Last month we realized the back third of our 1/2 acre yard was getting a bit out of control. Upon the encouragement of local scythe master Brian Kerkvliet of Inspiration Farm, we decided to host a “Sunday Scythe Social” to get it cleaned up. Angela and I give a hearty thanks to Brian, Kevin, and Josh!
The team is assembled: myself, Josh, Kevin, and Brian, and Angela (taking the photo, not pictured)
Brian provides a brief demo on proper technique
We didn’t get photos of all of us working…we were too busy getting the job done. The discussion continues during the “Social,” as Brian shows “the finer points of this sharp tool.”
Brian demonstrates how to properly peen a scythe blade
Here is Angela, the photographer of the other photos. This was taken later, where you can see the piles of cut grass
Another photo of Angela scything…just because
In the weeks that have followed, I’ve continued to scythe as a Sunday morning practice. It’s very nice to be outside on a quiet Sunday morning. No sound of power tools, just the quiet “swish” of the scythe blade doing its work.
This is the back corner I worked on this morning.
I even scythed the front yard today.
It’s been pretty dry, so the grass is staying low, but there were some tall weeds to bring down.
Your reward for reading this post is this photo by Angela of a majestic deer that recently visited the neighborhood. Fortunately our fences are keeping the deer out of our garden.
Permaculture pioneer Toby Hemenway, passed away earlier this week (Dec. 20, 2016). On the day he passed, it was announced Permaculure News that he had pancreatic cancer and was in hospice care.
We were fortunate to host Toby for a presentation he gave to our community in the fall of 2015 (around the same time he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, apparently). We found him to be warm, kind, humble, intelligent. Best known for his classic “Gaia’s Garden,” he was now promoting a new, arguably as important, book: The Permaculture City.
In 2005, Su and I were hosted by Toby in Portland, Oregon during our 6-month teaching and study tour of North America. I remember him as earnest and modest as he maintained a passionate commitment to permaculture ideas as he made the transition from rural self-reliant living to applying permaculture in the city. His move back to urban living was emblematic of the learnings of our generation about the limits to rural self-sufficiency.
Here’s a reposting of a blog I wrote last year before Toby’s visit…
The Permaculture City: Regenerative Design for Urban, Suburban, and Town Resilience by Toby Hemenway is a welcome articulation of permaculture applied to cities.
For those of you who’ve read Gaia’s Garden, Toby Hemenway’s first permaculture book (which is the best-selling permaculture book in the world), you know that Hemenway writes in a straight-forward style that is easy to follow and digest, and a pleasure to read. While Gaia’s Garden was a practical permaculture book applied to home-scale gardening, the new book emphasizes from the very beginning that permaculture is not to be understood as a style of organic gardening.
He writes, “Urban permaculture is only slightly about gardening, and mostly about people. The human ecosystem that is the city is rich, and it includes much more than food. To understand, work within, and enhance that ecosystem, we need to understand not just how we feed ourselves in cities and towns but how we meet all our needs. How do we build, move about, use water and energy, feel secure, make decisions, solve problems, sustain ourselves, develop policies, live together?
…We’re not just gardening plants but people, neighborhoods, and even cultures.”
Hemenway defines permaculture as:
“applied ecology; that is, it is a design approach based on finding and applying to our own creations some of the guiding axioms at work in natural ecosystems.”
And as:
“a set of decision-making tools, based on natural systems, for arriving at regenerative solutions to design challenges of all kinds.”
Contents
Introduction: Looking at Cities through a Permaculture Lens (read online here)
1. The Surprisingly Green City (read online here)
2. Permaculture Design with an Urban Twist
3. Designing the Urban Home Garden
4. Techniques for the Urban Home Garden
5. Strategies for Gardening in Community
6. Water Wisdom: Metropolitan Style
7. Energy Solutions for Homes and Communities
8. Livelihood, Real Wealth, and Becoming Valuable
9. Placemaking and the Empowered Community
10. Tools for Designing Resilient Cities
“Many people who are searching for a more fulfilling life, wanting to reduce their ecological footprint and buld resilience for uncertain futures, grasp that permaculture might be part of the solution but are often unsure how it applies to their particular situation. For residents of towns and cities in the modern affluent world, The Permaculture City shows how permaculture design makes common sense.”
