Permaculture principles, strategies, tactics, and the occasional wisdom saying

From How To Live Wiki

This article was originally written for a workshop in kitchen permaculture that I presented.

Permaculture is a holistic discipline that seeks to design and create sustainable human habitations that incorporate the three permaculture ethics:

★ Care for people.
★ Care for the planet.
★ Care for the future through the acceptance of voluntary limits and fair distribution of surplus

(See Permaculture Ethics for a more in depth examination of the ethics of permaculture.)

These three ethics inform all of our permaculture design work. Taken together, they offer a secular ethical framework that transcends the traditional divisions/categories of human organization. Permaculture has universal applicability; it works for people in cities, and for people in rural areas, and all points in between. It is useful for people with acreage, small city lots, or who live in high-rise apartments.

This is not a top-down enterprise. It can’t be imposed by the government or an international bureaucracy. It can only grow from the ground up, in ways that mimic the natural creation. A pasture does not transform itself to a mature climax forest overnight, that transformation does not occur in one grand revolutionary change. By a process of natural succession, a prairie can evolve into a forest and then evolve back to a prairie, each part of the process growing organically from the previous, and as a response to the ever-changing aspects of the biosphere that are larger than any given site.

Permaculture is both art and science. It is rigorously rational and inherently intuitive. The science and rationality come from what we know about climate, the earth, the biology of plants, animals, humans, and the invisible structures that we human beings create. (Invisible structures = things like governments, laws, cultural and belief systems that are always found as part of human settlements and communities.) The intuition comes from the plain fact that there is much that we don’t know about “all that is”, especially when it comes to how systems and their parts interact. The power of “Black Swan events” which seemingly come out of nowhere to radically and rapidly change “normality”, is not always understandable, even if all such events have antecedents and causes, however obscure.

Introduction to Permaculture Principles

Why do we need them? What can they do for us?
Permaculture does not have a pope; it is a decentralized system that continues to evolve as the planetary situation develops. It originates in the work of Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, and as a movement it is composed of various permaculture teaching “lineages” that derive from people who were trained by Mollison in the late 1970s and early 1980s. My permaculture teacher, Dan Hemenway, was one of the first practitioners authorized to offer permaculture training in North America by Bill Mollison, so if we have “permaculture elders,” he is certainly one of them.

Permaculture is a human cultural artifact, derived from our observation of nature and perception of the history of our species, that attempts to describe natural processes in human terms. I say “attempt” because anything we can formulate verbally about natural processes will be inherently incomplete. The plan is that as we learn how the system works, or perhaps rather, “how the system appears to work from our limited viewing platforms,” we will be able to make intelligent, conscious interventions to bring to fruition a future consistent with the permaculture ethics.

So. . . No pressure folks, none at all. . . Or. . . as it is sometimes said on the internet, “Bwahahahahahaahahaha.”

Permaculture is like music theory, which is a set of principles that are rooted in observations of what constitutes “beautiful music” in various cultures. There is no original Board of Musical Theory that developed all these rules about part writing and parallel fifths and etc. that we learn about when we study music. In other words, first we sang and then we attempted an explanation of why what we sang sounded so beautiful.

We study music theory because it works.

I began piano lessons at age 6, but didn’t actually take music theory until 1994, when I enrolled at a university school of music. After studying musical theory, I became a much better musician, because I understood more about why the music that I thought was beautiful sounded the way that it did. I learned of its characteristics, structure, acoustics, dynamics, and much more. I learned enough to know that the rules of music theory while normative, are not absolutes, and there can be discernment in making “exceptions to the rules.”

In 1994, I was already a musician. I had been playing the piano for 36 years and the organ for 32 years. But through the study of musical theory, I was able to take those years of experience and understand them as newly as if I had been given a different set of ears and eyes. I remember my theory teacher, Professor Payne, telling us that music theory would change the way we listen to music forever, and that if we didn’t want that, we should get out of the class immediately. In other words, if a student was truly satisfied with his or her previous “listening” to music, then they might be upset when music theory turns that upside down and gives them an entirely new way to hear and understand music.

