Hawaiʻi has held a very special place in my heart for a long time. I lived on Oʻahu for about seven years while attending Hawaiʻi Pacific University, and during those years I had the opportunity to travel regularly throughout the islands. For several years I also lived with a Hawaiian family. That experience gave me a relationship with Hawaiʻi that went far beyond attending school or simply living in an extraordinarily beautiful place. The land, the culture, the people, the climate, the food, the ocean, and the ways community and place intersect all influenced the person I was becoming.

Hawaiʻi was also where I first encountered permaculture, both as a concept and in practice. At the time, I could not have known how deeply that encounter would influence the direction of my life. Over the years, permaculture grew into regenerative landscape design, farming, soil work, education, consulting, and a much broader interest in how we design not only landscapes, but communities, businesses, and lives. In some ways, many of the ideas that now sit at the center of my work - observation before intervention, working with natural patterns, understanding relationships, community, resourcefulness, and thinking in whole systems - felt less like entirely new ideas and more like things resurfacing from my childhood in Romania. I had grown up around a culture where gardens, food, family, neighbors, seasonal rhythms, making use of what was available, and a close relationship with land were simply part of everyday life. Hawaiʻi brought many of those threads back to the surface in a different cultural and ecological setting, and it was during those years that they began to take much deeper root in me and develop into a conscious way of seeing, designing, and eventually working in the world.

Today, I am once again spending more time thinking about Hawaiʻi. I am currently working on several land-based design projects there and expect to be visiting the islands more regularly moving forward. With Hurricane Lala affecting Hawaiʻi, particularly Hawaiʻi Island, I found myself thinking about the event not only as a storm, but as a design question:

• What can history teach us about hurricanes in Hawaiʻi?
• What helps communities recover well after a major storm?
• And perhaps most importantly: what would it look like to intentionally design homes, farms, neighborhoods, community spaces, infrastructure, and emergency systems so that they are better prepared for the next one?

Those questions led me to initiate an AI-assisted research process, reviewing historical hurricane information, weather and emergency-management data, recovery reports, infrastructure impacts, and resilience practices. I began organizing that information into three visual guides. They are not intended as comprehensive engineering documents or final prescriptions. They are starting points for conversation—an attempt to take a large amount of information and make some of it easier to see, discuss, question, and build upon.

1. What Can 50 Years of Hurricanes Tell Us?
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The first graphic looks backward. I wanted to understand the major hurricanes and hurricane-related events that have significantly affected Hawaiʻi over roughly the past 50 years: when they happened, their strength, which islands were affected, the damage they caused, power disruptions, deaths, flooding, and how long recovery took. A few things immediately stand out:

1. Direct hurricane strikes on the Hawaiian Islands are relatively uncommon when compared with many other tropical regions. But uncommon does not mean impossible, and historical rarity can sometimes create its own vulnerability if buildings, infrastructure, or communities gradually begin to assume that a major event is unlikely. The historical record also reminds us that hurricane category alone does not tell the entire story.
2. Some of Hawaiʻi's most serious tropical-cyclone impacts have come through rainfall, flooding, high surf, falling trees, damaged utility systems, road closures, agricultural losses, and long-duration power outages. A storm does not need to place its eye directly over a community to profoundly disrupt life there.
3. Hurricane Iniki in 1992 remains the clearest modern example of how severe the consequences can become. Other storms, including Iselle, Lane, Hone, and now Lala, demonstrate different forms of vulnerability: flooding, infrastructure failure, crop loss, downed vegetation, isolated communities, and prolonged utility disruption.

There are also patterns worth examining around El Niño and broader Pacific conditions. Historical patterns do not guarantee what will happen in the future, and changing climate conditions, ocean temperatures, development patterns, and infrastructure mean the future will not necessarily behave exactly like the past. 

2. Recovery Is a Community Design Problem
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The second graphic turns from history to the present. In the immediate aftermath of a major storm, the needs become much more human and practical:

• Is everyone safe?
• Who has water?
• Who has electricity?
• Which roads are passable?
• Who needs food, medication, shelter, transportation, childcare, animal care, or help cleaning their property?
• Who is isolated?
• Who has equipment?
• Who has skills?
• Who simply needs another person to show up?

​One of the things I continue to appreciate about regenerative design is that it teaches us not to think only about objects. A house is not just a house. A road is not simply a road. A water tank is not simply a container. They are parts of systems. The same is true of disaster recovery.

Sometimes the most valuable form of help is remarkably simple: bringing drinking water to someone without it, preparing food, checking on an elderly neighbor, helping remove wet material from a home, clearing debris, providing a generator, watching someone's children while they deal with damage, offering temporary housing, or helping somebody navigate assistance paperwork.

At the same time, uncoordinated help can create additional problems. Flooded areas, unstable trees, downed electrical lines, landslides, contaminated water, and damaged structures remain dangerous after the wind stops. 

• That means effective mutual aid has to combine generosity with coordination.
• Before showing up with equipment or supplies, ask what is actually needed.
• Before cutting trees, understand where power lines are.
• Before driving into a damaged community, make sure additional traffic will not interfere with emergency access.
• Before donating material goods, find out whether those particular goods are useful.
• Sometimes the best donation is money to a trusted local organization. Sometimes it is a chainsaw crew. Sometimes it is a pallet of water. Sometimes it is opening a spare room to a family for several nights.

3. Designing Now for the Hurricane That Has Not Arrived Yet

The third graphic asks the question I find most interesting as a designer: What would it look like to design for the next hurricane before it exists? I divided this into several scales because resilience cannot be created at only one level.

The household level

​At the household or property level, many of the most important interventions are not particularly glamorous:

• Roof-to-wall connections matter. Roof fasteners matter. Carports and large overhangs matter. Window and door protection matter. Drainage matters. The placement and anchoring of propane tanks, water tanks, sheds, greenhouses, solar equipment, and outdoor materials matters. Backup water matters. Backup electricity matters. Knowing where water will flow across a property during an extreme rainfall event matters enormously.

For rural properties, farms, and homesteads, this expands into another set of questions:

• Can the water system operate without grid power? Is there stored potable water? Can animals be moved into protected areas? Can greenhouses withstand high winds? Are access roads vulnerable to erosion? Where does runoff concentrate? Could culverts become blocked? Are large trees positioned where their failure could damage homes, tanks, fences, or power systems?

There may also be opportunities to learn from local materials and long-standing building traditions. Hawaiʻi Island has an extraordinary abundance of lava rock, and rock walls are already a familiar part of the landscape. In certain settings, thoughtfully engineered rock walls, windbreaks, berms, or protected spaces might become part of resilient site design. But these ideas need to be approached carefully. A heavy wall that performs well against wind still has to behave safely during earthquakes and volcanic tremors. It also cannot unintentionally redirect floodwater toward a home. Which leads to an important Big Island principle:

​The community level

At the community scale, I think one of the strongest opportunities is the development of multi-use resilience spaces. Instead of building an emergency shelter that sits mostly unused until a disaster occurs, what if the same building functioned every week? (This is already practiced on every Hawaiian island at different scales):

The county level​

At the county level, resilience becomes partly an infrastructure and planning question. Roads, culverts, bridges, drainage systems, water systems, communication networks, emergency shelters, and power infrastructure become critical. These are the questions that lead that planning:

• Where are the roads most likely to wash out?
• Which communities could become geographically isolated?
• Where should emergency equipment be staged before the storm?
• Where are backup shelter locations?
• Which water systems depend completely on grid electricity?
• Where could distributed solar and battery systems support critical infrastructure?
• Which neighborhoods have only one practical access route?
• Which bridges, slopes, or drainage channels represent potential failure points?

Preparedness should not begin with a forecast cone. It should be part of normal planning.

The state level

At the state level, Hawaiʻi faces a challenge that is different from almost anywhere else in the United States: island geography.

Major disasters can affect ports, airports, fuel supply, food distribution, telecommunications, electrical generation, and movement between islands simultaneously. This makes redundancy extremely important. The following are not only emergency-management questions. They are design questions.

• How much food, fuel, medical material, repair equipment, and emergency water exists locally if transportation is interrupted?
• How quickly can utility crews or specialized equipment move between islands?
• What happens when a harbor or airport is temporarily unavailable?
• How can distributed energy systems reduce dependence on centralized infrastructure?
• How can schools, public buildings, healthcare facilities, and emergency shelters be designed not only to survive an event, but to continue functioning afterward?

Resilience Is More Than Stronger Buildings

There is a temptation when discussing hurricanes to focus entirely on construction. Construction matters enormously. But resilient communities require more than stronger roofs. They require communication. Relationships. Education. Stored resources. Healthy ecosystems. Reliable water. Local food systems. Energy redundancy. Transportation options. People who know their neighbors. Institutions that have practiced working together. And perhaps most importantly, a culture that takes preparation seriously without living in fear.

One of the permaculture principles that has influenced me most to see resilience design in this way is observe and interact. Observe what the system is telling you. Interact thoughtfully. Observe the result. Adjust. That approach feels particularly relevant here. Every storm teaches something, and those learning lessons must be noted:

• Where did water go? Which trees failed? Which roofs survived? Which roads became impassable? Which communication systems worked? Which neighborhoods organized quickly? Which communities struggled to access food, power, or water?

Every one of those observations can become information for the next design.

There Is Much More to Learn

These three graphics are only a beginning. There is much more research that could be done around resilient tropical architecture, utility systems, water storage, food security, agroforestry, community shelter design, rural road access, and landscape strategies for extreme rainfall and wind.

I do not want to pretend that a few days of research - or a decade of professional design experience elsewhere - can substitute for that place-based knowledge. It cannot. One of the most important parts of good design is recognizing what you do not yet know.

As I spend more time working on land-based projects in Hawaiʻi, I want to continue learning from local builders, farmers, emergency responders, Native Hawaiian practitioners, cultural knowledge holders, scientists, land stewards, families, and residents who have lived through these events firsthand.

If you live in Hawaiʻi - especially if you have experienced Iniki, Iselle, Lane, Hone, Lala, or other major storms - I would genuinely appreciate hearing what experience has taught you.

• What worked? What failed? What should every homeowner know? What should every community have ready? What traditional knowledge or local practice belongs in this conversation? What infrastructure improvements would make the biggest difference?
• And what am I missing?

Hawaiʻi helped shape my life many years ago, and I carry a great deal of gratitude for that. My hope in sharing this work is simply to contribute something useful—to listen, learn, ask better design questions, and support the larger work of protecting these extraordinary islands and helping them become even more resilient and regenerative for the people of Hawaiʻi.

Continue Exploring Regenerative Design

If this way of looking at land, resilience, community, and the systems around us resonates with you, join me for future essays, research, design ideas, and field reflections from Sun and Bloom Regenerative Design.

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When we say we are growing oats at Sun and Bloom Farms, we are not talking about one simple purpose. We are talking about a whole stack of functions. This is one of the core ideas in permaculture and regenerative farming: one element in the system should ideally serve many purposes at the same time.

Here are twelve reasons we grow oats as a cover crop.

1. We grow oats to build organic matter and carbon in the soil.

Oats create biomass above the surface and roots below the surface. Depending on the timing and the winter, they may winterkill naturally, or we may terminate them later in spring and cover the area with a tarp. Either way, that plant material becomes food for the soil. Instead of gathering all of that carbon from somewhere else as compost or mulch, we are growing some of it right where we need it.

2. We grow oats to keep the soil alive.

Living roots are one of the most important parts of soil health. While the oats are growing, their roots are releasing sugars and other compounds into the soil through root exudates. Those exudates feed bacteria, fungi, and other soil organisms that help cycle fertility and keep the underground community active.

3. We grow oats to improve soil structure. 

The roots of oats, together with the soil organisms around them, help create biological glues that form soil aggregates. Those aggregates help the soil become more crumbly, sponge-like, breathable, and able to absorb water. Better structure means better habitat for roots and soil life.

4. We grow oats for erosion control.

Bare soil is vulnerable soil. Rain can break it apart and carry it away. Wind can dry it out and remove the most fertile particles. Oats protect the soil surface, and their roots hold the ground in place.

5. We grow oats for weed suppression.

A strong stand of oats fills space, shades the ground, and makes it harder for weeds to establish. Instead of leaving bare soil open for whatever wants to grow, we choose a plant that serves the farm.

6. We grow oats as nutrient scavengers.

Oats are very useful in cover crop mixes because they can take up nutrients that might otherwise be lost from the soil. When we intergrow oats with other cover crops, including nitrogen-fixing plants like clovers, peas, or vetches, those legumes are helping bring nitrogen into the system. The oats can absorb some of that available nitrogen and use it to grow more biomass. Without a crop there to capture it, some of that fertility could be lost through leaching, runoff, or volatilization, depending on the conditions. So the oats help hold fertility in plant form until that biomass breaks down and returns nutrients to the soil.
7. We grow oats to build resilience and save money.

In our context, if we can grow a plot of oats and harvest seed, biomass, mulch, fodder, or bedding from it, we can use that abundance to help establish and support other areas of the farm. That means we are not only growing a crop; we are growing our capacity to keep growing. Every bit of fertility, mulch, cover, seed, feed, or bedding we can produce in place is something we do not have to buy, haul, or depend on from outside the farm. Saving money is not separate from making money. It is part of building a viable regenerative system.
8. We grow oats for medicine.

Oats can have medicinal value, especially as milky oats and oatstraw. My wife is an herbalist, and herbs are part of how we care for people and animals. So oats can be part of the farm’s apothecary as well as part of its soil-building system.
9. We grow oats for food.

Oats can feed people as grain, flour, or breakfast food. They can also feed animals as fodder or supplemental feed. A farm that grows food for its own living community becomes more resilient.
10. We grow oats for wildlife.

A living stand of oats supports more than the crop plan. Insects come into it. Birds move through it and feed from it. The crop becomes part of a larger web of life on the farm.

11. We grow oats for animal bedding.

When we have enough biomass, some of the oat straw can become bedding for animals — goats, pigs, and sometimes chickens. Then even that bedding continues cycling through the farm. It absorbs manure, protects the animals, and can later return to the compost system or soil as fertility.

12. We grow oats because they are beautiful.

Beauty matters. A green stand of oats in winter and early spring changes the feeling of the land. It reminds us that the soil is still alive, the farm is still breathing, and the next season is already beginning.

So when you see oats growing here, you are not just seeing a cover crop. You are seeing carbon, roots, medicine, food, wildlife habitat, soil protection, fertility, animal bedding, beauty, and resilience — all growing in the same place. That is the power of stacking functions.
If this way of thinking is exciting to you, and you want to go deeper into regenerative soil, soil health, and how to design systems that build fertility instead of constantly depending on outside inputs, I recently launched a book and a four-part regenerative soil course. The course can be taken live with other people or at your own pace, and there is also an option for certification if you want to use this work professionally, including for regenerative soil consulting.
BOOK: https://www.sunandbloomfarms.com/store/p93/regenerative-soil-fertility-guidebook.html

COURSE: https://www.sunandbloomfarms.com/store/p91/soil-regeneration-online.html

And I’d love to hear from you: which of these stacking functions surprised you the most? Can you think of any other functions oats might serve in a regenerative farm system?

From Design to Implementation

There is a moment in every good design process when the work stops being only a conversation, a drawing, a dream, or a beautiful map, and begins to become something living in the world. Soil is opened. Materials are gathered. A path is shaped. A fence post goes in. Someone stands inside the space that only months before existed as a possibility, and they begin to feel what the design is asking of them. That moment is one of the reasons we love this work so much.

At Sun and Bloom Farms, we do not understand permaculture design as something separate from practice. We are not interested in design as a purely theoretical exercise, or as a beautiful image that impresses people for a moment but does not help them actually care for land over time. We design because we believe that land, families, communities, food systems, water, soil, animals, plants, beauty, livelihood, and learning can be woven together in a more intelligent and life-giving way. But for that to happen, a design has to be able to move from the page into real life.

This project is a beautiful example of that movement. It shows the relationship between a master conceptual plan, a more detailed zoom-in design, and the early stages of implementation. It also shows something we think is essential for anyone dreaming about a homestead, farmstead, hobby farm, or regenerative farm: a good design is not only about what could exist one day. It is about creating a wise pathway from where you are now to where you want to go.

What a Master Conceptual Design Actually Does

A master conceptual design is not the same thing as a construction blueprint. It does not usually answer every small technical detail of every system. Instead, it gives a property an organizing pattern. It helps the landowners see how the major pieces of their vision can relate to one another over time.

In this particular project, the family had a large and beautiful vision for their farm. They were not simply asking where to put a garden. They were asking how a whole place could slowly become more productive, resilient, educational, and meaningful. The larger design included many layers of possibility: gardens, orchards, mushrooms, trails, berries, flowers, food forests, farm store possibilities, guest experiences, family spaces, and future farm enterprises.

A master conceptual design helps bring that kind of vision into relationship with the actual land. It asks where access should happen, where water is moving, where people will enter and gather, where production systems make sense, where beauty matters most, where infrastructure may eventually belong, and how different parts of the farm can support one another instead of competing for attention, labor, and resources.

This is one of the first educational lessons from this project: the master plan is not just a pretty map. It is a decision-making framework. It helps answer questions like:

• What belongs near the home and what can be farther away?
• What systems need daily attention and what systems can be visited less often?
• Where should fertility be generated and where will it be used?
• How does the family move through the land now, and how might that change over time?
• Which enterprises depend on other systems being established first?
• What should happen early, and what should wait until skills, soil, infrastructure, and capacity are more developed?