– David Holmgren
If you’re in the Pacific Northwest, come out to hear Toby speak about the new book. 9/9 Eugene, 9/10 Corvallis, 9/11 Portland, 9/12 Portland, 9/13 Olympia, 9/14 here in Bellingham (our Transition Whatcom event listing is here, and on Facebook here), 9/15 Seattle, and 9/16 Ashland.
More info: http://tobyhemenway.com/speaking/
“To me this book and the interview you just heard are vital to changing the conversation about permaculture away from just the landscape and growing food, as these are problems that are technically solved. We know how to raise up plants from seed, cutting, or graft. We understand the techniques to use in a wide variety of situations in any climate, even if that means making modifications to the land through ponds or swales, or creating physical structures such as greenhouses or stone walls as thermal mass. Conventional and organic agriculture have a lot of information for us to pull from, as do the rapidly growing fields of agro-forestry and agro-ecology. Where things go sideways is in reaching a larger audience with these ideas, not just in mainstream culture, but also in the permaculture community at large.
…But now, 40 years since the beginning we need to go back and dig through Mollison’s big black book of permaculture and remember Chapter 14: Strategies for an Alternative Nation. We need to learn how to build and work in community with one another. Now that the thorny pioneers have blazed a trail into the depths of the jungles, plains, and cities, and there set down roots, we have flourished in the shade of their experience and the work that came before us long enough. Now the specialists can come in. The growers, the builders, the organizers, and the communicators, to fill in the gaps and expand to reach all aspects of human life. We have the potential for permanent human agriculture, now let’s work on building that permanent human culture, and retain the aspects of civilization that matter to us.”
The Permaculture City: Regenerative Design for Urban, Suburban, and Town Resilience by Toby Hemenway is a welcome articulation of permaculture applied to cities.
For those of you who’ve read Gaia’s Garden, Toby Hemenway’s first permaculture book (which is the best-selling permaculture book in the world), you know that Hemenway writes in a straight-forward style that is easy to follow and digest, and a pleasure to read. While Gaia’s Garden was a practical permaculture book applied to home-scale gardening, the new book emphasizes from the very beginning that permaculture is not to be understood as a style of organic gardening.
He writes, “Urban permaculture is only slightly about gardening, and mostly about people. The human ecosystem that is the city is rich, and it includes much more than food. To understand, work within, and enhance that ecosystem, we need to understand not just how we feed ourselves in cities and towns but how we meet all our needs. How do we build, move about, use water and energy, feel secure, make decisions, solve problems, sustain ourselves, develop policies, live together?
…We’re not just gardening plants but people, neighborhoods, and even cultures.”
Hemenway defines permaculture as:
“applied ecology; that is, it is a design approach based on finding and applying to our own creations some of the guiding axioms at work in natural ecosystems.”
And as:
“a set of decision-making tools, based on natural systems, for arriving at regenerative solutions to design challenges of all kinds.”
Contents
Introduction: Looking at Cities through a Permaculture Lens (read online here)
1. The Surprisingly Green City (read online here)
2. Permaculture Design with an Urban Twist
3. Designing the Urban Home Garden
4. Techniques for the Urban Home Garden
5. Strategies for Gardening in Community
6. Water Wisdom: Metropolitan Style
7. Energy Solutions for Homes and Communities
8. Livelihood, Real Wealth, and Becoming Valuable
9. Placemaking and the Empowered Community
10. Tools for Designing Resilient Cities
“Many people who are searching for a more fulfilling life, wanting to reduce their ecological footprint and buld resilience for uncertain futures, grasp that permaculture might be part of the solution but are often unsure how it applies to their particular situation. For residents of towns and cities in the modern affluent world, The Permaculture City shows how permaculture design makes common sense.”
– David Holmgren
If you’re in the Pacific Northwest, come out to hear Toby speak about the new book. 9/9 Eugene, 9/10 Corvallis, 9/11 Portland, 9/12 Portland, 9/13 Olympia, 9/14 here in Bellingham (our Transition Whatcom event listing is here, and on Facebook here), 9/15 Seattle, and 9/16 Ashland.
