Regenerating Resiliency

An interview with Ben Falk, author of the second edition of The Resilient Farm and Homestead: 20 Years of Permaculture and Whole Systems Design

Acres U.S.A. I’ll ask you the best first question for a book author — what’s your book about?

Ben Falk. The book is a report on the experiments that we’ve undertaken to live in our landscape — to grow food, to be nourished, to be healthy, to revive the soil and the water cycle and the wildlife on site — to be as regenerative as possible while gleaning the most important basic needs that we have: food, water, medicine, health, wellbeing, spiritual sustenance, if you will, joy, a good life. And to generate as many high-value yields as we can from the site, while hopefully improving the ecosystem health of the site as much as possible.

So, that ranges from growing food to slowing, spreading and sinking water — we’re doing a lot of earthworks and waterworks to do better in drought conditions, or high-rainfall flood conditions. And we’re growing firewood and heating with wood in as efficient and effective ways as possible. 

We’ve experimented heavily with ways to not just get space heat, but to cook and bake, and to get all of our hot water from our wood stove system. We’ve had a lot of success with that. We’re on version like 4.6 of these systems over the last 20 years, and now we’re basically getting all the heat and hot water we need, plus as much baking and cooking as we want, for three people, on two cords of wood, in an 1,800-square-foot house that’s not very well insulated. That’s not a lot of wood in a Zone 4 climate, without much sun in the winter.

Acres U.S.A. You say in one of the first chapters, “Regeneration involves seeing things as they could be, while resiliency requires dealing with things as they are.” Farmers obviously know the word “regenerate” — it’s become the concept du jour, although it’s pretty ill-defined — but they maybe don’t talk about resiliency as much. Can you discuss that a little bit?

Falk. Sure. I’d say the main piece of resiliency that we’re concerned with is the ability to keep a place regenerating — to keep our cells regenerating and the place regenerating. How are we able to bounce back from stresses and continue the work that we do on site, and the processes that are positive on site? You can be regenerative, or get good yields, in nice weather, but if you don’t have certain systems in place that can deal with a heavy rainfall year or a drought year, your resiliency’s low — and then your yields, and your ability to regenerate, plummet. They’re both really key. 

I see regeneration as looking ahead toward what a place could be — how healthy could this place be? And resiliency is focused on, not the aspirational side, but on the problem side — what are the threats? What are our vulnerabilities? And dealing with those.