In Conversation with ‌Cory Edmund Endrulat

(I see that the video file is frozen after 26:35 on my end and have tried reuploading but substack keeps glitching so I uploaded Youtube and you can watch the last part of the interview here:

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Cory Edmund Endrulat and I recently did a gift exchange where we exchanged our published works (I gave him a copy of my first book and a collection of heirloom seeds saved from our garden and he gifted me not one but two of his books).

We boycotted the fiat currency economy by gifting these items to each other directly

I have started reading Natural Intelligence: The Technology of Peace and find his writing and how he connects the dots to be very impressive. The book serves to illuminate the true nature of statism, modern forms of slavery and perhaps more importantly, he elucidates how permaculture/food forest design and voluntaryism are synergistically suited to provide a viable solution to the problems we face as a human family.

You can learn more about Cory Edmund Endrulat’s work and get his other books here:

• https://taplink.cc/coryhealth'

• https://www.theliberator.us/

Here is a list of pertinent links which were discussed in the video above:

(I have also linked the full transcript to the interview below with hyperlinks to pertinent articles and posts for helping connect the dots)

My book:

• https://recipesforreciprocity.com/

Some of the recipes from the book Cory is hinting at during first part of interview:

• Sopa de Lima (Yucatán-Style Lime Tortilla Soup) with information about the Mayan Milpa crop rotation system, their forest gardens and other soil regeneration techniques developed by indigenous peoples.

  Vegetarian Khao Poon - This vibrantly flavored Laotian soup is a reflection of the diversity of the ecosystem, cultivation method and beautiful culture that inspired it.

• Moroccan Harissa Spice Medley and Vegetable Tajine - In the article linked below I share 2 more recipes from my book and info on the ancient forest gardens of Morocco

If you would like to have access to well over a hundred other fun and nutritious recipes like this there is info to where you can purchase either a physical or digital copy of my book below.

For those of you interested in purchasing an Ebook copy of my book that option is now available through this link: https://payhip.com/b/6P5Ab

For those interested in purchasing a physical copy of the book you can do so through this link:

https://recipesforreciprocity.com/shop/softcover/

Other articles and subject matter mentioned in conversation include (but is not limited to) :

Community Gardens - #SolutionsWatch

https://corbettreport.com/solutionswatch-communitygardens/

my youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@gavinmacmounsey

a recent video

Full Transcript with hyper links to pertinent material mentioned:

(00:00:01):

Hello, everybody.

(00:00:01):

You've got to check out this really cool book here.

(00:00:04):

I am proud to be here with this awesome author of this great book, Recipes for Reciprocity.

(00:00:11):

Anybody who's into permaculture, gardening, or nature, or growing food, or learning about all the different ancient foods, cultures and wisdom.

(00:00:20):

I learned a lot of different foods I didn't even know existed. Until I read this book and recipes as well. And I love to cook.

(00:00:27):

So anybody who's into cooking as well, anybody into truth, to freedom, to all sorts of like philosophy in here, like this is not just a recipe book. Which is why I wanted to interview you.

And I don't do many interviews.

So that tells you something.

(00:00:41):

It's called Recipes for Reciprocity, the Regenerative Way from Seed to Table.

(00:00:45):

And actually I've been featuring this in my living room for all our guests every time they come by to check out this book that's sitting there on the table. They open it up and they're like, whoa, what's going on here?

(00:00:57):

I don't think most people are familiar with some of these ancient recipes.

(00:01:01):

You don't just have the recipes, you have the context.

(00:01:03):

Where are these foods coming from?

And you have a lot of quotes, a lot of different pictures to make it easy for people. You got a lot of really cool sections.

(00:01:11):

And toward the end, it goes into like all sorts of things with the economy and rebuilding the future.

So I feel like this book can be for anybody who wants to see a better world and wants people to reconnect with nature.

(00:01:23):

And one of my main messages is nature is the answer.

So I'm really proud to have you here and thank you so much for making this wonderful work and all of the great writings that you have on your substack.

(00:01:35):

So your name is Gavin Mounsey and the website is recipesforreciprocity.com.

(00:01:41):

If you can introduce a little bit about yourself and why you made this recipe book and why people should check it out.

(00:01:47):

Thanks so much for having me on, brother.

It's an honor.

