In this episode, Byron Birss speaks with Mary and Andrew as they talk about Byron’s transformation from someone with no knowledge of permaculture or gardening into a professional designer and food forest aficionado in just a few years. Growing up in the United States, Byron moved to New Zealand nearly a decade ago for a change of life that wound up being a life-changing experience.

Resources Backyard Paradise Byron Grows (YouTube) Byron Grows (Instagram)

Larry Santoyo - Exploring Permaculture

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Can you live an enjoyable, self-indulgent life while remaining thrifty and at the same time not overtaxing Earth's resources? To have all of that sounds too good to be true.

If you follow what Annie Raser-Rowland suggested in her book The Art of Frugal Hedonism, however, the answer rings out as a resounding Yes!

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Over more than a decade, The Permaculture Podcast has explored the landscape-based practices which lead to permanent agriculture, as well as the invisible structures necessary, as individuals and in our community, to create permanent culture. Today’s episode examines our ability to create culture and continues the 12th-anniversary celebration of The Permaculture Podcast, as Alasdair Stuart joins me to share his insights on how media and culture influence the community and countries we live in, and how those stories shape who we are and our experiences. Through those lenses, Alasdair and I look at representation in media, the importance of inclusion and diversity as creators and consumers of fictional works, the importance of cultivating kindness, and changing outlooks on mental health. We also share how we find hope through storytelling, on the page or through the screen, as we face an uncertain future, and invite you to join us on that journey. If you’re not familiar with Alasdair, he is the co-owner of Escape Artists Incorporated, which produces the wonderful short-fiction podcasts Cast of Wonders, EscapePod, PodCastle, and PseudoPod. Alasdair is also the regular host of the horror podcast PseudoPod, where he not only introduces the author, narrator, and fright to follow but also shares his commentary and critique on the story for each episode and how that unique tale fits into our lives and world. As you might imagine when a pair of media-loving folks who grew up immersed in comic books, TV shows, movies, and games of all kinds come together to talk about how those works create our society and a vision for the future, it leads to nearly continuous references to the personal and pop culture that shaped us and that we see as continuing to mold current generations. If you love anything like Dr. Who, video games, Terry Pratchett, Tik Tok, Henry Rollins, Heavy Metal, or George Carlin, there is each of those and so much more somewhere in today’s interview. You can find Alasdair's at alasdairstuart.com. While you are there, be sure to sign up for his newsletter, The Full Lid. He is also on Twitter @alasdairstuart Escape Artists Incorporated and their amazing slate of podcasts are at EscapeArtists.Net. I’d also like to give a big thank you to the artist SerHawke for allowing me to the drawing of Alasdair in a She-Hulk T-shirt as the cover image for this episode. Their commissions are open and you can find them on Twitter @serhawke. I enjoyed this conversation with Alasdair because of how he points to the ways media, in whatever form it might take from TV shows to spoken word albums to podcasts, can have an impact on us as individuals and help us develop or change our worldviews. How media as a shared experience can create a culture or subculture we feel at home in and want to be an active participant in. Media can create a cultural zeitgeist that changes a country or the world. As we permaculture practitioners share our vision of the future through fiction, such as Utopia by Geoff Christou 470 by Linda Woodrow, it shows others what is possible. As we share the stories of our lives and experiences through podcasts or memoirs, we link the past to the present and share them with others. This work, of telling our stories with voice, body, and bones, is vital to what permaculture has to hold now and for future generations. If you have a story inside of you, find a way to tell it. Your voice matters. Before closing this episode, I’d like to give a hearty thanks to Alasdair for joining me, as this conversation was a special one for me, as it’s been a dream of mine to interview Alasdair after hearing his voice—both his literal, spoken voice and voice as an expression for his point of view and talent as a writer—all those years ago when I downloaded my first episode of PseudoPod. It was a pleasure to have this experience and chat like old friends. I continue to tune in to PseudoPod and remain a dedicated listener because I am inspired by Alasdair’s message that we can shine a light into the darkness and find hope, even when we face real monsters in the world. That hope, along with a story well told, reminds me that we are not alone, that there are others like us in the world, and we can stand together with others, whatever comes in the days, years, and decades to come. Until the next time, listen to an episode of PseudoPod while you spend each day discovering the media that inspires you while creating a culture that takes care of Earth, your self, and each other.

