Soul Soil: Where Agriculture and Spirit Intersect with Brooke Kornegay

In today’s episode, we talk to Coordinator Stephanie Morningstar and John Deloatch (JD) Giraldo of the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust. Their vision is to advance land sovereignty in the northeast region through permanent and secure land tenure for Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and Asian farmers and land stewards who will use the land in a sacred manner that honors our ancestors dreams - for sustainable farming, human habitat, ceremony, native ecosystem restoration, and cultural preservation.

Stephanie Morningstar, of the Oneida Nation, is an herbalist, soil and seed steward, scholar, student, and Earth Worker dedicated to decolonizing and liberating minds, hearts, and land- one plant, person, ecosystem, and non-human being at a time. Stephanie is the Coordinator of the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust, grows medicines and food for her community at Sky World Apothecary & Farm; and mobilizes knowledge for Indigenous-led climate change and food sovereignty research projects for Global Water Futures.

John Deloatch Giraldo is an Earthworker that focuses on connection to the land, healing with the land and education of how natural systems work. He is guided by Freedom Loving Plants, also known as weeds, and the stories of ancestral plants. His dream is to have green spaces where people can pass on family and cultural traditions as well as create new experiences. He believes it’s critical to have spaces where people can pass on their stories and ways of being in respect to Mother Nature, especially for people who are migrating from different Mother Lands to those who are being raised here so they can maintain a sense of culture, tradition and sovereignty.

Resources

• https://nefoclandtrust.org/

• Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman

• Lilith's Brood: The Complete Xenogenesis Trilogy and Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

• Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood  by Margaret Atwood

• The Organic Medicinal Herb Farmer: The Ultimate Guide to Producing High-Quality Herbs on a Market Scale by Jeff and Melanie Carpenter

To learn more about the Grow and Glow package mentioned in today's episode, visit https://www.soulsoilpodcast.com/offerings/grow-and-glow-package

To learn how to become a Patreon and support the show while getting extra resources and support, visit https://www.patreon.com/soulsoil

Woodland Harvest Mountain Farm is a woman-owned, 16-acre, off-grid educational regenerative agriculture farmstead nestled in the mountains of Appalachia. Since 2004, they have welcomed more than 2500 volunteers, held workshop gatherings, provided respite to activists, held healing space for their beloveds, and organized countless parties for work, teaching, learning and leisure. They have opened their land to hundreds of "strangers" (who they now know and love and honor as their community farm family) who each have helped create this dreamstead space to share. Each season they move closer toward self-reliance and resilience. Elizabeth West and Lisa Redman are activists, homesteaders, permaculturalists, educators and Earth lovers who weave their experience with the opportunities of the present to create an abundant, inclusive alternative to the status quo.

Woodland Harvest isn’t just a place, it’s a state of mind…a place to drop out and tune in!

In this episode…

• About Woodland Harvest
• The impact of off-grid immersion on visitors
• Defining resilience
• Balancing the intellectual with walking the walk
• Early influences
• Nonviolent activism
• Diving into folk medicine
• Planning for relocalization of resources
• Raising children in a new way
• The importance of fun 😊

• The Empowerment Manual and The Earth Path by Starhawk

• Shelter, Home Work: Handbuilt Shelter, and The Half-Acre Homestead: 46 Years of Building and Gardening by Lloyd Kahn

• Barbara Kingsolver

• Toni Morrison

• Alice Walker

• Octavia Butler

• Howard Zinn

• Noam Chomsky

Nature is inherently abundant. No one has to spray the forests or plant the wetlands in order for them to thrive in perfect balance. As such, food gathered from the wild has the highest potential to nourish us on a deep level. When we realize that we have access to this bounty without having to intervene and sweat and toil (the original definition of agriculture!)…when we truly know this, then we can begin to release our scarcity mentality, relax our grip, our need to control. This shift is particularly liberating.

Katrina Blair began studying wild plants in her teens when she camped out alone for a summer to embrace a wild foods diet.  She later wrote “The Wild Edible and Medicinal Plants of the San Juan Mountains” for her senior project at Colorado College.  She completed a MA at John F Kennedy University in Holistic Health Education.  She founded Turtle Lake Refuge in 1998, a non-profit, whose mission is to celebrate the connection between personal health and wild lands. 

Turtle Lake Refuge includes a wild living foods café, sustainable education center and community farm.  Katrina teaches permaculture and wild edible and medicinal classes locally and globally.  

She is author of several books including: “Local Wild Life- Turtle Lake Refuge’s Recipes for Living Deep” and “ The Wild Wisdom of Weeds: 13 Essential Plants for Human Survival.

In this episode…

• Early influences and experiences with plants
• On beginning a conservation-focused nonprofit that manages parks and open spaces organically
• How plants can teach us from the inside out
• The life-changing impact of cultivating space — in your day, in your diet, in your mind
• How wild foods affect your mind, body, and spirit
• When we realize that we’re part of Nature, and Nature is inherently abundant…something shifts inside us and we can release our scarcity story

Resources

• Turtle Lake Refuge
• The Wild Wisdom of Weeds: 13 Essential Plants for Human Survival by Katrina Blair
• The Essene Gospel of Peace
• The Hippocrates Diet and Health Program by Ann Wigmore

How the world would be different if politics were rooted in radical love? This is the question being asked by Heather Mizeur, CEO + Founder of Soul Force Politics, a non-profit educational organization dedicated to the cultivation, empowerment, and alignment of inner wisdom and external engagement as a catalyst for individual and community transformation. Mizeur teaches heart-centered mindfulness and resilient leadership to strengthen democracy and soften political divides.  

After a successful career as a health care policy analyst in Congress, a Maryland State Manager of a U.S. Presidential campaign, and a stint on her local City Council, Mizeur was elected to serve two four-year terms as a Democratic member of the House of Delegates in the Maryland General Assembly (2007-2015).  She was also a Democratic candidate for Governor of Maryland in 2014 and became one of the state’s most recognized voices promoting progressive change. She lives with her wife, Deborah Mizeur, on a 34-acre organic herbal medicine farm on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

How would the environment be different if we radically loved our planet? How would we be different if we knew that the planet radically loves us?

In this episode…

• Heather’s path as a social justice advocate in politics, and how all the external engagement led to a desire to dive into internal work
• There’s so much power in the Pause that allows heart-based inner wisdom to emerge
• The choice to love each other even when it’s hard or when our opinions differ…the choice to embrace the Unity Consciousness that we are all One
• Becoming comfortable with stillness in a world rife with distraction and numbing vices, in bringing forth healing and heart-wisdom
• Going against the flow of Western culture where emptiness, need, lack, and scarcity fuel our economy, and instead, opting to find the wholeness inside us
• How caring enough to unveil our own best self first, leads to a vibrational connection to others doing similar work…leading to opportunities to collaborate and impact our world and remake it through the lens of love
• Sitting with WHAT IS, observing what circumstances come our way, instead of getting swept up in the emotions those circumstances generate
• How our connection with Mother Earth reflects our relationship to ourselves  

Resources https://www.soulforcepolitics.org

If there were one enterprise that addresses environmental degradation, chronic illness, depression, and poverty, would you be willing to learn about it? Today, we speak to someone who seems to have hit the jackpot…he and his family have developed a highly productive, dense nutrient-producing farming style that feeds people like medicine. They have reached a point with their fields where weeds, pests, and disease issues are all but null, and the life and vitality that reaches well beyond their farm is rewarded with a community that supports and celebrates their efforts. Bryan O’Hara has been growing vegetables for a livelihood since 1990 at Tobacco Road Farm in Lebanon, Connecticut. He works with natural systems to build complex and balanced soil life, resulting in a highly productive, vibrant growing system. Bryan was named Northeast Organic Farming Association’s Farmer of the Year in 2016, and is the author of No-Till Intensive Vegetable Culture.

