I'm Travis Bader, and this is the silver Corp podcast.
Silvercore has been providing its members with a skills and knowledge necessary
to be confident and proficient in the outdoors for over 20 years, and we
make it easier for people to deepen their connection to the natural world.
If you enjoy the positive
content we provide, please let others know by sharing, commenting, and
following so that you can join in on everything that Silvercore stands for.
If you'd like to learn more about becoming a member of the Silvercore Club and
community, visit our website Silvercore.ca
Silvercore has been helping others deepen their connection with the
natural world for well over 20 years.
And I'm excited to have the proprietor of learn your land.com,
a committed and passionate forger and naturalist joined me today.
Welcome to the Silvercore Podcast, Adam Haritan.
Thanks.
Travis nobody's ever called me a proprietor of learned your land.
So I like that one.
That's got a bit of a ring to it.
Doesn't it?
Yeah, it sounds fancy.
It sounds, it makes me out to be better than I actually am,
I think, but I'll take it.
We'll call it the worst.
Well, I, you know, I'm looking at your, your workshops, you're doing your
YouTube channel, your website, your social media, the amount of content that
you're putting out to help people deepen their connection with the natural world.
It's impressive.
How
did this start?
It that's a good question.
It all started with nutrition.
For me, most people don't get into nature through nutrition, I find, but maybe
more and more these days they are okay.
But that was my gateway into nature.
It wasn't like I grew up.
But more and more.
I'm figuring out that a lot of people have a similar story.
They didn't grow up in the outdoors and they're trying to find a way into there.
And so, however you could do it more power to you.
For me, it was nutrition.
I was interested in eating healthy and I started coming across research.
That wild foods are actually pretty healthy foods.
I thought this is great.
It was fun to spend time outdoors.
But it was more than just hiking for me.
I started just hiking, but I felt like something was missing.
I wanted a connection, a deeper connection to everything that was around me.
And I just wanted to know the names of things, not just the edible foods, but it
was mostly the edible foods, the plants, the mushrooms, some animals as well, that
really solidified my connection to nature.
So that was it.
And then I felt like I needed to give back.
And so to give back, I wanted to teach what I learned and
what I'm still learning.
So you had yourself a well lucrative job working for business.
And you said, I know I want to just walk away from all of
that and start my own business.
Learn your land.com.
Was that scary?
Are you saying my former job was lucrative?
Well, I mean, you're, I perhaps I'm, perhaps I'm reading a little further
into it was that one of the reasons why you, you left because it wasn't
as lucrative as you wished it to be.
I
mean, so I always, in my, I guess, mid twenties at the time when I decided
to walk away from a, I guess it was a more stable job, it wasn't that
lucrative, but at the time I didn't really have a concept of money.
I just thought if I'm making money, that's a good.
Um, and I was making more money than I was ever making
up until that point in my life.
But again, I wasn't that old and it's not like I'm that old right now.
But I found that when I was inside doing my job, which was a nutritionist
at the time I would look outside and just think I want to be out there.
I don't want to be inside if I could even just do what I'm doing inside, outside.
That would make a complete difference in my life, but I just need to get out there.
But fortunately they cut my position.
So I didn't have a choice in the matter position, but they cut the position.
I thought I'll just take this assigned from the great
beyond to try to start my own.
Yeah, and I started it and it was called learn your land.
And it led me here today, talking to you on this podcast.
So
how did you start that?
Like, what was the process like?
I look at myself when I started Silvercore, let's see.
I was 94.
I was in high school and I was doing the training.
Learning about all the different things I was interested in and training others.
And then I started a sole proprietorship by 2003.
I incorporated it every step of the way I was like, I don't know what I'm doing.
Like, I, I think I have to be incorporated.
Like they got limited companies, incorporated
companies, but it sounds fancy.
I think I have to do that.
I might, I must need a business bank account and I'm just fumbling my
way through at every single step.
I didn't have too many mentors out there that were in.
I didn't have any mentors that were in my sphere.
I had one mentor who was a businessman, but he was on a
completely different level than myself.
I had no idea how to start.
However, when I look back, I know exactly how to get here now.
Um, and I'm happy to share that with anybody who wants to, to
know how did, how did you start?
It sounds like our stories are fairly similar.
I didn't know.
At first I had a lot of passion.
I was so hungry to start something.
And I read a lot of books.
I love reading.
And I feel like if I can't find a in-person mentor, somebody older than
me, who's been through the ropes and knows what they're doing and he's willing
to teach it to the next generation.
I'll find those mentors in books.
And I still feel that that's the truth today, which is why I read a lot every
single day, I'm reading something.
And so I was just reading a lot of business books.
You know, I was reading a ton of nutrition books, a ton of nature
books, wild food books, but at the same time, Stacks of marketing
books and stacks of business books.
And a lot of these were old.
A lot of these were old, like personal development and self-help books, but
a lot of them were more modern with tactical advice on how to start something.
But a lot of the.
Action steps that I took moving forward, you know, getting the LLC or doing things
illegally that was out of necessity.
I stumbled into that stuff because I wasn't doing it correctly.
And somebody said, you're doing incorrectly.
You need to do this.
You need to do that.
And I thought, oh, I didn't know that.
Like I would leave.
And I hope nobody from the state parks is listening to this right now, but I
would just host events in Pennsylvania, state parks, not knowing that you
needed a license to do such a thing.
So I would just do it and just invite people and I would get money for.
And I would always donate back.
So they shouldn't be too mad that I was doing this in the parks.
I would always donate money back to the parks, but I don't think they knew
I was leading events in their parks.
And so I would do this.
And then one day I get an email saying, uh, you're not allowed to do this.
You have to call us ASAP or else we're going to shut down your event.
That's coming up in two weeks.
I thought I did it.
No, and they were really nice about it.
And so then I started doing it legally.
Right then the stuff with the LLC is just for tax purposes alone.
It just made more sense for me to incorporate as a.
For liability reasons as well, but I kind of just fumbled my way
through it and I'm still doing it.
I know that there's many things that I'm doing right now that I shouldn't be doing.
And eventually I'll have to change paths a little bit, you know, to
make it more business, like having fun, trying to figure it out as well.
Yeah.
