Water-Soluble Calcium, IMO Fermentation Temps, No-Smell Pig Waste

0:00 today um i wanted to start off with a one one question that i had from um cesari um and he commented on my youtube and he was asking um what nutrients i have to provide to my pregnant pig because now she is 42 days pregnant. So I was just looking up my notes from the advanced swine seminar that I went to in 2017.

0:45 And basically what it was talking about is one of the most important things to give during pregnancy is water-soluble calcium. um and so similar to anytime you're growing um plants when they're when they're in their pregnant phase like when things are fruiting and they're they're getting more mature like they're pregnant towards the the end of the pregnancy calcium is the most important thing and um if you know like in when it's that's actually one of the hardest elements to get into plants and our food is actually calcium, um, like lacking in calcium and what water

1:31 soluble calcium, if you spray it on your plants, it goes directly in. So you can kind of bypass it going up through the root system. So, so that's good. And, um, in, in the animals, you can either put it in their feed or into their water. And for plants, the dilutions typically one to 1000. um but for animals you can go between one to a thousand and one to 700 so one one part in seven you know 700 diluted which um if you're going per gallon that's about four milliliters per gallon is one to 1000 i think one to 700 is like um it's five between five and six

2:15 so anyway i wanted want to start off answering that and um get that out there but um hey yeah so um so if you guys if you guys have any questions or you um you need some answers uh fire fire away when so one thing um i i wanted to kind of share with you guys here is, let's see here, share my screen here. I wanted to share this graph here with you. Yeah. So just in terms of IMO and fermentation, this graph here is going from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m.

3:08 over 24 hours. So it's actually 25 hours in this graph. And I've been kind of messing around with with fermentation and temperature probes. I actually built a small temperature probe from a raspberry pie. And so what this chart is representing is this upper line, the skinny line is the temperature probe that was put into some animal feed. and this lower skinny line is the temperature probe that was left out in the air.

3:57 And so what I was trying to do is with fermentation, you always get this heat up and this heating effect because as the microbes start to metabolize and reproduce, that reproduction actually creates heat. And then, but I wanted to measure the difference of, like, if you look at the fermentation line, the probe that was in the bucket itself, it kind of starts off, it declines in temperature a little bit, and then it starts to kind of rise exponentially up until about 6 a.m. And then it kind of stays steady here, like it rises more shallow.

4:42 And so if you look at the air temperature down below, you'll see that it's starting at 4 p.m. It's about 80 degrees or so. It's nice to be in Hawaii to do these things. And you can see our temperature only went between 80 and 65 degrees. So it's real nice to be in the tropics. Somewhere else you might have much more of a difference. but when the temperature of the fermentation is dropping so is the air temperature and it drops you know until about 10 30 at night when it's when it's about 70 degrees or so and then the

5:25 fermentation starts to take off so in the first um what is that five hours or so there's not too much heat happening from the fermentation and actually the air temperature is lowering the temperature of the probe inside of the bucket. But then once the fermentation takes off, the air temperature is still sinking, but it starts to heat up. And then about 6.45 in the morning, the sun rises and it begins to heat up as the day starts. And that's when you also see this secondary heating in the IMO. But what I wanted to show is this gray mass behind that you

6:15 see here. And the gray mass is not based on these numbers. It's based on these numbers over here on the right side. And it's also in degrees Fahrenheit. And what I did was I subtracted this upper graph from this lower graph. And that difference between those two numbers is what this other one is. So in the very beginning, it started off with almost zero degrees difference. And then here it's about rising up to about eight to nine degrees different. Then here it's you know, 20 degrees different than at its very peak, it ended up being about 48 degrees

7:04 different between the air temperature, which significantly sunk at this point at about five in the morning. And this point here where the temperature was up, there was about a 48 degree difference between the air temperature and the fermentation temperature. So that would, And this is when in this amount of time, my animal feed completely heats up and feels warm the next day. Like it's at almost 120 degrees when I go to feed this to the animals. But what I thought was interesting is this point here at about nine in the morning when

7:50 the fermentation temperature is still rising, but so is the air temperature. And if you look at this difference graph, it kind of peaks out and then it starts to almost stabilize that the temperature of fermentation is about 40 degrees different here. And so even though it's max temperature difference between here was about 48 degrees. It's real true difference is about 40 degrees. So when you feel the microbes and all that, even though they're still somewhat rising, it's pretty constant. And the jitters on this are because the clouds and whatever coming through,

8:36 the air temperature is not that constant. But I thought this was an interesting graph how these relate to each other. And recently, I've built a temperature probe to try to investigate turning an IMO three or four pile. So when I go to activate the indigenous microorganisms, I built another probe that has four temperature probes. So I'm going to put one out in the air. I'm going to put one in the core of the pile. I'm going to put one on the edge. And I think one on the surface or some other place where, because I want to measure the

