How a ‘chicken tractor’ can clear and improve soil, as well as getting rid of pests

My vegetable field has some problems. It’s not that vegetables don’t grow there; over two seasons I’ve had some notable successes, it’s just that there’s verdant weed growth throughout, more slugs than you can shake a stick at, and the soil needs improving if I am going to grow the range of crops I want to, on what can be a challenging site.

Of course, chicken tractoring is one of the staples of Permaculture gardening, and the first time I saw chickens used to help in the garden was at Ragman’s Lane Farm years and years ago. Since then I’ve had chickens in most of my gardens, but it’s always a good idea to refine and reconsider how we design our food growing systems.

Chickens enclosed in a pen will till, scratching and clearing away weeds. They won’t necessarily knock-out perennial weeds, but they will keep all kinds of plant growth under control. In so doing of course, they will also provide quite a lot of their own food.When I cleared ground in my mountain garden in France, I went in first with the brush-cutter, and then penned the chickens on the opened ground; they couldn’t clear brambles unaided, but once I’d started the work, they quickly made ground good enough to be turned into beds. Here in Wales, my birds will face less of a challenge, more greenery and less thorns.

In their scratching and searching, chickens effectively control slugs, eating both the adults and uncovering their eggs. Slugs are considered by many people to be the single biggest limiting factor on veg production in this climate, controlling them can make the difference between a viable garden and no garden at all. I know quite a few people here in the wet West who use Indian Runner ducks or Khaki Campbells to eat slugs, they are breeds which much prefer to eat slug flesh than your vegetables, but whilst you’d never let chickens roam amongst your veg, carefully penned on ground being prepared for gardening, they can at least clear the way a little, and keep a lid on the slug population prior to planting or sowing.

Read more here.

How to Make The Most of Your Yard (Including Weeds!), Permaculture Style

Not all the world hates weeds. Sure, there are many gardeners scuffling around in the clogs, cursing those pesky dandelions (actually a highly medicinal plant) and that crabgrass blemishing their flower beds. They offer theories as to how to prevent them, when to get rid of them and, at the weakest and worst moments, may even spray a little agent orange, aka Roundup, to kill them dead, dead, dead.

However, it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, with a little effort and a good plan, weeds and gardeners can live in harmony. In fact, it’s not just weeds. It’s all those twigs and sticks that loiter round beneath trees. The mountains of leaves that spiral down in the autumn can join in as well. With the right mindset, that is a mindset of feeding your garden some premium organic fodder, all the yard work many have come to despise can actually be … exciting.

That’s right. I said it. I love weeding and raking. I get warm and fuzzy over fallen debris from my trees. I know that all of this stuff will make my garden a richer, more fertile space, and it is completely free. Instead of agonizing over the work I’m doing to keep the grass trimmed, through permaculture techniques, I’ve learned how to make my yard work for me.

Step 1: More Garden, Less Grass

The first and most exciting step of making your yard work for you is getting rid of the grass and making a garden (Here are ten reasons to do it!). This, however, doesn’t have to be the typical tilled-up rows we’ve come to associate with growing vegetables. Garden beds can be arranged like flowerbeds, or they can be beautiful herb spirals or funky designs. The idea is to use the space to grow food, which can be an alluring mix of colors and aromas as well. Then, rather than mowing the lawn so much, you get to harvest some food.

Read more here.

Permaculture is Revolution disguised as Organic Gardening

Co-founder of permaculture, David Holmgren knows the power of cultivating seeds to full fruition

Over the past thirty-five years, he’s seen the seeds of permaculture  grow into a thriving global movement. During his recent “Transforming the Australian Dream” tour on the east coast of Australia, David shared a glimpse into the early sparks of permaculture and offered insights into some of the simple principles of growing and living that can now help us transform suburbia into a flourishing ecosystem of sustainable living on all levels.

“It is perhaps surprising to people that when I was a student in Hobart Design School in 1974, there was a huge interest in what today we would call sustainability. It was one year after the oil crisis of 1973 that changed a lot of thinking around the world. And it was two years after the Club of Rome Limit to Growth report which really showed that industrial society couldn’t keep going like it was. 1973 was also the year that E.F. Schumacher wrote the very influential book on my thinking, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered.”

Read more here.

What Is 'Liberation Permaculture'

Is permaculture about re-creating Eden or about changing the world in every way, even politically? Graham Burnet and Nicole Vosper make the case for a politically engaged, 'liberation permaculture'.

