 We're trying to be like a, like a lived example that it's, that it's possible to adapt to small scale living to low energy, low carbon living and to thrive. Ashley Colby is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas brought to you by 1.5 Media and Innovators Magazine. Ashley is the executive director of the Resoma Foundation. She earned her PhD in environmental sociology with a focus on household food production in the United States. Her dissertation was published as a book subs, subsistence agriculture in the US connecting to work, nature and community. I've got the book right here. I'm excited to talk to her about it. It will be absolutely fabulous. In the process of completing her research that Ashley discovered the creativity in individuals creating diverse and formal economies unnoticed by policymakers and politicians. Ashley is interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. Ashley is a qualitative researcher, so she tends to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. Ashley's focus has turned to Ryzone Foundation where she seeks to accelerate local decentralized networks of people who can get us to the next iteration of society as fast as possible. Ashley, welcome to the show. It's so good to have you. Thanks so much, Mark. I'm really honored to be here. Really, really honored. Thanks. Ashley, it's a sheer pleasure and I have to let our listeners know. I read your book, then I reached out to you to discuss it on the podcast and kind of there was some things that just really touched my heart some words that you use in the book that I feel are the direction that we need to go as humanity as far as subsistence as farming as homesteading as regenerative agriculture, and that will be a big solution to a lot of the woes we have, not only with climate and environment but just as human health and the suffering that we're seeing around the world. It's a short read so you're not very thick, but it was your PhD work so it was your thesis correct. Yep, it was my dissertation for my PhD at Washington State University. Yep. I've heard you on a few other podcasts and you said sometimes between the publishers and those you were working with on the thesis that sometimes it was a little struggle, a little battle. Why was that? Is it so cutting edge? Is it so different than what they've heard in the academic world before? What were some of the reasons that came out? Sure. So when it, I guess to back up a little bit, I started to get interested in sort of small scale food production before I even went to graduate school. After college I was kind of doing the typical, you know, international travel on a shoestring, trying to, you know, see the world find myself and found myself drawn to these small scale markets and like food culture and you know people just bringing things in from the local region and producing things locally and eating seasonally and it was always so interesting to me how common that is around the world. And so when I went to grad school, I thought, you know, maybe I'll focus on something like small scale food production and see if I can find out, you know, as a qualitative researcher, you know, interviewing and doing ethnography, what it is people, if there is a movement for small scale food production in the United States and, you know, can I find people and if I can find people, you know, what do they have to say? What are the reasons behind it? But then, you know, bringing this up to my committee who wants to know what is the sociological significance, right? What does it matter? There's a few people with tomatoes who cares, you know, it's just like a, it's a hobby. It doesn't, it's a fringe. It's not central to anything. It's not central to our economy. It's not central to anything that sociologists care about, which is a lot about, you know, inequality and social structures, institutions, this kind of thing. And so I had to fight a bit that that I think indeed it is something significant while it might be not a huge number of people taking part yet. I make the argument that it's a small scale production, not just food production, but even craft production, is kind of our normal state. It's our normal economy historically, like as human beings, we're normally create things and normally, if I say normal, I mean, you know, for the most amount of time in human civilization and in the most parts of the world, most people would be involved in some form of production, you know, just food centrally, but you know, goods and services and even home production, the production of and processing of things in the home, home economics. Even down to gardening, right? Right. Gardening. I mean, even down to like making cheese or processing things to be stored for winter and this kind of thing. This is common. This is normal human stuff. And I think it's just, we're so far removed from that over the course of a few generations, especially in the United States, but you know, other advanced countries that it's almost like we're forgetting that. So I kind of had to make that case that there's a sociological significance to this. And I actually ended up going back to sort of Marks and Weber who are like the original sociologists to draw on some of their analysis talking about the movement to society and how it moved people out of these, you know, smaller scale craft production economies. And I was, you know, I used those, you know, sort of, I guess, original texts, sociological texts to make my case that it was something worthwhile to study. So I ended up winning because I ended up writing it. So that was good. It was amazing and you won in a lot of places. So there's a lot of things that will bring up in the book where I think you probably had a fight and you won. Not to put any negative light or anything on your university or where you wrote your thesis. Why was it so out there that subsistence agriculture farming in general didn't tie to economies I mean what what age were they in where they still stuck in the dark age because as far as my version of the history and I think as yours as well. So isn't, isn't the world's oldest and most successful longest running economies in the world and agrarian society over 10 10 to possibly 12,000 years old. Yeah, I mean, yes, and this is so funny. I mean I think part of what what I'm always fighting against is that. I think part of it is an analysis of the Academy itself, everyone in the Academy has become so specialized that they don't take a large view of things and that what's funny historically is that it turns out just because of the history of the land grant system in the United States that it was rural sociology that studied anything to do with farming or agriculture and that was just considered a sort of, you know niche side, more applied, less rigorous less theoretical and you can hear in these words judgment value judgments right you know it's not. And in the Academy, things are built around prestige, they're built around, you know who gets who's using the most up to date theories etc. So to try to talk about small scale agricultural production in the context of environmental sociology. It's just a sort of a fringe and a niche thing and it just happens to be because that's just the thing that people, you know, weren't the main researchers who are the most prestigious aren't interested in it so. It's one of those things where I've, I have a history of just being headstrong about my interests and my desires and what and you know I kind of have this attitude you only have one life to live so just, you know, do what you're passionate about and you don't have to fight that but it's, you know it's no real knock on the university it is extremely widespread the belief that small scale food production is backwards. We've moved beyond that. This is that this is the thinking this is not my thinking, but this is a very very common thinking in almost every discipline, you know we're beyond that we can't go backwards. Forward we're progress there's all these metaphors of time moving forward, you know, and, and that would just be a backward step and we can get into this in more detail but the way that I think about it is we can sort of learn and take the best from the past, the most balanced part of the past, but that doesn't mean we have to forget all of the things that we've discovered and all of the best. There are some technologies that might be helpful to us in the future but it, you know, I think just pretending that we have nothing to learn from the past is is sort of hubristic. I would totally agree and thanks for kind of updating us on that and with the academia tends that we deal with a lot of these specialists these experts these siloed thinking and we don't understand how the bigger world connects. Not as systemic thinking but as this symbiosis this regeneration which we will talk about as well. I want to ask you some a couple personal things first and foremost. I'm honored and thank you for writing a contribution in my book menu be I want to let all listeners know that you're one of the new contributors we've added you to the website and that you'll be a nice section to the book menu be and so thank you for that, but I know a little bit more about your backstory and where you're at now you're in Uruguay, your family and I kind of, if it's okay if it's not too personal, I want to ask why did you escape from the craziness of the US and maybe some systems that you don't like, or was it that's the best place