My name is Kat Buxton, I am founder of the Not Healthy Soils Coalition, and I wear a few hats, but tonight I'm the facilitator hat with, yes, and this one is wool, which is also the name of my band. But so tonight I'm so pleased that you're all here for the Soil Series, Grass Roots for the Climate Emergency. They've been putting a lot of effort into making sure that you know about it, and to putting together some really good programs. So I'm going to let you know about the raffle. I'm assuming everyone heard about it when you came in the door, but just in case you didn't, everyone who is here gets a free raffle ticket if you want one. The prize is six books from our three featured Vermont women authors who are also speaking at these series. Those books are also for sale, but on April 24th we're going to do a drawing, one person gets six books. You can also buy extra tickets if you want to, and all the money raised is going to help us to pay for this event. And Chris, who runs Bale, building a local economy, and I, for Vermont Health as well as Coalition, are going to split any proceeds, should there be any, so that we can continue to do really good work, we think it's good work like this. So I'm going to hand it over to Chris. Okay, I'll be short. Yeah, I guess first I could just say our general idea for the format is seven o'clock moments. We start with our three presenters. Half of the program is listening to the good information that they're bringing us, and the other half of the program we are going to engage in a community discussion. So we really want to hear from you as well. That's the point of this series designed by Chris, like in general, right? And cat. So I'm Chris Wood. I'm from Bale, building a local economy. And for those who don't know what Bale is, it's a community resource center for local economy initiatives in the White River Valley. So we are focused on the watershed. We are multi-issue in what we do for topics. And we are multi-disciplinary in the way we do programming. This right here is actually your part. You're the first of the fifth year of what we've called in Randolph. So for this, for year five, this is called building resilient communities.  And we do sit, actually, back five years ago, it was called why build a local economy series. But anyway, you know, it's still the same thing. And we did a lot more programs back then. But this year, I sort of, I decided to approach cat and said, this is the topic. This is what we have to be talking about. And pretty much I didn't have to do anything after that. This is really, this is really, cats. Which I like, I like, I like that. So anyway, this is, you know, this is really sort of in some ways, you know, I think of what Bale does and how I just start describing it now is, and this five years ago, this is what I would have never said this. Here we are five years later. Climate chaos and disaster coming, you know, closer and closer in our face. So what I'm saying about Bale is it's about consciousness raising, culture shift, and backyard skills building. So the soil series is all of that. So anyway, I'm grateful for that. Now I have to make sure I do my little duties. Surveys, we would love it if at the end, we have surveys back there. Just give us feedback. We want feedback. It'll help us for the future programs. Sign-up sheets, of course, for Healthy Sores Coalition and Bale. I just nod to Orca Media, who's here, who's going to be doing the entire series. Big nod, of course, to the invisible people over there, which is the Black Creme Tavern. So that food is from the Black Creme, and that'll be there. Different things will be there every time you come here. Karen already mentioned the raffle, so they crossed that one off.  Yes, Claude, if there are any, if anybody in the crowd has started a farm in the past, because Lauren Griswold, I work in organizing a short meetup series for new or new fish farmers in the area. I'll be around after. Thanks, Lauren, for the vital communities. So in case you didn't hear that, check in with Lauren if you are a new farmer. Good stuff happening with the vital communities that's putting together. So I'd like to introduce our speakers. They're going to help to frame this first discussion, Ground to Body, Soil Health and Human Health. Our whole series is, of course, about soil, and we're trying to approach this from different areas, because soil is literally the foundation that we all stand on. And we're going to get to hear how a lot of our remote healthy soils, coalition members and community members feel about that. So we have Dee Dee Pursehouse, who's going to be our first speaker tonight. We have Grace Groshini, who is going to go... Like Looney, right? Like Looney. And Michael Denney. So Grace Groshini is going to go last. Michael is going to be second, and Dee Dee is first. And I hope you all had a chance to read their bios. These are three really interesting people in here. Let's get started with Dee Dee. I'm excited to see how many people came out for this. You know, in the old days, when I got started long ago, five years ago, there weren't so many people coming out for soil talks. But I think the word has gotten out that this is a really, really, really key piece to community resilience, to public health, to climate change, et cetera. So I'm going to try to kind of start things off with a bang to give you the 12-minute version of why soil is important in terms of all of the above. And I'm going to do... So many of you knew me in my previous incarnation as an acupuncturist in Thetford, which I did for 25 years, and was spent the last nine of those writing a book called The Ecology of Care. And in the writing of that book led me into soil, and I realized soil was a way to impact public health much more on a bigger scale and more dramatically than keeping treating patients one-on-one. And for those of you who are still treating patients one-on-one, please keep going because I feel a little badly having stepped out. So all important work. So I wanted to just show a couple of slides. The first thing that I did when I transitioned was to start writing curriculum because I wanted to... I know that I learned better when I'm teaching, so I tried to, whatever I learned, turn around and teach it to someone else and then keep track of that learning and turn it into this, which is a free downloadable curriculum at soilcarboncollection.org slash learn. And while I was writing that, there was a day in July 1st. I was over in the Adirondacks, and I got a call from someone in the family saying, there's some stuff going down here in Thugford. And this is the road behind our house, Buzzle Bridge Road. Some of you may know it. It's a great road, walked down to the river. Well, when I came back, it looked like that. So... And it still hasn't been fixed. And that's a lot of money to fix for a town of 2,000 people, most of whom are only this tall. So when we think about the economics of, like, how much money goes towards health care? How much money goes towards this? If we're spending money on this, every time we get a few inches of rain, that's a problem. So it was that interaction with Irene when we saw this kind of thing that really got me shifting towards thinking about rain hitting the ground and what happens. So, my lovely trustee boss and assistant. Cat will bring over something. So this is the way I came up with to explain this fast and dirty of what's the difference between healthy soil and unhealthy soil. And I just came back from speaking in