My Grandma loved telling stories. She had dozens of stories and she would tell them to anyone who would listen. Sometimes if I was feeling impatient I would admit, “I’ve already heard that one, Grandma.” She’d say, “Well, you can hear it again.” and continue unabated. I’m grateful that she did because that repetition etched some of them deeper into my memory banks. Maybe that was her way of holding on to them.
One story I heard many times was about her life as a child growing up during the Great Depression. When things got hard for her family they did what many others did at that time and moved in with extended family. They had three families, 17 people, living in one small house. She shared a walk-in closet with a cousin as their bedroom. You can see why she grew up to be a very thrifty woman. It is interesting to see this trend coming back as we begin our societal energy descent. There will definitely be future posts doing deeper dives into it, but multi-generational housing is back to near depression rates. My other grandparents had similar backgrounds, so frugality runs deep in my family. This mindset is what led me to discovering the design process called permaculture back in 2010.
Frugality Drives Innovation
At that time I had been teaching middle school for a couple of years and it was the first time I had any surplus of money as an adult. I was looking for ways to invest some of that money when I came across the idea of extreme early retirement. These days it’s more commonly known as FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early), and it is so hot right now. The basic idea is that life is short and full of wonder and you don’t want to be stuck punching the clock for 40-60 years. You also don’t want to be vulnerable to losing everything whenever the downsizing, offshoring, or Amazon-ing hits your company and town. To gain more freedom and resilience, you start to save as much money as possible, invest it in long term investments, and hopefully build up enough to live off of interest and dividends within 5-10 years.
Going down this FIRE rabbit hole eventually led me to trying to find ways to avoid a mortgage. That pursuit led me to DIY underground house construction for $50 and up. At the time I didn’t feel confident enough in my construction skills or the zoning ordinances to actually try to pull off building one. His design for a passive solar greenhouse and root cellar is superb though, and that is definitely on the to do list in the future. I stumbled across the concept of permaculture through websites connected with his work.
The concept of a permanently sustainable culture blew my mind. It seemed to answer everything I was looking for – saving money for early retirement, securing healthy food, creating living investments, building healthy ecosystems, reversing climate change, managing for severe weather, living with the seasons, connecting with nature and patterning lives in symbiotic ways, and on and on… Bill Mollison, a co-founder of permaculture, likes to say it was a “revolution disguised as gardening” and that “all of our problems can be solved in the garden.” It has certainly revolutionized my life for the better.
Some Guideposts to Get Started
Your journey is ultimately yours and yours alone. My hope is that my experience can offer you some guideposts along the way that might be useful to you. I started by devouring everything I could online. Fukuoka’s book One Straw Revolution is in the public domain online and is an excellent foundational philosophical guide to working with nature rather than against it. Geoff Lawton already had lots of free youtube videos back then. Now there are even more. Mark Shepard, Ben Falk, Toby Hemingway, Sean Dembrowski, Mike Hoag, and Justin Rhodes are a few other youtubers who come to mind who have since produced lots of helpful content. Libraries often have free copies of Gaia’s Garden, Restoration Agriculture, RetroSuburbia, and even the original Permaculture Designer’s Manual at times. There are many options to join forums out there, and those are largely a mixed bag. Some give bad advice at times and others can be cult-ish at times, but all have gems of wisdom in them if you are able to sift through them.
After a year or two of running through every free book or video I could find I wanted more. I took a full Permaculture Design Course in Ashland, Oregon. The group I studied with is called Siskiyou Permaculture. They had incredibly knowledgeable guest instructors every weekend in addition to the already capable lead instructors. I would compare the total amount of information and interaction from that PDC to the average year long college course. It was helpful to interact with people on similar paths, to ask questions, to collaborate and commiserate and learn from everyone who came to share there. This type of study can be interesting, inspiring, thought-provoking, and more, but it’s not the same as the actual practice of the thing. I had to get my hands dirty.
Win Your Permaculture Championship
I grew up in Indiana, the Hoosier state, where basketball is life and life is basketball for most boys. We had about 55 boys in my grade. The first year we had basketball tryouts in middle school, 42 of them wanted to be on the team. A huge chunk of my childhood was devoted to that sport. Long story short, I ended up being the team MVP and winning a sectional championship my senior year. You’re probably thinking, “Good for you man, but why are you telling me this?” For one, I want to share some of my personal life here so you can get a better idea of who I am and how I came to the path I am on. Second, America loves sports and sports analogies.
My studying of all of the free information online was like learning to play basketball as a child. I would play by myself and imagine what was possible. I would pretend to make game winning shots, try to do all of the moves I saw on TV. A vision for myself began to form into my subconscious, into my bodily awareness, into my dreams, but it was only a vision at the time. It wasn’t real yet.
When I took a PDC it was comparable to my first competitive games in childhood. I was there with a group of people trying to do a thing we had all dreamt of doing and most of us still had no idea how to do it. There were some coaches and referees there to guide us, some of us had practiced more than others, but it wasn’t really a basketball game yet, it was a learning experience, a rehearsal.
By the time I was playing at the varsity level, it was almost a decade later and the 42 boys had been whittled down to 5. We had spent years waking up early and staying late and dedicated a huge amount of our life to it. When we faced competition, they had done the same, and it created an intense and dynamic flow that is beautiful to be a part of and to watch.
That feeling of culmination of years of work and sacrifice and shared struggle with teammates is special and it is hard to replicate. This is like actually living a permaculture life for a number of years. The lived experience is irreplaceable. The depth of meaning cannot be put into words when you have sacrificed so much. The youtubers and authors don’t often show you the sweat, blood, tears, and strained relationships that went into building their off grid food forest, homestead, farm, or business. Watching them is like watching an NBA game, you don’t see the lifetime of work that went into the work of art in front of you.
Live Like a Champion
The payoff for all of the work is the lived experience you get every day that can bring such a deep sense of purpose and satisfaction. When you put so much into it and start to see the fruits of you labor multiplying year after year until you are inundated with more fruit than you and your family can eat. That is winning your permaculture championship. You can live in that satisfaction, that personal Eden, every day. But it’s going to take sacrifice and time to get there. Be gentle with yourself during your process. Dream, imagine, and envision often, watch and learn from those who have done it, and start to chip away at your championship with one small step at a time.
Many thanks for sharing your experience.
Do you have any advice for the person who does not have the means to cross the country to draw on the experience of others?
Is there a clear starting point and a clear path to follow for such a person?
I would advise them to do what you did – start where you are with what you have! For those who don’t know, Dick Winkel was planting chestnuts 40 years before it was cool, and has some of the best genetics in west Michigan. I would also recommend reading the books and blogs and watching the videos I referenced, starting a stockpile of valuable plants, and reaching out to local gardeners, permaculture groups, and university extension offices. I will have follow up posts detailing further steps. Thanks for reading and for asking!
Pingback: Start with the Low Hanging Fruit - Trees and Teas Permaculture