David Ford: Don’t give up. Be aware that people out there, especially in these communities, are aware that there’s a problem, and if you talk to ’em one-on-one, they’re gonna be very receptive to your ideas. If you get ’em in a group, that’s the hypernormalization. They know there’s a problem, but it’s that herd mentality.
They can’t they refuse to acknowledge it. They refuse to change. So change is gonna be slow. If you’re a new farmer, you’re getting into it. Be open to suggestions. Talk to a lot of people, build yourself a network, find a community, and make a lot of mistakes.
Josh Wilder: Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. At Mother Earth News for 50 years and counting, we’ve been dedicated to conserving the planet’s natural resources while helping you conserve your financial resources in this podcast. We host conversations with experts in the fields of sustainability, homesteading, natural health, and more to share all about how you can live well wherever you are in a way that values both people and our [00:01:00] Mother Earth.
This February 27th and 28th, 2026, you’ll find 24 workshops and 30 classes at the Homesteaders of Iowa Expo and Midwest Conference in Ottumwa, Iowa. At Homesteaders of Iowa they believe in the power of homestead to inspire you to live more sustainably and connect with others who share your passion.
Learn from those who learn by doing like homegrown herbalists, Dr. Patrick Jones and homesteader Ruth Ann Zimmerman. Be sure to visit the Mother Earth News booth as well. Learn more at homesteadersofiowa.com.
Hello, and thank you for listening to this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends. I’m Josh Wilder, and with me today I have David Ford and Ana Skemp. Thanks for being here. I’ll let you all introduce yourself,
Ana Skemp: My name is Ana Skemp. I am the lead editor for Mother Earth News. I farm and homestead in southwest Wisconsin. It’s barely warmer than zero degrees this morning, so it’s a fun day to get outside and do chores. We have a herd of grassfed beef cows, Icelandic sheep, Kune pigs. And David, I know we [00:02:00] overlap on at least a couple of those. And then poultry and fiber goats. We do farm programming for kids all summer long, and that’s a passion project of mine. I think it’s really important to teach the next generation how to grow food and raise food.
Josh Wilder: Great, thanks Ana. And David, can you talk a little bit about where you’re at and and what you’re doing there in Iowa?
David Ford: Sure. My name’s David Ford. I live with my wife and my children on our homestead. We call it Fairfield Good Earthworks. And we’re in Fairfield, Iowa.
And much like Ana, it’s about two degrees right now with a windchill of minus 12. So chores this morning were very fun. I’ve also got Icelandic sheep and KuneKune pigs. My poultry situation right now is a little thin. We had some raccoon issues, but I’ve still got some Cayuga ducks and a chicken we call pig chicken ’cause she would much rather live with the with the pigs than the other chickens.
Ana Skemp: I think that’s great. Thanks. This is an under-explored area of the Kune behavior is that they [00:03:00] love chickens because I too have had this experience many times over the years, and the chickens will actually sit on the ba, the back of the pigs when they’re all buried in the hay, and I think it provides them a little bit of extra warmth and they clean up the grain that the pigs leave.
And it’s just, it’s a good situation all around.
David Ford: Oh yeah, I’ve caught over the years we’ve had a number of chickens that have chosen to, to live with Kune . And as coy coons have a thicker fur or a thicker hair coat than a lot of other breeds, and the chickens like to scratch, and the pigs absolutely love that scratching.
So yeah it’s a great symbiotic relationship between the two. And the pigs, of course, provide protection.
Josh Wilder: I wanna make sure we mention up top quick that David will be speaking at the Homesteaders of Iowa event here coming up in February. And primarily today we’d like to talk about, how you got to where you’re at today in Iowa, and what you’re doing now and what you’re hoping to do in 2026.
David Ford: Alright let’s see, where am I coming from? So I’m 54 [00:04:00] years old. I am a Gen X kid. I grew up in the 1970s and I was that kid that I grew in all kinds of science fiction and technology. I read a lot of Heinlein and Asimov and I love Star Trek and I was absolutely convinced that technology was gonna be the answer.
So when I was old enough to mow lawns, I was mowing lawns to purchase computer parts. And I made my first 8086 processor computer when I was about 12, 13 years old. I made an 8088 after that, and I was that kid that was, again, just electronics. So my background I joined the service. I was an electronics technician in the Navy, and after that I was a telecommunications technician and an engineer and something happened about 2001. I became a paramedic. The technology bubble burst. And I found myself in a unique position where there was a career change. I wasn’t planning it, but it just so happened and got into EMS, became a paramedic, and [00:05:00] somewhere about 2008 I woke up and I had this epiphany or.
