Zach Buchel: Farm Table West

[00:00:03] You're listening here to PBN. Your path back to stability here.

[00:00:55] Zach Buchel with us tonight. I hope I didn't butcher that, Zach. I apologize in advance. You could correct me. Tonight's show brought to you by the Prepper's Medical Handbook, Dr. William Forgey, MD, the Prepper's Medical Handbook. You got to have the Prepper's Medical Handbook, folks. Do I have it in arm's reach? Of course I do.

[00:01:19] It's the handheld Prepper resource for medical, right? This guy, right? I'm not going to go too deep in detail because you hear about it all the time, but highly affordable, small, effective. It's not like a medical Bible. You got to search 20 minutes through to find anything. Prepper's Medical Handbook. It's been with us a long time. You guys know the deal. Without further ado, let's get our guest on. Zach, thanks so much for joining us tonight, my man.

[00:01:49] I appreciate it. Did I pronounce the name wrong? Just a tad. It's Buckle like... Oh, dude, that's way cooler. I gave it like the French connotation. I wasn't sure. No, no, you did great. It's actually better than the French way because that's how they usually pronounce it the first day of school and it always kind of annoyed me. So you did it better. The last name Buckle is an awesome name for a guy who is farming essentially, right? That's pretty good.

[00:02:17] I think so. I think it fits well. I think you need a Buckle with the name Buckle on it. Like that. No, I do. Actually, in Wyoming, everybody's got those big cowboy jackets. I need one that says Buckle. So that would be pretty good. That would be pretty good. So why don't you give us the rundown on Zach Buckle and how you wind up on the Prepper Broadcasting Network because you're doing a lot of cool stuff, you know?

[00:02:46] And I think growing food is kind of the high point of it. But why don't you break it down for us a little? Maybe how you got started and all that kind of stuff. Sure. So I'm Zach Buckle. I own a one third acre vegetable farm in Cody, Wyoming, and we harvest fresh vegetables pretty much year round in our zone 4B climate.

[00:03:11] So we only have 120 frost free days to grow food here. So it's pretty short season. We get a nice negative 20 Fahrenheit blasts every couple times every winter. So we have some pretty crazy cold. And I got into it. It's kind of a long story, but I'll give you the short version. I got into it, believe it or not, in Chicago.

[00:03:36] I'm from Chicago area and I have always been interested in growing vegetables and farming. And I visited some farms in the city of Chicago on the south side and really rough neighborhoods where there really isn't any food or things to do other than deal drugs and shoot people more or less. These are like urban farms? Yes.

[00:04:03] They're pretty cool, though, man. I've been to some of those that are set up really well. They're really cool. And what I found fascinating with that whole system was they were growing on parking lots. There's no soil there. Oh, wow. Yeah. Was it like a back to Eden kind of thing? Like they were laying down cardboard and wood chips? Yeah, they were making just truckloads of compost from all the restaurant waste.

[00:04:30] And then they were bringing people to work the farm that were just kids in the neighborhood that would have been dealing drugs otherwise. So the whole impact of making the community better was really inspiring to me. And on top of producing something that actually provides value to people other than just something made from China, you know, that was really inspiring.

[00:04:55] So long story short, I ended up my family's got property out in Wyoming and has for about 20 years. And I wanted to get out of Chicago and they told me about this farm that's right across the street from our property out here. And ended up calling him working on his farm and just that was the first time I actually worked on a vegetable farm. And it was actually kind of similar to the Chicago style, but it was just on three acres in Wyoming.

[00:05:25] But he has like two feet of black topsoil. Just phenomenal stuff. And I just fell in love with it immediately. And he had, I've never seen that many vegetables growing in one place at one time before. And it's the first time I actually got exposed to like a real homegrown tomato and celery. And the difference between the flavor of that versus the store was the first time I'd ever been exposed to it.

[00:05:53] And so that opened your eyes to what was possible. A lot of land. Yeah. Yeah. And I ended up starting a business shortly after working there to sell his food because I saw there was a big problem with access. You know, he was doing five farmer's markets a week, which is really hard on your body, your mental stress.

[00:06:21] It's just a lot of work to sell that much food. And so I tried selling it online, which is actually my website you're probably going to show later. But that actually was the, that's still the same website that I used back then to sell his food. But now I just sell my own. And I started working with other farms in Wyoming and trying to connect them with bigger markets like Yellowstone National Park. We did that for a while. Let's pop it in now. There you go. Yep.

[00:06:49] That's, that's actually, that photo was taken right around the time I'm talking about. That's like eight years old at photo. Ah. Um, but yeah, we do it. We deliver our stuff, uh, online to, uh, retail customers in Cody. Um, there's a home delivery part of that website. That's sweet, man. That's a game changer. Yeah, it is. It is.

[00:07:13] Um, so that's kind of the point of it, but it's, it's evolved from that point to now. I just kind of use it to sell my, uh, subscription vegetables, uh, for the whole summer. The CSA style? Basically. I call it a veggie box, but yeah, same thing. I talk to our audience a lot about the CSA as a, uh, sort of a backup to the backup garden. You know what I mean? Yeah.

[00:07:38] Like having your own garden, but then signing up for something like a CSA for either things you can't grow or I don't know if you run into this cause you have, it looks like a lot of your stuff is protected by greenhouses. So I don't know the ins and outs of greenhousing very well. Um, but you know, sometimes you lose things that you're depending on. Oh yeah. And, uh, yeah, that's why I always promoted that.

