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  • From: Michael Pilarski <friendsofthetrees@yahoo.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] The Trouble with Permaculture
  • Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 15:43:19 -0800 (PST)

Darrell,  thank you for the comments. I concur with you completely. 

I too read the article being talked about and didn't think it was a bad
article at all.  She lambasted permaculturists who don't know how to garden,
and rightly so.  She poked at some holes in the PC ideology/dogmatism, and
rightly so.  We should all be alert for dogmatism and applying permaculture
techniques blindly (such as every pc design should include sheet mulch, a
hugelkultur and a food forest).

I went and viewed the youtube she was criticizing of Mike Feingold's pc
garden in the UK.  Mike's pc site looked good to me and his gardening . His
dialogue was good.  I am not sure what she was complaining about. Maybe it
was because Mike looked untidy. Perhaps it wasn't as productive as a wall to
wall garden at peak productivity.  But for the amount of time he put into it,
I suspect the cost/yield ratio was good.  I am perhaps biased since Mike
Feingold is a friend of mine and we taught a pdc in Nepal together. 

here is Mike Feingold's youtube if anyone wants to watch it, 9 minutes 37
seconds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3R1BZVnD4M


Michael Pilarski

 
Michael "Skeeter" Pilarski
Permaculture - Wildcrafting - Medicinal Herbs & Seeds


Sign up for my newsletter at www.friendsofthetrees.net
www.facebook.com/michael.skeeter.pilarski




On Saturday, January 25, 2014 11:55 AM, Darrell E. Frey
<defrey@bioshelter.com> wrote:

I have to confess I have had similar experiences as the article
describes, many times over the last 30 years. Many people have visited
my market garden farm, who, with a limited view of Permaculture Design,
offered numerous critiques  and questioned where the "permaculture "
was?
  I have been teaching permaculture design since 1987, with many
different associates, in various venues. We always teach permaculture
as a design system applied land, buildings,  businesses, farms,
schools lifestyles and regions and so on. Permaculture encompasses all
aspects of our human relationship to our planet and draws on many
disciplines and resources to achieve our goals consistant with our
ethics. As I heard Bill Mollison say in person in 1981, it is not how
you garden, it is just where you put the garden that makes a
permaculture design .
As a permaculture design professional I help clients, starting from
where they are, to achieve their goals to live a more ecologically
sustainable lifestyle. Sometimes that includes a forest garden,
sometimes a biointensive garden, and generally a mix. Some may mulch,
sme may till. Generally they will do both in different gardens. 
Sometimes it is just about what they eat and where they buy it, and
what the do with "waste" But it also includes time management,
succession planning, resource conservation, and a goal to achieve the
yields the client seeks.

So, back to the article in question, I say bravo! Let us read such self
critique with an open mind and seek to broaden the view of our
associates. The experience the author describes predate the a
forementioned Vlad by decades, and comes from people short on
experience .

  A deep reading of Bill Mollison does not really promise no work
gardening. Do not confuse his promotion techniques with real advice.
Yes, such presentation by Mollison may have led to short sighted
comprehension by novices  of permaculture, but I do not think he, or
anyone else I have taught permaculture with promised a yield with no
work. And we did not think mollison really suggested that entirely. I
met Bill Mollison in 1981 and again in 1990 when he spent a day at my
fledgling farm. He wrote in my copy of the Designer's Manual. "Great
Work!" as he signed it for me. Work indeed!

