The Coop Ep. #05: The Gentle Art of Homesteading Resilience, with John and Molly Chester

Introduction:

We believe food looks and tastes better when it comes from a mason jar and that every home should have a well used cast iron skillet. We believe in starting where you are in being a good steward, and that homesteading is a mindset. First, we believe that our great grandmothers were right about almost everything and that the best conversations happen around the coup.

Anna Sakawsky:

All right, well welcome everybody to episode five of The Coop. So if you’re just joining us for the first time, this is our live monthly series where we bring you inspiring and educational conversations with the homesteaders, farmers and writers who contribute to Homestead Living Magazine every month. So these are the very people who are shaping the modern homesteading movement as we know it today. I am Anna Sakawsky and I am the editor in chief of Homestead Living Magazine, and I’m thrilled to be with you here today and to be with John and Molly Chester, who are the creators of the award-winning documentary, The Biggest Little Farm. So they are regenerative farmers and passionate educators and are also featured in the June issue of Homestead Living Magazine. So if you have not yet subscribed, there is a button right below the video here where you can go ahead and subscribe.

And if you do so today, you will still catch it in time to get the June issue delivered to your mailbox. So I would love to know, I see people from all over the place in the comments as per usual, we’ve got people from all over the states. I saw another fellow Canadian, I’m from Canada. We saw somebody come in from Australia, England. And then like I say, people from all corners of the US. So welcome everyone. I would also love to know if you could pop in the comments, who here has seen the documentary, The Biggest Little Farm? Let me know, have you seen it? Have you not seen it? My husband and I actually watched it a number of years ago when it first came out. Came out in 2019 and this was when we had just really begun our homestead journey. And it was a very inspiring piece for us when we were just getting started just to see what’s possible because John and Molly, their approach has been, well, first of all, they kind of jumped in with both feet, came from not being farmers at all living in the city, a lot of us, that’s a similar story for a lot of us, certainly for my husband.

And I dove right into farming and really went at it from the regenerative farming angle and wanting to do things traditionally and organically. But even beyond that, and I won’t give away too much, let them tell their own story here, but they really wanted to rewild the land and learn to work with nature and even integrate things like predators and wildlife and that sort of thing, which is often something that we’re battling against and they have done so beautifully over the years. But of course it has not come without its share of challenges. So we’re going to be talking all about that today, but if you haven’t yet seen it, yeah, a lot of people in the comments saying that they saw it, Cynthia said, “my daughters and I watch The Biggest Little Farm every September as a kickoff to our homeschool year.” That’s brilliant.

And it is actually, if you haven’t seen it, a great documentary to watch with kids as well. We watched it with our 8-year-old a few months back, and it was just a really good family movie to watch too. So if you haven’t checked it out yet, make sure you do and we can check with John and Molly, but I think there’s a bunch of places that you can stream it online or it might be on Netflix. We can double check that. But definitely if you haven’t seen it yet, definitely check it out. So today we’re going to be talking with John and Molly about all sorts of things, and I’m really excited to have this conversation. I got to interview them for the June issue of Homestead Living Magazine a few months back, but there was so much good information in that interview that I wasn’t able, I had to make some hard decisions about certain things to cut.

And so this is an opportunity to touch on some of those things, some things that you will find that are in the June issue, but some things that we didn’t get to include in there that we get to talk about today. Alright, so before we dive in, I just want to thank the Homestead documentary. So if you have been with me before on The Coop, you’ve heard me talk about the Homestead documentary. It’s an inspiring documentary series that brings you up close and personal with 50 real life homesteaders across two incredible seasons from gardening and animal husbandry to running profitable homestead businesses. It covers everything you need to start or grow your own homestead journey. And you can stream all 20 episodes right now for just $59 at homesteaddocumentary.com. So again, check out homesteaddocumentary.com, and with that I welcome John and Molly Chester to the show.

John Chester:

Hey. Hi. Hi. Thanks for having us. Hi.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, thank you for being here. I know you guys must be very, very busy on your farm. You got lots going on there, so thanks for taking the time out of your day to be with us. So I gave a little bit of an intro and a lot of people in the comments have seen your documentary, probably know who you are, but for anybody who might not know or who might not know the full story of how you got started, can you just give a little bit of a background on how you went from living in the city? Living right in the heart of Los Angeles, I believe, right to being full scale organic farmers.

John Chester:

You want to tell ’em of the whole thing from the food side though?

Molly Chester:

Sure. Yeah. So I was a private chef before we started farming, and my interest in even getting into food was about how to really put a life giving healthy plate on the table, it’s about the choices that the farmer makes. And when we were seeking out the type of food that I wanted to cook with, because then you can bring it in the kitchen and maximize nutrient density, like many of the people that listen to this I’m sure do soaking, sprouting, fermenting. You had to start with really, really nutrient dense food and we couldn’t find all the food that we wanted. We wanted really great eggs and we couldn’t find that in the Los Angeles area at the time. So we talked about what if we just do this on a really small scale and it ended up turning into something bigger than we could have ever possibly imagined, but it was really about really great food so that we could eat really great food. And then obviously you build the community around that

John Chester:

Eggs being the gateway drug into this world. It really was about, for us, the idea of eggs. And no one was really raising chickens in the way that was informing that flavor of an egg. It surprising as, I mean 15 years ago, at least in our area.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, that’s so funny. Eggs being the gateway drug, I always hear it is like eggs or sourdough, right? It’s almost the gateway into this. But I think that food, for the most part, you guys are actually farming and doing so commercially, and I’m sure that we have some folks that are doing the same, but a lot of people are just homesteading for themselves and to feed their families. And I think that that idea of just wanting more nutritious flavorful food is really what gets a lot of us into this in the first place. So certainly being a private chef, as you were Molly, I can understand that. So what were your lives like before you became farmers? Give us an overview of what that looked like.

Molly Chester:

It’s interesting you say on a small scale, we just lived in a little two bedroom apartment that it’s seen on The Biggest Little Farm, but that space we maximized as much as we possibly could. We had no grass, but we had tomato plants on the porch and there was a dehydrator in guest room, and we had convinced the landlord at the time to let us have a standup freezer down in the shared garage just so that I could get full cows because funds were tight in those times, but those are the ways that you can do it for less expensive. And I was this close to convincing the landlord that we could have a roof garden by the time that the film happened. But you had a very, or by the time the farm happened, but you had a different life back then.

John Chester:

Yeah, I was mainly doing documentaries about wildlife, but I was a documentary filmmaker, and so I had at least what I had was an understanding and appreciation for systems thinking and the interconnectedness and relationship between animals within a given ecosystem. And so I realized there was a connection to that. But I had done a film in South Africa about these wildlife game parks that all used to be farms. And these guys that were running these game parks that owned these 40,000 hectare massive parks, had screwed their land up by overgrazing it with sheep. And when they were building it back, they recognized that what they really needed to be were ecosystem managers. And then they realized, well, there’s a lot more money in game parks and you’re actually controlling the predator prey populations to balance essentially flora and fauna within an ecosystem. So by destroying it, they learned that it was really truly about ecosystem management. So I came back with that, knowing that and being very convinced, at least from their experience, that there was no question that this was a methodology of farming that we could employ. I thought it would be a lot easier than it was.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, I think that’s a common sentiment at the beginning of this. Great. A hard Yeah, absolutely. That’s true. And so when you kind of made the decision, and I know you had a dog that played a part in this too, it was kind of the final straw for you guys. You had a dog, Todd, was that right?

John Chester:

Yeah. So it was a rescue dog that wouldn’t stop barking

Anna Sakawsky:

In your apartment, and so you had to look for somewhere else. And so that’s when you decided, hey, we’ve been talking about maybe starting a farm, let’s go for it. And so what was your original vision for how you guys wanted to farm? What were you looking for when you first set out?

John Chester:

I mean, really we were looking to focus on biodiversity, and we knew that soil health was obviously critical and that the biodiversity, when it comes to, when I say biodiversity, I don’t mean just in the crop diversity, but in the habitats that would be either contiguous to next to the farm or woven within the farm as a way to balance pest and disease epidemics. Not to perfect and completely obliterate the problems, but to have a regulating immune system would require a farm that had some level of diversity on it. And we picked one with the most large trees that weren’t crops, but the soil was completely dead and it had been attractively farmed for years, but we at least picked an area that had some hope for being able to tap into that resilience system and try to reawaken it in our naive minds. But we happen to be at least clued enough to know that there was value in plant diversity within a farming system.

Anna Sakawsky:

So can you share a little bit about, it’s called Apricot Lane Farms where you farm now. And so tell me a little bit about the land, how you found it, why you chose what you chose, and was it, I believe it’s, how big is it? 230-40 acres now?

John Chester:

It was a hundred when we purchased it with our partners. Our partners were a big part of this because it’s just one family who really felt that the future of food was food grown with maximum amount of nutrient density based on soil health. And they also understood the principles of ecosystem stewardship and interaction with a farm. So they had this futuristic vision that aligned with ours. So we found we’re very fortunate, and that’s the biggest thing when you’re finding a partner, a bank doesn’t normally care about your futurized altruistic intent, but this individual had experience in that, at least from other projects that they’d invested in. So the goal was to really find that to immediately start to invest not only in soil health and rebuilding soil, which we know plants build soil. So we leaned into cover crops and compost and those types of things immediately integrating animals, farm animals for manure and planning and reestablishing these habitat areas within the farm. I don’t know if I answered the question, but that was—

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.And you touched on the fact that you had some investors, which I think is good, just so that people know how you guys got started because everybody’s journey looks a bit different. Was that always the plan was to find an investor or was that just a luck, lucky draw?

