Common Sense Business Pamphlet
Good News!
Sound the clarion call, stir the pipes, bang the bodhran, clash the high- sounding cymbals, ring bulletin bells throughout the land!
The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.
–Wendell Berry
The following pages contain a summary/outline from my writing, the Dare to Dream Notebooks, concerning establishing Earth’s Paradise Farms and Gardens, Unlimited, an employee-owned nonprofit, socially responsible organic grower of food and fiber, practicing no-till sustainable agriculture, and marketing Paradise Farms products globally on the Paradise Farms website. The idea of growing Paradise Farms came to me while trying to imagine ways to be of help to my farmer and fellow farm laborer friends here in Eastern North Carolina, and my thoughts kept growing to include helping all people grow food and fiber the way nature intended and that is proven to be the most economical way to grow the most nutrient-dense food, even nourishing the very soil from which it is grown, and this way of farming and gardening, on a massive scale, will help bring food security to all people while conserving the land, cleaning the water and air of Earth itself, and all that therein is.
The “big, ambitious vision,” Paradise Farms way of farming and gardening will “employ thousands locally and feed people globally,” help save family farms, recruit young farmers to be good stewards of the land. And when Paradise Farms hits its long distance running stride, begin to share cover crop seeds and heirloom vegetable seeds with school children, always encouraging the students to save their seeds each growing season to share with their families. neighbors, and with other schools, and to make videos of their gardening experiences to share with other students, thereby teaching all students, each and every unique one, the organic way of gardening, the way to grow the healthiest, most delicious and nutritious food that can be grown, for themselves and their families, right around the world.
A few quotes regarding sustainable agriculture:
“When farmers view soil health not as an abstract virtue, but as a real asset, it revolutionizes the way they farm and radically reduces their dependence on inputs to produce food and fiber.”
“Soil carbon is the key driver for the nutritional status of plants, and therefore the mineral density in animals and people.”
“Soil carbon is the key driver for soil moisture holding capacity, frequently the most limiting factor for production.”
“Soil carbon is the key driver for farm profit.”
“Restoring soil health equals economic stability.”
“Soil security is equal to food security.”
“Carbon is the currency of life. The rapid formation of carbon-rich topsoil is the greatest priority and opportunity of our time.”–Rattan Lal
“Man, despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and many accomplishments owes the entire fact of his existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.”–John Jeavons
“He who controls your breadbasket controls your destiny”–Abu Talib
Starting it up: Begin recruiting students studying regenerative agriculture at community colleges and land grant schools throughout North Carolina (the knowers of the great promise of regen ag), and other students, to create and staff the Paradise Farms website, then begin blogging the world to fund the cause. The ag students, some of whom are organic growers will know enough regen ag growers near their schools to supply the community takeouts, super food markets, etc., (see below) and to begin lining up the first PF contract growers to supply PF food and fiber. The financial incentive for Paradise Farms growers: By eliminating middlemen, advertising, marketing, shipping costs, etc., Paradise Farms to offer contract growers a better price for their produce than they now receive, thereby allowing PF to offer customers the best food at a better price than other takeouts, markets, etc., and this will free the growers to do what they enjoy doing, growing food and fiber, and the PF growers and associates receive their just rewards for their labor, and their earned income stays in their community and the communities prosper, all across Earth. Once Paradise Farms has enough growers, begin to build wholesale markets in cities, beginning on the East Coast, offering all PF products to all businesses and people at the best price. And after PF is getting established in Carolina, students to begin contacting students in other States, then around the world, and in due time begin to build PF distributing warehouses near the center of each State, and that way all customer orders to be delivered in due time.
