She also mentors permaculture practitioners, such as Ethan Roland of Appleseed Permaculture and the Regenesis Group, to connect our work with business world. Along the way today we talk about her background as a university professor, and in business development for large companies. We also discuss metrics, principles, social structures, and many other topics that lead to a way to find the essence of our work. This essence is more than what we do and is bigger than ourselves. We also talk about hierarchy, anarchy, and responsibility, as well as mechanistic systems, the human potential movement, and living systems. This is a fast-paced, dynamic conversation. Relax and hold on, there is a lot of information here and it’s worth your time whether or not you currently operate a permaculture or other business because these seeds of thought are useful in finding and refining your niche. You can find Carol and her work at CarolSanford.com. What stood out to me in this conversation is the role we can have as educators and also in finding our own essence. As educators, we can draw out the ideas that guide someone and help them to discover their best practices. What works best for them?  What matters? What matters is what we then make time for. Tying that to responsibility can allow leaders to get more done in a way that benefits Earth, themselves, and everyone else. That idea of essence is important to me because it’s something I’ve been working through as your host of this show. What is core to what I do? What is it that is bigger than me that I enjoy so much about this? For a long time I thought it was about the interviews and the information, but the more I do this the more it’s about helping you on your path by making connections to different people and resources and using my social capital to do so. I want you to find your niche and I'm here to help you do that and to bring your vision of permaculture and regenerative practices into the world. What is it that you currently work on? What is your essence? I’d love to hear from you.

Resources
Carol Sanford
Living Systems
Paradigm Shift
John B. Watson - What is Behaviorism?
BF Skinner
Human Potential Movement 

Ethan and Gregory’s work on the Eight Forms of Capital is one of the pieces that most influenced my perspective on permaculture and the different ways we can engage the various aspects of our lives to live and practice more fully what it is we love. Though financial capital is often the focus, and in our system we do need money to live, there are many ways we can create abundance in our lives. Where this material kind of unhinged me from the system that currently exists was in understanding how much value there is in our non-financial capital, and how appreciating someone’s work doesn’t need to be in the form of a direct financial exchange.

The first thank you I ever got for this show was a box containing three bottles of my favorite hot sauce, Secret Aardvark Trading Co. habanero. Or receiving an email from someone about how the podcast changed their life. Or the time someone send pictures of Ghost Pipe flowers growing on their property not far from where I live. Now I know definitively where they are and want to go visit and see them next year when they rise again, adding to my experiential and intellectual property with that plant. Something else I’m coming to understand, which I’ll follow up on when the interview with Ethan’s mentor Carol Sanford comes out in a few weeks, is about what my core abilities are. I’m not well versed or skilled in marketing or raising financial capital. That’s not where my skill set is. I’m good at building other forms of capital, in particular social. I talk to people, make connections, and draw out the stories from others. That’s where my calling is. To make the other pieces of this work viable, I ask for help from others. I appeal to you, the listener, to help support the show. I also leave the various ways to contact me out in the open so I can give back what I’ve learned to you, to help you on your path. In the end there is a value exchange that occurs for everyone involved. I like that. With that introspection around the eight forms of capital comes a personal understanding of our strengths and weaknesses that touches back on what Ethan said about building an ecosystem of businesses that support and grow one another. Some of us are really good at making money. Others are really good at teaching, design, implementing in the landscape, organizing, storytelling, and on and on. As permaculture practitioners let’s help one another. I’m here to help you connect with the stories and voices you might not hear otherwise, so you can find what works for you and get down to your work. I want you to find and fulfill your calling so you can live a life of abundance. Let’s talk and make that happen. 

