00:00:05 Speaker 1: The principal elements that compose us and that compose soils are effectively the same elements. I really think this is the best tool we have to improve our planet soil health. Soil health. On this episode of the Bear Grease podcast, we're going to the very footing of natural systems and human existence. Empires have risen and fallen because of it, and the equalizing grasp of the topic at hand is inescapable from both the wealthy and the impoverished people of the Earth. Will be discussing the bewildering complexity of the soil in our connection to it. Will nerd out with my old soil Sides professor Dr David Miller, exploring soil uniqueness. Will also talk with Dr Grant Woods and learn how he transformed a degradated cattle farm into a white tailed paradise through building soils. And we'll talk with an Arkansas farmer who has been inspired to live close to the land because what he saw in the Middle East. Understanding soils will upgrade us as woodsman and will understand more about the heartbeat of wild places. I've got some questions that need answered about the dirt. You're not gonna want to miss this one. Even though we have this advanced industrial society, the fragility of our soils is something that we can never forget about and that we need to continue to pay attention to. My name is Clay Nukelem and this is the bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of America who lived their lives close to the land. Presented by f h F Gear, American made, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Guys, we've got an exclusive bear Grease discount code for f h F Gear that's fish Hunt Fight Gear. I've been using their products for the last year and I love carrying my gear in a chest rig or my binos and their bin no harness. It's easier and more accessible than a backpack and it doesn't get in the way when I'm riding my mule. For a limited time, you can head over to f h F gear dot com forward slash bear Grease and listeners to this here podcast get a discount on purchases for your f h F Gear system and you can see how I build my gear system. So go to f h F gear dot com. I'm forward slash bear grease for a special code. If you're buying stuff from f h F Gear, check it out Fish Hunt Fight f h F Gear. I want to introduce you to a friend that we both know. That may sound oxymoronic, but I think you'll understand what I mean. This friend has played a part in defining humanity. No man has escaped its sculpting grip in the literal and physiological sense. Every great beast that has walked the planet has been swallowed by it, and the so called great men of the Earth have amassed wealth from its bounty, but also intimately met it in the end. Oddly, it's a persnickety bedfellow and easily offended, often distributing poverty in its anger. It's the great equalizer of man kind. No amount of power excuses a man from its authority. Men arise from it and return to it when the spark of life leaves their body. What I'm talking about is the soil. I want to read for you some ancient text, even removing any sense of its religious context. I'm astonished by the scientific accuracy of the primitive writer as he tries to interpret and understand his existence. Genesis to seven through nine. Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man's nostrils, and the man became a living being. Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had made. This text is extremely simple and complex. At the same time, the knowledge of the chemistry of soil and the makeup of the organic matter of human flesh is kind of wild. I bet that we can all agree that mankind's original and deeply innate connection to the land is unique. We're the only species that practices agriculture and manipulates natural systems to grow and produce food. I want to read a short excerpt from Daniel Hillel's book titled Out of the Earth. You'll hear more about this book soon from my old soil science professor. These are Hillel's words. Readers of the Bible and translation miss much of the imagery and poetry of the evocative verbal associations in the original Hebrew. The indissoluble link between man and the soil is manifest in the very name Adam, derived from a dama a Hebrew now and a feminine gender meaning earth or soil. Adam's name encapsulates man's origin and destiny, his existence and livelihood derived from the soil to which he has tethered throughout his life, into which he has faded to return at the end of his days. Likewise, the name of Adam's mate, Hava rendered Eve in translation, literally means living in the words of the Bible, and the man called his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living together. Therefore, Adam and Eve signify soil and life. The ancient Hebrew association of man with soil is echoed in the Latin name for man, Homo, derived from humus, the stuff of life in the soil. This powerful metaphors suggests an early realization of a profound truth that humanity has since disregarded to its own detriment. Since the words humility and humble also derived from humus, it's rather ironic that we should have assigned our species so arrogant a name as Homo sapiens sapiens wise wise man. It occurs to me as I ponder our past and future relation to the Earth that we might consider changing our name to a more modest Homo sapiens curans, the word curans denoting caretaking or caring, as in curator. Of course, we must work to deserve the new name, even as we have not deserved the old one end of quote. First of all, I've got to say that my name means from the earth. I've always felt like that was significant. Juju says. They almost named me cole, but in the last minute, audible, they named me a formal soil science. Now in college, I studied soils almost by accident. Sand, silt, and clay are the three architectural definers of all soil eils. We're gonna meet my favorite professor in just a bit. But the seed thoughts of the soils importance was put in me by my grandfather, lew and Nwcom. He would grin ear to ear and sarcastically proclaim that he was a farmer as he stood overlooking a small twenty by twenty garden in his backyard. As a young boy. He talked to me about the process of soil composting as he throw banana peels and watermelon rinds in his garden. I'd be shocked if he realized how impacting those moments were for me, because I don't think I gave many visual cues of my interest. Later in college, as a student in the soil science department, those early sensations of fascinations stirred by this complexity in natural systems, came to fruition. Curiosity, I believe is a key part of the definition of being a woodsman. Daniel Boone taught us what a woodsman was and that it is a noble idea entity. I think we have the right to continue to add complexity to the idea of being a woodsman. To understand the flora of the woods, wild beast, untamed rivers, and the overarching ecology of wilderness, we have to possess a fundamental understanding of where it all begins. Dr. David Miller was my advisor in college, and honestly I was a poor student. However, in his soil science class he had us read a Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, and secondly he had us read a book called Out of the Earth by Daniel Hillel, which discusses the importance of soil health on civilizations. It was fascinating. Dr Miller's passion for soils and his engaging lecturing style stood out to me, and I never forgot the basics of soil science. It had been fifteen years since I had seen him in his office looked almost identical as it did in two thousand five, though his hair was a bit longer. It was actually a way longer. I want you to meet Dr David Miller of the University of Arkansas and Daniel Hillel's book, the book that you had me read twenty years ago. I'm glad you. Hey, I was underlying stuff back then, I've noticed. But he talks about the rise and fall of civilizations based upon how they treated their soils, which is bizarre. Like if you if you were to ask anybody and say, show me that what are the key factors of a civilization success? I mean, they would name every single thing except soils. But it's fascinating to look back across history