Why Encouraging Kids To Connect With Nature is Becoming More Important Than Ever

Transcript:

Regen Ray: Hello, soil lovers, and welcome to another episode of Secrets of the Soil. I’m your host Regen Ray And I’m super excited to dig deeper with you today with our guest, Asher. Welcome to the call today.

Asher: Yeah, happy to be here Ray. Thanks for having me on board.

Regen Ray: Excellent. And what’s been keeping you busy lately?

Asher: Well, we just released a book on soils for kids. Oh, how

Regen Ray: exciting. I’m going to love this topic.

Asher: Yeah, big illustrated book. And we’re working on a big, interactive board game that’s coming along as well. So keeping busy.

Regen Ray: That sounds very exciting. And so the name of the book is that life rocks. It’s the name of the company. But what’s the book?

Asher: The country is life rocks yep. And the name of the book is the soil. The soil book. Excellent. Big, big book there.

Regen Ray: Yeah, excellent. And for those listening on the podcast, the book was held up. So if you’re watching us on the Soil Learning Center, that’s where you get the best experience because you get the visual feedback as well. So I’m very keen to have you flick through some of the books. I keep that nearby. I’m keen to see inside it if you’re allowed to share some of that, but I’m what inspired you to get this book off the ground. Pun intended.

Asher: Well, it was an interesting journey. I used to run a permaculture horticulture business in the Southern Highlands. One of our biggest jobs we were doing at the time was just planting loads of trees, a New Zealand native forest. And at the time I was studying biology and human development and also working one day at a Whole Foods store met a man down there who is a geologist, and he had a passion for educating young kids. And he said, Asher, you seem to know a lot about soils. I like what you’re talking about soils. Can you put put together a game on soils for me? And I’d already done a bit of teaching at a local high school on soil health and what it all means, and it’s totally in line with my interests. So I did my best effort at that. And then he said, You know what? I want to give you the reins to the company. I want to help fund you writing these books and designing these games. And we figured that the first thing we should release is on soils, because that’s where all of life comes from the plants and animals. And really, it’s our mother in a way. So we are in a science education company where we’re covering crystals and metals and trees and fossils. But we’re going to we started with soils because, well, you know, exactly why don’t I do?

Regen Ray: I do. And the soil lovers listening, do you also? It’s the foundation of everything above the ground and below the ground, you know? So it’s such a precious resource, and that’s what I love about just, you know, meeting people like yourself and even that story where, you know, two different people come together and there’s this symbiosis of relationship that just magically happens and we can’t explain it. Sometimes he’s got to let it be. And that’s what I’ve loved to learn in this space.

Asher: And you know what? That symbiosis was exactly the story that I had that something clicked for John when I was talking about that. The pine forests in Australia don’t rates their growth potential until they’ve been inoculated with the symbiotic pine fungus. And when I said that he went, Hey, will you help me with this thing? So symbiosis is just the nature of life, and it’s it’s such a thrill to be on that wavelength.

Regen Ray: Yeah. And I agree in the same way that seeds can, like, sit on the ground and wait for the perfect environment. I think humans are the same. We just floating through these big rock called Earth and waiting for the environments to be perfect. Before we find our purpose, we flourish. We get around the right people we nurtured and then, you know, the magic happens.

Asher: Well, said so.

Regen Ray: So I want to like I love the idea, so of nurturing our younger minded and our future generations was there. What was the pool or the the the reason of going for that younger generation of education?

