Lucia Beer:
I think, well, the discovery of Tartary buckwheat’s nutrient capability, of course, is something unto itself, but I really attribute the movement toward healthier agricultural products to our consumers. They have demanded farmer’s markets, they have demanded organic agriculture. They have demanded better products.
Dr. Jeff Bland:
Hi. I’m Dr. Jeff Bland. I’m here for the Big Bold Health Podcast. As you know, we’re exploring the impact of immunity in this living that we are going through now where the planet’s immune system is connected to the plant’s immune system, which is connected to our personal immune systems. It’s a co-immunity adventure that we’re all engaged in. And we’re very pleased, at this episode, to go right to the core of where this starts, and that’s the interface of our soil with our plants, with our food, with our personal immune system. And who better to do this than Sam and Lucia Beer, the pioneer farmers of Himalayan Tartary buckwheat. They’re going to tell us about the family farm. They’re going to tell us about this remarkable crop, Himalayan Tartary buckwheat, and they’re going to discuss how it influences, then, our immune system through the unique genes of this ancient food crop, 3,500 years in the food supply, Himalayan Tartary buckwheat.
Well, sometimes in life we have a chance to do things that we never would’ve expected that opened up all sorts of new avenues of learning, and all sorts of new avenues of opportunity, and really new ways of redefining yourself in the context of people that you are so fortunate to have met and learn from. And that’s the context of this discussion that I feel very privileged to have with Sam and Lucia Beer. Individuals that I give credit to my colleague, Trish Eury for actually introducing me to. Trish actually found the two of them, farmers in Angelica, New York through her website sleuthing. And that has led now into, for me personally, a couple of years of extraordinary learning and gracious connection with two really remarkable people and their family. People that we found were the leaders in United States of farming of what I call Himalayan Tartary buckwheat, I guess you could call it Tartary buckwheat, but I think there’s something about its 3,500 year history back to the Himalayan Tartar region of China.
And they were the individuals that started to bring this crop back actually, which was a crop that our colonial ancestors had brought over from Europe, but had been lost over time for probably a variety of reasons that we could go into. But, I wanted to stop and just take a deep breath because these are individuals that have been in the farming industries for many decades; Lucia being a nurse. So, from the health perspective and Sam being an ag researcher. And an ag science background at Cornell university, as well as a farmer and moving around the country and doing different things all the way from dairy to food crops, plant crops, and ultimately now landing on this Tartary buckwheat; what I’m considering going to be a revolution. It’s going to be a revolution in the United States.
And I predict that this will be on the top of mind of any health-conscious consumer over the years to come. And so we owe great gratitude to the Beers for getting us started down this road as colleagues with the nature of Himalayan Tartary buckwheat agriculture regenerative and organic, and things that we’ll learn about this crop that probably have never been known before as we deep drill into both its production and ultimately its extraordinary nutrition value. It has characteristics that I think as a food crop are really second to none. The more I learn about it the more impressed I am, the nature put into this germplasm. These characteristics that deliver to humans, these influences on their immune system. Sam and Lucia, thank you for being at the Big Bold Health Podcast threshold. Let me just start off. As farmers, what have you seen over the years over the decades of farming? Do we still have family farms? Are there still room for people like you to survive in this mega farming industry? And what’s been your experience watching this industry change over the years?
Sam Beer:
I think what’s surprise me is how constant the trajectory evaluative agriculture has been since we moved here in 1975 and started a little dairy farm. There’s just been constant consolidation. Operations have gotten bigger and more sophisticated and more heavily capitalized. And I was recalling that in one of those early years I saw a reference to the fact that the average job in the US required, I think about $60,000 of capitalization, and our startup capitalization on the farm was a bit more than that. Not a lot more than that. Of course there was a bit more than a one person job, it was about two-and-a-half people job initially. And yet it was within a few years we had become marginal. We were too small to continue viably and that trajectory continues. I think whether an operation is a family operation or a corporate operation, if it’s growing commodities at a sustainable level and with some profitability there’s millions of dollars of capital behind it, and that is certainly a daunting prospect to anyone who wants to get into farming.
