Mike Garcia, owner/operator of Everoak Farm in Orlando, FL,  is a self-taught first-generation farmer with a deep-rooted passion for sustainable agriculture and regenerative farming practices. His journey began in the culinary world, where he honed his skills and expertise through formal training at culinary school and over a decade of experience in the hospitality industry. Driven by a desire to reconnect with the land and foster a more sustainable food system, Mike transitioned from the kitchen to the fields, embracing a holistic approach to farming rooted in agroecology. Drawing inspiration from nature’s wisdom, he practices agroecology, integrating bio-intensive market gardening, agroforestry, pasture poultry, and composting to cultivate healthy, nutrient-rich soil and promote biodiversity on his farm.

Alana Bliss is a seasoned practitioner of holistic, regenerative living with over 20 years of experience in permaculture, natural building, and conscious birth work. Certified in multiple branches of Permaculture since 2005—including Design, Teaching, Social Design, and Natural Building—she has dedicated her life to cultivating systems that nurture both people and planet. As co-founder of the Fruition Center for Holistic Ecology in Costa Rica, Alana led hands-on education in regenerative design, community living, and ecological restoration. Her work as a homebirth doula and midwifery student deepened her understanding of the natural cycles of creation and renewal, weaving birth and ecology into a unified philosophy of thrivability.

Having taught and presented internationally, Alana’s work bridges earth-based living and human transformation. She and her family now live on a developing homestead in Marshall, Virginia, where they continue to grow food, raise animals, and teach regenerative practices that honor life in all its forms.

Class info
The Permaculture of Birth: Reclaiming Birth as a Rite of Passage
Birth is the original act of regeneration—the moment when nature’s design flows through us most powerfully. In this talk, Alana Bliss explores how the principles of permaculture—care for the earth, care for people, and fair share—mirror the deep wisdom inherent in birth. By viewing birth as a rite of passage rather than a medical event, we rediscover it as a sacred process of transformation, resilience, and design in harmony with life’s patterns. Through the lens of ecology, community, and feminine intelligence, Alana invites us to remember that how we birth shapes how we live, grow, and care for our world.

Session Description:
In this heartfelt and grounding session, Dawn Greene, founder of Graceful Goodbyes, invites participants to explore the Permaculture of Death, a lens through which we can see death not as an ending, but as an integral part of life’s renewal and continuation. Drawing from her experience as a Certified End of Life Doula and hospice volunteer, Dawn will guide a conversation on how death functions in nature as a rhythm rather than a rupture and how embracing this truth can reshape our own relationship to mortality. Together, participants will reflect on The Human Permaculture of Death, cultivating presence, acceptance, and authentic connection as we honor the cycles that sustain life itself.

Presenter Bio:
Dawn Greene is a Certified End of Life Doula, hospice volunteer, and founder of Graceful Goodbyes, an organization dedicated to supporting individuals and families through the sacred walk toward life’s transition. Through her work, Dawn provides grounded presence, consistent companionship, and education to help others face impermanence with grace. Her mission extends beyond individual care to raise community consciousness around death, dying, and grief through workshops and conversation circles that nurture understanding, courage, and love.

A rare combination of warrior gardener, care for people and the earth, Andi Wyldlander is an army veteran, firefighter EMT, and sailing captain and instructor who has sailed and guided around much of the globe. Andi was featured on Discovery Channel’s Naked and Afriad, and has been called one of the kindest survivalists on television.
He’s on the Board and is a survival skills instructor for the nonprofit organization Glitter Sisters Inc., creating positive wilderness nature connection experiences for bipoc scholars in the Asheville area. As a budding premaculturalist for four years, Andi loves to teach permaculture to our future earth stewards, and serves as the Logistician for Healing Roots Design, a regenerative design and installation company based in Asheville, NC.

