I've been exploring food for about a
decade, since 2011, when I woke up to
the globalized, industrialized food system
and realized it was basically causing
destruction to everything that I loved.
To people, to the planet, to other
species. The thing was I realized it was
not just the globalized, industrialized
food system, but I was a part of that.
Everything that I was eating was being
shipped long distances across the world.
It was in packages, in plastic that was
leaving trash behind for future
generations. It was sprayed with
pesticides. it was animals raised in
horrible conditions. I realized I was a
part of all of that. That was back in
2011. I decided I was going to change
my life to eat in a way that didn't
consume the planet, but actually helped
the planet. I had a big question from the
from the very beginning, but it was a far
off question. "Would it be possible to
actually step away from this globalized,
industrialized food system?" "Would it be
possible to step away from big ag and
actually produce all of my own food?"
"Could I grow and forage one-hundred
percent of my food?" That has been a
question for about eight years now. About
two years ago I decided I was actually
going to find the answer to that question
not just by looking at the internet,
which I did and I could not find anyone
doing it . I decided I was going to find
the answer by doing it and seeing if it
was possible. Could I grow and forage
everything that I eat for an entire year?
Nothing packaged or processed, nothing
shipped long distances, no pesticides,
literally knowing every ingredient that I
put in my body, including the medicine as
well (my food being my medicine).That is
why I ended up in Orlando Florida.That is
why I'm here today. I'm standing here
because I finished the year two days ago.
Today is the second day after growing and
foraging one-hundred percent of my food.
(crowd claps and cheers)
Proof that it is indeed possible!
I am the one standing here tonight, but I
am only proof that the community can do
this. There is no way that I could have
done this without the people in this
room. Orlando Permaculture being a big
big part of it. Hundreds of people! It
took hundreds of people to feed me, not
by bringing my food to me, or farming it
for me, but through the knowledge, the
education, the spending time with people,
getting plants from people. The only
reason I was able to do this is because
of the community. Why Orlando? Why did I
choose to live in Orlando? I was passing
through here for the first time in 2016.
I was invited to speak connected with
Orlando Permaculture and Fleet Farming.
My partner at the time, Cheryl and I just
felt welcomed here. We had been travelling
all over. We had not felt more welcome
than right here. We were telling people
that we were looking for a spot to
possibly settle down and I had this
project in mind. People said "Yeah, come
here!" We felt very welcomed, but also the
thing that I liked about Orlando is there
is a community, but there's a blossoming
community. I wanted to be in a place where
I could affect positive change. That did
not mean, for me, being in Berkeley
California where there's already a lot
of change makers. I could make a
difference, but there is already a lot
going on, but not rural Alabama where
people would not really listen to me.
Central Florida and Orlando is this great
great middle ground right now where there
are a lot of people (as you can see in
this room) that really care about this.
We all know where we are. We are in
Orlando, one extremely consumer-istic
city. That was one of the reasons that I
chose Orlando.I felt it was the right
place to make a difference. The other
part was the year-round growing season.
I thought that if I have a chance to do
this Orlando is a really good place to
give it my first shot. The reason why I
wanted to do it in one of the easier
places is because going into this, I had
next to no actual growing experience.
When I moved to Orlando, before this I had
only had a couple of small raised beds
back in San Diego.I grew a little bit of
greens, some herbs and some tomatoes. I
looked back at that and all the mistakes
I was making were just crazy. There was
a tomato hornworm and I thought that it
that it was so cute. I loved it. I let it
eat my tomatoes, my tomato plant. Tonight
I was going through my old photos to find
photos to show you.This is the small,
little greenhouse that I made when I first
got here. I look back and I know how
little I knew then, because there's no
sunlight hitting this greenhouse. This is
is under a balcony. There's no way those
plants would grow. When I moved here I
did not know how much water to put on
seeds, I did not know how much sunlight a
garden needed. I was just figuring out all
of the most basic things. I was trying to
do it quickly.My plan was to have six
months of getting here before I started
my year of growing and foraging all of my
of my food. I had another big problem,
and that was that I did not own any land.
I arrived here not only not knowing how
to grow food, but also not owning any
land, and also not having a lot of
experience in the state of Florida. I had
I had been coming here since I was
sixteen, fishing and things like that,
but never had paid attention to the
plants. I certainly had never grown any
any food here. I was new to growing, I
was especially new to Florida and I
I arrived here with just backpack.
Everything I owned fit into a backpack
and I had a few connections. I met Sarah
right here at this church at a Fleet
Farming dinner when I passed through.
When I got here she was one of the first
people that I talked to. I said "Hey
Sarah, what do you think about me staying
in your guest bedroom and turning your
your yard into a garden in exchange?"
That is what I did, This is Sarah's front
yard two years ago. As you can see,
Sarah's yard was grass but she had a
dream. That dream was to turn it into an
abundant garden.This picture was taken
about a month ago.Today I actually had a
really beautiful experience, I was
standing right about where you see me
now. I realized I was way higher up than
the land around me. You can see where I
am, and you can see the sidewalk. You can
see there's quite a bit of height there.
I dug down to see what was below me.
What it started with was sand. Most of
you live around here.You know that we are
basically a former beach, a former ocean
under the water.Starting with sand I had
to turn that into a garden. Two years
later, I started to dig down, today. It
was nothing but black loamy soil for
about six to eight inches. The reason I
was standing that high is because that is
all fertility that was created over the
last two years. I'm going to show you how
I managed to turn front yards into
gardens as one of the things today. As
far as preparation, the idea was that I
was going to give myself six months to
prepare before I was going to launch into
into growing and foraging all of my food.
The reason I was so quick about it was
because I've been a travelling person for
really the last, kind of forever. At
least since 2011, I have never stayed in
one place where I could really grow food.
That was one of the reasons I didn't
know the answer to that question: "Could
I grow and forage all my food?" When I
lived in San Diego I traveled six months
months of the year. Before that I was
consistently traveling. I did not think I
I would want to stay here for too long.
That is why I gave myself six months to
prepare, then a year living here. That
would be eighteen months staying put,
which would be the longest that I had
stayed put since I became unable to stay
put, I suppose. I gave myself six months.
I started trying to figure things out.
I connected with local resources. One of
the first places I came was here to
Orlando Permaculture. I started to buy
local seeds. I searched out local seed
companies. I search out local nurseries.
I went to classes like "Foraging with
Green Dean" and Andy Firk. I went to the
local earth skills gathering and any
opportunity I had. I found local books.
I found websites like Eat the Weeds and
Survival Gardener. I tried to soak in as
much knowledge as I could. It was
basically my full-time job to try to
figure out how to grow and forage all of
my food. These are some of the beginning
plants, getting some trays and starting
to plant seeds. I accumulated everything
one little bit at a time. Some of the
seeds were brought from companies in
other in other parts of the United States
like Baker's Creek Seed Company, for
for example. Most of it was local. Some
of it was Palmer's dumpster, for example,
down the street from here. That is where
I got my sweet potato slips to start of
with The six months turned into a little
bit longer. It ended up ten months before
I actually decided to get started. "Grow
Food Not Lawns," that's probably a saying
that all of you have heard before, but
that was really my core to being able to
do this here. Being in the city of
Orlando poses challenges compared to
being on say, a farm, having that small
space. What I did was I met people in the
community and just like I did with Sarah,
I put six plots through out this
neighborhood, the Audubon Park
neighborhood where I grew my food. I had
that spread out in different areas. This
was the first garden.This is probably a
month into the project. I can see I was a
a little fatter before this year started.
I lost a little bit of weight. The idea of
"growing food not lawns," I like to keep
things pretty simple. I am going share a
little bit about how to turn your yard
into a garden. For that there are six
basic ingredients: cardboard, mulch, soil
or compost, water, sun, and plants, the
basics to turning a yard into a garden.
First, you lay down cardboard. You can
get cardboard for free from dumpsters,
grocery stores, restaurants, and liquor
stores If you go to appliance shops that
sell things like refrigerators your job
Twill be a lot easier because they have
huge pieces of cardboard. Take all the
tape off. Take the staples off and lay
that down. The idea of that is to kill
the grass. Every plant needs to
photosynthesize and if it has no sun, it
it can't create energy and it will die
over time. That cardboard would not stay
not stay put on its own. It is just the
first ingredient. Over that you lay
mulch. You lay about one foot of mulch.
You can see the mulch here. One of the
big focuses of this is "How can we
utilize resources that would otherwise
be completely wasted and do things in a
very inexpensive way?". Mulch is actually
the waste product of tree trimming and
tree cutting down companies. A lot of the
of the time, they actually take that to
the landfill. It is something they have
to deal with. Instead, you can get them
to dump it into your yard. You can do
that through websites like getchipdrop.com.
I will have all of the resources listed
at the end. If you see one of those
companies, you can just walk up to them
in your neighborhood and say, "Hey, do
you want to dump that right on my front
yard?" Cardboard, mulch, the reason that
you have mulch are many. One, it
suppresses the grass to turn your yard
into a garden. Mulch holds in moisture.
Your lawn, if there is nothing there,
when it rains most of it runs right off
into the street. You loose that
opportunity Mulch holds that in. The
other thing mulch does is it breaks down
over time into soil. It also creates an
environment where microorganisms and
fungi, which are very important to
plants. It prevents erosion and holds in
nutrients. It has many, many functions.
The third ingredient is compost, or soil.
