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Using the principles of permaculture design, we can pack innumerable useful functions onto even a very small residential yard, such as are commonly found in suburban and urban areas. A couple of excerpts from Mollison and Slay’s Intro to Permaculture book:

“Contrast the large cleared areas of Australia and North America with the small, intensively-farmed areas in the Philippines, where the total land around the house is usually only twelve square meters” (=less than 130 square feet!): “out of this comes most of the food for the family. The house is often on stilts, with animals penned beneath. Garden surrounds the house. Scraps and trimmings are fed to the animals; manures are used on the garden. Trellis, holding passionfruit, gourds, beans, and other climbing vegetables, shelters the house from extreme heat and provides food for the family. Fast growing trees … are coppiced for fuelwood. So stay close to the house, and work towards developing small, intensive systems. We can plant 10 critical trees, and look after them, whereas we plant 100 we can lose up to 60% of them from lack of site preparation and care.” …

And similarly, garden/orchard plantings grouped around houses in Central America:

“Close to the house and more or less surrounding it is a compact garden and orchard some 20 square meters” (=less than 216 square feet!) “in extent. No two of these are exactly alike. There are neat plantations more or less grouped together. There are various fruit trees … And a thicket of coffee bushes in the shade of the larger trees. There are tapioca (cassava) plants of one or two species, grown more or less in rows at the edge of the trees. Frequently there are patches of banana; corn and beans are here and there in rows or patches. Climbing and scrambling all over all are vines of various squashes and their relatives: the chayote (choko) grown for its squashes, as well as its big starchy root; and the luffa gourd, its skeleton used for dishrags and sponges. The cucurbits clamber over the eaves of the house and run along the ridgepole, climb high in the trees, or festoon the fence. Setting off the whole garden are flowers and various useful weeds (dahlias, rosemary, gladioli, climbing roses, asparagus fern, cannas and grain amaranth).”

Meanwhile:
“… European gardens, often extraordinarily tidy, result in functional disorder and low yield. Creativity is seldom tidy. Perhaps we could say that tidiness is something that happens when compulsive activity replaces thoughtful creativity.”

(From Introduction to Permaculture; by Bill Mollison with Reny Mia Slay.)

And one of my favorite quotes from the book:

“Permaculture is not energy- or capital-intensive, rather it is information-intensive. It is the quality of thought and the information we use that determines yield, not the size or quality of the site. We are using not only our physical resources, but our ability to access information and to process it. Information is the most portable and flexible investment we can make in our lives; it represents the knowledge, experience, ideas, and experimentation of thousands of people before us.”

#PermacultureDesignPrinciples #SmallScaleIntensiveSystems

Someone in the DA forum asked what are people doing about retirement savings, pension funds, college funds for kids, etc.; and asked what alternatives people are investing in.

As this person so eloquently pointed out: “It’s one thing to believe in the impending collapse of our financial system, and it’s quite another to voluntary divest of that system in preparation for its demise …”

My response:

I have voluntarily divested. No Wall Street funds or things of that kind. I keep a few thousand dollars in a bank as an emergency repair fund for my house, but may end up investing even that in some sort of local business.

I am an investor in a permaculture education farm, a grassroots indie film, and a small café that’s a learning space. But I haven’t earned any money from those, and if the money I invested were to disappear, I wouldn’t be much troubled (though I do have great regard for these organizations/projects and I’m hoping they succeed).

I own my home outright. Love it and have turned it into a learning space and community asset. It is my workplace: office and studio. But would sell it if I had to. Understanding that there’s no guarantee I would get what I put into it, let alone more.

Part of Deep Adaptation for me is emphasizing social capital over money capital. Social capital is much more durable and flexible than financial capital.

Also intellectual and experiential capital, such as skills learned.

In my book and on this blog I emphasize the power of voting with our wallets.

When I say voting with our wallets, though, I am referring to NOT buying stuff, as much as (or even more than) I am referring to buying stuff. What we don’t buy probably matters even more than what we do buy (other than local farm produce, possibly).

In one of the forums, someone commented that they want good, reliable public transport. And they asked how do we vote with our wallets for this?

I answered:

An excellent question! I have similar goals for public transport as you do. And here are some ways I have voted with my wallet:

— I keep to an absolute bare minimum as possible the amount of money that I give to private car transportation. Mainly I get around by foot, bus, train, and bicycle. When I absolutely must use private car, I pay a friend/neighbor of mine, a young single mom, to be my “taxi”.

— I have reduced my overhead living expenses so as to never have to work at a full-time office type job with strict hours. Instead, I am self-employed and can make my own hours. Furthermore my occupation is eco-educator, permaculture designer. As part of my work, I am able to devote time to attend local government meetings.

