 Three versions of me died in parallel universes this past winter. As I lay there, gasping for breath, it came to me what my life purpose was, to show that no matter what the universe throws at us, as a species, as individuals, those of us that surrender to that reality can thrive if we choose to. Every safety net I ever expected to catch me failed. My family failed me. My government failed me. It was only the friends, old, new, rekindled from embers, planted in the coals, that ultimately saw me through to the end. And to the ones I burned up along the way, to the ones who can stand in my shine, I apologize. I only meant to dry your tears, not to sing your flesh and blind your eyes. I wish you could see it now, this little corner of the world you helped me save, this little corner of the world you made abundant. I couldn't have done it without you. I'm sorry for the pain that I have caused. I hope you are happier now. I hope you found the strength to move on and to grow. I hope you grow. I never wanted anything more for you or I. I hope the phantoms start ghosting you so you can finally get some rest. I see it now. I see the paradoxical nature of the universe. From things which are bad, good is inevitably birthed, and extricably linked, such as they are. It was in my weakest moment that I found out just how much more I add in me. In the past six years, I have staved off mycotoxicity, malnutrition, heavy metal poisoning, loneliness, grief, illness, depression, psychosis. I found out that my parents had hid my autism diagnosis from me for three and a half decades. That unlocked me. All the failed relationships, the struggle to make or keep friends, my peculiar habits, which I often didn't even realize were peculiar, the struggle to hold down a job, the complete meltdowns when I just had enough, the constant wish that I didn't exist, the desire just to be seen, to not be constantly misunderstood. With this revelation about how my brain works, I was unlocked. Being able to review my entire life through this new perspective, I finally understood who I was, who the past made me. And now I understood that I could keep on going the way I was going, or I could choose to try something different. I could choose to value myself as much as I valued my friends. I would never talk shit about them the way I would talk shit about myself. I knew where it was coming from. I knew the fear was coming from the belief that there wouldn't be enough, because for 35 years, there never had been. But when spring did finally thaw our unusually brutal winter, I believed in abundance. These previous years banged my head against the wall, begging just to survive. They had taught me what I was capable of. They also taught me what I am not capable of. And that that capability can change if I take care of my body, if I feel it well, and if I'm mindful about what I put in and on it. I've lost maybe 60 pounds at this point, maybe more. My scale broke months ago and I haven't had the gumption to try to fix it, nor the money to replace it. It felt like the universe itself was telling me that I didn't need the scale any longer, that I know how to eat, and what to eat to support my health. I know when I'm hungry, and when I'm just compulsively eating because of stress. I'm not perfect, but I've become good enough. And that's good enough for me. As my health has improved, the health of the land has improved in lockstep. One of us responding to the other. Myself more able to care, it more able to provide. This particular land has become my wife. Born from my mother, the earth, and over these seasons I have learned to care for her. I learned to dress her wounds. I learned to respect her boundaries. She will give if you see her. She is fruitful. She hungers for my surplus, paradoxically creating a life from my decay. She is never more abundant than when we get out of her way. We must express our needs to her and respect her answer. No means no, and she will rend the flesh from trespassers with thorn or flame as we are all collectively realizing. I have seen how to abuse her. Have done some of that abuse myself. Have been abused by her just the same. It's a shame, but we have forgiven. And we forget more each day. And now I live for the futures I have seen in my mind's eye. One of many where we humans are honest and thriving and creating a beautiful world of peace and abundance. I don't know which future we will dream up together, but I know that it will be beautiful. I know that the challenges will feel worthwhile. We will be free. I can taste it. Every time an overripe tomato gushes down my bearded chin and stains my pants yellow, I can taste it in the heat of the soup, in the comfort of the achirah, the glow of the squash. I have embraced the chaos and let it show me how to live. I am healthier now than I was a decade ago, physically, mentally. I am strong. I am centered. I know who I am, and I know that I'm here to teach people how to do very much with very little, to create abundance from lack on every level. This year I've produced about 50% of my calories from my main staple crops, flint corn, beans, squash, amaranth, sunflowers, sunchokes, potatoes. I continue to eat about 10% of my calories from tomatoes every day as I finish up the last harvest of the season. I have enough zucchini to feed a small army. My freezer is packed with hominy, which I may dehydrate once things settle down. Potatoes, amaranth, and beans did poorly this year. We should successfully propagate themselves. I saved all of my own seeds as I continued to land-race everything. And things just keep getting better. Not without challenge, but better. My last crop of flint corn maxed out at a third of a pound for the largest cobs. And this year, the largest cobs were over half a pound. Soon I'll be inundated with carrots and daikons and turnips