Welcome to Beyond Gold and Silver
You know, you hear, we talk all the time about gold and silver on ITM’s channel, but to get through what we have to get through the hyperinflationary depression and to maintain a reasonable standard of living, you need more than Gold and Silver. You need these, this is your base in your foundation, but you all also need food, water, energy, security, as well as that barterability, wealth, preservation, community, and shelter. So that’s what we’re gonna talk about on this channel.
My guest Marjory Wildcraft is the founder of The Grow Network, which is a community of people focused on modern self-sufficient living. She has been featured by National Geographic as an expert in off-grid living, she hosted the Mother Earth News Online Homesteading Summit, and she is listed in Who’s Who in America for having inspired hundreds of thousands of backyard gardens. Marjory was the focus of an article that won Reuter’s Food Sustainability Media Award, and she recently authored The Grow System: The Essential Guide to Modern Self-Sufficient Living—From Growing Food to Making Medicine.
She is best known for her DVD series Grow Your Own Groceries, which has over a half million copies in use by homesteaders, foodies, preppers, universities, and missionary organizations around the world.
Since food becomes the single biggest issue for most people during hyperinflation and we should now be able to see this in our current environment, I’m so glad to have her back today.
WATCH PART 1 BELOW:
TRANSCRIPT FROM VIDEO:
Lynette Zang:
So today we have Marjory Wildcraft, who is the founder of The Grow Network, which is a community of people that are focused on modern. Self-Sufficient living extremely important these days. But Marjory, you mentioned that you have this system where anybody can grow most of their groceries in their backyard and it’s a really simple system. Could you explain that to everyone please?
Marjory Wildcraft:
Absolutely. And, and actually I’ve been doing this for years and then one day I was like, oh my gosh, this is so simple. So it’s a three part system and it evolves a backyard flock of laying hens, only about six hens a garden. And I’m not talking about a large one and a home rabbitry with a buck and three breeding dose. And this will produce about half of the food that you need to eat. And you can totally operate this system in about an hour a day. And I’ve taught literally hundreds of thousands of people, how to do this now. And I know within The Grow Network, there are tens of thousands of people that are doing it. So it’s very proven and very simple. And what I recommend you start out with is a flock of laying hens. And that’s gonna be, I recommend six hens because first of all, hens are flocking animals, right? They’re they’re they’re and
Lynette Zang:
Community animals. They need to be.
Marjory Wildcraft:
They’re Community animals
Lynette Zang:
Right?
Marjory Wildcraft:
Yeah. And they, they depend on each other. So if you watch your chickens, everybody loves to eat chicken, right? So Bobcat, raccoons, foxes, you know, any weasel, whatever you got and, and you should not say, do I have raccoons? You should say, where is my nearest raccoon? Like you, you have raccoons, right?
Lynette Zang:
Oh, I agree. Because here I am in the middle of the city and there was an opening in my chicken coop. This happened a number of years ago. And I kept telling my guys to fix that hole. And they didn’t, and a raccoon got in something must have spooked him, but he got he got about five or six of my chickens and ducks.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Yep.
Lynette Zang:
Yeah. And I don’t know why he didn’t get them all, but something must have spooked them.
Marjory Wildcraft:
They have all night, every night to look for, for for a way into your chicken coop. But even during the day, if you watch your hands you’ll see that, you know, they’re in the mornings, in the evenings when they’ve got their down and they’re pecking, they’ll always be one up and looking around and that’s the nature, you know, that’s what flocking animals do. And they rotate that duty. Right? So the, you know, one, so if you have six of them, then you know, it’s one, six at a time that one’s gonna be up looking around and the five get to eat. And then, but if you have only two of them, then it’s like 50% of the time they got, you know, and if you have only one hen, the poor thing is gonna go neurotic because you know.
Lynette Zang:
hahaha
Marjory Wildcraft:
Know, it, it, it just, you know, it’s gonna go crazy. So, so you really do need a minimum number of hens, but I also don’t recommend going crazy with a lot of hens because you got a lot to learn and there’s a real good principle of start small and move forward from a controlled front.
Lynette Zang:
That, that is a real good principle. That’s not one that, that is to my nature. Mind you. But I think that would’ve been a much better idea.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Oh my God, my farm has beat all of my megalomaniacal tendencies out of me. Like totally. But you can fit these. You can build a chicken coop that has a run in about the size of a parking spot, you know, so maybe, you know, eight feet wide by, by 12 feet, 16 feet long. And then you gonna let, ’em run around, out in the yard a little bit, or maybe a little electric fencing or something to keep ’em off of other things, but it’s not that much space. Right. And one laying, hen you know, a, a reasonably good laying, he will produce about 250 eggs a year. And so if you have six laying hens, that’s gonna be 1500 eggs in a year that gets produced.
Lynette Zang:
And eggs are like extraordinarily nutritious.
Marjory Wildcraft:
They really are. You want here? I got, I got it. You wanna pop? You wanna pop quiz?
Lynette Zang:
Oh no don’t ask me a pop quiz.
Marjory Wildcraft:
On, come on Lynette! Let’s have fun. What is the chicken? Is it the egg or the white? Which part is the actual chicken?
Lynette Zang:
I think it’s the, I think it’s the, the white and they eat the yolk?
