Harvesting Rainwater for a Greener Future

Show Highlights

• Why is the water (hydrological) cycle out of balance and the problems in the world that are linked to lack of water?
• Getting started with water harvesting using passive water harvesting basins
• Harvesting water from not only rainwater, but household greywater, and air conditioner condensate to create integrated living systems
• How to simultaneously reduce flooding and solve drought
• Rain tanks and cisterns are secondary considerations after passive water harvesting earthworks
• How harvesting rainwater and increasing plant systems can reverse the excess carbon that is leading to climate change 
• Allowing water harvesting solutions to present themselves
• How rainwater harvesting systems were illegal and are now mandated in Arizona in other locations

About Brad Lancaster

Brad Lancaster is a dynamic teacher, consultant, and designer of regenerative systems that sustainably enhance local resources and our global potential. He is the author of the award-winning, best-selling book series "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond;" and Brad has just released new, full-color, revised & expanded editions of these books in both print and ebook formats available at deep discount direct from Brad via his website HarvestingRainwater.com. Brad is also a co-founder of Desert Harvesters, which strives to repopulate Tucson’s urban core with rain-irrigated indigenous food plants.

Brad has taught throughout North America as well as in the Middle East, Asia, Europe, Africa, and Australia. His hometown projects have included working with the City of Tucson and other municipalities to legalize, incentivize, and provide guidance on water-harvesting systems, demonstration sites, and policy. He has likewise collaborated with state agencies to promote practices that transform costly local “wastes” into free local resources. Brad’s aim is always to boost communities’ true health and wealth by using simple overlapping strategies to augment the region’s hydrology, ecosystems, and economies—living systems upon which we depend.

Brad lives his talk on an oasis-like demonstration site he created and continually improves with his brother’s family and neighbors in downtown Tucson, Arizona. On this eighth of an acre and surrounding public right-of-way, they harvest 100,000 gallons of rainwater a year where just 11 inches per year fall from the sky. But it doesn’t end there. The potential of that water is then integrated with the simultaneous harvest of sun, wind, shade, and fertility. Brad is motivated in his work by the tens of thousands of people he has helped inspire to do likewise, go further, and continue our collective evolution.

Links

Brad's books and website store:

Videos of Brad's work and others:

Street-Runoff Harvesting

Greywater Harvesting

Sun & Shade Harvesting

Brad's Drops in a Bucket blog

Transcript

Josh Robinson:   0:00
Welcome to the permaculture for the future podcast. I'm your host, Josh Robinson. The world is full of negative news, and the planet seems to be in an ecological crisis. And this can be downright disheartening and disenfranchising because we feel that there's nothing that each one of us can do is an individual that can make any difference. Well, I'm here to provide a different perspective. To tell a new story. Permaculture for the future Podcast is all about spreading positive and impactful stories, tips and ways that each one of us can transition into a regenerative lifestyle where we can make an ecological impact way. Talk about simple ways to make lifestyle changes as we interview authors, teachers, another folks that air collectively healing ourselves and the planet. So if you want to make an ecological impact stick around this podcast, it's for you. All right, well, welcome, Brad. To the permaculture for the future podcast. So excited toe have you on today for people that aren't familiar with what you do and some of the projects that you've been involved in you want to give a little brief background on who you are.

Brad Lancaster:   1:39
Sure? Well, my bias and expertise comes from where I live, which is the Sonoran Desert on the Arizona Mexico border. So it's a dry land environment, and water is very important resource all too often deemed a scarce resource. But in actuality, it's abundant if we would just change the way we manage it. So instead of mismanaging it, Lee mimic the planet's hydrologic cycle to cycle it as many times as possible in a way that elevates, or at least does not worsen the quality of that water. So in that spirit and wanting to be part of the solution, as opposed to part of the water problem in my community, I started practicing water harvesting. Permaculture in the early 19 nineties created two books bestselling books, Rainwater Harvesting for Dry Lands and Beyond, Volumes one and two and I Just this year, there came out with dramatically revised its expanded full color sweet additions, meeting the vision finally that I always have for these books and exceeding that vision, and I do consulting, design and teaching all over the world. But when I really love is that it was just working in my backyard that enabled that regional and international work And really, anyone could do this because it's just conscious shovel work as opposed to the unconscious double work, so it costs no more than the price of a shovel. If you're willing to do the work, make it dramatic difference and create some abundance.

Josh Robinson:   3:22
Awesome. Well, we'll get into your books and what you can expect in those. But before we do that, I wanted Thio ask you from your experience. I mean, obviously you're passionate. You're driven around water and you've been traveling around the world and seen a lot of the problems that we have with our water infrastructure and our water systems from just lack of clean water or just mismanagement. Do you want to just again briefly talk about what some of the main problems that are out there and kind of What is it about those that are driving you in your current work?

Brad Lancaster:   3:57
Yeah, well, the biggest problem is all too often we're not holding on to the gift of the rainfall when it falls. Were instead getting rid of it as quickly as possible, thereby creating flooding issues downstream, creating water scarcity issues where we are, um, and also worsening the quality of the water because we're getting rid of it so quickly that it's the speed of that water enables it to pick up sediments and pollutants and whatnot. So my work is really a reaction, a response to that and inspired in part by my realization that everywhere in the world where there is a dry climate or a wet climate with a dry season and it could be a very short, dry season, there is a rich history and traditions of water harvesting. Unfortunately, many of those traditions and practices were for gotten in the 19 thirties and around their around the world when very powerful mechanical water pumps were introduced. Um, and we thought we didn't have to live in that balance anymore, and we started forget. But now I'm finding all over the world. These water harvesting strategies are in a resurgence because the wells that the pumps pump water from and the rivers that the pumps pump water from are going dry because we are now extracting water at a more rapid rate than were naturally recharging, reinvesting or infiltrating it back into the system. And the great thing about these traditional water are missing systems they historically would do that they would reinvest the water is closest possible where it fell into the system and cycle it as many times as possible. So that's what inspires me. And it's not just the old traditional strategies. It's too many newer innovations and whatnot of colleagues and practitioners around the world. So the great thing is, it's it's continually evolving. So I strive to share a lot of those evolutions.

Josh Robinson:   6:10
Yeah, and I know you're not want to really dwell on these problems and whatnot, but looking more past that through that and understanding like they're our potentials and solutions that are lying within this for people that are just wanting to get started with water harvesting and actually making a difference in their own local communities. What do you feel? Are some just simple strategies that people can utilized to get started?

