Amazing Tips to Start Your Homestead with Trevor Andrei

We're going to take a turn in Season 2  and dive deeper into sustainable living! Today I'm talking with Trevor Andrei, Australia's preeminent survivalist.  Trevor has lived most of his adult life, traveling through Western Australia, Northern Territory and South Australia before settling in the state of Victoria in Australia. He's done many years as an Outback tour guide and in mining. He's a single pureblood father. He's sponsored by a gun shop and he loves sharing his skills.

Get ready for a masterclass on essential topics like permaculture, survival techniques, starting a homestead, and the intricacies of Section 32/Vendor's Statements in property buying. Trevor shares insightful tips on recognizing and dealing with land overlays, vegetation offsets, soil preparation, and how to identify and use bush tucker plants. The episode also delves into ethical hunting for controlling feral species and ensuring your property's and its native wildlife's health and safety. Tune in for practical advice on building your homestead sustainably and responsibly.

00:00 Welcome to Season Two
02:07 Introducing Our First Guest: Trevor Andre
03:28 Understanding Property Overlays and Legalities
13:25 Dealing with Toxins and Soil Health
17:25 Permaculture Practices and Soil Management
34:39 Hugelkultur Beds and Raised Garden Challenges
35:45 Permaculture Principles: Embracing Weeds
37:22 Bush Tucker: An Introduction
39:58 The Benefits of Edible Weeds
45:44 Hunting for Homesteading: Getting Started
54:32 Ethical Hunting and Wildlife Management
01:08:54 Concluding Thoughts on Health and Sustainability

Trevor offers a wide range of homestead and prepper supplies at his website: https://www.survivalshopprepperswarehouse.com/

Learn more on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/@TrevsBushcraft

DoTERRA Wellness Advocate
At Wholistic Natural Health Australia, we often recommend the use of high quality essential oils.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Magic Barclay: 0:42

welcome back to a magical life. I'm your host, Magic Barclay, and welcome to season two. Some exciting things coming up this season. We'll have a few guests throughout the season, but we'll be talking about things that matter to you. Now, this could be traditional health. This could be homeopathic health. It could be any form of health, hopefully some more natural medicine coming in and we're really going to kick this season off with a bang. We're going to have our first guest of the season and we're going to talk to about everything permaculture, survival techniques, and how do you get started on a homestead. So without further ado, welcome to season two. As always, like this podcast, subscribe, share the podcast. And if you really love what we're telling you, leave us a review. Bye. Before we get started, I will remind you to pop over to the Facebook page for A Magical Life, Health, Wealth and Weight Loss and send us your questions because season two is about you. We're here to answer your questions, any burning questions at all, and we will give you a shout out on the podcast. Now let's get to our fantastic guest guest. I'm talking today to Australia's preeminent survivalist, Trevor Andre. Now, let me tell you a little bit about Trevor. He's a good mate of mine. We've been Facebook friends for quite a while. And we finally caught up in person to bring you this podcast. Trevor has lived most of his adult life, traveling through Western Australia, Northern Territory and South Australia before settling in the state of Victoria in Australia. He's done many years as an Outback tour guide and in mining. He's a single pureblood father. He's sponsored by a gun shop and he loves sharing his skills. Gills and no ladies, this is not a singles event that I'm telling you about, although he is on the market. So some lucky lady will snap him up one day. Welcome Trevor.

Trevor Andrei: 2:57

Thanks, Magic. Thanks for having me.

Magic Barclay: 2:59

My absolute pleasure. Now, in our chats, we've talked about how do you start a homestead? It's kind of the, the go to lifestyle for people. I live on a fledgling homestead myself, and I guess many people think it's out of their reach. I started my homestead on a suburban block and I had every inch of it. producing food for my family. So people might be looking at, well, how do I buy a block? So my first question for you is what are we looking for in a section 32? Now in Australia, it's a section 32 in the US, I believe it's a vendor's statement. We're looking for things like, you know, what is on the property? What do we need to be cautious of? Go for it, Trev.

Trevor Andrei: 3:48

So what we're really looking at is overlays. Like these things can be six figure killers. These, these are the things that can take years out of your life and add years to your dream build. what we're looking for is bushfire overlays, Aboriginal heritage overlays, which are common along watercourses. We're looking for conservation overlays, which means you can't, you know, You can't even cut a single tree. You can't do anything. we're looking for all sorts of overways, whether there's going to be anything that's going to be coming along in the future, road works, power lines, um, mining, anything like that. Just basically it's, it's a real big heads up and we have to be wary of section 32s because a lot of times when there's a run on, on land, like land banking and things that we saw in the last four years and, tree changes. The, that you get unscrupulous agents. that will literally tell you everything that you want to hear, lie through their teeth, and tell you we're looking for a cash unconditional offer by 5pm today, and that means you're waiving your section 32 rights. Now one of the big troubles that we've got is with councils when these, uh, big runs on land occur, as we've seen in the last four or five years. Councils, get inundated instead of putting on more staff. Um, they're just happy to boost their numbers. It looks great. Oh, I'm doing a wonderful job. We're building more, we're getting, you know, 50 percent more people, but those people are all buying blocks of lands with major issues that are being sold by unscrupulous people trying to absolutely cash in on your, lack of understanding of what's going on in that area. so sometimes I've, I had it when I was buying my farm, council would get back to me a month after a farm sold. Oh, hello, Mr. Andre. Um, so what questions do you want to ask? You want, I've looked at 13 blocks since that one, that one's been sold for a month now. You need to put on some stuff like this is going to all be a massive catastrophe in the next 10 years when people want to actually do something with that thing they've just invested hundreds of thousands in. other things that we need to be, uh, very mindful of are vegetation, offsets and things like that. So, uh, there's sort of two rules that I've found, where I am, and that is that there's a rule for locals and then there's a rule for outsiders. Uh, everybody seems to circumvent, you know, all the rules on vegetation. that's an insider. And if you're an outsider, suddenly there's a mystery phone call and you're paying thousands of dollars and you've got offsets. Um, even if it was just for something like the, where there's meant to be an exemption of four meters to do the boundary fences, which as we've seen with the bush flies going on in the Grampians, which is just ground, that ground zero is like 10 Ks from my farm. so we need to be wary of those things. Those things can absolutely. literally destroy your wealth and your mental health. Never sign off unconditional. I did it. I did enough research I thought at the time that would mean that I, I, I knew what I was getting into. I didn't realize that literally there's a rule for locals and a rule for newcomers. and I don't even mean literally, I mean, I'm, I'm probably going to prove that in court this year. so don't sign, off on unconditional. Absolutely don't do that. And if you can get a bit of local knowledge, this is going to be really good. So other things you might be mindful to understand is, are there any, has somebody been coveting your block for 50, 60, 70 years, for example, my block was sold and the lady who bought it off her aunt, her aunt told her the family name by name. You must promise me that you will never sell to these people. They've wanted that block off us forever. You can never sell to that family group. Now, I only found that two years later when I was thinking, why am I having all these troubles with planning issues? And then under FOI, guess whose family was all upset that I'd bought a block 24 kilometers from where their main homestead is and they've wanted it and, They've obviously realized it's in a good location to do a business model like I'm trying to do, and this is something else you need to be wary of. You know, when you're putting in your proposal, lots of people in the community get to see your proposal. You know, are you going to have, uh, a healing place? Are you going to have a wildlife sanctuary? Is there some sort of tourism thing? Is there something that like they've not realized because they've not traveled as well as you or lived your life and worked? But now they're like, Oh my goodness, that's perfect. That would be a cash cow. And suddenly nobody wants you to do it because they all want to do it. You have to be so careful. Other things we want to be mindful of is we want to see if we can talk to neighbors and say, Oh, was there ever any old sheds or anything on that property? Chances are in the bush they'll either build a corrugated iron. Wonderful, not a problem or asbestos. The problem is literally every time in the bush, like on a block, when somebody used to have a building built out of asbestos, when the termites eat it, they find a little hollow in the, in the property, stick it in the hollow, put a little skim of dirt over it and they know it's there, but they're never going to tell you. And you don't know because it's once it's 20 centimetres under the dirt, you're not going to know until the day comes that you go to build something there. You start scraping the dirt back, and the next thing you know, you have got an EPA nightmare on your hands.

