 Hey, it's Matt the Stone Day Farmer coming at you from Farm For All and today I'm going to hit you with a permaculture observation. Now it's going to be a short video this week. I've got to get my RV unloaded so it can move on to its new home, but this gives me the perfect opportunity to unveil a new series I've been thinking about, all about the observations that we can make in nature and bring back to our gardens. Dear are not the enemy. Now before you click away because you think I'm full, let me explain myself. I live in a rural area. We have lots of deer. We have probably about 20 deer on our property and if you live in an area like I do where there's a lot of predation in the garden from deer, you probably think I'm crazy for not thanking the deer or the enemy. They can get into the garden and destroy it in a matter of seconds. What if I told you that you're the problem in this scenario? Let's take a walk. Here is a lettuce plant that is bolting. There's something very important about it, but I want to show you a different one while you try to figure out what that is. Here's another lettuce. You might be able to notice these brown little nubs all over the plant. The difference with this one, first of all, is that it was a victim to predation by deer. Another difference that substitute observers might notice is that instead of a single stem, this one's got three main stems and all these little side shoots coming off of it. Why is that important? Let's talk about it. Now, I don't have the time to go into the politics of seed saving and food sovereignty, but just know that if you can, you should be saving seeds. And in a normal garden situation when you're not saving seeds, when you're having someone else grow your seeds for you and then you're buying from them every year, it is super annoying to have deer come in and munch on your plants and completely decimate everything. It's a huge deal. But when you get involved in the process from beginning to end, when you plant seeds, eat from your plants, and then let them produce their seeds so that you can plant them again the next year, the story changes a little. Just look at what happens on the plant that didn't have any predation by deer versus the one that did. The one that didn't have any predation by deer grew a single stalk and the few flowers that it creates are going to create a few seeds and that's all it's going to make. The one that did have predation by deer went into crisis mode and it started creating more and more branches. It's basically saying to yourself, I need to create a lot of seeds, something is trying to eat me. I need to get this job done so that I can have offspring in the next generation. Genetic selection is important. Even if you're just trying to preserve a variety, some level of selection is still happening. Even if you're not selecting for flavor or production, which you should be, some kind of selection is happening. Whether it's the climate that you're growing in or your growing methods or the specific disease and pest pressures that exist in your garden, the plants that are able to survive all of that are the ones that produce seeds and the ones that do it the best produce the most seeds and have the most offspring in the next generation. And if you're buying your seeds from some company that's halfway across the country every year, then you aren't selecting for how you grow and where you grow. You're selecting for wherever that company is and whatever growing conditions that they supply. That becomes especially important when you're doing something extreme like gardening without irrigation. If every year you aren't selecting plants that do best without irrigation, then your garden is never going to move beyond merely surviving and onto the point of actually thriving. If you're bringing in new genetics every year instead of selecting the best genetics, then your garden is merely going to survive. If deer always eat your best plants, it's not by accident. Deer have preferences just like people do and they want the best, tastiest, juiciest plants that they can get their little mouths on. Now imagine a world where people don't exist. Plant breeding would still happen on some level and that's because when herbivores bite a plant, plants respond by branching out, creating more flowers and creating more seeds. And that gives them a leg up in the next generation. And in a natural environment undisturbed by humans and with an abundance of food, herbivores will never eat a plant to the ground. That's because the best, tastiest, tenderest parts of the plant are the tender growing tips. Herbivores want the best parts of the best plants and the plants respond by producing more seeds in response to that predation. As long as something in the environment doesn't change that suddenly makes those genetics no longer able to compete, then things are just going to get better and better with each generation unless humans step in and mess it up. It's almost like clockwork, how evolution has developed these processes for improving things. If the deer munch on your best plants, don't fret. They're just unconsciously trying to select for the best plants that they want to eat in the next generation. As long as we don't step in and meddle with that process, we benefit from it as well as them. Plus, it saves us the effort of trying to choose which plants we want to save seeds from. And if you don't have deer, follow their lead. Take the tops off of any plants that will respond to predation by branching out and then you can have more seeds from the plants that you like the best. This has been Matt, the Stone Day farmer with the Permaculture Observation. 2,000 subscribers and beyond, I thank you.