It’s easy to fall into the mentality that humans are bad for the Earth…but the Earth is actually overjoyed to have humans work with her, and are in fact the Earth’s best allies in bringing about health, vitality and increase of life and abundance for not only ourselves, but all of nature around us.

In this episode…

• How declining environmental conditions caused Bryan to explore the way he raised his vegetables
• How he transitioned to a no-till growing system
• Weeds, insects and disease show the farmer what kind of imbalance exists in the environment; when plants are a state of health and vitality, insects and diseases do not attack those plants
• We are currently experiencing a global pandemic that we can view as an indicator that our planetary environment is likewise imbalanced
• If a crop is experiencing lack of fertility or vitality, it will experience pest and disease pressure. Typically, a pesticide is applied to protect that crop, but if that plant lacked the vitality to survive, it will not confer vitality to the animal (or human) that consumes that crop.
• …conversely, a crop that is full of vitality that doesn’t attract insects and diseases, has the vital compounds that readily transfer to the consumer and produces higher-functioning humans or animals.
• Many of Bryan’s customers have been with him for 3 decades…over that time, the impacts of consuming highly vital, nutrient dense food have had profound effects on their health, vitality, and even their medical conditions.
• How operating within the community with the goal of “love for the other” creates a culture of cooperation, goodwill, and success
• Growing 4 acres’ worth of produce in one acre…the efficiencies of crop intensification
• Layering composting materials with living plant cover and other no-till techniques
• How to identify nutrient-dense food without equipment Some think that humans are fundamentally bad for the Earth…but working this way with natural forces, creating this kind of vibrancy, gives human life tremendous meaning…once you see the potential, the heights of health and vitality and increase of life and abundance for not only you, but all of nature around you. The Earth is actually overjoyed to have humans work with her, and are in fact the Earth’s best allies in bringing out more vibrancy and life.  

Resources No-Till Intensive Vegetable Culture by Bryan O’Hara      

What motivates the biodynamic farmer? What perceptions do they hold that are a little bit different than those in the mainstream? So many of us yearn for connection—with Nature, with the Divine, with each other. When you can view each living thing as an expression of its Divine nature, our connections have a different meaning.

M Mueller is the Biodynamic specialist on Against the Grain Farm in Zionville, NC. He has held positions most recently in Williamsburg, VA, as Gardener in Residence for Grove Community Garden and as orchard keeper and part time milker on Gospel Spreading Church Farm, operated by descendants of M. O. Smith and supported by the Church of God at Williamsburg. M began using Biodynamic principles in his gardening in 2011 and has been a member of the Biodynamic Association since 2012. He is an approved mentor of the Spikenard Beekeeping Method.

“Whatever we do, if we do it with love, we are being fully human”.

In this episode…

• Soil: the earth’s magical skin!
• The on-farm community
• Spikenard Beekeeping: a bee-centered method
• The easiest access to the spiritual world might be through the growing of plants
• Seeing the eternal nature manifested in each living thing
• The nature of biodynamics as a technology that puts living elements together to strengthen the whole
• Biodynamic observations and resources

Resources

• Farmacology: Total Health from the Ground Up by Daphne Miller

• Biodynamic Association

• Josephine Porter Institute for Applied Biodynamics

• Agriculture: Spiritual Foundations for the Renewal of Agriculture by Rudolf Steiner; notes by Malcolm Gardner

• The Philosophy Of Freedom by Rudolf Steiner

• Theosophy : An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos by Rudolf Steiner

• Pablo Neruda

Just as pests don’t attack healthy crops, disease doesn’t take hold in a human body that is nutritionally balanced. With one foot in the world of agriculture and the other in medicine, Dr. Arden Andersen is in a unique position to observe the connections between soil health, food nutrient density, and human health.

Dr. Andersen is a holistic family and occupational medicine physician in Gladstone, MO. Dr. Andersen possesses a unique understanding of the link between soil/ crop health and human health.  He works both as an integrative family doctor and a soil and crop consultant with clients and speaking engagements across the US, 8 countries and two languages.  Dr. Andersen has authored several books including Real Medicine-Real Health, Science In Agriculture, The Anatomy of Life and Energy In Agriculture, and Food Plague. He lectures around the world on the link between soil and human health, on public health issues and real preventive medicine.  He has firm grasp of the underlying causes of illness and disease, environmental health and the contribution to human and animal illness and disease, the link between soil/human health and climatic issues, pandemics and the underlying solutions needed to return harmony and health to all living systems.

This is a wonderful time to be alive…the equipment, products, and people that we have now that we didn’t have, even 30 years ago…we CAN have better quality food, and we do have the capability to completely reverse the problems on the planet today.

In this episode… Dr. Andersen’s background and early influences connecting nutrition with health, from the soil to the doctor’s office Nutrition in food is influenced not only by the condition of the soil, but also by the presence of toxins which interfere with our nutrition With a higher nutritional balance of soil (and resulting food), the amount of environmental toxins present in the plants grown in those conditions decreases Municipalities sell their “biosolids” to farmers, who are attracted by the cheap NPK source, and end up poisoning their farms and soils with pathogens, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals, degrading the soil further Electromagnetic qualities of plants and how that affects their nutrient uptake If we can maintain an appropriate nutrient balance in the soil, paramagnetism helps to stimulate biological activity—beneficial bacteria and fungi—root growth, and overall health and vigor Ancient paramagnetic limestone towers of Ireland Sometimes the biggest issue isn’t on the farm, it’s between the ears How to determine the nutrient density of produce The only reason we have weeds, diseases, and insect problems is nutrient imbalance; likewise, the only reason humans have disease is lack of nutritional balance

Resources

• Science for Sale: How the US Government Uses Powerful Corporations and Leading Universities to Support Government Policies, Silence Top Scientists, Jeopardize Our Health, and Protect Corporate Profits by David Lewis, Ph.D

• John Kempf’s regenerative agriculture workshops and courses: https://johnkempf.com/

• Healthy Crops: A New Agricultural Revolution by Francis Chaboussou

• Tuning Into Nature by Philip Callahan

• Food Plague: Could our daily bread be our most life threatening exposure? by Arden Andersen, Ph.D

• Real Medicine Real Health by Arden Andersen, Ph.D

• Science in Agriculture: Advanced Methods for Sustainable Farming by Arden Andersen, Ph.D

• Anatomy of Life & Energy in Agriculture by Arden Andersen, Ph.D

• Mineral Nutrition and Plant Disease by Don Huber et. al.

• Rudolf Steiner

We are living through a time when the entire world is taking a good, hard look at itself. This has given humanity an incredible opportunity to shift focus and choose systems that feed life, that create biological resources, rather than only financial resources. We have a chance to turn away from systems that marginalize, extract, and degrade…and choose what we want to cultivate for ourselves and for future generations.

Trained as a cultural anthropologist and skilled in four languages, Juliana Birnbaum has lived and worked in the U.S., Europe, Japan, Nepal, Costa Rica and Brazil. She is the co-author of Sustainable [R]evolution: Permaculture in Ecovillages, Urban Farms and Communities Worldwide and CBD: A Patient’s Guide to Medicinal Cannabis. She is also the mother of two daughters and has attended over 100 births as a doula and assistant midwife. Juliana currently coordinates the Volunteer and Faculty departments at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA.