That, you know, what do you have a passion for something, and you
want to share it with others?
The idea of, for me anyways, when I was starting, the idea of
actually making money was kind of a.
Taboo.
I mean, I figured I'll cover my costs.
I mean, I'll just make a little bit, but as you get into it a little bit more,
you realize it has to be sustainable.
You have to be, and there's so many different pillars that hold up
and a business like yours, or like mine that need to be addressed.
And that all requires money.
You mentioned something earlier, you said, I didn't really have a concept of money.
I thought that's kind of interesting.
Do you have a concept of money, right?
I
think about money a lot more right now.
I mean, it's interesting when I run this kind of business, you
have to make money to keep going.
I love providing free content.
I really do.
But at the end of the day, it costs me thousands of dollars to run my email list.
It cost me thousands of dollars to keep the online course going.
It cost me a lot of money in taxes every year that I have no
idea where that money's going.
Once I submit it to the government, but I ha I have.
Ask people who are watching my videos, who are getting value out of my videos
to exchange value every now and then not everybody's going to do it clearly
that 99 point something percent of people will never give you money for
what you're doing, but that's okay.
Because as long as you can convince some people that what you're doing is valuable.
And if you just exchange some of that value, And I'll be able to
continue doing what I'm doing.
Like I don't receive grants for anything.
I don't monetize my YouTube channel.
At least at this point in time, I've never monetized it.
And I have millions of views on some of these videos, but I never turned
it thousand subscribers.
And you've never monetized.
No, you know, it's interesting though.
A lot of people started saying you should really monetize this.
And I thought that's not fair to a lot of people though, because.
I don't like sitting through ads.
I, I despise ads.
I agree.
Anytime I'm watching TV, I don't like commercials.
I don't think I've ever purchased something based on an advertisement, but
I know that sounds like a bold statement, but I don't think it's ever worked on me.
Like I don't, they just don't work on me.
And I don't want people to have to sit through that stuff.
A lot of it's just completely irrelevant anyway, and it's becoming
more irrelevant every single day.
I'd rather them just get the content.
But some people started coming up to me saying, yeah, you should really
monetize your YouTube channel.
And I thought, okay, so I'll turn, I'll submit the application to monetize
YouTube because you have to like submit an application to do such a thing.
So I did that and I was approved.
Obviously I was approved to do it because I have some subscribers.
But I've never hit that turn on monetization on any YouTube.
So anytime I sell a course, I mean, that's the only way money's coming in.
And some people get mad that some of these courses cost a couple of
dollars, but it costs a lot of money to produce these courses as well.
That's funny.
And it's not like I'm living in a man.
I mean, I have like one plant behind me.
There's a cat.
It's not like I've got a rolls Royce parked out.
A lot of his money just goes back to land conservation.
I'm a huge believer.
Donating money to local land conservation trust is a way to give back.
And so I don't keep all the money.
I mean, a lot of it goes to the government.
A lot of it goes to the email list to the software platforms
and to land conservation as
well.
I realized in myself that I have some similar traits to what
you're explaining right now.
And for.
A long time ago.
I just had to make the decision.
Um, I'm not going to look at the money.
I'm not going to think about the money.
I'm just going to work on the job.
Mind you, as money comes in, I'll let the accountants look at the
money and think about the money and they can give me a nudge.
If I need to come on track, we've got to do something here.
And, uh, but for myself, I found.
I would look at people who just knew all the ins and outs and they had all the
spreadsheets and they knew their profit and loss and where it's, where it's at.
And it seemed to me anyways, that their attention would be better served.
On the customer base and providing them with the content or the material
that they're passionate about and the money would be a natural byproduct
of that provided there's a, there's a mechanism to be able to collect money.
Like, I dunno, for example, turning on monetization on your YouTube channel.
Uh, but the money would be a natural by-product of that.
So I many years ago just stopped.
I've never cared much for, um, for much I like to have Kent.
I like to have different things.
But the, uh, the money concept when you're running a business,
particularly when you're starting out is always an interesting one.
And I don't think I have the answers to it, but I'm always interested to
see how other people approach it.
I like your approach.
It's smart.
Other than the YouTube one.
I think that would be an easy one for you to just turn on.
And if people don't want to see ads, I'm pretty sure YouTube will get rid of them.
If you pay like a five bucks a month subscription or.
Yeah.
I mean more and more I'm thinking about it.
And it was a huge step for me to just submit that application to
get approved for monetization.
Right.
And I'm sure it's only a matter of time before I do turn it
on because it's getting more expensive to run such a thing.
It's interesting.
Like the more value you provide, the more subscribers you
get, the bigger email list.
You just have to pay more.
I manage all this stuff.
It just costs more money and you have to make money somehow, or else
I'm just going to go back to doing something else that I don't really
like indoors wishing I was outside.
I don't think that's doing the world a great service by doing that.
And people are so used to ads these days.
Anyway, when I watch videos, it's not like I get super mad
when I have to click skip ad, but
yeah, after what, two and a half seconds, three seconds skip right.
Or whatever the runtime is.
Yeah.
So, I mean, maybe by the end of this year, we'll see, there might be more ads on my.
But I'm happy to say that I haven't done such a thing yet.
No.
W we were talking off air, you know, I got into foraging to a small degree.
I love being outside.
I never really equated what's around me with things that I could eat,
unless it was like, I don't know.
I was in an apple orchard and I saw an apple on the tree.
I'm like, yeah, I could eat that.
Right.
Uh, It was Hank Shaw who actually got me into it.
And we were forging for porcinis and a bunch of other things
he took around and showed me.
It was just like a giant Easter egg hunt.
And I was good at it.
And I was able to find things once I was told what to look for and just
let loose, uh, I found it so much fun.
And then of course we take that stuff back.
And, uh, this was in Sierra Nevada where I was doing it.
And we went to a restaurant, we took the porcinis and said,
Hey, here's some for you guys.
Keep them, can you make us something good out of what we've got here?
And they made a five course meal with what we'd forage.
It was amazing.
But that connection, that little light bulb switch.
I think when I was getting into it, foraging really wasn't on the radar
for anybody in my social circles.
I think now though, with people like yourself out there who are providing
greater information, I can see it.