Asher: Yeah. Well, I guess it’s going to be really cliché. My answer. So get ready, soil lovers, children of the future. Yeah. And you know, in an increasingly technological world where everyone’s on the iPod and the phone and just really entertained by digital realities, we need to come back to the Earth and we need to make sure that the young ones growing up have a connection to nature. So they know that there’s something to protect there and something that’s exciting and and fun. Because when I was little I for a long time, I just thought that dirt was boring. It was boring dirt. And it’s just, you know, why would I be interested? And the farming methods and all I knew about gardening was waiting. Mowing grass and removing things and killing things. Boring, boring. So it wasn’t until I clicked and I got interested in health and whatever. For some personal reasons, I had had many health issues as a kid that I discovered that, hey, soil is health, soil is life. And that’s fascinating, and that’s curious. So that’s why I think we need to influence the younger generation, but it really comes full circle as soon as we talk about youth. We’re talking about mentors. And we’re talking about adults and teachers because where they’re guides? Yeah. And what better guide is there than someone who’s passionate about something? You can’t teach something. If you’re not passionate about it, you can’t. You can’t transmit any sort of energy. So when we when we educate kids, do we have to educate the parents and instill the same mindset of you want your kids to be connected to nature? You have to connect to nature as well.

Regen Ray: Lead by example and by example? Yeah. And I love that whole idea of, you know, going and nurturing our younger generations. And would you say that the current education system or our current ways of, you know, instilling these kind of connectivity to our own generations is a little bit broken where there’s a gap or missing piece?

Asher: There is. There is a massive missing piece. I think basically in school, we’re not taught to look at whole systems. Everything is broken up into a subject. Say you got chemistry, biology, geology and maths. But if you look at any natural environment, they’re all happening simultaneously into this into meshing web. And people learn through experience that not many people learn through abstracted, condensed intellectual information, which is what the schooling system does. It puts everything on paper, gets you to fill out questionnaires and answer the right questions. So unless students are cognitively inclined cognitive learners, cognitive dominant learners, they’re not going to pass the test and they’re not going to be considered a good student. But the reality is that educators have shown that most people learn through experience. So unless we’ve got a schooling system that’s providing those experiences, most people aren’t going to cottoned on and they’re not going to be interested. And here’s another thing who’s gonna be interested in poisoning landscapes and degrading land? Children, especially in the teenage years, that’s that’s the time of moral development. Yeah. So if you bring a bunch of things to some teenagers that don’t sit right in their system, like why are we using poison poisons? Why are we? Why are we killing all these weeds? Why aren’t we encouraging biodiversity? Why are we doing monoculture cropping? Why do we deforesting in rainforests? Like if you bring all of that stuff to high school students, I’d say that be an uprising. So I think they kind of keep it a bit low key until you get to Taif. And now suddenly your career and your money and your family and your house depend upon you poisoning and ruining landscapes, then maybe you can. You can bite the bullet a bit more. That’s a bit of a hypothesis there, but

Regen Ray: I like it. I’ve never thought of it like that. It’s like, Keep it unknown until it’s too late. Yeah, I resognate that I 100 percent, you know. You know, I am on record all the time saying that our education system is just not, you know, when you were talking about, you know, the way that the education system coming is. And I thought, Wow, did you have access to my report cards because I would be an ice student in class come an exam, terrible drop me down to a C, you know, I just don’t retain information and I’m not good in test in exam environments and nowhere in the world are you ever put in a room and told you need to do these tasks in complete silence and aloneness without the resources of any other things, you know? And so how can that simulate what you actually do in the real world? And what that does actually do is break the whole importance of collaborating and winning together. And you know, I hate the fact that if you look at someone NASA’s sheet, so you ask for help in an exam you classified as the cheeter and you both fail. It’s like, that’s not the way the real world operates. Where’s collaboration? Where’s helping each other win and getting across the finishing line together, you know, and we need more of that. And that’s, you know, I can’t wait to see a revolution in the education system. I’m not sure if it’s going to happen any time soon, but I agree with you. More and more younger generations are getting access to information through the internet and through other things and questioning exactly what you said. Like Why are we poisoning? Why are we not caring for the land? Why are we doing monoculture and killing biodiversity? And you know, yeah, and those are the real harsh questions that younger and younger people are starting. In to ask, and the adults just don’t have the answers, which then asked them, you know, kind of question it themselves as well.

