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

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.

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.

How Rancho Mastatal Changed my Life

How Rancho Mastatal Changed my Life

By Kristen Mandala,

It seems hyperbolic, but it’s hard to overstate the overwhelmingly positive effect that my experiences at Rancho Mastatal have had on my life, and my current career path.

I was first introduced to Rancho Mastatal when I was running high school trips with a small Canadian eco-tourism company in January of 2017, called Evolve Tours. I was able to experience first-hand the effect the ranch has on inspiring young minds and reconnecting them with nature through hands-on activities and facilitation-style learning. I knew from the first night staying in the bamboo tree house (affectionately called the Hooch) that I was in for an unforgettable experience. The peaceful jungle-sleeps, coupled with the incredibly healthful and delicious food made it easy to return the following year to bring more youth to stay at the ranch.

The Hooch at sunrise

They weren’t the only ones who gained knowledge from the lesson plans. The more I sat in on and participated in activities, the more I realized that my passion for sustainability and food systems could be more than my side “passion project” that I indulged in after regular work hours. Rancho Mastatal planted the seeds for what has become my new career back home in Toronto.

After moving on from touring, I decided to invest in my own education and enrolled in the Permaculture Design Course in April of 2018. This would be my first time travelling to the ranch as an individual and my first non-traditional education experience post-grad. My two weeks learning under Scott Gallant, Rachel Jackson, Laura Killingbeck, Chris Shanks, and Alejandro Arango as well as the incredible Core Team (love and gratitude to Nic, Ali, Timo, and Robin) and the 2018 apprentices was truly transformative.

PDC lesson in our Ceiba Lounge

I was able to fully immerse myself in the world of permaculture, sustainable living, and social/food justice surrounded by like minded people from all over the world. It was like summer camp when I was a kid in all of the best ways, intersected with some of the most inspiring and stimulating lessons and conversations I’ve ever been apart of. The two weeks not only expanded my knowledge of regenerative ecology and permaculture, but also instilled in me a deep sense of optimism for the future state of the world knowing that there are so many incredibly intelligent people who want to bring the earth back to it’s roots through community-centered activism and organizing.

Fast-forward a year, I am lifelong friends with many of the people from the PDC, who have proven to be a beautiful support-system regardless of time zones; I have created a sustainable consulting company called The Greener Good, aimed at inspiring those in schools and offices throughout the Toronto area to incorporate sustainable habits into their daily lives through on-site workshops; and I am eternally grateful that I trusted myself and invested in my education by studying Permaculture Design at Rancho Mastatal.

Enjoying the waterfall

My highlights of my time at the Ranch include: waking up and doing yoga on the deck overlooking the jungle, the coffee, the food (cannot emphasize enough how good the damn food is), SO MUCH LEARNING (from someone who struggled to stay engaged in school, I was hungry to learn more each day), running to the waterfall at lunch for a refreshing dip, walking to class and picking fruits on the way, playing soccer or ultimate before dinner, ending each night with some of the best conversations, and waking up and doing it all again.

Locally sourced meals

Okay, I should end this now as I am currently flooded with nostalgia and my emotions doth runneth over as I type. To the folks at the Ranch, thank you for reminding me of my strengths, empowering me to use them, and for making a small piece of Costa Rica feel like home. I continue to thank Mother Nature before my meals and express gratitude at every turn, a practice introduced by Robin and Timo that I will always carry with me.

If anyone is looking for a sign to invest in themselves, this is it.

If you are interested in learning more about my project you can go to:

Instagram: www.instagram.com/@the.greener.good

Website: www.thegreenergood.net

Facebook: www.facebook.com/kristen.greener.good

With love and gratitude,

Kristen

The Basic Pantry Analysis: Design, Food, Sourcing

The Basic Pantry Analysis:  Design, Food, Sourcing

By Laura Killingbeck, Porvenir Design's Food System Designer

The Human Diet as An Ecological System
Cuisine is diet that's unique to a physical place and a human cultural group. We can taste the patterns of modern cuisine in the melding of characteristic ingredients into characteristic forms. Wheat noodles with tomato sauce points us in the direction of Italy. Fermented spiced cabbage leads us to Korean kimchi. Even amid tremendous variation, and even as these cultural foods are exported, appropriated, and evolve in different ways in different places, we are still able in many cases to recognize a cultural and geographical narrative embedded within relational patterns of flavors and forms.

