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During the 70’s my real estate company in St. Lawrence County, New York worked with a lot of “Mother Earth” buyers. Just 100 years ago people went west in covered wagons these buyers were coming from all over in “station wagons”!
During that time many of them were incorporating the method of Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren whose articles about an approach to designing human settlements. They and their followers were interested particularlly in the development of perennial agricultural systems that mimic the structure and interrelationship found in natural ecologies.
Mollison especially felt it was time for humans to take responsibility for their own existence and that of their children. He felt that “fast track” training was necessary for people to create their own environment and rely less on chemical and non-organic systems.
Over the years this agro-ecological design theory has become the back bone of Permaculture and has grown into a huge International following and these people practice what they preach.
Permaculture practitioners minimize waste and the demand for human energy and labor in such areas as organic agriculture, sustainable forestry, agro-forestry and horticulture.
The people who believed this and came into my real estate offices between 1970 and 1973 were termed “Hippies” and they bought up many of our old abandoned farms and created these types of systems, some individually, some in small communes and I learned a lot from them and developed some good and long lasting friendships.
Since Permaculture systems take a long time to evolve many of these people are no longer practicing Permaculture for whatever personal reasons. However, many of them still are in the North Country. Some of them solved the problem of vanishing farmers and dairy farmers in that area and created other systems that worked for them and gave them a “good life” area in which to live and raise their children.
Permaculture people recognize our planet as the source of all life and they support and help each other so they are not harming the planet. Permaculture people believe in the words, “fair share” and do not use more than they need. They understand how ecosystems interact with each other.
Their ground designs take into the fact that gardens that require frequent handling and harvesting are usually created closer to the house in what may be called zones 1 & 2 and other agro-activities that require less handling would be in zones farther away from the house.
One practice is “layer stacking” in Permaculture or Forest Gardening and that includes 7 layers of stacking such as large fruit and nut trees near dwarf fruit trees near a shrub layers such as berries and currents near root vegetables called the Rhizosphere area and then the soil surface covers are things like strawberries etc and the vertical layer such as climbing vegetables grow around the tree trunks. There is an eighth layer called Mycosphere (fungi), is often included in this plan.
Some Permacultures include animals such as chickens to weed the areas and provide eggs and manure, horses to do some of the work and again provide manure and keep down the grass. Whatever animal they have that animal is considered a co-worker and a pet and these animals eat the things that humans normally don’t eat such as slugs, termites etc.
There are still Permaculture designs available for anyone who wants to investigate this theory further. Try your library or internet. There are many Permaculture units all over the world.
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Author Bio Box: Arlene Wright Correll
 For more gardening or cooking information click http://www.learn-america.com/
To see Arlene’s Gardens and to read her gardening diaries or click on Arlene’s Books where you can download or buy her gardening & cook books. Arlene says, “All my royalties from the sale of my books go to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and I thank you for visiting my site.”
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