The Permaculture Podcast

Visit Our Sponsor: Foraged.Market Donate to the Podcast via PayPal -or- Venmo @permaculturepodcast Join Our Community of Patrons on Patreon  Want to listen to more conversations about Permaculture?  Browse the extensive archives of the show.    Today’s episode is a collaboration with my friend, Karryn Olson. She’s currently hosting a series of conversations exploring what work could look, feel like, and give rise to, if our efforts were dedicated to collective thriving and evolution.     During these times with Karryn and her guests, we’ll hear them explore visions of what the world could look like if we dedicated more of the hours of our day towards work in service to life. And what it could mean—to us, our communities, and the world—if we earned our living through this work.   Join the Podcast Patreon Community Find the guest for this episode, Carmen Leilani DeJesus at museyouneedmost.me and on Instagram @consentisapractice.    You can find our host for this episode, Karryn Olson, at Regenepreneurs.

Visit Our Sponsor: Foraged.Market Donate to the Podcast via PayPal -or- Venmo @permaculturepodcast Join Our Community of Patrons on Patreon  Want to listen to more conversations about Permaculture?  Browse the extensive archives of the show.  Our individual permaculture practices are rooted in the teachers we learn with. In the books we read to expand our knowledge. In the videos we watch on YouTube to answer a particular question. Or the documentaries we find on Netflix that give us a sense of connection to the larger world.  

Visit Our Sponsor: Foraged.Market Donate to the Podcast via PayPal -or- Venmo @permaculturepodcast Join Our Community of Patrons on Patreon  Want to listen to more conversations about Permaculture?  Browse the extensive archives of the show.  My longest-running hobby—one I’ve participated in since I was a child, long before discovering permaculture—is playing tabletop roleplaying games. Perhaps the most well-known of those that you’ve heard of, or played yourself, is Dungeons and Dragons.  

Visit Our Sponsor: Foraged.Market Donate to the Podcast via PayPal -or- Venmo @permaculturepodcast Join Our Community of Patrons on Patreon  Want to listen to more conversations about Permaculture?  Browse the extensive archives of the show.  A note on the content for today’s episode. The interview which follows is a discussion of disasters and their impacts, including food insecurity, personal injury, and suicide. Listener discretion is advised. How do we prepare ourselves for disasters, whether natural or manmade, such as a seasonal storm, global pandemic, economic collapse, or political upheaval?  

Visit Our Sponsor: Foraged.Market Donate to the Podcast via PayPal -or- Venmo @permaculturepodcast Join Our Community of Patrons on Patreon  Want to listen to more conversations about Permaculture?  Browse the extensive archives of the show.  In this episode, I’m joined by my friend Eric Puro as we catch up on what he’s been doing since we last saw each other in 2016. Quite a bit has changed since then, as he’s now living in Finland running a biotech company that cultivates chaga fungi, manages forests holistically, and explores the nutritional qualities, health benefits, and medicinal properties of mushrooms.  

Visit Our Sponsor: Foraged.Market Donate to the Podcast via PayPal -or- Venmo @permaculturepodcast Join Our Community of Patrons on Patreon  Want to listen to more conversations about Permaculture?  Browse the extensive archives of the show.  In today’s interview, Dan Palmer of Making Permaculture Stronger, and David Holmgren continue their conversation about David’s design journey. In this episode they discuss founding Holmgren Design in the 1980s, David’s work as a professional designer and how that influenced his thoughts on permaculture over time, and the ideas that lead to his authoring Permaculture Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability and RetroSuburbia. Throughout, they share more about how David’s knowledge and understanding of reading the landscape developed.  

Visit Our Sponsor: Foraged.Market Donate to the Podcast via PayPal -or- Venmo @permaculturepodcast Join Our Community of Patrons on Patreon  Want to listen to more conversations about Permaculture?  Browse the extensive archives of the show.  In today’s interview, the first in a two-part series, my friend and colleague Dan Palmer of Making Permaculture Stronger, gives me a sense of vicarious joy to share with you, as he’s done something that’s on my list of dream podcast experiences. Dan sits down face-to-face with David Holmgren at Melliodora and together they have a conversation about the early history of permaculture. From David’s lips to our ears we hear the first-hand account of his days at university, meeting Bill Mollison and their initial work together, to the impact of David’s second permaculture mentor Haikai Tane.

