August 21, 2025 • 50 mins
Learn with Jimmy DiResta in this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends to build with confidence and transform every project from a simple sandwich to a complex workshop into a creative opportunity.
We discuss everything from the evolution of his workshops and property to growing pawpaw trees and making everything from knives to chicken coops.
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(00:00):
When I taught for 24 years, my bigthing for all them was just experiment.
(00:04):
Don't go into this thinking you'regonna make it perfect just be welcome
to the fact you're gonna screw up.
You might actually invent something newthat nobody's ever done in this process
'cause you don't know how to do it.
So I teach them, go intoit with an open mind.
Really look for the breakthroughs.
Right now the breakthrough isyou're just trying to get it.
Experiment with that.
(00:24):
The big fear is and it's funnybecause, and I use this as an example
all the time, people watch somebodyin sports or they'll watch somebody
play a violin and they're like, wow.
Years of practice, years of dedication.
And they watch me do a perfectlybound book in a two hour demo.
And then they go home and they go,there's no way I could do that.
I can't do it as perfect as you.
I'm like, you're not expectedto do it as perfect as me.
(00:47):
Welcome to the Mother EarthNews and Friends podcast.
At Mother Earth News for 50 yearsand counting, we've been dedicated
to conserving the planet's naturalresources while helping you
conserve your financial resources.
In this podcast, we host conversationswith experts in the fields of
sustainability, homesteading,natural health, and more to share
(01:08):
all about how you can live wellwherever you are in a way that values
both people and our Mother Earth.
My name is Josh Wilder and I'm the ContentDirector here with Mother Earth News.
I'm here with Jimmy DiResta.
He is a maker and artist you mightknow from his popular YouTube channel,
co-host of Making It podcast, co-authorof Workshop Mastery, host of Making
(01:28):
Fun on Netflix, and half a dozen othershows that have showed his skills.
He works with wood, metal, letterpress, recycled materials, making
furniture, sculptures, and justabout any other project in his mind.
I wanna meet that guy.
And Jordan, an artist and designerwho, teaches in the fine art
department at Pitt Community College.
(01:49):
Thanks for being here.
Like I said in my email when I reachedout, I turned on your show for my
son and he's just, he's obsessed.
I wake up early on Saturdayand just turn it on by himself.
I gotta get his questionout of the way first.
Sure.
Let's do it.
Is the ultimate workshop real?
Yeah, I've achieved it.
I personally have achieved it.
It's a long-term goal.
(02:10):
Every workshop that I've had— whichnow has been, I can't count really, but
probably at least seven different, eightdifferent workshops — has been the best
workshop at the time until I decide I needto learn something new add a discipline
to the shop, and then I upgrade the space.
And it really is true, likethey say about animals.
Like a snake, for instance,will live within its confines.
(02:32):
It won't grow anymore.
And every time I've gotten a shop andexpanded my square footage, I've grown.
In my creativity, I've grownin my collecting of course, and
my ability to have bigger, moreinteresting, fun vintage machines.
So I just keep adding spaceto my life, which as long as
I could afford it, I'm okay.
(02:53):
I think I'm gonna take a pause for aminute, but I do wanna maybe build a
giant industrial building on one ofmy properties, but I won't do that.
I'm gonna enlist the partner.
I'm gonna split the, it's a conversationright now we'll, see where it goes.
For sure.
Yeah.
And you've been at that propertywhere the workshop is now for
what, I think I heard 20 years.
20 years.
Yeah.
September was my 20th yearof closing on this property.
(03:14):
When I bought this in2004, I bought the house.
It's an old farmhouse with a lot of rooms.
It was a boarding house.
It's got 11 bedrooms,11 full-time bedrooms.
And if I needed to add thisroom I'm in with a bed and the
living room, that adds two more.
So that would be 13 bedrooms if I needed.
And this weekend we just did makercamp, so everything was full, every
room in the house was full with friends.
(03:35):
But I bought the original house withthe multiple bedrooms on 17 acres.
And I went on the tax map and I sawthe property next to me, had nothing
built on it, but I saw who owned itand I wrote them a letter in 2004.
And then in 2006 they reached outto me and we made a fast deal.
I refinanced and includedthat in my property.
And so I got that.
So now I have 40 acres.
(03:55):
That's 23 acres.
The house originally is 17, but ifyou go back in time, this house was
the center of hundreds of acres.
This was the original house for, thisis one of the oldest houses in several
mile radius, and most of the propertybelonged to this original homeowner
in 17, originally built in 1790.
In that.
(04:16):
I quickly went to a new family.
I actually know the history.
I gotta brush up on my details, but thesame family owned it for generations.
So they owned all the farmland.
That's awesome.
And then you have the graveyardhouse you're working on too, right?
That's, yeah, down the block.
That's an old it's a four bedroom house.
A four bedroom farmhouse.
I bought it gutted from theprevious short-term owner.
(04:37):
He bought it in thebeginning of the pandemic.
Dug into it, gutted it, cut down everyliving tree that was on the property,
which was probably about a hundred trees.
So now the house sits aloneon a big, empty field.
Headstrong into the winds.
My neighbor has 180 acres, and I'm threeof those acres in that little development,
(04:58):
and it's, it just 180 open field acres.
It's beautiful space there.
If you've seen some of the videos.
So I'm a little island cut out of myneighbor's, 180 acres, and he said I
love that you've restored this house.
He's really happy with that.
And right across the roadis also part of that parcel.
That's another 10 acres.
So all in it's about 13acres with a big barn.
So that's a project.
(05:18):
So I'm digging into that house.
The biggest part of this last yearwas spent fixing the foundation.
Cool.
Yeah, I saw the video on that.
And that kind of brings us intokind of our, the big theme I
kinda wanna go into a little bit.
Yeah.
For this talk is kinda reallyjust building with confidence.
Like whether it's a DIY project,whether it's restoration, whether it's
maintenance, really just like going intoa project and you've worked with kids
(05:42):
and like knowing what it takes to getthem actually not only interested, but
like feeling like they can do something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So like, how, how do you approach?
When I taught at the School ofVisual Arts for 24 years and
my big push to teach the kids
intimidating things.
They're all graphic designersthat for the most part of those
24 years we're using computers anddeveloping graphics flat on a page.
(06:06):
And I was like, this is how you do 3D.
This is how you might take sculptyclay and you bake it in the oven.
You have a 3D object and you takethat object, you make it latex
mold or a silicone mold and youmake a generation and then you
do package construction design.
And my big thing for allthem was just experiment.
Don't go into this thinking you'regonna make it perfect just be welcome
to the fact you're gonna screw up.
You might actually invent something newthat nobody's ever done in this process
(06:29):
'cause you don't know how to do it.
So I teach them, go intoit with an open mind.
Really look for the breakthroughs.
Right now the breakthrough isyou're just trying to get it.
Experiment with that.
The big fear is and it's funnybecause, and I use this as an example
all the time, people watch somebodyin sports or they'll watch somebody
play a violin and they're like, wow.
(06:50):
Years of practice, years of dedication.
And they watch me do a perfectlybound book in a two hour demo.
And then they go home and they go,there's no way I could do that.
I can't do it as perfect as you.
I'm like, you're not expectedto do it as perfect as me.
Just get your hands on the materials,experiment, start to understand how the
glue works, how it dries, how the paperfolds, hit the cracks, when it cracks,
(07:11):
how to make the Roman corners around thefolded edge of the book binding cover.
You gotta figure all that out.
So this is just throw away the firstfive and then you start to really look
at it and think, okay, my learning isreally starting to really take hold.
So that's really what I do.
And especially with kids.
I'm like, let's just experiment.
Let's have fun.
Don't think you're gonna do anything thatI've done in my portfolio straight away.
(07:32):
I've been at it since I've beenat it for 40 years, 50 years.
I'm 57.
I started in my workshop fiveor six years old with my dad.
So the practical way to hold anduse a screwdriver and expect it
to slip and poke me in the hand.
I learned all that atsix, seven years old.
Those are skills that if you neverused it, you gotta go through it.
You gotta go through it.
(07:52):
Jordan and I both have young kids.
How late were you atScouts last night, Jordan?
Oh, golly.
I left there around 8 45 tokicking and screaming 'cause he
had to go home and do homework.
Yeah, exactly.
So we're trying to figure out thatnow as dads, but it's the same thing
when you're working with people andtrying to build a project together.
Something you said on yourpodcast, I heard you say is
(08:13):
what's the best that could happen?
Yeah.
What if everything works out?
Yeah.
Because, my dad was a little bit, mydad really I owe everything I'm doing
to my dad, but my dad had, he's froma different generation where there
was always that hovering of fear.
It was always that whatif it doesn't work out?
He said, I go, dad, I'mgoing to art school.
Maybe you should alsotake the police exam.
(08:33):
Maybe you could be a police officerin case that doesn't work out.
And I might have said to him35, 40 years ago, I might have
said, what if it does work out?
Yeah, let's be positive.
What if it does work out?
What if everything goes right?
What if everything goes right because youtalk to anybody, you say, I'm gonna take
this tractor and carry that pallet and I'mgonna hang it on the top of that truck.
And then from there I'm gonna do a rope.
(08:53):
And they go, what if it doesn't work out?
I'll figure it out right there andthen, and I'll make it work out.
Make it go right.
That's another phrase.
A friend of mine taught me earlyon, one of my early mentors, she
would always say, make it go right.
I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing.
She just goes, make it go right?
You got the skills, make it go right.
I like that.
Yeah.
And I feel like the, what you weretalking about with the graphic
designers, and that speaks to me'cause I got my BFA in graphic design.
(09:14):
Yeah, me too.
That's great, yeah.
That's where I'm approaching like, MotherEarth News from and content creation in
general is just, taking everything andmaking it easily digestible as possible.
So once you're past that kindof curiosity stage of like.
What if everything goes right?
Then you get into your creative space.
How do we do this?
We are all artists, but I had ahard time calling myself an artist.
(09:35):
Sure.
I did a podcast once and the subject was.
Are you an artist?
And I basically said, you have thepermission to call yourself an artist.
And it was so touching a young manwho was, who took a class here.
I knew him.
His name escapes me at the moment,but he wrote me the longest letter.
He said, when you said that he's anambulance driver, he says, when you
(09:56):
said that, I pulled over to the sideof the road and I broke down in tears.
He said, because I've beenresisting that for years.
My father never wanted me to be an artist.
My mother thought it was a loser path.
And when you said it's okay to callyourself an artist, and I was just
freestyling, I wasn't trying to makeany profound statements, but when he
called me and told me that, and theneventually I overheard it at a couple
of meetups, like when you said it,it's okay to call yourself an artist.
(10:19):
It really hit home for me 'causepeople resist it because it's like the
Scarlet Letter in a lot of families.
They want you to get a realjob, join the family business of
construction or whatever it is.
Yeah, but there's so much artistryin reclaiming old doors or,
any kind of carpentry really.
Any kind of making,there's artistry in that.
Yeah, I always say make somethingevery day, even a sandwich,
(10:42):
putting together a sandwich.
Every decision is a creative one.
Every decision you make is a creative one.
Whether you drop that piece of salamion it and you're like, should I fold it?
If I fold it, I have toput another one next to it.
And if I, and if you're OCD,you're gonna put three in a row.
'cause you want it to lookgood as if there's a magazine
camera over your shoulder.
Every decision you make is a creative one.
Whether it's gonna be a fine art piecethat hangs in a gallery, or whether
(11:02):
you're just deciding how to arrange yourshoes across the edge of the mudroom.
Every decision you make is a creative one.
Yeah, you talked about having alot of storage and I saw when you
were making a table out of a door,like your kind of door collection.
I have a hard time getting rid of stuff.
Me too.
Especially for our Mother Earth Newsaudience, it's about waste reduction.
(11:23):
It's about doing as much aspossible with as little as you have.
At what point do you decide okay,I'm gonna do something with this?
I will, when people say, I'm gonnakeep this in if I haven't used it in
a year, I use things that I've hadsitting around for seven, eight years.
So it is a very difficult decisionfor me to look at something and
go, I haven't used it in a year.
It's also currency.
If it's good fodder, it's currencythat you could trade to a friend,
(11:48):
or if it's a good machine.
A lot of times people drop off machines.
To me, I'll never use them, but Ihave a good currency in that machine.
When somebody comes along and they'relike, I'm needing this old lathe.
I'm like, that one right there?
I'm like, if you like that's yours.
I can have that.
Really?
Aren't you gonna use it?
I go, I never used it once.
Someone brought it here.
And I couldn't say no.
I'm almost like like the way I alwaysjoke about instead of fostering puppies,
(12:09):
I foster old machines because I can'tsee them sit outside and get rusty.
I say, bring them inside.
Come on.
We'll bring 'em inside.
We'll take care of them.
Some of them make it inside, not everyone.
But the good thing about old steelis that it's always revivable.
So everything gets used eventually.