Magic Barclay: 9:20

That's some great information now for the non Aussie listeners today. the FOI is the Freedom of Information Act here in Australia. So, what we can do is just send in some paperwork, and ask the question, and under Freedom of Information, we get it. Get to find out a whole heap of stuff. So I'm not sure if you've got the same thing over there in the US or over in the UK, but yeah, we have that here, which is a great thing, which has been quite recent actually.

Trevor Andrei: 9:50

one good old note that you might want to put on that is particularly if you've had, have planning issues with council and you start suspecting that things are going awry and you start making your own connections. where you realize that family members are related to people and etc, etc. And it's starting to look very, very, um, dodgy. Right. Just be mindful that councils in Australia make their own bylaws. So they can actually just decide to just block you on something because they rezone your block. They won't do it to anybody else's. They'll just put some special conditions on you, just to make you feel extra special and welcomed as an outsider. So when you do your FOI, what you also need to be mindful of is if there's anything incriminating, on council or its people, right? They can remove that. And it even says it in their own paperwork. If there's something incriminating us as a criminal offense, we don't have to give it to you. Crazy, but true. the way that we are fighting back against that is we still request an FOI off them, right? But then we'll go to the federal MP. And we'll explain to the federal MP, as I have and as many other people are doing, right? These are the issues that are sounding very suspicious to me. Uh, if the federal MP's office, sees what's going on, they're going to refer you to the minister for councils, right? So, the minister for councils has the power to say, because for example, when I've got FROIs. which took me forever. And I had to keep badgering and badgering and badgering saying, Hey, you're meant to respond in 30 days. Where is my FOI? Right? Then they redacted sections like they redacted paragraphs, seven centimeters long. That's three inches, right? They're not meant to be able to redact that out, right? They're meant to redact private information that may identify the person. But believe me, when you know that you got three neighbors, right? You, you, it's really easy to work out if a neighbor said it, or if it was somebody from down the road. Other things are in the council's, information in their own acts, right? If there is false, misleading, defamatory information that somebody has put in their complaint against your proposal for your business, the home you want to build, whatever, right? So If there's false information that they've put in their complaint that's on your file, that is then forming the conditions, which may literally make you bankrupt to continue, right? And you can show that these things are complete untruths. Council, unlike mine, is meant to remove that from your file. Me and the MP having a wonderful little talk about these things as we speak. I hope this is of great help to you.

Magic Barclay: 12:40

Thank you. You know, there's wildfires, and I say that with a grain of salt. They're not wildfires, they're fires. Uh, more about that maybe in another episode, but there's wildfires all around the world now. We're seeing it everywhere. There's fire retardants being sprayed heavily. There's. Crop spraying as well. There's all sorts of stuff coming from plains onto our land. Some of that we know, some of that we don't. There's insecticides coming from other farms. We know all this stuff, but there are other poisons that we need to be aware of, such as 10 80 here in Australia. So, Trevor, how do we find out what is being used to around our area. And also if you can tell us a bit more about 1080, what it does. Um, as I said, it is a big thing here in Australia. I'm not sure if it's used overseas. I'm pretty sure it is, but yeah, what are we looking for in a way of toxins that we have to be aware of on our land?

Trevor Andrei: 13:48

So here's another good point. So I actually applied to find out, you know, what was on the chemical register. And then I got told, oh, there is no chemical register. And I was like, Oh my goodness. You guys are saying. like 1800. Um, I, I paid double the record price per acre for my farm because I know it's only been farmed once one year in its entirety. my block was a bush block, so I've got years of work to just to get the soil to be, good to grow in. You can do soil tests. you can find out what sort of crops have been grown. So for example, uh, where we are here on, uh, Magix. beautiful, magic spot. It's beautiful. You want to see the views out the window. It's gobsmacking. and there's Rosella sitting there eating your figs that I was eating this morning. I wouldn't blame him because that fig was delicious that you gave me. so this was a potato farming area. So in potato farming still to this day, they use a chemical called Paraquad and it's bad. It should be banned. It is just bad. Like they've, we've just got to get better at farming practices. so yeah, so do a soil test. Things like 1080 are a concern. So for example, 1080 is a bait that is used to control feral, species. you will never ever hear me ever condone baiting animals with poisons. I'm sponsored by a gun shop. I was the, admin on Facebook for Fox Hunting Australia, which has 30, 000 members, which if you want some crazy numbers, it's about the same as one of our militaries. there is more than enough people that are trained, that have got licenses, that have done all the things to go through. and shoot feral species. One of the biggest problems that we find with 1080 is it goes into the bones of rabbits. Um, and then what that means is the rabbit might stumble onto your property, right? Die, get a little bit mummified. And what does Fido do? Fido goes, oh yum, I love rabbit. Give me a bit of mummified bloody rabbit jerky. Choo, choo, choo. Next thing you know. Your dog's in, in, in, in a world of pain, sick with 1080 poison. These, these things are bad. Things that we can do when we're looking at spraying, so for example, I won't say I got violent with people spraying the side of the road, that, that is then a, a way that gets water into my dam. I will say that I, got quite heated and Explained to them don't you see that that's what goes to my dam? It's about to rain It's forecast for a 40 mil rain this afternoon Why would anybody with a brain be spraying when it's going to rain this afternoon? Oh, well, we just got a contract for fuel. We don't get paid. So what I did is then I got onto Vic roads And i've now made that whole road side on my place in the Grampians, a no spray zone. Absolutely no one from any department can now spray on that zone. So there are things you can do. Like I say, one of the big things that you can do is just look around, find out what the history is of the place, what sort of crops they were growing. Um, so like there's like the dirty dozen in, in the crops. So things like potatoes, strawberries, stuff like that. We know that those things are very heavily poisoned. So you want to be mindful of that. If you're thinking of growing, do your soil tests, you know, obviously if you're going to plant yourself, you can try something like Magic and I are doing. So we're using pollinators on our farms, right? And that's just very, a very simple way. of planting lots of natives through there and allowing your place, and I know this is going to sound totally paradoxical, I don't hunt on my farm. My farm is a haven for wildlife. Anything can live there in peace and it can eat my 527 fruit trees. I've got neighbors that say, why have you got possum trees when you're growing Fruit. You're a primary producer. And I'm like, you don't get it. You just, there's a part of this that you just don't get. I've got an organic farm. I don't have to spray anything. I don't have to do anything. Nature is doing that heavy lifting for me. And then we can just walk up any day of the year and just pick something off the tree and eat it. It's clean.

