Podcast – Page 7 – Regenerative Skills

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Re-evaluating the long term. Key considerations for my context and personal vision of success.

The mindset required to find and purchase the land and home that my partner and I are now living in is not the same mindset required to develop and invest in the long term journey of being here. This has become obvious to me as new opportunities and collaborations come up in my work life and I find myself falling into the old habits and tendencies that I’ve become used to in the previous years. I’m now in a position in which I need to take some steps back, look at the whole that we are managing and develop a […]

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High Quality Food

Harriet Mella on the science of water handling and drought resilience in plants

Those of you who’ve been following this show for a while have watched my fascination with water and its role in every ecosystem grow over the years. By now, between my professional experience, the courses I’ve taken, and the research I’ve done, I feel quite competent in working with land in a practical way to restore its cycles and functionality on the land. Where my understanding is still lacking is in the cutting edge science of the way that plants use and interact with water. I’m no research scientist and don’t hold any degrees in biology or ecology, but I’m […]

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agroforestry

Diary of a water restoration design and install

Welcome to the first epsiode of season 7! So much has happened in the month between the last episode where I introduced my partner Alba and our new home and farm in Spain. There have been a lot of projects both inside the house, out on the land, and within our own businesses. One of the new developments that came up is that I was invited to assist on a watershed restoration design and install project with a company that I’ve admired and looked up to my whole career, Restoration Agriculture Development (RAD). RAD is the design and project installation […]

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rainwater harvesting

A first look at our regenerative project in the new year!

2022 has been an intense year for me behind the scenes. I don’t often talk about my personal life here on the show, but I’ve had some major milestones this year that I’m excited to share with you. It’s been a long journey of almost 4 years since leaving the project that I cofounded with my two colleagues in Guatemala around the time that I started this podcast, until now when my partner and I are recently moved into our new little farm in the mountains of Catalunya in Spain. In this episode, for the first time, I’m going to […]

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Gardening

Nick Steiner and Oliver Goshey on the scope of water cycle restoration options for any project size

I’ll keep today’s intro real short because this is a long episode. The short of it is that my good friend Nick Steiner and I have been diving real deep into the topic of landscape hydrology and water cycle restoration both on our own properties and through our work with clients and farmers all around Europe. In the process we’ve become complete nerds about this topic and all of the incredible potential that working with water systems can have for the ecology and quality of life where it’s applied appropriately. So today, Nick and I are just gonna lay it […]

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regenerative design

Zach Weiss and Lorenzo Costa break down the design and process for restoring the water cycle of Tuscany

It’s not often I get to do interviews in person, and it’s not often that I get a chance to go to Italy to visit amazing farms and take a course on regional scale landscape hydrological restoration either. In fact this was my first visit to Italy at all. All of these fortunate circumstances came together at the end of November, a couple weeks ago, thanks to the incredible efforts and coordination by my friend Ed Cutler, the director of the Tuscany Environment Foundation. Early on Ed invited me to come and assist on a four day course that he […]

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Interviews

Scott Zona on the gardener’s guide to biology

Today’s session, in contrast to the more challenging subject of the last two weeks, will take me back into my comfort zone, namely, nerding out about plants and how bizarre and amazing they are. I don’t claim to be a plant expert, far from it. I’m more like a fanboy of a stadium band that has been around forever pumping out the hits and that I only found out about recently and act like I discovered them. I hope those of you who’ve been growing and studying plants your whole lives will forgive me. A perfect example of a person […]

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myth busting

Jake Leguee gives a perspective from modern technological farming: Part 2

Today we’ll be wrapping up the second in a two part interview that I’ve been looking forward to doing for a long time. If you missed the first part of the interview then I really recommend that you go back and listen to it before this second half to get the proper context. As a quick recap, I’ve been speaking with conventional and industrial farmers for some time, not only to better understand the industry and the management practices they use, but also to understand the people who manage these farms, the decisions and challenges they face, and both the […]

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myth busting

Jake Leguee gives a perspective from modern technological farming: Part 1

Today I’ll begin the first in a two part interview that I’ve been looking forward to doing for a long time, but let me give you some background context before we get started. It’s no secret that I’m a major proponent of regenerative agriculture and many of the different methodologies, practices, and concepts that this wide label contains. I believe strongly that our generation has an opportunity and an obligation to reconcile our food production system with the natural world that we depend on and to use our knowledge, wisdom, and access to resources to regenerate the health of the […]

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Transition to regenerative ag

Laura Lengnick on the principles of building climate resilient farms. Part 2

This week I’ll be presenting the second in a two part series exploring the topic of building true resilience in agriculture. Resilience is often thought of as the ability to bounce back from a disturbance or a challenge, but in these two episodes we’re going to dig deeper and not only broaden the theory of true resilience, but also to look into case studies of growers and land stewards who are building lasting resilience on their farms. To help me to understand all of this better and to give practical advice that all of us, even those of us that […]