 So thanks again for coming. This is one of my favorite things in the world to talk about It told me it didn't recognize the keyboard no, and I said it's right there So you know despite all of the accomplishments, I don't know whose quote this is but I love it Where would we be right without our soil? We wouldn't have food we wouldn't have public health or landscapes would be flying all over the place We need soil this picture on the right was taken by my colleague Peter Donovan From the soil carbon coalition. It was taken this summer in Iowa And this is how we grow corn in this country it's as a it's as if The dust bowl never happened or that we forgot it happened Or that our farmers are under so much pressure to try and increase their yields and stay on our land That they just farm right up to the rivers again And you can almost see that soil leaving And that's in a place in the world where we used to have you know 20 foot of topsoil that was left to us as a gift from the buffalo and all the remnants And we haven't done a very good job of stewarding that soil So my presentation is really going to focus a lot on the soil health principles Which are I think the most important thing that we could put into policy and the most important thing that we can follow In our backyards on our farms no matter what size farm you have and even on your rooftop or porch guard These were designed by the nrcs, which is the natural resources conservation service that used to be the soil conservation service And the top four were designed by them and the fifth one was actually brought in by a brown Who's a really awesome rancher out in the Midwest? He didn't he's connected we have him in our notes So if you want to learn more about a ground you can look into those It's really deep notes and find his name and get some links there So these are the five principles living roots in the ground all year long or for as long as possible Maximized diversity above the ground and plant species and animal species and below the ground as well in microbial life Minimize disturbance meaning tillage and chemicals And other ways that we disturb soil there are many many putting pavement over top of them, etc Minimizing bare soil more about pavement But also when you don't have living roots in the ground even if there isn't pavement your soil basically becomes pavement So having living roots in the ground is important and also not having bare soil Even when you're doing annual tillage Trying to cover that soil up even if it's not with living roots is going to be better than leaving it bare and Having animals in contact with soil and to me That's everything from microbes to elephants to cows to sheep and chickens and zebras So the Sun has an energy budget And the Sun is a really important part of soil health the Sun is how soil gets its energy It's how the microbial life in the soil gets food So this is this is showing you the basic breakdown of the energy budget, and I want to focus on Oh not that Not that I'll get the hang of it. Give me a second. Okay That's what I was looking for you see a little red dot So we're gonna focus on the 50% absorbed energy here 40 to 60 percent of this energy is actually invested by the trees into the root system and This starts to get into Understanding transpiration to this whole sort of circle of life of biodiversity Photosynthesis and transpiration we're going to focus more on transpiration in the sixth soil series event where we talk about water I'm not going to talk too much about it now, but it's all connected. So the Sun shines It shines down when it's on green growing plants It is investing that are those green growing plants are investing most of that sunshine into the energy to feed the soil food web Making the connection of the circle of life. I think is something it's it's kind of amazing to me that we don't do more I work a lot with kids and It's something that they're interested in it's something they're learning about but then we seem to forget about how important that is One of the things when I work with kids It really scares me and worries me that kids are being raised to think that carbon is bad We are carbon carbon is life Carbon is not bad. We just mismanage it because we don't understand its cycles, but we can do better So this is kind of what happens inside of a leaf, right? We're taking carbon dioxide and we're taking oxygen and we're turning that into sugar inside of the leaves and That Those little solar cells those leaves are the first solar panels, right? And if we can maximize solar power in Every way and using green growing plants as one of the ways to do that. We can feed the soil Going back to this slide wait wait All down in that root system are going to be billions and billions and billions and billions of organisms that are going to eat those sugars Made by the sunshine and that's why this is so important because that soil life is what is feeding us So I like to think about maximizing diversity as also maximizing sunlight The more leaf surfaces we have in different sizes and shapes and throughout the year The more we are harnessing photosynthesis and when we harness photosynthesis We're creating sugar out of sunshine sunshine Elaine Ingham who's a soil microbiologist and one of my teachers It's likes to call those the cakes and cookies So sunlight brings in sugars those cakes and cookies and they feed them through the root system to billions of microorganisms That are waiting just waiting for just the right cakes and cookies so that they can bring the nutrients that the plant wants right back to the plant This map on the bottom right was created by Peter Donovan Colleen from the Soil Carbon Coalition and these are all available online if you go to the Soil Carbon Coalition website and search NDVI maps that stands for non Differently normalized different Vegetation index and what that map is showing us is essentially three years worth of photosynthesis around Lake Champlain So Using technology on the internet and Google Maps and Stuff that's a lot smarter than I am. We're able to capture We can measure how much sunlight We are capturing in Vermont and so when I see this I see opportunity When I look at those deep dark green places, those are more than likely are our conifer forests So those are photosynthesizing year-round another great reason to have conifers and those brown areas Some of those are places like Burlington but some of those places up north all around that lake in Quebec those are those are farms and So that's showing us how little sunshine is being captured on that farmland So when I think about the fact that a lot of those farms are probably growing cow for corn for cows And corn has something like a 65 day window of photosynthesizing You know so while it might take longer to build the whole plant the actual days of photosynthesizing and building route exodus are pretty small And so that's 65 out of 365 days so to me that's an opportunity for 300 more days of sunlight. That's the way I like to look at that You don't have to know what's happening here except to know that there's a lot happening here This one is going to take us. I think a little further into some of this sort of stuff and just to so sunlight captures Leaves capture the sunlight turning oxygen and carbon dioxide, which is a problem, right? Too much of it up in the air It's also captured by the way water, which is also too much up in the air 90 5% of our greenhouse gases are water vapor and only 4% are carbon dioxide So trapping that bringing it down into sugar and feeding that microorganism system that the zoo underneath the ground Around every single living root in healthy soil. There is this tiny little place called the rhizosphere The picture on the left is showing you Just how big that might be in an area of a tree and actually the more we're learning the more we're learning that That's actually much bigger than that There are teeny tiny repairs that that little cartoon picture isn't showing us and they all have this little millimeter area around them called the rhizosphere and In that rhizosphere this picture over here that we're looking at on the right. Oh All these little guys all these little red guys are indicating bacteria And the little white guys are indicating fungal hyphae coming in and out of the side so fungal hyphae and That's the mycelium. Have you heard the word mycelium or mycorrhiza? So this is what's literally holding our landscapes together one teaspoon of healthy soil can have a Mile of fungal hyphae in it one mile in a teaspoon To give you the kind of indication of the togetherness and the connectedness of the mycorrhiza The mycelium I like to say that we're building the social mycelium to hold our communities together Because I think we can learn a lot from this really intelligent network of organisms That are that have been holding our planet together So it's really exciting to me to think about the life that could be in our soil if we were maximizing photosynthesis if we were maximizing the conditions for healthy soil and following those soil health principles This is an indication just a little map of the soil food web It's a very very busy place down there, and if you remove any one thing it doesn't function well There are predators. There are Vegetarians there everybody is down there, and they're all working together even when they're killing each other It's it's a wonderful place the more I learn about it the more I want to learn about it Are you folks in the back hearing okay, or is it too loud? Okay, we just want to make sure that everybody's comfortable Further away. Can you still hear me in the back if I'm like that? So the soil food web one teaspoon of healthy soil I told you can have a mile of fungal hyphae the 75,000 species of bacteria 10,000 protozoa a few hundred nematodes and maybe micro arthropod one teaspoon Dead soil otherwise known as dirt, which is sand, silt, and clay isn't gonna have any of that and The kind of disturbance that can kill these guys fertilizer tillage Any kind of fertilizer