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Retire by 35 with Dylan Graves
1.4k Plays4 months ago
Sit down and whip out your preferred pen* because Dylan Graves is doing back-of-the-envelope calculations to show you how to access land within three to five years.
I know, sounds weirdly left-brained for our whimsical podcast, but fear not, this conversation with an inspiring and intensely honest permaculture teacher will have you dreaming and doing in tandem.
In the deep south of Aotearoa New Zealand, Dylan and his partner Evita are living and breathing Reskillience. Dylan is a permaculture teacher, biochar educator, farmer and frank-as-anything about financial pathways that lead to both personal freedom and a low-resource lifestyle that respects nature’s limits. He also covers these tantalising topics:
Should permaculture courses be cheaper?
Should we all earn radically less?
Jobs no-one is doing in permaculture.
So many options for low-cost living.
Insights as a Workaway host.
Total weekly income.
Living on 10k per year.
Educational holidays.
Accepting financial gifts from friends.
Money taboos.
Small livelihoods.
Anger as a driver.
Forced to farm!
Permaculture sheep farming.
Introverted permaculture teacher lyfe.
Biochar conspiracies.
*The hierarchy of pens is: Quill + ink > any Japanese pen > old school fountain pen > Artline 220 Series Superfine Point Black 0.2mm > all other pens.
LINKY POOS 🧙♀️
A great chat with Dylan on the Quorum Sense podcast
The Great Simplification Podcast
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Setting
00:00:07
Speaker
Hey, this is Katie and you're tuned into Resilience, a podcast about living closer to the ground so we don't have quite so far to fall if our fragile modern systems fail us. These words are coming to you from inside a van on a windy day near a busy road in Nanowal and Wiradjuri country in the southern tablelands of New South Wales. Thank you to the elders and this beautiful land with its flaxen grasses and granite boulders for having us.
Road Trip and Podcast Inspirations
00:00:36
Speaker
We're on a road trip rattling our way towards the Northern Rivers, which is a common migratory pathway for cold Victorians. We've already spent nine hours binging the great simplification podcast in which Nate Hagens and Daniel Schmattenberger unpack the artificial intelligence arms race and all the ways we are, as Daniel says, intractably fucked.
00:00:59
Speaker
It's grim and fascinating listening.
Managing Information Overload
00:01:02
Speaker
Earlier today Jordan and I stopped by a lake to stretch our legs and take big gulps of fresh icy air to replace the stale highway stuff. As we walked, we found ourselves discussing the themes of the podcast, wondering how to hold all this heavy information without s sinking, how to stay buoyant when extremely intelligent people like Nate, Daniel, and countless others are warning that if it's not climate-induced crop failure or economic catastrophe that'll get us, a generalized artificial intelligence that exploits us in the way that we've been exploiting animals and plants and rivers and ancient sunlight will.
Cultural Critique of Nature Utilization
00:01:42
Speaker
We strolled past an Australian data, one of those long, sleek waterbirds that looks like an oily snake with feathers. They were perched on a semi-submerged branch, holding their shiny black wings out to catch the sun, eyes half-closed in snoozy raptures. Unlike most water birds, dartas don't have waterproof feathers. Their feathers actually absorb water which helps them dive for fish and other aquatic forageables. That's why you'll often see them hanging their wings out to dry like laundry. And perhaps we humans need to do some diving too.
00:02:19
Speaker
Rather than treading water near the surface, what would happen if we dove headfirst into the turbid issues of our times? Right now we're part of a culture whose overarching goal is to turn the living world into currency, into profits for a tiny few, and won't stop till every last waterway and sunbathing data have been cashed. Most of us would agree that this isn't our heart's desire, and yet here we are entangled with and enabling this system that feeds and clothes us, that gives us jobs and meaning, that purports to support us but is perversely destroying our home.
Dylan Graves' Sustainable Journey
00:02:58
Speaker
By plumbing the depths of this painful and seemingly impossible predicament, we might just get to the bottom of why things are the way they are, why we are the way we are, that this money-hungry sea that we're swimming in has a plug and we can pull it. A person who has looked deeply into our broken systems and culture and changed his life in response is Dylan Graves. Dylan may not be on your radar, but that's probably because he's outside growing food, not his personal brand.
00:03:31
Speaker
Dylan is a living demonstration of resilience, freedom and respect for nature's limits. He and his partner Evita are based on a farm in the deep south of New Zealand, Aotearoa, and teach all kinds of from scratch skills like fermenting, weaving, growing, animal husbandry, biochar making and permaculture design, as well as hosting volunteers from around the world. Dylan is probably the most candid podcast guest to date, talking openly about their household income, which has been as low as $10,000 a year, and yet how it is that they've been able to access land, and ways that you can do that too. I'm really excited to share this pragmatic chat about money, freedom, work, integrity, the pitfalls of permaculture, and living in alignment with your values, which as we all know, ain't as easy as it sounds.
00:04:23
Speaker
There's also a little discussion on biochar to whet your appetite for this amazing soil amendment that you can make at home. and an apologetic disclaimer. You'll just have to bear with the audio on this one. There was some pretty gnarly interference in Dylan's recording, so I enlisted the help of audio cleaning robots, but in exchange, they took some of Dylan's syllables, so he too sounds somewhat robotic. I'm really sorry about that, but listen past it and I know you'll love the substance of this conversation.
Engaging with Sustainable Philosophies
00:04:55
Speaker
And finally, I'm very excited to introduce you to a new Resculience segment. It's called one resilient thing, and it's a way for you to engage more deeply with each guest and their work. I'm asking every person who joins me on the podcast to suggest an activity, an exercise, or a challenge that they've personally found useful or brings their philosophy to life. It can be zany, uncomfortable, delightful, provocative, or ultra simple, like a writing prompt, a sit spot, tracking wombats, or playing in the mud.
00:05:31
Speaker
So if you're anything like me, someone who likes structure and clearly articulated tasks to sink your teeth into, one resilient thing might be up your alley. Dylan's prompt is to go outside and find a pattern in nature and think about how it could apply to permaculture design. I've also put this up as a free post on Patreon, which is at patreon dot.com forward slash reskillience, in case you'd like to read it and share your insights. And if you want to hear Dylan and I discuss this exercise, I've popped that part of the conversation right at the end of the episode.
00:06:07
Speaker
Well, here is the excellent and understated Dylan Graves being welcomed by the sounds of a Tui, a shining and chatty bird native to Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Exploring Permaculture Practices
00:06:23
Speaker
I was living overseas in Asia and had a little balcony and then basically just started wanting to grow some stuff on the balcony. And when I started researching what things I could plant, you know, permaculture coming up. And yeah, I guess I also had a childhood that was on a little bit of land. And so I was kind of connected to to the land as a child. And then in my young adult life, i I was totally disconnected from that. I was in the city, I was in the in the rat race, as it were. And so I had a period of
00:07:08
Speaker
at least 10 years, completely disconnected from nature, I would say almost, living the city life. And it wasn't making me happy. I was getting paid well. I had lots of money. I was spending a lot of money doing travel and things like that. And I still wasn't happy. And so when I found Permacool, just through just wanting to grow something again, I was a rabbit hole and I ran into it deep and I have got into it really deep and so I did lots of reading lots of watching videos and right into it and I then just kind of just converted my life.