Darrell E. Frey
Three Sisters Farm
defrey@bioshelter.com
www.bioshelter.com

Author; Bioshelter Market Garden: A Permaculture Farm. New Society
Publishing, 2011

On Sat, 25 Jan 2014 06:18:54 -0500, Holger Hieronimi
<holger@tierramor.org> wrote:
Why Bad? I think this article is a good one, althought it is very
> critical with some expressions of PC-
> the author is not uninformed, since she aparently read though some of
> the basic literature plus seems to have considerable experience in
> organic food production...
>
> Its more than clear now that some of the "Mollsionisms" ("The
> designer becomes a recliner"/ "The problem is the solution"/ etc.)
> were great vehicles to draw atention back in the 80ies, but also
> helped to build "cult permaculture" & a cadre of enthusiastic PC
> illuminates described in the article. No problem...I have been one
> after my first PDC back in 1996....and I´m happy for that, since
> this motivated me (in my case) to actually try to establish some
> systems and realize that not everything works as well in realiity as
> described th the PC Designers Manual, a greant book but definitly not
> the "bible" and/or ultimate expression of PC.
>
> Every course of some PC celebrities (Geoff Lawton is one prominent
> example) adds some more to this number (and I think nobody in thios
> group wants to qualify him as some body who gives "bad courses"), and
> its only through a few years of practice "on the ground",
> establishing designs, getting dirtty, maintainig developing systems,
> producing food, experiencing how systems actually work and evolve
> over time in different climates & contexts, that the imaginative
> power of PC concepts get grounded.
>
> saludos desde Colombia (en este momento)
>
> Holger
>
>
> El 24/01/14 04:14, permaculture-request@lists.ibiblio.org escribió:
> > The Trouble with Permaculture
> > http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-01-23/the-trouble-with-permaculture
> >
> > a very bad article; Vlad fodder, awful - just to see what the uninformed
> > are up to
>
> -- Holger Hieronimi - holger@tierramor.org
> TIERRAMOR - Diseño Integrado
> www.tierramor.org
> Diseño de sistemas ecológicos
> Consultas y asesorías
> Facilitación de conferencias, seminarios, cursos y talleres
>
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>From christopher.nesbitt@mmrfbz.org Sat Jan 25 19:21:07 2014
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Subject: [permaculture] 9th Annual PDC, MMRF, Belize, Feb 10-22nd
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This will be our 9th Annual Permaculture Design Course. MMRF has been
managed to agroforestry over the last 25 years and is one of the oldest
permaculture projects in Central America. Come take a PDC with great teachers
at a very well established permaculture project.


9th Annual Permaculture Design Course, February 10th through 22nd, 2014
February 10th through 22nd, 2014

Place: Maya Mountain Research Farm San Pedro Columbia, BELIZE

Instructors: Albert Bates, Marisha Auerbach, Nicole Foss and Christopher
Nesbitt with local guest instructors.

Cost:USD1250/Belize$2500 includes organic farm fresh meals, all course
materials and expeditions*, comfortable accommodation in the farm, and a
certificate of Permaculture Design upon completion of the course.

For Details, or to register, please contact Christopher at info(a)mmrfbz.org.

Through lecture, discussion, small groups, site visits and hands on
experience, participants will gain the tools to create sustainable,
ecologically based homes, farms, businesses and communities. Tucked into the
foothills of the Maya Mountains, two miles up river from the village of San
Pedro Columbia in southern Belize, Maya Mountain Research Farm is a working
demonstration farm and registered NGO that promotes sustainable agriculture,
appropriate technology and food security using permaculture principles and
applied biodiversity.

With over 25 years of organic management and conversion from an abandoned
cattle and citrus farm to a polyculture, MMRF is one of Central Americas
oldest permaculture farms. Students will get a chance to see decades worth of
design work applied at this venue. A fun video of the 2009 PDC is here, and
some footage from the 2010 PDC on Mexican TV, in Spanish is here, and here.

Teachers: Albert Bates is a former lawyer, paramedic, graphic artist and
author of eleven books on energy, environment and law, and produced two films
on ecovillages. He is the founder of the Ecovillage Network of the Americas
and was active in the creation of the Global Ecovillage Network. He has
lectured and universities and government agencies and worked on natural
buildings, village infrastructure, and permaculture landscapes on 6
continents. He has been teaching permaculture design courses since 1994.

