Today Jade sits down with one of those luminous beings who’s living like tomorrow matters with deep intention and integrity.

Mara of Village Dreaming and ORTO Farm near Daylesford shares stories from her slow food life and lyrical observations (to the tune of ‘riding a bike to work in the city is like experiencing a musical’) that’ll linger long after this convo wraps up. 

Mara describes her Italian roots and being a waste renegade, the magic of WWOOFing and running a cooking school, wildlife corridors and messages to her 20 year old self. 

It’s better than a big bowl of bolognese with hot-buttered garlic bread and it's yours for the devouring.

SHOW NOTES

• Sharing our lives on social media
• Why there should be more shame in waste
• Building adventure through salvaging waste
• Diverting waste as a human rights and social issue
• Being an eco-renegade 
• Her Italian heritage that provides a foundation for living with heart
• Being surrounded by love has allowed her to be a lover in return
• Being 110% herself
• Naming her farm to reflect a circular and loving village
• Hand building a home that is the culmination of a 20 year journey in community building/love of food
• The Magic of WWOOFing; refilling  hearts, rebuilding  skills and recreating rhythms
• Her desire to be the archetypal mother 
• Running a cooking school in your own home with heart, song and dance
• Having a partner who is as warm, delicious and inviting as ricotta
• Creating ORTO farm: berries, olives, wildlife corridors, orchards and one-day pigs on pasture 
• Messages to her 20 year old self - well done!
• Years of searching for like minded individuals
• Why the music industry interrupted her need to be ‘home for dinner’
• Discovering permaculture
• Her pure love of cycling 
• The privilege of building her own straw bale house using ‘light earth'
• Adding a greenhouse on the northern side of her house = revolutionary outcome
• The work needed to retrofit housing stock in this country
• Why ENOUGH is reflected in the health of relationships
• Being part of a world that actively manages the impacts of climate change
• Managing the ‘daunt’ of educating our kids without them experiencing dread and fear 
• Giving kids rope to make their own decisions
• Struggling to say “life is going to get harder” (but knowing it’s the truth)
• The power of bringing disparate groups together to effect real change! We re more alike than not.
• Removing judgement and expectations from transition
• Seeing glints in peoples eyes when they consider their homes as life havens
• The nasty cycle of fiscal domination

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

Mara + Village Dreaming on Instagram
Village Dreaming + ORTO Farm online
The Red Tent ~ Anita Diamant

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This week, Catie sits down with Alice Crowe in her plant-filled Melbourne home for a chat over tea and marmalade toast. 

Alice is a Botanist, kitchen gardener at Heide Museum of Modern Art, founder of The Lush Forest, president of Growing Farmers and former litigation lawyer who underwent a pretty radical life pivot -- ample inspiration for anyone who’s ever wanted to ‘just quit everything’ to see what happens next.

We talk: pulling the pin on conventional success, the primal energy of the rainforest, boring habits (that make for a beautiful life), can backyard farming feed the world? and things you can’t go to your grave without knowing.

SHOW NOTES

• The journey from litigation lawyer to botany nerd.
• The perils and pure distraction of perpetual busy-ness. 
• When your body says NUP.
• When external metrics of success don’t align with your internal compass.
• Quitting a corporate career without a plan. 
• Taking three months off to do who-knows-what.
• How quickly wellness returns when you Just Stop.
• How a short horticulture course at Burnley College became a Master of Science (Botany).
• Idolising people who wear secateurs on their belt.
• Approaching nurseries as a mature-age assistant with no skills and no experience.
• The joy of pottering around watering geraniums. 
• Realising that the simple, non-intellectual stuff is where it’s at for happiness.
• An epiphany thanks to Ficus elastica.
• How to honour what your heart wants when that’s not necessarily what the world wants.
• Less noise during the pandemic = more clarity.
• Boring habits that facilitate contentment, peacefulness.
• Why being in a tropical rainforest is a primeval, sensory experience.
• Brain explosion! How did we get these amazing plants and universe?
• Things you can’t go to your grave not knowing.
• The delight in the mundane and the magic of dumb questions.
• Why everyone should look at something through a microscope once daily!
• Photosynthesis = SORCERY.
• The story of plant evolution is the story of the earth.
• Why we need more scientific literacy to fight misinformation that hobbles climate action.
• The folly of mental striving. We’ve got what we’ve got. 
• The paradox of changemaking: Is it more effective when you’re not out to succeed?
• Rebecca Solnit.
• The garden of your mental health.
• Meditation as foundation.
• Why true acceptance is truly courageous.
• The myth of the individual, self-sufficient unit.
• No individual can fight a system. How to get on the systems waves with others!
• How Growing Farmers began and how it’s transforming backyards, local food systems, new farmer opportunities and (with any luck) the planet.
• Building non-transactional community relationships.
• Will we go down the tech farming or agroecology road?
• Why all the academic arguments in the world aren’t a substitute for just giving it a go.
• Why shifting our current paradigm and lifestyle is terrifying!
• Practising new systems while things are relatively ‘stable’.
• Talking to kids who are scared about climate change. 

