Let Them Eat Grass
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© 2023 Austin Williams
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"Let Them Eat Grass" follows one former suburbanite (me) turned farmer as I make sense in real-time of the interconnected world of farming, food, and the environment. Here, your insatiable curiosity can feast upon good food. Here, a good story only germinates in deep topsoil.
Here, you'll get some questions answered you've always had and learn about others you never knew existed.
I started this podcast on a shoestring budget in the basement of my 1950s farmhouse during my early days of farming from March 2019 through March 2020. The older episodes sound like a time capsule of pre-Covid urgency that rings still true today. I restarted this podcast three years later, in March of 2023. There is still so much I have left to say.
And, we're losing 2000 acres of farmland a day to development or abandonment. The average age of farmers is only going up. And, the effects of climate change are only going to get stronger. If you're like me, you love this planet. You want to preserve it for future generations. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and we must be the change we wish to see in the world. Listen to the old episodes, but stick around for the new ones.
PS--If you're a farmer, and you need some help marketing your good food to the world, message me via my website:
https://www.seofarmmarketing.com
Here, you'll get some questions answered you've always had and learn about others you never knew existed.
I started this podcast on a shoestring budget in the basement of my 1950s farmhouse during my early days of farming from March 2019 through March 2020. The older episodes sound like a time capsule of pre-Covid urgency that rings still true today. I restarted this podcast three years later, in March of 2023. There is still so much I have left to say.
And, we're losing 2000 acres of farmland a day to development or abandonment. The average age of farmers is only going up. And, the effects of climate change are only going to get stronger. If you're like me, you love this planet. You want to preserve it for future generations. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and we must be the change we wish to see in the world. Listen to the old episodes, but stick around for the new ones.
PS--If you're a farmer, and you need some help marketing your good food to the world, message me via my website:
https://www.seofarmmarketing.com
38 Episodes
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The Invisible Things
What lies beneath the soil is generally invisible unless we stick our hands into it. It doesn’t take much sifting of American soil before you run into one invisible thing: Race.
Unsurprisingly, I learned about race from a very distant, middle-class, white perspective. Growing up in the upwardly-mobile suburbs of St. Louis, the son of a pharmacist and a lawyer, I had many privileges only now I can fully appreciate. There was always food in the fridge. Always a parent at home when I was home. And so, so many more.
None of the buildings in my hometown were even old enough to have witnessed the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. There are no visible reminders of acrimonious race relations. But, as I've come to see, the reminders of the past are all around us.
It’s easy to get lost in the interwebs looking for good food.
You have enough to worry about between your job, bills to pay, going Beast Mode during CrossFit, soccer practice for the kids, and date nights with your spouse. Finding a directory of quality food so you can nourish your family AND support the local economy shouldn’t be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
What else are you going to do? Ask a farmer who their competitors are so you can browse their products? Yeah, I didn’t think so either.
Regenerative Agriculture is farming with nature rather than against it. Farmers who work regeneratively treat nature like a dance partner rather than a sparring partner.
It’s mimicking on a small, human-directed scale what nature does on a large, wild scale. Regenerative farmers focus on building healthy ecosystems by replenishing the humus which has been lost by centuries of extractive and shortsighted farming methods. They focus on:
Organic matter, hydrology, mineral cycling, ground cover, and plant spacing
NOT
Yield, weeds, disease, pests, artificial inputs, and chemicals
These are seven regenerative farmers who you should know about (or even buy food from).
The true story of how I met my wife, Kelli Williams, on top of a mountain in Colorado. Narrated by Austin and Kelli Williams, Calvin Blaylock, Bradford Barnett, and Ashton Anderson. For your listening pleasure.
Now, imagine that actually happened. Because it did. We've by and large lost the expectation to be able to see the night sky. It has become the exception rather than the rule. The night sky has been disappearing rapidly from the public consciousness, and it loss is extremely detrimental to more species than just ours.
Birds need it to navigate and baby sea turtles need it to help them get from the beach to the ocean, as just a couple examples.
Join me as I argue for responsible stewardship of one of our most valuable resources.
Rashid Nuri started with a degree in political science from Harvard and ended up as an urban farmer in Atlanta. He's traveled across the post-colonial world to 36 different countries as he sought to aid in nation-building. He wanted a practical skill to help these fledgling nations get off their feet, and he could think of none better than farming. He's on a God-directed mission to bring natural food to communities so they can thrive. Listen to his story.
During the 2018 Christmas season, the average American family spent over $1000 on holiday-related expenses. Ironically, the average family surveyed a few month's prior believed they'd only spend around $700. That's a $300 gap between expectations and reality.
One solution is a zero-based budget, and one way to budget is with an app called Every Dollar. I've been using this app for more than two years, and it's definitely the best budgeting app I've ever used.
After all, pasture-raised food is expensive. Our farm's ground beef is twice as expensive as Walmarts, but for good reason! Listen more to find out.
As a farmer, I've come to see just how complicated the world of farming is. Debt, severe weather events, and decades of convention have all helped turn the colloquial relationship with the farmer down the street to the world of globalized, commodity-based farming. Stay with me as I try to parse it out for you.
