Regenerative Skills

I’ve been so happy to see how popular the concept of growing one’s own food has become in recent years. Especially since the pandemic, a lot of us have connected deeply with the need to build food resilience by cultivating our own gardens, and quite a few have even gone further and started to grow at a market scale.  It’s a beautiful thing to be able to eat fresh healthy produce from your own land, but I’ve often wondered as well, how we can cross the long dark and cold period of winter, when fresh local veggies are tough to come by. Though there are quite a few volumes about season extension in the garden, I had never really come across anyone who was actively planting for deep months of winter, and so I was thrilled when I found that New Society publishers were putting out a whole book on exactly this subject. Building on years of research, experimentation, and collaboration, and co authored by Catherine Sylvestre and Jean Martin Fortier “The Winter Market Gardener” is a beautifully illustrated practical guide to winter vegetable production for small farmers growing in northern climates.  I got to speak with Catherine Sylvestre who is a professional agronomist and director of vegetable production and leader of the market garden team at la Ferme des Quatre-Temps (The Fours Seasons Farm) in Quebec, Canada. She develops, implements, and teaches best practices for cold-season growing, specializing in crop protection and greenhouse production for northern climates. In this episode we cover just about every focus in this very complete book, from where the interest and research into winter growing started, sources of knowledge and inspiration for their ongoing experiments into winter growing, strategies and season planning, and even sales and marketing advice for the off-season produce. Catherine also gives crucial advice on the very practical side for things like structures and season extension tools, greenhouse heating devices, disease and pest protection, harvesting and cold storage, and even lists of plants that have grown well for them as well as those which have struggled. This episode could very well be the key to extending your home production of fresh veggies, whether at home or in a market garden, for the entire year, so you may want to have a notebook for this one and follow the link in the show notes to get your own copy. 

This past month we took a look at the timely topic of agritourism and the potential for farms to serve as community and educational centers. This summer we saw a lot of protests against mass tourism and the effects that it's having on tourist centers like Barcelona near where I live. The antidote to this is something that we debate in past episodes I've done on the developing series on regenerative tourism and in this panel session, we'll take a look at it from a farm perspective.  In this session I speak to three people who either have integrated farm visits and agrotoursim as a significant part of their farm enterprise, or are working to empower farmers to integrate tourism and commuinity events into their operation.  I was lucky enough to get three fantastic guests who I happen to know personally and exemplify some of the best in entrepreneurial tenacity, creativity, and experience.

have you ever wondered what the difference between a garden and an edible ecosystem is? Do you want to know how you can create one in you own yard? In this episode with author Zach Loeks from the Ecosystem Solutions Institute, you learn all that and more. We’ll walk you through how to choose your site, even if all you have is a 5ft by 5ft patch of earth. From there we’ll look into orienting the garden spot, improving the soil, and choosing your plants for form, function, and potential. The coolest part is that this system is modular and you can expand it from a tiny spot in an urban yard to a whole farm with the permabed system. While there are tons and tons of tips and information in Zachs book on edible ecosystems, the smallest and most basic form revolves around the modular permabed system that he pioneered in his first book. Starting with a 5”x5” patch of earth, you mound compost or topsoil like you might in a garden bed, with the low sides being on the south and north ideally to create tiny microclimates that favor different types of plants. in the center row at the height of the mound you can plant your key plant, which will usually be a fruit tree or berry bushes. This creates a center point with full access to sunlight and space around to plant your support species. I’ll use the example of a pear tree guild from the book. in the center is the pear tree, ideally a bare root sapling which will cost less than a potted on and is less likely to be root bound. Along with the tree on the top of the mound you could plant grape vines on either side which will use the tree as a trellis as they grow taller. strawberries are a great perennial ground cover which will help to shade out weeds and bear delicious fruit on the south side where it gets full sun. on the shadier south side of the mound you could grow a few asparagus shoots. they’re a highly nutritious perennial vegetable that will keep coming back year after year. Some echinacea planted around the top by the pear and grapes will offer some visual beauty from the flowers, attract pollinators, and is a powerful medicine too.  This is just one example of a micro edible ecosystem. If you have more space you can group multiple 5×5 squares into a row, or add multiple rows in what Zach calls a triad. play with different combinations of plants that can support one another and explore the full diversity of what grows in your climate. The options are almost limitless.

