With front line activism on his resume and a concerted effort to diverge from his familial farming and retail heritage, Chris Ennis embarked on a path of his own only to find himself at the front of the socially progressive 10 acre urban farming, retail and educational enterprise CERES Fair Food and now CERES Fair Wood in Melbourne's North. As you guessed it, an urban farm and retailer. Seems you can't escape what's in your blood... but you can reframe it to suit our times and cultural needs which is exactly what Chris has done as a social entrepreneur.

SHOW NOTES

• What is a social entrepreneur? Caring about all the parts of business that aren't about money
• Enterprise stacking = an ecosystem of diverse enterprises that fit together
• Make up the rules of business! You can decide what the workplace looks like and how that fits with your life
• Different ways of being a farmer even in the city
• Having faith in kids to take their seeded habits and make them bounce in later life
• From fair food to fair wood and possibly fair anything
• Stacking diversity in life to ensure multi-purpose uses
• Not subscribing to traditional channels of business or being pigeon holed
• Why he refers to ‘founders’ as weeds
• Planning for business succession with the right types of people
• The long game versus short-term-ism
• The importance of seeing the pathway as having value 
• The value of generational knowledge in business
• Yearning for indigenous wisdom
• Being comfortable to ask uncomfortable questions
• Embedding ritual as the social fabric of life
• Practical positive activism is nourishing and fulfilling
• Aim for deeper change, it’s more potent than flashy shallow initiatives
• If in doubt - go out!

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• Prom Coast Food Collective
• Baw Baw Food Hub
• Beechworth Food Co op
• Retrosuburbia - David Holmgren
• The Social Dilemma 
• Ubie - NSW based social enterprise
• Green Connect South Sydney
• CERES Fair Wood
• CERES Fair Food
• Dark Emu - Bruce Pascoe

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Warning: this episode with Rob Greenfield might make you want to do something crazy - like sell all your material possessions, set off on an adventure with only a backpack and faith in human kindness, or build a tiny home from reclaimed materials with your mates.

Rob is an activist and humanitarian dedicated to leading the way to a more sustainable, just and equal world. 

He embarks on extreme projects to bring attention to important global issues and inspire positive change. His work has been covered by media worldwide including National Geographic and he’s been named “The Robin Hood of modern times” by France 2 TV.  

Rob’s life is an embodiment of Gandhi’s philosophy, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” He believes that our actions really do matter and that as individuals and communities we have the power to improve the world around us. Rob donates 100% of his media earnings to grassroots nonprofits and has committed to living simply and responsibly for life.

This conversation strikes the balance between inspiration and groundedness, and will leave you feeling both comforted and courageous. 

SHOW NOTES

• From shining his car on Sundays at age 25 with dollar signs in his eyes to dumpster diving over 2,000 times and being a beacon for radical change around the world.
• The decision to transform his life so he stopped destroying the earth
• Making one positive change every single week for two years
• Intersectional environmentalism - deeply intertwined problems and their solutions
• Building feedback loops towards empowerment and a sustainable foundation
• Learning skills to stand strong against the sweeping tide of consumption
• Finding alternatives for the things you think you need
• Holistic decision making
• Travelling the world for the same price as the annual cost of a car
• Building freedom by avoiding the minimum monthly repayment trap
• Living a life that's not so 'protected’ or ‘insured’
• The truth: a quality existence takes time, travel, eating, learning, conversing.
• Spreading excess when you have it so life is more equitable - from those who have enough to those who have too little.
• Demonetising life relies on more human kindness
• The illusion that money makes us independent
• Teaching our kids critical thinking and about relationships to thrive in a post carbon economy
• Skill sharing 
• The power of needing each other
• The problems with convenience
• The psychology of change
• The value of minimising judgement and enhancing compassion and understanding
• Starting with the things which excite you the most

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• Rob's website
• Rob's Instagram

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If there's a human who represents the quintessential qualities of living like tomorrow matters, it just might be Hannah Maloney. 

A former front line picketer, Hannah transitioned to a more sustainable approach to advocacy for climate action and First Nations justice when she founded Good Life Permaculture and is now based in Tassie on Muwinina country where days of voluntary simplicity provide time for her community which she collaborates with to teach, design and live with love. 

Hannah is a radical homemaker who is currently writing a book, blogging her knowledge for all to learn from and has recently forayed into the world of television presenting on Gardening Australia.

