I feel I have decent insight in both Paul Wheatons permaculture perspective and Richard Perkins perspective as I have listened to all the podcasts and been the Navigator on the permaculture roadtrip - the symphonies of seeds and soil tour of 2012 - with Paul Wheaton, Jocelyn Campell and Captain Badknock. Also I have been an intern at Ridgedale Permaculture farm in 2016.
Firstly: There was a discussion about how old this site could be at the time of the filming and four, five, six and ten years was mentioned. The correct age is 2.5 years. What you see in the film is the result of 2.5 years, and that is nothing short of mindblowing.
Secondly: I believe I heard Paul Wheaton say his place is better than Ridgedale. What is better, I ask then. Ethically?
In order to be
sustainable it also needs to be economically sustainable and I know of no place in the world where they have a better balance of ecological and economical sustainabillity, when you look at the bigger picture and say "ok, people are going to eat
chicken anyway so why not produce it better than anywhere else and pay down our
mortgage on the farm in five years". The broilers and the egg layers contribute heavily to the improvement of pastures with their scratching and deposits of manure from the industrial
feed they get. When Paul says "better" I believe he means better according to his ethical values. But in the real world farmers has bills to pay in order to keep their farm, and Ridgedale Permaculture Farm is a fantastic example on how you can create a white collar income from permaculture farming. The ethics are still there, but the reality of economy is taken into account by using the Holostic Managment decision framework of context. One way Ridgedale could be labelled better ethically than Wheoton Labs would be the impact possible through farmers seeing it can be done. No farmers will look to Wheaton Labs in at least twenty years, that's a site for homesteaders.
Another aspect is the contribution to forward velocity and momentum that comes when people see the result so clearly. I think it is a honorable route Paul Wheaton has chosen, but I do believe his goals could be reached faster by being pragmatic in the beginning in regards of giving the people what they recognize, want and expect from a permaculture site while also working on the long term goals. Bread and circus.
I have to leave the office now, it's camping time. But first I want to share the link to the Diego Footer podcast where he interviews Richard Perkins.
Building a Profitable Permaculture Farm with Richard Perkins of Ridgedale Permaculture (V225). That podcast is awesome. Now when googling for the link I found this recently published podcast as well, I haven't heard it but I bet it's awesome:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJpWyKr49mA
Other than that I want to share the design overview from Ridgedale, where the bottom one is a 3d rendition - hint of how it is expected to look in the future:
