Regenerative Skills

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 a...

It’s been a wild couple of weeks for me and as a result I’m struggling a bit to catch up. After the 5 day regenerative Design course at the Green Rebel farm in Miravet, Spain, then the three day Climate Farming conference at Schloss Kirchberg in Germany, and I’m now on a short break visiting the small farm of a good friend of mine in Dessau between events before a week long team retreat with the C...

Welcome to a very special episode. For the first time on this show I've given the mic over to the participants on my regenerative design course and told them they can ask me anything. This was completely unplanned and came out of some of the many amazing conversations with the group in the evenings. Many of the people who came out to learn with us here on the Green Rebel farm are long time listene...

Today I’m back with part 2 of my interview with Blake Cothron, the author of the new book “The Berry Grower: small scale organic fruit production in the 21st century.” Just in case you missed the first part of this episode, Blake Cothron is an organic farmer, educator, professional horticulturist and small business owner in Stanford, Kentucky, USA. He has been a grower for over 25 years and has be...

I’m super excited to share with you all what is about to be a deep dive into one of the most promising and often overlooked small farm enterprises, small fruit and berry growing.  In order to get the scoop on berry growing, I went straight to the source to speak with Blake Cothron, the author of the new book “The Berry Grower: small scale organic fruit production in the 21st century.” Blake Cothro...

Today I’m excited to share a special episode which comes from a presentation I gave about two weeks ago with Gaia Education, an leading organization in providing education in sustainable development. Through Ecosystem Restoration Camps, the NGO that I used to work with, I have co-facilitated the design portion of their Ecosystem Restoration Design course for the last few years. Now, for the first...

A lot of my work at the moment is centered around building community and connecting people across Europe who are on a journey into regenerative agriculture. As I learn more and more about the farmers that I’m working with and their challenges and desires for the future I’m struck by the stories that unfold. Stories of legacy, perseverance, experimentation, recovery from adversity, hope, and so muc...

It’s no secret that the farmer population in Europe and many other places has been diminishing and growing older for a long time now. There are however still lots of younger folks who are interested in becoming farmers, but are struggling to get their foot in the door. Barriers to entry such as high land prices, high startup and infrastructure costs, lack of loan options, bureaucratic difficulties...

Ever since moving to Europe three years ago, I’ve been working to understand both the differences and similarities between the cultural, societal, and governmental background that I’m more familiar with from the USA and Mesoamerica compared to Spain and the larger European Union. Especially since my work is centered around agriculture and how we can set up the infrastructure to assist growers on t...

This week I wanted to get back to one of my favorite formats from the early days of this show in which I just take the time to speak with some of my close friends and collaborators about what we’re working on. Today I grabbed my good friends Nick Steiner and Jacob Evans.  Nick is one of my closest colleagues in my work with Climate Farmers. He leads the Academy at the company and has spearheaded t...

I’ve been taking it easy since my sister and her little girls are over visiting from Kuwait for the month and my Granny on the Isle of Man was also able to stop by for a week. So for that reason I’m going to rebroadcast one of my favorite episodes on agroforestry from two seasons ago with Patrick Worms. I hope all of you out there are also finding time to unwind and enjoy this summer despite all t...

Though we’re quite a few episodes into this series on tree planting and agroforestry already, I had a unique opportunity to go back to the roots and explore some of the fundamentals of the plant kingdom and how we can actively work to preserve the wonder and diversity of vegetative life.  The truth is that the challenges of climate change and ecosystem mismanagement aren’t only having an effect on...

Welcome back to another episode in this ongoing series on tree planting and agroforestry. Today we’re going to pick up where we left off last week in our conversation with Mark Krawczyk about the practice of coppicing woody perennial plants and woodland management as a whole.  For a quick recap, Mark Krawczyk is the author of the new book Coppice Agroforestry: Tending trees for product, profit, &...

Welcome back to another episode in this ongoing series on tree planting and agroforestry. So far we’ve taken a broad look at many types of reforestation and how to integrate trees and woody species into farming systems, but there’s another side of the coin in this conversation. Today we’re going to start another two part session focusing on the management of woody perennials, specifically the prac...

Welcome back to this ongoing series on tree planting and agroforestry. This week we’ll wrap up the two part interview I did with Philipp Gerhardt, the founder of the website baumfeldwirtschaft.de (which translates basically to tree farming) and managing director of Deutsche Agroforst GmbH. He is considered a leading expert for keyline design in Central Europe and is active in research projects and...

Welcome back to this ongoing series on tree planting and agroforestry. This week will be the first of a two part interview I did with Philipp Gerhardt, the founder of the website baumfeldwirtschaft.de (which translates basically to tree farming) and managing director of Deutsche Agroforst GmbH. He is considered a leading expert for keyline design in Central Europe and is active in research project...

Welcome to a special episode edition of this ongoing series focusing on tree planting and agroforestry. So far I’ve had a lot of interviews talking about tree and perennial systems and we’ve mostly looked at things from a macro perspective. Today we’ll take a closer look at one of the most incredible families of plants that are present in the majority of temperate ecologies around the world, the f...

Welcome to a special episode edition of this ongoing series focusing on tree planting and agroforestry. Often when we think about agroforestry we think first about food. Orchards of fruit and nut crops are certainly an important aspect of agroforestry, but so is the responsible harvesting and care for woodlands for building materials and fuel. For a long time now I’ve admired the work of Ben Law w...

Welcome back to this ongoing series on tree planting and agroforestry. As I’ve been researching this topic for years I’ve begun to see a spectrum of tree planting concepts that look like a gradient based on the diversity in the system. On one extreme you have monoculture orchards and timber plantations which are just a single species on large tracts of land, and on the other extreme you have syntr...

Just as promised from last week’s episode exploring the wide and unknown varieties of fruit and nut trees for cold climates, we’re going to go deeper into getting forest gardens established in frigid zones.  It turns out there are tons of planting options for people who live in hardiness zones 6 and below. There are even some advantages in maintenance and pest pressure since you get a long dormant...

There are so many interesting perspectives to approach this topic from and today we’re going to hear from two people who turned a personal love of plants into a thriving botanical garden and nursery.  Allyson Levy and Scott Serrano started creating a botanical garden in their backyard 22 years ago by planting native trees, shrubs, perennials and unusual edibles. Soon after they became interested i...

Welcome to a brand new series. Over the next months we’ll be exploring a wide variety of perspectives and knowledge about tree planting, agroforestry, forestry management, and everything to do with woody perennial species.  In the last couple years you’ve probably seen tons of articles and promotions about reforestation and tree planting initiatives around the world. Many of these are tied to spec...

Today is the last episode of the series on building community. Though there remains so much to say on this subject, I wanted to wrap up this endlessly complex and nuanced topic with a discussion about the challenges and learning of integrating into a foreign community. I have a lot of my own thoughts and stories on this, but I also immediately thought to check back in with a friend of mine who’s b...

As we come to the end of this series on building strong communities, I wanted to revisit one of the most impactful conversations I had from last season. Last year you may remember that I released an 11 episode series of expert panels focused on various aspects of regenerative agriculture. In the final panel session I recorded a discussion with Allan Savory, Ana Digón, and Rudolf Buehler all of who...

Over the last decade I’ve begun to see a subcategory of permaculture learning start to gain attention. As more and more people encounter the principles of this ecological design framework and experiment with different ways of applying it in their lives there’s been an emergence of social permaculture to integrate the patterns of nature to tackle inner challenges.  The wonderful book Human Permacul...