Building on the series with my friend Alex in Urugay on the challenges and opportunities of regeneration in areas of the world that are more economically and resource limited, Alex was able to connect with our mutual friend through the Regenerative Skills Discord server, Bobby Dimitrov.  Bobby not only has a unique perspective because of living in Bulgaria, one of the lowest income regions of Europe, but also because he's had a lot of success in leveraging his skill in building community to overcome many of the financial and material access challesges of where he lives.  This episode focuses on his personal journey and how he and his family have built connections in their neighborhood that is consistently yielding benefits that even having a large land base or a massive bank account could bring.  I love this conversation because it reinforces the necessity of building relationships caring for the people around you as the foundation of resilience

Welcome back to another panel session. This month our topic of focus was the role of livestock in regenerative farms. This is a contentious issue for many people either strongly entrenched in the idea that animals should be removed from our farming systems from a range of reasons due to prevailing animal cruelty, the massive environmental resources and contamination that is pervasive in conventional livestock operations, and even reasons of efficiency of food conversion into calories and nutrition being that it can be much more effective to grow human food rather than feed animals and then eat them or their products like milk and eggs. On the other side is the perspective that we’ll be highlighting today which aims to answer those concerns, dispel myths and misconceptions, and offer data and case studies from professionals and practitioners in the field themselves.

For a long time now, our food system has been a primary indicator for so many markers of health in our society, from the way that our food is produced, what kinds of food we eat, how we cook, how it affects our health and even our ethics as consumers. For the next four weeks I’ll be taking a look our food system from a variety of different view-points and analysis in order to shed light on some of the lesser know factors that influence how we eat and how our dietary choices shape the food industry at large. To kick off this series I spoke with Jon Steinman, author of the new book “Grocery Story: the promise of food co-ops in the age of grocery giants.” Now Jon has studied and worked with everything about food for more than twenty years. He formerly produced and hosted a popular podcast called Deconstructing Dinner, was a writer and host for a web series by the same name, and now curates the annual “Deconstructing Dinner” film festival of compelling food documentaries. Jon was also an elected director from 2006-2016 of the Kootenay Co-op – Canada’s largest independent retail consumer food co-op, serving as Board President from 2014-2016 Now I consider myself fairly well informed about the food industry from personal research and that fact that in the last decade I’ve worked directly in many branches of the industry from refrigerated shipping, industrial farms, organic farms, fish processing, many different roles in restaurants, and even the permaculture farm that many of you have heard me talk about for over a year now, but I never knew so much about the influence that the giant grocery chains and supermarkets have on every aspect of our food from how it’s grown till it gets to our plates. This is a very eye opening look, not only at the broken aspects of the food industry, but the very tangible and accessible solutions that co-op grocery stores can be, not only for getting access to better food and transforming the way the industry is incentivized to operate, but also for the positive impact that co-ops can have on our communities and local economies. We also talk about solutions for access to high quality food for low-income neighborhoods and much more.

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 are a handful of examples of growers who’ve been pioneering these practices around the continent, the vast majority are fairly early in their journeys. It’s still rare to find an experienced commercial grower who has found success through organic, no-till, low input systems.  Luckily there are a few who have shown that this is possible and are sharing their knowledge and experience and I’m thrilled to feature one of them in this session. Helen Atthowe has worked for 35 years to connect farming, food systems, land stewardship, and conservation. She currently farms and does soil- and natural enemies’ habitat- building research on her new 5-acre farm in Western Montana. Helen has an M.S. in Horticulture from Rutgers University and even studied with renowned Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka. She has worked in education and research at Rutgers, the University of Arkansas, and Oregon State University and was a Horticulture Extension Agent in Montana for 17 years. Helen was a board member for the Organic Farming Research Foundation 2000-2005 and advisor for Wild Farm Alliance in 2018 & 2019.  She first owned and operated a 30 acre certified organic vegetable/fruit farm in Montana and later co-owned with her late husband a 26 acre certified organic orchard in California. Together they then moved to a 211 acre organic farm in Eastern Oregon doing mainly orchard and vegetable production. The two of them also created educational videos on their YouTube channel called Agrarian Dreams, and did video presentations about their ecological farming methods. She is the author of “The Ecological Farm: A Minimalist No-Till, No-Spray, Selective-Weeding, Grow-Your-Own-Fertilizer System for Organic Agriculture”. And that is exactly what we’ll be focusing on in our interview today. As a reflection of many of the discussions happening within the Climate Farmer’s community at the moment, Helen and I really dug into the unique goals she and her husband had during their farming careers and how they gauged their success. We talk about the way they measured progress on their journey towards a healthy yet low input system for both their orchard and vegetable crops as well the routines and practices that brought them the best results. Much more than just the knowledge and practices of her farming experience, Helen brings a remarkable mindset of constant learning and experimentation to this conversation that is now informing her new 5 acre project in Montana. We also cover the most important learnings that she has gained through her career and how it informs the establishment of all her new research.

