question here from JC, what's up Jonathan, is to say it's okay to use the part of the IMO to'u even though the top has mold. You should see mycelial outgrowth on your IMO2, or excuse me, excuse me, on your IMO1. Sorry, sorry. I think I misunderstood your question. On your IMO1, your IMO2, if you're getting little bits of mold growing on the top of your IMO2, you may be getting, oh man, it's looking, it's lagging out a little bit, but you may be not enough sugar or moisture is getting in there, but it's okay if little blooms grow out
41:43 once in a while, but really, um, it should be stabilized enough. Um, so, so you're saying like, you shouldn't really be getting mold on IMO two. Um, it's just a sign that it's not preserved as well as you want it to be. The whole point of adding enough sugar to your IMO one is to make your IMO two stable. And if it's continuing to grow, then that means that it's, it's not stabilized. It's, it's continuing to grow. So you read on the KNF group that the mold on the IMO2 collection compromises the collection. Yeah. So if you're seeing mold after you preserved it,
42:24 it's, it's a sign that you didn't add enough sugar. So for whatever reason, some moisture might've gotten in there. Um, it's, it's okay that it's goopy and liquidy. It's, it's about that super saturation. So on my, on my YouTube, if you're, if you're unfamiliar with, um, what super saturation is. Um, you can go to, um, let me pull it up here. Um, but on my YouTube channel, um, I have a video specifically on, um, super saturation. So let me pull this up and just show it to you here. So the whole point, like even in the, so if you don't know how to supersaturate
43:17 or you know, that's confusing, watch this video. It's basically talking, this is talking about supersaturating liquids, but the same concept applies for supersaturating these solids. so if you if you're unfamiliar with that it's one of the key components of natural farming that's not talked about very much in the literature or maybe some other videos that you've seen but this really does talk about the importance of it and why you have to super saturate things um so hopefully that's helpful and we'll answer those mold questions
43:54 so someone healing the earth remediations is saying i have the first layer of the pig pens two feet deep of logs that's great my my recommendation is to make them as long as possible if you have shorter logs the pigs will eventually dig down and pop them up to the surface so if you've already done it it's fine but if you're just starting out try to make the logs about six feet or longer. The diameter doesn't really matter, but getting those down there, they'll stay down longer, which will make your pig pen more resilient in the long run.
44:34 And then for filling it up, I've used all kinds of green matter. And I recommend wood chips, but I use some dump mulch, which is just everything ground together, kind of composted. it comes out really hot and it works fairly well. Um, but the, um, the, yeah, so wood chips, um, and just inoculated with the microbes and you should be good to go on the pigs. I'm, I'm stoked that you're making pig pen. Um, you know, that airflow is, is really important. Make sure you're not blocking the bottom two feet. So put some sort of metal or, um, you know, I was just looking at
45:13 my stuff from Korea the other day. I've been working on a few projects and, um, they just welded rebar across. So, you know, if rebar is cheap in your area, it's, it's pretty easy to do, um, to figure that out and put it across. Um, oh yeah. Manu Manu got, uh, um, thanks from Switzerland. It's pretty amazing. I, um, I'm always amazed that, um, Korean natural farming as a global community and that, you know, these recipes are applicable anywhere, you know. It's, yeah, it's, I guess that's why I do what I do, trying to help the world eat better food and
45:55 find better solutions and build richness where we're at. So hope that's all working out for you. um so a question from um domi 2001 what solutions need to be stored in the fridge ohn maybe thank you very much for sharing your knowledge well first off you're welcome um love doing this love helping out i figured i was just looking at the other day and i'm like shoot man if not me who um you know i just was just learning about um there there was a trip planned to korea but we can't even go to Korea now. You got to quarantine for 14 days and then we can't even
46:37 tour around with a group larger than 10. Um, so this access of information, you know, like I'm glad I was able to go when I did and capture what I did and to share it with you guys, because now it's, it's like even, even getting to Korea is a challenge. So you're welcome and, um, hope, hope we can help the world here. Um, but to answer you of what needs to be stored in the fridge is any solution that you're not going to super saturate. So meaning for some reason, like for instance, if I make a, um, a fermented plant juice from comfrey, which is one of my favorites to make
47:18 it from. Sometimes I'll use it for an oral swish for myself. And it really helps with oral health. I won't do the second, I'll add sugar in the first stage to get the osmotic pressure to draw out the juice, but I won't add more sugar in the second stage. And so in that case, I do store that in the refrigerator. And if I didn't, it would rot and it would turn to vinegar within a week, within a month, it would be, I would have comfrey vinegar as opposed to comfrey food or plant juice. Storing OHN in the fridge is also a good idea. If I look at the original