to do some farming and kind of some of the things that you do to, to your to find your niche in the world to really be successful and thrive, because we only have one life to live. Right. Yeah, so it's basically all of the above but the story is basically is more or less, you know, I'm, I'm getting I traveled all around the world, like I mentioned after college to something like 35 different countries and just saving up money as a nanny and then going on these trips you know buses and all sorts of crazy places and just sort of getting a sense that you know there's there's a big world out there, and there's a lot lots of different places one might land. And then going to graduate school and getting my PhD in sociology. I had an inkling about the state and the direction of the world, but that really cemented the details for me about how much deep trouble we're in you know I mean, not just environmentally but you know socially and you know I have all these sort of big ideas about how how things can change socially environmentally about how you can build community. But I did feel like where I'm from which is the south side of Chicago. I was just swimming against the current every day, all the time, in every way to try to make that that vision or reality so I figured, I think I can go to a place that is a little further along on my vision and or already has a history or culture of it, where I can not only sort of live the way that I want to live closer to the land and, and, you know, with a lot of time dedicated to my children and my family. But maybe I could, I could live that way and then bring some of those insights back to the US and so a lot of my, my project has been more or less to experiment with these things. Which includes things like homesteading and we have like this, we have a small scale rural school where my little, my little girls go and it's like a one room school house so I talk about that model for education and to think about education in a different way so the insights from this place this culture, and our experimentation as you know, people from the West in a very from a very developed city, trying out these different things. So I specifically is just a really great place for this particular goal that I have our set of goals it's just, I mean there's a huge culture of sharing and cooperation interdependence there's a huge culture of small scale production. So, you know when we first came here and we, and we bought some land. People who were meeting we're saying oh you know why why'd you come here oh well we said you know we just basically want to want to self produce some food and see try our hand at that and the response was always, oh how nice that's a wonderful way to raise kids. Whereas in the US. We're saying you know we want to live off land well why would you want to do that that doesn't make any sense and you know you have your PhD you should be doing like more ambitious things than that kind of thing you know. So Uruguay is a really, it's, it's, it's developed enough that we're extremely comfortable here, but we're doing all sorts of experimentation with sort of low energy living and small scale production and trying all all sorts of, you know, different community building exercises and we've got really good community here that helps me, you know to translate insights back to people around the world. We were on the gym, Jim rut podcast show. And you mentioned that you kind of stepped away from academia and tied to this paradox of different theories and ways of thinking that were continually being presented and I'd like to hear more about that you touch upon it and some different theories that we'll also talk about in the book as well. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and it seems like now you're putting it into practice you're trying it out yourself and how's that going and tell us a little more about that story. Sure. So yeah when you know, there's a couple of different things going on I mean I think all of these things at least in my mind they're interconnected and academia is in crisis mode I mean there's just less and less jobs there's more and more people graduating there's just this extremely stressful path to get a tenure track position you know you get into an adjunct position for years on end and you're making poverty level wages and you're moving your family everywhere and you're never settled anywhere and you know I just figured if I want to really experiment with like a high quality life. It's academia doesn't give me that option you know it really just isn't an option that's available at least not until you pay your dues for at least a decade or something like that so I figured you know my I've got my life my life is worth living now so I'm going to I'm going to do it. And yeah and I think moving to Uruguay. We're trying to be like a like a lived example that it's that it's possible to adapt to small scale living to low energy low carbon living and to thrive and and documenting that process. And I think this is just, I honestly I've learned a lot from the people that I've researched. So I learned about how they did it and I learned that it and it sort of made me feel empowered that I could do it myself. And this is the sort of message that I keep wanting to share with other people. You know I think what what happens is that a lot of people feel like stressed out and anxious and they just don't even they're they're on the treadmill they're in the rat race and they just think like I feel no sense of meaning from this I don't even know. I don't even know where to start to take a first step towards something that might resemble a more meaningful life you know and people are also extremely feeling doomer doomer sensibilities from the state of the climate etc etc and so I figured I would try to take a step in the direction of sort of detoxing from like too much consumer culture too much, you know, too much time on phones you know I don't know running from one place to another commuting, never seeing your kids you know and always trying to seek out that next level of prestige. And instead see if I could focus my values and my family's values on you know connection and meaning and maybe that the act of producing things together and you know the sort of feeling of efficacy you get from from producing and and teaching that skill and teaching some skills to my kids in that and sort of modeling that for them so that they don't have to go through a process where they have to painfully learn it you know it's just sort of mess it's just normal for their for their upbringing. I have to say it, it was extremely hard at first to adapt. And it's still a very slow process of sort of like detoxification and relearning a bunch of skills I mean, just the other day I made yogurt for the first time I never made yogurt and I was like this is so easy, but I didn't know I never had done it before and so it's like little by little I'm building skills and capacities, and when I do it I think like wow oh my gosh awesome now I only have to like buy milk and I can make yogurt I don't have to buy yogurt anymore I can make it and, and anything that I have in my fridge we have honey and we have preserves I can put those in with the yogurt and flavor and, you know this creativity that comes about. It is slow and you know half the time I'm googling something and trying to figure it out through different websites or sometimes I'm learning from friends and you know at first that's just extremely awkward and overwhelming when you're a person who's just main life is like going to work and then consuming thing buying things you know. So I think, yeah I guess my it's going pretty well it's going slow, but part of the reason I, I guess kind of want to evangelize this as an as an option for people is that it is slow going, and when crisis hits. It's even harder to adapt quickly, you know, and so if we get to a point where there's crisis and people are looking for some sort of solution. You know what what what kind of way of life might I, I pursued to help me solve the problem of the crisis that I'm facing whatever it is. It would be nice if more people were adapting sooner, so that it was, you know, a kind of a slower more gentle process of adaptation rather than this shock and now all of a sudden I don't have a warm water how do I you know what do I do to get I don't have you know what I'm thinking about Texas this snowstorm in Texas and my the buildings aren't made for it, you know, and all of a sudden we're in this crisis mode with no skills, you know so I'm thinking about, you know that trying to get people, just to consider and this this kind of, you know, small, it's almost like off off the grid, living subsistence living it's a self sustaining kind of kind of a direction, not to put you in you or your family into a box but would you would you say homesteader would you say subsistence farmer, would you say nomad I mean, is there a term do you want to stay away from terms, what's kind of what's the evolution or what's the direction that you're going in and, and to end up that the answer to that question. Is it because you feel this angst or unease with the world systems that they're not able to possibly support the basic needs of you and your family and that's why you're taking it into your own hands to make sure you have the skills and the tools to be able to do that yourself. Yeah, so on on the on the label question I never really called myself a homesteader