When I came to the formal study of permaculture in 2005, I already had 30 years of experience in trying to live a more simple, sustainable, and frugal life. I bought my first issue of Mother Earth News in 1975, and that same year bought a copy of the Whole Earth Catalog and also started reading Co-Evolution Quarterly. I’ve always felt that conceptually, these publications were “print” fore-runners of the internet “web”. I bought a hand crank grain mill at a flea market in 1980 and used it to grind grain to make flour to bake bread. For 16 years I was a tax protestor, which meant keeping my income below the amount that is legally taxable, so during that period, with one year’s exception my income was below $5,000/yr. Dumpster diving, organic gardening, alternative energies . . . I had plenty of experience with frugal land alternative living.

To take this back to permaculture, first we observed what was working in nature and how humanity was harming the system, and then we developed permaculture to explain how we could avoid further harm, heal existing harm, and take us forward into a future that would not include a catastrophic die-off of the human race and the consequent devastation to the planetary environment that such a violent event would entail.

When I came to the formal study of permaculture, I found tools and concepts that helped me take my life’s experiences, the things I had learned, and take that to a new level, going forward as a matter of conscious design. Hit or miss is a fine thing, as long as there is excess money and time and resources to make up for all the misses. As the money, time, and resources dwindle, however, it becomes ever more important to “look before you leap” and to “think before you act” and to “learn patience”.

We study permaculture because it works.

Whatever experience in simple, frugal, and sustainable living that students bring to the learning community will be enhanced and strengthened and enriched by what they learn here about permaculture design.

Permaculture Principles

Here’s a list.

Note that I said, “a list”, not “the list”. Because there isn’t a permaculture pope, and there are different teaching styles and emphases, not everybody will give the same list of principles, strategies, tactics, and techniques, although all such lists are very similar. One person may say X is a principle, while another teacher will call it a strategy, and a third will speak of tactics. We are trying to put human categories onto natural processes, and nature is not organized into neat and discrete little boxes with no over-lap.

Permaculture as a design discipline encompasses all aspects of a person’s/household’s life and ways of living. It shouldn’t be limited to just one aspect of who and what we are. In the workshop this article was originally written for, our focus was on “kitchen permaculture”, but we constantly kept in mind that the kitchen is only one aspect of permaculture. It is a place to start, not to finish. The tools and skills you learn here can and should be applied to other aspects of your life, to develop a holistic vision of your life at this time and going forward into the future.

As a design discipline, permaculture uses ethics, tools, disciplines, principles, strategies, and tactics to turn our observations and evaluations into concrete plans for action and implementation.

One excellent statement of the principles and disciplines of permaculture design is in the article “Living Lovingly” by my teacher Dan Hemenway. Please read this article online at http://www.barkingfrogspermaculture.org/livinglovingly.pdf before proceeding further.

In the article, Dan identifies 4 disciplines and 10 principles for permaculture:

Permaculture Disciplines

★ Observe
★ Trust yourself.
★ Respect and honor every being and situation as a unique part of Creation.
★ See everything as part of a whole.

Principles

★ Do only what is necessary. Conserve.
★ Never do anything for only one reason (stack functions)
★ Be redundant.(Meet needs in multiple ways.)
★ Design, and act, on an appropriate scale.
★ Work with edges.
★ Promote and preserve diversity.
★ No condition, action, or inaction is without consequence.
★ Energy follows the pattern.
★ Everything works both ways.
★ Love is the harmony between giving and receiving.

Besides disciplines and principles, there are also some common strategies and tactics used in permaculture design. The list which follows is my own, and it is not exhaustive, but it is based on the canon of permaculture knowledge and my own experiences. It should be read in the context of the design principles and disciplines identified in the Living Lovingly article.