Brad Lancaster:   6:39
Yeah, well, let me kind of answer that in. Ah, what might at first seem a roundabout way, But for me, waters, just the bait, Okay, you can enter from whatever your passion or interest is. Okay. Ultimately, what I'm just trying to do is I'm trying to recognize previously unseen or for gotten potentials opportunities resource is that were dwindling, that were worsening and to flip that. So how can we, instead of worse sinner dwindled dramatically enhance them? How we collaborate with a supposed to fight them And I just come to water because I'm from Dryland Environment. But elsewhere. Maybe that's human power transport. Maybe it's food forestry. Maybe it's tapping into indigenous knowledge of ethnic botanical uses of your plants. Maybe it's passive sun and shade harvesting. I don't know. You know, whatever, whatever you want. Um, I think you'll have more success if whatever you're addressing can also directly address some some immediate needs. So on the water standpoint, I like to begin by just creating what I call water harvesting earthworks. A rain gardens. So all too often I see throughout the U. S, particularly Western us, we'll all over the U. S. People create these burial mound like landforms. Then they plant on top of it. But everything moves with gravity, so the water moves away, the soil moves away, the fertility moves away. It's it's ridiculous. It's completely backwards. So I flipped that. So instead of planting on beside mounds, I plant within our beside Basin shapes, which I see his nets for much more than water because again, everything moves of gravity unless there's money behind it. So with the base and shapes, I'm gonna collect rainfall. I'm gonna collect runoff and collect all waters. I can collect gray water from household drains, condensate from air conditioners, whatever. I can move it all for free with gravity. But I also capture leaf drop bird droppings. So I'm collecting organics, which is food and habitat for more soil life, which then contributes to a living spun tch. So whatever water I grab is much more rapidly infiltrated. So I'm not storing any water on the surface. It's all below the surface. There's no puddles, no evaporative loss from surface water and no mosquito breeding. Okay, so I'm actually reducing mosquito issues and reducing Zika and West Nile and all that by harvesting water. So any time we are on the right track, a great sign of that is that the domino theory is working in our favor. And all these unanticipated benefits start to appear and manifest as opposed all thes unanticipated problems and headaches. Yeah, I find that definitely being the case with the water harvesting, and it reduces flooding while minimizing drought. I'm growing more vegetation, which then is mitigating climate change locally and globally, so by having more of a living sponge of moisture rich vegetation, the radiant heat and energy from the sun is immediately dissipated, whereas if it hits asphalt or bare earth, just gonna bake that surface and it's gonna bounce back up and hit the pollutant haze and bounce back at us again. And it's just it's this horrible negative cycle. But with of agitation, I'm immediately starting to cool things off. And then the moisture in the soil or vegetation of AP oh transpires and evaporates, and that radiant he of the sun is transformed. Its energy is transformed in a way that the temperature disappears. Um, because all that heat energy coming in from the sun is converted to enable the transformation of a liquid water to a vapor, so changing the face state of water from liquid vapour through evaporation of apple tree inspirations that even further dissipates and cool snakes and then on up that moisture goes. And then there's these beneficial bacteria. In the stomach of the vegetation is leaves that are the ideal cloud seeds, thes particles that are up taken in the highest levels of the atmosphere around which clouds form. They're the best cloud seats way better than anything we've ever thought of to manufacture. So when we get more clouds further reflecting in, coming, ready keep from the sun and generating rain which further cools things against, we get this wonderful. Yeah, just system where things air, just we're getting multiple beneficial things. One after that, Just don't don't don't don't, uh, and the best part for me, that was a lot. I just do out there. So let's simplify it. This is all about living systems. It's about what's alive, and that's what juices me. That's what gives me joy, because I'm not creating a dead manufactured tank that's just going to slowly erode over time. Tanks are good, but they're not the ideal for me. The ideal for me is the living systems, because they get better over time the vegetation grows, it germinates new plants. That's what I love. That's where I feel I'm collaborating with a larger, more powerful system and ah yeah, I don't find anything more rewarding than that.

Josh Robinson:   12:06
Yeah, I mean, those are all super amazing benefits when we start to include hydrating are particularly dry climates of the West here, Not to mention when we do start thio, increase the height, uh, the water capacity of our soils and start to build these living systems. We have a connection back to the carbon cycle because we're essentially taking that atmospheric carbon dioxide, which we all know is currently in excess and getting that back down into the soil through the route accidents and leaf drop in, you know, on and on. So there is a huge potential there. It seems like this in this connection between water and the carbon cycle. And I've even been hearing a lot lately about the hydrologic cycle being a better indicator of you know, where we are in the climate change kind of areas of you.

Brad Lancaster:   12:59
Yeah, I'm not sure if ah, gonna be pronouncing his name correctly. But Walter Jenni J E h any. He's got a lot of great presentations on YouTube. He's a microbiologist and climatologist from Australia, and he and colleagues of his They say that 95% of our planet's thermal regulation is managed by the hydrologic cycle, not the carbon cycle? No, they say, you know, we absolutely need to pay attention to and address the buildup of carbon in our atmosphere. But the most powerful way we can change things for the better is to collaborate with the hydrologic cycle. Okay, so I'm just real quick examples of that. So Tucson is ranked number three in terms of cities in the US that air have rising temperatures. Las Vegas is number one. Well, but it's happening all over. You know, it doesn't matter what your ranking this I would say The bulk of that temperature rise is due to us scraping and removing the living sponge of carbon sequestering Tze plant life and soil life and replacing it with bear dead earth comparatively or paved soil. So yeah, we've removed the cooling mechanism, so of course it's gonna get hotter and then even worse, we've replaced the cooling mechanism with a heating mechanism and then even worse, we've replaced it with a heating mechanism that takes huge amounts of fossil fuel burning to remove the sponge. You know, with tobacco's bulldozers, the cement mixers, the mining and bring in the limestone which he cook and furnaces to make cement. And, yeah, so like and what? Yeah, we It's messed up. So any time I can bring back for grow a pocket of that lot if that feels great, and I immediately feel the difference, because the temperatures in summer cooler and in winter at night they're warmer because that vegetation at life's insulating me from all extremes and just want to share, too. So I do a lot of my work in the urban setting. But I've been lucky enough to be able to work with a mentor of mine, Bill Z. Dyke, who does a lot of work in rural areas. He comes from a background of doing wildlife habitat restoration and a lot of what he does inspire the revisions of my new books because he's got a lot of strategies that are even easier to build. Lower cost, then stuff I had in my initial additions. So I'm replaced the more energy intensive, expensive, less effective strategies, with a lot of his and colleagues of his less expensive, more effective, easier to build strategies. And I've had the opportunity to visit him and colleagues like plant fan clothes here, and Craig Spong holds and others and go and see where they're initially doing. Work on a degraded and dad wetland Because we've lost over 90% of our wetlands in the western U. S due to mismanagement of Watership. And we're just very simple. Well, uh, Rach, I structures where he first place native Grass seed before he placed the rock. And you only do one rock high so that the vegetation control through in between the rock, whereas gabby eons that are multi rock I they don't allow vegetation growth through it. So you're forever dependent on this human made thing, whereas was Bill's eat like stuff. These are just temporary measures that nudge the ecological system in the right direction. So vegetation grows pseudo rock and becomes a living comb. Ah, slowing, spreading and infiltrating with water, capturing more sediment, capturing organic matter sequestering more carbon which enables more seed to germinate girl more or plants. So it just gets better and better over time as opposed to an eroding gabby on. So it's been phenomenal to see these wetlands regenerated and the wetlands I mentioned this in part because you're in California. People are freaked out about fire in California. The wetlands are phenomenal in reducing fire threat to because even in the dry season, they hold so much moisture within the soil in the system that you don't have drought stressed and dry tinder like vegetation. Instead, you have well hydrated, non flammable vegetation. So this is essential and reducing fire threat in sequestering carbon in mitigating climate change and enhancing our hydrology, raising our groundwater levels instead of depleting them. And it just and it keeps going. You know, I can keep going that list, but I was originally drawn to How do you bring back a wetlands and then all these other benefits I start becoming aware of right on. So

Josh Robinson:   18:04
yeah, yeah, so those are always the beauty of like when you do start to kind of partner with the living systems and realize there's those, you know, domino effect, like you were talking about of like, you know, solving that one problem leading to the solutions of many others. I love that that elegance.

