The Permaculture Podcast

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast Browse the Archives.  

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast My guest today is Andrew Slack. He joins me to share his thoughts and personal experience on how to use storytelling to create social change. A climate activist and former head of the non-profit Harry Potter Alliance—which used the collective fandom of J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World to create a movement of good-will in the real-world—we talk about his approach of using the arts to catalyze movements through the stories we share, as fans of fiction, from our culture, or our individual lives. He also asks some questions of me about why permaculture matters, in a conversation that wound up personal for both of us. You can find out more about Andrew's current project at savesantashome.us. I’ve also included links in the resource section of this episode to The Harry Potter Alliance and other places you can find more about him and his work i

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast My guests for this episode are Joshua Hughes and Amanda Wilson of VerdEnergia Pacifica and Blacksheep Regenerative Resource Management. On the ground practitioners of permaculture practitioners engaged in restorative business, Joshua and Amanda are the founders and, respectively, the CEO and CMO of Black Sheep Regenerative Resource Management. Together they’ve co-managed VerdEnergia Pacifica, a permaculture farm, education, and resource center in Costa Rica, for the last five years They join me today to discuss how they are scaling up Blacksheep Regeneration Resource management. We also continue the earlier conversation from earlier interviews with Joshua about creating a compassionate future, the role of regenerative investing in saving and repairing the land, and the transitional ethics required in this period of change. Find out mor

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast "What have you seen through your lived experience and via your increasing network that gives you not only aspirational hope, but also 'perspirational' perspective & confidence of moving past demonstration projects and moving toward broader-scale impact?" Posted by Christopher Kopka during the May Ask Me Anything on Patreon. I don’t see the land and agriculture-based permaculture movement pushing past the point of small or demonstration projects in the near future because of the expense and labor required to create, manage, and harvest from fully integrated systems. Compared to modern agriculture, the tools currently do not exist to scale-up without a large investment in human labor, which drives the price of on-farm production. Farm labor is skilled labor and we must not only train those people but also pay the costs up-front. Comp

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast Browse the Archives. (Pictured: The Design Squiggle, by Damien Newman as mentioned in this interview. CC BY-ND 3.0 US) Today I’m joined by Rob Avis and Takota Coen, two Canadian permaculture designers and teachers, who, working together, created a systemized approach to permaculture and landscape design. This process, called The Adaptive Habitat Program, reduces drudgery and simplifies complexity by using the best information and techniques currently available from permaculture and related disciplines.

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast Browse the Archives. In this episode, my guests are Meg Toben, the co-founder and director of The Eco-Institute at Pickards Mountain, and Jimi Eisenstein, one of the facilitators for the Rising Earth Immersion course. They join me to discuss this ten-week, on-site intensive offered at The Eco-Institute, located near Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast Browse the Archives. My guest is Emmet Van Driesche, author of Carving Out a Living on the Land: Lessons in Resourcefulness and Craft from an Unusual Christmas Tree Farm. He joins me to share his life transitioning to farming. How he became a Christmas tree farmer, who coppices softwood balsam firs rather than cutting and replanting. How he earns an additional on-farm income through spoon carving. And we end with his thoughts on planning for long-term succession, both of the land as he considers how to leave this patch of earth for future generations, and the process of transitioning a farm between non-family members, as he took over responsibility and ownership of the Christmas tree farm from his mentor Al.

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast Browse the Archives. My guest today is the adventurer, activist, and humanitarian Rob Greenfield. Rob joins me to talk about the Food Freedom project he launched in Orlando, Florida, where he is growing and foraging for all of his nutritional needs.

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast Browse the Archives. In this episode, David Bilbrey sits down with Melissa Peet to talk about her work in learning to trust one’s inherent knowledge. As the first of a two-part conversation, she provides the background to her research and establishing trust in our personal understanding; that which we already know and that which others might draw out of us through education or transformational experiences.