Paris where someone translated my PowerPoint into French. So if you're wondering how to say that in French, there it is. So this is a plate. This is arranged really badly for this. We could do it. Hold it up. Sure. Why don't you hold that? Just don't hold it too high. Hold it kind of down low. So this is just a plate of flour. You can imagine this to anyone who's done any baking knows what's going on. What's that? Music stand. So flour here is going to be a stand in for sand silt and clay, which is essentially broken down rocks that is a substrate of soil, of all soils. And if we were outside, I might have my whole blow on that. And we would get the dust bowl. So when sand silt and clay don't have anything holding them in a living matrix, they're basically just dust. And they can move. So this is a stand in for that mineral substrate, but it's also showing us what happens when soil is degraded, when desertification happens on dirt roads like we saw. The road was missing. The forest didn't go anywhere. So the forest had biology working on it. The road didn't. That's the first clue there. So we're going to say, hang on, we're not there yet. No, we don't need that. So I need someone to make a rain cloud. So this is a demo I encourage you to do at home, at dinner parties, turn around so they can really enjoy making a rain cloud. And then I need somebody to be God for the goddess, or female God, or may God. Who cares? Who could be better? So what do I do? So we need to open this up. Here's the rain cloud. God's going to open up the flow of water in the universe. And then sand, sand that way so everybody can see. So God is going to pour some water into the rain cloud, and we're going to see what happens to the soil. Don't go too much because what's happening? So anyone who's made bread, when you pour the liquid on the flour, what happens? You don't need to keep pouring. That's good. Very good. So why don't you just walk down there, Michael, and let people see what's happening. If this was a landscape, what has happened? Runoff. The water's moving sideways over the top. It's not going in. What else? Erosion. Mudslides, maybe? If it's big erosion. And there's a flood, right? So that water has to go somewhere. So suddenly you have a flood. The water's not clean. So it's taken the soil with it. It's taken any chemicals that were in there. It's taken manure. If it's that kind of harm. If there's antibiotic resistant bacteria, and it's a feed thought, it's taken that and it's washed it all around. And that's also getting blown into the air when the wind comes along. Okay. So, and did the plant roots get any of that water? No, because if you dig down under there, it's completely dry. So what do you have to add to flour? One thing, that's liquid. To turn it into bread. Yeast, which is biology, a microorganism, right? So the same basic, it's not, it doesn't happen in the same way. But the structural difference between flour and bread is exactly like the structural difference between unhealthy, abiotic soil that has no biology in it. And biologically active living soil I call the soil carbon sponge or the soil sponge. And why is it a sponge? Well, we're going to see. Yeah, you know what I'm going to do here? I'm going to put it on the table. How about that? For those people who can't quite see, there we go. Okay. So we're going to rain on this landscape. And you can imagine what's happening. Also feel free to get up and come to the front. There's plenty of room all the way around here. What's different? It's absorbing the water. Yeah. What else is it doing? Or what is it not doing? It's not running off. It's not running off. It's going in. It's filtering it. Yeah, it's filtering it physically. And it's filtering it biologically. So it's capturing it in those pore spaces. But it's also filtering it because the biology is going to break down into their original parts. Okay. Now, if you keep pouring, we can usually pour about ten times as much water on this landscape as this one. And eventually what's going to happen is it's going to start coming out the bottom. So in a landscape, what is the happening there? The roots are down there. Right. What else? The aquifer. Yep, the water table. So we're refilling the water table with clean, clear water. And if you put these two plates out into the sun, what's going to happen to each one of them? Let's say we're in, you know, Africa or something. The water in the flower one is going to evaporate really fast. It's going to evaporate super fast. Yep, absolutely. And it's also going to make a cross and kind of seal off. So then the next time it rains, even less rain. And this can happen even on like a nice organic farm around here. You can see, I've seen this where you come right after a rain and it looks just like flower.  Okay, so if you lived somewhere where there was a lot of rain like Vermont, which landscape would you rather have around your house or on your farm? The bread, yeah. And how about if you lived somewhere that just got a little bit of rain, like really, really, really just a few millimeters of rain and you were trying to grow food? Still the bread, yeah. How about if you lived somewhere with really high winds? Oklahoma, Plains or Vermont last week. The bread, yeah. Okay. So how does that happen? What's going on here? What we have is we have porosity, right? A sponge is a sponge because it's porous, right? So there's holes there. But the other thing about a sponge is when you put it into water it doesn't fall apart. Okay, so a sponge has two really important qualities to it and a living soil sponge has both of those qualities as well. The life that has moved through there, so we have plant roots going down, feeding soil biology, those root hairs and the hongo hyphae start working to tie all those little particles together and then all the slimes and glues of life stick those particles together and as things stick together around them there space and that space and also leave some room for more things to move through there. You start to get some earthworms and you get smaller soil biology moving through. You get bigger things moving through, moles and foxes and other things. So if you have a real drought, those bigger holes kickstart things when it rains. So important to have all different size holes. So I don't know where we're at. I'm wanting to probably get in close. Alright, wow. Okay, so let's look at what this looks like up close. Let me just show this one first because that's what I was talking about, those biotic glues, the slimes and glues of life. That soil on the right is that's like the bread. You can see that you can put it in there. You can leave that for 24 hours, 48 hours. The water is still going to be clean because all those mineral particles are held together. They're not falling apart. And the one on the left is like the flower. As soon as it gets in the water, the water whoosh, like that. Okay, so here's a rainfall simulator. These are five same soil type. So for your soil geeks out there, it's not that one of them is sand and the other one's all clay or something. Is there the same ratio of sand silt and clay? But what's different is that it's the same way that they've been managed. So this one is conventional agriculture. Lots of heavy tillage, no cover crops. Not a lot of biology going on there. And we put four inches of rain on three inches of soil. This is like a big cookie cutter. And what's happened is that nothing has come through. There's no infiltration. It's all runoff and it's