> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-extropians@extropy.org
> What is permaculture?
Here's the best site I know of for info on permaculture:
http://www.permaculture.org.au/index.shtml
This site includes info and photos of Tagari Farm, a project started by Bill
Mollison; IMO it's worth checking out the site just to see the photos of the
farm.
I first heard of permaculture when I was describing my garden to someone I
met at a party: the wild volunteers growing alongside cultivated crops; the
greywater system; the fish pond; the chickens and goats in their
vine-covered pens. (I lived in town at the time, and the neighborhood kids
called my place the City Farm [with the accent on "city"} The person I was
talking to said, "Oh, you have a permaculture garden." "What's
permaculture?" I asked, and that's how I learned of Bill Mollison.
I've never had the privilege of taking one of Bill's courses, but I keep his
books close at hand for inspiration and practical information. Many of the
things in the books I'd come up with independently, which is not surprising,
since the methods logically follow from a close observation of the way
things work.
>From _Permaculture_:
pg. ix "Permacultue is the conscious design an maintenance of
agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability,
and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of
landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other
material and non-material needs in a sustainable way...The philosophy behind
permaculture is one of working with, rather than against, nature; of
protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless
acti on; of looking at systems in all their functions, rather than asking
only one yield of them; and of allowing systems to demonstrate their own
evolutions."
pg 1 "The courage we need is to refuse authority and to accept only
personally responsible decisions...It is...our only possible decision to
withhold all support for destructive systems, and to cease to invest our
lives in our own annihilation."
pg. 10 "It is alarming that in western society no popular body of
directives has arisen to replace the injunctions of tribal taboo and myth.
When we left tribal life we left with it all guides to sensible behaviour in
the natural world...by never having the time or commonsense to evolve new or
current guiding directives, we have forgotten how to evolve self-regulating
systems...[Permaculture] emphasises self-reliance, responsibility, and the
functions of living things. Within a self-regulated system on earth, energy
from the sun can be trapped and stored in any number of ways. While the sun
burns, we are in an open system..."
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