By Jade Miles
This is a conversation about the future. About creating a culture that values tomorrow. We reckon a slower, simpler, steadier existence is the first step - one that’s healthier for humans and the p
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The podcast currently has 158 episodes available.
Hungry? How bout a salad…trust me, after todays convo, you’re going to want to eat salad for breakfast, lunch & dinner. Not just the limp lettuce & store bought dressing kind of salad but one that tickles all your gastronomic senses. Once you've been satiated the convo settle into really chewing on the realities of this high energy lass' day to day existence: her rituals, her challenge to find the gaps to do the quiet things, learning to really be in the moment & finding her path to enoughness.
Alice Zaslavski has chatted with us on the pod before but since then her OTT love for food, food education & food appreciation has exploded into the stratosphere with another 3 cookbooks, her own radio segment on Saturday mornings & now her own cooking show on the ABC, you’ll still find her exuberance filling the pages of papers & magazines nationwide & for today you’ll her convincing you to serve salad for your every meal.
The pace of this human is dizzy-ing so its a strap in & hang tight kind of episode.
Links You'll Love
A bite to eat with Alice - ABC
Salad Days - Alice Zaslavski
Phenomenom - Free Lessons via the lense of food
Loved this? Try these:
Alice on Futuresteading previously
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We talked about:
Being a talker on paper
Her latest adventures in gastronomic pleasures
Listening to your body to understand what you need at the time.
Food as medicine deserves to be understood by all
Her ‘vegetable-forward’ food, centric Georgian heritage
Sharing a common vision but not always sharing the same timing ambitions
Movement has power - just start & collectively the energies come together
Breaking our daily fast with vegetables
Be ready & willing to adapt the recipes to suit yourself
The real life day to day juggle of such a busy busy life
Having a ‘wife’ in her ‘husband’
Learning to say a hard NO
Prioritising her health as the most important part of her job
Being lit up by all that you do so it doesn't feel like working a day of your life
Time to update the vision board
The soma response to birthing a new project
Building an enabling network to get into flow
Enabling others to be their most magic version of themselves
Being an extroverted extrovert - learning how to absorb human energy via a screen
Learning to speak English with Big Ted on Playschool
Wishing for more time with community
Making time for reading
Saying yes to the opportunities that ground you.
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This is a pour-a-cuppa kinda convo - Matilda Brown is a rare kind-of open book where nothing is off limits and despite not actually being her friend you get the distinct feeling that you must be.
Flipping a childhood acting career for a regnerative food business wasn’t part of her plan - actually nothing really is, this breath of fresh air claims to be “bumbling around with life, filling in time until she dies.” But her bumble is joyful & hopeful in the best way possible.
She & her husband Scott Gooding are the brains & brawn behind the Good Farm pre prepared meals range & they’ve just released a cook book with the same name - its as delightful as she is - This is her story!
Links You'll Love
The Good Farm Shop
the Good Farm Cookbook
Provinir
Loved this? Try these eps:
Alex from Cornersmith
Laura from Feather & bone
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Casual Support - Buy Me A Coffee
Regular Support - Patreon
Buy the Book - Futuresteading - Live Like tomorrow matters
We talked about:
Being an oversharer & wanting to know the details without any shame
Going through the world giving more than taking
Boobs peaking at 14
Fad diets of her teenage years without an understanding of nutrition
From actor to foodie
Life epiphanies via parenthood
Believing that the universe has your back & the lessons you are being served are necessary
Stumbling into a regenerative path
Creating Cow shares until they realised there was a hole in their bucket
The challenge of building a business around the true cost of a whole animal outside of the industrial food system
Creating a regenerative food business nuancing as they went.
Combining a regen story with convenience
Sharing more than just the business news in this nosey world…navigating sharing of personal stories
Avoiding a thick skin so you keep ‘feeling’
I have so much to learn as a spiritual being in a humans body, on a ride in a world that can’t be controlled or predicted.
Magic sits in the bumbling, rats & mice & problem children
Appreciating the things that money can’t buy
The value of being relational - shunning the online solution
The need to squeeze your closest folk
How many ‘no’s’ do you need before you get to the YES
Even when things are hard they can still be heart filling and they can make you FEEL so alive! This is living, side stepping numbness is when you feel your most alive.
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Summary
Life is impermanent. Precious but not entitled to length. The past is behind us, the future is unknown & all we have is this moment. Our role is to meet the moment.