Without that larger pattern, people often begin by doing the thing that feels most exciting or urgent. They plant trees before understanding water. They build infrastructure before understanding access. They start enterprises before understanding maintenance. They create gardens that are too large before they have learned the rhythms of care.

A good master plan does not remove all uncertainty, but it helps people make better decisions in sequence.

A Good Design Does Not Only Ask What Is Possible

It is easy to look at a piece of land and imagine everything it could become. This field could be an orchard. That hillside could hold berries. That forest edge could grow mushrooms. This open area could become a flower enterprise. There could be cabins, trails, classes, food forests, animals, gardens, gathering spaces, a farm store, a nursery, and so much more.

That kind of vision matters. It gives energy to the work. It helps people see beyond the current condition of a place and begin to imagine a different future. But vision alone is not design.

A good design also asks harder and more grounded questions. What can actually be managed? What skills are already present, and what skills need to be developed? What forms of capital are available right now, not only financial capital, but time, energy, knowledge, relationships, equipment, materials, attention, and emotional capacity? What needs to happen first so that the next thing becomes easier instead of overwhelming?

In this project, the long-term vision was large, but the first phase needed to be foundational. During the design process, it became clear that before moving deeply into larger enterprises, the family needed to build their base of experience with compost, mulch, cover crops, soil building, planting, maintenance rhythms, and the successful care of a family-scale garden and orchard. That does not make the larger vision smaller. It makes it more possible.

This is one of the most important gifts of design: not just to show what could happen, but to help people know what should happen first.

Phasing Is One of the Most Important Design Tools

When people are excited about land, they often want to do everything at once. We understand that feeling deeply. We live inside that kind of excitement ourselves. At Sun and Bloom Farms, there is always another system we can imagine, another planting to establish, another edge to improve, another educational space to build, another layer of abundance to invite in. But land-based work has a rhythm. Families have a rhythm. Budgets have a rhythm. Soil has a rhythm. Human learning has a rhythm.

A design that ignores those rhythms may look impressive, but it can easily become a burden. It can ask people to maintain systems they do not yet understand, invest in infrastructure they are not ready to manage, or move into enterprises before the foundational patterns of fertility, access, water, labor, and care are established. Phasing is not just “doing things slowly.” It is the art of matching vision with capacity.

In this project, we helped the clients shape a long-term vision with a phased pathway. The first phase focused on learning and capacity. The compost and mulch systems mattered because they would feed everything else. The family garden mattered because it would teach daily observation, planting, watering, weeding, harvesting, fertility, pest pressure, joy, and responsibility. The small family orchard mattered because tree crops require patience, protection, establishment, and a long view. These are not small things. They are the foundation of everything else.

If the first phase creates confidence, beauty, food, fertility, and learning, then the second phase has a much better chance of succeeding. If the first phase creates overwhelm, debt, unfinished infrastructure, and discouragement, then even a beautiful master plan can become heavy. So we phased the design with care.

Why We Create Zoom-In Designs

A large property needs different scales of design. The master conceptual design answers the big-picture questions: where things belong, how they connect, what the larger pattern is, and how the land may develop over time. But when it is time to build a specific system, people often need another layer of detail. That is where zoom-in designs become valuable.

A zoom-in design takes one part of the larger master plan and explores it more deeply. It begins to answer practical questions about shape, scale, access, materials, planting zones, maintenance, and implementation. It does not necessarily answer every construction detail, because real-world building always reveals new information, but it gives enough structure for people to begin with confidence.

In this project, the mandala garden became one of those zoom-in areas. The master plan showed where the garden belonged within the larger farm system. The zoom-in design showed how that garden could function as an actual growing space. It included the approximate size, growing space, path structure, access gates, fencing concepts, bed organization, planting zones, trellis opportunities, material considerations, and implementation notes.

This is another important lesson: design should be nested. The big map answers, “Where does this belong in the whole?” The zoom-in answers, “How does this particular place begin to work?”

What a Mandala Garden Teaches About Pattern

One of the first pieces the family felt especially excited to build was the mandala garden. They already had a garden area with some existing raised beds, and part of the design process involved exploring how that space could be expanded into something more beautiful, productive, and meaningful. We looked at different garden forms and approaches, but the mandala pattern carried a particular kind of energy for them. It offered a way to create a family garden that was not only useful, but also deeply inviting.

A mandala garden can be misunderstood as merely decorative, but when designed well, it can be a very intelligent growing pattern. The circular form creates a strong center and organizes the garden around relationship rather than only efficiency in straight lines. It can shorten the distance a gardener needs to walk, create multiple points of access, and make it easier to reach many growing beds without long repetitive movement up and down rows. It can also allow different planting zones to be organized by sun exposure, seasonality, plant type, and frequency of harvest.

The mandala pattern can help organize:

• daily movement through the garden
• main paths and smaller access paths
• annual vegetables and herbs
• annual and perennial flowers
• medicinal plants and ground covers
• trellis opportunities
• central gathering or work space
• fertility, mulch, and seasonal maintenance
• beauty and invitation

There is also something important about beauty here. A garden is not only a food-producing machine. It is a place a person returns to again and again. It is a place of attention, labor, frustration, harvest, prayer, teaching, experimentation, and rest. When a garden is beautiful, people often want to be in it more. When people want to be in a garden more, they notice more. When they notice more, they become better gardeners.

The mandala pattern gave this family a form that could hold vegetables, herbs, fruits, flowers, medicinals, trellis opportunities, paths, sitting areas, and a sense of peace. It brought together function and meaning, which is exactly what good permaculture design should do.

The Real Yield of Phase One Is Skill

When people look at a project like this, they may first see the obvious yield: a garden. And yes, the garden matters. The family is building a place that can grow food, herbs, flowers, beauty, and daily connection with the land. But the deeper yield of this first phase is skill.

In permaculture, we often talk about yields in terms of food, medicine, fiber, fertility, water, or income. Those yields matter. But there are other yields that are just as important, especially in the early years of a land-based project: confidence, discernment, observation, patience, practical skill, family cooperation, and the ability to make better decisions over time.

By beginning with the mandala garden, the family is learning things that will serve the whole future of the farm. They are learning about soil preparation, cover cropping, tarping, sourcing materials, fencing, shaping beds, building paths, working with mulch, protecting young plants, adjusting scale, and making decisions in the real world. These skills are not separate from the design. They are part of the design.

A farm is not only built with money and materials. It is built with competence. It is built with the people who will care for it becoming more capable as the systems grow. That is why phase one matters so much.

When Design Meets the Real World

Even before every part of the larger design and report was complete, the family felt clear that the mandala garden was one of the first pieces they wanted to begin implementing. There was already enough clarity around the location, the form, and the purpose of the garden that it made sense to get the process started while the deeper layers of the design continued to develop. This is often how living design work unfolds. A full design process may still be moving toward completion, but one piece becomes ready. It gathers energy. It becomes the next right step.

So we began together. Before the mandala form was shaped and before the final materials were gathered, we helped them think through the soil preparation process and choose a cover crop strategy for the space. We cleared the garden area, and then we seeded cover crop together with the family, our kids, and their kids. It became a real work party, the kind of moment that reminds us that implementation is not only technical. It is relational, embodied, educational, and alive. The children were part of it. The families were part of it. The future garden began not only with a drawing, but with many hands, seeds, laughter, and the beginning of care.

Later, as we had discussed, the family terminated the cover crop with tarps so the area could move into the next stage of preparation. Before they started laying out the mandala form, shaping the beds, and gathering the materials they wanted to use, we had already spent time observing what was available on the land itself. They were interested in using materials from their own place as much as possible, so part of the design conversation included walking the land, noticing what could be used, and creating a list of possible materials that could support the garden build.

This mattered because the project was not only about constructing a beautiful garden. It was also about helping them learn how to see their own land as a source of fertility, structure, material, and possibility. And then, as always happens when design meets the real world, new questions appeared.

This is important to say clearly: adjustment is not the failure of design. Adjustment is part of design.

A design can answer the biggest questions. It can clarify location, function, relationships, scale, access, materials, planting concepts, and phases. But once people begin building, the next layer of reality appears. The cost of materials feels different when it is time to purchase them. The labor feels different when the work is happening in real time. A certain fence detail may need to change. A footprint may need to shrink slightly. A family may realize that one material option they liked in the design phase no longer feels like the most appropriate choice once they are actually holding the whole project in their hands.

In this case, the family reached out to us after sitting with the design, looking more closely at the materials, the work involved, and the options we had discussed together. Some of the ideas they had originally liked still felt right, while others needed to be adjusted. They wanted to use a few different materials than we had originally discussed. They also wanted to shrink the size of the garden slightly so it would feel more achievable in this first phase, especially when considering the fencing, the labor, and the materials required.

So we consulted back and forth. We talked through the implications of those choices, looked again at the purpose of the garden, and confirmed that their new direction still made sense within the larger design. It was beautiful to see, because the adjustments did not feel random or disconnected. Their thinking was clearly becoming more aligned with the whole project. They were not abandoning the design; they were learning how to carry the design into their real context with more discernment.

The garden remained true to the spirit and function of the original design, but it became more appropriate to their actual developing situation. It became a little more achievable, a little more rooted in the materials they wanted to use, and a little more connected to what they were learning as they built. That is good design becoming alive.

Why Adjustment Is Not Failure

This may be one of the most important lessons for anyone trying to create a regenerative homestead or farm: a good design is not rigid. A rigid plan breaks when reality changes. A good design gives enough structure that changes can be made wisely without losing the larger intention.

If a family simply begins changing things without a larger framework, the project can become scattered. One decision leads to another, and eventually the original purpose gets lost. But when there is a thoughtful design behind the work, adjustments can be evaluated in relationship to the whole:

• Does this change still support the purpose of the garden?
• Does it still fit the larger farm pattern?
• Does it make the first phase more achievable?
• Does it reduce unnecessary strain without compromising the function?
• Does it honor the materials, skills, and capacity available right now?

In this project, the adjustments made sense because they were not random. They were guided by the design, by the family’s actual capacity, and by continued conversation. The result was not a weaker design. It was a more appropriate design. That is a very different thing.

Permaculture Design Is Relational Work

One of the things we want people to understand about our design and consulting work is that it is not simply a transaction. We are not interested in handing someone a beautiful map and disappearing forever, especially when the project is large, layered, or connected to a family’s long-term life and livelihood. We stay true to the core ethics of permaculture design: earth care, people care and fair share!

Permaculture design is relational because land-based transformation is relational. The designer is in relationship with the clients, the land, the climate, the soil, the available resources, the timeline, the budget, the plants, the animals, the future maintenance, and the inevitable unknowns that appear along the way. In this project, that relationship continued after the design was created, as the family began making real decisions about size, fencing, materials, labor, and implementation.

Of course, the design itself matters. The maps matter. The report matters (150+ pages for this project). The measurements, phases, recommendations, materials, and plant lists matter. A thoughtful design can save years of confusion, misplaced infrastructure, wasted money, and unnecessary labor. But the implementation process also matters because that is where people become capable of caring for what they are building.

In this project, the family is not only building a mandala garden. They are learning what it takes to shape beds, build fencing, use mulch, manage soil, establish planting areas, protect the garden, work with natural materials, make decisions in sequence, and adjust without losing the larger intention. That learning is part of the yield.

The Role We Bring as Sun and Bloom Permaculture

At Sun and Bloom Farms, our design work comes from the same place as our teaching and our farming. We are practicing what we teach, learning from our own systems, and bringing that lived experience into our work with clients and students.

Lucian brings the perspective of a systems designer, educator, and land practitioner who has spent years developing integrated farm and homestead systems, teaching permaculture design, working with clients, and thinking deeply about how people move from vision to implementation. Much of his work focuses on seeing the whole pattern: water, access, fertility, production, economics, maintenance, education, family life, and the long-term development of a place.

Anna Maria brings another essential way of seeing. Her background as a natural beekeeper, herbalist, farmer, and community connector adds a deep sensitivity to plants, pollinators, healing, food, relationships, and the human culture around land. She has spent years connecting farmers, chefs, students, families, and community members, and she brings a grounded understanding of how ecological systems and human relationships need to support one another.

Together, our work is not only about where things go on a map. It is about how a place can become more alive, more useful, more beautiful, more resilient, and more connected to the people who are caring for it.

We also draw from a wider network of trusted designers, peers, and graduates when a project needs additional support or when local knowledge, specific expertise, or regional presence can strengthen the work. We love to design as locally as possible, and we also recognize that every project has its own context, scale, and needs.

Building Something That Can Actually Be Cared For

A lot of people are dreaming about land right now. They want gardens, orchards, animals, herbs, flowers, ponds, food forests, outdoor kitchens, cabins, classes, farm stores, community gatherings, healing spaces, and meaningful livelihoods. We understand that dream. We share it. But the dream needs a pathway.

With good design, the dream does not disappear. It becomes more grounded. It becomes phased. It becomes connected to the real life of the people and the real conditions of the land. This is what we loved about this project. The master plan held the long vision. The mandala garden became one of the first living steps. The implementation process created learning. The adjustments made the design more appropriate. The relationship allowed the work to keep unfolding.

That is what we hope for in all of our design work. Not perfection. Not fantasy. Not a static plan that never changes. We hope for living designs that help people become more capable, land becomes more abundant, and places become more beautiful and resilient over time.

Work With Us or Learn With Us

If you are dreaming about a homestead, farmstead, hobby farm, or regenerative farm, there are a few ways to connect with this work.

If you want support with your own land project, we provide design and consulting. Sometimes that may be a simple consultation to help you clarify the next wise step. Other times it may be a deeper design process, long-term consulting, or implementation support.

If you want to learn the process yourself and experience our systems in place for inspiration, we would love to have you join us for our in-person Permaculture Design Course at Sun and Bloom Farms.

And if you are interested in learning from a distance, watch for the relaunch of our yearly deep-dive online course, where we will continue helping people study permaculture design, regenerative systems, and the practical process of bringing these ideas into real places.

You can learn more through our website here:

https://www.sunandbloomfarms.com/educationconsulting.html

Or reach out to us directly here:

info@sunandbloomfarms.com

The design is not only the map. The design is the relationship between the people and the place. It is the compost pile, the garden path, the fence post, the orchard, the mulch, the pollinators, the seasonal rhythm, the learning, the mistakes, the adjustments, the beauty, and the care that slowly accumulates over time.

That is where the real transformation happens.

The Photograph That Carries the Whole Story

I could have chosen so many different photographs to begin this essay.

I could have chosen a picture of my adult students graduating from one of our permaculture courses, holding their certificates after long, beautiful, life-changing days learning together. Or I could have chosen a picture of those same students during the course itself: standing in the garden, learning how to read the land, building compost piles, planting fruit trees, milking goats, making salads and pizzas from farm ingredients, walking through food forests, studying water, soil, animals, fungi, trees, and the deep intelligence of living systems.

All of those images would have told part of the story. But the picture I keep coming back to is much simpler. It is a picture of children in our nature and ecological farm based homeschool co-op harvesting mushrooms from our mushroom logs.

There is something in that image that feels more foundational to me than almost anything else I could say. These children are not just doing an activity. They are not just learning about mushrooms. They are touching a living system. They are harvesting food from wood inoculated with fungi. They are seeing decomposition, cooperation, patience, moisture, shade, time, and nourishment come together in one moment. They are learning, with their hands and eyes and bodies, that the world is alive, generous, mysterious, and understandable.

They are learning it all with their parents and other loving adults, and more importantly, they are learning it early.

Reintroduced to the World They Belong To

For more than a decade now, I have believed that the earlier people are brought into real relationship with nature, the better and more integrated their lives can become. I do not mean nature as a vague idea, or as a pretty background, or as something we visit once in a while when we need a break from the real world. I mean nature as the real world. I mean the living systems that give us food, clean water, clean air, biodiversity, beauty, medicine, materials for shelter, joy, inspiration, contemplation, and so much of what makes a human life whole.

When a child learns how food grows, how soil is built, how water moves, how fungi transform wood into nourishment, how animals participate in fertility, how flowers become color, how insects pollinate, how birds move seeds, how trees feed communities of life above and below the ground, that child is not only receiving information - that child is being reintroduced to the world they belong to.

What I have seen, again and again, is that this kind of education does not feel like novelty.
IT FEELS LIKE REUNION.

Where I Learned to See the Reunion

The first time I truly saw this was 12 or 13 years ago at The Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano. That place was one of my great launching pads. I am still deeply grateful for the years I spent there, for the workshops I was able to teach, for the permaculture courses I was able to help facilitate and teach, and for the people who trusted me before I fully understood what was being awakened in me.

I am especially grateful to Evan Marks, who trusted me and mentored me in such a beautiful way. There was something almost effortless in his leadership, something like the idea of "wu wei", or action without force - effortless action. He did not have to push too hard. He seemed to understand that if I reconnected with the way I had grown up, if I remembered the land-based wisdom of my childhood, I would be able to help others reconnect too. I had been raised with so much of this knowledge around me, especially through my grandmother, but I had to return to it with new eyes. Evan helped create the conditions for that return. (Thank you Evan, if you are reading this!)