Asher: Totally. And look, I think from my understanding, the definition of soil health has changed a lot over the years. And right up until about 2005, in a lot of the literature and the conventions, soil health was defined as the ability for soil to raise weight corn to soy and cotton. Cotton seed. So they changed that definition. And guess what it is now? You know, it’s it’s. Biodiversity, its ability to hold water, its ability to create diverse plant life and animal life, and as a home for all those things, so one is so boring and sterile and just like, you know, just not doesn’t have any inspiration in it, and the other one is like, Yeah, that’s something that we can really run with and get kids excited with. So that’s something I focused on in the soil book was it’s really about the life in the soil, from the microorganisms up to the macro organisms. You know, we’ve got these evolution of soil on the planet of like. Billions of years of microbes and microbe life doing its thing, evolving into higher and higher forms, bigger and bigger plans, more diverse animals and, you know, nowadays we’ve got some of the biggest big creatures that live in the soil that call their home like wombats and crocodiles and burrowing owls. And they’re the things that we can see. And, you know, humans love things that they can say. It’s really like top down awareness, you know? But if we can become more aware of that unseen element of the soils, there’s a real magic in that. You know, the soil here, they all know that in a teaspoon of soil, there’s billions of organisms, protozoa and nematodes and fungi. But to a child who’s never been told that they just look and see these brown stuff, it’s not very entertaining. So I’m trying to bring we’re trying to bring that to life in the imagination and bring back the tools of science more into the home and more into the classroom and say, Hey, let’s have an experience of what that actually means.

Regen Ray: I couldn’t agree with you more in regards to that whole, you know, the spoonful. I think most parents will probably tell their kids, put that down. It’s dirty and germy. You know what I mean? It’s dirty. You know, it’s like we’re so told to like, wash our hands because they’re dirty yet. You know, I speak to my grandparents and my my even my parents and say, like a lot of people were raised in bonds they were raised in in the in the garden. They were raised, you know, following their parent around while they doing, you know, chores and so forth. They were exposed to a lot of different bacteria and the biology of just the world, you know? And so that is just really been lost. And I love that your book is encouraging people to really celebrate soil. And even that key word like it sounds like the first definition was really developed by say, like Big Pharma, AG Industry, you know, like narrow-Minded I Soil corn , you know. And then the other important keyword that you mentioned, and I want to highlight for the soil lovers is the fact that like the word living, you know, living soils and we’re starting to see a lot more of that come into literature where it’s not just referred to the soil, but it’s like living soil. And when we start putting that it’s alive, there’s just more sense of empathy to it to say if it’s living in soil, we need to treat it very differently than just if it’s an object like soil. And so even in my own wording, I try to be very careful of putting pronouns in front of the soil. Like, I don’t want to say my soil our soil because the soil is in the Commons and it’s belongs to everyone, you know, and just being really mindful about about those little things that do matter to paint a bigger picture, like you said, zoom out and see the many parts of the whole.

Asher: Yeah, exactly. I went along to Peter Andrews Farm recently and you know, his site is a demonstration of that diversity and biological diversity. Just taking health to another level. Like you look at the site next door and the grass is dry and there’s no nothing going on and you look at next door and same thing. And then, you know, he’s only been there for two years and only one of them really been practicing what he normally does. Many other sites, obviously, that he’s had. But the diversity of the grass and the animal life is intense because it just just shows that just a simple shift in awareness about the details of life can can radically change an environment and support that vision of living soil. Yeah, it’s actually our home for so much going on.

Regen Ray: Yeah. And that’s such a great example in regards to, you know, so many people who have access to land would be saying, Well, it’s my climate or it’s just it’s just the soil here, like a got to suck it up and deal with it. I’m I mean, you know, and then you look at something like, Well, Peter Andrews is done where you like you just so well said you look at the neighbors and you’ve been there and seen with your own eyes. It’s two different stories on other sides of the fence. So how can you blame rainfall, location or soil type? Because it’s just the area like I love when those mindset but limiting beliefs are broken and, you know, so cool that you’ve been there

Asher: and we need to break them because, you know, if we go to the council level and we say, and they come or they come to us and they say, Hey, you’re not controlling your weight and we go, they’re not wage, they’re actually doing a job. Well, they’re going to go, Yeah, but we’re going to give you a fine because that’s not allowed. So unless we change this fundamental belief structures in the children who can then grow up and have a job in the council, we’re just going to keep on repeating this same. In this same story. And it’s not not serving the land anymore.