More info: http://tobyhemenway.com/speaking/
“To me this book and the interview you just heard are vital to changing the conversation about permaculture away from just the landscape and growing food, as these are problems that are technically solved. We know how to raise up plants from seed, cutting, or graft. We understand the techniques to use in a wide variety of situations in any climate, even if that means making modifications to the land through ponds or swales, or creating physical structures such as greenhouses or stone walls as thermal mass. Conventional and organic agriculture have a lot of information for us to pull from, as do the rapidly growing fields of agro-forestry and agro-ecology. Where things go sideways is in reaching a larger audience with these ideas, not just in mainstream culture, but also in the permaculture community at large.
…But now, 40 years since the beginning we need to go back and dig through Mollison’s big black book of permaculture and remember Chapter 14: Strategies for an Alternative Nation. We need to learn how to build and work in community with one another. Now that the thorny pioneers have blazed a trail into the depths of the jungles, plains, and cities, and there set down roots, we have flourished in the shade of their experience and the work that came before us long enough. Now the specialists can come in. The growers, the builders, the organizers, and the communicators, to fill in the gaps and expand to reach all aspects of human life. We have the potential for permanent human agriculture, now let’s work on building that permanent human culture, and retain the aspects of civilization that matter to us.”
Today’s installment of our holiday smorgasbord features an approach to the environmental crisis and the energy crisis and the economic crisis that I’m very thankful for…Permaculture.
Permaculture, A vision of a post-oil world
Yves Cochet
Yves Cochet has written the preface to the French edition of David Holmgren’s Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability. Yves Cochet was a minister for the environment in the French national government, and is now an elected member of Euro parliament for the Greens.
In his own Preface in the original, Holmgren was very clear that “Permaculture is a creative design response to a world of declining energy and resource availability…” and that it “was predicated on the likelihood of some degree of collapse and breakdown in technology, economics and even society…”
In my copy of the book I have a star by this paragraph:
Insofar as permaculture is an effective response to the limitations on use of energy and natural resources, it will move from its current status as “alternative response to environmental crisis” to the social and economic mainstream of the post-industrial era. Whether it will be called permaculture or not is a secondary matter.
– David Holmgren
In the new French edition, Cochet shows a keen understanding of Holmgren’s thought. It is clear, it is succinct, and I think very well captures David Holmgren’s message on the essence of Permaculture, and I highly recommend taking a look at the English translation. 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 permaculture draws together strategies of resilience in the face of imminent radical transformations, if not collapses.
– Yves Cochet
Download the entire translated preface from David Holmgren’s website here: Permaculture, a vision of a post-oil world. And join me today in giving thanks for Permaculture!
Photos below from Day 1 of this year’s Skillshare Faire, held just north of Bellingham, in Ferndale Washington. Come on out for Day 2 tomorrow (Aug. 24, 2014), beginning with the Northwest Permaculture Convergence Annual Meeting from 9:30 to 11:30, and various skillsharings from 11 am to 4pm, including (just to name a few): Dowsing, Homeopathic Survival Skills, Seed Cleaning and Processing, Soapmaking, Winter Food Storage Techniques, How to Make a Rain Barrel, Backyard Chickens, Swashbuckling for Kids, The Alternative Economy, Appropriate Use of Hand Tools (scythes and more), Bike Maintenance, Raising Rabbits, Commercial Uses of Hemp, Making Buckskin, Sun Dials, Aquaponic Gardening, and Spinning and Combing Wool.
And then extend the learning with the Permaculture Living and Learning Seminars at Inspiration Farm! Monday, Aug. 25th: 12pm until dusk: Extended farm tour, potluck and tele-vision and music around the fire. Tuesday, Aug. 26: 10am to 5pm: Choose from 8 different workshops (including yours truly on PatternDynamics)! Get all the info at Inspirationfarm.com
Transition Whatcom, in northwest Washington state (Bellingham and surrounds), has a unique series of events coming up in August, and we welcome participation from all friends in the region (and beyond).
Skillshare Faire, 2012
The 3rd Annual Whatcom Skillshare Faire (Aug. 23-24) is a fun, family oriented festival about teaching and learning all kinds of useful & practical resilience skills. Our August-sunny Faire this year will have two days of family-friendly Workshops and Demonstrations, plus a great lineup of local Musical Talent, tasty local Food Offerings and the ever-popular local brewery Beer Garden and Fermentation Station. Watch the promo video here, and see the Peak Moment TV episode filmed at last year’s Faire here.