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast Browse the Archives. This episode continues co-host David Bilbrey’s exploration of regenerative business and permaculture as he sits down with Kevin Jones to talk about Gather Lab, Transform 19, and the need to create something more than a conference, but rather events that include action. In the case of Transform 19 those are modeled in the form of various labs where participants come together to assist organizations and businesses ready to launch, expand, or go to scale. Kevin and David also talk about Impact Investing, which focuses on mission-oriented investing so we can think like a philanthropist while acting as an investor.

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast Browse the Archives. In this conversation moderated by Ben Weiss of Susquehanna Sustainable Enterprises and Robyn Mello of Edenspore, Jon Darby, Alyson Earl, and Wilson Alvarez discuss their work at Horn Farm Center and regenerating the land. This includes how they came to sustainable agriculture; the dream projects they’re working on; how their ancestral and cultural history impacts their work and thought processes; and close by taking questions from the students assembled for the ecological design course.

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast Browse the Archives. My guest today is Tim Krahn, a Canadian engineer, builder, and author of Essential Rammed Earth Construction from New Society Publishers.

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast Browse the Archives. Today’s guests are Ryan Rising, of Permaculture Action Network, and Leah Song, of Rising Appalachia, who join me to talk about how they use the work on-stage and off to organize communities to participate in a permaculture action day. How they blend permaculture and activism with music and merriment.

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast Browse the Archives. My guest today is Zev Friedman, founder of Co-Operate WNC, a mutual aid organization in Western North Carolina.

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast Browse the Archives. Kirsten Lie-Nielsen, author of So You Want to be a Modern Homesteader, joins me to share her journey in becoming a modern homesteader and the advice she has for anyone interested in pursuing a similar path. Residing in Maine, I like her story because of how she and her partner had this dream and began on the land they were on. Continuing to develop their skills, in a space that was definitely not a farm, they spent this time seeking out the right piece of property for their goals.

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast Browse the Archives. Rob Avis, of Verge Permaculture, joins me to talk about rainwater harvesting.

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast In this episode co-host David Bilbrey sits down for a group interview the co-founders of Propagate Ventures, with Ethan, Jeremy, and Harry. Together they share how they bring agroforestry to existing farms using direct investment. Through these efforts they also show that farming, agriculture, and regenerative business hold a place in the portfolio of the investment class, allowing those who practice Earth care to take advantage of the resources that might not be available to them otherwise. You can learn more about their work towards on-farm investing and agroforestry at propagateventures.com, and if you’d like to know more about regenerative business and news, check out their sister site, propagate.org. This is David’s last interview that came his trip to ReGen18. Would you like him to return to ReGen19 and bring you more about re

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast Browse the Archives. In this interview by co-host David Bilbrey, Warren Brush returns to the show to share his work about fostering a vision for the next 500 years. During their time together Warren walks us through the mentorship he’s received, the mentoring he provides, and his own discoveries of how to live a fulfilling life now and for future generations, all told through an interwoven, connected story of self, place, and meaning.

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast Browse the Archives. Rhonda Baird, the editor of Permaculture Design Magazine and teacher and designer at Sheltering Hills Design, LLC., joins me to continue our conversation about creating change. In our first interview, we spoke about the way that we can work on ourselves as individuals. Today we move from the inside to the out with how we can organize and support others and our community.

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast [caption id="attachment_4368" align="aligncenter" width="610"] Photo: © Anna Rutkovskaya - Dreamstime.com[/caption] Welcome to the final episode of 2018. In a few hours we’ll transition to the New Year. As I do every year as what was comes to an end, this is a time to look back over everything that has happened in the preceding twelve months and prepare for those ahead. Sometimes I’ve put together a “best of” list for the year, but the idea of doing that any more is like asking which of my children I love more. Each one shines in their own particular moments, and, in the end, I do love them all equally, so this year I want to highlight some episode that provides an overview of the many places we explored together in 2018. The first was with Fred Provenza when we used his book Nourishment to talk about diet and reclaiming our nutr