Know And Grow Your Food With Greg Peterson

Holiness,

Welcome.

This is Josh Tippold.

Today I have Greg Peterson with me.

Greg,

How's it going today?

Fantastic.

Very cool.

So you already told me before the show,

You're already a little bit familiar with my format.

So I'll just jump right in here.

Who is Greg Peterson?

No relation to Jordan Peterson,

I guess.

And what kind of work do you do?

Greg Peterson started his journey in food in 1974 when he wrote,

I think it's interesting how you speak in third person,

By the way,

When he wrote a paper on how we collectively were overfishing the oceans.

And back,

I was 14 years,

14,

15 years old.

And I knew back then that there was something significantly wrong with the way we were eating and living on the planet.

And in 1981,

I was on the board of the Arizona Aquaculture Association.

Aquaculture is fish farming.

And we would regularly take tours of fish farms around the state of Arizona,

Which is in the desert.

Go figure.

And one of the fish farms that we landed at was growing and harvesting fish and cleaning them.

And when you clean a fish,

You end up with about 30%,

35% meat,

And the rest is just leftover stuff.

And that leftover stuff was being thrown away.

And it just didn't make sense to me.

That was a bizarre thing for me to see that.

And fast forward to 1988,

89.

And I'm pondering how nature works and how do we make a fish farm where you don't throw anything away,

Where everything gets used.

And now I know this is called regenerative.

In 1991,

Several things happened for me.

I read a book called Ishmael.

If your listeners haven't read Ishmael,

It is a amazing book on how our food system came to be the way it is.

And I took a course at Landmark Education where I was challenged to create a vision for my life.

And the vision that I created for my life was I am the person on the planet responsible for transforming our global food system.

Not like a burden,

But that's what gets me up in the morning.

That's what gets me excited.

That's why I do my podcast.

That's why I share what I share.

I believe that our food system is significantly broken on this planet.

And we need to be much more aware of what's going on in it.

The most important thing we can do right now is figure out where our food comes from and how to grow our own.

And then another big thing that happened for me in 1991 is I discovered permaculture.

Are you familiar with that term?

Yeah,

It's a really buzzword almost now.

It's a really hot term,

Yeah.

Yeah,

I call permaculture the art and science of working with nature.

And I did a 72-hour deep dive into the introduction of permaculture back in 1991.

And it blew my mind.

For me,

It was,

Wow,

There's something I can call the way that I think.

This is the way my brain works.

We human beings,

Every single human system that we've created on this planet is degenerative.

It breaks down over time.

Our cars,

Our roads,

Our pipelines,

Our medical system,

Our political system,

It all is designed to break down over time.

And that's not how nature works.

How nature works is regeneratively.

There is no waste in nature.

There is nothing to throw away.

Everything gets used in nature.

So here I am in 1991,

Ishmael,

Landmark,

Permaculture design course.

My mind is getting blown that there's a different way that we can live on this planet.

And a friend of mine goes to the South Pacific.

And they anchor at an island.

And they're looking for a grocery store.

And the people on the island looked at them and said,

Go pick your own.

Just blew my mind.

It was like,

All right,

That is the creme de la creme.

So 91,

92 was a pivotal time in my life where I transformed how I was thinking about how we live on the planet.

And I was given lots and lots of tools to do that.

So since then,

I spent 20 years in technology.

And from 85 to 2005,

I ran multiple tech businesses,

A software company,

Training company for computers.

And in the early aughts,

I started looking at what I was doing.

And it occurred to me,

This does not support who I am in the world.

This doesn't transform our global food system.

What I was doing supports the structure that I no longer believed in.

And Yeah,

I mean,

You said so much here to go on.

So first off,

I want a quick detail that's probably not a big picture,

But I'm still curious.

What did you do with the fish waste?

And then why you before,

And I just want to tack on bigger things like permaculture.

I mean,

I'm a little familiar with it.

