I was struck by her work in planting edible landscapes because it happens with volunteers, not a whole lot of money, and often without permission. As I learned in our conversation, this is also done without endless talks and meetings. This is a movement about action. Incredible Edible is more than growing food, but also educating people, growing businesses, and fostering community. Here is a way to build not only a better world, but a kinder one as well.

Resources:
Incredible Edible Todmorden

Pam's TED Talk:

Their organization is devoted to doing on the ground education and to serve as a hub to connect people with information and ideas in the San Diego area. When Josh came to my attention, I was fascinated by the amount of classes and workshops being offered by the San Diego Sustainable Living Institute, and then in scheduling the show, also by the passion he has for teaching and sharing permaculture. With our time together, the conversation covers his own long passage to permaculture, the work of the institute, and dry land permaculture techniques. Along the way his love of all these things, and his experience, come through.
Resources:
People:
Josh Robinson
Brad Lancaster
Chris Anderson
Karen Taylor
Lisa Rayner
Matt Berry
Penny Livingston-Stark

Organizations:
San Diego Sustainable Living Institute
Lama Foundation
Prescott College

There we talked about Community Developed Finance, here Adam and I speak more broadly about Invisible Structures and his emerging Invisible Structures Pattern Language. This invisible structure theme began when I first spoke with Adam and I've wanted to follow up on it for some time. What we are capable of as individuals is multiplied when we come together. Many hands make light work whether designing a landscape, working out the details of an alternative economic system, or building community. In Permaculture, there's plenty of work on backyard permaculture, and as Rafter Sass Ferguson's study shows the work on broad scale is growing. To take these ideas further, we now need to move from the physical and start on the small scale invisible structures: our friends and neighbors. And then our community.

You want to review his online presentation here: Adam Brock's Invisible Structure Pattern Language Take your time to look it over. If you have thoughts on what to the pattern language, leave a comment and help Adam grow this body of knowledge he's working on.

I think these pattern languages, in the long term, serve as one of the best ways to take the vast body of information we have available as permaculture practitioners, and break them down into something we can carry with us. Though the descriptors that go with each piece of the language may take several paragraphs, or pages, to explain in detail, the title of the pattern is short. You can take all titles from the patterns in Peter Bane's A Permaculture Handbook, which is excellent by the way, and write them down on the front and back of a single sheet of paper. The same can be said for the edible forest garden pattern language in Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier. Take those two, add in Alexander's plus Mr. Brock's, and you have a very powerful reference, that extends the ethics and principles of permaculture. This toolkit allows us to facilitate designing larger, more varied systems, all in a format that fits in a pocket.

Inspirations for Adam's Pattern Language:
A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, Sarah Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein.
Debt the First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier
The Empowerment Manual by Starhawk
People and Permaculture by Looby MacNamara
The Permaculture Handbook by Peter Bane
Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein

Resources:
The GrowHaus
Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman

I've enjoyed these two interviews with Bill because he's able to take these ideas, that to me are very heavy material and largely impenetrable from the outside, and demystify them into something very accessible. As permaculture practitioners, we take gardening, horticulture, and biochar, to name a few, and tie them together under the big top of Permaculture, which thankfully have numerous clearly written books available to understand them. But Banking? Finance? I haven't found anyone who can break those down into easy-to-understand bits as well as Bill can. And I am greatly appreciative. Plus, as with his involvement in the Permaculture Credit Union, he has the ethical and principle based understanding in common to the more visible structures of permaculture. Though we have alternative economic options in the permaculture literature with things like Local Exchange Trading System, Bartering, Time Banking, and Local Currency, what gives me hope from this conversation is that here is another way to approach banking and finance a bit differently, in a way that can engage the system that currently exists. I agree with that idea given to us by Ethan Hughes, and reiterated by Lisa Fernandes and others, that we need meet people where they are at to make permaculture more accessible, and desirable by the public in those areas that aren't hungry for it yet. As we get the physical structure designs down, the invisible becomes more important as we build community and permanent culture.

Resources:
The Permaculture Credit Union
CDFI Fund

I didn't have permaculture parents. Though my father could, and still can, build many many things out of wood, he never conserved materials, except to save money, or worried about electricity. If the table saw kept running while fetching another piece of lumber, and taking the time to mark it before making the cut, so be it. My mother, an accomplished cook, was as likely to tear open a box to put dinner on the table as cook from scratch. Organic had no meaning either, and the closest notion to a farmer's market consisted of one roadside, proclaiming “Sweet Corn, $2/dozen” for a few weeks every year. The only thing we grew were strawberries and spring onions, of which I'd eat both fresh from the garden, dirt still on them.