Stephanie Syson is the co-founder and Director of Caribbean Agroforestry Institute, spends the days with her hands in the soil and her heart with the plants.  She started down her Permaculture path in 2001 with an internship at Punta Mona in Costa Rica.  After visiting and living at multiple Permaculture communities in Latin America she was hooked!  Stephanie lived within and managed the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute for 4 years.  In that time she started the Basalt Seed Library and the Basalt Community Food Park as well as opening an herbal Product line called Dynamic Roots.  After many years of farming and running her herbal product business, she decided to devote herself fully to farming medicinal herbs.  Stephanie partnered with Sustainable Settings Ranch in Carbondale Colorado and opened Biodynamic Botanicals in 2015.  She is a full-time farmer and educator.  She has recently started 35 acre farm in Puerto Rico that combines her love of medicinal herbs, agroforestry, subsistence farming,  tropical climates and ocean life with teaching and rural, large scale Permaculture Design. Stephanie is a Certified Permaculture Designer, an educator in the fields of  Greenhouse Management, Seed Saving, Food Forests, Biodynamics, Herbalism and more. She has presented at conferences such as the Boulder Bioneers, the North American Permaculture Convergence, the American Herbalists Guild and the Biodynamic Association. She works with groups of all ages to further their knowledge of these topics through regular public workshops such as CRMPI, Colorado Mountain College, The Grow Network, and the Denver Permaculture Guild  as well as co-hosting the Living Permaculture Show, a monthly radio show on public radio KDNK. Stephanie is committed to community service through education and demonstration of herbal self-care and sustainable farming practices. 

Please welcome Kiah one of two yoga teachers we will have for the weekend.

I stepped into my first yoga class back in 2014, I was searching for peace of mind and a way to manage stress and anxiety. What I learned in that first class was how to let go. I was able to breath a little easier, tune out everthing that didn’t matter on the mat and dive into a world of just being present. From that first class I was hooked. I became intrigued by yoga and wanted to learn everything that I could about this ancient practice and deepen my personal practice. I found a 200hr YTT Yin and Vinyasa teacher training program at Guruv in 2019 and quickly knew this was the path I was supposed to take. While in the YTT training, I wanted to broaden my knowledge on other types of yoga and participated in a Prenatal Immersion Course at Guruv Yoga and learned just how incredible the human body can be. Over the years, I have discovered how much peace, joy, community, love and compassion there is in yoga and through the YTT program, I became eager to share this passion of yoga with others. 

True reciprocity and regeneration in permaculture requires going beyond binary, extractive thinking rooted in colonization, which is why Rev. Houston R. Cypress (Otter Clan, Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida) and Kelsey Greene invite you into a conversation that honors multiple ways of knowing, being, and relating to land and ‘natural resources.’ Houston will share insights from the Miccosukee Tribe’s environmental studies in the Everglades, where community members balance scientific measurements with deep listening, reflection, and ancestral wisdom. We’ll explore how language shapes our ways of relating, the concept of “queer ecological knowledge,” and practical applications of decolonizing the scientific method in permaculture practice. The session will begin with a grounding invocation, followed by a dialogue between Kelsey and Houston, then conclude with an interactive reflection where participants are invited to share their own observations, inspirations, and questions.

This session is presented in collaboration with Proven Sustainable, a podcast and educational initiative highlighting Indigenous and African Maroon worldviews to challenge colonized thinking.

Rev. Houston R. Cypress is a Two-Spirit, Indigiqueer Artist and Environmentalist from the Otter Clan of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, exploring themes of “queer ecological knowledge” as both a means of organizing, and as a contemporary art form. He grew up in the River of Grass region of the Greater Everglades – a place of refuge for his ancestors, and the source of traditional plant medicines. Growing up bilingual in the Everglades, Cypress navigates the beauty of the Miccosukee language and its deep connection to the land while creating new expressions for twenty-first century experiences. Houston believes that when it comes to environmental conservation, indigenous rights are everyone’s rights, and that creative solidarity with nature means expanding our praxis of “chosen family.” He in-joys bringing communities together through art and technology. He serves on the Miccosukee Tribe’s Everglades Advisory Committee, and also their Festival Committee. He’s been serving the Love The Everglades Movement for 13 years – an environmental nonprofit concerned with indigenous solidarity, action, art, multifaith coalition-building, and reciprocity with nature. Houston invites you to join him in creating portals between worlds.

David Ahlgren uses a listening and observation of nature model of coaching/consulting. After observation of land and humans in many ecosystems, David believes the most abundance and restoration both in human and land ecosystems comes with most ease when we enter each system with humility and a listening and learning sprit. This practice of befriending and listening to nature has been the recipe for restoration of abundance throughout all of history and across all landscapes.  David along with many other colleges across the world use, modern appropriate technology and research to both gain scientific situational awareness and foster restoration to abundance.

