Chiron Communications

Our Collective Odyssey: Song and Story for the Generations Arising

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This blog post marks the 30th anniversary of the suspended steps of the Sunbow 5 Walk for the Earth (aka Odyssey of the 8th Fire). Those historic steps were pressed into shifting beach sands on February 2, 1996, several miles downcoast of North America’s anciently honored Western Gate on the shore of the Pacific Ocean.

For reasons related to our current moments in time, that long-ago multicultural, multifaith sunbow odyssey remains relevant, resonant, and incomplete.

The sunbow pilgrimage followed the path of the Sun from east to west—in ways similar to the celebrated Walk for Peace now underway from west to east. It serves as metaphor and example for all of us right now as we swiftly progress through turbulence into a new time. Choose it or not, we’re all on personal and collective pathways of change. We’ve been cast onto an uncertain cultural, economic, governmental, environmental, and spiritual journey – an odyssey of our individual and collective souls.

Where are we going? Visions will lead the way, as ever. With dry, unfeeling, billionaire techno-bully visions now predominating—and hope declining grievously among younger people—we need healthy visions. The true North American story of the 8th Fire represents one such vision: a vision arising from the deepest roots of our land, a vision that embraces and honors all the healthy possibilities inherent in the different colors and faiths of people who have come to inhabit Turtle Island (North America). There are miles to go for all, and many more sparks to be struck.

To mark this 30th anniversary of our long walk, I’ve added singing and orchestration to the Invocation for Odyssey of the 8th Fire. With respect, I invite you to check out my venerable (2007) story-telling web site, and to listen. Epilogue coming later this year. < 8thFire.net >

Nota Bene: The heroic journey-odyssey theme is very much front and center culturally. Check out the trailer for Christopher Nolan’s new film, The Odyssey, set for release as a would-be summer blockbuster, July, 2026.

 

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Podcast book review of Deep Agroecology (5 minutes)

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Academia.com recently reviewed my book, Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food and Our Future. They rendered their review in a five-minute podcast. You can listen to it by clicking below on the start arrow for the MP3 recording.

Their AI-generated Abstract
Steven McFadden’s book Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future presents a blend of spiritual and scientific perspectives on agroecology.

The book argues for the inseparable connection between agroecology and the survival of the Earth, emphasizing a holistic approach that integrates the physical and spiritual realms within food systems.

Through a critical analysis of modern agricultural practices and historical contexts, McFadden advocates for a shift towards sustainable agroecological methods, which he posits as essential for addressing ecological crises and fostering an intentional relationship with nature.

The book suggests that by seeking deeper knowledge and connection with our food and farm sources, we don’t just eat better, we participate in much bigger, far more consequential healing deed as our life-sustaining Planet Earth passes through an era of tremendous challenge.

Click on the start arrow to listen to the brief podcast review:

This is a rendering  of an AI poster for the book, also from Acdemia.com.  In my view it is just kind of ok, but one statement is way off the mark. AI claims the book “advocates for the fusion of human and non-human life.” What? I never wrote that, never even thought it.  Dangerously wrong “wishful thinking” on the part of AI.

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Key talk about farms and food 2025 – English y Español

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As of 2025 one of the classic books about the CSA movement—Farms of Tomorrow Revisited—has been translated and published in the Spanish language as Las Granjas del Mañana Revisitadas: Comunidad apoyada por Granjas, Granja apoyada por Comunidades.

Nearly 40 years ago I was the Organic Outlook columnist for a rural newspaper when I met a farmer setting down roots the next town over, Trauger Groh (1932-2016). Trauger and his colleagues Lincoln Geiger and Anthony Graham were founding one of the first CSAs in the nation: the Temple-Wilton Community Farm in New Hampshire.

Recognizing the importance of the seeds the first CSAs were planting, Trauger and  teamed up to write Farms of Tomorrow in 1990, published by the Biodynamic Association. 

Eight years later we returned to the subject and wrote Farms of Tomorrow Revisited (1998) to consider what farmers and communities were actually experiencing and learning. That’s the version of the book now translated as Las Granjas del Mañana Revisitadas by Martin Alonso of StayTrue Organics in Argentina.

