005 – Biodigesting Close to Home

005 – Biodigesting Close to Home

with host Linda Borghi and guest Maria Blon

Farm-A-Yard Podcast logo: orange sun with sunbeams rising over a mound of black dirt with 2 sprouts and a microphone in green coming up out of the soil.
Farm-A-Yard Podcast — It’s a movement… have ya heard?

Maria Blon is a speaker, author and teacher who launched the “HEART in Haiti School” after the hurricane in 2010. Gardens and Moringa trees are grown at the school to teach the children how to grow and feed themselves. This oasis includes a biodigester. There is no garbage pick up in Haiti. Now with the biodigester to process all their garbage, they also generate energy for the school.

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Music credit: “Insomnia” by John Sheehan. Used with permission.

Do you have the courage to walk out your door and rip up your lawn? Make a plan!

Just because you are on this website is evidence enough that you’ve got what it takes to grow you’re own food.

It’s a smart brave move on your part to take control of your food and where it comes from.  To know that it’s safe and truly nutritious.

Join the ranks of the grassroots garden renegades that are popping up everywhere!  When we grow food, we are making an impact on our health, the community, the environment and helping to localize our food system for food security. AND yard farming can be a real income generator.

If you are serious about growing food, this is the place!  It pays to get started learning everything you can so that you can have the success you’re looking for sooner than later.

WARNING….once you get started you’ll be hooked.

Record numbers of people are growing food in pots in the window, on the patio, plots in the backyard, front yard, curb sites, public parks, schools, businesses…food can grow almost anywhere!

Where do you want to grow?

Here’s what you need first:  Make a Plan and Get Organized

  • Evaluate your life and what time you can make available for the project.
  • Plan for the size garden you can realistically manage.
  • Assess your growing space options.  Make sure you consider:
    • Do you have permission to use the space? Short or Long Term?
    • Does the area have at least 6-8 hrs. of sunlight daily? Make a sun map (google “sun mapping”)
    • Does it have a safe, convenient  water source?
    • Will it need fencing to minimized wild life distrubance?
    • Get a calendar to use just for the garden to schedule your plan.
    • Get a folder or large manila envelope so you can attach receipts for all your garden seed, tools, investments. You can record and date each oneon the outside of the envelope.  Data is important and will help you get the most from your garden adventure with less waste and cost.  Attach pages that keep track of garden notes, like: Garden map plan, yields, pest problems, budget…

    Equipped with the right information you can get to your goal much faster than most.  This planning can help you save money too!

    We’re with you every step of the way, so get on the Farm-A-Yard email list so that you don’t miss the announcement of our next FREE course. (check your spam folder too to make sure out emails are not getting lost!)

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Artificial Fertilizer is “Fast Food” for Plants

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Artificial fertilizers contribute to soil degeneration.  It is no different than highly processed fast food which causes the degeneration of human health.  It’s like drinking caffeine to artificially get the energy you need temporarily but not address the real reason for your low energy.

Healthy soil can sustain itself because it has the real food and healthy environment it needs to regenerate and propagate.  That’s what nature does naturally, all on its own.

Healthy soil makes healthy plants for healthy people.  Period.

Today, many people are interested in learning how to grow some of their own foods without toxic/artificial inputs.

Many people have tried and failed too.

One reason is that the soil is so depleted and it takes quite a while to make your own compost and build your soil health.

I know this because it happened to me when I first got started. All I had was sand to work with.

A lot of people try to garden and when they fail they think that they just have a “black thumb”, when it’s really about the damaged condition of the soil, which is, then, rightfully called “dead dirt” because of toxic chemicals and the absence of living organisms.

One of the biggest challenges with starting a garden or farming project is having the healthy soil you need to make it successful.

Everything depends on that.

FYI…Healthy soil cannot be found in a bag at the garden stores.

BUT DON’T LET THAT STOP YOU!

Linda Borghi has been a Biodynamic farmer for years and knows intimately that the quality of her harvests hinged on the simple commitment to feeding the microbes in the soil with the Biodynamic stir and spray preparations.  She was personally so profoundly affected by the dynamic results that she was determined to spray the country!!

This was really exciting for me to finally learn about this simple solution and it has saved me so much time, work, money and GUESSING.