If you are living in a place like
Wisconsin, where I am from, there is a
lot of very rich soil and that might not
be needed. If you have a sandy yard, you
need to bring in some nutrients. I got
mushroom compost, which is a resource
that we are blessed to have in Central
Florida. It is a waste product of the
mushrooms that many of us buy at the
grocery stores. Mushroom compost was my
growing medium. Then sun, that is freely
available to us. There is not much we
have to do there. Water. Also something
that can be freely available to us from
the sky. We live in a place where we get
get a good amount of water year-round.
Even our dry time of the year, we still
get about three inches of rain per year.
If you are doing rain water harvesting,
you can capture a whole lot of that. The
other ingredients would be plants. You
can start from seeds, cuttings, and
buying potted plants. There are probably
some other ways to do it. I am still kind
of a rookie. I should say that from the
beginning. That is the basic ingredients
and that is what I did to turn the front
yards into gardens. What were the
guidelines for this project of growing
and foraging all of my food? What that
meant is obviously, no grocery stores, no
restaurants. That included my medicine,
so, no pharmacy. I had to grow or forage
my own medicines as well. A lot of people
know me for having done a lot of dumpster
diving to raise awareness about food
waste. Some people call that urban
foraging, but for this project that did
not count as foraging. The idea was, I
had already learned in the past that I
could live solely off food from grocery
store dumpsters. I wanted to step
away from big ag and see if I could live
independently of that, which would not
mean eating those foods from dumpsters.
No dumpster diving. No drinks at a bar.
no eating food from a friend's pantry.
No going to my friends' food forests,
because let's face it, if I ate at the
food forest life would have been too
easy. I would not have learned nearly as
much because this is Orlando Permaculture
there is dozens of food forests that I
could visit. No food forests. I literally
had to grow or forage everything for the
entire year. This picture is on day one.
That was November 11, 2018. You would
think when I finally began that I would
have maybe, eaten quite a few meals that
I had completely grow and foraged, but I
had a lot going on. My first meal was the
first meal that I had ever eating one-
hundred percent grown or foraged. When I
started on day one, I was definitely in
on the deep end. Jumping into the deep
end. Where did I live during this time?
My goal was originally to live off-grid
in the city and do all of this off the
grid as well. Over time, I realized that
off the grid would have been a whole
other level of the challenge that I was
not quite able to do. I was not off the
grid, but what I did is I built a tiny
house homestead. You can see it in the
back yard here. This is the drone shot.
Here is another picture of it from closer
up. The idea was to try to live in a way
where I was living as much as possible
in harmony with the earth, here in the
city and in a way that caused as little
harm to the earth. It might not seem like
it in the city of Orlando, but we are
indeed in a natural environment, of
sorts. Even though there is concrete
around, everywhere is nature. We are
nature. Even being in the city of Orlando
my idea was to be as integrated as
possible with the elements as I could,
to actually use resources as effectively
and as wisely as I could, and improve
the quality of life around me. At this
tiny house, a couple of the key things
for sustainable living: there was a basic
compost bin, which meant anything like
food waste, yard waste, paper, cardboard,
all of that stuff could go right into the
compost to build fertility for my
gardens. There was rainwater harvesting.
My shower was a rainwater harvesting
system. That water that I used to
shower, after it came off the roof from
rain, after it cleaned me, it went onto
bananas and then could grow bananas. The
water from my kitchen was also from
rainwater harvesting. After I washed
dishes and washed my hands, that went
behind the sink. That is called gray
water. Back there I planted taro and
turmeric. All of that [water] was also
used to grow food. The idea of this is to
keep the water on the land. It is the
opposite idea of a lot of today's
society. [If] you look at how the gutters
any the downspouts are set up, it is to
send the water off of your property into
the street and then into our storm water
run-off system. My goal was to try to
keep as much of that water as possible,
but still let it flow off during
hurricanes. I am not talking about
holding every ounce. That was the idea
there, as well as fertility. Keeping all
of that fertility on the land. I also
had compost toilet, so I could use that.
Over this year I grew and foraged three-
hundred different foods. I grew one-
hundred different foods in my garden and
two-hundred different foods that I
foraged. There are three-hundred sixty-
five days in a year. What that means is
that I foraged a new food for almost
every single day of the entire year. That
is quite a bit of diversity. A lot of
people imaging that I would be missing
all of the different tastes and favors,
but the reality was that between the
three-hundred different foods that I
foraged, there was quite the diversity.
I am going to walk you through that.
A large part of tonight's focus is how
you can do this. Not necessarily one-
hundred percent, that is obviously really
extreme and very challenging. How you can
grow and forage, or how you can produce
as much of your food as you would like
to. I am going to go into detail with a
lot of the actual points. One of the
really important ones: so many people
dream of self-sufficiency. It is the
dream of millions of people to grow one-
hundred percent of their food, to live
off the land, to never have to take a trip
to the grocery store. For most of us,
that is really just a dream because the
globalized food system is far too easy,
far too far-reaching, far too convenient
and alluring. Even the people that are
largely living off the land, one of the
biggest challenges is calories, actually
growing all of your calories. Here in
Florida. we are not in a grain state.
You do not see big fields of wheat and
corn and things like that out here.
Grains were not going to be the way that
I was going feed myself, like billions
of people around the world do. Tubers
are actually what we have going for
ourselves in Central Florida. My first
calorie crop is sweet potato. That is
what I am holding in my had there. Some
of the sweet potatoes were like what you
would see at the store, small ones, but
the biggest sweet potato was over five
pounds. Image if you but a five pound
bag of potatoes, one sweet potato can be
that big or even larger. In a small area,
definitely smaller than this stage, I
grew about five-hundred pounds of sweet
potato. It is truly one of the most
powerful crops we have here in Central
Florida. Not only can you eat the tubers,
the potatoes themselves, but the greens
are also edible. What I was told is that
sweet potatoes are the most useful, as
far as any crop goes, you can get more
out of that per acre that any other crop
that is grown because of the calories
from the potato and then the nutrients
from the greens. It is really important
to look at all of the elements in the
plant because most people who bought
sweet potatoes at the store have never
eaten a sweet potato green, but it is a
really, really useful resource. Sweet
potatoes were one of my main crops. Then,
yuca is another one, also called
cassava. Now, what you will see tonight
with a lot of the plants that I am going
to show you is that these are plants that
most people in Caribbean cuisines and a
lot of Central and South American
cuisines, these are staple crops to
them. If you go away from the South into
much of the United States, these are
foods that most people have never heard
of. Many of these you will see as
staples in much of the Caribbean, Central
and South America. Yuca being one of
those, or cassava. I am just going to
say, it is not 'YUCK-ah.' That is
y-u-c-c-a. YO"-ka is y-u-c-a. Yucca is a
desert plant that does not produce big
tubers. Yuca is a plant grows in the semi-
tropics and tropics that produces big
tubers. The nice thing about yuca is you
can plant it along your fence line. All
you have to do for yuca is get a cutting,
which is a stick like what I am holing
in my hand there, just a part of the
stick. All around there are just the
parts that I broke off that grows above
the ground. Any one of those sticks, you
just take that stick and you put it in
the ground. That is going to turn into
five pounds of yuca, or sometimes even
fifteen pounds of yuca. This is what is
called a 'survival crop.' One billion
people around the world depend on yuca.
The reason they depend on it is because
it grows ridiculously easily, takes very
few nutrients, and does not need much
water at all. That makes it very much a
survival crop. The other great thing
about it is that you can leave it as your
basic calorie bank in the ground. It can
sit there for years. At Peanut Butter
Palace, there is one that was there long
before I got there and it is still there
today and they can go down and dig that
food out. It's a survival crop. It is not
the most nutritious. It does not have a
lot of nutrients, but it has calories. It
is twice as calorie dense as sweet
potato. Very important crop. I got my
nutrients elsewhere. We will go into
that, but calories came from tubers.
Another tuber is wild yam, or dioscorea
alata. I am not sure if I pronounced that
correctly, but it is an idea. I mostly
use common names rather than the genus
and species. Wild yam. Winged yam. This
is actually formerly a domesticated yam
that got into the wild. The largest one
that I dug up this year was with James
and it was one-hundred fifty-seven
pounds. I weigh one-hundred fifty-three
pounds. A yam as heavy as me, and that is
just one yam. Imagine how much food you
can get out of that. That is thirty
five-pound bags of potatoes for one yam.
We found this wild yam in a reserve about
ten miles west of here. Before I started,
as I was preparing, I actually found a
amount of it. There might be as much as
one-thousand calories on the Cady Way
Trail right over by the golf course,
growing right along the golf course. That
was actually on day one. I think one of
my first meals was the wilds yams right
there from the golf course. An amazing
plant. You can also grow it. There are
a lot of people who grow it in Central
Florida. It is great for foraging for
calories, or growing your own calories.
Another really important crop for me this
year has been papaya. It is absolutely,
for Central Florida, one of the plants
that I would recommend the most. You can
eat papaya green. If you have ever had
Thai papaya salad, for example, that is
green papaya. There are so many ways you
can prepare it. You can cut it up like
potatoes and saute it. You can turn it
into papaya kraut. Ferment it, which I
am going to talk a little bit about
later. It is not as dense in calories as
the tubers, but still has quite a few
calories. As you can see from this one
tree, I had probably five papaya trees
and i never ate five percent of the
papayas that it put out. Papaya trees are
a really, really worthwhile thing to
grow. Another thing is Seminole pumpkin.