Brad Lancaster:   18:21
Yeah, and there's another lesson in that in that when I was first introduced to Bill's work was like No way in hell. This works that is too simple. It's too small and because I came from the permaculture world that was enamored with, I would say, heroic wall like, damn, like gabby ons. That was the education I had come from. So, uh, I was my bias, But he doesn't create walls. He creates very subtle, very low speed humps. Okay? And that, as I mentioned before overtaking but by vegetation. So then they disappear. And I guess the lesson there is we should job in two challenges to our preconceptions instead of Batta Muay, we should dive in and explore and say, Well, what is this? What's really going on here? And does this really work? And if so, how? And how is it different from how I have been doing things? That's the way we can really learn and evolve. And, um, that has enabled me to get out of burnout and back in to turn on, because I'm I'm learning again, you know? And I've learned to surf to ride and Julia a challenges to my preconceptions and think, Sam. All right, let's let's embrace this and maybe or maybe not. You know, I may or may not go all the way with this challenge to myself and my thinking, But let's see what happens. You know, maybe maybe a hybrid will be created that sze better than either. So, yeah, in this time of of disagreements, people jumping Thio Yeah, a position. I think it's useful toe. Let's be more empathetic, more open toe learning from others.

Josh Robinson:   20:22
Yeah, and really water is a common ground. I think we can all agree that, you know, we would love to have more access to clean, healthy, free flowing water. I mean, just from an economic perspective, it's cheaper, you know? It's like on and on. It's it's something I think, you know, Nobody was like, I want terrible polluted water. Well, and not enough of it.

Brad Lancaster:   20:43
Yeah, yeah, and depressing. Er and a motivator for me has been learning about you know, how we killed our local river. Used to flow you around. Used to be able to swim and swimming holes year round. Drink your fill fish dinner. Come home. That's the easy water. And there was not a water company in Tucson. People just had hand dug wells in their backyard, no deeper in 20 feet. And so that was easy water for everybody. But when we started to mismanage the water sheds. The water table dropped. We killed the river. We killed the right period forest. Then we had to start paying for water.

Josh Robinson:   21:21
Yeah, we We wiped out our collective vision of what was even possible. So now we don't even remember that story.

Brad Lancaster:   21:28
Right? And you need a lot of bottles of water to swim.

Josh Robinson:   21:33
Ah, that's a lot of maybe on Yeah,

Brad Lancaster:   21:37
and it's nowhere near as fun is a natural water body. And then what you gonna do with all that waste of the plastic? So yeah. So that's another just great thing about a lot of work I've been doing of late. Thanks to learnings from Bill Van and Craig and others is I'm helping regenerate water holes, regenerate springs, regenerate criminally flowing water. And that is the best payment too. Go in, take a dip. And so,

Josh Robinson:   22:08
well, I mean, along those same lines. I mean, you are somebody that's been traveling the world and learning new techniques, new strategies on, then also teaching about this and then implementing. So you have that continual feedback loop. And I mean, you're probably more connected than anyone I know in this. This field in this arena. So what have been some of the most remarkable projects that you've been involved with or know about, that have actually significantly changed the local hydrology and water availability of a place?

Brad Lancaster:   22:42
Mmm. Okay, I'm gonna answer that with a generality that's based on specifics. So big frustration of mine is coming from the U. S. We are so accustomed and perhaps even addicted to very high cost, energy consuming resource systems. So when we want water, we all right. Well, what's it gonna take to pump import that water from elsewhere? Okay, if we don't like the quality of the water, All right. So I'm gonna create a mechanical chemical filtration system, okay? Which is gonna consume more energy. And I have to bring that in from elsewhere. So we just go to the expensive. Maybe because we're so consumer historian, it I don't know, But what has inspired me again and again throughout the world is subsistence farmers and folks that maybe poor financially but are so rich ecologically, because they are enhancing their local free resource is by partnering with their local natural systems just again and again. That's the case. And so in In my first book, Volume one, there's Ah, African water farmer from the driest region, Zimbabwe, Mr Stefania Period, Maseca, who turned a wasteland of just wrote it farm that was growing nothing. He turned that into an oasis by planting the rain. And I remember touring with him and I'm zeroing in on the tank and he's got a rainwater tank collecting water off the roof. Pennies. Okay, tell me why you set this up and how it works and stuff and he said, Brad, stop it. This is not where you should be looking. This is not it. You are looking at a selfish man's investment and that that is not what we should be focusing on, what you what you talking about? And he said, Look, the only people who will ever drink from this tank or me and my family, no one else will access this water. So he said, Look, just look a little further. And then he showed me these series of vegetated mulch basins, or rain gardens, to which he directed the overflow water from his tank and run off water from the dirt road and bear bedrock nearby and so on. He said, Look, this this is a strategy for everybody. I did not have to buy anything, no cement to create the tank, and I just moved dirt and and I planted seeds, and I let the organic matter accumulate so that infiltrates water into his system. His associative plants around it are just thriving looking great, dramatically reducing the need for any supplemental irrigation from his tank. But the surplus water continues to move subsurface downstream, or to the aquifer, which enhances the larger community in the larger Watership. And at the same time, he's reducing flooding downstream. He's reducing erosion and soil loss on his land, and he's reducing sediment deposition downstream, causing problems to those folks that just shook me to the core in a great way. And the last time I was in Zimbabwe, I was really lucky. I got to go and 1995 and I got to return 20 some years later and visit Mr Peary again and his family man, I was worried that maybe the stories and stuff I remembered were not true. You know, maybe my eyes weren't yet educated enough for trained to really see. And maybe it wasn't as good as I thought, but I went back. It was so much better than I remember. And the other people I met and interacted with have been inspired or taught by him. They were like leapfrogging him. They were doing so much better. And I broke down crying one morning with my hosts, who were, uh, in a nearby community and had been teaching his his strategies and think around the area. And, uh, I it was such a forceful cry. I was like, What is going off me? I have no idea why I was crying and I couldn't stop. And I'm trying so hard to communicate and just get out of No, sorry. I don't know what cry and, uh hey, yeah, Um, later, What I realized is I don't get what I got from Mr Peary and all various people I worked with in Zimbabwe when I'm in the U. S. It is not an accessory for them. It's not a luxury. They all too often it's a fad in the U. S. You know, like I wanted water have seen, looks cool. I want to be in the in crowd or whatever. I mean, there's deeper stuff than that, but we can get by without it. Weaken Continue to rely on these extractive depleting systems, but they don't have a choice. And it was just so refreshing, honest and real. And, uh, way have these incredible conversations where you will be talking about the systems. Now we tweak them and stuff. And everyone was just so alive and engaged because this was key to their survival and not just their survival. There thrive. All these people were thriving. Now, since they were doing this. Yeah. So everything that they were doing was so accessible to anyone, you didn't even have to have a tool. You could do hand work without a tool. Tools have made it easier, but like a shovel. But you could take a digging stick or whatnot. So what I've continually strive to do in my books teaching design and whatnot. How do we simplify this? People want to go right to a tank. No, we don't even start with the tank way. We start with the shovel work or we don't. You start with a shovel. We just start with planting seeds in the right place. So it's how how can we for the least amount of effort. Energy cost money get maximum regenerative life. And that's that's the goal. And oftentimes with clients. So, yeah, you know, I'm thinking of bringing this, and I said, Okay, I don't want to challenge you. What can you take out? You give me a list of things you want, what can you take out? And they're always, like a slap to the face, like we mean, take out. What are you doing? And I said, Well, I think if you try that you're gonna beneficially simplify this project. I think it's gonna be lower cost. I think that's something you should always be challenging yourself for. So

