Permaculture Visions

December 1, 2023November 29, 2023

Give Yourself Skills, Peace and Joy

Give yourself a break over the new year. And develop some living skills to reduce costs and increase your wellbeing. These skills build a regenerative culture that is rich in social connections and well being.

A chicken fairy god mother — Be a green fairy god-mother.

10 Fundamental Permaculture Living Skills

Live with principles
Get clean energy
Cut the waste
Use resources well
Build biodiversity
Breathe cleaner air
Save water
Creatively Make-do
Invest in Social justice
Start positive

1. Apply Permaculture Principles

Apply Permaculture Principles to Everyday Life. Multiple functions for each element in the design is a key principle. “If I can’t get at least 3 reasons for having something, I’m not having it.” says Permaculture Elder Judith Collins. And then, integrate the elements, so that nothing sits alone in the system. Everything connects and contributes to the other things. For example, the bushes shade the paths. These paths are shaped to direct water. The water nurtures the garden. The garden attracts birds and insects. This give us joy. Then, we share joy and food with others.

This also applies to skills. These skills have many uses beyond the home. They can be applied in the workplace and for the good on your community.

2. Get Smarter Energy

https://www.saulgriffith.com/ promotes electricification for better future universal energy systems

Change to better energy sources such as solar systems. Saul Griffith explains how electrifying our energy network builds better future energy systems for all.

Permaculture Elder, Judith Collins EarthKeepers, Buxton, NSW

3. Cut the Waste – Stop Buying Stuff! And Grow

Judith Collins of EarthKeepers challenges us to know where our food comes. And if you really need to buy something, check out local makers and support the markets rather than so called ‘super-markets’. And farmer Gerard Lawry at EagleRiseFarm points out “There is no co-incidence that the supermarkets present their fresh foods to look like market stalls”.

4. Use Resources Well

Now that you have decided what to waste cut, look to see what other waste materials from the home can be converted. Identify and reduce your waste by conducting a home audit.

If you don’t have much space, you can use Bokashi to convert your food scraps, if you have a balcony, then you have room for a worm farm. If you have a garden, there is room for worms, compost and chickens. Grow food in wicking pots or rain gardens.

Utilise things more by saving the seed from the foods you eat. Get creative by repurposing stuff that you can no longer use. Mend, redesign your clothes. Then when they are finally no longer useful, compost them.

5. Build biodiversity

Design your life to blend with the surrounding wildlife. Build awareness of the natural world. Stop to smell the roses or Boronia. Find the unique perfumes of native plants. Create space in your domain for wildlife.

6. Cut the Chemicals – Breathe Less Toxins

Stop polluting your home. Cut out chemicals by using low toxic cleaners. You can easily make your own cleaning fluids. In fact, vinegar and sodium bicarbonate will clean nearly everything. Another permaculture principle is to start small so you can feel successful. You can do this right now, in your home. Try sprouts, food and herbs, and making your own vinegar. For outside the home, try minimal disturbance techniques to handle weeds. Get to know how nature works and work with her.

7. Save Water

Saving water is vital because clean water is a valuable resource during dry periods. Plants and animals depend on clean rain water. So do the river systems. We can contribute to the healthy rivers by building carbon in the soil, planting trees and supporting insect life. A basic start would be to create birdbaths. Next, install rain gardens. Catch and store rainwater in a tank or direct it to a pool. Something that takes a bit more research but is radical and resourceful is to install a compost toilet and an outdoor shower.

8. Get Creative and Make-Do

There are various types of waste. And this includes having too much stuff because stuff demands requires storage and maintenance. Other forms include wasted opportunities.

Simple steps to cut waste are to seal out drafts. Mend things like leaking taps or frayed clothes. Learn to use basic tools, how to sew, tie knots and make do.

Above all, walk, cycle and use public transport. These simple steps keep us fit and reject the the fossil fuel industry. Plan to make your next car an electric car.

cockatoo dropping a macadamia nut — cockatoo enjoying a macadamia nut

9. Invest time and effort in others

Invest in a Circular economy by spending your money on products and services that are created locally. This builds social justice. Social justice is a vital part of reducing the pressures on our planet. Without social justice, we get more pollution, more harmful chemical use and more frequent environmental destruction through wars.

Be generous and kind. Fix stuff before you give it to charity. And be generous. Better still, fix things for others. Repair cafes are wonderful ways to link skilled retirees with young people in need. Better still, show a young person how to do stuff. Or help a local family that needs a hand. Have an informal meeting with neighbours and find out what your community needs and has the passion to do.