9:28 difference in all these different temperatures. And I think this fermentation graph and seeing how the microbes relate to each other and what is optimal fermentation temperatures, especially for these indigenous microorganisms, where we're not trying to have them reach a super high temperature. We're actually trying to have it at about 120 degrees, which is ideal. but there's a difference between the core of the pile to the outside to the different stratas and layers in there and the different microbes that start to grow and i know you could

10:10 take this graph here that i have on the screen and compare that to the different sets of microbes that they know grow at different temperatures like for instance um like there's lactobacillus is probably taking off the fastest here and starting to grow as it's kind of an opportunistic microorganism that's very powerful. And then, you know, another set of microbes is starting to grow. So taking this information and then bringing that to, I don't know, I mean, it just, it's a new, it's a new lens to kind of look at these microbes because you can't necessarily see them with your

10:52 eyes. Although at this point here, when I go to feed my pig feed about 24 hours later, I do see microbial blooms on the surface. And the pig feed starts smelling, it's just commercial feed. So it smells kind of like dry cereal. And then when I go to feed it to the pigs 24 hours later, it smells like a, like baking bread. It actually smells really good when I, when I go to feed it to them. So I've completely transformed this. And then all those microbes that have reproduced to make this heat have also started to colonize the food. So not only am I feeding them the pig feed and

11:39 all those nutrients, what I'm, what I'm also feeding them is those enzymes and aminos and different compounds that these microbes have transmuted into making available for the animals. And so what that translates into is a higher digestibility index, meaning that if the same unit of food moves through the digestive tract, the animal is going to gain much more nutrition from the same unit of food. Because oftentimes you'll see feed where it'll say it's X amount of protein, it's X amount of fats, it's this many carbohydrates. But just because it's in the food,

12:27 does it mean that it can be absorbed by the animal? And so that's what fermentation helps to do is unlock that digestibility index. And so similar to using this on plants, that's also, again, what's happening is that these microbes, as they go into your soil, it's not just the microbial life is unlocking all of these nutrients from your soil and all of these different all of you know and so so i think it's real it's an interesting thing to study is this heat of microorganisms and how how all this relates so i've been kind of messing around with those

13:17 those things and um playing playing around and that's kind of what uh what what excites me on the farm to do this research um this this last year i've been i've been teaching some classes here, but it's, but it's mostly been just staying, staying at the farm much more than normal. And, um, so this, this kind of science I think is, um, is good to bring forward. And, um, and this, this graph here, I may do an animal feed where instead of feeding it to the animals, I just let it go like three or four or five days to see how this, um, how this temperature profile

13:59 changes. But a lot of the moisture, the reason the temperature starts to kind of decline here, I believe it is that the microbes start to use up all of the water. So when I mix my animal feed, I add in probably about 80% moisture content. And by the time I go to feed, it's not, it's not liquidy anymore. It's, it's more of like a moist mash. Um, so, and the, and the same thing here applies for this, this happens to be pig feed, but, um, but it's also true. I, I ferment my chickens feed. Um, and I don't, I, I, I don't notice the temperature get

14:46 as warm as just the pig feed because the pig feed is, um, is similar to the mill run. It's, it's like these, these pellets that are, um, there. And then in the chicken feed, I'm also adding in, um, some scratch grains and some fruits. And so it's, it's a more complex, um, feed that, that is going, but the same, same, I recommend, um, you know, a 24 hour ferment for, for any animal feeds i'm not i'm not sure if you guys have any have any animals or um so someone the other day was mentioning to me that they had ducks but um but yeah so so any fermentation like

15:27 that is is good so um yeah so anyway that's that's kind of what i wanted to share here with you guys was this in the temperature of what I'm getting into. So we got a question here in the chat and it says, my friend and I collected an IMO collection this week and we think we saw growth protruding from the sides of the box. We think it's the growth of a mushroom. Have you ever encountered this. Here's the link to the post I made on the KNF Facebook with the pictures. Okay. So let me pull that up here and, oh, whoa. Okay. Let me see if I can share this into there.

16:21 Okay. This one. okay so here looking at your um wow this this is a this to me looks like a really good um collection jonathan it um this this white um type of um my ciliation that's coming out so sometimes you'll see the picture like if you read my my book um you'll see this type of this more wispy spider webby type of stuff. But in my best collections, it actually looks like the center of your collection here, where I often get this kind of thing under bamboo. And then if you see this kind of grayish stuff on the edge, it's probably because

17:09 you've just opened the box and it's starting to gray out. But this looks like a most excellent collection. I just got a question from my friend Dash who sent me this really good mycelia that he grew on some taro in a bucket, but it all depends if this is exposed to the soil or not because all these microbes, you see these white mycelias are friends of your subtle indigenous, very diverse set of microbes that we're trying to get into IMO. So just because you have this growing, it also depends on the conditions in the soil, but let's, let's look further. You got a couple

17:50 pictures here. Um, and this, this is this mushroom you have coming out of here. That's wild. And, and, um, how, how long was this collection? It looks, looks to me like it was at least about five days for this much mycelia to grow, um, and depending on your temperature, but, uh, looking here and seeing, wow. Yeah, no, um, it, it, it's just a healthy collection. Um, I, I think this, yeah, this mycelia growing, yeah, these, these nice mushrooms coming out as they get into the air. It just, that to me, it just looks like an excellent collection here that you got going.