00:07:53
Speaker
different life and I was doing conventional teaching overseas in international schools and then I've just transitioned into now teaching permaculture wherever I can. Of course it's not a full-time job but ah I do is what I can when I can and Yeah, back to your question of how deeper I am into it would be, yeah, constantly reevaluating how I live and what I'm doing. And and unfortunately it's it's so difficult because it's easy to make mistakes. It's easy to do this kind of, I don't know, almost just get trapped into doing things a certain way. It's difficult to explain, but
00:08:43
Speaker
So say one example would be yeah even permaculture, you know, it has a lot of things that are publicized within it. And then actually, when you step back and you can go into a deep, totally not really necessary. Say, for example, swales. Well, it works. That's a huge big section of permaculture. It has great uses, but a lot of the time it actually isn't that necessary. So for example, swales might stop erosion, might stop water flow across the surface of land, but actually so will long grass. And so if you just graze less and allow the grass to grow a bit longer, it negates needing a swale. And therefore if you don't need the swale, well then you don't need to spend the diesel on the big machine to come and do the swale.
00:09:34
Speaker
But I've made similar kind of mistakes to that where I've used the Perth working machine and then later on I've realised actually I really didn't need to spend that diesel, that carbon footprint on doing that. So I think it takes many many years to really understand perigulture. And perhaps there's a failure there of the Permaculture Design certificate course. It's not actually getting deep enough into the philosophy. I know it's only two week course for 72 hours or 90 hours.
00:10:12
Speaker
but fundamentally it means that a lot of people are doing stuff unnecessarily and they're getting into it too quickly almost. We're not taking it slow enough, I fear. Yeah, that's part of what's missing. That's one of your questions you said, and it's part of what's missing in the permaculture conversation I think is sometimes when we're remember missing the drawing, sometimes we're not being idealistic enough perhaps, and large amounts of damage are being done. I don't know. here is night with that Well, actually I wanted to put a little dog ear in this page because I'm super thrilled that you want to go there with the What's Missing in Permaculture conversation and I'd love to hear your examples and also an embellishment on that statement of not being idealistic enough. That is a really cool flip. But anyway, that's very fertile territory and I want to come back to that. But I don't want to skip over Dylan, the transition phase of your life because
00:11:11
Speaker
I know that beyond you know the theory and the wonders of permaculture and all the stuff we're interested in, a lot of us are just interested in how other people have created their own a little like desire line off the mainstream to go somewhere different.
Financial Strategies for Sustainable Living
00:11:27
Speaker
Because it's really, really tough sometimes. There are blackberries and gorse and all kinds of shit to trip you up if you don't want to do the done thing anymore, right? You said that it's still difficult to make a living. in I suppose that's what I'm inferring from what you said. um doing permaculture, but how did you transition maybe like, you know, the psychological elements, the financial elements, the geographic elements away from that great teaching career to something altogether more grounded and probably a little bit tougher? I kind of decided when I was younger, because I was about 19 or 20, I decided that I wanted to retire by 35. That's before, long before I'd found permaculture.
00:12:10
Speaker
And we'll I was just thinking recently why I had already decided that. And I guess it was because I see people working until age 65. They work so hard. And then they go and they might buy a camper van or they might go overseas and start traveling. And I just thought, well, for me that's really the wrong way around doing things that we need to actually experience and live life when we're young and not feel most of your life working 40 to 60 hours a week chasing the dollar.
00:12:48
Speaker
Somehow I figured that out really young and so I was working hard between 22 to that 35 trying to get basically trying to get get free and have a bit of land or get a house and luckily by the time I had found permaculture I did have a piece of land and Yeah. And then when I decided to move back to that land, which was in Australia, I just saved some money so that I had some money. I didn't have to work for the first two or three years. And then I could use the savings to live on and to develop the property into something where I didn't need lots of money. And our transition is basically being to try and have low
00:13:41
Speaker
expenses so that you only need low income. It works very well with permaculture and unfortunately you see a lot of permaculturists trying to maintain the same livelihood levels as everybody else by doing permaculture and Most of the time it doesn't really work because there's just not enough market. And then it makes Paraculture become exclusive. It becomes, for those who are privileged enough to be able to take to re-software and be able to pay $2,000 for a course and so on. It it's becomes less and less accessible. so
00:14:25
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's one of the places where permaculturists are trapped in the main capitalist system. They just want to kind of replace something bad with doing it the permavulture way, but not actually downsizing, not reducing your actual means to to live. So yeah, but then there are lots of permaculturists living below the poverty line. And that I think it very right every permaculture of Y is doing that, but then permaculture courses and that would be key. It'd be nice.
00:15:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's a conundrum because I do realize that people want security when they do get older. They want something in their retirement. They want to accumulate some kind of wealth to look after themselves when they are at that point, sometimes in the future when they need some money for an operation or or something like that. So I do understand it. and I do have that worry too. Yeah. yeah Yeah okay thanks for the honesty and I suppose my question is if you hadn't had that pretty savvy strategy in your 20s and 30s to at least have that patch where you could live a
00:15:47
Speaker
a degrowth style existence and actually do that unsexy thing of of living on less, which so many of us don't want to do, but you did have to almost do more to get the less. If you hadn't have done that and you were a youngish person now, what would you be seeking as that proxy, you know, for security? Would you still be looking at land but just like in the middle of nowhere land? Or you would, I assume, have conversations pretty regularly with with students coming through your courses about this very thing? Is there yeah something that you offer to them in terms of advice or? Yeah, and we we get a lot of work exchanges.
00:16:31
Speaker
Some people call it woofers or they know it as woofers as well and I often do it back of the envelope calculation with them and I say You know you and your partner it This is based in Australia. So, you know, what's the sort of minimum wage you can get and I multiply that out over the number of hours in a week, weeks in a year, and maybe three to five years. And we we come up with a calculation of how much you can save. And I'm quite generous. I give them four weeks of holiday a year, then they don't have to work, and and so on. And I say to them, you basically need to find a a cheap way to live.
00:17:17
Speaker
whether that's going and doing work exchange instead of paying rent. you know Get yourself a van or a caravan. Get onto someone's land and spend four or five hours each week doing some job splitting and don't pay rent. And if you can just do that and work a normal 40 hour a week, I think two young people, ah they they can also grow quite a lot of their own food and they can save several hundred thousand dollars in three to five years. Now that might not be possible in every country in the world. Australia, you know, the wages are quite high.
00:18:00
Speaker
But what I tell them is that that's a five year sacrifice where you need to work very hard and you need to spend very small amounts. But then you can get yourself a property. It might not be get free. You might have still get a mortgage. but you will have a huge deposit to put down. And so then you can work but another five years to pay off the rest of the mortgage. And you might have a conventional job, but you might also just do laboring. And so I say to them, it might even be 10 years of your life that you've got to work hard, save hard, and then you can get land. And then you have no debt. And then you can live a simple life. And then you've got to find something that you're passionate about.
