How did we get here (permies.com, that is)?

How did folks make their way to permies? I got here partly because I was watching some of the videos on the My Little Homestead YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/mylittlehomestead) where they were talking about Rocket Mass Heaters and mentioned getting information about them from permies.com. I also was introduced to permiculture concepts by the TEDx talk "Why is organic food so *#@! expensive??". Finally, when I Googled some topics I was interested in, permies came up. I started posting here because people were talking about insulating windows, which was something I'd already been researching, so I could contribute some hints to the discussion.

A gave a farm tour to a friend of a friend, who proclaimed that I was the first permaculture farm she had ever seen. Huh? I hadn't ever heard the word permaculture before that. Had to go google it. During my snuffling around on Google, I stumbled upon permies.com. Been here ever since.

By the way, I learned that I wasn't a permaculture farm back then, and I'm still not totally one today. But I do practice many aspects of permaculture on this farm and in my daily life. I like to think of my lifestyle as low input/low impact, permie-ish, conservation, homestead farming. How's that bunch of adjectives!

I was getting more interested in gardening one year, mostly because of the quality difference vs grocery store produce that I was really learning to appreciate. I was reading through a forum about care for tomatoes, specifically nutrients, and someone there used an analogy for wood/rocks being in a garden bed:

It depends how you look at the situation: A farmer sees he has 100's of rocks in his field and wants to figure out a way to get rid of them. A permaculturist in the same situation says "this is great! I have nutrients for the next 100 years!"

I had never heard of permaculture before that and 100 years of nutrients sounded right up my alley, so I google'd it and found this site to lurk around since permaculture is talked about All-The-Time here. hehe. Aswell as watching every PermacultureVoices videos + reading books and articles for about a year. I felt I had a basic understand of permaculture principles earlier this spring, so I signed up as a Permie

I was standing out in the woods chopping down a tree, when all of a sudden it started to rain. No...hold on! That was the tin man in the Wizard of Oz.

My journey to here...I had been enjoying magazines such as Mother Earth News and The New Pioneer for awhile. Then, one issue changed everything. The April 2013 issue (which I still have) had an article called Primer For Permies. It featured Paul Wheaton (our very own Master Steward), Paul Gautchi (Back to Eden gardening method) and Brenda Groth (Permies Pollinator). There was a short bio about Paul titled The Polarizing Permie King and a cute picture of him in his overalls. I just couldn't resist learning more about this new (to me) concept of permaculture. And, I just love a man in overalls. What can I say?

I didn't know what I was doing was permaculture til a few months ago.  I was simply paying attention to the land, the plants, insects.  I just thought it was important to take care of a property in a "holistic" way.

I was a member of a huge homesteading forum and I'd see Paul over there periodically, stirring the pot. I can't remember what the topic was that really peaked my curiosity, probably growing tomatoes in the desert? Anyway - He had posted a video he'd made and all the people (I think that forum had a lot of old school conventional farmers) were pooh-poohing him and I watched the video and I really liked what he had to say and how he thought. I always had such frustration there because everyone was so... conventional, but I didn't really know of any other community or resources where I could learn homesteading stuff.

So I followed his links and ended up on permies.com but I don't think there was a forum back then, but eventually I checked back and there was, and then it grew like crazy and it was the perfect community of out-of-the-box thinkers and people coming up with creative solutions and I loved the very concept of "permaculture" so much better than anything else so I finally registered and here I am

I'm not quite sure how I found permies, exactly. About a year and a half ago, I tried to write down my journey to permaculture in another thread (https://permies.com/t/80/2099/find-permies). I think I got to permaculture and permies by watching Food.inc a good 6+ years ago and seeing Salatin's farms and how he rotated chickens after cows. I started doing web searches on it, and I think that's how I found out it was called permaculture. I'm pretty sure Paul's chicken article was the first one I found. And, when I wanted to learn about permaculture without spending money I didn't have, I found that permies was the place to be. A lot of websites seemed to require memberships to see articles, or I'd have to buy books, but not permies! Here there are so many helpful people answering questions and building knowledge. After continually finding answers to my permaculture questions here, and not knowing what to do with my north-facing slope, I registered and I've been loving it here ever since!

I got here completely on accident by clicking on a link I didn't mean too. So here I am. Found a lot of people who grow like I do. I never even knew the term permaculter then one day a gardening friend ask how I learned it. I told her I don't know what that is this is just what me grandma taught me and it makes more sense the doping chemicals on everything and I'm just doing what nature does. Later that night I looked up permaculter on YouTube and a couple years later watching those type of videos my finger slipped and I found my self here.