Cathedral: One Thousand Acre-Years

I introduce the Cathedral Project, a thousand-acre regenerative silvopasture model designed for long-term fertility, animal flow, and decentralized food production.


I explain the model’s structure: sacred geometry layout, rotational grazing logic, tree lane design, and flexible use for different USDA zones.


I discuss the philosophy behind Cathedral—rooted in time preference, decentralized systems, and the rejection of fiat-driven agriculture and industrial food.


I explore how black locust, honey locust, and black walnut trees form the biological and economic backbone of the system through nitrogen fixation and multi-use yields.


I introduce the idea of measuring productivity through a conceptual “acre-year” unit to evaluate solar and biological output across time.

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Episode Transcript

(00:01):
It is 09:37AM
Pacific Daylight Time. It is the eleventh day of the month of July 2025,
and this is episode eleven thirty two
of Bitcoin and
today
we are faced with doing something very very different
for various reasons because I just don't want to pile on to the noise that is out there

(00:27):
about Bitcoin breaking yet another all time high and and then breaking it again and then and then making a new one. We all we're all very aware.
There's honestly
nothing going on right now.
Other than that, there is literally nothing going on.
It's kind of amazing,

(00:49):
but not gonna leave you in the lurch because this gives me an opportunity
to fully introduce
the cathedral project.
And it is not a software. It's not an Oster client. It's it's
not an an AI thing. It is literally
what I was telling you about yesterday.

(01:11):
It's a concept that's been in my mind and will not leave me alone. It's like a nagging child. Daddy, dad, are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
It won't leave me alone.
And this has happened to me a couple of times before, and it seems very, very effective to actually get these ideas out either on paper or in a word document kind of format.

(01:35):
And
this one is is no different. And and this one,
if I'm referring to the Forest Walker project
that I did,
some of you guys heard Guy Swan read it on his podcast. I've read it on my podcast.
I've done a full podcast
about it
without, you know, without the reading on it.

(01:56):
And
I wanna do the same thing here, except that there's there I'm going to enter into a new kind of context for the next two weeks.
Two weeks, like, Butterfly Labs. And if you if you know, you know. I won't explain it.
I'm going on vacation.
I will be in Southwest Colorado
starting

(02:17):
on Monday. Well, actually, no. I'll I'll end up in freaking Utah on Monday because it's that far of a drive from Eastern Washington,
and I will not actually be where I want to be, the promised land,
which is Southwest Colorado, until
the day after that. But
for these next two weeks,

(02:37):
I wanna dive deep
into the cathedral project. I wanna really outline what it is.
I wanna also be able to get feedback from you guys
because here's the thing,
I'm not an agriculturalist.
I'm not an animal husbandry guy.
I've read a shit ton of books from everything from ecology to soil

(03:02):
to grazing and pasture management
to holistic management with Allan Savory and that thing's a freaking tome.
I've read the entire permaculture
design manual. That thing is a freaking tome.
All what I'm going on here is, like,
65
books.
And and every time I've read one of these books,

(03:23):
it seemed it it seems to have just put itself into a memory center in my head.
And like a soup or a a brew, it's just what pops out is this
entire thing that I've decided to call a cathedral.
So that's what the context is gonna be for the next two weeks. Now if something breaking or something you know,

(03:45):
sets of news that really does,
you know, occur in Bitcoin
actually happen and is, you know, some kind some in some way, shape, form, or fashion
rather newsworthy,
then I will I will cut episodes while I'm in Colorado on those because I will have my recording studio with me. I will have a laptop. I got internet access.

(04:05):
I can do I can do this show anywhere in the world.
So that's what I'm gonna do. So that's the context.
Now
let's
before we begin,
I still am going to be doing the Circle p. And today's Circle p
vendor
is Leathermint.

(04:26):
You can find some of the best wallets, belts,
watch bands,
and I'm thinking soon to be book covers because I'll get into that here in a second,
from Leathermint at the leathermint.com.
That's the leathermint.com.
You can get, by the way, a 10% off
of all of your purchases if you use the code Bitcoin and because

(04:50):
this is the circle p. We are open for business, and my vendors
that are in the circle p
take Bitcoin for their goods and services. If you're not selling your goods and services
for Bitcoin, you are not in the circle p. It's the rule. I've gotta have we all gotta have rules, and Leatherman follows the rule. Actually, he doesn't follow the rules. He's always taken Bitcoin for his goods and services.

(05:15):
And, dude, his goods,
oh my god. His wallets are freaking gorgeous.
Highest quality leather. And I picked Leathermint for today's show because
part of the cathedral's
system is grazing animals, and we start with cattle. And
cattle produces
high quality
food for humans, but they also produce high quality hide,

(05:39):
which can be turned into high quality leather, which can then be cut and sewn into things like belts and watch bands and book covers, and in this case, wallets.
One of my favorite wallets that he has, just by looking at it,
is the Max, m a x. It's named after Max Kizer.

(06:00):
Max Kizer has this tendency to wear lots of white and lots of orange, so this wallet
is white and orange. Its its
its cover and inside is white and all of its accent marks like the like the edging and things like that, they're all in Bitcoin orange.
It's a really gorgeous wallet. And you know what? What happens with this wallet when you lay it down on something dark?

(06:24):
You don't lose it.
I
my iPhone, I lose it all the time. Why? Because it's pitch black.
For some reason or another, all my furniture is black or dark or whatever, and I can't find I can't find my wallet because it's dark. I can't find my phone because it's dark. You're not gonna lose this wallet. And when you get this wallet,
it's gonna be with you forever. In fact,

(06:46):
your kids will probably fight over it when you're dead.
The stitching is done by hand. It's high quality stitching. And that's what makes the difference between a cheap,
crappy wallet and a high quality, everlasting
wallet like you'll find at the leathermint.com.
Go to the leathermint.com.
Check out all of his wallets, but at least take a look at the Max.