I think there's a lot of overlap and mirroring in our work.

I've been starting to read your written works, your published works,

and I've been really inspired how you draw the connection between voluntaryism and permaculture, how they're both these fractal seeds that can express out into freedom in so many different domains.

(00:02:03):

And that's something I touched on in my book, but I'll get back to the beginning of how I wrote it.

(00:02:07):

So I was raised on an orchard and vineyard. And so I started experimenting with growing some of my own food as a kid. And I found that the homegrown food just tasted that much better than the grocery store food.

(00:02:18):

So I wanted to step up that game a bit. And so I experimented with going into organic instead of the conventional.

(00:02:24):

And I noticed the flavor difference in like the tomatoes that are grown in compost instead of all the synthetic fertilizer.

(00:02:30):

And then that was my entry point to start learning about natural cultivation methods.

(00:02:34):

And then one season,

(00:02:36):

I was my wife, she sent me a video to Matt Powers, who was talking about amaranth seeds for Baker Creek seeds. And he had a permaculture course.

And so when I saw that, that you can take it beyond organic to the level of aligning your cultivation systems with ecology and learning from ancient cultures, putting it all together so you can have not only food for humans, but also habitat for our non-human kin and just a self-perpetuating food system that creates beauty and medicine.

(00:03:06):

So I took that course, the Advanced Permaculture Student Online, And then from there, I was like, you know what, I need to synthesize all this.

I have this passion for cooking I always had since I was a kid. I'm learning that we can use free resources.

We can learn from nature to build soil and we can create amazing food. And I put those two together to try to give people a roadmap so that they can just take nature's wisdom and infuse it in their local household and be able to access medicine as food, and then be able to perpetuate the cycle through seed saving, through composting free materials.

And then through creating awesome recipes that can become part of family traditions, because that's kind of the thing, you know, when it gets infused in your cultural traditions or your family traditions, that brings it on through the test of time, rather than just being a book on the shelf, it's something that's living and breathing.

(00:03:55):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can open up any page in this book, and it's just like, whoa, you know?

And that's what I like about this book. Some books are like that, you know, where you can just open up any page. You're like, oh, okay, this is something I haven't seen before. Even though, you know, I'll go over this book, and then it's like I'll open up another page, and maybe I've seen it before, but it's still like something... fresh to me because it is like reviving a lot of this ancient culture.

(00:04:20):

And you'd think that a lot of these recipes or a lot of these ideas should be shared generation to generation. You're reviving a lot of that, it seems.

(00:04:28):

Yeah, that's true, man.

There's a there's kind of a disconnect. I've been talking about that recently in my essays. I call it generational amnesia.

And I think it's related to a lot of what you write about, which is statism, in that there's these indoctrination programs.

You mentioned the Prussian education school model in your natural intelligence book, which I was really grateful to see.

Something I read about recently in an essay about the spiritual destitution of statism, in which people are disconnected from these place-based cultures.

And even people with a lighter melanin skin content who don't necessarily think of themselves as having indigenous ancestors do, if you go far enough back.

(00:05:04):

You know, even the people in Europe at one time before there was a state regime and wherever they lived, they would have had a close knit relationship to certain plants and places.

They would have looked upon the rivers and the mountains as alive and having a spirit like my Gaelic ancestors did. And so, yeah, a lot of that cultural connection to traditions, whether it's food based or horticulture or viewpoints on the world has been kind of severed by these indoctrinated education systems.

(00:05:29):

So part of my book, this first one and the next one I'm going to be coming out with is to reconnect people to those ancestral threads and allow them to plant the seeds of their own lives. So new traditions and new connections to the living world around them can take root and then can pass on to future generations.

(00:05:46):

Beautiful.

Yeah, and this is very professional too, I must say.

It is absolutely incredible.

So I thank you for putting the time into it and even, you know, multiple pictures per recipe so people can really, you know, guide along with this sometimes and you have all these different types of plants that, like I said, it's just mind-blowing.

(00:06:04):

Every time I look at it, I'm just like, this is incredible because I haven't come across a recipe book like that.

(00:06:10):

I've seen many recipe books. I love to cook, and I'm always online looking for different recipes, but it's not like that.

(00:06:16):

You've got superfoods mixed into nutrition, education mixed into future care, earth care, people care, which is the permaculture principle.