[00:08:03] We have a pretty cool, I don't know if this is something that would work up in your neck of the woods, but we have a pretty cool business down here called seasonal roots. And seasonal roots is taking the CSA idea and the delivery idea and like grabbed a bunch of farms and artisans. So they have like bakeries and they do dairy, they do produce, they do meat, and then they deliver you a box of like, and you shop it, which is weird, right?

[00:08:33] CSAs are typically like you get what our share, right? We're going to send you our share of what we grow. So you get to shop and then they bring you that and it's all local farmers. I always loved it. It's really cool. We've been using them for probably two years, three years, something like that now. And it's, uh, it's probably the realistically the most effective and consistent way I can support local farmers. You know what I mean? Cause I'm not always going to make it out to farmer's market and stuff like that.

[00:09:03] So this is, you know, delivery is a game changer. It just is. That level of convenience is cool. But I love your guy's site, man. Your guy's site really. And I guess you should, so people can understand, um, why it's such a cool thing is that you're doing all this off of your one third acre plot. Right. And in all in greenhouses, is it? Um, mostly greenhouses just cause we're in Wyoming.

[00:09:30] So we got, you know, 120 days is pretty hard to make money on that small of a land base. Oh yeah. So yeah. So yeah, going forward, that's pretty much what we're going to be doing is just producing in greenhouses. Um, we've got a little bit of field space, um, and we'll do a little bit more later, but it's, there's only so many plants you could start ahead of time in a nursery to make it worth it.

[00:09:52] Having the greenhouses means you got potential of, uh, 12 months of harvesting, which is a big deal for Wyoming. And it's kind of like what I was, what I was telling you at the head of the show that kind of blew my mind about it was so many of us, you know, the prepping homesteading community, we talk about like growing food and selling food.

[00:10:17] Uh, you know, maybe setting a table up at the farmer's market, maybe selling the extra eggs if we have a bunch of chickens, but you have, you're not only selling it, but you've set up the website that kind of got it like straight. You know, how did you, how did you get go from the mentality? Was it because of the first farm, the mentality of, uh, you know, running around and killing yourself at farmer's markets to deliver in a box and driving produce around instead of lugging produce around?

[00:10:47] Yeah, it was exactly that. I mean, when you, um, if you work closely with somebody who's working like that, you start to ask yourself some questions like, is this really how you want the rest of your life to look like? You know, you want to work 70 hours a week, just barely making it for the rest of your life. You know, so I kind of saw the writing and I, I'm still friends with this guy. I really love him to death. We're family friends and his life's gotten a lot better since then. Oh, that's good.

[00:11:16] Things are because of that website or. No, no, it's just the markets changed. And, um, but yeah, having, that was why I started it. And it's still pretty handy for, for certain things like right now, just being able to send an email and have, you know, 20 people send me $300 is pretty nice. You know, that saves a lot of. Oh yeah. You know, phone calls and emails and stuff. It makes things really convenient.

[00:11:41] But yeah, having, um, the biggest thing I've found with, um, customers, uh, that they have a problem buying it is not necessarily the price or, um, you know, the, the quality or anything like that. It's really just access. You know, this, this is how you can kind of compete with the grocery store because the grocery store has got 24 seven access to customers basically. Right. Um, and we only have at the farmer's market, it's three hours a week.

[00:12:09] So it's not, it's really hard for a lot of, you know, busy families to make it. So this allows you to, um, you know, make your purchasing decision anytime, and then you just go pick it up and whenever you want. And, um, there's a lot of potential in it. I'll be honest. I have not mastered it. Um, most of my sales are still farmer's market, but yeah, I think there's a lot of potential in bigger populated areas for sure. It's, it's, it's exciting. I think the next five, 10 years, it's that whole model is going to explore.

[00:12:39] Do you promote it at the farmer's market? A little bit. Um, I live in a really small town, so I'm still kind of like figuring out my markets. I'm starting to sell into a much bigger town. That's like 200,000 people, but I live in a town of 10,000. I gotcha. Yeah. I, that's where I heard about the seasonal roots place. I actually was at a farmer's market. Yeah.

[00:13:02] And that was the, like the death of my farmer's market visiting was once we started getting that stuff dropped off at the house. It was like, yeah, we can go once in a while, but yeah, that was, that was, like I said, a game changer. But I see what you're doing and man, you know, the first thing that comes to mind is how the hell are you heating the greenhouses? Oh, heating. Okay. I thought you said heating. Well, I don't know. Hopefully it doesn't get that bad for you. Yeah.

[00:13:31] Um, so I have a, I have one greenhouse that's sort of heated with a climate battery, which is like kind of in between. It's sort of a geothermal thing, but it's not really geothermal. It's, um, it's really just warming the ground under and then releasing the heat at night. So, um, the ground during the day and then keeps the greenhouse warm overnight. Yeah. And it, it, it, it, it, and when I say warm, it bumps up the temperature, like 15 degrees.

[00:14:01] So it's not like bomb proof at all. Like when it's negative 20, it's still really cold in there, but it's really cheap to run. Um, it costs like 50 bucks a month, less than that, probably 20 bucks a month to run. So it's a nice, um, climate battery. I have a, actually have a YouTube video explaining it, but. Oh, do you? Yeah. Um. I was going to put it in our chat here. Yeah. It's a climate battery. Um. Um.