and too high of an amount is gonna kill these guys So it's no wonder that our soil is dead So can we increase living roots in the ground? This is another question. I like to pose questions because I like opportunity and possibility as opposed to a wall of terror We're facing a lot of problems in the future, but I think if we harness possibility and opportunity we can get through this together So I always like to point out top left. That's a lawn Your standard single species lawn if you had a multi species lawn even a kind of conservation mix You might have some deeper roots from the clover in there And this is 15 feet, right? So these are Prairie plants from the West, but we all recognize gardeners in the room recognize that right echinacea and that one's lupin Look at how deep those root systems go Did you have any idea that they could go so deep and think about the rhizosphere? and the potential for a rhizosphere and If we have that happening in our soils when we get lots of rain, they might hold in place Because there's billions of organism and my cariza holding them together along with living root structures So can we increase the amount of living roots in the ground? Can we deepen our root systems? And if we do that will we also be deepening our watersheds because this is also how we get water into the ground We can hold our landscapes in place by creating the conditions for healthy soil and in doing so we'll decrease flooding and drought and the Potential for wildfires will increase nutrient density We'll all be a lot better off so we can do this. I'm not going to read the slide because I hate when people do that But there's I will that the one on the bottom I think is really important You know who here has an acre of land that you manage So for every acre of land that you manage if you could increase your organic matter one percent In the top six inches you could hold 20,000 gallons more water per acre There's some dispute about that number because what kind of soil do you have was it six inches or ten inches? You know, but it's still a lot. So some of these figures are still under dispute because we're learning about them But the point is we can increase a lot of Water-holding capacity in our soil by creating conditions which include following the soil health principles When we don't follow the soil health principles, this is what happens So this is a picture overhead view of what Long Island sounds look like after Hurricane Irene and What you're looking at there are Vermont's farm fields and dirt roads Gone Yeah, Connecticut River so eight hundred million dollars in infrastructure damage But not one penny was considered for how much soil we lost and what the value of that was How do we start measuring that and is it important is it important to hang on to soil? that takes a long time to build and that farmers have been working so hard to build and They didn't know that if they tilled their soil all the time They might not have the mycorrhizal network to hold it together We can change the way that water moves through landscape simply by increasing the soil spunked by increasing the health of our soil We can influence the amount of water that Infiltrates into our soil and holds in our soil to get us through times of drought This little cartoon is just giving us an indication that when you have good ground cover You get a lot of infiltration Not a lot of runoff. So then these full jars are showing us runoff not infiltration. It's a little confusing On the right hand side clearly if you're all paved You're gonna lose all the water and it's gonna run off and overfill your jar And if you have a forest you might lose a small amount of that water when you get a lot of it And it goes beyond saturation point, but you're gonna be able to hold on to it a lot more So can we turn our cities from something? Oh? Okay, can we turn our cities Into something that looks more green and it's happening people are doing this There's really exciting stuff happening with vertical gardening and rooftop gardening and more parks in cities and impervious pavements and Water catchment. There's a lot that we can do even in our urban areas and where we are in Vermont There's a whole lot that we can do so when when we treat water like this on the top right I think my mic stopped working When we have water like this on the top left and by the way that was taken at Fetford Elementary School where I managed the school gardens and on July 1st 2017 we had that rain event where we got like seven hour seven inches in a few hours We had 12 feet of water in our schoolyard above the drain and it formed the coolest Funnel so I took a picture of it That Basically creates ocean dead zones when we look at the picture of the Long Island sound after Hurricane Irene All of that is headed down to the ocean dead zone, which I just learned is now the size of Connecticut I was taught it was the size of Rhode Island Growing We can do rain gardens that one is from up Burlington Davis Center UVM That's just a really cool experiment to catch water coming off of their parking lot and they're using it to grow plants and deep and root systems Can we provide more ecosystem services so this is showing us this this little picture here Just look at the green pedals on the left side Natural ecosystems provide us with all the ecosystem services. We need except for crop production So what do humans do about that? We come into that center panel and we create crop production at the expense of all other ecosystem services So can we move more toward the one on the right where we're growing crops and we're providing ecosystem services So what are ecosystem services? pollination beneficial insects of any kind there are 900,000 insects Identified on the planet in a very small fraction of those are actually considered to be pests to humans and a smaller percentage of that Are actual pests to agriculture yet? We have killed off. I mean have you heard of the insect apocalypse? That was all for a fraction of a percent of insects at the expense of all the other ones that provide Who knows what kind of ecosystem services that we've never even acknowledged Clean water clean air Surface water temperatures these are all different kinds of ecosystem services having landscapes that hold themselves in place Ecosystem service so all the things that we need from this incredible planet that are provided for us That we don't know how to make money off of Although we keep trying we're genetically engineering bees. Don't worry about the bees. We'll make new ones So can we provide more ecosystem services? This is a question we can all ask ourselves on our porch in our backyard in our neighborhoods statewide, etc Can we start to mimic? Ecosystems what would it be like if we mimic these ecosystems? I find this picture very inspiring and below it Look at the beavers. Did we learn that pattern from the beavers? Can we learn any patterning from the beavers? If we have left the beavers alone and if we could create the conditions for the beavers to come back to manage our water We might not have such drastic flooding effects next time Because beavers have been managing water for as long as beavers have been so can we shift the system to provide? Multiple ecosystem services like you're seeing on the left. These are actually a lot of Vermont farms So we're very lucky where we live, but let's not forget not everybody lives there And on the right side, this is the kind of agriculture you generally support when you go to the regular grocery store and buy meat Or dairy or vegetables on the left side, and you're buying grass fed You can buy you can buy all kinds of food and Support ecosystem services for the planet. It's all about how the food was produced Can we measure impacts and outcomes? We like to talk about a lot what's in the left-hand side and we can calculate damages But we don't even really do that well enough, but can we start to plan for outcomes? Can we start to plan for more plant available water stream base flow purity ground water quality? Recharge surface water, etc Can we focus on that? Can we put a value on that and can we begin to hire? Land managers to produce those ecosystem services that we all benefit from and not just that that we all actually need In order to survive so following those soil health principles That's how we do this and I like to say principles and not practices because practices limit us They create barriers. They create tunnels and we we stop innovating when we when we hold to principles There are all sorts of practices. We haven't even thought of yet that can help us employ these principles and I think That's it for me. So I just always like to provide some tape takeaways. These will be in the notes I'd like to move on and let Jess come up Yes, Ruben Every time I can you hear me? Yes, every time I see a presentation of yours. I think I need to follow you around So so much you should be able to So down It's too loud, you know, so Before we begin, I would like to close part of the beginning. I'd like to just acknowledge Please adjust the mic. It's I would like to acknowledge That we are on the traditional and unceded territory of the el new abanaki the nohigen band of the kusak abanaki nation abanaki nation of the missus koi and the kuasek traditional band of the kusabanaki nation These are the four federally recognized tribes in Vermont They're also other abanaki who are not recognized and just want to honor and they call this land Dakina Don land and They are living in a place where the colonial borders created by government entities called New York Vermont Canada and they Do not have access to their native home land traditions in the way that they is their inherent right due to these colonial borders and Laws and I just would like to Say that because we're here and the mission of Vermont healthy soils growing the mycelial network and Creating a new paradigm Part of the work is acknowledging that and holding the reality that there's a lot of pain in the soil here because of the history of Those people