John Chester:

No, we were just lucky because here’s the thing, to those of you who have this dream, we just told everyone that this is what we wanted to do and we had to bear the humiliation and the smirks and the funny jabs that your family and friends will throw at you. And honestly, one of the ones that was probably the most critical and ridiculous the most was Molly’s brother who introduced us to the investor. So you never know where it’s going to come from, and it just aligned. And honestly, in a way, I think to do something like this, it was about knowing less, not knowing more, because there could have been a lot of reasons intellectually to not do the things we did that ultimately worked out in defiance of what say science or nature would’ve even predicted. And I think that’s a big part of the journey for homesteaders. They see a lot of things that are truths because they see it and it may not register in a book that they read about agriculture, but what you see is real until it’s proven wrong in nature and the homesteader gets that opportunity to witness nature doing things that we didn’t think were possible all the time, regardless of the size of the farm. So the curse became one of our blessings of our ignorance to essentially what we were doing.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, that’s a really good point to kind of not go into it with preconceived notions of how it should be, but just let it reveal what it is or what it needs to be. So when you found the land, so we’ll get into this and some of the challenges you faced, one of your major challenges was the soil. Did you know this going in? Was this always your vision to find somewhere like this where you could then regenerate? Or what was it about this specific plot of land? You mentioned the trees. Why did you end up choosing the property that you were in? 

John Chester:

Southern California, we knew enough to check wells and a lot of people out here buy farms. They come to us, they’re so excited. We just bought a farm down the road. I’m like, oh, that’s great. How’s your aquifer? I just ask. And they’re like, oh, we don’t know. They haven’t even checked the stability of the, the integrity of the well, whether there’s even water. And we didn’t know enough to do that.

Molly Chester:

It was also, it’s a great location. It’s only 50 minutes north of la, so you have that whole market. You have the Santa Barbara market, you have the Ventura market. It also was incredibly beautiful rolling hills and it had different infrastructure that we needed because it had a pond that was needing renovation, but it was there and some different structures that we could already make use of

John Chester:

Proximity to market was important that once you’re investing at that level, most farms could be three hours away from a million people. This farm happens to be an hour away from 12 million between LA and Santa Barbara. So that was important. But the diversity of the landscape and lots of little microclimates within it gave us the ability to think creatively about different types of crops we could grow to stay competitive, which can be a good thing, but also that’s a challenge. Everything is a different kid with a different problem now. So you face that those are I guess, some of the reasons. Yeah.

Anna Sakawsky:

Okay. Right. Okay. So now you found yourself on this plot of land and now you get to really dig in, no pun intended, and see what you’re working with. And you said that one of the biggest challenges that you faced was the soil, right?

John Chester:

It was dead. Yeah. It was dead horrible, not scientifically dead, but you couldn’t grow anything in this unless you were going to give it synthetically derived nitrogen and just basically focus on NPK inputs, right? Nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus. And that’s what they were doing. They were using the soil as a medium with which to hold the plant up, but it wasn’t the true stomach of the plant. It wasn’t digesting anything on behalf of the plant and providing it life. So we knew we had to fix that first. So that was the first year for sure.

Anna Sakawsky:

So how did you go about fixing that? Because especially on such a large scale, it’s not just you’ve got a couple garden beds you need to add composts to that can get pretty pricey when you’re bringing in those kind of inputs. So what was your approach to regenerating the soil on your farm?

Molly Chester:

Well, right away you want to figure out what you’re working with. So we had to do a lot of soil testing and then you may remember things to add too, but I just remembered you just got to start growing things. Once you add your amendment and then you get in the soil and get your water in there a bit so that you can start to grow some cover crop and cover crop, cover crop and growing things is the key to beginning there. And then we did it differently then because of permaculture, that type of perspective doesn’t want to disturb the soil at all. We kind of have a philosophy that you do step into your true shepherd role in the very beginning because it just takes so long to complete. So we’ll grow things and turn that under to get the organic matter down in the soil and repeat that a few times until you get to the place where you have something to work with. And then you can step back and be much more hands off. Animals do what they need to do to carry it forward from there.

John Chester:

Yeah, I would say that that’s so true. We had to do some really, dig deep, ripping of the soil, so much hard plan- but resources were, I got to say, of all the expense of the things that we spent money on to fix on the farm, the habitat component and soil component was probably the smallest investment because you, you’re buying seed cover crop seed and you’re growing it in the first couple of two years in a row, your cover crop wouldn’t even establish, it looked pathetic. And so you want to give up, but every year it gets a little bit better and you’re constantly adding more compost. So we’re generating a lot of compost, not just from our land, but we went to all the neighbors who were giving away manure. You might have a local brewery in town that can feed goats and feed your cows so that you can add more manure from your own fertility stream, but you have tons of horse farms that can’t get rid of the stall bedding, they don’t know what to do with it. And that can become a really valuable source for us. And we used hundreds and hundreds of tons of that stuff, but the third time we started the third growing of cover crop pretty much for all of the different locations it would take. And then now you’re really working something in and you begin to till less and till more shallow. You don’t want to break up those fungal communities that mycorrhizal strand of communication between plants. And it did feel like we weren’t making much headway in the first two years. And I’ve heard that from a lot of people who experienced really depleted soil systems,

Molly Chester:

The trees, because we had some orchards that we were renovating rather than completely ripping them out, starting over. And those, it’s almost like they act like an addict. They, they’ve been kind of directly injected with NPK first, NPK for so long that when you take those things away, they wilt. And so you’ll see them get a lot worse before they start to get better because they have no idea how to fend for themselves anymore. Those root structures have not been developed and they have to start to develop them to then be able to care and be able to feed themselves.

John Chester:

They have no relationship with the soil system.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, I never thought about that. And so doing this kind approach, adding compost and cover cropping and actually building the soil rather than just putting in these kind of synthetic inputs, how long did it take? You said the first couple of years you weren’t feeling like you made any headway then by the third cover crop. How long would you say it really took until you felt like, okay, now we’ve got fertile soil that is ready for planting?

John Chester:

I’d say probably three to five years, but we were planting trees in the midst of that anyway. And what Molly’s actually talking about is so important because it was that the plants were not motivated to give back to the soil. They weren’t photosynthesizing and dumping those excess liquified carbonic sugars into the soil because they weren’t needing to pay for anything. So in order for a plant to get phosphorus in a natural system, it has to pay the mycorrhizal fungi with sugar. And then the mycorrhizal fungi brings the phosphorus to it. And when you have essentially an addict who’s living in the attic and getting three square meals a day and not adding back to the community, those relationships that sustain and build euphoria and build life and increase dopamine flow in a human, those relationships of give and take are not there. So the plant doesn’t even know how to do it. So it takes a while, you’re helping it build that back up. And so it would be around year three or four and then you would start to see disease issues. Like we’d get Verticillium in the apricot and then if someone would come out and advise and say, you need to get rid of this cover crop causing that issue,

If you just don’t react too quickly, you start to actually see these things work themselves out. So you have to sort of be able to sustain the fear while you’re learning. Unless something has truly happened and it has died, it is not dead yet. I watched apricot trees look like they were dead and boom, they come right back. So it would be that year, that three to five period I think is where I started to see a lot of those issues be turned around.

Anna Sakawsky:

Right. And then I want to get into a little bit more of your vision with integrating Biodiversity and Wildlife into a sec, but I know that you mentioned in our interview as well that it was around year five that you actually decided to make the documentary. So just backtracking a bit before we get further into some of the practical solutions and challenges you guys faced and everything, what made you decide to actually document this process? You know, were going to do this from the start. You said that it was year five when you really started getting into it, what was it that all of a sudden made you go, you know what, we want to share this. And what was your mission with sharing it with the world?

John Chester:

That’s a good question. I swore off making any more films. I wasn’t inspired anymore, but I’d done it for 35 years. It’s like all I’d ever done since I was in high school even. And I didn’t know if it was going to work, so I didn’t want to make a film about our demise and have to live through it twice, once as a person in real time. And then again trying to come up with an ending that made sense. And I wasn’t sure, I mean, I questioned it all along the way. There was a lot of idealism, Molly’s much better at — I think — hiding her skepticism. I bleed it out at night. Men do that. We just cry. Please tell us it is real so that we don’t feel foolish because we really want to believe it’s real. But it was year five, I remember it was probably year five, five and a half.

I saw the return of life in a way that was creating a stability and a reckoning with these pest issues to such a degree. I was like, no one is going to believe this. I didn’t actually know if it was going to happen. And so that’s when I really started, I mean, we had a bunch of iPhone footage from the past. That’s when I really started documenting these rhythms and keeping track of the rhythms that mattered that I felt were relatable for people to see the cinematic greatness and resilience that is this natural world that we live within. And that was really the impetus was the fact that I started to actually see it working.

Anna Sakawsky:

Right. So yeah, you had mentioned, again, kind of around that five year mark is when if you’re actively working on regenerating your land and trying to strike a bit of a balance with biodiversity and everything, that’s when you started actually seeing some results. And you said that you had also heard from other farmers that that’s usually kind of the timeframe. So I just think if somebody’s new to this that maybe if it’s not, it doesn’t look like you’re getting anywhere in the first couple of years, keep going. Would you say to keep going at least until that five year mark and see where you get?

John Chester:

Definitely. Well also too, there were a lot of little wins along the way, but you don’t even recognize how much better it can get. It’s impossible to sell someone on it. But I think for us, there were many times when we felt like we should turn around. But if you ask farmers, I would ask a neighboring farmer, how come you’ve never planted a cover crop? And he’s like, well, he’s like the gopher problem just destroyed the trees. And then I asked a follow up question, well, how many years in a row did you do it before you gave up? And he is like two. And in my head I’m like, I wonder what happens at year three. 

