Subject: growth of pc

From: "Rene and Lorraine van Raders" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 22:42:51 -0800

Good discussion!

Liked Fiona's analogy (K and r strategies)... seems to me there is room for
both huge courses like Bill's was and one's like ours (maximum 10
students).  One gets to lots of people, but not necessarily well.  I
believe our small courses invariably make a significant impact on people's
lives.  Different teachers produce different students.. diversity!  just
what we want.

I would beg to differ re weak people mostly being affected by the two week
courses.  I guess it may depend on the teacher, but we are very aware of
the brainwashing that can occur during intense sessions such as our
courses.  We are very careful to constantly remind people that what we're
saying isn't all true.  Our experience has been  that  the most highly
motivated and intelligent individuals are the most excited by the potential
of pc concepts and they go for it, while "weaker" individuals are usually
secretly very frightened by the whole idea and are often not heard of for
some time.  Even then seeds are often sown that show up much later.

But Fiona is right I think in saying that the two week course is not the
only way, or even the best way to spread pc information.  As many have
said, pc is in it's infancy/gestation period.  Change is already happening.
 It only takes one person to make a big difference.. there are many more
than one making waves (some within pc, some without).

We have not had a student yet teach a full two week design course, though
we have two who are due to do so fairly soon.  I'm not surprised at the
lack of students wanting to be teachers though - it needs a lot of
dedication and isn't especially financially rewarding at first.  Our focus
is on helping students take charge of their lives, leaving with more
knowledge about
what they don't know.. starting them on a learning curve.  In time, I
believe most will do more for themselves and others (including the
environment) than if they hadn't done the course.  Not bad for a two week
course.
A small percentage will develop to be dedicated activists (for positive
change) and teachers.  I'm learning to make that percentage bigger, but
most students aren't ready for such a huge life change. 

Every day in every way I'm becoming a better teacher.
Every day in every way the world is becoming a better place.  :-)
Well actually if we look at nature we see that though a trend can be seen,
nature grows in spurts (often 3 steps forward, 1 backwards, then on again).

Good night from Far North Queensland (Major flooding in Cairns and
Townsville, 80 and 400 km away).  All our tanks and swales are full!!!

Cheers Rene van Raders
PS 400 km is close where I come from.

---

From: Jack Rowe <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 12:37:17 -0500

David DeVries asks the pertinent: "How many diverse levels with how many
seeds?"

To quote myself (isn't that tacky?) "...as many seed nuclei on as many
levels as we can..."; it's a situation that is critical... probably about
as easy to actually quantify as the weather, but critical and as David also
says: 

"...without 100,000... enthusiasts spread very evenly, we are set to lose a
significant proportion of [global] diversity (cultural and biological)..."

Partly a done deal... already our sub-species (H. sapiens addictus) is the
direct (first known biological) cause of one of the 6 great extinctions of
known geo-biological ourstory. This is a fact... therefore, it's not only
"how many do we need?", it's "everybody get to it, now!" Not much more we
can do except our best, right now. A very good reason for a very high level
of cooperation on BOTH centralized and decentralized levels... groups
replacing banks with credit unions and universities that teach pillage with
universities that teach life, and individuals working wherever they are to
do whatever they can with whatever they know and have. In the end shame
comes not from losing, but from failing to fight the good fight. 

Jack

---

From: Jack Rowe <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 12:37:17 -0500

Jack

---

From: YankeePerm <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 19:22:05 EST

In a message dated 1/11/98 5:39:49 PM, you wrote:

<<My post encouraged a wealth of permaphilosophising.  Noone appeared to
share my initial premise that Pc was still drastically understaffed.
Before touching on some of the excellent points made, I would like to try
and establish the premise that we are too thin on the ground and rapid
growth is a priority.  Maybe not _the_ priority - but still a priority.

~~Sherry Levi stated:
"..The thought system has to become fairly well articulated in a process of
intensive development by a few pioneers before it develops sufficient
explanatory power to become appealing as a better representation of reality to
be widespread.  It is tested for functionality by use-- which is what all of
us permacultivating our living spaces are doing-- and in the more varied
circumstances, the better."