and so as we learn how to heal the soil and the water We're also looking at those relationships and how do we heal our relationship with those living people today and their ancestors So the overall lens That sounds like we're all aligning with is this regenerative agriculture principle shifting the burden to the intervener and As we well know our species is still trying to figure out how to be a good earth community member and we have disturbed a lot of systems that were Working beautifully before we got here and so we are we are responsible to try to do the best to fix it When I tried to approach that overwhelming task I go back to geologic time And I want to acknowledge that there's many different views of creation and forms of time and creation stories That have as much validity as science I am going to be using the scientific paradigm today just because I found it very helpful in ecological restoration Those other ways of looking at creation and time are also as valid so according to that Scientific paradigm life on the planet is around four point six billion years old and the microbes showed up around three to four billion and it was a very gaseous and hot and Difficult environment for creatures, but these extremophiles were able to live with sulfuric acid Hydrochloric acid and they were able to live and reproduce and make the habit the planet a bit more a bit of Hospitable as water began to condense and as they did this can you hear yes? Can you hear me? Check check. Can you hear check? I'm not familiar much with microphones Check check. Can you hear me? Okay, so As the microbes made the How the earth more hospitable the fungi showed up not that long after two billion years ago And these fungi partnered with the microbes and they were able to help the earth environment become even more hospitable as Water was condensing and it was only a billion years later that the plants showed up So I you know bow to these creatures because they are our ecological ancestors And so when I think okay, how do you repair our mess? I look to them and I said well they kind of know what they're doing How do we align and partner with them? We're going to be diving a little into the OA horizons Which are about the top four to sixteen inches down And this is where the highest density of plant roots and soil organisms are the microbes fungi and plant roots and One thing I just want to point out is that the fungi bridge the microbes and the plants And That role is really critical. I believe in the earth repair work. We're doing So as cat had mentioned this fear around Roots is called the rhizosphere and it has an incredible capacity 10 to a thousand times increasing soil and nutrient absorption and access and when it partners with fungi it becomes the Myco rhizosphere When we look at the soil food web, it's amazing to see the interspecies communication the interspecies Collaboration and it's a great model for our community of how we can rekindle and Honor the interspecies community that we're a part of Just a brief dip into the biology of fungi when you harvest the fruiting body It's like taking an apple from a tree The roots of the tree are like the hi-fi and the hi-fi are the vegetative structure of the fungi They are the biggest part of the fungi. They are the part that I will be focusing on They're where the nutrient exchange networks are and they are the ones that are involved in a lot of the enzyme releasing nutrient capture and healing work you often may have heard the word mycillium which is when there's a lot of hi-fi and I won't get into biology about too much right now An interesting thing about fungi is they're closer to us than plants And they respirate like us. They take in oxygen. They release carbon dioxide However, they have an external digestive system So they release enzymes ahead of themselves and one of the amazing things about them is they could take very complex molecules and break them down and make them accessible to life that Other creatures aren't able to access otherwise It's interesting to note that their functioning is very dependent upon water and cat had mentioned about water being part of the Greenhouse gases and it's I've heard that the spores there's billions of them in the air actually create surface area For a water vapor to gather on congeal and return to the water cycle in a more efficient manner The gist of fun fungi ecology is that they really provide balanced Ecosystems just like when we learn to take fungi as medicine for our bodies and they help return us to balance So too in the ecosystems. They can decompose and recycle Their dead life plants and animals have a lot of micro and trace nutrients that get released when they die And the fungi can uptake them and release them back into cycles toxins are able to be denatured into benign elements except heavy metals and and move them around and As I mentioned before bridging nutrient networks, they're sort of like the janitors of the earth with microbes But we don't want to lean on them to heavily The fungi I'll be just briefly talking about not going to mention pathogenic fungi, but sap saprophidic fungi like these black trumpets on the left where the uh Are they break down cellulose and lingon in wood and absorb nutrients from dead animals? as I mentioned and plants and they're the ones that are very capable to heal soil and water Mycorrhizae are also wonderful healers in partnering with plant roots And they release a chemical called glomelin which was discovered in 1996 We'll talk more about that which acts like a glue holds soil aggregates together They mineralize in organic matter and they're very helpful in preventing erosion So we're going to focus on mycorrhizae fungi and around 90% of plants on earth are mycorrhizal and I mentioned a lot of this already I think what hasn't been mentioned is that they do improve crop yields and Can really help restore and rebuild food soil web and originally before the industrial evolution before we were disturbing soil Mycorrhizae was everywhere. It's it's as if the fungi nervous system of the earth has sort of been ripped apart We have the internet and computers now But the original nervous system got ripped apart and so a lot of those natural fertility cycles were disturbed and we're aiming to recover them The our fuss there there's two main categories of mycorrhizae fungi based on the way that the fungal cells associate with the plant cells the Arbuscular or endo mycorrhizae, which are the ones on the left of this photo. You can see that on the outside is where the Excuse me on the right side. They actually penetrate inside the plant roots And about 80% of the plant families partner with them And those are the ones you will mostly find in fields in gardens and prairies and there with most flowering plants The ecto mycorrhizae are more on the surface of plant roots And those are the ones that more in the forests partnering with conifer and hardwood trees And that's about 10% of the plant families that they partner with Arbuscular mycorrhizae as I mentioned before release this gluey glycoprotein called glomalin and Glomalin is fascinating in that it seals off intercellular spaces and basically allows soil to aggregate to clump together and this clumping Basically provides a rigid space for hi-fi to penetrate through the air spaces between soil and for water to settle in and Remember when cat showed us that slide on the far left where very little water was leaving that landscape And it was acting like a pool. It was because that soil had a lot of This glomalin in it and it also is about 30% carbon in organic matter So it's really I don't like the word sequester, but it's a way of storing carbon It helps store carbon and hold it in the soil When you have well aggregated soil and rich microbial diversity as Mentioned you're going to have more water holding capacity more aeration for some of the microbes that do Respirate in the soil because obviously you want to keep growing so microbial diversity in the soil and These nutrient exchange works up the hi-fi can take off even more Of course erosion will happen less because soil won't want to leave has such a great place to stay So need to know about glomalin there are small heavy traces of heavy metals even in healthy soils and It can actually prevent soil from decompose carbon from decomposing in a century and when heavy metals are not present Glomalin will actually sort of store carbon in a way that allows soil Microbes microbes to slow get your switch, maybe Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Now is it all the way up when it's on I'll speak loud. So can you hear me? Yes? Okay? Our organic matter is preserved and it's like a slow release so plants can access it over a long period of time As the as the climate is warming which we all know there's increased co2 in the atmosphere and one of the benefits of this it is that Glomalin Will actually increase production when we have more co2 and hi-fi will grow more so it's just so interesting That they're actually Almost like helping correct You know this anthropogenic forcing of greenhouse gases And there's a the woman Sarah Wright who's a scientist in 1996 who researched and discovered Glomalin with a team of researchers had Said that the same thing will happen when you just manage soil in a good way which Go figure and a longer hi-fi obviously going to increase the rise of sphere more water less erosion increased soil fertility The ways that you can easily add fungi to the landscape You can build Google cultures you can take wood store it on swales on contour So you're catching water going down and you're sequestering or storing carbon and then you can grow perennials or edible or medicinal fungi in it you can Inuculate mulch in your pathways with fungi food and medicine that will also retain moisture and protect the soil microbial diversity that's Continuing to grow you can add my go rise eye inoculants to places in your community that are clearly more monocultures such as Recreation fields golf courses lawns and when you're