And I learned something from that experiment and that thesis and that was that plants in the first two years when you plant them, are way more vulnerable and susceptible to any kind of bites from a gopher. But after about two years, they can handle a little nibbling. And the other thing that starts to happen is around year three, not only has the plant start to mature and it has more roots shooting everywhere else, but you also have more predators coming in to mitigate those issues. And you yourself have started to actually figure out trapping protocols and things like that. So is a time thing you’ve got to put the time in and got to go past those points where you feel like everybody else has turned around. I always try to figure out, when did you quit? And I’m like, what happens after?

Anna Sakawsky:

Right. Oh, that’s a great mindset to have. And before we get into mindset, because a big part of this as well, let’s talk about the predators and the wildlife. And this is where I say you kind of came at this with an idea of—to get into regenerative farming, right? Regenerate the land. But your vision differed a little bit from how most regenerative farmers approach things where you really wanted to bring in, like you say, you wanted to manage an ecosystem where you were actually integrating wildlife and predators and all that. That’s kind of going a step beyond what most people are willing to do on their land. But you really wanted this to be an integral part of how your operation was run. So first of all, why was this something that was part of your vision where you wanted to not just integrate wildlife, but specifically encourage predators on your land? What sort of challenges did you face while you were trying to find that harmony and what advice would you have for somebody else who’s looking to do something similar?

John Chester:

Cool. I think at some point we should go back to and talk about biodynamics because there wasn’t regenerative when we started, but Molly can talk a little bit more about biodynamics in a deeper sense. But in general, biodynamics for us was encouraging us to treat the farm as a self-contained ecosystem. And it does require that you embrace these predator and prey relationships. And it’s not so much that we were encouraging predators that would do harm to the farm back, but as soon as you start growing food, you’ve created a stacked system. Every insect that damages that fruit is now also going to have a predator that maybe comes in and takes it out or at least puts balance to it. And then there’s a predator of that predator and it just keeps going. So what we did recognize though is that there was significant investment.

We could — not significant, we’re talking like $1,500 maybe for 20 owl boxes — that we could make, but we didn’t have a gopher problem, but we were encouraged by our mentor, you should start putting up owl boxes. And I’m like, well, I mean I got a billion other things on the list. This isn’t a priority. Later I understood why he was saying that —

 

Molly Chester:
– as soon as we had roots, we had a gopher problem. 

 

John Chester:
As soon as we planted cover crop, we had gophers. So you want to create habitat alongside of the actual rebuilding of your farm or the building and the reawakening of your farm because you want the fire department and the police department there that the ladybugs are, they’re kind of your military force, but you want ’em living there. You want ’em habituating there before you have the problem. So that mindset was something we dabbled in, but we didn’t really lean into it until we started seeing how many pest issues we were dealing with.

But look, when the coyotes started killing chickens and they killed over two, three year period, they probably killed 400 chickens. That’s a lot of chickens. And it’s indefensible as to why we wouldn’t shoot a coyote. And we did. I shot one in the film and probably two more, but they were euthanized for other reasons because they were literally like I found ’em one on the road and one had hit a fence, which is in the movie, it didn’t feel good to shoot coyotes. But the more I looked into the way coyotes interact with the system is that they have this autogenic response when they are howling at night between different packs and they’re taking a census of the number of coyotes that are in that area. And the female will actually drop the appropriate number of eggs to replenish the coyote pack based on how many coyotes are around. And understanding intuitively, subconsciously as to how much food there is available. They’re the only species that we’ve been trying to eradicate for two centuries since that time, and we kill up to 500,000 a year. It’s crazy. But since that time, not only have the numbers gone up, but now they’re in all 50 states, well, not Hawaii,

Back on island, up in Seattle, they’re everywhere. And now they’re in the cities, so they’re obviously doing something. And so I started leaning into what it is they were doing and why, how could I justify not killing them? And one of the things I recognized was that one of their main foods — at least in our area — was gophers and rats.

 

So now I had to look at it as like this is an animal that is a lazy opportunist. All of them are, they’re not vindictive. We’re the only species on the planet that eradicates an entire species because it just annoys us. They’re opportunists and they look at everything in terms of joules of energy. So a spider is one joule of energy. So everything they do requires energy. So they’re not going to do something that’s going to take more energy and create more risk. So all I need to do is create a little bit of a disruption in that flow of energy and hopefully that would then encourage them to focus on other things that were now easier. And that’s where the guardian dogs came in. So the time I was spending and investing in a guardian dog was justified. I just lost $18,000 worth of chickens. So now I’m like, well, I got to me $18,000 in non-money figuring out how to get this guardian dog thing. And so over time, what we did is we then found out how much those coyotes were impacting the farming operation, which I can get into later in terms of the economics of it. 

But the farm team thought it was crazy that we weren’t killing more coyotes. And here’s the other thing I wanted to add. When you kill a coyote, especially you kill, when you kill coyotes in general, they’re now going to have more. The problem players within a pack typically are the juveniles because they get displaced by the alphas and then they have to hunt in these really weird spots because they’re now kicked out of the traditional easier hunting areas. Human interaction is a risk. The juveniles are the ones you see standing on the hood of your car. They’re the ones you see on your porch and they’re a little taller… and they’re just out of their mind. They don’t know what is risky and and they’re desperate. It’s

Anna Sakawsky:

Like teenage humans, right?

John Chester:

Right

Anna Sakawsky:

Figures,

John Chester:

You can train the packs and it’s crazy to think about it like this, but you can train them. And so by not killing them, they will not cross thresholds now because they know that, alright, they can go after my Guinea heads. That’s kind of my rodeo clown offering. We let ’em fly, they can go after my rabbits, they can go after. We’re not raising rabbits, but they can go after all those different things. So for us, it’s about knowing that over time we’re training that pack to work and coexist with us and there’s always going to be problems. But if a coyote kills nine chickens in the last five years, which is all that’s happened, that’s nothing. That’s nothing compared to the contribution they’ve made to gopher mitigation.

Anna Sakawsky:

Right, right. Okay. Yeah. Okay. That is going to lead into my next question here, but before I go into that, I just want to let everybody know too, I saw a couple people asking in the comments, first of all, there will be a replay if you can’t make the whole episode, there will be a replay available. But somebody else just had commented saying, I have so many questions, is there going to be a chance to ask questions? So yes, absolutely. If you have questions as we go, feel free to pop them in the comment box and then we’ll have some time for a q and a at the end. So if anything comes up for you as we go through the rest of the interview, please go ahead and ask your questions in the comments. So I have a question about that. So a lot of what you did when it came to predator management, wildlife management, that sort of thing, was to then figure out, well, what else could we add rather than trying to take that animal or pest or whatever it may be away, what could we add in that would help to manage the population?

So one was the livestock guardian dogs with helping to deal with the coyote problem. Another one in the film you show the snail problem that you had, which was incredible. Snails all over your orchard trees. And so you brought in ducks, right, because you figured out that ducks will eat the snails. And then you talked about having owl boxes and that sort of thing for gophers. So that I feel like is a really good approach when you have a lot of land that you’re working on, you can continue, okay, let’s bring in this animal now let’s bring in this, let’s keep adding for somebody that might be on a smaller property, and I’m going to selfishly ask for myself here, but my husband and I are only on a quarter acre,

And so we have pretty extensive gardens for where we are and we have some backyard chickens, but we aren’t able to bring a whole bunch of different types of livestock and diversity in that sense onto our land because we’ve got such a small parcel. And of course we’re dealing with local regulations around that. And there’s a lot of people that are in that, a kind of similar situation where they’re working with a little bit less land. And so they made me feel like they’re a little bit handcuffed because of that. And I had mentioned before we went live, we’re actually dealing with an issue right now where we’ve got a mink that is coming around and taking our chickens, and we’re really wanting to, first of all, the mink here are a protected species, so we can’t really take them out anyway, but we’re trying to figure out what is our approach to how we deal with something like that, like a predator that’s now coming around and is posing a threat, but also keeping in mind that we are backing onto a forest where this is part of the local ecosystem in here, and how do we deal with that on a scale where we can’t necessarily bring in guard dogs or other types of livestock.

Do you have any advice for people on a smaller scale?

John Chester:

Yeah. First of all, I just want to say I acknowledge that these things, there’s no easy answers and I have no judgment over someone that ends up having to make the decision to shoot a predator. I just think thats what it is, and this is maybe to your specific case, is that every predator is an opportunity to become incredibly curious about the system within which you live. So they will guide you through understanding what they eat, understanding when they nest, understanding where they nest, understanding what their favorite foods are, and then starting to look around knowing that information of now a lot about make a lot more than you thought you wanted to know about the enemy. But if you can’t get rid of the enemy because that’s never going to be easy and you actually always don’t want it, other things that thing’s doing that you have no idea maybe helping, right?

Obviously they eat voles and mice and things like that too. For some reason they see your situation as easy to eat the chickens. It’s easier than say catching mice or whatever. But I would say understanding those things and then beginning to look around and try to even figure out where it’s nesting. I know where a lot of the dens are with coyotes, and by understanding that, I can put that into playbook a little bit. But there are little things, and I’ll get back to the Mick thing in a second, but roosting bars, you have no idea the number of barn owls or great horned owls or barred owls or whatever. It’s flying through your little garden at night. You have no idea the missed opportunities just because there’s not a really simple branch in the form of a 10 foot or 20 foot post right above your garden. And it may not happen in the first couple of months, but if they sit there one night and they see a lot of gophers or bats or whatever it is that’s coming in and out of your house and your coop, they will come back there. And you know what? They will come back there and they will start to train other hawks, other owls over the years and they will habituate to that post.