Marjory Wildcraft:
That’s pretty close. Yeah. The, that that’s it. The yolk is actually a sack of food that the, the, the, the, if you have a rooster, you’ll see that often, you’ll see your eggs have a little red spot on ’em. And that’s where the genetic material has connected. And that will actually turn into the chicken. And the, the white plasma is mostly a lot of protein, but that, that yolk is all the nutrients needed to turn that slimy mess into a little chick that has wings and a beak and eyes and legs. And that wants it. It has the strength to break through that shell. And then survive for another like two days, while it figures out how to Peck around and follow mama and start eating that egg yolk has all of that in it. It’s a super food beyond belief!
Lynette Zang:
Yes, it is!
Marjory Wildcraft:
It’s, it’s amazing! And now, so one medium sized egg, which is, you know, sometimes to get large ones, but medium, let’s go with medium size egg according to the U S D a one thing that is very useful from our government. They tell us that I love Joel Sal and he calls it the us, duh, One egg has 62 calories, an average medium sized egg. And if you do the math on 1500 eggs with 62 calories, something like 94,000 calories gets produced from this group of but, but 1500 eggs, right? That’s three egg omelets for you every morning of the year with another, what I, I think, guess 30 something, dozen eggs for you to trade or give away, or, you know, eat in other ways. So, right. Hugely productive, just six hens amazing how much they produce. And then again, it’s really only in the, in the size of a, a parking spot. Right. And yeah, and I.
Lynette Zang:
Much, that’s much the size that I started out with. And then over the years then I, I expanded the coop and, and the yard etcetera. But yeah, it doesn’t take very much space and they’re so loving. I mean, if you’re having a bad day, if I’m having a bad day, I can go in the coop and just sit there and let the girls just play all around and jump up on. And I mean, it’s very relaxing.
Marjory Wildcraft:
You don’t need tele. You don’t need television. When my, when, when my kids were real small, my husband and I, we didn’t have a television. We were living in the barn and that’s what we would do in the evenings is watch the chickens. And it was, you know, you don’t need television. Right. It was amazing. You’re right. They’re very, they’re friends with benefits.
Lynette Zang:
Well, there are, yes, there are they are
Marjory Wildcraft:
By, by the way, you don’t need a rooster in, but the hands will lay eggs. If you want eggs or fertile, you do need a rooster, but you’re probably not gonna do. I also, I know it sounds so romantic to buy baby chicks and raise them up, but I do not recommend doing that one. You don’t have time. It takes about five to six months to get a chick to laying hen size.
Lynette Zang:
Exactly.
Marjory Wildcraft:
The other thing is, is the skills and equipment is different for raising chicks to become hens than it is from just having hens and collecting eggs. So and it’s a really fun homeschooling project. I’ve done it numerous times with the kids, and that’s actually how we used to raise our meat birds, but don’t start there, go out and you know, Craigslist you know, farms farm stores, feed stores, other are people who have chickens, go get, just go buy a dozen laying hens that are, are just starting to lay. So six month old hens. I agree with just start that way and believe me, you know, when you build the coop over a weekend or two, by the way, I also really recommend buy some feed, buy chicken feed. It’s still relatively cheap, chicken feed, right? Not supposedly synonymous or cheap later on, you can figure out how to feed your chickens almost a hundred percent for free, but don’t start out with, you got so much other stuff to learn, build the coop, get the water, buy the feeds that you can just dump the feed in there, and you don’t have to learn about it. You can do that later. Can
Lynette Zang:
We talk about…
Marjory Wildcraft:
You could be producing within a, just a couple of weeks. You could be having eggs.
Lynette Zang:
Yeah, it’s a, yeah, depends on the age of the, of the hen, but let’s talk about feed for a minute because there’s feed and then there’s feed. Yeah. And you know, the feed that I and we’ll, we’ll take a picture of this, so you can see it, but the feed that I give my girls, you can actually see the grains. You can see what it is versus that mashed up stuff that you really can’t see. Do you have an opinion on that?
Marjory Wildcraft:
I do. I do. And yeah, definitely do not buy GMO feed to feed your chickens. And that is going to be the chicken cheapest chicken feed. It’ll be like ground up soy and corn that has been genetically modified grown. And that actually most of the corn and grain bought grown in America is meant for animal feed. And it’s all genetically modified. On the other hand, you know, probably the most expensive feed you can get is going to be this pure organic stuff. I, I, I think we talked a little bit about how organic the labeling of it is so expensive. Getting the certification is expensive and maintaining the certification is expensive. So what I like to do is just find a local source of feed or locally, you know, like within a few hundred miles. And it may not, it probably isn’t gonna be organically certified, but generally those farmers are using organic methods and techniques, and they’re certainly not using chemicals. So, and it’s gonna be less expensive than the organically branded stuff. So I would recommend that, right. So try to find a a local feed source that may not be organic, but it probably really is just because organic is a, is a certification that we don’t really need. Right.
Lynette Zang:
But, and, and, you know, when you consider the fact that at mean, I think this really shows you are what you eat,.
