As Transform 19 is still a conference at the core with these labs as a central component, Kevin also shares some of the speakers and other offerings at the event. You’ll hear about a number of people and projects you may want to explore further and connect with from all over the globe.

You can find more about Kevin's work with Gather Lab at GatherLab.net and Transform: Climate, Communities, and Capital at TheTransformSeries.net

Though Kevin gives us quite a bit regarding the various ways he and others focus on business development, impact investing, and what to expect from Transform 19, what I think about from this and my own experience is that burst of energy we have—the anticipation and excitement—leading up to an event, the fall off afterward, and what we can do to keep the momentum and possibility for change going once we’re no longer together. Kevin uses a lot of technology to accomplish this goal, through conference calls, Slack instances and custom software.

For those of us not plugged into those resources I think of Facebook events and Meetup groups, or even just posting meeting details to an Instagram account or Twitter, to bring us and keep us together. To me, however, the most important part is ongoing face-to-face time together, where we consistently show up. As we have our meetings and conversations after an event, we need to continue learning the stories of those around us, whether a personal anecdote or, like Kevin and his folks are doing with Transform, the stories of successful professionals; the people who did the work, overcame the struggles, and found a way forward. Can we, as Kevin himself mentioned at the beginning of the interview, openly talk about the fact we failed? To share that the journey along the way is more than just our successes and we have other lessons to learn through failure, such as the temperament Kevin’s wife brings to their businesses that balances his thoughts and energy. The further I dig into my own focus with permaculture, social permaculture, and community development, the more importance I place on getting to know one another, through silly stories like the origins of a nickname; to conversations about what breaks our heart; how we fell in love with a piece of land; or discovered the calling and created a business that changed our lives. We all have stories of success and failures. Those stories matter. What are your stories?

Let me know by leaving a comment below. 

Resources
Gather Lab
The Transform Series
B Corporation (Certification)
Regenerate Illinois
Root Capital
The Democracy Collaborative
Lotus Foods
Guayaki
Indigenous Designs
Iroquois Valley Farmland

Related Interviews
Otto Scharmer - Theory U and the Emerging Future 
Carol Sanford - Responsible Business, Responsible Entrepreneur

I’d like to thank Ben and Robyn for inviting the podcast to join them for the day so we could share this with you, and to “Photographer John” Staley for making the trip, as I was unable to attend.

I love the shared story of these three presenters speaking around these common questions, and why I like to include conversations like these, and the others over the years on the show. Together, a multitude of voices address the same series of inquiries. Though any moment, given question or particular response, leads to greater reflection, the one that stays with me leaving this interview regards the inquiry into one’s ancestral history and how that impacts our work and view of the world.

As the descendant of Appalachian Hillbillies and a 19th-century German immigrant, I often find myself considering the ways that familial culture brought me to where I am today. How stories of growing up poor in West Virginia lead my mother’s family to focus on people. Often folks I did not know, and remain unsure if we were related by blood or by marriage, we called family. Anyone who would join us for a meal was free to eat with us. From those roots how came to care about individuals and the community we create. One immigrant, my great-great-grandfather Mann arrived in the second half of the 1800s, where came to Pennsylvania and fought in the American Civil War, before settling with an American wife in southern Maryland to farm. They taught his son how to farm, who then taught my grandfather, who taught my father. Though I did not grow up on the land, as my family no-longer farmed by the 1980s, the soil still ran through me, as we planted seeds. Dug in the ground. Planted trees in the yard with my father on Arbor day so that by the time I was a teenager there was the shade to sit under, even if branches lacked the height to climb.

I’ve carried those times, those stories of past generations, and experiences for my entire life and see them all as leading me directly to this path of creating The Permaculture Podcast, retaining a love of Earth, people, and sharing the bounty of life.

Do you have any stories like these which lead you to your journey? I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment below so we can continue the conversation.

