Permaculture Design & The Importance of Recreation and Team-Oriented Thinking
By 2022 Apprentice AJ Nolan
Playing volleyball down at the local field. All ages welcome!
Permaculture thinking moves us towards finding solutions that can serve multiple functions. This can be known as stacking functions with the goal to develop more “free time”. Simply put and maybe more traditionally put, “killing two birds with one stone”. How you spend that free time is something that really gets very little attention in the permaculture community and one that I am particularly interested in. Once you begin to think about it, the way we spend our “free time” will define the sustainability of the entire system. If we choose to pack in more projects and more tasks, in the short term we may benefit from our added productivity, but is this sustainable in the long term? In this article I am going to talk about how we design our lives using permaculture based thinking to create sustainable patterns for not just our farm but for our lives. Bill Mollinson once asked, “How can we maximize hammock time?”. Whilst I agree with the sentiment, I prefer to run around in my free time!
We aim to create balance between the needs of the farm (which has endless lists of projects that could be done) and the needs of us as individuals to relax, recreate, unwind and decompress. The benefit of playing team sports together helps build team morale, a sense of togetherness and comradery that is vitally important to the fluid functioning of our community.
Think back to your childhood days. What were you spending most of your time doing? If you said playing video games, I can’t relate, but if you responded with getting dirty and running around outside, I recommend you keep reading.
The first day I arrived at the Ranch for my year-long apprenticeship, everyone was involved in a heated game of volleyball. I joined in and after brief introductions, I shared the field with myriad new faces, and we worked together toward a common goal for the next hour. I couldn’t have asked for a better initiation into Ranch life than that first volleyball game.
As a child, playing outside is instinctive and it’s how we begin to understand the physics of the natural world. In school there are scheduled times to play outside. Where I’m from, it’s called recess. When I was growing up, we were given three different times throughout the day to release our pent-up energy and run rampant through the school yard. As I got older and school years passed, the allotted recess time slowly disappeared and was replaced with longer class times.
Many community members take daily trips to our waterfall
Recreation is an important aspect of life that we begin to lose as we age. It’s the hardest part of life to hold onto because it’s no longer allotted for us. Western society has deemed it unimportant and prioritizes work and time spent at a desk. Here at the Ranch, we have designed in ample opportunities to recreate. Pitching in to clean up brunch, taking a trip to the waterfall, practicing yoga, and reading a good book are all forms of recreation. We have scheduled in plenty of downtime and we have made a conscious decision to start the work day early in order to end our work day earlier to allow more time for afternoon team recreation. The inspiration for this blog post comes from what I like to call 16:00 Mass (a.k.a sports time).
Here at the Ranch we schedule our free time. That’s how serious we are about it. We are currently in the dry season, so the “cancha” (sports field) gets a lot of use by the Mastatal community this time of year. Every town in Costa Rica is given a church, an elementary school, a community center, and a sports field. Our main forms of team recreation are frisbee and volleyball. Every day I trot down to the field at 15:50, tired from a full workday at the Ranch. I’ve got a frisbee, volleyball, and a bunch of bright orange cones in my hand. As I step out onto the field, I look at everyone’s tired eyes and I smile because I know that it’s all about to change. We split up into teams and the game begins. I begin to move into my body and out of my head. Before I’m aware of my actions, I stop to catch my breath and realize how much energy I have. I sweat not only from running around but from the intensity of the game. Coupled with teamwork, this form of exercise alters my thought pattern and I find myself in a state of euphoria and limitless energy. For the next hour I’m on Cloud 9 and I don’t want the excitement to end. When the game does end, my bare feet thank me for stopping and I find myself in high spirits with an overwhelming feeling of accomplishment and grit. Everyone is talking of food now and my stomach rumbles in anticipation for a Ranch dinner.
I’ve always placed great importance on exercise in my life, but I mainly participated in individual sports like swimming or tennis. Working in teams at the Ranch is paramount to our success here and it’s no different on the field. Playing a team sport changes my mood and puts me in a flow state. No longer am I thinking of the past or the future. I am right there on the field in the present moment. If my mind strays away, my teammates are sure to let me know. I can no longer only think of myself - I must take other people’s needs and wants into account. Playing a team sport necessitates quick thinking and sound decision making. These qualities allow for a dynamic community and encourages the development of well-rounded individuals. Whenever I’m having an off day, I feel a sense of balance and grounding after running around on the field with my peers.
Enjoying the refreshing swims in the river
I am extremely lucky to be living in a community that prioritizes recreation and down-time. The world would be a much happier place if a higher value was placed on these activities. It’s a privilege to have free-time and I encourage others to do the same. Play outside with your kids, join a local soccer league, take a yoga class, or pick up that book you’ve been wanting to read forever. Whatever your preferred form of recreation is, it will dramatically alter your mental state and contribute to your happiness and overall well-being.
One thing that has been learnt over the years at the Ranch though, is that recreation time must be planned in. If we leave it to chance it becomes difficult for us to find space for it with all the other tasks and activities going on. Although Permaculture Design tends to focus on the design of your land based project, food forest or garden systems, I think it is also very important to place a large emphasis on planning our social lives, activities and recreation times. Collectively we have found that just like planning a garden and selecting the best place to plant your favourite perennial salad crop, it is vitally important to plan your daily activities and make sure to plan in recreation time.
How you choose to spend your recreation time is up to you but if you need me, I’ll be down at the “cancha”.
Other Community and Permaculture Related Blogs
How to Run a Permaculture Internship
Enriching Community Soil: 5 Simple Strategies that Support Sustainable Relationships
View of the sports field and La Cangreja National Park