and and look back across the footprints of humanity across the globe and you see this. Can you talk to me about that? Yeah, I mean a number one. I'm I'm impressed that you still have the book. It's a great little read, isn't it. It really is the wonder I didn't lose it and little dirty trucks well or sell it for two dollars to buy a hamburger or something. Yeah, but yeah, Hillells book is is really good about that. He goes back and documents and he tries to warn us not to oversimplify that. Of course, take the Roman Empire. You know, there's a lot of factors that went into the decline of the Roman empature. It wasn't just so us. But he does point this out that the Romans, as technologically advanced as they were, they were actually sort of stupid when it came to agriculture. You know, I mean, the Italian uplands are not flat. There tends to be a tremendous amount of slope to many of the soils on the Italian peninsula, as hill Hill points out in his book. And so the Romans go in there and start clearing the native vegetation that cut down the trees, start planting crops. Originally I suspect it was wheat and other grains. Well, those kinds of crops are notoriously irrosive when you try to grow them on slopes, because when you plant the seed it takes a long time for the for the for the plants to emerge and to close the canopy and protect the soil, and so they had massive amounts of erosion, according to Hillel. And I've never been to Italy, so I can't speak to this firsthand, but you go to the Italian Peninsula these days and there's hardly any soil left on any of the hills. It's just a bunch of bare rocks. And the evidence of massive amounts of erosion is still evident to this day. And so, according to Hillel, one of the things that the Romans did not realize was that exposure of soil to rainfall after clearing of the native vegetation resulted in massive land degradation as a result of water erosion. Now you would think wouldn't but the Romans would be able to figure that out a barely not. And they just continue to do it until the soils were so eroded that they wouldn't even grow crops of wheat and barley and so forth anymore, and they had to resort to what uh permanent crops like olives and grapes, and so they switched over. And so where did they get their grain. They started to import their grain from North Africa, Egypt, in particular their empire, and and this is one of the things that Will argues is that they were forced to expand their empire in order to acquire lands that were capable of producing sufficient quantities of food for their people because they had ruined their soils to the extent that they were no longer able to grow enough grain to feed their own people. As one example of the inability of a civilization to take care of their soils, so that decentralization caused them to spread and expand out and basically become I mean they were they were prosperous for a long time, but became vulnerable because of that. And so there, yeah, I mean that of growing their quote own grain, their importing grain from foreign countries. Another good example was the Mesopotamians, who tended to salonize their lands with inappropriate irrigation techniques. So this was even before the Romans. This is the Fertile Crescent and all that, right, some of the first civilizations in Babylonia, they irrigated so heavily that they rose their water table. When it reached the surface, it evaporated and deposited salt. It left what was in it left water leaves, but the salt stays. They salonized their lands by improper irrigation. That particular example would have been like the cradle of life Tigris and Euphrates rivers that are referred to in Genesis. And is that in modern day Ira? That is correct? And the area that we're talking about here is down in that southern town near Bosra. It's a southern town and the fields around north of bo are still water logged in sale as a result of improper irrigation thousands of years ago. Is it clear that the soil usage is what has what attributed that to becoming like almost desert like. Yes, they are, the archaeologist in particular, and I think hill El says are pretty convinced that's why that area is as desolate as it is now. And as a result of Babylonians continually moved north as they screwed up their soils with too much irrigation water and finally um civilization disappeared. Terrell Spencer is my longtime friend and a thought leader in our region for pastured poultry and family farming. He's always had a unique insight into the soil, and it came from a unique place far from northwest Arkansas. I want to learn about his operation, how he builds soils, and where he became inspired to be a farmer. And me my friend Terrell Spencer, also a student of Dr Miller. Terrell Spencer, also known as Spence to me for decades. Tell me what you do. Tell me about your farm. Yeah, I'm a pasture poultry grower. I raised chickens out on pasture and then I have a process and plant that I partner with. We butcher them deliver them to customers across northwest Arkansas eastern Oklahoma. Um. I also am a grass farmer. I cut hay and sell it. Just more than anything, man, I just I love working with nature. So they're there are independent growers like you, and then there are people that grow chickens under contract with some of these bigger companies. Talk to me about the systems that you have in place, and particularly how soil really is kind of a foundational part of it. I'm like one of the one per centers when it comes to just raising poultry, right is nine point something percenta pols. You're one of the billionaires that other into that spectrum too. If I could find a way to flip flop them, we'd be doing pretty good now. Like most chicken growers are growers, they grow for someone else. They grow someone else's birds. About in the eighties, poultry companies realized that the least profitable part of the chicken industry was actually the risk of raising chickens in that and so they kind of outsource that people that sign up for it. You know, no one makes you do it, and it works well for some folks and for some folks it doesn't. And we're just not in that system at all. We're we're just independent. It's just right now. Myself, my boys, my daughter, my wife across the creek farm. Talk to me about the sequence of moving these pins, Like, describe past your poultry how it works. Yeah, it actually works really well. Chickens lay down manure, right like we we bring in feed and then they eat it and it goes out the back end and about half of what they eat becomes chicken and the other half goes out the back end. If you went to your farm, you would see these mobile pins that you move every day, yeah, or every every every couple of days. Yeah, so you're getting two crops. You're getting hay, which round here is very valuable, but you're also getting chickens. But the catalyst of it all is this soil. Yeah, because chicken new is going down in and then the grass comes up very nutrient rich, grows fast, grows good. We don't spray. The edges of our fields are intentionally messy, which is hunters like I don't personally hunt. I love hunters because beer constantly grazing down stuff for other critters, you know, popping Kyle, tell me your true, unfiltered thoughts on raccoons, man, I think, let me start a sance for you. A good raccoon is a dead raccoon, or is is on someone's wall or a hat a good rat cane. And see, I don't even like the word rat can. I like the word trash panda. But and you know, a good rat and that's why friends long lived the beast. But not on your farm. Yes, Now that we understand the process of soil inputs from the chickens and the subsequent grass harvest, I want to hear about where and how Harold decided to be a farmer. My first realization of the destructiveness of human beings, like just to the soil was. I was in Iraq. My job was as a gunner, and we'd go in the U. S. Military in the U. S. Military, Yeah, this was back in two thousand and four, and we would go down and escort convoys and stuff. That was one of the things we did. And we'd go down to quait bring them back up. I was in Baghdad and we would go through