I don’t know exactly what you’d call it, but I realized that this technology that I was an advocate for years really was more of a hindrance in causing problems than anything else. And that was the year that we started. Our very first garden was 2008. We were living in Clarinda, Iowa. And it’s just snowballed from there about 2017 2015 we moved here to Fairfield from Clarinda and, that’s when it really started accelerating as, as far as homesteading, I was ending the I was getting towards the end of my EMS career, and my wife said to me one day, she said, you’ve been playing around with this sustainable living and regenerative living for a number of years, and you’ve, I’ve had all kinds of experiments.
I made biogas gasifiers. I played with pyrolysis, making my own biochar and doing all kinds of things that I thought were interesting. And she said, why don’t you go back to school [00:06:00] and learn how to do this right. Not that I was doing it wrong, but, can learn some from other people’s mistakes.
And ’cause I’ll be honest, I was making a lot of mistakes along the way, but I went back to school local school here Maharishi International University, or MIU for short. And they have a regenerative living program. And I got my undergrad degree in regenerative living with a emphasis on adaptable complex systems or adaptive complex systems.
And from there I went to Arizona State where I got my master’s degree in biomimicry. And I’m currently at Mississippi State getting my PhD where I’m doing research on mycorrhizal fungi and. How we’ve my, my idea in the research is that we need mycorrhizal fungi to basically regenerate the soil.
It’s so beneficial to the soil. And as here in Iowa, we’ve got about 35 million acres. Farmland and 35 million acres total, about 31 million [00:07:00] acres of farmland, and about 60% of that is moderately to severely degraded. It’s it absolute, it’s absolutely dependent on synthetic inputs every year.
And as far as the Homesteaders of Iowa, I got involved with them about three years ago. And I, it’s, it’s a weird situation. I tell my wife, I, I found ’em online. I used to follow I still follow Homesteaders of America, but I was looking for something regional, something that I could literally connect with people and drive out to other people’s farms and talk to people that are actually dealing with.
The temperature and the weather and the soil that we have here in Iowa and see how they were doing things. So I got involved with them, and my wife will tell you that I’m 100% an introvert. I don’t do well in public. I have a little social anxiety about speaking and things like that, but I found my group, I found my my flock.
Or my herd, whatever you wanna, however you wanna term it. And I just started putting a lot of energy into it [00:08:00] and doing some volunteer work. And Linda and Randy Spears who run the organization are absolutely phenomenal people. And they’ve just given me opportunity to be involved and I really appreciate ’em for that.
And it’s not just me, it’s not Linda and Randy. There’s a tremendous amount of people that are, behind the scenes with the homesteaders of Iowa. Yeah. Fantastic group. I’m glad to support ’em in any way I can. And I think I’ve been an asset to them a little bit. Bringing some stuff.
Last year I gave a presentation. It was last minute on soil regeneration. And my area of expertise again is microorganisms and how nature regenerates soil.
Ana Skemp: So we have some more funny overlaps here. I finished up my graduate program at the University of Arizona in ecology and evolutionary biology, and I studied cognition and spiders and insects, and sometimes I wonder. How that, did I waste my time or does that inform my daily decisions on the farm and homestead?
And I’m curious if you could just share [00:09:00] with our audience a bit what biomimicry is, and maybe give your favorite example, and then I’d love to hear a couple of examples of how that might inform your decisions as you work with the land and with your animals.
David Ford: With animals. Okay. Yeah. So biomimicry in short, is so nature’s been around for 3.8 billion years basically. And she has, and when I say she, Mother Nature has gone through pretty much every possible combination of solutions to solve every problem that’s come along. So biomimicry is really the studying of nature and using nature’s solutions to solve our [00:10:00] problems.
And the way we do that is through emulation. It’s not through bio utilization, which is something totally different. That’s something I do here with my job. We use a variety of fungi to make. Natural soil amendments that’s bio utilization. What we’re doing is we’re mimicking, so biomimicry, emulates nature, or specifically the solution that nature has derived through, its 3.8 billion years of experimenting.
You just can’t if you’re looking for test results or you’re looking for any kind of track record. Again I saw something a few years ago that if you were to put the entire lifespan of the planet into a 24 hour clock, mankind’s been here for about three seconds. So yeah you just can’t go wrong with that.
As far as what I’ve seen. My wife tells me that I’ve originally I was gonna be doing my master’s work in regenerative organic agriculture, and life has a way [00:11:00] of changing your path. I just, I was applying to a couple different programs that I was interested in, and there was just roadblock after roadblock.
