Send us a text In this illuminating episode of Roots to Renewal, host Martin Ping engages with Spencer Beebe, a pioneering conservation leader who founded influential organizations including Salmon Nation, Conservation International and EcoTrust. Spencer shares his remarkable journey and the development of his visionary concept "Salmon Nation," which reimagines conservation through the lens of bioregional identity and community empowerment. Throughout the conversation, Spencer illustrates how...
Send us a text In this episode of Hawthorne Valley's Roots to Renewal podcast, we are honored to welcome Dr. Bayo Akomolafe. Post humanist thinker, poet, teacher, essayist, and author. Together, he and our host, Martin Ping share a thought provoking conversation exploring a rich tapestry of ideas, beginning with Bayo’s inspiring fellowship at the Schumacher Center for New Economics. The conversation delves into the concept of drifting and its relevance in our current times, the value of...
Send us a text In this episode of Roots to Renewal, Hawthorne Valley's executive director Martin Ping sits down with Artist and Co-founder of Place Corps Dawn Breeze. They discuss the origins and goals of Place Corps a gap year fellowship program that aims to help young people discover their calling and develop a sense of belonging in their communities. Let's listen in as they discuss the importance of creativity, community engagement, and regenerative practices, and fostering personal growth...
Send us a text We recently had the great fortune of welcoming Micah Blumenthal into conversation. Micah is a worker trustee at the Good Work Institute, a workshop leader of the Kingston based TMI project, serves on the board of Radio Kingston, and is co-host of The Breathing Room and host of Hip Hop 101 on Radio Kingston. In this episode, Micah and our host Martin Ping reflect on the phenomenon of time, the importance of being rooted in place, the nature of work, our complicated relationship ...
Send us a text In this episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with Aisha Hassan and Lukas Paltanavičius, the founders of Cycle to Farms, an advocacy project with the goal of documenting regenerative agriculture practices in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa by cycling from farm to farm. They began their cycling journey in the Netherlands, ultimately visiting over 20 farms in 15 countries. The couple's initial goal was to explore regenerative agriculture and learn its true meaning from far...
Send us a text We are back after a bit of a hiatus with a very special guest, Helmy Abouleish, CEO of SEKEM Group, based outside of Cairo, Egypt. Founded in 1977 by Helmy’s father, Dr. Ibrahim Abouleish, the vision for Sekem is “sustainable development towards a future where every human being can unfold his or her individual potential; where humankind is living together in social forms reflecting human dignity; and where all economic activity is conducted in accordance with ecological and eth...
Send us a text This episode features Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School Class of 2005 alumnus Eliot Livingston Wilson, the founder and design lead for FUTUR, a firm developing regenerative affordable housing solutions. Hawthorne Valley's Executive Director, Martin Ping, chatted with Eliot about his exciting venture to find solutions to the interconnected housing and climate crises. They also talked about his family's deeply rooted history in the Hudson Valley and the impact of that history and o...
Send us a text Thank you for joining us for Episode 4 of Season 2, highlighting the work of Hawthorne Valley’s Farmscape Ecology Program. Their mission is to foster informed, active compassion for the ecological and cultural landscape of Columbia County, New York through participatory research and outreach. In this episode Hawthorne Valley’s Executive Director, Martin Ping, sits down with two of the founders of the Farmscape Ecology Program – wildlife ecologist, Conrad Vispo and field b...
Send us a text Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron Dessner In this episode Martin Ping, Hawthorne Valley’s Executive Director, welcomes Cornelius Pietzner, who served as the Director of Camphill Communities of North America, and whose father Carlo brought the Camphill movement to the US, including founding Camphill Copake. Hawthorne Valley’s origin story is closely tied to Camphill Copake as our Waldorf school was, in part, founded to accommodate the children of the Camphill Copake comm...
Send us a text Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron Dessner This is the second episode of our second season, and what an honor and pleasure it is to welcome Mary Berry, Director of The Berry Center in Kentucky, a nonprofit organization “dedicated to bringing focus, knowledge and cohesion to the work of changing our industrial agricultural system into a system and culture that uses nature as the standard, accepts no permanent damage to the ecosphere, and takes into consideration human hea...
