We Are Not Zombies [WANZ]
  • 9 months ago
Ve el episodio completo en: https://www.wearenotzombies.com/canales/podcasts/wanz-talks/sean-hawkins

Maestro y estudiante de agricultura regenerativa, recolector de semillas y fundador de "Cultivated Mind".
Sean Hawkins está dedicado a educar y crear sistemas de alimentación descentralizados a través del empoderamiento comunitario con la visión de crear un futuro regenerativo.
Hablamos del verdadero sabor de la comida, el mundo y poder de los hongos, de cómo convertir la tierra en un lugar saludable y fértil para cultivar alimentos; y del despertar a una conciencia de cuidado con la tierra y permacultura.

ENGLISH
Teacher and student of regenerative agriculture, mushroom grower, seed collector and founder of "Cultivated Mind".
Sean Hawkins is dedicated to educating and creating decentralized food systems through community empowerment with the vision of creating a regenerative future.
We talk about the real taste of food, how to turn the land into a healthy and fertile place to grow food; and about the awakening of taking care of the soil and permaculture.

Subscribe to WANZ: https://bit.ly/39FViiC
Transcript
00:00 [Music]
00:18 Hola, welcome to One Stocks, a We Are Not Zombies podcast.
00:23 I'm your host, Ramiro, and today we are very, very excited to be connected and talking with this human born in Houston, Texas.
00:36 He's a teacher and student of regenerative agriculture.
00:40 He's a mushroom grower, a soil smith, a dissident, a natural farmer, a seed collector, a citizen scientist,
00:50 the founder of Cultivated Mind, Sean Hawkins.
00:54 How are you, brother?
00:56 Hey, Ramiro. Thank you very much for having me. I'm doing good.
00:59 I'm happy to be talking finally with you.
01:03 And first, and because we just mentioned it, Sean, tell us what is being a soil smith.
01:11 So a soil smith is essentially like a blacksmith.
01:15 You know, we create and regenerate soil that is native to that land.
01:21 So you don't have to bring in soil from somewhere else where you might have to get it from a facility.
01:27 You can just take the land that's around you and turn it into a healthy, fertile place to grow food.
01:35 How did you start it in this path?
01:41 So, you know, that I would have to go back pretty far, really, to my grandfather and the farm that he's had his entire life.
01:51 And as a child, walking through them and being able to eat food straight off the plant,
01:55 it was something that always stuck with me because as I grew up, you start to realize, you know, how tasteless a lot of our food is.
02:03 So every time I go back to my grandparents' house and I get that just explosion of flavor and the differences,
02:11 one was at a grocery store and one was from my grandfather's garden.
02:15 So it's that that. That need to grow food has been with me since a young age.
02:22 Of course, I didn't do that for a large part of my life. A large part of my life, I actually did construction.
02:28 I can basically build a house from the ground up from the concrete to putting the last shingle on and did that for about 20 years, actually.
02:38 And the whole time sort of farming was just in the background.
02:43 I kind of did it as a hobby. And since we're on a pretty open podcast, I was actually an underground cannabis grower.
02:53 I did that for a long time. So it, you know, you, you, when you're in that sort of realm, you have to do all the education yourself.
03:07 So there was a lot of book reading, a lot of experimentation, a lot of failures along the way.
03:15 But the more and more I learned, the more I really just grew to love how to grow this plant.
03:21 And that started to branch into food when I noticed there was this huge need for us to get back to growing that way,
03:31 especially when I go back to the flavors of my foods. And at first you just notice it as taste.
03:36 And then you start noticing it really that taste is a direct link to health.
03:41 And when you start making those connections and the cannabis market sort of dropped out, we had a lot of problems here in America.
03:51 It's not profitable to be a cannabis grower anymore unless you're one of the big guys.
03:58 Unfortunately, it's just what happens whenever you make something quote unquote legalized through the regulation system or
04:08 versus decriminalized where you sort of hands off and let sort of the public take over.
04:16 You know, it's caused a massive amount of regulation, which I'm definitely against.
04:20 So, you know, that became less and less attractive as time went on.
04:24 And the need to see my family and my friends get healthier became more and more apparent.
04:31 And that path just sort of was a very easy transition because, hey, cannabis is just a weed.
04:37 It's just a plant that grows like everything else. And all of those strategies, you know, were pretty much exactly the same when I transitioned over.
04:46 And it really just sort of got a hold of me whenever I went to my first Korean natural farming class.