Visit Our Sponsor: Foraged.Market Donate to the Podcast via PayPal -or- Venmo @permaculturepodcast Join Our Community of Patrons on Patreon  Want to listen to more conversations about Permaculture?  Browse the extensive archives of the show.  With the release of this episode, the podcast is back to full-time production. In this episode I’m joined by Hannah Eckberg, to discuss what she’s been up to since we last spoke in 2017, and her work with Abundant Earth Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, to move philanthropic resources and support to permaculture projects around the world. Along the way we talk about the resources that are available, the role that non-financial support plays in overall success, the kinds of projects Abundant Earth Foundation is looking to work with, the best way to contact the foundation, and much more. If you’re interested in developing an organization, finding like-minded projects and partners around your specific niche, the role which structures like a nonprofit can play in advanci

Visit Our Sponsor: Foraged.Market Donate to the Podcast via PayPal -or- Venmo @permaculturepodcast Join Our Community of Patrons on Patreon  Want to listen to more conversations about Permaculture?  Browse the extensive archives of the show.  In this episode co-host David Bilbrey sits down again with Martin Ping. Martin is the executive director of Hawthorne Valley Association, a non-profit whose mission is social and cultural renewal through the integration of education, agriculture, and the arts.  

Visit Our Sponsor: Foraged.Market Donate to the Podcast via PayPal -or- Venmo @permaculturepodcast Join Our Community of Patrons on Patreon  Want to listen to more conversations about Permaculture?  Browse the extensive archives of the show.  This episode is a re-release of a conversation that was originally shared as a bonus episode on Patreon back in 2016 after co-host David Bilbrey attended the Prairie Festival and had a chance to talk to Martin Ping of Hawthorne Valley Association. I’m releasing this again to everyone as an introduction to Martin’s work and influences ahead of a new interview David and Martin recently recorded.  

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast Browse the Archives. In today’s episode, co-host David Bilbrey continues his exploration of business and permaculture as he sits down to hear from Mark Simpson about how Mark applied the ideas of Holacracy and Self Management to a hierarchical business. This resulted in a flattening of that vertical organization into a vastly more horizontal one that creates empowerment and opportunity for employees to influence their work and direction.

Visit Our Sponsor: Foraged.Market Donate to the Podcast via PayPal -or- Venmo @permaculturepodcast Join Our Community of Patrons on Patreon  Want to listen to more conversations about Permaculture?  Browse the extensive archives of the show.  As you read these notes or listen to the accompanying podcast, I’m on a sabbatical. With all these years of producing long interviews, I need to take some time to experiment with new ideas, while reading, writing, and exploring what working with permaculture means. What do our practices look like in a world substantially changed since these ideas were first shared more than 40 years ago. How does the Zone model of permaculture shift when we don’t have access to land, particularly with more than half of the world living in cities and urban environments? When those spaces become their own unique ecosystems, some that we can walk through and others that demand motorized transportation. Some with green spaces and others the epitome of the concrete jungle.  

Visit Our Sponsor: Foraged.Market Donate to the Podcast via PayPal -or- Venmo @permaculturepodcast Join Our Community of Patrons on Patreon  Want to listen to more conversations about Permaculture?  Browse the extensive archives of the show.  The episode with Jeff Speck left me curious about what the details Jeff mentioned look like in practice. I followed up that conversation by sitting down with my guest for this episode, Steve Nygren, founder of Serenbe.

Visit Our Sponsor: Foraged.Market Donate to the Podcast via PayPal -or- Venmo @permaculturepodcast Join Our Community of Patrons on Patreon  Want to listen to more conversations about Permaculture?  Browse the extensive archives of the show.    We live in a world that seems ever more chaotic and outside of our control. From a global pandemic that is unlikely to be the only one we experience in our lifetimes to devastating natural disasters exacerbated by climate change that leads to weather weirding and chaos beyond our ability to properly map and mitigate. In the face of all of this, how do we avoid burnout and continue to practice permaculture and develop meaningful designs that fulfill the three ethics while improving the wellbeing of the natural world, our clients, and ourselves?   Visit Our Sponsor: Food Forest Card Game To discuss how to manifest motivational longing in our lives is my guest, Bonita Ford, author of Embers of Hope, a meditative journal meets memoir. Bonita guides us through her feeli