Skillshare Faire, 2012
This year we are pleased that the Northwest Permaculture Convergence is occurring within and alongside our Skillshare Faire! The Convergence will have its own tent, which will host the permaculture workshops and demos at the Skillshare, and will hold its annual meeting on Sunday the 24th at the Faire.
Feet in communion at Inspiration Farm PDC
For those who are ready for the full-meal-deal of permaculture, we invite you to attend the Permaculture Design Certificate course at Inspiration Farm (just north of Bellingham), running August 17 – 29th. This course is being designed around, and will include at no extra charge, participation at the Skillshare Faire and Convergence! [Registration deadline for this PDC is coming up soon on July 15!] Watch the Peak Moment TV episodes filmed at Inspiration Farm here.
More details below for each of these offerings:
1) Permaculture Design Certification course at Inspiration Farm!
Be part of the solution! Learn a skill set for uncertain times
Registration for the PDC will close on the 15th of July so don’t delay, sign up today!
Extensive 72 hour Curriculum Includes: Design Methodologies ~ Site Mapping ~ Ethics ~ Design Principles and Goals ~ Pattern Recognition ~ Natural Cycles and Processes ~ Plant Identification ~ Wild crafting ~ Micro climate ~ Tropical and Dry land Farming ~ Indigenous Land Management ~ Natural Building ~ Forest Gardening ~ Mushroom Growing ~ Myco-Remediation ~ Renewable Energy ~ Passive and Active Solar Design ~ Soil Ecology ~ Compost Systems ~ Aquaculture ~ Animals in the Landscape ~ Plant Propagation ~ Slow Food ~ Urban Permaculture Strategies ~ Graywater Harvesting ~ Emergency Preparation ~ Appropriate Technology ~ Seed Saving ~ Nursery Set-up ~ Food Preservation ~ Local Economics ~ Currency and Community Structures ~ Non-Violent Communication ~ Pattern Dynamics…
Featured instructors Include: Brian Kerkvliet, Co-steward of Inspiration Farm and Permaculture Research Institute Certified permaculture designer Sarah Sullivan, co-founder of Hawaii SEED and director of the award winning school garden and scratch kitchen program David MacLeod, from Transition Whatcom, and the first individual outside of Australia certified to lead PatternDynamics workshops, recognizing, integrating, and balancing natural patterns that show up in human systems.
With special guest presenters, Doug Bullock, Washington’s premier permaculture designer and teacher, Larry Dobson, Northern Light Research and Development, Alex Winstead from Cascadia Mushrooms,
and more nationally recognized and local experts to be announced.
Courses held at Inspiration Farm an established 12 ac. Permaculture / Biodynamic farm setting! Enrollment includes free camping space and prepared wholesome beyond organic farm meals.
Paul Wheaton, of Permies.com, has named Inspiration Farm as the premier Permaculture Farm of the Pacific Northwest. You can learn much more in the Cascadia Forum at Permies.com here.
Class meets 9am to 5pm Additional Hands-On Farm Opportunities throughout the course. Evening Permaculture and Eco-Films
Space is limited- first 10 students- $1295; regular tuition- $1395
Registration will close on the 15th of July so don’t delay, sign up today.
Some work-trade positions and payment plans available.
A great way to fund your PDC course fee and support the global work of Permaculture! We The Trees is a crowd funded stacking of functions, a win -win-win!
Attending a PDC is one of the best investments in future abundance you can make.For more info. and registration: Visit inspirationfarm.com or Call 360-398-7061
See also the informative forum discussion at Permies.com here and view the Peak Moment TV episodes filmed at Inspiration Farm here!
2) Whatcom Skillshare Faire! August 23rd & 24 – Two days with camping!
“Share your skills – Trade your wares”The Whatcom SkillShare Faire – a fun festival about teaching and learning all kinds of useful & practical resilience skills. Years ago, lots of people knew how to repair & sharpen tools, make a braided rug, raise chickens, make soap, build a fence, make simple toys, & much more.
The goal of SkillShare is to help revive those skills, showcase some new ones, and provide a place where all of us can come learn from people more experienced in these crafts and trades.
