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Permaculture in Boulder County
Care for the earth. Care for people. Share the surplus. These are the ethical imperatives of permaculture. These ethics can be brought to bear on every aspect of our lives. Permaculture is a system of design that works with natural cycles and functions to create agricultural, water, energy, home, and work systems. Bill Mollison and David Holmgren developed permaculture in the late 1970's in Australia in response to the oil crisis at that time. In the years since, the practice of permaculture has spread around the globe. Mollison and Holmgren drew on their knowledge of science, especially agricultural science, and their experiences with aboriginal peoples to create a system of design that draws on and blends the best of both worlds. Permaculture designers-or "permies" as they are more affectionately known-observe how the natural world functions and base their designs on these observations. As permies experiment and learn, the collective storehouse of knowledge grows. Each new student of permaculture can draw upon this reservoir as she puts permaculture into practice in her environment. Permaculture has been applied on every scale, in every climate (with the possible exception of the polar regions). It's been applied to farms, forests, home landscaping, wildlands restoration, riparian environments, urban gardens, ranches, schools, and other public buildings. As a system of design, permaculture is also applied to invisible structures, such as residential communities, financial systems, and larger social structures. Sandy Cruz, Bill Melvin, and Joshua Smith are among the early permaculture teachers in Boulder County. Sandy Cruz stopped teaching for several years having found that, though people seemed interested, she "wasn't seeing change on the ground." She felt that permaculture was "an idea before its time." As climate change and the need for energy security create a growing sense of urgency to localize economies and communities, interest in permaculture and its application is rising sharply. Most permaculture design certification courses are taught in two-week intensives, in which the students live, work, and learn together in an environment that reflects the principles of permaculture. Marco Chung-Shu Lam and Sandy Cruz, both long-time teachers and practitioners of permaculture, have envisioned a new way of teaching permaculture, by extending it through the course of a growing season. Permaculture Through the Seasons-offered April through November and sponsored by Boulder Valley Relocalization-is gathering the second weekend of every month for an intensive weekend of lectures, hands-on projects, and small-group design work. This form has greatly expanded access to people wishing to take the design course but not having the luxury of taking two full weeks away from work and other commitments. This form has also enhanced the learning experience by providing time to digest the material and to observe our local environment through a full change of seasons. Thirty-six people enrolled in this first offering of Permaculture Through the Seasons. The instructors said they had to turn away nearly that many more who wanted to participate. Many of those in the current class are interested in continuing to study permaculture and intend to go on to become teachers and designers themselves. In Boulder County the prospects for future permaculture courses and dissemination of this important knowledge look very bright. Permaculture is, by definition, local. Every design is based on observations of a specific site. Each site has its own patterns of wind, water, and sun. Each has its own qualities and types of soil, plants, and animal life. The practice of permaculture is the practice of learning to live in place. As the world confronts multiple and growing crises-from peak oil to climate change to the depletion of soil and water-the wisdom is arising from a diverse chorus of voices that the solutions to our problems lie close around us, in our local environments. Successful relocalization depends upon an intimate and working knowledge of the places where we live. Permaculture provides the principles and tools for putting this knowledge to use in a way that is both practical and sustainable. Successful relocalization also depends on developing local sources of energy and materials for our homes and workplaces. Permaculture designers can draw on many years of accumulated knowledge in natural building techniques, energy-efficient heating and cooling systems, renewable energy systems, and sustainable technologies that reduce or eliminate the need for nonlocal resources. As this resource guide demonstrates, one of the easiest-and most pleasurable-ways to "go local" is by eating local food. The typical American meal has traveled over 1500 miles to reach a consumer's plate. Local food is not only resource efficient; it also builds community. Buying food at the farmers market, a roadside stand or through a community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm connects you to the people who've grown it. Permaculture practices take organic and holistic