I got into farming just because it tasted so much better. Like the carrots
that we get at the grocery store are basically just kind of orange liquidy
things with no flavor, but a carrot pulled out of the ground is bursting
with flavor. I wonder what else tastes like that and it's everything. Everything
takes that much better.
My name's Justin Cutter. My program is called Compass Green.
This is inside my mobile greenhouse where I drive a miniature sustainable
farm to at-risk youth around the United States.
I got this truck in 2011. I'd been traveling in colleges teaching
bio-intensive sustainable farming. My buddy that I grew up with, a friend of ours
had bought a box truck old potato chip delivery truck and turned it into a
mobile art gallery and then her project kinda ended and the truck was just sort
of rotting away on Long Island. My buddy saw a picture with the windows that
they'd installed and thought it looked like a greenhouse, knew I was into
farming and gave me a call. It just clicked. This is what we should do for
education. So that was in 2011, had an insane Kickstarter campaign. We were able
to raise $27,000 which is what we needed to purchase the truck and build out the
greenhouse and switch over so it can run on waste veggie oil. We raised the money
had a crazy month of building staying up till like 2:00 in the morning and then
we drove up to our friend's farm in Vermont. We planted our starts while the
truck was still just bare bones nothing so by the time we got to Vermont we
had these little tiny seedlings all ready to go. We got a bunch of really
good soil from this epic farmer named Carl the Hammer. Carl Hammer's his name but
we called him Carl the Hammer. He donated all this awesome compost and then we
planted our plants in and two week later we taught at our first school. That was
43,000 students ago.
This is Angie. She is a GM CW 4500 box truck who has been turned into a mobile
greenhouse. Funny thing about the GMC part basically just a logo. This is an
Isuzu truck with an Isuzu engine inside it. I converted the turbo diesel to be
able to run off of waste vegetable oil. Any diesel engine that was made I think
before 2006 is able to run off of waste vegetable oil. In fact, people say that the
first car was made to run off of peanut oil so this is nothing new.
All you have to do is heat the oil and filter it. Here's the hose that I
stick in the vat of fryer oil behind the restaurant if they give me permission
and if it's legal in that state. This blocks out any major particles of food
like french fries or tempura or whatever. I put a handle on here, pump the oil into
this tank, passes through another filter in there that filters the oil a lot more
finely and then the next thing is those two red hoses over here and so it
carries the hot radiator fluid after it passes through the engine into a proper
coil heats up the oil in here so it's not viscous and then it's ready to go to
the engine, the engine is ready to run off of it. Moving back from the
tilt cab in the front. This truck, which was a originally a potato chip delivery
truck, is now a greenhouse.
The type of agriculture that I teach is called Biointensive
Sustainable Agriculture developed by John Jevons and there's a
few different features. One of them is close plant spacing so you aren't
planting in rows because rows waste space. They're not natural. If it was the
best way to grow you'd see forests just have naturally evolved into rows. Instead
you want plants to reach out and touch each other and create a microclimate and
canopy protecting the soil so if you see over here I've placed my spinach like
one here, one there, and then one in between and one in between, etc., etc. so
that when the spinach grows up, the leaves are going to reach out and
protect each other in a way similar to how my chard, which
is a lot older, is doing right now. So the sunlight comes through the windows, hits
the leaf, the chard, which can make use of it turns it into energy and at the same
time it protects the soil and stops the soil from drying out. Also this
microclimate holds in humidity which which causes the plants to grow faster.
