One in Nature

Full Circle Living: a Harvesting Conversation

June 21, 2022
One in Nature
Full Circle Living: a Harvesting Conversation
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

A lively conversation with farmer Haleigh Christ while picking a crop of green beans at a  biodynamic Black Forest farm.  As her two toddlers play underfoot and farm life bustles all around, Haleigh shares about day to day life as a regenerative farmer and the important personal choices on the path towards harmony with one's life-affirming values.

The topics of this episode include:

Why food is possibly our most significant connection with the ecosystem

The difference between organic and biodynamic farming

The carnivorous wonders of healthy soil

Living in tune with the cycles of life

From consumer to ecological co-creator



Haleigh Christ is a regenerative farmer living and farming in Southern Germany.  She lives with her husband and two children on a bio-dynamic community farm, which does its best to live in harmony with its ecosystem. She lives passionately for strengthening communities and ecosystems through empowerment of the individual within the whole. Her current focus is in building a community supported agriculture program to extend the farm's current self-sufficiency onto others. She is excited for the future and believes that we have endless opportunities to connect and heal through food!

To learn more about the place, humans and animals check out www.klosterhofsitzenkirch.de



Quotes and references mentioned by Haleigh during the conversation:

Michael Pollan (Voting With Your Fork)

Zach Bush, MD

René Descartes, French philosopher, mathematician, scientist. (1596-1650)

David Hume, Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, librarian. (1711-76)

Dugald Stewart,  Scottish philosopher and mathematician. (1753-1828)

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Full Circle Living: A Harvesting Conversation.

One in Nature Episode 17 Transcript

Interview with Haleigh Christ, July 2021

Hosted by Pamela Wirth

 

Pamela: While I was visiting my family in Southern Germany. I came to a farm. And when I walked into this farm, I was just delighted. There were birds and sheep and chickens. And everything was lush and green and it just felt so alive and vibrant. And then I learned that this farm was organic and biodynamic and I got very interested. I was wondering. What. How do the people live, who operate this farm? What kind of choices do they make in their daily lives? To create such a beautiful environment that feels so vibrant. And so luscious. And so I asked around if there was someone I could interview in English - and sure enough, I was introduced to Haleigh Christ who originally came from Canada. 

Haleigh agreed to be interviewed. However, as a farmer, she couldn't stop her work of course. So, together with her two toddler age daughters, we went out to the market garden which Haley was managing at the time and Haleigh picked beans and I followed her around. We were scooting along on our knees up and down the garden beds and she picked green beans and her daughters played nearby in the soil with the bugs and the dandelions. And it was a very idyllic scene. I'm your host Pamela Wirth and I hope you enjoy this conversation.  

Kat Novotna: Welcome to One in Nature Podcast

 Pamela: Haleigh, thank you so much for making time to talk to us today. It's really impressive. I think maybe this is the origin of multitasking,you have your two little daughters with you and you are harvesting beans. And you're being interviewed for One in Nature podcast. That's pretty impressive. 

Haleigh: I like to talk, I'll just forget that the microphone is there.

Pamela: We are here at Naturgut Hörnle, which is a biodynamic farm in the region of Freiburg, in the black forest, Rhein region. I came here last week for the first time, because my family shops here every week 

Haleigh: In our Hofladen, our farm store.

A Closed Cycle System


Pamela: Exactly. And I, and I felt right away that at this place, there's something really special here. So I'm curious, who lives here? Like how many people and beings work and live here and contribute to this place?

Haleigh:okay. So actually the people who live here are mostly our seasonal workers. So the people who live here, but other than that, we have a ton of, of other beings. I like how you didn't forget them, like our chickens and our sheep, our bees, and then the thousands of plants and trees that are also here.

Pamela: And I noticed you have a lot of fruit trees. 

Haleigh: yeah, we're approximately 65 hectors of production and about 50% vegetable, 50% fruit with that? Everything is biodynamic and the animals are actually more for more for fertility. In biodynamic farming the cycle is very important.

