Keynote: Designing Healthy Future Farms

adapt adapt design deck community community engagement design ecological systems ecopsychology events farm farmer wellness gateway farm keynote literacies and practices permaculture re-wilding regenerative agriculture self-care sustainability workshops Aug 28, 2025

Bridget O’Brien and Dr Charlie Brennan presenting Garden Juju Collective keynote on healthy future farms and farmers at the Northern Michigan Small Farm Conference.

Last week we were honored to deliver the keynote "Designing Healthy Future Farms" at the Northern Michigan Small Farm Conference in Glen Arbor, MI, USA, run by Crosshatch Center for Art & Ecology.

Now in its 26th year, this gathering brings together farmers, growers, and land stewards to build skills, share knowledge, and strengthen resilience across the region. This year’s theme—Incubate & Integrate, weaving farmer wellness and resilience into community solutions—aligns deeply with our approach to place-based healing and regenerative design. Our presentation highlighted the practices we’ve implemented to make Gateway Farm a healthy future focused farm—it was well received and sparked many great conversations. We also ran sessions on ‘Adapt & Design’ and ‘Healing Self/Healing Land’.

Farming is definitely not for the faint-hearted. It was so good to connect with other farmers, food system supporters, and extension representatives.

At a time when author Florence Williams tells us that humanity as a whole is migrating indoors—we express this desire and love for the outdoor life, working with nature, self-reliance, healthy foods and lifestyles.

We hope you enjoy these highlights from our keynote presentation.

Case Study

Using Gateway Farm as a living case study, we explored what it means to tend not just land, but relationships—between humans, our community and the more-than-human—soil, plants, animals, land and more. We share the unfolding process of radically redesigning Gateway Farm from initial infrastructure to regenerative agriculture practices and how we’ve opened the gates to the community as a hub for skill-building, connection and sanctuary.

Design

Our work is shaped by decades of design, facilitation, and community engagement. From permaculture to re-wilding, from soil health to inclusivity, our approach is layered and deeply relational. We offer frameworks—design tools, care practices, and a mindset of radical redesign—strategies developed from our lifetimes’ practical application of regenerative practices that can be replicated to heal people, communities and landscapes around the world.

The Shadow & Celebration of Farmlife

High rates of depression, anxiey, suicide, financial stress, impact of climate disasters, exhaustion, injuries, social isolation, and the lack of support/understanding/compensation from the majority of the population—these are some of the shadows of farmlife.

We as a farming community show that it is possible to keep this flame alive against this backdrop, indoor-ness, and trends driven by Industrial Ag. We want to share the example of a social impact workwear brand TradeMutt, which is raising mental health awareness with conversation starter clothing and apparel and supporting free counseling for tradespeople in Australia.

Radically Imagining the Future

Inspiration

"Most failures are due to a lack of imagination" - James Hillman

'How to Fall in Love With the Future' trainings - Rob Hopkins

Time traveling and back-casting exercises

Select a time in the future and imagine a scene as you wish it to be, and work backward to identify action steps needed to achieve your goal.

Questions to ask yourself

What does your ideal, dreamed, imagined healthy future farm look & feel like?
Imagine you have already achieved your goal. What helped?

What Does It Mean to Be Healthy?

Most importantly, in our keynote we ask what does it mean to be healthy and what does healthy look like for you in the future?

Looking For More GJC Goodness?

Watch a Keynote Recording

You can watch a recording of our keynote "Regeneration Through Permaculture, Re-wilding & Community Engagement" delivered earlier this year at the 77th Annual Celebration of the Washtenaw County Conservation District—an evening rooted in community, conservation, and care. We’re excited to share the full recording along with reflections and resources from the event. Click here to read more.

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