Share on social media:

Episode 1160 of Bitcoin And . . . is LIVE!

Topics for today:

• Microbes cycle nutrients and persist.
• Subsoil injection reaches deep layers.
• Foliar spray coats every leaf.
• Endophytes live inside plant tissue.
• Carbon credits create extra revenue.

Circle P:

SoapMiner
 Product: Tallow Soap
 Website: https://soapminer.com/
nostr Profile: https://nostrudel.ninja/#/u/npub1zzmxvr9sw49lhzfx236aweurt8h5tmzjw7x3gfsazlgd8j64ql0sexw5wy
Twitter Profile: https://x.com/soapminer1
Discount code: Use "BITCOINAND" in the Cart's Coupon Code box for 10% off total purchase

Get You're Free Comfrey Owner's Manual Here:
https://www.bitcoinandshow.com/the-comfrey-owners-manual-is-here/

Find the Bitcoin And Podcast on every podcast app here:
https://episodes.fm/1438789088

Find me on nostr
npub1vwymuey3u7mf860ndrkw3r7dz30s0srg6tqmhtjzg7umtm6rn5eq2qzugd (npub)
6389be6491e7b693e9f368ece88fcd145f07c068d2c1bbae4247b9b5ef439d32 (Hex)

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/DavidB84567

StackerNews:
stacker.news/NunyaBidness

Podcasting 2.0:
fountain.fm/show/eK5XaSb3UaLRavU3lYrI

Apple Podcasts:
tinyurl.com/unm35bjh

Mastodon:
https://noauthority.social/@NunyaBidness

Support Bitcoin And . . . on Patreon:
patreon.com/BitcoinAndPodcast

Find Lightning Network Channel partners here:
https://t.me/+bj-7w_ePsANlOGEx (Nodestrich)
https://t.me/plebnet (Plebnet)

Music by:
Flutey Funk Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

[00:00:02] David Bennett:

It is 10:20AM   Pacific Daylight Time. It's the September   2025.   This is episode ten sixty   of Bitcoin, and   it's Cathedral   five.   We're doing Cathedral   part five today. We're not going to be talking about Bitcoin, although it will be mentioned,   but this is going to be part of the ongoing series that I'm calling Cathedral   that describes   an immense   thousand year, thousand acre   silvopasture   farm, for lack of a better term.   If you have not listened   to any of the other cathedral   parts, then this is really not going to make a lot of sense to you. It can stand alone because we are going to be talking about biology today. We're going to be talking about   specifically,   microbiology   in the soil   and   on the plants and shrubs and trees and grass and forbs and legumes and all the other little   plants that are going on. But we're gonna so we're gonna be talking about microbiology   above the soil   and microbiology   below the soil.  

Specifically though,   to get even more specific,   we're gonna be talking about biology that we add to the soil. I know we've already talked about how cows,   you know, and ruminants and all these other little critters that they're definitely adding to the microbiological   component of the soil,   but this is going to take it one step further. This   is part   of the infrastructure   of Cathedral. So, again, if you haven't,   I highly recommend   that you go back   and listen to the rest of the Cathedral series starting with   Cathedral one,   a thousand acre years.  

That's the that's the name of it. That's where it starts. And then Cathedral two builds on it, three, and then four, and then now now we're at five.   And this is the outline that I have for you guys today   is pretty immense.   It's probably gonna take longer than an hour to do. I'm not going to split this episode up. I'm just I'm just not. I want all of these together. I don't want a part five   a and a part five b. So   let's go ahead and start treading that water. But first, I think it's important   that we talk about the Circle P.   My Circle P vendor of the day is SoapMiner.  

You can find the best soap. Not good soap,   not high quality soap,   not not not that it's, you know, it's handmade, but not handmade soap. I'm talking about the best soap   I've   ever   used. I've been alive for longer than,   well, you know, a good, you know, getting on a handful of decades here. I know soap. I've been using soap since I was a kid. I've never found soap like this before.   This soap is the best soap in the business. Soapminer.com.   Soapminer,   as in mining soap out of the ground.   Soapminer.com   has the very best   handmade   100%   beef tallow soap. It is amazing. It these bars, if you take care of them, these bars of soap last forever.  

Make sure that they don't sit in water.   Right? That's the best way that you can destroy a good bar of soap really quickly.   You wanna make sure that it is not sitting in a pool of water. And that goes for all soap, really. But this soap,   this is special soap. And he only takes Bitcoin for it. So if you wanna buy this soap, you're gonna go to soapmiter.com.   You're gonna use   the coupon code bitcoin and   in the coupon code spot that he allows for and you're gonna get 10% off your purchase bro.   Buy the best soap in the business from soapminer.com.   That's soapminer.com.  

It'll get you nice and clean.   Alright.   Let's start off   doing this.   Okay. Here we are.   Coming into Cathedral   5   and I want to make sure that everybody understands   that   we're talking about brewing biology today.   We're literally going to brew   biology   And we're going to apply it, and we're going to talk about   what's going on with it. Why are we doing it? Why do we care?   So we're shifting in focus from the earlier episodes of cathedral   where we were really talking about geometry   and flow.   The way that the   tree lanes are built and the grazing lanes in between and the perimeter trees and the flow of the animals through the geometry.   It goes   cathedral goes well beyond that.  

It goes well, well, well beyond that, because geometry by itself   doesn't build soil. It just doesn't.   But yet,   the project   cathedral needs biology   to fully come alive.   So what what why does it matter?   Honestly, why why do we care about all this? Why are you all been out of shape, David, about all this biology? Well,   because the microbiological   life in the soil   drives   fertility.   And it does that in many ways, one of which is nutrient cycling.   As these critters die, their nutrients they've collected become now available to other critters, including plants. Right? That is the plant. The plants are able to get all these bioavailable   nutrients that are being continuously   gathered from   the resources around the microbes   turned into bioavailable   molecules   that the microbe itself uses and then either that microbe gets eaten by another microbe and turned into microbe   poop,   which is all bioavailable   to plants and, well, other microbes.  

It's this continuous   cycling   of nutrients in the soil.   And these microbes not only cycle the nutrients,   they gather nutrients,   nutrients that were that used to be unavailable to plants.   These critters can go get them   and can make them   available to plants, like mining phosphorus,   which all by itself is usually locked up and is not very available to plants.   You can put phosphorus on the soil and ensure for a little   while that phosphorus is available to plants, but it quickly becomes bound up   in the mineral component of the soil because the way the chemistry works. So you can just keep on putting on phosphorus and unless you've got microbiology   in the soil   that's going to be able to mine that phosphorus continually out and turn it into something actually useful, well then, ladies and gentlemen, you can forget about it. It's just not going it's not going to be available to the plants.  

And then   a lot of this is going to to be a discussion also about biochar, which I've definitely talked about before, and I talked about it at length   in the last episode, which is Cathedral part four.   And I've also talked a little bit about brewing biology, but for that particular episode, but not not like we're gonna do it today. And so why to as a reminder for people, why is biochar important?   Well, it's first of all, it's a charcoal. It's almost   pure   pure crystalline carbon, not diamonds. I'm talking about, like, it's like charcoal, except not the charcoal you use for your grill. It's more like activated charcoal that you'd find in a water filter. It's almost pure carbon.   It acts as a water battery because it holds   seven times its weight in water chemically.  

It's chemically bound.   It's not like it's in a sponge where you can squeeze it out. No. No. No. No. The water   is chemically bound to the biochar,   so it doesn't evaporate and it makes everything water resilient.   Again,   seven times its weight in water.   A gram of biochar will hold seven grams of water   chemically.   It's not going anywhere, except unless a plant actually needs it and is able to knock off those water molecules by, you know, actively mining the water.   This makes land resilient.   But more than that, biochar is a nutrient battery. So any bioavailable nutrients   are also locked away   into the structure of this biochar.  

It's not allowed to leach away with the rain. It holds it chemically just like biochar holds water chemically.   And then biochar   acts as a habitat for all these little   micro critters. Right? It's a porous structure.   It's got a in fact,   one gram   of biochar, if you were to flatten it all out and look at just the surface area of pure carbon surface that it has,   it's an NBA   basketball court   for one gram.   And think about how much nutrient you can chemically adhere   to that surface of a NBA basketball court. Ladies and gentlemen, it's it ends up being quite a bit. And, again,   it's really taken up bioavailable,   plant bioavailable   nutrients like   nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, but also like micronutrients   like calcium,   magnesium,   copper, and iron. It   it all is it just sticks to this biochar like glue.  

Right? So along with that, like I said, it's a habitat.   It forms apartment buildings. That same surface area that collects the water and all these nutrients.   If you fold it back up, you end up with it literally looks like an apartment building for microbes and like bacteria, protozoa,   nematodes.   Well, nematodes are a little large for it, but fungi,   it it it all hangs out in there where they're safe from predators.   And like I kind of described,   you know, in in last week's show, it's kind of like a coral reef.   It literally   emits new life.  

It's like families of people that live in in in an apartment building and then they but they keep having children. They don't they're not like one and done, two and done, three and done. No. They just they keep   generating new progeny and it just spills out of the coral reef and it gets into the soil and it just it makes everything better because it's actually functioning as a habitat and together   the microbes   and the biochar   turn these static structures that is Cathedral   into   living   resilience.  

