permaculture

[Glenn Gall <glenngall@gmail.com>]

"Keep thinking outside of the suburban/urban box!"  Yes!!

Bob --

You, and most of us here, know that all but a very few urban PC'rs still get
the bulk of their protein, carbs, fats, and oils from the rural farm via
processors, while the far greatest chunk of urban production is garden
vegetables.  There's a gap here.

Urban dwellers, some at least, are slowly migrating toward a shorter food
supply chain, increased nutrient density and food safety, and more contact
with the grower, or becoming one of the growers.  The gap may be narrowing.

Considering the sorry and dangerous predicament of our earth home, those of
us urban dwellers who are sentient and aware might, "outside of the
suburban/urban box," find ways to participate in and positively impact the
farm .  Learn all you can about water harvesting, and soil food webs,
rotational, mob, and multi-species grazing, tree crops, agroforestry, and
alley cropping, keyline plowing, and actively aerated compost tea.  These
are things that farmers need!

Then, find ways to meet farmers -- all kinds and flavors, by following
the ads and signs, farm markets farm tours, auctions.  You will learn, and
you can help  them learn.  Water, diversity, soil biology, perennials are
enormously valuable, and your knowledge can benefit them.  Some will
appreciate what you have to offer.

With patience and persistence you can find ways to partner with some
homesteaders and fearless, curious, or generous farmers, and become a farmer
yourself -- city dweller, with no land, no barn, no tractor, but a stake in
the business.  Picture helping with fencing, or buying a few sheep to
supplement a cow herd, planting black beans or wheat (planted in rotation
with topsoil rich pastures, of course!) for city csa's.  Or gleaning or
foraging -- there are markets for garlic mustard or honeysuckle.  Can you
help start a keyline plow co-op?  Or design a hazel and fruit tree water
harvesting alley cropping system?

Our farms and ranches, prairies and savannas need more of us to become
engaged and a part of the green and brown of the countryside.  They need
springs flowing, endangered species returning, tons of microbes per acre
... and a lot more prosperity!  Can 50 million or more of us get back out
there and help regenerate the topsoil, sequester hundreds or thousands of
tons of CO2, create systems that will flourish for decades and centuries?

None of us are happy with business as usual forecasts, but even some of the
more optimistic scenarios are scary.  Urban farming and backyard
permaculture, although desirable and necessary, will not get us out of this
-- nor will any amount of energy savings.  They are great places to start,
but they need to contagiously and courageously inspire us to orders of
magnitude greater impact than we have now, which can happen on the scale of
a farm.

It will be so worth it!  Start with buying a dozen eggs, or some spinach, or
a ride down a side road.  You will have doubled stocking rates, springs
flowing, and songbirds galore before you know it!

