Intrinsic: An Agriculture of Altered Chaos

Intrinsic is a completely new, drastically streamlined approach to "growing." It's about how your ecology can grow things for you -the growth becomes "intrinsic."

Any suggestions or reviews of the kickstarter are entirely welcome. I made a lot of funding tier so you can find the one just right for you (I hope, of not let me know.

If I learned anything from my last project, advertising is everything. Other thing is that it helps to add humor to your campaign.

I find lately that asking people to share their pledge notification with friends is one of the best advertisments out there. If you pledge, don't let that little notification go to waste. Share it!

The humor of this project's video really comes out at the end:

http://kck.st/2zMqQ6F

It's live now through December 16th. I can't wait to send out copies ASAP!

Don't have more than a minute? Here's the table of contents.

Intrinsic Overview/ Table of Contents

Chapters:

The Syntax of Chaos (Will be available for preview very soon)

Quote from chapter: “Chaos doesn't have to be destructive, does it? Chaos is just something that happens on a large scale we can't control. Cut these events down to size, and they're just things that happen we don't have to make happen. They are nature's intrinsic force.”

A Point in Time

“While the specifics of your system’s timing must be learned from the system, there are several broad topics of timing this chapter will cover. For now, it’s important to know you can benefit from mapping events in time, both forward and backwards, to synchronize events. This is how you build a better system in the present.”

The Intrinsic Origins of Plants

“Plants in a similar way condense from the air. Like ice in a glass, solid air, which you'll soon find makes up almost all fertilizers, is like a lure that pulls air into the soil. Once this lure is in the soil, air drips from the soil as plants.”

Nitrogen: The Quality of Life

“Almost no ecology on Earth has a large enough intrinsic nitrogen cycle to grow garden vegetables. The genetics that demand these unnatural conditions are the fruit of extrinsic, synthesized ecologies. We made them.”

Space is a Problem for Extrinsic (The Rules of Spacing)

“The rules of spacing dictate the effects one plant—or mountain range—will have on the surrounding area. These effects work their way from air to earth creating macro effects of weather down to what species of plants, bacteria, or the like can or cannot grow. Certain gears in our wheelhouse just don't mesh with each other depending on the biome they come from. To learn these rules means you can influence the local environment, even on a small scale from plant to plant, to form a unique biome.”

Covering Ground

“Exclusion is a very valuable resource. Imagine $56 billion dollars worth of herbicides insecticides, fungicides and the like, and you start to feel the size of this resource called exclusion.“

Coding your Results with Genetics

“Highly pliable genetics are the best example of chaos level 3. They can move from place to place in the system but still yield all the abundance you designed. When this occurs, the plants have essentially taken your design and started to recreate it themselves. The entirety of your design has been absorbed into and altered the intrinsic character of natural chaos.”

Intrinsic Program Trials

“An important part of Intrinsic is bridging the gap between knowledge of nature and farming systems, to making these systems function. This is where the levels of chaos, and chaos ratio are most important: They are not for nature, they are for you. They define where you work, and where nature works. They break down the design process into stair steps small enough and concise enough you can ascend and descend without tripping.”

The project has over $500 in funding! Thanks to everyone blowing up the stats over there!

I decided to release the first chapter of Intrinsic. I have a print format, and digital format preview since the two will be fairly different. To make the most of the preview release, I printed out the first chapter and made a video of myself explaining this 'manuscript.' You can view it, and find the chapter previews here:

https://wp.me/p3sVns-2A4 .

Note that I pay for Wordpress to host videos for me, but, when I tried to post the video on Kickstarter referencing the Wordpress URL where the video is stored, Kickstarter couldn't make the connection. Apparently Wordpress hosts videos for Wordpress, and those are in a special format for Wordpress. I just linked on Kickstarter to the post where the video is live.

I think this video was a good move because how many people are likely to actually review the whole chapter? The video has a much more grand, easily accessed impact. Also, all the killer infographics and images (mostly infographics) I have in this book make it very visually appealing.

Advertising is a little more complicated than I'll expalin here. I have a full page ad in Permacukture Magazine and half page ad in Acres. Much more besides. I will mention that I bought 2,000,000 tiny ads (1m in tinies, 1m in email), pie, thumbs up, to boost this thread less than a week ago, and this thread already has about 350 views. My click rate on the tiny ads is about 5%. Thanks Paul! I still need something a little more direct, like a Facebook release, because almost none of the thread viewers are going the extra mile to the Kickstarter page. I think just getting the info out is half the advertising process, so feel like the $104 I spent in thread boost is way worth it.