Related Interviews
Wilson Alvarez - Biomimicry, Landcare, and The Reintegration Project
The Reintegration Project Tour (YouTube)
Wilson Alvarez and Ben Weiss - Rewilding 
Wilson Alvarez and Ben Weiss - Zone 4 Permaculture 
Wilson Alvarez and Ben Weiss - Restoring Eden 
Right Livelihood 
Getting Right with Ourselves and Building Community
Roundtable: Susquehanna Permaculture (Part 1)
Roundtable: Susquehanna Permaculture (Part 2)
Permanent Multi-Culture with Robyn Mello
Robyn Mello - An Introduction to Philadelphia Orchard Project
Roundtable: Philly Q&A (Part 1)
Roundtable: Philly Q&A (Part 2)

Tim joins me to share his thoughts and experiences with rammed earth as a natural building method. This includes the distinction between raw and stabilized rammed earth and how rammed earth can reduce the amount of cement required for a long-lasting wall. Tim also gives an estimate of the price difference between stick-built walls and professionally installed rammed earth, while acknowledges that natural building is a growing but still niche field. We close with a discussion of the importance of valuing our time when considering the cost of erecting a building or other project to come to the real price for any of our work.

You can find his book, Essential Rammed Earth Construction at NewSociety.com.

Below you'll also find links to the earlier interviews from the Essential series and natural building, including the conversations with Bob Theis who we mentioned in this episode.

As Tim works full-time as a professional engineer, the best place to find his thoughts and knowledge about Rammed Earth are in this interview and his book. If you do have any questions for him, please forward those to me here at the show, and I can send them to Tim for a follow-up interview.

What I love about natural building, which Tim reinforces in this interview, is the flexibility and forgiveness of the materials and techniques compared to stick-built homes. Whether stacking earthbags for a dome, filling tires for an Earthship, or ramming earth for a wall, at many steps along the way we can put things up and tear them down again, trying different ideas and learning as we go. Though the costs may be more expensive when we account for our time, we can learn a lot along the way about what satisfies our physical or aesthetic needs. By being involved in the process, we become connected to the spaces we build and what it means to inhabit a place.

What do you think of natural building? What techniques and materials have you used where you are? I’d love to hear more about your projects and accomplishments. Get in touch my leaving a comment below.

Essential Rammed Earth Construction - Tim's Book

Related Interviews
Bob Theis - Natural Building and Design
Bob Theis - More Natural Building
Rob Avis - Essential Rainwater Harvesting
Kelly Hart - Essential Earthbag Construction
The Mudgirls Natural Building Collective
Clare Kenny of The Mudgirls - Natural Building, Community, and Opportunity
Eric Puro - Natural Building and ThePoosh.org
Cliff Davis - Natural Building with Cliff Davis
Eddy Garcia - Natural Swimming Pools

Starting with his beginning as a tracker and forager, we move into his work on getting his farm started, and some of his favorite trees. Among those, we dig in deep about chestnuts and hickories. We also touch on what we mean by the word farm. Creating his families on-farm income on three-quarters of an acre. How foraging and tending the land extends the space we might consider our farm. How we can harvest more food than we can imagine by going to those places and spaces where others might not consider looking for food. Akiva also shares the joy of propagation and the many ways we can do this from cuttings to grafting to layering, and how we can significantly diversify our plant genetics by growing out our selection from seeds. Whether you are growing, planting, or just enjoy trees, there is a lot to learn from this interview. Trees of Power Giveaway

You can find Akiva, his farm, and work at twisted-tree.net and you can find his book, Trees of Power, at chelseagreen.com.

Though Akiva runs a farm that propagates thousands and thousands of trees each year, what stands out for me is the passion that comes through in his voice from his connection to Earth that he developed through foraging and tracking. His experience shows that we can use these skills as a way to foster and deepen that connection. I feel that doing this is essential because we need to love something to care for it.

If we can have that experience at a younger age, it can lead to a lifetime of meaningful action on our part to take responsibility for our choice and the impact on Earth, other people, and our ability to return the surplus. Foraging is one of the best skills for this that we can learn, and also share with others, especially children. Time and time again I see this in my own kids, as my daughter seeks out violets and my son the brambles, to harvest flowers and berries from the yard or when we go for a hike. It instilled a curiosity to wonder what this mushroom is, and can they eat it? To borrow my camera to take a picture so we can find out more about that little bush we’ve never seen before. This started when they were pre-school age and continues now as they prepare for their pre-teen years. Anyone can benefit from learning to forage. As a hobby, it is simple and low-cost that can reap incredible rewards and is worth taking your time to, even if it’s only for a few hours on a couple of weekends a year.