In this episode… Juliana’s fascinating background Far-reaching effects of consumerism Seeing life through the lens of permaculture What a sustainable city looks like How the Coronavirus pandemic is revealing the flaws in our societal structures The cost of industrial agriculture Relocalization of food Relocalization of energy Co-housing and ecovillage communities Impact of our diet choices Force and violence against Life that is inherent in our modern societal structures De-commodifying humans’ basic needs The need to develop communication skills that support the sustainable community  

Resources

• Sustainable [R}evolution: Permaculture in Ecovillages, Urban Farms and Communities Worldwide

• CBD: A Patient’s Guide to Medicinal Cannabis

• Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming by Paul Hawken

• Mary Oliver

• www.cultureofpermaculture.org

The Coronavirus pandemic is catalyzing many things…and forcing us to take a good look at the systems we depend on. During this period of isolation, we have the opportunity to disconnect from large systems that do harm, and redesign our lives with the help of systems aligned with life and love. Do our communities have enough resources to support everyone to live their lives with dignity and allow for the spirit that lives within them to emerge and benefit the rest of the community? This situation can be viewed through a lens of fear, or it can be an opportunity to tune into our higher spirit and connect with the vibration of our creation song,

Sherri Mitchell, Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset (meaning “she who brings the light”), is an Indigenous rights activist, spiritual teacher, and transformational change maker. Sherri was born and raised on the Penobscot Indian reservation (Penawahpskek).  She speaks and teaches around the world on issues of Indigenous rights, environmental justice, and spiritual change. Sherri has been actively involved with Indigenous rights and environmental justice work for more than 25 years, and she is the Founding Director of the Land Peace Foundation, an organization dedicated to the global protection of Indigenous land and water rights and the preservation of the Indigenous way of life. 

The key to being able to adapt, overcome and integrate the lessons of the day is to be able to approach everything we’re facing from a perspective of love. We have the chance to make an evolutionary leap of consciousness and come through this to the other side as better representations of our humanity.

In this episode…

• How an illness contracted in Guatemala led to a spiritual awakening that set the course for her spiritual work
• The opportunity that this period of isolation is affording humankind at this time in history
• The connection between the physical and emotional experience of Mother Earth to what humans are currently experiencing
• The Wabanaki web of life creation story and how the fact that we are all made of the same matter parallels the phenomenon of quantum entanglement
• The Wabanaki story of the first illness and how it foreshadows current global events
• Getting our human minds out of the way so that we can hear the messages coming from plants and animals—guidance from the starlings
• Actions communities need to take in order to be resilient in the face of system collapse
• What’s being exposed to us at this time
• How we can bring the benefits of this time—the introspection, time with family, examination of community and cultural systems—into the future with us?
• Aligning the three fires, the vibrational frequencies of the minds of the brain, heart, and gut—is when we’re able to open up to the collective unconsciousness, to ancestral memory
• We are all constantly creating, we just aren’t conscious of what it is that we’ve created…we are now being asked to take responsibility for what humans have collectively created and to clean it up the mess
• Tools for embodiment and grounding
• We are here at this time, in these bodies, for a specific purpose…tune into your body and spirit daily and connect with the vibration of your own creation song

• The Dandelion Insurrection: - love and revolution by Rivera Sun

• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

• My Beloved Kin by Lisa Brooks

• Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change by Sherri Mitchell

• Sherri’s website: sacredinstructions.life

• facebook.com/sacredinstructions

• IG: @sacredinstructions

• Twitter: @sacred411

Today Brooke speaks to the listeners directly about things that have helped ease her transition to the new circumstances in which the global population finds itself...

Resources

"Blessing for Earth-Healers" from The Earth Path: Grounding your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature by Starhawk

How to Grow Vibrant Food and Connect to your Land webinar series 

"Eating is not simply filling some gustatory hole, eating is knitting yourself into the fabric of life that's going on all the time, all around you...and how you knit yourself in can either make that fabric a beautiful thing, or it can make it tattered. Right now, I think a lot of our eating is creating tatters all across the world. What would be great is if the kinds of eating we do, beginning with the growing of food and the harvesting of food and the distribution and the cooking and sharing of food...could create a beautiful tapestry."

Dr. Norman Wirzba is a Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Theology, Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics, and the Senior Associate Dean for Institutional & Faculty Advancement at Duke School of Divinity. Dr. Wirzba pursues research and teaching interests at the intersections of theology, philosophy, ecology, and agrarian and environmental studies, and has published several books on food and land. He serves as Series Editor for a group of books called “Culture of the Land”. As an editor, Dr. Wirzba contributed to Wendell Berry’s work in The Art of the Commonplace. He is the director of a project called “Facing the Anthropocene” wherein he works with an international team of scholars to rethink several academic disciplines in light of challenges like climate change, food insecurity, biotechnology and genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, species extinction, and the built environment.

• How connecting with the land fosters empathy and stewardship

• Why the environmental preservation movement has seen so little progress

• How children model Presence and show us how to be in the Now

• Restlessness that is inherent in the social condition

• Examining sacrifice

• How the world economy thrives on ingratitude

• How operating in a world where speed, homogeneity, and mechanization are the production norm, ultimately degrades life at every level

• Our human creaturely condition

• Nurturing the world that nurtures us

• The importance of moving cautiously in a world that we don't fully understand

• The mental health benefits of growing food, cooking, and eating in community

• Food as the ultimate cross-disciplinary subject

• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

• Wendell Berry

• Mary Oliver

• normanwirzba.com

• https://divinity.duke.edu/faculty/norman-wirzba

“Creation isn’t something that happened all at once, a long time ago…creation is something that happens every day, and humans are meant to be stewards of this creation instead of dominating it. We are co—creators of this reality every day, and as such, we need to learn to work with natural systems instead of fighting them. The degree of our success as a society is going to be in direct correlation with our ability to adopt this ‘heartset’.”

John Kempf is the founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture, a plant nutrition and biostimulant consulting company. A top expert in the field of biological and regenerative farming, John founded AEA in 2006 to help fellow farmers by providing the education, tools, and strategies that will have a global effect on the food supply and those who are growing that supply. John is the host of the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast, where he interviews top scientists and growers about the science and principles of implementing regenerative agriculture on a large scale.

“Change doesn’t happen in the soil, change doesn’t happen with plants, change occurs within your heart and your mind. The only difference between a farm that is doing extraordinarily well and one that is not, is in the decisions and choices that the farm manager makes.”

In this episode…

• Events that led John to explore alternatives to the conventional agriculture model
• Regenerative agriculture can and should deliver three things: disease and pest-resistant plants, plants that transfer their immunity to the people and animals that consume them, and vibrant, healthy soils that produce organic matter and sequester carbon.
• The dominating, war-like mentality in contemporary large-scale agriculture that is embraced by big agribusiness
• The modern fallacy that we need genetically modified organisms, pesticides, and fertilizers to “feed the world” and the overwhelming evidence that regenerative agroecosystems outperform and outyield modern agricultural systems
• Why “sustainable agriculture” isn’t enough for our current needs and goals
• The perspective shift that differentiates modern agronomy from regenerative agriculture with regard to plant nutrition
• Scientific research is now demonstrating that soil biology has more impact on soil and crop health than soil chemistry
• Up to 70% of a plant’s photosynthate production can be sent out through the roots to feed soil biology, and the more efficient that process becomes, the more exudates are released in the rhizosphere…so the fastest way to build healthy soil is to grown healthy plants
• Since the mid 1800s, prominent figures have concluded that soils have been degraded to the point that they are no longer able to support the physical, mental and spiritual potential of humans
• The world needs us to shift from the role of dominating and fighting natural systems to becoming co-creators working with these systems
• Openness, awareness, and desire will facilitate connection with this stewardship perspective

Resources

Nutrition and Your Mind by George Watson

The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs by Joel Salatin

johnkempf.com

Advancing Eco Agriculture

The Regenerative Agriculture Podcast

regen.ag Academy

In today's episode, Stacia Nordin shares her experiences assisting the Malawian government with food insecurity and nutrition through a permaculture lens. The open-door policy at her education center/homestead located in a village near the capital is real-world demonstration of the Garden of Eden Malawi can actually be.

