Larry lived and studied at Mr. Fukuoka’s Farm in Japan in the 1970s and was personally responsible for translating and then getting The One-Straw Revolution published by Rodale Press. Larry also studied Permaculture with Bill Mollison’s during one of Bill’s first, if not the first, Permaculture Design Course in the United States in the early 1980s, and continued to teach permaculture and natural farming throughout his life.

Larry passed away in November 2019, but his life and legacy live on in his translations of The One-Straw Revolution and Sowing Seeds in the Desert, as well as his own book examining the life and philosophy of Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolutionary, published in 2015 with Chelsea Green Publishing. He also left an indelible impression on the thousands of people he personally influenced through his teaching, mentoring, and friendship.

I feel fortunate to count myself among that group, as Larry checked in with me over the years to continue the conversation you heard today, off-air. His influence continues on-air as my path leads ever more towards starting with designing ourselves and our lifestyles before moving out into the landscape. Or in the broad conversations about philosophy and ethics and then recommending where you can find more specific resources that focus on technique.

The One-Straw Revolution remains the book first book I recommend every new permaculture practitioner reads before moving on to any of the other permaculture texts. You can read more about that book and my other reading list at thepermaculturepodcast.com/firstreads to see why this book matters and more from that list.

Are there any permaculture practitioners who influenced you early in your journey that you still find reflected in your everyday practice?

Let me know who that was and how they changed your thoughts at that time and continue to do so by leaving a comment below.

Until the next time, remember your teachers and mentors, while taking care of Earth, yourself, and each other

I’ve been intrigued by biodynamic agriculture as a farming practice since first hearing about the growth of biodynamic wineries in Sonoma Valley, California. How did Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy impact the way we managed the land? How does Biodynamic Agriculture differ from permaculture or organic ag? And, what was the deal with the preparations, like stuffing a cow horn full of manure and burying it in a field?

Thankfully, I knew of Allen Clements through our local permaculture community and saw that he’d posted some info about biodynamic agriculture to his Instagram feed. Reading some of his blog entries, he was just getting started with all of this, so seemed like the perfect person for me to sit down with, in person, to explore these ideas. Together, we could capture his perspective as a relatively new practitioner, and my bewilderment as someone with only a passing familiarity with the name, let alone the practices. 

You can find Allen’s at his blog ForestRancher.wordpress.com, on Instagram @forestranchregenerative, and his YouTube channel, Forest Ranch Regenerative. On his channel, you’ll also find an interview he recorded with me about The Permaculture Podcast.

As you can hear in this interview, I am skeptical of some aspects of biodynamic agriculture, but also convinced that there is something to these practices that leads to improved landscapes and healthy plants. Is it in planting and harvesting according to the calendar, mindful of the root, fruit, leaf, and flower days? Do the preparations offer the nutritional density missing in conventional, and even organic agriculture? Or do the changes come from the attention and connection to the land found by engaging with these practices?

I don’t know yet but would like to learn more about the origins, efficacy, and deeper practices. Not just the preparations, but also how the calendar is calculated. Why farmers chose to convert to biodynamic agriculture (Is to restore degraded land? As a branding opportunity? To increase returns?) and also to hear how Biodynamic Agriculture has grown from the ideas set out by the founder, Rudolph Steiner, a century ago.

If you’d like me to air this exploration on the show and join me through this period of discovery, let me know and I’ll produce more episodes on Biodynamic Agriculture. Also, do you currently practice biodynamic agriculture? What are your thoughts? What would you like to learn more about? Or do you see this as a system incompatible with permaculture?

Let me know.

Leave a comment in the show notes, send me an email: The Permaculture Podcast.

From here, the next interview is a conversation with Nigel Palmer, to discuss his work creating hyper-local soil amendments from mineral and biological ferments and extracts.

Until the next time, spend each day considering your preparations while taking care of Earth, your self, and each other.

Along the way, John shares the history of how he came to and developed these methods, as well as how existing food policies and intellectual property systems hamper farmers' ability to steward the land and increase the health and resilience of our communities. By holistically meeting the needs of farmers and focusing on the results, rather than the methods, John leads farmers down the path of regenerative agriculture and a more abundant future.

Find out more about John, his podcast, and his new book, Quality Agriculture, at JohnKempf.com.

Become a sustaining supporter at Patreon

John's results represent what permaculture practitioners can achieve on a broad-scale by seeing to farmers' needs while speaking the language of permaculture. John is doing for fruit and vegetable agriculture what folks like Allan Savory are achieving raising animals.

Permaculture folks have a fantastic number of tools in our toolkit. John extends those by providing a model for furthering our practices, whether we are interested in working directly with farmers and broad-scale agriculture or policy and politics. We can use the research and science he's found to argue and advocate for practices and procedures that change agriculture as we know it. We can push organic and other operations further and further away from chemical use and closer to what we've known for more than 40 years: working with nature leads to bountiful results.

But, those are just my thoughts at the moment. What are yours? 

Leave a comment below in the show notes or by sending me an email: The Permaculture Podcast

Until the next time, spend each day caring for the soil and growing healthy plants while taking care of Earth, your self, and each other.

Resources
John Kempf
Regenerative Agriculture PodcastDisease Resistance and Regenerating Soil with Michael McNeill
Kiss The Ground
Farmer’s Footprint

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)

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

Drawing on her years of experience in the landscape and her neighborhood, Amy shares what we can do to grow in small yards and gardens by considering our edges, looks at the difference we can make in our pantry if we grow for ourselves or in our wallet if we grow for market, and also shares her thoughts on what the future of permaculture holds as the ethics and principles are put into practice by people adapt these ideas to where they are and through their interests.

You can find out more about her and all she spoke about at tenthacrefarm.com/permaculturepodcast.

