Creative Destruction - Honest Conversations About Farming, Business, And Life

John Kitsteiner of Temperate Climate Permaculture joins me to discuss his series of blog posts, The Myth of the Perfect Job. So many of us are stuck in the rat race. We want to be farmers, homesteaders, or something else that involves working closer to home, and not for the man. But we never end up doing that. Why? I think people are either afraid to take a risk and start, or they don't know where to start. This podcast should start to address both of those issues and at least get you thinking. Key Takeaways from this Episode: Be careful of the danger of just pursuing your passion. At the end of the day you have to make a living and get some sort of yield for your work. Balance: Biological, physical, social, spiritual health. Most people focus on one or two areas, not all. Consider this when pursuing a career path. Start looking for a career where your passion and skills overlap. Then start adding in what does the world need (will they pay for it) and does it have meaning to your own life. Think about if a ne

Owen Hablutzel joins me to talk about patterns in permaculture and the power of setting a goal. Key Takeaways from this Episode: Patterns are the shorthand of nature. They take a large complex system of forces and processes and simplifies it down. What is the long term vision of the project? A lot of designs fall apart on the social impact side of the project. Take the time to set and write down a goal. That process greatly increases the likelihood that something will happen in the direction of your goal. Think about setting a Holistic Goal. "If you can understand patterns and what causes them to become the way they are, you can tell an awful lot about the processes that created it. And if you understand that, then you can create a design pattern that is going to best work with those forces." "Begin with the end in mind." "Without a goal it's tough to know exactly what you are designing for." "If it's not written down then it is not likely to happen, or much less likely to happen." "Don't buy the suit to matc

This is replay of the webinar that was recorded on December 5, 2013 with Rebecca Krassnoski. Attendees submitted their questions about raising hogs and Rebecca answered them. the b reels: episodes of the Permaculture Voices podcast that just weren't a fit for the main weekly show. This is content that I have that is worth sharing, but it will be a little more raw, unedited, and no show notes. The b reels can come out at anytime, while the main weekly interview based version of the podcast will always come out on Friday. These episodes are part experiment, so hopefully they give you as the listener some valuable information. Especially for the listener who just can't get enough permaculture in their life. Enjoy the show, and go out and be a part of the positive change. And let me know what you think, I would love to hear from you. Thanks for listening and thanks for support us, and permaculture. www.permaculturevoices.com

Joey Delia of Tipuana Farm joins me to talk about overstory trees in permaculture systems. We touch on species of overstory trees that grow in our area and the benefits of those trees to a system. Dealing with too much shade. Finding fast growing species and other thoughts that we have on the subject. the b reels: episodes of the Permaculture Voices podcast that just weren't a fit for the main weekly show. This is content that I have that is worth sharing, but it will be a little more raw, unedited, and no show notes. The b reels can come out at anytime, while the main weekly interview based version of the podcast will always come out on Friday. These episodes are part experiment, so hopefully they give you as the listener some valuable information. Especially for the listener who just can't get enough permaculture in their life. Enjoy the show, and go out and be a part of the positive change. And let me know what you think, I would love to hear from you. Thanks for listening and thanks for support us, and p

Michael Pollan joins me to talk about GMOs, organic food, the industrial agriculture, and his new book Cooked. Points we hit on:What will it take to ultimately get GMOs labelled in the US? And what affect will that labeling have. Rewarding farmers for embracing sustainable practices.Getting changes in agriculture from the grassroots, corporate and government level. Getting representation for eaters on the government agriculture committees which are currently dominated by lightly populated corn belt states.The importance of being able to demonstrate scientifically that we can do what we say we can do - relating to permaculture, sustainable agriculture.The importance of cooking your own food and the trickle down effects. If you are cooking your own food then you have the ability to shop from local farmers, farmers markets, and CSAs. Fast food supports industrial agriculture.10% of the food dollar goes to the farmer. The longer the food chain the less the farmer gets. Even the packaging manufacturers make more t

