Subject: Re: Ethics? [Online Permaculture Course: File: Ethics Note ethical pricipals

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 15:15:38 -0500 (EST)

In a message dated 1/27/97 1:52:47 PM, you wrote:

>While I have not written the list much of late, I have been reading all the
>posts that have come through.  One of the observations I have had is the
>incongruity at times with a primary ethic of Permaculture; Care of People.
>While the techical information exchanged is important and of interest, to
>forget this important principle is a negation of that which makes
>Permaculture unique. Aren't the cultural, human designs relevant?  Isn't
>there a responsibility we have to examine what Care of People means whether
>it is about community responses to what we are doing and who we are or how
>we can further education towards the implementation of Permaculture systems
>wherever people are in need of this? (Everywhere!)  People are people with
>very real concerns and needs wherEVER they may be.  While certain of these
>subjects may be a bit 'beaten to the ground' at times, it is an injustice to
>the principles of Permaculture to deny the human element of sustainability
>to be discussed. 
>>Vicki Garland

Vicki:

While I agree with the spirit and intent of your post, I think, I have to
point out some issues that it does not address.  Permaculture is not the
World Welfare Department.  Care for people is an ethic articulated in
connection to actual permaculture designs.  The design cares for that place
and the people on it.  We have other concerns in viewing the broader picture.
 We wan't the maximum benefit for the least change.  We want to do the right
thing in the righ place at the right time.  

There is a fundamental split in the permaculture movement between people who
prosletize--who try to convince other people to believe as they do--and
people who feel outreach should be diffrent from religious conversion.
 Obviously, by the slant of my remarks, I'm in the second group.   I'll let
the evangelests speak for themselves and hope, probably in vain, that this
time they refrain from putting words into MY mouth.  It seems to me that the
most effect for the least change, to those of us who are called to be
teachers, involves going where we are INVITED.  Letting people know that we
have something to say and that we can be invited is reasonable.  On the net,
for example, I get dozens of requests for permaculture information each week
and I send back information.  If I see a possible way we can help I point it
out.  Then I forget about it unless the person calls back.  This has two
values in my view:  First, the person gets a quick, personal response.  While
I usually send prepared informaton "sheets" on different topics, depending on
interest expressed, I always give a personal reply to reinforce the feeling
that if more is wanted, there is a willing avenue available.  This policy of
trying to always answer every piece of mail personally is not universal lin
permaclture.  Some of the most influential people in the movment virtually
never respond to this kind of mail.  I feel that if it helps a person who is
taking the major effort to change the direction of his/her life keep that
momentum going, it is indeed the maximum benefit for the least change.  They
may go on to buy publications or request workshops elsewhere--I don't care,
really.  I don't take any salary from this work anyway.  Secondly, by not
pursuing the person, I feel that I have respected their decision making
process and space.  I don't like univited people at my doorstep selling me
their world view and I try to keep the same perspective about how I present
my own.

Furthermore, going into places that may be in dire straights to fix them for
the people is arrogant and disrespectful, even though they may be screwing up
royally.  It is just plain bad community organizing.   I assume that we are
talking about the argument about moving people from city to the country.
Cities are inherently destructive to Mother Earth. I'm not going to take the
time to go into that here.  Take my course if you think my view is that
important to get.  What makes a city a city is the people and their views and
attitudes and worst of all their expectations.  You can't change that by
moving them onto the farm.  

Obviously, some people leave the city for the country side; unfortunately
more people go to the city.  I have three children, one in the country (Rural
Vermont), one in the city (San Francisco), and one in the suburbs (outside
Worcester, Massachusetts), all USA.  I don't love one more or less because of
those choices. But I am more involved with the one in the country because
they are doing something I can support, developing a self-reliant lifestyle
that will enrich their community.  I support the others, all adults by now of
course, in different ways.  All of them garden and the daughter in San
Francisco will be much more of an asset to the city than such a place can
ever be to her.  

