(music) Hey guys. So here we are, we've just collected our IMO 1 and we're gonna make it into IMO 2. So IMO 1 is the rice and the bloom in the forest. IMO 2 is the stage where we take this bloom and we put it into "cryo-freeze" where we cause it to go dormant through the osmotic pressure of sugar. Basically we put dry stuff with wet stuff and the dry stuff pulls all the water and causes the microbial bodies to run out of available water. And so they sporulate all of them, or most of them, and we get them in a dormant state about one generation removed from the wild forest. So we can talk more about that. As I start to do All About videos, I'll explain some of the science and technical details of these. But right now I just want to show you how to take your culture: what you collected out of the forest and put it "on ice" so to speak, or cause it to be shelf-stable so you can use it for farming. Alright, so we got our collection. It's a good collection, but as you saw in some of the pictures, not a perfect collection. But that's alright. I want to show you that there's some leeway in here. And we want to always make a great collection but if we only have what we have then we got to use that. Right? Well I use about five different collections all of them which came out really well. And I use a little of each of those in my IMO 3. So if you get a collection and you're not sure if it's good. Save it, send me a picture. I want to see failure. Okay? So if you find a way to contact me, or on Facebook, or something and you show me failure. I will respond and we'll talk about it. So that's a commitment. Hopefully I'm still alive by the time you're viewing this and we can talk about it. But failure is great because failure is going to teach you all kinds of good things. Alright so if you're going to store it in a small container, sometimes it's easier to mix it in a large container. So first thing we're going to do is get a larger container for mixing. Throw it on here. And on my scale right here I'm going to zero it out so that I don't have to figure out exactly where I was at the last when the scale went on. So now I'm at zero and all the rice I put in will give me a weight. So let's.... I'm gonna take some of the best parts of this culture and I may leave some of the non, kind of, inoculated or not visibly inoculated rice behind. Just because, you know, smaller amount only use some of the best of it. But what did get covered turned out really well So this is a batch full of good biology. Just the whole box didn't fill up. And there was a bit of sunlight. It was really hot and dry. So there could have been a lot of factors. When I say sunlight, there was a little bit of sunlight maybe hitting the box and kind of threw some leaves and what not and that might have kind of slowed down, that UV getting through. A little UV getting through the paper towel might have slowed down growth. So some things to think about as you place your collection. Direct sunlight isn't the best for this. It isn't good at all. Again, I'm getting the most visible spider webby or rice that was kind of mushed together and held together like a cake by things I could see kind of growing. I'll clean up the mess in a second here. Alright I've grabbed out everything I want to use from that collection and I have it in a box here. Now, I did that because the collection went really well on some parts and some parts didn't really get inoculated. Now if a rat gets in there and bites it and it starts to rot or a bunch of water gets in there and it starts to stink. You don't want to try and grab bits and pieces of that collection It's different and won't work for you. So talking to you about the different things that can go on - I can't interact with every possibility you have. If you have all one color like bright green, you might want to stay away from that collection or use it as one little bit that you put in with other real good collections. If it's really dark black is probably going to smell. If it's light gray or darkish gray that might be fine. Because what white spider-webby stuff, this beneficial biology, will do is it'll bloom up and then if you catch it like at the end of the day - you want to often get it at the beginning of the day- if you catch it at the end of the day, that bloom will go up and then settle back down and as all those different spiderwebs overlay each other it looks kind of dark grey. But that doesn't mean it didn't look really white when it was all puffed up. It might be that you were a little late or just got a really hot day that caused it all kinda deflate. So here we are. We've got - this red is my pound measurement- so I got about a pound and and maybe three-quarters. Almost two pounds. So what we want to do is add sugar to where it is almost to 4 pounds which would be right over here. I'm going to use the scoop. A tiny bit more sugar and we'll call that good. Alright we have just under 4 pounds in there. Now I'm going to take it off my scale. And I'm gonna massage it. I'm not smashing it. This is living stuff and it is somewhat delicate. So it's just a light movement massage with my material. I'm kind of pushing the clumps so that they kind of lose their shape. I'm not smashing them as hard as I can, I'm just kind of trying to evenly distribute the sugar to the rice. Alright while I'm doing this I'm going to talk about some frequently asked questions or misunderstandings with this. Why do I use brown sugar? What good is that? Can I just use molasses? You know that's better food. This is really important and often not understood. We're not using brown sugar as a