April 29, 2025 • 40 mins
Episode Description:
“Once you start eating your own food, it expands your taste horizons and you can’t be afraid to experiment. If it doesn’t work out and it’s horrible, just put it in the compost bucket and start over. It’s okay, you’ll be fine.” —Marjory Wildcraft
Food is not just sustenance; it's a fundamental human right that we've outsourced to complex, fragile systems. This disconnection from food sources has transformed us into passive consumers dependent on a market that creates an illusion of abundance, masking a precarious supply chain that can unravel in moments. But we are not powerless. Our backyard is a potential fortress of food security, self-sufficiency, and resilience.
Marjory Wildcraft is a pioneering educator who teaches sustainable food production and home medicine skills. She has developed innovative systems for growing food in diverse environments, helping people reclaim their food independence.
Tune in as Justine and Marjory explore how we can transform our living space into a productive food ecosystem through urban gardening, home medicine, animal protein production, seed diversity, nutrient cycling, and economic resilience strategies.
Meet Marjory:
Marjory Wildcraft is the founder of The Grow Network, which is a community of people focused on modern self-sufficient living. She has been featured by National Geographic as an expert in off-grid living, she hosted the Mother Earth News Online Homesteading Summit, and she is listed in Who’s Who in America for having inspired hundreds of thousands of backyard gardens. Marjory was the focus of an article that won Reuters’ Food Sustainability Media Award, and she recently authored The Grow System: The Essential Guide to Modern Self-Sufficient Living—From Growing Food to Making Medicine.
She is best known for her DVD series Grow Your Own Groceries, which has over half a million copies in use by homesteaders, foodies, preppers, universities, and missionary organizations around the world.
Beloved for her humorous, non-judgmental, get ’er done style, Marjory raised two teenagers in Central Texas and currently splits her time between Paonia, CO, and Puerto Rico. When she’s not building an online network, being “Mom,” and tending her family’s food supply, Marjory loves playing, running, doing gymnastics, skateboarding, acquiring skills from the Paleolithic era (yes, she is part cavewoman!), and experimenting with anything and everything related to food production and sustainability.
Join the I Can Grow Food webinar to learn the fastest and easiest ways to produce healthy and delicious meat, eggs, and vegetables with Marjory: http://www.backyardfoodproduction.com
Connect with NextGen Purpose:
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Justine Reichman: (00:13):
So Marjorie, welcome to Essential
Ingredients. So happy to haveyou here. Excited to learn a
little bit about your journey.What brought you there? Let's
kick it off by just letting ourcommunity know who you are, and
what you do?
Marjory Wildcraft: (00:27):
Okay. What I do now and who I am now is
Marjory Wildcraft. I basicallyteach people backyard food
production and home medicine, sothe skills to keeping the home
together, which used to be very,very common. But that is not at
all how I started out.
Justine Reichman: (00:46):
What's interesting to me is you're not
alone there, right? People havea journey getting to where they
are today, and oftentimes, wherethey're meant to be and where
they love to be. We probablyhave listeners that are tuning
in today that can reallyresonate with your story,
because it's been very varieduntil you got to this point.
Marjory Wildcraft: (01:09):
Hopefully, it's empowering too, because I
was not born in a hippiecommune, or on some organic farm
or anything like that. Nothingcould be further from the truth
about that, and my first degreeactually is in electrical
Justine Reichman: (01:21):
Well, I didn't mean to cut you off, but
engineering. My family, we grewup in South Florida. And even in
in the United States, you'reactually doing pretty well. But
they didn't have a lot of money,let's just say that. And like a
when you were talking aboutkids, he does programs in the
lot of kids that come from thatkind of a background, I was very
interested in wealth. And when Iwas in Hong Kong, which is the
(01:42):
ultra capitalistic center of theworld, I actually got over there
with Motorola. I was an expatmanaging a couple of mobile
backs of schools in urban areas,New York City, the Bronx,
telephone networks. And the guysthat worked for me say, you
gotta take this class with thisguy named Robert. He's really
interesting. He's all aboutmoney. And I said, do we know
him? And they said, no. We neverheard of him before, but he's
etcetera, and he helps themlearn how to grow food so it
(02:04):
really good. You have to go. SoI went, and then through a lot
more classes with Robert, Iended up being inspired to leave
engineering. And ultimately, Imoved. I chose Austin, Texas as
a real estate market. And by thetime I was 40, I had made my
supports their ability to domath and science, and all these
first million, and things wereso successful that Robert asked
me if I would be on someinfomercials he was making. So I
(02:27):
was on national television forfour years selling Rich Dad,
Poor Dad stuff for RobertKiyosaki. So none of that
different things. And as aresult, many of these kids are
involves growing food. Not atall, businesswoman, engineer,
but I was volunteering on aproject to get locally grown
food into an elementary school.This is outside of Austin,
Texas. A little town called RedRock, working with some big
doing really much better goingto colleges, and being much more
(02:48):
movers and shakers in Texas, andwe were going to just do it
there, and then duplicate it allacross the state and get clean
organic food in the schoolsystem. Super important. Well,
that project was an utter andcomplete failure, and that
failure absolutely changed mylife. Now, it didn't look like
successful. So as you're sittingthere saying this, there really
it, like you'd think the schoolwanted it, the teachers wanted
(03:11):
it. There's all kinds of federalgrant state money for it.
There's reams of studies thatshow that when children eat
higher quality food, they scorehigher on intelligence tests,
is a movement to integrate thisin school systems, in urban
and they literally have lessbehavioral problems. It just
makes sense, right? So are youfamiliar with Steve Ritz?
Marjory Wildcraft: (03:29):
I've seen those greenhouses on the tops of
schools in New York City, andI'm like, I want to go visit
areas with families, so thatpeople have greater access and
those. Those look so cool. Butwe were just looking at getting
local farmers to provide thevegetables. And the reason that
the whole project failed wasthere weren't enough locally
(03:51):
can really thrive. That ismentally, physically, all of it.
grown organic farmers within theentire county to provide even
part of the vegetables for onesmall rural elementary school.
And I just literally that night.I will never forget that night,
my body was just violentlyshaking because first of all,
(04:14):
the drive from Austin to RedRock suddenly made sense.
There's no farmers out there.There's some open space. Maybe a
few cows, but there's $1 generalgoing in. There's a subdivision,
but there's no food growing outin the countryside. There's only
(04:35):
four days worth of food ininventory, in the grocery
Justine Reichman: (04:36):
I totally agree. And I also think that
stores. We have a just in timetrucking system, and it travels
some people live in largerareas, and it's much easier for
1500 miles to get to you. And atthat time, the population is
them to grow a garden, butthere's a lot more challenge in
bigger now, but I was surroundedby 20 million Texans who were
(04:56):
armed to the teeth seriously.And I'm like, you know that
urban areas. And understandinghow to do that, and how to
whole saying about nine daysaway from anarchy or whatever? I
create enough abundance of thesefoods so that people can feed
mean, I realized that eventhough I had a lot of money and
wealth, there are scenarioswhere no amount of money will
their family, especially asthings get more expensive and we
(05:16):
get you what you really need.And I had two small kids and I
just said, that's it. WhateverI've been doing in my life up to
don't have good access, you havemore control. And so I know
now is unimportant. There's lotsof people who know how to make
we've had many people that havetuned into the podcast
money. God does not need anotherperson to be able to make money.
(05:38):
But there's hardly anybodyanymore who knows how to grow food.
wondering, okay, well, that'sgreat. We know that you can do
this if you have a garden, buthow do we do this in a more
Marjory Wildcraft: (05:49):
It's not anybody's core competency
urban environment? And so when Isaw what you were doing, I
thought, wow, here's anopportunity to talk to those
(06:12):
people. The people in particularthat want to be able to do this,
but don't either have the visionbecause it's not their core
competency, which fair enough.
(06:35):
anymore.
Justine Reichman: (06:39):
If you don't see it and you're not grown up
with it, it's much harder tointegrate. I'd love to hear from
you, if one of our guests weretuning in and they're asking,
okay, I want to do this. I livein a high rise or in the middle
of New York City, or Miami,Florida, how do I make this work
so I can feed my family well?
Marjory Wildcraft: (07:01):
If you live in an urban area like that, so
let me riff on that for what youcan do right in your own
property. And what I wouldrecommend you to start with is a
couple of herbs on a windowsill. And let me give you the
Justine Reichman: (07:14):
So for those of us that are not perfect and
directions for that. So first ofall, by the way, when you're
cooking, you doing yourspaghetti or whatever, if you
add just a little bit of freshbasil, it completely what you
know, what's the name of yourpodcast, right? It completely
changes that. It just makes thewhole thing just pop and come
alive. In fact, when I starteddoing that, my family thought I
(07:38):
had changed. They were like,hey, Mom, you got a new recipe.