until I got onto Twitter and I found that there's a bunch of other people out there. Like experimenting with the stuff that that I'm doing and they're calling themselves homesteader so you know for a sociologist for ease of, you know norms and you know labels I'm going to go ahead and use that term so that they you know sort of know that I'm part of the I like to say low carbon or low energy living because I think no matter what we need to have a low energy lifestyle and a low, and we are going to have a low carbon future, like they say it in Spanish co c yes or yes like that's going to happen so my, my perspective is to sort of adapt to a low carbon future before being forced to, and to do a lot of experimentation with the sort of low carbon living without, you know the pressure of crisis, you know I don't want to wait to learn keep chickens until I can't get eggs you know I want to learn the process and advance it if there is a point at which, you know for example global supply chains break down and you can't get certain things it's it's it would be nice. Oh, you know, I guess I want to say explicitly, I do think that globalized economies and like globalized supply chains need to go away, not completely but they need to be shrunk down so significantly, and our local product productive capacities, whether it's at the home scale or the community scale or even the nation state scale would be so much better than what it is. There's a there's a process there it's like, you know these these sort of I talk about it in my book a little bit the dual process one system is is failing or changing so rapidly the other system must come to being to address people's needs that that the first system is failing to meet so. Yes, so I do think that we're we both need and have no choice about a low carbon future so we might as well start, you know, experimenting with what that means and I think there's nothing lower carbon than like local but I mean my chickens are backyard chickens they they use very little feed and it's just free protein I mean they're really just walking around our yard. The eggs are free protein so it's these kinds of things. When I talk to environmentalists environmental writers or thinkers. They tend to think that this is silly. They tend to think that it's backwards or it's not significant enough. But I, I really can't see another solution that would be top down that would solve the carbon problems so thoroughly or so significantly as to sort of transform our entire our entire economy our entire way of living. You know, without some measure of more localized production and more people involved in small scale production as they have been for most of human history it's not you know rocket science and it's also not. Something that's just like totally off the wall it's very very normal stuff. And if you ever go anywhere around the world that's not. You know the most advanced urban center centers of the global north you know that there's like, even in Eastern Europe and in little towns you have people everybody's got little gardens and little chickens and this is sort of a normal part of life and I think I'm trying to, to advance that message is pretty normal thing, you know. Is that a conundrum or what why why do you think that they think it's silly why do you think environmentalists think it's silly is that the right. Right direction is it. What's your what's your thinking behind that. I have very strong thoughts about this. Um, I think that people are taught that the solutions, you know if if if I think about, for example, when I took a social movements class. People think social movements specifically the way you get social changes you go out and you protest and when you protest you, you got your signs and you demand change and when it comes to bringing in a low carbon future. I really don't even know I mean there's a few things you could do legislatively but that that demand change. It doesn't happen. You don't get a low carbon and entirely transformed localized economy by demanding change, you could maybe get them to put more limitations and regulations on fossil fuel companies for example but that has to be simultaneous with the some up change of transforming ourselves transforming our economies, transforming our relationship to one another. And I don't want to sound neoliberal or anything like it's, it's only individuals can do these things but part of, I think the specific point of view that I have that I don't really hear a lot of people repeating is if we need a new society from the bottom up okay and it's and it's going to be some mix of the old traditional ways of doing things and the and the new inventions that we've come up with as as a species. The only way to get there is through this process of adaptation and experimentation, you know what works I have a solar water heater out in the back of an outside of my yard. The way it works is sun shines on black tubes and it heats up the water inside. I am so glad that that has been invented. I think maybe you could go to the the Arizona State Legislature and say every single person has to have one of these solar water heaters in their house. Sure, that's one thing. But then the people have to learn how to use the solar water heater it's a different form of technology that they have to get used to, for example, in the winter here, I can't take a shower till like 3pm at the earliest and I can't wait for the sun to shine all day. So, I say this because I think that that the to live a low carbon life. One must figure out how to adapt. And this adaptation has to happen at the individual family and then community level. And so the reason a lot of environmentalists think we can we can just legislate this you know, and then we've got these protesters out there, but I really don't even know. We're legislating to like to put regulations on fossil fuel companies. Yes, but if all fossil fuels went away tomorrow, we would have a huge process of adaptation to learn how to live without them I mean every part of our lives is is subsidized by fossil fuel so that's why I argue for the slow iterative experimental process at the community level where we're sort of learning co learning recreating. And I think, you know, I think it's just a mismatch with how people think social change happens but actually the scale of social change we need it's just, it's too much to legislate. Even if you could get the legislators to care or change any laws what would you be asking for it's it's it's just too much the transformation. It certainly has to be everybody you know everybody at once kind of thing. The education process of those politicians and legislate are so hard because they're not educated in farming or energy and multiple systems they're also very specialized and expert roles where they sell well, you know I'm really good at energy or I'm good at agriculture or industrial agriculture, but all these other things you're talking about that play into the big system of life, you know the systems view of life the web of life. I can't tell you about and so it's always the siloed linear lateral approaches to solving global grand challenges and that's not how the world works and so I love that you brought that up to two things so a lot of people misunderstand globally that industrial agriculture is as big it's a big driver, but it's a small portion of the world's food production the larger portion is homesteaders subsistence farmers small hold farmers small medium enterprise farmers that are doing farmers markets organic food, all of those together is upwards of 75% sometime you know some depending on what what crisis is in the world up to 80% now, especially during the years that have moved into homesteading and into subsistence farming. In your book, you actually do a study you go out and speak to subsistence farmers and farmers, mainly in Chicago and I'd like to hear if they're you know what other areas and also since the book. How many other areas have you heard from how many other farmers, and tell me some of the aha moments that that you had that you talk about in the book with these farmers, one of them is really. And I'll let you tell it in your own words but it's kind of like you're like, boy this farmers environmentalists and they don't even know it, but the way they're living is pretty damn good actually. Yeah right so yeah and I think. So I'll get to that but I think, just to bring what I'm going to talk about to your previous point. I think when we're thinking about environmental social change, you know the people who are out there protesting, there are people who consider themselves, they will self label themselves environmentalist, and that tend to be left leaning highly educated on the urban people. And I think that the kind of person who might label themselves environmentalist is a pretty narrow niche, and we need a bigger tent. And so I, you know, set out on the, when I'm doing my research to be completely open minded who you know who might be here in this movement to a low carbon future, is it are we excluding people who are natural allies and or who are actually doing low carbon living and the answer to that was yes so you know the first thing is. I went to interview people, I said for my book okay you have to produce at least 50% of your own food to be in my study. And I don't know if I'm going to find anyone in Chicago who's doing that in or around Chicago I did the suburbs to and rural areas around Chicago I interviewed