Problem = Solution

This entry is an effort to retain some of the exciting ideas introduced and reviewed in the Permaculture Principles class I attended at the Cayuga Nature Center (Fingerlakes Permaculture Institute http://www.flpci.org/) last weekend.

"The prime directive of permaculture is making the decision to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children's existence. Permaculture is different in each realization because it is specific to time and place, and therefore it can only every be a story particular to the people and settle in which it is experienced."

Permaculture systems:

• produce MORE energy than they use;
• provide basic needs for everything involved AND distribute a surplus;
• maintain a balance of health and productivity AND create new stores of it;
• recycle AND produce nutrients (don't pollute);
• produce needs within the system

From Wikipedia: "The word permaculture, coined by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren during the 1970s, is a portmanteau of permanent agriculture as well as permanent culture. Through a series of publications, Mollison, Holmgren and their associates documented an approach to designing human settlements, in particular the development of perennial agricultural systems that mimic the structure and interrelationship found in natural ecologies.

Permaculture design principles extend from the position that "The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children" (Mollison, 1990). The intent was that, by rapidly training individuals in a core set of design principles, those individuals could become designers of their own environments and able to build increasingly self-sufficient human settlements — ones that reduce society's reliance on industrial systems of production and distribution that Mollison identified as fundamentally and systematically destroying the earth's ecosystems."

Ethics: Earthcare (reverence and respect for all living things), People Care (providing needs--promoting self-reliance and community building), Fair Share (thinking beyond the self--distribution of surplus resources)

Attitudes:

• Problem=Solution
• Greatest Change for Least Effort
• Work with Nature, Not Against
• Unlimited Yield
• Everything Gardens

Principles: Energy (Sector Planning, Zone Planning, Elevation Planning, Network Planning), Resources (Value Feedback, Energy Recycling, Biological Resources, Multiple Functions-Redundancy), Design (Relative Location, Microclimate, Maximize Edge, Succession, Diversity, Pattern, Stacking, Limiting Factors)