Permaculture Strategies

★ Cooperation instead of competition.
“Cooperation, not competition, is the very basis of existing life systems and of future survival.” (Bill Mollison, Permaculture Design Manual) We hear a lot about competition, but the success of nature is actually based on cooperation – giving and receiving and effectively working together for the common good, whether it be a prairie evolving into a forest, or a group of people creating an invisible structure and calling it a “coop”.

★ Do no harm.
There should be no further destruction/manipulation of wilderness areas, and we should do all we can to protect and repair our planet’s biosphere. We should not use chemical pesticides/herbicides/fungicides in growing food or controlling pests. We need to minimize the pollution that is a by-product of our lifestyles, work for zero waste/emissions, and heal the damage existing emissions cause.

★ Use entropy to achieve desired goals.
Nothing stays where you put it. Everything eventually falls apart. Each time energy changes there is a net loss of energy. The Laws of Thermodynamics are pitiless and inescapable and universal: You can’t make a profit, you can’t break even, you can’t get out of the game. Since we can’t escape or avoid entropy , we might as well recover something from the process. Rainwater can fall onto your roof, run off down the street and into the storm drain. Or it can fall onto your roof, and then be channeled into a rain harvesting system, which provides water for the household and an aquaculture system, and the water from the aquaculture system can then flow onto your garden areas to provide nutrient rich moisture that your plants need. This is a much better plan than just letting the rain hit your roof and then dispersing its energy into the storm drains.

★ Make the least change for the greatest effect.
This strategy is the implementation of the conservation principle in Dan Hemenway’s list of principles. It echoes the traditional wisdom – if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. We humans tend to like grand solutions that feature much bigness. Nature, on the other hand. . . well, consider the micro-flora and micro-fauna that do so much to enrich the soil. You need a microscope to see what’s going on. No bigness or grandiosity there. So as you consider what changes you want or need in your life, first think small. We start small or we don’t start at all.

★ Energy conservation and efficiency.
All of modern human social, economic, and technological life “as we know it” is predicated on a cheap and endless supply of energy. The physical reality of our world is that fossil fuel energy is neither cheap (when a full accounting is made of its costs) nor will it be endlessly available. In the coming years we will see the rock of the modern lifestyle meet the irresistible force of peak energy. Better get out of the way of that grind while the getting is good. Intelligent energy conservation first begins with household demand destruction and finding non-fossil-fuel powered ways to provide energy needs. It does not start with ordering solar PV panels, although eventually that may be part of a permaculture plan. And when you think about conserving energy, don’t forget “human energy”. There are design situations where you may decide to invest some energy up front – in either materials or fossil fuels – in order to conserve energy all throughout the life history of the element or function receiving the investment. E.g., using earth moving machinery to create a pond, or purchasing a set of cast iron cookware that you can give to your grandchildren, etc.

★ Prefer biological solutions.
As one of the great attempts to fool Mother Nature used to say, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” (That was in a margarine commercial years ago.) In fact, attempts to fool Mother Nature are inevitably doomed to failure. Yet, much of our modern technocracy is built on attempts to fool Mother Nature. We build the same house, using the same plans, whether we live in Portland, Maine or Los Angeles. We think we can use geo-engineering to finesse the crises of global climate change. We always expect that our technology will allow us to triumph over nature, but “consider the tornado” and what it can do to a modern city full of uber-technology. Nature and Biology rule us humans too, we are living creatures. To expect us to act as machines is contrary to our nature, and not part of our vision of the future.

★ Everything cycles, so cycle everything.
The advice of our grandparents – waste not, want not – seems quaint in the use-once-and-throw-away culture in which we live. Since everything cycles, we should plan for that and use it in our designs. And “everything” does mean “everything.” Particular attention must be paid to resource use in general, food, water, energy, and material items. Sometimes this suggests changes in personal lifestyle so that we avoid items that are hard or impossible to cycle at present. Or we implement a biological solution. Or we stack and re-arrange some functions and elements so that we don’t need an un-recyclable item or an unsustainable practice. Reduce, reuse, remake, recycle, make it over, make do, do without. One plant’s compost is another plant’s fertilizer.

