This is a cattail heart,
and we are foraging essentially for our lives.
Today we are going to be trying to forage for our calories...
We cooking tonight, Mom!
create food without soil...
You're gonna help us grow things. We love you.
...and essentially learn how to become farmers.
It's too smart!
I really have to think about how to get protein.
Oh! There's a bit of sandy texture.
I can't believe we broke being vegetarian for this.
Mitch:
and it's not just our sexy good looks.
- It's climate change.
Greg:
we detail some of the biggest issues we're facing.
Mitch:
We know how to talk the talk, now we have to walk the walk,
and there's no time to waste.
We're gonna go to the farm.
Mitch:
and scientific knowhow out of the classroom
and into the country.
Greg:
Mitch:
Production has officially turned off our power.
I'm freaking out.
Allowing us to experiment with everything from new technology...
- You're literally going to use pee to power your phone? - Yes.
to traditional technology...
God, it's, like, the most satisfying thing I've ever seen in my life.
...to find solutions that promote sustainability.
Oh, my gosh.
Greg:
Mitch:
Yes! Power!
Mitch:
Mitch and Greg:
I've never lived on a farm. Have you?
No, are you kidding?
Everything about my personality is very on-grid,
so I am nervous about what we are about to do.
Hey, we're turning onto a side road!
Mitch: Oh, my God. I feel crazy.
We're here.
Ernie, let's go see. Come on.
Oh, my God. We're at the farm. Come on.
- Come on. - It's like we're at camp.
Yeah, that's exactly it.
Ooh, Ernie, it's your new home!
Greg: It's nice. It's cute.
- Is it too rustic? - Oh, an outdoor kitchen.
Oh, there is a spider in there.
This is what Mitch was scared of,
so it's gonna be a long time here at this little chalet.
Stop shaming me on camera.
I am afraid of bugs.
So for sure, every aspect of this experiment
is really just going to be suffering for me.
- Oh, my God. Our new house! - Oh! Our new house!
The accommodations are rustic, for sure.
I know there's a lot of work and fear and discomfort to come,
but for right now, I'm feeling excited. It's so quaint.
We are no longer little city boys.
We want all of our knowledge of sustainability
and going off-grid to relate to the climate crisis,
to relate to the bigger picture,
to relate to our life in a city.
Today our groceries are officially being shut off.
Greg: So that means we're not gonna have things
that we usually have in our trusty fridge in the cabin,
but we're being left with some staples over here,
some pasta, some oatmeal, some things that will make sure that we somehow survive.
We've been curious about where our food comes from, how it grows,
so we're gonna learn a lot about agriculture
and the climate crisis during this experiment.
I'm very nervous. I hate being hungry.
We need to figure out how we're going to be subsidizing our calories
with the environment around us, which is going to be very nerve-wracking,
so we need to think of a plan.
Let's talk about where the energy in our food comes from.
It all starts with the sun.
Green plants containing chlorophyll
absorb light energy from the sun,
and then, using water and carbon dioxide, create glucose
which the plant uses for energy to grow.
When you eat that plant or eat an animal
you consume calories that were once light energy from the sun
released through nuclear fusion 150 million kilometers away
that are now stored in chemical bonds in the fats, proteins, and carbs we eat.
Chemist Wilbur Atwater calculated their approximate caloric content
to be four calories per gram of protein and carbs and nine calories for fat.
These figures give us the caloric estimates we see on modern food packaging.
The average adult male eats around 2,500 calories per day,
but we've been tracking ourselves with an app,
and we only eat around 1,800 calories per day.
So we wanna get as many of those calories from alternative sources,
and I wanna share my idea first. Is that okay?
Yes, yours is always so cool.
So we have a classic fish tank,
and of course, in that fish tank, we got our little fishies.
Oh, my gosh! They're raving fish!
( dance music playing )
- Where the heck did you get these? - And these fish,
basically, we feed them and they poop out waste.
We're gonna use bacteria that grow on all these rocks at the bottom
to turn that waste into a usable energy source for our plants.
Wow, so it's like a little mini-farm.
Mitch:
we'll be able to grow fresh food without using any soil.
Oh, my God. You're so extra.
My demo for y'all is that I got a basket.
- Aww. Did you weave it? - I did not even weave it.
I found an indigenous chef named Shawn Adler
who is gonna help us forage from around our cabin
and teach us about the wild flowers that are there
and how we can prepare them and eat them,
and it's good to have a guide because you can die.
( bird cawing )
So this is Shawn Adler, who is our expert forager.
