permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <london@metalab.unc.edu>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 12:12:55 -0400
From: Wayne Turner <wturner@issachar.com>
To: 'sanet-mg List' <sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu>
Subject: A SusAg Pattern Language

The portions of the quoted message below, fanned a spark in me.  Please 
bear with me as I speak abstractly. I studied architecture formally. Among 
the resources I encountered were the writings of Christopher Alexander and 
his team.  Among those writings is the only book (as I recall) that Stuart 
Brand saw fit to provide an entire page of review in the Whole Earth 
Catalog. The title is "A Pattern Language".  It deals with the built 
environment from macro global and regional issues down in scale to micro 
considerations of door and window trim. The listed patterns in the book are 
meant to be in permanent flux and never complete. The virtue of the Pattern 
Language is in providing a pathway for systemic planning and 
implementation.  This same type of pattern language has been underlain by 
some into the process of software engineering. I don't know where else it 
may be used.

But Dan's comments below, beg for the same type of tool to be applied to 
the systemic planning and implementation of sustainable agriculture.

My spouse and I home-school our six children. I require that all my 
children master mathematics up through calculus. The reason I require this 
is because I want them to become problem solving leaders. I want them to 
grasp that the solution set(s) to some basic problems are simple points or 
numbers, but some solutions are represented by all the points on line(s) 
and/or curve(s). And yet others are in bound spaces, and beyond. I don't 
want my children to grow up intolerant of other points within a solution 
set because they think all solutions are static points. I am banking on 
this helping to promote discernment, tolerance and patient leadership.

A pattern language developed together can become a critical planning tool 
that can preclude enormous expenditures of time and money re-inventing the 
wheel.  Unlike specific recipes, such a tool supports pathways and can do 
so without ever coming to the same conclusion twice.

Has anyone already thought these thoughts and shared them here?

Wayne Turner
Front Royal, VA

>     In a warm climate, this pattern would reflect ... fluctuations.
> ... I don't agree with recipes.  People have to work out what makes sense 
in their
> situations.  Those of us who work in the field with homestead and 
farmstead
> scale family situations can offer an assortment of strategies and 
options,
> but always they need to be tailored.  There is a tendency for people to
> emulate a successful operation, and this should not always be encouraged. 
> It is better for people to fill different market niches than to glut one
> particular niche.
>
> ...we need to be looking as startup PATHWAYS.  This is a site-specific
> and family-specific design question.  While diversity can allow
> for a work flow that optimized production and grants a high quality of 
life,
> it can be assured only by design of that diversity.  In my opinion, it is 
> preferable to teach the design process than to try to design for others
> because they have more depth of awareness of the factors in their 
situation

> Dan Hemenway, Co-Director
> Barking Frogs Permaculture Center
> Sparr  Florida  USA