It’s what you actually can’t see because as farmers we’re so focused, I think too much myopically on soil and the food crop, but not on the whole system that surrounds us that we’re constantly battled and frustrated by. And quite honestly, we take it personally, don’t we? Right. It’s like I’m trying to do the right thing. I’m trying to grow, but you are in a system and it’s actually inviting and teasing you into it to understand it more deeply. So when you understand you do you have coyotes there?

Anna Sakawsky:

We’re lucky we don’t have coyotes. We’re mainly mink and raccoons. And then we have some larger predators. We’ve got bears and we’ve got cougars, and then a lot of eagles and owls and that sort of thing.

John Chester:

So with owls, probably eat the mink. I don’t, yeah, I mean great horn owls, but I don’t know if mink travel at night, that’s probably the other issue. Maybe Redtail hawks. Coopers Hawks, or not Coopers, they’re going to be attacking birds, redtail hawks, red shoulder hawks, things like that. But if you don’t have coyotes and you’re pretty sure you don’t have coyotes?

Anna Sakawsky:

We don’t, yeah…

 

John Chester:

I would never suggest this to someone who has coyotes. You can buy coyote urine, and if you can find where that meat comes in and out of your property, you can dabble a little of that. It’s a horrible smelling urine too. I will tell you that you’re going to need to triple bag that stuff and put it in the garage. Human urine too could potentially work.

Anna Sakawsk:

Okay, I have got to pass this on to my husband now. You know what I said to him yesterday, 

 

John Chester:

Specifically, your husband’s urine.

Anna Sakawsky:

I told him because he was rebuilding our coop, and I said, I know this sounds really crazy, but maybe you should just pee around before we go into it. He’s like, whatcha talking about? I’m like, well, just because it might throw it off and go, something bigger was here. I don’t want to mess with that.

John Chester:

He’s flushing down the toilet with two and a half gallons of fresh water for no reason. That’s fertility.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah,

John Chester:

I mean, I wouldn’t say don’t pee on your ground covers or your ground crop.

Anna Sakawsky:

Good, okay. I’m not crazy.

Molly Chester:

So John’s the master at getting in here and figuring out how these things work and thinking the animals so that you can figure out how to meet it. And I also like to give myself motivation as to why you’re even doing it. It seems so much easier to just like, oh, it wouldn’t be so much easier to just take this out and then you don’t have to deal with it anymore. I do think a farm is a reflection of just the life experience and kind of in life when you have that really annoying person who’s in your life and you are so annoyed by this person and then you just finally put them out of your life and then the next person that’s just like them comes into your life in another way. And the farms kind of like that where you have one thing and if you just control it, because life is much more alchemy than it is control. And so if you’re operating in that control space, you’re probably just going to find yourself fighting a different battle that’s very much the same principal. But if you can do that way of thinking like the mink and looking at it like a teacher and a offering of some sort, then you can start to work the way nature works.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, I love that. And that actually really leads into my next question, which is how have you managed and what advice I guess would you have for others to take some of the challenges and the hardships that come with this lifestyle? Inevitably, no matter what scale you’re doing this on, you’re going to come up against challenges and losses and all and perceived failures, and that for a lot of people can be what causes them to give up. But you’ve done a really good job at actually using that as your fuel. So how can we take some of those things and use them for our highest good, both as people and as stewards of the land?

John Chester :

I’ll talk about the fear thing and then you can add, yeah, please. So I think the energy that we feel depleted from us in the midst of failure is I think, tell me if you agree. I feel it’s twofold. One is a complete shame and humiliation for self-worth, and I’m not good enough. Nobody else is suffering with these same issues. First of all, I’m trying to get your head around the idea that that’s actually not true. Everyone, regardless of how long they’ve been doing this, if they’ve been doing it long enough, even we haven’t been doing it that long. We’ve been doing it 15 years. I talked to a farmers 30 years and 50 years, and they will tell you they have not figured out hardly anything they’ve wanted to figure out in life when it comes to farming. They’re still dealing with issues, but they just know it’s part of the gig. It’s what it’s right.

And the only antidote I have found to that shame, which causes the fear, is curiosity. It’s a chance to actually understand the system and become a real steward and to become a part of the system, not above the system. And I think a lot of people fool themselves, not a lot, but some fool themselves. But the idea behind why they get into is just for the sake of growing food. There’s a lot easier way to figure out how to get food than farming your own food. Truly. If we really look at it from an economics perspective, the reason I think we do it is because we want the portal into the experience to have a relationship with the natural world, which means we have to engage with it and deal with the fact that it doesn’t care about our altruistic intent or our earnest intent.

It’s going to show us how these forces of nature are not personal. The goal, I think it’s trying to engage us into understanding the way it works. So with every problem, the deeper you go into understanding it, the solution will not be obvious. It will be something you could have never imagined. And then you begin to see that it’s a lens and all the problems on the farm begin to be solvable in some way with this lens of how the last one got solved. So it is the chance to actually become so much more connected to the very thing that you started the farm for, and that is that experience, that portal, that travel to this relationship that’s beyond human connection, beyond connection with self, it’s connection with the infinite force of life.

Anna Sakawsky:

Wow. Yeah. That’s beautiful. Molly, what do you have to add to that?

Molly Chester:

I think you said it really well. I think that back before the farm started, I had worked on this project and I put everything into this project, and at the time I was reading this quantum book and it had said in there that if you put everything into something and that it doesn’t happen, it’s organizing to something greater. And so that was kind of soothing for me when it all fell apart, it did not work out, and it was so devastating in that. And yet the project that I was working on was this little pilot for a show called Farm to Table, and then six months later, farm to table in a much, much, much bigger scale ended up coming to fruition. And there was something that I learned from that process of failure and then seeing how it reorganized to something that if you really do,

John Chester:

I was say meaning the farm started.

Molly Chester:

The farm started. So farm to table, meaning the whole farm avenue, it was 130 acres worth of farms to table. And I think that if you’re really committing to something and because you love it, and it comes from a desire not just like a requirement or you’re forcing yourself to do something, then that desire that’s bringing you in to do something brings with it the loyalty and the want to make it work. And then if you really can trust inside of that, that everything that’s presenting itself is trying to elevate. And that’s just sort of hardwired in that way. But you can loan that idea. I can loan that idea to everybody else if they’re having trouble with that too. But it’s like it’s organizing to something greater. And then if you look at a problem from that point of view, it will kick you off the island if you’re not supposed to be there anymore. And that then you can trust too, because it’s aligning you in a different way then, but it’s always building.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah,

Molly Chester:

Yeah. Well said.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, I totally agree with that. We’re actually going through something similar in our personal life where that very, it resonates a lot right now about just finding what’s in alignment. And sometimes I think especially when we’re home sitting, when we’re farming, when we’re, I mean essentially we are trying to force our will upon the land in some manner. And I think that sometimes that we can get almost too controlling over that. And sometimes it’s just having a little bit of faith and letting go of the things that are not working or not aligning and making space to see what might be the right thing that might be more in alignment. And that I think can be applied to all sorts of different things.

And I want to touch also just not just the challenges and the hardships, but also on dealing with grief. This is something that we talked about in our interview a few months back. And again, it was something that there was so much good stuff in that interview that I couldn’t include everything. I can’t remember if I was able to touch on some of that in the magazine, but I do want to touch on it here today because that is a very real in actual sense of grief when we have losses, when we deal with losing livestock, when we put everything into growing a crop that fails or we invest so much in this and we care. I mean, this is something that I think that we all have in common living this lifestyle is that we genuinely care about our animals, about the land, about what we’re putting our hand to. And when it doesn’t work out, especially if we feel like we may have had some fault in it, like that shame and what you’re talking about, John, it can cause a genuine sense of grief. How have you dealt with the kind of emotional processing of some of that, and what advice do you have to share with others on that?

Molly Chester:

Yeah, that’s definitely, I think I learned grief through working with the land and all of the things that arose from it, and it snuck up on me at different times. I can remember a time that I think I can tell it for this audience, there’s some audiences that I wouldn’t tell the story, but we were processing chickens on the farm and we had done this three or four times in this wonderful Hungarian person that was working landscaping with us, but she taught me how to do it. So I never experienced grief because she had done it in such a respectful way and it carried all through the process. Well, this time we made a mistake. We didn’t have the right equipment, and the chickens were in a vessel that didn’t have enough airflow to it, and they kind of got limp. And so when we went to process, we had to do it quickly.

We realized what was going on, and the whole thing didn’t feel very well. And that night I was just unwinding for the day and I really did not feel well. I didn’t know what was going on. I was just way, way off. And I realized I was sad and I had a really good cry, and then I was double to kind of move forward and move on. And the next time it didn’t happen because we didn’t have those same kind of things. And I think those little lessons, that’s just a small one, but we deal with so many animal losses on the farm. It’s so important to the detoxification of our emotional systems as human beings. And I think our world has gotten very, very afraid of the grief process, and we’re suffering a lot because there’s not that valve of release that it gives.