SHOW NOTES

• Hannah's transition from frontline activism to a more sustainable pace to avoid burnout
• Why a simple life can be a hard life but when infused with joy, a wonderful life
• Following your Shen energy
• Choosing to sit on the edge of comfort and forcing yourself to cope with discomfort where often the greatest outcome is achieved
• Showing up despite adversity, for the sake of the individual AND self assurance
• Discovering the wonders of planting, food flowers and fibre
• Going to bed in a state of love every day
• Practical ideas for swapping resources with our neighbours like your vacuum
• Seeking ways to be more useful
• Avoiding dogma for self and others
• Loving people unconditionally where they’re at
• Why she wakes at 4am each day
• Preserving her natural energy
• Radical Hope - it's not what you might suspect
• The power of imagination

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• Good Life Permaculture
• [musician] Briggs
• [musician] Thelma Plumm
• [musician] Mama Kin
• “From What Is To What If” - Rob Hopkins

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Dan Palmer is co-founder of Permablitz, Landed, Holistic Decision Making, Making Permaculture Stronger and Very Edible Gardens. He has a PhD in systems thinking and contagious levels of enthusiasm for supporting the journeys of others. He currently lives with his wife and two daughters in a small home in Castlemaine, Victoria.

We hear Dan’s thoughts on consciously shaping a vibrant and beautiful life, getting paid for your passion, how to be vulnerable and cut to the chase (rather than participating in superficial BS), the deception of ideas, the illusion of separation from the natural world and why to ask better questions.

SHOW NOTES

• How Dan moved away from reductionist thinking and towards a holistic framework. 
• Discovering holistic management and the influence of Allan Savory.
• How to uncover the deeper intention beneath the goal or dream.
• What are the core ingredients of a fulfilling life?
• How linear thinking sustains our industrialised society.
• Why you can’t just ‘join your life back up’ to create a whole - you need to go right back to the DNA of your values and beliefs.
• How to tap into deep harmony and coherence.
• Why life can’t be like a knitted jumper. 
• “Deciding your way” towards the life you want.
• Why self work isn’t selfish - it’s a precursor to genuine altruism.
• Honouring the need for financial security in a world that hinges on money.
• An uncompromising approach to making profit from your passion.
• From hobby to Patreon; a by-donation model of asking for financial support. 
• How to avoid fake bullshit conversations and go deeper. 
• Having hard conversations vs. modern ‘communities’ that stroke our egos.
• Why Dan’s excited to be alive at this time in history. 
• Sending positive ripples into space and time.
• How to enjoy the ride and make peace with everything you can’t change. 
• The gnarly question of how to instil hope, buoyancy and knowledge in your kids. 
• The ritual of ‘roses and thorns’ at dinner time.
• Why to se the 'shape' of your life. 
• Waking up and approaching each day as a living whole that you can make as vibrant and alive as possible - versus a to-do list of frenzied actions. 
• Our obligation to contribute to the beauty of the universe. 
• How we’ve been hijacked by the idea that the world is a machine. 
• How to lead with feeling and back up with thinking.
• “The intellect is too crude a net to catch the whole” - Christopher Alexander
• Why we don’t need to “reconnect” with nature - we have never been separate. 
• How to relax back into underlying non-separateness.
• Understanding “life sheds” rather than arbitrary borders.
• Why advice and “answers” can disempower people.
• How can we ask better questions?  

LINKS YOU’LL LOVE

• Making Permaculture Stronger 
• Permablitz
• Landed
• Holistic Decision Making
• Very Edible Gardens
• Allan Savory
• Brian Goodwin
• Charles Eisenstein
• Christopher Alexander

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If changing the world over breakfast sounds like your kind of activism, you’ll love this conversation with Cassie Duncan; a woman who took her passion for a fairer food system and plated it up as an accessible, digestible and inspiring not-for-profit: Sustainable Table. 

Cassie co-founded Sustainable Table in 2009 as a way to help more Aussies make ethical choices about what they eat. Through beautifully written articles, educational events and innovative campaigns that connect eaters with farmers in deeply emotional (and motivating) ways, Sustainable Table taps into the most powerful change agent of all: story. 

Today, we hear Cassie’s; how she became the ethical food enthusiast she is today, why we need to humanise our food system, what our eating choices can change (hint: everything), how she overcame imposter syndrome and why it’s impossible to be the perfect parent. 

Enjoy ample wisdom and solidarity in this free-wheeling conversation with one of our favourite guests so far. Dig in. 

SHOW NOTES

• Her long standing love of food.
• How her mother's fierce sense of social justice and standing up for the underdog has made her what she is.
• Why the loss of her mum at 21 forced a deep reflection of self.
• Food is friendly and positive and we connect to it, but in truth it's deeply destructive.
• Applying ethics to the food we choose to buy.
• Why starting the conversation with food is a gateway to bigger issues.
• How Australians identify with fairness, and yet we haven't translated this fairness to farmers.
• How to tell your story honestly until corporations listen and make change.
• Her paralysis and overwhelm before finding a way to engage personally.
• The importance of having people with different skills, interests, communication styles and audiences.
• Managing imposter syndrome.
• Why living your truest life influences others like nothing else.
• Farmers market family rituals.
• Doing the everyday stuff in a way that makes it purposeful.
• Taking the time to discover your community.
• The gift of building a financially viable life around your values.
• Why people will stop buying a product and instead buy into a way of life.
• Raising considered, awake kids.
• Top tips: Start with what you can control, honour your strengths and skills, connect and communicate with each other.
• Growing “gritty” kids by not over-protecting them.
• The surprising benefits of asking others for help.

