What You Need to Start Farming with Ashley Armstrong
01:15:02 Share

What we do today is not real farming. It's a concoction of pharmaceuticals and pesticides and various other compounds that we've become reliant on. And it's this continuous process of it works for a little bit and then it stops working. Okay, now let's develop another chemical to work now. Okay, then that stops working. Now let's develop the next one. That is very profitable for chemical companies because it's a continuous market. Yeah.

A neighbor's choice.

Well, I'm excited to have my guest today joining us again from her farm where she's very busy. She's got one of her friends there in the background in the painting. Who's that? What's that one's name? I actually don't have any Holstein cows, but this is just a pretty cow painting. It's animal paintings throughout the house. Maybe that was the general manager of your operation or he's...

Messy. We have some Jersey cows, but not that type. I was gifted a cute painting. Well, we have Ashley Armstrong with us. So how are you doing? Hey, I'm doing well. You know, I'm excited about where things are headed, grateful to have these opportunities, and excited to have another fun conversation with you. You're here to announce that you're back in the carnivore lane, right? Yeah.

Oh, no. Are you going to go on the doctors? Are you going on the doctors to set the record straight? I should. That would be funny. That would be funny. They were right about a few things at that time that I didn't want to acknowledge or accept. And I just like pushed it under the rug. But no, I'm not going back to. Man, they they really they really made Paul Saladino look bad, but he recovered.

Yes, he did. He recovered. He retooled. He repackaged. He got a little PD, and he got to the White House. So he's resilient. You got to give him credit. Raw milk shots inside the White House. That's amazing. Yeah. Well, you know, that's one of the things that I like about what you guys do on your show is that you cover a whole variety of things that have been a similar journey.

we talked about before that I've had. And, you know, you've, you've done a lot of great work with the regenerative agriculture space with Joel Saladin and that kind of world. And,

I've always enjoyed talking to Joel and other folks in that space. Obviously, you're out there with the farm, you know, doing the whole polyculture type model, it looks like, and having great success. You were just talking about your eggs. Tell us about what's going on with your eggs. Yeah, I think that...

All roads lead to bioenergetic, right? Everyone tries these different diet camps and cultures and then realizing at some point they reach a dead end and then they realize, oh, metabolism really matters, right? And we're...

I fit in is I think that how our food is produced impacts our metabolism. And that's drastically changed over the last 100 years. We've stuffed animals into confinement buildings. We're obviously completely changing the types of fat that we're consuming in our diets. And that's where I really nerded out. I was really inspired by the work of Dr. Ray Pete. He actually was the reason why I left the career path that I was headed down. Yeah, what was your what was your path before this?

I have a PhD in mechanical engineering. And I was headed down, I was interviewing to be a professor of mechanical engineering, and realizing learning from Dr. Ray Pete, seeing the benefits in my own metabolism, making these dietary changes, and

I was inspired to become a farmer and make a change in the food system by Dr. Ray Peet, learning about how much our fatty acid composition has changed over the last 100 years. Like we went from very high saturated fat diets to now more saturated diets.

mostly unsaturated fats and that's a result of seed oils but also what chickens and pigs are eating has drastically changed and that's changed the types of fat in those animals and we eat that right so we've completely unsaturated our food system and in the process we've unsaturated ourselves yeah that's having severe metabolic consequences that like

Hello, it's screaming. It's screaming. We like being overweight and obese is the norm. Having chronic disease conditions is the norm. Food intolerances that really didn't exist a hundred years ago, autoimmune conditions, gut problems. Like it's just screaming that what we're doing isn't working. So I was really inspired by Dr. Ray Pete and learning about unsaturated fats that decided to be that crazy person and tell my advisors, Hey, I'm not going to be a professor. I'm going to be a farmer.

And after finishing PhD, moved to a farm, first-generation farmer, wasn't happy with the feed options out there, so have been on this long journey of trying to perfect chicken feed, hog feed, dairy goat feed, and going back to principles that they were using in the 1800s when these animal fats weren't as unsaturated. They were higher in saturated fat, higher in stearic acid. Yeah.

is all a result of what they're eating. So long story short, I'm a metabolism nerd that loves to farm and I'm here to improve food quality one egg at a time. And so we started with just our farm and we do mobile pasturiers. So the chickens don't live in a stationary building. They're not stuffed into a barn. They're in a mobile coop and that gets moved.

three to five times a week, depending on the weather, fresh grass, fresh bugs, but even pasture raised chickens, 70 to 90% of their diet is feed. They're not cows. They

They don't have a rumen. They need feed for protein and adequate energy. So what a chicken eats, even when it's outside on pasture does matter. And we've seen that we've tested our eggs versus vital farms. And we see a 74%. That was, that was, that was in the ancestral diet book, right? That Chris Kenobi and Susie, Susie Alexander put out, right? Yes. And I remember seeing your angel acre eggs compared to the, right.

Yeah. So we saw a 74% reduction in linoleic acid and omega-6 PUFA in our eggs because we changed the diet that the chickens were eating. And this is relative to organic vital farms, pasture raised eggs, because what a chicken eats does matters. And that is my obsession and passion in improving the quality there because I

When you cook these things, you're exposing it to high heat and temperature, right? And so there's plenty of research showing, hey, those fats already oxidize before you eat them if they're loaded with more PUFAs. And then you're loading yourself with more PUFAs. So it's a downstream impact. And I'm excited to see where I can help get things in five to 10 years from now. Hopefully we can re-saturate the food system. Yeah, that's great. So you...

You have these unsaturated, you know, you're working on trying to get these unsaturated fats down. Have you improved it since those studies were done with the book I was referencing that was spent out a year or two, a couple of years ago?

Yes, we have. So for example, our meat chickens, we've been able to increase the stearic acid by like 202% relative to like an organic store-bought free range chicken option. Does it change? I imagine it would change the taste or the texture at all or no? No.

I have been eating these for four or five years, so I haven't really bought any other eggs. So it's my new goal, but we have several customers that say they do taste a difference and they

I completely, like our eggs are more expensive. We conveniently deliver to all 50 states in a box. You have to understand that when you deliver that adds shipping, that adds packaging. Yes, our eggs are more expensive. When you take out the shipping and the packaging,

We're less than Vital Farms. And so their margins are a lot higher, but it's just the nature of what we're trying to do. And the feed ingredients that we use are not government subsidized. So our feed costs are four times higher. It's just the reality. Higher quality food, it costs more to produce. That's just the reality. And we're seeing the consequences of low cost food production. In America, we brag about bigger, quicker food.

quantities without even considering quality. And there are consequences to that. And we're, we see lower prices at the grocery store and we forget that eggs, milk, and some other items are often sold as a loss at the grocery store. These are loss leaders because they're staples that have staples.