10. Start Positive, Act Now

Knowing how and where to start is a skill in itself. Stuart Hill recommends we do one thing before we go to bed that will move us closer to our goals. Starting small is one way to achieve this. He encourages us to take action by refreshing our mindset. This enables us to make bigger changes. If it requires us to lie boldly to ourselves about what we can achieve, then do it.

November 10, 2023November 20, 2023

SPECIAL POST – Why Onion Makes Us Cry

Juliana Mitry, tells a folk tale about why the onion makes us cry. Juliana owns Balinese Spice Magic in Wollongong and hand-crafts Tempeh.

In this short video, Jules relates the Balinese story of why we cry when we cut onions and how soft and sweet it is. Juliana grew up in the Mountains in Bali, with an amazing array of homegrown food and spices.

A tale of social justice, the Balinese way.

“You know why you’re always sad every time you grind onion? My mom told me it’s because onion and garlic used to be sisters. Can I tell you a story? yeah! There used to be sisters called Bawang. and Kasuna. Bawang is the onion and Kasuna is garlic. Onion is the older sister. So, she used to do all the work and Kasuno is the white sister. She’s done nothing but pamper herself. “

“One day the mother went to the market so the mother said ‘Okay, you two girls, you have to do work today. If you do a good job, I’ll give you a treat. I’ll buy you some cakes and new stuff from the markets. And mum says to Onion, what do you want? and she says ‘that’s fine mummy, as long as you get home, I’m fine. and the second sister said ‘I need new clothes and I need everything new. So, the mother went.’

So, the big sister basically did everything. Starting from getting the putty out to the yard and then pounding it to get the seeds out. And then dry it in the sun and and pounding to get this just the husk off the rice. She basically done everything cleaned the house and then went to the river [this is cutting the story short].“

Garlic delays, Onion works straight away

“Every time she (onion) asks a sister to help the sister says “okay! you do that part I’ll do the other part”… “you do that part I’ll do the other parts”. It is always all the same answers. So, Bawang, being such a nice girl she thinks “I’ll do it because it’s just easier than waiting for Kasuna to do it”.

“Then the mother came home and there’s still you know like a one part that of the onion left behind. It was putting the rubbish out. But then Kasuna says I’ll make sure that I do that because you’ve done everything. I haven’t done anything. I’ll do that!” So, onion agrees “okay I’ll leave you that. And she went to the river, washed the clothes and everything’s been dirty because she’s doing all the work herself.“

“When garlic hears her mum coming she sits herself in all this husk (the rubbish) and started crying. She was pretending that she did all the work and that the big sister never did anything. “

“The sad thing was that poor onion got beaten and kicked out of the house. This is why you feel her sadness. But it a positive story because it’s has good karma, like in like most of Asian stories. The stories always support what is right. The Karma is because onion’s done good and she fell asleep under a tree, a magical bird calls her. ‘wake up, wake up little one, why are you sleeping here? Onion said ‘life took a really bad turn for me and nothing I do is right! “

learning to glaze old windows save a lot of money and provides opportunities to be creative.

“The bird says ‘because you look so sad, I’ll give you a treat like you can ask for you whatever you want’. Onion says ‘I just want a home’. The bird asks her to sing for me? The bird blesses her and brings her to the grandmother.“

Check out the variety of talks from the Permaculture Community on our Youtube channel.

October 27, 2023October 11, 2023

Design Process not Procedure

Dan Palmer invites us to discover the design process beyond a rigid set of procedures. And design for highly complex and evolving living systems.

The late Dan palmer sensed a strong distinction between procedure and process.

Evolutionary Design Process Versus Control Thinking

Here is some of what Dan shared “I’m passionately interested in permaculture design and particularly permaculture design process like how is it that we go about realizing permaculture’s potential. How is it that we get from someone arriving on some land that they want to evolve with, and make more productive, to being in the game and having some things growing and letting the system continue to evolve. “

“When we want to do something – we default to a procedure. A procedure is like a recipe or a model it’s a linear sequence of steps. ‘Step one for example – Step one: Observe, Step two: Design. Step three: Implement, Step four: Evaluate … Just like – Step one: mix the banana and the flour, Step two: add the eggs that sort of thing.”

Geared up for Procedural Thinking

“We’re very geared. Actually geared is the right word. Because it’s a mechanical analogy and procedures are kind of mechanical in the way they work. Or mechanistic. And so often when I see people talking about process and design process and giving examples of permaculture design process – that’s not what they’re talking about. To me, what they’re talking about is a procedure.