Stacia Nordin is a Registered Dietitian working on issues of environment, agriculture, food systems and healthy living for optimal nutrition. With a background in nutrition education in the States and Jamaica, she and her husband moved to Malawi in 1997, where they still live and work today. Stacia has studied hundreds of locally available foods, which she and her family have collected, multiplied around their home and shared. Working with World Food Programme Malawi, she compiled a Sustainable Nutrition manual, which is used in homes, schools and churches around the country. Stacia has worked with the Malawi Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Agriculture on Nutrition, Food and Agriculture projects and programs. She is now on a 5-year USAID Feed the Future project led by University of Illinois to support Malawi’s Ministry of Agriculture to strengthen Agricultural Extension Systems for improving income, food security and nutrition.

To realize the vision of a just and equitable world, we need to make the shift to systems thinking...thinking in cycles...while valuing the land and all of its people.

• How Stacia and husband Kristof got involved in international food security work

• How listening and observing needs and resources at the village level led to the work of using permaculture principles and ethics to address water and food insecurity

• Purchasing land and beginning a permaculture homestead in the middle of the village

• Cultural diet challenges and effects on nutrition and health

• How nutrition education, markets, agriculture, and seed availability are all connected in the move toward healthy bodies, soils, and ecosystems

• Major barriers to food security are seed supply (or seed-saving education/legality), and land ownership (so the soil healing can begin).

• Envisioning a healthy, robust Malawi

• Nature is always moving toward healing

• The Kitchen Garden by June Walker

• http://www.neverendingfood.org/

• The Sustainable Nutrition Manual

• Frances Moore Lappe

In part 2 of this series, Vail opens up about new ways to approach business, our relationship with ourselves, and seeing the world through a holistic lens and how that opens up possibilities unavailable to the linear cause-and-effect thinking of scientific logic.

Vail Dixon is a regenerative farmer and holistic grazing mentor. Founder of Simple Soil Solutions, Grazing Power and ABC Beef, Vail grew up working on farms, climbing mountains and enjoying nature. While training to represent her country in the Olympics, a life threatening accident gave Vail an opportunity to experience healing through healthy food and natural methods – even when doctors told her it was impossible. This deeper understanding of our food and farming systems instilled in Vail a passion for healing our soils as a way to rejuvenate our ecology, economy and health. Vail conducts research on how humans affect the soil biology and how that impacts productivity. Learning about ways to repair damaged soil biologically led Vail to understand how animals and humans play a vital role in soil regeneration. Vail is passionate about joining with Nature to heal the land, our economy and ourselves. Besides farming full time, she connects with open-minded farmers who want to become successful adaptive managers and create abundance on their land. To this end she is building a Holistic grazing mentorship program called Grazing Power, on-farm Grow Your Soil workshops, and Living Soils biological soil-building mentorship program.

In this episode... A new (or...ancient) perspective on the role of humans in natural systems Holistic business management How Vail's work lines up with the work of the Bionutrient Food Association Vail's Four Season mentorship program Working to craft a business that feels more like a human relationship than a transaction Transcending the limitations of present-day science by embracing cellular potential and healing ability How doing business differently, relating to ourselves differently...using our energy and time more intentionally...will transcend science's projection of the Earth's ability to heal The current ecological and humanitarian crises are inviting us to tap into the human potential, into why we are here Tips and tricks for moving energy around when we feel stuck

• simplesoilsolutions.com

• Leadership Co.

• Bionutrient Food Association (see episode 001, Dan Kittredge)

• TTouch with Dr. Linda Tellington-Jones

• The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

• Holacracy: The New Management System for a Rapidly Changing World by Brian Robertson

• Getting Things Done: the Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen

• Holistic Management: a Commonsense Revolution to Restore our Environment by Allan Savory and Jody Butterfield

• Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing; Advanced Energy Anatomy: The Science of Co-Creation and Your Power of Choice; Entering the Castle: Finding the Inner Path to God and Your Soul's Purpose by Carolyn Myss

• The Five Roles of a Master Herder: A Revolutionary Model for Socially Intelligent Leadership by Linda Kohanov

Vail Dixon is a regenerative farmer and holistic grazing mentor. Founder of Simple Soil Solutions, Grazing Power and ABC Beef, Vail grew up working on farms, climbing mountains and enjoying nature. While training to represent her country in the Olympics, a life threatening accident gave Vail an opportunity to experience healing through healthy food and natural methods – even when doctors told her it was impossible. This deeper understanding of our food and farming systems instilled in Vail a passion for healing our soils as a way to rejuvenate our ecology, economy and health.

Vail conducts research on how humans affect the soil biology and how that impacts productivity. Learning about ways to repair damaged soil biologically led Vail to understand how animals and humans play a vital role in soil regeneration.

Vail is passionate about joining with Nature to heal the land, our economy and ourselves. Besides farming full time, she connects with open-minded farmers who want to become successful adaptive managers and create abundance on their land. To this end she is building a Holistic grazing mentorship program called Grazing Power, on-farm Grow Your Soil workshops, and Living Soils biological soil-building mentorship program.

In this episode... Vail's journey to the work of soil regeneration How the soil is the key to so many of the cultural and environmental problems we face The power of high quality food to heal the body and mind Learning how to heal the soil Facing the health and economic challenges of a conventional agriculture-based county Real-life experimentation with rehabilitating soils and changing an extractive enterprise into a regenerative one The realization that a well managed livestock system can improve the soil as well as manual application of biological compost teas Harvesting plants and animals consciously Most of the water that cows use is getting served back to the soil with a side of beneficial microbes Well-managed regenerative agriculture systems that incorporate animals can sequester a significant amount of carbon

• http://simplesoilsolutions.com/

• Contact Reflex Analysis (CRA)

• Vail Dixon MP3: Is Your Soil Really Covered? Unearth Your Own Blind Spots to Radically Improve Your Soil

It's a dream farm story...Holly and Andy met on a farm, were married on a farm, started a family on a farm and make their living on a farm. When Holly and Andy purchased land in 2013 to begin their dream farm, they realized that the initial focus was going to be rehabilitating the soil. They decided that biodynamic agriculture would be the way they would address their soil building needs, and went on to create a vibrant farm system that nourishes so many in the community.

Holly Whitesides, along with husband Andy Bryant, and their two daughters, farm on 35 acres in western NC, where they raise certified Biodynamic and Organic vegetables on about 2 acres of crop land and Animal Welfare Approved pork, chicken, beef and turkey on the rest.  Holly and Andy have been studying and practicing Biodynamic agriculture since 2013 and feel passionate about raising nutritious food for their community.

"No matter how small your property is, you can engage with it in a co-creative way...a way that builds relationship and allows you to be a voice for your farm."

