The Permaculture Project

“Cultures cannot survive without a sustainable agricultural base and land use ethic. Permaculture is about the relationships we can create between minerals, plants, animals and humans by the way we place them in the landscape. The aim is to create systems that are ecologically sound and economically viable, which provide for their own needs, do not exploit or pollute, and are therefore sustainable in the long term.” Bill Mollison

         The Permaculture Project works to help build the proper eco‑skills necessary in all areas of life. Our vision is to make sure that all of our students and clients are eventually able to read directly from the very Book of Nature herself. Care and love of the environment are at the core of our work: ethics and values grow naturally out of these practices: care of the earth, care of people, ethical surplus distribution, building an ecological-human support base. One can come to understand the inherent connection between Nature, humanity and society, revealing that every thought, word and action carries consequences. Each person shares responsibility for the development of another. The Permaculture Project believes that education focuses our efforts to answer life’s fundamental questions. Learning the answers to these questions is best encouraged through love, nurturing, cooperation and reverence for all life.

       We seek to create positive and ethical lifestyle change, develop ecological and environmental harmony and stability for future generations, and teach appropriate technologies that sustain rather than harm. There is great benefit when intellectual knowledge is translated into personal experience and right and appropriate action.   Through personal and customized consultation, research, design and implementation, curriculum development and education, The Permaculture Project promotes true self‑reliance through hands‑on practice for farmers, gardeners, home‑owners, urban dwellers, educators, administrators, communities, businesses, students, ranchers, landowners, architects, regional planners and builder-developers. Ultimately, we can achieve balance and health by synthesizing applied biology, eco-technology and integrative architecture: the merging of renewable energies and biological-earth systems.

The Three Epochs Of Human Development

      Since our emergence as a species, humankind has gone through three great cultural epochs, each with its prototypical lifestyle forms and folkways.

      The first epoch was that of the pre-agricultural tribe of hunter-gatherers and primitive cultivators. Hunter‑gatherer societies sustained themselves by having an intimate and intuitive knowledge of their surroundings. They acted as “gardeners”  in the natural world and walked the earth quietly leaving as little trace of their presence as possible.

      The simultaneous development of agriculture ten thousand years ago in various regions of the world gave birth to the second cultural epoch. The ability to grow food year after year from seeds and cultivated plants selected for vigor and reliability gave the former hunter‑gatherer the opportunity to remain in one place and cultivate extensive food crops for sustenance for family, relatives and friends.

      The third cultural epoch gave rise to an explosion of intellectual, artistic and scientific learning. The technological discoveries and inventions of this era (which is still with us) helped to disassemble nature into pieces and then reassemble them into mechanical entities.

      We now stand at a time when the best of these three great epochs must come together to help create an ecologically sound environment for all. The ecological epoch will see a resacrilization of  the living world in which life forms are more than resources ‑ they are also our relatives. The new epoch will not reject science or technology but bring them into a context where phenomena are understood as parts of a systemic whole that includes the spirit of the whole.  By developing “local and regional agriculturally productive ecosystems with the same diversity, stability and resilience as our natural ecosystems”, and by utilizing appropriate technologies that sustain, rather than hinder and destroy the balance of Nature, the new epoch will create "a meta-industrial society without violating fundamental ecological integrity". Permaculture models and methods are not separated by culture or creed. They are applicable for all peoples, everywhere.

The Practice Of Permaculture

      As stated by Bill Mollison in Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual, in order for the long-term consequences of our actions to promote sustainability for future generations, we need to use “species that are native to our area or those naturalized species known to be beneficial; plan for small‑scale, energy‑efficient intensive systems rather than large‑scale, energy‑consuming extensive systems; be diverse, polycultural; increase the sum of yields: look at the total yield of the system provided by annuals, perennials, crops, trees and animals, also regard energy saved as a yield; use low energy environmental (solar, wind  and water) and biological (plant and animal) systems to conserve and generate energy; bring food growing back into the towns and cities; assist people to become self‑reliant and promote community responsibility; reafforest the earth and restore fertility to the soil; use everything at its optimum level and recycle so‑called wastes of any kind; see solutions, not problems .”

"We must create designs for human settlements that incorporate principles inherent in the natural world in order to sustain human populations over a long span of time."    (Nancy and John Todd)

The Permaculture Project
510 West Pecan Street
Carbondale, IL 62901
618-713-0537
permacultureproject@gmail.com
www.permacultureproject.com