these areas that were like they had irrigation ditches, they had pumps, I had, you know, all this stuff for agriculture. And at the time, I kind of had my eye on some rice farmer's daughter in East Arkansas. So I knew like a good setup for going rice, right, and so I thought we'd head south and I would be like, they're gonna plant rice here, you know. And one day, not to digress, but she did become this woman became the rice Queen. Yeah yeah, Cross County or ice Queen. Okay, take us back to and so like we uh, one day we were heading down and the fleet all these fields were flooded. I'm okay, they're gonna grow rice. And at the time I did zero about farming. I had been a punk rocker before I went into the the military, you know, no agricultural background. And then over time we'd passed it again and it was all white. I don't know what's going on here. And then we came back, you know, like a couple of days later, and they were all these families filling bags of salt, and it just like what is going on? And then I got back. I went to the University of Arkansas and got a degree and to all science and and it just like blew my mind because this is the fertile Crescent, right, like we all learned that in school. And as I started thinking back and as I kind of went through pictures and like southern Iraq, man, that was like where they think the Garden of Eden was, you know, like and it's just a waste land. And it's all because humans, well intentioned humans, their actions like just destroyed the foundation of life in that area, you know. And it's crazy even looking at like here in the US, we've been here kicking around for like a hundred and fifty years doing agriculture and we're seeing the same problems, you know. And I guess what I'm passionate about is just like not leaving that mess for someone else to leave it better than I found it. Especially coming back from the war. It was like when I realized what through farming you could be creative instead of destructive. Man, I was hooked, and that's why I raised chickens an pasture. I want to jump back to Dr Miller. I think we need to go back and try to understand the fundamental aspects of soil. Welcome to Dr Miller's Soil Science class one oh one. Here's Dr Miller. Dr Miller talked to me about how soils, this thin layer on the outer crust of the Earth is so essential to not just human life, but every part of life, because it's kind of bizarre when you think about this big rock floating around the star and this, you know, whatever the volume of the Earth is, it's massive, and this this outer, tiny, tiny fraction of that volume of the crust of the Earth is this brilliant, intricate wild thing called dirt, which is what humans disdain in so many ways. But to talk to me about about the uniqueness of that, you know, it is there saying it's a good point that you bring up to. By volume, the Earth is a minuscule fraction soil right, because as most of us know, it can range from oh gosh, six inches thick too. I don't know. Down near the equator there are probably soils that are fifty or sixty feet thick, but in general two to three four five ft thick is all soil is, and it has unique properties. It's more than just crushed up rock. A lot of people say, well, dirt's just you can take rock and crushed up and you have dirt. Well, no, you can't. Crushed up rock is not soil. It's crushed up rock. You need to undergo what we think. What we scientist is what we saw a scientists called petagenesis, which is the process by which this stuff called parent material, which can be rock, or it can be sediment, or it can be plant tissues for that matter, petogenesis is the process by which that materially is converted into this special stuff that we call soil. And yes, it does have minerals in it, but it also has organic materials in it. And then incredibly importantly, it has lots of pores, and pores is where the water is held, and then of course they're the other thing that's special about soils is the fact that it's so biologically active, it's got some much stuff living in it. So I mean there's this combination of factors I think that leads to the uniqueness of soils. Its composition. Clearly, it's chemical composition. It has a very interesting and unique chemical composition, sand, silt and clay, poor size distributions, biological activity, and then this organic fraction is incredibly interesting. Those features combined to make soil unique in its ability to support plant life. But then there's these other things that soils do that are remarkable. And most people when they think of soils, they think of soils support plant life, and that is true, but they also help control the composition of the atmosphere through what through their CEO to production and or sequestration. Methane is produced by soils, Nitrous oxide is produced by soils. So soils through their production and consumption of gases, helped regulate the composition of the atmosphere, which these days with people, you know, talking about global warming, that's an important thing that soils do. Hop out um the ability of soils to hold and purify water. Every drop of rainfall pretty much interacts with soil and the quality of the soils then tends to impact the quality of the water. Where would we be without soils to hold water? We would have massive floods. We would have no mechanism by which store water for plants to take up. Later on, I asked Dr Miller about the composition of soils as compared to the human body. Here's what he had to say, Dr Miller. In the Book of Genesis, it talks about how man was formed from the earth. But I remember, when i've because hellel first chapter he talks about that event. Can you explain to me just about how literally the human body is made of the same things that the soil is. There's no question that's true. I mean, there are only what I don't know how many naturally occurring elements there are in the periodic table these days there used to be ninety two or something like that. The principal elements that compose us and that compose the soils are effectively the same elements. In fact, interesting story and that is that some people are proponents these days of what are called green burials. Are you are you familiar with green burials? Okay, instead of embalming the human body and instead of putting it in a casket which then gets put into a sarcophagus. The green burial lists will call them advocate non preservation of the body and burial within twenty four hours. Directly into the soil and the idea. It's and of interesting idea, but rather to allow the elements that are in the human body to return to the soil in a natural way, interesting stuff, Dr Miller. In modern times, soil degradation continues to define our existence. Dr Miller will now go into a modern example of a soil issue that nearly snuffed us out here in America. Hang on with me, boys were about to get out of all this nerdy soil stuff and talk about whitetailed deer, or maybe soils have a ton to do with white tailed deer. Stand By, I think a lot of people probably would say, well, the Romans and the Messopotamians, they lived thousands of you. They didn't know any better. We know better. They might say that the gym on the street or marry on the street. You tell them about the importance of soils, and they go, we got nothing to worry about. The scientists have figured this out. We know how to take care of our soils well. It wasn't that long ago in this country that we had a massive erosional event called the dust bowl, right, I mean nineteen thirties, early nineteen thirties, south central United States. We had plowed up from from Fence Road to Fence Road because suddenly we had tractors. I mean that was kind of the same time that tractors were becoming available, and we had had plentiful rainfall over a period of several years, and so people just planted wheat right and left, and all of a sudden one spring, there was no rain, and so they had pulverized the soil. They had cleared those southern prairies of all native vegetation. So here they were over tilled, powdery, dry as a bone, and these huge Santa Anna winds came out of the west, and uh, I wasn't there. I'm