All of those pumpkins that you see right
there came from the seeds of two
pumpkins that I had for dinner. Before
this project started, I was down at
Sustainable Kashi in Sebastian. We had
Seminole pumpkin and I said "Can I take
these seeds home?". I was just as excited
as could be. I had planted very few
things in my life at that time. That was
before I got started. I took these seeds
home and was just so excited to plant
them. Those seeds, from two pumpkins,
turned into one-hundred sixty-nine
pumpkins that I grew in two of the front
yards. A beautiful thing about Seminole
pumpkins is they also store. I lived
basically outside. No air conditioning in
my tiny house. If it was ninety degrees
outside, it was ninety degrees inside.
They lasted through an entire summer on
my shelves. They are a truly amazing
crop. Most of you do not have to worry
about that because you have air
conditioning. I have heard of them
lasting even two years inside. Another
amazing crop. Similar to butternut squash
in a way. It is bright, fleshy, bright
orange on the inside. That, for me, was a
big lesson in the power of the seed.
Just think about it. If there are one-
hundred fifty people in this room; there
are about one-hundred fifty seeds in a
pumpkin. If we just had two pumpkins
between [the people in] this room, each
one of us could take home one seed, turn
that into say, ten pumpkins and that
would already be in the tens of thousands
of seeds. you could create food
sovereignty so quickly just with growing
our own seeds. It is truly amazing. If
you order a one-pound bag of kale seeds,
I looked at how many seeds are in there.
It is about one-point-five million. One
bag of kale seeds has enough seeds in it
for the entire metro Orlando area to have
their own kale. The seed is an extremely,
extremely powerful thing! Ron Finley, he
calls himself a gangster gardener out in
L.A. He is a friend of mine. One of the
things that he has said the most that I
absolutely love is "Growing your own food
is like printing your own money." It
truly is. You can literally create
abundance out of almost nothing. It is
truly special. Another really important
crop for this area is bananas. When I
first got here, for some reason I did not
believe that bananas would really produce.
I looked around at all of my friends'
banana plants and I never saw bananas.
I thought, I see these people growing
banana plants, but I never actually see
any bananas. Now, sure enough the banana
stand over at Sarah's has three racks on
it. I just harvested one of the racks. It
already has two others, and we already
harvested one, and I am eating fresh
bananas from over at Lisa's house and
fresh bananas from Jen's house. Bananas
really do grow extremely well here. You
can also forage them. Dickson Azalea Park
has been one of my sources for wild
foraged bananas. I have harvested bananas
there multiple times. Apparently, nobody
knows the stand is there, because when I
went aware for the summer there were five
racks of bananas and I thought, "Surely
someone is going to harvest these while
I am gone." I came back. All five of them
I could tell had rotted and not been
harvested. If you want wild bananas,
Dickson Azalea Park is a great place to
search it out. I am not going to tell you
exactly where it is. You will just have
to scout it out. I found wild bananas
growing within five miles of here in at
least three difference locations, public
parks that you can go seek out. Bananas
are a great crop for growing and foraging.
You can wait until they are yellow and eat
them as a delicious fruit. When they are
green you can fry them and have fried
green bananas. You can dry and blend the
entire thing: the peel and the banana
inside to make green banana flour. It is
a really great crop for here. Coconuts
were one of the most important foods for
this year. I shared some of my main ways
of getting calories, which are the energy
of life. Without having enough calories
we slowly would dwindle away. It is one
of the most important foundations. We can
be nutrient deficient for quite a while,
but if we do not have enough calories
then we are in more trouble. Calories
were my big focus because I knew I could
make it through the year not getting
enough nutrients, but if I did not have
enough calories I knew I would not be
able to make it. That is why I started
with calories. Coconuts are an interesting
crop because they are very high in
calories. They are also high in fat and
they also have protein. The water inside
of it is high in electrolytes. It is often
called "Nature's Gatorade." The meat
itself is high in oil and fat. You can
either dry it and shred it and use it as
coconut shreds. You can dry it and just
make chunks and have that as a snack. You
can dry it and blend it and make your own
coconut butter, or you can dry it and
press it and make your own coconut oil.
You can also make your own coconut milk
just by blending it up straining it. Then
you have delicious high-fat coconut milk.
I have probably eaten two-hundred coconuts
over the last year. If I did not have the
coconuts, I do not know if I would have
made it through this year. You cannot
grow coconuts in Orlando, They are more
tropical. You can forage coconuts all
over South Florida. All of these coconuts
that are brown are mostly from picking
up on the ground around coconut trees.
They were growing in public parks. They
are also growing in places like
nurseries, people's backyards, all over
the place. Coconuts were one of my
absolute most important crops of the
year. For protein, that was one of the
biggest challenges of the project. Where
would I get my protein? Probably one of
the most commonly asked questions online.
I grew some of my own protein. These I am
standing with are called pigeon peas or
gandules. They were one of the most
important crops of this year. Also very
much a survival crop. It needs minimal
nutrients, minimal water and it is a very
nutrient dense, calorie dense, protein
dense plant. Behind me is the pigeon pea
tree. You can the flowers there and then
those are dried pigeon peas that you
would use just like you would use
lentils, or black-eyed peas, or any dried
bean. I grew some of my own protein, I
tried growing sunflower seeds for protein
and did not have much success with that
because of the squirrels. I grew some
peanuts, but also did not have a lot of
success with that. The other crop that I
grew was southern peas. That was another
crop. It is a ground cover that is really
helpful in the garden and also a nitrogen
fixer and an important protein source.
Other protein sources: fish was always my
main plan. If there was one thing I was
experienced in before this project, it
was fishing. I started fishing when I was
about eight and it has actually been one
of my biggest passions of my life. It is
one of my most important ways of
connecting with the land. I got away from
it for a while because I was vegan for a
while and it just did not sit right with
me for a period of time. For most of my
life, I have been fishing. I started
fishing again about three or four years
ago. My main plan for fish was mullet.
Probably most of the people in this room
have not eaten mullet. It is not
generally a really highly regarded fish.
I would say one of the most important
lessons as far as a food lesson that you
could walk away with is that most
everything that is not highly regarded by
American culture is an amazing food.
For other cultures it is the food of life
if Americans don't like it, generally.
Mullet is an amazing fish. It is very
high in fat, the beneficial fats. It is
very abundant, still in Florida. The
reason I wanted to focus on mullet is
because it is very low on the food chain.
It only eats plants, so it does not
bioaccumulate. Bioaccumulation - you have
probably all heard about how eagles were
affected by DDT in the past and then
their egg shells crumbled and that made
eagles almost extinct in the United
States. That was because there was DDT
that built up in the fish and the eagles
eat so many fish that it builds up in the
cycle. Once it gets up to the predator so
much of it is in them that it can affect
them greatly. Now, there are a lot of
bioaccumulants. If you are eating game
fish like tuna, for example there is a
lot of accumulation of mercury in that.
The reason I wanted to mostly eat mullet
is because it only eats plants, so it
does not accumulate by eating fish that
eat bigger fish, and bigger fish, and
bigger fish and so on. Mullet was one of
my plans. This is a red fish here. I did
not actually catch enough mullet to have
a really good picture, or never got
around to taking a good one. Mullet were
harder [to catch] than I expected.
interestingly enough, fishing was weirdly
the most challenging thing. I could just
never catch enough fish. I ate squirrel,
but not because I could not have enough
fish, but because squirrels were eating
my sunflowers. A lot of you are new to
permaculture in this room tonight, but
there is one common saying in permaculture
and that is "the problem is the solution."
How can you turn the problem into the
solution? Well, here I was trying to grow
a plant-based protein. They were eating
my plant-based protein, so I ate them
instead. It definitely caused a little
controversy. Some people like it, I guess.
I may as well answer the question "How
does it taste?". It just tastes like meat.
It tastes similar to chicken, not too
different. I only ate about nine
squirrels, so it was by no means a main
source of food. The other thing I thought
about hunting was wild boar. They are
invasive. this is not something that I
did, so I cannot speak from experience,
there are, I think, a couple of million
wild boar in Florida. It is one of the
most sustainable ways to get protein, to
get meat in Florida and other parts of
the Southern United States. They are
highly invasive and they destroy a lot of
the land. They are an amazing resource
that we can utilize. I did not end up
doing that. The reason I did not is
because most people who hunt it, who
offered to take me out they bait it. My
rule was I could only use food that I
grew to catch other food. I did not have
bait for the pigs and that is why I never
got around to actually doing that. The
reason I did not raise animals - I'm not
going to get into raising animals today
because I did not do that, but chickens,
quails, rabbits - you can also do
aquaponics for fish, tilapia is a common
one. There are a lot of ways to raise
animals. The reason I did not do that is
because, again, I would have to raise all
of the food for them. On a small plot, I
did not have the ability to grow all of
the food for the chickens, or to have any
grass-fed animals or anything like that.
That is why raising animals was out.
The other solution is number three, and
that is car-killed animals. I have not
really hunted much, so my solution was to
find animals that had already died. David
and I, David Warfel - there he is - he
and I went up to Gainesville around New
Year's searching for dome deer. Joe
Pierce was going to help us out. We went
up to his place near Gainesville. We found
two [deer], but they were too old. We
were not able to harvest those. Then, it
got a little hot. As you can imagine,
when it is ninety degrees by nine in the
morning in Florida, that is not the best
time to try to harvest deer. I did not
actually harvest and deer in Florida, but
this summer I took a trip to Wisconsin.
I wanted to connect with my homeland.
I felt a strong desire to learn the
plants where I was from. I decided to
take a trip up there. I will talk a
little bit more about that at the end.
One of my goals while I was there was to
get a deer. When I got to Wisconsin, I
was really deficient in fat and protein.