The full circle system; closed loop system. This is very important, maybe the most important principle. Closed loop system is essentially an ecosystem, essentially a system where you don't have to take anything from outside to be able to, to produce or to, harvest or to reap.

Pamela: I read about the importance that you've placed on, on the soil 

 Haleigh: Yeah, the soil is pretty much God here. This is the Mother Earth. This is the mother earth. Yeah. This is where it begins and ends. And that's also why we are, we are very invested in healthy soil. 

Biodynamic farming


I'm wondering how, I mean, we all know organic, it's become kind of a standard thing that's available in most supermarkets, but how is biodynamic farming different? 

Haleigh: Oh gosh, good question. I'm still very much on that, on that discovery journey of what that is, I'm still learning very much. And if I had to describe it from the little bit that I know, I would say that it is a way of farming that really focuses on closed cycle systems. Yeah. 

And, and also really takes into account what we in Germany say Hof Individualität, the Farm Individuality. So the character of this specific place in this specific time, in this little corner of the universe and that every single farm is like a human being In the sense that it has its own personality, its own character, its own needs. And you can't just paint over with the brush. So what works over here doesn't necessarily work over here. It really respects the individuality of a specific place and the needs of the people there and, and the, the other organisms, the ecosystem.

Pamela: And so a lot of importance is placed on the soil, which is the mother of the production of everything right on this farm.

Haleigh: It is our mother. It is, as I said, like the beginning and the end and that the "A & O", the omega and alpha, it's, it's one of our greatest places of focus for sure. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. 

Pamela: So we're harvesting – You're harvesting these beans right now. And, then you told me they will be mowed.

Haleigh: Yeah. Well, flail mow them, which pretty much means that we'll mow them with a shredder. Yeah. They get shredded. And then, we will, rotary plow and that means we're not going to plow the bed. We're going to plow the pathways. We have, permanent beds here. We want to mess with the mother as little as possible.

So let the soil be and don't mix her up because there's a whole …  the soil is like an apartment complex, it's full of life. And if you go through there with a shredder or some kind of knife system, all of those living beings die yeah. And gets thrown around, and we don't want to do that. 

Pamela: So the bean plants will become food for the soil?

Haleigh: Yeah, exactly. It's sort of like an in-place compost. That's what we'll do. We'll shred it. We'll cover it with soil, not messing with the soil here we might, we might broadfork the bed too. Just to give it a little bit of oxygen, a little bit of lift.

We have problems with compaction in these fields, from the years of tractor work and the years of plowing and before us, and, therefore, the broad fork helps improve the soil structure with time. And, then we will cover it with a tarp and the tarp will help speed the process, the decomposition.

And we might even irrigate with some ferment. So we use ferments in our production 

Pamela: Ferment is kind of like a …

Haleigh: It's like kombucha. Yeah. It's pretty much kombucha for the soil. Yeah. It's food. And it's also an inoculation. Yeah, it helps the population of microorganisms. Get a little bit more food and also spikes the population a bit.

Pamela: And then I assume at some point you'll also plant again. 

Haleigh: Yep. This is a really great thing about this kind of farming: it's bio-intensive market garden vegetable production, and you can really, it's a very intensive production. And what I mean by that is that you get a, you can do many timelines, different cultures within a season. Because we have, we really try and focus on the soil structure and make sure that the soil is healthy. And we are convinced of the philosophy that when the soil is healthy, the plants are healthy. 

Pamela: Yeah. So then when the plants are healthy, the vegetables are healthy. So what you then sell in the community or in the farm store are great plants, great vegetables that people then eat.

Haleigh: That's the goal. Honestly, we had such a crappy, oh my gosh. We had such a crappy spring and the summer has not been good either. It's only starting now, honestly, like summer is just beginning.