04:54 I thought that I was going to learn about composting. In fact, when my buddy Rob Bass invited me, so I thought I was going to.
05:05 I was like, oh, are we going to an advanced composting course?
05:07 I'm spending a thousand dollars, more than a thousand dollars to to just fly out to this place for five days and spend more money taking this five day course.
05:19 Well, by the end of the first day, I really knew what all the fuss was about.
05:25 And it was such a wonderful surprise to be introduced to this method, not online, but in person with, you know, the teacher, with Chris Trump.
05:34 And yeah, it just really showed me that this is the way when we take these systems and we learn to partner with nature, we can create beautiful things.
05:47 And nature has been doing this for a very long time.
05:49 And when we start to understand her and we start to be able to make changes to our land that is in line with what nature wants to do, wonderful things happen.
05:58 And and when you see the detriment that our agricultural systems have done to our land, done to our food, as most food is very devoid of nutrition,
06:10 it is absolutely devoid of nutrition with the way that we have implemented our agricultural practices in order to get that back.
06:17 We have to get back to nature. And when I saw this just foundational education, things that were like, ah, I have control over my land now.
06:29 I don't have to go buy this product or implement the spray method from this company.
06:35 I can create those things in a natural way on my land with my own materials.
06:40 And it's just like, well, duh, I don't need anyone else.
06:46 I can do this within a 10 mile radius of my farm. Of course, this is the answer.
06:51 Why would we do anything else? And that's just ever since then, the education to be able to bring this method to everybody else has has just grown rapidly
07:02 because it's such a vital piece of information for everyone.
07:07 And it really just sells itself. I don't have to do a whole lot of work in getting people to agree that we need to be going down a more natural path.
07:16 So this this is why I'm here to get the word out.
07:20 So it's because you took this this this workshop that you decided to make a shift or were you like just making construction and working with the with cement?
07:31 And with all these materials, you know that I suppose now you have a strong opinion about them and suddenly you decided to drop out of it.
07:40 I wonder because it's important to understand what's our breaking point.
07:45 No, I'm curious to know what what's what was the point that you were decided to be?
07:51 You know what? I'm turning totally to connect to the land.
07:55 I love that decision. And I yeah, I would like to know.
08:01 Right. You know, that's that's a really tough one.
08:05 I would have to say fate, to be honest, and a little bit of faith,
08:12 because it wasn't necessarily something that I would have done if the situation hadn't revealed itself to me that there needed to be a change.
08:23 While I was doing construction, I was making pretty good money and life was just sort of cruising along.
08:30 Didn't really pay attention to much of the world.
08:33 In fact, if it wasn't for a car accident that I had in the middle of this, I'd probably still be doing construction right now.
08:41 This this car accident totaled my truck. I hurt my back really bad.
08:46 I couldn't walk actually for almost a whole year. And it really put me into this sort of midlife crisis where I was like, what am I going to do with my life?
08:56 I can't go back to doing, you know, climbing around on roofs and moving materials.
09:02 You know, this is not going to be something for my life. And well, because I was doing, you know, some underground gardening on the side, it it just made me go, OK.
09:13 I can sit in a chair and read a book and plant some plants and that can be a life for me.
09:20 And in the process of learning how to take care of this plant, it really revealed nature to me.
09:28 And that just opened up this huge world and made essentially expanded my entire consciousness of what was going on around us.
09:36 And that's sometimes how it happens. Sometimes something bad happens to you.
09:42 And instead of taking this moment and really stewing in it and having it become something that pulls you down or drags you down,
09:49 you use that as something to build upon, use that as some time to think, as some time to educate yourself and elevate yourself.
09:57 You know, don't don't necessarily take all the bad things that happen in your life and let them really wear you down or drag you down.
10:06 They can be benefits in your life because there is a yin and yang in everything.
10:12 When something bad comes along now, I'm immediately looking for the good.
10:18 Like, where's the window? Where's the opportunity that comes with this?
10:21 Yeah. You know, and that's definitely something that's gotten me into this position and kept myself sane and moving in a good direction.
10:30 You know, our mental powers are important.
10:33 You mentioned something very important, which is a farm, having a farm.
10:39 And I'm sure a lot of people that listen to us, that is watching, they're like probably in a city, you know, inside of a huge system,
10:51 probably with the children, you know, probably with a mortgage, probably working a nine to five.
