Patrones del Alma: Zona Ser o Ser

Katia Lopezconde, Estudiante 2025

“El tiempo es patrones y el mundo una secuencia de eventos dentro de un patrón”. -Amanda Calvo

Cuando me acerqué a la permacultura, mi intención inicial fue nutrir mi formación en diseño arquitectónico con algo más aterrizado, más conectado con la tierra, los cultivos, el agua, el clima. Quería comprender mejor los ritmos naturales para intervenir el territorio de una manera más coherente y responsable.

Con el tiempo, y al experimentarla desde adentro, comprendí que esos ritmos no se manifiestan solo en el entorno. Los patrones más profundos de nuestra relación con la naturaleza habitan en el “yo”: en el paisaje interior, donde se tejen nuestras emociones, pensamientos y formas de habitar nuestro mundo.

Así como la naturaleza se organiza en patrones -ramificaciones, ondas, espirales, redes-, nosotros también repetimos formas: de pensar, de sentir, de reaccionar, de vincularnos. Nuestro crecimiento no es lineal: es una secuencia de patrones. ¿Qué pasa cuando miramos hacia dentro con los mismos ojos con los que observamos un bosque? ¿Qué formas repetimos y estas hacia dónde nos están llevando?

En permacultura se habla de la Zona 00 como el espacio más cercano: la casa, el centro de operaciones. Pero también puede entenderse como el centro que nos mueve y donde habita lo que le da sentido a nuestras vidas. Es desde ahí que se irradian nuestras decisiones, nuestras relaciones y los paisajes que vamos diseñando en nuestro entorno. Ahí nace la posibilidad real de transformación: el punto de partida para construir hábitos más conscientes, sustentables y en coherencia con el amor por la tierra y sus habitantes.

La naturaleza, entonces, no solo nos muestra formas visibles, sino también claves para comprender procesos internos. Observar sus patrones es una forma de leer el lenguaje con el que la vida se organiza. Si todo está tejido con ritmos, estructuras y flujos, ¿qué tanto esos mismos diseños también habitan en nuestra manera de sentir y de ser?

A continuación, exploro algunos de estos patrones, no como formas externas, sino como metáforas vivas de nuestro mundo interior. Porque en la Zona 00 del ser, esos mismos patrones nos ofrecen caminos de autoconocimiento.

RAMIFICACIÓN

En los sistemas naturales, la ramificación permite que la energía se distribuya de forma eficiente: el agua llega a cada hoja, los nutrientes alcanzan cada célula, el oxígeno recorre hasta el último rincón. En el plano personal, ese mismo patrón aparece en la forma en que nuestra conciencia se extiende hacia diferentes partes de nosotros mismos.

Cada emoción, cada recuerdo, cada experiencia presente activa nuevas conexiones: pensamientos que derivan en sensaciones, sensaciones que despiertan memorias profundas, intuiciones que abren posibilidades, información almacenada que toma nuevo significado. Observar este patrón con detenimiento es una invitación a dejar de pensar en la vida interior como un sistema de elecciones aisladas y empezar a verla como una red de conexiones que, si se integran con honestidad, nos pueden guiar hacia una vida más coherente con nuestro mayor bien.

La ramificación también nos revela que lo que parece independiente muchas veces comparte un origen común. Un árbol que comienza a secarse en sus hojas no necesariamente tiene el problema en la copa; puede tratarse de una raíz dañada o de un desequilibrio en el suelo. Del mismo modo, un dolor físico puede estar vinculado a una emoción no expresada, y un patrón repetitivo en nuestras relaciones puede tener raíces más profundas, incluso invisibles a simple vista.

Este patrón nos recuerda que siempre hay un tronco base del cual emergen los distintos caminos. En el ámbito profesional, ese tronco representa el conocimiento que hemos cultivado, la experiencia que nos sostiene, los aprendizajes que han dado forma a nuestra práctica. Con el tiempo, ese saber se expande: vamos adquiriendo nuevas herramientas, vivencias y aprendizajes que se ramifican en direcciones diversas, ampliando nuestro panorama y afinando nuestra mirada

Esta expansión no solo nos da más opciones, también nos ayuda a ubicar con mayor claridad cuáles son nuestras fortalezas, nuestros dones particulares, aquello que nos hace únicos dentro de la red más amplia en la que participamos. Ramificarse es crecer sin perder el origen, es expandirse con sentido.

ONDAS

Las ondas son movimiento, transmisión, eco. En la naturaleza, una onda no se queda dónde empieza: viaja, resuena, transforma y se extiende. En nuestra energía interior ocurre algo similar. Cada pensamiento que sostenemos, cada palabra que decimos, cada emoción que no nombramos o que expresamos, genera una vibración que se extiende más allá del momento en que ocurre.

A menudo no somos conscientes de esas ondas internas que generamos día con día. Una tensión no resuelta puede dejar un eco que se filtra en nuestras relaciones, en nuestros estados de ánimo, en la forma en que trabajamos o creamos. Una emoción reprimida, un lenguaje mal empleado o una reacción impulsiva puede distorsionar nuestra percepción del mundo, de los vínculos y de los procesos que habitamos.

Pero también sucede lo contrario: una intención clara, una mirada amorosa, un gesto honesto o la fuerza del trabajo en equipo pueden multiplicar su efecto, tocando espacios mucho más profundos de lo que alcanzamos a ver.

Desde la Zona 00, estas ondas surgen del centro mismo del ser: de nuestros hábitos, nuestras elecciones, nuestras formas de estar. Una vida más alineada con los principios de la permacultura, más consciente, más presente, más cuidadosa, no transforma solo a quien la vive. También genera un campo de influencia sutil que alcanza a quienes la rodean. Las personas observan, absorben, imitan. Las ondas de coherencia se convierten en ejemplo silencioso, en semilla viva.

Comprender este patrón como parte de nuestro sistema interno es reconocer que no somos seres aislados. Que nuestras acciones y nuestros procesos internos tienen forma, impacto y dirección. Y que, como quien afina un instrumento, podemos ajustar nuestra vibración interna para contribuir, de manera silenciosa pero poderosa, a un mundo más armónico.

ESPIRALES

La naturaleza nos recuerda que el crecimiento no siempre avanza en línea recta. Muchas de sus formas, desde un caracol hasta una galaxia, desde una semilla en brote hasta el movimiento de un huracán, siguen un patrón de espiral.

En nuestros procesos mentales ocurre lo mismo. El crecimiento personal, emocional y espiritual rara vez es lineal. A menudo volvemos a lugares que creíamos superados: viejas heridas, dudas recurrentes, patrones que se repiten. Pero si el movimiento es espiralado, no estamos en el mismo punto.

Aunque desde arriba parezca que giramos en círculos, basta cambiar de perspectiva —como mirar un alzado en lugar de una planta— para darnos cuenta de que en realidad hemos ascendido. Volver no significa retroceder, sino estar en otro nivel de comprensión, con más herramientas, experiencia e, idealmente, mayor conciencia.

Mientras más giramos hacia dentro, más cerca estamos del centro; y al mismo tiempo, más alto podemos mirar. Creo que, en el camino de la permacultura, esta forma de crecer es esencial, que el aprendizaje no se quede solo en la superficie o en lo intelectual, sino que transite dentro de nosotros, en nuestras capas internas, nuestra esencia, nuestro modo de sentir y actuar y desde ahí nos impulse a un crecimiento verdadero, a “elevarnos” en un sentido más profundo y auténtico.

Revisitar ciertas emociones, encontrar nuevamente una resistencia, repetir una lección desde otra etapa de la vida, no es señal de estancamiento. Forma parte del proceso, de ensayo y error, y de lo cíclica que puede llegar a ser la vida.

Cada vuelta es distinta, cada repetición fortalece, y cada regreso nos brinda la oportunidad de actuar diferente, llevándonos siempre a un lugar diferente al anterior. La espiral nos recuerda que el camino hacia el crecimiento es a la vez regreso y avance, profundidad y elevación.

REDES

Nada esta desconectado. El micelio funciona como un sistema de comunicación y soporte que une raíces a grandes distancias; las telarañas forman entramados que capturan y sostienen; nuestras comunidades humanas, junto con los sistemas de reciclaje y manejo de residuos, crean redes que impactan y transforman nuestro entorno. De igual manera, nuestras relaciones, pensamientos y emociones tejen redes invisibles que nos conectan y sostienen.

Este patrón de redes nos habla de una interdependencia profunda: somos nodos dentro de sistemas mayores, donde cada vínculo influye y sostiene a otro. Las redes sostienen todo el sistema que habitamos, brindándonos la libertad y las oportunidades para avanzar y explorar nuevos caminos. Mientras los ciclos siguen su curso, podemos confiar en los procesos y en nuestra comunidad aliada para sostenernos y crecer.

En permacultura, el patrón de redes es considerado uno de los más importantes, pues representa la base de la interconexión que sostiene la vida y la salud del sistema. Entender y fortalecer estas conexiones es fundamental para crear sistemas resilientes, integrales y capaces de adaptarse y regenerarse.

Hacer red en equipo es fundamental. No podemos ser todólogos; por eso, unir fuerzas y conocimientos es clave. Nos apoyamos en otras disciplinas, en las habilidades y dones de cada persona, y en el conocimiento base que cada quien aporta para fusionarlo todo y crear un sistema sólido, integral y capaz. Reconocer y honrar estas conexiones es esencial tanto para el crecimiento personal como para la práctica de la permacultura, donde el bienestar del todo depende del cuidado mutuo. Al fortalecer nuestras redes, no solo cuidamos de nosotros mismos, sino que también contribuimos a la resiliencia y salud de todo el sistema al que pertenecemos.

Habitar nuestra Zona 00 con mayor conciencia, apertura y responsabilidad implica tener el valor de reconocer nuestros propios patrones y hacer ajustes en nuestro sistema interno. Este es uno de los mayores retos del ser humano. La verdadera madurez, quizás, comienza cuando asumimos la responsabilidad total de lo que habita ahí: emociones, hábitos, expectativas y creencias.

Implica dejar de esperar que el cambio venga desde afuera -de la familia, las autoridades, las parejas o cualquier otra influencia externa- y empezar a entender que la transformación real nace desde dentro.

Al reconocer que formamos parte de redes vivas, que nuestras decisiones se ramifican y que el camino se despliega en espirales ascendentes, podemos abrazar con humildad y confianza el proceso de transformación. Así, desde nuestro centro, sembramos el cambio que queremos ver y dejar, cuidándonos a nosotros mismos, a nuestras comunidades y a la tierra que nos sostiene.

¿Con qué he de irme?
¿Nada dejaré en pos de mí sobre la tierra?
¿Cómo ha de actuar mi corazón?
¿Acaso en vano venimos a vivir,
a brotar sobre la tierra?
Dejemos al menos flores
Dejemos al menos cantos.

– Nezahualcóyotl

La Transformadora Experiencia de la Certificación en Permacultura en Rancho Mastatal

La Transformadora Experiencia de la Certificación en Permacultura en Rancho Mastatal

Escrita por una estudiante

La Certificación en Diseño de Permacultura realizada en Rancho Mastatal (PDC en Español) no es solo el resultado de un programa de 88 horas de clases técnico-prácticas, ¡es mucho más que eso! Es el resultado de 14 días sumergidos en una experiencia 100% inmersiva de permacultura, donde cada participante tendrá que abrirse a poner en pausa todas sus rutinas habituales y aceptar los principios de permacultura implementados por Rancho Mastatal.

Conexión con la Cultura Local

Fuimos 18 participantes, de los cuales la mayoría eran locales y solo 3 viajamos desde otros países para vivir la experiencia. Pude haberlo hecho en inglés y haber conocido a muchas personas de distintas partes del mundo, pero al ser en español, esta experiencia me permitió conectar con la cultura de Costa Rica desde múltiples esferas. Como tenemos un clima similar en República Dominicana, solo al ingresar al proyecto pude ver claramente oportunidades de mejora, ya que tenemos un montón de especies parecidas.

Desconexión y Crecimiento Personal

Para quienes venimos de la vida caótica de la ciudad, esta experiencia se asemeja a un retiro espiritual, no porque el Rancho promueva nuevas creencias, sino porque invita a desconectarnos de lo habitual: sin internet, sin señal telefónica y con horarios de comida muy especiales.

Las simples normas, como quitarse siempre los zapatos al entrar a las instalaciones y que cada quien debe fregar sus platos, nos hacen entender desde el principio que una sana convivencia puede lograrse cuando, a pesar de tantas libertades, se dejan claras las reglas. Y, ante cualquier duda, solo basta con releer los principios de la permacultura para encontrar nuestras propias respuestas dentro de este esquema.

Particularmente, me resultó un choque tener que usar baños secos, ya que solo había conocido el método de las “letrinas” y los juzgaba como poco funcionales y poco higiénicos. Sin embargo, el vivir la experiencia y entender en clase cómo hacerlos y qué métodos implementar me hizo no solo replantearme por qué no tengo uno en mi proyecto, sino… cómo fui capaz de juzgar previamente este sistema. Y así pasaron cientos de cosas por mi mente en esos días.

Al principio, la desconexión me causó ansiedad. Cada vez que pensaba en conectarme a internet, sentía un nudo en el estómago por no tener el control de lo habitual ante las responsabilidades que dejamos en casa.

Solidaridad y Respeto en la Comunidad

Rancho Mastatal es un claro ejemplo de cómo la solidaridad y el respeto pueden hacer crecer una comunidad. Qué orgullo conocer de cerca cómo Tim y Robin podrían ganar más dinero añadiendo servicios como internet o el lavado de ropa; sin embargo, el proyecto ha optado por apoyar a una vecina que se sostiene económicamente en gran parte gracias a que todos los que llegamos al Rancho necesitamos pagarle por sus servicios. Y no solo a ella: están el bar de enfrente, el Proyecto de Marlon, el Proyecto de La Iguana Chocolate y muchos más que dan fe de que este proyecto no es una fachada, ¡es REAL!

Reflexión sobre lo Esencial en Nuestras Vidas

Es casi imposible estar dentro de esta experiencia y no preguntarnos qué es realmente esencial en nuestras vidas, frente a todas las cosas que hemos permitido normalizar sin pensar en el gran impacto negativo que le hacemos a nuestra amada naturaleza y a nuestro propio entorno social.

Una de las revelaciones más importantes que tuve fue con una de las meriendas. Una tarde, moría de hambre y aparentemente se habían olvidado de colocar la merienda, y todos asumieron que simplemente no habría nada. Mi intensidad me llevó a preguntar si es que no había, y fue entonces cuando, con mucho amor, nos sirvieron una bandeja hermosa con unos trozos de fruta perfectos. Cuando me dijeron que era guanábana, me fricé y, de forma automática, pensé: “No me gusta la guanábana”… Sin embargo, sentí el compromiso de probarla. Fue entonces cuando me detuve a cuestionarme: “¿En qué momento decidí que no me gustaba?”. Mi niña interior me respondió, recordando que en casa había una planta de guanábana cuya fruta era blanda y babosa, muy diferente a lo que tenía frente a mí en ese momento, que era una fruta con una estructura completamente distinta a la que describía mi recuerdo. Y fue cuando me dije: “¡Dios mío! ¿A cuántas cosas me he negado por prejuicios arrastrados durante años?”. ¡Amé la guanábana! Y a partir de ese momento, activé mi radar para hacer las paces con un montón de cosas que he rechazado, diciendo “no” cuando quizás la respuesta debería haber sido “sí.”

Prácticas Significativas en la Comunidad

Durante el curso, realizamos dos prácticas muy significativas que nos permitieron dejar nuestra huella en la comunidad. La primera consistió en trabajar en la finca de Marlon, un miembro de la comunidad, donde, entre todos, creamos una zanja que él realmente necesitaba. En este ejercicio, aplicamos todo lo que habíamos aprendido en el aula, poniendo en práctica los principios de permacultura en un contexto real. La segunda fue nuestro proyecto final, donde tuvimos la oportunidad de aportar con todo nuestro conocimiento a una pareja que recién comenzaba a dar forma a su proyecto en Mastatal y que aún no tenía claro su rumbo. Le pusimos el alma a nuestras propuestas, esforzándonos al máximo para ayudarles a definir el diseño de su proyecto y aportar claridad en su camino. Nos movía la emoción de dejar una huella positiva en esta hermosa comunidad, y cada tarea fue un paso más en ese proceso de aprendizaje y contribución.

Reflexiones Finales y Conclusión

Mi proyecto es La Finca de los Recuerdos en República Dominicana. Llegué a este curso sin entender bien lo que significaba la permacultura, pero con la clara certeza de que me llevaría mucho aprendizaje para mejorar las prácticas agroforestales en mi proyecto. Sin embargo, terminé el curso con el alma en paz, repleta de gratitud, nuevos sueños y un montón de nuevos amigos.

