 My name is Erin Beasley. I'm the executive director for ecosystem restoration camps in the US. As you know, we're a movement and network of independent restoration initiatives around the world. And we host these fireside chats to learn a little bit more in depth about what's going on at each of our partners. And today we have Leo Lechere, who I will introduce to you in a moment, who's joining us from EcoCamp Coyote. We will also be joined by John D. Lu, who will talk a little bit about what's going on in some of the restoration sites that he's been visiting. He'll join us a little bit later. But I think we can go ahead and get started with the overview of what's going on with some news about what's happening in our camps and some general housekeeping. So as I mentioned, please keep your mute, please mute your microphone until after Leo's presentation, we will have a participatory section at the end. And we'd love to hear from you then. And please hold your questions until after his presentation as well. You can ask your question either in person by raising your hand virtually or on your video. And you can also put your question in the chat if that's better for you. We'll first do a formal one hour session to learn a little bit more about EcoCamp Coyote. And we'll have a question and answer session after Leo's presentation. And then we'll open it up for a general discussion where you can talk about projects that you're working on, additional questions that you might have, or anything else that you'd like to share. Before we get started, I want to share a little bit about what's going on with camp experiences and courses that are coming up. Camp Green Pop in South Africa is hosting their Eden Festival of Action, which combines practical ecosystem work with a full lineup of workshops from October 2nd to the 9th. Camp Embercoom in the UK will be hosting a Rewilding camp experience from October 14th to 17th. Hi, John, I see you just joined us. I'll have you jump in after I do the camp news. Camp Tolago is in South Africa, and they will be hosting an internationally recognized permaculture design course from November 16th to 19th. And last but not least, our featured guest today, EcoCamp Coyote in California, will be having a fall camp weekend in Morgan Hill from November 11th to 13th. And Leo can confirm those dates for you and his presentation. Quickly about camp news. There are now 55 camps in our network, which is really exciting. So sometimes it's hard to keep up with all of the developments and all the amazing things that are happening there. But some quick highlights. In Kenya, Camp Mombasa Mangroves has partnered with climate partners to plant 750,000 mangrove trees. Sinaldo Valley in Brazil and outside of Rio is hosting, or it has launched a crowdfunding campaign. You can find more about that on our website. Please support them. They're working to expand a women led agroforestry enterprise that includes job training and job skills for protection and restoration of the Machatlantica Forest, excuse me, the Machatlantica in Brazil. And then in Italy, Camp Rocha Viva is working with ERC and Plant for the Planet to host a conference on the 27th of September to present their new project, Magnus Lucas, which is a collaboration to build a green belt to stop land desertification and mitigate climate change. And finally, to celebrate a little bit about what all of this action has meant collectively. Since we began this work in 2017, 18,000 people have joined to participate in restoration, regeneration, and rehabilitation of over 8,800 hectares of land, which is just over 20,000 acres. And they've planted more than 2,300,000 trees and plants at 55 initiatives around the world. So so nice to see all of this action and effort moving and growing. And thank you for joining us here. I want to hand it over to John to share some opening words about about what he's been thinking about and visiting related to restoration. And when John closes, I will introduce Leo. So please go ahead, John. Hello, everyone. It's so exciting. Can you hear me? Okay. Yeah, it's my one o'clock in the morning, unfortunately. So I'm a little woozy. But great to see lots of people I know. And so glad you're all here. I just wanted to tell you that I was able to have a discussion with was on a panel discussion with Noam Chomsky two days ago. So if you'd like to take a look at that, I'm going to I think I'm at the best place. The best method might be to let you just look at some of the some of the clips of that. So I'm going to put that into the into the chat a little bit later. I think the things that I've been if you if you look at that, you'll notice that Noam Chomsky is really pretty worried. One of the things that I noticed about Noam Chomsky's work is that over the years, he's been consistently, I would say, right somehow in his thinking, but that it hasn't made him very happy. He's a really seriously sad individual, I think. And if you're really dedicated and watch the whole thing at the very end, he sort of smiles sort of barely. And I really wish he could smile more. But I don't know how he's going to be able to do that exactly. But I was able to discuss what's happening a little bit with the camps movement. We did have it was shown on a live stream with a group called we don't have I think it's called we don't have time. So the time is running out or something like that. And and then there was another it's also being shown on VPRO, the public television network that that made green gold here in the Netherlands, Dutch public TV. Anyway, I was able to talk about what I've been thinking. And in the kind of grim situation that that Noam Chomsky talks about. He's he actually thinks that we have just that this particular time in the next few months is critical for the world because or for let's say for human civilization. Because he thinks that there's so many stacked crises going on, which pretty much everybody can feel now. And that one of the problems that we have, I think, is that all the all the people that are discussing this are talking about policy issues and about money. And of course, I've never seen policy or financial things. They they take place pretty slowly and unfold. And I think what we really need to consider is that if he's right, then ecosystem restoration camps may have not only this ability to help to restore ecological function at scale, but it might also be a question of survival for a lot of people around the world. So I wish it was a you know, I'm I'm really hoping as I get older that it'll all be great fun. But I think we're we're in for a rocky road in the short term. And I've been thinking about what I think is the best way to deal with the short term and and the long term. And I've I've been working with people who are getting ready to set up central kitchens, creator spaces, and cultural stages. And I think this this is kind of like a portal for a transition between this sort of conceptual human civilizational intention and a functional ecological world. Because let's face it, we have 43 people on this call. And the Dome Chomsky thing did get into the hundreds of thousands of people checking it out, according to the digital statistics. But, you know, there are 8 billion people on the planet. And, you know, no, no, I'm not wrong. I would say about the scale of the problem. I'm hoping it's not quite as grim as he he feels it is. But I think we're going to have to keep our spirits up. And in case things really get worse. And that's what the most fun thing I've had at going to camps is