But for people that don't know,

Go into kind of like the elevator pitch or our nutshell.

And then who came up with it?

And you came on to it fairly early,

Right?

I did.

And I will just point out for the audience too,

In some of these old ancient spiritual teachings,

There's what's called the nutriments.

And we're all familiar with food,

Which is probably one of the most important.

I mean,

We've got air,

Water,

And then food.

I mean,

What's more important?

We can't live but a couple of minutes without air,

Not very long without water.

But food then is the next biggest one.

We also have emotions as a nutriment.

That's kind of more on the meditative side.

And then we have our thoughts and consciousness.

But today,

We're to talk about food too.

And I want you to go into too how this is,

You're bringing it back more local.

The food knowledge,

Know where it comes from.

I mean,

How many people probably just think food comes from a grocery store,

Right?

Like you mentioned,

Right?

And then how important it is to know that if we have seeds,

We just take care of it.

Food doesn't have to be so expensive.

And then we know intimately where it comes from,

Right?

In a certain way.

So explain why these two things are so important.

Very simple,

But very important to our livelihood and our wellbeing.

Yeah.

So permaculture came to me in a very interesting way.

I received a postcard in the mail.

I have,

In 1991,

I have no idea where the postcard came from.

Every time I tell this story,

I get chills.

And it talked about this way of being called permaculture.

And I ran inside,

Literally,

I ran inside and said,

Michelle,

I was married at the time.

I said,

Michelle,

I'm going to do this course.

Are you coming with me?

And so we did it together.

And permaculture,

I like to,

Like I said,

I like to call it the art and science of working with nature.

How do we work in the flow of nature?

And it starts with observation.

And interestingly,

Permaculture ends with observation.

And there's steps that you do in between,

But observation is the key piece of this.

And you asked what to do with fish waste.

Well,

There's a couple of different kinds of fish waste that you can work with.

And both of them are fertilizer.

There is the fish waste,

Which is the fish poop.

And then there is the fish parts,

Which can also be turned into fertilizer.

And for clarity,

The fish farm that I designed in the late 80s,

It was on paper.

I still have that paper.

I never actually implemented it.

But since then,

Many people have implemented what they now call regenerative farming.

You know,

Joel Salatin's a big rock star in the regenerative farming arena.

And he talks about how to rotate.

You know,

You put the cattle or sheep on first,

And they do what they do for a certain amount of time.

And then you bring the chickens in behind them,

And the chickens will eat the bugs that are in the manure.

And then you plant it and grow out what you grow out.

And then you bring the cattle and goats in to eat the leftover stuff.

And they add manure and to bring in the chickens.

You see this,

How it goes circular,

Right?

So David Holmgren and Bill Mollison created this concept of permaculture in mid 70s.

And since then,

It's gone global.

You can do a permaculture design course in just about every big city on the planet.

And we do them in Phoenix,

Arizona.

I know they do them here in Asheville,

North Carolina,

Where I live now.

But if you're interested in permaculture,

It's permaculture,

Permanent culture,

Or permanent agriculture.

It's a combination of those words.

And you just type in the name of your city or the big city near you in permaculture and see what comes up.

You're gonna find something.

Very cool.

I've got a couple of friend of ours who's doing kind of more off-grid living in a rural Illinois area.

They've got the animals now,

The pigs,

The ape pig,

Chickens,

Geese,

The little bitty sheep.

It's just,

It's wild.

And yes,

They could definitely use some,

They're asking me from time to time about things.

And I don't know too much.

I was fortunate enough to grow up on,

My folks had an organic garden coming up and there was a whole back to the land movement kind of thing.

So,

But very early on,

I had exposure to having a fairly decent sized garden and he has a organic gardening friend and really enjoys doing that.

Now,

So this,

What I.

.

.

So many places to go.

I know,

There is so many things to go.

It is quite exciting.

I think some of the big topics I wanted to ask you about is these food forests.

Well,

Another comment too,

On what you just said,

It's this observation.