Yeah. It's been so wet and quite cold. And one of the, one of the pillars that carries this whole farm right now is the strawberry production. We do a lot of strawberries and we ship them all around Southern Germany and with such a crappy spring, you'd expect them to be watery and absolutely not taste good at all. But because we use so much ferment, they tasted incredible. They were the best strawberries I've ever had in my life.

Food that tastes good is healthier


Haleigh: Yeah. They were just, and that's also, there's also some new research that's coming out. I remember a few years ago I was at a regenerative agriculture symposium at Tempelhof here in Germany. And there was a researcher talking about how healthier plants actually produce tastier food. They produce tastier food and they are higher in nutrition and it makes sense, doesn't it, like food that tastes good,  It's healthier, like a carrot that tastes good is healthier than a carrot that doesn't taste good. That's sort of like the general rule from her research. And it also has to do with the process of photosynthesis, creating assimilate, assimilate is sugar in the plant and sugar tastes good to me as a human. I'm sort of programmed and evolved for it or evolve for it.

Wow. That's it digital, digital vocabulary here. 

Pamela:It works. 

Haleigh: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the goal of really great food, really great food, really great soil. 

Pamela: So that's wonderful. So that's one of the ways your production touches the world around you, the human communities around you.

Haleigh: It's all for the humans here. Like when we get down to it, we wouldn't be here otherwise; we would be a nature reserve if this wasn't food production. That's my goal. Secretly, that's my personal goal to work at a farm that you can mistake as a nature reserve. Like that would be that's my ultimate dream.


You come out here and you think, wow. Where's the food, you know, and the food is everywhere around, but yeah, we wouldn't, we wouldn't be here if it weren't for humans

So I think it has to, it has to serve humans in some way. Yeah. And I'm really critical of this, of making consumption in general a bad word, you know, like consumerism and consumption.

If we look at, if I look at my life, like I have to consume, I have to eat. I just don't want to have a bad conscience by doing it. I want to know that when I eat, I'm doing something good. You know, I'm supporting life, I'm supporting the ecosystem. Yeah. I'm part of this, I'm one in nature.

Yeah. Actually, you know, so, Yeah. I want it to serve humans and, and also be good for everybody, for my whole ecosystem. 

Teaching children that we are part of Nature


Pamela: And so one of the things that you do is teach children. You hold classes for workshops, for children. 

Haleigh: Yes. 

Pamela: what do you teach them? 

Haleigh: So essentially my whole jam is, absolutely not to help the kids identify what a bean plant is or teach them what radishes look like as a seed or whatever. That's really great that they get those experiences too. And they understand also how to plant plants. They get all of these experiences. But my ultimate goal with these kids on the field is to really help them make the connection that we are part of an ecosystem that we are nature herself.

And that, that is what we have to preserve. There's a permaculture researcher. I think he even comes out of California and I forget his name. 

But he once said in a speech that all biological beings will fight to the death of that, what they believe gives them life. So whether it be a bacteria or a polar bear or a human being, they fight to the death for it. Kind of what I want to do with these kids is teach them it's not the supermarket that brings you food. Fight for the ecosystem. 

Pamela: And you do that by teaching the children or giving them an experience that they are nature? 

Haleigh: that's, that's the hope, that's the hope really, that they begin to just, that that seed is planted in some way. That's my hope. 

Pamela: You recently had a workshop with children, you told me.

Haleigh: Yeah. they came and just wanted a day just out here on the farm and I love that kind of stuff. We came into the field and we did some work together and we talked about what open pollinated seeds are and what shocks me every single time, not only how smart kids are,I think that sounds so dumb because - they they're really so engaged and so responsive right away  to the things that we talk about. And I, I I'm always impressed by that, but, yeah, they just came out here and we ate food and we talked about, we talked about open pollinated seeds and about mulch and about mulching plants and soil, fertility … just great. How it all just blubbers out. And they're truly interested, it's not something that isn't interesting for them, like their attention is there. 