that people are having a good time in some of these places. And not only is it a good time, but it's making their landscapes more resilient, and their communities stronger. And we're we can see very specific results in terms of if they go a bit longer. I'm in a place right at the moment where for five generations, a biodynamic family has cared for a piece of land. And it's been a drought conditions in the Netherlands. But here it's seven to 10 degrees cooler than in the in, you know, two miles away, it will be stifling, and it's moist, and it's fertile, and it's massively biodiverse. So there's tremendous amounts of physical evidence that it's possible to make ecosystems more resilient and more in line with with natural outcomes. And I also also say this, it's a lot more interesting to be surrounded by all sorts of birds and insects and and small mammals. And even in when I was in California, I was also encountering large mammals. And it's that that's really fun. It's it's kind of better than being in the in abiotic situations. So I really hope that everybody will enjoy what Leo has to say, because I think he's doing a lot of things that we need to consider. He's using existing materials and upcycling. And he's the training at EcoCamp Coyote is really very special, because it's almost like a movie set in the place where they are. It's like a post apocalyptic movie where where people are rallying around to to to use what they have to make it better. And I think this is maybe something that a lot of places around the world are going to face pretty soon. And the more I look at the kind of postmodern architecture here in the Netherlands, I just keep thinking about what a thousand years from now, archaeologists are going to be seeing when they come and they they look at this particular era in time. I mean, they're going to they're going to find all this wonky strange ruins. And they'll they'll be excavating the the trash. They'll be looking at at the toxic trash layer that has been created by the last few generations of people. But I think we're we're doing something which is critically important for ourselves and for our families and our communities, and for future generations. And I'm so glad that you guys are working on it. And I hope that many, many more will come on board to do this. But when we're doing this, I believe we're we're doing what we're supposed to do at this time. So thanks a lot. And I'm it's one o'clock in the morning. And I must say, Aaron woke me up. And I had set my alarm and I don't know what happened. But my alarm either I turned it off and went back to sleep. So I'm a little confused here. But it's it's great to be here and see you. And welcome. And I'm looking forward to hearing from Leo. And I hope everybody will go and visit Eco Camp Coyote when they're in California, if they're in California. Thanks again. I'm going to turn it over back to Aaron and let this go forward. And I'm going to put into the chat some links to to the to the Noam Chomsky thing. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, John. And thank you for waking up to be here with us. I know it's really late where you are right now. So it makes we really appreciate you adjusting to the hour so that we can all hear from you and hear what you've been involved in. I'd like to now open the floor for Leo, the share, who is the camp coordinator for Eco Camp Coyote in Morgan Hill, California. We'll have about 20 minutes, 20 to 30 minutes for Leo to share what they've been working on at Eco Camp Coyote. And then we'll have time for questions and answers at the end. So Leo, the floor is yours. Please make sure to unmute yourself and share your screen. Thank you. Yay. Thank you, Aaron. Oh, I'm so excited. This is going to be the most thorough thing about Eco Camp Coyote I've ever done. Okay, well, let's see. Yeah, thank you. I'm Leo, the share. I am camp host out here at Eco Camp Coyote. Let's see what I'll be talking about today is kind of the who, what, where, when and why of Eco Camp Coyote. Some of our the ways that we do restoration, some of our projects, we'll talk about our events and a little bit looking into the future and what we would like this to evolve into and how people can get involved. I'm hoping that the outcome of this is that we inspire some hope, you know, we're just regular folks over here and our attendees are regular folks and I imagine most of the people on the call are regular folks. And so I'm just excited to, to all be in this community of people who care. So can we all see my screen, this our front gate here? Yes, go ahead. Thank you. So this is the front gate of Eco Camp Coyote. Eco Camp Coyote is a one acre property in the corner of a larger 10 acre property here in Coyote, California, which is in the south Silicon Valley area. It used to be a sod farm. So they grew people's lawns and then scraped them up, put them on a truck. So people can desertify from the comfort of their home, you know, and we're an off grid prototype. We're an intentional community in training. We practice sociocracy. We live together. Right now there's four of us, my business partner, Aero Gorski, Jake Gorski, Hannah Riley, and myself. And let's see, this is what it looked like when we got here. So it had been scraped, pillaged, plundered, it had been compacted, there's borrow the dog out there in the desert. And our camp is in the far corner, kind of forward into the right. There I am with a crazy beard. There was nothing here. There was just gravel, fences. Here's some of the restoration that we do. So this little spot is right outside our gate. And this is an example of we got a bunch of mushroom compost and a bunch of wood chips. That's what those piles are. And then those little antlers, people spreading out the mushroom compost. So we are trying to restore the topsoil, undo the strategic desertification and plant food, producing trees and native plants. Here's a load of the mushroom compost. We've had something like maybe 10 or more semi truckloads of this free mushroom compost. There's a mushroom farm about two miles away. We've had probably, shoot, I bought a dump truck just to get this stuff here. This is a bunch of wood chips. Here's folks at a camp out along this little strip on the right where the tents are. We planted a bunch of trees, native plants there. A couple years ago. Here's Dorje Jonathan, who's from Camp Potlum. He's on the call today. He was putting the finishing touches on this owl box. And the owls actually moved in. And so I'm very honored to be, you know, what do you call them? Live with owls be like little roommates. Here's one of the trees. Here's an almond tree. And so this is that same strip. This is this year. All these trees are big. And a lot of them, I think all of them are producing fruit now and grow in and it's just very exciting. Another type of restoration we do is we're addressing the the marginalized road sides. So we're restoring road sides. There's this mile and a half long strip. It's about five acres total along the road here outside of our spot. And the city was spraying poison. And and so we said, all right, we'll take care of this. So we started picking up the garbage. This is us with a load of garbage. We started mowing the grass and trimming the trees so that the fire hazard was lower. That's why they were spraying it with poison. Here's Hannah with the weed wacker. It's pretty simple, but it's hard work. So then once we trim the trees, here we are chipping, chipping it up, making free showers for the folks. This is a wood chip