That core question arises from Karen’s life experiences with an aunt who farmed, continuing through the interviews she conducted with women farmers, including some folks, to my delight and surprise, who I’ve spoken with over the years. Taking those stories and lived moments, Karen shows the importance of showing up, participating, and most importantly listening. Though we may come from a particular place regarding agriculture and farming, we have a lot to learn from our friends, neighbors, and family, who picked up the plow before us.

Find out more about her and her work at kalacreative.net. There you can also purchase your own copy of The Woman Hobby Farmer and find more information about her upcoming documentary.

What I love about this conversation with Karen is the reality of what it means to farm, and the need to make the right decision of whether or not we want to. There is a physical toll that comes from farming. A dear friend of mine in the community is facing that knowledge right now and considering how to pass their farm along to someone else to manage so they can “move to town” while continuing to teach the next generation of farmers. An interim space for many of us is a garden. With a little bit of land and a little bit of time we can provide food and security for ourselves, but that discussion and those numbers are a conversation for a different episode. Suffice to say, we should take a stark look at whether or not deciding to start a farm is our best path.

Thankfully, as we discussed, Karen provides tools, worksheets, and stories, for helping to make that very serious choice. The other side, as mentioned, is that Yes, you can make a living at this and there is plenty of evidence for that possibility.

Some of those include past interviews with Jean-Martin Fortier and Joel Salatin, or what I’ve personally witnessed from Susana Lein or Holly Brown, but there is a price that comes with it. Many people who farm, by the numbers, do not bring in a great deal of financial income, that is a reality of this, especially as things scale up and more money is spent on tools, equipment, and labor, but there are other possibilities that arise by shifting in this direction.

Finally, my favorite insight into all of this is to show up and listen. Get yourself to farms. Find on-farm training sessions. Go and open your ears. Attend agricultural conferences if you can, and not just ones on organic or regenerative. See if your local extension office or land-grant university has meetings. Join The Grange, the full name of which, as I learned while writing this, is The National National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry. These folks are our allies.

Many of them, especially ones like The Grange, want to promote the science of agriculture and community resilience, ideas that should seem common to any permaculture practitioner. We have a lot to learn from them and to share. Show up. Participate. Be a part of your local community. You, and all of us, benefit from working together for the future that we want to see.

What did you think of this conversation with Karen? Does it give you a different perspective on what you do and don’t know about farming and agriculture? Whether you have answers to those or just more questions, I’m here to listen and give more insight if I’m able.

Leave a comment below and we can continue the conversation.

Resources
KalaCreative - Karen’s Website
The Woman Hobby Farmer
Wildlife in Your Garden
Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group
Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service
PASA Sustainable Agriculture
PA-Wagn Women
Food and Agriculture Network in Iowa National
Ladies Homestead Gathering

Related Interviews 
Holly Brown - Island Creek Farm 
Roundtable: Clear Creek Community - Community Building   
Roundtable: Clear Creek Community - Making Mead, Natural Building, and Permaculture Farming Roundtable: Clear Creek Community - Community and Traditions

From these experiences, he created the foundations for a pattern language, which he shares with us, that we can use to remove the restrictions placed upon permaculture designers, homeowners, and businesses that practice sustainability and build resilience.

Find out more about Avery and his work at ColoradoGreywater.com

I mentioned near the end of the conversation about some allies in our work to change the laws that restrict sustainable practices. The two you’ll find linked to in the show notes are Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund and National Community Rights Network. The National Community Rights Network also has state chapters in Colorado, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. If you’re involved in any kind of community engagement around the use of natural resources, definitely check out those two organizations.

I really appreciate people like Avery, or Adam Brock or Karryn Olson-Ramanujan, who continue to develop various pattern languages, drawing on the earlier work of Christopher Alexander and team in the book A Pattern Language. I find that pattern languages extend the core principle of permaculture design and apply this language and thought process to specific problems. Karryn works on issues for women in permaculture. Adam on how to create change, here and now.

For Avery, it is to be involved in the stakeholder process and politically engaged on the things we care about and lend our expertise, which lead him to his patterns. The ones he explicitly identified that we walked through in our conversation today were: allies on the inside, stakeholder cohesion, speaking legalese, CYA, people power, immutable force, and grit.

Have you been involved in the process of political change? Are there patterns you would add to this list?

Let me know by leaving a comment below.

