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Tag Archives: permaculture
Resilience in the face of Climate Change
Resilience is a common principal of permaculture, says Dave Boehnlein, co-author of the book Practical Permaculture.
In this Mother Earth News interview, Boehnlein stresses the importance of incorporating redundancy, such as with planning access to potable water. “If the water stops coming from a municipal system, then what’s your back-up plan? Six bottles in the basement? Great. When those run out, what’s your back-up plan?”
With weather patterns changing around the globe, Boehnlein’s focus has been on planting for the “climatic edges.” Most species of trees and plants have specific climatic propagation requirements. Horticulture within a changing climate may well be an opportunity to expand those borders.
A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity
A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity
The dominant mode of global development today seeks to universalise high-consumption consumer lifestyles, but this has produced perverse inequalities of wealth and – to an extent that is no longer possible to ignore – is environmentally catastrophic. We are called on to take shorter showers, recycle, buy ‘green’ products, and turn the lights off when we leave the room, but these measures are grossly inadequate. We need more fundamental change – personally, culturally, and structurally.
The purpose of the documentary is to envision a way of life that positively responds to the overlapping global crises of climate change, peak oil, economic collapse, and consumerism. Genuine progress today means building a new, more resilient world based on permaculture, simple living, renewable energy, and localised economies.Most of all, we need to reimagine the good life beyond consumer culture and begin building a world that supports a simpler way of life. This does not mean hardship or deprivation. It means focusing on having enough, for everyone, forever.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Boundaries and Future of Solution Space – Part 5
The Boundaries and Future of Solution Space – Part 5
Solution Space
To use the word ‘solution’ is perhaps misleading, since it could be said to imply that circumstances exist which could allow us to continue business as usual, and this is not, in fact, the case. A crunch period cannot be avoided. We face an intractable predicament, and the consequences of overshoot are going to manifest no matter what we do. However, while we may not be able to prevent this from occurring, we can mitigate the impact and lay the foundation for a fundamentally different and more workable way of being in the world.
Acknowledging the non-negotiable allows us to avoid beating our heads against a brick wall, freeing us to focus on that which we can either influence or change, and acknowledging the limits within which we must operate, even in these areas, allows us to act far more effectively without wasting scarce resources on fantasies. There are plenty of actions which can be taken, but those with potential for building a viable future will be inexpensive, small-scale, simple, low-energy, community-based initiatives. It will be important to work with natural systems in accordance with permaculture principles, rather than in opposition to them as currently do so comprehensively.
We require viable ways forward across different timeframes, first to navigate the rapid-onset acute crisis which the bursting of a financial bubble will pitch us into, and then to reboot our global operating system into a form less reminiscent of a planet-killing ponzi scheme. The various limits we face do not manifest all at the same time, and so to some extent can be navigated sequentially. The first phase of our constrained future, which will be primarily financial and social, will occur before the onset of energy supply difficulties for instance. Some initiatives are of particular value at specific times, and other have general value across timescales.
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Shaun Chamberlin on the Ecological Land Coop.
Shaun Chamberlin on the Ecological Land Coop.
Food is an issue that galvanizes so many Transition communities, but many of the classic Transition activities around food, like Landshare and Abundance projects, are to some extent ways of making the best of the ever-shrinking space available for ecological growing. Nothing wrong with that, but it meant I was rather excited when – via a post on the Transition Network site in 2011 – I discovered the fledgling Ecological Land Co-operative working on a model for actually reclaimingland from industrialized agriculture and making it available to local, small-scale agroecology and permaculture projects. I quickly got involved, and was elected as a director in the summer of 2012.
Apple Nursery
Since then we’ve delivered three new ecological smallholdings into the hands of eager growers, and plan to reach twenty-five(!) new holdings in the next five years, and then spread from there, influencing planning policy as we go.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Permaculture: The Design Arm of a Paradigm Shift
Permaculture: The Design Arm of a Paradigm Shift
Here’s how it happened to me: Back in 1990 I was playing hooky from my unsatisfying biotech job in Seattle by browsing the homesteading shelves in the public library. I pulled down a thick black book I hadn’t seen before calledPermaculture: A Designers’ Manual. As I perused the pages, suddenly my previously fragmented life made sense. I had been fascinated for years with ecology, appropriate technology, economics, gardening, evolution, construction, energy systems, social justice, and a raft of other seemingly disconnected fields. But I didn’t want to specialize in any one of them, and I had been watching with some envy as my friends dropped into successful careers in various niches. Now, finally I knew what was going on. What a relief to find that a whole-systems approach could tie together the many disparate pieces of my life. This is, I know, a familiar and exalting experience for many when they first encounter permaculture.
Another familiar and not-so exalting experience for most of us is trying to explain permaculture to our friends and families, and receiving blank, confused, or condescending looks in response. I’ve explored this problem in the past, as have others. I’ve continued that journey, and want to share some of my latest thoughts on how we can explain permaculture to others and where it fits into a larger picture.
