Journey into Permaculture

Thursday night I was at a 2 hr lecture, an introduction to Permaculture. Permaculture is a term coined by Bill Mollison; it's a design system, which takes into account patterns, functionality and ethics in its design. It could be large-scale or small-scale. It could be a way of designing your garden layout, it could be a way of building a house onto a property in a way that fits how you will use the house and property in an integrated way, connecting you to the larger community as well... it could be about designing subdivisions and villages and even larger-scale projects. It's about the interconnectedness between us as humans and nature/the environment we are surrounded by.

What I love about permaculture is that it is not based on a scarcity model; rather, it's about abundance. It's about the exchange of services and relationships and connections. I really like that the focus is not on the things themselves, it's about the connections, the patterns, between things. It's about making connections to maximize efficiency, and all of this, the whole principle its based on, is ethics. Permaculture places care of the Earth, care of people, and return of surplus to meet these two ends above, for example, unlimited or exponential growth. In my view, permaculture is about positivism and cooperation between all.

A book I really enjoyed which gets into this whole design idea is A Pattern Language. I can't remember the authors, but it's really a great book.

I hadn't considered that the ocean is like the sink of the world. All our pollutants and toxins end up in the ocean ultimately. We could be thinking of the entire planet as one big closed loop, rather than an open loop which is our common social view. (Does all of this make sense?) I hadn't considered that the Scotch Broom in our yard, or the salmon berry bushes which threaten to overtake areas I want "open", are actually filling a niche in the environment. There not problems; they're solutions. The Earth is trying to heal the land, the soil, by placing pioneer species into the damaged area (and scotch broom is a legumous pioneer)...

Another concept within permaculture is that the longest path for any resource through the system before leaving is the most productive. So, for example, we want to maximize our water (or energy, as another example) as it travels throughout the system before it leaves the system. Interesting. Very very interesting. One priority list in designing could be: water first, access next, and then structures last. (Rather than looking at a possible site, planning the structures, then access to things like water as an afterthought, for example). Shouldn't we consider harmonizing our lives, our structures with the land, with the patterns of the landscape around us?

Here's one way of looking at things:
Interactive diversity leads to stability. Stability leads to fertility. Fertility leads to sustainable productivity. Productivity leads to a designed sustainable economy.

So I guess I'd ask, how do we live our lives within space, within time, within place? Permaculture offers us a very positive, possible solution. :)