taken a lot of the soil with it. When you grow for every bushel of corn that's harvested, we lose a bushel of soil. For every bushel of soybean that's harvested, we lose over two bushels of soil. That is not a sustainable system and it's certainly not a regenerative system. Okay, so then we start adding in some of the soil health principles of how you grow a healthy spun. We start adding in cover crops. We add a little bit of infiltration, a little less runoff. The water is a little cleaner. We add in mixed species cover crops and some no-toe. I don't remember exactly which one of these is which thing, but we're adding these principles of soil health. Finally, we get all the way over here. We've got diversity. So lots of different plants growing. We've got perennial plants. So their roots are in the ground all year round. We start feeding that soil biology. And we've got animals in the system helping to manage the system. And what have we got? We've got all the water, all four inches of rain has soaked in, no runoff and it's been filtered. So this is pretty exciting because what are we worried about first of all in order for us to even survive we need clean water. And we need oxygen. So plants in that system are providing us with both of those. But what do we need to thrive? We need nutrient-dense food. We also need safety from this kind of survival and thriving. Safety from extreme weather events. We need a livable climate. So we've got clean water. We've got clean air because that soil isn't blowing in the air, right? We've got this whole filtration system. We also have protection from flooding. We have protection from drought. We have refilled the water table so the soils aren't collapsing. Like in California and Florida, anyone heard of subsidence where the land just collapses and you'll fall down 30 feet into the ground because there's no water table holding things up. Anyone know the aquifers are empty? We have we also have, which we'll be talking about more in a later one, that the plants are transpiring and that is taking heat away from the surface and it's cooling that the area. And a colleague of mine, Walter Yamas, says that if we increased the amount of green growth on land by 5%, just the transpiration alone would reverse global warming. Like as soon as we had that like we don't have to wait down the road. Okay? But we're also putting carbon into this. So all of that life is the living that dead, the very dead. 50% of the dry weight of all of that stuff is carbon. So we're also addressing the atmospheric CO2. So there's a French initiative 4 per thousand, we can increase 4 parts per thousand in soil carbon. We can also address climate change in a longer sense. But we've addressed the resilience right away right? So we've addressed the flooding, the drought, what else are we worried about ocean rise? Michael Kravchik from Slovakia says that a lot of what we're seeing of ocean rise already is because the plate is full, right? All that water is leaving and going right into the river that empties into the ocean. So we're missing that soil sponge. But we can totally rebuild it. Anything else we're worried about? Toxic biocides. Toxic biocides, yeah. So when we grow food in the system, nutrients because all of that increased surface area that's in the bread, then there's so much more biology to go get nutrients for the plants and in the right ratios. The soil is filtering the water, right? The soil is filtering the water, right? So we've got more water and we've got more clean water. And to do it optimally, we're using way less or no additional chemicals. Like mother nature knows how to do this. That's why that picture a few slides back, right? That's why the road washed away, but the forest didn't wash away. Even where there were just ferns on the side, the soil stayed in place. So mother nature knows how to build a sponge and we just have to follow her lead. Okay. Thanks very much. Thanks a lot, Beauty. I wonder, can we just have a quick show of hands of people in this room that have taken Deedee's soil health course? Yeah, I teach an online live course called what do we call it? Growing O. Growing the soil sponge. Just so you all know I want to encourage you to take notes too about things you're interested in, but I'm taking notes and I have folks in the audience helping. If you can give me your email address, I will send you all of our notes and resources including things like links to Deedee's class and a lot of the things the other speakers are going to provide for us as well. Michael. Are you using a PowerPoint? I'd like to first apologize. I think there was some false advertising. How many people saw the flyer with our pictures? That one of me, that was a younger me. Then you'll switch it with the little arrow. Thank you. Just to let you know a little bit about my approach to soil, I take it from not only an environmental stance, but also from a social activism stance and a peace approach, because I think they're all explicitly linked and I've worked on some reservations out in the southwest and also up in Canada with First Nations people and we gave them the worst land. We gave them the most depleted land and then we only wanted to take it back when we found there was some minerals and oil and gas on those lands. And the sad thing is that they've lost some of their ways of being with the land and some of the elders I was fortunate to spend time with talk about that. The same is true in West Africa because I have a seed program out there in Gambia teaching them how to grow food again. And we're working with an NGO out there called African Organics teaching permaculture and organic gardening. Because they don't people forgot how to survive, how to live. And much like Native Americans here, the Native people of West Africa are also suffering because of you know colonialism, post-colonialism we talk about that in this country. Anyway I don't want to go too far on that but that's the web that I bring together. I also work in a hospital I work at Montesquatney Hospital in Windsor, Vermont and in the head of our sustainability committee and one of the things that in the 24 years that I've been there is I'm always pushing the hospital to do more because we create a lot of waste. And so at our little hospital we compost on site probably 90-95% of our food waste. We're looking at ways to mitigate water runoff you know with the soil, managing the soil better. We have fruit trees on property we recycle everything. And I'm concerned about the food that we feed people. You know anybody who knows anything about medicine, you know Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine said do no harm. And so anybody in healthcare has to take that oath. Well, Hippocrates also said your first medicine is your food. So I've pushed the hospital to give antibiotic free meats and chicken and also get them to buy as much local I think we're up to 27% local of our produce that we feed people. And when I look at things I look at the food chain you know the food web is basically a link in the ecosystem from species, you know from insects, you know all the way up to the top predators and if you look at it you know food chains you know it's both terrestrial which is deserts, grasslands and forests and also the aquatic food chains which exist in our streams, ponds lakes and oceans and so here's a food chain and I have a question after this look closely at it right you see the clouds and then you know that rains and on the lichens grow and the caribou eat that