18:34 And, oh, here's the bottom and I can see the leaf litter. So you had excellent connection directly to the soil, to your environment. That is so crucial. I would say this is like an A, A plus collection. And there's the mushroom there. Yeah, totally. So I would just say that's a most excellent collection. You know, I've had the IMOs, like after I've collected, after making an IMO three pile, I've taken it and put it into a box and put it into storage.

19:19 And then I've had a bunch of mushrooms pop out of it. And so anytime you're seeing those mushrooms, you know that you got a highly fungal collection, which is probably the more important microbes to collect in Korean natural farming. because you really have this thing between bacteria and fungus. And bacteria is kind of like dime a dozen. If you put any nutrient source out there, you're going to get bacteria. But you're really after getting the fungus because you want to raise that fungal ratio. If you go and study Elaine Ingham and the soil food web, you'll notice she always talks

20:01 about getting enough fungus in there and making good compost, which contains not only the nutrients, but also those microorganisms. And so in Korean natural farming, we're kind of shortcutting that in terms of getting the good fungus, getting the good biology and letting and then applying the nutrients in a sort of different way so that a lot of the nutrients in Korean natural farming come from like a maintenance solution where you're simulating plant exudates and you're getting those, um, like, like the fermented plant juice, the vinegar,

20:40 um, the calcium phosphates, um, like the, the fermented plant juice. Like if you think of this, it's, it's, it's like typically an ecosystem works by a plant receiving sunlight and then converting that into certain sugars and exuding those into the soil. And that's what stimulates the microorganisms to grow. And by putting out different exudates, they can kind of change the biology. And so in Korean natural farming, you take good biology, like you've collected here, and then you build it up through a few stages to culture that so that

21:19 you strengthen it, and then you're putting these exudates directly on as liquid feeds. And in my case, where I'm growing, I'm growing a lot of bananas, sugarcane, cassava, vegetables, those things, they require more feeding than a fruit tree would or a tree would. And so by applying these nutrients regularly, the plant's absorbing them, but they're also going into the root system to activate that mycelium and these microorganisms to go to work. So I would just say this is an excellent collection. For sure, go to IMO2, grow this

22:01 up through the IMO3 process, which is similar to activating those, or excuse me, it's propagating those IMOs. So through that process of mixing it with the millrun, similar to what I was doing with that animal feed is keeping those microbes at the right temperature. So you're growing the, these guys that you've just collected into trillions. And then the, and then that's about a week long to 10 day process. And then the final stage is to do that same thing again with your soil and bring, and now you're, you're teaching all of these microbes that you just collected,

22:38 these, these amazing guys, and you're teaching them directly how to work with your soil. So as a resource of what they're understanding of how to use, they're learning how to use your soil. Okay, so you're saying here there were some orange spores, not too sure, on the top of the bloom. And when I removed the box, there were long, dense strands of mycelium. That sounds excellent. And another way to grade your IMO1 is that when you're done with it, if you pick it up, it should not be mushy at all. And my bet to you is that when you pick this up, it was like a solid brick.

23:22 And then as you started to break it apart, it started to cling to itself. And it was like, as if, um, there's a Japanese thing, um, like, um, miso, I want to say it's, it's, um, it's actually, um, uh, I can't, I can't think of it at the, at the current time. Cause it's a different language, but, but there's these, um, these fermented bean, uh, cakes that they make and, and they're, they're tied together like spider webs, like linked. And I bet you, when you pick this out of your box, it was just like super nice. And you could hold it up like a

23:57 brick and hold it in front of you and bounce it. And it didn't even break apart. That's my bet on this just by looking at these pictures. So it'll be interesting to see if there is a difference in animals waste too. So I'm currently working with a guy here locally in Hawaii, but he runs a pig farm in the Philippines kind of remotely. He's a Filipino guy. He's a papaya farmer. Shout out to John, and he started to learn about this IMO because I've been going over to his place and

24:43 I pick up his papaya waste to feed my pigs. In exchange, I wanted to teach him about these IMOs because he's raising pigs. And so when I first went over to his place, he was raising two baby pigs at his house. And he had them in kind of more conventional way. He basically built a small, probably five by six little raised pallet house out of pallets for these pigs. And it smelled terrible. And these baby pigs were pooping out stuff that looked just like green, like liquid,

25:29 almost not, not diarrhea. Cause it wasn't like, but it like almost diarrhea ish type of thing. And I was like, Hey, John, take this IMO four. And I took it and I just dusted this, the finest layer. Just imagine like you just got covered in fine dust onto the pig pen floor. And then I told him, Hey, just take a handful, mix it into their feed and, and add water. and those pigs poop. By the time I visited them next week to pick up the papayas, A, there was no smell in the pig pen. There were no flies. And I told him each time he washes it