Thinking back to childhood memories, that wide rectangular patch seemed to stretch over a quarter of our urban lot, bigger than any one child could possibly eat all of, and I certainly tried. But seemed is the right word there, as the patch wasn't all that big. Maybe 100 square feet. As a child, I spent time in the outdoors, until books, video games, and ultimately computers, caught my interest as a teen. Those teenage years lead to college, where computers continued to play a major role, as I studied Computer Science. I still joke Comp. Sci. is only one part science. The other part is witchcraft, with a lot of prayer and hand waving hoping the results we get back are those we desire. While in those late teen years, an opportunity arose to intern at a U.S. Military facility. Still before the year 2000, the Y2K bug left a feeling of panic in the air. Great quantities of work waited to fix this problem. No one seemed to know just what would happen if this problem didn't get fixed. That fear pushed me, prodded me, and took up residence in my mind, so that I became someone involved in disaster preparedness and primitive skills. Should something happen and society did melt down, I'd be ready to step into the temperate hills of Appalachia and be OK. Thankfully, that fantasy of a young adult quickly left, to be filled with compassion for family and friends, and a desire for a sense of community. I wanted to see everyone make it through any disaster. There had to be a better way to make it through hard times than to go at it alone or build some secure, remote compound. Not long before Y2K, I found permaculture. The design portion of permaculture didn't catch my attention, as before my love of computer science, I wanted to study anthropology and sociology, rather here was a system for designing permanent agriculture, to support a permanent culture, and in turn civilization could continue, even in the face of a catastrophe. The piece I'd been looking for came into focus, and the hunt for a Permaculture Design Course was on. At the time, there were not many being offered and my connection to the community, being very very cursory, turned up few chances where time and money aligned to go. Once Y2K happened, or didn't as is more accurate, the fear of an unknown future and desire to take up permaculture faded with them. I used the technology boom of the late 90s and early 00s to launch a career and travel down a comfortable road in my 20s, but a sneaking suspicion that something wasn't quite right with the path continued. Permaculture kept cropping up in my reading and interest. I'd keep looking for a PDC from time to time, but continued to hit the challenge of having either the time or the money to go. Fast forward a decade. I'm married, in my early 30s, with children. Off and on for 13 years I've looked for a PDC. On a whim, I looked again, and found one. It's being taught about an hour a way. On weekends only. Over 7 months. Finally! A class I can take! Phone calls happen. I talk to one of the teachers, Dillon. The deadline isn't too far away. I talk to my wife. Back and forth. We straighten things out. I'm finally taking a PDC! The course went well. I meet a great group of people dedicated to building a better world with permaculture, each in their own way. We graduate, and I start this show, but then some rough time came. I've mentioned before that I encountered several failures to launch before getting to where I am today. That began in late 2010 and early 2011, as I wanted to start my own permaculture design business. Given the place that I'm at, with a family and children, I needed to make sure everything was above board and properly covered, legally. Here's where I found out, over several months, that to carry the proper insurance and hire a law firm, because of the non-standard nature of permaculture as so considered by the state of Pennsylvania, would be prohibitively expensive for someone starting out. Not too expensive, I don't think, for an already established business, but getting off the ground this was at the time and insurmountable hurdle. Shelving the idea of professional design in my current situation, I used the last of my seed money to go to Oregon and take a Teacher Training with Jude Hobbs, Andrew Millison, and Rico Zook. There I realized that technology is a part of who I am, and the podcast was reaching people. Jude went so far as to play a clip while we were eating dinner. She had listened to some shows. Returning from a great week in the green hills of Oregon, I took nearly a year off to focus on matters important to my family and figure out the next step. Honestly, returning to the show was a bit of a fluke, but as with so much of what happened on my road to here, the idea of working with this material never left me. One day