(07:09):
This thing is an awesome looking wallet. I gotta tell you, man. It's it's it's pretty cool. But he's got thing like, some of these things are the inside. If you got credit cards, they're protected by RFID or not RFID.
Well, they are actually. I'm sorry. RFID shielding.
Right? So
these wallets are more than meets the eye. He's produced a couple of wallets in the past that actually has an NFC thing going on so you can just tap your wallet

(07:36):
on something that's NFC charged and pay in Bitcoin.
The guy's got it down, man. Go to the leathermint.com.
That is the leathermint.com.
Find the wallet,
the last wallet that you will ever own,
and use Bitcoin and for a 10% off discount. That way, he also knows that I made the sale for him, and he will catch me on the backside with some sats. Now let's get into the meat and potatoes

(08:01):
of today's show. This is the introduction
of Cathedral.
It's not the full sketch. It's not the full plan.
It's not everything. Alright? This is going to happen over the next few weeks.
So we're gonna begin with the introduction.
What is Cathedral?

(08:22):
Well, it's a model.
It's more like
a blueprint.
Right?
And it's it's
challenging the way that we think about
land
and animals
and trees
and time.
Right? Bitcoiners are always, always

(08:44):
all about time preference.
We've we've had to completely
refit
the way that we think about things. We've had multiple discussions
about things like fiat architecture,
fiat fashion,
fiat food.
And we we've all come to the conclusion,
not well, not all of us, but most of the Bitcoiners I know at this point, we don't we don't think in what happens to me next week. We we think about what happens to

(09:12):
the third generation away from after my death.
That we're really starting to embrace this idea, and god knows we need it.
I can't handle one more strip mall.
I literally cannot handle
one more shirt made in Malaysia, probably by, I don't know, child slave labor that falls apart at the first time that it gets snagged on a tree or something like that. I I'm just done.

(09:40):
And this type of thinking
has permeated everything. When I said Fiat food, I'm not just talking about Taco Bell and McDonald's.
No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
I heard I was listening to a podcast of, from John Kempf, k e m was it?
K e m f p, I think it is Kemp. No. K

(10:03):
a m p f. John Kempf. He's an Amish gentleman
that has built a company called AEA,
Advancing Eco Agriculture,
and he's it's one of my favorite podcasts about this this type of thing.
He was talking about
farmers in the Midwest that can't feed themselves.

(10:23):
They like, they were talking to about the fact that he was talking he was talking to a dairy farmer that bought their milk from the store.
And when he said, well, hey.
Actually, this may not have been John Kemp. In fact, this I think this was Jeff Lawton on,
Jack Spierko show. It doesn't matter because

(10:44):
John Kemp has these same stories.
Right? Farmers that farm food cannot feed themselves because none of the shit that they do either is actual food or they're also in the fiat mindset. So, again, we go back to the dairy farmer that buys their milk at the store.
And when when asked about that, they thought it was an odd question to be asking, why wouldn't you buy your milk at a store?

(11:09):
And of course, the the Jeff Lawton on the other side is like, because you're a dairy farmer, you're the one that makes the milk.
That's how far down the rabbit hole
Fiat has taken us.
Where we don't even understand the concept
that we produce milk,
we could be able to go get that milk fresh from the cow and refrigerate it if we want

(11:33):
and use it and drink it, make butter from it. We we could do all kinds of stuff, but we could at least scrape the cream off for our coffee and then drink the whole milk. But this concept fell flat when Jeff Lawton was talking to this particular dairy farmer. Same thing with the wheat farmer. How much wheat do you think you can eat?
You're gonna need some kind of animal protein.

(11:55):
There's an there he Jeff had another story. It's like, well, was the same dairy farmer. Like, literally, why don't you take some of the bulls that are born? Because even though you're a dairy operation, it's a cow calf operation.
You got cow calves coming out every year. Some of them are likely to be male. Why don't you take them and castrate them and grow them up and then have them butchered?

(12:17):
And the answer was because we buy our meat at Costco,
and they're the farmer.
We've
really been
shattered
as a species
by the concept of fiat,
by governments never having our best interest in mind, and and permeating

(12:39):
their influence through scientific fields and agricultural fields and university systems simply because if you don't fall in line, you don't get the fiat money that we can simply print out of thin air. It's destroyed
everything,
even the concept of what a farm is.

(12:59):
I I at this point,
I no longer look at a commodity farmer as a farmer.
I don't know what I would call them. I I'm not mad at them. I'm just saying that a a field of rye
is not a farm. It's something else.
I mean, hell, the dairy farmer, at least at least we can say, hey. There's milk. There's animal protein there. There's animal fat there.

(13:24):
Wheat, barley, god forbid, the swaths of yellow canola or rapeseed that I see in the fields around
Eastern Washington make me kinda sick to my stomach.
I mean, I know that's how they make their money, and I'm not gonna not gonna say, hey. Don't do that. That's not my business. That's their farm. That's the way that they get paid.
But something is very, very wrong.

