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Propaganda By The Seed (with Aaron Parker and Tim Holland)

Propaganda By The Seed (with Aaron Parker and Tim Holland)

Logo for PBTS featuring a tree, the words "Propaganda By The Seed" around te exterior with a circle-A in the roots of the tree
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This week on the show, we feature a chat with Aaron Parker of Edgewood Nursery & Tim Holland (aka MC Sole), who together form the Propaganda By The Seed podcast. You can find the podcast on the channel zero network, Libsyn, and a bunch of streaming services. We hope you enjoy this chat as much as Bursts did. We talk about their project of sharing conversations with various farmers, herbalists, propagators, scavengers, historians and cooks about plants, food autonomy, agriculture mutual aid and a host of other, related topics.

You can find a bunch of Sole’s music at his bandcamp. And, if you want to hear past convos we’ve had, you can find a chat Tim & Bursts had (when Bursts was wicked underslept) in 2017 or Amar & Bursts on the “final” Solecast in 2020.

The podcast that Bursts mentioned but never named is “The Strange Case of Starship Iris“. It’s great, you should check it out.

Amy’s Kitchen Labor Issues

For a few articles on the Amy’s Kitchen labor issues, since they closed a factory in San Jose, laying off 300 employees with no notice…:

Mo Evil Foods:

Announcements

Phone / Email Zap for Robert Preacher

Robert Peacher #881627 is a prolific jailhouse lawyer who is incarcerated at Pendleton CF. He has won at least 18 lawsuits against the Indiana DOC since being wrongfully convicted in the late ’90s. In retaliation for his jailhouse lawyering in defense of prisoners’ human rights, Peacher was fed rat poison by guards at Wabash Valley CF. As a result of that experience, Peacher now suffers from PTSD and can’t eat unless his food is delivered by someone he trusts. He has told officials that he can’t trust food delivered by custody officers but will eat food delivered by non-custody staff. He is now 48 days into an involuntary hunger strike and could use some support…

Please call and email IDOC HQ and Pendleton CF Warden Dennis Reagle to demand that Robert Preacher’s (#881627) food be delivered by non-custody staff, so that he can eat without triggering his PTSD!

16 On Hunger Strike at Harnett CI in NC

from ItsGoingDown:

On August 30th, sixteen prisoners housed in the SC-S 24 building of Harnett Correctional, in Lillington, NC went on an indefinite hunger strike. A supporter received the following statement, signed by all sixteen participants, with the request that it posted and spread online to make their grievances known. Stay tuned for future calls to action!

In the meantime, supporters can call the Warden of Harnett CI, Cathy Judge, at 910-893-2751 to express their support and concern for the hunger strike.

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Featured Tracks Include:

  • Keeper of the Ecosystems (instrumental) by Sole from Worlds Not Yet Gone (Black Box Tapes)
  • The Old (w/ Oldeaf) by Sole
  • Flood by Sole and DJ Pain 1 from Nihilismo

. … . ..

Transcription

TFSR: Would you two please introduce yourselves to the audience with any names, pronouns, locations, and other info you’d like to share?

Tim: Sure, my name is Tim aka Sole, I live in so-called Brunswick, Maine. My pronouns are he/his. Primarily, for my life and by trade, I’m a musician. But I’m also a podcaster. I do a podcast with Aaron called Propaganda by the Seed. I used to do the Solecast, I might do it again. Who knows? I like plants and food, and fuck the police. That’s me.

Aaron: My name is Aaron. I live in Wabanaki territory, so-called Falmouth, Maine. Not too far from Tim. My pronouns are he/him, I do a lot of stuff with plants, mostly seed farming and growing nursery stock. And I make that Propaganda by the Seed podcast with Tim. I am a partner parent, trying to get out into the community and hopefully do some cool stuff there too. And that’s mostly it.

T: He is also an educator. One of my favorite things about Aaron is that the permaculture industrial complex stuff that I really wanted to learn about in Denver was like $1,000, $150 a class. Where Aaron would do those things at the resilience hub for $15, pay what you want, no one turned away. And I was “Wow, that is how this stuff should be.” That’s awesome.

A: Educator/insufferable know-it-all.

TFSR: Well, many of us are suffering through it joyfully. I’m gonna cut that.

Thank you so much both of you for coming on the chat. I really appreciate it. And I really appreciate your podcast, I’ll gush about it in a minute. But I wonder if you could talk about Propaganda by the Seed. Also, Tim, I’ve heard over the years, you levy the cannons or whatever at permaculture as the industrial complex attached to it. I wonder if you could at least partially frame some of what you do with Propaganda by the Seed in terms of being in opposition to a model where people pay a bunch for really specialized knowledge?

T: Yeah, sure. You asked me so I’ll start answering. When I took my permaculture design certificate (PDC) course in 2015 or 2016, it was very expensive. It was a gift from family members chipping in. It really blew my mind in some ways. It changed my life. And I was “Wow, this is so incredible.” I can’t believe how expensive this is, I wish this information was free. And a lot of the information I was really interested in as a vegan, and was these plants like Turkish Rocket, Caucasian Mountain Spinach, Hablitzia, pawpaw – really stuff that isn’t very popular at all, and was really difficult to find information on. And because I had already built up a platform through podcasting and stuff, it was easy to start making podcast episodes with Aaron about all this stuff that you really can’t get good information on, unless you’re deep in the subculture. No nurseries and no people who are doing the work. Information everywhere is in chains and wants to be free. And I feel really keeping this project going. What’s so cool about it is you can plug into it at any time, five years from now, 10 years from now. And it’s a compendium of really great information, mostly from people Aaron knows.

And from my perspective, it started with– When I moved here, I had read about Aaron before. And so when we met and I found out he was an anarchist, and we became friends, and he started coming on the Solecast, doing random perennial vegetable podcasts. It’s crazy to have a comrade who’s one of the leading suppliers of these plants that I’ve been reading about for years, living close by. I pinch myself off to be on the other side of it, six years later, eight years later to be putting out this content for free and also framed by anarchists. A lot of the permaculture stuff is “get a PDC and then become an instructor.” It’s a pyramid scheme. Learn to grow food so that you can get free and share the information and the food and all that with everyone. Those are my motivations behind it really creating the content that I want to see in the world, this is what I want to geek out to. And again, I pinch myself that it’s part of my life, it’s really, really awesome.

A: I’ll hop in and give a little bit on my side. When Tim first showed up at my nursery, I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone so excited about Turkish Rocket. Usually, it’s a plant I have to sell to people and be like “Oh, it’s really cool because this, this, and this,” and Tim was like “Oh, that Turkish Rocket, there’s so much of it. I’m so excited. I’ve been trying to grow this.” And then as we became friends, he was like “We should do this podcast together.” Doing a podcast on plants is something that I had thought about and considered, but probably never would have actually done without someone to work with and someone to get the ball rolling. So I feel we have a really good working relationship on this project where Tim’s got a lot of connections and a lot more experience doing podcast stuff, and I have a lot of deep plant knowledge and connections to plant weirdos.