while sitting down to review website stats for my wife's site, I decided to check the permaculture podcast and was surprised to see that more people subscribed to the now inactive show than when I first started. The interest was still there. The show came back online with my first new interview speaking to Dillon Cruz, and brought me back to permaculture full time. Well, as full time as my schedule allows. This same event reignited my desire to be a better educator, and improve my ability to communicate these ideas, by going on to graduate school, so that permaculture and sustainability have another credentialed voice, to aid those who work every day to make such great changed in the world. And so I can help anyone of you who are interested, have a chance to follow your permaculture path wherever it may lead, without having to walk this 15 year long, convoluted road I've been on. I don't know how much time I can save you, but I hope it's substantial. And, for those of you on this road with me already, realize how long it took me to get here, even with a path that started nearly half my life ago. From here, where do we go? Well, for me, I'll continue to work on those credentials and share information about permaculture with the world via the podcast, freely. My desire to keep the show and main website ad and commercial free remain. I depend on donation from listeners to keep things running and make investments in equipment, or to buy skype credits to call internationally. If you'd like to contribute, go to thepermaculturepodcast.com/support to find out how. Also, the show is expanding into an on-line PDC, and I'm putting together the resources to shoot video for release on YouTube. That's me. For you, there's a couple of places to start, depending on where you are and what you want to do. If you are practicing permaculture in your backyard, you don't need to take a PDC. There are great books and on-line videos on the subject to get you going, and plenty of evening, one day, and weekend seminars to get you more information. However, if you have the time and money to go to a PDC, I highly recommend it. The camaraderie and connections go a long way towards having people you can bounce ideas off of. In the meantime, always feel free to reach out to me and I'll do what I can to help you, to certain degrees. If you want to practice permaculture design professionally, before you go off to a PDC or start down that road, check into what, if any, legal requirements you have in your area, and what the road might be to meet those needs. You may find additional schooling is well served to do this, or that you don't want to design after all. Otherwise, and once you check that out, get yourself to a PDC! This course is your “gateway” to the world of permaculture. There are more options available now than ever, including several on-line, of which I'll be opening one up this summer. But that's not meant as a plug for my work alone. Plenty of talented people work every day to teach permaculture and you'll be well served by most. If in doubt, send me an email with a listing and I'll give you an idea of what to consider before making a decision. If you want to teach this material professionally, once you get a PDC, go to a Teacher Training. This is the next “gateway” on the path. You'll learn a lot about how to teach effectively in the informal environment, how to run workshops, and many of the other business development pieces you need to be effective. The transparency of my teacher training teachers helped to clear up many questions about permaculture education, and what's necessary to put yourself out in the world. However, once you have a PDC and Teacher Training under your belt, don't just jump in with both feet. Take your time, get some more experience, and observe other classes. You'll save yourself time and energy in the long run. From there, with your experiences, what you do with permaculture is your choice. Have a Masters in Business Administration and want to do green business consulting with a permaculture focus? Go for it. Have a science background and want to research the efficacy of permaculture techniques in field trials? Go for it? Want to use your communications background to help people express their local needs in a sustainable way? Go for it! Are you a great writer who wants to create the next revision of the Designers' Manual? Go for it! But only after contacting Tigari to find out what that process would be. There's room for many different paths under the permaculture umbrella. Whatever you choose to do, find your niche, where you fit in this big picture, and go for it. Depending on your situation, that may mean a slow climb down on the other side of the precipice, but for others you may be able to leap and build your wings on the way down.

