Zev Friedman - Co-Operate WNC, Mutual Aid, and the Scale of Collaboration

My guest today is Zev Friedman, founder of Co-Operate WNC, a mutual aid organization in Western North Carolina.

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

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Kirsten Lie-Nielsen - So You Want To Be A Modern Homesteader

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

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.

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Rob Avis - Essentials of Rainwater Harvesting

Rob Avis leaning against the corner of the house.

Rob Avis, of Verge Permaculture, joins me to talk about rainwater harvesting.

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

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Propagate Ventures

In this episode co-host David Bilbrey sits down for a group interview the co-founders of Propagate Ventures, with Ethan, Jeremy, and Harry. Together they share how they bring agroforestry to existing farms using direct investment. Through these efforts they also show that farming, agriculture, and regenerative business hold a place in the portfolio of the investment class, allowing those who practice Earth care to take advantage of the resources that might not be available to them otherwise.

You can learn more about their work towards on-farm investing and agroforestry at propagateventures.com, and if you’d like to know more about regenerative business and news, check out their sister site, propagate.org.

This is David’s last interview that came his trip to ReGen18.

Would you like him to return to ReGen19 and bring you more about 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

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Warren Brush - Fostering a 500 Year Vision

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

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?

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Rhonda Baird - Organizing and Supporting Our Communities

The Permaculture Podcast Tree with Roots Logo

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

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.

If there is anything you would like to learn more about, let me know. Leave a comment below.

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

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Joel Solomon - Whole System Economics

Where has our relationship with money and capital gone wrong as individuals and as a society? What do we have to do to get right with that relationship? In the last interview of the year, co-host David Bilbrey sits down with Joel Solomon to examine those questions and talk about how we can change the dominant economic system.

To cover all of that requires a wide-ranging discussion that includes wealth, politics, the commons, consciousness, care for those around us, and much more. Find out more about Joel's work to return the balance between finance, capital, and economics at joelsolomon.org. Find out more about Renewal Funds at renewalfunds.com.

As this is the final interview of the year and last episode before the holiday break, I’d like to leave you with three questions we’ll revisit again in a few weeks:

- What do you care about?
- What do you believe in?
- How much is enough?

If you’d like to share your thoughts with me directly, leave a comment below. 

Until the next time, spend each day considering your role and impact on the world while taking care of Earth, yourself, and each other. 

Resources
Joel Solomon
The Renewal Fund
Clean Money Revolution
Velocity of Money (Wiki)
Braiding Sweetgrass

Related Interviews 
Joel Solomon - Regen18: Politics and The Clean Money Revolution 
Dr. Otto Scharmer - Theory U and the Emerging Future 
David Bollier - The Commons

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Fred Provenza - Nourishment and Reclaiming our Nutritional Wisdom

The renowned animal behaviorist Fred Provenza joins me to talk about how we can reconnect with the foods that feed our bodies and reclaim our nutritional wisdom.

Visit Our Partner: Food Forest Card Game

Drawing on decades of research with animals, upon retirement from Utah State University he turned his lens towards human beings to pull together the best studies and his own personal journey to provide a way we can begin to eat well for ourselves by outlining where we’ve gone wrong and what we can do to make a positive change.

You can find Fred's book, Nourishment, at chelseagreen.com.

What do you think of what Fred shares with us today? Can you see the relationships between flavor-feedback, culture, and alternative availability on our nutritional wisdom? Let me know by leaving a comment below.

Resources
Nourishment
Chemical Ecology (Wiki)
Dying To Be Me by Anita Moorjani
Edward R Murrow’s This I Believe (Wiki)

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Lindsey Bender - Mushrooms and Mycology

My guest today is Lindsey Bender, the chief mycologist for Field and Forest Products, Inc., a mushroom spawn and supply company located in Wisconsin.

