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! There is a process to all of this, but we can achieve this goal by making choices that lead to more of what we desire, as we discover what holds us in rapt attention: the true pleasures of our lives.

During our conversation, Annie uses her own life, as a artist, long-distance hiker, and forager, to model what we can expect by embracing frugal hedonism. The results lead to a life rich in time with those we care about and full of opportunities, for concerts, education, and the occasional luxurious restaurant meal. You might say this is minimalism, with a permaculture twist.

After listening to this conversation, can you see making the changes to live this way? Would you want to? Leave a comment below.

Get in Touch
Email: The Permaculture Podcast

When we completed our Permaculture Design Course we were excited and enthusiastic but weren't sure what to do next. We had a certificate, but the only paths presented were to design or teach. We were full of possibilities, but few practical next steps. We found ourselves in The Permaculture Pit.

I’m trying to understand how many others felt this during their permaculture education.

Is this something you experienced? If so, what was missing for you?

Let me know. Leave a comment below in the show notes or send me an email: The Permaculture Podcast

Until the next time, spend each day practicing permaculture while taking care of Earth, yourself, and each other.

Eloisa joins me today to talk about her experiences in radical spaces, particularly Rainbow Gatherings but also in intentional community and activist camps, to put the principles of social permaculture into action. Throughout the conversation, she shares the ways those manifest in the acts of nonviolence, communication, and community justice. She also shares how she began down this road, where she studied permaculture, and some of her mentors for others who would like to journey down this path.

Find out more about Eloisa at newlcimateculture.com and on social media @nomadsoulful and @newclimateculture.

Throughout this conversation with Eloisa, I was thinking back to the experimental practices I’ve engaged in in-order to live into social permaculture, from launching permaculture convergences to visiting or living in intentional communities. These places served as vital opportunities to try non-violent communication, conflict transformation, restorative circles, and the other ways we can work together as human beings seeking to build permanent cultures that care for all life. The work is important to our long-term goals, but we need to see and experience them now before they’re necessary.

If we can attend radical gatherings or convergences, once they re-emerge from the pandemic, that’s amazing. I know, however, that that isn’t possible for everyone. In the meantime, or while we remain indoors, what are our options? The first place I would recommend starting is with Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication. Though Dr. Rosenberg has since passed on, his work continues to live and breathe through his book and the ongoing efforts of The Center for Nonviolent Communication.

I also linked to two other interviews below, one with Karl Stayeart and another with Ethan Hughes, that explore nonviolent communication and conflict transformation, so you can hear other voices engaged in this work. I also encourage you to reach out to Eloisa to see if she is currently hosting any workshops on these subjects you could attend virtually.

This conversation with Eloisa was also just the first to begin looking at radical spaces and how we can begin the ongoing processes of rewilding ourselves and working to decolonize our practices. If you know of anyone else working on these tasks who should appear in an upcoming episode, please let me know.

Leave a comment below or send me an email: The Permaculture Podcast

Until the next time, put your principles into practice while taking care of Earth, your self, and each other.

Related Interviews
Nonviolent Communication
Conflict Transformation

Resources
newclimateculture.com
@nomadsoulful
@newclimateculture 

Find a Rainbow Gathering
Women’s Permaculture Guild
Heather Jo Flores
Urban Permaculture Institute of San Francisco

Visit Our Partner: Food Forest Card Game

In that frame, we look at the tools you can add to your toolkit to do this work and build your, and other’s, competencies. Some of those include Theory U, nonviolent communication, and dynamic governance (sociocracy). We also look at facilitation and what it means to step into a role of leadership.

Find Rhonda at https://www.shelteringhills.net/ and Permaculture Design Magazine, which she edits, at https://www.permaculturedesignmagazine.com/

What I keep coming back to from this conversation is that everything we talked about, from nonviolent communication to facilitation, and even leadership, are all skills you can learn. Though I’ve met a number of people who through charisma and their presence come across as natural leaders you can be taught how to lead others in the moment or on a project. This doesn’t require talent or exceptional abilities, just a desire to learn to lead.

A resource that can help you with this is the book, The Leadership Challenge. Based on copious research of businesses large and small, this has gone through multiple editions and printings and is one of the best I’ve ever encountered on organizational leadership and development. This has influenced countless leaders over the years and was required reading during graduate school.