I'm like, yeah, that's a wholenew recipe. I just added a
tablespoon of chopped basil,fresh basil. And it's great when
you see your kids asking forseconds. That makes you feel
good. There's incredible powerin just some fresh herbs. And I
have had many, many, many peoplethat just started with a few
(08:01):
fresh herbs on a window sillthat then later on went to do
much greater things. So don'tunderestimate the power. The
other thing is learning fromthose three or four plants that
you have there. Everything youlearn there is going to be
appropriate for when you havemaybe a four by four square
plot, or a bigger garden, oreven if you're managing acres of
(08:23):
crops. And don't tell me you'renot going to ever be managing
acres of crops because we are ina freaking vortex, and you have
no idea what you're going to bedoing even next year, so it's a
possibility. But everything youlearn from those plants, if it's
not getting enough sunlight,they get pale, and they just
tend to grow straight up, right?If you forgot to water them,
(08:47):
they start turning yellow, andthen the ends start getting
crispy brown, and then they die.So these things that you're
learning is identical to whatyou're going to see with their
plants, and they're teaching youalready. I would really
recommend to get started some ofthe toughest, most badass plants
that are tough to kill. Althoughyou probably will, so don't be
(09:11):
worried about it. It is going tobe mint and basil, and then
chives. Or even scallions, andthose also have the biggest
impact. I was saying that freshbasil on a dish is just amazing.
And the fresh mint, and put itinto a beverage. The fresh
scallions on top of some soup.It just gives that dish so much
vibrancy. So getting startedone, first of all, do not put
(09:34):
this in your spare bedroom. Youwill never go in there. Those
plants will die. You'll get tosee how they die. Ideally, if
you have a kitchen sink with awindow that has a little bit of
sun, that's going to be perfectbecause you're by that kitchen
sink all the time. Sometimes Ithink I'm married to my kitchen
sink where do all these dishes.And I live alone anyway. Other
(09:57):
thing is get as big a pot as youcan fit on that window sill. So
the bigger the pot you have, themore soil it's going to be able
to hold, and the more forgivingof your erratic water schedule
it'll be. So you'll be able toretain more moisture and more
minerals, and it'll do better.
(10:17):
do forget to water, we have abetter chance of keeping them
alive.
Marjory Wildcraft: (10:21):
And especially if it has one of
those little plates on thebottom to retain extra water,
that really helps a lot.
Justine Reichman: (10:27):
I want to ask you about mints. I have mint and
it is taking over everywhere. Sowhat do you do in your kitchen,
is it a bad idea to mix yourmint with your chives and your
basil? Does it need its ownpots?
Marjory Wildcraft: (10:43):
I would have them all in separate pots. And
isn't that great that it's likemegalomaniacal like, that means
you got a lot of mint. You makemint tea, you can have so many
mints. You can throw mint, youcan give bunches of it away to
your neighbors. That is what theabundance is all about. You're
getting all kinds ofmicronutrients and stuff from
(11:03):
that mint that you're growing.So growing a few herbs is just a
fantastic way to start. And I'vehad a lot of people just start
with that. And then a coupleyears later, they've got
chickens, rabbits and goats. Imet one woman who was in my
community and she started outwith that, and she said, I just
wanted to grow more. So I wentand found a house with a yard
(11:24):
because I just wanted to growmore food. So let's talk about
some other things that may ormay not need a lot of light.
Bean sprouts. A lot of peoplejust do that with a simple grow
light and boom. Like in five toeight days, you've got sprouts.
Not a lot of caloric density,but there's a huge amount of
(11:49):
life force and nutrition inthose, and they will really help
your health. We just got donewith a whole series on the Grow
Network blog on micro greens andhow to grow them in apartments
and condominiums because peoplehave been asking us, I think
there's like five or six partblog series we just created
that'll teach you everything youneed to know about growing
microgreens in your house.
Justine Reichman: (12:11):
That's really amazing because I think that
some of this stuff sounds likeit's fairly simple, but is
intimidating because we have somany things going on in our
lives, and we don't want toforget to do this. And then
also, when you're thinking aboutwhat you're going to cook,
remembering to incorporate that.I go to the grocery store and
(12:32):
I'm like, wait, what do I havein my garden? I should eat that
first. It's like changing thenarrative for you to think about
this. And I think it takes alittle time. Even the other day,
I was making dinner and I wentinto the garden like, okay, we
can have (inaudible). In thepast, I would think about, what
(12:55):
is it that I want to eat? Oh, Iwant to make this. Oh, it's not
local. Oh, it has to come fromMexico. Oh, it's not in season.
Oh, my god, how expensive thatis. But if you change the
narrative and you say, you knowwhat? What I have in my garden,
let me investigate what I couldmake with this. You start to eat
local. You start to eat your ownfood, and you can have more
(13:16):
control over the quality of it,and the accessibility of it. You
get to grow what you want to eatand what you can offer to your
Marjory Wildcraft: (13:24):
It really expands your tastes horizons.
family.
Don't be afraid to experiment.And if it doesn't work out and
it's horrible, just put it inthe compost bucket to start
over. It's okay. You'll be fine.
Justine Reichman: (13:36):
You first started this, I'm curious. There
was a lack of vegetation andfarmers in Texas. How did you
end up in Puerto Rico nowkicking off this Grow Network to
create inspiration for others tobe able to grow their own fruits
and vegetables?
Marjory Wildcraft: (13:56):
I started The Grow Network. So I had the
big wake up call, I would saythat that was about the 2003
era, and there was a bunch ofother thing happening. I had a
strong intuition, and I startedto back it up with research that
the real estate market was goingto collapse. I basically foresaw
what was going to happen in2008, so I realized that I
(14:16):
wanted to get out of that, andit took me a while to unwind it.
And then we bought a propertyout in Central Texas, and I've
started full blown homesteading,homeschooling. And as soon as
you start growing food, youstart to realize that you gotta
have community, and it took me awhile to really start figuring
things out. And then thatengineering, I'm like, what is
(14:36):
this system gear? What's thesimplest way? What's the most
effective way? There's a lot tofigure out. I started teaching
classes locally, and you're onto something when somebody calls
you up and says, I've got 20people. I'll be over Saturday,
can you teach us? If you've everorganized events, you know that
(14:58):
rare that is. And everybody keptsaying, hey, Marjory, you need
to make a video out of this. Youneed to video this because you
need to expand what you've gothere. Is really, really good. I
wanted people to come to see andexperience it. Like, here's why
the kitchen garden is rightoutside my back door so that I
can just grab it. If I had agarden that's even 50 feet away,
(15:20):
I'm less likely to use it.That's why they're going to
kitchen gardens. And I justwanted to have people have that
experience and see it. I took ayear off and scripted, re
scripted and scripted thisvideo. And then back then, video
editing took a lot longer andwas way more expensive than it
is now. I don't know if youremember DVDs. I made my first
(15:43):
DVD called Backyard FoodProduction and I'd put like,
$30,000 of the family savingsinto this thing. We put up the
website, and nothing sold.Because you put up a website, it
doesn't mean it's great,although we did have almost half
(16:03):
a million illegal downloads ontorrent sites and things like
that. But if you remember backthen in the day how that went.
So anyway, I said, well, I thinkI have something that's really
useful here, and I got to figurethis out. I had to come up with
a way to recoup the savings thatI'd taken from the family's
coffer. So I ended up, at thatpoint in time, became a digital
(16:26):
marketer because I had to figureout how to sell these things,
and that's how The Grow Network.And then having one product are
a few businesses that can getaway with that. But really, for
a business to be successful, youreally need multiple products.
But I was learning a lot moreall the time. I got by a
copperhead snake, which is apotentially fatal bite, and
(16:48):
treated it at home with a lot ofnatural techniques that I had
learned from crazy people livingout in the wilderness who lived
this kind of a lifestyle to anextreme that none of us are
probably going to anytime inthis lifetime. I'm like, wow,
the techniques that were usedthousands of years ago, those
Greek and Roman guys are bashingeach other with swords and all
(17:11):
that stuff, but they got majorwounds. Now, a few of them did
die from their womb, so the vastmajority of them were healed and
recovered. And it turns out thatthose same techniques are still
effective today, and you don'tneed to use antibiotics. I
actually never even went to thehospital for a lot of injuries
(17:32):
that I have sustained andcompletely treated at home. So
we made a product calledtreating infections without
antibiotics, on how to handlelacerations and broken bones,
and snake bites and that kind ofthing using natural herbal
medicines. That was anotherproduct we made.
Justine Reichman: (17:46):
You made this natural product. Where did you
get the information to figureout how to make this product and
sell it? Because people sell alot of things. Here's something
that I'm listening to you talkabout it. I can hear you're
passionate about it, and I canhear your enthusiasm for it. But
(18:07):
I'm wondering how you took itfrom idea to create the actual
product, and what you did aboutsharing stories so that people
could understand the efficacy ofit? What role did that play in
it for you?
