Two years planting fruit trees and bringing back wild food!

Chatting today with Cole from BarefootAppalachia who's spent the past couple years planting fruit trees!

https://www.instagram.com/barefootappalachia/

Transcript

0:00

Welcome back to the Global Stewardship Podcast. I'm excited to be here. It's been a while with the holidays. Before we jump into the interview portion of today's episode. I'm excited to share this. For years I was feeling very called to go to England and experience farming there. As you know, I'm a traveling farmer. I visit farmers around the world. It's part of why I do this. It's part of my job, and, just felt like there was a calling for me to go there, but I kept putting it to the side because I didn't know farmers there. I just felt like. What was there to see? I just didn't know enough about it and just kind of kept pushing aside this calling. Anyways, all that to say, last spring while I was supposed to be traveling through Spain and Portugal, the weather in Spain turned very, very dangerous and very bad very quickly, and I had my toddler with me, like an overnight decision. I had to go to England to basically get us out of a very rainy. Situation that was probably not going to be a very fun week. And so totally on a whim, we go to England to find refuge from the storm. That's my toddler in the background right now, playing my harp. So I get dropped, basically dropped in England. I had no plans, didn't really know anybody except for this wonderful lady named Shannon, who I only knew on social media. She basically gives me all the details to plan the most perfect, elaborate, farm related time in Northern England. It ended up being one of the best weeks, two weeks of my entire life. It became my favorite place in the world. And I say this because I have literally been. Overseas nearly a hundred times. I'm a professional traveler in a sense self-proclaimed professional traveler. Previously, my favorite place was China. I'll tell you all about that another time, but there's just the most beautiful places in China, but I fell in love with this part of England. The people there are incredible, and I just think that that says a lot because I really have been to so many places all over the world. And I've always traveled with food and farming related purposes, All that to say, wow, God had been leading me to this place for years, and I kept putting it on the back burner and letting fear and doubt creep in and just let things hold me back. And then he had basically dropped us there. So I first wanted to share that story because as you hear Cole's story today, our guest on the show, it kind of reminded me that a lot of times God will be leading us a certain direction and we will detour. We will go the wrong way, we'll take wrong turns. And then he always leads us right back. It's like a GPS, oftentimes, it totally reroute you. It never just totally shuts down on you and says, I give up. Well, sometimes if there's no signal, but, ah, that's pretty good. But it keeps loading. It keeps rerouting, and sometimes it doesn't even get you there any later. It just finds a whole new direction, a new path, because you went a different way. And I think it's so cool. I do believe that God works like that, and I think that he worked like that many times in Cole's journey trying to figure out his calling and how to pour into people and help others connect to the land. Despite having different jobs and being thrown in all kinds of circumstances, that just didn't necessarily make sense at the time. Okay. Now back to the England thing. I'm so excited and thrilled to announce that I am taking a group of women to England this summer, we'll be spending time with some of my farmer friends and just experiencing all that that beautiful place has to offer. I can only take eight people, so I do expect the trip to fill as soon as the dates are confirmed, but if you're interested and you want to be one of those eight people and have me prioritize sharing those details with you, message me and let me know. There's pictures of it on my social media. It's Hannah at the gardens on Instagram especially, and just check it out and see what you think This will be Summer 2026. So as we dive into the interview with Cole Richardson. You may know him as barefoot Appalachia, the modern day Johnny Appleseed on Instagram. We're just gonna kickstart the episode with hearing a little bit about his childhood and why he had such a heart to want to do something different with his life. Okay.

