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Behind My Decision To Go All Organic

There was just too much 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid-Polyethoxylated tallow amine.

Author

James Cave
May 24, 2025

In partnership with

I don’t know if you saw the media release about my big announcement, but I wanted to take this moment to explain why I’ve decided to make The Jiffy 100% organic.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about this (understandably), so I’ll try to explain:

When I set out to launch an Instagram Feed named “Jamescave,” there was no way for me to know that it would quickly become a newsletter, then a podcast version of the newsletter, then a website version of the podcast of the newsletter of the Instagram Feed.

It was head-spinning and it happened fast. The Instagram Feed started to blur into wilderness, then the podcast surrendered itself to the weeds. Finally, the newsletter yielded to chaos. Short of paving over this garden, I took the easy way out and applied as much 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid-Polyethoxylated tallow amine that I could find.

But no matter which formulations, additives, and synergistic combinations I tried, the content just kept coming.

Thankfully, amidst all of this, I’ve also been spending time at MX Morningstar – a certified-organic farm – in Claverack, learning from the team about a better way.

The first picking of the season: French breakfast radishes!

It became clear to me that I needed to rethink my content’s organic structure across all of James Cave Omniblog Media: my podcast, newsletter, website, Instagram Feed, and now TikTok channel.

I’m sharing everything I’m learning as part of this journey to transition to a fully organic influencer in my new series, “CSA: A Content Series on Agriculture.”

The MX Morningstar team seems to think that CSA also stands for Community Supported Agriculture, so I guess we’ll also be looking at their CSA program, too.

In case you missed it, we’ve currently posted the first three episodes:

So far, we’ve learned where to find the North Field, how to battle rapidly-multiplying aphids using an army of parasitic wasps, and how to successfully plant 4,320 cabbages in a matter of minutes!! Isn’t that something?

We’ve got a lot of new episodes to come — including: Tractors! Potatoes! Farm dogs! Hand-painted signs! And more. In other news:

The Jiffy-Mart is coming, here’s a quick update: The shelves are installed and the refrigerator’s running. But I’m still shopping around for the right giant ribbon-cutting scissors. In the meantime, I thought I’d share a sneak preview behind the doors just for you, newsletter reader.

An architectural rendering of the Jiffy-Mart, the convenience store of the James Cave Instagram Feed

The Jiffy-Mart will soon be the hub for all premium content, so if you’re a premium subscriber, I’ll send a note to you in the coming days about what to expect. This will also be the place for all Jiffy-related commerce, such as the Début Bookmarks Collection or the Jiffy Was Right* Tote Bag. You’ll be the first to know when it’s officially open!

Some of the Premium Contents that will be in the Paid Tiers:

  • Your name engraved on the Support Wall

  • Potential podcast episode addressed to you and only you

  • Premium-only newsletter that’s more intimate

  • Founding Friends Grab Bag Of Goods

  • Access to the quarterly digital J: Magazine The Style Magazine Of The James Cave Instagram Feed (coming soon)

  • Audio Exclusives from The Jiffy Audio Newsletter Podcast

  • Jiffy Jaunts and other digital downloads

  • BTS dispatches

  • Quarterly investor briefs

  • The Jiffy Beta Club To Try New Things

  • Supreme Secrets

In the Member Lounge, I’ll also share some recent things (behind the scenes, personal) that have me thinking from time to time, such as these:

  • Roxane Gay provided us all with an annotated look at her syllabus, which has introduced me to the next book I’m reading: “Telling True Stories”! I’m excited.

  • I’m currently charting a Field Guide To The Many Chathams — what should I mention?? Email me and let me know.

  • It sure has been raining A LOT. So in the spirit of Mud Season, I wanted to share this passage from John McPhee about some mud that I’m truly glad I haven’t come across here in upstate New York: bentonite ☠️

On bentonite, from “Annals of the Former World,” by John McPhee:

Much of Wyoming's bentonite is Cretaceous in age and consistent in composition. [...] This Mowry shale had been organic mud of the Cretaceous seafloor, wherein the oil of the Frontier could have formed. It was a shale so black it all but smelled of low tide. In it, like mica, were millions of fish scales. It was interlayered with bentonite, which is a rock so soft it is actually plastic—pliable and porous, color of cream, sometimes the color of chocolate. Bentonite is volcanic tuff—decomposed, devitrified. So much volcanic debris has settled on Wyoming that bentonite is widespread and, in many places, more than ten feet thick. To some extent, it covers every basin. Also known as mineral soap, it has a magical ability to absorb water up to fifteen times its own volume, and when this happens it offers to a tire about as much resistance as soft butter. Wet, swollen bentonite soil is known as gumbo. We were crossing badlands of the Bighorn Basin one time when a light shower fell, and the surface of the road changed in moments from dust to colloidal suspension. The wheels began to skid as if they were climbing ice. Four-wheel drive was no help. Many a geologist has walked out forty miles from a vehicle shipwrecked in gumbo. Bentonite is mined in Wyoming and sold to the rest of the world. [...] Bentonite is used in adhesives, automobile polish, detergent, and paint. It is in the drilling "mud" of oil rigs, sent down the pipe and through apertures in the bit to carry rock chips to the surface. It sticks to the walls of the drill hole and keeps out unwanted water. It is used to line irrigation ditches and reservoirs, and in facial makeup. Indians drove buffalo into swamps full of bentonite.

Blessed is the land that can sell its mud.

—John McPhee

You’ll be the first to know when the Jiffy-Mart is ready for mass consumption. In the meantime, that’s it for this issue of The Jiffy! Thank you as always for reading.

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