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

Alice on Insta
The Lush Forest
Heide Museum of Modern Art
Growing Farmers
Rebecca Solnit
Jonathan Lear -- Radical Hope

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Catie goes free range with her mic to interview one of Melbourne’s best loved urban farmers: Simeon Ash from Spoke & Spade and Collingwood Children's Farm.

Sit with us on a wooden bench in Sim’s city plot, freshly planted with broad beans, garlic and greens, as we chat about the realities of small-scale farming in Australia’s second largest city. (Don’t mind the occasional plane or magpie serenade.)

Sim has been leading the charge in urban ag for years, better known as ‘that guy who turned the front yard of his rental into a market garden’ following a Curtis Stone-style approach. 

Without owning any land himself, Sim has tended numerous backyard farms in inner-suburban Melbourne, offering CSA veggie boxes (delivered by electric bike!) to his local community, plus a heckload of inspiration to aspiring growers. 

We talk educational pathways, finances, unexpected pests (and their excrement) and the power of surrounding yourself with a believable solution to the impossible issues of our time.

SHOW NOTES

• Why backyard growing is so much more than food production
• Compost as the gateway to the interconnectedness of nature and human systems
• Completing a permaculture design course to 'join the dots’ on systems
• Finding good people who have already done what you want to do - then copying them.
• Setting yourself up as an urban micro farmer ain't straightforward!
• Striking relationships with people who have spare space and are eager to see it productive.
• Making the business viable via a CSA model
• Trawling google maps to find unused empty blocks and hitting up the landlords for a dual relationships.
• How food is as political as it is connective.
• Front yards > backyards
• Seeking permission to use rental properties for micro businesses .
• Setting up a farmgate on your verge
• Going to the ‘dark side’ of facebook to engage his community
• Making crust with values intact - honest insights into the financial reality of urban farming.
• Simplicity as the baseline for this life.
• Acknowledging his ‘underserved position of privilege’.
• A vision of Melbourne being a leading hub of urban agriculture.
• Minimum viability scale of 2 hectares
• How life aspirations change with experience and time.
• Pests and poo in food production spaces
• Why time is your greatest asset as a market gardener
• Repeated existential crisis that lead to farming as his way of ‘doing something and being part of something that is positive'.
• We are at a time in history where we could sacrifice a little more 
• "I’m 30 and Id like to see a future where I wont be so mad at myself for not doing anything."
• Being a human scale change-maker. 
• Taking a leap which makes the leap for the next person less of a jump.

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• Spoke & Spade on Instagram + Web
• Curtis Stone -- The Urban Farmer
• The NEIS scheme
• Milkwood PDC

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“Meat is hard” as Laura Dalrymple (of Feather and Bone fame) knows only too well. But this ethical meat mistress also knows that demonising meat is a distraction from the much bigger and much more urgent issues of our time.

Taking the hard questions head on is what Laura does best with an eloquence and warmth that makes you wonder what was so problematic in the first place.

In this hour of conversation we discuss taking ownership of our own actions by tapping into our own moral scales to find a balance that’s right for each of us. And feeling solidarity in the knowledge that, “Food is the universal connector that is a powerful political, social, economic and cultural force that we need right now”.