And one day a friend of mine says, Hey, you need to look into this biomimicry. And everything just went. So well I had I, I applied, literally if you know anything about getting into grad school and dealing with financial aid or dealing with the government and the va that’s, that takes forever.
And literally within a month, all my paperwork was done. I was accepted into the program. I’d had my interview and I was ready to go. And I just, there’s a, there was just some kind of. I was just that perfect. It was that perfect puzzle piece. And it fit for me and everything clicked. And I used biomimicry a lot in my day-to-day life.
I’m looking I’ve got a pollinator garden out on my property as well as here. And it’s interesting, I look at, so here at work, I have lance drop boxes and I have traditional hives, but out on my property I use all native [00:12:00] hives. I use old logs, I use hollowed out vessels.
I use whatever the bees have pretty much set themselves up in, and I’ll go and I’ll do swarm mitigation from time to time if somebody gets ahold of me here in Jefferson County. And if they’ve made themselves comfortable, I’ve got a. I’ve got a hive that’s living in a, it’s a 1948 or a 1946 gas can from an old truck.
They’ve made their hive in there. They’ve lived in there for three years now. And I have tried everything I could short of cutting the gas tank open and pulling them all out and relocating them to another hive. They’re just happy there. And I look at that and I just think, it’s they’re living a much simpler life.
It’s not, it’s not complicated. So I try and emulate that every day in my own life. As far as what I’m doing to the land, again I look at how nature how does nature regenerate the soil. My property when I bought it was considered junk farm land. I bought it in 2015 five, started off with five acres north of [00:13:00] town, and I added 10 acres to it.
Couple years back, and I literally started with an inch of topsoil. That’s how bad it was. I had people around here tell me, I, I overpaid. It was junk land. I never grow anything on it. And I started emulating the way nature emulates things. I increased the diversity. It started off with blue stem and yes I did something that a lot of regenerative ag people find themselves having to do.
I had a. The grass basically cut down. I didn’t know what a roller crimper was in the beginning, otherwise I would’ve just crimped everything and come in with a seed drill and planted a variety of species. But I did it the hard way. Again, it’s just how I learned. I learned through my mistakes and now I’ve got, god, there’s probably about a hundred to 150 different species of plants that’s grown on the soil. I’ve got 15 inches of top soil everywhere on that farm. It’s taken me 10 years to get from one inch to 15 inches of top soil, and it’s absolutely beautiful. [00:14:00] And the, some of the ROA guys from the regenerative Organic Ag program come out to my farm in the spring and I’ve gotta a deal with ’em.
I’ll give ’em a hundred dollars and a shovel. If they can dig up one square foot of Earth and A, it’s not moist, it’s not black and, or it’s not moist and black, and b, if it’s, if it, they don’t find any worms in what they dig up, I’ll give ’em a hundred bucks. And I’ve yet to pay anybody.
So I, and again, it just. I was looking at how nature did it, how does nature doesn’t come through. That doesn’t till, it doesn’t remove the cover of the ground. It armors the ground. Gabe Brown talks about armoring the ground all the time with cover crops, and that’s what I do. I don’t, yeah, so I’ve I keep the ground covered.
I’m emulating nature in that way. There’s an ecological succession that goes on in the first couple years I saw that ecological succession. I had weed. I had nothing but garbage that was coming up. There was nothing [00:15:00] but parasitic insects that were coming through. And now I’ve got monarchs, I’ve got butterflies and moths that I’ve never seen, I got a little app.
I’ve got a constantly look something up because every day I’m seeing something new that’s out there on the farm that’s being drawn to the land.
Ana Skemp: Two follow up questions on this. Are you grazing it at all? Are livestock involved? And number two, did you rely on the existing seed bank in the soil or did you bring new seed in?
David Ford: Yes , my KuneKune pigs, my Icelandic sheep, my chickens. I would love to get some cattle out there. I really would. I don’t need a big herd. It’s a bedtime to buy cattle.
Ana Skemp: It’s maybe in 2027 they’ll be affordable again.
David Ford: Yes. The weird thing about my animals is, and let me go on a little tangent here.
So one of the things I believe in is, we can make all the plans in the world that we want. I don’t, it doesn’t matter how you can believe in God, you can believe in the universe, there’s a million different things you can believe in, but [00:16:00] I think that when you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing.
The world will help you. Life will help you. There’s just, I talk about the five acres we bought. We talked to some neighbors and they said land around here is really expensive, but maybe, we’ll, we know somebody. And sure enough, a month later they introduced me to this gentleman by the name of James Stinton going through a divorce.
