Permaculture: DIY Sustainable Design

The human impulse to dominate and control the natural environment seems to have been part of our wiring all along. But we really started to let loose with this tendency in the Industrial Revolution, when the wholesale tapping of fossil-fuel deposits allowed us to create an ever-wider moat between ourselves and nature. Pretty quickly, people started to notice the negative side-effects of industrialization. But it was a while before anything like a "green movement" caught on. Now we're starting to notice the limits of "green." After all, nothing's perfectly green. We can only reduce our footprint so much ... right? So how do we evolve beyond green? Is there anything beyond green?

Yes! There is something beyond green, and it's called PERMACULTURE.

I find it useful to view the evolution of human design as being divided into three phases. Each phase is characterized by a certain intent, certain strategies, and a certain attitude or consciousness. I'll call the three phases Subjugation/Control, Eco/Green, and Permaculture.

In the Subjugation/Control phase (the prevailing mode in the US and most other industrialized nations), the intent is to control, subdue, and dominate the environment.

Animals, plants, materials, and fellow human beings are categorized as either resources to be exploited or pests to be eliminated. The strategy is to do one of those things: exploit, or eliminate.

The prevailing attitude/consciousness is:

- Scarcity consciousness
- Competition for resources
- Conflict with others, and internal conflict with oneself as well

In the Eco/Green phase (the mode that is emerging to varying degrees in the US and many other industrialized nations), the intent is to minimize human impact on the environment.

In this phase, animals, plants, and materials are seen as vulnerable and needing to be protected from humans, who are a damaging influence. So the strategy, typically accompanied by fear and worry, is to guard and protect. Proponents of Voluntary Human Extinction would be an extreme example of people in this phase.

The prevailing attitude/consciousness is, interestingly enough, the same as for the Subjugation/Control phase:

- Scarcity consciousness
- Competition for resources
- Conflict with others, and internal conflict within oneself

In the Permaculture phase (which is emerging in a select few countries at the government level, and in a scattering of tribes and communities around the world at the unofficial level), the intent is to deliberately IMPROVE the environment -- to accelerate positive change and create excellent design by observing and mimicking natural patterns.

The strategy in this phase? Animals, plants, materials, and fellow humans are ALL seen as valuable resources, so the strategy is to use them wisely and share them. Good permaculture design creates surpluses (of food, materials, time, skills, energy, and so on), which are shared with others; channeled back into the system.

The prevailing attitude/consciousness in the Permaculture phase is:

- abundance consciousness
- sharing of resources
- cooperation with others
- REVERENCE for life and all things

A lot of people (and communities) who are actively seeking to move into the Permaculture phase find themselves still stuck in the emotions and attitudes of the earlier phases. The reactivity, the blame, the scarcity-consciousness, the competitiveness, the primal urge to make the "others" wrong. Dissolving these attitudinal rocks and thorns is the next task on our plate, and we need to do it in order to truly implement permaculture, as individuals and as a species. The technical and logistical challenges to building a sustainable civilization are trivial compared with the attitudinal ones.

We have to keep in mind that what lies beneath all those rocks and thorns is just plain old garden-variety fear. We can have compassion for fear -- our own fear, and other peoples' fear. By cultivating compassion, we will free up the creative energy and other resources that are currently being consumed by blame and judgment. We can then harness this considerable quantity of resources to design a better world.

The most spectacular presentation I have seen, to date, on the power of biomimicry is this 15-minute talk by architect Michael Pawlyn on using nature's genius in architecture.

Although he never uses the word "permaculture" in this talk, his use of natural patterns in the design of greenhouses and other structures is a great illustration of how permaculture design principles can be applied to create design that's not just sustainable, but regenerative.

Pawlyn points out that a spider is capable of spinning silk that's stronger than any fiber humans can create. Though we've come close with aramid fiber, that requires extremely high inputs of heat and pressure. The spider, meanwhile, accomplishes this feat at ambient temperature and pressure. And he brings up the example of a desert-dwelling beetle that collects water on its shell. The shape, color, and material of the shell allow the beetle to collect every tiny droplet of water.