This was something I was really trying
for and it took me a whole month before I
was able to get one. Towards the end I
harvested five deer in Wisconsin. That
ended up being one of my main sources of
food the entire year. It probably made up
ten percent plus of my food for the
entire year. One of my other main sources
of food was honey. Sugar is really
important. One of the big challenges this
year, I thought was going to be
chocolate. That is actually one of my
favorite foods in the whole world, dark
chocolate. My former partner Cheryl used
to call me a chocolate vampire because if
it was around me I did bad things. I
would just eat everyone's share of
chocolate and not be able to resist. I
loved it! So, that was one of the big
things. Could I get by without chocolate?
The solution was honey. This year I think
I harvested five gallons of honey from my
bees. That is a lot of honey. That is
about, let's see... Anyway, five gallons!
It is a huge amount of honey. It is one
of those big blue jugs. Honey was a
really important source of calories, of
enjoyment. It added a lot of value to
different meals. I fermented with it.
Sugar cane is another source of sugar
that you can do here. That is something
that is actually pretty easy, but it
takes time. It is just not one of the
things that I ever did. I actually got
a whole bunch of sugarcane cuttings, but
they all rotted and I never got around to
it. It is an important lesson when you
are trying to grow and forage one-hundred
percent of your food. It is not that
necessarily any one thing is challenging,
it is that trying to do everything is
challenging. People would often say
"Well, why don't you just do that!?".
Well, because I am already working
seventy hours a week on my food, so I
just did not have time to do that. That
is one of the big differences between
shooting for one-hundred percent and say,
eighty percent. It is actually that last
ten to twenty percent, making your own
oils and the calories and all of that
that is one of the most difficult parts.
Salt. Before I started this project I was
actually on a train in Germany and I was
just thinking "How the heck am I going to
get salt?". I never had seen anyone
eating salt that they harvested. I had
very little experience with it
whatsoever. There were a couple of
stories I had in mind, one was Gandhi's
salt match where he walked to the ocean.
He picked up salt from the ocean and that
was his protest against the British.
I knew that they literally just picked up
salt. I thought, "Okay, I know it can be
done". I knew there were the salt flats
in Bolivia, the salt flats of Uyuni.
I knew there were places, but I did not
think that was in Florida. I was pretty
sure of that. I did not know how the heck
I was going to do salt. I was very lost.
I did the research and basically, all you
have to do it go to the ocean, scoop up
some salt water, put it in a pot, turn on
your stove. All the water will boil off
and then you are left with salt. It is
just as simple as that. Salt water is
about three and a half percent salt by
volume. A gallon of salt water gives you
about a half-cup of salt. That is a fair
bit of salt. If you go and get five
gallons [of sea water], that could be all
of the salt you need for an entire year.
We can be producing all of our own salt
really quite easily. The most sustainable
way to do it is not to put it on your
stove. You can just let that water
evaporate. Use the sun. Let it evaporate
over time. I would prefer to do that, but
I always just boiled it. Usually I boiled
it on wood, waste wood from the
neighborhood, like heat-treated pallets
that did not have chemicals in them, or
wood from the trees in my neighborhood.
Mushrooms were another really important
source of food for me. This is Pete
Kanaris and I. This is two different
species, or three different species of
chanterelle mushrooms. When I started
this, I had maybe foraged mushrooms one
or two times. I would say probably, when
people think about foraging that is one
of the things that scares them the most
is mushrooms. There is one way to never
die or never get sick foraging and that
is, only eat something of you are one-
hundred percent sure what it is. You will
never have problems foraging if you only
eat things that you are one-hundred
percent sure what they are. That is the
number one rule of foraging. One way to
do that is triple confirmation. You don't
take one person's word. You don't take
from me tonight that chanterelles are
edible. You first have three different,
good sources. you can decide whether I am
a good source or not and decide whether
that is your first source. Three
different, good resources before you eat
something from the wild. Triple
confirmation. I probably foraged about
twenty species of mushrooms between here
and my trip to Wisconsin. In Florida,
chanterelles are probably one of the more
abundant and easier. It is one of the
most beginner, easy mushrooms to start
with. I said I was growing and foraging
one-hundred percent of my own food and
that included my own medicine. For the
last year nature was my garden; it was
my pantry, and it was my pharmacy. If I
got sick this year, I could not take any
medicine to get better. that meant first
and foremost, I had to take care of my
health, preventative health care. Today,
with our modern health insurance it is
something like seventy-five percent of
all of our doctors' visits come down to
what we eat, exercise, basic movement,
and our level of stress and anxiety.
Seventy-five percent of our doctors'
visits can be taken care of through
preventative health care. Just basic eating
healthy, moving and living a life that is
not so stressful and anxious. For me,
food was my medicine and medicine was my
food. There is really is no clear
difference between the two. They are all
working together. Every green that I
ate, every vegetable, every fruit, the
meat that I ate, the fish, it all was my
medicine. It is just like we need to take
care of our plants to have healthy
plants. It is the exact same with us. If
we are healthy, we are less likely to get
sick. A couple of my most important
medicines were elderberry syrup. That
came from foraging elderberries, which
are an amazingly abundant resource in
Central Florida, combining that with
honey from my bees to make elderberry
syrup. I would often put turmeric and
ginger and sometimes fermented garlic in
there. I took a tablespoon of elderberry
syrup most every day of this entire year.
I prevents cold and flu, or if you get
cold or flu you can use it to reduce it
or take care of it. Fire cider was
another one of my important medicines.
I made vinegar from fruit, apple cider
vinegar but you can make it from almost
any fruit. Then onion, garlic horseradish
and red peppers, serrano peppers and
maybe another ingredient or two. Ferment
it over a period of a couple of months,
probably. That was something that I took
most days as well. Fire cider, turmeric.
I grew my own turmeric. That is one of
the easiest crops that you can grow in
central Florida. It is like ten to twenty-
five dollars a pound for organic stuff at
the grocery store. It grows amazingly
easily as well. Just go to the grocery
store, buy some organic turmeric, put it
in the ground and then you never have to
buy it again. Simple as that. Ideally
you can source it locally, but if not
you can literally just get organic stuff
from the grocery store and start growing
your own. Garlic, I consider that a
medicine as well. Reishi mushrooms are
something that I foraged, another
medicine. Herbal teas, plantago, or
broadleaf plantain, that to me is a
medicine that very much calls to me. If I
get stung by my bees, not my bees, I do
not own them, but the bees that I
steward. If they sting me and I do not
do anything, I swell up big. I should
have put a picture on there, but a lot of
you have probably seen my face after
getting stung. I swell up, but if I take
some honey and dome dried plantago and
I put it on there within about two
minutes, I generally don't swell at all.
It is a pretty amazing medicine. It grows
probably in most states of the United
States. You can forage it or you can grow
it in the garden here in Florida. Food
was my medicine and medicine was my food.
Here I am with Jeff. That was early on
collecting elderberries. This is out by
Blanchard Park over towards Peanut Butter
Palace. Again, just an amazing resource.
It grows all over and you can grow it in
your garden. Another one of those kind of
borderline foods or medicine is
fermentation. [It was] one of the most
important ways for me to stay healthy, to
increase the nutrients in my diet, and to
have a well-functioning digestive system.
I did a lot of wild fermentation. What is
wild fermentation? That is taking the
yeast and the bacteria from the air and
using that for fermentation. What would
not be wild fermentation would be a
controlled, sterile environment where you
buy a specific yeast, like baker's yeast,
and you use that to make things bubble or
rise. It that even fermentation? Is that
fermentation? Yeah? So that's
fermentation, but not wild fermentation.
That is the way that most of the beers
that you buy, for example, are done. Wild
fermentation is literally just the yeast
and the bacteria that are in every breath
we take, using that to ferment your food.
All you have to do to attract them is put
food that they want there that they will
eat. Bacteria and yeast love sugar. It is
on every tiny part of our skin. It is in
every breath we take. Every breath we
take, we consume yeast and bacteria. Wild
fermentation. Some of the things that I
have here, for example, this is papaya
kraut. You know sauerkraut, but you can
use the green papaya to make a delicious
ferment. This is jun. Jun is not gin. It
is like kombucha, except it uses honey
and green tea. You can grow green tea
here as well, or yaupon holly. I will
tell you about that in a bit. Fruit scrap
vinegar. Most fruits, especially fruits
that are high in sugar, you can make
vinegar from. The rinds of pineapples
have enough juices left on them still
that you can make vinegar just from the
left-over pineapple scraps. Honey wine
and another one is ginger beer or
turmeric beer. That is not alcohol, even
though it is called beer, but it is
another one that I made. These are some
of my sauerkrauts, here. I did not have a
fridge and I did not have air
conditioning, so I needed to keep them
cold. What I did was build this little
underground storage. It was an
experiment. I did not know if it would
work. I knew it would at least be a
little bit better, probably. The idea was
to keep the things cooler because
fermenting is done best in somewhere like
the mid-seventies, not ninety degrees.
There is some fermenting that can be done
at that [temperature], but sauerkraut and
thing like that are around seventy
degrees. Hard to do it the summer, unless
you are in air conditioning. Then it
does not matter. I had to figure out a
way to keep things a little bit cooler.
