Season Two, Episode Five: Eliot Livingston Wilson on Regenerative Housing Solutions

This episode features Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School Class of 2005 alumnus Eliot Livingston Wilson, the founder and design lead for FUTUR, a firm developing regenerative affordable housing solutions. Hawthorne Valley's Executive Director, Martin Ping, chatted with Eliot about his exciting venture to find solutions to the interconnected housing and climate crises. They also talked about his family's deeply rooted history in the Hudson Valley and the impact of that history and of Waldorf education on Eliot's chosen career path. Regenerative solutions have been the thread throughout Eliot's work in a range of interconnected fields, including carpentry, UX design, renewable energy systems development, and permaculture landscape design. He aims to realize a truly regenerative future through the development and implementation of holistic and technical innovations that maintain harmony with the earth.

Our heartfelt thanks to Tierra Farm for their continued generous support of this podcast. As a family-owned manufacturer and distributor of organic dried fruits and nuts, Tierra Farm is proud to put the people they serve and the planet we share before all else. Learn more at tierrafarm.com.


About Eliot Livingston Wilson: As the Founder and Design Lead of FUTUR, the work of Eliot Livingston Wilson is anchored in the applied practices of Regeneration. His passion is rooted in the development and implementation of real solutions to the housing deficit in the context of our ecological crisis.

A native of the Hudson Valley, Wilson spent his formative years in Europe where, immersed in a culture that was actively pursuing solutions to the climate crisis and ecocide, he received an education in Architecture and Fine Arts with a concentration in Land-based Sculpture from Alaus University. It was during these 15 years abroad that Wilson developed and designed early prototypes of the holistic building systems now offered by FUTUR. 

In 2019 Wilson established FUTUR, developing partnerships with sustainable builders Hudson Valley Timberworks and Restoration and renowned permaculture experts Whole Systems Design. FUTUR is newly-partnered with the Wilhelm Reich Museum in Rangely, Maine for a long-term development project.

ABOUT FUTUR

FUTUR offers regenerative, affordable starter-homes as a real solution to the housing and climate crises. Non-toxic, highly energy-efficient, and intelligently designed for ideal function and flow, FUTUR’s dwellings make a life in harmony with Earth possible. Crafted from sustainable materials such as hemp lime, reclaimed lumber, and recycled metal, a FUTUR home does not fight with Nature but collaborates with her. FUTUR is a holistic vision for a new way of living. Join us in the regenerative revolution. 

Learn more about FUTUR.

Thanks for listening to Hawthorne Valley’s Roots to Renewal podcast. We are an association comprised of a variety of interconnected initiatives that work collectively to meet our mission. You can learn more about our work by visiting our website at hawthornevalley.org.

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Transcript

Heather Gibbons (00:15):

Welcome to Hawthorne Valley's podcast, Roots to Renewal. We're so glad you're here. This episode features Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School Class of 2005 alumnus Eliot Livingston Wilson, the founder and design lead for FUTUR, a firm developing regenerative affordable housing solutions. Hawthorne Valley's Executive Director, Martin Ping, chatted with Eliot about his exciting venture to find solutions to the interconnected housing and climate crises. They also talked about his family's deeply rooted history in the Hudson Valley and the impact of that history and of Waldorf education on Eliot's chosen career path. Regenerative solutions have been the thread throughout Eliot's work in a range of interconnected fields, including carpentry, UX design, renewable energy systems development, and permaculture landscape design. He aims to realize a truly regenerative future through the development and implementation of holistic and technical innovations that maintain harmony with the earth. 

Our heartfelt thanks to Tierra Farm for their continued generous support of this podcast. As a family-owned manufacturer and distributor of organic dried fruits and nuts, Tierra Farm is proud to put the people they serve and the planet we share before all else. Learn more at tierrafarm.com.

Martin Ping (01:36):

Good afternoon, Eliot.

Eliot Livingston Wilson (01:37):

Hello, Martin.

Martin Ping (01:37):

It is nice of you to... hello, hello... good of you to make some time in your day for this conversation. This is part of our Roots to Renewal podcast series, and and I believe that this is, uh, a distinct episode in that I think you're the first Hawthorne Valley Alumni that I'm speaking with. I might have to fact check that, and if it's not true, I'll edit this out. But <laugh>, I do think that, um, this is the first chance we've had to speak with an alum of Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School, and I hope it's the first of many because our alum, our alums are, uh, a very interesting group of people.