Marjory Wildcraft: (18:21):
One other thing about how I got the
information. I have been deeply,deeply concerned that night in
Red Rock. I had a vision of thepotential of what could happen,
right? And we're talking aboutmass hunger, and social unrest,
and complete disruption, whichby the way is still not off the
table. And if anything more, itis a likely. It's getting more
(18:46):
and more likely and probable.Now, the US dollar is almost
over. When the banking systemcollapsed, we are going to have
that exact situation where youcan't go to the grocery store
and buy stuff. There's adefinitely a very practical
sound reason for driving me tolearn skills. And so I did all
(19:11):
the gardening class andpermaculture classes, citizen
forest, all the classes you cantake, read all the books. And
then I started spending time outin the national forest with
barefoot crazies who are notlosing weight. They're healthy,
and they're doing well. And justlooking all the beaten path for
ways that people can sustainthemselves in extremely
(19:32):
difficult times. And some of thegatherings that I used to love
to go to are called primitiveskills gatherings. And this is
where people who study andpractice, learn and teach the
skills that would have beencommon in the Paleolithic era.
I'm homeschooling, so mydaughter always came with me. It
(19:53):
was just so fun. We're bothlearning stuff like how to tan a
deer skin with just its brains.All wild plants, and how to
create traps and snares, andnavigating by the stars, and all
the skills of the paleolith era.And this guy, Doug Simons, came
in, and he knew all abouttreating infections without
(20:15):
using herbal medicine to makethese treatments. And I'm like,
Doug, this is such a usefulinformation, and we have to
bring it to a wider audience. Iguess that I'll be the conduit
for that. So I got avideographer to help me, and we
created a video called TreatingInfections Without Antibiotics,
and started putting it up on thewebsite. It does take a lot of
(20:37):
people to think, oh, I've got agreat product. And actually, the
product as fun as it was todiscover that and create it,
usually the products only about10% of the work, right? Because
there's the packaging, thebranding and the labeling.
There's the sales page, which ifanybody wants to see a sales
page that I've just written,gosh, I should get you the link
(20:59):
for we have a new kit called TheSoil Detox Kit, and it's like a
20 page long form sales letter.I hate long form sales letters,
but they convert. There's thewebsite and the blog posts. I
found that I could never getadvertising to work. I'd spend
$1,000 on advertising and maybesell $500 worth of product.
(21:23):
You're just not going to stay inbusiness doing that for very
long. But one thing that I foundreally worked for me well was
like what we're doing right now.I'd get on podcast, talk to
people and tell them what I had.You want to know how to grow
food? Here's a way to do it. Goto backyardfoodproduction.com,
I'll show you how to grow food.And I've got a free webinar
there. And in that webinar, Ishow you how to grow half of
(21:45):
your own food in your backyard,even if you are older, out of
shape, or have no experience.And it's true, I really have
dialed in the three easiest waysto grow food in a backyard.
Justine Reichman: (21:57):
When you were coming up with this, and you
were hoping to create change,hoping to inspire and support
people to grow half their ownfood in their garden, if you
look at the population, whatpercentage were you hoping to
convert? If we just look at yourcommunity, let's just say, what
percentage were you hoping toconvert to be able to do this
(22:18):
for themselves? And whatpercentage Have you been able to
convert?
Marjory Wildcraft: (22:22):
Well, at this point now in our database,
there's more than a millionemails. Now, that's because I've
been at this for what? 15 years.We only have about 100,000 of
them that are active. That'sbecause if you don't engage with
me for six months, or we haven'theard from you, if you're not
clicking on something, we putyou in a campaign that says,
(22:43):
hey, are you sure? Goodbye,goodbye. We only keep active and
engaged people. And then at thispoint in time, I've probably
talked to people, severalmillion people at this point in
time, I've helped in one way oranother. Now, when I first got
that, made that first DVD onBackyard Food Production, I sold
(23:04):
thousands of them. I wouldfollow up with people. And what
shocked me was, almost, nobodywatched it. Almost, nobody
watched it. They bought it. Theythought it was a great idea.
They wanted it in their libraryin case the world came to an end
or something like that. So thereality of businesses is that.
There's a lot of people in mycommunity now actually like, who
(23:27):
is it? I think she's 80something, and she said, look,
I'm almost done here. I'm almostdone. I know it. I got some
youngster doing some stuff forme, but I just really want to
support you because what you'redoing is vitally important for
everybody. So she buys my stuffjust to support for me. Yeah,
(23:49):
that's amazing.
Justine Reichman: (23:52):
At the community, do you have a
percentage or some statisticsthat you could share that might
realize or highlight the impactyou've had by integrating this
into your community, andshowcasing this in such an
accessible way?
Marjory Wildcraft: (24:05):
I don't have any specific numbers like that.
We used to have a big forumsarea, and I would get a lot of
feedback. And I would guess theone thing that I'm known for is
The Grow half system. How togrow half your own food in your
backyard even if you have noexperience, you're older and
you're out of shape. Thatheadline took quite a while to
get to, by the way, so that didnot just come out of the air
(24:27):
magically. We're playing with alot of different headlines, and
I'll talk about split testing ifyou want. But as far as I can
guess, I think there are several100,000 people who have
implemented that grow halfsystem. I've taught little kids
to elders, but we don't have anyreal hard data on that. It's not
really something you can trackthat well.
Justine Reichman: (24:50):
I understand that this came from, it sounds
like it came from a place ofpassion, which is not uncommon
for entrepreneurs, and a voidthat you see that you want to
fill. So when you did this andyou wanted to kick this off, did
you look at this as like anothercareer, and you needed to be
able to monetize this?
Marjory Wildcraft: (25:10):
It's really been more of a purpose and
mission driven, because I stillsee collapse as, actually every
day, the probability of itoccurring is growing, right?
We're in the apocalypse rightnow. This is for real. The
Apocalypse is the lifting of theveil, and it's not anything to
be afraid of. We've already gonethrough tremendous change. We're
(25:35):
only about ankle deep intowhat's actually coming, and the
more people that are prepared,the easier this transition is
going to be. So I've always beendriven by trying to help this
transition be as easy aspossible, so that it's really
been purpose and mission driven.And I will tell you that the
(25:55):
growing food niche is not alucrative niche at all. I did
really, really well. We had agood couple of run for a couple
of years there, and I can giveyou some numbers. In 2019, The
Grow Network grossed about 1.6million. That was our biggest
revenue year. I had a team ofeight, and we had been doing
over a million for a couple ofyears. Now, what your gross
(26:16):
revenue does not reflect profit.We're making a little bit of
profit, but almost anytime, Ihad new profit. I would roll
that into something else thatwas vitally important, that
people were asking, well, homemedicine was a huge thing.
People were like, I really wantto learn the basics of home
medicine to take care of myfamily. And so we developed a
whole bunch of products on that.I need to learn about how to
(26:38):
build a greenhouse, so wefigured that out. We ended up
creating an academy because wehave like 35 courses now for
things people had asked us tohow to keep goats, how to keep
sheep, different styles ofgardening, home medicine, how to
grow cannabis. That's a greatgateway.
Justine Reichman: (26:56):
Overall mission with these courses and
supporting people with homemedicine and home agriculture to
feed themselves, what is theoverall mission? And what do you
hope to achieve?
Marjory Wildcraft: (27:07):
Homegrown food on every table.
Justine Reichman: (27:09):
Homegrown food on every table. And then if
we look forward three, fiveyears, how do you hope this is
going to evolve? And what do yousee?
Marjory Wildcraft: (27:18):
It used to be a like a little tongue in
cheek joke, homegrown food onevery table. But honestly, we're
going to have homegrown food onevery table 3, 5, 10 years from
now. Probably more like thethree to five year time frame,
because it takes 10 calories ofenergy to get one calorie of
food on your plate. That iscompletely unsustainable that
(27:38):
will not go on forever, thatwon't go on for much longer.
Now, we're already seeing thecollapse of these systems that
get you food. So whether I doanything or not, you are
ultimately, if you're going tobe eating, it will be homegrown
food. The existing commercialfood supply is imploding right
now as we're talking. There'salso some other very, very good
(28:02):
reasons. And you asked me howmany people and what percentage?
I think we need to have about aminimum of 70% of people in any
food shed doing backyard foodproduction. And the reason is
genetics. So the USDA in the1990s did a study, and they
compared seeded catalogs from1890 with seed catalogs from
(28:24):
1990, and they showed it wastragic. Something like a 94%
loss in seed varieties becausebackyard producers were keeping
it alive or keeping the straingoing. We know that this squash
is really useful because itstores through the winter
better, so we grow that. Andalmost all of that is gone now.
(28:47):
Seed savers has done a good jobwith it. And then we have the
Svalbard in Norway, which isgreat. Except for that
Microsoft, pretty much. BillGates owns that, and I doubt
we're ever going to have accessto it. So somebody's got the
genetics, but we really need alot. Farmers do not have time to
experiment, they're working.They're making and growing food.