Josh Robinson:   29:41
yeah, I mean, I think there was just a lot of nuggets within that discussion there. I mean, one that sticks out to me was when you were talking about Mr Puri and going back in and visiting and how things have kind of changed and evolved. And also on the social side, where there are now other people that had been watching and learning and developing their own systems and how they've it sounded like, even taken things a little step further. And I think we've all been on this journey of trying to understand how we can make a difference. And, you know, for you it's been water, and I'm pretty sure your your water understanding was initially sparked by permaculture. What you say? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it seems like, especially in a lot of the early permaculture courses, that was all about swales and big, large ponds. And as you mentioned, Gabby eons and other infrastructural kind of larger systems and how you've kind of changed over time of moving to these more low tech systems. Now, I I see this all the time in either my teaching work or my design work. You know where people, you know, read a book? I saw you two video, and they're like, You know what? I'm gonna Google culture, everything I'm gonna put in swales everywhere, whether it makes sense or not. And then they do it. That would have been the big things for you that have kind of, like, shifted your thinking when it comes to managing water.

Brad Lancaster:   31:17
Okay, well, let me rip off that and what I was saying earlier with an example in Alpine, Texas. So I have been asked to come in and teach a workshop there. And s o they wanted on all day, hands on component. And we got permission to use the landscape. Very large site around the town library. No, there were some issues because the folks at man which that landscape didn't unfortunately interact with the workshop. You know, there's that social peace that didn't go as far as I am would have liked it, But nonetheless, I had to rely on Google Earth to try and initiate the design. And then I had a local person kind of helping me out, spotting things on the ground. But I created the sole plan with lot of boomerang Swales contour swear, uh, somethin filtration basins. All these strategies, he swat are missing strategies. And it was it was fairly complex. It was only gonna be dirt work, though. And we had ah, back. Oh, the use of the operator and back Oh, donated by the city utility would be available for us the day before. So I get out onto the site and like, Okay, Is the plan even gonna work? And because I don't know, I was not basing my plan on the ground I was basing it on the virtual, the unreal, the two dimensional Google Earth image, not the three dimensional site. And I started to panic when I'm out there running around with a laser level because I'm like, This is not working. This floats are not, as I thought they were, based on the Contour maps I was provided. So I'm freaking out of like the plan's not gonna work. Plan's not gonna work and that then all that evaporated. All that panic evaporated. I'm like, Dude, cut it out. The plan is nothing. What's important? What's the desired effect here? What do you want to make happen? Okay, I want to spread the water that's rapidly draining off the roof, the parking lot right through the site, into the street, causing major flooding problems. I want to reduce that, and I want to spread this water out. It's a maximum surface area of the site that can then be the free irrigation source for the dying oak trees and stuff the community's planted and help recharge the aquifer. So when I was able to focus on that, not the strategy, but okay, what's the desired effect they want now? it could. It could be any strategy. So let's just go. So then I moving around with the laser level, and I just realized Oh, wow. There was this huge basin natural basin that all the water was flowing past because there was a very subtle Ridgeline between that basin and where the water was currently flowing off the roof parking lot and into the street and into ah, neighboring properties building. So I just realized, Wow, all that needs to be done is ah, very small, simple diversion berm that redirects the water. It's flown off the parking lot over that subtle Ridgeline and just fill in that massive natural basin which had a dead level spill over well on the property edge. So we only needed tobacco for like 30 minutes where we had the guy reserved for the day. And that was a eureka moment for me. And that's what I ultimately want to go for or is. How can I better understand what's happening on the site so my interventions are minimal and better leverage, So I'm gonna get great effect with with less work. So I dropped my strategy and just focused on what's the needed effect and what's appropriate, the unique conditions of the site. And then, oh, this is the best way. So we have the hands on workshop the next day. So basically just doing finishing work rakes and hand shells and teaching like how we came upon this design and figured it out with the laser level and and then we ceded some native vegetation scene. And then just as we finish up, this insane thunderstorm came in and just wham just hit us. It was just incredible. Flooding storm and everything worked perfectly on the, uh, the the adjoining property. No more flooding of their building. All the water just totally filled up the basin. And it took a good hour before that basin was totally full. But it didn't fill up and then spilled. Not an erosion sieve channel ized way into the street, but a very calm, spread out sheet flow manner almost the entire north end of the property rather than just this one spot. So if they choose Dio, they could planet on of street trees irrigated by the same system, further capitalizing on that water before it spills. And I have a YouTube video of this storm if people want to check it out all Oh, I'll send you the link afterwards

Josh Robinson:   36:32
that started up in the show Notes. Yeah. I mean, that's a beautiful story of how often times we get in our own ways and try to kind of design how we think it should be. But then when we really just step back and and ask ourselves like, What are what are the actual goals? Yeah, and how can we achieve this in another fashion, that design really emerges.

Brad Lancaster:   36:54
Yeah. And when walking watersheds with bills, he died. Van Clothier Creek, Spahn hold Steve Room and and others other flu viel rodents say that in a good way, they're all striving to be beers. So yeah, it's giving me a whole new way of seeing because very often, particularly in alpine areas, I see these eroding drainage is in the grasslands. And then they asked me So where's the natural drainage? And when I first walked with them, I'm like, Well, it's right here where we've got this eroding gully, and I know it. Does that look natural to you? Does that look healthy? No. Don't look healthy. Okay? We'll look for something that looks more natural and healthy. And then I see above what I thought was just like a terrace, like a waterway. Terrorists, that was the original waterway. And this eroded gully that we're walking was an old wagon road, uh, that later became a Jeep road, and it captured the runoff that used to go to the original healthy drainage. And the water starts flowing down the one vegetated, unstable ized wheel ruts, and it just got worse and worse. So kind of like the Alpine project. They do these great things where they it's higher in the watershed, like a sheet flow spreader or a pond and plug, Or this this hybrid plug and spread Swail system and, uh, they just divert the water out of the eroded channel and back into the original. And things just take off in such a great way. And again, it's in my early days, this work, I never would have gotten seen the possibility for something so subtle and something so effective because I was coming from all right, where do I get to put in the gabby on? I'm trying stick my square peg of a gabby on in the round hole. And I'm not even seeing the waterway. Yeah, really, Waterway. So, um so a lot of it is learning to see and with natural systems being our teacher, as opposed to engineering schools or so on, and I've tried to in the new editions of the book really pepper them with a lot of that. So, for example, I removed the whole chapter on gabby ons. You know, just the title is bad. It's just focused on a single strategy. So, um, now the chapter's called in channel Strategies OK, and I've put a whole bunch of new natural patterns of water and sediment flow and then principles like guidelines. If all right, look for these patterns, are they in existence? And how might you be able to work with them? So I'll try and give you one example. It's kind of hard doing it verbally, without visuals, and that's why I have so many illustrations in the book. But there's a pattern that water will flow perpendicular to anything it flows over. So if you put a log across a creek, perpendicular water will just keep going straight down the creek, as it did. But if you put the log in at an angle 45 degree angle to the flow of the water in the creek. Now the water will be diverted into the bank and I'll start to eat the bank and you could do another shape. You can create like an arch. So let's say you have a you where the bend of the U is upstream and the two legs of the U R. Downstream. Okay, so now that's gonna create a pool because water is gonna be flowing in and over this thing at different angles. And that's gonna scour because you're concentrating the water into the center so you can create an ephemeral pool for wildlife for bathing whatever. And then you can reverse that you and create kind of like 1/2 moon shape media Luna, where the dip is on the downstream side and the arms go upstream and most of the structure should be dead level. Except for the very ends which go up, streams of water can't flow around it. It has to flow over and through it. Now it spreads the flow out. It makes the flow more shallow and sediment will drop out rather than being picked up. So instead of a scour pool, you create a settlement dump and you seed it with the vegetation that will thrive and grow through that sentiment. No, unlike dealing. Ah, and you can do these on the broad landscape to they don't have to be in drainage is. So instead of doing the typical permaculture Swail, it's got a basin on the up slope side and a berm on the downslope side that in a high sediment flow zone, will just fill up with sediment and blow