Marjory Wildcraft:
You are, right,
Lynette Zang:
Right. You are what you eat.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Yes. You don’t feed your chickens, organic you know, GMO feed. And then, you know,
Lynette Zang:
Cause that’s what you, you’re eating. Yeah,
Marjory Wildcraft:
That’s right. You’re gonna be eating the, the eggs or that chicken. So, you know, you’re gonna be basically eating a GMO chicken. You’d don’t want that. Right. We’re trying to get away from that system. They, they eat chickens, eat their omnivores, they eat all kinds of stuff and you’ll be feeding ’em your, your scraps. And they love bugs. And, and like I said, there are ways to feed your chickens a hundred percent per free for free, but in the beginning, just buy the feed. So that way that’s one less thing you have to learn, cuz you do need, you know, you’re gonna be starting a new routine now of checking the chicken feed, checking their waters, collecting eggs, you know hanging out with them instead of the latest Netflix binge, you know?
Lynette Zang:
Right. And also mucking the stall where their poop is like so valuable.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Valuable. Yes. Like really more than gold! So funny. I can’t believe I’m saying that to Lynnette Zang.
Lynette Zang:
I know! But you know, but truthfully, because we really do, we have to eat. So, you know, what gold really does is it, it and silver too silver, probably in the food category more than gold, but it, it will enable you to have a universal tool of barter. Yeah. But, but food is also a universal tool of barter.
Marjory Wildcraft:
You know, there’s a saying, I, I credit Rob Finley, who in California was the guy that just started growing food on a strip of land on the sidewalk in Los Angeles. And he goes, growing your own food is like printing your own money.
Lynette Zang:
Yes. I agree with that. I definitely do cuz you, you, and you don’t have to spend that other Fiat money. That’s losing value. So a rapidly. Yeah. Okay. So we have the chickens and I never realized that one would look out, I’m gonna pay attention to the girls for that now, cuz I never realized that one looks out for, for all of the others, but what do
Marjory Wildcraft:
Yeah. So the next, so that’s the first component and the it’s, you know, about 94,000, maybe a hundred thousand calories from the six laying hints. So the next component I recommend is a garden and gardens are actually, most people think, oh Marjory, you’re all about gardening. I’m like actually not they’re they are not as calorically dense as animal products.
Lynette Zang:
No, that’s true.
Marjory Wildcraft:
And I recommend just a hundred square feet of garden space and I recommend a raised bed garden where you’ve got two cinder blocks high. So you’re talking about, you know 16 inch deep bed that’s maybe, you know, 12 and a half feet by, by, by four feet wide or five feet by 10 feet, you know, a bed, but you want it narrow enough. The, you can reach into the center of it, you know? Right. Somebody said, I’ve got a, I’ve got a 10 foot by 10 foot raised bed and I’m like, wow, that’s dumb. You know,
Lynette Zang:
You’re never gonna, yeah, you’re gonna get right, right, right.
Marjory Wildcraft:
But you really only need about a hundred square feet. And there’s a the most calorically dense food that you can grow and a hundred square feet are gonna be Irish potatoes and you’re gonna get it’s about let’s see, you’ll get about a hundred pounds of potatoes for, you’ll get about a pound of potato per square foot in, in one of these gardens. And I’m trying to remember the caloric. I think it’s something like about 54,000 calories. If you were to plant that whole entire a hundred square feet in just potatoes, you’re gonna get about 50,000…54,000 calories, but a hundred pounds of potatoes. So I wish I had a couple here, but about a half a pound a half a pound of potato is a good serving size. A lot of times your medium size potato is gonna be about a half a pound. And so I consider a hundred pounds of potatoes, approximately 200 servings of potatoes. So that’d be like, you know, you know, a serving a potato for, you know, two thirds of the year you know, a decent amount. But I really like to think of the calories or the garden more for, for nutrition and fiber. The, the Irish potatoes are the most calorically dense. If you live in the Southern states sweet potatoes are gonna be a better crop for you. Yeah. And they’s very, a more calorically dense, but then there’s all the other stuff that’s real fun. Like tomatoes and cucumbers and squash and zucchini. And by the way, I never really could say I liked zucchini until I started growing my own zucchini. And if you’re the kind of person, if you’re viewing this and you go, oh, I hate vegetables. I’m like, I’m telling you what, if you haven’t grown your own, you have never eaten vegetables.
Lynette Zang:
Exactly. Totally different flavor.
Marjory Wildcraft:
There’s a totally different flavor. I don’t recommend corn. Corn is wind pollinated and usually you need a pretty big area to grow a significant crop of corn. So that’s not one, it’s not a real good one for a beginner. Right. Tomatoes, interestingly enough are actually, it’s so interesting. Everybody wants to grow tomatoes. And let me just say this, if your tomato crops don’t work, don’t feel bad. This is, you know, even super super experience. Gardeners have a hard time with tomatoes sometimes. So but squashes and zucchinis, unbelievably prolific, you know, green beans, carrots, there’s so much you can grow. That’s so delicious and so fun. And then you got, you know, eat the rainbow. You don’t, you don’t need your one a day eat the rainbow.
