Where is permaculture for the elderly?

Travis Johnson wrote:My father is moving in this direction, and he is elderly and has Alzheimer's. The man was like my Grandmother and coud grow veggies on ledgerock it seems. He wants to convert some of his land into a raised bed strawberry U=Pick farm, and I am okay with that, and will help him out.

Our recent plans of getting out of sheep, selling two of our houses, really have to do with my aging parents. My Mom is really bad, and I expect a call at any minute saying she has died. Katie and i are in a position to not only care for my father, but also my two adopted isters who live at home who have Down Snydrome. It really is going to be hard because I have three people who cannot really function with a lot of change in their lives, but we are family, and that is what we do here.

We differ a bit in that our family does not use nursing homes. As I tye this, I am sitting in the exact spot where my Grandmother took her last breath, and my Grandfather, and my Great grandmother. It is also where my father was born, and that of my uncle. I mean that literally; they came out of my Grandmother here in a home-birth. We are a farm family in rural Maine, we literally are born and die in the same spot. We have been here for 9 generations, and I really do not see that changing. Homesteading, farming and permiculture are just a huge part of that next-generational transfer.

Lif Strand wrote:The business end of a community dedicated to permaculture + the elderly is pretty much an insurmountable obstacle.  A friend and I began working on putting something similar together -- a retirement community for women with horses, women who loved the outdoors, and women who were creatives -- including any of those women who needed extra help as seniors.  We envisioned islands of duplex cottages (basically two tiny homes joined by one wall) so that no individual was isolated, a community building, and live-in staff (some full-time, some part-time and encouraged to work outside the community) for whatever the member/residents couldn't take care of themselves.  I was going to donate some of my land to the project, my friend was going to donate money, management, and networking skills, and we had a few women who were ready to invest.

The big problem was not starting up, but running it.  In order for it to work, it had to be something like a co-op type community where each woman contributed an initial investment plus brought in money every month to help run the place.  Younger women could keep working to generate their funds, some women would have investment or other funding sources, but at some point most would have to have additional funds due to age-related factors.  Many people have insurance for retirement/senior living; an individual's insurance money would make all the difference in whether we could fill our cottages and have a viable business or not.   However, meeting the standards that an insurance company and government codes would require would shove our start-up and maintenance costs well above the point where we could realistically make a go of it.

Unfortunately, my friend died in an accident and the project fell apart.  I'm no spring chicken so I wonder what I will do when the time comes -- sooner rather than later -- that I won't be able to manage my homesteading style of life.

Johanna Sol wrote:So many good points on this thread.  We're still in our 60s (with my hubby 5 years older than me) and our main mantra is helping ourselves by keeping health and safety in mind at all times. Working on our roof, replacing composite with metal, with dangerous drops off on three sides has been very good for re-emphasizing safety, along with using power saws. However, some of the projects I want to do are bigger than available energy - and I recently managed to expend too much of it, thereby taking down my immunity - especially not good when Covid is still circulating. Luckily my husband had just figured out how to get out from under six months of daily headaches and his energy was back so we weren't both down at the same time.

Permaculture reasons why we put this focus on safety and health:
1)  life quality is diminished when you can't physically do basic things, let alone when you're in pain
2)  we do not want to burden our 30-something daughters - one is expecting her second child and has a demanding job, and the other informed us that she did not want to be our caregiver if something happened to us, although she and her husband indicated they would be willing to pay into long term care insurance for us.  
3)  we have no other caring extended family on either side
4)  we do not want to waste our assets on medical care - so many horror stories regarding medical bankruptcies - we want to keep stress down
5)  we would like to see the grandchildren graduate high school and still be walking unaided

The main reason my hubby quit his career earlier than most was because our stress levels were way too high and I reckoned it would be a matter of time before one of us was faced with a major disease. It was a leap of faith financially, but in my book, life is not about what you do/did for work but about aging as gracefully with as good a quality of life as you can. So far, things are working out - and we had 10 years where we were young enough to explore remote areas and create a band to play music for various audiences. I also developed a long-running website and got to practice growing things plus start studying permaculture.

All that said, we talk often about how fleeting human life really is and how little it will matter to society as a whole when we are gone. I want to transform parts of our property to an Eden-like landscape, and have made a start - I just have to recognize once again that the timing of things is not up to me, and that things will work out the way they are supposed to. The major storm damage we had end December which derailed all my plans for garden design is a case in point.

We have already improved on what was here - being good stewards during our tenure is key. We can prepare for declining capabilities by putting in a masonry or rocket mass heater to cut down on firewood needs. Perhaps someone can be persuaded to rent at a reduced rate in exchange for help as we age, especially if we can get a small guest house up for us to stay in. We hope to automate water systems as much as possible to cut down on the need for maintenance and watering.

