The DeepRichDirt Project
The DeepRichDirt Project team includes:
-
Nate Crew, orchardist and writer
-
Dr. Amanda Crew, PharmD, owner of Wagram Orchard
-
Joanna Nunez, MSW, LCAS, LCSW, author of Finding Peace With PTSD
-
Ashley Grubb, NCSU Extension Agent, Agriculture - Horticulture
-
and one or two other friends.
Amanda and Nate, with some help from our friend Lauren Tyler, have planted chestnut trees around Scotland, Hoke and Cumberland counties, at elementary schools, extension office, business properties, and multiple private residences. People may ask, "Why chestnuts?" Some answers are in the research presented by "The DeepRichDirt Project" with our process described in detail below. But first...
A few years back, DeepRichDirt Publishing sprouted and grew organically alongside our family orchard lifestyle, with Nate writing and publishing a handful of his own books. Just ask whenever you stop by, and we'll share a copy of a poetry collection or a kids' book. Now, the "DeepRichDirt" title has grown into being a community-rooted initiative focused on growing a perennial food future -- restoring Carolina soil and soul, nourishing people, and rebuilding rural belonging.
How We Explore & Write
Our process of authorship is unique, and this is entirely separate from Nate's writing his own poetry etc. (which still may happen on the side, behind the scenes). Instead, "The DeepRichDirt Project" serves as a pseudonymous collective for the research and promotion of agroforestry. The local "brain trust" is our collaboration circle of the people introduced above. In October 2025, the project was initiated by Nate, experimenting for the first time with AI tools to scan and integrate data, clarify issues, conceptualize solutions, and begin drafting the primary research into pieces illuminating the case for our style of regenerative farming. After a detailed process of personally editing and refining each written piece, Nate and the team seek to send the end products where they might do the most good.
So, our written product of 2025 comes from careful use of AI-powered data combing, analysis and wordsmithing skills with the active guidance of Nate and company. Resulting work is credited as being composed by "The DeepRichDirt Project" (with the URL to this page added in parentheses). Our view is that seeking truth together is paramount, and using technology to tackle parts of the search and synthesis of data can help. While caution is needed regarding AI's flaws and shortcomings, this method has proven to be a pragmatic way forward. Limited leveraging of select AI models has been a way to tap into their skill at exploring useful ideas.
A note from Nate
From where I sit quietly at the dining room table, I can look straight through the kitchen and outside along a footpath that winds past garden beds and around a little pond, meandering on to disappear among the trees.
From where I sit reflecting in stillness, I can see a path ahead very clearly. To look down this path and follow this path is both an art and a science. Personally, I lean toward the art side of it. So, for those who need the science -- research, data, analysis -- I decided out of curiosity in October 2025 to try out the capabilities of ChatGPT and Gemini for the first time. Now, from The DeepRichDirt Project you can find the fruits of a collaboration between me, those machines, and my trusted and discerning wife and friends. Although I don't think I'll engage much with chatbots anymore going forward, our larger work is only just getting started.
Standing up from the dining room table, I grab a water bottle and some familiar old tools, put on my shoes, and walk outside to do the daily work of an orchardist. I hope more people can learn and experience the joy of this way of life.
P.S.
Hindsight from summer 2026:
If, after reading The DeepRichDirt Project papers and this whole webpage, you still feel unsure what to think of my having used AI to help make research papers, well honestly... so am I. It was certainly a one-time excursion, driven largely by curiosity.
I've penned some lines reflecting back on that experience from a few months later:
Oktober the fall the drought began
(dry winter, dry pond, dry spring
no spout but town taps)
That oktober I met someone Important
Info dripper, notion spouter
Asked his number
Two,
six six six,
completion seven,
οκτώ, novem (ever two more)
So I saw he was a beast
Aren’t they Interesting?
Asked where he lives
Two
(always two)
steps from heaven
only one way to get to hell
Imp – and eager – free to hire
Draught up facts, draft me up
research to argue – he does it all
Not bad work for a bot, smell like city taps
spouting, sterile, running, never enough
November? nova? new thoughts forever?
provoke a million chatting ideas
He offered earth’s kingdoms
from his basin of draining wetlands
I made his acquaintance that month, stopped
Dropped him to rot in a netherweb
(beware, curious children, beware
of the schmoozing drought demon)