A very warm and dry summer is having a big impact in many places of the world right now, from huge devastating fires to droughts to failed crops. It is the hottest summer we've experienced so far, and the coldest from now on. We are 'only' at 1.2 degrees of global warming, and most likely we will not stay below 3 degrees.. This is seriously scaring us, what is the future of Paolo looking like? Are we in time with what we are doing to make a difference? We don't know, what we do know is that planting trees while regenerating the soils has never been more important to somehow reduce the effects of this climate crisis.
It has been a while since we have written an update here, almost 9 months. Our lives have changed drastically since Paolo came into our world to bring us joy & unconditional love. We have also lost Viggo, Coralie's brother, unexpectedly. Grief, letting go and accepting is a hard process. But we try do so with admiration of who Viggo was and what he meant to the world.
This year started by organizing & hosting our second course, this time on Syntropic Agroforestry. Students from all paths of life joined us to gain knowledge to setup their own project. This has given us so much motivation and inspiration that we are not alone in this, and that we can amplify our impact by facilitating this learning journey to those who want to act on this urgency through regeneration. We've then transformed our outside 'corral', where the animals used to graze surrounded by stone walls, into the 'Rebel Kitchen' : an outside kitchen and community space. But also after the renovation of our stone house, we had to completely re-do the roof due to leakages (it was literally raining in our bedroom). This gave us the possibility to add some insulation for the cold winters, and hopefully to also cool down the house a bit in summer. We hope from now on we can focus more on being farmers than architects. The almond trees seem abundantly full of almonds, so fingers crossed they are tasty as well! Very welcome after the apricots failed due to late frost, all our melons, watermelons and pumpkins have been eaten by snails and our first market garden has been suffering the extreme heat..
Now we are getting through the summer preparing for a very exciting and busy autumn. Together with experts from La Loma Viva we are working on a design to do our second big tree planting this October. If you want to join us, block your calendars the weekend of October 22 & 23! Sijtse & Irma (@2zeetjes) are cycling 9,000 kilometers to raise money to be able to plant a foodforest at the farm, and the Hageveld Lyceum school from the Netherlands has decided to collaborate with The Green Rebel by planting a tree for every student graduating. To make it even cooler, 15 students will come to the farm at the end of October to plant the trees themselves and to learn all about Regenerative Agroforestry. We have built a tree nursery from material available from the renovation work and are now taking care of the first 460 trees of our planting this October.
If you also want to support our journey to plant more trees this October, you can adopt your own mini-forest or enjoy our pure olive oil:
Courses
Together with our friend and mentor Oliver Goshey, we have decided to organize 2 more courses to help like-minded people on their journey to regeneration:
Regenerative Agroforestry
The course on Agroforestry is an intensive weekend for those who want to learn and experience a range of skills on tree planting & orchard maintenance that you can apply to any climate & context to regenerate your soils through multiple layers of vegetation. It covers everything from reading the ecosystem you are in and propagating plants, to planning your planting project, getting trees in the ground, maintaining a growing agroforestry system and even managing a grown forest. All of these activities are based in a real farm, The Green Rebel Farm.
Regenerative Design
If you want to dive deep into the regenerative design process for your own project, and are you either considering buying land or at the early stages of developing a site and want to ensure you set off on a profitable regenerative trajectory? Then this course is made for you! We’ll work through the scale of permanence learning to gather essential information about the landscape, vegetation, and soil. From there we’ll work through hydrological capture and restoration, planning for productive planting and reforestation, business considerations, soil health regeneration, and much more. All of this too will be taught through hands-on activities so you leave not only knowing how to develop an effective and profitable design, but also with experience with the work and skills required to get things done!
Both courses allow you to spend face to face time with Oliver Goshey, the host of the Regenerative Skills podcast, and to surround yourself with likeminded people who are on a same path with similar objectives and challenges. If you want to learn more about what you can do yourself as a solution towards so many of our biggest issues of today, and are tired of learning from your screen? Join us in person in the mountains of Catalonia at The Green Rebel farm!
Or do you know exactly who is considering this courageous journey? Share the course information pages with them to help them with the structured tools to make the project a success.
To follow our journey more closely follow our social media pages. We hope you stay safe and healthy, and thank you for being a rebel by reading our update! It is the support from our community that helps us through the tougher times.
With love,
Carlo, Coralie & Paolo
