We have been teaching people to make and use biochar for more than a decade, but the past year we have turned almost exclusively to online classes. It has been much easier and more efficient in many respects, but there are still a number of people who would rather have in-person classes. That is why we are fundraising to buy land on which we can teach about this and other skills important to become more sustainably oriented. Permaculture design, foraging classes, animal husbandry and regenerative ag. skills, even home economics and other sustainable living skills are more necessary now than ever and there are dozens of great teachers who have offered to teach at our facility. Things from knitting to soap and candle making, canning, drying and putting up th eharves during the fat times so we still can appreciate Earth's abundance during the lean times, etc.
Making and use of biochar can be taught in a fairly comprehensive way in just two or three hours, but some of the other skills we teach can take considerably longer to learn. For guests who want or need to stay longer, we have a plan to offer glamping opportunities as well. Just enough "roughing it" with just enough luxury to have fun and stretch to the limits of our comfort level. That is why we are developing a broader plan to purchase a significant acreage upon which we can offer opportunities fo rno trace camping while teaching a variety of management strategies that layer functions, emulate nature by closing the loop on nutrients, energy, carbon, water and other "resources" and adapt creatively to our rapidly changing world. In our experience, we find that appreciating the gifts of the nature and investing in them often pay dividends that are not necessarily financial, but are every bit as important to our quality of life. what we put in, or give away often comes with unimaginable rewards.
One of the most important aspects of permaculture is that one needs to look, listen and learn, really get down to the level of what goes on in nature, before ever trying to make change happen. The often quoted belief that native people have that every decision needs to be weighed for the good of the next seven generations may seem like far too long a timeline to consider seeing as many are predicting that human actions may make our species extinct within a decade or two, but for those people who have been paying attention, we know that even if people don't want to change, they are going to have to. Far from being a drag, or predicting destruction of society as we know it, we teach ways that the recovery of sound ecological practices will enhance quality of life, jobs and the sense of community that seems to have evaporated under the powerful, but often nearly invisible hand of capitalism.

Far too many use words to describe themselves that were arrived at by focus group or polling data, so I try to refrain from naming myself, our group or the direction our guests are headed. A wise older gentleman laughed at me once, when I was struggling to give him a word to describe myself. I know that far too often descriptors can be pejorative. He said, "I know what you are, a bioneeer!" and at first it felt a bit like the same slap in the face that tree hugger had always been, but as I learned the depth of meaning behind the term and came to understand that he meant nothing negative about it, I took it to heart and more and more have grown to like it. After all, pioneers are eternally optimistic that perhaps over the next rise will be some sort of Shangrila, a place where the cool fresh springs will be plentiful enough that our livestock will have water and that the lush, green grasses will feed them abundantly, the winds and snows won't be too harsh and that we can find straight, tall and strong timbers with which to build shelters that will serve the coming generations. Bioneers do the same, but they can find their lush abundance right where they are, without packing all of our worldly goods in a prarie schooner and striking out across a vast sea of grass to get there. We often find rich abundance by turning over a single rock, or collecting enough from nearby to build the foundations of a new, rich and abundant life, through interaction with the natural world. We invest time required to turn wast to resources or trash to treasure, getting creative to save money and eliminate waste. When I was first called a bioneer, I was still a young man. I had explored hundreds of thousands of places, slept out under the stars in hundreds of them, gotten to know biota on their terms and within their various biomes. I had come to find many dozens of wild foods that thrive where I live and learned how to propagate ones that were finding it difficult to thrive, learning what they needed that had been missing, creating more stable and habitable niches not only for myself, but hundreds of thousands of other species even though I could not name them all.
At this point in my life, I may be an elder, but the motivation I have is not the same as the elders I met and saw when I was young. Most of them had exuded a holier than thou attitude and explicitly said that things were "My way or the highway." Many of the elders I had when I was growing up taught me far more abotu the wrong way to be than how to grow adapt and create meaningful positive change in the world around them.
I choose to continue to strive toward something better, more fulfilling, to learn and grow, even though it sometimes brings painful consequences. Yes, I am sometimes forced to admit I was wrong or to stretch my boundaries, adapt and change. That hope for a better place, for the bioneer lies in the same space we are in today, the same culture, the same location, we don't find it by traversing a vast wilderness. More likely it lives within us already and by digging deeply into the difference between needs and wants, understanding that there is no "away" and that once we discover how to help nature to be abundant, the hardest task becomes equitably redistributing the abundance. I have written at length about the give away, or the give back. The time I have left may be short, but the depth of experience I bring to the table will not die with me. Stories allow us to transcend death, as long as people continue to tell them and find the meaning worth putting into practice. When I teach people to make and use biochar, it is a story that was told over nine thousand years ago. Before humans had developed written language, there were those who knew how important it was to give back to the soil. The only thing that has really changed is that today it is far more important to know, instead of me speaking, think of it as our long dead human ancestors, reaching out across time to show you how to make the soil healthy and life thrive.