I wish all school happened outside. I wish all schools started in, in the forest and in the garden. I think our world would be a much better place if we all started there.  Kindergarten, you know, child garden. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Pamela: We learn so much from directly tasting and touching.  I'm looking at your two adorable little daughters who are both just playing in the soil right now. And they're completely content.

Haleigh:  oh gosh, I don't even know how that happens. They just get caught up in a pile of mulch for 30 minutes. And I'm so thankful, so thankful for the microbial interaction that they currently have and their imagination, but I'm also thankful for the 30 minutes to pick beans.

Yeah, it's good. Because just 20 minutes ago, they were over here throwing the beans all around, out of my basket. So yeah. 

Embedded in the human community


Pamela: And how is this farm, this very large farm embedded in the communities around it. There are all these villages around. 

Haleigh: Good question. Yeah. My dream, my heart, my passion lies in Community Shared Agriculture. And, um, I think it's what makes sense for me a hundred percent. 

Pamela: So does that mean, the people from the communities around help with the farming? 

Haleigh: it depends, each CSA (Community Shared Agriculture) is very different. You can also do market share. So, I mean, like it's just a way of showing support to the farmer, that the farmer has the security that what I plant, I don't have to scramble to sell.

That I know that what I plant actually is going to be harvested. This is such a crazy thing about being a farmer. That what you plant, statistically, what you plant 40% will be sorted out before you sell it. And then another amount will be sorted out before it's sold to the next customer. And then. 40% or something astronomical will be thrown away at home. 

It is incredible to think that just a tiny percent of all of the diesel, the time, the fertilizer, all of this energy that we pour in, so much of this energy goes away, you know? 

Pamela: I didn't know that.

Haleigh: Yeah, it hurts. To think like 40% of my lifetime, you know, I mean, if it goes in compost, that's one thing, 'cause then it goes back into the cycle, to the circle, to the system, the ecosystem. But if it goes in the landfill, That's really, that's a flaw. That's not sustainable, 

Pamela: it's heartbreaking. It is. No, I never thought about this in this way. And I think because I buy my vegetables in the store. I don't have that kind of relationship most of the time. If I knew the farm where they come from…  I will, I will, beans will be different for me from now on. I know that. 

Haleigh: Wow. Every everything has to be harvested from a hand. Yeah. There's no bean, I don't think there is a bean that can be harvested from the machine. That's why they're so expensive. Yeah. I'm pretty sure every bunch of radishes has to be harvested from a hand, from a face, one person, from human being, for another human being, Yeah. 

I think one of the, one of the saddest things about our world is that we think that energy, we talk about cheap energy, cheap labor. There is no such thing energy is energy. 

Is food our greatest connection to the ecosystem


Pamela: Yeah. It's really the foundation of life, what you do here.

Haleigh: Um, food is arguably, I don't know. I'm not fully convinced, but it's arguably our greatest connection to the ecosystem. You know, I think air is also very important and water is very important.

So there's a lot of arguments here for other things, but food is extremely, and you can't really choose air. Not really, but you really do choose in the supermarket or at the market or in the field or wherever you get your food, the forest, the valley, the whatever it may be like, you really do have to choose your food three times a day, 

Michael Pollan, God bless him. He says, you vote three times a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And I think he's very, very right. Yeah, you are, you co-create three times a day. 

Pamela: I think it is a conscious choice and how much we pay for the food, that's also a conscious choice. And sometimes we feel like we don't have a choice, that we can't afford certain types of food. 

Haleigh: Totally. Yup. 

Pamela: Yeah. And I loved the model that you described. Yeah, to just really envision a change there, that this can become different. And we were just starting really literally at the grass roots at the, at the ground level to make that happen. 

Haleigh: I honestly think that the truly resilient and sustainable things in life are grassroots. Like the government needs to do something and they should do something, but we can't wait for the government.