Build first Paradise Farms Serve All healthy fast food takeouts (some with attached fish & chips shop) and markets in, or near Carolina college towns (at least one in each County and on Native American land), with most takeouts staffed mainly by community college students and students from other schools, high schools, etc., and once the takeouts have established a welcome presence, begin building PF community super food markets with attached PF bakery serving organic food grown in the community where the takeouts, markets and bakeries are located, and using same building materials as used in Paradise Farms modular houses (see below), some with a PF garden center, with takeouts offering pizzas, fish & chips, Three Sisters soup, chicken pastry, pasture-fed Pineywoods beef burgers with heirloom beefsteak tomato slices, and beef jerky and sausages, lamb burgers and sausages, buffalo burgers and sausages, fish stew made from Carolina jumping mullet or red drum or rockfish, whole free range chickens grilling and roasting, all served up with home made Southern biscuits and sourdough bread made from Southern heirloom soft wheat (the original Southern biscuit flour), buckwheat flour, oat bread, bagels, etc., baked daily by Paradise Farms, and muffins, apricot tarts, apple pie and fritters, all sweetened with PF fruit juice preserves, and offering Bulgarian yogurt made daily with authentic Bulgarian yogurt culture and featuring the most nutritious hawthorn berry yogurt and yogurt flavored with PF fruits preserved in their own juice: persimmon, fig, mango, apple, mulberry, cloudberry, blueberry, boysenberry, blackberry, bilberry, raspberry, strawberry, plum, peach, pear, pomegranate, etc., for smoothies on the go, and since milk products will have been fermented with authentic Bulgarian yogurt culture, even the lactose and casein intolerant can enjoy, same with PF sourdough bread, all PF breads. All Paradise Farms food prepared with healthy fats: ghee, olive oil, pecan oil, etc., and cooked in spring water or filtered water. And where possible, Paradise Farms buildings to feature paintings, sculptures, fine art photography prints, etc., by local artists, and if the artist chooses, offering their art for sale.
Paradise Farms to contract its organically grown food and fiber, thereby allowing PF to sell best food at best price, and never to be undersold. All PF foods packed in glass jars from the Paradise Farms glass factories (see below), and shipped in fiber boxes made from fiber grown by PF growers. State on PF labels that all PF foods, trees, flowers, fiber, herbs, etc., are guaranteed by Paradise Farms to be 100% organically and sustainably grown, citing scientific studies proving that the organic way of growing food allows Paradise Farms to supply customers with superior mineral and nutritionally dense food, and that information stated on all PF labels, accompanied by this statement: “Once a customer, always a friend.”
I know no better business for our people to be in than growing the best food that can be grown, and since all people must eat and all wealth comes from the land, once Paradise Farms becomes established I see no end to its growth, winning silver and gold, and the best wealth of all, health, for all.
Paradise Farms to market all its products globally on the most user- friendly website that can be built, with no pop-ups, no sharing of customer names with other businesses, always offering the best products at the best price. And when a PF telephone customer needs to be put on hold, automatically the soothing muted strings beginning the 2nd movement of Beethoven’s 5th piano concerto will begin playing, and the music will soothe the customer.
And when possible, establish Earth’s Paradise Farms First Trust Bank, with part of its mission to make loans to PF associates who wish to grow Paradise Farms food and fiber and to PF associates who wish to build their own home.
And recruit sustainable ag teachers from around the world to establish the 100% free Paradise Farms Agriculture School on the PF website, always open to all people.
And build to exacting specifications our modular houses designed by top student architects, sell on PF website, with houses delivered to the building site, then situated on-site to harness maximum solar energy with insulated glass from PF glassworks, hemp/wool batt insulation in floors, walls and ceilings to capture winter sun, and each house to have an attached greenhouse/solarium to catch the winter sun to heat tile floors during daylight hours, then at night, opening the glass doors to release the warmth from the floors throughout the house, and furnishing the houses with fine contemporary furniture and the finest reproduction of antique pieces from around the world, made by furniture craftsmen in the furniture producing district situated in the Hickory, High Point, Thomasville, Lenoir, North Carolina area, creating fine kitchen cabinets, generous cupboards, bookcases, made with sustainably grown pine, oak, cedar, with pine and bamboo flooring, and reproducing fine Georgian furniture from Carolina pine, Georgia pine too. Offer landscaping services with trees and plants from PF garden centers, all sustainably grown, completely organic. Show all model houses on website, furnished with PF furniture and landscaped by Paradise Farms nursery centers, with each house supplied an oak seedling, and in the region where live oaks and pecans grow, a live oak and a Stuart pecan sapling, butterfly bushes, and a scuppernong vine. And when PF hits its light-footed, long distance running stride, offering best financing.