For nearly 40 years, Rosemary’s work as a teacher has brought permaculture directly into the lives of her thousands of students. As an author, she has touched innumerably more. As her students became teachers and other teachers used her works in their classrooms, her ideas and methods continue to ripple through the world and reach even more. With this reach, her work touched has touched my own, first as a student, through her book Earth User’s Guide to Permaculture, and later as an instructor, when I used that book as one of the student texts for the course paired with the companion book to that, Earth User’s Guide to Teaching Permaculture. Now, we celebrate Rowe’s newest book, from Melliodora Publishing, Earth Restorer’s Guide to Permaculture, with a series of conversations covering her thoughts on the breadth of permaculture as a practice, interwoven with stories from throughout her journey. To start things off, I knew a lot about Rowe’s writings, but not about her early life, how she came to permaculture or her career as a teacher and author. So, we begin where so many interviews do on The Permaculture Podcast, with a conversation about her biography and background, which includes some insights into the development and growth of permaculture over the years, the kinds of character and teacher Bill Mollison was, and how Rowe reframes permaculture education into a local, lived experience, whether she’s teaching in Australia, Vietnam, or Cambodia. Support the Podcast Donate Online: Via PayPal -or- Venmo @permaculturepodcast You can find Rosemary's books, including Earth Restorer’s Guide to Permaculture, at the PermaculturePrinciples.com store. As we close this conversation and prepare for the others which will follow, I’d like to re-extend the invitation for you to answer Rowe’s questions: 

• What is your country? 
• Do you speak a language from there? 
• Do you know how the indigenous peoples lived on that land?

Visit Our Series Partners Permaculture Principles Melliodora Publishing Abundant Earth Foundation

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In this episode, an old friend returns. Together, we relax and celebrate the 12th anniversary of The Permaculture Podcast with Scott Mann.

Erin Harvey, and I met one another and became friends in 2010 when we took our Permaculture Design Course with Ben Weiss and Dillon Naber Cruz in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. After graduating, Erin returned to Ohio to begin her own farm, The Kale Yard. Erin was one of the first guest on the show, back in early 2013, when we talked about how she started The Kale Yard. If you haven’t heard that, you’ll find a link to that interview in the show notes. Today, we talk about how life has changed over the last decade, including The Kale Yard transitioning from a Market Garden to a nursery business, and Erin’s current role as a farmers market manager and what that means for both her, the farmers, and the community they serve. We also spend some time on her interest in propagating figs and other plants; the role of a hoop house and greenhouse on her farm; and what Erin sees in her future. Related Episode Starting a Small Scale Farm - Erin Harvey Resources The Kale Yard Keller Market House

This month marks the 12th anniversary of The Permaculture Podcast with Scott. To celebrate this latest milestone, I asked my friend Erin Harvey to join me again to discuss how her life and work have changed since we graduated from our Permaculture Design Course on October 10th, 2010, and the show began. In preparation for that new conversation, here is my first interview with Erin, recorded and released in the Winter of 2013. Note: This is from the earliest days of interviews on the podcast and does not benefit from later improvements in microphones or recording tools. Resources:  The Kale Yard The Organic Farmer's Business Handbook (Chelsea Green Publishing)

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Today's guest is Perrine Hervé-Gruyer author, along with her husband Charles, of Miraculous Abundance: One Quarter Acre, Two French Farmers and Enough Food to Feed the World.

 

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My guest for this episode is Sandor Katz, author of Wild Fermentation, The Art of Fermentation, and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved. If you’ve practiced any kind of fermentation and went looking for a recipe, reference, or just read about the wee yeasties and bacteria that transform our foods with their microbial magic, then you’ve probably read something by Sandor, and I recommend reading even more.