And this isn't about this isn't about government. This is about community. This is about my neighbors. This is about the soil where I get my food from the air that I breathe, the water that I drink, this is and my children and my family and my neighbors and my friends.

This is about that. And then like, we, we can, we can. We are co-creators and we are part of this. We can do something. Yeah. Very, very much. , I'm very thankful for this farm, because I mean, without this farm, this could also be just a, a corn field. Right. And then I probably wouldn't think I can, you know, so yeah.

 one of the sayings from the farm is, um, you can count the number of seeds in an apple, but you could not count the number of apples that will come from that seed. 

Pamela: Oh, that is beautiful.

Haleigh: Yeah, it is. Isn't it. Yeah. 

Making Life Choices


Pamela: And what a choice to make that you choose with your family to live this life and to produce food in this way, 

Haleigh: I studied opera. 

Pamela: You did. 

Haleigh: I did. I was going to become an opera singer. And then at one point I was like, wait, I don't even like opera, but it wasn't just that, it was also the feeling of like, do I really want that?

Is that the life that I want, you know, what really got me? This is hilarious. I realized that if I wanted to be an opera singer at one time, I was going to have to color my hair. And I was like, I don't want to color my hair. What's a lifestyle that I don't have to color my hair. And now I literally live in dirty clothes.

I honestly didn't think about it. What do I necessarily want to do? It's more of like, how do I want to live and do that?

Pamela: Yeah. Yeah. That is really brilliant. Not what do I want to do, but how do I want to live? 

And you really dove into it, this beautiful life, by answering your own question of how, how do I want to live? That's very inspiring. 

Haleigh: Thank you so much for this conversation. I love reflecting and talking about stuff and chewing ideas, we call them harvesting, conversations. They're usually the best. There's something about busy hands that just frees your mouth. Kind of like moving hips, like when you go for a walk, when the hips are moving, somehow it, unhinges also the, the brain, the jaw, and the same thing about harvesting. So we have really great conversations. 

One of my favorite conversations in life, I can remember the harvesting that we were doing. Like parsley has some kind of special… and I do think plants affect us in this way. I do think so. Plants, they, they send out something. We receive it. Yeah.

Becoming compost one day


Pamela: I have this strange thing. Maybe you're familiar with this. I'm not a grower, but I weed in my garden occasionally I just pull out weeds in my garden.

Haleigh: You're a gardener. 

Pamela: Every single time when I weed, for hours, until I go to sleep that night, every time, each time I close my eyes, I see the weeds. It completely occupies my inner vision. I've always been curious about that. 

Haleigh: What does that mean? 

Pamela: One year I stopped weeding because of it because, oh my God, are these the souls of the plants and they just stay with me and I murder them, you know? And so I stopped weeding. 

Haleigh: but as long, I mean, as long as it's going back to the soil and then it dies with honor. Yeah. I mean, that's the same thing that we have to do to a carrot every time.

So this is something that I find a little bit … I'm not very critical of veganism actually in general, if someone wants to be a vegan, I think it's fantastic. But, um, this idea that plants don't have souls or aren't living beings, to argue we won't kill animals because, um, 

Pamela: if we eat plants, we're not killing anything.

Haleigh: Uh, it's not true. But I don't believe that there's really a death, but in every death there is a transformation. That's again, these closed systems cycles. Yeah. 

Pamela: That's where the conversation is making a circle because we can't not consume as you've said so many times we're designed and programmed …

Haleigh: no, no. I take away this digital speak!

Pamela: … evolved to process meat and to process plants.

Haleigh: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think very much, yeah, very much meat as well. And I mean, if we look in the soil, it is a carnivore slaughter, every single millisecond, but I love looking under the microscope and seeing this activity of eating and pooping and moving and transforming and transforming and transforming.

And that is how that is. That is life. That is life. The transformation. Thank you. And I love living in four seasons because it's also all about transformation. Always. That's also very biodynamic like always the next and the transforming of the energy and it's beautiful. Yeah. Like I will, I will dance with these ideas until I die.

