Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Well, Tom, I had to look you up at 
http://transitionus.ning.com/profile/TommyTolson . I've been around the block 
myself and seen all kinds of wannabes joining every new trend that comes 
along - but never actually DOING anything beyond changing their gurus or 
light bulbs. I strongly suspect you see a lot of that in Transition Texas. 
It's the only thing I see in permaculture, nothing to teach you how to 
actually grow your own food and use it.

I'm not against theTransition thing anymore than the Permaculture thing. I 
just think we don't have the luxury of waiting for people to take it 
seriously. I don't pretend to be a prophet because I'd hate to be wrong. In 
fact we're seeing the perfect storm converging on us now, not someday. $145 
bbl oil triggered this Great Recession and all hell broke loose, and recovery 
is bogus. At Copenhagen most of the world condemned our stonewalling on 
climate, and we can't afford mitigation costs. We know these things, and we 
know there's a damm good reason the media won't allow the words "peak oil" or 
the folly of unlimited growth on the air. There's more chatter about crop 
losses in too many countries due to climate anomalies. It's all out there to 
see, but it's not on Leno.

What I'm doing to adapt to growing in little space under adverse conditions, 
without fossil fuel inputs matters very little, but there are millions of 
others working, and learning growing and community food security. I keep 
saying people like to eat. Food, water, shelter, transportation, community - 
when the necessities are threatened and store shelves are stripped bare, then 
people get mad and realize they're clueless and don't even know their 
neighbors. Thanks to globalization and just in time inventory, stores and gas 
stations have three days supply at best, and we see what happens in minor 
emergencies.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net


*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 1/16/2010 at 1:29 PM Tommy Tolson wrote:

>Permaculture is a design system intended to consciously and ethically
>place humans back into the natural order, based on processes of
>observation and interaction, in a way that fosters ecological
>resilience.  Permaculture puts us in position to learn from nature to
>design ecosystems that support all the life that makes its living from
>the land with which humans in a Permaculture design learn to live.
>Pattern literacy is a huge part of the design system.  We seek to
>design into the patterns of nature, so nature supports us - instead of
>rejecting us, as climate change threatens to do.  We learn to use any
>given landscape as our text, so we read landscapes to inform the basis
>of our designs.
>
>Mollison and Holmgren created Permaculture based on their grounding in
>Howard Odum's articulation of systems ecology.  Odum's "Systems
>Ecology" remains the single best Permaculture book in existence, but
>it's expensive and written to an advanced academic audience: ecology
>graduate students.  Mollison and Holmgren are both forest ecologists.
>"Environment, Power, and Society," Odum's attempt to reach beyond an
>academic audience, is useful, in that it teaches human ecology and
>systems ecology in a straightforward way.
>
>Permaculture designers create systems, rather than limiting designs to
>elements of systems, as reductionist education teaches.  A system may
>use legacy practices, or may inspire the creation of new practices, or
>mix both, or something entirely different.  The idea is to design so
>that nature does the work, creating low-energy systems which enable
>humans to sow once and reap many times, among many other advantages.
>A Permaculture Design Course should focus on grounding students in
>systems thinking rather than any practice, per se, save design
>practices, as each landscape requires its own practice.
>
>"Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability" by David
>Holmgren is the single best Permaculture reference I know of
>presently.  Here's the blurb from www.alibris.com, where you can get
>the book new for less than $22.00:
>About this title: David Holmgren brings into sharper focus the
>powerful and still evolving Permaculture concept he pioneered with
>Bill Mollison in the 1970s. It draws together and integrates 25 years
>of thinking and teaching to reveal a whole new way of understanding
>and action behind a simple set of design principles. The 12 design
>principles are each represented by a positive action statement, an
>icon and a traditional proverb or two that captures the essence of
>each principle.Holmgren draws a correlation between every aspect of
>how we organize our lives, communities and landscapes and our ability
>to creatively adapt to the ecological realities that shape human
>destiny. For students and teachers of Permaculture this book provides
>something more fundamental and distilled than Mollison's encyclopedic
>Designers Manual. For the general reader it provides refreshing
>perspectives on a range of environmental issues and shows how
>permaculture is much more than just a system of gardening. For anyone
>seriously interested in understanding the foundations of sustainable
>design and culture, this book is essential reading. Although a book of
>ideas, the big picture is repeatedly grounded by reference to
>Holmgren's own place, Melliodora, and other practical examples.
>
>Biodynamics is fairly commonly used as one element (annual production)
>of a Permaculture design.
>
>Smiles.
>Tommy
>
>On Jan 16, 2010, at 4:42 AM, A Deville wrote:
>
>>