26:10 down. So continue his wash down system. I didn't want to try and change too much on him. Just every time you finish washing down, just scatter a handful of this dust out. Actually, I found a Starbucks cup at his place and we put a Starbucks cup worth of, I don't know if it was a venti or grande or whatever, but a Starbucks cup of it, enough dust to cover the thing. And there was no smell and the flies were gone. And I saw the pigs poop and it turned into these solid nuggets that were now a dark brown color instead of this kind of sickly green color. So yes, it changes the pig's

26:49 waste and it makes it less of a biohazard because anytime you're smelling that gross smell, that's nitrogen and it's being off-gassed by anaerobic bacteria in there. And so when you're smelling a nasty smell, you know the microbes you're culturing are actually pathogenic. And so by putting these IMOs, it becomes an aerobic fermentation. They're able to break it down. And so as the waste is broken down, now what's released instead of these nitrogen compounds is actually CO2 and we can't smell CO2. So it's just, it's decomposing. The

27:29 carbons are breaking down and that's, you know, so yeah, totally. It changes the waste of the animal. So another, another question here is what is the name of my book? And since it's, you know, since this is one of the primary resources that I put out, I'll show it to you here. I got my book and it's this peer KNF recipe book, the core solutions with formulas and applications. It's available in a couple spots. One of those is knfsupport.com and it's there under the resources. And that's also where I've been posting these office hours. It's KNF support is a project

28:18 put on by our foundation to help support the KNF community. And I do need to tune in there a little bit more and put some good answers to questions. But it's a great resource that enables answers to float to the top. And now these office hours will be posted there. But this book, the pure KNF recipe book is available there. And the way I, this book started for me was actually, this was a set of handouts that I give when I do classes. So this book here is not the most comprehensive, like you just pick up this book and think, oh, I'm going to learn everything about

29:00 KNF from this book. What this is, is it's designed to go with some teachings or with some of my videos that are out on my channel, my YouTube channel, and it's designed to be a helping book. And I also update it quite frequently. This last one was made June 4th of this year. And so it kind of, just to scroll through it a little bit so you can see, it starts off with kind of our natural farming chant. And I have been slowly converting this into more of its own specific book, but really my, you know, the reason I write this, the reason I do everything I do is

29:41 because this is, you know, it's about the ocean. If our ocean is sick, our planet is sick. Um, you know, I was reading something like, you know, so many people rely on fish from the ocean and all of that. Um, and so the health of our ocean is the health of our land is the health of our planet. So a little bit about me, you know, and all these recipes, I don't claim to be an inventor of any of it or, you know, any of it. It all comes from Master Cho and, you know, my mentors that I learned from and, you know, these folks that have had a huge impact.

30:20 And really what this book does is it covers these nine vital solutions of Master Cho. And one thing my book does is it converts this Eastern mindset of thinking about these weird terms that got translated weird, like FPJ and BRV and all these weird acronyms that we use. And what I've done is I've translated these because I used to teach elementary school. I've translated these into things that elementary school kids can understand. Like all kids understand cleanser. You got to clean things or you're going to get a cleanser. You're sick. You need a medicine. You're feeling weak.

31:04 You need structure. You're feeling not enough energy. You need fuel. You're about to have fruits come out or pigs reproduce. you need calcium, um, or, you know, you need minerals to build, um, build these crystalline structures and all these things, you know, your plants are lacking minerals. Well, then here you go with the minerals or the seawater. And so I've taken these terms that were these weird acronyms or these kind of mistranslations, not, not, I don't want to say mistranslations, but I want to say like, um, it wasn't when, when the Korean natural farming initially came to America,

31:42 it was translated just like fermented plant juice, which is the process of how you make it. You ferment plants to get juice. But what I've noticed is people then get these recipes and they go home to their farm and they're like, well, how do I use it? They know like fermented plant juice. So I'll go to their farm and they'll show me like, oh, here's my fermented plant juice. And they made it and it's still sitting on the shelf. And I'm like, have you used it? They're like, no, I didn't don't know how to use it. So a lot of the use or a lot of the terms I chose here were specifically

32:16 of how to use these things. So if you look at this list and you read down these bold headers here, it's really based, the terminology I've chosen to name these things is really based on how they're used. And so, you know, if you got a disease, you need some protectors, You probably need to reduce a bit of the food, up a bit of your cleanser, add in some medicine. If it's a plant, something eating your plant leaves, add some structure, reduce a bit of the fuel. And as the plant starts to recover, then increase the fuel. And it really gives you an idea of how to use these.