11:03 You know, it's it might sound a wild dream or a far dream to to think I have the money to have a farm.
11:17 What would you say about that?
11:21 I would say that farming can be very cheap.
11:24 In fact, that's the entire one of the main reasons that I love Cree Natural Farming and JADAM.
11:30 It it taught me how cheap farming could actually be.
11:34 Now, of course, if you're in your backyard, you can have some really poor soil and these methods might take a minute to work.
11:43 It might take you a whole season of just building up your soil to make it healthy enough to put a plant in,
11:50 which it can be a little bit of work for someone who's working a nine to five.
11:54 For someone who's working nine to five, there are some some quick steps that you can use to bypass this.
12:00 You can find a nice, healthy, quality soil and grow in pots even or or even take that quality soil and mix it in with some of your your net,
12:09 your native soil and get very healthy.
12:13 Easy to grow plants for your area, you know, when you go to a nursery, of course, every region is a little bit different.
12:19 Talk to them, say, hey, which one am I going to have the most success with, even if I forget to water, you know, so start there.
12:27 And if you can just grow something and get it to finish, I would say you're having success like that is the beginnings of it.
12:34 You're going to have failure whenever you're farming. It's tough.
12:37 We we have we've gotten to a point where we don't educate our public on how to do some of these basic things that that were just part of life.
12:49 Yes. Back in the day, you know, this was just something that you did.
12:53 You knew how to farm. You knew how to grow your own food. It was it was something that was sort of necessary.
12:58 And it can be a little bit challenging at first. But once you get it down, you start to realize how simple it really is.
13:04 And it becomes a routine. It's like, hey, every week I do these steps A, B and C.
13:09 And in about three or four months, I've got enough food to completely supplement all of my produce.
13:16 I don't have to buy produce at the store anymore because I took a couple of four by eight spaces and packed them with as many vegetables as I could for my climate, my region.
13:29 So you've got to be curious. About your your health, about food, about the quality of the food that you're getting, you mentioned something very important, the flavors of the food.
13:43 I think sometimes you or we can forget how juicy and how delicious a strawberry or an apple or a banana should be.
13:55 Absolutely. Absolutely. And there's a big part to that, actually.
14:01 When when food has that flavor, that that means that it has completed its entire genetic process.
14:09 That means that it has fulfilled. Of course, there is a little bit of selection involved.
14:15 Of course, some varieties have a little more flavor than others, of course.
14:18 But what that really means that it's starting to produce all of its secondary metabolites.
14:22 These are all the things that it doesn't need to survive.
14:26 But when it has all of the basic building blocks to make it a healthy plant, it starts producing flavors.
14:32 Then it starts producing smells and all of the extra compounds that really those are the things that are responsible for our health.
14:39 It's not the fiber. It's not the material just to get the plant to survive and live, which is what happens whenever you put chemicals on a plant.
14:48 That's that's the only function it can it can achieve is get to reproduction, get to seed.
14:54 And then that plant will never achieve that level of health is really the main epidemic that we're going through.
15:01 A nice, easy way to counter that is with mushrooms.
15:05 Actually, you can grow mushrooms at home on logs.
15:08 I have a video that I need to put on my channel right now showing you how to inoculate these mushrooms,
15:15 set them up in your backyard so that you can have a very healthy food right there in your backyard with very minimal input.
15:23 It's very cheap. You don't have to do a whole lot of work.
15:27 You go out there and water the logs every once in a while.
15:29 And the medicinal compounds and the the food nutrition that these things provide is far and above anything that you're going to to find at the store.
15:41 And then when I would say if you're looking for vegetables that are healthy, you don't have the time, you don't necessarily have the space.
15:48 You need to find something local. Of course, in Mexico, that seems to be a lot easier.
15:53 I really enjoyed coming down there.
15:56 You guys had some wonderful food and like I could smell like the fruit and the vegetables from like way over there.
16:04 You know, it was amazing. You guys definitely have an advantage there.
16:08 I felt better and healthier whenever I was eating from these local farms.
16:14 And that's what I encourage people to do. Find the local farm if you don't have the time or the energy to do it and get your farm from as close of a farm to your land as possible.
16:24 That will apply the best amount of nutrition for you, assuming that they don't use chemicals.
16:31 Yes, of course. That would be the first question to scratch out of the way. Right.
16:35 What not using chemicals? Absolutely.
16:39 Not not having nothing to do with Monsanto. No Monsanto logos anywhere.