There, I speak to advocate:

• FOR expanded public transport hours/routes;
• FOR sidewalks; urban shade trees
• FOR dense multifamily housing near shops and bus lines
• AGAINST road expansions and car-dependent residential development.

Other things I do to vote with my wallet for sustainable transportation include:

• Keep as little money in the bank as possible (a lot of bank loans go to developers, oil projects, etc.)

• No investments on Wall Street.

The environmental situation is bad. Really bad. In Florida, and all over the world. And toxic positivity will not help.

Dear Friends and Fellow Activists:
Recently I made a post on Facebook that came across as promoting toxic positivity and dismissing the concerns of a fellow activist who has deep, detailed knowledge and first-hand experience about the environmental and political situation in Florida.

I did not mean to promote toxic positivity, and did not mean to dismiss the feelings of this fellow activist, and others who are very knowledgeable about the situation and have deep first-hand experience.

I have removed the post wherever I could access it, and I apologize for being careless and insensitive in my communication. (I will be apologizing to the person(s) directly as well.)

We are all in this together. And we all care about the environment, and are working hard to fix the problems. But the fact is, our efforts may not succeed, for a variety of reasons. It may be too late. And we always have to acknowledge that possibility.

The situation is extremely bad. And despair, hopelessness, anger, frustration, and any number of other “negative” feelings are not an inappropriate response to that reality. I myself feel all those things on a constant daily basis.

“ReTuna Återbruksgalleria is the world’s first recycling mall, revolutionizing shopping in a climate-smart way. Old items are given new life through repair and upcycling. Everything sold is recycled or reused or has been organically or sustainably produced.”

Love this!

I actually think things like this can be a key part of (re)development in our cities & counties, and that they will attract tourists as well as helping to address basic local waste issues.

As a bonus: The more cool interesting development like this we are able to make happen, the more effectively we inoculate ourselves against undesirable massive projects from outsiders who don’t really have a stake in the wellbeing of our community.

Especially as a coastal community, something like this would be a wonderful addition. I would like to see it in one of the empty endless store fronts on the A1A even! Or maybe Main Street.

It would spawn an array of crafts people and artisans I’m sure!

BTW there is a similarly oriented establishment in Austin Texas, known as Austin Creative Reuse.

They offer fun DIY workshops in addition to taking in “waste” materials and selling upcycled one-of-a-kind items.

No matter how was the rest of the week goes, this is already an amazing week.

1) A highly influential, solidly middle-class fellow Boomer of my acquaintance shared an environmental post when I asked her to please share it publicly on her own page instead of just sharing it w me by DM. This helps contribute to the normalization /de-marginalization of environmental stuff.

2) We now know for sure that Guantánamo Ron is not going to get into the White House in 2024. Yes, other challenges lie ahead most certainly, but that’s one big worry cleared out of the way.

3) I found a couple of really cool ethical micro-investments, helping tiny businesses and creative ventures. A comedy horror film about the service industry; and a café that has long served as a safe space for LGBTQIA people and the kink community.

4) I am hand-sewing a really cool bag out of upcycled junk fabric scraps right now!

5) Probably there’s some other stuff too. It just feels like a happy happy Monday. Hope things are going well in your world too!!

A fellow author commented that they cannot do audiobooks because they can’t concentrate on the audio. Same here.

Yes, people take in information differently. I can’t do audiobooks. (Video news/documentaries either. I find it much easier to read print than wade through a video, even a short video.)

Myself, I am a lifelong, ride-or-die fan of the printed word. Whether the “printed” word is on actual paper or on a screen.

Of course I have a special place in my heart for a physical printed book. However, the availability of ebooks and digitized periodicals on the screen has been extremely life-changing for me as far as enabling me to access much more reading material. So I can deal with the screens as well as the paper!

But, even though I prefer to read visually, I am learning that huge numbers of people greatly prefer audiobooks. And some people would not read a book if it were not available via audio. So I have become a supporter of audiobooks too.

I’m really glad that both print books and audio books are available! For the sake of everyone who loves words and reading.

Just now I did think of another angle to consider. A lot of people are using audiobooks on their long commutes. I am in favor of anything that maximizes time for learning and enjoyment.

(I’m still against long commutes, however. We need to fix our public transportation system, and also retrofit more neighborhoods with the stores, local jobs, and other basics that would enable people to navigate their daily life without having to sit in traffic for hours and hours every day.)

One factor I’m not sure of is eco footprint. The eco footprint of making/shipping a print book versus making and electronically delivering an audiobook. But I wouldn’t want people to not be able to access words just because audio might have a higher footprint. Besides, printing and mailing physical books surely has an enormous footprint. I have a feeling it’s about the same. I will look into this and if I find out something else I will let you know.

Speaking of eco footprint: One thing I will say about reading e-books on my phone, it doesn’t require a light to be turned on in the room, because the book and the flashlight are combined in one unit!