- We are passionate people.
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And when I get excited, sometimes I want
to do all the things.
I want to do everything at once.
I don't wanna leave anything out.
I wanna have all the experiences,
and usually that works out for me.
Life can be great like that, and often it can be exhausting.
And sometimes I screw stuff up
because I'm trying to do too much at the same time.
Today's episode is about how
to build your regeneratively minded cannabis
farm with balance.
It's about building your soil without blowing up the farm.
It's about staying busy without going crazy,
and it's about building sustainable future
without being your own bully.
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Also, it is true that I've been away for a minute.
Thanks for the messages from the
folks who were checking on me.
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and back home in Michigan, helping
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I'm back now and back at it. So thanks for your patience.
You are listening to Shaping Fire,
and I'm your host, Shang Los.
Welcome to episode 114. My guest today is Daniel Stein.
Daniel Stein was born in Humboldt County
and grew up in Hawaii.
He went to college first for engineering,
and then for soils, forestry,
and eventually environmental science.
He started farming vegetables in cannabis in Hawaii,
doing lettuce farming
and permaculture installations while caretaking a citrus
and avocado orchard in the jungle on land that was part
of Terrence McKenna's ethno botanical gardens.
In fact, Daniel returned to the home in Humbold
where he was born and started gardening and farming in 2000.
In 2010, he met his wife Taylor,
and they became Priceland Forest Farm.
They started selling vegetables at farmer's markets in 2011.
In 2016, they entered the regulated cannabis market.
In 2017,
Priceland Forest Farm won the
Regenerative Cannabis Farm Award.
That was a great year at Emerald Cup.
Nowadays, they grow about three quarters of an acre
of vegetables, 5,000 square feet of cannabis,
and a small orchard and perennial garden,
all low or no-till.
Today, we're gonna use Daniel's parcel as an example of how
to approach growing regeneratively on your own new parcel
or transitioning from petroleum
and salt fertilizers to regenerative growing.
The lessons learned from his parcel can likely be
transferred to yours as well.
During the first set, we'll talk about assessing your
property for cannabis cultivation, building soil,
and choosing cover crops and companion plants for cannabis.
In the second set, we will discuss water sequestration,
animal husbandry, and animal fertilizers,
and if crop rotation applies to cannabis.
And we finish the episode considering controlled fire burns,
long-term research opportunities
and the economics of growing cannabis regeneratively,
welcome to Shaping Fire, Daniel.
- Ah, happy to be here.
- Thank you so much for giving us some of your time on a,
on a busy midweek Tuesday during the spring.
I know that you have gotta be totally busy on the farm right
now, getting everything in place for the summer crops.
- Absolutely. But it, it's really nice to have the excuse
and opportunity to sit down for a minute, .
- Excellent. Fantastic. Um, uh, I like
that you have set up outdoors.
Um, I think you're, this is the first time I've ever had
somebody set up outdoors, so,
so you dear listener can enjoy the, uh, the, the birds
of Humboldt during the interview .
- And I can too. - Excellent. So let's get right into it.
So, you know, um, I understand
that when you arrived on your property,
you knew you had a lot to do
to make your property into a functional farm.
And, and I think that's the case with a lot
of new homesteaders.
What were the biggest concerns
or projects that you knew you needed to address first off,
in order to build out your farm?
- So, I, I mean, on a homestead level,
the first thing was making sure I had a place to stay.
But, but on, on, on the, the land level, the,
the property had been, um,
unmaintained for quite a long time.
So in terms of gardening, the first thing I had
to do is cle the space.
We're, we're in a forest environment,
and the forest had had re encroached a lot
of tree seedlings, uh, Himalaya, blackberry, white thorn,
various plants that, that had re encroached on,
on historic garden spaces.
So my first order business was, was to get
to clearing some burning,
some chipping when I could borrow a chipper.
I had very little resources at the time.
And then, um, for cultivating cannabis, which,
which I was really excited to do here, um,
was building a greenhouse.
When I came back onto the property, um, it was 2000
and, uh, we were in the two 15 days where
it was vague what, what the legality was,
but if you hid it in a greenhouse where they couldn't see it
and get a warrant, you were, you were pretty safe.
So clearing enough space, building a greenhouse.
And then as I started to build out the garden
as it was cleared, my next order
of business was getting a soil test.
So I, I knew what I was dealing with
and knew my approach to bringing that soil in
that gardening space to a place
where it was productive again.
- Right on. I wanna hit on a couple of those.
Let's, let's start with the clearing. Mm-Hmm. .
So, um, I don't have a big parcel.
My, my farm is pretty small.
It's actually more like a homestead with a big garden.
And, um, you know, I know that when it gets right down
to it, if I wanna clear something
and want it to be, if I want it to stay clear, I need
to clear it down to the roots.
Um, yep. It sounds like you've done a lot of clearing
for people who are new to their property
and they, they need to clear things, um, like, uh,
like Scotch Broom where I live, which is absolutely heinous.
Um, mm-Hmm. . Um, did you learn any tricks
about clearing that, that you would recommend to somebody
who is new at clearing?
- Um, do it while you're young.
- , - Um, scotch Broom specifically,
there's great tools for that.
And, and some of those tools like a weed wrench and,
and various tools that are specifically for,
for small woody things under, under an inch diameter stems
that give you leverage
to pull things out are, are wonderful.
They work somewhat for Blackberry.
One of the things I've learned in land development is it's
really worth just doing it right from the start.
You know, I didn't have a lot
of resources at the time I was doing this.
It would've been worth it to hire a,
a mini excavator or rent one and,
and just, just get it done from the start.
Do that land disturbance early on on land
that you're already transitioning from one thing to another,
where the disturbance won't make as big of an impact,
do the disturbance, and then heal the disturbance with,
with kind of the new paradigm, uh, of, uh, of a different,
uh, biological, uh,
pattern happening.
- I like the suggestion that you're making that, like,
you know, as regenerative farmers, we're looking to do,
in most cases as little disturbance as possible,
but you weigh that realistically over time
and over the fact that you needed to be able
to get in your crops in order
to make the revenue to sustain the farm.
So you're like, all right, well, I, I can either do some,
you know, careful disturbance now and, and,
and then come right behind it with a lot of healing,
or I can wait and do it the slow way all by hand
and then potentially miss the season,
which also will not be good for the farm.
And so you, you really weighed the type of disturbance
that you're going to do,
and I think that clarity is important.
- Well, and, and even in the long term,
like there's the heavy handed disturbance, uh, of, um,
bringing machinery onto the land,
but then if you have, say, small diameter a foot
to 18 inch diameter trees,
and you don't get the roots out, you will be coming back in
with a chainsaw depending on the species of trees and,
and burning fuel and using oil again and again
and again, um, to keep that held back.
So it's like, uh, you know, more upfront and then,
and then, um, the lack of disturbance
or a continuous disturbance to maintain that project,
- You know, a lot i it, your, your experience
of getting on the property
and then, uh, first off needing to, uh,
get a greenhouse going is
that's a pretty typical experience.
And, um, I've, I've talked to different farmers and,
and I enjoy hearing, um, how they decided where
to place their greenhouse
because, you know, on some properties it's obvious, right?
You put it into one place that gets the most sun Mm-hmm.
. But if, if you've got things like, you know,
um, uh, uh, seasonal sun changes or,
or sun is available everywhere on the property, um,
there can be a lot of competing, um, uh, reasons
to, of, of placement.
Uh, how did you come to the decision of where
to put your greenhouse?
- Uh, well, um, you know,
I would've loved to have been on the land for five years
before I made any infrastructure commitments, you know?
Mm-Hmm. to, to kinda see
the pattern of things.
And, and one piece of advice I would give
to new homesteaders is really to,
to think about if you can make infrastructure
that's functional, but not permanent
in the early part of homesteading.
So like, if you do put your greenhouse somewhere
where it makes sense when you first do it,
but then it makes less sense as time goes on,
you can take it apart and move it to somewhere new.
Um, but yeah, I, I've seen a lot of,
of land development, especially around cannabis growing,
make mistakes as far as that, that desire
to get in your cash crop and the first season makes you rush
and make kind of the decisions
that you can pull off rather than the decisions you
want to see in the long term.
Um, and, and there's no way around that to some extent,
but, um, I, I'm kind of wandering off.
I forgot the, the aim of the question at first. Oh,
- That's, that's all right.
You know, I think that you make a good point
that the first step on the new parcel is not to dig, uh,
the first step on the new parcel is
to put down your chair in the middle of the, of the,
of the area and look at it with notes and, and,
and really like, think and dream and plan
before you dive into making things.
And, um, uh, that planning part,
you don't wanna short shrift
because, you know, it kind of reminds me of, you know, uh,
the whole measure twice cut once idea.
Exactly. You really don't wanna build the greenhouse
and then have to move the greenhouse in the same season.
It's really better to spend a little bit of time
that you think you might be able to, might,
should be doing something else, and,
and really plan out what you're going to do
for the season. There.
- I, I can't even count the number of times I,
I've confidently made a design
or a decision about something like irrigation,
ordered a bunch of parts, spent money, put it all together,
and then realized the areas
where it falls short . Yeah.
- So a lot of people, um, who are coming to their property
also have got limited resources like you did.
And, um, they really struggle.
I have really struggled on the, okay, it's,
it's my first season and I, I need to get going.
Um, I can either do a, a fast and cheap greenhouse,
or I can build something that I'll be proud of
and will last me a long time.