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In this episode, Natalie Bogwalker shares her technique to quickly build soil for growing food in a temperate climate. You can watch the video of Natalie’s work on soil building at Wild Abundance, which is where today’s audio comes from, at: YouTube.com/ThePermaculturePodcast 

Find out more about Natalie, her work, and Wild Abundance at: WildAbundance.Net

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The guest for this episode is John Kotab to discuss his book Bee the Change, a travelogue about his discovery of what we can do to save bees and other pollinators. Find John, his permaculture consulting business, and his books at: cotabconsulting.com

Visit Our Sponsor: Foraged.Market This episode is a remaster of my first interview with Eric Toensmeier, originally recorded in the early days of the show way back in 2012 when I still lived on the land in Pennsylvania. I’m sharing this as a follow-up to the most recent episode before this one where Eric joined me for another interview to talk about his current work on Alley Cropping. Depending on when you are listening to this, if you haven’t heard that show, definitely give it a listen. You’ll find that right before this one in the archives. If you are not familiar with Eric and his work, he is the author of numerous permaculture and permaculture-adjacent books, all of which I highly recommend for your library. Most recently, that includes Carbon Farming: A Global Toolkit of Perennial Crops and Regenerative Agriculture Practices for Climate Change Mitigation and Food Security. Another title where Eric is the sole author is Perennial Vegetables: From Artichoke to Zuiki Taro, a Gardener’s Guide to Over 100 Delicious, Easy-to-grow Edibles. He is the co-author, along with Dave Jacke, of Edible Forest Gardens and also wrote Paradise Lot with Jonathan Bates, the former of which is probably his most popular title in the permie community. Our conversation begins with Eric’s bio. He then answers some listener questions on perennials, then delves into perennial plants, the broad-scale application of permaculture, and removing some of the fear factors of implementing a forest garden. Throughout you will hear both of us touch on plants we would like to see improved and simple ways anyone who is growing a garden can help domesticate and improve edible perennials. - You can find Eric at PerennialSolutions.org - His latest venture, The Perennial Agriculture Institute, is at PerennialAgriculture.Institute. - You can also read Eric’s current writing and support his ongoing efforts at patreon.com/erictoensmeier. Resources Eric Toensmeier Perennial Solutions PerennialAgriculture.Institute Edible Forest Gardens Keyline Design USDA PLANTS Database Books Billy Joe Tatum's Wild Foods Field Guide and Cookbook (Out-of-Print. Bookfinder.com link) Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties by Carol Deppe Creating a Forest Garden by Martin Crawford Edible Water Gardens by Nick Romanowski (Out-of-Print. Bookfinder.com link) The New American Landscape: Leading Voices on the Future of Sustainable Gardening Return to Resistance: Breeding Crops to Reduce Pesticide Dependence by Raoul Robinson Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast - A Field Guide

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In this episode, Eric Toensmeier returns to share some of his research on alley cropping, from his forthcoming book on this subject which he is writing in cooperation with Interlace Commons, an organization spreading the benefits and evidence of agroforestry, including alley cropping, with farmers.

Resources

• Perennial Solutions
• Eric's Patreon
• Interlace Commons
• Kernza Perennial Grain
• Agroforesterie (Book)
• AGROOF (French Agroforestry Organization)
• Alley Cropping (Univ. of Missouri Center for Agroforestry Training Manual - PDF)
• Savanna Institute

, Related Interviews

• Stream Restoration and Riparian Corridors - Dr. Bern Sweeney
• The Savanna Institute - Keefe Keeley

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My guest for this episode is Dina Falconi, an herbalist from the Hudson Valley of New York and the author of the gorgeous book Foraging and Feasting, which you’ll find at botanicalartspress.com.

 

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GoFundMe: Support for Dan Palmer’s Family CW: Death, Grief, and Loss It is with a heavy heart that I share the tragic news that Dan Palmer, of Making Permaculture Stronger, passed away suddenly in the first week of August, 2022. Dan was an activist, designer, permaculture practitioner, and teacher. He was also the driving force behind numerous events and organizations including permablitz, Very Edible Gardens, Holistic Decision Making, the still-in-progress film Reading the Landscape, and his blog and podcast. I knew Dan half as well as I would have liked, but am thankful for the many long hours we spent in conversation over the years, separated by half the world, asking what we could do to make one another, and by extension permaculture, stronger. My thoughts are with his partner, children, and other loved ones. If you are someone who prays, I ask you to offer words into the universe for those who are hurting. You can also use the link above to donate to a GoFundMe for his family during this time of transition. 

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This episode begins with a history lesson on Natural Farming and the work of Masanobu Fukuoka and leads into a conversation comparing and contrasting that method and his ideas to Permaculture, delivered in the voice and words of someone who was present in both movements from their earliest days, the late Larry Korn.