It's almost like they were rediscovering old ways.

My guess is that way before kind of knowledge and ways of dying out after industrialization,

That's how they did it.

And it worked pretty well for a long time.

And they just happened to observe things and knew certain things about certain animals and the way the cycles and the seasons worked.

And it just kind of made sense,

I can imagine.

Yeah,

I wanna be really clear too,

Because we live on a farm now.

I lived in Phoenix for 54 years and two and a half years ago,

My partner Heidi and I moved from Phoenix to Asheville,

North Carolina and bought four acres and we've started a farm.

However,

What I wanna be very clear about is my house in Phoenix,

Arizona was on a third of an acre.

That's 80 feet wide and 160 feet deep.

It's a small piece of land.

And I fully implemented permaculture on that property.

And when I left it and I left it in some really amazing hands of a family that purchased it from me.

But when I left it,

We had developed what we called an old growth food forest.

Basically what could happen every day of the year,

Including the summertime,

I could go out in my yard and harvest food,

Multiple things,

Not one or two,

But 10 or 15 different things that could be harvested just like you would in a forest if you were out hunting in the forest.

So this doesn't have to be a back to the land movement,

Although that's part of it.

It doesn't have to be a homestead out there somewhere.

It can be done in the city,

Absolutely.

And it has to be done in the city.

Our food system has a major problem.

It's called,

We have a three-day supply of food in the grocery stores.

And when we saw COVID hit,

We actually had a three-hour supply of groceries in the grocery store.

So the most important thing we can be doing right now is figuring out where our food comes from and how to grow our own.

And both of those are very simple.

Those are very simple.

Yes,

Let's talk about that.

Well,

First off,

Guerrilla gardening,

This term,

What do you feel about that?

I mean,

Should people be just these abandoned urban lots?

Should people just go plant things there?

You know,

Should they get permission?

You know,

I don't know how to do it.

But talk about these 15 things.

I'm imagining a lot of them are fruit trees and nut trees,

But what else is kind of really common that's fairly simple to grow in urban areas like that and to do a food forest?

Give us a brief rundown on how to do that.

All right,

Herbs.

The most expensive thing you can buy in the grocery store and the easiest thing that you can grow.

Flat out,

You can buy a pot of basil at the nursery,

Stick it in a windowsill and harvest on it,

Off of it for a month,

Two months,

Three months.

You could start a little pot in a windowsill with a couple of basil seeds,

Cilantro,

Oregano,

Thyme,

All can be grown in a sunny windowsill.

Pots on your patio,

Easy to grow on pots on your patio.

And you can grow lettuces and herbs and spinach,

Greens,

Kale,

Tomatoes.

We have tomatoes growing in pots on our back patio right now.

It's possible.

And I guess the biggest thing people need to know about how to grow food healthfully is make sure you got good,

Healthy soil.

If you go out in your backyard and dig up the dirt,

Put it in a pot and try and grow something,

Good luck.

I will spend $30 on a garden bed to build the garden bed out of wood.

And I will spend $300 on the soil that goes in it because that soil is gonna be in there,

What's essentially forever.

And it will provide great food for us year over year over year.

So your soil is the most important thing for you.

And,

You know,

Jump in.

Here's one key piece for people is knowing what to plant when.

Having a planting calendar.

And here's another task for you.

Put the name of your city,

Asheville,

North Carolina,

And planting calendar in a search engine,

And you will come up with several of them.

Brilliant,

That's one thing I never really,

Not a big date and time guy,

So I kind of need that reference there.

And yes,

I would go and do weeding and cultivating in the garden,

But I never knew,

My old man,

He did all the planting,

Right,

And the tilling and stuff like that.

But,

Okay,

So we're thinking about maybe getting a small little bitty,

In Denmark it's popular to have this little bitty kind of square greenhouse or,

You know,

And I don't know if it's more for show or people really grow a lot of food in there or they just can go out there or flowers because it will,

You know,

Be available.