(13:46):
And
I came across
a long time ago the concept of
what's called a silvopasture.
Silvopasture means trees or forest.
You could say that. Pasture means pasture, so the word itself
describes what we're talking about.
A pasture

(14:06):
inside of a forest, or rather
forests integrated into pasture.
It doesn't matter because both systems are present.
And I've always talked about edge effect. When you have a system that is a forest, you know, smack up against the system that is like a pasture,
and you you get to that edge where the pasture meets the forest, and you get a whole bunch

(14:29):
of species that are not present in either one of the systems.
It's the most productive part of both of the systems.
And there is there's
only one more
system on the face of this planet that is more productive
than what you would call a savanna,
which is the natural form of a silvopasture.

(14:52):
It means that there's trees
and grassland and well actually let's just call it pastureland.
Right? Pasture and trees.
The pasture is huge. It's dotted with trees and in like the Midwest it used to be what was called an oak savanna.
So the predominant tree was oak and then it was basically a savanna or a huge pasture

(15:13):
and around those oak trees,
man,
dude, it's the most productive system in terms of the production of of pounds of biomass,
the amount of animals it can feed, there's only one more system on the face of this planet that can actually produce more and that's a mangrove swamp. And I'm not living in Vietnam so I'm not going to worry about mangrove swamp. I'm going to worry about silvopasture.

(15:37):
So think
trees
and pasture.
So
let's do
the definition of the cathedral.
It is 1,000
acres.
It is a regenerative
silvopasture
system.
Now it's a model. It's a template.

(15:59):
It's it's not a prescription because
what would work for zone USDA
Zone 6, and if you don't know what USDA zones are, it basically sets how much moisture you get in a particular place,
what the,
frost temperatures are gonna be, the lowest temperature, the highest temperature, the average temperatures,

(16:20):
the amount of moisture, all that is defined in these USDA zones. And what's good for USDA zone six is not necessarily
gonna fit in USDA
Zone 3.
In fact, if you try to build a system for USDA 6
and put it into
USDA zone three, it would be a complete failure.

(16:41):
It will be a complete failure. And the same thing is probably true if you went up. So like if you if you were living in the Panhandle Of Texas, which is a good,
you know, definition line between
USDA Zones 6 And 7, but you built it for that and then took it down to USDA Zone 11, which is closer to the Equator, probably not going to work.

(17:03):
So this when I mean this is a what all the stuff that I'm going to talk about is a blueprint.
I'm gonna talk about black walnut trees. May not work where you live, and you may go, oh my god. I can't believe it. You may live in a place where if you planted a black walnut tree, you would fall over dead within a week.
Then you we've got to think about what other tree.

(17:25):
But in a system that that is this big,
I I can't do a prescription for every single USDA zone in every single region in every single whatever. It's impossible.
But the framework
here is what is important.
How do these things work together?

(17:45):
So
it's flexible. And and I think that that I think that this is one of the reasons why I do get excited about it is that if the black walnut tree is the main,
nut producer in the system is not applicable for your land, what about pecan?
What about hazelnut?
Yeah. How how can this system be flexible enough

(18:05):
to change where it is?
Like, for instance, this is on the model is on flat land.
How much flat land is actually out there? Not a whole lot.
Even what you think is flat has some kind of of natural contour to it.
But if you've ever been to the Palouse region of Washington state, if I were to try to apply

(18:27):
the the model that I'm bringing you here,
everything would have to change. Not just this well, actually, the species probably wouldn't have to change because I'm USDA zone six here. I was USDA zone six in the Panhandle Of Texas.
And if that don't blow your mind, I don't know what will. But the way that it's physically laid out,

(18:47):
it would not work here. You'd have to you'd have to respect the contour,
which I wouldn't have to do on a blown out hay field in Eastern Colorado
or, you know,
yeah, Eastern Colorado or the Panhandle Of West Texas.
But I would have to respect the contour if I was getting close to the hill country in Austin.
So this is a model.

(19:08):
It is to be flexible.
So
why cathedral?
Why why name it cathedral? Because of time preference
and one other thing. But time preference is really, really to the fore here.
Cathedrals of Europe
took centuries to build,

(19:29):
would have hundreds of artisans and
architects and and stonemasons
and and haulers and laborers
all working together
over two hundred years
to build something like, I don't I don't know,
the great castles of Europe or
Notre Dame or whatever. I mean, these things didn't these things weren't thrown up in six months like your next big box store.

(19:55):
There was a respect there.
But I've also named it Cathedral because when I look at this in my mind, it's like a gigantic
thousand acre prayer.
I'm I'm
I wouldn't count myself as being religious,
but I I have been known to go to church when I find a church that doesn't kinda get under my skin. I haven't been going lately because the church here for the Episcopal Church, I haven't really found one that

(20:22):
that, you know, washes with me. But
for four years straight, I went to I went to a church in Lubbock. It was great. Right?
But this is a prayer to God.
I do believe in God. I will say that. Now I don't stand out on the street corner saying Jesus is coming home and you're all going to hell. That's not me, and it's never going to be me. I did not find Jesus on the floor of a bathroom stall when I was hammered out of my mind. That's not where this shit comes from.

(20:50):
But this is a prayer.
It makes sense for me to think of this system as a church
because of what it does.
So what's the goal?
More fertility,
more life
every year.

(21:11):
To do that,
I think I need to lay down some rules for the system.
Now, while I read a whole bunch of
science fiction novels
and agricultural
novels,
I have this tendency to think
of
I

(21:31):
I have this tendency to look at things like Forest Walker,
the robot that goes through the woods and basically eats all the dead wood so that the forest doesn't burn down.
And and what I'm about what I'm presenting to you here in Cathedral, I I think of it as
almost ag fiction.
Not sci fi,
you know, but ag fi.

