WEEDS is a new Substack experiment connected to permies.com and the broader idea that if we want permaculture thinking to spread, we need to bring it into the wider internet ecosystem where people are already spending their time.
One of the guiding ideas behind
WEEDS is this: People protect what they love. I want a billion brains to find out about permaculture. But I want all one-billion of them to love what it creates.
One thing you will discover if you click the link to go there, is it will ask for an email address. You can click on "no thanks" and it will still let you into WEEDS.
A lot of modern environmental messaging leads with fear, guilt, doom, collapse, outrage, or abstract statistics. But most people are moved to care for the living world through affection first — through beauty, wonder, usefulness, observation, connection, good memories, good meals, birdsong, gardens, shade trees, ponds, trails, pollinators, fireflies, mushrooms, orchards, and the simple feeling that a place is alive like my little permaculture paradise at Willow Acre.
WEEDS is intended to lean into that, as well as be an easily navigable link to our other online resources.
The goal is to be an outpost that directs people to the depth of knowledge and wisdom contained in the forums and threads. My hope is to help more people discover ideas that may eventually lead them here.
A lot of people out there are quietly exhausted, isolated, burned out, tired of processed foods and screen-heavy living. Many of them don’t even know words like “permaculture,” “appropriate technology,” or “soil building.”
But they *do* know they want something more grounded, more beautiful, more human, and more connected to the living world.
WEEDS is meant to be one small bridge toward that.
Some of the content will be exclusive video hosted directly on Substack, though much will still connect back to permies threads.
One thing I personally like about Substack is that it allows slower, longer-form, less algorithmically frantic communication than many mainstream platforms. It feels a little more like sitting down with a cup of coffee and paging through a homesteading journal than doomscrolling social media.
This is still very much an experiment, and we are figuring it out as we go, and Substack is woefully void of any permaculture presence, so we have an opportunity to be pioneers there.
If you’d like to follow along, offer suggestions, or help spread permaculture ideas beyond the usual circles, here’s the link:
https://permies.substack.com
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