And, and, you know,
perhaps I can go even later in the season
because if I get an, uh, an unexpected snow,
I'll be able to handle it.
You know? How how did you weigh that for yourself?
The, the, the wanting to not waste resources,
but needed to get something up,
but also not having the resources to just throw money at it
and make something, you know,
make a castle greenhouse right outta the bat?
- Well, I mean, there's a bunch of approaches.
I, I was very fortunate in that I had access to a wood mill,
so I made a, a wooden greenhouse.
Um, but since then, various approaches, I,
there's a lot available online of, of used, uh, materials.
You could, you can get on Craigslist, you can find, um,
galvanized conduit, things like that.
And you can get a, a conduit bender to,
to make your own greenhouses relatively
inexpensively these days.
Um, but the way my first greenhouse here,
I believe I found a, a old pile of used PVC
at somebody's in somebody's yard,
asked them if they were using it
and made it a quick PVC hoop.
And it was the following year where I had actually had time
to fell a tree and mill it and, and build a greenhouse.
- I like this idea of not only upcycling your materials in
the short term, because
that way you can feel a lot easier about, um,
building a temporary greenhouse immediately.
And then, and then as you're able
to collect the higher quality, um, materials, do
that the next season or,
or further on, um, if you're,
if you're gonna do something short term, um, it's great
to be able to, to get things from, from neighbors or,
or shared online so that you don't have to spend that money
and, uh, you know, and also create new plastic, right?
- Yeah. And absolutely.
And maybe you don't need a greenhouse the first year.
I mean, I did 'cause I was hiding plants,
but, um, if you don't use a greenhouse,
you start your plants a little bit later,
it gives you extra time to prepare your,
your outdoor garden.
And, and then you plant that and,
and you have a crop that you can use towards
building a greenhouse the, the following year.
I mean, uh, I, I, I can give this advice.
It hasn't always been advice I've taken myself .
Um, but to, to bite off
what you can realistically chew based on your, your budget
and your, your time, et cetera.
I mean, I, I have the bad habit of jumping out
of the airplane and then imagining I can sew the parachute
before I hit the ground .
But, um, I, I've, I can't say
that it's always worked that well,
- Well, you know, that I think that is one
of the challenges for those of us who are like, you know,
optimistic, visionary type folks
because, um, we,
we we're always biting off more than we can
chew . Yeah.
- Yeah. It, it all looks so good. Yeah.
- So, so let's talk about the, the real star
of the farm, your soil.
So, mm-Hmm. , um, if I understand the,
the story, um, when you got to the farm,
it had not actually, I mean, it wasn't even really a farm.
It was, it was a parcel and, and the,
and the soil had not been cared for in a long time.
Um, you know, most of us imagine
that the soil in Humboldt County is like, you know, infused
with magic and like good all by itself.
Was, was your soil already good to go when you arrived?
Or did you know immediately
that you needed to do soil building?
- Um, it's actually a combination
because generally the, the soil in Humboldt County
and around here, I is a very thin clay soil as,
as far as the top soil goes.
And, and here we have a vein of,
of really quality soil in terms of, of the soil structure.
Um, the, the place we are is relatively flat and,
and it has a vein of alluvial soil where,
where two creeks had come back and forth across
and deposited some soil.
So, so it has a, a slightly sandy loam
strip through part of the, the flat area here.
That being said, it was covered in brush
and was very acidic,
and, um, it, it needed a lot of work.
Um, so the first order of business definitely was testing
that and, uh, adjusting the, the pH to,
to bring it back to, to neutral.
Um, and then as we expanded the farm,
we reached out into more of, of the clay pore soil areas
of the farm and, and started working on those soils.
- So as you, um, you know, once you got the pH back
to neutral from all the, all the acidity Mm-Hmm.
, um, why don't you, uh, kind of illustrate
for us a couple of the processes that you did
to like build fertility into the soil?
Um, because, you know, as we know, it takes more than just,
um, you know, a good pH the, the soil we want it, um, uh,
imbued with, with, with microbes
and beneficial bacteria and fungi.
And, and I'm sure
that you were probably excited about that part of it.
'cause because I mean, it's my favorite part
'cause you get to do a whole bunch
of really cool living projects, you know?
Yeah. So, so why don't, why don't, why don't you just kind
of like, uh, go through some of the, the projects like that,
that you did, um, to just increase the,
the life force in the soil?
- Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I was relatively lucky in that generally,
unless a soil is really bare, you,
you have a lot of life force in it.
We, we, we have a forest soil here, so it,
it is infused with life.
The, the, the challenge here in humble
and in similar Mediterranean climates is that it gets so dry
during the summer that it, it, it's kind
of like the winter would be if you were in Michigan
or something where the, the, the season that,
that the life kind of gets put on hold in, in
that most active layer of the soil here is in the summer
because it dries out.
Um, so a big part of that for me was
developing the organic matter so that it could hold moisture
and, and there could be life there
throughout, throughout the season.
So, yeah, a a big part of it was, was building a,
a stable organic matter in the soil.
And, and stable organic matter is very different than act
of breaking down organic matter, both
of which you need the act
of breaking down organic matter is the food
for the biology in the soil, the stable organic matter.
I kind of think of as the, um, the housing .
It, it's, it's the buffer, it's the well that, that you,
your plants can draw from.
Mm-Hmm. and, and the place, the,
the pantry, if you will.
So that is a relatively slow process.
One of the early ways I started putting stable organic
matter into the soil,
and this is when I had a much smaller garden.
The farm didn't come until, until later, was,
was through biochar.
I was doing a lot of, of burning here on the property
and learning how to, a, as I did, um, fire safety work
and thinning in the forest, learning how to make burn piles,
um, in a way that preserved a lot of the charcoal, then
soaking that in like a worm, casting tea,
and then putting that in the soil.
So then you have this, this repository, uh, of, uh,
moisture holding and nutrient holding within the soil.
And early on I was, um, managing the soil with,
uh, a biointensive style rather than a no-till style.
That's where you like double dig everything all the time,
which was incredibly tiring.
But it also really allowed me to,
to build up organic matter very, very deep in the soil.
Um, I hadn't heard of no-till yet.
I was, I was really excited when I discovered
that about a decade later,
- , you're like, oh, I'm already doing that. I'm
- Like, I, I'm, I, I don't have
to dig everything every year.
And, you know, at that point I was, I was digging
with a shovel and a fork to be able to do the same kind
of a thing of like keeping soil structure while aerating,
um, and,
and discovering techniques to be able to do that without
as much work was, was mind blowing to me.
- I didn't understand it when you first, uh, suggested
that idea, now that I do, that must have been a really
fabulous moment when you, when you read a, you know,
a defense of not double digging
and realizing that, that perhaps it was time for
that to end all that.
And that's particularly backbreaking work.
You must have felt Oh, yeah. Felt like, oh, I'm free. You
- Know?
Yeah. Well, I, it, it was amazing.
'cause it, it kind of came with,
as we expanded into being a larger farm, um, Taylor, my,
my wife and I, as,
as we expanded into a larger area here on the property, the,
the first thing we did was like, we, well,
we obviously can't double dig an acre, so we're gonna,
we have a tiller for our tractor, we're gonna till,
and it just felt so wrong.
And then we tilled and we were basically gardening an acre.
And, and we had this awareness like this,
we can't garden this much.
We have to learn how to farm and,
and farming is a different thing than gardening.
And, and how can we farm in a way
that feels like we're taking care of the soil?
And, and we discovered various literature about it
and discovered techniques to do that and,
and become efficient at the same time as, as
becoming better stewards of the, the soil.
- This, this idea that,
that farming is different than gardening.
That's a very provocative statement.
My, my best understanding of
what you're saying there would be that with, with gardening,
you're doing things that can be inefficient
because you're not scaled.
But when you're scaled to a farm, you have
to be far more efficient.
Is that what you mean by that?
- Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Um, if you're farming, um, you know,
unfortunately you're interacting with, with a,
an economic reality where, um,
you can't lose money the way you can
having a hobby, you know?
Yeah. You can have a hobby where you spend $10
to make a beautiful heirloom tomato for your kitchen.
Um, that doesn't work if you're, if you're trying to,
to make a living selling that tomato.
So, um, that, that's kind of been the,
the constant challenges.
How, how do you scale in a way that you can provide food in
a environmentally friendly way, in a way
that leaves your land in a better state than you found it,
and at the same time is economically viable.
Um, and, and it is a kind of a constant push and pull
and, and there's, there's no way to do it.
Perfect. Uh, uh, we, we talk about being regenerative,
but really when it comes to it, we're all
of us striving towards this idea of being regenerative.
Mm. And, and it, it's, it's not something that's easy.
You, you can't, um, in, in permaculture,
we talk about a closed loop system where, where the outputs
of your farm become the inputs of your farm,
and it's a self-sustaining ecosystem.
Well, that, that's a lot harder when so much of the output
of your farm is leaving your farm never
to be returned. Hmm.
- So, oh, so, so when you were, um, you were describing how,
uh, you were, you were, um, double dig digging
until you learned about no-till
because, um, you know, while, while that's, while that's an,
you know, an ancient process, it's, it's relatively new
to trending again, I guess I'll say.
Mm-Hmm. . Um, I can imagine
that at the beginning also, you were probably doing things
that, that we all know as regenerative farming, just
because you had low resources.
I I was talking with a guy, I never did get his name,
but, um, at a, uh, at a golden tarp several years ago.