(21:52):
If and I don't think that that exists, but I just
I we're I think I'm here. I I think I think we're both here.
Agricultural
fiction.
And this may end up being nothing but a fiction. And that's okay.
If somebody got something out of it and was able to apply it to their little piece of paradise,

(22:13):
then good. I'm I'm totally fine with that.
But in my reading, I ran across the robot novels from Isaac Asimov.
And if you know if you've read those novels, you know where I'm going with this.
It's the three laws of robotics.
I've just reapplied them because it makes sense here.

(22:33):
So for Cathedral and the Cathedral project, the rules are simple.
Now the outcomes end up being complex, but the rules are simple.
The first law
is that the land
must become more fertile and abundant
every single year.
The second law,
every square inch of ground must not only maximize productivity,

(22:59):
but increase its productivity
unless, for some reason,
that breaks
law number one.
The third law:
no synthetic chemistry
can be used,
ever,
unless needed
to obey the first two laws.

(23:20):
It
I don't like chemistry.
I like biochemistry.
I think there's a lot of answers in biochemistry.
Fungus,
critters,
bacteria
of all different shapes and sizes.
That's actual soil fertility.
Dumping nitrogen on the land

(23:42):
causes compaction,
And I never realized that before. I thought it was just tractors driving over the land that causes extreme compaction, which is not good. No. No. That helps. That or rather, that doesn't help compaction.
Well, it helps to compact.
But it's the amount of synthetic nitrogen that you dump on the land that causes plants to essentially shut down its associations

(24:04):
with the soil critters and doesn't feed them because it doesn't need to. It's got all the nitrogen that it wants. And because those little critters are shut down, the
chemistries, the biochemistries
that they release into the soil that causes soil aggregation that allows water to infiltrate and air to infiltrate
shuts down.
And there's only

(24:25):
one path forward,
the eventual compaction
of all the land that's being treated with synthetic fertilizers.
That's why this shit isn't allowed. However
hey, if if we were to start this out on a blown out hay field,
you're probably gonna have to have some kind of chemical inputs to kick start the system.

(24:46):
But the goal
is biology only.
So
let's talk about the design logic
because this isn't a farm
and it's not a ranch,
but it is a system. Right?
So let's talk about the tree lanes. Actually, I no. I I'm I'm sorry. I jumped ahead. I wanna talk about the perimeter. So a thousand acres. Think of a square. One and a half miles

(25:15):
on a side.
So one and a half miles east to west, one and a half miles north to south. A complete, beautiful square.
And here's where anybody who's an agricultureist
starts laughing, and which is why this is merely a model.
How many perfect squares of land are you actually going to be able to find?

(25:37):
You you actually will be able to find a lot. But
there's there's a whole bunch of land out there that's just waiting to be waiting to have this model planted on it. And it ain't a square.
So we have to be able to be flexible
in this model.
So think but for the model,
because it's the best way to explain it. Think of a square of land,

(25:58):
1,000 acres,
one and a half miles on each side.
Okay. That defines
our
our our primary
sacred geometry,
the square.
At the very edge,
place a dirt road.
Don't have to pave it. Don't have to gravel it. But you need access to every point

(26:19):
by vehicles
all the way around.
So essentially, you don't place a road. You don't prepare
a road. You just designate where the road's going to be. And that's where you put tractors
or
combines
or
where you run cattle if you have to move them, you know, from one side of the system

(26:42):
to the other without going through the whole system because it's a maze.
We'll we'll we'll get to that.
This is where you do that. That compaction, which will eventually occur, is actually
okay with me.
Right.
So the first thing we have is a square that's a road dirt road all the way around.
It'll just become a dirt road simply by treating it as a road. Think of it this way.

(27:06):
If you have a a really high quality $1,500
Japanese knife,
do you know how to turn that into a cheap ass utility knife really quick?
Use it as a utility knife. Use it to open boxes.
You know? Use it to cut shoelaces to length. Use it to cut leather. You'll take your $1,500

(27:26):
Japanese chef knife down to utility knife real quick.
Same with the road. I don't have to prep it.
All I have to do is utilize it for what it's meant to be. So I've defined the very first part of this. The extreme edges of this square
is for transit
and is to be used as such.

(27:48):
Now,
we get into the first part of the meats and meat and potatoes of this.
The line of black locust trees
intermixed with honey locust trees.
These are support trees for the main tree coming, which is the black walnut tree. So envision in yourself

(28:10):
a line that is the road, and then a line that is black locust and honey locust trees, and then a line that is
black walnut trees.
Alright. So,
the black walnut tree is there for a couple of things. It is the majority
of the carbohydrate
drop
for this system.

(28:32):
It is to put the the meat of the black walnut is slightly sweeter. It's got a deeper, more complex flavor than the English walnut,
but they're drought tolerant.
It well well, okay.
Let's just say they're mildly drought tolerant. They will die if they don't get water. I mean, that that that's a thing. But they're pretty much disease resistant.

(28:54):
They're, you know, they're
in fact, English walnut trees are grafted on to black walnut tree rootstock
because of the fact that it just doesn't get that much diseases.
It's disease resistant and
Black walnut meat is actually kind of it's
it's it.

(29:15):
It's a different flavor. It's good. It's good meat.
But
there's something else about the black walnut tree that comes into play here. We'll probably get to that later. But that's the nut tree. Now, again,
black walnut tree doesn't doesn't
thrive in your area.
What about pecan trees? What about a different cultivar of black walnuts?