Eliot Livingston Wilson (02:27):

Well, thank so, thank you so much.

Martin Ping (02:29):

Go ahead.

Eliot Livingston Wilson (02:29):

It's, it's really, it's such a pleasure to be able to do this and, and am I was more than happy to, to make time to talk with you today on the Roots of Renewal Podcast. Um, and it's a total honor to be the first, uh, alum. Um, Hawthorne Valley, really, you know... I, I would not be doing the work I'm doing today if I, without having that extraordinary education. And I think one of the most important aspects of that education is how, how much the education is rooted in, in a, in a deep relationship to nature that has informed so much, uh, in my life and certainly also in my work. So thank you so much for making this possible.

Martin Ping (03:20):

Well, you're welcome. And, uh, I'm, I'm trying to remember, being chronologically impaired, what year you graduated from Hawthorne Valley?

Eliot Livingston Wilson (03:30):

I graduated from Hawthorne Valley in 2005.

Martin Ping (03:35):

2005. That's, that was the year I was thinking, so, and, and..

Eliot Livingston Wilson (03:39):

Good, good.

Martin Ping (03:41):

You had, um, my dear friend and mentor William Ward as your class teacher, or do I have that right...?

Eliot Livingston Wilson (03:47):

I did. I did. I was very, very blessed to be in William Ward's class, uh, at least seventh and eighth grade. I, I only joined the class in seventh grade, but alone, having those two years with him was, was a total blessing.

Martin Ping (04:02):

Yeah, he's, he was a very special, uh, individuality. How did you end up at Hawthorne Valley in grade seven?

Eliot Livingston Wilson (04:10):

My siblings, my brothers, had been at Hawthorne Valley earlier in the late eighties, but we then moved away, uh, to North northwestern Connecticut. So actually I started my Waldorf education at the Great Barrington School from kindergarten through sixth grade, and then we moved back to the Hudson Valley, which is really home. Uhm, and I transferred to Hawthorne Valley. The story of how mom found Waldorf education in the first place is kind of funny. She was looking for, uh, a wholesome loaf of bread and stumbled across the Farm Store, and that's how it all began. <laugh>.

Martin Ping (04:45):

That is a familiar story, actually. Bread or yogurt or, yeah, yeah.

Eliot Livingston Wilson (04:49):

<laugh>. Right!

Martin Ping (04:50):

We, we've heard that one before. Well, that's good. Historically speaking, your, your family has, uh, fairly deeply rooted history in in the Hudson Valley.

Eliot Livingston Wilson (05:02):

Yes. Yes, we do. We do certainly, uh, my family has been in the Hudson Valley since the 1600s, and that is a history that really roots me in this place, and I feel that very, very strongly. It's also a history that has some significant darkness, also, and both aspects of that have greatly informed why I do what I do. My family was involved in the founding of this country, and we were also involved in the slave trade. And, um, of course, also as being founding settlers, we were involved in the removal of the First Nations. And those are sins of my family, if you will, that that need to be addressed. And in my work, I, I try to do so.

Martin Ping (05:57):

That's amazing, Eliot. And first of all, that, you know, to be so rooted and connected to a place for that long is, is unusual. And secondly, to be so open and willing to, you know, look at the full picture of that is, is I think one step towards what, what the future is <laugh> calling for from all of us. And so I really, I'm, I just wanna honor you for sharing. That leads to the obvious question of you said that has been influential in the work you've chosen. Why don't you tell us about the work that you've chosen? What are you doing now?

Eliot Livingston Wilson (06:33):