Magic Barclay: 18:12

And sorry to stop you there. Trevor and I just went for a wander on my farm and we picked a fig from the tree and he ate it. And you know, as he said, the Rosellas are there now wreaking havoc on the tree, but all under the tree, I've got the pollinators. I've got some poppies. I've got corn flowers. I've got native mustard. I've got dandelions. I've got all sorts of things flowering at different times under the tree. So at all times, I've got those pollinators coming in. That fig has, while I've been here, never been touched with a chemical because it doesn't need to be. In fact, I don't even have to water it very often because those pollinators down at the base of the tree are actually holding the moisture into the roots of the tree. So there is a better way, and this is part of the permaculture lifestyle, of using what nature can provide. To make your produce tastier and fresher and more abundant.

Trevor Andrei: 19:08

Exactly. And the thing is, I had neighbours within, within six months. I had, I had, and I mean old time set in their way farmers. The, I had a, um, the advocate newspaper did a story on my farm and they showed how I'd turned this block around in six months. It was already starting to show like life. way beyond what the neighbor just on the other side of one fence, you could see a definite line. Their grass is short, short, and mine's already grown like, you know, 12 centimeters long. And they got me to pull out a root and show how deep my roots were. And farmers started asking, Trevor, so, um, how do you do it? Because obviously that's good to them. They're like, you're making free feed. How do I make free feed? And, um, and I explained to them what my causal fungus. And so the thing is you've got the roots of your plants and then for a couple of meters below that There's like invisible spiderweb like filaments that you can send a microscope. That's mycosia. And so what happens is when you've got good If you understand this is gut health, right when you've got that that good flora under the ground Right. They exchange carbohydrates for sugars with the top plants so they can access nutrients from meters deep and bring it up. Right. And so it's a really, really, really good thing to do. But the trouble is, Farmers, for decades, have been, been caught out by Big Farmer with a F. And so Big Farmer with a F is not anybody's friend on a homestead. They want to get you in a never ending loop of superphosphate, which sounds really good, super, and it's going to make a crop yield, but superphosphate kills mycorrhizal fungi. So all you're doing is getting like a crazy enhanced little reaction on the top for a little while until that burns out and everything else underneath is dead. You've killed off what, what you can understand as your gut flora. and then all the soil opens up and then all the weeds come in. So then we've got this other wonderful product called glyphosate that we're going to have to sell you. And every year it goes up about 13 percent and the farmers are sick of it. And they're starting to finally, some of it's 70 years of age. Realizing there must be a better way. And that's why we do things like compost teas. So for example, we'll get like a thousand liter IBC tank or something like that. Um, and then all we'll do is fill it with water. Put a four or five dollar bag of compost in there. So, you know, when you go to the hardware store and you see your potting mix, it says, Oh yeah, wear gloves, wear a mark. Oh, this stuff's got live bits and pieces in it. Right. That is all biota. That is exactly what your soil needs in the millions and billions and trillions. So what we do is we get a four dollar bag of compost and we're going to make a thousand liters of free fertilizer. And so all we do is we get the compost bag, we rip it open, we dunk it in a thousand liters of water, we stick the weed on, we leave it for about three weeks and guess what comes out the other end? A thousand liters of fertilizer. It's all biota, it's all going to, this stuff is going to start making depleted soils live and thrive and survive. Like when we're buying, homesteads particularly, particularly in the last four or five years, there's been, an absolute tree change. you know, of biblical proportions. The amount of people that have moved to the country, never wanting to see lockdowns again, has been epic. and a lot of us got soil blocks that were sort of problematic. You know, they're the ones with the bad soil and the bad slopes and the this and the that and this and the that. And to people that are used to just, all right, well, how many times MPK is going to fix this? That might've been a problem. To people like us, That think outside the box, that listen to our friends, that will read the books, that are like, that will go do the YouTube videos and, and plug in and find out, all right, now how can I fix this permanently on a budget? You know, we, we are the people that will I go through Melbourne, every time I go through Melbourne, I go home with a ute load of stuff. Everything on the side of the road, that Melbourne people think is rubbish, I'm like, oh my goodness! Six ute, six trailer tyres for my friend's bloody farm trail, I've got to bring six tyres home this afternoon. You know, we can find things on the side of the road, old, old containers and stuff like that, that we can repurpose. What we're really looking at when we're looking at stuff like this is, so soil structure, how we can fix the soil and things like that. So Magic's probably going to ask me a couple of bits about that. And then we'll, we'll, really go into depth with the actual hands on and, and, and feed on the land thing. Okay, we've looked at the legals, we've found out what we've got to find out as much as we can, and don't worry, there'll probably still be some little surprise you didn't find out, but at least you've, you've controlled whatever you could control. You've got as many ticks off the legals as possible. Now we're going to look at, okay, this block of land, how are we going to make this arable? How are we going to turn this into like me, I'm, I'm turning my block, which was the block. I owned the block that started the Arak gold rush in 1853. I owned Pinky Point. And I suspect that anybody that didn't know what to do with it from a tourism point of view, saw my building, my proposal and went, he can't do that. We should have done that. He's not even a local, but I've been turning that block into a fruit forest for three years now. In five or six years time, you'll go to drive to the Grampians and everything will just be this dirty, great, big monoculture of sheep grass. And then you'll go around the corner and you'll get to Pinky Point. And you'll go, Oh my goodness, what is going on here? This is like a, this is like paradise. And this is what we're all trying to create on our homesteads. We're trying to make it these beautiful permaculture loops, self sustaining platforms that in 60 years time, I'm growing trees now that I know I will never see. get to their full life, like oaks and stuff like that, that then obviously are inoculated. They're going to grow truffles. My great grandkids will probably be selling truffles and things. So how do we do it? What do you reckon, Magic?