★ Design from patterns to details.
When we look at nature, we can see many patterns repeating, although details may vary widely. Trees have leaves, that grow from branches, but there is a wide variety of shapes and functions and etc among those leaves. Spiders weave webs, but no two webs will look exactly alike. Snowflakes have a six-side pattern, with an infinity of variations within. Patterns provide structure, enable energy flows, and enable life to exist and perpetuate itself. Humans have our own set of patterns, and as the modern world developed, our patterns became less natural, more contrived, and thus required ever more technology and maintenance to operate correctly. We see lots of patterns of waste, which will also have an infinity of variations in their details. All of this should suggest some ideas to us about our human design work. We should avoid as much as possible unnatural patterns and prefer natural patterns. Our patterns should work together, be synergistic, interconnected, just as they are in nature. We can repeat patterns, in an almost infinite number of details.

★ Relative location
My mother used to say – “a place for everything, and everything in its place.” Permaculture uses “zones” as a way of finding a place for everything. Elements that require frequent maintenance or visits by the household should be placed conveniently. Thus, in many permaculture designs, the herb and kitchen garden is right outside the door closest to the kitchen. And within that garden, plants that may need daily attention (“plucking plants” like lettuces or greens that are “cut and come again” and used frequently) will be closer to the kitchen door than plants like corn, which require much less frequent attention.

★ Plant succession.
First things first. Second things second. If you want to build a house, you start with the foundation, not the roof. If you want a food forest, you don’t plant trees “first thing”. Which is to say, If you want an oak, plant an acorn, but first, improve the fertility of the soil with nitrogen fixing, beneficial insect attracting, nutrient accumulator plants. Plant succession is easily observed in nature, and if we harness its power in our designs, we will have better results.

★ Reciprocity – the giving and receiving of natural and human systems.
Mollison says, “One calorie in, one calorie out.” Dan Hemenway says, “Love is the balance of giving and receiving.” The word on the street has always been – what goes around, must come around. We can utilize the yields of each element of a site to meet the needs of other parts of the design. We must give even as we receive, not only as persons, but as designers. A comfrey plant uses fertility, but it also restores fertility through the dynamic accumulation of nutrients which, as its leaves decay, are available for use by surrounding plants. An apple tree provides apples for humans (and birds), as well as shade which can nurture other plants that dislike full sun, who in turn will contribute fertility to the tree, attract beneficial insects, and perhaps yield a harvest to the humans and/or birds and/or animals of the area. The birds will also leave their droppings behind, which gives fertility, and spread seeds of the tree, so that more can grow.

★ The yield of a system is theoretically unlimited.
Mollison says, “The only limit on the number of uses of a resource is the limit of information and imagination of designer.” We have to get out of the mind-set that limits our observations to our present time scale, and think in much broader, more long term, visions. Over seven generations, what will be the yield of this system? I play a pipe organ that was built in 1865, that’s 135 years ago this year. It has already outlasted two church buildings and will certainly outlast its present home. Five hundred years from now, if properly cared for, it will continue to make music. What was the yield of the original organ design and those who, at the end of the Civil War, which was not a prosperous time, paid for the creation of that musical instrument? Except for the electric fan that was installed during the 20th century in the wind chest and the external case, the interior workings and the design of the organ are original to 1865. That fan could easily be pulled out and the bellows reconstructed, if and when electricity is no longer is available, so its design is adaptable to its context.