In the Urban Permaculture section of our course, and when I teach urban
permaclture workshops, particularly in cities, I stress that permaculture has
to progress from zone 1, just as always, from the people who live in the
city, not from outsiders.  It is a basic principle of community organizing
that it has to happen from within to take root.  Urban permaculture is
phenomenally more political than "regular" permaculture, though otherwise the
same principles apply.  A community garden is almost always in zone 3 or 4
unless the family, or parts of it, virtually live there in the summer.  This
happens, of course, especially if organizers have had the good sense to spare
space for shade trees and arbors and poor city people tend to bake in their
apartments in the summer.  

It of course buys the planet some time to make the cities as self-reliant as
possible.  There is a great deal, indeed, to make cities more livable and
less destructive and I've done my share and more of that work though my time
living in cities has been kept to a minimum.  At some point, we have to say,
well what happens to all these people?  That is the discussion we have been
having.  Do we invite them join us in the country or not?  Do we allow them
to rip off other ecosystems creating expanding deserts around themselves or
do we at some point draw the line.   I'm for drawing the line now and making
it a well protected line. 

If a city is working to conserve, to harvest rain water (water is the biggest
problem facing cities from an environmental resource viewpoint), to foster
community gardens, to restrict internal combusion use and increase bicycle
lanes, to conserve energy in all manner, and to actually produce something
useful within its limits to barter for what it can't produce, then I will
give that city priority if asked to help in some way appropriate to my
abilities.

Right now, as far as cities are concerned, I'll go with the old blues lyrics.
"There ain't nothing' in the streets that I can't get at home."  

The true basis of permaculture is the law of gifts, which is the basis of the
philosophy of abundance.  In a balanced sytem, everything receives what it
needs when it needs it and transforms these gifts to provide other elements
what they need in the right place at the right time.  Translation:  Love is
the harmony between giving and receiving.  As long as cities are steeped in
the gimme culture and aren't producing for the rest of the planet, it will be
very hard to change things.   I've been part of some projects that have
worked, in limited ways, and I know of others, like the City Farms projects
in the UK, that have done wonders.  But these are still widely spaced candles
in a big or dark abyss.  I've lit my share of candles and I'm therefore
entitled to curse the darkness, to misquote an early and often misrepresented
permaculturist. 

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
permaculture training by email. Copyright, 1996, Dan & Cynthia Hemenway, P.O.
Box 2052, Ocala FL 34478 USA  [email-masked]  

We don't have time to rush.

PS:  Here's a care for people proposal I've put out for decades and got about
zero feedback on.  Many of us, particularly in industrialized countries, have
more resource than we need.  How about a halfway program for people trying to
get out of the system, get out of the city, whatever, where they can live in
that spare room and eat meals in exchange for good honest work on our
permaculture sites.  This could give people the opportunity to investigate
living a lifestyle that they believe in.  I'd surely want to be selective.
 We are going a step further and offering our space for interns, but lots of
people, particularly people with grown children, have such space that could
be put to work to help one person.  This makes more sense to me than pissing
away one's energies trying to help millions of people who don't care whether
or not you exist.

---

From: April Sampson-Kelly <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 14:50:43 +-1100

talk is so highly over-rated, especially when we talk about care of people
Lets lead by example not by retoric!
It seems to me that the only people shocked or disturbed
by idle discussions about 'the welfare
of others'
are those of us who instinctively care.
April
----------
From: 	[email-masked][SMTP:[email-masked]]
Sent: 	Tuesday, 28 January 1997 2:15
To: 	[email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]
Cc: 	[email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]
Subject: 	Re: Ethics?  [Online Permaculture Course:  File:  Ethics  Note ethical pricipals

Vicki:

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 10:45:04 -0500 (EST)

In a message dated 1/29/97 11:14:52 PM, [email-masked] (April

>are those of us who instinctively care.

This of course is the limitation of this medium.  People see only words and
not works.  Maybe, as Mr. London suggests, it is best suited to merely
exchange of data, leaving the values and evaluations to those circumstances
that we directly experience.