That's beautiful until I die and transform. 

You know, I grew up very Christian. I grew up in an evangelical church, and I'm very thankful for my background because it was extremely grace based. And I believe that the earth is, mother earth is extremely grace based, extremely resilient.

Thank you, Zach Bush. One of my big problems was,  having such a clarity of what is right and what is wrong and what will happen in, in the afterlife, you know, in the afterlife. And, that really bothered me and also to realize every religion sort of has their, their idea of what, what will happen in the afterlife..

Pamela: I see, 

Haleigh: Can we really, I don't know. I just, I feel like more and more in my life I leave the black and the white pencil crayon in the box and take the gray out more and more. And I hope, I hope that that trend continues with me, to be honest. But, I did figure out one thing, about the afterlife, like really know it. 

And it is that. I am going to be compost one day. And then with 18 years old, as I really began to chew these ideas. I was like, I'm going to make really good compost. I'm going to make really good compost when I die, I can make really good compost. That's sort of also the goal here. Yeah. So I'm not going to pump myself full with life killing things. 

Pamela: I like that a lot, to think of ourselves as compost, that is both humbling and it helps with making all those choices every day. 

Haleigh: Exactly! It's interesting how, reflecting on, on transformation, on death, how that will inform your life. Yeah, that's really an interesting Zusammenhang, connection, isn't it? 

Pamela: And we learn that from the earth directly. 

Haleigh: We can. And that's again, our environment matters, and how we perceive it. It matters. It affects us. Yeah. 

Pamela: Amazing. Wow. How did we come from beans to philosophy and spirituality, how did that happen? 

There is no difference.

Haleigh: No, there isn't, there really isn't. But I mean, ask any indigenous folk and it's the same thing. I mean, that food is holy.

I studied opera and I also studied philosophy. I had a double major, like I told you, I'm a reflection junkie. I love this stuff. I could talk about ideas all day. I love it. 

Pamela: Well, what I'm so inspired by, you know, there's a lot of people who have a lot of ideas and who can talk a lot. But you and your family and the people at this farm are putting these ideas directly into, you know, you're manifesting it into daily work into the way that you live, produce, eat. Interact with each other. That's very powerful. 

Haleigh: I quit my studies. I dropped out of university and I'm so thankful for my years there. It's not something that was wasted because I've learned so much. It informed me so much in my decisions. And another element of university for me in this philosophy study was we had to study philosophers. And what I realized while studying philosophers of the past, Descartes and Stewart and Hume, when I was reading their works.

They would never call themselves philosophers. Descartes was a mathematician. Hume and Stewart, or I think Stewart was also a lawyer, you know, they were all entrenched in their practice and that's where they were informed from in their philosophy. And I think that it's fine to study philosophy and be a philosopher.

 I think there's also much, much value in being active in something. And just thinking about it, reflecting about it, having ideas. I just, yeah, but you said early, like always staying curious about these feelings and, and, and why you do something. 

… I can go to bed at night and feel good and go to work and not have to leave my values at the door. Not completely, at least.

Learning from each other


Sometimes I also think, why do people want to listen to me? Or why should I be hurt? You know? Why did they give time of day from my ideas and my thoughts? Or am I imposing? Like, who do I think I am, but, uh, that's not what I think about anybody else. So I don't know why I think that about myself. 

Pamela: Yeah. I mean, I think it's wonderful that we have the ability to listen to people, interesting people who do interesting things with their lives. And you know what we're exploring with this podcast, especially, ways of relating with nature that are new and different and are actually opening pathways for other people.

So you're just talking about your life and sharing your life with us for just this little bit with your two beautiful daughters and the beans that we all get to participate  in your life for a little bit. I don't feel that you're imposing your ideas on anybody. 

Haleigh: I feel very honored that someone wants to put a microphone in my face.

