During this conversation, recorded live at the Prairie Festival the 40th celebration of The Land Institute, we join David Bilbrey talks with Fred Kirschenmann, a national and international leader in sustainable agriculture, who shares an appointment as Distinguished Fellow for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, and is president of Stone Barn Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, New York.
He also continues to manage his family’s 1800 acre certified organic farm in North Dakota. We join David and Fred a few minutes into their conversation after Fred shares his encouragment by a former university student to look into organic Agriculture. Fred begins with his decision to convert to organic agriculture and the impacts this has on his farming choices, including the lack of available mentors and markets for this new-old method of farming. From there, Fred walks David through the transformations one can see from choosing bio-regionalism and farming with a sense of place and the impacts of organic agriculture. They end with Fred's three points for creating viable sustainable farms: by choosing to create regenerative, resilience, and relationship focused agriculture that forms a bond between the farmer, their land, and community.
Resources
Stone Barns Center
The Gospel of Consumption (Orion Magazine Article)
People
Thomas Berry
Sir Albert Howard
Liberty Hyde Bailey (Wiki)
Books and Articles
How to Thrive in the Next Economy - John Thackara
The Impulse Society - Paul Roberts
Flourishing - Ehrenfeld & Hoffman
Farmers of 40 Centuries (PDF) - FH King (Wiki)
50-Year Farm Bill (The Land Institute. PDF Download)
The end of the "neocaloric era"?
The Agriculture Course - Rudolph Steiner (Wiki)
Steven Martyn, the Sacred Gardener from Ontario, Canada, returns to continue our conversation about reconnecting with the land, as well as with the traditions and cultures not only of the area we call home, but also with the peoples of that land, and the ways of our families.
Along the way we talk about what it means to develop a mindset that tends the wild, to move away from domineering or colonizing, while also honoring those who come before us. During this interview you can also hear some of the struggles I’m currently having as I deepen my sense of place. This is an interview about place, culture, getting deep, and moving away from a self-centered and anthropocentric worldview.
Resources:
The Sacred Gardener
Orphan Wisdom School
The Hundredth Monkey Effect
Related Interview
Dave Jacke - Edible Forest Gardens and Permaculture
My guest for this episode is Mary Reynolds, the Irish author of The Garden Awakening: Designs to Nurture Our Land and Ourselves.
Our conversation focuses on how we can heal the land and ourselves by reconnecting with the stories of a place, and to acknowledge those feeling of the sacred. Through this process we become guardians of the land, responsible for the earth as much as we are for ourselves and our descendants. The land becomes a member of our family and connected to our community.
I'm not normally one to involve myself in conversations about the spiritual, but Mary's storytelling and personal experiences, as shared in the book and through her own words in this interview, spoke to me. The more that I connect to what it means to build community or establish a sense of place, these spiritual and religious overtones have meaning because of how much they matter to the people around us and to how those beliefs shape our interaction with the land. I've also had experiences when hunting of hiking of entering a primordial space. An area influenced by man, and yet still wild. An animist moment with the other than human. I don't have words for it, as it is so far removed from what I would normally find in a reductionist mindset, but there it stands, something I wish to and need to explore further. May you enjoy this conversation with Mary and may it awaken something in you, as it did for me.
Find out more about Mary and her work at MaryMary.ie.
Resources
The Garden Awakening
Mary Reynolds
Related Interview
Larry Korn - Masanobu Fukuoka and Natural Farming
Today is part two of the conversation with Shaun Chamberlin (Part 1 ), editor of Lean Logic and Surviving the Future, on the work of David Fleming.
This time we focus on Shaun including his background, current activities, and what it means to bear David's Legacy. Along the way, the conversation touches on a variety of subjects related to our work in the modern world, including the role of education, the apolitical need for action on the future, and what we can do to live inexpensively and with directed intent. This is candid, on both of our parts, as we share more of our own private stories as much as the public.
Find out more about Shaun and his work at DarkOptimism.org.
Resources
Lean Logic (Chelsea Green Publishing)
Surviving the Future (Chelsea Green Publishing)
Get both books for $60 (Chelsea Green Publishing)
Dark Optimism (Shaun's Site)
Schumacher College
The Moneyless Manifesto - Mark Boyle
The Dark Mountain Project
The Transition Timeline
The Happy Pig, Ireland. (Permaculture Magazine UK)
The Power of Time Off (TED Talk)
Related Interview
Shaun Chamberlin - Lean Logic: The Work of David Fleming
In this episode, I'm joined by Beth Dougherty the co-author, along with her husband Shawn, of The Independent Farmstead.
This new book from Chelsea Green Publishing looks at intensive pasture management and animals on the farm. Though that is the subject of the book, which comes from decades of experience running The Sow's Ear Farm in Ohio and provides a holistic approach to farm management, we spend most of the conversation discussing the calling to become a farmer and what the lifestyle includes. We also discuss the impact that a single large ruminant, the cow, can have on a farm, and the role of milk in transforming the availability of nutrients, which reduces the need for off-farm inputs. As Beth says, animals turn yesterday's sunlight into today's fat and proteins. This is something we can accomplish with a few acres of grass, the sun, and a dairy cow.
Resource
The Independent Farmstead (Chelsea Green Publishing)*
*This is an affiliate link. Purchasing using these links will benefit the financial health of the show.