(29:11):
What used to be the bridgebetween the farmers and the
backyard producers are thecounty fairs. Used to go to the
county fair and you get a blueribbon because you grew the
greatest tomato. The farmerswould all be there, and they're
looking like, hey, that lookslike that really tastes good.
They talk to you about it, andcould I get some seeds from
that? That was how there was atransfer. And you can even do
(29:35):
this in an apartment orcondominium by the way. Even
though we have a lot less space,we have a lot more time, and we
can do a lot more playingaround, and we are absolutely
essential to the whole foodnetwork. So in addition to
resiliency, you having at leastsome of your own food supply at
(29:55):
hand and the skills to do it,which gives you an appreciation
for the farmer who's doing it.
Justine Reichman: (30:01):
As we're sitting here talking, and we're
talking about home medicine andhomegrown agriculture, it takes
me back, all of a sudden, I feellike we're going back to a long
time ago, and ancient traditionsare now colliding with our new
traditions, and some of thethings that we learned, and
we're sort of going back andforth to find that new platform
(30:23):
that's going to work and be ourfuture.
Marjory Wildcraft: (30:25):
Yeah, I totally agree. And there's some
things we let go of, that wereally have to pick back up. And
part of that is backyard foodproduction. You'd mentioned
this, but I'd also like to makea quick correction> Everybody
always thinks of me as gardens,and I definitely love gardens.
But the most productive foodsource that you can have is
going to be animal products. Sofor example, 100 square foot
(30:48):
garden, which I recommend twosmall raised beds. 50 square
feet each, so 5 feet by 10 feetlong. And in two growing
(31:09):
seasons, you can produce 50,60,000 calories if you're
growing some of the morecalorically rich foods, like
potatoes and things like that.But a small backyard flock of
laying hens, like six layinghens, it will produce 250 eggs a
year. And a medium sized egg is62 calories. So we're talking
about 1500 eggs a year from thissmall group of six hens in your
(31:32):
backyard. That's like 95,000calories. But more importantly,
three egg omelets for breakfastfor you for the entire year,
plus 30 eggs to give away. Soyou've got breakfast handled.
You build the coupon run or youget somebody to build it, get
the feed and water, go toCraigslist or a feed store, buy
(31:55):
the laying hens. And in just acouple of weeks, egg production
is happening. You can havebreakfast handled for a long
time, right? So animal productsare a lot more calorically
efficient and also nutritionallydense. The other thing about
backyard food production is themost difficult macronutrient to
(32:17):
produce is fat. So if you thinkabout it in a garden, there are
no fatty vegetables, no eggplantor, green beans, none of that
has any fat in it. Very Spartandiet. The next most difficult is
protein. And you start gettinginto your beans, legumes and
things like that, and you getsome protein. The easiest thing
(32:39):
to produce are going to becarbohydrates. Your potatoes,
your squashes, your carrots andbeets. And then there is forage
fiber everywhere. There's allkinds of greens everywhere. You
don't even need to garden.There's probably wild all around
you that you didn't realize it.But animal products are by far
the best way to produce proteinand fat, which are the most
(32:59):
difficult macro nutrients.
Justine Reichman: (33:01):
And I'm thinking your protein, I'm
wondering looking at my gardenas I look out my window and I'm
like, how's that gonna look?
Marjory Wildcraft: (33:10):
You can have a small coupon run in about the
size of a parking spot, evensmaller. I also really recommend
Justine Reichman: (33:15):
After being an electrical engineer, going
a small home rabbitry with onebuck and three breeding does.
And again, you're talking aboutlike 120 square feet, not that
much. Another thing that's superimportant about the rabbits and
the chickens, and I have friendswho are vegans that still have
livestock even though they don'tchoose to eat them. It's for the
(33:37):
nutrient cycling. The animalsproduce the best fertilizers,
and you need to think aboutnutrient cycling. So all your
weeds in your garden go to feedthe rabbits in addition to some
other food, and they createrabbit pellets, and then you're
using that to either make warmcomposting or just applying
directly to the garden orcomposting it. You really need
(34:00):
to have this nutrient cyclinggoing on, which is why that
three part system atbackyardfoodproduction.com. So
those of you who have abusiness, you really have to. I
mean, sometimes I hate myself,but you have to promote your business.
into real estate and kickingthis off, when you originally
(34:22):
did this, what was it like foryou? Because you came from a
very different environment tobecome a business owner and
create something that wasmission driven and impact
driven, how did you make thattransition?
Marjory Wildcraft: (34:37):
Think about the sun and the moon, and you
think about good, and you thinkabout evil, and you think about
engineers, and you think aboutmarketers. I think we could off
all the marketers on the planet.We'd be better off along with
the lawyers. I hated marketing,right? And I thought I knew a
lot about marketing becausewe've all been marketed to our
entire lives. Turns out that Ididn't know anything about
(35:00):
marketing. And if you're inbusiness, you had better take
some marketing classes,workshops, courses. I mean, I've
done so much marketing classes,and that's the difference
between a successful businessand an unsuccessful business on
it. So it comes down tomarketing. It really does
marketing because you can havethe greatest product in the
world, and if you don't know howto market and sell it, it ain't
(35:22):
going anywhere. People alwaysapproach me like, because I've
got a decent size following, notanything too huge, but they're
like, hey, I've got this greatproduct. Could you sell it? I
get hit up all the time becausemarketing and sales is the
toughest part. Usually in bigcorporations, if you see the
CEO, they did not come upthrough manufacturing, they did
(35:43):
not come up through accounting,they did not come up through
engineering, they came upthrough marketing, right?
Justine Reichman: (35:50):
As we wrap this up, and I feel like there's
been so much, it's been verycontent heavy, a lot of
different things that people cando. If we just wanted to break
it down, and you're talkingspecifically to one of our
guests and they said, can yougive me the three things I got
to do to kick this off, whatwould that be?
Marjory Wildcraft: (36:08):
Well, first of all, I would say, set your
intention. You say, I reallywant to grow food. And I'll tell
you a quick story about this. Iknow we're running out of time,
but I do want to say this. So Ialways get this question about
and have an open mind and anopen heart, and the universe
will, and you can use God orwhatever your particular
religion is, but I likeuniverse. We're here. It will
(36:29):
help you, it will guide you, butyou got to keep an open heart
and an open mind. So I've hadthis question of like, how can I
help people to grow more food inapartments and condominiums? And
then one day, my teenage son, wefound out he had been growing
(inaudible) in his closet, whichwas not cool. So the magic
mushrooms, right? So we dealtwithout his parents. But then
(36:51):
I'm thinking, you can growmushrooms in a closet? So the
universe brought me the answerto one of the questions I had.
It's like, oh, you can growmushrooms in an apartment or a
condominium. Others are like,they're pretty substantial. It's
not just like some leafy greens.So open your heart and open your
(37:11):
mind. And you ask a questionvery sincerely, and the universe
will answer you. You just got tobe paying attention and realize
it's not going to be anythingthat you've already thought
about, because you would alreadybe doing that if you'd have
thought about it. So that's myfirst advice. Set an intention,
open up your heart and mind thatyou'll get it answered. The
(37:32):
other is, of course, go tobackyardfoodproduction.com. As
free webinar, even if you haveno experience, you're older,
you're out of shape, I'll showyou how to grow food. It's
mostly targeted toward abackyard, but we also do cover
the apartment and condominiumseries. And the other thing I
would say is get started today,because it's happening really,
(37:52):
really fast. I mean, there'snothing else more important. You
don't need to do Facebook andforget that Netflix thing. Get
focused on this right away. Buysome backup food supplies. Start
getting your supplies togetherto get a garden going. Or if
you're going to do chickens,hens or whatever, do it right
now. For example, here in theUnited States, the US government
(38:13):
has to refinance $9.2 trillionthis year. It's the biggest year
they've ever had to do it. Mostof it, 70% of it has to be done
before June. They're havingproblems in the bond market.
Nobody's buying those bonds. Wehave a currency crisis happening
right now. All of our banks arecompletely bankrupt, they're
(38:33):
just keeping them afloat. TheFederal Reserve, which is the
backstop to the banks iscompletely bankrupt. And then
the US government, which is abackstop to the Federal Reserve
is completely bankrupt. RoyRogers says, you go bankrupt
slowly until it happens all atonce. And we're very close to
the happening all at once. So Ijust really want to encourage
you, you don't have to payattention to me, but start
(38:55):
growing some food because itwill help your life
tremendously.
