Prabhupāda: I think this Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra should be chanted.
Allen Ginsberg: You see, we have two and a half hours.
Prabhupāda: Huh?
Devotee: It'll be lecturing, too, though.
Allen Ginsberg: Yes.
Prabhupāda: I think in the beginning we should have kīrtana.
Allen Ginsberg: Yes.
Prabhupāda: And at the end we should have kīrtana. And in the middle we can speak, you can speak about Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
Allen Ginsberg: I think you'd better speak, because you're more eloquent on it, and also you understand in the language . . .
Prabhupāda: I'll speak, you'll also speak.
Allen Ginsberg: You might not like what I say. (laughter)
Prabhupāda: No, you say your experience, how you're experiencing. That's all.
Allen Ginsberg: Yes. Okay.
Prabhupāda: Yes. All right. Yad yad vibhūtimat sattvaṁ. You have got Kṛṣṇa's blessings upon you. You are not ordinary man.
Allen Ginsberg: I'm not certain that I'm worthy of that, Swāmījī.
Prabhupāda: That's all right. But I know that you are not ordinary man.
Allen Ginsberg: Well . . . I've only recently stopped smoking, by the way, finally. With that car crash, I quit smoking. But I haven't stopped eating meat. So what is the intelligence of meat?
Prabhupāda: You remain with us at least for three months and you'll forget your . . . you remain with us for three months. (laughter) With your associates, you just come to Vṛndāvana. We shall live together.
Allen Ginsberg: You have a farm now?
Prabhupāda: Huh?
Allen Ginsberg: You have a farm now?
Prabhupāda: Yes. And you'll forget everything. You'll be fully Kṛṣṇa conscious.
Allen Ginsberg: We have a farm also now in upstate New York. There we have vegetarian table also in the farm. We have cow, goats. But . . .
Prabhupāda: From economic point of view, if one man has got a cow and four acres of land, he has no economic problem. That we want to start. He can independently live any part of the world. Simply he must (have) one cow and four acres of land. Let the people be divided with four acres of land and a cow, there will be no economic question. All the factories will be closed.
Allen Ginsberg: Four acres, you think?
Prabhupāda: Four acres.
Allen Ginsberg: Maybe.
Prabhupāda: That I am instructing Kīrtanānanda, to show this example in New Vrindaban.
Allen Ginsberg: Are you going to be able to do it on four acres?
Kīrtanānanda: I hope so. Whatever he tells me . . .
Prabhupāda: Is it very difficult? Four acres of land per head?
Allen Ginsberg: I just this last night was in Minnesota, which is flat, very fertile, very rich land.
Prabhupāda: Where it is? Which province?
Allen Ginsberg: Minnesota. Midwest. Further west. Talking with a poet who also is a fellow sādhana, whose family is from that area for many generations, whose brother has a thousand acres of land, and he himself has 160 acres of land. And as farming is done now in America, apparently 160 acres is not enough to support a farm economically, because farming is done now on such large scale with machines.
Kīrtanānanda: You can use those machines if you want. If you want to live in the so-called American style, that is so. But if you're willing to adopt the Vedic way of minimizing the material needs in order to pursue Kṛṣṇa consciousness . . . (indistinct) . . . what does one need? He needs sufficient food to keep the body healthy and a place to lay down. So four acres is plenty. My idea is that it's not . . .
Allen Ginsberg: Where do you get the . . . how do you feed the cow, or would you?
Kīrtanānanda: On four acres you can do it.
Allen Ginsberg: You can get enough hay for a cow, for . . .?
Prabhupāda: Fodder. Yes. You grow.
Guest: On food, it depends on what part of the east.
Allen Ginsberg: He's a farmer.
Guest: Whereabouts? What part? 'Cause a cow has to have about three acres for grazing.
Kīrtanānanda: For grazing.
Allen Ginsberg: Is that what they prescribe?
Kīrtanānanda: So at most five acres. It's in that vicinity.
Allen Ginsberg: So we are interested in this problem of minimizing.
Prabhupāda: So let us cooperate.
Allen Ginsberg: And often doing organic farming and minimizing the effort and also the material demands.
Kīrtanānanda: One person can grow sufficient vegetables on a fraction of an acre.
Allen Ginsberg: Yes. We had a big vegetable garden this year, too. I've been doing farming . . . Peter has been doing a great deal of farming.
Hayagrīva: How are you tilling your land?
Peter: We have a friend who comes out with a plow.
Allen Ginsberg: You're doing it by hand?
Kīrtanānanda: We just got a horse.
Devotee: We just got a horse. We had bad experience with a rotary tiller. We got rid of it.