Dr. Jeff Bland:
Lucia, as a person who comes up through the health side, I’m sure has seen some of the value-add possibilities of bringing certain nutrition products into the health community. I know you and Sam have done a lot of consumer testing with different farmer’s markets and interacted with people to see what their persuasions are and how they see health. How do you see what you’re doing in farming connected into the health system and giving value-add to farmers?
Lucia Beer:
Well, I think this ties into the capitalization issue that Sam was just mentioning, because it seems like the young people who are entering into farming now are not so much crop farming in Kansas or dairy farming in California, but are growing vegetables. This can be done on a smaller scale with less capitalization and it produces, I think, more of a health-oriented type of agricultural interest. And it also produces something that farming has lost in this community. I know that’s one of the things we wanted to speak of here today, but the kind of farming that goes on with big farms, heavily capitalized farms, even smaller farms too who are mainly field crop oriented. Families no longer get together and share expensive machinery the way they used to a hundred years ago, and the kids and the women would gather and really make it a party when somebody’s field had to be threshed.
I mean, that just doesn’t exist anymore, of course, but we don’t do much in tandem with other farmers at all, except for one or two who happen to live near and that we’re friends with. But I think the move toward young people entering agriculture in a small way and concentrating on organic vegetables is very much appreciated by their clientele, and is great for the agricultural movement in general in this country.
Dr. Jeff Bland:
I know you’re sitting on your front porch here, and we’ve had the pleasure of visiting you in your extraordinary home there. You raised your children in this community that you’ve been in for many years. They’ve gone out and done their own things. What impact did your lifestyle have, being in agriculture? How do you think on them? Because they’re not all in farming now as they’ve gone on to become adult. As a quality-of-life issue, how would you see all this fitting together?
Lucia Beer:
Well, they sure all like to come back here. That may be because I do most of the cooking when they’re here, but I think it’s affected all of their lives. They all garden, even in small little plots in downtown Chicago, small plots wherever they have them, but they do continue to work ground wherever they are. And our oldest daughter is writing a history of Angelica Schuyler Church, sister-in-law of Alexander Hamilton, for whom our town is named. So, she’s very much involved in the history of this community. Not so much with regard to agriculture, although that’s an interesting aspect of what went on here 200 years ago. But yeah, it’s had an enduring effect on all of our kids and grandchildren, some of whom are here right now, hopefully staying quiet napping. But love to work in the garden and cook and everything they can get their hands on having to do with the farm.
Dr. Jeff Bland:
That’s exciting. Sam, you wanted to say something to that?
Sam Beer:
Yeah. And the other piece of that is a real interest in food, in the products of agriculture. I mean, they are all cooks, or married to cooks, and careful consumers, careful cooks, food is important to all of them. And they’ve raised some great eaters. I laugh because our granddaughters who sometimes have little acts of resistance at meal time, when they’re with Lucia in the garden, they will eat anything that comes out of the dirt. Sometimes washed, sometimes not so washed. But there’s a real awareness of where the food comes from and an appreciation of what goes into getting it onto the plate.
Dr. Jeff Bland:
Well, it sounds like it’s also good for their microbiome. There’s this whole thing that we’re learning now about, that a little bit of dirt is not so bad.
Lucia Beer:
We’ll tell them.
Sam Beer:
That’s actually another word they have…
Dr. Jeff Bland:
So Sam, when I think back of the joys that I’ve had personally, since we first met and learning from the two of you and your colleagues, one of the things that struck me was your ability to go out and to find some other of your colleagues in the upstate New York area that might be willing to commit some of their sacred land, their organically certified land to this experiment called the Himalayan Tartary buckwheat. How did that conversation go? I mean, when you start something new, it’s always fraught with uncertainty. So how did the conversations go as you started to build this cooperation with other growers that we now enjoy?
