Regenerative Skills

In this session I had the pleasure of speaking to the founder of “Elemental Ecosystems” Zach Weiss. Zach earned the distinction of being the first person to earn the Holzer practitioner certification from revolutionary Austrian farmer Sepp Holzer through a rigorous two-year apprenticeship working alongside Sepp in North America and Europe. Zach created Elemental Ecosystems as a for-benefit social...

We’ve completed 100 episodes! Thank you to all our listeners and supporters who are part of more than thirty thousand subscribers to this podcast and the growing regenerative community that is taking back our future and helping humanity move into its fullest potential. In this episode Oliver and Neal talk about the new direction that Abundant Edge and Granja Tz’ikin will be taking independently an...

In this interview I had the pleasure of speaking with Daniel Christian Wahl, Daniel is an international consultant and educator specialising in biologically-inspired whole systems design and transformative innovation. By the time he was 28 Daniel had travelled to 35 different countries on six continents and he started his career as a marine biologist and scuba diving instructor, before he decided...

My guest today has been a big inspiration to me and has been a leader in regenerative design, pretty much before that was even a term. Bill Reed is an internationally recognized practitioner, lecturer, and authority in sustainability and regenerative planning, design and implementation. He is a principal in both Integrative Design, Inc. and Regenesis – two organizations working to lift green build...

Welcome to the first episode of season three. I’m so excited for the year to come and all the conversations, interviews, and information that I’ll be sharing with all of you over the year. This season, while I’ll be sticking with the general format of the season prior, I’m also looking to bring more stories into these conversations and cultivate narratives around the incredible work that people ar...

It’s been a monumental first year for us here at Abundant Edge with the development of the farm “Granja Tz’ikin” and all of the client projects we’ve been juggling at the same time. As we wrap up the second season of the podcast and the first year of me, Neal and Jeremy working as a team we want to mostly take the time to show our gratitude for all the people who’ve been instrumental in the progre...

My guest today is one of the most inspiring and enthusiastic educators working in permaculture and regenerative education anywhere in the world. I had the pleasure of interviewing Matt Powers, author of “The Permaculture Student” and “The Permaculture Student 2,” in the last season on this podcast and got to catch up with him again to talk in depth about some of the most urgent transitions facing...

Animals and livestock can be an essential component to land restoration if managed correctly and while we already have goats, chickens and ducks on our small demonstration farm here in Guatemala, I’ve been looking into the addition of another animal enterprise that would fit into our existing systems without overwhelming the small space we have. For a while I’ve been interested in rabbits for thei...

It’s not often I get the chance to speak with a renowned animal behaviorist, much less for a talk about nutrition and nourishment, but my guest today, Fred Provenza, professor emeritus at Utah State University, makes the argument that we can learn a lot about our own health by observing the way that animals choose their food in their natural environments. Fred challenges us to be more skeptical of...

The Abundant Edge team is back to talk about all the progress from our projects over the last month as we transition from the rainy season to the dry season here in Guatemala. We’ve got compost production, plant propagation, new baby goats, duck houses, gray and black water treatment for the house and much more. Above all we’re talking about how each one of these projects and enterprises contribut...

Leah Penniman’s mission is to end racism and injustice in our food system by increasing farmland stewardship by people of color, promoting equity in food access, and training the next generation of activist farmers. Her new book, Farming While Black, has been called "a revolutionary work that opens important doors" by Civil Eats and a “brilliant guide” by Mark Bittman. In this interview Leah expla...

For those of you used to the more practical and literal information that I usually focus on in these interviews, you'll be refreshed by the story telling and concepts in this next session. This week, Neal Hegarty interviews countryman Diarmuid Lyng, a former star hurler for the county of Wexford who wrote a compelling article on the concept of "silver branch perception" from Irish mythology and ho...