This is well worth picking up, and I’m going to give away a copy of this and Giraffe Juice here on Patreon. Look for those in your feed on January 9 and January 8, respectively.

2019 marks a new year, and I’d like to bring you new knowledge, skills, and resources. If there is anything you would like to learn more about, let me know.

Leave a comment below or send an email to The Permaculture Podcast

Until we meet again, spend each day creating the world you want to live in by taking care of Earth, yourself, and each other.

Additional Resources
On Feedback – The School of Life
The Four Agreements (Wiki)
Regenpreneurs

This includes our role as teachers and leaders while others are struggling for security, and how we can build resilience in our homes and our communities. He shares how together we can soften the blow to ourselves and others by preparing for the economic changes possible in the scenarios of hyperinflation, deflationary contraction, and hyper-stagflation, the latter of which he sees as the most likely outcome of those three at this time. 

A past guest of the show we get rolling with his thoughts on how to handle what we’re currently facing, so I’ve linked to Rob’s earlier interviews in the show notes below if you’d like to learn more about his background, his work on harvesting rainwater, and the framework he and his business partner Takota Coen have developed to simplify the application of permaculture to agriculture.

Find out more about Rob and his work at VergePermaculture.ca, and more through the links below.

I agree with Rob that now is a vital time for us to continue our education, take a role in creating resilience in our communities, and shift the narrative of what is possible. For ourselves, we can turn to our books, the University of YouTube, or the online classrooms like Coursera to work on expanding our knowledge. Now would be a great time to take that online Permaculture Design Course if you’re still looking for one.

If you have skills to share, we can contact our friends and family and see what they want to learn more about. Can we help them with their garden design? Help them repair something around the home?

If you’re a permaculture teacher, now is a good time to work on those online classes you wanted to put together. Begin sharing your knowledge through one-on-one consulting or webinars.

For our communities, we can coordinate seed swaps by mail, and eventually in person. We can make those phone calls to the city council or the mayor’s office to begin the conversation about chickens or other micro-livestock, or about expanding community garden efforts so people have access to land, or grow their own food.

To help with these, I’ve included links in the show notes to resources for each including some places offering online classes; software to connect remotely or run webinars of your own; and to organizations working on policy change. If you have any resources that come to mind others should know about, leave a comment in the show notes.

And of course, I’m always here to help you move your projects forward.

Until the next time, creatively respond to these uncertain times, while taking care of Earth, your self, and each other.

Previous Interviews with Rob Avis

Rob Avis on the Essentials of Rainwater Harvesting

The Adaptive Habitat Program

Related Interviews

Emergency Management and Disaster Preparedness

Edenspore

Resources

Verge Permaculture

Spanish Flu Waves (CDC)

The Great Influenza, a great book on the 1918 pandemic by John Barry.

Economist Mark Blyth

Online Classes (General Education)

EdX

Harvard University Free Online Classes

Coursera Free Classes

Online Meeting and Webinar Software

Cisco WebEx
GoToMeeting
Zoom

Micro-Livestock
Backyard Chicken Project
How to get your city to allow backyard chickens (Grist)
Raising Chickens in the City (Mother Earth Living)

We talk about the social side of permaculture and what we can do, as individuals and a community, to create boundaries that lead to deeper respect for ourselves and each other. To fight for something — rather than against — through small and slow solutions. The power we have as minority voices to create social change. The impact that being face-to-face with others can have in engaging with and resolving the issues facing our community and the broader world.

This is a conversation about sitting with things that are often uncomfortable, but necessary for transforming the world we have into the one we want to see.

Find out more about Rhonda and her work at permaculturedesignmagazine.com and shelteringhills.net.

Get in Touch
Email: The Permaculture Podcast

Resources
Permaculture Design Magazine
Sheltering Hills Design, LLC
Small and Slow-Solutions: IPC India 2017
Safer Spaces Agreement
Great Rivers and Lake Permaculture Institute
How to Conduct a Community Inventory (Transition US)
Sociocracy aka Dynamic Governance (Wikipedia)
Dynamic Governance: A New System for Better Decisions (Triple Pundit)
Restorative Justice
Restorative Circles
Permaculture and The Commons. Permaculture Design Magazine #103 (February 2017)
Radical Faeries
Why Mobile Technology Matters for the World’s Nomadic Peoples

Support the Podcast on Patreon

During their conversation Kanyon and David also touch on the history of Indian Canyon and the role this location had for native peoples of California, being thoughtful with our words and actions, and to consider the impacts our choices have on ourselves, our descendants, and the land.

