Everyday Permaculture

In addition to my apprenticeship, I am also researching for my thesis, engaging in family time, and working part-time. My off-farm time allows me to digest my permaculture experiences. It also has me constantly searching for connections between my many worlds.

As someone without an agricultural or botanical background, I long for an inner or 'natural' understanding of the land and permaculture. It's been interesting to use metaphor, from my other lives, to make permaculture familiar. I understand through what is 'natural' to me. In this exploration, I find that the comparisons are dangerously easy. They almost make themselves--maybe I understand permaculture after all...

You don't have to be a farmer or a permaculturist to use, or at least consider the principles and ethics in daily life.  In Bill Mollison's Introduction to Permaculture, he almost immediately lists the Permaculture ethics and suggests how to implement those ethics. I've chosen one with which to relate1:

"Think about the long-term consequences of your actions. Plan for sustainability"

On the farm we think of chemical use and crop choice. In my learning approach, it is the immediate treatment of those around you. "Don't burn bridges", if you will. Mistreat the land, it fails to feed; mistreat a friend and lose the warm and fuzzies of friendship.

David Holmgren's design principles in Permaculture Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability provides a few more possible life comparisons2 :

Observe and Interact

In permaculture, we watch systems and see where they go and how they grow before committing to any one method of interaction. Live in an apartment? You may observe how the sun hits the wall in choosing decor or how the counter slopes before drying dishes upon it. Outside the apartment, among a new group of people, you observe the group's behavior and choose actions and reactions based on those observations, whether for self-preservation, blending, or career purposes. If you want to keep a [certain] job, you observe the dress code and wear a pinstripe 3-piece suit, like your co-workers, instead of a 2-piece polka dot swimming suit.

Use Small and Slow Solutions

On the farm we plant onions amidst more vulnerable vegetables, using the onions' aroma to confuse passing pests before hastily prescribing chemical warfare. Where there are weeds, we start small. Again, we do not jump to chemical means. And even before pulling the weeds' roots, we simply chop and drop. Chopping and Dropping leaves the soil undisturbed . The fallen leaves trap moisture, curb future weeds, and offer nutrients to the soil. So, Chop & Drop! 

I'm just having a little trouble with Chop and Drop's metaphor....

References
1. Mollison, B., and D. Holmgren. 1978. Permaculture one. Morebank, NSW Australia: Transworld Publications.
2. Holmgren, D. 2002. Permaculture: principles & pathways beyond sustainability: Chelsea Green Pub Co.

Copyright © 2011 Jacquelyn Marie Schneller.

The No Shame Summer of Skilling-up

Like most summers, mine has gotten away from me.
Nostalgically, I sifted through my journal to relive farm days of the past.
I was struck by the number of entries containing, titled, or themed skilling up. 
Skilling up means something different for everyone and depends on one's currents skills and their desired skills to up. Skilling up is relative. Skilling up, to me, means learning to work with the land as well as obtaining exposure to common sense skills. By living in-town with able and willing parents, machines, gadgets, and electronics, I somehow missed many basic skills. A 20-some year skill hiccup.

Glacial Lakes Permaculture recently offered a Permaculture Weekend. I was aware of the skilling up I needed, but it was at the weekend workshop that I truly experienced my skill inadequacies.  Permaculture is really for the well-rounded. It involves math, mapping (I was humbled by the amount of time it took me to draw a plot to scale), botany, seasonal foresight, critical thinking (both theoretical and practical), carpentry, gardening, livestock sensibilities, etc. A [talented] permaculturist is truly a 'Jack of All Trades'.  This is not to say that those of us suffering from a life of hiccups should leave permaculture to someone else. Instead of learning from lifestyle, we'll learn from immediate experience.

Luckily, my mentor is a patient and generous teacher. I've been lucky enough to: participate in the carpentry of a new shed; imagine, contour measure, and dig a pond; create and apply alternative mulching; build an espalier; and even learn and practice the simplest of gardening actions.

Masking skill-hiccups does no favors.
The key is: Ask Questions. Listen Carefully. Try it. No Shame.

okay, maybe a little shame..

Copyright © 2011 Jacquelyn Marie Schneller.

For strawberry ponds, that's why.

As I hurriedly gather practical experience. I distract myself from what I lack in horticulture, schnazzy design skills, and land by fixating on the comfortable--the abstract.  At this point, Permaculture comes to me through its ethics and design principles which will continue to serve as guides and reminders when I have the time, money, experience and means to exercise the practical.

In Permaculture's youth it was described as an, "integrated evolving system of perennial or self perpetuating plant and animal species useful to man."1. This definition is very applied, very agricultural. Which is fine, though I am relieved to live and learn the more holistic & human Permaculture of today.  The Permaculture beyond its first, basic definition is a resilient philosophy and lifestyle. Components of this lifestyle encourage and depend on each other. It is with these lifestyle ethics that I am currently engrossed.

Earlier I used the word fixate, I did so based on a particular frenzied
slobbery chomp upon a few words in David Holmgren's summary of the 12 design principles of Permaculture.
In Principle 3: Obtain a Yield "You can't work on an empty stomach", Holmgren reminds us that designs should, "provide for self-reliance at all levels [including the personal]..."2.
I read 'personal' so I dug a strawberry.

It's easy to get caught up in doom and launch into 'flight or farm' mode (choosing farm of course). It is while fearing the possibilities of eerie and urgent future happenings one [I] wonder, why? Why follow these design principles? Why till and toil? Why preach permaculture? Why boast of a sustainable [& smug?] system? My answer to these questions is conditional. If there isn't happiness, individually and among the community [at all levels] there is no reason to assemble a water catchment system.  If there isn't humor, there is no reason to build a composting toilet. If there isn't one person with enough joy to dig-draw a strawberry then there is no reason to dig a pond.

I am not suggesting hedonism. There is good, healthy pain in Permaculture. I am suggesting that despite dire days,  in a truly sustainable system there is room for fun and a need for non-judgmental kindness and guidance. Because I don't expect communities to respond well to pushes or pretentiousness. And because I can't work on an empty [for lack of a better term] soul.

At Glacial Lakes Permaculture, we are applying Permaculture practically by making use of the previously disappointing, currently soggy pasture by digging a pond. I apply Permaculture, personally, by first digging a strawberry.

Never dig alone

I like Permaculture berry much

Creative energy is not misspent. It is stored to fuel the mind & soul for future digs.

Copyright © 2011 Jacquelyn Marie Schneller.


References
1. Mollison, B., and D. Holmgren. 1978. Permaculture one. Morebank, NSW Australia: Transworld Publications.
2. Holmgren, D. 2002. Permaculture: principles & pathways beyond sustainability: Chelsea Green Pub Co.