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  • From: venaurafarm <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Brief comments on Natural Farming
  • Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2012 18:49:40 -0400

On 10/2/2012 5:15 PM, Dieter Brand wrote:
They are part of one another, inextricably linked as I see it. NF
could be considered subjective while permaculture is objective.
Permaculture seeks to design and implement systems that emulate
Nature and become natural or NF in their most basic elements. NF
gives direction to those designs and installation of them.
Permaculture does not just "seek to emulate Nature" is seeks to be
nature, harmonious with on site and off site ecosystems, a dynamic
process, continually changing and self-stabilizing (sustainable,
regenerative). Permaculture leads to NF and NF provides timeless
and essential design criteria, not to mention inspiration.

I would add that permaculture is a systems approach to site use whereas nature farming is completely about one's ongoing presence on that site,
learning from it and taking that landscape to new heights or rather letting Nature do that.

Larry, these are words and concepts too. The question is what does
it all mean in the reality beyond the concepts? By "emulating
nature" you already take the first conceptual step that separates you
from nature - there is nature and there is you who emulates nature,
who controls nature, who designs nature, ... If there were any

Then by creating a permaculture site design, assemble all the components to install, construct or retrofit/reconstruct a site from that design you are merely, humbly, respectfully inserting a structure into an existing natural landscape with as little disruption or change as possible, i.e. adding a fertile element around and within which that landscape can grow and thrive, no different from Fukuoka adding chickens to graze and fertilize....adding seed from off site, manure from off site...this is the least invasive process I can think of or rather describe. Burn incense. Remain still and meditate for further direction. I suggest this thoughtful process as an alternative to "emulating nature". Using a site for Natural Farming should involve a period of contemplation and meditation, observation and recording your thoughts. Peace, tranquility, quietude then mindfullness, observation, analysis, documentation, design then implementation. The difference between Fukuoka and Natural Farming and Mollison and Permaculture is that Fukuoka would not bring in the track loader and backhoe whereas Mollison would.

The more I think about this the more I like it. It seems I have always
had this view of our Earth. Maybe it is a mindset you are born with,
one you should seek to cultivate and derive nourishment from throughout your life.

You should see my natural farm. You would get lots of ideas, think of many possibilities. Case in point, I made major changes to this land after I bought it: hundreds of tons of manures, compost, soil amendments and quarry rock dusts combined, spread and deep tilled in with 70HP tractor, skid loader, rotavator, subsoiler, feld cultivator, 3 bottom plow, large hiller-bedder to make raised beds. Spread and incorporated all the materials, wore out the equipment and sold it
and am now ready to use my well prepared land as a natural market farm
and permaculture site. I have galleries of pictures of the equipment and the land during garden site preparation.

I needed to make sure, given the heavy soil I have, frequent droughts, and dependency on well water for irrigation that could easily work my land with hand tools and get a satisfactory food crop. Now the challenge is to gradually use Fukuoka's no till method to achieve similar results.

In retrospect, truthfully, I could have done quite well adopting NF on my farm and doing without all the off site inputs of materials and equipment. I noticed the condition of the soil when I first arrived here. After a rain you could walk out on the land and when you stepped onto a spot that was saturated but mostly drained and with a little standing water you would hear a popping and crackling sound and see little bubbles appear in the small puddle. This occured because the weight of your body squeezed air out of the pores and capillaries in the soil, perhaps deep in the soil to surface in the puddle giving you a little sound and light show. This was extraordinary to me at the time. I had wild strawberries and all kinds of beautiful wildflowers growing here too. This says volumes about leaving land alone to nurture and stabilize itself.

This is why I suggest taking time to contemplate how you will use land you have well before changing it in any way. Fascinating subject.

philosophy to be extracted from NF (which there isn’t), than we could
perhaps say that “the NFer IS nature, the NFer does not emulate
nature”. Thus, there is the duality of you and nature versus the
ideal of the “unity with nature” of the NFer. It doesn’t matter
whether this ideal can be reached or not, since everything in life
(and nature) is process. There is no end and no beginning. There is
constant change. Ultimately, the ideal too needs to be forgotten and
only nature remains. Of course, a Permi can arrive at the same
thought processes, methods etc. as an NFer, but does she? How do
things look in praxis? If I listen to a newcomer to gardening or
farming who presents her computer-drawn Permaculture “designs” of her
ideal garden or farm, I usually have to stop myself from saying
anything, because I know that by imposing “our design” on nature we
deprive ourselves of the things that only nature can teach us. Of
course, we are humans, we need to plan for tomorrow, we need to make
designs; that is “our nature”. Thus, how do I plan without making
plans? Likewise, we can endlessly make word constructions such as
“method-less method” and the like; which sound intriguing at first,
but tend to exhaust themselves in meaningless word games. The art is
in the doing.

Yes, it certainly is. The future belongs to those who show up.
There are timeless, trancendent designs created on the fly, as an afterthought as it were...:-) and there are good designs and there are the ones that stifle nature and the instincts of those who have to live with with them. The goal of a PDC should be to emphasize the importance of well thought out system design and implementation. A complete course would include grounding in Nature Farming. Thus the value of a PDC. I cannot stress the need for all interested in permaculture to take a PDC at some point in their lives. I participated in an in deoth afternoon session with Lee Barnes. This event started me on the path.

The word praxis is interesting. Wikipedia says this about it: ""Praxis" may also refer to the act of engaging, applying, exercising, realizing, or practicing ideas."

Brilliant, fascinating and absorbing, Dieter. I will think about about these ideas you've suggested for years to come. This is classic thinking about NF and PC.

Hah, all these gems of forum posts scattered around here, F_F list, Permies and elsewhere are like knowledge seedballs, dropped on the cyberturf and left to germinate and flourish, seed themselves, go dormant and them to life again in the next cycle.

I always fret about the need to glean all these gems and add them to organized libraries for posterity. All that takes time. Right now I am
striving to save drafts of this email as I write it lest it get lost.

Modern man is like a forlorn child. We have lost our traditions, the
customs of our communities that have fragmented and the wisdom of the
ancients. The traditional farmer didn’t need to design his farm with
a row of pear trees here, some plum trees at a prescribed distance
and the chicken scoop or fish pond at a certain place behind the farm
house. All these things and much more were given by tradition. The
contemporary city dropout needs to learn all of this again and
artificially create his own traditions. But with all the design
features, the avalanche of websites to be studied and the numerous
practical problems any newcomer will face, it is all too easy to
forget the other thing.

This is the challenge and we can work to restore past traditions.
I guess I a an antiquarian. I played Flamenco guitar for a while. I only cared for the traditional forms of the music and their most outstanding exponents. I still have this attitude. There are many lessons to be learned from close listening, observation and skilled assimilation of experience and knowledge. Putting this into practice, say, as a homesteading permaculture practicioner or nature farmer may well revitalize the best of the past as future paths are forged.

The bottom line is that the NF philosopher, if she were to exist,
does not believe in progress, does not believe it science, does not
believe that humans can improve on nature or that humans can even
“know” nature like an object to be studied. That is a hard one to
swallow for any Westerner, but swallow it we must, or there will be
no NF.

This states the truth eloquently, Dieter. This mindset, should it be cultivated and widely adopted would put man's presence on Earth in proper perspective and revitalize humanity.

LL




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