How many pioneers in how many circumstances are required?

Jack Rowe stated:
"We can operate to sow as many seed nuclei on as many levels as we can,
trusting them to grow if they are viable and placed in fertile ground (if
all the seeds grow like magic beans, great -- but remember to sow even the
little ones because the growing medium and conditions are changing, and
there is strength in diversity)."

How many diverse levels with how many seeds?

Pick an average size continent, say North America.  How many regions need
to be researched for each to become sustainable?  How many different
combinations of local cultures (indigenous/imported), climate, catastrophe
susceptibility, soils, unique biodiversity, degradation etc need to be
characterised and sustainable solutions identified.  100? 1000?

How many people need to be in each region to effectively characterise it.
10? 100?

I suggest that without 100,000 NA enthusiasts spread very evenly, we are
set to lose a significant proportion of NA's diversity (cultural and
biological).  This would be a rotten shame.  The question I am interested
in is, how does Pc get to sufficient numbers (100's of thousands in each
continent)?

I thought everyones' comments about adopting paradigm shifts and critical
mass were spot on.  I wasn't looking that far in the future. Within the
research phase of identifying solutions there is still a lot of territory
without any researchers.

David>>

David:

We may be too much hung up on the word.  I can tell you that it is two or
three orders of magnitude easier to explain permaculture to someone now than
it was when I started teaching PC 17 years ago.  I'm not talking about the
skill difference but a difference in people being able to grasp that there is
this way of thinking and designing and doing.

In our private correspondense I've mentioned people like Jose the priest, who
gives sermons on permaculture, Maria who went off into the hinterlands of
Mexico on her mission to help Mexican women with a permaculture course she
fought to be able to take, a whole class of Philippine grass-roots extension
agents who went out and resumed their daily teaching in a dozen or more
languages.  Then there are the public domain pamphlets that wend their way
back and forth around.  And that is only a bit of what is working out there
that we might guess at resulting from the work of one student in a class of
30.  I think of Joy in Canada who took a measley weekend workshop and went
home, abandoned her 3/4 acre garden in the back yard to nature, feeding her
soul, and fed her body on a fraction of her front yard.  She isn't a diploma
holder.  Her garden was never told, however.  

There is more to permaculture than the formal courses.  In my view, these are
best given for people who want to teach, design commercially, or take some
other role in bringing permaculature to others as a main focus of their lives.
The average person doesn't need certificate courses.  I find that the designs
I get from a 10-day intensive that focuses only on a design, and not on the
full range to topics required for certification, are way better than anything
I've ever seen from any certificate course.  These people go home and design
their places.  They know where to get published info, a dab on consulting on a
difficult aspect of a a project, etc. and sometimes avail themselves.  Mostly,
they just do a bang up job and live their lives.  I run into their names in
the attendance lists of bioregional gatherings, and the like, where they
connect with kindred spirits.

While the teacher-student-certificate model is the most visible and talked-
about aspect of permaculture, it is not most of permaculture.  All the more
reason to hold the line on quality in those certificate courses we do give.

For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway, Yankee Permaculture Publications (since 1982),
Elfin Permaculture workshops, lectures, Permaculture Design Courses,
consulting and permaculture designs (since 1981), and now correspondence
courses via email.  One is now underway.  Next Live program:  Paraguay,
8/10-22/98. Internships available. Copyright, 1997, Dan & Cynthia Hemenway,
P.O. Box 52, Sparr FL 32192 USA  [email-masked]  

We don't have time to rush.

A list by topic of all Yankee Permaculture titles may be found at
http://csf.colorado.edu/perma/ypc_catalog.html

From [email-masked]  Tue Jan 13 21:00:38 1998
Date: 	Tue, 13 Jan 1998 19:26:44 EST
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Sender: [email-masked]
From: FranksFarm <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject:   Re: growth of PC

Hi,

OK, I'm a newbie. I've read Mollison and want to learn as much as I can about
applying some of his principles, and evolved experinces, and insights into my
farm plan.