  In this episode...

• About Against the Grain Farm
• What led Holly to embark on the farming journey
• Why biodynamic?
• Early challenges, how our values inform our actions
• Being fully present while working the land
• Nourishing the local community
• High-quality, nutrient-dense food is a basic human right
• What surprised Holly about this work  

Resources

• Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships by Marshall B. Rosenberg

• The No-Till Market Farmer Podcast Jesse with Farmer Jesse

• Online Biodynamic courses taught by Cory Eichman

• Spikenard Honeybee Sanctuary

• Earth Legacy Agriculture

• Josephine Porter Institute for Applied Biodynamics

Humans are unique creatures for many reasons. One of those is our long list of disorders, specifically Nature Deficit Disorder. Most of us are so far removed from our original habitat that we are actually suffering from the absence of plant influences in our lives, and it affects our body, mind, and spirit.

Today we discuss this and much more with Marc Williams, an ethnobiologist who studies the connections between people, plants, mushrooms, and microbes while learning to employ botanicals and other life forms for food, medicine, and beauty. He has spent over two decades working at a multitude of restaurants and various farms and has traveled throughout 30 countries and all 50 U.S. states. Marc is the Executive Director of Plants and Healers International and serves on the Board of Directors of United Plant Savers. Marc has taught hundreds of classes to thousands of students about the marvelous world of people and their interface with other organisms. Marc's greatest hope is that this effort may help improve our current challenging global ecological situation.

• What is ethnobotany?...Marc's path to this work

• Mentor Frank Cook, finding your way to the Green Path

• The impact of food miles and industrially-produced food

• Plants that transcend culture

• Nature Deficit Disorder

• What the natural world can teach us about ourselves

• Marc's online botany classes: botanyeveryday.com

• Frank Cook's nonprofit organization: Plants and Healers International

• Emerging Planetary Medicines by Frank Cook

• Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv

• Fantastic Fungi movie

• Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification by Thomas Elpel

• Be Here Now by Ram Dass

• Peterson Field Guides

• The Encyclopedia of Edible Plants of North America: Nature's Green Feast by Francois Couplan

• Mabberley's Plant-book: A Portable Dictionary of Plants, their Classification and Uses by David Mabberley

• Flora of the Southern and Mid-Atlantic States by Alan Weakley

• Earth from Above: 365 Days by Yann Arthus-Bertrand

• Appalachian State University Appalachian Studies/Sustainability https://appstudies.appstate.edu/, https://sd.appstate.edu/

• Chestnut School of Herbal medicine https://chestnutherbs.com/

• Society for Economic Botany https://www.econbot.org/

• Suzanne Simard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Simard

• Vipassana https://www.dhamma.org/en-US/index

• Warren Wilson College https://www.warren-wilson.edu/

• White Sage sustainability https://unitedplantsavers.org/what-is-going-on-with-white-sage/📷

Renee Boughman is from Belmont, NC. She earned a Master's degree in history and another degree in Culinary Arts. While working in fine dining establishments in the North Carolina high country, Renee joined with other citizens in a grassroots effort to open a community cafe modeled after S.A.M.E. (So All May Eat) Cafe in Denver, Colorado. F.A.R.M. Cafe (Feed All Regardless of Means) opened in May 2012 and has been operating ever since.

F.A.R.M. Cafe is a unique restaurant model that operates on a pay-as-you-can basis. Based on a restaurant in Denver, CO, F.A.R.M. Cafe brings together folks from all walks of life to a community cafe that purchases locally grown foods and creates daily menus, making high quality meals accessible to anyone and everyone. At F.A.R.M. Cafe, they address the issues of not only food insecurity, but also local food system resilience, food recovery, and nutrient cycling (composting kitchen scraps). They also build community by creating a welcoming place where everyone who walks in has a seat at the table.

• What F.A.R.M. Cafe does, what it's all about, and where it all started

• How purchasing local foods changes everything--how daily menus are planned, the dynamics of serving local dishes on the buffet line, and access of locally grown foods to people of limited means

• Joys and challenges of running a restaurant with volunteers

• Community reaction to this new model

• F.A.R.M. Full Circle food recovery program

• The Why of the work

• F.A.R.M. Cafe website

• One World Everybody Eats

Imagine your daily grind--your house, your car, your commute, your job....Now imagine what it would be like to spend days camping in the woods, drinking spring water, breathing clean mountain air, eating freshly picked foods, and spending all day in Nature...learning about growing and gathering cultivated and wild food, making tools, tracking, tanning hides, natural building, and living in a community. What would happen to your energy? Your spirit? Natalie Bogwalker is a fan of watching the transformation that takes place when a guest spends days on her property, exploring their relationship with the land. Natalie is the founder and director of Wild Abundance, a permaculture and homestead school. She’s passionate about teaching and sharing skills that are essential for living harmoniously within the natural systems of the earth.

She and her family live at the Wild Abundance homestead campus in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Natalie spends her time harvesting in the wild, building, gardening, planting, putting up food, growing, teaching, connecting with the community, and playing with her daughter. Amidst all of this she’s constantly scheming about how to introduce more people to Earth-based living, while worshipping the beauty around her.

In the midst of all the turmoil of our modern society, Natalie reminds us to breathe deeply, be outside, put one foot in front of the other, and find like-minded people for support and inspiration.

• Origin story of Wild Abundance

• The joy of helping people find sovereignty and connection

• Soil building techniques used on the Wild Abundance homestead

• Breaking pest and disease cycles

• What happens to people when they begin to participate in the cycles of the seasons and get involved with their own food and shelter production

• Eat something wild every day!

• Natalie's journey to her wild abundant life

• How reshaping education and redesigning curriculum could help us transform our disconnected society

• The Earth Skills and Permaculture Immersion Program curriculum

• How the Barnardsville community developed

• How to have a successful daily practice

• Firefly Gathering

• wildabundance.net

• Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships by Marshall Rosenberg

• The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups by Starhawk

• The Earth Skills and Permaculture Immersion Program at Wild Abundance

"It's not about what I do, but how I'm part of what WE do"...

Patryk Battle has been farming since the mid 80’s; throughout that time, he has always been inspired to farm as an answer to the problem of human disconnection from Nature. Farming became an extension of his political activism as a way to create a better world. Farming was not only way to make a living but was also a way to seek environmental and social transformation. Pat’s not sure why, but somehow he found himself in the role of teacher, which he enjoys immensely. He delights in seeing farmers with similar intentions be inspired to create social transformation through the regenerative agriculture movement. He found himself devoting a lot of time teaching, presenting and working in public growing situations. He ended up growing a garden for the 1% in a country club (it turns out it doesn’t matter if folks are rich or poor, they all connect to gardening in a real way.) Through one of those teaching events, he met the people who would fund Living Web Farms, a nonprofit whose mission is to address food insecurity, both directly through food donations, but also by helping people learn the skills they need to be able to feed themselves, warm themselves, and power their lives through alternative energy sources.

• The purpose driving Living Web Farms, the leading demonstration site for effective organic farming in Western NC

• Declaring war on reductionist science

• The science of complex systems is observation + conclusions

• Biochemistry shows us how biodynamics works--"every element has its own resonance"

• The crucial role of observation; observing animal behaviors to demonstrate how to be tuned into natural intelligence, and regular observation of plant systems to notice imbalances

• Non-negotiables when designing a sustainable agroecosystem

• Creating balance by adding life to avoid disease instead of obliterating life

• Embracing systems thinking and letting the garden guide you

• Exercise while interacting with nature vs. mechanical movement

• The spiritual practice of producing and sharing food

• Plant medicine across cultures

• The Parable of the Beast by John Bleibtreu

• Ancient Futures by Helena Norberg-Hodge

• Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing by Robert Wolff

Meet Sarah. Sarah works with faith-based communities to connect their most sacred teachings to ways to embody those values and incorporate lifestyle changes that promote justice, compassion, and sustainability.

