Roots to Renewal

Send us Fan Mail 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 h...

Send us Fan Mail 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 grow...

Send us Fan Mail 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 f...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 co...

Send us Fan Mail 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 underst...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 b...

Send us Fan Mail 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: livi...

Send us Fan Mail 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 Cana...

Send us Fan Mail Sponsored by Tierra Farm. Music by Grammy Award winning artist Aaron Dessner. In this episode, Martin Ping and Rising Tide Capital cofounder Alfa Demmellash discuss the notion of economy and what we need to do to reimagine it so that it can serve us, our communities, and our children, and their children’s children. Alfa was born and raised in Ethiopia. She came to the United States at the age of 12 with a keen interest in poverty alleviation and conflict resoluti...

Send us Fan Mail March 1, 2021 | Roots to Renewal Sponsored by Tierra Farm | Music by Simon Frishkoff In this, our first episode, Hawthorne Valley’s executive director Martin Ping engages in an uplifting conversation about the power of hope with special guest, activist thinker, Frances Moore Lappé. She is the founder of Food First and the Small Planet Institute, and is author or co-author of 19 books about world hunger, living democracy, and the environment, including her seminal book, Diet f...