Audio Only - All Participants 4:11

I grew up in Richmond, Virginia kind of in the swamp, kayaking, having fun in the woods, on the edge of the suburbs where everyone else is, you know, inside playing video games. And I was like, I feel like there's more to this. My buddies and I like kids, used to play outside all the time, we had like, six or seven miles of swamp land on the edge of town where we just got super rowdy with it. As you get older, you start to kind of separate from that a little bit. You know, you can drive, people are, hanging out at Panera and stuff and we're just like, no, this is crazy. Whenever the river floods and they tell you not to go, like near the roads in the water. And we're in the background of the news report, throwing the kayaks off the, the bridge and, you know, going in the Whitewater Rapids where it used to be like a little creek, My background has been in like the trades, started up going to HVAC school, going to trade school, thinking that all the fun years were behind me of just being connected with the land. And I always told myself that, Hey, you know, whenever I make it one day I'm gonna do some sort of business. I'm gonna get outta construction, I'm gonna get out of hvac, and I'm gonna do something that brings people closer to the land. Like, I don't even know what that is. That's not even a business, right? Mm-hmm. Like what? Walking people through the woods. What does that look like? So I was just trying to figure out ways to make enough money to take care of my needs, but also do something that's impactful. And for a while I kind of lost that, you know, I went out and I got into real estate and I got into, hauling junk for people and then I was like, you know what? I kind of like doing stuff with my hands. So I was like, alright, I'm gonna start landscaping. The first step was just working outside. But after about five years of doing that and doing some real estate stuff on the side, it kind of occurred to me that. I really wasn't doing anything with a huge impact for the world. Like yes, I was making clients happy. Yes, I was having some success and progress and that feels good to be like, you know, I'm hustling. I got my systems in check. But it was really weighing on me. I was just like, I don't know what it is. I would take trips out on the weekends and I remember this one specific time I was by the Rapid End River in like Madison County, Virginia, and I was never expecting this, but I'm walking along the river. Right at eye level, I see these two beautiful cherries and I was like, did someone plant this tree is fruit just out here? And like people see blackberries but this is a whole fruit, a whole tree. I was like, why is there not, why is the whole entire river not filled with cherry trees? This is really cool. So what I decided to do is take some of the cherries, I ate'em, saved the seeds, took some of the cuttings, and I started to grow more of those cherry trees. And then I go back to landscaping for a while and I go out again and you find an apple tree. And there was this day where I was alone by myself on top of a mountain wondering what the heck am I gonna do with my life? And I saw that the forest service had planted a spruce tree'cause it was staked. And you could tell it's a tiny tree in the middle of a field. I was at this mountain about four years ago. If I was the one who planted a tree here and I planted something like an apple tree, I would be eating apples right now. That got me excited. So I turned on the starlink and I was like, I'm not gonna go to another spot, whether it's a weekend ship or whatever without planting fruit trees to make an impact on the land. So I bought 981 American Wild Plum seeds and I was like, this is, this is why I'm here. This is a big part. The reason why I'm on earth right now is to nurture the land around me where I didn't feel fulfillment in anything else. I didn't feel fulfillment in business I was just searching for meaning, and in that moment, something that was tangible that I could see and do with my own two hands and just see it grow and flourish was planting fruit trees. Eventually was on a project one day and I told myself that I was gonna sell all my stuff and just go off to the mountains and start planting trees, and I was gonna figure it all out later. I felt like God put it in my heart. So why would I keep ignoring this? Why would I keep working? Right? So I take a trip, I make that decision. On the way back from the trip, I was getting ready to go buy something. Buy a camper. I'm gonna buy a truck. I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I'm gonna do it. Then there was the test. Someone calls me, a really good client, says, Hey Cole, I want you to do this job for my friend. We love your work. You know, she's buttering me up. We want you to be here. It's gonna be so great. Without hesitation, I was like, I'll be there. I hang up the phone. I was like, oh, that was the test to see how serious I was, and I failed. So I'm all upset. All right. I go do the project in a couple days, as I'm finishing up, another neighbor comes over, Hey, we love the work. You did so much. I want you to do our house. And this time I knew, I was like, sorry, I'm gone. I'm outta here. I'm closing down the business and I'm, I'm going to plant fruit trees. They're like, you're crazy. What are you talking about? Like,'cause they were kind of half tipsy from the Halloween party they're getting started at, oh, it's no movie right now. And they're like, you are? I'm like, I guess so. Yeah. I'm leaving right now.

8:58

Our signal kind of cut out, but Cole explains that he went on Facebook Marketplace and found a truck bed camper that was all the way in Ohio, like a seven hour drive. Had just replaced his transmission over$7,000, and just as he began his journey, his transmission went out again. Not only that, but he left his wallet on the hood of his car. And accidentally kept driving, so everything just kept kind of going wrong. When he did get the camper, he realized very quickly that it had black mold. The thing started to fall apart multiple times. It was leaking gas and propane. While he was sleeping, and then ultimately, in his own words, here's what happened.

