Today we’d like to introduce you to Joel Karsten.
Hi Joel, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I was born and raised on a crop and dairy farm in SW Minnesota. Graduated from the University of MN about 30 years ago with a BS in Horticulture. Pioneered the STRAW BALE GARDENS® method 30 years ago, shortly after leaving college. I purchased a home and wanted to start a vegetable garden when I discovered the property had literally 1″ of topsoil and construction fill underneath that. Having no money for raised beds, I remembered how the old broken bales of straw or hay that had been discarded with broken stings against the barn on the farm years ago, would break down nicely and grow very health-looking thistles and other weeds. I contemplated using the bales on purpose as a growing medium and started experimenting with the best methods to make that work. I gardened that way for 14 years with little fanfare until one day, a television reporter did a story about my unique methods. It blew up quickly and with the advent of social media, the concept spread worldwide quickly. This led to publishing five books, and doing hundreds of interviews, articles, podcasts, and more than 1,200 speaking engagements and presentations over the past 16 years, including a TEDx talk and many international development projects. With more than a million gardeners in 62 countries that we know of, the popularity of the STRAW BALE GARDENS® method has blossomed. Our objective and future mission is to continue to spread the method to the corners of the world where hunger and food insecurity continue to persist. We believe that we can teach people how to use our methods, requiring zero outside resources and zero capital investment, to grow food for local delivery and community provision. Solving the problem of hunger and food insecurity around the world is a very lofty goal, we understand that. It is our first objective to help people around the world understand how the solution can be provided by empowering the people themselves and how this is the only ultimate solution that will work permanently to resolve the problem of world hunger.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
30 years since the first experimental trials of the STRAW BALE GARDENS® method, and here we are. We have now published five books, and hundreds of videos, five websites, an online garden club membership website, and we have made a million costly mistakes every step of the way, but we are still here and still growing every day. The entire Straw Bale Gardens concept has been on a shoestring budget, without sponsorship through brands or any other outside funding, but only through sales of books and our new BaleBuster® product. The biggest struggles have been financial, but of course, with a huge online profile, we have fought a number of unexpected battles with outside parties who have attempted to take advantage of the audience, followers and fans that we have developed. It has become a common fraud on Amazon for unscrupulous “authors” usually from the far corners of earth, to take current non-fiction books like ours that are popular on Amazon, and simply read them and then rewrite them with minimal changes, adding pictures they steal online, and they keep the same title as the original stolen work. This allows the unscrupulous author to sell digital versions of “their” books, which are not EXACTLY copyright infringements, but are intellectual rip-offs, and sell them for less to uninformed book buyers who are simply seeking information at the lowest price possible. This theft of intellectual property slips through the system because the digital books are sold online, hard to stop, impossible to track to a specific person, and if caught, they simply change names and relist the same knockoff books for sale. Publishers have become less important because so many books are now in digital format that printing and distribution of physical books is old technology in many ways. The inability to control these unscrupulous “authors” will lead to fewer books being written. Who will take the time to research and publish new ideas if those ideas are immediately stolen and monetized by others just days after a book is offered for sale? This has not only been our biggest hurdle, but will become a very big problem for all non-fiction authors as the problem is quickly growing in all corners of the world.
In addition to the unscrupulous authors, we have a few anti-Straw Bale Gardening advertisers, who take advantage of the high level of interest in the topic, and the way people find information in the modern world by “googling it”. If a website that makes a profit from advertisers based on how many clicks the website receives, the website’s interest is in getting clicks, and they are not interested in the content they offer being accurate or reliable, but actually just the opposite, they want content to be inflammatory and controversial. For this reason, websites will pick a popular topic that a large number of people are searching on Google, and they create an “anti” website. When people search for “how to grow a straw bale garden?” the results include a few websites that offer instead “why growing a straw bale garden can be harmful?” When an unsuspecting person clicks the link to satisfy their own human nature and to find out why this could be harmful, the website gets paid. The website publishes a bunch of nonsense and hysterical inaccurate information, with many links and multiple page clicks required to read the information. These clicks rack up advertising money for the website, but in so doing, spread false information about the topic. Other common headlines will be things like “why can low carb diets lead to severe health decline or death?” or “how drinking coffee can cause severe headaches or death?” This is a consequence of the modern internet and how advertisers pay for exposure, and it has become very detrimental to the good websites that rely on the internet and search engines to drive traffic.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
StrawBaleGardenClub.com is our main website where we have a membership option, as well as resources such as our books and BALEBUSTER® for sale, and hundreds of free-to-watch videos and blog articles, and a forum where people can ask questions or post images of their gardens to share with others. The club website is our main website or headquarters for Straw Bale Gardening worldwide. While our Facebook and Instagram accounts help to disseminate information and drive new interest in the method. While we offer lots of information to the world via our social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter, our goal is always to drive people to our website in order to fully expose them to the resources we provide for free, and additional products which can be purchased. BALEBUSTER® is our proprietary formula developed to prepare bales before the planting process begins in the spring. This product is the only one that exists which is specifically designed for this purpose, and it is a simple all-in-one product that is easy to apply and water in. Two weeks after the BALEBUSTER® formula is applied the bales will be ready to plant with vegetable seeds or transplants. BALEBUSTER® can also be purchased in a starter package which includes the book “STRAW BALE GARDENS COMPLETE”, the best-selling book about the STRAW BALE GARDENS® method.
Membership in the Straw Bale Garden Club is available for FREE, which is our “sprout” level, or at $11.99/year for the “seedling” membership, $39.99 for “blossom” level membership or “harvest” level membership for $99 per year. Each increasing level gets the member additional discounts, benefits and access to more resources to help them be successful with their Straw Bale Garden. The support received from our members is used toward producing videos, some of which are being shot for an international project with multiple language translations in a video series that will be made available in third-world countries for audiences to quickly adopt the methods we have developed.
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
I am an avid college football fan, and I specifically love to watch the University of Minnesota and the University of Texas, both of which are alma matter in our household. I enjoy traveling and have been to 24 countries and 45 of the states here at home. I have a couple of dogs that love to help in the Straw Bale Garden, Aspen is our oldest golden retriever and Tucker is the youngest. My wife Patty loves to beat me at golf, so I usually let her win and that way, it keeps both of us happy.
Pricing:
- BALEBUSTER4 (preps 4 bales)- $11.99
- Straw Bale Gardens Complete book – $24.99
- Blossom level membership $39.99/year
- Seedling level membership $11.99/year
- Harvest level membership $99.99/year
Contact Info:
- Website: www.StrawBaleGardenClub.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/strawbalegardenclub/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/learntogrowastrawbalegarden
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/StrawBaleGarden
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwS94_ID0y3a_wfeSTKEXuQ
Image Credits
Joel Karsten – StrawBaleGardenClub.com