(00:06:25):

Can you share a little bit about why this recipe book goes into these other topics more?

(00:06:31):

Is there a need to use this recipe book maybe to get to a better future for humanity.

Is this not just a recipe book?

Like, am I right when I assume that this might be something bigger than people may think?

(00:06:43):

Yeah, brother, that is what it's intended to be.

It's intended, I guess I would put it as it's supposed to be a fractal seed and that it embodies a wholeness on many different topics that can expand outwardly.

So it does include the food aspect, using food as medicine and food as creative expression, because a lot of modern food culture is this homogenous, just dead thing of everyone getting fast food and processed things.

(00:07:05):

So I want to revive the life and the art of food.

But it's also about looking to nature as the source of wisdom, as you do in your writing,

And then recognizing the parts of our modern society that are in conflict with our ability to align with that abundance in nature, mitigating their effects on our lives, cutting them out of our lives where possible and aligning with nature's intelligence so that we can create abundance on a residential scale, but could also be scaled up to community scale.

(00:07:32):

I touch on food forest design in that book, which is something that I'm really grateful to see you writing about.

(00:07:37):

Jim Gale is actually a big inspiration of mine too. He, he said in one of his interviews with James Corbett, um, You can count the seeds in a single apple, but you can't count the apples in a single seed.

(00:07:50):

And so I took that to heart and I actually sourced out the original progenitor of all modern apples from Kazakhstan.

And I've been growing out apple trees from seed. And each one of these seeds produces an entirely new apple variety. And they're resilient to all these pest issues that the modern apples are not because they're clones of these 200 year old trees.

And so I've been sharing those seeds with everyone. And now I've heard back from probably over 100 people that have planted out dozens of these apple trees. And it's this infinite abundance that expands outwardly.

(00:08:20):

So it's basically the book is about that. It's about recognizing that abundance is in nature and the wisdom is there.

We can access it and then cultivating it in our lives and allowing it to spread outwardly through gift economics, which is another thing I touch on in my book.

(00:08:36):

And you and I engaged in when we shared our books with each other freely instead of involving the fiat currency economy.

So I'm grateful for that.

Oh, yeah. I didn't know if you wanted me to mention that, but you were just like, lets trade books!

I was so grateful that you sent me actually seeds and this book.

And you didn't have to do that. And he was like, oh, I'll give you my book. I'll give you my book. And we did this swap. And it was just incredible because I love that, you know, and for the local project that we're doing here in Florida, where we're growing food together, bringing to the community, everybody is just pitching in.

(00:09:05):

Everybody's volunteering, helping each other out. I'm constantly like, how can I help you?

While you're helping me, you know, and it's such a beautiful relationship.

(00:09:12):

I think this knowledge, this food, like this stuff should be free.

If we're doing this right, it should be easily accessible.

(00:09:20):

All these recipes, all this knowledge, I find it so essential.

So thank you for putting it together.

(00:09:26):

How do you think, because I want to kind of move more into action, if you don't mind, for the audience.

And I love the fact that individuals can get involved with this.

On a system level too, so not just micro but macro, how do you think we evolve?

How do you think we get from where we are now to,

say, a freer world based in more of these regenerative principles?

(00:09:50):

Well, that's a great question, man.

I guess it first involves identifying those systems and those entities that are not conducive with abundance, not conducive with health on multiple levels, whether it's your body's health or the health of society and communities.

(00:10:05):

And then cutting off those parasitic ways of feeding on us, whether it's through various status systems or corporations that have their kind of tendrils into our lives.

(00:10:14):

And taking action to grow your own food and recognize food as medicine is a huge step in that process.

So even though it seems like a micro thing, it has huge macro ripple effects, where if you start learning about the certain nutrition and foods, the medicinal properties of plants that our ancestors used to address certain medical conditions.

(00:10:30):

You're cutting out big pharma and you're creating yourself as a sovereign person that has food sovereignty and health sovereignty.

And from that point, you're standing in a solid foundation where you can go out into your community. You can be an example to live by.

(00:10:43):

You can inspire other people to create community scale projects based on what you've done on your smaller scale project, which is something I'm working on right now with the local indigenous people here in Ontario.

(00:10:53):

They recently got gifted back a little section of land and well, they fought over with the government for years to get it, but they finally got it back.

