Grow and Forage 100% of Your Food in Central Florida: Rob Greenfield at Orlando Permaculture

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.