Natalie Bogwalker Of Wild Abundance: Building resilience with permaculture and primitive skills (podcast interview)
Natalie Bogwalker is the visionary, founder, and director behind Wild Abundance (@wildabundance), a homesteading, permaculture, building, and gardening school near Asheville North Carolina. Natalie and the writer for Wild Abundance, Chloe, recently launched an online gardening school for people who want to grow their own food.
In this podcast episode, Natalie sheds light on her online gardening course, which has been especially relevant as people are learning to grow their own foods amidst COVID-19; whether and how the pandemic has affected her off-grid lifestyle; and more.
To start, get a glimpse below into the conversation between Natalie and Green Dreamer Podcast's host, Kamea Chayne.
Musical feature: Trust The Sun by Yarrow by Kim Anderson
“Lack of participation in a capitalistic system that is inevitably tied up with cruelty, slavery, factory farming, and depletion of resources, when you can choose to be self-sufficient and to step out of that system, that is totally an act of rebellion.”
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This is a conversation on Green Dreamer with Kamea Chayne, a podcast and multimedia journal illuminating our paths towards ecological regeneration, intersectional sustainability, and true abundance and wellness for all. This preview has been edited for clarity. Subscribe to Green Dreamer Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app to stay informed and updated on our latest episodes!
On the importance of place-based knowledge in learning self-sufficiency:
"I've had people call me from TV stations asking, 'If we dropped you off in an unknown location somewhere in the world, could you survive?' And I say, "No way, because I don't know the plants there!"
But here in my own ecosystem, I could probably hack it… at least for a while.
But if everyone went out and did that right now, it just wouldn't work because there is not the abundance that there was in a preindustrial America."
On self-sufficiency as a form of rebellion:
"Lack of participation in a capitalistic system that is inevitably tied up with cruelty, slavery, factory farming, and depletion of resources [is a rebellious act].
When you can choose to be self-sufficient and to step out of that system, that is totally an act of rebellion."
Final words of wisdom:
"Don't be scared. Follow your heart and connect with the wild."
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