Regen Ray: Yeah. So much, so much that you’ve said today, just resignation exactly the way that I see the world, you know, and I often say to people like, don’t wait for legislation to catch up because you’ll be waiting forever, like just be the change policy and let them change legislation because what you’ve done, you know? Exactly. It’s very easy to point a finger and say, Oh, but the rules say this. And, you know, Department of AG says that it’s like, Guess what they’re saying? I’ve seen I’ve been in webinars with Peter Andrews and there’s been scientists in the room going, I’ve walked the paddocks and I can’t even explain what’s going on here, but I’ve seen it with my own eyes like stop the science stuff, the research. And like you said before seeing is believing in so, you know, we’ve got so many case studies now that show that this is just so, so, such a way forward. And it gets me very excited and I love having these chats. We’re going to take a quick break, but when we come back, we’re going to take a bit of a flick through the book, and I want to know your favorite part of the book as well so far. So lovers, stick with us. Welcome back, soul lovers. You’re hanging out with Asher and Regen Ray ? Writing We’re about to take a deep dive into the book. It’s called the Soil Book, an amazing book that’s aimed for the younger generations. Asher, what’s your favorite part of the book and why you can’t say all of it?

Asher: Well, I’m gonna show you this. This is one of my favorite parts of the book, which is the

Regen Ray: look of that illustrations.

Asher: Well, the mushrooms and the mycelium. And we wanted these illustrations to be really like fun and engaging for kids to remind them of that sort of anime style. Yeah, but also to look scientific. So we’ve done these like blow out portions which are magnified and so so the spores of the fungi and what they look like at a microscopic level and these kind of things all through the book. And I just love this this illustration, because that’s something that you can’t really capture with a camera too easily. That web of mycelium onto the Earth. And you know, it’s those details that really bring the soil to life. There’s been a lot of awareness about mycelium networks over the past little while with Paul Stamets and the amazing documentaries that he’s been producing and that blows people’s minds. I think you could put any family in front of that documentary, and you’re going to get a lot of things taking in the head. But yeah, I’d say that that’s one of my favorites from the book. Yeah, I love that. It’s very, very much a couple of other quick things. Yeah, I like the fact we’ve got all the coloring sections so kids can get to know nice things a bit more personally like protozoa or rhizome. Bacteria love that, you know, stuff like that.

Regen Ray: And I think that’s so important. You know, I always say to people because people look at what you’ve just showed, and for those who are listening, it was like outlines of the, you know, zoomed in versions of what a nematode looks like or a fungi or bacteria and how am i to remember all that. And I go, Well, do you remember what the McDonald’s logo looks like? Do you remember what the Disney logo looks like? Do you know what the Netflix logo looks like? Two shapes? The more you look at it and the more you train our brain like that is proof that we can train our brain to remember patterns. Shapes just swap that out and go, that’s the nematode logo. And that’s building. That’s a business that’s building life under the soil. And so we can do it

Asher: under and this this is where I want to tip my hat to my artist Nick Mather, who is an amazing naturalist and bushman. He can survive in the bush indefinitely by himself, and that’s a very heroic thing to do. You know, it doesn’t. It’s not easy. It takes a lot of knowledge. angelic , he’s he’s yeah, me too. Matsui is definitely way out there in the in the the fringe of society. But he has this passion for nature, and we’ve spoken a lot about how through through this act of creating Earth science books, we get to break down the the visual language of nature and start to give that back to the public and say here’s is these logos. here’s these images, these these meanings of the natural world that we’re developing a proficiency for just by doing it.