And it’s really fun to make. It’s a really awesome excuse for us to have a long in-depth conversation about this stuff with people that I might know or people that I have known for a long time. But to really get in deep on a particular subject. And I think something that our podcast offers that I haven’t really found in other podcasts about plants is we really try and go pretty deep and get beyond a 101 level. So there are lots of plant podcasts out there that’ll profile a plant, but it’s 15-20 minutes often, and can be a great introduction. But we tend to get in deep and get some more in-depth information that isn’t always easily found without really digging.

As far as the permaculture stuff, I have two kinds of critiques in my head… I don’t want it totally shit all over permaculture, I think has a place and is not necessarily beyond fixing, I don’t think we need to entirely scrap that word. But I think we need to look at it with a jaundiced eye and say there’s a lot of problems here that need to be addressed and fixed. So, one of them Tim already covered. It is this idea of the permaculture industrial complex, where people tend to go from taking this expensive PDC course and then turning around and becoming teachers and teaching expensive PDC courses without actually having a lot of experience. And I think that can lead to people who take a PDC and think they know how shit works, but don’t have on-the-ground knowledge and an overly rosy idea of what a designed ecosystem can be. And basically think that you can set up a garden that takes care of itself. And that’s completely imaginary as far as I can tell.

T: My yard. I prove that right now, by the way, here.

A: Yeah, one of the better ideas that are in permaculture is that humans are part of nature, and you have to be actively participating in this ecosystem that you’re trying to build. That means often a lot of labor. And that can be very joyful, that can be very fulfilling. I think a lot of people would be excited about being in the garden for a certain amount of time. But that isn’t always a reality under capitalism that you can spend that amount of time on probably unpaid labor. So that’s an issue.

And then there’s also this massive thing of cultural appropriation of indigenous knowledge that basically everything in permaculture, there’s no new ideas, really, it’s a synthesis of traditional techniques from around the world, not from any one place. But taking ideas from all over the world and using them, repackaging them in a commercial way that is often uncredited, often disrespectful, and often out of context to the point that the idea is no longer useful or doesn’t actually work anymore. So that’s a huge conversation that needs to happen and is, in some places, happening in the permaculture world. But it’s still one of the big things that I see as being “oh, permaculture is a bit of a trash fire.” And it’s not something that I think we need to totally walk away from. But if we can’t address the problems that are at the base, then we do need to start over with something else.

TFSR: If I remember correctly, it was developed as a schema by a white person in Australia. It’s a byproduct of settler colonial culture. And everything that exists in here, it’s got troubling roots to it that need to get navigated and need to get worked through.

T: I’m really glad that you brought that up. I think that one of the critiques that I’ve heard levied against permaculture- PDC is a permaculture design certificate?

T: Yes, sorry, for using jargon.

B: The idea that you’re selling someone on this, full, completed, enclosed system, that if they pay their way through it, they’ll get certified and suddenly, they can do anything, I think that, you’ve pointed to the fact that, nothing new is invented. And these are all ideas that are being shared and decontextualized in some ways. One thing that really impresses me about the show – and Tim said, a lot of the guests, Aaron, are your friends or your contacts – is the amount that the guests talk about being in online forums, or in discussion with people that are growing in totally different bioregions and having different experiences, the way that people are pulling knowledge from these different areas, but also in dialogue with people that are engaging with the plants and the natural settings that they’re at, to work with them or change them or challenge them or whatever. I’m amazed. It’s a little portal into a part of the world that I find really fascinating. But I’m also totally on the outside.

T: You know, Bursts, I feel that way about a lot of things but I have the same feeling, when I listened to someone whether they’re talking for a two-and-a-half-hour episode about mulberries, the cornelian cherry episode that we did was an hour and a half. I try to imagine these people being so focused on one plant, how can you afford to do that? How can you spend your whole life or 10 years digging so deep? And then really, they’re doing it mostly as a passion project. This guy Andrew out here has 150 hazelnuts, he’s breeding them. He doesn’t even think of it necessarily as this some money-making thing, it’s something he feels called to do. Anybody who’s deep into some shit that’s a little apart from our direct experience is always awesome, especially when it’s something– It’s that sense of wonder that keeps me coming back, and hearing people talk about all this shit is great, especially pre-internet stuff.

A: What strikes me – and this is something that I’m reminded of in my daily life – is this camaraderie that there is in the perennial agriculture world, where I have not a huge network, but a pretty decent network of folks doing similar work, most of them making their living at this, and there is virtually no sense of competition. So even among several nurseries, we’re freely sharing plant material and resources, and information. In the past 15-20 years I’ve been doing this, only once have I ever asked someone like “Oh, what are the real specifics of how you propagated that plant?” and have someone be like “Well, that’s proprietary information, I’m trying to run a business. I can’t tell you that.” For the most part, people are 100% down to share this information and be like “Yeah, let me get you cuttings of that. Let me give you seeds.” And occasionally it’s “Let me buy some of that from you.” But for the most part, people are like “Oh, let me give this to you. And I know that when you’ve got something cool, you’re gonna share it back with me.” And all these people, I haven’t gotten into “Oh, what are your politics but whether or not they’re into anarchist or anti-capitalist theory, they are, for the most part, living it to some degree, even if they’re, like me, trying to run a business to pay the bills and survive under capitalism. Even if that’s not the way they want to do things. A lot of people love plants, but there is a lot of cooperation that happens. That would seem to be outside of what you would expect in a capitalist system.

TFSR: I have a really crass way of talking about stuff sometimes. And I mean it to be joking and fun and stuff, but it’s like you plant people have toxoplasmosis for plants. And you start doing things, once you get really deep into it, you start reproducing my anthropomorphized version of what I experienced you talking about plants is finding ways to work with each other and running counter to what our society teaches us about that we’re in competition. It’s really inspiring to see people in a way, I think, act in “a more natural way” by being like “Oh, yeah, here, abundance, have some of this. I really love this thing. I want to share this with you.” Do you know what I mean?

T: Yeah. And also we need more of these specific plants that we’re very excited about in the world. Toby Hemingway, one of the prime people behind “permaculture” and food “forestry,” has this talk called Liberation Permaculture, you can find it online. And he was one of the first people I heard– When I read his stuff, it really struck me like “Well, this is some anarchists shit. But why are all the permies so liberal where I live?” So I started talking with other more radical permaculturists and my friend, Steven Polk who teaches at Naropa University, who was on the Solecast a few times, really liked to draw on Peter Kropotkin’s theory of mutual aid as a factor in evolution when talking about permaculture. Because it’s drawing out a lot of those same ideas that you were talking about – cooperation and mutuality and everything. That’s really interesting. There’s a whole field within permaculture called “social permaculture,” where they try to take these ideas of ecosystems through observing nature and try to replicate them with people and social things. And I even I got an email from one of my permaculture teachers back in Denver, from their social permaculture thing and it was a “Decolonize the Workplace” seminar on social permaculture, and I was like “Fuck, man, dude, this is the shit I love you do but, man, I don’t even know how to engage with this shit.” Decolonize the workplace – you mean, burn it down? What are you talking about? Throw some fresh mint in your water cooler?

