Regenerative Skills

The essential skills and knowledge to become a regenerative water worker, with Zach Weiss and Nick Steiner

For those of you following along from the last three episodes of this season so far, I’ve been sharing the intimate details of my own journey along with my good friend Nick Steiner as we’ve gone around to visit a number of out client’s projects in the south of Portugal and both gather essential data to inform our process and actually put that process into action implementing water retention features. 
We’ve seen examples of farms facing droughts and rural communities facing wildfire and working to recover from it. In last week’s episode with Aline from La Casa Integral, I also explored what severe drought in my local community looks like and explored the actions both ecological and community oriented to set ourselves on a new path. 
Though water cycle restoration will always be a theme on this show, today's episode is going to wrap up this personal deep dive for a little while. I believe that regular reflection on one’s learning process is essential to continued progress and today I’m joined by two people that have been major figures in my learning and growth, Nick Steiner of course, and Zach Weiss. Nick is of course the founder of Permanick water solutions and Zach is the founder of Elemental Ecosystems, project implementation company, and Water Stories his online teaching and community platform focused on building water solution awareness and education. Since both of them have appeared on this show quite a number of times I’ll skip over their introductions and instead have linked to previous episodes with them in which we explore their backstories.
We’re having this conversation at an important point for a couple reasons. Nick and I had just submitted out final project report in order to complete the professional certification, the highest tier of completion through the water stories training course, and Zach and the organization have just opened their training once again to new applicants. 
Together, the three of us reflect on our different learning journeys to get where we currently are. We discuss in depth both the obvious and less apparent skills that we each believe is essential for effective work in this space and in order to develop ourselves as true regenerative actors. 
Each one of us talks about our personal turning points and “aha moments” as well as mentors, growing pains, and areas in which we still need to improve. We cover different roles and responsibilities in the space of water restoration and how designing and installing ecosystem features is only one which we have a common passion for. We also recognize the need for so many other skill sets, experience bases, and focuses that are required to bring regeneration to the scale that is needed. 
I also really recommend that you listen to this one all the way till the end when Zach gives us a brutally honest review of our final project submission and critiques our work with no filter.

Nature based solutions for the worst drought on record, with Aline Van Moerbeke

I’ve talked a lot about drought and water management on this podcast. It’s becoming a bigger and bigger part of my work and specialization, both in the work I do with private clients and through the network of farmers that I work with through Climate Farmers. At the moment, these topics are hitting home for another reason. Catalunya, the region where I live in Northeastern Spain is currently experiencing the most severe drought in its recorded history, and there is little relief in sight. 
Now obviously I’m not from this area of the world myself and though I’ve built a competent understanding of my local context and the water management history of this region, I’m always looking to better understand the scope and options of what is happening in this time of climate emergency.Another big focus of mine lately has been to reach out and make connections to others in the area who are working on nature based and regenerative solutions to the challenges we face in hopes of supporting existing efforts and making myself useful to the people and organizations who’ve been working in this space for a long time. One source of unification around these efforts in my area and consistent messages of inspiration and hope come from the small company La Casa Integral, and today I had the pleasure of speaking to Aline, one of the co-founders of the company.Aline Van Moerbeke is Flemish Belgian by birth but feels most Mallorquina after spending over 20 years in San Roqueta on the island of Mallorca. She now lives with her partner Juan Pedro in the Maresme region just up the coast from Barcelona in Catalunya where they run their business La Casa Integral, a permaculture and ecological design company focused on the needs of the communities of the Balearic Islands and Northeastern Spain. Aline is also the co founder of Permacultura Mediterranea and is highly active in many networks and initiatives in the region. 
 