48:03 recipe book, it says that OHN should be stored from one to 15 degrees centigrade. So to me, that means storing in the fridge. But for me, I haven't stored it in the fridge. Oh, yeah. Whoa. Someone actually gave me money. That's amazing. But I store it just out on the, I store it in five gallon buckets up in my shed. One main thing with your Korean natural farming ingredients is you don't want to store them in some area where the temperature is going to fluctuate rapidly. The more the temperature is going up and down, it means that the sugar in
48:49 solution drops out of solution when the temperature shifts. So what you can run into is these problems where as the temperature rises, sugar drops out of solution, I believe. I think it's, or maybe it's when it's colder. I'm not sure when it drops out of solution. I should look up that chemistry. But if it's rising, then it's falling. Now more water is free. And the water is what encourages the other biology to grow, which causes your solution you're trying to keep in this pristine state to rot. So if you can't avoid the temperatures going up and down, putting them in a cooler, putting
49:29 them in some sort of insulated area, putting them in this place is what helps them to stay stable over the long run. So if you have the fridge space, store all of them in the fridge. If you don't, make sure you supersaturate them and make sure they're not going huge temperature fluctuation up and down. hope this thing's still going it looks like it is yeah okay yeah it says excellent connection i was just saying no data oh man this youtube the obs is interesting okay so getting back over here um my options from the feed stores follow dried shredded beets powdered rice bran
50:18 soft wheat bran steamed rolled oats uh and sun cured alfalfa pellets pellets um i would say go with the combination of the soft wheat bran and the powdered rice steven um that those are probably your best bets out of there um the steamed rolled oats may also be good for growing out fungus. I'm not entirely sure on those. Oh, cool. So I like it. Grow More Pagalolo is here for the esoteric and woo quantum aspects that I talk about. That's great, man. You know, I like to get
51:03 into that. I also like to stay somewhat scientific in terms of I don't want to get too pigeonholed out there, but I do love to go into the woo. Um, you'll probably love checking out the microbial secret society podcast. Hopefully this is coming through. I think it's, it's saying air. It's not receiving enough data. You guys are going to experience buffering. Oh man. YouTube and this stuff. I got to get a fiber connection one of these days. Um, so yeah, I appreciate you, uh, liking the woo, liking the good stuff that, that gets out the, um, you know, the microbial secret
51:43 society going deep into like golden ratio, the esoteric bits of this, man, that's, that's, uh, that's my jam. Uh, but, uh, you know, maybe ask some questions about that, um, of, of what you guys want to know more and I'll see, see what I have. I, I don't know. I just hopefully not making stuff up. I, you know, one, one thing, um, since, since you guys are here, wanted to learn about the woo tuned into this and I appreciate you is, um, in my hat right here under the brim. Um, oh man, look at my hair. What the hell is that? Um, I actually put in, um, IMOs right here.
52:25 So yeah, and it's kind of a little funky, but I think it's really clean because these IMOs are constantly like dripping into my forehead and, you know, starting to do just like, you know, if you do some mushrooms, you can do, they can alter your mind. Why not assume that these microbes here can also, I gotta, gotta make sure I look good. Looking good. Yeah. Um, these microbes here can also penetrate your brain and get in there and start doing the thinking for you. I mean, why not, right? Like this idea of, you know, that maybe they're much more subtle, but
53:03 these guys doing what they do. So, you know, if you got some good IMO, feel free, put it on your body, you know, constantly. Every time I sweat, I'm activating those microbes, the mycelia is plugging directly into my neurons. That's, it's always fun to think about, right? um oh someone retracted a message i didn't even know that was possible um so let's see here um some ingredients to make ohn are easy to find some are not can you recommend good sources where you can get ingredients to prepare ohn so shaman king um
53:42 i i've been using um you know when i go to korea i buy a bunch bring them back in bulk but now that I have can't go to Korea I've been using Mountain Rose Herbs out of out of Eugene, Oregon they seem to be a good company I've known some people that have worked for them they really like it I think they're high quality you know the one thing is that it's it's somewhat expensive especially Angelica just to make one batch of IMO I think or excuse me of OHN, I think it is, it's like 30 something dollars. It's, it's pretty pricey. So if you do
54:24 live in Pacific Northwest or you do have Angelica growing, you can, um, use any type of Angelica in the Philippines where they are, um, much more financially constrained, they just use garlic and ginger so having um you know getting close to your ohn getting close to what you need doing those things um that's that's the way to do it um you know if you don't have every everything out there that's that's okay um and so yeah so um so just doing you know getting getting as close as possible, using what you have. And two things to do is research your
