Several times at NEPC, reference was made to the book A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. When I got back to town I went straight to the library to get it. Sadly, it was out, but another book, The Timeless Way of Building was in, and I’m glad for this happy little accident [sic].

The Timeless Way of Building (Volume 1 in the series) lays out, methodically, the difference between a built environment that is alive and one that is dead, what makes it possible to create the living one, that is a shared pattern language, how it is possible that normal people like you and I can build these living environments, what a pattern is, how to recognize one, and how to build a shared language of patterns and combine them in specific methods of design. A Pattern Language (Volume 2 in the series) is then, one attempt to build such a language that has general applicability.

Since Permaculture is all about design and a lot about pattern, I am glad to have stumbled onto these books. Which is not to say that they weren’t explicitly recommended in my PDC, or even by Mollison in the DM- they probably were. But they are both critically important books, IMHO, for Permies everywhere.

Here’s Alexander’s definition of a pattern:

Each pattern is a three-part rule, which expresses a relation between a certain context, a problem, and a solution.
The Timeless Way of Building, p. 247

I believe this is what Dave Jacke was referring to when he said a pattern is a way in which conflicting forces get resolved. This is also another way of restating the Permaculture principle: “the problem is the solution.”

Further, Alexander shows how we can discover these patterns.

1. Pick a kind of a place- entrance, window, garden, tree grove, sidewalk, path, hedge, whatever
2. Look around for good and bad examples of this type of place
3. Try to isolate the property the good ones have in common. This will not be a simple property, like a color or size, but will be a relationship
4. Look at the bad examples and define what the problem is with them
5. Expand the problem with any additional information you may have about it, generalize it. What does the space need to accomplish or solve?
6. Identify specifically the ways that the good patterns resolve this problem
7. Give this pattern a specific name which will clearly identify it

This is a very specific and detailed form of “protracted and thoughtful observation,” and is quite similar to the ways both Mollison and Toby Hemenway suggest to identify guilds. Zone and Sector analysis is very good at quickly locating components in an overall site, in a general way. Alexander’s method seems to me much more definitive when you get down to the details of where to place the actual greenhouse, swales, paths, compost bin, chicken coop and so on in relation to each other and to existing components, within or across any zone/sector analysis segment.

Today was an awesome day! I was able to get hot water for my coffee this morning, then went for a little walk and found that despite it’s strip-mall and industrial park cosmetics

Chicopee has a heart of gold. I took my coffee down to the parking lot and started looking at the flora when I noticed an old road or path running behind some shrubs and decided to explore further. Some black caps, black-eyed susans, milkweeds, sumacs. Then I came around a corner and found myself in a state park. Walking further I found a swimming area which turns out to be the Chicopee reservoir. Thus, it’s a short five minute walk from that to this:

I was completely astounded by this, and spent some time there to start the day. I went back for my camera and tried to drive there, but couldn’t find a way! Walking was the most direct method. After a McSaussage I went on the the Convergence.

In the morning Ethan Roland ran a session on Scaling Up, that is how we can work on bigger projects or think about bigger projects. He put an interesting twist on “succession” asking, what do we need as designers to accelerate our inner, as well as the outer, succession. There was some discussion about building community and Ethan specifically demonstrated a design that was not accepted. He said he didn’t know why, but it seemed clearly that there was not buy-in or ownership from the community, some lack of trust by the community for the landowner based on history. This started to emerge as the main theme for me: it’s not the designs, it’s the social and hidden structures that will ultimately determine whether our designs get implemented.

Steve Gabriel made a similar point in the next session- that most designs don’t get built. This was a very instructive presentation on his experience with FLPI, their relationship with an existing Not-for-Profit, the dream vs. reality (”where the rubber hits the road,” Bill would say), and some successes. I was starting to conclude that small was good, that the way to go big is still to expand small successes, join and network the nodes of permanence as if they are components in a design, a bigger design.

After lunch we had the first two events of the Permie Olympics, which involved eyeballing elevations for a swale, then speed digging. There were I think five teams and the result was two nice swales built in a couple of hours for fun and for free.

After lunch, Phil and Sharon gave a talk on their experiences trying to get diverse, multi-cultural (”people of flavor”), urban permaculture going in NYC. I want to talk more to him about the specifics of his experiences, what worked and what didn’t. They seem now to have got a core site at a community garden in Harlem, and have had a very successful PDC where 23 of 24 finished the course. He also talked about financial issues of pricing and chasing down payment and scholarships, which I want to hear more about.

Dave Jacke then led a roundtable on issues related to certification and organization within the movement as a whole, and I found myself contributing some models that might be helpful, and questions about standards being set purposely at a very low level to generate quick growth. As Mollison says, we can’t possibly do worse than the way things are being done now. I’m wondering whether the certification wasn’t Mollison’s way of not dealing with centralized authority and structure. I’ll probably get struck by lightning for saying that. I was glad to add to the discussion, and the point was made several times during the day that the ideas generated by newbies were often very interesting and productive. We’ll see.