shower. Come to EcoCamp and you can have a wood chip shower. Another type of restoration that we do is around restoring fire ecologies and and the cultures that go with them. So here's Lee Klinger of Sudden Oak Life. And what what he does, he's like a tree doctor. He's all about the oak trees. He's all about looking at the systems of the oak forests, which is the forests that would that are around here natively. And what do they need now that fire has been suppressed for sense colonialization? So we work with Canyon Sears Roots of Indian Canyon. And they are an indigenous person who still has access to the land that her ancestors have been on. You know, forever, which amazing thing. So a big part of our events is going out there and doing this fire mimicry of mimicking what wood fire do when the indigenous folks were maintaining the land with fire and evolving with fire and having healthy relationships with with low common fire. How can we manually bring the forest back to a place where fire can come back to the land and not be this catastrophic thing? So one of the major ways we do that here, we are clearing brush clear and brush and trim and trees is a big way. There's something fire would have done. We're adding minerals to the soil here on the left. This brother is applying this this lime wash. So a big part of the the the thing from fire not being around is that calcium isn't isn't as available to the trees. So we manually apply it to these trees to help them along. And over on the far right, my little friend is brushing the moss and the lichens off of the tree, which would have been controlled by the fire and the smoke and actually are detrimental to the to the health of the tree when when they aren't kept in check. Here's Lee taking out diseased flesh from the tree. So now that the calcium isn't there to create healthy bark, there's cracks, diseases and bugs get in there. So we carve it out, cauterize it with a flame and do some surgeries on the trees. And then of course, our follow up event to that event is a fire like a burn day. So we'll take that brush that we cleared. This is a ring of fire that Jonathan from Camp Hotlum brought with Thomas. And they brought it down and we created a bunch of biochar with this kiln. It was amazing. So now this, this brush that would have been a problem is now part of the solution of bringing stable carbon back to the forest, healing the soil is just so exciting. Here we are putting putting out the fire. Big part of making biochar and the smoke being all good for the trees here. And here's the crew here. So this was our camp out last fall. Okay, some of our projects. This is where it gets kind of juicy. Okay, good news. What's elevation? Arrow and I are partners. This is us on the cover of OSHA magazine. I'm just kidding. This is not at all OSHA. Don't forget I mentioned OSHA. Don't call them. So we reclaim wood for a living. Redwood fenceboards. So, so check this out. They took the most ancient living organism on earth, multiple thousands of years old, redwood trees, cut them all down almost 100% of all the redwoods along this coast that only grow along this coast, cut them all down. We're still clear cutting red wood to make fences to divide people. And then when someone goes to get a new fence, because you know, they want to sell the house or somebody's coming over for Thanksgiving or whatever, and they just replace the whole fence, the boards are fine. And so we take these boards that we're getting shipped, we're getting burnt in the power plant, we're going into the landfill. And we we have a business out of it. So here's more. We built this cool outhouse out of it. That's over there at Indian Canyon now. And it gets turned into this beautiful interior wall paneling that you see behind me. And it's actually it's available for sale if you're interested. It's a beautiful thing to have on your wall in your home. I have a little pet project that I would love for this wood to just get turned into the most sacred use we could imagine, which to me was, I would love to be returned back to the earth in the box in the reused flesh of these beautiful trees. So that's not what our business does, but it's something I built this casket for myself anyhow. The Forest Factory, this is another project that we do. There's this greenhouse down the road that we have access to. And the landowner said, when we start making money, we'll start paying rent. So we have not made any money doing this. This tree nursery. It's about an acre big of a greenhouse that used to be you can see on the left there that it used to be a carnation factory for lack of a better term. And here we are clearing it up. And planting little baby plants in it and and trying to be what we can have a hub for, you know, the native oak species, chestnuts, figs. We did a workshop where we went and collected acorns. Here we are processing them. Here they are sprouting. It was so exciting. Here they are sprouting. It's like a takeover of the oak trees. I mean, these are the trees around here. They more of them. It's so exciting. Here they are. There's a bunch of loquat there and a bunch of chest nuts. Chestnuts are an awesome tree as well. Look at how big these are the same trees in those other pictures. Now granted girlfriend Hannah here is petite, but these are huge trees. Anyhow, I get all excited about that. The food rescue is another little thing we do. I'll say a couple words about it. There's so much food waste that just goes into the dumpster goes. We diesel fuel it up to the freaking landfill. It's crazy. So we take that from this grocery store. They give it to us. We used to have to rummage through the dumpster for it. But they give it to us now and we eat some of it. We take we use it at events. We give it to the homeless shelter. And we compost a lot of it because it belongs in the ground. You know, something something better than putting it in a plastic bag. Okay, so John mentioned these these kitchens that are needed. So a couple years ago, some of the California camps got together and had a fundraiser and we built this mobile kitchen. So it's a little seven by 10 trailer that has all the innards in it for a kitchen. So we put this together. And we use it at our events and it's still very much in the prototype phase, but we've used it at a few events now and it gets better every time. And the idea is that this would be a deployable kitchen that could feed 50 or more people off grid. It's we want to use as minimal fossil fuels as we cook our food and and support permaculture projects, ecosystem restoration. You know, there's so many times where you should be able to go out there and work on the land, but people got to eat and and it's such a big thing to set up a kitchen and so this thing has a water system, a power system, water filtration, it has cooking stuff, pots and pans and refrigeration and really it's it's come a long way. Here's Willie, we use this this cob pizza oven that we have on loan. So that's another way you can cook food without here's some people eating at the thing. Here's Willie. So we have vegan pizza tonight, come to a camp out and we're going to have pizza. It's free if you buy a ticket to come. Let's see, this is this huge solar oven that we are borrowing from a friend. That's another way that we can cook without using fossil fuels to give you some perspective. Like look at look at those tires. That's that's a regular trailer tire. This thing is like 15 feet tall. It's huge. I mean, you could you could climb there. There's a little baby one. So