"We are cannibalizing ourselves, so that things look neat and tidy, on our way to our grave" - CPL. This is possibly the most quotable thing You have ever said. What an accurate description of modern society.

Well done. Now, write your book.

Permaculture is amazing. Looking forward to learning as much as possible about our interconnectedness with nature though my own food forest soon. Thanks for the important lesson.

Absolutely love this way of thinking 🙏

I always learn something from you, even though I'm in Florida. Thank you for taking the time and effort to share your knowledge

This might be your best video ever. Fantastically articulated.

Didn't I once meet you in Tibet, your head was bare, and you were wearing a Crimson Cloak sitting under a Bodhai Tree.... Very Inspiring Keith...very Holistic....everything is so interconnected in Nature, the way you view Mother Nature and Permaculture. Sincerely enjoy when you delve into this aspect of life on your channel, also made me open my eyes to another view of my yard, and see things a little differently again when I go out this morning. I'd love to take a tour of your property sometime if you ever open it up for tours in the future. Now if you can help me with any suggestions to keep Murphy the Wonder Dog (pictured left @ 20 lbs), away from our new resident Groundhog (30 lbs), I am open to them. All the Best, and keep up the Good Fight!! :)

All excellent points. We have removed ourselves from this ecosystem to such an extent that it’s no wonder we are not thriving both physically and mentally.

Writing this even before the video finishes. This is by no means whoo Whoo. It’s vital that we all understand this🥰

Wow!! Absolutely love this and learning from you!! Thank you for all your educational videos!!! Inspiring ❤

I loved this one. I love the cyclical aspect of nature. "I AM the currant." That's my favorite quote!

Thank you for discussing the importance of allowing life into your garden. We need this life around us, not sterility. Not only does it benefit the food web of our gardens, it also improves our well-being.

Yea when you said "landmass",I thought " Oh shit,we're swamped!"

We are a fractal of the planet. What gives us protection and allows us to process our food is just a different version of what protects the planet and allows it's soil to process and distribute nutrients. The systems and energy flow in a person is similar to in a town, in a country, and beyond. I love that science is learning to explain the whoo hoo to make it more understandable and acceptable to a wider variety of people.

...that currant becomes me, I am the currant..had to light one up right there. Great video, enjoyed watching it!

Much to think about. Thought-provoking thanks for sharing.

This video is so interesting and informative. When I first started “gardening” I thought food plants had to be organized in patches and rows. It was a lot of work. But I started to find self seeded kale or a berry sprout or a volunteer tomato tucked under a perennial shrub or tree and it grew to a large productive food source with absolutely zero attention or fussing or manipulation. I now “hide” seeds and small edibles amongst other growing things. I grow a lot of perennial edibles. It’s all a wonderful, “unorganized,” highly sensory experience to pick and forage. It’s taken me years to get to this and you’ve explained it all in this video. Thank you.

I've been fully tuned into this integrated nature thing for possibly longer than you have been alive, and at the same time, this video has me thinking about things even just a little bit different. Consider this video successful! I also like how you didn't present it like you came up with this - theologists and philosophers around the world have had their fingers on this pulse for a very long time. What I found really interesting was how you connected gut biome to essentially the insect world (well, the whole world). It IS quite arbitrary for us to call our body "us", when "us" is a collective of symbiotic relationships between micro organisms. It's not that strange to extend this envelope outside of our own skin. The part that I'm thinking about differently is how my garden works. When I think of my garden as the "super organism", (i.e. basically this is what an ecosystem is), I understand how important it is to maximize the amount of symbiotic relationships in them. Some of them I may not even see, or understand. I really really super duper loved this one Keith.

Thanks for another awesome video, I feel so much more connected to nature after planting my own fruit forest. Your videos are so inspiring 💚

Hippy Dippy is good!

Very interesting video with some deep thought. Enjoyed watching ❤

Awesome! Thanks, Keith!

Have I mentioned that I want you as my neighbor? :-) My food forest is young, so I am repelling the deer as you did. They're loving everything I have planted! Great video and insight into our living world, Keith! Thank you!