Being overwhelmed with the assignment of bringing healing & protection to the earth, todays guest looked to Gaia as the source of guidance towards effortless harmony. Easier said than done but she found that our cultural inclination to constant self referencing & focussing on I, Me, Mine was the limitation.
Looking beyond the veil into another dimension & awakening her relationship to the earth allowed her to thread humility into all her actions & remembering that we are part of & conspiring with gaia in every living moment gave her the space to take a breath before acting.
She meditated
She took the radical act of pausing to gain clarity
She had the courage to step out of the old patterns
She undertook pilgrimages
She built global networks of healing & peace
She honoured those who are maintaining the ceremonies, prayers & connections that keep us all in balance.
She filled Earth Treasure vases and built a global mandala as her offering of 'sacred activism'.
This is her story.
Links You'll Love
Joanna Macey - the work that reconnects
Charles Eisenstein - new and ancient story podcast
Cynthia Jurs Book - Summoned by the Earth
Gaiamandala.net global healing community
Loved this ep? Try these:
E138 Osprey Oriel Lake
E105 Rosemary Morrow
Support the Show
Casual Support - Buy Me A Coffee
Regular Support - Patreon
Buy the Book - Futuresteading - Live Like tomorrow matters
We talked about:
Buddhism tradition of earth treasure vases - holy vessels with purpose
Being prepared within yourself before succumbing to a summoning
Bringing the earth back into balance
Filling small clay pots with prayers, offerings, traditions & intentions as a symbolic measure for healing & balance
Clay pots are kind of like living beings - they come alive in your hands
The clay includes many sacred substances linking them to ancestral lineages Allowing ancient practices to become relevant to the world today & to the people that are participating in the offering process
The capacity for different cultures, communities & lands to accept without assumption
Making offerings to the earth & the unseen-beings-without-a-voice that we know we need to keep in balance
Becoming a vessel but not imposing your own ideas & self importance on what you think is best for the world.
Getting down on her knees and opening her heart and asking for support from the unseen energy.
Our own true nature is so much a part of the nature of Gaia
“ When I learned how to get myself out of the way, form an intention, but allow that intention to unfold on its own without trying so hard to make it happen, things started to unfold in a very different way - in ways I never could have predicted"
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Summary
The age of short termism now dominates - Todays guest however takes long termism the way we all take breakfast (those not on a fasting regime anyway) Apparently he was born this way.
In his recently released book Taming the Apocalypse he states that the only remaining sustainable resources after industrialisation runs its course will be biology & culture. To prepare for this time, Shane Simonsen has an exceptionally original approach to zero input, large scale farming & has committed his life's plan of living long enough to connect varieties of crops that have been separated by 60 million years of evolution by creating plant hybridisation at scale - his seed collection rivals Svalbard the Global Seed Vault.
His thesis so far:
-The shortcoming of science is that it wants all organisms to behave like machines.
-If we have 1000 farmers over 1000 years doing this, we would see a miracle - not a machine.
- Now is the moment for sacrificial offerings of research & time for the sake of learning for future generations
- Putting seeds in the dirt NOT a seed bank is the best path to build genetic diversity
Links You'll Love
Shane Simonsen substack
Loved this? Try this:
Artists as family episode
Support the Show
Casual Support - Buy Me A Coffee
Regular Support - Patreon
Buy the Book - Futuresteading - Live Like tomorrow matters
We talked about:
Support the show
Summary
In a world dominated by a striving for endless growth, it can be hard to see that while a drive towards money and individualism is great for the economy, it is fundamentally destructive for humanity, community & ecology. This conversation tackles us relearning our ability to grow our environment with each other & to meet our own needs rather than outsourcing to those who will make the divisions based on profit. It asks us to opt for less transactions & more relationships, it addresses the epidemic of loneliness and it settles on the idea that a little bit of debt is a good thing - relational debt that is.
The time to navigate difficult & complex divisions to make us anti fragile is now but it requires us to heal our hurt hearts so we can do the work we need to do in our current system.
Degrowth is the salve, held by love that is the container for our path forward as humanity.