And I heard someone say once, two different things about raising children. They said the best thing you can do for your child is to teach them to be really amazing digestive enzymes of life. And then the other one was that the best thing that you could do is to teach your child how to grieve. And whenever a child, I’m sure all of the people that are raising different animals with children, you face that with your child and you face it before, maybe you want to face it, they uncomfortable and awful, but when they learn that process and they see reverence and they see whatever tools you use to work your way through to the other side of that situation, they don’t believe there’s just a cliff there that they’re not going to survive when they walk over. And then you’re actually priming them for what’s needed in the farm or in the future. And I think John did a beautiful job with the film of relaying some of the truth of what it really feels like on a farm. And some people find that uncomfortable, but that’s something that he chose not to shy away from because of the important value that we think that it plays in the world.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, I love that. And I do. I think that’s really important. And again, that’s why I say I think this is a really great film to watch with kids as well. I know that when we watched it the last time with our now 8-year-old daughter, we stopped and paused it at different parts. And when you found the coyote and when I think you had, was it a baby lamb that was born with its in trails, her

John Chester:

Herniated intestine

Anna Sakawsky:

And quite getting, yeah, and getting personal here. Actually, we lost a baby of our own a few years back, and so we stopped and we talked about a lot of these things and about how these are just unfortunately parts of life sometimes too. So rather than sheltering, especially kids, but even ourselves, I think you’re right, even as adults, we want to bury grief or not face it, not deal with it, but it is just a part of life and learning to process it. I agree. I think that’s a healthy thing. So

Molly Chester:

For what you walked through there, that is not easy.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, yeah. No, it’s not, but it is. I think because I was living this lifestyle too and went through that, I did have a different perspective because I think it is one of you said, I think you can be very like, why me take it almost as a personal attack, but I was able to at least reframe this and just say, these things, unfortunately sometimes happen, but with the bad comes the good and all these things. So I think it’s a really important aspect of all this. Okay, so before we get into a few questions here, first of all, I just want to acknowledge first of all that you have done this together as a couple, which can be a source of strength, but it can also cause some challenges. No

John Chester:

Challenges. All good. Everything’s fine. Nothing to see here.

Anna Sakawsky:

Every color of the rainbow, I’m sure

John Chester:

We’ll talk about it.

Anna Sakawsky:

What advice do you have for other couples who are embarking on this journey together or who are maybe already in it and who are dealing with challenges? And sometimes that can have a strain on your relationship as well. What are some of the really important things that you’ve learned about working together as a couple, doing what you’ve done?

John Chester:

I think I would say there’s nothing more difficult on a couple that launch into a business and into just any kind of thing that neither has done enough and failed enough at. So every failure is just complete and sheer terror, and then the debates are based on two people who literally don’t really know the right answer. So it does cause a lot of conflict, and so I think as things got really hard for us in year, probably three through five morning Glory was a big part of that. That’s when we ended up seeking actual help and got a counselor and just for the men out there, don’t worry. When you go to counseling, they always figure out that it’s not the man. It’s always we did that and that’s been really helpful to figure, I mean, to keep us on the tracks. I always say that’s been our net, but it is, it’s really hard because you’re experiencing these first, a lot of failures, a lot of the grief stuff. I always think the thing that grief does that I think has scared me the most is how it turns us against each other.

John & Molly Chester:

Because the first thing is denial and anger, and usually you don’t want to absorb that. So usually you’re looking to blame outside circumstances and it’s your team or your spouse or whatever, God, the universe. So that process is a really big pivotal moment and usually the whole thing collapsing. So that’s how I would start it off, but I’m sure Molly would have a whole different perspective on this.

Molly Chester:

No, yeah, I mean it’s not easy to take on all those different things and roles and responsibilities are so intertwined and interwoven and I feel like the beauty and wonderful thing is that John has always chosen to keep growing and I have always been committed to keep growing and you’re not perfect when you come together. None of us are, and then you spend the first year they say, realizing all the ways you’re similar and the next 20 years realizing all the ways that you’re so vastly different. But if we can look at a family of any sort as this is our team, this is who we’ve got and all these skills that he has, he’s bringing to the table and to the team and the ones I’m bringing to the table and have some respect inside of that for those points of view, it just gives you a place to start.

There’s some days that you’re just really mad at each other and it’s terrible and you don’t want to be in that place, but it’s kind of part of the process also of weathering the relationship to get to the point that you don’t freak out over those things anymore and you kind of let the weather change and then you can move forward again. And I know I feel closer to John today than I did when we started. So that makes me know that as hard as it was and as much as we’ve been through together, that it was the journey that we were meant to take because it brought us closer to ourselves and closer to each other.

John Chester:

Yeah, now everything’s perfect.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah. Yeah, right. Well, it’s just interesting because I think the common, there’s a few common threads throughout all of this, and one is that idea of diversity and just even for you two and the diverse skills and knowledge and everything that you two bring to the table and the fact that you’re stronger because you have different things that you bring into the relationship and into your journey together as farmers. So that’s one. And then the other that I’ve heard you mentioned a few times is just that willingness to grow and evolve and push past, like you said, that when people are in a certain stage, that’s usually when that breaks them. But pushing past that and seeing what’s on the other side of that, if we can get beyond that, it reminds me of what John said earlier about that point where most people give up. Try to just push past that and see, because it’s often on the other side of that, that if you’re willing to continue to grow and evolve and that that’s when the breakthroughs really happen and beautiful things happen

Molly Chester:

Because that point, past that point that we’re seeing, it’s the point that the only thing left is trust. And that is such a hard thing for us as human beings, the absence of the control space, and sometimes it’s just whatever you do and you put whatever your resources are in those moments, that’s all you can do is just surrender and trust. But why not take it just a little further in that trust space and see what happens? Because that trust space is the language of the universe and there’s really beautiful stuff that can come in that spot of kind of darkness.

Anna Sakawsky:

That’s so great. I love all of that. Oh man, that’s great. Okay, so we’re going to get into some questions. I do want to touch on the one more thing, and you just brought this up, John, something that we talked a bit about on our first interview that you actually did not film or cut from the movie, or you didn’t want to show this part because it was such a source of stress for you. And it’s something that I wanted to include in the magazine as well, but it might not make it in just for because there was so much good information. But it’s something that I have heard a lot of people have dealt with this problem, and that is Bindweed or Morning Glory. So if anybody’s ever dealt with this, bindweed is like a wild growing morning glory type of thing. So I think there’s a plant, like a morning glory that you can go get at the Garden center that doesn’t grow as invasively as Bindweed does, but bindweed, we have it on our property and it is one of the toughest weeds to deal with because it is so invasive and it’s root system is like miles long, and the only way you can really eradicate it is by using Roundup, by traditional or conventional methods kind of thing.

But obviously, so you had this problem and you had it on a large scale, and this was something that you mentioned was a really big, like I say, you didn’t even want to film it because it was so

John & Molly Chester:

I was losing. It was such a source.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, stress for you. So I mean, this can go for all sorts of different, we can apply this to different types of problems, different weeds, that sort of thing. But I know Bindweed is specifically something that I hear come up in this community a lot that is just something that people can’t get a hold on. So if there’s anybody in the comments, there’s anybody that’s watching live right now and you have Bindweed. Oh, already I just clicked on the comments and I see Bindweed is driving me crazy hate Bindweed. Bindweed was sent from the devil to test God’s people bindweed. I see. We’re not

John Chester:

Alone. I see people talking about using calcium and amendments and things like that. That’s all great, but that is not easy to do. To mend your soil and fighting bindweed. You have to understand that bindweed works opportunistically to repair the soil in freshly disturbed soil systems where it is void of cover crop typically, especially a dense cover crop. You can’t call it a cover crop if you’ve got a bunch grass here and 12 to 14 inches over here, you got another bunch that is 14 to 12 inches of Bindweed opportunity to heal the soil. The other thing Bindweed likes to do is climb, which is why it’s a big problem. So it doesn’t just climb across things, it climbs up sprinklers, it climbs up your crops, all those things. Those are the things we hate. The seeds are hallucinogenic apparently, especially when the sheep eat, get a little wonky, they turn into robots and they vomit.

 

It’s pretty wild. But we did base it on 35, 40, I don’t know, 50 acres. It was terrible. It was freshly disturbed soil. What we did after that, we planted avocado trees and we put a bunch of mulch down around the sprinklers and under each avocado tree, and then there were rows in the center between the trees that was planted with cover crop. But the bindweed took over a little bit in the rows, but went crazy across the tops of all the mulch because it was freshly disturbed soil. So we ended up removing a lot of the mulch except for right around the tree and towards the end of the season, just before fall, we planted a cover crop. We removed the buying weed one last time. We spent lots of money on this. I mean, I don’t want to tell you even tell you how much it was a lot six figures on removal of buying weed for years.

Anna Sakawsky:

Wow.

John Chester;

Right. We removed the buying weed right in the fall. We planted a cover crop mix of some legumes and grasses, but most importantly we planted buckwheat because buckwheat germs in four to nine days. So I looked up online, how long does it take for the buying weed to germinate and to find a partner? It needs a partner plant to climb with, so it has to germinate, and then it becomes a problem when it finds a partner. Now it has some structural integrity. So I had to figure out what were the potential things that we could grow that could, would germinate quick, create a little bit of a canopy, but then not prevent other seeds from germinating later. The beautiful thing about the buckwheat is that it germinates. It creates a little bit of a canopy and buying weed’s really lazy. It does not like no sun situations.

It does not. You watch it won’t grow under trees. As soon as there’s like overhang, it doesn’t really grow under there. It stays to the sun and it looks for the lights constantly climbing for the sky. So we created that. But the understory of what I planted with the buckwheat was the cover crop. So once the fall came, buckwheat dies and then it leaves exposed the soil, the startings of all this other cover crop seed, it wintered over and then by for us in Southern California, then by spring it had already germinated that cover crop seed, and now it was beating the regrowth of the bind weed coming back into its spring season. So again, that’s how we fought it with seed and planting something that would beat it. But you also have to recognize that it doesn’t like competition. It doesn’t like shade and it loves freshly disturbed soil. So if you’re going to freshly disturb soil, amend it with compost and get seeds in the ground because if you leave that soil, bare nature’s going to try to fix the soil for you and it’s going to offer you vine weed.