It's like the consumer needs to get. And so it gets people into the grocery store and then they go and buy processed food, packaged food where the real margins are. And that devalues real food. That makes it hard for regenerative farmers because people see the price tag of like what a pasture raised egg is or a pasture raised chicken, pasture raised pork. And they,

get afraid at it. And I completely understand, but we've been grocery stores have taught us to devalue real food. It's a challenge. It's a challenge. And see, I always, you know, sometimes just as a fun hobby or thought experiment, sometimes it's something I actually do. I always like to kind of game out different little entrepreneurial solutions for the problems of our health

or food system. And years ago, I was talking to Brad Marshall, who I know is a mutual friend of ours. And I know you guys are going to be doing a really cool podcast together, which will be exciting to see. Do you guys have a name picked out yet?

Not yet. Okay. All about fatty acids, metabolism, really nerding out and diving into the truth. Strong fire sisters or something. It'll either start this fall or early next year. Whenever a few projects that we're both working on kind of calm down a little bit, but I'm super excited because it going to take people through like a

Why this fatty acid change in our diet, overall changes in our diets, compounds in our food like plastics, pesticides, why all of these things are leading to metabolic problems that we see today and understanding the why is going to help us better get out of this chronic condition.

crisis that the us is in right so you're not going to try to pass off brad as your new sister now no no no no no no no um we're this is going to be a lot more like nerdy and yeah deep dive stuff yeah yeah that'll be fun yeah we'll look forward to that but with brad just to go back to that you know i was a early uh you know uh

consumer of his meat products that he had, which I know he's now, you guys are working with that now, right? And so, but at the time I said, you know, man, you wish you could really do something like you did here with this pork. You could do this with eggs and chicken meat because that's the, that's, you know, I'm always, I always have that aficionado for that populist working class person like Ray Pete did. Like if we can help heal people,

The average working class person. And I thought, you know, people can't afford, well, pork's different a little bit, but, but steaks and stuff like, which is very popular in the online health world are expensive to get grass fed and grass finished and all that. And I thought, man, if we could get the chicken, uh,

You know, it's usually, you know, I know in the old days it was considered a luxury thing, but nowadays it's considered a working class staple that people can afford. And I thought, man, if we could get that down, that would be a really great touch point to get that linoleic acid down and really improve the health of our, you know, middle class and working class folks. And Brad and I had, you know, it was funny because, you know, he did a lot of investigation of this.

And it was hard to find the right feed mills that would have the kind of setup to even do what we were trying to do. We were trying to look at different food sources, and then there was regulations. And then I heard later on from another mutual friend of ours, the one I mentioned earlier, Susie Alexander, that you guys had been going through a similar journey and experience with your farm.

And I ultimately concluded, I said, this is just my thing. I said, man, we got to, there's got to be a way to develop a feed that could be developed for the masses, right?

So because not everybody's going to be able to buy your eggs, right? And you want to have a, I know that you're developing a network of farms and that'll be pretty cool to see that thing come to life. We can talk about that in a little bit, but just in general to have people who are just backyard egg producers be able to be empowered with healthy food with a nice

Feed line would be cool, but I don't know what your thoughts are on that. So yeah, that, that is a future goal of mine, but you can only do one thing at a time. You got to take care of your farm first, right? And I think that people see our outputs, right? They see what we're doing.

They have no idea the inputs. I work very long days, very long days. And that's the reality of being a farmer. It's the reality of doing online distribution and sales and marketing. It's a lot, a lot of work. And you understand being in the trenches here. You understand why the conventional system is the way that it is.

Because being a farmer, it's much easier to just go bring your stuff to the market and not worry about it. Right. Like just go get to the conventional market, do whatever the system tells you to do in order to get paid. Yeah. And that's the problem. The system is set up to put farmers down the path it wants them to go down. Yeah.

It's much easier to get government subsidies and plant the crops that the government's going to pay you for. Yeah. As opposed to going out of your way to be that non-normal person like myself. And the reality is going this out of the way path, it is more expensive. And so I'm in the trenches right now of figuring out how in the heck can we make this more affordable? How can we improve the distribution, improve the feed production, improve

And it's going to take me a while. And I know that people are not happy about that. They get upset that I don't share things. I'm not there yet. And I'm not going to share until I feel comfortable that, hey, this is a really solid solution, but I'm working on it. But see, you're in the cross section of two very...

nascent and niche niches. So it's a really super niche, which is you're in the, you know, very low linoleic acid, anti-seed oil world, which is a thing that has been growing and is growing faster, but it's still very early in the details about people understanding what this means.

Most normies who are learning about seed oils are only thinking of it still in relationship of omega-6 to omega-3 ratio at best, you know, or, you know, in that sense. They're not even thinking about what's in the chicken that they're eating. Then you have Joel Saladin and that whole world, which, you know, I learned very quickly. I would ask Joel, so Joel, what are we going to do about that linoleic acid? And he was like, that wasn't something he was super interested in because his model, he's focused on other things.

But I know that they've learned over time that there's a market demand for this that's growing from their customers. And I get that. But what I'm saying is that there's a lot of regenerative local egg producers and chicken producers, even in my own state of Florida and so forth, that do a really good job. But they're still not focused like you are on lowering that PUFA content in such a significant, meaningful way.

So you're in a super niche, you know, cross section there and it's going to take time for that market. You're, you know, it's going to take time for that market to, you know, to develop and the demand to develop to even, you know, you know, really, you know, like you're not going to be to, you know, catch up with the level of demand at this point if you're just one supplier. Right.

And what I mean by demand, it's kind of a catch-22, but the more demand there continues to come from the consumer, an educated consumer who wants low linoleic acid, you know, regeneratively raised food, that cross-section will grow and grow and grow, and that'll be a very lucrative market niche eventually for a lot of people to get in on. I'm working on it. It's just lots of balls are in the air right now. Yeah.

There, the end is near for some certain projects. So we've been building a new website, working on the next feed tweak. And there are all these different things. But that is a that is a role where I see myself being right, helping others get to this place as well. But

It's going to take time. I think that's really pertinent right now because we're recording this show today as it looks like another Middle East war could be breaking out. And a lot of people right now are going to be tuning in or clicking on the audio or the video versions of this show, and they're going to be saying, you know, I want to learn how to farm because this is ridiculous. You know, the way that we're in right now,

We could have a collapse of our energy situation or skyrocketing energy costs could disrupt a lot of foundational things that people have come to expect as a normal. And we saw that pulled away temporarily with COVID and this could be another seismic world event. So people are like,

Tell me what to do. I want to know how to farm. You know, what would you say? Do people need to do people need to expect to get a loan from a bank or some rich family member or a trust fund or or or a venture capital to get this type of of regenerative farming off the ground in your in your perspective? Or do you think it's not necessary?