[00:14:31] And it's basically just like each, there's like 28 lengths of pipe. Each one of the pipes has a fan on it and it pumps air six feet underground, releases it on the other side. And it warms up during the day, releases the heat at night. And like right now at this time of year, it's really valuable because there's enough light to warm up the greenhouse a lot in the day. And it's, it stays, um, 10, 15 degrees warmer than outside, which is a big deal.

[00:14:57] And it'll be a really big deal for me for like early tomatoes and stuff like that. Oh yeah. Is there a lot of gambling with that? Oh God. Yeah. It's very, it's very stressful. Um, well I've gotten a little better at it. I'm actually still pretty new at growing, believe it or not. I actually really didn't start growing until like basically 2020. Um, like, um, most of the time I was trying to do that other business and that didn't really

[00:15:24] work, but, uh, um, I took a farm course to learn how to grow basically. But, uh, that, that's shaped a lot of years off my learning curve, but yeah, the, um, that, that's the main, uh, heated greenhouse, but the rest of them are all unheated. So we just do really cold hardy crops and protect them. So it makes it, um, profitable, you know, so you don't have to spend tons of money on heating stuff.

[00:15:51] We're like right now we're selling spinach, carrots. I just harvested carrots like a week ago. Um, uh, and then all of the, in like arugula, lots of salad greens right now. And then, um, as the season progresses, we'll start adding a little bit more root vegetables and, uh, quick growing crops. But for the winter. You're growing salad greens in Wyoming in February. Yeah. In the unheated greenhouse. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

[00:16:20] That's just daily sunlight. Yep. Just daily sunlight. It's just getting the crop to mature, um, at your last 10 hour day. And then you just keep it alive through the winter and harvest it. We were harvesting fresh in January. It was spectacular. Absolutely. And it's the best flavor. You, it's the best tasting spinach and salad greens you've ever tasted in your life. Cause everything gets sweeter. The colder. Yeah. Ah, how about that? Yeah.

[00:16:49] We just throw them things up and just hope and pray. We had a guy, I think it was Dave Jones actually, who had, he was running a wood stove in his, to try and keep it warm in there. Yeah. You know, we, I guess the courses, what, tell us about that course. One of the things that, that we don't do enough, I think as in our community is, um, take legitimate farming and growing courses.

[00:17:17] You know, we do a lot of different trainings and stuff, first aid and shooting and tactical stuff. But like, we were like, we can figure out gardens, you know what I mean? And maybe like what you're telling me right now has really got my ears perked up and I'm thinking maybe garden courses are probably the way to go. Was it greenhouse based or was it just like soil and, you know, planting and all that kind of stuff?

[00:17:43] So the course I took, um, was from a guy it's called never sink farm. He's on YouTube, Instagram. He's pretty big deal in the market farming space, but he's in upstate New York, which is very similar climate to here. He's like a zone five, a I'm a zone four B. So it's almost the same. Right. And so he's doing exactly this, but I'm like one and a half acres. So he's doing three, four times the volume of me, but he's been at it quite a bit longer also. I got you.

[00:18:13] Yeah. Um, but yeah, he's online then you didn't fly to New York. No, it's online. Yeah. Okay. I mean, that's important because then, then we can justify it even better. You know what I mean? We can say, Oh, we can take an online course. We don't have to go to, you know, somewhere and go do a thing. Yeah. Well, well, it is really handy for this topic because I constantly go back to that course now and then still look at the video of him explaining how to do something.

[00:18:41] You know, it's really handy because I, I don't really learn well from like one workshop or like a book or something. Yeah. I'm the same way. Um, and so having the, especially for gardening and growing food, that having videos explaining it is really valuable. Um, because like, I don't know how you can explain how to graft tomatoes in a book. Like that would be ridiculously hard. That is, that's a whole rabble. I don't want to go into it, but, um, that's, that's, that's a really hard thing to do.

[00:19:11] And I, I still have a hard time understanding from his videos, but. So I don't, we don't have to go into that, but is that an essential practice where you're at? Oh, okay. All right. No, it just bumps up your yield 30%. Um, so. Trees, same deal with the apple trees, right? Yep. Yeah. It's the same idea. Yep. Wow, man. You'd like to, my father-in-law before he passed away really went deep into gardening and,

[00:19:38] and I, I just had no idea how seriously and how like all encompassing gardening and soil can become, you know, the amending of soil with certain things. And I remember he had like his own recipe. He was bringing in coconut cores. It was every year. That was a thing that he was adding to the soil. And he had different, he had this stuff called boogie brew. Did you ever hear that? No.

[00:20:07] Boogie brew was another YouTube farmer thing that he found. And it was just this, uh, you know, collection of minerals and stuff like that, that you put in a bucket with an aerated water, sort of like compost tea. You know what I mean? Do you ever do like a compost tea? Like an aerated anaerobic, I think it is, right? Anaerobic? Uh-huh. Is that the one that needs oxygen? Um, or is that aerobic? I think it's aerobic. But whatever.

