The Inland Northwest Permaculture Guild would be honored to publish your original writing on any subject pertaining to permaculture in our 'Articles' section.
About the author:
Michael Pilarski is a multi-disciplinary thinker and hands-on guy specializing in organic, sustainable agriculture, forestry, agroforestry and permaculture. He is a farmer, tree-planter, author and educator. He has planted 80,000 trees so far.
Here is a history of permaculture gatherings in the USA and IPCs
The problem = the solution. The main thesis of this article is that there are large numbers of people not doing useful work and a large amount of useful work that obviously needs to be done. Let's put the two together. Look at how many people are available for useful and needed work!
Unemployed, official and unofficial.
Unemployed because of mental or physical handicaps.
Underemployed.
Employed but doing useless work.
Employed but doing harmful things to the earth and/or
people.
Introduction:
This article is intended for a number of readerships:
1. The staff and volunteers of hunger organizations. I
would like to make you aware of some possible ways to
increase food security for your constituencies. You may
be aware of many of the social policies included here, but
less familiar with the gardening methods promoted by permaculture.
2. The permaculture movement. Permaculture has three
main ethics: a) care of people; b) care of land; c) dispersal
of surplus. Permaculturists in general are well aware of
Goats are technically browsers (more similar to deer than cows which are grazers). Despite the common practice of running goats on grass/legume pastures (or feeding them hay in corrals), goats will prefer browse if given the choice. They like the mineral content and higher tannin content of deciduous and evergreen foliage, in fact, their metabolism requires more mineral than grazing ruminants for their health, especially reproductive health.
Bio: Michael Pilarski helped organize the first Tilth conference in 1974 in Ellensburg, Washington. He was the main coordinator for T-10 held near Ellensburg, Washington in 1984 and attended T-20 and T-30. His organic farming career started in 1972 and over the years he has branched out into agroforestry, permaculture, forestry, ethnobotany, wildcrafting, and farming medicinal plants. Michael took his first permaculture design course in 1982 and is one of the leading permaculture networkers and teachers in the Pacific Northwest.
Proposal: To create a North American permaculture convergence that happens every two years. The event rotates around North America and is hosted by already existing regional convergences. The N.A. convergence would bring together people from around the US and Canada and to a lesser extent, Mexico, due to language and border constraints. There have always been a lot of ties between US and Canadian permaculturists. The same is true but to a lesser extent for the ties between US and Mexican permaculturists.
The Inland Northwest Permaculture Guild is sponsoring its Second Annual Permaculture Conference at the University of Montana in Missoula Friday through Sunday, November 9, 10 & 11. Everybody who is interested is encouraged to attend (there is an admission fee). Presenters will share their knowledge on how to live and work in harmony with nature and to create a more harmonious society. There is, for example, an opportunity for ordinary people to learn how to build their own low cost environmentally friendly housing and buildings.
Handout for permaculture workshops - January 25, 2010 version
Michael Pilarski wrote this version of the methodology and the list of recommended websites.
This list of principles is from an internet source.
Permaculture was started by Australians, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the mid-1970s.
I am in the process of traveling by train from the West Coast to the East Coast and back again. Here is a report on my trip. I spend most of the daylight hours observing the landscapes I pass through. In much of them I observe paradise lost and think about how permaculture could help make these areas more productive again. Here are some of the major eco-regions I passed through with some observations and suggestions. The long winter nights kept me from seeing and commenting on large swaths of the landscape.
Northern Rocky Mountains.
Within the next two weeks the workers at the Fukushima plant are going to try to remove spent fuel rods that are suspended on damaged racks. They weigh about 400 tons all together and contain radiation equivalent to 14,0000 times the amount released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb. This is very dangerous work, not just for the workers, or Japan, but for the entire world. There's a media blackout about the gravity of the situation (and has been for two years) but right now I believe that prayers are needed more than ever.
On the international level, perhaps the biggest news for permaculture is the widespread adoption of permaculture by the Anastasia movement in Russia which is inspired by the nine books in the Ringing Cedar Series written by Vladimir Megre. If you haven’t heard of the Anastasia movement, here is a nutshell sketch.
[This article was written to inform people about the different kinds of permaculture design courses being offered in the Northwest in 2010. We are putting it on the INPC website to show some of the types of courses being offered. At a later date we will add PC courses being offered in the Inland Northwest in 2012]
I woke up last night out of a dream wherein I was delivering a lecture to a packed audience and thought it was worth writing down.
I see that there are a lot of young people in the audience tonight and this speech is especially for you, although it applies to all humans on the planet at this time. There is no time to lose at this point. Since 1970 I have been aware that humanity has needed a revolution and in recent years it has become ever more obvious that we are in a race with extinction. The stakes are much higher than I thought in my earlier years.
This article explores the role of home gardens in world food production. The thesis of the article is that home gardens have the potential to become the dominant food supply for humanity. A case is made that home gardens could grow 50% of humanity’s food supply on less then 10% of the world’s arable farmland. Home gardens are one of the most reliable, efficient and democratic ways of producing food ever invented. Agriculture has repeatedly degraded its natural resource base and collapsed many societies in the past.
This is an excellent resource for designers of rain water collection systems. It's geared to arid regions so maybe it's fairly applicable to the Inland Northwest.
Please follow the link to the article:
http://www.twdb.texas.gov/innovativewater/rainwater/doc/RainwaterHarvestingManual_3rdedition.pdf
So what is permaculture? What makes it different from: organic gardening? organic farming? sustainable agriculture? ecological agriculture? bio-dynamic farming? regeneration farming? forest gardening? Holistic Resource Management HRM? ecosystem restoration? sustainability? or natural building?
