"You're the average of the five people that you spend the most time with."  Jim Rohn

Hang around with people who support you and push you and you will end up farther ahead than by hanging around with people who hold you back and tear you down.  It sounds obvious.  And I think that most people listening to this would agree.

But it's not always easy to do.   

Either by choice or by life.

Sometimes we just don't put in the effort or want to deal with the pain of getting rid of the negative influences in our lives.  And sometimes we can't easily get rid of the negative influences in our lives.  Sometimes people in our family struggle or run into problems.  Problems which require our support.  So we can't abandon those people.  

Regardless those people will have an effect on our lives.  

And this idea is one of the many that I will be talking about today with Javan Bernakevitch as part of our continued look into the common, but hidden reality of us all.

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It's currently September 15, 2016 and the end of the regular farming season is near. Along with it is Curtis's tenure at the Kelowna Farmers Market.

After 7 seasons at the farmers market, Curtis is moving on. It's part of a larger effort to simplify the farm and match the farm to his lifestyle.

At this point in his career Curtis is trying to simplify his farm. Not grow bigger just to be bigger. Instead choosing to grow better becoming more efficient and effective. That means focusing on the market streams that work, the products that sell, and moving to plots located even closer to his homebase.

Part of those changes involve dropping things like the farmers market which has done since the beginning of his career. But it's a market stream that requires getting up on Saturday for 8 months of the year and it's a market stream that isn't growing anymore.

And It's one of the many changes taking place at Green City Acres, resulting in a farm that will look very different come April 2017.

Today we will take a look at the many changes coming to Green City Acres, along with they why behind those changes.

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Shannon Jones, a young farmer from River Hebert, Nova Scotia joins me to talk about what it is like to be a young farmer on her farm, Broadfork Farm. She started the farm with her partner Bryan Dyck in 2011.

Both Shannon and Bryan farmed on other farms for many years before they started their own farm. The lived simply and knew what they could get by without. That made the transition to farming a lot easier. Their path of frugality is one path into farming. But like Shannon said, find what works for you and don't just copy what someone else did.

At the end of the day it is very clear that Shannon loves what she does. Living her dream, working her dream job, as part of the next generation of farmers.

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"Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
 
This episode is about those secret sorrows, it's an inside look at the world of depression and suicide.  Depression that affect 20 million Americans a year.  And depression is like a war, you either win or die trying.

Today's episode features some stories of people fighting that war.

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Homesteader Justin Rhodes of AbundantPermaculture.com takes on the question - You have kids, how do you work from home and get anything done?

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Stefan Sebkowiak of Miracle Farms joins me to talk about the what's lacking in organic systems - biodiversity. And why organic is good, but creating a polyculture is a lot better.

Stefan started out his journey purchasing a conventional non-organic orchard. He worked on converting it over to organic and realized that something wasn't right, something was missing. The system was lacking the biodiversity that you see in nature.

So Stefan converted over his organic orchard into a permaculture, polyculture based system. He removed a lot of apple trees and replaced them with other fruit trees and support species. He added more diversity to the system giving him more products to sell, more wildlife, and ultimate a healthier, more resilient system.

A lot of commercial orchardists say that polyculture won't work. Stefan has show that on a tree by tree basis he is getting as much yield as a conventional orchard.

He is out there trying to prove that you gross $1.00 per square foot in a polyculture system that value adds from multiple yields - poultry, fruit, vegetables, herbs, etc.

"You can read a lot, but you need to go out and test things."

Mycologist and author Peter McCoy of RadicalMycology.com takes on the question - In a perfect world, what would be your ideal recipe for a substrate mixture that is fairly universal in terms of species of mushrooms that would grow on it?

To learn more about Peter and see all of the ASK Peter episodes visit permaculturevoices.com/peter.

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Busy versus effective.

Two different ways of getting stuff done.

Think of busy as the pinball in a pinball machine, a lot of bouncing around randomly, getting some stuff done, but not in the most linear way. Where effective is like the bowling ball headed down the lane, a straight shot targeting a specific pin. Both lead to results, the busy route does a lot more moving per unit of work done.

Usually these two routes are mutually exclusive. Busy people aren't effective, and effective people aren't busy.

The danger in being a busy body, is just that, you are just busy; you are doing a lot of work, maybe the right work, maybe not, maybe in the right order, maybe not, and the cost of being busy is a loss of time.

Whereas the effective person does what they need to do when they need to do it based on the time that they have available and the priority of the task at hand. This saves the effective person time, allowing them to get more done, or just have more free time.

Time can be a major constraint for entrepreneurs. You can’t get more of it, and we all only have 24 hours in a day, so using that time effectively is going to determine what your lifestyle looks like.

Today I am talking to an entrepreneur who has made shifts in their life to make their time less busy, and more effective.

It's Erik Ohslen of Permaculture Artisans.  Erik's been on the show a few times in the past, and if you have heard those shows that you will know that he founded the successful landscape design and build company Permaculture Artisans.