[00:20:36] You know, he'd boil this stuff up, not boil it, but, you know, run air through it in a five-gallon bucket and feed the plants with it like every day. And it was just a whole world I didn't know about. Like, I grew up and it was like, put the Miracle-Gro in the garden bed. My dad would, and he'd have great plants, you know what I mean, all the time. So, yeah, it's a deep world out there, man. And you're just telling us about another level of it I didn't know about, grafting tomatoes. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:21:05] So what was the guy's name with the course again? Um, Never Sink Farm. Never Sink Farm, PBN family. Check it out. Yeah. Sounds like it's worth the money. Oh, yeah. Best is like, I don't know, two grand or something or more than that. But by far the best I've ever spent in my life. And you still go back to it. Yep. Yeah. I mean, otherwise I would have probably quit growing because farming is ridiculously hard.

[00:21:31] You know, gardening's hard, but farming, doing this for like 300 people is really hard. So why do we take it for granted, Zach? What is the deal with that? What is your, what is your diagnosis? I know a bunch of farmers. Why do we take you guys for granted so much? It's just like, yeah, they're farmers. They grow the food. There's no holiday, nothing. You know what I mean? It's like. Yeah. That's a deep, that's a deep topic, man. That's a, I've thought a lot about that one.

[00:21:57] I mean, um, the simple answer is just convenience, right? That's why the website is a big deal because it's, it's, uh, a convenient way for people to buy this kind of stuff. Yeah. You know, um, the way that the grocery store works is just too convenient. It's just way easier. It doesn't really, you know, it costs a lot more to buy from somebody like me, although that's changing every day. It seems like my prices are almost the same as a store now around here. It's getting there.

[00:22:28] Yeah. Um, but, uh, yeah, it's just been a slow, um, convenient way to consume food. And, and also just the whole direction of health in America, I think has gone to process foods over the past 40, 50 years, you know? So it's a whole podcast in itself. That question. You were just spoiled. And we, we grow up in a world where produce is at our arm's length. Anytime we want it.

[00:22:58] I think it's just a weird disconnect to me. Always seems like a weird thing. You know what I mean? It's like, there's these guys, they wake up insanely early. They're on combines and all that kind of stuff for hours at a time. They listen to the podcast too. They love the prep and broadcasting network gives them something to do. I drive them combines. And, uh, yeah. And we just ho hum, you know, the farmers are doing what the farmers do. They run out of water. Nobody cares. I remember in California, they like wouldn't give them water.

[00:23:29] Whatever. You know, it's weird until it touches us. The average person doesn't even really think about farmers that much, but we appreciate you here because we go out in our backyards and we're like, check out, check out, you know, things aren't going well. So we get it. But yeah. Yeah. I seen you. The thing that got me was you, um, carrying out them trays of seedlings and laying them down, laying them down. I think it was in the Instagram video. And I was like, oh, this guy's doing it.

[00:23:58] He's doing the real thing. Let me see what he's doing all about. And, uh, so one of the things we wanted to talk about was sort of like how you keep the produce flowing all year, you know, with succession planning and whatever other techniques you use, because I always promise myself I'm going to do succession planning and that never works. You know what I mean? Yeah.

[00:24:21] Well, yeah, I think it's, it's probably the number one secret to my farm being a business because otherwise with a third of an acre, it's pretty hard to produce enough food to, you know, make a decent amount of money. Um, sure. We actually sold 80, just shot $86,000 of vegetables. Man. Wow. And that's, it's actually could be a lot better than that. There was a lot of things that still went wrong, but that this succession planting thing

[00:24:51] is how that happens. So. Well, congratulations on that. That's great. Yeah. It's been, it's been a hard couple of years to get there, but it's pretty cool. I'm not going to lie. Um, but yeah, succession planting is, is the key. It's how, it's how you can make it grow a lot of food in a short growing season or even without a short growing season. It's just how you can basically grow, you know, two to three crops in your, on your existing land per season.

[00:25:19] You know, that, that unlocks a lot more food you can produce on your own land, especially with land prices going through the roof everywhere, you know, so you can make a lot more out of a small land base and especially a short growing season. So. Well, it's huge for us because the majority of people, uh, don't have tons of land. You know what I mean? Like the, the most populated areas don't come with an acre backyard, you know?

[00:25:47] And my mentality is always like the people, like, I feel like those who have the land can garden and will garden. The people who we want gardening and growing their own food and finding a little more self-sufficiency are the people who are in the suburbs and cities. You know what I mean? Who are completely dependent on everything being trucked in. Exactly. You know, and that's why your story was so intriguing to me because it was like third of an acre. I know a lot of people with third of an acre backyard.

[00:26:17] You know what I mean? They could pull something off and you don't got to pull off $86,000 in sales on vegetables to feed your family, you know? So that's, yeah. Yeah. That's the only reason I bring that number up. It's not really the brag. It's just be like, that's- Oh, I love it. You could do a thousand. How easy would it be to do a thousand dollars on like 600 square feet? Yeah. Oh, it's not a brag, man. Look, you invested two grand and you may, you are doing something with it. That's awesome.

[00:26:47] Yeah. That's the way it works. But, uh, well, you invested more than that, I'm sure, but yeah. Yeah. But, um, so give us sort of a breakdown on how, how you do succession planning, I guess. Sure. Yeah. So, um, actually, can we show that? Um, yeah, let's bring the document up for sure. That planting schedule. Okay. So that's, everybody can see that? Yeah, they can. That's live on the air now. Okay, cool. Chat, let us know if you could see that thing.