and the wolf eat the caribou I want you to think about what's missing from this food chain what's missing? Yeah soil right so that first slide wasn't that long ago where when they looked at ecosystems we ignored the soil and you know because of the work of a lot of people now and you know Didi and Grace and folks you know colleagues of theirs you know we're starting to really pay attention to how important the soil is for our health right and we know that you know it goes all the way down to you know all those microorganisms that we have in the soil so there's a healthier food chain right the terrestrial food chain where you're looking at you know the soil the plants the soil nutrients you know Didi you said you know we need soil rich nutrient rich soil to have healthy food alright how many farmers in here again how many organic farmers gardeners right we know we know how important that is right there's been initiative in Maryland about four years ago where they started looking at the local food initiative and they did some research looking around the country as well and they're trying to get as much food and food education healthy food in hospitals and at Mount Oskotny we had some of this stuff we have CSAs with local CSA farmers we've had farmer markets on the property lots of education around healthy food how many people are familiar with veggie van go here in Vermont okay it drives around the state delivers food anybody can take it any of the vegetables it's not all organic so I wish it was more of that but again getting healthier food to people we spent a lot of money and we created a big carbon footprint to move food right most food it comes to hospitals comes from a distance of an average of 1500 miles from farm to plate in a hospital that's quite a distance versus local farms by contrast brings it 56 miles we're trying to do more of that we spent a lot of money in hospitals 9.7 billion on food annually for food and beverages in hospitals alone and it's estimated by 2040 34% or GDP is going to go to feeding people and healthcare hospitals are supposed to be places of healing and we want to bring the best food to our patients again it's I pushed our physicians to even look at some of this stuff in our hospital you know not only is food better tasting but it's more nutrient rich and I'm not going to go into all the science about what minerals and vitamins and all that stuff and that would be a long talk but we also know that soil health is important this study was done in 1998 right some time ago out in Nebraska University of Nebraska and it was to increase the awareness and the importance of how organisms in our soil provides the right nutrients, minerals, vitamins and all that stuff so we have healthy food again you know soil health is basically the capacity of soil to function as a vital living system this came out of that conference within the ecosystem and land use boundaries to sustain plant animal productivity and maintain as Needy talked about and enhance water, air quality and promote plant animal health and we're part of the animal kingdom so they started looking at these practices a long time ago and I'm glad that there's been a reassurgence because without healthy soil without good land management you know we're going to not have healthy air, water and food and there's already a ton of research I didn't bring it with me because I've pared this down but there's a ton of research about all the toxins in our environment the carcinogens in our environment we know we're having that issue with some of the water quality over near Bennington I was just out in the Midwest they're having issues out there with water and it's all this stuff all these chemicals you know that is filtrating into our water the soil and its constituents on human health are through ingestion inhalation and absorption what's the largest organ in our body you know skin yes I think of soil since I spent time with a lot of indigenous people it's the skin of Makia Mother Earth right and if we don't take good care of her what's going to happen what happens one of the things I'm most proud of they wanted to pave the upper parking lots where the staff parked and I said no so I went to the medical staff and I said what happens if we have a patient that gets burns over half or three quarters of their body what happens the body can't breathe right it can't evaporate or reduce heat through evaporation when we sweat right so they can overheat you can have heat stroke in a normal temperature day right so I said if we pave over those parking lots we're like a burn patient and you know what the medical staff said don't pave the parking lots right so I think about again soil that way we need it we need it for the trace elements so we can have both the beneficial and the toxic effects on our health it takes out the toxic effects if we have good healthy soil and it also gives us the trace elements and nutrients that we need for our healthy food to build bone to build cells and to build nerve cells right there's all this research now about neuro receptors how many people take vitamins all kinds of stuff why because you're trying to keep those nerve cells healthy those cells in our body for whatever organs that they're producing right so I talk to our medical staff about this all the time you know because sometimes we'll see cancer patients and I'll see the doc say you know you're losing weight eat whatever you want and then I'll say so I'll go later I won't say it in front of the patient out of respect but I'll go to the doctor and I'll show the research behind it because we're supposed to do evidence-based medicine right this is evidence-based you know how to take care of the soil how to take care of the planet you know and so that's my big bend on this and again the soil is the skin of the earth you know we need it to breathe we need it to provide the right nutrients for our body for our health and that's essential especially as we're developing think about some of the developmental issues that we're having these days with young people autism is through the roof developmental disorders are through the roof they're so susceptible to these environmental hazards and we're right we got to take care of the soil for our health and our well-being and not only the other things that Didi was talking about the environment reducing floods and all those other things and getting carbon out of the air we know what to do science is pretty clear so I just want to leave you with one last thing um one of the elders I spent time with he was a Lakota elder his name was grandfather Wallace Black Elk and grandfather in Lakota language they have this phrase a whole metakue oyasin a whole metakue oyasin means all my relations because they believe we're related to everything all the beings two-legged, four-legged mammals, creeper crawlers, stone people plant people, winged ones and swimmers and the mother and we got to take good care of her grandfather passed in March 2004 but one of the things that he talked about in their tradition that they talked about for over 5,000 years is they tell these stories and one of the stories that they talk about is hearing these bells and these bells get louder and when they feel there's six bells and when you hear the sixth bell that's when things are going to be really tough and he would say he liked this word he said we live in a auspicious time and he said that's a good word for me you know and before he died in March 2004 grandfather reported hearing the fifth bell