permaculture

[jamesdavid Sneed <harvestcircle@hotmail.com>]

The reason I have not responded to Toby's "nasty b'ast" about 
self-sufficiency and food independence was too-fold: First, I wanted to hear 
the opinions of others who had read my posts as well as his response, and 
Lawrence's too.
Second, I was busy, planting several gardens large and small, for myself and 
for others, and a couple of which I will never see the harvest from. I plant 
gardens to feed people. At the same time I was teaching a few workshops, and 
for free, not for the exhorbitant fees someone seemed to imply (in a related 
post) I must or should be seeking. (Perhaps a few permaculture gurus are 
feeling a bit guilty about the fees they themselves charge). 
You see, the abundance of Nature is free, and should be passed on for free. 
Even the labor we claim to expend (or sell) is free to us, for our bodies and 
minds are a gift from Nature (or from whatever deity you might choose to 
embrace). The energy that fuels our bodies and minds is given to us by 
Nature, although we are often confused by the idea that the food energy and 
fossil fuels are sold to us by someone else......they are supplied by Nature.
I plant these gardens, grow the needed seeds, and teach these classes for 
free, although I have accepted gifts to help pay for transportation. I hope 
each of you are able to find ways to pass on Nature's abundance.
I also face serious challenges now....I walk with a cane, and have had to 
learn new ways to approach working with the soil. I spend more time kneeling 
and laying alongside garden beds rather than bending, and when I return to 
Alaska soon I will take these limitations with joy (and yes, often 
frustration) to the edge of and into the wild in order to feed and clothe 
myself. 
I was an organic farmer for a few decades, active in legislation and 
community action, and have worked with several of the "greats" in the field. 
Sometimes I was under their tutelage, and a couple of my own students have 
become really fantastic farmers themselves. It gives me some perspective that 
I have tried to share. The experiences and contact has also led me and others 
to believe that the current system of organic farming and distribution (even 
farmer's markets) is unsustainable. It also seems wrong to make or urge folks 
to be dependent on a food system that is actually very petroleum based. Much 
of our image of sustainable and organic production is an illusion.
Toby was simply misinformed about Alaska. Their are a number of legitimate 
estimates of the native population levels (before european assault decimated 
the indigenous groups) that place their numbers at approximately what the 
total population of the state is now. 
They got all their food from Nature, lived longer than we do now, and died 
with their teeth intact. 
Toby assumes a lot about me, whom he does not know. When we and others ask 
about where the hand tools I espouse came from, where were they made, I admit 
I have bought many, but part of my learning process has been to focus on how 
to make similar tools from the metals already above the surface of the earth, 
usually in the form of scrap that is waiting to rust back into the Mother's 
embrace. I make my handles from tree branches, and have begun to carve  and 
test all-wood digging sticks. They work great, and they are free. Yes, I 
carve them with a knife, but oddly enough I found that knife many years ago 
while walking along a road.
Lastly, I would like to reiterate, in case I omitted it or failed to be clear 
before, that what I advocate is much more than just "growing all one's own 
food". It is the conscious finding, or planting, or gently altering small 
portions of the environmeNt for food growing AS well as HARVEST FORM THE WILD 
OR NEAR-WILD SPACES SUCH AS FOOD FORESTS, BE THEY PLANTED OR FOUND.For me, 
the ocean and seashore is as important as the forest, and no it doesn't take 
hundreds or acres or miles or whatever Toby said for wild harvests. 
Indigenous groups in most of coastal Alaska harvested the majority of their 
food from near the shore, not at sea. The exceptions lie towards the 
aleutians and the bering straits and sea.
I feel it is sad that Toby would be so discouraging to folks who see the need 
and virtue in such self-sufficiency, and it is disrespectful to belittle 
those efforts. He has some good points, and it was sad to seem to hear him 
threaten to avoid the postings if people's reactions weren't to his liking. I 
hope that's not what he meant. We all learn from discussion, and to some 
extent from disagreements.
I apologize for clumsy syntax and any mispellings. I am tired and must get 
back to the garden. Good gardening, everybody.
James David

