REGRARIANS
Regular readers of this blog know I seldom use it for commercial purposes, but from time to time I think it's okay to make sure everyone knows about what I consider life-changing opportunities that aren't free (hence, the commercial aspect).
Darren Doherty is unquestionably the foremost landscape planner in the world. He's done projects--some massive--in 40 countries around the world and spent a lifetime studying landscapes and helping farmers leverage them, regardless of rainfall, climate, and topography.
His Regrarians platform is one of the most cutting edge landscape design repositories in the world. He's one of my significant mentors in how to think about solving erosion, water storage, access engineering (lanes) and integrating ecologies on a property.
This summer he's coming to Polyface to do a 4-day intensive seminar. He was here last year for the Stockman Grass Farmer gathering and wowed people with his overlays. Did you know you can plug in a piece of land, from one acre to 10,000, and get the actual annual run-off from that area?
What he does is show you how to use space-age topographical, geological, and hydrological overlays to literally build out ponds, roads, woods, pastures and infrastructure and then see what it does. What happens if I put this pond here instead of there? How much water can I expect to collect from that hillside? Where would the ideal pond be located? What's the ideal spot for frost-free berry bushes or apple trees?
Yes, this is high tech, space age stuff, but the amount of information and computational ability available is beyond astounding. The problem is we don't know how to use it, to tap into these incredible resources.
What if I build my cow shed here instead of there? You can literally watch the rain come down, see the runoff, and determine to the inch how a building will affect hydrology. That's pretty cool. It's like watching your property come to life in front of your eyes, to be able to offer numerous scenarios and see what affect they have on the landscape.
Okay, here's the commercial part: Darren is coming to Polyface to do a 4-day seminar on these techniques and tools Aug. 25-28. He's limiting the group in size in order to make sure everyone gets full-on attention. The idea is to get you to bring your own computer and create your projects, to learn about your land, while he's over your shoulder coaching you on the software. We'll use our farm for some field work exercises.
My mentor Allan Nation used to say "the most consistent guaranteed return on investment is information." People who know things that others don't always move to the head of their class, and this is one of those times. I can think of few things as worthy of my unconditional endorsement as any Regrarians intensive course.
You can see more about it and register at https://www.regrarians.org/rexi-polyface-2025
Okay, somebody in my vast universe (ha!) of readers must have encountered Darren somewhere--what did you think?