Should one or both of us become incapacitated, we are prepared to let go and downsize if need be - at some point we will have to let go of this property anyway. Whether that involves living with the daughter who said she would take us in or another arrangement, who knows - a nursing home would be last resort though. Perhaps there will be more community care situations in 20 years.

By the way, the Amish seem to have things worked out regarding keeping elders at home and engaged with family and seem to practice some aspects of permaculture as well - at least they are close to the land.

Marth Vince wrote:I am 75 and live on 80 acres in TEXAS.  I plant, garden, harvest and put up. I look after cows, horses, donkeys and dogs and cats. My Da lived to 96 on 40 acres in the mountains of Wales.Don’t expect that all elderly people need caring for. We are far and away happier on our own.

Wendy Robers wrote:Hi, David
I like your ideas about including medical support in the intentional community, as well as the value of the contributios the elders can make.

If Covid did anything positive, it was in bringing remote medical care to all of us.  Today, a cell phone can tap in and display your vital signs and heart rhythms and provide them, remotely, to a qualified physician.  This takes some of the burden off of those of us who are "more mature" than we were 10 years ago.

Kate Downham wrote:I wonder if intentional communities with people of all ages are a solution?

One that I know of encourages residents to help each other out informally, so elderly people get help with their gardens, and then sometimes give help by teaching children things like knitting and music lessons, and just by being elders that children can look to.

I'm not sure how this approach would work for elderly people that need a lot of day to day help, but the older members of this community seem to be thriving, and some are participating in the permaculture design course there.

Gina Capri wrote:

Bernie Farmer wrote:

I guess my point here is that permaculture doesn't exist in a vacuum. For it to really work it has to be incorporated in life as we know it in such a way as to make it better for everyone and no village for the elderly will ever function that way. We dream of permaculture on a grand scale, encompassing everyone and everything, but we practice it on an individual basis - one-on-one, face-to-face, intimately, passionately, and compassionately. Permaculture for the elderly already exists in the lives of every single caretaker paid or unpaid, family or friend, neighbor or stranger, who takes the time to care.

I like the thoughtful conversation about this, and I absolutely don’t deny it is super hard. I watched my great grandma die from dementia over 6 years, and all the things you mentioned about siblings fighting, not all children contributing equally, only a few sacrificing to do the work happened. And she still ended up being institutionalized, because it truly was too hard. She didn’t remember anyone and felt like those taking care of her (her own children) were strangers in her house. How unsettling for her and emotionally terrible for everyone!

But there is a place where elders are naturally taken care of by the community. It’s called Africa. At least Burkina Faso. But it is so different from mainstream white Western culture that it is hard to fathom all the mentality changes that would mean to make it work in a Western white context. And is it too late, at the point where you realize grandma needs care, but grandma is not African and has different expectations, perhaps?

I do take the point about loss of income and retirement... there is an inherent problem with the system in this respect too.

From my heart, my thought is that if the expectation from the time you are born is that you will care for your community’s elders as long as possible, then more people will be able to age in community for longer, and I won’t have to keep watching lots be cleared (at least two in the last year near where I work and live) to keep building senior care facilities because the need won’t be so much. Not everyone that is in a care facility/senior living arrangement is living with dementia, we all know that. And with the mandated community care mindset, it wouldn’t matter (financially, maybe it would matter to you personally) if you suffer loss of income and retirement, because the community should be taking care of you too when you are an elder.  I guess for this to work in this day when many people only had one or two kids, the answer would need to consider both family and community contributions. Even in Burkina it’s first family but then community too.

S Tonin wrote:I don't know if it's still there, but in the early oughts I visited a place somewhere in upstate NY . . . intentional community for longer.  It was Theosophist, and they were kind of strict about what the community members were allowed to do.   . . .

I found the place-- The Fellowship Community in Chestnut Hill, NY.  

E.L. Dunn wrote:I have been reading this off and on for some time now, and may as well pitch in, I suppose.  Currently closing in on 74 and now dealing with Parkinsons and leukemia.  Same damned thing my father turned up with.  Hereditary?  I am told not, but one has to wonder.  NOT looking for sympathy, but I have sometimes thought on finding a community where I might be able to pass on life experience and practical matters I have picked up over my time.  

I tried several places via IC.org and was either ignored or refused as, while they would not come out and say it, I was too old.  I am not dumb and know what was going on.   So, I take a dim view at this juncture of community for the aged.  It seemingly does not exist.  "Oh, he is just an old scudder and if you ignore him he will go away."  That seems to be the pervasive attitude.

So... I shake and jitter my way through the end times and make myself less apparent in permies.  Shopping as early as I can when I need to, selling off tools and bits of my life, and spending a lot of time staring off into the middle distance.  Seems the best course at this point.