Across the span of human agricultural history, cuisine sprung from ecological relationships—people ate what grew well in their area, and they grew what nourished them. Humans shaped the morphology of plant, animal, and microbial species by selective breeding; in turn, these foods changed the physiology of the human body. Cultural groups vary widely in their tolerance and desire for certain foods—these are genetic adaptations to their peoples' long history of evolution with specific cuisine. The co-transformation of people and food species was exquisitely mediated by the opportunities and limitations of the ecological niche of the place where they lived. Growth was balanced and calibrated within an ecological feedback loop of regenerating resources.
But in recent human history, globalization expanded our access to place and people, while simultaneously breaking this ecological feedback loop. We travel, and food travels; neither is linked, necessarily, in place. People are still connected with the world, but now we are connected differently. This shift is transforming the evolution of cuisine in unprecedented ways.
 

If you imagine the path of human ecology as a train traveling down a railroad track, globalization is the conductor turning the train onto a new track. Human relationships with food are now evolving in a different direction than they did before. The foundation for cuisine is no longer an ecological relationship between people and place; it is an economic relationship between people and business. Businesses grow or produce food and ship it around the world, where chains of distributors buy it and warehouse it in grocery stores. Surely this is not the only way that food works, and local food cultures still thrive in many areas. But it is a style of human-food interaction that is growing and replacing such local cultures. As we become increasingly separate from our direct relationship with the ecological patterns that once mediated food and diet, we become more deeply fused with a new, abstract, relationship with global commerce. The foods we like to eat often have less to do with healthy ecology, and more to do with macroeconomics and marketing.

We know there are a lot of problems with this. The Western Diet (aka, global cuisine) is correlated to chronic disease and poor health. Mass agriculture depletes soil and species diversity. Industrial pesticides and fertilizers damage ecosystems. There is a lot more to say but I don't have to say it—on some level we know, all the time, that this is bad. And even as we know, we still eat global-industrial foods, because we're hungry, its what we know, and its what's there.

Post-Harvest Permaculture Design
Permaculture design is essentially applied ecology for human development. It studies and teaches how life relates to place, with the object of sustaining that life and that place. A lot of the literature within Permaculture Design centers on the infrastructure development of building, landscape, and agricultural systems. It most often highlights the agricultural side, with ideas and methods of learning how to integrate human agricultural systems with the larger ecology of life on earth.

But interestingly, the focus on agricultural systems within Permaculture Design methodologies often only lightly brushes post-harvest food handling and cuisine development. The general thinking is that once people understand food production as a functional part of ecological systems, they will be able to grow more food. This has been very successful for many people, with one caveat—growing plants, animals, or microbial species that are edible does not mean you are growing food that is ready to eat. A a plot of wheat and a chicken pecking bugs can be wonderful parts of an agricultural ecosystem, but if you want a chicken sandwich there is still a lot of work to do.

Over the last nine years I've worked with two farms and education centers who dedicated themselves to the process of farm-to-table food production—one in temperate Massachusetts, and the other in tropical Costa Rica. This allowed me to study and practice food preservation and processing across climates, and see the similarities and differences that unfolded.

At Rancho Mastatal in Costa Rica, even very common foods, like malanga, tiquisque, cuadrados, pejibaye, and chaya were all new to us. And what do you do with a sudden hundred pounds of ripe bananas? At Round the Bend Farm in Massachusetts, we needed to preserve large quantities of food seasonally to last the winter, in a way that was totally different than in the tropics. We also transitioned from a home-scale cooking facility to one which could serve hundreds, and had to scale our systems up to meet new demands. At both organizations, it took us a lot of time, and a lot of trial and error, to acquire the skills, tools, and labor to do these things. And to do these things efficiently, it took structured seasonal planning. The teaspoon of ginger you need now in your recipe had to be grown a year ago, then harvested, dried, powdered, and stored. We had to learn how to organize ourselves in relation to local food, in ways that were intrinsically different from how we used to organize ourselves in relation to globalized foods.

The human element of how we interacted with food based on our personal and cultural backgrounds was another huge piece of the puzzle for local eating, especially in Costa Rica. We craved western-style bread products; people didn't always like Costa Rican cuisine; some people were afraid of new foods like fermented bananas. Eating locally meant coming to terms with the cultural references for desirability of foods we had brought with us, in relation to the ecological and cultural backdrop of a new country and climate. We had to adapt ourselves to new styles of cuisine, and adapt that cuisine to ourselves as newcomers.