TFSR: Some cucumber slices… People…

T: But those tensions exist in everything. You got your people who are on the same page, and you got some people that are on another page. Hopefully, we can draw people in the right direction. And when we started doing this, there weren’t a lot of radical resources for this thing. And so that’s another reason why– It’s like the Black Rose Federation idea of throwing up a left pole and having that be a gravitational pull away from the shittier stuff.

TFSR: I’ve told Tim this a bunch of times, but I really love listening to your show. I listened to way too many really political podcasts… Yours is political, but a book, discussions, or whatever else, new stuff. And I feel this tension building up inside of me when I listen to that sometimes. It’s important, but somehow, listening to you two talk with your guests about – maybe it’s the element of this – something this person is really passionate about. And you’re asking really good questions. And I understand maybe 40% of it because I’m not a person who’s put a lot of thought and study into how plants grow, into the biology of it. But I find it really relaxing to listen to and I think that I get stuff, but I can listen to episodes a few times and each time gets a little bit more out of it. So you’re my go-to-happy-space podcast, that and this other sci-fi podcast that I won’t mention right now (“The Strange Case of Starship Iris” -Ed.). Could you talk a little bit about the feedback that you get, because I’m sure that you get people who are into it and already know Aaron’s nursery, they know about Edgewood, or they know Tim from Tim’s music or what have you. So they may come from this large spectrum of knowledge around plant stuff. And probably different intentions of like “Oh, I want to make a little herb garden that can hang out on the balcony of my apartment, if I’m lucky enough to have a balcony or out the window.” Or “I’m sitting in the middle of a field of wild grasses. And I don’t know what to do with this.” Can you talk about some of the feedback that y’all have gotten so far in the show?

A: Sure. I would say we don’t get a ton of feedback. Tim might get some more than I see. But we definitely have a fair amount of listeners who have a surface-level knowledge of plants. And some of the stuff is washing over them. But it’s a pleasant thing to listen to while the world is on fire, and it can be nice to focus on something less traumatic and something growing in a positive direction, let’s say. And then some people are hardcore plant nerds who really appreciate all the super details of this plant or that plant and be like “I thought I knew what was going on with mulberries, and now there’s this whole another layer that we were able to bring out.” Generally, positive reviews, get a fair amount of emails with people asking for “You should do an episode on a such and such obscure plant.”

T: I get more feedback from the more anarcho side, with the more or less planty side, and I get email messages from people who are starting out doing land projects, people wanting to, and absorbing the information the same way. The thing TFSR you said, is that it’s relaxing, and it’s a joyful place to get to live in this person’s world for an hour to three hours, depending on who has to piss and how many times, but it’s not fluff. It’s not you’re listening to stuff that’s useless information. All that information is going in your brain somewhere. And when you go to work that land behind your house, you’re like “I remember this from that podcast, and I’m gonna go back and listen to it.” I get encouraging emails, it’s so cool to hear radicals talking about this stuff and nerding out on this stuff.

TFSR: As a renter, since the late 90s, I have moved from house to house. And since 2005, I have not felt confident enough living in a specific location that it’s felt good to gather plants together and try to grow stuff in the yard, because I figure I’m going to be moving within a year, and I’m probably not going to see any of that stuff come to fruition. And I’ve got scavengey friends, so I know a little bit better in my heart of hearts that you don’t have to own a piece of land, you don’t have to be stable in a place to have a plant move with you, or you have to know a grove of this nutting or fruiting trees to be able to take advantage and get in there with the squirrels and compete for some of those acorns. The acorn chat (PBTS episode Sept 29, 2020 -Ed.) keeps coming back to me, all the ways of processing that and all the ways of the guests that you had– I’m sorry, this is a couple of years ago now but I was going out driving some half hour-hour to go collect acorns where they knew that they were piling up and coming back and processing them over a long period and making a bunch of different delicious sounding foods out of it. It’s stuff, that I hear in the show, it’s inspiring to me. I didn’t mean to make it say as it washes over me, and it doesn’t come into my pores. But I get inspired. And I feel a little more enabled to engage with the things around me in the world when it doesn’t feel like I have to learn everything all at once. And I can approach your project like a compendium.

T: That’s awesome. I love getting those messages from you Bursts, it’s great. That’s the thing with podcasting is that it’s a one-way conversation for the most part because we’re not trying to spend all day on social media blowing that up. We don’t have time for all that. You get feedback when you ask for it. I keep wanting to add this thing at the beginning of the show like “Leave us a message about what you’re doing on your farm” and all this shit, but it’s so many ways to encourage listener participation and feedback, but then at the end of the day, it creates a little more work, and we like to focus on the conversations themselves and have that be the main point of the project.

TFSR: Were there any specific interviews that have stood out to y’all where you’ve learned something that totally surprised you that you were not expecting to hear out of the conversation?

A: Well, actually, I think the next episode (PBTS September 1, 2022) that’s going to come out was one of the ones where I learned the most. It’s on this thing called the Eastern Agricultural Complex, which is a thing that happened 1000s of years ago in eastern North America, or Eastern Turtle Island if you prefer. That area was one of the places where agriculture basically arose independently. So there’s a whole palette of domesticated plants, that, for the most part, have totally fallen out of cultivation. We have an interesting interview that’s going to come out the first week in September. So coming right up here, that gets really into it. So much of that was brand new and totally mind-blowing to me.

TFSR: Who did you talk to?

A: Natalie Mueller? Who is a, she’s an archaeologist, technically an archaeobotanist. But she’s not only studying archaeological sites but also growing out a lot of these plants that have for the most part fallen out of cultivation.

T: Aaron, did we talk about the Dawn Of Everything with her? I feel we must have to.

A: Yeah, a little bit.

T: That gives you an idea of– Aaron didn’t really know her, right?

A: I didn’t know her at all, she was actually mentioned in a different podcast that we recorded, and I was like “Oh, I should follow up with this person.” It took a year and a half, to eventually get around to doing this interview. But then we did. And it was fascinating.

T: For me, I learned so much. My role is really to make dad jokes. It sucks because when you’re sarcastic, you’re sarcastic, but then when you have kids, your sarcasm gets called dad jokes.

The one that stands out in my mind is the one with Mallory O’Donnell (PBTS March 1, 2022). All the stuff that they’re doing with foraged plants in this area, I learned so much from their Instagram. Sometimes you have a conversation with somebody and it’s the right one at the right time. And it keeps rattling around in your brain. Just hearing the way they use things juniper berries and plants that I see around, that are native in this area, that I would never even consider eating, where now it’s I’ll be walking down and be like “Eat a bayberry, eat a juniper berry.” I didn’t know those things were edible until they sent me a wild curry mix that had all that shit and it was so crazy tasting. That’s one of the things that gets me pumped. It’s the idea of new flavors. All we know is brassicas, broccoli, garlic, and salt and there’s so many piney flavors. There’s so much more that I’ve learned from this podcast. But that’s what stands out to me.