Most of my teaching then was with adults, but The Ecology Center also had children’s programs, and that is where another beautiful teacher entered the story. Dr. Meg, who now runs The Human Nature Center in Santa Barbara, was leading those programs at the time. She would bring me into tours and activities with children, inviting me to help them engage the garden, the farm, the compost, the plants, the animals, and the stories embedded in all of it. She, too, had a way of teaching and training that was gentle but powerful, another kind of effortless action. She knew how to create a space where children could encounter nature directly, and where those of us helping could learn how to guide without over-controlling.

It was there that I began to recognize something I have never forgotten. When adults and children encountered living systems in this way, their response was not simply the excitement of learning something new. It was not just the spark of novelty, the thrill of hearing an interesting fact, or the entertainment of a hands-on activity. It was way deeper than that:

It was like watching a child see their mother after being away from her all day. The smile. The relief. The movement toward her. The embrace. The body remembering safety. The heart recognizing home 

That is what it felt like. People were not just learning about nature. They were returning to their mother.

And over the years, I began to notice something else. The people who came once were often moved. They had a beautiful experience. They learned something. They felt something. But the people who returned again and again, the children who kept coming back, the adults who kept studying, practicing, building, planting, composting, harvesting, cooking, designing, and asking better questions — those people seemed to reconnect at a much deeper level.

Repeated relationship matters. A field trip can open a door. A workshop can plant a seed. But a rhythm of return changes a life.

I have seen this in adults who went on to change the way they lived, the way they ate, the way they designed their homes and landscapes, the way they raised their children, and even the careers they chose. I have seen it in children I met more than a decade ago who are now out in the world carrying something beautiful from those early encounters. It is hard to measure this kind of impact in the usual ways, but it is very real. When people are repeatedly brought into contact with living systems, and when they are invited to participate with reverence and skill, something forms in them.

This is one of the great reasons I believe the future of education must be agrarian, regenerative, deeply practical, and deeply human.

Bringing This Work Home to Missouri

When we moved to Missouri and began building our life at Sun and Bloom Farms, this same pattern continued. Early on, we began facilitating nature-based and regenerative farming sessions for a homeschool group that was already established locally. Many of the families were driving from the Jefferson City area, and they were already oriented toward nature-based education, so the connection felt very natural.

They saw what we were doing here. They saw the farm, the gardens, the animals, the food, the trees, the soil, the way we were trying to live. And they trusted the space. Not just in the basic sense of physical safety, though that matters deeply, but in the health sense too. They knew we were growing beyond organic, without chemicals, and that their children could touch the soil, harvest plants, smell flowers, interact with animals, and be on the land without being exposed to the kinds of things many parents rightly worry about. They also knew that we were teachers, that Anna Maria and I cared deeply about children, about education, about the earth, and about the future these children are inheriting.

Natural Dyeing: Where Color Comes From

One of the activities we offered was natural dyeing. On the surface, natural dyeing could look like a craft. A sweet seasonal project. Something beautiful for children to do with flowers, onion skins, fruits, pits, leaves, and pieces of cloth brought from home. And it is that. It is beautiful. It is tactile. It is memorable. But it is also so much more. (Thank you Kristin Morrison for opening that door for us long ago!)

When children learn natural dyeing, they begin to understand that color does not simply come from a store. Color is not just an artificial product that appears on a shelf with no story, no plant, no place, no people, no history behind it. Color comes from the living world. It comes from roots, bark, petals, fruits, minerals, insects, soil, seasons, cultures, and long human relationships with place.

Anna Maria brought such beauty to this teaching, weaving together histories from her Greek and Italian ancestry, stories of people and plants and cloth and household life. And as I watched the children dye handkerchiefs and T-shirts with natural materials, I was taken back to my own grandmother in Romania.

My grandmother made natural dyes for everything. She made natural paints and washes for the outside of the house and different ones for the inside. They had different textures, smells, purposes, and qualities. She made dyes for blankets and fibers and household needs. She carried an entire body of knowledge that did not live in a notebook. She did not need to check a recipe or read instructions. She knew because she had done it all her life. It lived in her hands, in her nose, in her eyes, in her memory, in her relationship with materials.

Watching children on our farm learn these things was like reliving my past in the present. And it reminded me that this kind of education is not just about preserving old skills for nostalgia’s sake. It is about restoring a relationship between people, place, beauty, and responsibility. If we want natural color, we must protect and grow the plants that give us color. If we want medicine, we must protect medicinal plants and the ecosystems they live in. If we want food, we must care for soil. If we want clean water, we must care for watersheds. If we want beauty, we must participate in the conditions that allow beauty to flourish.

Why Parents Matter in This Kind of Learning

In that setting of the homeschool activities we were facilitating for that local homeschool group, where our own children were also involved, the format was that the parents were present the entire time. These gatherings were not quick drop-off activities. They often lasted four hours, and sometimes five or even six, depending on the day and the activity. There was always a hands-on learning activity, but there was also food. We ate together. We made food together. The learning was held inside a larger rhythm of relationship, work, nourishment, and community.

That was the format we continued to follow with our nonprofit, Bloom Homeschool Co-op. The children were not simply dropped into an isolated lesson and then sent home with a finished product. The parents were present. They watched. They helped. They learned. They remembered things from their own lives. They had new things to talk about with their children. They could repeat the activity later, at home, in another season, with another plant, at another age. The lesson could grow as the child grew.

A five-year-old can learn that flowers make color. An eight-year-old can begin to learn about plant parts, heat, fibers, mordants, and history. A twelve-year-old can begin to understand chemistry, culture, trade, ecology, and land stewardship. A teenager can begin to ask deeper questions about clothing systems, pollution, beauty, economy, and what kind of world we are building.

The same activity can return year after year, each time with another layer of meaning. That is how wisdom forms. Not by rushing from one disconnected subject to another, but by returning to living realities with deeper attention.

Compost, Soil, and the Universe Under Our Feet

Another example of this learning is compost. So many children are taught to think of soil as dirt, as something beneath us, something messy, something to wash off quickly before going inside. But soil is one of the great living foundations of our lives. It is where food begins. It is where plants find their nourishment. It is where water is held, carbon is cycled, organisms live, roots communicate, and the visible world is supported by the invisible one.

When we made compost with the children, we were not merely showing them how to pile up organic materials. We were teaching them that compost is a collaboration with a natural process already happening everywhere. Leaves fall in a forest. Animals leave manure. Plants die. Fungi and bacteria and insects and worms and countless organisms begin the work of transformation. Nutrients cycle. Life feeds life.

In composting, humans are not inventing decomposition. We are creating conditions for decomposition to happen well and quickly. We are gathering materials, balancing carbon and nitrogen, adding moisture, creating structure, allowing oxygen to move, and then stepping back enough for life to do what life does.

We do not make compost alone. We create the right conditions, and the microorganisms do the composting. That is a profound lesson for children. Honestly, it is a profound lesson for adults too.

The children helped build the pile. Then they came back and felt the heat of it. They could see that something was happening. The pile was alive with activity. A week later it was hot, breaking down, transforming. Later, they could see the material becoming something else entirely. What had been scraps and leaves and manure and bedding was becoming dark, rich, beautiful compost that could feed the garden beds.

Anna Maria taught them about the soil food web, and the children began making connections between the life below the soil and the life above it. They understood that there is a web of relationship underground, and there is a food web above ground too: insects, birds, animals, plants, fungi, seeds, predators, prey, grazers, pollinators, decomposers, and everything participating in the larger pattern.

Then we looked through a microscope.

The children were amazed. Some of them seemed to feel as if they were looking through a telescope into the universe. And in a way, they were. They were looking into a universe that had been beneath their feet the entire time.

It struck me deeply. So much of our culture looks upward, wondering where life might be in the universe, while children can look down and discover whole worlds of life in a teaspoon of soil or compost. There is mystery under our feet. There is intelligence under our feet. There is life feeding life under our feet. And once a child sees that, soil is never just dirt again.

Everything Can Be Taught in a Garden

This is why I love Evan’s phrase from The Ecology Center: everything can be taught in a garden. It is true. Biology can be taught in a garden. Chemistry can be taught in a garden. Math can be taught in a garden. Literature, history, nutrition, ecology, art, engineering, economics, ethics, and spirituality can all be taught in a garden. A garden is not a break from education. A garden is one of the most complete classrooms we have.

And when that garden is part of a farm, and when that farm is part of a community, and when parents and children and teachers and elders are involved together, the learning becomes even more powerful. It becomes not just information transfer, but community formation. Skills are built. Relationships are strengthened. Families share meaningful experiences. Children see adults learning. Adults see children discovering. The community becomes more resilient because knowledge is no longer locked away in a textbook or held by one expert. It is practiced, repeated, embodied, and shared.

This is the model we have been moving toward through our work at Sun and Bloom Farms and now through Anna Maria's non-profit, The Bloom Homeschool Co-op. Different formats have emerged over the years, but the heart has remained the same: nature, farm, community, children, parents, practical skill, living systems, and repeated relationship.

Different Models, Same Living Heart

And I want to be clear that this does not have to look exactly one way.

Some people may hear this and think, “Well, not every family can be part of a parent-child farm co-op every week.” That is true. Not every parent has the same schedule, capacity, location, or season of life. But the deeper question is not whether every model looks exactly the same. The deeper question is whether we can begin designing educational environments around the realities of life.

At The Ecology Center, for example, many programs involve children being dropped off into the care of a trained, loving, capable team. The parents may not be present for the whole experience, but the children are still surrounded by multiple adults who care deeply about them, about the earth, and about the quality of the learning environment. That matters. It is not one isolated teacher carrying the whole burden alone. It is a team. It is a culture. It is a place. It is land-based, relational, practical, and alive.

These are two different models, but they point toward the same possibility. What would happen if more communities began to value this kind of education enough to design life around it? What would happen if parent-involved learning, land-based learning, and team-supported children’s programs were not rare exceptions, but normal parts of a healthy society?

The benefit would not only be for the children. It would be for the parents too. Isn’t this part of the point of being a parent — to share life with our children, to learn beside them, to enjoy them, to pass on what we know, and to discover what we still need to learn? And isn’t part of the gift of being a child the chance to spend meaningful time with our parents, to learn from them, to be with them, to feel their presence inside the ordinary and extraordinary moments of life?

If enough people experience this, I believe our communities will begin to move toward it. We will begin to want it. We will begin to value it. And then we can design the rest of society around making these relationships and rhythms possible: work schedules, schools, farms, community spaces, nonprofit programs, local economies, and the whole living structure around family and education.

What Is Happening Now, and Why It Needs to Change

I do not want to speak harshly about teachers working inside the traditional educational system. Many teachers are heroic. Many are doing their best inside systems they did not design. But I do believe we have placed an impossible burden on them. We have often asked one person in one room to carry the intellectual, emotional, social, and practical development of many children, while separating those children from land, food, craft, weather, animals, gardens, parents, elders, and the direct practice of life.

That is not a failure of teachers. It is a failure of design.

Human beings do not learn only by listening, looking, memorizing, writing, and taking tests. We have bodies. We have hands. We have noses. We have skin. We have balance, movement, emotion, intuition, pattern recognition, and imagination. We learn by touching, smelling, tasting, hearing, building, sweating, failing, trying again, laughing, wondering, harvesting, cooking, sharing, and caring for something real.

Learning is much more dynamic than sitting in a room and receiving information. And I truly believe the world would be transformed if more people were educated in nature, farm and project based environments like the ones I described in this essay.

Not Everyone Will Become a Farmer, But Everyone Needs the Living World

Not because everyone would become a farmer. Not because every child needs to become a natural dyer, compost maker, cheesemaker, bread baker, gardener, forester, or permaculture designer as a profession. That is not the point.

The point is that all of us live because the living world is generous.

Even the people who go on to become architects, engineers, software designers, builders, doctors, artists, entrepreneurs, civic leaders, or creators of advanced technologies would benefit from being deeply connected to how nature works. In fact, I believe the more technological the future becomes, the more important this reconnection will be.

Technology will still exist. Machines will still exist. Computing systems will still exist. We will continue designing tools meant to make life easier, healthier, safer, and more beautiful. But imagine if the people designing those systems had been formed by gardens, forests, rivers, animals, fungi, soil, pollinators, and living relationships. 

Imagine if the architects of the future understood how nature builds strength with beauty, how ecosystems use waste as food, how diversity creates resilience, how edges create abundance, how cooperation and competition both have their place, how energy is captured and cycled, how life creates conditions for more life.

A Technological Future Still Needs Nature’s Wisdom

The future Janine Benyus points toward in *Biomimicry* is exactly this kind of future: one where human design is increasingly inspired by nature’s genius. Our buildings, schools, transportation systems, technologies, materials, farms, economies, and communities can all learn from the living world.

And how beautiful that is. How beautiful that we get to observe all these living beings and learn from them.

Butterflies and bees pollinate flowers, and in doing so help make food for countless species, including us. Birds eat insects, manage pests, move seeds, and carry nutrients from one place to another. Grazing animals, when participating in healthy patterns, can help manage plant growth, cycle fertility through manure, stimulate grasses, and contribute to the stability of soils, slopes, and waterways. Fungi break down what has died and help feed what is alive. Trees cool the air, hold soil, feed soil life, shelter birds, breathe with us, and call water into relationship with land.

So many living beings participate in stewarding this planet simply by living their lives. Maybe they do it unknowingly. Maybe they do it unconsciously. Or maybe they understand in ways we do not yet understand. Either way, what a blessing they are. And what a blessing that we can observe them.

What a blessing that we are here, on this beautiful and special planet, with the ability to notice, to learn, to love, and to become more intentional. We have the opportunity not only to receive life from this place, but to participate in its healing. We can become conscious stewards. We can design with humility. We can farm, build, teach, cook, parent, engineer, heal, and create in ways that honor both people and the living world.

The Reconnection Is Worth Pursuing

This is why this kind of education matters so much. It is not just about children having nice outdoor experiences. It is not just about mushrooms, compost, dye plants, goats, chickens, gardens, or field trips. It is about helping human beings remember where they are, what they are part of, and how they might live in a way that gives back.

It is about the child running back into the arms of the mother.

That image has stayed with me as I have written this. I have cried thinking about it. I have thought about my own mother, whom I have not seen in person in so many years, and how much I look forward to that embrace. I have thought about the ache of distance, and the beauty of return. I have thought about my own path, and the strange acceptance that has come with it: accepting my fate, accepting my work, accepting that for whatever reason, I have felt called to share this.

The reconnection is worth pursuing. Whether you have children or not, whether you grew up close to nature or far from it, whether you already know this feeling or have only sensed that something is missing, the invitation remains.

Come and learn. Come and remember. Come and see how this applies to your life. There are many ways to be involved in this work. For some families, it may look like joining a co-op where children and parents learn together. For others, it may look like finding a place like The Ecology Center, where children can be held by a team of loving, capable, nature-connected educators. For some, it may mean starting a garden at home, composting for the first time, planting fruit trees, learning the names of birds, making natural dyes, baking bread, keeping animals, or simply paying attention to the life already around them.

An Invitation to Go Deeper

For those who want to learn how to design these kinds of places, these kinds of learning environments, and even this kind of life,  our permaculture courses can help. If you want to understand more deeply how nature works, how humans can work with it, and how families and communities can design spaces that are more beautiful, resilient, nourishing, and alive, this course is one of the clearest invitations we know how to offer.

Our permaculture course is a 10-day immersion into how nature works and how we can work with it. It is not just a class. It is a community experience. We learn together, eat together, observe together, design together, and practice seeing the world through the lens of living systems. Before the course, participants receive a book we created to help prepare them for the journey, a book that will also soon be available to people beyond the course itself.

During the course, we study patterns, soil, water, plants, animals, food, shelter, energy, community, design, and the ethics of permaculture: earth care, people care, and fair share — or returning the surplus. We learn how to design places that honor nature and honor human needs at the same time. We learn how to build resilience not only in landscapes, but in families and communities. And perhaps most importantly, we learn practices and ways of thinking that can be repeated long after the course is over.

Because the point is not simply to have one powerful experience. The point is to begin thinking like a permaculture designer. The point is to learn how to create life-giving places. The point is to participate in the healing of the world, starting wherever we are.

Returning to the First Image

When I look at that photograph I took today, May 28th 2026, of the children harvesting mushrooms, I see more than children learning about fungi. I see a possible future. I see education returning to the living world. I see children learning with their hands, hearts, minds, and families. I see parents and teachers and communities remembering that life is not divided into disconnected subjects. I see the beginning of a world where our schools, farms, homes, technologies, and communities are designed with nature, not against it.

And I see children smiling as they return to the mother they may not have even known they were missing. May we be brave enough to build that kind of education. May we be humble enough to learn from the living world. May we be wise enough to return. May we teach our children not only how to succeed in the world as it is, but how to help create the world as it could be.

Ways to Learn and Support This Work

If something in this stirred something new in you, and you want to learn how to design places like the ones described in this article, you can learn more about our permaculture courses here:
https://www.sunandbloomfarms.com/inpersonpdc.html

And if your heart is especially moved by the children’s side of this story, we also welcome support for Bloom Homeschool Co-op. Our classroom space was recently damaged by hail, and gifts toward that repair help us continue creating this kind of nature-based, farm-based, family-supported education for children in our community: 
https://gofund.me/c135078f3 

If you are not receiving these newsletters in your inbox and would like to, you can subscribe here: 
https://mailchi.mp/sunandbloomfarms/sjcl3tqy3f

Regenerative Water Retention, Soil Building, and Pest Management Strategies Inspired by Agroforestry, Regenerative Agriculture, and Permaculture Design

This year, I started sharing more consistently about what is happening on our unique farmstead (farm homestead) week by week. Part of that is simply practical. So much happens in a growing season that if we do not pause and tell the story as it is unfolding, the work can disappear into the pace of the next task. But part of it is deeper than that too.