Marisha Auerbach has been actively practicing, studying, and teaching
Permaculture in the Pacific Northwest for over a decade, specializing in food
production, biodiversity, seedsaving, ecology, and useful plants. Her
practical experience has been gained from living and working in both urban
and rural locations. She currently teaches permaculture courses at Oregon
State University, Pacific University, Bastyr University, and Portland
Community College. Marisha works with many organizations including The City
Repair Project, Aprovecho Education Center, Lost Valley Education Center,
Fertile Ground Community Center, and Planet Repair. Marisha holds an advanced
certificate in Permaculture Aid Work and has participated in permaculture
projects from the forests of Vietnam to the Rocky Mountains of the United
States to the stressed conditions of Haiti. She can be found online at
www.herbnwisdom.com.

Nicole Foss is Senior Editor of The Automatic Earth, a big-picture website.
Since January 2008, she and her writing partner have been chronicling and
interpreting the on-going global credit crunch as the most pressing aspect of
our current multi-faceted predicament. The site integrates finance, energy,
environment, psychology, population and real politik in order to explain why
we find ourselves in a state of crisis and what we can do about it. Nicole is
also an international speaker on energy and global finance. She has lectured
in hundreds of locations across North America, Europe, Australia and New
Zealand, and has made many media appearances in a variety of countries. In
addition, Nicole has been involved in teaching on permaculture design
certificate courses in Central America and Europe. Prior to the establishment
of The Automatic Earth, Nicole was Editor of The Oil Drum Canada, where she
wrote on peak oil and finance. She also ran the Agri-Energy Producers'
Association of Ontario, where she focused on farm-based biogas projects, grid
connections for renewable energy and Feed-In Tariff policy development. While
living in the UK she was a Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy
Studies, where she specialized in nuclear safety in Eastern Europe and the
Former Soviet Union, and conducted research into electricity policy at the EU
level. She also has significant previous experience practicing as an
environmental consultant. Her academic qualifications include a BSc in
Biology from Carleton University in Canada (where she focused primarily on
neuroscience and psychology), a post-graduate diploma in air and water
pollution control, the common professional examination in law and an LLM in
international law in development from the University of Warwick in the UK.
She was granted the University Medal for the top science graduate in 1988 and
the law school prize for the top law school graduate in 1997.

Christopher Nesbitt is the founder and director of Maya Mountain Research
Farm. He is a farmer, and a pioneer in tropical agroforestry and
permaculture, having lived and studied agriculture in Belize since the mid
1980s. He has been engaged in agroforestry, permaculture, renewable energy
through his work on the farm and elsewhere. Christopher worked for Green &
Blacks, an organic chocolate company, from 1997 to 2004 on issues related to
organic certification, Fairtrade certification and extension. He was a
founding member of Belize Organic Producers Association and has worked as a
consultant for the Government of Belize’s Ministry of Health, Ministry of
Agriculture, Fisheries Department. He represented Belize in workshops in
Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica and Guatemala. He installs photovoltaic and
photovoltaic/wind hybrid systems in protected areas, schools, village level
photovoltaic water pumps, and teaches agroforestry.

A scholarship for this Permaculture Design Course is being offered by Maya
Mountain Research Farm in memory of Anne Bulford. Anne Bulford graduated from
Antioch College, was active in organic agriculture in Ohio, working at Ohio
Ecological Food and Farming Association, and died in November, 2008 of
cancer. She has two boys, Peter and Skyler, who live with Annes mother,
Sally. Applicants must be Belizean working in agriculture anywhere in Belize
or the communities adjacent to the Maya Mountains in Belize, and a farmer,
extension officer or community leader. To apply, please contact Christopher
Nesbitt with a description of the work you are doing, and a resume or CV and
explain why you would like to participate in this course.

*Fees for entry into National Parks or Archeological Reserves must be paid by
the students.





_____________________________
Christopher Nesbitt

Maya Mountain Research Farm
San Pedro Columbia, Toledo
PO 153 Punta Gorda Town, Toledo
BELIZE,
Central America

Country code 501-630-4386

www.mmrfbz.org
www.facebook.com/MayaMountainResearchFarm








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