(29:37):
What about a different cultivar of
pecan trees? What what about American chestnut trees that have been hybridized with Chinese chestnut trees? That's that that's a thing.
There's good chestnut, you know, chestnut meat market going on.
Is is this to be
the end all be all of the production? Oh, hell no. This is part

(29:59):
of the production.
Right? This is part of the production.
There are many,
many revenue streams
that we're going to go through here. That's
just part of it.
But that's for you know, that's for different
that's for different episodes.
So right now,

(30:19):
we have a kind of a structure.
Oh, well, okay. On the other side,
so we got road, we've got
support trees or also known as nurse trees for black, for the black walnut trees, and that would be black locust and the honey locust. Then we got the black locust.
On the other side of the black locust is another row

(30:40):
of black locust or on the other side of the black walnut trees is another line of black locust and honey locust trees.
Honey locust trees are to be thornless. Otherwise, you will be walking around Jesus's
crown of thorns everywhere you go, and we don't want that shit. Right? And, yes, black locusts do have thorns. We'll get to all that. But then on the other side

(31:04):
of the black locust
or yeah. Black locust and honey locust nursery is a hedgerow,
which is multi species.
We'll get into why that hedgerow is there on the inside of this
here in probably a moment. And if not a moment, in in definitely another another podcast.

(31:26):
Because, really, this is all supposed to be an introduction, and I don't wanna get too damn deep into the weeds.
See you see what I did there? But we do need to go through some more stuff. Because
now that we've got a framework for the outside of the sacred geometry, if you want to call it that, we've got we've we've got road,
we got we got the support trees, we got a primary tree lane, and then we've got more support trees on the other side, and then we have the hedge row.

(31:54):
Right on the other side of that hedgerow
is another
designated
road.
Again,
the same
way that we think about it. We're not going to gravel it.
We're not gonna really prepare
it. We're just going to utilize it for what it is to be. And that is a way to get around the entire

(32:15):
interior
of cathedral.
Right? We have to be able to have access
everywhere.
These roads, by the way, are about 25 foot wide, so they should be able to accommodate
quite a bit of of machinery.
Right? They won't take a 30 foot combine unless you tow the combine header behind the actual tractor, and if you do that, yeah, it'll work. You'll be fine. You just have to set up ins you know, set up inside. Why would there be a combine involved? We'll get to it. I promise.

(32:47):
But now let's look and try to visualize
the inside
of cathedral.
Now we've entered the church, ladies and gentlemen, and what do we find
but tree lanes?
23
tree lanes
about 7,406
foot long each.

(33:10):
Now between the tree lanes
and now the tree lanes pretty much are kind of exactly like the outer rim, except there's hedgerows on both sides.
So think of
you you've come inside the church
and the first thing that you see is a pastor.
It's a 150

(33:31):
foot wide.
That's from the
edge of the sacred geometry of the square
to the first tree lane that you see.
I've got the model set to where all tree lanes run north to south,
all of them,
so that they get
just as much

(33:51):
sunlight on the east side as they do on the west side of each individual tree lane. And again, there's 23 tree lanes inside
this thousand acre plot, and they're 7,400
foot long.
They're all they almost they almost go to the opposite end. They begin right at the edge,

(34:11):
but they end
just short of the
other side. So if we if we're looking at the tree lane, the first tree lane, let's say it goes from it's it starts on the south side, so it's connected to the edge and nothing can get through it.
If you go and walk 7,400
feet down,
it stops just short of the north side

(34:34):
of the edge.
And there's a reason there's a very good reason for that, which, again, we will we will get to.
The 150
foot that's in between each, like from from the outer edge
to the first North South
Tree Lane
is there for pasture grazing.

(34:56):
It also
could be used
for what's known as alley cropping. You could put, instead of grazing animals in there, you could, if you so chose,
grow a crop of wheat or barley or rye or, God forbid,
rapeseed. I hope nobody does that, but, hey, it it it happens, and we have nothing to do about it. Right?

(35:20):
In my mind,
the pasture, the 150
foot span between each of the lanes
is for cattle.
And
that's where the rotational grazing is going to come in. And it's also where the rest of the structure starts to
unfurl itself for you as we move through this. But for now,

(35:44):
just think of a box
that's contained on all sides except there's like a cup there will always be a couple of entry, you know, some entry points into the system because
access is key. If you don't design in access,
everything is for naught. But for now, just think of
all those trees in the hedgerow and the nurseries that are all on the outer edge

(36:06):
as a fence, a living fence that is animal type.
No. This isn't going to happen overnight. This is why this is a thousand year plan.
That's part of how we kick start this thing up, but that's another episode.
I'm just thinking of the mature system
if you were to accidentally stumble across it after it's been live and and going hard for three hundred and fifty years.

(36:33):
That's where we're at right now. I probably should have said that up front,
But somebody's got to start this. Somebody's got to grow the trees. Somebody's got to do the hedgerow. Somebody's got to make the plan. Right?
But what we're after is what does this look like at maturity so that we can wrap our little bitty, itty bitty minds around it? Because it's it's a big system in my mind is having difficulty trying to interpret

(36:58):
this whole thing myself.
Right. So
150
feet between
tree rows means what?
I designed it that way for a 30 foot header on a combine.
You can take five passes
down each of the lanes
and the tractor in the header will fit and it will be exactly

(37:19):
five swaths of if you decide to grow wheat or barley
again.
All I needed to do was say, Hey, I only care about pasture. I only care about grazing animals. You want to farm it, you farm it. But
to be flexible,
I'm like, all I really have to do is figure out how many passes a tractor with a 30 foot header can do. And I just said, okay, 150

(37:42):
feet.
It's
like, okay, that that works. That's five passes with a 30 foot combine.
Okay. So now it's even more flexible for somebody who says, I don't want to I don't want to. We don't have any cows this year. I don't have anybody to lease the pasture
this year. What do we do? Lease it to a farmer? Maybe.

