Summer Foraging and FREE Book!

[00:00:18] What is up PBN Family? Don't forget to get the Kindle today, Poems for Men, free on Amazon, go pick it up. Big thanks real quick before we get to Foraging Talk. Big, big thanks guys. We made it to number one in fatherhood, we made it to number one in men's health. We're going to make it to number one, we're at number two or something like that in Christian men's issues.

[00:00:45] And, you know, that's you. That's you. It's a giveaway. People get the book for free, you know what I mean? It's a strategy. You give away the free e-book and hopefully people buy the hardcover so you make some money, right? But at the end of the day, it don't have to work. You know what I mean? My cries out into the ether have gone unheard with books past. It's not a given. Number one is not a given, even when you're giving the book away.

[00:01:11] It's a given for me now because of you, right? Because of you and my audiences across the internet and people in my life who care. It's a given for me, but it hasn't always been that way. And, you know, you're talking about my great disappointment at 19 years old, 20 years old, more like 19. I wrote a book called Diary of a Young Chef that you can't even buy anymore. Diary of a Young Cook, actually. I wasn't a chef yet.

[00:01:40] It was called Diary of a Young Cook. And I published that book and I got it written up in the Delco Times, the newspaper from where I'm at, you know. And I'm sitting there and I'm saying, okay, I wrote a book with pictures. It's published. It's self-published. This is 2007 or 8 or something. And I'm like, I did it. You know, I did it. I'm here. I've made it. I'm an author. I'm going to be rich. I'm going to be a bestseller.

[00:02:07] The newspaper picked it up. Everyone who sees it in the newspaper is going to buy it. It's a local boy who wrote a book and he's a cook and there's recipes. And it didn't sell any. I think it sold like two copies. And one of them was my mom. So you have to understand, like, it's been that way a while. Like, it has been that way for a while. I've published a lot of books. A lot of books that did nothing.

[00:02:34] So these newer publishing ventures, you know what I mean? The World of Ready When It Does Good and This Book It's Doing Really Well and other books that I've written recently, Darker Trails. When they do good things, like, when they get to number one, even on a giveaway, it's still amazing. You know? When you make money from your writing, you get close to something.

[00:02:58] You get close to something equating a dream that you never thought really, or that you've spent the better part of 20 years assuming was dead. You know? It's just assuming this is a thing that's never going to come to fruition. Right? It's just not, it can't. How are you going to make it work? You know what I mean? You just, you can't make it work. It's, the publishing houses won't take you. The, let me eat this gooseberry real quick. It's purple and delicious. Oh! Hmm. Everything's ripe.

[00:03:29] And they're good. Everything's ripe. Everything's great. The time has come, PBN family, for forging. But I wanted to first thank you and let you understand the gravity of buying from me. You know what I mean? I'm not a guy who was a podcaster or a prepper or anything but a writer to begin.

[00:03:49] And, and, the real big takeaway is like, seeing this stuff happen now is seeing a dream that I gave up on but never really gave up on. A dream that I lied to myself to give up on. You know? And to say, you're not going to be on the New York Times bestseller list because you're this and this and this. And they don't, you know, that's not happening anymore for people like you.

[00:04:19] And largely it was. Largely it was a dream that I gave up on and it was something that I started saying, well, I'm just going to write the things that I want to write and, you know, whatever happens, happens. And really the whole, the whole push for PBN, the whole push that really turned me into, not just a prepper because of the things I talk about, but to really give my all to the prepping community and to really dig in was the release of a book. I think it was Our World Recovered Journals.

[00:04:50] And when I released Our World, I'm really proud of that book. It's a really fun book. It's, you know, there's multiple journal entries, multiple characters. It's all journal written. All about the end of the world and what it's looking like and how things are going down for these four different characters. And they're very different stories. There's all, you know, you got the urban prepper, the bug out scenario gone wrong,

[00:05:15] the sort of darkness of man's hearts happening in there. I mean, just the whole thing. And, you know, I expected a lot of people to buy that book. I did a lot of promotion. I did a lot of, I spent some money on some advertising. And you guys bought it. You were the people who bought it. You, the audience of I Am Liberty at the time, bought the book.

[00:05:44] And that was when I said, this is my community. These are the people who care about me. So what kind of a fool would I be to spend my time running around trying to find other people? Oh, pay attention to me. You know what I mean? When I have this audience that cares and supports the things that I do. You know, it's a no-brainer. So, on to the forging. Thank you for the support. If you haven't got the free book, just go to Amazon, type in Poems for Men, get the Kindle version.