32:59 So that's how my recipe book is featured. featured. And I've also taken Master Cho's recipes where he has like SES, which is like seed soak solution and all these different weird names, like type two, type three solution. And I've given them names like maintenance formula, soil formula, seed formula, leaf, bloom, fruit, and harvest. And all of those things, I think make it easier for us to put in our heads instead of having to learn this esoteric vocabulary, we can learn a lot about what's there. And then this chart

33:38 here shows how to take those nine solutions that were on the previous page and then combine these into these formulas. And so once you've made these formulas, like you've made the maintenance formula, which is good all the time, make a soil formula, which you put out after you put those IMOs out. Then you soak your seeds. Then you start to apply this as your plants start to go into a chubby phase and want to grow leaves. Then if your plant's going through puberty, you'd use a bloom solution. And then in your skinny phase or this other growth phase, you'd use your,

34:15 towards the end of the life, you'd use this fruit formula. And then the very end, you'd use a harvest. And so I'm hoping that those things become more intuitive and translating Korean natural farming, not only like from East to West, but also into more of how we start to understand these things. Um, and then, you know, boy, building soil foundation a little on that, how to make the maintenance. And then this chart here, uh, sideways here, but, um, it's how to, how to use these things. And basically when you're using them, you're kind of pulsing between soil

34:49 to seed, then leaf, fruit, leaf, fruit, and puberty, fruit, leaf, fruit, leaf, and you come back to harvest. And so that's the part where my translation of the names makes it a little less intuitive because you're going from leaf to fruit, leaf to fruit. But in the class and in the things I explain nutrient cycle, I really talk a lot more about how to do this. And this is one of the hardest parts of Korean natural farming is to understand this, but it is pretty simple. And once you do understand it, you should be able to do this. But it is kind of, basically your

35:29 plant's always going from chubby to skinny and then through puberty. And this just models off natural, like even humans go through these same growth phases. So then the book goes through these recipes. I go through all nine recipes. I'm just going to kind of scroll over this a little fast here. Um, and then I go into some microbial theory of micro, you know, the neutral microbes versus the good or bad. And if you haven't checked out my, um, my microbial theory video on YouTube, it's super good. I went, I talked about this for like three hours with, um, the farm apprentice

36:05 mentors mentorship program for the hawaii farmers union um and then going through the microbes a little bit here's you know your your jonathan your microbes looked even better than ours here even though this one's like a correct and how to do it um how to preserve them and then how to propagate them um and then also i go through um young song chose recipes a little bit um these are known as Jadam microbe solutions, the Jadam solutions, but they're open source, ancient knowledge, and just give you a quick way to get those. And then this soap recipe that's in

36:48 here, I make soap all the time. It's the only soap I use. Talk a little bit about my calculator app, which if you don't have it, saves you time, energy, money, everything. I use it all the time. And then this last little colorful chart here. So that's kind of what's in the book, give you a little preview. You might even get some screenshots out of there and see that and take away what you want. But buying the book, there's a $50 version, which enables you to get updates each time I update it. And then there's a $20 version, which is just the current one.

37:27 And I thought it might be useful to show you my app if it'll show here. And this thing enables me to take any volume, say I wanted to calculate 85 gallons for some reason, I hit calculate and immediately spits out all the numbers that I need to make all these dilutions. So I know my virtual background is kind of messing with that a little bit, but it's a great app, something I've made. So yeah. Yeah. So anyway, long, long little tangent there on the, on the book, but it's one of the, you know, it's a great resource for, for folks. Um, and, um, so thanks. Uh, so Jonathan saying he collected

38:11 this IMO in a bamboo patch, which it looks exactly like you got it from a bamboo patch in dry weather. It didn't rain for a week before, nor did it rain while the microbes were culturing. And that's actually ideal collection because if it's not raining outside, the only moisture is in your box. So the microbes are going to go quicker up into your box. And you said it only took three days, man. Where are you at? That's incredible for that much growth to happen in three days. We just did it here in Hawaii and it took about five days to do it.

38:50 And let me show you, I was just out teaching a course here for the Farmers Union, and here's the collection we got. So this was also a bamboo patch, and I've been switching to these round boxes. But you can see very similar, that white, nice, good stuff happening there. um so yeah so you're saying you learned a lot from the group in your videos thanks um i always i i hate saying uh subscribe to the youtube people because it seems just obvious to me but if you like it subscribe i put up things all the time try to keep it focused and on point

39:33 and i think the group you're referring to the the korean natural farming group on facebook which this, I, I, um, I don't really want to apologize for it, but I've been much more less on Facebook. I just feel that that platform is make us makes us so polarized. And so I've just, I've, I've basically deleted my account this beginning of this year. And I only have one account back into the Korean natural farming group. And I just, I just don't want to walk away from, you know, helping 28,000 people on Facebook and helping people all over the world. One time I went to Korea and I was at a symposium

40:15 and this African guy was like, hey, Drake. And I was like, who are you? And he's like, I watch all your videos. And so I know that the group can help people all around the world in people that need it the most, like changing up Gambia, for instance. Like now they're doing natural farming there, changing up the Philippines, bringing this technology. There's a bunch of folks down in South America that follow and have learned this and bring it all together. And so it's a resource that I don't want to get permanently banned from, but I really, man, I think that what they're doing