How do you feel about greenhouses and then raised beds,

Right,

Are fairly popular,

But the soil really is that important too.

So you're saying for urban farming,

Well,

I know it is,

It's just for urban farming,

You will buy the pre-made soil,

Right?

You're not gonna try to take soil samples and,

You know,

Level it out yourself and do that because it's such a small scale,

It's not really worth it,

Right?

Yeah,

Well,

Plus it gets you going right away.

I could put a garden bed in the ground,

I'd have to dig out all the weeds,

What I have here in Asheville is clay.

So then I'd have to bring in compost and I'd have to work the compost in and,

Oh,

By the way,

We have voles and gophers and moles that come up and eat our stuff.

So we have to figure out that,

How to make sure that we can avoid that and it would have been a two to four year process for me to get in the ground garden beds going.

I wanted garden beds now.

So I went with raised beds,

I built them out of two by twelves,

Two inch wide,

12 inch tall,

Untreated,

That's really important,

Untreated wood.

People say,

Well,

It's,

You know,

Wet there,

It's gonna break down.

It's like,

Yep,

They are gonna break down eventually.

I figured I'll get five years out of the wood for $30,

That's a pretty great deal.

And then I put a metal hardware cloth underneath it to keep the voles and moles from coming up and I filled it with this really great soil.

And,

You know,

So that's one way of doing it.

There is another thing that I discovered in 2010.

It is called a tower garden.

Yes,

I've heard of these,

I've seen them.

It's a hydroponic growing system put out by Juice Plus,

I think,

And they,

It's mind blowing,

It's amazing.

I absolutely love my tower garden.

You can grow a lot vertically,

Right,

In a very small space and have very different things and rotate.

I've seen these,

I considered it,

But since I'm kind of traveling now and until I settle down more,

It doesn't really make sense.

What about aeroponics too?

Have you heard of it?

I guess that aeroponics,

I think that's actually just like certain plants that grow,

Right?

You can't,

Decorative or?

No,

You may be thinking about air ferns,

That's different.

Aeroponics and hydroponics are very similar.

Hydroponics is where you have a system that has water traveling through troughs and you have the plants in the troughs,

Kind of like gutters for a house.

Aeroponics is a system like a tower garden that has 20 gallons of water in the bottom.

And then you have a pump in this pond,

At the 20 gallon pond at the bottom that pumps the water to the top of the tower.

And at the top of the tower,

It splashes and trickles down through the tower.

And mine has 26 holes in it,

So you can grow 26 different things in it.

So hydroponics and aeroponics are very similar.

The thing I like about the tower garden is that they use natural minerals.

There's no chemicals used in the tower garden solutions.

So that's really important because you don't want chemicals to grow our food in any way,

Shape or form.

This is a very good,

Go ahead.

Let me make a distinction there.

Industrial chemicals,

Because the nutrients for the tower garden,

They're mineral nutrients that could be called chemicals.

So you don't want industrial chemicals either for fertilizer,

For your plants.

We're all organic,

You know,

Like that.

Let's talk about that,

Because this is a big,

I don't know,

Passion of mine in a way.

I can tell.

As much as I can get passionate,

Is organic food,

You know?

And sometimes I get in trouble sometimes talking to people about this.

In Europe,

It's kind of nice because the organic food here is affordable.

GMOs are,

You know,

They're not as prevalent,

I think,

In the States.

And I don't want to mention any company names here,

But we're free to talk about,

You know,

How important it is not to,

You know,

Spray food with synthetic chemicals and pesticides.

To me,

It's just so simple.

If you see outside,

And then somebody sprays something on the food,

And everything else dies around it,

And you want to go eat that?

You know,

I'm imagining some people could think,

Oh,

Wow,

It could survive poisoning.

I want to gain its powers by eating it or something silly like that.

But,

I mean,

It's just kind of a no-brainer that it kills everything,

Except the food somehow.