Does permaculture design have a place within the current 'political' narrative? Do ethics of earth care, people care and fair shares inform our strategic thinking in effectively responding to what is happening in a political arena that is so clearly diametrically opposed to such values right now, or do we continue to doggedly insist that permaculture is 'neutral' and stick to designing our gardens and insist on being 'nice to each other' rather than speaking our truth to Power? Graham Burnett and Nicole Vosper discuss the idea of 'Liberation Permaculture' and some questions that arise...

There's a quote attributed to Buckminster Fuller that many permaculturists seem fond of using whenever 'political' issues arise;

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

In many ways this is a nice little phrase that neatly encapsulates what Joanna Macy calls 'The Great Turning' – the need for a paradigm shift in the human mindset; fundamentally reassessing who we are, what we assume we need and how we are related to our living planet and to each other. But as with all sound-bites, there is also the danger of using these words as a substitute for critical thinking, without exploring what they truly mean or imply.

Read more here.

Food Forests Could Bring Free Healthy Organic Food To Everyone For The Same Cost As Roadside Grass

Food forests or Forest gardening have been around for a long time with many of the native cultures practicing this form of sustainable agriculture. It is a form of low-maintenance plant-based food production which replicates natural ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, running vines and perennial vegetables. Beneficial plants and companion planting is a big part of the food forest system.

Unlike much of the modern industrial agricultural system which relies heavily of inputs such as fossil fuels and artificial herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers, a food forest once established is self-regulating and highly abundant in yield.

Why Food Forests?

• Forests are home to approximately 50-90% of all the world’s terrestrial (land-living) biodiversity — including the pollinators and wild relatives of many agricultural crops (Source: WWF Living Planet Report 2010)
• Tropical forests alone are estimated to contain between 10-50 million species -over 50% of species on the planet.
• Rainforests cover 2% of the Earth’s surface and 6% of its land mass, yet they are home to over half of the world’s plant and animal species.

It is evident that forests themselves are synonymous with life, biodiversity and fertility. Where life gathers, complex and mutually beneficial relationships are created between organisms; natural harmonious communities form, and life forms multiply and proliferate. If forests are where most of the life on the planet is, then anything less than a forest is most likely less suited to supporting life. Life supports life, yet we have forgotten that we are in fact part of the web of life itself, and depend on other life to sustain ours.(1)

Read more here.

London neighbors create 'instant' permaculture gardens for each other

I've gotta say, I've been loving the Living with the Land video series from Permaculture Magazine.

Whether it's showing us vegan organic agriculture, mature forest gardens, no-dig market gardening or regenerative agriculture through holistic grazing, the series has introduced some wonderful ways to manage land that don't just "do less harm," but actually heal the soil and renew biodiversity too.

But most of the examples so far have been rural.

Given that more and more of us are living in the city, how can we rethink our relationship with the soil? One answer, I think, is to rethink our relationship with each other. That's the idea behind Permablitz—a concept that started out in Australia before catching on in London—and which involves neighbors getting together to carry out one-day garden makeovers using permaculture design as the guiding vision.

Read more here.

How Permaculture Can Restore Ecosystems & Communities

Maddy Harland tells the story of the Shona African community who healed their damaged ecosystems. They restored their springs, rebuilt their soil, regenerated their agriculture and alleviated poverty and malnutrition. Permaculture farming has proven effective all over the planet.

In the rural Shona African community in Zimbabwe, five villages of 7,000 people have joined together to form the Chikukwa Project, named after their local chief. Twenty years ago their land was deforested, barren, and nothing would grow there in the summer months. When the rains came, they washed down the slopes taking the soil with them. The springs had dried up and the people were poor, hungry, and suffering from malnutrition.

The Shona decided to do something about it and sought advice from permaculture pioneer, John Wilson. Slowly, a field at a time, they built water retaining landscapes: terracing the slopes and digging swales to hold the water in the soil. They added composted manure to these terrace beds to build soil and grow food. They stopped grazing animals and foraging for firewood in the gullies where the springs rose and planted native trees there to hold the moisture in the soil. They also stopped untethered grazing of goats on the hillsides, allowing trees to regenerate, and they started driving their cattle to agreed grazing areas. They learnt new skills: specifically permaculture training, conflict resolution, women’s empowerment, primary education and HIV management.