old, but I'm not that old. But my dad was alive. My dad was born in twenty three and as a kid, he remembers dust in Indiana blown in from the dust bol and said, the morning sunrises in the evening sunsets were absolutely remarkable as a result of all this dust in the atmosphere. Well, the amount of soil that was removed from the southern plains was unbelievable as a result of this wind erosion event. So, while yes, we have learned a lot since the time of the Romans and the Mesopotamians, we did the same thing years ago right here in this country where we allowed this tremendous degradation of the land to occur. That's a good place to explain to us how soil in the span of human lifetimes really is not a renewable resource. Good point, it is not because we think of we think of the soil is well, that's part of the beauty of soil, is it. It can be restored and you can do things to bring back soil health. But it is a long term process. It is in fact, and we didn't talk about that, but I mean the kinds of times frames that we're talking about here. In order to produce one inch of soil, let's say that in an under a natural kind of a of a setting hundreds to thousands of years to produce one has of soil. And so this is a very very very slow process. The soils outside our window here, outside my office window, have been in the process of being weathered and turned into soil for literally millions of years. These soils are millions of years old out here yet and so how rapidly can soils your road, Well, think about it an erosional event like the dust bowl. You can remove two feet of soil in a matter of an afternoon. And I emphasized this in my course. They are essential to life. They are delicate. You have to be gentle with them when as soon as you remove the vegetative cover, you have exposed that soil to potential disaster through erosion. Even though we have this advanced industrial society, the fragility of our soils is something that we can never forget about and that we need to continue to pay attention to. No matter if you live in urban or rural areas, whether you're a farmer or an insurance agent, we're all connected to the soil. I now want to ask Dr Miller about the fertile soils on the earth called mala sols, some of which are in the Great Plains of the United States, and these soils are very rare. Our mala sols in the US developed under tall grass prairie, immense herds of grazing bison and other ungulates. And the perfect mix of rainfall, freezing and thawing of the soil. Freezing solid of soils like in the midwestern United States, slows down the decomposition of organic matter, allowing it to build up over the years organic matters dead stuff that used to be alive. Soil in the southern latitudes stays warmer longer, and he composes this organic matter, the good stuff, quicker, which ultimately makes the soils less fertile. Here's what he has to say about malasols. So it was kind of like the perfect storm. Indeed, it was to have these exactly this incredible soil just in these pockets. And you know, you find that in other parts of the world. The other place that you can find soils as good as the ones they're in central US or in the Ukraine, um Central Europe, Central Europe, East East, Central Europe. I would say, you know, the steps the steps of that would be western Russia. You know, during the Second World War, Hitler wanted to conquer the East because they had what they had, they had resources. One of the things he was thinking about it was the Ukrainian mollosols, these absolutely fantastic soils. Germany doesn't have the kind of soils they needed to grow their food. Molasolsosils. You're number triggered that that's like the buzzword of soils. You had a flashback there, I can tell you had a flashback. Mala so I mean would like the greatest soil. They are those? Oh yeah, soft black, high in organic matter, deep, just grow virtually anything without even trying. How many places on the Earth have a molasol? Well, that's a good question, Central United States, the Ukraine. There are also monasols in Argentina, the Pompous area of South America. Again, that would be what on the other side of the equator, across the same in the same latitude south as we are north. Yeah. What about Africa? Malasils in Africa virtually none. What about Asia? I think there are some monasols in China, but they're rare, and that's why we're so lucky in this country to have those. Do you feel like that that the the the great plains, the bread bass good of America has been part of our success questions, Absolutely, no question that's that have been able to I mean just this huge number of tens of millions of hectares of soil that are so productive. We've never had to worry about food in this country ever. That's really bizarre when you think about the incredible, vast differences in topography across the earth, and that there's these pockets that jump started civilizations. It's like it's like they had a they had a pass code that nobody else had, and we were lucky enough to sit right on top of one here in North America. Dr. Grant Woods is a wildlife biologist and is known as one of the top dear biologists in the country. He's wearing a yellow fire retarded shirt and his pants are stained with black ash. He's just walked in from a controlled burn on his family property. Twenty years ago, he embarked on a land experiment, approving grounds, if you will, when he and his wife purchased a large degradated property in the ozarks of southern Missouri. He actually named it the proving ground, the region not being known for high quality deer. I want to learn about his story and it's connection to the soil. Dr. Woods, tell me about the history of this property. You've worked extremely hard for almost last twenty years. I'm interested in your how the property started, your overall objectives and ultimately how the soil quality tied into that. So it's been it's just a fabulous story. My wife, Tracy and I were living in South Carolina. I schooled at George and Plan soon and got out and we've gotten married and and we were looking for land and we scraped up her money and about thirteen acres and men I had a food plot and my dad's had a little buck was longbow. I mean, we're living high on the hog, you know. And I'm from the those arts as you know, and back Viston family and Trace and I went to get a little ice cream and and she picked up real estate Guide and uh so here's a here's a property self kind of sounds like we've been looking for and just for even read the ad, just called a realtor. Anyway, we got here and there was a guy, a gentleman, had passed. He had been a cow firmer and he passed seven years previous. Left it to a local hospital and never gonna sell some big developer because we're next to Branson, Missouri, and I think they had in fact had it so but didn't close and just put it back on the market. And and we looked at it. Men as rough as a cop. I mean, you know, locust sprouts in the opening where they'd fed hay, and bare rocks showing all over the place being grazed to the you know, the neighbors have been running cows without the hospital knowing. So we made an offer and it wasn't near what they're asking, and we just felt what we could take down. And they said no, no, heck know, in a real short letter. And a year later, nine eleven happened, and uh, they wrote us and says your offer still good? Yeah, And we said, heck yeah. I like a story with some risk involved in it, one that took some guts. The woods investing in this property was just that they put it all on the table. I want to hear what his first step was in working with the property, and we'll meet an influential player in Dr Wood's life, a man of the land. I called the local co op to get some fertilizer because I had been schooled and fertilizer and soil tests. You live by that soil test. And the guy made one pass around the little food plot and said, no, it's too rocky. I'm gonna trip my equipment and he drove out my driveway with the fertilizer I had paid for in the back of the truck. And like many things, you hear about this in hindsight, you know, I was a blessing. But at the time I thought, I