Growing Ancient Grains for Healthy Eating

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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:05] SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to Edmonton's podcast with Mario Toneguzi on Canada's podcast network.
[00:12] SPEAKER_01: Joining me today is John Schneider, who is owner of Gold Forest Grains in the Edmonton area.
[00:18] SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining us today, John.
[00:20] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you for having me, Mario. I appreciate it.
[00:22] SPEAKER_01: Well, let me just start by asking you, John, what Gold Forest Grains is and what you do.
[00:28] SPEAKER_00: Well, we are a very small farm.
[00:31] SPEAKER_00: It's my wife Cindy and I and our two children now that they're home from university.
[00:36] SPEAKER_00: We grow certified organic grains.
[00:39] SPEAKER_00: The grains are heritage or ancient varieties of grains.
[00:43] SPEAKER_00: And then we own stone mills.
[00:45] SPEAKER_00: So we have a building here on the farm that processes those grains into stone milled flour.
[00:51] SPEAKER_00: And then we market direct to consumer flour and grain products here in Edmonton area.
[00:58] SPEAKER_00: So where exactly are you located?
[01:02] SPEAKER_00: We are about eight miles north of St. Albert, Alberta, which is sort of a separate city.
[01:11] SPEAKER_00: But it's, you know, what do you call that? It's a satellite city of Edmonton.
[01:15] SPEAKER_01: Okay, then.
[01:18] SPEAKER_01: Let me ask you just a little bit about the grains.
[01:21] SPEAKER_01: Like, what kind of grains do you grow?
[01:23] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so of course most of our customers like to bake bread.
[01:29] SPEAKER_00: So we do grow two different, well, what kind of grains?
[01:34] SPEAKER_00: That's the ancient and heritage varieties is basically the bottom line and then the organic.
[01:39] SPEAKER_00: So for instance, wheat, we grow a variety called red fife, which is Canada's first wheat.
[01:46] SPEAKER_00: It was brought here from Europe in the mid 1800s and was grown by a fellow in Ontario named David Vife,
[01:54] SPEAKER_00: which is where we get the name red fife from.
[01:56] SPEAKER_00: It is a hard red spring.
[01:58] SPEAKER_00: It is obviously very old and it's genetics.
[02:02] SPEAKER_00: And then the other one we grow is called park, which is a variety of wheat that was developed here in Alberta back in the 50s.
[02:09] SPEAKER_00: And it has actually bred from different natural crosses, including red fife.
[02:16] SPEAKER_00: So we also grow an ancient variety. Have you heard of Utsi, Mario?
[02:20] SPEAKER_00: No, I haven't.
[02:21] SPEAKER_00: Utsi, O-O-T's that I, all your listeners need to look that up because that is a fascinating story.
[02:28] SPEAKER_00: He is the prehistoric man that they found in the receding glacier in the Italian house.
[02:36] SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
[02:37] SPEAKER_00: And he had iron corn in his stomach and in his purse, in his pouch, and we grow iron corn as well.
[02:45] SPEAKER_00: Wow.
[02:46] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a very old one obviously.
[02:48] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[02:48] SPEAKER_00: What we're finding with a lot, and I mean a lot of our customers, we've been doing this for a while now,
[02:54] SPEAKER_00: is that people complaining of gluten issues or the inability to digest wheat,
[03:00] SPEAKER_00: what we're finding is most of that is coming from the variety of wheat, meaning that,
[03:10] SPEAKER_00: of course, this is anecdotal evidence. I'm not a scientist, but when you hear it enough times,
[03:14] SPEAKER_00: it sort of rings true to a certain degree.
[03:17] SPEAKER_00: So these older varieties seem to be the ones that people are able to digest a lot easier.
[03:25] SPEAKER_00: Like, you know,
[03:26] SPEAKER_00: even to an extreme.
[03:28] SPEAKER_00: So how long have you been doing this job?
[03:30] SPEAKER_00: Well, I've been farming, you know, I always, I don't know how to answer that.
[03:34] SPEAKER_00: I've been farming my whole life.