and beets and all kinds of greens from the winter garden. And sooner still I will forage for late season apples and might finally try my luck with acorns if the squirrels haven't already claimed them all. I could have picked my fill of berries almost every day over the summer with only small gaps or due to lack of time. And now I'm tending to these, my terraces. I've been dreaming of combinations of plants I could combine and grow into living, morphing terraces created and held in place by the plants themselves. In this case, I grew sunflowers on contour which felt like a comfortable distance between the rows. And so that from the bottom of one terrace to the bottom of the next would be a manageable height. Between the sunflowers I planted perennial kale, both from seed and from cuttings. From the lone plant that survived both the chickens and our deeply unsettled climate. Now that I've harvested the sunflower heads, I've laid the stalks down flat above the kale and the remaining stalk. As well I've piled corn stalks, sticks, and whatever else I find to form a wall to hold back the organic matter I pile above it. Organic matter which will slowly compost and build up the soil level in the terrace. Along the front wall I've begun placing more perennial kale cuttings with the idea that it can be trained to root into the front of the terrace as the organic matter breaks down, holding the whole thing in place. In places where food production isn't the goal, I might use comfrey, either directly below or on the uphill side of the wall, and allow it to continue to grow through the piles of organic matter and provide plenty of organic matter itself. If I wanted to mark out sites for larger terraces and get a feel for the layout before committing to something more permanent, I would plant sun chokes or chira on contour and have a good survival crop wading in the wings if I ever needed it. Once I was happy with the layout, I would plant trees from either seeds or cuttings. The black locust seems promising because of its strength and rot resistance. In wetter locations, willow's tenacious rooting might serve this purpose well. Willow seems promising because it already has a track record of being used to stabilize the chinampas in Mexico, which are one of the most productive food systems in the world, especially where annuals are concerned. Next year I think I'll plant potatoes and amaranth in these terraces and see how they do. Can't do worse than they did this year. It's not just my weight that has improved as I've made all these changes to my diet and lifestyle. My psoriasis has cleared up. Inflammation on a good day is non-existent. Or at least at a minimum. My blood sugar has stabilized. My anxiety and depression have waned, all except during the darkest months of the year. The fog and fatigue have lifted. I feel human again. And in all of this, I discovered how to solve my health problems myself, stranded as I was in the middle of nowhere without access to medical care. I had to dig into studies, searching for my symptoms and coming up with natural solutions to my many maladies, thwarting the early stages of scurvy, goiter, palagra, berry berry, and a number of other conditions of malnutrition. I came up with the best solutions I could for recurring mold and heavy metal poisoning from our wet climate and contaminated well. And after I saw that my health could be improved, with a little research and elbow crease, I asked if the impossible could be possible. I started attempting to regrow my hair after 10 years of hair loss using only diet and lifestyle changes. It's premature to announce any miracle cures, but my hair is happily thicker and fuller than it was at this time a year ago. And I feel positive about how things are progressing. I do believe that hair health is a window into total health, so I will not be surprised when my hair continues to improve in conjunction with my overall health. I do believe that permaculture really only has a place in the world, if it creates health for people. And I hope that my health journey can be the ultimate litmus test. I hope you'll follow along and see what I discover. If my hair-brained attempt to fully restore my hair through diet and lifestyle is successful, I want to share all of the research that made it possible with all of you. For the first time in years, I finally have enough food and enough diversity of food to move closer to health. I'm looking forward to a winter nestled in with my winter squash, which I'm slowly experimenting with ways to prepare. Apples and warming spices are a nice touch. I'm looking forward to exploring a cheer or more as we progress into the winter. I might even get motivated to make some cellophane noodles, which are commonly made out of a churro starch in Vietnam. But I don't know. That seems a bit fancy for my taste. I was a little afraid that the winter garden would be a little sparse this year. Saving all of your own seeds can make timing a little difficult, and the winter garden did not go to plan. With my pleasant surprise, the soil has been so inundated with the seeds that I've broadcast over these last years that our entire garden has sprouted up of its own volition. I will be eating turnips and mustard and daikon throughout the winter, in addition to the staples I've put up. Kale will be abundant, and the leaves big and supple enough to substitute for tortillas. I knew the world wasn't bad shape when I got out here, but with the pandemic and everything else, it became apparent that it was so much worse than I believed. But I'm hopeful. The pandemic felt like a wake-up call, and people are actually waking up. They're doing what they can to help their friends and neighbors, and that's where the real change starts. I'm really looking forward to next year. I'm expecting big things for the channel