I really do believe that.
But within reason.
For instance, my we're clearingout, my dad passed away and we're
(12:31):
clearing at his house, and hehad piles and piles of cutoffs.
And wood.
And wood.
And I would always say, and I evensaid it in my most recent episode
of The House Build, I keep allmy materials at the lumberyard.
I let the lumber yard be my storage unit.
'cause when I go and get it, it's notgrade from weather, it's straight,
it's not rotten because it's beenstanding in a puddle for a year.
When I'm ready to use it and it's exactlythe length I need, I don't have to cut
(12:53):
off two inches, all that type of stuff.
And that's primarily coming from my dad.
So I'm very selective and I curatethe junk that sits around me.
I'm not taking palletssimply because they're there.
I know where they are.
If I need 'em, I go and get 'em.
I always get my freshlumber when I get it.
And a lot of times when you seesomebody cutting down a tree and I'm
like, Ugh, there'll be another tree.
I'll get it eventually.
(13:13):
When I'm ready to look for a treeand I know it's gonna go right on
the new sawmill, or if I'm gonnabe able to make a hammer stump or
something or other it'll be there.
So I'm not that much of a hoarder.
I'm very selective in my hoard.
So on the top of that, I've noticedyou also kinda use the whole hog or try
to make sure that you're not wastingmuch while you are in the project.
Like I think I saw you put an arch outof a board and make sure that you were
(13:37):
you were taking the cut that you tookand adding it to the top, for instance.
Oh yeah.
I've done that.
That's a technique I've Ilearned a long time ago.
Yeah.
If you cut like a four by four,you can make it like a, like maybe
a six or eight inch curve by.
Cutting out the scallop out of the flatside and then gluing it right on top flat.
That's an old technique Iused to play with on the bend.
So are there any other techniqueslike that where you think you're
(13:58):
stretching materials, making sure,
Yeah, for instance I have a new horsebarn in the back and I made all the doors.
9 doors.
Two of those nine doors are actualdouble doors, big double doors.
So 13 doors, door frames.
And I bought a bunch of three inch bythree inch, quarter inch thick angle iron.
And I got down to it and I realized, oh, Idon't have enough to finish the big door.
(14:21):
And I was like, wait a minute.
I got scraps laying all around me and Ijust tacked together, bunch of scraps.
Nobody would know where the seam is.
So I just tacked together.
And it's funny, a lot of guys, Italk to welders, old school welders.
And they say, I realized early on ifI make a mistake in welding and metal,
I could just weld another piece onand hide it and versus woodworking
where you have to get more creative.
(14:42):
If you're gonna cut something short,you have to just start over or come up
with a creative scarf joint, and in somecases you can't really put a seam in a
timber or something or other, whatever.
But, so a lot of guys say, I checked outwoodworking when I was in school and I
checked out metalworking, metalworking.
You can make mistakes and hide 'em mucheasier than wood, but in general all.
I always say, what's, I'velearned this from a lot of people.
(15:04):
What is a professional in woodworking?
A professional metalworker, it's justgetting better and better at hiding your
mistakes and making it look intentional.
So with metal, you couldalways scab it back together.
And with wood, if you have bits andpieces of wood and you gotta scab
something together like the magiciansay, turn that into your feature.
And look, I made this outta 17pieces of wood when it really
(15:25):
should have been made outta one.
But I had 17 pieces of scrap.
Nice.
My boat, I recently made, I made arowboat a year ago, and the rowboat
is made out of all the leftover porchplanks from my front porch of my home.
I redid my front porch and I wasripping up all these doug fir porch
planks that were put on a hundredyears ago from a tree that was probably
harvested in a few years beforethat, but started growing a hundred
(15:48):
years or maybe 400 years before that.
Who knows, because the grain linesare so tight in a, in an inch
there's 70, 80 grain lines, andthat's 70, 80 years worth of growth.
And I was like, I cannot burn this.
I was about to just go throw it inthe fire and I put a fresh cut on
one end to see what's inside of it.
'cause it's all covered with lead paintand the ends are all rotted on both edges.
And I was like, whoa, there's somebeautiful stuff hidden in here.
(16:10):
So I saved it all.
I still have a giant pile on my frontporch pins, but I made a boat out of it.
I made a few little end tablesout of it and I'm gonna do another
video soon where I take all the,
I forget with that one, didn't you, didyou do the cove and bead on that for.
The joints for the boat.
I didn't do a cove and bead on that.
I actually, I made a canoein 2018 and I did that, came
(16:31):
with the cove and bead on it.
Okay.
This was just, butt joint, but everytime you blow up a plank, you take a
hand plane or a hand plane that has awhole bleeded blade or think it would be
called a, a joint plane, joiner plane.
And then go right around and then makethat rolling bevel so that the next board
you put on it will land right on it.
(16:52):
Yeah, that was a real learning experience.
That was fun.
And so putting that boat together, allmy porch planks were no longer than
seven feet, but the boat is 14 feet,so there's scarf joints everywhere.
But I made that a feature.
Wherever the wood was reallyweathered from the being near
the edge of the porch, I actuallydid my scarf joint close to that.
So when I did my scarf joint, one ofthem is aged and one of them's clean.
(17:15):
So I accentuated that just to showand I was always looking for the
nail holes if I could find them,because you have a beautifully
shaped boat, which I didn't design.
My Steve Killen designed a beautiful,classic, beautiful wooden boat.
But when you get up close, youstart seeing, oh, there's a nail
hole, but the nail holes filledin the pop and it's intentional.
And the scarf joint looks like bamboo.
'cause this one, there's ascarf joint here, and one here
(17:36):
starts to look like a feature.
So that's why I say you always accentuateinstead of trying to hide and be shamed
about it, take it and make it a feature.
So kinda talking about thataccentuating and that being your,
level of, makes you professionaland and the horse barn, frankly.
I talk a little bit about your cleanshop that you're working on and what
(17:59):
all you're looking at doing up there.
I know you'd mentioned that you made acover for your sewing machine doing more
sewing and kinda leather work up there.
Yeah, the second floor of the horse barn.
Is a clean space for me.
It's a clean space.
I don't have really a clean space.
I do now, but when I started myleather, I ran for my leather
business a year ago and I came upwith a pattern that I really like,
(18:20):
and everyone seems to really like it.
I've been able to sellquite a few of them and.
Every time I got a hide in,I was buying three hides at
a time, four hides at a time.
I would bring 'em into my livingroom and lay 'em on the floor
because it's the only place whereI know no water's gonna get on 'em.
No animal's gonna pee on 'em andno saw dust and grinding powder's
gonna burn the edge or getnear 'em and I can lay 'em out.
And also, I also, it's really funny.
(18:42):
Everybody worries about my leather.
They're all like, how are you gonna store?
Go, just lay it on the floor like,but it's gonna get in your way.
I go, I just won't standin that part of the room.
It's gonna be fine.
You're not gonna hang it ona rack or put it on a shelf.
I'm like, no, because when I getleather, I like to immediately unroll
it, lay it, lay flat on the floor.
'cause when you need a piece ofleather that you're not fighting
a bump in it, you're not fightinga scene that's been created.
(19:05):
Or even worse, you've rolled it upand now you needed a year later and
it just wants to stay in a role.
And you can't work it on the table or onthe sewing machine 'cause it's rolled up.
So that's why I just leave it layingflat on the floor and now all my hides
are up there and I've actually, sinceI'm up there, I'm being productive.
I need to buy more hides.
I've kind, I've gone throughall the useful stuff already.
I've turned them into bags in the lastcouple, a couple of maybe last week.
(19:29):
They're all I made about 15bags out of everything that
was light in my living room.
Wow.
Nice.
So at what point do you are, do.
So having that more space.
More space.
Is there anything else in that clean shopthat you're looking at that, I know you've
done some letterpress work, for example,
Yeah, the letterpressis down the block now.
I bought an old racetrack, which iswhere I do my annual hangout with my
(19:50):
friends and fans that want to comeand they bring a handmade go-kart and
we goof off on the day on the track.
And it was an old concession standwhere you could buy hot dogs and
ice cream and run on the track.
So the building that's there has themechanic's garage for the go-karts in
the back and inside there's a was whatwould've been the old dining area.
If you bought a hotdog, yougo sit in the dining area.
(20:12):
And now that's all my printpresses are in there now.
That's awesome.
Is that the go-kart you made on Hammered?
No, the one I made on hammered wasa. It was a TV prop that was a prop.
Now what I made on hammeredwas so many years ago.
Now I'm like, I'm much more intowelding than I was at that point.
When I got on YouTube, I stored I'vewelded and I welded on that show,
(20:33):
but when I got on YouTube, I gota, I got an endorsement deal with
Lincoln Electric primarily becauselike you're the average nube that.
Weld occasionally we wanna show the homegarage guy that he can get a welder,
learn how to weld, and he doesn'thave to be a certified welder to do
VBV groove welding on the pipeline.
(20:55):
So I'm not intermediary where I'mnot a farmer, I'm a furniture maker.
But I could also do this.
I could fix a leg on a tableor I could fix my trailer.
And so that, that was really themarketing ploy with me behind.
So when I really got machines,I started really welding.
A lot more often.
I went to school at Lincoln a coupletimes for just some basic skills and then
just challenge yourself with projects.
(21:16):
The more projects you do, the moreyou challenge yourself to weld,
the better you get at anything.
So I developed a lot of welding projects,and so now the go-karts that I'm making
for my Go-Kart event are all welded up.
I've made three in a row now.
The first two years, the firstyear was COVID, the second year
was admitted beginning of thatTV show that we talked about.
So I, we finished the episode, the finalepisode, the day before the Go-Kart event.
(21:40):
So I didn't have achance to build anything.
So the last three years, so we've donefive and a, but the last three years I've
built a go-kart every year and I'll dothat every year until the event is done.
That's awesome.
Yeah, it's always fun.
So I start thinking now it's becominga short tradition, it's in July,
so May, June, I start thinkingabout what I'm gonna make and start
(22:00):
gathering the materials and go toHarbor Freight by a, by an engine
and start thinking it through.
Nice.
So talking about, you're not a farmer,but have a farmhouse and all the
land, and I know there's probably,maintenance projects you have around and
having all your skills come in handy.
For somebody who wants to pick up askill and they have some property,
where would you suggest them starting?
(22:21):
I have chickens.
I do take the eggs, so I maintenancethe chicken coop and I built a chicken
coop, which was really easy to do.
That's a simple thing.
Some four by fours andsome what do you call it?
Hard cloth wire, which is thattight closed wire you can get at the
gardening shop or tractor supply.
That that was cool.
I've gone through lots of birdsin the last, almost 10 years now.
(22:42):
I have right now I have three turkeys.
So the turkeys are fun.
I don't eat anything as far as meat goes.
I just harvest the eggsand they're more pets.
But everybody wants the eggs.
People come by all the time.
They're like, do you have any eggs?
And then there's that primetime in the summer where you're
getting like 25 eggs a day and youdon't know what to do with them.
Giving 'em to everybody that comes by.
And yeah.
So now I'm getting about oneegg a day, maybe, if I'm lucky.
(23:06):
'cause it's cold out now.
But the chicken coop isan easy thing to get into.
You could even buy one,but I recommend making one.
And you don't need a lot of spaceif you have one or two chickens.
And what else I got a big field andit's fenced in and we had a drought
in 22 and my neighbors have five cows.
And they were raising him for slaughterand he said, we are running outta
(23:28):
grass because nothing's growing.
He said, can we have my cows?
So the cows were in my field all ofAugust and a little bit of September, a
few years ago, and that was a lot of fun.
So what I'm gonna do, and I justreached, my business partner, reached
out to me he's my partner on the housedown the block, which is got that big
10 acre field, and I have at leastthree acres in the horse pasture.
And he's would you considerrenting to a farmer?
(23:49):
I said, sure, if we can, if youcould find a tenant that wants
to grow something, bring it on.
So having all these projects and,trying to use as many materials as
you can that are, they're reclaimed.
How does someone who may not have as,as much, as many access to the materials
you're using to take off your porch orthe door that you might have taken out?
(24:10):
It sounds crazy, but any constructionsite dumpsters have the great stuff.
I used to be in the city full-time.
I'm upstate full-time now, but when Iwas in the city prior to six or seven
years ago, dumpsters were the greatest.
I there was, I remember when I veryfirst started my New York City shop, the
one where I started my YouTube channel,but I had to shop for about four years
before I started my YouTube channel.
All my early videos are downin this basement hole, in the
(24:32):
basement of a tenement building.
I was dumpster diving constantly.
I had no money.
I was living paycheck to paycheckthen in Manhattan, which was a
rough making a rough go of it.
I had a few clients that I knew wouldalways, I was on retainer with a few
people designing, developing productsand making prototypes and doing interior
design a little bit here and there.
But you stop at any construct and peopleare ripping out plywood that they don't
(24:54):
want anymore 'cause it's got paint on it.