There's a bit of a resurgence.
Are you seeing that?
And COVID as well when everyone got locked up, that they want to learn how to fend
for themselves and harvest and go inside.
Are you seeing that?
Yeah, for sure.
When I started there weren't as many people doing this and I'm sure there
were a lot of people back in the nineties saying the same thing or the eighties.
I'm sure it's becoming slightly more popular, but I think over the
past 10 years it's really taken off.
I think there's a lot of reasons behind it.
I think more and more people are interested in local.
And then wild foods are the epitome of local foods.
More and more people are interested in healthy foods.
I think people don't trust the food supply, uh, or they don't know what's in
those foods are sprayed on those foods.
And so they feel like they have more control if they just
go out and get it themselves.
And it's really fun.
I think people are just more interested in going out.
And spending lots of time outside and plus, because social media
is so dominant in our lives.
You see other people doing it, where back in the day, you just don't see
people forwarding a lot because you would have to be in the woods or in a natural
setting to actually see them doing it.
And somebody just driving by might not even know what the heck that
person's doing in that field anyway.
Right.
You might think they're just like looking for birds, but now they're picking
something or to forging something.
So I think just because of social media and a lot of people love.
The post, what they're finding.
There's a lot of ego involved, I think with foraging today, it spreads and other
people want that same thrill as well.
I don't think it's a bad thing that more and more people are getting into it.
I think it's a good thing.
Uh, but you're right.
I did notice over the years, more and more people were doing this.
What are, you know, with more people coming out and doing it?
So, I don't think in BC I could be wrong.
Uh, you might know better.
I don't think in BC that we really have ramps out here, uh, or like wild leaks.
Back east though, there are pretty popular.
And from what I understand, like certain areas, they either a, you have
to get a ramp harvesting licenses, and you're only allowed so much and some
places won't even let you harvest them because it's one of these species that
have been, uh, becoming so popular that people are, are wiping them out.
Um, is that.
Is that a, a concern?
Is that something that you're seeing as more people enter into the,
uh, uh, the foraging world that certain species are starting to get
over harvested species or plants?
It's a good question.
And personally, I haven't noticed anything, but I haven't been doing
this long enough to notice trends.
I've heard lots of people say that ramps are on the decline.
But I trust a lot of people who say that, no, they're not.
They're just as plannable as they used to be where I live in
Pennsylvania, they're not endangered.
A lot of people think that they are endangered.
They're not, I mean, there, you could go to areas where there's acres and
acres and acres of these things.
And in many cases they do benefit by actually digging them up and
sending the population so that they can continue to expand and grow.
But in some areas they're just not that plentiful.
And I think if you go to those areas where they're not planting.
And then you start harvesting a bunch of year after year that's where
over time, obviously you would see a decline in that population, but
I think across the board in Eastern north America ramps are fairly steep.
Interesting.
Okay.
Well, that's a, do they have ramps in BC?
Uh, you know of, I'm
not, I'm not sure.
I mean, I'm not an expert on wild foods where I live, but I'm
certainly not an expert on wild foods all across north America.
So I'm not quite sure, but I'm sure you could just easily Google
that and find out if it grows
there.
Take a look at that.
Definitely.
So you you've actually been to a BC before Andrew.
I have, yeah, I don't remember too much because I was younger and it
was for a completely different reason than foraging or getting into nature.
I was in a city.
I was in Vancouver and Vancouver island playing heavy metal.
I wish I knew the name of the club.
If I Googled it, I'm sure I could come up with the name of it.
Um, I remember Vancouver was kind of a sketchy place.
We were in some pretty interesting areas of Vancouver.
Vancouver island was very, very.
I remember.
Yeah, but we didn't spend much time there.
You know, when you're on tour, you're in a city for like eight hours and
then you're onto the next city, then you're onto the next city.
Right.
So you really don't get to experience like all that the city has to offer.
But it was a lot of fun at the time.
I'd love to come back sometime, but I don't know when that'll
be bit of a dichotomy between a foraging and a peace and a, one of the nature and
touring cities and the heavy metal band.
Something happened in my life.
I don't know what it was though, but I did a complete 180, like really I was totally
into music and I was playing heavy.
'cause it worked like people love seeing us play heavy metal.
It's not like I was the biggest heavy metal fan that was out there.
But after a while, you just, you have to stick with a style that got you where you
are, you can't like change radically or your fans don't want to hear that kind of
music, which is why like the Ramones never changed or Motley crew never changed.
You know, they just keep playing the same stuff over and over and over again.
So I listened to a lot of other music at the time, but heavy
metal worked, um, Over time.
I just felt like it wasn't for me, you know, singing about knives and fair enough
devils and a killing and all that stuff.
I mean, it's all for entertainment.
It wasn't like my true heart, my passion coming out of me, but
it was a lot of fun at the time.
And I learned a lot and I got to travel.
I have so many good memories from that time, but something happened
in my life where I just completely.
Shifted gears.
And I went down the nutrition rabbit hole and then got into nature.
And I'm glad that I did, like, I wouldn't have it any other
way.
I've I've never growing up.
I never equated what I ate with how I felt and it wasn't until much, much
later in my life, a bear embarrassingly.
So.
That I finally started to equate, Hey, if I eat crap food, I feel like crap.
Like I'd go out camping for a week and come back.
Like, oh God, I'm feeling super great.
And my wife's like, well, what'd you eat?
Oh, you know, hot dogs and cheeses and beers.
She's like, do you think maybe that's got something to do with it?
Like, no, no, that's probably not.
Right.
Um, of course it did the, uh, The use of wild plants and Herb's, and,
and mushrooms out there for medicinal benefits is something aside from the
nutrition side, making you feel better, the medicinal side is something that,
uh, that you're passionate about from, from what I see on your, what you're
posting, how did you get into that?
I was lucky that when I got into nutrition, I started studying
from mentors that were into.
I don't know how it happened.
I mean, it depends who you follow and who circles you hang around, but
these teachers were foragers as well.
And they were really interested in the medicinal side of things, not just forging
for calories, but foraging for medicine.
And I just became swept away by that idea.
And I started spending a lot of time looking for medicinal
mushrooms, specifically, also medicinal medicinal plants, but to
a large degree medicinal mushrooms.