Most of my work in Costa Rica and Massachusetts was to create, systematize, and implement post-harvest food processing and preservation strategies based on farm foods. I also worked with numerous farm owners, communities, and homesteaders who were and are in the process of divesting from their dependence on global-market food supplies. It is through these relationships and experiences that I began to notice consistent patterns in the challenges people faced in transforming their farms into food. I started comparing patterns of limitations and successes that people were reporting, with those of the organizations I was working with. I used permaculture design to organize these patterns into a systematic format that I could use to consult with people about how to achieve more efficient and accelerated farm-to-table food system success.

I call this consultation service the Basic Pantry Analysis. The title and process drew inspiration from many collaborators in the fields of permaculture design and farm-to-table cuisine; in particular the work of Costa Rican ethnobotonist Rafael Ocampo, as well as that of the Sat Yoga Institute. A similar process focused on family nutrition has also been promoted by the Instituto de Nutrición de Centroamérica y Panamá (INCAP). My version of this process is based on my experience working with farms and communities, and is an adaptation of a wonderful wealth of collaboration among many individuals and organizations.

The Basic Pantry Analysis
The Basic Pantry Analysis matches the ecological needs of your land, with your cultural and personal frames of reference, your dietary needs and desires, and your resource capacity, to form a “basic pantry” of ingredients, whole and value added, that you will use to develop your own dynamic cuisine—that is, the meals you eat every day to sustain yourself in the place you live. This process is useful for anyone who wants to accelerate their ability to grow, process, and eat local foods.

Your Basic Pantry will be designed through a combination of personal decisions and desires, which inform a multitude of what are often very simple tasks. Those big ideas and those little tasks are what build the complex whole. The consultation service is divided into four primary parts: Vision, Layout, Basic Pantry, and Adaptation. The scope of service varies depending on the client's needs and desires.

Sample Outline of Basic Pantry Service
Please note this varies based on client needs.

Vision
This is the overall concept of your cuisine. Exploration of goals and values, and how those relate to your capacity. Make decisions about priorities for ecological, cultural, dietary, financial, factors.

What the client receives:

    •    A one paragraph vision statement for your cuisine.
    •    A one page analysis of the factors and values that contribute to that vision.
    •    A sample set of meals you could expect to eat over the course of the year.

Layout
This is the architectural layout of your plan—it shows clearly how different food elements and tasks fit into your cuisine over time.

What the client receives:

    •    Daily, weekly, monthly, and/or annual list of post-harvest food tasks for your mature food system.
    •    Analysis of tools and infrastructure.
    •    Analysis of skills and labor needed.
    •    Basic five year analysis of how your food system transitions through time.
  
Basic Pantry
You need lots of ingredients to make meals—this is the list of those ingredients, whole and value-added. I work closely with the agricultural team to make recommendations about food species.

What the client receives:

    •    Sourcing and Growing list
    •    Processed and Preserved foods list

Adaptation
Your Basic Pantry Analysis is a starting point, not an end. It will grow and shift and evolve as you and your land do. This section is a structured feedback loop to help you grow and shift your cuisine based on your priorities.

What the client receives:

    •    Design concept follow up questions
    •    Blank harvest, processing, and/or other charts for feedback
    •    Supporting appendix—contains client-specific documents on further skills and strategies, and/or other supplementary documentation as needed.

For more information on costs and deliverables of this service please write our team at info@porvenirdesign.com.

For information on food related workshops at Rancho Mastatal please see go to our Workshops page.  
 

Where to Buy Your Trees and Seeds in Costa Rica?

Where to Buy Your Trees and Seeds in Costa Rica?

By Nic, Core Team

Costa Rica has always been a challenging place to source your materials, as more places are getting online though, it is getting easier and easier to find things that were once impossible.

We are delighted to be able to share with you some of our favorite places to buy grafted fruit trees, seeds and so much more

Gary Zill is one of the leading produces of tropical grafted trees in Costa Rica and the tropics. A must visit in Orotina area. Check his website out for more info

Peter Kring runs a fantastic botanical gardens in Puerto Viejo and has many rare and difficult to find grafted fruit trees. Check out his Facebook, he also sells fruits at the puerto viejo farmers market every week.

The La Garita area in Alajuela just off the pan american highway near the airport is a place with many many nurseries, it is probably one of the best areas to purchase your more commonly available fruit trees like mango and citrus, but they are unlikely to have any more niche trees like Durian or Salak. El Punto is one we have used in the past.

