Permaculture Quickstart

Permaculture? Is it swales? What on earth is a swale?

Swales are a dry-climate, tree-growing system. Permaculture may use swales, but that is a small, small part of permaculture.

Permaculture is often described as “Permanent Agriculture.” However, Permaculture is better described as “Permanent Culture.” That includes:

  1. Earth care
  2. People care
  3. Returning surplus

Permaculture transcends politics, religion, and country. You can throw a prepper, a tree hugger, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a capitalist, and a communist into the same permaculture class and have them all walk away determined to use the knowledge they gained in their individual pursuits. In fact, I’ve seen that happen.

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Week One of the PDC

I’ve been through the first week of course work for the Online Permaculture Design Course taught by Geoff Lawton. I found it was a good thing that I’ve been studying permaculture on my own for so long. My previous permaculture studies helped me understand a lot of the more abstract theory that the course starts out with.

Since this is a pretty big investment for myself and my family, financially speaking, I decided to make the most of it and study Bill Mollison’s Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual along with the course. Also, I decided to take it up a notch and also listen to Bill Mollison’s original 1983 permaculture design course on MP3 while driving to and from the day job.

Bill Mollison
Bill Mollison, the father of permaculture.
(Photo by Nicolas Boullosa – http://www.flickr.com/photos/faircompanies/2196171642/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18933888)

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