SHOW NOTES

• Tackling the food system issues via ethical meat 
• Engaging people emotionally and intellectually to transform the food system
• Taking actions to shorten the supply chain 
• Retelling core myths in new ways 
• The genesis of her book “The Ethical Omnivore’
• The insane juggle of raising a family while running a business and writing a book
• Why optimism is important in these times of change
• Arresting eco anxiety
• Facing hypocrisy daily
• Restoring cultural landscapes in short time frames
• Managing the frustration of the “say/do gap” 
• Why change is slow and hard but worth the journey
• Why a food system needs more than just farmers; it also needs storytellers and eaters and wholesalers, community builders
• We don’t have time to be precious about our values position or our patch; we face serious issues and we need open hearted, respectful and non-judgemental togetherness to enact change.
• Being vigilant about doing the “best you can” rather than “the best there is”.
• Food is the universal connector that that unlocks change in a powerful way
• Jade's story of rebuilding a community through the lens of her new knowledge
• Being capable of straddling multiple ideals 
•  The power of wholistic thinking rather than silo mentality
• The magnetic process that occurs where you move into the orbits of the people who have similar ideals
• The demonisation of meat in recent years which seem to distract from the issues at hand
• Writing a book that's an embodiment of transparency
• Talking about slaughter is the kiss of death but it's critical to talk about it or it will become a dark opaque corner of the universe that everyone ignores.
• Answering the most asked, most confronting question: “How did the animal die?"
• Realising our role in the ecosystem of life 
• Not being a killjoy with overzealous passion. 

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• Feather and Bone online
• The Ethical Omnivore ~ Laura Dalrymple and Grant Hilliard
• Sydney University ~ Charles Perkins Centre

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Brooke McAlary has built a life and brand around slow. She's the author of three books, the co-host of The Slow Home podcast and the voice of a movement that says, "Dear Joneses, I'm opting out of the rat race."

But hey, that doesn't mean she's exempt from overwhelm. This convo opens with Brooke and Jade swapping stories of exhaustion.  File that under honesty. 

So join us on the couch as we define our zone zero, get our inner turmoil sorted before facing the outer chaos, and discuss a potential inner care deficit.

We talk packaged up versions of “balance” “slow” and “simple” and why “tilting” may be more useful; leaning into the most pressing issue of the moment.

Why multi tasking is a farce but barefoot bushwalking creates a heady sense of lightness, wonder and awe that  just might hold the answers.

Say no to fast and yes to slow living with Brooke McAlary.

SHOW NOTES

• Why her books and pod are basically talking to herself to maintain a slower pace
• Being diagnosed with severe postnatal depression 
• Googling in search of solutions
• Letting go of the relentless ‘keep up’ approach to life
• Stabilising mental health and finding a deeper sense of contentment
• Living life with no buffer
• Operating at 70% capacity to ensure there’s room for unplanned
• Defining and protecting  zone zero
• Getting the inner turmoil sorted before facing the outer chaos
• Avoiding an inner care deficit
• The intrinsic link between inward care and capacity to give 
• Why the words 'balance', 'simple' and 'slow' are all fraught
• The endless wrestle of living counter culturally 
• Learning to “tilt” rather than “balance”
• The fraudulence of multi tasking
• Experiencing a loss of connection, celebration and grieving as a result of covid
• Facing into the need for ‘unlearning’ to build a brave new non-consumerist world
• Building your tribe without preaching 
•  Equating simple with ‘ease’ not ‘easy’
•  Why simplicity lives in the process of finding ease
• Noticing = gratitude
• Family rituals that offer hope
• Barefoot bushwalking on a bliss wave
• A designated slow room 
• Reconciling the footprint of travel by embracing her local area
• Vision Quests 
• Why small actions of care, purpose and values are creating powerful ripples 
• Rebuilding rites of passage for our youth to test and expand resilience and tap into the wisdom from older generations
• Writing a letter to your younger self
• Jump starting our memory making function 

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• ZenHabits
• Slow - Brooke McAlary
• Destination Simple - Brooke McAlary
• Care - Brooke McAlary
• Rites of passage institute
• Alone - SBS series
• Vision Quest Challenges

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Having just moved back to her childhood home in Tasmania, Pip Lincolne is celebrating the launch of her latest book “Days Like These” while giving herself time and space to etch her place in a new community. And of course, create for the love of it.

This conversation speaks to the value of taking a temperature check on your feelings, asking consent before giving advice, having ‘enough’ rather than excess, and why success lies in the simplest of things -- not least of which is an insatiable love of books.

