What is Permaculture?

Frequently I am asked to explain what permaculture is.  Good question!  Explaining permaculture succinctly is like trying to explain Buddhism.  Both are 'kinda philosophies' to live by.  Neither can be surmised with one sentence.

Permaculture literally means "permanent agriculture". When you type "What is permaculture" into google, you get a lot of complicated and very wordy phrases which collectively make you more confused.  Here's some examples:

"Combining the best of natural landscaping and edible landscaping, permaculture aims for a site that sustains itself and the gardener. The ultimate purpose of permaculture is to develop a site until it meets all the needs of its inhabitants, including food, shelter, fuel, and entertainment".

"Permaculture is an innovative framework for creating sustainable ways of living.  It is a practical method of developing ecologically harmonious, efficient and productive systems that can be used by anyone, anywhere."

Errrr, what?  The easiest single quote I found to grapple with is this:

"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.

Maybe some history will help explain a bit.  In the early 1900's Dr. King, former chief of the Soil Division of the US Department of Agriculture, went to Asia to find out how farmers in China could farm the same fields for thousands of years without applying artificial fertilizer.  He learned about how they used the principles of permaculture such as building soils, sharing the abundance and waste reduction to maximise their farming and lifestyle.  King then brought these ideas back to North America.

But even with all those quotes and information; how do you do it? Here's some examples of what it looks like on a practical level on Laurica Farm. 

Some plants promote growth of other plants or repel bugs/diseases.  It seems logical then to plant these 'friends' together to aid growth and as an alternative to artificial fertilizers or insecticides.  An example of this companion planting was something we read about First Nations people doing.  They planted corn, peas and squash together.  The corn provides a structure for the peas to grow up.  The peas put nitrates into the soil that benefits the other plants, and the squash crowds out the weeds.  Seems sensible, right?

Things like salad like shade.  Again, we embrace logic and the resources we have here.  Instead of planting them in straight lines and prescribed beds, plant them near trees.  You get fertile soil under trees as the leaves fall on it all Autumn and decay all winter into a natural compost.  No human effort required.  Once you have observed the land for a while, you can plant your shade loving produce in the appropriate place under the canopy.

We're planning a food forest.  I won't try and describe this in detail, here's a self explantory diagram:

The herb spiral here is another practical example of permaculture practice.  The spiral has it's history rooted in Mayan culture.  The design also creates microclimates allowing you to plant a diverse range of herbs in a variety of positions(sunny, sheltered and shady). In a typical garden bed or pot, all plants are grown on the one level, so the growing conditions are the same. This design offers you multiple options in a compact space.

I talked in an earlier post about agriculture not being sustainable.  As an example, the idea of using fertilizers that have been made elsewhere and transported to our farm seems a ridiculous resource-laden practice. And using fuel & time to plough a field in a tractor seems silly when it can be done by a couple of pigs for less money and you get free, organic fertilizer and bacon as bi-product.  Generally, you can only till a patch of land for 7 years before you have 'killed' it and need to add resources.  So why do it?

Permaculture teaches you landscape design and management that promotes building and protecting the soil for us and for future generations.  We'll manage the grazing of the animals here and plant winter cover crops that we can mulch into the land as opposed to sourcing it off-site.  The chickens are great assets in composting.  Our compost bin is in their run.  I empty compost into it.  They scratch through it everyday, eating what interests them but turning it over everyday.  Saves us the effort.

These are just a few examples, but the focus is on putting less in and getting more out.  By getting more out we are also able to share the abundance.  We do this by selling some of our produce at reasonable prices but also by supporting the food bank.

Recently, I had to explain permaculture to a group of children.  I did this by turning the language into child-friendly wording.  I'm glad I did, it really helped me too.  Put simply, the ethics read like this:

• Earth Care

• Fair share

• People Care

Easy!  When I took the complexity out of the principles, they seemed quite manageable.  They don't embrace everything that permaculture stands for but were easier to grasp:

• Build thing up - give something back to the earth and to people

• Look after things; protect agricultural land for future generations

• Save some for later

• Plan - mistakes are ok but better on paper

• Observe and interact - let nature lead you

• Turn problems upside down; find solutions

• There is a lot to share!

