AdAgrA 2019: True Success

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Seminar 2

Milton Teske

Getting Started in Your Backyard

My profession and training is in medicine, not in agriculture, but when I was a kid, my dad grew a garden, and I have grown some gardens since then, and as I got more on my own in my adult life, I realized that gardening was something I really liked to do.

And so I have pretty much everywhere I've been, when I'm not on duty of some kind, I've got a garden going out in the backyard and over the years I've done lots of different things in the garden and I Remember when I first read John Jeavons grow more vegetables Some of you familiar with his the double dig beds and you dig them down and then you dig that lower layer and really loosen up everything and get them going there and wow, it grew some really good stuff.

Over the years I've learned other ways of doing things and a lot of times I've learned that things are simpler.

There are easier ways to do things And God designed things to work in a certain way and the more you cooperate with the way nature runs, the better off you are.

And my current gardening practices, and I don't claim that they are the ultimate best.

I'm sure many of you have things you can share with us that could improve on what I'm doing.

Some of these slides are ones I had, you know, sort of a follow-up to my previous ones about growing greens, but growing greens are sort of like growing anything else, only easier.

So everything I'm saying, you know, while I may focus on the greens because I've really got a burden that you get your greens and get the fresh greens from the garden, it's the same thing, those same plants can grow fruits and seeds and many other parts that make them valuable there.

So we'll go through and share with you some of the hopefully wisdom that I have learned over the years in growing gardens here.

This is a patch of greens growing out of my backyard here at 1 point.

The average piece of food travels 1, 500 miles from the farm to the supermarket.

I try more and more to bring mine down to the few feet from that backyard garden into my kitchen, you know, from the farm to the table.

There's a lot of stuff that is lost in the timing of transition, even of good produce from the good supermarket shelf.

I read something once that fascinated me.

They did a study on broccoli and they measured the nutrient contents of what was found in broccoli and then they measured their contents using best industry practices in terms of harvesting, you know, the right storage and packing and moving and getting to the grocery store.

And in that time of best practices, and then they measured it as the grocer was sitting out on the shelf, set it out here, and if you went in and picked it up right there after he had put it out, not let it sit in the grocery store for a few days, they measured the contents there.

You've probably heard people talk about the advantages of the broccoli, cabbage, kale, this whole family of plants and how beneficial they are in preventing cancer.

There's a certain sulfur containing molecules called glycosinolates which are so valuable in terms of preventing cancer and treating cancer.

And I've seen people making cabbage juices.

And, you know, there's all kinds of ways in which they use this particular family group because of these sulfur containing compounds which are unique to this particular group of plants and give them certain health benefits.

80% of those were lost between picking that in the, you know, when they picked it straight from the garden versus just, you know, best practices getting to the grocery store and picking it off the shelf.

So you go down here and you pick some broccoli in the grocery store and, you know, of course my first thing is is it spongy and limp or is it still firm and crisp?

You know that's sort of my son, oh that's spongy and limp, that's probably not.

But you know you go and you look for the that and is it still nice and green, have a nice dark green color, you're starting to see some yellow on it, you know that that's really deteriorating.

But, you know, so you do your best practice to mix the best fresh stuff, still 80% of the glycosinolates lost.

We talk about flavonoids, you know, these phytochemicals, all of these things which have such wonderful anti-inflammatory properties and we could go on and on.

I mean, all of these are categories of molecules, not just a single molecule that is found in these plants.

And so many of the health benefits relate to some of these here, 75% loss.

The vitamin C, half of it was gone already.

And so you're getting the best, nice, even organic vegetables here in the grocery store that's still not as good as picking it yourself.

You know, the other day just before I came out here I was out picking some greens and stuff and saw the top coming on 1 of those broccoli things.

I just kind of reached down and you know they're nice and crisp.

You've got all your natural organic stuff and they're growing great there.

That was his original plan and as near as possible pushes back towards that plan.

It's very simple to do and you'd be amazed at the places you can do it.

You know, we've talked a lot about finding the perfect garden place and the right sun and the right everything.

If you happen to be in a place right now that isn't that perfect gardening spot, you'd be amazed at what you still can do there, particularly when it comes to greens.

