From the field – and the sickbed. And then the field again.

My research travel has taken a slight detour. I’ve had to fly home to deal with an urgent, but non-life-threatening, medical situation. I’m now recovering well after minor surgery, and will be getting back out on the road shortly. It was frustrating to abandon part of an itinerary that I had put so much time into assembling, farm by farm, but… sometimes you just have to roll with it.

Ultimately, I’m just happy to be healing well and getting back out there. Hopefully I will find a way to get back out to that stretch of southern Oregon to central California before all is said and done.

But I’ll be going east before I go back west.

Next weekend, I’ll be presenting twice at the Yale Food Systems Symposium. I’m happy to be sitting on a panel on Permaculture in Academia, as well as giving a presentation entitled “Recovering the Future: Food System Transition Pathways on (and Around) U.S. Permaculture Farms.” You can find the whole schedule here.

Immediately afterwards, I’m heading west to Bay Area, and then south. The coming weeks are packed. My first stop will be Regenerative Earth Farms, managed by Warren Brush (of Quail Springs Permaculture) and family. My plan had been to follow the farm visit with a visit my dear friends Andrew and Lindsay, who live at Quail Springs – and then serendipity took over. It turned out that Quail Springs would be starting their 2-week Permaculture Design Certificate Course right after my visit. Soon enough, some conversations with Andrew and Lindsay turned into an invitation from Warren to stay and teach for a few days. I’m psyched for this opportunity to teach permaculture with new people in a new context – and grateful to everybody at QSP for their generosity and interest in working me in to the first few days of their course.

Then it’s Colorado, Kansas, Wisconsin, and home! And then Cuba – oh my.