Within three years, the springs began to reactivate. They saw that the yields from the plots with swales were bigger than the plots without them. Twenty years later, where there was once eroded soil and over-grazed slopes, there are now reforested gullies with flowing water, terraces full of vegetables, grains and fruit, and high ridges lined with trees for firewood. In the villages, there are home gardens, pens for hens and goats, water tanks to catch rainfall runoff, and a culture of cooperation that values people skills as much as horticultural techniques. The landscape is verdant and biodiverse, and the gardens and farms produce crops for the families and for market, bringing an economic yield back into the region. All this in one generation.

Read more here.

Living With The Land Part 5 - No-Dig Gardening

Growing organic vegetables commercially for over 30 years, Charles Dowding has developed a no-dig method of cultivation for temperate climate gardening.

Charles and his partner Steph Hafferty introduces us to Homeacres, his 1/4 acre market garden. Now supplying year-round salad and fresh vegetables for local restaurants, Charles took just one winter to transform it from weedy pasture using mulch and no-dig gardening.

No-dig gardening is a technique regularly used in permaculture. The use of a mulch on top of the soil mimics the leaves that drop from the trees, which then rot and are drawn into the soil by worms and microbes. In nature, soil is rarely disturbed, with all work being done by the bacteria and creatures in the soil. Charles explains the importance of soil, the beneficial bacteria and how soil disturbance reduces nutrients and affects the microbes good work.

Read more here.

Permaculture is Revolution disguised as Organic Gardening

Permaculture is Revolution disguised as Organic Gardening

‘Permaculture is Revolution disguised as Organic Gardening.’ Graham Burnett.

Over the past thirty-five years, he’s seen the seeds of permaculture  grow into a thriving global movement. During his recent “Transforming the Australian Dream” tour on the east coast of Australia, David shared a glimpse into the early sparks of permaculture and offered insights into some of the simple principles of growing and living that can now help us transform suburbia into a flourishing ecosystem of sustainable living on all levels.

“It is perhaps surprising to people that when I was a student in Hobart Design School in 1974, there was a huge interest in what today we would call sustainability. It was one year after the oil crisis of 1973 that changed a lot of thinking around the world. And it was two years after the Club of Rome Limit to Growth report which really showed that industrial society couldn’t keep going like it was. 1973 was also the year that E.F. Schumacher wrote the very influential book on my thinking, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered.”

“So a lot of these ideas were around at that time and my interest was really in the overlap between landscape architecture as a design profession, the science of ecology and the practice of agriculture.”

It was at that time that David met Bill Mollison, who was teaching at another university in Hobart, and through their friendship and discussions started to gel the idea of what ultimately became permaculture.

Read more here.

Permaculture 101

How to put natural landscaping practices to use in your own backyard.

Combining the best of natural landscaping and edible gardening, permaculture systems sustain both themselves and their caregivers. The ultimate purpose of permaculture—a word coined in the mid-1970s by two Australians, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren—is to develop a site until it meets all the needs of its inhabitants, from food and shelter to fuel and entertainment. While it’s the rare home gardener who can follow permaculture principles to the ultimate degree, most can borrow ideas from the permaculture ethos with landscaping techniques based on production and usefulness.

Gardening + Permaculture

Permaculture emphasizes the use of native plants or those that are well adapted to your locale. The goal here is to plant things you like, while making sure they have a purpose and benefit the landscape in some way. Plants such as fruit trees provide food as well as shade; a patch of bamboo could provide stakes for supporting pole beans and other vining plants. Permaculture gardeners grow many types of perennial food plants—such as arrowhead, sorrel, chicory, and asparagus—in addition to standard garden vegetables.

Like all gardeners, permaculture enthusiasts love plants for their beauty and fragrance, but they seek out plants that offer practical benefits along with aesthetic satisfaction. Instead of a border of flowering shrubs, for instance, a permaculture site would make use of a raspberry or blackberry border.

Disease-prone plants, such as hybrid tea roses, and plants requiring a lot of water or pampering are not good permaculture candidates. Choose a native persimmon tree that doesn’t need spraying and pruning, for example, instead of a high-upkeep peach tree. Consider the natural inclinations of your site, along with the needs of its inhabitants, and put as much of your site as possible to use. Work with the materials already available rather than trucking in topsoil or stone. And remember that a permaculture design is never finished because the plants within a site are always changing.

Read more here.