Audio Only - All Participants 9:34

Life was like super chaotic and I was just like, what the heck is going on with my life? I just, I closed down my business. My truck just broke down. I almost totaled the camper. I got mold all up in my system right now, like maybe I should go back. And I was like, I'm not gonna go back. On the second day of the trip, I have a vision of flipping over the camper and losing all my stuff and being on the side of the road. The next day at about 1:30 PM I hit some ice going eight miles an hour. I slide off the road, the truck flips over. I total the camper two days into this journey. Just getting the truck fixed and fixing the window, fixing the wheels, and I hit the road again, went down to Florida and that's kind of how I started all of this fruit tree stuff. I started buying trees and seeds and hiking up on top of mountaintops and just rewilding the earth that way. But I just, I posted a video. I was in the parking lot of like tractor supply and I saw that they were selling blueberry bushes, and I was like, that's kind of cool. And then I look up at the skyline and I see Mountain Mitchell, which is the tallest mountain on this side of the country. And I looked down at the blueberries and I looked up at Mount Mitchell and I was like. Oh, I need to climb up there. So the first video was like hiking 10 miles to plant a blueberry bush on top of a mountain, and that blew up, you know, a hundred thousand or 300,000 views on, depending on the platform. And I was like, okay, this is my thing. So then every day I'd go out and keep planting more trees and keep planting more trees. And 10. Then I've done about 2000 full trees seeds. Saplings. And, um, that's how the Instagram traction, uh, really got going was just like going out one day and deciding to plant the blueberry bush all because I was so inspired from that one trip that I made. Wow. Yeah. That's pretty cool. It's cool that you had, you felt a calling to help people connect to the land, and I'm guessing you never even saw that coming that. You're helping thousands, hundreds of thousands of people connect to the land through your videos. No, not at all. I did not plan it. I did not plan it. I, I knew I wanted to share the story. What was on my mind was just, Hey, I would love some more friends. I would love some more connections out here in the world, and the more videos I post the more opportunities there will be for everybody. So I was like. It's kind of like just say yes and figure the rest out later. Mine was just like, Hey, get some sort of recognition and traction and figure out how I wanna direct it to make a positive impact. Yeah, right. That's super cool. So why, I know you shared about your childhood outdoors, why exactly was it so important to you to help people connect to the land? Like, why are you so passionate about this? Oh, that's a good question. It was, uh, because of the feelings that I would feel when I would go out there. Like when I was a kid and I'd be in the swamp and we'd find a new place for the fort, I would get this like tingly feeling like, like I was just found. A cool little hideaway. It's like when you're young, everything is so fresh and new and you get like the first time you see your grandparents and you have a great time and you play and you go out to the theme park, you're just like, wow. Then it wears off when you get older. But when I would go out to the woods, it wouldn't really wear off, or I would just keep exploring new places, or I'd stay up until midnight every night. Just studying maps to see where the beginning of a river is. And I'd go out with my friends and we'd figure out where we'd drive three hours to find the beginning of the river and climb up the mountain just to say that we found the source. Wow. And, um, when I found the fruit trees, I, I could feel like God's love for us in that fruit because it was just out there in the wilderness and no one was really tending to those trees. And I just realized that like. That's the natural system that we're meant to be a part of. Like, we're not supposed to be disconnected from the land in nature. Contrary to what some ecologists or conservationist people will say, you know, they'll say, Hey, we're humans. All we know how to do is destroy land. The best thing to do to make the land better is to stay away. Defense it off and to put it into a park to make sure that, hey, leave no trace, don't leave any, and let's like, they're gonna mess it up so bad. Let's just make rules saying, hey, don't touch anything and hope it's okay. Instead of hitting people on, did you know we can nurture this land? Did you know we can thin out the trees and bring more light? To the forest floor to bring more biodiversity. Did you know we can compost? Did you know that you can bring in some herbs or some comfort to act as a bio accumulator or some, some sort of like legume or, you know, you can plant a black locust tree or honey locust tree to, to make the other trees grow better near. Did you know that you don't have to buy your fruit from the grocery store? You can go out and plant some seeds and graft them, or you can grow some trees and plant those out by the park so that you guys don't have to buy anything ever again if you don't want to. You can have a quarter acre and you could plant that quarter acre with blueberries. And when they're pretty mature, you can have enough blueberries for three