Regen Ray: I love that that is so cool. And you know, and so have you always hung out in these type of inner circles and communities? Or is this something that’s kind of grown with you organically over the years because you’ve spoken about permaculture? But at what age did you get into that? And has it been a big jump of, you know, leap of faith to change the way that

Asher: I think my story is that I’ve had a lot of contrasting experiences, like I went to a public school and then I went to a Steiner school. Wow. And then I went back to. Public school, and then I realized that uni wasn’t for me, and I wanted to study nature, and I got out and then I became a gardener and and then I got fascinated in human development and health, and it all just sort of came together for me. And, you know, from from 20 onwards, that’s where I really chose. Okay, I’m going this naturalist path, my love ancestral skills. I love spending time in the bush. I love studying nature and biology and science, and that is also my my spirituality. I’ve been practising Daoist Dallas practices since I was 19. And yeah, so it was it was an awakening moment for me where I was lost in uni, lost in a sort of modern lifestyle that wasn’t healthy for me. And I just realized life is about this interconnectedness of community and nature, and I want to bring all that together. And so that’s how my path started.

Regen Ray: Yeah, very cool. And to have that contrasting reference points, as I like to call them, is like, you know, because I think so many people always sit in that world of like, what if I did more in nature or what if I did this? But we are in a space where we can go and try all this stuff and do it and and sit on the fringes and go do something for 12 months. And I know what I like. I go to uni. No, I try, you know, so having that freedom and that ability to just really know that you can do something and then change it, I think it’s a hard mindset shift for a lot of people because society says you need to get a job and go to uni and get the degree in the paper and do all three of them. And you know, and keep keep that vicious circle of rat race happening.

Asher: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it’s it’s good to have have options and realize that life is a beautiful playground and there’s so many places to get involved. And nature and science can become a platform for anyone to explore a lot of a lot of different things.

Regen Ray: Yeah. And I noticed in your bio that you’d prefer to the that nature is the best classroom for learning. Why do you say that and what? What’s nature taught you from being in a classroom of nature?

Asher: Yeah. Well, it’s our evolutionary birthplace. And what I mean by that is that for the bulk of human history, we’ve evolved to be in natural environments, and it’s only really, really since the industrialized revolution that we’ve started to condense ourselves into cities and to live indoors so our bodies resonate with nature. We are connected to it intrinsically, whether we know it or not, in the modern life we can spend all you could spend a whole year inside ordering over eight and never look at a tree if you wanted to. But what happens to the human spirit is it it diminishes that that healthiness and that healthiness is so easy to achieve in a natural environment. So we’re not talking about classroom. The best learning in life is experience, the biggest place that humans have ever known is nature and natural outdoors, and the amount of experience that is coming at you when you’re in a natural environment is far beyond anything that can be achieved in an indoor environment. When you think of texture, light, sound interactivity, you’ve got all of the things happening at one’s biology, geology, chemistry. Botany. Weather patterns. So all the senses are activated, totally activated, and, you know, the studies show that when people are adults, when adults are asked What’s your most powerful memory, they’ll always say something that was in nature. And why? Why is that? Well, strong memories are formed when our senses are activated and whenever our senses most activated, when we’re getting the most sensory input and that happens in natural environment. So, you know, Einstein on the science school I went to when we had to learn mechanics or trigonometry instead of learning on a paper sheet that says, OK, this is a colleague and blah blah blah. We pull apart a moa and put it back together. That was mechanics when we wanted to learn about trigonometry and angles. We pull a rock out of a creek bed with some rope. Hmm. You know, and that’s real learning. That’s the stuff that you remember your whole life. You will never forget that experience. But if you sit down and try to learn trigonometry on the tree on a printout sheet of paper, I can’t wait to forget that.