00:18:47
Speaker
and that's as equal as you can and then do that as your career do that as your job and perhaps you only need to work 15 to 20 hours a week and in the other 20 hours you have in your week then you can start giving back somehow to the world and again whatever you're passionate about Yeah, if I, part of your question was what ah what would I do if I hadn't already decided that it was 20 year old, I would possibly do to that route or I'd found permaculture earlier than I would probably be doing the implementation of people's designs for them because I see that as the most lacking in the world is that a lot of the time someone really wants the permaculture design and they can't do it themselves.
00:19:38
Speaker
they might be able to get a design, but most of the time it's some landscape companies that might be available to come and do it, but not a permaculture company. So, I mean, there are some out there in the world, permaculture companies doing implementations of designs, but I think a lot of the time is's there's not.
Community and Land Ownership
00:20:00
Speaker
that That's a niche in the market that I see and that I probably would go into if I was a young person trying to do that and yeah if you work hard doing that I think you would be able to make and a pretty good livelihood and do what I've just kind of said save up get a deposit together get some land
00:20:21
Speaker
Of course, the other options of of reducing your amount you need to earn is getting together with other people and learning to live with other people again and sharing. You know, getting people to get together, they put in X dollars and then they can buy it properly. That's big enough that they can all have their own little space on it. and set up a little community. I see that as something that's really necessary, can be a lot of fun, and and why wife couldn't young people do that? Why do people in their 50s or 60s need to be doing that kind of thing, which tends to be written the kind of stereotype?
00:21:06
Speaker
One of the people in the mid 20s getting together they buying land and having a little experiment and seeing if they can lift together a community and just have a, you know, an exit strategy. So if it's not working for you, you can sell out your share and get somebody else in there. And yeah, I think that would make the world a lot more interesting.
00:21:29
Speaker
This is great. I don't know what's more barefoot than the barefoot investor, but this is like permy level, calloused, filthy footed, barefoot investor advice that you're giving us right now. And I really appreciate it. And I love to that additional reflection around sharing land because I did want to follow up with your thoughts on co-living. And um obviously, as you probably know, I've just been living at Meliodora for a few years and it feels and that was just intensely wonderful as an immersion and David and Sue feel like my elders and family, but it seems to be that there's this limit to how long people stay in a situation like Meliodora or Simila because we all, I don't know, want to spread our wings. It's like we've been incubated there and then something happens and there's this yearning for our own patch, our own failures, our own autonomy in a way. so
00:22:25
Speaker
Yeah, it's nice to hear you speak about the fun and experimentation that can come of sharing land and not that it might be perfect, but that that is a valid option. You have workaways there with you. Do you have them all the time or is that seasonal? Actually when in in Australia, so we were in Australia for eight years and.
00:22:48
Speaker
Strangely enough people would not do their research and not actually figure out exactly where we were and we had a lot of people come in the winter when it was freezing cold and there the spare guest room we had wasn't heated and people were used to still cut and so actually we were almost all year round it wasn't as seasonal as we had thought it would be and I guess in the summer months is when there's more work around and so Holiday workers were tending to come and do the work exchange with us when there was less paid work around and so that would be a way for them to save money as well.
Volunteer Hosting and Management
00:23:28
Speaker
So, we tended not to be that seasonal actually and it just ebbs and flows. Sometimes you're really busy, other times not so. Sometimes you say no thank you to people if you don't really have a big project on at the time.
00:23:43
Speaker
um Yeah, it it really it depends a lot on the context of the game. There are some places where we just don't get a good flow of people coming through where we are right now. We're in the south of New Zealand. It's not so much on the tourist trail. And so we might get, say, less people than if we were I don't know, on the East Coast near Christchurch or if you're in near Hamilton, you might get a lot more flow of tourists coming past. And what's it like to be a host? Is it infuriating at times? Do you struggle to share that space with people? Are you just incredibly social and it's a breeze? What's your experience as a host? We could talk about that for but an hour or two.
00:24:30
Speaker
great Um, what, what we have found, uh, is that we tend to try to only take people interested in agriculture for white. That's, that's kind of our first thing. Second, we try and take people with references, but we do give other people a chance. If they write a really good message to us, then we often will give them a chance. But generally from references, you can tell whether they're going to work high. or not than whether they're going to make you around or not. And we do hear lots of stories of work exchanges and not actually helping so much and actually will cost people a lot of money actually and break things and that stuff. So yeah, those were kind of our main two things. Are they interested in program culture and do they have references? Then we tended to have a lot less problem.
00:25:26
Speaker
And then we kind of just set the set the expectations quite early on of what we're expecting. And then we just try and have it a really open communication. yeah Sometimes, you know, after an hour of work. We kind of have to sit down with people and say, look, this is what ah what's happening here. And yeah, and then and then people change. Sometimes they don't. We kind of need to take them to the bus stop, as it were, and they carry on on their journey. But it does cost a lot of money to host people. I mean, we try and feed them top quality food, and it takes our time to teach people
00:26:09
Speaker
ah we slow right down to to skill them up. So we couldn't really afford to have people if they weren't actually going to help. yeah yeah mean i I enjoyed it a lot because I travel i had already traveled quite a lot and so this was travelers coming to me rather than me having to go out and and meet meet people from overseas ah and and chat and talk and get to know their countries. and so I really liked it like that. It was it was great and yeah, the social time and you you basically get friends um quite quickly and you keep in touch with them and they follow your journey and and you know, you check in with them and see what they're doing and so you make friend, really good friend. It's a way I think that we can really have a strong impact on on people's life.
00:27:01
Speaker
And so any things that are negative about it, I think that kind of outweighs, we know that we're doing something positive for them, so it kind of outweighs the negativity, there the loss of privacy or the bits and, you know, there are hassles sometimes and that's it's just human nature of of people that you don't know and that's fine. So already in this conversation, I feel like there's this is really nice thread of doing less. I don't even want to say less is more, but making compromises, making peace with different ways of living, whether that be hosting people or going without
00:27:39
Speaker
certain expenses that are ultimately going to offer you freedom in the long run. With that kind of thread running through, would you be able to describe your patch and your home and just give us a little bit of a taste of your daily rhythms with maybe some emphasis on what you do go without that people might find surprising or
Living Simply and Frugally
00:28:02
Speaker
confronting? I mean, I guess we go without weekends because we just, you know, whether it's fine, we work. And then Monday to Sunday, when the weather's fine, we're doing a construction project. i worked One day, we're now in a nearby town for the Environment Centre. Olivia does, Olivia's my partner, she does some English tutoring, online mostly. And so,
00:28:31
Speaker
I think our combined income might be something like $500 a week maybe. And so at the moment we've spent all our savings. And so we're going to be living week to week on that amount. and Basically we can only do improvements as we save up a bit more money again. And it's going to be tight because we're not earning to two and a half thousand in a week, you know, like normal working people are. But that's cool. We will just have to take it slow. But most of our basic needs will be met soon. and We still don't have a hot shower. We still don't have and heating in the tiny house. There was no heater. But it's been cold. And we stay warm by putting our hot water bottle on our feet at night. We do have a little solar sister.