planting on your land you can do dips the land you tend you can do my go Riesel dips of your plants and trees in in these my go Riesel Products farm fields They can definitely use this and actually farmers if they use this will not need to add as much phosphorus Inputs or fertilizer inputs because they're going to have all of those Ecosystem services of the fungi and in the long term it'll also protect the watershed health So very helpful for degraded landscapes So one thing when I was on the beach a little while ago, I saw this Stink horn popping up when I was looking at these Sand dunes that were going into the ocean and thinking about all the sand dunes like hang on there And I saw these little hi-fi holding Sand particles together and then little succession of lichens and then this popping up and it was like of course you're here You're always on the edge of where we're losing ecosystem And I don't yet know it's it's you know biological functions, but I was just like fascinating So what we can do is we can partner with protecting them, you know, no rototilling Don't compact soil. Don't over fertilize. You use a broad fork instead Keyline plow you can sheet mulch do enrich your soil with quality compost add my go Riesel to roots of species plant with Species that sim symbia size. I don't know if that's a word with my go Riesel Made it up today keep soil covered with cover crop or mulch and incorporate charged Biochar biochar works wonderful with fungi create surface airing when you charge it up with urine and other compost teas. It's amazing So I'm just gonna briefly touch on How much time do I have none? Yeah, all right. We're gonna go through this in a second My creation using microbes micro emanation using fungi for the rumation using plants It's all about chemistry. Basically the fungi recognize the toxin and you partner with it You know fungi know how to break down lignin and cellulose trees petroleum. Guess what? It's a hydrocarbon. It's also a CH bond and that happens with all these other species so there's a whole system of how you do it just matching up things and creating substrate and Be careful with heavy metals because those are ones that are more complicated but you could do with hydrocarbons and and Pathogens and excess nutrients like phosphate and nitrate I think in this watershed you have too much nitrate going at where I live We have too much phosphate Michael riser will actually uptake it and redirect it into plant cycles and get it out of water It also breaks down all the crazy chemicals that we have floating around in the Abyss in the ecosystem. I won't get into the watershed where I live but just like the watershed here, it's in a lot of trouble and Same story of why your waters where you live this watershed is in trouble our watersheds in trouble this is a study that The service that I help facilitate did with UVM and we basically focused on working with a fungi to try to remediate E. Coli because there's too much E. Coli because farms don't have support to manage their manure and We found that we actually did decrease the E. Coli. However, we have nutrient questions There's a lot of questions about nutrient cycles, so there's a lot we don't know but we do know fungal mats work, but we know less than we do know and I'm not gonna get into all that but there's implications where this can help with stormwater design and rain gardens and repairing buffers and We have a couple projects going on in Colchester in Castleton and hopefully she'll burn farms if we can figure out the funding trail I encourage everyone here and I imagine a lot of you already do partner with the fungi go to the forest listen to them They're waiting there are elders Develop relationships with them fungi language is different than playing language, but it's similar requires us to be humble and listen I Already mentioned all these things we can do with buffers Microryzei fungi. There's so many industrial agriculture point source places that needed in stormwater runoff and large-scale farms It could benefit the youth and the public need to know about it textbooks have like one paragraph about soil Maybe a line about fungi And then research like everyone in here is a citizen science We need more people on deck. Mycology is actually like a very new science, which is like kind of ridiculous And you think about how old they've been here So we need like everyone on deck and there's another fellow here Jesse I think who grows a lot of mushrooms and we have a group here Myco node and we have a lab and lots of resources. We'd love you to come join us. It's open to everybody These are a couple of great resources To get both products and education these are a couple books and if you want any scientific articles I could fill your inbox. So feel free to be in touch and we don't have time for questions because we want to hear from one Okay, one thing is that we have a survey we're trying to get a stair grant for one of our projects This is for farmers and we it's I know farmers have to fill a lot of surveys But this is short and it's just to find out what you need for support to learn more about Implementing microimmediation projects on your land So if you would be so kind as to use it to fill it out It helped us when we write our stair grant to say see there's a need for this So there's a stack of surveys up here Thank you. Thank you for inviting me to the Seoul series. This is amazing. I want to thank God for choosing a picture of me 15 years ago And I also want to say that to Jessica that I've been doing our research with Eight sources of compost and I'm looking at fungi and but in bacteria and We'll talk more about it but interesting results about the amount of Fungi and bacteria in different sources of compost basically went from commercial to comes home stat residential dairy sheep composed beef to beef farms and amazingly residential and Johnson Sue which is a new new to some form of making compost Where the ones that have the most bacteria and fungi? Okay, so thank you for having having me today. I'm gonna talk about What does farming with the nature mean and I'm getting into deep water here Because I'm going to tell a story about one of my mentors One of my professors when I was living in Brazil, I did my college there He was one of the pioneers in Rotational grazing in America's and I want to start with a provocative question, you know Can you read in the back? What is the difference between these two photos? these and these 10 seconds The second one to plow mining fundamental differences Petroleum powder, what else scale scale. Okay, what else? Ability yeah, we're turning all good 300 force power tractor versus a one force power manual plow and What is the difference? Energy. Yes. Oh, right. No, all right, and I will say that the one that is missing Is the time to plow the area? Okay, these can plow A hundred acres or more in one day Okay, please, you know these Beautiful points here Okay, so by doing that what are we doing? We are disturbing the soil. We are turning the soil and making it Enhancing soil respiration and when we do that we free carbon just like a kid loses a balloon Into the air. Okay so The faster we do it, you know the more soil will lose the more carbon will lose and when we disturb this the carbon cycle We disturb the water cycle and we disturb the nitrogen cycle and other biogeochemical cycles Okay, I want to get into jargon here, but just to so this is this is the symbol and Scat and I must mention that I'm using some of the photos that you use or some of the pictures that you use in your Presentation, you know just a chance, you know, we're on the same page But I want to you guys hear me. It's a microphone workings Great so today's agriculture, so I'm not gonna add more than what Jess and Cat said, but basically in order to lose food we need to clear an area So we slashing burn. Okay, we Provide a packet of you know irrigation silos. We dry the seeds we commercialize and The problem with that is that we're not producing with this model here. We're not producing food for humans. We're producing food for animals and For storing as a resource in case we run out of food But today we produce more than double of the food that the world needs So we're good at that We could take a break and and maybe Slow down a little bit because this picture here in Brazil I counted about 28 combines and and they are harvesting soy not corn and There are Machines no till drilling The next season in Brazil they can do sometimes three crops in a year okay Because of the climate and amazing soils that were forest before and most of these food goes to feed animals in confinement Okay, which is cruel Using cheap fossil fuels And leaving behind contaminated Water that we can't drink or swim or fish and Guess what we subsidize all that and produce, you know very cheap fast food so it's this is a model that is not sustainable and I'm gonna repeat some concepts that were said by my cat, but this is not a basketball. This is a grain of sand The next one here is a silt grain and This dot here is a clay So very distinct sizes again topsoil full of life predators Risosphere the you've heard that's possible concepts before rhizosphere can amplify the reaches of the roots and Interconnect like Jessica was saying but today we're living in an unprecedented crisis. Why because we're more people therefore, there's less land per capita land per person and And we are losing soil at an unprecedented rate 2400 tons per second like every second Okay, and it's not me who's saying this is foul and it's very old. It's like 10 years old or more Okay, and we are desertifying the earth at a rate of 1300 hectares per hour Okay, this is no no joke Okay, so it's like losing a Costa Rica size country every year But not only that Every 11 hectares of soil are still under expanding cities every hour in Europe Okay So I don't want to scare you with this. I would just want to bring reality here This is a crisis, you know, we have many civilizations that disappear because they didn't take care