Getting Lucky with David Stouder: Four-leaf Clover Hunting

Speaker 1 00:00:05 Do you believe in luck? Maybe you do, but can’t say so, because even admitting that you believe in luck might jinx it. Welcome to hobby dabbler, the show dedicated to exploring hobbies for people who want to make their free time more valuable. I’m your host, Vanessa crest. And today I’m sharing my recent experience going four leaf Clover hunting with David stouter. At the end of the show, we have a unique promo code for you. So make sure to listen all the way through
Speaker 1 00:00:46 So several years ago, my friend, Jen and I did a whole bunch of not so random acts of kindness on my birthday. Things like bringing flowers to a senior living home and ask, they go to someone who rarely gets visitors leaving quarters in a gumball machine at the grocery store, actually multiple grocery stores and multiple gumball machines taking food to the animal shelter. One of the sillier things we did was we bought lottery tickets and tape them behind the doors of bathroom stalls. With a note reading, you probably didn’t think you’d get lucky in a bathroom stall today.
Speaker 1 00:01:27 Hopefully the recipients found the same humor and fortunate that we intended, but it’s only now that I’m writing this post about luck that I realized, I never really thought about it in regards to creating luck for someone else. I mean, you know, you’re doing something that a semi-random, as in, you don’t know who will receive your kindness, but the creating luck part comes in because they were totally not expecting it. Anyway, the idea about luck versus randomness is fun to explore. So I was intrigued when I met someone who seems to come upon luck rather frequently. Paul and I met the subject of today’s episode, David stouter and his wife, while we were having appetizers and drinks with pat may and his wife. You may recall pat from one of my earlier episodes, one of my talents, much to my introverted husband’s chagrin is talking to strangers.
Speaker 1 00:02:22 When we go out, I was making the most of a tipsy social moment to introduce pat and his new plant propagation app propa to the couple of next to us. After we bonded over anchovy toast, I mentioned that I’d be interviewing him soon for my hobby dabbler podcast. And of course, after I explained the premise of the podcast, what normally happens happened, David told me about his hobby of finding four leaf clovers. And I was sold. We agreed that I joined him for a hunt. It took a few months, but we finally made it happen. Spoiler alert it. Also David, that gumption to get his website together more on that later, let’s start off with some basic information.
Speaker 2 00:03:07 Have you ever found a four leaf Clover before? No.
Speaker 3 00:03:10 I don’t know that I’ve ever gone hunting for them though.
Speaker 2 00:03:13 I average about, I think six, four leaf clovers
Speaker 1 00:03:16 A day. Paul hadn’t found any before either. In fact, he didn’t really have much interest in looking while we were out with David Paul happily volunteered to capture photos and videos of my efforts about two thirds of the way through. He just happened to look down and found one
Speaker 3 00:03:32 Found one. The first time you looked,
Speaker 2 00:03:35 All right, here we go. There you go. As the leaf chewed off, but it’s there. It’s there.
Speaker 1 00:03:43 I on the other hand and had been scouring for 40 minutes with no luck. Paul is known for being lucky. His mom calls it the Paul Cross effect. So there’s this whole conversation to be had about luck. I asked the question on Facebook to get an idea of how many of my friends believe in luck, the responses, weren’t all that surprising. I’ll post them in the show notes. If you’re interested. One of them though reminded me that there is a science behind the chaos and randomness evident in nature. When I looked up the oddity, that is a four-leaf Clover. It turns out that about one in 10,000 clovers mutate to have a fourth leaf. And I know what you’re thinking, especially after listening to the plant propagation episode, no, you cannot propagate that Clover to make a whole plant a four-leaf clovers while we’re on the topic of the plant itself. I learned during this hunt that there’s a common Clover imposter, the Excellus Oxalis Oak solace.
Speaker 2 00:04:44 Now the, uh, the biggest poser or the plant that isn’t a four-leaf Clover, here’s the ox Cylus. And they’re the ones with these really sculpted leaves. So see, see the difference, the heart leaves. Yeah. Let’s see how that’s like. So those are not clovers. No, that’s an Oxalis, that’s a Clover.
Speaker 1 00:05:08 It’s interesting to think about the idea that certain things only have value or are considered special because of their differences that make them less common. Like when it comes to people, they try so hard to fit in when really they’re just setting themselves up to be overlooked much like three leaf clovers
Speaker 2 00:05:32 To me, like, so it’s become just like, like a hobby and the thing I love to do. So I’ll always take the chance to just come out and hang out with the clovers. And you know, one time I had this feeling like the three leaf clovers were getting jealous. Did you pick one just to make it feel they were like, why do you only, you know, and I said to him, I spent a lot more time looking at three leaf clovers and I do four leaf clovers. They’re just the ones I like to find
Speaker 1 00:06:21 That excitement was short-lived. I didn’t actually have a four-leaf Clover
Speaker 2 00:06:26 Lately. I’ve been trying to hone my intuition because I figured the universe knows where all the clovers are. And so sometimes I’ve actually been able to just go, like, I think I’d go over there. And there’s one, you know, like sometimes I can, I can be that, whatever, just, and then other times you just stumble upon a big pack
Speaker 1 00:06:48 Home while I’m over there, honing let’s get back to David and how he came to create Cloverdale.
