permaculture

["Darrell E. Frey" <defrey@bioshelter.com>]

I have to confess I have had similar experiences as the article
describes, many times over the last 30 years. Many people have visited
my market garden farm, who, with a limited view of Permaculture Design,
offered numerous critiques  and questioned where the "permaculture "
was?
 I have been teaching permaculture design since 1987, with many
different associates, in various venues. We always teach permaculture
as a design system applied land, buildings,  businesses, farms,
schools lifestyles and regions and so on. Permaculture encompasses all
aspects of our human relationship to our planet and draws on many
disciplines and resources to achieve our goals consistant with our
ethics. As I heard Bill Mollison say in person in 1981, it is not how
you garden, it is just where you put the garden that makes a
permaculture design .
As a permaculture design professional I help clients, starting from
where they are, to achieve their goals to live a more ecologically
sustainable lifestyle. Sometimes that includes a forest garden,
sometimes a biointensive garden, and generally a mix. Some may mulch,
sme may till. Generally they will do both in different gardens. 
Sometimes it is just about what they eat and where they buy it, and
what the do with "waste" But it also includes time management,
succession planning, resource conservation, and a goal to achieve the
yields the client seeks.

So, back to the article in question, I say bravo! Let us read such self
critique with an open mind and seek to broaden the view of our
associates. The experience the author describes predate the a
forementioned Vlad by decades, and comes from people short on
experience .

  A deep reading of Bill Mollison does not really promise no work
gardening. Do not confuse his promotion techniques with real advice.
Yes, such presentation by Mollison may have led to short sighted
comprehension by novices  of permaculture, but I do not think he, or
anyone else I have taught permaculture with promised a yield with no
work. And we did not think mollison really suggested that entirely. I
met Bill Mollison in 1981 and again in 1990 when he spent a day at my
fledgling farm. He wrote in my copy of the Designer's Manual. "Great
Work!" as he signed it for me. Work indeed!

Darrell E. Frey
Three Sisters Farm
defrey@bioshelter.com
www.bioshelter.com

Author; Bioshelter Market Garden: A Permaculture Farm. New Society
Publishing, 2011

On Sat, 25 Jan 2014 06:18:54 -0500, Holger Hieronimi
<holger@tierramor.org> wrote:
Why Bad? I think this article is a good one, althought it is very
> critical with some expressions of PC-
> the author is not uninformed, since she aparently read though some of
> the basic literature plus seems to have considerable experience in
> organic food production...
>
> Its more than clear now that some of the "Mollsionisms" ("The
> designer becomes a recliner"/ "The problem is the solution"/ etc.)
> were great vehicles to draw atention back in the 80ies, but also
> helped to build "cult permaculture" & a cadre of enthusiastic PC
> illuminates described in the article. No problem...I have been one
> after my first PDC back in 1996....and I´m happy for that, since
> this motivated me (in my case) to actually try to establish some
> systems and realize that not everything works as well in realiity as
> described th the PC Designers Manual, a greant book but definitly not
> the "bible" and/or ultimate expression of PC.
>
> Every course of some PC celebrities (Geoff Lawton is one prominent
> example) adds some more to this number (and I think nobody in thios
> group wants to qualify him as some body who gives "bad courses"), and
> its only through a few years of practice "on the ground",
> establishing designs, getting dirtty, maintainig developing systems,
> producing food, experiencing how systems actually work and evolve
> over time in different climates & contexts, that the imaginative
> power of PC concepts get grounded.
>
> saludos desde Colombia (en este momento)
>
> Holger
>
>
> El 24/01/14 04:14, permaculture-request@lists.ibiblio.org escribió:
> > The Trouble with Permaculture
> > http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-01-23/the-trouble-with-permaculture
> >
> > a very bad article; Vlad fodder, awful - just to see what the uninformed
> > are up to
>
> -- Holger Hieronimi - holger@tierramor.org
> TIERRAMOR - Diseño Integrado
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