What is Permaculture?

Permaculture is a system of forest and food management and sustainable living that was coined by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the 1970s. The term has come to mean “permanent agriculture” or “permanent culture”. It is a system that allows us to grow our own food in a sustainable way focusing on perennial forest gardening. These food systems are renewable and actually heal the Earth as well as provide for communities of people, animals and insects. There are three ethics of permaculture, Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share, as well as 12 core principles.

What is downshifting?

The term downshifting in a permaculture context means that we are slowing our lives down. The “Go big or Go home” attitudes are not sustainable and cause damage to people and the planet. Downshifting means making more with less. For example instead of throwing away a garment for a small tear we fix it and keep using that garment. It means relying less on complex corporate structures and learning the DIYs of everyday things. It means more community based activities and home based production instead of relying on international supply chains that are barely functioning to get the goods or services we need. It is about community relationships and sharing. “Retrosuburbia” is the comprehensive guide to downshifting and is an incredible resource. We highly recommend it.

Why should I grow my own food?

We live in a time when many of us have forgotten the survival skills of our grandparents day. Things such as gardening, having chickens, canning, cooking, sewing, hunting. We have traded these skills for others and a system has developed that makes it easy for us to just pick out what we want to eat, when we want to eat. Massive carbon emitting supply chains have replaced seasonal eating and allow us to have exotic foods such as mangoes, avocados or even tomatoes out of season at any time. We know that “just in time” food supply chains are destroying ecosystems and depend on fossil fuels, emit tons of plastic waste and chemicals and often exploit workers and use child labor for our convenience. We have lived through supply chain breakdowns during the pandemic and know that there will be more breakdowns coming. The pandemic was a wake up call for many of us. If we are able to grow our own food AND preserve it, we are not subject to the market with its “greedflation” (remember $11 for a dozen eggs?) and crop failures that empty shelves or make food inaccessible. We can also avoid toxins placed in our foods by corporations that have no business in our bodies. We can begin to feed ourselves and our family and share our excess with our community members. We can cut out price gouging, pesticides and herbicides, we create habitat and food for our insect and animal friends and we cut out highly processed food and single use plastics. Once we begin to feed ourselves we keep more money in our pockets and can weather the uncertainties of the future. Plus home grown food tastes better! Store bought tomatoes are just sad.

I don’t live on a farm or own property. How can I grow my own food?

We didn’t used to live on a farm or own property when we started either but we grew a surprising amount of food. We mostly grew in containers on our driveway, patio and side yard when we rented a duplex. However, there are many surprising ways to grow food from community gardens to indoor growing spaces utilizing grow lights and doing things like sprouting seeds. You can even compost inside with worms (no they do not stink if done correctly). Thinking outside of the box is important so perhaps there is a lonely elderly community member who would agree to allow you to garden in their yard for a share of the food and some company. There are many ways to grow your own food especially in collaboration with others and many places even in ultra urban areas.

What is a food forest?

A food forest or forest garden are self perpetuating food systems modeled off of nature designed to feed us indefinitely. They mimic natural ecosystems with a focus on food for humans and animals in a high density area. Food forests incorporate all layers of a forest ecosystem from the overstory trees all the way down to the mycelial layer under the soil.

What is Permaculture Site Design?

Permaculture site design is a complex analysis of your land and how to develop a self sustaining and perennial food forest. Many things are taken into account from climate, growing zone, fire threat zones, flood threat zones, soil tests and remediation, accounting for water capture and storage, food systems both perennial and annual, tree guilds, animals, compost, waste management and much more. Designing your site for your needs is an important step in self reliance and helping to mitigate the damage industrial food systems have done to the planet.

What are the three ethics of Permaculture?

1. Earth Care: This is the first ethic of permaculture and the most important. Without a healthy Earth with renewing eco-systems no life is possible on this planet. We therefore must be stewards of the Earth in order to have renewable resources and not exhaust the natural world in a consumerist mentality. It means we are thoughtful in our consumption, waste, and use of what the land can provide to us. It also means that we heal and restore degraded land where we can including planting trees and cleaning up waste.

