Permaculture Design By Observation

Nature Wisdom Podcast: Episode 05

Today I have a something kind of different for you.

I had a conversation recently with Laura Rutherford who lives just a few hours north of where I am.

And she’s recently acquired a new place to live where she’s been spending a lot of time on the land there.

It’s a pretty large piece of property that’s actually an old homestead so this land has been cultivated and used for small scale food production in the past.

And what Laura is looking to do is develop this land into something that both provides for her own physical needs with food production and animals and even some cashflow opportunities while simultaneously working with the unique opportunities of how nature is presenting itself on that piece of land.

And it just comes back to one of the things that I have really noticed in the years that I’ve been getting outside to do nature observation, tracking, learning about the plants, birds, trees, all these different natural elements that co-exist on every landscape.

When you take the time to get outside and make some good observations and really watch what’s happening around you in the environment.

It really sets us up with the ability to design our backyards, our food production systems, our vegetable gardens with long term, sustainable human habitat that both enables the environment to really regenerate and thrive.

While simultaneously providing for our personal needs.

So what you’re gonna hear in this conversation is an example of someone coming into a system that is already somewhat established.

It already has some areas with good workable soil that Laura can start using and get some really nice production.

And there’s also some things that aren’t actually all that ideal for what she’s trying to do, some fairly permanent features that aren’t 100% lined up with her long term vision.

So we basically went through step by step and talked about a whole series of ideas, plans and observations that she’s been making, and came up with a handful of small but realistic action steps for moving things forward.

If nothing else, this is really just a testament to how helpful it can be to actually talk things over and bounce different ideas back and forth… and put some real thought into how can we design any landscape with sustainable, long term production that’s really an absolute joy to live with on a daily basis.

Wouldn’t it be great if the presence of human beings on planet earth actually helped the environment to thrive?

I believe in the idea of leaving our world better than we found it… And good observation skills are truly one of the secrets to making that reality come true.

Have you ever heard of Permaculture?

Permaculture is an ecological design system for creating sustainable human habitat that promotes biodiversity, soil health, water health and simple solutions to big global problems.

It all starts with the practical ability to observe patterns in nature!

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