[00:11:30] Unknown:

So   brewing this biology.  

[00:11:33] David Bennett:

We're gonna talk about brewing biology. We're gonna talk but we're we really need to talk about how it's applied.   How do I get the biology there? Now, if you if you were here for last week, you're going well, you already told us about this. No. I told you about how to do part of it.  

[00:11:49] Unknown:

Now, this is the rest of the story,  

[00:11:53] David Bennett:

and it's a much longer story.   We have a dual delivery system that I want to talk about.   There's gonna be the top down application   of this brood biology,   Like, we spray the the foliage of the plants and the the grasses and the forbs and   the the legumes, but also the black walnut trees, the black locust trees, the the honey locust trees, and all the hedge rows and and anything else that that we if it's got a leaf,   it's getting this foliar application thrown on it.   But we're not done. We're we're not done. We we're gonna have a bottom up approach   inside the soil.  

The subsoil,   we're going to be working that as well. And the top down and the bottom up   delivery systems are going to work together.   Because in the end,   the biology that we're laying down   is not   what you would consider   farm inputs.   Right? They're they're not like, oh, like what's okay. What's an input?   Fertilizer.   I go buy, you know, a truckload of fertilizer for my thousand acre farm. I'm growing wheat.   It's it's mined somewhere else or it's produced it's not mined. It's actually produced. It's produced somewhere else. It comes in bags. They deliver it on a truck, and then I put it on the tractor and in bin and and either broadcast it or liquid apply it. It's an input. I have to pay for it,   and it comes from somewhere off farm.  

What I'm talking about today   is not really as much of an input   as much as it is   infrastructure.   It's infrastructure for the cathedral system.   Just like the tree lanes are infrastructure, just like the grazing lanes are infrastructure,   the animals are infrastructure. Any buildings are gonna be infrastructure. And there's there were there will be buildings. We'll we'll get to them much, much, much later.   But it's infrastructure. It should not be seen as, oh, it's a bug in a bag or a bug in a jug, and and we buy it from somewhere else. And, no, because all this needs to be able to be brewed   right there at cathedral.  

And it be needs to be brewed   with   items that are coming off of the cathedral system. Compost that is made on-site is going to be a part of that system.   So for the rest of the show, the first third of this is we're gonna be talking about land stewardship and the biological   focus.   But the final third, we're gonna get into a little bit of economics.   And we're gonna delve into something that many of you might find   utterly distasteful.   Carbon credits.   If you've heard me talk about carbon credits before, you know two things   about how I think about it.  

One,  

[00:14:45] Unknown:

carbon credits are stupid.   They are just dumb.  

[00:14:49] David Bennett:

They are there to make, the I guess the the the ESG folks feel good about themselves so they can do whatever they want to the environment. And as long as they're buying carbon credits, hey, they're okay. Right? No. No. Okay. Well, that's sort of that's sort of true. I mean, that I mean, that that's that's the way that I feel about carbon credits.   Here's the other side of that coin.   If they're gonna pay me money   to put carbon in the soil,   then I'm going to take their money.   But I wanna make deadly sure   that I don't actually think that this whole carbon credit thing, the scheme is anything but that.  

A scheme. Probably grifting,   if not grafting or whatever else you wanna put it. But I'm not leaving money on the table.   If somebody is going to help offset my cost to put a whole bunch of carbon in the ground,   I'm taking it. Right? So you you it would be helpful to me   if you kind of hold your nose as we go through the carbon credit thing because honestly it's it's   it's not integral, it's not a it's not a make it or break it kind of thing for Cathedral,   but it would it it would seriously   seriously help,   a lot of people who are trying to combat this, and we'll hopefully, we'll we'll get into that.  

Just saying, I need you to buckle up.   Because if if you thought Cathedral was alive before,   honey,   you ain't seen nothing yet.   Let's redefine our inputs first.   I just briefly touched on inputs, like fertilizer.   Now, fertilizer is consumed.   You know, you you go and you buy it. You you go you go to your farm store, your ranch store. You tell them you need, you know, I don't know, 250   pounds of nitrogen per acre, and you've got a thousand acres, so you're gonna end up putting on, what, 250,000   pounds of nitrogen   to grow weed or oats or whatever it is that that that you're gonna do. A quarter of a million pounds is a lot of money to cut a check for.  

Fertilizer costs have gone up.   But   microbes,   microbes   persist.   And not only do they persist,   they amplify.   They amplify themselves. And when they amplify themselves, by definition,   they amplify   everything that they do.   That's what we're getting at. We need to be looking at we need to be looking at   deleting our inputs.   The amount of money that we pay somebody else to bring something that's not on our farm   to our farm or to silvopasture or ranch or whatever it is that that that you're whatever way you're thinking about this.   Instead of pay money going out and objects coming in, we need to make sure that money, at least as little as money as possible, goes out and as much   of our   raw materials that we need to be working with are built on farm.  

That is a paradigm shift from the way that we do any kind of agriculture that any of us are actually used to. Right?   And then so that's the micro part as as, like, you know, our we we need to redefine that as an input, but we also need to redefine   an input of biochar.   Okay? That's that doesn't wash away.   That's not like I I go and buy, however many pounds of phosphorus I would need to charge the soil,   of on a thousand acres. I   I I think it's like I wanna say it's something like 50 pounds per acre, which is, you know, a thousand acres that's still   that's still a lot of weight. That's still a lot of money. It's still a lot of application.  

Biochar   doesn't wash away.   And if it gets a hold of bioavailable phosphorus,   it's going to stick   to that biochar,   and it's just not going to leave your farm. It's just it's just not. It all becomes   part of the soil matrix,   the biochar, the microbes that are living inside of it, on it, around it,   came from it, whatever.   And it's   the compost tea.   That's that's where we're gonna get the biology from. That's how we're going to do our first amplification   step of this particular input   that we are going to be looking at as as the microbiology of the soil.   So   micro microbes reproduce.  

And thank god for the biochar because they have a an apartment to have sex in and raise their children and then kick their ass out when they're done.  

[00:19:36] Unknown:

But it allows them to regulate   and   defend themselves   once they're established.  

[00:19:44] David Bennett:

So they don't go away, unless you do something to your soil that kills them, like put on herbicide, pesticides, and   and fungicides, and all the rest of the inputs that we put on conventional farm fields. If you don't do that,   these things never leave. They just   reproduce.   They get the population   gets larger and larger and larger.   Some of these micro   some of these microbes,   like fungi,   you you may ask, well, what do they what do they do? What are they doing? Now, I've I've covered this   in some of the other cathedral stuff, but for backgrounder,   fungi.  

These things produce organic acids that mineralize nutrients   by dissolving rock. They get up they get next to, like, let's say, a phosphorus   or a phosphate bearing rock,   but the phosphates all bound up in in the the matrix of the rock. They   they digest that rock with organic acids they produce.   It frees up the phosphorus. They take the phosphorus in and they trade it to the plant for   in return for sugar, which is   the the carbon based sugar   is   well, that's nature's currency.   And by the way,   that currency is built like Bitcoin on proof of work. It takes work to manufacture sugar.   You have to pack energy   into those carbon bonds. It is a perfect   monetary   exchange   mechanism for nature.  

And that's exactly what fungi do. They dissolve rock. They they harvest the nutrients out of it. They trade, like, things like phosphorus and other trace elements for the sugar.   Bacteria,   them sons of bitches take they take nitrogen from the air of which is like nitrogen is like 72% of our atmosphere. 72% of every breath you take is nitrogen,   yet it's plant unavailable.   But bacteria in the soil, they fix that nitrogen, which means they make it available. They make that nitrogen from the atmosphere available   to the plants.  

They also help solubilize   things like phosphorus   that enables plants to uptake phosphorus.   They produce plant hormones, by the way,   and they those along well, those hormones   can trigger immune responses   in plants   that that makes the plant stronger. Some of these bacteria not only give them the nitrogen they need, they produce   they   produce hormones   that accelerate   a plant's immune systems.   Then we've got this stuff called actinomycetes.   They break down very complex organic   molecules like lignin and chitin,   and they recycle that carbon into more usable forms in the soil.   Lignin   is part of wood.  

Chitin, by the way, is the shell of all insects and crustaceans in the ocean, like lobsters.   That shell is made out of a   polysaccharide   called well, in a polysaccharide   actually, it's a protein polysaccharide   complex. So there's protein and sugars, and it fits together in a certain way that makes   a hard shell.   Right? And lignin   is   is a bunch of sugars like that are that are molecularly bound together that is almost impossible for anything but actinomycetes   to break down.   It's it's amazing. It's that's how   one of the ways that we've we've come to find well, it's one of the ways that wood breaks down fully in the soil. Without fungi and things like actinomycetes,   we'd be buried in dead wood. We we just would. And then there's things like protozoa.  