Lynette Zang:
That’s what my mom always said. And, and you know, I’ll, I’ll tell you, it’s, it’s really pretty interesting because I live in the middle of a desert. Right. And people are amazed at what you can actually grow in the middle of a desert, this huge variety.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Absolutely. Yeah. I, you and I were chatting a little bit before and I sometimes feel that if you, you have water growing in the desert is one of the easier regions because you have much less weed pressure and you have much less insect pressure. So the desert growing can be, can be quite awesome. Right.
Lynette Zang:
Can I ask you in that, in that in the small area that you’re gonna grow, chances are pretty good. People will have a tree on their property or two, or you know, or three as well. If you are in a warm climate, I would add a moringa tree.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Yeah, yeah. That is
Lynette Zang:
Actually is so nutritionally dense.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Yeah. yeah, absolutely. And there’s lots of trees that you can, like, I used to grow some called Leucaena I would grow it. It would die back. It was in Texas. It would die back in the winter. Right. And, and I didn’t really eat it, but it was great rabbit feed. It was also prolific with leaves. So I would use it to compost. And the sticks were pretty straight. So you could use those sticks for all kinds of things like trellising or it was actually even pretty good for a fire starter, you know, kindling. So yeah. I definitely, definitely recommend a lot of trees. Absolutely.
Lynette Zang:
Those are actually easier than gardening.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Yeah. It is easier than gardening. They’re slower to get going. Yes. So just the, the, the, the, the just, you know, a hundred square feet of gardening space is really gonna ultimately take you only about 200 square feet cause you can, you need room for the paths and access and stuff like that. But you know, 200 square feet, again, we’re talking about like a parking spot, right? So it’s not that much room. I also really recommend raise bed gardens. And one of the main reasons why is because your soil is confined to those cinder blocks and you become very clear that that is your vegetable growing soil. So a lot of people just think about soils, just dirt. You know, I don’t want, don’t drag that in the house. You know, like, you know, don’t get that in here Esther start you want soil is you should it’s…
Lynette Zang:
Ugh! I love soil.
Marjory Wildcraft:
That’s where the minerals come from And you need to replenish the soil. Obviously I was on a radio interview a few years ago and this young couple called in and they said, oh, we had this great garden for the first two years. And they just really petered out. Do you, you think it was due to chem trails? And I’m like, what were you fertilizing the garden with? What were you giving back to the, oh, we, you had to fertilize a garden. Like let’s stop there. Like, you know, before we worry about chem trails, you know, you need to be having, adding compost that chicken, you know, you fertile, you, you compost your chicken manure, the, the manure you’re gonna get from your rabbits. You gotta keep giving it’s the cycle of nutrients. Yes. Even your own urine is a excellent fertilizer. Diluted 10 to one has a lot of nitrogen in it. In fact there are studies that show that the amount of urine that you produce is just about the amount of nitrogen that the plants that you need to feed you requires. So a very interesting correlation there.
Lynette Zang:
Well, if we get desperate enough, I think that could be another option where you get stung by a jellyfish it’s handy for that too.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Oh, it’s really handy for that. Yeah. Or poison Ivy. If you, you break out in poison, Ivy, you just pee on yourself in the shower before you turn on the water and stand there a few minutes and then rinse it off. And, and it, it, it’s, it’s really the only thing I’ve ever seen that will take poison Ivy that’s gone systemic away. So wow. It’s an incredibly potent medicine. Yeah.
Lynette Zang:
Never really thought about that. That is something I want to talk to you about is creating your own medicine.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Well we’ll, we’ll do some on that too, but let’s get to the third component. Just say, you know, the garden on average is gonna be about 30,000 calories per season and in most play like in Colorado, in one season, I actually in that two raised beds in Colorado in one season, I grew more than enough produce that I froze or dried or canned and still gave away a bunch. And it fed me and kept me in pro for the whole year. So you can, it really can produce a lot, But let’s get to the third part. And that is going to be a home rabbit tree. And really all you need is a buck and three breeding does. And you will get between 75 and 85-90 rabbits a year, a rabbit is equivalent to a chicken in terms of the weight and everything about like how you cook it. All your recipes for chicken are directly. You, you can just substitute rabbit and it’ll work for that. And you know, they breed like rabbit rabbit.
Lynette Zang:
That’s very handy,
Marjory Wildcraft:
A real important distinction to make between rabbits and chickens. You know, if people go, why don’t you raise chickens for meat? Rabbits are herbivores and they’re a lot easier to feed than chickens. Chickens are omnivores. They will eat some greens. I think like 30% of their diet will be greens, but they’re gonna want protein and they’re gonna want carbohydrates. They’re gonna want stuff like that. Rabbits are you. It’s very, very easy to produce all the food you need for rabbits. Again, though, when you get your rabbits, you know, start out with the pellets just to make your life easier and cut out one variable. And because you’re learning a lot and you’re getting up to speed. And then as you, you know, as your skills develop, then start feeding the rabbits other things, but being in herbivore means that they are easier to feed. That’s easier to find the food source for them than it is. And it’s less expensive than it is for chickens. Right. So that’s why we’re using rabbits for meat. Do you
Lynette Zang:
Do you do much with azolla or duckweed for your chickens? Cause that’s pure protein and it self propagates.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Yeah. Now, so you need, you need, you need a pond or something for a lot of that, but yeah, absolutely
Lynette Zang:
For water. Right.