When PF is financially able, employ students at engineering schools to begin research to design and manufacture Maglights (portable steam turbine generators, some with rotary engines designed to run on ethanol distilled from PF grown sunflowers, sugarcane, etc., to generate electricity, heat water for households, radiators for winter heat, different sizes for different applications. Maglights to help supply power to the 13% of the world where electricity is not now available and the 40% of the world that doesn’t have access to clean fuels for cooking, and build Maglight stoves to cook food, heat water, etc. and if possible, Maglights to heat water to produce steam to produce electricity.
Grow fine organic long staple Carolina cotton, even the different natural colors of cotton, throughout the fertile Coastal Plains of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, around Cotton Plant, Arkansas and Cotton Plant and Cotton Gin Port, Mississippi and in all Southern States, shipping the finished cotton goods throughout the world from ports in Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, Mobile, Gulfport and Galveston and opening textile mills again and this time keeping them open, producing comfortable cotton goods for the world: comforters, sheets, blankets, quilts, mattresses, pillows and pillow cases, comfortable t-shirts, sweatshirts, sweaters, baby clothes, dresses, suits, etc., and growing the indigo down around Wilmington, Charleston and Savannah to dye the cotton, and offering organic cotton merchandise, plenty of raw cotton too on the world market at the best price. Best quality, best price. And offer top quality hemp/wool, cotton/wool mattresses and pillows from PF organic buckwheat hulls too, made from buckwheat grown and manufactured in West Virginia. And manufacture Paradise Farms ultralightt, most durable racing flats and cross country racing flats and walking shoes from regen PF fibers and from PF leather, with Paradise Farms sponsoring community races, all on grass or dirt (no pavement pounding).
Heart healthy Pecans. Using PF cover crops, grow thousands of acres of super nutritious, delicious Carolina Stuart pecans (simply the best), offering pecans in the shell, shelled, pecan oil, pecan butter in pecan oil, helping supply the domestic market and the huge Asian demand, the world market, pointing out on PF website that our pecans are sustainably grown. Establish strong windbreaks by planting fast growing red cedars around pecan groves to lessen effects when the big hurricane winds blow through the Carolinas.
Grow Brown Turkey figs (fruit of heaven) across the Coastal Plains of the Carolinas, other Southern States, market them raw, sun-dried, preserved in their own juice, with no added sugar, always touting their superior taste and health benefits on our website.
Grow sunflowers for nutritious seeds and sunflower butter.
Grow our own Earth’s Best Baby Food, cooked in spring water in stainless steel pots, packed in glass jars and shipped to mothers across America, mothers for safe food for children, to all mothers throughout the world. State on our labels that all Paradise Farms food is tested for its absolute purity, and these words also make the label: “Only the best is good enough for our children, our future.”
Begin global search for best honey production sites, and once we begin production, offering our raw organic honey, royal jelly, pollen, propolis and beeswax candles, globally. State on labels: antiviral, antiseptic, anti- inflammatory, antioxidant, antibacterial, antifungal, antiulcer, anticancer, and immunomodulatory properties. And on pollen label: antiviral, antimicrobial, antifungal, anti-inflammatory, immunostimulating agent.
Grow pasture-fed Pineywoods beef cattle, and other breeds, throughout the South, and beyond, utilizing perennial grasses, thereby eliminating hay costs, and since cattle will be outside all year, saving on shelter costs as well, and grow trees in all the pastures, and use Pineywoods milk to make ghee, butter, colostrum, yogurt, etc., with each dairy farm composting all its animal wastes, selling the bagged compost at PF garden centers and on the PF website. And establish PF sheep farms throughout the Southern mountains, all the way to Patagonia, Tasmania, to Land’s End, and beyond.
