Anywhere we go, every book blogpost or any other type of information we learn about how our natural pollinators are becoming more at risk, even more so on bees. Most of us for relaxation or entertainment will sit and watch a favorite television show, Netflix , Youtube etc.

For Jacqueline its watching bees, studying them, watching their traits and habits. She has made it part of her mission to spread the word about how devastating it would be without them. In addition to bees Jacqueline loves gardening and has adapted several systems for her area to grow in, one including cover crops breaking that monoculture cycle which the bees love too.

In most areas of the country, we run our showers to take a bath, wash our clothes and never give a second thought to the water usage or lack of supply of it to perform these tasks. But the story is somewhat different in areas such as San Diego California.

Brook has developed systems for the capture of not only rain water but also grey water to use this water to grow food. She speaks with gardening clubs, community organizations, schools, businesses and at regional events to spread the message. Ironic as it may seem, a city surrounded by water, and the need to capture grey water.

A truly amazing story of “just don’t give up” because things may look different tomorrow. That’s the story of Dave, coming home after the world war, soon being in a property dispute with family, losing ground and starting over. Dave never had the luxury of internet info for soil health help, but Ohio state university was there and he used everything bit of info he could find from them.

Dave and his wife operated a large market farm all on no till to help pay the bills so to speak, then when they were able to purchase more ground they expanded the production farm. Today Dave has a very busy schedule goggling between hats of being a farmer, running a seed business primary for cover crops, and being on a team with the soil health academy and traveling the globe teaching soil health and how he overcame the high production costs and use very little outside inputs for his production farm to thrive.

Deborah and her family left the suburbs of Chicago, signed a contact on some land and began the journey of homesteading. After showing people for somewhere around 7 years of things like how to make soap, she started writing about her journey.

Lots of insights on this call, even a greeting from one of their geese, and that just indicates that not only does she just talk about it but is in the trenches working with it every day and refining the homestead process.

Amie is a mother, wife, instructor and a leader in many ways, especially when it comes to the square foot gardening foundation. Working close with Mel Bartholomew, the founder of square foot gardening, even though Mel is gone the foundation continues to move forward, Amie was able to take her passion of food health and teach the importance of nutrients from food and coupled it with her passion to garden.

On this call, Amie indicated to me some changes she has made in her own gardening practices to the soil as a result of student becoming a little bit of the teacher.

Justin has put together a process where restaurants retirement homes and many other types of businesses can utilize an edible garden in their space out front instead of having lawn grass. Justin and his company does it all from seeding to harvesting for the facility.

At the time of this call, he was stretched across 16 states and growing, with Minnesota being one of his latest projects where they have that thing called hard winters. Justin also has his system to teach others to make a business out of his process.

The topic of this call, you guessed it, Glyphosate. Henry goes into the details about the testing that has been done not only recently as a result of the lawsuit in July of 2018 against Monsanto, but over the years to find the so called “leaks” of where it could be possibly be coming from, areas that are often overlooked.

Henry’s phone has been ringing off the hook since July, but it is important that we know more about the facts of all pesticides and possibly why the name organic may be getting to be just a statement in marketing to draw the right audience instead of its original intention.

And really to mention Agriculture smack dab in the middle of the big city, urban in a town or even a city, but Greg has been working with several areas of small agriculture since the late 90’s, and talks about it as being more of a testing grounds for ideas that he comes up with, but at the same time ideas that relate back to a natural environment and not ideas that come from garden centers and big box home improvement centers.

Then within the last 3 plus years has developed an amazing podcast  of sharing info with experts all over the country. On this call Greg gets into some of the fundamental systems that he has found with in his area to build upon to restore and maintain soil health, not only for gardening purposes but for fruit trees and other plants.

What I love about the style and systems from Greg is that he comes from more of the city style of life, but yet was open to learning from the best, went home and tried what he learned and found a way of improving upon it for his growing environment and is now sharing it big time.

A long time homesteader and fermenter In southern Oregon since 1999, grows produce and a frequent attendee at Mother Earth show’s and has a very busy travel schedule teaching her process. Through the process of those years Kirsten really feels the impact that the world is coming forward in realization that we really need these foods. Our foods from the past were full of life meaning nutrients and microbes.

We encourage microbes in the soil and Kirsten and her Husband are encouraging to bring it back into our diets.

Most of us start out with pretty low organic matter levels, some even 3 to 4 and work hard to bring it up. Lee is located somewhat in the northern New York state area, and has forest that pretty much surrounds his location. The unique part I found of Lee’s story is that over 30 years ago, somewhere around 37 to be exact he began the process of gardening, now referred to as his “farmden”.

In most areas of the country back that long ago, they basically wore the soil out and moved on or are spending massive amounts on costly soil amendments. Lee has been no till gardening the same spot for 36 yrs. He tilled it the first year then switched to no till, it’s living proof of how utilizing the principles of soil health, the soil just keeps improving.

From Pre Med to switching majors in college to bio environmental science which included a lot of soil science.  Lori is now teaching the only holistic program that exists at a community college and loves what she does. She teaches nutrition, herbalism, wellness coaching from a clinical setting, from all this it incorporates permaculture gardening and growing your own medicinal edible plants.

Lori believes that we are all interconnected through the soil. Lori has 15 years of experience to share with you on this topic.

To be able to watch Ray in action when he is in the field, or sitting having lunch with somebody or even just walking down the dirt road, the story is pretty much the same. I am willing to bet that when this man sleeps, Ray dreams soil health. Just walking next to, sitting next to the conversation you will be able to pick out some nuggets that can apply to yourself and what you are doing.

Ray was on my farm two summers ago, when a sample of soil was lifted to view, Ray was down on all four checking it out, muttering words that I had no idea of, then looked over at me with a nod and said good job. Ray is part of the team traveling globally teaching soil health. Rays favorite phrase “Soil and Roots are One”

From mapping out the strategic working plan of 8000 acre ranches and farms to the small organic garden, Butch Tindell is about as down to earth literally as they come. A short visit you will learn about a man that has been involved with the struggles that producers face with the production side of cattle ranching and farming, and yet he can bring it all full circle back to a simplistic style to go out and homestead garden to produce for a family all the way to scale up to a market farm.

Butch and myself share alike with a lot of the same views and concerns where production farms & ranches have headed in the monoculture practices and fear that market farms are heading with the focus on production rather than nutrient density. At the end of the day, the soil will dictate the outcome.