We’re dedicated to serving West Michigan with very best in Permaculture Design Services, plants, and herbal medicines. Learn simple steps today that can save your family money, improve your health in a holistic way, build a resilient home and community, and create your own forest garden oasis. We provide opportunities to help you live a life filled with purpose, meaning, connection, and fulfillment by re-connecting to nature and to our innate ways of being as humans. Before we get into what we do, let’s start with the basics of why this work is so important right now.
The Root of our Disconnect
I grew up with four generations helping tend a family garden. The little guy in the picture below is me circa 1990 with my grandpa and great-grandpa. This type of generational land connection has become very rare in modern America. Looking at the entire scope of human history, which new research is suggesting may be more like 2-6 million years rather than 200,000 years, we have spent nearly all of our existence in land based tribes and cultures. Scientists call it our Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness, and it mostly involves a tribal community living on a mix of hunting, gathering, and forest gardening. Cubicles and fluorescent lights and 72 degree rooms are just not what we are used to as a species, and our bodies, minds, and souls can feel that. Unfortunately, this trend of disconnect has only accelerated and compounded further in recent times.
In just a few generations, we have gone from the majority of people in the United States working with the land for their livelihood, to only about 1% of the population farming today. This creates societal instability because we are so dependent on a few giant corporations growing millions of acres of only a few types of plants. We have put all of our eggs in one basket. We have become further disconnected; disconnected from where our food comes from, disconnected from nature and a sense of place, disconnected across the generations. This has become pervasive and it affects our mental health, our physical health, and our lifestyle of dependence. If you feel alone and separate from all other life, you are more susceptible to all types of illness and to falling prey to the consumption trap.
I visualize the consumption trap like a hamster wheel. A person who has a difficult life without a sense of grounding, of purpose, of meaning and interdependence is easily taken advantage of. They are more likely to be influenced by advertising propaganda that we are all inundated with every day and more likely come to believe that some type of retail therapy can buy their way back to a fulfilling life. This, of course, is a futile pursuit and only leads to more debt, dependence, despair, and disconnection. Once you become engrained in these habits, it becomes more difficult to forge a new path for yourself, your family, and your community. We have solutions and steps to help you do just that.
On top of this existential disconnection we all feel, we have also become surrounded by toxins. Over half of American children today have some form of chronic illness, compared to about 10% just a few generations ago. All modern food plants have lost measurable nutrition over the past 100 years because of increased CO2 in the atmosphere, selective breeding for other traits, and synthetic farming practices. Billions of tons of glyphosate, a probable carcinogen and known microbiome disrupter, are used year after year as the basis of most farm and yard maintenance. Plastic in “organic” hoop houses and farms leaches hormone and endocrine disruptors and known carcinogens that are absorbed into food and that lead to infertility and a myriad of health problems. These are just a few examples of some sources of our declining health, and they all lead to the same conclusions.
How can you Reconnect?
As I have learned more about the environmental problems people are causing I realized that the solutions to stop the destruction to the environment and to our health always circle back to the same thing. Time and time again I have found the best remedy for all of these problems is to grow our own food and medicine using permaculture design principles as a guidepost. As permaculture co-founder Bill Mollison wrote, “All of the world’s problems can be solved in the garden.” We have been putting these design approaches into practice in West Michigan for nearly a decade now and have the local field experience necessary to help you avoid common mistakes and setbacks.
There are dozens of examples and settings around the world where permaculture design has reconnected people to nature, to each other, and to a healthier, happier life. From Mark Shepard’s impressive 110 acre “New Forest Farm” in Wisconsin, to GrowBiointensive methods demonstrating the ability to grow 100% of your food on less than 1/4 acre, the possibilities are endless. Permaculture also offers design concepts and strategies proven to help with finances, community building, architecture, business, and health. As Wendell Berry writes, “We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunities!”
We can help you create perennial forest gardens that provide both organic food and living ecosystems. These landscapes provide natural pest and disease control, a healthier more diverse microbiome, organic fertility, improved water quality and infiltration, cleaner air, and a beautiful serene place to live and work. The lovely side-effects of living this type of lifestyle and landscape include: more meaning, purpose, and connection to life, better finances, improved mental and physical health, and more resilience in the face of uncertain times.
Connect with us!
When we started this business in 2017 our passion for creating a regenerative way of life drove us to planting a forest garden of over 1,000 trees and offering perennial plant sales and design services. We have also earned grant funding to start two school food forests and to build a school greenhouse. Now we offer herbal remedies and classes in herbalism, and have completed a Certificate in Medicinal Herbs from Cornell University. We also offer seasonal permaculture design classes and consultations to customers throughout the Grand Rapids area and all over West Michigan, and we are thrilled to share our passion with you!
We hope you enjoy our plants, herbal products, classes, and consultation services. We also have a listing of products and services at https://treesandteas.ecwid.com/ and we post updates on classes, newsletters, and new product listings to our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/treesandteas
You are the man! Giving back to nature!