permaculture

["Graham Burnett" <gb0063551@cableinet.co.uk>]

Hi Rich- the web page is a great idea-

In addition (why didn't I think of this before!!), Graeme Sheriff has 
published his
survey of Permaculture In Britain (mainly based on interviews/questionaires 
with
people/projects who've apperared in 'The Permaculture Plot' book, it's at
http://www.edibleecosystems.care4free.net/

The raw data for his survey and report is available as a 68 page pdf file at
http://www.edibleecosystems.care4free.net/eeisa.html

which contains plenty of info and figures for the stats lovers out there!

Cheers,
Graham Burnett
www.landandliberty.co.uk
Now available-
'Permaculture A Beginner's Guide'
also
tee shirts- 'Permaculture Manadala'
&
'Land Is Liberty- Plant A Seed Today...'


----- Original Message -----
From: Richard Morris <webmaster@pfaf.org>
To: permaculture <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2002 12:35 PM
Subject: Good examples of Permaculture


> Hi Folks,
> Thanks for the responses to my slightly OTT post, just the
> sort of thing I was looking for. In fact so good I though it might
> make a good web page. First draft reprinted below. If any one
> has problems with using their email address or messages please let me
> know. It would be nice to see some more examples like this, I think
> it could make a really good advocacy document for PC.
>
> While we may not have much quantitative data there is a lot of
> qualitative
> info which is just as important. Gathering such info is important.
>
> Heres what I've got so far:
>
> Some Good Examples of Permaculture
>
> There has been a lot of discussion recently over the merits of
> permaculture and the how to measure its the success. Conventional
> measures such as yields don't really capture the benefits of
> permaculture so instead I've gathered together some messages about some
> really good examples of permaculture obtained from a discussion on the
> subject on the permaculture mailing list at ibiblio.
>
> One of the best examples I've seen is a wet land system designed to
> treat the waste from a Cider farm in Herefordshire, England. Its a four
> acre plot, consisting of lots of ponds and swales and planted with 200
> species and varieties of willows, reeds and other plants. You can see
> its working as some very mucky waste is going in one end and at the
> other end clean water is coming out the other end. Its also producing a
> lot of willows for all the thing willows are good for. It was put
> together by Jay and Claire at Biologic design.
>
> Steve Bonney sustainableearth.steve@verizon.net writes:
>
> There are many, many examples of farm features that embrace the
> principles of permaculture. Even in Indiana, we have good examples:
> constructed wetlands cleaning wastewater from a milkhouse, alleycropping
> of agronomic crops between rows of black walnut trees, managed intensive
> grazing systems that maintain a permanent crop cover on the soil and
> increase water infiltration instead of runoff. These are all features of
> permaculture, or rather, demonstrate principles of permaculture.
>
> There are many striking examples of permaculture that have been
> developed by listmembers. I don't want to slight anyone, but what Robyn
> Francis has built upon the principles of permaculture in a short time is
> truly amazing to me.
>
> Toby Hemenway hemenway@jeffnet.org
>
> The best ones I've seen are: Flowering Tree in New Mexico, Roxanne
> Swentzell's place designed by her and Joel Glanzberg. Rox has taken a
> 1/2 acre of bare gravel desert and, starting with swaling, mulching, and
> lots of N-fixers, now has a nearly closed canopy of walnuts, fruit
> trees, N-fixing trees, with fantastic habitat and more food and mulch
> than she can deal with.
>
> Permaculture Institute of Northern California, Penny Livingston's place,
> an acre of suburban jungle with chickens, ducks, and again, more food
> and biomass production than she can use. It's got a cob office, and two
> load-bearing straw-bale buildings, a marsh and pond system that handles
> all the greywater and supports the duck and some irrigation. There's a
> Bed-and Breakfast attached, so lots of visitors come away inspired. Too
> bad Penny just dropped this list, but she's busy with a thriving design
> business.
>
> The Bullock's property on Orcas Island, north of Seattle. 10 acres
> that's the best developed food forest I've seen, plus several acres of
> wetland that has chinampas in it (mostly for wildlife). They hold
> classes for 3 weeks each summer with 30 students, and there's enough
> fruit to support grazing for the whole class the whole time. They're off
> the grid, and supported by a nursery business and teaching. These are
> all very attractive sites, too.
>
> None of these people are measuring yields, though I think they all have
> some idea of rough quantities of certain crops. I'm sure that converting
> each property into a conventional, row-crop farm or orchard would
> generate more total output (ignoring inputs) than they are currently
> getting, but at a severe loss of habitat, multiple function, and
> education about integrated systems.
>
> And that reminds me of Jerome Osentowski's Central Rocky Mountain
> Permaculture Institute in Colorado. The particular interest here is that
> Jerome's income source for about a decade was a many-specied
> salad-growing operation he ran in raised beds and two large greenhouses
> (a real feat, going year-round at 7000 feet elevation). He sold to tony
> restaurants in Aspen. He got sick of the huge amount of work, and
> demoralized by the vast quantities of organic matter that he was
> importing, burning up, and exporting as C02 and salad. Really high
> inputs. So he shifted to a food forest, which is just reaching good
> production now and supported a lot of heavy grazing during a class I
> helped teach there last summer. Again, no hard data, but his decision to
> shift from intensive row-cropping to food forest, and his enormous
> happiness with the result, is a powerful statement.
>
> Ute Bohnsack sustag@eircom.net writes:
>
> for anyone interested in this topic, the Swiss Institute of Organic
> Farming has done some very interesting work on this front. They have
> assessed the long-term agronomic and ecological performance of
> bio-dynamic and bio-organic systems in comparison with conventional
> arable farming systems in a replicated 21-year field trial study (the
> famous DOC-trial in Therwil). Some of their results are given in
> http://www.fao.org/organicag/doc/RTS58.pdf and at
> http://www.sac.ac.uk/envsci/external/bsss/poster2.htm I translated some
> more recent results for FiBL in 2000 but can not share them for
> copyright reasons. However, the author of that particular paper, Paul
> Mäder paul.maeder@fibl.ch, can probably be approached for the info. The
> general 'gist' of the results is: "The variety of substrates utilized by
> soil microorganisms serves as an indicator of microbial functional
> diversity, which was higher in bio-dynamic than in conventional soils.
> Concomitantly, microbes in the bio-dynamic soil decomposed added plant
> material to a higher extent than in conventional soil with a higher
> proportion of the plant material being used for microbial biomass
> build-up. In conclusion soil quality as indicated by the abundance and
> diversity of soil organisms as well as by their activity tends to be
> improved under organic agriculture. "
>
> The article Holistic approaches in organic farming research and
> development: a general overview by Urs NIGGLI also addresses some of the
> aspects debated here in relation to the possibilities of comparing Pc
> with other systems/paradigms/models, whatever you want to call them.
>
> From: Maddy Harland
>
> "The Woodland Way" by Ben Law is full of data. There is also an analysis
> of income and pc woodland management which was part of a MSc in the
> centre pages. Greg is out of date. We now have lots of post graduate
> data here proving pc works (not the wild kind but serious, cool
> temperate systems which have been thoroughly researched) and pc design
> is taught at university and horticultural colleges.
>
> From: Graham Burnett gb0063551@cableinet.co.uk
>
> John Comben & Sue Ferguson have compiled reports on Cool Temperate PC
> (i.e. UK).
>
> From: Chris Dixon mawddach@gn.apc.org
>
> With regards to yield figures, I did collect some basic data which is
> available on my web site; http://www.konsk.co.uk/design/argelacs.htm
> this is a page on Argel, the wilderness regeneration site and my
> attempts to quantify yield there.
>
>
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