Wow!, you have helped me to crystallize some thoughts that have been bumbling around in my head....like a bumble bee not sure which blossom to go to next.....the question of 'life' being something more than just a collection of elements, DNA etc....the self organizing spark that that manifests 'life' when the right elements are present....thankyou. Denise (NewZealand)

"Spaceship that carries bacteria around" I believe the proper term is "Meat Vessel"

My microbiology prof in grad school used to say, "I am more WE than ME"...something I think about often, not just in terms of my gut microbiome, but in terms of how people around me shape me and vice versa...

I love that you are talking about all of this - this too is what I talk about in the "work' I do - unity - within and in our garden spaces. So good. I know your work is "getting out there" more and more as your videos keep getting sharedi in our local (Ottawa area) gardening groups (there are many). It's so awesome that your videos are offering such excellent thought provoking ideas about the oneness with science too. :)

Hi Keith This has to be one of the best wow factor videos of our time, you have surpassed yourself with this one. AMAZING 👏 🌍🌱🌳🌿💚

Excellent video! You put your points across so well. I'm aware of the things you talk about, but it's always good to hear it, to bring it to the forefront of the mind. Thank you

Loved this video. Learned much and also had so much tat I think and feel confirmed. We just need to follow nature's example, she will teach us so much. Nothing is separate, it is all connected.

Thanks Keith! Your subscribers might be interested in Ed Yong's book, "I Contain Multitudes".

Very interesting...Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

I LOVE this. Thank you for being here.

I also am trying to cultivate my relationship with the Tao. It’s so hard to be “unwanting” when you want to save the planet. I know it’ll still be here after we finish cannabalizing ourselves but …

Great video. I'm decidedly not spiritual in any supernatural sense, but I really do appreciate the complexity and scale of ecosystems and even non-biological natural systems. There is awe to be felt in our world. The whole "100 companies" thing is really about the concentration of power and it doesn't matter much to the point if it's 1000 or 10000 companies/governments. The point is that a very small number of corporate executives and politicians make decisions about things that majorly affect emissions and it really isn't all "just demand" from individual consumption. There are significant areas throughout all of the global economy and corporate structures where sustainability can be improved with minimal negative impact on profits or quality of life (in many cases positive impacts can be expected), but those people with concentrated power must choose those options for us to make the progress we need to make in the timeline required to mitigate significant damage. Energy is the classic example. It's relatively easy for an individual to achieve moderate reductions in electricity use, but below a certain threshold it requires major sacrifices to quality of life. In contrast, the choice of electricity grid inputs (coal, solar, nuclear, hydro) have a massive impact on the overall environmental impact of that electricity use, but those choices are directly controlled by a very small number of people who are, at best, only indirectly accountable to the average consumer through our democratic political system. Same thing applies to public transit vs car use. If our governments spend most of their transportation budgets on highways and parking, while starving public transit and legislating environmentally disastrous urban sprawl, it's nearly impossible for individuals to opt out of that system completely.

Thank you for this. This year I have grown Borage. It’s a wonderful bee magnet and the flowers a nice little treat. I haven’t tried the leaves yet but read they can be eaten.

If this interconnectivity would be taught in schools, I'm confident solutions would be found before Mother Nature finds them for us.

Thanks so much for this video! Love the idea that the lines of where our human bodies begin and end are much more ambiguous than it seems. Would be awesome to hear more of your thoughts on the transition between a protected, young perma forest and one strong enough to withstand animal browsing

Thank-you for sharing this! I got swamped this year and didn't really plant much of a garden. But with what energy I did have, I turned a small section in front of the house into a dye flower bed, most of it filled with plants a friend was giving away. It was mostly done for the selfish reason of making the front of the hosue look presentable for guests and not just having a bed of quack grass, but every day I go out and there are bees, butterflies and other insects galore, feasting on the flowers! Previously I had dismissed flowers and put my energy on vagetables, but now I see the benefit for the insects, I'll be adding in lots more perennial flowers throughout the property.