Magic Barclay: 25:44

Yeah, look, there's a lot we can go into. It starts with the soil, Trev, and you mentioned that just before. Now, where I am, ex potato farm land, not particularly on this property, but around the area, it's very, very acidic soil. So, you know, the, the layers in, in this land are amazing. I cut out a whole area to put a veggie garden in. The topsoil, absolutely beautiful, rich, fully abundant. I've never seen so many earthworms in my life. And then we go down a little bit further and it's very loamy. And then we go down a little bit further and we hit clay. So, you know, three metres down, this is pretty solid clay land. How do we look after the soil and, and particularly tell us about pH, you know, how can we adjust it? You mentioned all the people that, you know, rock up on some land and go a bit of NPK is all we need. And, you know, the, Use this, no use that. Tell us what we can do.

Trevor Andrei: 26:51

Yes, so pH, that's such a good question, Magic. So pH is viral. So if you understand pH, we all know PH is like, you know, what's in a swimming pool, you know, too much and your eyes are red and too little and, you know, you, you, you got, your eyes get, need the drops in them, right? But PH in soil is different. So, pH in soil, you need to understand as the lock that needs to be opened, right? So quite often in the cities, for example, you know, people get a new block of land, they'll put in all their plants, and lovely three years later, it's all dead. I had it once when I was a landscaper, I did 10 years self employed as a landscaper as well. I was doing a landscape, uh, at, uh, a landscape at Henwey Beach in South Australia. Neighbour Crossroads says, Oh, tell me young fella, I said, I see what you're doing over there. You seem to know what you're doing. I'm having a look at my front yard. There's something's going on here. I don't understand. And I said, what's wrong? And I had a look and it was all Moraya, Paniculata and stuff. And I said, doesn't look good, does it? And I said, what'd you spend on your front yard? He says, Oh, the landscaping cost me 25, 000. And I said, it's just about there, isn't it? And he says, yep. I said, how old is about three years? He says, how do you know? I said, it's your pH. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's not the pH. He says, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I said, mate, I'm going to pull out a 15 test kit and I'm going to prove to you why your place is dead. I said, you're still fertilizing it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can't understand. I give it water. I give it fertilizer, it's not responding. They said it's your pH. Went back over my ute, pulled out a 15 pH test kit that you can buy from any hardware store in Australia. Went over, did the test, and it's as simple as making a coffee doing a pH test. Alright, you get about a spoonful of dirt from, you know, about a few inches down. Make, mix it up a little bit. So you got, you, you, you powder it up and then all you do is put three drops of the precursor on there, shake a bit of the powder. There's got a little chart and it'll show you what color it is. If it's purple, it's alkaline. If it's orange, it's acidic. And this was really purple, right? Which is really alkaline. And I said, now, do you see this? I said, your soil is out by about 150, 200 times. I said, that's why. It doesn't matter. It cannot, until that pH is right, it can't eat the fertilizer. So it has been starving to death for three years and is all about to die. And he's like, oh my goodness. He says, I don't believe that. I said, well, that's, that's how it is. So for you, Magic, you've got acidic soil, same as me. My block was, um, 4. 5. So that's out maybe 250 times, it's to the magnitude of 10, which is like terrible, right? Clay's very good. Very, lots of nutrition in clay. the trouble is really wet in winter, really dry in summer, you know? So you're getting wet feet on your roots and killing them in, in winter and they're baking in the ground, literally baking in a natural terracotta pot. under the earth in summer. How do we fix that? It is a piece of cake and no one does it. I remember doing a landscaping job on one of those two million dollar, hospital lottery places in Glenelg Beach. They couldn't work out how to build something. They paid me to come in and build the thing that they couldn't work out how to build. I'm going around, I'm sitting there doing like, I'm talking a couple hundred thousand dollar landscape. And I said, are you guys adjusting the soil? Like a 200, 000 landscape. No, no, we don't do that. And I was like, it's all going to die. Look, it's look, I'll get me test kit. I'll proof to you. It's going to be eight or nine. It's all going to, you don't even adjust it. 200, 000 landscape jobs don't even adjust the pH. And here's how bloody simple it is. You do the test, if it's acid, like acidic, then what we need to do is we need to adjust that up with lime, so even builder's lime, right? And you just basically shake it in the ground, or in, uh, rural areas, you can get crushed limestone, and so they'll bring that out to you or whatever, and basically if you add that at the rate of about one kilo per square metre. It's going to adjust up. Just do, just do sort of three quarters of what you think you're going to need. Water it in. So particularly winter is a good time to put it, particularly when you know, it's going to, you're going to get, you know, good 20, 30, 40 mil downpour, right? It's going to take about six weeks to get into the ground and adjust the pH. And the next thing, you know, you might need to do it like two times. And next thing you know, your soil is going to be where you want it. You know, anywhere between sort of six and seven. you know, be happy with. And that figure sort of fluctuate if there's organic matter or whatever in there. But anywhere in there is pretty good. So pH is, is low and acidic, which is orange on the scale. You use lime. If it's high, like eight or nine or something like that, it's going to be really purple on that little chart that you're going to use. Right. And all you're going to need for that is sulfur, right? And that will bring it down. That's really what you need to know. And honestly, this is step one, right? Particularly if you're getting a bush block like me, I picked up, I don't know how many thousands of sticks. Um, if somebody, if, if God told me one day when I meet God, Trev, you're not going to believe this. You picked up 23, 468 sticks on that farm of yours to build permaculture, hugelkulturpiles. com I'd go, wow, I knew it was a lot. I didn't know it was 24, 368, but it'd be something like that. So what I did first is where I knew I was permaculture piles all around the block, which is quite big compost piles out of stick and dirt. You're basically making a lasagna. to break down over time and give structure to the soil. So what I did first was first I pH tested the soil on the ground, right? Because that's going to give me my best thing to go off. Then I adjusted the pH of that. And then I did the hugelkultur piles on the top. And you've got to understand as you add things like gumweeds and that, that's going to be more acidic. Right. So then every once in a while through that, you know, you shake a little bit through, you put a little bit of lime over that as well, and then you put your soil. And basically I'm at sort of three years now, maybe another two years, you know, then that's all going to be down in the ground. But in the meantime, I've been putting all sorts of seeds in amongst it all. So the day that it's all ready to germinate. I don't have to start from ground zero, all the right sorts of seeds that I want are already in there, just waiting for the day that they deem that the, the conditions are perfect and they'll sprout. In permaculture, we've got what we call succession. So permaculture is about getting like your five zones or six zones and working out, okay, basically like magic's place, you've got to come here. Um, like, Magic's got this place pretty well dialed in already and she's only been on this block for a year. Like, they've built a phenomenally awesome greenhouse. They got a really good, rabbit proof, veggie garden and medicinal garden. Like it's, it's really well set up and it's really well set up where it is, which is what you got to do. You want to sort of work out how it all makes sense. Now the thing that we understand if we're going to go the whole nine yards on permaculture, right, is succession. So what we're understanding is that we're, we're building up the soil, we're getting some plants to grow and they're going to get overtaken over time by our long term ones that are going to be the ones that are going to be there for, for generations.