I mean,

It is so wild.

So it just seems so common sense to us and so straightforward.

But the amount of propaganda,

I think,

The amount of money behind this,

I hear the argument all the time.

Oh,

Well,

You know,

The world wouldn't be able to eat if we didn't have,

You know,

GMO and things like this.

So,

You know,

Speak to this if you'd like.

Well,

We're seeing,

I have this theory.

It's the,

And it's not properly named yet,

Longevity decline theory.

Longevity age,

Our age is declining.

2023 was,

I think,

The first year where longevity declined.

And what I'm seeing,

I've not done a lot of research on this yet.

I'm in the process.

What I'm seeing is that younger people are coming up with more dis-ease.

You know,

We're seeing more things happen younger and younger.

And it comes from chemicals in our food.

It comes from plastics.

There's so many places that it can come from.

There's,

And I am a huge proponent of going as organic as you can because of that.

Now,

Is organic perfect,

Especially in the United States?

No,

But at least it's a better place to start because we're seeing with all,

Do you know what ultra processed foods are?

That's gone through human hands in certain different processes and chemicals and things like that.

Yeah,

Ultra processed.

Ultra processed foods.

They add chemicals.

There's over 40,

000 chemicals that can be added to food that don't have to be named on the label.

Wow,

All the nutrients are stripped out and then they add kind of really low quality stuff to it,

Vitamins and stuff like that.

Yeah,

Exactly.

And I'm not quite sure they need to do that that way,

But that's the way it's getting done.

Buy as local as you can.

Find a farmer's market.

We have some great farmer's markets here in Asheville.

We have some great farmer's markets in Phoenix,

Arizona,

Where I'm from.

Get to know your farmer and buy fresh food.

You wanna shop on the periphery of the grocery store,

Not in the middle.

The ultra processed foods are in the middle and on the periphery is the fresh stuff.

It does take a little more work.

Actually,

It does take a lot more work in order to make your food.

I probably spend a couple hours a day from start to finish.

And start to finish means figuring out what we're gonna make,

Making it,

And then cleaning up afterwards.

But what we're getting is incredibly healthy food,

Especially when we're growing it ourselves.

I had never grown.

So I've only been here in Asheville for two and a half years and last season,

So last fall,

About a year ago,

I planted,

No,

No,

No,

No,

Sorry.

In February of this year,

I planted potatoes and I grew 40 pounds of potatoes.

I have enough potatoes to last us the year.

And I'd never grown potatoes before.

Awesome,

Yes.

Yeah,

And basil.

I grew enough basil this year to make 10 half pints of pesto.

Wow,

That's amazing.

For whatever reason,

Basil doesn't like me.

And that's one of the few that it turns black right away,

But I love basil too.

So a few things going back here,

The chemicals in food too.

I remember in the United States,

They list them explicitly and it seems like some kind of weird medication name that I can barely pronounce.

So I don't know what that is.

And then you'll see certain products side by side.

One of them won't have certain things in it.

It's basically kind of the same thing,

But then you have another that has all these extra chemicals in it.

Why are they doing this?

I mean,

I have some theories,

But it's really not that important to speculate either.

I have no idea.

And in Europe though,

It's interesting.

It doesn't seem on the whole,

Maybe this is not accurate,

But on the whole,

It doesn't seem like there's as many,

But there's this coding system.

They won't list it explicitly.

It's like E and then two,

Three,

Five.

So you have to have like a deciphering ring or a,

Not a ring,

But you know,

Like a chart that tells you exactly what that is.

I guess in one sense you can save space on a label,

But unless you know what it is,

You don't really know.

So,

You know- Eat fresh.

This,

Yes,

This is,

Well,

It's,

That is another thing,

This labeling thing.

So there is no rules on saying fresh.

I mean,

You could put fresh on a can of food,

Right?