My friend Harley built this little
underground storage container. The idea
was at least maybe I would get an extra
month of life out of the sauerkraut. It
not like I could go to the store and buy
cabbage and I could not grow cabbage in
the summer. I had to figure out a way to
make it last. That is how you make it
last, through sauerkraut. I went away,
like I said, to Wisconsin for three
months. When I came back, I opened that
thing up and I still had about three or
four jars of sauerkraut in there. I made
them three months before I left. This was
six month old sauerkraut, sitting in the
ground in Florida, about ninety degrees
every day for those six months. When I
opened that thing I did not know "is this
stuff still going to be good?". I opened
it up. It looked good. I took the cap
off. It smelled good. I just pulled the
little top layer off. That is called the
sacrificial leaf that you put on top.
I bit it and it was some of the most
delicious sauerkraut that I have ever
made. I was a really awesome little
experience, a little experiment to see
that you can do that here even in the
heat of Florida. If you want to get into
wild fermentation, my favorite is "Wild
Fermentation" Sandor Katz, also called
Sandor Kraut. He is also named the Johnny
Appleseed of fermentation by Michael
Pollan. Amazing book. Highly recommend
it. You will learn what you need to know
about wild fermentation. A little bit
about fruit foraging - I did not have the
time to establish fruit trees, Most fruit
trees take a bit of time to produce, a
couple of years. Avocados, for example,
can take five-plus years. I was not able
to grow most of my fruit. Foraging was my
key for most of my fruit. I mentioned
that I grew papayas and bananas, but
for the most part my fruit came from
foraging. Some of the easiest to forage
and easiest to grow fruits are loquat,
mulberry, Suriname cherry, banana,
avocado, citrus, which would be
grapefruit, lemon, oranges, passion
fruit, which is not a tree. It is a vine.
I think I missed starfruit. The ones that
I foraged a lot are loquat, mulberry,
starfruit, Suriname cherry, banana, some
avocado, citrus, banana, not passion
fruit. I grew that. Those are all also
fairly easy to grow. Except citrus
because of citrus greening, but there is
still a ton of citrus in existence. There
is a lot of it out there, even with that
disease. Some more abundant foraging that
I experienced were mango, prickly pear
cactus and white sapote were other great
foraging that I had. A few mentions, as
far as fruit trees: persimmon, cocoa
plum, Java plum, pond apple, sea grapes
are all fruits that I had pretty good
success with. There are hundreds of
fruits that grow in Florida. There are
different fruits that grow in Northern
Florida, Central Florida and South
Florida. We actually have a pretty
diverse state. Those are just some of the
fruits that I experienced. I went to
South Florida for my mangoes. This is
about a day of foraging down there for
mangoes. There are so many mangoes that
it is a problem. What I would do for
foraging for fruit is just ride my bike
around, or be in car depending on the
situation. If I saw a huge mango tree and
there was fruit falling to the ground and
the road, I would just knock on the door
and ask if I could harvest that fruit.
Generally, the answer was yes. Sometimes
it was "Absolutely! Please!" This stuff is
rotting on the ground and causing me
trouble, or falling on my car. A lot of
the time, people wanted it to be taken.
Generally, that was the response. That
was a form of urban foraging. That was
one of the gray areas. A lot of it was
abandoned lots. There are fruit trees
growing in abandoned lots, in the
forests, in public parks, which is all
clear foraging. The stuff that was
growing over the street, on someone's
lawn, that was one of my gray areas as to
whether I completely considered that
foraging. Basically, it is what I
considered foraging. I tried to stick to
all fruit trees that had pretty much
naturalized, where nobody was taking care
of them. They were just largely in
existence, that kind of gray area of
humanity. Ultimately, that was one of the
big things for me. This project was about
stepping away from big ag, but it was not
about stepping away from humanity. It was
not about stepping away from other
people. I realized that almost everything
that I ate was affected by humans in one
way or another. Most of the weeds that I
was eating, a lot of them came from
Europe four-hundred years ago from
humans. That was one of the interesting
lessons. "Wild" and "domesticated," is a
gray area. An important tool for fruit
foraging is a fruit picker. I bought this
for forty dollars at a hardware store.
That allows you to reach way more fruit,
fruit that often would go to waste
because most people do not have a fruit
picker. They just pick the lower stuff.
I would often pick the higher up stuff
that other people definitely would not
have gotten. My meals were definitely not
bland, occasionally bland, but for the
most part not bland. I grew lots of herbs
and spices. The ones that I am going to
list here are the ones that I recommend
for Central Florida that do grow well:
African blue basil, Cuban oregano, holy
basil, garlic chives, green onion, mint,
rosemary, lemon grass, Italian basil,
Thai basil, papalo, which popped up in my
garden. I had no clue what it was. It was
this mystery, but it was a great herb.
Some people consider it close to
cilantro. Cilantro, dill, fennel, thyme,
oregano, curry leaf tree, garlic, sage,
dill seeds, coriander. the dill seeds are
you let dill go to seed and you get dill
seeds. Coriander is cilantro that goes to
seed. Those are just some of the herbs
and spices that I grew this year. I am
just featuring those as the highlights.
I grew a lot of annual greens. Collards
are my top recommendation as far as
annual greens. Some of the ones I grew:
collards, kale arugula, swiss chard,
mustard greens, chicory, lettuce,
cabbage, brassicas (That's the whole
family of broccoli and kale and collards
and such.), Asian greens bok choy and
tatsoi do really well in this area,
nasturtium and amaranth would be a
bunch of the annual greens that I grew.
I really prefer perennial greens though.
For those of you who do not know what
an annual is, that is a plant that
generally produces about once and then
dies. A good example of that is a carrot.
you cannot leave a carrot in the ground
for more carrots to come. You have to
pull that carrot up after about ninety
days and eat that carrot. Otherwise, you
get no food. Perennials, some of them
can be [producing for] three, four, five
years. Rhubarb, in the North generally
lasts for twenty-five years. Oak trees
can be hundreds of years old. Those put
out acorns, which are edible. Perennials
can produce for years, decades, or even
over one century. They are much more
resource efficient. They are more time
efficient. They consume far fewer
resources. Generally, they add nutrition
back to the soil. When you take out a
plant from the soil, you are taking out
nutrients. Perennials, by staying there's
less disruption of the soil. That would
be something that goes hand in hand with
no-till gardening, for example. The
number one plant that I recommend in
Central Florida, if everybody in this
room just had one plant, it would be
moringa. It is also called the vitamin
tree, or the tree of life. It is one of
the most nutrient-dense plants on earth.
Another survival plant, it needs almost
no water or irrigation. It needs almost
no nutrients. It is native to India, from
dry part of India. It is one of the most
nutrient-dense plants on Earth. It is
truly a miracle food. If everyone had one
of those plants, it could change the
entire state of Florida. Very easy to
grow, you can get it from a cutting,
stick that cutting in the ground or from
seeds. Moringa is my number one
recommendation. Other ones are katook.
That is what you see right here, that I
am cutting. Chia, that is also considered
a superfood. I has been grown for
thousands of years. It dates back to, I
think, the Aztecs, the Mayans, in Central
and South America. Sweet potato greens,
as I mentioned before, yuca greens or
cassava, not only does it create a tuber,
but you can also eat the greens. Just
like chia, they are high in cyanide so
they have to be cooked. Do not be scared
by the fact that they have a poison in
them. A lot of our foods are poisonous
if not prepared correctly, or toxic might
be a better word. They just have to be
boiled for, depending on who you talk to,
three to twenty minutes. You can go
twenty minutes, whatever you want. Yuca
greens. Other ones, cranberry hibiscus,
purslane is one of my favorite foods on
Earth. It is very nutrient-dense. It is
actually one of the few plants that are
high in omegas. Garden sorrel, again
plantago, and perennial spinaches. We can
grow a lot of different perennial
spinaches here. To name a few of them:
Okinawa, longevity, Suriname, Malabar,
Brazilian. Those are just five of the
perennial spinaches that we can grow
here. Foraging greens, this is right here
on Bumby. This is a plant that most
people know, Bidens alba, or Spanish
needle. It is despised by many front lawn
growers and gardeners as a weed, but it
is actually nutritious and medicinal. It
is one of the most highly regarded
medicinal plants by a lot of the local
holistic health practitioners. If you go
to the Florida School of Holistic Living,
they are always talking about Bidens
alba. It is an important medicinal, but
it is also just a great edible and very
nutritious. This is it right here. It has
these flowers with the yellow in the
center and the white around it. You can
eat the flowers. They make a nice salad
garnish, or you can eat the greens. It is
beautiful food and everywhere you go in
the United States, most every you go in
the United States, there are going to be
"weeds" that are edible, nutritious, and
often medicinal greens. To name some
other great ones in the area: dollar
weed is in most of your yards, probably,
gotu kola, it is considered a brain food,
a very important one, bacopa, oxalis,
purslane. Then there are sea greens like
sea purslane and sea blight. Then
plantago, which might be the third time I
have brought that plant up. I obviously
like it quite a bit. One of the foods
that I made was green juice. That was a
good staple this year. As far as water,
when I went into this year my hope was to
actually get all of my water foraged as
well, which meant harvesting rain water.
That was something I quickly realized I
was not going to do because I did not
want to have to carry around gallons of
water everywhere I went. At my tiny house
I harvested rain water, [and] put it through a
filter. This is called a Berkey filter,
That purified it and that was my
drinking water. A majority of my water
this year was foraged water. It was
drinking water. Wherever I went, if I had
to I drank tap water as well. Some
mentions of other plants, and this is
getting close to the end of the plant
section. Other things: carrots, I grew
over sixty pounds of carrots this year.
That was an important food source. Beets,
tindora cucumber, which is perennial
cucumber that can grow year-round.