If you’d like to learn more about foraging, though I know some great foragers locally, the best person working in our broader region of the United States and writing about their experiences is Sam Thayer. As Akiva mentioned, Sam wrote the forward to Trees of Power and has appeared on The Permaculture Podcast in the past. His books are just incredible and take you through many of the different ways you can make use of a wide selection of plants, beyond only the edible parts. Even if you don’t live in areas where the particular plants he details grow, his thoughts on foraging ethics and what to consider while walking the land make each book worth much more than the cover price.

Sam Thayer is at foragersharvest.com, and you can find a link to our interview below.

Along the way on this or any of your journeys, if I can ever help, please let me know.

Resources
Twisted Tree Farm
Trees of Power (Chelsea Green)
Tom Brown Jr. Tracking School
The Graves Tree - Arthur Graves Chestnuts
Empire Chestnut Company (Route 9 Cooperative)
Related Interview: Foraging with Sam Thayer

From their experience bringing together more than 13,000 people to over 90 action days, they share how we can learn more, get involved, and make a difference. You can find Ryan’s work at permacultureaction.org and Leah at risingappalachia.com.

Though I interviewed Jasmine Saavedra about the Permaculture Action Tour in 2015, it was my friends in Kentucky—whom you’ve heard in the in-person conversations recorded at the Clear Creek Schoolhouse—who helped get this conversation together. Thank you, Leah Van Winkle and Michael Beck for helping to set all this up.

What I’m left with stepping away from this conversation is a reminder of David Fleming’s Lean Logic and how in those pages he calls on the need for celebration and carnival if we plan to have a joyous and bountiful future. But, we can have that now, and Ryan and Leah and all the rest are working on making this a possibility. The first is through the permaculture action days. We can take this further, however, through related movements like slow music or slow food and celebrate and enjoy the bounties of life and our ability to share a space or a plate with others, a part of our everyday lives and ongoing rituals. This is social permaculture in motion, working with people so they can work the land. As they care for one another, they can care for Earth.

If you are an organizer, or just interested, get in touch with the Permaculture Action Network and see what you can do to create or join with one of the regional hubs. Look for the artists, artisans, and allies that can come together and share the surplus with one another. Need help along the way? Get in touch.

Resources
Permaculture Action Network
Rising Appalachia
The Slow Music Movement (Huffington Post)
Lead to Life
Extinction Rebellion
Sonic Bloom Festival

A long-time permaculture practitioner, Zev’s current area of interest is similar to my own: supporting people, communities, and organizations to see the long-term implementation of Earth restoring and human healing systems. One of those ways is through the use of Mutual Aid, as outlined by Kropotkin and others throughout the 20th century, to share resources and various forms of capital across a community of like-minded individuals.

Using Mutual Aid as the basis for our conversation, Zev leads us through the scale on which this kind of cooperation occurs, more than as close friends and family, but much smaller than a nation-state. As we talk about today, we’re looking at regional groups and hubs that support the members and can also network with one another. As environmentally-minded folks, we also consider the lessons from the bioregional movement when considering where to draw our lines of association as the peoples of a river, mountains, or woodland. However we decide to associate, ideally in-person but even virtually, we can all work together to render aid to those who share our goals and desires.

You can find more about Zev and his work with Co-Operate WNC at wnc-mutual-aid.org 

I’d also like to thank Jennings Ingram for getting me in touch with Zev. Jennings is an awesome permaculture practitioner out of Asheville, North Carolina, whose work you can find on Instagram at green.catalyst.