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• Sustainable Table website
• Sustainable Table Instagram

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Before you ask, yes this is Charlie Showers of Black Barn Farm - Jade's other half.

Charlie is a fair food advocate, holistic orchardist, landscape scientist and insatiable reader, with an appetite for knowledge that sees him getting up before the birds to devour scientific papers, books and teachings, before putting it into practice at Black Barn Farm.

In this conversation, he shares decades of wisdom with his trademark patience, clarity and intellect. He covers the power of community and regional pride, a new way to frame our 'hypocrisy' in this time of transition, the reality of first generation farming and a sugar-free account of a 'working marriage' and unified vision. You'll get to hear Jade's answers too ;)

No hopium, all clarity in this complex interview that inspires action!

SHOW NOTES

• Sitting with the contradiction inherent in your morals and lifestyle
• Reconciling hypocrisy in your everyday existence
• Being self aware without it becoming unbearable 
• His childhood role-modelling of ‘family statesmen’ who committed to the needs of their community equally with their own
• Maintaining curiosity about our system, culture and economy to impart change
• Why farming is the best place for him to share knowledge at a community level and make meaningful change 
• Why showing rather than telling is the most powerful way to inspire
• Being exposed to those who have a different way of being, whirrs the thinking cogs
• The importance of self time to recuperate and maintain balance when you’re an introvert
• Why endless hope is not always helpful, and hopium is a recipe for ignorance
• What a new future might look like
• The raw reality of starting up a long-game farming enterprise
• The potency of creating a dream together
• Undertaking change journeys as a couple
• Ideas to ‘blow your mind’
• Living examples of how systems interact with and impact on each other
• Awe of the Indigenous Australian cultural understanding of the complex web of the world
• Making ‘complexity science’ more mainstream for the betterment of all
• His evolution of changemaking from panicked urgency to slow and steady solutions
• Why being more settled will make his children better change makers
• The evolution and personal nature of success
• Importance of a ‘solutions based mindset’

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

Black Barn Farm website & Instagram

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Need some lockdown solidarity? Here’s 20 minutes of it, with a real and honest chat about our experiences, and insights, from the ongoing Victorian lockdown. 

Jade’s juggling kids on the farm in Stage 3 while Catie is chucking tanties at her laptop in Melbourne’s Stage 4. We hope this little small glimpse into our everyday is akin to a virtual hug.

Caveat: There's no one experience of lockdown, nor prescription for doing it right. We acknowledge our relative good fortune while honouring the tougher-than-tough reality of so many others.

SHOW NOTES

• Why Catie's brain is like wet cake
• Long funky days at home with kids
• Wired brains and screen-impacted sleep
• Solidarity!
• Finding daily patterns for consistency and reassurance
• Why this enforced localisation is giving us the chance to take a microscopic view of our local turf
• Sharing a daily lunch with family - snack plates + kids
• The value of accepting this period of wartime-like grief
• Seeing a psychologist is a mental multivitamin
• We are experiencing acute instability
• Grief/joy/love are combining to create empathy for others
• Human adaptability
• At least there's no FOMO!
• Willingness to be vulnerable; we are all in this together
• The value of maintaining perspective
• The value of repetition and order
• Diving into abstract, artistic, creative concepts and classic literature
• Loving those at home
• Letting joy be your compass - harking back to our childhood loves
• Why we don't have to have a picture of the new world we want. Nature is emergent; let's be open to unfolding solutions
• Seeing the beauty in the immediate

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• Dumbo Feather Magazine
• Bleak House - Charles Dickens
• Sand Talk - Tyson Yunkaporta

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Join us for a calming conversation about how to make a difference without the overwhelm. In true surfie style, Robyn Rosenfeldt is laid back - despite riding a wave of daily to-dos and permaculture reporting as the founder of Pip Magazine. 

(Not already all over Pip? It’s a dedicated Aussie permaculture mag with everything from foraging tips to renegade urban gardeners, seed saving, waste-busting, soil building and good old fashioned storytelling.)

Robyn started Pip from scratch, so of course, we were itching to get inside her mind and understand the process of turning passion into print, beliefs into features, change making into this beautiful, uplifting, shareable thing you can hold in your hands. 

And with her refreshingly realistic advice and natural optimism, you just might find yourself taking small steps in the direction of your dreams in about an hour’s time.

