HOW TO KNF STEPS 1-9

How to KNF Steps 1-9

HOW TO KNF STEPS 1-9

This series of articles on How to Start KNF is not meant to give you recipes. It’s meant to teach you how to cook. So far, we have covered the basics on how to start practicing KNF. This is a quick review of the basics before we cover more advanced concepts.

LEVEL ONE: PREPARATION (Steps 1-3)

Level one of How to Start KNF focuses on setting up the systems. It’s about setting goals, learning skills, and starting things that take time to be ready for use.

Step 1. Collect IMO (Indigenous Micro-Organism)

IMO is the foundation of the soil, and the foundation of KNF. The other steps will not work without it. This first step is the priority: collecting a culture of soil biology, as a complete and balanced ecosystem, from healthy local soil.

Start with the preparation. Select collection sites that will best fit your needs. Gather and prepare materials for collection. Understand what is important to this process and why. Then collect an IMO culture. The goal of this step is to collect a single quality culture of IMO and stabilize it for storage.

Step 2. Time Dependent Inputs

We need tools to practice KNF. Some of them take a while to be ready for use, so we make the ones that take the longest right away. The goal of this step is to get everything you need for KNF systems as quickly as possible.

There are three inputs that are time-dependent:

1. Brown Rice Vinegar (BRV) or Banana Vinegar (BV)

2. Oriental Herbal Nutrient (OHN)

3. Fish Amino Acids (FAA)

BRV or BV is used as an ionic buffer and is needed (not optional) in almost every formula. It can take as long as 6 months to make a proper vinegar. The ionizing properties of vinegar made of Brown Rice or Banana are specific and should not be substituted.

OHN is a tonic that supports plant and animal health and balances immune systems. OHN is made from 5 ingredients in a two-step process, and takes about 13 weeks to finish. It is a specific recipe that is in almost every formula, either as the full recipe or in part. Use the ingredients that you have access to and don’t make substitutions.

FAA is like traditional fermented fish sauce, only made with sugar rather than salt, which would kill plants. It is used whenever plants are weak and need strength, and given to animals (and people) when they need protein and nutrition. It takes 6 months to a year to be ready to use.

 Step 3. Observation and Strategy

How does a first-time parent know when their baby is hungry or tired? While they can read about it and ask other parents, the only way they really know is by paying attention to their own baby.

It soon becomes obvious that the baby will have a certain behavior when hungry, a distinct cry when the diaper needs to be changed, and a certain fussiness when tired and in need of sleep.

Growing food is the same way. You need to pay attention, try things, and then notice whether things got better, worse, or didn’t change at all.

Modern methods are prescriptive, but Natural Farming of any kind (mimicking Nature to grow food) requires observation. This is perhaps the part of Natural Farming that feels the hardest, but like first-time parents, you only need to pay attention.

What this step actually is

• Intentional observation

• Establishing a habit of recording conditions and responses (Field Log)

• Creating a feedback record so that patterns can be recognized later

Make logging daily rainfall and weather a habit. Record what your crops and animals are doing, and what makes them change, when you see the first flower or fruit. Write down what happens in a hard rain, etc. Note activities of wildlife, like migrating birds. The birds can indicate an early or late winter, for example.

Plan and design what you want on your property going forward. Decide what you want and where you think it should be. Permaculture is a great tool for designing your space.

This is not paperwork, compliance, or data for its own sake. This is about learning the land over time. Observation notes become patterns. Patterns tell you what will work and what won’t, what weather signals mean, and when the seasons are about to change.

LEVEL TWO: FOUNDATIONAL GROUNDWORK (Steps 4-6)

Level Two is about getting systems in place, installing, and building. Nature can run perfectly without intervention, and that’s what we want to establish on the land, but we need some infrastructure in place to protect crops and livestock.

For example, in Level One, you decide what animal you want to start with and where. In Level Two, you build the infrastructure to house your first animal.

Caution: Start slow. Add only one animal type at a time and start with a small number. It is always good to have at least two animals of the same species together, but start small, learn to care for them properly, and then expand. You may end up changing your mind.

Step 4. Install Soil Foundation

Cultivate the IMO-2 into IMO-4 or 5. Install IMO into the planting soil. Add mulch for organic matter. You may be happy with a single application. It will work fine.

Reapply once or twice a year for the first three years if you want to increase diversity, but remember that diversity for its own sake is just chaos.

Focus on adding collections that add value, such as collecting from the sunny side of the mountain in the summer and the shady side in the winter, to enhance microbes’ ability to withstand weather extremes. Random collections for the sake of “diversity” just make more work, which can cause you to want to quit.