Josh Robinson:   41:44
out. Yep, the Lord dio Yeah,

Brad Lancaster:   41:49
what? We weren't taught to have a blowout, but we're taught that that's that's that's a strategy. Don't do that. In that context of high sediment flow, Chief lo spreader of rock with seed below the rock of vegetation will go through the sediment or sometimes you do it. Very dry environments with prickly pear planted in the shape of the sheet close better, so vegetation is doing it right from the get go. Based on the desired effect. What needs to happen? Do we need thio? Eat the banks to create a more meandering flow, which will then increase the distance, water needs to travel from the top to the bottom, slow it down and enable more settlement to drop out. So we can then start filling in eroded drainages just because the water's moving longer and slower. So it starts to fill itself. We don't have to use gabby ons were just enabling a more meandering flow. Or, uh, do we want to create that pool as I mentioned? Or do you want to create a sheet close? Better like, uh, downslope side of, ah, culvert or something? My hope and I given examples in the books is people will custom design to what's going on in their sight, and they'll even hybridize. And I've got some great examples of some structures that her ex pond holds did of watershed artisans, where he's diverting water off a dirt road with rolling dip that then careens down the super steep slope, which would be very erosive. You just creates a simple rock, Moz run down. Okay, so the water swollen over the rock and that's stabilized, and he put C down first novel agitations anchoring the Rocket. Then, instead of just doing that all the way to the bottom, which is what we all too often see you just get the water moving through this steep areas quickly as possible. Halfway down, he creates AA bowl a pool, okay by then creating that u shape that. And then this pool spills dead level over its whole downstream edge. So he's now shifted channel ized flow that was coming down that steep section in which the waters deeper there's more volume of it. It's faster, all eroding, all picking up, all potentially picking up stuff at this pool he see flips it now he sheet flow, spreading the water, reducing the depth, reducing speed, reducing the volume at any one point, and it starts dropping sediment out. And then he continues this alluvial fan like shape all the way to the bottom. So instead of having an erosive cut at the bottom, he has this thriving building alluvial fan where the sediment keeps building.

Josh Robinson:   44:27
Was there kind of a natural nick point in that slope where that first kind of pooling area was established? Or is it like still on that that steep slope where that steep slope, you know well

Brad Lancaster:   44:38
and then he's got abundant grass is growing in the alluvial fan So I've I've got great photos showing it being built during the water flow in the aftereffect, and I just think that kind of thing is so key because it breaks us out of, you know, a strategy. Have you okay, what needs to happen here? We got to get the water off the road. So that faster, steeper channel, right of the road's edge, That makes sense there. So we don't have pooling on the road. And because his dirt road, but at the best opportunity, the best chance we can flip it around and start to hydrate rather than dehydrate. He did it. And just awesome effect.

Josh Robinson:   45:20
Beautiful. Yeah, beautiful. Well, along those lines, I mean, you were talking about how you've changed up your more recent additions of your books with, uh, taking out things like the Gap, Beyonce, and rename it some of these strategies, including others. Do you want to take a second and just talk about what main changes you have in the third edition of the books out there now?

Brad Lancaster:   45:42
Sure. Yeah, well, some of the other changes are there now. Full color. And a big reason for that is I want a soon as people open the book to be inspired and drawn in and not just practitioners. But let's say you're showing a client or a student Oh, or a policy maker. This stuff, the more inviting that image, the more success we're gonna have. Um, then I just got super anal or detailed and ah reworked the vast majority of all the illustrations in the books. So your average reader who's read the previous editions may not even see the bulk of the changes. But for those like myself who really study a diagram TOC Okay, what are the subtleties that we really need to pay attention to? They're all in there now,

Josh Robinson:   46:35
now Beautiful.

Brad Lancaster:   46:36
Yeah, and, uh, it's been great. It's just seeing how policy has changed in the 10 some years since the original editions. The books came out. So, for example, gray water harvesting. When I came out with my initial book, Arizona was the only state where you could legally and very effectively harvest gray water with no permit. Inspection or fee is long as you're following common sense guidelines, and they could be all a gravity fed system. No tanks, very cheap, just directing water tow mulching, dedicated basins since then states throughout the Western U. S. If updated their codes, and Utah is right on the Cust of being the next one. But along with that, Arizona has gone further and revised its great water loss. And I wanted people to be aware of that. So they're not basing policy change in their state or community on the old rule but the new rule. So it's now become a lot easier to harvest. Drinking fountain, great water. Oh, Darvis. Gray water in commercial properties and the harvest, uh, dark gray water, the kitchen sink water. So the way the rule was originally written, it was confusing. And it made it sound as though you had to create your kitchen sink dark gray water harvesting system to handle all the houses water that's been clarified. He on Lee have to handle the kitchen sink water.

Josh Robinson:   48:15
No, it's beautiful.

Brad Lancaster:   48:17
So that's cut the cost of the system by more than half. Um, and we now have, uh, great water harvesting rebates will give you up to $1000 to harvest your great water. If you go through a free three hour class, which is great because that class for people that are new to this, it shows him. Hey, this is what you need to watch out for in terms of fly by night contractors that don't really know what they're doing and might want to take advantage of you. So as a result, oftentimes the homeowner knows much more than many of the contractors. Yeah, so it's now legal statewide in Arizona. You can build a home with no sewer, no septic cook up. Well, it's all directing. It's great water to great water harvesting strategies in the landscape and the kitchen sink dark gray water into other strategies. And then the oil is a compost toilet.

Josh Robinson:   49:11
Wow, that is huge. I mean, Brooke's arson and her family and our family have been building a couple of houses and developing our property, and we have not been able Thio even change the size of the septic or the leech lines. You know, it's like, regardless that we have a permitted whole house gray water system, all gravity. But, you know, we were not allowed to do composting toilets legally, you know, we still have to put in the septic as if all of that gray water is going to go to the septic tank. And so it just ends up quite overkill, you know, huge expense. Yeah, that you guys don't have to do. And that's That's a That's a very beautiful thing.

Brad Lancaster:   49:52
Yeah, And I have the story of all that in the new edition of volume, too, along with the specifications, illustrations and everything So you can show your policy makers and I find that their fear threshold drops considerably when they see another state. Another musicality is doing this and it's proven, Yeah, so hopefully that will that will help you in this. And it took the way we changed. There's Ola. It was just a couple dozen people doing this.

Josh Robinson:   50:26
Yeah, any Yeah. I mean, I've always been impressed with, like what has been accomplished in, you know, particularly seems like Team a county seems thio spearhead a lot of these things and whether it's that composting twit or the gray water laws mean for the rest of the U. S, Arizona doesn't always get a great rap when it comes to like their policies. But really from ah, you know, waterside and and waste management. I mean, they're leading some of these kind of charges.