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Resources
Avery Ecological Design
Colorado Greywater
Colorado Aquaponics
Boulder Permaculture
Sandy Cruz
High Altitude Permaculture
Living Routes (Now defunct. Reorganized as CAPE - Custom Academic Programs in Ecovillages) Auroville Ecovillage - India
Master of Ecological Design - San Francisco Institute of Architecture
Greywater Action
Harvesting Rainwater and Brad Lancaster

Allies in our Work for Change
Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
National Community Rights Network

Related Interviews on Pattern Languages 
Adam Brock - Change Here Now with Adam Brock
Karry Olson - A Pattern Language for Women in Permaculture

That opening quote, from the paleontologist and science writer Stephen Jay Gould, is a running thread throughout this conversation as we talk about how early exposure to the beauty and bounty of the outdoors and nature can have a lifelong impact on our perception and understand the world as students, while also developing a sense of biophilia, a love for all life and connection. 

Visit our partner: Food Forest Card Game 

If Emma’s name or The Riverside Project sounds familiar, it’s because she and I have known each other and worked together for a number of years. Together we organized the Mid-Atlantic Permaculture Convergence in 2016 and 2017. She also hosted a podcast roundtable at The Riverside Project in 2015 which included Nicole Luttrell of Deeply Rooted Design, Jesse Wyner of Liberty Root Farm, Ashley Davis, of Meadowsweet Botanicals, and Diane Blust, of Chicory Hill Farm. I’ve included links to those, and my conversation with Patrick Shunney, one of the timber framers who built her outdoor space, and to Emma and her projects in the Resources section below. I’ve wanted to have Emma on the show for some time because I always enjoy the way she blends her passion and professionalism, so that every interaction we had, from first talking about building the timber frame pavilion, organizing MAPC, or standing on her porch one summer night talking about permaculture, left me with a better understanding of her personally, and of the work she cares so much about.

This conversation left me feeling better about some of the decisions I’ve made as a parent to expose my children to the natural world. Foraging for violets with my daughter. Letting my son dig in the dirt. The pair of them building forts, which turned into their own little village, from downed tree limbs, and only asking for help when they needed it. The three of us grabbing our water bottles and cameras to hit the trails and go hiking, interweaving their childhood with the experiences that, three decades ago, gave me a love for the natural world, as my large family gave me a love of people from the earliest moments of life. As an educator myself, I leave this interview comfortable knowing the evidence for the holistic impacts of environmental education and our direct connection to the relational world of nature, rather than the transactional one of tests, capital, and economics. Whether you home-school, teach in a school system or are a parent doing your best, my wish is that you’ll take this conversation with Emma to heart and spend more time outdoors, in wild places, with the children in your life. What are your thoughts on this episode? Whether you are a teacher or parent; interested in outdoor education or just want to learn more, I’d love to hear from you.

Leave a comment or, email: The Permaculture Podcast

I’m here to assist you on your journey. Wherever you are or wherever you go, I will walk beside you for as long as our paths converge. From here, the next episode is with Avery Ellis, of Colorado Aquaponics, to talk about gray water, aquaponics, and what we can do to change the laws and regulations that make sustainability and permaculture legally prohibitive. Until then, spend each day taking care of Earth, yourself, and spend some time in nature with the children of your community.

Resources Emma Huvos Riverside Nature School No Better Classroom Than Nature: Re-Imagining Early Childhood Education Balanced and Barefoot by Angela Hanscom Balanced and Barefoot Blog Forest Kindergarten (Wikipedia) What is Forest School? (Forest School Association) Forest School (learning style)  (Wikipedia) The Responsive Classroom Approach Sensory Processing Issues Explained More Time Outdoors May Reduce Kids’ Risk of Nearsightedness(American Academy of Ophthalmology) Sirius Community Sowing Solutions 1507: Timber Framing with Patrick Shunney 1541: The Riverside Project Round Table (Part 1) 1544: Home (The Riverside Project Round Table Part 2)

They then talk about Jacqueline’s experience building up Central Grazing Company, using a slow money loan, into a regional farm-to-consumer business. They close with her mission of using animals, agriculture, and business to create regenerative ecosystems.

Find out more about Jacqueline and her work at CentralGrazingCompany.com.

I’m thankful that Jacqueline joined David for this conversation because of the way a bit of entrepreneurial spirit, a small initial investment, and a good bit of effort can create an ethical company that aims for social and planetary good. We don’t have to follow the existing models or old ways of being. We can take inspiration to give it a shot, try something different, and maybe, just maybe, change our little piece of the world.

I also always enjoy the conversation that David leads because of his interest in the intersection between permaculture, the land, and business, from his years studying our design discipline while working professionally in sales. How he asked questions like whether or not Jacqueline would want to take her company and make it a national brand, or keep it regional. Would they become an umbrella for others to work under, or simply as models to create other regional farm- to-consumer supply chains. How she became involved with and used slow money to build up Central Grazing Company.

