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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“Herbs aren’t drugs, and we shouldn’t expect them to perform like drugs. They’re food. They work with the human body in intuitive ways we can’t yet explain.”

So, Catie is a trained naturopath! We dig into her “brown bottle” education and go deep into her love of medicinal plants as culinary healers, esoteric friends and nourishing allies for life. 

This shortie focuses on the simplest ways you can build relationships with our green community and tap into the powerful benefits of backyard herbalism. We hope it inspires you to get out there and have a yarn with a rosemary bush!

SHOW NOTES

• The power of dried herbs.
• Herbs as symbols and archetypes - Ma’am Rosemary,  Pioneer Dandelion, Stoic Sage.
• How to head into the garden and tap into the herbal wisdom you need.
• Why food/herb pairings are everyday herbal medicine.
• The power of herbal infusions.
• Volatile oils, aromatic teas and nourishing herbs.
• Great herbal references and books!

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• [Books & knowledge]
• Root to Bloom: A Modern Guide to Whole Plant Use - Jocelyn Cross and Mat Pember
• Wild Food - Roger Phillips 
• Chelsea Green Publishing 
• The Herbalist’s Way : The Art and Practice of Healing with Plants -  Nancy Phillips
• Rosemary Gladstar's Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner's Guide: 33 Healing Herbs to Know, Grow, and Use - Rosemary Gladstar
• Botany In A Day -Thomas J. Elpel
• Weed Forager's Handbook: A Guide to Edible and Medicinal Weeds in Australia - Adam Grubb & Annie Raser-Rowland
• [Herbal Teachers]
• Susun Weed 
• Taj The Perma Pixie
• [Great Aussie Suppliers]
• Highland Herbs
• Austral Herbs

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How do you live your beliefs while earning enough to eat?

This is the question we put to ORICoop founder and fair farming advocate Carolyn Suggate (amongst other conundrums). It’s a curly one, but Carolyn comes to the party with passion and insight aplenty.

She shares why she pursues her principles over financial gain, how she makes it work with her partner and family, tips for raising conscious kids (without being pushy or puritanical), her unexpected foray into olympic rifle shooting, and why we should put farmers at the top of the food chain.

Enjoy this conversation with a big-picture food-systems thinker and down-to-earth proponent of simple pleasures.

SHOW NOTES

• Carolyn’s accidental olympic rifle shooting career.
• Why she rebelled against conventional farming. 
• Her 20 year journey back to farming.
• The on/off-farm income balancing act.
• Why she follows fulfillment, not financial rewards. 
• A call to end the cycle of undervaluing farmers. 
• Noticing that our children emulate our values.
• How farming systems are reverting back to pre 1950’s practices where we encourage diversity and seasonal observation.
• How adversity builds character. 
• Why we need our tribe to stay on course. 
• How to raise changemaking kids. 
• The pitfalls of being puritanical about organic farming.
• How the industrial mentality of incessant production and high yields is hurting farmers. 
• Why our financial system thwarts our ability to be nimble with nature. 
• Her no-rule Sundays.
• The value of seasonal connection.
• Empowering our children to call out racism, sexism, culturalism.
• Thinking further back than our colonial roots. 
• Why we should be supporting farmers, not eaters. 
• Has community evolved as a concept? Can we still create the tight-knit communities of yesteryear? 
• Why we can’t forget that nature is in control.
• Her advice to “start early - it’s a long road and you need the right people.”
• Her experience of supportive-yet-stifling rural communities. 
• Is tourism good for communities?

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• The Barossa Coop
• ORICoop
• Prom Coast Food Collective
• CERES

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A woman with generosity in spades, Sophie Hansen has turned her background in publishing into a force for good. 

For the last decade, she’s been plating up important messages about slow living, local produce and reverence for farmers (disguised as lip smacking seasonal recipes) on her exceedingly popular blog: Local Is Lovely. 

Sophie takes us backstage to life on a deer farm, her city-to-rural transition, raising contented kids, sharing with abandon and letting her love of great food take her in all manner of delicious directions.

This chat is satisfying listening for anyone who thinks a better world starts with the simple act of coming together over food.

SHOW NOTES

• How she nearly ended up as a news journalist before getting distracted by food. 
• What she learned at Australian Table magazine.
• Her Slow Food internship in Italy.
• Why and how she started Local Is Lovely after moving to rural NSW and craving a creative outlet. 
• How she turned her existing skills into a career that fit her life.
• The beauty of an unpredictable life path.
• The launch of her third cookbook.
• Trusting your path when venturing out as a freelancer.
• Managing imposter syndrome.
• Her 'Rules of Engagement' for social media.
• Why diversifying her freelance work means spreading risk.
• Her approach to kids: helping them stay curious, open minded and confident to ask the hard questions.
• Her early bird daily rhythm and preferred work schedule.
• Balancing living generously without running out of time.
• The importance of putting down the smart phone.
• Life on her community-filled country lane.
• Why she oscillates between sheer panic and the realisation she's doing her best.
• Her advice to take baby steps and start by thinking about where your food comes from.
• The value of making a fuss at meal times.
• Why to make an effort to create daily rituals.

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• Recipe & Food Inspo:
• Michael Pollan
• Midnight Chicken - Ella Risbridger
• Nigel Slater
• Nigella Lawson
• Diana Henry
• Podcasts:
• The High Low
• The Daily - NTY
• Radio Cherry Bombe
• 7AM
• Desert Island Discs
• Instagram favourites:
• @sue_singingmagpicproduce 
• @anjadunk

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It’s time to get outside and reconnect, rewild and ignite a love of the outdoors in our little people. In fact, this shortie is bursting with fun and creative ideas for all ages!

Jade and Catie plate up simple acts and rituals (decorating the dinner table with found objects or making scarecrows, anyone?) to touch and be touched by the seasons. Perfect school holiday fodder.

SHOW NOTES

• Why rewild our kids?
• Activities for dextrous little fingers like seed saving and food harvesting.
• How to make a kids’ nature kit. 
• The value of self-guided activities.
• The allure of scarecrows for big and little people.
• Activities that speak to the season and connect you to the here and now.
• The importance of letting kids free range in their own time, in their own way.
• Why being a grown-up nature enthusiast will transmit to your kids.
• Parenting with a long rope.
• Should we let children extend their own boundaries?
• How do you balance risk and worry?
• Getting to know and trust in your kids’ abilities.
• Letting kids connect to their own needs, surroundings and abilities.
• Making bee hotels.
• Reframing winter as a magic time to be outside.

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• Your Wild Imagination - Brooke Davis
• The Continuum Concept - Jean Liedloff

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