Okay.
And this is at a time also a medicinal mushrooms were becoming more popular.
So I kind of like wrote that way for a long time.
And at the end of the day, you know, looking back on that, I mean, I
still look for medicinal mushrooms.
I still consume them.
And I still know that they're extremely valuable at least in my life.
But I think the most medicinal thing about the mushrooms for me is that.
They've kept me tethered to the forest.
They keep me outside.
They keep me looking for other things in nature, and it's not
necessarily the beta glucans or the polysaccharides, which are all great.
And I know I benefit from their consumption, but it's just being glued
to the forest and not wanting to leave.
And I think a lot of people don't talk about those benefits and those
are benefits that you don't get eating foods from the grocery store.
Right because you just, you don't have that kind of connection.
And even if you're tethered to the grocery store, it's like, that's not
much of an achievement, but being tethered to nature, to me, that's like
very admirable, you know, to never want to leave such a situation or scenario
it's over the years when people ask me like, well, what's the use of this?
Or what's the use of that?
I think, well, it may just stop and look at it.
It made you learn it and made you forget about the other worldly
affairs for just a couple seconds.
And maybe you'll come back and learn something.
And that's, what's been a good benefit to me over the years, just doing those
kinds of things and being tethered to the forest through medicinal mushrooms.
That's an awesome perspective.
I, you know, everyone understands that there is a huge.
Element to being out in nature.
They feel calm when they're by the, at the ocean and they're watching the waves crash
in and the sunsets are in the forest.
If provided.
They're not, uh, wrought with anxiety because they're afraid of whatever
might lurk around the next tree.
Uh, most people find that there's a very calming effect.
But not everybody has the ability or maybe they just have prioritize their
lives in a certain way where they're, they're more stuck in a, in a big city.
Um, do you ever do anything with, with urban foraging?
Cause I know that's sort of a, a, a trend that seems to be fairly popular.
That's how I started.
That's how I started learning all this stuff.
Even when I started learning your land, I was living in the city of.
And some of those early videos literally were filmed in a city of Pittsburgh.
It's just, I found a patch of green where I filmed, but if you listen
carefully, you'll hear the trains.
You'll hear the sirens.
You'll hear the cars, you'll see people walking in the background.
Yeah, you can totally do it in the city, but I would also recommend trying to
get out of the city as much as possible, but I wouldn't use it as an excuse just
because you live in the city that you have to like put your education on hold.
But I was going to the university of Pittsburgh at the time that I
was getting into nutrition and.
Four miles every day, two miles to get there two miles to get back.
And I would learn every plant along the way, every tree, along
the way, every bird along the way.
That's what I did.
And if there was a plant that I didn't know, I would make sure I knew it to
where I knew every single plant, because I would do it year after year after year.
And so I was very good at knowing those kinds of things like urban plants.
But once I got into Wilder air, I didn't really know as much until
I kind of moved away from the city a little bit and started spending
more time in Wilder places.
But as far as urban forging, a lot of people do it.
It can be done.
I think you just have to be a little more mindful of the pollutants
that could be in that particular area, because there can be a lot.
Uh, and if you're in a Wilder space, it's not to say there's no pollutants in
those areas because there's certainly.
But I think there's less generally speaking, compared to an urban
environment.
Right.
And maybe less garbage being thrown on the side that something's growing out of.
But, uh, where, where would, where would you point somebody who wants to start?
Who says, look it, I'm learning about this.
Eat local, um, farm to table.
And I want to, I want to start dipping my toes in the water.
What, what would you tell a person?
So I would tell them what worked for me, because I can
only speak based on experience.
And it's not like you read these things like a list of five
things on how to start forging.
Maybe there's some blogs on that, but I never came across that information,
but for me, it was always find an event where somebody is teaching these skills.
It could be a wildflower walk.
It could be a bird walk.
It could be a tree identification walk.
It could be a mushroom walk.
It doesn't matter what it is, as long as it's some nature skill, find those
events and go on those events because you're not just going to pick up the
birding skills on a bird walk or the mushroom skills on a mushroom walk.
There are people on those walks that if you connect with them,
they'll teach you other things.
Like I started learning trees on mushroom walks because people would teach me that.
So it is between red Oaks and white Oaks and Maples and hackberries and
different trees, just a mushroom walks.
And when I was starting, there were a decent number of these walks that
were available around Pittsburgh, but nowadays there's way more available.
And actually when I started learning their land, it was originally a database
to kind of compile a list of all these events, where they were happening.
And then it kind of got away from that.
I didn't want to be stuck behind a computer, plugging away all these
different events and managing this.
I'm not a software developer.
I don't know that stuff.
I'd rather be outside filming myself, teaching people.
Um, so that didn't quite work out, but if you just, you know, use a search
engine type in your area and wildflower walk or birding walk or mushroom walk
or inquire at a local state park or an environmental center or an Arboretum,
it just go on some of these walks.
You might be the oldest person on the lawn.
You might be the youngest person on the walk, but as long as you go
on these events, you're going to feel more comfortable out there.
You're going to meet incredible people.
And they're going to teach you some things that you never knew you wanted to learn,
you know, I'm you've brought up trees a couple of times now.
And you, from what I understand, you've had a little bit of a, maybe secret, not
so secret passion about trees for the last number of years, which has culminated in a
brand new course that you've put together.
On trees and tree identification.
Can you tell me a bit about that?
Yes.
So for the past two and a half years, it's all been trees for me, despite
what you see on YouTube and on my Facebook and Instagram posts, I'll
still put the mushrooms out there.
I'll still put the plants up there, but almost every single
day I've been looking at trees.
I've been studying trees.
I've been visiting trees.
I've been saying no to a lot of things, just so I could
spend more time with trees.
All because I was putting together an online tree identification
course, and I finally released it just a couple of days ago.
Uh, so if somebody's listening to this or watching this, and if you
try to gain access to the course, there are closed seasons for it
and there's open seasons for it.
Uh, so you can just put your name on the notification list and then you'll
get an email whenever it's open again.
But yeah, I've been obsessed with trees lately and I love it.
It's done so much for me.
And I no idea that by saying yes to this project to study.