And the reason I love that one, in particular, is because it’s thinking of foraging, less about let’s get out there and dig up some vegetables to eat, and more like “How can we get out there and create an awesome cabinet of preserved seeds and saved spices and flavor, and how can you stretch those foraged ingredients throughout the year and enrich everything you eat?” And I love that approach, and I’m sure Aaron knows a million people who do that. But Mallory was one of the first people that I really got to hear, articulate their practice in full. And it made me so jealous, Oh, God, come over. Let’s eat!

A: Yeah, I know lots of foragers and people doing interesting stuff with food preservation, but Mallory definitely is doing some stuff that I had no idea was even out there. Georgian fusion cuisine and all sorts of really interesting stuff using foraged plants and spices. I don’t know anyone else doing that.

TFSR: It was awesome for me to hear, I think on that episode. Just going out and collecting wild seeds, grinding them up and toasting them and making a career out of it, making a paste. And I hadn’t even thought of that either. That blew my mind.

T: Even mustard seeds, until she sent us the curry mix, I’d never really been cooked with my own mustard seeds. I have mustard growing all over my yard that I’ve planted, but I’ve never eaten the seeds. And then afterward, I was like “I’m eating the seeds from now on.” They are so good.

TFSR: Doesn’t have to be one or the other. That’s great.

Tim, in the years that I’ve known you, you’ve also been a food alchemist. And this mixes in with what we’re talking about right now. Trying to find the most healthy and delicious vegan treats that you can and sharing them with others. Food seems to really bring you a lot of joy in the growing and in the making. Now you’ve got a veggie protein company in Maine, right? Can you talk about this and what stuff you’re working on? Are you a factory owner now, like Engels?

T: Yeah… I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 11. And so I’m 45, it’s a long time before veggie burgers. I grew up on pizza and peanut butter. I’ve always been obsessed with food. Because my whole life, as I’m traveling, you couldn’t get a dope vegan meal when you’re driving through the Midwest. So all these years of touring and stuff, food has been my obsession. I’m driving through Italy. Oh, what are they going to have for dinner tonight? Am I gonna have 20 pounds of pasta and zucchini? Is there going to be some protein in there? You get there, and it’s some squat. And I am getting crazy food you’ve never had. Crazy French cooking styles, different. I’ve been picking up all this stuff all the years. Like you say, I love food. If you’ve been to my house, I’ve probably cooked for you. Because that’s what I like to do. And that’s really what drew me to all this stuff.

No, I’m not a factory owner. It’s not something I necessarily wanted to do. I’ve had many things in my back pocket that I’ve tried to do over the years, some things have stuck, some things haven’t, but then when inflation kicked in, with two little kids working part-time as a dad, my income from music isn’t enough anymore. And so I had to do something. I had been talking with a friend for a long time about starting a vegan food company and then when it was time to start it, he bailed or he didn’t have the time. And so I was like “Do I want to do this? Yeah, I do want to do this. I’m still going to do this.” So I went and got all the certifications and all the state stuff and found a kitchen and then I started selling meals to the local health food store. The first week they took 18. The next week, they took 40. Next week they took 60. It keeps going up. And it’s steady and it’s turned into an extra day of work to supplement my income. And that’s good. I need that. And I don’t want to work for someone else, because then you’re getting fucked over at some point, and it’s not worth it.

I’m making vegan meats, I’m really excited about the smoked hams and stuff, and from there I am working on pastrami and bacon. The thing I’m most excited about is vegan cheeses. I’ve tried out various vegan cheese recipes from Miyoko and Pascal Baudar. I’ve combined those things and added my own styles and tried to come up with local vegan cuisine. And that’s been something I’ve been obsessed with since I started doing food forestry stuff. Just creating systems where instead of– I have 26 hazelnut trees in the ground, they’re small, but I would love to be able to produce all my own tofu and cheese from hazelnuts, walnuts, and acorns. I’m interested in that, our whole cuisine of vegan foods is based on West Coast foods that are grown in deserts and they bulldozed a million cashew trees last year. It’s not sustainable to-

TFSR: Or the avocado mafia. In a lot of countries, avocado exports are such a moneymaker. It’s one of these commodities that the avocado oil, the production of it, sort of palm oil in a lot of places, or even sand for concrete in some places. Some mafias control the export of it. Anyway, sorry to interrupt.

T: Yeah, stuff chestnuts, stinging nettles and then all the plants we talk about. And those are more exciting directions to go with vegan cuisine than keep doing the same stuff. So I rent the kitchen, I’m either gonna have to build a kitchen in my barn or find something else because the kitchen I work at is expensive. I don’t have any employees, I’m traumatized by my experience of Anticon Records of forming this collective and having it end in heartbreak. I really do things on my own, for the most part. That’s what I want to have – a small one-person thing where I can show up, make some cheese, make some meats, get them out to stores, I don’t want to run a restaurant. I applied to cook brunch at the local farmers’ market. And so that will be cool also. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m winging it and putting everything into it because I want it to succeed.

TFSR: So, you’re the Proudhon of vegan proteins, the independent producer.

T: I’d like to think of it more of as an Emma Goldman ice cream shop thing. But instead of buying ammunition, I’m buying organic blueberries for my kids.

TFSR: For the children!

You mentioned chestnuts. Are there any protein sources that are outside of the realm of what listeners who do eat vegan protein or make their own that they might not have thought of making out of?

T: Not really. We did an episode on mulberries (PBTS June 11, 2020), and apparently, mulberry leaves are the highest in protein, but I read this article about some senator’s wife being killed by a mulberry leaf. Propaganda by the seed, you know? But I think foraging local nuts, not overlooking what is in– It’s so easy to overlook these things that are “common”, that we see all the time. In actuality, acorns out here, I have ground nuts on the river behind my house, that’s an indigenous root vegetable. That’s 25% protein. It tastes like taro. They’re difficult to dig and process. People have mixed feelings about those, I guess. But acorns – all day. Aaron, are you still eating acorn grits from two years ago?

A: I’m basically out of acorns and it doesn’t look like it’s gonna be mast year around here. So, acorns are more or less out of my diet until the tree has decided to dump a bunch on the ground, and then I’ll start eating them again.

T: Aaron, are there any proteins that you’re excited about that are missing?

A: The ground nut. Pea shrub is one that for a while I was telling people “Oh, you can technically eat the seeds of this shrub, but I don’t know if they’re actually worth it as far as how much they produce.” And then my friend Jack Cortez showed up at an event with a five-gallon bucket half full of them. I was like “Whoa, how did you get all those?” And if you have pea shrubs that are out in the open, they’re producing well, you can lay tarps around them, and give them a shake at the right time of year and all the pods burst and you’d get a not a ton of material, but they’re really tasty seeds. They’re about the size of a French lentil and they taste between a lentil and a walnut. So there’s stuff out there that’s potential. But as far as what you could plant today, it’s all annuals that are really going to provide a lot of protein. It’s soybeans, common beans, and peas that are really producing a ton.