There's no law that said,

And it means absolutely nothing to say something is fresh,

But you know,

USD organic,

I've even had the,

Met people,

I've heard this now or secondhand though,

That said,

Oh,

You know,

It just,

It says organic,

But they're lying about it.

You know,

It's not really organic.

Well,

I'm like,

Well,

That could be so,

But the likelihood of it actually having more things that are organic versus something that's not USDA certified organic,

It's probably a lot greater.

So to write it off immediately,

I was like,

I never heard this before.

This is bizarre that people would come up with this.

Yes,

I have heard of a lot of fraud,

Like the certification agencies,

Cutting corners and things like this.

It's still at the end of the day,

You're more likely to get,

I'm guessing,

Right,

Than this,

But like you're saying absolutely best is if you know for certain and you trust the person,

You go to their farm,

You see their practices firsthand,

That's better than any kind of government label to me.

Exactly.

One of the,

So one of the things that happened for me when we were looking at a new place to move,

I had lived in Arizona,

Like I said,

For 54 years,

And about 15 years ago,

I started a conversation in my head,

I wanna go someplace quiet.

And we landed in Asheville and found this house that we bought,

The house and farm that we bought.

And when I came to vet the house,

I saw two different billboards around town.

Now,

Asheville is a town of about 100,

000 people.

So it's not a huge town.

And they had a billboard that said,

Get your local compost from us on a billboard.

I knew I was at home.

Yeah,

I've heard all kinds of great things about Asheville,

And it's definitely on my list of places to go for,

I've only been to North Carolina one time,

But if I make it over there and the chance arises,

I definitely wanna to visit Asheville.

Say hi,

Absolutely,

Show me what I'm up to.

Possibly do that.

Now,

The Asheville,

What was I gonna say?

Oh,

There's all kinds of other topics.

Let me just get a few more in here.

Now,

Composting,

You know,

You mentioned,

What do you recommend people do with that?

Do you have a kind of a system or recommendation in general for that?

There are many things that you can do about composting.

If you have a yard,

Get some chickens.

Your chickens will eat all of the compost for you.

And guess what?

They poop out a really nice nutrient fertilizer for your garden.

So that's one thing you can do.

That's a little bit more complicated than a worm bin.

Worm composting is super simple.

And you can do that with just a 25 gallon bin from your hardware store.

And you can eat,

My worm bins in my garage,

That's how I do all my composting.

If you wanna go simpler than that,

If you have a garden,

You can do what's called pit composting.

So you just dig a hole in your garden and dump the food waste down about 12,

14 inches and let it do what it does.

So there's several easier ideas.

Composting,

Traditional thermophilic or hot composting,

It's all process.

It's a process.

It's a process.

And I point people away from traditional composting because it's such a,

It takes a lot of work.

We did the pit method when I was a kid,

Actually sometimes just on top and then covered it up later.

I mean,

This is out in the country though.

Okay,

So the other thing I wanted to mention in grocery stores,

And I don't think it's been too long,

At least in the St.

Louis,

Missouri area,

There used to be aisles in the big supermarkets that said organic,

You know?

So what does that say about the rest?

Or no,

Or health,

I'm sorry,

Health food.

It said,

This is the health food aisle in the grocery store.

But what would that say about the rest of the grocery store then,

You know?

So they got rid of that.

I think once they figured that out,

Then they started mixing everything together.

So it was a little bit harder and you had to spend more time and look at more stuff.

Products,

And you mentioned this earlier,

Products can say healthy on them.

They can say whatever they want.

So you have to do your own work.

I'll even go into restaurants,

Just kind of as a thing I do.

And I say,

Do you have any non-GMO food here?

Do you serve organic food?

Doing that in the Midwest where it's,

You know,

The most capital of the thing.

I've had some people say,

What is GM?

What is that?

I don't even know what that is.

Usually more times than not,

They have to go ask their supervisor,

You know,

Because they have no idea.

And it's really sad,

You know?

On California,

It's great.

