Use small and slow solutions

Holmgren and Mollison began developing the Permaculture Principles in the era of publication of E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful: A Study Economics as if People Mattered. Still recommended, especially the chapter on "Buddhist economics." 

The permaculturist is enjoined to consider edges and diversity partly because foraging is more sustainable than farming, and one place you can forage is in the garden! This year we have an abundance of chard that came up on its own as a result of our having let a plant go to seed. It's doing better than any of our transplanted greens.

One leaf meal: volunteer Fordhook chard.

1. Cut and bring in.

2. Wash and cut up.

3. Steam stem pieces 20 min.

4. Add leafy green pieces and steam 10 min. Salt and butter to taste and serve.

Making a meal from something that "just came up" is even more local than your CSA. Think of the ways that fits into "Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share." Invite the neighbors to have some and you will really be on a roll.

Fordhook dates from the 1920s and was a Burpee developed strain. The stems are to my mind even better than the greens. Transplants well. Does like well composted loose soil and lots of water. Tolerates both sun and shade and lasts through most of our summers and most of our winters. Seeds prolifically and volunteers grow true to form. Seed companies say it grows to 18" high but they are being modest. Many specimens here have gone over three feet not counting those that bolted in heat waves.

From an economist’s point of view, the marvel of the Buddhist way of life is the utter rationality of its pattern — amazingly small means leading to extraordinarily satisfactory results. 

  -- E. F. Schumacher, "Buddhist Economics" in Small is Beautiful

(To be continued)

Integrate rather than segregate

Create efficiencies and resiliences (Yin and Yang, if you will).

1. This is the poultry moat/orchard at Stony Run Farm, an example of function stacking. Outside fence, slowly becoming a hedge that yields blackberries, plums and wild cherries, is a woven wire deer fence for excluding deer, coyotes and stray dogs from poultry area and garden. Inside fence, lower left, is a welded wire poultry fence and keeps poultry out of the garden until wanted. Fruit trees are planted on a north-south axis to shade one another's roots. They also provide shade to poultry as well as protection from glide-path predators. Poultry pick up fallen fruit and predate on slugs, snails and insects headed for the garden, drop some fertilizer. Chickens, ducks and geese have overlapping but not identical dietary interests.

2. Polyculture; species mixing. Different perennials and annuals mix it up in some beds with a range of heights and leaf and root patterns, allowing some plants to look for slightly different nutrients and water profiles than others, varying sunlight and shade, hiding some plants better from their predators. We never got the hang of companion planting charts but sometimes we get lucky!

3. Variation in height; trellised crops alternate with low-growing spreading crops, assisting each other with partial shade, moisture conservation and weed suppression.

4. Graze; instead of gathering a bushel of this here and that there, one can work one's way up a single bed, finding what's ripe and what's appealing and bring in a fresh meal. Potentially what you're bringing in has less predation, less nutrient depletion, less drought shock, was what your body was really hungry for, and will be eaten fresher. Do the same for poultry or stock; they like their lettuce in season as well.

He who sees the nature of a phenomenon
Is said to [see] the nature of everything.
For the emptiness of a phenomenon
Is the emptiness of everything.

  -- Aryadeva (in Mahatthanadull Et al., "Research Report: A Theory of Buddhism  Integration for Sustainable Development of Wisdom and Virtue in the 21 st Century" (Compatibility of Buddhism and Science in support of the UN SDGs)

 

(To be continued) 

Design from pattern to detail

"Design from pattern to detail."

 

Four views by evening light.

"Permanent" and temporary structures, walkways, paths, beds, guilds, garden architecture, pastures, woodlots, shade, sun, and wildlife corridors should interlock to the advantage of all concerned and also reflect your own needs, movements and temperament. 

Know in what direction are summer and winter sun and shade, where the weather tends to come from, and the state of your soil and watershed. (I would add first and last frost, but who knows, these days?) Remember humanity is a heat engine and way over energy budget: what are things you can do to lower the cost to others of your short time here? 

The buildings shown here, for example, are insulated, shaded, and have white walls and roofs. Many of their materials are recycled and recyclable.

Go lightly on the earth and others and also build soil!

One day Master Guishan asked Huiji, “How do you understand inconceivable, clear, bright mind?” Huiji said, “Mountains, rivers, the great earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars.”

