Last Born In The Wilderness

[Intro: 8:02] In this episode, I speak with writer, arborist, and professional horticulturist Max Paschall. We discuss his essay ‘The Lost Forest Gardens of Europe,’ published at the Shelterwood Forest Farm website. In addressing the ever-increasing, ongoing impacts anthropogenic climate change is having on food production and land management, for those of us that descend from European colonizers in North America, what can we learn from the past? What relationship did our ancestors have with the lands they were indigenous to, and how did they adapt to rapid climatological and ecological shifts throughout the millennia? In Max's fascinating and illuminating essay ‘The Lost Forest Gardens of Europe,’ the answers to these questions come more into focus.   “Whereas modern industrial agriculture is descended from a distinctly imperialist Roman plantation system based on slave labor, systems like coltura promiscua [mixed cultivation] are the direct descendants of the indigenous forest gardens of pre-agricultural