But unfortunately imho ther'e just too much empty theorizing, worries over not
being paid, and fears of somehow passing on wisdom that other sympathizers can
use for fear they'll somehow not understand it or tell others about it at no
charge.

Where are the free tools, the sites that can give us pointed , practical
permaculture advice for our climate etc. I  realize that PC probably goes far
beyond agriculture, and holistic farm planning...but that's the kind of
knowledge I'm looking for.

Larry London has offered to put up a free site....What a great idea. I hope
the mpre advanced PC'ers will contribute their thoughts, and findings. Best to
all. frank

---

From: FionaNyx <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 21:55:54 EST

Dear Frank,

I hear your frustration.  But this list is a conversation on the topic of
permaculture-- like any list, the people who post talk about their concerns of
the moment.  Most of us are very busy.  It's not realistic to expect to just
listen in & learn about the field as a whole.  I have seen your posts saying
you want to learn "about permaculture".  Well, nobody is going to sit down and
write you a reply that lays it all out because it's just too big.  

People are working on getting various sorts of information online, but most of
us are relatively new to computers AND only doing it part time.  Have you
searched the web & internet using several different search engines?  There is
quite a bit of stuff around.  Also, if you want I can send you a list of the
permaculture-related sites that I've collected.  

I think your best tactic for learning here would be to ask specific questions
about problems you are trying to solve at your place, solutions you are
considering, etc.  

Your education is your own job.  You have to reach, seek, ask and ask again.
Asking better questions usually works better than criticizing...
~~FionaNyx

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From: Bruce Brummitt <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 08:23:55 -0600 (CST)

We've followed this thread and wish to put in our two cents worth, now.

Teaching is a constant.  People learn as much or more from what we are doing
than from what we are saying.  To be living the permaculture life that we
espouse gives folks something concrete to grasp.

As has been written throughout this thread, permaculture goes beyond
agriculture into complete sustainable systems, up to and including
community/social interactions.  How we get our food, where and how we get
our water, clothing, heat, electricity, building materials, medicines,
health care, social interactions and loving...and where we put/how we use
the by-products of living.

When folks come to visit our place they are often confused by the simplicity
of the system.  
Perhaps as overwhelmed as we've felt when trekking in an old growth
temperate rain forest of the pacific northwest, or canoeing through a wild
river system.  Awed by the strangeness, the connectedness.

Teaching through doing is the best we can do to further permaculture. 
Questions have more meaning when they are voiced within some context.  Those
questions often give our answers a stronger base.  Those questions often
cause us to redefine meanings to ourselves.  In order to teach, we need to
keep learning and doing, creating and recreating.  (recreation)

For someone who gets all their goods wrapped in plastic, origin unknown, it
is culturally shocking to be "slapped in the face" by a permaculture system.
 To wrap our teachings in plastic does more harm than good.

We laud all the folks that, through their daily lives, are causing change. 
We have problems with folks that drive their Mercedes down a "freeway
system", to work in an air-conditioned skyscraper designing mud-huts/farming
systems for the Agency for International Development.  

Off the box, now.

Cheryl Valois and Bruce Brummitt
       <[email-masked]>
     "Life is an experiment"
Visit the Natural Building Gallery
<http://www.zianet.com/blackrange>

---

From: Jack Rowe <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 12:46:19 -0500

Rene made some great points:

First: "Jack... and Dan seem to be antagonising each other... I'm very
sorry to see this niggling."... I agree, Rene, and I apologize to Dan and
others who have been offended by my sometimes too-harsh, sometimes too-flip
responses. Really. I'm trying to learn some manners -- and the occasional
wisdom of judicious silence when I feel my sardony piping in too loudly. 

