Permaculture Wendy in the Kimberly

Discover Wendy Albert and her permaculture food forest in the Kimberly. She lives and teaches in the remote hot wet tropics and is part of a strong indigenous community. She is in one of the most remote places on Earth. Her Permaculture life is in the hot wet tropics, thousands of kilometres from the most remote city in the world, Perth. In fact, Wendy is closer to Bali than to most of her fellow Australians.

Wendy describes her amazing permaculture food forest

“The closest famous town is Broome which is 200k to the south. And then per the capital city is 2,000 K away to the South. The nearest other Australian big city is Darwin of course and that’s 2,000 K to the North East. Whereas Bali is only about 200ks by sea.

The Asiatic people had been coming here for a long time they have a history here not just from the pearling industry but from before that. They used to be Trang fishing. And so they brought with them a lot of plants like the Tamarind. And also a plant that’s well known in permaculture circles called mother of cocoa.”

Mother of Cocoa

Wendy said “When I learned about permaculture and started practicing it I looked for Gliricidia sepium or Mother of cocoa plants and I couldn’t find them anywhere in Australia.
I looked everywhere. And, in fact, I got some seed from America that didn’t germinate and then after months or so of searching I was at friend’s place in town and I said to her ‘what’s that beautiful tree with a lovely purple flowers?’ and she said ‘oh that’s Mother of Coco’.

Then I found that throughout the old areas of town both here in Derby and in Broome. There’s lots of those plants. They’re really hardy. So, they’ve they survive over a hundred years and they were brought here by the early Asiatic settlers who had to grow their own food. They didn’t have state ships and trucks and things bringing food from all over the country to them. “

The community had to survive by themselves. “And so I was able to get cuttings and grow the Gidia and now I have a cocoa grove where the Gidia or the mother of cocoa are mothering the baby Cocoa trees as well as a lot of other trees. Because they just used to poke the stick in the ground and it grows! If you keep it down and then it just grows and grows. And you just keep cutting it and cutting it and adding it to the soil. Because that’s the other thing we need to do here is add organic matter to the soil.”

Mother of Cocoa nurses the Cocoa chocolate plant as well as many other plants in a tropical Permaculture system. It is used for many purposes including live fencing, fodder, firewood,^[11] green manure, intercropping, and rat poison.^[12] In fact, the generic name Gliricidia means mouse killer.

Nutrients cycles for the Tropics

Wendy says “I wish I’d known what I know now, 20 years ago! And I would have been able to do much more. I’ve recently had a couple of woofers, three young people, and we got so much done just in the the early hours of the morning with their muscle. I have to find a way to inspire young people around here to get into it. Because what I find is I’ve got all the resources now that I didn’t have when I started. That’s from growing those resources and recognizing what’s already there in terms of the the indigenous plants. And their use. And how to maximize their benefit. You know, people get frightened of pruning. But really, lots of plants respond so positively to pruning.”

How Wendy makes great soil

Wendy converted the orange, sandy soil to a diverse, productive food forest. She uses charcoal, organic matter, ferment and moisture.

Before Wendy adds organic matter she needs to add charcoal to the soil. “We make biochar basically because the nature of the soil here it’s pinned down and when the big rains come all the nutrients wash away. So, it’s really important to have a layer of charcoal to start with so that the microbes and the all the little odds and ends that like to live in the soil have got their own apartment blocks and can stay and not be washed away. That’s the basics for…..developing a thorough, thriving ecosystem here.”

Working with Nature

There is a striking contrast between Wendy’s site and the neighbouring properties. Wendy explained that the process for a permaculture food forest is complicated and fights the mainstream urge for people to demonstrate control. She lamented that one of the first things the young people are taught in horticulture courses is how to kill plants.

Wendy mused “we’re all people of habit and we rely on our education. And people come here and they see trees that grow so easily they don’t realize they’re legumes. They don’t realize the value of keeping them in the soil and just pruning them to encourage growth. And so they clear everything. They get a bulldozer in and bulldoze everything down. And maybe burn it. But they don’t you know utilize ash. They don’t burn it to charcoal. Then they try and plant other stuff. Southern stuff. Whereas the reality is we’ve got to plant what grows here what likes this environment, what can cope. If we want to be self-sufficient we have to learn to eat stuff that will grow in this environment. Potatoes that we’re used to from down south don’t grow here (only during the dry sometimes with a lot of care and attention).

Tackling control and colonialism

There’s also the issue of control. “Control is a subconscious thing. When people don’t identify with the natural world, they think they’re in charge. It’s a colonial mentality. Control is just more colonialism. Getting control of things and taking what we want from the land instead of respecting the land and giving back to it. Giving back in terms of even waste our own waste. ie food waste. and so exchange is how nature actually works.

That’s what people don’t understand. People, I think, see nature as something to utilize to use for their benefit and not they’re not part part of it. They don’t sink into the rhythm of it. And be. And give back in the same way as nature gives to us. We can’t keep getting fruit from trees if we don’t put something back. And our practice is to go and buy something from the hardware to put back in the soil ie. some manufactured fertilizer. I’ve seen people take truckloads of prunings from their trees to the tip then go to the hardware and buy mulch!

“We’re trained into this capitalist economic system. Buying stuff is what you do. It is the basis of how we live. We’re not working with nature and giving and taking. It’s more taking as much as possible. And making as much profit as we can”. Have your heart in the right place. This is a simple way to start. And it’s a scalable.

Easiest Ways to Start

“I’ve been writing a handbook about how to do it in the most straightforward and easiest way. Start in the kitchen with your own food. Even if you’ve just got a small backyard go and dig a trench and have a bucket on your sink. Put all your food waste in it and once a day go out and empty the food waste into the trench and cover it up. That’s the easiest way and then you can sort of upgrade from that.”

You can add Bokashi to it. “It’s a learning process. Understanding what what’s going on why we putting the food waste in the ground. And how can we utilize it to its best effect. And the other thing though is to get some charcoal and if you can’t have a fire yourself in your backyard we can go out into the bush where there’s lots been lots of bush fires and collect some charcoal. Chuck that in with with the food waste and that’s your start and this wet season buildup is the time to start. Mind you, the other thing to do when you cover the food cut some you know leaves of any tree you’ve got handy and put it over as a mulch to keep it moist. The other thing is to keep it moist.”

You can do the same thing in the big pot. Fill it up with layers of leaves, food waste, charcoal and soil from a friend. “Sophie Strand said ‘rot is the womb of life’. Tapping into that process. That’s what’s important.”