SHOW NOTES

• Writing books that are heart on sleeve 
• The creative journey of meet me at mikes 
• Life with clinical depression and chronic anxiety and turning it into something worthwhile for others 
• If mums are not ok then no-one else is ok
• The collaborative journey of writing a book 
• Building friendship and community groups through creativity
• Taking the gloss off and replacing it with grit in the way we tell our stories
• Being true and sincere for the sake of empowering others 
• Making the move to Tassie following a covid job loss 
• “When you return to the place you grew up in, it's like you’ve left pieces of your DNA there and your body knows that this is where you belong."
• Taking the time to narrow ideas rather than taking on too much
• The joy of being a cog in the wheel and falling in behind others
• The creative doing is what matters most, not the end result. 
• Taking time to unwind our minds with daydreams, procrastination
• Valuing the ‘middle-of-the-night’ interruptions
• Hot tip for mums to change the lens of insomnia to avoid the anxiety spiral
• Advice for giving advice - seek permission and offer to listen first
• Acknowledging that a person in crisis doesn’t want to be processed and managed rather “heard” and trusted
• Success is about having close bonds with your kids, a few close friends, supportive family, a cosy home and enough money to get by. 
• Keeping her desires for MORE focussed on the non material things.
• A day in the life of a writer
• If you’re ever stuck, “take it to the back fence, the answers are there”

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• Craft for the Soul -- Pip Lincolne
• When Life is not Peachy -- Pip Lincolne
• Days Like These -- Pip Lincolne

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Kate (aka. Compostable Kate) has a thing for decomposition.

This inner city mother of three is the self-appointed Compost Queen who single-handedly collects scraps from her neighbours and local cafes to reduce food waste and produce garden gold. 

As well as being an activist on the ground, she’s also a compost influencer in the ether. Kate is gaining thousands of followers on Instagram who love her catchy content and colourful tutorials on making grade-A hot compost. What's more, her stats are translating into action.

In this convo, Kate  shares the story of her potted street garden on the pavement in inner city Sydney, the cooling power of greenery in urban spaces, how she's using social media for good, and strategies for Insta-stalking local MPs to agitate for change.

Upbeat, down-to-earth, anything-is-possible stuff from her Right Royal Highness of Compost.

SHOW NOTES

• Why composting is her number one focus!
• Being a share waste user
• Composting in a tiny inner city terrace
• Being a crazy urban bowerbird 
• Creating a composting ‘mothership' to service her ‘compost hungry’ needs 
• Compost wars with her mum
• Creating a potted street garden for her community
• Inviting  neighbours to join her on this quest
• Swapping and sharing 
• Permaculture wars in the suburbs
• Extending friendships beyond a sprig of mint
• Hoarding behaviour during covid
• Why it’s important to have fun when encouraging change 
• The potency but potential poison of social media
• Making compost a happy and exciting message via memes, music and comedy
• Channeling eco-activism between kids' naps
• Encouraging second hand presents  
• Protecting the childhood years of wonder
• Rising children who are empowered by their ability to action
• Finding your ONE thing! 
• Food waste as a catalyst for climate impact
• Focussing on local letter writing and agitation to bring about change
• Making the most of opportunities on our verges
• Change can really happen in the tiny strips of soil between roads and footpaths
• The power of green in a city is amplified against the black bitumen
• Using movable pots in a rental to change the use of the streetscape
• Urban sprawl by way of potted plants rather than houses
• Use of signage and lights to activate your street pot garden 
• Being at peace if anything is stolen 
• Getting resource savvy with the things you can find rather than always buying new
• COMPOST HOW TO

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• ShareWaste app
• Michael Mobbs (creator of regenerative city verges in Chippendale)
• Retrosuburbia
• Uno's Garden - Graeme Base
• Bower - Reuse + Repair programs

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Come with us to a homesteading, homeschooling farmhouse in Pennsylvania where the days start early and the blessings are abundant.

Grab a yellow chair on the porch (to the tune of morning crickets) and meet Sarah Stutzman, the down-to-earth powerhouse behind Wellfolk Revival, a place to meet belly to belly and up-skill yourself, your kids and your community.

This is one of those rocking chair chats that offers a glimpse into someone else's world; their daily habits and ways of thinking. Their challenges and triumphs. Their personal paradigm. 

And even if you don't aspire to be a modern day homesteader, this convo could very well revive whatever latent life dreams you've got hiding in there. Time to action them?