I compare that to how I would have spoken with Jacqueline, if I were in the host seat rather than David and how I imagine I would have focused more on her background and transitioning to farming, lessons learned from her first business, and how that influenced her ethical choices, like ensuring all the producers are animal welfare approved. David reminds me that we all have a voice and a perspective, and it is in dialog between ourselves, earth, other people, and the other-than-human, that a unique story arises. That by having the conversations, we elevate ourselves and the way we can communicate with one another, and live a richly rewarding life of interconnectedness.

If you are interested in starting a business or telling the stories of others, get in touch and continue the conversation by leaving a comment below.

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Resources
Central Grazing Company
Central Grazing Company (Instagram)
Animal Welfare Approved
Savory Institute - Land to Market Program
Slow Money Institute
Slow Money NE Kansas

Related Interviews
Woody Tasch - Limits, Our Future, and Slow Money
Nancy Thellman - Slow Money with Nancy Thellman

He helps us navigate what to do in order to create our burial site; how to clear it with local officials, laws, and regulations; how to provide access in perpetuity; and how to legally and properly inter the deceased. From there we continue the conversation to talk about how we can prepare for our own end of life by creating an advanced directive; the options for green burial; the need for all of us to start having honest and open conversations about death, regardless of our age. We end with a series of listener questions.

Find out more about Michael at EcologiaDesign.com.

As I mentioned early in this episode, I see preparing for our own end and including our loved ones in those conversations early as essential to our work as permaculture practitioners, regardless of what level or degree you take your design to. If your focus is primarily on farm and land, then setting aside a place to hold the dead is essential.

If your design takes you beyond the landscape, then what ways can you start the conversation with family members, friends, and your community? Can you take the ideas here, of the wake that Michael held, and apply them where you are? Or do you have different cultural hallmarks that mark the transition from life, just there are ones for entering it?

I don’t know anyone for whom death and dying is an easy conversation, but if you have thoughts on this and would like to talk about them, or need some space for someone to listen as you grieve and seek closure, my door is always open.

Leave a comment below and we can continue the conversation. 

Resources
Ecologia Design
National Home Funeral Alliance
Crossings: Caring for own Own at Death
International End of Life Doula Association
Five Wishes - Aging with Dignity Advanced Directive
Death Cafe
Green Burial Council
Penn Forest Cemetery
Sparkroot Farm - Conservation Burial Ground in Moncure, North Carolina
Urban Death Project (Facebook)

That question provides the framework for Wilson Alvarez and his current work, The Reintegration Project, which examines the prehistoric ecosystem engineers of the Eastern United States as a way to understand how permaculture practitioners and rewilders can use biomimicry to replicate those influences and restore the landscape. To dig into this question and the solutions he’s found, Wilson shares his thoughts on harmonic disturbance; functional extinction; taxon vs. mechanical substitution as two different approaches to land management for conversation rewilding; and how to bolster the ecosystem by planning for correct disturbances of the correct size at the correct time. As one of my teachers, colleagues, and friends this interview with Wilson has less structure as we didn’t need an introduction to get started so we just started talking, with the interview beginning with an explanation of the idea of niche construction.

To find out more about Wilson and his work as a permaculture practitioner and rewilder, listen to our earlier interviews:
Restoring Eden with Wilson Alvarez and Ben Weiss
Listener Questions on Zone 4 Permaculture with Wilson Alvarez and Ben Weiss
Rewilding with Wilson Alvarez and Ben Weiss

I’d also like to say that for anyone in the Mid-Atlantic the Horn Farm Center is an incredible resource for anyone interested in Agriculture, Permaculture, and Rewilding. Jon Darby, who appeared in the first group discussion of the podcast many years ago (Part 1) (Part 2), is the education director there and focuses on offering classes in these areas, often with Wilson as a lead instructor. Check out the events page and see if there is anything might be of interest to you. -- My conversations with Wilson always restore some of my hope that we can achieve a number of our ecological, landscape, and management goals because of the way he provides practical, replicable advice on how to tackle the hard issues facing us.  He continually develops ways to face the difficult tasks of working on the edges to manage the landscape and to do so with simple tools. Though there are some ethical and legal issues we’ll probably need to discuss at some point before taking these practices to the required landscape scale, right now you can use the four ecosystems engineers that Wilson shared today -- the beaver, wolf, elephant, and wild human -- and look for similar prehistoric landscape changers in your area and how they impacted the land and begin applying the mechanical disturbances they did, now, where you are. If, after listening to this episode you dive into the research of your local ecological engineers, I'd love to hear what you find and the ways they created disturbances. Email: The Permaculture Podcast Write: The Permaculture Podcast The Permaculture Podcast From here the next interview is my conversation with Michael Judd on Natural Burials.