It's perfect for aworkbench, two by fours.
Nobody wants to cleanthe nails out of 'em.
Perfect for workbench legs.
It's all free material.
And then one of the, one ofthe best fruits of the city
was the old tenement buildings.
If you were gonna rehab a three orfour story, or six story tenement,
there was some rule where youhad to get rid of the timbers.
(25:15):
The three by 10, three by 12 inch dougfir timbers all have to go right in
a dumpster, and they're 20 feet long.
And you could barely pickone up, one end by yourself.
They're the floor joists that gofrom brick wall to brick wall.
They are the floor joists of all theseold 10 buildings built in the 1880s.
1890s.
(25:36):
And if you're gonna rehab one,you gotta replace it with steel.
Those buildings were designed sothat the brick wall, my dad taught
me this 'cause he was a fireman.
So when you see these old timbers inthe dumpster, the ends are chamfered.
They're really chamfered like thisso that when the fire in the middle
burns, if there's a fire, which theyalways know there would be eventually
the timbers tip out of the wall.
(25:56):
They don't pull the bricks in with 'em.
So all these timbers go wall towall with the chamfered corners.
You could tell it's a full piece'cause the, you could still see the
end on 'em and then they're out, likehalf pieces for stairwells and stuff.
So that.
Was a huge giving tree in the cityis when they designed when they were
going to rehab a six story building.
They were gonna be pullingthose things out for months.
(26:17):
Every floor, front to back,a hundred feet, six floors.
If they're every 18, 20 inches,20 inches on center, there's a
hundreds of 'em in the buildingand they just don't want them.
But there are guys that did come along andreclaim them, and there was a lumberyard
in Brooklyn called M Fine Lumber.
And they would take those old three bys,four bys, four by twelves, three by nines.
(26:40):
They were all different thicknesses.
They were basically the I-beamsthat held up all these floors
and all these old tenements andthe city is still full of them.
There was the building boom inthe 1890s, 1880s, and 1890s.
All those buildings that were builtthen are majority, A lot of them.
So there's always gonna bethat wood coming outta them.
It's all old growth, Southern pine doug,fir insane with beautiful textures on 'em.
(27:04):
They have now I have shelves allaround the house made out of 'em.
That's great.
So that was, I would take 'em andcut 'em up into pieces that I haven't
thought about that actually until youjust asked me that pointed question.
But yeah, I would findthat stuff all the time.
I remember one Thanksgiving morning.
I happened, pawn a dumpster full ofthem and there was nobody around.
(27:24):
Everybody was getting ready tohave dinner with their family
and I said, I gotta get out.
'cause tomorrow thecity's gonna be bustling.
They're all gonna be takenby dirt bags like me.
So I spent the whole morning ofThanksgiving morning before I
drove out to my mother's house.
I kept driving back to my shop,I'm driving to the ninth Street
and drive back to my shop andbrought 'em back to ninth Street.
I have a pile of them in my backyard.
I would always grab 'em when I could.
(27:45):
They're not easy to get, especially in anold Tundra that only has a 66 inch bed.
I'd lay 'em up on my roof, so they'dbe like, on the tailgate, they'd
be on the tailgate and on the roof,and they'd be sticking up past
the roof a few feet and stickingback past the tailgate a few feet.
I can get a 10 foot piece on the truck,crushed my taillight, but on the, the
third light on the back of the cab.
(28:05):
But who cares?
You got free wood.
Nice.
I'm imagining you, so this is whenyou were down in your basement doing
your first videos, and I saw, Iwent back and I watched your first
video that you still have on likepublic on YouTube of the foot chair.
Oh yeah, I made that, yeah, Imade that about six or seven years
before I started my YouTube channel.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(28:26):
So what would you do with those sorts ofprojects after you were done with them?
That sat in the basement for years,and then I brought it up here.
When I bought this house.
I made that before I bought this house,and then when I bought this house, I
brought it upstate and I put it in thewoods, and so it was a destination.
You just walk in the woods and thenyou see this foot sticking outta the
ground and then it deteriorated it.
It was covered with plastic and wood.
(28:46):
It lasted about four years untilit was completely just a pile
of white spot on the ground.
So yeah, a lot.
A lot of times I justgive it back to the earth.
Nice.
Yeah.
Nice.
Besides, the horse barn andwhat other projects do you have
coming up that you're looking at?
I have the horse barn's done andthe graveyard house is always
gonna be in process, probably for acouple of years, at the very least.
(29:08):
And I just got a sawmill,so I'm excited about that.
So what are your plans for the sawmill?
Do you think you'll start takingmore folks trees when they come down?
Oh yeah, absolutely.
I also just bought, I just boughta Kubota, which is something
I really was contemplating.
It's a lot of money.
Of course.
Do I need it?
Do I need it?
But I knew the minute Ibought it, I would use it.
(29:29):
I just got it 10 days ago and the firstthing I did was I brush hog my feel.
With it every year for 20 years, Igotta find some reluctant farmer that's
annoyed to have to brush hog my field'cause probably pays pennies on the
minute because it takes 10 hours tobrush hog a three acre field with a
(29:50):
machine that goes four miles an hour,and with the difficulties of hitting
a stump and stopping and startingand trying not to flip the tractor
on the hill, nobody wanted to do it.
So this year I said I moved somany things around the property.
I enlisted my friend Eli whocomes over with his forks on
his what is, he has a yanmar.
He comes over and he picks up stuffwith his forks and moves stuff around.
(30:10):
Whenever he is here, I like,we gotta move this over, we
gotta move that pile of rocks.
We gotta move that.
I was like, lemme just buy my own tractor.
So I bought a 66 horsepowerM6060 and it's a great machine.
It's like the bigger of the middle size.
It's the big one up from the middle size.
And the wheels are up to about my chest.
So they're that high.
Nice.
(30:32):
Yeah.
That'll take care of a few things.
You won't have to put stuff in yourtundra anymore, that's for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now I got a couple of Chevys, butI could show you an interesting,
I just took this picture just now.
What the hell are they here?
So I just got, look at this.
I just got a pack of scaffoldingmaterial for the graveyard house.
Oh, nice.
The ceiling.
(30:52):
And I was able to get it offthe truck with my tractor.
That's great.
It's already paying for itself.
I did the field already with thebrush hog and I just unloaded a
3000 pound pallet in the truck.
And then once the winter comes,and winter's always, the,
always kicks our ass up here.
So I'll have a place, somethingto plow the snow with if I needed.
That's just gonna make it easier for youto get more pallets of of things now.
(31:14):
A hundred percent.
I cleaned out the basement.
We, I hired some local guys, butI helped, we pulled out all the
flagstones outta the basement becausethe drainage under the floor was the
collapsing and nothing was draining.
I'm on a very fertile ground where thewater comes up constantly, even though I'm
about a thousand feet up somehow there'sa water table that comes into my basement.
So if I'm not draining.
(31:35):
It, my basement will fill up with water.
It's a natural flagstonebasement from 200 years ago plus.
And, but I pulled out all the bigchiseled square stones that were
puzzled together in the basement.
I had to, and we put concrete back in it.
But I got five palletsof those things outside.
I can't throw 'em away.
'cause some guy 200 years agowith a chipping hammer made them
all beautifully fit together.
(31:56):
I might use 'em for an outdoor patio inthe backyard, but they're all in pallets.
And the pallets weigh 2000 pounds a piece.
So now I can shuffle them around.
Nice.
Yeah.
-So one thing I was curious about you're obviously out a bit away,
on your property, it didn't seemlike you're necessarily off grid.
Is that something you'vethought about all.
(32:17):
Yeah.
In fact the graveyard house, I'mworking with a company called Eaton
Electric, and they said, Hey, if weget with you, do you think you could
take your house off grid with solar?
And I've been talking to my buddyPatrick, who's been my electrical
engineer for all my projects.
He said let's do it.
So we're gonna see if we can takethat house off grid with solar panels.
We'll try, we'll see.
There's enough room to put a coupleof solar panels in and around.
(32:39):
I don't want them on the house 'causeI just don't think they look good.
And plus the house is such a beautifulold farmhouse, it would be blasphemy
to tie those panels to the roof.
So there's enough space, I'll find aspace to, to set 'em up that's the goal.
To go off grid over there.
If we can even at the very least, to geta generator partnership or something with
Generac or see if you can do that and.
(32:59):
I've been wanting to dothat here at this house too.
My, my plumber, he set it upso that we can go off grid with
a Woodburn stove in the yard.
He's got it all set up.
So I got the ports whenI'm ready to put it.
He's it'll be easy.
We just run the pipes on theground to through the wall.
We'll set it up.
So I had my plumbing upgraded hereat the house last year, and he is we
will, we'll have that as an option.
Do you do any rain collectionor anything like that?
(33:21):
I don't, but I will, I do need to.
And at the other house I want to it'sdefinitely something I want to do.
I know.
Do you guys know April Wilkerson?
She's a contemporary mine.
We came up together, Aprildid an amazing rain collection
system at her farm in East Texas.
And yeah, she's she's got this giant tuband I was just talking a funny story.
(33:45):
A family called me and said, myfamily used to live in your house.
My family was the owners of your housefrom like the 1920s to around the fifties.
And my dad wants to come and visit.
And this weekend George came to visit me.
He was born in the room right above here.
He was born in this bedroom above me.
He's 85 right now.
And he walked around and showed mearound and we were talking and we were
(34:05):
standing in the kitchen and I said, tellme what you remember about the kitchen.
Just asking him random questions.
He goes there's a bigcistern under the floor.
He goes, it used to be, I go, it's stillthere 'cause I lifted up the floor planks
and I looked underneath, there's a bigconcrete square tub underneath the house.
And he goes, yeah, we used to fillit with rainwater from the roof.
And I said, I know exactly.
I go, there was a thing overthere, we had to rip it up to
redo the drainage for the toilets.
(34:27):
He goes yeah.
And I pointed at the ground.
He goes, yeah, my dad putthat in the 1930s and '40s.
It was a drain that came off the roofand went back, pointed towards the house.
'Cause it went underneath, throughthe foundation into that cistern
underneath the kitchen floor.
So that got me inspired to start tofiguring out how to do more stuff
like that again, especially overat the graveyard house where I'm
at a clean slate at the moment.
Sure.
(34:48):
But we're all on well waterhere, so that's, in a way, we're
still collecting the rain water.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Even this house is fully on.
And so is the house down the block.
Everybody around here is on well water.
I am curious, with Mother Earth Newswe've been publishing for about 50 years
and I went back and I looked at a fewdifferent project articles, looking at
(35:12):
old issues and there's this one from theearly 2000s I picked up in the archive on
straw bill house building your own home.
Oh yeah.
$50 at a square foot.
Yeah.
That's funny.
'cause when I was talking aboutbuilding the barn with with my ex, he.
All kinds of straw bales andeven IFCs and all different
(35:33):
alternative methods of building.
But we just went with stick frame.
'cause ultimately it was thecheapest, fastest way to go.
Yeah.
But I was also researching land shipsand all that stuff at the time, looking
at all kinds of cool alternatives.
And I want to build a logcabin on this property.
I got obviously plenty of room.
So now with the sawmill, talk abouta project, one thing I want to do is.
(35:54):
Cut the timbers to do like a log stack,not necessarily raw logs, but square
cut logs, but stacked up with somenotch corners, that kind of thing, like
an old prairie house type of thing.
Nice.
And I've always been abig fan of Dick Proenneke.
Of course.
I always wanted to.
Oh yeah.
That's, it was even in my notes, justto build the exact, just get all the
(36:14):
pictures of Dick Proenneke's houseand just build that in the woods.
So One Man's Wilderness has a prettygood layout for the whole thing.
I'm sure some people havereplicated it over the years.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's a goal.
Yeah.
I've done a lot of naturalbuilding stuff over the years.
We worked with CASBA, the CaliforniaAssociation for Straw Building, and
(36:35):
then Uncle Mud this guy outta Ohiothat does a lot of cob building.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, I've heard of that.
Yeah, he'd always show up to ourevents and make an outdoor pizza
oven out of cob, over the weekend.
Oh, right on.
Yeah.
Yeah, that same issue that Iwas looking at that has D-I-Y
make your own handmade caskets.
I made a casket for my friend's wife.
(36:55):
She was diagnosed terminalpancreatic cancer and she, when
she found out the week she foundout, she said you make my casket.
'cause she only had a year to live.
That's a rough request,but I won't say no.
Said, of course.
But she lived for, she was able tohang on for at least five more years.
And then I got a call from my friendand he said, he goes, I think it's time.
So I started building it in Februaryand I got close and then at the end
(37:18):
of the weekend, and he calls me, hegoes, she made a miraculous recovery,
but she was obviously, she was on thedownside because she was succumbing
to the illness, but she, theythought that was gonna be the week.
So she went in February,I started building fast.
He told me to slow down andthen she lived until July.
Wow.
