posted 10 years ago
I think someone who can produce enough food for a family of 4 annually, especially following the constraints Paul wants to add, is well beyond bachelor-level permaculture.
I've heard there's a transition between about 70% of one's calories, and 100%, where gardening turns from a hobby into a full-time job.
A bachelors' can be completed while working full time at something else, as proven by Ernie and his dad. It's definitely not full-time work, as most of us realize after we leave school and start actually working full-time.
Maybe producing 50 to 70% of your calories for 1 or 2 people would be comparable to a bachelors' program, in terms of serious effort and reward, but no guarantees of self-sufficiency using only the content of that experience.
Even just filling a pantry or freezer, or propagating heirloom plants true for more than a few years, indicates a pretty serious gardener.
Maybe 4 people would be a masters / black belt.
I'd say a doctorate (or masters in some fields) and a 3rd-degree black belt would be roughly equal - that's when you're generally allowed to start teaching. Note that this is numerous hours of practice after one's first-degree black belt.
In most cases the degree is just the starting point.
A bachelor is like an older apprentice in the trades system: you are now allowed to make some of your own decisions, and considered an insider rather than a lay person in the field, but you are not a master yet. In most cases you will not be allowed to practice independently, unless your field depends more on experience/OJT than academics.
The modern masters' degree in some fields indicates full mastery (you can become licensed to practice by your state) but in others it's comparable to a trades journeyman: you are qualified to work independently, but you are not yet considered an authority in the field who can train other craft masters.
For many fields the doctorate, the bar, your residency, licensure, or some other final threshold must be reached before you're considered a fully-fledged practitioner of a profession.
I think the idea of a 72-hour "designer" course being enough training to set yourself up as a design-services professional is kinda ludicrous, personally.
I think Mollison's idea was that if we each think of ourselves as creatively empowered "designers" who are responsible for integrating the elements within our control, we can do a lot more than if we think of ourselves as "consumers", customers, owners, or some of those other roles that impoverish our relationship with landscape. His political ideals involve a lot of egalitarian creative control - almost anarchy, though he reviews other equitable systems like democracy or consensus for the record. Yet he positions himself as an authority in this design field. He probably is - but the idea that you can become a designer as your livelihood after a week or two learning from some of his students smacks of pyramid scheme.
By comparison - trades apprenticeship in Europe was traditionally 5 to 7 years if started as a youth; for an adult mason to become a certified kachelofen builder is a 3-year course, and there's a similar 3-year course to become a tile-maker for the same type of tile ovens. To understand climate, weather, and other local factors well enough to make good permaculture designs seems like it would take at least as long as learning how to plumb a house, or make and install an effective tile stove.
If you are already a landscape architect and you are adding some permaculture practice and polish to established organic gardening and drought-tolerant landscape design skills, or something, that's another story. I would imagine a good masonry heater builder could learn a new design in about 3 tries, or with a good table of references, where it might take a novice 10 or more projects to find all the gaps in their understanding.
Bill says "you can hardly do worse" than what's currently out there, but I disagree. I think there is a lot of good local design going unrecognized because it wears some other name, like "rancher" or "unemployed" or "housewife" or "century farm."
I'd love to see ag schools doing permaculture trainings where you did more than one year - a 3 or 4 year program where you iteratively build on what you did before.
That's one thing I do like about the belts: the idea that you do one level the first year, and then your goal is to do better the following year, building on what you already learned.
After you've done that 3 or 4 times (with some supervision and help), you are demonstrably qualified to teach yourself and continue with your own research, and that's what I see as the basic promise of the bachelor's degree.
The content is often not that ambitious; it's the iterative improvements that are most important.
Freshman Gardening:
Establish a Zone 1 garden providing familiar herbs and plants that you will use regularly - even a window-box is a good start. You will be graded not on the percentage of plants that survive, but on the percentage of the window-box that contains healthy or usable plant matter by finals week. (Yes, a store of dried herbs can compensate for some plants dying back.)
Breadth requirements: In your zone 1 or 2, grow some of each food group: a legume, a starch, annual fruit(s) and vegetable(s), an oil-producing plant. Consider including a members of every major food-producing families that are viable in your area (e.g. a grain, tuber, bulb, and seed crop, not just a single starch; a berry, melon/gourd, annual and perennial fruits.)
Perennials: Start establishing both herbaceous (rhubarb, horseradish, parsnip) and woody perennial crops (nuts, fruits, and/or coppice trees). If you do not have any zone 4 or 5 timber areas, start establishing coppice or timber access now, off-property if necessary.
