permaculture

["Lee Flier" <lflier@mindspring.com>]

Mikal wrote:

>What I'm looking for is not so much technical answers to the technical
>questions of how-to this or how-to that, but what theoretical filters to
>apply, what questions to ask--in other words, how to apply Permaculture
>without an a priori outcome in mind. Anyone got any thoughts on the
subject?


Yeah and I think this really strikes at the heart of the discussion and some
of the problems people have in making the transition to "permaculture
thinking."  I can almost guarantee that one would NOT come away with a good
understanding of permaculture concepts by reading the Designers' Manual,
even if they read it cover to cover (which most people don't).  The manual
is really meant to be the technical reference for the design course, and if
one hasn't taken the course it can all be mighty confusing because, as you
point out, permaculture is NOT the techniques, although techniques are of
course important in seeing permaculture principles through in the real
world.

In an attempt to work backward and answer your practical questions from the
point of view of permaculture theory, let's review the ethical basis of
permaculture:

1) Care of the earth.
2) Care of people.
3) Return of all surplus yields to care of the earth and its people.

OK, so that is what we're aiming for, ethically: that we take care of
ourselves in a way that is consistent with caring for the earth (which
includes us) without either destroying it or separating our own activity
from the rest of the planet (i.e. we live in miserable cities but we go and
visit roped-off national parks which are supposedly representations of
"pristine" nature, and we should feel guilty to even be there).

Strategically, what this ends up to mean is that we can best take care of
ourselves by imitating natural processes as far as possible in meeting our
own everyday needs (food, housing, water, energy, etc.)  This is the big
leap that many people are reluctant to make because they misinterpret what
it means.  Lots of people think it means "returning to the Stone Age" or
"giving up technology" or, at the very least, consigning yourself to a life
of backbreaking labor.  This thinking is a product of cultural brainwashing
and a lack of understanding of natural systems.  In fact, if you do a really
good job of imitating nature you will SAVE yourself a lot of labor: why
plant something (and till the soil and weed and worry about pests and all
the accompanying headache) if you can get it to just grow there?  Why dig a
well and put in an electronic pump to pump water out of the ground when
gravity may be able to do the job of providing water to your home?   By
thinking permaculturally you can come up with a thousand questions (and
answers) like these.  This usually involves nothing more than broadening the
way you look at your needs.  Instead of thinking "I need a well", if you
think, "I need water" you might come up with much better ideas as to how you
can get your water.  And none of this involves going back to the Stone Age.

In fact, learn to look at the words "natural process" as meaning "something
that will just happen without your having to interfere (labor)".  You may
have to help the process a bit in order to make it happen in a way that
benefits you, by putting things in the right place or the right proportion,
but in general you can observe natural patterns and get them to work for you
rather than seeing human life and activity as a "fight with Nature".  Bill
Mollison says "Where there is hard work, there is usually pollution", and
it's true.  The more you can get nature to work for you the less you will
have to work yourself, AND you will also be meeting the ethical requirements
of permaculture.

Some of the guidelines that have emerged as a result of this kind of
thinking include:

- where possible, look for perennial substitutes for annual plants.  Self
sowing annuals in a polyculture may work too.

- combine different species together so that they work with each other
instead of isolating them.  There are several reasons to do this: 1) it cuts
down considerably on weeds and pests, 2) you will probably not need
fertilizer if you play your cards right, for example combining a nitrogen
feeder with a nitrogen fixer, 3) it's good to have a diverse selection of
crops so that if one thing fails you'll still have something else.
4)Polycultures therefore have a good chance of eventually becoming
self-maintaining, and ultimately you could in fact end up becoming nothing
but a forager in an "ecosystem" of your own making.  Many hunter-gatherers
did the same thing in fact.  In such a system, you won't really care if the
birds get some of your blueberries because there's no way you could eat them
all, you didn't work very hard to grow them, and anyway the birds will help
sow the seeds for yet more blueberries.

- Everything in the system should serve multiple functions.  A greenhouse is
great, but a greenhouse that's attached to one side of your house to help
heat the house in winter is better.  Chickens are great, but letting
chickens eat bugs in your garden and fertilize it is better.  Nut trees are
great, but nut trees that provide mulch and protection from
erosion/evaporation for understory crops are better.  Building a septic
system is costly and serves no useful purpose except burying your waste;
re-using your greywater is less costly and recycles water, an important
resource.  When looking at your needs, don't just look at them individually
but try to come up with as many connections between functions as you can,
and situate things so that they benefit each other.  If you can't think of
several good reasons why something needs to be there, consider whether it
really does need to be there or whether something else might serve you just
as well - or whether simply placing it somewhere else will increase the
number of functions it can serve.

- Consider whether systems are sustainable, that is, whether they can
produce or store as much or more energy than it takes to create and maintain
them.  Using technology or high energy output is OK if you only have to do
it once and the system will be self sustaining thereafter.  A system that is
easy to set up in the short term but requires massive amounts of energy to
maintain (like tilling up soil every year and adding fertilizers and
pesticides) is not sustainable.  This violates all three ethics of
permaculture: it pollutes the earth, it doesn't take care of you because you
have to work your butt off to maintain it, and it rarely produces a surplus
(and when it does, you want to hoard the surplus because you worked so hard
to get it).