And he called me in the beginning of thatweek and he is this might be the week.
(37:39):
And so I went to work,I finished it right up.
But yeah, it was a tough one,it is, in a way, it's an honor.
When somebody askedyou, she got to ask me.
Yeah.
Yeah, I imagine when you're, when youhave the skills, you do, you get asked
for a lot of, personal projects thatyou know, people, they're artifacts.
In fact, what I discussed with you, why Imight be a little bit late to this podcast
(38:01):
is that earlier today was in the news.
It's not a secret.
We lost a local community memberto a small airplane accident.
Here in New York State,there's a Rhinebeck aerodrome.
His plane that he made went downand he died in the accident.
And so the board members came to meto help make some of the medals that
they wanted to put in with his burial.
(38:23):
They have these vintage medals andwere just women making them doing some
low melt white metal castings.
So I'm making some replicasof the ones they have.
That's great.
Yeah.
And I have to go to Sweden tomorrow andeverything, and she called me and said,
can you, I said, a hundred percent comeover, we'll do this, and then you guys
are kind enough to move me up a half hour.
(38:43):
So thank you.
No problem.
It's part of being a community really.
You're able to give back that wayand, for what they've given to
you and part of, their legacy.
And what's funny is these guys,they're all really hands-on guys.
These guys that are down at the shop now,they build airplanes with their own hands.
They came here to watch me do the process.
I did it for about an hour and ahalf, gave 'em some tips and lessons.
I'm like, I gotta go do my interviewso you guys are on your own.
(39:05):
So by the time I was able toleave the shop, they did one
successful one, the very first one.
So I'm like, that's it, you guys.
You guys, now you're gonnateach the next people.
You're good to go.
So that's, you're doing like oil sand?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Petro bond.
Okay.
Yeah, we just, I just got abouta 30 pound bucket of petro bond.
We're just using that and alittle wooden flask, which is the
top and bottom frame and yeah.
(39:25):
Easy stuff.
Technically it's easy stuff ifyou get a little education on it.
Yeah.
Speaking of education, the the makercamp, you just had that finished up.
I was taking a look at that.
I wasn't aware of that.
I might have to, I'm gonnahave to make it up there.
Oh, you guys have to come next year.
You guys would enjoy it even ifyou wanted to set up a little
thing to promote the brand.
We have all kinds of tents, but wehave jewelry making, leather working,
(39:46):
glass blowing, pottery, welding,plasma cutting, and above all the
featured event is blacksmithing.
Hammer making, axe making, knifemaking, some of the world class knife
makers are there and lots of toolrepresentatives of grinding companies
that you would use for making theknives and some blacksmithing companies.
(40:07):
Coal Iron Forge, they produceforges, and then also the hydraulic
press and some other stuff.
Now it's a really great get together.
This year we, this is year numbersix and I'm not a partner in the
event, but I help promote it.
I'm a big part in getting people here.
It's a great weekend and like I saideverybody that knows me personally tries
to get a room in my house, gets crowded.
(40:28):
It's a couple campers outside my property.
All every year it was, I have a camper.
Somebody's, two people stay in thecamper and people camp in their car.
Yeah, that's great.
And at the event we had a thousand people.
Oh, nice.
Speaking of axes, what are some of the,your tools or machines that you've built
? I always say I'm a student of knife making.
I've made lots of knives in my timeand I always make something different.
(40:49):
I haven't made enough to develop a style.
I guess if I had to say I do havea style, it's oversized stuff.
I say, I like to make a knife that lookslike Bugs Bunny would use it in a cartoon.
I like big knives, like kitchen knivesthat are like 20 inches long, just because
they're just dramatic and they're fun.
And I made a lot oflatches to hold doors shut.
(41:09):
That kinda stuff.
It's a tough thing when you blacksmith.
I know.
It's been a topic of conversationon some of the podcasts.
What can we make that'snot a bottle opener.
Let's not make a bottle opener anymore.
What can we make?
And I do some door hardware, which is fun.
And I'm, I always, I'm looking around myarea right here to see if I have any, I
don't really have anything that I made.
(41:29):
Here, this is my friend, so Ialways make these ice picks.
My friend Jeff made these JeffFader, so this is like a pocket pick.
I sell these ice picks on my website.
So Jeff made this for me as a gift,but that's all blacksmithed up.
And then it's got this, the folder.
And he, and because Jeff's a NewYorker like me, he always puts the
(41:50):
subway token as the ring somewhere.
He got a hundred subway tokens, so heuses them as the little pivot spot.
Stuff like that is fun to make,but I never, and I probably
never will make a bottle opener.
Outta curiosity with your horse barn, doyou ever do any, do you have horses and
do Ferrier work ever or have you tried it?
I don't, but that's another thing.
(42:11):
I wanna blacksmith up someof the latches when I'm gonna
make the horse gates and stuff.
There was another time and placein my life where there would've
been a horse in there, but.
I'm on a different path now andI'm gonna keep the horse barn as a
horse barn in the can, in the eventthat I pass the house on, or if I
sell it or if I ever do get a horse.
So it, it's gonna be a quickconversion, but in the meantime it's
(42:31):
gonna be for pottery, some storage.
I have an old caulk, an old Cadillac.
I'm gonna try and restoremy, pull that inside there.
There is a slight potential if Iever needed to rent it so I could
rent the whole downstairs to a horsefacility if somebody wanted to do that.
'Cause I got the field, I got plentyof space for a pen, that type of stuff.
Like I said, there was a time inmy life where that was the whole
(42:52):
reason we built it for a horse.
But the, I don't have a horse in my lifeanymore, but I did a quick change and I
turned the second floor to a leather shop.
Yeah, I remember.
And going back to the ceramicsI remember you mentioning that.
What's your history of ceramics and isthat something you're expanding into?
I got into a relationshipwith even heat ovens.
They gave me some knife, heat treatingovens, and I was looking on their
(43:14):
website and I was like, oh, theseguys originally started at making
pottery kilns and I reached out to 'em.
I was like, Hey, Iwanna play with pottery.
And so I did a deal with them and I gota pottery kiln from them at a discount.
I paid for it, but they built me one as adiscount and I said, let me just get into
it, and I just started playing with clay.
I don't really know what I'm doing.
(43:35):
I've taken a couple of courses withpeople, but I'm gonna admit something
here that I thought pottery was easyand there's an amazing science to it.
There's, you just see, it's alwaysthe butt of a joke, it's oh, I'm gonna
learn pottery because, I just gotoutta rehab, I'm changing, whatever.
But I really developed a reallynewfound respect for the concept
of pottery and firing clay.
I never took it serious.
(43:56):
But now I understand how serious it is andwhat a part of the American experience it
was from the very beginning of humankind.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
It's, it's one of the things oflike the learning how to hoe the
earth making pottery is it's rightthere at the beginning of mankind.
Say something you can nerd out ontoo that's just really fantastic is
(44:16):
watching the Japanese teapots beingmade with that style of turntables.
It's just beautiful.
A hundred percent.
The care that goes intothat, it's amazing.
Yeah I see those and I'mlike, I could do that.
It, it is wild.
It's one of those things wherepeople look at it and like, why
doesn't mine turn out that way?
But it's like these, this hasbeen passed down through how many
generations in a single familyat sometimes, and it's like that
(44:37):
knowledge isn't, just something innate.
It's learned.
Have you done a lot of slip, any slip castand anything like that with your ceramics?
A little bit.
A little bit.
My buddy gave me a bucket of slip that hewasn't using, so I had some fun with that,
pouring it into my tile molds that I made.
And it's on my, it's on my to-do list.
I have a big 3D printedversion of my head.
(44:57):
My beautiful face with the top flat.
And I was gonna try and makea big slip of that and plaster
Nice.
If we could do it, but it's gonnahave to be obviously multiple pieces.
Yeah.
In seeing how guys combine 3Dprinting with slip, it's unbelievable.
How you guys make these really multifractional molds that are unbelievable.
It a fun thing too, that when I wasdoing some slip casting when I was
(45:19):
in graduate school I started using.
Infusion 360 specifically.
'cause I can do my mold lines with that.
So I'd use that to lay some things out for5, 6, 7, 8, 9 piece slip molds, which the
flatter the surface area, the harder itwas to pull the piece off once it got wet.
But it was,
yeah,
really it's a lot of fun.
Yeah.
So I definitely havesome slip molds in mind.
(45:41):
Nice.
Everything gets timely.
It all becomes timely.
All of a sudden I'll get a requestfor an advertisement that might tie
loosely into something like that.
And, that's why I alwayskeep my to-do list loose.
I'm not one of these guys that knowswhat I'm doing for the next seven weeks.
I have no idea what I'm even gonna donext week when I get back from Sweden.
I do know that's a lie.
(46:02):
I have to make a set of saddlebagsfor a video, but that's easy for me.
That's a one day build or oneand a half, two day build.
I have a loose list and I justlook on it and see what I'm
feeling, what scrap material I havearound, or what I can recycle into
something that might fit an idea.
So you have a potter's wheel?
I have a small potter's wheel, butone of my videos, and this is where
(46:24):
I'm always trying to think of how Ican combine a few things together.
I have several.
A lot of people donate meprinting presses and they usually
disaster, broken, cracked, weldedwith weather together forever.
And it's I always just take the wheel.
So a leaning on my garage, I have abouteight S-spoked cast iron flywheels.
(46:46):
Nice.
It's gonna take one of thoseand make it into a kick wheel.
See if I could play around with that.
I get a kick pottery wheel.
You can do a little treadle wheeltoo with an old sewing machine.
That's a lot of fun.
Yeah, so I have a couple of ideas toto play around with, and I think for
me, it'd obviously be fun for me tobuild the mechanics of it, but then
to do the mechanics and then takeit the next step and play around
(47:09):
with doing something on pottery.
So that's in the timeline.
I'll probably do that closer tothe spring, but that's definitely
something I wanna do sooner than later.
Cool.
Nice.
I appreciate your time.
Yeah, reach out anytime.
If you guys wanna talk about anythingspecific, I'd love to get involved.
Awesome.
Appreciate it.
And when you do another jamboree,I'd love to come and hang out.
Awesome.
Yeah.
We were actually justdown in southeast Ohio.
(47:31):
We had, where we went toschool at Pawpaw Festival.
I have a pawpaw tree in my backyard.
Do you?
That's great.
Yeah.
Do you guys know Eric?
Do you guys know Ericfrom Hand Tool Rescue?
I've seen his, I watch his videos a lot.
Yeah.
So Eric from Hand Tool Rescuejust spent the weekend here.
Years ago an ex-girlfriend of mine said,"Hey, I wanna I want a pawpaw tree.
This is going back like 10, 12 years ago.
(47:51):
She found a pawpaw tree.
We planted it in the yard, and she's okay,it's gonna fruit in seven years from now.
And is that about right?
Am I remembering that right?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's about right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I forgot about it every year.
I'm like, it didn't die.
It didn't die every year.
Oh, I can't believe it said it didn't die.
Now maybe it's 12 or 13 feet tall andthere's seven or eight sprouts, around it.
And my buddy Eric, whois a botanist by trade.
(48:15):
Nobody really knows this.
He's a PhD level botanist.
He goes, "Do you know you have apawpaw tree in your backyard?" He
goes, "Why the eff do you have apawpaw tree in your backyard?" I
go somebody planted that years ago.
He goes this, he goes, this tree.
There is 6 to 7,000dollar tree sitting there.
He goes, this is a veryhighly sought after tree.
He goes, that they're hard to get.
He goes, they're almost gettingthey're on the verge of being extinct.
(48:35):
He said.
Especially in your region.
'cause they're not really cold hardy.
Yeah, that's what he said.
It's a little unusual for it to be here.
For sure, our lead editor fromMother Earth News is up in Wisconsin
and she's trying to grow somenow, but she's trying to find a
variety that was more cold hardy.
He's in Toronto.
I was like, take one with you'cause they probably won't let
me bring it across the border.
They're gonna gimme a hassle.
So I might mail him some seeds.
(48:56):
Yeah, I have actually, that remindsme, I have a slurry of seeds
in my, in the trunk of my car.
I need to put in a bucket.
Yeah.
The guy who wrote a book on themsaid, if you just keep a slurry to
ferment over the winter, you can justthrow it in the ground in the spring.
Oh, right on.
It's been great talking to you.
Alright, guys.
Thank you so much.
And like I said, count me inanything cool and interesting.
I would love to be involved.
Awesome.
Appreciate it.
Thanks so much.
(49:16):
Thanks.
Love and respect guys.
Thank you.
Thanks for joining us for this episodeof Mother Earth News and Friends.
To listen to more podcasts and getconnected on our social media, visit
www.motherearthnews.com/podcast.
You can also email us atpodcast@ogdenpubs.com with
any questions or suggestions.
(49:37):
Our podcast production teamincludes Kenny Coogan, Alyssa
Warner, and myself, Josh Wilder.
