Tag: biology

Man Spends 30 Years Turning Degraded Land into Massive Forest – Fools & Dreamers (Full Documentary)

The incredible story of how degraded gorse-infested farmland has been regenerated back into beautiful New Zealand native forest over the course of 30 years.

Fools & Dreamers: Regenerating a Native Forest is a 30-minute documentary about Hinewai Nature Reserve, on New Zealand’s Banks Peninsula, and its kaitiaki/manager of 30 years, botanist Hugh Wilson. When, in 1987, Hugh let the local community know of his plans to allow the introduced ‘weed’ gorse to grow as a nurse canopy to regenerate farmland into native forest, people were not only skeptical but outright angry – the plan was the sort to be expected only of “fools and dreamers”.

Now considered a hero locally and across the country, Hugh oversees 1500 hectares resplendent in native forest, where birds and other wildlife are abundant and 47 known waterfalls are in permanent flow. He has proven without doubt that nature knows best – and that he is no fool.

Into the Soil | The Wisdom of Regenerative Farming | Full Documentary

”A refreshing perspective on what it means to be wealthy” – Don Smith, Kiss the Ground

In the documentary ”Into the Soil” we follow Brigid LeFevre, who runs a community supported agriculture operation (CSO) in Järna, Sweden. In her biodynamic vegetable garden she focuses on fermenting the harvest in order to enrich it with nutritious lactic acid bacteria.

Brigid grew up in an anthroposophically inspired Camphill community in Northern Ireland where volunteers lived and worked together with people with special needs. It was a self-sufficient community where the local store brought in bulk organic produce and each household would write down their purchases – without any actual exchange of money.

Growing up in a place where food was separated from the economic market has had a big impact on Brigid’s philosophy as a farmer. And really, come to think about it, why is it that the global ups and downs of the economy should determine the operating practices of small scale local farms?

In Brigid’s garden it doesn’t. She grows and ferments vegetables for the members, who subscribe to her sauerkraut, kimchi and lacto fermented pickles, all year round. The members support this regenerative agriculture operation with money or hands-on help in the garden.

It’s a local, circular economy, which underpins an alive garden, buzzing and chirping, where the goal isn’t to turn a profit, but rather to make the soil more alive with the passing of each season.

Directed and produced by Mattias Olsson for Campfire Stories. Musical score composed by Arvid Rask. Sound design by Boris Laible and Jonas Källstrand. Financed in part by the Namaste Foundation.

The making of Epiphytes | Tully Arnot and Monica Gagliano

Artist Tully Arnot’s latest work, EPIPHYTES, is a multi-sensory virtual reality experience exploring plant communication, posthumanism and alternate forms of perception. To create EPIPHYTES, Arnot partnered with evolutionary biologist Monica Gagliano, who pioneered the brand-new research field of plant bioacoustics, for the first time experimentally demonstrating that plants emit their own ‘voices’ and detect and respond to the sounds of their environments. Her work has extended the concept of cognition (including perception, learning processes, memory) in plants. The pair spoke about Arnot’s practice and why he chose VR as a medium to express his ideas, and discussed the importance of slowing down, ‘listening’ to, and looking more closely at the communication lines and biological relationships that exist in the plant kingdom as a means of altering the way we perceive our world.

Living in the Future’s Past | AWARD WINNING DOC | Jeff Bridges | Environment

Living in the Future’s Past – This film upends our way of thinking and provides original insights into our subconscious motivations, the unintended consequences, and how our fundamental nature influences our future as mankind.

Not Too Late: Finding Hope in a Time of Despair with Roshi Joan Halifax & Rebecca Solnit

This event is part of Tricycle’s second annual Buddhism and Ecology Summit, a weeklong series of conversations with Buddhist teachers, writers, environmental activists and psychologists on transforming eco-anxiety into awakened action. Learn more and sign up here: https://tricycle.org/events/the-buddh…

Conversations around confronting the climate crisis often focus on what we will lose in moving from an “age of abundance” to a time of austerity and scarce resources. But what about what we stand to gain in these times of transformation—and how we might challenge the ways that we are currently impoverished? Writer Rebecca Solnit, celebrated author and editor of the forthcoming book “Not Too Late,” and beloved Buddhist teacher Roshi Joan Halifax, a contributor to Not Too Late, explore the new realities we are facing at this time as well as the powerful possibilities before us—and how to manage our emotions through it all. As Rebecca writes: It is not too late.

In this conversation, Tricycle’s Publisher, Sam Mowe, sat down with Roshi Joan Halifax and Rebecca Solnit to discover a radical view of transforming our sense of impoverishment to hope, connection, and faith in our shared future.