ASSESSING A PROPERTY BEFORE DESIGNING IT
For the purpose of this article and the scope of which I’m looking to explore, we are going to begin by assuming a hypothetical property is already bought and paid for. In short, we won’t be going into all of the legal assessment ideas that might be involved when buying a property, though many of these thoughts could help in choosing one to buy. Instead, we’ll be looking at assessing properties from a design perspective, gathering a checklist of things to identify when implementing a permaculture project seems to be in the near future.
Obviously, at the foundation of all permaculture design, we rely on the famous three Permaculture ethics of earth care, people care, and return of surplus, but when assessing a property, we need to focus more on the minutiae of maintaining these ethics. This is the time we pay attention to the less easily packaged permaculture principles. This is the time when we observe and interact, when look to utilize natural patterns, when we discover opportunistic edges, and when we sniff out ways to integrate things rather than segregate them.
As amazing as all that sounds, we’ll also need to start whittling these principles down from grand theories to applicable data. Once we step into a project or onto a property with the intention of designing it, all the good ideas and positive ethics become a matter of physical application. This is the moment just before the pencil goes to drawing board, before the shovel plunges into the soil, the moment before the hammer hits the nail, and we need a good start. So, in terms of assessing a property, where do we begin?
BEFORE THE FIRST FOOTPRINT
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