---

From: sal schettino <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 12:46:38 +0000

I found it to be true that we are all students and all teachers from the
lest to the greatest.  I find that if I know one thing and April knows 10
and Dan know 30 things together we know 41 things .  I know I started in
the dark so everything I know I learn from someone.   I never heard the
word permaculture before the net and already it seems like I have come from
night  to  day.   Seems like information that is handed down from person to
person is the best information .   I have learn more about chickens from
Dan and April in a few weeks than years of raising chickens the way I
thought I should.  People doing this permaculture thing have lots of great
ideas.  I'm just glad to be a fly on the wall. I did not know there were so
many people thinking about and putting together such a natural life of
living. I enjoyed one straw revolution and glad to see what a long way
permaculture has come. 

The zone idea and thinking in zones was simple yet right on the mark.  I
moved my chicken pin close to the house and I do go there a lot and this
does save so much time.   I value the stuff I'm learning here. I was
wondering if anyone knows what kinds of food you can plant that the
chickens will not eat.  Also what are the plants that one would plant that
would be done at about the same time so you can send the chickens in to
clean up.  Will it work with just 2 pins?Can you put  chickens in one pin
at night and vegetables in the other and then at the time the vegetables
are done switch. I use to cut my front yard now the chickens do it  but I
would sure like to plant something that they will not eat around the trees
that I can eat.

---

From: sal schettino <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 08:36:13 +0000

Dan let me thank you for your reply.  It looks like I have a lot more
designing to do.  does anyone know of a quick easy chicken pin I can put up
and take down in different locations easy.  Easy is the key here.  I tried
to make a chicken tractor but it is too heavy  for me by my self  to move
around . I guess I can just stick fence stakes in the grown and wrap some
chicken wire around it.  Also does any one know of a food that is easy to
grow that chickens love so much I can use it to heard them and get them to
graze in the places I want them to graze.  Now I throw bird seed out and
the really work the spot where I throw it .   I like the way chickens turn
weeds bugs,and weed seeds into eggs and meat.  I need to learn more about
them to get the most from them.   Thanks for all the food for thought.
 At 09:46 AM 1/31/97 -0500, [email-masked] wrote:

>Hi Sal:
>
>You are right with the program there, taking as someone suggested a while
>back, the last first.  Two pens or several pens, depending on your space
>requirements.  The more pens, the more land in growing but the less space
>that the chickens have.  I strongly recommend dumping all kinds of organic
>matter into the pen with the chickens so that they are continually shredding
>it into deep mulch.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 09:46:52 -0500 (EST)

Hi Sal:

You are right with the program there, taking as someone suggested a while
back, the last first.  Two pens or several pens, depending on your space
requirements.  The more pens, the more land in growing but the less space
that the chickens have.  I strongly recommend dumping all kinds of organic
matter into the pen with the chickens so that they are continually shredding
it into deep mulch.  (Caution, mulch can be TOO deep in wet or clay soils,
especially for some plants such as tomatoes.  Trial and error or experience
of local people is what is needed to fine tune.)  chickens get a lot of
invertebrates out of deep mulch.  In my observation, ONCE ESTABLISHED,
predation does not seem to limit earthworm populations much, mainly it is
available food.  This could vary from species to species of worm, though.  

Aside from cactus, what kind of plants indeed will chickens not eat.  A lot
of woody plants, canes, shrubs, and even trees, are eaten by chickens, or
scratched to death, when small.  The famous poultry forage plant for cold
temperate zones, Caragana, is eaten by poultry-=-the leaves, so eventually it
dies unless protected.  The very best poultry yard plant I have found is
black raspberry.  The canes tip layer and provide tunnels where chickens can
hide and raise young.  Even racoons won't penetrate the densest of these.
 Catbrier is good but I  haven't as much experience with it as with black
raspberry.  Chickens eat fruits of both, but since they can only reach so
high by jumping for the higher berries (a comical sight), the easy to pick
berries are left for you.  I think you get more berries that way because the
chickens fertilize and suppress competition.  Nut trees love being in the
poultry yard.  I always have one yard that is mainly for chickens and crops
I've mentioned above and that has the most secure fence.  That's where they
go if other gardens are all in production or if I need to be away for a while
and have strangers caring for them.  Put the water source near the base of
any walnut (Juglans spp)  or hickory (such as pecan, Carya spp) and watch it
tear up to the sky.  Spilled water and somewhat concentrated manture, plus
suppression of competion, really makes a difference.  