Links You'll Love
Tools for Conviviality - Ivan Illich
National Degrowth Network
The Overstory - Richard Powers
Loved this? Try these:
Ep 125 Jane Hilliard - Enoughness
Ep 120 Just Collapse
Ep 77 Tammi Jonas
Support the Show
Casual Support - Buy Me A Coffee
Regular Support - Patreon
Buy the Book - Futuresteading - Live Like tomorrow matters
We talked about:
Poverty is political
Building action into your everyday existence
Seeking inspiration from socialist countries
Building an obsession with nature
Composting as a gateway drug
Evolving from being individuals to being change making huddles
Making academic theories approachable & practical
Finding collective inspiration for criticising growth
Creating coalitions of the unlikely by side stepping black & white
Creating containers for people who are looking to connect despite the inevitable conflicts that will arise
We need more spaces to hold respected disagreements
Despite relationships being thorny, we are going to have to work this out.
The hardest skills of all are the soft skills of really working wth humans - meeting people with what they need to unpack the complexity
Being part of groups where the hard stuff can be held
Building the ‘neighbourhood’ - learning the name of the person next door, even when they are different to you
Being materially dependent on one another is a good thing
Our mobility has meant we are avoiding our ability to learn to manage conflict.
Why cleverness is disarming
The role of grief & gratitude in this journey
Slow is smooth & smooth is fast
Instead of air conditioners - lets have an afternoon nap
Returning us to our natural cycles & building our life around it
Side stepping linear, capitalist striving.
Connection to the earth is not lost on us - it’s in our ancestral knowledge, but we need to sit still, reskill & really want to relearn
Learning to be comfortable with a lack of control
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As a food grower, lover of the natural world, cook and wizened plant expert, todays conversation meanders between the veggie patch & the kitchen, the garden shed & the pickling shelf.
A reverence for the food we eat was planted deep inside Paulette's young mind by a mother who shared her skills and passion which then carried her onto this trajectory of life where she experiences the world through her garden.
As founder and owner of Provenance Growers and now author she tells the story of where our food comes from, how it was grown and what nutrients it might share with us in our interwoven way of existence with the natural world.
Links you’ll love:
Provenance growers
Broccoli and other love stories
Loved this? Try these:
Similar themes but of course wonderfully different stories.
Ep 134 Jane Stevens who is a herbalist & astrologer in the US
Ep 121 Nat Wilmott who shares her story of homesteading, homeschooling & living simply in the West Gippsland Hills
Ep 53 Simeon Ash from Spoke and Spade market garden.
Support the Show
Casual Support - Buy Me A Coffee
Regular Support - Patreon
Buy the Book - Futuresteading - Live Like Tomorrow Matters
We talked about:
Learning lessons outside with her Mum
Seeing a process evolve from environmental impact to food
Tapping back into her childhood skills to step away from the pressure to sell things
Changing careers in her mid 20’s & landing in horticulture
Making people feel happy & safe with what we do with our hands
The many uses of flowers for culinary, health & horticulture
Her addiction to seeds - especially spring loaded ones
Tips for managing cross pollination for seed saving
Her caffeine supported daily routine
The cycle of paddock/soil management
Her love of perennial edibles for ease of management & health of soil
Creating plants that are hardy & weather beaten that thrive when planted
Kids pulling away from their parents
Being a reluctant elder
Market gardening as an ideal job for a human low in confidence & introverted
Her ADHD diagnosis
Her husband is the doer & she is the wanderer
Storytelling as a tool for knowledge sharing
Following the rhythm of her brain as a pattern to writing her book
The freedom of knowing you can hold more than one idea at once
The beautiful cyclical nature of observing & interacting
Lean model of market gardening
Managing failure - easier to do when you are safe & have your basics met
Avoiding waste from the outset
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This gent who goes by the name of Das is eccentric, passionate, articulate & intelligent so strap in for this fast paced, heady conversation framed through the lens of equal rights for species other than humans to the very resources we are destroying. His voice grins, setting a positive tone & his true love of the natural world is just a tad intoxicating.
We leap from the truth that adaptability trumps strength for resilience. We quip about how the finance sector is filled with animals, we both agree that animals are more sensible than human beings - they don’t go about destroying the landscape that keeps them alive & we ponder how we came to be a culture that thinks we can click our way out of the quandary we find ourselves in. We ask if you're suffering from 'Prognostic Miopia' where you are so focussed on the near term things you don’t connect with the real long term consequences of our actions. We suspect the very culture we all swim in, means we all suffer & rather than feeling the weight of this, taking the approach of finding our own, individual ways to swim out of it.