That it would do the kinds of things that it has done for me, it's been
such a blessing and the project is kind of, it's not over, but a
lot of the work has already been done and I'm kind of having that.
You know, I get, I'd never had a kid before, but I imagine like if you
have a kid, you kind miss out and get in the womb for a while, and then
you're like, oh yeah, you know, and then like grows up and like, you don't
have as much control over it anymore.
And I kind of feel that way, but I'm still putting content into it.
And it's just, I have no other word other than blessing to describe what
it's done for me over the years.
And I know that if other people listening to this learn their
trees, I could do the same thing.
So, okay, so many questions for at first one, just not about trees, more
about the course in general, what do you mean open season and closed season?
Like it's an online course.
Can someone just click on the thing and take it whenever?
So
the course is entirely go at your own pace.
All the videos, all the content, all the downloads are immediately and always
available to you once you sign up.
But because I'm the only instructor.
I take it very seriously when students email me with questions and students
are always encouraged to email me with questions and I prioritize people who
have bought my courses, obviously because they paid a lot of money for this stuff.
And I'm not going to leave them hanging compared to some random like YouTube
or her leave some nasty comment about my mouth or something like that,
because it happens from time to time.
Uh, so there are closed seasons only because when people sign up for this.
I find that they generally work through the course during a certain chunk of time.
And because I'm the only instructor, I'm the only person
that can email these people back.
And also, because this was the first launch of this course in case there's
mistakes or in case there's any issues with the software platform, it's kind
of like a beta launch and I'm going to get the feedback, tweak some things
and then reopen it and make it better.
And I did that with the mushroom course that I previously released.
And every time I would rely on.
There was new.
There were new things in there and it was a letter little better every time.
And I'm able to be more present with students as they work
through it, rather than, you know, somebody signed up for it in July.
Somebody signed up November, somebody at the very beginning,
some ways halfway through it.
It's just easier for me as an instructor to deal with it that way.
And I don't have to.
Sell myself constantly.
If it's always open, it was always open.
More of my emails would be like, Hey, don't forget trees in all.
Seasons is open.
Don't forget trees in all.
Seasons is open.
That's the name of trees in all seasons.
But if I just limit that window, you're only going to get those
emails for maybe three weeks out of the year when it's open, because
honestly, I don't really enjoy.
I like getting giving free content out.
It just feels better to give free content now, but I have to in
order to keep this machine running.
So
what kind of things can a person learn on the mushroom course or the tree course?
What can they expect to see in something like that?
I
I'm used to learning from field guides because a lot of people,
that's how they learn mushrooms.
That's how they learn plants.
And a lot of people also learn online these days.
But one thing that's always missing is seeing.
And it's natural setting, not in 3d, but you know, you see the natural
environment, you hear the bird sounds, you see what else is growing around it?
And with a field guide or with an app, you just see a picture and it's
very static and it's very lifeless and you don't see what else is going on.
So with these mushroom courses or with the treatment.
You see me out there finding the thing, like I'm present with the
organism in 100% of the videos.
It's not like it's a PowerPoint presentation.
Like if you go to a garden club and somebody is talking about a tree
and it's like, it's almost like a slideshow, like grandma's trip to
The Bahamas or something, you know, she's flipping through all the slides.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, with this, you know, I'm standing right in front of the tree.
I'm finding it.
I'm describing it to you.
And with the tree course specifically, you're getting
footage in every single state.
Which is something that as far as I'm concerned, you don't find in any
field guide, you just find the leaves.
The bark may be the fruits, maybe the flowers and that's about it, but
you don't get the winter silhouette.
You don't always get the twigs.
You don't get the male flowers.
You don't get the little female flowers.
You don't get the stipules on the leaves.
But with this, why took two and a half years?
Is I committed to getting every single feature I could
possibly get in every season.
And I packaged it together so that you basically start from the beginning.
I almost treated as if you don't even know what a tree is in the beginning.
And I know it sounds like it's so basic.
Why would you treat students like that?
But I want to start from the very beginning and then
build your skills from there.
And I think with field guides and with apps, they don't teach you how to learn.
They just give you the answers, but they don't teach you the
process of actually learning.
So that once you're done, you can go out and learn any tree based
on the skills that are presented to you in this kind of course.
I like that.
So funny side, uh, Anecdote.
My kid's school.
I mean, we're in a, outside the city, but it's built up enough over here.
Then kids elementary school, we would go there and they'd have birched bullets.
And we'd pick those when they, when they pop up or shaggy mains
or sheep sorrel or salmon berries.
There's a quince tree, I guess, was neglected.
But at some point, someone had planted onto the side.
And so it would, whenever the quince was in season week, Grab that and,
um, stinging nettle as well because, um, uh, I guess it's supposed to
help with, uh, with allergies.
It good say it does.
Um, but the school sends us a letter back and says, can you stop showing your
kids to pick things around the school?
Because they're showing others that we've got all of our kids running
around eating crap out of the ground.
Right.
And I told my wife, we should frame that, that photo there.
It's a very.
I, and I guess from their standpoint, there's a safety aspect of somebody goes
and picks the wrong thing and goes and eats it and like, and I can appreciate
that, but there's a disconnect that I think that most people have between
what's actually growing around them and what they can, what they can use.
What's going to have some healthy benefits for them or medicinal benefits,
or maybe this tastes goodness salad.
Have, have you noticed that disconnect?
And is that something that you're working at trying to change?
Yeah, of course.
I noticed that this connect, I mean, I, I never had the experience of forging
around the school yard growing up, but it's interesting that, you know,
some of the teachers or some of this.
Would be upset that they would pick and things that are potentially dangerous.
But I would say most of the food in that cafeteria is probably way more dangerous
than anything that you can pick outside.
And I mean, I honestly believe that too.
When you think about poisonous plants are poisonous mushrooms, relatively
speaking, there are a few of them compared to what's edible, medicinal, or benign.
I mean, people think that when you're forging for mushrooms, that.
That could be a poisonous one and it could be, there are poisonous mushrooms
out there, but when you look at how many species there are, the poisonous ones
only make up a small amount of them.
And the same goes for the plants as well.
Now I'm not saying you should just blindfold yourself and pick this
stuff, but you're not the risks.