So now we're identifying the mother trees in the forest that produced food for their ancestors. We're saving seed from those trees so that the genetic memory of all that those trees have learned as well as how their ancestors interacted with them can go forward.

And we're planting them out in this 40 acre plot where there's going to be hickory trees.

There's going to be those wild apple trees I mentioned, oak trees, butternut, and a whole range of other long-lived trees that can become an ecosystem that provides like a sanctuary or a cathedral, if you will, to be in prayer, connect with creator and simultaneously feed our bodies.

(00:11:35):

So that's the kind of fractal thing that can expand out to a community scale where we can totally boycott these systems that are feeding on us and create a new model that can scale up.

(00:11:46):

I absolutely love that.

(00:11:47) Cory:

Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to ask a little bit more of a challenging question.

Let's say someone's in the city or doesn't have access to much land.

They feel like they can't maybe grow as much.

They can still maybe participate with some of these recipes, though a lot of the stuff might be exported also.

Right.

They might have to get things from other sources. What would you say from their position they can do?

(00:12:06) Gavin:

That's a great question.

I do have a little section in the book about urban cultivation.

So I talk about with really limited space, you can either grow things like even on a balcony. If you have a balcony, some people, let's say you're in an extreme situation, you're like in an apartment building in China where you don't even have a window or anything.

You could literally take free materials like coffee grounds and you can grow things like oyster mushrooms because fungi is another really untapped potential in permaculture realm and food forest design.

Something that I intend on remedying in my next book.

(00:12:34):

So you can take coffee grounds, you can take random wood from landscaping companies or utility companies, you can inoculate it with certain spawn and you could be growing mushrooms gourmet and medicinal right inside your house without having any access to a garden space outside.

Now that's a bit of a specialized endeavor. Some people don't want to go the deep dive with that, but you can also do things like you could take just a few seeds like an amaranth seed or seeds from certain things and you grow them as microgreens.

(00:13:03):

So you could have in your windowsill some super nutrient dense microgreens that you're harvesting repetitively.

(00:13:08):

And so you're getting access to fresh food, even though you don't have access to soil.

(00:13:12):

And then additionally, you can do what's called Guerilla Gardening. So if you're in an urban situation, you can identify the plants that are already growing in your area that are medicinal. Some of them might be called weeds to most people.

And then identify the trees that are producing food. And you can go around to common areas, whether it's an abandoned lot or even a median on a street.

And you can cultivate some of these plants that can set up in the long term. You're going back and you're foraging. And it's not on land that you technically own, but you're creating access to it for yourself and others and as well as wildlife.

And then another one that I like to talk about is community gardens.

So you could set up a space where you talk to whoever it is that has some local space available, whether it's an abandoned lot or just an unused portion of an apartment building property.

(00:13:58):

And you could say, can we put in some raised beds here?

We're gonna increase the beauty of the space.

We're gonna make it so it's a community thing that's joining us together.

People are gonna be outside growing food rather than sitting around smoking weed and drinking.

And you can sell it to the, uh, the owners in that way.

And I've found really good success in that.

(00:14:14):

There was a place here where there was a people in recovery from addiction.

(00:14:19):

And I went and said to them, like, I'm going to provide all the compost.

(00:14:22):

I'm going to provide all the seeds.

(00:14:23):

And I'm going to invite people in to just learn about the plant cycle and then harvest their own food.

(00:14:28):

And they were all game for it because it brings up the value of the, of the place in the eyes of the community as something that's a little less sketchy and a little more family conducive.

(00:14:37):

So you can do that kind of thing.

And then, um,

Yeah, in my book,

(00:14:42):

there's information on how you could get food from the store and you could use it as medicine if all else fails and you're not able to do those other three methods.

At least you can use food as medicine through targeted nutritional approaches.

(00:14:53) Cory

Thank you.

Wow.

That was a great summary.

Oh my gosh.

Just went over like a hundred different fields within like a couple of minutes.

So dude, you're incredible. And that's why I love your writings too.

And I'm not trying to like hype up your ego too much, but I swear it's why I wanted to do this interview. So thank you so much.

(00:15:12):

I'll give you another challenge.

So let's say it's illegal to grow food where you are.