Justine Reichman: (38:59):
Awesome. Thank you so much for joining me
today. I know that it's alwaysgreat for me to talk to folks
like yourselves who are creatingchange, having an impact in the
world, and really very missiondriven because that's what
drives me. And I know that ourlisteners, the founders and the
researchers that are tuning intoday and tune into Essential
ingredients rely on this kind ofinformation, whether they do it
(39:23):
completely or they use it forinspiration to innovate in their
own way. It's really inspiringso I really appreciate you
sharing that with us. I want tojust thank our guests for tuning
in. It's a family. It's acommunity. I feel like these are
my friends that tune in eachweek because they know that
we're going to have somebodygreat like yourself on to share
(39:43):
information so we can also makegreat change, so thank you to
our guests. Thank you to you fortuning in and joining me in this
conversation. For those folksthat want to learn more, what's
the best website to go to?
Marjory Wildcraft: (39:58):
backyardfoodproduction.com.
Justine Reichman: (40:00):
And if anybody wanted to connect
directly with you, maybe theyhave a couple questions, or
maybe they want to innovate andthey want to hear more about
your experience, what's the bestway to connect with you?
Marjory Wildcraft: (40:09):
Via email at Marjory, M-A-R-J-O-R-Y, number
3, marjory3@proton.me. And yeah,I'm getting a lot of people
reaching out that way. We have alot of really great projects
going on, but the key to it, andthe foundation to everything is
Backyard Food Production.
Justine Reichman: (40:28):
Awesome. Thanks so much.
So Marjorie, welcome to Essential
Ingredients. So happy to haveyou here. Excited to learn a
little bit about your journey.What brought you there? Let's
kick it off by just letting ourcommunity know who you are, and
what you do?
Marjory Wildcraft: (00:27):
Okay. What I do now and who I am now is
Marjory Wildcraft. I basicallyteach people backyard food
production and home medicine, sothe skills to keeping the home
together, which used to be very,very common. But that is not at
all how I started out.
Justine Reichman: (00:46):
What's interesting to me is you're not
alone there, right? People havea journey getting to where they
are today, and oftentimes, wherethey're meant to be and where
they love to be. We probablyhave listeners that are tuning
in today that can reallyresonate with your story,
because it's been very varieduntil you got to this point.
Marjory Wildcraft: (01:09):
Hopefully, it's empowering too, because I
was not born in a hippiecommune, or on some organic farm
or anything like that. Nothingcould be further from the truth
about that, and my first degreeactually is in electrical
Justine Reichman: (01:21):
Well, I didn't mean to cut you off, but
engineering. My family, we grewup in South Florida. And even in
in the United States, you'reactually doing pretty well. But
they didn't have a lot of money,let's just say that. And like a
when you were talking aboutkids, he does programs in the
lot of kids that come from thatkind of a background, I was very
interested in wealth. And when Iwas in Hong Kong, which is the
(01:42):
ultra capitalistic center of theworld, I actually got over there
with Motorola. I was an expatmanaging a couple of mobile
backs of schools in urban areas,New York City, the Bronx,
telephone networks. And the guysthat worked for me say, you
gotta take this class with thisguy named Robert. He's really
interesting. He's all aboutmoney. And I said, do we know
him? And they said, no. We neverheard of him before, but he's
etcetera, and he helps themlearn how to grow food so it
(02:04):
really good. You have to go. SoI went, and then through a lot
more classes with Robert, Iended up being inspired to leave
engineering. And ultimately, Imoved. I chose Austin, Texas as
a real estate market. And by thetime I was 40, I had made my
supports their ability to domath and science, and all these
first million, and things wereso successful that Robert asked
me if I would be on someinfomercials he was making. So I
(02:27):
was on national television forfour years selling Rich Dad,
Poor Dad stuff for RobertKiyosaki. So none of that
different things. And as aresult, many of these kids are
involves growing food. Not atall, businesswoman, engineer,
but I was volunteering on aproject to get locally grown
food into an elementary school.This is outside of Austin,
Texas. A little town called RedRock, working with some big
doing really much better goingto colleges, and being much more
(02:48):
movers and shakers in Texas, andwe were going to just do it
there, and then duplicate it allacross the state and get clean
organic food in the schoolsystem. Super important. Well,
that project was an utter andcomplete failure, and that
failure absolutely changed mylife. Now, it didn't look like
successful. So as you're sittingthere saying this, there really
it, like you'd think the schoolwanted it, the teachers wanted
(03:11):
it. There's all kinds of federalgrant state money for it.
There's reams of studies thatshow that when children eat
higher quality food, they scorehigher on intelligence tests,
is a movement to integrate thisin school systems, in urban
and they literally have lessbehavioral problems. It just
makes sense, right? So are youfamiliar with Steve Ritz?
Marjory Wildcraft: (03:29):
I've seen those greenhouses on the tops of
schools in New York City, andI'm like, I want to go visit
areas with families, so thatpeople have greater access and
those. Those look so cool. Butwe were just looking at getting
local farmers to provide thevegetables. And the reason that
the whole project failed wasthere weren't enough locally
(03:51):
can really thrive. That ismentally, physically, all of it.
grown organic farmers within theentire county to provide even
part of the vegetables for onesmall rural elementary school.
And I just literally that night.I will never forget that night,
my body was just violentlyshaking because first of all,
(04:14):
the drive from Austin to RedRock suddenly made sense.
There's no farmers out there.There's some open space. Maybe a
few cows, but there's $1 generalgoing in. There's a subdivision,
but there's no food growing outin the countryside. There's only
(04:35):
four days worth of food ininventory, in the grocery
Justine Reichman: (04:36):
I totally agree. And I also think that
stores. We have a just in timetrucking system, and it travels
some people live in largerareas, and it's much easier for
1500 miles to get to you. And atthat time, the population is
them to grow a garden, butthere's a lot more challenge in
bigger now, but I was surroundedby 20 million Texans who were
(04:56):
armed to the teeth seriously.And I'm like, you know that
urban areas. And understandinghow to do that, and how to
whole saying about nine daysaway from anarchy or whatever? I
create enough abundance of thesefoods so that people can feed
mean, I realized that eventhough I had a lot of money and
wealth, there are scenarioswhere no amount of money will
their family, especially asthings get more expensive and we
(05:16):
get you what you really need.And I had two small kids and I
just said, that's it. WhateverI've been doing in my life up to
don't have good access, you havemore control. And so I know
now is unimportant. There's lotsof people who know how to make
we've had many people that havetuned into the podcast
money. God does not need anotherperson to be able to make money.
(05:38):
But there's hardly anybodyanymore who knows how to grow food.
wondering, okay, well, that'sgreat. We know that you can do
this if you have a garden, buthow do we do this in a more
Marjory Wildcraft: (05:49):
It's not anybody's core competency
urban environment? And so when Isaw what you were doing, I
thought, wow, here's anopportunity to talk to those
(06:12):
people. The people in particularthat want to be able to do this,
but don't either have the visionbecause it's not their core
competency, which fair enough.
(06:35):
anymore.
Justine Reichman: (06:39):
If you don't see it and you're not grown up
with it, it's much harder tointegrate. I'd love to hear from
you, if one of our guests weretuning in and they're asking,
okay, I want to do this. I livein a high rise or in the middle
of New York City, or Miami,Florida, how do I make this work
so I can feed my family well?
Marjory Wildcraft: (07:01):
If you live in an urban area like that, so
let me riff on that for what youcan do right in your own
property. And what I wouldrecommend you to start with is a
couple of herbs on a windowsill. And let me give you the
Justine Reichman: (07:14):
So for those of us that are not perfect and
directions for that. So first ofall, by the way, when you're
cooking, you doing yourspaghetti or whatever, if you
add just a little bit of freshbasil, it completely what you
know, what's the name of yourpodcast, right? It completely
changes that. It just makes thewhole thing just pop and come
alive. In fact, when I starteddoing that, my family thought I
(07:38):
had changed. They were like,hey, Mom, you got a new recipe.
I'm like, yeah, that's a wholenew recipe. I just added a
tablespoon of chopped basil,fresh basil. And it's great when
you see your kids asking forseconds. That makes you feel
good. There's incredible powerin just some fresh herbs. And I
have had many, many, many peoplethat just started with a few
(08:01):
fresh herbs on a window sillthat then later on went to do
much greater things. So don'tunderestimate the power. The
other thing is learning fromthose three or four plants that
you have there. Everything youlearn there is going to be
appropriate for when you havemaybe a four by four square
plot, or a bigger garden, oreven if you're managing acres of
(08:23):
crops. And don't tell me you'renot going to ever be managing
acres of crops because we are ina freaking vortex, and you have
no idea what you're going to bedoing even next year, so it's a
possibility. But everything youlearn from those plants, if it's
not getting enough sunlight,they get pale, and they just
tend to grow straight up, right?If you forgot to water them,
(08:47):
they start turning yellow, andthen the ends start getting
crispy brown, and then they die.So these things that you're
learning is identical to whatyou're going to see with their
plants, and they're teaching youalready. I would really
recommend to get started some ofthe toughest, most badass plants
that are tough to kill. Althoughyou probably will, so don't be
(09:11):
worried about it. It is going tobe mint and basil, and then
chives. Or even scallions, andthose also have the biggest
impact. I was saying that freshbasil on a dish is just amazing.
