Regenerative Skills

Since last year much of my work with Climate Farmers has been in building the European farmer community and creating connections so that members can learn from each other.  I admittedly don’t have a lot of prior experience with this so I went looking for experienced and successful community builders to mentor me in the process.  One of the most helpful and inspiring people the this search put me i...

I’ve touched on this topic briefly in previous interviews, but it bears repeating. Agriculture around the world is going through a critical moment. The skyrocketing prices of petroleum products, meaning most agriculture chemicals and fertilizers as well as machinery fuel, is causing a tipping point for many farm businesses. Operations that have long been dependent on these synthetic inputs are fac...

One of my favorite topics to explore on this show is how other people with unique skill sets and talents look at the natural world and the ecological design process. I’ve been fortunate in my network of designers, educators, farmers, and academics to peer into the specialties of ecological understanding and design thinking from many points of view, and today is one of those opportunities. I first...

I’ve been looking forward to today’s session for a good couple months now.  Though it’s been years since I got excited about seed saving and heard the first little bits of the ideas around landrace gardening, I only recently got a window into its real potential. I honestly feel a bit embarrassed that I didn’t know more about landrace plant breeding until recently since it’s the reason we have pret...

A lot of my work these days revolves around communicating with farmers around Europe who are at various stages of a transition towards regenerative management. For many different reasons farmers are looking for solutions outside of the conventional industry of chemical and technological manipulations and are rediscovering the potential of partnering with natural cycles and processes. Though there...

Welcome to a very special episode of the regenerative skills podcast. This is the 300th episode that I am publishing today, and to make the occasion I wanted to try something new. At this point the show has grown immensely from where I started it and I would imagine that most of you who are tuned in now haven’t been here since the beginning.  For that reason I’m going to revisit the origins of thi...

Today’s episode touches on a very timely topic for me. I’m currently developing a program to assist European farmers in their transition to regenerative management of their farms, and the big challenge is to make a program that is relevant for the vast array and contexts and differences that farmers across this continent are working from. No set of information is appropriate. No one teaching style...

Today’s episode is going to require some context for anyone who’s not familiar with the origin of this show. Back in 2017 when I started this podcast I was doing an internship with my friend and mentor Charlie Rendal on bamboo building in Lake Atitlan Guatemala. I had been traveling back and forth from Guatemala for a number of years. I had originally gone down there with a friend to learn Spanish...

Since the three part series that Nick and I recorded about the vast array of drought mitigation and recovery solutions for people in different living situations we’ve gotten a lot of follow up questions from listeners who want to go deeper into this subject.  Luckily one of my friends and mentors who’s had an outsized influence on my educational journey and inspiration to work with farmers and lan...

Just checking in while still on a short holiday. I just dropped my mom off at the airport at about 3 yesterday morning after a wonderful week of her visiting us, my sister, and her girls at the farm. It’s been such a blessing to have almost all my favorite women under the same roof for a time. My family is scattered all across the world, so these moments when a number of us can be together is real...

Over the next two weeks I’m going to be taking some much needed recharge time with my family here on the farm. I've got my little sister Emily here and her three little girls Selma, Rawan, and Lujane who came from Kuwait city to spend the summer with us, and my mom who just arrived on Wednesday who will be spending a week with us. We’ve got outdoor education time around the farm (which we call Jun...

Welcome to the final episode in mine and Nick’s 3 part series on drought. In the first episode we talked about how drought was affecting our two homes at the moment. His home on the island of Tenerife, and my own in Northeastern Spain. We went over the definition of drought and some common myths and misconceptions, as well as the major factors that can make drought more common and severe.  In the...

Continuing with our deep dive into drought, my good friend Nick Steiner and I are going to move now from defining drought and the its myriad of causes and factors that make it worse, to a wide range of solutions and opportunities available to people who are living in different environments and with different access to land and space.  You may not be surprised to hear that we ended up running long...

It’s that time again. In todays’ regenerative round table, my good friend Nick Steiner and I give updates on our respective projects. Him on the Island of Tenerife and myself in the mountains of central Catalunya in Spain. In the update we talk about some of the challenges we’ve been experiencing this year. The big topic at the moment for us, and many other in this area of the world, is drought. P...

A couple weeks ago I had a wonderful conversation with my good friend Harriet Mela, the independent researcher from Austria who has helped push the boundaries of soil science and plant physiological understanding. We focused last time on how plants handle water stress, specifically drought and the management practices that can either help or inhibit their natural adaptation to this stress. Harriet...

Today I’m going to dive deeper into the broad topic of holistic health and wellness for this ongoing series that I started with Richard Perkins a couple weeks ago. In this episode we’re going to take a step back and analyze wellbeing with a perspective from the world of high performance athletics.  Now I would imagine that for many of you this probably sounds a bit off-brand in comparison to my us...

Today’s interview has been in the making for me for a couple years now. I first got to know Michael Reber through the pioneer program with Climate Farmers that I directed two years ago. Through that program we guided farmers from around Europe through existing online regenerative farming courses and helped them to adapt the information and techniques to their own businesses and contexts. By this p...

Many of you will remember my guest today from the three other interviews I’ve done with him over the years. Zack Loeks is a good friend and a maverick of many regenerative skills and knowledge. From growing up on a permaculture homestead in northern New Mexico as a kid, to farming commercially in Canada, teaching edible ecosystem design through Ecosystem U, designing and installing edible ecosyste...

Now that I’m spending so much time out on the land here at the new farm I’m becoming a lot more conscious of my health. Nutrition has been really important for me in the last handful of years as I’ve struggled to overcome the chronic digestive issues that plagued me until my 30s. Over time I’ve dug deeper into whole food nutrition, fermentation and the gut microbiome, the importance of healthy fat...

Today I’m going to give you a window into the series of Skill Exchange calls that I host regularly for the members of the Climate Farming community. The community is open to any active farmer in Europe and together we’ve co-created an online learning space for farmers to connect with one another, share ideas and knowledge, and receive support from their peers. This series of Skill Exchange calls i...

In my work with farmers and clients I’ve always looked for the leverage points where small actions can lead to the largest changes and progress. Where is it that a beginner or novice can invest some resources and make big leaps rather than burning out for small results. In fact, as I’m in the early stages of renovating my own house and farm, this is a source of constant reflection for me as well....

If you’ve been following the episodes so far this season, you know I’ve got a lot of projects and travels going on right now. Since the episode I recorded in Nicaragua, I’ve also been on a project on the island of Madeira and just two days ago I got back from a 9 day trip to Portugal. Though I haven’t been able to record everything like a diary the way I would have liked to, today I did get a chan...

I’ve got a treat for you all today. After almost 3 years, I’ve got Shane Simonsen back on the show. For those of you who are not familiar with Shane, I’ll give a quick intro and then point you to the links to the two previous shows I recorded with him because they’re really worth while.  Shane is a biologist who has a fascinating project on 40 acres in Queensland, AU centered around the concept of...

One of the most important resources we’ve been working to create for our network of farmers here in Europe through my work at Climate Farmers is what we’ve called our coach matching service. We’ve long since seen that one of the hurdles that farmers face in their transition to regenerative agriculture is either one of two things. Either not the right specific information and support based on their...