permastructure. This is a big thing. This kind of comes from permaculture. It's like permanent infrastructure. It's like how could we have systems that really are based on renewables and prolific integration of energy and nutrients and water and all these sites. So this is a big thing that we focus on here at our camp. This is our camp from the gate. So you can see front and center. We have a photovoltaic system that supplies our energy. The fire truck is there. We'll get to that. That's in front of that. We have a generator runs on biodiesel. We have some biodiesel storage capacity. It's all very exciting. Here's one iteration of the innards of the solar system. We have this awesome bike generator that we put together from the folks over at rock the bike. So you pedal on this thing and it creates 110 power and you can charge your phone with it. You can charge the solar system with it. The thing it's really best for is figuring out how much energy things take because you can't run much off of this. You feel like a little ant. You're just like, wow, you could pedal on there for days and run your computer for five minutes or it's maybe not that bad. We run a lot of things off of waste cooking oil and biodiesel. So here's our generator on the left. It runs on biodiesel. There's my Jetta on the right. I think I went all the way to New Mexico on biodiesel way back. So we have generators and the truck for the wood business. A lot of stuff here runs on biodiesel. Here's my old Mercedes running on some vegetable oil, some sesame oil. All right. Some call it the John. Some call it the Lou. We just call it the outhouse. This is our outhouse that is attached to a bio digester. So the first step in using this is hopefully the last person wash their hands. The gray water from the sink goes into the bucket under the drain. Then this toilet uses that water to flush into the bottom bag of this bio digester in which the little methanogenic bacteria break that stuff down and create methane and it gets caught in this upper bag. So then you weight that bag down. Here's an example here of a cute little weight, weighting one of these bags full of poop gas down. This is not animal cruelty. Here's me mess it. This is the grossest thing I do by far. It's good to know because then we have to pump the stuff. There's kind of some stuff to it. But anyhow, eventually that gas makes it into the kitchen. This is poop gas that you're seeing and it cooks food with the gas from the poop. Here is our rainwater catchment system. So here's an example of how these industrial scale hoop houses, in this case we use this hoop house to keep the reclaimed wood dry. It can be gutters and this is going in. You could see through these white pipes into these big old tanks that somebody gave us. And here it is, rainwater. We're working on, this is, we're working on getting this integrated into our system to water the trees. Here's the fire truck. So this is one of our things. We like to be fire prepared. So we, we thought, we gotta, I just had this feeling like we gotta, we gotta have something. We're in California. There's fires around us every year. We've had to stop events because of fires. They're along the road. We've had them on our property and we've gotten lucky. So we put this together and not, was it two weeks later there was a fire on our property just outside the gate on the way in, I mean on the larger tent acre. And so here's Jake. He's putting out the fire. I was driving around in the truck. It was, it was like, it was such a highlight. And we put out the fire before the fire department even got there. We had it under control. I'm glad they came, but it was, it was really, it was, it was a highlight of my year for sure. It was like, all right, I'm going to listen to my gut, you know. Okay, events. This is one of the biggest things that we really do and care about. So here's us shipping off for the events. We pack up the truck. Sometimes we do them at our spot. And sometimes we do them, like I said, over at Indian Canyon, which is about 50 miles away. We've had about 10 of these events, something like twice or more a year since 2019. We've had over 300 campers. And we really think something that is community accessibility and if you can't pay, just come on. You know, it's not about that. It's got to kind of pay for it, which is a whole thing, but just making sure everybody can come who wants to come. So, so learning and education is a big one. Here we are out here with Lee. We're taking notes like, oh, curious, is that a tree where he's teaching us about the fire mimicry thing? And here we are exploring the pizza oven or the sun oven. Look how big that thing is. We could all fit in there. Huge. Awesome discussions. I mean, it's just something special about our campus is the connection that you find with other people who care. And here we are doing it and learning about it and like, ugh, it's so, it's so good. Here we are just, just being a community. Just this is like during nap time, you know, together. Learning from Michelle, she taught us about zero waste. She was like, use this jar, you know, or whatever she was talking about. And then action. Here's Gina. Here we are on the roadside. This is one of the things that we do during our campouts, you know, getting the branches over to the chipper. Here we are planting trees. You can see Leor had this. We brought the jack camera out because the soil here is so compacted from decades of, you know, industrial ag. We put Johnny to work. He's from Camp Birdhouse over in Hollywood. We said, you got to wash some dishes, bro. Anyway, he looks like he's having a good time. And then fun. Fun is a big part of the campout. So we always have like an open mic around the fire and, and something I didn't know quite how to say this, but there's just such a, there's also this reverend component that there's just this, this sacred thing that we're all there for, you know, like, why do we come out to the camp and why do we put all this effort in and, and honor of the land. And this, this picture just kind of said it better than I, than I can say it, obviously. Here we are. We're in the greenhouse. This was at one of our first camps. Just enjoying. And of course, we eat awesome food at the camps with all, we're trying more and more to not use any petroleum. Last, at our last camp, I think we fed all those people and we used like one thing of propane and at the next camp, I hope that it's none. Looking into the future, this is Coyote Valley. This is, this is the larger area of where we are. And I just hope that we can restore more area and expand our programs. I love this picture of this little kid who came to a camp and he gets to play with fire in a good way. And we really want to get kids involved and expand the programs to include kids. And then this is a picture that I found. It's kind of one of my visioning things is, you know, right now we're just, we've just rent here and there's all of this nonsense with the city. And we don't know, you know, we don't expect to be able to stay at this place forever at this location. But one of our goals is to eventually own some land and be able to have a long term, you know, a stewardship of the a stewardship relationship with with some land. And I think that's something that really we all have in common. And we're excited about my my calls to action and ways people can get involved are you can donate, you know, if you can't come to a camp, you can help support it, that really I mean, it's direct like it helps other people come who can't pay