Sam Beer:
Well, like most of the world, the agriculture world works on relationships, even with people you rarely see or never see. But I started by having names of mutual friends and that got me a listing. And I think farmers fall largely into two categories, and maybe all people do. There’re some people who stick with what has worked in the past. In terms of innovation, they’re conservative. And then there are people who are just welcome to something new, maybe even a little infatuated by the next big thing. And Rodney Graham and Thor Oechsner, the two fellows I approached first; Rodney through a friend of mine who was a childhood friend of his, and then Thor through Rodney. And they’ve seen a lot of crops come and go. They are much more experienced farmers than we are growing a variety of grains, beans, whatnot. And the idea of something new was appealed to both of them.
Dr. Jeff Bland:
Yeah. I’ve been really impressed with the willingness for a collaborative effort to do something new, something different, and to give it a good run. And we’ve got this new experiment going on with the inoculants in the soil to see if we can improve soil health, to improve the quality of the final product of Himalayan Tartary buckwheat. So, it takes a unique set of personality characteristics to engage in this type of work. And I feel very privileged that you’ve been the ambassador to introduce us into quite a community of individuals, including the Trumansburg mill, which has its own unique personality and blends itself nicely into our whole theme of trying to create value within family farms. And to do something that has now a benefit across not only the consumers, but the people that are producing the product. So it’s really neat to watch this cooperation develop to become a real thing.
Which then leads me into a question concerning soil health, because the crops are only as good as the soil in which they’re growing. And I just wonder, is this a topic of conversation or is this a theme of interest? It seems it is among these individuals that you have chosen to collaborate with. And I’m not sure if that’s a general theme of all farmers, or just maybe some subset that have a deeper connection into the products that they’re producing.
Sam Beer:
It is. I mean, first of all this has been a great experience for us because these were farmers whom we probably never would have met except through this crop, through Tartary buckwheat. So, I’ve said it many times over the last couple of years, we’ve learned more about farming now than we ever did in the decades before. In our early milking days of course we were learning intensively from other farmers, but many of the decades since we worked part time and very solo operation. So we’ve enjoyed these contacts for sure. And in the organic community there is certainly a lot of attention to soil health. There’s also increased attention within the conventional farming community. And when we started out a soil test was strictly nutrient analysis; you got back results that told you essentially how much nitrogen, potassium, or phosphorus you could ring out of the soil in your fields.
And that was considered to be almost the entire use of the soil. It was an inner medium on which the plant could stand, and it provided macro nutrients and the more sophisticated farmers at some micro nutrients. Even conventional farmers have learned that this soil is more complex and has to be analyzed over a broader range of features in order to bring yield out of it. But then the methods of farming are pretty much of the same mindset as they were, which is you have better equipment, better crop germplasm and better knowledge to use the soil that you have; you look at it over a broader range of parameters but essentially you’d attack it with chemicals and implements and information.
Dr. Jeff Bland:
Yeah. And I think that this attitudinal change in which the soil is a sacrosanct ecosystem that needs proper care as we would any community of living organisms is a really major frame-shifting concept. And Lucia, I would imagine when you speak to consumers in your experience with the Tartary buckwheat that this concept of soil health or health of the ecosystem probably comes into some of their philosophy I would imagine given the consumer that would probably be interested.
Lucia Beer:
Honestly, I think the discovery of Tartary buckwheat’s nutrient capability, of course, is something unto itself, but I really attribute the movement toward healthier agricultural products to our consumers. They have demanded farmer’s markets, they have demanded organic agriculture, they have demanded better products, even an area like this that is a pretty poverty stricken area. People turn out for the farmer’s markets, they’re buying organic at the grocery stores. There’s really a demand that I think we can thank our own consumers for in a big way, and we do. There’s a movement in our area, and I imagine most places to know your farmer.
Not every farm can be certified organic, even though they may be organic because certification is a big deal. But a lot of farmers even in cities, even when our daughter was in Washington, the farmers at the farmer’s market would say, “I’m not certified but if you want to see how I do stuff, come out to the farm in Virginia and I’ll show.” The know your farmer movement is important and for health, for all of us, and I really think our consumers are thoughtful consumers. Who I think are the ones that are going to attach themselves to products like Himalayan Tartary buckwheat and make it important, and make it go.