[00:06:14] It's free. If you want to buy a hard copy, I'd highly recommend it. I think it's a book, you know, even if you have a son. Even if you're a woman and you have a son, like, get this in his hands. Even if you have a husband, get this in his hands. It's a thing that men need to read. It's a collection of things men need to read. But everything's ripe. Everything's ripe. I'm moments away, really literally moments away from heading out. I may go the back way, actually. Ooh, maybe I should do that.

[00:06:45] I may go the back way to one of my foraging spots. And it's just, I mean, it's just a time to explore the woods for food, guys. I don't know what else to tell you. It really is. It's a time to explore the woods for food. Everything's out. Everything's ripe. The nation just got hit by heat and then it got hit by rain. So, you know, there's a lot of places that are putting out all kinds of mushrooms. I'm sure if I searched my own yard, this compost heap right here, I'd find something cool.

[00:07:14] I'd find something growing on one of these logs. So, yeah. There's chanterelle mushrooms out there. I want to get my hands on there. Should we talk about that? Go forth and forage is what we should talk about. Right? If you remember, you should definitely do the foraging masterclass. Go do it. Okay? It's very short. It's like four videos. Really important concepts, though.

[00:07:43] You should really go do that if you remember. It's free. All of our masterclass courses are free. This is not a course where you got to sit there and look at a leaf. You don't have to sit and look at a leaf and go like, Oh, this is this part of a leaf and this is this part of a leaf. This is about a foraging mentality. That's what the course is about. It's about making you a forager. It's not about teaching you what a mullein looks like. Right? There's enough of that. There's books of that. There's YouTube videos of that.

[00:08:12] What I aim to do with my foraging course was really to get you to become a forager. Like, I want you to do it. I don't want you to know what something looks like. I don't want you to know what a chanterelle mushroom looks like. Well, I do. But what I want you to do is commit. I want you to say, I got my tools. I got this. I got my location. I'm going to go. I'm going to actually bring food back. You know, this whole thing. That's what I want for you. So, if you're a member, go do that course.

[00:08:42] If you're not a member, you could do the course. I think it's 30 bucks or something like that. Um, well worth it. Well worth it. I'm going to harvest $30 worth of chanterelles today. So, I can tell you that right now. Um, we don't do mushroom foraging. The book, Go Forth and Forage by Whitney Johnson, is the supreme manual for mushroom foraging. That's the book you want. If you want to get into mushroom foraging, first of all, I'd say it's going to take you time even with that book.

[00:09:11] And I'd recommend you buying mushrooms. Buy the wild mushrooms you're going to forage. Now, some of them you can't buy. But things like chanterelles, things like morels, oyster mushrooms. You can buy these. You can buy these. You can look them over. You can cook them. You can smell them. You can taste them raw. You can do all kinds of things to get to know them. See, I know them really well. Because I spent years with them in the kitchen. But you can do that. If you're not a member, and, you know, you want to take these courses,

[00:09:41] you've got to become a member. I don't know what to tell you. You know what I mean? Those of you out there listening, it's money that you will spend that, I think, every single time something goes crazy in this world, you'll be able to look back and say, I bought that annual membership for $60. And now I can go read whatever. Now I can go take the security course because the riots are getting crazy. Now I can go learn to forage. Now I can go measure my bug out plan

[00:10:11] against the six hour bug out series. Now I can go get in shape with Prepper Fit and Health. In fact, I just posted a heavy kettlebell workout for our members a couple days before I left for vacation. Like, there's so much there, guys. I don't know. Like, you've got to understand the frustration. It's not necessarily frustration as much as desperation. It's like the world is coming apart at the seams in many ways.

[00:10:41] And we've got the glue here at PBN. And I just, you know, you want to get it in the hands of as many people as possible. That's all. But here in Virginia, the Blackberries are ready. They're out. They're out in droves. If you can find them near water, they're probably ready to pick already. I mean, just phenomenal. I mean, who doesn't like to sit around and eat blackberries off a bush in the woods? It is probably every forager's beginning.

[00:11:10] It's the best way for a forager to begin. Like, if you want to do some foraging and feel really safe and really good about it and bring something home and all that kind of stuff, make it a jam, make it a pie, whatever, you almost can't get blackberries wrong, right? They're a multi... If you get blackberries wrong, the worst thing you're going to do is be eating raspberries. You know what I mean? They're a segmented berry. They grow on canes. They have thorns. They have very distinct leaves, right?