Hmm. The work I'm doing now is, uh, rooted in a company I founded three and a half years ago. It's called FUTUR. The seed of what FUTUR is doing today was sown in my senior year at Hawthorne Valley in the context of my senior project. That is such an extraordinary opportunity that Waldorf education offers and something that I've been so grateful for, because it really did set a tone in many ways for my whole life. In 12th grade, I worked with a, a wonderful architect and he mentored me to design an ecological home for my mother, for my family. That seed really began to take roots and actually informed my passion and, and studies and work ever since. So since 2005, I've been working on those questions of "what is ecological housing?" And most importantly, "how do we make it accessible?" So FUTUR is here to address those questions. We are a wonderful team of, uh, internationally-based, some of us are in Germany, some of us are in Brazil, most of us are here in the Hudson Valley. And what we've done is we've developed a, a regenerative building system. So what does that mean? It means we went the full mile, if you will, to really go back to square one and look at how we build a home and un- and leave no stone unturned to really make sure that, that everything, all of the inputs going into this home, are truly as close as they possibly can be to coming from a harmonious relationship with our planet. So that means these homes are healthy. In other words, they're not full of toxins, which is really, really important. I mean, we see chronic illness rising radically. We see mental illness rising radically. A lot of these things, these illnesses have to do with chemical exposure and we spend 80% of our lives indoors. So, our homes are a big part of that. Um, the other component is that it's not just healthy for us living in it, but it's healthy for the planet in its production and also in its end of use. So we've gone to great lengths to, to build primarily out of natural materials, and if we can't use natural materials, then we're using materials that are non-toxic and recyclable in perpetuity. The other major component is that the whole home provides really the foundation for the people living in it to also live a regenerative life. So it reduces your carbon footprint on day one by at least a third. That can be significantly increased depending on how you use it. Our homes are also never standalone. We always see them embedded in nature and in a permaculture landscape that provides nutrition and medicine, but also creates a microclimate around the home, assisting it in its passive heating and cooling. So what we've done is really to, to really go the full mile: to create an ecological housing system. And the other really important component is we've designed this to be able to be produced using and leveraging the digital revolution and what that means in terms of automated production. So we can build these for an affordable price. The way we define "affordability" is housing should be accessible to people at a quarter of their income. Today, the, the gold standard is to say that it should be available, accessible, at, at a, at a third of one's income. But we disagree with that; we think that's too much. So our goal is to be able to create housing that can be paid for with a quarter of someone's income. So what does that mean? The US median income is $64,000 a year. Of course, many people don't earn that in our region here in Columbia County; you have far more people that are earning half that, and you also have a significant population even earning a quarter of that. We've come up with a, a price goal that we could offer a basic starter home of roughly 600 to 800 square feet for $160,000. $160,000 would, is that number that someone earning $64,000 a year can pay off with a quarter of their income in 10 years. So hence someone earning $32,000 a year could pay it off in 20 years, and someone earning below the poverty line at $16,000 could pay it off in 30 years. So that's our goal, is to make it that accessible. And the way we do that is through the fact that our homes are built using automation. I've had the, the pleasure to, and to work with a number of carpenters over the course of my life, and particularly two of them being green builders, and one of those being Simon Dale in Wales. He's a world-renowned natural builder. I learned so much from, from this work as well as my studies in architecture and, uh, also working in, in other contexts. And what I saw was a pattern that would repeat. There are amazing builders out there doing amazing work and really trying to do things in the best ecological way they possibly can, but simply because of the nature of how we build things, they're not able to scale that solution to actually meet the size of the problem. So we have, you know, one green builder over here that's able to build 20 houses, and we have another green builder over here who's able to do the same. And because at this time, if you want to build ecologically, it's generally gonna be more expensive. It's limited in terms of its clientele and so forth. And, and I've, and I've lived with these people and, and lived with their, their frustration themselves that they have around that like, "Oh my God." They, we all see the immensity of the impact that is needed to shift our trajectory towards regeneration. And there's been this frustration amongst this trade of natural builders of like, "Well, yeah, but it's not gonna do anything unless we can scale it." So this was deeply inspiring to me, and it was, that was the kind of nut that I sought out to try and crack like, okay, how can we, um, apply this incredible knowledge and expertise in terms of natural building in ways that we can scale? And really FUTUR would not have been possible to have to, to create. Technology was not there yet, but the technology is there now. And what I mean by technology is first and foremost, software, what we're able to do on the computer in terms of design, but particularly how that software can speak to the machines that make it. And then of course, the machines themselves. So we're talking about computer numeric controlled cutting machines that cut the frame in extraordinary precision and at very rapid speed that allow us to reduce labor costs significantly. That process then moves onto a robotic arm that can assemble these pieces and so forth. That is really what is kind of the game changer here, because it allows us to actually make the impact that that really is necessary.

Martin Ping (13:50):

I mean, what I'm hearing in that is some upfront capital investment in the software and hardware infrastructure, and that requires then, I am presuming, square footage of space, condition space to do that work in. And are, are, how far along are you in setting that all up?

Eliot Livingston Wilson (14:08):

Everything we've done so far on a, on a tiny budget, and yet we've, we've managed to do a whole lot with that. We already have a production facility, uh, which is 5,000 square feet. We'll grow out of that pretty quickly, but that's in Hudson, New York. And we're, we're very proud of that fact to be right in Hudson. For right now, as we're building the first prototype of this system, the CNC cutting, we hire out to another, to another firm to do that for us. But you're absolutely right. Yes, over the coming year, we want to gather the investors together so that we can actually set up our own automated facility at small scale. And then the next step is to then scale that as we move forward so that we can produce more and more and more of these homes and hence provide people with a means to live a life far more in harmony with our planet.