6:30 i recently had a similar experience. the back parking lot of my job was filled with great native plants - evening primrose, St Johns wort, spotted Knapp weed, dogwood, wild grapes, etc.. it seemed like a decent enough place to squeeze in some extra tomatoes i had started. two weeks ago, the company hired somebody to spray poison all around the property. i watched my tomatoes and hundreds of other plants get murdered in real time. fortunately it looks like mostly just the understory plants were affected but i was heartbroken and just kept thinking "who in their right mind pays someone to kill such beautiful habitat?" but that's most of the world and apparently I'M the crazy one! maybe a silver lining - there was a ton of poison ivy that also got sprayed so that's no longer a threat and i managed to plant some more tomatoes behind a patch that i could previously not access. thanks for this video and for all of your work, Keith.

Good one Tyler it wasnt really hippy dippy stuff at all. I really like that you are letting the deer join the party now. Very cool🌳🌼🌻☘🌿🏵🍁🫒🍑

I loved this, and I don't even think "supernatural" is a coherent concept. I can't express how refreshing it is to hear a Secular Taoist perspective on anything. No surprise it's about permaculture 😁.

Awesome video, as always! This is such unique content. A+ very rare stuff.

I was a little worried by the video title, I must admit. However, by using the standpoint of an engineer is pretty much how I see things (being the daughter of an eminent engineer, and wife of another. Connectivity is certainly 'king' in that profession). I am an ex-professional gardener who started to rebel against the 'manic orderliness' of ornamental horticulture some 35-40 years ago. I'd originally picked the 'humble' career of a gardener because good careers information was a bit thin on the ground when I was a youth and if you wanted to work outdoors with plants, you were told to become a gardener. But the whole absurdity of this 'nice little job outdoors with the sunshine and flowers' - it is soul-crushing. The amount of machinery we were expected to use for different jobs was criminal. Mowers to keep every piece of lawn shorn. Hedgecutters, strimmers, little vehicles to transport tools a short distance, scarifiers, leaf blowers, and even this filthy little contraption that belched choking blue smoke while it trimmed the edges around lawns only marginally quicker than a pair of long-handled clippers. (I deliberately and repeatedly blunteded the machine until my manager allowed me to return to the quiet, restful, unpolluting clippers). I was forced to take a chemical spraying course, but point-blank refused to my furious garden manager's face to ever spray chemicals afterwards. So I don't have that on my conscience at least. But many of my colleagues do, spraying Glyphosate all over the place, drenching the many gravel paths and weedy corners (there is a rumour that the owner of the property died from cancer. A disproportionate number of my colleagues died in their early 50's from cancer... Oh, I can't imagine how that happened). Spring and Summer bedding... There's another one. Gaudy annual flowers grown elsewhere, potted in manufactured peat-based compost, sprayed with god knows what, transported around, a frankly 'unforgivable' amount of mains water used to establish them in the beds (Fuchsias being notoriously bad for their thirst), and then once they finally really get to look good - rip 'em up for the next season's lot. The waste. The waste. Especially the Spring bulbs and perennials used and thrown away afterwards. The garden industry, for all its apparent beauty, has much to be ashamed of. Now however... While my neighbours continue to mow, spray, clip, nip and trim to obsessive, unnatural tidiness, I am the only one with Nightingales nesting in my 'wild' garden (proudly announcing 6 cute chicks fledged so far). Lizards have arrived. Frogs, newts and toads are appearing in greater numbers. For the past 2 years, Goldfinches have taken to nesting in the crazy, wind-swept heights of a tall, columnar conifer I planted 15 years ago (they sing as magnificently as my Nightingales). I get bitten and bothered by an amazing range of insects. I need beehives. That has to be the next thing. I have the flowers, with more to come. Beehives are sort of scary, but I must... You can't help but see connections being made in a garden in which you participate but don't even try to govern absolutely. It doesn't need it. I cover some of the fruit produced with net bags to reserve some for myself - but leave the rest to the birds so they come and eat a little of that and then tuck into the insects. This year, for the first time, no weevils on the raspberries or Amelanchiers. Just gone. A little treat for the new Nightingales. They just yum 'em up. Next year I am going to download a 'No-Mow May' poster and stick it in the Community notice board. I am sick of lawnmower racket and pollution, and sick of the damage it is doing around here. Rant over. Sorry.

I really sent you down a rabbit hole with Nate's podcast. Good stuff man! Keep it up.