of the soil and One of the relationships between soil and health for instance some ecosystem services provided by soil So cyanobacteria which can be a culprit of some In some cases produces about 50% of the oxygen and it's indirectly responsible for the other 50% Some microbes make antioxidants Some microbes trigger neuro formation Some microbes break down calcium oxalate and that means If you have kidney stones, you probably have deficient microbiome so on and so forth so those are Those are benefits from soils to human health so we have been mining these soils and we learned a lot from They create the times of the Great Depression There was dust balls in this country and in many other cities in the world, but dust balls still exists today in many countries Australia Like countries in Africa. There are dust balls, you know, sometimes weekly. So that's soil Going away from their place Because there's no cover. Okay, so You can look at soil soil work as mining so we are mining for nutrients and there's a metric that says that Ever since the end of the Second World War, we have been losing Minerals and vitamins at 1% per year in fruits and vegetables okay, pretty dramatic but dramatic when you see big apples or being fruits They probably contain the normal macro elements which make possible for them to grow well But they may not have the traces the trace elements that are important for many body functions like Hormone formations many other functions and processes in the body and So as such, you know, we are reaching several planet-style limits such as climate change and nitrogen nitrogen use by diversity loss presidential rates and We are losing biodiversity at a very high high rate About a thousand times higher than the background rate And I want to I wanted to bring this slide that shows The evolution did this it shows Price indexes in percent and these are years 1970s through 2015 and looks look at the fertilizer price versus food price index They're almost identical so that means we have a heavy dependence on the fertilizers and When one goes up the other one goes up, too And That's a bad habit, and I'm gonna show why is about have it. Okay? Think as this light as misplaced I want to I want to start with this slide first in 1960 Dr. Pinaire Machado was was my I Mean he was my mentor in the 90s when I did agronomy Okay, but he was the first one one of the first one It was the second one to start a rotational grazing in Brazil And maybe in the in the Americas, okay? He bought a farm that was that had sand soil not sand dissolutes These were the the soils before he started after running animals through design to these fields All the soils started to get covered and Can someone tell me what are these bumps here? Manure urine they're called ghost patches This is five years later, okay, and Because he was a he was an academic he measure he measure his soils and He looked at organic matter in 1959 Zero point nineteen. This is extremely low amounts of organic matter Phosphorus solute phosphorus less than one ppm Total phosphorus not available at that time potassium okay, okay 2.15 1993 This went up almost eight times And phosphorus went up 16 times and potassium went up 33 times and then they measure again in 1999 and compared to his neighbor here and His neighbor was still doing continuous grazing versus rotational grazing Now rotational grazing you move animals fast from one faster to the next pasture How many farmers are you in this audience to a giant? Great three awesome so you move animals Daily and you put them in a relatively Relatively small area and you change them and the area rests until they come back rest in a dynamic way Depending on the time of the season it rests for 14 days to 40 60 days sometimes and That way you occupy the same area for five or six days in a year basically Okay, the thing is all this happened without adding fertilizer So where does the extra phosphorus and potassium come from? That's a question and Hold on and then I'm gonna talk about nature secrets and I'm gonna talk I'm gonna dare to talk about these for ecosystem processes That tells you that we can farm with the nature using process based agriculture in term in term instead of Input based agriculture. Okay, so on here. So soil processes. You didn't have this slide But basically every time we disturb the soil we are really destroying the habitat of many many Microorganisms macro and macro organisms. I remember when my my grandfather used to plow the land He bought the same land every year at the beginning lots of birds would come and Worms etc and I know this you know after some many years that No birds would come because there's no life in that soil Okay, and his yields went down and down and down everything is interconnected. So Dr. Pinheiro Machado said That he started establishing a theory for Why his soils went up in these elements without adding fertilizer. So He came up with bio-synosis with which is a dynamic development of soil life only if the soils are not disturbed Okay, he came up with that here theory before 2014 there 2004 So every time you move the soil you destroy those connections those interactions between those organisms and You become dependent on external inputs Okay So I'm gonna skip this slide because just The second theory was the trophobiosis which was coined by Chabuzzo in 1980s and Trophobiosis is a mix of three words trophomins food By your life and sees development. So basically the development the development of life via food basically Makes sense, right? And here on the book healthy crops and your repulsion revolution and basically the gist of it is that Healthy plants or plants grow grown in healthy soils They grow complex substances that Jerry Beretti used to call them funny proteins Okay, those are complex substances Which offer a barrier to path pathogens? Okay, so pathogens on the other hand are few insects a few a few of your organisms that have They lack enzymatic capacity to attack Plants that grow in healthy soils Okay, they need enzymes, but they don't have enzymes. They don't have all the enzymes needed to attack those plants But they will attack plants with highly soluble sap which are the plants that drink soluble fertilizer, you know Synthetic fertilizer, okay, okay And then the third process was the ethylene oxygen cycle which was coined by we do so in 1993 Australia and this happens in the microsites which are the soil pores where root hairs leave and absorb nutrients and basically he said that in these Micro pores there are Sometimes oxygen in water and when there's oxygen there are aerobic organisms aerobic bacteria and with plant activity there's an aerobic Oxygen and the pleated so these microorganisms go dormant when they go dormant anaerobic bacteria wakes up and releases ethylene by releasing ethylene iron Goes from ferric insoluble to ferrous soluble loses one charge And guess what? It frees other metals like phosphorus potassium calcium Okay droplets of droplets of nutrients So here we have three types of soil soil sponge middle of the road and a break basically so Yeah, so soil needs pores in order to in order to accomplish these important processes and then the fourth Ouch commutation of elements with low energy coined by Kerbram, you know Louis Kerbram a French French person Which means low energy nuclear reactions can transform nature elements into different ones You can turn carbon into gold. Yes, that's what he said okay, or Be very and another French scholar I studied and I studied papers of Kerbram and He said that biologists not only a chemical process about it also a nuclear one basically Elements in the right With the right soil conditions with the healthy soils Are able to change into other elements and as bizarre as it may think may seem you know This is the foundation for cold fusion basically transforming some elements into other elements is a theory But it makes sense so some examples of these Transmutation of silica into calcium There was an experiment that Kerbram did with chickens. He fed one pound of old and Which was high potassium and low in calcium When these chickens laid eggs the eggs had five times the amount of potassium and he said whoops what happened here So another experiment done by a Japanese scholar to Mizuno Transportation between from sodium into potassium so he He seeded some fungi Inoculated into a hundred grams of sand and clay medium with zero and with zero point zero zero six grams of Potassium oxide and after 72 hours he harvested three three six grams of these inoculated And he measured the potassium and the potassium was 1.58 grams 300 times more. How can it be so? my Where does the extra possible in potassium came from? he think is this process here that is Responsible for the extra amount of potassium because he didn't add anything basically and I like to you know finish with the soil health principles Because they support all these processes Manage manage more by disturbing less basically Diversified crop Diversity to get above and below ground Carbon Grow living roots as much as you can And keep the soil cover as much as possible so that it's an armor to the surface regardless of the use of moisture And like to leave you with these quote Just do Thank you Thanks Juan. Thanks Jess. That was great So we went a little over all of us. I think on our presentations because we just love to talk about this stuff So sorry about that, but I hope you enjoyed the information and we have 20 minutes officially left I'm happy to stay longer people want to stay past 8 30 But at this point this is when we need to get to know each other I don't want anyone leaving the room without knowing who was here because we live together We face a climate emergency together and together We have to fix this mess So if we all just get up and don't know who each other are how can we do that? So please stand up and make a circle with your chairs As best you can As best you can circle What a nice big circle So what I'd like to do now, we don't have enough time for Q&A We never do If I had