That's part of the microbe set here.   They graze on the bacteria.   They they they're like their own think of them as the ruminants of the soil.   And they eat bacteria   and they, well, they poop out nutrients that are in plant available form. It's microbial   digestion   as it were. And then we have getting up into, like, the little bit bigger scale,   nematodes.   These regulate microbial   populations   by essentially eating them. They're also sort of like grazers, but nematodes can be more like predators. They can get out, they can go after, you know, they can go after larger things like protozoa.   And they cycle nitrogen   and other micro and macronutrients   back into the soil. So this is part of the cycling.  

Everything is cycling here. And it's fungi and bacteria act, tendomycetes   and protozoa and nematodes.   And they're all in the soil and there's more, much more. We just don't have time to hit them all.   But I wanna talk a little bit about, just a little bit here,   I wanna make mention of this thing called   endophytes.   Bacteria,   fungi,   things like actinomycetes,   they not only exist in the soil,   they exist   inside   trees,   bushes,   shrubs,   plants,   grasses,   forbs, legumes.   They also exist inside of us.   If you're one of these people that think that that you gotta wash your hands 10 times a day,   if you were to see what's going on in your gut and how much bacteria is in your gut,   you might get a little anxious.  

I'm just I'm just saying we are   the beings of this planet, whether you're a deer, a giant beaver, a human, or a giant walnut tree, you are shot through   with bacteria   at least. Now in the case of plants, those things are shot through   from tip to tip, and I'm talking root tip to the top of the tree,   all throughout the branches, all throughout   the the the active part of the wood, all throughout the leaves   is shot through with fungus and bacteria.   And they're all working together. They're not working against each other. I mean, in in the case of disease,   yeah, that's not a good thing. But under normal circumstances with a normal healthy tree,   that tree is infected   tip to toe   with all kinds of living critters and so is grass,   so is forbs, so is bushes,   everything.  

It's not just the roots   that have fungal connections.   Those fungal connections stretch up all the way through the plant, all the way through the tree to the very top leaf.   And that top leaf is shot through   with bacteria and fungus, and it's all working together. That's what an endophyte   is, and that word's gonna come back up, by the way.   I just wanted to I wanted to put that here because fungus and bacteria and things like actinomycetes,   that's that's part of that. Not so much protozoa and nematodes,   but bacteria and fungi,   yes.  

That exists throughout every plant you see. And they're, again, they're working in concert   for the greater good.   So   the compounding effects of this application   of biology   Remember, we're talk talking about spraying all the leafy surfaces, and we're also gonna be putting this stuff inside the soil.   Each application,   because there should be you should be doing this. The the way that I've got the way that I think about cathedral,   this should be done multiple times a year, at least once a year, but every year.   You never stop. If you were gonna spend money putting nitrogen on your soil,   then spend   one tenth of that and and brew up biology and put that on your soil instead.  

Because every application   layers more biology into the system.   And earlier inoculations,   they're established.   They have a huge population,   and now they're getting new genetic material added to them. They're never gonna have a bottleneck in being able to breed. Right? You're never gonna end up with a monoculture   of a single kind of bacteria in your soil. And that's one of the reasons why you continuously   add more   populations,   different populations   to the soil.   And that earlier layers of the applications   are gonna be are going to inform   the later layers of applications,   but those later layers are also going to inform the earlier layers.  

It you're you're gonna have a genetic pool that is   immense, and that's critical   so that you don't end up with genetic bottlenecks or you don't end up with,   one, you know, species that is so genetically   identical to each other that one disease wipes them all out at once. Right? That's never gonna happen in a system like this.   And by the way, let's I just wanna   reiterate that all this is going to be associated. All this microbiology is associated with this biochar, this this charcoal, this agricultural   charcoal that we're gonna be putting in the soil.   And those particles, those biochar particles   are like emission points for new life.  

So they themselves   will be emitting new layers of biology   all the time.   This is sort of like a circulatory   system for the cathedral system.   The foliar spray,   when we spray the leaves and the plants and the grasses and all that, it distributes biology   top down.   We'll get into more of that and the subsoil injection distributes biology from the bottom up   together   they mimic veins   and capillaries   and arteries   that carries fertility   throughout the system   Remember what I said about endophytes?   When we do foliar sprays, we're allowing these microbes to enter the leaf and the stem   and the branches.  

It after a while, it's really the entry points are the leaf and the, new growth on the branches.   Barked, you know, really heavily barked over situations,   it's not really gonna the microbes aren't gonna penetrate into into the into the plant.   But that foliar spray, when it hits those leaves,   these microbes are definitely gonna penetrate from that side and they're gonna work their way down.   The stuff that we put in the soil is going to contact the plant roots   and that biology is gonna go from the bottom up.   And, again, together,   it's sort of like a circulatory system   for cathedral.  

It's a bridge.   This entire thing is a bridge between the geometry or the structure of cathedral   and the function.   What why do why are we doing cathedral in the first place? We need several different outputs that we can sell at the market, and we need to be able to do it in a way where biology is king,   cycling is king,   management   is king,   all of these things are king.   Right? Instead of pulling   in sacks of nitrogen,   we're we're we're doing it from a different standpoint.   It's the biology   that fuses   that structure, the tree lanes, and the types of trees, and the types of grasses, and the types of forbs.   It fuses   that with the animals.  

It fuses that with the way life works on the farm.   So it's not just about geometry and structure, and it's not just about animals rotating through the through the paddocks.   It's about tying it all together and the way this entire system is tied together is these continuous   applications   of biology,   which we can brew.   Yes, we can brew this stuff. So you might say to yourself, self,   how do I do this?   He's talking about all this biology. How in the hell do we make enough biology that we can put into a tank and spray on leaves   and however he intends to do it, put it underground? Well,   there is several ways that you can brew compost tea.  

Most of the stuff that I I I come across on things like YouTube is small scale.   We need more   industrial size.   But I'm going to go middle ground here, you know, so that we can   I'm not gonna describe some kind of   manufacturing   plant with steel, you know,   fermenters and whatnot, although that is in my mind.   But what I really wanna do is I wanna talk about something called an IBC   tote.   You've seen them. If you don't if you don't know what an IBC tote is,   if I showed you a picture of one right now, you'd go, oh, those things. I see those things everywhere.   It is a like, think 500 gallons.  

Right? So it's a cube of plastic,   and it's got a spigot on the bottom, and it's a big spigot because it's you know, this thing's holding, like, 500 gallons of liquid.   It is that cube   is wrapped in aluminum steel caging.   Right?   You've seen them. It's white plastic. Sometimes they're different colors. Most of the time, though, when you see them, they're white.   And they have this this aluminum caging around them that wraps all the way around it, and that's what gives that plastic   structure so that as it bends out when it's got 500 gallons of wood, you know, Heinz ketchup in it, that it that that structure will not collapse in on itself and and blow out. So that that's that's what I'm talking about.   That is honestly,   even for something like Cathedral,   a couple of those,   and and you're off to a hell of a start.  

So there's this woman named,   Laura Ingram or In Kam, I think is actually her name. She,   is one of the first people in the world to actually define something called the the food soil or the soil food web. Right? And that's   that is part that is that is what we're building   is actually a soil food web,   except I don't wanna get into that because I think I think you're gonna understand what a soil food web is after we get finished with this discussion. So I'm not gonna go into it right now.   Her and her and one of her friends came up with   this system to brew compost tea, which is old technology. This this this isn't new. It's not like we just discovered this, but we are kind of rediscovering   this. Right? So it's been around for a long time. Right? So   you take what they did is they came up with a system where they would take an a standard IBC tote,   they'd cut the top of it off, not all of it, just like, it's a certain size, and I think it's like a rectangle or something like that. It's just the exact size for them to   put   an air compressor on top of. Now they built this air compressor. It's not something you go buy at Home Depot.  

It's got special   arms and armatures and and stuff on it and but it's essentially a gigantic air compressor.   And you put that on top and you bolt it   to what's left of the frame,   the aluminum frame that is on top of the IBC tote. So it just gives you a port that goes in there.   You make really good compost.   And,   again, Laura Ingram, she's got, like, a $5,000   class you can take if you wanna learn how to use a microscope and identify all the good critters in the soil and make an assessment as to whether or not your compost   is really up to snuff. But I don't wanna get into that. That's she can if you wanna pay $5 for Laura Ingram's course, you can go do that.  

Let's just assume that our compost is high quality compost.   It's got a lot of fungus, and it's got a lot of bacteria.   It's it's there's there it's not filled with bacteria and fungi that are harmful to plants.   That we've made the highest quality   compost that we can find. And what do we do?   We take,   kinda like a burlap bag, except it's think of it more in terms of a tube. Not a bag, but a tube. And it's about, you know, about two foot long, maybe three.   I'm sure they come in different sizes.   And it's like it's   designed to hold compost and you so you fill it up full of compost.  

And you take that bag and you throw it into the water. Actually, let's let's back   up. You're you're ready to put the bag on.   So you've already filled up the IBC tote with just regular water from the tap,   except that tap water's probably got chlorine. Even if you're on well, if you're on farm, you probably got well water.   But it doesn't hurt   to fill up the IBC tote and flick on the air compressor   and let all of that air just bubble through the water for about an hour.   If you are on chlorinated water systems, this is critical because otherwise, you dip that that that bag full of compost,   all the critters are going to die, or at least most of them will die and a lot of them will just be severely weakened because that's what fluoride and chloride in water systems   do. They   they're not good for life, and that's why they feed it to us, I guess. I whatever. That's a that's a tinfoil hatchery right there.  