Stacking Yields: Find at least 3 uses for the weeds you encounter while establishing your Zone 1 garden. (Class exercises may include harvest and preservation of edible weeds, basketry, mulch and tinder-bundle preparation, shade-mat, and hugel-bed construction)
Other Core Work: gain a working knowledge of soils, weather, solar aspect, pest management, etc. Start a journal with lab work to identify soil types, soil microbes, weather patterns, and key limiting factors of your site or climate.
Electives: a choice of ornamental flowers, wild-foraging, livestock/apiary management, fermented foods, or building a 'sit spot' feature such as a bench, sundial, or outdoor tea stove.
Freshman "finals": Produce a week's menu of varied meals from your produce (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks). Off site ingredients may be used if you can document how the garden produce was used to obtain these ingredients, but the main ingredients should be the direct produce of the garden. The meals can be produced and documented throughout the year; we strongly recommend not waiting until finals week as your selection may be seasonally limited.
Will be scored on the likelihood of a new girlfriend or boyfriend being favorably impressed with the dining experience.
Sophomore:
Crops: Increase the diversity of your garden to provide better pest resistance. Double the number of crops, and rearrange them as needed based on last years' success or problems with certain aspects, soil types, water, etc.
Landforms: Build 2 landforms or structures to improve the garden's performance (in-class work parties to include hugel bed(s), solar bowls, raised beds, cloches or solar-cones, frost-drainages, on and off-contour berms or beds, ditch cultivation, plants as structure).
Materials: Visit established forage and timber systems such as coppice or pollard, harvest and renew a coppice area for future years' projects. Students may choose between de-budding withes in preparation for wickerwork, trimming stands for wattle production, or planting cuttings in preparation for hedge and fence work.
Polyculture: Continue to develop your perrenial garden areas. Harvest the first crop of herbaceous perennials and propagate as appropriate. Tour 3 nearby garden or farm areas for ideas on climate-tolerant perennials to add, and aspects or landforms to suit them. Keep a journal of observations regarding garden visitors, interactions, and differences in microclimate or guild associations that may be affecting your garden choices next year.
Sophomore finals: Produce 3 full week's menu of varied meals from your garden produce, one each from 3 different months of the year. Include the use of stored/hardy foods for your climate's winter or dormant season.
Document 20 different visitors who have appeared in your garden without human intervention (insects, plants/weeds, animals, birds, debris, etc), and describe their potential associations with your efforts.
Establish 2 goals for next year: one for personal-best calorie production, another for personal satisfaction or trade.
Junior:
Crops: Your crop palette should now include at least three examples of each category from freshman year. Demonstrate redundancy at least 3 varieties deep for: Major food groups, soil-building functions, insect functions; and seasonal rotation of functions.
Emergency: Take 2 field trips to meet climate-tolerant native or naturalized species that can be used as emergency food and fodder. Inspect perennials and repair any damage; graduation next year depends on successful establishment of perrennials. (If all perennials are failing to thrive, consider an inventory of native or weedy perennials and researching their productive potential.)
Animal Husbandry: Integrate livestock or apiaries into your garden. Build a fence or tether of site-grown materials capable of keeping a goat busy for over 24 hours. (Vegan alternative: build orchard-bee habitat capable of resisting mite and fungal infestation for all 4 seasons)
Landforms II: Add 3 more landforms or structures to improve the garden's overall performance - either more of the same, or a new strategy. Class examples to include an outdoor kitchen capable of safe canning and dehydration, safe storage for tools and seeds, a pond and key-line system, contour and off-contour berms, wattle or wickerwork animal control systems.
Observation: Track your own personal diet for a full month. Document the role your garden produce plays in your personal diet, favorite foods to target for production next year, and any exotics that could only be acquired by trade.
Junior finals: Produce at least 50% of the adult caloric requirement, using at least 4 distinct families of plants/animals. Trade is permissible but calorie-for-calorie exchanges must be observed; the pig must eat sufficient pounds of squash to account for the weight of bacon claimed.
For the plant or family that represents the biggest contributor/surplus, document how that plants' supporting requirements are being met, how you are insuring against pest congregation, and how this surplus is being used to serve the larger garden development.
Your plan for next year should include bringing a different plant family into equivalent or better production with this year's winner.
Senior:
Crops: Your crop palette should now be capable of providing 70% of an adult daily caloric requirement, with some surplus for trade. Most of your senior work will consist of maintaining and improving production using everything learned so far.
