Permaculture and Julia Child

Posted on | January 3, 2010 | No Comments

I just finished watching the movie “Julie and Julia”, of all things. A brilliant study of what it takes to persist in love for something so meaningful. And we, as Permaculture practitioners, are cooks of a sort. We take the ingredients of the landscape and mix them together in increments, always seeking the perfect balance. Sometimes we burn the sauce, or add too much salt. And sometimes we get it right. Just as the cook has the opportunity to shut the stove off and remix, and then, turn the stove on again, we work the design for a site over and over again until the ingredients merge in the most balanced fashion. The natural world is very forgiving as long as we enter it with care. Plants will persist amidst even the harshest of conditions. They will produce food for us, and medicines, and fiber, and all kinds of valuable products so that we may exist, and the animals may exist. We must taste the soup over and over, again and again. Is it a bit more compost, water, a mineral here or there? Is it a little more spice, vinegar, a pinch of salt here or there? Are not all of these ingredients in functional relationship? Is all of this not the design? A recipe? A plan?

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