Maybe you're in some HOA neighborhood and you're constantly fighting this and I think this is maybe relevant to a previous point you made where you mentioned statism.

You mentioned within this book some decentralized systems, alternatives to governance as well. So can you maybe share with us why you shared that in the book and how that's maybe relevant to the case or scenario I just mentioned where maybe somebody can't grow food at all?

(00:15:42):

Yeah, there is that for sure too.

I think locally here, even a little south of us in Windsor, there was people that they tried to grow food on their front lawn and the municipality tried to sue them for growing food on their own front lawn.

(00:15:55):

They went to court and they won the fight,

(00:15:57):

but there's also other ways to, if you actually have property and the HOAs are coming after you to grow food that

(00:16:02):

they might not necessarily recognize as food.

(00:16:04):

Now I created an article on Substack. I don't know if you've seen it.

It was a covert food gardening in the era of lawn Nazis.

And so that has some suggestions where you can do plants that would be seen as ornamental to most, but are actually extremely medicinal and nutritious.

(00:16:20):

I go through things like service berry, which are used in the ornamental landscaping industry, but provide really delicious berries.

Echinacea, of course, is a beautiful flower, coneflower. And then you can dig up the roots and you create really powerful immune system boosting medicine out of that, as well as the foliage.

And amaranth, the one I mentioned before, beautiful tall flowering plant, golden or purple flowers, really nutrient dense protein rich seeds and the leaves can be used like spinach.

(00:16:47):

So those are a few ideas you can use if you're trying to get around the HOAs and

(00:16:51):

you're just growing something that looks pretty,

(00:16:52):

but you're also harvesting it for food.

(00:16:54):

And then another one that I didn't mention in the context of gorilla gardening is

(00:16:59):

gorilla forest gardening,

(00:17:00):

forest tending,

(00:17:01):

otherwise known as.

(00:17:03):

So if you,

(00:17:03):

in a place where there's parks and there's already forest present,

(00:17:07):

you can think about what plants could grow in conjunction with those trees that

(00:17:12):

people wouldn't necessarily notice that something's been planted there,

(00:17:16):

like for instance,

(00:17:17):

I go to this local little forest that's just down the way from my place.

(00:17:21):

And it's got oak and it's got different old growth trees.

(00:17:25):

And so I planted ramp seeds down underneath the trees.

(00:17:28):

So that's the wild onions.

(00:17:29):

So now the ramps are growing down in the rich soil that's produced by these old trees.

For more info:

(00:17:33):

And after a few years, I was able to start harvesting my own ramps on my walks.

(00:17:37):

And they also provide for the pollinators.

(00:17:39):

And I've seen some other people harvesting from them too, recognizing them.

(00:17:41):

So I was like, oh, good.

(00:17:42):

People actually know what these plants are.

(00:17:44):

There's not a plant knowledge isn't dead.

(00:17:46):

So you can do that kind of thing, forest tending.

(00:17:49):

And then there's another fun one that I've heard of called gorilla grafting.

(00:17:53):

So they take edible fruit species and graft them onto those ornamental fruits that

(00:17:58):

you might see planted along the roads and stuff.

(00:18:00):

Like there's a lot of ornamental pears and crab apples,

(00:18:03):

and you could graft an edible branch on there.

(00:18:05):

And then in future years, it's going to produce fruit for you.

(00:18:08):

So those are some ideas.

(00:18:09):

But as far as statism inhibiting that kind of cultivation,

(00:18:13):

I think there's a concerted effort,

(00:18:14):

an attack to cripple people's access to real food.

(00:18:18):

It's a multifaceted approach where they're using genetic modification to try to

(00:18:22):

take over ownership of seeds.

(00:18:25):

They're putting out poisons in foods.

(00:18:27):

It's a lot of different ways that they're trying to attack people's health in that capacity.

(00:18:31):

So what is the solution to that?

(00:18:33):

It's just to start small, wherever you can start.

(00:18:35):

Even if it's just a windowsill,

(00:18:37):

you can start to learn about the seed cycle,

(00:18:39):

go on a walk and recognize the plants that are growing in your local ecology,

(00:18:43):

recognize the ones that provide medicine and food.

(00:18:45):

Just getting that pattern recognition,

(00:18:47):

you're getting a step up above and able to be more resilient.