Exploring Italy, the 'Bioculture' Way

The often forgotten Italian region of Le Marche offers rolling green hills of organic wine, olives and vegetables as well as passionate artists, agrotourisms and historic tales.

The Le Marche region in central Italy is deeply connected to its land and locality, with small-scale organic and biodynamic vineyards, agrotourisms, passionate communities and a focus on local and sustainable food. The region sits between the Adriatic Sea and the Appenine mountains that extend along the length of peninsular Italy.

I was recently given the opportunity to visit this stunning region, with the main aim of testing out a new App: Bioculture, aimed at people visiting in Le Marche. I have to admit, I was a bit dubious at first. My idea of a holiday is somewhere I can turn my phone off and immerse myself in the culture and countryside of my localities. But the Bioculture App surprised me.

Read more here.

Bioculture is the baby of Federico Bomba, a theatre director and advocate of local business. Federico was fed up with artists in Italy not being able to find paid work. Since the economic crash, more and more Italians are either moving abroad to find work or are leaving their city careers for the ‘slower pace’ of life in the countryside – growing grapes, olives and food – which although may be ‘slower’ is actually a lot of hard work.

Federico wanted to bring artists back into the economic sector and saw the best way for this was to connect them up with tourism. This is how Art Walks with Bioculture was born. This project and app joins up agrotourism, local food, businesses and artists who are passionate about the health and tourism of their region.

Perennial Vegetables: Grow More Food With Less Work

Combine permaculture gardening techniques and edible landscaping ingenuity in your garden by growing perennial vegetables. You’ll be surprised by how little work garden perennials require when compared with the work you expend growing annuals. Plus, our list of best perennials and resources guide will get you started with this sustainable, practical gardening technique.

Suppose a new agricultural breakthrough promised higher yields, a longer growing season and much less work. These claims can become real benefits for those willing to make a change to a way of gardening that more closely mimics nature.

Nature’s ecosystems always include not only annual vegetables, but also perennials — edible roots, shoots, leaves, flowers and fruits that produce year after year. Besides fruit-bearing trees and shrubs, more than 100 species of perennial vegetables grow well in North America.

By growing perennials, you’ll create a more diverse garden that ultimately needs less from you: You’ll spend less time working and more time harvesting.

“It’s as close to zero-work gardening as you can get,” says Eric Toensmeier, author of Perennial Vegetables. “Our perennial vegetable beds planted 11 years ago still bear food, and all we do is add compost and mulch once a year.”

What’s more, growing perennials extends the harvest season without a greenhouse, cold frame or other device. You can harvest Jerusalem artichokes all winter as long as you mulch enough to keep the ground from freezing.

Read more here.

Food Forests Could Bring Healthy Organic Food To Everyone – For Free

Food forests or Forest gardening have been around for a long time with many of the native cultures practicing this form of sustainable agriculture. It is a form of low-maintenance plant-based food production which replicates natural ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, running vines and perennial vegetables. Beneficial plants and companion planting is a big part of the food forest system.

Unlike much of the modern industrial agricultural system which relies heavily of inputs such as fossil fuels and artificial herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers, a food forest once established is self-regulating and highly abundant in yield.

Why Food Forests?

• Forests are home to approximately 50-90% of all the world’s terrestrial (land-living) biodiversity — including the pollinators and wild relatives of many agricultural crops (Source: WWF Living Planet Report 2010)
• Tropical forests alone are estimated to contain between 10-50 million species - over 50% of species on the planet.
• Rainforests cover 2% of the Earth’s surface and 6% of its land mass, yet they are home to over half of the world’s plant and animal species.

It is evident that forests themselves are synonymous with life, biodiversity and fertility. Where life gathers, complex and mutually beneficial relationships are created between organisms; natural harmonious communities form, and life forms multiply and proliferate. If forests are where most of the life on the planet is, then anything less than a forest is most likely less suited to supporting life. Life supports life, yet we have forgotten that we are in fact part of the web of life itself, and depend on other life to sustain ours.(1)

Read more: http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/08/31/food-forests-could-bring-healthy-organic-food-to-everyone-for-free/

A Calendar/Mandala Celebrating Natural Cycles

Natural cycles are circular, so why are calendars not? Robert Alcock explains why he has created a free to download and print, circular calendar/mandala for everyone to use!

Ever since I can remember, my internal picture of the year has been a circle - with summer opposite winter, spring opposite autumn. This makes perfect sense if you consider that, after all, a circle is the shape of the Earth's orbit around the sun.