Magic Barclay: 34:23

100 percent and we mentioned we went out to my veggie garden this morning. We wandered around the property. I've got hugelkultur beds inside my greenhouse. So I've got two very cheap internet garden beds set up in the middle of it. And that's actually filled with some of the, I guess, the waste that people would consider waste. It's not waste of food. sticks and leaves and grass clippings and all sorts of stuff. And then it's just got soil on the top. So, you know, nothing goes to waste, but in the veggie garden, I mentioned to Trevor, as we were walking around that I made a mistake. I raised the bed so I wouldn't have to bend over as much. And I really don't like getting down to ground level. And so I've raised the beds up with the soil that's there. And in some areas, someone would look at it and go, Oh, magic, your garden bed's full of weeds. It's actually so moist where I've got the dandelions and a wild mustard holding the banks of these raised beds in. And there were, when there's none, it's dry and it's solid. And the pumpkins are looking at me like, dude, water me. You know, this is part of permaculture. is out of place. Nothing is not needed. It's all needed. Those dandelions and those mustards, I'm about to make a whole series of mustards that I'm going to sell at market from that wild mustard. The dandelions I'm harvesting now, I'm pulling out a couple of plants, you know, every week and I'm drying them naturally in a herb dryer, which just is actually hanging outside my office on the wall. And. You know, I'm going to be making things. I've already made batches of dandelion honey from the flowers. So, you know, in permaculture, nothing goes to waste. And I think we have to get out of this mindset of a weed is a bad plant. A weed is just a really good plant that you've given a nasty name to, that's all it is. And listeners, you're probably thinking, this is a health podcast. What the heck are they talking about this stuff for? The weeds that we see in the garden. We see in those in our, in our health as well, like nothing is wrong with your body. It's just not maybe used to the best way or not in the right place or not at the right time. So, you know, your dry skin, what is that telling you? It's telling you that you've got nutrient imbalance. Same as if your plants are dying, when you put them in your landscape garden, you've got a nutrient imbalance or a pH imbalance. So, you know, we can link this stuff up to our health quite easily. Now talking about free things in the garden, Trevor, there's a term called bush tucker here in Australia. I don't know if overseas you guys use this, but It's a term that's bandied about here a fair bit. We all hear about it, but many people don't know what it means. So what is bush tucker and how can we use it for our health and our survival?

Trevor Andrei: 37:40

That's, well, let's face it, Magic, that's a part of why we're having this chat today. Um, I've just spent the last two days doing a YouTube collaboration with a guy called Xenonymous. And, um, we just went through Melbourne and we've been looking and, and out in the Grampians. We filmed the bushfires, we filmed farms. We've talked about, lots of bush tucker. So I hold a research and share Indigenous culture qualification from Charles Darwin University. Uh, I spent many, many, many years as an Outback Tour Guide and like I, I started doing volunteer work 25 years ago on an Aboriginal community where they were still carrying spears for real. There were no tourists. This was for real. Um, so Bush Tucker basically comes from that. It was Bush and Tucker's just Aussie slang for food, right? So when the white settlers came out, out here, you know, it's not like they were all hated by, um, the Aborigines or whatever. I suppose what the new modern word is, is, um, First Nations people. Um, and in fact, a lot of them became good friends and got on well. Um, and so you would be taught bush tucker. You know, if you were sort of taken in as a friend of the tribe, you know, you might have had a homestead, but they knew that works good, you know, and when we run out of sugar or something that local, you know, he'll help us out. So we're going to help him out a bit. So for example, very early instances, a cup of tea might be an easy thing to get today. Can you imagine how hard and how expensive tea was in 1800? so Coria alba, which is an Australian native plant, the Aboriginals taught what set was, you put some of this in when you boil that water and it tastes good. And the white set was like, that's English breakfast. Right. And, and this goes on and on and on. Like we've got medicinal benefits from things like kangaroo apple, which I grow on my, my farm, which is, you know, the 60, 000 year old version of Denka rub or Right. It was you smashed up and made as a poultice. So a lot of the things that people call weeds, I mean, if I can ask you to do two favors for me today, one, subscribe to my YouTube, I'm going to really appreciate it. Two, the thing that I really want you to do is get onto your council and ask them to start putting in edible weed gardens and particularly if it's called bush tucker because then they can sit there and try and sell it with the whole, oh we're all going to be wonderful and lovey dovey and whatever. When you've done as many years in Aboriginal culture as I have, you realize that unfortunately a lot of these councils and governments use Aboriginal culture in the same way as silverware. It's put out for the fancy guests to show off and then it's locked up in a cupboard after that. but we can use that to our advantage and say to them, well, why don't you, I was going around in Melbourne yesterday, it was anonymous, showing him things that you can eat. And I was like, look, there's even a signboard next to this. They should be putting a sign saying you can eat this. This goes great with potatoes and roast, you know? So a lot of the things that people think of as words. Like, Magic just touched on one of the best right there. Dandelion, wonderful. Okay, so here's your hit list. Dandelion, South Thistle, Mallow, Purslane, Nasturtium, Amaranth, a little bit of Oxalis. Not too much, but a little bit of Oxalis. Love Lee and Lemony. My daughter loves a little bit of Oxalis when, when we have, my daughter's half Greek. So over there, it's prized. It's called, Water, right? even when we look at things like stinging nettle. Oh, stinging nettle? How horrible! No, how lovely. You blanch it for a minute, right, chop it all up, put a little bit of olive oil with it, bit of cracked pepper, bit of salt, as with all bush tucker. Right, you either blanch it for like one minute, or you fry it up, right, little bit of olive oil, little bit of pepper, little bit of salt, oh my goodness, so amazing, great with anything like white meat, great with fish, great with anything like red meat, just wonderful. But what's it got? It's high in A, B, C, K, I mean the levels of potassium and stuff in things like pja. So pja is like in Maori culture. This is priced right. This is A, B, C, K in in, in great levels and heaps of potassium And like, I mean, you know, don't believe me, get on Google and have a look like this stuff is what should be sold in shops. But they won't sell it in shops because they know this can grow in any season. any soil type anytime a year and it is, this is, these are all superfoods, absolute powerhouse superfoods. So why are we here today talking about permaculture and homesteading on a wellness thing? Because a lot of you guys are sitting there wondering, How can I utilize my backyard better? Or if I've got a rental? Like Synonymous said to me yesterday, but Trev, where does prepping sit with me? Easy, man. Petition councils to make the Merry Creek a bush tucker corridor. Instead of them having one little token, little sign, or aborigines used to live here and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Show what it was. Put bush tucker all along. Don't poison it and say like, okay, this is all ready to eat. This is in season now, blah, blah, blah. Use our rates for good. We are in a, in economic financial crisis. There is a cost of living crisis. Why are councils planting pear trees that don't grow fruit when they could be grafted? We've a fruiting variety and suddenly we're eating for free. When we look at that in our backyards, we go, oh, well, I've tried growing tomatoes before and I know that home grown tomatoes are nice, but the birds come and peck at them. Okay, here's the trouble with growing fruits and vegetables. In season, in ideal conditions, 50 to 100 days is going to yield you your harvest. Now here's the magic of bush tucker. It doesn't need to grow a fruit. Most of it doesn't grow fruits. Alright, it just grows and you can snip it off like parsley and you can add it to every single dish that you cook. And I guarantee you, it tastes nice. You give it a cook for one minute, like they, they can all be cooked in whatever. Like I just said, Puha, that's Southies, right? In Maori culture, they got a thing called a boil up. The next time you're in the supermarket and you see a Maori person pick up like a big pork bone, like a shoulder or something with a bit of meat on it, you say to them, Ooh, you having a boil up. And they'll say, Oh, the boil up like me. I'm a guy. So they call me bro. Boil up, bro. How do you know to boil up? Oh, I eat the boil up all the time. You put the tomato sauce with you. Oh, you got to have the tomato sauce. That makes that extra special. Right? So what they do in these cultures, this is like my mate, who's Charlie, what my mate Charlie's Maori. Right. Puha boil up is Maori peasant food. Right. So how are you going to feed your, your family huge doses of vitamins and something that's yummy? You get a bit of like a bit of meat with a bit of bone, you throw it in the pot. If you've got some potatoes, some carrots, and then they go out and they collect bush tucker. So predominantly south thistle. And if they can get a bit of watercress from a running stream, Bit of watercress, pop it in the pot. And the, how do you think these people are so big and so strong on a budget?