Resources

• The One-Straw Revolutionary

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The guest for this episode is Mark Ervin of GreenGro Biologicals. He joins me to share his passion for terra preta soil and biochar and how he turned that love into an entrepreneurial business bringing a regenerative product to market. Along the way, he shares the difference between simply burning something and calling biochar versus creating a carbon-rich, mineralized biochar, the importance of nutrient ratios for sustainable growing, and much more.

  More Information on Terra Preta and Biochar

• Terra Preta (Wikipedia)
• Biochar (Wikipedia)
• The Biochar Solution by Albert Bates
• Burn by Albert Bates and Kathleen Draper

Related Interviews

• Dr. Elaine Ingham - The Soil Food Web
• Eric Toensmeier - Drawing Down Carbon: Agroforestry and Climate Change
• Permabyte: Biochar, Gasification, and Woodlot Management
• Mary Johnson - An Introduction to Nutrient Dense Farming
• Connor Stedman - Carbon Farming - Soil

 

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This episode on Urban Homesteading with Rachel Kaplan is the conversation that started me down the road of what the show has become known for: long-format, interview-driven, guest-focused conversations you won’t hear anywhere else. It is also the first interview I ever recorded for The Permaculture Podcast so, unless you were here in the early days of the show or took a deep dive into the archives at thepermaculturepodcast.com in later years, it’s one you’ll hear for the first time, today.

Resources

• Urban Homesteading
• Rachel Kaplan - EcoSomatic Action
• K.Ruby Blume - Rogue Ruby
• The Institute of Urban Homesteading
• Daily Acts
• North Bay Institute of Green Technology
• Grey Water Action

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Our guest for this episode is Chris Salisbury, author of Wild Nights Out. He joins us to share his work acclimating people of all ages to nature through experiences and encounters in a world shrouded by the dark, so we may do the same for others in our lives, whether as professional educators, parents, or community members. Throughout the interview, Chris shares ways to find nature all around us and extends an invitation so that we can discover, or rediscover, the joy, majesty, and mystery of night.

Resources

• Wild Wise
• Wild Nights Out
• Wilderness Awareness School
• 8 Shields Institute
• The Art of Mentoring
• Sharing Nature
• Institute for Earth Education

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This episode is a guest interview from my friend Drew Grim of Schoolhouse Life, as he sits down with Andrew Magazine to discuss the art and craft of whole animal butchery, as it applies to the homestead. Throughout, Andrew shares tips from his professional experience as a craft butcher on setting up one’s workspace, how to select the right tools and equipment for this work, and how raising and butchering our own animals is an act of care, compassion, and an ethical way to include meat in our diet.

Resources

• Applied Anatomist (Website)
• Applied Anatomist (Instagram)
• Wonderland Hollow (Andrew's Farm with Christina Chumbley)
• The Schoolhouse Life Podcast

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Caring for Earth includes caring for ourselves.

To help us find ways to stay active throughout our lives, I’m joined by Katy Bowman as she shares her work on the importance of incorporating regular, whole-body movement throughout the day, with a focus on stacking activities to make sure we stretch, flex, reach, push, and pull, during our regular routine. In this way, we can express a full range of motion, inhabited in our bodies, without needing to worry about making time to go to the gym, unless we want to. Throughout the conversation, she includes numerous ways to redesign our current habits into ones with more use of our body, while framing the conversation as one not of exercise but with movement as a form of nutrition and how we can look for and address any deficits we may find.

Resources

• Nutritious Movement
• Grow Wild

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40% of all insect species have declined globally in recent decades, and a third of those are considered endangered. The impacts that wild insects have on our lives are incalculable, while the benefit to humanity by domesticated honeybees is measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

With this decline in insect populations, including the bees that pollinate our food, what can we do? Searching for answers and to understand what was leading to a bee decline, several years ago I reached out to Dr. Dennis vanEngelsdorp, a research scientist and associate professor of entomology at the University of Maryland and the former Chief apiarist for Pennsylvania to find out more. Resources:

• Dennis vanEnglesdrop, PhD
• Dennis vanEnglesdorp: A Plea for Bees (TED Talk Video)
• Bee Informed Partnership
• Crop Pollination Exposes Honey Bees to Pesticides Which Alters Their Susceptibility to the Gut Pathogen Nosema ceranae

Related Interview

• Owen Wormser - Turning Lawns into Meadows

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In this episode I sit down with my friends Jill Cloutier, of Sustainable World Radio, and Oliver Goshey, of Regenerative Skills, as we have a round-robin conversation about what brought us to the permaculture community and why we started and continue to produce our respective shows. This is an introduction not only to ourselves but also a collaborative project we’ve been working on for more than a year, the Regenerative Media Alliance.