Marjory Wildcraft:
And for ducks, duck love duck weed. They really do. It’s really fun to see the duck eating the duck weed. Yes. You can absolutely feed that to the, to the chickens and the, and the rabbits would also probably like the duck weed you’d need to dry it a little bit.
Lynette Zang:
I was just gonna say, oh, so they needed a little bit drier?
Marjory Wildcraft:
Yeah. In general with anything you need just like us, you need to give them a diversity of food. Right, right. You know, so you can’t just give them all one thing. But yeah. And absolutely mixing it up is, is a good thing.
Lynette Zang:
So that’s like, you know, that’s really complete, you know, when you think about it, you’ve got the chickens and the eggs and the meat and then you’ve got your produce your vegetables and then you’ve got your rabbits. But I know one of the things that people would be asking you,
Marjory Wildcraft:
Yes. I know it’s coming. Okay.
Lynette Zang:
And you know, it’s coming, playing on me. Okay. Because I’m fortunate in that I don’t have to do this is how do you harvest them?
Marjory Wildcraft:
How do you butcher the rabbit? I know everybody’s
Lynette Zang:
How do you get, how did you get to the point where you could do that?
Marjory Wildcraft:
You’re a rabbit killer Marjory oh my god!
Lynette Zang:
Bugs Bunny!
Marjory Wildcraft:
I know right! A bunny! We used to raise them. And my daughter and my son, you know, we were homesteading homeschooling and, and my daughter would name all of them. They all had names like jumpy and gravy and, and, and, and thumper.
Lynette Zang:
Gravy would make sense.
Marjory Wildcraft:
It was cause like the, the rabbit was gray, you know? Anyway. and then she would take him out on the trampoline to teach him how to jump.
Lynette Zang:
Hahahahaha!
Marjory Wildcraft:
It’s not necessary, but, and she them, and then she knew exactly what she would actually would help me do the butchering. Oh. So you know, butchering small game used to be a skill that was, it was like tying your shoes or, or, you know, every, every human being alive knew how to process small game. Right. And in fact, you know, you, you know, you, when they used to say, when mama used to say, go get me a chicken, what she meant for the kids was to go to the chicken coop and, and one of the hens that wasn’t laying that well or something like that go, you know, process it and take out the feathers and bring her the bird to be cooked. So it’s, it used to be a skill that everybody had. And I’m not saying it’s nice or easy. Oh my a computer’s mad at me. Can you hang on one anyway, you can do it. The most humane way that I found is I take a broom stick and put it across its neck and then pull the feet up really quick and snap its neck because then it’s it’s paralyzed. And and they go very quickly. If, if you can’t do that. And honestly, when I started this journey, I was actually all, I’ve been on every diet. I mean, I think maybe Oprah has been on more diets than I have, but not many. And I was a raw vegan when I first, well, when I was doing the Red Rock Elementary school and, and finding out that the food supply, wasn’t what I thought it was. So I really, I really tried to make that happen. And, and really animal products buying far are just so much more efficient and easier and faster to produce. And I said, well, if I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna do it. And I when, what I did before I started processing the rabbits was I would fast for three to five days sometimes just to really get in touch with why I was doing it. I don’t need to do that anymore, but you know, in the beginning you’re like, Ugh. And if you really don’t think that you can do that, it’s totally fine. You’re gonna have a lot of bunnies. And I am sure that, or as a fisherman or a hunter, right. Or a farmer or somebody in your life, and if you give them 10 rabbits and you say, will you process these? And you can keep, you know, one or two and give me the other ones back. You can work that out. That’s part of what Community is about. And honestly, really though the skill is, it’s very simple to, I can take a rabbit from the cage, completely process it and have the whole, you know, outdoor kitchen cleaned up within 20 minutes. And I’m not particularly fast at it. People in commercial rabbit trees do it in like three minutes. It’s it’s really fast. So.
Marjory Wildcraft:
And just like the yolks are the most nutritious part of the egg.
Lynette Zang:
Right?
Marjory Wildcraft:
The absolutely, go look this up sometime, but liver is the most nutritionally dense food that you can produce in your backyard. It is unbelievable all the nutrients that are in liver. And there’s a reason and Lynette you probably remember this, you and I are of that age when your mama ate, made you eat liver once a week. Yeah. We hated it.
Lynette Zang:
Well, it wasn’t once a week, but yes, you’re right.
Marjory Wildcraft:
There was a, a really good reason for that. Yeah.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Do not ever eat the liver from a commercial commercially raised animal. But one that you’ve raised yourself and you know, what they’ve eaten and you know, there’s out any toxins or anything in there. It’s a fantastic superfood is, is, is the livers. And they’re, they, they have been throughout ancient cultures throughout history, you know for the large part, humanity depended when you were a human, you needed your body, you needed your eyesight, you needed to be able to run. You needed to be able to bend and pick and harvest that we, we, we are physical creatures and those cultures that, you know, very much in touch with their bodies, they truly, all of them, every single one of them, without exception, highly value the livers of animals as, as a superfood.
Lynette Zang:
Yeah. I, I would have a little liver with my ketchup.