T: With all the pea protein hype, definitely cool to hear that about the Siberian pea shrub. I have one but you were like “It’s not viable for a lot of food.” And so I didn’t plant anymore. But now that makes me want to. The Siberian pea shrub is a perennial shrub that produces little peas, for those who don’t know, it’s very interesting, it’s got thorns and shit. It’s a cool plant.

TFSR: Aaron, can you talk a little bit about the Mt. Joy Orchard? I actually went up to Portland (Maine, Ed.) and was able to take a tour, Tim showed me around, but it was a really cool place. And I wonder about its history and who participates and what it provides, in your view, to the Portland ecosystem.

A: Mt. Joy Orchard is a free-to-pick public orchard in Portland. It’s in a city park. It is sanctioned by the city. They’re cool with it being there. But it’s very much grassroots-organized and maintained with volunteer labor. And it started seven or eight years ago now, with the city throwing some apples into this field. It’s such a steep hill that the field wasn’t really getting used for much. There’s a path that runs through it that people use frequently, but the space was underappreciated. And the city arborist Jeff Tarling, who’s a pretty cool guy, was like “Oh, we should plant some apple trees in there.” So they did, but they couldn’t really have an orchard crew. So they started looking for community partners. And my friend Kristin was like “Oh, I could probably round up a few people to mulch those trees and maybe plant some comfrey. And I was one of the people that she rounded up. So we met as the original group, I think five people. And we’ve looked at the site and we’re like “Wow, this is such a beautiful spot.” We met in the evening and you can look out over the city and see the sunset and it’s a really beautiful piece of land. And we’re like “We shouldn’t do this bare minimum, we should go all out and have this community food forest or integrated orchard or whatever you want to call it.”

So, since then, we’ve basically met once a month-ish through the growing season to plant and maintain an orchard that now has over a hundred trees, over 20 species of woody fruiting plants, and probably 20 to 40 species of perennials, many of them edible, some medicinal, some that are more ornamental. There’s a lot of plants that are there for wildlife. We’ve seen a lot more species show up as far as birds and insects and reptiles and all sorts of wildlife use the space as well. And we have several goals with the project, I would say the most successful one has been to be a model of urban agriculture. So since this orchard was installed and people went and checked it out and go like “Ah, this is really cool. I want this in my neighborhood.” That basic model has been replicated several times in the Portland area, which is really cool to see. Also, obviously providing food directly to the community. A lot of the trees are coming into real production. But for the most part, everything in the orchard gets harvested by passers-by, and people living in the neighborhood. It’s a great project and has been really fun and fulfilling to work on and continues to grow.

There’s an area adjacent to the orchard that has to remain open because it’s a sledding hill. So we’re working on killing a bunch of the turf grass that’s there and replacing it with more of a native meadow-type environment. And that will include a lot of edible and medicinal plants, and hopefully, a much better pollinator habitat than is there now. And we continue to try and build community resources into the orchard. So we’re hoping to start the construction of a community cob oven that would be available to anyone who wants to use it, which is an exciting addition to the orchard.

T: How fun would it be to bake some acorn bread there or something?

A: It’d be amazing, the oven will be almost under the canopy of huge oak trees. So that would be very cool. And I want to tie one more thing together, which you, Bursts, mentioned like not really getting into perennial plants because they’re always moving around and renting. I think projects this can be a way for people who are interested or excited about perennial agriculture to be able to do that without having long-term land access, to do it in this community setting where you can plant a tree that’s going to be there for a long time, and you can come back and you wouldn’t certainly have exclusive access to the fruit of that tree like you would if it was your yard and your tree. But you could have the experience and the interaction of being able to plant a tree and come back in five years.

TFSR: That’s awesome. I’ve seen in different places that I’ve lived middle-class liberal mentality bristle at public space being utilized in many different ways. I could see somebody being like “This darn pesky hillside is drawing in more deer and they’re eating my shrubs.” Or “Someone’s sleeping next to that tree and this needs to be gated off at night” or something. Have you all had to deal with the propertarian element of living within a city and people being NIMBY about the space?

A: Luckily, we haven’t had those issues yet. Knock on wood, there’s a big fucking condo development getting built right next to it. So hopefully, that doesn’t arise. So far, we haven’t had those issues. And I’m really glad that we haven’t because there’s a community garden that’s directly adjacent to Mt. Joy. And it’s amazing how similar and how different that is. So it’s similar and it’s like “Oh, there’s food growing in the city. And that’s really cool and beautiful.” But the community gardens are very much like you rent a little four-by-eight plot, and that’s your space. And people are really protective and onerous about that. And there’s a lot of gross shit that happens. Some people who have a plot there, live in the community, live very close to there, had their fellow community gardeners making very racist assumptions about what they were doing in that space. And it’s gross. And then you have Mt. Joy, where it’s open to the public and inclusive. If you want a peach, you pick a peach, they’re very different mentalities. And I think only one time have I ever had someone who was middle-class liberal, moved to the city, being like “Oh, this place could be really nice if we changed a few things.” And definitely had to push back a bit and be like “No, we do things this for a reason. And we mustn’t push people out by making it “nice.” That guy who’s sleeping on a piece of cardboard over there is as welcome in this space as you are. From my perspective, probably more.

T: I didn’t realize it was that new, Aaron, I thought I’d been around a little longer than that. So I got here when it was a couple of years old. And what I’ve noticed, because I and my kids often go there, when we’re in Portland, every time I’ve noticed that the use of it has really increased a lot. Now if I go there, there’s, it’s very joyful. And it’s pretty middle-class, too. Portland’s an expensive city to live in. It’s hard to be really broke in Portland, Maine. Every time I’m in there, there’s always people in there picking stuff. There’s no food they’re going to waste, that’s for sure. And it’s awesome. Every city needs 10,000 of those.

A: Yeah, and as far as a lot of the people utilizing the space being pretty middle-class, I think that’s one of the areas that we’ve failed on so far. Maybe not a complete failure. But something that needs more work and attention is outreach to immigrant communities. Because there are lots of pretty recent immigrants that live in neighborhoods adjacent to Mt. Joy, who I don’t think are utilizing the space for probably a variety of reasons. But trying to build a space that is welcoming to those folks and do active outreach, so that they can feel welcomed in that space and have a higher level of participation if they want to. It would be awesome.

TFSR: Cool. Was any direct responses to that, Tim?

T: I am trying to be Quakerish here, speaking when the Spirit moves me, or something. No offense, Aaron, I didn’t mean to co-opt your lineage or whatever.

TFSR: Well, that leads into the next question about Quakers. No, I’m kidding. I didn’t have one. I wish I had.

T: Aaron’s family is abolitionist.

TFSR: Oh, that’s awesome. Hell, yeah.