A farm is not just a place where things are produced, especially a permaculture farm. A farm is also a place where patterns become visible. Soil changes. Water moves. Plants respond. Animals participate. Mistakes teach. Good decisions compound. What looked like an experiment one year can become a real system a few years later.

So for Week 22, I wanted to do something a little different. Instead of only giving a weekly update, I wanted to take one picture from the farm and use it as a teaching image. This one picture shows a young agroforestry, specifically alley crop, system we are building here at Sun and Bloom Farms, right alongside our annual vegetable, medicine, forest farming and cut flower production.

Some of the food forest systems on our farm are more mature at this point in our context. Some were planted close to five years ago. Others are around three years old. Many of those plantings were designed with food and medicine production in mind, especially fruit trees, berries, perennial herbs, and useful support plants. But they were also designed with the permaculture principle of stacking functions in mind. So they have not only produced food, medicine, beauty, habitat, and soil improvement, as mother plants they have also given us cuttings, seeds, experience, failures, and confidence.

This agroforestry system in the picture is newer. More specifically, it is a young alley cropping system. A food forest is one agroforestry strategy, and many of the more mature plantings I described above are closer to that food forest or plant guild approach. This system is a little different. Alley cropping is almost like a food forest organized in rows: perennial crop rows, support plant rows, and managed alleys between them that can produce food, flowers, fertility, mulch, and animal impact while the system matures.

We started this alley cropping system last year, and we are continuing to build it this year. As a perennial system that takes a few years to start producing food in abundance, it is growing in parallel with the growth and expansion of our annual production. And that is important, because for us, agroforestry and food forest design are not separate from making a living from the land. They are not separate from feeding ourselves. They are not separate from flowers, vegetables, nursery plants, animals, compost, mulch, water, or the forest edge. It is all connected. 

This picture shows one young section of that connection.

The annual production that helped make the food forest possible

When we first arrived here, one of the early production areas we began working with was an old orchard space. Many of the trees had already died, and some of the remaining trees were in poor enough condition that we eventually determined we would not be able to bring them back into health.

But before we started changing the land, we observed. That is the first principle in permaculture: observe and interact. We spent time learning the regional context online and at locally available webinars and workshops, studying the landscape  in person, collecting information, walking the site, watching the water, noticing the old trees, the slope, the access, the soil, and the patterns already present. In many ways, we were working through the same 10-step permaculture design process that we now teach in our courses and use with clients, a framework we have articulated clearly and offer freely for people to learn from and use. We then moved from observation and data gathering into a preliminary overview design and plan, and then we started the physical work. I even have some older videos where I am standing in this space talking about what we planned and hoped would happen here, and it is beautiful to look back now and see that some of those early ideas have actually taken form.

We cleared some of those trees in stages. We did not have one big perfect plan and one big perfect implementation moment. We worked with what we had, when we had it. The trees that came down became part of the fertility story of the farm. Some became mulch. Some became firewood. Some became biochar. Some became habitat and organic material. Then we began running chicken tractors through that area, letting the birds scratch, eat, fertilize, disturb lightly, and participate in the transition from a declining orchard into a new growing system.

The high tunnels you can see on the left side of the picture are at the edge of that transition area. Our first high tunnel was not actually a high tunnel in the beginning. It was a wedding tent we brought with us from California. We adapted it, strengthened it, and turned it into a growing structure. Later, we added another high tunnel that I bought locally and modified. Then we added another kit we bought online. Last year, we added a larger tunnel that we built in two pieces. (the company we bought these things from has been very supportive and offered us an affiliate partnership at one point - let me know if you want the link).

I do not share that because the structures themselves are the main point. I share it because that is often how real regenerative systems are built. Piece by piece. Season by season. With what is available. With practical decisions that are not always perfect, but that move the larger vision forward.

We knew we wanted to grow perennial systems. We knew we wanted berries, fruit trees, medicinal plants, and forest-edge production. We knew we wanted nursery plants. But we also knew we needed food now. We needed production now. We needed a way to feed ourselves through the year and begin creating a farm economy while the longer-term systems matured. That is what the high tunnels have helped us do.

At this point, we can grow food through much of the year. Even in the middle of winter, we can harvest beautiful food for ourselves and share some with people in our community. We have not yet chosen to take on a full winter CSA the way we do during the main growing season. That would require the right people working with us and the right rhythm around the farm. For now, the high tunnels allow us to eat well all year, start growing for the market early, end late, and extend the season without overcommitting the farm beyond its current capacity.

We also know that plastic is not ideal. That is something we hold honestly. It is not perfectly aligned with the deepest version of our values. But in this stage of our farm, the tunnels are helping us build soil, grow nutrient-dense food, stabilize production, and support the transition toward more perennial and living systems.

Inside each tunnel, across roughly 5,000 square feet of covered growing space, and in a few additional outside initial permanent beds to the west of the high tunnels, totaling around 5,000 square feet, we have been building soil every year. We add compost. We add mulch. We use cover crops. Sometimes we allow plant residues to break down in place. In two of the tunnels, we have also integrated chickens during the winter. They come in after the crop cycle, terminate plant material, eat pests, scratch through residues, and deposit nitrogen and other nutrients.

Over time, we have built more than a foot of beautiful living soil above what was once hardpan in the high tunnels. That is not just fertility. That is transformation.

Permanent market garden beds and living soil

On the east side of the high tunnels, we expanded the garden for the first time about two years ago. This is part of what you are seeing in the picture. Like the high tunnels, these outdoor beds were built slowly and intentionally.

Because this area is on a slope, we had to think carefully about water. We did not want to place everything exactly on contour because we also needed to manage the beds efficiently. We wanted parallel rows, clear pathways, and a layout that could function well for production. So we worked with the slope and designed the beds slightly off contour.

The outdoor production area is made of permanent market garden beds with very low disturbance. Some beds are annual production. Some hold perennial crops. We have asparagus in places. We have self-seeding plants. We grow cut flowers, medicinal plants, fruiting annuals, and food crops.

The beds themselves are rich in compost and organic matter. This is intentional because this is where we have much of our annual plant production. In these beds, we are encouraging faster nutrient cycling through well-crafted compost, organic matter, and biological activity. This is more of a bacteria-dominated soil system, where the biology can break down organic material, release nutrients quickly, and support quick-growing crops. 

The pathways are different. They are heavily mulched. That mulch suppresses weeds, absorbs water, breaks down slowly, feeds the soil, and supports a more fungal network underground. Over time, those pathways become more than walking spaces. They become moisture reservoirs, fungal corridors, and slow-release fertility systems.

We give this understanding an important place in our permaculture courses. We have also created a Master Regenerative Soil Building and Management course around it, because we want this understanding to become more pervasive in our community. We teach it both in person and online, and we keep seeing how much changes when this kind of soil understanding is unlocked. Food systems and plant systems become healthier, more productive, and more resilient when we understand that soil fertility is not only about adding nutrients, but about building the living relationships that cycle those nutrients.

We have bought compost when we needed to. Some of it was what I would call dead compost. It had organic matter, but not the kind of biological life we are really trying to build. So we used it as material, but then we brought life back into the system with cover crops, living roots, vermicompost, our own farm-made compost, and especially extracts and aerated teas made from these farm made composts. There is nothing quite like making extraxts and teas from compost and vermicompost on the land where it will be used.

Because we have animals, gardens, flowers, perennial plants, and a lot of diverse organic material, our compost can become very rich. It carries more than a high diversity of nutrients, it carries diverse and powerful biology too. And that matters because fertility is not just a list of minerals on a soil test. 

Fertility is cycled by life. Organic materials improve soil structure and aggregation, but that process is done by decomposing organisms. Bacteria, fungi, worms, arthropods, and many other members of the soil food web break down organic matter. Then other organisms consume and digest those decomposers and release nutrients into the soil in plant-available forms. In the process, they also create substances that help hold soil particles together, making soil more able to absorb water, hold nutrients, and support roots.

So when we talk about building soil, we are not only talking about adding stuff. We are talking about feeding a living system. That is how we manage both the high tunnels and the outdoor beds: permanent beds, low disturbance, compost, mulch, cover crops, living roots, biological inputs, and patience.

Designing with water instead of letting water decide everything

Because the high tunnels shed a lot of water from their plastic surfaces, and because the outdoor production area sits on a slope, water movement became one of the major design focus in this part of the farm.

When water falls on plastic, it does not infiltrate where it lands. It runs off. Then it joins the water already moving across the slope. If we had ignored that, the water would have found its own way. It always does. On a farm, even a gentle slope can create problems when water starts concentrating in the wrong places. We have seen many farms where water moves through mulched rows, raised beds, tire tracks, and paths in ways that slowly create erosion, wash out fertility, and damage production - on conventional farms, and especially where black plastic is used as mulch, that issue is even more pronounced! 

So in this section of the farm production, we used a keyline-inspired approach. In large-scale keyline systems, subsoil rips are often made with a tractor and a specific implement to help distribute water through the landscape. In our case, we did not use a tractor. We did the work manually. We made long, narrow rips, roughly six inches deep, slightly off contour and parallel to the growing rows.

The goal was simple: slow, spread, and sink the water. As water moves down the slope, it crosses those rips. Instead of gathering speed and erosive force,  it enters the rips, spreads more evenly, and begins soaking deeper into the soil. Organic material also collects in those lines, which means carbon and nutrients begin moving into the soil profile instead of only staying on the surface or washing away.

This kind of water work can be done at many scales. It can be used in large grazing systems where water is not infiltrating well or where erosion is developing. It can also be used in a smaller market garden and agroforestry system like this one, where annual production, berries, tree crops, mulch, and forest edge are all close together. 

The principle is the same. We do not want water to leave the land as quickly as possible. We want to guide it, calm it, invite it into the soil, and let plant roots access it over time.

A young alley cropping system

On this slope, we are developing an agroforestry system called alley cropping. In simple terms, alley cropping means we have rows or lines of main crops, usually perennial crops, with managed alleys between them. Those alleys can be used for annual crops, flowers, cover crops, animals, soil building, pollinator habitat, or other functions while the trees and shrubs are still young.

As the perennial crops mature, the alleys change. A mature fruit tree row casts more shade. A berry row fills in. Root systems expand. The system becomes less open and more woody. So the way we use the alley now will not be the way we use it forever. That is part of the design.

In the beginning of a food forest or agroforestry system, there is often a lot of sunlight, a lot of open ground, and a lot of opportunity to grow annual crops, flowers, cover crops, and fertility-building plants. Later, as the canopy develops, the system shifts toward more perennial production and understory management.

This is one of the reasons we like food forest design so much. It is not static. It has time built into it.

The blackberry row from our own farm cuttings

One of the main rows in this system is a 100-foot row of blackberries. These plants came from cuttings and propagation material from our own farm. That matters to us. We have spent years building mother plants, trialing different berries, observing what grows well here, and learning how to propagate more of what works.

The blackberry row is still young. This is its second year. We should see some fruit this year, but most of the real production should begin next year. For now, we are managing the row with very deep mulch. The mulch suppresses weeds, holds moisture, breaks down slowly, and helps create the kind of soil environment perennial berries prefer. Compared to an annual vegetable bed, where we often want faster bacterial nutrient cycling, a mulched perennial row leans more toward fungal relationships. That does not mean bacteria are absent. Soil is never that simple. But woody mulch supports a different kind of decomposition, a different kind of nutrient release, and a different relationship between roots, fungi, and organic matter.

Perennial plants, especially woody plants, tend to thrive when they can connect with fungal networks. Fungi can extend long distances through the soil, break down more complex organic materials, move nutrients, and help plants access resources beyond their immediate root zone. This is part of what we are trying to encourage in this system.

We are also beginning to integrate flowers, beneficial insect plants, and pest-deterrent plants into these rows. The goal is not only beauty, though beauty matters. The goal is ecological pest management.

If we can attract pollinators, predatory insects, and beneficial organisms into the system, we are not only growing crops. We are growing relationships.

Chickens, cover crops, and the productive alley between berries and trees

Between the blackberry row and the fruit tree row is an alley that we manage seasonally. During late fall and winter, we run chickens through this area. Our chickens are mostly heritage breeds, and we love them because they are beautiful, hardy, full of personality, and very good at scratching and pooping. :) In this system, they are not just egg layers. They are part of the soil management team.

The chickens scratch through the soil surface, eat weed seeds, disturb pest habitat, break down plant residue, and deposit manure. Chicken manure is rich in nitrogen, but it also contains other nutrients connected to what the chickens eat, both from their feed and from what they find in the landscape.

We use electric fencing so they do not overwork the berry row or fruit tree row. Sometimes they get some access around the plants, but we are careful. Chickens can be wonderful, but they can also compact soil and damage young plants if left too long or unmanaged.

After the chickens move on, we seed cover crops into the alley. The cover crops absorb and hold some of the nutrients the chickens left behind. They keep living roots in the soil. They feed soil organisms. They protect the surface. Later, we terminate the cover crop by mowing it down. We could bring in sheep or goats, but this is not the right context, we willdo that in another alley crop area with proper fencing, but in this specific section we are currently using mowing and mulch.

After mowing, we may use a clean, chemical-free landscape paper made from pressed plant pulp, almost like a cardboard mulch. Then we add compost and plant into it. In the past, we have grown peppers in this kind of alley. This year, we may grow flowers. Then, when that production cycle is finished, the chickens can come back through and help terminate the system again.

This is the kind of rotation we are interested in: Animals. Cover crops. Compost. Flowers. Vegetables. Mulch. Animals again. Not as separate enterprises, but as one fertility cycle.

The fruit tree row: resilience, diversity, and support plants

Beyond the blackberry row and the managed alley is a line of fruit trees. These trees are also young, mostly in their second year in this system. We planted different kinds and varieties because diversity is part of resilience. If one variety struggles, another may thrive. If apricots have a hard year, plums or peaches may do better. If one apple variety has pest or disease pressure, another may handle the season differently.

We are also choosing fruit tree varieties for staggered harvest. Some fruit ripens early. Some ripens in mid-season. Some ripens later. That spreads food, labor, and abundance over more of the year.

Around each tree, we have mulch. Over time, the plan is for the tree row to become a more continuous deep-mulch row, similar to the blackberry row.

Between the fruit trees, we planted perennial nitrogen-fixing shrubs. We experimented with a few types a couple of years ago. Not all of them worked. That is part of the process. One that did work very well for us is a native false indigo, a beautiful nitrogen-fixing shrub that we now use as a support plant. This year, because of that experience, we planted more of the same between the fruit trees. We use these plants for chop-and-drop. That means we trim them and lay the cut material on the ground as mulch. As the plant grows, fixes nitrogen, drops leaves, and responds to pruning, it helps feed the soil and support the fruit trees around it.

We also use comfrey in the system. Comfrey is a dynamic accumulator, a pollinator plant, and a strong biomass producer. We can chop it and lay it down as mulch around trees. It supports pollinators while it is flowering, and it helps cycle nutrients through its roots and leaves.

In addition to comfrey and nitrogen-fixing shrubs, we are adding pollinator attractors, beneficial insect plants, and pest-deterrent herbs. We want this tree row to become more than a line of fruit trees. We want it to become a living guild system.

Another native row before the forest

Beyond the fruit trees, we are planning another row of native plants from the Missouri Department of Conservation. These plants were very affordable, and we are excited to use them as another layer in the system. This row will combine habitat, food, medicine, and wildlife forage.

Part of the idea is to create a generous edge before the forest. We want plants that feed pollinators, birds, beneficial insects, and wildlife. We also want a kind of soft barrier. Instead of the wild animals moving straight into the fruit and berry production, we want to offer an abundant edge that gives them something to interact with before they reach the crops we are managing more intensely.

Of course, wildlife does not always follow our plans. But design can still shape relationships.

The forest edge and forest farming

At the far right of the image is the native forest. We have done some light clearing in places, mostly removing or shifting material near the lower understory. We are careful with this work because the goal is not to erase the forest and turn it into a garden. The goal is to work with the forest as a living system.

Every year, little by little, we are plugging in classic high-value forest farming species. Some are medicinal. Some are edible. Some are fungal. Some are simply part of increasing the useful diversity of the woodland edge.

Some of the species and crops that we are working with, that have already been plugged in, and that some will be plugged in later for our context in Missouri forest farming include American ginseng, goldenseal, black cohosh, blue cohosh, ramps, pawpaw, spicebush, Solomon’s seal, wild ginger, bloodroot, mayapple, ferns, elderberry along sunnier edges, persimmon along open woodland edges, hazelnut along productive edges, and serviceberry in partial sun and edge conditions.

We also have stacks of logs inoculated with shiitake, oyster, and lion’s mane mushrooms, and I will share more about that in a future article.

We are not growing all of these at commercial scale in this one place. Some are in small trials. Some are in other parts of the farm. Some are long-term plantings. Some are part of the learning and propagation process. But that is how forest farming begins for us. Not by forcing a forest to become a field, but by learning what kind of production belongs under trees, along edges, and within the shade and moisture patterns that already exist.