[03:35] SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've been driving a tractor since I was 11 or 12 years old on my father's farm.
[03:42] SPEAKER_00: But then I took a break in my adult years and went and worked in the ivory towers of downtown Emton and Toronto.
[03:49] SPEAKER_00: And then I got back to farming.
[03:51] SPEAKER_00: I'm an adult on set farmer.
[03:54] SPEAKER_00: So I was, I'd say that, you know, maybe in my 30s, I got, I really missed farming.
[04:01] SPEAKER_00: We were living on an, on an 80 acre parcel west of the city of Emton that was primarily bush and pasture.
[04:09] SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to get back into farming.
[04:11] SPEAKER_00: My wife Cindy was very supportive of that.
[04:14] SPEAKER_00: And we experimented with all sorts of things.
[04:16] SPEAKER_00: So the bottom line is Gold for Screens has been running.
[04:20] SPEAKER_00: We've been certified organic since 2007.
[04:23] SPEAKER_00: Okay, super.
[04:24] SPEAKER_01: Now, did I read something correctly somewhere at the minute?
[04:28] SPEAKER_01: It was on your website that the family has been involved in farming since 1884?
[04:34] SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
[04:35] SPEAKER_00: That, yeah.
[04:36] SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're in this sort of era, I guess, now colonialism is bad.
[04:41] SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if this is a story we're telling or not.
[04:44] SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, and, and from different perspectives, it is bad, right?
[04:50] SPEAKER_00: But, I don't know, as long as we're aware of these things, the town of Gibbons in Alberta is named after my great grandfather.
[05:00] SPEAKER_00: So, yeah.
[05:01] SPEAKER_00: And he was one of the first, he was on the very first train that ever arrived in Emton to the point that the family story is the him and,
[05:12] SPEAKER_00: and a few of the other people on the train, you know, men on the train got out of the train before it reached the station at Stratkona and laid,
[05:21] SPEAKER_00: helped lay the last few bits of track so that they could, the train could actually pull up into the station to get their luggage off.
[05:27] SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, we've been in the Sturgeon County area for 125 years.
[05:34] SPEAKER_00: I'm not even sure now anymore.
[05:37] SPEAKER_01: So, I just wanted to go back to what you had talked about being in the ivory towers.
[05:43] SPEAKER_01: What were you doing?
[05:46] SPEAKER_00: Oh, I don't know how I landed there, but I ended up in commercial real estate.
[05:51] SPEAKER_00: So, Lee, and I was working with a firm called JJ Barnocky at the time.
[05:58] SPEAKER_01: I knew JJ Barnocky very well, like at the firm, actually, there was a guy here in Calgary many years ago that I dealt with.
[06:06] SPEAKER_01: Very, very often now.
[06:07] SPEAKER_00: But, yeah, I might know him.
[06:09] SPEAKER_00: Yeah. So, yeah, I was, and then from there I got into the landlord side things.
[06:15] SPEAKER_00: So, I worked with Oxford Properties for a few years.
[06:18] SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, so that's what led me down to Toronto on a fairly regular basis.
[06:23] SPEAKER_01: So, tell me what drew you back to Farming?
[06:28] SPEAKER_01: What was it about Farming?
[06:31] SPEAKER_00: That's a good question, Mary.
[06:33] SPEAKER_00: I just missed it.
[06:35] SPEAKER_00: I'm quite a sentimental person.
[06:38] SPEAKER_00: I'm sentimental about places and sentimental about people and family.
[06:44] SPEAKER_00: And, yeah, that's all I can say to you is that I just started missing the farming.
[06:50] SPEAKER_00: In my adult mind, the romance of farming as a child was exaggerated, I think.
[07:00] SPEAKER_00: And that's what brought me back to it.
[07:02] SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, the reality quickly set in that it's not, I mean, it's still romantic.
[07:09] SPEAKER_00: The sun sets and things like that are, you know, they're real.
[07:14] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, remember, I always remember the book Steinbeck's book of Mice and Men, right?