• Small changes have a big effect

• Include a bit of everything

• Produce no waste, use what you have
  

Permaculture is not just about how we farm, it's about how we choose to live.  For me, it's about making farming easier.  If you change your perspective and let your environment guide you have instead of pre-determining what you want to grow, nature will do the job for you.  It's also very much about sustainability, intuitive approaches, building communities, embracing tradition and protecting the future. 

Has that cleared anything up for you?  At least next time someone asks you what permaculture is, you'll might have a couple of quotes on hand!

Animal Antics!

One of my main motivations for writing this blog is the hope that one day our children will look back on it, remember & understand.  So for this post I want to focus on the livestock, which brings some comic moments.  It’s not that we don’t have anything else going on; we’re expanding our delivery service and opening our farm gates to the public next week.  It’s all very exciting, but it’s having the animals here, doing their thing, that makes it feel like a real farming venture. 

Let’s start with our new arrivals.  Last Friday night, Ian and I toiled in the dark to finish a homemade ‘cap’ for the truck.  We were quite pleased with our $160 lid as they cost thousands to buy new.  Of course, being homemade, it made us look like hillbillies!  Anyway, early Saturday morning we set off to go and collect the first four of our pedigree piglets.  We worked really hard to source heritage hogs rather go down the commercial route.  If you’re interested in the differences, here’s a small article that outline some of the reasons for this decision: http://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/blogs/6-reasons-to-buy-heritage-pork-from-small-farms

We got them home and off the truck without incident and settled them in.  They were very nervous but appeared to like their new pasture.  They tested the electric fencing causing quite the cacophony, but no harm done, they learn fast.  We named them John, Paul, George and Ringo.

That night, Ian went out at about 10.00pm to check on them.  He came running back into the house exclaiming that the pigs had gone!  Now I tend to be far less reactive than Ian when it comes to the animals but perhaps my “gone where?” question was a little daft, even by my standards.  So off we went with flashlights to traipse around an acre of chest high grass in the dark.  Nothing.  It was starting to look like our four heritage pigs that we had paid for that day had indeed gone. 

Ian and I met back at the pig house in despair.  It was at that moment we heard a faint snuffling noise.  Relief flooded over us.  We heard them, but where were they?  Further investigation revealed that they had tunneled underneath their piggy mansion and decided to make their bedroom underneath the structure intended for them. Pests! 

Underneath the house is where they choose to stay.  I call them 'the troglodytes'.  Seriously, why rent the basement suite when the mansion above is vacant?

The baby chicks have moved into the big girls’ hen house.  They’ve settled in now but were rather upset by this move at first.  Being free-range, the chickens go where they please during the day.  The babies were adamant that they were going to move back to their cozy nursery.  As the nursery is all closed up now, they persistently got lost.  Off we would go again, trawling the field in the dark looking for the chicks.  We usually found them snuggled into the sheep, apparently not quite ready to give up the comforts of a Mothers love.  This made for some late nights and I hate walking through that snake infested field at night, but at least the animals are giving me plenty of opportunity to become adept at it!

Let’s talk about the sheep.  Sheep must be one of the easiest livestock to look after.  All I do is change their water once a week.  Other than that I barely see them in all that long grass.  However, the oldest lamb is a ram and is getting a bit above his station.  He’s been testing us recently by threatening to butt us every time we go to check on them.

Last Friday, a delivery driver left the farm gate open unbeknown to me and I hadn’t properly shut their field gate.  Chaos ensued.  I wrote a brief Facebook status about this incident but it didn’t fully capture the comedy of the situation. Let me fill in the gaps.

I had come into the house to do some baking.  As I put 9 layers of cake batter into the oven I caught a glimpse of four fluffy sheep bottoms disappearing out of the farm gate.  Off I went, panicking.  There was no real need to fly into a blind panic; our farm is at the end of a single track road so very little risk of them causing a multi-car pile-up.  As I got down to the end of the drive, they were happily munching on the roadside foliage.  But, because the road is so narrow, I couldn’t get passed them to usher them back towards the farm and they were ignoring my food offerings and bribes to follow me back to the farm.  Every time I tried to get past them, I just frightened them further away from the farm and towards 256^th Street.  256^th Street is not a major carriageway, this is rural Langley, but the cars do come along there quite fast and there are a lot of trucks delivering feed to the many farms around here, so as they trotted out onto this road, I was quite worried.  Luckily for me a kind man stopped to help me.  He introduced himself as Farmer Rob.  I’m not sure if he was Christened Farmer Rob but that’s exactly what I called him.