CATIE in Turrialba area has a large seedbank of cover crops, native trees, timber species and some fruit trees. you can contact them through their website for upto date info about what they currently have.

ICE, Costa Rica’s electricity company usually has stock of native trees and nitrogen fixers available for free for reforestation projects. They can be phoned for free on 800-VIVEROS (800-8483-767) for more info.

For local annual vegetable seeds, our friends at Semillas Plantae have a fantastic selection of organic seeds available in country that can even be delivered to your house!

At the Ranch we also have a small nursery with a variety of Nitrogen Fixing Species, grafted fruit trees etc.. Please contact us if you would like to know what we currently have in stock.

The Earth University also maintains an extensive nursery, David Guido can be contacted on +506- 8639-9928

Join us for our annual Permaculture Design Course to learn more about designing, implementing, and maintaining your own farm and project.

8 Tips for Starting your Tropical Homestead

8 Tips for Starting your Tropical Homestead

by Scott Gallant

Originally published at the Porvenir Design blog.

You’ve just purchased your dream property in tropical Costa Rica. You want to grow your own food. You are anxious to get to work now, have bought some plants from a nursery you randomly drove by, and have a shovel in hand, but...where to start?

Most of our clients fall on either side of a spectrum of project implementation. Either they experience paralysis by analysis, overthinking every step, their confidence slowly eroding, or they dive in head first without any planning. Either way they hire our team at Porvenir Design to bring them to the middle. How can we take our time and plan while simultaneously moving forward with the energy and confidence that is required to see a project to completion? The answer revolves around good goal setting and thoughtful design. So as you look to set your goals and follow the permaculture design process, here are a few tips we’ve picked up over the years for starting your tropical homestead.

Consider Access First

Before you do anything: planting a garden, siting a fruit tree, digging earthworks; make sure you know how you will access that space afterwards. The most common reason for systems to fail is that they are difficult to access. It may be easy to plant those nut trees at the bottom of the steep gully, but walking and slipping and falling down that slope in the middle of the rainy season, year after year, will quickly erode your enthusiasm for those plants’ care.

Paths should be wide, 1.5 meters at least, allow wheelbarrow access if possible, and should only be lined with plants that will not interfere with your movement. Anything that makes walking on a path less desirable means that whatever is at the end of the route will get less care and be less productive.

Consider lining paths with mundo grass for erosion control and delineation. Plant species around the path that you can trim in the rainy season for more sunlight and let grow in the dry season for more shade.

No Bare Soil

Do not underestimate the power of the tropical sun and rain to erode exposed soil. Anytime that you find bare soil on your property, you should instantly be thinking about how you can cover that soil with dead or living mulch. This will lower the soil temperature, increase nutrient cycling, improve water retention and so much more.

A dead mulch is effective and can be anything from grass clippings to pea gravel to chopped banana trunks. A living mulch is even more effective. This is a cover of living plants, also called a ground cover, that perform specific functions. Good tropical ground covers include peanut grass, sweet potato, wandering Jew, Okinawan spinach, and many beautiful ornamentals.

Don’t Overestimate Your Soil Fertility

It is easy to think that with a little compost from the Ag store and some mulch that your garden will be rocking for years to come. Clearly plants thrive in the soil all around your site; the tropics are a prolific place. But that doesn’t mean your soil is high in nutrients, has a balanced pH, or has a healthy microbial population. Most of us buying land in the tropics are working with degraded hill sides that were formerly cattle pasture. This is not prime farm land. Many of the plants we want to grow will struggle in this soil. Don’t be surprised if your first tomatoes and cucumbers struggle.

Fortunately soil is the component of our ecosystem that we can change the fastest. By actively promoting microbial health, planting leguminous trees and shrubs, providing fungal biomass, and reducing erosion we can quickly turn a site’s soil productive. Soil fertility requires consistent maintenance.

Tropical Tubers and Perennial Greens

Speaking of tomatoes and cucumbers, don’t bother growing these outside in your first year. Instead focus on very easy to grow, nutritious local foods adapted to the common soil conditions and heavy rain fall. Our typical western style vegetables can be grown in the tropics but the pest pressure is high here and these crops haven’t been bred with the same defense mechanisms.