don't beat that guy up something, you know. And so it was gonna reign next couple of days and you get a food plot it in orth. I drove down to Arkansas closest equipment dealer and was gonna buy a fertilizer spreader and so I could spread moan. And this old boy said, you don't need that. My uncle Galen, he makes composts, and I've heard about composting. College poultry business is of course really big in Arkansas. Winner in meadow, Uncle Galen, and he's crazy some men. I'll drive your slopes. Ain't no problem for me, So sign me up. You know. Here we go and Galen, he's a man of the land, and he understood soil. I understood soil chemistry. He understood soil, and he started teaching me about the soil, not trying to sell me this product. And it was too rocky to even this. So the county here right lived the NRCS office rents no til drills. They're primarily made for pasture, not going crops here, and they're beat up from last guy that owned rented it, you know, and rented that and playing a little food plot and published some pictures and some magazine back in the day, and they're like, man, you're crazy to be planting those rocks and men crops are growing. We started with the grazed out, burned out cattle wrench, and twenty years later, in some of those same plots, we've built over six inches of rich, black, lush top soil. And of all the accomplishments whatever my career, probably the one I gives me the most satisfaction is there's no plaque on the wall or anything. That's when I walk out during those fields and I just reached down and grab a handful and smell it, and it smells like really rich garden dirt here on top of those art mountain. That's that's what drives me. Yeah, So, what were you trying to do with this place on a general scale in terms of wildlife? Yeah? So so again, I was raised in Theose Arts, and I clearly remember the first deer I ever saw My oldest daughter is Raleigh oldinlys for a dweller by the deer meadow. My youngest daughter is ray R a Hebrew for dough deer. Kind of a big thing in our lives, right And uh so I wanted to have a place that we could see dear, that my dad and brought in law and family could hunt deer, friends could hunt deer. And in the first year I saw one deer, I saw a tail going around a cedar tree. We did not hunt deer here for five years. Now for Tracy and I, this was a investment of a lifetime. I'll just do you know, we don't have many stock market this. This is what we were pouring into. And I bought a lot for deer and they were not dear here. And the deer that were here the old statement, but the dear it looks like a shepherd dog or you know, a small but that's kind of what we were seeing, you know. And so my goal was to improve the habitat, both then food plots and native habitat and to where we could just have some good quality family hunting. That was my objective. And food plots were going to play and have played a big role in that, but through time of learning about soil and the potential of native habitat, that's when you came here. We were getting ready to prescribe fire, which has big implications for the soil in reasons some ways people may not think of. And so I got hooked on in this path of having better deer hunting, improving the habitat quality. And here in the Ozark's of course, Lewis and Claw passing north to here the Missouri rivers three fires in north Arapin on where you are. But the early explorer to come through here is Schoolcraft, and you can buy his journal and reading his notes and all the wildlife he saw and the lush creek bottoms, and he passed pretty close to right here. I'm thinking this land has potential. Some of it's a rotor down the White River and into the Mississippi, but the potentials here and reaching that potential, which I'm not and I would like the state that. I don't think any person living right now are very very few have ever seen the soil or the habitats potential, because almost everyone this planet has been degraded, not intentionally necessarily when the early settlers come to this continent. May of fact, they're trying to make a living. They're hacking out a wilderness and they're plowing of mules and durst going down to you know, the rivers like crazy. They weren't all gonna cause erosion. They're just trying to make a living. There's no anger in me over this. That's hard for us to understand, isn't it. Because we walk out into a big eastern deciduous for us like this, and we just assume that this is what it's looked like for the last thousand years, which is just untrue. One of the comments from one of the early explorers are really stuck in my head. Is that all the forest he wrote through, he sa he loved it because he could ride a horse there and never knocked the hat off his head. And so the Great Forest of the Eastern United States primarily have been harvested about three times. And so yeah, we're looking at leftovers after twenty years. I want to understand what's happened. You'll hear dr woods mentioned using a scoring system to measure white tailed deer antlers. Many of you would be very familiar with this, but if you're not, it's a prescribed way to measure the length with and circumference of deer antlers. They're multiple record keeping organizations, two of which Dr Woods refers to at the Pope and Young Club, which is for archery kills only, and the Boone and Crockett Club. These organizations were originally designed to incentivize harvesting older age male animals, and their influence on North American hunting culture and management has been invaluable to the success of wildlife populations here. They helped move our hunting culture out of a market hunting quote if it's brown, it's down mentality into a selective, management based mentality, which prevails in hunting culture today. So what's it like today? So I'm not really a score guy. I don't mean it's boastful, but I think as a majorings dick. When I got here, I was more into scores back then. Boy, if I killed a you know, one five plus a bow, I was. I was writing Pope and Young you know, well, A lot of people did back in the day, right, especially in areas like this where they were rare and the records still. I think last I checked here, no Boone and Crocketts and one that made p y and that was like a hundred and thirty one. I forget somewhere in there. It's pretty common now that we're gonna take you know, one forties, one fifty every year multiples, and we have a one seventy plus on the wall. So it's change, and you know, and everyone wants to laus he shipped in some deer, you know, no folks, and and and along that line to talk about how important soils are and sun reaching the ground. Northern Missouri, of course, is known as record book deer country. And the Bulkaals deer were restored. They were wiped out. I mean they were gone. There weren't even residual populations, and they were restored from one of the refuges about twenty miles of crow flies and a couple other here in southern Missouri. There Ozart's genetics on better groceries, and better groceries requires better dirt, and so massive deer there. I got thinking, well, you know, that's a big area. People know they grow big deer. They're passing up a lot of deer. But what can I do here? And I consider, for you know, mountain country, timber country man and one forties a dog good deer one seventies like a two twenty and I but I mean that's cooking with gas right there. So there are many indicators in evaluating ecosystem health. But if one of your primary objectives is to produce a healthy dear herd, analyzing dear antler growth is a great way to do it. Where nutrition is poor and animals are stressed, antler growth will be minimal. Large antlers, and the presence of mature adult males indicates positive herd health. By understanding the historical antler development patterns in the region. If you remember he said the biggest deer in the county was in the hundred and thirty inch range, it's clear that the proving ground has a healthy dear herd. In the last few years they've taken a hundred and seventy plus buck off the property. That's about the difference between the mid sized suv and a monster truck in the dear