Category: Design

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Finding the Best Places to Live: Safety, Productivity, and Community

Finding the best place to live is partly based on region and microclimate but mostly the community. We can find the best location, but we won’t get full value until we are an active part of the community. Because the best places to live are not just pretty. They are safe, productive and friendly.

community lunch being served

1. Safe

Being safe is vital. We all need to be safe from all forms of bullying, violence, gang war, international wars, and the effects of looming threats of war. And safety addresses climate risk and pollution. Before you choose where to live, consider the risk of domestic violence. Check the local crime rates. These issues will limit when and where you can enjoy freedom outdoors. Also, some towns are more accessible. They proudly support dementia initiatives and provide ramps and rest spots for people living with limited mobility. Before you set your heart on an area, test it out by using a wheelchair for a day.

Comic painting of a mermaid winking as she lazily waits for the fisherman to give her a fish.

Climate risk

We can check major risks including rising sea water levels. And check the trees for blackened trunks showing recent fire. Search local government archives for reports natural disasters such as fire and flood. And talk to shop holders to find out where the most vulnerable areas are. Talking to locals can also reveal ongoing legal battles with local council for development of some parcels of land.

https://www.iqair.com/au/air-quality-map/australia/new-south-wales/sydney uses various government and non-government sources

Pollution

Finding an area that has few toxins in the soil or air is becoming rare. Some sites are far more toxic than others. And there are not many information sources available. It is possible to get soil tested for a reasonable fee and the testing authority can offer advice on how to remediate the soil. There are also reliable sources for tracking air-borne toxins or pollution.

making-steel-fibre-cement-pond as a small community. Sharing information, skills and supporting one another.

2. Productive

Being part of a productive culture enriches our community. It houses and feeds us and reduces waste. Feeling productive shapes our sense of belonging and of purpose. Accessible places have public transport, bike riding, walking and separate areas for motor vehicles rather than having highest right of way.

painting of friendly woman with a potted plant gift

3. Friendly

Most of all, the best places to live are friendly. This may seem idealistic. But friendly towns have lower mental stress, higher interactions and less violence. The best place to live in has neighbours who talk to one another, help each other, and share resources, skills, knowledge and public spaces.

Choosing a Site

Choosing where to invest time and effort has these features:

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1. Situated in a friendly community that values its natural environment and easy network of transport.
2. Subtropical or Temperate regions with minimal frost, good soil and good rainfall.
3. Good microclimate – a slope that faces the morning sun rather than exposed to wind or hot afternoon sun.

Conservatory in New Zealand with ample grapes hanging below the glass ceiling.

Unique microclimates

Also, each place has unique microclimates, with a bit of training, you can find the best location within the best area. The best location has a sunny aspect, greeting the morning sun. It is sheltered from winter wind and at the keyline [the point in the slope of a hill where the land shifts from being steep to gentle]. At this point, there is often a thermal band above the frost line and below the cold tops of a hill.

Despite having a great microclimate, some dwellings have terrible architecture that blocks natural light, and poorly insulated. Most dwellings focus on the view rather than opportunities to design a comfortable space.

bushwalk - appreciating the natural world around us

Start Now and Where You Are

The best place to practice permaculture could be right where you live and right now. Reduce your footprint by choosing biodegradable materials, growing and cooking your meals. Increase your productivity by making and repairing stuff. Nurture, value and maintain (repairing, retrofitting) the things that keep you healthy. Then you make more great places to live.

get out there and explore permaculture design
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Advanced Permaculture Design – Flow

get out there and explore permaculture design

Better flow results from design. There is flow in family dynamics, effort and energy, movement and transport. Improve your life flows.

This is the first tutorial in a short series on how to design better.

Better Design Reduces Work

See, these tiny little native bees?

Before and after native bee hive redesign. Better flow design results in less work

In our area, a native bee hive is fragile because it can get quite cool here. They thrive in warmer climates. So, I need to care for them. I don’t want them to die. It was a very costly exercise to get these little bees. And we really needed bees because our pollination rates had plummeted with the loss of the local honeybees.

Each day I’m observing them and I’m seeing their energy flow. It is surprising that they’re still producing babies through winter. The season is a very mild at the moment. Here they are disposing of the casing of the cocoon of their babies, they take each cocoon out individually and drop it.

What are they up to?

At at number one, they’re bringing the casing out of the hive. At number two, they’re dropping it. And then the poor little bees are having to lift it up over a ledge to dispose of the little casings at number three. There you can see where they’re dropping it off.

