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, th...
Jul 14, 2023•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 301
Welcome to a very special episode of the regenerative skills podcast. This is the 300th episode that I am publishing today, and to make the occasion I wanted to try something new. At this point the show has grown immensely from where I started it and I would imagine that most of you who are tuned in now haven’t been here since the beginning. For that reason I’m going to revisit the origins of this show and explain the context in which this podcast was started, how it’s evolved along with my own ...
Jul 07, 2023•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 300
Today’s episode touches on a very timely topic for me. I’m currently developing a program to assist European farmers in their transition to regenerative management of their farms, and the big challenge is to make a program that is relevant for the vast array and contexts and differences that farmers across this continent are working from. No set of information is appropriate. No one teaching style is going to connect with everyone. Even the regulatory frameworks and incentive structures can vary...
Jun 30, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 299
Today’s episode is going to require some context for anyone who’s not familiar with the origin of this show. Back in 2017 when I started this podcast I was doing an internship with my friend and mentor Charlie Rendal on bamboo building in Lake Atitlan Guatemala. I had been traveling back and forth from Guatemala for a number of years. I had originally gone down there with a friend to learn Spanish and I ended up coming back for years to see friends and just because I love that country. In my tim...
Jun 24, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 6
Since the three part series that Nick and I recorded about the vast array of drought mitigation and recovery solutions for people in different living situations we’ve gotten a lot of follow up questions from listeners who want to go deeper into this subject. Luckily one of my friends and mentors who’s had an outsized influence on my educational journey and inspiration to work with farmers and land managers in helping them to make the most of the water resources has just come out with a new book....
Jun 16, 2023•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 5
Just checking in while still on a short holiday. I just dropped my mom off at the airport at about 3 yesterday morning after a wonderful week of her visiting us, my sister, and her girls at the farm. It’s been such a blessing to have almost all my favorite women under the same roof for a time. My family is scattered all across the world, so these moments when a number of us can be together is really precious to me, and a big motivation of why Alba and I moved out here to begin with. Though we on...
Jun 09, 2023•49 min•Ep. 4
Over the next two weeks I’m going to be taking some much needed recharge time with my family here on the farm. I've got my little sister Emily here and her three little girls Selma, Rawan, and Lujane who came from Kuwait city to spend the summer with us, and my mom who just arrived on Wednesday who will be spending a week with us. We’ve got outdoor education time around the farm (which we call Jungle School), a number of fairs and local festivals in the area we’re going too, and a lot of good fo...
Jun 02, 2023•51 min•Ep. 3
May 26, 2023•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 2
Welcome to the final episode in mine and Nick’s 3 part series on drought. In the first episode we talked about how drought was affecting our two homes at the moment. His home on the island of Tenerife, and my own in Northeastern Spain. We went over the definition of drought and some common myths and misconceptions, as well as the major factors that can make drought more common and severe. In the second episode we turned to look at the myriad of options that are available to mitigate and even rev...
May 19, 2023•1 hr 8 min
Continuing with our deep dive into drought, my good friend Nick Steiner and I are going to move now from defining drought and the its myriad of causes and factors that make it worse, to a wide range of solutions and opportunities available to people who are living in different environments and with different access to land and space. You may not be surprised to hear that we ended up running long and so I split the episode into two parts. In this session we cover mostly the order of consideration...
May 12, 2023•1 hr 9 min
It’s that time again. In todays’ regenerative round table, my good friend Nick Steiner and I give updates on our respective projects. Him on the Island of Tenerife and myself in the mountains of central Catalunya in Spain. In the update we talk about some of the challenges we’ve been experiencing this year. The big topic at the moment for us, and many other in this area of the world, is drought. Partly because Nick and I live in parts of the world where drought is a common factor we’ve been rese...