Networking: Contact gardeners from regions where your favorite exotics grow, and learn which of your local crops they would consider as possible trade goods. You may also consider renewable resources such as ice, wood, or textiles, but avoid non-renewable exports unless their removal will actively improve your garden. (e.g. swapping caliche/lime for peat or pine-needle amendments.)
Senior Finals: Document that your garden produces 70% of the adult caloric requirement, and what type(s) of surplus it produces.
Demonstrate what proportion of this food production is perennial, irrigation-independent, self-seeding, and generally capable of continued production without intervention.
Senior project: Design your own signature project, graded based on whether it favorably impresses other gardeners in your climate. Examples might include cultivating a desirable exotic, improving production of an heirloom from last year, unusually beautiful polyculture gardening or landscape design, or producing a value-added delicacy such as honey, cheese, sauces/relishes, fruit butters, sausage or smoked foods, or fermented foods/beverages from your produce.
That's if permaculture gardening was a college bachelors' degree... as I imagine it.
My own personal self-designed permaculture learning curve is very different from this - it's a combination of social networking and climate adaptation, built around my situation as a freelance traveling teacher and family caregiver. I'm not expecting food self-sufficiency, yet I'm seeing my grocery bills go down and the food quality go up.
I don't think I'd consider myself as having any particular gardening degree.
So really, the question is what would master gardeners or subsitence farmers consider the basic requirements for a bachelors' of gardening?
Based on recent farm-hand adventures:
"Harvest 4 to 10 different market crops for this week's meals, using the appropriate care and handling with each, so that they last in cool storage for 72 hours or until processed. T
(Farmer: Triage crops and schedule available picking time based on current ripeness, storage life, market potential, likelihood of weather or insect damage, and the necessity to keep plants in their productive, vegetative state (over-ripe crops may need to be picked and discarded).
Estimate the cost of all labor and materials in cultivating those crops, and a fair price per unit. Consider how processing time to bundle units before market, or lost sales time while weighing produce at the market, might affect your prices.)"
"Make a meal for 4 farm hands using produce on hand, meeting their caloric needs, keeping the summer kitchen as cool as possible, and ensuring that nobody gets food or water-borne illness (rinsing salad with irrigation water is an automatic fail).
One farm hand is allergic to wheat, one to nuts, one is sensitive to dairy but will eat it anyway if served, and one will vomit if served okra."
"Create and use a method for ensuring that all 27 rabbits get fresh water twice daily during the heat wave, including the ones in the new hutches over the hill, while alternating shifts with your fellow farm hands."
"List 4 items on your farm that could be used as substitute rabbit-food after the hay delivery is discovered to be moldy."
"Pack enough produce into the station wagon by 1 pm on Thursday to pay your bills for the week, including tables, scales and equipment. Do you have room for your intern(s)? Did all flowers and produce arrive intact?"
"Create a realistic time budget to complete all essential garden chores and inspections without shirking other duties or health requirements. This schedule should allow for:
- 8 hours of sleep,
- 8 hours of "day job" plus a half-hour for unpaid lunch,*
- 2 hours of daily travel for errands or commuting,
- 2 to 4 hours for family or personal obligations such as cooking, bathing, bills, housework, etc.
X What time remains available for garden work?
X What other daily activities, such as education, entertainment, or social life would you need to budget time for?
Can any of the above activities be combined or share time slots? (Is it possible to do two things at once?)
How might the schedule change with additional family members or teammates, either responsible or infantile?
Explain how a 4-hour emergency involving farm equipment, transportation, or medical breakdowns would affect your proposed schedule.
Describe the possible consequences of a health breakdown lasting more than 48 hours.
Describe how your schedule and priorities would change if you received word of an approaching hail storm, wild fire, or other threat to your farm and family?
Consider how you would use an additional 2 hours of help from a novice volunteer, assuming they have no prior knowledge of plants or animals?
How much of your own time would you invest to recruit 41 minutes of reluctant 'help' from your teenaged offspring? Describe other considerations that might affect your decision besides the simple quantity of productive time gained or lost.
Consider what level of income is needed to service your current debts, bills, or other obligations (such as medical and schooling costs for children).
At what point could you afford to reduce your 'day job' hours because of garden productivity?
At what point would a part-time job no longer carry a financial advantage due to commuting or other costs?
Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of working from home."
-Erica
3
Just the jump from one to four, directly following the requirement to grow double... that confuses me.
All those millions of people new to permaculture and how this might also serve the purpose of luring them in.
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