(38:03):
And if we design it right, it should there should not be an issue. The farmer should be able to work the interior part of this like a farm field, like anything else.
All we had to do was design it that way.
So
I want to talk about the interior.
We've we've defined the very edges of the system.

(38:26):
We've defined the first tree lane. It connects at the at the south
and goes to the north, but doesn't quite connect to the opposite end.
So if we start
right inside the outer rim of the system and in and and
between that and the tree lane on the extreme south side,

(38:48):
we choose
we define with fencing or whatever, electro fencing, however we wanna do it, a containment paddock
for a certain number of cattle, and they graze that.
And then you move them the next day, and they graze the next acre.
And they and you move them north the the next day, and they graze it. And then you move them north to a new fresh acre in the next day and they graze that one and on and on and on until you end

(39:15):
at well, until you end at the end of the first tree lane. And then you hook a right to the east.
And that's why the tree lane doesn't connect
to the north side
of the edge of this particular property because you need the cattle
to move into the next lane.

(39:35):
So they move to the north they move to the east
north of the end of the first tree lane and south of the north edge of the property.
And when you move them far enough, you get to the center of that. And lo and behold, or you get to the center of the tree lane, the end of the tree lane,
and you're looking square at what?

(39:57):
The other tree lane, except this one,
connects from the north,
goes 4,000 or or rather 7,400
feet to the south and doesn't quite connect to the south end.
This gives you a maze structure
all the way through the system.

(40:18):
It's like interlocking
fingers
with passageways
through the entire thing.
But the cattle cannot get into the tree lanes because the hedgerows that border it are animal tight.
And if we do it right,
we would even be able to contain
hogs and pigs.
If we did it right. Now, hogs and pigs,

(40:41):
different animal altogether.
Cattle don't really like to be annoyed.
A pig,
That's a different animal.
Literally.
We'll we'll get to that. It's animal type because I don't want the cattle walking around inside the nut tree lanes. I want them to stay in the pasture.
There's nothing for them in the tree lanes anyway, and I don't want to build that much fucking fencing. It's I mean, the amount of fencing we're talking about would be

(41:07):
everything about this is already cost prohibitive when you start thinking about it, and this is why these elements have to come in in stages. That's why this is this thing is at maturity
at, like, two hundred and fifty years,
about the time it takes to build a full cathedral in old Europe. Alright? So just keep it all in mind.
But that's why the hedgerows.
The hedgerows should also form a different function. They should produce medicine, food, fuel, fiber, whatever. We'll get to all that in later episodes.

(41:35):
Right now, let's go back to the cattle.
We've got a whole
new 7,400
foot long,
150
foot wide pasture lane to graze these critters on.
And now we start moving them from the north
to the south.
And we get to the south end
of that second tree lane,

(41:56):
we hook left.
Right? So now we are able to get around the other side of the tree lane, and then we go to the to the north.
We hang a right. We come down to the south.
We hang a left. We go up to the north. We hang a right. We come down to the south.
Rinse and repeat until you end up on the extreme let's say we started on the west hand side.

(42:19):
We end up on the extreme east end side.
The travel time for those animals should be exactly one year.
Maybe longer,
maybe shorter. It depends. How much fertility is in the soil? How much forage is there? How many cows are you running? All these questions and more will be answered, I promise,
at least in a theoretical standpoint.

(42:41):
You know, I know enough cattle ranchers I can start asking questions to.
You know? I mean but the framework here is what's important. I know the framework works. It's the details
that's going to make or break something like this. It's how the management
of startup
handles this that'll make or break this. It's how the ongoing management of a mature system

(43:04):
works
that will make or break the system going forward.
These things are problems. I'm not going to lie.
These are hard, extremely
hard issues to work through.
But
if I don't put this thing out like the kid that's going, daddy, daddy, daddy, are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Then I'm going to end up in a straight jacket like I told you yesterday.

(43:26):
And I do not want to end up in a straight jacket so all this comes out. So if you already know that there's problems,
then boost me and tell me about it or get a hold of me on Nostr.
My my Nostr profile you can get to my Nostr account
anywhere from any of the show notes. It's in there. All you gotta do is click on it. It'll take you right and you can just you can you can read me the riot act, and I will be fine with it because I will definitely learn something,

(43:55):
and I will definitely be able to integrate it into this system.
But I'm not done for today just yet.
Right. So now we've got essentially you've got the maze logic.
You've got the fact that the hedgerows are there for animal containment. So they've got to be animal type.
You've got the fact that there's, you know, the black walnut trees are there for nut production, and then there's black locust as well as honey locust there

(44:21):
to support the black walnut trees. How? They're well, the black locust is a nitrogen fixation
tree. It's a legume.
The honey locust is there. It has associative
nitrogen fixation, but it's not a true legume.
However, its presence has demonstrated that it,
in conjunction with soil critters,

(44:42):
where where we think
is it also fixes nitrogen. If I'm fixing nitrogen right at the edge in the drip line of the black walnut tree, what am I doing?
I'm fertilizing
the black walnut tree, and I'm not applying synthetic fertilizer. That's why the black locust and the,

(45:03):
and the the honey locust is there. The honey locust comes into play later on. We'll get to it as usual. I promise.
But you have a sense of the layout. If you were to look at it from the top, and I'll I'll I'll try to provide it. I've got a couple of schematics that I will start providing
when I do these write ups. I I

(45:23):
I promise. I I swear. I'm not gonna leave you in the lurch. If you're having difficulty
visualizing this in your mind from my description,
I'm not gonna blame you.
That's why it's on me to make some of these things that I've been working on, these these drawings that I've been working on for a while. I'll make them available so that you can just see it. Alright? I promise it's not gonna happen today, but I promise it it will it will definitely happen.