Patreon Exclusives
Wilson Alvarez - Practicing Permaculture On The Edge

Other Interviews on The Permaculture Podcast with Wilson Alvarez
Rewilding with Wilson Alvarez and Ben Weiss
Listener Questions on Zone 4 Permaculture with Wilson Alvarez and Ben Weiss
Restoring Eden with Wilson Alvarez and Ben Weiss

Resources
Horn Farm Center
Donate to Horn Farm Center and support The Reintegration Project
The Forest Man of India (YouTube)
Jadav Payeng (The Forest Man of India - Wikipedia)
The Biggest Estate on Earth by Bill Gammage
Bringing Nature Home by Doug Tallamy
Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv

Related Interviews
Beyond the War on Invasive Species (Tao Orion)
Nomad Seed Project (Zach Elfers)

Find out more about Maddy Harland and the magazine at permaculturemagazine.co.uk.

You can order a copy of her book, Fertile Edges, from PermanentPublications.co.uk if you are in the United Kingdom, or ChelseaGreen.com if you are in the United States.

I enjoyed my time with Maddy because of her long history in the permaculture movement and getting to hear, directly, about her role as a curator of so much useful information for our community. Permaculture continues to exist and grow because of her efforts and the team at Permaculture Magazine. Generations of permaculture practitioners came to the movement by picking up a copy at the newsstand. That includes me.

Though I found permaculture in the 90s when I started exploring sustainability, primitive skills, and rewilding in the mid-2000s an issue of Permaculture Magazine was in a stack of periodicals gifted to me so that I could see what was happening in the world. That inspired me to continue my search for a Permaculture Design Course, and lead me to Susquehanna Permaculture, Ben Weiss, and Dillon Cruz. At the end of that class, I started this show. Simply put, this podcast exists because of Maddy’s work with the magazine; editing so many great books, like the ones from Patrick Whitefield; and co-founding Permanent Publications which made those books available to the world. Her work provides me and other permaculture podcasters, video producers, bloggers, and authors -- those members of our community who were often not part of those first or second waves of permaculture education and outreach -- with a foundation to search out the voices, farms, designers, and scientists to expand and push the edges of permaculture.

Maddy continues that legacy of curation and inspiration with Fertile Edges, a collection of her wisdom that provides a view into the past, present, and future of Permaculture. If you are new to movement or were one of Bill Mollison’s first students,  this is something well worth having. Pick up a copy today. 

After listening to this interview, where do you see the permaculture movement right now? Where do you see our future heading? Let me know. Leave a comment below.

Support the Podcast:
Become a Patreon Member
Make a one-time donation

Resources
Maddy Harland
Permaculture Magazine
Permanent Publications

Fertile Edges
Permanent Publications (U.K.)
Chelsea Green (U.S.)

Permaculture in a Nutshell
Permanent Publications (U.K.)
Chelsea Green (U.S.)

Earth Care Manual
Permanent Publications (U.K.)
Chelsea Green (U.S.)

People and Permaculture
Permanent Publications (U.K.)
Chelsea Green (U.S)

UK Permaculture Association
Patrick Whitefield (Wiki)
Graham Bell
Chris Dixon (UK Permaculture Association)
Chris Marsh (UK Permaculture Association)
Max Lindegger - Crystal Waters
Looby Macnamara
Aranya (Permanent Publications)
Charles Dowding
Stephanie Hafferty
Albert Bates (Peaksurfer)
Mayan Mountain Research Farm - Christopher Nesbitt
Polly Higgins - Eradicating Ecocide

He and others in those early days created the many direct actions now used by activists and protestors all around the world including tree sitting or chaining oneself to industrial equipment. From there he moves to his current work with the Rainforest Information Centre and the Los Cedros Reserve to save the rainforests of Ecuador.

Find out more about Los Cedros at https://reservaloscedros.org/, and the Rainforest Information Center at rainforestinformationcentre.org.

Everyone should get involved in politics. If we leave it only to those who are attracted to it, we get exactly the current situation.”

My own personal perspective and why I was interested in David’s interview with John rests closer to that second answer: we should all be involved in politics and action. As a permaculture practitioner, my focus continues to be on the philosophical underpinnings of this holistic systems-thinking approach paired with the social, economic, and, yes, political change we can create through intentional design. Though I see the world through this lens of political and social work, I also understand that we should engage in the activities we are called to. We only have so much time in our lives to work on the issues that matter to us. If you have a limited interest in politics but live in a democratic society with elections, vote.