Magic Barclay: 45:18

100%. All right. So we've bought the land, we've adjusted the soil. Now, particularly where I am, and I'm sure a lot of people have this issue, we're overrun with rabbits, foxes, and deer. So it's time to learn hunting. What's our first port of call with hunting? Is it getting the gun license? And how do we go about that?

Trevor Andrei: 45:40

So it's a good question, Magic. So, um, a gun license is good because it enables you to get free food and it enables you to Um, do conservation, um, hunting. So where you're actually hunting feral animals, right. Without using poisons, it's the cleanest way to do it. So to get a gun license in Australia is, I wouldn't say easy. it's something that you need to be, there's checks and balances. It's not like other countries in Australia. They vet you pretty heavily. They're going to check you all out. It might take up to a year, right? In terms of getting a license, I'm sponsored by a company called Global Weapon Systems on Sydney Road in Melbourne. If you go there, they'll give you a special. All you have to do is say, Oh, Trevor, I heard a thing with Trevor. Apparently I can get my gun license for 50 bucks and they'll welcome you in like family. So you've got to do a safety course, takes a couple of hours, right, and then you're on your way. You've got your, basically you're going to get your license after that if you don't have a criminal record, etc. So the things that we want to know for homesteading are, you know, what sort of things are causing us problems. so for example, foxes, if you If you don't live on the land, if you don't have chickens, you won't realize, but currently even an Isa Brown's fetching 30. Uh, it's very easy to lose 600 worth of chickens. And as we've seen with, um, uh, uh, avian flu, um, the amount of chickens that have been destroyed around the world, and in processing facilities, burning downs and things. is quite large and it's only adding to the cost of purchasing a chicken. So you're going to want to get rid of foxes in your area. Um, a lot of times your, the rabbits are going to absolutely decimate anything you're going to try and grow. It only takes a couple of rabbits to actually, deforest about an of land. So like two and a bit acres. So it only takes a few rabbits to cause quite a big trouble. It's very easy to get very good at shooting. You're going to want like a 22 rifle, right? You can buy something like a JW 15 Norinco for about 600 as a brand new setup. You could get a cheaper sort of gun that's secondhand. Um, for sort of, you know, two to three hundred dollars and these things use bullets that are about seven cents each. It's going to take you about 500 bullets, right, of practice shooting and, and you will be a very, very confident shooter. So, you know, we suggest going to a target range or if you've got a farm, you know, set some targets up in your backyard, shoot downhill, shoot uphill, shoot the wind to the left, shoot the wind to the right, uh, watch some videos. I've got some videos. Um, that show you how to do these things, right? And, and learn how to sight in your rifle, which is called zeroing in. And the reason for this is we want to be really accurate, right? I don't know of any hunters that go out to like maim something can cause it suffering, right? We want to just shoot the thing in the head. It's instant. One day it's running around and the next thing it's gone to sleep, right? We don't want to gut shot it or anything like that because it destroys the meat. It's totally unusable. And so people that have got cats, people that have got dogs, people that want to learn all the recipes that our grandparents lived, survived and thrived on, particularly in the Great Depression, you know, freak a seared rabbit and all that sort of stuff, I mean, this stuff's beautiful and it's really high yield. Now you can, you can save so much money on your budget. It will absolutely blow your mind. You know, if you just shoot a few rabbits a week, suddenly you're like, Oh wow, there you go. We're just going to have slow cook rabbit with some veggies, bit of celery, bit of garlic, you know, a little dash of red wine. Just phenomenal, really good eating, really clean eating, you know, and you're eating things Unlike all the garbage in the supermarkets now if we're going to talk about wellness, let's be honest, right? Let's be honest. There are products now that are still experimental and not even that experimental. I mean, look at Barver in, in, in milk and stuff. Now we know that this thing's caustic if it hits your eyes, we know that if you get the raw product on your, on your hands, it can lead to male sterility and yet out they come, they're just constantly pushing things and injecting things. If they told us all the, all the things that like the animals have been injected with that are on our supermarket shelves, we'd be going on like, it's like a donut. Why is there 40 ingredients in a donut? Like isn't it just like dough and a bit of cinnamon sugar and some oil, you know? So this is the thing like it's a really good question that you've asked Magic is how do we go about it and more so For people new to homesteading, why would you go about and that's the answer We're not going to have to use 1080. So suddenly we've got a thousand dollar vet bill because Fido's bloody rolling over half dead Right, doing what? Everybody did for thousands of years. We're just using modern techniques with a really, really accurate rifle, with a good scope. You know, it's really easy to use. And there's nothing to be afraid of. I mean, these things have got safety catches on them. The bullet comes out the front, you know, not to just point it around in the wind, you do your safety, stuff. And if you want to actually get good at this or you've bought land, for example, you know, you can just meet, meet local people and say, Oh, well, to be honest, I'm not really from the land, you know, and particularly what we find in the awake community is there's a lot who hobbies gone off wherever. You know, he's moved on to family number two, and for some reason he's forgot that his boys or his girls or both need that kind of hands on, how do you use tools and drills and hammers and saws and, and even up the guns, you know? And there are people like me that absolutely love newbies. You know, I'm a dad, I've got an eight year old daughter, and even when it's like, you know, 23 year old guys, you know, whose mum's got me to come on their farm to show their kids, okay, we've got our license, we've got a gun, how do we go about this, because all we know is it's a gun and that's it. You know, it's not a whole beat your chest and you won't find blokes like that. The shooting community is very, very different. It's quite an embracing and welcoming community. There's pages like Fox hunting Australia. For example, you go on any other Facebook page in Australia and you ask a question. So I'll give you an example. You go on the, the cast iron camp oven cooking page. You say, Oh, I just bought some cast iron pans and they're rusty. how do I season these? And you're going to get run down your first day on the page. 30 people going, Oh, blah, blah, blah, blah. Everybody knows that. Oh, I can't believe people are still asking this question. You go on a page like Fox hunting Australia, which I used to admin for five years with 30, 000 shooters, it's still going strong. And you say, Oh, I'm not sure. Should I get a two, two, three, or a two, four, three. And in 13 seconds, you're going to have 30 people that know what they're talking about. holding your hand through the process saying, well, that's a good question. You know, are their neighbors more than 600 meters away from you? Is your place forested? Is it hilly? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, it's a very different thing because the shooting community doesn't have to pretend to be keyboard warriors or tough or bravado or whatever, because. We've all got guns, right? We don't, we don't need to impress anybody that we're tough or hard or the best or whatever. It's just, it's like, it's, it's really bizarre. It's the only forum I've ever seen on Facebook where that level of keyboard warrior does not exist at all. All. You can be a total newbie and no one's ever going to say, Oh, you're the 12th person to ask that question this week. It's out comes the 30 or 40 people like me that loves newbies. So let's talk about, um, shooting a little bit.