Along with other CSA books, educational materials, and organizations, our books have helped to spark and to support well over 8,000 CSAs (est.) in the USA, and many thousands more worldwide.

Journalist Steven McFadden stands before a poster for Farms of Tomorrow, and also one for Farms of Tomorrow Revisited.

Whether in English or Spanish, the subtitles for our books express a main point of focus: “Community Supported Farms, and Farm Supported Communities.” The phrase reversal in the subtitle highlights an key point. In recent years CSA has often been promoted as a “marketing model,” whereas Trauger and I—along with many others—envisioned CSA as a “community model.”  Consequently, in our writing we actively explored social, environmental, and spiritual dimensions of this emerging form.

Our explorations remain healthfully provocative now in 2025, and beyond, especially the explorations of “associative economy,”  “parallel polis,” and the preservation of farmland via innovative trusts, that young farmers might be enabled to fulfill their vocations.

Note: In early February 2025 I participated in an online zoom conversation about CSA with the publisher of Las Granjas del Manana. The English-language recording of that zoom call is at this link; the Spanish-language recording is at this link.

In a review of the English-language version of our book, Resurgence Magazine commented “It is rare to come across any practical farming guide that sets out, from its inception, a set of principles that embrace social, spiritual and economic concerns on completely equal terms…The wisdom and clarity of philosophy are striking throughout.”

As Bill T. put it in an Amazon review: “The concepts of community supported agriculture (CSA) grab at the imagination: reconnect with the land and farmer, know exactly where your food is coming from…”

In yet another review published in the Journal of Applied Communications, Mickie Swisher wrote “For those who have little or no previous experience with community-based agriculture, this book brings together information and resources in one place. Even for those who think that community-based agriculture is either unimportant or unrealistic, Groh and McFadden’s book is worth reading. It will, at the least, stimulate thought. With luck, it will produce action.”

The actions now needed – actions that Las Granjas del Mañana Revisitadas can help stimulate – are the further development and networking of clean, healthy, just CSA farms in thousands more communities, both Spanish and English speaking, along with the many other languages of the world.

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Spiffy new makeover for one of my satellite websites

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Screenshot of updated Deep Agroecology blog.

After 16 years wearing the same internet face, my website for Deep Agroecology needed an update. My steady-state blog about food, farms, and our future has been online since 2008. For several years its messages made their way through the digisphere as The Call of the Land. But the blog now bears the name Deep Agroecology. That may sound abstract or academic, but the words actually represent what I regard as one of our main chances for navigating safely and wisely through the cascade of earth changes now unfolding,

My thanks to Tim Hill of Draft Horse Studio for expert web support, making the transition smooth and straightforward for Deep Agroecology.

Chiron Communications–upon whose pages you now gaze, dear readers–is my main, umbrella website, hosting a range of subjects that have drawn my interest over the years.

But to give emphasis to particular subjects, I long ago created and two satellite web sites. They remain alive and active.

The first website is my blog for Deep Agroecology, which has now undergone a facelift. The focus on that blog is the intelligent, and proactive response of farms and communities around the world to establish clean, just, sustainable food systems in the face of ongoing climate change.

My second satellite web site is Odyssey of the 8th Fire. That site tells at epic length the true saga of a great, long pilgrimage on foot from the Eastern Door at the Atlantic Ocean, toward the Western Gate at the Pacific Ocean. The 8th Fire relates a nonfiction tale about a quest arising from the deepest roots of our land, but taking place in the present and the future. In it, circles upon circles, elders make a great and generous giveaway of the teachings they carry.

My 8th Fire website could use a facelift as well, no doubt. But that will have to wait for the right moment. For now, I’m pleased to be able to shine a light upon the new look of Deep Agroecology — a main chance for us all.

 

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Strategic Wisdom in an Era of Change

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As cloaks of summer heat settled upon most of North America, and storms raged severe in sky, land, and sea, I happened upon a 2020 academic review of Deep Agroecology.