And, uh, he said, he says, he says, oh, I,
I've been regenerative farmer my whole life,
but when I was young, we just called it being poor.
Mm-Hmm, . Yeah. And, and because like,
he was focused on using the materials
that are on the property, um, and, and
because he, he, he couldn't afford, you know, the,
the fertilizers that you'd get from town in the same way,
I want to ask you, like, you know, you, you described
how you wanted to both increase the microbe life,
but then also increase the, you know,
what we're gonna call housing
or structure that, um, that protects and,
and gives, um, a place for those microbes to, to,
I, I wanna use the word procreate,
but that's not scientifically accurate,
but make more, incubate them.
Mm-Hmm. . And so what, what were some
of the natural inputs that you found, um, you know,
on the parcel or nearby that you could wildcraft
and put to work in your soil building it?
- Well, early on in building the soil, I didn't really have
the awareness of, of wildcrafting inputs.
So I think that kind of the, the Juda KNF kind
of input, um, awareness came, came
to us maybe 10 years ago.
Um, early on, I, I had a lot of wood, a lot of wood chip.
Uh, I wasn't doing Hugo building with, with large wood,
partly because I, I had really nice soil
and I didn't feel like I needed to, to put wood in the,
the lower profile of it to make that work.
But what, what I did have is a lot
of wood chips for doing mulching.
Um, and
although I didn't have animals myself early on,
besides, um, chickens for eggs,
and that manure went back onto the farm, um,
I did have friends and neighbors who had cows and horses
and, and goats,
and was able to put a lot of organic matter in the form of
manure and wood chips from, from the area onto the soil.
And I mean, that, that really is like,
the input you want is, is organic matter,
especially in a place like Humboldt.
The flip side of, of
what we were talking about earlier about the,
the dry season being a time when, when microbes kind
of go dormant, if, if the soil isn't kept moist
and there's not good moisture holding capacity,
the flip side of it is the wet season here is, is
80 plus inches of rain during, during the years.
So if you don't hold those nutrients, somehow
they, they wash out all, all of the soluble nutrients.
So some of the biggest issues
for us over the years have always been like, how do we
create nitrogen?
How do we hold nitrogen? How do we find sulfur?
How do we hold sulfur?
Um, uh, and some of, of the micronutrients
and minerals things that wash out
of the soil here just aren't there
unless you find ways to put them in and to hold them.
Um, and the, the over the course of gardening here,
the single largest way that we've found
to build soil is, is through wintertime cover cropping.
And, and it's, it, it just is incredible
how much soil you can build,
because the winter here when we're not able
to grow crops is, is four to six months of the year.
So you, you're actually growing a full crop during
that wintertime season, entirely just
to put back into the soil.
And once you start doing the, the no-till version of it,
you're, you're not just putting it back on the top,
but all of the roots of those cover crops get to stay
where they are in the pathways, in the soil
that they've opened up.
That becomes a porous structure of the soil.
And the exodus of the roots help create kind of a,
a glue that glues the soil structure together and,
and then makes a, a porous environment.
So if you take a cover crop
and you lay the, the, the green matter on the top
and let that decompose naturally into the top of the soil,
and that the roots decompose down in the subsoil
and in, in, in the soil deeper where they are,
you really quickly build organic matter deep
into the soil. That was
- A beautiful explanation, Daniel. That was top notch
- .
Yeah. I mean, like the, the engine for all of it, right?
The engine for organic matter is photosynthesis.
And, and to, you need to take advantage
of the photosynthesis potential
on your garden soil all the time.
And it's either you're,
you're taking photosynthesis from another area in the form
of straw or hay or wood chips,
or even animal manure from animals that have eaten that
and bringing it to you or your, or, and really not,
or you are creating photosynthesis in place.
And that the, the lovely thing about that is it's so simple.
It's there. You're not wheelbarrowing it,
you're not moving it around,
and you can have it, um, be nitrogen fixing so that it,
it also creates, um, creates fertility.
- That's great. So, um, I wanna hit one more topic,
or it's actually the same topic,
but I wanna ask you one more question
before we go to the first commercial, which is, um,
you know, the,
what the specific over winter cover crop is going to be, um,
is gonna be different depending on what part
of the country that we live in.
So, so everybody's gonna have their own local plant
that tends to work best for them.
What I'm curious to hear you speak to is, is number one, um,
did you choose one cover crop and go solely with that ever?
Or did you pick a few different cover crops and,
and plant them together for variety?
And two, how does that crop cover crop fit into
like, all of the plants that are on your property?
So on your property, I'm assuming
that you're gonna have these, these seasonal cover crops,
but then also you're gonna have, um, uh, uh, the food
that you're grow growing for market,
and then you've got the cannabis probably in the greenhouse
and outside of it, and then you've got your ornamentals
that you just grow around your property for fun.
We, we all know as regenerative farmers
that these plants are all interacting
with each other at a biological level, even,
even if they're not planted right next to each other.
I'd like to kind of like, hear, hear about like,
what was the melody for the different types of plants
that you chose for the farm, um, as you, as you settled in
and figured out what was gonna be best
for the farm? Mm-Hmm.
- , um, I mean, we have a, a number
of different management strategies that we have developed
and are developing
and will, will change over time for, for different goals.
Um, how we manage beds for cannabis is very different than
how we manage beds for lettuce.
And, you know, the big factors are
the crop that you're growing.
Is it a quick turnaround?
Does it suffer from, from competition from weeds,
or does it do fine with that?
And, and again, like we you just said, how does it interact
with the plants around it?
So, um, in our perennial gardens,
we just do a lot of deep mulch.
We have a variety of plants, both for, for beauty
that we like, for medicinal use for ourselves,
for beneficial insects.
Um, and then the, the cannabis is kind of somewhere in
between a perennial garden and an annual garden.
Cannabis is such a long lived annual, it,
it really plays well with perennials.
Um, and, and the way we manage that tends to be, uh, an in
between where we, we grow, grow a cover crop,
but we manage it through crimping and mulch.
And, and the edge of the cannabis beds has, has a,
a perennial garden of sorts.
And, and that garden tends to entirely be beneficials, um,
for insects that are predator insects for cannabis
or trap crops or, or things like that.
Um, and then the annual vegetable production de,
depending on the crop that's gonna be in an area,
gets a different management technique and,
and needs longer to transition from the wintertime cover
crop to being a, a very clean
blank bear slate bed that we could use cedars or,
or transplanting tools on.
And what I've really found that I like in terms
of cover crop is doing a cover crop mix,
and you can find a mix that that works for your environment
and works for your needs.
But, but we actually buy a pre-mixed cover crop
that is a combination of, of, uh, fava, uh,
vetch peas and oats.
And, and what I like about that is,
is there's an inherent intelligence to, to plants
and their interaction with their environment and,
and, um, you find different expressions of
what germinates and what thrives in different beds.
In beds that tend to be low in nitrogen
after a year of growing the crop you've had on it.
The, the legumes in that cover crop mix really thrive
in beds that have a lot of nitrogen.
The, the grass really thrives and it's able to grow a lot
before the heaviness of the winter rains comes and,
and hold a lot of that nutrient in, its in its structure
versus the legumes, which are building, building nutrient
through, um, its relationship in, in its roots.
Um, so, so having a mix of cover crop really helps
it thrive in whichever environment you put it in.
And that changes year to year.
It's not something I've been able to wrap my head
around predicting what will do well in which
area at which time.
Um, the one aspect we're starting to discover in,
in the cannabis zones, especially where we use crimping
as a technique to integrate cover crop, is that,
that there's a benefit if you're, if you're using crimping
as a technique to having cover crops
that come into flour at the same time.
'cause um, crimping as a technique really depends on timing.
If, if you crimp while a plant is in its most vigorous
growth time, it's going to grow right through that
push its way through the mulch you put on top
of it and continue growing.
Versus if you cover crop, um,
right when a plant's putting all
of its energy into flowering
but hasn't produced seeds yet, it, it tends to actually be
killed by the crimping technique
and start its decomposition process.
And so the cover crop mix we've been using,
which we've still used this season, the, the
oats flour at a later time, then, then the vetch
and the, um, the fava beans,
so the oats continue to grow.
Or if I were to wait for the oats to flower, the, the fava
and the vetch will have already seeded,
and that could be a benefit.
And, and I know farmers
who are effectively using already seeded cover crop
and dry farming somewhat.
So they, if, if you are aren't overhead watering,
say if you have your irrigation under
where you crimp your cover crop so that
after you do your cover crop, it, it, it kind of dries out
and becomes mulch, you can have a fully seeded cover crop,
let it dry out and become mulch,
your irrigation lines are under it.
And then when you get fall rains, it causes that
to germinate again
and you're already planted in cover crop. Ooh,
- That's nice.
- Yeah. And that's, that's theoretical.
I've heard, um, some,
some really amazing farmers talk about that.
Um, but I have not tried that. You really
- Gotta nail that.
You really gotta nail that timing.
- You just gotta nail that, you know? Yeah.
And, and, and getting it to rese and, and all of that.
It's something I'd love to experiment with at some point,
but, but haven't gotten to yet as it is.
I'm now looking for an earlier flowering,
um, grain grass that I can mix in with, with my, my batch
and, and my fava beans
to have them at least come into fruition at the same time
for effective crimping.