Marjory Wildcraft:
You know
Lynette Zang:
But she made us eat it, we had to eat it.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Yep. Make, make Pâté out of it, chop it up in a small bit and throw it into the, into the chili. You know, my kids, I was finding, you know, I, I was finding the threshold and they’d be like, mom, did you put liver in this? No, no, no! Not at all. I was just finding that threshold to what you could get away with, you know?
Lynette Zang:
Well, that’s pretty interesting.
Marjory Wildcraft:
So the other, the other cool thing about the rabbits is the bones. You can make bone broth and oh
Lynette Zang:
Yes. Oh yes. Well, I do that with the chickens too. And the feet.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Yeah. Yeah. And throw those eggshells in there and you’ll get some of the calcium out and yeah. So there’s, and and a, a typical rabbit I’m trying to remember…from, from 75 rabbits, you’re gonna be getting about 230,000 calories. And, and if, you know, if you think about 75 rabbits, that’s equivalent to a chicken, that’s like having, you know, a, a chicken and a half every week, which actually ends up being the protein requirements for a family of four. So, so it’s, and, and, and again, the rabbitry, you’re really only talking about a, a you know, two or 300 square feet at the most, and for such a huge amount of production, and they’re going to eat, they’re going eat weeds. They’re going to eat your landscape trimmings. They’re going to eat grass. They’re they’re you know, you’ve got a whole cycle, their pellets, you don’t even have to compost ’em because they’re what we call cool. You can just throw them directly into the garden but you’ve got these cycles going now.
Lynette Zang:
That’s, that’s excellent. And especially when you’re looking, what’s at what’s happening with fertilizer, you know, now how can you be as independent and self-sufficient as possible? And you’re saying you can do all of that. Any person can do all of that in an hour, a day?
Marjory Wildcraft:
In an hour a day. Absolutely. And I have taught this to little kids at schools, and I’ve taught this to elders who can, can’t really bend over that much. We make their raised beds at waist level. Right.
Lynette Zang:
That’s the way I like them the best. Yeah. To be honest with you, that’s what I did with, with not all my raised beds, but with the first ones I put in, I did I think three or four cider blocks high.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Yeah. Anybody can do this. And it really is less an hour. A typical day is you’re gonna be going to the rabbits and feeding them, checking the schedule of, you know, who’s breeding. And when, and maybe moving some around, cuz this one needs to move here or there, and just, or, or if someone’s kindled, which, which means they had a litter of babies, you know, checking the babies, you know, that’s like five or 10 minute that at the most, and then you go over to the chickens, you’re checking to make sure their water systems are all right. You know, tossing them some feed you know, making sure they’re, they’re fine. Heading over to the garden, maybe doing a little bit of weeding, a little bit of watering. Actually it’s surprisingly with the garden. One of the biggest chunks of work in a garden is harvesting, right. How much time it takes to harvest. Right. So.
Lynette Zang:
But it is kind of nice going out and picking your food and then going in the house and utilizing it, whether you’re cooking with it or you’re eating it raw. It’s when it has the most nutritional density too, as yeah. You know, as well, as soon as you pick it.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Yeah. You want all this stuff as close as you can to your house,
Lynette Zang:
Right. Because yeah.
Marjory Wildcraft:
You just, they used to be called kitchen gardens because they were right outside because the closer it is, the more likely you’re gonna run out there to, to grab a handful of basil to throw into the tomato sauce with the spaghetti. If it’s 50 feet away, you’re not gonna do it. I used to throw strawberries every year in this beautiful strawberry container. And when it was right next to the house, I never got strawberries cuz the kids would always eat. ’em When I moved the container up to the barn, which it was not more than a hundred feet away, I got all the strawberries cause the kids weren’t gonna get it.
Lynette Zang:
It’s true. And that is a really good point to make. Cause they’ve done a lot of studies on what, you know, how far away your garden is to how likely you are to do it and maintain it. And you know, and while that might have been a, a nice thing a while ago now that’s really become a necessity.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Yeah. You know, and it’s a, it’s a time thing. Also. You just, we really aren’t, you know, we all have busy lives now. Yes. And we’re gonna have even busier lives as these systems collapse and break and you’re you now, you know, stuff that used to be a super convenience now is gonna take longer or be harder. So we, we’re not gonna have more time. So we have to figure out these systems and, and they, they can be made to where that you can integrate them into your lifestyle start now so that your lifestyle shifting now and you have less to shift into and you’re already there. Right.
Lynette Zang:
Right. And you, you, you brought up something that I really wanted to just kind of amplify a little bit. When you look at countries like Venezuela that are going through hyperinflation, what do you see? You see lines and lines where people will wait all day just to see what they might be able to buy when they get into the grocery store. Right? Yeah. So this way you’re being productive, you’re creating the food that your family will eat, your family likes and you know, and also I would, I would definitely add if you’re gonna have trees, make them productive trees, you know? Yeah. Plant, it depends on where you are, but instead of just planting a tree, that’s gonna suck water, plant, plant a cherry tree or a peach tree or a grape fruit or apple or you know, whatever it is exactly. Or Moringa.
Marjory Wildcraft:
You know, I I was just in a Lyft, I had a Lyft driver and he was just fresh from Venezuela, somehow managed to get out. And he he’d only been here two months.
Lynette Zang:
Wow I’d love to talk to him!