Joey Delia of EvokeHope.org joins me to recap the recent Darren Doherty Regrarian Open Consultancy, talk about the Dehesa system of Spain, and an upcoming PDC at the new PRI Tipuana Farm.Key Takeaways from this Episode:Don't focus on tactics. Slow down, observe and embrace a more passive approach to permaculture. Plant trees in the eroded gullies. Helps to control erosion while providing a valuable timber crop. Use roads as catchment. Often times roads are permitable, water harvesting is not. Roads have a lot of surface area to harvest water.  Use it to your advantage.Offset other systems off of the roads. This helps to create some order for systems like waterlines. If it is buried 5 feet off of the road then it will always be 5 feet off of the road.Consider using HDPE line instead of PVC. The fact that it is flexible might make things a lot easier. And it is probably a lot less toxic.Embrace the thistle, it is amazing.Read about the Dehesa system as a perennial ecosystem. So simple, yet so interconnected and

Stefan Sebkowiak of Miracle Farms joins me to talk about the what's lacking in organic systems - biodiversity. And why organic is good, but creating a polyculture is a lot better. Stefan started out his journey purchasing a conventional non-organic orchard. He worked on converting it over to organic and realized that something wasn't right, something was missing. The system was lacking the biodiversity that you see in nature. So Stefan converted over his organic orchard into a permaculture, polyculture based system. He removed a lot of apple trees and replaced them with other fruit trees and support species. He added more diversity to the system giving him more products to sell, more wildlife, and ultimate a healthier, more resilient system. A lot of commercial orchardists say that polyculture won't work. Stefan has show that on a tree by tree basis he is getting as much yield as a conventional orchard. He is out there trying to prove that you gross $1.00 per square foot in a polyculture system that value add

David Barmon of Fiddlehead Landscape Design joins me to talk about urban lumber. We discuss how we can start thinking about urban trees as not just a source of beauty, but as a valuable, sustainable resource. Most people don't really think about what happens to a tree in an urban setting. Most of the time it ends up as fireword, mulch, or goes to the landfill.David thinks that we could be sourcing 10-20% of our lumber from urban sources. This creates a lot of value for landowners, both private and public, in addition to adding all of the other benefits that trees bring to a landscape.Creating valuable lumber from urban trees sequesters carbon while providing a renewable resource. Show Notes: www.permaculturevoices.com/20

Joel talks a lot about how young people can get into farming by establishing synergistic relationships with older farmers as he tries to dispel the big belief that you need land to farm. He touches on the farming business and how conventional farmers can start to transition to a perennial based agricultural system.Key Takeaways from this Episode:Convert a little bit of acres at a time, when converting a large amount of land from an annual based system to a perennial based system. Converting a corn, soybean operation over to grassfed beef. It would take a year to plant the grass, an d it would take another year to come into production. You could start grazing it the second year and 3 years out you would be making more money per acre than you would on corn and beans.Possibly sell some land to get yourself enough wiggle room to convert your farm over to a more regenerative agriculture system.Prune off enterprises that don't work. Maybe you can't figure them out. It doesn't fit your marketbase or your unfair adva

What do you do with 350,000 gallons of rainwater runoff that enters your property with a high velocity causing erosion? One option is to harvest that water, slow it down, and take away the erosion by constructing some permaculture earthworks. Alden Hough of the Sky Mountain Institute joins me to talk about some earthworks that were constructed on his 7 acre property last March during a Paul Wheaton earthworks workshop.He will also talk about some of the upcoming events at the 2013 Fall San Diego Permaculture Convergence that will expand these earthworks. Joey Delia of Evoke Hope and Tipuana Farm also joins the conversation to talk about the plant systems that were put in place after the earthworks construction. During the workshop last March we constructed a pond and a long swale to capture the 350,000 gallons of storm water that were running off of the road onto Alden's property, causing a lot of erosion in the process. The dam was constructed at the highest part of the property allowing Alden to gravity fee