When the patterns are observed and used in humble harmony, abundance becomes a simple task to flow with into an oasis of abundance and peace.

So excited that Kelly Reid from @thereidfarm will be sharing some of her amazing knowledge at the convergence. Kelly is well versed in everything from growing production scale food, to sour dough, to rabbit farming, and yoga therapy just to touch on few of her skills. This woman does it all! Having people who live this life & share their successes and mistakes is what the event is all about.

@themadmycologists, is a locally-oriented, small business start-up based in Saint Petersburg, Florida. Our mission as a science-driven company is to produce the highest quality mushroom extracts for people to incorporate functionally into their lifestyle & routine. We plan to infuse our extracts into a line of intentionally-crafted supplements that we plan to release in the near future. Until then and even after, our goal will always be education; by sharing knowledge about integrating mushrooms into people’s lives

Josie will be sharing her incredible wisdom with us. Curandera Remedies is an indie wellness brand created by Josie Castaneda, certified health coach and yoga therapist. Offering artisanal, apothecary remedies for modern times along with a curated selection of service modalities to harmonize your inner being.

Growing & using grains in Florida. Growing grains and staple crops can be difficult in our Florida climate, but there are so many delightful grains, roots and tubers that offer great nutrition and are easy to grow, harvest and process in our humid, changeable climate! Learn when to plant what, and how to properly harvest, thresh, and prepare grains and the best way to store roots and other starchy vegetables. 💚 @angieminno

Meet Lonny from @thereidfarm and Bernie from @the_bernie_journey_ Honestly ask Lonny just about anything! From deep sea fishing to rabbit harvesting, growing food to rare fruit hunting, aquaponics systems to pole barns, fermenting to bone broth he does it all. Lonny & Bernie will be teaching small animal harvesting & cleaning fish, showcasing a back yard aquaponics systems, and doing some primitive fishing on the side. 

Kayla is very excited to be workshopping the funky world that is wild yeast and sourdough! She has taken an interest in food as medicine over the past couple of years, which has led her down many paths, one being the world of ferments! Through curiosity and trial and error she has learned all that goes into making delicious loaves of sourdough bread that are not only yummy but also beneficial for our bodies.
Kayla currently resides near Asheville, NC, after finishing up with a Dance and Art Degree at school in Florida. She has spent many years as a dance teacher, and has spent time working as a teacher at Waldorf-Montessori based nature schools. In her free time, when not baking, she enjoys dancing, creating music, cooking, and foraging.💚

PhD, ATR-BC is a board-certified therapist, certified educational leader and owner of a two-acre, Florida permaculture farm complete with hundreds of species of edible plants, free-roaming chickens and 26 beehives. Dr. Pike serves as Education Chair for the Palm Beach County chapter of the Native Plant Society. As a local 4-H program facilitator, Dr. Pike helps make food forestry an accessible and practical landscaping option for the community. Her food forest currently provides an average of 70% of her family’s daily meals.💚 @florida_food_forests

We are honored to have Johnny Dame at the convergence this year. He is intimately connected with Florida ecosystems and water systems – he ignites and inspires with his wisdom and a vast amount of experience with real Florida. Sharing his passion with us is a true blessing 

Kelsey Greene is the Program Director for the Proven Sustainable Conversations series and designer of the Proven Sustainable website. She co-interviews guests with journalist and poet Ketu Oladuwa, facilitating dialogues that center Indigenous perspectives and challenge dominant paradigms. With a BA in Documentary Production, M.Ed in Education Studies, and ten years of experience in nonprofit communications and operations, Kelsey brings extensive media and research skills to collaborative projects. She is deeply committed to creating spaces where Indigenous knowledge, cultural resilience, and decolonized approaches to sustainability can be honored and amplified. Kelsey is based in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Joseph Pierce aka “Micanopy Joe” has been a permaculture teacher, consultant and designer in Florida since earning a PDC certification in 2009. He currently owns and operates a bakery/coffee shop and permaculture demonstration food forest called Mosswood Farm Store located in Micanopy Fl. He specializes in bananas, bamboos and gingers as well as being knowledgeable in the areas of composting/soil building natural construction and earthworks for water management.