Regenerative Agriculture with Stacy Pulice
8 min read (and watch)
We recently got to sit down with Stacy Pulice at her beautiful home to talk all things (re)generative and wanted to connect the dots for our audience on how you can take steps to living a regenerative life. Stacy has 3 decades of knowledge and immersion in the spheres of regeneration, education and good living. With 30+ years as a farmer/Owner-Operator of a farm in Santa Barbara, Ca., decades of environmental activism, while during the same time she has been on the front lines of education and psychology, where she has advocated for healthier education (eco)systems. All this tied together through the practice of nature-based philosophy of Taoism she is well researched, published and read on all the subsequent topics. But it doesn’t stop there, if you want to hear her talk just drop over to her podcast called Regenerative Spaces where she dives deep into a variety of foundational touch points that align with humanity’s impact on our surroundings.
With a majority of the Good Ancestor Co audience living in single family homes with an average sized yard and more suburb style living or in New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco, IE: city living with little/no outdoor space, we also hope to dispel the typically used excuse that they do not have space to compost at home. We were hoping to shed light on how each of us can start to adjust our daily practices to better align with nature and mitigate our impact on the land that we stand.
“We do this because one has to manage one’s own waste. You can’t take that way.”
What has your composting journey looked like? How do you compost at Elwood Ranch?
Stacy/ At the moment we have about 18,000 commercial avocado trees and 1,400 commercial pomegranate trees on our property, but we also have organic food gardens for our family and our team who live and work here. So we have two different areas of focus for compost. While we have always managed our green waste, creating mulch from seasonal pruning and crop waste, we don’t have a proper large-scale compost system for our commercial groves yet. This year we began working on trials of a basic hot pile system, and we’re about to test something called a Johnson Su bioreactor. I learned about that from Zach at Apricot Lane Farms. It takes about nine months to produce compost, but it’s simple to build and maintain, and the result is extremely fungal- dominant.
In the summer of 2022, we started experimenting with vermicompost in our kitchen garden and fruit orchards, using what’s called a Subpod bin. It’s about 30 inches wide and 17 inches tall, super easy to set up, with two chambers for worms and microbes to live inside. We’ve been feeding the worms with our kitchen scraps, shredded newspaper, and coconut fiber, and after six to seven months, we started producing what I call “black gold.” It’s a nutrient-rich compost made of worm castings. We put it in cheesecloth bags and soak those bags in water, along with liquid kelp and molasses, then bubble that for about four days, to create about 25 gallons of concentrated and nutritious compost tea. The yield is amazing because we dilute the tea with water at a ratio of 1:4.
So far, we’ve applied our compost tea to the food gardens and fruit orchards, both as a foliar spray and around the root systems, depending on whether it’s leafy row crops or trees. We’re considering scaling up the worm compost and brewing process to make it in much larger quantities for the agricultural aspect of the ranch. I’m a big fan of vermiculture in general – especially for smaller scale gardens. It’s such an easy, non- smelly and accessible process.
How do you manage your kitchen scraps? And what is your general philosophy on kitchen composting?
Stacy/ Originally we gave all of our kitchen scraps and some garden waste to our flock of chickens. We usually keep 10-15 at a time, so they’ve managed things quite nicely. It has felt very satisfying to manage our own organic waste that otherwise goes to the sewer system or to a landfill, where it creates damaging methane gas emissions.
But now that we have a worm compost system, I keep two ceramic bins on the counter – the original one for the chickens, and a new, very elegant one from Good Ancestor for the worms! Worms can break down tea leaves (I drink both chrysanthemum and black tea every day), avocado skins, flower stems from vases in the house, and other items the chickens can’t eat. We save coffee grounds to use as soil amendment in another container.
We now have seven families living and working on the ranch, so one of my top priorities is making sure that all of our excess produce gets distributed to them or placed out on our fruit stand, which is a wooden outdoor stall on the side of the ranch road where anyone can stop and take some of what’s available. We tend to have plenty of seasonal oranges and avocados, and sometimes the gardens produce more vegetables than we can eat, so that all goes down to the fruit stand, too. We are increasing our chicken population, so we will be able to share eggs soon.
But with eight households on the ranch, we still wind up with a lot of food scraps! I typically take a full bin of kitchen scraps to our worm composter and our chickens daily, so with one of the larger families, there will be a lot, and that can be daunting when you're unfamiliar. I am slowly educating everyone on the process, which is brand new to most of our workers. Also, some people can be deterred by the “eww” factor, but I got over that pretty quick. I have always kept our ceramic compost container on the island, and when it’s full, I just walk it out to the composter, then rinse. No mess! But if my hands do get dirty, oh well. It’s part of the process. When you have a beautiful bin to keep right out the counter, even better. It reminds and reinforces this simple and important process that can so easily be done to keep life systems healthy and thriving.
So, we do all we can do at an individual household and property-wide level to keep the scraps and bio-waste on site and repurposed to nurture growth for the next season. As we work towards a comprehensive plan to manage all the farm’s bi-products and to make compost in greater quantities, we’re starting by focusing on the families here and making sure we all have the tools we need to compost on a daily basis so it’s an accessible practice.
How reliable do you think some of the city compositing programs are? For example the compositing program in San Francisco seems great… can people just utilize these bins in good faith that they are doing good, or is home composting something that they should be doing regardless of city programs?
Stacy/I don't think there is a substitute for doing it yourself, because then you know exactly what goes into the composting mix, and it’s so rewarding to witness the composting process and make use of the product. But I think if you can't, if you don't have time or resources, city composting programs are the next best option.