Pawlyn goes over some of his concepts and projects that are actually putting biomimicry into action with success on the ground. Particularly impressive are his salt-water evaporation devices that have created a moist microclimate around a coastal dryland greenhouse; and his project to reforest the boundary areas of the Sahara.

This is a TED talk. If you've never visited the TED site, you're in for a treat. It's a site dedicated to spreading publicly beneficial ideas via video. I would describe it as YouTube with a really strong public-spirited focus.

Pawlyn's 15-minute talk is a must-see. A memorable statement he makes is that if we want people to build ships, we shouldn't sit around talking about carpentry - we should set their souls ablaze with visions of travels to distant shores.

I. QUICK-START GUIDE TO PERMACULTURE

Permaculture was founded in the late 1970s by two Australians, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. The most widely accepted definition of permaculture is "A design system for creating sustainable human environments" (Mollison, Introduction to Permaculture). The word "permaculture" is a contraction of "permanent" and "culture."

The permaculture mind-set is easy to develop. The best way to develop it is:

1) get into a steady habit of observing nature. Sunlight patterns, moon phases, which direction the trees grow, where water collects, where plants don't grow. Extend your observation to patterns in HUMAN nature too. What kinds of work young kids enjoy and don't enjoy. What time of day the boss is most receptive to new ideas. How people tend to behave at certain phases of a project; the types of people that tend to be attracted at different phases of a project. And also observe the NEEDS of anything (plant, animal, or business partner) that you are thinking you might like to cultivate. If you want to raise tilapia, find out what conditions they need so you can adjust your microclimate accordingly.

And

2) exercise your creativity by looking all around you and thinking up examples of how you might apply the permaculture ethics and principles to the design of everything you notice, both tangible and intangible.

A great way to quickly make the permaculture mind-set a part of your personal software is to take a permaculture design course, where you build community with like-minded people and you get to apply your newly learned skills to do an actual site design. In a permaculture design course, you learn a menu of "best practices" from all over the world and throughout history. It's an incredibly rich learning experience that will bring out the creativity you didn't even know you had(!) and will make you more optimistic about your ability to shape the future.

For the moment, here's a quick-start guide to permaculture for you:

Permaculture design ETHICS

1) Care of the earth
Look beyond the surface: Probe the full life-cycle of the goods and services you use. For example: Even some well-meaning recycling operations generate harmful side effects. Seek first to REDUCE consumption, then to REUSE what you have consumed. As a last resort, put it in the RECYCLE bin.

2) Care of people and all other species
Every species has value. You don't have to sleep with fire ants or roll in poison ivy, but recognize that every species has its place in the ecosystem. Care of people is something we often overlook too. If some wonderful nonprofit is trying to save the planet but is overworking its employees and not paying them a livable wage, Care of People is falling short, and there's a fatal flaw in the system (what Mollison calls a "Type 1 Design Error").

3) Limit consumption; share surplus
Really reflect on what's reasonable and try to live within those means. Surplus can be anything extra that you have: money, ideas, energy, tomatoes, knowledge, books, skills, labor, time, ... Share it! Sharing of surplus is the perpetual-motion machine of sustainable culture.

Permaculture design PRINCIPLES

1) Relative location
Don't locate anything in isolation. A greenhouse attached to the sunny side of a house (the south side if you're in the northern hemisphere; the north side if you're in the Southern Hemisphere) offers much more benefit than a greenhouse standing on its own out in the middle of a field. The value lies in the number of beneficial relationships we can create. One definition of permaculture is "the science of maximizing beneficial relationships."

2) Each element performs multiple functions (bang for the buck)
- Pond: irrigation, habitat, fire control, thermal mass, fish farm (or bait farm)
- Job: income, skill-honing, social network, surrogate family

3) Every important function is served by multiple elements (redundancy)
Food sources: farmer's market, local store, grow your own, forage for wild food, and team up with neighbors.
Income: regular job, part-time job, freelancing, selling your surplus stuff on Craigslist ...

