Regenerative Skills

Welcome to the fourth of the monthly expert panel discussions. As I mentioned in the past, each month I’ll be hosting discussions and debates between some of the most prominent voices in regenerative agriculture, soil science, restoration land management and more. If you’re a subscribing patreon member, you’ll also be invited to the live events and the open Q&A for listeners after the panel. In th...

I remember distinctly the time that a storyteller came to my middle school when I was in 7th grade. At that point my school experience, like for many others, consisted of being talked to all day by someone at the front of the class while I struggled to pay attention and not fidget. But this was different. This woman’s story and the way she told it managed to hold an auditorium full of 12 and 13 ye...

If you don’t know her from her books, Fibershed and Harvesting Color you’ll likely remember Rebecca Burgess from the panel discussion two weeks ago that I hosted with the team at Climate Farmers in which she and Aroa Alvarez Fernandez spoke about the potential of regenerative fashion and textiles to transform the current clothing industry. After that discussion I felt compelled to speak to her aga...

On this show I’ve often taken a strong focus on the actions that we can all take to restore ecosystem function and productivity, whether it be planting trees in an agroforestry system, repairing the hydrology of a landscape, or building our homes with natural materials. I’ve centered around these topics because frankly, they’re the ones I have most experience with and can speak about with some con...

Welcome to the third of the monthly expert panel discussions. As I mentioned before, each month I’ll be hosting discussions and debates between some of the most prominent voices in regenerative agriculture, soil science, restoration land management and more. If you’re a subscribing patreon member, you’ll also be invited to the live events and the open Q&A for listeners after the panel. In this ses...

Let's take a look at the 1st step in the process of creating a design for building your permaculture property. In working in regenerative design for a while and being connected with many other people who make their living this way, myself and a lot of others have begun to identify patterns in the questions and troubles that people reach out to us consultants and designers for. I haven't been in th...

With regenerative agriculture and agroforestry increasingly becoming popular topics in environmental and even political circles. I wanted to do a one-on-one session with one of my favorite speakers in this sphere, Patrick Worms.  Many of you frequent listeners will remember him from the panel discussion on agroforestry two weeks ago that I hosted with Climate Farmers. I got to know Patrick’s work...

Since last week’s episode was an expert panel discussion on agroforestry, I wanted to expand on that theme and help to bring some practical and actionable information on how to plan your own reforestation project. I reached out to Michael Pilarski first since I’m helping to organize and launch the knowledge exchange platform for Ecosystem Restoration Camps, and as an advisory council member, Micha...

Welcome to the second of the monthly expert panel discussions. As I mentioned last time, each month I’ll be hosting discussions and debates between some of the most prominent voices in regenerative agriculture, soil science, restoration land management and more. If you’re a subscribing patreon member, you’ll also be invited to the live events and the open Q&A for listeners after the panel.  In thi...

It's time we take a look at How To Make Biochar Enriched Compost For Epic Veggies. A lot of what I spend my time on these days, between working with Ecosystem Restoration Camps, Climate Farmers, and running this show, is researching techniques and solutions for people who are working to regenerate damaged landscapes, either for generally healthier environments or for rich and abundant farmland. Si...

How To Start A Profitable Elderberry Farm. Since I first arrived in the northeast of Spain a year and a half ago, I’ve been obsessed with getting to know the native plants in my area. I’ve been blown away by just how many edible and medicinal plants are all around me and growing in the most unlikely places, from cracks in the concrete and the edges of parking lots to erosion gullies and whole fore...

In today’s episode I spoke with Van Clothier about an innovative and subtle water erosion mitigation technique, and how to build a one rock dam. I know this might seem oddly specific, but after an interview with Brad Lancaster last season, he talked about how he’s been learning from people like Van and his mentor Bill Zeedyk about smaller, less intrusive interventions that can have profound effect...