I had stories. I even looked online. I called this professor at UC Davis, and he is like, well, here’s what I did. I bought a bunch of geese and I put ’em out of my orchard. But then the USDA said I couldn’t put geese in the orchard, so I had to put diapers on ’em. And then I had them certified as service animals. So he had geese with diapers. And I’m like, alright, well I don’t need to worry about the USDA with this because it’s this torture. We’re not even getting fruit from you. So I bought a bunch of geese and then within two weeks it looked like somebody had taken three down pillows and just scattered feathers everywhere because the coyotes killed the geese instantly.

Molly Chester:

They were protecting, they were protect too. But we didn’t have a dog in there. We didn’t have

John Chester:

A dog. We were just desperate. It did look and the ye didn’t like the bind weed. They ate a little bit of it, but it wasn’t, people are like, you got to knock it on the head, you got to knock it on the head. Well, it almost knocked us out of the farming business. You can’t knock this stuff on the head enough. You do have to change the biome of the soil and understand how it is motivated to start growing in the first place so that you are active in the freshly disturbed soil situations. You get compost out there, get some seed out there, put a little stroll over top you want so that the rain drops or water or whatever doesn’t blow the seeds out of the ground. And also the moisture stays in that top half inch so that seed can germinate between your watering set. So don’t be afraid to use a little straw. I mean, especially on small scale, use straw and germinate cover crop seeds just a little bit

Molly Chester:

And just know that if you’re in a place, we did this with the morning glory, we were trying to eradicate, eradicate, and when you’re in that place, you’re, that’s probably not where the answers are going to be.

Anna Sakawsky:

Kind of like what we said earlier with the animals and everything, rather than trying to get rid of something, it’s what else can we bring in that will help to mitigate that problem. So in this case, it’s cover cropping and that sort of thing. We’re going to try that this year in a stage of expanding but also revamping our entire property right now because of the mined wheat, quite honestly.

John Chester:

When does the bind weed start to weaken? That’s when you want to pull it one last time and get some seeds in there that are going to compete with it.

Anna Sakawsky:

Well, that advice has come at the perfect time for us, so I appreciate that. And I know that judging from the comments will probably be helpful for a lot of other people too. Look at that.

John Chester:

If it grows in your area, it’s amazing how fast it germinates. And we also use invested in straw for a huge amount. We had tried it, so in other words, we had spent so money doing it, so much money doing it cost effectively and it wasn’t working then it justified a big expense to do it once and hopefully for all.

Molly Chester:

And we haven’t dealt with it ever yet.

John Chester:

We haven’t. Well, you see it, but yeah, I know that it’s not going to last because it’s trying to crawl across the grass. I’m like, good luck sucker. The energy that you need to really do something is being taken away by the rest of the cover crop that’s established.

Molly Chester:

If you want a really pretty garden that has no weeds and all that, that’s the space that it gets really tricky with Morning glory. Not that there’s not, there’s other farmers out there that do wonderful things. Their mulch systems with gardens, if you like tidy, you can probably figure that out too. But buying weed works better whenever you don’t need it quite as tidy.

Anna Sakawsky:

Right. Okay. That’s some really great advice. So thank you for sharing that. Okay, so I do want to get to a few questions from our viewers. So let’s just see. So first off, Susan had a question. She asked, do you give tours of your farm for us who want to learn? So tell us about what you guys offer at Apricot Lane Farms.

Molly Chester:

Yeah, so we have a really vibrant tour program. There’s a beautiful two hour walking tour that gives tons and tons of information, and that runs from sometime in March through sometime in October every season and it’s Saturdays and Sundays, and there’s a farm stand here so that you can get all sorts of goods there. You can

John Chester:

Paper cut farms.com for tickets on that.

Molly Chester:

And then we also have started layering all sorts of fun offerings into those weekends. So there’s sound baths and yogas and different things that people can do out in avocado orchards and things. And then there’s also, we have really neat events that we have one coming up in a couple of weeks that’s with these beautiful people called the brothers Corin who do voice work. It’s like finding your embodiment through the use of the voice. And that again, we do out in the avocado orchards and then they have a concert after and you can just come attend the concert or do the workshop part. But there’s things like that, festivals, all sorts of offerings. So apr cut farms.com.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, that’s really cool just for anybody who wants to visit. But also I would imagine that that’s kind, I dunno if that was your vision from the beginning, but it’s evolved anyway into kind of multiple different income streams and offerings. And that probably also adds resilience economically into the farm. We didn’t really touch on that, but

John Chester:

If you’re not selling direct and creating that community with you and your farm, then you’re kind of living alongside of these commodity prices, like the avocado market pricing. If we sell to a packing house, we make no money, but when we sell direct, we make four times the amount of money and we don’t change or fluctuate our prices because we’re not chasing a market. It’s a direct consumer relationship.

Anna Sakawsky:

And

John Chester:

So tours and opening the event, and I really say it’s like if you’re the farmer, it’s important that you go out there and say hi to them and you connect with them. They know the difference between being guided around by someone on an events team and talking to the people that are ethically and morally responsible for the food that they’re growing. So we really do try to be available and interact because it was always important to us when visiting farms. But it also reminds you and your team how appreciated the work is that we all do when we grow food. Yeah, absolutely. That next Gopher Bindweed issue.

Anna Sakawsky:

So on that note, Donna had asked, she said, hello, this is a fascinating talk, thank you. Question, how many people do you have working the farm with you? So what does that operation look like maybe now, and what did it look like when you were starting out just to give

John Chester:

People? Well, what started was myself, Molly, one full-time guy who was here who had been working here through five owners, two of them were banks, meaning the farms had foreclosed. So he literally kept the farm alive for the bank, which was never very encouraging to know that that is how he had it twice. But then we had interns in the beginning, we went through the wolf program that became at some point unsustainable and you really need to invest in people and they need to make a living and you need to have people that can experience rhythms with you. So then as it got more serious, here we are 15 year, almost 15, well going on our 15th year, we have about 20 ish agricultural workers that are just farm focused. Keep in mind we grow a lot of different things, too many things. So they’re handling, we have orchard team, we have garden team, which is much smaller.

We have livestock, which is the four-legged creatures, and then we separate that out and poultry are the two-legged ones. So ducks and chickens is another team. And then really for us to actually sell directly to the consumer, now we’re talking about sales, we’re talking about packing, we’re talking about picking, packing, sorting farmer’s market staff so we can get up to 60 people at certain times a year depending on what we’re doing. But honestly, I wouldn’t recommend it because it’s taken us further and further out of the thing that we love. And so now we’re trying to become, get back more in touch with things we loved about farming in the first place. But that direct consumer relationship is essential if you’re going to be growing on land that’s more than just for you and your family.

Anna Sakawsky:

And I think that’s an important thing to note too, because first of all, I think some people might look at what you guys are doing and be like, that’s great and it’s super inspiring, but I am having a hard time getting a handle on my one acre or whatever. Just to recognize that you guys are working with a team, first of all, while you’re not doing it all yourself, you’re having,

John Chester:

Honestly, if you’re on a quarter acre, I guarantee you it’s more fun on a quarter acre than it is on 240. You spend more time in HR dealing with humans, and you really want to deal with plants and animals. So I think it’s an opportunity, and honestly, I think everybody needs to understand they are enough in what their pursuit is. They’re enough and they’re good enough. And for me to compare the success of my neighbor versus our enterprise is apples and oranges. Oranges. And so we have to remember that farms are, I think they’re more genetically, they are more genetically unique than a human being. So you will never see two farms that are anywhere close. They’re probably, it’s like comparing a spaceship to a potato. That’s how far apart they are genetically to one another. Each farm is so incredibly unique in terms of what makes it,

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, it’s a good reminder just especially nowadays with the online world and social media and even a documentary such as yours, right? I mean, yes, you showed some of the challenges, but you were able to do some in a very cinematic way where it kind of romanticizes it sometimes and then people sometimes get into the real life nitty gritty of it and they’re like, this doesn’t feel like that at all.

John Chester:

It doesn’t background for you, music playing in the background when you lose lose, no, you’re living through it more than 90 minutes. That’s all that film was.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, totally. Okay, so here actually I can show these questions. So Summer asked, I would like to know good alternatives to a guardian dog. We had some traumatic bite incidents in the past and are not willing to reintroduce LGDs. We have sheep and seven strand high tensile wire at the moment. Do you have any advice?

John Chester:

First of all, I don’t know the background behind why the animals were biting or what they were biting, but I mean, I do think temperament and guardian dogs finding a good breeder, or at least coming from a litter that comes from two well-adjusted adults with the right temperament is important because some of that aggressiveness can be genetically bred into sloppy breeders from sloppy breeders or people getting the dog from the pound. Sometimes we’ve gotten lucky from rescue guardian dogs, and I’ve just had an incident where we had one that showed up after a fire and he bit two people and got quarantined. And that’s the first time in 14 years I’ve had a guardian dog bite someone. But there are alternatives. I’ve never used them, but, well, there’s different types of guardians too. There’s AK Bosch and Great Pyrenees are the three that I’m aware of. Some people swear by donkeys.

John & Molly Chester:

I’ve

John Chester:

Heard donkeys people use. Is it llamas? People would suggest things to us all the time. You can end up with a dog that’s a mutt that just is not killing your chickens, but is actually a protector of a flock of sheep or flock of chickens. And I will say as far as the luck between having guardian dogs that are good at the job and also don’t eat chickens, I’d say it’s like our success rate is more like 25%. 25% of the guardian dogs will eat chickens and 25% and 75% we are going to eat the chicken, sorry, 25%.