And the fresh mint, and put itinto a beverage. The fresh
scallions on top of some soup.It just gives that dish so much
vibrancy. So getting startedone, first of all, do not put
(09:34):
this in your spare bedroom. Youwill never go in there. Those
plants will die. You'll get tosee how they die. Ideally, if
you have a kitchen sink with awindow that has a little bit of
sun, that's going to be perfectbecause you're by that kitchen
sink all the time. Sometimes Ithink I'm married to my kitchen
sink where do all these dishes.And I live alone anyway. Other
(09:57):
thing is get as big a pot as youcan fit on that window sill. So
the bigger the pot you have, themore soil it's going to be able
to hold, and the more forgivingof your erratic water schedule
it'll be. So you'll be able toretain more moisture and more
minerals, and it'll do better.
(10:17):
do forget to water, we have abetter chance of keeping them
alive.
Marjory Wildcraft: (10:21):
And especially if it has one of
those little plates on thebottom to retain extra water,
that really helps a lot.
Justine Reichman: (10:27):
I want to ask you about mints. I have mint and
it is taking over everywhere. Sowhat do you do in your kitchen,
is it a bad idea to mix yourmint with your chives and your
basil? Does it need its ownpots?
Marjory Wildcraft: (10:43):
I would have them all in separate pots. And
isn't that great that it's likemegalomaniacal like, that means
you got a lot of mint. You makemint tea, you can have so many
mints. You can throw mint, youcan give bunches of it away to
your neighbors. That is what theabundance is all about. You're
getting all kinds ofmicronutrients and stuff from
(11:03):
that mint that you're growing.So growing a few herbs is just a
fantastic way to start. And I'vehad a lot of people just start
with that. And then a coupleyears later, they've got
chickens, rabbits and goats. Imet one woman who was in my
community and she started outwith that, and she said, I just
wanted to grow more. So I wentand found a house with a yard
(11:24):
because I just wanted to growmore food. So let's talk about
some other things that may ormay not need a lot of light.
Bean sprouts. A lot of peoplejust do that with a simple grow
light and boom. Like in five toeight days, you've got sprouts.
Not a lot of caloric density,but there's a huge amount of
(11:49):
life force and nutrition inthose, and they will really help
your health. We just got donewith a whole series on the Grow
Network blog on micro greens andhow to grow them in apartments
and condominiums because peoplehave been asking us, I think
there's like five or six partblog series we just created
that'll teach you everything youneed to know about growing
microgreens in your house.
Justine Reichman: (12:11):
That's really amazing because I think that
some of this stuff sounds likeit's fairly simple, but is
intimidating because we have somany things going on in our
lives, and we don't want toforget to do this. And then
also, when you're thinking aboutwhat you're going to cook,
remembering to incorporate that.I go to the grocery store and
(12:32):
I'm like, wait, what do I havein my garden? I should eat that
first. It's like changing thenarrative for you to think about
this. And I think it takes alittle time. Even the other day,
I was making dinner and I wentinto the garden like, okay, we
can have (inaudible). In thepast, I would think about, what
(12:55):
is it that I want to eat? Oh, Iwant to make this. Oh, it's not
local. Oh, it has to come fromMexico. Oh, it's not in season.
Oh, my god, how expensive thatis. But if you change the
narrative and you say, you knowwhat? What I have in my garden,
let me investigate what I couldmake with this. You start to eat
local. You start to eat your ownfood, and you can have more
(13:16):
control over the quality of it,and the accessibility of it. You
get to grow what you want to eatand what you can offer to your
Marjory Wildcraft: (13:24):
It really expands your tastes horizons.
family.
Don't be afraid to experiment.And if it doesn't work out and
it's horrible, just put it inthe compost bucket to start
over. It's okay. You'll be fine.
Justine Reichman: (13:36):
You first started this, I'm curious. There
was a lack of vegetation andfarmers in Texas. How did you
end up in Puerto Rico nowkicking off this Grow Network to
create inspiration for others tobe able to grow their own fruits
and vegetables?
Marjory Wildcraft: (13:56):
I started The Grow Network. So I had the
big wake up call, I would saythat that was about the 2003
era, and there was a bunch ofother thing happening. I had a
strong intuition, and I startedto back it up with research that
the real estate market was goingto collapse. I basically foresaw
what was going to happen in2008, so I realized that I
(14:16):
wanted to get out of that, andit took me a while to unwind it.
And then we bought a propertyout in Central Texas, and I've
started full blown homesteading,homeschooling. And as soon as
you start growing food, youstart to realize that you gotta
have community, and it took me awhile to really start figuring
things out. And then thatengineering, I'm like, what is
(14:36):
this system gear? What's thesimplest way? What's the most
effective way? There's a lot tofigure out. I started teaching
classes locally, and you're onto something when somebody calls
you up and says, I've got 20people. I'll be over Saturday,
can you teach us? If you've everorganized events, you know that
(14:58):
rare that is. And everybody keptsaying, hey, Marjory, you need
to make a video out of this. Youneed to video this because you
need to expand what you've gothere. Is really, really good. I
wanted people to come to see andexperience it. Like, here's why
the kitchen garden is rightoutside my back door so that I
can just grab it. If I had agarden that's even 50 feet away,
(15:20):
I'm less likely to use it.That's why they're going to
kitchen gardens. And I justwanted to have people have that
experience and see it. I took ayear off and scripted, re
scripted and scripted thisvideo. And then back then, video
editing took a lot longer andwas way more expensive than it
is now. I don't know if youremember DVDs. I made my first
(15:43):
DVD called Backyard FoodProduction and I'd put like,
$30,000 of the family savingsinto this thing. We put up the
website, and nothing sold.Because you put up a website, it
doesn't mean it's great,although we did have almost half
(16:03):
a million illegal downloads ontorrent sites and things like
that. But if you remember backthen in the day how that went.
So anyway, I said, well, I thinkI have something that's really
useful here, and I got to figurethis out. I had to come up with
a way to recoup the savings thatI'd taken from the family's
coffer. So I ended up, at thatpoint in time, became a digital
(16:26):
marketer because I had to figureout how to sell these things,
and that's how The Grow Network.And then having one product are
a few businesses that can getaway with that. But really, for
a business to be successful, youreally need multiple products.
But I was learning a lot moreall the time. I got by a
copperhead snake, which is apotentially fatal bite, and
(16:48):
treated it at home with a lot ofnatural techniques that I had
learned from crazy people livingout in the wilderness who lived
this kind of a lifestyle to anextreme that none of us are
probably going to anytime inthis lifetime. I'm like, wow,
the techniques that were usedthousands of years ago, those
Greek and Roman guys are bashingeach other with swords and all
(17:11):
that stuff, but they got majorwounds. Now, a few of them did
die from their womb, so the vastmajority of them were healed and
recovered. And it turns out thatthose same techniques are still
effective today, and you don'tneed to use antibiotics. I
actually never even went to thehospital for a lot of injuries
(17:32):
that I have sustained andcompletely treated at home. So
we made a product calledtreating infections without
antibiotics, on how to handlelacerations and broken bones,
and snake bites and that kind ofthing using natural herbal
medicines. That was anotherproduct we made.
Justine Reichman: (17:46):
You made this natural product. Where did you
get the information to figureout how to make this product and
sell it? Because people sell alot of things. Here's something
that I'm listening to you talkabout it. I can hear you're
passionate about it, and I canhear your enthusiasm for it. But
(18:07):
I'm wondering how you took itfrom idea to create the actual
product, and what you did aboutsharing stories so that people
could understand the efficacy ofit? What role did that play in
it for you?
Marjory Wildcraft: (18:21):
One other thing about how I got the
information. I have been deeply,deeply concerned that night in
Red Rock. I had a vision of thepotential of what could happen,
right? And we're talking aboutmass hunger, and social unrest,
and complete disruption, whichby the way is still not off the
table. And if anything more, itis a likely. It's getting more
(18:46):
and more likely and probable.Now, the US dollar is almost
over. When the banking systemcollapsed, we are going to have
that exact situation where youcan't go to the grocery store
and buy stuff. There's adefinitely a very practical
sound reason for driving me tolearn skills. And so I did all
(19:11):
the gardening class andpermaculture classes, citizen
forest, all the classes you cantake, read all the books. And
then I started spending time outin the national forest with
barefoot crazies who are notlosing weight. They're healthy,
and they're doing well. And justlooking all the beaten path for
ways that people can sustainthemselves in extremely
(19:32):
difficult times. And some of thegatherings that I used to love
to go to are called primitiveskills gatherings. And this is
where people who study andpractice, learn and teach the
skills that would have beencommon in the Paleolithic era.