pounds a day for every day of the year, given it would be lumpy and you would have to process them and freeze'em and stuff. But if you were to preserve a quarter acre of blueberries, you could have three pounds every day that give, you could feed your family blueberries for a whole year off of just that small amount of land. I've seen you share about, a lot of your. Time outdoors even now is in like national parks or like public lands that used to be private and people were planting on. Can you tell me more about that? Yeah, yeah. That was out. There's some places in that first mountain range in Virginia where. Oh my gosh. I remember I was at this place called, uh, mountain Run Jam, which was like a, a community event where we're doing workshops and they're doing music and it was this, this great family that has this huge farm and I remember I found this mountain and they were like, Hey, that used to be old home sites. Like back in the day, people would settle this area. Especially'cause the valleys were already taken. That was the prime land. These backwoods people would go up on top of the mountain and they would create orchards. And when I looked online, the park service and the government, they would be like, no, you know, it might be called. Apple, orchard mountain. But that's just because the trees would you get weathered and look like apple trees like, like the oak trees would get pruned from the wind and it would look like, and I was like, there's no way that there's no apples on this mountain. So I went up there. With my girlfriend and we just started going through and he's like, check out this place, this place, and this place. And we found all the overgrown areas where there used to be like apple trees to where they had, you know, probably way more than this, but we were finding like tens and tens of acres just full of abandoned apple groves. We found foundations of old houses when they're like, oh, no one has to live up there. Or like, maybe there was a little boy scout camp and we're finding the remains of. When the apple trees were the biggest thing on that mountain, and now they're completely covered by this over story of like oak trees, which are nice if you're in California over Vermont, where they don't really, they're kind of rare. But in Virginia, we have oak trees everywhere and squirrels have plenty of acorns to eat, but. We are the ones who need food. Like squirrels can't go to the grocery store. The squirrels aren't eating poisonous. Uh, you know, just toxic monocrop vegetables for the most part. So like, we're the ones that need to take this into our own hands so that we're able to just connect with the land. Like the squirrels had plenty of food, but we need a lot more good food. We need the apples. So, we went in there and we. We took holy cow, like maybe two, three buckets full of, uh, you know, those five gallon buckets full of these apples and turned it into sauce and jams and jellies and ate'em straight and preserved them and froze them. Wow. And it just made me so excited. So like. I've got a whole Google Maps pin of just these little abandoned orchards, old home sites. You can read the history of an area and just get a hunch, like you'll find a town that's called like, you know, apple Grove or you know, peach Ravine or something silly like that, and you'll go there and there's no orchards that you can see. But you know that back in the day there was, and that's when you start running out into the woods to find a couple of those trees. If you go into early spring, you can see the flowers blossoming and it stands out from all the other trees that haven't gotten their leaves yet. And I mark them, put a little ribbon there, put a little pin on it, and then I come back during the fruit season and just harvest them and then go plant more while I'm there. Yeah. Wow. That's beautiful. As land privatization has happened and how they've sectioned off land, I think I heard you say like about the national parks, they treat them like museums. I'd never heard that before, when you remove the stewardship element of things, like you were sharing all the overgrowth over these, these old orchards, what would your ideal solution food system look like to be able to restore some of that land? To edible plants for humans, for the animals. I mean, hey, if, if we've got Big brother on our side and we can actually just do it out in the open. The way that it is right now is, hey, we've got the private land owned by big corporations and land banking companies who just look at it as dollar signs. They look at land as tax breaks and they look at it as timber. Mm. So they come into a piece of land that they have no connection with, and they, most of the time they absolutely clear cut the land, they strip it, they take away all the resources, they mine it, they do whatever they're doing to the land. They just take it away and wait for it to grow back so they can get more dollars. And then in response, the Forest Service and the government's like, well, we want to protect this land for the people, so we're gonna have land that no one touches. It just grows up nice and thick, and it's a closed canopy forest for probably 99% of it. On the East coast. It's just like dense forest, which is cool. But historically, the natives of the land would go out and they would take, they would thin out some of the trees and they would use that wood to make a a canoe, or