Music for this episode is thesong Hustle by Kevin MacLeod.
The Mother Earth News and Friends podcastis a production of Ogden Publications.
When I taught for 24 years, my bigthing for all them was just experiment.
(00:04):
Don't go into this thinking you'regonna make it perfect just be welcome
to the fact you're gonna screw up.
You might actually invent something newthat nobody's ever done in this process
'cause you don't know how to do it.
So I teach them, go intoit with an open mind.
Really look for the breakthroughs.
Right now the breakthrough isyou're just trying to get it.
Experiment with that.
(00:24):
The big fear is and it's funnybecause, and I use this as an example
all the time, people watch somebodyin sports or they'll watch somebody
play a violin and they're like, wow.
Years of practice, years of dedication.
And they watch me do a perfectlybound book in a two hour demo.
And then they go home and they go,there's no way I could do that.
I can't do it as perfect as you.
I'm like, you're not expectedto do it as perfect as me.
(00:47):
Welcome to the Mother EarthNews and Friends podcast.
At Mother Earth News for 50 yearsand counting, we've been dedicated
to conserving the planet's naturalresources while helping you
conserve your financial resources.
In this podcast, we host conversationswith experts in the fields of
sustainability, homesteading,natural health, and more to share
(01:08):
all about how you can live wellwherever you are in a way that values
both people and our Mother Earth.
My name is Josh Wilder and I'm the ContentDirector here with Mother Earth News.
I'm here with Jimmy DiResta.
He is a maker and artist you mightknow from his popular YouTube channel,
co-host of Making It podcast, co-authorof Workshop Mastery, host of Making
(01:28):
Fun on Netflix, and half a dozen othershows that have showed his skills.
He works with wood, metal, letterpress, recycled materials, making
furniture, sculptures, and justabout any other project in his mind.
I wanna meet that guy.
And Jordan, an artist and designerwho, teaches in the fine art
department at Pitt Community College.
(01:49):
Thanks for being here.
Like I said in my email when I reachedout, I turned on your show for my
son and he's just, he's obsessed.
I wake up early on Saturdayand just turn it on by himself.
I gotta get his questionout of the way first.
Sure.
Let's do it.
Is the ultimate workshop real?
Yeah, I've achieved it.
I personally have achieved it.
It's a long-term goal.
(02:10):
Every workshop that I've had— whichnow has been, I can't count really, but
probably at least seven different, eightdifferent workshops — has been the best
workshop at the time until I decide I needto learn something new add a discipline
to the shop, and then I upgrade the space.
And it really is true, likethey say about animals.
Like a snake, for instance,will live within its confines.
(02:32):
It won't grow anymore.
And every time I've gotten a shop andexpanded my square footage, I've grown.
In my creativity, I've grownin my collecting of course, and
my ability to have bigger, moreinteresting, fun vintage machines.
So I just keep adding spaceto my life, which as long as
I could afford it, I'm okay.
(02:53):
I think I'm gonna take a pause for aminute, but I do wanna maybe build a
giant industrial building on one ofmy properties, but I won't do that.
I'm gonna enlist the partner.
I'm gonna split the, it's a conversationright now we'll, see where it goes.
For sure.
Yeah.
And you've been at that propertywhere the workshop is now for
what, I think I heard 20 years.
20 years.
Yeah.
September was my 20th yearof closing on this property.
(03:14):
When I bought this in2004, I bought the house.
It's an old farmhouse with a lot of rooms.
It was a boarding house.
It's got 11 bedrooms,11 full-time bedrooms.
And if I needed to add thisroom I'm in with a bed and the
living room, that adds two more.
So that would be 13 bedrooms if I needed.
And this weekend we just did makercamp, so everything was full, every
room in the house was full with friends.
(03:35):
But I bought the original house withthe multiple bedrooms on 17 acres.
And I went on the tax map and I sawthe property next to me, had nothing
built on it, but I saw who owned itand I wrote them a letter in 2004.
And then in 2006 they reached outto me and we made a fast deal.
I refinanced and includedthat in my property.
And so I got that.
So now I have 40 acres.
(03:55):
That's 23 acres.
The house originally is 17, but ifyou go back in time, this house was
the center of hundreds of acres.
This was the original house for, thisis one of the oldest houses in several
mile radius, and most of the propertybelonged to this original homeowner
in 17, originally built in 1790.
In that.
(04:16):
I quickly went to a new family.
I actually know the history.
I gotta brush up on my details, but thesame family owned it for generations.
So they owned all the farmland.
That's awesome.
And then you have the graveyardhouse you're working on too, right?
That's, yeah, down the block.
That's an old it's a four bedroom house.
A four bedroom farmhouse.
I bought it gutted from theprevious short-term owner.
(04:37):
He bought it in thebeginning of the pandemic.
Dug into it, gutted it, cut down everyliving tree that was on the property,
which was probably about a hundred trees.
So now the house sits aloneon a big, empty field.
Headstrong into the winds.
My neighbor has 180 acres, and I'm threeof those acres in that little development,
(04:58):
and it's, it just 180 open field acres.
It's beautiful space there.
If you've seen some of the videos.
So I'm a little island cut out of myneighbor's, 180 acres, and he said I
love that you've restored this house.
He's really happy with that.
And right across the roadis also part of that parcel.
That's another 10 acres.
So all in it's about 13acres with a big barn.
So that's a project.
(05:18):
So I'm digging into that house.
The biggest part of this last yearwas spent fixing the foundation.
Cool.
Yeah, I saw the video on that.
And that kind of brings us intokind of our, the big theme I
kinda wanna go into a little bit.
Yeah.
For this talk is kinda reallyjust building with confidence.
Like whether it's a DIY project,whether it's restoration, whether it's
maintenance, really just like going intoa project and you've worked with kids
(05:42):
and like knowing what it takes to getthem actually not only interested, but
like feeling like they can do something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So like, how, how do you approach?
When I taught at the School ofVisual Arts for 24 years and
my big push to teach the kids
intimidating things.
They're all graphic designersthat for the most part of those
24 years we're using computers anddeveloping graphics flat on a page.
(06:06):
And I was like, this is how you do 3D.
This is how you might take sculptyclay and you bake it in the oven.
You have a 3D object and you takethat object, you make it latex
mold or a silicone mold and youmake a generation and then you
do package construction design.
And my big thing for allthem was just experiment.
Don't go into this thinking you'regonna make it perfect just be welcome
to the fact you're gonna screw up.
You might actually invent something newthat nobody's ever done in this process
(06:29):
'cause you don't know how to do it.
So I teach them, go intoit with an open mind.
Really look for the breakthroughs.
Right now the breakthrough isyou're just trying to get it.
Experiment with that.
The big fear is and it's funnybecause, and I use this as an example
all the time, people watch somebodyin sports or they'll watch somebody
play a violin and they're like, wow.
(06:50):
Years of practice, years of dedication.
And they watch me do a perfectlybound book in a two hour demo.
And then they go home and they go,there's no way I could do that.
I can't do it as perfect as you.
I'm like, you're not expectedto do it as perfect as me.
Just get your hands on the materials,experiment, start to understand how the
glue works, how it dries, how the paperfolds, hit the cracks, when it cracks,
(07:11):
how to make the Roman corners around thefolded edge of the book binding cover.
You gotta figure all that out.
So this is just throw away the firstfive and then you start to really look
at it and think, okay, my learning isreally starting to really take hold.
So that's really what I do.
And especially with kids.
I'm like, let's just experiment.
Let's have fun.
Don't think you're gonna do anything thatI've done in my portfolio straight away.
(07:32):
I've been at it since I've beenat it for 40 years, 50 years.
I'm 57.
I started in my workshop fiveor six years old with my dad.
So the practical way to hold anduse a screwdriver and expect it
to slip and poke me in the hand.
I learned all that atsix, seven years old.
Those are skills that if you neverused it, you gotta go through it.
You gotta go through it.
(07:52):
Jordan and I both have young kids.
How late were you atScouts last night, Jordan?
Oh, golly.
I left there around 8 45 tokicking and screaming 'cause he
had to go home and do homework.
Yeah, exactly.
So we're trying to figure out thatnow as dads, but it's the same thing
when you're working with people andtrying to build a project together.
Something you said on yourpodcast, I heard you say is
(08:13):
what's the best that could happen?
Yeah.
What if everything works out?
Yeah.
Because, my dad was a little bit, mydad really I owe everything I'm doing
to my dad, but my dad had, he's froma different generation where there
was always that hovering of fear.
It was always that whatif it doesn't work out?
He said, I go, dad, I'mgoing to art school.
Maybe you should alsotake the police exam.
(08:33):
Maybe you could be a police officerin case that doesn't work out.
And I might have said to him35, 40 years ago, I might have
said, what if it does work out?
Yeah, let's be positive.
What if it does work out?
What if everything goes right?
What if everything goes right because youtalk to anybody, you say, I'm gonna take
this tractor and carry that pallet and I'mgonna hang it on the top of that truck.
And then from there I'm gonna do a rope.
(08:53):
And they go, what if it doesn't work out?
I'll figure it out right there andthen, and I'll make it work out.
Make it go right.
That's another phrase.
A friend of mine taught me earlyon, one of my early mentors, she
would always say, make it go right.
I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing.
She just goes, make it go right?
You got the skills, make it go right.
I like that.
Yeah.
And I feel like the, what you weretalking about with the graphic
designers, and that speaks to me'cause I got my BFA in graphic design.
(09:14):
Yeah, me too.
That's great, yeah.
That's where I'm approaching like, MotherEarth News from and content creation in
general is just, taking everything andmaking it easily digestible as possible.
So once you're past that kindof curiosity stage of like.
What if everything goes right?
Then you get into your creative space.
How do we do this?
We are all artists, but I had ahard time calling myself an artist.
(09:35):
Sure.
I did a podcast once and the subject was.
Are you an artist?
And I basically said, you have thepermission to call yourself an artist.
And it was so touching a young manwho was, who took a class here.
I knew him.
His name escapes me at the moment,but he wrote me the longest letter.
He said, when you said that he's anambulance driver, he says, when you
(09:56):
said that, I pulled over to the sideof the road and I broke down in tears.
He said, because I've beenresisting that for years.
My father never wanted me to be an artist.
My mother thought it was a loser path.
And when you said it's okay to callyourself an artist, and I was just
freestyling, I wasn't trying to makeany profound statements, but when he
called me and told me that, and theneventually I overheard it at a couple
of meetups, like when you said it,it's okay to call yourself an artist.
(10:19):
It really hit home for me 'causepeople resist it because it's like the
Scarlet Letter in a lot of families.
They want you to get a realjob, join the family business of
construction or whatever it is.
Yeah, but there's so much artistryin reclaiming old doors or,
any kind of carpentry really.
Any kind of making,there's artistry in that.
Yeah, I always say make somethingevery day, even a sandwich,
(10:42):
putting together a sandwich.
Every decision is a creative one.
Every decision you make is a creative one.
Whether you drop that piece of salamion it and you're like, should I fold it?
If I fold it, I have toput another one next to it.
And if I, and if you're OCD,you're gonna put three in a row.
'cause you want it to lookgood as if there's a magazine
camera over your shoulder.
Every decision you make is a creative one.
Whether it's gonna be a fine art piecethat hangs in a gallery, or whether
(11:02):
you're just deciding how to arrange yourshoes across the edge of the mudroom.
Every decision you make is a creative one.
Yeah, you talked about having alot of storage and I saw when you
were making a table out of a door,like your kind of door collection.
I have a hard time getting rid of stuff.
Me too.
Especially for our Mother Earth Newsaudience, it's about waste reduction.
(11:23):
It's about doing as much aspossible with as little as you have.
At what point do you decide okay,I'm gonna do something with this?
I will, when people say, I'm gonnakeep this in if I haven't used it in
a year, I use things that I've hadsitting around for seven, eight years.
So it is a very difficult decisionfor me to look at something and
go, I haven't used it in a year.
It's also currency.
If it's good fodder, it's currencythat you could trade to a friend,
(11:48):
or if it's a good machine.
A lot of times people drop off machines.
To me, I'll never use them, but Ihave a good currency in that machine.
When somebody comes along and they'relike, I'm needing this old lathe.
I'm like, that one right there?
I'm like, if you like that's yours.
I can have that.
Really?
Aren't you gonna use it?
I go, I never used it once.
Someone brought it here.
And I couldn't say no.
I'm almost like like the way I alwaysjoke about instead of fostering puppies,
(12:09):
I foster old machines because I can'tsee them sit outside and get rusty.
I say, bring them inside.
Come on.
We'll bring 'em inside.
We'll take care of them.
Some of them make it inside, not everyone.
But the good thing about old steelis that it's always revivable.
So everything gets used eventually.
I really do believe that.
But within reason.
For instance, my we're clearingout, my dad passed away and we're
(12:31):
clearing at his house, and hehad piles and piles of cutoffs.