Although,   I don't think fluoride should be in water. That's just that's just me, though.   That will boil out the chlorine and the fluorine because halogens of that's part of the halogen family.   Those gases are so volatile that if they get exposed to any amount of oxygen whatsoever,   like in a bubbling you're bubbling it through   air through chlorinated water, that goes away literally within an hour. So after you've got all the water bubbled for about an hour, you shut this thing off,   you put the bag of compost into the water and let it let it fill up, and then you hook it to   one of the bottom ports   of this air compressor.  

You can again, there's more than one way to skin a cat, but this is this is for cathedral. So we need   we need some tonnage here. We need some some good volume.   You tie the top of that bag. There's a pipe that goes into the bag and then   you it's got drawstrings and you tie it around that pipe and it doesn't come off. Just trust me.   That pipe goes down into all the way to the bottom   of that bag of compost.   And it's got little holes in it and air comes out of it.   Right? So then,   on the other side or part the other part of the air compressor, the part that go the armatures that go into the liquid,   there's a couple of other armatures that just go all the way down to the bottom of the IBC tote and they just pump air into it. And it's all from the same air compressor.  

So every all the water is moving.   So now when you turn it on,   air is bubbling through the compost   and the water itself is being churned by a whole other set of air jets that are coming out of the air compressor.   So that water is 100%   oxygenated   and   that compost is definitely being aerated because there's that pipe that's that's blowing air through, you know, from tip to toe on it.   What you're doing is you've started the tea brewing process.   Right? So then   what you do is it depends on what you want.   You need to feed this thing. And this, generally speaking, this tea process for Laura Ingraham's tea process   anywhere between one and three days that you just leave this thing on and you cannot turn it off because   the life in this in that water will so will just gobble up every molecule of oxygen and it will turn anaerobic and then everything starts dying.  

So that's one of the other reasons we've got air being pumped into this thing.   If you feed it with molasses, let's say,   like agricultural molasses,   you will get more bacteria than fungus.   If instead   you feed it with humic acid   or kelp   or, I don't know, fish, fish emulsion   you will get more fungus   than bacteria.   So right there,   right there   is the basis   for how do we what effect do we want?   What kind of bacteria do we want in there? What else can we adjust   for our purposes?   So   the way that I would do it with Cathedral is that I would come at it from the standpoint that I want to start   with a fungally dominated composting.  

Like, for two days I feed it nothing but fish emulsion and humic acid and fulvic acid   and kelp,   you know? And I really don't   feed the bacteria that much.   I'm really concentrated on the fungus because I want a lot of fungus in the soil.   I want a lot of fungus being able to cling to the to the leaves and the branches of all the trees and the shrubs and the grasses and whatnot.   But I don't want it to be all fungus because I need other critters in there. I need diversity. I need   niches to be filled. You know, what a fungus doesn't do, a bacteria does. What a bacteria doesn't do, another kind of fungus will do.   So I start   by just wanting to brew a fungally dominated   compost tea first.  

Then,   I might start adding bacterial   inoculants   later   in that brew process so that I avoid competition with for the fungus.   By sequencing,   I can ensure   a balance and effectiveness to the tea that I'm brewing. I can use automation and control to do this too.   Dosing pumps can regulate the food inputs like how much molasses, when do you feed it molasses, and the humic acid, and the and the fish slurry. You know, dosing pumps will do that.   Sensors can monitor pH,   temperature,   oxygenation.   Automation   stabilizes these conditions.   I can program all of this too, by the way. I can have it set on a program   if I wanted to, probably through an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi or something like that. That's that's where that gets a little bit more technical. But this can be automated. You don't have to stand there for three days and and and or or set your timer. You, you know, you can if you wanna wake up at two in the morning and make sure that you add some more humic acid. But   I we could build a system with dosing pumps   with sensors,   make sure that pH doesn't get all out of whack, and then readjust it with dosing pumps with, like, maybe acetic acid or even lye or something like that that will adjust the pH up and down.  

So   once we have this brewed,   this is when we start being able to do the applications.   And   I wanna start   from the bottom up.   Alright? Well, actually, I take that back. I wanna say one more thing. I'm not gonna be just brewing this in water.   After this is all said and done, like, I've got a good brew.   I'm I'm just about to start, you know, start dosing it with a different kind of bacteria set. Like I said, start with fungal dominated.   And then right before I start putting in other stuff,   I put in a whole bunch   of very finely ground biochar   to the point   that it's almost a slurry.  

Still liquid enough that air can bubble into it. Still liquid enough that it can move around,   but it's gonna have a lot of biochar in it. To the point that it will make it a little you'll you would actually look in the bubbling chamber and say, that looks viscous.   That's starting to look more like maple syrup in the way that it flows.   Right? That's what I'm looking for.   Leave that in there for a couple, you know, for maybe like, I don't know, thirty minutes to an hour and then start dosing   with different   bacterial inoculants   depending on what it is that I wanna do.  

This way   this way,   all of these critters that I'm brewing   are not   just staying in the water.   They are starting to move into their little apartment complex. They're starting to to take the TV up the stairs and and get their friends with the pickup truck that has the back the the   sticker on the back that says, yes, this is my truck. No, I won't help you   move. You you hornswoggle   the they're moving in   to all these nooks and crannies into the   into the that that well, that is offered by the biochar.   Now   now we're ready   that we can take this entire IBT IBC tote and think think of it this way.  

This IBC tote is permanently fastened   to a small trailer.   We can just hitch that trailer up. We use it like either like, we connect it to the battery of the car. So because we always have to have   this slurry   being oxygenated.   We can't I mean, we   really wouldn't want the oxygen to be turned off for any longer than thirty minutes to an hour, and I wouldn't even want thirty minutes.   This is continuously   aerated.   And by the time we're ready to apply this stuff,   by the time we're ready, it's gonna be thick,   all the nooks and crannies of the biochar is gonna be filled with life,   and it's gonna be filled with nutrients, and it's gonna be filled with water. It's not going to take anything away from the soil. Because if you were to put raw biochar in your garden, you would actually see detrimental effects first.  

Why?   Because the biochar is going to suck all the available plant available nitrogen out of the soil in its area, all the plant available phosphorus. It's got remember how I said   that biochar holds water and phosphorus and all kinds of stuff because it's sticky?   It's also a magnet.   If it if those spaces aren't filled,   those spaces will become filled and the nutrients that fill them will come from the soil.   And people have done this. And they've said the first two years that they put biochar on because they didn't charge it with biology and nutrients first,   they saw bad effects to their tomatoes. They saw bad effects to their cucumbers.  

That's why we're doing this now   before we apply it. It has to be filled with the life. It has to be filled with the nutrients.   It has to be completely soaked in water and that's going to help us deliver it   in the bottom up delivery, which is   subsoil   injection.   There was a man in   either Australia or Tasmania   or or New Zealand, I'm pretty sure it was Australia,   his name is was P. A. Yeomans.   And he invented something called the Yeomans Plow.   It's also known as a Keyline Plow.   And   this is   the way that I envision   subsoil injection   of this   life   containing   biochar   slurry into the soil.  

We need to get it   down deep.   Last episode of Cathedral, we talked about the life raft   and, you know, putting down, like, biochar   in front of the cows and letting them step on it.   You know, honey, it's not gonna get down any more than an inch, but it will be it will have soil contact.   Yes, it will. It's definitely going to help. And it's going to soak up in like, it will actually become inoculated   by the cow poop. So by the time the chickens get to it, and again, if you haven't   if you don't know what I'm talking about, this is cathedral four,   subtitle life raft. I'd go through it   at length.  

Alright? So go if you haven't listened to it, go listen to that.   So, yes. And and continual   applications   are always going to help.   But what about this what about the soils, you know,   eight inches down, 12 inches down,   16 inches down,   three feet down?   We have done an immense   job of destroying our soils in Europe,   in Africa,   in Australia,   in America,   South America,   you name it, because of conventional ag. Because in this particular case, specifically because of plowing,   because the carbon   the carbon content in soils   of the like, let's just take North America. The you know, what what would become The United States back when   ain't nothing but Native Americans and buffalo and wild giant beavers and giant elk and cave faced bears and all that, whatever, all that stuff.  

The the it's been theorized that the carbon   percentage of carbon in the soils in the Great Plains was approaching somewhere around   15%.   I think it was probably more.   Right now,   we're lucky to get 1%.   Some farms report half of 1%   of carbon in their soil   at depth.   Not just the surface, at depth. Why?   That carbon,   as long as it's not exposed to oxygen   in the soil,   it stays there. It doesn't leave. It doesn't turn into c o two and off gas into the atmosphere.   Until you put a plow on it, and you turn that soil over and expose it to the oxygen,   you can't see it.  

But envision this: a tractor pulling a plow and flipping 12 inches of oil   over on itself   to create furrows.   You might as that right behind that,   at a from a chemical standpoint,   it might as well be on fire.   You can't see the flames,   but they're there.   Because the oxygen in the atmosphere   is fiercely   and quickly combining with the carbon that's in the soil   to produce c o two. It is combustion.   It's just not the way that you think about combustion.   But every time we plow the soil,   more carbon goes into the atmosphere. It leaves the soil.   We   cannot do this shit.  