food. Can some microbes use little bit of this and will they use it as food? Sure, and especially when we put it on water, some of the remaining brown sugar will be used as food but we use brown sugar because it has an osmotic pressure I'm going to get nerdy and science with you. So the sugar molecule is capable of bonding with water molecule. And so in a chemical reaction with the water molecules in this material also pulling even the water molecules in the body of some of these organisms. The sugar traps all the available water in this in a chemical bond. And so now all the microbes that need water to do other processes have no water in their environment. We've just artificially put them into a desert. They all go dormant or makes spores sporulate and your bacteria and your yeast and fungi and they will just hang out there waiting for the reintroduction of water and food. And so what we have now is this really cool culture of biology kind of one generation removed so to speak, from the forest. So if I were to pour molasses in with these microbes I'd basically just be multiplying like a certain kind of narrow group of bacteria and yeast. You know if you if you took that stuff straight from the rice and put it with stuff and water and food, yeah, you can grow out some things. What we're trying to do is get it to go dormant so that we can take a tablespoon every time we want to make something and inoculate our material, cause it to wake up in water and we have this shelf-stable biology just sitting waiting for us to use it. We don't have to run out to the forest every time we want to make something for our farm. Not that we don't like going into the forest but sometimes if making this stuff causes you not to grow food you're probably - not really fun Alright so I've continued moving it. I'm not smashing it. Now all of a sudden the material feels all wet. It's getting this kind of wet feeling here. And as we do this and the material gets wet, we're pretty much done. What we've done now is kind of evenly distributed the sugar and rice and now our material will be in a dormant state for use in the future. So I have a nice clean container. It's a little bit smaller and I'm going to transfer this. Ok so it's all mixed. We got equal weights brown sugar and rice in there and now we're ready to clean it. We want to make sure that we get the whole outside all nice and clean so that we don't have critters trying to chew through our paper towel or whatever paper or breathable covering you're using. So we just want to get this top edge and the outside. We don't have to get the inside because that's going to be protected by a breathable lid. So I use a little bit of vinegar. In natural farming if you want to use the kind of a cheaper white vinegar for cleaning, I recommend that. Just so you don't have to spend money on your good brown rice vinegar or your homemade vinegar for cleaning. All right now we got the stickiness off. I want to go ahead and give it a lid. Now, the only thing you can't do, or you really want to make sure you don't do.... with IMO 1 is use too little sugar. For example let's just say here I used too little sugar It's pretty wet. See how sloppy it is when I move it back and forth? Moving pretty well there. That's a lot of moisture so much that I'm worried that there's too much moisture and it might start to eat that brown sugar instead of being kind of inhibited by that brown sugar. So what you can do is you can mix in more brown sugar or you can add a tiny bit of brown sugar to the top. So if I'm worried that this is going to go off because it seems so wet, let's put a tiny more brown sugar on the top there and then I'll check it tomorrow. Or you can massage it in. If that feels better. Again this is just to use up more of that available water to bond with the sugar. It makes less available to microbes and puts us in a much better spot. If this starts to bubble and goes off you lost your quality. It still might be usable for something but don't rely on that as your main IMO 2. I'm gonna wash my hands then I'm going to put this breathable lid on. Alright I'm back. My hands are nice and clean. I'm going to shape my lid a little bit. I've got my rubber band and put my paper towel cover on. If you have rice paper that's good. Butcher paper is not very breathable but could still work. There you go. Breathable lid IMO 2. Make sure you label this and date it, otherwise you will be wondering in a little bit what that is. So IMO 2 ready to go. To use this check out IMO 3, How to IMO 3. You will see that you just use a tiny bit to inoculate your pile. Show me what you do. Get ahold of me or find another natural farmer and check your work. I will reward your failure. I think it's a great teacher so keep up the good work Keep natural farming. Thanks for watching How to- IMO 2 Alright see you later. Hey guys since you finished IMO 2. Make sure to clean out your box. There will be bits of wet material and goop in there where your fungi grew and went up the sides. Wash it out, maybe give it a vinegar scrub. Just get everything nice and cleaned out of there so this doesn't degrade faster than you need it to. I'll show you how to build your cedar box. It has nice gaps in the bottom and that's to allow airflow and microbial activity coming up through the bottom of the box. How big you make it doesn't matter too much but if you know how to build things this is enough to show you. It's a basic box with a floor and some gaps. So I'll do a video on how to make this but make sure to take care of your box so you only have to make it once. Aright guys, talk to you later.