And wood.
And wood.
And I would always say, and I evensaid it in my most recent episode
of The House Build, I keep allmy materials at the lumberyard.
I let the lumber yard be my storage unit.
'cause when I go and get it, it's notgrade from weather, it's straight,
it's not rotten because it's beenstanding in a puddle for a year.
When I'm ready to use it and it's exactlythe length I need, I don't have to cut
(12:53):
off two inches, all that type of stuff.
And that's primarily coming from my dad.
So I'm very selective and I curatethe junk that sits around me.
I'm not taking palletssimply because they're there.
I know where they are.
If I need 'em, I go and get 'em.
I always get my freshlumber when I get it.
And a lot of times when you seesomebody cutting down a tree and I'm
like, Ugh, there'll be another tree.
I'll get it eventually.
(13:13):
When I'm ready to look for a treeand I know it's gonna go right on
the new sawmill, or if I'm gonnabe able to make a hammer stump or
something or other it'll be there.
So I'm not that much of a hoarder.
I'm very selective in my hoard.
So on the top of that, I've noticedyou also kinda use the whole hog or try
to make sure that you're not wastingmuch while you are in the project.
Like I think I saw you put an arch outof a board and make sure that you were
(13:37):
you were taking the cut that you tookand adding it to the top, for instance.
Oh yeah.
I've done that.
That's a technique I've Ilearned a long time ago.
Yeah.
If you cut like a four by four,you can make it like a, like maybe
a six or eight inch curve by.
Cutting out the scallop out of the flatside and then gluing it right on top flat.
That's an old technique Iused to play with on the bend.
So are there any other techniqueslike that where you think you're
(13:58):
stretching materials, making sure,
Yeah, for instance I have a new horsebarn in the back and I made all the doors.
9 doors.
Two of those nine doors are actualdouble doors, big double doors.
So 13 doors, door frames.
And I bought a bunch of three inch bythree inch, quarter inch thick angle iron.
And I got down to it and I realized, oh, Idon't have enough to finish the big door.
(14:21):
And I was like, wait a minute.
I got scraps laying all around me and Ijust tacked together, bunch of scraps.
Nobody would know where the seam is.
So I just tacked together.
And it's funny, a lot of guys, Italk to welders, old school welders.
And they say, I realized early on ifI make a mistake in welding and metal,
I could just weld another piece onand hide it and versus woodworking
where you have to get more creative.
(14:42):
If you're gonna cut something short,you have to just start over or come up
with a creative scarf joint, and in somecases you can't really put a seam in a
timber or something or other, whatever.
But, so a lot of guys say, I checked outwoodworking when I was in school and I
checked out metalworking, metalworking.
You can make mistakes and hide 'em mucheasier than wood, but in general all.
I always say, what's, I'velearned this from a lot of people.
(15:04):
What is a professional in woodworking?
A professional metalworker, it's justgetting better and better at hiding your
mistakes and making it look intentional.
So with metal, you couldalways scab it back together.
And with wood, if you have bits andpieces of wood and you gotta scab
something together like the magiciansay, turn that into your feature.
And look, I made this outta 17pieces of wood when it really
(15:25):
should have been made outta one.
But I had 17 pieces of scrap.
Nice.
My boat, I recently made, I made arowboat a year ago, and the rowboat
is made out of all the leftover porchplanks from my front porch of my home.
I redid my front porch and I wasripping up all these doug fir porch
planks that were put on a hundredyears ago from a tree that was probably
harvested in a few years beforethat, but started growing a hundred
(15:48):
years or maybe 400 years before that.
Who knows, because the grain linesare so tight in a, in an inch
there's 70, 80 grain lines, andthat's 70, 80 years worth of growth.
And I was like, I cannot burn this.
I was about to just go throw it inthe fire and I put a fresh cut on
one end to see what's inside of it.
'cause it's all covered with lead paintand the ends are all rotted on both edges.
And I was like, whoa, there's somebeautiful stuff hidden in here.
(16:10):
So I saved it all.
I still have a giant pile on my frontporch pins, but I made a boat out of it.
I made a few little end tablesout of it and I'm gonna do another
video soon where I take all the,
I forget with that one, didn't you, didyou do the cove and bead on that for.
The joints for the boat.
I didn't do a cove and bead on that.
I actually, I made a canoein 2018 and I did that, came
(16:31):
with the cove and bead on it.
Okay.
This was just, butt joint, but everytime you blow up a plank, you take a
hand plane or a hand plane that has awhole bleeded blade or think it would be
called a, a joint plane, joiner plane.
And then go right around and then makethat rolling bevel so that the next board
you put on it will land right on it.
(16:52):
Yeah, that was a real learning experience.
That was fun.
And so putting that boat together, allmy porch planks were no longer than
seven feet, but the boat is 14 feet,so there's scarf joints everywhere.
But I made that a feature.
Wherever the wood was reallyweathered from the being near
the edge of the porch, I actuallydid my scarf joint close to that.
So when I did my scarf joint, one ofthem is aged and one of them's clean.
(17:15):
So I accentuated that just to showand I was always looking for the
nail holes if I could find them,because you have a beautifully
shaped boat, which I didn't design.
My Steve Killen designed a beautiful,classic, beautiful wooden boat.
But when you get up close, youstart seeing, oh, there's a nail
hole, but the nail holes filledin the pop and it's intentional.
And the scarf joint looks like bamboo.
'cause this one, there's ascarf joint here, and one here
(17:36):
starts to look like a feature.
So that's why I say you always accentuateinstead of trying to hide and be shamed
about it, take it and make it a feature.
So kinda talking about thataccentuating and that being your,
level of, makes you professionaland and the horse barn, frankly.
I talk a little bit about your cleanshop that you're working on and what
(17:59):
all you're looking at doing up there.
I know you'd mentioned that you made acover for your sewing machine doing more
sewing and kinda leather work up there.
Yeah, the second floor of the horse barn.
Is a clean space for me.
It's a clean space.
I don't have really a clean space.
I do now, but when I started myleather, I ran for my leather
business a year ago and I came upwith a pattern that I really like,
(18:20):
and everyone seems to really like it.
I've been able to sellquite a few of them and.
Every time I got a hide in,I was buying three hides at
a time, four hides at a time.
I would bring 'em into my livingroom and lay 'em on the floor
because it's the only place whereI know no water's gonna get on 'em.
No animal's gonna pee on 'em andno saw dust and grinding powder's
gonna burn the edge or getnear 'em and I can lay 'em out.
And also, I also, it's really funny.
(18:42):
Everybody worries about my leather.
They're all like, how are you gonna store?
Go, just lay it on the floor like,but it's gonna get in your way.
I go, I just won't standin that part of the room.
It's gonna be fine.
You're not gonna hang it ona rack or put it on a shelf.
I'm like, no, because when I getleather, I like to immediately unroll
it, lay it, lay flat on the floor.
'cause when you need a piece ofleather that you're not fighting
a bump in it, you're not fightinga scene that's been created.
(19:05):
Or even worse, you've rolled it upand now you needed a year later and
it just wants to stay in a role.
And you can't work it on the table or onthe sewing machine 'cause it's rolled up.
So that's why I just leave it layingflat on the floor and now all my hides
are up there and I've actually, sinceI'm up there, I'm being productive.
I need to buy more hides.
I've kind, I've gone throughall the useful stuff already.
I've turned them into bags in the lastcouple, a couple of maybe last week.
(19:29):
They're all I made about 15bags out of everything that
was light in my living room.
Wow.
Nice.
So at what point do you are, do.
So having that more space.
More space.
Is there anything else in that clean shopthat you're looking at that, I know you've
done some letterpress work, for example,
Yeah, the letterpressis down the block now.
I bought an old racetrack, which iswhere I do my annual hangout with my
(19:50):
friends and fans that want to comeand they bring a handmade go-kart and
we goof off on the day on the track.
And it was an old concession standwhere you could buy hot dogs and
ice cream and run on the track.
So the building that's there has themechanic's garage for the go-karts in
the back and inside there's a was whatwould've been the old dining area.
If you bought a hotdog, yougo sit in the dining area.
(20:12):
And now that's all my printpresses are in there now.
That's awesome.
Is that the go-kart you made on Hammered?
No, the one I made on hammered wasa. It was a TV prop that was a prop.
Now what I made on hammeredwas so many years ago.
Now I'm like, I'm much more intowelding than I was at that point.
When I got on YouTube, I stored I'vewelded and I welded on that show,
(20:33):
but when I got on YouTube, I gota, I got an endorsement deal with
Lincoln Electric primarily becauselike you're the average nube that.
Weld occasionally we wanna show the homegarage guy that he can get a welder,
learn how to weld, and he doesn'thave to be a certified welder to do
VBV groove welding on the pipeline.
(20:55):
So I'm not intermediary where I'mnot a farmer, I'm a furniture maker.
But I could also do this.
I could fix a leg on a tableor I could fix my trailer.
And so that, that was really themarketing ploy with me behind.
So when I really got machines,I started really welding.
A lot more often.
I went to school at Lincoln a coupletimes for just some basic skills and then
just challenge yourself with projects.
(21:16):
The more projects you do, the moreyou challenge yourself to weld,
the better you get at anything.
So I developed a lot of welding projects,and so now the go-karts that I'm making
for my Go-Kart event are all welded up.
I've made three in a row now.
The first two years, the firstyear was COVID, the second year
was admitted beginning of thatTV show that we talked about.
So I, we finished the episode, the finalepisode, the day before the Go-Kart event.
(21:40):
So I didn't have achance to build anything.
So the last three years, so we've donefive and a, but the last three years I've
built a go-kart every year and I'll dothat every year until the event is done.
That's awesome.
Yeah, it's always fun.
So I start thinking now it's becominga short tradition, it's in July,
so May, June, I start thinkingabout what I'm gonna make and start
(22:00):
gathering the materials and go toHarbor Freight by a, by an engine
and start thinking it through.
Nice.
So talking about, you're not a farmer,but have a farmhouse and all the
land, and I know there's probably,maintenance projects you have around and
having all your skills come in handy.
For somebody who wants to pick up askill and they have some property,
where would you suggest them starting?
(22:21):
I have chickens.
I do take the eggs, so I maintenancethe chicken coop and I built a chicken
coop, which was really easy to do.
That's a simple thing.
Some four by fours andsome what do you call it?
Hard cloth wire, which is thattight closed wire you can get at the
gardening shop or tractor supply.
That that was cool.
I've gone through lots of birdsin the last, almost 10 years now.
(22:42):
I have right now I have three turkeys.
So the turkeys are fun.
I don't eat anything as far as meat goes.
I just harvest the eggsand they're more pets.
But everybody wants the eggs.
People come by all the time.
They're like, do you have any eggs?
And then there's that primetime in the summer where you're
getting like 25 eggs a day and youdon't know what to do with them.
Giving 'em to everybody that comes by.
And yeah.
So now I'm getting about oneegg a day, maybe, if I'm lucky.
(23:06):
'cause it's cold out now.
But the chicken coop isan easy thing to get into.
You could even buy one,but I recommend making one.
And you don't need a lot of spaceif you have one or two chickens.
And what else I got a big field andit's fenced in and we had a drought
in 22 and my neighbors have five cows.
And they were raising him for slaughterand he said, we are running outta
(23:28):
grass because nothing's growing.
He said, can we have my cows?
So the cows were in my field all ofAugust and a little bit of September, a
few years ago, and that was a lot of fun.
So what I'm gonna do, and I justreached, my business partner, reached
out to me he's my partner on the housedown the block, which is got that big
10 acre field, and I have at leastthree acres in the horse pasture.
And he's would you considerrenting to a farmer?
(23:49):
I said, sure, if we can, if youcould find a tenant that wants
to grow something, bring it on.
So having all these projects and,trying to use as many materials as
you can that are, they're reclaimed.
How does someone who may not have as,as much, as many access to the materials
you're using to take off your porch orthe door that you might have taken out?
(24:10):
It sounds crazy, but any constructionsite dumpsters have the great stuff.
I used to be in the city full-time.
I'm upstate full-time now, but when Iwas in the city prior to six or seven
years ago, dumpsters were the greatest.
I there was, I remember when I veryfirst started my New York City shop, the
one where I started my YouTube channel,but I had to shop for about four years
before I started my YouTube channel.
All my early videos are downin this basement hole, in the
(24:32):
basement of a tenement building.
I was dumpster diving constantly.
I had no money.
I was living paycheck to paycheckthen in Manhattan, which was a
rough making a rough go of it.
I had a few clients that I knew wouldalways, I was on retainer with a few
people designing, developing productsand making prototypes and doing interior
design a little bit here and there.
But you stop at any construct and peopleare ripping out plywood that they don't
(24:54):
want anymore 'cause it's got paint on it.
It's perfect for aworkbench, two by fours.
Nobody wants to cleanthe nails out of 'em.
Perfect for workbench legs.