We are Canadians foraging for the first time
and think it's very important that we acknowledge
we're on indigenous land, specifically the treaty land
and territory of Mississaugas of the New Credit.
That's important for us to remember as we forage off of the land.
- Let's do it. - Shawn: I think this looks
- like a great place to start foraging. - Okay.
It's a nice mixed bush. We got some pasture.
This is like a supermarket over here basically.
- Oh, my gosh! - A supermarket. I can get into that.
- Ooh! - I don't know if I have the agility for this.
I was really trying to show off on that one.
This is prime. From here I can see watercress. Like, all of this.
Wait, so what's watercress?
Watercress is a great green. Try that.
- Just eat it? - Just eat it.
Yep, it'll be, like, a little bit bitter,
but amazing source of vitamins.
Mitch: That's so good.
Greg:
of fruits and veg for nutrient density,
packed with vitamin A, C, and K.
Ooh, wow. Oh, my Lord.
This is basically the best survival food anywhere around.
That's the paw end of a cattail.
At this time of year, what you really want is the heart.
Steam that, and it's delicious.
Mitch:
I'm getting hungry for the salad after all this walking. What's the next--
So the next one I think we should grab for our salad is jewelweed.
- Jewelweed? Okay. - It's right around here. Can you find it?
- This! - ♪ Da, da, da, da! ♪
Yes! Oh, my God! It's just the first thing that I saw
that I hadn't seen before!
Shawn: Yep, when you put water on it,
the little bit of water that actually does stick,
it looks like a jewel.
- Greg: Oh, my gosh. - It's a really cool plant.
Greg:
Its juice can treat poison ivy and athlete's foot.
Is there any sort of thought about over-foraging?
Should we be leaving behind something?
Yes, you don't want to pull the roots.
And watercress, like a lot of herbs,
when you pinch them, it encourages the outer growth.
Oh, so we're actually helping the bugs.
We're really actually promoting this to branch out.
- Ooh, purple. Pretty flowers here. - Greg: Yeah, what about that?
Yeah, I don't think this is a good idea. This here will make you dead.
- Greg: What? - This has a very apt name. This is deadly nightshade.
If we eat these berries, we would die?
It, like, shuts down your liver and all sorts of organs,
so this is not edible.
Okay, so this is very real what we are doing.
- Shawn: Very real. - Mitch: Yeah.
That's insane.
Greg:
but we are going to need more calories and protein.
Since we're on a working farm,
neither of those things are very far away.
So you're telling me that you want to work so you can eat?
Yes, we need eggs. We need eggs. We need protein.
- So that's called farming. - Oh!
- We're farmers! - You're like,
"You need to do something to get that."
So I actually have to move this chicken coop today
and the chickens in the coop.
So if I go get my tractor, can you guys just round up
all these chickens and get them in the coop?
- Like, we physically get them in there? - Yes.
So why are we moving this mobile chicken coop somewhere?
Why do we even have to do this?
I am gonna use these chickens to fertilize my soil
- and help scratch open the turf. - So this one's done?
- That's right. - Okay, so they're functional chickens.
Mitch: All right, so...
You should be done by the time I get back with my tractor.
- Okay, we'll see. - Good luck.
I know Mitch and Greg are both city boys,
so I foresee this being an interesting exercise.
- Here, chicken, chicken. - So we're gonna be gentle.
Greg: Oh, okay. They run.
Mitch: That seems not catchable.
It should not take more than 20 minutes.
( buzzer )
Okay, we've got this one. Oh, buddy.
Oh! I didn't even know they could do that.
Ow!
Mitch:
which are regularly moved to new patches of land.
This was does not want to be caught.
The chickens scratch and dig the soil when they forage for food,
which spreads and mixes our soil layers in a very nondestructive way.
It feels like a really just weird video game.
It's too smart!
One single chicken can till 4.5 square meters of soil in about four weeks,
at which point the soil should be ready for crop planting.
- Damn it. Ow! - I got one!
- ( gasps ) - It's okay.
- Mitch! - Okay.
I am gonna be calm to not stress it out.
- Okay, there you go. - Okay.
Aw, there's poo on my hand now.
There's literally poo on my hands.
All I have is poo on my hands, and I haven't even caught one chicken.
Chicken poop has the highest
nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium content
of all animal manure.
It adds organic matter and helpful bacteria
that soil needs to break down plant matter.
All this increases the health of the soil.
Aww, we just want to put you with your friends.
Got it.
- Another one! - Oh, my God.
It was devastating for me. I really felt like I was gonna be good at it.
We got one left.
