Why Permaculture?

            There are many folks here about who likely have never heard of Permaculture. Those who have heard only a little may not like what they have heard. My best guess as to the reaction of most folks here in the Lone Oak area to the very idea of Permaculture is: 1) Why do we need this, whatever the heck it is, anyway? 2) Isn’t that some hippy-dippy thing where you give up meat, join a commune, and give everything away? 3) Why change what’s worked in agriculture for ages? Haven’t American Farmers been feeding the world since WWII! We’ve even exported our way of farming to poor nations to pull them up out of poverty!

            Let’s start with #3. American Agriculture hasn’t been as it is “for ages”. I’m willing to bet that few farmers around here had a diesel or gasoline tractor before WWI. That would be your grate grand-dad, I think. Few if any at that time used artificial fertilizers and they certainly didn’t raise crops of plants that had been genetically engineered to resist pesticides as they likely didn’t have those either.

            Oh, a side note on those GMO’s. Those crops are being taken over by weeds that have naturally developed a resistance to the herbicide that the crops were engineered to be immune to. Hello!  Big chemical company I don’t dare name least I be sued! You can’t engineer around nature and you don’t own it, either.

            Yes. Thanks to modern fertilizers and pesticides the American Farmer has been feeding the world since about WWII. We’ve also been losing top soil at several inches a year, every year, at the same time. The soil in most fields now MUST have fertilizer on it or it can’t grow anything BUT weeds. So we have fed the world, at a price far greater than what we were ever paid.

            Yep. We did export our farming methods to poor nations. And now they are even poorer. Not because the folks there are lazy or incompetent, but because they used AMERICAN methods of farming instead of some method that would have fit THEIR climate, THEIR terrain, THEIR culture much better. They also fell into the same trap American Farmers now find their selves in. The farmers in the poorer nations just fell into it sooner. They fell into the trap of needing to buy fertilizer every year or even every crop. They must also buy fuel for those big tractors and pesticides to protect the mono-crops we taught them they had to grow. These are recurring costs that a poor farmer, a family or a subsistence farmer, just cannot bear. Which brings me back to American Agriculture being as it has “for ages.” The big Agri-businesses that have driven the family farm out of business then bought the land haven’t been in existence for ages. Heck, I don’t think they existed even in the 1950’s except, perhaps in an embryonic form.

            So much for changing what hasn’t changed in ages. Except, I happen to believe that Permaculture can change it for the better. It would result in the Family, the subsistence farm, the LOCAL farm replacing the big agri-businesses, while building soil and feeding the farmer, his/her family and the local community as well.  It would also be done without fossil fuels. It would have to be. There aren’t enough left to bother with, really and they add Carbon to the atmosphere that was sequestered long ages before some government hireling came up with the idea of trying to do sequester it all over again.

            I can see some out there reading this far and gasping, “But what about the poor and underprivileged in the big cities or in other countries!”

            Teach them Permaculture too. Permaculture is great in suburbs, and in big cities. A roof garden on a tenement building would insulate the building and provide food for the people in the building. Those better off could have at least a few fresh veggies from planters on their fire escape, their patio, or even just in front of a window. Earth worms can compost whatever left over’s you have, or even newspaper and cardboard in a pinch, into great soil for growing things. As for the poor in other countries, the same idea works. They can rebuild their land using the same (but different and specific to their needs) methods of Permaculture.

            Now for question #2 above, especially as I have probably started sounding just a little hippy-dippy with all the saving the world stuff I’ve written above. To refresh all our memories that was:  “Isn’t that some hippy-dippy thing where you give up meat, join a commune, and give everything away?”

            Well, you can give up meat if you want to. Or, as I plan to do, you can continue your carnivorous ways.  It’s just that with Permaculture you would know that there was nothing “extra” in your meat. In fact, in most situations you would have raised it, be it a cow or pig from your “back 40,” a chicken from your suburban back yard, or a pigeon from the coop on your tenement roof. As for joining a commune, once more, only if you want to and can find one that suites you. If you just plain don’t want to, that’s fine to. Though with Permaculture, once it gets going you might need help with the harvesting. Yeah, there is a part of the Permaculture philosophy that says something about sharing. That’s sharing the excess. It’s what’s left over after you’ve feed yourself, your family for the season and sold some off to pay land taxes or pay whatever other bill you might have. Maybe even bought that really great new whatever it is you think you need. Then, if you still have left over harvest, or money you find someone who needs it. Not to Joe Blow who would just buy another hit of his favorite intoxicant, unless you want to. But to old Granny Good gal who is too crippled up to work her own garden. In fact you might work her garden for her in your spare time. As for the poor in other countries; you could help them by going there in the off season or whenever you have the time to help them adapt Permaculture to their own landscape.

            Now for #1 above: “Why do we need this, whatever the heck it is, anyway?” I’ll do a quick rundown of what Permaculture is first. At least I’ll do the best I can as I have yet to be able to get to a Permaculture Design Course. I do plan to remedy that as soon as I can.

