I’ll beat this drum until my last days. We need to get out there and DO something!! Watch my full R-Future 2026 video on my YouTube channel. https://youtu.be/XrdXV-fxXiE?is=3vu6exmvbBj4EDRB

Can I add material to a “hot compost” after it’s already started?? Some ideological composters will say absolutely not, or that if you must then it “resets” your flip count (we generally want 3 flips to get everything a chance in the middle to get “cleaned”). The idea being that fresh material may not get the thermophilic treatment that we’re aiming for with the remaining flips. But the real answer is once again “it depends”. My pile is up to heat, but just barely in some places, and I’m anticipating that the temperature will drop slightly over subsequent flips. What to do? I’m going to add fresh plant material that doesn’t have any seeds. I can do this because I understand what the heat is for. Heat does 2 things - kill weed seeds and clear out potential pathogens. So if I’m not adding seeds or potential pathogens, we haven’t actually violated the rule. So what I would avoid is adding more animal manures, funky compost buckets, feathers, or anything you turn your nose up at. So because my new material is fresh, clean plant material, I won’t be resetting my flip count, and this is critical to minimizing the necessary oxidation and loss of carbon creating a pile - but more on that later. #growmicrobes #soilhealth #microbes #compost #soil

I wanted to share a snippet from my session with Igro Soil and Yellow Skunk Farm talking #roots #rhizophagy and #soilhealth Catch the full thing on Moe’s YouTube. I promise we bring it down to earth and how to make use of new knowledge. (Big hint - it’s fermentation #microbes again) https://www.youtube.com/live/rui0_juKs70?is=TAiIUUE8V2w-CaVr

On this 250th Anniversary of our American Founding I feel an immense sense of importance and timeliness. As we celebrate how far we've come as a People and all that we've accomplished, we are also faced with many trials, social challenges, and waves of despair through our society. I too may feel the tug to get sucked under in a sometimes overwhelming amount of tribulation in this Time. I would, except for the abundance of Hope that is coming through our Agricultural Revolution. While there are certainly many important contributors to this turning tide across the globe, I sense a distinctly American flavor to this transformation of Food. This makes sense, as we exported the Green Revolution in tandem with the cementing of the American Empire, it comes to bear that We must resolve this contention in how farming is conducted across the world. This crescendo within agriculture, the balance of Society and Nature, of Man and his Place in the world, has been a theme long before the American endeavor. Empires have risen and fallen around their agricultural practices. We currently engage a global folly of exporting "fertility" (urea) from Persia - the origin of the historical context of destroying arable land through the agricultural practices that feed us. Is this a little too "on the nose"? What I see as New is that we now have the Opportunity for American ingenuity, innovation, tenacity, and brilliance to come to bear on this human existential conundrum - and indeed when we have nowhere left to discover and farm. America is a country built from farming. Laura Ingalls Wilder attributes these words to her father-in-law as he was speaking about the expansion to the West. "all the land our forefathers had was a little strip of country, here between the mountains and the ocean. All the way from here west was Indian country, and Spanish and French and English country. It was farmers that took all that country and made it America.” “How?” Almanzo asked. “Well, son, the Spaniards were soldiers, and high-and-mighty gentlemen that only wanted gold. And the French were fur-traders, wanting to make quick money. And England was busy fighting wars. But we were farmers, son; we wanted the land. It was farmers that went over the mountains, and cleared the land, and settled it, and farmed it, and hung on to their farms."

Grateful for fantastic local events and the opportunity to connect with local growers. I had lots of great conversations about soil and microbiology while offering the surplus from my plant sale.