Build Soil Or Die’s Beyond Organic/ Biodynamic Farm and Garden Consulting Service
Need help rebuilding health in all your soils and agricultural systems? Call us to help you improve your compost, soils, pastured systems, vegetable cropping and animal husbandry.
For support, site consulting visits or more information Call: 970-618-8599
Brook Le Van's BIO
Co-founder and Executive Director of Sustainable Settings a 501 (c)(3)
Le Van created, with his wife Rose, Sustainable Settings - a working ranch and Whole Systems Learning Center in 1997. He oversees all development and programming and raised the funds to purchase the 244-acre ranch site for Sustainable Settings, fuel sustainable development and sustainability education programs for the last 19 years. Personal grants and fellowships include Fulbright Research Scholarships for his research on the cosmological influences in West African human settlements; a Durfee Foundation Fellowship for navigating the entire 4,000 miles of the Yellow River in China; and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant for studio research. Le Van holds a Masters degree from NYSCC Alfred, NY, and is an alumnus of the Institute for Social Ecology and Kansas City Art Institute, has his diploma in Permaculture Design and is a Whole Systems Design consultant and green building design charrette facilitator. He has been a visiting professor and lectured regionally and nationally on small-scale organic food production, and the development of local food and energy systems, is on the board of three non-profit organizations and an advisory board on numerous others, hosts Sustainable Solutions- Interviews with Practical Visionaries on Aspen Grassroots TV, and is an advisor and writes a regular column, Food For Thought, for edible Aspen magazine. Le Van taught college & university full time from 1990-96. Sustainable Settings is a founding member of Slow Money and has hosted two Slow Money Regional Gatherings. LeVan is a sought after and respected lecturer and panel moderator at national and regional conferences on regenerative soil, food and energy solutions in the wake of climate change.
Sustainable Settings is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization formed to create a shared vision of a sustainable and desirable society, one based on a whole systems approach, that provides permanent prosperity within the biophysical constraints of the real world-that is equitable to all of humanity and nature, present, and future.
Sustainable Settings emphasizes collaboration between disciplines to create a whole systems approach and a setting conducive to:
· Intelligently designing, building and operating sustainable human developments
· Experimenting with long-term solutions for food, herb and fiber production
· Anchoring our experiential teaching and learning in the surrounding ecosystem
· Investigating how we can incorporate art and aesthetics into sustainable daily lives
· Building a more cooperative and just society.
Selected Biodynamic experience and demonstration
LeVan first worked with biodynamic preparations in compost making at The Institute for Social Ecology in Plainfield,VT in 1977. Sustainable Settings Ranch has been making and applying BD preps with increasing frequency and with expanded and diversified applications since 2004.
Biodynamic Research
Biodynamics and Homeodynamics has dominated the research agendaat Sustainable Settings since 2010. Hosted Enzo Nastati, Euerka Farms, Italy for lectures and ranch consults in Homeodynamics from 2013 to present.
Biodynamic Education and Affiliations
· Hosting Biodynamic preparation making workshops and demonstrations
· Member of the North American Fellowship Preparation Makers
· Sustainable Settings Ranch is an approved mentor ranch for North American Biodynamic Association’s Apprenticeship Program (NABDAAP)
· Founding director of Biodynamicsource.com with Lloyd Nelson and Harold Nelson
· Founding member of the Central Colorado Biodynamic group (CCBD)
· Member of the BDA