Estar en esta experiencia me puso en contacto con venas sensibles. Me hizo abrazar a mis padres por todo lo que hicieron en mi niñez para mantener lo que hoy es la finca de los recuerdos. En el alma le pedí perdón a mi niña interior. Ella siempre andaba descalza, sin preocupación por la ropa ni por peinarse, y fue la Maia adolescente la que la forzó a cambiar sus patrones nativos, dejar de pelear por defenderlos y la que la domesticó solo para poder sobrevivir en los estándares sociales que entendía como correctos. Entré a Rancho Mastatal un poco escéptica por tener que andar descalza, y fue en ese momento cuando comencé a cuestionarme esos patrones tan marcados que había asumido en mi vida, los cuales me habían separado de lo natural. Hoy entiendo el porqué de tantas decisiones que tomó mi padre en la finca y que por situaciones ajenas a su voluntad no me pudo transmitir. Rancho Mastatal fue para mí ese canal para poder conectar con todo lo que mi padre no pudo contarme sobre cada una de sus decisiones en nuestras 5 hectáreas.

La Certificación en Permacultura en Rancho Mastatal no solo te brinda conocimiento técnico, sino que transforma tu visión de la vida y la naturaleza. Me asombró ver cómo, a pesar de tanta carga de clases y el agotamiento, ¡nunca quisimos perdernos ni un minuto de cada una! Esto demuestra que el formato de las clases definitivamente funciona. Si buscas una experiencia que conecte lo intelectual con lo emocional, te invito a unirte a esta extraordinaria aventura. ¡No dejes pasar la oportunidad de sumergirte en una experiencia única que cambiará tu vida!

Permaculture Entrepreneurship: Navigating the Path from Student to Professional

Permaculture Entrepreneurship: Navigating the Path from Student to Professional

By Jason Thomas
The voice behind the podcast Regeneration Nation Costa Rica

After completing a Permaculture Design Course (PDC), natural building workshop, or any other educational opportunities at a place like Rancho Mastatal, many students find themselves wondering how to turn their newfound knowledge and passion into a career. This transition from student to professional is a common challenge in the permaculture world.

It’s not surprising, considering that most standard education programs don’t teach entrepreneurship, and new students of the trade often feel like they lack sufficient experience to charge for their services.

Common Challenges Faced by Permaculture and Alternative Solutions Students

I’ve interviewed dozens of permaculture professionals and students wishing to make their mark, and I’ve found some common hurdles that seem to hold people back.

Some of those obstacles include:

• Lack of business education and experience

• Little understanding of how to monetize their skills

• Imposter syndrome

• Limited support network

• Balancing ideals with practicality

• Many potential clients don’t know what permaculture or these sustainable solutions are, and many regenerative entrepreneurs don’t understand how their ideal clients are thinking about their needs from their perspective.

Insight Tool: Identify Your Hurdles

Take a moment to reflect on your own journey. What are some challenges you're currently facing in turning your ideas into a profession? Write them down and consider how they align with or differ from the common challenges mentioned above.

The Gap Between Passion and Profession:

This gap isn't unique to permaculture. Many individuals who care about helping humanity turn its trajectory around face a similar divide between academic knowledge and professional application. 

In permaculture, this gap is often widened by the holistic, systems-thinking approach that doesn't always align neatly with traditional business models but does exceedingly well when harnessing traditional tactics, repurposed in a holistic system approach.

Tim O’Hara from Rancho Mastatal shared with me in one of our conversations that he felt like they were chasing their tails for several years as they tried to figure out how to make it all work. It’s a similar story for many people who embark on a project like this.

… but that’s not the only way to go about it.

In today’s age, it’s easier than ever to learn from wisdom keepers like this and model from the solutions they’ve arrived to through their mistakes. It IS NOT a wheel worth recreating. We have work to do and the faster we can get our services out to the world, the better off we’re all going to be. 

The trick is not to do it so fast that you skip the foundational steps of contemplative design.

So, from a design perspective, let’s look at some solutions we can embrace to bridge this gap between passion and professional application. 

Key Business Skills Needed to Bridge the GaP

Business planning: 

Overcome your unclear direction and orientation to business by looking at your business idea as if it were pasture land that you are about to implement into a multi-yielding homestead. 

Taking the time to design your enterprise will earn you an intimate relationship with the path ahead and the confidence to walk it.

Marketing and communication: 

Conveying the value of permaculture and other sustainable solutions to potential clients can be tricky because they lack the vocabulary and point of reference for what it means, let alone how or why it provides any unique benefits to them. 

In marketing and communication, describe the benefits from the prospect’s point of view. 

Financial management: 

Understanding budgeting, pricing, and sustainable revenue streams may not sound sexy as you’re getting started, but careful documentation will come in handy when you revisit the feedback loop and want to understand what worked well, what didn’t, and how to do it better next time. 

Finances are only one part of the puzzle, but trying to skip it will leave you hanging with gaps in your picture.

Legal and administrative skills: 

Navigating regulations, contracts, and business structures is another aspect that many new entrepreneurs would prefer to skip. 

However, if you want to practice your trade as anything more than a hobby, you might as well start with the end in mind and get some of those things squared away as soon as they are relevant.

Networking and collaboration: 

Building a supportive community and finding complementary partners is the practice that will serve all others. We are a culture of people that want to help each other. We need each other! Reach out to other regenerative activators in your area and get to know them. 

I even teach people to create a database of these projects and their owners. This could prove to be your business’s most valuable asset.

Insight Tool: Skill Assessment 

On a scale of 1-5 (1 being novice, 5 being expert), rate yourself on each of the key business skills mentioned. Which areas do you feel strongest in? Which areas need the most improvement?

Essential Skills and Mindsets to Adapt as a Regenerative Entrepreneur:

As you embark on your journey as an entrepreneur and business operator, you’ll want to cultivate a set of skills and mindsets that support your personal growth and business development. 

The following attributes, to the degree they’re cultivated, will help you navigate challenges, recognize and embrace aligned opportunities, and cultivate the confidence to see them through. Let's explore some skills and mindsets worth developing:

Holistic Systems Thinking: 

Apply the holistic approach of permaculture to your business. Understand how different aspects of your business interact and support each other. Find common problems people face in your area that have insufficient solutions and find the place where those meet your passions and skill set. 

… or desired skill set. 

Remember, you’re a student who likes to learn new things. Nothing can hold you back!

Insight Tool: Map Your Business Ecosystem

Sketch a simple mind map, outline, or diagram of your current or planned business idea. Include key elements such as your services, target audience, resources, and potential partners. Draw arrows to show how these elements interact and support each other.

Adaptability to Change: 

Be prepared to adjust your strategies as you learn and grow. As Tim has mentioned to me, even they, after all these years, continue to develop and refine policies as they learn and grow. Their documents are regularly being edited and revised by new people with fresh perspectives. 

It’s a regular, intentionally planned practice.

Patience and Persistence: 

Building a successful business takes time. Rancho Mastatal, like most projects of this nature, didn’t have a huge budget to just set up shop and run massive retreats. Instead, they took a slow, iterative approach, using the resources they had on hand, which included the support of their neighbors, and slowly, persistently, grew as resources and wisdom allowed. 

Creating a phase-planned design for your new enterprise to spread your ambitions out over the next 3-5 years is a great way to resist distracting impulses and stay on track.

Lifelong Learning: 

Never stop learning. Stay open to new ideas and keep developing your skills. This is the habit that keeps on giving. However, don’t just study information focused on your trade. 

Round out your education so that you can understand the macro patterns of the human condition, market patterns, and personal development, as well as the micro details of your business operations.

Community Integration: 

Understand the importance of community integration. Of all the community projects and education centers I’ve researched around Costa Rica, Rancho Mastatal is one of the shining examples of community integration and worth modeling at any opportunity. 

Community integration is an extremely important part of our work. It helps us to integrate in a way that allows us to be accepted by those we wish to influence and serve.

Insight Tool: Community Asset Mapping

List 5-10 local business owners, organizations, or other leaders in your community that could potentially support or collaborate with your efforts. How might you engage with each of them?

Innovative Problem-Solving: 

Use holistic thinking to find innovative solutions to your business challenges. Permaculture teaches us that each problem holds a gem of solution just waiting to be discovered. By carefully researching and analyzing your options and approach, you can see these pitfalls before they ever become a problem and design ways to ensure they never will be. 

By staying vigilant in your process to find ways you can stack functions in your solutions, your experience operating your business will improve.

Clear & Effective Communication: 

Develop the ability to explain what you do and its benefits to a wide range of audiences. While it's always advised to start any product or service creation with a specific client avatar profile in mind to help target your messaging, we’re not just here to get customers. We want to affect change in the world, and that requires speaking other people’s languages. 

The best way to do that is to talk to more people about the problems you provide solutions for, but not with an intention to pitch your services. Instead, talk to them with a sense of curiosity and care. 

Get to know them and pay attention to the words they use in describing their challenges and perceived options. If you take the time to do this in a systematic way, you’ll develop the vocabulary and sensibility to make the impact you’re hoping for.

How the Permaculture Business Design Course Helps Bridge These Gaps:

The Permaculture Business Design Course is designed to bridge the gap between a passion for making regenerative practices what you do for a living and the business skills needed to make that happen. 

It applies the permaculture methodology and principles to design your business like you would a multi-yielding food system or a physical structure made from carefully calculated materials and procedures.

Why would we celebrate those practices on the land and houses, but not our business?

It’s impressive how often we stumble into a business idea, throwing offers out there hoping it will land with someone as we describe OUR favorite features of the service, rather than the benefits THEY want to receive. Business development is too common a reactionary process of figuring out as you go, which is exhilarating in moments, but not an effective way to get off the ground flying.

In this course, you’ll:

• Expand your perspective on how to solve common challenges people are actually experiencing so you can find the unique niche that’s perfect for you.

• Gain clarity around your unique vision and how it meets the needs of your region to purposefully design a financially regenerative enterprise that people can relate to.

• Enhance your professional skill set through training videos, insight tools, worksheets, and other guided exercises.

• Proceed through the lessons at your own pace to develop your offer, invisible infrastructure, marketing strategies, and operational procedures through slow and small solutions.

It’s a start-to-finish roadmap for the motivated permaculture entrepreneur, from ideation to implementation.

Insight Tool: Your Next Steps

Based on what you've learned in this post, what are three specific actions you can take in the next month to move closer to your goal of becoming a permaculture professional?

A Little More About Rancho Mastatal's Journey from Vision to Successful Enterprise:

I’ve had the pleasure of hearing Rancho Mastatal's story through my various interviews with Tim and the fortunate opportunity I’ve had to visit on the Ecovillage Tours that we now operate annually. 

Each interaction with Tim, Robin, and their team has demonstrated:

• Consistency in their intention to integrate and serve with the local community

• Persistence in finding solutions when change happens

• Adaptability through intentional experimentation

• And ongoing education and refinement of their practices. 

In an interview we did for the Permaculture Professionals Interview series, Tim shared that, early on, they didn't focus enough on compensating and taking care of the people that were making it possible. And that is unfortunately common amidst foreigners who buy land are happy to take advantage of the poverty wages many rural farm-hands are willing to work for.

Many of us have that wake-up call at some point, and for them it led to significant changes in their approach.

They implemented changes like:

• Formalizing their business structure

• Creating clear agreements and expectations

• Developing a core team with defined roles

• Implementing financial tools for better decision-making

Tim shared that developing more of a structure has helped them feel much more stable and resilient.

Rancho Mastatal's evolution is one of my favorite examples of combining permaculture principles with sound business practices. They've grown from a couple running a farm to an education center offering diverse courses, an apprenticeship program, and strong community integration directly affecting who knows how many hundreds of people each year, and thousands through the lives touched by those who’ve passed through their doors.

In the guest presentation Tim provided for the Community Living Agreements Training, he emphasized the value that clear documentation has brought to their project.

He explained that creating documents outlining standards for:

• Sharing communal space

• Participation expectations for members and guests

• And common operating procedures 

They have a library of best practices they can use to inform guests, train staff, and keep their intentions on track over time. 

(Image) PBDC Landscape 1.jpg

Are you ready to start to design?

The Permaculture Business Design Course offers the knowledge, tools, and support needed to navigate the journey from permaculture student to professional. It provides practical skills to design a business that's as regenerative and abundant as the ecosystems we aim to protect and regenerate through our work.

Enroll in the course to start designing a business in a way that will earn you experience, confidence, and clear enough vision to motivate people to your cause.

If you like the idea of designing and developing your regenerative enterprise in the company of other dedicated entrepreneurs, I offer a seasonal group program for permaculture-minded professionals looking for support and accountability as they navigate the path ahead. It’s application only and an interview is required to ensure we have a committed group of aligned individuals in the cohort.

Let’s do it together!

To learn more, visit the Permaculture Professionals Program and fill out the application. I’d love to meet you and hear about your ambitions to cultivate a regenerative livelihood.

Remember, as in permaculture design, the key to a successful business is thoughtful planning, diverse strategies, and regular visits to the feedback loop. 

However, accountability, coaching, and peer support are powerful amendments worth investing in.

May your dreams to serve through right action flourish!

Jason Thomas is the voice behind the podcast Regeneration Nation Costa Rica, designer and guide for Ecovillage Tours CR, mastermind facilitator for the Community Founders Circle and the Permaculture Professionals Program, and creator of the Permaculture Business Design Course. 

With over 20 years practicing both permaculture and entrepreneurship, he bridges these two worlds to empower our next agents of change.

Los Suelos y Su Importancia para la Existencia de la Vida

Los Suelos y Su Importancia para la Existencia de la Vida

Escrito por el aprendiz 2024, Felipe

El suelo es una delgada capa de minerales, agua, gases, y material orgánico, la cual se encuentra activa biológicamente y debiese cubrir la mayoría de la superficie de la tierra. Acá se desarrollan una serie de interacciones, entre los múltiples elementos que habitan los suelos se encuentran: plantas, minerales, hongos, bacterias, filamentos, algas, pequeños animales desde protozoos a lombrices, insectos mamíferos, etc. 

El suelo es un sistema biológicamente activo que otorga una serie de servicios ecosistémicos claves para el mantenimiento de la biosfera (la parte de la tierra donde existe la vida), así como para la regulación del clima. Es la base del sistema alimentario del ser humano: 95% de los alimentos provienen de los suelos, es la base de la agricultura y es el medio donde crecen casi todas las plantas productoras de alimentos. Es uno de los ecosistemas más importantes para asegurar la existencia de la vida en el planeta. Aproximadamente un cuarto de las especies del planeta que se encuentran registradas necesita de los suelos para existir. Es extremadamente vital mantener la biodiversidad subterránea, para que los suelos estén saludables, en simbiosis y siendo el hábitat de diferentes especies, logrando un ecosistema equilibrado y balanceado para el buen funcionamiento de la cadena alimentaria del planeta. 

Algunos de los beneficios que los suelos otorgan al medio ambiente son los siguientes:

1. Producción de biomasa que sirve de alimento para muchas especies

2. Dotación de energía a muchos seres vivos

3. Filtra, regula y transforma la materia que absorbe

4. Es el hábitat de innumerables especies 

5. Fijación de Dióxido de carbono

6. Tiene un importante rol en la regulación del clima

7. Protección del recurso hídrico en las capas subterráneas

La formación de 1 cm de capa de suelo, puede tomar entre cien a miles de años. Este proceso llamado meteorización, consiste en la descomposición de distintas rocas madres y minerales que conforman una macroestructura, disolviéndose en partículas más pequeñas y originando nuevos minerales a través de la erosión que ocasiona el aire y el agua a través del paso del tiempo. El periodo de formación de los suelos depende de: tipo de roca madre, clima, la vegetación, topografía y el tiempo.

Según la OMS, 40% de los suelos del planeta hoy se encuentran degradados. En África, solo un 8% de los suelos es adecuado para su uso en la agricultura. Hoy en día, existe una gran amenaza para la seguridad alimentaria de los seres humanos, debido a la perdida de los suelos. La principal causa de esta amenaza, es el ser humano a través de la contaminación. La mayoría de los contaminantes provienen de desechos urbanos no tratados y actividades humanas como: las prácticas agrícolas insostenibles, la industria, la minería, deposición de contaminantes atmosféricos, entre otros. Ejemplos de estos contaminantes son: derrames de hidrocarburos, residuos urbanos, medicamentos, antibióticos, desinfectantes, pesticidas y fertilizantes, metales pesados como el plomo, cadmio, el mercurio, como también los plásticos y microfibras que afectan negativamente a los suelos. Otros factores importantes en la desertificación y perdida de los suelos son los monocultivos y la sobre expansión urbana. Esto tiene como consecuencia la pérdida definitiva de suelos productivos. El problema de la degradación de los suelos puede traer consecuencias graves como: sequias, guerras por recursos hídricos, pobreza, hambruna, marginación, emigración obligada, disminución de recursos esenciales, etc.

