Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Tommy Tolson <healinghawk@earthlink.net>]

I lived in a Permaculture design in Santa Rosa, CA when I was married  
to my first wife.  From the second year, its food forest produced  
food.  We planted annuals on berms of adobe clay that we amended with  
shell flour, kept mulched with straw, and watered with drip  
irrigation.  Everything we planted grew like crazy.  The marriage  
didn't.

I've seen the change that happens when people realize that part of  
Transition is inner transformation.  When I got to Austin, local  
Permaculture was all about gardening, and I objected to that.  It's  
part of Permaculture but not nearly all of it.  Permaculture is about  
building functioning ecosystems which happen to produce food for all  
the creatures who make their living from that land.  It's still a lot  
more esoteric than it should be by now.  Stewart Brand, I think, said  
long ago, "We're as gods, so we may as well get good at it."

I, too, think we've run out of time.  The national government wages  
wars for the oil to keep up our unsustainable consumer society.  We  
sacrificed four thousand dead and no telling how many injured so  
ExxonMobil and Chevron could bid on producing Iraq's oil.  When US  
fossil fuel interests got the inside track at Copenhagen, it was all  
over.  We can't afford mitigation, but we can far less afford climate  
change.

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorganChase, wondered this week when the  
recovery would start.  Real recoveries are not jobless.  The economic  
paradigm can't see ecological constraints.

My hope is that people proactively engage the process now to create  
the future they want to live after the economic paradigm falls and the  
ecological paradigm replaces it.  Growing one's own food is, I think,  
a necessary element of getting through the crisis part of that  
paradigm shift.  But it's only an element.  The shift itself is the  
system, and I hope it can be consciously negotiated.  We need to re- 
learn how to build community, and learn how to create cultures that  
support us in "being all we can be."

But the big deal is the crash that the failure at Copenhagen and  
corporate control of Congress almost surely guarantee.  I believe  
community will determine who lives and who doesn't, when the time comes.

Smiles.
Tommy



On Jan 16, 2010, at 10:32 PM, Tradingpost wrote:

> 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:
> >
> > >
>
>
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