Brad Lancaster:   50:55
Yeah, and that's in part due to what's unique about the Tucson area. So until the 19 nineties, after we killed our local rivers are only water source was our dwindling groundwater. Yeah, And then we got the Central Arizona Project Canal that pumps water 300 miles in the Colorado River and 3000 feet uphill from river toe Tucson Phoenix. But that is not a sustainable system because by any means, because it's a single largest consumer of electricity in this state because of how much energy it takes to pump that water uphill. It's a single. You are just emitter of carbon in this state because we're using coal burning power plant to run those pumps. But we can't count on that wall butter, because Arizona is the bottom of the water rights to California, gets water out of Colorado way before Arizona. So if California, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, they all take their share, there's nothing left for us. So we're in a position where we have to look for alternatives, and I think that's another great example of a lot of times people can freak out like, Oh my God of water. It's not secure, and it's like a embrace that Okay, so jump in. Look, look at it further. Look at it more deeply. You have water currently. How can you make it go further? How can you clean it rather than pollute it? The option's air there. We just have to be willing to look for them and to try and make it happen.

Josh Robinson:   52:26
Yeah, I mean, it's not really coming back to that. It's not about how much water we have, but how many times we can utilize it. That gives you that effective, watery.

Brad Lancaster:   52:36
And here's here's the thing. Here's a challenge would like to put out to your listeners California anywhere wherever they are. Okay, So up till now, Tucson has been a net extractor of water from our groundwater. From are now Dead River from now the Colorado River, which is dying. But more rain falls on the desert community to sun than all its citizens consume of municipal water in here. Okay, so there's the potential. So the water already exists. Tucson could choose to be a net infiltrator. Annette, give her back of water to our aquifer to the Santa Cruz River. Bring it back to the Colorado River. We have more than enough water to do that to give back more than we take. Every community could do this so we can break the cycle in the story of things were just getting worse over time. No, we already have the know how. The ability to flip it 182 degrees. Now it's hard because it is 180 degree flip and are thinking. But if we're willing to go there and this is why it's so powerful and needed tohave demonstration sites so people can go and see it, experience it. It's not just a concept, and this is also why it's so important that we never get lazy and stop evolving our demonstration sites. So you were my brother and his family and I were harvesting 100,000 gallons of rainwater in ST Run off a year on our eighth of an acre urban lot and surrounding public right of way. You know, we started that back in the nineties so we could have just stopped. But I keep pushing myself, and actually, when I give tours and stuff, students push me. I love that too. Maybe not the first time. You the first time, a little ticked off, but then I get over it and realize, Oh, that challenges give one. So, like we first did our systems, we were bootstrapping it. I didn't have the calculations that I have now and have put into my books. So I was guesstimating how big the system should be. But now, with very simple calculations, a number of which have been revised and new ones that I put into the new addition to the books, I can figure out exactly how big the capacity should ideally be and what the cost per gallon is. All that compare my earthwork rain garden capacity in cost per gallon to a tank.

Josh Robinson:   55:11
No and

Brad Lancaster:   55:12
rain gardens win, man hands down because it also doubles his flood control and so much more. But a big thing was I way under built my initial systems. So I've been going back and dramatically expanding the capacity. And this is something I found with the city of Tucson, too. So the city Tucson looked it when creating the commercial water harvesting ordinance where a commercial property needs provide at least 50% of its irrigation demand with free on site harvested water with no tanks, just passive earthworks. It's all based on the average train, which is 1/2 inch, and I do not think that it It's a great start, but I do not think that's correct. Yeah, I think we need to design it based on extremes. So it's it's common. It is definitely comin to get to one and train storms within a week of each other. So we're getting storms where we get the storm cells dropping six inches of rain in less than an hour. Oh, different parts of town. So I think we need to design our earthworks to handle a minimum of a two inch rain storm. So we're now at a size that we can easily handle above average storm events, which is absolutely needed when we're trying to reduce flooding. It's in the higher the normal events that we're gonna have more this flooding, and it's essential that we do this to mitigate drought because we may not get another rain after two and train event or that six and treatment for another six months or more. Yeah, so we better bank up a cz. Much of that water is possible in the living soils and vegetation to get us through that drought for dry season. So, yeah, these air, all key and that way to we stay energetic and passionate about our stuff rather than getting bored of it are burnt out. And then it becomes more exciting for others to that go. How did you learn that? Do you go about that? So Yeah,

Josh Robinson:   57:14
well, again, there was a lot of gems and that I mean, one thing that was coming up for me when you were talking There is about demonstration site and how things have evolved for you. And I know seeing your place over the years here and what not when you've gone through various phases where you were technically breaking the law, and I wonder if you can touch upon that. And now how some of those things like the curb cuts and, you know, even the composting toilet, Like when you were originally putting that in and doing tours of this kind of stuff, you are technically an outlaw.

Brad Lancaster:   57:53
Oh, yeah. Well, I, uh, when I was at the localizing California Waters conference earlier this year, and Yosemite. I love the term that people were using up there, which is these strategies were not illegal. Technically, technically, yes, they were. But the term I prefer is they were all pre legal. Yes, yes, they were changes. It needed to happen but needed to be proven. And you don't work. So I definitely had a lot of fear when I was initially doing those curb cuts. You know, I'd only do him on a Sunday morning when no one from the city was watching. But it was always, man. Is the hammer gonna come down on me? And it was a strategy I wanted to share with clients and neighbors, but they weren't willing to take that risk until we got it legalized. But what enabled us to legalize it is we found allies, um, within the city bureaucracy and started plotting. You're planning meetings with them and staff in various departments, like flood control transportation. So on. And at the initial meeting, we asked the city officials What are your problems? Belong neighborhood streets, they said, OK, well, we've got excessive flooding. We've got the vaporization of the asphalt creating cracks and potholes because we've got excessively hot temperatures. Then we have heat stress related illnesses of the residents along these streets. We have too much litter, crime and so on. Okay, so we said, All right, so So we started by trying to draw from them. What are they trying to address instead of just pushing for what we want from them? So he said, OK, great. We'd like to help you address all of these issues, and we think we've got a strategy that could go a long way in helping with that. Then we explained, Okay, if we pull more water off the street, there's less flooding of the street. If we use that water for vegetation, vegetation uses an of apple transpires that water so it doesn't hang out under the street and cause structural issues it and then grow shade that shades and cools the street, reducing the vaporization of the asphalt. It makes it a more livable, enjoyable spot for people to be outdoors and the C one another, maybe interact, maybe get to know one another, so you start to know your neighbors as opposed to them. Everyone being a stranger, Um, and let's create neighborhood Forrester projects where people are helping Stuart take care of prune plant this vegetation. So now it's less burden on the city. And you've got more of the people that live on the street who care most about the street because that's where they live, Okay, They love where they live, and they're gonna love it more when they interact more. So it's less of Aah! Financial burden and staff burden on the city. So all all that was huge. And now these street runoff harvesting curb cuts have been legalized. They've been re baited. You can get up to a $2000 rebate Thio put him in and mandated and all new city road construction or major road renovation. So I mean, that's you. That's that's the 180 degree shift right there. Yeah, and then you mentioned Compost Hood. So I just want to touch on that. So for a long time, it's been legal to do manufactured compost toilets that have a N S f stamp Was that National Safety Federation And what I can't marry what S F stands for? But those were really expensive toilets there, $3000 minimum eso What's recently happened is we've legalized statewide, thanks to work initiating in seven Arizona inexpensive site built compost toilets that you could build yourself for $300 supposed to $3000. Or you can buy a kit that's got all the parts you just need to assemble it. That'll cost me $800 but still dramatically less than the 3000 plus. And it's much higher capacity system as well, and you get to do a free workshop with it. So what's great here is this is enabling far more people with less financial resource is which kind of tie back to what I was saying about people. And they don't work within rural Africa rural US, Paul elsewhere, where people don't have the financial ability. So how do we simplify the system? Make it more accessible. So now many more people can legally ah, deposit their nutrients in the carbon cycle. The soil based carbon cycle, which generates fertility and life as opposed to depositing our human waste in the hydrologic cycle. In the drinking water that's in a flush toilet, which immediately turns that resource of drink in water into toxic waste. Sewage that's messed up. Okay, the most dangerous and common diseases to humans. Are those costs by fecal matter, human fecal matter getting into our water? So why by law do we have to put a fecal matter? Not just in water, but in drinking water?