they would burn it, or they would build a little house with it, or they would use it for this and that they would make charcoal and put it around their plants. So they would use something, leave the rest. So instead of clear cutting the land or leaving it completely untouched, I think that we should be immersed in it. And it's kind of like, take what you need to leave the rest. So, hey, let's thin out some trees. What happens when the trees get thinned out? A bunch of blueberry bushes, a bunch of blackberry bushes, a bunch of wild cherries start popping up underneath those trees because light just touched the forest floor for the first time in a hundred years. Mm-hmm. So if you were to responsibly manage this land and start planting community food force in areas like this, and if you want to be all kosher and above board, is planting native plants. Pawpaws persimmon, um, American wild plums, blueberries, we have so many things that grow well in this climate, but they're not gonna grow in a dense forest. And yeah, there's not a lot of places where it's public land, but it's just a meadow because that takes management. When people say that like, oh, well, back in the day, people didn't use to manage the land, or they didn't use to cut the grass, so that must mean that just leaving it is the highest and best use. But back before private property and fences, what would happen is the bland and the buffalo would eat the meadows and the prairies. And it wasn't so dense like a, a high density. Cattle operation to where all the plants would die. They would eat some, keep going. The wild flowers would stay there. If there was any saplings of trees, they would most likely get eaten by these ruminant animals and it would stay a meadow. But then when we put fences around everything, hey, if you don't have a cow, that land's not gonna get eaten. And about 10 to 15 years that nice open pasture is gonna turn into. Thick woods and it's gonna be full of brush. And all of a sudden you lost almost all of that biodiversity. Mm-hmm. You're gonna have, you know, maybe some sycamores and some oaks and maples and some tulip poplars, but you're not gonna have any of those more desirable trees for humans to eat from. You're not gonna have the elderberries, you're not gonna have a persimmon in a forest like that. So we lose a lot by letting the land sit idle. Definitely. That was a great answer. Still talking about your journey planting trees. What are some of the scariest sketchiest situations you've found yourself in during that whole time period? Oh geez. Um, I mean, hey, being in the woods, you know, and it's, it's two in the morning and you know, sometimes you hear the coyotes around you and you think that's the scariest thing.'cause they're circling you, making all this noise real close to the tent. But, you know, other times I could go on to some pretty crazy stories about like, weird, uh, I don't even know what you would call it. Weird energies, spirit. Mm-hmm. Things, I mean, that's, that's a story for another time. But I've been in some places and had a feeling about certain, certain things, like something's here watching me. I'm like, no, I'm probably crazy. Then I go into town and meet somebody who describes the same exact situation. Some people talk about, you know, the Appalachian folklore real, I'll just leave it at that a lot of that is real. Um, but on the bright side, I believe a lot of it feeds off of fear. So, you know, if you just stay, um, stay in prayer and know that you're protected and you're not letting yourself get fearful, you're gonna be completely fine. It's nothing to worry about. But that was a huge, awakening for me when it first happened and I didn't know what to do. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. I am guessing from your social media that you are a believer. Absolutely. Yeah. Every year it's, it's gotten stronger. Started out with just not trusting the institutions and the churches and being like, Hey, like, I'm just gonna pray outside under the trees and just to the one who made me, praise God. And I had some friends who told me, they were like, Hey, you know, why don't you check out the Jesus thing? And they gave me a Bible and everyone wrote me messages on it. I was like, you know what, like I don't wanna outsource my power to anybody, but like, you know, maybe I'll try it sometime, like nothing against it. But I'm like, I've had miracles happen where God has brought metal shavings outta my eye when I couldn't see for a couple days. And I was just like, you know, I didn't, I didn't pray to Jesus. I was like, I think story of Jesus is great, but you know, God's got me. I was, I was talking to the father and then I had this situation when I was driving one day and. I remember just saying a little prayer of protection and, you know, going down I 95 heading down to Florida and I had this weird feeling, I dunno how much I should get into, but it was like this intrusive thoughts that like, I knew were not mine. And I was like, whatever voice in my head is not me. And like, this is really scary. I started to like getting all concerned and spiraling. I'm like, gosh, what if this thought doesn't leave me? What if this thought doesn't leave me? What do I do? Like how am I even gonna drive another mile and. Oh my gosh. I, I remember what my friend said about praying to Jesus, and I said, all right. And I said, this prayer, I said, this