I'm homeschooling, so mydaughter always came with me. It
(19:53):
was just so fun. We're bothlearning stuff like how to tan a
deer skin with just its brains.All wild plants, and how to
create traps and snares, andnavigating by the stars, and all
the skills of the paleolith era.And this guy, Doug Simons, came
in, and he knew all abouttreating infections without
(20:15):
using herbal medicine to makethese treatments. And I'm like,
Doug, this is such a usefulinformation, and we have to
bring it to a wider audience. Iguess that I'll be the conduit
for that. So I got avideographer to help me, and we
created a video called TreatingInfections Without Antibiotics,
and started putting it up on thewebsite. It does take a lot of
(20:37):
people to think, oh, I've got agreat product. And actually, the
product as fun as it was todiscover that and create it,
usually the products only about10% of the work, right? Because
there's the packaging, thebranding and the labeling.
There's the sales page, which ifanybody wants to see a sales
page that I've just written,gosh, I should get you the link
(20:59):
for we have a new kit called TheSoil Detox Kit, and it's like a
20 page long form sales letter.I hate long form sales letters,
but they convert. There's thewebsite and the blog posts. I
found that I could never getadvertising to work. I'd spend
$1,000 on advertising and maybesell $500 worth of product.
(21:23):
You're just not going to stay inbusiness doing that for very
long. But one thing that I foundreally worked for me well was
like what we're doing right now.I'd get on podcast, talk to
people and tell them what I had.You want to know how to grow
food? Here's a way to do it. Goto backyardfoodproduction.com,
I'll show you how to grow food.And I've got a free webinar
there. And in that webinar, Ishow you how to grow half of
(21:45):
your own food in your backyard,even if you are older, out of
shape, or have no experience.And it's true, I really have
dialed in the three easiest waysto grow food in a backyard.
Justine Reichman: (21:57):
When you were coming up with this, and you
were hoping to create change,hoping to inspire and support
people to grow half their ownfood in their garden, if you
look at the population, whatpercentage were you hoping to
convert? If we just look at yourcommunity, let's just say, what
percentage were you hoping toconvert to be able to do this
(22:18):
for themselves? And whatpercentage Have you been able to
convert?
Marjory Wildcraft: (22:22):
Well, at this point now in our database,
there's more than a millionemails. Now, that's because I've
been at this for what? 15 years.We only have about 100,000 of
them that are active. That'sbecause if you don't engage with
me for six months, or we haven'theard from you, if you're not
clicking on something, we putyou in a campaign that says,
(22:43):
hey, are you sure? Goodbye,goodbye. We only keep active and
engaged people. And then at thispoint in time, I've probably
talked to people, severalmillion people at this point in
time, I've helped in one way oranother. Now, when I first got
that, made that first DVD onBackyard Food Production, I sold
(23:04):
thousands of them. I wouldfollow up with people. And what
shocked me was, almost, nobodywatched it. Almost, nobody
watched it. They bought it. Theythought it was a great idea.
They wanted it in their libraryin case the world came to an end
or something like that. So thereality of businesses is that.
There's a lot of people in mycommunity now actually like, who
(23:27):
is it? I think she's 80something, and she said, look,
I'm almost done here. I'm almostdone. I know it. I got some
youngster doing some stuff forme, but I just really want to
support you because what you'redoing is vitally important for
everybody. So she buys my stuffjust to support for me. Yeah,
(23:49):
that's amazing.
Justine Reichman: (23:52):
At the community, do you have a
percentage or some statisticsthat you could share that might
realize or highlight the impactyou've had by integrating this
into your community, andshowcasing this in such an
accessible way?
Marjory Wildcraft: (24:05):
I don't have any specific numbers like that.
We used to have a big forumsarea, and I would get a lot of
feedback. And I would guess theone thing that I'm known for is
The Grow half system. How togrow half your own food in your
backyard even if you have noexperience, you're older and
you're out of shape. Thatheadline took quite a while to
get to, by the way, so that didnot just come out of the air
(24:27):
magically. We're playing with alot of different headlines, and
I'll talk about split testing ifyou want. But as far as I can
guess, I think there are several100,000 people who have
implemented that grow halfsystem. I've taught little kids
to elders, but we don't have anyreal hard data on that. It's not
really something you can trackthat well.
Justine Reichman: (24:50):
I understand that this came from, it sounds
like it came from a place ofpassion, which is not uncommon
for entrepreneurs, and a voidthat you see that you want to
fill. So when you did this andyou wanted to kick this off, did
you look at this as like anothercareer, and you needed to be
able to monetize this?
Marjory Wildcraft: (25:10):
It's really been more of a purpose and
mission driven, because I stillsee collapse as, actually every
day, the probability of itoccurring is growing, right?
We're in the apocalypse rightnow. This is for real. The
Apocalypse is the lifting of theveil, and it's not anything to
be afraid of. We've already gonethrough tremendous change. We're
(25:35):
only about ankle deep intowhat's actually coming, and the
more people that are prepared,the easier this transition is
going to be. So I've always beendriven by trying to help this
transition be as easy aspossible, so that it's really
been purpose and mission driven.And I will tell you that the
(25:55):
growing food niche is not alucrative niche at all. I did
really, really well. We had agood couple of run for a couple
of years there, and I can giveyou some numbers. In 2019, The
Grow Network grossed about 1.6million. That was our biggest
revenue year. I had a team ofeight, and we had been doing
over a million for a couple ofyears. Now, what your gross
(26:16):
revenue does not reflect profit.We're making a little bit of
profit, but almost anytime, Ihad new profit. I would roll
that into something else thatwas vitally important, that
people were asking, well, homemedicine was a huge thing.
People were like, I really wantto learn the basics of home
medicine to take care of myfamily. And so we developed a
whole bunch of products on that.I need to learn about how to
(26:38):
build a greenhouse, so wefigured that out. We ended up
creating an academy because wehave like 35 courses now for
things people had asked us tohow to keep goats, how to keep
sheep, different styles ofgardening, home medicine, how to
grow cannabis. That's a greatgateway.
Justine Reichman: (26:56):
Overall mission with these courses and
supporting people with homemedicine and home agriculture to
feed themselves, what is theoverall mission? And what do you
hope to achieve?
Marjory Wildcraft: (27:07):
Homegrown food on every table.
Justine Reichman: (27:09):
Homegrown food on every table. And then if
we look forward three, fiveyears, how do you hope this is
going to evolve? And what do yousee?
Marjory Wildcraft: (27:18):
It used to be a like a little tongue in
cheek joke, homegrown food onevery table. But honestly, we're
going to have homegrown food onevery table 3, 5, 10 years from
now. Probably more like thethree to five year time frame,
because it takes 10 calories ofenergy to get one calorie of
food on your plate. That iscompletely unsustainable that
(27:38):
will not go on forever, thatwon't go on for much longer.
Now, we're already seeing thecollapse of these systems that
get you food. So whether I doanything or not, you are
ultimately, if you're going tobe eating, it will be homegrown
food. The existing commercialfood supply is imploding right
now as we're talking. There'salso some other very, very good
(28:02):
reasons. And you asked me howmany people and what percentage?
I think we need to have about aminimum of 70% of people in any
food shed doing backyard foodproduction. And the reason is
genetics. So the USDA in the1990s did a study, and they
compared seeded catalogs from1890 with seed catalogs from
(28:24):
1990, and they showed it wastragic. Something like a 94%
loss in seed varieties becausebackyard producers were keeping
it alive or keeping the straingoing. We know that this squash
is really useful because itstores through the winter
better, so we grow that. Andalmost all of that is gone now.
(28:47):
Seed savers has done a good jobwith it. And then we have the
Svalbard in Norway, which isgreat. Except for that
Microsoft, pretty much. BillGates owns that, and I doubt
we're ever going to have accessto it. So somebody's got the
genetics, but we really need alot. Farmers do not have time to
experiment, they're working.They're making and growing food.
(29:11):
What used to be the bridgebetween the farmers and the
backyard producers are thecounty fairs. Used to go to the
county fair and you get a blueribbon because you grew the
greatest tomato. The farmerswould all be there, and they're
looking like, hey, that lookslike that really tastes good.
They talk to you about it, andcould I get some seeds from
that? That was how there was atransfer. And you can even do
(29:35):
this in an apartment orcondominium by the way. Even
though we have a lot less space,we have a lot more time, and we
can do a lot more playingaround, and we are absolutely
essential to the whole foodnetwork. So in addition to
resiliency, you having at leastsome of your own food supply at
(29:55):
hand and the skills to do it,which gives you an appreciation
for the farmer who's doing it.
Justine Reichman: (30:01):
As we're sitting here talking, and we're
talking about home medicine andhomegrown agriculture, it takes
me back, all of a sudden, I feellike we're going back to a long
time ago, and ancient traditionsare now colliding with our new
traditions, and some of thethings that we learned, and
we're sort of going back andforth to find that new platform
(30:23):
that's going to work and be ourfuture.