FDR

When we did have a Democratic Socialist, he was voted to be our President four times. The oligarchs were so afraid of people like him getting into office again that they implemented term limits. Of course, FDR brought us out of the Great Depression, The Dust Bowl and virtually all of World War II. He did it with style, compassion and in many ways more honor and respect than we have seemingly been able to muster for any President since. Many parks and libraries, infrastructure and aspects of our society that make life better to this day were funded unde the alphabet soup of agencies that he helped to create. If you are unfamiliar, it is worth going back to the speeches he gave to Congress, not telling them what to do, but what our nation needed and the elected officials got to work in order to make it so.
The Dust Bowl that blew away the single greatest resource our nation had, the very soil itself was stopped by planting over 3.5 billion trees. Under his Administration he also built over 3,000 fire towers to look after our forests. Not because he was a draconian and power hungry leader who thought it was a good idea, but because We The People banded together with common purpose and said with one voice, this is where we put our foot down, here this will end, and together, we made something that seemed impossible not only possibly but real. We rebuilt and refurbished water supply systems, modernized roads and bridges, expanded the links between and among our great cities and beat back the rising tide of poverty that threatened to mire our nation for decades. our future is still made possible by programs he signed off on. Social Security, perhaps the greatest humanitarian program ever conceived was signed into law under his term in th ehighest office in our nation. He was beloved and today, many of us still celebrate his life. Of course he was limited by the times he was living in and there were a few things he did that were not the best, but at least he had the guts to strike out, creating the CCC (Civilian conservation Corps) which paid unemployed people to improve and protect our soils, the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) and the REA (Rural Electrification Act)to bring the majority of U.S. households into the Twentieth Century. Hundreds of programs that led to increased quality of life came about bnecause of his leadership and the drive which he exhibited and was able to get the people of our nation to get excited abotu as well. It is interesting that we don't have a holiday to celebrate the birth of this great leader. He was born, January 30, 1882 and sadly passed away while still serving as President April 12, 1945. Less than four months later, his successor Harry Truman ended WWII by dropping bombs, developed under the Presidency of FDR, on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima, August 6th and Nagasaki, August 9th of that same year, killing between 130,000 and 230,000 innocents. There is no doubt that he had saved more than that many lives in this nation during the course of his three full terms in office and the American People were so greatful that they rewarded him with an unprescedented fourth term. now, when a political figure tries to make sweeping changest that improve the lives of the entire nation's citizens, he is called names. Socialist has come to mean something unrecognizeable. terms like bleeding heart and dso-gooder are thrown at him almost as if the ultra-rich are spitting in the face of decent leaders. their right to serve in office is questioned, or their transgressions are magnified as if that makes their decent and logical policies suspect. The fact is that ownership of nearly all of our media has been transferred to the very oligarchs FDR taxed to pay fo rthe improvement of the lives of all our citizens. At this point, those ultra-wealthy folks have had fifty years of fighting in court, being allowed to buy candidatres who know better than to bite the hand of those who feed them and to consolidate their positions and offshore their obscene wealth.
Americans for Tax Fairness points out that: The number of Billionaires has increased more than nine fold during the three decades between 1990 and 2020. Increasing from just 66 individuals to over 615. This unfathomable amount of money had to come from somewhare and it is directly seen in th eerosion of our middle class and th ecomplete collapse of our social safety net. We need anothe rleader like FDR to put this nation back on course.

this image is just one of thousands of park shelters in use today that were built with labor provided under one of th emany programs FDR signed off on. I'm sure there are places in your town that have the hand of his Presidency upon them and we are all better off because of the sacrifices made by people who were actively participating in making our country better for generations they knew that they would never see.