This is a difficult conversation and I don't mean to be rude or mean about anything, but in order to farm, you have to give up a lot in life. Yeah. Yeah. It's a labor of love. Right. It really is. You won't be going out to fancy dinners. You won't be taking vacations. You won't be buying nice clothes. You won't be buying the next fancy purse.

Oh man, I think I'm out. You have to give up a lot of what's quote normal. I am not normal. I don't care about any of those things. You have to give up what's considered normal in order to actually afford and have the time and energy to farm. The reality is that

you have to be selective with what types of animals you start with because you do need, you do need a lot of startup capital to get started. Um, I had to take out a loan and five years later, I will be paying off the loan by the end of this year. It has been very hard. Um, I, I don't, I don't like to talk about that side of things because I think it's depressing and I think that it makes people afraid of it, but it's the reality. Um,

It costs a lot. Like in the beginning, I didn't have a tractor and I didn't have a truck. So I had to borrow that every time. Did you have experience in how to operate them before though? Or you were learning everything brand new? Absolutely not. That's the type of person that I am. I dive in. I don't care. I'll figure it out. And yeah,

Did you buy a whole herd and then not understand what even to do with them when they got to the farm? In grad school, I was just listening to as many videos as possible about regenerative agriculture and

At a certain point, you kind of understand that Mother Nature has a lot of these very complex biological systems that we'll never understand. And that's like not the point. But the point is to work with those. Give Mother Nature the tools that she needs to actually make all these systems work. And so when you learn about regenerative agriculture, the principles just start to become second nature, right? Like move your cows, move your chickens, right?

various things, but there is a lot of like context dependent. Like I bought,

a corn and soy row crop field that was degraded as heck. Talk about like how to set yourself up for failure from the beginning, because that doesn't have biodiversity. It doesn't have grasses. It's just dead dirt. And so that was a big challenge having to like revitalize and regenerate that landscape on top of learning how to farm on top of trying to make new feed. And so I think it's very context dependent, um,

Um, but it is a reality that it does cost a lot and that is, it's unfortunate. And I wish that the system was set up easier. I applied to so many loans, David, so, uh, grants, so many grants and lost them all. Didn't get any of them. And a lot of them said, well, we don't like to fund people that are less than two years with experience because there's

Such high failure rate at year two. Yeah. Farms closed down at year two. They give up. It's too hard financially. It's too much work. So grants don't like to fund people unless they see they've made it past the two-year mark. What the heck? I'm in year one and I need funds. So I think that... Is that for all farming or is that for animal farming? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I just know that I applied to a lot of grants and I got zero dollars. So...

Well, actually, I got one. I got one for $3,500 award. And I was like, yes. And then I got the bill for what it cost to get someone to help me write out the plan that was needed to outline all the government steps. And it was $3,420. So I made 80 bucks. Wow.

Um, so it's, it's this, it's this balance. Um, I think that Joel has outlined, if you do meat birds, you can get higher turnover quicker because the life cycle of a meat bird is seven to eight weeks. Whereas the life cycle of a cow is two years. So imagine buying a herd of cow cows.

And you don't get return for two years later. Who, who has the finance that on a farm, you know? So unless you have inherited a hundred head herd of cows, it's very hard to get into cattle farming. Very, very hard. That's why things like egg layers and meat birds are a little bit quicker return in your investment. So you can get paid quicker, but yeah,

Land is getting more expensive and then you, you don't need tractors and equipment and machinery, but if you don't have those, you need more of your time. You need more time and effort and like hard manual work. And that's what I had to put in the beginning. Our tractor couldn't,

pick up feed like totes. It couldn't, we had a garden tractor. Now we have a better tractor that's able to move all of our feed and stuff. So I think that with farming, the reality is that

you're gonna have to balance something else at the same time to pay for it. - Yeah. - Then eventually it will start to return on its investment, but that's hard. Long-term thinking and reward is not common these days 'cause many people are used to a job where you get paychecks every two weeks.

That doesn't happen with farming. There's no guarantee. So what's the thing that sustains you the big picture? Is it the feeling of having this amazing farm that's a showcase for what nature can do? Or is it being right, being proven right, and proving the...

is it a David and Goliath romanticism kind of thing? What's the, what's the thing that makes, cause that's, that's a slog. People are not ready for that. People just want to get in there and, you know, have a quick return, you know, do a Bitcoin, Bitcoin app or something and make their big money. And, you know, Oh, I think different. This is a quote that has stuck with me a lot. You have to love where you're headed more than you hate what it takes to get there. Yeah.

And as long as that stays above the dread of the stuff that you have to get, you're going to be okay because you're going to stay headed down the right path. And I, I guess my motivation, I think I'm a little bit crazy and insane and not normal, but I think

I'm obsessed with it and I really do want to help make a change. And I think to whom much have been given, much is expected. And I have been given so many wonderful things in my life that I want to be able to make a positive change in exchange for all of those things. And this is clearly the path that I was meant to go down. I've done a lot of things that I thought were right for me, mechanical engineering and undergrad, many, many years of golf,

graduate school, PhD, and I was doing those for other people. And then when I found farming, I found myself and I found like what lights me up, gets me so fired up every single day is this passion of changing the food system to better improve metabolism. Like that's my two loves and

metabolism, energy production, and farming methods and combining those together. That is like where I am meant to be. And I think that if you're able to find that for yourself, the why is obvious and it shows up every day. So, yeah. That's good. So, you know, you're obviously probably getting a lot of good sunlight and circadian rhythm healing, right? In your endeavors, huh? I mean,

am really good about morning sunlight. Like that's just the reality. I go feed the animals. I go take care of them before I take care of myself. Do you have a team with you or is it just you? Or how does that work? I do have one farmhand and I have my mom and my mom's friend and we all kind of juggle all of this together. But in the beginning, it was really just me and my sister. And

a lot of people were like, you are, you guys are insane as first generation farmers with zero experience. And I think that that's like accepting that people are viewing you as crazy and not being the norm. That's like step one, right? Being normal isn't good these days, in my opinion, don't be normal. And now I've got a few people that help me here and there, and we're getting better systems in place. And, um,

I can spend more time on building like the farm is one piece. It's one piece, but then the backend logistics, feed development, chicken health, websites, shipping and distribution, marketing, that's a lot. And so people think that my whole day is spent outside on the farm. A lot of my day is spent on the computer getting work done in the morning out doing farm tours, taking care of the animals, getting morning sunlight. It's amazing. And then,

There are many days where I spend late nights on the computer, but that's just the reality of where things are at trying to get the bigger picture systems in place. And it's not going to be that way for forever once getting the systems in place and

I hope to have a little bit better of a work-life balance, but right now it is a lot of computer work to get those systems. Do you wear the blockers or whatever? Does that help? I just turn that filter on, which like automatically, I forgot the name of it. I think it's called Flux, F-Flux. And you can set the timers of when the blue light starts to fade out in the red light. So at night, yeah, the screen is just like red. Yeah, that's cool.