Marjory Wildcraft: (30:25):
Yeah, I totally agree. And there's some
things we let go of, that wereally have to pick back up. And
part of that is backyard foodproduction. You'd mentioned
this, but I'd also like to makea quick correction> Everybody
always thinks of me as gardens,and I definitely love gardens.
But the most productive foodsource that you can have is
going to be animal products. Sofor example, 100 square foot
(30:48):
garden, which I recommend twosmall raised beds. 50 square
feet each, so 5 feet by 10 feetlong. And in two growing
(31:09):
seasons, you can produce 50,60,000 calories if you're
growing some of the morecalorically rich foods, like
potatoes and things like that.But a small backyard flock of
laying hens, like six layinghens, it will produce 250 eggs a
year. And a medium sized egg is62 calories. So we're talking
about 1500 eggs a year from thissmall group of six hens in your
(31:32):
backyard. That's like 95,000calories. But more importantly,
three egg omelets for breakfastfor you for the entire year,
plus 30 eggs to give away. Soyou've got breakfast handled.
You build the coupon run or youget somebody to build it, get
the feed and water, go toCraigslist or a feed store, buy
(31:55):
the laying hens. And in just acouple of weeks, egg production
is happening. You can havebreakfast handled for a long
time, right? So animal productsare a lot more calorically
efficient and also nutritionallydense. The other thing about
backyard food production is themost difficult macronutrient to
(32:17):
produce is fat. So if you thinkabout it in a garden, there are
no fatty vegetables, no eggplantor, green beans, none of that
has any fat in it. Very Spartandiet. The next most difficult is
protein. And you start gettinginto your beans, legumes and
things like that, and you getsome protein. The easiest thing
(32:39):
to produce are going to becarbohydrates. Your potatoes,
your squashes, your carrots andbeets. And then there is forage
fiber everywhere. There's allkinds of greens everywhere. You
don't even need to garden.There's probably wild all around
you that you didn't realize it.But animal products are by far
the best way to produce proteinand fat, which are the most
(32:59):
difficult macro nutrients.
Justine Reichman: (33:01):
And I'm thinking your protein, I'm
wondering looking at my gardenas I look out my window and I'm
like, how's that gonna look?
Marjory Wildcraft: (33:10):
You can have a small coupon run in about the
size of a parking spot, evensmaller. I also really recommend
Justine Reichman: (33:15):
After being an electrical engineer, going
a small home rabbitry with onebuck and three breeding does.
And again, you're talking aboutlike 120 square feet, not that
much. Another thing that's superimportant about the rabbits and
the chickens, and I have friendswho are vegans that still have
livestock even though they don'tchoose to eat them. It's for the
(33:37):
nutrient cycling. The animalsproduce the best fertilizers,
and you need to think aboutnutrient cycling. So all your
weeds in your garden go to feedthe rabbits in addition to some
other food, and they createrabbit pellets, and then you're
using that to either make warmcomposting or just applying
directly to the garden orcomposting it. You really need
(34:00):
to have this nutrient cyclinggoing on, which is why that
three part system atbackyardfoodproduction.com. So
those of you who have abusiness, you really have to. I
mean, sometimes I hate myself,but you have to promote your business.
into real estate and kickingthis off, when you originally
(34:22):
did this, what was it like foryou? Because you came from a
very different environment tobecome a business owner and
create something that wasmission driven and impact
driven, how did you make thattransition?
Marjory Wildcraft: (34:37):
Think about the sun and the moon, and you
think about good, and you thinkabout evil, and you think about
engineers, and you think aboutmarketers. I think we could off
all the marketers on the planet.We'd be better off along with
the lawyers. I hated marketing,right? And I thought I knew a
lot about marketing becausewe've all been marketed to our
entire lives. Turns out that Ididn't know anything about
(35:00):
marketing. And if you're inbusiness, you had better take
some marketing classes,workshops, courses. I mean, I've
done so much marketing classes,and that's the difference
between a successful businessand an unsuccessful business on
it. So it comes down tomarketing. It really does
marketing because you can havethe greatest product in the
world, and if you don't know howto market and sell it, it ain't
(35:22):
going anywhere. People alwaysapproach me like, because I've
got a decent size following, notanything too huge, but they're
like, hey, I've got this greatproduct. Could you sell it? I
get hit up all the time becausemarketing and sales is the
toughest part. Usually in bigcorporations, if you see the
CEO, they did not come upthrough manufacturing, they did
(35:43):
not come up through accounting,they did not come up through
engineering, they came upthrough marketing, right?
Justine Reichman: (35:50):
As we wrap this up, and I feel like there's
been so much, it's been verycontent heavy, a lot of
different things that people cando. If we just wanted to break
it down, and you're talkingspecifically to one of our
guests and they said, can yougive me the three things I got
to do to kick this off, whatwould that be?
Marjory Wildcraft: (36:08):
Well, first of all, I would say, set your
intention. You say, I reallywant to grow food. And I'll tell
you a quick story about this. Iknow we're running out of time,
but I do want to say this. So Ialways get this question about
and have an open mind and anopen heart, and the universe
will, and you can use God orwhatever your particular
religion is, but I likeuniverse. We're here. It will
(36:29):
help you, it will guide you, butyou got to keep an open heart
and an open mind. So I've hadthis question of like, how can I
help people to grow more food inapartments and condominiums? And
then one day, my teenage son, wefound out he had been growing
(inaudible) in his closet, whichwas not cool. So the magic
mushrooms, right? So we dealtwithout his parents. But then
(36:51):
I'm thinking, you can growmushrooms in a closet? So the
universe brought me the answerto one of the questions I had.
It's like, oh, you can growmushrooms in an apartment or a
condominium. Others are like,they're pretty substantial. It's
not just like some leafy greens.So open your heart and open your
(37:11):
mind. And you ask a questionvery sincerely, and the universe
will answer you. You just got tobe paying attention and realize
it's not going to be anythingthat you've already thought
about, because you would alreadybe doing that if you'd have
thought about it. So that's myfirst advice. Set an intention,
open up your heart and mind thatyou'll get it answered. The
(37:32):
other is, of course, go tobackyardfoodproduction.com. As
free webinar, even if you haveno experience, you're older,
you're out of shape, I'll showyou how to grow food. It's
mostly targeted toward abackyard, but we also do cover
the apartment and condominiumseries. And the other thing I
would say is get started today,because it's happening really,
(37:52):
really fast. I mean, there'snothing else more important. You
don't need to do Facebook andforget that Netflix thing. Get
focused on this right away. Buysome backup food supplies. Start
getting your supplies togetherto get a garden going. Or if
you're going to do chickens,hens or whatever, do it right
now. For example, here in theUnited States, the US government
(38:13):
has to refinance $9.2 trillionthis year. It's the biggest year
they've ever had to do it. Mostof it, 70% of it has to be done
before June. They're havingproblems in the bond market.
Nobody's buying those bonds. Wehave a currency crisis happening
right now. All of our banks arecompletely bankrupt, they're
(38:33):
just keeping them afloat. TheFederal Reserve, which is the
backstop to the banks iscompletely bankrupt. And then
the US government, which is abackstop to the Federal Reserve
is completely bankrupt. RoyRogers says, you go bankrupt
slowly until it happens all atonce. And we're very close to
the happening all at once. So Ijust really want to encourage
you, you don't have to payattention to me, but start
(38:55):
growing some food because itwill help your life
tremendously.
Justine Reichman: (38:59):
Awesome. Thank you so much for joining me
today. I know that it's alwaysgreat for me to talk to folks
like yourselves who are creatingchange, having an impact in the
world, and really very missiondriven because that's what
drives me. And I know that ourlisteners, the founders and the
researchers that are tuning intoday and tune into Essential
ingredients rely on this kind ofinformation, whether they do it
(39:23):
completely or they use it forinspiration to innovate in their
own way. It's really inspiringso I really appreciate you
sharing that with us. I want tojust thank our guests for tuning
in. It's a family. It's acommunity. I feel like these are
my friends that tune in eachweek because they know that
we're going to have somebodygreat like yourself on to share
(39:43):
information so we can also makegreat change, so thank you to
our guests. Thank you to you fortuning in and joining me in this
conversation. For those folksthat want to learn more, what's
the best website to go to?
Marjory Wildcraft: (39:58):
backyardfoodproduction.com.
Justine Reichman: (40:00):
And if anybody wanted to connect
directly with you, maybe theyhave a couple questions, or
maybe they want to innovate andthey want to hear more about
your experience, what's the bestway to connect with you?
Marjory Wildcraft: (40:09):
Via email at Marjory, M-A-R-J-O-R-Y, number
3, marjory3@proton.me. And yeah,I'm getting a lot of people
reaching out that way. We have alot of really great projects
going on, but the key to it, andthe foundation to everything is
Backyard Food Production.
Justine Reichman: (40:28):
Awesome. Thanks so much.
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