Regen Ray: Yeah. I can’t wait, either. Oh gosh, I wish I went to start a school or something like that because I’m a kinesthetic learner. So getting out there and you know, I remember people my family stopped by me toys because I’d break them apart because I’d always wanted to know how they worked, you know? That’s how I learned, you know, pulling things apart and then putting them back together. And I became the person who fixed everything in my family. It’s like all these guys give it to, ray? He’ll fix it, you know? So that curiosity is is is just so powerful. And I know that that was one of your key elements of the of of the book. And that is to instill that curiosity. What does curiosity mean mean to you? And have we kind of lost that a little bit of we just become passive and accept everything for face value?

Asher: Yeah, that’s a good that’s a good question. I think that curiosity is a state of mind, and it’s something that’s instilled into us by other curious individuals. So our schooling system is very much rote answers and rote knowledge. If someone’s like if a kid’s like, what’s that tree over there? Well, then the teachers then just say, that’s a eucalypt. But in indigenous child rearing techniques, it would never be that way. That child would say, What’s that tree? And even if the adult knew what the tree was or is, they’d say, Oh, I don’t know, let’s go and have a look. Wow. Oh, look at the bark. Oh, it’s this sort of color. It’s in this texture. Let’s have a smell. Oh yeah, it smells. Maybe like it’s got some eucalypt oils in it. What’s happening around the roots, you know, and that that’s a different state of mind for a mentor or a teacher to be in the art form of stimulating curiosity rather than applying rote knowledge or facts. So I’ve met some teachers over the years, and the ones that always stick in my mind had a fascination and a curiosity and a passion just for learning, just for knowledge, whatever the subject was. And then when they had that, the subject was easy to translate whether they were teaching me maths, history, art, it was all those teachers who embodied some sense of passion and genuine. They don’t know all the answers they don’t have. Have it all sorted out. They’re observing. Still, they’re still in that state of childlike learning. And I think it gets crushed out of children who so naturally have it only because of the methods of education and because all of these world view that most of the western world has, which is just leave it up to the experts. And we don’t know, and we should just read the book, you know, curiosity.

Regen Ray: Maybe it’s one of those things that I’ve always tried to encourage people to be. And I even, yeah, it’s I couldn’t help myself. But think to your example of my mainstream schooling if I said to someone, What’s that tree out in the window, I’d probably get in trouble for being distracted because, like, focus on the at the blackboard. You know, it’s like there’s not even the ability to be curious outside the window. You know,

Asher: it just

Regen Ray: blew my mind in regards to how broken the system is. And I love that, you know, that true mentor educator would say, Oh, let’s go and explore this together, you know, and unfold that learning and teach the actual art of being curious and being able to solve the problem and ourselves so. And how much of those elements did you keep in top of mind, when and when putting a book together? Like, does the book tell a story or is it just facts after facts, activities or does it? Take people through an actual story. How did you come up with that framework?

Asher: Well, the whole thing rhymes, so it’s very singsong, which helps to activate those centers of of learning as well. It’s it’s not just factual. You know, there’s a lot of storytelling in terms of bringing out the characters in the soil of like the slippery spinny slidey nematodes and mushrooms talking to each other and they bringing to life natural things and looking at it through a lens that is a bit creative and not just black and white learning. Yeah, definitely. And I think with the design of all of our products, we’ve tried to keep that in the same line, which is to say that everything should be interactive. Everything should have multiple avenues to explore it with. In the book, we’ve got links to our YouTube channel where we’ve got activities for kids to explore soil like growing pains or doing a soil test or pretending like they are one of the soil creatures. And actually, you know, getting up and moving like an animal toad or bouncing around like a spring tail. Wow. And you know, by the time this podcast lands, we’re probably going to have our interactive soil kit out, which is a full box full of it’s got a board game in there. It’s got a card game in there. It’s got soil activities. It’s got scientific photos of different curious soil things. It’s got a teachers reference book which has soil facts, but also soil activities and ideas for tasting soil stuff. So it’s a really comprehensive little thing that would be great for families or a small classroom to explore and has lots of different uses and tries to hit all the different learning methods. Cognitive kinesthetic visual audio.