Our August-sunny Faire this year will have two days of family-friendly Workshops and Demonstrations, plus a great lineup of local Musical Talent, tasty local Food Offerings and the ever-popular local brewery Beer Garden and Fermentation Station.Lots more information at our website! http://whatcomskillsharefaire. org
(Camping scheduled through Hovander Park – see our website for details)
3)The Northwest Permaculture Convergence Board is happy to announce a new partnership (umbrellad-er-ship) for the 2014 season.
We encourage all our members to attend the Whatcom Skillshare Faire happening August 23-24 outside of Bellingham. We will have a ‘Permaculture’ area of the fair and on Sunday morning will hold our annual meeting there.
The Skillshare is a project of Transition Whatcom, and the worldwide Transition movement began with a Permaculture course! (toot toot)
Also, we are looking for several hardy volunteers to help with setup and breakdown of our area on Friday and Sunday evening. If interested in that, please send an email to volunteer@nwpermaculture.org.
For many reasons, we are tickled with this partnership. Not the least of these reasons being that many wonderful permaculture events are happening this summer!
David Holmgren, co-originator of Permaculture, and systems analyst Nicole Foss have begun their summer tour of Australia, which is being billed as “Strategies for a Changing Economy: Survive and Thrive” (click here for dates and here for further details about the tour). Foss will outline the links between the converging crises that include economic contraction, peak energy and geopolitical stress. She will also share her thoughts on the implications for how it will impact everyday lives and will offer practical solutions. David Holmgren will outline practical strategies drawn from 30 years of permaculture to help households and communities survive, thrive and contribute to a better world. Holmgren will also present an update of his well-known and popular “Retrofitting the Suburbs for Sustainability” presentation:
Returning to Aussie St, David shows how the permaculture makeover and behaviour change is progressing through the Second Great Depression. Aussie St is not only surviving but thriving through the “dumpers” that property bubble collapse, climate chaos and geopolitical energy shocks have unleashed on the lucky country. An endearing, amusing and gutsy story of hope for in-situ adaptation by the majority of Australians living in our towns and suburbs.
Reading about the announcement of this Foss and Holmgreen tour, I was reminded of an observation I’ve had that when people really get educated about this triple threat of climate chaos, energy depletion, and economic instability; and when they seriously consider the options for how to respond; that permaculture very often comes up as the number 1 recommended approach.
Let’s review just a few.
Energy Bulletin – Adam Fenderson and Bart Anderson
Resilience.org‘s predecessor was the venerable Energy Bulletin, co-founded in 2004 by Adam Fenderson as a clearinghouse for information on peak-oil. Adam clearly latched on to Permaculture early on. He did some excellent interviews with David Holmgren that are still very worthwhile to listen to (check out transcript here). He then changed his name to “Adam Grubb” and resigned to pursue Permaculture in more depth. He became co-founder of the Permablitz network and director of Very Edible Gardens. Longtime editor of Energy Bulletin/Resilience, Bart Anderson is also a proponent of permaculture.
Richard Heinberg
Richard Heinberg is one of the most longest standing and well respected “peak oil educators.” When you read his work, note how often he recommends permaculture and Transition Towns as a response. Heinberg also toured with Holmgren in 2006, and practices permaculture at his home (as demonstrated in this Peak Moment TV episode.)
Hopkins was also already a permaculture educator when he and his students experienced what he calls their “End of Suburbia moment” in 2004. The Transition movement was born as a permaculture “energy descent” design plan – social permaculture in action. As Hopkins said in an interview, “It [Transition] is my attempt at lifting permaculture principles onto a whole other level of effectiveness and relevance. We try and integrate permaculture principles into the whole process, and they certainly underpin the work that I do. I recommend Holmgren’s book to anyone who is interested in all this.” In his review of Holmgren’s book, Hopkins wrote, “This book is the clearest elucidation of what this new paradigm might look like since his permaculture co-originator Bill Mollison’s seminal ‘Permaculture, a Designers Manual’ was published in 1988. It is no exaggeration to call this the most important book published in the last 15 years.” Chris Martenson
Martenson developed his highly regarded “Crash Course” as a response to energy depletion and economic instability. Martenson found his way to “Financial Permaculture” and more recently Permaculture has had a more pronounced presence on his ‘Peak Prosperity” website – for example, see his post on Permaculture and the 8 Forms of Capital with Ethan Roland, and the excellent discussion with Toby Hemenway: Explaining Permaculture .