[00:27:17] If it zoomed up enough, we can zoom in a little more if you need. Okay, cool. I think you're good to go. All right. So, um, this is like a gardening version of my annual planting schedule. Um, so I use a little bit more complicated one for the farm because I'm doing all sorts of greenhouse plantings. And that, that adds another layer of complications. But this works really well for just planting in your backyard in basically any climate. Okay.

[00:27:46] And, um, the way this works is you just need to find out your average last frost and your average first frost in your area. And you just Google that exact phrase in, and usually the old farmer's almanac will tell you, you know. Oh, right. Yeah. What it is for your town or whatever. And then you plug those dates into this calendar and it'll cover, um, about 17 different vegetables.

[00:28:13] And I kind of focus on, um, since I'm in Wyoming, I focus a lot on cold hardy crops. Yeah, of course. Because they just produce so much better here. Um, I don't do a lot of peppers and, uh, okra and stuff like that just because it's too, it's just impossible to, to get a crop here. But, you know, if you did do that in your climate, you just kind of find, um, the correct

[00:28:39] weeks before and after, um, your, uh, first and last frost for that crop and you can do the same thing. But basically you just plug those two dates into this whole, um, sheet and you can use this as a, um, uh, every week throughout the season, you come back to this schedule and you decide, you know, if you have space in your indoor nursery or windowsill to start plants.

[00:29:07] Um, and if there is room, you can start a plant that is on this schedule that is in the time window that will produce a crop in your growing season. And so I just do this because it's, it's a lot simpler than having like three different schedules for different greenhouse plantings or fall plantings or whatever. And I combine it with, um, cause, cause I don't look at gardening as, uh, like a spring job or a summer job or a fall job.

[00:29:38] It's like the whole season I'm planting things. Right. So I got you. Yeah. So it's like, um, to, to do succession planting, to keep a constant flow of something like green onions, you just, all you do is you just keep, um, planting your nursery space with green onion plants, uh, and keep it full all season. And then you keep, eventually you keep your, your outdoor planting space full of the plants.

[00:30:05] And then if you just focus on those two things, you focus on keeping your nursery full of plants and then your actual land full of plants throughout the entire growing season, you kind of automatically have succession plantings for the whole season. And the cool thing about this one, this schedule is, um, basically all the ones that are, uh, designed for fall planting, where it says before your first frost, they're all frost party

[00:30:31] party crops. So you're going to be able to harvest them past your average first frost. So that automatically gives you a nice, big, juicy fall garden filled with food. Um, so you're basically running effectively, you're running two gardens, right? You're running the crops that are on their way to maturity or are mature for harvest. And then you're running this other garden, which is a nursery garden. Exactly.

[00:31:00] And the only other question is how do you do quantity? Is it based on orders for the week for you? Like we're going to pull X amount of green onions. So I'm going to take X amount of green onions from that plot and put them right back where I took them from. That's a good question. Um, so quantity is something that I, I dial in the quantity, uh, after like reviewing what I sold, um, last year.

[00:31:30] So like right now I'm doing a lot of the little tweaks on my planting for this year based on what I sold last year. And you could take the same idea and use it in your garden. Like what did you eat last year? Sure. Yeah. You know, you just, you know, kind of percentage wise, you just bump up the amount of plants that you ate last year. You bump down. Yeah. Yeah. And instead of, uh, cause I think a lot of people freak out about like, oh, I need to

[00:31:57] have 20 tomato plants to get a hundred pounds or something like that. And if you're a beginner, that's going to stress you out. And you're going to, if you do that for every single one of these vegetables, you're going to just get stressed and probably not get a great result. I think you start with just focusing on keeping the garden in the nursery full of plants at all times, as much as you possibly can. You'll, you'll eventually after a year or two, you'll get much better at dialing your yields up and down.

[00:32:26] And there's, there's a whole, um, uh, plant spacing to get a certain yields. You know, I can, that's a little hard to explain here, but like there's, we plant everything in grids on the, on the farm. So like, uh, I think for example, celery will plant 10 inches by 10 inches. So to get, to get 19 heads of celery or 18 heads of celery, you need to plant, uh, what is that like five feet of celery in a bed? Okay. Gotcha.

[00:32:56] So there is some little recipe that we have all sorts of, um, yield calculations for the farm and, um, you could do it in your garden too really easily, especially for stuff like carrots. It's really handy to do because that's a crop that you can harvest and eat all winter, um, pretty easily. Um, now you, but your start, so your nursery's inside. Yeah. My nursery is in that fancy climate battery greenhouse, but if you're a gardener, you could just get a real simple grow light setup.

[00:33:26] I actually have one I could show you real quick if you want, but, um, it's, there's a, there's a kit you can buy that's just, it's three shelves and you put grow lights on each one of those shelves. And if you're just worried about keeping those three shelves full of plants, you know, I'm talking February through August. That's the part that I think most people miss is if you keep that thing, fill up plants all the way through August, you're going to really increase the amount of food you can produce, especially in a short growing season.