            Permaculture is a system of designing your home, your city, your country, your life so that it all works with and within nature rather than trying to impose our will and, possibly misguided, ideas on nature. It was developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren who was one of his students. There are three ethics and eleven principles at the core of this system. They may sound simple or even simpleminded to some. But, I don’t think they really are that simple. As for an exact, simple definition of what Permaculture is, there isn’t one. Even Bill Mollison can’t and won’t give one.

THE ETHICS:  1) Care of the Earth I know. It seems obvious. But I think it needs to be enlarged upon here. I’ll use my Peanut M&M © analogy. Get a Peanut M&M candy, preferably a green one, for reasons that will soon be obvious. Carefully bite it in half, through the peanut. Now, closely examine the remaining half as you savor that tasty bit of candy. (Yes, I am addicted to the things!) Note the relative sizes of the peanut to the chocolate to the candy shell. Now look really close at that candy shell. I said use a green one remember. You will note that there are actually two colors there. A white inner line and an even thinner outside that carries the green coloring.  Now consider this in relation to our home planet. The peanut can be seen as the inner and outer core of the Earth. Okay, technically it may be a little on the large side, but hey I’m working with a piece of candy here! The chocolate is the mantel. That part of the Earth, like the core, that science can know about only because of instruments that show how the energy of earthquakes bounces around inside it. To us it is so distant as to be of little or no interest, unless we happen to be students of the Earth Sciences. And like the core, both inner and outer, it really has nothing more to give to this discussion than the fact that it exists and is approximately of the same size relative to the Earth as the chocolate is to the peanut candy. Our focus must go back to that thin candy crust. That white line of sugar coating? That is about the same relative thickness of the sea floor and the mass of the continents below about one to two miles from the surface.  Are you starting to get the BIG picture here? That even thinner green line of dyed surgery candy? That is what we Earth Science nerds would call the BIOSPHERE. It’s where life happens. It’s where we live, breath, eat, and take care of business. It stretches from the sea floor, from about a mile down on land (I think that’s the depth of our deepest mine) to that point just below where the nearest artificial satellites orbit which is where our atmosphere ends. Now, here is the really scary part, folks. This lonely little M&M is the only one we know of in the knowable Universe. There might, MIGHT, be others similar to it out there somewhere. In fact it’s quite likely given what the telescopes keep finding. But first off those places are so far away they may have developed civilizations ten or more times over since the light we see left their star! They may be similar to Earth but also might be in no way livable for us. We also know for a fact that there simply is no other M&M enough like ours here in our own solar system for us to live on as comfortably as we do here. 

            So we only have this one Green M&M, and we just bit it in half. (Need I mention: Peak Oil, soil depletion, over population and pollution among other things!)   We really need to take excellent care of what we have left.

2) Care of People and all other species   we as humans must begin to recognize the place, use, and needs of all living things while remembering that we humans, People, are also part of the process. We stand now at the place of the parent or guardian on an airplane who is told to put on their own oxygen mask before going to the aid of the person they are to care for. If you do not care for yourself you cannot care for another. We humans are part and parcel of that thin green line on the M&M I used in the analogy above. We need to care for our own personal needs and uses, the needs and uses of our family and friends and for those more distant while also taking into account the needs and uses of all the other forms of life around us. Life is a web, after all where the “waste” of one is the “food” for another. Remember the old example of the plant breathing out oxygen while we breathe it in and exhale CO2 for the plant to breath. That is only part of the massive web of life on this world.

3) Limit Consumption; Share Surplus   we need to think about what is a reasonable rate of consumption of anything and everything and then live within that limit. Yes, that means trashing the old idea’s of ever more of everything. It means rethinking the ever bigger bottom line, asking if we really need that new pair of fancy shoes or do we just want them cause Joe Bob got a new pair, and frankly, do we really NEED all of this STUFF!? Couldn’t someone else use some of this “stuff” because they don’t have any, always providing that they even want it. Some might think they have nothing to share but there is one thing that grows when shared and that is knowledge. Information is often far more powerful a thing than any weapon. Oh, yes, by limiting consumption it is also understood that population would also have to be limited, preferably by personal choice.

The Principles of Permaculture:

            I’ve read these stated several ways. These are the last ones I heard, but they are all similar. Just remember that Permaculture is basically about how to design things from the small to the large inclusive.

1)      Relative Location:  There is value in the number of beneficial relationships between structures and elements. The chicken coop is near the garden so that garden scraps can be easily tossed over the fence and ‘fertilizer’ from the coop can be carted to the garden. The compost pile should be nearby as well so the chickens can be let out onto it to harvest bugs and turn it for you.

2)      Each Element performs multiple functions: A pond on your farm or in your front yard can be used for irrigation, habitat for useful critters, fire control, thermal mass, growing food (fish and plant) or bait to catch fish with or to sell.

3)      Redundancy or every important function must be served by multiple elements: This goes straight to leaving the foolishness of big agricultures mono-cropping behind. If you have one or one hundred acres grow as many different kinds of food on them as you can. Then if one crop fails you can still eat or sell the harvest of what’s left. And by all means learn what “weeds” are edible. Put in solar, and wind energy harvesting systems but don’t give up your wood fired stove or your connection (if it still works) to the grid.

