permaculture

[Loren Davidson <lorenstwin@yahoo.com>]

--- Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org> wrote:

> I agree, and I really admired your history and review of Zones--nice
> work.
> The original lack of Zone 0 was clearly a flaw;(...)(any time a list
contains an item "0" you know the
> list
> maker forgot something).

Either that, or the list maker is a programmer. :)

> 
> Another refinement of the zone idea came up in Peter Bane's piece
> "Zone and
> Sector Design-1" in Permaculture Activist #40-A (supplement). He
> pointed
> out that Zone 0 is the zone of consumption; Zone 1 of self-reliance,
> where
> we meet most of our needs for food, shelter, water, etc. Zone 2
> produces
> surplus for barter and local trade; Zone 3 is for cash crops; Zone 4
> is for
> investments; and Zone 5 is the commons. This is a nice expansion of
> the
> meaning of zones:

I dunno....I don't see a 1:1 mapping between this and zones as being
defined by how often you visit an element - many cash crops are things
that would require daily maintenance (Zone 1); many food/shelter needs
(bamboo, woodlot, fruit trees) only need to be visited weekly or
monthly (Zone 2-4), and I've grown salad greens on the windowsill (Zone
0).  I like it as a different paradigm for mapping, conceptualizing,
and perhaps prioritizing some of the "invisible structures" - the
economics and social structures of a place.  But I think his zone
functions and the Mollinsonian ones complement each other rather than
correspond strictly.


> the place we never visit doesn't seem to do that. Again, if Zone 00
> is our
> mental state, and Zone 6 is our imagination, then we could just go on
> and
> on listing every mood as a new zone ("I used ESP to locate the
> outhouse, so
> that's in zone 12").

Perhaps...but how often do you visit it? :)

Build soil,

Loren


=====
Loren Davidson       Permaculturist, poet, philosopher
NEW: loren@farwalker.com | http://www.batnet.com/beauty/
Compost - because a rind is a terrible thing to waste.

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