00:29:29
Speaker
So when the sun's been shining, we have a little electric blanket, one one between two of us, and that heats up the bed a little bit, gets us warm. But yeah, it's been a little hard because it's been pretty cold. But now we have our deck and our wood fire gonna come soon. We'll get a bit more comfortable. We've been living on a very small solar system, so very limited power. So I guess we're going it without the conventional power, you know, click a switch and there's plenty of whatever you want. So it takes time to heat up a little bit of water on a gas stove. And when it is cloudy for three or four days, then you really got to conserve the power. yeah Given your taste for retirement, are you looking to increase that $500 a week combined income? Or is that sufficient for you into the future? The one thing I often wonder with folks is when do they cap themselves? and
00:30:24
Speaker
I don't know, maybe normal people don't. They're just like, we infinite money if they had the opportunity to make infinite money. But you are such a thoughtful person. And you've thought deeply ah about yeah your finances and your freedom and that balance. Like, where would you stop yourself with ah with weekly income? Well, I mean, ideally, we we wouldn't be working much at all. We would just be doing our chemical teaching. And in Australia, we were probably earning and living on about 10,000 Australian dollars a year. And we were still comfortable. It was nicer when we were on more like 18,000 that those years we had had a little bit of money. We would it go away and do a course and that would be kind of a combined holiday. And usually it was only one of us at a time, but I would go
00:31:12
Speaker
who rub and pay for it and go and do her course one year and basically take a week away from the property and if either would stay and look after all the animals and then the next year she would go and that that's kind of how we had a holiday and how we also upskilled ourselves but yeah we don't have you know ah holiday to get ah away very often. And what that means is that we appreciate it when we do. When somebody comes and looks out for the place and we have helpers that are good enough that we can go away for a week and relax, then yeah, that's really appreciated there. We did get to the point in Australia where we really didn't have to work very much at all.
00:31:57
Speaker
And we were growing a lot of our food, so it was basically just enough to pay for your external expenses, you know, cell phone and running a white vehicle. Yeah, yeah an occasional trip away to go do a course. Now that we've got a new project and I'm quite ambitious for this project, I i want to step it up. I kind of do need money to step it up. I have to be honest. Yeah. But you know what's happening is that we're getting support from other people who do have excess money. And so we're starting to see another kind of generous generosity that's happening in the world where people who do have more than what they need are starting to share. And it's great to be part of that because what that means is that I don't have to go and do the work
00:32:56
Speaker
and then delay all the things that I want to do on the property. One of the things I would like to do is offer people a space to come and try to do some kind of enterprise where I would mentor them and they would have use of the sheds and the tools and stuff like that. And setting up a micro-binance fund for that. Now, I'm not going to be able to fund that because it would take me the way that I'm currently work even if I went back to full-time teaching, it would take me a couple of years to save up that kind of money.
00:33:34
Speaker
So what I would like to do is actually get people to kind of contribute towards that so that I don't have to take two years and delay everything by two years to go and do the work. if That makes sense. And some people think I'm dreaming. That's not going to happen. But we've already had support to get this property. And so that's encouraging. What do I need money for on the property? Well, it's a sheep farm. It's very conventional. There's basically quite large paddocks and I would love to put in more fencing to make those paddock sizes much smaller. I would also like to double fence most of it most of the areas of the paddock so that we can put in really wide windbreaks, shelter bells and also do agroforestry type stuff.
Permaculture in Conventional Contexts
00:34:22
Speaker
Yeah, unfortunately it costs money to do those things. If you want to do them quickly, yes we could grow living fences
00:34:30
Speaker
but growing 11, then it's just going to take four or five years before it's functional. So, yeah, I'm already halfway through my life. And so, speeding those things up requires that. Yeah, well, i I suspect that a lot of people would be really flawed to hear how little you do live on and have lived on in the past, which is just great for us to all share. I think that can be really, really remedial and an important part of the transparency around what we actually need. And then this other part of your answer, which is the phillan philanthropic slash fair sharing of resources and funds that are are already in our communities. I'm seeing that here too in our region.
00:35:19
Speaker
There are some older couples who have made money in one way or another and they're consciously gifting that money out to folks who they see as doing really important work in their spheres, you know, friendship circles and local spheres. And it's absolutely blowing my mind. Like it's, you know, suddenly how much you earn, earn blows apart these taboos that kind of perpetuate all of this unconscious, like scrambling for more and more. And also this taboo around taking other people's monies pretty big as well. um When you spoke about accepting those gifts from from people for your land, for your projects, how are you going about finding that resourcing? like Is that something that's coming to you through the flow of gifts in that gift economy or are you actively seeking people to fund these projects? What's your approach? Firstly, the accepting gifts is very difficult. yeah We have
00:36:16
Speaker
Certainly in the Western world, we have this feeling of obligation. So somebody gives you ah buys a coffee, you feel obligated that you need to pay that back at some point. So maybe next week you make the effort and try and buy the other person back a coffee. We have that at the part of our culture, I guess. And it's difficult, it's difficult to risk the configure without feeling obligated that you owe that person back something. And i I still feel that obligation. So the gift that we've received via the property, in a way I am obligated. It's not really written down anywhere, but I'm obligated, steward, part of for the land now.
00:37:05
Speaker
Stewart the land and give it back to nature. And so almost half of the property is going to return back to native bush. And I've taken it upon myself that I'm going to be steward of that and try and protect that as well as I can to enable it to regenerate as best as it can.
00:37:30
Speaker
And that, that gift came to us completely out of the blue. It was someone who had followed our journey for 10 years. And, uh, yeah, they just loved what we did. And just to kind of one time they said, you know, if you, if you find the right property and you need some help, like I want to help you. And we kind of just brushed it off. We didn't think it was serious. And then when when they said at the third time, it was like, wow, they actually seem serious. And I mean, I i went, are you okay? But I didn't really, I really couldn't believe it. And then when we did find ah this property, when we showed it to them, they were like, yeah, I want to help you. And it it was amazing. It was sometimes I can't believe it's happened. And then and another,
00:38:26
Speaker
couple of friends gifted us a vehicle. We were borrowing it and I was about to give it back and they said, well, you can just keep it. And they did that because somebody else gifted them at some past point in their lives, gifted something to them that they really that. And so, yeah, yeah that and then it's happened a third time. So now that it's happened three times, it's like, wow ah okay maybe we can actually use this so that we can then help lots of other people that makes sense you know like if i can have 10 enterprises up on the property to help in young people set up their own little business that's me giving back because one of the things i believe in largely is is a re-localization
00:39:18
Speaker
I think that is the key to most of the problems in the world, is to actually undo the globalization and go back to local. You know, have a local person who can make furniture, have a local person who can make socks and hats and so on. ah And I see small into enterprises Small livelihood, not people trying to make $70,000 a year, but people wanting to try and make maybe $20,000 a year making furniture. And they don't have to do it 40 hours a week. It could be more of a...
