Category: PermaZ Land

Permaculture the landscape, garden, critters, etc.

So, What the Heck is This Permaculture Thing?

A Very Brief Overview, as told by an un-trained, much-researched, minimally-practiced newbie…

This permaculture thing is a system of growing food (and doing lots of other stuff!) that takes nature’s lead, rather than fighting it, for the purpose of living more healthy, more sustainable, more vibrant lives that not only leaves something for future generations but actually provides them with more!

Even though the word itself is a mash-up of “permanent” and “agriculture” it needn’t only apply to agriculture/gardening.  Just like the word “culture” means a range of stuff from ’tilling and growing’ to ‘values and practices of an organization’ to ‘arts and wisdom of a society’ permaculture also applies to running a household, conducting business, engaging in relationships, and more.  It’s about seeing things as interconnected parts of a larger whole and finding and using the connections between them to enhance our lives and the lives of others.

Permaculture is a complete system based on 3 guiding Ethics~ Earth Care, People Care, Returning/Sharing Surplus.  When your actions are driven by these 3 Ethics, bammo, you’re permaculturing!

Ok, ok, so how do we get our permaculture on???  Here are some nuts and bolts ways to get going (mostly garden oriented)~

  • OBSERVE and interact with nature and its processes.  How is your site oriented to the sun, is there any slope, how can you catch and store water, what’s around to help create healthy soil, what so-called weeds are food or living mulch?
  • Minimize waste.  Pretty self-explanatory.
  • How is some “waste” a resource?  Some packaging is good for starting seeds or sheltering seedlings.  Meat bones are good for making broth and soil amendment.
  • “Stacking functions”.  Work toward making most things serve at least 2 purposes.
  • Use hand tools.  Saves gas/electricity, reduces pollution, exercises your body, can be meditative.
  • Use polyculture/guilds.  Interplanting different types of crops such as the Native American “three sisters”- corn, beans and squash.
  • Learn this mantra- Problems are Solutions!

And PLEASE, don’t take my word for it!  Go look this stuff up!  Here are a few people to search- Bill Mollison, David Holmgren, Geoff Lawton.

Here are a few great websites-

https://permacultureprinciples.com

http://permaculturenews.org

https://permaculturemag.org

Now go out there and get your permaculture on!

Transform a Chicken Into a Veggie in 5 Easy Steps, Or Less!

Growing good veggies requires good dirt.  Growing good dirt requires good compost.  Growing good compost requires good inputs~

Steps 1 and 2, backyard chickens not required!

1. Put all eggshells in compost

2. Keep all chicken bones (after making bone broth😀), bake in oven or hot coals of a fire, grind up, put in compost

Steps 3-5, backyard chickens are required (or just borrow the neighbor’s!)

3. Put chicken poo in compost

4. Put all bedding, nesting and floor/ground covering materials, naturally enriched with poo, dander and feathers, in compost

5. Learn to let ’em do their stuff, right in the garden!  Chickens love to scratch, peck, eat weeds and seeds and bugs and small critters, and of course can’t help but poop!

Can you think of more ways to transform a chicken into a veggie???

How it All Began

Starting behind the 8 ball… This is my big garden out back. Fallow last year, 2014, due to campaign-burnout. Fallow this year due to a 3-4lb ‘watermelon’ growing in my gut, making me feel pretty bad, then watermelon removal on July 2nd. Said removal required a vertical incision bisecting 8-9in of muscle on my abdomen.

Believe it or not, there are many silver linings! The family has managed to keep 2 chickens alive for over a year and enjoyed the eggs of 1 hen. There’s a ton of biomass to add organic material to our still-heavy soil. There’s a ton of weed seeds to create voluntary cover crops next year and more biomass as I pull out the unwanted species. I’ve had more time to learn about permaculture and now realize that I need to make our gardens a little more self sufficient and perennial. I have a golden opportunity to rehab my body and ‘permaculture’ it as well.

All this has got me thinking about doing a blog. Starting with something that looks as bad as my garden and feels as bad as I did and charting the progress of permaculturing it all. Permaculturing life. Topics like, gardening, breathing, moving, eating well, micro biome, diy home and personal care, sunshine, dirt, etc. All with a little resistance-is-fertile spice!