An East Tennessee native with Appalachian roots like Mary Kingsley, Jonathan McRay shares his day-to-day as he works in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. With an MA in Conflict Transformation and Restorative Justice, Jonathan has worked with Vine and Fig, Speakers Collective of Soul Fire Farm, and the Cambium Collective. He founded Silver Run Forest Farm along with his partner Cornelius Deppe, where he grows plants and is committed to cleansing the pollutants from our souls, society, and soil. An advocate of land care, transformative racial justice, and renewable energy sources, Jonathan sits down with Mary and Emma to discuss how his love of trees started it all, restorative justice, and collective land trusts.

Topics Discussed
• Appalachian tradition of "planting by the signs"
• How a Childhood in Central Appalachia Fostered a Love of Land
• The Riparian Nursery
• Collective Land Trusts and Decommodification of Farm Land
• Restorative Justice, its Critiques, and How to Practice It
• Questions to Ask Ourselves; What's Happened Here, Whose Responsibility is it to Make it Right, Who Needs to Participate to Bring Healing, and What are the Root Causes?
• Food Sovereignty and Ecological Restoration,
• Storytelling through Plants & Honoring Their Indigenous Partners
• Uprooting Racism in the Food System Trainings
• Land Ownership and Food System's White Supremacist Roots
• Supporting Black Farmers
• Mariame Kaba's Hope & James Hal Cone's Whose Earth Is It Anyway?
• The False Idea of Human Supremacy over Nature
• Jonathan's Native Plant Nursery & Folk School
• Agroforestry
• Watershed Health

Episode Resources:

Follow Jonathan McRay on Instagram

Learn More About Jonathan Here

"The Nature of Community: Restorative Justice and Permaculture" by Jonathan McRay, in the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding

Acres of Ancestry

"A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet" by Raj Patel 


"The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South" by Michael W. Twitty

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

Adrienne Maree Brown

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This Episode is Sponsored by Pinetree Garden Seeds!

Order their seeds today from superseeds.com and use our promo code: GOODDIRT15 for 15% off your entire order!

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Original music by John Kingsley. Editing and podcast production by Fast Forward Production.