I met Lindsey at the Pennsylvania Mother Earth News Fair in 2018 when I stopped to check in with Laura of Field and Forest, who I’ve gotten to know over the years through phone calls asking questions about mushrooms and other products and meeting one another at the fair several years ago. This time Lindsey was along for the trip. Once we started talking about all things fungi, she started answering some of my questions in very technical ways that lead us to talk about her background. Through that I learned she became a mycologist after many years studying biology at the undergraduate and graduate levels, which we get into in more depth during her introduction. In this interview, you’ll hear about her work on keeping the genetic lines of the fungi used for spawn production healthy and experiments related to the interactions between fungi, plants and soil microbiology. She also shares why some mushrooms are commercially viable, and others are not, including some of our favorites like morels and why those cannot reliably be grown from spawn, and different ways to shock fungi to force fruiting and induce mushroom production. Whether you are new to mushroom cultivation or been growing for years, there’s something here for everyone to learn more about fungi and mycology. Find out more about Lindsey and Field and Forest Products, Inc. at fieldforest.net.

What did you think about this conversation with Lindsey? Does it change your view of mushrooms, mushroom growing, and what is possible? Let me know. Leave a comment below. 

Resources
Field and Forest Products, Inc. Three-Season Mushroom Gardens (Video)

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Karl Treen - Permaculture Play and Design Considerations

The Permaculture Podcast Tree with Roots Logo

My guest today is Karl Treen of Food Forest Card Game. He joins me to share where his life has gone since our interview last year.

A longtime permaculture practitioner, Karl is one of the people whose work I follow off the air and I find quite a bit of inspiration from what he’s doing with his card game and working on implementing his designs in an urban environment where he lives in Rhode Island near the Atlantic Coast here in the United States. Though we’ve never met in person, knowing Karl as I do we wound talking as soon as we connected without a formal start to the interview. As a result what you’re about to hear drops directly into the conversation, but is not where we began nor ultimately where we ended when I turned off the recording. Where we do pick up is a few moments after he shared that he made a move to a new house with a larger yard and how this change influences his permaculture work. Along the way, we talk about a variety of thoughts. Those include different uses for his game inside the permaculture or school classroom; accepting that we can’t know everything and with that what we can do to be better teachers and designers; and why Instagram is our favorite place to learn and share new ideas, and some folks he recommends following. Find out more about Karl and his work at foodforestcardgame.com. While you are there consider picking up a couple of sets of cards as stocking stuffers for the holidays and introduce your friends and family to permaculture design. I also recommend following Karl on Instagram. As we mentioned there at the end of the interview, you can find him at foodforestcardgame. In his feed, you can see images from his mushroom logs, which he inoculated a few days after recording this interview in early November. You’ll find links to his Instagram account, his mushroom project, and the people he mentioned worth following in the show notes. To go with this interview, I’m giving away a deck of Food Forest Card Game cards and a copy of Mary Appelhof’s Worms Eat my Garbage. I like sitting down with Karl to talk about his work because I find what he’s doing, even after his many years of practice, reflects the experiences of other permaculture folks who work a job, have a little bit of land and are doing the best they can. As with his conversation about composting and black soldier flies, we have many decisions to make on what works best for us, our design, and goals. Yes, he has the perfect start to growing the fly larva, but at this time there are other places to focus his time and energy. Though he’s studied permaculture; created a design and education aid for the community, and remains connected with myself and others; he still finds inspiration from others. By focusing on a particular area for practice, he expands his knowledge, and direct experience becomes an in-depth resource for anyone who contacts him, while still absorbing what interests him from others. Similarly, as I continue down my own path, my own role is influenced by sitting in the chair as the show host, to have conversations with guests, read the latest books and newest articles, and act as a curator of information about permaculture. To pull upon all these connections to help you find the people, books, organizations, and resources that help you meet your goals. As one of my teachers used to say, to be a guide on the side rather than a sage on the stage. Continuing to stay in touch with Karl and others in our community, I’d like to have more casual conversations like this. We can learn so much from the informal understanding of the day to day lives of others putting the ideas of permaculture into practice.

If there’s someone who appeared on the show in the past that you thought I had a good conversation with and you’d like to hear back on the air for something less formal, let me know.

Leave a comment below.

Resources
Food Forest Card Game
Foodforestcardgame on Instagram
Haskap Edible Honeysuckle
Karl’s Mushroom Inoculation
Patrick Whitefield

Instagrams Worth Following
The Permaculture Podcast
That Vinegar Guy
Greenwood Farm
Veggie Garden Vermont

 

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