A graduate of the Sustainable Development department at Appalachian State University, Sarah recently earned her Master of Divinity, with a concentration in religious leadership and ecology, from Wake Forest University School of Divinity. She has worked at the intersection of faith and environment for the past six years, partnering with organizations like the Creation Care Alliance of Western North Carolina, United Methodist Women, Creation Justice Network (UCC Southern Conference), and Presbyterians for Earth Care. In her current role as North Carolina Interfaith Power & Light (NCIPL) Program Coordinator, Sarah is blessed with the opportunity to walk alongside faith communities and people of conscience as they consider the social, environmental, and climate impacts of their relationships to both energy and food.

In addition to offering her services as a preacher, Sarah is available to faith communities as a sounding board for their ideas relating to sustainability in addition to giving presentations regarding the connections between climate change, faith, health, and food. Sarah calls the southern Appalachian mountains home and resides in Happy Valley, North Carolina, with her husband, dog, and two cats.

Don't feel like your voice doesn't matter, and don't feel like your voice isn't important. Go out and do what grounds you in the midst of the overwhelm.

• Psychological effects of the environmental crisis

• The work of NC Interfaith Power & Light

• Faith communities help to shape culture, so if we can help folks connect the values of a more just, compassionate and sustainable world with the values outlined in their sacred texts, it will help to shape our culture into one that invests in solutions surrounding climate change

• Climate change as an issue of justice

• How the biblical foundation for environmental work is related to soil

• The role of food and food production in Sarah's work

• Being conscious about meat consumption

• Learning to live well in a world that we have changed

• Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible by Ellen Davis

• ncipl.org

Can we regard food production with a systematic, science-based approach and still believe in and support the invisible, life-giving forces that govern Nature? Today we speak with Jane Weaver, who has been an enthusiastic student of mathematics, music, and the connections between these two sciences for nearly all of her life. Following her college and graduate studies in the areas of music, mathematics and general systems theory, and several years of public sector teaching, she served as a faculty member of the music department at Princeton University. Jane's current projects include applications of projective geometry, interpreting and furthering the work of the French radiesthesists, exploring non-quantum geometric theories of nuclear structure, and consulting in application of sacred geometry in architectural design. She is a Jin Shin Jyutsu practitioner, Biodynamic gardener, and biological soil consultant, having studied under soil microbiologist Dr. Elaine Ingham, and has plans to be an alchemist and jazz saxophonist in her next life.

In the context of modern agriculture, we need to stop micromanaging Nature and instead learn what works by following Nature's lead--get out of the way, facilitate the natural regenerative functions of soil, and let the life forces get to work.

• Jane's work in the field of soil microbiology

• True definition of compost

• The role of microbes in agriculture

• The story of ecological succession

• How plants speak to microbes

• The fallacy of lime and pH

• Soil microbiology and biodynamics: measuring the work of the invisible with microbes

• "Biodynamics is information that provides us with a way to increase and retain growth forces for the land"

• Geometry and vibration/frequency: can we harness geometry to increase the life forces in the land? Case studies: Irish Round Towers, Perelandra (Machaelle Small Wright)

• Comparing biodynamics to homeopathy

• Expectation, attitude, and miracles

• Communication with people of opposing values

• Behaving As If the God in All Life Mattered and Perelandra Garden Workbook: A Complete Guide to Gardening with Nature Intelligences by Machaelle Small Wright; https://www.perelandra-ltd.com

• Enzo Nastadi "Trinium Agriculture"

• Culture and Horticulture: The Classic Guide to Biodynamic and Organic Gardening by Wolf Storl

We are in a unique time in human history. We can order an item from around the world and receive it at our doorstep in a few days. We can live our entire lives indoors. We can exist without interacting with other humans. Unfortunately, this separation from each other and from Nature makes it easier than ever to exploit and destroy nature for our own purposes. The good news is...we are actually in a position to salvage what few wild areas still exist on the planet. There is however, an expiration date on that offer.

Ayana Young is a podcast and radio personality specializing in intersectional environmental and social justice, deep ecology and land-based restoration. Young has a strong academic background at the intersections of ecology, culture, and spirituality. Young lives among the coastal redwood and salmon habitat in Northern California. She established a native species nursery and research center, spearheading the 1 Million Redwoods Project, the most backed farm project in Kickstarter history. Young is also a budding filmmaker. Her debut film, When Old Growth Ends, is an ode to the irreplaceable Tongass National Forest during its last stand as a distinctly wild place in Southeast Alaska. Young is the Founder and Executive Director of millennial media organization and nonprofit For the Wild. Her podcast, For the Wild, has featured over 100 guests, including Chris Hedges, Sylvia Earle, Vandana Shiva, Jill Stein, Winona La Duke, Terry Tempest Williams. Young approaches the mission of "For The Wild" with critical thinking, deep reverence and artistry.

Standing up and speaking out for the Earth is not the easy path...but no one is going to lay on their deathbed regretting caring about and working to protect the Earth. Devoting ourselves to something outside ourselves is what makes us truly worthy.

• Ayana's experience creating a farm and a food forest

• Soil building

• Shattering her own conditioning and the origin of For the Wild Podcast

• The connection between the human inner landscape and Earth's landscape

• Taking responsibility for what it means to be a modern human

• How modern human disconnection from Nature makes it easier to exploit Nature

• Being wary of greenwashing solutions and token consumerism as distractions from the ecological disaster that is happening now

• Addressing our own addiction to consumerism and entitlement is the first step

• Buffers that keep us satisfied and distracted from processing what is actually going on in our world right now

• It's okay to slow down and not "do" something. It's the times when we are quiet, especially in Nature, that we can hear our inner voice

• If we want clean water, if we want clean air, if we want a future for our children...we have to act, and expect to be engaging for the long haul. We need to be in relationship with each other and with the work of standing up for the Earth, rather than only focusing on getting to the finish line.

• Strategies for sustainable activism

• forthewild.world (info on For The Wild Podcast, 1 Million Redwoods Project, Tongass Campaign)

• Instagram, Twitter, Facebook: @for.the.wild

• [email protected]

• Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism by Adrienne Maree Brown

• A State of Change: Forgotten Landscapes of California by Laura Cunningham

• Terry Tempest Williams

• Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God by Rainer Maria

We are coming to the end of an era that uses fossil calories to power our food production. It's going to take more than technology, more than math and science, to see us out of this predicament; it's going to take collaboration, creativity, and imagination. Born on a North Dakota farm during the Great Depression and in the grips of the worst drought in U.S. history, Fred Kirschenmann has spent most of his life working to change how we farm, as well as our relationship to the land. For more than four decades, Fred has been a champion of agricultural resilience, an articulate advocate for soil health and a pioneer of organic farming. Fred currently serves as President of the Board for the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. A long time national and international leader in sustainable agriculture, Fred is a Distinguished Fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University at Iowa State University and a professor in the Department of Religion and Philosophy. He also continues to manage his family’s 1,800-acre certified-organic farm in south-central North Dakota. His work has helped transform what was once obscure and marginal work—resilient, sustainable agriculture focused on the health and restoration of the soil—into an international movement.

