Tell me, tell me! How did you discover Permaculture?

Happy Friday Everyone!

I'm curious about how you discovered Permaculture?

Were you looking for a specific topic?
Did a friend tell you about it?
Did a family member teach you?

What Permaculture topics take you down the rabbit hole with Alice...? (Google/ YouTube)
Did you search for something like- soil, bees, hugels, rocket mass heaters, solar, fermenting goodies, compost???

How did you come across Permies.com?

For me, I was looking to learn and understand what is different about gardening in MT compared to Western OR (where I used to live). I searched for things like gardening in MT, permaculture in MT, how to raise chickens in MT, soil basics, etc -  and came across Paul's Ted talk. Which then led me to Permies.com and the master gardening class! Yay, now I'm hooked!

**I'm asking this to try and understand what are the common threads that people search for if they are interested in permaculture.  
How can I get more people thinking about this kind of thing and make our world better?

Please tell me more about you! 🙂

I was looking for a better way to grow food.   Tp improve my health and grow organic,I think i saw some vids on youtube and down the rabbit hole i went.   And it all just spoke to me.   And you learn organic is just the begining.   Can't remember the first one but I started watching Permies vids and couldn't get enough.  
And i love that there are so many topics you can look up and find info and help on.  
I do my best to bring others into the fold. lol  Some want to know and you can talk with them but others are just not ready.  But maybe when they are they will remember the word permaculture.

Thanks for your reply Lyda!

"Some want to know and you can talk with them but others are just not ready.  But maybe when they are they will remember the word permaculture."
Absolutely agree!

I can't remember exactly when or where I heard about permaculture, most likely something on youtube.

I definitely came to Permies as a result of my situation finally sorting out such that I could start a garden. My inclination is to work with nature, so the vein of searching that I performed ended up giving a lot of results on this website. It helped that there were lots of green woodworking resources and spoon-making discussions here, since that is a major interest of mine.

I think the clincher was when I finished reading One Straw Revolution and found that a lot of the methodology and principles Fukuoka pushed are shared with permaculture.

I started gardening over a decade ago to save money on food costs. So I searched the internet for frugal, free, or cheap ways to garden. That led me to sites about making my own fertilizers and pesticides and using organic methods. That eventually led me to more natural methods, working with nature instead of against it, and permaculture in general. My own health and my need for fewer chemicals also contributed to my searches. So I guess finances started it for me.

It was probably Jan 2016, when I was looking to ID a plant of some kind, that part of the story I don't remember.

Google took me to this forum.  The first thing that I wanted to know was why was this forum called permies.  I soon read that was short for permaculture.

What was permaculture?

After reading the topics and threads on the forum for about a month I knew this was a place I wanted to stay.

I signed up to be a member in Feb 2016 when I wanted to help someone with a fencing problem due to flooding for which I had an answer that might help.

I am still here ... and I now know so much more about what permaculture is.

The short version is that it was finding help growing comfrey (mine was drowning).

The longer story is that I just always liked growing things.  As a kid, we had silver maples that went to seed for the first time and I collected seeds and planted them on every spare patch of ground I could find.  I eventually selected the 8 best looking (out of maybe 100?) little 4” trees to transplant in pairs assuming one would die in each pair. They all survived and when about 3-4’ tall I transplanted them in a neighbor’s yard.

I always liked the idea of growing things without having to add additives more than once, or at least only using additives grown only on my own land.  Early on in my gardening I did use bone and blood meal, but I wanted to accomplish the same using comfrey.

Once I got my comfrey growing (thanks to Permies) I was hooked.  My next step was to break down wood chips with Wine Cap mushrooms, an obsession of mine today.

I have found that the more “Permie” my garden gets, the better it grows.

Eric

Hard to say.  Since the early 60s I wanted land In a woodland setting. I discovered Mother Earth in the late 70s.   At that time, it was much more about hippies being on, what was called then, “The Indian Trip”.   There were also a few articles about more serious homesteading and organic gardening, certainly Mother Earth endorsed  organic, but all of their articles did not endorse it.  From there, it continued to be a gradual process of discovery. I bought my first acreage in the early 80s. It was 95% organic. I moved to my present location in the late 90s. This site (Permies) I discovered around 2016 and I joined a year later. Today, I am more Permie than not.

Thanks everyone for sharing your permie journey!

Water brought me to permaculture.
I grew up in a place where there is a fairly steady amount of precipitation year-round, and moved to a place with a rainy season and a dry season.  So I was looking or the best ways to conserve and get the most out of water. I discovered Art Ludwig, then Brad Lancaster, this was all right around the turn of this century. I knew about permies.com back then but only joined recently. Back then I was very active in two other forums, one based around my profession and the other based on motherhood and I just didn't have the time for yet another forum. Neither my job nor my kids absorb so much time and worry anymore. and besides those two forums died, and permies is still kicking.