Josh Robinson:   1:3:06
Yeah. Yeah. Cleaned up to the point of drinking water and then all that expense and trying to separate

Brad Lancaster:   1:3:12
it. Yeah. Yeah. So this enabling these shifts brings a huge amount of joy to me and others. So, um, it used to be that when I would go near a flush toilet, my sphincter was just just freeze up, okay? And I get constipated because I knew what was gonna happen if I let that turd drop into the bowl from the drinking water. So I just couldn't deal with that when I got the compost toilet. Oh, everything just flowed so good. No more constipation. I mean, it's just a joy. He is it Because every time I'm there making a deposit into the fertile Knust of ah, carbon based sawdust, you know, which is a waste product from local woodworkers. I'm turning their waste into resource and that carbon counters the nitrogen of the fecal matter. So there's no odor and kick starts. Accomplice in process. I am literally making a deposit. I'm literally making an investment in greater fertility. More life, a healthier system at no cost. There's no bill. There's no bill for the sewage treatment or for the importation of the water. It's I'm just keeping everything on site. Yeah. I mean, I love it all Giggle on the toilet, guys. Uh, because I know I'm contributing and and I'm learning, you know? And then I'll crank the aging barrels of the compost, and I'm seeing how it breaks down. I'm seeing the mushrooms that erupt and grow from its and the other life in it drops the fear. You know, I used to be a a turn a faux bh he knows freaked out about I still on that I don't like turns. Okay, um they said they're

Josh Robinson:   1:5:00
not your thing. No,

Brad Lancaster:   1:5:01
it's not my thing. I like turd humor. I love what turds can become if we compost and manage them the right way.

Josh Robinson:   1:5:10
Yeah, turning them back into that, that resource and and adding to it it really As you build that carbon rich compost which are applying dear soil, it is also positively impacting the water resource is because that made your soils are healthier and can contain more water for longer into that dry season as well. Yeah, again, that win win. Yeah. Win, win, win, win, win.

Brad Lancaster:   1:5:35
Yes. And it is a whole nother way of beating to that soil carbon sponge that the Australian microbiologist climatologist Walter Jenny was talking about of how do we get more of the Earth's surface covered with healthy living soil and vegetation? It will help mitigate extremes. And thermal regulate the temperatures on this planet as they were all intended to dio.

Josh Robinson:   1:6:05
Yeah, yeah, the which is the work that we have. I think for all of us right now on this planet, like I mean, what other work can we really participate in? That's gonna have any meaning 100 years from now.

Brad Lancaster:   1:6:19
Yeah, And I'd say it's not just the work, it's the play. So I love it when it rains. I am running out there in my bathing suit and with a shovel. And I love to see how the water is moving. I love to make subtle shifts and, uh, I learned so much, and before the rains will look at the weather report. I'm going out there and I'm I'm planting steed in my water harvesting earthworks and whatnot. So Oh, that's sorry. Just say this real quick. So when we started our neighbor forestry like back in 1996 we started an annual food bearing native tree planting project in our neighborhood, and we've been doing it every year. And since then we've planted over 1500 native food bearing trees in the neighborhood. But that has evolved. It used to just be planting the vegetation in the trees in this shallow basin to capture direct rainfall. But we realized we're missing the bulk of the water and that the bulk of water's flowing down the street. So then we lowered the basins to make them lower than the street and redirected the water off the street to the basins. And we got dramatically faster, healthier, abundant growth. But then we realized, man, we're still not making these big enough. We gotta make commuting bigger to handle the extremes, not just the average rainstorms, and we have to be doing the understory plantings as well as the over story. So we've got all layers of the food forest And so now in our tree planting program, you can't even get a tree if you until you agree to have a basin that is at least five feet long. Upside five feet wide, eight feet long and 18 inches deep. We'll have over 4500 down annual capacity well, and so that is really up in the game on how much we're reducing flooding, how much we're banking water and getting us through drought. And we're getting much bigger, healthier canopies, shading mitigating temperature extremes and growing more food, creating wildlife corridors, creating more livable place. So all that just brings a lot of joy for me and others. And I've learned in this process where we used to bring in nursery group grown plants, we still do. But I've learned that if we first create these water harvesting earthworks, if we don't have the money for nursery grown plants, that's okay. We can just plant seed where we've already planted the rain, and we do so at the beginning of the rainy seasons and we get even healthier vegetation because its roots have never been bound up by the pot now, and they have deeper tap roots and they grow faster and it's free. Just we just gotta collect the sea, which is more the joy peace, because that's gonna get me out into the desert, which is my ultimate learning laboratory. Um, in place of inspiration. And I'm gonna look for that. Plants that have the healthiest growth shape are have the densest fruit clusters ripening it the best times of the year. So I'm selecting for better stuff that I'm going to bring home. And maybe it's not just seed. Maybe it's cuttings like of Caffe di. And so we're enhancing the quality and the diversity of Ah, it's grown around us at the same time.

Josh Robinson:   1:9:45
Beautiful. Yeah. So it's evolving. Getting better.

Brad Lancaster:   1:9:50
Yeah, And then, as we learn from others different ways, you can use these. These plant foods or plant medicines like oh, are learning deepens even more. We learned from others little tricks on scare. If I ng seed or whatnot that increases our germination rate. The learning never ends. Are we learn we could actually create even better, more useful guilds. So, for example, you guys have toy cactus out in California to southern California. So the flower buds I'm not talking about the fruit. Talking about flower bud just before the flower opens are edible, okay? And they're hiring calcium in milk by volume. So, uh, but you need to de thorn it before you eat it. So we've learned from indigenous Tona Autumn elders, um, and teachers friends that, uh the funnest way, perhaps more efficient way is to get a sprig of, ah, local bush like trying reverse age, which is a sticky leaf bush. So it grabs the Florence and you like a paint brush. You brush off the thorns before you pick the flower bud from the cactus. So it's already de Thorin before you pick it. And it's also a reason for you to hang out longer with the plants out there. Yeah, you're gonna learn more. You're gonna see which native pollinators come in which sleep in the flowers. You're going to see what eats or doesn't eat the various things because you want to spend more time out that you need to spend more time out there and you want to spend more time out there. You start to see which foods the wild by for more readily eating like Oh, those the tastier ones. So that's the one I want to collect from. Yeah, so all that stuff really essential to So we're now planting cuttings of the Choi cactus from the most abundant producing flour but producing cactus we find when we're out about. And there's over 12 different colors of flower. Wow, though we're we're then taking cuttings and marking what flower The color is how big butt is and propagating that throughout the neighborhood. So we actually have, um, more efficient were growing more efficient harvests than you could get out in the desert because we're selecting them for those characteristics. And then we plant field associates of the triangle, the first stage of the base of these Gioia. So we have the plant needed to brush off the thorns crease. It works great, too.