So it’s tough to find the right one for chickens. Typically, they’re the older ones that they’ve given up the chase, they’re not as into the chase as much, so they don’t get that spark. But definitely, I would say good electric fencing make it a little more difficult. And I wouldn’t give up on a really good, great Pyrenees. I think it’s about temperament and finding the right dog and really getting to know the breeder and what the parents look like and how you manage that animalis really important. Take that opportunity to work that animal through whatever aggression it may be showing signs of early on.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, I think that’s really great advice. Okay, so Regina has asked, she said, we will be starting our homesteading journey next year in the high desert area of Arizona. I’ve been to the property several times. Soil is heavily grazed by free roaming cattle. Glad for the free fertilizer, but not the heavy grazing. What would be your advice in starting land regeneration in that type of soil? So Sandy lmi with a clay base, you got all sorts of stuff going on there.

John Chester:

I mean, compost, compost, compost if you’re, that’s a bank robbed system, so it’s going to grow some things well, but obviously you’re going to need a fertility stream. So I would start looking for and taking sections that are already looking healthy and start with sections that look healthy and work on those and then start to move outward from healthy sections to the less healthy sections. People always want to go and attack the most unhealthy thing first, and you’re basically going out and trying to save an island that doesn’t have life support around it.

And then obviously picking the right cover crop mix and that would call your local extension office or find a consultant in that area, something that is drought tolerant, obviously, meaning it’s going to have long roots, but also is going to do the kind of thing you want to have happen to the soil. You can get soil tests, you can do all those things. And I would say we would always advise that, but without building back up the biome of diversity of microorganisms that live within that system and having structure and food there for them, those plants are going to struggle to grow. And things like Bermuda are going to show up opportunistically, buying weed, maybe more of the opportunistic stuff that’s more ominous and just is trying to cover the soil to help you, which ultimately isn’t maybe always the best feed. Some would argue people use Bermuda grass

Molly Chester:

And it’s working when you do get your rain because at some point you’re going to get some batch of rain. And we moved over to this other house on the farm and it was very dilapidated all around it, and just the soil looked like the rest of the farm did 15 years ago. And John just at the right timing came in and scratched the surface and got some seed in there. And now it’s like, I mean, we got rain, a little rain, not tons of rain, but it looks like a green wonderland now there

John Chester:

One rain is, I would say, I don’t know the science on it, but it’s probably 10 times more effective than one irrigation set. The rain is capturing and bringing with it all kinds of microorganisms, including at times nitrogen, especially in an electrical storm. That would be enough energy to sort of break that inert bond that prevents nitrogen from being used to break it and now it’s in water coming to your soil among a bunch of other microbes that live in this sea of atmospheric soil above us. So timing it out with rain events will really make you feel a lot better about the expensive seed.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah. Okay, good. Yeah, great advice. Again, learning to work with nature. Right. Okay. Just quickly, just to revisit something that you said earlier, crystal had asked, please ask John what cover crop he used.

John Chester:

We used so many different types, but it’s essentially a mix of grasses and legumes. At first it was all perennials, but actually that’s not true. We started mixing, we did use annuals in the beginning. We got away from it. But now what we’ve realized is at certain times of the year, putting annuals in helps give that soil a little bit of a bump when maybe your perennial crops are kind of a little more sluggish. So again, legumes are things like vetch, clover pea, things like that that create, have this relationship with zoa bacteria that converts atmospheric nitrogen to essentially ammonia for the plant to be able to use, but then it shares it with the grasses once it dies. So I think, and vetch is great. I don’t know where this person is, but vetch is great. It’s just such a density on top and bulk density in the bottom that it just creates a tremendous amount of coverage and it’s very easy to trample. It’ll climb your crops, but you just go and knock it down and it won’t even try to go back up. But it’s great ground cover

Molly Chester:

And you’ll use daikon to break up

John Chester:

The soil. Oh yeah. Daikon, radish use that. Yeah, A lot of radishes actually, especially if you’ve got hard pan to

Anna Sakawsky:

Break up the soil because of the roots

John Chester:

Long tap up with these radishes that are like snub nose because the soil’s so compacted and that’ll tell you what you’re dealing with. So I can’t be specific, but we’ve used so many different types over the years. I would just say really be careful. Don’t use sheep’s fescue. That stuff gets so incredibly recommended and it is so invasive.

Anna Sakawsky:

Sorry, what’s that one?

John Chester:

Sheep’s fescue.

Anna Sakawsky:

Oh, I haven’t actually heard that. It’s blanket nothing,

John Chester:

And it actually stays alive when we turn the irrigation off. It lives longer, but it really does start to choke out orchard trees.

Molly Chester:

Yeah, it’s not worth it in an orchard for sure.

John Chester:

 And I had a recommendation against using it by one guy, and I didn’t listen to him

Molly Chester:

And we suckered that one,

John Chester:

But the seed salesman was like, keeps best cube. She love it. Well, they hate it, number one. They do not.

Molly Chester:

I put in the olives now we got in trouble too. Oh yeah. We’ve all had our moments. Yeah.

Anna Sakawsky:

Okay. So let’s go to, Colleen had a question about did you have legal counseling for how to set up the investor partnership? Can you discuss any of this?

John Chester:

Yeah, I mean, I can’t get into the super specifics about our partnership arrangement, but in general, I think there’s so many different ways to do this. It comes down to trust and there’s always going to be challenges in any partnership. That’s just the nature of human beings trying to do anything on this earth. So yeah, we got some legal counseling, but more importantly, we spent a lot of time, especially in the beginning, getting aligned around the expectations. And when you really ask people what their vision is and everybody’s sort of sharing, well, what is the vision? What does a metric of success look like for this partnership? What is the expectation in three years? What’s the expectation in five? You start to hear the truth, and we so often will turn our ears off and not actually admit to ourselves. We may have heard something that either is not possible to achieve or not convenient to the way we individually want to see it turn out. And I just can’t urge people enough to be really honest with what they’re hearing when they ask each other questions and they’re listening to those responses because there’s no amount of legal work in the world that’s going to prevent everything from going south when people are not arriving at the same conclusion based on what they thought were perceived accountable expectations.

But there’s different people. Some people own the land with the investor, sometimes it’s the investor owns the land and they’re partnered in the farming business of it. There are a lot of people out there that are very wealthy landowners that are looking for opportunities to have their farm farmed in a more regenerative way or biodynamic way. They realize that affects their land value and they don’t want a bunch of pesticides around their kids or their family, and they want to be in that kind of world. And so there’s chances for people who are willing, it’s a risk, but to find some sort of way to come up to an agreement where, hey, we give each other five or 10 or 20 year leases, which is challenging, but it comes down to relationships. You can find opportunities like that where people have the land and they may be willing to give a young farmer a chance.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, great advice. Okay, probably take one or two more questions, then we’ll wrap up running a little bit over. But again, it’s just there’s so much we could dive into. So okay, here’s one that I know you showed in the film a little bit, and then I know you guys just dealt with this recently. Again, Joe was asking, were you ever affected by any of the California fires? How do you, I know personally that you were, or to some degree maybe it wasn’t lapping at your door, but that is a very real threat in your area. It’s hard enough just as a homeowner or just a person to deal with that. I live in an area that we get wildfires and stuff, and that’s always a concern, but as a farmer, you get a lot more to think about. How do you deal with living in an area where that’s a constant threat?

John Chester:

Well, yes, every year I grew up in hurricane country back in Maryland, and you could see hurricanes and you hear about hurricanes coming for weeks in advance. These fires just pop up and the winds are 80 miles an hour. All the terror and horror stories you hear and see on the news that is kind of like the life that all of us in this area live through. And there are little fires that go unreported. You don’t see in the news that blow up on our farm or near our farm. We’ve been very fortunate. Let me say, this is what I’ve learned.

If you’re focusing on soil organic matter levels, you’re increasing the healthier soil. You’re increasing with every 1% increase in that organic matter per acre, you’re increasing water holding capacity anywhere from sciences all over the place, but 15 to 20,000 gallons of water can be now held in the top 12 inches of that soil. In our case, we’ve increased organic matter farm wide. On average four to 5% sounds small, but it’s massive. You now have almost 80 to 100,000 gallons of water for those plants to pull from plants burn when they have no more water pull from the ground and transpire. So I wouldn’t say we’re fireproof, but our orchards and our habitat areas have a greater degree of fire resistance to slow those fires down. The other opportunity is succulents around edges, especially around our home succulents full of water. Most of what burns these homes down and even crops down is the ember cast that’s showering across the ground that eventually gets blown up into the eve of a house.

It’s typically not just a giant wall of fire that does happen, but most of it is embers and ember cast. So you think about it from the perspective of where are the ember casts going to come? What is the fuel in the direction from which the wind is blowing that I need to be concerned about? But all the while the bank of water that you’re creating in soil health is creating at least a higher degree of humidity in your environment, which will change wind patterns will affect them. And in our case, it helped us recently with a fire fire for some reason stopped right at our property line. We always assume, oh, you guys are fireproof. And I’m like, no, it’s not that it’s not true, but I couldn’t believe it. And it stopped right at the line. And some of what we’ve thought is maybe because there’s so much more moisture in our environment, that wind pattern changed right there. And it just didn’t have the energy to come over. And when the embers were hitting the trees, there was soil in the soil, water in the soil for those plants to transpire and just hang in there a bit.

Anna Sakawsky :

That’s incredible. It’s stopped right at your property line basically.

John Chester:

Yeah. I don’t want to over celebrate it.

Anna Sakawsky:

No, of course. And yeah, you’re right. Nobody’s ever fireproof or whatever, but

John Chester:

Completely snowing everybody. If I was like, oh, it’s because it knew that we were doing things right. Fire trucks. One of them is a giant water truck. And then we invested in a wildland firetruck a few years ago and we’ve done a lot of work with the neighbors to help put out fires on their land and little fires that have started up during those incidents on ours. But it’s kind of terrifying. It’s really stressful. I used to love that stuff and I don’t like it as much anymore.