Directing your focus is an effective use of labor and materials (time and money). Collecting for the sake of diversity is not. If you only collect once and install a soil foundation with a single collection, that is enough to be very successful in KNF. Again, once has been demonstrated to be enough.

If you struggle to make IMO, install a high concentration of soil microbes into your soil in other ways, such as adding composted leaf mold directly. The goal of this step is to:

• Get high concentrations of a soil biology ecosystem living in your soil in a stable state.

• Install a complete ecosystem from healthy local soil.

• Increase the amount of organic matter in the soil to allow the soil biology to thrive.

Avoid using liquid IMO. Water will change the ecosystem of the collected culture. The organisms that critically need oxygen will be the first to die, yet they are among the most critical. We want the ecology to be as intact and close to “wild” as possible.

 Furthermore, in liquid form, the microbes will be added without any sense of community or housing, unlike IMO 4-5, which is in chunks and crumbles, which provides housing for the microbes. This feature is enhanced with the addition of biochar.

Master Cho developed IMO Technology to be efficient. Using IMO4-5 is best practice. This is the most important step in getting KNF to work. The Soil Foundation is fundamental. It is the majority of what growing systems need. Farmers and gardeners have had greater success when they do only this step and nothing else.

Step 5. Seed & Genetic Groundwork

Resiliency and vitality are set in motion for the life of an organism by its starting conditions. When growing your own seeds, grow the seed crop in the least productive areas of your land, and choose the best seeds that thrive there. They will be the strongest for your conditions. This matches the concept of natural selection.

Seed soaking solution helps overcome the lack of life force in lower-quality and purchased seeds.

When transplanting, stress the plants first and then soak them in the same seed soaking solution. Plant into soil that is as intact as possible. Soft fertilized soil leads to “Till and Fertilizer Disease.”

Likewise, give animals a chance to reach their genetic potential. Chickens, for example, should be given hard-to-digest food when developing. Chicks raised on commercial feed will have intestines that are only half as long as they should be.

This resilience comes from genes that don’t get activated when given easily digestible food. Hardy food not only gives them the advantage of better digestion and the ability to consume any feed, but also improves their health, such that pests and disease are almost eliminated.

Step 6. Create Functional Ecological Systems

We want to keep as much as possible on the land and bring in as little as possible. Think of the iconic recycling logo. That is essentially what we want to do.

The common way to do this is composting. Composting is labor intensive and inconsistent. It is an artificial construct of a natural process. In Nature, this process occurs through the interplay among animals, large and small, plants, and microbes. It happens in place, on the soil.

The best way is with animal integration. This can include grazing animals, or chickens and pigs (quintessential homesteading animals), or even worms and black soldier flies. Create systems for animals that include an Inoculated Deep Litter System (IDLS) that uses IMO as the inoculant.

Build in ways that keep waste on the land: water, soil, manure, urine, and organic matter. Plant crops that will provide all your animal feed and input materials. Your land should be able to support your animals. This is not as hard as you think.

LEVEL THREE: SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT (Steps 7-9)

In Level Three, we switch from building systems to management.

Step 7. Biochemical Signaling Technology (BST)

Once the Soil Foundation is established and plants can use soil biology to obtain their own nutrition on demand, growth is directed and enhanced through foliar feeds of highly dilute inputs. Fermented Plant Juices (FPJ) are the active ingredients of the formulas, containing hormones, enzymes, and cofactors that direct plant growth.

Step 8. Formulas, Patterns & Vital Forces

Formulas follow the Nutritive Cycle, which is the life cycle of plants. These inputs can also be used with animals.

Careful observation (rather than prescriptive nutrient schedules) tells the farmer when something is needed and how well interactions work. With observation, patterns of growth are used to increase success.

Cultivation and harvesting activities can be better timed when weather, seasonal, and lunar changes are observed and understood.

Animals are kept, and crops are cultivated to ensure the Vital Forces (air and wind, water and moisture, sunlight and heat) are balanced. The physical comfort of plants and animals ensures they are healthy and happy, leading to better yields, taste, and quality.

Step 9. Mineral Balancing

Seawater contains balanced concentrations of all minerals found on Earth, in solution. Life on Earth is based on seawater. It is used in dilute amounts to ensure that crops and animals have access to any minerals they may need.

Other mineral inputs can be applied during specific stages of the Nutritive Cycle to support that stage of growth. True mineral deficiencies can also be addressed with mineral inputs made with materials found on or near the farm.

LEVEL FOUR: SYSTEM MASTERY AND COMMUNITY (Steps 10-12)

This is what to expect in the coming articles in this series:

10. Routines & Rituals: Managing the ecology with minimal labor and cost.11. The Master’s Toolkit: Advanced inputs and skills for specific challenges.12. The Human Element: People and health as part of the Natural Farming system.