world. But how did he do it? The answer might surprise you. If you till the soil, you decrease the value to soil. There's there, there's I know, and you're staying well man, And the only know one I see these farmers on sixty shank plows. I mean, that's all true. They do, but there is no chance and there's one real simple reason and all the other debates, there's just one reason. When you tell soil or of course, you let more air oxygen touch more surfacers soil than if you didn't tell it. Think of the great prairies buffalo run around. Okay, Well, that oxidizes very powerful chemical reaction portions of the soil and terminate some of the good microbes that live in soil, and allows the microbes that kind of are anti our mission of building soil health to populate more. Just that one simple thing. No one can defeat that argument. So, because it was so rocky here, I started renting the no till drill and I've always no tilled. I have not disk in over two decades. I've never had a disc on this property period, And that's been a big secret to improve in our soul's health and growing bigger deer. Wait a minute, I thought tilling was good. This is an ancient human practice. You tell a garden when you want to control weeds and ake up the soil so that new plants can take root. Well, what dr woods and many others are learning. Is that telling has its place in some applications, but undoubtedly degrade soil health, creating a vicious cycle. And agriculture telling destroys that natural soil structure and soil microbes, which are the m v P of soil health and plant growth. It's a complex story. Standby because we're about to learn the importance of carbon. You may be saying, Clay, I don't give a rat's tale about carbon, but it's influenced in human life. Is incredible. I wonder if Dan boon knew anything about carbon. I digress in college port I was called n P and K and malybd um and zinc and boron and all the men. It's all cool stuff. But you know, we humans and deer and most plants, the biggest element in our bodies is carbon. Carbon is delimited resource. And there's a lot on the news about carbon now, But I'm just talking practice. Go boots on the dirt carbons while we want you probably know it's you know, really good soil. And we talked about EWA some places like that, the delta, it's black carbons, black poor soil. You hear your farmers say, well, my soil is light and always go light. Soil is light colored, it's had all the carbon taken out of it. And here's here's this maybe a little heavy. You can slap me around a little bit here, But there's an economy in the soil. The economy is if you have a healthy microbe population, Okay, they need carbon. Plants are photosynthesizing see six whole bunch of carbon first part of photosynthesis equation. Microbes actually go around the plant root or in the plant and trade phosphorus potassium. But we're on the libium and want the plant needs for that carbon coming out of exudates. That's a beautiful, beautiful economy. It's a win win economy. And one disk in putting oxygen in soil kills that economy. And therefore we must use synthetic fertilizer. We can go wicked cycle there doesn't it and we can grow crops. You know, we didn't know what nitrogen was or we could produce it anyway until World War two, and that was part of building bombs. And the German scientists that figured out how to make nitrogen escape from Germany and brought it here. And when the war is over and when they felt we didn't need these bombs while we're gonna do so well, maybe we use a fertilizer. I don't know. That's how the whole nitrogen fertilizers thing literally got startled. That's interesting, But we think about this over every acre on the planet. That's a big statement there. There's about thirty tons or more of nitrogen in the air. Why would anyone ever pay for nitrogen? Or we look at buffalo and we think there's about sixty million buffalo on the Great Prairie. There's about sixty million cattle now, and no one was putting out synthetic fertilizer to feed all these bison. What you'll learn when you dive in deeper to this philosophy is that chemical fertilizers, though they've been instrumental in modern agriculture and feeding the planet, they're also a massive source of soil degradation and the fuel of a wildly unsustainable cycle. Dr. Woods, along with many others, say there's a better way. In a world that talks a lot about excess carbon in the air, intact soils have the ability to sequester or store incredible amounts of carbon. As you've heard Dr. Wood says he's built up to six inches of rich soil in his food plots in the twenty years he's managed the proving grounds. This is massive. I want to learn more about this process, So talk to me about the accelerated soil building. So, you know, when I was in school and always you know wild if first needs some good soil classes, there's always one thing stuck in my mind talking about thousand years to make an inch of soil. I just seems I can't even really envision thousand years. I mean, we through out these big numbers, but a decade is a big change for most humans, right, and I think a thousand years is true. If you're talking about the Green Canyon weathering and making a little dirt and the crevice somewhere, you know, it's a so slow process. You know, that's probably why humans have such a hard time connecting with soil, is it typically is a slow process, and it's something that you you you inherit a baseline of understanding of what a place looks like. And the human life is so short compared to the life cycles of Planet Earth ecosystems. Yeah, and when when we got mislead, but that place has good dirt or that place will never have good dirt. There was never a process talked about. And so Galen, back to my friend, Galen was a very is a very wise man. And Galen started teaching me these principles. And I've just simplified them a lot over time, and I've learned from other I did not come up on this my own. Maybe I've made some observations to tweak it over time, but there's basically a couple of principles that work anywhere equator to anywhere plants grow. You need to soil covered every day. Out of here. When I say covered, maybe it's in the winter, but there's a thatch or a mulch on top of it, so the soil is always covered. We call that armor. So als it wasn't covered. You need a living plant as many days out of year. Some plants grow better in the spring. It's all due to daylight and soil temperture, some in the summer, some in the fall. So just having soil always covered minimal disturbance to the soil. And that's not only physical we talking about disking, plowing, but chemical synthetic fertilizer is we all think the chemicals I think is herbiside herbside, but man synthetic nitrogen, foster's potassium. Those babies are, you know, I think i'd probably rather I don't know if i'd say something air and no, but I probably rare drink a teaspoon of life for stade than I would suck a teaspoon of synthetic nitrogen down because the results of that second one is gonna be really bad. I promise you you're not gonna hunt anymore. And then this one, it's just an observation, just I mean, I used to be uh work as a little naturalist out and your stone a little bit in a few places like that. And I was young roaming around America and uh men, there's a big diversity of plants I talked about us. I didn't a find over a hundred seventy species of plants here that's native habitat. And that's part of my release process of native habitat. But how about in our food plots. We're all thinking that perfect row of corn, perfect patch of soybeans, perfect clover field monoculture. Well, if we go back to the real reason we have monoculture, so a combine would work, or the planter would only plant one size seed at a time, or guy, should you know we can only use this herbicide on top of this, it's gonna kill everything else. And I've learned through otherwise people. I want as much of life out there as I can get. Man, I want bugs and earthworms and microbes. And if I got a ragweed and a food plot, IDEA can eat that too, you know, I just but man, I want diversity, so my blends will Typically I always want