I feel it’s relevant to tell you what Farmer Rob looked like at this point.  Contrary to what I told Ian, Farmer Rob can only be described as a bronzed Adonis.  He was beautiful in a masculine, country kind of way.  Approximately 30 years old.  In any other circumstance, I would have found this meeting very pleasing.  While I drawled over Farmer Rob, the sheep continued to refuse to comply and it was almost 30 minutes later that we got them back into their field.

As I turned around to shut the gate, Farmer Rob bid me farewell (sigh).  I raised my hand to wave and shouted “bye Farmer Ro….”.  I didn’t get to finish the word “Rob” because the ram butted me.  Right on my bum!  He put so much effort into butting me that he sent me flying onto my face…in the mud….and the sheep poop.  I lifted my head from my disgraced position to see Beautiful Farmer Rob, still with his hand in the air, mid-wave, staring at me with his mouth open in disbelief.  For some reason, I decided to remain aloof about my predicament and uttered “Thanks again Farmer Rob, bye”.  With that, he shook his head and left.  It was all very Bridget Jones and highly embarrassing.  I shall never forgive that sheep for my humiliation and will feel avenged every time I put part of him into my oven.

During this episode, my nine cakes had burned to a crisp!

As I said earlier, it’s the animals that make this feel like a farm.  It’s also the animals that keep us humble and remind us of our naivety.  Time for us to work on our animal smarts before we can really call ourselves Farmers.

Cultivating Relationships

I’ve been thinking about the content of this post for a while now.  You see, the purpose of this blog was to document our transition from an urban lifestyle to our chosen farming utopia.  But for the last couple of months, the place has felt like a farm, and I feel like a farmer.  I had trouble saying and owning “I’m a farmer” at first, but not anymore.  There is dirt under my nails constantly, I have no clean clothes and I spend a significant proportion of my time on my hands and knees in the soil with an achy back.  I mean, that’s the true measure of a farmer, right?  Now, I’m not naïve enough to think the transition is complete but living in suburbia feels like a distant memory and we are immersed in rural life.  And so, I will continue to blog about this lifestyle and what’s going on with the farm, but with the acknowledgment that ‘stage one’ is done.

I thought that this time I would talk about our relationships; with each other, with the land and with farming.  I suppose I’ve already touched on my relationship with farming.  I can barely remember a time when I wasn’t farming.  I’m also feeling way more confident about what I’m doing, not an expert, but certainly able to muddle through and find the information I need to forge ahead and make conscientious decisions.  The other note about my relationship with farming is how it has become my greatest act of feminism to date.  Ironically, I worked most of my previous career in social care and the nonprofit sector and considered myself somewhat of an activist.  However, I believe I’m making more of an impact as a feminist now and it’s completely unintentional.  When I’m asked what I do, and I reply that I am a farmer, I can see many people struggle with that.  They can deal with ‘homesteader’ or ‘farmers wife’, but that fact that I am the farmer pushes people.  The next stage in their acceptance is when I talk about growing herbs and veg.  People can imagine me pottering around a small garden with a few carrots and some rosemary growing but when I start talking about acres and pigs and sheep and chickens; well, it’s just too much for some and their disbelief is tangible.  I’m sure that when I’m fully healed from my career in social care, I will relish that fight, but right now I’m still not ready for any cause.

Our family is flourishing.  Ian and I are spending more time together than ever before, granted it’s usually working on the farm after he’s been at work all day and I’ve got the kids to bed but at least it’s time, and quality time at that.  Not sitting in front of a mind numbing TV program, but working together and talking about our future.  Our marriage feels lighter, easier, raw; strange descriptive words for a relationship but appropriate, I think.  Definitely better, happier, easier.