Diets can be overwhelming and confusing.
It seems like a new one pops up every minute, and ones we thought were new are just rebranded ones from ten years ago. What do we believe?
Especially what do we believe when we have people preaching extremes, and they both seem healthy?
Can we be both fully vegan and fully carnivore? (Don't think too hard about it)
In this episode I explore a possible middle ground for diet. The easiest answer to the question of whether or not I should eat meat is that... we're omnivores. Some meats and some veggies is probably good for everyone. But God created us so magnificently that we're able to survive on the extremes. For this episode I interviewed Mariah Boatright, who was told she probably wouldn't be able to have children due to ovarian cysts. After trying birth control, she switched to a whole foods/pasture-raised meat diet and she now has two beautiful boys!
Listen to the rest of it!
Farm-to-Fork is a loosely affiliated restaurant movement that champions close relationships with local farmers instead of nationwide distributors. Wherever you live, there are likely restaurants nearby that practice this philosophy. Farm-to-Fork is part of a groundswell of popular support away from processed food and towards wholesome eating. I interviewed Ben Parks, the chef/owner of a farm to fork restaurant in Columbia, MO. He talks about the movement, the struggles, and the future of good food.
Recently I got interview on the podcast "Faith and Family Fellowship" by Pastor Chris Buscher. I go deeper into the theological underpinnings of why I do what I do than normally happens on my episodes. I hope all who listen can be strengthened and encouraged. Whether or not you're a brother or sister in Christ, I think you'll find it interesting.
Across the US, farm animals have been creeping into formerly suburban spaces. There has been an incredible interest in keeping backyard poultry for the many ecological benefits they offer. Trash disposal plus fresh eggs every morning? Sign us up! Chickens do everything from helping control tick populations to recycle biomass. It's a win-win situation.
Goats and sheep aren't as common, but they are equally valuable. In fire prone countries like Portugal and states like California, tribes of goats are used to build fire breaks ahead of encroaching wildfires. They eat through all the flammable material, which deprives a fire of any fuel source. Sheep are great to own if you don't want to mow your lawn any more. They'll eat through perennial grass without breaking a sweat.
For this episode, I interviewed Janet Garman. She's been keeping backyard animals for many years now, and has a wealth of experience to boot. Check out the Backyard Poultry Magazine if you want to know more about this (she is affiliated with them!)
Seriously, just listen for a minute.
Leave No Trace (LNT) is a backcountry wilderness ethic preached in many of our national parks. It makes sense. Don't litter, respect wildlife, stay on the trail, etc. But it has blind spots. It encourages an ecological disconnectedness with actions in our daily lives. We might not litter in the park, what what happens to the plastic wrappers that covered our food when we bought it at the store? See? Trash has to go somewhere, too.
Conscious Impact Living (CIL) will hopefully be the replacement for LNT. I didn't create it, and I don't even think LNT is bad. LNT served its purpose for many decades. But we've learned a lot about the earth's climate in the half century since LNT was created, and we know more now than ever that everything is connected. CIL is a roadmap to sustainable living in both the city and the backcountry. I can't wait to show it to you!
Our penchant for global travel is destroying the very places we're trying to see. Whether it's going off trail for the perfect instagram picture, or it's more invisible like carbon dioxide melting around 90% of the world's glaciers, these fragile environments are breaking down right in front of our eyes.
Tourism isn't new. Even the Pharoahs of ancient Egypt visited monuments like the Great Sphinx built 1000 years previously. But we aren't going for these grand, month-long tours of different countries. Most tourists now are from the emerging middle class, and they only have time for a week. So ports of call in beautiful locales are swamped with picture-hungry tourists who only have a few hours to prove to their friends back home how much fun they're having.
At least 259 people died while trying to take a selfie last year. That statistic alone proves how messed up our social-media driven culture is.
We've heard a lot about the Amazon Rainforest in the news recently.
"The lungs of the world are burning!"
Well, first off, they really aren't the lungs of the world. And the amount of fires this year in the Brazilian Amazon is actually slightly BELOW the 20 year average for fires by this time of year. So why are we hearing about it now?
We're hearing about it because the media are famous for histrionics and over-simplification of complex ecological issues.
Having no oxygen might scare us, but it's not true. It might get our attention, but it's a lie.
What we need to worry about is having too much carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. It's not our lungs that should be the focus of the Amazon. It's the burning trees.
Sheep aren't complicated animals. They eat, sleep, and poop just like we do. But they are the most mentioned animal in the Bible. We are compared to them more than any one other animal. So, what can we learn about ourselves from sheep?
Sheep are vulnerable, wayward, and need a mentor.
After a year of observing our biological weed control (aka sheep) at work, I have a pretty good idea of what makes them tick. There is a certain nuance to sheep that only becines clear from being around them for months at a time. I checked online to see what other people said about sheep, and I could smell suburbia from across the internet!
Our culture is geared towards making us think we're invincible, self-reliant, and always on the right path. We'd all be better off if we watched some sheep... maybe we'd be reminded of our own humanity.
This is too short for a description! Just listen to it!
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