It's all free material.
And then one of the, one ofthe best fruits of the city
was the old tenement buildings.
If you were gonna rehab a three orfour story, or six story tenement,
there was some rule where youhad to get rid of the timbers.
(25:15):
The three by 10, three by 12 inch dougfir timbers all have to go right in
a dumpster, and they're 20 feet long.
And you could barely pickone up, one end by yourself.
They're the floor joists that gofrom brick wall to brick wall.
They are the floor joists of all theseold 10 buildings built in the 1880s.
1890s.
(25:36):
And if you're gonna rehab one,you gotta replace it with steel.
Those buildings were designed sothat the brick wall, my dad taught
me this 'cause he was a fireman.
So when you see these old timbers inthe dumpster, the ends are chamfered.
They're really chamfered like thisso that when the fire in the middle
burns, if there's a fire, which theyalways know there would be eventually
the timbers tip out of the wall.
(25:56):
They don't pull the bricks in with 'em.
So all these timbers go wall towall with the chamfered corners.
You could tell it's a full piece'cause the, you could still see the
end on 'em and then they're out, likehalf pieces for stairwells and stuff.
So that.
Was a huge giving tree in the cityis when they designed when they were
going to rehab a six story building.
They were gonna be pullingthose things out for months.
(26:17):
Every floor, front to back,a hundred feet, six floors.
If they're every 18, 20 inches,20 inches on center, there's a
hundreds of 'em in the buildingand they just don't want them.
But there are guys that did come along andreclaim them, and there was a lumberyard
in Brooklyn called M Fine Lumber.
And they would take those old three bys,four bys, four by twelves, three by nines.
(26:40):
They were all different thicknesses.
They were basically the I-beamsthat held up all these floors
and all these old tenements andthe city is still full of them.
There was the building boom inthe 1890s, 1880s, and 1890s.
All those buildings that were builtthen are majority, A lot of them.
So there's always gonna bethat wood coming outta them.
It's all old growth, Southern pine doug,fir insane with beautiful textures on 'em.
(27:04):
They have now I have shelves allaround the house made out of 'em.
That's great.
So that was, I would take 'em andcut 'em up into pieces that I haven't
thought about that actually until youjust asked me that pointed question.
But yeah, I would findthat stuff all the time.
I remember one Thanksgiving morning.
I happened, pawn a dumpster full ofthem and there was nobody around.
(27:24):
Everybody was getting ready tohave dinner with their family
and I said, I gotta get out.
'cause tomorrow thecity's gonna be bustling.
They're all gonna be takenby dirt bags like me.
So I spent the whole morning ofThanksgiving morning before I
drove out to my mother's house.
I kept driving back to my shop,I'm driving to the ninth Street
and drive back to my shop andbrought 'em back to ninth Street.
I have a pile of them in my backyard.
I would always grab 'em when I could.
(27:45):
They're not easy to get, especially in anold Tundra that only has a 66 inch bed.
I'd lay 'em up on my roof, so they'dbe like, on the tailgate, they'd
be on the tailgate and on the roof,and they'd be sticking up past
the roof a few feet and stickingback past the tailgate a few feet.
I can get a 10 foot piece on the truck,crushed my taillight, but on the, the
third light on the back of the cab.
(28:05):
But who cares?
You got free wood.
Nice.
I'm imagining you, so this is whenyou were down in your basement doing
your first videos, and I saw, Iwent back and I watched your first
video that you still have on likepublic on YouTube of the foot chair.
Oh yeah, I made that, yeah, Imade that about six or seven years
before I started my YouTube channel.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(28:26):
So what would you do with those sorts ofprojects after you were done with them?
That sat in the basement for years,and then I brought it up here.
When I bought this house.
I made that before I bought this house,and then when I bought this house, I
brought it upstate and I put it in thewoods, and so it was a destination.
You just walk in the woods and thenyou see this foot sticking outta the
ground and then it deteriorated it.
It was covered with plastic and wood.
(28:46):
It lasted about four years untilit was completely just a pile
of white spot on the ground.
So yeah, a lot.
A lot of times I justgive it back to the earth.
Nice.
Yeah.
Nice.
Besides, the horse barn andwhat other projects do you have
coming up that you're looking at?
I have the horse barn's done andthe graveyard house is always
gonna be in process, probably for acouple of years, at the very least.
(29:08):
And I just got a sawmill,so I'm excited about that.
So what are your plans for the sawmill?
Do you think you'll start takingmore folks trees when they come down?
Oh yeah, absolutely.
I also just bought, I just boughta Kubota, which is something
I really was contemplating.
It's a lot of money.
Of course.
Do I need it?
Do I need it?
But I knew the minute Ibought it, I would use it.
(29:29):
I just got it 10 days ago and the firstthing I did was I brush hog my feel.
With it every year for 20 years, Igotta find some reluctant farmer that's
annoyed to have to brush hog my field'cause probably pays pennies on the
minute because it takes 10 hours tobrush hog a three acre field with a
(29:50):
machine that goes four miles an hour,and with the difficulties of hitting
a stump and stopping and startingand trying not to flip the tractor
on the hill, nobody wanted to do it.
So this year I said I moved somany things around the property.
I enlisted my friend Eli whocomes over with his forks on
his what is, he has a yanmar.
He comes over and he picks up stuffwith his forks and moves stuff around.
(30:10):
Whenever he is here, I like,we gotta move this over, we
gotta move that pile of rocks.
We gotta move that.
I was like, lemme just buy my own tractor.
So I bought a 66 horsepowerM6060 and it's a great machine.
It's like the bigger of the middle size.
It's the big one up from the middle size.
And the wheels are up to about my chest.
So they're that high.
Nice.
(30:32):
Yeah.
That'll take care of a few things.
You won't have to put stuff in yourtundra anymore, that's for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now I got a couple of Chevys, butI could show you an interesting,
I just took this picture just now.
What the hell are they here?
So I just got, look at this.
I just got a pack of scaffoldingmaterial for the graveyard house.
Oh, nice.
The ceiling.
(30:52):
And I was able to get it offthe truck with my tractor.
That's great.
It's already paying for itself.
I did the field already with thebrush hog and I just unloaded a
3000 pound pallet in the truck.
And then once the winter comes,and winter's always, the,
always kicks our ass up here.
So I'll have a place, somethingto plow the snow with if I needed.
That's just gonna make it easier for youto get more pallets of of things now.
(31:14):
A hundred percent.
I cleaned out the basement.
We, I hired some local guys, butI helped, we pulled out all the
flagstones outta the basement becausethe drainage under the floor was the
collapsing and nothing was draining.
I'm on a very fertile ground where thewater comes up constantly, even though I'm
about a thousand feet up somehow there'sa water table that comes into my basement.
So if I'm not draining.
(31:35):
It, my basement will fill up with water.
It's a natural flagstonebasement from 200 years ago plus.
And, but I pulled out all the bigchiseled square stones that were
puzzled together in the basement.
I had to, and we put concrete back in it.
But I got five palletsof those things outside.
I can't throw 'em away.
'cause some guy 200 years agowith a chipping hammer made them
all beautifully fit together.
(31:56):
I might use 'em for an outdoor patio inthe backyard, but they're all in pallets.
And the pallets weigh 2000 pounds a piece.
So now I can shuffle them around.
Nice.
Yeah.
-So one thing I was curious about you're obviously out a bit away,
on your property, it didn't seemlike you're necessarily off grid.
Is that something you'vethought about all.
(32:17):
Yeah.
In fact the graveyard house, I'mworking with a company called Eaton
Electric, and they said, Hey, if weget with you, do you think you could
take your house off grid with solar?
And I've been talking to my buddyPatrick, who's been my electrical
engineer for all my projects.
He said let's do it.
So we're gonna see if we can takethat house off grid with solar panels.
We'll try, we'll see.
There's enough room to put a coupleof solar panels in and around.
(32:39):
I don't want them on the house 'causeI just don't think they look good.
And plus the house is such a beautifulold farmhouse, it would be blasphemy
to tie those panels to the roof.
So there's enough space, I'll find aspace to, to set 'em up that's the goal.
To go off grid over there.
If we can even at the very least, to geta generator partnership or something with
Generac or see if you can do that and.
(32:59):
I've been wanting to dothat here at this house too.
My, my plumber, he set it upso that we can go off grid with
a Woodburn stove in the yard.
He's got it all set up.
So I got the ports whenI'm ready to put it.
He's it'll be easy.
We just run the pipes on theground to through the wall.
We'll set it up.
So I had my plumbing upgraded hereat the house last year, and he is we
will, we'll have that as an option.
Do you do any rain collectionor anything like that?
(33:21):
I don't, but I will, I do need to.
And at the other house I want to it'sdefinitely something I want to do.
I know.
Do you guys know April Wilkerson?
She's a contemporary mine.
We came up together, Aprildid an amazing rain collection
system at her farm in East Texas.
And yeah, she's she's got this giant tuband I was just talking a funny story.
(33:45):
A family called me and said, myfamily used to live in your house.
My family was the owners of your housefrom like the 1920s to around the fifties.
And my dad wants to come and visit.
And this weekend George came to visit me.
He was born in the room right above here.
He was born in this bedroom above me.
He's 85 right now.
And he walked around and showed mearound and we were talking and we were
(34:05):
standing in the kitchen and I said, tellme what you remember about the kitchen.
Just asking him random questions.
He goes there's a bigcistern under the floor.
He goes, it used to be, I go, it's stillthere 'cause I lifted up the floor planks
and I looked underneath, there's a bigconcrete square tub underneath the house.
And he goes, yeah, we used to fillit with rainwater from the roof.
And I said, I know exactly.
I go, there was a thing overthere, we had to rip it up to
redo the drainage for the toilets.
(34:27):
He goes yeah.
And I pointed at the ground.
He goes, yeah, my dad putthat in the 1930s and '40s.
It was a drain that came off the roofand went back, pointed towards the house.
'Cause it went underneath, throughthe foundation into that cistern
underneath the kitchen floor.
So that got me inspired to start tofiguring out how to do more stuff
like that again, especially overat the graveyard house where I'm
at a clean slate at the moment.
Sure.
(34:48):
But we're all on well waterhere, so that's, in a way, we're
still collecting the rain water.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Even this house is fully on.
And so is the house down the block.
Everybody around here is on well water.
I am curious, with Mother Earth Newswe've been publishing for about 50 years
and I went back and I looked at a fewdifferent project articles, looking at
(35:12):
old issues and there's this one from theearly 2000s I picked up in the archive on
straw bill house building your own home.
Oh yeah.
$50 at a square foot.
Yeah.
That's funny.
'cause when I was talking aboutbuilding the barn with with my ex, he.
All kinds of straw bales andeven IFCs and all different
(35:33):
alternative methods of building.
But we just went with stick frame.
'cause ultimately it was thecheapest, fastest way to go.
Yeah.
But I was also researching land shipsand all that stuff at the time, looking
at all kinds of cool alternatives.
And I want to build a logcabin on this property.
I got obviously plenty of room.
So now with the sawmill, talk abouta project, one thing I want to do is.
(35:54):
Cut the timbers to do like a log stack,not necessarily raw logs, but square
cut logs, but stacked up with somenotch corners, that kind of thing, like
an old prairie house type of thing.
Nice.
And I've always been abig fan of Dick Proenneke.
Of course.
I always wanted to.
Oh yeah.
That's, it was even in my notes, justto build the exact, just get all the
(36:14):
pictures of Dick Proenneke's houseand just build that in the woods.
So One Man's Wilderness has a prettygood layout for the whole thing.
I'm sure some people havereplicated it over the years.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's a goal.
Yeah.
I've done a lot of naturalbuilding stuff over the years.
We worked with CASBA, the CaliforniaAssociation for Straw Building, and
(36:35):
then Uncle Mud this guy outta Ohiothat does a lot of cob building.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, I've heard of that.
Yeah, he'd always show up to ourevents and make an outdoor pizza
oven out of cob, over the weekend.
Oh, right on.
Yeah.
Yeah, that same issue that Iwas looking at that has D-I-Y
make your own handmade caskets.
I made a casket for my friend's wife.
(36:55):
She was diagnosed terminalpancreatic cancer and she, when
she found out the week she foundout, she said you make my casket.
'cause she only had a year to live.
That's a rough request,but I won't say no.
Said, of course.
But she lived for, she was able tohang on for at least five more years.
And then I got a call from my friendand he said, he goes, I think it's time.
So I started building it in Februaryand I got close and then at the end
(37:18):
of the weekend, and he calls me, hegoes, she made a miraculous recovery,
but she was obviously, she was on thedownside because she was succumbing
to the illness, but she, theythought that was gonna be the week.
So she went in February,I started building fast.
He told me to slow down andthen she lived until July.
Wow.
And he called me in the beginning of thatweek and he is this might be the week.
(37:39):
And so I went to work,I finished it right up.
