permaculture

[venaurafarm <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

On 1/1/2013 8:19 AM, Cory Brennan wrote:
> This is great for a homesteader on 10 acres, but I'm looking for
> something that works on a 1/4 acre lot that already has a bunch of
> stuff on it like food forests, house and garage (for co-housing),
> compost, vermicompost, rain catchment, etc. On a lot that size, you
> need most or all  of the coppiced wood for fertility if you don't
> want to import it. You gotta have something that goes on the roof,
> like PV, or something really small.
>
> This is a design problem that is not handled or solved that I know
> of. If everyone on the planet moved to 20 acre homesteads, or 5 acres
> or even 1 acre and grew wood for fuel, it wouldn't be the highest use
> for trees or wood on this planet, and therefore not sustainable. It's
> all well and good to talk about how others aren't really applying
> permaculture, but how many of us are fully off grid and using fully
> renewable (over the long term) energy sources that could work
> anywhere on the planet - particularly in US suburbs?  What would
> happen if we as a group put our collective genius to the task of
> solving this one?

An answer to that question is simply to use Toby's propopsal:
"self-reliance on a bioregional level is where we need to focus not on 
self-sufficiency". Organize neighborhoods with distributed production in 
mind. Have them all meet and brainstorm. There is hardly anything more 
fun than doing that. Determine the needs of individual (urban) 
(permaculture) home(steads). Locate vacant urban space within the 
neighborhood. Install permaculture gardens with woodlots for fuel 
generation and compost from leaves and twigs, wildlife habitat. I'll bet 
you'd be surprised at how much land you would find that could be used 
for these purposes. Some of this space could be devoted exclusively to 
fuel production. Also, why would every house need its own power 
generation system? Why not determine the most efficient size
of such equipment and have it supply electricity to as many homes as 
possible; also those homes can schedule power usage at different times
to eliminate peak loading (overloading) of the system. Also, individual 
homes could have small PV units with battery storage as determined by 
their needs which may differ from their neighbor's, i.e. more or less 
electronic gear to be charged, or have a common charging station for 
several homes. Why not have community kitchens and dining facilities,
with food storage: pickling, canning, fermenting equipment, freezers and 
refrigerators, food dehydrators, pantries, baking facilities (coupled 
with steam & DHW boiler). I really like the idea of steam engine driven 
electrical generators with battery storage. This can be done on any 
scale proportional to need and provides living space and greenhouse heat 
as well as heat for cooking and baking, if the equipment is designed 
with that in mind. Coordinate the latter with
operation of the power plant.

The possibilities are endless. As Bill Mollison said (with a few words 
added by me): "the only limit to the scope, depth and complexity of a 
permaculture design is the imagination of the designer (and of course 
the skill and knowledge of those implementing those designs)".

LL