00:39:55
Speaker
Hard time. You know, 50-50 part of your life maybe. Make furniture, rent some money, still have a business as that. So we'd kind of have to do a two-in-one then. We have to basically get people doing their passion but also hopefully getting people doing it and not feeling the need that they have to keep up with the Joneses. They don't have to earn huge nami. I think $70,000 is quite large. Yes, so what I've done is I've put together a presentation outlining the little history of how we've got the property and what we want to do on the property and just putting it out to select people when people show an interest or some people we think might be interested.
00:40:39
Speaker
We've just passed it around and we'll we'll see what happens. and Like I say, if we get funding, things can happen very quickly. If we don't, it's just gonna, I'm still gonna do it. It's gonna take a lot longer. I really loved hearing yeah the reframe from debt to indebtedness and how the indebtedness spiral or cycle is actually a really positive thing when we lean into the receiving and the gifting on, and it's not actually a circle. it's like
00:41:10
Speaker
Kind of currents going in all directions because you're not necessarily paying those people back and how beautiful is it that the money that I see as cold and ruthless actually now in being gifted has some added bluster of of loveliness because it's coming along with this obligation that you feel to do something really meaningful. with that money so I just feel really inspired by that story and also just reflecting that you've experienced that a few times and I know that people listening might feel like oh what the heck this guy's just the luckiest person ever but actually you're putting things out there and doing things without an expectation of receiving that is seeding these gifts and
00:41:56
Speaker
I don't know, it just, and it can sound baffling to a person who's so used to doing one thing and getting something back um in such a linear fashion and and I'm seeing that happen here and there's much more to it than just happenstance, I think. Yeah, and it, you know, like, there's that really simple thing that I think a lot of permaculture people teach is that they do that little example, the $20 note, and Somebody can keep the $20 note in their pocket until they need it. And then when they spend it, you follow that little journey of the $20 note and it it can pass between many different people and at each time it allows an exchange of a good or service. And if you put the $20 in the bank,
00:42:48
Speaker
doesn't have the knock on effects. It doesn't allow one person to buy something and then that person to buy something and the next person to buy something. So I think i think peter people are realising that money sitting in a bank doesn't do much good to anyone except that one person.
Local Spending and Community Benefits
00:43:09
Speaker
Whereas you spend the money in thoughtful ways, if it can get then go around a local economy, It can do a lot of good. That's all we want to attract basically. We want to attract money to come into our local system of circulation and do good.
00:43:29
Speaker
I don't want to um miss out on the opportunity to ask you about permaculture and come back to that earlier topic of discussion which is what's missing from the permaculture discussion. So maybe a simple way in is, you know, what do you love about permaculture? Well, I love that it gives me hope. it's ah There's a lot of negative stuffs in the world, and I am fully aware of all the negatives. Like Bill Lawson, I'm angry. and I've been using that anger to drive me to try and make a better world, try and educate myself. I've just given myself and shared that with other people.
00:44:13
Speaker
ae I'd be working very hard at that. It drives me, just like a drive bill, drive bill. Dylan, what are you angry about? Can you elaborate on that? Well, I'm angry at all of the negative, negative things in the world. So all the problems make me quite angry. I mean, and I guess it's mostly stemming from the capitalist model and the expert exploitation of the earth and people. I guess from when I was really young, I've always been a nature lover. So I've always liked going for walks, being out in nature and observing the beauty of nature. And so as I've got older, and I've seen all the negatives in the world. Most of it's about destruction of that beauty and that, that loss that were the constant loss of all sorts of things, you know, species extensions and so so on.
00:45:11
Speaker
So yeah, that makes me angry. And then of course, why do we need a world with so many poor people? You know, we have plenty of food and plenty of material goods where we want to be comfortable and happy. And yet more than half the world not. So yeah, that makes me angry, but I can't see a way to change that except by how I'm living. And so yeah, that's, I guess, where permaculture gives me some of those ethics and principles to follow to help me do those things. And it gives me hope that if lots of people start doing this, then we can start to change things.
00:45:54
Speaker
What's your own personal permaculture practice and way of communicating that out? We're kind of doing the whole permaculture homestead the second time around. But like I said, I want to step it up. And so the stepping up of it, it's doing all these other extra projects on top. ah We were just homesteading, which was just trying to buy food and share Share that with other people how to do that. But this next step I'm talking about now is actually getting people to be able to come and do the enterprises. So there's the enterprise part. There's the native forest regenerative part.
00:46:36
Speaker
and be able at heart move to add more trees to the landscape in doing those other two agreements and also integrate that with the farming side of it because we're actually by default a farmer now and annoyingly that's the government and the capitalist system that forces us to do that because if we don't continue farming on the land then then you have to pay back your GST on the purchase price of the property And so now and youre we're kind of hooked into doing some level of farming. So what I would like to do with that, and take that as a positive, is to do the sheep farming, but in more of a clinical way. And number one, that is to implement more tree systems in that.
00:47:26
Speaker
We have some trees, some shelterbelts but not nearly enough and I'd love to be able to show that you can reduce the amount of pasture you have and not lose productivity because I think that the animals would eat the trees if you find the right tree they will take that as fodder. So the leaf drop in autumn will you do some prunings, will you do chop and drop when it's dry, when they need a boost. They will get the extra nutrition from that which will make them healthier. The meat caused will be better. We need that demonstrated and I don't know if it is being demonstrated and certainly it needs to be demonstrated in every different context to actually get people to change.
00:48:10
Speaker
say I'd like to do that as well. So there's kind of three projects in one there, really. And so that's the kind of mix that while I'm talking about agriculture, that's kind of where
Scaling and Teaching Permaculture
00:48:21
Speaker
I'm at. I'm ready to do that kind of stuff. We're just getting out ourselves set up so we can grow our own food and be comfortable. But then it'll be into that, into planting trees and trying to find, you know, trying to find ways to plant trees on scale without spending on some money. Because if I haven't got the money, I have to do it.
00:48:42
Speaker
the cheap way. And if I can do it, the cheap way that mean becomes accessible to lots of people to do it the cheap way, because obviously that's the biggest limitation is $4 to plant one tree. It's just too much, you know? And if we can take it further into the teaching realm, how are you teaching permaculture differently? Yeah, well, I did Robin Clayfield's dynamic groups and creative facilitation course. And it's it's a amazing. And that changed my whole way of teaching. iron um Up to that point, I was a really traditional teacher. So I was teaching computers, information technology. And so all my lessons were run from a PowerPoint.
