Evidence of Progress

What’s on my mind?

Pride.

That isn't always an easy thing for me to feel.

Most days, I work my ass off and still feel like I'm moving at a snail's pace.

Too many projects. Too many promises and commitments. Not enough time.

I go to bed thinking about what I didn't finish and how I'm going to get it all done. Then, because my brain apparently believes the solution to having too many projects is coming up with another great project, my thoughts wander somewhere new.

There is always more work.

Last week was different.

Not because there was less work.

But because a few things happened that allowed me to see some of the work I've been doing for a long time actually come together.

The first happened at my new Iowa Worm Farm shop.

I've been building my first Johnson-Su-style bioreactor there. I've built one before with my dad, but this is the first one I've built on my own.

The goal is to create a highly fungal compost that I can eventually use as another biological input in the work I'm doing with soil and plants.

It's nowhere near finished compost yet.

But I stood there looking at this thing I had built and felt proud.

Another piece of the system.

A few days later, I was making foliar applications at a customer's home.

This is his first year working with me. As I walked the property, I started noticing mushrooms.

One species.

Then another.

Then another.

By the time I was done, I had found four different species growing in different parts of the lawn.

I smiled.

Mushrooms alone don't prove that I've transformed a lawn into some perfectly functioning fungal ecosystem. Nature is much more complicated than that.

But seeing fungal fruiting bodies appearing throughout a property where I've been intentionally trying to support soil biology?

I'll take that as an encouraging sign.

And then there was the cabbage.

This one probably meant the most.

I grew my first cabbage this year, and it had a terrible start.

The early leaves were almost completely eaten by insects. It looked bad enough that I seriously considered pulling the plant and moving on.

I didn't.

I kept working with it.

Each week I applied worm casting extract along with some of the other biological inputs I've been experimenting with.

Then something changed.

The cabbage started growing healthy new leaves.

And the insects stopped eating them.

Not fewer insects.

The damage stopped.

This is something I've spent a lot of time learning about through the work of entomologist Dr. Tom Dykstra.

His work has helped change the way I think about insects and plants. Instead of looking only at the insect as the problem, he looks at what the insect may be telling us about the health and physiology of the plant itself.

Different insects have different digestive capabilities. As a plant becomes healthier and changes physiologically, it can become a food source that a particular insect can no longer effectively use.

The goal isn't always to kill the insect.

Sometimes the goal is to grow a healthier plant.

I watched that happen in my own garden.

The cabbage I almost gave up on eventually grew into a beautiful, healthy head.

I harvested it last week.

Within 24 hours, I shredded it, added a small amount of purple Dragon carrot that I also grew, salted everything and packed it into a jar to make my first batch of sauerkraut from vegetables I grew myself.

Then I looked at the jar.

And felt proud.

That cabbage grew in soil that hasn't received synthetic fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides for four years.

I've spent those years adding organic matter, supporting biology, growing different plants, observing, experimenting and trying to create soft, aggregated, living soil.

Is that cabbage more nutrient dense because of everything I've done?

I believe it probably is.

Someday I'd like to test that.

But I already know something else.

I know how it was grown.

I know what went into the soil.

I know what didn't.

I know the plant struggled.

I know I didn't give up on it.

And now another community of microbes is fermenting it into sauerkraut.

Soil biology.

Plant biology.

Human food.

Fermentation.

Another circle.

Maybe that's why all three of these moments felt so satisfying.

I've spent the last couple of years learning about worms, compost, soil, fungi, plant physiology, fermentation, nutrition and regenerative agriculture.

At times, those probably look like a collection of unrelated projects.

Sometimes they feel that way to me too.

But I'm starting to see the connections.

I thought I was building a worm farm.

I'm beginning to understand that I'm building a system.

And I'm still very early in the journey.

There are unfinished projects everywhere. Things I've promised people that I still need to finish. Experiments I want to run. Equipment I want to build. Things I need to learn.

And approximately 4,000 ideas in my head that I absolutely do not have time for.

As I was thinking about all of this, I was reminded of a few pages from my favorite book, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy.

“We have such a long way to go,” sighed the boy.

“Yes, but look how far we’ve come,” said the horse.

I've read those pages a thousand times.

I've always loved them.

Today, I think I understand them a little differently.

Most nights, I'm the boy.

I see what isn't finished.

I see what still needs to be learned.

I see the next thing.

And the next thing after that.

I see how far there is to go.

Last week, for a minute, I got to be the horse.

I looked at a bioreactor I built.

I found mushrooms growing in a lawn where I've been working to support biology.

I looked at a jar of sauerkraut made from cabbage and carrots I grew in soil I've spent years trying to improve.

And instead of immediately thinking about what comes next, I stopped.

Look how far I've come.

I'm proud of that.

Tomorrow, I'll keep going.