The Road to Season 2: Reimagining Community
Highlights from the S2E1 of the podcast
Our Family Travels
We've been traveling as a family for two months. We left Green Valley, Sebastopol, California, in October to get out of the fires, packed up all our stuff, loaded up Daisy, the RV, and we drove cross country.
We went from New Jersey and to Vermont, planning to spend four or five days with some friends—we spent a month! We got pulled into the Vermont vortex. With low national COVID rates and natural beauty, Vermont is a pretty magical place. We weren't expecting to spend that much time in Vermont, and with the cold, we went South to Atlanta to my parents’ as winter came on. Atlanta has always been home for me, since we immigrated from South Africa when I was about three. My wife, kids, and I still don’t really have a home landing spot; but it feels good to stabilize, get back into a routine, and travel the country working with clients.
When we were in Vermont, I got involved in this really cool project called Bread and Butter Farm—a regenerative farm community that's expanding. They're doing a big Land Trust to preserve the land for agriculture. Then they're going to build a little community for their farm staff, as it’s an expensive area to buy in.
With Bread and Butter farm, it’s a really cool example of a coming together of a city of South Burlington, Vermont Land Trust, the Agrarian Commons, and Dirt Capital, which is a mission Investment Group trying to help support regenerative farms and farm housing—affordable housing.
Unfortunately, the challenge is the problem. There aren’t many places like that.
I got interested in this farm, because it's the kind of community that I would actually see us living, which was pretty exciting. And it speaks to where we're going with this podcast next.
Where We’re Headed in Podcast Season 2
The first season of the podcast was really fun to dig into the book and share the Citizen Farmers philosophy and framework of the lifecycle of the garden, and understanding the process and the virtues.
But really, what the book is really all about, is integrating gardens and farms into society. And my consulting has largely been based on that and the practice of helping to inspire, design, develop and set up these kinds of farms, gardens and communities around the country.
I'm really looking forward to the next season highlighting different projects and people and showcasing a number of the projects we've been working on. We're going to interview the visionaries of these projects to understand why they started them, what they've learned in their journey, and how those communities, urban farms, community farms, nonprofits and neighborhoods are making a difference.
For me, this is really going to be very fulfilling, because one of the greatest benefits of my work over the years has been the people that I've gotten to work with. The relationships that I've built with all these amazing people.
I want to tell their stories and learn from them, get inspired from them and, and get more people exposed to these great projects and initiatives that are making a difference in the spirit of the Citizen Farmer.
Three Aspects of This Season
(1) Inspiring People
I want listeners to find inspiration and hope. So many of us are concerned about climate, economy, health, ecology, nature, farmers, local food systems… this season will provide some inspiration and hope around these really amazing initiatives. We’ll meet people leading the way when it comes to doing good work in these areas. Focused around sustainability, conservation of nature, revitalization of land and agriculture, community food systems, food justice, food security, affordable housing. How they're being addressed through the lens of agriculture, community development, urban farming, and entrepreneurship.
(2) Connecting People
We’ll focus on connecting people, to these people and projects and places, and movements. I think we all yearn to be more connected, especially now with COVID, and we want to be more connected to each other, we want to be more connected to cool things happening. We want to be connected to people in projects that we can learn, contribute and support.
(3) Nourishing Our Community
We want to nourish our community with access to good information. Nourishing people with tools and resources they can use to grow and prepare healthy food, to go out in their community and make a difference so they can nourish their family and their community. And in turn nourish themselves in the process.
Ultimately, the goal is inspiring, connecting and nourishing all of us to live healthier, happier, more resilient lives. I've always found for myself a lot of inspiration and motivation, from seeing what other people are doing.
The Challenges We Want to Solve
There’s a couple of key challenges that we face as a society, and they've all been exacerbated by COVID. We see the lines of people at food banks, and the real challenge of hunger in this country.
We have to address this issue. It starts with food and making sure that people have access to healthy food. This is directly connected to environmental justice and to the health issues that especially underserved communities face, but really, that we face as a society as a whole.
I do feel like this combination of land stewardship, local food systems, improving health, addressing hunger, addressing affordable housing, they can all be solved through a reimagining of how we design communities.
Through this reimagining, people get to connect, take hikes in the woods, walk instead of drive, eat fresh food, and have access to social interaction with their neighbors in a vibrant, diverse community.
How do we take a more holistic approach to addressing the housing, the health and the environmental challenges of our time? Because those elements are key ingredients to happiness and health. There's tons of opportunities. And I’m excited for all of you, Citizen Farmers, to be on the journey with us.