farming methods a step further by providing a larger framework for viewing the overall system. This framework allows one to work with the existing system to reduce the need for inputs external to the system (such as fuel, soil amendments, animal feed, and water), as well as reduce the total outputs that leave the system as waste or pollution. For example, rather than importing expensive petroleum-based fertilizers to maintain soil fertility, we can add local animal "wastes" (which become serious pollutants in centralized feedlots) to depleted, degraded soils, transforming a garden into a worm farm. The worms will happily work full time to maintain the soil, largely eliminating the need for further inputs. Permaculture designs typically incorporate as many edible plants as possible, providing alternatives to the globalized supermarket and drugstore. Once established, fruit trees, berry bushes, and perennial herbs and vegetables largely take care of themselves and provide food, medicines, windbreaks, and shade. Certain perennial flowers and herbs act as magnets for beneficial insects, including bees. One Boulder County company, Ecoscape Environmental Design, has been applying permaculture principles, including edible landscaping, in its designs since 2000. Ecoscape co-founder Bill Melvin strongly encourages his clients to include disease- and pest-resistant fruit varieties in the designs for their sites. His recommended plants include peaches, apples, pears, raspberries, and strawberries, as well as herbs. Lesser-known, but still highly recommended, are aronia berries (a blueberry-like fruit in large clusters on a large upright bush with beautiful fall colors), currants, thimbleberries (a.k.a. Boulder raspberries), and maximilian sunflowers (stunning perennial sunflowers with edible tubers). Separately, each of these practices-local food, local health, local energy, local materials, fewer external inputs, few polluting outputs-makes a difference in how resources are used and contributes to lightening one's ecological footprint. Permaculture brings these practices together into an overall design for living and working in local community. Permaculture ultimately serves as an organizing principle that integrates many disparate elements and shows the relationships among them. Permaculture provides tools for analyzing these relationships and improving the ease, efficiency, and functionality with which the various elements interact. The long-term potential for permaculture in Boulder County lies in applying it on a large scale, particularly in relationship to development and growth. The cost of land and the pressure for development are significant factors in how land is used in Boulder County. Issues of access and stability are foremost for those who don't or can't afford to own land. Bringing the lens of permaculture to these issues could help facilitate an overall design for the county that takes into account all the various needs and factors. What could such a design include? The possibilities are limited only by the imagination and skills of the designers and the community's willingness to participate in the process. Marco Lam has suggested developments in which housing is built around an existing farm, thus retaining the essential agricultural element, while providing housing and access to local food. The "urban refugee syndrome"-people moving to the mountains intending to escape crowds, get back to the land, and live a simpler life-is a phenomenon that Sandy Cruz believes actually increases human impact substantially. Dispersed mountain development reduces animal habitat (especially for large game), increases wildfire risk and destructiveness, requires more resources for infrastructure, increases travel distances, and physically isolates people from community. She says one permaculture strategy to reduce impact is to cluster development. Permaculture makes it clear that we can't address only one aspect of a system and expect the entire system to become functional. Local food in itself doesn't provide the solution to our ills. It can, however, provide an active example of the principles of permaculture that is essential for moving us toward a more sustainable world. Marco Lam defines permaculture as "a system of underlying ethics that inform us about how to live life." We can each live these ethics now, a step at a time. Care for the earth. Care for people. Share the surplus. With thanks to Sandy Cruz for her generous suggestions and examples. Resources: Sandy Cruz, High Altitude Permaculture, 303.459.3494 Marco Chung-Shu Lam: pranafarmer@gmail.com Ecoscape Environmental Design, Bill Melvin, www.ecoscapedesign.com, 303.447.2282 The Permaculture Activist, (North American Journal), www.permacultureactivist.net, PO Box 5516, Bloomington, IN 47407 (They have a fantastic bookstore.) Permaculture: A Designer's Manual, Bill Mollison, 1990 Introduction to Permaculture, Bill Mollison and Reny Mia Slay, 1994 Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, David Holmgren, 2002 Earth User's Guide to Permaculture, Rosemary Morrow, 2006 Gaia's Garden, Toby Hemenway, 2001
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