Ac Baker

All the details are now up!

Madhavi Kolte, Co-founder of Jeeva Bhavana in India and part of a regional sustainable growing network, is a keynote speaker.

Helen Atthowe and Iain Tolhurst are too.

The talks are pre-recorded and subtitled, to make them accessible across timezones, help those who aren't L1 in English, and those who need a longer time to access all the sessions (I think they're available for 12 months).

(There are also live activities over the next two weeks, I think you can contact the organisers about the fees if they're unaffordable for you).

The focus weekend is Fri 7 - Sun 9 Nov for the 2025 Veganic Summit, but it's a year-round growing community in practice.

There's a free online learning conference each November for people wanting to learn more about stock-free farming, including stock-free permaculture.

This is The Veganic Summit: https://veganicsummit.com/

Madhavi Kolte, Co-founder of Jeeva Bhavana in India and part of a regional sustainable growing network, is a keynote speaker. Helen Atthowe and Iain Tolhurst are too.

The talks are pre-recorded and subtitled, to make them accessible across timezones, help those who aren't L1 in English, and those who need a longer time to access all the sessions (I think they're available for 12 months).

(There are also live activities over the next two weeks, I think you can contact the organisers about the fees if they're unaffordable for you).

The focus weekend is Fri 7 - Sun 9 Nov for the 2025 Veganic Summit, but it's a year-round growing community in practice.

There are several wider networks now of farmers and growers, some of whom are explicitly working with permaculture and/or Indigenous foodway philosphies.

For example, Farmers for Stock-free Farming (based in Scotland) are sharing their experience and findings widely, from business case studies, to peer mentoring, to peer-reviewed research:
https://stockfreefarming.org/

They've just published a study on the mental health of people involved in large-scale farming of animals, involving 287 farmers, in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics:

"Contrary to dominant narratives .. a  49% would consider stopping farming [of animals at large scale] entirely if financially viable alternatives were accessible.

"The publication recommends a comprehensive package of policy measures aimed at offering farmers choice around change."

Tolhurst Organic CIC has been learning and growing over 25+ years. They've evolved to be a part of the wider community, have a strong focus on peer-to-peer learning across Europe & beyond, and as N shows, opened up to agroforestry and other practices. All whilst feeding up to 400 families their greengrocery needs.  I feel like they've grown towards permacultural 'concept space'.

As I understand, there are several significant reasons for avoiding imported materials, which can be summarised:

(1) Contamination e.g. a proven issue of persistent agrochemical herbicides in products of large scale farming of animals (e.g.  manure, used bedding);

(2) Larger eco-footprint e.g. all the harmful impacts elsewhere - from soil health degradation to greenhouse gas emissions - of moving materials (Tolhurst uses the term "ghost acres (hectares)" for that "external" land).

Any use of animals in farming at large scales tends to be harmful due to the "life cycle" impacts on and by those animals e.g.
eco-footprint of meeting their needs;
opportunity costs upon local free-living animals and their habitats;
burdens on the large numbers farmed animals and those people who have to work in the system that farms them.

This looks interesting: "Intercropping grain peas with barley" although it assuming farm-scale mechanisation. Grain peas are the same as field peas, I presume? Pea "lodging" is when the pea plants are compressed by the combined with of growth and developing peas, I gather?

"Mixed crops of grain peas and barley can produce stable yields for protein production; with the risk of yield loss being reduced.

"Barley prevents pea lodging, reducing losses during threshing and increasing the quality of the harvested crop.

"The cereal crop also improves the soil cover, suppressing weeds."

https://agricology.co.uk/resource/intercropping-grain-peas-barley/

Technically a replant perennial where I live in zone 8ish, red yacón is probably my favourite perennial vegetable at the moment.  That said, I treat it like a fruit, it's a known as 'ground apple' after all.

I was brought up in a family with generations of rhubarb lovers. My late Mum used to cook it with minimal sugar, so it was pretty tart. I add no refined sugar, I ear my rhubarb poached with fresh ginger and a sweeter dried fruit e.g. sultanas.

This autumn, I will be trying dahlia tubers for the first time.

Now I need to look up how to grow runner beans as a replant perennial?!

Jennie Little wrote:Having wound up once in the emergency room as a kid for eating wild mushrooms...

Eek. Glad you're here to tell the tale.

I'm told step 1 for mushrooms is, be very sure you can identify all the harmful ones ('toadstools') before you think of trying to learn to pick them to eat?

Indeed. I'm thinking that you have the opportunity to put in stick drains now, so it's a good plan?

Riffing even more in this theme, the Black-led Mutual Aid scheme with whom I volunteer has been delivering an average of 100 people one cooked meal per day plus ready-to-wear extras ever since the start of the first COVID-19 lockdown.

A quick back of the envelope calculation suggests this is diverting from supermarket waste and local garden crop surpluses, around 30 million calories per year. (I personally grew, harvested, sorted and/or delivered food to people at least three times per week).

So I can reasonably suggest that my fair share of this is one million calories per year, diverted to community members in need. DAMCTP? Divert A Million Calories To People!

Rebekah Harmon wrote:My current total is 803,802calories!!! Less than one quarter left to go.

That's really impressive. What an achievement!

If you have the time at some point, I'd love to see a rough analysis of the breakdown of crop species (obviously, lots of fruits at this time of year in my latitudes c 51 N too) and maybe nutrients e.g. complex carbs, protein (and, I guess, bought-in sugar? I'm going to make some membrillo today with bought-in rapadura/powdered jaggery e.g. evaporated cane juice, which isn't growable in our zone 8ish climate of course) too?

I'll look back through your thread, but in a good year, I would have to grow a lot of potatoes to come close to this aim!!

Thank you so much for sharing your process in so much detail!