(00:18:51):

While these systems are trying to put their vision about control on you,

(00:18:54):

you're gaining more freedom through understanding of your plant kin.

(00:18:58):

And that's something that today is surely lacking.

(00:19:00):

I mean,

(00:19:00):

there's,

(00:19:01):

I read a study that there's kids that they can recognize more than a thousand

(00:19:04):

corporate logos,

(00:19:05):

but less than 10 plant species in Canada and the States.

(00:19:07):

That's a common thing.

(00:19:09):

So to remedy that,

(00:19:10):

we've got to start reversing the trend by just giving our attention and giving our

(00:19:14):

gratitude to the plants where we are,

(00:19:15):

even if it's in a city and start learning about them,

(00:19:18):

collect their seeds and perpetuate that cycle so that it can give us health and

(00:19:22):

resilience.

(00:19:24):

Wow.

(00:19:25):

Yeah, I totally agree with that.

(00:19:27):

And I think people are becoming more gravitated toward these ideas as they see

(00:19:32):

things in the world are somewhat shaky.

(00:19:35):

And they saw not just a couple of years ago where the shelves were empty,

(00:19:39):

you know,

(00:19:39):

when people were rushing for toilet paper.

(00:19:42):

But there's news articles that are coming out almost weekly at this point and maybe

(00:19:46):

daily where there's people fighting

(00:19:49):

for, you know, to grow food.

(00:19:51):

Like there's this one scenario where this guy was just growing sunflowers on his lawn.

(00:19:55):

This was like not even two weeks ago.

(00:19:57):

And the video on YouTube got half a million views.

(00:19:59):

And the comment section was just loaded of people saying,

(00:20:01):

why is the state going after this guy who's just growing sunflowers on his lawn?

(00:20:06):

And they're like, let the man grow sunflowers.

(00:20:08):

The guy was fighting in the courts for four years trying to protect the sunflowers on his lawn.

(00:20:14):

I mean, it's crazy stuff.

(00:20:15):

And people are looking at it and they're like, huh?

(00:20:18):

Why is this okay?

(00:20:20):

Right?

(00:20:20):

Why is there a whole law dedicated to sunflowers not being grown?

(00:20:23):

Like, huh?

(00:20:25):

But I think you mentioned a lot of good points is we show the better way.

(00:20:28):

We inspire other people and we could have abundance everywhere.

(00:20:32):

Right.

(00:20:33):

I think if we implemented a lot of these strategies you're sharing,

(00:20:36):

you know,

(00:20:37):

we could have the Garden of Eden per se here on Earth.

(00:20:39) Cory:

So I kind of want to delve into some of these these more broader scale type of things like is there, let's say, a religious background for this book or does it transcend every culture? Does it transcend every religion?

You know, what would you say is your main source of knowledge?

Because obviously we're an English speaking audience.

I'm learning Chinese. I find out a lot of the plants I'm learning are from Japan or China and origin.

I've just figured to ask you like more cultural question.

What do you think?

(00:21:12) Gavin:

For sure.

I appreciate the question.

I'm not religious per se.

I am a very spiritual person.

So growing up in the atheist family,

I kind of had my innate curiosity about,

is there more than just humans that have a spirit?

Is there a God kind of suppressed for a while..

But what happened was is that I spent more time in nature as a young adult, and I would go into meditation in places like what's behind me there, the old growth forest.

That's on Vancouver Island in Fairy Creek, a really rare old growth forest habitat.

But my parents were park rangers, so I was up in the woods a lot.

And when I would just be quiet and calm down,

I was able to sense intuitively without any external cultural programming that there is this essence in me that precedes my body that is the spirit or the soul.

(00:21:57):

And from there, I started my own path to kind of learn about that there's a creator,

(00:22:02):

that there is a higher source of our spirit that is like our spirits or sparks that

(00:22:07):

came off of that being.

(00:22:08):

And I just started to develop my own spirituality.

(00:22:11):

So I guess I've described it before as spiritual autodidacticism or self-taught spirituality.

(00:22:17):

So I do learn about the different spiritual traditions of the ancient Christian

viewpoints, the ancient Buddhism.

(00:22:25):

And I see a lot of wisdom threads in there.

(00:22:27):

I also see that sometimes there are these institutional takeovers have happened, you know, with the Council of Nicaea or it's the Constantinian interpretation.