Rebecca Krossnoski of Nature Delivered Farm joins me to talk about her passion for pigs. Rebecca left her job as a construction estimator 6 years ago to start pasture raising pigs. She realized that her old job wasn't going to be there forever so she began the transition into the farming business while she was still working at her old job. She had no prior farming experience when she embarked on the venture, learning along the way from her grandfather's notes, other farmers, and books, then building on that book knowledge with real world trial and error.Rebecca is another example of someone who decided to follow her passion and make a go of farming with no prior farming experience. She could have easily made excuses about why it wouldn't work or what her disadvantages were, but she didn't focus on that, she focused on the positive and made it happen. She put her heart and soul into her pigs, did her research, and worked her ass off. Like any new business there were some troubles and mistakes made along the wa

Darren Doherty of Heenan Doherty and Regrarians joins me from Australia to fill in some of the gaps surrounding Keyline design.While the whole Keyline design system is complex and way beyond the scope of this podcast.This episode should give you a brief introduction into what Keyline is, where it can be used, and what it can accomplish. Like all other design systems Keyline isn't the be all, end all, it is another tool in the tool box help design a regenerative landscape.For those that want to learn more check out Darren's work, some of it below, and P.A. Yeomans books. Darren recommends The Keyline Plan and The Challenge of Landscape.Keyline design is a foundation of technique and planning using a scale of permanence. It's focus is on reacting to a climate of an environment, a site, and then using the landscape's shape to maximize the possibility of a sustainable, regenerative environment.Show Notes: www.permaculturevoices.com/16

Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm joins me to talk about his new book Fields of Farmers which focuses on the next generation of farmers.How young people can work with existing farmers to transition into farming. He talks about young people can do today to take advantage of the huge opportunity that is out there. Topics range from leasing land to forming synergistic, non-competitive enterprises on existing farms. The whole key is that you have to start. Movement creates movement.Joel touches on the cultural stereotype against farming. So many people get "forced" into a job that they hate to satisfy their parents only to do that career for a few years and realize that they hate it.All along that person only wanted to do something with their hands. So why not encourage the youth to follow those passions and pursue them with all of their skills and talents. This episode also has a very heavy entrepreneurial component. Hopefully it will motivate some people to get out there, stop thinking about farming, and actually s

John Backes of Circle B Ranch joins me to talk about raising pastured hogs on 90 acres in Missouri. John didn't come from a farming background. He transitioned into farming in 2009 with his wife Marina after leaving a career in mechanical contracting. They set out to produce high quality food while focusing on the welfare and humane treatment of their hogs.Key Takeaways from this Episode:-Be steadfast with pricing. Stay away from brokers, sale barns, and commodity pricing.-Stresses the importance of educating and connecting with the customer base. That involves a lot of marketing your own product through tools like social media. -Pick a spouse that is a good compliment to your skills as a farm. It’s a team effort. -Stress affects meat quality. So try to minimize the animal’s stress. -Maintain good relationships with the hogs. Keep them calm because ultimately they are big and you want them working with you.Visit www.permaculturevoices.com/14 for show notes.

Darren Doherty of Heenan Doherty and Regrarians joins me from Australia to talk about the regrarian philosophy that he has put together and how it can be used to regenerate landscapes and farming enterprises.This is a system that borrows and includes tools from multiple disciplines like permaculture, keyline design, the transition movement, carbon farming, and the work of of people like Joel Salatin, Paul Stamets, and Dr. Elaine Ingham. These tools give you the ability to design a system that ultimately regenerates land while producing numerous agricultural products. The system deals with everything from the work done on the land to how you can synergistically stack multiple enterprises in the same system, and ultimately how to market and distribute those products to the people that actually want them. The system emphasizes participating in all 4 legs of the farm income stool - production, processing, marketing, and distribution. This allows you to be a market price setter, not a price receiver. If you are in

