Permaculture 101

"Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and perennial agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in the natural ecologies. It was first developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren and their associates during the 1970s in a series of publications. The word permaculture is a portmanteau of permanent agriculture, as well as permanent culture."

"The intent was that, by rapidly training individuals in a core set of design principles, those individuals could design their own environments and build increasingly self-sufficient human settlements — ones that reduce society's reliance on industrial systems of production and distribution that Mollison identified as fundamentally and systematically destroying Earth's ecosystems."

Here is wikipedia's definition which I think tells it MUCH better than I could. I had heard about permaculture a few years back from some good friends who had been trying to apply some of it's principles into their home garden. It sounded intriguing back then but, at the time, we weren't in a place where could apply any of it's teachings.

Once it was time for us to make this change, we started gathering all of info we could on the subject. One of the main inspirations for me is the people I found at a website called "The Path to Freedom." I have a vague memory of someone sending me an email link to their video YEARS ago. I remember watching it then and feeling this swelling inside me. I had no idea how deeply it I was impacted until recently. I have scoured their website and watched the video over and over.



Now, I'm not sure if they are applying permaculture ideas into their set up but my what I've seen and read I can only assume so. It's just that I don't think seen the actual word permacuture in their stuff but I'm not absolutely sure. Just let me leave it at that.

We decided to go straight to the source with our first book about permaculture, "Introduction to Permaculure." We have really loved this book and found that it has been a MUST for what we are trying to do. But...we also found it to be written in a textbook format which tends to lean it more toward the boring side. Along with use of language and verbage that was somewhat over our heads. (We are most DEFINITELY a bit on the slower side)

After months of reading, we were grateful for another recommendation. A book called "Gaia's Garden." Also, a permacuture book but a MUCH easier read. When to read both books together, we found that understanding the first book become easier. We found that whatever we struggled to understand in "Introduction to Permaculture", would tend to be explained in a bit more understandable way in "Gaia's Garden." We do feel that we need both books to get and apply needed information in regards to the teachings of permaculture. We do plan on purchasing and reading Mollison's Permaculture Part 1, 2 and so on. There is so much information in just the 2 books we have now that we feel until we can really glean and even apply some of what we already have there is no need to purchase more yet.

One idea that we realize is a MUST is the DESIGN. Well, I should say if you are starting how we are which is square one with bare land. Design is a must even if you are doing what the Path to Freedom people are doing too! It's just you start from where you are at and what is or is not available to you. Our situation I think is a bit different than most because we are starting at square one.

This has been an EXTREMELY daunting task for us. To be honest, we really don't know what we are doing. We are gleaned mega doses of information from people and books but we have never actually applied any of it til now. Trying to create a design that is highly effective and reusable in all aspects has taken much more time than we expected.

These books have truly been a life saver in so many ways. There were so many ideas and concepts that we already knew would work to help build what we are wanting but we just didn't know how to apply them. This is where the books comes in. I think anyone with an endeavor as ours has many ideals they want to meet to create self sufficiency. One main ideal for us is freedom. We want freedom from enslavement of debt and bills and such but also freedom to do what our lives what we truly want. When we want and for the most part, removing ourselves from being beholden to anyone or anything. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom.

We've have found that with the ideas and principles of permaculture being properly applied, homesteading seems to be more of a joy and less of a headache. We assume so anyway. We have already found this to be true, to a small extent, with our garden. Just applying permaculture to our garden, we've found it to be much easier and less time restrictive than expected. We have most definitely made many mistakes with this first garden but feel our fall garden should be better and more concise.

I think I will stop here for now. We are still in the process of deciding what type of earth friendly home we want to build. Come back for my next post. Earthbag? Earth berm? Underground? Adobe? What to choose? What to choose? We have some ideas. I'll tell you all about it.

Abundant peace to all,

Rachel