Yeah. I mean, that's, I just wondered if, if you've noticed like, uh, that maybe being outdoors and all that grounding and sunlight, has that made just as much of a difference for you and your health as applying some of the principles of repeat or. Oh, absolutely. Uh, noticeable difference. So we're in Michigan. So we have four extreme seasons, right? Winter time, definitely see a down regulation of metabolism. Um,

a little bit. And then in the summer, I can notice the difference right away being outside more. And I think that you bring up a really great point. AI is here, right? AI is here and it's going to come take jobs. It's going to take millions of jobs throughout the country. Where do we put those people?

I think we put them on farms. You want some interns there, huh? Well, I think farms all over the U.S., when in doubt, they need help. They need work. I think AI actually is going to help a lot of the business stuff of farming become a lot more easier. I think that's going to be exciting. That's another thing that I keep thinking about, like how AI can be used. Because you think about all these people that play these little farm games on farm app, farm video games.

So there's a hunger for that. And if you could find a way to use AI to get them to make farming simpler for people to buy into. Video game where you can build a farm. Yeah. Farmville. Yeah. I've always thought they should make like an app that helps you gamify starting your own little backyard farm. So you get the normies out there stumbling and bumbling with their phones to have a little, have a little postcard farm, you know, but yeah,

But yeah, I mean, that's the health, like getting out and working on a farm for a few hours a day, getting sunlight grounding. They there's really awesome research showing that some of the best red light therapy is being out on pasture or in gardens because plants are

and emit red light. And so it's some of the best high quality. So our pasture is pretty high right now. So I'm like thinking I'm getting some good red light therapy when I'm out there from the sun and from the plants. And that certainly helps, um, and compare that to a nine to five cubicle job. The, the, the hardest thing though, is that

Farming isn't always profitable. And as people get better and better, as we implement AI to maybe help with pattern recognition and improving systems at the farms, I think that that's a big problem right now. Yeah.

And it's all the, all the things are there to make it a much more effective thing. You could use AI to scan your field and assess what's the, based on latest market trends in the local area, what are the best things for you to be selling and the type of land that you have and then how to identify soil health and plant health and leaf tissue health. I mean, you could really, the AI could really take farming to a whole nother level.

level for people and simplify it, not complicate it. Yeah. And where I think that they're missing the mark the most is, so I do not believe that we should just be eating animal products. I believe that we are omnivores and I think it's beautiful that we're omnivores. We can get various vitamins and minerals from animal products and then vitamins and minerals from plant products. And that combined sets us up for a full nutrient intake that's required to thrive, right? Yeah.

But I think that we're really missing the mark on like cropping because you see these corn and soy monoculture fields like nature doesn't work like that. And we have the technology to implement amazing systems to bring back old school farming practices. So I'm obsessed with this thing called three sisters. Have you heard about that? No.

So it's an old-fashioned way of planting crops called companion planting, where you plant a certain crop and it helps support the other crop. Okay, yeah. And that way they have better pest control without any chemical use, no weeds. They were doing that with citrus down here with hemp and some other things. I don't remember. Things like that. That's not taking hold. But Three Sisters is like an ancient process from South America where they would plant corn.

beans that would climb the corn stalks. The beans pull down nitrogen into the soil to better support the corn. And then they plant squashes or pumpkins on the outside and those sprawl out for weed suppression. So you've got three crops.

We totally could build the tractors to plant those in the right orientation requiring no synthetic fertilizer, well, minimal synthetic fertilizer use, no herbicide weed suppression. If we did more companion planting and mixed things, which better support mother nature, we're missing the mark there on crop systems. And there is a huge opportunity problem is the system like those farmers are

There's no fault to them. They are doing the best that they can given the government crop subsidy system. It's so broken, so backwards, but it benefits Bayer and it benefits these other big ag companies. So it's not going to change with billions of dollars of lobbyists keeping it that way. How do we dismantle that monoculture industrial cropping system to do something that

more diverse plant species? Why aren't fruit and potatoes and squash getting the same support that seed corn and seed soy, which carnivores don't like to hear, that is mainly produced by

for livestock in confinement buildings. Most of the corn and soy that you see along the field that's sprayed with glyphosate that is genetically modified, that's for livestock in confinement buildings. This is not normal. This is not natural. And that is a result of the last 100 years and this huge change in how we farm. And I think the

Of course, how we put livestock out on pasture, the answer to how to do that is obvious. Like Joel Salatin, white oak pastures, so many people are doing it. There's not enough discussion on how can we produce plants. That's right. Yeah, you're totally right. That's something I've taught that Joel and we've had some car rides together and I've talked about that when he goes to these different conventions and that there's not a lot of the

creative energy has been in the animal side of regenerative agriculture and a lot of the you know creative energy and the plant side tends to be not to diminish but a little bit more uh hippie i guess which is okay but it's got its own thing going you know and um

you know, permaculture and all these different kind of strange things that have their place. But there does need to be more of that polyculture approach to, you know, crops and fruit trees and so forth. That's one of the things that I've been pushing for a long time. In another life, I had a citrus company in Florida here. Yeah. And, you know, the whole industry has collapsed because

And we're still trying to push it, but it's this very slow going process to try to get, you know, citrus growers to approach, you know, the land and the soil in a regenerative way, you know, and, you know, just trying to get them to understand the concept of something like, you know, blackstrap molasses or something, you know, we're a long ways from getting them to even think, you know, some of them are doing like the hemp thing and all that, but I,

you know, we're, it's just little baby steps because they're again, you know, one of the things that, you know, the MAGA crowd and all that stuff, they don't understand is that when you subsidize industries and protect them with all these little government protections, it cripples them and it kills them. It really does. And I'm living, I've seen that upfront and close. I work with the biggest growers in the state of Florida, 5,000 acres each. And, um,

Worked with them for years and they, you know, there was citrus greening disease and all this, but they didn't have, they were so caught. The industry as a whole is just so coddled in this kind of fake environment that it can't handle anything.