Resources

• Regenerative Media Alliance
• Contact Regenerative Media Alliance

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This episode shares some of what I learned at the Together We Can Conference from Future Harvest on January 13 and 14, 2022. This includes some reflections (or ramblings if you prefer) as they relate to my own experiences and practices, along with people, organizations, and ideas I recommend you connect with or learn more about to grow, improve, or pivot your permaculture practices.

Resources

• Future Harvest
• Maryland Food System Resiliency Council
• Jonathan Bardzik

, New Age Agrarianism

• Renard Turner - New Age Agrarianism (Interview)
• Booker T. Whatley (Wiki)
• Booker T Whatley Part 1: The Ten Commandments (Video)
• Booker T Whatley Part 2: The Clientele Membership Club (Video)
• Rodale Institute
• Save Three Lives: A Plan for Famine Prevention by Robert Rodale

, Care Farming

• Care Farming Network
• Red Wiggler Community Farm
• Fields 4 Valor Farms
• Benevolence Farm
• UNC Farm at Penny Lane
• Blawesome, LLC

, Anne Biklé and David R. Montgomery

• Dig2Grow

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Today’s episode is a new interview with Andrew Millison, recorded by Mary Marshall and Andrew Tuttle.

Starting with Andrew's history with permaculture, in 1996 through to the present, first with ecological landscape design and construction in Arizona and how it has bloomed into a broader outreach through not only his teaching, but also through his work as a videographer documenting projects around the world. Throughout, he discusses the problems we face, on global, local, and personal scales and the realities of what it is to do this work, and to do it well.

Resources Andrew Millison AndrewMillison.com YouTube Channel Instagram OSU Permaculture Design Certificate Program

Natalie Topa Profile at Permaculture Women’s Guild Natalie’s YouTube

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This episode is a guest interview from my friend Karryn Olson, continuing the conversation series on right livelihoods.

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This episode is the annual update looking at the year ahead, including some announcements and insights from behind the scenes.

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My guest today is Renard Turner, an independent, African-American, sustainable farmer. Along with his wife, he raises gourmet goats and squab at Vanguard Ranch Natural Gourmet in Virginia. He is also the opening keynote speaker at the upcoming conference, Together We Can, from Future Harvest. I wanted to learn more about Renard and how those experiences inform his upcoming keynote speech, New Age Agrarianism: Growing for a Regenerative, Sustainable, and Equitable Planet.

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Here we are at Episode Seven, the finale, of the focused exploration of Permaculture, Land, and Land Access, with my final thoughts as a series of ramblings, reflections, and ruminations stemming from the earlier episodes. If you haven’t listened to all of those, or you just found the show and this is your first time tuning in, I recommend going back and checking the preceding six episodes before continuing. You’ll find numbered and ordered links to those in the show notes, along with past episodes of the show related to this series, and a long list of resources.

 

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In this episode, we hear from each of the guests in the Permaculture, Land and Land Access series, as they address the question: What can we do to improve land access, particularly for those who want to grow food for people? We’ll hear from each of them in the order they appeared in the series so far, beginning with Jesse Frost, followed by Sarah Mock and Amyrose Foll, and ending with Reana Kovalcik.  

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In this episode, Reana Kovalcik and I discuss direct action and mutual aid to get seeds into the hands of people who want to grow food. Using that same overlay, to find and connect with local allies and organizations to spread the message and amplify our impact. Throughout, she uses her work with Slow Food and the program she started, Share a Seed, as effective, on-the-ground models to inspire and encourage you in your next steps for local change.

 

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Continuing the series on Permaculture, Land, and Land Access, in this interview I’m joined by Amyrose Foll, of Virginia Free Farm. Amyrose shares how she and the team at VFF use the farm as an incubator of ideas that empower individuals and organizations to get food and gardens into communities. She also discusses: How growing food is a liberating experience for everyone. Ways to find land to grow on. And, some organizations working with gardening and growing as therapy.