Here comes Wolf with the tractor.
Greg: I got her!
Oh, my gosh. I'm so sorry.
I love you. Are you okay?
Now gently flip it over. It's calm, it's calm.
Okay. Oh, there you go.
- We did it. - Did you?
We just finished.
You just finished now?
Both: Yes.
I feel like you could probably do what we did in three minutes.
I think it's really great that Mitch and Greg are doing this.
I love the opportunity to bring hard science
to something that the average person
does not associate with hard science, which is agriculture.
Both: Oh!
- One dozen eggs as promised. - Thank you so much.
There's a little bit of poo on them,
- but that's normal. - There's poo on my hands.
Yeah, there's literally poo all over us.
How many farms are doing this
versus those large tilling processes?
It's increasingly popular.
Agriculture is bad for the planet, full stop.
It's not what the planet wants.
It's not what's healthiest for the soil.
Greg:
with a complex structure of plants, roots,
and microorganisms working together.
Tilling disrupts that system.
It breaks up the structure and makes it more vulnerable to being washed away.
It removes the live roots that are the microbes' food.
It opens up channels that can flood with water,
then prevents the microbes from getting enough air.
This not only damages the soil quality,
but also makes it release chemicals into the waterways
and carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.
The global population is expected to increase by almost two billion
in the next 30 years, and over a third of the world's farmable land
is currently being lost to pollution and erosion.
By the way, soil erosion is happening at a rate
100 times greater than soil formation.
It's clear we have a huge problem.
We have to think more about how we get our food.
I'm curious, as a farmer, what advice you have
thinking of climate change and the global crisis,
like, how we can shop and think about our food.
Happy animals make for a happy microecology,
make for happy soil, make for a happy environment.
We are actively helping to sink
some of the carbon in the atmosphere back into the soil
when we do that.
We will starve if we keep just taking everything we can
without putting some back, so it's as simple as that.
Well, Wolf, thank you so much. You've taught so much.
Greg: So much. You're the best.
- You're so cool. - The last question is
are we allowed to let our new best friends out of the coop now?
It would be weird if we didn't after that conversation.
- Look, you've got new land! - Hi.
And it's satisfying to move a chicken coop and then fertilize new soil
and feel like you're helping out with, like, the biosphere
and creating a carbon sink on this farm.
It feels good.
Mitch:
we're ready to get our system up and running.
While our build is small,
aquaponic systems have a huge global potential.
Because they rely on water instead of soil to grow crops,
they're an effective way of growing food
in areas of the world with little to no farmable land.
Time to fill her up!
Let's go over this aquaponics cycle just so I can get it in my brain.
Sure. We start over with three inputs into the fish tank.
That's water, oxygen, and fish feed.
Fish consume the feed, produce our magic nutrients.
The microbe families in our filters
help break down the fish waste to nitrates
and make it readily available for the plants to consume.
And the demineralized water goes back into the fish tank,
and it's one happy system.
A nice big cycle that just repeats over and over.
Over again, yes.
Mitch:
Without it, they can't grow, and they'll lose their green color.
Although they can't absorb nitrogen from the air,
their roots can suck up nitrate compounds.
We've got our air bubbles going through both tanks.
Everything's circulating in the system,
so we're gonna take our lettuce board,
place it on top,
and then tomorrow our fishies come,
then the whole thing is complete.
Greg:
into a tasty lunch of fried cattails and salad.
Okay, let's get started, chef.
We'll get our cattail hearts cooking.
Garlic mustard, I'll chop it up,
and then I'll get you to grind it in our mortar.
I'm good at smashing stuff.
So, yeah.
To all my high school bullies!
That looks great. I'm gonna make a vinaigrette.
Whoa! We cooking tonight, Mom!
What's going on here?
Oh, you're just in time for me to toss the salad!
- Mitch: Oh, my gosh. Okay, what's going on? - Greg: Is this cool?
So we've made a garlic mustard pesto,
fire-roasted cattail hearts, with our watercress and jewelweed salad.
It needs some color though.
Oh, my God! Okay, this is the thing!
Nasturtium out of a flowers!
Oh, perfect. That is great.
Mitch: You guys...
Greg: Now we can eat.
Oh, yeah. Mmm.
It is so fresh. It's so delicious.
I can't get over the cattails.
I've never really tasted anything like it.
Good job, you guys.
I did not expect to come down to a gourmet meal.
This is so good. Thank you so much.
You've honestly changed my perspective on a lot of things today.
And without you, I think we might've died by eating that nightshade.