Algunas de las iniciativas que se pueden emplear para proteger los suelos son:

• Aumentar la materia orgánica en los suelos, con mayor cubierta vegetal, vegetación, lechos orgánicos y compost

• Usar la vegetación para proteger los suelos del viento y la salinidad

• Practicar una labranza mínima (que reduzca las emisiones CO2) y retener los residuos de los cultivos

• Implementar pastoreo rotacional

• Usar fertilizantes orgánicos y evitar los químicos

• Tener 100% cobertura vegetal durante todo el año

• Permitir el crecimiento de la biodiversidad por encima y por debajo del suelo

• Apoyar y proteger la simbiosis microbiana del suelo, incluido los hongos

• Reducir los combustibles fósiles

• Usar los residuos orgánicos que generamos para nutrir los suelos

Algunas de las estrategias que se aplican en Rancho Mastatal para el manejo de los suelos arcillosos de la zona, los cuales tienden a ser pobres en material orgánico y bajos en nutrientes disponibles, consiste en la nutrición de los suelos a través de compost para elevar el nivel de materia orgánica.

En el rancho se manejan distintos tipos de procesamiento de compost: 

1. Compost pasivo con el material orgánico de cocina en composteras verticales, formando niveles de residuos de cocina, cubiertos con hojas secas. La estructura de las composteras es en base de alambres, para incrementar la aireación, ayudando a la descomposición del material orgánico en estructuras más simples que servirán de alimento para las plantas del Rancho

2. Compost en pila con estiércol de animales, de granjas aledañas de la zona, mezclados con aserrín para balancear la proporción C:N, el cual se voltea cada semana y se humedece para no perder el nitrógeno de la mezcla

3. Lombricultura, en donde se alimentan las lombrices con los residuos del biodigestor. El biodigestor se alimenta con estiércol de animales de la zona para producir metano, el cual se utiliza como fuente de energía en la cocina. De esta forma, se tiene como resultado, el humus que producen las lombrices que van directamente a enriquecer el suelo de las plantas del vivero y gas para cocinar los alimentos del Rancho.

A partir del compost generado, se procede a ejecutar la fórmula de la santa trinidad de los suelos, la cual se forma a través de adicionar estos tres componentes ricos en nutrientes, que serán los encargados de devolverle el equilibrio a los suelos, alimentándolos de manera adecuado y sustentable.  

Materia Organica + Micorganismos de Montaña + Biocarbon = Suelo Dorado

• Materia orgánica: el componente del compost descrito anteriormente

• Microrganismo de Montaña: esta enmienda natural se genera a partir de la recolección de hojas y material orgánico de los bosques de la zona que contienen un alto nivel de microrganismos, hongos y bacterias altamente activos, para desarrollar los procesos biológicos que tanto los suelos necesitan. Estos residuos se depositan en un contenedor mezclado con agua y melaza para alimentar los microrganismos en un proceso anaeróbico, con el objetivo de multiplicarlos y reproducirlos. Muy parecido a como si se fuera a hacer una infusión de té. Después de dos semanas se tiene un fertilizante natural lleno de vida que los suelos y las plantas estarán muy felices de recibir. Lea más sobre esto aquí.

• Biocarbón: este componente se obtiene a través de la combustión incompleta de madera, donde se realiza una fogata y llegando a cierto punto de combustión se reduce la cantidad de oxígeno para permitir una estructura amplia y porosa. Para este proceso se utilizan los residuos de las maderas que se usan para los diferentes proyectos de la comunidad.

Otra estrategia que se aplica en el Rancho, es cubrir con mantillos los suelos y las especies deseadas, como árboles frutales, con el objetivo de retener la humedad en los suelos, incrementar la biomasa, para dar un hábitat propicio para la acumulación de microrganismos y hongos que benefician la absorción de nutrientes para el buen desarrollo del sistema radicular de las plantas. Para el proceso de elaboración de los mantillos y mejorar la calidad de los suelos se siembran distintas plantas de soporte, autóctonas de la zona y de rápido crecimiento, con el objetivo de proporcionar: biomasa (vetiver), fijación de nitrógeno (calliandra) , ornamentación (monstera) y diferentes nutrientes a los suelos, a través de las plantas que actúan como acumuladores dinámicos (girasol mexicano).

A través de la aplicación de las estrategias descritas anteriormente, se mejoran los suelos en Rancho Mastatal, contribuyendo con la restauración y la reparación de los suelos que tanto se necesita, devolviéndole la vida a este ecosistema tan dañado e ignorado por los seres humanos.

Artículos relacionados

Fermented Plant Juice (FPJ) and Its Application

Amending Calcium-Deficient Soils – A Tropical Permaculturist’s Approach

Improving Soils in the Humid Tropics of Costa Rica

The Ethics of Permaculture

The Ethics of Permaculture

By core team member, Sam Hansen

Philosophy is the study of knowledge, truth, and meaning. Ethics or “moral philosophy” embraces those principles as they influence human behavior. Socrates, who was a foundational figure in western philosophy thought that ethics are based on the premise that all people are essentially good and given the choice will make good decisions. Aristotle called this behavior “virtue,” a striving to do the right thing and make the ethical decision.

When these concepts are applied in practice, the seeking after right and wrong gets a little more complicated. Are ethics universal, or are they subjective, governed by individual attitudes and circumstances? And if that is the case, how can anyone be sure that they have “good ethics” and are always making the right decision? And by what means can we design a future in which every choice leads to the wellbeing of all humanity and to the wellbeing of the planet?

In 1978 Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, two Australian ecologists took on that challenge by developing an interdisciplinary design manual which they believed, if followed would result in a positive, integrated and prosperous future. They called their enterprise “permaculture” and created three fundamental ethical formations as its foundation.

“The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children. Make it now.” – Bill Mollison

Care of the EARTH

Care of the PEOPLE

Set LIMITS to consumption

Transition

---

Earth Care

The permaculture ethic of caring for the earth is founded on an understanding of the interconnectedness we share with all nature and that our survival as a species is dependent on that of the planet earth. While some might argue that this ethic stems from our own self-interest, Bill and David believed that the “survival of natural systems” is based on cooperation with, rather than domination over, the natural systems that provide a healthy habitat for us.

“When we lose plant and animal species due to our actions, we lose many survival opportunities”- B. Mollison.

Permaculture states that we leave these natural systems to flourish and when we require resources, we harvest them applying the rules of “necessitous use” which includes reducing waste, avoiding pollution, and safeguarding against any process with negative environmental or human impacts.

The Earth care ethic reminds us that our best, our only future, depends on the common goal of living together in harmony and cooperation on a thriving sustainable Earth.

People Care

When we come together and agree on the common goal of taking care of the earth and ensuring its existence and our survival on it, we can then focus on our relationships with others. From an early age we are taught to look out for our family and keep each other safe. As global citizens it is essential to treat all humanity as part of our family and extend the same care to all. A population that values each and every individual’s contribution and functions to support each other is more likely to thrive than one based on competition and opposition. Sadly, most political and state systems function by setting us on opposing teams. How much better would it be for everyone if we were on the same side working towards a unified and prosperous future?

What Bill Mollison called “communal permanence” is creating a strong sense of interconnectedness with nature and with each other so that we can thrive for many generations. For example, knowing that the forests we plant today will be nurtured and cherished for the future and not harvested for short term gain. This ethic is not a simple one in which to find balance, given that we have such a diverse range of cultures, customs, values and philosophies in the world. However, by working together towards common goals that allow us to live in harmony with nature, ensure that everyone has access to clean water and healthy food and enjoys the right to free expression, all the while not imposing on other’s well-being, we can strive to create a future in which we protect our planet and each other.

Set Limits to consumption – redistribute surplus

“Beneficial behavior involves managing natural systems for their own, and our, long-term benefit, not for our immediate and exploitative personal gain” - Bill Mollison

In a world of rampant consumption and waste the third ethic of Permaculture is based on setting limits and seeking to live a sustainable life by relying on the rule of necessitous use. When we free ourselves from competitive and wasteful economic systems, and organize equitable distribution systems, we discover that there are certainly enough resources to meet everyone’s needs.

The “Fair-share” ethic teaches us to look after our neighbor when they have fewer yields and in turn they will look after us when our yields are low. We can extend this ethic to all of nature and leave space for ecosystems to thrive. Minimizing waste and developing as many renewable resources and systems as possible will help us achieve a balance where we can all enjoy the bounty the earth has to offer, and we can care for each other.

Transitioning into a permanent agriculture and a permanent culture

Since the first permaculture design manuals were written in the late 70’s, much work has been done that has advanced all aspects of permaculture both in design and philosophy. As a result, a fourth ethic has been added to the original three, the “transition ethic.” As we endeavor to make our planet a better and more equitable one, and to protect the natural world and all who inhabit it, the reality of the tremendous inequities of the people who share it, make that a formidable task. 

Differing perspectives based on vastly different realities and experiences, make consensus on any and every decision extremely challenging. For example, so many of the agricultural practices employed in conventional farming are hugely destructive to the health of the soil and the people who are fed by it. But persuading a farmer not to use pesticides, tilling or monocropping, when they are convinced that their livelihood depends upon it, is not a simple matter. But neither is it impossible. Through education and support and the awareness of sustainable agricultural practices, farmers could make the necessary transition into rewarding, diversified agro-ecological systems that are resilient, respect the earth and provide plenty for all.

Transitioning people from a globalized individualistic consumption-based economy into one that is rooted in local communities and tied to resource sharing, also poses a challenge. Meeting people where they are and having patience with the fact that not everyone can immediately escape from under the thumb of the current economic paradigm comes with the understanding and application of permaculture ethics and their application in creating a better future. 

Breaking down existing systems and interacting with each other in respect and harmony will lead to the just future we seek. The process is a long one, but the transition ethic teaches us to be compassionate and patient as well as understanding that not everyone can simply make that immediate “switch.”

In a perfect world

The path humanity has taken since the industrial revolution, colonial exploration and exploitation, has been a hugely destructive and divisive one. The planet has been massively degraded and political elites acting in their own narrow interests have kept entire peoples and societies apart and impoverished. While the ethics permaculture proposes may seem utopic and difficult to achieve in the short term or on any significant scale, it’s important to remember that living mindfully, guided by these ethics and practices, can have a significant impact.

They can guide us to living in a harmonious relationship to the earth, ourselves and each other if only we keep them close in all aspects of our daily life. By starting out small and applying the ethics and practices of permaculture in our homes, neighborhoods and communities, every positive decision we make or action we take, has ripple effects that contribute to the transformations we yearn to see in the world. 

This is the goal of the permaculture movement on a global scale, to share ancient wisdom that largely has been forgotten and that can be used to connect us with a collective vision, behaviors and actions that will lead all who participate, to a just, equal and abundant way of life.

“Meaning in life is lost by striving after status and future glory; it is gained and realized by action towards a common ideal, in serving the whole according to our physical, mental, educational and understanding capacities. It is never enough to mean well, rather, it is necessary to ensure that it gets done.”

- Bill Mollison

Learn More

Join us for one of our yearly Permaculture Design Certifications to get theory and hands on experience from leading experts. Check out our workshop calendar for more educational experiences.

Read these past related blogs

What is Permaculture

Applied Permaculture Principles

Foundations for Success: 10 Considerations to Create a Healthy Project

What is Permaculture

What is Permaculture

By core team member, Ambra Pirker

“Permaculture (permanent culture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integrations of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order.” - Bill Mollison

History

Permaculture as a concept was coined in the late 1970s, between 1972 and 1974 Bill Mollison worked on developing an interdisciplinary earth science with help from David Holmgren in the later years. In 1981 the concept had matured sufficiently and it was thought of as an applied design system to the first 26 students through a 140-hour lecture series. The first literature around permaculture were two foundational texts: Permaculture One (1978), Permaculture Two (1979) followed by PEMACULTURE A Designers’ Manual (1979), the latter is considered the Permaculture ‘bible’ by many. In 2002 David Holmgren released the book “Permaculture- Principals & Pathways beyond Sustainability” where he summarized the principals into 12 and offered a smaller, easier but thorough read. Nowadays there are many different books around permaculture, many of them leaning to specific topics that fall under the big permaculture umbrella; some are more on the social side, many focus on homesteading and gardening and some are centered around agroforestry and tree crops.

Evolution

Permaculture’s concept has evolved since the 1970’s, in its beginning the focus was around the design of ecological, regenerative and smart agriculture with the idea of creating a permanent agriculture; with an emphasis on perennials, tree crops, water conservation, earthworks, soil improvement, biodiversity and much more. Many of the proposed systems and methods were drawn out or inspired by indigenous knowledge around land use and care. Mollison independently researched and published a three-volume treatise on the history and genealogies of the descendants of the Tasmanian aborigines, this interest and dedication around indigenous culture was key in the developing of permacultures basis.

Nowadays permaculture has a huge social side with the inspiration of creating a permanent culture of sustainable, regenerative, cooperative and compassionate living; while giving the power back to the people to design their lives in accordance to their values. Permaculture is helping in the creation of a network, a web of interconnected visions, dreams, projects, ideas and people, with a common intention of doing good for each other and the planet.

“Great change is taking place. These are not as a result of any one group or teachings, but as a result of millions of people defining one or more ways in which they can conserve energy, aid local self-reliance, or provide for themselves.” - Bill Mollison

Definitions

Permaculture is a macro-concept that involves many different topics, methods, systems and ideas. Ideas like moving back to the land, using nature as our guide, applying ecology in our productive systems, reconnecting with the cycles of nature, approaching life holistically, creating stable local economies, regenerating the landscape and our relationships with others, investing in resiliency and interconnectivity; are in the heart of permaculture. Since the beginning of permaculture, the sense of shared work has been central, “we could say that there are as many permaculture definitions as there are permaculturalists.” (People and Permaculture, 2012)

I personally like to describe permaculture as: “An ethically based design system for human habitation and regenerative living that encompasses most aspects of life as a part of this planet; based on observation, inspired by pattern, inclusive, biodiverse, holistic and kind.”

Essentially permaculture is a design methodology that has foundational ethics and core principals, that can be applied to most aspects in life. When practicing permaculture, the ethics are the guides and the principals are the canons, so for example when designing a new system or element first we evaluate if it respects the four ethics. There is a lot to say about each of these ethics, the following is a brief summary; to learn more check out our blog article The Ethics of Permaculture.

Ethics

1) The first ethic is Earth care, when considering that planet earth is our sole and only home the need to move away from our extractive, materialistic, consumption-based society becomes obvious. Taking care of nature’s resources needs to be a central part of any human endeavor, protecting our flora and its genetic diversity should be in mind every time we sew a seed. Defending our fauna and understanding their importance in ecological balance should be part of every anthropocentric project. Protecting and improving our soil, respecting our waters and using them rationally, understanding the importance of clean air and minimizing our contributions to its contamination, all of this is just the start.

2) The second ethic is People care, meeting tangible and intangible needs of humans is central in permaculture, we are not just talking about human rights, we are going way further into providing the space for people to flourish. Right livelihood is a common term in permaculture, based on the idea of working on something that feels right individually, suits our needs, and is in line with our ethics. When we think of people care, we think about the wellbeing, happiness, health and support that people need, not just in our immediate proximity like our family and friends, but also in our community and for the humans of the world, what can we do today to improve the life of others? Permaculture helps us remember how important it is to shift our attention onto how we interact with each other. We have the chance to support people doing good for the planet, for others and themselves, creating local economies and supporting ethically based business’ will have huge positive repercussions in our destiny as humans.

3) The third ethic is Fair share, also know as “set limits to consumption” or “redistribute surplus.” We need to live within the carrying capacities of the planet, in a finite world we can’t follow an infinite thirst for materialistic goods. Redistribution of resources including money, food, knowledge, skills, education, land, and time are needed if we want a prosperous future. This may sound utopic, but the reality is that there are enough resources on the planet to allow every human to have a balanced and enjoyable life, but the culture of consumerism and accumulation has enabled some to have way more than what they need. Permaculture promotes a simpler life, where we are able to appreciate what is actually important and necessary for humans to thrive. Luxury and opulence have no place in permaculture. Fair share is personal responsibility and we should take it seriously.

4) The fourth ethic is Transition, this one wasn’t part of the literature for a long time, it came as a compromise around time and cultural context. In this ethic the general idea is that change takes time, when switching to a different paradigm; capital is a limiting factor since in our current world a greener life is usually more expensive than a mainstream one, and honestly there is no valid reason to prolongate that reality. If big industries were truly paying the honest price of oil and big ag wasn’t subsidized by the state, the greener alternative would cease to be more expensive. Transition ethic also helps us come to terms with the time needed for change, the system that inhabits our society has been around for a long interval, a new age is coming as our only option for the prosperity of our species. I believe that permaculture is a great starting point in the creation of our next society.