They, him and his wife had bought this property, this five acres, and they were gonna develop it and put a little homestead out there, and they ended up selling it to me for a good price. There was this 10 acres right behind the five acres, and it was absolutely just gorgeous piece of property as far as I was concerned.
It was absolutely gorgeous and nobody else thought so, but I did. But I didn’t know who owned it and I couldn’t contact him. So I went through the assessor’s office and I found an address for who I thought was the owner, and I would write them about every six months, I’d literally sit down and hand write a letter.
My name’s David Ford. I own this plot, blah, blah, blah. If you ever think about selling this land. Reach [00:17:00] out to me. And I did that for years. And then about 2019 when I was preparing to retire from EMS and I was out on a medical retirement at the time, going through some stuff this lady called me up one morning, said, Hey the family trust is looking to sell the land and.
Are you interested? This 10 acres, you own this five acre piece right in front? And I said, yeah, I’ve been writing you guys for years. And they said, oh, we never got a letter. And I said this is the address I was writing to. And they said, oh, that’s a dead mail address. We don’t, it’s just for, business and stuff.
And I said, oh, okay, yes, I’m very interested. And she said, okay, I will have the family trust attorney call you and we’ll figure out what how to go from there. And I said, okay. At the time. My daughter we were in the middle of a fight for brain cancer. My daughter about 2016, was diagnosed with brain cancer and she’s doing well now.
She’s 19, she was just 11 at the time. And so that was taking a lot of our financial resources, was [00:18:00] making sure she was getting the care she needed and she was healthy and everything else. And I didn’t know how I was gonna pay for it and I didn’t know what they were gonna ask. Farm prices here in Iowa, five, $12,000 I’ve seen.
We just had a record sale where $35,000 an acre for farmland and I didn’t know what was gonna happen. But they. If the attorney called me the next day said, okay, the family’s a little weird. And I said, I love weird. I’m weird myself. And he said they wanna know what you’re gonna do with the land.
So I laid out my plan for the homestead, and eventually the goal is to bring people to the land. Set up some cabins like wolfers, I’m sure you’re familiar with a, what a wolfer is. Bring some wolfers in. I wanna teach ’em about regenerative ag. I wanna teach ’em about some permaculture principles.
I wanna teach ’em about what I’m doing. And my whole goal is to just plant a seed, send them home, and hopefully they’ll replicate or they’ll integrate some of what they learned into their own lives. I explained all this to him and he said, [00:19:00] oh, I think this is fantastic. You’re gonna love it. He said lemme call you back tomorrow and I’ll see what what happens.
I said, okay. He called me back the next day. He said we’ve agreed on a price. And he, the price for the land was about a quarter of what I was expecting. It was just fantastic deal. And I thought, okay, I have no idea how I’m gonna pay for this, but I’m gonna figure it out. And the next morning I get a certified letter from the insurance company that I’ve been fighting with for my my medical and inside was the settlement check and all my back pay, which covered the the purchase of the property.
So that’s what I’m talking about when I say if it’s meant to happen. If something’s meant to happen, then you’re gonna find a way. Yeah, that’s my little tangent.
Ana Skemp: I’m just gonna share really quick that I had to become an organic orchardist in much the same way.
Just, it, it unfolded, it was meant to be mine and now I. I had to learn how to grow organic apples. [00:20:00] But when it’s your, when it’s your task and you rise to the occasion and you do it you answered the question about grazing the land and how the sheep and the pigs and the poultry are helping with the fertility there.
I’m curious if you brought in new seeds or if you just utilize the existing seed bank.
David Ford: So primarily I utilized the existing seed bank initially. I’ll be honest about that, but the farmland that I purchased that became the homestead had become it. It had been so over farmed at the Seed Bank. I know as I’m sure you’re aware, you know that the seed bank is there, it’s there in the soil.
It’s just waiting. Seeds can stay dormant from weeks to hundreds of years. They’re just there waiting for their chance to shine and do what they’re supposed to do. Unfortunately, I was one of the hardest lessons I’m having to learn in this entire process is my timeline isn’t necessarily nature’s timeline.
So those seeds weren’t developing, they weren’t coming up as fast [00:21:00] as I wanted. So after about three years, I did start to supplement. I did start to bring in other native seeds if I could find them to this region, not native specifically to Jefferson County, but to the region. I figured that would be good enough first start, and then eventually when the soil got a little bit healthier, I’d see more and more of that, those native seeds that were laying dormant.
And so soil pop up and that’s exactly what I’m seeing now.