It's just a much better more natural system. Basically if you don't have a
tractor you have no reason to have rows in your garden. The soil that I have in
here is a high percentage composted material which makes it really really
lightweight, very nutritious. Also it stores a lot of water in the ground. So
for watering I'm doing something a little bit different. At least it's
different here. They've been using these things called Ollas in Mexico for about
400 years. There's records of them being used in China for over 2,000 years. All
it is is just a clay vessel, clay pot, but the ones I have in here are a little bit bigger
but it's porous so you put it in the ground, fill it with water, the roots
travel underground, wrap around it, and suck the water right through the walls
so whenever the plants are thirsty which some plants are thirstier than others
just like humans they get to maunder their own water intake where as with any
other irrigation system you have to pretty much give them all the same
amount of water and that means too much for some and too little for others and
it definitely means water wasted. This I put a lid on it and not a single drop
gets lost to evaporation. Every single drop goes directly to the plants
also it means for me that I can go ahead and leave my truck somewhere and go on a
five-day backpacking trip or go out of town for a week because I fill it up and
the plants can take care of themselves with that water for between 4 and 11
days depending on how hot it is. There's a whole lot of other things that are
appropriate in here such as planting plants together that would actually
support each other. The spinach that I have spaced all over here in close plant
spacing can actually benefit by being near the oregano plant which has overall
beneficial on the plants around it. The kale I have growing over there can make
use of the mint that I have nearby that helps it to resist certain insects and
diseases, stuff like that. In my garden I've planted a bunch of things that I
like to eat. In your garden, you should plant the
things you like to eat. Something I love is chard. My chard is booming. It's been
going strong for over six months now. I've recently planted a lot more spring
things like herbs like my basil over here or my mint or my oregano. I've got
bok choy coming up right there. I've got some red Russian kale which is going to
grow about this tall. It's amazing, it can keep going for ages and ages. This huge
plant that's all up in my face here is Inca berry. It's a superfood from South
America. Check these little like Chinese lantern like pods that are growing and
open it up and you've got a nice delicious berry that is loaded with vitamin C so
when I'm traveling to schools and slapping high fives with you know tons
of germy teenagers I go ahead and eat some of this and it keeps me nice and
healthy. Scattered in and amongst my Inca berries you can see these
little yellow flowers here. This is my cherry tomato plant, you can see some cherry
tomatoes have started growing. I really want to make use of every bit of growing
space that I have available because I want to get the most food sustainably as
possible out of my garden because every bit of food that I get out of here is
some food that I don't need to buy. So this air space in here
this is usable growing space. I plant a viney plant like a tomato that's going
to send its vines all over here. This tomato plant, as it grows, will send its
vines all through here and I'm really making use of every bit of growing space
available, even the airspace in here. One thing that is super easy, these guys.
These are called garden huckleberries. Looks a lot like deadly nightshade which
sometimes I get a PTA member who's coming to the visit who will be like, "are you
bringing deadly nightshade around to my little students?" I'm like, "nope, this stuff
is all good to eat." I could drop a berry on the ground, you'll get three
plants you know in a couple of months. Grows so well. It's worthwhile mentioning
some of the growing techniques of Biointensive Sustainable Agriculture. One
feature is deep soil preparation. If I was outside in my backyard that would
mean I would be loosening up the soil with a digging fork 24
inches deep. In my garden it just means I have nice deep garden beds so that when
I'm driving, for one thing, the plants don't fall over but for another thing
the roots really have a lot of room to spread out and absorb more nutrients.
Another really important feature is my compost pile. If you see here
nature's trying to compost already. These leaves that I haven't eaten are dying on
the ground. Over the course of time they'll eventually be chewed up by worms
and turned back into soil so the nutrients locked in this leaf will become
available for future generations of chard. Humans can go ahead and interact
with nature by doing it in a compact format so I take this dead leaf and I
put it in my pile. In about three months this breaks down and turns into healthy
life giving nutrient-rich soil, which I can put back into my garden to keep
growing more plants so no garden even if it's in the back of a truck would be
complete without a compost pile. This is from my rainwater catchment system. If
you look at the pipe it will go up to a gutter I built on the back of the roof.
Go ahead and use this to fill up my watering can and then for my little tiny
plants that are, still have short roots, I go ahead and just top water them like
this and then for my bigger plants whose roots are already to the ollas then I
use this to fill up the ollas. So I do have some problems with bugs because this is
a real farm, but these bugs are telling me that my soil needs a little bit of
work or, in this case, these bugs are telling me that I need more air
circulation, but bugs are nature's way of correcting a problem. They're trying to
destroy my plant, break it down, so that I'll turn back into soil and then it'll
make more healthy soil for the future. When farmers go on and they just spray
pesticides to kill the bugs 1. they're putting poison on our food which is
obviously dumb but 2. they are not listening to nature trying to speak to
them and say, "hey look, you've got a problem in the soil" or "you've got a
problem with air circulation there, you should deal with it. We're sending you a
message." This leaf right here, this is sow thistle. It's in the dandelion family.
This is a weed. I have this in here on purpose though to demonstrate to people
that there are a lot of edible weeds. Some of them are really nutritious and
it's okay to go ahead and pull out your weeds and put them on your compost pile
or get rid of them in another way, but it's nice to broaden our mind of like
what actually is a weed. This is something that is actually quite tasty and
really good for me.
One step that I would recommend to people that they could make today is to
talk to friends and look up where their local farmers market is and then go
there to get some of their food. Another thing that's really really easy, think of
something that you really like to eat. You know, any kind of vegetable or herb
and plant some. Whether it's in your windowsill or your backyard whatever you
have. There's something special about growing food because you're having this
communion with the earth. The plant is absorbing nutrients from the soil. That
plant is turning the Sun into energy that you can then eat and get that energy in
your body and you're interacting with the ocean because this plant uses water
that has evaporated off the ocean. It's as simple as just growing food because
it tastes better, but there is a sense of that when you when you do start doing it
you start to realize the connection that you're having and so it's a very natural
process. You know, what you eat you become and you're eating the earth, the Sun, and
the oceans you know just in this little spinach over here.