I got to talk to Tom and Martin a bit afterwards which was cool, the discussion leading to Bateson and patterns among other things. Some books I need to get:

• Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander
• A Long Deep Furrow- Three Centuries of Farming in New England
• Luscious Landscapes
• Human Ecology, or books on this topic

After that my brain was pretty much moosh. Looking back through my notes there’s a ton of material that will be fodder for future posts. For now, my stomach needs food.

This afternoon I helped these young people:

build this herb spiral:

in less than an hour.

They totally made my day and made me feel like I’d done something worthwhile and fun for the day. I was able to forget about the idiocy of work for a bit. I was able to explain about the different micro-climates we were making, from dry at the top to moist at the bottom, hot and light on the southwest and top sides and darker and cooler on the north and east edges, how the bricks and soil form a more stable structure- they totally got it and hopefully now they can do their own spirals and teach others.

Here are some more details on swales. As I was working on them, I was struck by the sophistication of even the simplest of permaculture techniques.

Here’s a better diagram of how they work and how mine are constructed:

I had previously marked the paths out using a very simple contour-locating device I built ($5) from 2 x 2, a hinge, a cross piece of scrap wood, some fishing line and a weight. This forms a big “A” shape. Calibrate it by setting it up on a level surface and marking where the fishing wire and weight hangs crossing the cross piece. To use it, pick a starting point and then swing it around til the other leg hits the grass and the weight lines up, showing the legs to be level. Mark the new point with a stone and move on to the next point.
To actually dig the swales, first, I rented a rototiller ($39 for a half day) and loosened up the soil on the swale paths. Then I simply went along and dug with a shovel, flippiing the sod over onto the downslope side. After digging, I went along each swale and forked down and loosened a bit, just to put some depth for water to soak in.

Next I filled the swales with whatever drainage and organic matter I had handy. In this case, I had a bunch of gravel scraped onto my lawn from the next door neighbors winter plowing, so I put that in the base. Then I put in dead leaves which I had in profusion as I don’t rake them in the fall. Finally I put some ground bark mulch. This all went inside the swale.

I then scattered clover seed on both the ridge and the upslope side of the swale. The upslope side, being level, makes a nice path. Since the main path on the site runs downslope, across the swales, the swale paths are secondary cross paths. From these I run some keyhole garden paths upslope into the main garden beds defined by the swales and main path.

Finally, both the ridge and upslope side get a layer of straw mulch to keep them moist and deter weed and grass growth, while allowing the clover to sprout.

The fact that all of this works as an integrated whole where each part plays multiple roles was kind of impressive in a quiet sort of way. The clover helps seed the ridge, and will grow a good root system to keep it locked in place. It also adds nitrogen to the soil. The gravel and leaves were readily available and relatively easy to move. I would have had to scrape up the gravel anyway, so no big deal just putting it in the base of the swale. I mentioned that I use the upslope side for paths. I also noticed that laying the swales in broke up the garden space in a very interesting and useful way. The slope is now visible in the landscape, and it’s really obvious where the moisture is and isn’t in the ground, and where it flows. Little pockets and odd accute angles suggest places for anchor plants and shrubs. The garden starts to design itself.

I’m killing my lawn and turning it into a food garden.

Let the sheet mulching begin! I went for a walk around town the other day, poking around the old abandoned railway lines (often a good place to find old tree and shrub stock), and walked past a feed and grain store I hadn’t paid much attention to. I called them up and asked if they sold strawbales, and they did. I ordered 20 at $4.50 each.

Unfortunately they don’t deliver and I don’t have a pickup any more. So I decided to rent a U-Haul, and found that the repair shop around the corner from me rents them- I could walk there if necessary. So I lined up a truck for this weekend.

Meanwhile I went on craigslist and discovered all manner of cool free stuff including rotted horse manure and creek rocks (don’t tell these folks, but people pay good money for this stuff). Haven’t heard back from the rock people yet, but I have the manure and straw pickups scheduled for this Saturday. Naturally, the forecast is for rain.

So the way sheet mulching works is this:

1. first I put down a layer of manure, an inch or two thick, directly on the lawn.
2. If I need soil amendments, these go down now too, and I probably should lime and rock phosphate a bit, especially up the end with the spruce tree.
3. Next we need a weed barrier. My preferred material is corrugated cardboard from the gazillion shipping boxes left over from Christmas and various birthdays, coffee shipments, etc. Thick newspaper, cotton clothes or even carpet will work too. This is to prevent the lawn / weed from coming up through the manure fertilizer.
4. Next layer is a bit of topsoil, maybe an inch. This isn’t really needed, but I put it in anyway.
5. Then comes 6″ to 10″ of straw or other mulch. Last year I used double-ground bark mulch, but it was a bit too woody, so I changed to straw this year.