Nicole Foss
Posting as “Stoneleigh” on The Oil Drum and then The Automatic Earth, Nicole Foss has a well-earned reputation for deep analysis, penetrating wisdom, and a unique ability to connect the dots using her complexity and systems thinking skills. In the last few years she too seems to be increasingly mentioning permaculture, and participating with permaculture teachers and courses, culminating in the current tour with David Holmgren.
I am increasingly involved with permaculture (teaching it in Belize this February), as it represents one of the most important paths towards building workable life-support systems in our era of limits to growth. We are rapidly running out of options as we deplete our natural capital worldwide. While we badly need to make some informed hard choices, we collectively do not, as our consumptive system has tremendous inertia. As we reach the limits that lie in our not too distant future, permaculture can be of tremendous use, for those who implement it, in mitigating the impacts and facilitating rebuilding from the bottom-up.
– Nicole Foss
We could mention many others, but the point is made. The next question is – what is it about Permaculture that makes it so attractive as a response to the challenges we’re faced with today?
First, it can be said that Permaculture was designed specifically for declining availability and use of fossil fuels. In the Preface to his 2002 book, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, David Holmgren wrote very clearly that permaculture, from the very beginning was founded on fundamental assumptions about the environmental crisis, the ongoing impacts of global industrial society, the limitations due to the energy laws that govern the material universe, the role of fossil fuels in enabling the industrial era, and the inevitable depletion of fossil fuels – likely sooner rather than later.
Howard T. Odum
Holmgren also acknowledges “a clear and special debt to the published work of American ecologist Howard Odum.” Odum was the first listed reference in the first permaculture book (Permaculture One), and is referenced over and over in the 2002 book, which is dedicated to the memory of Odum, who passed Sept. 11, 2002. This is significant, because Howard T. Odum spent much of his life work on the topic of energy and the inevitable decline of fossil fuel availability. In 1994, Holmgren wrote:
Odum was one of the leading ecologists who developed a systems approach to the study of human/environment interactions. He uses energy as a currency to compare and quantify the whole spectrum of natural and man-made elements and processes.
In Holmgren’s 2002 Permaculture book, he states that “Permaculture is a creative design response to a world of declining energy and resource availability.”
Other features Holmgren names offer additional reasons permaculture is being recognized frequently as appropriate response to the current state of affairs. Permaculture:
gives priority to using existing wealth to rebuilding natural capital…
emphasizes bottom-up “redesign” processes…
more fundamentally was predicated on the likelihood of some degree of collapse and breakdown…
sees pre-industrial sustainable societies as providing models that reflect the more general system design principles observable in nature and relevant to post-industrial systems.
Here’s an interview with Holmgren on Permaculture and Peak Oil, recorded circa 2007, I think. He covers many of the most important features of his thinking in relation to energy descent.
Hopefully it is becoming obvious that permaculture is much more than a quirky form of organic gardening. It is when people come to this realization that they start to see the real possibilities and potentialities.
Now we come to that pesky problem of trying to define “permaculture.” Holmgren, again:
“…I see permaculture as the use of systems thinking and design principles that provide the organizing framework for implementing [the vision outlined in Permaculture One of] …’Consciously designed landscapes which mimic the patterns and relationships found in nature, while yielding an abundance of food, fiber and energy for provision of local needs.’ People, their buildings and the ways they organize themselves are central to permaculture. Thus the permaculture vision of permanent (sustainable) agriculture has evolved to one of permanent (sustainable) culture…It draws together the diverse ideas, skills and ways of living which need to be rediscovered and developed in order to empower us to move from being dependent consumers to becoming responsible and productive citizens.”
– Permaculture: Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability, p. xix [to get a concise definition, I’ve rearranged the order of sentences, but it all comes from page xix of the Introduction]
In this more recent video, David Holmgren talks about permaculture as a way to change the world:
I envy those in Australia who are able to attend one of the presentations of the Foss and Holmgren ‘Survive and Thrive’ tour. If you live elsewhere in the world, the best way to learn permaculture is to attend a ‘hands-on’ full immersion Permaculture Design Certification course taught by qualified and experienced teachers using the full 72 hour course material from the Permaculture Design manual by the other co-originator, Bill Mollison.