SHOW NOTES

• Raising kids in a “new normal”
• The value of community sufficiency 
• What is homesteading?
• Her childhood on a Christmas tree farm surrounded by exotic animals before moving to life in a subdivision
• Accidentally homesteading via a desire to know where her food came from 
• Using skills to teach people how to start a garden, grow their food and take baby steps
• Building community
• Resources needed for up-skilling
• Craving community 
• Bringing people around the table to learn
• Pivoting business around Covid
• Eating organ meats and head cheese
• Embracing the chaos and imperfection
• Blowing the romance perception and keeping it real
• Be the ripple effect by inviting people to your real house (messy and all) at any time  and encouraging them to share their new skills with others
• Getting the kids involved so the foundations to hold them during the rebellion phase are strong
• Letting kids feel their own way and encouraging them to learn through mistakes
• Getting past our own failures, focus on our successes
• Integrating with the local Amish, traditional farmers and new wave of micro farms
• Connecting!
• Reconciling the process of taking life to sustain our own nutritional needs
• Counting the things on your plate that you have a connection to 
• Avoiding the throw away mentality
• Using the ENTIRE animal to honour the WHOLE and not just the best parts
• Looking for the blessings in between the constant hard work
• Nourishing our bodies with good food and our minds with beautiful things
• Stopping and embracing the simple moments as a measure of success
• Seeing success through the eyes of a child
• The power of pulling out other people's gifts and talents
• Avoiding the overwhelm of the emergency by doing the small things every day  
• Haste makes waste so just make pace

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• Wellfolk Revival online + on Instagram

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Does activism always have to be so serious? Nup, says Emma-Kate Rose. Lighten up and let your hair down, let’s face our collective challenges in lycra! 

It was fitting that Emma-Kate was on her way to No Lights No Lycra as we recorded this convo, because her radical approach to balancing work and play is probably the most refreshing thing you’ll hear all day.

After quitting her career in criminology inspired by Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Emma-Kate went on to crowdfund $2 million for Brissy Food Connect’s community hub with partner Rob Pekin. Impressive stuff. She’s also a mother, social entrepreneur, community builder, risk taker, intuition-follower, and big fan of ‘sticking to your knitting’.

Emma-Kate shares her transition from avid consumer to climate activist, unexpected ways to mobilise community, how indigenous epistemology infuses Food Connect, creating careholders not shareholders, bleeding days, part time work and food sovereignty. Look, it's a pretty frivolous conversation ;)

Get snacks and press play on the wonderful Emma-Kate Rose!

SHOW NOTES

• An urban start in Sydney 
• The cycle of boom and bust in her own childhood home led to questioning “why people do bad things”.
• Her career in criminology before taking on the food system
• Being hit with the “tonne of bricks that is climate change”.
• Starting a local climate action group
• Starting a car sharing business
• Selling the cars and putting the family on public transport and bicycles.
• Encouraging  various economies to embrace de-carbonisation.
• Accidentally crowd funding $2 million to keep the wheels of Brisbane Food Connect turning and in the hands of community ownership.
• Manifesting intentions and creating visions despite having no money and no idea how.
• Questioning enough to move the needle rather than settling for business as usual solutions.
• Food Connect as a social enterprise that provides a platform for multiple values aligned businesses a chance to incubate into a supported environment.
• Offering office space to social entrepreneurs who need affordable  access to office space.
• Incorporating indigenous epistemology into their business 
• Creating careholders not share holders
• Fun over ideology
• Why we're ready to have a national conversation about embracing Indigenous culture
• Reassessing our sense of time and urgency -- “Act now is required but do we do that at the expense of our relationships with our fellow human beings?"
• Walking the talk and building a life that really honours a balanced life: work, community contribution, joy.
• Whats a bleeding day? 
• Escaping the trap of being earnest in your activism
• Making the most of bringing people together while we can

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• Food Connect Brisbane
• Indigenous Epistemology: Descent Into the Womb of Decolonised Research Methodologies - Marcus Waters and Marva McClean
• Dark Emu - Bruce Pascoe
• The Next Economy

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Plug in, listen up and let your imagination run 100 000 years into the future. 

Joshua Gilbert is a Worimi man, farmer, entrepreneur, environmental advocate and truth teller with a vision for a sustainable future -- and boy is it beautiful. 

We chat with Josh about the 60 000 years of agricultural history in his bones, why ‘Indigenous farming’ isn’t some separate and immutable thing, what the 26th of January means to him and why asking daft questions is all part of the process.

Oh, and he’s optimistic that humanity will 'make it'... it just might require a little more respect for the past, deep self inquiry and a few less fences.

It's a good day to be your ears.

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

- Joshua Gilbert online + Instagram
- Bruce Pascoe ~ Dark Emu
- Bill Gammage ~ The Biggest Estate on Earth

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