Josh Robinson:   1:12:28
Yeah, there's so so many ways that we have to learn how to adapt and re indigenous eyes to place and, you know, relearning like what the foods that we have available and then realizing, too, that it's not just a static part of our existence that we air this continually evolving entity that is a species on this planet. And I love how you were talking about now select enough. The ones that are gonna be different colored flowers. I'm sure you're also noticing certain cacti that maybe maybe they have larger, smaller thorns or it wants to come off easier or less easy than others. And it's like all of those little nuances that you begin to kind of select and create those foods of the future. That air really gonna be enabling us tow, thrive in place, coming back? Yeah. Co create? Yeah, that that are bringing us back into this existence with living systems where we are then a part of that.

Brad Lancaster:   1:13:29
Yeah, we're a partner.

Josh Robinson:   1:13:31
Yeah. Yeah, we got

Brad Lancaster:   1:13:33
another. And, uh, yeah, that's all been great. Another key thing I've been really pushing in my work is how can I make it easier to do the right thing? Or how can I make it easier to step into a challenge? So, um, conventionally, it's easier to go to a plant nursery and by all these domesticated plants from elsewhere. So I've been forcing myself might know I have to first try and explore and expand the local native perennial plant palate before I go into the more domesticated plant palate. So I'm surrounding myself with more of these native plants that there's less readily available information on on how you use it. You know how you harvest cook it and so on. Um, his few recipes. So that's pushing me to experiment, cause that's what's right there. So in my little herb garden, it's wild oregano neo. It's not Greek oregano. It's the oregano native to here. And, uh, so I'm becoming more in tune with its flavor, subtleties and what it works with and what it doesn't. It's forcing me to experiment. Engage and, um, all too often I think things are set up to lessen our engagement, and I want to increase it even, uh, like in my one car garage in cottage or garage or my shed size condo, my Shawn dough. So I said it upto, um, heat and cool itself for free with passive sun and shade are missing strategies, which all these strategies I've learned and more I've packed into the new edition of Volume one so some people might come to my place might get a little freaked out, but I love it. So, uh, I've designed it, so it's easier for me to open up a window at night for free cooling ventilation than it is to turn on the backup cooler of which I placed consciously purposefully the switch of that cooler in a very inconvenient place. Okay, so I can still turn it on. But I'm first going to utilize the free cooling strategies to minimize or or even eliminate my need for it. Um and that also then it's got me engaged with I staggered the heights of the windows. So even when there's no breeze, they generate their own breeze through since hot air rises to confection S o. T, then see, how is that working or not working and on? And if I open the window, more or less, how does it affect it? If I changed the direction, the window could be opened because I have casement windows. They have hinges on one side. So over time I've switched the direction of those hinges to be more in alignment with my local winds. So all that it goes beyond the living plant world and goes right into the building world to

Josh Robinson:   1:16:49
Yeah, well, I mean along those notes, Brad, I think we could continue on and keep the conversation going for, you know, days exploring all of these different avenues. And like all of the wealth of knowledge that you have, but for people that just want to kind of get a little bit more information about, you know, your books, where can they find, you know, some of the we'll work and they purchase your books.

Brad Lancaster:   1:17:11
Yeah. So, uh, the best places harvesting rainwater dot com because it harvesting rainwater dot com is my website. So you can buy the books direct from me. No middle person getting a cut. Um, and I sell them at deep discounts on my state. Ah, and by buying them direct from me, that dramatically increases thehe mount of resource is I'm able to reinvest in the revisions of my books and, uh um, and creating new books such as that I just kind of came out with e book additions along with the print editions of my books. So people that live outside the U. S. Don't have to pay the crazy international shipping rates. And the other great thing about the e book is even myself. I've got all my books on my phone so I can't remember all the calculations and everything I've got in there. So anytime I'm with a client of student, I could just whip out my phone, pull up an image or a calculation and boom, they see it. It's right there. Ah, so, uh and then for some of the need of wild food resource is go to Desert harvesters dot or GE and check out the cookbook, Eat Mesquite and More. A cookbook for Sonoran Desert Foods and living even if you're not in the Sonoran Desert, because there are many of the plants in there, or at least family members of those plants you confined throughout Erica's, um in in the world, so many of them You confined throughout California. Um, and we met for that book to be kind of a template that people can create a similar like book wherever they are, because you can open it to any month of the year and see what's harvestable implantable at that time. Various recipes There's tradition, recipes, but a lot of fusion hybrids. Um, it's been a great way for people from other places to become more deeply rooted to this place. So, for example, We've got recipes of India from India, Asian, India. Ah, um, naan bread made with mesquite. Oh, prickly pear cactus fruit chutneys. OK. And so it's great the folks that create those recipes and they've come from India and bringing that rich culinary heritage and then used it to tap into the abundance of what you need to hear. Yeah, and people can also check out the events page of my website harvesting rainwater dot com for, um, I'm hoping to be able to come back into California and elsewhere. I'm starting to speak publicly again. More now. Released the books, um, got a bunch of videos and free from May shine on the website as well that people can check out. And I really recommend people, huh? Ask the local libraries, public library, school libraries to carry these books in print, analytic and e book format. Um, and also, what would be hugely helpful for me is if any of you have read the new additions the book, um please write reviews Post reviews on Amazon, good reads or whatever bookseller you got it from. And you don't have to have bought the book from Amazon. A poster of you. You just have to have read the book. And and I I only want people to write a review if they enjoy the book after actually reading it. Yeah, because I can tell when they just bought the book and they wrote a review, and it's lame because they didn't engage. It's obvious to everybody. So the reason I wrote the books to be read and used so tappin you like it then, writer of you. And it'll be awesome. You know, your grammar sucks. Doesn't matter. They'll be able to see the heart of spirit. The knowledge is there.

Josh Robinson:   1:21:10
Yeah. It's riel. Yeah. All right. Well, is there anything else you want to say to our listeners before we and the show Here,

Brad Lancaster:   1:21:21
Uh, this kind of a tangent, But, uh, check out the storytelling page of my website. So I've been doing more. Ah, live storytelling events, kind of moth style. So, uh, I think people might enjoy that and, uh, keep checking back. There's another story. I just did. I should have it posted in a month or so.

Josh Robinson:   1:21:44
Oh, great. I have to check that out. I mean, your website always has a wealth of information. Every time I seem to go back there, I'm finding new things, and I feel like I get sucked in for an hour or two at a time. And I haven't even seen the storytelling one yet. Well,

Brad Lancaster:   1:22:01
I'm hoping to also, uh, in 2020 get a Spanish edition. Ah, volume let out. So we're working on that now, so we'll see how that goes. Okay. Excellent. Ears open. Yeah.

Josh Robinson:   1:22:15
All right. Well, I appreciate you taking the time, Brad, and we hope to have you on the show again at some point, keeping this discussion going and just inspiring people to really get out there and start making a difference in their local communities.

Brad Lancaster:   1:22:30
That'd be great. I'd love to come back.

Josh Robinson:   1:22:32
All right. Awesome.