A: Yeah, that’s the cool branch of Quakers. And actually, it’s fascinating starting to look at some of the people working with tree crops in the late 1800s – early 1900s, there were a lot of Quakers, and a lot of the work was done in the public interest. Right up to fairly recent history. There’s a guy from New Hampshire, Elwyn Meader, who was a really interesting plant breeder and I still grow a lot of descendants and selections that he made, who was was a Quaker and felt plant breeding should be done for the community and for the public.

TFSR: So I have to say, I haven’t been vegan in a couple of decades. But I do love a good meatless protein option. A few years back now, we had a blow-up in Ashville at the “No Evil Foods” factory about their terrible labor practices and union busting. And I want to give a shout-out here to the media project Mo Evil Foods, I had a couple of friends that actually worked in the factory from when it started up. And the folks from Mo Evil were involved. It’s a media platform, they were folks that were involved in labor organizing at the space and who eventually got fired for it and have continued to call out the company since. And since that time, they actually closed their food production factory here and moved it somewhere else. But they’d hired an outside PR company that was talking about “how great the product was” and trying to throw the union organizers or anyone with labor concerns under the bus. They were doing all the same union-busting that you see with Amazon or with the nurses union here or with anything else. They’re forcing workers to sit through really long meetings, firing people for BS reasons, if they thought that they were people talking about union stuff. I’m from Northern California, Sonoma County, and there’s this frozen food production company called Amy’s [Kitchen], which they always used to provide lots of food to the food bank. Our Food Not Bombs would use a lot of it. I think their food is delicious. They’ve actually got a couple of fast food places in Sonoma County, as I understand. But I’ve also heard that they’ve shut down some of their production facilities recently, rather than allow them to unionize.

I would love to hear from either of you and tie this back to the podcast about food politics, how those two words can’t be extracted from each other or extricated from the society that we live in with the racist patriarchal settler colonial capitalism underpinnings of it. Go!

A: I don’t have a lot to add to that. We live in a fucked-up society and it is fucked up. Even if there are some good elements of any organization there, those can easily be overwhelmed by the bad aspects. So, you could say the same thing about Planned Parenthood being anti-union, and it’s oh, Planned Parenthood, they do lots of good. But also their union busting. Shit is complicated.

T: For me, it’s another highlight of liberal hypocrisy. If your Whole Foods cheese is produced by prison labor… Is it still organic if it’s grown by fucking drones in a vacuum-sealed greenhouse, where there’s nothing organic happening. And a lot of those tensions or hypocrisies that exist within capitalism, a lot of that is really coming to a head now because of inflation. And at the same time, you have workers really recognizing their power.

But at the same time, being someone who’s producing food now, I am starting to see how much costs. So when I go buy a falafel, and it’s $13 or something, I’m like “This fucking is crazy!” But then, once you’re involved in food production, you realize, all the time that goes into this stuff, there’s a thin profit margin. And places like Amy’s that are based around scale, huge scale. They can’t do that large scale if you have a whole bunch of unionized workers making $35 an hour or something. They can’t exist on that scale if people are being paid that much because then by the time you get that Amy’s potpie in the store, it’s going to be $35. And obviously, people need to organize, but that’s why I always think about this Pete Seeger quote: “the world won’t be saved by big things,” (I don’t think it’s going to be saved anyway) “it’ll be saved by millions of little things.” And that’s why I think small little worker collectives doing the work of Beyond Meat or Amy’s, where people are collaborating, working together, and making things. I think you can actually make a decent income doing that. You don’t have to be a multibillion-dollar organization with 10,000 employees. Part of this capitalist drive is things have to keep getting bigger and better and more and faster and cheaper. 2022 ain’t the year for infinite growth, it’s 2022 should be a period where people are reflecting on the limitations of the Earth, the limitations of our civilization that we’re trapped in, and looking for ways out.

The whole organic food, even with veganism– Is it vegan or is it plant-based? Well, it depends if you give a fuck about animals, as people who say plant-based are usually doing it for health reasons, whereas vegans are a little more political about it. It’s absurd, and my last anecdote response to this is the health food store I’m selling stuff to, I can barely afford to shop there. So I’m selling food there. And I got some kickback about using red dye #30. And people were asking if you’ll make it without the red dye. The Betty Crocker red dye that’s in birthday cakes, one little drop of that. And people are freaking out. It’s like “Do you realize that the water you drink has fucking plastic in it? We live in a toxic environment where we’re drinking antidepressants and lead, who knows what the fuck?” Our bodies are constantly bathing in toxic shit. As Aaron said, it’s fucked up and the best we can do is not be those people and limit their stranglehold on the world by – the same way anarchists do it – providing those alternatives.

TFSR: This episode is brought to you by strychnine from organically grown apples…

Was the concern about the toxicity of the red dye or is it that it’s got some part of production that includes shellfish or something like that?

T: No, some studies say it’s linked to cancer. So when I saw that, and it was pointed out to me, I was like “Alright, good, then I’m not gonna use that anymore.” I actually didn’t know that. But defensively, it still strikes me as hypocritical on some level. I’m new in the food world. So I’m trying to make people happy and make good food.

TFSR: Aaron had mentioned the Eastern Agricultural Complex episode coming up. Are there any other episodes that you’ve got coming up that you’re excited about that listeners can get a sneak preview of?

T: Chestnuts?

A: Chestnuts episode will be in October. Lots of people are excited about chestnuts. Lots of people are talking about chestnuts. And I’m really excited that we got to talk with Dr. Sandra Anagnostakis, who is retired now but has basically spent her entire professional life working on chestnut breeding at the Connecticut USDA Research Station. So she’s got a really deep knowledge of chestnuts and lots of fascinating information.

T: And worthy. I love that one. And we’re about to start recording season 10 of Propaganda by the Seed. So we haven’t even started booking yet. But I’m about to break some news. I want to track down those growers in Indiana who are growing cold-hardy Iranian almonds, would be great to talk to them. They’ve discovered an almond that’s potentially hardy to zone 4. And that would be crazy to be able to grow almonds on the East Coast up here. Do you think we’ll be able to, Aaron?

A: I don’t know. That’s a “maybe” from my point of view. Almonds are a stone fruit. There are Prunus and therefore, brown rot which affects all Prunus crops could be a deal breaker. Hard to say. But also, we’re so at the very beginning of the potential for a culture of growing almonds in the Northeast that it could be an issue that’s solved by breeding work. So if you can find some genetics that helps it resist brown rot, you could build that in at the beginning of a long-term breeding project. So I think it’s certainly possible, whether or not it’s practical without decades of breeding work. You won’t know until you try.

T: I’m gonna have to try.

A: I do know a couple of people who have had at least moderate success with peach almond hybrids.

T: Wow, do they eat the peach and then eat the pit?

A: No, if you’ve ever heard of Hall’s hardy almond, it basically is an almond. The fruit is a leathery husk that’s not human-edible, but it’s technically a peach-almond hybrid. And that’s where the extra cold hardiness comes from.