Loved this video. Would be fun to catalog the species you find on your land and actively try to increase the numbers. Maybe a good homeschool activity (I'm dreaming up the future :) )

Great topic and way to start my day, thanks

Love this video

Thank you

You could go further and talk about the bacteria in the soil, their relationship to the fruit bush and eventually to your body. And If you want to extend this further you could talk about the energy in the air, soil and water and how it is one with your body and how the energy of the sun powers all this and relates you to the energy of the galaxy and etc. You are a child of the universe... I could sing if you like.

Long time watcher here; I finally have land and this fall I will be sheet mulching with carboard and covering it deeply with arborist's chips. Come spring I will begin my permaculture food forest. I am starting small with a half acre where I have dug a swale and a biochar pit over the last couple months, but I have 13 1/2 more acres to expand into over the years. I have been in the landscaping industry for some time and I suppose I feel somewhat guilty for my involvement in our self cannibalization. Even today my job still sometimes demands my actions are at odds with my ideals. At some point, however, I would like to start my own landscaping company where I will use what I learn in the coming years with starting my own food forest, to do the same for others, increasing the percentage of land in my area that is in harmony with nature. I wanted to tell you this because you have been the largest force driving me down this road. It is still early and I don't know how far I will get, but any distance is further than I would have gone otherwise. Bigger channels may have seeded my brain with the idea of permaculture, but I think yours is the best and I have continued to watch you even after I stopped watching others. You have brought me so much inspiration and motivation. Thank you!

Great video!!

Love this video!

Did you just call me bacteria? I feel so seen! The few times I've had no choice but to take antibiotics, I apologized to all my bacteria friends for what I was doing to us. So I can't fathom how people can feel okay literally mowing down other living beings in order to fit an aesthetic they probably never even consciously chose or thought about the costs of. There are not words to describe how much I love this. Hands down my favorite video of yours yet. You wouldn't happen to be reading Braiding Sweetgrass or another book by Robin Wall Kimmerer, would you? The direction of this reminds me a lot of her work.

Very interesting thanks. I've been thinking about how, just as we are hosts to diverse benign microbial symbionts on whose good health our own life depends, we are ourselves symbionts of our host planet but we have become, in our totality, like pathogens that kill their host. Interestingly, microbes we are in the habit of thinking of as pathogenic are not always so. It depends on the environment they find themselves in. Something else to reflect on is that inorganic substances are also capable of self-organising. Mutualistic self-organising seems like a fundamental law of existence. Most of our problems today stem from ignorance. We're not attuned to how our own decisions around consumption drive the very processes that are destroying our ecosystem - on of the points you are making. It may be that as we become more aware of our own responsibilities the drive to self organise will arise in such a way that we actually enter into a mutually beneficial relationship with the planet.

💟

I'm trying to follow your lead but the deer and rabbits are making me crazy. I'm planting fruit trees and bushes and a lot of natives. Even my native ferns and milkweed are being eaten, which are supposed to be toxic. The lawn is full of clover and the previous owners planted lots of hostas. I'm leaving those as sacrificial plants but it's still not enough. I think we have an overpopulation of deer and rabbits. The whole system is out of whack! Thanks for your informative and encouraging videos. In spite of my current frustration your messages are hopeful!

thank you for not trying to sell a spiritual message here. i was somewhat afraid that there would be some wo-wo in the comments, but so far nothing yet!

I have been watching you for a while now and love your videos and all the information you have in your content. I have been wanting to get more of my own food growing, and this will be my third attempt since moving to our home in 2006. I am in a much better position now to start implementing production of our own food on our property. Last weekend I bought two potted blueberry bushes and two potted asparagus. I don't want to mess up my placement on either of these. Do you offer any services that could help me locate good spots on my property for these plants? Or can you direct me to some who might be able to help?

There is a local company near me that advertises that for a fee they will come to your house and kill all your weeds and bugs with chemicals. I cringe every time I hear it! I was reading a book about nutrition and it said eat like your grandparents. When your grandparents or great grandparents were alive no one was carrying around large tanks of very dangerous chemicals to spray on the things they ate.