the adaptations it needs to be able to survive and thrive and be smart with what they're doing. So they just sit waiting for the next government subsidized antibiotic. They were injecting trees, you know, with vaccines as the latest, you know, one of the things they've been doing in Florida and they spend all of their money, uh,

trying to, you know, just like with human health. That's when I realized the whole thing is the nightmare, not just with human health, but with plant health, because all of the solutions for citrus greening disease are always focused on a genetic solution. Just like we see with the cancer industry, with what Georgie and Ray Pete and all these people have shown us,

That there's all this focus on this, you know, this Holy grail genetic solution, because it's the biggest billion dollar grift. You can keep that going forever. And that same thing's going on with the plant, but the plant guys don't have enough, you know, they're not botanists and so forth. So they just hear some fertilizer guys say you need this. And, and then they hear these scientists come in with these big universities. Oh, we've got a big grant for you. We're going to give you this vaccine inoculation for your tree. And they, they still don't,

They miss it all. And so you've got an $11 billion industry in Florida citrus that's collapsed into almost nothing, and now it's being replaced with debt slave farms, a new farm, which is these little tiny flimsy homes that are popping up for BlackRock. You know, they destroy the groves in Florida, and then they build these

These little disgustingly built homes with, you know, you put your arm out the window and you're already in the other window of the other house. You know, that's how much of a back, that's how much of a yard you get. And you're in. We can put, we can grow food in a lab. No big deal. This is a big issue with, I think our frame of mindset on agriculture, which is totally different than 1800s and early 1900s.

Those were built on small scale regenerative farms working together. They didn't call themselves regenerative farms at the time because they were just farming that they were doing real farming and

What we do today is not real farming. It's a concoction of pharmaceuticals and pesticides and various other compounds that we've become reliant on. And it's this continuous process of it works for a little bit and then it stops working. Okay, now let's develop another chemical to work now. Okay, then that stops working. Now let's develop the next one. That is very profitable for chemical companies because it's a continuous market. Yeah.

And we're seeing this with antibiotics. Many people don't realize this, but animals in confinement buildings are reliant on antibiotics for their survival. It is very unnatural living conditions. There's antibiotics in their drinking water every single day. Over 80% of the antibiotics sold in the U S are for livestock in confinement, antibiotic resistance happening more and more and more. And at some point, like we're just going to be going down this chemical path of

That you saw with the citrus groves. I didn't know that you were part of citrus farming. That's amazing. There's a huge untapped potential there in how we produce fruits, in how we produce potatoes, squashes. When I created my citrus brand, we got it into different grocery stores and stuff. There's fresh tangerines and everything, honey tangerines. I was still doing...

a kind of low carb paleo thing. So I kind of felt very awkward shoving dozens and dozens of tangerines into people's hands while still doing a low carb thing. Cause I thought that was the ticket for success. Uh, I've been, I guess I can eat two tangerines today. And then, you know, I was so happy when I discovered, you know, Ray P cause I was like, Oh, right. I have a ticket to be proud of what I was like. I was right all along. I just, I,

I was convincing myself that I was selling something that's kind of like candy and I shouldn't really eat too much of it, but I have to because I'm marketing it. You know, so that was a good thing that when history comes, you know, your life journey changes.

validates that intuition you had that people should be eating fresh Florida local citrus. But yeah, but the whole thing's collapsed because like you said, they're dependent on the chemical marketing. And I've been to those conferences. It's pretty pathetic. And David, I think that this is where we're kind of at this divide right now where many people in the Maha space are

they believe that the government is going to fix it. And I just like history repeats itself. I don't know. I don't know if a big government intervention is the solution here. We have to see drastic changes and the lot pure amount of money that lobbyists spend on convincing politicians. So I'm now a raw milk lobbyists. Um, didn't sign up for this at all, but I'm

I am now trying to get laws changed and your state, local state, trying to get laws changed. I'm hosting a raw milk and sourdough cookies event on the state Capitol building in Lansing, Michigan on June 24th. If anyone would like to attend and learning the process here, it's like, you've got a wine and dine.

You've got to share your story. You got to talk about things. I'm never going to be able to compete with big dairy companies and their lobbying, but I have learned.

How much money and how much time and effort? There's entire lobbyist departments in these big chemical companies, these big ag companies that go towards convincing politicians to pass certain laws that make business as usual stay. Hey, we want to stay in this chemical dependent farming model. We're going to keep it this way, okay?

And that's the reality. So how do we compete? How can we compete with that financially? You can't, right? So how do we actually make these big policy changes financially?

I didn't sign up to be a politician. This is hard, right? This is very hard. And I think that it really is going to come bottom up and how that looks. I don't know, but I think that in five to 10 years, knowing a regenerative farmer will be one of the best things for you as the centralized food system becomes more and more centralized, more and more chemical dependent and potentially may go away. So there's so many unknowns out there, but yeah,

I think that putting our faith in a government interventional program, I don't know if that's the best thing.

Yeah, it's not. And, you know, in Florida here, we have a little bit favorable environment for some big changes. I just had a guy on who talked about his success in lobbying the state of Florida to pass a bill to legalize using gold and silver as legal tender, which is in the Constitution. It's like, wait, I'm just getting my rights back. So you can imagine in that environment, it may not be that hard to imagine that

some more favorable food laws here in the state of Florida. And you can imagine that a state like that, which tends to be a trendsetter for other states, you know, if they got on board with something big with food freedom, just dreaming right now, but that's a dream that could be very real in some sense, if there's enough critical mass demand for it. But there's so many multifaceted approaches to how you get it done. You know, it's some people focus on the

the dairy thing only. I think we should just push for absolute blanket food freedom for anything so that, you know, people right now it's illegal in most States to sell, you know, grandma to sell her cookies and pies from her kitchen if it's not licensed, you know what I mean? So there's all these, like just getting rid of that whole, whole situation would be just a blanket win for everybody, you know, because people are going to have to learn to,

to go to their neighbors and get some food every now and then instead of the restaurants when these food systems continue to fail. Okay. So this is a very important thing that most people don't realize. As a farmer, as a food producer, there are horrible rules and regulations that we have to follow that take a ton of time. They frustrate you and they make you grow gray hairs everywhere. And they cost a lot of money.

I think that the USDA and FDA rules and regulations increase the cost of food production. And if we got rid of some of those, regenerative farming foods would be a lot more affordable. So what I'm putting forward in the state of Michigan is a complete food freedom bill. We are essentially like, David, you can go skiing, you can go skiing.

at a ski resort and you sign a liability waiver. And what does that say? You cannot sue the ski resort because you understand that you are putting...

You're life at risk. You could die on that slope, but a part of life is risk. And you're going to take that risk for the enjoyment of skiing. In that waiver, you go ski. Food freedom. I think that the government doesn't need to have its hand in rules and regulations of all of our food. I think the concept of public health is bizarre. It's bizarre. Why is your health in the hands of someone else? Right.