May 05, 2023•58 min
A couple weeks ago I had a wonderful conversation with my good friend Harriet Mela, the independent researcher from Austria who has helped push the boundaries of soil science and plant physiological understanding. We focused last time on how plants handle water stress, specifically drought and the management practices that can either help or inhibit their natural adaptation to this stress. Harriet also made it clear that she had a lot more to say on this topic and behind the scenes we talked abo...
Apr 28, 2023•1 hr 13 min
Today I’m going to dive deeper into the broad topic of holistic health and wellness for this ongoing series that I started with Richard Perkins a couple weeks ago. In this episode we’re going to take a step back and analyze wellbeing with a perspective from the world of high performance athletics. Now I would imagine that for many of you this probably sounds a bit off-brand in comparison to my usual focus on ecological restoration and farming, but bear with me. Even though my guest today, Dr. Ge...
Apr 21, 2023•1 hr 31 min
Today’s interview has been in the making for me for a couple years now. I first got to know Michael Reber through the pioneer program with Climate Farmers that I directed two years ago. Through that program we guided farmers from around Europe through existing online regenerative farming courses and helped them to adapt the information and techniques to their own businesses and contexts. By this point Michael had already gone through a few major transitions on his own farm and was in the process...
Apr 14, 2023•1 hr 18 min
Many of you will remember my guest today from the three other interviews I’ve done with him over the years. Zack Loeks is a good friend and a maverick of many regenerative skills and knowledge. From growing up on a permaculture homestead in northern New Mexico as a kid, to farming commercially in Canada, teaching edible ecosystem design through Ecosystem U, designing and installing edible ecosystems and many more side projects, I’m always thrilled to catch up with him. In the past I’ve interview...
Apr 07, 2023•1 hr 3 min
Now that I’m spending so much time out on the land here at the new farm I’m becoming a lot more conscious of my health. Nutrition has been really important for me in the last handful of years as I’ve struggled to overcome the chronic digestive issues that plagued me until my 30s. Over time I’ve dug deeper into whole food nutrition, fermentation and the gut microbiome, the importance of healthy fats and unpasteurized products, and quite a few others. At the same time, I’ve read and researched a l...
Mar 31, 2023•1 hr 25 min
Today I’m going to give you a window into the series of Skill Exchange calls that I host regularly for the members of the Climate Farming community. The community is open to any active farmer in Europe and together we’ve co-created an online learning space for farmers to connect with one another, share ideas and knowledge, and receive support from their peers.This series of Skill Exchange calls is part of my ongoing effort to create a free library of farmer’s presentations on tips and abilities ...
Mar 24, 2023•1 hr 15 min
In my work with farmers and clients I’ve always looked for the leverage points where small actions can lead to the largest changes and progress. Where is it that a beginner or novice can invest some resources and make big leaps rather than burning out for small results. In fact, as I’m in the early stages of renovating my own house and farm, this is a source of constant reflection for me as well.This line of thinking has led me to focus so much on water, since basically all life is dependent on ...
Mar 17, 2023•55 min
If you’ve been following the episodes so far this season, you know I’ve got a lot of projects and travels going on right now. Since the episode I recorded in Nicaragua, I’ve also been on a project on the island of Madeira and just two days ago I got back from a 9 day trip to Portugal. Though I haven’t been able to record everything like a diary the way I would have liked to, today I did get a chance to sit down with Nick Steiner who was with me every step of the way during the tour around three ...
Mar 10, 2023•53 min
I’ve got a treat for you all today. After almost 3 years, I’ve got Shane Simonsen back on the show. For those of you who are not familiar with Shane, I’ll give a quick intro and then point you to the links to the two previous shows I recorded with him because they’re really worth while. Shane is a biologist who has a fascinating project on 40 acres in Queensland, AU centered around the concept of zero input farming, which also happens to be the name of the popular blog he’s written about it, whi...
