Podcast 273 – Earthworks DVD Set

Come walk with Paul and Jocelyn through the snow (the VERY crunchy snow) up at the laboratory! Jocelyn wants to walk, and Paul is willing, if they also create a new podcast while they walk. If people keep posting topic requests at permies.com, this may happen regularly. You get a sense of what it looks like up there in the mountains of Montana in January (think conifers covered in snow, but with less snow underneath). Paul talks about how it seems to be a bit warmer under conifer trees. He also talks about thinning out the overcrowded trees as part of good forestry management, and how you decide which trees should go.

They are walking through a draw, and Paul talks about how this may be where there used to be a creek. Right now there is no running water (or still water, I believe) anywhere on the laboratory. Paul and Mark Vandemeer have walked the land and theorized about what used to be there.

Paul tells the story of his TED talk, how stressful it was to try to present entirely from memory, how worried he was about “a car wreck” of a presentation, but how it ended up going pretty well. You can find a link to watch it yourself on permies.com in the tinkering forum. Paul shares that his favorite part of the TED talk was hanging out in the green room, seeing the presentations and being able to comment about how things are soooper awwesome!

Then follows much observation of various kinds of poop on the ground. Deer, elk, even bear!

There is a new Kickstarter going, to fund the production of a 3 DVD se on Earthworks. Paul is nervous that there won’t be enough interest in buying video about earthworks. Jocelyn wants to point out that the video camera was NOT operated by Paul (he is the subject–the video was taken at a workshop he presented in Southern California). So, the video is pretty high quality, and Paul was wearing a microphone so the sound is good as well. Paul is worried because Geoff Lawton already has made an earthworks DVD, but Jocelyn thinks Paul’s presentations have more technique and specifics. Go, gentle reader and check out the Kickstarter and tell your friends.

Another ongoing project is to sell a jump drive that holds all of the podcasts (this was requested by those with crappy internet). The current plan is to load a 32GB jump drive with ALL of the Paul podcasts, ALL of Paul’s videos, ALL of “Tall Paul’s” podcasts and maybe 70 of Jack Spirko’s podcasts, plus a big video of Jack talking about food forests. It’s going to cost $60. Currently if Paul buys 100 he’ll need to sell 85 to break even.

Paul shares that if the Earthworks DVD Kickstarter is a success, he and Bart have planned out 12 more Kickstarters, with a hope to do 4 a year (!). Jocelyn points out that there are huge amounts of work that go into these things, so 4 a year is a rather breakneck pace, right before she fall on the ice and breaks her neck!!

No, just kidding. Jocelyn falls and breaks her wrist, but she’s such a trooper she just says “ow.” She really did, and it was a bad break, and there’s a thread on permies.com where you can wish her a speedy recovery. So go there now (and then go to Kickstarter).

You can discuss this podcast on this thread at Permies.
Credit: Julia Winter

>