Food flowing from annuals to forest

One of the things I love about this section of the farm is that food and fertility are beginning to flow from the annual production area all the way to the forest edge. At the top and left, we have high tunnels and permanent annual beds producing vegetables, flowers, and medicinal plants. Then we move into berries. Then a managed alley. Then fruit trees. Then native habitat and food plants. Then forest farming. 

Water moves through that whole system. Nutrients move through that whole system. Insects move through that whole system. Roots and fungi move through that whole system. The forest is not separate from the market garden. The market garden is not separate from the orchard. The orchard is not separate from the chickens. The chickens are not separate from the compost. The compost is not separate from the food.

This is what we are striving toward: connected systems.

We do not build it all at once

When we came here, we did not try to turn acres and acres into food forest production all at once. That can sound exciting, but it can also become overwhelming, expensive, and hard to maintain. Instead, we built pockets.

We built some silvopasture areas where animals could move under trees and benefit from shade, shelter, and seasonal tree crops like acorns and nuts. Those areas may become more productive over time, but right now they already serve the animals and the land.

We built small food forest guilds near forest edges. We planted berries, fruit trees, medicinal plants, and support species in different parts of the farm. We cared for many plants in pots while we figured out where they belonged. We propagated from mother plants. We learned what survived. We learned what struggled. 

Each new planting could benefit from the systems that were already growing. That is important. A new food forest does not begin in isolation. It begins within the ecology that has already been cultivated. Beneficial insects are already present. Fungal networks are already developing. Mother plants are already producing propagation material. Compost systems are already alive. The people are also more experienced.

So the system in this picture may be young, but it is not starting from nothing. It is being planted into the momentum of the whole farm.

Seven-year cycles and returning to food forests

We have built and helped design food forests and agroforestry systems in other places too. At our previous farm, we planted fruit trees, grapes, berries, medicinal plants, and many support species. That system is around seven years old now. Even without us actively managing it the way we once did, it continues to grow and produce.

We are planning to visit it again soon. There is something beautiful about that. Many indigenous cultures around the world tell stories of planting food systems that people returned to in cycles. Food forests were not always managed in the rigid way modern agriculture imagines farming. They were tended, visited, harvested, remembered, and woven into culture over time.

That kind of thinking is present in many traditions, including stories from the people of the place I come from, the Dacians, and from many other agrarian and forest-based peoples around the world. There is something deeply human about planting a system that may feed someone years later. There is something deeply healing about returning to a place and finding that the trees kept growing.

Why this matters now

In my last article, I wrote about why I believe the future of regenerative living will be agrarian, relational, and deeply practical. This is part of what I mean. The future we need will not be created only by ideas. It will be created by people learning how to work with soil, water, plants, animals, buildings, communities, and economies in a more integrated way. It will be created by people who know how to grow food, but also how to think in systems. It will be created by people who can look at a slope and ask:

• Where does the water go?
• Where should the trees be?
• Where can animals help?
• Where does fertility come from?
• Where can annual crops support perennial establishment?
• Where does the forest want to participate?
• Where can beauty, food, medicine, income, and ecology meet?

That is permaculture design. Not as a trend. Not as a slogan. Not as a collection of random techniques. As a way of seeing and working with life.

An invitation to learn with us this September 2026

This September 2026, we are hosting our in-person Permaculture Design Certification & Farm Immersion Course here at Sun and Bloom Farms.

I am very excited about this because students will be able to walk through systems like the one in this picture and see them in real life (and our sit down lectures will be more like briefs, because the participants will get our guide-book to read in advance!). They will be able to see the high tunnels, the permanent beds, the berry rows, the young fruit trees, the cover crop alleys, the compost systems, the animals, the forest edge, and the places where things are still imperfect and still becoming.

We will be taking soil tests. We will compare different parts of the farm. We will look at water movement. We will talk about why certain plants were placed where they were placed. We will taste vegetables. We may taste fruit. We will smell flowers. We will look at insects. We will talk about mistakes. We will talk about what is working.

For local students, there may even be moments when cuttings or plant material can go home with you, so these systems can begin multiplying in other places too. That is really the point. We do not want this knowledge to stay here.

We want more people growing food forests, gardens, homesteads, orchards, agroforestry systems, community landscapes, school gardens, medicinal plantings, and resilient farms. We want more people to understand how to design from their own context, for their own land, family, community, and future. The course is not just about learning techniques. It is about learning how to think clearly, observe carefully, design responsibly, and take action in a way that fits real life.

If that is something you are longing for, or if you know someone who is ready for that kind of learning, this is an invitation.

Come learn with us this September at Sun and Bloom Farms.

Registration is open now.

https://www.sunandbloomfarms.com/inpersonpdc.html
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And if there is enough interest, we may also offer a focused Food Forest and Agroforestry Design Masterclass in the future, where we can go even deeper into systems like this one.

For now, we are grateful to keep building, keep learning, and keep sharing the story as it grows.

— Lucian
Sun and Bloom Farms
Lebanon, Missouri

A Question I Have Been Carrying for More Than a Decade

The picture I am using for this writing comes from a TEDx talk I gave around 2014 or 2015. In that talk, I was speaking mostly to people living in urban and suburban homes, and I opened with a question that has stayed with me ever since: what would it look like if we transformed our homes from resource-guzzling, polluting entities into ecologically productive ecosystems? At the time, I was talking about very practical things: composting, rainwater harvesting, native landscapes in the front yard, food-producing ecosystems in the backyard, and simple design steps that ordinary families could begin taking in the places where they already lived.

That was not the first time I had shared those ideas publicly or privately, but looking back now, more than a decade later, I can see how much of my life has been spent in service to that same question. I have spoken about it, taught it, designed for it, installed systems around it, consulted on it, written about it, and, most importantly, lived inside of it. Over the years, I have had the privilege of helping people transform backyards, homesteads, small farms, community spaces, neighborhoods and larger landscapes into places with more food, more fertility, more biodiversity, more water awareness, more beauty, and more relationship.

I say this not to position myself as someone who has arrived, or as someone who has figured it all out. I have not. The work itself has been one of my greatest teachers. Every landscape, every family, every climate, every budget, every animal system, every failed planting, every successful harvest, every pond, every compost pile, every community experiment, and every farm season has taught me something. But I do want to begin this article by saying that what I am writing here is not a collection of abstract ideas floating above real life. These are ideas I have been carrying, testing, refining, and living with for many years.

In the last decade, I have watched this vision take form at different scales. I have seen ordinary homes begin to become productive ecological systems. I have seen homesteads become places of learning, food, and community. I have helped imagine and build more collaborative agrarian models, including farm-village experiments in places like the high desert of Anza, California and now in the work we are developing in Lebanon, Missouri and soon another sister location. I have also begun to think and work more seriously with larger-scale land projects and regional transformation. So when I talk about the future of regenerative living, I am not only talking about something I hope will happen someday. I am talking about something that is already happening, something I have seen with my own eyes, and something I believe we are still only at the beginning of understanding.

## From Sustainability to Regeneration

For a long time, the word *sustainable* has carried much of the weight in conversations about the future. We have heard it applied to agriculture, homes, communities, businesses, cities, development, energy, and almost every other part of modern life. At its best, the word has helped us ask an important question: how do we meet our needs without destroying the systems that future generations will depend on? That is a necessary question, and we should not dismiss it. But in recent years, another word has begun to rise with more depth, more power, and more possibility: *regenerative*.

To regenerate means more than to maintain. It means to restore life, to renew what has been depleted, to participate in healing, and to help a living system become more capable of sustaining itself over time. In agriculture, the word has become associated with farming practices that rebuild soil, increase biodiversity, improve water cycles, integrate animals wisely, sequester carbon, and produce food in ways that strengthen the living systems beneath and around us. The modern use of the phrase “regenerative organic agriculture” is often associated with Robert Rodale and the Rodale Institute, which helped popularize the idea that farming should go beyond simply sustaining the land and should instead actively improve the health of the whole system.

That shift matters because once we understand regeneration in the soil, we begin to see that the same question applies everywhere. What would it mean to regenerate not only our farms, but our homes? What would it mean to regenerate not only our food systems, but our neighborhoods, our local economies, our daily rhythms, our education, our health, our relationship with work, and our sense of belonging? Regenerative agriculture opens the door to something larger: regenerative living. And I believe the future of regenerative living will be, in many ways, a return to agrarian life — not in a nostalgic or romantic sense, and not as a rejection of modern tools, but as a practical, creative, intelligent re-rooting of human life in land, food, water, energy, community, and place.

Not everyone will become a full-time farmer. Not everyone will live on acreage. Not everyone will raise animals, manage orchards, sell food at market, build ponds, or plant windbreaks. But everyone will need to recover some relationship with the living world that supports them. 

Everyone will need to understand, at least in some basic way, where food comes from, how water moves, how fertility is built, how homes can be designed with climate in mind, how communities become resilient, and how human beings can live as participants inside natural systems rather than as consumers standing outside of them. Regenerative living cannot remain an idea. It has to become embodied in place.

## What Regenerative Agriculture Means

Regenerative agriculture begins with a simple observation: the way we produce food can either degrade life or increase it. A farm can lose soil, or it can build soil. It can pollute water, or it can help clean and store water. It can simplify a landscape into monocultures, or it can invite biodiversity back. It can depend heavily on outside inputs, or it can learn to cycle fertility from within. It can treat animals as machines, or it can integrate them as living participants in a larger ecological pattern. It can extract, or it can regenerate.

This is why soil health is so central to regenerative agriculture. The Natural Resources Conservation Service defines soil health as the continued capacity of soil to function as a living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals, and humans. Healthy soil regulates water, supports plant and animal life, cycles nutrients, filters pollutants, and forms the foundation for productive and beautiful landscapes. When farmers talk about keeping soil covered, reducing disturbance, increasing diversity, maintaining living roots, integrating livestock, building organic matter, and restoring water cycles, they are not merely talking about techniques. They are talking about a different relationship with the land.

The Food and Agriculture Organization describes regenerative agriculture as holistic farming systems that improve water and air quality, enhance biodiversity, produce nutrient-dense food, store carbon, work in harmony with nature, and maintain or improve economic viability. That last part is important. Regeneration is not just about pretty gardens, idealistic visions, or moral language. It has to work. It has to feed people. It has to support livelihoods. It has to build forms of resilience that are ecological, social, and economic. And once we understand that, the lessons of regenerative agriculture naturally begin to expand beyond the farm.

## From Regenerative Agriculture to Regenerative Living

A household can be extractive or regenerative. A neighborhood can be extractive or regenerative. A local economy can be extractive or regenerative. A way of life can either deplete people, land, water, attention, community, and spirit, or it can increase health, beauty, fertility, belonging, and abundance over time. Regenerative living asks this larger question: how do we design our lives so that the places we inhabit become more alive because we are there?

That question changes how we think about almost everything. It changes how we think about a backyard, a house, a meal, a neighborhood, a school, a farm, a church, a business, and a town. It changes how we think about waste, because in living systems waste is usually a misplaced resource. It changes how we think about energy, because the sun, wind, wood, food, labor, and attention all move through our lives in patterns that can be designed well or poorly. It changes how we think about money, because a regenerative economy should circulate value in ways that strengthen real places and real relationships. It changes how we think about children and elders, because a healthy culture passes skills, stories, responsibility, and belonging across generations.

Regenerative living is not simply adding a compost bin to an otherwise disconnected life, although composting is a beautiful beginning. It is not simply installing solar panels, although renewable energy can be part of it. It is not simply shopping at a farmers market, although supporting local growers matters. Regenerative living is a whole-systems approach to life. It asks us to see the household, the garden, the farm, the neighborhood, and the bioregion as living systems. It asks us to notice the flows of energy, water, food, fertility, labor, money, care, attention, and meaning. Then it asks us to design those flows in ways that create more life.

Where is fertility leaving the system? Where is water being wasted? Where are people isolated? Where is food traveling too far? Where is energy being consumed without awareness? Where are children being separated from practical skills? Where are elders being separated from usefulness and honor? Where are landscapes being simplified when they could be made abundant? Where are homes becoming places of consumption when they could also become places of production, beauty, hospitality, prayer, healing, and rest? These are not abstract questions. They are design questions.

## The Home as the First Regenerative Landscape

For many people, regenerative living will begin at the smallest scale: the home. A backyard, a front yard, a patio, a rooftop, a side lot, or even a small urban or suburban space can become the first doorway into a different way of life. A conventional yard is often a place of maintenance. Grass is mowed, leaves are removed, water runs off, fertility is exported, wildlife is discouraged, and the household remains almost entirely dependent on distant systems it cannot see. But that same space can become something entirely different.

A backyard can become a food forest. A front yard can become a pollinator garden. A fence line can become a trellis for grapes, berries, or medicinal vines. A roof can harvest rainwater. A shed can hold tools, seeds, and nursery plants. A lawn can become vegetables, herbs, flowers, mushrooms, fruit trees, native plants, gathering spaces, and quiet corners for reflection, meditation, or prayer. A home can be retrofitted over time with better insulation, passive solar awareness, natural materials, renewable energy where appropriate, water harvesting, outdoor kitchens, root cellars, perennial plantings, and seasonal rhythms. The household can begin to produce not only food, but also beauty, biodiversity, shade, habitat, medicine, compost, and connection.

This scale matters because it restores agency. Many people feel powerless when they think about climate, food systems, housing, economics, health, and the future. The scale of the problems can become paralyzing. But a garden gives people a place to act. A compost pile gives them a way to participate. A rain barrel teaches them to see water differently. A fruit tree teaches them patience. A flock of backyard chickens teaches them daily care, cycles, death, fertility, and gratitude. These things may seem small, but they are not insignificant. They begin to re-educate the body, the household, and the imagination.

Over the years, I have seen this happen in many different climates and contexts, from Southern California to Missouri and in projects reaching into desert regions like Nevada and Arizona. People would often come to me because they wanted help transforming a yard, a garden, or a piece of land. They wanted food, beauty, shade, fertility, water harvesting, or a more ecological landscape around their home. But many of them received something more than a design. They received an invitation into a different way of thinking about their life. A garden can teach a family that self-sufficiency, at least in the isolated modern sense, is largely a myth. We can become more capable, more skilled, and more locally resilient, but we are never meant to become sealed-off units of independence. A truly regenerative household eventually has to give something back.

This is where the permaculture ethic of fair share becomes so important. If a home landscape begins producing more food, more seed, more compost, more habitat, more inspiration, or more knowledge, then the question becomes: how will that abundance circulate? I have seen people open their gardens to neighbors, invite friends over to see what is possible, host conversations about transforming other yards, and become part of a quiet local movement of people learning together. In some cases, neighbors of past clients showed up in my courses because they had seen something shift nearby and wanted to understand how to make that leap themselves. In that sense, the home is not only the first regenerative landscape because it is physically close to us. It is the first regenerative landscape because it can become the first place where we practice giving back to both people and the living world.

At the same time, the household scale also reveals its own limits. No backyard can do everything. A family may grow herbs, greens, berries, eggs, and some seasonal vegetables, but still need grains, meat, dairy, fruit, firewood, honey, mushrooms, medicine, fiber, tools, and community. This is not a failure. It is part of the design. The regenerative backyard naturally points beyond itself. It leads to neighbors, local farmers, barter, buying clubs, shared tools, skill exchanges, community meals, and relationships with people who are producing what one household cannot. A regenerative household cannot remain isolated for long. It becomes a doorway into community.

## The Homestead and Farmstead as Community Hubs

The next scale of regenerative living is the homestead or small farmstead. This may be a few acres, ten acres, twenty acres, fifty acres, or something else entirely. The exact size matters less than the function. At this scale, people can begin to produce more than their own household needs. They may grow vegetables, fruit, eggs, milk, meat, mushrooms, herbs, flowers, nursery plants, compost, mulch, honey, seeds, or value-added products. They may not become a “farm” in the industrial sense, but they become a node of abundance. They become a place where surplus begins to flow.

Once surplus exists, relationship becomes possible in a new way. The homestead can feed neighbors, host workdays, teach children, welcome apprentices, sell at market, support a local food cooperative, or become a gathering place for meals, workshops, ceremonies, skill-building days, and seasonal celebrations. It can become a place where people remember that food does not come from a store. It comes from soil, rain, sunlight, animals, fungi, microbes, labor, skill, patience, and grace.

This is one of the most important roles of the regenerative homestead: it becomes a school. Not necessarily a formal school with desks, fluorescent lights, and standardized tests, but a living school. A place where people learn by doing. They learn how to plant a tree, build compost, read a landscape, harvest water, sharpen tools, care for animals, prune, graft, ferment, preserve, cook, butcher, mulch, sow, weed, observe, and repair. They learn how to work with others. They learn how to become useful. And usefulness is one of the great missing nutrients of modern life.

Many people today are surrounded by convenience but starved of meaningful participation. They can order almost anything, watch almost anything, and communicate instantly with people far away, yet still feel disconnected from the basic processes that sustain life. Regenerative homesteads and farmsteads can become places where people recover the dignity of being needed by a living system. The garden needs hands. The animals need care. The soil needs cover. The harvest needs processing. The meal needs preparing. The children need examples. The community needs gathering. In such places, life becomes less abstract and more embodied.