My guest for this episode is Rafter Sass Ferguson, a permaculture practitioner and PhD student who is researching self-identified permaculture farms. Our conversation today looks at the state of his work and of permaculture research in general, as well as some of the challenges we face in broadening the impact, accountability, and acceptance of permaculture. Find out more about Rafter and his research at: liberationecology.org What stands out to me from this interview is, again, our importance of doing research as practitioners. To be involved. To experiment. To try new things. To figure out what does and doesn’t work where we are and share that information with others. We have the tools in our hands and in the permaculture literature to create an abundant world that can tackle some really big problems, but much of that gets cast aside because of the barriers and hurdles we have to overcome to get there. It’s why I take a long view on spreading the word and getting permaculture out there. I’d rather offer a life changing impact on a few people, like the person who wrote in saying that they were no longer a bigot and more accepting of others because of the interviews with Rhamis Kent, than have this podcast be a fluff piece for ten times as many people who just listen and move on. I wake up every day wanting to make the world a better place for everyone. For me, my children, my friends, my family, and for you, and people I haven’t met yet, and people who aren’t born yet. We have the most amazing set of tools. Now all we have to do is use them. I’ll step down from my soap box now and leave you to your time. If you’d like to get in touch, here are the usual ways. E-mail: The Permaculture Podcast Facebook: Facebook.com/ThePermaculturePodcast Twitter: @permaculturecst The Permaculture Podcast with Scott Mann The Permaculture Podcast (Episode: rafter2)

My guest for this episode is Rob Scott, a permaculture practitioner who started and directed the Urbana Permaculture Project. He now teaches Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership at the University of Illinois. We spend our time in this interview discussing his 2010 article, “A Critical Review of Permaculture in the United States,” and offer a critique of permaculture, and permaculture education in the U.S., as they exist now, as well as what we can do to improve our permaculture practices in the landscape and education. If you enjoy this interview with Rob, please support the Permaculture Podcast so that I can keep things going. Become a one time or ongoing contributor by going to: thepermaculturepodcast.com/support to find out how. I consider this conversation as a start on what we can do to make permaculture more accessible and acceptable. What I would like is to begin a new project where we start documenting our permaculture successes and failures. I’d like you to write down what you’ve done, what’s worked, what hasn’t, and share it with me. Once some of these come in, with your permission, I’ll setup a section of the website where we can share and discuss the results and work on building our understanding of permaculture in the current era. Another piece of this is that I recently interviewed Elizabeth Farnsworth who works at the New England Wild Flower Society, who I mentioned in my coverage of the Native Plants Conference I attended a few weeks ago. She and I talked about the role of citizen scientists. In that discussion she reminded me that by being curious and asking “Why?” we are, each and everyone of us, scientists. So let’s collect data, and sometime in the not too distant future I’ll release that interview with Elizabeth to serve as further inspiration on that project. Finally, on the idea of education, it can occur whether we are formally trained in teaching, or not. Just as I set out “The Plan” a few months ago detailing my ideas for teaching young adults and adult in a holistic way, Jen Mendez at Permie Kids is actively working on developing ideas for childhood education and permaculture through a series of topical webinars she’s calling the “Edge Alliance.” I’d like you to take a look and get involved if you are a parent of school age children, or an educator of the same. Resources Rob Scott A Critical Review of Permaculture in the United States A Review of Suitable Companion Crops for Black Walnut (PDF) Edge Alliance Do you Have a Critique of Permaculture? Let me know: E-mail: The Permaculture Podcast Facebook: Facebook.com/ThePermaculturePodcast Twitter: @permaculturecst The Permaculture Podcast with Scott Mann The Permaculture Podcast (Episode: RobScott)

We covered some of those core thoughts in this conversation, which were reflections of the interview with Dave Jacke. Three of the important pieces of functioning as a professional were: not knowing what we don't know, forming a professional group, and working with collaborators. That piece about not knowing what we don't know sticks out because of the hurdles I'm encountering as the podcast, and my role in the permaculture community, continues to grow. There are licensing requirement, taxes to be accounted for, insurances to carry, and a host of other pieces of the puzzle that aren't immediately clear when starting this kind of work. Only as I bump up against them do they become clear and require a reactive response rather than a proactive one. Depending on what kind of work you do you've probably encountered those days where something comes up you have to deal with that completely takes the wind out of your progress. That's what this is like. I'm not stumbling into my issues so much as hitting them head on. That's where I find developing your own professional group is important. Even if you form this with fellow students from a PDC, it's likely you'll each reach your different milestones and obstacles at different times and can share those discoveries with your group. You can also share notes on who your accountant, banker, lawyer, or insurance agents are. That's where we need to collaborate with others. We only have so many minutes in each hours, hours in a day, days in a week, and so on. Unless you've found a way to suspend time, or go without any sleep, then there is only so much you can fit into your schedule. Working with others can free you to focus on what it is you do best, and bring in those who can handle the other pieces for you, while also sharing what they know.