SHOW NOTES

• Rebelling against her middle class suburban upbringing.
• On being a doer who doesn't wait for others to make it happen.
• Her interest in alternatives from an very early age.
• Why taking on less is more powerful.
• The driver behind PIP magazine.
• Why not everyone can do everything (and shouldn't try). 
• Natural optimism.
• Avoiding the comparison trap. 
• What makes a community with heart and soul
• How she followed her intuition in founding Pip.
• Why to just give things a go.
• Starting small and letting things grow slowly.
• Her love of surfing for perspective and balance.
• Creating ritual with kids.
• Making financial ends meet by being happy with ‘enough’.
• Life in Pambula on the NSW South coast.
• Role modelling hopefulness and optimism for her kids.
• Adapting to our changing world.
• The recalibration of life in times of a pandemic
• Her one piece of advice.

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• Pip Magazine
• Pip has a podcast!

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Johno heads up Conscious Ground Organics in Byron Bay, an earth school that produces changemaking humans and delicious food in equal measure. 

On this working organic farm, Johno and his team have created a world class agri-educational facility, mentoring people through earth care and regeneration, people care and leadership training, and all kinds of skills like driving tractors to thinking holistically about life.

Johno is one of those humans whose grit, determination and practicality will inspire you to keep it real and put a little strategy around your dreams (in fact, he's sometimes called the 'Dream Assassin', injecting much-needed reality into those rosy ideals). 

You’ll hear about his dislike of school, his incredible father and role model, his methods of self-reflection and values-realignment, and the ritualistic structure of his everyday. 

Enjoy this tangible, practical and actionable conversation with a certified organic legend.

SHOW NOTES

• A childhood as one of nine kids raised by their dad on his own.
• Why he takes his gift of connecting people to their place very responsibly.
• What ‘place’ means to him.
• The gift of offering knowledge without needing anything in return.
• The expectation that everyone around him should soon be capable of superseding him in their knowledge.
• Why mentors matter.
• Why a practical, hands-on approach rather than academic strength has led him to where he is today.
• His full circle career path back to the land.
• Why he will never compromise on his values.
• Why parenting and farming are the hardest jobs on earth.
• How to maintain balance between ideology and long-term sustainability.
• How he became known as the Dream Assassin.
• The value of being brutally honest.
• What Conscious Ground is here to do.
• Why support and clear expectations make a vision come to life.
• The value of building rituals.
• The excitement of teaching skills to the next generation.
• What is “enough”?
• Why to celebrate accomplishments no matter how small.
• SCRUM - A project management framework where all heads are moving in a united direction for a short time.
• Why have a dance party in the green house?

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• Conscious Ground Online

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We spend an hour looking through the lens of anthropology, nutrition and vitalism with Cyndi O’Meara, author of ‘Changing Habits, Changing Lives’ (once just a book, now an entire movement).

Cyndi's wisdom is born of deep scientific research and understanding, coupled with a refreshing awe for the body's innate healing potential.

We journey back to her childhood (where seeds of big pharma skepticism were sown), talk all things success (and being an anti-statistic), how she embraces the Japanese concept of Ikigai, and why becoming a farmer at age 50 was a peak-fulfilment moment.

Cyndi’s unwavering commitment to human health - and the rich, juicy life it facilitates - makes this conversation a feel-good reminder of your own innate strength. 

Listen. Absorb. Enjoy.

SHOW NOTES

• Cyndi’s childhood in a household that shunned western medicine and looked to food, chiropractors, physical activity and the outdoors for health. No vaccinations, no antibiotics, no painkillers.
• Why having a family of haemophiliacs set her up to question Big Pharma.
• Her sense of following a path which was intended for her.
• How studying chiropractic reinvigorated her love of nutrition and vitalism. 
• She shares a beautiful story about a farmer who transitioned to organic growing techniques (but took a little longer to apply this philosophy to his body). 
• Her experience growing abundant food harvests in pots.
• Her ritualistic habits of picking fresh herbs, doing the daily crossword and preparing a breakfast from scratch.
• Her CADA start to the day.
• Why she questioned her beliefs while parenting.
• Her tips for packing food for travel.
• Why food is her only focus as a consumer, rather than fashion or home renovations.
• Becoming a farmer in her 50’s, a long held dream for a food bowl and retreat.
• Parenting by example and not following trends.
• Why raising a close-knit family of conscious humans is her greatest achievement.
• The philosophy of vitalistic consciousness as opposed to mechanism.
• The power of community.
• How to boost immune function to boost health to boost resilience.
• Her definition of success.
• The power of science blended with history.
• What is Ikigai, and how can it help shape a meaningful life?

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• Changing Habits, Changing Lives - Cyndi O'Meara
• Cyndi O'Meara Online
• Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
• The Japanese philosophy of Ikigai

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