Martin Ping (14:55):

One of the things I heard earlier was that you're imagining an, an initial design that can meet this kind of affordability threshold of 600 to 800 square feet. I have a house that's about 800 square feet and my wife and I live in about, we live in half of that; we live in 400 square feet, essentially. And for two people that works, I think fine. There's a lot about it. I really love, it doesn't necessarily lend itself to socializing <laugh> with large gatherings, but you know, we could figure out ways to do that. Usually good weather, we go outside. That's one of the many kind of sea change in thinking that people need to move away from the idea that everyone needs to have 2,000 square feet or more of house and, and, and, and quite a bit more actually. With McMansions and things like that are... How is that appearing on your radar as far as, like, do you see more people moving towards smaller and smaller houses? I mean, tiny houses seem to be a thing for some people, but certainly not for everyone. What's your, kind of, analysis of the marketplace for smaller homes?

Eliot Livingston Wilson (15:55):

Hmm. I'm definitely seeing that trend, uh, particularly as, you know, as you get lower to the younger generations, the millennials, they're like, "You know what? I don't want stuff. It's, it's a burden. It's in the way I want high quality, but I want, I want less stuff and more quality." That, that is definitely a trend that that, that I've been seeing growing and growing for many, many years now. There really is a major shift in, in the market and in what people want the emergence of the cultural creatives as a group within society that have really radically different values than, than more conventional groups within society around value. That group in society, they value nature above all things. They value relationships, they value equality, they value justice, they value high quality goods, but less of them. They also really value community. And that's a really important aspect of this. So it goes beyond just creating those individual homes, but also creating communities of these homes. And that that opens, also, a whole lot of opportunities in terms of a regenerative lifestyle and a different relationship to, to the land. This is something that I find is so important when I look out into the world and see the environmental crises that we're facing. And In studying those issues, the conclusion I came to is that actually fundamentally at core of that is a relational problem. Our relationship between ourselves and the wonderful, glorious planet that gives us life is disturbed. And we need to heal that relationship. We can do that in community and we can do that in spaces that emulate her. And this is also why in our design organic form is so important.

Martin Ping (17:38):

I'm actually on your website and looking at the organic form of, uh, one of your prototype structures, and it's actually quite lovely from my standards. Beauty is, obviously, in the eye of the beholder. And my first impression is when, you know, when I first saw it, is it's, it has a very kind of, there's obviously an analog to nature and it looks to me like it's in more in like the plant family, like possibly the bud on a, on a, on a tree or a leaf on another species of tree. And I would say, it looks like it really fits and belongs in a forest dwelling. It's a, I could imagine somebody writing, you know, like a a, a really beautiful story about forest dwellers and their homes would've organic design incorporated in a way that, that, um, captures some of what you have illustrated here, which I think is quite beautiful. Could you say a little bit about what, what led you to that particular prototype design that I'm looking at on the website?

Eliot Livingston Wilson (18:40):

I mean, nature is the greatest source of inspiration for, for all of our design and all of our design thinking. And that has a very simple reason. Nature has done an extraordinary job in generating solutions to, you name it, in terms of problems. And so looking towards her and how she solves problems is simply the, the greatest source possible. So that has definitely informed our design in, in, in, in every way that has to do with that relationship. It was Winston Churchill who said something, I'll butcher his words, but he said something to the effect of that, "We shape our buildings and those buildings in turn shape us." This is so incredibly true for, you know, most people who aren't architects or, or work in those fields may, might not think about it. But it really is true, they do have a fundamental impact. And so creating space that does not put us in forms foreign to nature, but forms similar to her, I believe very strongly can, can deeply transform and reinforce our relationship to our planet. And that we need that, we need to be held in those forms again. There's a reason why across the globe in the traditions of so many cultures, throughout so many different epochs had times where they lived in round structures. A round structure has no end whereas a box does. These do have very real impact, the very shape of the cone, our core module, which is the at the heart of zone and home, is really simply a mirror of who we are as humans. It expands horizontally and reaches its its maximum point of expansion in the same plane as we do in our heart plane. It is oriented to the four directions, which is part of the passive heating and cooling, but it's also connected to the stars. This is important. We really need to shift that relationship between us and our planet, and also between us and ourselves to see ourselves again as part of a whole and not separate. We believe very strongly that form and material can either aid or obstruct in that process.