You have a lot of organic food,

But in the Midwest,

It's really,

Yeah.

So as you're speaking this,

I'm thinking back to a recent visit to a farmer's market.

And this is a really,

Really important piece of what I want to share today.

And I was at a farmer's market and we stopped at a bakery booth.

They were making bread and that kind of stuff.

And I asked the person if they were using organic wheat.

She didn't know.

Wow.

I walked away.

Yeah,

Yeah.

If they don't know,

That's a huge red flag.

Now we were talking about chemicals like glyphosate earlier that is used to kill weeds.

The farmers also use glyphosate on non-organic grains.

Yes,

To dry it out quicker.

That's right.

It's a drying agent so that they can get it dried and harvested.

So those grains are being sprayed with glyphosate.

Then harvested.

So if nothing else,

Only organic grains.

It is really important.

And I appreciate the people that are actually honest though.

Some people will say,

Oh yeah,

It's organic.

And then you can keep pressing them.

And it turns out they just want to say that to make a sale.

So honesty is really important too.

And vetting whether people are actually,

Just want to say that to make you happy or not look like they're dumb.

So I really appreciate people.

I thank them for their honesty too.

That's even more important to me than not use it.

Because if I don't have right information,

Well then I can't even make right choices.

So that's even more important in my book.

Yeah,

I ask about organic flour too.

Yeah,

It's so wild that they do that.

And glyphosate,

From what I understand,

Was originally a boiler cleaner.

They put it through industrial boilers in order to clean it.

And they only discovered it could kill weeds when it flew out on the ground and it killed all the grass and stuff.

Oh wow,

I didn't know that.

And not only that,

I heard that that's even,

As bad as it is,

That it's actually,

In some of these products,

The proprietary thing in some of these things.

That secret that they are trying to reconstruct that are actually even more detrimental than glyphosate,

Even,

In some of these products.

So it really is wild,

Right?

Take a deep breath,

Yeah,

Exactly.

So,

But it's just the marketing.

People are tuned into marketing and in a dream world about,

You know,

How they might feel or think about a certain product.

And they just look at the product packaging and they'll buy based on that,

Right,

A lot of times.

And so,

Yeah,

It's a whole thing.

So what are some other tips,

And then we'll probably start wrapping up here soon,

Of people knowing their food?

We've talked about labels.

We talked about getting to know farmers,

Going around the edges of the grocery store.

Anything else,

How people can get to know their food,

Where it comes from,

And more about that.

Grow your own.

Grow your own.

Even if it's just basil in a windowsill,

It's magical how that happens.

And that way you know exactly what's going in it.

And it just tastes better.

I'll tell you what,

If you grow a peach and harvest a peach ripe,

When it falls off into your hand and you take a bite of it and it splashes down the front of you and makes your toes tingle,

That is possible when you're growing your own.

And it's just,

Growing your own food is just better.

It's happier.

It is really cool.

You know,

It's the farmer's market culture in America now.

I'm grateful to really see that.

Do you have any tips for people selling at farmer's markets too?

Like pros and cons of the whole kind of culture?

Yes.

A really big one.

Any advice?

For people,

You said for people selling at a farmer's market.

Selling and buying,

Anything.

Anything about farmer's markets,

Sure.

All right,

Well,

From a farmer vendor's perspective,

I learned this a long time ago and I've done this on my podcast.

I've never in eight and a half years missed an episode on the podcast,

An episode release.

And early on,

When I was doing farmer's markets in the late nineties and early aughts,

I was told by a market manager,

Don't miss a week.

People come to count on you.

If you're gonna be here,

Be here every week,

No matter what.

And that's really goes to life.

Show up a hundred percent.

Yeah.

Reliable,

If you can,

Yes.

You know,

So I overlapped that into my podcast,

850 episodes and never having missed one in almost nine years.

So yeah,

Show up in life.

And if you're a buyer at a farmer's market,

If you've never been to one,

Go to a farmer's market.

