Hugelkultur & Plant Friends

Enjoy these pictures of my garden work, as inspired by Permaculture and nature. :-) Click on any of the images, to get an enlarged view!

My rather new Hugelkultur bed.
Some cucumbers appear to have taken root.

I kept the top branches, if any plant would like to climb them.

I was lacking soil for this, as my town is all rocks & stones.

I have finally changed my pots into large unperforated tubs,
that hold the water in this dry and arid climate. It's working great!

On the right, a rescued fat plant.
On the left, a left-over from the transition into tubs.
I'm using a bowl to help it hold the water, and it works well.

Need to get more soil and seeds, for this one.

A corner of empty soil. I experiment with different seeds and potatoes on it. :=P

My watering bucket. It also catches the drain from the table.

My compost bin.
I put holes in its' bottom, which was a bad idea, because of smelly leakings.
Still, works fine.

I just throw in any organic leftovers from the kitchen, and some leaf matter from the garden.

My window-sill pot, which has not been a great success, yet.
And an experiment!
Some soil and water in a bottle, with its' cap off, and some cherry-tomato seeds.
I'm waiting for the tomato plants to reach out of it!
This was inspired by various terrariums.

How To Design A Vegan Village

[Click here to scroll to the Vegan Village example, if you already read the original thread.]

I recently enjoyed a thread about Non-Hierarchical Permaculture Designed Community over at permies.com. The thread discussed the idea of designing a new village, in a way that attracts and keeps the most wanted population at any given time, so that it reflects the will of the designer(s). The conclusion, for me, was the following illustration:

It's sorta like from ground to horizon. How neat is that?! :-D

Basically, the point here is that some parts of a village are very fluid, so they should be regarded as "experiments". Other parts are quite static, so we can design them to pretty much be, what we want them to be. And finally, some things are just so random and wild, that we should only design to cope with them, and not for specific results.

The purpose of such a design, is to define, in advanced, what we want built-into the village. It is very hard to decide on how we want our village to be, when we are not even sure what is relevant for the design process.

In this case, I suggest that we design for three goals:
1. Limitations on private experimentation, so that we get people who are either more or less adventurous.
2. Limitations on public experimentations, so that we get people who are either more or less social.
3. Limitations on shared resources, so that we get people who enjoy a life style similar to our own taste.

The focus is the village's intended population and the village's intended functionality. Naturally, this is all in regard to Permaculture ideals, so it will not answer the wishes of many, who do not take interest in bold new ways!

For example, could we design a vegan village?

A vegan diet (or life style) denies two things: animal produce and the preparation of animal produce. Animals, as in husbandry, generally require access to the Stable section of the village, for grazing and happiness. The preparation of animal produce, generally requires in-house equipment and storage, which is under the Private Experimental section.

It is unlikely to be able to design any denying mechanism in the Private Experimental section, because a person's home is "their fortress." That is fair enough. On the other hand, for serious meat eating, beasts need proper grazing. If we design the Stable section, which includes all the shared land around and between the houses, so that it is inhospitable to beasts, then we can design the village to be utterly offensive to meat farmers. That would be enough to disgust a prospective buyer that has any ideas about growing beasts for their products.

A vegan vacation! It's vegelicious!

In this very penetrating case, we come to the conclusion that while no one can be forced to be a vegan, in their privacy, by design; it is still possible to design a village, so it discourages meat farmers and meat eaters, away.

Not to mention, we can design a lot of vegan propaganda into the public Experimental section, so that it feels like a horrifying cult to non-vegans, who first see the design. :-P

Wine, Pizza & National Parks

It is just another lovely autumn evening, as I look outside my window and imagine all the endless possibilities out there. "If only I could have some land to live and farm on," I think to myself.

It is not reasonable that all public lands are in the hands of national park services. There are very few people who would actually want to farmstead in small communities, without harming the natural environment, as it has existed for thousands of years. Us few, and enjoyable folk, should have access to the wild. Those lands that are neglected by the national park services.

My first note is that national park services mistreat and doom our natural environment to desolation. The process of desertification and loss of wildlife has been running amok, ever since those guys took over. Many animals that are recorded in the pages of history, even from only a century ago, are already gone or quickly vanishing. This is true worldwide!

My second note, which casually leans on the first, is that ecologically inclined people, also known as local (non-industrial) farmers, are exactly what our environment needs! Regular people, without the use of massive industrial machinery and pollutants, have kept nature in a balanced and lush state, since time immemorial.

I believe in nut & fruit orchards, just like I believe in good food.

Just think about it. People farmed the land, in many different ways, for millennia, and no major ecological distastes happened. It is true that many empires slowly and dreadfully destroyed native forests, for example, in the Mediterranean area. Never the less, even then all that was lacking was the replanting of trees; exactly what farmers are doing now, in some areas, sometimes with government support and funds (Some time ago, I saw a good example on video about China.)

So, it is about time that states the world over started getting their ecology into perspective, and returned the wild back to the hands of the simple farmers. Back to the hands of those that can really serve the wild, unlike the National Park Services.