What has soil got to do with the brain? Cath Conlon, the CEO and Founder of Blackwood Educational Land Institute, sees a direct chain leading from soil health to brain health and advocates using regenerative practices in agriculture to achieve a positive impact on both physical and mental well-being. When you come to think about it, it is hard not to be disgusted when we dig into what comes into our food nowadays. Since the agricultural revolution many decades ago, the food production industry has been floating incrementally further from nature. Cath sees regenerative farming as a way to get closer to nature and reap its products’ benefits. At Blackwood, she strives to educate young people of humanity’s intrinsic bond with the land. In this very unhealthy era of human history, Cath’s insights can help us reclaim the health that we deserve if we open our minds to nature’s call. Join in as she talks about this and more in this conversation with your host, Carrie Miller.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Regenerative Farming: Healthy Soil, Healthy Food, Healthy Brain With Cath Conlon



Hey, My Friends, I want to welcome you to The Healthy Brain Podcast…where we stand up and speak Truth about what’s healthy in this world……you won’t find any sugar-coatin’ in this space.

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My guest is a Certified Permaculture Designer and Master Gardner. She’s the brains behind a nonprofit agricultural education center in Hempstead, Texas for Texas schools, teachers, children, corporations and volunteers since the ’90s, attracting thousands of students each year who come to learn where their food comes from. Why all this fuss about where your food comes from? To answer that question and more, welcome to the show, the CEO and Founder of Blackwood Educational Land Institute, Cath Conlon. Welcome. I’m excited to meet you, Cath, and discuss the importance of building community through regenerative practices and how it can make a positive impact on our mental health. Before we dive into this topic though, if you’d please share with us a little backstory of Blackwood. Was it a dream of yours to own a farm and teach others? Did the business organically grow on its own? 



It organically grew on its own. When my son was born in ’83, I could not imagine how I was going to raise a young man that was ecologically sensitive, intelligent and a great sense of humor in a city of millions. This was family land, so I got permission or I asked him to please not raise cattle on it anymore. Let me see what we could do by coming out here. We started coming and it was for him that my focus was getting him outside, but he was a little tiny and I started inviting his elementary, nursery, and middle school groups to come out. Eventually, one school came on Friday and they were here every Friday the whole rest of the school year. I realized that it was not just for one person. It was for people that I had an interest in sharing what I knew and what I knew in my heart because of being raised on a farm.

Where did you get the name? 

Blackwood? That was my grandmother, the most important woman in my life and an amazing person. She’s the one that introduced me to this natural world.

You must have had a close relationship with her?

A very close relationship, yes.

What would you say was most instrumental to you?

 

I was the eldest of five and she played with me because being the eldest of five children, I was the adult. As soon as my grandmother came on site, she and I were kids together so we played.

That’s good because all of us kids out here need attention. Cath, what is your definition of regenerative farming? That’s a little bit about what you all d...