Find out more about Kanyon’s work at indiancanyonlife.org.

There is a lot to unpack from this conversation, with more emerging with each additional listen. I realized that my thoughts on what was expressed could easily take an hour or more to explore all the threads and thoughts that Kanyon raised, so I’ll try to keep this shorter than that.

A piece that continues to resonate is what we can do to ask better questions and seek deeper understanding. I hear this in Kanyon’s words when talking about the role of cultural recognition and identity and asking from a place of humility. To know the history of the land beyond the physical impacts of industry or previous development, but also of those who called that land home and how they got there. To recognize the distinction of being native to a place versus being indigenous to it.

One of the reasons I found permaculture appealing decades ago was that as Bill wrote about the foundational ideas in the Designers’ manual, something that stood out was that what we are doing in our thought and design processes to look for what we can give and then receive in return. We build relationships in reciprocity.

Let’s take that a step further and deepen our work to honor and respect those people who came before us and how they knew and worked the land. We have a lot to learn and a lot to share.

--

What are your thoughts after hearing this interview with Kanyon?

Leave a comment in the show notes or reach out to directly:

Email: The Permaculture Podcast

Write:

The Permaculture Podcast

The Permaculture Podcast

With only 4 regular episode left in the year, I’m not sure which will be out in a few weeks, as David and I are shuffling around the scheduled so that we can explore some topics in more depth through a series of related interviews in 2019.

Whatever may come, until the next time, spend each day creating the world you want to live in by taking care of Earth, your self, and each other.

Resources
Indian Canyon Life
Kanyon Sayers-Roods
Kanyon Konsulting

Dawes Act of 1887

Visit our Partner: Food Forest Card Game

During the conversation today, William shares how we can get involved as citizen scientists to explore the genetic makeup of mushrooms, as well as plants and insects, with readily available supplies and skills we can learn with less study than you might expect. We also dig into his work on breeding mushrooms and the role that molecular biology plays in understanding mating types to create viable strains with the characteristics we are looking for, rather than having to breed out to random chance. We end with how you can get started, reflection on how we hope the explosion of mycology might extend to other disciplines, and some of his work on growing algae for food.

Where to find William Padilla-Brown
Mycosymbiotics
Mycofest
Facebook
Instagram
YouTube
Cognitive Function
Cognitive Function Instagram

Giveaway: Cordyceps Cultivation Handbook Vol. 1

I’m always impressed by William continuing to push the edges of his work with mushrooms, mycology, and food systems, and make this knowledge accessible to everyone around him. From setting up the right environment for growing fungi to how to identify different types to how to propagate and now how to create gene sequences, he develops his knowledge and skills and then shares what he’s learned. His interest, built on books and workshops, allowed him to become an expert in mycology in his own right in five years. Now he’s conquering microbiology and gene sequencing to get even better at what he already does. Imagine where he’ll be in another five years. Or ten. Or twenty.

I reflect on this because I’ve re-created myself every decade or so of my life. I studied computer science and worked in Information Technology through my late teens and twenties. Leveraging those skills, a few years in college radio as a DJ, and finally taking a permaculture design course, became a podcaster. I took all that and went back to school to learn about resource management to better understand permaculture while honing my interview skills to get better at drawing out people’s personal narratives. Now I go back to my years as a storyteller as a teenager and in my 20s and consider how we can tell better stories and integrate them into our lives, change ourselves, and transform the world.

I believe that each of us has the ability to become experts in multiple areas. We can do this in non-traditional ways, through personal reading and study, the University of YouTube, mentorships, immersive internships. The hard part is deciding what we truly care about.

Once we know what gives our life meaning, we can climb onto the shoulders of the giants that came before us and see horizons they’ve only dreamed about.

What do you love so much that you’ll take the first step towards the edge of human knowledge and use your passion to add to our collective understanding?

Let me know:

The Permaculture Podcast

Or Write:
The Permaculture Podcast

The Permaculture Podcast

Until the next time, spend each day learning more about what you love while taking care of Earth, your self, and each other.