Glenn Gall



> Message: 4
> Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 20:34:05 -0500
> From: "Bob Waldrop" <bwaldrop@cox.net>
> Subject: Re: [permaculture] (Sub)urban Permaculture Elements
> To: <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <52EBE6A001BE4660A6BAEDAA3F3455DB@bwaldropPC>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
>        reply-type=original
>
> Thanks for your kind words about my work, it's always glad to find out when
> someone is paying attention  ;).
>
> I think of the hub system as a variation on the traditional permaculture
> zones. In urban and suburban areas, just as a zone 1 area of activity is
> the
> "most intense" on the individual plot, a village hub is the most intense
> social/economic interaction for a neighborhood, people might visit that
> village hub every day, or at least several times a week.  Mail could be
> delivered to village hubs, and people could pick it up there, instead of
> the
> cost and effort involved of bringing it to individual houses.  My
> grandparents maintained a post office box for years, not because they
> really
> needed one, but because my grandfather liked to stand around at the post
> office and talk with other people who were also at the post office (this
> was
> in a small rural town where nearly everybody knew everybody).  The village
> hub would likely be the place for education through middle school.  A
> regional center could provide more, and larger, economic opportunities,
> maybe be the location of the high school and a community college.  People
> who didn't work in such a place or attend school there might only go there
> three or four times a month, if that.  In a large area with at least a
> million people, there might also be a major city hub "downtown". Most
> people
> would only go there maybe 3 or 4 times a year, for big cultural events, a
> major entertainment excursion, etc.
>
> A key point in the design would be lateral connections between regional
> hubs
> and villages.  The most common urban transit design in the United States is
> a series of routes radiating out from a central downtown station.  If you
> were going to look for a failure pattern for urban transit, this would be
> it. To get anywhere, you typically have to go all the way downtown, and
> then
> back out, and retrace your route to get home.  One recent study found that
> only 4% of the jobs in the United States can be reached by a commute of 30
> minutes or less on mass transit, about 25% of the jobs are accessible by a
> 90 minute, one way commute, but that means THREE HOURS/day on the bus going
> to and from work, and that's not something most people will want to do.
> That poor performance is one of the consequences of the downtown
> orientation
> of transit systems.
>
> I agree the place to start is with the individual back yard, and that from
> there you go into voluntary relationships in neighborhoods.  Continguous
> properties are "everything" in such things.  I could take you to a place
> here in Oklahoma City, where there is a group of people who practically
> occupy an entire block.  They have taken down their back fences, and
> created
> a large common areas. There are chickens and ducks and pigeons and a
> composting toilet, water harvesting, a very large compost pile, and even
> grazing goats, most of this activity is completely illegal in OKC, BUT,
> they
> are able to get away with it because all of the neighbors on the block are
> in on the "conspiracy", and they have carefully arranged their fences and
> hedges so it is impossible to see within this area from any place that a
> code inspector can access (i.e. the street and sidewalk and front yards).
> So, out of site, means out of mind, and it's incredible what they have
> done.
> I have one neighbor, right behind me, who is part of the permaculture
> movement, but he just occupies a garage apartment and has no back yard, so
> I
> gave him some of my yard to garden on.  I would like to buy that property,
> but (a) it isn't for sale and (b) I don't have the money anyway. . . but I
> am looking for someone to buy it if it does come up for sale because it is
> a
> duplex plus the garage apartment.
>
> These days, the differences between urban and suburban are most semantics.
> My neighborhood was actually one of OKC's first suburbs, it was built
> between 1910 - 1929, and was made possible by a street car line which was
> built to the neighborhood.  Now it is considered inner city, since it is
> only 24 blocks or so to downtown OKC.  But it has the hallmarks of
> suburbia,
> being dominated by single family homes on lots of typically 1/8 to 1/4 acre
> ALTHOUGH it was built before the current fascination with single family
> occupancy so the area is sprinkled with a considerable number of duplexes,
> fourplexes and lots of garage apartments.  It is ethnically extremely
> mixed,
> and while business isn't allowed in the neighborhood, it is surrounded by
> retail, so it is a very livable space except of course for the problems
> with
> neighborhood code enforcement.
>
> The area where I work, 11 miles away, has been entirely built up since the
> 1970s, and they are still building out there.  I am in the eastern cross
> timbers ecological zone, my job is on the Great Plains, with my residence
> being right at the interface of those two ecological areas.  There is a
> large lake in the middle of that area, and lots of interconnected ponds in
> the subdivisions that are connected by ditches to the lake, thus having
> something to do with the drainage of the area presumably.
>
> Keep thinking outside of the suburban/urban box!  We need more permaculture
> theory and design for urban sites.
>
> Bob Waldrop, Oklahoma City
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: harry byrne wykman
> Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2011 6:30 AM
> To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [permaculture] (Sub)urban Permaculture Elements
>
>
> Hi Bob,
>
> Thanks so much for your consistently thoughtful responses in this forum
> and for this response in particular.  I'm a big fan of your work.
>
> Thanks for the suggestion of more attention of invible structures.  I
> have certainly neglected that.
>
> I am hoping that there is enough similarity between suburban / urban
> environments to make these patterns useful (perhaps they are not:).
> Perhaps this regulatory environment will be one of the most distinctive
> things in each area.
>
> I like your vision of urban and suburban spaces and their
> interconnection.  I have something like this in mind.  I would like to
> begin in the place that many people would like to begin - in their own
> backyard.  I hope that by showing the limits of this (while optimising
> it) that it will assist people to think of cooperative options for
> gaining other needs.
>
> Thanks again for your work and comments,
>
> Harry
>
> On Mon, 30 May 2011 20:02:21 -0500
> "Bob Waldrop" <bwaldrop@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > This is an interesting list and article at the link.  The main thing
> > I would add is more attention to the invisible structures. The way
> > most cities and suburbs are constituted these days, a lot on that
> > list would be illegal. Cities and their suburbs are full of traps
> > like the one our Oklahoma City code enforcement just sprang on me
> > which caused me to have to cut down five mature fruit trees, two of
> > which were in full bloom when felled.
> >
> > One of the biggest invisible structure issues with the suburbs is the
> > mandated single family occupancy neighborhood. In such places,
> > duplexes/triplexes, four-plexes are illegal, as are garage, attic,
> > backyard and basement apartments. In general it is also illegal to
> > operate a business in a suburban neighborhood.
> >
> > I think that suburbs have a lot of potential, because of the lowered
> > density of the settlement.  So there's lots of green space with food
> > production potential, and also room to increase the population
> > density without overpowering the food production capability -- IF the
> > single family occupancy zoning designation is relegated to the dust
> > bin of history.  One of the best apartments I ever had was in an old
> > house which had been carved into five small apartments. It was
> > perfect for me at the time, one room with a bath and kitchen
> > attached, complete with a murphy bed that disappeared into the wall
> > during the day.
> >
> > I've always felt that as we reverse-engineer large cities and their
> > suburbs to be more sustainable, what we end up with is a pattern of
> > regional centers connected with transit options, each regional hub
> > the center of several smaller village hubs, each in turn surrounded
> > by neighborhoods of mixed use and varying density. Overall, the
> > effect is a greater complexification and diversification of a
> > territory.
> >
> > Bob Waldrop, Oklahoma City
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: harry byrne wykman
> > Sent: Monday, May 30, 2011 7:32 PM
> > To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> > Subject: [permaculture] (Sub)urban Permaculture Elements
> >
> >
> > Hello Folks,
> >
> > A while ago I posted here some ideas for suburban permaculture
> > elements.  There were a few suggestions which I added to my list which
> > I have made available as a link from the link below.  In addition to
> > that file (which is now kind of relegated to 'draft' status) I have
> > been thinking about how to develop a richer framework for suburban
> > economy.  I would really appreciate people's thoughts.
> >
> > Suburban Permaculture: towards a pattern language | Perennial Ideas
> > http://bit.ly/kz66nd
> >
> > I would really appreciate people comments, ideas suggestions.  I am
> > also looking for someone to give me some advice on how to actually
> > depict some of the relationships involved in linking these elements.
> >
> > Harry
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