Send us a text Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron Dessner With this episode, we're excited to officially launch season two of our Roots to Renewal podcast, and we are thrilled to have Greg Watson as our guest to kick things off. Greg is the director of policy and systems design at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics and a self-described lifelong student. He has spent nearly 50 years studying systems thinking as inspired by Buckminster Fuller and has worked to apply that understan...
Send us a text Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron Dessner This is our twelfth episode of the podcast and this time Martin interviewed one of Hawthorne Valley’s longest standing coworkers, Gary Lamb. Gary is currently the director of the Hawthorne Valley Center for Social Research and its Ethical Technology Initiative. Over his 36 years of employment at Hawthorne Valley, Gary also served the Farm Store manager, school development and admissions director, and high school economics teache...
Send us a text Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron Dessner Recently our Executive Director, and podcast host, Martin Ping sat down with Melissa Auf der Maur, an artist, musician, photographer and writer – probably best known in musical circles for her turn as the bass player for the band Hole from 1994-1999. Melissa is revered locally as social entrepreneur, she’s the co-founder and director of Basilica Hudson, a nonprofit multidisciplinary art center in Hudson, NY. We consider B...
Send us a text Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron Dessner We are happy to be back after a short hiatus for a conversation with John Fullerton, founder of the Connecticut-based Capital Institute, a think-and-do tank with a mission to reimagine our economic and financial systems to promote transformation to a more just and regenerative world. An unconventional economist, impact investor, writer, and philosopher, John is the architect of Regenerative Economics, first conceived in hi...
Send us a text Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron Dessner In this episode, we stayed in our own back yard – right here on Hawthorne Valley’s 900-acre Biodynamic farm. Hawthorne Valley’s Executive Director Martin Ping sat down with Spencer Fenniman, Director of Farm Operations, and Jess Brobst, our Dairy Herd Manager. Together they discuss the essence of biodynamic farming, the pedagogical function of the Farm, and the role of art on the Farm. We are very excited to share this beh...
Send us a text Sponsored by Tierra Farm. Music by Aaron Dessner. In this episode, Hawthorne Valley’s Executive Director Martin Ping had a chance to chat with artist and educator Martina Müller. Together they explore the many ways that art enlivens our lives – from the practice of observation intrinsic in the experience of making art and its impact on our interpersonal relationships, and even society as a whole – to the way that creativity allows us to access our more divine selves. Martina b...
Send us a text Sponsored by Tierra Farm. Music by Aaron Dessner. In this episode we’re excited to share a follow up conversation with our very first podcast guest, Frances Moore Lappé. We are delighted to acknowledge and celebrate the release of the 50th anniversary edition of her seminal book, Diet for a Small Planet. Once again Frankie and our Executive Director, Martin Ping engage in uplifting conversation on topics of the day that are also woven into Diet for a Small Planet: living...
Send us a text Sponsored by Tierra Farm | Music by Aaron Dessner In this episode Hawthorne Valley's Executive Director Martin Ping enjoys a wide ranging conversation with John Bloom, General Secretary of The Anthroposophical Society in America and former Vice President of Organizational Culture at RSF Social Finance, about the role of money and philanthropy in the creative process, and how money can serve human destiny and foster creativity. In the course of their conversation. You'll ...
Send us a text Sponsored by Tierra Farm | Music by Aaron Dessner Martin welcomes activist, author, entrepreneur, and long-time friend Judy Wicks into conversation about her life's work to build economies based on cooperation and local self-reliance. In 2001, she founded the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia, and co-founded the international Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. BALLE now includes some 30,000 local independent businesses in the U.S. and Canada...
Send us a text Sponsored by Tierra Farm. Music by Aaron Dessner. Hawthorne Valley Executive Director Martin Ping chats with Herbert Dreiseitl (see bio below) about the nature of creativity, the role of beauty in our lives, and the gifts of Waldorf Education. Herbert joined Martin in conversation this past February over Zoom from his home on the shores of Lake Constance in Germany when the country was still in the throes of the pandemic and in a state of strict lockdown. 3:00 Herbert talks...