  -- Treasury of the Forest of Ancestors, comp. Satyavayu

(To be continued)

Produce no waste

"Produce no waste."

Here is a cycle:

1. We gather barn bedding, leaves, grass clippings, kitchen wastes, aged humanure, woodlot waste -- anything that is compostable, does not pass along disease, undesirable chemicals or plastic.

2. Heap and turn, or bin and worm. There are good texts on ways to do so. Keep under cover in rainy weather to prevent leaching out.

3. Distribute. Make enough to feed all beds, or it may be, pots. Consider using more where crops are hungry feeders, but give something to all soils if you can.

4. Reap the rewards ("Obtain a yield"). But remember to return all wastes -- leaving roots intact to rot in place, for example -- either by chop and drop, or carrying them to the heap or bin. If there are wastes that must be burned due to disease or pests, consider returning the ashes at least.

During the off season, if you have one, consider allowing stock (in our case poultry) access, to eat up pests and weed seeds. Meanwhile, start all over at 1.

Let your soil's seasons be to you like your days, with an awakening, sustenance, productivity, and rest.

Today humanity is challenged to discover the meaning and role it seeks in the ongoing, long-term task of repairing the rupture between us and mother earth. That healing will transform us as much as the biosphere.

  -- David Loy

If you have acres, maybe do this. If you have a few containers on the porch, do try this.

(To be continued)

Use and value renewable resources and services

"Use and value renewable resources and services"

My first thought when contemplating this principle was the adage: "reduce, renew, reuse, repurpose, recycle." And you do see some of that here: at 2. the harvest/forage bag has been made from a conference tote bag by snipping the handles at one end and sewing them to each other to make a shoulder strap, while at 3. the compost bins are made from pallets and the mailbox is repurposed as a rain-proof hand tool bin.

But it also means to let the earth gift you with things you may use and then return to the earth.

1. Perennials give and grow back, just as trees offer fruit and nuts and then offer them again.

2. Annuals provide fruit and veg but also seed, so that they may come again.

3. "Wastes" become compost gold. Water goes onto the soil, then out to the sea, becomes clouds, returns as rain and snow.

4. Our straw comes from local wheat farmers, and the following year comes from local wheat farmers again. The trellises are made from shoots from hazel, maple, ash, knotweed, and even Oregon grape, all growing on the premises, and renewing from the land cyclically. "Services," indeed. As these become soil and become food for us and the other creatures here, we make some small return via the composting potty and the kitchen "waste" bucket.

There's really no such thing as waste -- the continental plates will subduct all. What there is is spoilage -- hastened entropy, making the things you have used into things that are (in the nearer term than geologic processes) harmful or unusable for others. 

On a grand scale, the Pacific Garbage Patch would be an example of such spoilage, or the Love Canal, or whatever has been touched by the Tar Sands or nuclear industries. Closer to home, lead paint, indiscriminate herbicide usage, or motoring to the store with a V-8 engine to buy cigarettes, say. 

Watch what happens to the stream of gifts from the Earth you sample. Where do the beanpoles go? The apple cores? The old fence boards? 

Respect the cycle.

Simplicity and non-violence are obviously closely related. The optimal pattern of consumption, producing a high degree of human satisfaction by means of a relatively low rate of consumption, allows people to live without great pressure and strain and to fulfill the primary injunction of Buddhist teaching: “Cease to do evil; try to do good.” As physical resources are everywhere limited, people satisfying their needs by means of a modest use of resources are obviously less likely to be at each other’s throats than people depending upon a high rate of use. Equally, people who live in highly self-sufficient local communities are less likely to get involved in large-scale violence than people whose existence depends on world-wide systems of trade.

  -- E. F. Schumacher, "Buddhist Economics" in Small is Beautiful

(To be continued)

Apply self-regulation and accept feedback

"Apply self-regulation and accept feedback."

Efficient or resilient systems require noting and correcting inefficient or non-resilient practices.

My old labor cooperative, The Hoedads, ran on Robert's Rules of Order, but also appended to the end of each meeting a session borrowed from anarcho-syndicalist committee work, known as "Crit-Self-Crit." We would each rise in place and air a grievance we had with anyone, or clique, or the whole team, followed by a grievance we had with our own performance. Dialoguing was not permitted; one had to wait one's turn and even then responding to a specific criticism, other than to contribute to a solution, was discouraged. In this way we had time to consider the viewpoint that had been expressed, and perhaps acknowledge the truth in it and rise to the moment, making a public and private commitment to do better for the sake of all. Solidarity is People Care.