to at minimum one lagoon, think beans, peas in summer, winter peas, alfalfa or something like that in the cooler season. I want a broadleaf plant that could be a lagoon like a pea or a bean. But sunflowers is a great broadleaf, and I want a brassica. It can maybe collards in the warm sea eason or summer, and turnips rashes in the winter. I want those four I want. I want to grass and again summer could be corn or milo. Those are all get the grass familiars, other grasses fall, wheat, ryots or common When hunters use, people use. And once you find out when you get at least members of those four types of plants, you stimulate more microbes. So again, you know, the textbooks used to say, maybe still say takes a thousand years building an inch of soil, which I think is true on raw rock. But I think, and I've witnessed here, I think it's very possible, very realistic. If you're planting a blend of species, not a monoculture, a good blend, and you have a decent growing season, I think you can realistically build a quarter inch of soil a year, and that's cooking with gas. And on this place, you've seen how much so so you started with more or less rock on the tops of these knolls, and you have six inches six inches deep of good. Yeah, but that's not a linear because I keep learning, and at first I was planting Monaco, and I think our rate increases even faster. Now tell me in in short the cycle of growing and then crimping and then planting into Yeah, our system is really easy and simplified. We take way less hours we used to the plant. We about acres of food plot. So in the spring, I'm gonna always have cereal rye and probably crimson clover. Blanche is some really good annual clover, and it's gonna be I'm gonna wait a little later, and other people are playing football, so I'm gonna play a little later because I want those plants to maximize your value. Right, So I call it the dose st age. When I can take that wheat rye or whatever seed head and squish it and it's it's form like it's mature, but it's moist, it's not hard, it's obviously not viable. Then I'm gonna drill right through that. It's called planting green. I'm gonna take my notes. You've got a stand of a stand of these things you've just said, and you're planning right back in right. I haven't. I haven't treated her, so I haven't done anything. And I've not done nothing except crank the tracker and put the drill on, put a good warm season or summer, blend the seed in there, and you're find at drilling through standing. I started by terminating crop first with a crimper, but then you got to stick that. And I don't care how good a drill you got, him one hard to cut through there. It's not designed for that. So planting green, I learned from a farmer in Ohio, is much better. And then I'll let that I'll probably let that Germany. I'll let my new crop get an inch or too tall, and then I'll use a cramper, which is like a flat roller a round roller, but has a fin about every eight inches and you're dragging this behind your track and this rolling. But a cramper is designed to break the plants circulatory system every few inches and it terminates. Got these ridges. It looks like a tire. It looks like a mud tire. It's got ridges, but they're they're six inches sticking off, you know, well, just dealing and so. But the brand new plants are so pliable they just pop back up. If you had a really good fall crop, you're gonna have about four inches a thick mulch, so you've killed the stuff that was standing, but the plants in the dough stage aren't gonna. We started last fall and we planned the fall crop a blend had some big cereal grains in there and some lagoons and peas or whatever. And now spring. The soul temperatures at least sixty degrees at two inches deep at nine am sounds really picky. So that's how you're building a quarter inch of good soil well and everyone men pluted for years. We look at Watch up top. Galen taught me to look below the soil like an iceberg. Of an iceberg is below the water, only ten percent you can see above if you didn't catch that all. Dr Woods has an incredibly informative weekly show called Growing Dear TV where he explains all these processes in great detail for whitetail and turkey related land management content. His stuff is incredible. Hey, that was a pretty cool analogy on the icebergs and microbes. There they were again, diversity of plants species stimulates microbial activity, and monocultures degrade microbial activity. I think it's wild how something so small and invisible to the human eye is the fuel of the soil and thus the heartbeat of life on the planet. We can't talk about soil without understanding something about erosion. Dr Woods has a pretty wild example that will paint a vivid picture. So obviously, you can't lose soil and improve its health. You can't have erosion because the smaller particle usually the better quality dirt. So if you're seeing rivlets or ditches go across the field, you're it's being degraded. The best stup's leaving. How can you stop erosion? Man? Everyone thinks that's some expensive system or people tile fields to let moisture out. You don't need to do any of that stuff, right. Plant roots should go six feet deep easy, that's your tiling system. So again, if we've got the soil always covered, we've got thatched from the previous crop. I call that mulch and a living crop. The rain drop never really strikes the soil. It hits the living crop or hits the thatch, and the wind or whatever slows its way down and then it infiltrates through that satch and it just soaks in the soil. And if you've got a really good roots system, it's just gonna run right down that route, right, It's just gonna infiltrate versus running off. What are the stats for the soil and our agricultural belt for how much is running off? Yeah? I know exactly and Iowa because they IWA does a great job monitoring these things, and they do it through weirds that you know, Little Creek have a weird so much sentiments going dn't really scientific stuff. Uh. They average about five tons per acre per year running running off leaving going to the Missisippi River and you say you know again, ahead, you give me. Remember that the thickness of a piece of typing paper over an acre tune ee feet by tune or eighteen feet is a ton, just the thickness. So if you see a couple of ditches six inches deep to a field, there's tons. It's tons of the tons right there. If you start paying attention to soil erosion, you'll see it everywhere. And it's pretty eye opening when you understand the value of that soil. Dr Woods has a strong opinion about the significance that soil help plays on the earth. He has strong words about the agricultural systems in this country, and I want to reiterate Dr Wood's position. He is pro agriculture, He's been a farmer, he was raised by farmers. But it's very adamant that there is a better way. I'm very excited about this. I think, I really think this is the best tool we have to improve our planet soil health, soil health. I mean, electric cars are great, and all these earth things are great, but practicality pricing timing farmers, this is well proven, can make more profit and improve the soil at the same time and obvious questions why aren't they doing it? And I'll just tell you besides white tailed deer hunters, farmers are the hardest set as people I've ever tried to work in my life. And that's being unfair. I mean, their liveloods this day. A big, massive change is a big risk for them. That would be like saying, Grant, we want you to go be a music composer. It'd be a total life change for me to relearn that. Well, the whole system is set up for them to be successful by using the old system. So what I'm hearing you say is there needs to be a reformation in the way the whole architecture of everything. Yes, and to take that further. And I'm angry about this, not just mad angry. The system is absolutely not promoting soil health improvement. It's promoting the use of certain products. And I'm not anti herbicide. I look at herbicide, as I explained, just like a root canal. Man. I don't want to have one, but it's better than my jaw rotten out. You know, I