Further north, I've used virginia creeper (which everyone seems to hate
despite its beauty) on poultry netting.  Poultry don't eat THAT.  But it does
attract Japanese beetles.  Chickens can't get to many JBs and you don't want
to have chickens in with your roses, eating petals and all.

Generally, if you plant crops with chickens you need to have plants that are
immune to scratching (such as what?  cactus.  agave  any suggestions folks?)
or that are established woody plants that are higher than the chickens can
reach.  What they don't eat, they destroy by scratching, as far as herbaceous
plants go.

A good crop for living with chickens most of the year is asparagus.  You have
to keep them out during the season when you harvest, but otherwise they are
very symbiotic. (They will knock off the shoots as fast as they develop
throughs scratching.)   Chickens eat asparagus beetle, as do ducks, by the
way.  Chickens scratch, ducks don't.  But I don't know if ducks eat asparagus
SHOOTS.  They have a different range of vegetation preferences than chickens,
but there's a lot of overlap.  Chickens will eat anything (out of the water)
that they see a duck eat, just so the ducks can't have it.

Different rules apply to geese, which will go on a binge of girdeling
saplings from time to time with no apparant reason.  

No one who doesn't live next door to you, or at least quite close, can tell
you which crops will finish at about the same time.  You can try to use the
"days to maturity" figure on the seed package, but there are several factors.
 You need a diary for this and other phenological definition.  (I'll risk
another flame here and say we have an outstanding article on phenology in one
of our journals.  Or maybe someone else can answer that one when the
inevitable question comes up.)

For this purpose your diary should say the month and day crops were planted,
what species were in blossom at the time (especially woody plants), and of
course you should have at least dawn, maximum and dusk temperature records
per day as well as precipitation.  (Winter precipitation is important in many
areas where snow melt is the primary moisture available in spring.)   Also
record irrigation, if any, which beds were involved, anything that could make
a difference in how fast the plant grows.  Of course list the variety.

After a few years, you will get an idea of how long Commodore beans (my
favorite green been) take when planted in April vs how long they take planted
in June or on Sept. 1.  These will be very different numbers.  At that point
you can fine tune your sequencing.  Meanwhile you can put your 50 day turnips
and your 60 day green beans in the same enclosure and have a reasonable shot
of having them end at about the same time.

This is a lovely complexity, synchronizing harvest times.  The information is
also very useful if you want to market crops.  YOu'll find some varieties of,
say, carrots, come in pretty much according to schedule if planted at the
same time of year whereas other varieties are much more sensitive to weather
fluctuations.  You'll also find that irrigation can make these caculations
much simpler.  Corn (maize) will survive drought pretty well, but it does so
by not growing until it rains.  So much for your marketing.  

When you add this to various kinds of interplanting, succession planting,
fukuoka systems, companion planting, and so forth, you have one of the most
fascinating puzzels in the world.  
\
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
permaculture training by email. Copyright, 1996, Dan & Cynthia Hemenway, P.O.
Box 2052, Ocala FL 34478 USA  [email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 08:19:26 -0500 (EST)

>them to get the most from them.   Thanks for all the food for thought.

Hi Sal

Glad that my post was useful.  My forte is biological components to
designs--I only think about structures of necessity.  We just bought two
adjacent places for our permaculture center--one with a frame house for our
home and the other with a much larger mobile home for a permaculture office,
our extensive library, and of course quarters for interns.  With the fram
home came a camper trailer.  It is actually in pretty good condition inside,
though it looks a bit rough.  Nevertheless, to avoid building stuff, I'm
going to strip it out and use it for a mobile home for chickens.  For now we
will pull it around with either Cynthia's Toyota pickup or my big engine big
tires van, depending on the texture of soil we have to pull it through.  So I
will be moving chickens from place to place, an alternative we haven't
discussed but that I thought I'd throw in.  