Visions of no sugar-added sugarplums. Grow our own soft (low gluten)
wheat throughout the South, blue corn in New Mexico, cherries in Michigan, plums in Iowa, out there under the big wide blue sky where wild plump purple plums grow, in beauty, along Plum Creek and East Fork Des Moines River, and great fields of asparagus there where the wild asparagus grows, and begin cultivating sweet and juicy wild Carolina plums, share with all. Grow apples, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, persimmons across the Carolinas, and all around Berryville, Bluemont, Hillsboro, Round Hill, and Short Hill, out there Between the Hills in Loudoun County, Virginia, where wild strawberries and delicious wild persimmons still grow in old orchardgrass pastures around the edges of woods, up above Piney Run.
And where possible make each State’s spring water available to its residents at the best price PF can offer, bottled in returnable/recyclable glass bottles and jugs. And employ engineers to develop efficient water filter systems (duckweed, etc.) for water plants to help keep pollutants out of Earth’s only water.
By growing cover crops on the mostly now-bare Southern winter fields, we can grow greens aplenty to supply the East Coast from Maine to Florida, Canadian Maritime Provinces, too.
Grow sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, onions and garlic, sell in 5- 10, 25 pound fiber bags, and okra, pumpkins, squash, field cress, water cress, nettle, beans and heirloom Southern field peas, most nutritious savoy cabbage for sauerkraut, Carolina collards kraut, Swiss chard, Tuscan and Russian kale, etc., pumpkin, squash puree cooked in spring water, packed in glass jars, ship on down the line.
Establish PF online fish market, offering herring, mullet, croakers, butterfish, mackerel, sardines, cod, trout, salmon, etc., smoked, dried, pickled, salted with unrefined Celtic sea salt containing healthy potassium and all essential trace minerals. Source fish from sustainable fishing communities, Nova Scotia, the Shetland Islands, and “o’er the sea to Skye,” in Scotland, Belize, Dominica, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Africa, Peru, Ecuador, Haiti, British Columbia,
Newfoundland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Faroe Islands, Alaska, Kamchatka Peninsula, Albania, Tasmania, and all the way around Australia. Then building fish and chips takeouts/restaurants in communities around the world, serving local wild caught fish and seafood.
Establish Earth’s Paradise Farms Garden Center and Nursery to provide everything needed to begin cover crop gardening, and to promote organic cover crop farming, supplying naturally organic PF cover crop seeds and seed mixtures for PF growers and gardeners around the world: heirloom vegetable seeds, alfalfa powder and nettle leaf powder to grow all healthy plants, perfect food for roses too, always nourishing the land to share its boundless riches, and marigold for human eye health and to repel all pests, nematodes, etc., and hemp seeds aplenty; hemp cleans the soil of all heavy metals deposited there by pesticides, etc., even used to clean Chernobyl’s radioactive soil, and always growing the hemp, a heavy feeder, with a cover crop that replenishes the soil, and making cover crop gardening videos to teach cover crop gardening on our website, promoting heirloom seeds, wild Carolina ditch bank roses that smell better than all the rest, and the Iowa “Special Pink” roses that grow wild in the big ditches out there, and growing young pecan saplings to begin new groves and to replace old trees on pecan farms, and to sell to gardening customers, and black walnut trees, all Paradise Farms fruit trees and bushes from Paradise Farms own stock: Carolina pines, scuppernong vines, Sweet Betsy shrub, butterfly bush, lilacs, crepe myrtles, river birches, white birches, sycamores, oaks, magnolias, bald cypress seedlings, juniper, redwood, fir, balsam, cedar, yaupon holly, persimmon saplings, camellias, rhododendron, dogwood saplings, bay laurel, boxwood, honeysuckle, hawthorn, Himalayan blue poppies, red poppies, white daisies, purple morning glories, heavenly blue morning glories, bluebonnet, bluebells, and red Indian Paintbrush, a jillion wildflowers, etc., and shipping PF greenhouses, bamboo compost bins to gardening customers, public schools too, along with earthworms, and twin compost bins for earthworm cultivation, and ship indoor bamboo plants, planted in PF terracotta and cement planters, designed and built by PF associates. Grow bamboo around the country to make fine products, and with a stronger tensile strength than steel, hopefully incorporate it in fiber bodied Swift automobiles, etc. Partial list: flutes, flooring, gardening tools. landscaping, furniture, art objects, rocking chairs, deck chairs, indoor and outdoor furniture, computer cabinets, geodesic domes, fly rods, fishing poles, toothbrush handles, toothpicks, boat paddles, boats, magazine racks, etc., Aeolian harps made from bamboo and wood and metal wind harps and gongs too, for natural outdoor music.