In this episode, Aline and I begin by talking about the unique journey that she took to begin a career in permaculture education and regenerative design. From there we go into the unique context behind the current drought and how Catalunya is wrestling with this challenge. Since she has made an incredible effort to participate in and lead many discussions at various levels of government, industry, and communities, she gives me an overview of the ideas and solutions that are being proposed and the entrenched ways of thinking that are holding progress back.
Through her work at La Casa Integral she and Juan Pedro have advanced many unique water saving and recycling solutions and we explore some of them and even take a closer look at natural blackwater filtration systems that they are known for designing and installing for many different use cases. 
We also talk about reasons for hope in the policy and institutional structures at our local level and explore the first steps that anyone listening can take to gain a better understanding of their own opportunities to participate in the restoration of their own water systems, at any scale. This interview is a first step towards two things that I am trying to do more of in this season. The first is to highlight the incredible work that is being done by so many local people in my area, partly to build closer relationships with them myself, partly to demonstrate that most of the really effective people in this space are not the big name famous people from your documentaries and social media threads, and partly to show what it could look like for some of you listeners to explore your own local scene of regenerative workers and advocates instead of always looking outside your communities for solutions. Many of the topics that I’m passionate about and like to focus on might not be relevant or interesting to you, but the idea of connecting with and exploring the hyper local community of like-minded people doing good work around you is more important than a couple highly effective but isolated actors. Another theme I’ll be promoting this season is that of inspiring examples of collaboration. People who break the mold of protectionist business practices, ivory tower academics, and competitive paradigms of commerce. Aline and La Casa Integral are a perfect example in my area of folks who are leading through collaboration and by including the voices and expertise of as many people as they can. Their creation and participation in countless committees, online groups, advocacy organizations, and volunteer initiatives show a true commitment to the larger vision of realizing change in our region, and I know this chat will inspire you as it did for me, even if the challenges in your region have more to do with too much water rather than too little.

Installing water retention and fire mitigation features on the ground

Continuing on the journey we started in the last episode, Nick and I went to the next project where we got to install the types of water retention features that we had designed for the previous clients. Together we talk about the joys and the challenges of site where we were creating these earthworks. Over the previous summer the whole landscape had burned in a wildfire and the clients there are especially motivated to mitigate the risks moving into the future. We also got to work with a team with a variety of experiences and talents which contributed to the creativity and the outcome of the project. In just over 3 days of work we were able to build a small infiltration basin in an eroded valley and an infiltration terrace along a fire-prone ridge with many unique features in each. Follow us was we take your through the full process in this episode

Reading the landscape and gathering essential data for a water restoration design

Welcome to the first episode of season 8 of the Regenerative Skills podcast. We're starting in a big way with a special episode in which me and my good friend and collaborator Nick Steiner will be taking you along with us on a client visit in the south of Portugal in the very first steps of a water retention landscape project. We'll be giving you a behind the scenes look at what we do on these jobs, the landscape indicators that we're observing to inform our concept plans, and all of the essential data we collect while out in the field as we build the initial design for this farm. Southern Portugal is a classic area to illustrate the patterns of drought, flood and fire that are the result of landscape degradation. This mediterranean climate has been getting dryer and hotter in an accelerated way over the last few decades, and the result is failing farms, abandoned villages, and land that is on a downward trajectory. Each day we'll describe what we're up to out in the field, offer summaries of the discussions with the clients, describe the landscape features and observations we're making and even the heavy machinery work that it takes to inform the placement and types of features that can be implemented in order to turn the trajectory of this farm around through watershed restoration. Don't forget that you can see pictures and videos of our time out in the field on our social media pages and on the Regenerative Skills community on Discord. 

Regenerative farming on the edge of the desert, with Yanniek Schoonhoven

There are a few farms and organizations here in Spain that have been gaining international attention for their work and initiatives in the past few years. Partly through reaching out directly and partly through the Climate Farmers network I’ve been connecting with them to bring their inspiring stories and innovative knowledge to the farmers community that I help to manage. 
One of the most established and accomplished of these farms is La Junquera, an 1100 hectare farm in one of the most environmentally challenging regions of Spain in the south eastern province of Murcia in the altiplano region.Now some of you may remember previous interviews I’ve done with Alfonzo Chico de Guzman, the owner of the farm and one of the driving forces of the Alvelal cooperative that he helped to found, but today I’ll be speaking with his wife and co-owner of the farm to get a deeper look at all the projects that she has helped to lead simultaneously.Yanniek Schoonhoven is also the co-founder of the Regeneration Academy, a physical learning hub and model farm in La Junquera, focused on building a space and community to help students become practitioners, entrepreneurs, innovators and leaders in the field of regenerative agriculture and eco-system restoration, specialized in semi-arid climates. 
Yanniek has built a reputation in the regen ag space as an expert connection builder, weaving partnerships from the local community around them in Spain all the way up to the European Union level along with universities and non-profits. All of these connections are fueling the positive change that The Regeneration Academy and the farm itself are having on the ecology as well as the human communities around them.In this session we explore the journey that led Yanniek to southern Spain and the creation of all the projects that she now helps to coordinate. Yanniek talks about the unique challenges that they face in their remote rural area as well as the climate and ecological challenges of rebuilding the capacity for life on the land there.We also dig into the connections that she’s helped to build and strengthen that have brought visibility, support, and recognition to their efforts on the ground while making it possible to include more people in their training and projects.This is also a great opportunity to announce the collaboration that I’ll be doing with them as I’ll be co-facilitating a course in the upcoming year with them about water resource management. 
At the end of the episode we give an overview of the curriculum that we’ll be teaching through a highly immersive project of gathering essential data, co creating a design for water retention on a micro watershed on their farm, and actually implementing the design on the site. 
We’ll be training participants on a wide range of tools for site design and layout as well as building experience with everything from hand tools to guiding heavy machinery in order to install the design. You can find all the details about the course which will be from April 8th-11th in the show notes for this episode on the website,