Dr. Jeff Bland:
Thank you. Well, that’s certainly what we’ve experienced so far. I mean, we’re early on in this endeavor, but so far, that’s what we’re learning from the people that are interested in what we’re doing as Big Bold Health. And I was really, again, so impressed with Sam and Thor’s advocacy, as it relate to what we wanted to do to study soil health and get Dr. Emily Reiss as a soil scientist to be involved. She’s a very impressive woman who brings a wide variety of knowledge and background. And when we first had the chance to speak with her she said, I’m the soil steward.
And I thought, boy, that’s exactly the kind of person we want to have in helping us to build our system. And now with this research that’s going on with the field trial or the different inoculants, we’ll see what different things can do to improve soil health, and improve plant health, and improve yields, and phytochemical levels. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we’re going to be able to measure these differences in the outcome of this research to show that not only is it philosophically and I guess culturally good to worry about the soil, it also delivers a higher quality product.
I mean, a lot of people say, well, you can’t really detect the difference between organic and non-organic products. Well, here’s a place where we may be able to actually quantify the difference through the analysis of the various portfolio of phytochemicals that are found in this remarkable product. So the genes of the Tartary buckwheat plant are just waiting to be given the right information to create all sorts of new things that maybe the right kind of soil will help us to realize. So, I want to thank you both for the connection into Dr. Reiss and the studies that we’re doing now on Thor’s land this year to see if we can take it to the step.
Lucia Beer:
That’s great.
Sam Beer:
I think there’s several next steps. I think there’s a whole world going on that’s barely scratched. And there about there is also, not so much in the United States, worldwide, there is a large community of scientists working on Tartary buckwheat. And then there’s now a lot of genomic information about the species. So all kinds of agronomic experiments in the field can be tied to knowledge about the genetics, and they call the proteomics of the species. Is going to be fascinating, and it’s going to be decades of learning really.
Dr. Jeff Bland:
So you said something there that I wanted to explore with you because you’re a remarkable personality for me in the farming community because of the very intellectually high level under which you think about your work. And I think it’s maybe a rarity, to have someone who has the science interest and background you have coupled with the experience in the field, in actually growing and producing crops. So one of the things that I wanted people to understand is when we talk about these two types of buckwheat; common buckwheat Fagopyrum esculentum and then this other form tataricum, that they are both members of the same family. By the way, they’re not grains, they’re fruit seeds, they’re not in the grain family, the cereal family. But their gene homology is very uniquely different in terms of the germplasm.
And there’s not just one Tartary buckwheat. I think this is an important thing for people to understand because they might think, well, that all Tartary buckwheat’s are the same, but there are different varieties of to tataricum. And we have one specific variety, thanks to you. Your seed was unique. That’s the one that we’re developing on all these fields that are producing our product but there are many others that are out there with varying different characteristics. There is a lot of homology, obviously of the genes but they’re not identical. And so I think it’s really interesting when you look at the difference between common buckwheat esculentum, the genes in esculentum and that in tataricum. In that, the genes that occupy a lot of the genome in tataricum are much more enriched in genes that code for the production of phytochemicals.
And so then it raises an interesting philosophical question, well, why? Why was these divergence in the evolution of these two types of buckwheat? I even hate to say the name buckwheat, because when I say buckwheat for a lot of people they think it’s wheat. I don’t know how it ever got stuck with that name. But anyway, of these two species, and so we start to say there is a gene diversification. And so something around tataricum led it to have a lot of more of its genes occupied to produce these array of this over nearly a hundred different phytochemicals that have been identified. Do you have any philosophical idea as to why there was this higher level of those genes in that plant?
Sam Beer:
Evolution is rarely optimal. There’s a lot of happenstance and often the happenstance includes the gene pool from which a species arises, which can be very small and then the species works with a fairly limited array of alleles or genes from which to diversify. I am waiting to have the time to read more of what the information that’s making tease that part. I did read not long ago that, I mean, even tataricum, even Tartary buckwheat apparently had… From a wild species, there were two domestication events in different places and they ended up going and going off in different directions as they traveled around the globe.
