#1 – Time in Nature
Within each seed is a potential creation event. A big bang. The possibility of unfurling an infinity of self-replicating, evolving, fractal universes that can host other forms of life. When so much seems to be going wrong with the world, there is deep comfort and consolation in the magic and mystery all around us. That’s exactly why an appreciation and a reverence for nature is the top starting point for permaculture. It’s free. It’s easy. It’s intuitive. And it’s all around us all the time. Nature doesn’t ask for proof of insurance or a co-pay, but it can definitely be your primary care provider.
Reconnecting with nature can literally heal us. It can prevent emotional dis ease and physical disease. “Forest bathing” is a fancy new term researchers have made up that basically just means you spend time in the forest. A 2019 meta-analysis reviewing 28 studies on forest bathing found: “The results demonstrated that forest bathing activities might have the following merits: remarkably improving cardiovascular function, hemodynamic indexes, neuroendocrine indexes, metabolic indexes, immunity and inflammatory indexes, antioxidant indexes, and electrophysiological indexes; significantly enhancing people’s emotional state, attitude, and feelings towards things, physical and psychological recovery, and adaptive behaviors; and obvious alleviation of anxiety and depression.”
Just a few generations ago about 10% of children in the United States had some sort of chronic illness. Today about 54% of children have at least one form of chronic illness. On average, we are living shorter, sicker lives than our parents and grandparents did, and by a significant measure. There are many steps to take to keep yourself and your family healthy, but the easiest and cheapest one is to simply get out in the woods and play in the dirt. A recent study out of Finland tracked the health of children who had at least 90 minutes a day of play in forest soil around berry bushes and gardens on their playgrounds. They found the children with the daily dose of forest “showed beneficial changes to a range of proteins and cells related to the immune system, including anti-inflammatory cytokine and regulatory T cells.”
Invest your time in the forest and in the soil and you can start to build a strong foundation of health, happiness, gratitude, reverence, and interconnectedness. On top of that foundation you can also add an increase in your pattern understanding. A core permaculture strategy is to mimic or co-create with the existing patterns in nature. Once you begin to tap into your innate attunement with the way of things in nature, you can begin to apply that understanding to your designs in your gardens, in your buildings, and in your life in general. Most people know that nature is beautiful and good for us, but most isn’t enough! Cure your nature deficit disorder and get out there today!
#2 – Grow (and eat) your Greens
Paleo or keto diets are all the rage these days. Seeing people move away from the Standard American Diet (SAD) is always a good thing, but one thing I think these trends are missing is greens as a basis of the diet. It just makes sense that pre-historic people would grab the easiest and most plentiful things to eat the most often, and that would usually be some type of leafy greens. Scholars debate endlessly about what ancient human diets must have been like, but there is little debate about our SAD diet today. Over 90% of Americans aren’t getting enough fruits, veggies, or fiber.
Eating a diversity of high-fiber plants is also key for our gut health. As we learn more and more about the ecosystem that is the human body, we are realizing the importance of feeding out gut microbes, and that they love fiber. The Hadza, one of the last remaining modern hunter gatherer people, eat something like 150 grams of fiber, compared to 15 for the average American. Their microbiome is so robust that people literally pay for their poop to do fecal transplants and inoculate themselves. Call me crazy, but I think I’d rather just eat my own vegetables than pay to insert someone else’s poo in my rectum. Not only do our guts love fiber, but our jaws do too. Just like the Hadza, most people used to chew the cud all day and have jawlines like movie stars. Many researchers now believe that the need for braces and rates of sleep apnea are tied to our underdeveloped jaws because all we eat is processed mush these day. James Nestor’s book Breathe is great for a deeper dive into this phenomena as well as other pro tips on breathwork.
Now I want to be clear that I’m not discriminating – we need all types of foods to create resilience in human and environmental health going forward. It is estimated that there are 200,000-300,000 species of plants that are edible to humans, yet most people in industrial countries eat less than 200. We need all of the fruits, nuts, seeds, tubers, grains, algae, or whatever else we can get. It’s just that greens are the easiest to grow large amounts of, they are usually the most nutritious thing we can eat, and there are plenty of perennial options for our forest gardens, even in temperate Michigan.