Wherever you go and however you get there, I will be here as long as possible to help you on your journey. Leave a comment below.

From conversations with some listeners via email, phone, and twitter, I know you're looking for more in-depth, technical ways to begin realizing a different future with Permaculture. To take designs and thoughts on a page of how to make something and turn it into reality. What Dr. Dorband is doing here, as I'm fond of saying, provides another model for how to do something different, in an effective, productive way. If you would like to reach out to Dr. Dorband and discuss opening a Green Hacker Space in your area, his contact information is: E-Mail: waynedorband [at] gmail [dot] com Phone: 303-4nine5-3705

Websites:
Nourish The Planet
Green Hacker Space
Mountain Sky Group

• Two-thirds of the earth is experiencing desertification.
• Bare earth creates a microclimate. Enough bare earth impacts the macroclimate.
• Livestock mimicing nature can, inexpensively, lock up enough carbon in the soil to return us to pre-industrial levels of atmospheric CO2.

These are a few of the powerful points made by Allan Savory and his work to holistically manage grazing. Watch the video, hear his powerful message, and then use this new knowledge to make a difference in the world.

Now he and his team are on the next stage of that journey, providing products and tools empowering individuals to reconnect with the food system, and in turn making urban farming more accessible to everyone. Part of this is through the Maxfield's brand of products, which serve as the basis for their ability to do good work. When I first heard about J.P. and his company, I was reminded of the conversation with Andrew Faust on the difference NYC could make by processing food waste in the city, rather than shipping it out by the truckload, how that could in turn build healthy soil, and allow more food to be grown in the metropolis. There is so much food and lawn refuse in the United States, and elsewhere, that composting and other related businesses present numerous possibilities to leverage creativity and permaculture design into sustainable solutions in the current market. Where J.P. and Waste Farmers make a difference is in tying the business to a set of values that guide the work each day. Rather than try and reiterate these ideas in my own works, I'll read you the Maxfield's vision statement: “At Maxfield's we believe that the hope for worldwide agricultural harmony begins in every backyard. The revolution starts small, and it starts with your own two hands. Establish your roots, work with nature, celebrate the harvest-and cultivate the farmer within.“ The 10 core values that guide the company are:

1. Use passion to fuel change, allow imagination to drive it, and take pride in the vessel.
2. Don’t be afraid to take the contrarian point of view.
3. Believe there is more than less but trust that less is more.
4. Don’t be “right,” seek truth.
5. Strength through diversity, life builds life.
6. Trust your gut, listen, and always ask questions.
7. Civil disobedience through self-reliance.
8. The only productive move is to move forward.
9. Power ceases in the instant of repose.
10. Take time for tea.

Best of all, they're making this work, so here's a model of success to consider. Though the world of permaculture design is broad, there's room for everyone to find their way to make a difference in building a better world.

Resources
Waste Farmers
Waste Farmers: What We Do & Why Maxfield's
Is Sustainability and Oxymoron? by Toby Hemenway.

With this as the backdrop, I consider how to prepare for the coming Spring, but also how to use the principles of permaculture to design for locations where the climate is at least this cold or colder. For the sake of this discussion, I'm looking at areas that are in the Continental range of the Koppen Climate classification, and a coldest winter average month that drops below freezing, 32F or 0C. For those of you familiar with Hardiness zones, as initially developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, this corresponds approximates to a 7a or b. The strategies for this conversation are: Build it and they will grow. Cover up, its cold out there. Climb the hills. Don't rest in the valley. Know your natives. Read your seed and plant catalog. Mulch. Mulch. Mulch.

Resources:
Koppen Climate Classification (Wikipedia)
Hardiness Zone (Wikipedia)
Sepp Holzer: Farming with Nature (YouTube)
Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute

Life is my currency. The soil is my bank.

I want to liberate food from the coffin that our culture has placed it in. I have an idea for how to start.

My idea in a nutshell: the gamification of massively distributed horticulture, using cell-phones and perennial vegetables.

Even as everything constantly seems so precipitous and headed for disaster, our society at the moment has a number of really useful elements to work with. First, distributed computing and communication platforms. Second, a whole lot of people jonesing (craving) for real change, in the world and in their lives. Third, we can buy anything from anywhere over the Internet. Fourth, we can access more or less the entire knowledge of humanity at will.

This includes horticultural knowledge. Almost everything ever grown for food still exists somewhere, despite the best efforts of agribusiness. Many of these plants are varieties of delicious, transient delicate delicacies like tomatoes and melons that require a certain amount of pampering to thrive. Others, however, are bloody-knuckled fighters in the street brawl for sunlight and nutrients. There's food out there that it's actually hard to kill.

In a decorative manicured Victorian garden, this is a problem. To the 3 billion people on earth who live on under $2.50/day, this is abundance manifest. We put our imaginary currency in imaginary institutions and imagine that it "grows," but when I plant a pound of sunchoke, a year later I have 15 pounds. This is the archetype of abundance.

So what's the plan? 3 quick steps.

Step 1: Plant aggressive, resilient food in public spaces

Step 2: Map what's planted where, along with other public forage opportunities, like fruit and nut trees.

Step 3: Develop a smartphone app that lets people know what's where, helps you recognize what you're looking at, when it's ready for harvest, when it needs weeding or fertilizing, and then gives you points for care, for harvest, and for replanting, while letting everyone know who's doing what. Leaderboards for best weeder, best fertilizer, bonus seeds or starts, the possibilities are endless.

But how does this help those in poverty, who don't have a cellphone? To get to that point takes an awareness change, for anyone untrained, to start again seeing the world as feeding them. But, it takes the first crucial step: to take our food deserts and start peppering them with tiny food oases. That will grow. The app is aimed at those with a little more leisure, the time to learn and to play, who want to create a more resilient environment. Green-leaning soccer-moms, effectively.

In practice, just this app can turn hopeful urbanites into active permaculturalists, while sequestering resilience, and building abundance to share.

At least hypothetically.

But, practically, the pieces are all there. While we don't have all the pieces worked out, it's not beyond the capacity of the technology, the plants, or the people.

If you would like to find out more, you can join the conversation here:
https://plus.google.com/communities/111524883049498937999