40:58 to us, divide and conquer and this wickedness on the social media and all these things and the censorship and all that is just, it's wild, man. I wish we'd just be treated like adults that we are. And maybe it's something we need to pay for, even though I hear we're worth $17 per user on Facebook, which is $17 billion a year. If they have a billion users, it's just wild. So anyway, thanks for being a member of both those. But I urge you, the best thing that I've been urging people to now is get these resources, learn these things and teach and build a group in your local

41:38 area and get off the social media and bring it into your local area and try to do this. So I know Donna and Donna Ray and Don are coming out to learn this February because they want to bring this back to Homer, Alaska. And again, that's just magnificent. I think that's the way to do it. you know, start a local community, get people fermenting and, and live, live your truth. Because as you start to put this stuff into practice, people can't deny it. They're just like, Whoa, it it's working and you're happier and you smell better and all these things.

42:16 So, um, so Jonathan saying, yes, it was like a brick. It was actually quite hard to mix it with the sugar and apply, had to apply a bit of pressure to mix. And, and that's totally fine. If you're adding, after you've collected those good microbes, you're adding equal parts, brown sugar, ideally. And, um, you know, I just, I just kind of slowly mix it. And as I start to mix it, typically it'll get a little bit goopy because those microbes are, are, um, you draw the moisture out of them with the osmotic dry sugar.

42:49 and um you know if it goes in and it's solid it'll it'll kind of goop up and and be like a like a syrupy you don't want it to be too liquidy but but it's just the just don't add water to it and and that sugar will have work um so you're saying the IMO is wonderful for animals um and you just started listening to the pure KNF getting started with IMO and natural farming I believe that lecture series was given at the plant Aloha class. So shout out to Steve Lund. And if you're going to visit Hawaii, check out Hawaiian Sanctuary.

43:30 They got great accommodations down there and it's part of the farmer's union. And he puts on these classes every Thursday. And so I did that series there. And that was a really good one. That was a real small audience. I think I had about less than 20 folks there, but great information. I feel like when I start talking about natural farming, just this ancient wisdom just starts to flow through me and actually have microbes up in my hat. So they leak down into my forehead like Jimi Hendrix. And so great things happened there. And then I did that same series again.

44:11 It was, again, a six-day, over six-week series, which is the Pure KNF Certification Series. And that one was incredibly popular. There was standing room only, something like 100 people attended that one. But going through and teaching people, that was a really high point for Korean natural farming to happen out in Pune, which is where I'm born and come from. um and so it's nice to bring that back to like my like about a two miles from where i grew up and where i was a little kid um but unfortunately right after that we had the um the lava eruption

44:55 happen and it ravaged puna and lava opened up in the middle of this um neighborhood and claimed like 800 homes and and so we really got a lot of setback because a lot of these people that we're practicing. Just how can you focus on farming when your house gets buried under 50 feet of rock coming multantly out of the earth? It's its own challenge. So we've had a fair amount of setbacks here and keeping the natural farming group going, but it's always great to share. And so that's a little history backstory on where those courses come from. And I love doing those

45:36 And hopefully I'll be out there maybe next summer to do that. And so, okay. So you're saying, Jonathan's saying, I listened to your video about soil building with IMO. And my friend and I have a few questions about soil building in general. We're new to farming and have just begun trying to build soil. Good. That's a good way to do it. Instead of thinking of it as a medium to hold your plant up and just throw chemicals, thinking of actually a living soil that's completely alive is a good place to start.

46:09 And you start thinking that way and you're going to get more and more fertile year after year. So I found it very interesting that the microbes can store the morning dew in biochar. Is this sufficient water for crops like lettuce? So that's an interesting question. It's going to depend on a few factors. One is how moist is the air and all that. If you're in the desert, it's probably not enough moisture to get production on the level that you want commercially. However, if you're getting rains and you're in an area where it rains, here it rains.

46:58 like pretty much every day kind of thing. Um, but it's, there is, um, so let me go to a story from master Cho that they were reforesting the Gobi desert. This was one of the projects that master Cho got into that, um, uh, to help out Mongolia and they were planting trees in this desert. And what they would do is they would put the tree, dig the hole the way Master Cho recommends, which is instead of digging a pit, you dig like a pyramid and you plant the tree on top and make the roots go out. And then on top of that, they would scatter IMO in a donut shape around,

47:41 and then put three chunks of biochar on the surface. And what that did is it enabled the microbes to take the dew and to store it in the char and then bring it into the plant when it needed it. So in the case of like reforesting trees in the desert, they were able to do this. And even with negligible rainfall, I think if you look it up, like the Gobi desert doesn't even rain ever. I don't know. But they were able to get like 95% survival rate of these trees without further irrigation and without other nutrients. So in that case where it's trees, they're a little