Martin Ping (21:06):

Well said. I didn't know Churchill said that and just, uh, called to mind. Are you familiar with the poet David White?

Eliot Livingston Wilson (21:14):

I, I am very most recently, but, uh, thanks to yo,u Martin. <laugh> .

Martin Ping (21:18):

Oh, okay.

Eliot Livingston Wilson (21:20):

<laugh> ... from our, our conversation a week ago, that was actually the first time that I'd encountered David White and since he's come up quite a few times, so, um, very timely.

Martin Ping (21:29):

<laugh>. Yeah, he's, he kind of, uh, takes, takes Churchill's statement about shaping environment that shapes us, uh, to a, a very poetic and beautiful level. And in his, we shape ourselves to fit the world and by the world are shaped again. But so the design, which, thank you for elaborating on, on, you know, all of the many really profound reasons why you've selected this design, which, which departs from, you know, conventional box-design for sure. I'm curious, one thing though, like if you were designing, uh, in a different location, let's just say, um, Wahat in the Sahara Desert, because I have been there not too long ago, uh, how would that, how would that affect your material choice, your, um, your, you know, overall design, uh, choices in, in different locations? Have you, have you had already the, um, opportunity to design for different environments or is that coming next?

Eliot Livingston Wilson (22:37):

Well, I I, I have had that opportunity in other contexts, not, not directly related to FUTUR. But what a wonderful question, uh, because it, it points to, to an aspect of this whole regenerative movement that I think is so important and that is that, that it has to be rooted in place. We understand ourselves very much as rooted in place in the Hudson Valley and in the northeast of the United States, and hence why we've designed for, for that particular environment. But there's another reason for that, and that is also that it is precisely this type of environment. I mean, the, the US Northeast is, is a region of the United States that will hopefully and theoretically suffer less from climate change. Hence, it is a region of the world that is gonna be under extreme development pressure because so many other regions of the world are gonna become potentially entirely uninhabitable. And those people are gonna have to go somewhere and we need to prepare for that. And we need to do it well, and we need to do it in a way that preserves the incredible natural beauty that we have here. And this is really what FUTUR is about: it's about transforming real estate development away from being a major part of the problem today--buildings and and construction are responsible for 47% of carbon emissions. Moving that away from extraction and destruction towards it being a force for regeneration, for reinforcing biodiversity and so forth to do so that, that needs, that, that rootedness in, in, in place. But as I said, these regions that are similar to the northeast across the globe are the regions that will need to absorb the most population over the coming decades. That's a major reason why we chose to design for this particular type of climate and this particular type of scenario. If we were going to apply the principles of FUTUR to an area like the Sahara, yes, absolutely. Would that building look quite different? Yes, it would. Would there be certain elements of its form that would be similar, like the cone? The cone, because the cone, because of its height differential is part of the cooling system. So like that might be similar, but it might be taller because we need more, uh, more draw down there. And of course the materials would be different because there you, you don't have timber, you don't, you don't necessarily have lime either, but you have a lot of, uh, sand of course. And, uh, there's also clay. And so yes, absolutely--it's very important to adapt design to the place where it's going to be put.

Martin Ping (25:13):

You just mentioned lime as one of the materials and and I think that that's, uh, I, I wanna talk about that because I think the lime is one of the ingredients in the hempcrete and I'm ...

Eliot Livingston Wilson (25:24):

Yes.

Martin Ping (25:24):

I'm wondering if you could share a little bit more about hempcrete.

Eliot Livingston Wilson (25:28):

Oh, I'd love to. Uh, hempcrete, or hemplime, is an absolutely phenomenal material. It was developed by the French for the purposes of historic preservation because it has much better qualities, uh, in its relationship to, to wood than cement. And it's an insulate material that also has significant mass, so it makes it really ideal for passive heating and cooling scenarios, which is absolutely what we're doing. It is non-toxic, it is recyclable, it's reusable, it's is essentially fire-proof, mold-proof and pest-proof. But I think the, actually the most important component is when you combine lime and hemp, the lime is alkaline and so it actually petrifies the hemp embedded in, in it over time. And why is that important? That's important because an acre of hemp can absorb 20 times the amount of carbon that an acre of forest and that carbon that gets absorbed once it is then combined with the lime, is then permanently bonded. So the entire envelope of the home is a carbon bank. And that's fantastic. And that of course really helps in, in our goal of making sure that we have a a zero, a zero carbon emission production process. It's a phenomenal material and I'm so pleased that it's starting to take off in the, in the United States. It's far more known in Europe and more widely used, but it is really starting to take off here. And there's some wonderful people down in Pennsylvania and Utah and so forth working on, on really seeing industrial hemp become a, a prolific industry, uh, in this country, which would be very, very welcome because hemp has so many capacities to aid us in moving towards this regenerative future.