Focus on tropical tubers such as yuca, sweet potato, taro, and yam. Plant greens like chaya, Haitian basket vine, and zorillo. Learn how to prepare them for your kitchen and enjoy!

Never Stop Planting and Observing

Don’t be afraid to put plants in the ground. You will plant stuff in poor locations, but that's okay on a home scale. Its better to move forward than not at all. If a year later you don’t like a plant’s location, you can transplant it! Most plants in the tropics transplant well with little shock.

It is only through the act of observing your plants over time that you can learn from them. Through good observation and feedback you knowledge level will zoom ahead. You will begin to see the pollinators in action, understand the rivulets of water moving your mulch around, and become familiar with the seasonality of your tropical climate. If you consistently put time toward putting new plants in the ground, and observing them, you will quickly develop a lush and tropical feel to your site.

Learn to Propagate your Own Plants

Related to the previous tip, learning to propagate your own plants will save you time and money. It will accelerate the biological succession of your homestead. A lot of tropical plants propagate vegetatively from cuttings or root divisions. As you travel around the country carry a pair of garden clippers and a sharp trowel, and when you see a new plant you love, ask if you can take a cutting or division.

Set up a nursery right away on your property to accommodate all of these new plants. It should let about 50% of light through, have easy access to water for irrigation, and be protected from the wind. You can start plants in pots, bags, or simply till a bit of soil and mix in good potting mix materials, such as rice hulls, manure, and biochar, and plant directly into this new bed. This is your transplant bed. Once the rains arrive and the plants are large enough move them to their final location. This allows you to gather new plants before you have had the opportunity to site them.

Buy Grafted Fruit Trees

Don’t plant that seedling avocado or mango! Rather, invest the 10 to 20 USD and purchase a grafted tree. Almost all fruit you buy in the store, temperate or tropical origin, is born on a grafted tree and for very good reasons. A seedling avocado can take well over 10 years to produce fruit, while a grafted avocado will produce in year 4 or 5. A grafted tree is a guarantee of a high quality and consistent fruit.

Try to source these trees from nurseries doing the grafting themselves from root stock that is adapted to your soil and climate. Check the graft well before purchasing. Does it look healthy and secure? Don’t purchase trees with fruit on them in the nursery. This can be a sign of stress. But an investment in grafted trees will pay off.

Hire a Consultant

Consider this an investment. Any land use planner, landscape designer, or permaculture designer should be able to articulate to you how an investment in their services will save you time and money in the long run. What is the expected return on investment?

A simple day consultation should help you gain confidence to implement systems. It should allow you to set your priorities and put unnecessary projects on the back-burner. A larger master planning program should save you money by connecting you with the best experts or local resources, such as tree planting programs, and catching costly mistakes on paper before any shovel hits the ground.

A good designer will help you identify your goals and apply those to the landscape, resulting in a beautiful and productive homestead.

Porvenir Design

Looking for more than tips? Consider bringing in the Porvenir Design team for their expert advice!

The Art of Stacking Functions

By Lydia Blocksidge

Tulsi or Sacred Basil harvested for tea.

Stacking functions. What does this phrase mean to you? It could mean any number of things depending on what you apply it to. In this case I'm referring to the term as it's used in permaculture. It is one of the primary principles of permaculture design. Here at the Ranch we employ as many of these principles as we can in our work and in our daily lives. 

Before delving deeper into this topic, I think it's important to first define what permaculture is. There are thousands of definitions available but I've found it useful to come up with my own because it makes the most sense to me. I encourage anyone with an interest to do the same. Here is my definition: Permaculture is a way of life that empowers you to contribute to the regeneration of the earth on a personal level. Its use is guided by a set of principles that can be applied to any aspect of your life. 

Learning about Compost making in our PDC.

With this in mind let's go back to stacking functions. As first mentioned, stacking functions is a primary principle of permaculture and basically refers to elements in your life having multiple functions, instead of a single function. I will offer a few examples to make the concept easier to grasp. A kitchen table is where food is prepared, where meals are shared and it can also become storage space. A fruit tree provides fruit, offers shade, produces mulch, fire wood and a climbing structure. Try to think of elements in your life and what you use them for. If you can only come up with one use for something, it's probably not necessary to have in your life. Can you think of anything that doesn't have multiple functions? 

After taking the permaculture design course (PDC) at the ranch, I started to notice that I was applying these principles everywhere and had been all along, only now I was able to recognize this process. Stacking functions is apart of my everyday life here. My role has taken many forms, but recently I have focused on the farm to table operations. I propagate plants, nurture them and continuously maintain them until they are ready to be harvested and used in the kitchen. 