planned four hour evenings, you guys probably wouldn't come So we're keeping it short and packing it in and we want to stay connected as we move forward So what I'd like to do now is have us go around Say who we are and where you from and then share with us either something your move by hopefully related to tonight's presentation and Maybe leave us with a question that probably will not get answered But we have note takers that are keeping track of all your comments and questions And all of these comments and questions help us to guide What we're gonna do next so your question will not ultimately go unanswered It's gonna help us shape What do we need to do to help prepare our community to start acting toward the resilient future that we need Rather than waiting. We are the ones that we've been waiting for so let's introduce ourselves I'm cat and I'm totally inspired that you're all here It really means so much and it means That we're on to something and that we have great energy and every time we do this I'm so inspired by the people who show up the skills that you bring with you the knowledge The passion the connections and I leave feeling like we got this We can do a statement or a question what you're feeling after all this or Yeah Well, I really respect soil scientists and Interested in learning more about fungi. I've always been interested but haven't really Spent a lot of time Learning about it. So I really appreciate it just this presentation I Can you just point that at your mouth? Well, we want to hear you Hello, I'm Elizabeth Seiler from Burlington And I'm inspired by all the people in the room and Also by the feeling that I don't have to figure the saddle bone That is a huge relief My name is Jesse Markson. I'm living in White River Juncture right now Think one of the main things that really inspires me at the moment is just the fact that Mycorrhizos one of the dominant contributors to soil carbon and I guess my open question is How can we continue to manage land and perennial food producing ecosystems while Cultivating these local partners to maximize soil carbon My name is Keith Walsh. I live at Bethford Center In my journey of starting to understand What's going on in the soil the first person that I reached out to was Capos And Years I would say now three four or five years after we these book is what they answer the whole thing really So incredibly inspired By information that I've learned and really I'm feeling incredibly hopeful and understanding that The speed in which we can turn around some of these things that we've been degrading is really feasible And within our grasp not just because of the volume of people in here, but because what a major works that well Cassie Murphy at South Royalsburg I totally was inspired by all the science and Really kind of really got into that part my question would be is How do you share that information with people who aren't so much into the science and To be able to extend to do things that are simple And I'm just really excited about Yes, it's got a lot of my player Some new things about soil processes today that I think I'm integrating To what I thought I already knew and also taking a lot about Land management and what drives land management positions and how to kind of get there from here My name is Karen Walker. Great. I also live in Montpelier and I learned a lot this evening. I've been a gardener vegetables and Flowers and fruit trees for many many years, but now I live in a condo And we have a small yard and I like Tammy Joe and wondering how I can convince my fellow Neighbors to be as enthusiastic as I am to Not have a long mode and make it all plants Lin Wilde. I'm from Montpelier also It is really good to see this many people interested in this topic. I just I cannot tell you. Hey, Jen I'm across the country to find my neighbors I was really glad to hear Kat talk about dirt to soil gave brown. I brought this book. I'm donating it to the cost here So it's here. I gave it to Jesse Markson a few minutes ago And if you haven't Had a really easy introduction to regenerative agriculture. This is fabulous book and it's got so much great economics And and science my first ever book on tape My question is um working on the Montpelier tree board uh in in uh Montpelier, obviously There's a lot of focus on dealing with invasives including Norway maple and crazy snake worms and of course emerald ash borer and I just wonder if and this is really a philosophical and one of those life questions If we were so focused on taking care of regenerating our soil and making it healthy Would we really need to deal with invasives? Would we just could we just kind of just let them be what they're doing and we would get the soil So that's the question I'm Shelby George. I live in Brookfield. I also work for rural Montpelier and I must say that I'm really impressed both tonight and at the other event within this series that I attended that Folks came from quite a distance to be here. And I think that's really special I don't do long events in Randolph and I think mostly it tends to be Randolph and Brookfield brain tree folks. So this is really very cool. Um I also wanted to say that I just really appreciate the the upbeat nature of these events And that's they're very hopeful because it's really easy to get mired down and you're going to do them We're talking about such big issues that we're all facing. Um And it feels good to leave these events with This Hi, I'm Laura Simon. I live in one of the villages of Hartford. It's called Wilder and I mostly been a social worker doing organizing most of my life and a little bit of music about the earth Teaching and I started doing some working on my friend's permaculture properly But learning about soil is new to me. I've been working on climate issues for a while putting a lot into that So, um, it's good to see you all and think about that maybe uh soil is part of what we have to focus on and make some positive change Hi, I'm Stephen Monks and I live in Stratford And I guess the question I would have is that that I've been growing vegetables for a long time and I have about an acre of gardens and my till And um, it would be I I can't even imagine how I would garden So, I mean, I would love to do all of this because I work with soil and I work with the earth But how do I do it? I'm Laura Simon from Hartford and um, I guess I got started by how quickly Uh, we can get culture back when there was stability before And my question is how how do we get people to be now afraid of microbes? So, I'm Miss Kate and I live in South Brunswick right now. I'm originally from the climate area in New Hampshire And it's cool that this area has this kind of thing going on. I really appreciate it Going off of what you said I work uh in a hospital and so it's like constantly like sanitizing and getting around Like God doesn't stop and I really like talking about how awesome they are Hi, I'm Sandy Kignore. I'm from Heartland and um, I Yeah, I can't wait to get myself a a broad broad huge fork So I'm not telling you so much and disturbing things. I think that's what I'm Getting clear and clear about And I I do have that question about invasions that was brought up and So so much talk about it getting rid of them and So I'd like to hear more about that Hi, my name is Jenna Corbett. I'm originally from Rowling County. I'm from Rowlington And first of all, I'd just like to say I'm very full to the space of you with all of you today And my question would be how can we reach Those who are working like three jobs and Apparently don't have a lot of time Is this going to be available to them? These steps and a little addition right now and um the information about transportation was very interesting and um curious to learn more about that and also About to talk to people about emerging needs Emerging plants that are called invasive is a great book. I doubt I would put lying on And storm water designed outside of schools just curious about Children being involved in that all over the state My name is Gary Ur I'm a farm boy from Illinois And then realized how I was screwing up the soil by throwing land And I'm gonna take a little spread it or running the fully called the honey wagon Has a miller on it I'm extremely impressed With the speakers tonight in the depth of their knowledge. I'm extremely impressed by the number of people why the people here I'm overwhelmed by the magnitude of the project Hi, my name is Penny Smith. I'm looking up and I've seen some of my neighbors here, but Good to see you Very excited about being here tonight and the fact that this group is looking at soil I am extremely concerned by the use of life estate products in the state and We're owed reports on That you've sent and the governor has yet to give us those reports And how can we know even the scope of the problem if our reports which Are mandated by the legislature are not being produced by the administration So that's just kind of a shout out Ask the governor to get those reports down And and when we're looking at soil you just cannot avoid the issue of life estate. It kills the soil You know Montegro has a patent for antibiotic For life life of sake because it kills everything and so I really think that you know With the prices that conventional farmers are gaining for milk and that whole financial prices I would just encourage anyone who has a heart for this issue to Try to work on ways to get farmers to transition away from using Because it kills and I think the market is going to do that for us second court case Only 11,100 million to go so You know things a little bit there, but You know we live in a small state and if if just the people in this room Would write the governor and say first that report On pesticide use of the state we'd probably see a little action on it. So Good to see you guys Hi David from Randolph Like everybody else that's really impressed with the welcome to be presented tonight I'm glad the information's being transcribed I'm not the scientist You got a lot of work to ahead of me just to try