If you enjoy this episode, you should also check out:
Edible Forest Gardens and Permaculture with Dave Jacke
Josh Trought and D Acres
Professional Permaculture with Erik Ohlsen
The Permaculture Credit Union with Bill Sommers
Community Development Finance with Bill Sommers

Resource:
Damien McAnany
Abundant Earth Landscaping and Tree Care (Damien's Company)
ISA Certification information Natural Target Pruning (PDF)
Silky Saws (Damien's Prefered Saws)
Bear Saw (Scott's Current Saws)
Air-Spade

He was suggested as a guest on the Facebook page for the show, facebook.com/thepermaculturepodcast. If you'd like to suggest a guest, that's a great place to do so. You can find requests there from time to time for who I should reach out to for an interview. If there's anyone you'd like to hear, let me know there. After reading Mr. Olhsen's biography on his company website, the suggestion to interview him was a natural fit, because of the work he's doing to make permaculture a viable career. As one of my desires as an instructor is to provide a meaningful way forward for students so we can show how permaculture works to a broader world, being able to have a permaculture job, whatever your niche, is vital. Erik is someone who is making that happen, and he's sharing it with others through his Permaculture Skill Center. That center forms the framework for our discussion. In this episode, beyond the normal introduction to Erik and his work, we also talk about professional permaculture, the need for a strong work ethic, including our word as our bond, and developing working economic models to show how permaculture can be a viable career path. Some points that stand out from this conversation was the role of mentors, experience, and the ongoing search for knowledge. Those people we connect with provide voices that shape the direction we go with our personal practice. I can't speak for Erik, his own words do that well enough, but I'm deeply thankful for Ben Weiss and Dillon Cruz for guiding me through the formal training of a PDC. As one of their first PDC students, as I watch my own understanding grow, it's interesting to go back and sit in on a class with Ben and see how his style and methods have changed since those early days. From there came the teacher training with Jude Hobbs, Andrew Millison, and Rico Zook. Each one of them I've been in touch with each of them since. Though our relationships change from the teacher-student paradigm, it becomes more and more one of permaculture colleague. The confidence that instills, that my former instructors welcome me as an equal yet still offer their encouragement on my own work, is invaluable. But those are people in the industry. As Erik noted in the interview, there are other places to find mentoring. I have several family members who continue to teach me about home repair and maintenance. There's my friend John, who is a craftsman and maker who will, with a warm spirit, answer my questions about energy, electronics, and engineering, even when we're tired from hours of martial arts practice, or sitting down over a pint and supposed to be socializing. I get in turn get a better understanding of these and can use my role as a teacher to relay these ideas, more plainly, to others. Taking the time to reflect, or you might say observing and interacting, on our life experiences provide many many places where we can gain knowledge and skills applicable to permaculture practice. In particular, I think this is important so we can find our personal niche in all of this and become a “Jack of all trades, and master of one”. Which is where I liked Erik's personal story because it shows an example built on experience, not on schooling. Though I have a personal bias towards academia, because of the credentials it provides and the shortcut it can be towards societal acceptance, plus I'll admit I was one of those kids who really liked school, I recognize that schooling isn't a path for everyone. More time in school is useless unless you've found a calling that allows you to devote yourself to the work; to turn the school experience into a true education. As I'm discovering on my second and third pass through college, now at the graduate level, I'm ultimately the one responsible for an education, whether it's inside or outside of the classroom. Choosing an experiential route is just as worthwhile, if you're ready to put in the equally hard work to make a name for yourself. Going out on your own, even when supported by like minded individuals, isn't the easiest road to follow. You'll be doing a lot of bushwhacking and brush clearing to find the paths that intersect and run parallel to your own, but you can do it. Erik and others like him in the world can help show you the way. Even if you choose the schooling route, and the pieces of paper that come with them, you'll still need the experience to back it up by being out there and doing the work so you can show people what you're capable of. Regardless of which path you choose, I'll be here, with you, throughout your journey. Resources: Erik Ohlsen Permaculture Artisans Where Erik Teaches: Earth Activist Training Regenerative Design Institute The Occidental Arts and Ecology Center Some of Erik's Mentors: Starhawk Penny Livingston-Stark Brock Dolman