think farm farmers are I was raised on a farm. I'm passionate about farmers they got a hard life. I'm not talking to fifty acre corp farm here. I think it goes even further than that. If you really want to know why, I really think, well, don't you just ask me? Here's what I want. I want to hear you say in short, why you feel like soil is the way that we can turn this planet around. Yeah, so we know, and you're know. I talked about off air that when society civilizations harm or soil to society, or civilization fails, romans whatever, whatever. I think we can turn a society around for a couple of real simple reasons. We can reduce pollution significantly. Agg is the second largest provider of carbon because of disking, not the diesel coming out a tractor, because of releasing carbon from the soil. Member. Soil that's black has a lot of carbon in it. Red gray white soil is depleted a carbon. It will not be productive without a huge amount of synthetic inputs which are leaching into our groundwater too used to farms or hunted acres. T hunted acres, and you were making a living. Mama got a new car every now and then. Not that way anymore at all. Right, Corporate farms with government subsidies, if you're doing your genity vag And I know some beautiful examples of families that got sixty acres hunted acres and they're making a good income because they have such reduced inputs and their land is so healthy, it's so productive. I'll share with you just one, because a lot of count farmers out there right I used to raise cows. Here's an old boy up here north me About an hour I met at at a farmer's market. Got talking to him. He's got a hunted acre the land here in the those arts. He will sell fifty calves a year off a hundred acres of grass pasture, no supplemental feed. And he's doing what's called mob grazing. He may have the equivalent of a quarter two D fifty thousand pounds quarter million pounds of beef on an acre for an hour, and it's replicating what the buffalo did. And they're urinating and defecating, and a room and is full of microbes, are about a trillion microbes to her teaspoon and Rouman fluid. So they're salivating, urinating, defecating. They're putting those microbes right back in there. Which makes the plants grow faster. He's not using any fertilizer, no worm, no fly medicines because they're always moving. And then his wife has a chicken trailer and she follows the cows three days and they're cleaning up all the maggots out of cow poop pasture eggs. Eggs are about twelve dollars a dozen dollar an egg. That's pretty good money. Rule America is dead. There's no doubt about this. It's sad. I was raising Rule America. I love Rule America. If a fan can move out there and get sixty acres eight acres put in a good day's work, work five six days a week, they can make a living using this process. And to me, if we can get people making a good living with no government subsidies, improving the soil, improving the water, providing us better food to eat. Did you know that a lot of oranges and right now I have no vitamin seeing them because the soil is sol depleted. Did you know that spinach has less iron in it than it did on average thirty years ago because of depleted soils. Many of the diseases we're facing now to runheard of when you and I were boys were probably because of depleted soil health and therefore depleted nutrients in the food we eat. Take a pasture raised egg, stick your finger and skill it for the heats on. You can't hardly break the yolk taking egg of a chicken house It's like water. I'm not being mean. We're feeding a bunch of billions of people on the planet. But if our acres are more productive, we can feed even more people. We do not have to have these other inputs to feed more people. That is a myth. We just need to restore the health in our soil. I'm so passionate about this. I've share with you on my transplant patient. I go to male clinic once a year every year. From my annual checkup, boy's happening me with a dietitian, right. But the difference between and those are mountain deer that's eating really high quality native vegetation we're burning right now. Soon as it rain's gonna be really succulent, grow full of nutrients, full of minerals, versus the middle of iba soybean deer growing on synthetics. There's no comparison bite per bite in the nutrient content and my dietitians that the Male Clinic tell me keep eating what you eat. I'm twenty nine years alf a kidney transplant. I've been so blessed in life. Part of that is eating a healthy diet of wildlife. This is really affecting your the quality of your life big time. And at the end, I mean, I'm a hunter. I'm alive when I'm hunting. I'm in tune to everything around me when I'm hunting. But a hunt for me, I feel great pride, not in you know, a vacuum packed role. I feel pride of being a provider for my family of high quality meat. Man, that's just so cool when your family's involved and you kind of feel good. So I could be stack of firewood going in to fall man, you feel good right out. Olipil said it. You know, good oak warms you twice, once when you cut it and once when you burn it. And the thrill of having a buck or dough or turkey or whatever after. And I got a thrill at one time, and then we get it out and cook it. And that thrill to me has become at this season my life just as big as the first thrill. Yeah, I made up with it, man, no pun intended. And I think I think of America had healthy venison, healthy pheasants, healthy whatever to eat that wasn't loaded up with her beside pest side fungicide. Man, that'd be cool for America's healthy. No matter what we do as humans, it's hard to get away from the importance of soils on the quality of our everyday lives. But I'm still amazed at how little most of us actually think about it. The soil is literally the foundation of our existence, Hillel wrote, Perhaps our most precious and vital resource, both physical and spiritual, is that most common matter underfoot, which we scarcely even notice and sometimes call it dirt. I continue to be amazed at the complexity of natural systems. Will never know all the answers, but an internal bewilderment in the fact that we're players in a complex and ancient system should cause us to pause. When we look across a vast landscape, whether it be in the Ozarks or Montana, or in the Adirondacks of New York, whe our eyes we see the ten per cent of the iceberg, and it's spectacularly decorated with mountains, trees, plants and animals, the things that we love. But beneath it is the soil which gives it all life, if nothing else. Next time you're in your favorite wild place, scratch back the leaves or the grass and take a handful of dirt. Roll it through your hand, and while you do, think about how it's the rocket fuel of wildness, and consider how it's often the unseen things that define the things that are visible. And while the dirt touches your skin, also considered the incredibly short lifespan of a human compared to its ancientness, and at the very atoms of your body, will one day return to it and see if that changes the way you live today. Thank you all so much for listening to Bear Grease. We've got some cool stuff coming up this fall, so please tell your buddies about our podcast, and feel free to leave us a review on iTunes. Hey, if you're in the northwest Arkansas region, check out Across the Creek Farms. My friend tear Old Spencer's pastured poultry and eggs are off the charts. It's some good chicken. Keep the wild places wild. And hey, here's what Gary Newcomb does with dirt, all right, Dad, tell me your your philosophy on cleaning your hands. What's the best way in the world to clean your hands? It depends on where I am. If I'm in the house, I like to use soap, okay, if I'm at it camp. If I'm deer hunting, I use dirt. And I have no idea why, but just my gut feeling is that dirt is about to clean sling around and oh yeah yeah. If if I'm just if I clean a deer and I'm I don't have water and soap. I prefer really dirt. It takes the odor away. Uh you know, I might eat a sandwich after using the hurt. I mean, you never brush your teeth with dirt, never have, never have mm hm