Josh Wilder:
This February 27th and 28th, 2026, you’ll find 24 workshops and 30 classes at the Homesteaders of Iowa Expo and Midwest Conference in Ottumwa, Iowa. At Homesteaders of Iowa they believe in the power of homestead to inspire you to live more sustainably and connect with others who share your passion.
Learn from those who learn by doing like homegrown herbalists, Dr. Patrick Jones and homesteader Ruth Ann Zimmerman. Be sure to visit the Mother Earth News booth as well. Learn more at homesteadersofiowa.com.
Ana Skemp: I am curious if you’ve worked with the Farm Service Agency or the NRCS natural resource Conservation service at all, with funding to help with the [00:22:00] regeneration of these acres.
David Ford: We’re starting that process now. We’ve been working with the the local agency here.
I can’t think of the gentleman’s name last, Mr. Eids. I think it’s Eids. Apparently we had a farm number. You can’t really do anything with NRCS or USDA or anything until you get a farm number. Originally this was a much larger farm and it had a number, however, it’s now owned by about four different people.
So they’re trying to get us a new farm number, and that’s where we’re in the process right now. So it’s something it’s something we’re looking at. And we’re starting that journey. Yeah. And I know the, all those programs are changing with the big, beautiful bill that’s coming through.
And but any help we can get, yeah, to do things the right way would be really appreciated.
Ana Skemp: Yeah. I just wanna reiterate quick for our listeners that, there are these paperwork challenges of getting your farm number and all of that, and lots of meetings and lots of paperwork. But over the years we’ve had a [00:23:00] tremendous amount of support in pasture regeneration, soil testing fence building, waterline for livestock.
There’s so many programs out there and it’s, these meetings are worth it, I think.
David Ford: Absolutely.
Ana Skemp: I wanna touch quick on something else because I love your overlap with technology and science and nature. We recently covered the ecological impacts of artificial intelligence and looked at the water usage the energy usage the farm land that, and the wildlife habitat that these data centers are taking and are somewhat insatiable demand for ai.
Do you, I’m just, I’m curious your take on it, are there benefits, are there ways that AI can benefit people stewarding land? Is it all bad? Is it all good? What do you think?
David Ford: Oh, my boss would like me to say probably that AI is fantastic. My university would probably like me to say that as well. And the reason I say that is because AI is a wonderful [00:24:00] tool.
The problem is as a species, we have a habit of becoming too dependent on those tools. And then we begin to misuse them. And then, I used to run the makerspace here in town. I ran the wood shop and the metal shop. I do woodworking, I do blacksmithing things like that. Those are skills that I taught myself over the years.
And I’ve gotten pretty proficient. Not necessarily good, but proficient. And I had some guys come in one time and, oh, we’re, we know how to, we know how to do woodworking. We can cut. We’ve built all kinds of things. Oh, that’s great. Fantastic. Let’s go through the safety procedure and we’ll get you guys building.
And they turned around. They said, where’s the CNC machines and the laptops to program everything into, I said, oh, we don’t do that here. We’re strictly old school. So that’s what I mean by we’ve become too dependent. Eventually they had a fantastic time building things with their hands, but it’s something that scares me as far as land use.
Yeah, I know there’s a big battle going on right now in upper state, New York. [00:25:00] They’ve taken a lot of farms, or they’ve used eminent domain to, to see some farmland and they wanna build a big solar farm out there. I love solar. I love green energy. I’m off grid on my homestead. But taking the farmlands, there’s other ways to do it.
I see that there’s some negative sides to it, and I think it’s a big bubble right now waiting to burst. And everybody loves chat, GPT, and I know a lot of homesteaders. Hey Dave, I looked this up. I looked, you came in, you ran some soil test and you explained it to me and I forgot what you said, so I had to look it up on chat, GPT, and there’s still a lot of information that’s coming out of AI that’s incorrect.
Ana Skemp: Yeah.
David Ford: Re let’s revisit that in about five years. Let’s see if my opinion. So I’m very hesitant. I’m guessing I is really what I’m saying.
Ana Skemp: I am. I wanna circle back to this, and I think you’ve touched on it. In a couple of different ways, but I’d love to hear why, exactly, why do you raise duck [00:26:00] eggs? Why are you raising your own garden? If you could put your finger on it, why are you going through this hassle, this work, this time to raise food for your family?
David Ford: Okay. Great question. I love it and it’s one of those things that I’m gonna be addressing at this year’s conference. Actually, Linda and Randy asked me to be the keynote speaker, and one of the things I’m talking about is food security. We’re on a, basically we grow enough food, according to World Health Organizations.