Founded in 1992 by Lynn Byczynski, shortly after she and her husband stared market farming in Kansas, Growing for Market was a response to the lack of magazines available for small growers, and focuses mostly on practical how-to pieces. Some of the topics include vegetable production, cut flowers, food safety, tools and equipment, as well as growing, selling, and managing a business. You might say that this is a magazine for farmers, by farmers, with many of the authors contributing to the magazine in an ongoing basis.

In addition to editing the magazine, and her own farming, Lynn is also the author of The Flower Farmer: An Organic Grower's Guide to Raising and Selling Cut Flowers, and also Market Farming Success, both of which are published by Chelsea Green, the latter being released in a new edition in September 2013. After the interview with Kirsten Reinford, where she recommended this magazine, I wanted to know more about this magazine so reached out to the editor, Lynn Byczynski, to see if there was a review copy available. Happily, she sent me an electronic copy, and I liked what was there.

The main article, written by Ben Hartman a farmer from Indiana, was about applying the 5 principles of Lean manufacturing, a system developed by the Japanese manufacturing industry, to farming. In many ways this was a perfect article to start my exploration of the magazine because of how this system could be adapted directly, through Ben's examples, into permaculture systems and how we manage tools and workflow for implementation. Just as Ben Falk recommended always having a something available to move materials around the landscape, Ben Hartman suggested having bins located throughout a property to put weeds in, or to have tools available in key storage areas so they are always at hand and allow for a consistent workflow, rather than having to stop and start. I think about my own wasted time going back and forth from my garage when I realize I should have brought my big saw to prune, rather than the small saw I slipped in my pocket. This one example of equipment can be taken further by considering how to use these Lean ideas for organizing our various zones.
Where is it best to store different types of tools so you can efficiently accomplish your work, decreasing the time in the garden?
What tools should go where based on what you have planted?
What are your patterns of use?

Zone 1 is our garden, that front door to car door, so maybe we keep a bucket with hand tools, a sun hat, and gloves in the entryway to our home to be picked up and taken with us when we go outside, with larger tools stored in a garage or storage shed for when they're needed. Pruning tools, such as a bypass pruner, saws, and a pair of long-handled loppers, in a small covered area or storage box between Zones 1 and 2. If you're keeping animals out in zone 3, as well as a wood lot, orchard, or other trees, if the animals have a shelter you can store a ladder, some other pruning tools, and harvesting supplies to be on hand to maintain the landscape conveniently. I could go on with this thought exercise, but as you may have noticed, I took a lot from this one article and how to apply that information to make the implementation of permaculture more efficient. So before I go too down that path further let's get back to Growing for Market. I'm thankful to report this magazine is filled with this kind of adaptable material. I say this because Lynn also provided me with access to the online digital archives. This one issue wasn't a fluke that just happened to catch my attention in a compelling way. The back catalog, of some 1400 articles and growing, is filled with information you can use in your own practice, including contributions by Richard Wiswall. I mention him because of the number of guests who recommend his book The Organic Farmer's Business Handbook. With Growing for Market you can explore his writing style and decide if his book is valuable to you. For a permaculture practitioner, I think this magazine is useful. I say that because if you're looking to begin your own farm or market garden, perhaps after listening to the interviews with Erin Harvey, Kirsten Reinford, or Wayne Herring, or after reading Peter Bane's The Permaculture Handbook, there's a lot you can learn about how to start, run, and operate a small scale operation within the markets that are available, all written in language that isn't overly complex or hard to understand.