Historically, civilizations that anticipated change and prepared accordingly were the ones that survived, while those who ignored all the signs eventually collapsed....what kind will we be?

• Fred's father stressed the importance of taking care of the land and how that shaped Fred's values

• How his path took him into Philosophy and Religion, academia, and back to the land--this time on the organic path

• Rudolf Steiner's influence on his philosophy of spirituality and agriculture

• For Fred, spirituality and agriculture has a lot to do with microbes!

• Putting agriculture in historical context

• Farmers who switch from conventional agriculture to regenerative agriculture have a larger profit margin and find that the old model of "get big or get out" no longer makes financial sense

• Justus von Liebig's influence on input-intensive agriculture and being

• A soil-building philosophy (using the principles of nature)

• Perennializing our food crops

• The soil microbe-gut microbe connection; the effects of foods grown in living soil on human health

• Challenges of proposing huge changes to the aging farming community, and challenges of land prices for young farmers who want to practice regenerative agriculture

• Those civilizations who anticipated changes and made preparations are the ones that survived

• It's going to take more than a steady diet of STEM courses (science, technology, engineering, and math) to solve the coming food crisis...it is going to take imagination, creativity, and collaboration.

• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently estimated that we have 11 years to make major changes in the way we operate before climate change becomes catastrophic

• Growing a Revolution by David Montgomery

• Dirt to Soil by Gabe Brown

• Journey of the Universe by Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker

• The Land Institute (Wes Jackson)

• Farmacology by Daphne Miller

• Cultivating an Ecological Consciousness by Dr. Frederick Kirschenmann

In today's episode, we dive into the philosophy of permaculture, activism, and earth-based spirituality with Starhawk, an author, activist, permaculture designer and teacher, and a prominent voice in modern earth-based spirituality and ecofeminism. She is the author or co-author of thirteen books, including The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, as well as the ecotopian novel The Fifth Sacred Thing, with its sequel City of Refuge. Her most recent non-fiction book is The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups, on group dynamics, power, conflict and communications.

Starhawk founded Earth Activist Training, teaching permaculture design grounded in spirituality and with a focus on activism. She travels internationally, lecturing and teaching on earth-based spirituality, the tools of ritual, and the skills of activism.

"Ask yourself what it is that you most deeply love, and figure out how to put yourself at its service."

• Starhawk’s path as a storyteller

• Why she includes activism training in her permaculture certification courses

• The connection between permaculture and earth-based spirituality

• Starhawk's new regenerative land management program, a follow up to a Permaculture Design course

• Social permaculture: resources for collaborative groups

• Advice for next steps for the ecologically-minded

• "Permaculture is the art of designing beneficial relationships" --Patrick Whitefield

• Ask yourself what it is that you most deeply love, and figure out how to put yourself at its service...ask yourself what you need to be in a position to do it

Resources

• starhawk.org

• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

• The Overstory by Richard Powers

• earthactivisttraining.org

• Free webinar on Nov 3 on Regenerative Approaches to Climate Change (starhawk.org)

One of my guests, Skye Taylor (episode 7), graciously offered to interview me for the show. This is a chance for you to get to know a little bit about me, what my goals are, and where I'm coming from. Hopefully it will put this whole project into context. If you'd like to pitch a guest for this show, email me at [email protected]. Thanks for listening! --Brooke

What happens when we design from observation of Nature and not for human convenience? What would change in our experience if we decided to simplify our outer lives, while cultivating our inner life? In today's episode, we discuss these and other insights from meditations on the Holy Honey Bee. Skye’s first career was in theatre, and in her mid thirties decided to enter the temple life and become a Buddhist monk. Skye began the work of caring for and creating gardens, as well as researching various metaphysical studies including feng shui, tarot, astrology and the five great elements. Skye is motivated by the yearning for Beauty, for intimacy with the Holy, for a penetrating understanding of this strangely cruel and lovely world, and is constantly seeking the path from cruelty to Beauty.

Positive change doesn't come from the top-down, but from the bottom-up. When we the people make conscious choices and make those choices known with our dollar and with our time, only then will the forces that shape the world begin to shift.

• The Temple Hive, a home designed for bees

• What happens when systems are designed by observing Nature instead of being designed for human convenience?

• Learning from Wendy Johnson (trained under Alan Chadwick, who trained under Rudolf Steiner)

• How the Temple Hive materials relate to the planets (and how the planets correspond to the bees)

• We won't reach the tipping point of a regenerative, sustainable culture until the consumer realizes their power to direct change

• Temple Hive performance--the health this hive design, built as a gift, not built for extraction

• Rudolf Steiner's prediction of the decline of bee populations with the practice of annual re-queening

• How the life cycles of the bees correspond to celestial cycles and the Golden Mean (the Fibonacci Sequence)

• The importance of starlight for bees and humans--and the lack of it in our light-polluted world

• Guidance from the bees: learn to simplify, learn to appreciate the night and the wild world, pay attention, get quiet, be present

• If we don't pay attention to our inner lives, we need more and more distraction and stimulation in our daily existence

• The day is for serving, the night is for being nourished by Spirit; and the in-between moments, dawn and sunset, are especially auspicious for meditation and grounding

• A Monk in the Beehive by Skye Taylor

• https://www.skye-talk.com/

• San Francisco Zen Center (Green Gulch Farm)

• How to build a Temple Hive: Step by step videos: video 1, video 2, video 3, video 4, video 5, video 6

• Gardening at the Dragon's Gate by Wendy Johnson

• The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra

When we identify the things in life that we could not live without, the things that create true success, life becomes simple. Learning to deal with our own inner landscape and making our own healing a priority impacts how we treat others and view the world. Today we discuss trauma, sustainable living, and awakening with Morgan Caraway, a natural building instructor, multi-media artist, musician, author, and a co-founder of Bottom Leaf Intentional Community and Sustainable Life School. He and his family live off-grid in an earth bag house they designed and built. Through Sustainable Life School, they offer workshops with the goal of empowering people and modeling different modes of building and other possibilities.

• Trauma as the source of humanity's destructive tendency

• Nature as a tool to help us through trauma

• Social taboos against expressing emotion

• How belief shapes experience and experience shapes belief

• Heart awakening

• Ignorance (belief in separation) leads to fear (vulnerability), which leads to greed (attempting to deal with that vulnerability)

• Self care is a central tenant of sustainable living

• The crucial components of life: air, water, food, community

• True success

• Intelligent building design

• The "trauma feed" of news and social media

• The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure by Joseph Jenkins

• The Hand-Sculpted House: A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage: The Real Goods Solar Living Book

• Earthbag Building: The Tools, Tricks and Techniques

• The Road by Cormac McCarthy

• sustainablelifeschool.com

• morgancaraway.com

• The Book of Leaves: Reflections on Dying and Change and Ecological Awakening by Morgan Caraway

With modern conventional agriculture, we have lost the art of connecting with the land and growing food that was handed down by our ancestors. Not only are we left with a fraction of the genetic diversity of our food crops, we have also lost our connection to the land and any mention of the invisible beings who share the land with humans. Theresa Crabtree, an Empowered Life Facilitator, is the author of several books, including Gardening with Nature Spirits. Theresa's soul mission is to help people awaken to their true spiritual roots.

Tune in to learn more about Nature Spirits and how you can enlist their cooperation in creating a harmonious garden and landscape.