Peppers grow really well in Central
Florida. That is probably one of the
easiest foods to start with. I grew
serrano peppers and ghost peppers.
Everglades tomatoes, it is hard to grow
big tomatoes in Central Florida, but
Everglades tomatoes grow really well.
Daikon radish is an amazing one. You can
make ferments from that. Green tea is a
really great one that you can grow here,
but there is something that I prefer that
I will get to in a minute. Roselle, or
Jamaican sorrel, amaranth grains as far
as grains, that was the one that I
experimented with. I did get two pounds
of grains, full of rocks, so it never was
tasty. It was probably worse eating it
than not eating it. Amaranth grains is a
good potential [crop]. Green beans, yard-
long beans are a really great food to
grow here. Cucumbers, I did well with
annual cucumbers, but that one is not
always easy. Kohlrabi, celery, eggplant
and also just standard, small potatoes
can do well as well. Some other important
mentions for foraging, there are acorns.
For much of humanity many people that
existed, fifty percent of their calories
came from acorns. We only exist today as
humanity, possibly because of the acorn.
We might not exist without the acorn. It
is one of the most important food sources
on Earth. Oak is present, I thing, on
every continent except Antarctica. An
extremely important food source and can
still be used today. Here in Central
Florida, you could get most of your
calories from acorns if you wanted to
take the time and energy to do that.
Hickory nuts are a great nut. You can
make nut milk. Sam Thayer is one of the
great foragers. He has got three books
that I recommend: "Nature's Garden" is
one of them, I cannot think of the name
of the other one that I read at the
moment. What he taught me to do is to
smash the hickory nuts in the shell
because they are like walnuts, but there
is way more shell and not a lot of nut so
it is very tedious to pull out. If you
are trying to grow and forage one-hundred
percent of your food, you have to learn
to use your time effectively. How you use
your time effectively with hickory nuts
is you smash them up, you throw them in a
pot, you boil them and that makes hickory
nut milk. Then you just strain it out. It
takes just minutes to make you own nut
milk that is great, high in fats and
delicious. I put honey in it to make it a
really nice drink. Beauty berry is a
native plant to Florida that grows all
over, great little snack. Smilax, also
called Nature's asparagus or wild
asparagus, I think. It is delicious. It
just grows all over the place. Cattail,
we could talk about cattail for hours.
You can do cattail pollen. You can the
roots, the rhizomes, the shoots. When
the tops are young, you can eat that like
corn on the cob. You can eat most parts
of that plant at different times of the
year. Amazing plant. Bitter melon, those
are those weeds you see, those little
orange melons that grow as weeds in the
area. According to Green Dean, four of
those little melons a day will give you
all of the lycopene you need. I do not
know everything about lycopene, but
apparently it is an important thing. You
do not eat the seed. You just suck the
fruit off of it because the seed is
toxic. You just suck the fruit right off
of it. That is an amazing "weed" that is
great. [It] grows right around us.
Brazilian pepper is an invasive, but it
makes a red pepper corn that you can use
as a pepper substitute. I do not like it.
I used it occasionally, but a lot of
people like it. American nightshade is a
really great forageable. One of the big
foraging ones for me this year that
really deserves a whole section, but I
put it in the honorable mentions - that
is yaupon holly. It is North America's
only native caffeinated plant. It is a
plant with amazing potential. It has the
same abilities basically, as green tea
(the antioxidants in it). It grows
natively to Florida. It needs no water
and can be harvested wild or grown on
your property. It is often used as a nice
landscaping plant. You can forage it all
over the city. It has the same amount of
caffeine as coffee, and it is related to
yerba matte. It is basically the yerba
matte of North America. Then, a couple of
failures that I tried: I mentioned
sunflowers, which turned into squirrels
magically. Peanuts, and my big goal was
to grow my own peanut butter, make my own
coconut oil and my honey and spread that
all over a banana. That was my dream of
this year that never came true. I did
grow enough peanuts, but I harvested them
within the last couple of weeks. I was
just too busy coasting into the finish
line to try to make the peanut butter. I
did not get around to it. Peanuts were a
minor failure. Sugar cane for sugar is a
great resource that I have not succeeded
at. One of my big failures of the year
was coconut oil. I thought that about six
coconuts made a pint of coconut oil. I
thought at the beginning that I was going
to make a gallon of coconut oil and just
be coasting through the year with coconut
oil, all I wanted. I got four ounces of
coconut oil. I did not have oil this
whole year, which is definitely one of
the big challenges. You do not realize
until you are trying to grow and forage
everything all the things that you eat
that you do not realize how many
resources it takes and such. Coconut oil
was my holy grail that I ultimately
failed at. What I learned is that it is
more like fifteen coconuts to a pint [of
oil], is what I am told. Instead, I just
made my coconut milk, my coconut butter,
my coconut curries. I used a lot of
coconuts just did not succeed with the
coconut oil. [I will] show you some of my
meals. This is my little outdoor kitchen
where I cooked. These are a few meals
here. I did eat very well, very delicious
foods. Up hear is Seminole pumpkin soup
with a beet and cabbage sauerkraut as a
garnish. This is pigeon peas with
nasturtium leaves as a garnish and
greens. This is Seminole pumpkin roasted
inside of a collard wrap. Those were some
of my really nice meals. The little bit
of coconut oil I did have went on to
these collard wraps with the Seminole
pumpkin and that was like, one of the
best foods of the whole year. So good!
This was a very common meal. I probably
ate six, seven-hundred pounds of sweet
potatoes this year, quite a bit of sweet
potato. I did different things with them,
but the most common thing was just to
mash them up and make mashed sweet
potatoes. This is a bowl of mashed sweet
potatoes with greens and pigeon peas.
You can see behind me Seminole pumpkins
on the shelf. That is how I stored them,
just sitting there right on that shelf.
This is another common meal, yuca. I just
boiled the yuca. That was basically how I
did it. I did not actually have an oven
to bake. That limited me. When I went
over to friends' houses I would often use
their oven. It was really nice. This is
yuca with fish on there. That is mullet,
the white on top. Those are the little
Everglades tomatoes. Then that is a
sauerkraut garnish on top. That is just
an example of a few meals. I probably
really subsisted on a couple of dozen
different meals, but my food did vary
drastically throughout the year. As I
mentioned, I did take a trip to
Wisconsin. I did not make any videos
while I was gone and people commented on
YouTube like, "Oh, he went to Wisconsin
and ate pizza for the summer!". It was
harder to be travelling. Imagine, I had
no garden. I went away for eighty-two
days, is what it ended up being. I had no
garden up there. This was a whole new
challenge, taking it to the road. Before
I left I worked long hours, often until
two in the morning preparing foods. I
was making flours from yuca and yam that
Marabou Thomas taught me to make. I was
drying coconuts and making coconut
shreds. I was making tons of moringa
powder. I was dehydrating herbs. I was
foraging. I dehydrated bananas and
mangoes. I left with one-hundred thousand
calories, at least. At two-thousand
calories a day, that is fifty days. I was
carrying a lot of food. I was carrying a
couple hundred pounds of food with me.
I had a lot of food, but I really was
dependent on foraging. I did a lot of
fishing while I was up there. I mentioned
the deer. While I was in Wisconsin I
learned and foraged new plants. A lot of
people up North say "You can only do this
because you are in Central Florida." You
are the beneficiaries of that comment. We
are in a great place. Central Florida is
one of the best growing climates in the
United States, I would say. We have this
beautiful thing where we can grow many
plants of the North, but we can [also]
grow many plants of the tropics. We are
in a sub-tropical area. We are on this
border. We are in zone what, ten-A?
Nine-B? Nine? See, I am still kind of a
rooky. So it is nine? Nine-B. Nine-B is
basically on this edge where we can many
things of the North and we can grow many
things of the South. It is this beautiful
area where there is an incredible amount
of diversity and abundance. With that
being said, I never felt abundance like I
felt it up in Wisconsin. It was the most
abundant place I have ever been on Earth.
I almost did not come back. Actually, a
lot of people thought I was never coming
back, but I had things to take care of.
My trip to Wisconsin was great. I foraged
one-hundred different foods while I was
up there. Apples were one of the most
important. I made applesauce. I made so
much applesauce. In my hometown, off the
top of my head might now I could name
fifty public apple trees just in that
area. If you are ever go to Ashland,
Wisconsin (That is my hometown.), go and
gorge on apples. I have got to mention
the toilet paper. I grew my own toilet
paper. I have not bought toilet paper for
over five years. This plant is call
Plectranthus barbatus. That is the genus
and species, also called blue spur
flower. It grows in zones eight to ten,
so right where we are. This will not grow
in the colder climates. Maybe it will as
as annual. This will grow year-round. I
put two sticks in the ground and I have
never used more than one percent of my
toilet paper stock. Just two little
sticks turned into infinite toilet paper
for life. It is the perennial toilet
paper plant. I am rubbing it on my face
because it is actually softer than
anything you would buy at the store. It
is in the mint family, so some people
call me Captain Mint Bottom on YouTube
now because of that. [Audience laughs]
It does not leave a minty smell. Well,
I would not know, I guess. [Audience
laughs] I cannot speak to that, but I do
not think it does. It produces beautiful
flowers. Sometimes hummingbirds were
hanging out with my toilet paper, and
bees. It actually makes a tea! You can
eat this toilet paper as well. In Brazil,
I know that it is used for upset stomach
and maybe some other things. I have made
tea with it, very bitter. Bitter is
medicine. We have, in this society, bred
bitterness out of the plants. What we do
when we breed bitterness out, we breed
the nutrients out. Lettuce is one of the
least nutrient-rich plants that you can
possibly eat because it has almost no
flavor. No flavor means very few
nutrients. Keep that in mind. Highly
bitter means generally medicinal. Here is
the toilet paper next to the compost
toilet. This plant is truly miraculous.