[00:51:06] Unknown:

So therefore,  

[00:51:07] David Bennett:

I make assumptions about where cathedral goes. If it's anywhere in the, you know, in the Great Plains of The United States,   we need to put carbon back in the soil and we need to put it back at depth.   At various depths, but   getting down to three feet.   How? Well, again, this is that key line plow or the yeoman's plow.   You get a tractor   and you hitch up a yeoman's plow to it.   The yeoman's plow   can have one,   two.   I've seen them with three. Hell, I've even seen a yeoman's plow with five shanks   that   go into the ground   behind the trail   behind the the the the farm implement that's pulling it. Like, it's the last thing.  

So just think of these these shanks, these these steel   shanks that just plunge into the ground.   Right? And it rips   about a half inch because the the the shank is about a half inch wide, some are a little wider.   But this is gonna take have to take a lot of stress.   Right? Because you're dragging it through soil at depth.   At the very end of that shank   is an inverted   boat hull.   Just think think of a boat, think of the the the the bow of a ship.   Now, flip that ship over   and take a section of that bow and then weld it   to the bottom of the the shank that's going into the soil.  

It's literally   a boat hull   going through the soil   at depth.   What what does this do? So let's just just think 12 inches down, you know, one foot.   You've got this boat   boat hull thing   that's running through the soil.   It's not like this it's not really like the soil just says, oh sure, here, let me let me split myself for you so you can pass. No, no, no, no.   It explodes   the soil   underneath the ground.   It makes lateral   fractures.   It fractures   the soil, especially in compacted   soil, you want this anyway.   And for for a little bit, you know, for a little while,   those fractures   stay intact.  

Eventually, it'll all collapse back in on itself. But generally speaking,   you might think, well, David, you just said if we expose this to to air, the carbon's gonna go away.   Yeah. If you plow it and allow a bunch of surface area   for oxygen to get to, then yes.   But if you plunge   the plow   well into the ground   and you drag it through the ground and it explodes   12 inches beneath the soil and the only thing that is exposed   is a half inch crack at the top of the soil,   honey you're not getting that much oxygen in there it'll be fine you'll be fine we'll all be fine and it's gonna completely decompact that soil   so how does this help us   We've got we've got I mean, a,   let me just back up a little bit.  

The water infiltration   mechanics for your for your soils,   especially in compacted soils, has just changed.   If you if you do this   on contour,   you drag, like, three, you know, three hooks or, you know, like, three implements   behind this gentleman's plow. Right? You've got three shanks going into the ground, and they're separated by, I don't know, like, let's say,   three to four foot away from each other.   Like, you don't want them really, you know, you don't want them really close together.   Then if you drag that on contour,   the if it rains, the water that rolls off is going to contact one of these slits that you made in the ground and it's gonna go directly 12 inches down.  

And that water is going to stay on your farm. It's gonna stay inside cathedral.   If it's flat, you don't really have to worry about contours because you're not on a hill. Well, then it doesn't really matter. But the water is going to be able to find its way way   way deeper as it rains   than it ever would have especially in compact soil situations   in which case the the water just rolls off. It rolls onto somebody else's farm and you don't get to keep the water.   You want the water.   This is a way to make sure that you harvest   all the water that you can. The problem is and it's it it eventually builds soil.  

Eventually,   we can bootstrap that   by injecting this slurry that we've been talking about   directly into that crack.   But be if we don't do that,   even though the Keyline plow system harvest water   and build soil eventually,   in another use of the word eventually,   that soil will collapse back down and you have to subsoil again.   I don't want to drag implementation   through the soil all the time. It costs diesel.   And if you've got a good, you know, a whole bunch of like, you know,   really good   fungi,   you know, in the soil,   you you can disturb them. So you wanna keep even a key line plow disturbance down. You sure as shit don't wanna plow like conventional plowing.  

But   we've got a design we got to engineer something here, ladies and gentlemen. Here comes the engineering play. We've got to manufacture a pipe that sits behind the shank   that goes down and has an inject has some kind of injection head   at the very end of it right behind the boat plane.   And we've got to be able to fill that crack from 12 inches down all the way to the top of the crack   at speed, which is about,   farm speed on something like this,   three miles an hour,   something like that.   So we're gonna have to have a lot of slurry.   We're gonna have to have these pipes. And the reason they're behind the shank is so that the shank, as it rips through the soil,   protects   the injection pipe.  

So it's gotta be wide enough. It can't be too it can't be over, like, a half inch or whatever. It can't be   protruding   on from the edges of the, of the shank that's going into the soil. It's gotta be right behind it and 100 per 100%   protected by the shank so that that you don't break your injection pipe.   Let's say we and and I know we can build that. Farm engineering and ag ag engineering has been around forever. Yes. We can do this.   Those pipes need to be connected to the IBC tote.   Where that IBC tote goes, maybe   it's part of the implement   itself.  

That we already said that we we put these on a on a a trailer, we strap it down, and we brew it right there on the trailer. Maybe we just hitch it in between the tractor and the key line plow because the key line plow doesn't need the tractor's power takeoff,   so we don't need an axle going there.   However we do it,   there's more there's definitely more than one way skin the cat. But we're going to need that reservoir   that is continuously   being bubbled   of that life   infused   biochar   slurry   being pumped with a slurry pump   into those pipes and injected   to the point that it fills up all the lateral cracks and fissures   that the Keyline plow made and all the way up to the very top of the soil level.  

At 12 inches   that shit is never gonna recompact,   and it's gonna be filled with life.   So let's think of the grazing lanes in Cathedral.   This is what we do.   This is exactly how we're going to go about   infusing carbon,   water retention,   nutrient retention,   microbe and life retention   into the soil at depth.   And we are actually going to at the start, we're going to do this quite a bit.   You know? I mean, we're not gonna do, like, hopefully, after a while, we we don't have to do it anymore.   But I can load up my soil with a lot of carbon,   a lot of life,   a lot of water holding and nutrient holding capacity   with this system.  

So we make multiple passes.   Right?   We ensure that biochar   and the compost tea are deposited   immediately before that that soil closes back in on itself, which takes time. It doesn't close immediately,   but we wanna pump it right there.   But we're get we can do multiple depths.   I've been saying 12 inches   which sounds like, you know, it might be a little deep   because we're dragging this   steel cutter   through soil. And if you've got compacted soil, you know how cement like that shit can be. This can do it. I've seen it done. I I've seen it done on several occasions.   Subsoiling is a thing. This isn't new technology.  

This is very old technology.   It's just a new way to apply   it. But we also need   we need this stuff at six inches.   Well, can we do six inches? We certainly can do six inches. We can do 12 inches.   We can do 16 inches.   We can go down to 24 inches.   Ladies and gentlemen,   we can go down to, like, three feet.   After that,   you know, and actually between two and three feet,   depending on how compact your soil is to start with, maybe some problems.   Let's assume that we're not and we can go all the way down to three feet.   That's how far down I want this stuff.  

So I might start with just doing six inches and and drag   these trenches, do this entire key line plow and subsoil   injection system   throughout the entirety of all the acreage of all the grazing lanes.   And then next year, I do it again   at 12 inches   And then next year,   maybe 24 inches   And then the year after that,   36 inches   After that depth, I'm I am I become more unconcerned with what's going on at at, below 36 inches.   But as you can see,   we can put a lot   we can put a lot of carbon and life   a lot of life, a lot of nutrient retention, a lot of water from six inches, actually all the way at the top of the surface because the cows are walking over, you know, the the biochar that we put on,   that I described in life or after last,   week's episode of the cathedral.  



[01:02:09] Unknown:

I can go all the way down to 36 inches  

[01:02:12] David Bennett:

I can put a lot of this stuff in there.   So as I said, we break up the subsurface layers without disturbing the surface, so we're not really doing anything to the carbon that's already in the soil.   And   we improve the infiltration   and the root penetration   at the same time. So it's not just about water infiltration.   Since we're breaking up all this compaction,   the grassroots,   the forb roots, the the legume roots,   all of a sudden,   you you they they're like, holy shit. I can put roots everywhere.   I I'm I'm not blocked in any direction.   And when those plant roots start contacting   all that life and all that soil,   oh, honey,   That's when things start to really fly.  

And since we've done this all the way down to 36 inches   we've got a lot of room for those roots   to flow down.   We can now they're gonna start really doing some photosynthesis for us. They're really gonna be able to store their energy and bounce back after a heavy grazing. They're really gonna be protected against disease and drought and   nutrient deficiencies because we put a huge   water nutrient   immune system life giving battery   square inch to square inch everywhere in the grays.   This   is a long term carbon reservoir.   Whole   channels   of microbiological   highways that spread biology   beyond the injection line   because it's it's I mean, it's not just about the when when that boat hole went through the through the ground,   it not only fractured, like, everything where the boat hole is being the the tip of the key line plow is is, the, you know,   exploding the subsurface soil. It's cracking   12 inches sometimes 24 inches to either side and all of that's going to be infiltrated with this carbon.  