Visit Our Sponsor: Foraged.Market Donate to the Podcast via PayPal -or- Venmo @permaculturepodcast Join Our Community of Patrons on Patreon  Want to listen to more conversations about Permaculture?  Browse the extensive archives of the show.    Seafood represents the largest traded food commodity market in the world. 3 billion people depend on fish and other farmed or wild-caught foods as a source of protein, according to figures from the World Wildlife Fund. Regretfully, the majority of fish stocks are not sustainable, as they are overfished or fully exploited. Seeking sustainable and regenerative approaches to fishing and fishery management help to secure the future of food for large portions of the world.   Visit Our Sponsor: Building a Better World in Your Backyard Become a Patreon of The Permaculture Podcast As permaculture practitioners, is there something we can do in our designs and processes on small spaces to decrease our reliance on commercial food sources while using the byproducts of raisin

Visit Our Sponsor: Foraged.Market Donate to the Podcast via PayPal -or- Venmo @permaculturepodcast Join Our Community of Patrons on Patreon  Want to listen to more conversations about Permaculture?  Browse the extensive archives of the show.    During our lifetime we will encounter a variety of short to long-term disasters. The form the problem takes will vary depending on where we live, and how widespread the incident is that occurs. In late 2019 and throughout 2020, we’ve all been finding ways to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.     More regular and localized are man-made and natural disasters. Though not a comprehensive list, arising from society, those problems may be a hazardous material spill, power disruption, nuclear radiation leak, chemical or biological threat, communication blackout, and civil unrest. While the natural cycles of the world, compounded by human decisions and climate change, include earthquakes, hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes, extreme heat, winter storms, wildfires, and flooding.

Visit Our Sponsor: Foraged.Market Donate to the Podcast via PayPal -or- Venmo @permaculturepodcast Join Our Community of Patrons on Patreon  Want to listen to more conversations about Permaculture?  Browse the extensive archives of the show.    In the United States alone, more than 38 million tons of food is thrown away every year. 94% of that winds up in landfills, to rot and release methane, and lock all the nutrients from being returned to Earth for future fertilization.     Visit our Sponsor: Building a Better World in Your Backyard As permaculture practitioners, the principles set forth by David Holmgren and beautifully detailed at permacultureprinciples.com, implore us to Use and Value Renewable Resources, to Catch and Store Energy, and Produce No Waste. These principles lead us to a strategy to refuse, reduce, reuse, repair, and recycle. In the context of the food system, we refuse to create additional waste by not buying food we won’t eat or use. We reduce our waste by saving and eating leftovers f

Visit Our Sponsor: Foraged.Market Donate to the Podcast via PayPal -or- Venmo @permaculturepodcast Join Our Community of Patrons on Patreon  Want to listen to more conversations about Permaculture?  Browse the extensive archives of the show.    Every month I post an Ask Me Anything Thread over on the Patreon for the podcast at Patreon.com/permaculturepodcast. Most of the time these threads are about design and plants, like the best time to transplant Elderberry. Sometimes we get away from permaculture and a question will come up like, What is my favorite Halloween Candy? To which the answer is anything with chocolate and peanuts, whether that’s the whole legume or peanut-butter. In the AMA for October 2020, however, Joey asked something different. Their question was, “Do you have an opinion on the recent debate between Joel Salatin and Chris Newman of Sylvanaqua farms concerning racism and land access?”     Their question was, “Do you have an opinion on the recent debate between Joel Salatin and Chris Ne

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast The title for this episode is based on a quote from Bill Mollison that my guest, Geoff Christou, paraphrases in the middle of our conversation today about how Utopian literature, the need to imagine the future, and sharing that vision with others through stories, can help our work as permaculture practitioners. That we can create more abundant designs by first sitting down and thinking about what we want in the place where we live, in our relationships with Earth and other life, and in the wider world. By knowing those stories deeply—to inhabit them—we can teach others to yearn for a vast, bountiful, and regenerative life.     Find out more about Geoff's work and pick up an e-book copy of his novel at permacultureutopia.com. As I said in the beginning, the title for this episode is based on a quote from Bill Mollison. The text of that is: When we design, we are always building for fut

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast This episode marks 10 years of The Permaculture Podcast with Scott Mann, the longest-running English language podcast dedicated to the breadth and depth of permaculture.     To celebrate a decade of the show, the following interview is a personal one for me. In 2015, I interviewed Taj Scicluna, The Perma Pixie, and the two conversations we released were ones that transformed my personal perspective of permaculture. As Dave Jacke, Larry Santoyo, and Mark Lakeman moved my thoughts from permaculture as a land-based practice to a larger, holistic system applicable to most human needs for design, Taj’s thoughts on a fourth ethic, of transition, gave me an understanding of the precarious place we find ourselves in as we create the designs that lead to a more bountiful world for all life on Earth. Given all the issues we face from landscape degradation to economic programs that require our partic