prayer, nothing happened. I'm praying to God, I'm praying to this, praying to that. And, uh, eventually I just said, Jesus Christ, fill me with the Holy Spirit. Fill me with your Holy Spirit. And I, I swear like on, on everything as soon as I said his name. As soon as I said his name, I had a phone charger that shot out, like physically shot out of the cigarette, lighter on my truck, hit the seat, made a noise, my radio cut on full blast on the static channel. Like there was no, no, no music, no words. It was just like, and I started to feel his presence and I just kept praying and I kept praying to him and just kept asking him to fill me with this Holy Spirit. I was just like, I'm with the Holy Spirit, please. Like I don't know what to do. And after I did that, I felt this warm, radiating, just love like a cozy blanket. I remember having this vision that I was in the middle of the desert and it was so cold. And no one was around me and I didn't have anything to support me except him. And I remember just feeling so warm, like I could be anywhere in the entire world with no people around, no food, no water, and that my needs would be taken care of. And it was just like this comforting, like almost like. Fatherly just like love and radiating warmth. Like I don't even, I, I know it's kind of chilly outside of trying to get the good signal, so it's, I don't know how, how deep it sounds, but it was just such a profound experience for me to where like that was tangible. That was like my phone charger shot. The radio cut on like that was nothing else besides him. And that just like brought me almost like this sobering reality of like everything that I thought I knew feels like it was almost like just a game or an illusion. And this is like the truth. This is the one thing that is real and the one thing that matters and that like I'm being watched over, taken care of and everything is just going to be all right. And to keep going on my mission. That's so beautiful. That's such a powerful story. I've heard several stories like that recently. It's like so true that God will leave the 99, the other, the whole flock of sheep just to follow the one, and that in his perfect timing, he makes himself apparent to people. And when he does, there's no doubt about it. That's pretty cool. So the reason I asked, there was no doubt. I just wonder how that has shaped your vision of stewardship over time how that has increased your passion for this and any wisdom you got, you can share with us about that. oh my gosh. Yeah, I just, as I started to have that experience and I, I met some friends who were really connected with Jesus I started to learn about all these parables, about like the sower and fertile ground and seeds and fruit trees. And I realized that so much of the Bible was just talking about fruit trees. Even in the very beginning, it's just like, I've given you the seeds of the herbs for the food and the seeds of the fruit bearing trees, and I'm like, okay, that's a start. And it's just talking about you can steward this land and what was the one with the sower I was talking about like, you can put the seed down. Yeah. But like if the soil is rocky, you know, it will come up and thorns, will choke it out. Right. But if the soil is fertile and it's full of water, and it's almost just like the, the earth, the soil is our heart. Like if our heart is so closed off and we're not able to receive the love, and like the connection. From our creator, then like that seed's not gonna grow. Mm-hmm. Um, but I was at such a point in my life at that time where I was just so like raw exposed. I didn't know where else to look, that my heart was softened and that's why like the seed was able to, to grow in my heart. And, um, it just reminded me that like, wow. On another slightly different topic that like, we have dominion over this land. Like the reason that we were, it's like, I've given you these seeds and I'm like, people aren't doing things with the seeds that we've been given. I have these seeds and I feel like it's my God-given duty to nurture the land and be a good steward of the land around me. So it's like, why would I go to a camp spot? Why would I go on a trail and just observe the land without giving it some love, without saying thank you and giving back a little bit without thinking of the other people in the community, the other people hiking, the people who are either hungry, or the people who just want better quality food. Why wouldn't I think of them for my brothers and sisters to. Give them something that's gonna either make them happy or make them healthy and bring people closer to the land. And also like bring people closer to God in the same way. Whenever I sow a seed, it's the seed of intention. Mm-hmm. And, um, like I experienced Jesus Christ through the fruit trees. When you grow in yourself and it's the first time that you know, you just get 50 pounds of fruit and it was absolutely free and there was no pesticide sprayed it at all, and you, you taste that sweet sugar, you, you feel God's love through that. It's, it's so much different than going to a grocery store. You get get a sweet pair and it's just like, this is what life is all about. It doesn't have to be complicated. It really is that simple that he's given us these seeds and we're supposed to grow these seeds into trees and share with others that's like the definition of abundance, having more than