from his people so we're in that auspicious time so alright thank you thank you of course like everybody else way more material that I'd love to share with you than we have time for but I do have some of the people that I love the best whose books are there for you to look at and I will try to be as brief as possible some of the material that I wanted to talk about has been pretty well explored by Beatty and Michael so I will I will just continue and elaborate a little bit on some of what they said but I want to make a couple of comments to start one of them is to really thank the indigenous people the Avanaki people whose land we are really occupying as we do go about our lives we should remember that they have been dispossessed and ignored and we need to lift them up as well and I would also want to mention that Kat has been such a wonderful facilitator for this workshop and many others in this coalition and I just want to encourage those of you who are not on the listserv or signed up for the list to put your names and emails on that sheet and you will have access to all of the fabulous information that is available there so I will just go ahead and try to try to fill in some of the gaps and also give you a little bit of a preview of some of what we are going to be enjoying in the series to come as we go to this fabulous series I really don't know if I can come to all of them but I will damn well want to and you know I live in the Northeast Kingdom it's a little bit of a shlatt for me but it's worth it so and I love this healthy soils healthy humans I thought it was so good it was handed out by rural Vermont at the NOFA conference and I said I want that so here it is the next arrow come on there we go and I just wanted to I love this graphic and so this kind of really is a holistic summary of what we are all talking about and this is a poster from the Common Ground for Climate Action we had a seminar in St. Johnsbury in November we are going to do another one Brattleboro in April and unfortunately DeeDee won't be joining us for that one so Kat and I will try valiantly to make up for that but that will be a good one so I really love this I wanted to have an image of what does healthy soil look like and this comes from a guy named Steve Diver who is a long time soil professional consultant former NRCS former extension agent brilliant character and he's been very generous about sharing his slides with folks so I want to give a shout out to him and the dreadlocks image and the other image of what healthy soil looks like you've heard about the importance of the root system and the rhizosphere all of the good stuff that's happening in the soil is really concentrated in the small area right around the roots and the roots are extensive in healthy soil and so it's all like a virtuous cycle where the roots create more habitat for soil life and when they die they become the organic matter in the microbes etc and we saw from Didi's presentation that when soil is in poor condition then the roots don't grow and this is just another really nice graphic that this one from Kat about the rhizosphere showing how all of this works you'll get a lot more of it in the presentation that Kat will be giving but just a sense of how incredibly dynamic and interrelated it all is again this is another one from Steve Diver some electron micro scope images of these really wonderful interactions I think that the fungi there are quite amazing so an opportunity to really be able to determine for yourself how do you know if it's healthy how do you keep track and I think folks are aware of the land listener workshops that have been held I was able to go to one at Butterworks Farm at Jack Lasers and that's one of the ways that you don't need to have expensive equipment you don't need to have a soil lab you can monitor your excuse me your soils health through various sensory methods through your sense of touch through your sense of smell through your sense of taste and one of my very favorite inspirations these days is Leah Peneman who was the keynote speaker at the NOFA winter conference a couple of weeks ago and if anybody has not heard of or seen her this is her book Farmingwell Black and she goes into great many of the wonderful all of the stuff that we're talking about here but also honors the fact that many many of these ideas came from her indigenous ancestors from Africa brought over by enslaved people in the images of the women who would weave the the seeds the sacred seeds into the hair of into their hair and the hair of their daughters who they knew were going to be caught and sent away who knows where but they knew that they would somehow or other at some point be able to plant these seeds and have some way to survive and it's such an incredible story and I wanted to actually start with that that quote there's several quotes that she she always uses from Malcolm X which is that land is the basis of freedom and to free ourselves we must feed ourselves right so this is an important important understanding this is just another one of those images that shows you the difference between healthy soil and not so healthy soil the flower on the left and the bread on the right you can see what the difference is you don't need to have a soil test to tell you and this is a picture of healthy soil this is again a jack lasers and this is how we this is how we begin to repair the soil livestock appropriate tools he doesn't use so much tillage equipment anymore Jack wrote the book on grain growing and has begun to realize that it isn't such a good idea to grow all this grain and you know until the soil and have to create disturbances to the soil ecosystem that's one of the key things and that is that's one of the things that we're all learning more about to build the soil carbon sponge you avoid disturbing the soil as much as possible you bring in livestock you do it in a way that is going to encourage the water cycles encourage the growth of the of the grass and the other diverse kinds of pasture species that are needed and the question of diversity is incredibly important in the soil above the soil in the community it all is all about diversity biodiversity cultural diversity you name it let's see here there were some quotes that I wanted to use the the question of the microbes and I could probably talk endlessly just about that but recently we had an opportunity to listen to David Montgomery can you pass me the water bottle there thank you we had a chance to listen to David Montgomery and his wife Anna is that how you say it and they bought a copy of the recent book that they wrote together on the hidden half of nature and I was particularly struck by some of the things that Anna said and to riff on some of Michael's stuff about food and soil being the skin of the earth so for Anna soil is the guts and the rhizosphere she called the intestines turned inside out and I thought that was a great metaphor because that's exactly what keeps us healthy and what keeps the soil healthy and where the greatest biological activity is um she said that 40% of the health promoting compounds in our body are of bacterial origin okay many of those vitamins that we take are manufactured in our gut by microbes they aren't stuff that we necessarily get directly from the plants or the other foods that we consume this is a very important thing and the inner microbiome and the soil microbiome are so deeply interconnected another one of my favorite authors Dr. Daphne Miller has written several books one of them