And they didn’t diverge enough to become separate species that can be integrated, so potentially each one can be used to enrich the other. But it was happenstance when some small community decided to domesticate a plant, a wheat that lived in its fields, or in the waste places around its buildings and decided to actually make use of it and husband it. Then the species from that had whatever resources it came with it.
Dr. Jeff Bland:
Yeah.
Lucia Beer:
Unfortunately, the deer don’t know the difference. A small farmer has a real problem with deer eating your crops. So Sam plants common buckwheat around the outside of a field and Tartary buckwheat in the middle and the deer can eat all the common buckwheat they like but they don’t seem to understand that the good stuff is in the middle of the field.
Dr. Jeff Bland:
Oh, that’s good. Well, there’s another feature that I wanted you to talk about because I think it’s another part of the unique personality of tataricum and that’s the fact that it’s a self-pollinator, versus the common buckwheat being insect pollinated. And that is a remarkable difference, I think, in how its genes work in terms of its reproduction, but also it speaks to the preservation of this germplasm, because self-pollinators are incestuous, versus insect pollinators that get the luck of the draw. So, it’s retained its genes very privileged over the years. Maybe you want to comment on that?
Sam Beer:
Yeah. I can’t think back far enough to remember what I once knew, but a lot of domesticated species were self-pollinated or even moved towards self-pollination during the domestication. And in fact as you mentioned, there is an advantage in that once you get a particularly happy combination of genes then they tend to stay together. Whereas in common buckwheat your field may have some wonderful genes but they’re dispersed among a lot of individuals and pollination being rather random events, the lucky combinations come together in an individual and then in the next generation are dispersed again. High levels of heterogeneity, and high levels of heterozygosity and the scientific Tartary buckwheat being heavily inbred you have high levels of homozygosity, high levels where both alleles in the plant are identical.
Lucia Beer:
Our beekeeper friends do not like the self-pollination of Tartary buckwheat. They all come and say, “Oh, we want to put hives on your land for the buckwheat,” and I’m like, “No.”
Dr. Jeff Bland:
Well, I think that for me this was one of the things that really caught my fancy when I found this difference between the two forms of buckwheat, the common buckwheat being insect pollinated, and the Tartary buckwheat being self-pollinated. Because if, in fact, there is some reason for this high degree of its germplasm being committed to forming these phytochemicals, and these phytochemicals are known to be, I would call them, immune anti-stress factors for the plant, they’re part of the plant’s immune system. And this plant was historically found in very hostile portions of the globe, where it was growing and it didn’t require fertilizers, and it didn’t require irrigation. It tended to hang on tough in very hostile environments, preserving that toughness in its genes and then passing on those characteristics to humans in the food with these phytochemicals seemed like a remarkable learning opportunity for us as humans if we’re looking for something that is immune potentiating.
And so that’s one of the things that really struck me very early on when I looked at the literature, like talking about network pharmacology of Himalayan Tartary buckwheat. What is network pharmacology? Well, if you look at its effects on human health its health effects are in lipid management, in glucose management, in inflammation management. What do they share in common? They share in common some immunological influence on human health which came from an immunological powerhouse called the Tartary buckwheat plant that’s been preserved for eons by being a self-pollinator. So, there’s a story here that sounds really quite remarkable to me in why this crop should really be honored and brought back into American food. Particularly a time where the immune system is under such insult.
I just learned yesterday in a meeting I had with a colleague that he’s been surveying health of average American. In this case, it was a study they had been doing with women 30 to 45 years of age. And over the year of COVID, what this group found through analyzing literally thousands of blood tests of women; these women in that age group, there were presumably healthy, not diseased. They found that their level of an inflammatory biomarker called High Sensitivity CRP, went from only 30% of women showing positive levels above acceptable range to where the same age group of women this last year, 90% of them had elevated hs-CRP. So we are in a state of chronic inflammation, immune imbalance, right now if you take that data, maybe it needs more replication and big data set, but at least it informs us that something’s going on with regard to the immune system of individuals that have been weathering the storm of COVID.
