Techniques | How The Earth Thinks

Techniques and Approaches

On our courses and workshops we cover many different ways to increase the vitality of our land -whether it is food producing, rewilding, gardening or ecological restoration; we can offer knowledge that will boost your approach. Here we give examples of some of the approaches that enable you to plan the best actions to take.

Please see training page for details of courses

The T.A.M.P. Synergy Approach

This approach works for both ecological restoration and for food production because it is based on the myriad of connections between terrain, animals, microbes and plants. These connections have evolved over millions of years and form a natural system of regulation.

The connections are not just between living organisms but also with non living 'stuff' in our world from all minerals and other elements to the other sort of 'elements' our weather and also with energy.

By knowing some of these connections and how we can influence them, we can boost our interaction with the land.

There are fascinating concepts, such as how many ecosystem processes are triggered by 'bloats,' and the way microbes operate in a different way to visible life. These are fundamental to understanding how vibrant health and robust resilience of the whole system can be achieved.

It opens our eyes to what is possible, and what is achieveable, there is nothing more exciting and uplifting than that.

We offer this as both an online course and a series of workshops in Cumbria.

6 Groups of Techniques to gain FFS

(6 Useful Principles for Regenerative Food Production)

These 6 give something to get your teeth into and also to help you think about things separately so that you can keep coming back to different principles to consider what you could do next. It is a journey and steps need to be taken one at a time. Achieving fully functioning soil is a 'hitch-hitch' approach -you have to hitch up one aspect and then another because they are all connected and dependent on each other.

1. Diversity

2. Living Root

3. Organic Matter -3 types

4. Microbes, Minerals and Metabolites

5. Minimum Disturbance

6. Ecology and Community

There are groups of techniques that come with each principle and these enable us to look at a myriad of ways to increase the health of our soil. Some techniques will not work for your context -others will be universal.

One Walking Philosophy

Making decisions about the best course of action can be overwhelming; we find it useful to have just one principle when walking your land. We explore different options for this so that as you are out and about, you can come up with the best option for each situation.