called Pharmacology in which she actually shows some scientific evidence about the health of value of contact with the soil and you know for chasing away the winter blues there's nothing like starting a few seeds in a pot of soil my onions just came up yesterday and I'm so thrilled just like makes me feel like oh yes there's hope um okay how much time do I have one minute okay well the stuff about climate change you've heard it there's agriculture is responsible for a huge imprint of the food system the food system is about between a third and close to half of climate change as you know depending on whose research you look at and agriculture is a major part of that and agricultural production is a major part of that and actually food miles aren't all that big a piece of it because for various reasons but the actually one of the worst offends offenders in terms of climate change greenhouse gases is synthetic nitrate fertilizer it's one of the worst offenders in terms of water pollution and it's one of the worst offenders also in terms of poor nutritional quality so the sooner we get rid of it the better I can talk at length about the the horrible things wrought by synthetic nitrate which was originally of course the process for manufacturing it is incredibly energy intensive and it was originally created for the purpose of making dynamite in world war one that's really what it was for they didn't do it because they thought they could make fertilizer anyway and another important piece of that of course is the water cycle there will be some great stuff on water coming up later on but the 24th thank you and the 24th April 24th April 24th ok that's the last one I really encourage you to listen to that I've been learning more about water lately and I have there this amazing book called the fourth phase of water I encourage all of you to look into that because it's really about how water is life literally ok I will kind of skip over all of this stuff about why organic farming needs to proliferate we have about 5% of the food system by retail sales is organically grown produce or products manufactured products probably primarily a lot that's organically produced that's not much after 40 years of beating our heads against that wall but it needs to grow but what even more needs to grow is that we only have about 1% of US farmland is organic organic farming does have some problems once in a while but it is definitely shown and repeated studies to both mitigate the impact of climate chaos and to contribute to building soil organic matter which is what is the soil carbon sponge so I will just end with the community resilience piece again this is Kat's slide and encourage you also to attend the workshop that is going to be about community resilience I think that's an incredibly important piece of it and it is all about communities working together sharing resources sharing the land whenever possible this is my favorite quote from Leah Peneman and this is a photograph that she her sister I believe took this photograph at soulfire farm of some youth putting their feet in the soil and experiencing that direct contact with the earth that is so important for our health and this I got from this magazine and how many of you have seen Yes Magazine this came in my mailbox yesterday and I said oh and this article with that photograph is in this issue by connecting with soil we heal the planet and ourselves and I think I'll leave you with that there was another joke but this is enough time thank you so um yes thank you Chris we're going to turn on the light what's that how do you guys feel about shuffling into a circle I think that would be good I know that we have some folks in the room even when I talked we should turn wait yes it is so um put out the mic but I'll bet not everybody in this room is as loud as I am so if you're quiet we know you have a lot of important things to say and we want to hear every word so please please please don't be shy and use this light in the future I'll get a traveling one but right now you're left for the wall so this is here for quiet people so in this portion it's going to be interesting to see how it goes and everyone will be a little different because our group will be a little different what we want to do now is engage what can we do how are you feeling what are you inspired to do given the information that you were given tonight we could very easily in a 40 minute time period get stuck on some of these really important wedge issues which I would like to advise that we don't do it would be more important to me that everyone in this room has a chance to speak who wants to if you don't want to speak we won't make you so I would like to just start with the question I'd like to go around we can do it popcorn style if you'd like or round in a circle we're going to do circle we're going to go this way if you have nothing to say but I'm going to ask that you either pose a question that won't be answered or you state a comment or how you're feeling about what you've learned tonight what you're inspired to do maybe you have a question that you're left with and if you do have a specific question for clarity for one of our speakers we will answer that so you can just say that is that clear? Everybody clear? let's go first I was just wondering if D.D. could talk more about the center for sustainable something or other that I know that you have started and if you could talk more about that there are ways to get involved with that how do you want me to deal with that no that's cool I'm going to write it down I'm wondering because I don't have a farm but I do have some land so I'm curious if there are some opportunities to get engaged with the building the soil and also connecting to First Nations people or somehow adding multiple levels of diversity at the personal level I live on a farm and I am very interested in what people can do to start regenerating the soil everywhere and I know that there are things that everyone can do one particular thing that I'm very interested in is I have heard that there is a kind of composting method which is called the Johnson Sioux and that it produces in a year something that can inoculate the soil and I'm interested in hearing more about that because I realize having seen some designs and stuff it's a very very simple thing to do that practically anybody could do but I'd like to hear more about that I volunteer as manager of a community garden in Lebanon and it's an organic garden but one thing we have stopped doing is composting because communal composting is sort of like communal living that tends to go to the lowest common denominator and so some people are very careful about what they put in the compost pile and others are putting in disease and we are weedy and seedy and so on so the composting angle I would love to add to our garden if anyone has tips on how to do that with a large group of people I'd like to I'd like more information to incorporate nutrients into the soil without doing it no oh yes I didn't say that but thank you for just knowing I've been involved for 37 years in a mill and I've been involved with I'm involved with the Green Mountains January and I've been young and I care about how the livestock that we have been is raised in ways that grow the soil we have a we can tell our customers this and we have a lot of people that we sell to so I'd like to be able to do it in the right way so I'm trying to learn as much as I can all of you so we can try to because I was frustrated at the