to understand it's a little bit better But um Great that Good more research is going on out there Okay Yeah, I'm looking forward to the most thing to understand that they're Over stuff and I work here in town and um again, I See the magnitude of the problem But I'm hopeful because of the work that is being done. So Um My name is uh gene poutay and Thank you for the three presenters. I thought they were awesome. And I think the quote That really got me was that very last quote that fell ahead up there about What we know already keeps us from learning I think in my case, it's true I'm a raised vegetable in the same spot on a farm with my wife for almost 30 years And uh, we're always trying to tweak things and I'm really excited to learn about this mycelium Also, as you know, we've been experimenting with the nematodes as a To target soil organisms that we Bad Um And thanks a lot for putting this on My name is Dan Colby. I'm from Randolph as well. Um, I'm my colleague of wands and we've been some persons saying a lot So a question that I sort of been hearing in the room is what actions can we take? And as a person who works with farmers a lot, I can certainly encourage folks Please change your backyards, but please buy from farmers that are treating the soil the way you want Because they need your help Um, and at the risk of sounding really self-serving Our farm is a mile away We raise grass based lamb and we protect both the Ayersbrook and the White River because we're in between both of those So keeping the soil covered is pretty major in our work. Could you say the name of your farm? We're howling bull farm and and jean, could you just say the name of your farm? We are a tumbre trail farm Matt from tundra and just interested in Growing a bunch of fruit and nut trees pretty soon and I just realized we needed to learn a little bit more about the soil So it's kind of a good first step, but it's pretty interesting the concept of the soils and people hope for tonight as well Hi, my name is Cynthia Cooley-Chair. I live here in Randolph But uh, we are going to be getting started with the Randolph community orchard with planning after verse five Orchard and also we have some property examples that we've already started pending because our soil really does need help So I was left with about some of these options or for The principles and I guess my question would be where can I get the presentations that want out as the love Or just the references I would love to You know delve into some of that a little bit more. One question. I'll answer sure make sure you sign up on the email list And they'll be in the notes. All right. Thank you My question is We both Have My question is And Uh It's What's up Hi, I'm Megan, living in Cambridge. I was very excited by Jess's presentation. I'm a mushroom forager, returned from Ohio, was a mushroom forager there as well. And I agree that in some more times living to know our fungal ancestors. I also had a similar question about how we can increase the access of this type of knowledge and experience to places elsewhere. I'm originally from Cleveland but I can tell you that this is not how it is everywhere. And Vermont as a whole is definitely a pocket. And I wonder how we can increase the access in places like Cleveland. My name is Carol Gordon, I just moved to Cleveland as well. And yeah, I'm inspired by this fact that life is really a small area of six fields. And if you think about the short length of our small atmosphere here in the universe, in which we all live, I'm still, I'm kind of shocked, my background is in bio-demetic agriculture a little bit. I'm kind of shocked how much we need science to tell us how important and vulnerable life is. I mean, it's been a topic since a few years now in my life and I'm still shocked by that fact. And I think if we were more compacted, like the value-gray system as already in those principles, then we might even get climate change deniers, which still are the leaders of religion and stuff. And what we really need is this cultural shift in which we like to work with the soil and don't run away from it. And I've been, of course, very inspired by it. Hi, I'm Kai Cochran and I live on a small farm in West Park Creek. And I was definitely inspired today by a phone conversation that I had. I worked in the 70s and 80s, I lived in Montana and worked with a group that was promoting the use of renewable energy. We called it alternative energy back then. And I realized that I love learning this stuff. I think it's wonderful. It's just so encouraging. And I realized that it's a huge problem and not everybody, knows about it and I want to spread the word like, man, I had this phone conversation today with some friends in Montana that I used to work with on renewable energy. And I asked them what they were doing and this is what they were working on, too. So I was very encouraged. Everybody, all together, thank you, Black Queen. Is she back there? Thanks for dinner after the moment. I might involve Ronald and I do the basic species management without chemical methods. From Lake Champlain to Cape Cod to do it since 2010. Got the inspiration from Massachusetts, I was mentioning that. This was a brilliant evening. Thank you to all the travelers and presenters. Be safe on the way home. Went to the pesticide advisory council meeting today. I was the only member of the public there that said something. I did submit to the leader of the council where are the reports on pesticide usage that stopped in 2013? We've got five years of data. I was in the military. I was in the Forest Service. You never have enough people. You never have enough money to get to work there. You give me the numbers. Throw them out there on the floor. You give me the numbers. I'll bring you the people. For free. And we will make five years of reports. For free. That's free labor. So I mean, I see how many people in this room. I told them I have ten people. And if they put the numbers on the table or on the screen or whatever, we will make the reports that they don't have the people to work with. And they did say, that was cool. They were receptive to that. And Bill was off. They said, well, it's all about it. It's an IT issue. So now I have to go get my... It can change systems. But that's enough. Five years, that's not as much of an excuse. And I think people have already asked tonight as well. If you want things to grow, I ask people this all the time. They tell me, what do I do about the knotweed? What do I do about this? I say, well, do you want things to grow here or not? Well, yeah, I do. I do want things to grow. Then why would your first step in management be add toxin? I mean, that's why would you move backwards if you want to move forward? So I don't want to blab about that too much. Yeah, build soil. Ask your... I don't talk to the governor. You can talk to the Senate and the House Agriculture Committees and ask them why in the past three years appeared from some guy from Royalton who makes a lot of noise. Why do we not yet have a cure for Lyme disease so we can work for the land without pulling up a little ball in the night because we can't move our bodies anymore? Why don't we have a cure for Lyme disease and why do Vermonters burn... This is on us. Why do we burn 40,000 piles of unwanted vegetation a year? I prune apple trees and they always ask me, I'm going to the sky tomorrow and you wouldn't stop. What do I do with the vegetation? Do I burn it? No, the planet's hot enough and you have kids. So all those branch tips, that's next year's future soil. 40,000 piles a year, I think a math. And that's something that this group can change and people should get paid for not burning their sort of branches. That's enough pruning for me. I'm from Leeds Town, home gardener and I really like part of this group. I hear new concepts every week and I just write down those concepts and I go home and I do the research on it and get more jazz about it. But one thing I just wanted to put out is my friend Kai came and she lent me one of her books and so the idea of sharing books and information that we all have resources at home that we can share with one another. So I would just like to encourage you and maybe we can figure out a way to communicate that and share. A little bit more and we're starting to pull us somewhere in there and like I said, so many parts of really hopeful but so many people here today. I'm Brian Thokar from East Montpelier. I'm a climate activist and educator and have been gardening here in Vermont for about 35 years. And even though I was a pretty serious science geek in an earlier phase of life my approach to gardening has been mostly more experiential and intuitive and I'm just really inspired by the presentations tonight to think more about how I roll back together. Hi, I'm Aaron. I'm from Randolph. Just an avid home gardener looking to maybe potentially expand it into maybe a small farm so exploring that possibility. It's been really interesting to see so many different people from all over the state that it seems like. I don't know that I really have the questions just still kind of a lot to digest and think over. Thank you all for putting it together. Hi, my name is Joelle. I'm a farmer, organic vegetable grower in Worcester, Vermont. I've been farming for about 16 years. I know about a lot of this stuff for longer than that and I still can't believe we're farming the way that we farm in the Midwest. And I know a lot of people mention invasive species and that's the symptom of our industrial agricultural system when we're shipping food across the world back and forth. I'm dealing with an insect called Sweetmidge which came from Eurasia a couple of years ago. But I also work for 350 Vermont and we're doing a climate walk April 5th, really nice. Well-brained it. And walking from Middlebury to Montpelier and we're going to be highlighting some of these solutions along the way. I think Kat's going to come do a presentation so hope some of you can join. My name is Carl. I'm the co-founder of Soil for