The view of time as a cycle has been around for millennia - examples include the Celtic wheel of the year, the Mayan calendar, the Taoist yin-yang symbol and the Dharma wheel in Buddhism. But modern cosmology views time as an arrow, not a cycle: a endless onward progression with no turning back. Our calendars reflect this view, presenting time as an infinite sequence of rectangular boxes, reminiscent of the boxes (like houses, rooms, and cars) in which many of us spend our lives.

But for anyone who values our connection with the natural cycles of earth, sun and moon, it makes far more sense to depict the year as a circle. If you think about it, it's rather surprising that so few calendars represent the year in its natural shape.

Since I couldn't find any round calendar designs that I liked, eventually I decided to go ahead and make my own. This design has been evolving for about three years, and I'm fairly happy with it, but it isn't meant to be definitive. I'm offering it on the web for free in the hope that others will pick up the idea and run with it.

Read more: http://www.permaculture.co.uk/news/2411145803/calendarmandala-celebrating-natural-cycles

Top 10 Perennial/Ornamental Vegetables

Edible perennial expert Anni Kelsey shares her 10 favourite edible perennials that are also beautiful ornamentals for a cottage garden! Now that's permaculture!

This is one version of my 'Top 10' perennial vegetables – a version drawn up with a mixed cottage garden style planting in mind. It's really hard to choose favourites and there are plenty of others that I love and would be in the top 10 if it had a different purpose.

1. Earth nut pea (Lathyrus tuberosus) - It has edible tubers, beautiful flowers, like bright pink mini sweet peas plus the plants fix nitrogen and bees adore them. This year they have been growing with (herb) fennel and Jerusalem artichoke and happily used them as a climbing frame.

^{Earth nut pea}

2. Dahlia - Although I haven’t actually eaten this yet it is amazing for flowers with edible tubers too. I am following James Wong’s advice in growing them. I raised a few from seed last year, kept the tubers over the winter and planted them out in late spring. The results have been massive plants with lots of flowers all summer. When they have died down I will harvest tubers, save some and try eating the others. Various sources as well as James Wong suggest they really are nice to eat.

3. Skirret (Sium sisarum) - This is a top favourite and would be in any of my ‘must have’ lists. Its roots have a flavour between that of carrot and parsnip, it has attractive flowers which are good for insects and it grows without any trouble. At the end of the year you can save seeds and also take off the small plants that form at the base of the stem so they are easy to multiply.

4. Three cornered leek (Allium triquetrum) - These are in the garden from mid winter onwards (but from autumn in this mild year) and have absolutely beautiful flowers in spring, usually in May. The bulbs, stems and leaves have a garlic/onion flavour. They multiply quite rapidly and are all round super plants!

5. Buckler leaf sorrel (Rumex scutatus) - A low growing ground cover with attractive leaves but insignificant flowers. It has a fresh tangy, lemony flavour and is a good addition to salads.

Read more: http://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/top-10-perennialornamental-vegetables

The Oldest Food Forest in Britain

Visit Graham and Nancy Bell, permaculture teachers and creators of the oldest permaculture food forest in Britain.

Over 20 years ago, they began planting a wide range of fruit trees, vegetables, perennials and much more in a field behind their cottage.

Now one of Britain's first forest gardens is a diverse temperate food forest that mostly takes care of itself.

Read more: http://www.permaculture.co.uk/videos/oldest-food-forest-britain

How To Turn Your Front Lawn into an Edible Forest Garden | Action in Boise, ID

On Thursday, October 16th the Permaculture Action Tour landed in the front lawn of “the homestead,” a collective house in Boise, Idaho.   Unseen from the street, the backyard hosts an amazing food garden full of kale and delicious red chard, egg-laying chickens, and sheep.

On this day, we brought volunteers to spread the permaculture vision to the entire property surrounding the house, which could be seen from one of Boise’s busiest roadways.

The co-housing community where the Action Day was held is on State Street, a road that sees 40,000 cars pass by a day.  Most drive by without a clue to the beauty and productivity of the backyard gardens that hide behind the normal looking house.  That all changed after the Polish Ambassador came to town!  Over fifty people from the show the night before at the The Bouquet came out to participate in Boise’s Action Day, transforming the front and surrounding lawn of the homestead into a regenerative, food-producing forest garden.

Read more: http://www.permacultureaction.org/how-to-edible-garden/

What Is Hügelkultur?