Ready to make pickles.

One morning in the Vivero (plant nursery) and kitchen gardens I realized that everything I was doing actually had multiple functions. I'd set out to clear the paths and Swales from plants too tall to hold themselves up from the relentless rainy season downpours. I was simply cutting and clearing. But it was more than that. The plants I was tending too were edible salad and cooking greens, perfect to use in the kitchen later that day. And this got me thinking, what other functions do these humble garden tasks have? Well, I was pruning and shaping the plants, helping to promote new growth and removing old growth. I was collecting cuttings to propagate in the nursery later that day. And from what was leftover, I was gathering nitrogen rich green cover for our compost pile. When I was done clearing I got onto weeding and again found myself picking out perfectly edible food growing in unintentional places. I wasn't simply weeding, I was improving the aesthetic of the gardens, creating a new intentional herb garden and collecting herbs for use in the kitchen.

Later that week I was in the kitchen processing our farm food and found myself using these ingredients in many different ways. The tulsi or holy basil I'd cut back was used fresh to make a concentrate to flavor our kefir water sodas. Some of it was dried and put on the tea table and some of it was used to flavor a meal. One of my favorite foods to process this year has been mango. When it's ripe we eat it fresh, add it to our hot sauce, use it in smoothies and freeze it to make ice cream. When it's green we pickle it, make green mango kimchi, create green mango salads or simply slice it up and sprinkle with our chili lime salt. It seems simple but I'd bet many of you have set out to do a simple but necessary task in the kitchen or garden without realizing that what you're doing or using actually has many functions. 

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Chaya cuttings from the garden.

I've found this concept a wonderful and useful one to apply to my life here at the ranch. It is an approach I will take with me when I leave. A way of moving and doing that is easily applied to my life back home in the city. I will find myself asking the question, "what functions does this item/task/plant/food have?" over and over again. If I'm able to come up with at least 3 (positive) functions then I'm happy to purchase/do/ plant/use it. If not then I will rethink my choices. Of course there will be some situations where this concept is not applicable but there are many where it is and I believe it's simple enough for everyone to employ. After all it is these small changes in our lives and more specifically, in our thinking that help move the big change in the right direction. It is the decision to question what we are doing and using and actually think about the consequences, it is the decision to think and act consciously. 

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NEWS AND NOTES

Our Permaculture Design Course is on the schedule for 2017. Course runs from April 25th to May 8th. We are hoping for another great turnout so help us spread the word!

In 2016 we offered over a half dozen full and partial scholarships to students from Costa Rica and around Latin America to participate in our workshops.

We were able to do this through the generous support of the Mastate Charitable Foundation. We hope to continue this pattern in 2017 and are now accepting tax-deductible donations for our Central American Scholarship Program. Help has increase the accessibility of sustainability education to our neighbors and consider making a donation!

Abrazos

The Ranch Crew

How to Design, Plant, Maintain, and Feast from your Food Forest

How to Design, Plant, Maintain, and Feast from your Food Forest

When you visit the Ranch you will not find rows of squash, tomatoes and carrots as you might associate with a temperate climate organic farm. You won't find deep layers of topsoil. You won't find tractors and their associated implements. What you will find is an agriculture that blends pleasantly into the forest. To the untrained eye it may even be challenging to tell where the forest begins and the farm ends. This is because our agriculture is based on the ecology of the place we live. And we live in a tropical monsoon forest. Our agricultural practices, often cited as agroforestry or food forests in the permaculture jargon, mimic the forest around us. 

Mimicking this complex ecology and all the associated relationships occurring in this hyper-diverse place is novel, exciting, and challenging work for us new-generation farmers. In order to help others on this same path we are documenting our work more and more. As part of this effort, I recently published a series of in-depth articles on tropical orchard establishment practices and concepts for the Permaculture Research Institute.

For anyone wanting to learn more about how we manage our 15 acres of food forests please explore the following links.

Part 1: Discover our site goals, layout patterns and approach toward water.

Part 2: Explore our soil management strategy.

Part 3: Learn why and how we make certain species selections.

We hope you enjoy these and now have a clearer picture of the agricultural landscape we are creating.

Scott

NEWS AND NOTES

We have a number of life changing workshops coming up.