They are fun.

You will have a blast at a farmer's market.

You get to know people,

You get to know the farmers.

There's people that are making value added products,

Which is their salsas or fermented foods.

They're the actual people that are making it.

In fact,

I was at the farmer's market right after we got here two and a half years ago.

And I started talking to a woman named Samara.

She makes elderberry products,

Elderberry drinks,

And you know,

So on and so on.

And I said to her,

I interviewed her for my podcast.

And I said to her on the interview,

I said,

Where are you getting your elderberries?

She said,

Well,

I got a few here and a few there,

But most of them come from Europe.

And my brain was like,

Whoa,

What did you just say?

And the next thing that I said,

Now I'm an entrepreneur.

I've been self-employed since I was 15 years old.

That's almost 50 years ago.

And so my brain works that way.

So the next thing I said to her is,

Well,

Heck,

I can grow elderberries.

And I was in the elderberry growing business.

I have 90 elderberry plants in the ground that next year we'll actually produce.

And that just came from observing,

Pay attention,

Observe,

Have fun at your farmer's market,

Talk to the people.

You will have,

We have our bread guy at the farmer's market that we,

This week,

We'll see him on Wednesday.

We have our eggs guy at the farmer's market that we go see,

You know,

And when you walk up to their booth,

Hey,

Greg and Heidi,

How you doing?

You know,

That's what I'm talking about.

It really is a great community.

And in St.

Louis,

They had bands play.

You know,

You even had local businesses come in and cook things for people that want something there.

I've even talked to an egg farmer about,

You know,

A fox in the hen house or whatever got in there,

You know.

And people,

How they transition land into organic land and,

You know,

Even a knife sharpener.

It just,

It's just on and on and on.

It's such a great experience.

And this is,

It reminds me.

This is the local food economy.

Every day,

Everybody participates in the food economy.

If you're eating or drinking,

You're participating in the food economy.

Explore your local food economy.

See who's making what.

See who's growing what.

Get your food as local as possible.

There's one meme I think I saw a few years ago where it says,

Usually when they declare war on something,

It turns out bigger.

The war on drugs,

It just got worse,

Right?

The war on terror,

It exploded.

So why don't we just declare war on farmer's markets?

You know,

So.

So they would just,

Because everything they've declared war on,

It got huge.

So at least we have farmer's markets still.

I didn't mean that literally.

You mean farmer's market.

You mean war on markets,

Not farmer's markets.

There we go.

Well,

Greg,

It's been a blast and a pleasure.

And I appreciate all your work in this space.

Take us out on a final message here.

All right,

Perfect.

We've got a lot in the world right now that's just yuck.

There's a lot of negative,

A lot of angst,

A lot of mean out there.

And in my world,

There's no place for that.

Let's just be happy and choose,

Because it's a choice.

These people that are being grumpy out in the world can choose to be happy.

I was at a coffee house three or four years ago.

It was 7.

30 in the morning on a Monday.

And I walk in,

There's this woman in front of me in line.

There's two baristas.

I'm talking to the second barista and I'm happy.

And the woman standing in front of me looks at me and she says,

What are you so happy about?

And I said,

Well,

I have a choice every day to choose happy or not.

You know what she said to me?

She said,

Well,

Stop it.

That was my response.

And the barista laughed too.

Wow.

We have a choice.

We have a choice every single day.

I'm getting chills sharing this.

We have a choice every single day.

And that choice reflects how we are in the world and how people perceive us.

And I'll bet you,

You can guess how our customers and the people around me see me,

Right?

Positive,

Happy,

Fun.

So that's my piece of advice.

Oh,

Beautiful.

Greg,

Thanks so much for joining again and sharing all your knowledge and wisdom and just kind of having a chat about a lot of different things around this topic of food.

So may everyone out there come to know their most optimal health and food,

Growing and discernment for themselves and others,

For your long-term happiness and for the long-term happiness of all beings everywhere.