I’ve had the pleasure over the last few months to interview quite a few people that I admire, who’ve told me about their fascination with beekeeping. Over and over again I’ve heard about the incredible insights into overall ecological health and the amazing reflections of ecosystem function that can be observed through managing bee hives.  I got a window into the world of natural beekeeping back in May of 2022 when I co-hosted a Climate Farmer’s community event at Wilmer’s Gaerten, a regenerative farm just south of Berlin. Since then I've been looking for an opportunity to speak with Uli Beckman, the instructor on our course on beekeeping and management who helped me to see a whole new possibility in how to promote healthy colonies that in turn promote health ecosystems and people. This is exactly what today’s episode is all about. Uli’s company, Beckmann Urtracht was founded in 2015 with the aim of consistently working in such a way that the beekeeper takes a back seat to the needs of the bees. Today, their principles and way of working far exceed anything required to be certified as an organic beekeeper. Natural propagation, natural honeycomb, built entirely by the bees, natural nutrition and minimal intervention are their maxims. Because with every jar of honey we hold in our hands, we must not forget that the bees did not produce it for us, but as food for themselves. Beckmann Urtracht is the alternative to maximizing yields and obtaining varietal honeys. The end result is an honest, original honey that can only be harvested in small quantities, but is outstanding in terms of quality and taste as well as its ecological and bee-friendly production. In todays conversation with Uli, we start by comparing and contrasting the conventional practices of industrial beekeeping and how they differ from the principles that guide natural beekeeping. From there we go into the details of not only the life cycle and behavioral patterns of bees and how those inform how to manage them well, but also the practical side of building hives that promote their health and the environmental factors that present a real challenge to the future of the species. In the process we also unpack the history of beekeeping in Europe and the innovators how pioneered new management methods based on relationship over extraction. We cover advice on how to get started with your own hive and expectations of time and equipment for keeping bees too. I’m sure that by the end of this episode you’ll come to understand why many of the most influential and insightful people in the world of regenerative land management have become beekeepers themselves.

I had the pleasure of speaking to Meredith Leigh, the author of “The Ethical Meat Handbook.” Meredith has worked as a farmer, butcher, chef, teacher, non-profit executive director, consultant, and writer for the past 17 years, all in the pursuit of sustainable food The industrial meat industry, in my opinion, is the epitome of what is broken in our food system and is a glaring example of the disconnect between humans and healthy natural systems, but Meredith shows us how we can reconnect with animals by treating every step in the process from raising, to slaughter, butchery and cooking with respect and care. In this interview we start by acknowledging the broken and unhealthy state of meat consumption. We also go in depth about the environmental impacts, issues surrounding animal welfare, and the health problems of an imbalanced diet. Meredith then explains how a healthy and reverent relationship to animals and all their products could look like through real examples of ecological management of livestock systems, mindful slaughter, home butchery methods, and preservation through curing, fermentation and cooking. This is one of the most holistic and nuanced perspectives on every aspect of meat that I’ve come across that even treats vegan and vegetarian perspectives on the topic with compassion and understanding. Meredith herself was vegan before getting involved with butchery and animal care so I encourage you to listen through the full episode before jumping to conclusions on the angle that this interview takes. I also recognize that everything about meat from animal care, to diet, slaughter and cooking are very contentious topics at the moment and I would love to hear from you about how you feel and relate to the opinions expressed in this session, so please leave respectful comments and feedback under the show notes for this episode, or any other episode for that matter

At this point I’ve covered a wide array of practices and management styles that fall under the broad umbrella of regenerative agriculture. Some could be considered traditional while others are more modern and innovative and they span continents, climates, biomes and industries. Nonetheless I’ve noticed a pretty big gap that I’ve yet to cover in detail that I hope to begin to fill in today.  Dairy farming has been under sharp criticism in recent times. Scrutiny over everything from the appropriateness of dairy in the diet to the methane emissions of cows and the controversial practices of early separation of calves from their mothers to maximize milk production have all contributed to a diminished reputation.  Though these critiques are very legitimate, what if there were solutions to all of them without the need to turn to non-dairy alternatives? Today to explore these solutions is one of the leaders in regenerative dairy and a growing movement of dairy producers working to develop a new way of managing dairy cows and the pastures they coexist with. Phyllis Van Amburgh along with her husband Paul and their family are leaders in holistic land use, biodiverse cultivation, Organic dairy herd management, and more.  Together they are dairy farmers in upstate New York, and have been involved in key innovations in the dairy industry, mostly in western parts of the world, re-integrating dairy cows as a cornerstone for ecological health and for human communities to thrive. Phyllis and Paul have also helped develop the Grass-fed certification program with NOFA-NY and PCO.  In this interview Phyllis starts by sharing her inspiring story of transitioning away from her previous career as she and Paul embraced a gradual move into full time farming.  We explore the intuition she had that much of the conventional wisdom and ways of doing things in the dairy industry were not really in the interest of either the cows nor the farmers and how that led them to rethink their own dairy operation.  Phyllis outlines the key aspects they consider essential for managing a dairy herd regeneratively and the pioneering journey they’re on to make exclusively grass fed dairy cows viable through selective breeding and holistic managed grazing.  We also explore Phyllis’ insights from her work helping large dairy operations in the USA and Europe to transition to regenerative management and the challenges and opportunities that the wider industry has to transform.