Akiva Silver - 3223 12.11 PM

Soul Soil: Where Agriculture and Spirit Intersect with Brooke Kornegay

Akiva Silver has been studying and working with nature for the past 20 years. His endeavors have ranged from primitive wilderness survival to planting and maintaining diverse fruit and nut orchards, and to running his nursery business at Twisted Tree Farm. Akiva raises tens of thousands of trees every year, propagating from seeds and cuttings. He is an avid forager and observer of wildlife. Akiva has written three books, Trees of Power, The Conversation, and The Ocean of Dreams.

In this episode…

• An approach to creating change through inspiration and alternative solutions rather than opposition…Bringing opposition to those in service only to self can interrupt their agenda, but building new and better systems lays the groundwork for change from a place of love. What we put our focus on often grows, and that includes world problems as well as alternative solutions.
• One alternative solution Akiva has been working on is cooking oil…using the oft-maligned bitternut hickory as a source of cooking oil, instead of relying on an annual monocrop like canola whose production creates a biological desert on the land.
• The story about Akiva’s experience with wilderness and survival skills, how the guilt of taking from the earth, the plant and animal bodies to fuel his own body, was transformed into gratitude, paired with a realization that we are part of nature and the carbon cycle, we have the same value and right to be here…”you are taking life to have life. Something is killed for you to have energy. When I kill a deer and eat it, I have that energy in my body. What I do with that energy matters more to me when I remember this.” You can take that energy and wallow in self pity and self doubt, or you can take that life in order to create beauty and kindness and propagate life. A certain responsibility enters the picture.
• The joy of doing work that is directed by the seasons, the patterns of nature, instead of by a human schedule.
• “Having an attitude of curiosity would lead to a totally different world”
• The best way to be mentally healthy and happy is to know that you have a purpose, know that you’re helping others…finding how you can be of service is the best thing you can do for yourself and the world.

Resources

• Twisted Tree Farm website and nursery online store

• Akiva Silver - Twisted Tree Farm YouTube channel

• Trees of Power, The Conversation, and The Ocean of Dreams by Akiva Silver

• Sam Thayer's Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants of Eastern and Central North America; The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants; and Nature's Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants by Samuel Thayer

• Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden by Lee Reich

• Books by Robert Moss