> From: toby@patternliteracy.com
> Date: Wed, 12 May 2010 18:17:15 -0700
> To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [permaculture] How Much Land Does It Take To Become      Food  
>   Self-Reliant
> 
> 
> On May 12, 2010, at 10:28 AM, jamesdavid Sneed wrote:
> 
> > That seems so disappointing, an elitist attitude that discourages people 
> > from growing all their own food . . . . I find that independence 
> > impossible in anywhere but the most remote regions, I am returning to 
> > those locales, which to me is the REAL WORLD
> 
> Reality is often more disappointing than dreaming of something we've never 
> tried; yes, my point was indeed to discourage people from the simplistic, 
> near-impossible fantasy that when it gets tough they can just grow all 
> their own food. I hope that idea dies soon; it's a terrible deterrent to 
> facing a real solution. I beg you all: Stop thinking that way!  And, James, 
> when you return to the "real world," of the wild, just remember who made 
> your equipment for you; that's how self-reliant you'll be. The "I'll 
> harvest the wild" dream only insures the destruction of the last wild 
> places.That's anti-permaculture: stay out of the bush, says Mollison, and 
> he's right. With 7 billion people, all wild resources would be depleted in 
> a matter of months. I was recently in Alaska, and kept running into people 
> who thought they'd just hunt after the oil gets scarce. Not with the size 
> of the population of Alaska. That's a horrifying thought: goodbye caribou, 
> elk, deer, bear. 
> 
> Growing all your own food is not permaculture. It's subsistence farming. If 
> you love being a farmer, then do it. But if I remember Rain's stories of 
> the Jeavons associate who grew his food for a year, he was working 40-80 
> hours a week for about 6 months on it, and 20-30 hours in the winter. And 
> he did not have a job that year. That leaves little time for anything else, 
> and ignores the issue of how to pay for land, housing, etc.. Is that what 
> you want? What is the question that "grow your own food" is the answer to? 
> It's probably the least secure and most labor-intensive way to obtain your 
> food. Do you really trust no one else to grow food as well as you can? Or 
> not trust yourself to be able to do something in exchange for it? 
> 
> There is nothing in permaculture principles that suggests growing all your 
> own food, or even any food at all. Mollison, in the first pages of Intro to 
> Pc, says it makes more sense to do what you do well and support other 
> people who are good at growing food sustainably. It's not permacultural to 
> limit yourself to "I must grow all my own food." It's permacultural to say 
> "I must take care of my food needs sustainably" and connect with your local 
> community around food in ways that create mutual support and a whole 
> system. The lone farmer working to feed him/herself is bad design. That's a 
> critical function being supported only one way. An injury, and you and your 
> family starve. And the food bandits will hit you first, all alone out 
> there, long before they will attack the community where a few members farm 
> and the others can stand guard.
> 
> The "must grow all my own food" mindset is just more of the rugged 
> individualist, go-it-alone attitude that infects our culture. It's grounded 
> in a lack of trust. It's where we go first because it seems doable, easier 
> than creating a community, easier than participating and trusting in a 
> network, but it's not a solution. It's like buying a water filter when your 
> tapwater isn't clean. It provides personal safety but ignores the problem. 
> Except that in food, it's a fantasy solution: hardly anyone is really going 
> to grow all their own food, but I think we're comforted by imagining that 
> we can. It's a natural early but simplistic response, and we need to move 
> beyond it to more sophisticated and realistic thinking that assesses the 
> possibilities and resources instead of running away to our back yard.
> 
> I don't see more than a tiny percentage of people returning to growing most 
> of their food. It is simply too radical a shift from present systems; there 
> is no direct path there unless your scenario is rapid rupture of societal 
> fabric followed by utter fear and atomization, while there are many direct 
> paths to many other effective food-security scenarios. For one, I think 
> there will be a huge increase in the number of market farmers specializing 
> in a modest variety of crops, some to eat, but most for income or trade.
> 
> BTW, I believe the people on Tikopia, like all Polynesians, got most of 
> their protein and a large part of their other food from the sea. So that 
> enlarges their footprint from 1.8 square miles to hundreds of square miles. 
> To support 800 people from a square mile is impossible. Once again, that's 
> running to a simple answer--they just grew their own!--that misses the real 
> pattern.
> 
> Grow food if you enjoy it and are good at it. If not, design a better way 
> to meet your food needs. That would be permaculture.
> 
> Toby
> http://patternliteracy.com
> 
> 
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