So I think that for grocery stores, restaurants, airports, there does need to be government rules and regulations. Let those stay. Yeah. Keep those for that. But there should be a food freedom where an informed consumer is able to buy directly from a consumer understanding that government inspection didn't take place and they're okay with that. Yeah.

That's not set up, David. It's not. It's not a thing because gradually over these last 20, 30 years, more and more of these food bills and rules and regulations and warehouse licenses and contracts that just add up over and over and over, they have their hands in everything. And it costs the producer a lot of money and a lot of time. And that's what makes people give up.

So going back to like in the beginning, a lot of people asking like, how do I do this? Like, help me get to what you're doing. I need to put in this back end work to help make things easier for everyone. And part of that is we've got to get things passed that make this easier or else. You might have to run for ag commissioner if they have that in Michigan. Do you guys have an ag commissioner?

See, I didn't, I don't know. I didn't realize how much politics would be involved in all this. So I'm kind of new into this. I met with Michigan House of Representatives a few months ago, going back June 24th and 25th, meeting with various people and

I I'm just now learning. I was at this food freedom event where I met Brad and Abby Rockefeller's farm in New York. And I met this like incredible mother and daughter who live in Utah and they're farmers and.

But they spend 40 days every year being food freedom lobbyists at their state capitol. They've changed over 20 laws in their state. Talk about like some badass chicas. But 40 days, that's a lot of time. That's a lot of time.

And it is going to be no big companies are going to make those changes because that literally removes their profits. So it is going to come from consumers or farmers from the bottom up. And it's very exhausting to think about. But if it's something that's going to I think that it's almost a first layer that we got to tackle. Yeah. You saying like, all right, low poof of feed throughout the country. Well, guess what?

guess what the feed companies have rules and regulations that make it impossible to get into so i actually considered back in 2021 starting a feed company yeah the numbers didn't add up didn't make sense i would have gone out of business in a year and these rules and regulations are set up to get rid of small guys coming in small girls coming in exactly

Yeah, I mean, that's how it is in like Florida Fresh Citrus. It's illegal to sell. You can't just be a grower and grow fruit and then sell it to somebody. You have to go through these packing houses where they have these rules for all these fungicides and all these toxic things and chemicals, right? So you can't do that. You can't sell it. We don't have a free market for food. We don't. And the free market will balance itself out. Like if someone, I think that,

I think that a farm cooperative, I think, so my, I've studied a lot of like old fashioned agriculture. And what I think the most sustainable thing is, is like a group of farmers working together where each farmer does one to two different things at their farm, maybe three. And then they all work together to produce a full farm.

shopping experience. Right. And that's what I'm obsessed with building with nourish food club. We've got, I've got produce farmers. I've got chicken farmers. You've got like a cooperative of farmers. Do you have a, do you have, can you say how many or is it?

It's about 30, 30 farmers. All in your area or all scattered around everywhere? So right now we've got two hubs, one in Michigan and one in Kansas. And in Michigan, we have like a wide variety of like dairy partners, beef partners, chicken partners, egg partners. Is that like herding cats to get all those farmers to cooperate or is it easy?

I have some systems in place and people that help me. They do daily farm visits to help inspect. We have a SOP booklet. So we've got a booklet of what you need to do for this operation. This here's our rules and regulations. This is what's not allowed. This is what's allowed. I have my feed mill deliver all of our feed there. It's a lot to coordinate. It is, but we're building this small scale food system that,

how things used to be done, right? So I'm relearning how they used to farm in the 1800s before we were chemically dependent on all these things. And these farmers support each other, right? And it's almost like they, once they, once they get the system, once they have the SOP book that they understand, they can work together to help support one another. And so that's what we're trying to build here. And then in Kansas, right?

We have another egg hub and starting to experiment with like these cooperatives. Right. And it's, it's so different than how food is produced today. We're relearning and we're learning as meat birds with all of this too, or just the eggs and these cooperatives. Yep. Our, our chicken has 202% more stearic acid and, and,

I bet that's a bit crispier, right? I would imagine. Because I remember the first time I had Brad's pork and I cut into it, I said, man, this is like, this fat is so rich. Yeah, this is like a ribeye. This is delicious. It's totally different. Low poof of pork too, low poof of chicken. But right now, it's just, there's so many...

There's so many pieces to this, but I really think that one of the first layers needs to be relaxing some of the rules and regulations because those make it very hard to stick with. So, for example, David, I submitted labels for our new charcuterie project.

So this is what came from fire in a bottle or sorry, not fire in a bottle. Fire brand meats, Brad's pork company. Those hogs now go to our charcuterie project, low PUFA charcuterie. I submitted those labels in March. We still haven't heard back. I've bought the pigs. I paid for the charcuterie. I'm sitting on product. That's fine because it's aging and it actually gets better with aging, but it's June 13th. No word.

from the labels. They're just going to help you age a little better. Why do I need that? Why do I need the USDA to tell me that I put net weight in ounces at the right spot on the label? I think that those need to be, to make this a lot more approachable, I think we need to find the right balance of like making sure that people are doing things safely and producing food that is not dangerous.

but also these ridiculous rules and regulations that are needed for confinement, they're needed for industrial agriculture, they shouldn't be applied to small-scale farming because it is a completely different farming system. I'm just curious, you know, the people that are going to be doing these small-scale farms and homesteads, how do you convince them they're going to be the most notorious farmers

uh, anti authority people you will meet. So how do you convince them to just like come in under your system with your, you know, your little free market regulations, you know, like how do you get that kind of, that seems like that would be a hard sell, but I'm sure you can. I'm not saying that they have to be under my little co-op. What benefit of my co-op is that I provide a guaranteed market and a lot of farmers don't want to market. And I don't think they need to, um, it's,

You take that whole...

factor out of their hands they don't have to deal with it. They've got a guaranteed good market and then I provide like hey here's the regulations in terms not regulations that's not the right word but like no you can't feed your pigs soybean oil I'm sorry like yeah that's what's you need okay so it's it's like it's a um I would call it an educational book on how to farm in the 1800s that's what I would call it it's our SOPs for hey you need to move your pigs uh once a week and

call this person to get the feed delivered that fit the rules.

It's the standards. Standards. It's the standards. How do you find that person in that market that you're not there that's going to deliver the right feed? You just coordinate all this before you go into the market. You just have that whole thing. We visit them. This is the kind of stuff you're going to need when you politically organize for the revolution in Michigan. And this is the kind of stuff, you know, Ray Peet was waiting for people to get their thyroids fixed so people would

do this kind of coordination, you know? It takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot of energy, but it does. I've got an incredible team. It's not like it's just, you need a team. You need people to do this with you. It's,

It's very rewarding, but it can be very lonely and it can take a lot of time. But the government rules and regulations is a difficult thing. And like we talked about before we started recording, like we've got three and a half years and who knows what will come after that. But who even knows what will come during it? Because who is Brooke Rollins? Who is in charge? Who is Brooke? That's a great question. You make teachers say, who is Brooke Rollins? You sell them at ag events, you know?