[07:21] Speaker UNKNOWN: 
[07:21] SPEAKER_01: And the character was it Lennie or whatever, living off the fat of the land, right?
[07:27] SPEAKER_01: And there's always that traction, right?
[07:33] SPEAKER_01: That's what gardening is so popular, right?
[07:36] SPEAKER_01: People love it.
[07:36] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I carry that to an extreme with, you know, the rest of my lifestyle, my personal life is when we focus a lot on food, we spent some time.
[07:47] SPEAKER_00: I've traveled the world really dealing with food.
[07:50] SPEAKER_00: I spent time in turn Italy and with slow food.
[07:54] SPEAKER_00: And Sweden and Iceland.
[07:57] SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I've been to some cool places dealing with food.
[08:02] SPEAKER_00: And so it's a big priority for us.
[08:04] SPEAKER_01: Well, when you talk about food, you know, there is a huge trend, I guess, in society these days, you know, by local, you know,
[08:15] SPEAKER_01: reduce your own stuff, you know, natural food, organic food, all that type of stuff.
[08:21] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, why do you think that trend is there?
[08:24] SPEAKER_00: Oh, boy, Mary, what a wonderful question.
[08:27] SPEAKER_00: Why do those trends exist?
[08:29] SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
[08:30] SPEAKER_00: I think those trends probably exist for the same reason that any trend exists, which I don't know the answer to.
[08:38] SPEAKER_00: What a wonderful question.
[08:40] SPEAKER_00: Let me think about that for a minute.
[08:41] SPEAKER_00: But it's definitely there, right?
[08:43] SPEAKER_00: It is there, absolutely.
[08:45] SPEAKER_00: I think that there is an increased awareness in what we are consuming and what goes into making that product consumable, if that makes sense.
[08:57] SPEAKER_00: So for instance, the beef that you're eating or the pork that you're eating or the chicken that you're eating or the eggs or what condition did that animal live in prior to you eating it?
[09:07] SPEAKER_00: How was it treated?
[09:08] SPEAKER_00: What was it fed?
[09:09] SPEAKER_00: You know, that's one aspect.
[09:11] SPEAKER_00: And the other aspect is your own personal health and nutrition.
[09:15] SPEAKER_00: What sort of ingredients or additives or we're added to that food.
[09:21] SPEAKER_00: You know, so I think there's just an increased awareness and some people don't care about that.
[09:26] SPEAKER_00: And I would say the majority of people probably don't care about things like that.
[09:30] SPEAKER_00: And that's why, you know, big box grocery stores and fast food outlets exist.
[09:34] SPEAKER_00: And that's fine.
[09:36] SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I'd be a hypocrite to say that I don't like a good hamburger and a fast food joint to be known then.
[09:43] SPEAKER_00: So, but I think for the most part, people are just more aware.
[09:48] SPEAKER_00: That's all I can say about that.
[09:50] Speaker UNKNOWN: 
[09:50] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[09:51] SPEAKER_01: What a, you know, but farming is not an easy life, right?
[09:55] SPEAKER_01: Well,
[09:59] SPEAKER_00: it's easier now for me.
[10:00] SPEAKER_00: And so I know where you're going with that and I agree with you.
[10:03] SPEAKER_00: It's not an easy life.
[10:04] SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of hard work.
[10:05] SPEAKER_00: But we've set up our business model so that we are at a point now where we're comfortable.
[10:14] SPEAKER_00: We are not rich.
[10:15] SPEAKER_00: We do not want to be rich.
[10:17] SPEAKER_00: We don't strive to be rich.
[10:18] SPEAKER_00: We don't, we can pay our bills.
[10:21] SPEAKER_00: We can put food on our table.
[10:22] SPEAKER_00: We live in a straw-bale house that we design and build ourselves.
[10:25] SPEAKER_00: Our input costs to living are so low.
[10:30] SPEAKER_00: We drive used vehicles that we just repair ourselves and I've never owned a new vehicle in my life.
[10:37] SPEAKER_00: So things like that, those are all decisions that we make that I get.