Molly Chester:

And it’s been absolutely devastating for the region. There’s nobody here that doesn’t know someone that fully lost a home just gone, and then there’s so much threat, and so the kids live through all that kind of threat. It’s a tough part.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, yeah. No kidding. I can imagine. Okay, we’ll do the last two here and then we’ll wrap up. So this one, Kate asked, have you integrated cats in as an option for mice that, and how did you introduce them to livestock guardian dogs? Do you have cats on your property? Yeah,

Molly Chester:

We have a lot of cats. So pretty much every structure has a cat. We just moved over to this new or this new to us place on the farm and there were tons of rats, like rats in the walls, rats. They weren’t in the house per se, but it was a big presence. So there’s a local organization that places feral cats, which kind of also are just cats that aren’t working out in any kind of home system that could be euthanized. So they’re going to get euthanized. That’s important to keep that. And so we integrated two of them into the area. We brought one cat with us, so there’s three in this area now and there they catch everything. Now you get rats or you get cats in, the rats will eventually move out. And actually this weekend we aren’t hearing them anymore. We don’t really see their presence that much anymore. But Sycamore was walking around with a wrap that

John Chester:

There is a strategy to it, but this is the thing you’re giving a chance to an animal that’s going to be euthanized. And the concern is coyotes, right? Because that’s a real threat. That’s usually what would eat a cat in our area. But these Wiley cities, these street cats, man, these things are looking over their shoulders so much.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, they’re not like domesticated, pampered house cats.

John Chester:

Couple of ’em. One of ’em is meaner than hell to us.

But that has been really helpful. And the other thing is, look, they eat a lot of burbs and they eat hummingbirds and things beneficials. So one of the strategies that I’m constantly trying to encourage the team to take on is don’t feed them at night, feed them in the morning twice, and that’s the same amount you would feed them twice, feed them the whole meal in the morning. They’re more satiated, they’re less driven for predation. I’m not saying they’re not going to predate, but when you’re hungry at that drive as your instinctual drive. So don’t feed the cats at night and they will be more alert. They won’t be sleeping in the wrong spot when a coyote comes up and they will hunt their butts off to feed themselves

Anna Sakawsky:

And they’ll hunt and the rats that are more active at night, whereas the birds are more active during the day when they’re full and Okay, cool. Have you had any issues with your dogs and the cats integrating them together? They sorted

John Chester:

Out the street. Cats sorted out. The dogs are scared of the cats. I was going to say, one of the things we do when we’re introducing a cat to a dog or any animal is that I show favoritism to the new animal while also showing favoritism to the animal. That’s been there a while, but I let the dog know this is my cat and this is not something we’re chasing. So I’m petting the cat and doing that in front and it doesn’t always work. But honestly, with our dogs, they were like, okay, that’s one I can’t chase

Anna Sakawsky:

Animals pick up on that. We have a couple cats and we have a bunch of baby chicks right now, and they will take birds out in the yard, but they know not to touch these ones. They see we’ve introduced them. Oh look, right, these are our new chicks. They know the difference. I say that I’m going to knock on wood there because next thing they’ll have a dead baby chick

John Chester:

Working. That’s the best you can do in all this stuff.

Molly Chester:

And the feral cat companies that do this, they’ll teach you to, and you just have to lock, you get ’em some sort of enclosure or we were putting one of them under the house, and so they need to be in there for a couple weeks and you’re just feeding ’em every day. Locked our one cat Sycamore, she would not come for nine days. I never saw her. I knew she was in there because I would go and feed her and the food would be there. But then eventually one day she came out and now she’s just the sweetest thing in the world. So it does feel good that you’re giving these cats that otherwise wouldn’t make it a life too. But there’s a system habit. Then we start letting them out, letting them in. And one of our cats, it easily comes. So we just kind of put her in every night out doing chores anyways. And then the other cat, he roams around all night long and he’s fine. He’s tough. Yeah. Knuck away. Yeah,

Anna Sakawsky:

Exactly. Exactly. Okay, last question, and I think this is a perfect note to end on. This is more of a kind of thinker, I guess, but sorry, Zena. Zena, I hope I’m saying that right, has asked what would you say is the biggest opportunity for biodynamic farms in general, I guess in the current landscape.

Molly Chester:

So my thought on that, I remember someone we work with, Mathias Baker, he said it’s something like the farm is he playground for the development of the soul or something like that. And I do think that in a very esoteric big picture space that biodynamic farms in particular, regenerative farms are beautiful in their own right. Biodynamic is a form of regenerative, but it also brings in the cosmos, which is a really wonderful element of

Habitat. Yeah. Very focused on habitat too, which is really beautiful. And when you do focus from an ecosystem perspective like what John’s been describing here the whole time, it really, the only thing that stands in the way of you and figuring it out is you. And you have to turn and work on yourself, work on your ability to communicate with others, work on your ability, anything that is a limiting factor to you, childhood trauma, whatever you have, you’ve got to develop and work through those things so that you can meet the land where it is because your land is a reflection of the development of you inside. And so it’s such an opportunity when we do work with nature in these different ways to develop our own individual consciousness. And if we’re all individually developing consciousness in these different ways, that’s what is elevating the entire world. So the choices are different. So that would be, but do you have

John Chester:

No, I would say, I don’t know if he meant from a business perspective. I don’t know how it could be.

Molly Chester:

Right.

Anna Sakawsky:

Anyhow.

John Chester:

Yeah, I would say, do you know how he may have meant that?

Anna Sakawsky:

I’m not sure, but did you want to maybe give voice to that perspective on things, a business perspective and what kind of a market opportunity there might

John Chester:

Be? Yeah, I think biodynamic farms, at least from a marketing perspective, from the fact that vineyards have been, there’s a lot of vineyards that are biodynamic. There’s at least a marker of excellence and expectation that flavor, depth of flavor and quality is there. So if you’re going down the biodynamic path and you become certified, which is an option, it’s hard. Or even practicing biodynamic principles, it’s going to lead you to, I think the greatest level of soil health that’s going to ultimately be reflected in the food. And then also sort of come alongside of what Molly was saying, it’s also going to give you the greatest connection to the very system that you’re farming. I think the encouragement of any philosophy or methodology that’s also valuing pretty, it’s valuing that beauty has value.It’s going to keep you there when you’re struggling and fighting with your wife.

It’s going to keep you there when all the things on the farm are going wrong because it’s such a beautiful thing. And you will fall in love as a human with beauty, and you will not want to let it go. You will want to protect it. And biodynamic farming in general calls great attention to the importance of making it beautiful. And that beauty has purpose and it pays the bills too, because those ecosystem services that nature provides are something that no one will able to account for other than yourself. So don’t look outside of your farm to try to understand it. The opportunity is for you to see it and value it for your farm.

Anna Sakawsky:

Wow. That’s what a beautiful way to end this conversation. So thank you so much to both of you guys for taking well over the time that we had thought we were going to go to. I had a feeling we were going to go over because like I say, you guys are both just such a wealth of knowledge and experience and have so much valuable insight, so many valuable insights to share. And I’m seeing that a lot in the comments. Just thank you for sharing everything that you did. I know there are more questions, unfortunately we can’t get to more today, but if you did enjoy this episode of the Coop, then make sure that you join us back here again next month and make sure that you are subscribed to Homestead Living Magazine. If you haven’t yet subscribed, make sure you hit the button below the video and you can subscribe and get the June issue. And John and Molly will be featured on the cover there. John, did you have something else you wanted to share, Zoe?

John Chester:

Total shameless self-promotion, but if you wanted to follow along on our journey, Instagram at The Biggest Little Farm also at Apricot Lane Farms on Instagram. But Molly and I do a lot of posting on both of those channels to keep people up to date. And I hope to see everyone at the Homestead

Anna Sakawsky:

Conference. Yes, I was going to say, John, Molly, are you going to be at the conference as well? I know John’s speaking. Molly and I will

Molly Chester:

Be there and we’re going to do the book signing, but I’ll just be a participant enjoying it with everybody else. But John will be,

John Chester:

I’m bring her up on the stage for the q and a part after the talk.

Molly Chester:

So she’ll be

John Chester:

There.

Molly Chester:
I’ll be there. Awesome. Just thank you to all these nice people that are running in. We see them and read them and we appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for the, it’s so great.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah. Awesome. And yeah, good note that if you are not, don’t yet have tickets to the Modern Home Staying Conference, that’s coming up at the end of June too. So John will be speaking there. John and Molly will both be there signing. You’ll be signing, I think, doing some signing at the Homestead Living Tent, won’t you and Molly, I don’t actually know if we will or you will, but I’m assuming there will be some copies of your cookbook there as well. Yeah, there’s my cookbook. We didn’t even get to mentioning that, but Molly also has a cookbook out. I’ll hang over

John & Molly Chester:

Her head like that.

Anna Sakawsky:

And we’re actually featuring some of the recipes from that cookbook in the June issue of Living as well. So a nice kind of way to tie all this together. So make sure that you are getting the magazine, you’re getting the cookbook, you’re coming to the conference,and you’re following John and Molly online and keeping up with all the amazing things they’re doing. And we didn’t even get to talk about, but you got a new series coming out as well. John’s maybe going to be showing a little bit of a preview at the conference. So lots of exciting things still happening for you guys. Thank you so much for being here and everybody who took time out of their day to be with us today and to learn from two incredible and inspiring people who are doing great things. So thanks very much, guys.

John Chester:

Thanks you so much. Bye. Thank you.

Anna Sakawsky:

We’ll see you back next month on the Coop. And John and Molly, we will see you next month, or I will at the Modern Home Sing Conference. So bye for now.

John & Molly Chester:

Take care.