Throughout you’ll hear her thoughts on what we can do to make a difference, right now, where we are.  

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In this interview, I’m joined by the author of Farm (and other F words), rural and agriculture writer, and researcher Sarah Mock. Sarah shares her discoveries about the sustaining myths versus realities of farms, farmers, farming, and agriculture profitability in the United States. She also takes us deep into systemic incentives for holding agricultural land as an investment and how this, and other policies, limit first-generation farmers from accessing or retaining land in order to grow food.

 

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This conversation continues the series on Permaculture, Land, and Land Access as Jesse Frost joins me to share his experiences as a small-scale farmer. This includes: Where he sells. What he grows. Insights into market gardening, or French intensive, methods. How he's working towards reducing plastic around the farm. Whether or not you need to mechanize with a walk-behind tractor. And the use of living paths. We close by touching on his thoughts on farming on the small side in cities and how to reframe our mindset and the crops we choose to the resources and space available.  

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This episode starts the series on Permaculture, Land, and Land Access. I wanted to explore this topic because I’m currently landless and the opportunity to buy land or purchase a house with enough space for a garden, shrinks each year as the price goes up and the size of plots goes down. Living in an apartment in a city, there are plenty of parks and green spaces, but accessing a community garden or place to grow can require a car, years on a waitlist, or both. When an affordable place comes, it may require relocating away from friends and family, or be hours from the viable markets needed to sell on-farm products, requiring regular long-distance commutes to town and the associated added expenses of transportation, fuel, maintenance, and time.  

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Like this podcast? Support the show on Patreon.

 

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If you’ve been listening to this podcast since near the beginning, you may remember shorter episodes that introduced an idea or topic. This episode, and others you’ll hear like it, irregularly in the future, is a call back to the days of those perma-bytes. With so many amazing people and organizations doing good work in the world, I want to be able to share more of them with you.  

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We know that pesticides have an outsized impact on insects in the environment, particularly when broad-spectrum chemicals are used, killing nearly all the invertebrates they touch. If you’ve read a warning label on these, or many of the other garden, yard, or farm sprays available, you’ll find cautions about keeping the contents of the container out of waterways or away from amphibians.

But what about the other harms of human impacts? Like the destruction of habitat. The ever-increasing noise of industry. The lights that fill the sky with brightness throughout the night.

And once we’re aware of this mess, what can we do to start repairing the damage?  

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We can expect change to occur continuously throughout our lives. We’re likely to call several places home. Friends will come and go. We’ll move between jobs multiple times and likely even switch career paths.

As permaculture practitioners, in the landscape, we play with change. Slowing succession in some places of our design, advancing it in others, to arrest or encourage this process on a timeline that matches what we want within any given zone.

But how do we change as people and plan the succession of an organization, and the land it inhabits, through time?  

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Food. Something we think about regularly. Whether that’s what we’re having for our next meal; trying to remember the contents of our cabinets or refrigerator; or what we need to buy on our next trip to the grocery store. As permaculture practitioners, these thoughts are also likely to include what we’ll be harvesting from our garden; searching for a local source from a producer we can meet face to face; or reading labels to find the indicators of where something comes from and how it was produced.  

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Today’s interview is a casual and relaxed conversation, as I sit down with my co-host, David Bilbrey, and turn the mic towards him to discuss what brought him to permaculture and the ideas that influence how he sees the world. We touch on the work of Ken Wilber and Integral Theory, what community can mean in an internet-connected age, how podcasts make the world smaller as we hear from people we might not encounter otherwise, and the importance of sitting down to listen to a conversation between two people.  

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Today’s episode is a collaboration with my friend, Karryn Olson. She’s currently hosting a series of conversations exploring what work could look, feel like, and give rise to, if our efforts were dedicated to collective thriving and evolution.  

