View this post on Instagram A post shared by Levi (@levimeeuwenberg) 👇 Juicy Details Below 👇 Listen up if you care about WATER! These loose rock piles, also known as "check dams," when placed strategically within a watershed, can have powerfully transformative...
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Hey friends! In this video, I'm going to walk you through some of the first steps to getting started with homesteading and permaculture. In previous videos, I focused more on the "why" permaculture and homesteading are more than just cool hobbies but are...
Todays guest is Lina Bird who is very active in the Washington DC branch of the Citizens Climate Lobby. The Citizens Climate Lobby is a non-profit, non-partisan grassroots organization with chapters all over the country, with the aim of lobbying for national policies to address climate change. One of their primary policies is a Carbon Tax and Dividend.
Today we’re talking to Nathan Ayers who teaches Permaculture to students of all ages in Michigan. This is Nathans second time on the show, and it’s always a great time having him. If you like this one, be sure to check out Episode 18 as well where we discussed water solutions to the Flint, MI Water Crisis.
Today we talk about Nathan and his brother Nick’s exciting new project; We Are the Forest. In addition to their work in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area, they are also involved on Beaver Island.
Today we’re talking to Peter Allen who runs Mastodon Valley Farm in Wisconsin. Before getting in to regenerative farming, Peter was a student of ecology and complex systems theory, so he brings a unique an informed perspective to the use of animal agriculture as a method of managing landscape for ecological health.
This episode is a follow up on episode 27. If you missed it I highly recommend you check it out. In that episode we did an analysis of what humans need to flourish. So now, using what we learned from the past episode, this week we’re going to go into kind of the goal setting part of the design process if you want to look at it that way, but basically just looking at how we can respond to the situation that we’re in. How we can adapt.
Today’s guest is Peter Bane who is the president of the Permaculture Insitute of North America, he wrote the Permaculture Handbook, literally, he has built and lived in eco-villages and self-sufficient homesteads for decades. and has taught dozens and dozens of courses and workshops all over the world. He’s the real deal, as you’ll soon learn.
Todays guest is Albert Bates who we spoke to last year because he attended the COP21 Paris Climate Conference so he gave us the inside story on that in Episode 16.
Albert also went to the latest Climate Conference, COP22 in Marakech and so he’ll be sharing with us what the so-called world leaders are doing about Climate Change and many other environmental issues.
There’ll be few main parts to this episode. I’m going to start out by doing a survey of kind of our basic biological human needs. So you know food, energy, shelter, connection, love that type of thing. (our global life support systems) And look at those within the context of how we go about meeting those needs and how that has changed over time especially from pre-agriculture revolution and then after the agriculture revolution and now into modern technological age.
Today’s guest, Dan Kittrege has been an organic farmer since childhood, and has been developing a deep understanding of how a nutrient rich soil leads to healthier plants and healthier foods and ultimately healthier people and planet. He created the Bionutrient Food Association to promote this understanding of growing nutrient dense food. He also runs Kittredge farm in Brookfield, MA where he does his research and practices the science.
Today’s guest is Jesse Tack based out of Ypsilanti, Michigan. Jesse founded and helps run the very active permaculture group; Abundant Michigan Permaculture Ypsilanti. Or AMPY for short. We get to hear about how AMPY got started and has evolved since then.
Eric Toensmeier is the award-winning author of the books Perennial Vegetables and Paradise Lot, which describes how he converted his run-down city lot into a diverse plant sanctuary in Massachusets. He was also the co-author to Dave Jacke from episode 14 on the two volume set Edible Forest Gardens. Eric has a brand new book about to come out about Carbon Farming and the strategies that agriculture can use to sequester CO2 to help mitigate climate change.
Albert Bates is a longtime influential figure in environmental activism, and the ecovillage and permaculture movements. He’s a lawyer, an author and a teacher, who has been director of the Ecovillage Training Center at The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee since 1994.
Today’s guest, Cliff Davis was telling me that having all those pigs and plants to care for makes it hard to leave home and travel to experience new cultures and perspectives. And he values those experiences for personal growth and expansion, plus their a great source for new ideas. But fortunately there’s a continual flow of students and interns coming through his place, Spiral Ridge Permaculture…
Today’s guest is Dave Jacke who has been mentioned several times already in previous episodes. He was the co-author of the book that I’m no longer allowed to call the “bible” of designing edible forest garden ecosystems, which is Edible Forest Gardens Volumes 1 and 2.
Today’s guest is Eran Rhodes of Sacred Earth Landscaping soon to be based out of his new family farm in Benzie County, Michigan. Before moving northwards, he started his own permaculture landscaping business in Chicago, traveled around working at many sustainable farms around the country, and also worked at Oikos Tree Crops nursery. Him and his family have a beautiful vision for their new farm. Check it out.
Today’s guests, Paul and Sharron May, run a small farm called The May Farm in Frankfort, MI near us here in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula. They apply a permaculture approach to their homestead, and farm, and have been seeing some spectacular results.
An old-growth forest is a forest that has lived for many centuries, sometimes even millenia without significant disturbance and so they possess unique ecological features found no-where else on earth.
Todays episode focuses on water. A broad topic for sure, but a pretty important one since basically all life forms depend on access to clean water to survive. As you probably know, our bodies are 60% water. Water is vital for lubricating our joints, flushing out toxins and waste, and transporting vital nutrients to all of our cells.
Today’s guest is one my good friends and mentors Peter Bane, who is one of the most experienced permaculture teachers in the midwest. He’s the author of the Permaculture Handbook; Garden Farming for Town and Country. He’s also been the publisher of Permaculture Activist magazine for 25 years, which recently changed to Permaculture Design Magazine.
In short, life will be very very different in the future than the relative stability we’ve seen for most of our lives up to this point. Some geologists have described the current epoch as the “Anthropocene.” This is a period when almost every ecosystem on earth bares the mark of human presence. How we go about meeting our basic needs…
Then the oil age allowed us to do the wrong things with unprecedented speed and efficiency.
Oil is an almost ideal energy source. It is relatively easy to extract (until recently) requires little refining, and has an extremely high energy density.
Why bother with all the extra chores of trying to produce your own food, fuel, and other products when you can simply buy them at the store for cheap?
Well this is actually a daunting question to answer since it sort of crystallized into a clear picture after a lot of reading and reflecting on the multitude of challenges we face and how they’re all interconnected. Then also critically analyzing the lifestyle choices I make every day without thinking. This requires a systemic understanding of the industrialized modern world, as well as knowledge of the historical context in which we live. But I’ll attempt to summarize and hit the key points here, leaving all the juicy details for later posts. BTW, this