48:25 bit more hardy and they're not trying to get the same level of production as you would from a lettuce, which is a much higher turnover and much more moisture content in itself. So I would recommend, you know, some sort of irrigation if you can oxygenate that water even better. but it depends on what you're trying to do. My thought is if you didn't really care about the lettuce and you just wanted it to grow with like a hands-off kind of like set it and forget it type of situation, it would grow, but it wouldn't grow as fast as you're probably going to want it to

49:00 for economic reasons. You're better off to spend a little bit extra to get it to some irrigation that then it will pay off and that cost benefit will balance out. So, so kind of a long answer to that, but, but to understand this moisture. And then the other thing is that there's a lot of moisture in the air. So the deeper you get these microbes it's the, the, the microbes, as they go into a depth, they start to cool the soil. So as the air penetrates in that, they can actually pull water out of the air through condensation.

49:38 So the deeper your soil becomes, the less you have to irrigate because more of this air penetration and then natural condensation. And that's why, you know, the forest is fine growing without irrigation, you know, in an established forest with leaf litter and all this, it starts to pull moisture out of the air. So there's also that component. So the richer your soil, the more you got that microbial depth, the more they can naturally pull water out.

50:08 So it's saying here, I also understand the purpose of cover crops such as corn is used to protect the microbes in IMO4 from the UV rays and to provide food. Can I then use residual pepper plants? It has a woody stem and it's not much cover. So I'm thinking, I think that I'll use an additional protection such as wood chips. um okay so let me go to that and say that in a garden bed you want to watch out using wood chips like if i say for instance i'm growing lettuce i don't necessarily want to put wood chips right

50:52 against them because it it goes too fungal so what you're better off doing in that case is to use grass clippings. So just yard clippings from if you're mowing and you're bagging it. Or if you get straw, like straw mulch, straw bales, and you're able to spread that, that's even better. So recycling your peppers, I would say, yeah, because if you can get those woody parts to touch with the soil, the soil fungus will actually grow up into your woody parts. And if it's not a problem for your maintenance of how you're doing things,

51:31 it'll help to build that fungal layer. And the carbon aspect of this is actually another component that through fermentation, the microbes are constantly releasing CO2. And so that's carbon and oxygen. As the oxygen gets into the soil, they're then creating CO2 and the gas is leaving. So if you're able to add carbon back to your soil, the plants will then make the nitrogen. And so classic fertility and everything is getting your carbon nitrogen ratio together.

52:09 So adding that extra layer of carbon on the surface enables the microbes to go in there better and to interact with your soil and to actually build better texture. So mulching, not only in creating a layer to hold moisture in, to protect the microbes from the UV on the very surface, but also to add that carbon layer. And one thing about the microbes with the UV is you don't necessarily have to worry about it too much because if you just put down IMOs and you put them down in the afternoon, by the morning, they will actually be into the soil. They will go down just enough.

52:47 And the UV is actually blocked by the soil media and all that. So it's a good idea to mulch for various reasons. But the UV, maybe I talked about this more prior, but it's not your biggest concern in terms of once your system gets going, it shouldn't be a concern. But if I was to apply IMO and put down mulch right away, it would add that moisture. It'd add that carbon. It'd add that light protection. It adds so much to the soil. It's classic way to do it. So here, and then you're talking about, so here you're saying, Jonathan's saying we're also trying to build raised beds

53:30 and have been looking to make our own soil mixes. So topsoil, manure, organic matter, and then inoculating with IMO4. When we do it, yeah, great, great. All those things are great. The better, you know, if you're doing a raised bed and especially a high intensive crop, getting good things in there to start, especially organic matter, like good finished compost is always going to be beneficial. However, one thing is you don't want to necessarily over amend baby plants. Oftentimes the classic thing is just like, oh, just put so much food for the baby plants. But think of it.

54:09 It's like, it's like a baby that you serve this huge five course meal to like baby. want to start out simple. And if actually you kind of start out with a poor soil to start, and then as the plant starts to grow in its first week, two weeks, then you come back and you amend with a richer compost, like an IMO five or something on the surface. Now those nutrients are going to permeate down. And it's like, it's like you're feeding a teenager, these foods now, which is much more palatable to them. So I just want to be careful of one, one myth is that we

54:44 we over amend too much in the beginning and it's best to get the plants growing in a poorer soil, encourage them to reach for nutrients and then start to amend as those, um, on the surface with, with these different composts and those things, as your plant starts to build a more robust root system. And it's already built that. So, um, that's just, that's just classic natural farming, uh, methodology and thought process. Um, so from your video, I don't think this practice aligns with KNF, but I would like to start planting soon. What are your thoughts on that

55:18 method? So kind of just answered that. I think that is just with that caveat of don't try to give a baby a five-course meal, wait till it grows a bit, give it a little bit of hard knock so it's not spoiled, and then start to amend it and then give it all the goods. And as your soil gets richer, it becomes less and less important. So yeah, the terminology and the names, thanks for the comment on that, that you like those. I think it makes it much more easy to understand. And that's 90% of the problem with KNF is understanding, like getting the translation.