people and it was so easy to find people which was the first clue to me like wow this is actually pretty amazing. There are a lot of people producing a significant amount of food in and around the city and the other thing is when you're a researcher you're doing what we call snowball sampling where you find somebody and you ask them to introduce you to other people. Everybody knows each other in this community that was another key and a little aha moment like what's going on here. You know we're told that everyone's atomized and no one knows their neighbor and you know everybody here in this little community of producers knows each other what's going on. So basically when I first started interviewing people I'm asking them why did you get into this and I got this sense that they're sort of people reach some sort of crisis point. Whether it was I don't trust the quality of the food you know there's all these food recalls I don't trust labels, they seem like they say one thing but then you know then there's, there's issues with the quality of the food. Some people like for reasons of poverty couldn't access food, food deserts you know they couldn't get quality food where they lived. So they got into self production in one way or another and when they got into it. What was surprising to me is, you know, in sociology with a lot of studies of people who do like sort of they do organic consumption meaning they like go to whole foods and they think that's their contribution to the world which is good it's not a bad thing but they go and buy organic food and, you know it's just this kind of, you know, I'm protecting my own household attitude and it sort of stays there in the household and it's only really accessible to people have the money to shop there and that kind of thing. What I found is that when people start doing this sort of food production. It's a whole different ballgame because they have to figure out what they're doing like I was saying with the with the yogurt. They start reaching out to other people or they take classes or you know there's like one or two places in and around Chicago where you can get chicken feed, because of course that wouldn't be like a common thing you can get in a place where there's not a lot of small scale production. So, people go to the same stores to get the chicken feed and then they start meeting with each other and then they start sharing contact information and can I give you a call if I have issues with my chickens or anything. And they sort of built out relationships and networks of what I call communities of practice so for example in Chicago there's the Chicago chicken enthusiasts, and they have a website and they have an email listserv and they, they, a couple of people teach in it and the other aha moment that you were referring to before is when I went to interview rural people. You know I sat down with them and you know coming from you know academia and I'm from the south side of the city and you know I'm just so out of my element talking to these rural people and and who are you know big into hunting and fishing and all this. I sit down and I'm talking about you know how'd you get into the hunting and fishing and you know what are your biggest concerns and I remember I have a man in the book, Marty is pseudonym, who we're sitting and talking and he's going on and on about industrial fishing and fish life cycles and how there's there's all this waste getting tossed off of boats and barges and, and she. Yeah, yeah and how how unfortunate this is and how he's seen it happen and, and how when he goes hunting he wants to respect the amount of tags he was given to, to hunt with and how important it is to keep the ecosystem intact and, and he talks about his garden and, and I'm like, this guy's an environmentalist you know I mean he's what he's not just talking the touch, he's walking the walk every part of the way in which he produces food is with a concern for the environment and he's, and he's producing he's producing it's very low energy production and he truly cares and is a steward of the land that he's he's getting a food from. And of course he would never call himself an environmentalist and what was the, the, the, the, the, the main point that I know this is he said it's not climate change climate change is a hoax. And this is a really important was a really important insight for me because I think it's okay, and this is something I've been thinking about more and more to build big tent movements around shared production shared activities shared behaviors communities of practice. And if, if, for example, we want to live a low carbon life. Why don't we build communities of chicken keepers and communities of sustainable hunters and communities of yogurt makers and cheese makers and this kind of thing. And I, I had this several different experiences where there were meetups of people on specific topics one of them is called the, the urban livestock Expo, it was in, in February every February in Chicago which is freezing cold. In the city. City of Chicago high school, there were a bunch of people who keep small scale livestock in this, in this high school, talking about livestock talking about goats, chickens, ducks bees, keeping, keeping livestock in and around the city and the diversity of people talking about one another at that event, and they walk right up to one another just, oh, you know, I had mites in my chickens this year like what do you do, oh what do you do about the winter what do you do this, and just talking shop. I think that the insight I got from that was so profound because when I've been at political meetings let's say for example environment with other environmentalists. All we're doing is talking ideas, you know, oh well, no we got to do de growth oh no we got to do this with its capitalism it's not and it's like, you know we're just talking about ideas and not really getting to the nitty gritty of it. And we're arguing all the time and disagreeing, whereas in this case there were, there were ways to make relationships and friendships around the act of learning how to do a real thing a practical thing, and there's no barrier to, you know, do we all agree. It's really just do can you help me with my chickens can we can you give me advice and can we help one another out and we can talk about it. A little more in detail too but a lot of these networks sort of developed into you know more social and political and economic ties which is really cool too. There are many areas where we can jump off into, I guess rabbit holes we could call them. But basically, in these meetings that you just talked about. Sometimes you'll have very affluent rich people with lots of land doing farming on a big scale or even just living in the city, making sure they they've got the best food possible and so they've got the best chickens and it's, it's beyond organic it's really regenerative organic and they're really concerned. And then you have these homesteaders, almost what you also talk about in the book and the, these peasants almost where we're very poor we're just doing it enough to eat and buy to kind of self sustain ourselves that these two different groups that normally probably wouldn't mingle together in society or coming together and creating this whole different thing and they don't even realize that they're environmentalists in some respects of what they do, their political views or thoughts are totally different. So I'd love to hear a little more about that as well. Yeah, that's, that was so heartening to me you know as a sociologist. The first thing we want to do is find like where's the inequality, where are the issues where the social problems you know and another point at which where I where I got pushed back from my other places where I presented my research is like well what's the problem I mean there of course there are always some problems it is it is there's a barriers to entry and it's, it's difficult to get going but the this was such a positive story. Overall, and so exciting that it was just it was just. Yeah, it was surprising so. Here's a fun example so a lot of people who in my study reported times at which they couldn't. This is, you know, sort of low income people reported times which they couldn't afford to buy food at the store their, their family members usually their would go hunting and get a deer and they would eat venison and in their mind, venison is a sort of poor food a food that is, you know, evocative of a time where they couldn't, you know, get pasta at the store you know or canned. It's funny or Europe where you go to a restaurant and that's the most expensive thing on the, on the mail. Yes, so I was going to say then it's so funny because at the same time. I talked to people in my study who said, going hunting with a fancy hunting club rich people very affluent people going hunting with a fancy hunting club and then having their venison process for them and served at a five star restaurant. The fanciest thing you could get because you can't buy it in the store. So I thought that was the funniest thing that you know the same food can have totally different meanings depending on the cultural context but either way. It's something outside this normal, you know, globalized food chain system, and both these people can access it by getting out and hunting and, you know, eating venison through their own means, you know, through producing it themselves. What I what I also found is people were