Redesigning Ourselves Into the Landscape & Syntropic Living with Klaus & Frida of Permadynamics

WATCH FIRST: This amazing mini documentary on Permadynamics for context  

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Permadynamics website

Klaus, Frida, and their family run Permadynamics, a massively inspiring intergenerational syntropy & permaculture-based research farm and education center in New Zealand. They've taught over 2,000 students about caring for the soil, sequestering carbon, cycling water, cherishing diversity, orchestrating succession dynamics and achieving natural abundance within a creative livelihood. We dive into how they're living this amazing place-based, regenerative, thriving lifestyle as a family, their advice for people looking to create lives like this for themselves, all that's available to us when we live this type of lifestyle (so much more than money!), and the importance of redesigning human presence into the landscape in a positive way. Plus sooo much more! Their family is really living the example so many of us are wanting to move towards at this time, and it's an incredible opportunity from people who have gone for this dream and are thriving in it.  

Show notes:  

• How permadynamics was formed with them as a family: permanently dynamic flowing structure with emphasis on foundation in syntropy and permaculture 
• Klaus’s introduction to studying this with Ernst Gotsch, originator of syntropic agroforestry & learning over time/through his mistakes & continued study of ecological literacy, and his experience helping transition slash-and-burn farmers to syntropic perennial cash crop farmers in the Amazon 
• How this lifestyle works for them to make a living: It’s hard work, and they utilize the 8 forms of capital:  experiential, intellectual, spiritual, social, material, financial, living and cultural capital 
• Designing people INTO the landscape instead of out of it (most modern agriculture designs people out of it, which is problematic on many levels). Being empowered in our capability as positive changemakers in our environment!  
• Using syntropic agroforestry to turn depleted land around & increase land capital (plus the ability to buy land that’s in bad shape often gives you a better deal & makes this more financially accessible). 
• Life in syntropy video showing Ernst Gotsch's work: They're keeping that ball rolling! (Syntropy as the reverse of entropy & it's their main tool for repairing damaged and degraded soils.)  
• Thinking in time in relationship to vegetation - what is the current vegetation preparing the soil for? How is succession working? (The earth wants to be covered with plants!) Our role participating in the system is to bring vegetation to its fullest expression & shape it to feed us. 
• Advice for people with limited land access/stuck in apartment living: unwise to run out of the city to buy land or join an ecovillage right away, suggest to form relationships with local farmers and visit/learn from them/help on your days off. And see if they have some small piece of land you can work with/will get food/get experience steering vegetation, etc. 
• Integrating your expertise and existing experience and passions to the movement - don’t feel like you have to totally change what you do and who you are! It’s about adding all our skill sets together.  
• Ways people can learn from them, in-person and online!