You can check out permacourses.com to find a course being taught this summer near you.
Brian Kerkvliet, steward of Inspiration Farm
I’m hoping to see some of you at the Inspiration Farm PDC course I’ll be a co-instructor at in Northwest Washington state, Aug. 17-29th. Lead instructor Brian Kerkvliet is PRI certified, and Paul Wheaton, of Permies.com, has named Inspiration Farm as the premier Permaculture Farm of the Pacific Northwest. You can learn much more in the Cascadia Forum at Permies.com here.
“If you grow good soil, everything else falls into place. You grow good plants, you grow good animals, you grow good people.”
Permaculturist Brian Kerkvliet shows how he gently shapes soil to form ponds which overflow into connected swales (ditches on contour). They slow and retain water while distributing nutrients through the whole landscape. On the mound of soft earth dug out from one swale, he planted mostly edible cover crops, berry bushes and 25 fruit tree species in only three days.
“We don’t till [the soil],” he says. “The worms till. The moles till. We find the niche where each element works the best.” Episode 267. [inspirationfarm.com]
If you’re in the region of northwest Washington, or southwest B.C., consider stopping by Inspiration Farm on June 1st for a day of “Primary Practical Permaculture” at Inspiration Farm, located just north of Bellingham, WA.
June 1st $40 10am to 4pm A hands on approach to applying Permaculture principals. Ethics, Zones, Sectors, mapping, compost and guilds. This fun information packed day will provide practical ways to design your environment into an integrated system of abundance and productivity. Using design strategies we will explore ways of stacking elements within a system to be more productive and self regulating. The morning will be presentations and discussion, the afternoon will be a site tour and hands on session working with guilds, sheet mulch, keyhole beds and integrated composting.
Class includes: Presentation-discussion, A tour of Inspiration Farm explaining the systems employed, and hands on activities.
If you attend this class and then decide you want to take the whole Permacultue Design Certificate course we are offering in August we will credit this class fee towards the PDC.
You will likely come away Inspired, as PeakMoment.tv host Janaia Donaldson is when she visits. In her latest Journal post, Janaia writes:
Brian Kerkvliet gave the grand tour to us and gardener Ruth Nail, a recent transplant to the area. A large new pond in the middle, channeling water to a new swales (ditches carved on contour). Just outside the pasture fence were just-planted alder and apple trees which will eventually provide munchables for the two dairy cows inside.
I was most intrigued by his putting multiple levels of plants in one bed. “Stacking function,” said Brian the permaculture educator. Just like in a forest, there’s ground cover, an herbaceous layer, shrub layer, and tree layer. In the berm — a big mound of soil dug out of and piled up beside the swale— Brian had strewn a cover crop mix of broccoli, kale, peas, turnips, sunflowers, parsnips, daikon, buckwheat, oats, fava and other beans, bees’ friend, crimson clover, lettuce, carrots, and collards! Their little leaves were just poking up, colorful and varied like a ground cover of mosses and tiny plants in the forest. What a gorgeously diverse spread for future munching!
Beside the cover crop, a thicket of tall rye grass provided protection for the small apple tree starts planted here and there. The rye grains will be harvested in a few months, their cut stalks falling left in place to become mulch. Amongst the apple trees were also alder trees starts, whose roots will go much deeper than the apple trees, and will bring up deep water and nutrients for plants with shallower roots.
All of these layers were in one swale mound, just like in a forest: Autumn olive, sea buckthorn, buffalo berry, Gumi berry, siberian pea shrub. Brian rattled off which plants were nitrogen fixers as well as food plants, like black locust and alders.
I love this changing food forest landscape—always evolving, becoming more complex and even more like wild nature.
A new Peak Moment episode featuring Inspiration Farm is coming soon…in the meantime, check out this recent episode about last year’s Whatcom Skillshare Faire – which partly features Inspiration Farm steward Brian Kerkvliet as he and Celt Schira demonstrate the 100 year old seed thresher they restored.