[10:40] SPEAKER_00: A lot of people don't want to make those decisions and I get that.
[10:45] SPEAKER_00: So because our,
[10:48] SPEAKER_00: because our expectations are low and our needs are low,
[10:52] SPEAKER_00: our workflow is now low.
[10:56] SPEAKER_00: I've been in that situation where I'm up at 4 in the morning,
[10:59] SPEAKER_00: driving to work, to oppress the partners,
[11:01] SPEAKER_00: to, you know, I'm the last one to leave the office at night.
[11:04] SPEAKER_00: I've done all of those things.
[11:06] SPEAKER_00: And now I'm at a point in my,
[11:10] SPEAKER_00: my later years where I can relax a little bit.
[11:15] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, seeding,
[11:17] SPEAKER_00: because, so what I'm saying is we are doing direct consumer with our products, right?
[11:22] SPEAKER_00: So I don't farm thousands of acres.
[11:24] SPEAKER_00: I farm hundreds of acres and,
[11:27] SPEAKER_00: and a small hundreds of acres.
[11:31] SPEAKER_00: So that means when I'm seeding, I'm not in a hurry.
[11:34] SPEAKER_00: Like, I'll take my time and do it right.
[11:37] SPEAKER_00: It doesn't take me weeks and weeks to do seeding.
[11:39] SPEAKER_00: It takes me hours and I,
[11:42] SPEAKER_00: I lead a comfortable, relaxed sort of life.
[11:46] SPEAKER_01: So where do the consumers,
[11:48] SPEAKER_01: you talked about direct to consumer.
[11:53] SPEAKER_01: So what's the process there?
[11:55] SPEAKER_01: Like, where do consumers get the goods from you?
[11:59] SPEAKER_00: Well, so we have some retail partners here in the city of Ebonton.
[12:03] SPEAKER_00: If everybody goes to our website,
[12:04] SPEAKER_00: which is just go for screens.com,
[12:07] SPEAKER_00: you can see our retail partners.
[12:08] SPEAKER_00: And you can see that our primary point of sale would be the Strapcoma Farmers Market.
[12:14] SPEAKER_00: That's the only farmers market that we participate in.
[12:16] SPEAKER_00: My wife Cindy is the principal of Gold For Screens now.
[12:20] SPEAKER_00: I've sort of, we've sort of handed that,
[12:25] SPEAKER_00: that the business over to her more.
[12:27] SPEAKER_00: She does most of the work,
[12:29] SPEAKER_00: aside from the farming and mailing work.
[12:32] SPEAKER_00: So she's the one that handles all that marketing.
[12:35] SPEAKER_00: We also have farm gait sales.
[12:37] SPEAKER_00: So every Thursday and Friday,
[12:39] SPEAKER_00: you can order from our website and then come and pick up products at the farm.
[12:44] SPEAKER_00: And then I believe that she's now working on getting our,
[12:49] SPEAKER_00: more of an e-commerce presence set up and more of a shipping presence.
[12:53] SPEAKER_00: We do have requests all the time from people across Canada and across the world for our products.
[12:59] SPEAKER_00: So we might get to that point.
[13:01] SPEAKER_01: Oh, right. Super.
[13:03] SPEAKER_01: As a kid, you know,
[13:05] SPEAKER_01: growing up in a kind of a farming background,
[13:08] SPEAKER_01: a farming family background.
[13:12] SPEAKER_01: What kind of lessons do you think you learned from growing up on a farm?
[13:17] SPEAKER_01: That did, you know, that did with you and obviously were very helpful for you during your career.
[13:26] SPEAKER_01: Even outside of that farming.
[13:30] SPEAKER_00: Well, I got to get in the US.
[13:33] SPEAKER_00: That's wonderful questions.
[13:34] SPEAKER_00: Very a lot of.
[13:35] SPEAKER_00: I've learned everything that I know.
[13:38] SPEAKER_00: I've learned from that experience of growing up.
[13:40] SPEAKER_00: I mean, have you all.
[13:41] SPEAKER_00: And so some highlights come to mind.