I’d missed the review at the time, as I was reckoning that year with the passing of generational elders, and also a household move from Nebraska back to the mountains of the Southwest. But I’m happy to have come upon the review now, some four years later. I needed to hear a familiar chord sounded again.

Reading the analysis reminded me of the perilous realities that had driven the writing of the book, realities that had gone into soft focus for me since publication five years ago. That came about as, after the year of transition, I became intent on completing another writing project, the biography of Iina’bi’ho spiritual elder Leon Secatero (1943-2008). That book is moving toward completion.

The 2020 review of Deep Agroecology was written by Hannah Kass, Ph.D and published in the journal Food, Culture & Society. What sparked me in reading the review was her proficient description of my book’s goal: to state plainly the crucial knowledge that agroecology has to offer to the general public, and to sound a call for wide, strategic implementation in our era of mounting perils.

Professor Charles A. Francis (U. Nebraska) suggested the deep agroecology theme to me around 2012. After seven years of study and contemplation what emerged was not so much the expression of a personal vision, but rather the synthesis of a chorus of learned voices. Together they express an evolving vision—a strategic vision—shared by millions of people around the world. Deep Agroecology is my effort to articulate that compelling vision, along with a host of healthy pathways that can lead toward a just, sustainable, and spiritually elevated future.

Despite appearing as an academic concept, agroecology is altogether of the people and the earth: of the way we live on the land, and the way we give and receive sustenance with the earth. As we are at a point of peril, and our farm and food foundations are in critical transition, I wrote Deep Agroecology for the people—for all the people.

In her book review, Kass noted: “Using the framework of extinction and evolution to explain deep agroecology’s spiritual purpose, McFadden aptly demonstrates the inextricability of physical and spiritual worlds in the food system…He connects these worlds to the political economy of food, pointing out the climate’s ties to the intersecting problems of corporate power, industrialization and rural dispossession.”

Agroecology offers a wide array of sensible, sustainable, just, and strategically intelligent pathways to sustain our civilizations, and help them to progress in ever-wiser way.

Terra Madre – We Are Nature
One place where the theme of agroecology will resonate with power and beauty is at this years 20th anniversary Tierra Madre global food community gathering in Turin, Italy (Sept. 26-0).

The 2024 theme is “We Are Nature.” As a key part of the proceedings, the conference is establishing a spectacular space dedicated to agroecology: “an alternative food system paradigm that counters industrial agriculture…It is rooted in the reconstruction of relationships between people, agriculture and environment, food systems and society.”

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What are people for? What are farms for?

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In a thought-provoking essay published in 1990, Wendell Berry asked, “What are people for?” Now more than three decades later, with the aggressive incursion of artificial intelligence (AI) into our lives, Berry’s rhetorical question takes on added magnitude.

What does it mean to be human in the Age of AI? Especially if the craft, trade, or profession you mastered is rendered irrelevant by “intelligent machines.”

Meanwhile…In our moment of history, with the aid of AI, enormous industrial, chemical, GMO infused agri-corporations are continuing to subsume and to overshadow food systems, while colossal billion-buck investment firms continue to hoard farmland. This commercial juggernaut of consolidation and concentration for greater profit brings a second question into focus: What are farms for?…

Note: the rest of my essay is located on my dedicated blog for DEEP AGROECOLOGY.  Click here to read the rest.

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Native Knowings now in paperback and eBook formats

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Many years ago I compiled a concise eBook with some key native knowings about the earth, and about the era of transition we are living through. Much of that book came from my notes about meetings with traditional native elders, and other people learned in the ways of earth and spirit. Our current national and global circumstances prompted me this past month to update the eBook and slso to publish it in a paperback edition for the first time.

With that background and intention, Light and Sound Press, LLC hereby announces an important addition to the Soul*Sparks collection of gift books–-small treasures recognized for their enduring insights. As of late May 2023 Native Knowings is now available in a slender,  handsome, and impactful paperback edition as well as the eBook edition.