Welcome to the first edition of our monthly expert panels. This first edition starts off strong by addressing one of the most talked about issues of our time; understanding the future of regenerative agriculture. For this panel I teamed up with my friends and collaborators at Climate Farmers. Together we're working to advance regenerative agriculture in Europe. For this panel we assembled and all-...

How to start a school garden program For this week’s episode I reached out to Kaci Rae Chirstopher, the author of the new book The School Garden Curriculum, about how to create a school garden program Kaci is the volunteer Farm and Garden Educator for Oregon's Redband Ranch. She was also previously the School Garden Coordinator for the Springwater Environmental Sciences School and the Outdoor Educ...

Zach Loeks, author of the edible ecosystem solution have you ever wondered what the difference between a garden and an edible ecosystem is? Do you want to know how you can create one in you own yard? In this episode with author Zach Loeks from the Ecosystem Solutions Institute, you learn all that and more. We'll walk you through how to choose your site, even if all you have is a 5ft by 5ft patch o...

To kick of the new season of the Regenerative Skills podcast I wanted to set the tone by highlighting the invisible secret to all the successful design decisions I've ever made. Learning how to ask better questions has so much power to reshape the way we see the world and how we audit our own processes and choices. In this first episode I speak with two women who've been inspirations to me as a de...

After last week’s session with Matt Powers, I want to add a second perspective on soil and the new science behind how we can restore it to health in our own gardens. For that perspective I got back in touch with Robert Pavlis who was first on this show a few seasons ago to talk about building natural ponds. Robert has been an avid gardener for over four decades. He is the owner and developer of As...

Now that I've wrapped up the series on waterway regeneration, I wanted to transition into a two episode deep dive into an essential component of water cycle health and how it affects the land by analysing the most elemental component of a healthy ecology, and that of course is soil. There’ve been a ton of new developments and research in this field in a very short time as scientists and agronomist...

We’ve covered a ton of angles to this topic already, from fixing broken water cycles on the land with keyline planning and earthworks, to marine ecosystem restoration through conservation and even farming. In today’s episode I got to speak with Bruce Kania of Floating Island International which developed their patented Biohaven floating island technology as a solution to algae-ridden and nutrient...

Welcome back friends and family to this ongoing series on waterway regeneration. In the past three episodes I focused on marine regeneration through conservation as well as farming. Today we're going to take a look at fresh water systems and specifically, how to decontaminate them through biological methods. I'll be sure to put a link to that interview in the show note on the website in case you m...

Welcome back friends and family to this ongoing series on waterway regeneration. We’ve covered so many approaches to this subject up until now, and over the last two weeks I’ve been exploring regenerative solutions to the environmental degradation of marine ecosystems. Today we’ll be looking closely at some creative ways of protecting and even reseeding coral reefs in my interview with Celia Grego...

Continuing today with this ongoing series on waterway regeneration and a deep dive into marine ecosystems, I had the pleasure of speaking with Brian Von Herzen.  Brian is an ocean scientist, engineer and entrepreneur, though much of his career has been in Silicon Valley where he developed innovative technical solutions for companies like Pixar, Dolby and Microsoft. Brian is also the founder and Ex...

Over the last month, I’ve been focusing on interviews with people who are pioneering the repair and regeneration of the water cycle as it pertains to landscapes. We’ve explored the installation of ponds and dams, permaculture earthworks and water retention landscapes as well as keyline design and planting the rain in drylands. These are all great interventions at the beginning of the water cycle’s...

In the last handful of episodes we’ve explored permaculture earthworks for water harvesting landscapes and keyline design on large scales. As a complement to those topics I got in touch with Brad Lancaster, the author Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, volumes one and two which have recently been re-released as expanded new editions. Brad is an expert in the field of rainwater harvestin...

Since the last two episodes focused on earthworks, specifically water retention and catchment features, I wanted to revisit one of my favorite interviews that really helped me to understand the fundamentals of keyline design and how many different configurations it could take, even on the same piece of land. The keyline system was pioneered of course by PA Yeomans in Australia back in the 1950’s a...