What do you think of what Amy shared with us today? How are you building a longer table instead of a higher fence? Let me know. Leave a comment below.

Resources: 
Tenth Acre Farm - Page for Permaculture Podcast listeners
Cincinnati Permaculture Institute

I’ve wanted to speak to Philip for a number of years, ever since first hearing him in an NPR piece about Green Mountain College. At the time I enjoyed the way he spoke about food and food issues, particularly the turn of phrase, “anonymous, pre-packaged meat” when referring to the way we are disconnected from the animals and plants we eat when purchasing them from a grocery store.

Our conversation begins with how he came to farming and teach at Green Mountain College and then move into the story of Mals, a farming community in Italy that pushed back against the ingress of modern industrial agriculture. Throughout the conversation you’ll find suggestions for what one can do to engage in local, state, or national political action.

If after listening to Philip you have questions or comments, leave a comment below and we can continue the conversation. 

Resources
A Precautionary Tale (Chelsea Green Publishing)
Toppling Goliath: How Mals became the first town in the world to outlaw pesticides
Brunnenburg Castle (Wiki)

If we are a home gardener, you'll find encouragement to grown anything you want to serve on our table or share with friends. For commercial growers Andrew focuses on the eight most profitable crops for market:

1. Tomatoes
2. Peppers
3. Cucumbers
4. Eggplant
5. Lettuce
6. Greens
7. Microgreens
8. Herbs

If you're a plant nerd, you'll also find technical details to dig into, with information on spacing, grafting. If you like technology, you can immerse yourself in to all the systems that go into a greenhouse: lights, solar curtains, irrigation types, and even record keeping.

In addition to authoring this book and his life as a farmer, Andrew is also the editor of Growing for Market magazine. That publication is dedicated to growers who sell directly to clients be they restaurants or farmer's market customers.

Resources
The Greenhouse and Hoophouse Grower's Handbook (Chelsea Green)
Growing for Market Magazine
High Tunnel System Initiative (NRCS Grants)
The Greenhouse Company (Commercial Greenhouse Company)
15 Free Greenhouse Plans (Homestead and Prepper)
Build a 12' x 8' Gothic Arch Greenhouse  (YouTube)

During this course she provides a foundation to her students in botany, wild foods, and herbal medicine. The class starts the conversation, but where we wind up is deeper into the personal change that comes from a connection with nature; to know that nature is us and we are it; that we create our lives and the resulting yields from the system; and that each of us can choose to take action out of fear or out of love.

Just as we hold that choice, Victoria shares how her studies of healing lead to an understanding that trusting ourselves, one another, and the mystery of life leads to abundance and true, lasting security. We become free.

Find out more about Victoria and The Forager’s Apprentice program at charmcityfarms.org.

There is a parable, sometimes called “The Wolves Within” and attributed to the Cherokee, that came to mind when Victoria spoke about fear and love. A grandfather is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside of me,” he says to the boy. “This terrible fight is between two wolves. One is evil, full of anger, envy, sorrow, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good, full of joy peace, love, hope, serenity, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going inside of you, and everyone else.” The grandson thought about this and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old man replied, “The one you feed.” I’ve read or heard a version of that lesson dozens of times.

For years, though a person of faith, I trusted the results that came largely from the security of a full-time job, often working more than 60 hours a week. It was the only way I knew to live. Even now there are times when it is incomprehensible, but a mystery arises by feeding your personal abundance, that wolf of joy, that brings more abundance into the world and sets you free, opening unimaginable doors.

Whichever wolf you currently find yourself feeding, if I can help you tend it, get in touch by leaving a comment below. 

Resources
The Forager’s Apprentice
Charm City Farms
Urban Permaculture in Baltimore (The first interview with Eric and Victoria)
Aldo Leopold
Barbara Brennan
Henry David Thoreau
Gary Strauss
Jack Kornfield

Along the way we touch on favorite styles, how to get started, and developing your own mead making rituals and traditions. You will find more about him and his work at Jereme-Zimmerman.com, and at Earthineer.com. His book,Make Mead Like a Viking, is available through Chelsea Green Publishing, and retails for $24.95. Pick up a copy directly from Jereme or Chelsea Green, or order your own through your favorite independent bookseller today. Links to all those resources, and more, in the show notes. As I get into during the interview, I like Jereme’s book. A lot. On the bookshelf behind my desk are over a dozen books on fermentation and alcohol, including those by Papazian, Schramm, and Buhner, and Make Mead Like a Viking fits well among them. Light-hearted and an easy read, it blends ancient myth with modern techniques, while keeping things wild and still providing all the information you need to get started. If you’re someone new to the world of mead, or home brewing in general, start with this book, as it is as unintimidating and welcoming as a book on fermentation can come. If you’ve been doing this for a while and read many books on making your own mead, wine, beer, or spirits, on a scale from Charlie Papazian’s The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing and Stephen Harrod Buhner’s Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers, Jereme Zimmerman’s Make Mead Like a Viking rests comfortably in the middle. From here, next Monday, December 14, a short episode with Ethan Hughes discussing “What about Christmas?” and how we can transform our holiday into one of new traditions. After that, on Thursday, December 17, is the last interview of the year, when Taj Scicluna, The Perma Pixie, joins me to have a conversation about the general state of permaculture. Until the next time, spend each day taking care of earth, yourself, and each other.

Resources:
Jereme-Zimmerman.com
Earthineer.com
Make Mead Like a Viking (Chelsea Green)
Charlie Papazian, The Complete Joy of Home Brewing (Homebrewing.com)
Stephen Harrod Buhner  (Gaian Studies)
Stephen Haarrod Buhner - The Citizen Scientist (The Permaculture Podcast)
Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers (Brewers Publications)