TFSR: If you could grow almond fruit leather, that’d be dope.

A: [laughs] There’s also another long-term project that I’ve been interested in, which is breeding other stone fruits to have an edible kernel. So people are generally quite familiar with almonds, and some people are even familiar with sweet apricot kernels, which is basically miniature almond that grows inside of an apricot, which is a really cool double harvest. So you get this sweet fleshy fruit on the outside that can be dried or eaten fresh or whatever. And then you break open the stone on the inside, and you get a little almond as a bonus. And according to some old information from the 1800s that I read about 1 in 100 peaches have an edible kernel inside them. So that’s basically the same size as an almond. Basically the same thing. So if you could have the ultimate stone fruit, it might be a peach that produces good peaches is brown rot resistant, and then also has that edible kernel.

T: That would be awesome.

A: I haven’t found one yet.

T: I was reading Forager Chef has this recipe of ground-up cherry pit flour to make a cake. And the same thing, they are almond flavor. It blew my mind, the idea of grinding up cherry pits and making flour. So Bursts, this is what goes on…

TFSR: How do you process that? Are that mortar and pestle? Because I wouldn’t want to put that through a Robot-Coupe-type thing or a Vitamix. And it probably would take a lot of drying, right?

T: The Forager Chef puts it in a dehydrator. I think he said for three days so they get really dried out. And then he blends. I think after three days you could probably blend it. Aaron, what do you think?

A: Hard to say. If you’ve got a burr mill, that’s what I would use. A burr mill is a hand-driven flour mill that uses metal burrs, and metal plates instead of stone. And they can be really cheap. I got a no-name, unbranded one for 20 bucks. And useful also for grinding up acorns, or making masa from corn. Because if you have stone grinding surfaces, which is really nice for flour, but-

TFSR: You can also get bits of the stone or flakes from the mortar and pestle actually getting into your flour mix, as I understand, which can be concerning.

A: Yeah. Some of that’s probably unavoidable, but I wouldn’t be too worried about it.

T: Yeah, it’s probably good for you. Unless it’s uranium or lead.

TFSR: So, I should send back my no-name uranium mortar and pestle.

T: I don’t know if your body can absorb quartz but maybe quartz dust. [laughs]

A: Quartz is really bad if you inhale it, but other than that, it is fine. [laughs]

TFSR: If you’ve made it, it’s delicious.

T: Alright, hey, we’re talking shit here, listeners. Don’t try any of this at home. Like they say, always ask an adult before you eat something.

TFSR: Dad jokes. So, Tim, you’re also known as MC Sole, you introduced yourself earlier. In March, you put out an awesome new album Post-American Studies. And shortly after released No Gods No Master Gardeners 2.0 and released a co-lab called Summer Heat with Alexander Brown that’s going to show up on an upcoming album by that person. A lot of this is available on your Patreon. Just this morning, I’ve relistened to the The Old w/ Oldeaf, which I thought was really cool to see you like “I don’t know who this person is.” They sent me this track and I’ve rapped over it. Do you have anything coming out soon that you’re excited about? Do you get many opportunities to do that thing like the Oldeaf track?

T: I could if I wanted to, I’m a 25-year-old musician. It takes a bit to get me really excited. I’ve been doing this my whole adult life. It’s one of these things where when I’m really inspired to do music, I use whatever I have around me and make art with it. But I’m not a studio dude who’s hanging out, listening to music, and freestyling all day. I’ve always drawn my inspiration from other things like walking around in nature, listening to podcasts, reading books, or whatever.

Honestly, I haven’t really worked on a lot of music lately. This summer has been sandwiches and cheese and meat. But now that it’s starting to get cold again, I’m very excited to work on some music. Me and Pain 1 have a record. I think it’s coming out on Emergency Hearts, I’m not sure. It’s called the Vault 1312. It’s a collection of music that didn’t make it on any of our albums. It’s the stuff people love Sole and Pain 1 for, the hyper-trappy, fuck-the-police militant shit. There’s a whole bunch of those songs that were too much the same to go on any of the other albums. And so we’ve compiled them onto one record and it’s cool. It’s not my new new new record or anything, but people, when they hear it, they are like “Oh, this is the sounds like Deathdrive era.” Those sorts of collections are cool, especially when they’re done well. I’m excited to get the mixes of everything back to Pain 1.

It’s crazy when you make music, me and Pain 1 have been working on music together for eight years now. And we have shit loads of music. I’ve got a ton of beats he’s been sending me from the new stuff, awesome beats, really cool stuff. I’ve got an EP recorded with this dude Televangel, formerly of Blue Sky Black Death. My favorite record from him is called Anthropocene Blues, you can check it out. That’s the vibe I went with on this record. It’s like an emo dad at the end of the world looking back on his life. In some ways, I’m channeling Benny The Butcher and all this Grizelda stuff I’ve been listening to a lot lately, which is really hard New York rap. But one thing he does really well is he tells stories about his past and is clever about it. And finds a way to talk about it. He’s been through and pulled the wisdom out of it in cool ways. So that’s kinda the vibe I went with for that record. I don’t know when any of these records are coming out. None of them are done. I’m starting to get into the cold season where I’m going to start making a ton of music again, I want to pull out my 4-track and make a mixtape of stealing 80’s beats or something and make something fun. It all comes down to time. Right now, the thing is I’m mainly focused on building up this food company. I also got a ton of beats, maybe I’ll put out an instrumental record. I don’t know. I’m a neurotic person who’s constantly trying to keep my demons at bay.

TFSR: That was cool. I didn’t know the Televangel had put out something called Anthropocene Blues. When you said that, I was like “Oh, I know that phrase.” Because that was in this track One Penny that you put out in collaboration with Televangel. That’s awesome. Could you say a little bit about Emergency Hearts?

T: Yeah! scott crow, one of my mentors, friends, and someone I love is a huge inspiration for me as far as theory and stuff. He’s been someone who, over the years, as I’ve been struggling with things or tearing things over in my mind, he’s always really given me the best advice anyone has given me. At least with life activist stuff. We have that connection because he comes from music and really values the role of revolutionary art.

A few years back, at my prodding, scott said he always wanted to make music, I said “Fucking get back to it then, if you want to make music, that’s what’s in you, do it. Who gives a fuck?” And so he got back into music and put together a record label based around the anarcho-industrial scene that he was associated with in the 90s. And it’s a scene I don’t know much about, the bands from that era are Genesis P-Orridge, and people he’s performed with like Skinny Puppy, all these bands that were going around, tabling with animal rights literature at electronic music shows in the 90s. Just hearing that blew my mind because I didn’t know bands like Consolidated and stuff I don’t really know anything about. But it was cool learning “Oh, so punk isn’t the only form of music that has really taken these ideas seriously.” And so he started putting together a record label championing that era, the Austin noise scene or whatever that he felt didn’t really have a home. It wasn’t being curated anywhere and risked being lost. A lot of stuff that’s pre-social media is-

TFSR: Just cassette tape sitting in hot cars…

T: Yeah, if someone’s not doing the work of curation and keeping things alive, this 90s industrial scene that scott is championing, it could be a 20-part Netflix show and everybody becomes Rodriguez. It could have the Rodriguez effect for some of those people. Or not. But regardless, it deserves to be there.