4)      Plan to use energy efficiently: That goes for all energy. Electric energy, wood energy, animal energy and your own energy should be used as efficiently as possible. Depending on the conditions, would it use less energy, make you more tired (or less healthy) to walk into town to get a loaf of bread, or drive. Only you can answer that. This also relates back to the location of things. With the chicken coop near the garden you don’t have to move the stuff from the garden you want to feed the chickens as far or the fertilizer either.

5)      Where ever possible use bio or onsite resources: Use goats or chickens to mow your lawn rather than a gas mower. Use wood from your own trees to heat your house. Produce your own electricity, harvest your own food, energy, and water as well as you can with what you have. Just remember that all information you get on or about Permaculture must be adjusted to suit your own area!

6)      Energy and resource cycling:  Use everything more than once and for different things. Don’t toss that old t-shirt in the trash. Cut it up into dust rags, and wash cloths. When those get too raged to use, compost them, then use the compost to grow food or maybe some cotton to help make another shirt.

7)      Focus on small scale, intensive systems: Start small and build from there. At a small scale you can see if a specific design will work for you and tweak it until it dose before you scale up.

8)      Accelerate succession and evolution: Watch patterns in nature [including Human nature ;) ] and figure out how to accelerate them. Weeds take over a degraded pasture.  This is good! The weeds are deep rooted and will pull up moisture and nutrients from deep down to the surface. Cut the weeds before they go to seed and after you’ve spread the annual ground cover, soil building grasses and legumes of your choice. The cover of weeds will then protect and fertilize those seeds accelerating the recovery of the soil.

9)      Value Diversity!  Use poly-culture farming practices rather than mono-culture farming. Raise all kinds of crops at the same time rather than only one kind of crop at a time. Don’t limit yourself to “Just” being a farmer. You can be a writer, a philosopher and artist, even a scientist as well. Or you can stick to the one or two things you do really well and be glad that a friend, spouse or child can do others. Also realize that diversity can come in all shapes and forms and is always of value.

10)  Use Edge: It is at the edges of things where there is the most diversity and richness of life. Places like the sea shore, the river bank, the edge of a forest or the edge of a field. The more edges you have in your “garden” the more diverse and healthy it will be. This is also true of more than gardens.

11)  Attitudinal Principles: You can often find your solution in the very problem you face. You desperately want to garden and raise your own food but you live in a dying city with empty abandoned lots, are on social security and are in a wheel chair or on a walker most of the time. So. You go out to one of those abandoned lots near your apartment and start picking up the refuse and looking for stuff you can use to turn it into a garden. The local kids get curious and you tell them your plans and dreams. More than half snicker and leave the crazy old lady. Some stay to watch the nut case. A few feel sorry for her and start to help and end up learning. With luck their parents will soon come out to see what’s going on. Some of them will decide to help and then eventually there is a garden in that old lot, with raised beds that an old lady in a wheel chair or using a walker can tend and harvest along with everyone else. Don’t laugh at this little fable. It, or something like, has been happening all over. You should also go beyond trying to eradicate a problem. Use those pesky weeds! Some may have medicinal uses and if nothing else they bring nourishment, water and minerals up from deep underground for use by you in your compost pile and provide a resting or nursery place for good guy insects. Or, as in a quote attributed to Bill Mollison: “You don’t have a snail problem; you just don’t have enough ducks to eat the snails.” Some things seen as a problem can actually be a resource. The loud mouthed know-it-all student can be the teacher’s helper and fire ants are great at cleaning out greasy food containers for reuse or recycling.

If you want to learn more about Permaculture, even if it is just to find out how to say I’m full of it, you just have to do a computer search on Bill Mollison, David Holmgren, or Permaculture. You can also go to Permies.com to learn that we Permies don’t take everything as seriously as you might expect.

            So now you at least sort of know what this Permaculture thing is. But you likely still want to know WHY? Why do we need this stuff? We need it because it works. Mollison and others, such a Fukuoka, have been doing this sort of thing, without the fancy word, for a long time now. In the case of Fukuoka at least, since before WWII! They have lived by these principles and survived. They have helped others to survive. Some of Mollisons students have gone on to turn chunks of desert green and not just in the Australian outback. One took on a few acres just south of the Dead Sea.

            Yes. The DEAD SEA. That inland, super salty Middle Eastern, super hot hell hole of a place to try to survive and make a living off the land place.  He dug swales, he harvested what little rain fell, he planted deep rooted trees, then fruit trees suitable to the region, as well as bushes, vines and anything else native he could get to survive. Thanks to the swales a lot more survived than most onlookers expected. He nurtured this little piece of Eden with the help of some of the locals for about three years, until his funding ran out. When he left it was green and lush in comparison to the land around it. 

           Then he went back about five years later and despite a bit of mismanagement by those ignorant of how to properly use it, those acres were still much greener than the surrounding land. That was FIVE YEARS LATER! After being mismanaged! This without pesticides, without oil based fertilizers or even hauling in thousands of gallons of fresh water to flush out the salt naturally occurring in that soil.

          If that can be done there just think what we could do here! That is if we are willing to open our eyes. Heck we might even be able to save civilization. Maybe not civilization as we know it today, but hopefully something better to leave to the kids.