and it helps it grow and it helps it work. So if you go to eco camp coyote.org, you can donate there. You can follow us on Instagram, we're active on there we're active on Facebook. We have a YouTube channel. And you could buy a t-shirt contact me. And most of all is just come to a camp out. I would love folks to come to a camp out. And my last thing here is to show this video. This was made by a dear friend of ours, Sean, at two Owls Productions. And he came to the to the last camp out and would forward this and made this for us. So let's check it out. Wildfires are due to a lot more than just climate change and largely due to the fact that these forests haven't been tended. Oaks need tending, doing nothing is not an option. We are here in Indian Canyon. This land has continuously been held and stewarded by indigenous peoples. And it's where my ancestors have always been. I'm very rooted and I'm part of community. We've been working with Southern Oak Life and Indian Canyon to present this. Camp out and course on fire mimicry and traditional ecological knowledge. In essence, these are all forests that for thousands of years were actually tended mainly with fire by the native peoples. The forest have changed dramatically. Fire is really critical for maintaining a balance in the forest. And then without fire, the forest now are getting overgrown out of balance. And most importantly, much more susceptible to these catastrophic wildfires which we see. The events that we put on are educational, action oriented and fun. Camping and mobile kitchen activation. You got Southern Oak Life tending and stewarding oak trees, initiating conversations and collaborations with indigenous communities, protecting ancestor trees. The land that benefits from these collaborators, these co- conspirators, these community members just coming and having a space to land, a space to work within, to be in community with and inspire. We can do something on the ground level at community scales and we can get so much done. This is the thing to do and it can be right here right now. And it's the work that we have to be doing. There's really no choice. If we honor indigenous pedagogies, indigenous teachings, indigenous protocol, we can strategize sustainable futures. The beauty is, is that we have all the resources we need to address this problem. We really need to get out there and realize that everyone can do this work. Well, thank you so much, Leo. Um, we don't do applause here, but if you guys are on your, um, if you're, you know, on your zoom and you would like to add a reaction, I think it would be really nice for Leo to be able to see back from you guys, um, what you thought about his presentation. Um, you just shared such amazing projects that you're working on. It's really also motivating to see how many different types of projects you're able to incorporate. Wow, look at all these reactions coming in. That's awesome. Thank you guys. Um, it's really cool to see also how many diverse types of projects you're able to take on, which I think is really special. Um, and, uh, and I think your partnerships are a really, um, powerful piece of the work that you do. Um, so what I want to do now is hand it over to the audience. Um, I have some questions for you, but at this phase, um, we really want to hear from the group of people who are here. What would you like to know more about, um, from Leo's work? Um, what do you want him to share a little bit more? Do you have questions, technical questions, questions about, um, one of his programs, um, or the way that they, that they do their work. Um, so if you have a question, um, please raise your hand and I'll recognize you. And then, and then you can use your microphone and your video if you like. Um, if you'd like to also put a question in the chat, if that feels better to you, um, you can go ahead and do that as well. Um, or you can also raise your hand in the video. And if no one jumps in, I will start with one that I have. Oh, awesome. Um, yes, better world for all. Please go ahead. And just as a reminder, we'll be recording the question, the answer section. Um, and then we'll close the recording and open an open discussion for everyone as well. Please go ahead. Hello. Thank you so much for all the work you're doing. It's definitely what we need to do. Um, I'm in the US right now, but, um, I work in Kenya and I plan on moving back there. And I really want to start a, like an exhibition, uh, location so that we can hold trainings, um, for other people throughout Kenya. And I just wanted to see if you thought eco camps was a good way to get started on that. And if so, um, what what resources or people or funding do you think, uh, are necessary to get started? Thank you. Whoa. Uh, let's see. So was the, was working with the ERC helpful? And what are some of the necessary things that are needed in order to start this kind of how I heard that question? Let's see. Well, ERC ecosystem restoration camps helps a lot with, with getting the word out and things like this and connecting to a community of people in this line of work and other camps. And that's been just phenomenal. And and it's, it's helped us kind of like legitimize like what else would we call? I don't know what else we would be just some like hippies, you know. So it helps a, you know, I always say, yeah, we're internationally recognized ecosystem restoration camps. So it, it, it helps. And yeah, it's helped us with access to funding and things like that. And then and we've done a lot on our own, you know, there's not like, like someone who's necessarily gonna or like no one came in and was like, all right, put the water tank there and like, here's how to do an event and like things like that. There, there's been help and we've had to figure out a lot on our own. And, and good news, wood salvation has been, I mean, we couldn't have done it without the wood business, you know, the the events until recently have cost us money to put on. We've broke and then we started breaking even. So it's kind of like that. And like the solar system, good news bought it. And the bio digester and like all that stuff has been the wood business. So it will take funding. I mean, it would have, it feels like it's already going slow, but it would go even, even slower without spending a lot of our time on the wood business. So I hope that answers some of your questions. Yeah, thanks. Thanks. I just wanted to see if from having a company to help you from way and then using doing I think we're having some sound issues. So it's who are not talking. Can you hear me? They're mad. Can I can I say something, Aaron? Go ahead. Yeah, I would just tell you that we have one camp that's working in. Well, it's in Tanzania. It's the permaculture. They call it. What do they call it? What's what's Main Springs Camp called over there? What is it? It's called Main Springs. Well, that's the foundation. I think it's the permaculture Institute of Tanzania Pitt strange acronym. But they started as a as a. Well, like an orphanage and especially a girl's school. It's quite lovely. And they they have a very successful foundation fundraising efforts in the United States for helping out in Tanzania. And it's been going on for quite quite a long time. And they train a lot of people in permaculture in Tanzania. They've been working, I know, with Kenya and Rwanda and even even as far as Zambia and I don't think it was South Africa, but Malawi. And it's it's it's there's a lot of help available. We also have one of the supervisory board members who's in Kenya