And there’s nothing wrong with procedures they’re great. Just the other day I tried cooking something I hadn’t cooked before and I needed a procedure right. Yeah if I just launched into I would I’ve got myself in a lot of trouble. So, I was very grateful.

So, there’s a place and a huge value in procedures. There’s also a huge danger, a huge risk if we mistake procedure for process. And what we can do is – ‘here’s my permaculture design procedure and it’s better than yours, and it’s better than theirs and…. we don’t want to jump from step four to step six, we need to do step five.” The risk comes from imposing a procedure.

Design Process Happens in the Now

“Process is adapted to the moment. And it’s like a constant dance that I’ll pull in procedures as appropriate. But I’ll also be very ready to drop them and let them go. And to do whatever is the right thing to do next.

“I came across a beautiful quote about this from Carol Sanford. I’m reading through her book The Regenerative Business. She said “Processes occur in real time within the changing circumstances of the real world. They are not procedures. One of the unfortunate residues of the mechanistic way of thinking is that most organizations (we could say that most of us) try to turn processes, which are alive and based on what is happening in the moment, into procedures which are predetermined. And, I love this bit: Processes require people to be present and awake. Procedures put people to sleep and make them mechanical.

“I love the idea of processes that mean we’re awake and we’re conscious, and we’re aware, and we’re alive. We don’t know what wants to happen next. We’re discovering it.

Process Enables Co-evolution

“One way of thinking about it is getting like helping design or set up processes of co-evolution between human health and ecosystem health these are the kind of processes that humans always stewarded up to… That entails a fundamental transformation of our entire way of being as humans.”

“A lot of the conversation for me [about design process] is first getting that penny to drop that this is not a copy and paste-able bullet point list that you can just take out whatever you’re doing teaching your permaculture design course today drop the list I’ll give you in and do that tomorrow. This is a process that will unfold indefinitely and it will be years before perhaps it really starts to sink in. It’s baby steps. It’s a big process.”

Procedures are timely. Know when to use them.

“I have had a lot of conversations with people who say we need procedure. Yet often the procedures we default to, are… mechanical. They’re starting with fragmented, separate elements.. and gluing them together. As opposed to the idea of transforming whole systems and working with all the energies of a place as a coherent whole.”

“If you’re interested in permaculture you’ve signed up for some tricky stuff. Permaculture is not rocket science. It’s actually a lot more complex. Because it involves soil biota and biology and water flow. And it involves so many different disciplines in a flowing integrated way that it’s hugely complex. When you’re dealing with any kind of complexity you can’t predict it. No one can predict it.”

Planning is Essential. Plans are Useless

“We’re engaged in planning. And we get enough clarity about what makes sense to do for the next one, two or maybe three.. steps. Then, of course, we’ll keep planning. Because the plan (if we had one) would have changed. Things evolve so fast. Particularly when you’re dealing with biological systems, with gardens and all that. It has to be a very dynamic ongoing planning and doing process. No fixed or static plan is ever going to last for that long.

“And the trap, of course, is if you’ve got one (a plan) you can fall in love with it and continue to force it on the situation. Even when the situation’s like “no thanks – this doesn’t work anymore, things have changed: the climate’s changed, the soil has changed, the water cycles changed” That’s a big one, isn’t it? That’s huge.

[This shift in thinking is] “a design process transfusion”.
Dan Palmer

Gilly’s Kitchen design plans, work and social connections – a co-evolution

Co-Evolution Goal of the Design Process

Dan warned “This is closely related to the existential crisis humanity finds itself in. Unless we can shift out of mechanistic procedures into living processes we can’t actually get to the beautiful, heart-stopping possibilities that permaculture is all about: getting back into a co-evolutionary dance with the rest of life.”

You can support Dan Palmer‘s family and donate to makingpermaculturestronger.net to maintain the library of his work.

October 6, 2023October 11, 2023

We Sold Our Electric Car

For three years we drove an electric car. We negotiated with many other electric car drivers during a period of sparse infrastructure. And we pioneered extreme range driving, by carting a tent and extra leads for long journeys. We also worked in industries to support electric vehicles and a greener culture. Regularly we zoomed past petrol stations only to sit and wait in a queue to charge slowly at remote charging stations. Now, we have waved the car goodbye…..

And we replaced it with another electric car with longer range. Here is a detailed comparison of electric and petrol cars showing efficiency and pollution levels.

The True Cost Of Electric Cars

How do electric cars differ from petrol or diesel cars?

The first thing you will notice is you use the brake a lot less in the electric car. When you take your foot off the accelerator of an electric car, it slows down. So, you only use the brake to stop faster than planned. Also, you drive differently, slowing down before you stop. Sometimes this frustrates the petrol/diesel drivers because in a petrol car we tend to drive until we have to brake.