55:59 And then the next part is just having enough experience. Because when I teach experienced farmers and I teach them these things, they're like, oh, they get it. These tools fit in. Oh, so Jonathan's down in the Caribbean. Cool. The tropics are where it's at, smart choice and spreading IMOs and KNF down there. That's huge. I just think that this is technology to save the world. Thanks for sharing this wisdom. No problem, man. So that's what I like to do. Um, and started to think about the microbes first.

56:41 That's, that is where it's at. Um, so I just, I just wanted to finish out today with, you know, a small bit, uh, got, got all, got through all the questions here. And I really wanted to just talk about, um, kind of it's, it's been, it's been on my mind a little bit lately. Um, but it's this idea of grid down farming. So right now, I don't know if you guys follow Ice Age Farmer, but he's a great guy on the internet. And he's talking about just this food supplies and energy supply issues we're having. And for instance, in the UK, they just shut down some fertilizer plants.

57:26 So what I wanted to show you and finish this out today is just talking about this recipe that's here on the screen. And this is also known as Jadam Microbial Solution, sometimes the acronym JMS. I called it disgustingly cheap microbes because it's the other IMO1 through 234 is much cleaner and much more together than this. But this is the quick and dirty recipe that if for some reason the grid goes down and you don't have access to fertilizer, you don't have access to anything, knowing this recipe probably can and will save your life and those around you.

58:17 Because not only does this, these microbes, as you start to get them in the soil, they start to clean up toxins. They start to stabilize your climate. They start to go in and build things. And this recipe, you only need water, a little bit of soil, some starch, which you can use potatoes, taro, cassava, rice, anything with starch. You just boil it up and grind it into your water and a little bit of sea salt or seawater. and these things are combined in this ratio. You put them in a bucket. And when you first put them

58:56 in a bucket, there'll be no bubbles as seen down here on the bottom. After a few hours or so, it's probably about five, six hours, you start to see small rings of bubbles rising. Then these rings start to come up to a peak where it's just full of foam on the top. And then that's when you want to use it right here is when these rings are at a peak and that corresponds to this graph here of these good microbes growing and you use this. And then if you wait a little bit longer, the rings will kind of fade to the edge and they'll start to die off.

59:30 And the smell will change from being kind of Swedish, Swedish, um, to getting kind of stinky. And that's when it turns into more of a fertilizer. So this one recipe alone gives you in the beginning, when it's starting to grow and these rings are coming up, it gives you these soil microbes. And then if you continue to let it go, it gives you a fertilizer. And so this one recipe can, can give you everything you need to start soil microbes. And this is a great starting place. This only takes about, um, 24 to 40, 48 hours to do. Um, if it's really cold, it might take 72

1:00:08 hours, but, um, I've had it here happen 24 hours, even, even quicker than that. Um, and I just think that this recipe here is one of the most important recipes that we can get and we can share with people. Because if for some reason we don't have access to fertilizer, we don't have access to all these things, starting a home garden, using these microbes, you can be inoculating your soil a day in one day, two days later, you could start building soil microbes and start building local resilience for the cost of a few potatoes and a little bit of sea salt and some water in

1:00:47 a bucket and something that everyone out there can afford in today's world. And, um, just wanted to finish up with that and give, you know, some hope for everybody. And, uh, cause sometimes I feel like, oh man, this stuff, like the world's in a really precarious place in terms of our food supply. And especially when you start to look at our, our fertilizer supply and how all this translates forward. But I believe KNF, Korean natural farming, is hope, is resilience, is a way to not only grow better food, it's healthier food, healthier people,

1:01:26 cleaning our environment, healing the ocean, healing each other, getting our hands dirty in something where it's non-toxic. You can eat everything except for this one. Don't eat this one. and all this. So I just want to thank you guys for tuning in today. Thanks for the questions, Jonathan. Shout out to Donna Rae and Don up in Alaska. Hope you guys are doing well. And it's definitely, you know, it's a global thing happening here. So I appreciate you guys. Hey, Drake. Hey, Jonathan. One thing before we take off, Jonathan, check out Johnson Sioux,

1:02:06 bioreactor. It's a no turn compost pile. And it's out of this world with the ratings that they're getting out of that compost. It's two pounds per acre. Once you get it finished, it takes a year, but it's worth the wait. I'll catch you later, Drake. Well, just before you go, do you have experience with that? Have you successfully done that? I have successfully done that and been throwing it on the ground around here. And so um microbes are slow like as everybody knows they don't move very fast so it's going to take a couple

1:02:39 years to build your soil into something that's for the next generation cool talk to you guys later cool all right you guys well thanks thanks for tuning in and um maybe see you next week or uh catch you catch you around the world aloha