climate change conference in Poland when they were saying that animals are such a problem I think there's another perspective anything I'm also worried I'm sorry I'm worried that the organic people are starting to fight with some of the other people for taking care of the soil and organic people are not to be too much overrun by the national program which seems to keep watering down the Spanish so I got a lot of sorry I guess I'd like more information on how to better inclusion support from my my name's Tim and my use there is how to promote at least we've covered at community events and our department town fairs my name's Simon and I have been I live in the flood plain so we've had this goal for a long time about switching from annuals to perennials as it means flood proofing our land so I need to get off there here well my name is Vincent I'm from China actually I'm originally from one law school my research now is focused on biodiversity conservation so I'm going to talk about it today hi I'm Sean I'm directing a recent I established a research initiative I'm from a law school about international sustainability so one of our focus is about how to promote sustainable agriculture in American countries I think a lot of experience is people here are talking about it for long people can actually be copied to a lot of regions in American countries and also China and also we study the international trade and the international law actually influence the prospect of sustainable agriculture because nowadays a lot of the international trade agriculture commodity is actually producing the value of the last day so that's kind of like this place in both economic and political way the opportunities, the business opportunities and also the economic vitality of traditional agriculture and the system of agriculture so if that's to be concerned of us I'm sitting about how to reform the effect of the ecosystem and also the rules and the policies that is covering the system my name is Vanessa and I've been working on keeping hospitals in the ground and trying to figure out how to bring this to those people and I'm realizing I would need to really do so fast my name is Carl I'm the co-founder of the Soil and Climate Group and we're happy to be co-sponsor of tonight's event for those of you who have questions about this topic and who should follow it and join communities for people who don't know about this than I do I would recommend the Laundry Soil email list which many of you perhaps are on the Soil and Climate Group we now have over 10,000 members in more than 100 countries around the world so it's a great resource to put questions out there I'm Sophie and I would just say I'm starting a garden at my house in summer so I'm just wondering how you learn what to say I'm Mark we have a organic that's definitely farm and I've been working with a life of killer for a number of years now realizing the role of mycorrhizae in the soil and recognizing that we really need to change the way we deal with the soil we're left with a little problem that we needed a couple of pieces of equipment which are a few that are expensive and preferable both of those are expensive from a real hurdle to carrying into doing the right thing with the soil so one idea is to try and have a local loner but we have enough people that are interested in sharing I'm always curious to work on small different animal farms around the country and it's also the decision you have to make with finding the employer resources to build soil very interested in finding that out but also very inspired in realizing that people can look at farm animals and therefore just started a new time change but I specifically am also interested in trying to figure out ways to bring information like this to places like to try to reduce soil compaction and not specifically last Monday we were talking about stockpiling of soil when developing and the general practice now is that the good thing is to keep that stockpiling is re-enriching so I think that it would be great just some great things that would bring information like this boil it down to a two minute conversation about sheep so this would be more functionally used and widely practiced rather than just such small groups but it's limited I'm here in a couple of different capacities I don't care what the heralds are coming but I'm over here he's done a lot of work especially in the Mojave desert to rebuild soil he's done this super exciting Ryan from East Montilier I also spend a lot of time working on climate change thinking about directions for the climate movement but what these conversations get me thinking about the most are how can we get better at covercropping given in short seasons and limited land and what can we what are the steps we take to actually start minimizing tillage also the question of evasives I haven't seen my soil before months probably going for another six weeks some of the depth of this whatever I'm wondering what unique influences our climate may have on the soil and Bioloque is from the Lewinowski River bioregion of the Plainfield way also newly experimented living on the edge of Lake Champlain where I'm watching the algae blooms and watching the nitrate store in the water and watching the signs go up that said there are swimming beaches and it's all connected I'm also concerned about this soil we're talking about this soil it's been a missing ingredient but grateful for the cycles the images that everybody had of their powerpoint clothes because we can't forget that it's all connected with our neighbors on my mind the health of the forests not just the health of agricultural ecosystems but the forests how we hold this fun the way we work with our forests and Bioloque I'm wondering how in 5% of America how would you be interesting cool projects we are interested in where are the most actions I'm Jill and I'm also a climate activist and I'm here to catch up I'm not going to say that mini common white river watershed that I used to have animals on it and the animals shouldn't know that everything could care for itself and I no longer have animals and I don't know what to do with this land also because I really reduced capabilities in terms of the energy I'm putting so I'm looking for ideas for perennial row maintenance my name is Rick and there are two things one is in getting away from tilling how do you best ways to plant without tilling and also forest soil health are there practices that facilitate forest soil health conversations about forest soil things that are this important have been so absent from most of my life so far and that is something that I have had to find an interest in and seek out so it's a little bit depressing that it's not to talk there has to be a formal gathering about it but also at the same time equally encouraging other people who are excited enough to want to talk about everything that's in it so it's I was just kind of an interesting place to be in but I'm excited to be in a space where other people are excited about it and we've got all levels of wisdom about it too so it's cool to be able to bounce ideas off of each other and to learn hopefully I'm Jesse I think I'm both thinking about small scale things like how to build more like a rise up on guy in my little garden plot and also big scale things like how changes can take shape to the global way that we do hopefully questions that I have from the point of climate change so Vermont has a lot of farmland that is no longer being farmed and I think we need to grow