Personally, I harvest 2-4 large salads-worth of greens almost every day for about 7-8 months out of the year without any greenhouse or indoor growing. Sometimes I just go with salads, but more often I cook them down somehow and that large amount turns into a small side for a normal meal. I like to steam them, fry them in olive oil, or blend them into soups or smoothies. My top picks for easy, massive harvest greens are: littleleaf linden, slender nettle and wood nettle, french sorrel, turkish rocket, cultivated chicory, dandelions, plantain, marshmallow, walking onions, oregano, sage, parsley, and garlic greens. These are all perennial or self-seeding plants that can be harvested heavily and repeatedly. Some of them I even harvest from more than 20 times per year!
That kind of production with no work for planting every single year is what makes greens the highest leverage thing you can plant. Most of the ones I listed are aromatic or have defenses against critters eating them so they don’t need protected as much as kale or other favorites of our feral furry friends often do. One of the main reasons people don’t eat enough vegetables is because they can be really expensive. If you are on a strict budget, you need calories day to day, but you can skimp on nutrients for quite a while before disease develops. This means that when you run the calculations on your return on investment, growing greens becomes a no-brainer. They’re easy to grow, they’re superfood, and they’re close to the highest hourly rate you could pay yourself when growing your own food.
#3 – Berries
Let’s face it – lots of us don’t want to eat our veggies. They can be bitter, fibrous, tough, and finnicky to cook with. That’s why we’re going to wrap this one up on a sweeter note. If you’ve ever picked a fresh berry and felt it melt in your mouth then you understand the difference between growing your own and buying from the store. Berries at the store are selected for their ability to look good on the shelf for an extended time, not for their level of mouth-wateringness. A perfectly ripe berry on a summer day is truly one of the great joys in life. Add to that the bonus that you’re saving tons of fuel by not importing fruit from South America all winter, and your conscience can feel as good as your taste buds.
Berries are also one area where business and pleasure absolutely do mix. Not only are they tiny gateways into the divine, they are probably the single best investment you can make. You will think twice about buying those tiny $5 baskets at the store when you see just how much a big healthy bush can produce. You can often get a small plant for that same price! Invest that $5 and a bit of TLC up front, and you can have a lifetime of fresh berries right at your doorstep. Several studies have confirmed that berries are often the highest ROI food we can grow at home because they are so expensive at the store yet so easy to grow ourselves.
So berries taste delightful, they’re the best investment you can make, they save tons of transport costs, and they’re easy to grow. I still haven’t got to the best part, though. Berries are true superfoods. They are food medicine. Especially the dark ones with their high levels of anthocyanins. According to recent PubMed research, “studies associate regular, moderate intake of blueberries and/or anthocyanins with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, death, and type 2 diabetes, and with improved weight maintenance and neuroprotection.” Elderberry, blackberry, aroniaberry, juneberries, and currants all have similar phytochemicals, antioxidants, and health benefits.
Aronia melanocarpa and black currant are at the top of my list for easy to grow food medicines. They both have vast implications and a wide base of research evidence to confirm their health-promoting effects. Aronia is such a potent anti-inflammatory that is has a comparable effect to prednisone, a commonly prescribed steroid medication. Both aronia and black currant helpful for immune function, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, cholesterol, inflammation, viral infections, IBS, and more. You often can’t even find them in stores, so growing your own is especially beneficial. These two will even grow and produce some fruit in part shade, which is not easy to do in Michigan! They will be more productive in full sun, but a half day of shade and they are definitely still worth planting.
Get started NOW!
If the best you can do is to get outside and walk in the woods, get out there today and do it! In addition to all of the research on the health benefits of nature, if you simply believe that what you are doing is good for you, you’re giving yourself a healthy dose of belief effect – which can create real physiological changes in the body. Bonus points if you practice gratitude while you’re out there, if you get your hands dirty, and if you’re exposed to some of the elements such as cold, heat, rain, wind, or snow. You are building your health, practicing your pattern understanding, and just enjoying your life which is the most valuable thing of all.
If you have some space in your yard, or in the yard of some nearby friends or family, plan on planting some perennial greens or herbs and some berries there next spring. Dedicate a space for it and prep the area with a double dig or a sheet mulch a couple of months in advance. Usually the end of March/beginning of April is the best time to transplant roots in Michigan. Check out our spring plant sale that we will list on our facebook page around the beginning of March. We will have many of these plants available for purchase then. These are truly the best investments you can make and the highest leverage points for anyone to get started with permaculture.