This is my backyard, or a piece of the backyard there anyway, and you'll see the greens growing there where I grow them there.

Now you'll notice over here on this side there's a big live oak tree here.

That's the trunk of a large live oak tree extends high above the garden right here.

And now if you oriented yourself with a compass, this is on the south side of my garden.

My garden's on the north side of this big oak tree.

Well, it happened to be a convenient spot behind the house, and It was a place to put it.

Now any of you gardeners, do you plant on the north side of a tree?

Yeah, no, you need sunlight, right, for photosynthesis.

Now it catches, you know, you know how the Sun starts up here and it kind of makes an arc like this, doesn't go straight overhead, you know, at our latitude.

And so I get some morning sun coming in from here in the afternoon.

There's some afternoon sun as it sets down through these.

But look at how great those greens are growing.

Greens can grow in less than ideal sunlight.

Now if I was trying to grow tomatoes here or squash here or something that I wanted to mature the fruit, well, I'm really limiting the input and how much nutrients, how much sugar, how much starches I can build to put into the fruit right there.

But where I live in California there, the summers get very hot and we will often go for a month at a time, over 100 degrees during the day.

You know, it's kind of hot and miserable out there.

1 thing if you've lived in those kind of areas where the temperature is high and the sun is bright, sun burns some of your plants.

You're going to have to shade some stuff.

Peppers, my peppers, they get these burn spots on them.

I found I put them back here, They didn't get burned.

That tree gave them some protection here.

But if you're looking to plant greens, you don't need the perfect spot.

You know, here with a, you know, all of this shade for much of the day, Look how vigorous and great they're growing there.

You give them the opportunity, they'll take off and go.

You know where I live there in Central California, we call it a winter garden is when I like to really put out the greens.

And so wherever you live, your gardening timing is going to be different than someone living somewhere else.

And my gardening timing in, you know, Central California is going to be very different if you're living up in the northeast or in Tennessee or down in Texas or wherever you are, the climate is going to be different, the weather is going to be different, the highs and the lows temperatures, the amount of frost or snow or lack thereof, you know, all of that's going to be different and, you know, when is the right timing is going to be a very local thing.

But the underlying principles are going to be the same wherever you are, it's just when you do it is going to be different.

Where I am in, down here in the central California here, September and October is the time to put out your what we call winter, in some places you don't winter garden, everything's under deep snow.

And so what I call winter gardening is what you set out in the early spring and start off.

But I'm sure your local garden shops and people, if you don't already know your timing and pattern will tell you when to do that there.

There's some of the red Russian kale there, 1 of my favorites there.

Again this wintertime in central California, all of your cabbage type plants do really good there.

Swiss chard, peas, I plant peas in October, the plants kind of go through the winter and you know by February we're you know picking peas and then up until June when it gets really hot then they kind of, that's the end of those, that crops over when the when the real hot heat hits there.

For some people, these cool weather crops are year-round crops.

The cilantro, various types of greens here.

Again, some of the fruits of that, what we call winter gardening where I'm at, high end greens there.

You know like I said I've tried lots of things, some things are very labor intensive.

I found some pretty simple things seem to actually work really, really well.

Loosening the soil, and I suddenly even realized even loosening the soil was optional.

I mean, I used to dig and work and double dig even, you know.

And the real key is what you put on top of it.

How many of you have seen that video on the internet, Back to Eden?

Matthew Dealy

Bootstrapping a Farm

Dear Lord, we're so thankful that you have brought us all here or we know that you have a plan for each and every 1 of our lives and we ask that you would Help us all to learn more about you Through this process.

I pray in Jesus name Amen All right, so this was probably the hardest presentation.

I've done because there's There's no formula for bootstrapping a farm You know what is bootstrapping?

I got a definition here in a second, But why would you bootstrap?

These are some of the reasons that I came up with.

Because you're poor, you don't have much experience, you like having control of your business, can't access money from friends or banks, you don't like debt, you want to play it safe, you want to learn on a smaller scale.

So when I say you like having control of your business, if you borrow money or you get a partner, then you lose a chunk of your business or your control or what you want to do.