We could feed everybody on the planet one and a half times over. That means three meals a day, everybody gets three meals, and that’s all based on a 2000 calorie diet. So we’re on this caloric diet, but we’re not talking about nutritional density. And we see people that are eating these processed and ultra processed foods and.
We have people, we have people all over the world that are dying of malnutrition, but they’re eating 2000 calories a day, 3000 calories a day. We look at America I think I saw a statistic just a couple weeks ago that the average Americans eating about [00:27:00] 3000 calories a day. 30% of our population is morbidly obese.
The number of comorbidities are going up. The big key for me, we started with a small garden. Growing our own food just to see, we weren’t even growing our own food, but we had a garden and the kids got excited when they could pull a carrot out or they pull a tomato out, and we noticed that it tasted different than the carrots and the tomatoes we were getting into store.
And that was a big thing. So that little garden, which was literally four foot by eight foot couple raised beds, turned into, I think our largest garden was about half an acre. And I know where 80% of all my food comes from, that’s my meat and everything else. Yes, I will be the first one to admit, I’ve got a Little Debbie oatmeal cream pie addiction. Once or twice a week, I will run to the store and get a Little Debbie, but for the most part, I’m eating nutritionally dense food. I’m 54 years old. I just had some blood work done and the blood work came back and said [00:28:00] physiologically, my age is about 48, 49.
oh, wait a minute, I’m, I must be doing something right. And I’m looking at my energy levels compared to, I got a couple guys that work for me. They’re in their late twenties or early thirties, and I work circles around them. I’ve got so much more energy.
I’m so much more healthy. I don’t get sick as often. And that all started with eating. Eating at home with the food that I’m growing the meat that I’m getting. Again, I don’t have cattle right now, but I gotta deal with some, with an Amish family up the road. I get some pork from them.
I get some some beef from them. I know everything that they’re doing to those animals. They are raising those animals in a right way. They’re, they’re. They’re fed out on the pastures. There’s no grain going into it. So yeah,
Ana Skemp: The bartering economy is a good thing.
David Ford: It is!
Ana Skemp: We do so much of that too.
I’m wonder if we wondering if we could circle back now [00:29:00] to your PhD research a bit and tell me. Tell me how we’re going to save these depleted soils. Your fungi. Can we?
David Ford: I, I don’t believe there’s a single solution. If you look at nature, going back to biomimicry and everything, one of the key takeaways that I saw.
Or I learned through my education there is that nature doesn’t have a single solution to anything. She, she literally does the shotgun method, where she throws a hundred things at the wall to see what sticks. I think that’s what we’re gonna have to do right now. One of the things that I talk about in my presentations, in my lectures, and like you I’ve got a thing where I work with some of the elementary schools.
I call it shade tree scientists, the program. And we go into the schools and we work with the kids and we teach ’em about agriculture and we teach ’em about regenerative ag and organic living and where our food comes from and the amount of effort work that goes into food. So there isn’t a single solution.
There isn’t a single spray, there isn’t a single [00:30:00] microorganism that we can put on the fields, and next year, next season it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be miraculously repaired. However, that being said, my research is in micro of fungi and it does a lot of really interesting things. The biggest thing it does, and one of the problems we have here in Iowa is soil erosion.
The reason our soil erosion is so bad is, and I love the farmers. My, my father-in-law’s a traditional farmer he comes through and tills every year, and all these guys around here are tilling right up until the first snow last Friday. They’re breaking up those Michal networks and those microrisal networks are, they’re in the soil and they’re holding all the soil particles together, and they’re allowing the.
The water to actually collect in the soil. They’re allowing aeration. They’re breaking up the compaction that the heavy equipment’s doing to the soil every year. And the, as we learned, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the big study that was done in California decade, 15 years [00:31:00] ago where God, I cannot, I.
I talk about this study all the time. You would think that I would remember this researcher’s name more, but she did a big study on the fungal networks that are growing in the Sequoia Forest in Northern California. And what she found was the trees were basically using the mycorrhizal network in the soil as a communication.
They were talking to one another. It was chemical communication, not like you and I are talking verbally or anything or it’s, they’re using chemical signals to tell each other that there’s pests over here or there’s an infection over here. And what they found was is the microrisal network was actually isolating sick trees.
And the trees were using the network to protect the forest. As well as share nutrients with saplings from trees that had at excess so that these saplings would grow. And it was, [00:32:00] I just found it fascinating. So what we find is that fungus that’s growing underneath the soil does more than just hold the particles together.