Aren't as great as a lot of people make them out to be.
And especially if you teach people young, which is when.
People are probably going to learn this information though
the fastest and the best.
It's important to teach people what foods are appropriate and
what foods are not appropriate.
And I wish somebody told me growing up that the foods in the center I
was at the grocery store are not appropriate for my body, but it took
me a long time to figure that out.
And you were talking about.
How it took you awhile to figure out that the foods that you're eating
were actually affecting your body.
I didn't realize that till I was 19, I looked in the mirror and I saw
these red spots all over my face.
And I thought, does this have anything to do with diet at all?
And so I just started experimenting and I thought, well, maybe
it does have to do with diet.
And it does.
I mean, there are some things that I eat that'll make me break out.
And there's some things that if I avoid, I'm not going to break out, of course,
it's a hundred percent dietary really.
But as far as the connection with nature and the disconnect today, I
mean, it's greater than it's ever been.
I feel a lot of people are disconnected.
I still feel disconnected as well.
I mean, I think the reason I'm doing a lot of this work is to feel more
connected to the place where I belong.
I think, I mean, for me, I'm not so interested in that I'm not so interested
in traveling the world and finding all the edible plants and finding all the
trees and finding all the mushrooms.
And a lot of people are into that.
And I think that's only a symptom of the disconnect.
I think if you truly wanted to be connected to nature, you would
connect to the land where you live.
And that's why I talk up Pennsylvania so much in my videos.
I want to feel connected to.
I'm trying every single day, I'm trying by learning the names of the other
organisms by learning the different ecosystems, by eating the things by
drinking the Springwater, that's here by hunting the animals that live around here.
I want to feel like I belong to this place.
And I think that's why I kind of stopped focusing so much exclusively on mushrooms.
And I went to trees because at a certain point with.
You just want to start traveling and seeing what mushrooms grow in Malaysia
or what mushrooms grow in Mexico, or what mushrooms grow up in Alaska rather than
let me just stay here and learn what's here because the important thing here
is I want to feel connected to home.
I want a home base.
And so I thought, well, let's just shift gears a little bit and
learn the trees that are here.
And after I'm done with the trees, maybe I'll learn something else.
But to a large degree, I think it's going to be trying to
connect to Western Pennsylvania.
Rather than traveling the world, trying to connect to different
species that grow all over the world.
I don't think it's a bad thing, but if your goal is to connect to nature, I
think you have to put limitations on what nature is to you, because I don't
think it's the whole entire world.
I don't think humans are very good at conceptualizing what the globe actually
is or what the world is, but Homebase, I think people can conceptualize that
and you see the surrogates, you know, people connect to a sports team or
to their local township or their.
Alma mater their college.
I think these are all surrogates for like Western Pennsylvania or the mountains
here in Western or central Pennsylvania is where the mountains would be.
But you get the point.
I like that, you know, and you're right.
It is.
People are quite often in day-to-day conversations.
I find people are of course disconnected.
Uh, I think social media, uh, having devices in front of us all
the time, the level of connectivity that we have in interconnectivity
that all of our devices have.
I forgot to put my phone on, uh, uh, airplane mode.
When we're talking, you might've heard a beep come on through, and it's
always these little things taking our attention away from just being present.
And that doesn't mean that you have to travel far out into the middle of
nowhere in order to be present, just slowing down and taking a look in your
own backyard and your own park and taking your time to go through the different
plants and the different animals that you see and observing their behavior.
And what grows by, by what I think has got a very calming
effect and a very beneficial effect for people's mental health.
Tough when you're competing with, with all of this and for
you, I mean, you're out side.
We see you outside.
We see outside on YouTube.
People are back on their phone and it's kind of a funny little circle
and you've got a phone or some device that you're filming yourself
with and, and talking to it's.
It's not like it's something that we're ever going to be
able to completely break away.
And it sounds like you found a bit of a recipe to be able to embrace the
technology to a certain degree, to help facilitate that you facilitate
you to be able to get outside.
I mean, I, I see the irony in it as well.
Like brain technology out and technology has always been with humans.
I mean the bow and arrow that's technology, that rifle that's technology,
traps, that's technology as well.
I guess it's how you.
But for me, I'm very careful.
I'm very intentional with technology.
Like I understand what I'm using.
I see what it's doing to my life.
And I see what it does to other people as well.
So very careful about what I choose to bring into my life.
And that's why I just, I don't own a lot of stuff to begin with.
I mean, look at this room, it's like a plant back there.
There's a pull-up bar back in that corner to keep me nice and strong.
So I don't have a lot of stuff in my life to begin with.
And I learned this.
Years ago from a guy named Stuart Wilde, which has just touch things in your life.
And if you don't need it, get rid of it, literally just go through everything in
your life and just touch it and hold it.
Do you need this thing?
Would it be better just to give it to somebody else or to just get
rid of it, then just get rid of it.
But when I go out into nature, I mean, you said something about it.
I don't.
I mean, that getting out into nature for me, that gets me away from phones
because I don't have a smartphone.
So I, once I leave the house for any reason whatsoever, I do
not have access to the internet.
And sometimes I'm gone for days on these trips, which means I'm not
constantly checking a little device.
I mean, I can check the time on a flip phone, check my alarm
clock, or I can check texts.
But as far as the internet, I can leave that behind for a couple of days, which
is kind of interesting to say for somebody who leads an online business and it has
to be counted to a lot of students, but I try my best to, to let people know,
you know, I might be gone for a couple of days and I tell people where I'm
going, but even when I'm out in nature, I don't have a lot of technology with me.
It's largely me and the trees and the mushrooms, and just
trying to have a good time.
So are mushrooms still a pretty big part of your.
Yeah.
I mean, there'll always be a part of my life.
Yeah.
It's just, they're not always going to be the focus of the content that I teach
because a lot of other people are doing it these days and they're doing it very well.
And how many times can you talk about Morel mushrooms and how many
times can you talk about chicken?
I think you have to naturally evolve.
You know, it's kind of interesting because I used to play in this thrash metal band.
But that defined a certain period in my life.
And I'm glad I moved away from it, but there's some people who
still play that thrash metal until they're 50, 60, 70 years old.
And they still do the thing that defined them as a kid or as an adolescent.