I soon realized I had a mistake in my design. it was costing the bees extra energy because they’re having to perform an extra lift to get the casing over the ledge. In my set up, I had repurposed an old wooden sign. I didn’t understand what they really needed.

So since I observed them, I’ve done a very cheap modification by placing a scrap of wood as a new front porch.

Now you can see how well this works. But I’m surprised at their dedication to the task. They hold on to the casing and throw themselves down with it. Sometimes they even get turned upside down and land with the casing on top of them. Each individual bee transports a casing to the edge and drops it off into the garden.

Flow Thinking on a Large Scale

Here is something more.

This looks like an airport, but it’s actually a railway station in China. I’m showing you this for two reasons. It’s huge. And in Australia, you’re not going to find a station this size because our population is sparse and low. But the second reason why I want to show it to you is because our culture is different and so our flow is slower just by the the way we behave when we’re traveling. Flow is regulated by behaviour.

So, this is not the busiest railway station in in China, and it’s probably not the latest one, but I was very impressed about how efficient it is. They can load a train in as quick as 10 minutes. Hundreds of people. So, this is Shanghai’s Hunga Railway Station, and it’s rather large. is 10,000 square m or think of yards. 10,000 square yards. It has 30 tracks, although the 30th track seems to be hidden there. It has a capacity of 10,000 people at any one time. The reason why I like trains is because they feel so safe and liberating. You can get up, walk around, you can work, you can talk to people. Whether they like that or not, I don’t know. With this level of flow management, the train is much faster to load and unload than aeroplane.

Separate Functions Designed for Separate Flow Streams

Below that busy area is a very quiet area where the trains are. And above that busy area are restaurants and shops and plenty of places to rest and chill out. You are not allowed to just go to the platform and wait for your train. You need to queue. And the queueing is part of a pressure system. It’s part of getting that high efficient loading. So you queue and then you go to a gate. At your gate and you have your ticket checked. If you are non-conforming, you’ve got the wrong gate, your ticket is damaged or wrong in any way or you also need to supply a passport as we did, you get moved to the side.

So if need be, you are redirected nearby and then you are dealt with with a second filter or a second person. The gate acts as a filter and a valve. It stops people from going directly to the trains. The gate allows the build-up of pressure. There is a ‘relief valve’ at the side for those people like myself who did not comply because we also needed to show the passport. But then also then we can be woven back into the stream.

Your life, your design

In the end, the design and the control mechanisms are what create effective flow. I’d like to invite you to consider what the flows are in your life or your latest projects. They could be the social flows, nutrient, financial, water, wind or energy. And the quest is to identify and describe the flow. Ask yourself ‘what are useful or harmful aspects of the flow?’. And then consider how you might measure, preserve, enhance, redirect, or filter the flows. See you next time.

You can join our Advanced Permaculture Design discussions by becoming a guild member for a one-time investment of just 190 AUD or start your journey as a new-bie for just $125 AUD. If you are a member of Permaculture Australia you can also get a 10% discount.

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Evolution in Online Permaculture Training

Great trainers are sharing, motivating and supportive. They practice what they teach with a range of examples. And they are familiar with other cultures and environments, not just their own. And the online teaching space has evolved as people have become more familiar with the internet. I have practiced and taught Permaculture for 35 years. Now it is time to share some insights and growing concerns for the future of online training.

35 years evolving

My name is April. And few people know what I do, which suits me. I don’t want to be a celebrity. I enjoy the freedom and flexibility of anonymity.

My father was a soldier in Vietnam. So, my early childhood was spent on an army base. There a lonely clump of bananas surrounded the septic tank. There were no bird calls. All I heard was dogs howling. But when we settled in Wollongong I was suddenly surrounded by beautiful beaches and forests. And a strong sense of place and belonging.

My mother was a great gardener, artist and hard-working book-keeper. But my father wanted me to be a software writer. He believed that computing was the future and people would work less. And so, in 1986, I got a computer trainee-ship at the local university. By 1993 I had some basic computing skills and a supportive partner and mother. I also had a masters in Creative arts. I knew how to research. And I knew how to teach complex skills. And I had a baby and a toddler. So, I knew how to work. I still loved my environment. And I was fascinated with Permaculture. And I wondered how it would fit in the emerging world of the internet.

Life and Death? of Internet

At the dawn of the internet, Computer games and internet pages were painfully slow. And they had no graphics. You had to use a lot of imagination.