55:14 indigenous herbs in your place that have two properties. One is good for digestion, and the second is good for reproduction. And take those herbs and follow the same process. Ferment them first, then go into a tincture. And you can do that tincture multiple pour-offs, just like the OHN. And hopefully this is still coming through. It looks kind of lagged on my side. I hope it's smooth for you guys. I'll try next week, try to figure this all out, get it even better, make sure it's good for you guys. But yeah. And then, yeah, someone also
55:50 answered that the Asian markets are good places with weird smelling things and they're not labeled or organized or misspelled. Asian markets, you know, you may be able to find this stuff. they're they're really into these great things um so oh and there's someone following francois from south africa i can't even believe it this is great it's it's so good to see it in multiple continents multiple places uh started a veggie garden this year um and my my buddy um steven was down in Gambia and he did a project with I think USAID. So there is some literature down
56:37 in Africa and Gambia. I don't know if you could figure out how to get a hold of that. Maybe contact the USAID down there, but good stuff. So thanks for this live and answering questions. How can I get a copy of the KNF recipes that you showed earlier? So I do have um, I do have my ebook available. Um, and that's what I was going over, um, last week. And let me, um, let me pull that up. It's, it's at, it's at natural farming, Hawaii.net, um, is, is one way to get it, but I also have it at KNF support. Um, but here, I'm just, I'm going to do this and get
57:15 this transition, this guy over in one sec. It's loading here. Sorry. My website's a bit slow. I realize, uh, but right here, how to get that recipe book I was talking about on, um, let's see here. So you can see, um, natural farming, Hawaii.net. And then right here is the recipe book to click this, to download it, to get this, um, PDF. Um, and when you go click on that, you do, it takes you to a page where there's two editions of this. One is, in fact, I'm no longer stocking my hard copy. It's too hard to ship to everybody. But if you do buy it, feel free to print it.
58:00 And if you're in the United States, you can join the Hawaii Farmers Union United and get 80% off at OfficeMax. And then it makes it somewhat affordable to print this book in color at OfficeMax. and I do have this edition here for 50 bucks which helps me develop the book and I do like this last edition came out 2020 October in fact there was actually a newer edition than that so if you buy this upper one you get updates and if you just want the current edition for $22 you can buy this one and it gets you the whole book in its current state so that's been out there for a while
58:40 it's been a project I'm working on continually revising these things trying to make them better that's you know it's always my goal is to continually improve and if you help me out help you out and that's good so I started this couple minutes late so I may as well go a couple minutes over someone's talking shaman king is saying I live in Arizona where the summer temperatures reach 125 degrees. KNF solutions are very temperature sensitive to temperature. What advice do you have to give to be able to implement KNF in this hot desert?
59:17 I did a really great podcast with my brethren, Sam, and let me pull that up here. It's at microbialsecret.org. And, um, let's see, it looks like all, all my websites are a bit slower, almost. Um, but on transition this over here, you guys see my leggy ass internet connection. Um, but here under at the microbial secret, uh, microbialsecret.org, it's the microbial secret Society podcast. And then under episodes here, this one here, number 24 with Sam Bevins. I talk
1:00:03 about desert KNF in Israel and farming without water. And then I believe, Sam, we did two podcasts. What was his second one here? Maybe you guys can see. Oh, actually, here, let me, you guys can't see that. So it's this one here, episode 24. And then I also had Sam back on the show on episode 32. And we're talking about irrigation without water, some polymorphism, and Antoine Bechamp, who was contemporary with Pasteur and kind of germ theory versus terrain theory. So those two episodes if you're worried wanting to learn more about the desert those are there available
1:00:49 and awesome and okay so Manu Manu saying from Africa saying I do not have access to oily sea fish then can I use freshwater fish to make FAA or is it better to only do it with oily fish and the answer is I've done it with both I've done it with tilapia which are freshwater mudfish and I also do it with ahis which are um you know a yellowfin tuna and it works out for both you can actually make amino acids from any animal product so even cows or pigs or whatever you have around you can use the same recipe you just don't get the same um fats and oils and such that come
1:01:39 through, especially, you know, if you add IMO4 to your FAA, some, some folks recommend that. I do not. Um, if you do that, it eats up your fats and oils. So, um, so you can use anything there. Um, and JC, Jonathan, sorry for another mole question. Um, should I not use the IMO2 collections with mold growth on them. Um, I, you know, if your IMO too, so your sugar and, and IMO is growing, um, mold, I would, I would be careful because, you know, smell it, make sure it still smells kind of like koji, like, um, um, and it's not smelling rotten. If it's smelling rotten,