As you can hear throughout the conversation with Zev, I am a fan of mutual aid organizations, and participate in a private fraternity that has many of the same hallmarks when it comes to people care and the overall size and geographic distribution for such an organization. It’s more than a single person can administer to, while connecting more people than we might know, or like, as individuals. I see the development of Mutual Aid organizations, as informal as the fraternity or as formal as Co-Operate WNC, as ways for us to bring people together through free association, without the need for a large bureaucracy, to work together for change on scales that we cannot readily accomplish on our own. Also, though they are capable of a 501(c) status in the United States, they rest outside the range of what a non-profit might normally offer regarding educational or outreach goals. Rather than providing aid to a community directly, Mutual Aid organizations render this to the members. I think we see a lot of organizing like this already within the permaculture community, through the Permaculture Action Network, which you’ll hear more about in the next interview, to the various Permaculture Associations for permaculture professionals such as PINA, PAN, or the Permaculture Institutes. Mutual Aid organizations can provide similar benefits, but in the social and community space. As Zev is looking to work with existing groups in his area, what organizations where you reside could you see using this model to assist? What about creating a gardening mutual aid society? Or a skill share society? Or a family and childcare society? Whoever you wish to work with, however you want to help, there is a way to do so with Mutual Aid, right now.

Check out Co-Operate WNC and the other resources Zev mentioned, and take the next step where you are. Need help with this? Get in touch and I’ll do what I can to connect you with ways to move forward. 

Resources:
Co-Operate WNC
Down Home NC
Collective Courage: A history of African American Collective Economic Thought and Practice
Ithaka Institute
Humans United in Mutual Aid Networks
Hive Story: The Mutual Aid Podcast
Milpa: From Seed to Salsa
Related Interview: A New-Horticultural Revival with Chuck Marsh

Through our chat together Kirsten shares what and why she and her husband focused on when moving to the land. That she earns an income off the farm, and what they are developing to make one on it. The value of a partner who shares your dream, which she has in her husband. The relationship we have with our animals, including what develops from bottle feeding a baby goat, when your geese imprint on you and having a guardian dog as part of your family. Engaging your local community, while also leveraging social media to stay connected, learn new skills, and promote your farm and farm business. We get into quite a bit in our time together, which also reminded me of how technology is not always the most reliable at the end of a rural lane. You’ll hear a few places where we have less than perfect audio, but those are minor compared to the wealth of information Kirsten shares with us in this conversation.

You can read Kirsten's blog and learn more about her journey at HostileValleyLiving.com, and you’ll find her book at newsociety.com.

While lauding Kirsten’s book, I mention that I like the questions she asks to help you perform a self-assessment and decide whether or not this really is the path you want to pursue, something we don’t talk about enough within the permaculture community. Those questions can help you with preparing for rural life, understanding the seasonality of living on a farm, the reality of raising children on the homestead, and more. A few of those questions, from the chapter on Skills and Resources for Rural Living, include: What is your plan for keeping food fresh or preserved? How will you bathe and get fresh drinking water? How will you keep your animals warm in winter? As you read each chapter and answer those questions, if you want to learn more and dig deeper, Kirsten provides a relatively comprehensive list of books for each topic. From the same chapter, some of the books she recommends: The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery Raising Goats Naturally by Deborah Niemann I’m a fan of her suggested reading because many of the books are ones I would personally recommend from my own library, or have been suggested by guests at one point or another. Overall, if you are called to the land, you can learn a lot from Kirsten, her blog, and her books. I missed her at Mother Earth News Fair in PA this past year, as I was hanging out with Jereme Zimmerman at the time talking mead, but look forward to meeting her this September and sitting through some of her presentations. If you can make it to that or any of the other events, she’ll be at, seek out the opportunity. If not, read her work.

After listening to this episode, what do you think about making a move to a homestead? Have Kirsten’s insights changed your views? Will you need to take some time to build your skills?

Let me know by leaving a comment below.

Until the next time, consider whether or not a homestead is right for you and your plans, while taking care of Earth, yourself, and each other.

This conversation is based on his new book from New Society Publishers, Essential Rainwater Harvesting. Rob wrote this book along with his wife and Verge Permaculture Partner, Michelle. Though they began their professional careers as engineers designing solutions in the oil fields, they now live on a productive permaculture homestead in Alberta, Canada, and use that experience to create and share all the formulas, calculations, and components needed to create a productive system for capturing clean, healthy water.

