Perma-what?

Many of you know I took an eight day workshop on “Permaculture” recently. I travelled to Stelle, IL and was immersed in it from 8:30am until 9:30pm each day. Lots of people have asked me what permaculture actually is and I've been trying to come up with a simple, short explanation. However, because permaculture is a blend of lots of different principles, I'm having a difficult time. Luckily, though, a friend and fellow student has posted an excellent definition on her blog and I'd like to share it with you so you get a better understanding of what I actually did for those eight days.

On her blog, http://www.adventurefarm.blogspot.com/, Deanna Lawlor writes this:

'“Permaculture” was coined by two Australians, Bill Mollison and one of his students, David Holmgren. Originally, the word was a contraction of “permanent agriculture” however, as the permaculture practice evolved so did the meaning of the word, which is now mostly understood to mean “permanent culture.”'


'Most of us practice parts of permaculture already...with the choices we make in our daily lives. For instance, if you are composting, growing some of your own food, buying food at the farmer's market, supporting local businesses, walking or biking to work, or foraging for food; you are involved in a piece of permaculture. When you consciously start to pull these pieces together and design your life around the principles of permaculture, you are practicing it.'

I would add that any efforts to reduce your dependence upon finite resources, volunteering or sharing with others and working on building community in your area are also parts of the permaculture model. Permaculture is about caring for earth, caring for people and sharing surplus with everyone. The part which intrigues me the most is the fact that we can take the principles anywhere on the planet and help communities overcome poverty and despair, simply by teaching them some basic proven methods of growing food and obtaining water. It is pretty amazing to see whole villages in third world countries go from barren deserts to lush, green food forests.
Deanna and I are teaming up and will be holding workshops in the Chicago and St. Louis areas starting in January 2011. I know I can count on friends and family to be my “guinea pigs” and let us know how the workshops are going!

My Yard:

The boys have been busy helping me “permaculturize” (my own term!!) our back yard since I returned from the course. We've hauled leaves from neighbors lawns, dumped woodchips from the tree trimming company doing work down the street and collected animal feces from a teacher friend of mine with a zoo in her classroom. All this organic matter is being piled up on an old cement slab in my back yard which used to be the floor of a shed. After piling up a few feet of organic matter and giving it time to decompose, I should have soil healthy enough to plant in. I am also building a raised bed next to it for a couple of fruit trees and other beneficial plants and shrubs.



The beginning of the raised bed



It looks like an overwhelming mountain of my neighbors' yard waste, but all that organic matter will be healthy soil eventually!

We “inherited” Lucy, our new lop-eared bunny from a neighbor. She's sweet and adorable and produces EXCELLENT fertilizer for my compost pile! I got the rabbit hutch used on craigslist. You just pull out the bottom drawer where all the feces drops and pour it onto the pile. I made sure to place her hotel—I mean hutch on the south side of the house where it will get lots of sun. There is also a microclimate, or pocket of warm air in that area most of the time.

Lucy's luxurious home

LUCY

We started “vermi-composting” when I returned from the course. We had always done regular composting in the backyard, but now we have added red wiggler worms to a plastic bin full of air holes with newspaper and kitchen scraps to get richer compost in the spring. (Hopefully) I am still trying to get the correct amount of water, newspaper and organic scraps balanced and I think I might need some more worms. Anyone got some laying around they'd like to share?

Meet our fifty new family members

Some of my other ideas are to dig a small pond in the backyard to attract more beneficial wildlife and prevent water run-off. I'm also going to get another 55 gallon rainbarrel to harvest more water. In my future dreams, I'd love to have a graywater system from the kitchen, washing machine and bathtub. I've also tried very hard to talk the boys into a compost toilet.....but that is going to take some convincing!

This single rain barrel fills up in a couple of minutes during a good rain storm. If my village would let me, I'd get a 500 gallon one.

For more information about permaculture visit:

http://www.midwestpermaculture.com/
http://www.permacultureproject.com/