In addition to running that company, Erik also is a part of several other businesses, and he's married, and he has kids.

How does he make it all work?

That's the focus on today's episode.

I am going to dig into Erik's new business venture, ForeSite mapping, and the strategy behind that.

The second half of the episode will get into how to balance family and business?

The key in all of this, is to make effective decisions, so you are less busy with your time.

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Part three of our series on Small Scale Farming on the Cheap - What's the least you could spend to start a farm?

Last week in Episode 23 we started going through the equipment needed, or perceived to be needed, when you start a farm along with the costs and advantages associated with that equipment.

Given that this is Part 3 it probably makes more sense to listen to Part 1 and Part 2 first.

Last week we left of the talk on equipment wrapping up with the tiller.

We'll start today with a little bit of warmup on macro business talking before jumping back into the list discussing hand tools.

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I welcome Frank Golbeck of Golden Coast Mead on the show today.

Frank story is a great example of someone who went after their dreams in a smart and systematic way. He isn’t any different than any of us. He didn’t start with a huge some of money or some other advantage. But the difference between Frank and a lot of people is that took on the scary unknown, the hard part starting.

Fast forward ahead a few years and the dream has become a reality. Things still aren’t easy, but they are very real and Frank is enjoying every moment of it.

No matter where you are at in your life, I think Frank’s story is inspirational and highly copyable. Hopefully something in here will resonate with you and will inspire you to start that thing that you always wanted to do.

Mycologist and author Peter McCoy of RadicalMycology.com takes on the question - If I grow mushrooms on soil contaminated with oil or heavy metals, will the mushroom be safe to eat?  

To learn more about Peter and see all of the ASK Peter episodes visit permaculturevoices.com/peter

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Imagine it's your first year in college and you get an offer to go be an apprentice on farm.

You've never farmed before. And you've never really thought about farming before.

Taking the offer means that you would need to drop out of college to commit to the apprenticeship.

And so would you future wife, because you're also engaged.

She isn't from a farming family or background either.

So it's you two, in college for something that isn't ag related, dropping out out college to take an apprentice ship on a farm.

What would you do?

Most people would say tell me more.

Well, this is a farm raising chickens on grass. And this farm is located in Swoope, VA and it's run by a farmer named Joel Salatin.

What would you do? Would you and your wife drop out of college to accept the invitation to be apprentices or not?

A lot of people would say yes.

But it's 2016.

What if you got this same offer in 1996 when very few people outside of the area knew who Joel Salatin was, it's 1996 when pastured poultry wasn't a thing, and it's 1996 and you are going to be the second ever apprentice on Joel's farm.

It's not the same slam dunk answer that it might be for many of you as it is today.

That's the exact question that my guest, John McAuley was faced with back in 1996.

To quit school and farm, or not.

Let's find out how that played out.

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Homesteader Justin Rhodes of AbundantPermaculture.com talks about creating Permaculture Chickens live on stage at PV3.

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Part two of our series on Small Scale Farming on the Cheap - What's the least you could spend to start a farm?.

Last week in episode 22 we covered the base principles costs and equipment associated with farm startup.

We established the point that tools are simply one leg on the stool of success.

The tools should never hold you back. It's never going to be just the tools that make you successful. Yet, good tools can make job easier.

That show focused on the concepts and the ideas behind the why.

Today's show focuses on the what. What do you actually need and how much does it costs.

This episode is the first of a few digging into that question.

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“These side issues, the longer they go on and we don’t face reality, the more people that are going to die, and the more trillions of dollars it is going to cost, so time is not on our side.  We need to act.  Most people want to act.  Institutions are holding us up.  Only ordinary people can lead and act.  And it is time to move.” Allan Savory

This interview was conducted with Allan Savory several years ago at PV1.

For more from Allan listen to Rhodesia to Long Beach. 50 Years of Struggle, Persistence and Success with Allan Savory (PVP055)

Joel Salatin's talk on Stacking Fiefdoms from PV1.

"The whole idea is to create customized fiefdoms so that people are autonomous and have the authority to run their own fiefdom within your own umbrella, and you can't believe how many things you can get done that way."

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Today we will try to break down the holistic context into bites that are more digestible and present it in a way that might be easier for some people to understand.  

This is a tough subject to take on, and I think even Allan Savory would admit that, even stating in his book “the concept of holistic goal develop slowing winding its way through many wrong turns and dark passages.  It would prove to be more difficult to articulate than any other aspect of Holistic Management and it continues to evolve to this day."

Kudos to Allan Savory for coming up with this framework, it’s his shoulders that we are standing on during this episode.

Let’s get into it and try to deconstruct the holistic context, with my co-host Javan Bernakevitch.

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Homesteader Justin Rhodes of AbundantPermaculture.com takes on the question - If you are processing broilers on a homestead level, what type of equipment do you think you need?

To learn more about Justin and see all of the ASK Justin episodes visit permaculturevoices.com/justin.

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