(45:49):
Now
I want to introduce a concept of measurement. And I've said this on Nostr, and if you if you see me on Nostr, and I've even said it on on x, but I I don't get any traction on x because I refuse to pay
freaking Elon his $80 a year or whatever or a month or whatever it is that he wants.

(46:09):
I'm not gonna buy engagement.
I get natural organic engagement on Nostr. And if you're not on Nostr, why? Anyway, let's let's talk about this.
I've introduced the concept of well, let's let's start with some of the other units that that we all know and love like the Lightyear.
Some people it's like, oh, it's a measure of speed. No. No. It's not. Speed is a component, but it's a definition. It's it's more of a definition.

(46:35):
A light year is a measure of distance. It's the speed of light
and how far it goes after the speed. Given the speed of light that a particle goes after it's been traveling at the speed of light for one year,
we have
acre feet.
That's not a measure of area.
Acre is a measure of area.
You know, it's like 43,600

(46:59):
square feet or something like that. But an acre foot
is actually
a measurement of volume. It's
one acre
multiplied by depth. Like and and we use this for water. Right? So, like, a 100 acre feet means that you've got one foot of water on top of a 100 acres. That tells you how much volume you have.

(47:21):
There's many things like that. There's cow day, there's person hour, there's oh, there's many of them.
But I've never heard of the following measurement.
An acre year.
What what
what the hell is an acre year, and why is it right for cathedral?
Well,

(47:42):
how I've I think of acre year as a way to measure
solar productivity
and
biological momentum.
Now there's no unit for it. Not really.
Right? This is just a concept.
Like everything else about cathedral, it's a model. It's designed to be flexible.

(48:03):
But I've never heard of acre year. What can we do on one acre over the period of one year?
Whether whether it's to destroy fertility, build fertility,
or it doesn't even have to be that. Maybe somebody's thinking of what is the square foot revenue I can get from an acre of land
if I build a mall on it?

(48:24):
That kind of thing. Right? So
but in this context,
I look at acre year as the amount of solar production
in in the form of photosynthesis
products also known as photosynthesis
and biological
momentum. How much
biology in the soil am I growing? How much biology above the soil am I growing?

(48:48):
When I look at an acre, I see a completely different thing than just a dead patch of land in West Texas.
I see nothing but potential,
and it's all driven by solar energy.
Every
every ounce of energy you see on the planet that is non nuclear
was caused its creation
was caused by

(49:09):
our sun.
All every drop of oil,
every
drop of coal,
every
cubic foot of natural gas,
it's all come from the sun.
Not the carbon,
the energy that binds those carbon molecules together, that's where the energy is stored in oil. That's where the energy is stored in coal, in wood, in whatever,

(49:33):
whatever. It's all carbon.
And it's all been fused together by
photosynthesis.
That's where all our energy comes from. So now when I look at an acre and I see an acre over the span of one year, my question to me is,
what measures production?
How can we make it more productive?

(49:54):
How far
can it go
in
solar production,
general production,
biological momentum?
The answer is I don't know.
Cathedral's there to find out. I guarantee you that one.
But that's that is a metric that I want to introduce here, and I'm going to try to refine that and its usage

(50:20):
as we move forward
through the concept that is cathedral.
Let's see. I've got it. I'm working from an outline. So,
where are we at here?
I think
yeah. I think here's here's what I the way that I see this moving forward.

(50:42):
We're gonna be taking
way deeper dives
on the trees.
Now I'm gonna stick with black walnut.
I'm not gonna say, oh, and and by the way, let's have the the next thirty minute discussion that we just had with black walnut, but we'll change it to pecan trees. I'm not going to do that. That's not useful.
This is a model.

(51:02):
Right. It's a deployable,
flexible
model, and it will be in the mind of whoever, what, even in size.
It doesn't have to be
a thousand acres.
It doesn't it doesn't have to be a section of land. It doesn't have to be 640
acres. I I do think that there is a minimum viable
size for this, but I also believe that there's a maximum viable size for this. I think

(51:26):
minimum viable size for this model
starts at six forty acres, which is a section of land one mile long by one mile wide.
This model
is on 1,000 acres. It's 1.5 miles long, 1.5 miles wide.
I think the terminal size for a system of this would be one hectare,

(51:49):
which I believe is two
point
or not not one hectare,
like a thousand hectares,
which one hectare is sort of like the European equivalent of a of an acre except it's like I think it's 2.17
acres.
So if we were to do this in hectares,
the cathedral, it would actually end up being something like three miles wide by three miles long.

(52:13):
I
honestly think that that's a terminal size
for management of a particular set of people, and we'll get into management way later.
But I want to take deeper dives on the trees.
How how the
the the support trees act not only as nitrogen fixation,
shade providing during youth of the black walnut trees because you don't want them baking out in the sun. You actually want them kind of partially shaded.

(52:40):
And black locust and black walnut or black
black locust and honey locust grow faster,
but they don't grow as tall. So one point or another, the black walnut will outpace
those support trees. But while those support trees are there, they're gonna be providing
all kinds of things. Nitrogen fixation,

(53:02):
shade,
temperature control.
They're they also serve as high quality fodder
for animals.
They also have a tendency, especially the black,
black locust trees to be,
to provide
high quality lumber.
And we're talking craft lumber.

(53:23):
We're talking, like,
the kind of lumber that is really beautiful when you sand it and stain it, and it's
rot resistant.
You know, like, the The United States, they say, was built on black,
black locust. Why?
Fence posts.
These these this wood is rot resistant naturally.