As I write this, the children are swinging on the hammocks outside and playing Frisbee, and the sound of their laughter is joyful.  My girls are 14 and 6 years old so it’s refreshing to see what’s happening with them and how they’re bonding more.  Lauren is still the internet obsessed teenager but has softened since we came here.  She has joined 4H, which is a rural-based group that focuses on self-development and leaderships for kids and teens.  I can’t help believe that her change is partly due to moving away from the ‘burbs and mixing with different people. Their relationship as sisters has grown.  I think the fact that we have been so busy has forced us to become more reliant on each other, and that’s a good thing, it has strengthened all of our relationships.

Of course, as I talk about family relationships, I should really talk about our animal family.  The baby chicks have become obnoxious teenagers who peck my feet at every opportunity.  This is a relationship that will be tested.  We have at least two roosters that we know of and we can’t have boys in the hen house.  So, the boys are destined for the pot.  Generally, you can kill a chick for meat from 7 weeks onwards.  Well, they are 7 weeks but still very small so wouldn’t make much of a meal.  I think we will leave them until they are about 20 weeks but this is the first kill challenge we will have.  As I enjoy watching them grow and become more confident, I have one eye on the calendar and have a sense of trepidation about their fate. 

The same goes with the sheep that arrived about a month ago.  The lambs are for meat and this is another animal we will slaughter and butcher ourselves (at least that’s the plan).  I feel less bothered about this.  I’ve been very involved with the chicks, they hatched here on the farm and I watched them pop their little heads out of their eggs.  But the sheep are way more independent.  We haven’t had them since birth and I barely see them.  They are totally independent; all I do is water them.  Also, the little ram is becoming rather rambunctious.  He tries to butt us regularly and we had to fence off a little area so we could safely walk through the gate to the chicken nursery without being harassed by the little bugger!  I don’t think we’ll have too much trouble putting him to an end.

The pigs arrive soon.  We have managed to source pedigree pigs for meat.  They won’t be processed here.  We have other people who want to buy into the pigs.  If the meat is for public consumption, it has to be processed at an approved plant.  I’ve read a lot raising pigs and we’re looking forward to their arrival.  Let’s see if I still feel excited after they’ve been here a couple of weeks, there is going to be eight of them to care for and, errr, manage?!

My final relationship that I want to touch on is with customers.  I’m recognizing an increased need for patience.  No offence to a majority of the people who buy and appreciate our produce, most of you are wonderful people.  Now you would think that I would have practiced patience when working with vulnerable teenagers in my previous life.  But the thing is you expect challenges with that client group.  Recently, someone inquired about the cost of the salad we are selling.  I told her it’s $4 a box.  Bear in mind that it is organic, grown from non-GMO seed and much cheaper than the same amount at the grocery store.  It’s also much fresher.  Anyway, this customer agreed to a purchase but with a few choice comments about farmers getting rich and some suggestion that I should cram as much as possible into the box to ensure she gets good value.  At that moment, I had to exercise self-control.  But I also had to reflect on her reaction.  Sometimes, as consumers, it feels as if we pay a lot for food.  Lettuce – it’s really just water in a green casing.  And eggs – what could possibly be the cost of having a chicken do what it does naturally, how do we justify $5 a dozen?  It made me realize that people have no idea what farming involves and the cost associated with it.  This is not a ‘get rich quick scheme’ for us; it’s not even a ‘get rich eventually scheme’.  Don’t worry, I’m not about to bore you and lament about how hard we work, or the cost of fuel or feed prices.  I’m not going to justify what we charge for produce.  Buy it, or don’t.  Chose local, or not.  Enjoy organic, or don’t.  Opt for ethical, or don’t.  It’s up to you.  I’m not going to compromise my relation with the land, or my product, to reduce cost.  Our food choices here are based primarily on what I want to feed my family, and that’s not going to change.

As we become more aware of our farm relationships, our enterprise continues to grow, develop and evolve.  Sales of eggs and salad have been more successful than I anticipated and we have plans to start construction of another poly tunnel to meet demand.  This week we are offering a greater variety of produce for sale and next week I’m considering my first farmers market!  It’s exciting.  We came here naïve and overly confident (read: ignorant).  We worked, read, laughed, cried, built, planted, learned and worked some more, but we did it!  Less than a year since we moved to 5 acres of land with just a house and a dilapidated barn, the feminist farmer is ready to go to market!