You are right, we are interconnected with everything that was created. Masterfully designed by God of Jesus (have to clarify these days). I never met my grandfather, in South Korea, but he built an entire village with a school. He was born in 1907 and was not the first son, so no inheritance. Anyway, long story short - he had one of the most bountiful farms, and no one lever left there hungry (even enemy soldiers). But while occupied by the US during the war, pesticides and chemical fertilizers were introduced. My mother told me that when that happened, the crayfish, fish, including numerous other animals and beneficial insects disappeared, and the land was changed. The ecosystem was destroyed. Until recently (within the past 15 years), I never gave it much thought because I was chasing the "American Dream" and was too busy with "life". So that said, we definitely need to be very aware of the consequences of our decisions and need to mitigate as much damage as we can by restoring what we can without using harmful chemicals to enjoy the abundance that should be around us. Not feeding the greed machine.

You pissed me off with some climate snobbery,but you turned me around with this one, resubbed.

BC nature magazine the summer 2023 edition, volume 61, No.2 on page four, the title is "Natural Justice Is it Bad to Kill Endangered Plants?" "To some it seems less reprehensible to kill an unfeeling endangered plant than an endangered animal ,less reprehensible to kill a slimy endangered fish than a warm and fuzzy endangered mammal but does such a distinction apply in-law? Fortunately a 2020 Alberta court decision Supported the concept that endangered is endangered" Article by Ben van Drimmelen... article goes on to talk about a ski resort in Banff National Park knowingly cut down endangered white pine trees (keystone species) without permits and fined 2.1 million. We are nature.

I have just started Mt gatden transformation

Cheers for the video man!

This is sooo interesting. These are the basics of Buddha teachings - as of interdependent arising and further more cause and effect, and as well as the emptiness of the body and ego (where do I and my body begin, and where do those end). Do you have a literature advice of this scientific interdependence of flow? Would love to study that....soooo interesting

I wonder if you'd have the same attitude towards possums and wallabies that you do towards rabbits and deer haha. They can be pretty devastating in a food garden. Maybe if I had a big enough garden with enough diversity it could work... but I think I'd prefer to leave fence them out for now 😅

Great video, many thanks. the integration of microbiology with plants and our own bodies is really fascinating. But lately there is 1 doubt that entered my mind... your gut microbiology is anaerobic if im correct and the 'good' microbiology in soil and around plants is aerobic (generalizing). how does keeping this microbiology on the plants (not washing them intensively before eating) benefit your gut biology and vice versa? (dung on the ground). is it just to support the food webs (nutrient cycles), or is there something more going on?

I want you as my neighbor!

My wife and I love your channel, Keith and you certainly are an inspiration for us as we try to restore a 1-acre property to a more natural state. It's quite a bit further north than where you are located, so we don't have the same opportunity with cultivated food plant species, but maybe we'll be surprised by what can survive if we can find/create some milder microclimates. Doug Tallamy is another great advocate for conservation of native plants and insects and I'm sure you've come across him. If not, here's a link to a Google talk that you might like. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/jqmVnpBkuMXDmqc.html

Thanks for your input, you should do a video about plants and there defense mechanisms as they have many many anti nutrients and defense mechanisms to kill whatever eats it. A lot of plants do not want to be eaten. Meat however has zero anti nutrients theres nutrients that we as humans cannot get from plants but there is none that we cannot get from eating meat.

Do you have a video in how to prune fruit trees? I have a few first year (transplanted) trees and I’m wondering if I should heavily prune them this year & when if so. Thanks

Off topic but did I hear that health Canada is moving forward with the initiative to stop the sale of all natural health supplements? Another reason to grow your own imo.

Social engineering

The only "hippie-dippie" thing I heard you say was when you referred to flowers as people. 17:00 🌻🦭💜💜💜 I see our species as a greedy herd of animals (cows usually) mindlessly consuming a gargantuan dam made of hay. When they (we) eat through and the dam breaks the greedy herd is washed away. Dead. This is exactly what is happening. The dam has leaks. The systems are weakening. Oh and one final synchronistic event that ties into the intro to today's post: I ate my very first black currants literally just yesterday from two new bushes! Only five of them but still an event.