Regen Ray: Amazing. What a great gift idea I have to say you’ve just this is I get up by a couple of these kits and just distribute them throughout the year. I love it. I love it. You’ve spoken about doing activities where you become the nematode. I’m going to ask you to become our soils. Are you ready to become the voice of our soil?

Asher: I am. I am

Regen Ray: excellent. If you were to become the soil and embody the energy of our soil and you could give it a voice, what would you tell us all here on Earth?

Asher: I’d say be very humble like me, the soil where I just let let it all in and let it all sort itself out. You know, let’s encourage some biodiversity. Let’s rethink the universe that we live in. Let’s rethink life and empty our minds so that we can let them fill up again with some concepts that might ensure that we’ve got a healthy planet to live on in the future. So, yeah, stay curious. Stay humble. Keep on learning. Keep on digesting. Just like I do the soil.

Regen Ray: Excellent, I love. That’s such a great lesson for us all to learn. And, you know, just let it all sink in, let it all go through and let it do its thing. Nature knows how to heal, repair, protect, become resilient. So I love that, asher. It’s been an absolute pleasure hanging out with you today and also connecting on Instagram, which is where we met, which is the power of social media and seen the content that you, you put out. I’ve had the privilege of hanging out with your brand a little bit more, but how can the soil lovers hang out with you a little bit more? What are some of the things that you can point them to?

Asher: Yeah, great. So head on over to WW dot life rocks dot com dot au . That’s where you can find my blog. I’m often posting stuff about soils, education, science, childhood education, mentoring, and you can check out all of the offerings that we’ve got on the shop there. For now, it’s just the soil book. The soil keeps coming out in next year, and I also have a book called Connecting Children to Nature, which is for parents and mentors. And then just follow along on Instagram. We’re producing content. I’m putting out interviews as well with different childhood educators and nature people, and we’ve got Life Rocks Australia on YouTube as well. And then if you are a parent or a teacher, we’ve got an early learning connecting children to the magic of Nature, a Facebook group which you can find on Life rocks Facebook page. So I hope that people in the right direction love

Regen Ray: that and know all those links will be around, the show notes. If you listen to the podcast and if you’re on the soil learning centre getting the video experience, you would get all those links as well. And I highly recommend this episode to do the visual experience because, you know, seeing the illustrations of the book and and the, you know, flicking through the pages, it’s very well done. The book again. Is called the Soil Book. Great title says what it is on the label, which I love, and I would say that maybe it’s suitable for all ages, like would I be? But I’d be OK doing it?

Asher: You’d be. You’d have a good read. And I have been told from some parents like, well, I was learning some stuff and I remember the rhymes and whatnot. But the age group that we sort of designed it for is sort of, you know, three to eight years old. I said, you know, six to eight year olds really enjoy reading it themselves as we’re three, four or five. They probably love having it read to them.

Regen Ray: Excellent. Well, lucky I’m at years old and I can’t wait to get my copy to dig into it, so I make the the bracket. But no, I think he never too old to learn new stuff. And, you know, I encourage everyone to to buy one for themselves and buy one for a gift because I think this would just be an amazing gift of life and training the young people to really understand what’s beneath our feet that we walk on every day and just never really, you know, we’re always trying to look up. But I think we still need to start looking down and and exploring the wonderful world beneath our feet. It’s been so great chatting with you. My my brain’s buzzing with ideas of how we can keep this message alive and even do some other things in the social learning center and stuff so keen to chat to you a bit more about that. Thanks for coming along.

Asher: Thanks, ray. It’s been an absolute pleasure to talk to you again soon.

Regen Ray: Excellent. Well,soil lovers that’s another episode for you today. I really get get inspired about, you know, learning, and I honestly say it’s never too late to learn new tricks. And yeah, get, get, get your hands on the book and give it around and share it and do the activities. So on that note, stay curious has been the key word of today’s discussion. Get outside and get your hands dirty and keep digging deeper into our wonderful world of soils. I’m regen ray.