But the fun thing about making content for the internet was the equality. Gender didn’t matter. How you looked didn’t figure. Content was all the mattered. And so, in 1996 with the help of my family, we set about to create the first online Permaculture course.

In 1996, my mother and I drove across Australia. We visited my birthplace in Perth and went to the great International Permaculture Conference and Convergence. Thanks to the tireless work of Ross Mars and Permaculture west, the proceedings are still available.

There I met a lot of amazing Permaculture people. And at the Convergence, I saw a small discussion group in a back corner talking about Information Technology [IT]. I told them my idea to start online teaching and they all started offering support. Even Bill Mollison chipped in and said he thought that online teaching could work. And I knew there was a need. Especially for participants in isolated places and working mums like me.

Land-based Permaculture Design Courses are often run by charismatic leaders. So, to make online training successful we offered something different. Our online courses were self-paced, flexible, organised and tailored for the student needs. Also, we adopted a student-focused approach. And I applied my research experience, enthusiasm and applied knowledge to explore many aspects of Permaculture. But it is difficult to keep participants enthused via email so a lot of people dropped out. But those who were self motivated became exceptional graduates.

Internet Choking

Now, internet users have to navigate past information pollution – ‘Infollution‘. Getting past excessive, unreliable and irrelevant digital clutter hampers and impairs decision-making. The modern educator needs to guide participants in their research with clear pathways. And offer strong avenues of support.

Slowly Maturing

After 20 years I started digging deeper, asking more. And I was truly lucky to have an informal mentor in Stuart B. Hill. I could ask Stuart questions and he would answer straight away. And for this I am forever grateful. I started to develop skills in deep listening and set about to interview many elders.

Decades later, we had a vibrant food forest, supportive community and creative fun. Ted Trainer said – it is not work if you are having fun. We worked and we had fun.

3 functions of Education

1. Share knowledge and ideas for a wide range of conditions.

2. Motivate and support participants into action

3. Connect people through community and integration with their environment.

Sharing Knowledge and Ideas

Knowing how to do something doesn’t mean we know how to teach it. Teaching is a craft in itself using psychology, and communication systems. Content knowledge (CK)is fundamental. This is the mastering the Permaculture skills – the knowing of what, why and how this work. On the other hand, Pedagogical knowledge (PK) is knowing how to help others become skilled. And the third knowledge needed for online training is a framework and method for keeping people on their learning pathway. It is easy to fall off the internet surfboard.

At the core, teaching or demonstrating Permaculture introduces holistic thinking. Then it sets about to pull apart the parts. And finally we work on how the parts interact. There is a lot happening in a Permaculture system. And complexity is tricky to show in modern bite-sized chunks.

Instructors also need to show how they applied the principles in their own practice as well as other situations. And help their participants find out more about their situation. In reality, the sharing of expert know-how is never going to come from one person. It will come through a conversation with many pioneers.

This is the strength of the Permaculture movement. We share. We converses. And, we are generous.

Motivating and Supporting

When we motivate participants, we need to follow through. Our support mustn’t end when the course ends. This is where the social design is essential in the growth of Permaculture. Teachers must foster others. The traditional formal education system in the western world has a deeply entrenched economic and academically competitive framework. We must do better. We need to learn from one another, support good work and foster diversity.

Connecting and Providing Ongoing Support

We all grow when we build a network of experts and a community of knowledge keepers.

All training requires an understanding of the work, an ability to break it down, then reconnect the ideas. But online training has extra pitfalls. Online participants are at risk of being disconnected from their peers, their dreams and trainers. And few trainers can afford to commit to supporting their participants for years. What we need to foster is a community of trainers.

Become part of our new mode of Permaculture Training. Contact us to join our Online Advanced Permaculture Design course community.

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Seeking a Richer Yield

Yield feeds and energizes us. But how can we have an attitude of obtaining a regenerative yield rather than one that is merely extractive?

We can build systems using natural techniques for edible and useful products.  With clever design we can use natural systems that are productive as well as regenerative.  

Better still, we can apply permaculture thinking to social structures such as courses. In March we are releasing the test run of our Advanced Permaculture Design Course. We will question what yields can result from a course. What can a participant get from a course that they can’t simply glean from the internet?

3 Basic Yields

1.  Product yield: the resulting goods from a managed system. Physical yields include fruit, grain, herbs, animals, medicine, materials.