It may be more than just the infection results to a virus. It may be the whole psychosocial stress factors and all the things in being confined at home. And there’s many, many variables that we’ve had to work with all of which are impacting the immune system. This may be a time where immune strengthening or immune modulating food becomes really, really important for the health of our country. That’s just another part of the story.
Sam Beer:
I think a big and intriguing part.
Dr. Jeff Bland:
Yeah, I think so. So Lucia, you’ve talked to so many people at roadside stands and your recipes, and use of Tartary buckwheat. What things do people say either before they try it or after they try it in terms of feedback to you? Because it has its unique flavor profile.
Lucia Beer:
It does indeed. All our friends use it and have been from the get go. I think that its attributes in terms of cooking are such that it outweighs any negatives, and really the negatives are mostly mitigated by cooking anyway. I’m a competent cook. I’m not a baker, but Tartary buckwheat flour is light and I have success baking with it. And use it for all pie crusts. Our gluten-free friends that are very grateful to have a product like this on hand. But for cakes and pie crusts and all thickening I use it for, and so do my friends. And the thing we like to do best is, I’ve given everybody in our circle a little glass jar, you would put Parmesan cheese in like you would have in a restaurant, and they fill it with the Tartary buckwheat, particularly the bran, but also the hammer-milled product that Big Bold Health is selling, and keep it right by the stove and just throw a little in everything. It’s very easy to use that way and they like it that way. It’s convenient.
Dr. Jeff Bland:
Well, thank you. That’s really great news to use. That’s a real good insight. And because I think for a lot of people it’s like, “Well, I’m not really a baker and I love what this could do for me but I don’t know exactly how I could get it into my daily regimen.” So that’s a good starter tool. That’s really good. I know I use it personally, again I do some things in the kitchen, but I would not want to fashion myself by any way a chef, but I started to put it like on toast, I put it in peanut butter, I put it in beverages, I have it in soup, I’ve used it in sauces. So as you say, you can start slipping it into all sorts of things.
And it’s interesting the clinical work that’s been done on it shows that you get a pretty good measurable effect on human physiology if you get into the range of 100 grams a day. So anywhere between 50 and 100 grams, which is like three to four ounces, is going to have some health benefits. So, I think there are ways we can conveniently start using this in creative ways. And of course our food lab group, Michelle and Barb and Arti, are working collaboratively to try to put as many convenient good-tasting recipes together as possible. And we have a whole cadre now of influencer chefs that are competing for the best Tartary buckwheat recipe, so it’s really been fun to watch that happening on social media.
So, given that I’ve stolen a lot of your time here, let me bring this maybe to close. So, as we’ve started down this adventure, one of my goals was to form a full circle of advantage and some people call this the win-win cycle. So that everyone in the value chain wins; the farmer wins, the producer of product wins, the consumer of the product wins, the culture wins, the ecosystem wins. And so we tried very hard to think of ourselves as Big Bold Health, as a high tech company in that we think we know quite a bit about phytochemistry, and about physiology, and about immune system function, so that’s the high tech side, but we also like to think of ourselves as high touch and eco-friendly. That we’re really trying to bring this full circle so that they come in cooperation with one another. Because sometimes science is seen in off-putting and it’s not friendly and it’s not friends to the earth because some people feel that science takes us away from our heritage.
And what we’re trying to think of is how do we build a consistent story that science give you opportunity to know in different ways so you can do a better job in being a steward of the planet, and being socially responsible. The last part of this story really relates, or maybe it’s the first part of the story actually relates to, can we make this a value added crop such that farmers can actually make a living growing it? So do you from your experience feel that we’re moving in that direction that the encouragement to the farmer to take this on would make their experiment with this ultimately profitable enough to be worthy of their time and energy?
