Let Them Eat Grass

Leave No Trace (LNT) is a backcountry wilderness ethic preached in many of our national parks. It makes sense. Don't litter, respect wildlife, stay on the trail, etc. But it has blind spots. It encourages an ecological disconnectedness with actions in our daily lives. We might not litter in the park, what what happens to the plastic wrappers that covered our food when we bought it at the store? See? Trash has to go somewhere, too.

Conscious Impact Living (CIL) will hopefully be the replacement for LNT. I didn't create it, and I don't even think LNT is bad. LNT served its purpose for many decades. But we've learned a lot about the earth's climate in the half century since LNT was created, and we know more now than ever that everything is connected. CIL is a roadmap to sustainable living in both the city and the backcountry. I can't wait to show it to you!

Our penchant for global travel is destroying the very places we're trying to see. Whether it's going off trail for the perfect instagram picture, or it's more invisible like carbon dioxide melting around 90% of the world's glaciers, these fragile environments are breaking down right in front of our eyes.

Tourism isn't new. Even the Pharoahs of ancient Egypt visited monuments like the Great Sphinx built 1000 years previously. But we aren't going for these grand, month-long tours of different countries. Most tourists now are from the emerging middle class, and they only have time for a week. So ports of call in beautiful locales are swamped with picture-hungry tourists who only have a few hours to prove to their friends back home how much fun they're having.

At least 259 people died while trying to take a selfie last year. That statistic alone proves how messed up our social-media driven culture is.

We've heard a lot about the Amazon Rainforest in the news recently.

"The lungs of the world are burning!"

Well, first off, they really aren't the lungs of the world. And the amount of fires this year in the Brazilian Amazon is actually slightly BELOW the 20 year average for fires by this time of year. So why are we hearing about it now?

We're hearing about it because the media are famous for histrionics and over-simplification of complex ecological issues.

Having no oxygen might scare us, but it's not true. It might get our attention, but it's a lie.

What we need to worry about is having too much carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. It's not our lungs that should be the focus of the Amazon. It's the burning trees.

Sheep aren't complicated animals. They eat, sleep, and poop just like we do. But they are the most mentioned animal in the Bible. We are compared to them more than any one other animal. So, what can we learn about ourselves from sheep?

Sheep are vulnerable, wayward, and need a mentor.

After a year of observing our biological weed control (aka sheep) at work, I have a pretty good idea of what makes them tick. There is a certain nuance to sheep that only becines clear from being around them for months at a time. I checked online to see what other people said about sheep, and I could smell suburbia from across the internet!

Our culture is geared towards making us think we're invincible, self-reliant, and always on the right path. We'd all be better off if we watched some sheep... maybe we'd be reminded of our own humanity.

The average American ate around 5 pounds of lamb as late as the 1960's. Now the average American eats less than 1 pound of it.

Concurrently, there used to be herds of 40-50 million sheep in the US prior to WW2. In 2019, there were around 5 million.

Sheep are honestly my favorite animal on the farm. They love eating anything with deep taproots, which provides them with nutrients from deep soil sub-layers. This makes their bones incredibly good to boost your immune system in the form of a bone broth.

Listen more for why you should start eating more lamb!

This is too short for a description! Just listen to it!

Get ready for a faux-monologue featuring the central theme of HBO's Chernobyl: "What is the cost of lies?"

I can't stop thinking about this question, so I thought I'd pawn some of my existential fears off on you. Excpet instead of bemoaning the shortcomings of communism, I turn my attention to something more familiar. Namely, our food.

Once again, "Off the Record" is a more extemporaneous venture than my normal show. It will feature topics outside of the usual narrow categories of food, broken ecosystems, and a better way to live. Today's episode will be about food, but in a consciously theatrical manner.

If you can't deal with theatrics, you'd better turn it off.

Milk is our our first food.

It's sustained us since the beginning of time. The Lapplanders, Biblical Hebrews, Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Spanish, and early American colonists all drank it. It's probably been the least controversial thing on the planet for the past couple thousand years or so. When cows eat grass in a pastoral setting, they produce good milk.

But we've lost that logic somewhere along the way in modern America.

We lock our cows in 6x6 foot stalls and make them stand on concrete for the duration of their short lives. We feed them grain. And then we pretend to watch in horror as people get sickened by the milk.

Pasteurization was invented as a way to sterilize wine, but along the way it got applied to milk. Supposedly it makes milk safe. In fact, drinking a glass of pasteurized, homogenized milk is pretty dangerous. After researching for this episode, I refuse to drink another glass.

Update: I have updated this episode to reflect a more balanced take on conventional vs. raw milk

Last week I said I wouldn't make a new episode if my daughter was born. I had no idea it would be so fast! Well, she was born on July 18, 2019 at 10:42pm in Barnett, Missouri. She, in my ever so humble opinion, is absolutely perfect. Kelli labored for 23 hours, pushing for about 1.5 hours of that. My wife is nothing short of a superstar, and I'm so proud of her. The birth was pretty hairy. Kelli was losing a lot of blood and Tesni had secondary apnia--couldn't breathe right.

This week has been pretty crazy for us. Kelli has been getting used to only sleeping for 1.5 hour stretches and still finding time to take care of herself somewhere in-between nursing. Her mom and dad have been living out of our house to help with our transition into full time parenting. They've been taking the night shifts whenever Tesni is asleep.

But, like I ask in this episode, please email me at [email protected] to tell me what you're passionate about when it comes to real food, broken ecosystems, and a better way to live. Please!

Raw Milk is milk that hasn't been changed or adulterated in any way. It's been drunk by everyone from the Israelites of the Bible, to the Romans, to the Spanish Conquistadors, and finally, to us. But, somehow we've decided in the last 90 years or so that 4 millenia of milk drinkers had it wrong. Raw milk is actually super dangerous, or so the American medical and political establishment would have you believe.

Today's episode is the first of a 3 part series. Today I just wanted to cover the basics. I attempt to answer one main question:

Why is raw milk better for you?

Next week I'll be taking you through the history of the controversy... covering everything from time immemorial through about 1912. It's a tall order, but I think I can manage.

Check out my patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/user?u=18435655