and for the garden. My land-race breeding projects are coming along nicely, and I expect the yields to be phenomenal this coming year. I now have a relatively well-established garden, and I can spend the spring months expanding it even more. I expect to be able to provide a lot of food to my community this coming year. Both directly and by sharing seeds. Free of charge, so that others will never know the food insecurity that I have known, so we can collectively build a world that's healthy for people to live in. As far as the channel goes, you might have noticed that my posting has been a little funky. I really struggled the first few years trying to get the farm off the ground and document all of it on YouTube, especially when I suffered crop failure after crop failure. It was just too painful to hit record and bear it all for the world to see. And editing everything on my phone, even a relatively simple 10-minute video could take upwards of 20 hours to edit. It wasn't sustainable. And to have a bunch of randos viewing my videos, having no clue about my situation and constantly demanding I do the impossible, it was just too much. I love working with video. I nearly went to film school before getting my degree in creative writing and philosophy instead, while spending my free time working on my university's permaculture farm. But making the kind and quality of videos that I want to make on a weekly or even monthly basis just isn't sustainable for me with all the other work I have to do and the current state of my health. So instead, I'm going to experiment with an idea I've been toying around with for this next year. I'm going to make one or two big, fancy, algorithm-pleasing videos like this one. The rest of the videos I make will be private videos for subscribers only. And that's where the bulk of my educational content will be. That's where updates about various projects about myself and the farm and my writing will be. That's where my random shower thoughts will be. Subscribers will have access to a playlist of the year's videos, not just for me, but from other creators who I think are teaching valuable skills or information. Lectures on research for people that really want to geek out about plants and soil. Or maybe just art and music that I think put the culture in permaculture. If you're a creator and think you're sharing valuable skills and knowledge that most people don't have, leave a comment below and I'll try to check out as many channels as I can. I might include some of your videos in my playlist. As for everyone else, I genuinely don't care if you subscribe. I don't care if you comment. I don't care if you hit the like button. Especially if you haven't already been enticed to do those things on your own. But if you enjoyed this video at all, if you found it entertaining, informative, beautiful, challenging, or insightful, and you're still watching at this point, I know that you're my people. And if you're my people, I bet you know at least one other person or community of people who would enjoy this video. Won't you hit the share button and send the link their way? There are plenty of other goodies down in the description, including a list of some of my favorite reading. So don't forget to check that out before you leave. Thanks for the time you have shared with me. It means more than you could ever know. Holy shit. It's actually a triple cob because there's so much more cob and so many more kernels. It's actually more productive than a single large cob. Dicons, turnips, kales, that sort of thing. Basically, I just broadcast this mix all over this area. This one is one that's just food. You can see that they're pretty short, narrow cobs, not much on them, not always super full. Now I'm dropping a bunch of kernels and I got a sweep of a floor. Here's one of these ones. It's a double cob. The secondary cob is pretty small but it still has that double cob trait and these are larger, fuller. Even after five days of non-stop rain, it's still more or less bone dry. There's a lot of mold on here because the husk wasn't tight enough around the cob. I didn't expect the string to hold the weight of the beans which clearly it did not support the weight of the beans. Remove any of the outer husk because it tends to have mud spots and stuff and get down there where the husk is clean. After I finish processing the corn, the cobs cannot stay in this bin. There's not enough air flow the husk will start to mold and some tomato that I'm carrying around. That will eventually come. So don't do that. My record so far this year is a little over half a pound for one cob. This year is quite a big jump in size compared to previous generations. When I do find the ones that produce more than one tuber, I've been slowly spreading them out trying to fill in this hole here. This stuff is all stuff that I'll save food but I am not interested at all in passing on these genetics. The epigenetics that they're passing on to their offspring are going to let their offspring know, hey you aren't going to have water available be prepared for it. Any of these that are good for tamales will get saved for tamales and then the rest will end up in the garden as much. The ones that have the genetics that allowed them to stay upright are the genetics that I want to carry forward in my population. This stuff, as long as it's not rotting, will be perfectly fine to eat but I do not want to encourage genetics that cause the plants to fall over especially with the amount of wind that we have here. Because there was enough corn growing all in a clump together, it was able to find its way up in between them and control us ourselves without any effort on my part. It was planted exactly the same way. You can see that there are some beans mostly it's all empty and squash has started growing through the plants.