Climate. We're honored to be one of the sponsors for this series. If anyone's interested in following this discussion at a global level, I encourage you to join our Facebook group. We have over 10,000 members over 100 countries around the world. So it's been very exciting to watch the emergence of communities around the world who are interested in these topics. I recently saw a talk by John Kemp of advancing eco agriculture and one point that he makes which I found kind of revolutionary is thinking that all insects are beneficial and that when your plants are attacked by insects it's nature's way of eliminating from the fruits of five plants that are not nutritious enough to be consumed. Hi, I'm Vanessa Ruhl. I'm from Stratford. I'm inspired by the soil. Everything that's on it just goes away. I want to echo, I guess, that feeling that this is how we need to change things. I think it's building these connections and biomimicking socially and at the same time holding the despair of knowing the machine out there. I work on trying to get decision makers to transition to renewable energy all over the country with moms like organizing and showing up and I see how organized they are on the other side and I hate to put it in those terms but we are, I don't know how we stopped the machine because that image that you showed of the toning, the scale, or look at the scale right at this room versus what's out there. I guess so that's my question and I hate to leave that one. All right, Debbie. It's a really important question. Maybe we don't need to fight for it. I don't know, but we... Yeah. I just think it has smallest microbisodes and material to it. My name's Nancy. I've got a small pump stick on the side of fellas' falls and I was really struck by the quote. Is it you, Jess? If you screw it up, it's your responsibility to fix it. Yeah. So I'm sitting on this really, really lovely piece of land and I don't want to screw it up and what I don't know is driving me crazy so thank you for this because it helps me learn a little more and there was a piece of my land in that slide going down the Connecticut River into the Long Island Sound after Irene and followed by all of the knotweed that came in after it. So yeah, we've got horses outside of ourselves that are impacting our ability to care for our land and this helps us know more about how to do that. So thank you. I'm Tatchana Shriver. I live in Westminster, West. I have a little farm to go there to and also try to teach about ecological agriculture and also work for the Rich Earth Institute in Brattleboro. That's to work on using... that birdie urine from the waste treatment using it as a fertilizer. So I'm very interested in... I don't want to make connection with Jess. I'm very interested in what I learned tonight about or I want to learn a lot more about my goat remediation and all that sort of thing. I've always been very interested in soil and soil diversity and all of that stuff but really understanding it better and what all these critters are doing and how they're doing it is really interesting to me. But something that's come up a lot or come up in my mind a lot tonight is this whole question of the relationship between scientific ways of thinking and other ways of knowing. You mentioned, Jess, in your talk, how do we include all those ways of knowing together and speak across those different ways? I think it's really interesting that the science, at least for me, is so fascinating and I want to learn more and that's a way that I really like knowing but other people have other ways and it doesn't work for them and so how do we really cross those differences and bring them together? That's really interesting to me. Also, I just want to say I really appreciate what people have said. It sounds like there's a shift going on in thinking about invasive species and I'd really like to see us really change our way of thinking and talking about these plants that are just coming here and it's not their fault. They're just doing their thing. I don't want them to be blamed. I think we need to think about it another way of thinking about that. My name is Beth Champagne and I used to live here but I've been up in St. John'sbury now for 20 years and this is the most wonderful evening. This is the third time I've come and I do intend to get back the next two times. I'm sitting directly across from Randolph and seeing lots of other people either that I'm excited to listen to or that I know from one place or another and Jen Colby up there told me last year that her sheep were able to get rid of all the so-called poison parsnip which is really not poison. It's something to do with photo sensitivity. Yup. Yup. You know, when Seven Days ran that long article saying, oh, there's just nothing you can do about it, I was not impressed. Yeah. So this is it's just phenomenal the people that are here tonight from so many different towns and that we all care enough to show up and learn and get acquainted. My big takeaway for tonight and this is pretty well sad and it's funny too that this is the first time since I started reading all these books like Cows Save the Planet that teach you about soil I'm going to hear Carl talk a few years ago I think it was a 350 Vermont annual meeting at the old this is the first time that I really feel that I can get into my garden and not have to it took me a long time I'm Steve Herbert and I live in St. John's Berry I was really excited tonight to hear a subject talked about of biotransmutation especially by a university professor he's special transmutation of one element into another I would like to know what he knows about a similar phenomenon like what airplanes do taking elements in homeopathic amounts and multiplying them in quantity I'd be really excited to hear that too at some point thank you you want to know this your neighbor from St. John's Berry I would say that I'm not impressed with the amount of people and the energy in this room because after all this is Vermont and that's what we do we get together to support a cause and we really do it so thank you Pat for hosting these and for John and everybody one thing I want to say is we need to take responsibility for what we do and one of the ways that we can take responsibility is I'd like to support what Jen said if we can the question I have is can we think about buying one farm product per week from a different farm I think we're going to be better off our farmers are going to be better off we are facing a tremendous crisis right now in Derry the other side of the coin is that crisis can bring opportunities and I see these groups popping up in different places as a great format for a change and I call full and it makes me proud to be to have chosen Vermont as my home home place I'm very impressed about learning all about soil and soil restoration and I feel like that's the future of agriculture and we have to incorporate all these methods into our agricultural practices and I wish that we could learn how to grow I feel that conventional agriculture has to evolve into field methods that can concern the soil I'm joined from East Randolph I want to say I'm grateful to Cat, Jesse and Juan for tonight's presentations they were really terrific and I want to make a plug for a free home orchard workshop in May at the Randolph Community Orchard up near Exit Ford sponsored by Bale's Resilience University and an eco-rubin from the East Hill Tree Hi, my name is Scott from Randolph and I want to thank the earth for putting up with us and now that I know that the soil is alive I'll have somebody else to talk to Hi, I'm Warren from Richmond Richmond technically still and I just wanted to share a fact that I learned last week I went to a conference on adding large 20-degree to rivers and there was this really interesting fact that came about which was that beavers have effectively been removed from Vermont since 100 years before the first European settler came so we actually have no idea what our landscape would look like I think that's really mind boggling I thought you guys would appreciate it So Lauren has been taking notes for us for all this time so if you're reading those notes or getting those notes it's highly due to the fact that Lauren has been typing the entire time Thank you all so much This is really great Our next one is April 10th that one is about Resilience We'll have Simon Dennis, Mindy Blank Henry Harris and Chris Wood as our speakers and then the last one of the series is April 24th and that's about pooling the planet with water Carl Tiedemann here is going to be on the panel along with Henry Swayze Judas Schwartz who wrote the book Cal State of the Planet and Jan Lambert who also wrote a book that's in our raffle and she's a wonderful person you'll hear more about beavers from Jan and May 8th that is so important that you come on May 8th because that's where we're going to start getting to work and we're going to keep working and keep working and keep working we have to keep showing up we have to Oh no May 8th is here May 8th is here but you might be confused with another thing I'll tell you about so there are so many events going on if you have events that you know about and you want other people to know about please write them down we'll make sure they get in the calendar that we share with everyone but just today we booked the State House lawn for May 6th at 11 am and Vanda Nashiva is going to come and speak so it's a Monday and yeah so that's happening 350 Vermont I just want to put in another plug for their climate walk and also check out their website they have so many cool events happening right now really focusing a lot on solutions they're doing great work so plug into them Resilience University also is a really great place to learn there are lots of small towns doing sort of skill shares right now support those those are your neighbors sharing their skills and that's what we need to get out of this mess so thank you so much and we'll see you again if you want to help out by putting a chair away that would be fantastic