Portable Pocket Permaculture

Discussion in 'Designing, building, making and powering your life' started by Lumbuck Thornton, Jan 17, 2015.

  1. Lumbuck Thornton

    Lumbuck Thornton Junior Member

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    Most permaculture establishments are on quite large areas of land and there is quite a large investment in accommodation (zone zero).

    What if a permaculture setup was more portable and within a season, could be up and transferred to another site, another backyard where a permaculturalist could virtually slip under a vegetative cover of their own making to create a low cost, low risk, low impact existence?

    What would happen if it was possible to mobilise permaculture and thread it through existing community infrastructure as a retrofit and have it respond to politics organically !
     
  2. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    So if I'm understanding this right, I'm going to do all the work of compost piles, hugelkultur, garden beds, water source development, chicken coops, manure piles, greenhouses, etc., then move it to someone else's place? What about my place? And how does this work with politics? :)
     
  3. Lumbuck Thornton

    Lumbuck Thornton Junior Member

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    Ideally you stay right where you are but politically permaculturalists are vulnerable to external pressures and politics. The question is whether a more mobile and low cost form of permaculture can be devised to utilise smaller spaces more effectively and go into areas where permaculture might previously have been regarded as too difficult.
     
  4. Australian Beekeeper

    Australian Beekeeper Junior Member

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    Not quite sure what you have in mind. When I think about permaculture I think creating systems that are sustainable (well closer to it) in the long term (the 'perma' part). That would be difficult to do with something you transport around on the back of a truck (again not quite sure what you have in mind). You could of course use and demonstrate many of the principles in a very small system in that way. It is what renters all over the country already do.
     
  5. S.O.P

    S.O.P Moderator

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    I'm on an email distribution list from the guy who invented wicking beds. He designed new portable beds based around a pod system, you establish healthy living soil around the outer area and then drop a pod of seedlings into the inner area.

    He is trying to market the selling of the pods with healthy soil I think (mineralised and appropriate life added), not sure what he is up to lately. You could travel with them in the boot of your car or back of bike if eating a salad green on the go is "permaculture".
     
  6. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    And you want it to be mobile why? So when the powers that be get too cruel you can leave with it? Or, honestly, I'm not understanding. :)
     
  7. songbird

    songbird Senior Member

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    permaculture is mobile because it is knowledge, you carry it with you wherever you go. the idea that you need a large site is prevalent because that is what impresses most people when they see it, but you can still find many small intensive sites that are very interesting and productive.

    all living systems are essentially about managing the transport of water. you as a human are quite a bit of water and that makes you heavy and expensive to move. adding a growing system to what must be moved is likely a wasteful approach.

    move seeds, move knowledge, move yourself with as little else as possible, leave the moving of dirt to worms, gravity, etc. in most cases you don't want the dirt to move at all anyways.

    raised beds and container gardens are somewhat isolated ecologically from the subsoil, that implies a lot of the services that are normally supplied by a robust soil community are lost and have to be considered over the longer term. i think much of the added fiddling is a waste of resources. garden smart with as minimal use of resources as possible. the less junk you buy and move around the better.
     
  8. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    the less junk you buy and move around the better.

    Amen :)
     
  9. Lumbuck Thornton

    Lumbuck Thornton Junior Member

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    All great comments. There is a general assumption that permaculture is farm scale as an ideal and there are lots of lesser forms of permaculture right back to a plant in a pot started by children or renters. With more and more turmoil in the world, climate change, rogue religions, rogue governments and rogue corporations sometimes permaculturalists are going to have to move or get ready to move. It might not be worth planting a tree and having to wait years if at any time you might have to move. (although I agree good permaculture increases the value of the land and the place if you are able to recover a return for your efforts.)

    What I am raising is how small, compact, integrated and low cost can permaculture be made so it can be made available to more people and also it can be moved strategically. Permaculture properties are all part of larger systems and unfortunately these larger systems often resist permacultural activities or make them harder to operate. Some people ask, what part of town is the permaculture happening or where can I find like minded people to set up a bit of a green community? The reality is that it is scattered and fragmented and in new developments and estates there are hardly any permaculture principles being applied (at the moment - I don't think they can hold on for too much longer).

    Imagine if we could perfect a form of permaculture that a kid could set up in their backyard that they could grow into and eventually even live in much of the time and then take this eventually to the next place they wanted to go and gradually renovate their accommodation and garden structures so they could slide in under the radar of the normal restrictions on developments and communities until they got so established and perfected that they became the normal way to live.

    Its a bit like the way solar panels have crept out across the community except even they have up front costs, returns on investment and lack of transferability that impede their popularity. Portable solar panels on caravans are becoming the norm. What is the smallest practical stand alone solar panel set up for a basic permaculture existence in a back yard situation or is it better to run an extension lead from the house and trade fruit and vegetables and labour in return for electricity, land rent, town water, roof water, internet and other services to save on duplication and service charges?

    What if a way could be devised where instead of renting out a room, a land owner could lease out the backyard to a permaculturalist and they could construct an elaborate eco-system there that they could live in? Sort of camping but more permanent than that but constructed according to permaculture logic and using integrated systems permaculture is still developing where zones are threaded through zones horizontally and vertically as well. I realise it could breach several Council laws but then again it was not long ago that water tanks and solar panels were in many ways illegal. If permaculture played its cards right, it could almost reintroduce a form of native title claim to unutilised spaces and provide more of a return to land owners than conventional non-sustainable uses. If the idea then spread into other adjacent backyards and surrounding vacant land as an integrated system then it might be possible to have a farm almost overlay across conventional suburbia and then start mushrooming into a new type of community and development where conventional houses and buildings were not constructed anymore.

    Sounds like it could be a good story or interesting read even if it does not work, but I am confident it could.
     

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