I was just surrendered to the fact that I had to take the natural “slow road” to fertility by making my own compost and covercropping etc.

Then I got a prescription for my soil from Evan Folds, and he explained, in a comprehensive soil report, exactly what was going on.   He also made some mineral recommendations that I decided to apply to correct those deficiencies.  Now all I do is stir & spray the food for the microbes and continue to add organic matter.  Simple.

I was so grateful to hear Linda’s experience and find out about this.

Check out the education and solutions at:

www.microbemakers.com   (Special 10% discount, use code: farm-a-yard)

Evan Folds, the Soil Doc can also give you a detailed prescription to meet the unique needs of your soil if you’re interested.

Or you can just start stirring and spraying to feed the microbes and just let them do the work for you.

This concept parallels the picture of the human gut and its need for prebiotics to feed the microbiome for gut health.  This is critical for a strong immune system.

Biodynamics/BioEnergetics is food to build/heal the earth’s immune system.

https://www.facebook.com/microbemakers/videos/1166775200108466/

Linda would LOVE IT if you joined Farm-A-Yard in spraying your part of the country too!!   Feed the microbes, heal the earth, heal the people!

We can do this.

This wholistic approach builds soil so effectively that it also cuts water consumption by at least 50%!

FYI….Did you know that in 10  years 57% of our farmers will be retiring? So who is going to grow our food?

Just one more reason to be an urban farmer and farm your yard. (“just sayin”)

Changing the way we eat one yard at a time.

It’s a movement, have ya heard?

What is Real Food Security?

Being new to South Carolina everything is very interesting. I am aware of the sounds, the light… the sensations that are all around me, because it’s all new to me.

I am at a stage in my life that I have developed very keen observation skills and my most current observation has been my state of uneasiness because I did not have any food security. This is the first time in 16 years that I did not have any food growing outside my kitchen door. What a creepy feeling it is….unsettling at the very least.

Arriving in South Carolina the beginning of May did not give me enough time to create a yard farm before the “Heat of the Year” arrived. At one point during the summer the degrees on my car dashboard read 117…..whoa baby…hotter than anything other than watermelons wanted it to be!

I had to experience all summer long that creepy feeling due to my lack of food security. From May until the end of September…nearly 5 months, long enough to know how that feels.

Now that feeling is dissipating,. Why, because my beds are made, my plan is drawn and some seed is in the ground. When I see some germination the feeling will dissipate more and when I harvest I’m sure it will vanish the feeling completely!

That got me thinking about those who have never had food security. They do not experience those feelings but I am sure that if they were given 16 years of food security right outside their kitchen door and then not have that for five months…they would have a creepy feeling as well.

The moral of the story is this: Farm-a-Yard….it’s a Movement ….have ya heard?

 

Energy follows Thought

I have always been a believer in the process of energy following thought and I am reminded that the process is alive and well every now and again.

My sister from another mother, Marsha Howe and I have been discussing all aspects of Victory Gardens.  I have been studying Victory Gardens for quite a long time now.

All of that food, and there was a lot of it, it was being grown to lighten the stress on the National food supply.

Well, we have high level stress on our National food supply due to the lack of rain and extreme drought situations.

What I wanted to find out was how and why did everyone start farming their yards? Well….it spread through very organized entities, like churches.  And that got me thinking (thought) about once again standing on the pulpit explaining the meaning of true food security, AKA Yard Farming.

Just a few days after I arrived here in Beaufort SC the door bell rang. It was a lovely young man asking if I needed any yard work done. I said that I didn’t need any yard work and soon I would convert part of the lawn into food production areas. I spoke to him for about 10 minutes, as I had his full attention, then on his way he went, never to be seen from again until TODAY.

So, I am getting ready to make an additional 9 yard farm beds and then some…..when that lovely young man stopped by for a visit. I say a visit because he came to tell me that he was farming a yard behind the hotel down the street. His name is Jacob, he is 17 years old, he is so polite and has a smile that could melt a heart.

I went with him to check out his plot and sure enough there it was, about 1500 square feet, fenced in, behind this hotel. The Pastor wife has a garden there and got Jacob the permission to grow the food. Jacob and 4 of his friends will farm this section and expand from there.  I expecting a call from the Pastor’s wife sooner than later, and I anticipate to be preaching from the pulpit once again, so blessed to do so!