2.  Energy yield: stored and generated energy sources. Energy yields include increased efficiency, fuel, solar heating, gravity as in water storage, food preservation techniques.  

3.  Social yield: cultural benefits include security, creative and co-operative activities. “We see the invisible yields in terms of values and ethics.  This governs our concept of needs and sets the limits of enough.”  [B. Mollison] Social yields include time efficiency, creativity, community skills and structures and safety.

C.S. Lewis wrote about friendship, a social yield: “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art….it has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”

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Time and Yield:

Mature systems store energy with low maintenance regimes.  Old forests, large fish and animals maintain their large structures. So, some of the energy and nutrients they absorb is dedicated for maintenance. It is readily available as a or ‘yield’ for other elements.  Yes, these big structures can be a host to other living beings. But, the need for maintenance reduces the flow of energy through the system. It locks up energy and stores it.

There is great diversity attached to this maturity. And this diversity provides resilience and a long term yield. This includes habitat, food, shelter, clothing, security, warmth and shade. Also there are cultural values attached to the environment, broader animal community, sense of place. And long term gains from management of air, soil and water pollution. When we integrate mature forest systems with short-term agriculture the yield is richer.

As the system matures, we manage yield expectation and value the total yield.

Annual foods versus Perennial foods

Annual foods are foods that are produced by plants that live only seasonally. These plants are common in the modern diet: wheat, potato, most salad greens and most vegetables. Annual plants spend very little energy on self-maintenance.  But conventional annual agriculture has a very high energy cost per crop. And the management of the soil that supports these plants is expensive. The soil is tilled, nutrients added. Then we select the seed, plant the seeds, protect them, water them, remove weeds.

In a Permaculture system we can use animals to prepare the soil, remove weeds and kill pests and disease. There are some modifications that would reduce this cost. These modifications include hybridisation of seed, natural seed dispersal, rotating crops and creating rain water harvesting channels. We can also select varieties of foods that are adapted to our climate.

Cultural Change

The biggest challenge required can be a change in our choice of food types. Changing dietary habits is very difficult. It is cultural. And pinpoint the need for cultural change if we seek permanent, sustainable future. As we age we become less willing to try new foods.

We also need to build the knowledge of how to prepare these foods for optimal nutritional value. Much of this knowledge and skill can be learned from other cultures, especially tribes where bio-regional food are indigenous. A good example of the difficulty to change diet is Cuba. In Cuba, white bread was first introduced 500 years ago. And is still eaten daily yet Cuba does not grow wheat. The small population of indigenous people successfully grew Cassava and yet, this food was not adopted due to cultural preferences.

Perennial plants include only a few common vegetables like asparagus, buckwheat, rhubarb, and most fruits and nuts. Perennial plants store energy; they take longer to produce a yield and need to spend energy on sustaining themselves.  After maturity they produce less useful yield per energy used. On the flip side, perennial plants require less management (we plant, prune, mulch and provide some water). 

Side Yields

The structural effort by perennial plants provides many side yields. These include fine timber; habitat for nurturing young plants and animals. And micro-climate creation by producing of shade and condensation; and windbreak and shelter.  A poly-culture enables all the yields to contribute to the health of the farm and provides mixed marketable products.

Farmers like  Charles Massy, Martin Crawford, Mark Shepherd aim for both short term and long term yields. Diversification ensures a healthy combination of plant types for healthy total yield. We can install water catchment measures, build healthy soil, filter river water, and support wildlife. The yields also include deflected wind, reforested steep slopes and ridges, wildfire management and reduced pollutants and erosion.

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Calculate Total Yield

The total yield of a farm includes side products. Side projects often include income from visitors to seasonal camping grounds for wild-life lovers. For out of season periods, the area can be grazed. Farmers can also offer education programs for city-dwellers, native foods farming and sales.

Social Yield

When applying this thinking beyond land based systems, we can search for yields beyond the short term. For instance, a social enterprise can have quick income streams and long term influence. It can create long term cultural change. Charles Massey wrote that there was no point in only creating change on his farm. He realized he needed to help enrich the whole water catchment area. The success of one area inspires many others.

Upcoming Mentorship session will focus on Yield

Our first mentorship session is March 18th. The first part of the session will be devoted to introducing each participants current projects. Then the Second part is an exercise to explore different types of yield from your projects.

This session satisfies assignment requirements for PDC Natural systems and design and Advanced Permaculture Design assignments for facets 1, 2 and 3

Contact us to REGISTER for the online mentorship sessions.