Marjory Wildcraft:
I know! I was fascinated. I was so glad I had a long ride. And even with just the amount of money he was making here in the U.S. as a Lyft driver, right. Uber driver, he was supporting his wife and his kids. And I was talking to him about what? Well, like, did they grow food? And he said, oh, it was heartbreaking. His mother had had six mango trees. And she decided a couple of years ago to cut three of them down so she could have flower bed. And he said the whole family was so sad about that now because there was a huge amount of mango production. I said, what did she do with the mango production? Did she sell those mangoes? Or she, he said, well, yeah, they dried a lot of them to keep for themselves. You can’t live on mangoes. And he said, honestly, she gave a lot of them away to other friends and family who desperately needed food. So, you know, but just to hear him talk about the loss of those three mango trees and the stupidity of, well, not stupidity, but the ignorance
Lynette Zang:
Ignorance right.
Marjory Wildcraft:
That they had been living in before that, oh, you can just cut down mango trees and it’ll be fine. And we’ll have flower beds and the realization now of how valuable those trees were and the regret at that loss. But at least they still had three other mango trees. Right?
Lynette Zang:
Well, because we all have been, been trained. Everybody used to have a kitchen garden. I mean, that was the norm. You know, you go through the depression, I’m telling you, you have a kitchen garden. And you know, but now God, just before this whole thing hit, they were building apartments without kitchens because everybody goes out to eat. Why bother to cook? I’m like, are you kidding me apartments without kitchens for the millennials, for the younger people. Cause well that’s reversing. And even in Venezuela, you know where they’re living in a city where they’ve basically been trained away from growing their own food in the middle of it, they’re going, you know, have some chickens put in a garden it’s, you know, in the middle of it, it’s kind of hard to do.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Yeah.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Here’s a very hopeful thing is that in this country, in World War II, there was the, the victory garden and the victory garden movement actually started way back in the early 19 hundreds in response to food riots. Believe it or not, people were complaining, the price of food was going up way then this is before World War I, and it was a citizen led initiative, which the government later supported, but the victory garden movement within one year 20 million novice gardeners were producing 40% of the produce that this country consumed. Yeah. So that’s phenomenal of what can happen in less than a year. So you can do this, we’ve done it before it’s in your DNA. Yes. And you know, there are a lot of stupid mistakes. I know Lynette you and I could probably go through quite a few bottles of wine and Laughing about the stupid things we did. Oh yeah. That’s, you know, that’s the purpose of The Grow Network is to like.
Lynette Zang:
Yeah.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Just do this, follow these directions, get this going. That’s why we’ve created all the, you know, the trainings that, that I have and, and really figured out over the years what to tell people to do and, and how to do it and what not to do. Yeah. So anyway.
Lynette Zang:
I mean, you’re, you’re a phenomenal resource. Can I just kind of add like one little thing that if you have the room and the inclination is to put in a small tilapia pond/
Marjory Wildcraft:
Oh, you do what Lynette, there are so many other wonderful thing. I absolutely a tilapia pond growing mushrooms, bees, building a greenhouse, you know, I mean, there’s so wild-crafting. There’s so much free food that just falls off of trees all, and there’s so much more to do. I just really recommend people start with the basic free of the chickens and the gardens and the rabbits, just because that’s something you can do right now. It has a huge amount of reliable production. There’s already figured out systems to teach people.
Lynette Zang:
Yeah that’s perfect.
Marjory Wildcraft:
You know, when you add up the gardens, the chicken and the, and the, and you know, the eggs and the gardens and the rabbit meat, it ends up being over 365,000 calories which is a thousand calories a day, which I wish I were eating that much. Then I might lose these 10 pounds. But it’s a, you know, it’s about half of your diet. It’s a, it’s a very substantial amount. And then, you know, when you’ve got that base and the other thing, if you think about it, building the chicken coop, once you’ve done it, you can add more birds or building another
Lynette Zang:
Exactly.
Marjory Wildcraft:
You know how to do the rabbits. And that’s where it comes in when those in-laws, who actually thought you were nuts. And I have quite a few of those now that are like, Hey, that’s a good idea. You know, what can you, they’re like, could you feed me? And I’m like, no, but here’s some, here’s how you build a rabbit Hutch and I’ll give you a couple of babies and you know, here’s how you do that. And we’ll get you some chickens, you know.
Lynette Zang:
And you just, and, and let’s, let’s just kind of finish this off because there may be people out there that go, oh, well, I can’t afford that. You know, you, how expensive is it to kind of get that initial setup? It’s not very expensive.
Marjory Wildcraft:
It’s not, you know, I mean, if you want to go to tractor supply and buy it all built for you. Yeah. It’s gonna be a expensive, right. You know, if you wanna buy all of it, but there’s tons and tons of recycle material around here. Exactly. ECHO, which is Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization teaches this in like Sub-Saharan Africa, where they have nothing and they show them how to build it out of like bamboo. I mean, you can do this. There’s a ton of materials around that, that you can make this happen. And there’s a ton of scrap materials around. I’ve built this stuff completely out of just an old hunting cabin that was on the back of the property. And I just dragged all that material up and built it you know, built the chicken coops and the rabbit hus from that. So yeah,
Lynette Zang:
Pallets, I mean, right. So this does not have to be expensive. And you just said, you know, I’ll show you how to build the coop and I’ll give you a couple of rabbits. And, you know, I know up at the tractor supply store that I go to, there is people are always dropping off chickens, you know, or yeah. But yeah, they decide, I mean, I’ve, I’ve adopted a bunch of chickens, a bunch of fish because people, for whatever reason, they have too many or they, they
Marjory Wildcraft:
Gotta move. Yeah.