Mar 03, 2023•1 hr 20 min
One of the most important resources we’ve been working to create for our network of farmers here in Europe through my work at Climate Farmers is what we’ve called our coach matching service. We’ve long since seen that one of the hurdles that farmers face in their transition to regenerative agriculture is either one of two things. Either not the right specific information and support based on their unique context, or as is more common in the internet age, too much information to the point of over...
Feb 24, 2023•1 hr
The mindset required to find and purchase the land and home that my partner and I are now living in is not the same mindset required to develop and invest in the long term journey of being here. This has become obvious to me as new opportunities and collaborations come up in my work life and I find myself falling into the old habits and tendencies that I've become used to in the previous years. I'm now in a position in which I need to take some steps back, look at the whole that we are managing ...
Feb 17, 2023•1 hr 9 min
Those of you who’ve been following this show for a while have watched my fascination with water and its role in every ecosystem grow over the years. By now, between my professional experience, the courses I’ve taken, and the research I’ve done, I feel quite competent in working with land in a practical way to restore its cycles and functionality on the land. Where my understanding is still lacking is in the cutting edge science of the way that plants use and interact with water. I’m no research ...
Feb 11, 2023•1 hr 25 min
Welcome to the first epsiode of season 7! So much has happened in the month between the last episode where I introduced my partner Alba and our new home and farm in Spain. There have been a lot of projects both inside the house, out on the land, and within our own businesses. One of the new developments that came up is that I was invited to assist on a watershed restoration design and install project with a company that I've admired and looked up to my whole career, Restoration Agriculture Devel...
Feb 03, 2023•1 hr 12 min
2022 has been an intense year for me behind the scenes. I don't often talk about my personal life here on the show, but I've had some major milestones this year that I'm excited to share with you. It's been a long journey of almost 4 years since leaving the project that I cofounded with my two colleagues in Guatemala around the time that I started this podcast, until now when my partner and I are recently moved into our new little farm in the mountains of Catalunya in Spain. In this episode, for...
Dec 30, 2022•1 hr 4 min
I’ll keep today’s intro real short because this is a long episode. The short of it is that my good friend Nick Steiner and I have been diving real deep into the topic of landscape hydrology and water cycle restoration both on our own properties and through our work with clients and farmers all around Europe. In the process we’ve become complete nerds about this topic and all of the incredible potential that working with water systems can have for the ecology and quality of life where it’s applie...
Dec 23, 2022•1 hr 41 min
It’s not often I get to do interviews in person, and it’s not often that I get a chance to go to Italy to visit amazing farms and take a course on regional scale landscape hydrological restoration either. In fact this was my first visit to Italy at all. All of these fortunate circumstances came together at the end of November, a couple weeks ago, thanks to the incredible efforts and coordination by my friend Ed Cutler, the director of the Tuscany Environment Foundation. Early on Ed invited me to...
Dec 16, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Today’s session, in contrast to the more challenging subject of the last two weeks, will take me back into my comfort zone, namely, nerding out about plants and how bizarre and amazing they are. I don’t claim to be a plant expert, far from it. I’m more like a fanboy of a stadium band that has been around forever pumping out the hits and that I only found out about recently and act like I discovered them. I hope those of you who’ve been growing and studying plants your whole lives will forgive me...
Dec 09, 2022•1 hr 8 min
Today we’ll be wrapping up the second in a two part interview that I’ve been looking forward to doing for a long time. If you missed the first part of the interview then I really recommend that you go back and listen to it before this second half to get the proper context. As a quick recap, I’ve been speaking with conventional and industrial farmers for some time, not only to better understand the industry and the management practices they use, but also to understand the people who manage these ...
Dec 02, 2022•1 hr
Today I’ll begin the first in a two part interview that I’ve been looking forward to doing for a long time, but let me give you some background context before we get started. It’s no secret that I’m a major proponent of regenerative agriculture and many of the different methodologies, practices, and concepts that this wide label contains. I believe strongly that our generation has an opportunity and an obligation to reconcile our food production system with the natural world that we depend on an...
Nov 25, 2022•1 hr 9 min
