Episode Details

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What if everything your garden needs is already sitting in your kitchen?

In this episode, Corey and Christine welcome back Sophie Eng, author of The Nourishing Asian Kitchen and the forthcoming The Nourishing Asian Homestead. The daughter of Vietnamese refugees, Sophie grew up beside her grandfather's garden, learning to ferment, compost, and work with the land long before she knew it had a name. She and her husband Tim traded Silicon Valley for six acres in California and now homestead on 40 acres off the side of a mountain in East Tennessee, where they're raising their two daughters in the traditions their family carried across an ocean.

Together, they dig into Korean Natural Farming (KNF), the centuries-old Asian approach Sophie and her whole family got certified in, built on one deceptively simple idea: feed the soil, not the plant. Sophie shares how she turns rice rinse water, leftover milk, fish scraps, and fast-growing weeds like kudzu into free, truly organic fertilizers, the same "liquid gold" her grandfather made on a tiny scale in Vietnam. The conversation gets honest about food freedom in a fragile supply chain, why a single ton of fertilizer nearly doubled in price overnight, how community is the missing half of self-sufficiency, and the real challenge of raising grounded kids in a Doritos-and-Monster world.

✨ Topics Covered in This Episode:

✔️ What Korean Natural Farming (KNF) is and how it differs from regenerative agriculture

✔️ The core principle: healthy soil grows healthy plants, animals, and people

✔️ How to make free fertilizer from rice rinse water you'd normally pour down the drain

✔️ Lactic acid bacteria (LAB): one ferment for your gut, garden, coop, and laundry

✔️ Fermented plant juice and fish amino acids, and why kudzu is perfect for it

✔️ Indigenous microorganisms (IMO 1 through 5) and collecting wild soil microbes

✔️ Why grocery-store produce isn't as nutrient-dense as it used to be

✔️ Food freedom and breaking free from imported, supply-chain-dependent inputs

✔️ Trading milk, butter, and yogurt for hay and honey instead of cash

✔️ Simple starting points: bone broth, one daily ferment, and stretching protein with soup

✔️ Raising mature, grounded kids who choose real food over fitting in

📚 Resources & Links Mentioned:

📍 Sprinkle With Soil (Sophie's family blog) – https://sprinklewithsoil.com

📍 Pre-order The Nourishing Asian Homestead & shop The Nourishing Asian Kitchen – https://sprinklewithsoil.com

📍 Joy and Jolie (her daughters' organic pho spice mixes) – https://joyandjolie.com

📍 Call to Farms Podcast – https://calltofarms.com

📍 The Homesteading Agent (find & fund your homestead) – https://thehomesteadingagent.com

📍 Sophie on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/sprinklewithsoil/

📍 Join our Patreon Community – https://patreon.com/modernancestralmamas

📍 NEW Website – https://www.modernancestralmamas.com

📍 Earthley – https://www.earthley.com (code: ancestral10 for 10% off)

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