 

During these times with Karryn and her guests, we’ll hear them explore visions of what the world could look like if we dedicated more of the hours of our day towards work in service to life. And what it could mean—to us, our communities, and the world—if we earned our living through this work.   Join the Podcast Patreon Community Find the guest for this episode, Carmen Leilani DeJesus at museyouneedmost.me and on Instagram @consentisapractice.    You can find our host for this episode, Karryn Olson, at Regenepreneurs.com and additional resources from her session with Carmen at Regenepreneurs.com/dejesus.   I'm collaborating with Karryn to share more conversations from this series with you in the future on The Permaculture Podcast. If you’d like to see what’s coming up from Karryn and her guests, including joining in on an upcoming live session via this link:    Cultivating Livelihoods In Service to Life: A Conversation Series Karryn's next session is on Wednesday, October 6th, at 8 pm Eastern with the folks from the Meaningful Work Project.   In hearing what Karryn was working on, I wanted to share these conversations with you on The Permaculture Podcast, because the specific interviews and themes of the overall series speak to the growing dissonance I’ve experienced myself and heard from listeners between trying to make our way through the world while staying true to your values and the ethics of permaculture, while trading one’s work energy for dollars that are earned through practices that seem extractive, meaningless, or, in the words and title of the book by the late David Graber, like a bullshit job. And as if that weren’t enough, we’re navigating all this while feeling, in our bones and in our souls, the impacts of growing climate disruption, increasing wealth inequality, continual social injustice, ongoing pandemic chaos, and the myriad of other social and environmental ills all around us.    To help us with this, Karryn is speaking with numerous guests across a variety of disciplines to explore topics that move our individual mindset and shift our cultural paradigms.   Some of those include:   Right livelihoods. Collective liberation. Regenerative entrepreneurship. Social innovation. Decolonizing our concepts of "work.” And the importance of embracing pleasure and grief.   Listened to individually or taken together, it is Karryn and I’s desire to revitalize you and your work as we, all of us, stand together and cross the thresholds of our time.    Until we meet again, spend your days ranting about your needs and wants, meditating on whether you are saying yes willingly or out of a sense of obligation, and considering what work feels like in your body, while taking care of Earth, your self, and each other.

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Our individual permaculture practices are rooted in the teachers we learn with. In the books we read to expand our knowledge. In the videos we watch on YouTube to answer a particular question. Or the documentaries we find on Netflix that give us a sense of connection to the larger world.

 

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My longest-running hobby—one I’ve participated in since I was a child, long before discovering permaculture—is playing tabletop roleplaying games. Perhaps the most well-known of those that you’ve heard of, or played yourself, is Dungeons and Dragons.  

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A note on the content for today’s episode. The interview which follows is a discussion of disasters and their impacts, including food insecurity, personal injury, and suicide. Listener discretion is advised.

How do we prepare ourselves for disasters, whether natural or manmade, such as a seasonal storm, global pandemic, economic collapse, or political upheaval?  

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In this episode, I’m joined by my friend Eric Puro as we catch up on what he’s been doing since we last saw each other in 2016. Quite a bit has changed since then, as he’s now living in Finland running a biotech company that cultivates chaga fungi, manages forests holistically, and explores the nutritional qualities, health benefits, and medicinal properties of mushrooms.  

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My guest for this episode is the rewilder Peter Michael Bauer, from Portland, Oregon, who is also a trained permaculture practitioner who studied under Toby Hemenway. Peter is the executive director of Rewild Portland, an environmental education non-profit that uses hands-on workshops and classes to teach earth-based arts, skills, and technologies.

 

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This is part two of the Susquehanna Permaculture Round discussion with Jon Darby, Rafiyqa Muhammad, Shannon Sylte, and Ben Weiss.

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In today’s interview, the first in a two-part series, my friend and colleague Dan Palmer of Making Permaculture Stronger, gives me a sense of vicarious joy to share with you, as he’s done something that’s on my list of dream podcast experiences. Dan sits down face-to-face with David Holmgren at Melliodora and together they have a conversation about the early history of permaculture. From David’s lips to our ears we hear the first-hand account of his days at university, meeting Bill Mollison and their initial work together, to the impact of David’s second permaculture mentor Haikai Tane.

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With the release of this episode, the podcast is back to full-time production.

In this episode I’m joined by Hannah Eckberg, to discuss what she’s been up to since we last spoke in 2017, and her work with Abundant Earth Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, to move philanthropic resources and support to permaculture projects around the world. Along the way we talk about the resources that are available, the role that non-financial support plays in overall success, the kinds of projects Abundant Earth Foundation is looking to work with, the best way to contact the foundation, and much more. If you’re interested in developing an organization, finding like-minded projects and partners around your specific niche, the role which structures like a nonprofit can play in advancing permaculture, or ways to contribute to the movement, this is a conversation for you.

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