[13:45] SPEAKER_00: I remember one time I was underage and my friend and I had gone out to a bush party the night before and we were a little,
[13:53] SPEAKER_00: we were a lot worse for wear that night and it was in the summer.
[13:57] SPEAKER_00: And I was, my friend had brought me home and of course we were loud and obnoxious and laughing and I was 16, I think.
[14:04] SPEAKER_00: And, and my mom and dad's bedroom window was open because of a summer and they heard everything.
[14:10] SPEAKER_00: So the next morning, you know, I don't know what it was early.
[14:15] SPEAKER_00: The next morning of like six and a more boom, the door comes flying open and my dad's, get here, ask that a bed.
[14:22] SPEAKER_00: And then we spent the day shoveling grain.
[14:25] SPEAKER_00: So I was inside a steel grain bin shoveling grain into the auger.
[14:30] SPEAKER_00: It was like 30 above.
[14:32] SPEAKER_00: So I learned a really good lesson that day about stuff needs to get done.
[14:36] SPEAKER_00: And so you better govern yourselves accordingly, right?
[14:40] SPEAKER_00: It's okay to play but you better be prepared to work.
[14:44] SPEAKER_01: And that's the key, right?
[14:46] SPEAKER_01: It is the work and the hard work ethic.
[14:48] SPEAKER_01: And I often encounter that, you know, being from Calgary and seeing how many people are from Saskatchewan here, right?
[14:58] SPEAKER_01: Like that, a lot of people often look at Saskatchewan kids because they grew up on the farm and they know how to work hard, right?
[15:07] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's, it's work that you don't have a choice in doing.
[15:12] SPEAKER_00: So it just becomes normal.
[15:14] SPEAKER_00: It's seasonal.
[15:15] SPEAKER_00: You've got to get stuff done today because that's when it needs to happen.
[15:19] SPEAKER_00: And so you grow, when you grow up in that mentality, I think you just develop that attitude with everything, right?
[15:25] Speaker UNKNOWN: So you're in the same mentality as the people that are in the same state where it needs to get done.
[15:28] SPEAKER_00: And it's going to get done today.
[15:29] SPEAKER_00: Come hell or high water.
[15:31] SPEAKER_00: And so let's get her done.
[15:32] SPEAKER_00: Now, having said that, you know, there's city kids that grow up with that with good parenting that have that same mentality.
[15:41] SPEAKER_00: I'm sure.
[15:42] SPEAKER_00: But life on the farm is a little different.
[15:44] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
[15:46] SPEAKER_01: Now, I take it just by, you know, your thoughts earlier in our conversation here that you're comfortable where you're right.
[15:54] SPEAKER_01: You know, with what you're doing and what the company, right?
[16:00] SPEAKER_01: Are there any other plans to grow the company, though, or where are you at with that right now?
[16:08] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that we will, yeah, you know, for me personally, no.
[16:13] SPEAKER_00: And I know that that's going to be foreign to a lot of people where I think that is, I don't know.
[16:20] SPEAKER_00: I don't want to offend people like I'm not trying to preach to people how to be.
[16:25] SPEAKER_00: So I hope you understand that.
[16:27] SPEAKER_00: It's just that I think my perspective is that that is a problem with maybe our world or our society.
[16:33] SPEAKER_00: I agree with striving for better.
[16:36] SPEAKER_00: I agree with innovation.
[16:37] SPEAKER_00: I agree with ambition and all of those things.
[16:42] SPEAKER_00: But I also think that there needs to be a level of sustainability in your personal life and your business life.
[16:52] SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, so I don't have any plans to grow the business, other than what I mentioned.
[17:00] SPEAKER_00: I guess partly that comes from a standpoint of I don't need to be greedy about it.
[17:04] SPEAKER_00: There's lots of consumers out there.
[17:07] SPEAKER_00: I would like to have some space for other people to accomplish the same thing in other centers.
[17:13] SPEAKER_00: Flower is sort of, although it's a staple in our pantry and everybody has a bag flower in their pantry,
[17:21] SPEAKER_00: not everybody has stone ground organic flower from a local mill.