There is a lot more to add to all of the ethics of permaculture, an important point to mention is that they are open for interpretation, so the extent and detail that every permaculture project is applying them to their decision-making will vary. There is no permaculture body that supervises if a so-called permaculture farm is actually taking good care of their employees or helping the surrounding community. This may be seen as a flaw in the construct of permaculture, but it’s a genuine effort for decentralized, independent, self-reliant change. The evaluator of genuine permaculture should be the education of the multitude, we have the authority to exclaim when the ethics are not being respected, caring for permaculture is supporting it.

Principles

Permaculture also has several principles that guide decision making, they vary from author to author, but focus on similar ideas. Bill listed five principals in the book PEMACULTURE A Designers’ Manual (1979):

1. Work with nature rather than against it: assisting rather than impeding nature, understanding natural succession and using it in our favor.

2. The problem is the solution: everything can be a positive resource, figuring out how we may use it as such depends on us.

3. Make the least change for the greatest possible effect: change is a constant in nature but when it comes from our development it’s many times very damaging. Designing to minimize change and maximize positive effect is central for a regenerative future.

4. The yield of a system is theoretically unlimited: the imagination and information are the only limits to the number of uses of a resource within a system.

5. Everything gardens: every creature makes its own garden and has an effect on its environment.

David Holmgren proposes 12 principals in the book Permaculture- Principals & Pathways Beyond Sustainability (2002), take in consideration that the first 6 principles study systems from the bottom-up perspective and the second 6 principals emphasize the top-down organization and relationships that tend to develop in co-evolution. The following is just a brief mention of the principals, to learn more check out the blog “Applied Permaculture Principles.”

1. Observe and interact: observation should be the teacher of any action, interacting the lessons. “Careful observation and thoughtful interaction.”

2. Catch and store energy: understanding energy in a broad sense, there are many different types of energy, some are solar, wind, biomass, soil, rain, heat, commitment, passion and love. “Make hay while the sun shines.”

3. Obtain a yield: yields of many types; harvests, fauna, habitat, knowledge, beauty etc., design systems to provide self-reliance at all levels.

4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback: identifying positive and negative feedback loops. There is self-regulation in a system with a positive feedback loop. Accepting feedback will allow us to improve our designs to the point of self-reliance.

5. Use and value renewable: renewable resources are all which can be renewed and replace by natural processes over reasonable periods of time, and renewable services are the ones received by plants, animals, soil and water without damaging or consuming them.

6. Produce no waste: minimize pollution and waste by using all outputs, there is no waste in nature. Closing cycles with organic transformation of biomass and waste minimalist (refuse, reduce, reuse, repair and recycle.)

7. Design from patterns to details: the closer we get the harder it is to understand the bigger picture, pattern recognition is central. Patterns in nature are the arrangement of parts into a whole, our main source of inspiration and the answers of innumerable questions. Self-organization from symbiotic coevolution of nature.

8. Integrate rather than segregate: the integration of parts, elements, and humans is as important as themselves. Developing positive and reciprocal relationships lead to resiliency, balance, productivity, stability and effectiveness. Each element performs many functions and each important function is supported by many elements. Designing for synergistic relationships as a central point.

9. Use small and slow solutions: “Systems should be designed to perform functions at the smallest scale that is practical and energy-efficient for that function.” Start slow, receive feedback and expand accordingly.

10. Use and value diversity: diversity is key for balance. Diversity of ideas, knowledge, experience, age, culture, language, food and so on, are our tools for adapting to change and thriving in an uncertain future. Diversity in agriculture allows for resiliency and security.

11. Use edge and value the marginal: greater diversity of life in the region where the edges of two adjacent ecosystems overlap. There are special conditions in the transitions zone of two different areas, that allow for unique species or interactions.

12. Creatively use and respond to change: “The designer’s imagination and skill usually limit productivity and diversity before any physical limits are reached.”

Design Tools

Different authors will have varying definitions of the principles, but most of the time the same ideas and concepts are emphasized. There are a several important methods in permaculture design that I haven’t mentioned, one of them is the sector analysis which can be defined as the analysis of different energies that usually come from outside the land and have a direct influence on it. We as designers need to decide if these should be blocked, opened-up or channeled; some of them are the sun path (sunset/sunrise, winter sun/summer sun), winds, wildlife, views, neighboring structures, roads, etc.

The sector analysis allows the correct positioning of the different elements in the space, the elements are every system in the project; from the chicken coop, to the house. These can be productive systems (agroforestry, garden beds, cheese making facility, rotational grazing system, fish pond, etc.) or infrastructures (main house, yoga deck, kitchen, guest house, etc.) One very important methodology in permaculture is the element analysis, where we asses the needs, yields and intrinsic characteristics of each and every one of our elements, that way we can decipher the possible connections between them. Always with the goal of reusing every resource to its maximum, because we know there is no waste in nature, just inputs for a new process. By realizing the interconnectivity that is possible in our project, we can move on to the creating of a web of connections, which is a matrix that connects inputs and outputs of every element. This analysis will help us chose appropriate positioning of the systems, understanding that the element with more connections should be in a central position so we can save time when managing and navigating the space. The element analysis and web of connections should be hand in hand, because even though my pigs receive food scraps from the kitchen and the main garden, they need daily care and are able to forage in the food forest, we are not going to position them too close to the house because of their known odors and sounds.

The last method in permaculture design that I’m sharing is the zone analysis, zoning is a tool to organize our project into areas that require the most and the least attention. This can be applied to a house with a small garden or to a big farm. Basically, the zones go from 0 to 5, following is a summary of what each zone may entail, remember that every project is different so the following will vary:

• Zone 0: structures where permanent residents live.

• Zone 1: areas that are visited several times a day, the area closest to the house and paths that are connected with important elements in the project. This zone includes a veggie garden, herb garden, greenhouse, small animals (rabbits, guinea pigs), etc. Let’s say that you have a cheese making laboratory and packing room as your main work area, if you are visiting that space several times a day, that would be part of your zone one, just like the path between your house and that facility.

• Zone 2: areas that are visited at least once a day, we can have small animals and animal pens when they need to be fed on the daily, compost area, some fruit trees, more veggie beds, etc. Again, this classification will totally depend on our own daily schedule. 

• Zone 3: areas that are visited a few times a week. Larger food production system like a milpa, agroforestry systems, pasture lands, root crops etc.

• Zone 4: areas that are visited several times a month. These are semi-wild/semi-managed areas, used for gathering materials (timber, firewood, bamboo, fiber) and can include food forests.

• Zone 5: where we go to learn, where we are visitors and not managers, space that we give to nature. Many times, these are protected wildlife sanctuaries, ideally if the size allows it, 50% or more of your land should be in zone 5. In small, semi-urban and urban projects its complicated to dedicate an area to zone 5 because of the restricted space. In that case the edge of the property or even a corner where we allow native species to grow and thrive will have a big impact in the ecology of the project and the surroundings.

Concluding Thoughts

Now that we understand the basis of permaculture, its easy to find who is actually practicing permaculture. Its being practiced all over the globe in many land-based projects, intentional communities, homesteads, urban gardens. By many community leaders, innovators, architects, farmers, landscape designers, chefs, natural builders and many more.

It’s worth mentioning that permaculture can be many things, but it most definitely is not a neocolonialist tool, simply because the collective good and prosperity are keystones in actual Permaculture. As a design methodology for human habitats where some key concepts are: “share and return of surplus,” “integrate rather than segregate,” “cooperation instead of competition,” and “use and value diversity”; having an activity or development that damages local population or intends to create an exclusive bubble goes against permaculture. It’s necessary to protect permacultures name and reputation, for its reach to expand and create a better world, that is a task that we all should take seriously.

Using permaculture ethics and principles in the design of a project, regardless of its size, will promote a sustainable, low input to high output, self-reliant organism. For me permaculture is a way of thinking, a guide to understand and interact with the world, a kind reminder of our belonging to nature and a tool for living with intention. When we observe and interact with the world with permaculture lenses, we take action into choosing what is best for nature, others and ourselves, the sense of interconnection and reciprocity are in the heart of this philosophy. I believe that permaculture is a beautiful tool for positive impact and a way to create the change that we desperately need.

Learn More

Want to learn more about permaculture design and gets hands on experience from lead experts? Join us for one of our yearly Permaculture Design Certifications or other educational workshops.

Read these past related blogs

The Problem with Permaculture: Understanding Elements and Functions

Why the World Would be a Better Place if Everyone Took a Permaculture Design Certification

Social Permaculture: The Secret to a Successful Community

What is Syntropic Farming?

What is Syntropic Farming?

By Joshua Wright, apprentice 2022

Syntropy and entropy are two forces at work in this universe. Entropy being the movement of matter and energy towards chaos and simplicity over time. Syntropy being the opposite, of the movements of matter and energy towards higher levels of complexity and order over time. Syntropic farming is tapping into this universal force and leveraging it to produce a product useful to humans, food.

On Earth plants are the drivers of syntropy. Through photosynthesis they accumulate solar energy and make that energy available to other forms of life. Over time this accumulation of energy has led to the ability of our planet to support the order and complexity of life we see today.

To understand how we can use this for food production we need to have an understanding of a natural forest system and how it evolves and accumulates energy.

A forest cycle: 

We define a forest cycle as from clearing to clearing.

Starting with a blank slate, "weeds" and grasses colonized bare ground. Slowly energy accumulates supporting shrubs, small trees and eventually a mature forest. Then an old tree dies and falls creating a new clearing.

This is one cycle. This process can take thousands if not millions of years. Then the next cycle begins anew. However this cycle isn't starting from the same point as the cycle before. The system has millennia of accumulated energy stored as organic matter, topsoil and biodiversity. The time taken in cycle two to reach a mature forest is dramatically reduced compared to cycle one. 

This is syntropy at work!

When we start a syntropic agroforestry system we start by creating a clearing, kick-starting cycle two.

So what do we plant in this clearing?

When selecting our plants we want to make sure to represent all the different layers in a mature forest. The layers are categorized as Emergent, High, Medium and Low.

Mimicking a forest our emergent layer should occupy 20% of the canopy. Below that our high layer will occupy 40%, Medium 60% and low 80%.

Image by Orchard of Flavours

These layers are directly related to how much sunlight a plant needs to thrive. E.g. Papaya is emergent needing full sun. Most of your familiar fruit trees occupy the high layer, cocoa would be in the medium or low layer along with coffee as they tolerate lots of shade.

Another consideration when deciding what to plant is how quickly a plant will grow.

This takes us to a key idea in syntropic farming.

Maximizing solar energy capture

We don't want to have to wait several years for our fruit trees to be mature to have a closed canopy with maximum solar capture. We want to harvest this energy immediately.

To do this we have to design our syntropic farm not only in space but also in time.

A helpful tool is to further categorize our plants by their life cycle. In syntropic farming these categories are labeled: placenta 1, placenta 2, secondary 1, secondary 2 and climax. 

Placenta 1 are fast growing annuals that mature within 6 months. E.g. Radish, arugula (note. these are also part of the emergent layer, not because they are tall trees, obviously, but because of how much sun they need.)

Placenta 2 are slower growing annuals or biannual that are ready to harvest between 6 months and 2 years. E.g. Banana, pineapple, yuca.

Secondary 1 are fast perennials ready between 2-10 years. 

Secondary 2 are slow perennials, 10-15 years. E.g. Most fruit trees.

Climax, this category takes over 15 years to mature. E.g. hardwoods and nut trees.

Now I know this is sounding awfully complicated and it is.  So let's take a step back and see what this looks like when we start putting it all together.

Image by ECHOcommunity

Understanding our layers and succession planting

We have our clearing, the stage is set. 

In a mature forest all the seeds of the different layers are present in the soil together at the same time. When that clearing occurs they all start growing together, some fast, some slow, occupying all the different layers. We will do the same. 

Sowing a variety of annuals, perennials, fast and slow growing plants. With good planning what we get is our annuals popping up, harvesting sunlight, shading the soil and providing us with a crop in the first few months. When we harvest those annuals, light and space is opened up for the next succession of plants to come through. There is always a cover of green, growing leaves on our site, photosynthesizing and shading the soil.

After a few years, after the harvest of placenta 2, our fruit trees will be well established saplings. They have been protected from wind and harsh sun, they have had the soil loosened by the roots of all the plants that came before and they are in the perfect position to thrive!

Your Syntropic orchard awaits

Through observing how natural systems work, partnering with nature, humble stewardship and intentional management, humans have the potential to shepherd and accelerate succession. Regenerating eroded landscapes, reversing desertification and growing plants to eat. Let's make our food production systems part of the solution.

Learn More

Join us for one of our yearly workshops about permaculture, farming, plants and more!

If You Practice Yoga, Practice Permaculture

If You Practice Yoga, Practice Permaculture

By 2022 apprentice Lucas

Yoga.* Permaculture. Two seemingly disparate systems of knowledge and practices. What does a morning vinyasa flow class have to do with a plant guild? What does a contour line have to do with downward facing dog? Sit back, find your beginner’s mind, and read on.

Here are 5 reasons to practice both yoga and permaculture:

#1 Ahimsa and permaculture ethics

Ahimsa is the first yama (observance) of yoga ethics. Ahimsa is non-violence, or translated affirmatively, it is compassionate living and celebrating the inherent sacredness of all life.

The three ethics of permaculture are earth care, people care, and fair share; there’s also arguably a fourth - transition.

Earth and human care are outward expressions of ahimsa. This is what grounds a skillful permaculturist AND a skillful yogi aspirant. An active practice of love is caring for the earth and caring for each other. All of permaculture and yoga is built on this.

#2 Prana and prosperity

Skillful permaculture yields prosperity and abundance of: food, fuel, diversity, resilience, and interconnection. By harnessing natural forces and energy (prana) like rainfall and sunlight, permaculture produces more life-serving outputs like food or wildlife habitat, with less energy invested.

By working with our breath in yoga, we cultivate prana, mastering our life force from within. This yields more steadiness and ease even in challenging physical movements, poses, or expressions. Many yoga sequences are based off of optimally activating the nadis (energy channels) in the body to rebalance and revitalize us. We hold downward dog after opening our hearts in cobra. On a landscape, we plant vegetation on contour to catch and store water and minimize erosion.

With permaculture, we breathe life into a landscape, channeling prana along the nadis, and the result is prosperity.

#3 Observe and interact

Observe and interact is the first principle of the permaculture design methodology.

When observing nature and the land from a permaculture paradigm, I notice how much sunlight a particular area gets, what the microclimate is, the qualities of the soil, and the wildlife present. I devote especially close attention to an orchard slope and make a mental note of which plants need pruning and which need more support. I prune, I apply some nitrogen rich compost, and I come back in a few days to observe again. I learn from my observations and I learn from my actions.

Observation is a cornerstone of yoga. We observe our breath. We observe our body. We bring conscious attention to our thoughts and allow them to pass through our awareness like leaves floating down a river. By observing closely we build our awareness.

We then engage the breath, mind, and body in various exercises and movements. The interactions lead to new observations in perfect interdependent co-arising. We feel greater well-being, samadhi, or connection to the divine.

#4 Sangha and community

Well-being is supported in community (sangha). In spite of a toxic dominant culture that tries its best to separate us and 2+ years of the covid experience, people found ways to connect and continue to create community. Yoga centers offered classes online, outdoors, or utilized other larger community spaces to accommodate mats being farther apart. The act of practicing together creates bonds between all beings present. The possibility of harmony emerges.

Mutual support is an essential aspect of successful permaculture communities and landscapes. From a permaculture perspective, we create the conditions needed for mutual support. We create a greywater system to disperse water to plants that need the water, plants who then filter the water to be clean enough to continue on in the water cycle. We create a salt-water brine to submerge green papaya in order to support the growth of Lactobacillus bacteria, who then ferment our raw papaya into tasty kimchi that improves the fortitude of our gut microbiome. We exist on this earth in a community of life.

Inclusive yoga spaces where people come together to practice creates communities of mutual support just like a plant guild of wild hops (nitrogen fixer and mulch), caña india (contour stabilizer), vetiver (erosion control), and pineapple (food crop). Thich Nhat Hahn said that the next Buddha will be a Sangha, a community. Perhaps that is a yoga community, or the permaculture community, or a synthesis of many communities.

#5 Skill in action

Yoga is skill in action. Permaculture is skill in action. Yoga is reunion. Permaculture is reunion in this 3D material reality.