2. People Care: This the the second ethic of permaculture. We must take care of people in our community and not view them as a resource to be exploited. We come from a place of compassion and thoughtfulness with people in our community. How do we help one another in the most meaningful ways as well as take responsibility for our actions? Furthermore what does our community have to offer? How can we cooperate and help each other with the skills that we have?

3. Fair Share: When you begin to practice permaculture you find that the Earth provides and abundance of food and medicine in renewable systems where all beings from fungi to insects to you the steward play their part. There will be more food than you know what to do with. Fair share means just that, we share fairly with those who need what we produce. This doesn’t mean with human friends but also with the insect and animal worlds around us who are sharing with us by eating pests and pollinating our crops. We are all part of a sharing eco-system. It means leaving bees with enough honey to over winter. It means leaving plants and flowers that have much needed seeds to feed birds in winter. It means taking abundance to local food banks so that people having trouble making ends meet can have fresh organic produce. It means giving jam or bread or soup to an elderly neighbor who is lonely and tired.

What are the 12 principles of Permaculture?

1. Observe and interact

2. Catch and store energy

3. Obtain a yield

4. Apply self regulation and accept feedback

5. Use and value renewable resources

6. Produce no waste

7. Design from patterns to details

8. Integrate rather than segregate

9. Use small and slow solutions

10. Value diversity

11. Use the edge and value the marginal

12. Creatively respond to change

Why did you choose to move to Western New York?

Short Answer: The decision to uproot an entire life and move, especially with children involved, is not one that is taken lightly. For us it was a combination of financial and climate stresses. We came here because we have family in the area.

Long Answer: We were both working ourselves to sheer exhaustion in tech and marketing. While we were making what is considered extremely good salaries we noticed that without home ownership the cost of living began to way outpace the wages we made. Every year rent would go up but our salaries stayed mostly the same. We loved living in California. We lived in America’s bike town, Davis, California. Our son biked to school with friends every day. We had one of the best farmers markets in the country and every kind of restaurant you could imagine. We had amazing music festivals and hiked the redwoods or coast. We had wine country, Lake Tahoe and skiing or the city lights of San Francisco all within an easy hour or two drive. We had friends and community and we would often hang out in Berkeley at the hall of science or go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We left a rich and vibrant life that I still grieve for in many ways.

However, as bucolic as that may seem there were cracks in the foundations; acute infrastructure problems due to privatization; homelessness and tent camps to rival any disaster relief or war zone. Folks living in their cars, including graduate students, because no one could afford rent. Many families going without much needed basic resources while working full time jobs and their children going hungry. During the pandemic many middle class families had to go to the food bank just to get by.

Additionally the climate crisis was well underway in California with the fires and mudslides. In 2016 a new phenomenon that had never been seen, because it did not exist, was the “firenado”, tornadoes of fire that burned so hot and fierce they created their own wind. No amount of water or toxic PFAS filled foam could put these out. Then in 2018 I looked out the bank of glass windows on the 4th floor of the biggest corporate building in town that I worked in to see a wall of fire coming down the hill across the freeway. The fire crews couldn’t seem to stop it. I stood paralyzed of what to do. Should I leave work without permission to be safe? Should I stay and hope rescue services could handle it? I didn’t know what to do and people kept working like it was “business as usual”. This was insane to me. This was not normal. Everyone seemed to be in a delusion. This was the same year that the Camp Fire burned the entire town of Paradise. 85 people died, most in their cars trying to flee. I knew I had to leave not just a work environment that valued profit above people but also a State where I did not feel safe physically or financially. By 2020 five close friends had lost their homes to fires and the year before we had 3 solid months of smoke so bad everyone had to wear masks even inside. It was still business as usual on the climate front and then the pandemic hit. During lock down we educated ourselves and planned our departure.

We chose Western New York foremost because we have family in the area and that is important. It is important to be close to loved ones so you can help one another especially in times like these. We also could afford to buy land here as opposed to most other places in the US. Not even my hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico is affordable. I couldn’t move “home” if I wanted to. We had a list of many considerations as to why we chose this area.

