Is Permaculture Just a Fad?

0:00If you enjoy farm podcasts, then tune into Caricashflow for all things farm business. Join us as we explore the latest trends, tips, and stories from market farmers running businesses just like yours. Whether you're a seasoned farmer or just starting out, our podcast has something for everyone. Listen in and grow with us. Available on all major podcast platforms. Don't miss out. Subscribe to Caricashflow today. Because I think for a lot of people, permaculture is kind of their first experience, kind of diving into agriculture. I know for me, it was, I can't remember how I think I've, I think I discovered Jill Salatin, like a lot of people do. And then that turned me on to, you know, Diego footer had permaculture voices at the time. And so, and I've told this story long, long ago before, but you know, it's like, so I found the conference and then the subsequent talks and the podcasts and then, and then obviously you start hearing from these other guys who aren't doing animals, but they're doing veg, you know, and I mean, some of it's a little bit of like, you know, gross $200,000 on a quarter acre or whatever.

1:10But, you know, it's sort of the bait to kind of get you in and see what's going on. And so I think for a lot of folks that I've talked to, kind of my age, you know, in our early mid 30s, when we were kind of discovering all of this permaculture was the huge thing. And maybe I'm just out of touch now because I'm so, you know, I'm all the way in on just kind of market gardening farming is sort of that wave of permaculture. Is it, is that wave passed? Is it still very much a, a living vibrant sort of model for kind of tending the land and maybe earning an income or was that more of a fad? Well, I think, I think, yeah, I think a little bit of both. I think it's just been redefined, you know, when we started it was like, mollison, you know, like, yeah, mollison, home grand off grid, starting a new reality, you could call it even a working towards utopia, you know, ideologies. Yeah, yeah, a lot of ideologies, a lot of great ideas. And I think a lot of us, a lot of the people before us, but, you know, we were the guinea pigs to try to get you in.

2:18And I think it's just to try and put all that together. Would I ever build a naturally built house again? I'm not sure. You know, there's all these different things, you know, would I put a lot of edge in my garden beds? I'm not sure, you know, it just depends on scale and. But I think it just got redefined, honestly, and it became streamlined into the current media world, I guess you call it. And it's time that we were choosing to get out of it or stay in it. It was kind of heading that way, you know, online workshops. We had to be YouTube sensations to get people to show up to our class, you know, and we didn't want to do that. That's just not what we wanted to do. We're like, well, we're not going to write a book, you know, we're going to have a YouTube channel. So let's just do something else, the farming. The techniques maybe aren't as applicable to farming, you know, like to make money, you have to be efficient and, you know, and all these things. But I think the thinking behind the principles and the thinking behind permaculture are still used by us all the time, you know, and how we design and redesign new areas and think about how to be productive on the farm.

3:31So I think it's the thinking still applies, but maybe just I think people like latch onto ideas like herbs, spirals and, you know, like, things like that. Yeah, yeah, I think I'd do like having your zones. I mean, that's super applicable just for the efficiency of business, you know, having, having stuff kind of sectioned out. I mean, we even subconsciously maybe it's just from years of reading books and consuming YouTube videos at nauseam. You know, it's like, yeah, like let's keep the high rotation stuff close, the low rotation stuff further away, you know, try to do some head rows and things like that. So yeah, I think a lot of those principles can still be applicable to actual production scale farming. Oh, I do too, you know, the ecosystem of the soil, how important it is ecosystem ecosystem thought, you know, ecosystem kind of idea ideas and ideology and understanding how ecosystems function. That's the thought that that's the foundation of everything we do.

4:31Does that always work out? No, are we the best at it? No, not I mean, I'm I raise hogs. I mean, you know, their ecosystem is just wandering through massive amounts of. So there's there's there's always the type of principles and I you know that I kind of always go back to as my base, you know, just remember the ecosystem thinking how about systems work. And you're trying to work with nature, but you're also human and we don't I don't even not necessarily understand if we understand nature quite yet in a whole like soil science. I mean, they've just now tapping into the beginning, you know, of soil just now and we think it's like so revolutionary, but it's just like a small part. You know, now they're linking it to the bugot biome and all these different things, you know, so it's still got a ways to grow and I think it's defining itself in a very organic way actually, you know, finding what works, finding what doesn't work, finding what you would do, finding what you wouldn't do.

5:39And then everything's contextual. You can't you know, there's just not some map that you can place on every site and it works for each site, you know, everything's a context of who you are, you know, so many things are involved. Yeah, and I think that's I mean, I think that's a paramount aspect of like why I'm even having these conversations is because, you know, whether it's a, you know, permaculture design or it's, you know, quarter acre market garden that you do and you're, you know, backyard or whatever it may be, you know, there's there are contexts are so different. And so when you're interviewing farmers over and over again and asking the same questions, how did you get started talk about your, you know, what are your market streams like what you know, it's like everybody has a different context. And so trying to collect as many of those different contexts as possible, hopefully we can us as growers can start to piece together and kind of cherry pick a little bit like, oh, okay, so I don't have the same markets as you, but I like that strategy or it's like I'm in a different growing region than you are, but that's a really wise principle that I think I can implement in a hotter dryer climate. And so, yeah, I think context is huge and it's important about us talking about our context and not just saying like, here's my list of,

7:02non-negotiables and if you follow these and take my course, then you will be successful as well. It's like, no, it's so, it's so dependent upon so many different factors, most of which are completely out of our control and it's just a matter of sort of forcibly shaping those factors into something that can be profitable, hopefully, and, and feed some people. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes you just got to experiment and then you can't foresee how things are going to work out, you know, like we, we do these like we have these from earlier and before we started the farm, like these agro forestry systems and alley crop systems that we created, but like we have our annual crops between these swales and tree crops and it's beautiful and it looks great. But I mean, it creates habitat for rabbits and things that are like eating the crops that are in the alleys, you know, so it's like now we're dealing with, okay, how do we deal with that? You know, so there's some things that like look good on paper that, you know, when you execute them, you have to, you know, you just have to adjust and figure things out as you go.

8:09It's really a lot about adaptation, you know, you know, what do you do about the ears, the deer eating your apple trees? Well, you got free protein. Yeah, there you go. There's a lot of, there's a lot of adaptation that one has to, when it comes into the permaculture systems, you have to adapt completely because they don't, they're self-regulating, but you also kind of want them to be like under your control because we're humans and we're, our societies taught us to be in control. Yeah. And even though you might not consciously know that, you're unconsciously trying to be in control because of your training, you know, and you're, and you're the way our world is and especially in the individuation and individualization and all these different things. And sometimes it's good to just get a cup of tea and just sit around and go in. This is how it's supposed to be. You might not like it, but this is how it's supposed to be. It's okay. Yeah. And the design's always changing.

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