The answer to that question will give you a lot of information about the situation we're in on the ag side. Yeah, because it's like there's unelected bureaucrats telling us how to farm when they have no idea what metabolism is, what healthy food is. It's...

I don't know the solution now, but I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying to find our way out. It's gotta be, it's an orchestra of things happening. Right. And so Ray P was, and I wanted to ask your, you know, your opinion on this, but you know, Ray Pete was keen to see, you know, he wanted to fix people's health as a means of having political change. And people always overlook that part when they talk about Ray Pete online, a lot of people do.

which is that if, I guess in his imagination, if you can heal people, they can have clarity of mind and proper regulation of their emotions and their state of being, that they would give them the kind of insight they would need to do the right things, to think, perceive, and act in a right way with their neighbors, right? This is understanding of Ray's work, and I love this so much. Yeah, and that's the thing that, you know, I think about,

Okay, so how does that fit? If we continue to do our job through the podcast space and other things, because it does make a difference. You know, look, I was one of the, you know, people on one of the few shows in, you know, talk radio, normie land, not podcast, nutrition, nerd podcasting, which, you know, has always gone into deeper things that never really...

you know, reach the surface of the mainstream. I was talking about the seed oil problem every night, every day on major FM, AM broadcast radio shows in a political context, not just that seed oils are bad, but what it does to our bodies and how that affects our politics and

how that affects our violent attitudes in our culture, the way we are at each other's throats. I connected that whole thing every day for years, starting 2017, 2018. That topic has now become something that everybody's talking about. It doesn't take a long time. I'm not saying I'm the only guy doing that. Obviously, Ray Peet was in the wilderness since the 70s, like a voice in the wilderness calling out for this to change and going that long route. But things, if you...

The thing that I have found that the best way to change things is to not allow things to be siloed. So if the nutrition space gets siloed away from the regenerative space, we're wasting time. I think it is. If I had known more faster, I was interviewing Joel Saladin regularly every week on my show and Ray P. And if I had thought about it, I should have put them together. Yeah.

Because their fan bases would have seen that and that would have cross pollinated. And that, you know, that little things like that make this ripple effect. Right. And people are mimetic and they imitate what looks cool and edgy and what's different and what's something new they've never thought of in a different way. And that's all you just got to keep pushing that cross pollination of people, places, ideas, talents, and keep stirring that pot until you get something.

the kind of this rising up effect. Like, like I think the energy equation, you don't, you know, you can be despairing, but if we think about the energy equation, if we can get more decentralized energy, decentralized energy breaks us free from our dependence on the centralized powers. So if you rise, if you change the energy equation, then you've changed the metabolism of our entire economy. You've raised our metabolism. You've given us a much more robust,

metabolism that's not so sequestered artificially and dependent on foreign wars for the price of our energy. That's the kind of stuff that has to happen at the same time that people are curing cancer, right? Because when they cure cancer with these, that's why I love the political, when I see, you know, Georgie doing the things with B1, B3, B7, and aspirin,

or cancer, I say, God, that's a political and cultural revolution. I'm not even thinking about, I mean, I am thinking about the healing, the physiological healing. That's a cool science thing, but I'm looking at the cultural healing. A hundred percent. When people know that cancer can be slayed for just these little small, little ordinary things that everybody in the world has access to. People in Malaysia can afford B vitamins. People all around the world in impoverished countries could afford B

B vitamins and aspirin. And I love that subversiveness that you can take down this entire elaborate system using these ordinary little slingshots like David and Goliath. So how does that, how does healing the cancer situation improve your relationship to the food system and people's

hope and feeling that, you know, they say all the time, you can just do things. That's the little thing they all, what's that saying? You can just do things. You can just do things. Right. That mindset, you know, it sounds silly, but actually that's really important for this to change, right? It's like once people realize, oh, wait, you can just cure cancer. You can do it with like really cheap things and really ordinary things.

And if you believe in that and other people believe in that, they're like, well, we can do that with food systems and we can do that with our energy and we can do that with rare earths and we can do that with coordinating political action. Right. And you can just do things. You can just have gold and silver as legal tender in Florida. I never thought that was going to happen, but now it's apparently going to happen. You know, this, I have a very like, so in grad school, I was listening to Joel Salatin videos and,

Will Harris videos. And then the next day I tune into Ray Pete and then I go back to Joel Salatin and then I go to Ray Pete. So I was listening to both during grad school. But I think that you just nailed it right there. When we are in a low metabolism state and Ray Pete talks about this all the time, it's called learned helplessness.

your brain doesn't have enough glucose to make decisions for itself it's easier to listen to authority than it is to make your own opinions and decisions yeah i finally was able to get enough energy where i woke up and realized none of this makes sense right i'm not gonna listen to what they're saying

Instead, I'm going to do things differently. We need more and more people like that because right now we've got sheeps. We've got people lined up saying, yes, I trust, listen to authority, listen to these things. And I'm not saying to go start riots, but like you said, this hip new phrase of you can just do things. Most people don't think that way. Right. No.

And until we get people healed with better food choices, better habits, um,

We can't expect people to think that way because your health impacts what you are able to do in your life. It is directly connected. What you're talking about is what Ray says. Structure is interdependent with energy at every level, right? So energy informs structure and structure informs energy. What you are decrying in your food system and what I have in mind

is the lack of structure and a robust and healthy market that makes sense because it's so distorted by coercion, right? And coercion distorts healthy structures of markets and price signaling and like, you know, opportunities for market entrance and exit and all that. So we're missing the structure. So we also, so if we raise our energy, right, and get our metabolisms in order and get

get our hopes and our expectations about culture. You know, all of these things inform the structure energy kind of intertwines nature, right? Like better music makes better farmers, better farmers produce better artists and filmmakers and filmmakers inspire poets and poets inspire the next person who's going to create unlimited energy too cheap to meter, who's going to, you know, and that kind of interdependent relationship between the energy and

And the structure that kind of supports this. That's how you build things. That's how you get things done. Right. And so you have to do something. If you like you said, if you just stay there. Oh, it's too chaotic. Then, you know, it may not be as chaotic once you're at a higher state, you know? Yeah. And that's the thing that's amazing. You know, I've learned that, you know, is, you know,

Learning that you can live, I know that people are talking about the sugar fasting, but I've tried it a few times. And just the level of energy you can have just on pure sugar alone and the clarity of mind and how it makes you feel relaxed. It unlocks previous versions of yourself that you thought were just from younger years.