Those of you who’ve been listening to this podcast for a while know that I geek out big time when it comes to natural plasters and finishes. So you can imagine how excited I was to get to talk to kyle holzhueter, a certified plasterer who learned his trade and got his certification in Japan where the traditional style and techniques are surprisingly different from those that I’ve become accustomed...

In this month;s regenerative round table Jeremy and Oliver discuss the challenges of managing a lot of animals in a small space and some of the problems with keeping pests and predators out. We cover the progress on the little coffee beneficio, plastering the house, producing native and edible plants for ourselves and clients and all of the progress over the last few weeks of developing our little...

Get the design and siting PDF here In this special episode, Oliver goes into one of the key lectures in the Intro to Natural Building course on some of the most important considerations and bits of information to consider when designing a natural building and choosing a site for the structure. In this episode we cover many iconic natural building styles, considerations for different climates and r...

My guest today, Ziggy Liloia from “the year of mud” has been building naturally and blogging about his experiences for a decade since he started with a small cob cottage, just over 200 sq ft at an ecovillage in Missouri back in 2008. Since then he has explored many other materials and techniques and joins us today to talk about the myths and realities of natural building, especially when it comes...

Rammed earth is one of the earthen building techniques that I personally have the least experience with, but since it has been steadily growing in popularity around the world for its beauty and durability I reached out to April Magill of Root Down Designs to find out more about how this ancient vernacular building technique is being revived in the southeastern US and what challenges there are to g...

The international presence of the permaculture movement has always been an inspiration to me and in today’s interview I had the pleasure of talking with Nelson Lebo of the Eco School in Whanganui in the north island of New Zealand. Nelson first reached out to me after hearing about some of our similar experiences on this podcast and I became fascinated with the development of his own farm with the...

It’s time once again to check in with Atulya Bingham, one of my favorite voices and innovators in the natural building world. Atulya is the author “Mud Mountain, Mud Ball” and the newest release “Dirt  Witch,” each of which tell the story of her journey of building her own home and alternative lifestyle, first in Turkey and most recently her move to the north of Spain. In the last interview I did...

I have many heroes in the regenerative economy and my guest today certainly ranks up at the top. Wayne Dorband and his online educational platform, the Ecolonomics Action Team (or EAT for short) has been putting an amazing webinar series with some of the best educators and practitioners out there for years now and Wayne himself is a great example of a successful serial entrepreneur of regenerative...

Welcome back to the regenerative round table. Today Neal and Oliver are joined by "Bamboo" Charlie Rendall, natural builder and founder of Return to the Forest as we talk in depth about new developments and progress on the Abundant Edge farm (aka Finca Tz'ikin). We recently had a new drainage channel open up right next to the farm so as we scramble to shore up the northern border of our land and d...

In my focus and passion for designing beautiful, functional and holistic buildings and landscapes, it’s easy to get caught up in the macro and forget the micro, or to put it another way, for as important as the big picture is, the interactions at the ground level and the beauty of the relationships that you can develop with the plants that enrich the earth are certainly not to be forgotten. For in...

Welcome back to part two in our series speaking with Crystal Honeycutt about the idea of regenerative health. Crystal is a naturopathic doctor and registered clinical herbalist who has been sharing incredible insights on the topics of nutrition, self-assessment and diagnosis and how to find out just what your body needs to maintain itself in top form. For more on Crystal’s background and superhero...

Regenerative living can be a very wide and nuanced topic. Today we’ll start on a two-part journey into a tricky and sometimes controversial world of holistic health and what it means to experience regenerative well-being. My guest today, Crystal Honeycutt, is an accomplished naturopathic doctor and registered clinical herbalist who has been in private practice for more than 10 years specializing i...

Our baby goats, just a few days old One of the biggest challenges that we and many other peramculturalists face is how to balance the need for diversity and resilience in our ecosystems and enterprises and the need for efficiency and simplicity in their maintenance and operation. On this regenerative round table Neal and Oliver talk about their own experiences and mistakes along the way in finding...