It’s really the foundation or what I like to think of as the cornerstone. Yes, we’ve. A litany of microorganisms cyanobacteria and bacterias and algaes and everything else living in the soil. But they all use that, they all use that microrisal fungus. So my research is I want to. I don’t know how deep I want to get into, so I’m looking for a substrate basically.
If you were to take a piece of land, an acre of land, and under absolute ideal conditions, inoculate it with microrisal fungi, it would take about six to eight weeks for that fungal network to completely saturate and mature within the soil. With our modern farming system we don’t give it to that six to eight weeks.
And with our current climate crisis that’s going on it’s not [00:33:00] functioning under ideal situations. So I’m looking at using biomimicry. I want to emulate the way nature grows and establishes microrisal networks. And what I’m looking at right now is possibly using biochar as a substrate and inoculating the biochar.
And then. Basically using a no drill till, to implant plugs within the soil itself, just to give it a head start. And within that biochar, not only are we going to inoculate it with the mycorrhizal fungi, which I’m looking at there’s literally hundreds of different species. And I’m looking at about a dozen different species of microrisal fungi that.
Our ideal we do what’s called a bio brainstorm, where we look at what we call champions, which are organisms in nature from a biomimetic point of view or perspective. And we on right now, my list is about 150, so I’ve done 150 deep. I’ve done a deep dive on 150 different [00:34:00] organisms, and I’ve narrowed that down to about a dozen that I think will do what I want it to do and will inoculate.
The as far as the fungi, I’m looking at other organisms now, bacteria and cyanobacteria, nitrogen fixers, and things like that as well. I also want to inoculate it with the microrisal fungi into the substrate or these plugs, put it in the soil and see if we can accelerate or if we can mimic what nature does, but just in an accelerated and more efficient version.
Ana Skemp: How locally adapted do you think these communities are? So will your top candidates, they may be perfect for Iowa, would there be a completely different community and genetic makeup that would be perfect for Nebraska or for Texas or how what do you think about that?
David Ford: That’s actually a good question ’cause I was on a call last week. There’s some research coming out of Minnesota where they’re looking at emerald ash bore and they’re looking at native fungus to combat the emerald ash bore. [00:35:00] And there’s a term that we use, it’s ecological plasticity. You can take a species, the exact same species, and you can put it in two different regions and you’ll get two different outcomes.
So we’ve got to, when I’m looking at this and I’m looking at my species, I’m looking at something that’s gonna be found,
not necessarily regional. I want something that’s gonna, I’m, when you go to the doctor. You’ve get you’ve got an infection, you’ve got a bacterial infection. They’re gonna put you on a broad spectrum antibiotic, and they’re gonna take some cultures. And in three or four days, if they’ve got a better antibiotic that’s more targeted, then they’re going to adjust the medication that you’re taking to take care of the infection that you have.
And I’m looking at it the same way. I’m starting off with a very basic. Broad spectrum antibiotic that I think is gonna work everywhere. And then once we look at, and of course there always has to be soil samples before you do anything, during and after, because you wanna measure your [00:36:00] improvement.
You wanna see the results. We’re a very metric driven society, so we have to have those metrics, especially if you’re looking to people to beg for funding for your research. But, so we might have to adjust things, but the 12 species that I’m looking at, you can find pretty much everywhere in the world.
Ana Skemp: I’m really excited to read what you find. One follow up question on this. In our area, we’re in southwest Wisconsin. Over the past five years in particular, I’ve noticed a pretty dramatic switch away from tillage and instead there’s a lot of really herbicide intensive no-till row crops going in.
And I’m curious how the herbicides affect your mycorrhizal communities. How does that play into the picture?
David Ford: Man, I’m gonna alienate a lot of people a lot of good friends of mine, commercial farmers, and they’re using those herbicides and they’re absolutely destroying it. Yeah they’re destroying the microrisal community.
Perhaps not immediately. But the [00:37:00] detriment that they’re causing is gonna be systemic and within two or three seasons, it what they’re using as a chemical application, it will be no different than if they came through with the till.
Ana Skemp: We gotta end on some optimism here. Give us some advice for someone just getting started. What would you tell a new farmer? What would you tell yourself when you were just beginning?
David Ford: Make a lot of mistakes. Make a lot of mistakes. Be open to learning from other people. I’m a little bit unique.
I’m living in two different worlds. I’m living in the academia bubble. So when I am talking to professors and people within that bubble, I talk about oxen and ethylene. And I also talk to, a lot of farmers. I’ve got a farmer here who’s a friend of mine, was a landlord, and there’s a term that I like to use.