00:49:31
Speaker
And it was nice because then I could kind of just cruise through the lessons. If I forgot what to say next, then I would just quickly zip onto the next slide. And oh yeah, yeah now now we're going to do this and now we're going to talk about that. I'd have it all mapped and planned out. and the creative facilitation is all about, well, yes, PowerPoint's fine. It works for some people in your audience, some of your students, it works fine. But there's a lot of people there who are zoning out and it doesn't work for them. And so it forces you to look at all the different learning styles and then trying to make your teaching so that it
00:50:17
Speaker
gets all the different styles you know so and and mostly it's about making it interactive get people doing stuff because then they will take it more they will learn more by doing and get into contributing sides After that course, I started to see myself more a facilitator than a teacher. So I'd like to facilitate the group to share what they already know with each other. And in most of the workshops that I do, out of the whole group of, say, 10 people, there's always someone that knows the answer to almost everything. The knowledge is written in those 10 people by default. And so it's bringing that out.
00:51:05
Speaker
And when one person gets to explain it to somebody else, often they explain it better than I do. Or it just, it's taken in by other people because it's not just one person talking, talking, talking, half the people falling asleep, so on. So but did Robin Clayfield's course twice, and I did Orson Rosemary Morrow's course, which which is more about permaculture teaching. And she does the same thing, why way more interactive. singing songs, getting people up and doing activities. Lot less sitting down, listening. Lot less lecturing.
00:51:43
Speaker
How did you pacify your inner orator who wants to stand on a bench and yell? Like so many of us, and I definitely include myself in this, just love to talk. We love to hold forth on things. And especially as a teacher, you can get really entrenched in that style of communication. Was it was it easy to give your inner orator a bone to chew on while you facilitated beautifully what was already there in the group? Or ah has it been a process of reconciling with the fact that you don't get to just Wave your hands and talk all the time anymore Yeah, well like likely I'm probably not that much of a talker like teaching didn't come so naturally to me it was when I decided to come a teacher was a massive challenge because I I am a shy person and quite introvert and so when I went to teachers college it was like well, this is gonna
00:52:35
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not sure I can do this. And it was a massive challenge to become a teacher. And I was generally pretty uncomfortable standing up in front of a class and talking. It was difficult. I had to act. I mean, it's not my natural personality. So I felt like I was an actor in front of my class. And so perhaps that's made it a little easier when I transition to doing facilitation. It's great because now most workshops are different. Every workshop's being unique, way more unique than when I used to do it just by PowerPoint.
00:53:10
Speaker
then I would just go for it and i just become a bit more like a robot, which is a bit sad really. Yeah, totally. And I feel like this applies to lots of different situations that we find ourselves in, not just to kind of formalized, organized educational space. What are some of the things that you do and that potentially we could all do when interacting with other people that just open up those possibilities rather than shut them down? When you, when you do rolling playthroughs, it's a week long course. When you do that twice, you get given so many examples of little icebreakers and little activities. And then she has these cards or that a card and it guides you in what to do. And it's often quite challenging and you've got to be creative and
00:54:04
Speaker
I actually found it really stimulating. I actually really like it. It forces me to be more creative and and not really a creative, but more of mathematical science, logical type brain. And so I found it great. And like you say, people do like talking. So I think if you give people the opportunity to share what they know, When they see at the beginning of the workshop that that's how it's going to be, the dynamic changes and it shifts quite quickly. And once they realize that it's a safe space where they can share what they know, all sorts of things come out and people really start to just relax and be themselves.
00:54:54
Speaker
It still challenges one as a facilitator though, because you still have to do the classic thing. You still have to watch for people that aren't participating. And you, you know, I feel good when I can bring those people out of their shell and get them to contribute as well. And most of the activities are designed to do that. You don't put people on the spot. You put people in pairs, you put people in little groups, you split the group in two and Yeah, I think if you keep your yeah know keep doing that, brings out even the shyest person yeah to talk and have a say. Yeah, people can go away thinking, well, I was able to contribute and I learned a whole lot. And yeah, feedback's been great. Well, Dylan, I know that you are really interested in bio chat and have
00:55:49
Speaker
a lot of knowledge on that topic.
Biochar and Its Agricultural Impact
00:55:51
Speaker
And I wonder if you'd like to share some of that ah to kind of close out the conversation, why you are really excited about Biochar and what the application is for people who haven't tried that before. Alright, I'll tell you what biochar is first. So, most of our world were in the carbon based world. So, the chair is sitting on, the desk, it's all basically made out of carbon. Man.
00:56:23
Speaker
What we do in biochive is that we burn away everything except the carbon. We try to keep the carbon. And so if you do take a piece of wood and you heat it up and it starts to smoke, we burn that smoke. And then it will gas us some more and You get the flames. And when you look at a piece of wood, it's not the wood burning in the beginning. blame The flame that always separated from the wood, there was a gap. And so it's all the gases coming out of that wood that are actually burning in the beginning once we've started eating it, right?
00:57:08
Speaker
And so what we want to do is we want to burn away all those volatiles, all those gases and leave behind the carbon skeleton. And then that carbon skeleton is like a sponge. because when that piece of wood was a tree, it was living. Liquids are going up and liquids are coming down and air is going up, air is going down. And most plants that are in that with million of these little tubes going up and down. And so when we get the carbon skeleton, it's full of all those holes, all those nanotubes. And so, like I said, it's sponge there.
00:57:50
Speaker
and so that sponge can really hold a lot of water. Biochar holds three times its weight in water and then it's also a sponge for biology and a sponge for a nutrient. There's a process that happens when you do the high temperature burn that makes the cation exchange capacity such that it then holds onto nutrients. So it will attract the calcium ion, for example, it would hold onto the calcium. And so what that means is that once you've burnt some material, you can control the amount of air getting in, so that you end up with lots of carbon at the end, that carbon sponge then can be inoculated. We can inoculate it with biology, or we can inoculate it with nutrient.
00:58:40
Speaker
or depending on context, you can do a bit of both. And then you can apply it to soil. Now you can do that in dozens of different ways, but basically once you can get it in the soil, it's going to hold the water and it's going to provide the biology you put it in there or it's going to provide the nutrient if you put it in there. If you didn't inoculate it at all then it will still hold water well, it will improve the structure of the soil and the biology will naturally go into it over time and it will hold nutrients over time. Though if you did some in the soil and then you did some kind of fertilization instead of
00:59:25
Speaker
the fertilizer going through the soil profile and and being leached out when it's watered or when it's rained a lot. So as it passes through the biochar, the biochar would hold on to its growing issue. So it makes fertilization way more efficient. It makes it kind of last long. And yeah, you can put it out in the soil when you plant a tree. You can put it into potting mix. You can put it into compost. You can put it into your compost toilet system, your animal bedding.