Making soil health approachable and practical, with Ian Robertson

By now I’m sure many of you have heard the few episodes on soil health that I’ve recorded with people like Harriet Mela, Matt Powers, James White, and others. I know that the subject of soil has become really popular with growers and it’s always talked about as being central to the success of regenerative agriculture and broader environmental health, and I don’t disagree. Yet I’m often worried that the discourse around soil science is reminiscent of other scientific studies in which there’s a never ending search for more granular details. 
Breaking components of the whole overview down into chemistry, biology, and even down to anatomical structure, all without making the learnings accessible to soil stewards, growers and land managers. 
Such detailed science shrouded in a veil of technical jargon and research papers makes me feel that the real learnings are inaccessible and overly complicated. For that reason I’ve often held back from really going deeper into soil on this show. 
Here I hope to find the key concepts and actionable information that anyone can use to get real results, and that’s often been hard to find. 
Yet that’s exactly what brings me to today's session, where I get to speak to a soil scientist and consultant who believes, as I do, that we need to make soil concepts and principles more accessible and help to guide land managers along the way to learn how to make their own observations and discoveries in order to foster relationships or understanding with the land we take care of. 
Ian Robertson has a lifelong involvement in all things soil, growing up on an organic farm, and working in various roles helping farmers understand their soils. His present role is General Manager of Sustainable soil Management, a soil testing and consultation company in the UK. 
Over the last 20 years Ian has developed the most detailed soil test, which is widely used throughout the UK and Europe, allowing farmers a greater understanding of how best to manage their soil. Ian delivers soil presentations that are practical and engaging and he works across all sectors of agriculture to build long term relationships between himself, farmers, and their soil.
 
In this episode we start by exploring what aspects of soil are really essential to understand a holistic picture of the function of the earth you’re working with, as well as the best tests to gain that knowledge. Spoiler alert, many of those tests turn out to be things you can observe with your own senses. From there we dissect the three main conventional agricultural practices of tillage, fertilization, and crop protection chemicals such as herbicides and pesticides for their impact on the soil and what is really happening from a scientific perspective when they are used. 
We use that part of the discussion as a springboard towards which soil stewardship practices are broadly beneficial and represent the least amount of risk regardless of the soil type and makeup you have.
Ian’s learnings from decades and thousands of soil tests make for a very practical and digestible overview of the more detailed science out there and hopefully will act as an antidote to the overwhelming amount of information about soil out there at the moment. 

Adapting syntropic agroforestry to temperate climates, with Renke De Vries

Syntropic Agroforestry has exploded in popularity and interest in the last few years. I’ve explored this agroforestry design and management system a little in some previous episodes with my friend Jacob Evans, but there’s so much more to explore. 
 
First pioneered by renowned farmer Ernst Gostch in Brazil, his integrated approach of dense planting and timed pruning and intervention to accelerate natural succession and replace outside inputs for both ecosystem regeneration and nutrient dense food production has sparked an interest in many people to adapt the concepts to their own climates and contexts.
 
From what I’ve heard however, adapting syntropic methods to temperate climates has proven more difficult than many people originally thought. The plants that thrive in these latitudes have different growth cycles with their long dormant period and many compete for light more than their tropical counterparts. Luckily I was able to find someone who has not only studied with Ernst closely in Brazil, but has also been pioneering syntropic systems in Germany who was able to share some key learnings from the first couple years of trial. Renke de Vries studied International Forest Ecosystem Management, and works as an agroforestry designer and consultant and in arboreal maintenance. From 2019 till 2023 he has been responsible for the design, establishment and management of syntropic agroforestry systems especially at Gut and Bosel, the famous farm in Brandenburg outside of Berlin in Germany. In this interview we go into the learnings that he brought from his formal studies in forestry and forest management and how they juxtapose with his learnings from Ernst in Brazil. 
We also dig into the systems that he has been  designing and planting and the crucial learnings in his ongoing attempts to use syntropic principles in temperate climates. Though there is still so much to learn and experiment with, I’ve been very interested to see the different iterations of what I’m convinced are very wise and widely applicable principles of ecological management from the syntropic concept. Hopefully this discussion will spark some interest in some of you to start your own agroforestry experiments. 