But yeah, it was a tough one,it is, in a way, it's an honor.
When somebody askedyou, she got to ask me.
Yeah.
Yeah, I imagine when you're, when youhave the skills, you do, you get asked
for a lot of, personal projects thatyou know, people, they're artifacts.
In fact, what I discussed with you, why Imight be a little bit late to this podcast
(38:01):
is that earlier today was in the news.
It's not a secret.
We lost a local community memberto a small airplane accident.
Here in New York State,there's a Rhinebeck aerodrome.
His plane that he made went downand he died in the accident.
And so the board members came to meto help make some of the medals that
they wanted to put in with his burial.
(38:23):
They have these vintage medals andwere just women making them doing some
low melt white metal castings.
So I'm making some replicasof the ones they have.
That's great.
Yeah.
And I have to go to Sweden tomorrow andeverything, and she called me and said,
can you, I said, a hundred percent comeover, we'll do this, and then you guys
are kind enough to move me up a half hour.
(38:43):
So thank you.
No problem.
It's part of being a community really.
You're able to give back that wayand, for what they've given to
you and part of, their legacy.
And what's funny is these guys,they're all really hands-on guys.
These guys that are down at the shop now,they build airplanes with their own hands.
They came here to watch me do the process.
I did it for about an hour and ahalf, gave 'em some tips and lessons.
I'm like, I gotta go do my interviewso you guys are on your own.
(39:05):
So by the time I was able toleave the shop, they did one
successful one, the very first one.
So I'm like, that's it, you guys.
You guys, now you're gonnateach the next people.
You're good to go.
So that's, you're doing like oil sand?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Petro bond.
Okay.
Yeah, we just, I just got abouta 30 pound bucket of petro bond.
We're just using that and alittle wooden flask, which is the
top and bottom frame and yeah.
(39:25):
Easy stuff.
Technically it's easy stuff ifyou get a little education on it.
Yeah.
Speaking of education, the the makercamp, you just had that finished up.
I was taking a look at that.
I wasn't aware of that.
I might have to, I'm gonnahave to make it up there.
Oh, you guys have to come next year.
You guys would enjoy it even ifyou wanted to set up a little
thing to promote the brand.
We have all kinds of tents, but wehave jewelry making, leather working,
(39:46):
glass blowing, pottery, welding,plasma cutting, and above all the
featured event is blacksmithing.
Hammer making, axe making, knifemaking, some of the world class knife
makers are there and lots of toolrepresentatives of grinding companies
that you would use for making theknives and some blacksmithing companies.
(40:07):
Coal Iron Forge, they produceforges, and then also the hydraulic
press and some other stuff.
Now it's a really great get together.
This year we, this is year numbersix and I'm not a partner in the
event, but I help promote it.
I'm a big part in getting people here.
It's a great weekend and like I saideverybody that knows me personally tries
to get a room in my house, gets crowded.
(40:28):
It's a couple campers outside my property.
All every year it was, I have a camper.
Somebody's, two people stay in thecamper and people camp in their car.
Yeah, that's great.
And at the event we had a thousand people.
Oh, nice.
Speaking of axes, what are some of the,your tools or machines that you've built
? I always say I'm a student of knife making.
I've made lots of knives in my timeand I always make something different.
(40:49):
I haven't made enough to develop a style.
I guess if I had to say I do havea style, it's oversized stuff.
I say, I like to make a knife that lookslike Bugs Bunny would use it in a cartoon.
I like big knives, like kitchen knivesthat are like 20 inches long, just because
they're just dramatic and they're fun.
And I made a lot oflatches to hold doors shut.
(41:09):
That kinda stuff.
It's a tough thing when you blacksmith.
I know.
It's been a topic of conversationon some of the podcasts.
What can we make that'snot a bottle opener.
Let's not make a bottle opener anymore.
What can we make?
And I do some door hardware, which is fun.
And I'm, I always, I'm looking around myarea right here to see if I have any, I
don't really have anything that I made.
(41:29):
Here, this is my friend, so Ialways make these ice picks.
My friend Jeff made these JeffFader, so this is like a pocket pick.
I sell these ice picks on my website.
So Jeff made this for me as a gift,but that's all blacksmithed up.
And then it's got this, the folder.
And he, and because Jeff's a NewYorker like me, he always puts the
(41:50):
subway token as the ring somewhere.
He got a hundred subway tokens, so heuses them as the little pivot spot.
Stuff like that is fun to make,but I never, and I probably
never will make a bottle opener.
Outta curiosity with your horse barn, doyou ever do any, do you have horses and
do Ferrier work ever or have you tried it?
I don't, but that's another thing.
(42:11):
I wanna blacksmith up someof the latches when I'm gonna
make the horse gates and stuff.
There was another time and placein my life where there would've
been a horse in there, but.
I'm on a different path now andI'm gonna keep the horse barn as a
horse barn in the can, in the eventthat I pass the house on, or if I
sell it or if I ever do get a horse.
So it, it's gonna be a quickconversion, but in the meantime it's
(42:31):
gonna be for pottery, some storage.
I have an old caulk, an old Cadillac.
I'm gonna try and restoremy, pull that inside there.
There is a slight potential if Iever needed to rent it so I could
rent the whole downstairs to a horsefacility if somebody wanted to do that.
'Cause I got the field, I got plentyof space for a pen, that type of stuff.
Like I said, there was a time inmy life where that was the whole
(42:52):
reason we built it for a horse.
But the, I don't have a horse in my lifeanymore, but I did a quick change and I
turned the second floor to a leather shop.
Yeah, I remember.
And going back to the ceramicsI remember you mentioning that.
What's your history of ceramics and isthat something you're expanding into?
I got into a relationshipwith even heat ovens.
They gave me some knife, heat treatingovens, and I was looking on their
(43:14):
website and I was like, oh, theseguys originally started at making
pottery kilns and I reached out to 'em.
I was like, Hey, Iwanna play with pottery.
And so I did a deal with them and I gota pottery kiln from them at a discount.
I paid for it, but they built me one as adiscount and I said, let me just get into
it, and I just started playing with clay.
I don't really know what I'm doing.
(43:35):
I've taken a couple of courses withpeople, but I'm gonna admit something
here that I thought pottery was easyand there's an amazing science to it.
There's, you just see, it's alwaysthe butt of a joke, it's oh, I'm gonna
learn pottery because, I just gotoutta rehab, I'm changing, whatever.
But I really developed a reallynewfound respect for the concept
of pottery and firing clay.
I never took it serious.
(43:56):
But now I understand how serious it is andwhat a part of the American experience it
was from the very beginning of humankind.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
It's, it's one of the things oflike the learning how to hoe the
earth making pottery is it's rightthere at the beginning of mankind.
Say something you can nerd out ontoo that's just really fantastic is
(44:16):
watching the Japanese teapots beingmade with that style of turntables.
It's just beautiful.
A hundred percent.
The care that goes intothat, it's amazing.
Yeah I see those and I'mlike, I could do that.
It, it is wild.
It's one of those things wherepeople look at it and like, why
doesn't mine turn out that way?
But it's like these, this hasbeen passed down through how many
generations in a single familyat sometimes, and it's like that
(44:37):
knowledge isn't, just something innate.
It's learned.
Have you done a lot of slip, any slip castand anything like that with your ceramics?
A little bit.
A little bit.
My buddy gave me a bucket of slip that hewasn't using, so I had some fun with that,
pouring it into my tile molds that I made.
And it's on my, it's on my to-do list.
I have a big 3D printedversion of my head.
(44:57):
My beautiful face with the top flat.
And I was gonna try and makea big slip of that and plaster
Nice.
If we could do it, but it's gonnahave to be obviously multiple pieces.
Yeah.
In seeing how guys combine 3Dprinting with slip, it's unbelievable.
How you guys make these really multifractional molds that are unbelievable.
It a fun thing too, that when I wasdoing some slip casting when I was
(45:19):
in graduate school I started using.
Infusion 360 specifically.
'cause I can do my mold lines with that.
So I'd use that to lay some things out for5, 6, 7, 8, 9 piece slip molds, which the
flatter the surface area, the harder itwas to pull the piece off once it got wet.
But it was,
yeah,
really it's a lot of fun.
Yeah.
So I definitely havesome slip molds in mind.
(45:41):
Nice.
Everything gets timely.
It all becomes timely.
All of a sudden I'll get a requestfor an advertisement that might tie
loosely into something like that.
And, that's why I alwayskeep my to-do list loose.
I'm not one of these guys that knowswhat I'm doing for the next seven weeks.
I have no idea what I'm even gonna donext week when I get back from Sweden.
I do know that's a lie.
(46:02):
I have to make a set of saddlebagsfor a video, but that's easy for me.
That's a one day build or oneand a half, two day build.
I have a loose list and I justlook on it and see what I'm
feeling, what scrap material I havearound, or what I can recycle into
something that might fit an idea.
So you have a potter's wheel?
I have a small potter's wheel, butone of my videos, and this is where
(46:24):
I'm always trying to think of how Ican combine a few things together.
I have several.
A lot of people donate meprinting presses and they usually
disaster, broken, cracked, weldedwith weather together forever.
And it's I always just take the wheel.
So a leaning on my garage, I have abouteight S-spoked cast iron flywheels.
(46:46):
Nice.
It's gonna take one of thoseand make it into a kick wheel.
See if I could play around with that.
I get a kick pottery wheel.
You can do a little treadle wheeltoo with an old sewing machine.
That's a lot of fun.
Yeah, so I have a couple of ideas toto play around with, and I think for
me, it'd obviously be fun for me tobuild the mechanics of it, but then
to do the mechanics and then takeit the next step and play around
(47:09):
with doing something on pottery.
So that's in the timeline.
I'll probably do that closer tothe spring, but that's definitely
something I wanna do sooner than later.
Cool.
Nice.
I appreciate your time.
Yeah, reach out anytime.
If you guys wanna talk about anythingspecific, I'd love to get involved.
Awesome.
Appreciate it.
And when you do another jamboree,I'd love to come and hang out.
Awesome.
Yeah.
We were actually justdown in southeast Ohio.
(47:31):
We had, where we went toschool at Pawpaw Festival.
I have a pawpaw tree in my backyard.
Do you?
That's great.
Yeah.
Do you guys know Eric?
Do you guys know Ericfrom Hand Tool Rescue?
I've seen his, I watch his videos a lot.
Yeah.
So Eric from Hand Tool Rescuejust spent the weekend here.
Years ago an ex-girlfriend of mine said,"Hey, I wanna I want a pawpaw tree.
This is going back like 10, 12 years ago.
(47:51):
She found a pawpaw tree.
We planted it in the yard, and she's okay,it's gonna fruit in seven years from now.
And is that about right?
Am I remembering that right?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's about right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I forgot about it every year.
I'm like, it didn't die.
It didn't die every year.
Oh, I can't believe it said it didn't die.
Now maybe it's 12 or 13 feet tall andthere's seven or eight sprouts, around it.
And my buddy Eric, whois a botanist by trade.
(48:15):
Nobody really knows this.
He's a PhD level botanist.
He goes, "Do you know you have apawpaw tree in your backyard?" He
goes, "Why the eff do you have apawpaw tree in your backyard?" I
go somebody planted that years ago.
He goes this, he goes, this tree.
There is 6 to 7,000dollar tree sitting there.
He goes, this is a veryhighly sought after tree.
He goes, that they're hard to get.
He goes, they're almost gettingthey're on the verge of being extinct.
(48:35):
He said.
Especially in your region.
'cause they're not really cold hardy.
Yeah, that's what he said.
It's a little unusual for it to be here.
For sure, our lead editor fromMother Earth News is up in Wisconsin
and she's trying to grow somenow, but she's trying to find a
variety that was more cold hardy.
He's in Toronto.
I was like, take one with you'cause they probably won't let
me bring it across the border.
They're gonna gimme a hassle.
So I might mail him some seeds.
(48:56):
Yeah, I have actually, that remindsme, I have a slurry of seeds
in my, in the trunk of my car.
I need to put in a bucket.
Yeah.
The guy who wrote a book on themsaid, if you just keep a slurry to
ferment over the winter, you can justthrow it in the ground in the spring.
Oh, right on.
It's been great talking to you.
Alright, guys.
Thank you so much.
And like I said, count me inanything cool and interesting.
I would love to be involved.
Awesome.
Appreciate it.
Thanks so much.
(49:16):
Thanks.
Love and respect guys.
Thank you.
Thanks for joining us for this episodeof Mother Earth News and Friends.
To listen to more podcasts and getconnected on our social media, visit
www.motherearthnews.com/podcast.
You can also email us atpodcast@ogdenpubs.com with
any questions or suggestions.
(49:37):
Our podcast production teamincludes Kenny Coogan, Alyssa
Warner, and myself, Josh Wilder.
Music for this episode is thesong Hustle by Kevin MacLeod.
The Mother Earth News and Friends podcastis a production of Ogden Publications.
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