• How Theresa got into this work

• Evolution of belief

• Adventures in gardening with nature spirits

• Coning session "conference calls" for co-creation in the garden

• Duality vs. non-duality

• The importance of the breath in receptivity; how to connect with your higher self, with others, and with the spirit world

• Nature spirits by name

• Effects of conventional agriculture poisons on us and the unseen realm

• Rudolf Steiner's references to nature spirits and planting by the phases of the moon

• theresacrabtree.com

• theresacrabtree.com/resources

• perelandra-ltd.com

• Gardening with Nature Spirits by Theresa Crabtree

Did you know that exposing your body and mind to the life-giving energies of clean food and spending time in nature is not only beneficial for your own body, it also affect the genetic expression of your descendants? Today we take it outdoors to chat with Jasmine Shoshanna, owner and operator of Jasmine's Gardens. A long-time environmental activist, Jasmine's attachment to the land began on her grandparents' farm. Sustaining long-term relationships and repeat business is the foundation of Jasmine's business. This gardening and natural living company combines Jasmine's love of nature, health, and beauty, with her desire to work together to create a world where nature matters, and where clean, healthy living is more important than the latest outbreak of technology.

Creating outdoor spaces that feel magical is like writing a love poem to the Earth. Taking time to feel nature, whether it's wild space or designed space, benefits us in ways well beyond simple aesthetics. It may just save our lives.

• Biodynamics in present-day Western culture (2:30)

• Relying on the soil food web for fertility (9:00)

• The feeling-space of trees, waters, and gardens (13:50)

• Jasmine's biodynamic path (21:15)

• Lifestyle, epigenetics, and subsequent generations (23:45)

• "What is going to create harmony in this space?": the approach that sets Jasmine's landscaping approach apart (27:50)

• What happens energetically when you apply a biodynamic preparation (30:30)

• Eastern medicine, creating synergy in the body, creating synergy on the land (36:15)

• jasminesgardens.com

• Ringing Cedars by Vladimir Megre

• The Alchemist by Paul Coelho

• Rehmannia Dean Thomas (Chinese herbalism on YouTube)

• Abraham-Hicks publications

We can design sustainable agricultural systems all day long, but if we don't also have sustainable social systems to support them, they are far more likely to fail. Today we cover this and many other topics with Dave Jacke. Dave Jacke, primary author of the award winning two-volume book Edible Forest Gardens, has studied ecology and design since the 1970s, and has run Dynamics Ecological Design since 1984. Dave has consulted on, designed, built, and planted landscapes, homes, farms, and communities in many parts of the U.S., as well as overseas. His homestead is an eagle’s flight from the Connecticut River in Montague, MA.

What's integral to sustaining ecosystems is crucial to sustaining social systems....and to do that, we need a healthy inner landscape.

• The motivating force behind Edible Forest Gardens (2:10)

• Who do we have to become to create sustainable landscapes? (8:25)

• What a healthy, balanced landscape feels like (11:40)

• Forging reciprocal relationships with system elements (15:50)

• The role of emotions as an adaptive mechanism to give us information about ourself and our environment (21:15)

• Healing the trauma held in the body leads to more presence, increased ability to "be here now" and speak your truth; wholeness is interconnectedness (26:10)

• Why grow forest gardens? (28:10)

• In order to have successful sustainable landscapes, we need to also design collaborative, egalitarian social systems. In order to have successful, functioning social systems, we need to work on our inner landscapes. (33:30)

• Redefining guilds (37:10)

• Designing for results (46:00)

• Dynamics Ecological Design

• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

• Old Path, White Clouds: Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha by Thich Nhat Hanh

The humble honeybee does so much more than pollinate and produce honey. She is far more evolved than humans give her credit for. Join us as we discuss bees and biodynamic with Gunther Hauk. Gunther has four decades of experience as a biodynamic beekeeper, gardener, and farmer. In 1996 he co-founded the Pfeiffer Center – one of the first biodynamic training programs in the US. And since that time he has been invited to teach around the world. His book Toward Saving the Honeybee was first published in 2002. And in 2006, Gunther and his wife, Vivian, founded Spikenard Farm. His work was featured in two full-length documentary films about the honeybee crisis – “Queen of the Sun” (2010) and “Vanishing of the Bees” (2009), and he also produced his own educational film “Hour of Decision” (2015).

Take the time to enliven the soil, and watch insect and animal diversity on the land explode!

• Gunther's path to biodynamic agriculture and beekeeping (2:10)

• Rudolf Steiner and Spiritual Science (5:00)

• Biodynamic foundations (7:35)

• The "Laws of Life" (9:10)

• The insect apocalypse is here (12:35)

• The motivation behind the creation of a honeybee sanctuary (14:50)

• The role of compost on a farm or in a garden (25:15)

• Advice for those interested in exploring biodynamics (33:15)

• Enlivening the land increases insect and animal diversity (37:20)

• The mysterious honey bee (39:25)

• Spikenard Honeybee Sanctuary spikenardfarm.org

• Biodynamic Principles & Practices in Farming & Gardening workshop at Spikenard Honeybee Sanctuary (September 26-29, 2019)

• Agriculture: Spiritual Foundations for the Renewal of Agriculture and Bees by Rudolf Steiner; Laws of Life in Agriculture by Nicolaus Remer

What happens when you choose quantity over quality, short-term over long-term, uniform and shelf-stable over regional and flavorful, over and over for decades? Many things...including loss of genetic diversity, loss of soil fertility and soil life, and loss of nutrients in food. Dan Kittredge has been an organic farmer for more than 30 years, and is the founder and executive director of the Bionutrient Food Association, an 8 year old non-profit educational organization whose mission is to “increase quality in the food supply.” Known as one of the leading proponents of “nutrient density” globally, Dan has worked to make the connections between plant health, soil health, carbon sequestration, crop nutritional value, flavor and human health. The Bionutrient Food Association has engineered the Bionutrient Meter, a hand held consumer spectrometer that is designed to test crop nutrient density at point of purchase. The strategy is to connect the economic incentives from consumer to grower to drive full system regeneration.

The answer is so simple...just eating food that tastes good can actually solve many of the world's problems!

→What conditions in our food system have led to the need for nutrient monitoring? (2:25)

→What creates bionutrient-rich food? (6:25)

→Your health, your vitality, and the vitality of your children, has a direct correlation to the health of the environment (15:00)

→What happens to people when they eat foods with the nutrient levels they are supposed to have? (16:10)

→How nutrient-dense food affects our genes and the way they are expressed (epigenetics) (22:30)

→Physicists tell us that 95+% of reality can't be measured with the tools we have, and Eastern traditions tell us we are hard-wired to perceive on levels other than the physical plane (26:00)

→The more our bodies are built the way they were intended (with the nutrient "tools" we are supposed to access), the more subtle awareness we will be able to perceive...affecting everything in our culture, including the decisions we make (27:50)

→Dan's story of how he arrived at this work (30:30)

→Plants grown well are not only more nutritious, but they will sequester far more carbon than plants grown poorly (38:00)

→The Strategy: connect this understanding of crop quality, environmental health, and human health to money, a driving force that determines much of what happens in the world (40:15)

→Enter the handheld spectrometer, a tool that empowers the consumer to determine a food's nutrient value at point of purchase (41:00)

→Building the database of fruit and vegetable nutrient values (46:15)

→What Dan does to center, ground, and feed his soul (52:00)

→What book he turns to for inspiration (54:00)

→Dharana Darshan by Swami Paramahamsa Niranjanananda

→The Bionutrient Association: bionutrient.org

→Dan will be a featured speaker at the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association's Sustainable Agriculture Conference in Durham, NC Nov. 1-3