Growing fresh produce through the coldest winters, with Catherine Sylvestre

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. 

Making micro farms work through lean planning, with Ben Hartman

I’ve been observing an interesting trend in the regen ag space. The concept and awareness of regen ag has been growing exponentially with many people exploring ways to start their own farms and to participate in and support those who are already involved. At the same time the current economic situation and the complexity of regulations, paired with skill worker shortages, and other challenges are leading people to burn out or quit altogether. 
It’s no joke how complex and difficult it can be to run a lean and profitable farm in modern times. Luckily there are some successful and experienced farmers out there who are helping to train and inform the new generation in order to support them in getting established. 
One voice in particular who I’ve admired since the release of his first book, The Lean Farm, is Ben Hartman. Though they both have a lot of experience from running their previous large scale operation, Ben along with his wife Rachel started their new venture, Clay Bottom Farm which is an urban farm, set on the north edge of Goshen, IN, in 2006. One of their key features is that all of their food is sold within 1.5 miles of the farm. 
Ben is best known for bringing the Lean methodology pioneered in factory manufacturing, to the management and process on small farms. He now has a new book out titled The Lean Micro Farm: How to Get Small, Embrace Local, Live Better, and Work Less. 
In this interview Ben shares his story of his initial passion for farming and the journey to creating a simplified and efficient operation that allowed him to enjoy a life with his family and still have hobbies while running a profitable farm. 
We discuss the criteria he uses from the Lean system to design workflows, focus energy on the tasks of highest return, and eliminate unnecessary work. 
We also go into the practical details of this ⅓ of an acre operation such as the tools he uses, his method for bed flipping in the market garden, the marketing and sales system he has, and the infrastructure that makes it all flow smoothly. 
This episode is packed with advice for growers who are looking to get small by reducing complexity and waste without compromising profitability or losing their customer base.

Low tech solutions for erosion and water management with Neil Bertrando and Jeff Adams

We live in a time when everyone seems to be looking for high tech solutions for every problem. Maybe it's due to all of the new tech that has come out in recent decades with lofty promises of new frontiers, or the fact that so many of us are removed from regular interaction with the natural world, but I genuinely believe that technology is more over-applied and responsible for more problems than it usually solves. For that reason I always like to see when professionals advocate for low tech solutions and a return to basics and analog methods, especially when working with nature. 
 
Today I have the pleasure of introducing two guests whose work I’ve admired for a while and who co teach a online course called low tech erosion control which focuses on the approach and techniques that are approachable for almost everyone to reverse and regenerate landscapes suffering from water erosion. 
 
First up, there’s Jeff Adams, who is owner/operator of TerraSophia LLC, a watershed restoration and landscape contracting firm based in Moab, UT. He has a depth of experience in permaculture, watershed rehabilitation, water harvesting, erosion control, and educational programs. With over 20 years of field experience, Jeff brings a practical and integrated approach to each project and course he does. 
 
Along with him we’re joined by Neil Bertrando, a regenerative specialist who has focused on integrated water harvesting, agroforestry systems, homestead production gardens with season extension, medicinal pollinator habitats, and ecological restoration for over 12 years. He has been a permaculture instructor at OSU since 2014. He holds degrees in Biology and Environmental Science and owns an ecological design and education firm, RT Permaculture, specializing in effective and regenerative landscapes. 
 
Together we start by digging into each of their unique paths into working in ecological restoration in the American Southwest and the Great basin regions. They each describe the challenges of their climate and context as well as the historical and current sources of degradation of the surrounding ecology that is often behind the restoration project where they work.From there we systematically walk through the site assessment process of reading the landscape and understanding the local ecology to begin the project design. 
 
Both Jeff and Neil describe the ways they develop a plan of action including the information they gather and how they assess different implementation strategies, especially from the low tech options and working with materials found on site. 
We also talk about one of my favorite and often overlooked aspects of project design, which is the maintenance and revision strategies over time, as well as how to design with them in mind. This discussion is full of practical advice that you can use to get started on your own watershed restoration project at a manageable scale,