★ Support biodiversity.
Permaculture is not about monocultures, it celebrates the diversity of nature and seeks to enhance, support, and extend the biological diversity of the planet’s biosphere. The longer I garden at my house, the more biologically diverse my little 1/7th of an acre becomes. I sometimes say I grow more than 100 different varieties of useful or edible plants, and that sounds like a lot, but there’s a lot more going on here than that. My number doesn’t take into account, for example, the 15 or so different kinds of mushrooms and other fungi that grow at different times of the year here and there at my home place, nor the green under-story of little native clovers that start peeking out about this time of year. I’ve never tried to count everything that grows at my place, but I am pretty sure the variety is increasing beyond my own efforts. In the beginning, when I moved to my present house in 1999, I thought, “Well, there’s not really much room here to do a lot of gardening.” Which just goes to show the limits of my own understanding at the time.

★ Create/use/adapt invisible structures to make it easier to be permacultural.
If a city has an effective public transportation system, fueled by alternative energy, then it will be easier to live without a personal car. If your region has a food cooperative that makes it easy for people in cities to buy food directly from farmers, then households can make more permacultural food choices. If the state has regulations that are unfairly applied to small agricultural producers and limits their access to markets, then it will be harder for families to make permacultural food choices. One of my goals is to “create a world where it is easier to be permacultural.” Invisible structures have their limits (as do we all), but they also have their uses.

Permaculture Tactics

There are many possible tactics, this is but a small selection.

★ Grow food on-site and source other foods from local/regional producers.
We need to minimize the amount of land that it takes to support each human person. Small scale agriculture – all the way down to the garden level – is much more productive than broadacre conventional agriculture. The small plots of the Ecology Action folks in Willits, California, can produce the equivalent of 200 bushels of wheat per acre, a productivity that is unheard of in modern agriculture. As persons learning permaculture design, we seek to increase the biological resources of our home places and to thus participate in the creation of more sustainable local food systems that do little or no harm to the eco-system and support the human population..

★ Stop subsidizing the destruction of the planet with your time, talents, and money.
Don’t buy meat from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. Don’t buy plastic. As much as possible withdraw your support from invisible structures that are driving destructive and unsustainable functions. Don’t let the rain erode your topsoil and wash away its nutrients. Teach others to do likewise.

★ Support/start/join/patronize cooperative business enterprises.
A corporation, by law, has only one value – maximize the return to the stockholders. The domination of our economy by for-profit corporations is one of the primary “invisible structure” problems we face. On the other hand, a cooperative, by law, is oriented towards meeting the defined needs of its membership. So a credit union is a tactic to apply the strategy of “using invisible structures to make it easier to be permacultural” to money and finance. A food cooperative is a tactic to apply that same strategy to food distribution. A worker-owned cooperative is a tactic to give workers security in employment and a fair and just return on their labor.

★ Hold water and fertility as high on the property as possible.
Gravity is all around us, so you might as well use it. If you catch water at higher elevations (your roof for example) and use it at lower elevations (your garden), the water flows there without pumping. You may not have a choice, as your land may be flat as a pancake. But if you do have a choice, catch your fertility and water as high on your land as is practical and thus conserve the amount of energy required to move it around.

★ Start small and design systems that are manageable and produce good yields.
“We start small or we don’t start at all” is one of my favorite sayings (twice in this chapter already). The biggest mistake most people make in gardening is they attempt too much, too soon. In permaculture design, it is important to keep our abilities and resources in mind when we do design. There’s no point to an elaborate design if it isn’t possible for the residents to implement it because it is way beyond their abilities and resources. Small systems are more conservative of resources and productive in their yields.

★ The Keyline system
This strategy is mostly applicable to larger, rural properties, as most urban properties would not be large enough to use its methods. The keyline is where the “ridge meets the valley”, and the Keyline system, first described and published by P.A. Yeomans in the 1950s in Australia, is a method of water harvesting/conservation and land regeneration that is rooted in the observation of the ridges and valleys on a property and working with them, rather than against them, to achieve the goals of the farmer or the rancher with more property to work with than most urban residents.