you need and it doesn't cost a lot. And it just makes me sad to see people. Who, oh, they pay all this money for like food and housing and everyone's building a, you know, a$600,000 house. Which is fine if they want to, but we don't need all that at the end of the day. Yeah, right. It's just like us, our creator, the people around us and what do we need to survive? Food, clothing, and shelter and the food aspect is something that I want to connect people with. Well, yeah, I, I think it definitely is worth saying that we are one of the wealthiest. Nations, you being also from the us, one of the wealthiest nations in the world, but some of the most unwell people who are always searching for something to fill that void. And at least in my own life, and I'm guessing in yours too, like I've found so much of that void, obviously filled in the Lord. But then just with that connection with creation, like we were originally intended for relationship with the land. I feel like so rich getting to live this life, even if it doesn't look rich in the sense of our culture's definition of it, you know, Hey, it all started in the garden. Right? Yeah. So just with that bouncing off of that, we are designed for relationship with the land. How are you kind of moving forward on this journey and how would you recommend that listeners start with increasing in that relationship with the land? Absolutely. Um, as far as my plans right now, um, after two years of traveling and planting fruit trees and, you know, having some money from both of my businesses saved up, I was just like, I'm never gonna be this young again with this opportunity. So I set the businesses aside to travel, but with intention after a while, it's like, all right. This is getting kind of expensive to buy a bunch of fruit trees, whether they're little 50 cents seeds or$40 trees or$150 trees. I was like, I'm doing this. I of the passion that I have for it, but like it's coming to a point where I'm not getting a financial return. I'm getting a huge return in relationships, connections, awareness about what I do in the message. But it came to a point where it's like, all right, if I want to ever buy a farm, I gotta stop running around like a little nomad doing fun stuff, even if it's difficult sometimes. And doing random jobs in random cities. Like landscaping projects and stuff and building out little orchards. It wasn't very stable. So I'm back in Richmond with my landscaping company since you know about March, April, every single day. Pretty much I've been working, trimming bushes, clearing brush, planting, designing gardens and wildflowers. So the plan is to use the money from this business to go at, in on a piece of land with one of my friends. Maybe not a forever farm or something that's gonna be like a nice 20 acre homestead with pasture and a creek and a river may, Hey, God willing, I'll, I'll accept that if that's out there and it's within budget, like I'm, I'm all for it. But just to give me something to look forward to and be excited about that I know is like, Hey, this is achievable now. We're gonna find something and probably divide it into half. And that's something that I'm gonna start paying off from Richmond, from this business. I'm gonna go there, you know, on the weekends or in the summertime. Spend some time out there and build up that orchard, build out the food forest, then out some of the trees and maybe do some mushroom logs. And just let that do its thing and that now something is planted. Now it can grow. So when I'm here working, I know that I have something else kind of doing some more work for me. It's like the business people say, make your money work for you. Take that money and invest it so the interest can accumulate. But mine is take that money and plant trees so that. I guess the metaphorical interest of the fruits, so the fruits can accumulate and all that, all that goodies. So I want to get something so I can plant it, set it aside, eventually work my way out there. So like that's what I'm personally doing. There's like a lot of areas that are really beautiful with affordable land. Don't have. Grid economies. So if you work remotely, it's a really good opportunity to do that if you have stable income and you want to get a nice place. Um, but for me, I kind of reverted back to what I knew, which was doing home service business in a city where land's expensive and it's not particularly, in the mountain streams or the, the High Meadows. Um, yeah. So if people are in the city, or even if they're in the country and they want to get connected and to the land, it could be as simple as just getting a little window box and planting strawberries. I did that when I lived in an apartment, just to have something growing. A lot of churches and a lot of community centers have. Um, almost like you pay like 30,$40 a year for a community garden plot, so that's an option. Or you know, don't say I told you so, but if you got a couple seeds of some native trees and you're going for a walk with your family at the park or at the bass, fish and lake that's like super sterile and they cut the grass all around it, find a little pocket where you can get that seed to sprout. You know, if you wanna do it low maintenance, you can just have a pocket full of bulk seeds that you get from a farm or online somewhere. Or I sell my native Appalachian fruit seed mix. If you want a variety pack and you pop in the