In this interview, Kelly walks us through many of the steps required for building with earthbags, including the practical needs of what bags to use, what you can fill the bags with for thermal mass or insulation, some of the tools and equipment you’ll need, establishing a foundation, laying the courses, tying each layer together, and also how to secure your doors and windows.After you’ve listened to this interview, you’ll have a basic understanding of how to use earthbags for construction. With a copy of Kelly’s book you can learn the rest.

Find out more about Kelly and his work, including his DVD A Sampler of Alternative Homes, at naturalbuildingblog.com, and his book at NewSociety.com.

I like this interview because Kelly invites us to try our hand at building with earthbags. I find that invitation in, to try, to make mistakes, and to learn, incredibly powerful and empowering. We can start with simple structures, like an above-ground root cellar or domed storage shed, to get comfortable with the necessary techniques before proceeding to something more complicated. With the way earthbags go together we can stack, pull down, and try again, with our first structure serving as an in-depth learning experience. This is also an inexpensive technique, making it affordable and accessible in ways other methods, where mistakes can be costly, are not. Looking at the cost of supplies and some sample projects, 1,000 of the polypropylene bags that Kelly mentioned, are less than $400. Another $80 for a 440-yard roll of 4-point barbed wire. From there you’ll need rebar, lumber, windows, doors, and your tools, but over and over again I found many owner-built earthbag homes, all over the world, for under $10,000, in all shapes and sizes. Multi-story. Rectilinear. Rounded. Any combination you can imagine.

As a lover of cob and the feel of Earthships, there is something about the earthbag as a base that appeals to me. Its natural building meets LEGO. Earth risen into walls and offering us security, in a structure we can build with our own hands. I can think of few things more comfortable than that.

What do you think of this conversation? Has this changed your thoughts on building with earthbags? Is this a method you’ve used? Let me know. Leave a comment in the show notes, or get in touch.

From here the next regular episode is a conversation with Ben Goldfarb to talk about his book Eager and the role of one of the world’s greatest ecosystem engineers, the beaver. Until then, spend each day creating the world, and homes, you want to live in, while taking care of Earth, yourself, and each other.

Resources
Essential Earthbag Construction Natural Building Blog (Kelly’s Website)
A Sampler of Alternative Homes (Kelly’s DVD)
Nader Khalili (1936 - 2008)
The $50 and Up Underground House Book (undergroundhousing.com)

He shares with us the way we can combine local ingredients as flavor, with water, sugar, and yeast to create sodas, beer, wine, and mead with local flavor and sense of place. If you are familiar with his first book, The New Wildcrafted Cuisine, then you know his thoughts push the limits of what we might think of when considering what to toss into our brew pot. Taking these methods, he again takes us in an unexpected direction that goes from the social drinks we might expect, to discuss how we might consider making culinary, healing, or even psychotropic beverages.

Find out more about Pascal and his work as a forager and teacher at urbanoutdoorskills.com and his books, including The Wildcrafting Brewer at ChelseaGreen.com.

 Stepping away from this conversation, though he and I spoke about brewing and making wild-flavored beverages, I’m thinking more generally about how easy it is to complicate and over-analyze our journey and arrive at a place where the results we wish to accomplish gets lost in a messy process requiring more work than needed. Pascal shows us that with his primitive, or as he also says archaic, brews and how the modern steps, and commercial flavors, limit the range of experiences we create as we scrub and sanitize our pots and fermentation vessels, or leave our brews alone; watched but untouched as the liquid transforms from sugary concoction into alcoholic elixir.

How often do we do seek this same sterile approach in our other work, only to find the effort falls flat because of a singular direction and only considering one way? What if we tried more simplicity and creativity in our work as permaculture designers, and in our relationships and initiatives for community building? Can we strip away the unnecessary and arrive and something more concise, clear, whole, productive, and enjoyable? I think so, and the skills of creating wild foods and beverages provide a place where we can safely explore these patterns, before searching for similar details in our other work.

What do you think of this conversation with Pascal? Leave a comment below. 

Resources
Outdoor Urban Skills
The Wildcrafting Brewer
The New Wildcrafted Cuisine
Chelsea Green Publishing

Find out more about the company and products of Thrive at thrivecare.co.