Thanks to all the viewers of this thread. I hope you're getting your own ideas for kickstarters from my experience.

The video has been really hard for this campaign. My last campaign I spent hundreds on the video. A lot of that was high qualith sound bits which I still have for this campaign.

At first I wanted to use an interview. More complicated than I thought, and the outdoor filming was really not cooperating. Changed site, changed script, to what I thought a windless area, and really short, funny script. The sound came out awful. I spent a lot of time trying fix it in Adobe for not a lot of improvement.

The written campaign is really good, with lots of images. Also, I have a video of the opening chapter now, and the chapter previews. I decided the video is really detracting from the good stuff. Ditch the video.

I have to say I like the campaign better this way. I think it helps people look at the details of the campaign image and the rewards, and the writing. I am a writer and photographer more than a cinematographer. A campaign without a video is the kind of campaign that shows my, and my project's strengths.

Chaos, no. But random-positioned seeding of spp (including nitrogen fixers, mineral excavators, desired crop species, etc.), and then measurement of distances from each individual crop plant to surrounding spp., vs. the individual crop plant yield, would be a possible alternative to controlled, variable-by-variable experiments to determine what might be beneficial (you'd have a wealth of information to mine!). The trouble is, the overall effects on yield of intercropping with nitrogen fixers (for example) are well known. As are synergistic plant interactions in general.?
--Stan de Riel
Hamilto, NJ

I am a complete newbie to gardening. I am wanting to start a good forest in the seasonal wetlands behind my house, zone 8. I understand just a little of little of what you are talking about. I have started some elderberry. I plan to and Gigs and Asian pears. Is this like companion gardening? Which book would be most helpful to me? Any advise for someone starting out with no skills or knowledge?

Luke Simon wrote:The project has over $500 in funding! Thanks to everyone blowing up the stats over there!

Where is your kickstarter page - I can’t see a link …

Lisa Sture wrote:

Luke Simon wrote:The project has over $500 in funding! Thanks to everyone blowing up the stats over there!

Where is your kickstarter page - I can’t see a link …

The kickstarter dated from 2018: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1967830234/intrinsic-an-agriculture-of-altered-chaos?ref=project_email

Unfortunately Luke was unsuccessful in raising what he needed. I loved his Mortal Tree 'blog but his climate is too different from mine to be able to use many of his plant suggestions.

Tracy Gamel wrote:I am a complete newbie to gardening. I am wanting to start a good forest in the seasonal wetlands behind my house, zone 8. I understand just a little of little of what you are talking about. I have started some elderberry. I plan to and Gigs and Asian pears. Is this like companion gardening? Which book would be most helpful to me? Any advise for someone starting out with no skills or knowledge?

Tracy, Luke could answer better than I, but his ideas are somewhat like companion planting, but also using Nature's own tendencies to your advantage. I don't think he's active here anymore, but you could try contacting him through his website at Mortal Tree. He does have a couple of other books, "Passive" and "Mastering the Growing edge" which you may find useful. Also have a look at our Book Review Grid for other suggestions.

Nancy Reading wrote:

Lisa Sture wrote:

Luke Simon wrote:The project has over $500 in funding! Thanks to everyone blowing up the stats over there!

Where is your kickstarter page - I can’t see a link …

The kickstarter dated from 2018: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1967830234/intrinsic-an-agriculture-of-altered-chaos?ref=project_email

Unfortunately Luke was unsuccessful in raising what he needed. I loved his Mortal Tree 'blog but his climate is too different from mine to be able to use many of his plant suggestions.

Thankyou Nancy, I didn't see the date. It is a shame he didn't make his kickstarter. I would love this book, I think he has an interesting way of looking at things, similar to the revised paradigm on 'weeds', which are now herbs, soil conditioners, nature's mantle or volunteer plants - but bigger. Thanks for your help.

Looks like a great book! It sounds similar to Mark Shepard's STUN approach but geared more towards food forests permaculture orchards and gardens. Will you try the kickstarter again Luke? Maybe it needs more explanation for people who are just starting out and don't understand the value of those principles. I would like to see this project succeed!

I came here because I clicked the link in the tiny ad in the dailyish email...  but alas, there's nothing here for me to buy! (Not yet)

I understand Luke is working on it though, and will eventually have this book ready for the permies.  If we all encourage him, he might put it on the front burner..