Begin constructing PF glassworks to manufacture all the glass needed for PF modular houses, greenhouses, Swift automobiles (see below), trucks, buses, etc., as well as selling glass products to other businesses. Recruit glass artists to make fine art glass pieces, and reproductions, to sell online.
Hippocrates: Let your food be your medicine, your medicine be your food. And this: First, do no harm.
Begin growing wildcrafted American ginseng throughout Appalachia on a massive scale, and wisdom of the ages natural plant medicine for our health, to heal communities, the environment, natural medicine for human health, always strengthening the immune system, share on the PF website with people around the world. Source whole leaf, sun-dried dulse from the Bay of Fundy, there where the Labrador Current and the Gulf Stream waters meet to create the highest tides in the world, the sea vegetable containing all 74 trace minerals, great for detoxing, scientifically proven to eliminate heavy metals from the body, and more, and spices out of Kerala, cinnamon and coconut out of Sri Lanka, and tell all that “Ceylon” cinnamon has been clinically proven to help manage diabetes and cite studies proving nourishing hawthorn berry (“nutritious fruit”) strengthens the heart, increases circulation, builds immunity, regulates blood pressure, manages depression, stress, anxiety, anticancer, etc., and offering white willow bark (nature’s aspirin) for pain, without synthetic aspirin side effects, cat’s claw from Peruvian rain forest; vanilla powder for relaxation,
restful and healing sleep and to manage depression, stress, anxiety etc. Grow our own medicinal mushrooms, aloe vera (burn plant) to treat inflammation, and healing bicarbonate of soda and lemon juice to cure digestive ailments, kidneys, metabolic acidosis, etc., and eyebright to strengthen and rejuvenate the muscles of the eyes, bilberry and blueberry for night vision; stinging nettle leaf powder for allergies, perfect tonic to nourish the whole body and strengthen the immune system, and always promoting heart healthy ginger, the whole body health tonic, and establish the free Paradise Farms plant medicine department to publish a free weekly column on the PF website, complete with links to research institutions around the world, citing studies proving that plant medicines both prevent and cure human diseases.
Now is the time to bring back great herds of buffalo across the Great Plains. Paradise Farms will need many buffalo, and products made from buffalo to sell online, such as fresh and dried meat, meat salted with unrefined sea salt and Himalayan sea salt and smoked the Lakota way. And moccasins, tepees, buffalo coats, etc., and buffalo meat to sell in Paradise Farms Regenerative fast food takeouts and Paradise Farms Community Markets, and online. The Lakota have the perennial grasslands to grow many tatanka, and if it would be possible for Paradise Farms to contract with the Lakota, that would be a winning partnership for all people for as long as the wind blows and the wild bluestem prairie grass grows, even for evermore. Lakota elders know that buffalo could bring food sovereignty to their people, and they are teaching the children how the buffalo supplied the basic needs of the tribe, and even as I write, they have begun increasing their buffalo herds and feeding school children buffalo meat, and the children enjoy the food, and the Lakota’s own research has proven that it improves their mental and physical health, that nutrition equals health and IQ. When Paradise Farms is up and running strong, Paradise Farms will help the children grow their own regenerative gardens, and share these words with them: “This that I now tell you is as I saw my mother do or did myself when I was young. We loved our gardens and crops in those days as we would care for a child, for we Indian people loved our gardens just as a mother loves her children.”–Buffalo Bird- woman (Waheenee). And: “The ones that matter most are the children, they are the true human beings.”–Lakota proverb
Source silver from Taxco, Mexico and recruit silversmiths to design and make PF jewelry, silver handles for PF furniture, etc., source bead jewelry and other products from the Tuscarora and Lumbee in Eastern North Carolina and Niagara, New York, the Cherokee from Western North Carolina and Oklahoma, all Native American tribes, and offer fine pottery, rugs, blankets, etc., out of Mexico, all of Central and South America, and Canada. Offer fine art photography prints, original paintings and reproductions, wood and metal sculptures, and fine art pieces from Paradise Farms glass works associates, art glass and original art glass pieces from around the world.