And it's just, that's something that I really appreciate really appreciate is the idea that everybody's everybody's life as well is a film, you know, everybody has something incredible to share and we all have something to learn. From everyone.

Pamela: We make such fascinating choices in our lives.

Like you said earlier, We make a choice three times a day or way more. And yeah, coming to this beautiful place and feeling it, it's like what choices go into this place that make it feel this way? You know, it can't be easy. And at the same time, it also feels. There's a lot of clarity. It's like, it's a no brainer for you. You want to be healthy and happy and you and your husband chose this life . 

Haleigh: Yeah. And I think also there are many people who get involved in organic agriculture because we just can see in mainstream life, like there are so many things that we can do better, you know? And it takes the individual. So just do it. We just need people to do it. 

Know your farmer


Pamela: How do you deal with bugs, for example? 

Haleigh: I mean, in organic agriculture, technically there are, depending on who does the controlling and what kind of, what kind of certification, you are allowed to spray certain kinds of poisons, like it is poison, but it's, it's not necessarily poison that is synthetic but it, I mean, kills the bucks or It chokes them. They can't breathe anymore, whatever it may be. And we want to try and stay away from that as much as possible in the market garden. I won't say never because that's just

Pamela: It's just realistic. 

Haleigh: Yeah. Yeah. I won't say never. And this is the thing, I mean, this is again, exactly again this point, farmers, we make constant compromises because we have market pressure.

And if we have a group of people saying, Hey, we got your back, you can let that timeline go, that bed of broccoli be completely full of white fly and it'll die and that's fine, you know, then I won't spray, but if I know, oh my gosh, I have all of this, all of these people to pay and this lease to pay and everything, then I have to spray.

Because I have to get that profit. I have to get that profit from that broccoli. So yeah, I will make the compromise and farmers are forced to do that every single day. If people understood. 

Pamela:  Do you use a lot of nets? 

Haleigh: Yeah, we cover our crops with nets against insects and birds. But this is it. This is it. The goal here, we want people to come here and think that it's a nature reserve. So our goal is just to get an ecosystem and balance that takes a lot of time.

It takes a lot of observation, it takes a lot of patience and understanding, and knowledge and sensitivity. It's the long road. yeah, this is the difference, I guess, between organic agriculture and, and not organic agriculture, we are part of the ecosystem and and other agriculture it's control.

Pamela: it gives me a real, um, another level of appreciation for it, you know, going to the farmer's market where I can actually meet the farmers and talk to them: those are the people who pick the food. And I think one of the consumer ideas is still just looking at the price tag but what I really hear is how your vision is to bring the human into this ecosystem, like an awareness of the human that really then also brings the social change. Right? 

Haleigh: Yeah. And maybe I'm kind of, maybe I'm kind of like a, a local freak.

I think they call them, they call people like me locavores. But maybe I'm kind of like a local freak in this way, in the sense that I would much rather take all of that money or not all of it, but so much of this money that we donate in places.  What if we poured that into things that we really believe in, where we could see the faces? 

Like what if we actually then just pay it at the farmer's market, you know, doing that 

Pamela: and understanding that supporting the farmers by participating in farmer's markets is actually supporting the local economy and ecology, 

Haleigh: Ecology. You're a co-creator. 

Pamela: Thank you for all these Ahas that you're giving me!

Haleigh:  I'm … pass it on. Know your farmer. Just know your farmer. If you can know your farmer. Yeah. 

Kat: Thank you for listening to this episode of One in Nature Podcast. Our mission is to spark heartfelt connections between people and the world of nature.

Pamela: And if you'd like to support us, you can find us at patreon.com/oneinnature




Haley's Interview
What's a Closed Cycle Syst
Biodynamic farming
Food that tastes good is healthier
Teaching children that we are part of Nature
Embedded in the community
Making Life Choices
Becoming compost one day
Learning from each other
Transition here? Organic / Spray poisons