- Thank you for saving our lives. - Deadly nightshade!
You're welcome. Good luck, guys.
Should we get a bowl for Ernie? It's just daddy and I.
So hungry, and it's gonna be dark soon.
We're just gonna simply have pasta and go to bed.
- Ooh! - Oh, my God.
That could've been it. That could've been it.
We want it al dente.
It might still be really hard. We'll see.
- Oh, very al dente. - Oh, yeah.
It's crunchy. Needs more time.
We're ready to add the fish to our system.
Although there are many species of fish used in aquaponics,
we're using tilapia because they're extremely hardy
and can survive a wide range of pH and temperatures.
This is so fun!
You're gonna help us grow things.
You're so great. We love you.
Mitch:
feeding one another, but a lot of the time,
we break that cycle and have to artificially supply those nutrients.
Here we're building a whole ecosystem
making use of what nature already does.
Our very first aquaponic system is built and complete.
Wow.
Now we just wait for our lettuce to grow.
If our system is working properly,
we should see significant growth within a few weeks,
and it will be ready to pick in 28 days.
Greg:
we are still hungry, and I think I know why.
It's time to check how close we are
to our daily goal of 1,800 calories.
So I'm calculating how many calories I have foraged,
and I'm nervous.
Now a calorie is the amount of energy
that it takes to increase one milliliter of water
by one degree Celsius.
That one is calorie with a lowercase "c."
But the food calories that we're all used to reading on packaging
is an uppercase "C" Calorie, which is 1,000 of these.
It's more energy.
Our foraged greens are a great source of vitamins and minerals,
but they aren't very calorie dense.
Foods that contain fats and protein
have a higher caloric density,
meaning you get a lot more calories
from a smaller portion of food.
Everything that is edible on this table
only adds up to 117.9 Calories.
That's not nearly enough Calories.
I definitely expended more energy getting this
than I will be from eating it.
So I really have to think about how to get protein.
Proteins are made up of amino acids
strung together in chains.
At its core, an amino acid molecule looks like this.
An amino group of nitrogen and two hydrogen
connected to a carboxyl group of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen
bonded to a side chain.
Mitch:
is what makes each amino acid different.
Here is a bunch, and you can think of them all as an alphabet of letters
that our body strings together to create proteins.
These proteins keep you alive,
so your body needs amino acids
to build the chains that make up your proteins.
Your body can make most amino acids,
but those it cannot are called essential amino acids,
and ultimately, you need to eat protein
with these essential amino acids in order to live.
If you do not, your body takes amino acids from your muscles,
and you don't want that.
That's why lots of gym bros always eat so much protein
so their muscles get bigger.
Since essential amino acids are vital for survival,
it's time to head back into the woods and forage for some protein.
Let's follow the birds!
Part of the challenge is the season.
A lot of a high calorie high protein foods
like nuts and seeds
are only available in the fall here in Ontario.
So this is an immature black walnut.
They're gonna grow about three or four times that size.
You can see the nut inside hasn't formed yet.
Greg:
but they were still too early to eat,
so I'll need to get creative.
Earthworms are 60 to 70% protein,
so they are the way that we are going to be getting protein from foraging,
and they have essential amino acids lysine and methionine.
They actually have more per gram essential amino acids
than meat and fish.
They also have vitamin B12 and omega-3 fatty acids.
They also have lots of calcium, more than even cheese, per gram.
Oh, oh! There she is.
This is hell. This is what, our tenth salad?
I don't know. We've had a lot of this salad.
There's hardly any protein in this.
So far I feel like we haven't got a whole system figured out
for how we actually feed ourselves.
You promise you're working on something for more sustenance,
- more protein, right? - Oh, you're gonna love it, Mitch.
- Just you wait. - Is it gonna be bad?
Sorry, I almost just threw up in my mouth.
- ( gasps ) - That's a little foreshadowing.
Okay, maybe I'll stick with the salad.
I hate it, I hate it, I hate it,
I hate it. I hate it.
Oh, I'm sorry!
Greg:
they must be boiled to move any bacteria
like E. coli from their digestive tract
before you can eat them.
We're gonna need a lot of sauce.
I was picturing, you know, like, a meaty red,
but we've ended up with a beigey blue-green.
Great. Okay, here we go.
Oh, there's a lot of dirt.
Oh, my God.
Never show this to Mitch. I'm not even kidding.
He's gonna murder me when he watches this.
No! It just squirted.
A little salt, oatmeal, eggs, and herbs
quickly transforms the mushy worms
into something seemingly palatable.
Have you ever been more appetized in your life?