ground and just put it in, leave it, and just know that, hey, maybe it gets eaten by a squirrel, or maybe it pops up and flourishes. Um, but if you want to be even more kind of connected with it, you can sprout the seeds in a cup, let it get to a sapling. It get a foot tall and then you can dig that in at one of those parks. You know, whether you ask for permission, talk to your park, the guy cutting the grass. Be like, Hey, if I put a little, if I put a, a, a paw paw tree or a fig tree here, maybe we'll just kind of, but yeah, all that aside, I, I really just like add mulch around it and make it look like. It's meant to be there and a lot of times it gets left alone. Or you can just put it on the wood line where there's a bunch of brush and stuff growing up anyways, to kind of condense that, when I realized that I wasn't gonna be able to have my own farm and garden at that time, that's when I went out and I was. Kind of forced to make the world my garden. And that was a big reason of why I believed that I didn't get that land when I was searching for it. When I thought it was in, you know, God's will for my life to have a farm and it's all I worked towards and it kept falling through and it just wasn't quite right. That's when I went out and I was like, oh, that's because I'm supposed to do this everywhere, not just on my piece. Mm-hmm. Have you heard of Robin Greenfield? We have, uh, some mutual friends. I haven't met him personally, but he's like apparently really connected with the people here in, uh, Virginia. Oh, sure. Yeah. You won't have known this'cause the podcast episode isn't out yet, but he and I recorded one that will. Air like the week before yours. And it's interesting'cause I also talked to him about the parable of the sower, so maybe for the people listening they'll actually go and read it. Um, hearing it two weeks in a row but yeah, he's doing a 1 million fruit trees initiative, trying to get a million fruit and nut trees, native trees planted in the next couple years. And I am excited to participate here where I live. But yeah, just. It is so true that a lot of places, they're so used to only planting male trees that only produce pollen. Yes. Um, that's a whole problem why we have crazy pollen allergies now. But, a lot of places here are just so closed off to the idea of planting fruit trees. And so, that's part part of why I really love what you're doing and what you're passionate about, because, food used to be everywhere. Food should be everywhere for everybody and accessible and free and wild. And I think it, there is definitely a lot to, a lot of pushback still, but I think that people like you out there raising awareness about it is exactly what's gonna make it possible. And so I just love your enthusiasm about it and that your story has inspired other people, heck yeah. Thank you. Plant a fruit tree. If you're listening to this, like all you gotta do is pop a couple seeds in the ground spring time's coming. Go type in bear root trees, bear root fruit trees, and you can find trees between$1 and$4 per tree. They'll ship'em in a box. You can buy them in bulk. All you need is a little miniature shovel to put in your backpack that folds up and you can pop'em in the ground anywhere. If you plant in the early spring, they most likely will not need water just because the temperatures are cooler. There's less evaporation and you're gonna get plenty of rain. So that's something that I really like to do. And the tree's not too big. If you plant a huge four foot, five foot tall tree, the tree might be, you know, four foot tall of growth, but the root ball might only be a foot tall. But with the bare root tree, the roots might go down 10 inches but it's also gonna go a foot above ground, so it's kind of balanced the root to trunk ratio is pretty equal. So yeah, Bayroot, fruit trees, find some and you can plant them in your local area and they're super, super affordable. Yeah. Great advice. Thank you. Just go out there and find some local, whether it's a community garden, whether it's a permaculture space, you know, we have in Richmond Chim Native Food Forest, which is really cool. Find an organization near you to where like, maybe they're even teamed up with some of the city parks that have, an abandoned area. The one here was covered in kudzu and the city wasn't doing anything with it. So what they decided to do was gr clear the kudzu out and then grow food. So if you wanna do it above board, you know, find an organization, um, if you just want to be a little rambunctious, put some paw paw seeds in your pocket and put it by the river bank. You know, that's all I had to say on that. Just like, do something, you know, just grow something and put it in the ground and you can feel that connection. And when you go back to it. Especially in a place that you like to frequent, like a park, you can watch it grow every single year

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If you made it this far, thanks for dealing with our tricky audio. We just kept losing signal, the whole goal. I will be totally honest and admit that I tried to fix it for hours and hours and just finally gave up because I have way more important things to be doing and I'm not a professional podcaster. I do this for fun to chat with you and to help encourage you and farmers around the world. you for listening to another Tuesday episode, and we will chat again next week.