- You know, one thing that is underlying this, this, um,
this philosophy that you just shared is that when you're,
when you're just establishing your farm is regenerative,
whether or not you just got the parcel,
or if you're switching from petroleum farming
to regenerative farming, um, sometimes the first few years
as you're getting your legs under you, it's, it's okay
to use the same kind of like off the shelf, like, uh,
cover crop mixes
and other, other things where, where you don't have
to reinvent the wheel.
Like you don't Oh,
- Absolutely.
- You don't have to be inventing all new farming
techniques your first couple years.
There's reasons why, um, these, some of these seed mixes
and, and other tools are, you know,
are things that everybody uses.
And, and so just, you know, go ahead
and follow the crowd on some of this stuff
until you get established
and you can really, uh, fine tune it
for your own particular parcel.
- Well, and it, and it goes back to
that biting off more than you can chew.
I mean, you're right, I, I often still use cover crop mixes
because I don't have the time to wrap my head
around every aspect of the farm.
And farmers are doing it, especially now.
There's so many small farms out there, there, there is
so much thought being put into this.
And therefore there are a lot of products out there
that are made by farmers with the thought
of, of helping farmers.
And especially like in the tool realm and,
and things like that, there's a lot available.
You don't need to do it all yourself.
You couldn't, even if you tried.
And, and part of learning to farm was learning to focus on
what we're good at and,
and to let other people do what they're good at
and be collaborative about it.
- Right on. That's good. Those are good words of advice. So.
Alright, so let's take a short break and be right back.
You're listening to Shaping Fire
and my guest today is Regenerative farmer Daniel Stein.
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That's humboldt csi.com. Welcome back.
You are listening to Shaping Fire.
I'm your host Shang Los,
and my guest today is Regenerative Farmer Daniel Stein.
So before the break we were talking about the,
the initial things to do,
or at least considerations as you are, uh,
setting up your farm to become regenerative, whether
or not whether you are, uh, post petroleum
or if it's just your first time on the property.
Now, one of the things that Daniel hit on was that, um,
you know, if you're building up all this soil,
you don't want it all to get washed away.
And so that's what we're gonna start with, Daniel.
You know, water retention is really important, you know,
across the country, but especially where you live
because you, like I we have this, this drought portion
of the summer and um,
and there's lots of, there's lots of laws rurally about
what you can and can't do with water.
And if you find yourself without water
and you're far out, like you are off grid,
it's not like you can just turn on the faucet
and then suddenly there it is.
Absolutely. And and you also mentioned that, um, you know,
not only do you want to retain the water,
but you also need to control the flow of water so
that the water doesn't take away all the nutrients
that you're putting in all this
effort building into the soil.
So I'd like you to talk through, um, yeah.
Let's, you know for certain, use your property as example,
but I'd like you to talk about it more theoretically.
So it, so it applies to many people's farms.
Talk about water retention, meaning how,
how you can sequester the water on your property, uh,
strategies to do that so the water stays.
And then second, how you control the flow so
that it doesn't wash all the good hard
work you've done away.
- Yeah, well there there's a number of strategies
and it really depends on, on your individual situation needs
and, and what you're going for for your farm.
I mean, the answer to so many of,
of the issues is organic matter.
Organic matter is how you can hold water like a sponge.
It's how you can hold nutrients, it's how you can,
you can buffer high rainfall, high water events.
Um, it it's, it's the answer to
so much when it comes to, to farming.
Um, and then in, in terms of, of water flow,
if you're try, if your site doesn't get enough water
retention throughout the season, the main thing you wanna do
is, is get more water to it.
And, and so doing things like swales where,
where you slow down the water coming across your property
and get it to go into, into your system, help that.
And that's in my environment,
that's not something I've ever really had to do
with 80 inches of rain, everything
that can get saturated gets saturated without the help
of bringing more water into it.
And as a matter of fact, doing swales is,
is something you have to be careful about
because if you super saturate areas you could deal with with
landslides if it's in the wrong, wrong kind of an area.
Mm-Hmm. . Um, we do use some
of those techniques less about retaining water
and more about slowing water down in areas
that we have plantings that can uptake some
of those nutrients that that would flow out with water.
Um, so low on our property, we have some swales that are,
are planted in, in comfort
and other things that are deep rooted
so it can slow any water down and,
and we can hopefully remove a lot of the nutrients
that would be flowing out with that water
and turn them back into plant material that we can harvest
and bring up to, to the top of the system again.
Uh, but it definitely is organic matter.
Organic matter is the sponge.
It, it reduces water speed flowing
through sandy soil.
It increases the drainage capacity of clay soil.
It, it brings everything into balance.
- I believe this next question you've just answered,
and it's gonna be organic material,
but I'm gonna ask it anyway
because a lot of people run into it, you know, a lot
of parts of the country and,
and it's probably even gonna become more common
to have a drought period during the summer.
And when that happens, you know, the, the top soil gets, um,
you know, dusty and, and, and many places.
It gets hydrophobic so that when the rain does start, um,
it doesn't immediately go into the,
the top soil and it and it runs.
And, and so people really rely on, on these, uh,
permaculture solutions like swales, um, mm-hmm.
to, to guide it and to,
and to also slow it down.
Do you find, like, the question is what do you,
what strategy do you most like to, uh, fight the likelihood
of, um, hydrophobic soil so
that when the rains first start for the year, um,
you don't lose a lot of important soil and soil chemistry
before the soil opens up?
- Well, mulch being kind of the best when it,
when it's something that you can work with.
Like if, if you are in a cropping system
where you can do a heavy mulch, if you can afford to either
bring a quality straw on
or use wood chips for mulch
that will break up the water, it'll slow it down.
Um, that works for much of our farm for a lot of the,
the vegetable side of it.
You know, we, you can't mulch around radishes
that are in the ground for four weeks and then pull a mulch
and replant each time.
So we do have a lot of beds that that end up being
relatively bare soil, even though there,
there's cover crop planted in them that will sprout quickly
after the first rains.
Uh, one of the main things we do for that, where we don't,
we don't have control of it through something on the surface
of the soil, is making sure that all
of our beds are on contour.
So in a way they act like swales. Hmm.
So our beds are on contour
and even though we don't have much of a slope, um, the,
they're on contour
and they're slightly raised above the pathways so
that if we do lose any soil from erosion,
it goes into the pathways.
And then every couple years we, we come through
and we put the, the, the soil and,
and broken down wood chip mulch
and various things that have built up in the pathways back
on top of the beds.
And it acts like a, a another kind of a boost.
It's, it, it's like putting compost on top
of the beds. Mm-Hmm. .
- So earlier you mentioned, uh, trap plants
and um, uh, in addition to that, and, and,
and perhaps you can explain the kind
of trap plants that you like.
Um, how do you manage pests on your property?
- Um, well, different pests, different ways.
I mean, there, there are pests
that we can manage effectively through
encouraging the natural balance.
And then there are pests that come out of balance, um, pests
that we can deal with effectively
through the natural balance.
We, we encourage, uh, plants that are, are, uh,
an ecosystem and environment
that encourages natural predators.
And often for us,
those are our humbles things like Queen Ann's lace, sweetly,
um, various flowers.
Um, one thing that I i a lot of people don't,
don't realize is that the,
the stage of, of much of many of the predators
that attack pests, say if it's aphids or thrips
or something like that, a lot of the predators
that attack those pests are the larval stage.
Mm-Hmm. of, of the predator.
And that the adult stage that you need
to have a round in order to lay the eggs in the right place
to have the larval stage eat nectar
and pollen from specific plants.
So, so when you talk about beneficial plants,
it's all often you're providing the food
and the environment for the adult stage of,
of a beneficial insect that will then
go lay its eggs in aphid bodies
or lay larvae that then crawl around on the plant
and, and eat rips.
Um, things like that.
Um, the, the trap crops are, are interesting
'cause the idea of a trap crop is having, having a plant
that your pests desire more than your cash crop.
And one of the main ones we use in our cannabis is,
is actually catnip works really well for
mites seem to prefer catnip over
cannabis any day of the week.
And, and it provides an environment.
So if we do have something outta balance, we can,
if we're using beneficial insects,
we can release the beneficial insects into the trap crop
where there's a, a large population of,
of the pest and they can eat the pest, they can breed
and then they can branch out from there.
Where if, if you're, if you're buying a,
an expensive beneficial insect
and putting it on say a cannabis plant that has a, a,
a smattering of a pest, not, not to an epidemic proportion,
you're wasting a lot of, a lot of that insect, they'll,
they'll mostly die off
of starvation if they can't find
their food. Mm-Hmm. ,
- I, I like this idea.
And, uh, uh, that is common in, in regenerative agriculture
that, that these pests are usually coming
because the garden is, uh, out of balance
and it's, it swings one way
or another too dry, too wet too, too whatever.
And, and, and when it's out of balance,
it creates opportunities for certain pests to expand
and then you've got a problem.
And, um, I think it's really fun
because when I tour regenerative farms, there's,
there's just such a diversity of plants, right?
It's, it's, it's, it's the
complete opposite of a monoculture.
Yeah, of course we've got, we've got these, you know, fields
of cannabis, but then you've got, you know, you know,
all these smaller plants and then, and then cover crops
and then, uh, ornamentals that are are just pretty
for the farm and, and they're all growing.
And then in the summer,
which is normally when I do my doers, they're all flowering
and gorgeous and they smell good.
And you can, you can feel the balance of the farm.
And, and I, I think that the, the number one solution
for pests on regenerative farms is just to grow a lot
and a lot of variety
because I certainly have got great, uh,
results from adding beneficial insects as well.