16:46 Absolutely. Yeah, because what what happens is those chemicals, when they get into the soil, what they do is they destroy the microbial profile that's living in the soil.
16:57 And these microorganisms are what are important to to the health of the plant.
17:02 That is currently why I like growing mushrooms right now, because it's so much simpler to grow a mushroom to get more nutrition out of it.
17:12 It's a little it's a few more steps to get that that potato or get that cucumber, get that carrot to be as healthy.
17:21 And when we restore the balance in the soil by, let's say, growing mushrooms, which is a fungus, it creates a balance with the bacteria.
17:29 You start creating this ecosystem and those microorganisms boost the health of the plant.
17:35 Without those microorganisms, you cannot have a healthy plant.
17:39 So anytime you add a chemical, anytime you add an herbicide or a pesticide, you shut that system down.
17:45 You know, you can't see it visually. If we were to take things and put them underneath a microscope,
17:50 you would see that all of the life in the soil has just been decimated by our current agricultural practices.
17:57 Anytime you till, anytime you spray a chemical, anytime you spray an herbicide, anytime you leave the soil bare,
18:03 if you rip all the plants out and you leave just open dirt, you're you're causing a lot of oxidation and you're losing all of your nitrogen right out into the atmosphere.
18:13 When you could be holding that nitrogen, sequestering that nitrogen into the soil,
18:17 and it's an organic nitrogen instead of the chemicals that we put on there,
18:23 you'll establish a balance and nature starts to take over. And of course we get health from it.
18:29 We're allowing nature to do the thing that it's been doing for millions of years.
18:34 You know, who are we to come in and start going, well, I want to add this nutrient and everything's going to be OK.
18:42 I'm going to put this giant puzzle piece into this very intricate mechanism that's been functioning for a long time.
18:49 And that machine is just going to run just fine, isn't it? You know, so we just have to change our concepts of how we look at these things.
18:57 There's some very straightforward procedures, which is what I love about it.
19:01 Yes, it's a complicated system, but with K&F, with JADAM, with mushroom growing,
19:08 even there are some very straightforward steps to get you guys on this path so that you can turn your degradated,
19:16 toxic, trashed out land into a healthy food forest, into a healthy biome. So I'm excited.
19:24 So the first there's several steps to take here.
19:28 If you are in the city and don't have a garden, you should look for the closest farm or local grower or local market,
19:38 farmers market and be careful about the pesticides and all these factors.
19:43 But there's by now probably an option everywhere we can think that.
19:50 And in Mexico, I know we have markets and even in Monterrey or Guadalajara and in these these big cities,
19:57 there are ways now to get these local foods and vegetables that are growing, as you said, near your native land.
20:09 There's definitely options in the US. I don't know if everywhere, you know, I am.
20:14 I know you're in Houston. I am familiar to the Laredo surrounds.
20:19 And I'm not sure there's many, many options. You know, there's HEV everywhere.
20:26 And there's just these markets with these fruits.
20:30 I had the chance to live for a few years in New York, you know, with these all these trends of the farmers market.
20:38 And, whoa, Sean, after a few months there, I appreciated for once in for first and once in my life at that level,
20:51 the importance of the smells and flavors of our fruits and vegetables and the importance of sun,
21:00 you know, of vitamin of the power of vitamin D, because, yeah, sometimes you just go through your days
21:08 and the stress of life and don't stop to to question that and to and don't stop to flavor to try to taste all the flavors that can be there.
21:21 So after a few years living there, I totally changed the way I saw all these all these issues and the importance of our food.
21:31 And that's why I wanted to go over these important points, because anyone that is listening to us resonates with going to the supermarket
21:41 and not finding a good avocado or not finding a good fruit because, OK, well, I'll eat it in a week from now,
21:50 you know, because it's super hard or probably it's going to turn its color.
21:54 And we've all gone to those situations and normalize it by now, you know.
22:00 And yeah, precisely what we're talking, it's that that's not what should happen.
22:05 We should not comfort with that. We should get out of that comfort zone.
22:09 That implies the supermarket or the to go up or whatever and go find and connect with the real humans that are working and connecting with the soil.
22:19 And the question is, do you think that in the US, for example, that you said we have we have a probably tougher situation here?
22:26 You have anywhere, anywhere in the US you can find an option.
22:31 And I love what you said about finding good soil and finding pots and growing at least the first vegetables and herbs there.