Additional Resources
Ryan Paul Gates (Instagram)
Fungi for the People

Mushroom Mountain - Tradd Cotter
Mycelial Connection - Willoughby Arevalo
Fungi Perfecti - Paul Stamets
Radical Mycology - Peter McCoy

Oxford Nanopore

National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)
MiniPCR
New York Genome Center
GenBank
Genewiz
Organic Grower’s School

We recorded this conversation during the emerging COVID-19 pandemic to discuss practical solutions we can apply right now to make sense of the situation and prepare a response appropriate for our individual lives. We begin introducing the four pillars of emergency management and a six-question approach. Chris finds this method useful when creating our assessments. We then move into a conversation about personal actions for each of us to take in the moment and as part of our long-term planning, using examples from Chris’s life to show the theory in practice. Throughout, we repeatedly return to what we can do to lighten the emotional load through activities that ground us in the moment and plan for days ahead as we focus on our values and what is bigger than ourselves.

Find out more about Chris at ChangingWorldProject.com. He also put together a resource page at ChangingWorldProject.com/permaculturepodcast where you’ll find more information from this interview. You can also check out the ecovillage he is working with on disaster preparedness, Our Eco Village, at ourecovillage.org.

As we returned to the Our Purpose Beyond Self several times during the interview, I want to come back to this in my closing remarks with two books to recommend.

The first is Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Of all the books I’ve read in my life, this one slim volume, something most of us can read in a few hours, has had the most impact on my inner life and understanding how meaning can protect us and help us through the hardest moments of life.

The second is Robert Wright’s Why Buddhism is True, which looks at the modern research that shows how we can see ourselves and the world more clearly through mindfulness practices that lead to greater truth and happiness. I find the insights of this book and the different ways to be mindful, beyond just meditation, relate well to the discussion today, and in the interviews with Robyn Mello and Natalie Bogwalker, about finding our grounding activities.

Finally, as I said at the end of the recent interview with Robyn Mello, I don’t know what the future holds or how hard it will be, but we will get through this.

If I can help in any way, get in touch:

Email: The Permaculture Podcast

Or Write:
The Permaculture Podcast

The Permaculture Podcast

Until the next time, observe and interact, plan, and take small and slow solutions, while you care for Earth, yourself, and each other.

Related Interviews
Edenspore - Robyn Mello
People & Permaculture: Trauma-Informed and Radical Self Care with Jessi Bloom

Resources
Changing World Project
Changing World Project Resource Page

Sprouting Seeds (Johnny’s Selected Seeds)
Sprouting Seeds (Sprout People)

Indoor Mushroom Grow Kit (Field and Forest Products)

She spoke with me while I am currently self-isolating and wanting to record new interviews.

I’ve known Robyn for many years. As a past guest of the show, we started the conversation before I had a chance to start recording. This episode then begins with us talking about how we’re handling and thinking about the state of the world during the spreading COVID-19 pandemic. We then turn to building resilience and community and her work as a long-time permaculture practitioner working on lifestyle design. She shares how early motherhood has changed her perspective on future care and what we need to do to move away from a place of fear, as we trust ourselves and one another. We wrap up with a message of our role as permaculture practitioners to create more resilience in our local communities.

You can find Robyn at Edenspore.com, and on her Facebook page, Instagram, Bandcamp, and new blog site. Also, check out her Etsy page where you can find Robyn's herbal remedies and more.

Today, I’m going to forgo the usual lessons learned recap for the episode and say this: I don’t know what the future holds, I don’t know how hard it will be, but we’re going to make it through this.

Whatever you are going through, leave a comment in the show notes to share with the podcast community so we can help you. You can also let me know what you are experiencing, and I’ll do what I can.

Email: The Permaculture Podcast

Or write:
The Permaculture Podcast

The Permaculture Podcast

Whatever we face in the world, we can find strength together, while taking care of Earth, ourselves, and each other.

Related Interviews
Permaculture Multi-Culture with Robyn Mello
An Introduction to Philadelphia Orchard Project
Philly Round Table
Philly Round Table Q&A
Horn Farm Center Q&A

Resources
Email Robyn: edensporedesign@gmail.com
Edenspore
Edenspore (Facebook)

Edenspore (Instagram)
Edenspore (Bandcamp)
Edenspore (Etsy)
Slow and Steady Resilience

Permaculture Women’s Guild
Permaculture Women’s Guild (Facebook)

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Reflective Listening (PDF)
The Basics of Nonviolent Communication
The Permaculture Handbook by Peter Bane
Reducing Wasted Food at Home

Spotted Lanternfly