What does social and environmental justice look like? What does healing look like? What does a healthy community and landscape look like? Drab concrete, hazy air, industrially processed food, and the pounding sound of heavy machinery? Or green spaces, fresh air, abundant fruit hanging off trees, and the song of birds and lively human conversation?

Both permaculture and yoga reckon with cultural appropriation, privilege, and the intersectional systemic injustice of our day. Both are attempting to bring forth ancient wisdom that differs from current societal norms. Both have immense potential to heal: individuals, communities, and the biosphere. Both are vehicles of transformation.

Stale, sterilized yoga practice in commercialized studios of the capitalistic west is not enough. Reunite with the divine AND local water, food, energy, and educational sovereignty. Activate your chakras AND your connection to the community of life. Put your head in the clouds AND your hands in the earth.

If you practice yoga, practice permaculture

All the “reasons” above are really all the same. A personal yoga practice can feed and nourish oneself to devote even greater energy into permaculture practices out in the world. An applied permaculture approach to one’s home and community creates opportunities for healing out in the world. The co-founder of the yoga studio I completed my yoga teacher training at often speaks about how important it is to take our yoga practice with us off of the mat. Bringing yoga into our everyday lives. I don’t know of a better systemized way to do that than through permaculture. If you practice yoga, practice permaculture.

Sources and notes:

1. Bhagavad-Gita

2. Skill in Action (Michelle Cassandra Johnson)

*Yoga means many things to many people. The yoga I’m writing about is the yoga I practice and study. Mostly Hatha-Raja yoga, with lineage through Lindsay and Bart of Global Breath in Durham, NC and their teacher Dharma Mittra in NYC

Want to Learn More About Permaculture?

Join us for one of our yearly Permaculture Design Certifications.

Check Out these past blog articles about permaculture

Why the World Would be a Better Place if Everyone Took a Permaculture Design Certification

Why you Should Take a Permaculture Design Certification course at Rancho Mastatal, Costa Rica

The Problem with Permaculture – Understanding Elements and Functions

The Problem with Permaculture – Understanding Elements and Functions

The Problem with Permaculture – Understanding Elements and Functions

By core team member, Nic Donati

DISCLAIMER. It is important to understand that Rancho Mastatal is by no means perfect. In fact much of what we have learnt has been the hard way, through many failures. I also don’t believe we are alone in making these sometimes questionable decisions. It is mainly for this reason that I feel compelled to try write this article and clarify some of the processes and ideas that are so often misunderstood, misrepresented and incorrectly applied in Permaculture. The goal of this article is not to criticize people for what they are doing, but merely to offer insight into the processes which will (hopefully!) lead to success and to learn from some of our failures (and of course successes!).

How often have you heard someone say “oh yeah we have a permaculture farm or garden because we have a [insert permaculture cliché element]”.  They believe their project is permaculture based because it has some of the elements that are usually used as examples, such as composting or they have chickens, maybe a herb spiral or a rainwater catchment system? 

I hear it all the time – the idea that somehow permaculture is a catalogue of elements and we have to use them in order for it to be permaculture.  Herein lies the problem with permaculture… or as I would say the misunderstanding of what permaculture is.

These systems are all great systems and have proven success when used in the right context. Often they are used as examples in permaculture, as they do function very well in a number of contexts, have broad spectrum applicability and are relatively easy to install.

So why aren’t THEY permaculture, why am I saying that those elements are not permaculture if they work?

Well the simple answer is that permaculture is not a pre assigned group of elements; permaculture is a design methodology that helps you navigate through the myriad of options and select the elements that are going to provide the functions and outputs you desire.

Ok are you lost or confused? Let me break it down into examples of what I mean, I will give real world examples in order to help us understand what I mean by elements, functions, inputs and outputs.

The first thing we need to understand is what our context is and what our goals are.  This will help us establish what functions we want to achieve and will help us understand what elements we might want to use in order to achieve these functions.

Establishing Context

What do I mean by establishing our context? Firstly we need to understand where we are and in order to do this we need to look at four main areas.  We often do a lot of these types of assessment intuitively with or without realizing, but it is helpful to try and articulate your context so that you can refer to them again in the future. For further reading refer to Alan Savory’s work on holistic management.

Social

The first thing to establish is who are we talking about? Is it you on your own, you and a partner, a family, a community of people, etc…? This will be important as it will probably affect a number of the other categories, like legal issues and potentially your resource base.

Ecological

The next part of establishing your context is assessing your geographical location, weather patterns, climate, landform, water access, etc… This is going to affect many things, including what is possible to grow, how long your growing season is, establishing heating and cooling needs for a house, etc…

I will give you this example as it is pretty commonly brought up to me.  Someone has decided that they want a particular element – in this case a cob house.  My first question always is “where do you live?” - this is establishing context. In this scenario they live in a climate where building a cob house is quite literally insane and illegal! Cob is a very poor insulator and in many scenarios will not meet any environmental standards for insulation as defined by many temperate zone building codes. My second question is “why do you want a cob house?” – establishing the goal. Often their response is something to do with wanting a curvy naturally built structure (a goal).  Obviously this person has fallen into the trap of deciding on an element (a cob house) without succinctly establishing their context or goals. 

In this scenario, through asking questions we can begin to get to the core of why someone wants this specific element, what goals do they have and also what the function is (we want our house to be warm and comfortable, a poorly insulated house will not achieve that, at least not easily).  At this point knowing their context and goals there is already a perfectly good, established design solution, it is called strawbale. Stawbale building has excellent insulative properties that meet the most stringent of building codes, it is a natural material and with some additions of clay and straw plasters can be made curvy and round or whatever your heart desires.

Legal

We need to establish our legal context, for instance are we in a rural, urban or suburban setting or somewhere else, this is going to affect what we can do in terms of space and also what we are legally allowed to do. For instance in urban settings there may be prescribed methods of how to deal with sewage, like you have to connect to the municipal sewage system if it available. Whereas if you are in a rural setting you are able to legally decide which type of sewage treatment system you would like to use. Now I’m talking about your legal context here and of course where you are located (not just within a country but in different countries is going to affect the rules).  This also might affect if you will have space to do certain things.  There is no point establishing a goal of producing all of your own dairy if you live in an apartment and only have access to a balcony.  In many urban areas there are rules about animal ownership not to mention the practicalities! Seems obvious right? Well of course I am using examples that have obvious outcomes, it gets more complicated and the practicalities (the inputs) can become either harder to define or more difficult to predict. 

We will also need to consider any other legal ramifications of our endeavor like labor laws for business, or taxes, whether that river that runs through your property is legally available or if you can cut down trees? These are all things which will dictate what you can or can’t do if we want to stick to the confines of the law.

Resource base

What resources we have available (time, money, energy, labor, etc…) is going to massively influence what is achievable.  Like it or not our resource base is a critical factor when establishing our context and being realistic about this is going to be important in the success of any project. 

A common theme I here is that people maybe don’t have the labor resource pool that is needed to achieve a particular goal so they are going to start a volunteer program in order to provide the labor. Again, this is a backward approach, you are setting a goal that is only achievable if a whole new program is designed and implemented.  The inputs involved in managing people is huge and often overlooked, the structures required in order to successfully implement a volunteer program is vast especially if you want them to do what you want them to do as opposed to what they want to do.  Read our article about running a successful internship program here.

Goal Setting

Now that we have more or less outlined out context we want to establish some goals for ourselves. There are many goal setting methods and techniques; the important thing to try and distill down is what is the underlying goal that you are hoping to achieve.

Let’s look at one of the examples that we used already, the desire to build a cob house.  At this stage we should try and distill out the essence of the goal, let’s go through that process so that we can look at the functions and then identify the element.

GOAL: Build a Cob House

Let’s start with build: do we want to build it, do we have the resources to pay someone else to do it? Does it need to be a cob house? Can it be a natural material that also allows artistic freedom? Most importantly we want to have a house that is beautiful and functional, and as we discussed before we need a well-insulated house (if we live in a temperate climate).  So maybe we can redefine our goal as something like this:

GOAL: To have a beautiful, functional and natural home.

Once we have distilled out our goal we can identify the functions that we want. Here is an example:

• Home – somewhere that provides shelter for us primarily but is comfy and cozy

• Beauty – something well designed with art built into the structure through sculpture and curves

• Functional – well insulated and resistant to the climate, low maintenance

• Natural – using materials that are local and have lower amounts of processing or low carbon footprint

Now that we have identified our functions we can begin to research our elements that meet these functions, this is the fun stage. This involves reading, researching online, sketching etc… soon we will settle upon our element that will provide all (or most) of our functions and meet our goal that makes sense within our context.  This is good design; this is the methodology that a permaculturalist will employ.

Students in our Permaculture Design Course presenting their projects

I hope that you can see the difference in the methodology. One is looking at the goal and deciding from there what element we should use, and one is accumulating elements because we think they are a good idea without going through a design process.

We often innately do some of this process.  It is much easier to do this process within the realms of things that we already know well and understand.  As a natural builder it is much easier for me to distill out the goal and the functions within natural building as I am very familiar with a lot of the variables and a lot of the options.  If you are new to this, there are obviously endless options and opportunities.  I would recommend taking a permaculture design certification (read here why should take one at Rancho Mastatal).  This will help contextualize lots of your goals and ideas. A PDC will give you the opportunity to talk about your ideas with other people so you can cross pollinate and create wonderful new schemes and plans.

To summarize the problem with permaculture, it is the misunderstanding of the design process not with the design process itself, although there are many people who are always working to improve the design process too.  Here is a nice little diagram that was created by AppleSeed Permaculture that nicely summarizes the design process.

Hope you enjoyed my theory on this topic.

Join us for one of our two yearly Permaculture Design Courses to learn more about the topic and get inspired!

Why the World Would be a Better Place if Everyone Took a Permaculture Design Certification

Why the World Would be a Better Place if Everyone Took a Permaculture Design Certification

By core team member, Nic Donati

What is Permaculture

Permaculture is a methodology of thinking about, designing and creating environments that are regenerative from an environmental perspective and functional from a human perspective. 

So, what does that actually mean? Let’s look at some specific examples, as often we struggle to take the theoretical to the practical.

Permaculture can be applied in pretty much any context, although historically it has most commonly been used in agriculture.  So let’s start there. 

Permaculture in Agriculture

In agriculture the goal is to grow food and in most cases create an income or profit for farmers. As a permaculturalist we can look at the system of agriculture, look how we can grow food (the goal), and design and create environments that are regenerative for the planet and functional for humans. In the context of agriculture we want to grow food that is going to regenerate our environment as well as create income and food for humans. This is the design problem and now we have to come up with solutions for this.

What is important is that as permaculturalists we put the needs of our environment and the needs of humans on the same level. In the past we have not considered the needs of the planet and that has led to deforestation, desertification, loss of biodiversity etc… this has met our goal (at least in the short term) of providing food and income for humans, but has woefully overlooked creating a model that is at the least sustainable (can continue in perpetuity) and at best regenerative (actually improve the environment e.g. soil quality, water quality, biodiversity etc…).

In permaculture we are interested in creating design solutions that meet both the needs of our environment and our human needs.  Some of the design solutions that have been developed since the inception of permaculture have been to create more regenerative farming practices.  These have often drawn upon and been inspired by traditional methods of agriculture, for example using polycultures (the use of many species in one area as opposed to whole fields of one crop, known as a mono crop), crop rotations that benefit one another, multi-story agroforestry systems (also types of polycultures), syntropic agriculture, green manures & cover crops etc…. These systems are seen as potential design solutions as they have the potential to produce food, profit and regenerate the land.

Going back to the beginning we can see that from a permaculture perspective what we have done is taken something like agriculture and redefined the goals of it, in order to create a different outcome. We have changed the goals of agriculture from simply growing food and creating profit, to growing food, creating profit AND regenerating the land.

Defining Goals in Permaculture Design

This is a really important concept that we will learn more about - clearly defining your goals.  Many of the problems that we see around the world are created by having poorly defined goals or inadequately inclusive goals.  Our first step is to think through what our goals and context are in order to get the outcomes that we want.  At this point it is worth mentioning that within permaculture we already have some defined ethics and principles (you can read more about them here and how we apply them) that can help us guide our goals.  The original three core ethics are:

• Earth Care

• People Care

• Fair Share

Defining our Goals in Agriculture

We have outlined that in the past we prioritized people care (or at least we thought we were) and now we have added in an earth care goal by wanting to regenerate the land too.  Maybe we should also include a fair share element into our goals for agriculture? 

As with any exercise to find design solutions, there are usually many different ways to achieve it.  I am sure if people sit down and think about it we can come up with some good design solutions to implement our fair share goal in our agricultural model. One of the most obvious to me is making sure that farmers are getting paid a fair price for their production and that at the very least surplus from production is distributed to people who need it most through food banks, shelters, etc…  Write in the comments below some of your ideas for creating fair share within agriculture. 

How we can Meet our goals?

We buy all our beans from local farmers. Here is Chepo winnowing his harvest.

Now that we have identified how we want to shift the current agricultural paradigm, we have to implement our design solutions in a real world context… But, how?  This is of course is the hardest part, its one thing to come up with an idea and another to actually go out there and do it.  There are so many people who are working on this and so many different ways that these goals can be achieved.  Our first step should be to research this market. Is anyone already doing this? How have they identified and articulated their goals? What are their solutions? Can we help them, work with them, collaborate or just support them by buying their products?  If we can’t find anyone that is filling this niche then maybe this is an opportunity for us to fill it?  Do we want to get into this market and start a business?

Maybe we identify through our research and based on our skills and context that we would be better off getting involved in the political realm. Classically we have relied upon government and law makers to impose rules and regulations on industry and commerce to shift practices.  Can we advocate for the change we want to see? Can we be the change makers?  One option could be to get into politics or join an advocacy group in order to make political changes that you believe in.

So, without a large career change what can we do? As individuals we have a lot of power even if we decide this is not what we want to throw ourselves into full time or for a living, we can still effect change more subtly.  After all every time we spend money we are supporting one organization vs another. We can be diligent to make sure we know where our food is coming from and if they are producers that are supporting our paradigm shift or not.  We will talk extensively about some of these issues and solutions in our Permaculture Design Certification (PDC).

We have looked at how we can take our definition of permaculture and practically apply it to agriculture and we have even looked at how we might go about implementing these changes that we want to see happen. 

Social Permaculture

As I said before permaculture can be pretty much applied in any context and there is increasingly a body of work within social permaculture.  Social permaculture is using these same basic ethics and principles that we mentioned above, but rather than applying them to the physical environment we are applying them to our social organizations. 

As we talked about before let’s look at the classic business model of a Public Limited Company (PLC) or in the US its known as a Corporation. Essentially the goals of these companies are again centered on profit and distribution of profit to shareholders.  We have seen over history that when the explicit goals of a business are to generate profit and to distribute it to shareholders, that is what they are going to do right, as that is their goal.

In social permaculture we are again interested in looking at business and defining their goals and objectives to include our three core ethics.  We can then redefine the goals of our businesses to generate profit, regenerate the planet and fairly distribute surplus. 

Let’s again use a practical example of how we can use permaculture design to redefine the goals in order to get the outcome we desire.

For example, let’s use a clothing company as a business that we are going to redefine the goals of so that they are using our 3 core ethics. Here are some ways that we might do this:

• People Care – pays a fair living wage to its employees, maybe it’s a co-op? Maybe it uses a sociocratic model of governance.

• Earth care – sources materials that are compostable and/or grown regeneratively, repairs old clothes so they don’t get thrown away, recycles old clothes.

• Fair Share - gives clothes that are no longer in fashion (or the season has changed) to people who need them the most or donates them to charity.  It could also be an employee co-operative that distribute profits to the people who work there too.

There are many ways in which we could imagine these ethics working for a business and many businesses are now starting to employ more of these ideas into their goals and objectives. The two most commonly used terms in business trying to do this work are - social enterprises and B-Corporations.  These sorts of organizations are actively trying to change the way their organizational goals are structured in order to include some of the ethics we have outlined.

We have looked at what permaculture is and how we can apply permaculture in different contexts.  Hopefully you can see that many of our problems that we face in the world are due to having either insufficient or poorly defined goals.  Once we redefine these, we can begin to think about how we can design and create solutions.

How do You Study Permaculture?

Like any other topic you can learn a lot by reading books and studying the literature.  Everyone learns in different ways and learning from text books is not necessarily everyone’s idea of fun!  You could study in a practical way by working somewhere and looking at the designs people have created to solve their challenges. After reading this article I hope that everyone can begin to look at why problems are created and how we can redefine or clearly state our goals in order to try and change to a more desirable outcome.

Students practicing using the A-frame during our PDC

Rancho Mastatal offers two Permaculture Design Certifications (PDC) a year, one in the November/December and one in April. In this course we go through many of the different design challenges we face as individuals and as a larger society and look at methods and techniques that have been identified to tackle these. 