Lynette Zang:
They’ve gotta move or, or something like that. So there’s even. There are even very, it’s not expensive to do what Marjory has talked about doing.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Oh gosh. Well, I think it’s the free rooster ad.com. There’s a really funny, funny, funny rooster ad for somebody who’s like, I’d like to give away this rooster to a loving home and then they go like, well, maybe not actually anybody who wants a take this son of a bitch.
Lynette Zang:
Oh yeah cause roosters can be very mean! That’s funny.
Marjory Wildcraft:
Yeah. I also always hold that. And, and people, you know, in compartments or condominiums, there’s also a lot that you can do. Quail will, will grow. You can even grow rabbits in apartments. You can mushrooms. There’s lots of windows stuff and vertical stuff. But I always say, look, if you really want something, if you put your attention to it and you, you, you, you hold an open heart and you keep an open mind. The world is not just this three dimensional thing. There are a lot of other mystical and magical forces that will come to your assistance and help you. You know, there’s all kinds of possibilities out there that you don’t even know about now. And if you say, look, I really want to grow my own food. You know, can you help me? You will be astonished who you run into or, or, or, or what opens up for you. So yep. You know, it, it it’s true. It, it really is true that, that there’s, there’s, there’s a lot of resources out there that we don’t even know about that if you open yourself up to it, you’ll find it.
Lynette Zang:
Yep. When the student is ready, the teacher appears you are a phenomenal teacher. Would you tell everybody about the event that you’re hosting this weekend?
Marjory Wildcraft:
Yes. So this Saturday the 12th at 2:00 PM central, we’re having a webinar. “You can grow food” and I’m gonna go over this three part system in a lot more detail. When they sign up, you’ll get also I think we give you the, the movie with the free chicken feed and how to make a, a off grid water, and some stuff like that resources to really help you also come with your questions. The most popular part of it is after I get done, we do a live Q&A, and we will get your questions answered. Yeah. And we go all over what, you know, the current situation of why you need to grow food and then how to get started. And the plan to get started regardless of where you are in the world right now, what season it is, what can you do? What step do you need to take today? And then what you’ll be taking tomorrow and a, and a vision for, for how to make this happen. And you can do it. You absolutely can. So that’s what the webinar is all about.
Lynette Zang:
Marjory. You are such a tremendous resource. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I know everybody out there watching is also saying, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I hope to see everybody there at the webinar this weekend, but is there anything else that you’d like to leave our viewers with?
Marjory Wildcraft:
I would just like to say again how grateful I am for that terrible night in Red Rock, because truly growing my own food has healed me physically, mentally, emotionally, and you and I have not even talked about the unbelievable spiritual when you’re working directly with the voices of creation, magic happens. And I have been so grateful that my life took this turn of events. It has been the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I, I didn’t get into it because it, you know, I got out of fear and panic. So if you’re getting into it because you’re freaked out and you’re afraid, it’s fine. It’s a beautiful journey. And it really leads somewhere wonderful.
Lynette Zang:
Oh, wow. I, the wiser words have never been spoken the links to the seminar and also how you can view the rest of Marjory’s fantastic work so important these days is we have it below as well as on the blog. And, you know, truthfully food is the biggest single issue, which should be so clear to everybody. So it’s time to figure out how you’re gonna feed your family. This simple three part method is like perfect for anybody to get started with. And again, we’ll, we’re gonna have to have you back on, cause we need to talk about how you can do this in a small space and
Marjory Wildcraft:
We need small space. We need to talk about the community garden. And we also need to get getting started with home medicines. We got a lot of topics, so we’ll yeah, yeah,
Lynette Zang:
Yeah. We need to talk more!
Marjory Wildcraft:
So, oh, Lynette, it’s been a true pleasure. And I want to thank you also for your work. I mean just a lot of the things you’ve brought out, especially the interviews with people who have survived hyperinflation has been so insightful in the work that you’ve done to help prepare people. It’s it’s really been awesome. Thank you.
Lynette Zang:
Oh, thank you know, thank you. This is my life’s work. We all have our, you know, and how wonderful to be working inside of your passion. I mean, what a, what a gift, what truly a gift. So until we meet next, I’d like everybody to please, please, please start growing. Start becoming your best own advocate to make sure that you can sustain your standard of living and come out of this in better shape than you would’ve. If you kept eating the food that really has no nutritional value anyway, and until next we meet, please be safe out there. Bye bye.
SOURCES:
Follow Marjory Wildcraft ⬇️
Webinar: “How To Grow Lots Of Food In A Grid Down Situation Even If You Have No Experience, Are Older, And Out Of Shape”
https://thegrownetwork.com/i-can-grow-food-webinar/
Website: https://thegrownetwork.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/BackyardFood