Anna Maria and I began living into this more deeply on a suburban acre in San Clemente. What started as a transformed backyard gradually expanded into something much more like a small productive farm and community hub. I partnered with one of my past students, and together we started a microgreens business, but the production was never only about microgreens. We were growing additional plants, flowers, herbs, and produce, while also planting over a hundred fruit trees and filling much of the land with pollinator-friendly, medicinal, native, and soil-building plants. The actual intensive garden footprint was small compared to the whole acre, but people were amazed by how much food and abundance could come from a carefully designed space.

More important than the production itself was what began to gather around it. Our home was full all the time. We taught permaculture courses from the garden, and we brought students to other local sites so they could see many different expressions of regenerative design, not only our own. We taught simple gardening, seed saving, natural beekeeping, herbalism, and, of course, permaculture design. We made big salads with the community from what we were growing, and people could taste the difference. They were not just learning abstract principles; they were eating from the system, sitting inside the system, and beginning to imagine what might be possible in their own lives.

Eventually, the sheer number of people coming through, and the hunger for both education and good food, pushed us to expand beyond the limits of that suburban acre. We leased forty acres in the high desert so we could demonstrate and produce at a different scale. There we were able to integrate goats, chickens, more field production, larger workdays, and a broader experience of land-based learning. The movement from backyard to homestead to leased farmstead was not just a change in acreage. It was a change in what we were inviting people into. We were no longer simply asking people to visit a beautiful productive home landscape. We were beginning to ask whether others might join us in carrying the work, leading it, and building something more communal together.

That is where the homestead and farmstead naturally began to point toward the next idea: the regenerative farm village.

## The Regenerative Farm Village

Beyond the individual household and the single homestead, another form begins to emerge: the regenerative farm village. This can take many shapes. In some cases, multiple households may live on the same piece of land while managing their own independent projects. They may share roads, tools, water systems, barns, workshops, gathering spaces, values, and a basic agreement about the purpose and limits of the place. In other cases, the land may operate more like a collaborative farm enterprise, where different people specialize in different areas — vegetables, animals, orchards, flowers, herbs, mushrooms, education, hospitality, marketing, infrastructure, building, administration, events — while working under one shared umbrella.

Some communities may be more residential. Some may be more entrepreneurial. Some may be more educational. Some may be organized around a family farm, a cooperative, a church, a nonprofit, a land trust, private ownership, or a hybrid structure that has to be carefully developed over time. There is no single form that will work everywhere. But the shared pattern is this: people begin to realize that regeneration requires both land and community. Land without community can become lonely, overwhelming, or economically fragile. Community without land can become abstract, dependent, and disconnected from the material basis of life. But when land and community come together, something powerful becomes possible.

A farm village can share infrastructure that would be difficult for one household to afford or manage alone: greenhouses, barns, commercial kitchens, wash-pack stations, fencing, irrigation systems, tractors, walk-in coolers, sawmills, workshops, housing, classrooms, retreat spaces, and market channels. It can also share social infrastructure: meals, childcare, eldercare, education, spiritual practice, conflict resolution, seasonal celebrations, business planning, hospitality, and mutual aid. At this scale, regenerative living becomes more than a private lifestyle. It begins to become a culture.

People are no longer just trying to make their own home more sustainable. They are participating in a living place with shared responsibilities, shared limits, shared opportunities, and shared abundance. They must learn not only gardening or farming, but communication, governance, patience, forgiveness, boundaries, trust, leadership, and cooperation. This is important because the future of regenerative living cannot be reduced to land techniques. It will also require social maturity. Many people can dream about community; fewer are prepared to practice the humility, clarity, and commitment required to build it.

At its best, a regenerative farm village is not an escape from the world. It is a seed of the world to come. It is a place where education, farming, enterprise, hospitality, healing, and shared life can begin to form a pattern that others can visit, learn from, adapt, and carry elsewhere. It is not utopia. It is not perfect. It is not free from conflict, weather, financial pressure, human weakness, or the realities of work. But it can become a living demonstration that another way of organizing life is possible.

We began experimenting with this more directly during our first farm chapter in California. As more people gathered around the work, and especially in the less than two years before the COVID era, we started to ask what it would look like for people not only to visit, learn, or volunteer, but to actually live into the work with us. Some people moved onto the land, including people living in yurts with composting toilets, outdoor showers, and a much simpler relationship to daily life. For some, it was a difficult transition. For others, it was deeply beautiful, almost idyllic. We shared dinners most evenings. People stepped into leadership in different areas of the emerging work, including food production, marketing, herbalism, and animal care. The farm was beginning to feel less like a place managed by one household and more like a living organism with many people carrying different parts of the whole.

The tumultuous years around COVID-19 only intensified the importance of this direction. In a time when many people felt the fragility of supply chains, social trust, public life, and ordinary routines, the farm-village pattern felt like an answer to outside crisis. We had food growing. We had water. We had energy. We had work to do with our hands. We had animals to care for, meals to share, and a vision of resilience that was not just theoretical. There was something profoundly beautiful about that. It showed us that when life outside becomes uncertain, a well-designed land-based community can offer a kind of groundedness, usefulness, and mutual care that is hard to manufacture any other way.

Eventually, we decided to move to Missouri because we needed access to more land, a more affordable path forward, and an easier regulatory context for the kind of land-based village and educational work we were working to build. Some people came with us from California, and others came over the years to experience the work for a season. In the past five years, people have lived with us in the same house, in a separate house next door, and in beautiful yurt setups out in nature, using composting toilets, outdoor showers, and a commercial kitchen we created to support shared meals and farm life. Some stayed for three months, six months, nine months, or returned for different seasons. Many came as novices, so their role was often more about learning and participating than fully directing an enterprise. That too has been part of the education.

These experiments have taught us a great deal about what works and what does not for us and for others. They have confirmed the beauty of shared meals, shared land, shared learning, and shared purpose. They have also confirmed what I wrote above: a regenerative village requires more than enthusiasm. It requires maturity, commitment, communication, patience, responsibility, and a willingness to grow through the discomforts of real community. We are still learning. We are still refining the model. But we are no longer speaking about the farm village as an abstract dream. We have lived pieces of it, tested pieces of it, been humbled by pieces of it, and seen enough beauty to keep building toward it.

That is part of what is now taking shape through the Permaculture Farm School Village, which I will share more about later in this essay.

## Large-Scale Land Projects and Regional Transformation

There is another scale beyond the farm village: large tracts of land and regional networks. This may look like hundreds or thousands of acres held by families, cooperatives, land trusts, mission-aligned investors, churches, nonprofits, or regional alliances. At this scale, all the previous models can exist inside a larger pattern. There may be individual homesteads, collaborative farms, educational centers, managed forests, grazing systems, orchards, ponds, wetlands, retreat spaces, natural buildings, renewable energy systems, wildlife corridors, and village clusters. There may be enterprises producing food, medicine, fiber, timber, compost, nursery stock, education, hospitality, ecological restoration, and consulting.

The key is that land is no longer treated merely as a commodity to subdivide, extract from, and sell to the highest bidder. It is treated as a living inheritance. Large-scale regenerative land projects could become the backbone of regional resilience. They could produce food for towns and cities, train new farmers and land stewards, restore watersheds, create meaningful work, offer places of healing for people exhausted by modern life, reconnect urban and rural communities, and become centers where people learn not only how to farm, but how to live.

This matters because regenerative living cannot remain scattered into isolated households. It needs networks. It needs hubs. It needs places where knowledge, food, resources, labor, money, and courage can gather. The future may not be one giant movement with one central plan. It may look more like mycelium: many local nodes, many relationships, many places adapting to their own climate, culture, watershed, economy, and people. Underneath them all, however, there will be a shared pattern: life creates conditions for more life.

I have been part of these kinds of conversations in different capacities as a consultant, designer, and collaborator in different places around the United States, especially in the last few years. Some of this work is still emerging, and I will be sharing more about it in the future as the right doors open. Some of it will come in the form of invitations for people who want to participate in regenerative farming, homesteading, permaculture, land-based education, and larger regional projects. For now, I will simply say this: if you are interested in this field, you have probably already seen the signs of this movement growing through different organizations, land projects, educational platforms, and communities beginning to gather people around a similar vision. I am grateful to be in conversation with some of these efforts, and I am paying close attention to the new doors that are opening. I believe this larger landscape of work will become increasingly important in the years ahead.

## Why Regenerative Living Must Be Agrarian

I believe regenerative living must be agrarian. The word *agrarian* can sound old-fashioned to modern ears. Some people hear it and imagine a return to the past, or a rejection of technology, or a life of hard labor and isolation. That is not what I mean. To say that regenerative living must be agrarian is not to say that everyone must become a peasant farmer or abandon modern tools. It means that human life must be re-rooted in the realities of land: food, soil, water, seasons, animals, weather, fertility, limits, community, and place.

Modern life has allowed many people to live as though these realities are distant or optional. Food appears on shelves. Water comes from pipes. Waste disappears. Energy arrives through wires. Children grow up without knowing the names of plants. Adults work in digital economies while their bodies, communities, and local landscapes quietly deteriorate. Regenerative living interrupts that disconnection. It reminds us that we are biological beings living inside biological systems. We are not separate from the soil, the water cycle, the pollinators, the forests, the farms, the animals, the microbes, or the communities around us.

An agrarian future does not mean everyone doing the same thing. Some will grow food in backyards. Some will raise animals. Some will build homes. Some will teach. Some will cook. Some will preserve food. Some will manage water. Some will restore forests. Some will organize markets. Some will care for children. Some will care for elders. Some will design systems. Some will tell stories. Some will finance land. Some will build tools. Some will heal bodies. Some will create beauty. But the shared foundation will be a renewed understanding that human life flourishes when it is connected to land, community, and meaningful work.

When people live closer to food, land, animals, seasons, and one another, something in them begins to settle. They are not magically free from difficulty, but they often become more useful, more grounded, more connected, and more capable of joy. The land benefits too. Soil is covered instead of exposed. Water is slowed instead of wasted. Pollinators return. Food is grown closer to home. Waste becomes fertility. Beauty becomes part of daily life. This is why regenerative living matters: it is not only a philosophy about the planet, and it is not only a lifestyle choice for individuals. It is a way of arranging life so that people and places can become healthier together.

## The Skills This Future Will Require

This future will require more than enthusiasm. It will require skill. We will need people who understand natural systems, people who can observe a landscape and see patterns of sun, shade, wind, water, slope, soil, access, fertility, and succession. We will need people who know how to design a homestead, not just decorate a yard. We will need people who can place a garden where it belongs, harvest water before it becomes erosion, integrate animals without destroying the land, build fertility instead of buying fertility forever, grow perennial food systems, and design for human needs and ecological health at the same time.

## Permaculture as a Design Pathway

This is where permaculture and regenerative design become so important. Permaculture is not merely a gardening method. At its best, it is a design discipline for arranging human life in partnership with natural systems. It teaches us to ask better questions. What does this place want to become? Where is the energy coming from, and where is it going? What resources are already here? How can waste become food for another process? How can one element serve many functions? How can many elements support each necessary function? How can we design systems that become more abundant, beautiful, and resilient over time?

These are the kinds of questions that allow regenerative living to move from inspiration into practice. Without design, people often collect disconnected techniques. A raised bed here. A chicken coop there. A rain barrel somewhere else. A few fruit trees planted without thought. A solar panel, a compost pile, a dream. These may all be good beginnings, but they are not yet a system. Design is what turns good intentions into living patterns. It is what helps us see relationships instead of isolated parts. It is what allows a home, garden, farm, or village to become more than a collection of projects.

## A Living Invitation to Learn

This is part of why I teach permaculture. Not because permaculture is the only doorway into this work. It is not. There are many good teachers, traditions, farms, courses, books, mentors, and pathways. I have spent more than a decade teaching, designing, farming, observing, failing, learning, and continuing to build living systems. 

I have seen again and again that when people learn how to read the land and design with nature, something changes in them. They do not just gain information. They regain imagination. They begin to see possibility where before they saw problems. They look at a yard and see food, medicine, flowers, birds, shade, water, children, meals, prayer, and community. They look at a farm and see not just production, but education, healing, livelihood, worship, beauty, and belonging. They look at their lives and begin to ask different questions. What am I actually building? What am I participating in? What kind of future am I helping make possible?

So because I have seen what happens to people when they learn permaculture, after a break from teaching in-person courses, I am teaching them again. That matters to me because there is something powerful that happens when people come to a real farm and see a model already in motion. Not a perfect model. Not a finished model. But a living one. A place where soil is being built, animals are being integrated, trees are growing, systems are maturing, mistakes have become teachers, and the vision is no longer theoretical. You can walk through it. You can ask questions. You can see what is working and what is still becoming. You can begin to imagine what this might look like in your own life, your own home, your own land, and your own community.

If this is you — if you feel the desire to move from inspiration into practice, or if you know someone who is ready to learn these skills in person — I want to invite you to come learn with us. Our in-person permaculture course is one way to become more integrated into the future unfolding that I have been describing throughout this essay. It is a place to study design, walk real systems, ask questions, see a working farm model, and begin forming the practical imagination needed for regenerative living. You can find the course details and registration here: [Insert Permaculture Course Link].

## The Permaculture Farm School Village

For those who feel called not only to learn, but to participate more deeply, we are also developing the Permaculture Farm School Village. This is our attempt to move toward the kind of regenerative agrarian future described in this article: a place where education, farming, community, enterprise, land stewardship, and shared life can come together. We are not pretending to have the full model figured out. We are building toward it. Right now, there are opportunities for people to step in through real roles, real work, and real collaboration. These opportunities are not simply jobs in the ordinary sense. They are doorways — ways to explore whether there is a deeper fit, a shared calling, and the possibility of building something together over time.

I want to be clear: I did not write this whole article simply to pitch a course. There are many ways to begin this journey, and many people teaching beautiful and necessary things. But I do have a course, and I do have a farm where this work is being practiced, tested, and lived. If you are looking for a way to move from inspiration into design, from longing into skill, and from scattered ideas into a more coherent vision for your life and land, then the course is one resource available to you. And if you are looking for something deeper than a course — if you are looking for a possible path into collaborative agrarian life, meaningful work, and the building of a regenerative village — then the Farm School Village may be a door worth exploring.

At this stage, the Permaculture Farm School Village is being built around six farm-based enterprises, and we currently have leading roles open for three of them. These roles are not just ordinary positions to fill quickly. They are invitations for the right people to step into meaningful responsibility, help shape the next chapter of the work, and explore whether there is a deeper fit with the land, the community, and the vision. The roles will remain open until the right people show up. You can learn more about the open opportunities and apply here: [Insert Permaculture Farm School Village Link].

## The People Who Will Build This Future

The future of regenerative living will not be built by spectators. It will be built by people who are willing to learn, practice, design, plant, repair, host, teach, harvest, collaborate, and stay faithful to a vision larger than themselves. It will be built by people with backyards and people with farms, people with money and people with skills, people with land and people looking for land, people who teach and people who are finally ready to be taught. It will be built by families, neighbors, churches, schools, farmers, builders, cooks, healers, designers, investors, and ordinary people who decide that the future does not have to be only something that happens to them.

## Beyond a Technology-Only Future

Many visions of the future are dominated by technology: artificial intelligence, automation, space travel, virtual reality, smart cities, genetic engineering, robotics. Some of these tools may have a role to play, and regenerative living does not require us to reject every modern tool. But no technology can replace the living foundations of human life. We still need soil. We still need water. We still need food. We still need homes. We still need belonging. We still need meaningful work. We still need beauty. We still need children to grow up connected to reality. We still need elders to be honored. We still need communities that know how to care for one another. We still need places where the human spirit can become whole.

## Begin Where You Are

The future must be ecological. It must be agrarian. It must be relational. It must be designed. It must be practiced. And it must be local enough to become real. A person with a backyard can begin. A family with a few acres can begin. A farm can begin. A neighborhood can begin. A group of friends can begin. A church can begin. A school can begin. A landowner can begin. A young person looking for meaningful work can begin. An investor with vision can begin. A tired person longing for a more beautiful life can begin.

The work is enormous, but the doorway is often small: a compost pile, a garden bed, a fruit tree, a skill learned, a meal shared, a relationship repaired, a piece of land observed with love, a course taken, a village imagined, a first step. Regenerative living is not merely about the future. It is about how we live now in a way that makes a better future possible. The invitation is simple: begin where you are, learn how life works, design with it, and become the kind of person whose presence helps the world come alive.

I hope I have painted a picture of why I believe the next chapter of sustainability cannot remain abstract, isolated, or merely technological. It will be agrarian because it must return us to land and living systems. It will be relational because no household, farm, or village can regenerate alone. And it will be deeply practical because the future will be built through real skills, real places, real food, real work, and real people taking responsibility together.

If you are already working on something in this direction — a home landscape, a homestead, a farm, a community project, a land-based enterprise, or a larger regenerative vision — and you feel that I may be able to help in my capacity as a teacher, designer, or consultant, you are welcome to reach out. I am especially interested in conversations that are grounded, practical, and connected to real next steps. And beyond formal teaching or consulting, thoughtful comments and dialogue are welcome when they build on the ideas expressed here and help move this work forward with clarity, humility, and purpose.

The Sun & Bloom Permaculture Farm School Village Journal — Week 18 Spring in Full Motion | Soil, Bees, Flowers, Compost, Courses & the Village Growing Zone 7A / 6B — Lebanon, Missouri

It has been a few weeks since our last full Farm School Village Journal.
The last one was written around April 1st, covering Weeks 13 and 14. Now we are in Week 18, and the difference on the land is almost hard to believe. Spring is no longer arriving, spring is here.

