Creating An Abundant Homestead With Sonia Gomez

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[00:01:26] Gomez from Abundance Acres. Abundant Acres. And yeah, we're gonna talk about how to turn your property into an abundant

[00:01:32] garden, an abundant food resource. I don't know.

[00:01:39] Sonia, I appreciate you being a good place to start. When I purchase a property, where can I go wrong? What things should I be thinking about if I want to be sustainable? What kind of things might come in the future? Because I know you've mentioned on your show that it's important to like think more long term where you don't build things and then you're in the way

[00:03:03] and want to move things and change things around. How do you lay it all out?

[00:04:17] Not yet purchase a property you know the things you really want to be looking for is water soil health and your ability to access necessary or what's in abundance there, so you can start to course correct with your land from the very beginning. And then finally, you know, this is going to sound a little bit cliche, but you really have to think about your intention.

[00:05:40] Now, some preppers are satisfied buying from third-party resources who are doing all of

[00:05:45] the heavy lifting for you construction workers out there, you're going to know, like, Chuck, you're not going to go and fix the plumbing system unless you have a clear roadmap of where the pipes are, where the water lines are, where everything is. Everything starts with your map and with your plan and understanding what you need and what you want to thrive

[00:07:05] and survive on your property. Does that make sense? the little town of 250 people that's my town if I go to, they're not allowed to have chickens, they're not allowed to have cows. And I'm like, you know, it's insanity. It's one of the guys just sold a horse farm. And it was like 30 acres. And the guy wanted to do cows there. And they're like,

[00:08:20] Oh, no, it's in town, you can't do it. And I'm like, the guy's got 30 acres, and you're not letting them.

[00:09:23] because the government wants to see, quote-unquote, sustainability being built into their land

[00:09:26] and regenerative systems is the new buzzword

[00:09:29] to appease all of the environmentalists.

[00:09:33] However, it gives us property owners quite a bit of leeway

[00:09:37] if we can, quote-unquote, showcase

[00:09:40] or implement agricultural systems

[00:09:42] for the purpose of education or showcase.

[00:09:45] Those things allow us quite a bit of leeway. testing was very limited. Totally limited. Do you have a good place that you recommend to get your soil? Yeah, we do all of the soil testing. I mean, not to give us a plug, but we've partnered with some of the world's leading PhDs in soil science. Elaine Ingham's team with the food soil web is one

[00:11:00] of the resources that we use. We also work with your soil and your water. Gotcha. We, so same thing, like definitely when we got here we, you know, tested the soil and where we house without a blueprint. You're not going to start cutting into plumbing without, you know, a roadmap of what's going on with the existing pipes there. You're not going to build a skyscraper if you don't have a solid foundation. These principles

[00:13:41] apply to your property as well., what we are going to manage.

[00:15:01] You know, I think that's, that's what happens.

[00:15:03] You see, two things are going on right now with this phenomenon.

[00:16:02] thousand goats and

[00:16:07] You're gonna pile everything on at the same time, but you start to look around and realize holy cow

[00:16:11] It's quite a bit to take care of goats. It's quite a bit to take care of chickens

[00:16:15] Holy shit. I wish I would have put my garden over here. Gosh I didn't think I was gonna have to work that hard in the winter when my pipes freeze, you know

[00:16:19] Like all of these different considerations that had you done careful planning in the beginning

[00:16:24] You would not be wishing you were going you know that you have to go back and fix something

[00:17:25] I mean, that's the thing. So I guess the next thing, you know, I wanted to kind of address why I had you because I hate to let all this valuable information go, you know, it's like

[00:17:29] I get you here and I'm like, Oh, I got to ask all these things. But so, all right, when

[00:17:34] you get the soil, and there are things that I mean, are there some standards that everybody

[00:17:41] kind of has to deal with with soil? Like, how do we, you know encourage your kids to eat the dirt. Well why? Because there's microbes and biology existing in that soil structure that can help combat many of the illnesses or viruses and bacterias that are existing inside of you know our own internal ecosystem. So if you think about the bugs and the biology being present in the soil,

[00:19:02] the more prolific that that is all they're. It's funny, we're just noticing Casey and Keisha Ernst, for instance, who are one of the leading consultants for biocomplete compost and the food soil web. And they talked to me a lot about microbe taxis, all of these bugs and beetles and even mosquitoes. They told me the mosquitoes are the number one pollinator, even above bees.

[00:21:43] And so we just don't know what we don't know about how mother nature works. material, there's a whole formula that goes into based off of your percentage of sand in your soil. There's a whole formula of how you can start to add the necessary components that you need in order to build healthy, vibrant soil. If you're in a real wetlands, there's lots of or real drylands, there's lots of ways to use hoogal Well, knowing, you know, what's your take on pasta? Like, do you like your noodles cut or not? Oh, so here's the thing. Here's my thought. Like you have to, when I have a field

[00:24:22] that's full of grass or whatever, you know, day one,

[00:24:25] I walk up to it, you know cutting into the root system, you're disrupting the life and biology in your soil. So is it necessary? Can you do it minimally? Again, really, it takes costs, time, and money to run a tractor. You have to consider what your resources are and what is your end in