The PDC is very much focused on creating design solutions in a practical way, using the Ranch as a living example we will frequently walk around and see how we have created solutions for design challenges in our context.  As I have done in this article it is often important to not just outline the problems and solutions, but actually see how they have been applied.  Remember though context is key, the design solution for one place may not necessarily be the design solution for another place, so once we have established our goals and context we can begin to research and implement solutions.

The secret to humans’ success has been our ability to learn very quickly from one another. Our social learning abilities far outstrip that of our primate cousins and it is this innate ability to learn from others which is so crucial to our ecological success (which has also caused its own problems!). 

We are big believers in harnessing this innate ability of humans to pass on our knowledge and experiences to you, so that you don’t have to learn it all by yourself, let us help you accelerate your learning. 

You could also volunteer, although you are unlikely to receive the theoretical underpinnings that are important to gain context in different situations. At the Ranch we do offer a short two month internship however, we do not generally include the permaculture theory. You may do lots of activities that are associated with some of the ways we have designed our solutions, but getting the balance in this type of context is going to be difficult and will rely on you doing the leg work and reading in the background.

We offer a one year apprenticeship where all of this is covered. We teach all of the PDC modules to our apprentices and they receive plenty of practical opportunities to practice and apply these ideas. This is undoubtedly the best way to study permaculture, but not everyone can join us for a year and we recognize that.

Is a Permaculture Design Certification Worth it?

As I have said above, it may feel like a large investment for you, but in the context of the experience, we think it is worth the investment.  You can definitely study all of these concepts in a book or online and you will learn a lot, especially if you are the type of person who retains information well after reading it. If you are more of a visual person, maybe watching YouTube videos will be your study tool.

We are big believer in first learning about something and then applying it and/or doing it, which is why there is plenty of opportunity in our course to practice what you have learnt through practical workshops.  There is also time allotted to the design challenge, you will work in small groups to design solutions for the goals and objectives of your clients.  This will reinforce the ideas of identifying goals and context and then designing solutions for them.  You will get feedback on your designs and ideas during the final presentations that will act as the capstone project for the course. 

During the 14 days you will be studying permaculture with a group of people all interested in the same topic, you will also find this incredibly motivating and inspiring, not just the content of the lectures and practicals, but the holistic learning environment. 

What do I mean by a holistic learning environment? We specialize in educational workshops here and over many years have learnt a lot about the best way to teach and inspire people.  We have created a schedule and environment during the PDC that we believe maximizes your experience.  Your time is a balance of practical and theoretical classes, small group work and plenty of time to study in our extensive library of thousands of books. There will be community sharing opportunities, so you can learn from your fellow students. When you are not actively learning there will be time to regenerate your energy by playing sports or doing yoga, trips to the river and waterfall, walks in the jungle or through our small community of Mastatal and be fully immersed in what we believe is a little bit of paradise.

Ultimately everyone has to decide for themselves how and where they want to invest their time and money, but we think the world would be a much better place if everyone took a permaculture design certificate course.

What is Wrong with Permaculture?

Permaculture is a methodology, so often times the things that people criticize permaculture for is not actually the methodology, but it’s the way in which people have used or applied this methodology that is the problem, not the methodology itself.  Read more:

Having said that one of the biggest “problems” with the methodology is the lack of a good decision making tool.  Now plenty of decision making tools have been developed and are frequently used within a permaculture methodology, but there is not an explicit permaculture decision making tool. 

Why is this important? As we have discussed there are usually many different ways to approach and solve a problem and having a handy dandy decision making protocol would help weigh one solution over another.  At the end of the day though decision making is a hard thing to develop tools for as they are based very much on the assumption that you know the different outcomes for each decision, but as the old adage goes - you don’t know what you don’t know. So whilst decision making tools can be helpful they are implicitly biased towards what you know about the solutions.  This is always going to be tricky to overcome as we have said because it’s impossible to predict outcomes if we don’t know that they may happen.  Even if we have researched that topic extensively it is still possible that we will overlook things, or attribute more weight to one thing over another incorrectly.  Ultimately many of these things come down to experience, and being able to revisit the design process, aggregating problems as they occur and revisiting the goals and context and seeing how this may change the design solution.  Confirmation bias can then play a large role here as we tend to favor information that confirms our beliefs even if from an outside (objective) view one can see that this design solution is not working.  We see this sort of bias all the time in current paradigms that have been established although arguably this is less confirmation bias and more self-serving, short term decision making!

can we change the world with permaculture?

We think we can! With a good understanding of the design process and goal setting we think many areas of the world could be improved upon by looking at them through a permaculture lense.

How are you going to begin learning and getting experience in permaculture design?

A good start is keeping up to date with our blog articles that often discuss this theory and practical ways we are implenting designs around here.

And of course, joining us for our Permaculture Design Certification is a great way to get inspired, meet other like minded individuals, and have a beautiful experience.

Read other related articles

Revisión giraldística. Permacultura. Por qué Rancho Mastatal

Applied Permaculture Principles

Why Permaculture?

Why You Should Take a Permaculture Design Certification at Rancho Mastatal, Costa Rica

Why You Should Take a Permaculture Design Certification course at Rancho Mastatal, Costa Rica

By core team member, Nic Donati

The Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) is a 14 day fully immersive, hands on, inspirational workshop.  This course introduces you to all the major areas that we work in at Rancho Mastatal. We provide context for where we live, outline the specific goals and objectives that we are trying to achieve, while displaying excellent examples of different designs and elements. Read more here about Why the World would be a Better Place if Everyone took a PDC.  The PDC is a foundational course that provides you with an overview of the permaculture toolkit, which includes the methodologies, the principles and ethics of permaculture and the ways that one can apply them.

There are not many places in the world that offer such a diverse number of examples of applied permaculture principles and ethics in practice as you will find at Rancho Mastatal. 

Bordering one of Costa Rica’s national parks, La Cangreja, we are surrounded by nature, biodiversity and abundance, providing the perfect learning environment for permaculture. One of the core themes in permaculture is to use natural ecological patterns as a template for the systems you design.  It also provides an inspirational environment to immerse yourself in, as you can swim in the clear waters of our private waterfall, enjoy the natural surroundings and jungle life.

Rancho Mastatal was established in 2001, we have had lots of experience designing, implementing, evaluating and managing systems.  This gives us the perfect platform to pass on this information to you and give you context as to why we have done certain things, why something’s didn’t work and others have been more successful.  We have made plenty of mistakes over the years and we would love to share our experience with you of all of the success and failures so that you can accelerate your learning.

Rancho Mastatal is an established intentional community that manages the land using intelligent ecological design. We have over 200 acres of property that is at the disposal of students to explore during their time here.

We are one of the longest continually operating permaculture education centers in the world and not only do we provide a fantastic educational experience for all of our students we have always operated as a self-sustaining business.  Apart from the initial seed money that was borrowed to purchase the land, all of the developments that have been made on the land have been funded through our own work, we do not rely on donors or wealthy benefactors and having slowly paid back the money borrowed to purchase the land. We are completely debt free and financially independent.  We act as a model of developing a self-sustaining business, that uses permaculture ethics and principles to formulate our goals and objectives (read more about that here). 

This is a really important element to us, through taking our workshops you support all of our work which includes community development, scholarship programs and all of the other ethical practices we employ in order to create a just and equitable system. You can learn a little more about our efforts by exploring our website and during our PDC.

In a practical sense you will also learn about many of the different systems we have implemented over the years and the systems that have proven to be the most resilient are still in use today.  We will look at the design methodologies for deciding on our systems and then we will look at the detail of how these systems work and how you can effectively manage them.

A loaded jackfruit tree

Food Forests

We have a large diverse food forest on our property that incorporates hundreds of species of fruit and nut trees that we use for food, medicine, building materials, natural habitat, soil building, erosion control and so much more.  Our food forest is designed to imitate our natural rainforest environment, using species that have evolved in our climate or similar ones.  The food forest acts as a wonderful learning tool for students to walk through and see how you could create one yourself.  We also have other examples of agroforestry systems, including alley cropping, riparian buffers and a syntropic site.

Organic Gardens

We have a small organic garden near our main house, where we have raised beds and many perennial food crops (read more: Tropical Agriculture Blogs) that we have collected from around the world, that provide an abundance of cooking green, salads and other delicacies.  Our gardens are focused on growing crops appropriate to our harsh tropical climate and we don’t grow very many temperate climate annuals.

A beautiful jar of fermented veggies

Food and Fermentation

Food nourishes us and forms the heart of our community. Understanding where it comes from, how it is grown, and who has grown it helps us value our food in a way that we have lost in the modern era (read more: Eating Local: Reconnecting To Food).  We will spend time talking about how we source our food, how we support local farmers, how we ferment foods for increased storage life and health benefits, and how we focus on developing a culinary experience that is based on local tropical foods rather than imported foods .  We will have a hands on session to create delicious fermented treats that we will get to taste during your time at the Ranch. Read more: Farm to Table Blogs

Intentional community

The Ranch is not only a permanent intentional community for our core team members it also acts as year-long community for our apprentices.  Each year we take on 5-7 apprentices to live with us. They learn about communal living, permaculture design, natural building and so much more, it is like a long Permaculture Design Certification!  We have developed many structures in our community to help it function effectively and we will be sharing some of these strategies with you to help you on your journey.  Things that we use and we will be teaching during the PDC, are Non Violent Communication (NVC), decision making protocols and systems, and our governance structure amongst other things.  We will spend an entire day looking at how we can form communities in a general sense.  These can be applied in many different areas not just intentional communities, but amongst friend groups, families and businesses. Read more: Communal Living Blogs

Water Management

We will look at the different water management strategies that we have in place on our land, to retain water in the landscape. Examples of systems we use are soil building techniques to increase moisture retention, swales to slow, spread and sink water, contour planting and dead barriers to slow the flow of water and prevent erosion amongst others. We will see how these systems work and practice their application.

Transforming “Waste” into Humaure

Waste Management

Our waste management strategies are diverse and numerous and showcase a number of different systems which can be used in any context. We have 11 composting toilets and one biodigestor that produces methane to cook with. These systems manage all of our human waste. We use several different greywater systems to manage shower, sink and laundry water including banana circles and a branched drain system. We compost all of our kitchen waste in a simple to understand composting system and use composting worms to create compost for the front gardens and make vermicompost teas.  We also make our own dish soap and bar soap for use by everyone.  We will do a practical soap making workshop during the class. On top of these systems, we make a concerted effort to reduce or simply not make waste (trash, single use plastics, etc…) by buying food in bulk and without packaging, making our own beverages in reusable bottles, fermenting in reusable vessels and more.  

Soil Building & Fertility strategies

Soil building is essential for plant growth and moisture retention amongst other things (Read more: Improving Soils in the Humid Tropics).  Our primary goal is to hold water in our soil and build the soils fertility. We are not blessed with deep top soils and the role of our soil building activities is crucial. We use many different Nitrogen Fixing Species on the property to help build and protect soil, often in combination with some of our water management strategies. We will look at our Mountain/Indigenous microorganism collection and the brewing and application of this system. We will also look at how we make compost and vermicompost tea and how we use some Korean Natural Farming techniques.

Natural Building

We have without doubt some of the best examples of natural building in the world on display, using bamboo, earth, timber framing, earthen floors, Tadelakt, polished lime and clay plasters, clay carving and sculpting, natural paints and so much more!  We will also talk about design and walk around our extensive campus looking and talking about different techniques and get an opportunity to get our hands and feet dirty.

Appropriate technology

We have always strived to incorporate the “right” type of technologies into our repertoire.  We are trying to develop tools that are genuinely going to improve productivity, rather than technology for the sake of it.  We have wonderful examples of technologies that we think are accessible and simple for others to implement.  Some of our favorites include the efficient wood burning stoves for cooking, solar dehydrators, earthen pizza oven, composting toilets, biodigestors, solar hot water, composting tubes for slow cooking, wonderbags/hayboxes for keeping food warm and many more.  We will have a session about appropriate technologies (read more: Appropriate Technology Blogs) and renewable energy during our PDC.  If there are specific things you are interested in make sure to ask us as we have experimented with many different technologies over the years.

Jorge Salazar - PDC instructor

Community support & inclusion

We have always endeavored to support our community as best we can and over the years we have been involved in many community projects.  We have helped raise money to build a community library, build many additions to the primary school and high school, work on the community center, cemetery, church and football field.  We have run classes in the primary school and high school in art, music and English to supplement the work of the underfunded rural schools.  More recently we have been focusing our work on developing scholarship funds for our workshops and developing Spanish workshops with very accessible prices for the local people of Costa Rica and Central America.  We have also been incredibly lucky that some of the community leaders have also begun to develop business that we can actively support; we work a lot of the Iguana Chocolate, Finca Siempre Verde and KIS botanicals who provide fantastic local guiding, tour and workshop services for guests and workshop participants.  We have endeavored to include these local leaders in our permaculture design course, including family from La Iguana Chocolate and the founders of KIS botanicals to teach several modules in our Permaculture Design Certification.

Why Us?

We believe that we have developed not only a fantastic and inclusive permaculture course, but that it is based on our many years of experience living on the land. The Ranch is unique in its breadth of different permaculture systems that take many years to cultivate. 

By joining us for our Permaculture Design Certification course you will not only be learning about the systems that we have in place and the methodologies of design, but also about how to successfully run a business based on permaculture ethics and about a project firmly embedded in the local community.

We hope to have you join us for one of our two yearly Permaculture Design Courses. Stay tuned to our workshop calendar for dates!

Permacultura, ¿Porqué aprender en el Rancho Mastatal?

Permacultura, ¿Porqué aprender en el Rancho Mastatal?

Ari, Estudiante 2022

Imagina que tienes un lienzo en blanco para trazar y te dicen que lo que dibujes se va convertir en tu vida. Quizás, no tienes las herramientas, el conocimiento necesario para poder imaginarte en ese mundo ideal y te surgen preguntas: ¿cómo podré lograrlo?, ¿qué es lo realmente indispensable y necesario?, ¿esto me entusiasma o me agobia?, ¿por dónde empiezo?

Ahora volvamos a la realidad, pensemos en ese lienzo en blanco como las oportunidades de creación que tenemos disponibles todos los días. Conscientes o no, dibujamos diariamente en él con nuestros valores, desarrollo, conocimiento, con nuestras relaciones y decisiones. Siendo humanos, nos compenetramos con otros lienzos para tratar de descubrir; ¿cómo debería de verse el gran lienzo final? 

La Permacultura es una herramienta para diseñar la vida. Sus ámbitos abarcan los grandes aspectos de la vida humana y su entorno: el diseño de un mundo real, social, práctico y sustentable. Así pues, un curso de Permacultura procura que sus estudiantes sean diseñadores y agentes efectivos de cambios en sus hogares y comunidades, procurando relaciones entre los diversos ámbitos de creación, sobre ese gran lienzo de oportunidades.

¿Qué es un PDC (Permaculture Design Course)?

En el año 1984 se definió el Curso de Diseño en Permacultura (PDC por sus siglas en inglés) como un curso estándar de 72 horas a partir de la recopilación de métodos, técnicas y formas de vivir de diversas comunidades de pueblos originarios en diferentes partes del mundo, trabajo que estuvo a cargo de Bill Mollison y David Holmgren. No es un título académico, es una certificación por parte de la comunidad de permacultura que reconoce en quién lo obtiene las bases conceptuales y buenas prácticas para su aplicación.

Este curso es útil en el trazo de relaciones humanas compatibles con los sistemas naturales, desde un cúmulo de principios y éticas en relación con el cuidado de las personas, el cuidado de la tierra y el justo repartir de los excedentes.  En esta línea, las relaciones diseñadas construyen diseños autosuficientes que incluyen a la comunidad para ser efectivos y resilientes, diseños que respetan y entienden los patrones de la vida, la tierra, los microorganismos, los ecosistemas; diseños que contemplan y aprovechan el flujo energético entre todos los componentes incluidos, son regenerativos y permanecen.

¿Por qué cursar el PDC en Rancho Mastatal?

El PDC de Rancho Mastatal no es ni será el único certificado obtenido, pero por el momento sí es el mejor. Acá algunas razones relevantes:

1.     Es el primer centro de conservación y educación para la sustentabilidad que desarrolló de forma completa y en español el Curso de Permacultura en Costa Rica, para ser impartido por profesores ticos previamente certificados. Este hecho influye positivamente en la accesibilidad del curso, abriendo oportunidades a todo Latinoamérica y Suramérica. Debido al uso de castellano, este curso rompe con la barrera del idioma: la gran mayoría de la bibliografía de Permacultura está en inglés.