And they don't move beyond that.
And I'm wondering if some of these things that I'm doing right now, even
teaching mushrooms, even teaching trees, if this is almost like an
adolescent stage in my develop.
And I'm going to move into a deeper realm, teaching people about nature.
You know, I don't know what that's going to look like in the future, but I don't
know if I'm going to focus so much on the, what as much as I will on the why.
And I think a lot of people these days on Instagram, on Facebook, myself
included, we focus too much on the.
Like literally, if you go on any nature walk and I know I talked
up nature walks before and I still strongly recommend going on them.
I love them.
I still lead them from time to time.
There's a big focus on the, what here's what this is.
This is what this thing is doing.
This is the name of this thing, but less do you hear?
Here's why it's important to be out here.
Here's why this thing is here.
Here's why it's important to learn this thing.
Here's why you and this thing should develop a connection with one.
And I see myself probably being pulled in that direction in the
future.
I think that's a very smart move.
I think it's a natural progression and it's completely counter-intuitive
to how most things are approached.
Everything starts with, from the, the, what, the, how the why is what
drives people and really the why is what people can identify with.
I think Simon Sineck you ever see the, the golden circle and the why?
And you're nodding your head there.
The why is why somebody will want to actually learn these different things
and retain it and share it with others and actually gain value out of it
because it'll, it'll speak to them.
That's um, uh, that's it, I've never heard somebody talk about foraging or
nutrition in that sort of a perspective.
I'm sure other people have.
I've just never heard.
How do you see that working?
I agree with what you said, you don't hear a lot of people talking about it.
And I think it's because on social media, it doesn't do as well, like
lists of things that you found, the names of things and the sexy bird
that you found over here, the mushroom or this cool shot of something.
That does very well.
I mean, those things tend to go viral.
You get all the likes, you get all the shares, you get all
the followers because of them.
But when you start like philosophizing, people start rolling their eyes and
they just want to scroll onto the next thing, because it's more than three
sentences long, you know, because a why can't always be summed up in
like a fridge magnet, quote, you need explanations with a lot of this.
And so it takes some time to get into that.
And I think people's attention spans are just shot these days because of
social media to a very large degree.
It's just, we want things right now.
We want to see the image and then we want to be onto the next thing.
And it's very hard to capture someone's attention with a Y just
by posting something super quickly and letting them capture that.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Got that.
And then move onto the next.
It just takes more brain power, I think.
And it takes more thought and contemplation to understand
someone's why, and to figure out actually what your why is as well.
And so I'm trying to figure out how to navigate that in the future,
trying to stay relevant, teaching people online, but maybe in a longer
form content, which might not do as well on Instagram or on Facebook.
Certainly not on Tech-Talk good luck trying to get that stuff
out there on Tik TOK, but.
But I dunno.
I mean, maybe it'll be more, uh, smaller circles of people where I'll
lead events and they'll come and we'll spend some time in the woods for
awhile because it takes a long time.
It's not going to even take a three-day weekend event to get
this kind of information across.
But I don't know what that looks like yet.
It's just, I'm thinking about these things moving forward.
I like that, you know, you keep that in the back of your
head, it will become a real.
It's for whatever reason what they say, what a man thinks he will do.
Right.
Whether it's manifest destiny, whether it's we think about this thing long
enough and all of a sudden, uh, our perspective changes and everything
kind of rolls into place and say, oh yeah, see, it was always happening.
And you kind of reframe it in your head or is it.
If it's like the matrix and you're all three, your own destiny essentially.
But I, I firmly believe that if you continue down that path and you
keep that in the back of your head, you will be successful with it.
You might have to do the what in order to generate enough people and eyes
looking at it in order to create the why.
And it seems that's kind of the way now, but, uh, I can definitely see
that as a, uh, as something that would be beneficial for people to.
To wrap their heads
around.
Yeah.
You know, even when I have conversations with people and they, they assume and
rightfully so, they assume that I geek out on like the names of things, you
know, the plants that they found in the mushrooms that they found, but that stuff
just doesn't like penetrate my soul.
You know, I would so much rather hear somebody just like share
some very deep challenges that they're going through with.
Or the relationship with love or the relationship with money or what drives
them, you know, even what drives them to want to put names on things
like, I want to know that stuff.
And I think people fear getting into those areas.
Well, I don't know.
A lot of humans are very good at just like tapping into those
deeper selves, myself included.
Like it's hard to get there.
It's a lot easier to put a name on something than to express why you love
such a thing and why somebody else might want to fall in love with it as well.
And in fact, you never see the word love being tossed around
in any ecological circles.
Anyway.
I mean, if you read ecology textbooks or botany textbooks,
I don't think the word love is printed in those texts once at all.
And it's like, do the authors not love what they do?
Well, why not put it in there?
Like how amazing would that be to see the word love in some of those
books and to actually mean it as well.
I think people crave it though.
I think there's a reason why people are drawn to certain
things within social media.
I know that the reward, the dopamine release and all the rest of how we
look at something, you got your fix, anything you want in the next one.
And you're trying to keep that up, but I think that's creating a deficit in
people's lives, which is why long form conversations are becoming more of a.
An accepted thing.
Like you have a podcast, the idea of a podcast 20 years ago,
when people would, would laugh.
Who's going to want to take a look at this.
People want that now, because they want to, they either lack that
connectivity within their life currently.
And they wanted somehow feel it and have it involved.
Or they're, they're realizing that there's more.
That they can get them justice.
What a simple snippet will give them were a list of the five best
things that you're going to get.
It doesn't speak to their deep seated.
Why?
Interesting.
Well, is there anything.
We should be talking about that.
We haven't talked about, this is a very different podcast than
what I thought it was going to be.
When I first got into it.
I have a whole bunch of different notes, but I really enjoy
kind of where this has gone.
Is there anything that you think we should be touching on that perhaps we haven't.
I mean,
not that I can think of, but you're not the first person to say that.
I think a lot of people want to steer the conversation one way and I
tend to go off in another direction.
So that's all on me.
I think.
I don't think it's your fault.
I
think not at all.
I'm happy to ride the direction.
Yeah, whichever way the, uh, the conversation goes is there's no need
to steer it in a certain, certain area.