4) Energy-efficient planning: Zones and sectors
- Zones are roughly concentric bands starting in the house and extending all the way out to the land you leave wild. In an urban setting, your zones might well overlap with the neighbor's. Plan your design so the places you need to visit most often (container garden, compost bin, etc.) are located closest to your door. Some say that if you have to get your feet wet on the dewy grass to walk to the herb garden, you've placed it too far from your door.
- Sectors: Look at what comes onto the property (water, light, noise, etc.), where it enters and where it exits. Design for optimum use of things that flow onto your site. Some things like an obnoxious streetlight or a noisy neighbor might be a bit more challenging to harness as "resources." You will be surprised though! At least one person has been known to save on their electric bill because the obnoxious streetlight right outside their house made it possible for them to read at night without using their own light.

5) Use biological and/or on-site resources
- A human-powered push-mower beats a gasoline-powered mower. A goat might be even better!
- If you need someone (or something) for a job, save energy and effort and avoid reinventing the wheel by looking under your own roof first.
- And as an extension of "on-site," always check in with your LOCAL resources such as plant nurseries, agricultural extension services, Master Gardeners association, and neighbors! Find out what's working in your local area. IMPORTANT NOTE: A permaculture book (or other permaculture resource) teaches you PRINCIPLES and PATTERNS. Only if it happens to be written by someone who knows your geographic region should you use it as a guide for deciding what specific plants to plant, or building materials to use, or techniques to apply. Certainly, though, a permaculture design book is a great way to get a survey of the possibilities that are out there. Just don't use it as a substitute for your local nursery and your local building experts (and above all, your own first-hand observations of your site conditions).

6) Energy and resource cycling
- Try always to use water or other resources more than once. Rainwater harvesting expert Brad Lancaster irrigates his fruit trees with greywater from the washing machine. The woodstove that warms your house can also be heating up the water for tea or dishwashing.

7) Small-scale intensive systems
- Start SMALL, so you experience success and build on it, rather than get overwhelmed. Don't make a huge investment in some certain type of fish just because you read in a permaculture book that it's good for aquaponics. Buy a little and see how they do in your setup. This goes for gardens and for organizations too. And if you've ever done a natural-building project, you know that starting small is CERTAINLY wise in that arena. There's a reason why you've never heard of the Association of Cob and Strawbale Airplane Hangar Builders.

8. Accelerate succession and evolution
- By watching patterns in nature (including human nature), you can accelerate their progression. A compost bin or mulch pile is a means of deliberately accelerating the decomposition process that occurs on the forest floor, breaking organic matter down into rich soil.

9) Value diversity
- Don't grow just one crop.
- Don't invest all your energy in developing just one skill.
- Don't allow your organization to become a monoculture.

10) Use edge effects
Most of the life and the action is at the edges: the shoreline, the riverbank, the border between field and forest, the park where the motorcycle enthusiasts meet the birdwatchers, the interlude between the noon rush and the dinner rush. Edges offer more resources and greater possibilities for beneficial relationships; make use of them.

11) Attitudinal principles: Find the solution in the problem. Go beyond seeking to eradicate a "problem"; obtain a yield.
- Mollison: "You don't have a snail problem; you have a duck deficiency."
- Turn the loudmouth know-it-all student into a resource by enlisting that student to help teach the other ones.
- Fire-ants are quick and efficient at cleaning out greasy food cans so the cans won't make a mess of your recycling bin (or so you can more easily Reuse instead of Recycling the cans).

Permaculture aims to address human needs sustainably. Sustainable means ecologically, economically, and socially. We can divide human needs into five broad categories: food, water, shelter, energy, and community. One phrase that comes up a lot in permaculture is "self-reliance." This is different from "self-sufficiency," though some people confuse the two.

Self-sufficiency means being an island unto yourself, completely capable of meeting all your own needs. Most of us will never fall into this category, and may not even want to, for a variety of reasons.