Doniga Markegard of Markegard Family Grass-Fed comes on the show to talk about ranching, permaculture, and the regenerative power of rotational livestock grazing.She is a real life rancher, who is out there successfully doing things the right way. On her ranch she is using cattle, sheep, and pigs to build the soil and supply the San Fransisco Bay area with high quality food.Doniga discusses why traditional ranching methods often fail and lead to degenerative cycles with the soil; and how a more holistic, permaculture approach can actually repair landscapes. She talks about how they use permaculture on their ranch to increase species diversity and to increase the water holding capacity of the soil. She touches on how to get into ranching, the advantages of small herd dairy, and the importance of leasing land. Key Takeaways from this Episode: -The healing power of using proper livestock rotational management on a landscape is tremendous. Doniga often sees the benefits after just one or two rotations. The distu

What if you could gross $100,000 per acre in a small sustainable agriculture operation? You could make a good living and/or you could afford to pay someone a decent wage. If you can gross roughly $2.50 per square foot, per year, then that translates into a gross revenue of $100,000 per acre, per year. How can permaculture techniques be used to accomplish that goal? Chris Young of SoCal Shrooms and Closing the Loop joins me to talk about just that. His goal is to show that you can gross that $100k so you can hire one person to work an acre of land and pay them a good wage to work it. He aims to achieve this by reducing input costs and stacking revenue generators, all while improving the quality of the land and producing a high quality product. Key Takeaways from this Episode:-Oyster mushrooms have a nice advantage of having a quick turn around. They can start creating cash-flow in 4 to 6 weeks. Similar to selling sprouts and micro-greens which have a 2 to 3 week turnaround. -If possible tap into an existing di

Cathy Payne of Broad River Pastures joins me to talk about heritage breed livestock and her journey into farming that began in her mid-50's. Cathy and her husband started changing their diet in their 50's. Their quest for nutrient dense food led them to local farmers, and a lot of visits to their farms. One day they decided, why don't we do this, and they began their journey into farming. They jumped in with the goal of growing the food that they wanted to eat. This meant that they would raise the right animals, the right way - incorporating holistic livestock care, permaculture practices, and sustainable organic farming. Now they are a few years into their farming adventure. The farm is slowly growing and expanding it's education outreach a long the way. They actively support heritage breed livestock and education via outreach and their on-farm internship program. Both Cathy and her husband feel better than they have ever felt in their life due a combination of lifestyle and nutrient-dense food. They continu

Joey D'Elia joins me in this episode to talk about why people are afraid of embracing the order that comes in the "disorder of nature." We also ask why should anyone even care about food forests. Along the way we touch on embracing the "messiness" of permaculture and the importance of over-stacking the system with pioneer species early on.  This saves time and adds resiliency.Are people afraid of order? I know I can be. I tend to think in terms of straight lines and right angles, so embracing a swervy, zig zaggy permaculture system can be hard for me. I am sure other people encounter this as well. So how can a straight line thinker adapt to a permaculture system that wants to have the system follow nature's not so straight lines.The messiness of permaculture. Geoff Lawton has talked about this. In the beginning a lot of permaculture systems look messy. That can be hard for people to accept. Yet, that is the way that nature systems evolve. They aren't clean and tidy.Again, this is another challenge that some p

Paul Greive of Primal Pastures joins me to talk about being a grass farming entrepreneur. He talks about how the thought of Primal Pastures went from an idea to a reality one weekend while sitting around with his in-laws. This small step was the catalyst that helped develop Primal Pastures into a thriving beyond-sustainable meat business. Today they are continuing to grow the farm, their community, and the soil, but this isn't without its challenges. Paul discusses these challenges, and successes that he encounters on a daily basis as new farmer entrepreneur. He stresses the importance of connecting with your customer via Social Media, the advantages to starting out in the pastured poultry business, and the big advantages of leasing land over purchasing it. Episode Takeaways: -Don't undervalue and underestimate the value of connecting with your customers.-Stop focusing on the why it won't work, and go out and actually do something.-You can establish a profitable sustainable agriculture business with a small a