And some of these things have been skewed and distorted.

(00:22:39):

So I don't subscribe to any one of those institutions, but I do recognize the innate truth and things like the golden rule and those kinds of teachings.

(00:22:47):

So that's at the foundation of my book to recognize that we are all of the same source.

We all have a spirit.

And that I also see this world now through the lens of my ancestors, the Gaelic people, that trees and the living earth also has a spirit and a consciousness.

So that is the foundation to recognize all of our beings and

(00:23:07):

as deserving of respect and gratitude, because that is what the animist philosophy allowed for basically here in pre-colonial times in Turtle Island, the cultures recognized our fellow beings as living and having a spirit.

(00:23:22):

They may have hunted them or they may have fell the tree for what they needed,

(00:23:24):

but it was involved with a ceremony and an act of gratitude.

(00:23:28):

So that was the thing that basically staved off mass clear cutting that we see today because they didn't just do it out of want, they did it out of need and with a thank you involved.

(00:23:38):

And so that's where the reciprocity part comes into my book and the spiritual aspect that when we're growing food, we're giving thanks to the earth, to the seeds.

We're recognizing that they're giving us a gift.

Whether you're vegetarian or you eat meat, you know, these are beings. And I recognize them all as sentient and intelligent.

(00:23:57):

So I recognize that I'm receiving gift from the plant or whoever, whatever being is providing me food.

And that instills something in you that's like a really powerful spiritual understanding that ripples outwardly when you start to recognize everything as a gift.

(00:24:12):

And then you want to treat those beings with respect.

And that's something that's basically at the core of my book.

(00:24:19):

So there's other cultural philosophies that I have that have fed into that.

Like I have a lot of respect for the seven generations principle of the people that live where I live now centuries ago, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

And a lot of the First Nation cultures in Canada and the Native Americans in the States, not necessarily all their philosophies, but pieces and parts of them.

(00:24:39):

And so I basically, I look to what resonates with what's true in nature, as you have in your work.

When I look to this forest behind me here and I see all the symbiosis that's going on between the trees, there's a give and take going on.

Every breath that a mammal takes, you know, they're breathing in the oxygen the trees gave.

And these trees are connecting with each other underground.

They're sharing information and resources with each other, helping the young so they can get up to the light until they're strong enough.

And there's so many amazing reciprocal interactions going on there that the connection between trees and the ocean is something I've been exploring recently.

So the ocean basically is low in iron. And so when the trees drop their decomposing leaves and other matter, it creates fulvic and humic acid, which pulls out iron from the earth down into the streams, the rivers, and then fertilizes the ocean estuaries where the phytoplankton and the kelp forest grow.

(00:25:33):

So that becomes the foundation for all ocean life, gifted from the trees.

(00:25:37):

And then because the salmon find their habitat there and the salmon are spawning, they bring the ocean minerals back up in their flesh and their bones up into the forest and are carried there by the eagles, heron and by the bears, and they deposit those ocean minerals to finish the gift circle.

(00:25:51):

And those trees wouldn't get as big as they do without that gift relationship in place.

So I try to see those relationships.

And that's the foundation for my spiritual understanding and how I teach people to grow food.

(00:26:03) Cory:

Dude, I could talk to you probably for hours on end about these subjects.

That's incredible. Man, because I love studying nature and these plants,

(00:26:13):

and I never thought I'd get into permaculture, but there was always something within me that was like, I want to get into gardening.

(00:26:18):

I just don't know how.

I don't know how to get started.

When I was very young, I was thinking that because I was very connected to nature, and there was something in part of me like,

(00:26:25):

I want to do that, but I don't know what the best way is.

(00:26:29):

Then I met Jim Gale.

I'm like, it's over.

I found the answer because I didn't know it existed.

I just thought gardening and farming existed, but I didn't see that there was this ancient connection of respecting the food and the environment and creating a replicable system that mimics nature, but for food production.

I want to ask maybe a question because you brought this up.

Vegetarianism and people are looking at meat-based diets.

A lot of recipe books are sort of diet-based I would say.

They're pushing a certain agenda maybe where they say you got to eat all plants or eat all meat.

And would you say there's any basis to maybe that in the ancient cultures or the

cultures you studied or the recipes?