Self-reliance, on the other hand, simply means taking responsibility for meeting your own needs. It doesn't mean you have to grow all your own food, make your own shoes, etc.; it just means you take personal responsibility for meeting your needs. And the goal in permaculture is to do this in a sustainable manner -- recognizing that nothing is perfectly sustainable; that sustainability is more a process than some ideal that we will one day "arrive" at.

Let's take one category, food. What could food self-reliance look like? Some people really do grow most or all of their own food. But most of us don't, and that's OK.

Recently on the 90PercentReduction email list, someone made an excellent post called "Six Components of Personal Food Security." I forwarded this post to the Austinperm email list. There, a couple of people responded by posting their favorite books on food self-reliance.

Here, I've added two more components, and some more examples of each component. And I've included the book titles.

The author of the Six Components of Personal Food Security post is a permaculturist named Bob Waldrop, who wrote an excellent article about how he and his wife have been able to live on mostly local, farm-fresh food on a food-stamp budget. I've posted a link to that article in the Links module below.

EIGHT COMPONENTS OF PERSONAL FOOD SECURITY

(1) Grow some of your own food. However much you can. For some people, this will be a large household garden; for others, it'll be a little four-by-four biointensive plot; for still others, it'll be a couple of small pots on the porch or balcony, or in the kitchen window. Know yourself: Better to start small than to start on a scale that's too big for you. You want to be energized and encouraged to do more, not exhausted and overwhelmed. You want learning experiences to build on, not failures that will prompt you to give up.

(2) Buy some food from local farmers and ranchers. Buy however much you can afford and is available. Farmer's markets aren't open year-round in many places. Also, not everyone can afford to buy all their food at farmer's markets. Although, nowadays, a lot of the farmer's markets I visit seem to be price-competitive with grocery stores. And some of the farm markets are accepting food stamps. And farm produce subscriptions -- CSA baskets -- are becoming more widely available and reasonably priced. If you eat meat, get together with friends/neighbors and go in on a share of a cow, hog, or other locally raised meat. Even if you can only afford to buy a small portion of your food from local farmers, just buy what you can. It'll pay off in your health and well-being.

(3) Do some home preservation and processing of foods. Make yogurt or (even easier) kefir. Grow sprouts -- you can do this even in an apartment that gets no sun. Instead of buying sausage, buy fresh ground pork which is typically less expensive, and mix in the spices and seasonings yourself. Learn to can, freeze, and dehydrate. (The accompanying photo shows a little batch of habanero peppers drying. The amazingly productive little plant is growing in a small pot on my front porch.) Make your own ketchup, mustard, soup base, salad dressing.

(4) Prepare your meals from basic ingredients. Dried beans, rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, veggies, fruits, fish, meat. Get as basic as you can. It's cheaper and more nutritious. And learning to cook this way is fun and empowering. Knowing how to break a meal down into its most basic components, and knowing how to make delicious meals from a variety of low-cost foods, you become more resilient, less vulnerable.

(5) Prudently store food for future use. Keep a bit of food on hand: nuts, beans, rice, nut butters, dried fruit, a few canned goods. A few weeks' supply, maybe a couple months' supply, is good to keep on hand if you can afford it. Keep it in good containers made of glass, stainless steel, very sturdy plastic, etc. Some people go to the other extreme and keep years' worth of food on hand, but even if you have good containers, food stored for long periods is vulnerable to spoilage and vermin. Also, if everyone tried now to buy and hoard this much food, we might precipitate the very scarcity we're trying to avoid. I don't think the hoarding instinct is something we want to encourage.

(6) Be a very smart and principled and frugal supermarket shopper. Buy in bulk when you can. Notice what's on sale and stock up. Avoid buying too many foods that are highly packaged, highly processed, or transported from far away. All of these are not so great for the planet, or for you either.

(7) Forage for fresh local food. Hunt and gather: Learn your edible weeds. Find the "public fruit" in your neighborhood. Gather nuts. If you eat meat, learn to hunt. Or go in on a share of someone else's hunt.