Sam Beer:
That is a really intriguing question because I decided early on in our farming career that, well, we couldn’t succeed as commodity farmers regardless of what commodity we chose, we didn’t have the comfort with the level of financial risks that it took to go to on that route. I mean you could envision a point at which Tartary buckwheat is another commodity that instead of tens or hundreds of acres it’s planted on thousands of acres, or tens of thousands of acres and follows the path of corn and soybeans and wheat. But it has certainly started off on a different path. And that has been at this point largely a reflection of the ambitions you just stated that Big Bold Health wants to make it something that works for farmers.
And so it’s the culture that grows up around it. Where the money comes from and how the money talks. It’s a great start. The farmers that grew last year barely finished harvesting the crop and they were ready to go again. And both the miller and the other farmers have made substantial financial outlays to make it work. So it’s not just a minimal commitment, it’s been a good commitment on the part of everybody. That I think they felt that they were meeting a big commitment that they saw from Big Bold Health. So to be realistic, you’d have to say, well, this is swimming against the current, and whether that succeeds or not, I don’t know, but it’s sure worth the try.
Dr. Jeff Bland:
Thank you. Well, I can tell you with deep sincerity how much we appreciate the two of you and your colleagues that have been involved with this experiment. I can assure you we’re doing all we can on our end to make this experiment a success. Lucia, how about you? I know you have your lens that you’re watching this and participating.
Lucia Beer:
Well, what I see with regard to the last question is that I think it’s a good crop for new farmers but also for farmers who are already engaged in crop farming in different ways, because buckwheat and Tartary buckwheat are planted later than most major crops. This year, of course, being we’ve had such a rainy season here, though I know half the crowd that will be listening to this will find that amazing. We have been drowned out and some of our Tartary buckwheat to this day is not planted, because we’ve had torrential downpours so frequently that prevented normal planting. But it is planted ordinarily July 1st. And things like oats and other grains go in early. And then corn, soybeans go in May and June and so there’s a gap where farmers can find some space for buckwheat, and especially Tartary buckwheat.
Dr. Jeff Bland:
So culturally this is a life dream for me. I started off as a professor in 1970 at the university with a dual appointment in chemistry and environmental science. It was earth year and the university decided they wanted to have an environmental science program. So they wanted to hire a young member of the faculty that could steward their environmental science program and be involved with teaching chemistry. I was an organic chemist. And that was a great education for me. I spent 13 years as this professor role, and built a fairly substantial environmental science program at the University of Puget Sound. We produced some really great graduates that have gone on to do wonderful things over the decades, but it was a very big education for me. And my goal all these many decades; that’s 50 years, isn’t it? 1970 to ’20. My goal was to ultimately bring these things together into a harmonized loop of understanding in which stewardship of the environment was directly connected to stewardship health. Because health of the environment and health of the individual are intimately and intricately connected.
And this Himalayan Tartary buckwheat project is the materialization of that longstanding goal. And I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your friendship and your colleague-ship and this experiment. We are going to make this work. And I don’t ever expect this to be wheat, corn, or oats, or soybeans, but I expect it to be a health-giving crop that regenerates the land, regenerates lives, and keeps the spirit alive for the family farm, and connects high science with high eco sensibilities. And if I can collaborate with you in making that a legacy, it will be work well done. So, I just want to thank you so much.
Lucia Beer:
Congratulations on all that work you’ve done.
Dr. Jeff Bland:
Well, it’s a collaboration. As we’ve acknowledged, it takes a team to move this thing forward. So thank you very, very much. And we will hope that all the seeds get into the soil here, and that the rains will allow that to happen. And we’ll produce our 2021 harvest, and be off to the 2022 year. So thank you very, very much.
Sam Beer:
Well, it’s been a pleasure, Jeff.
Lucia Beer:
Really.
Sam Beer:
Truly.
Dr. Jeff Bland:
Okay. Be well, I will let you get to the day. Thank you.
Sam Beer:
Thank you.
Dr. Jeff Bland:
Bye-bye.
Lucia Beer:
Bye-bye.