Stepping away from this conversation I am left considering the ongoing push-pull between doing what is right and what works for our time and place. As individuals, groups, and organizations interested in the environment and caring for people that often means moving towards an ideal, rather than jumping directly there. We must acknowledge the forces at play, what is beyond our control that limits the viable options, and where we can offer reformatory or revolutionary change. What Alex and Mario are doing with Thrive addresses many of those concerns and pushes towards reforming the giant market that is the skin care industry with a radical approach to supporting their providers, while showing multi-million dollar companies what is possible, particularly at scales orders of magnitude larger than Thrive. I wish Alex, Mario, and the rest of their colleagues best in reaching their goals, and look forward to David having a follow-up conversation with them in a year or so to see how they are doing.

hat do you think of this conversation? Are you involved in an industry that could use this model to institute change? If you were asked to lean into the work of Thrive, what suggestions would you have for improving their model?

Let me know by leaving a comment below.

Along the way she tells us about the process of distilling, including watching for our heads, hearts, and tails; the poisonous compounds found and concentrated in distilled alcohol we need to look out for; equipment every distiller should own to keep them and their final product safe; and why we should think twice about making sugar-shine.

Find out more about Victoria and her work at victoriahedheadmiller.com, and her books from New Society Publishers at newsociety.com.

If you’re interested in making booze at home, after listening to our first episode together on the legality of this practice and deciding it is worth the concern, I highly recommend her book, Craft Distilling, as you can learn all you need from Victoria’s hands-on, experience-based approach. If you want to learn more about making beer, wine, or mead as the basis for your at-home still runs, I recommend the following books from my days as a brewer, vintner, and mead maker. The first of those is Charlie Papazian’s classic The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. This will tell you just about everything, and I do mean everything, about making beer. From there, on the wine side, one of the favorites that got me started is The Foxfire Book of Winemaking, filled with memories and recipes for wines, juices, and punches based on the traditions of the region I call home, Appalachia. Finally, when it comes to making mead, though I like The Complete Meadmaker and several others, my go-to is Jereme Zimmerman’s Make Mead Like a Viking. He’ll have you wild fermenting honey in no time, and after a night of drinking with Jereme before an event can say that a honey-based gin is a delightful thing.

At this point, I would like to offer an update in my comment about methanol and damaging the optic nerve. The amount required to do so is 10ml or about 2 teaspoons. To me, that’s not much, but looking into it further the risk of creating and consuming methanol in that quantity from a single batch of alcohol is unlikely. The issue increases, however, through multiple distillations as we combine and concentrate larger amounts of alcohol. Play it safe, use the alcohol refractometer, and make sure you separate your heads, hearts, and tails. 

What did you think of this episode? Did you learn something new? Are you interested in brewing beer or setting up a still? Leave a comment below.

Resources
Victoria Redhed Miller
Craft Distilling
From No-Knead to Sourdough
New Society Publishers
The Legality of Craft Distilling (Our First Interview)
The Complete Joy of Homebrewing
The Foxfire Book of Winemaking
Make Mead Like a Viking

Using her book and those experiences as a place to start, we explore her interest in wild fruit and foods, including first falling in love with the paw paw, and about how shared experiences, in the forest or around the table, bring us together. You can find Sara on her website sausagetarian and her book at Chelsea Green. I also recommend following her on Instagram, if you’re on there, as she posts some really great pictures about food. Just as with her website, you’ll find her there as sausagetarian.

Talking with Sara, as you hear from the stories I shared today, reminded me of all the different connections I have with food from particular flavors like the applesauce, crafted through culinary means, to those moments that matter with my children. Standing by the trailside with my son picking berries, or sitting in the grass with my daughter munching on violets. Or now, in this moment, of when I was a child and would sit at the edge of my parent’s garden and pick strawberries. Food, whether foraged, gleaned, or purchased from farm or market, give us time with ourselves and others. Food is nourishment for our body, our spirit, and our community. Finding something to eat, whether simply untended or truly wild, weaves those threads with the wider world, as we taste the soil and season in what we gather.

What are you foraging for? What are your favorite fruits? What are your favorite fruit memories? Let me know by leaving a comment below.

Resources
Sara Bir (sausagetarian.com)
Sara on Instagram
The Fruit Foragers Companion (Chelsea Green)

ind out more about Leslie at LeslieCrawford.net. Sprig The Rescue Pig, published by Stone Pier Press, is distributed by Chelsea Green Publishing. You can purchase the book at ChelseaGreen.com or look for it wherever you buy books.

I really like Leslie’s non-confrontational and non-judgemental tone to the story of Sprig, that shows us what is possible in expanding our relationships and connection to the natural world and other than human, in a beautiful way through Leslie's expressive language and the delightful illustrations by Sonya Stangl. If you are a parent of younger children, as I say somewhere in that 6 to 9 range, I recommend that you pick this up and start to share these stories and your values with your children. Gwen the Rescue Hen is now available for pre-order at stonepierpress.org.