If you're already involved in landscaping or farming, and want to improve your business you can learn about that as well, while also reading about the practices of others all over the country. If you're looking to consult with farmers on ecological agriculture or broadscale permaculture, Growing for Market can help provide background knowledge on current trends, providing ways to leverage your knowledge to meet clients where they are at, and get their buy-in to the process. With all that, if you'd like to check out Growing for Market, you can do so by going to growingformarket.com.

Resources:
Growing for Market
Subscribe to Growing for Market
The Flower Farmer
Market Farming Success

He joins me to discuss what ecolonomics is, and how he and his colleagues are growing this idea, as well as how you can be a part of the process. Dr. Dorband joined me several months ago to discuss the green hacker space he opened in Colorado as a place for individuals with ideas on how to build technology that leads to a better world can incubate and grow their concepts while also socializing with other like minded people. Today we take that underlying ethos of creativity and making to begin to understand how we can combine ecology and economics to make a living while improving the earth. The audio on this episode wound up a little fuzzy, and thank you to Jay for letting me know this happened with some other recent episode. I did the best I could with the source audio to put this together, which also resulted in some changes behind the scenes to my software so future interviews, hopefully, don't suffer from this same issue. Your feedback is always important for helping to improve the quality of these podcast and I appreciate it.

What impresses me about Dr. Dorband and this work is that there is an organization designed to advance human creativity and technology while also investing in the people who make sustainable and renewable solutions. For me, that's a pretty powerful place to find ourselves in as we work to move through many of the large hurdles ahead of us. As I've said with Eric Toensmeier before, I like civilization and being able to turn the lights on. Let's work together to find ways to keep that a possibility while lifting others up, and applying permaculture to make the landscape, and our lives, more resilient. If you are interested in helping me and Dr. Dorband develop this online maker's forum to investigate ideas, please let me know. Leave a comment here, send me an email, or call me. You can also find Dr. Dorband's contact information at the Institute of Ecolonomics, and reach out to him about this concept, if you'd like to help expand on any of the other projects he's working on, such as your own local green hackerspace or business accelerator, or if you have an idea of your own and would like to apply for the best of the best. Whatever road we find ourselves on, together we are part of the solution for a better and brighter future.

Resources:
Institute of Ecolonomics

I've enjoyed these two interviews with Bill because he's able to take these ideas, that to me are very heavy material and largely impenetrable from the outside, and demystify them into something very accessible. As permaculture practitioners, we take gardening, horticulture, and biochar, to name a few, and tie them together under the big top of Permaculture, which thankfully have numerous clearly written books available to understand them. But Banking? Finance? I haven't found anyone who can break those down into easy-to-understand bits as well as Bill can. And I am greatly appreciative. Plus, as with his involvement in the Permaculture Credit Union, he has the ethical and principle based understanding in common to the more visible structures of permaculture. Though we have alternative economic options in the permaculture literature with things like Local Exchange Trading System, Bartering, Time Banking, and Local Currency, what gives me hope from this conversation is that here is another way to approach banking and finance a bit differently, in a way that can engage the system that currently exists. I agree with that idea given to us by Ethan Hughes, and reiterated by Lisa Fernandes and others, that we need meet people where they are at to make permaculture more accessible, and desirable by the public in those areas that aren't hungry for it yet. As we get the physical structure designs down, the invisible becomes more important as we build community and permanent culture.

Resources:
The Permaculture Credit Union
CDFI Fund

From conversations with some listeners via email, phone, and twitter, I know you're looking for more in-depth, technical ways to begin realizing a different future with Permaculture. To take designs and thoughts on a page of how to make something and turn it into reality. What Dr. Dorband is doing here, as I'm fond of saying, provides another model for how to do something different, in an effective, productive way. If you would like to reach out to Dr. Dorband and discuss opening a Green Hacker Space in your area, his contact information is: E-Mail: waynedorband [at] gmail [dot] com Phone: 303-4nine5-3705

Websites:
Nourish The Planet
Green Hacker Space
Mountain Sky Group