(53:44):
It has an it has a natural fungicide in it that protects it from from white rot and any of the other stuff that's going on in the soil. It has been it has been,
cataloged that some black locust posts have lasted in the ground for one hundred years.
It's wood. It's not concrete. It ain't steel.
It's not titanium. It's not made out of freaking kryptonite. No. No. No. It's just wood,

(54:09):
except it has a fungicide
as part of its natural component inside of its wood, and fungus don't like that. It doesn't exude it into the soil. It's not destructed the fungus that's in the soil, but the fungus goes, you know I think I'm just gonna I think I'm gonna walk around this guy I don't really want to die right now

(54:30):
there are multiple uses
of everything in the system
I can
pollard or at about six to eight feet tall on a black locust,
I can pollard the canopy off of it, and it will not die. In fact, it will grow back. And in fact,
black locusts kinda like that shit.
But the fodder, the leaves,

(54:51):
35 anywhere between 2035%
protein.
You know what likes protein?
Cattle.
Yes. There are studies that suggest you don't feed black locusts to cattle. No. You don't feed the pods, the black locust pods to cattle.
That comes from the honey locust. Again, we'll get into it, but the leaves are fine. In fact, if you wanted to, you could dry them out

(55:15):
and use them as as hay.
I think that the best way to do things like this is to pollard the tree at about six to eight feet up
and just
put
the chopped off limbs
into a basically kind of like what you would put
bale of hay into
and just let the let the animals just eat the leaves off of it. But then you're going to take the wood and do something else with it. And we will get to that because that ends up being part of the heart of the system, which we're not even going to talk about today.

(55:49):
That's how big this thing is.
That's why it's driving me crazy.
That's why I'd end up in a straight jacket.
But you see how this is starting to work. The the pasture
could serve not only as grays, but as farmland.
The trees

(56:09):
support each other, but also have a dual function. Some of them have three and four functions. In this particular system if managed the way that I see it being managed.
It's not a system for the faint of heart.
It is a system
for people who are freaking tired of the fiat world that we find ourselves implanted into

(56:33):
and either wanna get away from it or wanna change it. This system will do both. It will change the way people think about agriculture.
It'll change
the way people think about farming. It'll change the way people think about ranching and grazing
and
forestry.
And how many different ways can you

(56:54):
construct revenue streams off of 1,000
acres?
Generally speaking,
a farmer like out here, like in in in Eastern Washington on the Palouse, a farmer will lease a thousand acres.
They will grow 1,000 acres of wheat on that thousand acres, and then they will and then most of the wheat around here grows beautifully, by the way. I mean, it's like

(57:18):
even if you hate carbohydrates and want nothing but animal protein, I I
if you're like me and and like daddy, I can't just stop looking at the hills
when they have the the the amount of wheat that is stacked on them. It's absolutely freaking amazing. But they're gonna cut that wheat down
and they're gonna silo it,

(57:38):
and
that's it. They make one revenue stream
with a set a given set of inputs off of 1,000 acres, and they don't make anything else from it for the rest of the year. In fact, for the majority of the year, all they're doing is spending money on this thousand acres.
They make money one time.
They have a single revenue stream, and that revenue stream happens in the

(58:04):
four week window of harvest.
And that's
if you get to harvest it. Bad things have happened in the past. Wouldn't it be nice if you had two things on that thousand acres and one of them got, I don't know, hit by hail and the other one said, I like hail.
You know, hail makes me stronger.

(58:25):
At least you are able to realize
half of the potential revenue
and don't lose it all like Gabe Brown did four years in a row in North Dakota.
When he first started farming, Gabe Brown
lost his entire grain crop, not once, not twice, not three times, but four times
consecutively.

(58:46):
He didn't lose, like, two two harvests and then had a good harvest and then lose two more. No. His first four years of farming
was complete
100%
loss.
He learned his lesson.
He has multiple revenue streams coming off of his land now.
Joel Salatin
is another farmer that I've read, that I respect, that I'm trying to figure out how how do I take his management style and move it into into cathedral because he has multiple revenue streams. He could lose all of his chickens and it would hurt,

(59:19):
but he's got other revenue streams on that farm because he built those revenue streams into that farm, and that's what this is supposed to do.
That's what Cathedral is.
So go to bitcoinandshow.com.
Sign up for the email.
It you you I've got a couple of tiers up there. You want it free? I'll give it to you for free.

(59:41):
You want it for $5,
for $5 a month? I have that tier. You want it for $5 a year? I think I have that tier. I had somebody sign up yesterday for $50 dollars a year.
You don't have to. You don't I mean, if you want to support what it is that I'm doing, I would love it if you did that.
But everybody's going to get the information.

(01:00:01):
There may be something that I release only to the people that pay. I don't know. I kind of feel bad about that. So that's that's on the table. But I don't know. We'll have to see.
Sketches,
writing,
these series of podcasts,
all of that. Go to bitcoinandshow.com.
All one word bitcoin and show like because the podcast is a show bitcoinandshow.com.

(01:00:28):
Just sign up for the email.
The only emails that I give are when I release a show
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(01:00:52):
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(01:01:12):
You're going to get this show
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the, like, visual,
visual materials to help you see what it is that I see in my head.

(01:01:36):
But the only way that I can make sure that you get it is if you actually get to sign up for the email because there's like otherwise, I'd have to be like, well, could you give me mine on Telegram? Oh, could you give me mine on signal? No, dude.
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(01:01:57):
and I will see you on the other side.
This has been Bitcoin and, and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon.
Have a great day.