One Page Permaculture

I'm not sure if this should be in the permaculture forum or the meaningless drivel forum. Feel free to move it about.

I heard on a recent podcast that Paul thought there should be a sort of quick & easy guide to permaculture. I think he's right. Instead of teaching people to be chefs, we should be providing Lean Cuisine for the masses. Or instead of teaching people to build computers from the semiconductors on up, we provide them with PCs and iPads. You can always go to chef/engineering/whatever school if you are interested enough.

So here's my attempt at one page permaculture:

Step 1: identify contours on property
Step 2: put stuff that will slow water down (swales, logs, branches, rocks, etc) on those contours
Step 3: plant a mixture of support species and productive species - obtain mix from a permaculture business that customizes seed mixes to temperature & moisture regions
Step 4: wait 3 months
Step 5: overseed with mixed species
Step 6: go to step 4

Obviously this isn't optimal design, but I think this kind of approach would be good enough and simple enough to provide results for those people who aren't interested in learning all the nitty-gritty details.

What's your One Page Permaculture?

obtain mix from a permaculture business that customizes seed mixes to temperature & moisture regions

Does such a company exist?

I'm looking into purchasing a piece of land (https://permies.com/t/30691/europe/Potential-permaculture-site-southwest-Germany)

My wife, who's not AS into Permaculture as I am, is still unconvinced that this purchase is a good idea, because it's a bit far from where we live and she feels it would steal too much time and attention from other aspects of our life. (Round trip from where we now live is about a 3 hour drive.)

On the other hand, I'm almost sick with desire to own land, and this feels like an opportunity that's too good to pass up. I feel very strongly that by implementing certain permaculture practices, this land would not require much of our attention, perhaps a few times a year. In the referenced podcast, (http://www.richsoil.com/permaculture/620-podcast-099-lessons-from-the-forest/) Paul Wheaton and Jack Spirko are talking about creating a cheat sheet for the lazy permaculturalist who just wants to phone it in, which brought me to this thread.

Further, to put my foot in my own mouth, I don't want to approach this with a generic list of tactics, but rather, strategically, which is essentially NOT what such a list or cheat sheet represents. I sense this happens a lot, and it seems to bypass the entire process of observation and choosing site-specific solutions. I recognize that, and yet, here's my list of what I would do to minimize my time on-site:

1. Take a weekend and mark out contour and install swales.
(1b. Connect with local landscapers, farmers and gardeners and encourage them to use the property to offload excess organic material?)
2. Sow perennial N-fixing cover crops and dynamic accumulators.
3. create habitat and good living conditions for beneficials, fertilizers, pollinators, and the soil food web. (Perhaps similar to 2., throw down some bird seed, see what gets eaten and what germinates.)
4. Let it sit until spring, come back and see what's established.
5. Install a pond near the highest point of elevation.
6. Find someone locally who would run some chickens and other small livestock over the land using a paddock shift/rotational grazing method.
7. Start planting a variety of trees (N-fixing, flowering, fruit etc.

At this point, I'm not sure what else would require my attention or involvement. I would occasionally visit the property to harvest, but it seems to me that once a system is set up, it more or less runs itself according to natural processes.

I don't want to be ignorant or idealistic, but at this point, much of my knowledge is only theoretical and I have no concept of how much work or what kinds of costs might be involved in any step along the way. I invite you to share your insight, critique, correct my thinking, etc.

Also, I want to clarify point 1b, I like the idea of accumulating organic matter, but I recognize that I have no idea about where it's coming from, if there are any unpleasant substances involved, and so on. For example, does the horse manure contain anti-worm medication? Have the grass clippings and tree prunings been treated with anything objectionable? who knows.

Thoughts?

Neal McSpadden wrote:I'm not sure if this should be in the permaculture forum or the meaningless drivel forum. Feel free to move it about.

I heard on a recent podcast that Paul thought there should be a sort of quick & easy guide to permaculture. I think he's right. Instead of teaching people to be chefs, we should be providing Lean Cuisine for the masses. Or instead of teaching people to build computers from the semiconductors on up, we provide them with PCs and iPads. You can always go to chef/engineering/whatever school if you are interested enough.

So here's my attempt at one page permaculture:

Step 1: identify contours on property
Step 2: put stuff that will slow water down (swales, logs, branches, rocks, etc) on those contours
Step 3: plant a mixture of support species and productive species - obtain mix from a permaculture business that customizes seed mixes to temperature & moisture regions
Step 4: wait 3 months
Step 5: overseed with mixed species
Step 6: go to step 4

Obviously this isn't optimal design, but I think this kind of approach would be good enough and simple enough to provide results for those people who aren't interested in learning all the nitty-gritty details.

What's your One Page Permaculture?

Hi Neal! I'm a fellow Primal Prepper! I only know a few others -- Todd of Survival Sherpa, Survival Punk, another female blogger whose name escapes me now, and Jack Spirko of The Survival Podcast. Anyway, I'm glad to have found your blog -- does your blog have a Facebook page? -- that's how I prefer to get my feeds. Well, I just subscribed to your YT channel.

Also, thanks for posting your "one page permaculture" -- I'm a PC newbie and I think that it's helpful. I've been an urban homesteader for 5 years or so. I found Paul Wheaton because The Prairie Homestead did blog post on hugelkultur and I was intrigued and did some searching and, of course, found him.

Cheers! Elissa