1. Ask your site what it wants from you, through close observation and interaction. Watch the seasons and learn.

2. Contemplate what you have seen and learned in a place and state of reflection.

3. Observe what is happening off-site as well, remembering that everything affects all. Here we see smoke from tundra and taiga fires over a thousand miles away. What does this mean for the world? Your region? Your locality? Your site? How should you respond?

4. Check your findings with others and be prepared to discover, in everyone's accumulated wisdom, your mistakes. Freely acknowledge these when they have been confirmed -- this too adds to the pool of knowledge.

In this way, your commitment to Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share will be honed and strengthened, and in your short time in the world you will have made a contribution.

To find out, to examine, to unravel, to penetrate, there must be freedom to listen and freedom to perceive.
  -- Krishnamurti

(To be continued)

Catch and store energy

Our budget at Stony Run Farm hasn't been up to what often comes to mind with this principle, which is a set of solar panels. But we do in fact catch and store energy.

1. A 3X50' bed of potatoes stores a lot of solar energy in the form of a wheelbarrow full of spuds. We eat about two thirds over the winter and then plant the rest the following spring. Rotating beds seems to help reduce the risks associated with using your own spuds for seed. Ours are Yukon Golds, Reds, and German Butterball.

2. We do buy in some wood for each winter but also manage our own coppice and woodlot. This is another form of solar, similar in principle to the potatoes (photosynthesis). One warms you on the inside, the other on the outside. Splits, rounds and smallwood go in the woodpile, which faces the sun to season the wood. Leftover branches and twigs, such as the pine boughs shown, are treated as chop-and-drop mulch material, scattered around beneath fruit trees or incorporated into the garden beds. One heap of twiggy "waste" is left for a wildlife safe zone. Many of the trees in our rotation we planted ourselves. Saw used here is electric, and we buy 100% wind from our power co-op.

3. We also use passive solar in the form of a used hot water heater with its jacket and insulation peeled back, and painted black, resting on a pallet inside its own cold frame. It's tapped into the main line between the well and house, and serves as a pre-heater for the inside electric hot water heater, reducing costs half the year. In two decades it has never needed maintenance.

4. Homemade solar dryers consisting of no more than a plywood box with a window on it, with holes in the ends, have served us well, perhaps because we have had such low humidity (and getting lower! Gulp) in summer. 

To see the wondrous nature of water, you need to look beyond the sign (appearance) of the water, and see that it is made of non-water elements. If you think that water is only water, that it cannot be the sun, the earth, or the flower, you are not correct. When you can see that the water is the sun, the earth, and the flower, that just by looking at the sun or the earth you can see the water, this is "the signlessness of signs." An organic gardener who looks at a banana peel, dead leaves, or rotting branches can see flowers, fruit, and vegetables in them. She is able to see the nonself nature of flowers, fruit, and garbage. When she can apply this insight to all other spheres, she will realize complete awakening.

  -- Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Buddha's Teaching

(To be continued)

Obtain a yield

1. Tomatoes, squash, eggplant, apple butter. People may not care for most of your home canning, but they will eat your apple butter.

2. Duck eggs and chicken eggs resting on a foraged bench. 

3. Greens being harvested for fresh consumption, for poultry, and for dehydration for later use by both humans and poultry. 

4. A persistent weed, Japanese knotweed, being collected for food, fodder, mulch, compost, trellising poles, bee hotels, and kindling.

These are subsistence yields. Stony Run Farm is really just a suburban-style lot in a country setting, but we do ask it to convert sunshine and compost for us into veggies. We try to stay within our fertility budget -- if we were to sell crops, we'd have to buy something to fertilize with. Commerce has the long term disadvantage that it leaks energy at every station of rach product -- speeding up entropy for all. We're idealists, but we've made an effort to participate as little as we reasonably might, and we feel good about our choice.

It’s the same as the people that teach poetry and the people that teach all of the arts in Japan, where it’s based on this idea that you come to the place where there’s no qualities and no thought and you’re one with everything, and if you’re studying pottery, of course it makes you a better person, it’s a good thing… with natural farming you become a better more joyful person, but you’re also providing for your own livelihood, you’re growing what you need to eat and you’re in partnership with other forms of life.