[00:11:40] They're very hard to get wrong. They're red and they're black. And you might even find some that are green all at the same time. They're very distinct. They're nearly impossible to get wrong. And it's probably the best way to get started is to say, I'm just going to go find a big blackberry bush. No, it's not magic medicine. It's not something really cool you can write home about or whatever. But it actually is. It is really cool.

[00:12:07] You can throw mason jars in your foraging bag like I will today and fill the mason jars up with blackberries. Bring them home. The reason I fill them up in mason jars is because you can fill them up. You can put sugar and whiskey in them and can them straight away. You know what I'm saying? Or you can just dump the blackberries out into a pot,

[00:12:37] sugar packed in, and you've got jam. It's not really that tough. The elderberries are growing. I have elderberries that grow in the foraging spot. In fact, they grow with one of the blackberry stands. One thing that I haven't taken advantage of in years past that I'm going to take advantage of this year are the hickory nuts. Something strange happened to me yesterday. I was running in the heat.

[00:13:06] Running in the heat just turns me into an animal. I don't know what else to say. You know what I mean? Just to sort of not beleaguer the point. You know what I mean? I feel more connected to the wild. And I'm out there and I'm running and I just, I see the hickory nuts on the ground. And I don't know why. I just wanted to smash one open and eat it. And I know that I've had hickory nuts in the past and they've been very bitter. I know that I should dry them first and that kind of thing. But I just did and it was good.

[00:13:37] You know, I didn't actually. The pith was so strong still that I couldn't even smash it with a rock. So I just bit the whole thing in half and ate the nut out of it. And it was good. It was delicious. So, carried on. Just looking. Just hunting. Literally. Just running the paths with my eyes wide open. Looking for mushrooms. What kind of mushrooms are popping up.

[00:14:07] Reps, PBN family. Reps. Foraging is all about reps. It really is. The more time you can spend in the woods, the more time you can see a mushroom from its inception all the way up to the time where it's gross and half eaten and overgrown. Like you see all those things, those steps time and time again. The same with plants. The same with trees. And that's what it takes. It takes reps. It takes reps. But there's so much out there waiting for you.

[00:14:35] You know, there's so much out there waiting for you. There's so many different kinds of foods out there right now waiting for you. There's things that I run by probably every single time I go run that I haven't even identified yet and one day will become food. That I take advantage of. Do you know what I mean? It never ends. It never ends. But it's a beautiful thing. And the only way to become a forager,

[00:15:03] the only way to start foraging is to get out into the woods. Do you know what I mean? There's no YouTube video that can do it for you. There's no book with pictures that can do it for you. They're all great pieces of the puzzle. But you have to get out there and do it. And this is going to be big for me today because I've never really brought chanterelle mushrooms home before. I've never felt comfortable enough with my identification that I brought mushrooms home,

[00:15:32] chanterelle mushrooms home before. I don't think I've ever really ran up on enough that I felt like I should take them either. In other words, it was a percentage of identity identifying the things, right? Like how confident am I in this? And then on top of that, it was, well, there's so few of them. Like I don't want to take them. I want them to spore out so that we have even more in the future. There's more in that park than I realized. So,

[00:16:02] PBN family, there's so much horror in the headlines. But the headlines are shit. They're not life. Do you know what I mean? Like the headlines are shit. If you go without the headlines for a full day, just for one full day, go without looking at news, without listening to politics and all that kind of shit, just live in your life for 24 hours. And at the end of that day, just go, what in the world really affects me?

[00:16:33] What is standing between me and living this amazing life? For most of us, the answer is nothing. There's no Iranian guard standing at the end of your road keeping you from going and doing what you want. There's no rioting Palestinian, pro-Palestinian group standing at your front door so that you can't leave. You know what I mean? Headline on top of headline on top of headline of things that do not affect your life whatsoever.

[00:17:05] I'll live my entire life today, do everything that I want to do today, eat the foods I want to eat, drink what I want to drink, work out when I want to work out, and so on and so forth. It's a weekend. And not one of the scary, dangerous climate change headlines, whatever the situation is, will touch me physically or affect my life at all. And I think we're forgetting that. I think we're starting to blend news with reality, paralyzing ourself a little bit.

[00:17:35] Don't fall for it. Okay? The continuity meets Monday night. Okay? If you can do two things, get the book, Poems for Men, free at Kindle, free on Kindle at Amazon.com, and then make plans. 9 p.m. Eastern, Monday night, the continuity. Okay? Be there. Chicago is under attack, and we're going to do our best to handle that.

[00:18:06] Monday night, Chicago. The continuity, folks. I'll talk to you soon.