Social Forestry with Tomi Hazel Vaarde and Morag Gamble

How do we tend to land and culture at the same time?

This episode was a conversation of hope for me, exploring the concept and practice social forestry with Tomi Hazel Vaarde - everything from ancient indigenous knowledge to stories of forests. Also Tomi reflects on design - avoiding it being an imposition, but something that emerges from connection with place and community  - an incredibly important distinction for a permaculture designer.

Social forestry is the Tomi's big picture thinking, their frame of reference for engaging in local and bioregional restoration. "Social forestry is tending the land as people of place. How do we cooperate with each other to do useful things in these places? It's always site specific, and it's always culturally specific."

Tomi Hazel Vaarde is a long-term resident of Southern Oregon and is deeply situated in place and permaculture. He's a prolific permaculturist - advising farms, stewarding forests and teaching environmental sciences for more than 50 years, even helping Bill Mollison in the first PDC on the West Coast.

Tomi's latest book (published April 2023 by Synergetic Press) is Social Forestry: Tending the Land as People and Place - an acclaimed guide of practical placemaking advice and ancient lore - a must-have for anyone wanting to have a reciprocating relationship with their communities, themselves, and most importantly their awe-inspiring forests and landscapes. 

In this conversation, we also discuss this book and the many projects that have informed its emergence.

Enjoy!

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MORAG GAMBLE

Founder, Permaculture Education Institute

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I am a possibilitarian and I believe HumanKINDness.

In this podcast my guests and I explore How are we to live? Really live, as nature ourselves, tending the conditions where life can thrive. We ask How do we become the kind of humans this moment is asking us to be?

This podcast is one of my acts of myceliation. Each conversation is a thread in a vast network of people speaking up for life with love and care. 

This podcast beams out from my hand-built solar-powered studio in the midst of a permaculture food forest in a permaculture ecovillage on Gubbi Gubbi country.

If this episode lights something in you, pass it to one person who needs it. That is how myceliation works.