finding excuses to talk to one another because of production so I had one chapter called without the garden. We never would have met him which was a quote from one of my, one of my participants who was talking about how they had a garden in there. This is this is in the city of Chicago, but in a neighborhood where the where the lot sizes were pretty big. They had a garden in their front yard and their neighbor from the Caribbean who they had never talked to before this this young couple with young kids said the neighbor walked by and just started asking questions about the garden and went, you know, back in the Caribbean where I'm from I would do it this way and, and they struck up a friendship and then they visited his place and then it became this thing where they're sort of casually shared tips about the garden and how I would do things and how I'm doing things now and I'm trying with this variety in this. And to me, the potential in that is completely explosive and I heard that story over and over again, you know, people who got chickens and then they get the neighbor kids stopping by looking at them and asking him questions about him it's an excuse to talk. It's an excuse to share knowledge and to share practices and so for me, you know it's not just about every person has to produce food and they have to be in agricultural slavery and working and breaking their back every day. There are little amounts of production that bring you little bits of joy and meaning and connection and community. It's, it's absolutely astounding what's possible, when you, when you sort of, you know, go down this rabbit hole. And to me the, the much more significant finding of my research is not just that there are people out there with gardens. It's the social aspect, you know that people are connecting to one another across differences of socio economic status and gender and race and class and geography even you know and they're sharing information and building friendships. I love that I have two good friends one of them been on the podcast. Eric tones Meyer he wrote in the book drawdown on kind of how farming and agriculture is a big role in drawing down our climate problems and carbon and his last book is called carbon farming. And he lives in Boston, Massachusetts and and I think it's in close to Salem, or Durham, and he just has a small little house with a very small lot, but it's like a jungle it's a food forest and the other one. The gangster gardener the gorilla gardener Ron Finley you know he just plants in his home on his lot and he's got a pool and does all this, just basically gardening kind of farming in the small space he has but he produces so many different things and plants and flowers and it's amazing that what you can do in such small spaces, especially if it's a diversity of so many different crop types and and we're seeing that more and more whereas I remember when I was younger if you did anything like that that the police had come by and complain about you doing something other than grass that you have to mow in your lawn or, I think, you know, or the homeowners Association. Exactly. Exactly. And so, I love that shift in the direction that we're going there. In your book you use the abbreviation SFP quite a bit stands for subsistence food producers. But I would like to maybe if I haven't defined what's subsistence agriculture or farming is for you to define that but also for you to tell us in the same, the same answer. What's the biggest takeaway that you want people to have from this work, even though it's PhD thesis that you've done into book what's the biggest takeaway that you want people to have. Sure. Yeah, I think they're kind of related the answers you know I columns, I decided to use the term subsistence food producer, because there's this like homesteader is so fraught people don't really know what that means are you talking about the hundreds and then, if you use the word peasants, which is actually a common term in like there's a whole peasant studies literature that's like sort of adjacent to sociology and geography. That's a common term and an okay term to use to but in the context of the US people think what is a peasant, you know, it's almost like people think it's pejorative, even though it's really not pejorative in terms of the actual peasants around the world use that term or use a version of it like compass you know in Spanish. But I decided to say subsistence food producers because the people in my study had to produce at least 50% of their own consumption food for their own consumption. And I also decided after looking into the anthropology literature a little bit that you know this this this number you were you were citing earlier peasant agriculture something like producing 70% of the food eaten in the in the world. Most people who do some sort of small scale production, the vast majority have multiple livelihood strategies. Most people in the world are not farmers solely who are doing some sort of small scale production like say they have an orchard but then they also, you know, have a side gig where they, you know, so so clothing or something like that. You know, it's very, very common, and I around the world for people to have multiple strategies for, for producing, you know, for making a living for making a livelihood. And I think what happens in general is that we tend to sort of use this term ghetto eyes, small scale food production Oh that's something that happens in the global self that's peasants that's different from us. And the more time I spent traveling around the world and then on top of it, you know, interviewing people in Chicago, it is, it is the exact same thing, maybe their job isn't like sewing or stitching clothes maybe it's, they're doing coding on their computer but they have and they're producing food it's, it's the same exact system. And so I wanted to almost as like a radical point of view to say this is subsistence food production this is the same thing as that. And we need to stop treating, you know, people in Uruguay and people in Ghana as if they're different from us we're all the same and we all have these strategies to survive and we're and it's all part of the same sort of web and network of human subsistence and strategies in the world so so yeah I did that on purpose I called it subsistence food production. For that reason. Related the takeaway is that I think I want people to understand that if you're listening from Chicago, or Boston, or Munich, or a small city outside of Paris, or, you know, London. This is normal stuff. This is normal human stuff and getting involved in it is a normal activity that's extremely enjoyable. Many people do small scale production and it doesn't just have to be food I mean, take up a spoon carving and practice craft, you know, and learn meet other spoon carvers you know basket weavers whatever it is. Getting involved in some small active production is a sort of way to commune with nature, and surprisingly commune with other people, and to find connection and community and other people who are who are also interested in the skill set. The main takeaway is that we are rapidly approaching a low carbon future in which access to basic goods isn't guaranteed and the amount of energy that goes into globalized economies is absolutely astounding and if energy is continuing to be, you know, more and more expensive. systems are going to transform so I think both bearing in mind the sort of risk analysis like acknowledging the risks risky historical moment we're in and the precarious historical moment we're in and the precarious global systems just in time supply chain systems we were facing in combination with how joyful and beautiful and lovely the process of living a low carbon life can be. I just ask you to take something up and try it and and it is one of those things that I found in my research that it's sort of like a gateway drug where you start with chickens and then you you meet other chicken people and now all of a sudden one of your all of your friends also have bees and a bee person and now we're all making cheese together and it's just one of those things where you just start building skills and then building community and it's it's it's actually really joyful and and the subtitle of the book it's reconnecting to work nature and community it's it's really all three things and this is something deeply in both Marx's writing and Weber's writing it's modernity sort of pulls you out of the meaningful part of work the meaningful connection to nature and a meaningful community. This, this process of low carbon living and small scale production really does embed you back in those those three aspects of life and it's, it's good so try it. I absolutely agree in in your writing tied to they were marks and other people you reference but also in the book. You, you say something German you say mine shaft, basically to get sales shaft, and I speak German so I know you, you speak German you've you've you've researched it but tell us kind of why you added that where does that come from and what are you trying to tell us with this. Yeah, this is a pretty common dichotomy in sociology which Weber use these two terms mine shaft and get sell shop to describe these two different forms of social organization and so mine shaft and maybe you could explain it better than me with a better understanding of German I don't speak German I just know these terms because you have to know some German to study