- All natural ecosystems produce a huge surplus or they couldn't survive.
Remember that the next time somebody tries to tell you that "nature can't
feed you" or that relying on natural processes is a "return to the Stone
Age."  Trees capture and store much more water than they will ever normally
use, and entire species have evolved that live in those niches of stored
water.  YOU can use that water too.  Birds and squirrels eat berries but
they also expel their seeds with a nice little dollop of fertilizer, thus
they help propagate what they eat and increase rather than decrease the
berries under "non-artificial" circumstances.

- Every important function should be served by multiple systems.  Don't have
just one source of water, food, or energy - have several.  And make sure
they can be had locally.  Not only does this protect you from disaster
(natural, economic or otherwise), but it prevents the land from being used
up by too much of the same activity.  Don't be tempted to follow "recipes"
because that would violate this principle.  Straw bale houses are great, for
example, but if everyone built them we would soon have disaster.  Better to
make use of lots of different building techniques, each of which would use
materials local to the site, and the sum of which will have minimal impact
on the land.

- Try not to look at everything as "problems and solutions."  Just look at
what is there, and see how you can work with it.  An "invasive" plant (like
say, locust trees) might turn out to be a welcome surplus of something
useful (like fence posts).  A "pest" (like slugs) might turn out to be a
source of yet more food for you (if you let ducks eat the slugs and you eat
the ducks).  Instead of problems and solutions, think balance and
counterbalance.  When you are looking at everything in relationship to each
other instead of single yields for single investments, it changes the whole
approach.

- Try to maximize the use of "edges" - the places where different systems
meet each other (the edges of ponds, the edges between fields and forests,
etc.)  Greatest yields tend to occur naturally along these edges (yields for
grains, for example, are double along forest edges compared to the interior
of the field).  The most complex ecosystems are those that exist on the
edges.  So, creating your own edges (making ponds with "fingers" instead of
a plain circle or oval, planting fields in multiple small clearings in
forests instead of one large one, etc.) maximizes yields and often also has
a beneficial effect on the surrounding environment.

Of course, living by these principles has to involve a certain amount of
creativity.  Usually we are handed a "tried and true" stock set of solutions
to everything and we are now forced to dispense with a lot of that.  You may
not be able to pick kiwi with a ladder anymore - you might have to buy or
invent a specialized picker that can reach into the high-growing vines or
trees from the ground.  Not too hard to do.  You may have to hand harvest
crops that you previously did with machines - but keep in mind you will be
using less total land to to grow your crops because they are "stacked" on
top of each other, and the land you work will be much more pleasant to work
in.  The line between "work" and "play" might well become blurred actually;
who needs to go off on a vacation to some national forest or island paradise
when you've got one in your back yard with all your food growing in it?
Much of your "pest management" might well take care of itself because you
spend so much time walking or sitting in the garden that you notice well in
advance of any serious problem that a pest or disease is bothering your
plants.

Along these same lines, another design guideline is that in nature,
everything beautiful serves a function and most things that are functional
are beautiful.  In the systems we have created, we have mostly utilitarian
things that are not beautiful and "beautiful" things with no function.  This
does not well serve either the earth or people.  Functional things can have
beauty and beautiful things can serve functions.  Rather than having a
separate flower and vegetable garden, for example, it is well known that
planting flowers and herbs in with your food crops helps keep pests away by
attracting beneficial insects, and they will also attract bees which will
pollinate your crops.  And again, your food garden will be made beautiful so
being in the garden, working it and observing it will become something
pleasant and welcome.  In turn, the more time you spend in the garden the
better it will yield because you will notice individual problems, beneficial
relationships between plants and animals, etc.  Nature is not capricious or
frivolous; if your eye is attracted by the beauty of something in nature
like a flower, chances are it is serving an important purpose.  And if
something created by man to be "functional" looks ugly to you, it probably
is somehow a blight on the land.  Learn to cultivate and trust that
instinct, and you may well find out there is a logical reason behind it.
Natural patterns and forces live inside of you as well as outside.

The examples given in the Design Manual are all illustrations of how these
principles CAN be applied.  They are not recipes to follow or complete
answers, and if you don't understand what it is you're trying to accomplish
you can even do more harm than good by using some of the examples.  I hope
this post goes at least part of the way toward explaining what it is
permaculture tries to accomplish.  I don't believe permaculture's theory can
be separated from its practice; they are integrated and one should feed into
and inform the other at all times.  The principles should change the way you
go about doing things in the real world and, likewise, looking at what you
have in front of you should inform your design theory.  If both of those
things aren't happening, it ain't permaculture, because permaculture is
neither a top-down system of design nor a series of technical strategies;
it's about the *relationship* between us and our environment, how we affect
the environment AND how it affects us and our thinking.  We must be prepared
to affect our environment in a conscious way, AND be prepared for it to
affect us in ways we didn't think of - both for worse and for better.  Over
time, that feedback loop can come to have a net effect that is positive
rather than negative.  But if we don't even understand that we are currently
in a negative feedback loop between the reality of our environment and the
way we think about it, that will never happen.

--Lee

***********************************
Lee A. Flier
lflier@mindspring.com
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
http://lflier.home.mindspring.com