I much prefer just to have an open and honest conversation, rather than
have a list of questions that we kind of go through and, and, and pay Goff.
I think the value to the listener is far superior.
If we're able to talk about these things that most people aren't because not
everybody has that comfort level though.
So you're not going to ask me what my favorite mushroom.
Were you waiting for that one?
It's a common question.
I believe it is.
But your relationship with cash is probably not a more common question.
Yeah, not at all.
I mean, that got me thinking as well.
Like I really wonder what my relationship with cash is.
Whether you're holding cash or not.
I mean, is it even smart to hold cash these days?
I don't know.
Friend of mine, he shows me a bunch of gold that he's collecting and okay.
I get it.
I get the rationale behind it from a prepper standpoint.
Other people talk about everything, moving to a digital currency.
Okay.
I can, I can see why that would be a.
Um, what did they say in fight club?
What you own owns you, right?
The more things that you want to own, the more things you're tied to it.
And it was kind of like that, what you're seeing before you pick it
up, you hold it, do I need this?
Well, you probably say no to most of those objects in your life.
Do you want it?
Well, kind of, right.
I kind of want it cause I like to have stuff and I want to have things around
me and I've been collecting for so long and, but is it bringing me any joy?
Good question.
The other thing is a lot of the things that you own end up tying you down, right?
You can't just take off at the drop of a hat.
You can't head out into the Bush for a long period of time.
If there's things that you have to maintain or, uh, or look after
are afraid that they're, that something's going to happen to them.
Yeah.
I mean, one thing about money and I've realized this over the
years, is that for me, it's not about buying the fanciest stuff.
But I see that in order to conserve land today, you need a lot of money to do so.
Like if there's a developer coming in and tearing apart, this pristine wooded
area that maybe has a hundred year old Oak trees in it, because it was sold off.
And now they're going to put a housing plan there.
If you don't have more money than that, then that developer,
you're not going to get it.
You could say, look, but I'm going to take care of this wooded area.
I'm going to.
Plant more trees here, or I'm going to turn this into a nature preserve.
And so a lot of people are going to benefit for their mental
health, for their spiritual side and all this different stuff.
People don't care about that.
They just want your money.
That's it.
And it's not like I love money, but I understand that if land is to be
conserved today in the 21st century, money has to be part of that deal.
And unfortunately, a lot of people don't donate to land conservation.
And so that's why through my online courses and any money that I generate
a good portion of that money actually goes directly to land conservation.
And it's not like I don't trust people to donate on their own, but I know that
as long as they give me some money, I'm going to funnel that to land conservation.
And so that's another relationship to money that I'm figuring out over
the years, that there is a direct connection between money and.
It's been that way for a long time.
I don't think it's going away anytime soon, but man, if I had the money
that like bill gates has, or Elon Musk has imagine how much magical
you could protect with that kind of.
Just imagine like any parcel of land, you would never be able
to develop on it ever again.
And not saying, in some instances it's not wise to develop, like I understand
in some areas it might be necessary in order to raise some people out of poverty
in order to bring more value to the area.
Economically speaking, I'm not like totally anti-development because I live
in an area that was developed, but a lot of it's just reckless development.
I think a lot of people understand that and you got some money.
You can prevent a lot of this reckless.
I don't have that money yet, yet,
but you watch, you watch, you put that in your head, starting to set that roadmap in
order to get yourself there and you'll get there might take awhile, um, surrounding
yourself with people who've already done that path and gotten there and learning
some of the shortcuts definitely helps.
It sounds like you've got a few people that you're, uh, you're using
as mentors as you, uh, have been building and growing your business.
Important.
Okay.
Well, I mean, that was, uh, we, we didn't go down to the favorite mushrooms.
We didn't go down the, uh, uh, the five point checklist of what to look
for, but I think what, uh, what you brought up and what we did touch
on, which is getting to the why.
And I really liked the, the concept of the hi.
Okay.
So these plants are healthy and they have medicinal benefits with the fact that
you're going out and learning and getting outside and you're searching for them.
And it's essentially putting you into a forced presence is extremely healthy.
And the benefits from that are, uh, could, could meet or exceed what the
plant is actually going to do for you.
I like that perspective.
I haven't heard people.
I haven't heard people talk about it like that.
Yeah.
And maybe because it's obvious to a lot of people, you know, anytime I
see a study on the benefits of nature connection, or, you know, people in
the hospital who have access to a window can see outside actually heal
faster than the people who don't to me.
It's like, of course, of course, of course, of course.
It's just so obvious to me.
And it's kind of funny in a way that money is being put
towards those kinds of studies.
It's like, well, how many more of the studies do you need in order for us to
finally change our connection to nature, and actually to spend more time with wild
places and to protect more wild places.
And so it's almost like studying trees, you know, with trees.
They're so obvious in the right in front of you.
That people just don't see them.
Why would I want to learn trees?
No, it's important to learn trees because you understand ecology a lot more.
If you learn trees compared to learning mushrooms or learning plants or
learning birds, you know, when I was filming this tree course, I could be
looking directly at a tree, putting my camera right there and people will
always say, what are you looking at?
What insect do you see?
Or what bird do you see?
Every time without fail.
There's never been one instance where somebody said, what
tree are you looking at?
And I'm right in front of the tree.
They always a hundred percent of the time think you're looking at something else.
And I say, I eventually started saying, you know what, you're going to be
really disappointed what I have to say, but I'm looking at red spruce
and they're like, oh, something on like an insect on red spruce, Nana.
Like, I'm just looking at the tree.
Like I'm studying this tree or I'm filming this tree.
And it catches them off guard every single time.
But it's the same thing with these nature studies.
It's like, it's so obvious that you would spend more time in
nature and you would feel better.
But for some reason, people don't make that connection and they'll just sit
inside and sit in their office all day.
And I understand a lot of people have to do that now, but your life
will be so much better to the extent that you could spend more time
outside, as much as you possibly can.
Even 20 minutes a day can make a world of a difference in your life.
Adam.
I love the conversation.
Thank you very much for being on this Silvercore Podcast.
This is
fantastic.
Hey, my pleasure.
Thanks for inviting me.
We should do it again sometime.
I think we
will.