Paradise Farms to offer healthy organic pet food made from pasture-fed dried meat and sustainably caught fish.
Fiber futures. Grow the hemp, kenaf, bamboo, cotton, etc., to build our own fiber-bodied Swift automobiles, trucks, buses, etc., with Paradise Farms glassworks furnishing the glass, employing students to reproduce similar formula Henry Ford used to make his fiber-bodied automobile. First choice for site: the North Carolina Center for Automotive Research (nccars) facility located in Northampton County, a State sponsored 63-acre site, complete with a 2.3 mile road track, research facilities, and affiliated with North Carolina State University. Paradise Farms to grow the crops to build the Swift bodies in Northampton and surrounding Counties. Build all Swift automobile bodies to accept electric motors placed low and in the center of vehicles for perfect balance, handling. The homegrown fiber body greatly reducing weight without sacrificing strength. Recruit graduate student engineers to help design and build the Swift grand touring coupe (coupe for structural integrity), bolted to frame made of hydro- formed aluminum, with a magnesium engine cradle and built-in roll bar/roll cage with maximum number of airbags, unassisted rack-and-pinion steering to provide best road feedback, equipped with magnesium wheels, with aluminum and magnesium used throughout for strength and light weight, strongest brakes with big cross-drilled rotors to haul it down, gain fastest passenger automobile stopping power, and comfortable, quiet cabin with cotton fibers used for soundproofing, with natural cloth interior. The Swift E speedster engine to be governed for maximum speed of 125 mph. When we’re up and running, send a Swift GT to motoring magazines, automobile websites, asking them to put it through its paces, and video rolling the speedster right out of the box and onto the nccars track, showcasing the Swift on the PF website (the Globe) and that way every driver who enjoys spirited motoring will want a copy. then begin manufacturing lightweight, great handling, affordable family sedans, etc., to run swiftly and sprightly, quietly and lightly over the earth.
Build small wooden houseboats and sailboats along the Carolina coast to be lived in on water or land, Carolina skiffs and sculls, canoes, kayaks, dinghies, dories, small sloop-rigged family sailboats, using same fiber composite material as used in Swift automobile bodies, and campers, personal computer cabinets, sailplanes, surfboards, skateboards, scooters, and design and manufacture ultralight steel-framed Swift Wheelhorse road bicyles, assembled in Carolina and sold only online, with customer sending measurements, then Swift team to hand assemble the custom frame tubing, add components, ship it to the customer along with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. and in Springtime, Swift to sponsor a road bike race across Carolina from Manteo to Murphy, and in late Summer sponsor a race along the United States-Canadian border beginning in Portland, Oregon, and ending in Portland, Maine, where the riders will board Big Cat, the Portland-Halifax catamaran ferry, for the 50 mph ride o’er the sea to Halifax, where begins the 5-stage, 400 mile international race around Nova Scotia to coincide with the apple festivals and the Cape Breton Highlands Fall leaf colors, and Swift to build lightweight touring bicycles and strong and light, and light utility bicycles (see documentary “Racing Cyclists of Burundi”), to share with the Burundi cyclists and all people who need strong bicycles for their work and transportation, and trucks, buses, boxcars, bluebird and Carolina wren houses, bat houses, swift purple martin houses, fiber boxes and containers to ship our products in, and to offer to other growers and shippers, etc.
More, later.
Jake Grant