But, but you're, you're speaking the truth man.
When you, when you say that if, if you, if your,
if your garden isn't already out of balance,
there might not be enough food for the beneficial insects
to keep them going.
And so it's really going to be better for you to, instead of
of spot trying to fix a problem,
really focus on the biological diversity and the flowering
and plant diversity so that, um, the plants that you want,
they choose to come to your farm
and they choose to do their lifecycle on your farm.
And then you can save some money on the biologicals like
beneficial insects, um, for when you actually have a problem
and, and you need some first aid.
- Yeah. And Abso absolutely,
and even even there within that, our farm
isn't an island.
It, it is in a greater environment.
And so as we've seen more proliferation
of large cannabis farms as we've had
to move towards using clones, things like that, more,
more pests become an issue.
Like the, the hemp aphid did not exist for us
in any way many years ago
and never would have if we didn't have some large cannabis
farms in our area that proliferated them.
Um, and that,
that particular pest poses a unique problem
because our,
the way our environment will is bringing
that pest into balance, is through a number of predators,
but one of the primary ones is the surf
and fly, uh, or hover fly.
And they're those little things that kind of look like bees,
but they're shaped like flies if you've ever seen them.
For sure. And, and they're wonderful.
The, the issue is
that the hemp aphid comes late in the season
during budding often or early budding,
and the surfing flies follow them.
And the way the surf fly, um, feeds on,
on the aphid is by, by laying eggs, which hatch
and develop into larva, which then crawl around
and or squirm around.
They kind of look like maggots and,
and eat aphids and aphid eggs.
Now, the issue with that is it is bringing it into balance,
and it is getting rid of the aphids.
Oftentimes, there's no aphids left in on,
on plants where, where the circuit flies have worked,
but they also leave eggs
and larva inside of buds.
So the, the most extreme version of this is, um, a number
of years ago, um, I knew of a jar brand and,
and the, the surf
and fly larvae will remain dormant at certain temperatures,
but then develop at room temperature over
the course of two weeks.
So there was a, a jarred brand that,
that had organic regenerative cannabis in it.
And because it was organic
and there were aphids, there was surf
and fly larvae that had,
once it was put on the shelf in the dispensary at room
temperature had hatched and become flies inside of the jar.
- Oh, what a, what a
- Terrible, which really makes for bad branding
- .
Yeah. That's a really bad brand experience for sure.
- So that, that particular balance does not work for us.
We can't encourage surfing flies
as the answer for aphids,
even though our natural environment wants
that to be the balance.
Um, so we do have to work with, with beneficial insects
to control the aphids early on so that we don't have what
is essentially a beneficial insect, um, hurt the,
the quality of our flower down the line.
- Wow. That's really thoughtful.
Um, not only so, so the, so the aphids are the original pest
and the surf it flies are the original beneficial,
but due to the nature of the surf, it flies the surf.
It flies, actually becomes a pest
because of their larva in the flowers.
And so actually you need a third party
outside beneficial insect.
Yeah. That will take out the aphids
before the aphids get so significant
that they track the surf. It flies.
- Yeah. And so , we do introduce green la swing,
which are natural here,
but never seem to build up enough
of a natural population fast enough.
Mm-Hmm. to deal with, uh, the, the hemp aphid,
which doesn't exist here naturally along with cannabis,
which also doesn't exist here naturally.
So it makes sense that, that it, it is sometimes hard
for the natural system to come into balance with these
essentially exotic plants.
Um, they, the, the lar the lace wing isn't able
to build up a population quick enough to deal
with just the incredibly rapid rate at which, um,
hemp aphids proliferate.
- Wow. So, um, - And hemp aphids do, like, there's,
it comes to variety there.
There's, there's strains that they seem to like, no matter
how healthy they are, that there's something about them they
like, and there's, they don't seem to like, and,
and not all,
oftentimes it is there is an imbalance in the farm
that causes a pest to, to like something.
But there, there's oftentimes pests that, that
do really well, uh, um, attacking plants.
And, and it might not be that the plant's outta balance,
it might just be that that plant has not developed
with a resistance to that particular pest
because they known each other long enough. Mm.
- Ah, I mean, that makes sense, especially with, you know,
some of these, uh, the, the, the newer strains that, that,
that are like a far cry away from, uh, land races sometimes.
Sometimes they just, yeah, absolutely.
So they just don't have that depth of, uh,
of genetic protection.
- No. They've, they've never seen, uh,
the sun even even much
- Less that they've never been outside of indoor .
Yeah. Yeah. Um, so let, let's, let's, uh, shift gears to,
um, uh, to animals on the property.
Um, so far, uh, you have mentioned, uh, chickens as far
as animal husbandry goes and,
and using, uh, manure from neighbors farms,
but that, that was way in the beginning.
So, Mm-Hmm. . So, so now
that you are more established,
perhaps you have other animals too, but,
but whether, whether the animals are yours
or whether you're bringing them from elsewhere, um,
speak a little bit, if you would, to, um, how, uh, animal,
um, inputs, if you will, uh, whether it's their manure
or their, their, their body, uh, how,
how those are being incorporated into
the cycle on your farm.
- Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I mean, number one, it's the, the relationship
with humans and animals
and farming, it, it all kind of evolved together.
Right. And the,
the way I see it is animals have developed incredible
microbiomes, um, to be able to digest
and process raw rough food
and come out with a fertilizer basically.
Mm-Hmm. . Uh, so goats are the, the primary
large animal we have on our farm.
And our goats free roam, a large area a
around our homestead, they're not fenced in.
Our homestead is fenced.
And, and the goats have everything else.
Um, and what they do is, is they gather food.
They, they go around, they, they eat a,
a wide variety of food.
They, they come back to the barn three times a day
and where they pee and they poop, and,
and they, they make a, a incredible compost
that we can gather and,
and add to our intentional compost piles every year.
And it's another way
besides wood chips, which are very slow, slow to degrade
and, and don't have a lot of nutritive value in terms of,
um, in terms of macronutrients.
Um, it's another way for us to, to gather biomass
from our surrounding area, bring it here onto our farm,
and process it into kind of a, a super fertilizer, um, and,
and an inoculant of microbiology.
- I wanna, I wanna poke at that bit.
Did you, did you really mean to suggest that the,
that the goats come back to the farm to poop
and that they, they don't just drop
it wherever they are walking around? No,
- They, they absolutely drop
it wherever they are walking around.
Oh, okay. No, no. So they, they come back to the barn.
They're, they're always pooping
- .
Right on. Okay. I was gonna say, I was gonna say,
- Does this, a lot of their poop ends up at the barn.
What they do is they'll roam around
and then they'll come back and loaf
and hang out at the barn and drink water.
And during that time, they're
continuing to poop. Alright, great.
- The way I heard I go, like, do they come back
to the barn is a toilet?
I've never heard that about goats, but, but now I
- Understand.
We're, we're really developing our, our animal training.
Like, bring don't pee. Not yet.
- No. Yeah. Hold it till you get back to the barn. Alright.
I, I understand more clearly now.
They're just, they're just always pooping and, and,
and they naturally come back to the barn for shelter
and water and they drop a load there too. Yeah,
- Exactly.
- Very good. Very good. Um, so do, when,
when you bring in manure from another property Mm-Hmm,
, um, how suspicious are you of that manure?
Like, like how much do you wanna know about those animals
before you're willing to bring the
manure onto your property?
- You, you wanna know a lot.
Um, you know, early on I brought horse manure on and,
and there's a couple aspects with horse manure.
Horses are basically pets to a lot of people.
Most people worm their horses continuously.
And, um, so wormer horses things kind
of pass straight through horses.
So if somebody is giving their horse horse wormer,
you basically have wormer in the manure.
Yeah. So you want to ask those kinds of questions.
Are your horses being fed any medication?
Another aspect with horse manure is
because things pass through horses, um,
something about the way they process you, they,
they don't process a lot of magnesium.
So horse manure is high in magnesium
that will build up over time if
that's the one manure you're using,
and you'll get an imbalance between the calcium
and magnesium in your soil.
Um, right now, one
of our primary manure inputs is from an organic dairy
where we, we get probably 40 to 50 yards of,
of dairy manure solids Wow.
From an organic dairy, which is wonderful.
It it's great material.
Um, one of the challenges with that is that they,
they dust the feeding stalls in the barn.
So, so the way that works is, is the, the cows get milked,
they go to, to a large barn with feeding stalls,
and then they go back out to pasture.
And while they poop in the feeding stalls,
that gets washed in into, uh, a trough
where the solids are separated from the liquids.
We get the solids,
the liquids get watered back out onto pasture,
but they dust down those feeding stalls with wood ash.
So now that we've been using that manure for a while,
we're starting to see a, an intense buildup
of potassium salts from the wood ash.
And so we're having to manage this, this great, um, biomass
that we're able to get at, at a good price, um, delivered
to us with dealing with potassium toxicity
as, as a potential outcome of that.
If we don't manage it properly.
- What does management of that look like?
That's a pretty exotic concern for me.
- Um, it's actually surprisingly common with a lot of,
of heavy compost applications
and especially manure applications.
Mm-Hmm. . Um,
but the, the way it works
for us is we just make sure we age the compost really well.
And we don't add potassium in any other facets.
It's like we used to add potassium in our amendments
to our farm, and we just don't do that anymore.
We make sure that doesn't happen.