This toilet paper you can actually
harvest from the plant and it stays soft
for up to a week. Sitting next to the
toilet for a week, it is still soft. It
is very strong, does not break. On a dewy
morning, it actually holds the moisture
and turns into a wet wipe. [Audience
laughs] It is truly a miraculous plant.
For people that live up North, the good
news is toilet paper grows everywhere.
There is lamb's ear up there. Imagine
wiping your butt with a lamb's ear. I
do not know if any of you guys have done
that, but it probably would feel good.
They are nice and soft. [Audience laughs]
They make wool, which could be
scratchier. Anyway... Everywhere you go,
there is a perennial toilet paper
growing, but this is the best that I have
seen on Earth. One of the most common
question is [about] pests. What about
pests? I am very, very proud to say that
in the two years here I never applied a
single pesticide, not even an organic one
like BT or neem. How did I deal with
pests? It is not that I never had pests.
This is my Seminole pumpkin. I know
there are probably some beginner
gardeners in the room, but you all
probably know that is not what plants
are supposed to look like. Towards the
back you can see leaves. All of this was
leaves, but all of that was eaten by
cucumber worms. There are different names
for them, but they eat squashed,
cucumbers and plants like that. They came
in and just decimated this. I was not
paying attention and they got so bad that
they actually started to eat many of my
pumpkins, to actually infest the
pumpkins. I definitely dealt with pests
this year. A lot of people say "You can
not grow food in Central Florida.". There
is this idea that a lot of people have
that this is a horrible, horrible place
to grow food. That is just not remotely
the truth at all. What they are doing is
they are trying to grow the wrong food in
the wrong way. When I got here, what I
did not do was go to the grocery store
and walk down the aisles and say "What do
I want to eat?". I did not say "I like
strawberries. I am going to grow
strawberries.". Instead, I talked to all
of the locals. I said "What grows so
ridiculously well and has so few pests
that a fool could not possibly kill it?".
I said, I am going to grow what grows the
easiest, has the fewest pests and is also
very nutrient-dense, or has a lot of
calories. That is what is was about. What
has been proven time and time again by
the locals? I did not come here and
reinvent anything. The only reason that I
am standing here today, after having
grown and foraged one-hundred percent
of my food, is because this is all of the
knowledge that is in this room already,
and in other people in this community.
All I did was take all that knowledge,
put it all together into one little
package to have me standing here at the
end of this year. As far as pests go, a
few things, there was one garden that I
worked with and there was the person in
the garden. I have fifty, sixty, seventy
different species growing in this garden.
She would always tell me about the one or
two plants that had pests on them. It
was a constant, "The pests are getting
these plants!". What I said was "Oh, we
have sixty-eight other plants that do not
have pests. Let's eat just eat those."
That is one of the most important
elements of [dealing with] pests,
diversity. If you have one-hundred
species and the pests are getting ten,
you still have ninety species to eat.
Diversity is key. Monoculture is going to
bring in pests. Polycultures are going to
reduce pests. Imagine if you have a line
of tomatoes. If you get worms here, they
just walk from tomato plant to tomato
plant to tomato plant. They just eat
themselves away. If you have a tomato
plant here and on the other side of the
garden and in between that you have got
basil and onions and such the pests,
amazingly, do not get to all of them.
Diversity. Spreading things out.
Intercropping, or polyculture. One
really important thing is that plants
basically have immune systems. Healthy
plants can defend themselves from pests.
You need healthy soil. You need the right
amount of sun. If a plant does not have
enough sun, if it is in too much shade,
that often is what will bring in the
pests. Aphids, for example, if you see
aphids it is not "How do I get rid of
these aphids?". It is "What do I have to
change foundationally to make healthy
plants so that the aphids are not there.
That means planting the right things,
planting at the right time of year,
planting in the right places, using local
knowledge, doing what has been done for
decades. There are many ways to get
local knowledge, which is something I am
going to get into. A little bit about my
health, this is me about eight month in
[to the project]. At that point I was not
catching enough fish. I was feeling
deficient [in nutrients]. I did not have
enough fat and I did not have enough
protein [in my diet]. I am pulling my
cheeks there because I started to feel my
body and I was like, "Man! I feel like my
skin is really loose!". I feel like my f
fat is gone. My brain was not functioning
as well. I was worried that I was not
getting enough fats. There was a rough
patch this summer. There were a good
number of times when I definitely thought
about giving up. I definitely want to
say, this was extremely difficult. It is
a dream because it is very, very
difficult, not something that is easy to
attain.. There were definitely many times
when I wanted to give up. This was one of
those times. I was feeling very gaunt and
like I was not getting what I needed. I
was pretty confident that it was fat and
it was protein. How I got to Wisconsin,
was I caught a ride with Jenn, one of the
Gardens for Single Moms recipients. She
happened to be going to Chicago two days
before I was trying to go to Chicago, so
I drove up there with her. I stayed at my
aunt's twenty-third story apartment in
Chicago. Then it only got worse because I
was sitting in a car, sitting in an
apartment and mostly eating carbs and did
not have the fat. That was a really hard
time I had my ups and downs, but that is
when I caught fish. I had one of my
lowest days, I caught a twenty-pound lake
trout. That would have fed me for three
weeks, at a pound per day. It is one of
the fattiest fish there is. Basically, it
was exactly what I needed and I put it
back in the water because it was too
big. At that point, lake trout are all
female. They are the producers for that
population. They produce so much. Here I
had exactly what I needed, what I was
craving, but I could not eat it. I put it
back in the water. That hurt me for days!
I did rebound. I caught enough fish. I
got the venison. At the end of my time in
Wisconsin, I actually spoke at UW
Lacrosse where I went to college. They
happened to have a dunk tank where I
could get my body fat composition
[measured]. I got it and it was fifteen
percent. I had built my fat back up and
I gained it back. Fifteen percent is
healthy fat, more than I would expect on
myself and I maintained my weight. I
started at one-hundred-fifty-three-point
four pounds and the night before I
finished, on day one-hundred-sixty-five I
weighed one-hundred-fifty-five pounds. On
the morning of my first day finishing I
weighed one-hundred-fifty-two-point-
eight, so point-eight pounds less. It is
amazing, I have weighed myself a lot.
You start to realize how much your weight
can fluctuate. It fluctuates by about
seven pounds a day. You can pee out a
gallon of water per day and that this
eight-point-eight pounds, so you are
shedding a lot of weight in one day just
through fluids and food. Basically, my
weight stayed about as steady as I could
possibly imagine and I did not get sick
once. I think it is safe to say that I
did it! [Audience laughs and cheers,
applauds] I have been doing it for a
while now. so I am a little nonchalant
about it because it kind of just feels
like, "Yeah, I did it." but it was
something that I had set out to do
forever. I want to end by sharing a whole
bunch of resources and then we will have
time for questions. I am going to go
through a bunch of resources. Now, I have
all of this information online at
robgreenfield.tv/grow. Many of the things
that I talked about tonight, but
certainly all of these resources are
listed on that page. You do not have to
cram it all down and this talk is being
recorded. Have these cameras been going
this whole time? Alright, so this talk is
being recorded and will be on my YouTube
channel, which is just
youtube.com/robgreenfield. You can watch
this and I will have all of the links in
the description there. I designed it so
that you don't have to suck all of this
in in one night. I am going to go through
these resources. First, events, classes,
groups. The most important thing is
community. As I said, the only reason I
am standing here today, period, is
because of community. I could not have
done this alone, not even remotely. It is
all through community. The idea of this
is not that any of us have to grow and
forage [one-hundred percent] of our own
food. we have an amazing community right
here where we can share. We can trade.
We can ask each other what we need. That
does not have to stop with just food. If
you look at this room, we have doctors.
We have lawyers. We have teachers. We
have permaculturists and growers. We have
most things in here and we can exchange
those things and improve our communities
without having to ship our money to these
corporations in far-off places. Starting
with community, that is where I am going
to start. Orlando Permaculture, where we
are standing right now. Definitely my
favorite community in Central Florida.
That is why I came to Orlando, because of
Orlando Permaculture. Foraging. Green
Dean, one of the greatest foragers in the
United States. He has got the most-
watched foraging YouTube channel. He
does classes in Orlando at least once a
month and all over the state of Florida.
We have an amazing resource in Green
Dean. Andy Firk, another amazing forager.
Definitely, I have to say, my favorite
human being that I have met in the state
of Florida. If you get a chance to hang
out with Andy Firk and do one of his
classes, it is social activism and plants
all in one. It is amazing. John Martin is
now an expert mushroom guy, "Fungi John".
Where is John? I know he is here. There
is John over there. [Faint applause]
Yeah, we will give him a round of
applause! [Audience applauds] When I got
here, John was not teaching classes yet.
This is something he started doing within
the last year. He is one of the mushroom
experts of the area. He teaches classes.
Fungi John. UF IFA IFAs Extension, that
is an amazing resource. I got so much
through them. They have a master
gardening program, which is a great
resource. Central Florida Fruit Society,
that is where I learned so much of what I
needed to know about what fruit trees to
plant for my community fruit trees
program. They have monthly meet-ups. Some
bigger events, there are the Permaculture
Convergences. There are local ones and
then there are the state-wide ones. Those
are an amazing place to meet local
permaculturists. Earth skills gatherings
are truly amazing. I went to that both
years I was here, highly recommend it.