Magic Barclay: 53:51

Before we do that. There's probably some listeners out there that are thinking, well, I love animals. Why will I shoot them? I'm going to tell you from personal experience that my farm here is a wildlife sanctuary. We have a young mob of kangaroos. Um, we have lots of wombats on the property. We have echidnas, you know, we have a lot of bird life as well. And. I've had to put down two wombats in the past two months because of mange. Mange is spread by rabbits and foxes. so, you know, and I've lost three joeys. Literally last week, foxes were following my female kangaroos around. And when the joeys first get out of the pouch, they're a bit wobbly. They don't really know how to use their legs. Mum can't be everywhere at once. And dad wasn't around on this day. And the fox is just. So before I hear listeners go, but shooting animals is wrong, sometimes it's not. Wrong becomes right. It has to because you have to put your native animals first. You have to put your pets first You know, I have a cat and She's in a cattery, but I have seen the foxes and I don't know how many locals have said don't worry about your cat Foxes won't go for her I have seen them outside the cattery trying to work out how to get to her and they are three times her size Yep. So let's talk a bit about shooting. What do we need to know?

Trevor Andrei: 55:24

A little while ago, actually, um, I had some friends and they called me up and, um, and they're good friends, really good friends. Uh, you'd be, you'd be amazed how, how much as being on a new farm can be totally isolating, that when you find your tribe. Like they'll do anything for you and they're always out to help you. Oh, I found some chicken wire on the side of the road. Do you want? Oh yeah, I'd love that. Oh, Fred's getting rid of some corrugated iron. You want to come around and pick it up? Oh yeah. Like it's just phenomenal, phenomenal. The unity in community is strong when you find your tribe. So my friends called me up and they said, Oh, mum's horse is, um, it's gone lame. It's, it can't even stand up properly anymore. the vet wants a fortune to put it out down. Can you come around and, and shoot it for us? And, um, and can you give us the number for that mate of yours that's got a bobcat so he can dig a hole and bury it nicely? I said, yeah, yeah, no worries. I, I got on Daryl, said, oh, do you want to meet us around there at such and such tonight? Yep, no worries. Put a lead around the horse, gave it a pat for about 10 minutes, walked around, and, um, yeah, you know, I shot it in one shot with the right bullet. Like that was it, it was on the ground, like it's as if you clicked your fingers and said disappearing legs, like you could not believe. a millionth of a second, this thing was already on the ground, painless, beautiful. And that's the thing, magic is, sometimes we do have to euthanize, animals. you know, sheep might break legs jumping down into a creek bank or something like that, you know, and this is the level of animal husbandry where, and it was put to me brilliantly yesterday, another shooter, said to Xenonimous, who's doing that YouTube with me, he said to Xenonimous, you've got to think of it like this, imagine that you needed to be euthanized, right? Something tragic has happened to you. You've got to think of it like this, imagine that you needed to be euthanized, right? Something tragic has happened to you. How long would you like the process to take? And it was just like a really sobering moment where you're like, yeah I literally want to just like close my eyes and that's it like as if I just went to sleep and didn't even know And so when we talk about um shooting we're talking about the right the right gun for you And the right gun to do the job. And so it's very simple to understand this. So A 22 is basically a rabbit shooting survival rifle. It can be used for like a fox, you know, at short range, which is usually where a fox is going to come around. It's going to be getting your chickens. It's going to be getting your cats. yet again, I saw a forum a good while ago. Where some idiot in England was saying, Oh, foxes don't eat cats. They don't eat animals. And I'm not joking. It was like 134 people got on that post straight away saying, do you want to see a picture of my cat that was quite chewed up by a fox? Cause I'll show you. Um, and, and that's really the thing. Like people don't realize. When you've got, even when you've got sheep for pets, which some people do just as grazers, you know, just to keep the grass low. If you get, a lamb, foxes will eat the tongue out of the lamb, just the tongue and it's dead. Like it just lies in the ground until it's dead.

Magic Barclay: 58:27

And around here, the foxes actually hang around the sheep. And as the sheep is giving birth, they're taking the lamb.