[00:33:52] Um, but yeah, so you're starting the stuff, a lot of the stuff indoors and then about half of it will just throw seeds directly in the ground. Cause like you're not starting carrots indoors. You start those always in the ground and stuff like that. So we do a little bit of both. What would your recommendation be Zach for, uh, one of the things that I do that I think

[00:34:16] prevents me from getting into more consistent succession planning is, uh, cause since we don't sell and since we also grow a lot of nightshade stuff, um, it feels like there's a certain time to pull the trigger on a plant and where like production is slowed, yank it out, put the new one in type of thing. Is there anything like that in your life or is it simply produce in produce out? It was ordered.

[00:34:45] It's going, you know, in other words, like I can, I can remember at one time having a kale plant that had grown so enormous and was just putting off like a few leaves every so often. And what I should have done is uprooted it and put a new one in because it would have been more prolific, but it was a plan. It was alive. It was one less thing to worry about in life. Do you ever run into that? Or is it since you're moving vegetables so much, it's just not a problem for you? Oh, oh, we run into that all the time. Oh really? Oh yeah, of course.

[00:35:13] I mean, crop, I don't even think what you said is a crop failure necessarily, but if the plant gets tired, it gets tired, you know? Yeah, we do that a lot. It depends on what's going on, you know, like with diseases and stuff. If we see disease on a bed of lettuce or something, we're going to rip that bed out and replant it. That makes sense, yeah. We replant all the time.

[00:35:38] Like that part of what this schedule, when I say like two to three crops a year, when you pull out a spring crop, like say you planted beets in May and you harvest them in late July, we pull those beets out, we immediately replant to something else. So it's like an assembly line. And that goes for a crop that's looking like it's not going to do well. Like one common example is if you're doing like onions, onions take all season to grow. Yeah.

[00:36:06] And if it's like mid June and they just look terrible and there's something wrong with them, I would just pull them and then replant because you still have time to get two crops in that same bed. But so those are the, there's, they're tough decisions sometimes. But if you really want to just focus on producing as much food as humanly possible, sometimes you got to make those decisions. And, you know, in general, the better your soil gets and the more experienced you get, the less of those situations you're going to have.

[00:36:36] But everybody goes through those. That's the thing. One problem with Instagram is it's a highlight reel, you know? Yeah, that's a good point. And I'm guilty of it too, for sure. But I made some videos where I really explained all of the things that went wrong. And it seems like those are the ones that people resonate with the most. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We learned that here too, Zach. That kind of content is so undervalued. Yeah.

[00:37:04] The moment we start talking, are we, do you want me to keep this thing up? No, you're good. Yeah. The moment we started talking about our failures is, is really, you know, it's just a game change. It humanizes you. You know what I mean? And then your audience is like, oh, this guy's normal. Exactly. You know what I mean? Because they, you know, when you do a podcast, it can be the same thing if you're not careful. You know what I mean? This is what you should be doing. This is what I do. This is how I do it.

[00:37:32] You're never like, I really screwed this up today. I mean, we do it a lot, but we had to kind of unlock that and understand like that's a, that's, it's valuable. People like that stuff. Yeah. People like that stuff because then they don't feel like, well, everybody's doing it perfect and I'm just screwing everything up over here. You know, it's a good deal. So you're going into the same soil all the time as a gardener. For me, I'm thinking third of an acre, three greenhouses.

[00:38:03] Eventually that soil is like, dude, we've given all we can give. What is, what's the answer there? Do you guys fertilize in between plantings or something like that? Compost? Yeah. So that's, that's a whole, uh, that's a rabbit hole. And I'll be honest. I am not an expert on soil in any way, shape or form. Okay. I pay an expert to be the expert for me. And so, uh.

[00:38:29] He comes out and tests soil and then says, this is, you need this much of this, this, and this. Yes. Yeah. We just got our soil test back last week and I take, um, I'm starting to do it in four different places. Even in that small land base, I'm doing it at every single greenhouse because they've all had different amendments over the last years. And each crop, the crops growing in there are different too. So I want to amend specifically for what's going on in each one of those.

[00:38:57] And it, it, it, I'm fairly new to that. Um, cause it's, it's complicated and I would never be able to figure it out on my own. I got this whole cement mixer that mixes all the amendments and stuff. Sure. Yeah. I got to put a gas mask on to, to do it. Cause it's like, um, some of it's like so powdery that it will, you will have an ammonia basically, but it'll just cake up your nose and lungs.

[00:39:22] But, um, yeah, we do, we do a real serious amendments, uh, of stuff like calcium and boron and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. This time of year. And then we add, uh, an inch of compost every year and we add, um, a mid season amendment of stuff like a falfer meal and, uh, biochar and stuff. Okay. Yeah. So there's, there's a lot, we amend like three times, four times a year for things like tomatoes.

[00:39:49] We're side dressing them weekly, every single week. Um, for those kinds of greenhouse crops, we're side dressing all the time. So soil is a big thing. And I've found that, uh, um, it is by far, even for a garden, if you have a limited budget, invest in soil as soon as humanly possible, because it will, it will, it will pay for itself faster than anything else. Yeah.

[00:40:15] It's, it's one of those things we compost here. Um, it's, this is one of those like ego things that probably the audience will benefit from failure. Uh, we compost here and like one of my goals, cause we got a lot of trees. These are pain in the ass, but you know, it's good to have trees too. Um, they shade out the garden. You got to get them trimmed back and all. I don't, you probably, you have trees around you or you don't have to worry about it wide open in Wyoming or what?