a lot more food here on that whole farmland but from the standpoint of climate change what is what uses up or eats up the most amount of carbon is it forests or is it you know these good practices in agriculture so what you know from the standpoint of climate change why don't we just let our fields grow for us does that be more beneficial for the students my name is Lauren I work on an organic dairy farm and I'm from Oregon and today we're learning more about moving fields especially the patching holes focusing more on building healthy soil because it's moving to like Oregon it's all being a soft operation I was going to say a lot about one of the markets is how we do some of the small scale and low till all that another question I guess is with forests particularly low grade you know we have 15 inches of junky pine forest in addition to some good forest but you know what's the best thing to do with that of course you should be cutting that wood to regenerate part of the forest what's the best thing to do with that from the public perspective my name is Rick I live here in Bethel in a tiny house I built for myself I'm currently renting a spot on 40 acres of field and forest and the landowners have recently we've discussed that we're trying to try to create a small affordable house community there which is based upon anti-capitalist mutual aid and kind of principles so we're inviting people and there will be a farming component there and we're not sure how that's going to work but we intend to have plants and animals eventually but we're just getting started now and we were actually looking for people so we want to experiment in Bethel I'm Sandy and I live in Heartland a dairy vegetable farm land that was heavily raised by sheep 100 years ago so we've recently been discussing building up the health of our soils and our sugar bush area of the farm and also rain gardens and permaculture things we can do the community is very sustainably oriented but there's a lot that we still can do and it's an interesting form my name's Cynthia I live here in Randall but I have purchased some property in Bethel that we are trying to build a house on and it's got some soil that's probably pretty forward to Sandy and we haven't really gone into all of them so analysis, well I know it's not going to matter, it's going to need work, it's going to need animals so I'm glad to get connected with the resources that you guys are going to have the question I have is coming to some of the things you've got to get us or preach into the converted sort of vibe I was wondering if any of the presenters could talk about connections that they've made maybe in the more conventional growers even if they're just organic or you know because I can't you know Vermont is sort of a protocol agricultural state and maybe you know not really industrial but small scale, I'm not sure of like what level of awareness they have I'd be interested in hearing you know how that's going, on that front because it's wonderful that all the there's a level of catches but it needs to take place on a larger scale so I'm here just got a living in Randall and we just have a small backyard garden and her industry I was excited to learn about having healthy soil to reverse global warming and I do have a question we just started gardening recently and we have very poor soil and we don't have any life animals so how can we improve the soil just for the compost and maybe adding manure interesting and I live in these things and I've been growing super organically for like 40, 45 years a long time and and had our farm for this particular farm for 10 years we grew soil but it's just dying on me now we know this past year or something, three minutes, thus soil like it's the soil stupid you know and I very we have a number of fields and a very large stretch of the world and we're not going to till that garden anymore except about halfway last year was poised to really get out there this year and at the NOVA conference I found for example said to have a principle of no bare ground here but ever, anytime it's a big one and I found out that you can in between your rows you can put an annual red clover I haven't wanted to see that on the compost and so on but it's promising but the farming question is how do you do no bare soil you got to be growing a lot of mulch getting your hands on a lot of mulch and so on I'm excited looks like we might make it my name is Kepp and I'm a home gardener and in the past couple of years maybe like you I've realized that this soil is a pretty incredible resource and I'm just fascinated with the whole ecosystem that's under our feet from fungal and floral and the little predators that are in there and they're all eating each other and there's just a team of black I'm Lauren I'm taking notes today and I'm interested in how everything connects soil environment cultural issues economic issues, political issues they're all intertwined I'm interested in kind of diving into all of them and seeing what the answer is sorry okay yes my name is Nato Haramillo I'm a home gardener from Florida I run a home garden and I'm interested in growing corn I'm from Colombia and that's our state of food and I'm going to connect with communities to the boundaries of making houses my name is John and I'm first-coach husband along with the garden we're also creating a perennial fruit bars on degraded hillside overgrown pastoral so it has lots of soil challenges so having access to these kind of resources and maybe meeting other people in the area that are doing similar works to exchange ideas would be a great thing I'm kind of coming in at the end of this but I'm getting the gist so yeah, as far as soil goes we have an issue with water and I don't, our place is relatively new but it was a single like hayfield and then like pumpkins forever so anyway we have diversified vegetables and the water just is so attracted to them and not a great way and it just there's not a whole lot we can do about it except for the town maintenance and all that kind of stuff so we have a lot of challenges with kind of replenishing like all the time what do we do with all this soil that was just like washed away multiple times so that's like a really big challenge for us and then you know this winter is like I don't even know what the spring's gonna be like we can't plant in one of our greenhouses because it's like oh there's no point it's probably going to fall which is kind of a rough situation but so I'm just thinking this area has never really been as flooded before or as wet and so these are kind of the pieces that we're putting together for our farm plant for this year which is totally I mean farming is hard enough as it is and then we're wondering what the water content's gonna be but so our biggest question that we always are asking is what is the quickest way to kind of revitalize soil that's like physically left it's gone you know trying to get that back we're doing a lot of cover property this year cutting everything by 50% so that will be I stood over here because I actually for all those people who don't know this is Sarah and Nancy from Black Creme so the food you're getting so they rip off the food but you know it's a wonderful example you know where they farm and they bring their food right to Black Creme and Sarah is so dedicated to local food and to everything that they do so I always people don't know that Black Creme is our premier red ball restaurant very cheap anyway that's fine jeez thanks Chris embarrass her again