And all of it's going to act as a microbiological   highway   that that's the circulatory   system   we're now talking about the very circulatory system that connects everything together   The biochar part,   along with all the other stuff that it does, this is long term carbon reservoir.   It's forever carbon in practical terms, and that'll come back when we talk about carbon credits.   And again, just to remind you, this thing is like it holds all this carbon to hold seven times its weight in water.   It   gloms on to nutrients and doesn't let it go.   And all the microbiology   that that it contains   is   purpose built to go   either mine rocks for more nutrients   or pull nitrogen directly out of the air and make it biologically available to all the plants that are connected to all this biology in the circulatory system in the first place. You see where I'm going with   this?  

The biochar,   again,   it's the housing development   for all this microbiological   life. And unless you do something   rather stupid,   like   use a side on it, herbicide, pesticide, fungicide, nematicide,   all these sides,   they'll always be there. And they will it's the herd underneath the ground.   You feed the herd on top of the ground with grasses and forbs and herbs, but you've got to feed the herd that lives underneath the ground because they're going to make sure   you have something to feed the herd above the ground   up and down and down and up from the top down   from the bottom up   it all works together in a symphony so  

[01:06:09] Unknown:

What about the trees though Dave?  

[01:06:12] David Bennett:

What do we do in the tree lanes? You're not dragging a a key line plow through that. You could do some some serious damage to the roots.   Yeah, you could. Yeah, you could. So there's another type of injection system that we can use.   It's called a VOT injector system   V O G T I believe it's manufactured in Germany, but think of a jackhammer   this injection system is just like that It's a pneumatic jackhammer style tool   for a single point injection   of whatever it is you want to inject and you know what we're talking about. We we can inject this this life infused nutrient infused biochar directly into the ground, But instead of as a trench,   we can do it as a single point. Why would we wanna do that? Because we got tight quarters inside the tree lanes. I'm not gonna be dragging,   you know, I mean, I could. We've got enough room to drag it through there, but you'll do you'll do the kind of damage to the root system that you don't wanna do. You you really will. You'll be hitting really heavy roots,   and that is a disease vector   just waiting   waiting to kill, you know, kill out an entire tree lane. But we can use a single point injector like the VOD injector   system, and it does the same thing. It fractures the soil from below, and then it delivers   our life infused slurry.  

It's also ideal for things like residential lawns and golf courses and orchards and, you know, other high traffic areas because when you do this, when you when this jackhammer goes down to the ground and you hit the button in this giant air compressor,   you know, you've got this this huge reservoir of highly compressed air and it all releases as a slug and just shoves this stuff down. It explodes   the the ground   but fills all the cracks with this carbon, this life, these microbes.   It's not gonna compact again.   It's not and and water will infiltrate.  

So, yes, this thing works in all kinds of places.   And this is what I would use for the tree lanes.   And every once in a while, I would go through and I would like find find the parts of the tree lanes   where   the root lines or the the   the the root balls or rather what's called the drip lines of the root system   where they're all connected together.   You know, I don't want to do this by by a trunk of a tree. I want to come out to the drip line, so I need to find out where where most of the drip lines are connected   to, like, the honey locust tree, the black locust tree, the black walnut tree, and that's my injection point.  

Because that's gonna fuse help fuse all those trees together with that mycorrhizal   fungi I keep talking about. Yeah. That's already gonna be there in the first place, but there's no reason   not to keep injecting this stuff into the soil because of its water retention, because of its nutrient retention, because it's going to continuously   spill life   to the very things that are built to harbor that life, not just the biochar, but the tree roots.   They form these associations with all these trees.   They   harvest minerals and nutrients for the trees and the trees in turn give these critters   the best currency since Bitcoin.  

Sugar,   which is a proof of work currency.   I'll do an entire article on that. I promise. But   that's   how we're going to start injecting   all the carbon that we want into our soil to do all the good things that we wanted to do in our soil   from the bottom up.   Next,   we go top down.   So   foliar spray. This this is how we're going to get this biology   introduced   from the top down.   We we've taken care of the grazing lanes. Hell, we've even taken care of underneath the tree lanes, and all that's gonna work for us. But now   we need to start thinking about   foliar applications  

[01:10:13] Unknown:

of this exact same thing.   So  

[01:10:17] David Bennett:

compost tea   brewed with fine biochar particles.   Maybe   quite not as slurry like, maybe a little bit lighter of a mix, maybe even a little bit heavier.   This   I am I am not going to pretend like I know exactly how all this is gonna work. Because like I said before,   like Mike Tyson says,   everybody's got a plan till you get punched in the face. Things will change.   So I have to be flexible about how I think about this. So I'm thinking though that we probably wouldn't want to have as much biochar   applied in this particular   brewed compost tea, but we would do the compost tea the same way fungal dominate dominated at first   and then adding whatever bacterial critters that we want to it depending on what effect we might want to to get. And I'll get to that here in a second.  

Once we've got it brewed,   we need to spray   the leaves   and the stems   with the inoculated biochar. So what are we spraying?   All first of all, we're gonna get a spray rig like we were spraying,   I don't know, applying,   herbicide to an, you know, to an early crop of GMO corn. You know, it's like   it's it's a trailer that goes behind a a tractor,   a power takeoff from the back of the tractor, drives an axle, which drives pumps on the sprayer. And as long as you've got a reservoir of whatever the hell it is that you want to spray, well, there you go. Except these sprayer heads are gonna have to be able to handle some of this fine particle stuff. So it's not it's gonna again, some engineering is gonna have to be involved, but I know we can do it.   That spray probably be like 30 foot wide.  

And you just go up and down the lanes, all the grazing lanes, because 30 feet is standard agricultural width. And I've designed   the grazing lanes to be 150   foot wide, which is five passes with a 30 foot wide combine header or in this case, a 30 foot wide maybe well, I wouldn't do a 30 foot wide key line plow, but I would definitely do 30 foot wide spray head.   And you just spray the grasses.   You just spray the forbs.   Spray the entire   surface area of the grazing lane.   That's going to inoculate   all of those plants with what it what it is that we want it to be inoculated with, and we'll we'll get to that in a second.   It essentially turns   every brand new stem,   you know, new growth stem and leaf surface   into sites   of microbiological   colonization.  

And that sounds bad.   Sounds like it so, hey, it sounds like you're making them all sick. It's a that's how diseases get in. Exactly.   But I want to make sure that they're always dosed with something that gets into them that are good,   that help fight disease help fight infection   and more and more we know what those things actually are   You know, I need to spray the leaves   with good   types of fungus   with good types of bacteria   and they will as long as if they've got long enough contact with that leaf, they will find their way in and they will become   endophytes.  

Remember I talked about endophytes at the beginning of this episode or towards the front of this episode.   These   critters, what's   they're bacteria   with as long as they're outside   the the plant. But the minute they take up residence,   long term residents inside the plant,   they are now effectively   endophytes.   They are endophytic.   They are inside, endo.   Right? So   they will do   what they do. And in a lot of cases,   they're they're doing   all kinds of wonderful stuff. They're doing plant hormone regulation.   They're they're   boosting the immune system.  

And I mean there's so much stuff we could go through it's like that's a whole a whole other episode.   I'm not gonna do that here. But you want this stuff   inside the tree. Sure, it's gonna get in from the roots.   I wanna make sure   every single year, maybe even twice a year, that every leaf surface of every tree,   of every hedge,   of every grass, of every form, of every legume   is coated   with the biology that I want   to have there.   Why or how,   basically, how do we do this?   I got an idea about that. Remember how I said I want a fungally   dominated   compost tea to begin with before I start adding in other stuff?  

I got a theory. Now, it's gotta be proven out,   but just bear with me.   There's this stuff called glomalin.   And I don't think I've talked about it in the cathedral series before, but I've been on several other podcast talking about soil. I've talked about it there. I've had a couple of other episodes   where I've talked about it, but it the short version is is that glomalin   is a glycoprotein.   So it's got sugars   and   protein or, well, amino acids and short amino acid chains.   Yeah. Oh, you know, oligopeptides   is another way to put it. They're not like a whole huge protein, but they're complex molecularly   complexed   together.  

And they're they're bonded. They're molecularly bonded to each other, so they don't really   break off of each other.   Right? This glomalin   is like glue   and it's produced by arbuscular   mycorrhizal   fungi in the soil. And this is probably a couple of other things too, but what we really know about   is that we know at least our buscular mycorrhizal fungi in the soil, and this is the same fungi   that connects tree to grass   and grass to legume and legume to shrub and shrub back to the original tree in a giant communications   and trading loop. It's like it's like the Silk Road and the sugars from one tree actually feed the grasses   and   it's amazing the way they trade water and resources and nutrients and information.  

But this is the you've heard me talk about it before, but this is the same stuff.   One of the things that it produces in   spades is something called glomalin.   Why is it called glomalin?   Because it gloms on. It   gloms on to soil particles especially. It's exuded outside the arbuscular mycorrhizal   fungi   in the soil   and it permeates into the soil and it causes   friability in soil which means it's like soil it makes soil looser   it aggregates soil particles together   and without it you get highly compacted soils there's other reason for compacted soils but this is one of them But it's very glue like. It's a very high molecular weight   molecule.  