It actually smells good. It actually smells good. I'm not just saying that.
I know I did almost just ralph all over the place about 20 times,
but that is a bit of a gorgeous meatball.
( retches ) Okay.
The whole experience of making the earthworm meatballs
is a blur to me of adrenaline and fear,
and I was just boiling earthworms alive, which made me feel bad.
But then I felt bad that I didn't care 'cause they were worms.
Mitch:
has been up and running for a bit now,
but we want to check in on the progress
to make sure it's working.
Ta-da! Our test is done.
We can see that the lettuce are starting to grow.
- There's no soil. That's so... - Yeah.
This is a great sort of small scale diorama,
but could a fish farm do this?
100%. Some of them are already starting to do it.
So you have the fish making the nutrients,
and instead of dealing with that waste
or dumping it into lakes and oceans,
you can actually use it to create more food.
This is a great alternative for places that are in food deserts,
that don't have the ability with rich soil to grow agriculture in the same way.
Do we want to do a little taste test?
- Yeah, for sure. - Okay.
- Cheers. - Cheers.
I was a little concerned that it might taste like fish.
And it doesn't at all. It tastes--
Oh, my God! Imagine. "Tilapia!"
Mitch: That tastes really good.
Both: It tastes like lettuce.
Mitch:
and although the lettuce hasn't grown enough for us to eat,
we're leaving this system on the farm
where they can use it to grow crops in the future.
Greg: Lots of oil,
something we're gonna hope is gonna help.
Oh, the sizzle! Ooh!
I never planned to eat earthworms.
As a vegetarian,
I have ample amounts of peanuts on my hands
to get proteins, some quinoa.
It's looking like a meatball. It's exciting.
It just looks like there's a little bit of, like,
intestines and plastic tubes spilling out of one of them.
But other than that, it looks pretty good.
Hola, Mitch! Welcome to my Italian restaurant.
Have a seat-a!
It's beautiful. It's very cute.
I'm just like, "Where are they?"
Mitch's going to have to eat this
'cause it's on camera,
but I am very much worried for him.
I think he might hate it. I think I might hate it.
I am nervous.
This whole meal, 198 Calories have been foraged.
So it's the most Calories we've got thanks to these earthworms meatballs.
That's actually a lot for one meal.
Here you go. Enjoy.
Oh, my God. Like, it actually doesn't look that bad,
but I just actually feel so sick right now.
There's a lot of pressure for me to eat this thing
'cause I did make them myself.
I'm just hoping that we don't get sick.
I'm hoping that we aren't eating what's inside the worms,
which could be feces, E. coli.
You name the protozoa, it could be there.
Okay, I'm gonna get some sauce.
Cheers. Okay, I'm going in.
( groans )
It's not that bad actually.
I don't mind it. I don't mind it.
Have a little pasta as a palate cleanser.
I really don't like when you can kinda sort of see
the intestinal looking parts of the worm.
Wait, where's that?
Don't look close, bud. Keep eating!
- What did you season it with? - Herbs.
- Salt, pepper, and oil. - ( groans )
So is this a romantic meal?
( burps )
This experience made me realize
we obviously rely on the current systems
to get our food, like grocery stores,
but I wanna figure out how we can work together
to make these systems less damaging.
So, I'm thinking about community gardens,
I'm thinking about access to green space,
parks, places where we feel where we feel happy
and also can maybe forage.
Mitch:
has a huge impact on the environment.
Are recent study found that just 20 meat and dairy companies
emit more greenhouse gases than Germany, Britain, or France,
and they receive billions of dollars in funding to do so.
But while corporations are disproportionately responsible for global emissions,
our individual choices in what we choose to eat can make a difference.
When you know where your food comes from,
when you understand its impact on the environment,
it can actually change your behavior.
And maybe there's a company out there that can figure out
how to make earthworms taste good.
No.
There's a bit of sandy texture, a bit of dirt.
- It actually doesn't taste bad... - It doesn't taste bad.
...but every single time I'm aware that it's a worm,
then it freaks me out.
And I'm sure the spaghetti aspect doesn't help that.
Yeah, that's true. Why did we have to have spaghetti with the earthworms?
- Just a lot of wormy vibes. - It just looks more--
Oh. What would pair well with an earthworm?
Ooh, an earthy mezcal,
or coffee to cleanse the palate or something.
Considering this just came from the ground near our cabin, it's pretty amazing.
And it's high Caloric intake.
Honestly, the apocalypse is coming.
You're all gonna have to eat this soon anyway,
so who's laughing now?