00:59:58
Speaker
You can apply it on the top of the soil, kind of like as a mulch. Lots and lots of ways to get it out and feed it to animals and get them to take it in and then poop it out. So something very similar to bychards called activated carbon and that's often used in poisoning. So if you overdose some kind of pharmaceutical or too much alcohol or something and you you're basically poisoned and you go to hospital, they give you activated carbon because ah it it attracts and holds onto all of those things and then you pass it out. So biochar is doing the same in the soil. And the other great thing about burning that biomass is that it becomes a form of carbon that doesn't really decay. Biology doesn't really eat it up. So it stays in the soil for a long, long time. This all came about from
01:00:58
Speaker
the soils in South America called terra pareta and generally in the tropics soil is very low in nutrient and usually you can only grow a crop for one or two years and then you have to go to some other land and let it regenerate. get it's nutrition back before you can go back and you might only be able to come back seven years to 15 years later to grow a crop and they found these soils that they could keep growing on them year after year after year. The soils were these deep dark black soils and they figured it out that it was biochar in effect and that stimulated a huge amount of research into biochar
01:01:45
Speaker
and what it is how it can be used and basically Every different kind of biomass gives you a different kind of biochar out. Like in permaculture, diversity is always good. So I always say to my students and anyone who told me about biochar too, use a diverse amount of input. You don't burn just one wood, put lots of different wood in when you're making it, and you're going to get in a diverse biochar coming out. I can't think of any
01:02:16
Speaker
other thing that you can do to the soil that's going to be there for hundreds or thousands of new years. They've found biochar in soils in Russia, the plains of North America, that that's 20,000 years old and it's probably not very naturally. If anthroprogenics gets from people doing burns and stuff like that on purpose and leaving the child behind and if they can see that you got it still there 20,000 years, well, that means that when you improve your soil in your vegetable garden or in your pasture, it's for your children and their children and their children and keeps going to for hundreds and hundreds of generations that you've improved the soil. And
01:03:08
Speaker
The way I came across biochar was because I was living in a sandy soil region of Australia and we needed a way for it to hold more water. It was just draining too easily. It's so dry all the time. You put compost in and the compost just disappeared. It lasted ah one one or two months and it was gone. And so I came across biochar started adding that to the soil and just made the soil so much more resilient and after we had a really long drought it just bounced back so much quicker after and it thought it raining again so yeah and I was kind of hooked on it and that's of been another rabbit hole that I've gone down into quite deep it's quite controversial
01:04:01
Speaker
I think that the big ag companies don't want people to know about biochar because it takes away significantly from what they're doing. Because it would mean they would sell a lot less fertilizer because there's a lot less leaching happening.
01:04:21
Speaker
But it is a fantastic way to sequester carbon. So it's one of the few methods of carbon sequestration that's when there's all this. greenwashing and stuff about how we fix the planet. We got to draw down the carbon. Well, it's actually a way we'll draw it down. Quite, you know, realistically, it does is really carbon negative. And we do currently burn lots of waste material. And so if we can convert those two by trying to get them into the soil,
01:04:58
Speaker
Yeah, it would make a huge difference. So that's why I spent a lot of time promoting it. And even if it wasn't for that carbon sequestration reason, it's got so many other benefits. So is it a matter of applying biochar once or twice? And because it is so long lasting, you're done? Or do you get to the point where you're just growing lettuces in beds of blackened biochar? Because it's just so great and like who even needs soil? Some people have done little experiments where they fill up little pots of different amounts, different percentages of the biochar. You could grow something and in 100% biochar, but you'd have to be giving it some kind of nutrient source. It'd basically be like aquaponics. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not actually a fertilizer. It's a soil amendment that it makes your fertilizer work or go through.
01:05:57
Speaker
But research shows that even a 2% bar value makes a difference to crop yield. So 2% is still a fair amount but I would say you could be adding by chart to your sort of your like home market garden, you could be adding it for several years before you would get into too much. Yeah, phenomenal. If you could get up to, you know, 10 to 20% biochar in say the top 20 to 30 centimetres of your soil, yeah, you're going to grow some different vegetables for sure.
01:06:35
Speaker
Nice. Well, I'm aware that we could have been talking about biochar for the entire conversation. So I wonder if there's a way that people can connect with you over this, or if you have an offering around biochar, or if you're simply passionate about sharing that over the airwaves, because I know that folks will be curious. And if there's somewhere you can direct them, that would be wonderful. Yeah, i like I said before, I work for the Environment Centre in Riverton and they allowed me to put a webpage on their website. So, dedicated to biochar, it's got basically a large summary of everything to do with biochar, methods of how to make it, how to inoculate it, how to get it out of the soil, what it does and all that.
01:07:23
Speaker
kind of big salary so yeah i can give you that link and you can share Brilliant, yes. I feel like the show notes are always a repository of interesting shit and I know I look at them for other podcasts and I'll definitely add that to this one. I also feel like I'd love to follow up with you at some point and see how your property is tracking and what you've been able to implement in that that opportunity that is presented to you around having to continue the sheep farming and yeah, the permaculture ways that you might do that.
01:07:57
Speaker
Yeah, see if I can actually shepherd sheep without a dog and without a quad bike and see how I go with that. So far I can move from paddock to paddock easily, but I haven't put them down in the yards yet to do anything with them at most quarters. So that's going to be the challenge. But yeah, it'd be good to check in at some point and then you can see if I had to get a dog or not. next Well, is there, what's the rationale for not having a dog? I would like to have the lowest stress sheep that I can so that the meat quality is unmatched. Because I think the stress, the stress hormones that are in meat actually makes meat and how people eat.
01:08:49
Speaker
Most of the meat we're buying, whether it's organic or regenerative or whatever, and most of it is still going through a conventional abattoir. And I think most of that meat is since healthy for people. It's just that reality, unfortunately. wait We eat that meat because at the moment we've only just got this property and you know, so yeah, what I would love to offer is a ah stress-free animal where it has a great life and then it's basically shot and doesn't even know it's been shot and it's dead and there's no stress involved. very yeah when what What happened and when we bought a property is that we leased the property to the ex-owner for another five months I think it was and so we saw him come and go every few days
01:09:45
Speaker
with one, two or three dogs. And we just hear the dogs basically yelling at the sheep all the time, chasing them. And even when they're in the yards, he leaves two dogs with them and they're just barking at the sheep constantly. And I just went, I don't want to do that. I find the barking of a dog that's stressful and so and the and the sheep are stressed for sure.
Stress-Free Farming Approaches
01:10:12
Speaker
I just, I'd like to just try and see if I can do it a different way. Maybe that's the rebel in me. Permaculture is full of rebels, isn't it? Holy shit. There are so many cans of worms that have just been opened at the 11th hour. And I know it's getting late over there, but I just really have to satisfy my curiosity on one point, which is, are you allowed to do home kill and sell it over there in New Zealand? Or is it the same as Australia where that can't be for commercial sale?
01:10:41
Speaker
i I don't know the rule exactly in both countries. They are similar rule. So it's my mission to find the way to do it. So my current understanding is that if I want to sell meat to you, you need to be the owner of that sheet for 28 days and you have to look after it for 28 days. Then the owner of your butcher can come to the property and and kill it and then you can consume it and pay for it. So I need to just find out whether I'm allowed to look after it, the 28 days on your behalf. And if I'm allowed to do that to me, then that might be a way to do it. So that's what I'm hoping.