Brian Kerkvliet gave the grand tour to us and gardener Ruth Nail, a recent transplant to the area. A large new pond in the middle, channeling water to a new swales (ditches carved on contour). Just outside the pasture fence were just-planted alder and apple trees which will eventually provide munchables for the two dairy cows inside.
I was most intrigued by his putting multiple levels of plants in one bed. “Stacking function,” said Brian the permaculture educator. Just like in a forest, there’s ground cover, an herbaceous layer, shrub layer, and tree layer. In the berm — a big mound of soil dug out of and piled up beside the swale — Brian had strewn a cover crop mix of broccoli, kale, peas, turnips, sunflowers, parsnips, daikon, buckwheat, oats, fava and other beans, bees’ friend, crimson clover, lettuce, carrots, and collards! Their little leaves were just poking up, colorful and varied like a ground cover of mosses and tiny plants in the forest. What a gorgeously diverse spread for future munching!
Beside the cover crop, a thicket of tall rye grass provided protection for the small apple tree starts planted here and there. The rye grains will be harvested in a few months, their cut stalks falling left in place to become mulch. Amongst the apple trees were also alder trees starts, whose roots will go much deeper than the apple trees, and will bring up deep water and nutrients for plants with shallower roots.
All of these layers were in one swale mound, just like in a forest: Autumn olive, sea buckthorn, buffalo berry, Gumi berry, siberian pea shrub. Brian rattled off which plants were nitrogen fixers as well as food plants, like black locust and alders.
I love this changing food forest landscape — always evolving, becoming more complex and even more like wild nature.
Good design depends on a free and harmonious relationship to nature and people, in which careful observation and thoughtful interaction provide the design inspiration, repertoire and patterns. It is not something that is generated in isolation, but through continuous and reciprocal interaction with the subject.
– David Holmgren, Permaculture: Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability
Getting about a foot of snow a week ago, then a few more inches this last weekend, followed by rain today offered a good opportunity to employ Permaculture Principle #1 with our swales: Observe and Interact. Above, see the sun glistening on the snow that has blanketed our raised beds and berms between the swales. Below, see one of our swales iced over.
Timeout for building a snowman (Permaculture Principle #12: Creatively Use and Respond to Change):
Since installing our swales last summer, we have been mostly Observing how they’re behaving through the seasons. Brian Kerkvliet advised that we might need to tweak them at some point for fine tuning. In our last Swale post, Angela ended with this comment: “I’m excited to see how the swales work and to know that we can change them in subtle ways as the needs arise.”
Over time we have so far observed that the spillways at the end of each swale have not yet come into use. The swales had not yet filled to the point of overflowing into the spillways. We’ve been concerned that perhaps we need to dig the spillways down a little lower so that the swales could drain a bit, but we’ve been taking the Small and Slow Solutions approach (Principle #9), to just keep observing over time (for now).
Time to check in with the snowman again, and Observe how he’s reacting to a little bit of warmth. Our friend Sus observes: “This guy has so much class in all phases of life. I see him ecstatically surrendering to the sun.”
After the big pulse of snow started to melt…followed by more snow, and then more rain…we were eager to see again today how the swales are responding. For the first time, I noticed that the spillway of the 2nd swale has been operationalized! It is now spilling out into the yard below – with puddles beginning to form in the yard (where without the swales we would have a huge pond right now). The first swale, however (pictured below), is still not emptying into it’s spillway. Instead it seems to be overflowing at the other end (on the west side closest to the fence). That area has the most clay soil, and water is pooling on the ground near our peach tree between the two swales (peach tree to the right in the photo below).
This next photo below shows the spillway from the first swale where water is not flowing. It has finally become clear to me that it is time to follow our Observations with some Interactions.
But first lets go back in time a few days and check back in on our snowman…ah, devolution. I think this is the Order/Chaos Pattern at play.
And now its finally time to go to work. Going just a shovel length deep, I carved a deeper winding path in the spillway, and bingo! The water started to flow!
I used some of the soil dug from here to build up a little more berm on the west end of the swale where it was overflowing. It will be interesting to continue the Observation tomorrow and in the days ahead to see the effect of my actions today.
It was very satisfying to see the water now flowing between the swales.
*All photos in this post by Angela (except the first snowman by David).Snowman constructed by David
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