 -- Larry Korn

(To be continued)

Observation and interaction

Here is one of twelve collages on The Permaculture Principles and how they might be applied to subsistence right livelihood, especially in the maritime Pacific Northwest. 

In recent years we have, on our one acre farm, by whatever causes, had fewer infestations here of insect pests, slugs and snails.

Perhaps one reason is that we keep an eye out for ways to encourage predation of these. By maintaining habitat refuges, we're seeing an increase in 1. garter snakes and gopher snakes, 2. tree frogs, and 3. orb weavers, yellow garden spiders, crab spiders and barn spiders. Also, we encourage 4. the ducks and chickens to spend time in the garden and orchard, especially in winter. When we find a ladybug or other beneficial on our walks, we bring it home if it seems okay to do so.

Through observation we can adapt to some changes. For example, we spotted a trend in increased supply of plantains, amaranths and false dandelion on the premises. We looked these up and ended up adding them to our diet and using the plantains for topical medication as well.

Bigger changes are leading us to other thoughts. Poison oak is on the increase, showing up on level ground and not just in the trees as formerly. We think from this, and hearing that rattlers are also extending their range, that our climate is drying and may affect the well, as our limited groundwater is seasonal-rains dependent. We can collect rain and drought-proof the garden somewhat, but may also need to add a water barrel and rotary pump for visits to the river, less than two miles off. We're nearing the end of our career here, but there's no point being driven off the place prematurely through lack of observation and interaction.

The Buddha’s insight into life’s interconnectedness has powerful implications for how we treat the natural world on earth, its wildlife, and each other. Because we depend so deeply on nature and on one another, we recognise that all life is as valuable as our own. 

  -- "Guest" writing for The Wildlife Trust

(To be continued)

The holistic way

If we look up "holistic" we find, apart from the narrower medical term, that it means "characterized by comprehension of the parts of something as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole."   

It is a term used by Permaculturists and is the point of Permaculture; treat this life (the "world") as a whole system of which we are a part, rather than as a set of resources (separate from us: objectified) to be exploited for profit, regardless of externalized costs.

Permaculture is a word originated by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren while considering whole systems in the context of agriculture in Tasmania. Permaculture principles as a set of ideas or design tools are in flux, as the movement's leadership is diverse and democratic, with new knowledge added all the time, so this series of posts will become dated quickly. 

With the exceptionally dissipative fossil fuel system rapidly approaching a EROEI Energy Returned On Energy Invested) of 1:1, the consequences: famines, resource wars, revolts, and corporate and governmental collapse appear unavoidable now. 

Those who have been feverishly working to create sustainable practices may or may not find a way for humanity to muddle through but remain the only game in town. There have been a number of related or similar efforts, such as the Satoyama Initiative or Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms, or Global Ecovillage Network.

I think the ethic (the "three ethics") as stated on permacultureprinciples.com is spot on. "Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share." Viewed through the monist glass, we can say that all this is Earth Care, people and their basic needs being a part of the holistic whole.

Here are the principles again:

1. Observe and Interact. By taking the time to engage with nature we can design relevant solutions.
2. Catch and Store Energy. Developing systems to collect resources when abundant, we can use them in need.
3. Obtain a yield – Ensure that you are getting useful rewards from your work.
4. Apply Self Regulation and Accept Feedback – Efficient or resilient systems require noting and correcting inefficient or non-resilient practices.
5. Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services – as opposed to non-renewable resources.
6. Produce No Waste – “Waste not, want not.”
7. Design From Patterns to Details – Observe patterns in nature and society. Test their appropriateness broadly, rather than losing yourself in detail.
8. Integrate Rather Than Segregate – By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop, creating efficiencies and resiliences.
9. Use Small and Slow Solutions – Small is beautiful.
10. Use and Value Diversity – “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” -- be resilient.
11. Use Edges and Value the Marginal – These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.
12. Creatively Use and Respond to Change – We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing and then intervening at the right time.

And, we'll go over them one by one.

An ethical life is one that is mindful, mannerly, and has style. Of
all moral failings and flaws of character, the worst is stinginess of
thought, which includes meanness in all its forms. Rudeness in
thought or deed toward others, toward nature, reduces the chances
of conviviality and interspecies communication, which are essential
to physical and spiritual survival.

-- Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild

(To be continued)