The farm has crossed that invisible seasonal threshold where everything begins moving at once. The trees are greening. The understory is filling in. The soil is warm enough to respond quickly. The insects are active. The ticks are out. The bees are flying. The flowers are forming buds. The high tunnels are full. The outdoor beds are being planted. The compost piles are multiplying. This is the part of spring where the farm stops whispering and starts speaking loudly.

Ecological Context: The Canopy Wakes Up

All across the farm, the trees are waking into green. Some oaks are still moving slowly — buds swelling, leaf tips just beginning to push outward. Others are already carrying young leaves. That unevenness is part of the beauty of spring in the Ozarks. Not every species wakes at the same pace.

The redbuds have been brightening the edges of fields and woods. Dogwoods are flowering through the understory. Serviceberry, wild plum, hawthorn, and red buckeye are all part of this larger Missouri spring bloom pattern, each one playing its own role in feeding pollinators and signaling the season’s movement.

On the ground, spring wildflowers are also showing themselves. This is the time for violets, spring beauties, mayapples, celandine poppies, columbine, and other native flowers to appear in forests, field edges, roadsides, and stream corridors. April is one of the best months to pay attention to this layer of the landscape, because so many spring plants do their work quickly before the canopy fully closes. 

This spring has been warm. Sunny. Wet. Full of growth. And full of ticks. We are seeing a lot of them this year, and at some point we’ll write a separate article about ticks from an ecological perspective — not just “how do we avoid them,” but what conditions allow their populations to explode. That conversation includes deer pressure, small mammal populations, predator relationships, edge habitat, fragmented ecosystems, warm wet springs, and the ways disrupted landscapes can favor certain species over others.

Ticks are not just a nuisance. They are a signal. And like everything else on a regenerative farm, we want to look at the deeper ecological pattern.

What Has Been Happening on the Farm

Since our last journal, the farm has been moving fast. We’ve been building compost, shaping rows, planting high tunnels, planting outdoor beds, starting more seeds, preparing flowers, hosting events, teaching workshops, serving CSA members, and continuing to build the larger Farm School Village structure.

Some of the beds are planted with brassicas like kale and cabbage. Others hold carrots, radishes, turnips, lettuces, parsley, cilantro, and other cool-season crops. Some rows are already producing. Some are just beginning. Some still need to be finished. We do feel a little behind — but that is also the truth of spring. Spring does not wait until your systems are perfectly organized. It arrives all at once, and then the work becomes learning how to keep pace without losing the thread.

Flowers Coming Into Bud

One of the most exciting things right now is the flower tunnel and Anna Maria’s flower plantings. Many of the flowers are already forming buds, and that is especially meaningful because she planned this timing carefully for Mother’s Day. There is something very beautiful about that. Flowers are not just a side crop here. They are part of the emotional and visual life of the farm. They bring people in. They create joy. They support events. They build beauty into the production system. They become bouquets, photographs, gifts, and memories.

A farm that grows food feeds people. A farm that grows flowers also feeds the spirit. We’re looking forward to sharing those blooms soon.

Seed & Ecological Wisdom Exchange

We also hosted our Seed & Ecological Wisdom Exchange. The weather made it difficult.
We had heavy rains on Wednesday and Friday, and the bridge flooded. Because of that, we had to move the event from Saturday to Sunday. Many of the people who registered were probably not able to come because of church, family plans, or the schedule change.

Only a small percentage of registrants made it. But the people who did come shared a beautiful day with us. We had seeds available, conversations about ecological growing, a walk through the farm, discussion about regenerative practices, and time with Anna Maria around flowers and medicinal plants. Of course, it was disappointing to prepare so much and have the weather shift the event. But that is also farming. That is also community-building. That is also learning how to stay flexible with the land we live on. The people who came were engaged, curious, and grateful. That matters.

Master Composting & Soil Regeneration Intensive

On April 25th, we hosted our Master Composting & Soil Regeneration Intensive. This workshop was small, but powerful. We joked that we “knighted” two more people into the realm of regenerative soil — but truly, it was meaningful to spend the day going deep into what soil is, how it behaves, and how we can work with it instead of against it. We explored:

• What soil actually is
• Soil texture and structure
• Different soils from around the world
• What we have here locally in the Ozarks
• How to observe and test soil without making it overly complicated
• How to build fertility using what is already around us
• How compost, organic matter, biology, water movement, and minerals interact

One of the most important themes was this: We do not want to depend forever on fertility inputs shipped from far away. We want to learn how to build fertility from the farm itself. That means compost. Leaves. Animal bedding. Wood chips. Cover crops. Crop residues. Forest duff. Vermicompost. Compost extracts. Compost teas. Water-harvesting earthworks that catch runoff with organic matter and turns what could be erosion into fertility. It is not about buying soil health. It is about building it.

CSA Has Begun

We also served our first CSA box of the season, and we are preparing to serve the second.
This early in the season, we are not yet in full abundance. But there are greens, leafy crops, herbs, microgreens, and the first signs of what is coming. CSA members are receiving the earliest harvests from the farm, and that relationship is important to us. CSA is not just a box of vegetables. It is a shared commitment. Members help carry the farm through the beginning of the season, before abundance fully arrives. In return, they receive priority access to the food as it begins flowing from the land. We are grateful for the people who have stepped into that relationship with us.

Bees, Apprenticeship & the Pollinator Season

The bees are active again. On warm days, we can see them moving with purpose — leaving the hive, returning with pollen, responding to the flowers and tree blooms opening across the landscape.

Anna Maria has also begun her seasonal beekeeping apprenticeship, a monthly hands-on learning experience centered around hive inspections and natural beekeeping practices. This is not just a lecture series. It is a full-season relationship with the hive. Participants learn by observing the bees across time — how colonies build, how queens lay, how brood patterns shift, how nectar flows affect behavior, how swarming pressure develops, and how to approach bees with respect rather than fear. The next session is coming in May, and this is a beautiful way for people to learn beekeeping through lived experience instead of isolated information.

Bees remind us that fertility is not just in the soil. It is also in the movement between flowers, insects, weather, trees, and time.

Soil Work Continues — And Now We’re Taking It Online

All of this soil work is leading into something larger. We are preparing to offer a Master Regenerative Soil & Fertility Systems online course — a four-part training with optional certification. This course will cover:

1. Soil foundations
2. Reading and testing soil
3. Building living fertility
4. Applying regenerative fertility systems in real landscapes

What makes this especially exciting is that we have a living classroom here. We can show people the difference between the soil we started with and the soil we now have in the market gardens, high tunnels, orchard areas, pasture systems, compost systems, and developing perennial plantings. We can show soil that has been compacted and soil that has been opened. Soil that has been covered and soil that has been exposed. Soil that has been fed with compost and organic matter, and soil that is still waiting to be rebuilt. We’ll also show how to test soil without turning it into something intimidating or expensive. Simple observation matters. Water infiltration matters. Smell matters. Aggregation matters. Plant response matters. Biology matters.

We’ll talk about compost, vermicompost, compost extracts, compost teas, cover crops, mulch, fertility plants, and ways to turn “problems” into solutions — like using runoff pathways as places to catch organic matter and minerals instead of losing them.

​We are also beginning to build a soil regeneration lab on the farm. That feels like a major step. Not because the lab needs to be fancy, but because it gives us a place to organize this work, teach it more clearly, and continue developing the practical tools that make soil regeneration understandable for more people.

Permaculture Design Retreats & Courses

We are also preparing to launch our permaculture design retreats and courses for the year. This is work we have been teaching for many years, and we are excited to bring it more fully into the farm context again.

We would love to hear from people who are interested. Some people may want a long weekend introduction to permaculture — something hands-on, immersive, and practical, where they can walk through the systems here and begin to understand the design thinking behind them. Others may want something deeper — a 10-day experience where we move through each major system more carefully and help participants begin designing their own land, garden, homestead, farm, or community project.

The farm is becoming an increasingly powerful place to teach this because people do not have to imagine the systems. They can walk through them. They can see the compost piles. The high tunnels. The animals. The flowers. The mushrooms. The nursery starts. The water movement. The forest. The farm store. The CSA packing. The educational systems. The mistakes. The experiments. The living relationships.

Permaculture is not just a set of ideas. It is a way of seeing relationships. And this farm is becoming a place where those relationships are easier to see.

The Farm School Village: Roles, Partners & Families

The larger Farm School Village vision is also moving.
We recently launched invitations for people to apply to join Sun & Bloom Farms in revenue-share partner roles. Right now, three main positions are open:

• Farm production
• Events, coordination, and storytelling
• Trainings, education, and media support

Applications are coming in. We’ve spoken with several individuals and families, and it has been especially interesting to see families responding to this vision. That tells us something. This is not only a job opportunity for people. For some, it is a way of life they are looking for.

We have made some adjustments to how we imagine working with partners, and we continue to refine the structure so that it is fair, clear, and rooted in real responsibility. A few people may join us shortly, but the positions remain open until filled. We are looking for people who are aligned, capable, grounded, and ready to help steward real systems — not just talk about them.

The Farm School Village is not built by an idea. It is built by people doing the work together.

Mushrooms Are Flushing

The mushrooms have been incredible lately. We’ve had big flushes from the logs, and every time mushrooms appear it feels like a small miracle — wood becoming food, forest becoming nourishment, fungal networks expressing themselves in visible form.

Mushrooms remain one of the most elegant regenerative systems on the farm. They fit into the forest. They use wood. They produce high-value food. They teach patience. They connect ecology, nutrition, and enterprise.

We will soon be launching a Mushroom Growing Operation Steward position as another revenue-share opportunity on the farm. This will likely include both outdoor log production and indoor mushroom systems as we continue expanding. If you know someone passionate about mushrooms — someone who loves production, biology, systems, and food — please send them our way. This could become a beautiful enterprise for the right person.

Looking Ahead

Spring is in full motion now. The trees are greening. The bees are flying. The ticks are out. The flowers are forming buds. The high tunnels are producing. The outdoor rows are being planted. Compost is being made. Mushrooms are fruiting. CSA has begun. Courses are forming. Partners are emerging.

It is a lot.

But it is also exactly what this season is supposed to feel like. The farm is no longer only preparing. The farm is producing. The village is growing.

Ways to Learn, Join, or Support

Here are the main invitations right now:

Master Regenerative Soil & Fertility Systems
A four-part online course with optional certification. We’ll go from soil foundations to testing, compost, living fertility, teas, extracts, and practical soil regeneration systems.
https://www.sunandbloomfarms.com/store/p91/soil-regeneration-online.html

Beekeeping Apprenticeship with Anna Maria
Monthly hands-on hive inspections and natural beekeeping through the season.
https://www.sunandbloomfarms.com/store/p90/beekeeping-mentorship-lebanon-mo.html

Permaculture Design Retreats & Courses
Long weekend introductions and deeper 10-day learning experiences are being shaped now. Send us a message and let us know which format would interest you.

Revenue-Share Partner Roles
We currently have open roles for farm production, events/storytelling, and trainings/media. Applications are open until filled.
​https://www.sunandbloomfarms.com/partners.html

Mushroom Growing Operation Steward
Coming soon. Let us know if you know someone who may be a strong fit.

Thank you for following this journey.
We are building the future we teach — slowly, imperfectly, and with our hands in the soil.

— Lucian & Anna Maria
Sun & Bloom Farms
The Permaculture Farm School Village

Compost as Living Fertility: What We See, What We Test, and Why It Matters

There is something deeply satisfying about holding finished compost in your hands. Dark. Crumbly. Sweet-smelling. Full of life. At first glance, what we notice is the color and the texture. It looks rich. It feels soft and biologically active. It has that unmistakable quality of something that has moved through decomposition well and has become stable, usable, and ready to help build soil. But what makes compost like this truly powerful is not just what we see on the surface. It is what that compost is doing physically, chemically, and biologically. That is the deeper story. And that is exactly the kind of story we want people to understand here at Sun and Bloom Farms.

Compost is not just “rotted material", and good compost is definitely not an accident. It is the result of understanding decomposition as a living system, and managing it with intention.

Compost Is Not Just Waste Breaking Down

A lot of people think composting means throwing organic materials into a pile and waiting. And yes, eventually, almost any pile of organic matter will decompose. But high-quality compost — the kind that supports real soil regeneration — comes from a much more intentional process. In our teaching, we often say that composting is not just decomposition: It is managed decomposition. That means we are paying attention to the conditions that allow biology to thrive:

• carbon and nitrogen balance
• moisture
• oxygen
• particle size
• temperature
• turning and timing
• and the kinds of biology and nutrients we want that finished compost to carry into the soil

That is what separates a random pile from a fertility-building system.

Looking at Compost Through Three Lenses

One of the core ideas in our soil and compost approaches on the farm, something we make sure we teach in all of our courses also, is that healthy soil is always an interaction of three dimensions:

• physical
• chemical
• biological

And compost matters because it improves all three.

1. Physical: What We Can Feel and See

Before we ever run a test, compost already tells us a lot. When finished compost is dark, crumbly, and well-aggregated, that physical structure matters. That kind of compost helps improve soil aggregation, pore space, root penetration, aeration, and water retention. It helps soil behave more like a sponge — taking water in, holding what plants need, and releasing excess more gracefully. This is one of the reasons organic matter is so powerful.

Organic matter helps hold soil particles together in stable aggregates. It acts like both a sponge and a glue. It supports better water movement, reduces crusting and runoff, buffers chemical swings, and creates habitat for the biological life that makes fertility possible. So when we hold beautiful finished compost in our hands, we are not just admiring something pretty, we are looking at a material that can help transform the physical behavior of soil.

2. Chemical: What the Simple Tests Can Show Us

Then we move into the chemical side. With a simple home soil test, we can begin looking at:

• pH
• nitrogen
• phosphorus
• potassium

​Those tests do not tell the whole story — but they do help us learn. They can give us a snapshot of nutrient presence and pH balance. And pH matters because it influences nutrient availability and also affects microbial communities.

This is one of the most important shifts in regenerative soil work: fertility is not just about nutrients being present. It is about nutrients being available, buffered, held in place, and continuously cycled through living processes. That is why compost is so different from simply applying soluble fertilizers. A chemical fertilizer may give a quick response. But compost helps build the conditions in which fertility can be held, cycled, and released over time. It is slower, deeper, and far more resilient.

3. Biological: What the Microscope Begins to Reveal

And then we come to the biological lens — the part that changes everything. Under the microscope, compost begins to tell an even richer story. Depending on the compost and how it was made, we may observe:

• abundant bacteria
• fungal hyphae
• protozoa
• and sometimes beneficial nematodes

That matters. Because fertility is not just something we “apply.” Fertility is something that biology helps create and release. Microbes decompose organic matter. Predators consume microbes. Nutrients are released in plant-available forms. This is why one of the most important things to understand about healthy soil is this: Biology cycles fertility. This is also why we often say: Organic matter connects everything. Because organic matter improves structure, increases nutrient holding capacity, and feeds the biological community all at once. So when we test compost biologically, we are not just “looking for life.” We are learning whether this compost is carrying the kind of living community that can help activate the soil food web.

How We Made This Compost (the one Lucian holds in his hand in the pictures)

This particular compost did not happen by accident. It came from intentionally mixing different materials and managing the pile toward a strong thermophilic process. We worked with materials such as:

• hay and uneaten goat hay
• goat manure
• oak leaves from the property
• a smaller amount of chicken manure
• coffee grounds from a local coffee shop

That diversity matters. Different materials bring different carbon levels, nitrogen levels, textures, minerals, and microbial communities. For active hot compost, we often aim near 25:1 carbon to nitrogen, with enough moisture, enough oxygen, attention to particle size, temperature, and turning. That is exactly the kind of thinking behind a compost pile like this.

• Not random mixing.
• A recipe 
• A process.
• A biological environment.

And this is only one example. Here at Sun and Bloom Farms, we make multiple types of composts for different goals and different growing contexts. Some composts are meant more for our market garden, some are better suited for our orchard and perennial systems, some are made with seedling production in mind, and others serve different fertility-building purposes across the farm. So while the core principles remain the same, the recipe and the process are not always identical. There are important tweaks in materials, balance, moisture, timing, and management that help shape the kind of compost we want to produce. We’ll be sharing more of those differences and recipes in future posts.

Why Compost Is Better Than Just Chasing Inputs

In conventional systems, fertility is often treated like a math problem:

• What nutrient is low?
• What product do I buy?
• How fast can I get a response?

But in regenerative systems, we ask a deeper question:

• How do we build a soil that keeps generating fertility?

That is a very different approach. Chemical fertility often works like fast food: quick, stimulating, sometimes useful, but not deeply nourishing to the larger system. Biological fertility is more like building a pantry and learning how to cook from it. It creates long-term resilience. It feeds relationships. It builds capacity over time. Compost is one of the clearest examples of this difference. Because compost does not just feed plants. It helps feed the system that feeds the plants.

Compost does not just supply fertility — it helps create the biological conditions through which fertility keeps being released.

What We’ll Be Showing Next

This is only one part of the picture. In upcoming posts, we’ll compare what we see when we test:

• the native/original soil we started with
• the market garden soil
• the orchard soil
• vermicompost
• and another compost more oriented toward perennial/orchard systems

That comparison matters because not all soils — and not all composts — are the same. A market garden often benefits from faster bacterial cycling. An orchard often benefits from a stronger fungal direction. And knowing the difference helps us design fertility more intelligently. That is the whole point: not just adding inputs, but learning how to read what the soil is telling us, and then respond well.