2.     En Rancho Mastatal respetan, cuidan y valoran el tiempo y recurso de cada integrante. Este curso no es uno que se extiende por 6 meses, tampoco es una experiencia de “retiro y sanación en el bosque” por valores excesivos por encima de los $1500, lo cual no se ajusta a la realidad económica de la mayoría de costarricenses, mesoamericanos e incluso personas latinoamericanas. Por el contrario, toman muy en cuenta el contexto: Si bien partimos de la cultura, el lugar y todas las condiciones externas y climáticas, tanto el Rancho Mastatal como los profesores del curso, entienden, viven y desarrollan su práctica en el mismo entorno en el que se imparte el curso (Costa Rica).

3.     Se parte del punto obvio, pero muchas veces ignorado que la práctica hace al maestro. Es un curso presencial inmersivo de 15 días y Por un accesible costo de $400 con hospedaje y comida incluida (cabe mencionar que es toda una experiencia increíble) existe la posibilidad de vivir en el rancho, convivir, servir a la comunidad, aprender y practicar. 

4.     Todo el contenido y material del curso es invaluable. Partiendo de la estructura del curso (amplia y extensiva), esta experiencia de campo abre las puertas del conocimiento ancestral tradicional que envuelve la permacultura: biología, bio construcción, plantas medicinales, gastronomía, fermentación y conservación, tecnología apropiada, energía, compostaje, manejo de agua, manejo de residuos, manejo del suelo, autosuficiencia desde un código descentralizado, entre otros.

5.     Aquí se vive bajo el principio básico de la vida: Estar presente y consciente. El constante contacto e interacción con la naturaleza y las distintas conexiones y lecciones humanas hacen, de este lugar, un espacio seguro de aprendizaje y de constante agradecimiento y motivación.

6.     Por último, pero jamás menos importante, en Rancho Mastatal predican con el ejemplo. Su vida sencilla, práctica, sustentable, comunitaria y permanente, es un ejemplo claro y vivo de su lucha por la conservación y la educación.

Este curso es para quién se ha percatado de la necesidad de un cambio, sin olvidar que un cambio externo sacude y refleja la necesidad de un cambio interno. Si existe la intuición de hacer algo diferente, si te cuestionas los patrones, estereotipos y condiciones impuestas por la humanidad que nos ciega y dirige hacia la ignorancia,  la separación y la destrucción… este curso puede dar rienda suelta a la transformación de tu lienzo diario  para, finalmente, trazar juntos el gran lienzo final.

Permaculture-Based Alcohol Production as an Energy Source — “The Proof is in your Buzz”

Permaculture-Based Alcohol Production as an Energy Source — “The Proof is in your Buzz”

By 2022 apprentice Lucas Babinec

With a refractometer we determine the brix of various fruits

Bring to mind a world where energy is cheap, plentiful, AND environmentally friendly. What’s powering that world? Wind? Biogas? Hydroelectric? Solar?

Pause.

Take this question seriously.

Our current track record with energy has us in a planetary ecological crisis, not to mention indirectly causing inequity and oppression all over the world. Now, what if we could grow our own fuel, in a way that increases soil fertility, ecosystem health, biodiversity and without any pollution or additional extraction of our planet’s precious resources. In a decentralized, community supporting, and resilient system. Caring for each other (people), the earth, and sharing the abundance fairly. Crazy. Nonsense. Not possible.

Enter Permaculture-Based Alcohol Production as an energy source

Please, if you’re here reading this and are unfamiliar with permaculture, check out these essential blog posts: Why Permaculture and Applied Permaculture Principles. Also, *shameless plug warning* look into taking one of our yearly Permaculture Design Courses.

In my first blog article I reviewed a book, ‘The Wizard and the Prophet’, about two different mindsets when working through our ecological challenges as a species. Permaculture-based alcohol fuel production harmonizes both perspectives, bring the best tech magic from the wizard and the most essential wisdom from the prophet together. At this point you probably are asking the question:

How?

Simple. Regenerative agriculture. Fermentation. Distillation. And then cycling all yields back into the system, aided by stacking functions and honoring the principle of zero-waste. This can be done on a household level or on a community level. Both would work within the design framework of permaculture and both are probably needed to gain true energy sovereignty. Primary fuel crop and overall polyculture selection would be specific to each biosphere and personal/regional culture preference.

A productive banana grey water circle

For example, here in Mastatal that might look like a great diversity of fruit trees: Sapote, pitanga, starfruit, jackfruit, mango, papaya, and many others that offer both food and the chance to ferment whatever can’t be eaten. Then, you’d have your staple fuel crops such as bananas, cassava (yuca), bamboo, and sugar cane. These would all be supported by other plants that fix nutrients in the soil (making them more bio-available), attract pollinators, and provide biomass for mulching. With skillful agroforestry methods in place, such as those implemented at Rancho Mastatal, anyone or any community could grow their own fuel. In a temperate climate like North Carolina, the fruit trees might be pawpaws, apples, and mulberries, with staple crops like potatoes, corn, soy beans, and hemp (grown in a polyculture/plant guilds with regenerative practices; no monocultures, no GMOs, no pesticides and other toxic chemicals).

Okay, now you might be wondering why this isn’t already the case. How come we don’t already have alcohol (aka ethanol) as an abundant, environmentally friendly fuel source?

100 years ago

What was going on in the United States back in 1922? Any guesses? Alright, well, many things actually, but what was a major one relevant to this topic? One word. Begins with a ‘P’.

PROHIBITION.

Our homemade alcohol station

The US Congress passed the 18th amendment in 1919, outlawing all production and distribution of alcohol. This destroyed the alcohol fuel industry and all farmer led cooperative distilleries, which had been booming since Pres. Teddy Roosevelt championed some liberating legislation in 1906. At the time, even Henry Ford preferred alcohol as a fuel source. The Model T was a dual fuel vehicle, able to run on ethanol or gasoline. Then an oil man with a last name beginning with ‘R’ ruined the party. When prohibition was reversed in 1933, gasoline was firmly positioned as America’s favorite fuel. Great for Big Oil. Bad for the people. Bad for the planet.

If this surprises you or leaves you feeling skeptical, I totally understand. Dive in, investigate and decide for yourself.

My curiosity has been sparked. I picked up the book ‘Alcohol Can Be a Gas’ by David Blume and now I want to prove that these possibilities are real. With more than six months left in my apprenticeship at the time of this writing, I reckon some experimentation and hands-on learning is in the cards. I didn’t even get into explaining the whole fermentation and distillation steps in this post or the various co-products that can be harvested from it. There’s a lot more to learn, stay tuned for the next installment of Permaculture-Based Alcohol Production. To be continued…

Read Other Permaculture Related Blogs

La Importancia de la Permacultura

6 Reasons to Use a Biodigester

Endeavors to End Propane: Local Fuel Sources and Efficient Cooking Technologies

Anti-Inflammatory Herbs – Medicinal Plants

Anti-Inflammatory Herbs – Medicinal Plants

By 2022 apprentice Connor Gilmartin

“Watching gardeners label their plants, I vow with all beings to practice the old horticulture, and let the plants identify me” Robert Aitken

This article seeks to bring attention to two plants that possess anti-inflammatory properties, commonly grown in Mastatal, Costa Rica. My goal is to discuss their medicinal properties and suggest simple preparation methods to maximize their efficacy. The plants I will go on to discuss have been shown to bolster your immune system’s response to inflammatory antigens that one is exposed to in urban environments.

Inflammation is a complex physiological and pathological process. It is typically an adaptive response caused by harmful stimuli and conditions to keep the body in homeostasis. When inflammation persists for a long time, “it becomes chronic and can contribute to a variety of chronic diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, arthritis, pancreatitis, cardiovascular, neurodegenerative, metabolic diseases, and some types of cancer” (Peng, et al, 2021). While some diseases are not preventable, many are. We exist in a physiologically, emotionally, and spiritually inflamed world. I firmly believe that we can begin to reduce the effects of this inflammation by utilizing the mosaic of plant medicines revered by our ancestors.

The two plant species I will provide a brief overview of are as follows:

Turmeric (Curcuma longa)

-          (Polyphenol, curcumin, anti-inflammation)

Pau d’arco (Tabebuia rosea)

-          (Immune stimulant, anti-tumor properties, anti-parasitic)

There are a handful of books that are frequently referenced by Rancho Mastatal’s core team. One of these books is Ed Bernhardt’s, “Medicinal Plants of Costa Rica”. If you live in Costa Rica, and you know what’s best for you, you’ll get a copy – and a backup copy – of this amazing, easy to read book.

Freshly harvested turmeric

Bernhardt introduces turmeric as, “An herbaceous perennial plant of the ginger family with a bright orange rhizome”. It is prolific around Rancho Mastatal – walking along the paths of the Ranch will lead you to encounter turmeric everywhere. Turmeric has a long history of being used for both food and medicine. It has been the primary anti-inflammatory herb of ayurvedic medicine for over 6,000 years. Its principle chemical component, curcumin, has anti-cancer effects and is useful for arthritis through its potent antioxidant action. Capsules of dried, ground turmeric powder have been used to relieve stomach problems, liver and gallbladder diseases, arthritis, colds and flus. In Phyllis Balch’s text, “Prescription for Herbal Healing”, she notes, “… Laboratory studies have confirmed that curcumin has anti-inflammatory and anti-arthritic activity… It has been shown to be effective in reducing pain in patients with osteoarthritis… When used at the equivalent of 200mg of curcumin per day, patients with osteoarthritis were able to use 63% less NSAID medications and still obtain relief from pain”. Turmeric is a gorgeous plant with such massive potential. Pulling its fiery orange rhizomes out of the soft jungle soil is a beautiful experience that I consider a privilege.

The branch of a pau d’arco tree ready to be made into a tincture

Another prolific plant species found around Mastatal is the pink trumpet tree – locally referred to as roble de sabana or pau d’arco. During the transition months of March and May, this tree puts on a dazzling display of soft, silken pink flowers that provide a striking contrast against the bright blue skies. When talking botany with elders and herbalists in the community of Mastatal, pau d’arco is never forgotten. It is revered as highly medicinal across Meso and South America. Ed Bernhart writes, “for centuries, people in the neotropics have used the inner bark of pau d’arco to make powerful botanical medicine that restores the immune system”. It has been cited traditionally to treat anemia, arthritis, asthma, bronchitis, boils, cancer, colitis, colds, coughs, diabetes, dysentery, eczema, fevers, liver infections, leukemia, parasites and wounds. There has been a great deal of research on the medicinal properties of the cambium layer of Tabebuia rosea. Researchers have demonstrated that eighteen of the bark’s many organic compounds have medicinal properties. Some of these organic compounds include quinines; compounds that help cleanse the human body of parasites and harmful protozoa. Another well-documented compound contained in the bark of the pau d’arco is lapachol – an organic alcohol that is responsible for the bark’s anti-cancer and tumor-reducing properties. Ed Bernhardt recommends reading, “Pau d’Arco: Immune Power from the Rainforest” by Kenneth Jones to learn more about the complex organic chemistry of the tree’s medicinal compounds. Pau d’Arco’s cambium layer can be prepared as a tea, or as a tincture. Mature branches must be used in the preparation of this medicine. I recommend further reading about the specifics of pau d’arco preparation as it does require some processing prior to drying the bark for tea, or making the tincture.

A student in our PDC with her homemade tincture

Both of these plants can be dried, powdered, and taken as a supplement in capsule form. Their medicinal properties can also be utilized when prepared in a concentrated tea. In my opinion, the most powerful of all preparations is to utilize ethanoyl as a solvent to extract their alcohol-soluble compounds. This concentrated, plant-based liquid is commonly referred to as a tincture. The precursor to distilled ethyl alcohol could be an herbal wine prepared at-home. You can read about how to prepare a simple, tea, sugar and yeast wine (hooch), at this article, written by an apprentice from 2017.

Realizing that plants can serve as medicine fosters a deeper appreciation of our natural environment and increases one’s sense of place. Looking into a forest and seeing it as a nutrient-rich, sentient ecosystem is something that our not-so-distant ancestors did out of necessity. I believe that if more folks started listening to what our plant teachers had to say, we’d live in a healthier, more reverent, less-inflamed world. As Terence McKenna once said, “Avoid gurus, follow plants”.

Holy Basil

Green Hibiscus

Life Everlasting

Gotu Kola

Check out these past related blogs

Jungle Apothecary

Tropical Fruits

Also join us for our yearly Plants as Medicine Workshop

Learn More

Join us for one of our educational workshops. Learn more here.

Making Compost 101

Making Compost 101

By 2022 apprentice Joshua Wright

Smelly, sticky, messy.

Perhaps these are some words to describe your experience with food waste. But it doesn't have to be! Enter the world of composting!

In permaculture we love composting and would never think about just throwing away our food scraps into the trash, because they aren’t waste, they are resources that will benefit our garden and our planet.

Composting is a great way of dealing with your kitchen scraps, autumn leaf litter and/or lawn trimmings, along with any other organic matter that may be in your garden. Dealing with a “waste” product and turning it into something beneficial. In permaculture we also call this stacking functions.

An apprentice flipping our compost pile

What is compost?

Compost is broken down, decomposed organic matter. It occurs naturally in the environment around us as living things decay. Through human interaction this natural process can be sped up.

Why should you be making compost?

Composting has several great benefits:

• It improves soil health. Adding organic matter into soils allows them to better retain moisture leading to reduced irrigation costs. It lends itself to better aerated soils reducing the need to till and it provides habitat for beneficial fungi and micro-organisms to continue the work of decomposition and nutrient cycling. 

• It provides plants with nutrients essential for their growth. The main elements plants need are Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P) and Potassium (K), all of which are present in compost, along with a number of other elements in trace amounts such as Calcium (Ca), Magnesium (Mg), Iron (Fe) and Zinc (Zn).

• Composting diverts waste from ending up in landfills and the incinerator. Both of these require lots of energy and resources to maintain and manage, so by composting you are freeing up time, money, and energy for better utilization elsewhere (building an abundant, regenerative future we can be proud of).

• When in landfills food waste doesn’t have access to oxygen, becoming anaerobic. When decomposing in this airless environment it produces methane and carbon dioxide. When not in balance with natural cycles these gasses contributes to greenhouse gas overload in our atmosphere adding to our global climate crises.

In summary by composting not only are you doing less bad (by producing less pollution) you are actively doing good (building soil which is essential for a healthy planet)! Win, win!

So how do we go about getting started?

Our little wigglers that we use for our vermicompost!

1. First, let’s identify the best location: Ideally you will have a spot in your garden that is out of direct sun and protected from the rain. You will need something to contain the compost in. A wire cage or recycled wood pallet box will both work great. But you can use any containment method that is roughly 1m^3 and allows air to circulate. If you are limited in space or don’t have a yard, there are many great DIY options, such as a plastic bin with holes drilled out. Or check out vermicompost, which uses worms to help you out! Check out this blog article from Mother Jones to learn more about using worms to compost in a small space.

2. Next let’s look at what goes into your compost: We can break this down into two basic categories: "greens" and "browns". "Greens" are materials that contain higher quantities of nitrogen and "browns" contain higher quantities of carbon. Balancing this ratio of greens to browns is what will define the success of your compost operation.

3. This ideal ratio being 25-30 parts carbon to 1 part nitrogen.

   Examples of “greens” are kitchen scraps or fresh lawn clippings. “Browns” can be dried leaves, wood chips, saw dust, etc.

   Remembering that there is carbon in ALL organic material including materials that we classify as “green”, we can achieve our ideal ratio (25-30:1) by adding roughly 2 parts “brown” material to 1 part “green” material.

4. If your compost pile starts to smell, attract flies or is excessively wet add more browns, if it is too dry reduce that amount of brown material you add.

5. Your compost should have the same moisture content as that of a damp sponge. When squeezed firmly no more than a few drops should come out.

Excellent!

Armed with these basics outlined above you are ready to begin your journey into the underworld (soil).

Keep in mind that there is no teacher out there as good as direct experience so get your hands dirty and have fun with it.

One day, we too, shall be compost. And so closes the circle of life.

Emptying out one of our compost toilets

Other Related Blog Articles

Transforming Human Waste into Fertilizer: Compost Toilets

5 “Grow Your Own” Mulch Plants

Learn More

Join us for one of our educational workshops about permaculture design, natural bulding, fermentation, and more. Check out our yearly workshops here.

Greywater: What Is It And How We Use It

Greywater: What Is It And How We Use It

by 2021 apprentice Matthew Raybon

One of our compost toilets where the sink greywater flows onto our orchards

What is Greywater

Greywater is the “waste” water that comes from all household plumbing that is not a toilet. This includes, the shower, bathtub, sinks, and hoses. In most of the contemporary world, greywater is seen as wastewater and is combined with sewage to be chemically treated and dumped into the nearest waterway. In the average household, non-toilet uses make up around 2/3 of water used. This adds up to about 30-50 gallons per person each day. Greywater’s cousin, blackwater, which is the water used by the toilet, makes up the rest of the water used in the typical household. This amounts to around 15-30 gallons of water per person each day (Van Der Ryn, 81). Read about our compost toilets or our biodigester and how these are a more sustainable solution for toilets.