It covers a lots and its a cracker!
Links You’ll Love
Aldo Leopold - The Sand County Almanac
Wild Quests by Das
Barry Lopez - Arctic Dreams
Loved this Ep….Listen to:
- Damon Gameau
- Dan Palmer
- Helena Norberg Hodge
Support the Show
Casual Support - Buy Me A Coffee
Regular Support - Patreon
Buy the Book - Futuresteading - Live Like tomorrow matters
Show Notes
Defining what it means to be human through studying animals
Coming face to face with a grizzly bear in Alaska
Failing our natural world as its guardian
Our need for 1.7 earths
"Human eyes need more pixels than there are in the universe to capture the beauty of some animals"
Going to the root cause of the problems rather than bandaid-ing
Human beings as mere hosts for bacteria & viruses
The danger of our reliance on tech
"Humans address every problem with Paleolithic emotions, medievil institutions & godlike technology - a dangerous recipe
Reading your landscape
Entering the phase of populism for answers
Moving our problems into the future
"Ultimately the worth of our species will be measured by our acceptance of our true role within the complex web that is life"
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Meet Jades husband - Charlie Showers. Perched at the kitchen table, this conversation is steered by questions received from listeners. For an oft reserved gent, Charlie emotionally opens the doors about why he leans into the 'uncomfortable' to realise his humanity, to the grief of facing his own mortality, taking his boys through rites of passage and why regenerative farming has been the perfect laboratory to spur his curiosity about systems, our connection to biological processes and being brave enough to do the opposite of what the mainstream insist on when fighting for a life of perpetuity for humanity.
Learn what 'exudate' means and how it could be the chance for all of us to leave life instead of destruction behind us and what he want's done with his teeth when he dies.
Links You'll Love
Pandoras Seed
Support the Show:
Casual Support - Buy Me A Coffee
Regular Support - Patreon
Buy the Book - Futuresteading - Live Like tomorrow matters
We chatted about:
Sharing a common vision but not always sharing the same timing ambitions
Movement has power - just start & collectively the energies come together
The value of being a curious poly-jobist
Why bringing a dream to fruition is impatience filled when the vision is so clear
His experience of taking his boys through rites of passage
Where he wants to be buried
Numbing yourself with the anaesthetic of netflix
Relishing the chance to build deeper ritual in his life
Embracing discomfort
Being a morning person through & through
His enough: a daily reflection - what's enough for him spiritually & to be who he truly is
Also asking - what will I strip away but what do I need more of: cultural depth,
His desire to explore an extremely simple existence - stripping back his farming 'needs'
Moving away from the word 'farming' - becoming hyper experimental in the way he produces food on country
Moving away from the loaded word of 'farming'
Exploring the edges of the system we are all ensconced in
What the landscape he stewards evokes in him & being a proud contributor to the Alpine Valleys of North East Victoria.
"I'm yearning to be surrounded by people who are connected to place not just for the sake of it but because its important to living in a deep
The intimate beauty of hosting on farm Wwoofers (volunteers)
Composting op shop shirts when they literally fall off his back
Being a banjo playing hack, brewing moonshine, anti authoritarian
Collecting Teeth
Storytelling: An important part of sharing culture. Digesting complex information
The complexity of being the partner of someone who has such a strong calling
Cultural anaesthetics
The journeys he has left in him - entwined in an exploration of self and elderhood
Inner work for the benefit of then serving his community around him
Modifying Black Barn Farm so it becomes a much more community space
Building a community of practice where the sum of the parts are greater than the whole.
Exudate: providing things for the benefit of other things.
You can go through life and the exhaust that comes out of the back of you does not have to be waste, rather than a product that contributes to the building of more life.
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Dani Wolff is a roll-your-sleeves-up-&-get-shit-done kinda girl who oozes earth wisdom and mama wisdom but most of all she personifies what it means to be collaborative. From her years in an intentional community to her globe trotting earth building projects and now her multi fingered prongs in collaborations that take her from veggie gardens to matriessence mentoring she shares a bagful of insights into how we can bring some of the ideological ideas to life in a way that can work for each of us wherever we live.