Just as permaculture helps umbrella many seemingly unrelated disciplines and places them into a larger context, we can understand permaculture better by seeing where it lies, in turn, in its own larger context. Much of the difficulty and confusion around permaculture stems from its protean nature: It can be many things to many people. It’s been called a philosophy, a movement, a design approach, a set of techniques, a practice, a worldview, a land use ethic, a science, a pseudoscience, and even a religion.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
A STEP TOWARDS TRANSFORMATION
A STEP TOWARDS TRANSFORMATION
In Reading, the United States’ second poorest city, the residents’ group Permacultivate is practicing and preaching local food production.
As you enter the 2,500-foot greenhouse, you immediately notice the large 300-gallon plastic tanks to the left. A few steps closer, you can see the tilapia swimming around and realize that water is circulating to nourish the vast beds of basil, lettuce, tomatoes, and other starter plants. In the heart of Reading, Pennsylvania, the second poorest city in the United States, the Reading Roots Urban Farm project was hatched by a small group of local residents committed to charting a sustainable course for their post-industrial city.
“Five years ago a group of us got together and envisioned an effort of bringing together people around food and community. We have been evolving ever since,” says Brian Twyman, a lifelong Reading resident and social worker by trade who is passionate about exposing urban youth to ideas about the food and waste system. He credits Neil Brantley as the major catalyst for Permacultivate. Neil was the type of visionary that spreads positivity in all he touches, combined with an incredible talent for transforming the urban landscape with a minimal amount of resources. Brantley wanted to empower people through increasing their food security. The two teamed up as guerrilla gardeners who scoured the city, reclaiming blighted parcels by cleaning them up and turning them into open community gardens and green spaces. Early on, they weren’t worried about property rights – they wanted action.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Climate Mash
The Climate Mash
Our favorite subjects for this blog are climate change, energy and civilization collapse. We spend equal amounts of time describing the remedies for these evils — permaculture, ecovillage, biochar, and carbon farming, for instance, because we hold out a sliver of hope humanity still might be able to redirect our otherwise dismal prospects.
Malcolm X said “tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” Much of our obsession about knowing in advance what is coming has to do with fear. We feel insecure about the future. We sense a chill wind blowing, a storm approaching. It is visceral. It is in the zeitgeist. No one has to speak of it, we all … just … know. Can we find a safe place? Can we lay in some supplies? What about our loved ones? What about our previous life, possessions, skills, interests?
But to prepare we first need to know. What are we talking about? Can we know, even in rough outlines? And if we get that right, can we do anything now that would change the outcome to something more to our liking?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
From Monoculture to Permaculture
From Monoculture to Permaculture.
When Warren Brush bought a run down orchard near Ventura, California, he knew he was in for the ride of his life transforming it into a Permaculture farm. From an original monoculture persimmon, apple and avocado orchard, it’s a risky challenge to turn all this around and announce you are now also running a creamery and a heritage pig system and a farm stall and then there are the walnuts and the orchards and… well, you get the idea. There are a lot of things happening here and you are not to sure what you are looking at when you walk around Casitas Valley Farm.
Warren’s farm is all about diversity and multiple functions that lead to security. Imagine many connecting wheels within wheels that drive the system. The end result is a farm that gets better soil fertility with age and remains economically viable even if one harvest is bad and one wheel happens to fall off that year. This train keeps rolling along. It’s like this simplistic chart below. This is one wheel that drives the system. There are many more interconnecting wheels that help keep everything on track.
7 Things You Should Know About Permaculture – Verge Permaculture
7 Things You Should Know About Permaculture – Verge Permaculture.
What is permaculture? For those of you who’ve only heard of the term in passing, and ever for you seasoned “permies” who struggle to explain this exciting (and sometimes life-changing) idea to others, here’s the gist in 7 points:
1. Permaculture is a Design System That Uses Ecosystem Principles to Meet Human Needs
Permaculture is an ecological systems theory. As author Toby Hemenway notes, while conventional thinking asks how we can meet our own needs, permaculture asks the broader question of how we can meet our needs while also taking ecosystem health into account.
Permaculture looks closely at how ecosystems work and condenses those functions into twelve general principles. These in turn inform our design decisions about shelter, food, water, energy, and waste management. They also rest on two fundamental assumptions:
- Humans are a part of the planet and cannot be separated from it.
- Humans can be a positive force that leaves things better than we find them.
If we are willing to learn from and work with nature, we can make smarter decisions to inform how we live. These choices can prevent the wasteful use of fossil fuels or the unnecessary need for environmentally and economically costly foods. They can help us avoid living in areas prone to fires, droughts, and floods. They can help us tread more lightly on the environment while saving us money and keeping us healthier and happier in the long-term.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Permaculture, a Vision of the Post-Oil World
Permaculture, a Vision of the Post-Oil World.
Originally published in French as the Preface to the French language edition of David Holmgren’s Permaculture Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability. (Translated by Eugene Moreau and edited by David Holmgren)
More than an agricultural technology, permaculture is a vision of the societies of tomorrow, ours, which will be confronted with the evolution of energy and climate systems. Permaculture is not only another way to garden: it is another way of thinking about and acting on the world, a global philosophical and concrete change, at the same time as a drawing together of strategies of resilience in the face of radical transformations, if not collapses, which are presenting themselves.