marks and vapor. Period yeah. Yeah right exactly there's I mean it's just necessary but the, the, what I've been taught is that mine shaft is is a sort of community structure, where there's sort of interdependence there's embedded relations there's social trust it's sort of organic. Where, wherein people are, they have shared responsibilities and shared endeavors to the point that you really can't kind of mess up or if you do it impacts your standing in the community it impacts all sorts of cascading consequences because you have an interdependent role within the community, whether it's somebody relying on you for something or buying something from you or you said, you buying something from them. And then gasel shaft is the sort of instrumental community this this idea that we're all just sort of individual rational actors. We, what can we take from one another what can we get out of one another at the, you know, what can we squeeze into the community, how can we sort of exploit one another to the highest degree. And everybody's dissatisfied and there's no real social or community level come up and for for bad behavior you know so. And we really want to try to re embed ourselves in a community where we're needed to one another, and where our, our actions have real consequences, which then makes us be more responsible and thoughtful in our relationships with one And, you know, after writing that and studying the different people in my book I came to Uruguay and I basically found a community that already already exists in a version of that you know it's people show up for one another right my friends asked me to watch their kids and they they watch my kids when I have things that I have to do that I can't bring my kids to do. They, they have different activities or, for example, one of my friends is a is a musician and she asked me to come to her concerts and it's like you show up for people you come to the concerts and then when I have activities. They come to my things and these kinds of things that they make you have a have a sort of reputation in the community of being somebody who could be relied upon. And rely on others and yeah I think that's that's what we're shooting for at least and it's a it's a it's a process in the US but that's what we're that's that's the goal. Definitely as a process and it's not just the US it's all over the world. I have a different term for it and what when you described it it really to me as almost a perfect definition of symbiosis. And in your book, you, you mentioned neoliberalism neo door was a few times and there's this overarching human condition that's almost crept into society in our world that it's survival of the fittest only the strong survived severe competition fight and scratch your way your existence out that we've got a really complete, severe competition amongst each other. And that's where this individual individualism really comes out that you discussed as well. And that's not the way the world works it's not the way the world has ever worked, but it's crept into our world that we think, or a lot of people think worldwide that that's the way the world works but our world works really through regeneration and symbiosis working together with nature with micro organisms with other species with the way we do farming the way we interact with each other. And that actually everybody benefits from that not only our environment and other species, but other cultures other people around the world, because we go much further. And this neoliberalism neo Darwinism very extractive economies worse kind of cradle to grave we take and throw away take and use and it's just kind of a single use process. We're on a planet of finite resources of that will only work so far. And through the coven through the things we've seen in supply chain issues. I think a lot of people are coming to this on ease or awareness. Boy, that's not the world they want to live in because it's just not working for many more and that there's some some other things and I'd like you maybe to address and speak to why you've added those are what your thoughts or feelings on them are. And it almost tickles to a couple other things that that we see that I that I want to talk about afterwards. There's really this peasant tree but the other one is hierarchy and collapse and we've kind of tickled on some, something about civilization collapse and, and where we're coming you also in the book talk about dual process theory from Morris Berman and so I really like that and, but it also ties to these kind of three things that I'm asking you about and I want to talk about next and move into. I think my sense, I tend to think of things to the lens of fossil fuels because it's just having this huge amount of energy just completely transformed all of the, I guess ecological barriers that stopped us from doing certain, you know, stopped humanity from from doing a certain level of destruction because we just simply didn't have the energy to exploit in the way that we do now and now that energy is just so overwhelmingly cheap relative you know to all the rest of human history that we're able to pull to pull all this off so to me the the neoliberalism or. I think this this idea that we're just individuals and we can get by we really can only pull that off because we have this extremely abundant energy. Through most of human history, and you know, even before the agricultural revolution. We were necessarily embedded in community and embedded in nature and we were governed by the rules of ecology, you know, and we can only take so much without giving back until it becomes this thing where you don't, you don't you collapse or you don't survive anymore. We're, we're kind of on life support right now with with the way that we're dealing with ecology and we're just injecting as much energy as possible just to keep that system going. But the way that I see it is we're at the end of that era of cheap energy and so what's next you know and I think it's it's the transition to the next system. In some ways it's it's an unbelievable opportunity, I mean we have all of this insight scientific and technological knowledge that we that doesn't go away now, you know, we, we, we know how to do certain things and ideally and hopefully we don't lose that. But we are being forced into a sort of contraction and we are sort of being forced back into an embedded relationship with one another and the ecology and being governed by ecological principles you know you can only take so much soil, until you produce things from the soil anymore that kind of thing. So dual process fits into that. This is Morris Berman he's brilliant theorist, one of my favorite writers of all time. He, he wrote about this idea that capitalism basically global capitalism started in sort of 1500 and he argues runs through about 2100 so we're right right here at the end of the of the era and and he said just like other periods of urban history like the, the end of the Roman Empire, as one system is sort of failing and and reaching limits and bumping up against you know the functioning it doesn't function anymore. Little at the edges things start to break down and where those breakdowns happen. If for example the breakdown means somebody can't access food. They can't figure out a way to access food so they're going to experiment there. And so one of the examples he was saying is sort of breakdown of, of like the law and political order in the Roman era. Made it so that all these sort of different ideological perspectives came about that were that all kind of looked like a version of Christianity and so at the time all these people are exploring with these, these different ideological and religious perspectives around the Roman Empire's waning, and then eventually out comes Christianity and it turns into the, you know, Holy Roman Empire and then Christianity is the is the sort of reigning, you know, sociological order of the time in Europe post Rome Roman collapse. He argues we're in a similar period now where the seed of what will come next is being planted now. And so one of the experimentation that we're doing at this period of time is a result of these failures. And when, when things are failing to, when the society's failing to meet needs people will won't just lay, lay down and died they're going to try to survive and so I think there's an example of this in my book but the example that's even more evocative for most people is Detroit. It's a hollowed out city, you know, it's, it's, it's a post collapse city. It's there are, there are neighborhoods in the city, where people just cannot access goods and food or transport, and, and they're not going to just sort of lay there What ends what has ended up happening is there's been all sorts of experimentation there and there's these things called agro hoods agricultural neighborhoods coming up there where people are building out neighborhoods in the middle of this hollowed out city and basically in the ruins of the city to ashes of the city, building an entirely different economy and way of connecting with one another and community and, and production and you know the small scale localized production. It's organic and lovely and comes with it like I said all this forms of community. To me, I think we're just in this, this is the era we're in, you know where the neoliberalism it's failing people are, I have a very strong sense of it post COVID. The systems are breaking down that we once thought, you