[00:40:44] We actually weirdly have a lot of trees on my property. So shades actually something I do have to deal with. Yeah. Uh, well, as a crazy prepper, I was thinking, I want to get to the point where I can use the chicken manure and the leaves and be self-sustaining on that. Right. Like compost it all together with our food scraps, grass clip, you know the deal. And, um, you know, get to the point where we're filling beds with that.

[00:41:10] And what I noticed is be right before I did that, I got like a truckload of, I think it was mushroom compost in and we had really good year that year. You know what I mean? And then I went on this tirade of like, well, if you can't get no more mushroom compost, then you got to be able to do something else. And it is different. It's different. Like the, the stuff that I bought from a professional composter or whatever, you know, like a greenhouse

[00:41:39] around here that sells plants and different kinds of compost and soils and gravels and stuff. Um, had a bit, it was better. It was just better for my plants than the stuff that I made. And probably because of what you're talking about, the refinement, the, you know, all that kind of stuff. Um, so we're, I think we're going to do truckload of compost again this year and see what a difference it makes after all these years, because like you said, it's all about the soil. Everybody says it too.

[00:42:07] You know, everybody says it's all about the soil, but you get excited about the plants. Oh, I got this heirloom thing. It's going to be crazy. It's so much fun to look at seed catalogs. It's a lot more fun to look at seed catalogs than it is to look at compost under a microscope. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Just how different can it be? So Zach, you, oh, my camera's going crazy. Um, you have something going on outside of all this stuff too, right?

[00:42:35] You've got a, uh, you're on a quest for information. You're on a quest for growing information from particularly for people in the Northern tiers. Right. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. Yeah. So I'm doing research interviews right now with anybody in Northern climates. So like anywhere from like zone three to six, I'd say, I don't know about Arctic circle. That's a little different.

[00:43:00] Um, I don't know how I could talk to people from the Arctic circle, but, um, but, uh, PBN Canada needs to come in. Volcana, Breezy Can, you guys know who you are. Maybe even the tool man if you're watching, because we have some people up there in, uh, in Canada. And I'm sure that that's the, that zone, right? Alberta. Uh, I don't know. No, I don't know either. I think so.

[00:43:26] Um, the zones are actually a lot more confusing than I thought until recently, but, um, but yeah, I'm doing research interviews for, um, anybody who's struggling to grow, uh, really productive garden in those climates. And, um, if you are somebody like that, I'd love to interview you for 20, 30 minutes or so just to learn about your challenges and your goals for your backyard.

[00:43:50] Because, um, you know, my context of growing on a farm is quite a bit different than growing on 600 feet in your backyard. So, um, so yeah, I'd love to chat with you because I, it's, it's for me to help better serve people in my content going forward. Cause, um, I don't actually interact with a lot of people that watch my stuff until recently.

[00:44:12] I just started, but, um, so yeah, I'd love to interview people that are struggling to grow, you know, to, to be the amount of self-sufficient that they want to be in, uh, in their backyards. Okay. So that again, tell us the zones. Uh, roughly three to six. I mean, I still don't even know if I should say that cause the zones are kind of weird. Like some zone threes are actually longer growing season than I am. So. Yeah. I mean, but it gives people something to cling on to, you know, well, I'm zone four.

[00:44:42] I could be part of that, you know, something like that. Um, and those questions go direct to your email, right? Yeah. Yeah. If you would like to be interviewed, if you could email me at ZB at farm table, west.com, that would be awesome. As the letter Z, the letter B, I don't know how to do the cool military thing. Z for Zach, B for baby. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. But at farm table, west.com you said?

[00:45:12] Yes. Yes. Okay. You heard it PBN family. If you got some, what are we talking? What kind of time commitment are we talking? Is it like a. 30 minutes. Okay. All right. Cool. Well, it might be something to consider guys, especially if you're struggling. You're struggling. Zach wants to talk to you for 30 minutes on the house. It's probably well. Yeah. I might be able to answer some questions for you. And if you want, I'll give you this. Uh, you can have this, uh, planting schedule. We just talked. Oh, there you go. There you go.

[00:45:42] That's a good bonus. That's a good bonus. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you coming on my man. Is there anything else in the chamber you want to hit real quick before we leave out or. I don't think so. Um, you know, I, let me ask you this. Let me ask you a question. Sure. I, cause I'm, I'm not exactly a prepper. I'll be honest. I'm not really a prepper, but I kind of am really interested in being self-sufficient growing vegetables. Yeah.

[00:46:10] How, how self-sufficient are, um, most preppers in growing vegetables? Like how big of a deal is that? You know, you, cause you mentioned, you know, sometimes people don't take gardening super seriously. They take, you know, livestock more seriously. What, how in general, how much, uh, do you guys want to grow vegetables? Well, I would say that it's, it's pretty popular to dehydrate and freeze dry, freeze dry. If you got the budget, things like that.

[00:46:39] Um, you know, every prepper has their own constraints in terms of where they live and what they can do. The people that I know, uh, well, the people that I know that do it the biggest, I guess we could start there can become pretty much self-sufficient, pretty much grow everything they need to eat vegetable wise. I don't know too many people who meet all their fruit needs.

