Thanks to my insomnia from epilepsy, I’m up pretty early. These extra hours have given me lot of time to explore the realms of gardening. Since condo-living had constrained us to container & square foot gardening, years before we purchase our property, I started to explore new and different gardening techniques that would work in a forest instead of a condo. YouTube became my best friend. I discovered a community of Permaculture teachers and the more I learned about Permaculture, the more it resonated with me.

“Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labour; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system.” – Bill Mollison

Permaculture was first introduced by David Holmgren while working with his professor Bill Mollison (who is considered the father of Permaculture, and recently passed away in 2016). Together, they developed a system of design principles centered around observation of natural ecosystems. Basically, they looked at what plants animals and humans can contribute to a integrated system modeled after their observations of nature. These integrated systems would work together to produce multiple yields, while at the same time improving soil fertility and structure.

Here’s an example of traditional farming, that really pushes my interest more into Permaculture…

We drive past a lot of farms and fields on the way up to our property. Most are conventional farms and there are lots of blueberry fields (that I always see being sprayed). There is one field in particular that I’ve watched throughout the season. This field was close to the road so it was easy to see the weekly transformation as we passed.

Crops planted in the spring grew until the summer.

A beautiful field of perfectly spaced plants appeared.

Until one week there was nothing but a field of sand.

No soil, no plants, no weeds. Just sand.

I could not believe they took everything out -plants and soil included.

A few weeks later, a mix of what looked like dirty chicken feathers and spent carrots littered the sand field. I expect it was also newly seeded because it did not take long to become a green field again.

What were they doing?

Now this is probably a normal farming practice, but for me it was shocking to observe.

I remember the instructor in one of my organic master gardening classes explaining how much of our soil is lost to the sea because of ground erosion. Then I think of that sand field with no roots to hold the soil in place. If that is normal farm practice, it make me appreciate what Permaculture practices can bring to the table even more.

Stay tuned for more information about how we’re integrating the principles of Permaculture into our property. If there are Permaculture topics you’d like to learn about, just let us know in the comments and I might make a video!

Jay