(8)Work on a farm. Spend a day or two a week volunteering on a local farm. You probably won't get paid in money, but you'll probably get to take home all the fresh in-season produce you can eat! Which is the same as money, if you ask me.

GREAT BOOKS FOR BOOSTING YOUR FOOD SELF-RELIANCE
(Thank you, Sasha and Mitch, for your excellent recommendations!)

Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon (a cookbook, and a lot more)

The Post Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook, by Albert Bates

Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Elix Katz (an excellent resource - I got into making pickles after reading this book)

Stocking Up 3rd edition, by Carol Hupping and the staff of the Rodale Food Center

Root Cellaring, by Mike and Nancy Bubel (a classic, highly recommended by many experts)

Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning by The Gardeners and Farmers of Terre Vivante

The Resilient Gardener, by Carol Deppe (recommended by a resilient central Texas nurseryman who specializes in permaculture and native plants)

(Note: This is a modified and greatly condensed version of my latest blog post. You can read the full original article here on my blog.)

As public-relations coordinator of a permaculture guild, I hear from a lot of people wanting to know where to find a permaculture job.

The bad news (if you can call it that) is that you'll probably have to make your own permaculture job. The good news is, there are lots of ways to do that!

1. Traditional apprenticeship:
If you're a graduate of a Permaculture Design Certificate course, the traditional path is to become a teacher or a designer. Apprenticing with a teacher/designer is the usual route. The apprenticeship may or may not be paid, but various aspects of the permaculture community make it relatively easy to get by on much less money than you might be used to.

2. Self-apprenticed designer:
If you aspire mainly to work as a designer, rather than a teacher, you can "apprentice" yourself to the craft by doing several pro bono designs (for friends, neighbors, etc.) and putting together a design portfolio and using that to attract paying clients.

3. Self-apprenticed teacher:
If you're not particularly looking to teach the full permaculture design certificate curriculum, but would just like to offer weekend workshops and such, you can go the self-apprentice route there as well. Start by offering talks to the public and to niche audiences. And set up permaculture information booths/tables at festivals and other events. People are thirsty for practical sustainability knowledge, and if you put yourself out there in this manner, you might find that your students come out of the woodwork.

4. Volunteer/intern:
This is another of the oft-tread paths to a permaculture occupation. Become a volunteer-member at a local CSA or other farm, or farmer's market; hop on the WWOOFing circuit; put in some hours with a local sustainability-focused nonprofit. If you really put your heart into it and set out to make yourself invaluable to the people around you, paying work is likely to come out of this one way or the other. The key is to really care about the work you're doing.

5. Launch a sustainable business:
Solo or with partners, permaculture enthusiasts have set up all sorts of little businesses. From local juice purveyors to composting services to green funeral consultants, the list goes on and on.

6. Permaculture your existing business:
Just about any business can be retooled as a local sustainable business. As just one example, if you sew for a living, hook up solar panels and advertise yourself as the first sun-powered seamstress in town. Or the artisan who makes all her stuff on a treadle-powered or hand-cranked sewing machine from 1909.

7. Shift your time mix:
Keep your existing job as a store clerk or tech-support person or whatever, but focus your off time on the things you want to do, that contribute to a more sustainable world. Learn to garden; make soap; spend more time with family; set up neighborhood freebox or tool library. As you gain more skills and inspiration, you'll gain the confidence to ask for the terms you want at work: flexible hours, telecommuting, etc.

8. Create a new job within your current job:
Become your company's unofficial green guru. Set up recycling; collect everyone's food "waste" for your compost. Go further: identify areas of waste in your company's actual operations, and propose permaculture design solutions. Make yourself the indispensable in-house efficiency expert.

As you can see, while there may not be anyone standing there handing out permaculture jobs, there are countless ways to get yourself one. Right this minute, all over the world, people are creating permaculture jobs, in ways I haven't even begun to imagine. It's more about your own passion and inner determination than about any external opportunity.

When you create your permaculture occupation, don't forget to tell us about it!