★ Forest Gardens/perennial food production
A “food forest” offers seven layers of potential food production:

★ Mature canopy trees (pecans, chestnuts, oaks, standard varieties of fruit trees),
★ Understory trees – redbuds, dwarf and semi-dwarf fruit and nut trees,
★ Woody shrubs and cane fruits – bush cherries, Siberian pea shrub, blackberries and etc.
★ Herbaceous plants – asparagus, bee balm, comfrey, dill, rosemary, sage, flowers, this list is very long.
★ Ground covers – sage, clovers, etc.
★ Roots – day lilies, Jerusalem artichokes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, peanuts, etc.
★ Climbing vines – grapes, passion fruit, kiwi fruit, etc.

★ Create buildings and structures that incorporate permaculture principles, strategies and tactics regarding energy, food production, waste management/cycling, and water.
It is better to renovate an existing building than to build something entirely new. Use as many recycled materials as possible in renovation or new construction. Meet needs for heating and cooling using passive techniques. Use design and capital investment to minimize operating costs and resources and to maximize on site cycling of resources. Ensure that whatever leaves the property is free of pollution.

★ Create and support invisible structures that promote distributive and social justice.
No one should be left behind for the wolves to devour during the cold winter. Creating and supporting structures that help the poor and empower them to transcend their challenges are important aspects of designing our way into a better future.

★ Take care of yourself and those you love.
In the modern world, the human person is expendable. He or she is just another replaceable cog in the world machine. Persons who get interested in permaculture are often busy people who are deeply involved with their communities. It is easy to let the vital and necessary “works for justice and peace and sustainability” become as consuming as a life dedicated to the corporation machine. So always reserve time and space for yourself and your household, your family, your tribe or clan, your friends – those who know you and you know them and there is a relationship of mutual caring and support. Healing and spiritual practices can be important parts of this, as are proper rest, nutrition, exercise, and general attention to wellness and quality of life. In other words, nurture blessings in your life and in the lives of others.

★ Demonstrate solidarity with those “far away”.
Care for people means, literally, “care for all people,” not just those who look like you, live in your neighborhood, and share bonds of culture and tradition. Care for people includes caring for people who are “not you” – not your culture, not your nation, not your religion, not your race, not sharing any of your traditions. “Be a good neighbor” applies in your physical neighborhood, and also to our world neighborhood.

Permaculture Wisdom Sayings

Wisdom sayings are important ways that knowledge and truth is conveyed. The first six are attributed to Bill Mollison, the seventh is from Dan Hemenway. The eighth is a traditional wisdom saying that is particularly applicable to permaculture design.

★ Wait one year.
People look at this and go “huh?” We are a species in a hurry. The idea of waiting “a whole year” for something we greatly desire is at minimum frustrating. Yet, observation is the first stage of permaculture design, and good observation takes time. You can’t just drop in on a situation and watch things for a few hours and come away with a complete understanding of what is needed. A property needs to be observed through all the seasons of the year to understand how it interacts with its surroundings. “Wait one year” is a counsel of patience.

★ We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunities.
For all of our sometimes gloomy talk about the problems of this world, permaculture as a design discipline is inherently optimistic. Sure we are in a deep hole, but as we stop digging the hole deeper, and start thinking of ways out of the hole, the situation gets better. Every step towards a better future is, in fact, a step towards a better future.

★ Mistakes are tools for learning.
Sometimes we freeze ourselves into inaction, or languish in procrastination, because we are afraid to make a mistake. I often talk about the “more than 100 different varieties of useful or edible plants” that grow on my former lawns. But there is another list, equally long, of plants that I tried but that did not survive. No one is capable of perfect understanding in any situation. So just expect that you are going to make mistakes, and practice the ability to recognize your mistakes and get out of them quickly rather than continuing to make the mistake, over and over and over again, just because, you know, you made that decision and now figure you have to stick with it, even as the evidence mounts that it was the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong place.