I'm going to talk a little bit about our first farm.

We didn't have any experience and that was a great place to not borrow money because we would have made huge mistakes.

We're still making mistakes, they're just getting smaller.

An individual is said to be bootstrapping when he or she attempts to found and build a company from personal finances or from the operating revenues of the company.

Basically bootstrapping, and again there's lots of different definitions or variables, but it's trying to start a business or do something with the resources, the abilities, the money that you have.

So 1 of the goals of bootstrapping a business is to live to fight another day as a business and personally so You know so that the goal you know if you're trying to hit a grand slam and you strike out It's not going to be good.

You cannot grow a business that does not exist.

So avoid trying to hit a home run if striking out will have a major impact on your business.

Again, bootstrapping is trying to use what you have.

So if you think you're to a spot and you need to borrow money and you fail It's not going to be good.

This was a bonus that I didn't put in the thing, but I have a formula For how to make money farming okay, and?

It works if you're starting a farm with lots of money It works if you're starting a farm with no money little experience required this has been tested over time and proven by many and guaranteed to work most of the time.

Depends on your willingness to try harder.

So you might want to take a picture, because this is good.

So what you do is you have your value that you're desiring to earn.

You times that by 2, and that's the amount you need to start to make the value desired.

All right, so if you want to earn a million dollars, you have to start with 2.

It's just kind of the reality sometimes, especially when you're trying to start a farm.

It seems like it takes way more than you have and It feels like you're just putting everything you have into it, and you're getting not much out of it Okay, so some of the challenges to starting a farm is it has a high capital outlay.

It requires a lot of work up front with no income for potentially months or years.

He talked a little bit about this last night.

You can't just go out to the hardware store and buy lumber and build a deck and get a paycheck.

You have to put lots of work in before you can make money sometimes.

And there's a pretty slow learning curve.

So if you made a mistake on your potatoes, you don't get that chance again until next year.

So helpful steps that I've found is focusing on true success.

And that's kind of what this conference is about.

But if your focus is on just making money, you're going to have a hard time.

So this is the next 1, make God your boss and take direction from him.

This is the best 1 and sometimes the hardest 1.

Sometimes you don't know what his direction is.

But this is the ultimate goal, is that you're not just making a business to make money, but you're operating.

You're a steward of God's land that he has given you.

And as a steward, you take directions from the boss.

And sometimes you don't like those directions, but there's a reason you've been given them, right?

So this 1, to the world, doesn't make sense.

But to me, it makes the most sense of anything.

So on our farm, basically all the farms that we've had, we've always paid God.

We've always paid tithe out of our gross, which is hard, right?

But we've always been blessed more than we can imagine.

So we have In our, we have an LLC and in our operating agreement, we have it set up so that all the money goes into a bank account and we pull that money out and pay God before we get anything.

And I'm not telling you that's how you have to do it, but this has worked for us.

Because especially starting a business, there's always expenses.

And just for example, this year, we got donated back to us.

We weren't expecting, but almost the same that we paid in tithes.

Find free land to practice on and grow from there.

A huge thing is to have a passion and calling for what you're doing.

A good 1 is to intern on a farm or work on a farm and then jump in and enjoy the ride.

So when we started our first farm, we had 6 months of interning experience, which we got the ideas that you need to plant them in straight rows and maybe 100 feet and whatever.

And we did have a church garden before that, but we didn't know nothing about anything.

It is hard to turn a boat that is not moving.

So this 1 kind of goes back to the Lord being in control.

So if you get stuck, like I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, what's going to happen?

So even if you're going in the wrong direction, he can turn you around and go in a different direction.

And if you can't go any farther, then just back off and wait on the Lord, and maybe he has something else in store.

So I'm always on the lookout for anything.

So if I'm driving down the road and there's an old something there that I might need sometime, make a note.

Or if you're having a conversation with somebody and they say, I might sell something, how much do you want?

Never be afraid to ask a stupid question.

This goes a long way in bootstrapping, because there's lots of experts.

And I have no problem getting on the phone and asking somebody anything.

And even sometimes you've got to do what you've got to do.