Links You’ll Love:
Earthed to birth
Johno Futuresteading episode (her husband)
Support the Show
Casual Support - Buy Me A Coffee
Regular Support - Patreon
Buy the Book - Futuresteading - Live Like tomorrow matters
We talked about:
Natural rhythms of each year
Earth building design is not about the building, its about the people & the relationships
Being drawn to communities & their dynamics - people care
Her trip to Scotland for a the Gaia led course in organisational design
Creating an intentional community with 25 other people using gut led decisions
Holding shame when reflecting on previous experiences
Teaching social permaculture
The complexity of ownership & agency
Living without comforts &with so many people took its toll & resulted in emotional exhaustion
Communities work when there are different types of people
Reflection is a really important part of the cycle
Her earth building experiences
Falling pregnant changed how she lives - pulling back from constant travel & constantly being in community
Reframing who you are as part of matriessesnce - it was really hard to let go of her preconceived ideas of who she was and how she would live
The new rhythm that motherhood brings
300sq metres is the perfect size for 6 families (23 people altogether). Using everything they grow & swapping the value added goodies with each other
Being collaborative is in our DNA but that doesn’t make it easy
It takes a lot to make the leap into working collaboratively & requires conversation & check ins to be sure everyone still feels valued & recompensed
There’s an inner knowing that we feel better when we work with others
How a greater driver can be the reason to connect
The importance of sharing our parenting challenges honestly
Being mothers & women who can share, assures us that we are good parent
Wanting to breastfeed forever
Do people carry the weight of their babies early birthing trauma
What can we do differently to encourage others to build their own tools & not just rely on organisers to make things happen - create independent groups for themselves
Seek mothers groups or activities & be brave enough to put yourself out there
Consistently showing up is so important for community groups to build momentum
Persistence is required to get things off the ground
Ask "What's your why - do you want to learn skills, do you want support, where are your vulnerabilities
Mind mapping & getting clear on what your wants/hopes are to fill a void
Her huddle word is NOURISHMENT
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No-one else is coming in to solve the human induced problems & it's not about us anymore - we all have a responsibility to do something for the generations still to come
Digby Hall reckons that if joined together we have wisdom, integrity & immense power to bring change but we must learn how to self manage the whiplash of constantly changing environments because its a forever 'whole' game, so this is our new normal and we have to be able to sustain our role in it.
Fundamentally climate change & climate action is a human issue but we don't have much living memory about how to work deeply in community & this leads us to divided & siloed communities. Todays conversation asks "how do we 'humanly solve these challenges by the way we make our daily decisions"
Links You'll Love
Lancet report - planetary dietary guidelines
Digbys tedx talk
Support the show:
Casual Support - Buy Me A Coffee
Regular Support - Patreon
Buy the Book - Futuresteading - Live Like tomorrow matters
We talked about
What’s the decision making process for a regular family to make plans for a life that is climate resilient?
Giving people tools they can use to make their own decisions rather than providing the answers
Nothing is linear - planning for a climate impacted future really depends on your future of choice
When planning for 7 generations it changes the first step you will take today.
First Nations thinking and caring for country is becoming a critical part of the way we design for climate i.e the way we manage water
Which water catchment are you in, how does your water get to the tap, how do you interact with your water, who manages your water
Functioning on the edge of our system - constantly challenging how we are doing our work
A “huddle” is the difference between light and dark, life & death.
"There are so many more of us in this change tribe than there are in the opposing camp of climate change disbelievers but it’s critical that we find where we all are and how we transcend our ever so slightly different lenses which might not overly 100%"
The importance of being in relationships with people who might be slightly different but ultimately want the same thing
2 ways to be an activist 1 is to do things actively and 2, where do you spend your money i.e superannuation funds hold immense power yet most of us are apathetic about it.
He looks for the levers that trigger the flow of everything else
A design rule he always puts in place - "if we did nothing else but made sure that every occupant using this building is within 8 metres of the outside world. This then solves lots of other things"
We have to have both art & science to solve problems of the magnitude we are facing
Why he chose Tassie; grassroots initiatives, community of life long learners
The power of the yarn in local communities
His food decision making tree
Thinking about where you shop - Shorten the supply chain at every opportunity
Reconnecting with place & the environment through the food we eat.
We know how to do what must be done but we’ve been distracted by the lure of convenience
The risks of self sufficiency & the vibrancy of community sufficiency
"You don't have the right to do things now that will ultimately harm the greater good. We have a responsibility & we each need to do the best we can to make a difference"
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The podcast currently has 158 episodes available.
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