Community

Social Permaculture: The Secret to a Successful Community

Social Permaculture:  The Secret to a Successful Community

The people part of our work is arguably the trickiest.  Even though it takes experience, know-how and intelligence to design and install orchards, build buildings, and manage water, I’d say that they all pale in comparison to the work that’s required to create a holistic and healthy human environment in which to live.

Rancho Spa-Statal: Finding Balance and Pleasure in a Life on the Farm

Rancho Spa-Statal: Finding Balance and Pleasure in a Life on the Farm

A day here can be very physically demanding: cutting bamboo, hauling bananas, and moving piles of sand and clay. I have learned that building a community and living in alignment with the Earth require sweat and persistence. But the Ranch has also taught me that finding healthy ways to relax and have fun is equally important for finding balance. If a community is going to last, you have to find ways to laugh and spark joy in any situation.

Life Lessons From Moving Piles

Life Lessons From Moving Piles

There are piles of sand and clay ready to be formed into adobe bricks or wattle and daub mix, piles of starfruit and lemons waiting to be fermented, stacks of bamboo waiting for the next bamboo construction workshop, piles of green papaya anticipating its second life as kimchi, piles and piles of knowledge held in peoples brains, piles of books filling up the library waiting for the next curious mind, piles of manure, compost piles, worm piles, piles and piles of piles.

Permaculture Education: Virtual Reality and Keeping it Real

Permaculture Education:  Virtual Reality and Keeping it Real

Nearly a decade ago I moved to where I live now-- a tiny, isolated, town in rural Latin America. Its charms include lush towers of tropical rain forest, rainbows of succulent fruits, and a nightly chorus of a thousand frogs. A single disheveled bus leaves in the morning and returns at night, except on Sundays, or when the road washes out. The place is home to farmers, families, and a spattering of eclectic foreigners. The town's namesake, the Mastate, is a tree that bears a thick white sap which people sometimes drink in coffee, like milk.