What do you think of the story of Sprig? Are there other books you would recommend for permaculture parents for children? Let me know. Let me know by leaving a comment below. 

Resources
Sprig the Rescue Pig
Gwen the Rescue Hen
Leslie Crawford
Stone Pier Press
Chelsea Green

During this conversation, David and Elaine explore the microbiology of the soil, the impact of this life on the health of our plants and agricultural system, how we can be citizen scientists, and the power of a microscope to bring all these ideas together, right in front of our eyes. Underneath it all is the importance of healthy, living soil for human well being, as individuals, participants in a community, and citizens of the world. Find out more about her work on soil microbiology at soilfoodweb.com and on her classes and other work with Environment Celebration Institute at environmentcelebration.com.

David and I have also partnered with Dr. Ingham and Environment Celebration Institute to make her courses more accessible to permaculture practitioners. If you’d like to take one of her online classes, use the promo code permaculturepodcast at checkout to save up to 50%. By doing so, you also help to support the podcast.

Stepping away from this conversation, I’m reminded of several past interviews that focused on citizen science and nutrient-dense foods, with Dr. Ingham’s talk with David adding the importance of soil microbiology and what we can do to support a healthy soil biome. As permaculture practitioners we can blend scientific research - both our own and that of others - with our Earth care practices. To continue these conversations and the exploration of these ideas, you'll find links to the related interviews, including those mentioned above, below.

What do you think of what Dr. Ingham is doing? Do you use a microscope in your exploration of the world? Have you taken one of her courses? Let me know by leaving a comment below.

Resources
Dr. Ingham’s CV
Soil Food Web
Environment Celebration Institute
Dr. Ingham's Online Classes
Ecological Monograph (1985 - PDF)
EcoThinkIt
Related Interviews
Dan Kittredge - Nutrient Dense Foods
Stephen Harrod Buhner - The Citizen Scientist
Elizabeth Farnsworth - GoBotany! and Citizen Science

During their time together they discuss what we can consider when we hear the phrase regenerative business; what the future holds as we transition to these models; how this emerging economy seeks to care for Earth, relationships, and human communities; and some of Kevin’s highlights from the first ReGen18 conference. Find out more about Kevin and his work on ReGen18 at regenecon.net.

After listening to this conversation with Kevin, what are your thoughts on regenerative economics? Regenerative business? The vision of a regenerative future? Let me know by leaving a comment below.

Resources
ReGen18
SoCap - Social Capital Markets
Neighborhood Economics
@KevinDoyleJones on Medium
uBegin
EcoThinkIt.com

In this episode, we take our time to focus on the role of supporting one another in our lives and business, the importance of friends and family, ways we can make classes and more accessible, and the importance of low-tech building for global sustainability and personal stability. Find out more about them at mudgirls.ca. There you’ll find more information about their book, and so much more. Often in permaculture, as we spoke about today, we talk about meeting someone where they’re at, which is one of the things that stood out for me in this conversation with The Mudgirls. They are using the patterns they see in the world around them that make accessing meaningful work and ongoing education, and creating the details by ensuring all members receive an equal wage whether building or providing childcare for the others. This extends to their classes and workshops that allow families and single-parents to attend and learn together.

What patterns do you see hindering people from engaging in quality work or engaging workshops or classes? What details can we create from those? What patterns do you see hindering people from engaging in quality work or engaging workshops or classes? What details can we create from those?  Let me know by leaving a comment to share your thoughts and insights so that we can continue to make permaculture design and education more accessible and affordable for all.

Resources
Mudgirls Mudgirls Manifesto from New Society Publishers
Jen Gobby (Article in Dwell)
Becky Bee
Canelo Project
Peak Oil (Wiki)
Cob (Wiki)

Joel is the author of The Clean Money Revolution: Reinventing Power, Purpose, and Capitalism. That work, and Joel’s thoughts on what we can do to create a more equitable world, form the basis of his time with David as they look at what we can do to influence politics and economic systems today and into the future. Find out more about Joel, his book, his work, and legacy, at joelsolomon.org. 

What I like about this brief introduction to Joel and his ideas is that we have an imperative to take action. To not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, but rather engage in the messy work of doing something, whether that means supporting from the sidelines, or getting into the game ourselves, both of which are common themes to recent episode of the podcast, and my own work in particular about finding our passions and stepping up to actively engage in part of the solutions. What are you doing to make a difference? Whether that is planting a garden and sharing food with your neighbors, organizing a community food forest, or running for elected office, I’d love to hear from you and know how you are working, each day, to create the world you want to live in.

Leave a comment below.