know, that that were trustworthy or reliable they're not anymore. And so, what comes next, and this is, you know, going back to what I said at the beginning, what comes next is, is a process of experimentation the seed of what will come next and become the next world order is being planted now we don't know exactly what will end up, you know, germinating and blossoming into the into the main world order but all we can really do in this period of sort of set, some seeds and sort of make this transition from one to the other, less ghastly and less, you know, feeling like traumatic and crisis and more a sort of gentle process. That I mean that that is definitely not an easy question but you're, you're well versed because you've written about it quite a bit and and done the research and been moving in these circles. There is something I mean this is probably the best time to bring it up. This collapse this what Morris Bremen says where we're at at this point is it's happened before we've had more than 21 civilization frameworks. Incas Maya's Aztecs early miserable came here the Greeks the Romans on and on that have all collapsed they're not here anymore. What they have is their ruins. And all but two of them collapsed, because of ecological or environmental collapse, which is strongly tied to agriculture and food basic needs infrastructure resources. We've started to feel now at this point in time, those kind of unease the insecurity of food supply chain is the food going to get here isn't going to get to our grocery store do we live in a food desert. Boy that's the basic thing I don't care about internet I don't care about all these I need food. Do honey clean water for in sanitation and in these basic needs and a lot of people fill in the unease around the world, not just in the US not just in in South America or Europe, all over the world. This has been going on. And these 21 civilizations that aren't here anymore. Not only did they collapse because of environmental or ecological collapse, but they all had the same model. And we've touched upon this and so this is the time that I really want to touch upon it get your, your thoughts and feelings. They all operated on an hierarchy model, where at the top was a few kings and presidents and leaders but on the bottom, where the peasants, the slaves, the farmers, whatever you want to call them. And that model just doesn't work it's not regenerative it's not restorative it's not circular economy it's not donut economics it's not planetary boundaries. It's not one where we're all kind of get the basic needs and infrastructure. It's that only a few do, and then that system is a very extractive hierarchy model that has a limit to growth has an end date has a collapse date, where that Gaussian curve that bell curve to make it over or something new is going to happen or or we're going to go away. And so I want to really talk because you talk about this in the book kind of collapse and hierarchy and peasantry. I want to get your thoughts and your feelings on. Where are we do you agree do you believe that we need another model one that lives in symbiosis that restores the earth that that gives us a different system, but also, is there a way that we all don't have to become farmers because I know people live in San Francisco they live in New York they're very happy in their apartment they don't want to start subsistence for me they don't. They, but they need a different system they're also filling the wall so I want to get your thoughts and feelings on that as well. Yeah, I think if I try to think about. Well, to start I think I would say there's a big difference or a chasm between what, like, is likely to happen and what ought to happen there's a big is odd divide you know and so. We can talk on and on about how we ought to have a system of pure regeneration and pure egalitarianism and all of this stuff but then I, I like to conjecture right in that period, the sort of historical material reality like what is likely to happen and how you can just tip in one direction or another so I so I'm saying that because I, I don't think there's a chance. We're going to have a global harmonious egalitarian regenerative perfect society. So without changing a few fundamental things, and specifically what I think needs to get changed, and will happen and this is me as a historical Marxist materialist talking. I think that the scale needs to be shrunk down to human scaled societies. And one of my friends Joe Norman he's a complexity scientist he said, we don't need the global village, we need a globe of villages. We need to shrink back down to the size of the village scale, or, you know, maybe even to the level of what you might call a bio region, you know, like a watershed or something like that. This is the, this is the coherent social organization that we're going to have to go back to. And, and is, and is likely to go back to and because of constraints on energy, and will help bring in a society that cannot have the level of inequality that it has now. So right now it's because we have a global society because the chasm is so great between rich and poor because we have the core societies and the periphery societies that are being exploited on the other side of the world and the people don't see, you know, how badly people factory workers are being treated across the world in order to get their lifestyle that they want to have in the global north, because of that scale of global. That's what allows that sort of hierarchy to go to happen. And because we're going to be faced and this is like again me, historical materialist talking because we're going to be faced with low, low energy low, you know, low carbon future. The scales are shrinking back down to a more coherent let's just say nation state level scale, and then maybe it's a bio region or, you know, even a state and then maybe there's more coherent culture and productive capacity around you know where there's all these hollowed out towns in New England the mill towns that used to have a productive capacity and a whole, a whole different culture of producing certain kinds of things I remember I took this tour in the Pacific Northwest and apparently like every little town in Skagit County they all had like a different pickle recipe and you knew what, what pickle you were eating from what town because it always like a little bit different but it was like a each town has a little productive culture and a little, you know, something that that it's distinct, it's, and that brings you some cohesion, and that sort of social cohesion on the human scale on the known scale sort of done by number thing, where this number number ideas that basically, you know, humans are used to living in communities of an X number maybe it's 150 of the people talk about different numbers, where you're known you're it's a it's a known scale of humans you know, and in that it's sort of going back to this embedded society idea, you know, you really cannot abide such extreme inequality if the scale is at that scale, so that it's really just a low carbon small scale human living makes it so a lot of those solutions just sort of happen organically or naturally because they really you just can't abide this level of exploitation at the scale of a village or a bio region you just can't. It just doesn't work there's too much come up and people know what's going on. On the, on the issue of not everybody to be a subsistence producer I, I think that that is there's absolutely room for division of labor in this small scale low carbon future. But I just think that 95% of people cannot be coders and 5% of people producing everything, it has to be a bit a bit more of a balance you know and I think the way that we have it now is just so many people and white collar professions, and not in any productive capacity whatsoever. I really like the idea of. Even if you're not a subsistence food producer for example and you, you are a coder still okay but but you have, you have chickens and you have like five peach trees or something like that you know everybody has a hand and something. You know where maybe their kids are part of the cheese making club and that's you know they're, you know, everybody, I think, I think if we just try to think about it, you know if you've ever been to a place where there's a lot of small scale kitchen gardens for example. I kind of feel this general web of production everybody's involved in the web in one way or another this sort of interconnectedness and, and I think in my community here in Uruguay. You know, all of our shopping is around neighbors and this community I mean our, we're from a community that's highly diverse agricultural production. It's part of a web a networked web of production and this little I mean you could call it a little bio region that we're in. That you know I think it does you don't have to be it doesn't always have your brain always have to go to like the work, you know I'm 100% backbreaking labor cutting wheat by hand or something like that it could be. You just have everybody has a little hand in it and everybody does their part. I don't I don't want to flood Uruguay but Uruguay is actually a number 10 on the top 10 list of places to retire in the world and quality of living, social care, health care, things like that so there's a lot to say. The things that you touched upon resonate so nice. There's a term global global local, but there's also local futures, local economies, and how