Want to Learn More about this?

If you want to learn this in person, we would love to invite you to our Master Composting & Soil Regeneration Intensive at Sun and Bloom Farms. It’s a full-day immersive experience where we go deeper into composting, soil testing, biological fertility, and how to build living soil systems with confidence. 
Click here for details and registration:
https://www.sunandbloomfarms.com/store/p89/master-compost-soil-regeneration-intensive.html

If you can’t attend in person, or if you’d prefer to learn with us from wherever you are, we’d also love to invite you to our Master Soil Regeneration — 4-Part Live Online Series. In this live online course, we go deeper into understanding soil foundations, reading and testing soil, building living fertility systems, and observing the biology behind healthy soil through real examples, live discussion, and additional resources. 
Click here for details and registration: 
https://www.sunandbloomfarms.com/store/p91/soil-regeneration-online.html

And if you’d like to see this work in action first, we also have a 25-minute YouTube video where Lucian demonstrates how we begin testing compost through physical, chemical, and biological lenses — including simple at-home tests and live microscope observation. 
Watch it here: 
https://youtu.be/1919DM4z9wg 

Week 11–12 Field Journal - Frost Returns, Mushrooms Flush, and Spring Systems Accelerate

Ecological Context

Spring continues to tease us here in Zone 7a. Week 11 brought several warm days that felt unmistakably like the beginning of the season. Soil temperatures began climbing, animals started moving more actively across the pastures, and many trees began showing the first hints of buds preparing to open.

But as is often the case in early spring, winter had one more reminder for us. A frost rolled in Sunday evening (3/15)  and had plans to continue through the early part of this week as we write this entry. These temperature swings are part of the rhythm of farming in this region — warm encouragement followed by a reminder to move carefully. Still, the warmth before the frost allowed us to push several important systems forward across the farm.

Animals Transitioning Back to Pasture

One of the first shifts last week was moving animals. The chickens were relocated from the orchard area in the front of the property back toward the rear pastures. As they transition out of their winter feeding patterns, they begin exploring the pasture again — scratching, foraging, and redistributing nutrients across the landscape. We also moved one of our Great Pyrenees livestock guardian dogs closer to their new location to help protect the flock.

Across the farm we’ve been watching the animals adjust to the seasonal change. The goats, sheep, and even the pigs are beginning to roam much more actively as the warmer weather encourages fresh growth and exploration. These transitions are always a reminder of how integrated animal systems are within regenerative farming. Their movement, manure, grazing patterns, and curiosity all contribute to shaping the land.

Perennial Systems Waking Up

Another encouraging sign of the season is happening across our perennial plantings. Our elderberry row, which we planted last year, is beginning to show its first buds of the season. Elderberries are a remarkable perennial crop — resilient, productive, and incredibly valuable both nutritionally and ecologically. Once established, they provide abundant berries that support pollinators, wildlife, and people alike, while requiring very little soil disturbance.

Nearby, our mother blackberry and raspberry patch is also beginning to wake up. This planting serves as our propagation area, where we take cuttings and divisions that will eventually expand into larger berry plantings across the farm. Over time these mother plants will help us establish acres of berries while also allowing us to offer nursery plants to the community. Propagating strong cultivar varieties ensures that growers can start with vigorous, productive plants adapted to our region.

Perennial systems like these are an important part of regenerative farming. While annual crops feed us each season, perennials build long-term resilience into the landscape — producing food while stabilizing soil, supporting pollinators, and requiring fewer inputs over time.

A Beautiful Flush of Shiitake Mushrooms

One of the highlights of the week came from the forest. After the warm weather and moisture, our shiitake logs produced a beautiful flush of mushrooms. For several days we enjoyed fresh mushrooms for breakfast, lunch, and dinner — one of the joys of establishing long-term forest food systems. Seeing those logs fruiting also set the perfect stage for the mushroom workshop we hosted this past weekend.

A Walk Into the Forest and an Ecological Learning: Mushroom Workshop 

This past weekend we welcomed a small group for our Mushroom Log Inoculation Workshop.
Participants joined us for a day that started not in the workshop space, but in the forest itself. Rather than beginning directly with drilling and inoculation, we first walked together through the woods to discuss tree identification and forest ecology. Much of the conversation focused on white oak, one of the best species for shiitake log production.

The discussion went deeper than simply identifying a tree and cutting it. We talked about ecological decision-making.

In many areas of our forest, white oaks are beginning to play an increasingly important role as other oak species — particularly red and black oaks — face disease pressure and decline. Because of this, we encourage workshop participants not to simply harvest the first white oak they see. Instead, we look for clusters of white oak, often growing near a large “mother oak” that produces abundant acorns. In contrast, isolated young white oaks — especially those growing alone or in very small groups — may represent the next generation of canopy trees, capable of spreading acorns and regenerating the forest. Those trees are better left standing.

By approaching mushroom cultivation through this ecological lens, participants learn not just how to grow mushrooms, but how to interact with forest systems responsibly. After the walk, we returned to the shop to inoculate logs together. Most participants who attended have land of their own, which means these mushroom systems will now begin spreading beyond our farm. That’s always one of the most rewarding parts of teaching.

The Big High Tunnel Is Now Planted

While the workshop was unfolding, we were also racing the weather to finish preparing our largest high tunnel. The 50 x 21 tunnel is now fully planted. Current crops include:

• Spinach
• Lettuce mixes and cut lettuce
• Beets
• Radishes
• Onions
• Carrots

With the tunnel now planted, the early spring production season is officially underway.

Managing Frost in High Tunnel Systems

The frost that arrived this week reminded us why season extension systems matter so much. Outside temperatures dropped as low as 18°F. Inside a high tunnel, however, we typically maintain temperatures 5–15 degrees warmer, even without the sun present, simply through passive solar heating (sometimes, when the sun is present, we can have 20 F outside and 60 F inside the tunnel).

To further protect newly planted crops, we covered all the rows with agricultural cloth (row cover). Row cover adds another 5–10 degrees of frost protection, which is often enough to carry crops safely through cold snaps. In our flower tunnel we even added an additional tarp layer to ensure the young plants remained protected. These layered systems — tunnel, row cover, and careful crop timing — allow us to push production weeks ahead of outdoor planting.

​Spring Signs Beneath the Soil: Earthworms

One of the small but fascinating signs of spring that appeared this week happened not in the tunnels or the forest, but right on the soil surface. During the warmer evenings we began noticing earthworms coming to the surface to mate. Earthworms often emerge during these damp spring nights when temperatures warm just enough to trigger this seasonal behavior.

It’s always exciting to see them in our clay soils. Interestingly, we saw the largest numbers in areas where the soil surface was bare or lightly covered, though that doesn’t mean worms are absent from our garden beds. In the beds themselves we tend to see more decomposer worms working through the organic matter we add regularly — compost, plant residues, and mulches.

Earthworms and decomposer worms play slightly different roles in the soil ecosystem. Earthworms move vertically through the soil profile, creating channels that improve soil aeration, water infiltration, and root penetration. Their movement helps loosen heavy clay soils and transport nutrients deeper into the ground. In regenerative agriculture lingo, we say that these worms improve soil aggregates.

Decomposer worms, on the other hand, specialize in breaking down organic materials near the surface, turning plant residues and compost into biologically active soil.

Both are essential partners in a healthy soil system.

Practices like minimal soil disturbance, adding organic matter, and avoiding heavy tillage allow these underground communities to thrive. When worms are active, the soil is alive — and living soil builds resilient farms.

Later this spring we’ll be diving much deeper into soil life during our Master Composting & Soil Regeneration Intensive on April 25, where we’ll explore how to intentionally feed and build these underground ecosystems through compost systems and regenerative soil practices.

Seeing the worms surface this week was a simple but powerful reminder that much of the real work of farming is happening beneath our feet.

Preparing the Farm Store

As these crops continue developing, we’re also preparing to reopen the Sun & Bloom Farms store. Over the coming weeks we’ll begin offering:

• Fresh salad greens
• Microgreens
• Eggs
• Mushrooms
• Seasonal vegetables

Orders will be placed in advance, allowing us to harvest and prepare everything fresh for pickup. Our CSA members will have first priority, but we will also open availability for additional community members. We still have a few CSA shares available for anyone interested in joining the season.

Spring Egg Production Returns

Another unmistakable sign of the season is coming from the chicken coop. As the days lengthen and temperatures warm, our hens have quickly ramped up egg production again. Even though we experienced a brief return of frost this week, a short cold spell usually isn’t enough to send chickens back into winter production patterns. It would take a longer stretch of cold and short daylight hours for them to slow down significantly again.

The main driver of egg production is actually daylight. As spring approaches and the days grow longer, the chickens’ reproductive systems are naturally stimulated by increasing light exposure. Combined with warmer temperatures and more time for foraging, the hens shift back into their most productive rhythm.

Right now our chickens are spending their days free-ranging across pasture, scratching through grasses and insects while being supplemented with organic feed. That combination produces deeply colored yolks and nutrient-dense eggs. We’re already taking egg orders now, and eggs will also be available when the farm store opens along with early greens and vegetables.

If you’d like to see just how much production jumped this week, we show the full egg harvest in our latest farm journal video.

Watch the field walk-through on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_00igMNZl_E 

One More Chance: Mushroom Workshop – March 21

After the success of this past weekend’s workshop, we have a few spots remaining for our next Mushroom Log Inoculation Workshop on March 21st.

One thing participants shared with us afterward is how much they appreciated the broader ecological approach we take. Rather than simply demonstrating inoculation techniques, the workshop includes:

• Forest walks and tree identification
• Ecological decision-making about harvesting logs
• Proper log selection and sizing for long-term production
• Hands-on drilling, inoculating, and sealing
• Guidance for managing log yards for years of harvest

Participants also work with three-foot logs, which produce significantly more mushrooms over time compared to shorter log systems. Our goal is not just to teach a technique, but to help people build long-lasting regenerative food systems on their own land. If you’ve been considering joining us, this upcoming workshop is a great opportunity.

Looking Ahead

Even with frost still lingering this week, the momentum of the season is unmistakable. Seedlings continue to fill the propagation space. Animals are returning to pasture rhythms. High tunnels are planted and protected. The forest is producing mushrooms. Spring systems are coming alive. And as always, we’re grateful to share the journey with this growing community.

Upcoming Opportunities

Mushroom Log Inoculation Workshop – March 21
Hands-on forest farming skills.
Details and Register here: https://www.sunandbloomfarms.com/store/p88/mushroom-log-workshop-lebanon-missouri.html

Farm Store Opening Soon
Fresh greens, microgreens, eggs, and more.

CSA Shares Available
Join the season and receive priority access to farm harvests.
Details and Purchase Here: https://www.sunandbloomfarms.com/producecsa.html 

Upcoming Workshops
More learning opportunities are on the way.
Master Compost & Soil Regeneration Intensive:Details and Register here: https://www.sunandbloomfarms.com/store/p89/master-compost-soil-regeneration-intensive.html

Watch the Field Journal in Motion
If you would like to see these systems in motion — the compost steaming, the seedlings growing, the mushroom logs stacked — we invite you to watch this week’s Field Journal video on our YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@SunAndBloomFarms 

Subscribe to our Permaculture Newsletter 
Receive reflections like this — free, oncex, twice, or more per week — directly in your inbox:
https://mailchi.mp/sunandbloomfarms/sjcl3tqy3f

Week 10 in Zone 7A/6B - Warming Soil, Rapid Growth & Systems in Motion

Ecological Context – Between Frost & Acceleration
We felt a bit of cold again this past week. A reminder that frost is still possible here in Zone 7A (edge of 6B). Heavy rain and thunderstorms are moving through, and the soil is being charged with moisture. But overall, something has shifted.

Daytime temperatures are now reaching the high 60s and even mid-70s. Nights are staying above 40 — some even above 50 degrees. That changes everything. This is the moment when work speeds up, when we begin planting outdoors intentionally. Some rows will receive early crops. Others will receive cover crops to prepare for later successions. It’s still early spring — but it’s no longer dormant.

And yes — this is also almost the time we begin looking for morels in Missouri. Morel season in south-central Missouri typically begins when soil temperatures reach around 50–55°F, often in late March into April depending on rainfall and warmth. With these current temperatures and moisture patterns, we’ll start scouting soon.

Spring is not theoretical anymore.

High Tunnels – Managing Heat, Managing Growth
Inside the high tunnels, the acceleration is visible. In our oldest tunnel — now in its sixth year of compost applications, no-till management, cover crops, and seasonal animal integration — the soil feels alive and ready. Some beds are already planted. Others are being prepared. Growth is noticeably faster now that nighttime temperatures are no longer dipping into the 20s and 30s. Warm days + moderate nights = exponential growth.

On hot days, we open doors and screen doors to manage airflow. The large tunnel has partial automation, but others still require manual management. Ventilation now becomes as important as fertility. We’ll be earlier to market than anything grown outdoors. And yet — outdoor planting has begun as well.

Resilience means stacking systems.

The Farm Store – Opening Soon
We’re preparing to open the farm store within the next couple of weeks. We’re already eating salads from the tunnels. Close friends are enjoying greens. CSA members will begin receiving produce shortly.

We’ll likely open a smaller CSA round for those who want less commitment (If you are reading this, you want a CSA membership, and it is still March 2026, reach out :). Some returning members made deeper seasonal commitments with added benefits — and we’re grateful for that trust.

We’re also developing a farm credit exchange model for those who want to work on the farm in exchange for food before partner roles fully open.

Food grown on the land. Sold on the land. Shared from the land. There’s something powerful about that.

Microgreens – Seed Energy, Concentrated Nutrition
Right now we have:
• Radish Mix — bright, slightly spicy, rich in antioxidants and glucosinolates
• Brassica Mix — mild, nutty, nutrient-dense with concentrated phytonutrients

Our microgreens are not grown in soil, they’re powered by the stored energy of the seed itself. In their earliest stage, they contain dense concentrations of vitamins, minerals, and plant compounds.

What doesn’t sell fresh is freeze-dried into powder. The growing medium moves into vermicompost. Nothing is wasted. Closed-loop systems in action. (Have you seen the reel we made about it?)

Compost – Turning at 140°F
Our compost pile reached 150°F and held there for nearly two weeks. This week it dropped to 140°F — the signal that it’s time to turn. Turning brings the outside material inward and moves the interior outward. We introduce oxygen, rebalance moisture, and re-ignite biological activity. Yes, some off-gassing occurs. But we also stimulate deeper decomposition. This is the phase where compost matures intentionally.

Our Master Composting Workshop (April 25, 2026) will go A–Z:
• Understanding soil biology
• Carbon-to-nitrogen ratios
• Fungal vs bacterial compost
• Balanced compost systems
• Materials selection
• Compost extracts & teas
• On-farm fertilizer creation from forest resources

Healthy soil is not accidental - It is managed life.

Teaching in the Community
This past week we taught four sessions in the community at Train to Sustain, and event led by a local Food Pantry Non-Profit that is starting to show the way in Ecological and Resilience thinking locally, and we love that (Anna Maria is putting lots of hearth in this organization as one of the Board Directors. The sessions were:
• Vermicomposting
• Regenerative Garden Design with Permaculture
• Kitchen Herbalism
• Natural Beekeeping

The level of interest was inspiring. Several participants committed to upcoming workshops — including mushrooms and compost.

Momentum is building.

Mushrooms – Mycelium Waking
As temperatures warm, we begin checking logs for mycelial growth at the ends. In Missouri, shiitake and oyster logs inoculated the previous year can begin fruiting in spring once temperatures stabilize between roughly 50–75°F and moisture is adequate. March fruiting is possible in southern Missouri, especially after rainfall. You’ll see white mycelium colonization at the cut ends before flushes begin. Spring moisture + warming temperatures = activation. Mushroom cultivation remains one of the most elegant regenerative systems available — woodland-based, low-input, and long-producing.

Our Mushroom Log Intensive(on March 14 or 21, 2026) will walk through:
• Tree identification
• Log selection & timing
• Inoculation methods
• Stacking & management
• Long-term production cycles
Everyone will take a log home with them.

Regenerative Gardening Intensive
We’ll also be launching our Regenerative Garden Production Intensive for people that want to grow a lot of their food, and farmers that want to make a living from it on May 2, 2026. This will cover:
• Soil preparation systems
• Crop planning & rotations
• Mulch strategies
• Water management
• Integrating compost systems
• Succession planting
• Designing for resilience instead of reaction

A garden can either extract from soil and its environment — or build and regenerate them.
We teach the second path.

The Permaculture Farm School Village – Expanding
We are currently operating six enterprises here on the farm. Each will eventually have a dedicated leader. Between April 1 and June 1, we’ll begin bringing in partners to steward these systems more deeply - so you will see new faces on the farm and our social media.

We haven’t yet broken ground on the new property — but that step is coming soon with the support of those who believe in this work.

This is no longer just a farm. It’s becoming a village of practice.

Invitation
If you feel the momentum of spring…
If you’re ready to move from inspiration to implementation…
Come learn with us.
Register for workshops.
Visit the farm store when we open.
Join the CSA.
Step into partnership conversations.
Spring doesn’t wait.
Neither should we.