22:40 No, that's definitely a big, a huge step to take.
22:46 Yes, absolutely. We definitely have a problem here in Houston.
22:53 And you can do a lot in your backyard, even if you have a small, a small space.
22:59 We do things called water walls where you'll use a vertical space and you actually, depending on which direction the sun's coming,
23:06 you can grow food on a vertical wall so you don't need a lot of square footage.
23:11 We do have to sort of take that into our own hands.
23:14 We do have a few co-ops here and there. Of course, people are busy.
23:20 People, you know, don't necessarily want to take the time until, of course, your your health starts to subside.
23:28 And then, you know, once you're in that position, you know, I think what this comes down to is a lot more education, number one, and a lot more availability.
23:38 One of the things that I've been hoping to do down here is start an educational facility.
23:46 Actually, I want to be able to teach people how to do natural farming and actually allow the public to come bring material into this location.
23:57 We will process it for them into their fertilizers, into their inputs.
24:01 While we're doing the education, we might take a little bit of of a cut just for the processing and the labor and things like that,
24:09 just to make it sustainable to to pay for the guys that are doing the work and doing the education.
24:14 And we build these communities where people can show up and can learn and can come get the fertilizers, because, you know, at one point I was selling them.
24:24 I can't keep up with everybody.
24:27 You know, there's a lot of land that needs remediation, you know, and it's a little bit of work.
24:33 And then the other part is that when you have these things, when you have these tools, which is one of the best parts about K&F and JADAM is, you know,
24:42 when you figure out these recipes and you have them, you sometimes don't know what to do with them.
24:51 You know, so we want to be able to allow people to come in, get the education, get the actual hands on product that they can go apply on their land and start really creating this this movement of people who are becoming more conscious.
25:07 It's definitely difficult here in Houston.
25:09 We are probably the slowest movers when it comes to health and it comes to farming.
25:16 The East Coast and the West Coast are way ahead of us, which maybe puts me into a good position as I'm probably one of the only teachers.
25:24 Definitely. Definitely.
25:26 I was totally surprised to know when I met you that you were based in Houston, because exactly what I'm saying.
25:34 There's you go there and I know if you go to some parts of Houston and you drive 40 minutes, you can find co-ops or parts of the city where there's markets that are coming from other places.
25:46 But that's not the norm. And something important, Sean, this is not about throwing guilt as the system loves to do it in all the issues to ourselves.
25:56 This is not about that.
25:57 We need to accept that in the middle of all this, we do need to make the extra mile because of our health and the health of our our family.
26:09 That's the most important thing, because the system clearly it's not there for us.
26:15 And the rules of the game, it's not in there are not in place for you to finish up your nine to five and be completely full of energy and be like, OK, now I'm going to do a new whole job and I'm going to entrepreneur in this way.
26:31 No, the rules are set up in the complete opposite way.
26:35 So we need to accept that and find a way to go.
26:42 To continue the that this path, you know, which is definitely requires a bit more work.
26:48 And I'm saying all this because something very important that you do and that you do in the cultivated mind is to empower others into these local farming foundations or initiatives or communities or principles like all these supplies, you know, all these solutions that you see your one can see your videos in Odyssey and Instagram and all these all the all your sources, your Web page, of course.
27:15 And the videos are there and it seems so easy to do it.
27:22 And it seems that it's so powerful once you achieve it and you create these brains that are the mushrooms and all these new greens grow in.
27:32 Yeah, that's it's just it's just magic. You know, sometimes I take, you know, the residuals of that are no residuals are just seeds of what I'm eating in the regrow it.
27:42 And you totally feel happiness the morning after you start seeing these sprouts.
27:47 It's it's beautiful. It's a beautiful feeling to to to have.
27:51 Yes, absolutely.
27:54 Yeah. And if anybody wants to follow my social media, it's open source.
27:59 Farmer is the educational platform that I go by.
28:02 And you can find me pretty much anywhere.
28:04 Rumble Odyssey, Instagram, Facebook. It's open source farmer.
28:08 And yeah, that that, you know, you really touched on on something about it.
28:15 It is really tough out there right now. It really is.
28:17 The only reason I'm even in the position that I'm in now is is delayed gratification.
28:25 It is putting aside the things that I want to do for the things that I really need to do.
28:31 As tired as I am, as much sleep as I've missed out on, you know, it I often say that evil can't win.
28:40 You know, they're not going to win in the end.
28:42 Yeah, but.