And if we see signs, um, I believe one of the, one
of the aspects of potassium toxicity is a,
a reduced uptake of manganese, I believe it is.
And a reduced uptake of manganese during the first few weeks
of, of a flower cycle on cannabis could cause really small
buds, especially at the top.
So when you see like larger buds lower down on your
flowering stock, and as it comes towards
what should be the nice top cola on a stock, it kind
of flattens out and,
and stops developing into a larger bud that could often be,
be a manganese toxic, uh, a lack of manganese,
which either could be a potassium toxicity,
it also could be the manganese uptake didn't happen
because the temperatures were too low for the uptake for
that particular strain
during its first few weeks of flowering.
A few things like that. But,
but it's like paying close attention to, to
what we're seeing on, on the, the growing end of it
and seeing if we're seeing those effects.
- Right on. So we've been,
we've been talking a lot about specifics.
I wanna, I wanna pull back our focus for a minute.
Um, and, and kind of give you an opportunity maybe
for a little bit of storytelling,
because if we go back to, you know,
where we are now in talking about your, about your farm
and using it as a, as an example farm.
Um, you've got very, uh, sophisticated and,
and experienced rich solutions, whereas at the beginning
of the show, we were talking about your very young
and immature farm when and when you had no money and,
and like doing the best you can with what you've got.
And so we know that over the last 25 ish years, your,
your experience has been increasing
and the farm's depth has been increasing.
And which sets us up for this question.
I'm curious if there were, you know, were there, uh,
any milestones that you experienced which told you
that you were having a really positive impact on the
biological diversity of the farm
and that things were getting better, like in the soil
and in the, I don't know, the biosphere of, of,
of your farm when, uh, you know, signs that when you saw it,
you just like kind of stopped
and you're like, oh man, we're we're doing it,
we're doing it .
- I i there's a lot of that.
I mean, I, I kind of walk around every day
and feel that like, oh my God, this is, this is amazing.
It's, it's happening, it's working.
Um, I remember specifically, uh, the, the first
or, uh, regenerative cannabis conference.
I don't, I don't know if you were there.
- I wasn't at the first one. No.
- It, it was, it was right here in my neighborhood.
It was at, at, uh, beginnings in, in Priceland here.
And it was relatively small
and I, uh, I had a few people who were there, A few
of the presenters come up and do a quick little of the farm.
Um, and,
and one of the presenters was, uh, a mycologist
who focused on Michal mycology.
And he said, oh, this is cool.
You've been growing cannabis in the same area for,
for 10 years or whatever it was
at that point, probably more than that.
Can I take a sample and and do a psychological study of it?
I was like, that, that sounds amazing. That
- Sounds bads. Yeah.
- And so he got back to me about a week later
and he said the, um, the spores
of the specific, um, michal
fungi that have relationship
with cannabis are dense enough in this soil
that you could cut it by 10 parts
and sell it as an inoculate.
- Wow. That must afford you. That was like, I
- Was just like, what the heck?
Well, I, I didn't know.
And I was like, well, does that mean we're doing a good job?
Or that commercial inoculates are ridiculous ?
And he said a little of both. Right.
- Yeah. That, that is fantastic.
And to, to know that, um, that, you know, it was your,
your soil was that fungal rich.
Um, it really gives you, um, an understanding
that you've got like room for error, right.
Because you, you're not barely getting by your,
your soil is actually bursting.
- Mm-Hmm. and,
and you know, I, some of it, I, I think you just end up
with a lot of happy accidents.
You know? Um, like I, I have thought a lot,
you know, while I'm on my way to bed
and don't have a piece of paper
or things like that of, you know, the idea of of,
of michal relationships.
Now there's a difference between, um, spores
and active michal that, that are in the soil.
Mm-Hmm. . And there's active mycorrhiza on
the cannabis ra roots.
What, what makes mycorrhiza go into kind
of a suspended state is not having those relationships.
So if you go into a wintertime where your soils bear,
the mycorrhiza that's alive no longer is,
there's spores Maybe maybe it'll build up again,
but it'll take longer to build up again in the spring.
And I've, I've been curious,
and I actually haven't done the, the research
or looked at it, it's like, is there specific cover crops
that, that have the same michal relationships
with the same species as does a cannabis crop
or a crop you're growing for that summer so
that you can encourage a continuity of those species?
Because, you know, we see a lot of, um, you know, if you,
if you go on Instagram
and you look at people's accounts, everybody, um,
posts these pictures of incredible mycelium in their soil.
And, and a lot of those species are wonderful.
They're good to have in your soil.
They're the species that break down, um, woody material
or unbroken down organic matter and,
and provide nutrients from it.
But then the specific fungal mats, the
specific michal relationships that,
that directly benefit the cannabis, um,
in a more direct relationship way,
how do we keep those alive?
How do we proliferate those and, and are there cover crops
or, or perennial plantings that share enough
of the same species to be able to be the, the kind
of safe space for,
for those living species to, to over winter?
- Hmm. Yeah. 'cause you don't, you don't want the, the,
the really beneficial ones for can cannabis like intercedes
to suddenly be outcompeted by like, um,
wood digesters, uh, uh, only you
- Know.
Exactly. And and that's mostly what you see, like, no,
no shade on anyone.
I, I love posting pictures of, of all my, you know,
michal mats when I find them,
but almost always it's wood digesters.
Yeah. Whether it's, you know, wine caps or,
or the safaria kind of mushrooms.
Um, that that's what you see a lot
because there, there, the way we're gardening the way we're,
we're doing things, whether it's through Hugo beds
or through a lot of, uh, of addition of carbon in the form
of mulch really favors the wood digesters. Yeah.
- Right on. Alright, so let's go ahead
and take our second, uh, short break.
We'll be right back. You are listening to Shaping Fire
and my guest today is regenerative farmer Daniel Stein.
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Welcome back. You are listening to Shaping Fire.
I am your host sheo,
and today my guest is Regenerative Farmer Daniel Stein.
So Daniel, during this last section, I want to talk about,
um, some macro ideas, um, around land management and,
and let's start with crop rotation.
Um, you know, we talked a lot during the first set about,
um, the, the joy of planning the farm and,
and how that plan can evolve over the years.
And you know, that you don't have
to do everything the first year.
Um, but you know, one of the challenges
that people get into is they really kind of fall in love
with their farm design and, and where things go.
And so everything has a place, but,
but as regenerative farmers, we also know the benefit
that comes from crop rotation.
So we're not trying to feed the same crop
with the same soil all the time,
but gosh, um, it's really easy to not rotate, um, crops.
Um, different farmers I've spoken to will either rotate
and some will be like, well, I just choose
to amend and not rotate.
Um, I'd like to hear what your thoughts are.
- Um, I think my thoughts on this is, is do
what you can see, see where rotations are important for you
and, and where they aren't.
Um, and sometimes it, it's self-limiting.
For instance, with cannabis, we couldn't rotate
because we had such a hard time explaining
to the regulatory agencies what crop rotation is,
and we didn't feel like redrawing
and resubmitting our maps every year.
Oh. Um, and
but what's interesting is that led us to a discovery,
which is that I think cannabis likes
to grow in the same spot.
And when I started thinking about it and,
and imagining cannabis growing in the wild, you know,
like a ditch weed, for instance, cannabis produces a ton
of seeds that fall right there and, and regrow right there.
Um, so I think cannabis as a plant is used to growing
in its own shadow, I guess you would say.
Um, and, you know, that doesn't change the fact
that crop rotation can reduce pest pressure,
especially pests that tend to over winter in the soil
or things like that, or wouldn't be beneficial.
But I, I think for us, for our different crops,
we weighed the benefit of crop rotation versus the challenge
of crop rotation and decide individually on each thing.
Um, you know, for instance, in our vegetable farm,
we have a block that is lettuce production
that we don't rotate
because the infrastructure that it takes for us
to have year round lettuce production in this hot arid
climate doesn't lend itself well to rotation.
And lettuce doesn't seem to be a problem in terms
of nutrient use or pest.
And with rotation things like, um, garlic
and tomatoes and carrots, we tend to rotate
and primarily are rotation for those isn't nutrient based.
'cause we are so well
provided with nutrients through compost.
Our rotation tends to be what crops do a good job
of reducing weed pressure for the next crop.
That doesn't do well with the weed pressure.
Like for instance, carrots might come after zucchini
because zucchini reduced the, the seed bank of weeds
in that area, and then carrots can come
after them and things like that.
So, uh, it's one of those things, uh, cover
it's more important to plant stuff and,
and get it in the ground than to get it just right
because, um, at the end of the day, you'd rather have a, a,
you know, carrot that's not perfect than not
to have any carrots, .
Um, and it's similar to how I feel about,
uh, planting with moon cycles.
Like plant it out, try to plant with the moon cycles.
If you don't miss it, if you miss it, don't wait a month
to plant again, because it's better
to have it growing a month than to
to hit it on exactly the energetic cycle.
Um, that,
- That bit that you said about do your best.
Right on. Do your best. That's good theme for today.
You know, that, you kind of blew my mind at the, at the top
of your answer when you, when you pointed out that
cannabis seeds when mature are pushed out of the flour
and just dropped to the ground at its own feet
and start next year's plants right there at its feet,
you know, they're, they're, they're not,
they're not air distributed.
And, and while, while they could be distributed by birds,
that's, that's really not their main
shtick, they really are.
- No birds crack 'em open
- And then there you go.
So, so they don't even, they don't even survive the process.