The ReSource Center in Santa Barbara County does a pretty great job. From the trash collection, they separate out all the food scraps and combine them with green waste. They add bacteria in a two-phase anaerobic process that emits methane gas, which they use to fuel the process itself, and they produce a beautiful dark compost – we actually buy it and use it here at the ranch. I feel really grateful for the quality and the volume they’re able to provide. From what I understand, they do need more people to purchase it, though. It’s not expensive, and it can really do its job to support soil fertility, whether on a ranch like ours or in a home garden. My recommendation is to do some research on your county-specific composting system.
“You’re all welcome. We’re all welcome. Yeah, that’s how I see it.”
Why is “regenerative" one of your favorite terms? Especially compared to the word Sustainable?
Stacy/ As I see it, “organic” has been a baseline term in my lifetime that means we’re not applying pesticides, herbicides, or other harmful chemicals. The next term I’ve seen take hold is “sustainable,” which can be a catch-all for a few different things, but essentially means focusing on practices and processes that maintain the current status over time. And then there’s the more recent term, “regenerative,” which says you’re actively replenishing life, energy, and resources. I think that’s the emphasis the planet really needs right now. Give more than you take.
We've extracted far too much from the earth already. Much of our planet's soil is so depleted, and I believe many institutions can deplete our spirits, too. So, my regenerative goal is to give back at least as much as I take from the land, relationships, and the community. To do this on the ranch requires awareness that the soil is absolutely a living community, full of living things – bacteria, fungi, nematodes, worms, and other critters. There’s so much going on underneath the surface that determines the health of the plants, and that’s the focus of regenerative agriculture.
There is a regenerative certification process that the Savory Institute and others are encouraging that is a measure of carbon sequestration in the land as a result of these same organic practices. But as a mentor once told me, what we call “organic,” we used to just call “farming.” I’m not sure the specific choice of words matters so much. It’s probably most important that we find the terms that resonate most with us, in service of wellbeing for ourselves, our community, and the land.
“Perfectionism doesn’t work.”
Can you tell us about your work in education, and the overlap with farming?
Stacy/ I started researching education decades ago while getting my doctoral degree in psychology. I studied the ways our public school system suffers from a colonizing mindset and how this impacts the wellbeing of students, teachers, and administrators. I learned to see schools as ecosystems where living beings exist in relationship to each other, and I discovered some essential growth factors that allow everyone to thrive.
I call these the 4 C’s: care, connection, community, and choice. Care means, everyone is loved. Connection means, everyone is in relationship with their peers and others in the school. Community means, everyone feels a sense of belonging. Choice means, everyone can express their uniqueness and speak truth to power. When school-based interactions orient around these values, they’re more positive and life-affirming, and people experience more motivation and positive self-esteem. Without them, what you see is depletion and eventual dropout and burnout.
I’ve since come to understand how the 4 C’s apply to agriculture, too, if we’re trying to grow healthy soil-based ecosystems. But I’d still love to see regenerative principles applied to schools as well. Classrooms, like gardens, should be treated with a holistic perspective that uplifts each living being’s unique role. Just like regenerative farming honors all the life below the surface of the soil, I’d like to see schools honor all the life happening internally for kids – their emotional wellbeing, their spiritual selves, their mental health and their unique genius. I think all of these invisible factors play a part in learning, and probably much more than the surface-level stuff like test scores.
What programs can parents look for to broaden their view on education and expose them to the 4 C’s at early stages of development? Are there areas of the globe where children don’t have access to these kind of programs?
“4 C’s
Care: Am I loved
Connection: In active relationships with peers
Community: Feelings of belonging and values of a tribe
Choice: Can I express my uniqueness and truths to power”
Stacy/ Schools have been really important to me, and my own kids have experienced many different styles of schooling. Each of our kids at different stages has needed something slightly different. But what I have found in some programs more than others, and really tried to look for, is a holistic sensibility that takes the whole child into account, not just academics. I also think outdoor programs can be really beneficial, as well as programs that teach personal reflection and subjective knowledge as valuable.
I've found that Waldorf schools have some great elements, and so do Montessori schools. There's a program called Reggio Emilio that was very obscure when I was doing research, but they're more common now. Homeschooling can be a good option, too, and there are more and more homeschool programs emerging that allow a sense of community by working with other families.
All of that being said, no two children, families, or situations are the same. My simplest suggestion would be to find a school with a garden. If you can’t find one with a garden, get kids into a garden at home.
Speaking for myself, I took my education to the Ph.D. level because I love learning and going deep into a specific topic, but I’m also aware of the shortcomings of academia, especially now that I’ve reeducated myself just by working in regenerative farming. I try to engage with the land like a child who hasn’t been through the standardized model of education. I use my imagination and all five of my senses – sometimes even a sixth sense or intuition I’ve developed through a stronger connection to the land. I’m no longer so afraid of experimenting and messing up, like the standard education system once taught me to be. I wish everyone the freedom to explore that kind of curiosity, wonder, and play – I think that’s what’s needed, if we want to change the paradigm.
“Continuing this practice over time that’s what I understand regenerative means, you’re actually actively replenishing.
It’s as though we’ve been on a spending spree for a couple hundred years and we’re overdrawn in earth bank and we actually need to go on a real intentional savings plan and start putting back what we may have extracted.”
We learned a lot in a short time and as we walked away all we could say was “I wish there was more time!”
More time to chat, be challenged, learn and grow. That awareness of “self” leads to great introspection which in turn connects you to the external world. The space outside your head.
When you recognize your impact on the external world, you start to measure your words, your actions and your intentions. Bringing new context to your life and the things around you.
Thank you for a great day of fresh air and fresh perspectives Stacy.
~R&B