★ The problem often contains the solution.
The Oklahoma Food Cooperative is an excellent example of this wisdom saying. There we were in 2002, with limited access to local foods. Out of that problem, with the actual application of a permaculture design process (although we didn’t really think of it as such in those days), grew the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, providing better access to local foods for hundreds of families every month.

★ Everything gardens.
Just think about this one for a while.

★ Start at your doorstep.
Begin at the beginning. Look in the mirror to find the leader you have been waiting for. You will have your greatest impact on that which is closest to you, and through this work you can do your part to change the world.

★ We don’t have time to be in a rush.
This is a quote from Dan Hemenway, and it is one of the hardest wisdoms for modern people to learn. We swim in a sea of crises, and this drives an adrenaline “fight or flight” rush at every turn. We think that in response to the on-rushing doom that we must act quickly or we will all die. Well, acting quickly without much thought is one of the primary ways we got into the present situation. We won’t get out of it by acting quickly without much thought. What we need now is “think first, then act, slowly and carefully.” Measure twice, cut once.

★ Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good.
This is a saying that illustrates the principle of natural succession. I often think of structuring decisions as good – better – best. The best choice might be to raise all of your own meat, using resources from your site. That might not be possible in all situations, so a better choice comes into play – buying meat from free-ranging, pastured animals and flocks from local farmers. If that isn’t possible, a good choice would be to minimize meat in the diet and perhaps go vegetarian until a local food system can take root and throw up a few green shoots to nibble on. This can go the other way too, seeing a different set of decisions as bad, “badder”, and worst.

Traditional Sayings Appropriate to Permaculture

★ Waste not, want not.
★ A stitch in time saves nine.
★ We start small or we don’t start at all.
★ Don’t bite off more than you can chew.
★ An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
★ Sow not in furrows of injustice lest you reap a seven-fold harvest.
★ Dig the well before you are thirsty.
★ The time to build the cellar is before the tornado hits.
★ You never know the worth of water until your well runs dry.
★ It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.
★ Hard work is the mother of luck.
★ Wisdom makes light the darkness of ignorance.
★ Procrastination is the thief of time.
★ Lies ride on debt’s back.
★ The borrower is the slave of the lender.
★ If you always do what you always do, you will always get what you always get.
★ Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
★ Look before you leap.
★ If it isn't broken, don't fix it.
★ Measure twice, cut once.
★ Obey Emperor Gandhi!

The Invitation of Permaculture

The invitation of permaculture is to become intentional in your ways and manners of living, to be engaged with your surroundings – your community, your family, your eco-system – and to incorporate ethics that care for the Earth, care for people, and care for the future by incorporating voluntary limits, into your life. In other words to join The Unplugged.

It no doubt seems complicated, but that’s true of most skills or fields of knowledge when we first encounter them. There is nothing in permaculture that is completely outside of your field of reference or experience. The unique contribution of Bill Mollison, David Holmgren, Dan Hemenway, Scott Pittman, and other permaculture thinkers and teachers is to remember, find, collect, synthesize, and then present cultural and ecological knowledge so that we can learn to make better decisions about how we live together in community on this planet.

What is required is a conscious decision to make the effort to incorporate the permaculture ethics into your life. Once that commitment is made, a lifetime of permaculture learning and experience and risk-taking opens up opportunities you never before thought possible. Through permaculture design, we can work together to increase the safety, security, well-being, and happiness of our families and communities.

Summary

Ethics:
★ Care for people.
★ Care for the planet.
★ Care for the future by acceptance of voluntary limits and fair distribution of surplus

Disciplines (from Dan Hemenway)
★ Observe
★ Trust yourself.
★ Respect and honor every being and situation as a unique part of Creation.
★ See everything as part of a whole.