[17:26] SPEAKER_00: So it's not something where four or five different versions of our business can exist in a smaller center.
[17:35] SPEAKER_00: But there's lots of centers in North America where these could exist.
[17:39] SPEAKER_00: So that's a long drawn odour.
[17:40] SPEAKER_00: So that's not really the answer.
[17:42] SPEAKER_00: I'm going to leave it up to the next generation to worry about that.
[17:48] SPEAKER_00: And think the thing that I'm learning, I mean, you and I look like maybe we're of the same generation.
[17:53] SPEAKER_00: And like I just can't believe how fast things have changed.
[17:59] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[18:00] SPEAKER_00: And change even with COVID, how things have changed with regard to e-commerce.
[18:05] SPEAKER_00: And the zoom meeting that we're doing now has become so normalized for people to communicate in this way.
[18:12] SPEAKER_00: So maybe the next generation will develop a business strategy that is something I haven't even thought of.
[18:20] SPEAKER_00: And that will grow the company.
[18:21] SPEAKER_00: True.
[18:22] SPEAKER_00: Or let's say maybe it's, I need to still derive an income from the business.
[18:29] SPEAKER_00: And my son or my daughter are now on the property and they need to derive an income from the business.
[18:34] SPEAKER_00: So that will necessitate growth of some sort, right?
[18:37] SPEAKER_00: So for now, I'm just not going to worry about it.
[18:40] SPEAKER_00: We do our thing and we do it well and we just try to stay comfortable with that.
[18:44] SPEAKER_00: Super.
[18:46] SPEAKER_01: I'm just curious.
[18:47] SPEAKER_01: You know, we all know that you know, said farming can be a hard thing in many ways.
[18:54] SPEAKER_01: It could be in terms of work a lot of long hours, etc.
[19:00] SPEAKER_01: What do you do, the side-sparming?
[19:02] SPEAKER_01: Like what do you do that to entertain yourself or relax yourself outside of the work?
[19:10] SPEAKER_00: Sure.
[19:11] SPEAKER_00: Let me just go back one step here first, though, Mary.
[19:15] SPEAKER_00: I don't want to give people the wrong impression that it's always been this way.
[19:19] SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was at a point in time, especially when we were building this business where I struggled mightily,
[19:24] SPEAKER_00: where it was literally 23 hours a day of work at certain times the year where I'd work a full-time job and then I'd come home and farm.
[19:32] SPEAKER_00: And then like I was the guy initially when the kids were younger and Cindy was busy with the household and with keeping our kids, our children happy.
[19:39] SPEAKER_00: I was the one working a full-time job, farming, milling, marketing, going to the farmer's market.
[19:47] SPEAKER_00: You know, it was a big struggle.
[19:49] SPEAKER_00: So maybe that's sort of the motivation for me now to seem unmotivated or you know what I mean or unambitious.
[19:58] SPEAKER_00: It's just I've been there and I've grown the company to where it is now.
[20:02] SPEAKER_00: So that's, you know, anyways, that'll give you an idea of maybe what my mindset is.
[20:07] SPEAKER_00: What do I do now?
[20:08] SPEAKER_00: I love hunting and fishing. I always have.
[20:13] SPEAKER_00: So, but I do that a little differently when I hunt, I hunt primarily with traditional bow.
[20:19] SPEAKER_00: I build a lot of my own gear, a lot of my own archery gear.
[20:24] SPEAKER_00: I tie my own flies and I build my own bamboo fly rods.
[20:30] SPEAKER_00: I do enjoy, you know, I enjoy projects, I guess, or like, you know, I just finished building a landing net.
[20:38] SPEAKER_00: Out of a piece of hazel, we have wild hazel nuts that grow on our farm.
[20:45] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, so things like that.
[20:48] SPEAKER_00: And I will tend to just figure that stuff out on my own.
[20:52] SPEAKER_00: And yeah, so.
[20:54] SPEAKER_00: What's the, what's the landing net?
[20:56] SPEAKER_00: Oh, for fly fishing or fishing.