• Wilderness First Responder--June 8th to 17th

• Sustainable Homestead Design--June 22nd to 26th

• Timber-Frame Construction--January 18th to 27th, 2017

Please share around if you know anyone who is ready for a trip to beautiful Costa Rica, a swim in the waterfalls, nourished with homemade meals, and challenged with an intensive educational experience.

Abrazos,

The Ranch Crew

Transition Ethics: The Art of Compromise

Transition Ethics: The Art of Compromise

By Scott Gallant

Permaculture Design is many things to many people, but one of its pillars is a set of three ethics.  These as originally laid out by Bill Mollison are

• Care of the Earth

• Care of People

• Redistribution of the Surplus

These are our primary directives for how to act to sustain the earth.  Or on a simpler level these are the ways to a good life.

Teaching these ethics during our annual Permaculture Design Certification (PDC) course is one of my favorite topics.  It inevitably brings up pointed and challenging conversations, commonly around how to live these ethics in a world that often does not care for the earth, nor its people. How do we live and design for today’s world and for the parallel world we want to create?  This discussion leads to fear and anger based responses, a tear-it-down approach easy to rally around in a classroom of like minded, fed up and passionate souls.  Unsurprisingly, this is not an effective route for change.  It became apparent to our teaching team that this conversation on ethics lacked a route to speak about compromise.  To fill this gap we utilize a fourth ethic in our PDC curriculum; the Transition Ethic.

The Transition Ethic is a guide for how to be effective in creating change. In their recent book Practical Permaculture (one of the few references to the Transition Ethic in permaculture) Jessi Bloom and Dave Boehnlein state that “the transition ethic says that no one is going from zero to sustainable overnight. Making the transition takes time.” We have to meet people where they are at.  We must understand their cultural context.

When I first began learning about the industrial food system and what it was doing to our personal and environmental health, I was angry.  I desperately avoided all participation in that system.  This was easier to embrace while living and working at the Ranch, a NuMundo impact center. But it was challenging when I returned to my parents’ home during the holidays.  While they eat healthy by many standards, I was disappointed to find apples from Chile, processed meats, and corn-syrup fueled snacks around the kitchen.  It was not a local food paradise by any means, so I jumped on my soapbox and preached.  They needed to support local economies and take care of their bodies!  Didn’t they care about the amount of pesticides used on those tomatoes?!

They responded with kindness and listened, like the wonderful parents they are, but were likely rolling their eyes in the background, and not much changed.  A few years latter though, when I was able to show them how excited I was to manage a farm in Costa Rica, bake my own bread, and build my own furniture.  I began to see them make real changes.  As soon as my ideas came from a place of positive examples versus negative critiques the transition began for them. Their garden as expanded, they save and share more and more seeds every year, and the kitchen has a few more jars of ferments upon my home arrival.

This instilled in me that even though I was ready to change, the world around me operated at a different pace. So the question became: how do I navigate the series of compromises needed to encourage change?  The original three ethics of permaculture speak to this in varying ways, but they don’t provide a road map as clearly as an ethic of transition. For me it is a road map of humility, recognizing that we are all coming from different places and we can’t begin to guess the context of others’ lives.

The Ranch is one of the leading natural building centers in the Americas.  Yet, we still use concrete in our foundations and metal on our roofs.  We don’t love the environmental impact of either of these materials, but we have done the due diligence to know that they make the most sense in our current context.  These are compromises we must make in order to protect our infrastructure investments from rain, earthquakes, termites, and the tropical climate.  This infrastructure allows us to operate as a world-class education center, without it our livelihood and mission fails.  It is a compromise we must make.

The Transition Ethic makes it clear that these compromises are ok and often necessary.  The key take away that I share with our students is that we can never compromise our ethics but we can make ethical compromises.

Most of us use fossil fuels, don’t eat only local organic food, and participate in a globalized economy.  We may wish this wasn’t true, but this is the world we live in; and it requires an art of compromise.  So how do we make choices and design our lives for the current world and the one we are creating and visioning for the future?

Permaculture design is one tool at our disposal to navigate these waters (primarily through good design of our lives, homes, and land) and with a Transition Ethic in place it becomes an even more robust tool.

Learn more

We have a number of life changing workshops yearly.

We rely on all of the amazing ambassadors to our project to spread the word; if you know of anyone who needs a get-life-into-gear experience, send them to one of our classes!

Abrazos,

The Ranch Crew