My guest today is Shaun Chamberlin, the editor of Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It and Surviving the Future, both of which are based on the work of the late David Fleming (1940 - 2010).
The conversation is as much a discussion of these books, as it is a celebration of the life of David Fleming, who we get to meet through a series of clips throughout the interview. Without hyperbole I see these two volumes as some of the most important recent texts for any permaculture practitioner, recent convert to long-standing expert, to add to their library.
David, through the careful clarifying editing by Shaun, has created the resources that bridge the landscape and our communities, from food to tranistion, in an apolitical, accessible way, covering topics from Abstraction to Yonder. Self-referential, you can open Lean Logic to any page and be lead on a trail of connected thoughts to lead you to ideas that initially might seem unrelated, kind of like going to Wikipedia to look up swales and before you know it three hours have passed and you are now reading about the health risks of tritium , except in a book where everything is related to the resiliency necessary to create a world where humans can survive whatever the future may hold. Enjoy this first conversation with Shaun.
Related Interview
Rob Hopkins - The Transition Town Movement
Peter Michael Bauer, executive director of Rewild Portland, returns again to talk about the re-release of his book Rewild or Die.
Pulling from the work of earlier Anarcho-Primitivists, Peter, as his character Urban Scout, uses the framework of persona and performance art to create a trickster figure to challenge what it means to practice primitive skills and seek to rewild ourselves in a world that is industrialized, homogenized, and pushes back with violence against efforts to return to living as a free, undomesticated human being. I find that the book serves as a starting place for anyone new to the idea of human rewilding because of the topical approach, dissecting individual ideas vs. rewilding into a cohesive whole that gets to the root of what rewilding is, is not, and where it runs into conflict or cooperation with other ideas.
Rewild or Die, written with short, focused chapters that covers a wide range of subjects, also serves as a counterpoint to challenge other perspectives, such as veganism or permaculture. My personal journey to rewilding began through primitive skills through a copy of Richard Graves Bushcraft, then learning alongside experimental archaeologists as a young adult, and then from conservationists who rewild the land with animals. Later I discovered permaculture and what it means to build lasting communities. These two interest draw me ever more to human rewilding.
In that context storytelling, mythmaking, and culture creation form the foundation to create communities. Those are the communities that hold sacred the stories, roles, and landbase required to allow for a return to a way of life that honors ourselves and the other-than-human. We can live in cooperation together, tending to one another, in a way that goes beyond the promises of permaculture, agroforestry or regenerative agriculture. Rewild or Die continues the journey, and is a worthy addition to your library.
Resources
Rewild or Die
Rewild Portland
Rewild Portland Online Fundraiser
Deep Green Resistance
Black and Green Review (Anarcho-Primitivist Journal)
Geeks, MOPS, and sociopaths in subculture evolution BarCampFoo Camp (Wiki)
The Fifth World - Children of Wormwood
Rewild.com Forums
Related Interviews
Peter Michael Bauer - Rewilding Permaculture
Peter Michael Bauer - Human vs. Conservation Rewilding
Joshua Hughes return to share information about his latest venture Blacksheep Regenerative Resource Management, a invest with social responsibility.
During the conversation he guides us through how this effort has moved the amount of land under management through his projects from 20 acres in 2014, to 400 acres two years alter, and providing a return of 4,000% to investors over a 30 year period. All while creatinging local jobs and keeping the majority of the physical assets and resources in Costa Rica. Regenerative investing: practicing permaculture using the tools of modern business to rebuild the land and the people who call the land home.
Is this a model we can use to bring the needed financial capital into our work and find success during this period of transition? Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment below.
Resources
Blacksheep Regenerative Resource Management
VerdEnergia Pacifica
Related Interview
Joshua Hughes - Transitional Ethics - Joshua's first interview on the podcast.
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In this episode, recorded live at Prarie Festival earlier this year, Woody Tasch, founder of the Slow Money movement, joins David Bilbrey to discuss the limits of growth as related to economics, our personal role in changing the future, and where Woody sees Slow Money in the next few years.
Along the way they talk about the incredible impact of other thinkers on these ideas, including Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, and E. F. Schumacher, author of Small is Beautiful. In the post-conversation interview, I spend a few minutes looking at the judgement-free way that Permaculture allows us to best use our resources, especially being able to vote with our money, to have an impact on what we are able to do.
By taking these kinds of actions each day we are able to decrease the size of our integrity gap and live in ever greater service to Earth, ourselves, and each other.
Resources
Slow Money
Woody Tasch's Biography
Wendell Berry
Wes Jackson
The Land Institute
E.F. Schumacher (Wiki)
Small is Beautiful (Wiki)
Today Steven Martyn, a Canadian permaculturist, gardener, primitive skills practitioner, and teacher, joins me to talk about his journey to write The Story of the Madawaska Forest Garden.
After establishing a deep sense of place by learning the history of the land and peoples he called home, Steven returned to the world to share what he learned. This narrative walks us through to learn about what it means to tend to earth as a sacred gardener. 
Resources
The Sacred Gardener (Steven's Site)
The Madawaska Forest Garden
School of Myth (Home of Martin Shaw)
The Agroforestry Research Trust (Martin Crawford)
Edible Forest Gardens (Dave Jacke)
Transition Music By Javier Suarez (Jahzzar) under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-ShareAlike)