[00:25:41] mind. If you're going to run cattle through there, you may want to do that first before, so she has a really high quality hay crop. She's gonna burn the entire field and disc up around the edges because she wants to plant something new. Now that's a complete shift from where she was at the beginning of the year before she started working with us where she was gonna till the entire field. Imagine the amount of gas and man hours

[00:27:01] to operate the tractor and the rental on the tractor

[00:27:04] to disc up a 40 acre field Micro-horizontal? I don't even know how to say it. You know what this is? I do. Micro-horizontal, yeah, I do. Christopher, great question. And I would say with a liquid amendment, although I would not really want to answer this question

[00:28:21] without understanding what's currently existing in your soil,

[00:28:26] somebody else asked the best place to get soil analysis. create biocomplete fertilizers that you can put into liquid form and apply on your garden a lot easier than you can with dry composting. Now, that was on my wife's list of questions, was Korean natural farming. What are your thoughts? You obviously sound like you're on board with some of their stuff anyways. Yeah, we had the... Actually, that's one of the areas that my husband is most well-versed in.

[00:30:52] And we had to figure out a way to create a higher quality product, a truly medicinal grade product line that was, you know, that could really help people but also give you a nice feeling as well.

[00:31:02] You know, we had to figure out how to be more cost effective in our production. And cut the cost of production, you know, down to a third. We've increased the medicinal properties, like you can scientifically prove that our terpenes, our flavonoids, our cannabinoids are all richer, more vibrant, more flavorful,

[00:32:21] and the experience is a lot cleaner. And so we accomplished all of our goals with Korean accelerated way to build microbiology into the soil to feed the microbes and to break down organic materials. So it becomes bioavailable to your garden. So there's a hundred ways to skin a cat. Our soil company, which is called Soil Sensei, you can check us out at Soilsensei.com, focuses on living soil systems.

[00:33:43] So that means we're gonna eliminate

[00:34:45] results. Does that make sense? No, I love it. Yeah, Korean natural farming, by the way, Chuck, is like, it's so romantic. It's like, it's very different. Korean natural farming starts,

[00:34:52] just picture this, guys. Waking up in the morning when the dew is on the on the leaves,

[00:34:58] and you take your little box of rice out into the soil and I'm always scared of that too. You know, what's out there. But no, after listening to you, I feel like I have about eight acres of woods that, more time but gives you long-term a way better result. And you're actually gonna be revitalizing your land, which at the end of the day, Chuck is gonna increase your equity in your property.

[00:37:40] Like let's say that nothing crazy is happening

[00:37:42] and you've taken this kind of soiled tobacco farm

[00:37:46] and you've little by that are used in industrial farming. That's what's so fascinating about it is that mother nature wins because they say, oh, I'm a fungi and this is a chemical. It's like, oh, I see you and you're not supposed to be here. I'm gonna encapsulate you. They saw this whole scientific study happen at Chernobyl where after, you know, after the nuclear

[00:39:03] contamination, they went in and they classes coming up and things like that, and you have, uh, you have other stuff you offer.

[00:40:23] Like if, if, uh, this all sounds really overwhelming and we just want help,

[00:41:22] and we meet with your family to hear, you know, what are your dreams?

[00:41:24] What do you love?

[00:41:25] You know, what kind of animals do you like?

[00:41:26] What kind of animals do you want to eat?

[00:41:28] What kind of food do you like to eat?

[00:41:30] And we create the entire roadmap and design for your land

[00:41:35] so that you can easily implement at your own pace.

[00:41:39] The second thing that we do is work with developers

[00:41:42] who want to incorporate, you know, these gardens

[00:41:45] into their developments and. Is that the whole list of questions from your wife? There is a big list. So yeah, that's how it goes sometimes. She's like, how do we change our farm? What do we do? And I just did about it bore everybody with shenanigans. Well, here we can

[00:43:04] hit maybe people get some extra value quick only take a minute.

[00:44:06] Yeah, absolutely. So if you have a sore, you know, you can get milk and essentially bakashi is

[00:44:09] either in liquid or

[00:44:14] Dry form if it's in a liquid form, it's lactobacillus It's like probiotics for your garden and essentially what it does is it allows you to break down your food waste faster

[00:44:20] So it becomes bioavailable faster

[00:44:24] essentially accelerating the composting or decomposition process

[00:45:25] fertilizer, you can take and bury the food waste into your garden beds, and it becomes food for the worms and microbes. It's awesome. As a matter of fact, no matter what your method

[00:45:33] of composting is right now, incorporating bakashi is, I think, one of my number one

[00:45:40] recommendations for sure.

[00:45:42] All right. Take the win. So now I appreciate practices. And she just so happens to be a god-loving, government-fearing person, you know, and so she wants to do everything she can to protect and provide for her family. And as a part of that, we've been helping her design her family compound. We created her entire food system on her property

[00:47:02] and we're building in multiple streams of income on her land. And as a come up when you offer classes, I mean, at least throw them on the website or on the Facebook and stuff like that. And hopefully if, you know, I'll share them on the podcast as you have new things you offer, but I'll put as many links as I can get from you and phone numbers as you want in the show notes.

[00:48:20] And so everybody can dig deeper in all this and get in touch with you if that's, you know,

[00:48:25] where we want to go.

[00:48:26] And I'm sure people have questions. You'd think, with four of us spread out on a tiny island, that the task of tagging a

[00:49:41] white tail would not be a big thing.