If you want to go a step further and help preserve rainforests, get involved with the Rainforest Information Centre. If you feel working on, or in, politics holds the most possibility for you to affect change, become a lawyer, run for office, or work to enact policy changes at your municipal, state, province, national, or the international level.

One of the things I love most about permaculture is the breadth of possibilities available to us. Use your knowledge and ability to create the world you want to live in. While you’re doing that, know that there are tens of thousands of others doing the same thing, in their own way, alongside you.

If there is any way I can help connect you to the resources you need, answer your question, or help you get involved, leave a comment below.

Resources:
Save the Los Cedros Reserve Petition
Los Cedros Reserve (Reserva Los Cedros) - Jose DeCoux
Rainforest Information Centre
Rainforest Action Network
Earth First! Worldwide
Earth First! Journal
Dave Foreman (Wiki)
Mike Roselle (Wiki)
Randy Hayes (Foundation Earth biography)
Friends of the Earth
Gary Snyder (Poetry Foundation)
AusAID - Australia's Aid Program
Work That Reconnects Network - Joanna Macy

 As an overview of the global state of carbon farming, Eric also discusses the reality of what we can do, through dietary practices and engaging in our own food production, to create change. For those of you inclined towards policy and top-down approaches, you’ll hear plenty of possibilities of how you can move the conversation in your community and with your legislators.

Find out more about Eric at perennialsolutions.org, and The Carbon Farming Solution at ChelseaGreen.com.  

Given the range of topics touched on regarding climate change, the resources below include not only those that Eric mentioned, but also a number of previous interviews with Dr. Laura Jackson, Keefe Keeley of The Savanna Institute, small-scale farmers Lee and Dave O’Neill at Radical Roots, and the market farmer Jean-Martin Fortier, as well as Jerome Osentowski of Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture. In the conversation with Jerome, he even touches on the impacts he’s seeing of climate change after his many years in the high altitude environment of Colorado where CRMPI calls home, and the focus of his decades of work on greenhouses.

As I put together the notes for this show, I’m left thinking about how to move forward in a meat-reduced world and have questions I need to answer. How viable is meat on leftovers? What systems do we need to implement to capture food waste so it gets to animals instead of the refuse bin? I should have expected to be left with more questions after speaking with Eric, so am going to keep digging into this and will share more as I find it. I would like to have Eric back some time to continue the conversation about permaculture and food production on marginal land.

If you have questions about this or anything else we covered in today’s conversation, leave a comment below. 

Resources
The Carbon Farming Solution Project Drawdown
Perennial Solutions
The Center for Agroforestry at the University of Missouri Agroforestry at Virginia Tech
IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Trees on Farms by RJ Zomer, et al. (PDF)
Savanna Institute
Steve Solomon - Gardening When It Counts
John Jeavons - Grow Biointensive
Legal Pathways to Carbon_Neutral Agriculture by Peter Lehner and Nathan Rosenberg (PDF)
Diet for a Small Planet

Related Interviews 
Dr. Laura Jackson - Modern Agricultural Systems 
Keefe Keeley - The Savanna Institute 
Jean-Martin Fortier - The Market Gardener 
Dave and Lee O'Neill - Radical Roots Farm 
Jerome Osentowski - The Forest Garden Greenhouse

For that reason, I’ve had an interest in helping you get up to date on the latest recurring permaculture periodicals. So, today, Robyn Rosenfeldt sits down to talk about her Australian-produced, but globally available, magazine: PIP. She designed this from the ground up to be a complete sensory experience that covers a wide range of practices in each issue. Similarly, she shares with us a variety of thoughts on permaculture in Australia, what it’s like to distill down practical advice to the length of an article, why a magazine means so much to her as a way to share this information, and how you can contact her if you would like to contribute your words to an upcoming issue.

Find out more about PIP Magazine, and pick up Issue #9, at pipmagazine.com.au.

I’d like to thank Robyn for taking the time to sit down and share with us her experiences of creating a magazine and her process of putting together the familiar yet unique PIP. Her work and the conversation today are a reminder of how, with the will and little bit of knowledge, we can make something new. Robyn took her experience as a photographer and the publishing industry to launch a magazine. I took some time spent as a radio DJ and a decade in IT, to create this podcast.

What skills and know-how do you have that you could forge together to bring something unique into the world? If you’d like to get in touch to talk with me about your ideas, projects, or abilities, leave a comment below.