By the way, the little propane stove that comes with camper trailers
(caravans to many people on the list) is perfect for our summer kitchen and
we'll scrounge the propane lamp for our hurricane season lighting.  I'm
getting older and my eyes don't see well in the dark any more.  We could
probably start a whole thread on scrounging componets of caravans and what to
do with the shells.  (No, they don't lay eggs.)

Chickens love to eat any grain--they are all easy to grow if you just cut
them and harvest the grain stalk and all--no threshing, no winnowing, use
them for mulch or littler in the chicken coop and let the chicens do the
work.  I'm talking true grains or cereal grains here.  Buckwheat, a seed crop
but not a grain (from gramin--- something or other Lating root for
grass/grain), is a lovely forage crop for poulty.  Theat the greens (so do
I!) or the seed and it is a great biological control crop when in flower as
it feeds adult stages of "beneficial" insects (unless you happen to be one of
the little guys who gets a voracious egg laid inside him).  

If you screw up the timing to get everything out of your enclosure at the
same time, or nature messes you up similiarly, you can fill in with
buckwheat, grows very fast, while waiting to finish the later crops.  This
will be extra feed for the chickens at any stage of growth and you get greens
for yourself, buckwheat grains (I pick them like blueberries which I find
easier than cutting or threshing after frost has killed the leaves), etc.

The thing chickens like best to eat is invertebrates and I did mention how to
grow them.  Deep mulch.  If you have a slug and/or snail problem, throw in a
few ducks to educate the chickens.  Duck eggs are great.

---

From: sal schettino <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 01 Feb 1997 18:45:14 +0000

Thanks  does Buckwheat, need to be watered or can I grow it free in the
winter here.  My friend has a cart he pulls his chickens around.  the
friend I told you about that has cows between his rows of fruit trees.  And
now the chickens follow the cows when he moves the cows to another row the
chickens walk with the cows and seem happy to move with them.  and the
chicken cart (house)moves  along  too.  I can just see the chickens
following your  water buffalo at your place.  Also maybe kiwi may be a good
idea for your temp.  Dan.  and thanks for all the great ideas on growing
grain and letting the chickens do the work.  >

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 08:49:27 -0500 (EST)

>grain and letting the chickens do the work.  >

Sorry, I don't remember where "here" is.  PDBR.  Buckwheat is pretty easy to
grow but does need some moisture.  I usually grow it by broadcasting it by
hand (I love broadcasting by hand--it is the closest I ever get to graceful
action.) and cutting crop residue to cover it.  In Florida on sand it did
well in the winter (Jacksonville, some years ago--I haven't got that far here
yet.) 

I forgot to mention that it mobilizes phosophorous and is a good precursor to
legumes and other phosphorous hungry crops.  Even legumes that are know
phosophorous accumulators, e.g. red clover, do better after buckwheat.  I've
also used it to relieve compaction where soil was so hard that we had not got
dow a inch with a few dozen passes with a troy-bilt rototiller (brand new, at
that).  

We broadcast buckwheat (we being me and my prison inmate "interns") and
covered it with straw, very lightly, and waited for rain.  As soon as it
blossomed, we broadcast more and cut it back again to cover the seed.  We had
three cycles of this before we made another pass with the rototiller to put
everything in the ground for a winter rye crop.  (Massachusetts, winter rye
is the best cover in cold winter areas, aside from deep mulch, in my
opinion.)  The tiller dropped to the axil on the first pass.  How those
delicate buckwheat roots accomplished that I have no idea.

I suggest that you just buy a packet or two and try it.  It is a good bee
plant too, by the way, one of the best.  And the seed is high lysine, and
generally has a superior amino acid balance to cereal grains, though probably
not as good as quinoa for a stand alone four seed.  It takes some fussing to
get the hulls off the seed--I just grind them into my flower but some people
gag on them--irritates their throats, so they have to be removed.  Not as
much fuss as rice or quinoa, though.  

Buckwheat is frost sensitive.  Instead of trying to figure out by proxy how
it will do in your winter, why not buy a bit from a seed company such as
Johnny's or Abundant Life or Bountiful Gardens, all of whom I am sure carry
it.  If it works, get a sack from your local feed store (which may have to
order it for you so order early.)