Evan Folds

The Teachings of Rudolf Steiner

Evan started a retail garden center called Progressive Gardens in 2002 that specialized in hydroponic and beyond organic gardening techniques, including composting, aquaponics, urban farming, compost tea, organic lawn care, and so much more.

For over fourteen years Evan honed his craft and learned the art of teaching and connecting with an audience on the subjects of gardening and health. During this time he founded and operated a commercial wheatgrass and microgreen growing business serving the local health food and restaurant community. It was through this experience that he began to intimately understand the value of life force in food, and the powerful influence living foods can have on people.

One of the original inspirations for Evan’s work is from the preface to The Agriculture Course lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in 1924. When Steiner was asked why despite his constant stimulus people’s inner guidance and spiritual impulse was so weak, his thought provoking and surprising answer was as follows:

“This is a problem of nutrition. Nutrition as it is to-day does not supply the strength necessary for manifesting the spirit in physical life. A bridge can no longer be built from thinking to will and action. Food plants no longer contain the forces people need for this.”

A serial entrepreneur, Evan founded and operated an organic lawn care company called A Natural Approach for over three years that specialized in growing and regenerating soil using compost tea and base saturation soil testing.

Out of this project he developed a local project called Food Lawns that focused on developing an economic model for the coordination of neighborhoods to produce food on lawns and vacant residential landscapes.

Through his experimentation with compost tea Evan pioneered the development of vortex-style compost tea brewing to deliver living microbes to the general public. He founded and operated a wholesale/distribution company Progressive Farms that manufactured the Microbe Maker compost tea system, then developed a Dealer network of hundreds of garden centers around the United States that used the “perpetual compost tea brewing” pioneered in Progressive Gardens.

In addition to product development and manufacturing, Progressive Farms operated a fourteen acre market vegetable farm with a community supported agriculture (CSA) program that fed over seventy families in cooperation with a local residential housing development. It was here that Evan learned the challenges and rewards of food farming on a community level.

With the creation of Be Agriculture in January 2018, Evan brought all of his experience into focus with the goal of creating a regional regenerative agriculture system in Southeastern North Carolina, and connecting this effort to the growing awareness of the power of regenerative agriculture. 

He now carries this out through a variety of projects on the local and national level, including Project Manager for the Northside Food Co-op, Co-Chair of the Eagles Island Central Park Task Force, Policy Director for the Feast Down East Learning Farm, Advisor to Kiss the Ground, and a consultant for many different regenerative agriculture projects around the world. 

Evan is active in performing lectures and workshops for gardening and farming groups, and is a contributing published writer for many reputable international gardening publications including Garden Culture Magazine, the Biodynamic Association, Hobby Farms, Maximum Yield, and more.

Evan feels he is on assignment to generate regional regenerative agricultural systems.

We are disconnected from what nourishes us.

Eating is an agricultural act.  We are all part of the agricultural system.

Consults with backyard gardeners to acreage farmers to activated water company to cooperative grocery projects.

Rudolf Steiner said people aren’t nourished enough to show up for themselves.

What does regenerative farming mean?

Growing soil capacity, not just plants.

The federal government doesn’t subsidize regenerative farms.  Versus subsidies for corporations.

Not realistic for everyone to own their own land and grow their own food.

Open sourcing is the future.  Regenerate more and achieve a higher profit.

Are the decision makers capable of making different decisions?  Preemption rules prevent people from making decisions for themselves.  But our hands are never really tied.

Is the HEB grocery store model of some organic offerings sustainable?  Organic standard is cleaner, but it’s not enough.  Ask what is the nutrient value of the food.

Organic certification tells you what shouldn’t be used, but is not a metric of whether a food is better.

Anthroposophy says we are not separate from anything.  Luciferic energy vs. Christ consciousness. 

How to juice up the soil?

Start a compost pile;   Exponentially adds microorganisms.  Compost is the gut of the plantscape. 

Trees don’t eat the fallen leaves, they eat what the microbes make out of the leaves.

Commercial compost is more like mulch.  Doesn’t have the microorganisms.

1 ounce of wheatgrass is equivalent to 2.5 lbs of vegetables.  Potency plus immediacy of digestion is magical.

Jason wonders if we can buy foods online that are nutrient dense and worth paying for.

Microgreens and sprouts are the most nutrient dense foods, plus they have lifeforce in them.

Consider BioSuperfoods, sold through ORN.

Any benefit to animal foods?  Meat is not a negative thing.  Need animals to provide optimum fertility.

We are all different and at different points in our path.

Planting a food coop in Wilmington, NC, a food desert for over 35 years.  Now using food to bring people together.  This city had the only successful coup in the US in 1898, a riot and insurrection carried out by white supremacists.