do we bring you know some some places around the world you're like oh I grew up here. I was in this place, and now you go back to these places, and there's no more local production everything's farmed in or chucked in from somewhere else. If we can bring that local production that local pride instead of our children or or those great producers saying, I'm sick of this small town life I'm going to move somewhere to the big city or move somewhere else where I can do this. I think that every place on the world has that balance or equality to say no right where I was born has all the basic needs of infrastructure that I need has all the foods that's produced here. Great diversity great variety of what we have here. We don't need to move to the big city to to see that success okay if you're a coder if you're doing those different types of jobs, then maybe that would be there. And if it was a true local economy that had all those things they need coders in that city they need people who build those renewable and sustainable buildings and do the coding and and bring that to your governance of your city so the things that allows them to move to big New York's like the California is like like the Los Angeles and Hollywood, wherever to have those same tools, but to have it say yeah, I'd love to go to Uruguay I'd love to go to Europe and certain parts of Europe to to have that diversity and see the nature and to experience that. But guess what that infrastructure a lot of those same things I have in my own community, because we're producing it on our own we're doing a little bit different, but we have that basic need and that infrastructure, and you mentioned to Detroit. The infrastructure is gone the supports gone the the production is gone but now is slowly coming back and you know the hood farming and that has gotten a great, but that's kind of the mindset we get in we're still global citizens we're still in this global city, but it's just a little bit different. We're really running out of time I've asked you tons of questions we could talk for hours, but I have, I have four really important questions that I always ask all my guests. And this is the probably the hardest question I'll give you today. And it's, what does a world that works for everyone look like for you Ashley, not someone else not your husband for you. Wait, what does, what does it look like? What does a world that works for everyone look like for to you. Okay. I think it, it, it looks like coherent interdependence, you know, and I think that starts at the scale of being a person who is good at being interdependent so that requires all sorts of psychological techniques and skills and, and, and, and, you know, social skills up to raising children who understand how to be interdependent and modeling that within, you know, marriage, for example, making a point to have interdependence be a, you know, and a coherent interdependence via priority in school in economies in, in every aspect of society. This, this sort of coherent interdependence requires skills, both of the individual and the community and the ways in which we relate to nature and the economy and the environment and, and so I think, I think to me this we've talked a couple times but the sort of web analogy is nice you know the ways in which we're all connected to one another via a web and the sort of you pull on one string and everything's connected to, to, to, to everything else. And so that's what it looks like to me yeah. Next question is you do the rhizoma field school. And I'd like to kind of get. Next, what how how has it been and where what are your next steps is there some things we can look forward to there. Yes, so thank you for asking the rhizoma field school sort of came out of this all of my research all of my whole project of my life is, is you know how can we accelerate sustainable, you know, low carbon living livelihoods and so typically we host students here. We bring students from North America and we have them work alongside our community members who are small scale sort of agroecological producers. That pause during the pandemic and we do think the student group will be coming from Ohio State University in May of 2022 that'll be our first post pandemic let's just put that in quotes I hope it's true. But, but in the meantime, I've been focusing on online education and I'm thinking underneath the umbrella of of rhizoma field school, I'll be, I have seen this, this absolutely massive interest in small scale production and so I started by hosting. I kind of built this class from scratch called homestead incubator. It's a sort of a pilot class and I have students in it right now and I got a bunch of different homesteaders and experts to come on as guest lecturers every week to talk about you know their their approach to small scale education and the way they think about low energy futures and all of this stuff and all the students have to think about the ways in which they're, they can get on to some land and maybe even build community or even if they're in the city what can they learn what kind of skills what, how do they approach this what should they be thinking about. And then, you know, a bunch of students are saying you know I would love to learn, take an online class where I have to learn how to make my own bread or learn cheese or, or anything along those lines so, and it's just so funny that it's an online class but some people feel more comfortable with that so you know you show up to the class you have to have these ingredients and we're and we're baking so I think we're going to we're going to go in that direction and just follow the interest and demand of students who are saying, you know I'd love to get some productive capacity. And then I think simultaneously what's really really important to me is to hold up as experts. Those people who are doing small scale production and have all that knowledge I mean just thinking about sourdough starters and run it and all this different stuff that's normal home production stuff that we sort of lost that knowledge so to pave those people as instructors and put them together with the people who want to learn I think there would be nothing that would fit my mission more than, than that. So I'm going to experiment with that a bit. That's great and we'll put we definitely put the link to the rise on Phil's school in the podcast show notes and look forward to that and I think it's very necessary of mutual knowledge to have as Justin Rhodes I believe and he has the abundance plus network where it's all online kind of videos and learning where people all over the world can go in and you know just realize the learning lessons and different things of homesteading of farming of having new and permaculture chickens etc. That I think you know especially during times of the pandemic I just got over a bad bout with with the cold myself and so it yet you need to go online you can always travel you can always do it so that's one of the ways to bring it back to those local economies and future. If there was one or two messages you could depart to my listeners as a sustainable takeaway that has the power to change their life what would it be your messages. I think don't underestimate the the power in your own two hands. You know and I think, I think a lot of people, you know if you're raised in a city and used to purchasing most things that you need to live. You just think oh no I can't do that. No way can I produce anything really of substance and you know coming from somebody who's from the south side of the city of Chicago who really has not been, you know was not raised with any hands on skills. I think you might be surprised at how easy it is and how joyful and the sort of slippery slope of what it leads to so so believe in yourself and take one step in the direction of producing something and and then come find me on Twitter and tell me how it goes. How have you experienced or learn in your journey so far that you would have loved to know from the beginning from the start. I think to be gentle with oneself in the process of of learning a low carbon life, learning how to live a low carbon life. In general, we sort of underestimate the the psychological and emotional and spiritual process that is involved in in in trying to reinvent ourselves in community and and nature and in the act of work like I said in my book. And it's just slow it's and it's necessarily slow because it's it's a it's an internal process you know so I think to be gentle with oneself in your journey and it's okay to feel some sense of like frustration or doom or anger denial I mean almost feels like the stages of grief you know we're moving from one society work accepting the loss of one society and and moving on to the birth of a new one so I think I guess to just be gentle with oneself in that process. Subsistence agriculture in the US. Ashley, thank you so much for letting us inside of your ideas it's been a shared pleasure. That's all I have unless you want to ask me something or if there's something that you didn't get to say. Now's your chance before I tell you goodbye. Nope just, I guess the only thing is come find me on Twitter this is where I'm always posting about all my, my newest ideas and insights it's at re soma school I'm sure you'll have it in the show notes but I will that's where you can put it in a show notes. And that's where you can come find me and talk to me. Great. Thank you so much Ashley. Thanks Mark. Bye.