A small hummingbird flew over 1,900 kilometres, and ended up in a Saskatchewan backyard before a cold winter. The hummingbird – later called Yosemite Sam in national news stories – had performed something called reverse migration, a phenomenon where a bird migrates in the wrong direction. Sam ended up in the care of today’s guest, who protected the Californian bird through a Canadian winter, while she puzzled over how to rehabilitate the bird to the wild.

Jan Shadick is a wildlife rehabilitator, and the Executive Director of Living Sky Wildlife Rehabilitation. Jan has spent decades advocating for wildlife rehabilitation, and she trains and encourages new rehabilitators. She is a founding member of a provincial organization that runs the wildlife hotline and provides rescue services for wildlife across the province.

Animal rehabilitation and care are a beautiful example of how humans can resist our hubris and become more humble with our relationships with nature. As Silent Spring becomes a reality, and as birds migrate across continents, this episode looks at the heartbreaking loss of birds and animals. The conversation also explores how to refuse to accept the continued destruction of biodiversity, by recognizing that we ourselves are animals, and we can be a force for good.

Listen at Reseed.ca.

Each of us is deeply connected to soil, whether we see or feel soil directly. It is the source of our food, medicine, and clothing, and is critical to the liveability of our ecosystems and to our lives. Healthy soil can also help us rise to meet biodiversity loss and climate change. We can grow soil, and sequester carbon, feed ourselves, and strengthen local communities and economies in the process.

Guest Antonious Petro is the Executive Director of Régénération Canada and a Masters Candidate in Soil Science. His background is in biology and in community economic development, and that intersection lends itself beautifully to his role leading a national project in regenerative agriculture. Régénération Canada started as a grassroots initiative, when a handful of Montrealers with a mutual passion for living soils met up in the fall of 2016, hoping to create a national conversation about regenerative agriculture. Since then, the group has grown to become a Canada-wide organization promoting soil regeneration in order to mitigate climate change, restore biodiversity, improve water cycles, and support a healthy food system.

In this episode, I visit Antonious in a barn at a local farm, and we also have a conversation where we get into the principles of regenerative agriculture, barriers that farmers face, and the importance of soil. We look at the hopeful ways in which we can help nature and soil heal themselves. Soil is a connector: regenerative agriculture is deeply connected to the well-being of human beings and animals, and the health of our communities and economies. We need to make sure environmental, economic, and social well-being work together, if we are to have any hope.

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We are midwives of a transformation, in a time of crises and grief. Now is a moment to find our most expansive definitions of motherhood, nature, and ancestry in order to equip us for this moment. This episode of Reseed explores mothering in these times of ours, writing through emergency, a ceasefire in Palestine, and the power of togetherness.

Kerri ní Dochartaigh is an Irish mother, writer, and grower. Her work explores ideas of emergency, interconnectedness and ecologies of care. For her first book, Thin Places, she was awarded the Butler Literary Award 2022, and highly commended for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 2021 in the UK. Cacophony of Bone was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing. Kerri is currently actively engaged with Irish Artists for Palestine, a coalition of artists focused on active solidarity and fundraising.

This conversation invites us to bear witness to the grief, atrocities, and brutalities of the genocide in Palestine and say not in our name. As we grapple with these horrors, we are called to bring our deepest reserves of tenderness and remember our deep love for each other.

Listen at reseed.ca.