All of our shower grey water is directed to orchard spaces

Woah! That is a whole lot of water. Now, imagine a world where that thing that we currently refer to as “waste” is highly revered as a RESOURCE! A precious thing worthy of a second life where it can aid in enriching the soil and fueling our journey towards a more holistic life. As it turns out, this is more than possible for the average household to pursue and achieve with a little bit of research, design, implementation and maintenance. Using our greywater as a resource hits many principles in permaculture.

Designing your greywater system

To many people the idea of using something that we typically think of as waste to help grow food or water our plants seems unsafe. While greywater is unsafe to drink, if handled and used properly, it is perfectly safe for certain applications. In order to begin designing the appropriate greywater system its necessary to ask a few simple questions:

• What is the volume of greywater being produced?

• What is the source of the greywater? Is it a kitchen sink or a washing machine?

• What is the intended application for the greywater? Are you irrigating an orchard or a vegetable garden?

Once we have answered these questions we can move on to designing and testing a system. At Rancho Mastatal we use a series of very simple low maintenance systems to distribute our greywater as irrigation for our ourchard spaces and ornamental beds. Most of our greywater is coming from our four kitchen sinks and two washing machines. As the water leaves the sink or appliance, it enters into a simple system of surface level PVC piping which utilizes the natural slope in the landscape to direct the greywater to various orchard spaces and ornamental beds. Once the water arrives at the intended zone it is important to distribute the water within the field or garden in a way that does not contribute to erosion or oversaturate one particular plant or tree. Think of a greywater system as a gravity fed, all natural fertilizer delivery system. We want it to feed our trees, but in moderation. In most cases this can be easily accomplished with a combination of branch drains, swales, and detention ponds which will slow spread and sink the water into the different areas.

Branch Drain System

Since our kitchen is particularly active (serving anywhere between 14-30+ people at a time) we use a simple branch drain which splits the grey water into three different pipes. Then these pipes each drain into separate swales. These swales allow the greywater to infiltrate the soil, feeding an orchard space full of bananas, breadfruit trees, and chaya.

Banana Circle

In another application, three less active sinks combine with the rainwater runoff from the roof of the food smithy and main house. This water collects in two small nearby ponds. Around the ponds, in the berm, we have planted a few varietals of banana as well as some Katuk for easy salad access. The greywater that collects in those ponds is diluted with the rainwater from the roof. As it slows and sinks into the earth it helps break down the mulch creating rich and active soil. These are often refered to as banana circles, but you can plant anything on the berms besides bananas.

Things to Consider

When designing your own system its important to consider the different sources of greywater. Kitchen sinks typically contribute the majority of the organic material of your greywater production. In nearly all situations this includes some volume of oils or grease. It’s important for the maintenance of your system to have some sort of grease trap installed in order to prevent the plumbing from clogging. Here at Rancho, we have a greywater and grease trap maintenance check scheduled on our calendar every month. This ensures that the system is maintained.

When utilizing greywater from your washing machine, it is important to consider what sort of soap or detergent is being used and what the environment is that the water will be entering into. Fortunate for us in the tropics, our ecosystem is extremely resilient. This makes it able to mitigate many of the chemicals that go into typical detergents. That said, it is best to avoid boron based detergents and detergents that tout their “softening” abilities.

When it comes to managing the human or synthetic inputs going into the greywater, the strategy that always wins is twofold. First- be conscious of the quantities that are being used. Second- be sure to dilute the greywater with fresh water! In our case at Rancho Mastatal, we experience high levels of rainfall throughout the larger part of the year. Thankfully, this heavily assists in diluting of our greywater inputs.

Applying Greywater

While greywater has the potential to be an incredible resource, it is important to manage and use it properly. As a general rule, its best when directly applied to the soil particularly in orchard type spaces. Here is a brief list of guidelines for applying greywater in food producing spaces:

Guidelines for applying greywater in the garden:

• Apply directly to soil; avoid overhead sprinkling

• Deliver greywater to relatively flat areas or an earthwork designed to slow and spread the greywater

• Use branch drains and swales to disperse the greywater

• Apply mulch and compost to areas receiving greywater to facilitate decomposition (stack functions)

• Greywater is typically alkaline, so avoid using it on acid loving plants

• Mix freshwater in with greywater irrigation - Dillution is key!

• When selecting soaps and cleaning agents be conscious of what those things are made of

• Try to avoid boron based detergents and detergents that tout their softening powers

• Be conscious about your usage of chemical inputs

• Dilution is key! Through the use of a mixture of freshwater (rainwater or otherwise) and grey water, the rich micro biome in your garden or orchards soil will be able to effectively process and integrate the greywater inputs.

Want to Learn More

Join us for our annual Permaculture Design Course to get inspired and hands on education in subjects such as greywater, natural building, agroforestry, and general good practices to designing a more sustainable home and environment.

Swale digging: Water management on the farm is key. Many hands make for much lighter work!

Applied Permaculture Principles

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.

Yucca bammies, green papaya kimchi, fresh garden salad and a mango salsa…yummy!

Patacones, lacto fermented Jalapanos, pickled turmeric, green papaya kraut, dairy kefir sauce

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!!!

Wing bean pickles

Chayote pickles

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.

Bamboo, a fantastic renewable building material

Join us April 2021 for our Bamboo Management Class or our Bamboo Construction Course

Fuel efficient stoves

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.

Our local sugar, tapa dulce

Sacks and baskets used to store food

Permaculture Principle #8 - Design from Pattern to Detail

Students in our annual PDC learning to use the A-frame

Nice lines of trees on contour

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.

Don Gerardo using his ox to press the sugar cane

Dona Flor feeding her chickens

Permaculture Principle #12 - Use Edges & Value the Marginal

Homemade banana vinegar

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.

A variety of aging homemade vinegars

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.

Why Permaculture?

Why Permaculture?

by PJ Barton

2019 Apprentice

During our Apprenticeship at Rancho Mastatal we spend a year immersed in a working example of how Permaculture can work on a practical level. We take several workshops throughout the year including the annual Permaculture Design Certification (PDC).

Presentation at the PDC

What is Permaculture?

Permaculture is the design system for creating sustainable human environments. In a modern society, which is not sustainable could permaculture hold a solution?

Permaculture was coined in the 1970s by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, the word is a contraction of permanent agriculture and permanent culture which are intertwined in our history as a society. By pulling both culture and agriculture into our attention we a focusing on what the relationship is between them, how they function together as a whole. Permaculture looks at meeting the needs of the present in harmony with our environment. Although it is designed as a agricultural practices it also can be applied socially. The broad framework means it can include multiple parts of our society linking things together and how they function as a whole.

The 3 Core Ethics of Permaculture

1. Care of the Earth

Care of all living and non living things. By applying this ethic we can appreciate all organisms on earth. Invisible to the naked eye are all the mico-organisms upon which life is built; everything is alive. It is not obvious at first that a plant is breathing and under its roots there's an incredible network of organisms working together. If we view all things as beings our attitude and relationship will change towards them, developing respect for what we interact with.

2. Care of the People

As a society/ individual we need to meet our basic needs as humans: food, water and shelter. Considering our basic needs while creating systems that can sustain us in the long term. Permaculture uses these basic needs to design systems that can hold solutions for the growing inequality that is gathering pace on a global scale. Modern systems don't focus on care instead they're driven through profit. Many of our social programs designed to care for the less fortunate are being dismantled in an effort to create more profit; looking after one another and care are given little time into our busy society.

3. Contribution of Surplus

This ethic is a way of circulating the wealth back into the system. In a our conditioned society, rather than circulating wealth it is common to hoard it - the idea of spending all of your wealth is a radical idea, when is enough money or wealth enough to have surplus? By reinvesting surplus, it self perpetuates the movement. The system would be regenerative constantly sustaining itself. Like any system if you continually extract resources without replenishing them it will eventually collapse. When the needs of a society are not met from within the system we look to extra energy inputs and ultimately pay the price in increasing energy consumption and its resulting pollution.

The ethics of permaculture give us another way to view the world which is perhaps different from modern, conventional society. Observing and approaching situations guided by these ethics permaculture can be applied to help us steward the earth and guide our activities in a better direction. Our fragmented society often misses the connection that helps it function as a whole seeing only the tip of a large iceberg. Sometimes we make connections but fail as a whole. Moving together, finding patterns that work and what needs to be improved. We are surrounded by nature who we can observe and mimic. She becomes our inspiration helping us establish sustainable systems. Perhaps that is why we should use permaculture.

For more information about Permaculture check out some of the excellent free resources on David Holmgrens website get involved in you local permaculture movement and consider taking a Permaculture Design Certification near you or with us!

La Importancia de la Permacultura

La Importancia de la Permacultura

Rhina Guido Tellez, Estudiante de Permacultura

La creciente crisis social y medioambiental nos ha obligado a buscar métodos y procesos alternativos que reduzcan el impacto humano en la naturaleza y nuestro entorno. Como una de las principales alternativas de cambio, la Permacultura constituye un sistema donde se combinan la vida de los seres humanos de una manera respetuosa y beneficiosa con los animales y plantas, y donde se logran implementar soluciones de menor impacto medioambiental para satisfacer las principales necesidades humanas. Si bien el termino Permacultura suena nuevo o hasta desconocido para algunos, podríamos traducirlo en ecología, desarrollo sustentable, preservación del hábitat, practicas eco amigables, etc. Este término no es más que la compilación de éticas y principios de diseño universales en planeación, desarrollo, mantenimiento, organización y preservación del hábitat apto para sostenerse en el futuro.

La Permacultura reúne una seria de principios éticos y de diseño que aplicados en áreas como la Arquitectura hacen posible la creación de entornos sustentables. Los principios éticos están dirigidos al desarrollo de la conciencia en temas del cuido de la tierra, relaciones humanas y equidad. Por su parte, los principios de diseño son los que fácilmente podemos ver materializados, en el ambiente construido con la utilización de materiales y técnicas de construcción locales, la autoconstrucción, climatización natural, implementación de técnicas eco amigables como sanitarios secos, reutilización y reciclaje, generación de energías renovables y cultivo biointensivo.

¿Por qué es importante la Permacultura? Porque nos encontramos en ese punto de inflexión donde se hace necesario tomar medidas que nos permitan crear ambientes más seguros y sanos. El sistema permacultural nos ayuda a generar cambios a nivel personal y local para proceder con los niveles colectivos y global. Este como tal contribuye poco a poco a reducir las marcadas brechas sociales, los altos niveles de pobreza, la falta de acceso a viviendas dignas así como a lograr cambios en los sistemas económicos globales que producen y reproducen desigualdad y que limitan el acceso a bienes físicos y sociales.

La Permacultura nos permite crear sistemas productivos sostenibles en espacios de área reducida, lo que significa que puede ser fácilmente aplicado tanto en zonas rurales como urbanas mediante el reconocimiento de los patrones y procesos naturales para luego ser integrados en nuestra vida diaria sin alterar el orden natural de los elementos que constituyen los diferentes ecosistemas. Su principal importancia radica en que no solo genera cambios a nivel personal sino que una vez que es implementado produce una especie de efecto domino en los demás ámbitos de nuestras vidas como en las prácticas de consumo, relaciones humanas, niveles de respuesta ante temas sociales, etc.

Teniendo en cuenta que uno de los principales agravantes de las problemáticas sociales y ambientales  lo constituyen en muchas casos los mismos gobiernos locales que se rehúsan a destinar los recursos necesarios para llevar a cabo políticas públicas que ayuden a contrarrestar las diferentes problemáticas que aquejan a nuestras sociedades; se hace necesario contar con espacios como el que nos brinda Rancho Matastal, donde haciendo uso del método de aprender haciendo, podemos adquirir una serie de conocimientos teórico-prácticos para luego ser capaces de brindar soluciones que pueden ser fácilmente aplicadas en nuestras comunidades sin la necesidad de contar con altos niveles de experiencia.

Rancho Matastal no solo nos brinda la oportunidad de obtener conocimientos básicos en temas como Permacultura, Bioconstrucción, Agroforestación, entre otros; sino que podemos experimentar en primera persona la oportunidad de convivir en un entorno sustentable y evidenciar los cambios que se pueden lograr con la implementación de sistemas amigables con la naturaleza y que a su vez  propician la preservación de las costumbres y tradiciones que forman parte de la identidad de cada lugar donde son desarrollados.  Además de su aporte a la preservación del medio ambiente este tipo de centros de educación nos ayudan a elevar nuestros niveles de conciencia acerca de los efectos que tienen cada acción individual y colectiva en nuestro entorno y que terminan convirtiéndose en verdaderas experiencias de vida que hacen replantearnos hábitos y costumbres que pudieran afectar directa o indirectamente nuestro entorno.

Contemplating an Uncertain Future: The Ranch and Climate Change

Contemplating an Uncertain Future:  The Ranch and Climate Change

by Tim O'Hara

Climate change, after decades of lulling at the bottom of the news cycle, has belatedly made it into the headlines as increasing numbers of people become aware, convinced and concerned about the environmental and social impacts of the Earth’s evolving atmospheric conditions.  I frequently think about disrupted weather patterns and what my role in this unfolding story should be.  

Many climate experts argue that we have surpassed the carrying capacity of our planet and that our natural resource base cannot support our modern lifestyles at our current population numbers.  I find this argument believable given the observable degradation of our natural systems everywhere I go.  Modern technology might for a time delay the worst impacts of our behavior, but soon we will stare more squarely in the face the consequences of the environmental alterations that we’ve set in motion.  Indications of a more brittle world are clear to me. 

Humans are descending to systematically destruct our limited natural resource base and in turn one another.  I am discouraged thinking about the future that my daughter is inheriting and struggle to decide how to divide my time between work, personal care and engagement in efforts that help mitigate some of our biggest societal challenges, especially climate change.  I’m not optimistic, but I cherish life, my family and my friends and strive to do my part in figuring out how we can usher in a more just world.        

I was recently asked how Rancho Mastatal is responding to climate change and whether we feel as if we are helping to create an alternative future for those becoming heir to the approaching changes.  In large part Robin and I started the Ranch to address and answer this question.  Widespread social and environmental injustice partly inspired us to leave the United States and a more common life path to set up an “alternative” project that we hoped would contribute to a brighter future.  We are dedicated to learning and teaching more environmentally appropriate ways to grow food in poor soils, build structures that are kinder on Mother Earth, and implement practices that allow us to meet our basic needs without destroying the elements that make it possible for the soil and atmosphere to sustain us.  We are helping to teach future generations that there is indeed a better way to live; a way that is not dominated by an addiction to consumer purchases and modern conveniences or reliant on oppressive economic systems.  We are experimenting with community structures that rely on cooperation and regeneration and have made efforts to conserve a relatively large and intact tract of rainforest.  

A loss of corporate and governmental confidence in dealing with our warming climate has prompted us to start to execute strategies that make us less reliant on traditional businesses and executive bodies.  We’re working towards attaining personal and communal well-being with our everyday activities and are compelled to look for ways to avoid our compromised medical care systems by looking at food as medicine.  We’re looking for ways to engage in the process of designing and building our own homes with the help of friends and learning techniques to grow food for our family and community as global food supplies become more susceptible to unsteady financial systems and weather patterns.  Communities are being torn apart by pollution, sickness, flagging economies and racism.  To address this we want to learn and practice other forms of governance and community structure that we believe can serve us and the world more equitably.  

Our modest efforts won’t be enough to stem the suffering for everyone.  In fact the sad truth is that it might not even prevent future hardships for myself and family.  Nevertheless, we’ve chosen to focus on this work with the hope that profound change might come from the accumulation of millions of small acts, projects and movements that when influential enough will begin to shift the human perspective to a more caring one.  It’s also a way for us to prepare for changes ahead.  

Future challenges will in part be most successfully met by strong networks of compassionate people dedicating their lives to the local problems that most impact them.  As our daughter gets older we’ll encourage her to explore avenues that will simultaneously challenge her intellectually while leading to improvements in our world.  Some of the areas that I encourage Ranch students to explore include energy conservation and renewable energy, education, responsible food production, social and environmental activism, politics, medicine, and counseling.  A warming climate will require bold and courageous engineers, teachers, farmers, activists, health care professionals, mentors, and politicians.  I encourage each of you today to take one small step to become a more engaged steward of our planet.  If not now, then when?

---

Check out our updated workshop schedule to see how you can start building relevant skills to make a difference.  

Read this interesting article about how agroforestry can help to sequester carbon, Can Dirt Save the Earth?