01:11:31
Speaker
And we have a localised system of food delivery called the Longwood Loop through the Environment Centre as well, which is a direct consumer to the grower or grower to consumer. And so they're purchasing direct from each other and there's an electrical man travelling around every week. Jordan from Happen Films has done a filming of it and it's on one of his films and so there's a little bit of a network already and yeah I'm hoping I can find a loophole and I don't have to try and fight the whole system because I don't really want that as another big project but so far that
01:12:14
Speaker
That's what I'm thinking about. And I've got to do like March or April next year to figure it out. Cause that's ideally what I would love is is not to send any animal the way on a truck and just have the homekeeper to come and select selectively. Um, you're the ones that have been pre-ordered essentially and do it that way. Yeah. and i mean Fundamentally, why shouldn't industry allow a small percentage of local meat to feed local people? Why why do they need control over 100%?
01:12:57
Speaker
Why do they need to control all the local meat as well as all the exported meat? Why can't they be satisfied with just exporting 98% of New Zealand meat overseas and let us feed New Zealand with small farms while I do it? That's my other little mission, like, hope to be trying to accomplish. Yeah, that's your beef. and Why indeed it is baffling. And I'm glad that people like you are transforming their anger into action and doing things about it. I really, really enjoy hearing from you, Dylan. It's been such a pleasure to have your rebellious spirit on the Risk Alliance podcast. Thank you for reaching out and making the connection. I'm looking forward to speaking with you again.
01:13:49
Speaker
You're very welcome. And thank you. Thank you for all you're doing. I'm enjoying your podcast as well, very much. You can find Dylan mostly on the ground, but also a couple of places in the ether, which I've linked in the show notes. In particular, there are two resources on biochar that Dylan has written and or recommends that go into great detail, because I know some of you will be wanting to geek out on this stuff. Recently I ran into Richard Telford of Permaculture Principles and Abdullah House in Seymour, who's a total legend and a podcast listener, hey Richard, who showed me his latest biochar hack that involved pushing two Cooper's brewing tins together with a bit of cutting and crimping of the edges to make a vessel that fits inside your wood heater that then you can use to turn scraps or bones or wood chips into biochar.
01:14:41
Speaker
I'll link his Instagram that shows similar experiments, but perhaps if you're listening, Richard, you could share a little bit more about that one. And Koopas, if you're listening, want to send Richard a commission for closing the loop on your packaging? As always, thank you so much for spending time with Reskillience and supporting the show. I see your Spotify stars. I read your iTunes reviews. I feel the love when you send me personal messages of support.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
01:15:06
Speaker
In particular, I want to issue a public display of affection for the show's new patrons, Jenna, Sophie and Mick. And also Tully, Mike, Rachel and Kate from Purple Pear Farm for your kind words. With gratitude and with great faith that we're getting somewhere, I'm Katie and this has been episode 23 of Resculience. See you next time. um Well, that activity work is normally part of the introduction to permaculture workshop that I do and I try and do really interactive workshops. So I see myself as a facilitator rather than a teacher and I try not to do all the talking. I really have worked hard on getting
01:15:53
Speaker
everybody that's there really doing stuff. And so I was scratching my head, what do I do about patterns? Because it keeps coming back to me in my head that Bill Mollison says in his manual that patterns is the most important thing in permaculture. And so how do I get across that point? And so that's why I do that simple exercise. they Go out into nature, find a pattern, and then bring it back to the group. You can tell us what you see. This sort is an observed thing that is happening. And then and see how we can pull out the main patterns and then discuss about how do we actually use that in a design. How do we use that?
01:16:40
Speaker
some kind of way of making use of it in a landscape. And does life boil down to one or two really simple patterns? No, I think this' lots it there's lots. lots of patterns. Yeah, I think there's patterns in almost anything. So I would say no, I think it's probably a couple of dozen maybe. I mean, still that's not so many when I think of the grand complexity of life as we know it. Because when I was out there wondering around looking for patterns, part of my brain, maybe the overachieving, got to get an A plus school indoctrinated part of my brain was like, how can I find a pattern that
01:17:19
Speaker
other people don't find, so I don't look like this basic person who's bringing back the same old thing that everyone notices first up. So I do wonder, Dylan, like are there things that people often come back with as that pattern that that they're noticing, or are there things that really, really surprise you that come out of the woodwork with that exercise? No, I think it's not to me surprises, but you do see some people going out there and really trying hard to find something different. and There are some people who just want to come back quite quickly. I say go out for one minute and come back and then there's some people who stick to the one minute and then there's other people who really try to find something a bit different. But initially you get lots of leaves and you get the lots of, you know, the dendritic pattern and we always talk about that. So there's normally four or five people with leaves.
01:18:10
Speaker
And then there's more people who come with flowers than pipe cones. But it's it's okay because it's just an introduction and it's just an opportunity for them to start to see patterns that they probably haven't really noticed before. For a little bit more insight into the kind of things that I was seeing and essentially, um yeah, just that really, really common pattern of a central, the central kind of heart of the organism and then the branching and the differentiating and the finger-like projections that come off everything. So I was feeling like, gosh, trees aren't just one big leaf, right? They're not just one massive solar panel that's
01:18:50
Speaker
clunkily trying to follow the sun. there They're really spreading out and um occupying all those various opportunities and options to capture every little scarec of light. And I was seeing that in the mistletoe and I was seeing that in the moss and so many of those patterns. I was thinking of my own body, like my trunk, my torso, and then the flexible projections of my fingers and those little finer interactions that I have with the world because of those appendages. so I feel like there were lots of different things coming to me around what those that pattern was provoking and meaning, but a big one is like do a bunch of different jobs. So you have all these streams of income and energy capture mechanisms that feed back into your being. But I don't know, like what do you make of that pattern that is the the center and then the the hairiness?
01:19:46
Speaker
of stuff, like the planet is that too. Like if you were leading that permaculture group and I was seeing that pattern, like is there anything you could add to that? Do you have any thoughts on that? um Am I on the right track with how nature works in that way? Yeah, I mean, we often talk about the dramatic pattern and are I like to ask the question, why? Why is a tree like that? and Especially when we come up with a spiral pattern. Often someone will bring me a flower and then if you look at the flower directly center on, there's often a spiral or sometimes a double spiral.
01:20:29
Speaker
So the thing I put back to the students is like, why is it like that? And yeah like you said, it's about collecting the sun. And then we kind of go into, well, what else is it collecting? And what else is happening there? And so we get it into the trees are breathing and there's oxygen going in and and carbon dioxide coming out and so on. and um fluids water to treat them both breathing out but also they can absorb water through the leaves and so it then shows us well that's that's a pattern we can use in the landscape for distributing resources or collecting resources because that's what the trees doing it's giving out and it's collecting in and people I think
01:21:21
Speaker
can see that, yes, okay. We can design our pathways through our landscape so that it makes it efficient to distribute out the compost and collect it in the veggies. I think it was the introduction workshop, you only get a really short time and I keep having to tell them. we could we could spend a whole day on patents and then we're just spending 20-25 minutes on it so it's just kind of waiting there at the time for oh getting them going you know getting them starting to think about it and and hopefully maybe I'll go away and read some books or we'll watch some videos or even do a permaculture course at some point that for me is what the whole point of the introduction to permaculture workshops about is just yeah trying to get them into it. um