[00:47:04] I know one guy actually, Rick Austin's probably the only guy that I know who was like, sorry, some, but my son just fell out of a chair upstairs or something. I don't know what that was, but like, uh, the, to meet all the fruit needs is a different animal. You know what I mean? But I'm sure like, uh, one of our hosts, Dave Jones, he grows all kinds of food all around this whole house. I doubt he's shopping the supermarkets.

[00:47:29] I think that most preppers are probably supplementing some produce, you know, because of variety more than anything else, right? Like, like doing great on tomatoes, doing great on peppers, doing great on herbs. But, uh, I didn't grow any eggplant. We want eggplant parm for dinner or something like that, you know, but a garden, a garden is fundamental, I'd say for probably every prepper.

[00:47:54] Or, uh, well, yeah, I, at least in our world, you know, there are some people who are like buy it up preppers. Like I got the, I got the dry food in the closet preppers. Sure. Um, but we're definitely more of the prepping homesteading kind of group. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. The reason I ask is because like, I don't know anybody that's really self-sufficient like that. Anybody who is self-sufficient on anything.

[00:48:19] Well, self-sufficiency is kind of as far as, so I know a great, she's a great prepper, Her good friend, her name's Sam Biggers. And she lives on the mountains of North Carolina, raises pigs, has grape vines and make, I think she makes wine or sells it to wineries and all that kind of stuff. She's got like, she's been at it a while. You know what I mean? I mean, her and her husband out there and her two kids, she's been at it a while.

[00:48:45] And years ago, she said like self-sufficiency is a myth in the modern age. You know what I mean? Like there's just, there's too many things. Like unless you're planning on producing gasoline, you know, something like that. Like you're going to need to go to town and get stuff. Yeah. Um, it, because it's just, you know, but what I always tell people is, uh, it's a little goes a long way, man. And, and it all improves your life so dramatically.

[00:49:15] Right. You know, just today I was on Instagram, just talking about what having six chickens can do for your, just the feeling of self-sufficiency. Right. You know, and right now it's glaring because of what's going on with the prices, but there's something to just being in your house and knowing like there's protein, like superior protein in the backyard. That's just there every morning I wake up, I go out and you grab eggs, bring them in the house.

[00:49:40] And it's, you know, it's a thing that is so easy and it's not like we're self-sufficient in any way on many other things. But like I said, a little goes a long way and it's, it's a constant reminder of like, well, we could do a little more with this. We could do a little more with the garden. We could do a little bit with the perennial foods. And I just think the, you know, when it's bad, when things are going bad and preppers are like, you see, we should do this stuff. It's a good thing.

[00:50:10] And then when times are great, it's still a good thing. It's like, we got our own eggs. We've got a great garden. We, you know, all that kind of stuff. It just, it pays off both ways. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And that counts for, that counts for artisanal skills and stuff like that. You know, we have one of our hosts is, is just a master of fiber work. You know what I mean? Like creating fibers. We do a blacksmithing series here.

[00:50:36] I do some blacksmithing, all those kinds of things that, that sort of like fit into the self-sufficiency world. They're that sort of that two way street too. You know, like if things get tough, money gets tight, whatever it is, we can take advantage of these skills too. But if not, it's just cool to make a knife. You know what I mean? Like it's just, it's just a better life. I think. Yeah. I mean, when everybody's like addicted to this these days, learning real skills.

[00:51:05] I mean, that's a, that's one thing I've learned in the farming journey. Being able to know how to do blue collar things where most of my friends just know how to type and click and stuff. Oh yeah. That is so valuable above and beyond the actual skill itself. Just being able to do things with your hands that are actually practical. Um, I think it, it just, it bleeds off into other parts of your life above and beyond just being able to do electrical or do blacksmithing and stuff.

[00:51:34] You can figure something else out easier because you know, those skills. Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I love that. Yeah. Just, you know, what I always say, Zach is we've overshot the goal with comfort and convenience. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like we just overshot it, which is a good problem. So we're fat, happy, you know what I mean? But we can't do anything. Right. We can't do anything. You know what I mean? So we just gotta, we just gotta walk it back a little.

[00:52:02] We walk it back like, you know, 30, 40 years, whatever. And, and, you know, it's not that big of a challenge really. So it's, it's a good thing, but people like you are opening other people's eyes to the fact that they're giving, you're giving people that confidence. You know what I mean? When somebody says I grow all this food on a third of an acre and this is how I do it and it's doable. And I do it in Wyoming and greenhouses and you live in Tennessee, get to work. You know what I mean?

[00:52:32] Like it's, yeah. That's the idea. Yeah. Hopefully. It definitely pushes people on, man. Well, I appreciate you coming on tonight, taking some time out of your day and it's been great. And keep us in the loop. You release something, you do a book, you do a PDF or whatever it is, that kind of stuff. Let us know. We can have you back on and talk about it, get it out to the audience. I'm sure they'd be interested. Cool. Thank you so much for having me, James. I really appreciate it. It was really fun. I enjoyed it. Yeah, definitely, man.

[00:53:02] Good luck with everything. Maybe $160,000 of vegetables this year, huh? Yeah, maybe. I don't know. We'll see. Well, good luck, man. And thanks again. Thank you. PBN family. I will see you guys tomorrow morning. We got some things to talk about. I'm not sure exactly. Well, you know me. I'll talk to you in the morning. Bye.