It's   predominantly carbon,   you know, and a little bit of nitrogen because it's a glycoprotein,   but the way it acts,   it's like a glue. So if I have   and again,   everybody has a plant until they get punched in the face.   The theory is is that if I can get arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi or any   fungi that is okay for plants   to produce glomalin   while I'm brewing it up in a compost tea, then part of the liquid component   is glue.   Well, wouldn't wouldn't it be great   if not only did I have this glue in there and not only did I have this life that I'm brewing in there that is very diverse between fungus and bacteria and some other stuff Wouldn't it also be great if I have some biochar that was loaded up with these part with these   particles of fungus   and bacteria?  

And as I sprayed,   that particle   contacts a leaf and sticks to it because of the glomalin.   See what I'm what I'm getting at here? Because it's the longer I can have these critters contacted with the leaf surface,   the more chances there is that it will be able to infiltrate the plant   and become endophytic,   which is exactly what I want. If I were to just spray I mean, it it's not that it wouldn't work if I just sprayed it, you know, as as water or whatnot.   It sure some of them would get in, but I want to increase. I wanna maximize this. So if I can select a species to brew first that produces   as much glomalin as I can,   it can't do anything but help stick   everything to the leaf,   including   a big old chunk well,   microscopically speaking, a big old chunk of a half of a piece of an apartment building that's filled with families just waiting   to kick their kids out of their apartment and have them go find someplace else to live   in the plant   where they do their thing,   which is exactly what I want.  

Endophytes.   Little baby endophytic   infections everywhere. That's what I want. I want endophyte colonization.  

[01:19:58] Unknown:

Because here's some like, here's some of the fungal players.   Trichoderma   or   trichoderma,  

[01:20:05] David Bennett:

depending on how you wanna pronounce it.   It thrives   in these brew in these compost brews. What does it do for the plant?   Boost plant immune responses.   I want that. I want that in my plant. I want Trichoderma   being able to get inside the plants, in the trees, the grasses and all that stuff, and I want them to help boost the plant immune responses.   And then there's, something called   boviria   fasiana.   What does it do?   It deters   pest   fungus.   Because not all fungus is good fungus.   I want something in there that says, hey, this fungus isn't really helping you out. I can help you with that. Damn, Skippy. You damn Skippy. I want this buerivera   or veria in there. I want it in there. That's going to be something that I add   into this   compost tea.  

What about bacterias? What bacteria? What do they do? Well, there's something called bacillus   subtilis.   Right? What does it do?   It supports nutrient uptake.   It also defends the plant against pathogens.   There's Pseudomonas   fluorescence   that, enhances root and leaf health.  

[01:21:25] Unknown:

So this is alive in the roots,   it lives in the leaves.  

[01:21:29] David Bennett:

I've put it in the soil, I've sprayed it on the leaf.   Then we've got Azospirillum   brazillinesse,   I think is how you pronounce it.   Fixes nitrogen, dude.   It's an endophyte.   Could what would be better   than to have   bacteria   that takes nitrogen out of the soil   and feeds it to the plant   right where the plant wants it. Because all the activity in the summer, ladies and gentlemen, it's going on in the leaves.   It's going on in in in fruit production.   This this is exactly   where I want nitrogen. I don't want nitrogen to wait as it travels up the super highway of the the the the from the tree roots all the way to the leaves.   I can just put it right there at the leaf. I can have it burrow into the leaf. I can have it live and and party down and and and and I don't know, call for fast food takeout right in the leaf while it's watching movies and fixing nitrogen   right where it's needed.  

That's what this stuff does. That's what endophytes do. If you thought you pulled a tree off of a or a tree, a leaf off of a tree and there was nothing but the leaf, you are wrong. You are just as wrong with that assumption   as if you think your intestines   don't have more bacterial   cells in it than are present in your entire body.   Because what I just said is true.   You have more individual bacterial cells in your body   than your body itself has human cells.   What do you think about that?   So   endophyte setup inside plant tissues,   and they sort of act like market stalls,   right where they they're at. I've talked at at length about the market stalls that are set up in roots by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi.  

Well, now I can do it directly   in the leaves,   in the stems.   You know, the new growth stems, not the old growth stuff. That's probably at this point kind of impermeable. But new growth? Yeah. Yeah. It'll happen.   I I can get stuff right in there. That that skin is is pretty thin. And as long as I got glomalin   and I can make sure that I've got, like, you know, I can chuck, you know, a whole, you know, Chicago   projects, you know, half of a freaking apartment tower and have it stick onto the leaf or the the stem.   Yeah.  

It it endophytes are going to just run freaking rampant. And as long as I make deadly sure   that I'm not introducing a pathogen to that tree,   dude, I'm golden.   Next,   we're gonna come up and talk about   some service models and client applications   because we've kind of gone through   what it is that I need to touch on as far as Cathedral is concerned. We've got it in the soil,   Now, every leaf surface is coated with it. And by the way, to coat the leaves, it's a different kind of sprayer,   but they have them.   Again, I'm not having to build anything that much new except for like an inject the injector on the back of the shank of the Yeoman's plow is about the only thing that I really need to mess with and to make sure that the spray heads on the sprayer would be able to take at least a little bit   of, you know, particulate matter without clogging up. After that, man, everything else is golden.  

And the the sprayers that orchards use to do foliar applications and in some cases, they're foliar applying compost tea because they know what's good.   This   I I can I can literally just drag one of these tree sprayers   inside the tree lane and just point it straight up and drive it down one one side of the black walnut trees and down the other side and every all the underside of the leaves are coated?   Then I can go to the outside of the tree lanes and I can just put it up at an angle and I can just spray it and go up one tree lane and down the other and all the outside   of the leaves are done.  

And   I I just know   I just know that I would be able to get enough surface area contact   to have enough sites of infiltration   for these critters   that this is going to be some of the healthiest trees, most well defended trees   ever. But it doesn't have to necessarily stop there because cathedral   is about integration.  

[01:26:11] Unknown:

Would I want to buy a sprayer just to only do it two times a year?  

[01:26:16] David Bennett:

You know, would I wanna buy a a like and that would be like for the grazing lanes. Do I really wanna buy something like a tree sprayer   and only do it like a couple of times a year? What if I can offer this service   to other people and they pay me money?   That's   where   this is sort of like a, kind of like a foreshadowing of what we're gonna talk about with the entire system of Cathedral.   But we can build   a company   around this   entire system   that's just spraying compost tea and doing foliar application   and doing soil injection, we can build an entire business, an on farm business   that not only does its business on farm, like to do the grazing lanes and the trees, but offers that service   for profit   outside of the system. What does that look like? Remember Kim Lawn?  

They'd come out to your house and they'd spray your lawn with that that that green goo and it was just nothing but just high high powered chemistry.   Yeah. We could do the same thing with this system. We can you we could use the exact same application systems that Kimlon used to use, and they've become something else. That service is still around, and they put all kinds of nasty chemistry on your lawn. But we could do we could use that same   exact application,   use that same application   infrastructure  

[01:27:40] Unknown:

to do a residential lawn.   Charge them the same amount of money.  

[01:27:45] David Bennett:

Right? I could I could make I could get portable equipment, you know, that to to do this on lawns without, you know, damaging their sprinkler. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna I mean, that's at least for, you know, the foliar application, but what if I wanted to get,   you know, like, inject this stuff into their subsoil? Well, I'm not gonna drag a key line plow across a half acre or or quarter acre   or or even one fifth of an acre front yard. I'm gonna I'll kill their sprinkler system and that's where that VOT injector comes back in.   Right?  

I've already got the gear.   I'm   not applying   foliar applications and subsoil applications   every day to Cathedral.   I should have a whole crew   that goes out into the nearest city   and says, hey,   you know, we can do we can make your lawn look awesome without chemistry.   We're just gonna put life onto it.   We're gonna put life underneath it. And I can use all the same stuff except the key lime plow. But I've got the Vaught, right? I but I could. I could offer this service to ranches and farms where I could use the key line plow for slurry   injection.  

I could cover thousands of acres in a season.   I could do multiple depths to ensure permanent   decompaction of their soil and give them long term   fertility as well   as water holding capacity.   Golf courses?   Well, I'm not gonna key line golf courses, but again, we've got the VOT injector.   We we and we can do foliar   applications on on on a golf course.   We might be able to get some real money out of that, guys.   We could deliver biology without tearing up any of these sensitive surfaces.   Orchards?   I could I could deliver these services to orchards.   I'm   not applying this every day to cathedral. I don't and I don't want idle equipment. That just doesn't make sense. I don't want a depreciation   schedule on something that's, you know, got a weed growing next to it because it doesn't need to be moved   for two more months and hasn't been moved for the two months before. It's just sitting there doing nothing.  

I can wrap a crew around that equipment easily.   I can tell golf courses and ranches and farms and and the residents inside cities that they can reduce chemical use   and use less water   and   disease, you know, make their their   lawns disease resistant.   Who doesn't want this shit? Especially if I can prove it. Right?   So we've got homeowners   as a market. I got ranchers as a market. Organic farms as a market. I got turf managers   as a market. That's the thing, by the way. That's a real job. It's just you'll find them at golf courses. They're called turf managers. But guess who else might want this?   Municipalities.  