The second major difference is the braking system. As you brake in the electric car, the engine recovers some of the electricity. Think of it like a spring rewinding, ready to be sprung again.

However, there is a third difference which is not so great for the environment. Because the electric car is more powerful it could cause more accidents (and subsequent social and environmental waste). It accelerates much, much faster.

These simple differences of braking and engine power make it possible, albeit costly, to convert a classic car to electric. In 2023 it costs about $60 thousand AUD for the basic kit to convert a classic car to electric. So, after paying specialised technicians, it is likely to cost about $100 thousand to convert your favourite car. This is a fast emerging business opportunity for mechanics and electricians.

Classic cars can be electrified

What to Compare

There is a lot to compare between Battery electric vehicles and petrol or diesel vehicles. We need to study the embodied energy. And the life cycle of all the parts. And examine the each of the spare parts. Do they get reused or can they be useful for something else? [For instance, the old batteries from Electric vehicles can be used as house battery and there are some vehicles that not only charge from the house, but send charge back to the home]

Then we look at the parts, some are reusable parts. But when it comes to the fuel, fossil fuel as an energy source is combusted and lost forever and there is often residual waste such as leakage from the oil lubricant and leakage from petrol stations.

There are hidden costs in electricity generation and distribution. Total fuel costs include extraction and distribution and waste. Despite there being less subsidies for fossil fuel than renewable energy sources, renewables are leading.

Next we would look at lost and wasted energy in conversion to movement. This is called the energy to wheels comparison.

Comparison of the number of parts plus how much wear and tear they get, extracted raw materials, Noise and air pollution, Social damage due to extraction and control of supply, Efficiency of energy extraction to energy applied to the road.

Those Boring Maintenance Costs

A fair comparison on vehicles also needs to include the cost of car repairs and fuel supply. Electric cars have less repairs because there are less moving parts and less wear and tear. However, there is cost in the generation and distribution of all fuels including electricity. Unlike fossil fuels from remote under-regulated regions, many communities can develop local capacity to generate their own electricity.

And even if the electricity is imported, it is more likely to be generated with renewable technology because renewables are cheaper than non-renewables. Next in the comparison, we would consider the losses in distribution system and here we see the benefit from generating clean fuel locally. Gone are the risks associated with transporting dirty fuel.

Fuel Infrastructure

Even today, the supply of fossil fuel is causing huge environmental and social degradation. And it is often a driving force behind wars. But there is also a cost involved in establishing electricity infrastructure beyond the home, to enable us to travel further than the range of one full tank. Fortunately, most communities that have cars, also have electricity. So, there is an established network of low-speed delivery points worldwide. However, as more and more people move to electric cars, the pressure on grid will cause noticeable problems. One solution is to lower the voltage of the grid.

The expense incurred by the network of high-speed chargers is an additional, yet purely optional running, cost. Our old electric car doesn’t use high speed charging. It didn’t have the capacity for high speed intake. That’s not why we sold it. Speed of charge is an occasional inconvenience we can live with. Total range between recharging stops was the deal-breaker for us. 220km range was challenging when travelling interstate and through rural areas. But as you are reading this, more chargers are being installed.

Better World Businesses

All these demands create good business opportunities. Anyone who can afford to buy an electric car, will have left over cash from not buying fossil fuels. This is more sufficient to pay for fuel at high speed charging stations. We know this because the electric vehicle charging industry has grown despite a lack of government subsidies. Research and development costs have been funded by the pioneering consumers.

Electrified Future

Everyone likes blue skies. And we all benefit from clean air. And governments like less health costs and take pride in their cities. Because the efficiency of Battery Electric Vehicles is more than double than of Petrol/Diesel, cars will become even more computerized and more electrified. People also like cheaper cars. Over time, the cars will become cheaper. The running costs already pay for the vehicle within 8 years due to cheaper fuel. The social inequity comes from high upfront costs and lack of public transport alternatives in poorer communities. Even the technology for the recovery and reuse of the lithium in the batteries will become streamlined.

Lithium is reusable whereas fossil fuel is lost forever.

Permaculture Mindset of Enough

Each of us has the power to cut consumption drastically and value what we have. Even if you cannot afford an electric car yet, lobby governments and public transport companies to go electric.

When we stop using non-renewable energy sources, we can create a circular economy. We stop giving money to companies that engage in harmful extraction and storage of raw materials. And, future generations can use these declining reserves of fossil fuels for important industries such as medicines.