now doing projects. And there's a number of camps in East Africa and other parts of Africa, which are also able to help out in in communicating about what is possible. I would recommend talking to them. Try to try to collaborate with Main Spring. Main Springs is. Teaching the course in fundraising, by the way, which might be quite useful for people who really need funds to get going. So just a thought there. Absolutely. And for folks that are interested in learning about more about being an ecosystem restoration camp, but it looks like maybe my video is for us. You can check out a section of the ecosystem restoration camps dot or website. And there's an explanation of everything you need to know there to get you started as well. I want to go back to some of the questions that we see coming through the chat. There's a lot coming in here, so I'm going to group a couple of questions from the chat. And if somebody would also like to ask a question in person, please go ahead and raise your hand and we'll get you in the queue. So some questions that the audience has been asking is whether that large solar oven actually has some way to store or save all of that heat or is it is it gone once you close it up? And where can we buy the redwood? Maybe we can have somebody put that information in the chat for people so that they can take that with them after. From Sadia, how do you financially support yourselves for food and water if you're not generating profits? So maybe some opportunity to talk about with the redwood business, how that's connected. So let's start with those three and then I'll ask another group. Sure. The website for good news for the redwood is goodnews. ECO. There it is. Thank you, Aero. The solar oven, let's see, does it have a way of storing the heat? It's quite insulated. It's fiberglass. It's got like a maybe an eight inch wall. I think it's filled with foam or something. And it doesn't other than that, it doesn't store the heat, but. It actually has a way because it was designed to be able to be used as a commercial oven for small like for for folks. How do I describe it? And basically, you can supplement the heat with propane. There's this tube that goes through it so so that you can ensure that the heat is high enough, you know, if a cloud goes in the sky or whatever. We've we've never done that. We've never had a reason to. But. Anyhow. And then what was the other one there? Oh, how do we make money? So Aero and I work, we do the wood business. Hannah works with the wood business and Jay has a dog training business that he does for his income. So that's the four of us who live here. And we contribute in different ways. But that's kind of the long and short of that. Eco Camp is. Is a passion project. It's it's hopefully won't always. Just need money. You know, the point is for it to be able to. To create regenerative livelihoods. That hasn't gotten going yet. So I'm going to jump in with a question. Of my own. And it's about your partnerships. Leo, I think that. Eco Camp Coyote has a very special power in partnerships. And getting people out to events, getting people involved and feeling really excited and. And. Interested in coming back again and again. And I think that that says a lot in the time where. There's so many other things people want to do. People have their own personal stuff that they're taking care of. What do you think it is about what you're doing? But I mean, I have, I have some theories that I'll offer them. I'll share mine too. But what do you think it is that about what you're doing. That builds that continued interest. Both from your partners as well as the folks who come out to your event. And they say that. So I think there might be some. Other people on the call who are also doing organizing. Let's see. It's a good question. It would be a good thing for us to know why do people come back. I think it's a. To me, it's that we've created a community. You know, it feels kind of like. We're creating the community. You know, it feels kind of like. We're creating the kind of thing that we would want to go to. And so hopefully the kind of people who. We are looking to attract would go to those things. And it's been the case. I mean, some of our great friends are folks who just. Found the event on event bright and came and now we're like. Buddies and like build stuff together and. Call each other on our birthdays and cut that kind of thing. So. I think the connection piece, you know, like we had some pictures of us sitting, sitting around doing discussions. You know, I just really want to lean into like, you're not the only one who cares. You're not the only one who. Wants to do this work that, that's how I sometimes feel, you know, even been going to things like this and following who I do on Instagram and seeing the good things going on. It's like. At the end of the day, often we kind of end up doing it alone or. Whatever. So. When you go to that event and you're all doing the same. Thing and. You're like swapping in these conversations. Like what's sacred to you and like what, what, you know, is it like rivers? Is that why you're doing it? Is it like earth or like babies or what, you know. It's like that depth that we just jump into. And it's this immersive experience and it. Just kind of gives people hope. It's like a little taste of what living in community could be. Without. Without all the. Random random like we'll, we'll. We'll figure it all out. Just come and like participate. You don't have to get into the weeds of. Making decisions together, blah, blah, blah, you know, the hard stuff. So. Awesome. But we have a lot more questions in the, in the, in line here. So we have questions about whether you're cooking with wood. Good news would. We have, I'm going to ask you, I'm going to ask three to start. We'll keep doing a round of three. Could you share a resource for creating a bio digester? It seems like you guys have a lot of questions. I'm going to start by answering that round of three. Could you share a resource for creating a bio digester? Seems like you guys have made one maybe by hand. And a question about your name. How did you come up with your name? And why does it symbolize something to you? Great questions. Do we cook with the wood? The bio digester and the name. We do cook with wood. We cook with a lot of wood. We heat with a lot of wood. You know, there's like what's seven dwellings on the land. We don't live here, but there's seven. Well, whatever it is, however many. And I think all of them have wood stoves. So we use a lot of scrap from the wood business. Anything that isn't painted. It's kind of given me an excuse to hoard our garbage, which is a slippery slope. But yeah, we cook with wood. I'm really pushing to get the mobile kitchen off of. Propane. And use a rocket stove for that. Some kind of supercharged little thing that. Is like trying to match the convenience of a propane stove, which is a pretty tall order. And you know, chefs don't want to be like blowing on a fricking finicky little stove. You know. So anyhow, there's, we would is awesome. The bio digester, we did not build that bio digester. It's from a company. Called home bio gas, which I put into the chat. And we bought it from them. They sell you the toilet. They sell you pretty much everything you need. It's a deal. I don't know why it isn't like why they aren't everywhere. It's such a cool thing. It's finicky. I mean, it's like hashtag finicky, like just about everything else here, but. This thing is so fricking cool. And the whole thing with the