Parks and recreation, bro.   I've seen some very large parks with very large sprinkler systems.   Do you think they'd want to reduce their dependence on water and how much water they actually use?   Do you think they'd want to be able to capture more water from rain events? You betcha.   You betcha. They just need to be educated.   But what I've just described, this brewing biology section,   this I can take off farm.   I can use it on on Cathedral   and I can use it outside Cathedral.   And this is the first time we start getting into   a little bit more. Like I said, I'm foreshadowing what's to come, but this is sort of the first thing about   how do we get double duty   out of everything that we do.  

And this is the first instance   of that. This is a lawn care business.   This is a a ranch care business. This is a farm care business. This is an orchard care business. It's a municipality   parks and recreation   contractor.   It can make money all year round. Well, maybe not in the winter, but you you get what I'm saying.   This is the way the cathedral needs to work.   Everything about it needs to do not just its function.   It needs to be able to perform another function.   It needs to be completely   maximized   as much as humanly possible.   Right?  

How might we get help   from world governments?   Oh, let's talk about that. They're gonna help us build this business.   I wanna talk to you about   integration into, yay, the carbon economy. It's coming.   Whether you like it or not, it's like AI,   like automobiles. It's like the invention of the telephone.   Everybody   hated it. They were all gonna fight against it. It was a terrible idea and they were gonna be able to stop it in its tracks. And guess which one of those technologies   got stopped?   None.   The Internet's still here. We've got electric electricity.   We've got telecommunications.  

We got automobiles. It didn't go away. You can you could you could red flag law automobiles   all day long and the writing was on the wall, ladies and gentlemen. This shit was gonna happen and it wasn't ever gonna go away.   I'm going to presume   that the carbon economy   isn't going to go away.   Is it dumb   because of the way that it's being introduced? Oh, you betcha.   But that doesn't mean I can't make it work for me   because biochar   is sequestration   of carbon. They talk about they wanna pump c o two into the ground.   Like that's gonna work. No. You need recalcitrant carbon in the ground, ladies and gentlemen. Here. My name is David Bennett. I got this project over here. I can pump   hundreds of tons of carbon into the soil and it will stay there for ten thousand years. You don't think they're not gonna love me? Of course, they're gonna love me because carbon is 85%   or well, biochar is 85%   carbon by weight.  

Now that's a maximum   figure. There's   some biochar or less than that, but let's go with 85%.   It's essentially permanent storage.   You know, literature   ranges its storage carbon storage inside the soil in well, in a biochar storage, you know, type thing.   Literature said anywhere between a 10,000   of stability. I'm going with 10,000.   I'm just gonna do this long enough to matter for any landowner,   and it's certainly long enough to matter for any municipality   or sovereign government that decides to get into the nonsense,   but it doesn't matter.  

The soil benefits   happen regardless of whatever carbon credit accounting you choose to do or for whatever reason you choose to do it for.   Because one pound of biochar   is about 3.67   pounds of sequestered   carbon dioxide, which is gonna kill us all.   Well,   I want one pound of biochar in my soil. I want   tons of biochar in my soil because of all the cool shit that it does, that you already know that it does.   Right? I got I got biochar acting as both the soil amendment and a verified   carbon lockbox.   It's measurable.   I know how many pounds of carbon I can put in the soil. It's auditable because I've got that all written down and certified.  

And those numbers allow me markets   that normally people don't get a chance to get to.   Specifically, it allows me entry into the carbon market.   Like, for example,   a thousand acre deployment   of, like, this subsoiling   thing we've already talked about.   Like, I've already done it   to Cathedral. Right? Let's say that I've made my first pass   on a thousand well,   okay, well, just say look at a thousand acres. Before we even plant all the trees, I got a thousand acres. I the soil's jacked anyway. I got I'm gonna have to do these applications anyway   because I need to put cows on there so I can start making money so that it kick starts this whole system. I'm gonna do the entire thousand acres and I'm gonna pay special attention to putting this carbon where the trees are eventually going to go. But I'm gonna do all thousand acres   and at one pound   of biochar   applied per linear foot,   I can probably sequester about 12,000   tons of CO2   every year. 12,000 tons, not 12,000 pounds.  

We're talking 24,000   pounds. That's just on one shank.   Let's say I got three shanks. All of a sudden, our our numbers start going up really hard, and I honestly believe these numbers are rather low. I think it's a hell of a lot more than 12,000 tons at one pound per linear foot on a thousand acre deployment because one pound per linear foot   isn't enough to fill up all the nooks and crannies of the exploded soil underneath the ground and fill up the half inch trench left behind.   I can put a lot of carbon in the soil, ladies and gentlemen.   Multiple passes at different depths compound   the carbon tonnage that I can store even further.  

I got that. If we're doing if we're if we're charging for services to go do this for, you know, residential places,  

[01:37:24] Unknown:

I can I can I can log that carbon   onto the books?   Carbon credits?   They currently trade anywhere between $42   and $100 a ton.   If   I can sequester   one ton of CO2   in the form of biochar,   right?   And remember, one, you know, one gram of biochar is 3.67   grams of CO2,   so I don't have to put down that much biochar to do it, right?   40   to a $100  

[01:38:02] David Bennett:

per ton is what they're gonna cut. I can sell those credits on the market, like I'm selling stock certificates or I'm selling futures or I'm selling some weird derivative.   That's a lot of money because 12,000   tons, even though I think those numbers are way low,   $500,000   to $700,000   per year   of potential revenue. Again,   everybody's got a plan till you get punched in the face, but we gotta start somewhere, so I'm starting here.   Half a million   to 3 quarters of a million dollars per year for me to do what I was gonna do anyway?   Sign   me up.  

I would do this anyway for soil health.   But, hell, if they're handing out money,   I'm not going to leave it on the table.   I get a double revenue stream, man. I mean, landowners   pay for services like me coming out to their ranch or their park   or their lawn or whatever.   I get to inoculate. I get to do the resilience and the fertility.   And then the I log all the carbon that I use and the carbon markets pay for the carbon stored in those processes.   Or   or I could offer the service for free.   Or at least at a hell of a discount. I could say, look, this would normally cost you, you know, a $150   for me to do. I'm gonna do it for a 100,   just because you're you. And then keep that price. Always have your price at a discount because I'm gonna make up that $50 on the back end anyway when I send my logs in   to get them certified   and then basically   change those carbon sequestration logs into futures or or or credits that I can sell on the carbon market. You see how this works? It's doing things   twice. It's getting   well, not doing things twice. It's getting  

[01:39:50] Unknown:

double duty out of something that I do only once.   Right?   One action,   two sources of revenue.  

[01:39:59] David Bennett:

That's a fundamental feature of almost everything that I can think of trying to do in Cathedral.   That's one of the points of Cathedral.   Because carbon credits are it's a ledger of ecological work, according to these people, and Bitcoin is a ledger of energy.   Both of them convert invisible processes into measurable   and tradable assets.   And Cathedral   sits at the intersection.   Biology,   energy, and economics   all reinforcing   one another.   Because I'm gonna end up talking about that   next,   of course, not next, but in the next episode   of Cathedral.  

Because the next episode of Cathedral is going to dive into   what I'm calling the carbon group.   I'm gonna show how biochar production,   energy generation,   and Bitcoin mining   all integrate   with,   well, brewing biology, for lack of a better term.   So let's close this episode out.   I wanna ask a couple of questions. I want you to start thinking about   these questions as I leave you alone to go on about your hump day this Wednesday.   We need a different way to think about inputs. Like I said, you know, bags of fertilizer.   What if fertility wasn't something that you bought in a bag?  

What if fertility could be brewed, inoculated,   and made to self replicate itself   all   on farm   or on cathedral or on your ranch?   What would your ranch or what would Cathedral look like if the pastures never got compacted ever again?   How would your farm change   if water stayed in the soil   through every single drought?   How would   how would your lawn look, your golf course look,   your orchard, if you didn't depend on chemical rescue,   but instead biology   glued to every leaf and root?   At least for a day. I mean, it is it's gonna wash off, you know, the glomalin is not gonna stay around forever outside in the atmosphere. It's gonna   it's gonna get solubilized by rain, and it will go back into the soil, which is great, but   what what would that look like   you're not having your your plant is healthy it's being its immune system is being boosted from the inside   by things that we can brew   Can you see the biology as infrastructure?  

Can you see it as not being an input?   I mean, are are we ready to design for resilience instead of just reacting to bad things that happen to us?   What part of your lawn, your land, your golf course, your ranch, your farm, your orchard? What   what part of that   could be the test bed for something like brewing biology if you did it yourself and you didn't even have to go full hog? You could look for a smaller,   compost tea brewing system. What part would you test?   Every organism,   no matter how big or how small, needs some kind of circulation.  

[01:43:26] Unknown:

But it also needs a heart.   And that is the next episode.  

[01:43:30] David Bennett:

It'll be Cathedral six,   the carbon group,   the living heartbeat   of energy and carbon.   Catch you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon.   Have a great day.