1:02:27 I wouldn't use it, but it may be good. Cool. So, um, oh, how can I make a donation? I don't know. Super Life figured out how to make a Super Chat donation through YouTube. I think there's a way to do it directly through YouTube that I think I'll get. If not, if you do want to make a donation, um, at naturalfarminghawaii.net, there is a monetary donation, um, and it's just $1, so you can increase the quantity for however many dollars you want to give me or you know i'm happy for any of that i i you know invested in my farm in doing more knf being more available helps me
1:03:08 write the book you know um actually got some crazy financial stuff going on right now so every dollar counts i really appreciate it really you know appreciate you tuning in but to me you know I mean, another huge way you can donate is go spread KNF, go teach other people, go make a living example at your farm. That donation to me is beyond the world. I mean, having money, having those things are nice, helps me stay alive, do those things. You know, I mean, my farm, my farm keeps me alive though, you know, but it helps keep the government from coming and
1:03:46 repossessing my farm, which is always good. I do have a few firearms, but I'd rather have enough money to just keep them happy. It's sort of like paying the mob off instead of fighting the mob. So with all that said, you can make monetary donation, but what's more important is doing natural farming where you're at, spreading it, doing it, loving the people around you, setting a good example being that person. But, you know, if you want to do want to send money, naturalfarminghawaii.net or someone figured out how to make money or send money through this
1:04:23 super chat. So yeah, Super Life is saying it's the lower keyboard on mobile devices. You see the money box to the right of those. You just type it in and click on it. And hey, thank you so much, Super Life. You know, I think this is the first time I've ever made a gotten a live donation and And it helps me do this and keep things alive. I really appreciate it. So I'm going to take this last question here and then sign off because I do got things to do today. It is raining like crazy, but I'm working on some food tacos, which I'll share with you guys maybe next week coming up of what those are.
1:05:06 So last question here, is it detrimental to make a fermented plant juice of multiple parts of a cantaloupe vine, meaning the growing tips, the flowers, unripe fruits, fruits, seeds, and peels? So if you're talking about taking the whole plant and making a fermented plant juice, it's not, it's okay. It's not optimal. the whole point of fermented plant juice is you are trying to get certain like for using the growth tips why why you know like the very little tip of your cantaloupe vine growing why just clip
1:05:45 just the tip because this part is full of growth hormones and enzymes that it's growing that that's what's in there now if i take the more mature part of the plant and make a plant plant juice out of that, I'm not getting those enzymes. Maybe I'm getting out an extraction of parts of the constituent that makes that plant grow, but I'm not getting the goods that I get from the growth tip. Now, if I do it from the fruits, I'm going to get a whole different set of enzymes that have different chemical composition. Like for instance, much more potassium, much more phosphorus are
1:06:24 going to be present in the fruits of this plant. And so if I'm going for the growth tips and then the fruits and all these things, you're end up getting everything. And that's not what you necessarily want to do. What's a better strategy is to take, for instance, growth tips and make that into one fermented plant juice and have that here, you know, like say it's in this jar here, then go make one from the fruits and have that in this cup which is my coffee cup and then when i go to make my ultimate solution say i'm diluting that stuff one to 500 to go make
1:07:06 now a maintenance solution to go use on my land or my plants take both of these and add those in and you can add up to three of these things at one to 500 without changing your ratio. You don't have to put in less or less. You just add in both those. So now I'm getting the growth tips plus I'm getting the fruit enzymes. And now I can add that and you're going to get better results. What happens if you combine all those in your fermentation is it gets kind of confused and it's not an extraction of one or the other. It's kind of more of like, I don't know. I mean,
1:07:44 That's where it gets kind of like dogmatic. And I'm not, I mean, if you do what you got to do to make something, if something's better than nothing. But if you understand what I'm saying, I'm talking about more of an optimal type of what's going on. So the more you can achieve optimum, the better you can get there. So, um, so we got, uh, uh, uh, hands up for Bachamp. He's a great guy researching those guys, figuring that out. And there's a couple more questions here. So I am going to take these questions that are here, take a little screenshot of these.
1:08:26 And I will start next week office hours with these questions here. so um so i just i want to thank you for tuning in i want to encourage you to again go out and make natural farming thrive for you so that it becomes so attractive that your neighbors come over and they're like what are you doing and you can be like i don't know and then eventually they'll be hiding in the bushes to be like what is what are you doing how are you growing such amazing produce and through this way not to say to deny knowledge to people but it will grow natural
1:09:06 farming to such immense proportions that this truly will be a worldwide movement not that it's already but i just want to thank you guys for tuning in do your best and as always long live the natural farmer aloha