Applied Permaculture Principles

By Nic, Core team member

There are a lot of misconceptions about what Permaculture is. Most people think of it as an agricultural system, typically some sort of food forest and whilst maybe it does make sense for you to have a food forest, maybe it doesn’t! The specifics of applying the principles will vary based on your environment, project , goals etc… but the principles will always remain the same. In permaculture there are 12 underlying principles that help guide us through the design and thinking process. We have highlighted below how we apply each of these principles, many times in more than just one way, at our site. We hope this helps inform you how these principles can be applied in practice. If this article intrigues you, check out our annual Permaculture Design Course!

Permaculture Principle: #1 - Creatively Use and Respond to Change

This is an almost everyday occurrence here, with such a huge diversity of projects and systems at the Ranch. One of the big changes that many people experience here is the change in diet, coming to a tropical region we focus on locally available food sources. In this photo we showcase a typical meal of rice, beans, picadillo, salad and plantains and green papaya kimchi, all sourced from within 20 miles of the Ranch. Each year apprentices learn about how to creatively use these new food types, and learn from our experience of eating and preparing these food items for the last 19 years.

Permaculture Principle: #2 - Observe & Interact

We love fermentation here at the Ranch we use it for so many things but as every ferment in every climate is slightly different it involves observation and interaction to fine tune your recipes. You have to pay close attention to each batch to make sure you get the perfect balance of flavors from the fermentation process, this timing varies throughout the year and depends a lot on the ambient temperature! Here we have some different pickles and ferments that we make from Green Papaya, Chayote and wing beans….Yummy!!!

Permaculture Principle #3 - Catch & Store Energy

For the last 12 years we have been using two types of bio-digestors at the ranch to catch and store energy from human (and cow) poop. For those unfamiliar with the system, a large underground vessel is used to create an anaerobic environment where the feces is broken down, killing any pathogens and releasing Methane gas which we pipe up to our kitchen and use to cook on. The now safe effluent is used to passively feed, bananas, bamboo and cacao trees.

On the left a mosaic describes the closed loop system we employ at the Ranch and on the right the mosaic describes the open loop, linear system that is often found around the world when dealing with human feces.

Permaculture Principle #4 - Obtain a Yield

Jackfruit is one of the largest fruits in the world, it grows and begins to produce very quickly and is ideally suited to our tropical climate. In our agroforestry systems we have many jackfruit trees of different varities. Here is a typical harvest of Jackfruit when it is really pumping!! We love to eat Jackfruit green (when it is more like a starch) and have been lacto-fermenting it, a great way to store and add nutrition to this abundant fruit. We then use the jackfruit to make a hash, or as a replacement for the pasta in a lasagna or even a pizza topping… its just so versatile!!

Permaculture Principle #5- Self Regulate & Accept Feedback

Rancho Mastatal is an education center, community and lodge. We host a year long apprenticeship, 100’s of high school students and 100’s of guests throughout the year. We eat together, live together, play together and work together. Conflicts are inevitable and we have designed many systems to productively work through these. We encourage feedback sessions with our one year apprentices through group meetings and one on ones to accept feedback and make the necessary changes to make all of our experiences living together more enjoyable. Here we are all meeting in our wonderful meeting room, a round earthen structure.

Permaculture Principle #6 - Use & Value Renewables

Over our 20 years of existence we have always valued and used renewable energy sources, from our biodigestor, to our super-efficient wood burning cook stoves to our dry composting toilets, these are all ways to use and capture renewable energies. We have also installed 10+ small solar systems at the ranch to power cabins far from the grid and to help community members in Mastatal and nearby villages have power. We are lucky to live in a country that also values renewable energy sources. Costa Rica is powered by 95% renewable energy sources a magnificent achievement by world standards.

In these photos we are setting up scaffold to harvest bamboo to build with, installing a small PV system for a local community member to help them have lights in the evening, and cooking on our fuel efficient wood cook stove.

Installing some PV panels in the community

Permaculture Principle #7 - Produce No Waste

This principle is gaining a lot more traction in the modern convenient driven society, where single use plastics have become commonplace. With the slow realization that we cannot keep throwing stuff away, the principle of produce no waste seems more relevant than ever. Here at the Ranch we are a large consumer of food and goods, often feeding up to 50 people a day we go through a lot of food!! Over the years we have used our purchasing power to convince/encourage local farmers to reduce their packaging. Our vegetables are delivered in baskets, our tapa dulce is wrapped in cane leaves, our rice comes in rice sacks which we can re-use for storage of other goods such as sawdust for our composting toilets and we get our milk in gallon containers we wash and send back and forth with the dairy farmer. We are not perfect, and we definitely still produce waste but considering the average American produces 4.5lbs of garbage a day we are well below that!! As we have become more aware of this issue around the world, this is one of the simplest and most accessible ways to become a more responsible world citizen.

Permaculture Principle #8 - Design from Pattern to Detail

One of the biggest challenges in tropical climates is the huge amount of rainfall we receive, seeing the pattern of deforestation and eroded landscapes on our property we countered this by reforesting land using diverse perennial tree crops, which mimic the forest stratas, protecting the soil and producing food for us to eat. We dig swales & retention ponds, plant on contour and use deep rooted species, mulch heavily all to help slow down the flow of water and build healthier more productive soils.

Lydia, an apprentice, planting and properly mulching this new fruit tree

Permaculture Principle #9 - Integrate rather than segregate

One of the ways we do this is by integrating different species known as guilds. These plant guilds help support one another and diversify your site making them less prone to diseases and providing shade, fertility and structure. We grow our black pepper vines on a living post. This post produces some shade and the living post is also a nitrogen fixing tree. Nearby we have more nitrogen fixing trees and bananas to provide more shade, food and mulch to the black pepper. Stay tuned for our next blog on the Life of Spice: Black Pepper.

Permaculture Principle #10 - Use Small Slow Solutions

Apprentices building an adobe brick walled shower that’s under a timber framed structure

Everything that we build at the Ranch is by hand. People always ask us how long it takes to build things and it takes a long time to be honest. Our goals are to give people educational opportunities in the building process not just to make something as quickly as possible. We see the value in taking it slow and not using a lot of machinery to streamline our building process. We use our buildings to create beautiful healthy homes that are not only using local resources but help us make connections with people and build community. Check out this article on how we built this Tadelakt shower

Permaculture Principle #11 - Use & Value Diversity

Don Chepo winnowing his harvest of beans

For many people the idea of becoming self-sufficient is an appealing one. We look at things in a different way by using and valuing diversity we aim to create regional food security and value the food we grow equally to the food we can obtain from local farmers. By supporting our neighbors and friends we build community, financially support local farmers and get to eat fresh local produce everyday! Beans from Don Chepo, Tapa Dulce from Don Gerardo, Eggs from Doña Flor and Coffee from Jose Luis are just some examples.

Permaculture Principle #12 - Use Edges & Value the Marginal

As we said before we love vinegar and fermentation at the Ranch. One of the simplest vinegar recipes we use is valuing the marginal, fruit scraps and peels make an excellent vinegar. We pack them into a bucket add water and let the natural yeasts convert the sugars into alcohol and then into vinegar. What is commonly treated as a waste product has now been converted into a sugar source for a vinegar which we can use to spice up some of our fresh garden salads! Read our latest blog on farm to table, homemade banana vinegar.

These are just some of the many examples of the way we implement the 12 permaculture principles here at the Ranch.

If you are interested in permaculture design and it’s principles join us for our annual 2 week, life changing Permaculture Design Course.

Applied Permaculture Principles