Rene: "What I'd love to see is an interactive database... [that] I could
add my comments and experience [to]..." This precisely what I was
envisioning, because there is a GREAT deal of collective experience on
these lists. For several years I've felt a need for more-specific,
climate/bioregional working manuals -- with the flexibility to be adapted
to individual designs -- that people can use as starting points to
place-specific designs. Like the sort of climate-specific materials
available from Ag Extension agents, but sane.

I do, personally, like the idea of protecting -- or at least not
duplicating -- the huge efforts of Dan, April et al in taking the time and
initiative to put courses on the web.

Michael Yount at Communications for a Sustainable Future
(www.csf.colorado.edu) has also put together an incredible group of pages.
Now we all owe it to ourselves and to them to USE this resource and make it
the actual toolkit they've planned it to be. I don't see a more inexpensive
and accessible way for all this to happen than on the web, though I DO want
to see the materials make it into print. I see collaborative web work as a
preliminary step. 

Rene: "Somehow I can't help thinking that it isn't really want of details,
but fear of starting that is the problem."... I'm sure that the problem, as
always, is BOTH. We can supply both the details which exist (chickens
everywhere need lots of calcium), AND the moral support which is probably
the main function of this list.

Re: How much are courses really worth? Truthfully they ARE "life
changing/enhancing experiences"... vis-a-vis free vs market value, the
middle road is dictated because the fact is that Time's a-wastin'... and in
ecosytem destruction and species loss -- as in golf -- the lowest score
wins.

Lastly: "...symposium.... a drinking party with intellectual discussion..."
Geez, this is a MUCH better definition than the one I was using! 

Jack

---

From: Jack Rowe <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 12:46:19 -0500

Jack

---

From: FranksFarm <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 07:06:53 EST

In a message dated 1/15/98 1:53:46 PM, you wrote:

<<For several years I've felt a need for more-specific,
climate/bioregional working manuals -- with the flexibility to be adapted
to individual designs -- that people can use as starting points to
place-specific designs. Like the sort of climate-specific materials
available from Ag Extension agents, but sane.>>

Hi.

Bravo, Jack. Well said! That's what I'm looking for, but don't know where to
find it. frank

---

From: "Steve Diver" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 11:46:37 +0000

I wonder, sometimes, if people aren't looking for that
"permaculture mousetrap." 

The rabbit poops over a bed of worms, the worms are then fed
to tilapia fish swimming around in a tank inside a solar greenhouse 
which eat the worms and make more poop and then the float triggers
a pump to suck the fish effluent across to gravel-cultured hydroponic
vegetable beds to ferigate the crops which function as biofliters and 
remove the nutrients so the cleaned-up water can go back to the 
fish tank.  Outside, an arbor is covered with kiwi vines to serve
three functions, intercropped with exotic hanging vegetables and 
vines some are edible and some produce berries which birds come
to eat and the seeds pass through when they make more poop and 
the seeds land in a fencerow which initiates succession amongst 
the nitrogen-fixing trees and shrubs which are serving as an 
alley crop system for annual herbs, flowers, and veggies that make
income to support the family of four human beings who are sort of 
vegetarian but eat the rabbits, fish, and chickens running around 
eating the bugs...Fukuoka- style organic garden...because they believe in 
permaculture but they think "oh, is this ethical?" and then "oh, what the 
hell" there are so many happy ecological songs being sung by all the birds and 
the bees and the trees and the happy squirrels which love agroforestry 
systems, which they started 1-year ago but they just know it will 
work because somebody wrote a book about it, all this in-between 
cleaning the bee hives and tending the sheep grazing merrily in the 
orchard and spinning their wool and shoeing the horse and 
sitting in the solar greenhouse reading a book about human-managed
ecological systems. 

I'd write the second part to this story, about what permaculture 
really is in realilty....an over-rated system for the average 
land-less urban dweller but nevertheless essential to teach 
every living being on the planet so we can all start shifting 
to permaculture....but I am too busy designing my new 
straw bale house that will house my 7 children that my wife is 
going to home school in her spare time because she is also an 
artist who writes books on sustainable living. 

Steve Diver

--
[email-masked]