So like I'll call, if I'm looking for a part or I need something, I'll call somebody in a different state that's, you know, 3 hours behind in a different time zone, because they're open, you know, to find the answer that I need for something.

When stuck in a corner, OK, so this is a good 1.

When you're stuck in a situation and you don't know what to do, I just go through my phone and start looking for names.

And then it'll jog your memory, and you'll say, oh, I can call this guy.

So these are all just things that Can help you when you're bootstrapping?

Stephanie Gimse

Chef’s Perspective

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this opportunity to talk about your bountiful produce and the blessings that you give us.

Please give us wisdom and help us have an opportunity this morning to really share some ways that we can work through some of our difficulties in this area so that the food that so lovingly is created in the field can be a blessing to your students that can help their minds and help their bodies and help them learn so much better.

So 1 of the things that really has put this as a passion on my heart is some of these statistics here.

Our students are getting, America's society in general is having a lot more diabetes.

Young adults, sorry, two-thirds of Americans are overweight.

And then in our communities and in our churches, 1 in 6 is food insecure.

And I know that we have that problem at our school, at PAA.

Our kids are getting diabetes at incredible rates.

Right now, the projectile is for students The projectile is for students that were born in 2000.

Food insecure is when, it runs a whole gamut, whether there's no food at home, but it basically means that they don't know where their next meal is coming or if they're going to have a next meal or maybe the mother at home doesn't eat dinner so that there's enough food for the kids.

So that there's food issues at home where they're not having enough food.

In fact, at PAA we had a student, sorry, at Portland Adventist Academy here, we've got about 280 students.

1 of our students we found out over the break, they were having this struggle at home, that they didn't have enough food, they were wondering where their next meal was.

And so it's not just a problem out there, it's a problem in here too, that's something that we need to take care of.

So that's what it means by food insecure.

So for students born in 2000, or kids born in 2000, 1 out of 3 Caucasian children are going to get diabetes before they die.

1 out of 2 Latino and African American will get diabetes before they die.

2000 is the first year when it's projected that students will die, sorry I keep saying students because I talk about kids all the time.

The children will die before their parents.

We are on a horrible crash course with the way we're eating.

If you look at the leading causes of death in the United States, which 1 on those are not food-related?

I mean, if you look at the list, most of them are very directly food-related, either immediately food-related or has a huge impact.

So accidents is 1, but I would imagine if you drilled down with accidents, there would be some of them that, you know, your brain wasn't thinking clearly, so you had an accident, or maybe you were alcohol.

Yeah, exactly, So there's a whole bunch of, in the accident realm, I would imagine are directly related to your body.

How about anything else on there do you see that's not food related?

However, we all know that when you're eating healthy, your body is healthy, your mind is healthy, and there's less depression, and there's less rates of suicide when you're treating your body right.

There's other issues, but when you're eating right, your mind is clear, and you're able to think better.

And so all of the top reasons that we die in the United States could be made better if we were taking care of ourselves and eating right.

So this is 1 of the reasons for me that this is definitely a passion and why we need to be doing this.

This actually came out a Harvard study which is something that we all know but it's nice to see it out in the world is that if we're eating healthy we are going to, sorry, if kids get more fruits and vegetables, they're gonna eat more fruits and vegetables.

So if we show these kids the food, we have it out there as an option, then they're gonna eat more of it.

1 of the things I do at school is I have what I call it is a share table.

So this is I do this for partly for the food the kids who are insecure.

So I have this share table and I always try to keep a big bowl of fruit on it.

Anybody can take something from this table at any time, and this can be something that you can kind of integrate as well, you wouldn't have to just put fruit in it, maybe you could put some veggies, some finger veggies or something that'd be easy for students to come and grab, but I always try to keep a big bowl of fruit there so that it's something easy for them to grab.

I keep this table of fruit out all day long.

So if I have students that come in early in the morning and they're hungry, then that table is always out there.

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Series

Seminar 2

Getting Started in Your Backyard

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

Getting Started in Your Backyard

1h 4m

Bootstrapping a Farm

50m

Chef’s Perspective

39m

Sound Doctrine