And you're like, oh, wow, that's like you're just kind of having more fun and relaxed attitude. And then you notice that things that would bother you more don't bother you as much in that state. And that's a pretty cool experience. It feels kind of like a superpower, kind of like the Matrix where you can slow down stressors and just see the bullet. That's not as bothering to me anymore, right? And that's...

It feels good to be a good carb burner, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I'm working on it, but I really appreciate your time. What a, what a great window into the nuts and bolts of, of, of a full-fledged farm cooperative. I mean, that's what, what's the, what's harder, the cooperative management or the farm management for your own farm? Oh gosh. Probably the, the cooperative. It's,

I really my favorite thing to do is to talk to people like you, podcasts, marketing, educate, talk about these things and why it's important because I think informed consumers, we need to make better informed consumers so that they can make better food choices so that they can be healthier and then can create cool shit in their life. Yeah. It's like a compounding effect.

And I really like, that's why I wanted to become a professor because I do like to educate and inspire others. So my favorite thing to do is to write articles, go on podcasts, make videos. I can't do that all day, every day. I've got to take care of the boring, monotonous stuff behind the scenes too. But then you get, you can get it like Joel where he's, he's got the whole thing done.

down to a machine where he can spend all of his time educating you know that's exactly I gotta get a lot of interns but I also wouldn't have my sanity if I didn't like this morning I started my day by moving the cows getting morning sunlight like that's my ideal start to a day but I can't be spending my whole day out in the farm and a farm does require a lot of time and attention so that's why I'm

I have a farmhand who can help, you know, move the chicken coops during the day and move fencing, make sure that all the hot wires are connected, make sure that the water lines are running. Okay. Cause when you're in mother nature, everything can go wrong. Whereas when you're in a confinement building, you're separated from the weather. It's like perfect temperature control. Everything when you're out in mother nature, every day is different. You've got a storm that comes through and wipes out your coop and

winds knock down your fencing, all your animals are out. So there's always a level of chaos. But like you just said, when you have good energy, you can handle these situations better. You don't freak out as much. So I would say that building the systems is definitely a lot more time intensive right now, but yeah.

um i'm honestly just grateful that i have this opportunity like i yeah it's very very helpful for a lot of folks you know i think about that have you ever seen the movie truman show with um

uh with the the it's about the guy trapped in this little dome but he thinks it's his life you know jim carrey plays the guy well you know the only way he can understand that is he has to have like an inciting incident that breaks his reality and he like it starts with like a light falling from the sky and falling on the ground he's like where did that come from and then he hears you know he hears like on a radio some something that's coordinating about his own daily drive you know yeah

That's what has to, it's like an apocalypse that has to happen. Those are like apocalypse. That's like an unveiling. And I, that's why I'm calling for the Manhattan project for cancer, where we're going to get Georgie and other folks. That's why I put Tom Seyfried in him. Cause I know he's doing a whole nother thing, but you have to cross pollinate these ideas. You have to learn to play the long game. If you're going to lead people, you can't fight about the difference. The first time you put Georgie, who is not,

And, you know, he doesn't have the established credentials that Thomas Seyfried has. You got to show respect. People need to learn how to be leaders if they understand that. I'm just saying that to the commenters that kept telling me, why didn't you talk about sugar? Make them fight about sugar. You don't understand humans. Sorry, we're not going to have time for that. But you're building that coalition. Have that Manhattan Project for Cancer because I think that's like the light bulb falling from the sky moment for the public. We're like, oh, wait, we can just cure cancer together.

without this machine that if that happens, it's like an in breaking moment that opens up the whole

possibility for a lot of different things, right? You know, like we could just sell food from a farm, right? We don't, if we can cure cancer and not be hurt, we should be able to just like sell food from the farm. If we do that, that's downstream from that. But like, just take a step back and reflect on what you just said. We should be able to just sell food from a farm. Why has that been taken away from us? Yeah.

That's like the most logical thing we should be doing. Because people are in a mental stupor and they're in a state of despair because everybody they know is getting all these horrific diseases. They're slowly rotting away. Every time a KFC shows up in a community in a small rural area, it's like a sign of buzzards flying over the death of people, slow death. It's a horrible experience. People don't realize the trauma of

You don't want to, you know, that word is overly used, but the trauma of everyday experience in this decadent empire with all of its violent psychopathic oligarchs picking at us at every level of our existence, including blue lights, you know, everything. And so like, just don't overwhelm yourself from it. Have some sugar.

And then like, and then just start learning how to like return to that hopeful spirit. And then, and then in my opinion, again, just we need to come together and find something that can be an apocalyptic unveiling for the whole thing. Something that they say can't be done and we do it. And that changes, that opens up this, this opportunity for true reform. I think it'll be easier to do food freedom once people realize that cancer has been a big giant psyop. Exactly. When they, when they,

you know, that's our doomsday thing, like afraid of cancer. Oh my gosh. And the immediate reaction that someone gets is okay, what drugs and what, when do I start radiation? Right. As soon as people realize we've been lied to about, that's been a big scam.

What else will they wake up to? Right. Wait, I can drink raw milk now. If aspirin is more important than these $50,000 a pop chemo drugs or whatever, then maybe raw milk won't kill me. And that kind of goes together. It's not a logical thing. It's like a feeling. That's how these people. Harvard isn't right that seed oils are heart healthy. Yeah. They can start waking up to these things. Exactly. Yeah.

All right. I appreciate you coming on, Ashley. It's always great having you on. Tell us your website and anything else you want to share with us. Yeah. Excited to, I didn't know how interested you were in politics. So I'd love to continue that discussion because I'll need some ideas once I talk to more legislators, but hopefully I can share more about, you know, progress on food freedom and getting that passed.

It's going to take a few years, I'm sure. But for the meantime, if people want low PUFA eggs delivered, check out www.angel-acresfarm.com. And we're building a completely new website for our nourish food cooperative system. And at some point in the future, I'd love to help other people get this set up. It's just there's only 24 hours in a day and I'm trying to get

bills and policies passed and also build our own system here. And I think that both need to be done in order to actually make healthy farm, fresh food accessible and price approachable. So that's what we're doing. So if you're in Michigan, milk and cookies is when raw milk and cookies on the Capitol building, uh, June 24th, you're going to get Gretchen Whitmer over there. Probably not. Yeah.

She'll be there, but we'll see. We'll see. All right. Take care. Appreciate what you're doing and keep it up. Thank you so much. The record shows that you can do

I took the boat. I'm feeling my way.