Principles (from Dan Hemenway)
★ Do only what is necessary. Conserve.
★ Never do anything for only one reason (stack functions)
★ Be redundant.
★ Design, and act, on an appropriate scale.
★ Work with edges.
★ Promote and preserve diversity.
★ No condition, action, or inaction is without consequence.
★ Energy follows the pattern.
★ Everything works both ways.
★ Love is the harmony between givi
ng and receiving.

Strategies
★ Cooperation instead of competition.
★ Do no harm.
★ Use entropy to achieve desired goals.
★ Make the least change for the greatest effect.
★ Energy conservation and efficiency. “Make hay while the sun shines.”
★ Prefer biological solutions. “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”
★ Everything cycles, so cycle everything. “Waste not, want not.”
★ Design from patterns to details – “Look for the trees within the forest”.

★ Relative location – “A place for everything and everything in its place”.
★ Plant succession and layers. “A mighty oak grows from a small acorn.”
★ Reciprocity – the giving and receiving of natural and human systems.
★ The yield of a system is theoretically unlimited.
★ Support biodiversity.
★ Create/use/adapt invisible structures to make it easier to be permacultural.
★ Demonstrate solidarity with those “far away”.

Tactics
There are many tactics used in permaculture, this is a small look at the possibilities.

★ Grow food on-site and source other foods from local/regional producers.
★ Stop subsidizing the destruction of the planet with your time, talents, and money.
★ Support/start/join/patronize cooperative business enterprises.
★ Hold water and fertility as high on the property as possible.
★ Start small and design systems that are manageable and produce useful yields.
★ The Keyline system
★ Forest Gardens/perennial food production
★ Create buildings/structures that incorporate permaculture principles, strategies and tactics regarding energy, food production, waste management/cycling, and water.
★ Create/support structures that promote distributive and social justice.
★ Take care of yourself and those you love.
★ Demonstrate solidarity with those “far away”.

Permaculture Wisdom Sayings

★ Wait one year.
★ We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunities.
★ Mistakes are tools for learning.
★ The problem often contains the solution.
★ Everything gardens.
★ Start at your doorstep.
★ We don’t have time to be in a hurry.
★ Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

Traditional Sayings Appropriate to Permaculture

★ Waste not, want not.
★ A stitch in time saves nine.
★ We start small or we don’t start at all.
★ Don’t bite off more than you can chew.
★ An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
★ Sow not in furrows of injustice lest you reap a pound of harvest.
★ Dig the well before you are thirsty.
★ The time to build the cellar is before the tornado hits.
★ You never know the worth of water until your well runs dry.
★ It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.
★ Hard work is the mother of luck.
★ Wisdom makes light the darkness of ignorance.
★ Procrastination is the thief of time.
★ Lies ride on debt’s back.
★ The borrower is the slave of the lender.
★ If you always do what you always do, you will always get what you always get.
★ Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
★ Look before you leap.
★ If it isn't broken, don't fix it.
★ Measure twice, cut once.
★ Obey Emperor Gandhi!

A Permaculture Campfire Song

Lyrics: Bob Waldrop
Tune: Oh my darling Clementine

This is a work in progress. Eventually there will be verses about the strategies, tactics, and wisdom sayings. The scansion is a bit rough in places, you have to divide some notes and etc to make it work, but it’s not presented as a major work of serious art music, it’s just a song to sing with your family or by a campfire.

Come my friends now, hear the story, of the permaculturists.
Habitations, love and justice, and peace for all the earth.

Three in number are the ethics, of the permaculturists,
care for people, care for planets, and voluntary limits.

Four in number, are the disciplines, of the permaculturists,
Observe all, trust yourself, respect for nature, holistic vision.

Ten we count now for the principles, of the permaculturists,
these the pathways to design for peace and harmony.

Stack the functions, be redundant, with appropriate scale design,
work with edges and diversity, keep the law of gifts in mind.

Do only what is necessary, everything will work both ways,
Irrelevant is nothing, and the energies follow patterns.