It’s called Hypernormalization. It was coined a number of years ago, and I see that every day. This farmer asked me one time, he, one of the things we did, we’ve got a creek filled with runoff on [00:38:00] our property. Absolutely. And I put in about a hundred different species of plants to filter that water to sequester the heavy metals that are in the water that are coming in from the runoff.
And the water that leaves my property going into the skunk river north of me is clean. I’ve had it tested and it’s amazing. But this farmer, who is a traditional farmer, who I’ve seen him a number of times in, casey’s getting his breakfast, talking with his farmer friends, having his morning coffee.
He always introduces me. This is David. He was my tenant. He’s one of those weird hippy dippy guys. He doesn’t use chemicals, but he asked me one time, he is got this pond on a north piece of his property that was absolutely covered in algae. Couldn’t use it, couldn’t drink it, couldn’t swim it.
He’s got some grandkids and he said, Hey, I saw what you did with your creek. And I’m wondering, can we do the same thing with my pond? I said, you know what, I think we can let me get some plants over there. And within two years we had it cleaned up. He s stocks it every year. Him and his grandkids fish and swim there every summer and it’s absolutely pristine.
[00:39:00] So
don’t give up. Be aware that people out there especially. In these communities are aware that there’s a problem, and if you talk to ’em one-on-one, they’re gonna be very receptive to your ideas. If you get ’em in a group, that’s the hypernormalization. They know there’s a problem, but it’s that herd mentality.
They can’t they refuse to acknowledge it. They refuse to change. So change is gonna be slow. If you’re a new farmer, you’re getting into it. Be open to suggestions. Talk to a lot of people, build yourself a network, find a community, and make a lot of mistakes.
Josh Wilder: amen. I appreciate your time, David, and thanks Anna for a great conversation.
I have to mention that I spent a couple summers in Clarinda, Iowa when I was a child, and it’s a beautiful area of the country and I. Definitely suggest anyone who is looking for somewhere to go. Oh there’s a lot of great events at that time in February, but I think the Homesteads of Iowa event sounds like an excellent one, especially if you can [00:40:00] hear David’s whole presentation and you’re doing what two workshops and two classes, is that
David Ford: right?
Yep. Two workshops and two presentations and the keynote address.
Josh Wilder: So you’ll be busy.
David Ford: I’ll be busy, yeah. Yeah. I like that. I love busy.
Josh Wilder: yeah. And I’ve been to a lot of these kinds of events and, one of the great things about, being there in person, obviously beyond, just being able to meet the people that are in your region that are going through the same things, interested in the same things are as weird as you are.
You get to. Good. Maybe you can pull David off to the side, ask him some questions, please forgive me if I am talking outta school.
David Ford: No, you’re not. I’m always happy to talk to people and it’s really strange because I never thought I’d be a popular person.
I, I’m not famous in any way, but I do have people occasionally stop me, Hey, you’re that soil guy. I saw your presentation on YouTube. Can I ask you about, and I love that and my wife loves it, and my kids think it’s great. I, it’s, I love it, but [00:41:00] it’s still a little weird when people recognize me, ’cause I always do that double take do I know you?
So soan, you’re on the right path. I’m, yeah. And if either of you find yourselves in this way around convention time or expo time, give us a holler, we’ll get you some tickets and get you in there. Sounds great. Again, you can talk to a lot of people that appreciate the work you’re doing. I know a lot of people that, that subscribe and follow your podcast and your YouTube channel, so by all means I’d love to see you too.
Josh Wilder: We’ll have a presence there and be sharing as much information as we can. I appreciate your time. Thank you very much.
David Ford: Y’all have a great day now.
Ana Skemp: Good luck with your research.
David Ford: Thank you.
Josh Wilder: This February 27th and 28th, 2026, you’ll find 24 workshops and 30 classes at the Homesteaders of Iowa Expo and Midwest Conference in Ottumwa, Iowa. At Homesteaders of Iowa they believe in the power of homestead to inspire you to live more sustainably and connect with others who share your passion.
Learn from those who learn by doing like homegrown herbalists, Dr. Patrick Jones and homesteader Ruth Ann Zimmerman. Be sure to visit the Mother Earth News booth as well. Learn more at homesteadersofiowa.com.
Thanks for joining us for this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends. To listen to more podcasts and get connected on our social media, visit www.motherearthnews.com/podcast. You can also email us at podcast@ogdenpubs.com with any questions or suggestions. Our podcast production team includes Alyssa Warner and myself, Josh Wilder.
Alyssa Warner: And until next time, don’t forget to love your mother.
