We are arriving in Daylesford. We haven't a place to spend the night yet so about ten minutes before closure we arrive at the tourist office with a nice question. The kind lady at the desk gives us 4 pages of places where to sleep in the area. Only calls to make. We finally find a room in a biker's motel. The room isn't nice and quite pricey but we can't do better for today. Off to the bar as there is a brewery in town and we are curious to try it out.
The day after we are arriving at David Holmgren's place, at Melliodora, in Hepburn. I let you read about this memorable visit and discover some of the permaculture fundamentals principles here below. David is both an intellectual making his research and compiling information, ading his own critical and analytical thoughts to bring about interesting concepts and principles and also a wood worker, who loves his land and its bountifulness, a pragmatic who built his own house and lives with Sue, a life nearly free of wasted waste, leading a sharing and serene life. For someone so famous, he is humble and accessible, he answers willingly to questions and even agrees to be filmed for a small interview. He is definitely also part of the solution.
We leave Melliodora truly enchanted to go and meet Pat and Meg, who live in a residential suburb and have integrated permaculture into their daily lives. It is the chance to go and discover another type of self-sufficiency, another alternative, a solution for those who do not live a bountiful countryside land. We are right away welcomed with big smiles, there is a lot of people at the house. I let you read all about this great experience here.
This visit completes our change of opinion on permaculture. Originally we thought the concept interesting, with some practical applications but not really applicable to a profesionnal scale, which somehow had made it a negative point in our mind. Moreover permaculture in France seem to attract both very good people and a whole range of « know-it-all » people who get themselves certified and start teaching without ever having applied the concept themselves which covers a whole life, a specific ethic and some principles that, it seems, only experience and discovery can enable deep understanding. You would have got our point, a rather not so positive opinion on what we had seen so far in France (though there are some very good permaculture people in France, that is not what we are saying) even if the theoretical concept seems good.
In Australia, on the other hand, we meet people who are living it in its entirety, without selecting only some techniques which by themselves do not constitute permaculture. People who have integrated the sharing values, for whom the techniques can be various and diversified as long as they derive from the principles of permaculture. These principles enable and encourage innovation precisely because permaculture is not an index of techniques but rather a design guide.
It is also surprising to discover the central and essential rôle of the housing, this heart of zone 0 in permaculture, also built along the core principles. We are far from the mounds and other lasagna type gardening techniques. Everything is done according it usefulness. There are mounds or lasagna type beds when it is necessary, not because « permaculture says so ».
Of course with time, the application of these principles, favouring innovation, common techniques are used in these permaculture practicing places such as planting trees along level lines or creating micro-climates or taking advantage of those that are there. It is the result of observation and thinking both encouraged by the permaculture fundamentals. An interesting discovery as finally, permaculture draws an intelligent framework within which everyone has the freedom and responsibility to play its role. If that framework could go through frontiers and reach the whole of humanity, we would probably be saved. Simple as that. Let's see what tomorrow looks like then.
We are putting here below a small section aside on the fundamental principles of permaculture and a little extract of one of David Holmgren's book so that you can up your own mind.
First of all and the most important, the ethics of permaculture, its fundamental values that precedes any thoughts about design :
- Care for the earth (husbands soil, forests and water)
- Care for the people (look after self, kin and community)
- Faire share (set limits to consumption and reproduction, and redistribute surplus)
From there naturally stems a critic of the modern « developped » society which does not support, or even goes against, those values.
« The same system of power that extracts and exploits the less powerful, soothese the billion or so middle-class people, mostly in the North, into complacency with low, and even falling costs relative to average incomes, of food, water, energy and other essential goods. This failure of global mrakets to transmit signals about resource depletion and environmental degradation has insulated consumers against the need for developing more self-reliant lifestyles, and disabled the drive for public policies which might assist these necessary adaptations. The flood of new and cheap consumer goods has stimulated consumption to a point of super-saturation, while at the same time measures of social capital and wellbeing continue to fall from peaks in the 1970's.
The craven acceptance of economic growth at all costs, and the powerful established corporate and government interests, which stand to lose power from such a transition, makes clear the radical political nature of the permaculture agenda. » quoted from « Essence of Permaculture » by David Holmgren
Then the 12 fundamental principles which frame the design of any permaculture project – they are associated with a traditional proverb that emphasises the negative or cautionary aspect of the principle :
- Observe and interact – Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
- Catch and store energy – Make hay while the sun shines
- Obtain a yield – You can't work on an empty stomach
- Apply self-regulation and accept feedback – The sins of the fathers are visited on the children unto the seventh generation
- Use and value renewable ressources and services – Let nature take its course
- Produce no waste – Waste not, want no / A stich in time saves nine
- Design from patterns to details – Can't see the forest for the trees
- Integrate rather than segregate – Many hands make light work
- Use small and slow solutions – The bigger they are, the harder they fall / Slow and steady wins the race
- Use and value diversity – Don't put all your eggs in one basket
- Use edges and value the marginal – Don't think you on the right track just because it's a well-beaten path
- Creatively use and respond to change – Vision is not seeing things as they are but as they will be
Of course each principle has a longer explanation in order to understand its use.
For more information : Books of David Holmgren on the topic
Videos made on-site:
What is permaculture?
Tegasaste - a leguminous tree for fodder and nitrogen fixing
Make permaculture worldwide