Martin Ping (27:22):

I'm so glad you mentioned that. And, uh, I was gonna mention Pennsylvania because I actually know the folks there through my dear friend, Judy Wicks, who was one of our Roots to Renewal podcast guests early on, and they are doing some, uh, incredible work and, and they're, you know, really goodhearted people with very fertile minds. I'm excited to, to continue to follow their progress in this because it is a product and industry for the future or for the present, but hopefully really in the future. And I'm wondering, something came to mind when you talk about the house itself becoming a carbon bank. Are you aware of, or is there any talk, of incentives for homeowners to use this product through some form of tax rebate or other, other credits that acknowledges the fact that by using this product and building a house out of hempcrete they're actually sequestering and locking that carbon in? That seems to me like another potential source of revenue to come into the mix to help keep the housing affordable.

Eliot Livingston Wilson (28:25):

Absolutely. I'm, I'm so glad you bring this up. When we talk about communities, we, we envision those being a community land trust in terms of the, the ownership structure. But we want to explore: can you combine the entity of a community land trust with, in some way, a natural asset corporation? Hence providing the vehicle so that that community can sell the value of what it's creating in terms of carbon bonding and carbon sequestering in order to subsidize the families and individuals in that community who can't pay as much as others. When we talk about affordable housing, some people have said yes, but, but when I look at your, your design, it seems luxurious and they're absolutely right. That is intended to be so, and yet not at all in a sense of decadence, but it is about, like, "Why can't we make it possible for all of us to have a beautiful place to live, not just superiorly functional and healthy, but also beautiful? Why not get creative about how to subsidize and cross-finance to make that accessible to everyone?" And it's so encouraging to see in the coming generations more and more that, that awareness around, yeah, I want to live in an, in a society that is far more equal than it is today. And, and hence, oh my God, if I had the opportunity as someone who's wealthier potentially, having a really good salary because I have a, a remote job in, in finance in New York City and, and God, that means I can provide my family with this beautiful home and, but I'd be willing to pay a significant premium because that means that I get to share that in community with others who don't have that. I get really excited about all this because it's like, in that creativity that, that we can create synergies to really open up a world that is vastly improved than the one we have today. I think that, that I find so interesting and so ironic about the challenges we face. Because if we actually step up and face them and acknowledge their immensity and complexity, what we find is that what they're demanding of us is that we step up our game in such a radical way that the quality of our collective lives, if we are able to pull this transition off to a regenerative future, will be vastly better than it is today. The immensity of the scale of the problem is creating an immensity of pressure, and that pressure is immensely powerful in forcing us forward. And the other thing that aids us deeply in that is that we're part of nature. We're part of life, and life wants to survive. That is the most powerful motive in the world. I think we can really look to the future with, with courage, with resolve and real hope if we're willing to step up and invest in what really needs to be done. And that's what we're doing. I've had the absolute privilege my whole life to look to a place like Hawthorne Valley to see as an example. And I want to see more of that in our world.

Heather Gibbons (31:44):

If you'd like to learn more about Eliot's work and FUTUR, visit FUTUR (without the e)-dot-earth [FUTUR.earth] for images of their innovative designs and information on how you can support this important work. You can also follow their journey on Instagram "@welcome.2.futur". Thanks for listening to Hawthorne Valley's Roots to Renewal podcast. We are an association comprised of a variety of interconnected initiatives that work collectively to meet our mission. You can learn more about our work by visiting our website at hawthornevalley.org. Hawthorne Valley is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and we rely on the generosity of people like you to make our work a reality. Please consider making a donation to support us today. If you'd like to help us in other ways, please help spread the word about this podcast by sharing it with your friends and leaving us a rating and review. We are grateful to our sponsor, Tierra Farm, for making this podcast possible and send our heartfelt thanks to Grammy Award-winning artist, Aaron Dessner, for providing our soundtrack and to Aaron Ping for his editing expertise.