The Florida School of Holistic Living is
all about holistic medicine and holistic
health, highly recommend getting involved
with that. They have the Florida Herbal
Conference once per year. Sustainable
Kashi is a place where I have done a lot
of my learning. They have free
permaculture classes on Wednesdays. There
are lots of events. John just hosted a
mushroom foraging class there a couple
of weeks back, for example. Lots of
opportunities there. I have not named all
of them, but those are some of the
amazing resources we have locally. Some
online resources, one of my favorites is
Pete Kanaris. I was lucky enough to get
to spend a lot of my time [with Pete]. He
is one of the reasons I am still standing.
He took me out fishing. He is an amazing
friend and an amazing resource. His
YouTube channel is Green Dreams Florida.
So much knowledge on there. Again, UF
IFIS Extension is a great resource. Green
Dean, eattheweeds.com, David The Good:
The Survival Gardener, so much education
came from him. Andy Firk, I mentioned
him. Again, my website is
robgreenfield.tv/growflorida, or just
/grow. That is just an accumulation of
all of this put into one place for you.
Another one is Terry Meer. His [website]
is terrymeer.com/resources. That is a
really great resource guide that puts
a lot of the events and the groups and
such. Some nurseries, my favorite
probably is HEART, Josh Jamison. He is
one of the amazing, solid foundations of
this community. Definitely go take a tour
there. Their plants are some of the most
affordable because their mission is not
to make money. Their mission is to spread
plants and plant knowledge. HEART Village
Nursery. ECHO Global Farm, that is down
in South Florida. I actually never made
it there, but it is an amazing resource.
A Natural Farm and Education Center, that
is an amazing resource for fruit trees.
That is where I got the majority of my
fruit trees for this year. South Seminole
Farms and Nursery, Green's Nursery, Green
Dreams, Pete Kanaris also has a nursery
over by Tampa. You do not have to buy
plants. The amazing thing about plants is
that they reproduce on their own. Are
there plants back there right now? Are
those flowers? We do have a plant raffle
tonight. Every month there is a plant
raffle, right? Every month that you come
here you can take plants with you. There
are plant swaps. There are plant raffles.
It is about connecting. I have this. you
have that. You do not have to buy plants.
I have enough yuca cuttings for everyone
in this room. Unfortunately, I do not
have them with me, but that all came from
a few cuttings in the first place. Simple
Living Institute, they do plants. Orlando
Permaculture. Leu Gardens has a plant
sale. Just meeting permaculturists, talk
to people. Ask if you can go over to
their garden and share knowledge. They
key to a permaculturist's heart is
helping them. doing work. that is the key
to any gardener's heart, doing some work
and helping them. Whatever that is:
weeding, shoveling, putting down compost.
It is usually the labor that is needed
because gardening takes work. Earn some
plants by putting in time at a garden, or
at a permaculture food forest. Another
nursery that I visited is Sow Exotic. That
was a really great nursery about an hour
south of here. Local seeds, when I got
here I asked around, even Orlando
Permaculture. I said "Where can I get
local seeds?" and they all said, "There
is no local seed company.". I said "No
way! There has got to be a local seed
company.". I search it out and I found
three local seed companies. There is
Crispy Farms in Apopka. They only have
about thirty varieties of seeds, but they
are all great varieties that grow really
well here. Crispy Farms is an incredible
little place to get seeds. Whitwam
Organics is over in Tampa. Southern
Heritage Seed Collective, Melissa DeSa is
the seed genius of Central Florida, I
would say. They are a non-profit. They
are spreading seeds. They probably have
fifty, one-hundred different varieties
and they grow all of them in Gainesville
for the most part. Not local seeds:
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Johnny's
Selected Seeds, Seeds Savers Exchange,
Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, High Mowing
Seeds and Seeds of Change are all some
great places that you can buy online. A
couple of local books, my favorites
listed here, Robert Boden's "Florida
Fruit and Vegetable Gardening." That is
more annual-based, but reading that
really gives you the basic knowledge you
need of understanding Central Florida.
That was my holy grail of a book starting
[out]. If it is not really perennials. It
is more annuals. Perennials, David The
Good is a great resource as were his
books. [They are] very small books that
have the information you need like,
"Create your own Florida Food Forest" and
"Totally Crazy Easy Florida Gardening"
the plants that grow ridiculously well
that you cannot kill. Peggy Lantz,
Florida's Edible Wild Plants" is a
foraging book that I really recommend.
Marabou Thomas has a cookbook. A home
garden cuisine toolkit for the sub-
tropics. Really highly recommend that
book. It is a beautiful one. James
Steven's "Vegetable Gardening in Florida."
This is Marabou right here! He is not
here tonight because he is a genius who
is at home always toiling away. I was
lucky to get to go over to his house a
couple of times and he came over to
mine. He taught me about yam flour and
yuca flour. He is a genius. If you can
tap into that knowledge, one way to do
that is through his book. This is him
making tortillas without oil from flour
that we made from my garden. That is
something that he has been perfecting.
I do not know a whole lot of people who
do [that]. That is an amazing book. His
Instagram page is a really nice resource
too. Some not local books, there are so
many books, but I am just naming a few:
"Perennial Vegetables" and "Paradise Lot"
by Eric Toensmeier, "Gaia's Garden: A
Guide to Home Scale Permaculture" are two
great permaculture books, just to name a
couple. I love Michael Pollan. His books
are some of the foundations to me
questioning the globalized food system.
If you want to understand even big
organic, Michael Pollan's books are
fantastic. Sandor Katz, "Wild
Fermentation," that is not just a
revolution of our food. It is really a
revolution of our mind. He is an
incredible author and person. Some garden
resources: I mentioned mulch, you got your
local tree companies, and then
getchipdrop.com. This is where you get
the mulch. Compost, you get that from
Monterey Mushrooms, or you can get it
from the city. Our yard waste gets turn
into compost. Oh, and we got the new
compost program started by Charlie! You
can do that was well. Cardboard, again,
grocery, liquor, appliance stores. If you
want to do rainwater harvesting, just
type "rainwater harvesting" into Craig's
List and you will be able to find barrels
and totes and materials for that. Drip
irrigation you can just get at hardware
stores and online. Those are kind of my
main ingredients besides the plants that
I mentioned. As far as this project,
other resources: my YouTube channel is
where I produced a lot of videos about
this year. If you want to learn more, or
you want to take tours of my gardens,
spend time virtually in the garden with
me, because you will not be able to in
real life because I am leaving in a few
days. YouTube.com/robgreenfield has these
videos. I am putting out a video soon
that is "How to turn your lawn into a
garden." A lot of the resources for this
project, if you go to
robgreenfield.tv/foodfreedomfoods, it
lists the three-hundred foods that I
foraged this year and grown with links to
a lot of them. Slash food freedom meals,
that lists every meal for the last three-
hundred-sixty-five days and every snack.
Slash food freedom photos is photos of
many of my meals and my foods where you
can learn more. Slash food freedom rules
is all the guidelines behind this year.
Slash food freedom why is why I did this
and more about that. Lastly, the book!
I do have a book, not out yet. It will
some out December of 2020 with New
Society Publishers. One-hundred percent
of the proceeds of that book [sales] are
donated to non-profits that are working
on the food solutions, working to create
a more sustainable and just food system.
I am not out to make money from food at
all, really. I think food is a basic
human right. I want to empower others to
grow their own food. This book, I think
it will be maybe the most powerful thing
that I have ever put out. I highly
recommend it. I will be on a book tour
here when that book comes out, end of
2020 / beginning of 2021. I will be doing
a talk with that book as well. As far as
the media behind this, I want to thank
Sierra Ford Photography. My friend Sierra
Ford, she took a lot of these photos as
well as Danielle Werner at Live Wonderful
Photography. As far as my videos that you
have seen over the year, John VonMutius
Brandon Carey and Paul O'Neill, so I want
to thank them for that. Most importantly,
I want to thank the Orlando Permaculture
community. I have said it one-hundred
times, but all of this is a matter of
community. It has been incredible to be
here for the last two years. You made
Orlando a more than tolerable place, a
beautiful place to spend the last two
years. I could not have done any of this
without you, so thank you to Orlando
Permaculture. Thank you to Sarah Robinson
for always hosting me in her house, in
her church, wherever! I want to say thank
you to Lisa Ray who hosted me in her
backyard and all of the fun stuff we went
through, especially the team at Orlando
Permaculture: Jeff and David and Kaitlin
and thank you all for that and the whole
Orlando Permaculture. To Daniel for all
of the good times we had together and for
the great kombucha. The list could
absolutely go on. Thank you everyone so
much for being a part of this journey.
[Audience applauds] So how long was that?
How long was I talking? [Conversation off
stage] Almost two hours! [Audience laughs]
Oh my gosh! There was a lot of information
to go through! What time is it?
[Conversation off stage] Nine o'clock?
That is the longest talk of all time at
Orlando Permaculture. I guess we do not
really have time for questions then,
right? Ok well, I will be around and
hugs. I love hugs so come give me a hug.
I love you all very much. Next up, Jeff
Trepani! [Audience applauds] Two hours!
Jeff: I want to thank you so much. You
have been such a great inspiration,
motivation for us and helping us to get
more publicity as well and get more people
here learning about things. So, I want to
thank you a lot. I am going to miss you,
definitely. I am going to be thinking
about you when I drive by the house and
the property and everything. It is a great
thing having you here.