toilet and all that was like under 1000 bucks. Which is super reasonable. And you know, we would have been paying for a porta potty every month or whatever, or at least at this spot. And then the name. The name came from, you know, we went to this. Convergence thing, which was like, all right, let's bring the ecosystem restoration camps to California. And we had been living on this land for maybe a year at that point. And we wanted to do permaculture and we wanted to teach and we wanted to. Do good stuff. So we said, well, ecosystem restoration camps, close your ears, Aaron and John, like it is a mouthful. You know, so eco camp just sounded cool and kind of hip and like abbreviatory of that. And then coyote is where we are. We're in coyote Valley, which is this cool, like, and coyotes is just like. Arrow frames it really well. He says like coyotes. You know, we're in. The coyote is like a word for the folks who bring the. The folks over the border and it's like this kind of. Like, Like, let's go like this is kind of. Renegade. We're just, we're just going to do it. We're going to get to the kind of like the promised land thing. And. I don't know that. That would be cool to be something like that of like. Holding people's hands across the. The threshold of. Just starting and doing it. So. Something like that. Thank you. Would anyone else like to ask a question in person? We do have a lot more questions. So. I will jump into the list. We have. A question from Lasonia Luther to. One about. The process of your tree nursery. So a little bit about how you start your seeds. How you start those trees from seeds and maybe a little more. Also about your collection process and where do those trees go? As well as. Oh, I lost the second question. Oh, about fire mimicry. Can you explain a little bit more about what that. What that is. Okay. So the seed nursery. Say it's an acorn. That's something that we're really trying. Or actually a chestnut is. They're pretty similar. They both you collect them. Can do a float test. The ones that. Low are bad. You inspect them for bugs and then you put them in a cold. We put them in our refrigerator, like in a plastic bag. And then we put them in the refrigerator. And then we put them in a, a damp environment that's cold. And that's called cold stratification. And it kind of mimics the winter, I suppose. And it, it like. It's just this nice little place for them to. For the seeds to know it's time to sprout. And they've got this nice little moist thing going on. So in the picture, there was like. Perlite. It's like, you know, it's like, you know, it's kind of, you could do it with sand too and just moisten it. Then we, once they're sprouting. We transplanted these into a. Air pruning bed. Which is like a planner box that's up off the ground and the bottom has like a mesh. Instead of being solid or instead of interfacing with the ground, there's a mesh. So the radical, the tap root goes down and it hits the mesh. And it's like, you know, it's just growing a hell of a long tap root. It, it puts that rooting energy laterally. And like. In theory makes a more like complex. Like a. More water, harvest the kind of a. Root system. Some trees like that better than others. We. Just, we discovered that the oak trees, the. Especially the live oaks. They don't like that at all. So that was like, kind of a failure. We had a great germination rate and they grew really tall, but they don't want to be transplanted ever. It's like, it's our experience. The chestnuts love it. They don't, they don't mind if you transplant them in the winter. When they don't have any leaves and. So chestnuts are awesome. And then fire mimicry. So fire mimicry has basically five components. They're like five actions that we do. There's brush clearing. There's spreading minerals. There is. Removing excess mosses and lichens. There's applying the lime wash to the trunk of the tree. Like a calcium rich lime wash. And then there's tree surgeries, which was where we, you know, removed the diseased material from the trunk of a tree. I think that's all of them. Oh, and then there's compost tea. Spreading compost tea around the. The tree. So all these things are. Helping the. Kind of looking at the forest as having its own immune system. Larger than any one tree. And we're trying to support that. And almost all these things like the minerals and the brush clearing, all these things would happen with fire. And these trees are adapted to have fire come, come right up to them. But it's just that. Now that it's so overgrown because. The folks came in. And stopped to the indigenous folks from being able to do this. So it's just so overgrown. And when these huge piles of brush that build up under the trees. Light on fire, they just take the whole tree with it. So. Now, if we do all that brush clearing and all those things and keep the trees going along with the minerals and such. Then hopefully. When a fire comes, there's not this big. Pile of kindling under it to. Make it into a catastrophic fire. So. That's a little more about fire mimicry. Thank you, Leah. It's so interesting to hear about like all the different aspects. And I don't even know how you guys keep all of, you know, all of the information clear. I see that there's a follow up question. From lasagna Luther, please go ahead. Yeah, I wanted to find out. In regards to the fire mimicry where you were. Addressing the portion about removing the excess. Moss and lichens. Instead of. Burning it or. I can't remember scraping it or whatever it was that you were doing. Have you ever considered making tinctures with that, especially I know that. That that's another way and lichens and moss. In a holistic aspect of an herbal medicine is huge for health. And so if you have all that excess. Instead of just getting rid of it, you could make herbal tinctures and make. Use it in an herbalistic way. And then that gives you another, I guess, idea of helping to heal. Yet recycling, restoring that. And, and helping to heal people. Yeah. I love that idea. I am not really the herbalist of the bunch. So I would love to learn more about that. I think that's a really cool idea. That would be awesome. Thanks for bringing that Hannah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So. Is a community member here and my girlfriend and. She's all, she's into herbalism. So. We'll be talking. That's a good idea. Thank you. Sonya, if there's a way. That you would like the eco camp coyote folks to get in touch with you. Please feel free to put that in the chat so they can pick that up. For their. Program. Thank you. Yeah, please go ahead. Hello, Leo. Hey, brother. Hey man, you know, Memorial Day weekend. Half of our city burned down and several people died. You know that hot Lameca regeneration camp. Burned last year in a catastrophic fire. Six years ago, the other half of the town burned down. And I know that you're really resilient. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the psychological work that you're doing and how you're, you're bringing the resilience. You know, I know that's a big part of your commitment with Indian Canyon, but I also know that you lead kind of a process around psychology. And I'm wondering how like sociocracy and your, and your lunch meetings, like how you support each other. Given that. It's going to hit the fan. I was at your camp one time and we raced to put a fire out down the road. And I know you've had a fire right next door. So how do you, how do you. How do you be psychologically resilient? That's a cool question. Yeah, big one. We've so we practice sociocracy like you mentioned. So sociocracy is like where. You know, all the folks in our community can have their voices heard. Without having that. Hopefully be too lengthy or slow of a process of. Making decisions and et cetera. So in that we started doing. Kind of putting together what's our. What's our clearing? Like how do we, how do we interact with each other when things are. And we have this. Like a, we're putting together a conflict resolution. Thing. Kind of process. And a big part of that is using RC using reevaluation counseling, which I learned from a guy, a you who. Andrew and Leora are here. So that's like a co-counseling technique. So. That's huge. That's like the permaculture therapy. You know, it's like, we need to be able to say like, Hey, I need a session like this is a bummer or whatever. There's so much around all the bummers that are. It's so easy to get caught up in it. And if we don't have a way to like discharge that energy. So that, that's been going really well. There's kind of a combination in our little community of doing. Those RC sessions, like back and forth. And doing these relationship check ins. Just to like, you know, some of us. We like work together and our romantic together and do eco camp together. And it's like, if we don't regularly, it's kind of, it's like the fire, you know, it's like, if you don't regularly burn that shit. It's going to be catastrophic when, when it goes up, you know, so. That's the part of my mouth, but it's, it, you know, so this like regular. This regular release of the heat in a contained way. Is awesome is the, I don't know about the way it's, it's something that we've been really leaning into and. Feels really good. We're going to have Della Duncan do some work around the work that he connects at our next event in November. Oh, I don't know if I said the enough of our next event in November 11th through the 13th. At Indian Canyon. And so that's all about active hope and all about like. How to cope with. And not get overwhelmed with the. The collapse that we're kind of witnessing and how to like. Put action into our thing and do it together and. What's it like to support each other and we're much more likely to be able to cope with that if we're supporting each other and. You know, I think that's a big part of what the camps are to each other as well. And. You know, it's kind of bigger vision of a future where we're trading things and supporting each other and can. Share resources and. Things like that. So that's. And then I guess the, just the last part I'd say about that is this thing that arrow and I have been vibing on for a long time, which is we call it soul centered agency. And it's like. Going to the deepest. Truist most pure intention of yourself. And acting from that center. Rather than being like money centered or like. Pleasure centered or like, you know, being like soul centered. And, and going to that place where we are. One with the earth and we can like act as agents and be in agency. Of that intention. You know, so that, that's kind of like what makes it all go around. So. First thing we do at the camps is we all break off and I say like, I'm going to do the same thing. But you know, in a session, like in this private thing, you're just going to get listened to like what's sacred. And people get to just like vibe on that and think about that. And I'm like, what are some of the obstacles that are standing in the way of that. Like, Oh, wow. And then like, well, what can you do about that? And like, what can you do? What can you not do to like, make that stop happening and. Eventually towards that coming to fruition and like. So that's some thoughts about that. Great. Thank you, Leo. I have a, I will not open some time for you to talk a little bit about the vision that you mentioned at the end of your presentation. You guys have talked for some time that, that you're looking for a space for a place that might become more permanently a part of the land restoration and community activation and engagement work that you're doing. And that net seems fairly large within perhaps the United States. So I was hoping maybe you could tell the group here. Just in case there's some like awesome synchronicity that might come out of that conversation about what that space looks like for you. At least to start sort of the size, like is one acre okay is 100,000 acres okay. And sort of region and if you have any other sense of what that might look like. Nice. I'm sure the my other comrades from the community are like, Oh, what's Leo going to say, because it's a, it's a thing that we're trying to figure out, you know, it's like, it's so big, you can easily be like, Oh right, but we don't even have to stay in the US like we could go to Brazil, we could go, you know. So it's, but what, what it seems to be gravitating towards is somewhere along this coast of the US, like upper California, Oregon, Washington is where we imagine gravitating towards. And something in the 20 to 120 acre range. And we're really looking to build a community at, at, ultimately, you know, the big vision is to be able to do this work, maintain forest. Do all our things not have to be under the the thumb of the city, you know, we're getting inspected and it's like, I'm supposed to be living here and all that kind of nonsense. So you know, water is a big part of that and and then it's, it's a big balance with like, leaving, you know, I'm from, I grew up 20 miles away and so keeping that keeping ties with this area and like perhaps that's doing the thing at Indian Canyon. And so we're working on it and I wish I could be like here's the vision but we're it's been expanding and there's, there's different iterations but if that sounds similar to other people staying where we're open and we're working on honing it and, you know, and building like what, what does a member look like and what are our must haves and I mean actually we have a whole, we have a whole like one pager thing about it that we've been kind of going through different processes of, of that of like how to build an intentional community from the ground up and taking courses and, you know, took courses and sociocracy courses in the legal aspects of the whole thing like how do you own it, who's going to own it, do you not own it. Anyhow, there's some questions to your question. Awesome. Well, if folks who are listening to this. If that resonates or bring some other resources that you have access to that might be able to move that vision forward with eco camp coyote, with eco camp coyote. Yeah, please get in contact with them and keep that conversation moving because I'm just a lot of the work you guys are doing the scale that you're able of impact that you're able to do from one the acre of land access is really amazing. And your commitment and energy and passion that you put into these projects is so visible from, from just knowing you even online and interacting digitally so I want to see if there's any other questions and if not we'll open, we'll close this session part of the session and we'll open the sketch the discussion part if people have news to share. So before we close up, are there any additional questions that people want to give to Leo specifically on his presentation. So I think we can go ahead. We'll stop our recording and thank you all so much for coming out for the fireside chat. And I will stop facilitating and just open the discussion for everyone who would like to join in. Yeah, thank you so much for your presentation. Yeah, thank you.