Was there a trend maybe among more vegetarian foods or more animal-based foods?

I see people claiming both sides were of the past and our ancestors ate both sides.

Were there any go-to diets, in other words, or universal diets or go-to medicines or universal medicines that you can share for the audience?

Gavin:

So they had the diversity in their diet, and then their viewpoint that you had to protect the forest as like a temple was similar to my Druidic ancestors and my Gaelic ancestors, and that they saw the trees as equals as brothers and sisters, and the rivers as also.

So those kind of cultural facets, when it's tied in with a diverse diet, whether it's plant-based or it's a mixture of both, those things I find that really breathe out into health.

So in my book, I have predominantly plant-based food, but for anyone who's eating meat-based diets obviously you could just mix in some meat with pretty much any flavorful recipe and it would be compatible but for me what made the most sense because i want to find a full reciprocal gift relationship with the beings that are providing me food is that i live on a small little lot so i can't have a bunch of livestock running around doing their ecological purpose where they would be able to have the freedom to move where they're happy and able to provide me with whatever gifts they might provide me.

So for me, what makes sense is eating plants and fungi is the main source of my nutrition, able to being gifting back to those beings.

So that's what my book expressed in the recipes.

Cory:

Wonderful.

Okay.

And then any, say, medicines that you observed across these cultures that you think would be important to mention?

Like I know people say, oh, coconut oil or apple cider vinegar or ginger, right?

Maybe there's something that people haven't heard of that you can share with our

audience or something that you think people should know about when it comes to

medicine.

Gavin:

Turmeric.

It offers a wide spectrum of benefits and when fermented it becomes a powerhouse.

Now you only need a fraction of it and you've got like anti-inflammatory effects.

If you've got sore muscles, all of a sudden you've got a lot more movement, cognitive enhancing effects.

So your memory and your memory retention is a lot more vivid and a range of other benefits like anti-cancer.

And I could go on and on.

I've wrote an article about it, which is pretty lengthy.

So I would say turmeric is a powerhouse.

Fermented food, whether it's cabbage or any other vegetable, Ginger as well.

Ginger is pretty cheap and easy to grow.

You can get ginger from the store, especially if you can get organic,

and then just put it in a little pot with some soil.

And the majority of the time that ginger will grow and you'll get a cool little tropical looking plant you can have in your house, whether you're inside in a city or you're somewhere else.

And then eventually you turn it over and you've got some amazing medicine.

You can make tea, you could ferment it.

Cory:

like an actual, natural, like traditional fermented foods.

But you're right.

You can do it with just water and salt.

And there shouldn't really necessarily be any heating involved for a lot of the times.

There's so many different ways of doing it.

I've even made my own like mead and kombucha and getting like scobies and stuff.

Yeah, I love this stuff.

So that's why this is totally up my alley and I appreciate you being here.

It looks like we're out of time,

but we went over a lot of great resources for people and I want people to check out

your book.

Recipes for Reciprocity,

that's recipesforreprocity.com and Gavin Mounsey.

You have a substack where you have a lot of incredible articles and resources,

many of which you mentioned or referenced here.

Your recent post, it looks like, or at least the one that pops up on top for me, is 25 reasons you should start a garden in 2025.

But you have everything on here.

You got all sorts of different topics, so I think anybody would be interested in this.

You also have a YouTube channel with a lot of different lectures and even movie clips.

So really cool stuff.

I'm really glad to have you here, man.

I really appreciate your work.

Gavin:

Thanks so much for connecting, man.

I'd like to have you on an interview on my Substack blog as well about your awesome

book, which I've been reading.

Oh, here it is.

Cory:

I appreciate it.

Yeah, so much.

And I did actually, that's a good thing to know.

I did mention you as a source in this book because you wrote an incredible article on how involuntary governance is incompatible with permaculture.

And how permaculture principles through our understanding of morality and the golden rule, like you mentioned, can be applied to everybody in all cultures and all walks of life.

And we can live truly in a free world.

So I appreciate you sharing that perspective and all these very nuanced open mind

perspectives, too, as people try to navigate.

What's the best diet for you?

What's the best medicine?

And you're sharing all these different solutions.

So I appreciate that.

Thank you, everybody, for watching.

Check it out.

Gavin Mounsey.

Cory, Nature's the Answer.

Thank you.

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