Trevor Andrei: 58:34

Oh yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's really, it's really quite a problem. And what, like we said before, by us doing this, we're doing our bit. to make sure that we're, that the land isn't all poisoned with crazy baits that stick around for years and years and years that then have all sorts of other ramifications. It's clean, it's ethical, it's done. Like you said, mange, my dog picked up mange last year, um, because a fox had come onto our property and within days my poor dog was in so much pain with mange. It's, it's not just like a looks bad thing, like you can see the pain on the dog. And so, I went to the agriculture supplies place, bought some Advocate. And, that ended up doing the job, but I mean, it took a while to do it. so what are we going to shoot? We were going to shoot with a 22 for rabbits. We're going to shoot a shotgun can shoot anything because you can use different cartridges, the same size bullet has got different sorts of ammunition in it. So a 12 gauge shotgun is really good. If you get a really cheap, nasty one, like a cheap one, it's going to hurt your shoulder when you shoot it. You get something like a 600 to 900. shotgun, even a woman is going to shoot it and I'm not saying it because the woman I'm saying it's because of the musculature in, in the shoulders. he's going to shoot that with ease and you can shoot anything from rabbits to a pig. Like you've got to understand that some listeners, would be in parts of the country where pigs are a massive problem and like a pig can kill your dog. You know, easily a hundred kilo ball will rip your dog to pieces and then eat it. you can get, when we're talking about, shooting longer ranges, if you've got a bigger farm. we're talking about things like, a 223 rifle or a 243 rifle. If there's things like deer, now you've got to understand in a lot of national parks, deer are actually feral in Australia. And what happens is if we, the shooters, that are licensed to have the right permits and all that sort of stuff. If we don't do this conservation hunting on the ground and harvest the meat, here's what does happen. Right. They get people in helicopters who shoot them and quite often there's what they're what called gut shots. Right. It drops the animal. It will eventually die. Nothing is harvestable. All it does is it places a huge amount of dead meat on the ground to further enhance fox and feral cat populations. Right. And something has suffered and We're all picking up the tab in our taxes, versus if you want to harvest venison, which tastes amazing, right, you can go into a national park or a forest, you can legally hunt one in the right hours, in the right time, and you can harvest all that meat. take it all out, take it home, put it in the freezer, turn it into sausages, turn it into whatever you want. And that's really the beauty in this, is like we say, and I've said this before, if everybody had to kill their own food, right, to eat meat, you know, I reckon something like 90 percent of the population would turn vegetarian overnight. It's a very sobering experience. for me, for example, I used to shoot kangaroos for a big farmer in South Australia that owned big flour mills over there. And I did years and years as an outback tour guide. I've got friends that own, uh, refuges as in wildlife refuges. I've had kangaroo kisses. hundreds of times with joeys hundreds. All right. And so for me, I've found that for me, I don't like shooting female kangaroos. I don't like finding it joey. if I'm going to control kangaroo populations in places where farmers rely on their lucent paddocks so that they don't have like a 30, 000 or a hundred thousand dollar stock feed bill that year, because they're trying to grow their stock feed, but it's been eaten out of that paddock. That's when they're allowed to shoot when there's increased numbers of roos. Instead of me shooting females and then maybe finding a joey here or there, right? Which I don't particularly like. I just shoot males, right? I shoot males. I harvest all the meat. And for me, that's the way that I go about it. Right. Um, I'll be really honest with you because I'm with magic and I can imagine what magics, listeners are like if they're, if you're always got wonderful and wavy W's magic is right. How many deers have you ever shot? Trev, do you want the honest answer? Zero. I've never shot at the, I've had deers in my sights before and I'm like, ah, you go, right. that's not to say that I never, will, for me, I do what works for me. I'm signed off on thousands and thousands of acres to shoot on. I get that for food. So predominantly I get rabbits. Me and, me and my dog, Sweetie, love rabbits. It's really good, really healthy food. if I'm going to shoot, uh, roos, you've got to have a permit. And like I said, I only shoot males. And then I harvest all the roos. All of the meat, right? Like you'd be amazed that when I shoot something and, and there again, rams, so farmers, when their rams get all old and tough and, and whatever, and they're looking like they're going to drop dead in a few days, right? Farmers will ring me up and say, Oh, Hey Trev, if you want a ram, I've got a ram in that paddock sitting there waiting for you, you shoot it and you can take the meat. No worries. I'll do that. Like the trick to like making ram tastes like lamb is you get patacks. Like and subscribe, Patax. You get Patax Rogan Josh, right? Any kind of meat that's like, you know, like that sort of male meat, it's got like kind of a, a bitterness to it, right? A little bit of vinegar in the pot and slow cook it. And it takes away all of that gaminess, and it's amaz I've fed, like, I've got Maori shearing contractor mates, and like, nobody eats ram. Like, shearers don't eat ram. They're like, ah, bleh. I've brought them around bowls. Of Ram, Rogan, Josh, and the ones tried it. He's Chad, Chad's his name. I'll tell you the whole story. And he's like, bro, this is awesome. This isn't Ram. This is Lam. I'm like, no, man, I'm telling you, this was a stinky old Ram ready to die. And then he tells you, he says to his mates, give this a try. They're like, no, no bro, nobody eats Ram. And he's like, I'm telling you, man, try it. And he's like, what did you do? How did you make this work, Trev? And I said, mate, Billy Clark, this is old guy, Billy Clark, right, Riley. Billy Clark's mum is the two time rabbit skinning world champion from Moyston. Moisten, if you don't know where Moisten is, that's right where it just all burnt down in the Grampians bushfires, and it's where AFL started. AFL was actually the aboriginal game of Marmbroke, that a couple of white fellas threw in, went, Whoa, that's a good game, we'll make a game like that. Right, so Billy Clarks, right, the two time, female, two Skinning Champion's son told me, Hey mate, if you want to make any game of meat taste better, You just make Rogan Josh out of it, you put a little bit of vinegar, and away you go. And then, it's not going to waste. If something is going to die, if something needs to be euthanized, if something can still be harvested, I'll, I'll do it, and I'll put it to good use. But you would be really amazed, I think, to see I do it with such compassion and, quite often I'll say sorry to the animal, you know, I remember saying, I think it's like the gods must be crazy. There was this old movie back in the eighties where they found a bottle and they were like, Oh my goodness, look at this thing. You can do all this stuff with this thing. But in that video, there's a scene where I think he shoots, uh, an antelope with a beard. This is a traditional ICAC Kalahari Bushman. And in his way, the subtitles comes up and he's saying to the animal, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I shot you. My family is hungry. we'll put you to good use. Your, your wife will not go to waste, you know? And if you can understand it in that context, like magic said, you know, if sheep are burnt in a paddock because of bushfires come through. All right, I'm telling you, these are hard things to do, but never gets to a point where like, you're, immune to it all, but it's something that you do either because you know, you're putting food on the table and you do it without being an a hole and you do it as ethically and quick as possible, or you're doing something because if that was you on the ground, you'd be like, please, I'm going to close my eyes, put me out of the misery right now.

Magic Barclay: 1:07:27

Well, we've covered a lot, and I think we need to wrap this episode up right there. People, there are so many facets to health, and it's not just what supplement we can take, what we can take out of our diet, or what we can add to our diet. It's all encompassing. It's how you live. It's how you respect and honour the land. It's how you live with the animals around you. It's how you live with the plants around you and what these plants can do. Remembering that many things we call weeds, or we're taught to call weeds, are actually medicinal plants. So thank you, Trevor, for coming on folks. You can find Trevor at survival shop, preppers warehouse. com. Now all his links will be on there. We'll put them in the show notes again. Welcome to season two of a magical life, health, wealth, and weight loss. We look forward to your viewer questions. Please do like subscribe, share, and review this podcast. And we will see you shortly. Thank you.