The wealth and economic growth of the industrial world rest on unprecedented extraction of enormous quantities of fossil fuels, which have taken some hundreds of millions of years to develop in the depths of the Earth. We have used some of this precious energy source to increase even more the consumption of resources in unsustainable proportions. The consequences of this overexploitation are being revealed as access to cheap fossil fuels is in decline. David Holmgren underlines the fact that the squandering of so much capital would lead any enterprise into bankruptcy (collapse).
Permaculture offers a break with this waste of energywhich is based on an erroneous understanding of wealth. One of its fundamental principles affirms the need to capture and store energy out of concern for the long term. In particular, it is focused on how to maximise the capture of energy from photosynthesis. The laws of thermodynamics have not escaped permaculture. In the second principle, speaking of capturing and storing energy, David Holmgren comes back to the law of entropy: in the universe, energy is dispersed from centres of concentration and tends to dilution. High quality energy is degraded into lesser quality energy thus losing its usefulness. This tendency to dissipation and dispersion affects all systems, living or dead. Living systems are organised in such a way that they maximise their capacities for transforming and storing energy: only the most efficient emerge unscathed in the course of evolution.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Additions to a Food Forest | Peak Prosperity
Additions to a Food Forest | Peak Prosperity.
Red mulberry trees are one of my favorite trees. They make fantastic additions to any permaculture garden or farm. I actually have two mature mulberry trees on my property, which is great, but I also planted half a dozen in my food forest.
Mulberry Tree
Planting Zones:
Mulberry trees in general are found in most planting zones, from the tropics to the very cold temperate. The Red Mulberry that we have here in zone 6 Pennsylvania is an unbelievably adaptable tree that can be found as far north as Canada, and as far south as Florida.
Growth Habit:
A full grown Red Mulberry can grow 30-45 feet tall, which seems tall, but it is considered a small tree.
Fruit:
The best part of The Red Mulberry is the excellent sweet berries that they produce. The berries mature in early summer and tend to hang around for 3 or 4 weeks. Mature trees are loaded with berries that resemble blackberries, but taste much better in my opinion. To me they taste like a sweet blackberry, but there is something different about a mulberry that is unlike any other berries that I have tried. People use the berries fresh, to make wine, pies, cobblers, and preserves.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Climate Crisis and the Pursuit of Happiness: Reflections on Community Solutions Conference – Transition Milwaukee
Last weekend I had the privilege of attending the Sixth Community Solutions Conference: “Climate Crisis—Curtailment and Community—and The Power of Individual Action,” held in Yellow Springs Ohio by The Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions. To those not familiar with permaculture, the work of Community Solutions or for that matter The Post Carbon Institute, the most remarkable thing about the conference was what was not included—namely, the usual salvo of smart-grids and breakthroughs in efficiency, panel after panel celebrating the decreasing price of solar and wind, the false promise of carbon capture or a new knowledge economy, or, if necessary (so that we might continue to live as if there is no tomorrow) the prospect of blasting the tops of mountain tops, this time to fill the air with sun-blocking dust. There was no suggestion, here, that we might magically maintain our unsustainable way of life with nary an inconvenience; the message was far more optimistic and uplifting than that.
Any foolish hope that we might collectively address climate change in a way that does not involve massive lifestyle-changes was disposed of in Richard Heinberg’s opening talk, which highlighted the peaking of world conventional oil production, the limits of tight oil, and the fact that renewable energy just won’t behave like coal, oil, and natural gas, no matter how much we may wish it would. Pat Murphy added to this a significant discussion about the diminishing returns that we might expect from efficiency and thus the necessity of re-engineering our own practices and demands rather than the planet itself. The rest of the conference was geared mainly towards personal and community choices we can make. While some of these changes did had a technological aspect, inner-change, will, and commitment received far more attention. The power of moral reckoning and a commitment to doing what is right on a planet that is hot, crowded, and certainly not flat, were highlighted by Jim Merkel’s rousing and highly-personal account of his model of radical simplicity. No one was suggesting that politics don’t matter, nor that our current societal values might be compatible with humanity’s long term survival. But the stronger emphasis, this weekend, spoke to the belief that this group of activists and aspirants might “be the change they want to see.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Great Change: What Rough Beast Is This?
The Great Change: What Rough Beast Is This?.
We are recently returned from the Mother Earth News Fair in Kansas where we spoke of the promise of permaculture and carbon farming to reverse global weirding. We are always happier after attending these events because they are so grounded in real skills and vocations and full of hope for the future.
Bryan Welsh, publisher of Mother Earth News, Utne Readerand Grit and author of Beautiful and Abundant: Building the World We Want, kicked off the event with an inspiring talk on the power of vision, and how to get it going in society.
Is it hopium? Are optimists only deluded? We don’t think so.
Lately some of the most sane and foresighted preppers we know are beginning to question their own assumptions, if not their sanity. Oil production did peak in 2006, after all. All conventional liquid fuels, including biofuels, peaked shortly thereafter. This is 2014. We just filled up at the pump and paid less than $2.80 per gallon. Whatever happened to The End of Suburbia?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Review: Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist
Review: Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist.