The great news about sheet mulch:

• no digging
• goes really fast
• you can plant into it right away by making little soil pockets into the mulch
• no digging

Once I get this going, I’ll include some pictures and maybe even a video on the process.

Stuart Staniford of the Oil Drum posted yet another rosy scenario about the future of food. What has struck me about this series is the fantastic gaps, assumptions and leaps of faith Staniford takes as givens and most of the commentators go along with. To give just a brief example, he says that there’s no problem with producing nitrogen in the future, despite the fact that natural gas is a critical component in the production of ammonia, which is the critical component of all nitrogen fertilizers. No problem, we’ll just substitute the boundless renewable energy he talked about in a previous post.

David Holmgren points out that if there’s boundless energy, then all of our work in Permaculture and sustainability is probably a waste of time. There’s still that pesky global warming issue, but we can ignore it for a while longer. Nevertheless, Staniford’s posts represent a possible scenario in the future, and we need to consider it, however unlikely it is to come to fruition. Holmgren considers this view as the “green tech” solution- one among a number of possible scenarios, each of which require differing strategies.

My point here is not to take Staniford’s arguments apart. At least not yet. What’s interesting to me today is that the process of uncovering the assumptions leads to more learning. To me this is like digging a trench (to use my friend Bill’s expression). Working at the trench level of detail, close to the ground, gives a strong and coherent foundation to one’s knowledge. So while I intuitively disagree with Staniford’s conclusions, he’s providing tremendous service by defining this swiss-cheese structure, whose negative space is a patch pattern of very fertile intellectual ground.

Permaculture points out that the interesting stuff, the productive areas are at the edges and transitions. This suggests that it is not the anti-assumption that is interesting but the points at which the assumption and anti-assumption approach eachother, where the anti-assumptions spread out to touch eachother, like pioneer patches in a successional field.

I just completed the first of five, weekend long modules at Hancock Permaculture with Andrew Leslie Phillips. If you are also attending the course, I mentioned the Placement Randomizer Tool, which takes a little digging to find here. Here’s a link to Peak Moment TV- lots of great interviews with Peak Oil as well as Permaculture and other cultural creatives. Also I’ve got a link here to Greeening the Desert.

I’d like to offer this as a place for us to work together virtually, in between and after the training sessions. If anyone is interested in contributing, send me an e-mail and I’ll create an account for you, and give you a little run through on how to write a post.

Finally I want to say a big Thank You to all of you for coming and inspiring me and eachother to move forward with Permaculture. I was looking at an old list of things I would do if I had unlimited time and resources and this training is on the list. Special thanks for the great food, coffee, pie, smoked fish, cheese, and Little Debbie cakes! See you next month.

I just discovered a link to a press release about Rochester’s “Greenprint” which contains a link to the full report (PDF). I would have liked to have attended this event, but I also want to find out about opportunities to plug in after the fact. A friend who is a strawbale building expert said he met with Mayor Duffy a few weeks ago. So there appears to be some reality behind this. The fact that Hillary was behind the whole thing was encouraging.
The report seems to conflate “green” with alternate energy and energy conservation, which I view as a small subsection of green. Nevertheless there are some 12 specific action items, several of which have to do with training, awareness and education. The ethanol activity in the area is apparent. One of my goals is to push at the crop productivity issue of growing sugar beets instead of corn, so this might be a place to start to make some connections.

Just read an article in the Independent by a journalist who visits the Utopia Experiment in self-sufficiency for a month. The site is located just outside Inverness, Scotland. The good news is that people learn quickly, especially when the food is at stake. The less good news is that they haven’t gone a winter yet, with no water or electricity, or faced the “hungry gap” in March.

They must be aware that there’s a similar experiment just 20 miles east of there that’s been running successfully for nearly forty years. I had the good luck to visit Findhorn in my college years, if only for a month. My experience with the learning I can echo, as within a day or two I had adopted what I can only call the rhythm of the place. The pace there seemed much slower, and people rarely blinked. They kept their eyes open. And so did I, once I let go to this energy and let it carry me.

It was there on the Moray Firth that I, too, learned to cook: something for which I can never be sufficiently grateful. I learned about working in a bindery, about meditation, about demolition work, about pine trees and the connection between natural resources, sustainability and peace. George Galloway recently had a video piece with David Strahan (hat tip TOD)looking specifically at the recent wars and their connection to resources.

I finally found a Permaculture Certification program that I think I can afford in terms of time and money, through Hancock Permaculture just east of Binghamton. One of the teachers there is Geoff Lawton, who’s project in the Jordan desert I profiled earlier.

The program runs 5 weekends, first weekend of each month, starting in February. Binghamton’s about 2-3 hours from here, but this was definitely better than the every weekend all winter or two-week intensive time investments needed for other nearby programs.