[20:58] SPEAKER_00: Oh.
[20:58] SPEAKER_00: And you want to land the fish.
[20:59] SPEAKER_00: Okay.
[21:00] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[21:01] SPEAKER_00: So I mean, I can take the time to make money to go and buy a net and certainly have done that.
[21:07] SPEAKER_00: Or I can just take the time to build the net.
[21:10] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[21:11] SPEAKER_00: And so I do a lot of that sort of stuff.
[21:13] SPEAKER_01: So it sounds to me like obviously with, with the work you do, with the, you know, what you do on the side, side, so that I'm a personal level.
[21:22] SPEAKER_01: Like, you're really in tune with the land and with nature.
[21:28] SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
[21:29] SPEAKER_00: Now, yeah, and more and more so I'm involved with the television show, not television.
[21:34] SPEAKER_00: I'm involved with a, uh, uh, uh, visual production.
[21:37] SPEAKER_00: I don't even know what to call it anymore.
[21:39] SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's called From the Wild.
[21:41] SPEAKER_00: And you can look at that at FromTheWild.ca.
[21:44] SPEAKER_00: My friend, Kevin Costwin owns that brand and produces that show.
[21:49] SPEAKER_00: Um, he is also involved with a less shroud, uh, survivor man and another project that they're working on together.
[21:56] SPEAKER_00: So he is an award-winning videographer and editor.
[22:01] SPEAKER_00: And, um, I'm super proud to be involved with that show.
[22:06] SPEAKER_00: And that show is all about wild food.
[22:08] SPEAKER_00: And so, um, we learn a lot together from that.
[22:12] SPEAKER_00: So I'm in tune with what's around me for sure.
[22:15] SPEAKER_00: And especially when it comes to food, we explore, you know, things, I guess, to give an example, um, we explore what pine needles taste like and what ingredients you, or what you might be able to make from a pine needle.
[22:30] SPEAKER_00: And for instance, like logical pine needles, they taste like lime popsicles.
[22:35] SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna say that sounds weird, but, um, it's not, not every logical pine taste that way, but a lot of them do.
[22:43] SPEAKER_00: And so you can use that flavor in making like a, a gimli.
[22:46] SPEAKER_00: So we make cocktails in, in camp in primitive settings.
[22:50] SPEAKER_00: We make icing like for a cake, what else have we done?
[22:54] SPEAKER_00: Oh, kombucha. We did last weekend, like a pine needle infused kombucha.
[23:03] SPEAKER_00: And when I say we, I mean, Kevin.
[23:05] SPEAKER_00: But, yeah, here on the farm, we raise pigs from time, you know, every second year kind of thing.
[23:12] SPEAKER_00: We have chickens for eggs, we garden.
[23:14] SPEAKER_00: We of course have our green products.
[23:16] SPEAKER_00: I hunt, so I have a freezer full of meat.
[23:18] SPEAKER_00: I don't trophy hunt, although you can see heads behind me in the background from back in the 90s.
[23:26] SPEAKER_00: I mean, if I happen to shoot something worthwhile, but now what I typically do with deer like that is I will utilize the hide and leather for a project, you know, clothing or what have you.
[23:39] SPEAKER_00: And then the antlers can go into other art functional pieces.
[23:46] SPEAKER_00: So I tend not to have trophies. Most of those trophies are all three of them actually are 25 years old.
[23:53] SPEAKER_00: So I don't really do that anymore.
[23:55] SPEAKER_00: But, yeah, food is a big part of our life for sure.
[23:58] SPEAKER_01: Well, that's cool.
[23:59] SPEAKER_01: Well, thanks so much, John, for joining us today.
[24:02] Speaker UNKNOWN: It was excellent.
[24:03] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Mario. I appreciate it.
[24:06] SPEAKER_01: All right, super. That was John Schneider, who is the owner of Gold Forest grains in the Edmonton area.
[24:12] SPEAKER_01: This has been this has been Edmonton's podcast with Mario Tony Goosey on Canada's podcast network.
[24:19] SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining us today.