So, um, yeah, that, that really kind of sets crop rotation
for cannabis in my head in a totally,
in a totally different realm.
I, uh, I'm already envisioning the, the next time I talk
to a microbiologist about the difference between, um,
the root structures of, of, of plants that need to be cover
or not cover crop need to be rotated versus ones who don't.
Because I'm sure
that life in the rhizosphere is entirely different
for plants that are, are built
to be the same location every year.
- Yeah. And, and that microrisal relationship is there too.
It's like the roots of the previous year are there with all
of its microbiology while you plant the next year.
- Yeah. And they must have very burly exudates too.
- I'd imagine so. Yeah, sure. It does seem like it. Yeah.
- Right on. So, so let's, let's talk about another variety
of land management other than crop rotation.
So, you know, we, we've been talking about different parts
of your parcel and how they relate,
but really if we, if we pull the, pull the camera out,
your whole whole parcel is one big, um,
land mass of growing as well.
Um, what kinds of forward thinking, big picture
land management do you use on the parcel as a whole?
I'm thinking stuff like controlled burns
and things like that that can
regenerate the property itself.
- Yeah, exactly. Um, so
our homestead is perhaps five to 10 acres of,
of the overall parcel.
And we're on 170 acres.
Most of it is forested and relatively steep.
Um, and here in, in northern California,
our, our native forest environment has been very affected
by, by extractive land management
and the exclusion, uh, of native cultural land management.
Um, so when we're looking at the overall property,
we're trying to understand how we take it from this state
where it's out of balance because, uh, of logging
and fire suppression
and get it back into its natural balance, which
for this area is, is a natural fire regimen
and more of an old growth, less, less trees, more space
between the trees, more biodiversity.
Um, so yeah, we're, we're looking intensely at that.
We've, we've partnered with, um, some local nonprofits
that work on, on watershed restoration.
We're doing some big in-depth studies of, of
how groundwater moves through the, the soil here.
Basically in this area, geologically, we have a,
a bedrock layer that's relatively impenetrable
by water on a lot of it,
and then a 20 to 30 foot deep
soil sponge on top of that.
And, and, um, we don't have aquifers.
Our summertime water is the water that slowly moves through
that sponge from, from the ridges down
to the creeks and out.
So where we have groundwater wells, where we're studying
infiltration from rain, how long it stays in the soil,
where it moves through the watershed.
And then we're gonna be doing some, some, um,
forest restoration work, thinning and living and,
and just kind of every
bringing it back into balance forest restoration work we
could do in that area, and seeing how
that changes the water flow through that watershed.
And then moving on
after we get to study that for a couple of years
to doing a prescribed fire in that area
and seeing how that affects water infiltration
and does it affect the pH of the groundwater
and how does that change the soil structure,
uh, and things like that.
So that's kind of the long range is looking towards
how we get this large parcel back to a place
where we can manage it through the use
of prescribed natural fire.
And then also
what land management techniques can use on a closer level.
And that's where things like the goats come in, they're kind
of like a biological fire where they consume a lot
of the biomass around, around our area and keep it down.
So, so not only does it get into a better balance,
but it keeps us fire safe.
We, we are in a, a fire prone environment and
because of this out of balance with fire that we have,
it is, um, it,
it's very catastrophic when it happens,
as we all know. Yeah.
- Um, you know, the way
that you talk about these bigger projects, which, um,
it's amazing that you are able to find time
or create time to do something that, that, that is that big
and future minded versus just the daily demands
of a farm, but really that extra effort that you put in it,
it's, it's like the farming, um, equivalent
of generational wealth.
You know, it's like, it's like you're,
you're doing these studies and you're learning how, how the,
the, the farm, uh, parcel will be, will be better over time
with your eye on 20
and 30 years out so that the, you know,
you can be a participant in the evolution of the nature
around you, but also that, um,
your farm has got a reliable backbone, uh,
you know, in in case in case your,
your kids wanna take it over in time or something like that.
Yeah. And I think that's, I think
that's philosophically really, uh, important
to regenerative farming and, and,
and often given short shrift.
- Well, and, and land ownership is funny.
It's like, um, you know, I'm here now.
Maybe my kids will be here.
Maybe they won't, but this land will be here either way.
Mm-Hmm. And in terms of like, time to do this, I'm,
I'm super fortunate.
I, I have great partnerships.
Um, I am do some grant writing,
but I'm working with local nonprofits
that are doing the grant writing, actually doing the work,
and I'm just coordinating with them
to see that it's happening. Oh, that's
- Great.
Um, so it's wonderful having people like
that working on your behalf, .
- Yeah, it's incredible.
And you know, to some degree it's the openness to it
and the, the the engaging in the community constantly in
these spheres of, you know, a a a big part here.
A as the, the economy is shifting here as,
as cannabis economy has changed
and gotten integrated into this larger
broken economy. Oh, good.
- Saying it's shifting is like the, the, the,
the nicest possible way to put what's going on around you.
- Yeah. I mean, think it, it's, honestly,
it's coming into balance,
but unfortunately it's coming into balance
with a broken system. Yeah,
- It sure is.
- And that's, that's kind of the way it goes.
But one of the economies that is starting to take some of
that, um, burden is, is the restoration economy.
What we have here is an incredible amount of,
of beautiful forested land in our area,
and it, it needs work,
it needs restoration if we're gonna have healthy fisheries,
if we're gonna be a fire safe community, et cetera.
- So, um, you kind of set me up perfectly.
These next two questions are, uh, economics based.
And the first one is, um, uh, you know,
what is the economic impact of switching
to regenerative farming?
You know, on a small farm, you know, you weren't,
you weren't petroleum based to begin with, so it wasn't
that much of a swing, but, um, you certainly stopped,
you know, double digging and,
and other, uh, potentially laborious, uh, practices,
but you probably also traded those
for other laborious practices.
And, and okay, you're, you're saving money on, on a lot
of inputs that a non regenerative farm
would be buying in town.
But then, but then you also have to buy materials
to do other types of projects.
There's like all of these, uh,
trade offs in both directions.
And so, um, so for regenerative farming, I think
incorrectly is, is assumed to be so much more expensive
to do because you don't get to use the shortcuts of, of,
of modern farming, which is also happens
to be poisoning everybody.
So I'd just like to hear, um, how you, how you kind
of like weigh it out about the, the economic impact, um,
for you specifically on regenerative farming, regarding some
of the other options that you have in front of you.
- Yeah, I, I mean, I think for the options I have in front
of me, regenerative farming is by far
the most economically feasible.
It's like when you align your values
and your goals with what naturally wants to happen anyway,
you are not needing the products
and the, the physical energy to fight against the flow,
um, on a larger scale.
Yeah. Industrial farming benefits from economies of scale.
And that's something that's, that's hard to do on our level
of regenerative farming.
I know there is regenerative farming at scale, um, that
that does take advantage of some
of those economies of scale.
But I wouldn't have an economy of scale in our type of farm,
even if I were to spray poison on everything
and rode to till the crap out of it .
Um, you know,
and when it comes down to it, it's like it has
to work economically if you're doing it as a business,
otherwise it doesn't work.
Um, but it also has to work, you know, you couldn't
pay me enough money to spray poison on my land.
I live here. Mm-Hmm. .
Um, so it, even if
that worked economically, it wouldn't work.
So you have to draw your boundaries somewhere.
And luckily with,
with regenerative no-till farming it, it does work.
It is less work to not till it is less work
to not spray poison.
Sometimes you do lose crops to, to pests.
Um, as, as one of my great, um,
farming mentor friends, Casey O'Neill from Happy Day says,
when, when you're selling products to, to customers
and your kale has a nice hole in it,
it's like the kale is delicious
and the hole doesn't taste like anything .
It's like, it, you, you get the products you get
because of the way you farm.
And they, it's a benefit.
It, it, it really is a benefit economically.
- So, um, I know that I'm kind of inside of a bubble that,
that I'm probably in with you
because the people that I roll with,
uh, literally roll with.
Um, we're all into regeneratively grown outdoor flower.
Right. That's what we smoke and Yeah.
Um, and we're not gonna, we don't,
we're not gonna spend our, our our our money, um, uh,
buying, uh, you know,
a plus B flour from a dispensary,
and we're certainly not gonna grow, you know,
salt sodium flowers.
We're, we're gonna do it regeneratively and outdoors.
Um, that said, we are in a bubble. Right.
And there, there is a market as, as a whole.
And so, um, I'm curious to know, um,
have you seen an increase in demand
for your regeneratively produced cannabis?
Because, you know, as somebody in journalism,
I'm certainly helping, you know, raise the profile
of regenerative and all of us who are in regenerative smoke,
regenerative, but, um, I I I'm not familiar with like,
how much of the market is being purchased regenerative,
and there you are on the front line.
So are, are you seeing an increased demand for your,
uh, quality of cannabis flour?
- Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We are.
Um, and it, it's an engagement thing.
It, it, it, it's having direct contact as much with,
with bud tenders, uh, as with customers
and our brand, which we share with a number
of other regenerative farmers is, is farm cut.
And what we've noticed with that is,
is the product we're coming to customers
with sometimes is a hard sell.
We're selling top shelf flour, minimally processed,
so basically un trimmed to it
and, uh, in quarter ounce amounts.
And it, the, the,
the hardest part is actually getting customers
to try it the first time,
because nearly across the board customers
that try it come back for more,
because objectively there is
a difference in the experience from it.