We did a threat analysis of possible scenarios of several areas in the us and this is what we looked at and studied as to why to come here:

Mitigating effects of a great lake. The vast bodies of water will help to mitigate heatwaves in the summer and cold snaps in the winter. We are already seeing this winter of 2024 with the breakdown of the polar vortex. As the vortex dips out of its stability zone we are staying more constant while places much further south of us are seeing negative temperatures their infrastructure was not designed to handle. This also applies to heat in the summer. Droughts here can be handled with proper water management and heat is tempered by the lake. We do not expect wet bulb dangers to be as emanant as they will be in the South. More likely this area will have boom and bust water cycles. Water mitigation and storage will be key.

Affordability. As of now this region is still affordable, at least where real estate and land is concerned relative to the rest of the United States. I have looked at rents and they are high here. Too high. The community could do much to help mitigate rents for low income folks and students. As the climate crisis worsens I imagine more people will start coming this way and that will increase the cost of homes and land. Gentrification will likely occur. Hopefully local towns and villages can help mitigate this as well and keep wealthy developers out. An American selling a home to another American is how it should be done, NOT foreign or large investment firms buying up single family homes to turn Americans into rental serfs. If folks can afford to come here now is the time. This will increase the tax base and hopefully bring professionals and other skilled people to the area which will increase revenue for all.

Water. This area has plenty of water. Actually, too much at times. As a person who has lived in places where there was not enough water for most of my life I know how to deal with not enough water. We grew up not flushing the toilets unless someone went poo and watering plants with our bath water or colleting water with a bucket during a shower. That was life. That was normal. Due to the warming of the Atlantic ocean, the warm water will evaporate more frequently and cause more rain. More rain causes flooding, which is the problem in these areas. Make sure if you purchase land or a home you are not in a flood zone because it will flood badly and probably in your lifetime. Storing and managing water in this area will be much easier and drought periods here can be mitigated and crops watered without failures if stored properly.

City violence. Every American no matter where they sit on the political fence knows that our society is at odds with itself. I do not see this changing any time soon and violent clashes happen in the cities. They are less likely to happen in the towns and villages and certainly not in some cow field. The legion of homeless will also flock to the cities to live off of the waste streams that cities produce. We saw this in Davis where a huge homeless camp began to grow next to the railroad tracks in the town. This camp had a sanitation problem, was filled with litter, and had problems such as murders and rapes. The camp was right next to the bike path that the children rode their bikes on each day. It was a safety concern and a societal issue that we alone could not fix. We chose to leave that behind for the safety of our son who started biking with friends next to the camp when he was 7 years old.

War, refugees and military bases. There are no military bases near where we live. This is a good thing. Unfortunately, with the break down of the climate and a fight for resources we believe war is inevitable. This has already been seen in Syria where the worst drought in their history, linked to Anthropocene climate change, occurred from 2006-2011. In 2011 a climate civil war started against the regime and food prices. This war has spilled over into neighboring countries causing a refugee crisis unparalleled that continues to this day. If a war starts that the US is involved in, then military bases will be targets. As a civilian it is good to be far away from military targets. History of any period of time can confirm this. We will eventually see massive amounts of refugees fleeing climate catastrophes and war going both north and south away from the equatorial zones. Because this area is not on a major border and far from large cities it will be able to better prepare itself and it’s community to help itself and those in need. Permaculture principles can feed well beyond what industrial ag can in a diverse and restorative way. We will be able to feed ourselves and share our excess with neighbors and community, especially if the US is involved in a war. During war time the soldiers eat first, which leaves civilian populations vulnerable. Growing your own food is key.

Nuclear. Nuclear energy catastrophe and nuclear war are some of the existential threats in our age. Both nuclear war and nuclear plant accidents have happened. The bombs that hit Nagasaki and Hiroshima were tiny compared to the bombs we have today. Thankfully nukes have not been used again but many bad actors have them including North Korea. Nuclear accidents we have seen time and time again from privatization in which the cutting of safety costs to give more money to share holders, like 3 Mile Island, caused major incidence. Janky workmanship like Chernobyl or the natural disaster that hit Fukashima have also caused major nuclear disasters. Nuclear power plants are vulnerable whether by human neglect, climate catastrophe or as weaponized targets. There are no nuclear power plants in this area and after an analysis of wind patterns if a nuclear strike were to happen in a large metropolitan area or military target the fallout here would be much less.