Indisputably and on many levels of experience and understanding, profound changes are underway in the world. My hope is that this small volume will in some ways help us to move through the changes more wisely. The root teachings of North America—native knowings—can truly help. This I know in the core of my being.

The words of contemporary leaders in particular bear notes of urgency. They share a sense that the time for us to make profound changes in our attitudes and our behaviors is short. As Native Knowings makes explicit, they encourage us to consider their voiced offerings promptly and carefully.

The back cover of this small treasure gives a sense of what lies within:

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Our Main Chance: Agroecology

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The phrase main chance generally refers to the most advantageous prospect available, the opportunity for the greatest progress or gain in any given set of circumstances. I use the phrase now in regard to our tempestuous environmental, climatological, social, and spiritual circumstances.

In a historical context, playwright William Shakespeare employed the phrase main chance memorably in a speech by the Earl of Warwick in Henry VI, Part 2:

“There is a history in all men’s lives,
figuring the nature of the times deceased,
the which observed,
a man may prophesy, with a near aim,
of the main chance
of things as yet not come to life…”

With my nearest aim, I now prophesy for the future that our main chance would be wisely grasped in reference to collective ambitions that we must of necessity awaken in ourselves: ambitions for survival and well-being through climate chaos and more, for a clean Earth, for health, for respect, for purpose, for the next seven generations, for beauty, for spiritual maturity.

All of this is what farms are for, what they can be for if we set our minds and hearts to make it so. Farms and food are the key to our physical, moral, community, and spiritual survival and evolution. Our main chance to realize all of this lies in the realms of agroecology and deep agroecology.

For your consideration, here’s a sample of five memes I was inspired to create by the main chance theme:

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New cover, renewed spirit for Tales of the Whirling Rainbow

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Dear Readers, I’m pleased to announce a facelift for an old book that is, I feel, acutely relevant to all that’s going on in the world. It’s the slimmest of volumes, but it still goes right to the heart of the matter. As of today the new cover and format edition is readily available as either print or eBook.

Here’s an image of the new cover, and below you will find the updated text from the book’s back cover:

Tales of the Whirling Rainbow is a journalist’s account of some of the key myths and mysteries of the Americas, and an electrifying exploration of how those myths are resounding in real time.

Veteran journalist Steven McFadden weaves the living myths together seamlessly. Like an atom of gold, this wee book radiates deep beauty. It delivers authentic inspiration for our 21st Century souls.

Tales of the Whirling Rainbow conveys critical insights into core wisdom teachings at the heart of North America’s unfolding saga. Respect for these knowings is fundamental to our survival, and to our spiritual development.

As the Sun awakens and Earth changes intensify, our lives attain high velocity. At this time and in this manner, elders across The Americas informed the author, the human beings who are the different colors and faiths of the world will have opportunities to heal their web of relationships with each other, and with the natural world.

“Absorbing, engaging, thoughtful, thought-provoking, exceptionally well written…unreservedly recommended.”~ Midwest Book Review 

 

 

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Council Circles: a perennial way to mark Earth Day

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In 1993 I had the honor of serving as National Coordinator for the annual Earth Day USA observation. When appointed to the position, I reached out to the Seventh Generation Fund. We formed a project partnership, and together we developed a plan and a protocol for community council circles.

People came together with their neighbors in a respectful matter to talk about something they (and their children) all have a stake in: the health of the earth, their responsibilities, and their opportunities.

That year Earth Day was marked with formal Council Circles in over 500 US and Canadian communities, a host of other activities from the Boston Esplanade to the Winnebago Reservation in Nebraska, and circles along the Pacific shore.

Now, 29 years later, the materials are still relevant for all kinds of communities. They describe a way to bring people together in a respectful and positive manner.

To access the guidelines and protocol for hosting a community Council Circle (on Earth Day or any day), follow this link then scroll down to where you see the scanned copies of the original typewritten documents.

Council Circles remains a powerful tool for any group of people needing to address serious issues. The circles function as a perennial way of democratically developing and engaging community wisdom and strength.

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