So, um, the, the challenge is definitely engaging
with Bud Tenderers who often push indoor flower
or brands they're familiar with, uh, whether out of habit
or out of market dynamics.
Um, but I, I feel like we have seen an increase in,
in people seeking out regenerative flour
and, uh, an in definitely an increase in the people
who do seek out regenerative flour coming back for our brand
after they have an experience with it.
- Yeah. The proof really isn't a pudding, isn't it?
Like af af Yeah. After you smoke outdoor that was, you know,
carefully grown regeneratively.
It really, it really does open up, um,
what you think cannabis can be
because of the wider terpene profiles
and, you know, the burs in general.
- Well, and the challenge for us
and why we created that brand is you,
you can grow the best regenerative flower in the world,
and if you don't cure it right, it's not great
and you can cure it perfectly.
And if it makes its way to market in a way that doesn't
preserve that and bring it to the customer in its best
possible form, then you also lose that quality.
And we kind of created a, a a way to get it
to the customer in the way we enjoy it.
And it blows people's minds.
It's like when you, when you open a jar that's been
vacuum sealed and, and not trimmed,
and you, you break it open for the first time
and break a couple sugar leafs off of it,
it's overwhelming like the smell.
And then when you smoke properly cured properly stored
flour, the experience is, is just different
and more full and more layered
and nuanced than the experience from
some fast dried indoor
- .
Yeah. . Um, you know,
there are two other aspects I wanna, um, uh,
economic regenerative aspects I wanna focus on.
Um, one you've already mentioned,
which is the relationship with budtenders.
Right. Um, because it is interesting that, um, you know,
bud tenderers do have a lot of control in, uh, uh,
influence in, in where they drive people
for their purchases.
So having a good relationship with budtenders is important.
And in a lot of ways, like, you know, um,
that friendship is also a regenerative farming p practice in
a way, in that it's, it's creating community and outreach
and, and, uh, reaching out with, um, you know,
your philosophy of regenerative growing and,
and what that meaning is.
But, but also, and,
and where I wanna focus more is, um, the cooperation
and community spirit that you, um, need to have
with other farmers on a basic level when you are trading
resources like, oh, you know, I'll trade you,
I'll trade you hay for manure,
or whatever the trades may be, or, or, or sharing equipment.
Those kinds of relationships become really essential in
regenerative farming when you're trying to, um, you know,
be very resourceful.
But then also you, you mentioned, uh, farm cut cannabis, um,
the brand that you've put together with, um, you know, uh,
looks like four different farms
and yourselves, where, um, you know, you, you kind
of get the benefits of being a scaled farm without having
to do the, the negatives of a scaled farm.
And, and, and that synergy only comes together
because you get together with these all small farms
and then market and distribute as one.
And we all know that, that that was, you know,
that was attempted at the beginning of, of, you know,
proposition 64 days by outsiders where they're, oh,
we're gonna pull together all the small farms.
And then it ended up being a big crock.
Um, but, but, but now in kind of like the dust
of the brokenness of, of the cannabis, uh, system in,
in California, we're seeing farmers come together,
like really, like over the dinner table in a, in, in,
in a smaller, less grandiose way.
And it appears from the outside, uh,
uh, um, that it's working.
So, so maybe talk a little bit about this partnership with,
um, you know, that you,
that you all are calling farm cut cannabis.
- Yeah. So that, that, that partnership is,
is five farms, including ourselves.
It's ourselves, Whitethorn Valley Farm, happy Day Farm,
Emerald Spirit Botanicals in Mendo
and Downham Farms in Nevada City area.
And, um, it's just wonderful.
We're, we're like-minded farmers who came together.
We couldn't exactly create a co-op,
but we created a brand together that we can share,
and like you'd said, share resources, share,
share the burden of the tasks.
Um, Joseph from ALD Spirit is our, our,
our primary salesperson.
And he, uh, because other members
of his family are taking care of the farm, he's able
to travel a lot and, and visit dispensaries and,
and talk to people about, about farm cut
and about our products and make those relationships.
And, and we've played to all of our strengths
and been able to develop systems
and processes that, that work for us,
whether it's sharing equipment
or pooling our resources to be able to say, um,
we have packaging that says Standard Mason Jar,
and we could not find a good childproof lid
for a standard mason jar that didn't have plastic in it.
So we were able to create one to, to go to a factory
and say, we want plant-based childproof lid for,
for this size jar and, and create that and bypass in bulk
and things like that.
And it, it's heartening, it's, it's, um,
in this economic system where it's going towards integration
with the kind of dog heat, dog venture, capitalist,
capitalist world, the, the cooperation, uh,
and the building something together gives us a lot of hope
and a lot of a good feeling, especially doing it
with people we just like seeing
and being around. Anyway,
- That Yeah, totally.
The, uh, doing business with people
that we actually like really
makes all the difference in the world. Oh,
- It's so great. You
- Know, it'd be really funny if this, um, if this, uh,
new childproof cap for mason jars that you all invented,
that, that, you know, that the patent for that
actually ends up becoming popular
because that's actually a really novel, useful idea
and ends up making you all more,
more income than the cannabis itself. You know,
- There was, there was somebody already doing it,
and we were, we were getting those, um,
and they were great products.
They, they were on the pricey side.
Uh, but the main thing that, that we wanted is something
that didn't have any plastic.
And the one we had initially started with our brand is made
with a flax fiber and a recycled plastic,
and we wanted one that was entirely biological.
Yeah. Plant-based material.
And, and that's where we got into it.
And yeah, who knows what the, the long, long term of that,
I'm, I'm just right now keeping my fingers crossed that
that California could be a big enough market that we can,
we can sell a majority of our product through this brand
that is, is a joy to, to be part of.
And, um, we're not there yet, but we're doing really well.
- Excellent, excellent. Well, it's nice, it's nice
to see good people coming together in a good union, uh,
for, for shared benefit.
- Yeah, it feels great too.
I mean, it's, it's, we get such incredibly
positive feedback from, from customers
and dispensaries about it that it e even just that alone,
besides the business aspect, it's like, um,
it's a good feeling to know that the thing you put
so much energy into creating well
and taking care of well is, is received
and acknowledged for being what it is in the world.
- And, and also specifically the, the farms
that you have partnered with, I know several of the folks
and you know, like who, who doesn't wanna be in partnership
with regenerative farmers who are generally happy go lucky
people anyway, you know, I mean, you know,
I I probably know Casey the best
and, you know, great success
to all of it, you know, . Exactly.
- Exactly. Great success. Yeah.
- So, so let's finish off with this question.
You know, like we intentionally designed this episode today
so that we could talk about your farm, um, in detail,
but really as an example of
what can happen on everybody's farm who's listening, right.
Whether or not they're transitioning from,
from petroleum farming or,
or if they're just coming to their parcel and,
and I think we get a did a good job of that, um, but,
but really like the direct advice really could be
profound and inspirational.
So, so let's finish with that.
So what advice would you give to a farmer
with a new parcel,
or who is transitioning, who is just starting out
with regenerative practices?
- Hmm. I think the best advice, um,
would be kind of go
if you've read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Yeah, for sure. The best advice in the world is don't panic.
- Oh, I thought you were gonna say to bring a towel ,
- That that's not a bad idea.
Uh, no, don't, don't panic. Don't stress. Do what you can.
None of us are, are on an island there.
There's no such thing
as a complete closed loop sustainability system.
Look at your farm, do your best.
Find, find the resources that you have available
and adapt to them.
Find the markets you have available and adapt to them.
Don't be too hard on yourself for the things that don't work
and, and don't imagine that, that
we can be pure
or to keep, um,
that we can do everything we dream
as regenerative right from the start.
I'm, you, you introduced me as a regenerative farmer.
I'm not a regenerative farmer.
I don't think anybody is a regenerative farmer.
I I think all of us are striving to align our farming
with natural process
and balancing that with the needs
of being a human on earth right now,
and what is available to us and what the, the constraints
and the, the, the burdens that, that,
that we have to deal with.
So find that balance.
Don't get squeezed between your ideals and your reality.
Make make your way the path that that is best for you.
And then see where you can improve it towards natural
systems towards more sustainability
and make some improvement that is possible for you
with each season and go in that direction.
- Beautiful. Well, Daniel, thank you so much
for sharing your, your depth of experience
and your passion for farming and doing the right thing and,
and your vision for your, you know, your own parcel
and your own family and your own life.
I think that, um, you know, through these words,
hopefully we've given some people some new ideas for things
to do on their own parcels
and also, uh, you know, just, just
put regenerative farming more into the realm
of the possible instead of the realm of the ideal.
So I know your time is valuable
and I, I really thank you for spending it
with us on Shaping Fire.
- Yeah, thank you. It's, it's been really enjoyable
and I just hope everybody gets out there
and gets their hands dirty this spring.
- Fantastic. Okay, dear listeners, so if you want to, uh,
know more about Priceland Forest Farm, where, uh,
where Daniel is owner with his wife Taylor, um, uh,
you can find out that at Priceland Forest
Farm on Instagram
or on their website@pricelandforestfarm.com.
And Bri Lynn is B-R-I-C-E-L-A-N-D.
And, um, we would love it if you would, uh, you know,
if you live in California, if you're,
or if you're traveling there to stop at your dispensary
and buy some Farm Cut Cannabis, um, their small farm,
uh, community group.
And, uh, if you wanna follow along with them, um, you on ig,
that's Farm Cut Canna
and, uh, on the interwebs, that's farm cut cannabis.com.
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