TFSR: Or Death, that Black punk band from Detroit from the late 70s, that was forgotten until one of their children came out, helped to get their music re-released and do a documentary about them. They’re amazing. And they were at this crossroads between Motown, soul music, and rock and roll, and then the beginnings of American punk before it hit either East or West Coast.

T: Oh, wow. I should check that out.

But yeah, scott started branching out and working with rappers and other electronic music, Televangel also works with them. It was at a point where I’ve been really busy as a dad in the last couple of years. And so it’s the opportunity to have some friends working with us and getting behind our music and doing some of that work. It sounds very nice at this stage in my life, to have trusted comrades working with you. It’s so pleasant on a day-to-day basis texting with people you care about when you’re working on something, rather than some company. Or usually, I do it myself, because I typically can do most of this stuff better myself. But when you have somebody who’s doing great and standing with you, it’s awesome. It’s nice to have more hands in the pot.

TFSR: I was going to wrap up with the general “where can people find blah, blah, blah question,” which I will do. But were there any things that I didn’t ask about that you wanted to mention?

A: No, I think we’re pretty thorough.

T: The only thing I wanted to say, is something I’ve been struggling with, and I think needs to be put out there for people who are interested in doing the land projects that I’m doing, or that they see. Aaron was saying earlier, that this is a lot of work, managing an acre with a family or even a small collective is a lot of work. And the idea that you’re gonna get some land somewhere and then destitute capitalism all at once, it doesn’t work that way. It takes years and years and years to learn to get things to come to fruition.

Time is money. We live under capitalism. We don’t want time to be money, but the outside world is there. It’s got its fangs showing at all times. I think people need to be more honest about their resources and their privilege. When they’re putting all this stuff out there, it’s like “Okay, well, that’s a nice land project. How’d you get it? Did you get that with a trust fund? How are you sustaining yourself while you’re on that land?” And these are the things that I am thinking about and when I was reading your questions, I was like “This is what this is something I want to say to other radicals out there.” It’s hard. It’s worth doing. People should do it. This is the way forward, in my opinion, autonomous, collective linked together farms, people building capacity for material, survival, resistance, and struggle. It’s worth doing, but it’s a lot of work. Just be ready for it. Right, Aaron?

A: Yeah, for sure. Let’s be realistic about it. If you want to make a living on the land, grow and stuff, expect to get up early, stay up late, and work really hard. It’s one of those things where you can both be into that and be like “Yeah, that’s what I want to do.” And be like “Fuck work.” Because it is meaningful work that– As long as you’re not doing it to a degree that you’re hurting yourself, which is definitely something that can happen. It can be like “Okay, this is awesome. I’m deeply invested in these plants and this project and feel good about it because it’s not bullshit. It feels real and important.

T: The CrimethInc. definition of work is important, “work is that which is subsumed by capitalism.“ Originally, when I started my food thing I was trying to do it farm-to-table. I was harvesting all the kale and random forest garden stuff. And I was like “Wow, I figured it out. This is the way to do forest gardens and earn income from it without starting a nursery,” which is the other thing I see. I was so excited but I figured it out. And then after doing it for three weeks, I was like “No, I’m not using plants from my garden anymore. It’s destroyed my garden, it’s made it no longer a place of joy. This is for my family, I’d be paying myself $2 an hour to sell this kale in my meals. This is for my family, I’m not selling this, this is to share.” So I had to draw a real distinction there. It’s tangential, but I think these are important things to think about with food and survival and autonomy, there’s no silver bullet to any of this.

TFSR: Yeah, for real. And with the point you said about how are you able to do this, how you were able to pay for that. I guess that’s where the community comes in and matters. It is like “Okay, being real, if you were able to get this piece of land because of the trust fund, or because of white privilege, or because of, obviously, you’re sitting on stolen land if you’re on this continent and you’re not indigenous. I don’t think that necessarily means that somebody has to stop, it means you have to think about where you’re stepping and think about what you’ve got. And think about how this whole work, the whole putting energy into sustaining yourself, there’s nothing unnatural about that. It’s the extractive nature of it that’s the problem. And if you came into this with some privileges and benefits, think about how you can use that to give back.” We’ve got mutual friends who have some property in Maine that grow a ton of food. And they’re always donating that food, working with Wabanaki Rematriation Project, or have been for years sending food back to urban communities living in cities that are attached to Victory Garden type things. You were mentioning before the chat that one of them has been working with Herman Bell on Victory Garden in New York State. I get so much excitement and energy out of seeing people actually giving back and sharing and building community through these and not trying to get their own. And whose definition of autonomy doesn’t mean “I got mine.”

A: Right. For sure.

T: Yeah, and we’re talking about Fire Ant, shout out to Fire Ant prisoners’ support, they’re doing awesome stuff. Huge inspiration. Good friends. Thank you for introducing me to them.

TFSR: Of course.

So where can people find your podcasts, the music, the saplings, the vegan treats and how can they support the work that y’all are doing?

A: Well, you can find Propaganda by the Seed on all major podcast platforms and on the Channel Zero Podcast Network and Patreon, if you care to support us that way. Also, positive reviews and ratings on podcast platforms are a great non-monetary way to support us and tell people about it. So thanks for having us on. You can find my seeds, cuttings, plants, and all that stuff at edgewoodnursery.com and you can also find me and the occasional dump of the unusual plant means on social media @edgewoodnursery on Instagram and Facebook.

T: I love that you stepped in and became a plant meme warrior.

A: I couldn’t leave it all for Poor Proles Almanac [podcast].

T: My stuff, you can go to my Bandcamp. That’s the best place to buy my music sole.bandcamp. You can listen to my stuff on all the evil streaming networks. I’m also on Patreon patreon.com/soleone. I sell seeds also on the Holland Farms Etsy store. But pretty much everything I’m selling you can get cheaper through Aaron’s store.

TFSR: Comrade, your anti-capitalism is base.

T: It’s his job, for me, it’s a fun little extra thing to do in the winter.

TFSR: Well, thank you so much for having this conversation. I really appreciate it and taking time out of your Sunday morning. Keep up the amazing work. You’re inspirational.

T: Thanks, TFSR, you are real good friend. I love you, dude. Thank you for your friendship. Much respect. I am sorry for calling you a dude.

TFSR: Oh, yeah. I’m all for that. I get duded, I’m into it.

A: Thanks for inviting me to this conversation as well. It was great. And in your kind words about our podcasts, that’s always lovely to hear that people are enjoying it. And that it takes the edge off of the stress of the modern world for an hour or two.

TFSR: I want to cry-listen when I feel bad, sometimes.

T: Entropy, the good entropy. Let divines take it all down.

TFSR: Some things are being eaten in a good way.