You can find more about Rob's work at VergePermaculture.ca, and his book, Essential Rainwater Harvesting at NewSociety.com.
 

In their book, Rob and Michelle break down what we need in order to install a rainwater harvesting system, and they back that up with their professional experience and the sources, that lead them to their conclusions. They also hold the additional need to understand the liability and risks of such a system as engineers who put their stamp on a design. I mention this latter part as one of my earliest lessons in rainwater capture was just how heavy a rain barrel, even a 50 gallon one, can get—over 400lbs/180kils—and what we need to consider when placing them, such as a solid foundation, so they can be productive and not create any hazards for the user or surrounding neighbors.

One of the mystifying parts of rainwater harvesting for me, in the beginning, was calculating just how much water would fall on a given area and the necessary size for a storage container to hold it all. Once you start doing those calculations you quickly find that a lot of water, whether you count the volume in liters or gallons, comes off of a roof or parking lot with just a centimeter or half-inch of rain. Accounting for that, how your surfaces or gutters divide and divert those flows, and where they’ll go can help to understand how to use this resource around your home or in your landscape. And with Essential Rainwater Harvesting, you’ll find all the details for that and so much more. This is a long way to say, I like this book and like the others in the Essential series from New Society Publishers, think you will too.

What did you think of this conversation with Rob? Do you have questions for him? Would you like to hear more about this work or his other projects at Verge Permaculture?

Get in touch and continue the conversation by leaving a comment below.

Resources
Verge Permaculture - Rob and Michelle Avis
Essential Rainwater Harvesting
Rainwater Harvesting Toolkit
Peter Coombes - Urban Water Cycle Solutions
Dr. Anthony Spinks PhD Thesis on Biofilms and Sludges
American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association (ARCSA)
North American Rainwater Harvesting Code

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 regenerative business? Let him know: david@thepermaculturepodcast.com

Do you have any questions on Regenerative Business? Would you like to know more about anything covered in David’s series or any other episodes in the archives? Would you love to hear a particular subject included in the future as David and I plan the second and third quarter of 2019?

Get in touch by leaving a comment below.

Resources
Terra Genesis International
Regrarians

You can find Warren’s home, Quail Springs Permaculture, at quailsprings.org. You’ll also find links to many of the other organizations mentioned, and his past interviews on the show, in the resources section below.

Stepping away from this one I find value in all of what Warren shared with us. That nearly everyone lacks an intact culture. We should create a home to work outward from, before stepping up to international outreach. We can find a sense of place and foster an indigenous spirit in a rural, suburban, or even an urban setting. We need to find a way to process grief in a healthy way. Grief occupies my thoughts quite a bit lately. Exploring that emotion, beyond just thing interview with Warren, comes from a recent exchange with a friend, Hi Josh!, about the role of guilt in the destructive choices that we make. How a desire to do the right thing can lead to a crisis of comparison and paralysis where we do nothing at all. Or, worse, to put on blinders and barrel down another way which leads to more harm than if we’d not felt the guilt. Considering the premise of guilt that started the conversation with Josh, I wondered if we can look at guilt as a form of grief; the grief that stems from a lack of agency to care for what we love because of the requirements of the dominant culture and the lack of real, deep, and meaningful community.

If we could make space for those feelings and express them with others who care about us, through a community, could we move through these paralyzing thoughts more quickly and live fully into our own gifts and create the world we know is possible? Is creating that space, now, in an acknowledged period of transition a way we can heal ourselves and with it our homes, communities, and Earth? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this and everything else covered in today’s episode.

Get in touch by leaving a comment below. 

Resources
Quail Springs Permaculture
Sustainable Vocations
Wilderness Youth Project
Casitas Valley Farm and Creamery
True Nature Design
Technical Operations Performance Support (TOPS) Program
Resilience Resources (USAID)
Lush Cosmetics Spring Prize
Eight Shields
USAID
The Smell of Rain on Dust

Past Interviews with Warren 
Warren Brush - Profitable Permaculture
Warren Brush - What Sustains You?