Speaker 2 00:06:54 I, a long, long time ago, I thought of this idea of Cloverdale, you know, but I never did anything about it. It was like an idea 30 some years ago. But when I was over at the Annapolis, small talking to a friend, sort of bored, and I started looking at one of the little median strips, I found 14, four leaf clovers and this one little place, I was like, oh my God. And that just made me go, okay, I’m going to do something with it this time. And that’s what sort of started me on, how am I going to make this spray for people? How am I going to share all this? Instead of just finding them, putting them in books, showing them to people, if I remember, and then they crumble, right?
Speaker 1 00:07:33 So you already work in the vitamin
Speaker 2 00:07:35 Industry. Yeah. Which, which actually, well, well, yeah, it was sort of, it was really great because once I made the decision, I went to, uh, uh, uh, one of the major herbal extract companies called herb farm with a pH and they’re in Williams, Oregon. So we were visiting, I worked for a broker, we were visiting the farm and I met an herbalist there who sort of had a, a bit of a mystic bent. And I told him kind of what I wanted to do. And so he told me to take the clovers and put them in brain alcohol and just swish them a little bit and let the essence kind of come out in the alcohol. And then one of our companies who makes homeopathic remedies told me how to make homeopathic remedies at home. So I basically take that Clover essence. And you, uh, you succuss it, you vibrate it down to where you’re just trying to capture the essence of the plant, which of course is what you want from before the flow rate. Um, I don’t think anyone’s ever said it’s good luck to eat them,
Speaker 1 00:08:42 But does it work while we were out by the street, hunting a passer, Byer stopped by and stared at us with curiosity, her name was Tina.
Speaker 2 00:08:53 I find so many, four-leaf clovers all my life, um, hundreds and I’m not lying. My biggest day was 43 and there was some five leaves in there. So what I do is I make a homeopathic, good luck spray out of them. So that, so that’s yours, it’s called Cloverdale. And so my thought is whatever there is to the four-leaf Clover, probably in that bottle.
Speaker 1 00:09:18 So what happened to Tina? You’re probably wondering, well, as it turns out, Tina later wrote to David that she’d won the lottery the next day. I’m kidding. She didn’t. I mean, she didn’t write to say she’d won the lottery. Maybe she did though. We just don’t know. I mean, if I’d won the lottery, I probably wouldn’t remember to tell some strangers that I met by the side of the road. She did in fact write though, and thank David for the bottle of Clover do and wished him luck on his Clover do venture, which, I mean, that’s kind of ironic, right?
Speaker 2 00:09:55 One time I was on Capitol hill with some people from the vitamin business. Cause that’s my day job if you will. And this was many years ago, but we were lobbying Congress for health freedom. And um, so we met at the Capitol and we took a group picture. Then we went off to our separate meetings with our legislators and, um, mine wasn’t for an hour. So I’m in a suit. I had a briefcase, you know, and I’m down with my briefcase, the Capitol, you know, and I’m like doing this and suddenly I just became aware and I looked up at like six feet. There was a cop six feet, there’s a cop six, there’s a cop. And they’re just staring at me. And I said, um, I said, how you doing? They just nodded. And I said, I’m looking for four leaf clovers. They nodded and stared at me and I go, okay, I’ll be on my way. So they never, you know, they weren’t mean to me or anything, but they just kinda like, you know, did you find me there? But I don’t remember if I did, but I left. I don’t think I had found any at the moment.
Speaker 1 00:11:00 What is next for David and Cloverdale?
Speaker 2 00:11:07 I found lots of five leaf clovers. I got great pictures. I found a fair amount of six leaf clovers. I found three seven leaf blowers in my life. And, uh, May 4th of this year I found an eight lead photo.
Speaker 2 00:11:26 I haven’t been greedy and try to go to casinos and sell it.
Speaker 1 00:11:32 I guess this is where luck meets integrity. Thank you, David, for not messing with the delicate balance of casino on
Speaker 1 00:11:49 Since this experience, I can’t help, but at least take a quick look of clusters of clovers to see if we find each other. In any case, it’s been an exercise of being present and trying to notice the things that usually go unnoticed.
Speaker 1 00:12:06 Thank you for listening to this episode of hobby dabbler. I hope you’re inspired to look for four leaf clovers or create some luck for someone else. Don’t forget to subscribe. Leave a note in the comments and tell us what you think or drop me a line@vanessaathobbybabbler.com. Be sure to follow us on Insta at hobby dabbler, underscore official and facebook.com/hobby dabbler, where we post more hobby fodder throughout the week. Sign up to join our email list@ourwebsitehobbydabbler.com to get notified when a new show drops and for insider news today’s episode is brought to you by crest consulting from online hosting to complete website design, Cress consulting is your one-stop shop for your digital presence.
Speaker 2 00:12:54 I have wondered if I find them or they find me
Speaker 3 00:12:58 Like you’re saying, I feel like sometimes it’s just because you’re letting yourself be in this moment where you’re extra observational about the things that are already there.
Speaker 1 00:13:10 If you’re curious and want to try your luck, head over to spray Clover, do.com. David has offered our listeners, the promo code, my four LLC, to get 20% off. Good luck.