Build healthy soil your garden can rock out in with this German compost technique.

Lasagna gardening. Sheet composting. No-till gardening. You’ve probably come across these and similar gardening techniques before. They are all slightly different variations on building a raised bed from layers of organic matter, which rots down right where it is, getting better and better as it composts in place. Techniques such as these promise that you can improve tilth, preserve soil structure, and create the garden bed of your dreams without a lot of backbreaking labor or expensive, imported garden soil.

Although some of these published methods offer specific "recipes” to create ideal, no-till beds, the basic technique is simple: Pile on a lot of organic, compostable material, and let nature take its course.

The latest bed-building method to turn gardeners’ heads is actually an ancient technique called hügelkultur. The German word, meaning "mound culture,” is usually pronounced "hoo-gull culture” in English-speaking gardening circles. It is one of many techniques associated with permaculture, a philosophy that seeks to understand, mimic and incorporate natural relationships and systems into the garden.

Hügelkultur differs from previously popularized no-till bed-building techniques in a few key ways:

1. Woody Base Material

Hügelkultur beds are ideally built with a base of logs or branches and prunings from woody shrubs. The larger the woody base material, the more self-sustaining you can expect the beds to be over time.

Read more: http://www.urbanfarmonline.com/urban-gardening/backyard-gardening/what-is-hugelkultur.aspx

How To Make a DIY Worm Tower

Make composting in your garden a speedy affair with your own worm tower by eliminating a few stages in the composting process. Your garden or yard will love you!

A Worm Tower is basically a length of pipe buried halfway in the ground with holes drilled in the buried part for worms to get in and out. Food scraps are added directly to the tower instead of into your composting bin, and are eaten by worms already living in the target part of your yard. You can add Worm Towers to your full blown vermiculture / vermicomposting regime or just use them by themselves, particularly in raised beds. Several steps and lots of time can be eliminated for some of your composting by simply delivering food waste directly to the worms, directly on to the garden.

What you need:

Length of PVC about 3 1/2 inches (89mm) or larger wide or if you can get it a length of bamboo – much more ecological

Something to cap the tube with. (I bought some caps but there are other suggestions like a flipped over plastic pot with some screen to keep out the flies

A saw that can cut through PVC

Drill with large drill bit. I used 1 1/8 inches (30mm) but in the videos looks like they use 1/2 inch (13mm)

Shovel

I had a 9 foot (2.74 metres) length of PVC already, but I did go buy three caps to seal off the top from flies and critters. Before starting this project I was reading about squirrels because several of them like digging in my garden. I was concerned that putting the compost into the garden might be an attraction, and it might, but I did learn that they can only smell about 6-8″ (152-203mm) under the surface of the ground. I took this into consideration when measuring out my pipe hole placement and my notes reflect that. Your results may vary.

Read more: http://www.permaculture.co.uk/readers-solutions/how-make-diy-worm-tower

Just a Thought: Why Permaculture Can Make the Problem the Solution

Want to change the world? It starts with your next thought! Maddy Harland explains why how we think can shape not only our personal lives but the world we live in, why learning permaculture was a game changer, and what enables her to stay focused for over two decades.

We recently published Looby Macnamara's second book, 7 Ways to Think Differently. This little book is like good medicine - it is potent - it goes a long way. I couldn't attend the book launch at the UK Permaculture Convergence because my better half, Tim, was recovering from an operation so I wrote a short speech about how thinking shapes our worldview and why it is particularly important at this time in human history. In true multi-functional fashion, I thought I'd share what I said and expand on it here.

How we think shapes not only our immediate environs but the world we live in as well. As philosophers and yogis have long understood, we create a shared collective reality through our beliefs and thoughts.

The aspect of permaculture design that I love is the attitudinal principles – 'the problem is the solution', 'harvest only sunshine', 'the designer's imagination and skill limits productivity and diversity more than any physical limit'. Of course, the practical principles about functionality and energy efficient design are equally important but the capacity of permaculture design to reframe how we see the world is what I found completely transformational after completing my Permaculture Design Course. Suddenly, the landscape was full of unfolding stories, discernible patterns, and resources that I had been blind to became suddenly evident all around me. I felt that I could indeed begin to design my own patch and grow food, even though none of my education up to that point was remotely practical or land based. Halleluja!

Read more: http://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/just-thought-why-permaculture-can-make-problem-solution