Today I'm talking with Julia at Sustainable Driftless, Inc. You can follow on Facebook as well. If you'd like information regarding the documentaries mentioned, click here. If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Julia at Sustainable Driftless Incorporated. I think it is Inc., so incorporated. Good morning, Julia. How are you? I am good. I'm good. I'm glad to be here with you. I'm so happy to have you on because I... 00:28 I have been to the Driftless area in Wisconsin once and it's gorgeous, but I don't know all the history and the stories behind it. So I'm very excited to talk to you. You're in La Crosse, Wisconsin? I would say La Crosse kind of geographically might be roughly the center of the Driftless region. I'm actually in the, I call it the suburbs of a very rural area. It's where I live on an 80 acre. 00:58 Homestead. Ooh. But I travel all over the Driftless region. Today I'm in Madison, Wisconsin. And we just do a whole lot of stuff out there in the Driftless. Okay. Well, first off, can you tell me what your part in the organization is and what the organization is? Okay. Let's see. 01:26 About eight years ago, I collaborated with somebody else that I had been working with on another not-for-profit. These two guys have produced mysteries of the driftless through the Mississippi Valley Conservancy, Tim Jacobson and George Howe. And the three of us got together and we formed Sustainable Driftless with the purpose of kind of shining a light on the area 01:55 basic idea is that if you love something, you'll treat it well. So what we're, our attempt was and is to get people to love the driftless region, to see what is around them. There are lots of people that have lived here their entire lives and don't necessarily recognize how precious and fragile and gorgeous it is. I think you have to go outside the region to recognize how special it is sometimes. 02:25 But we're shining a light on that. We produced Decoding the Driftless six years ago, which won some Emmys and worldwide accolades. And I think it's one of the number one documentaries that is shown on public television throughout the nation. And what that has done is it kind of... 02:51 gets people kind of into what this special place is all about. So we've continued on with that, and we had a terrible unexpected loss of George Howe about a year ago in a farming accident. And my role as one of the original founders and vice president, and now also is to find new ways to... 03:16 shine the light on the area and to uplift other organizations that are in this area that do work on sustainability and environmental and wise and smart development of the area, water quality issues, soil issues. We just want to get all those individual groups working, not necessarily working together, but aware of one another and having the general public be aware of everybody because 03:46 It's a really exciting time and it's a really exciting story to see this kind of efforts for biodiversity and home setting and gardening and all kinds of good stuff. Okay, that helps. Thank you. So for those who are listening that don't know about the driftless area, can you explain what it is? 04:12 The driftless area is a very unique part of the Midwest. And what it is, is over the two last ice ages, I think the last one was 10,000 years ago, there was no glacier drift as things melted. There was no glacier scraping this area. So you're not going to find drift from... 04:41 Far away. 04:44 that has landed in this area because the glaciers went around both times. And it's kind of like an amoeba-shaped island that encompasses 32 counties in Wisconsin, southwest Wisconsin, western Wisconsin, a bit of Minnesota, southeast Minnesota, and northeast Iowa, and a little tiny bit of Illinois. And it has karst geology, which makes it very interesting. 05:15 It has what geology? Karst geology, which is kind of limestone. It's like the Swiss cheese of rocks. So the rain and the water that, and this was once underwater as everything melted, but the rain and the water that falls on the hills and at this area and the valley percolates through kind of a 05:40 Swiss cheese, I would say, imaginary rock system. So the water kind of goes through it and absorbs all those minerals and ends up in a very abundant water supply in the area. Okay, thank you. I just missed the word and I didn't understand what you said. Okay, so one of the things that I either understand or misunderstand about the driftless area and people who grow food 06:09 is that you're not supposed to use man-made herbicides or pesticides ...
