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What's Permaculture All About? · Stuff You Should Know

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Think Spring is here with our Think Spring playlist,
0:09
Speaker 1: and it's Chuck here to introduce today's episode. What's permaculture
0:13
Speaker 1: all about? Permaculture is a pretty great thing, and it's
0:17
Speaker 1: you know, if you don't know anything about it, this
0:19
Speaker 1: can teach you all about it and it may just
0:21
Speaker 1: change the way you live your life. There at yourius,
0:24
Speaker 1: so give it a try.
0:32
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
0:42
Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
0:45
Speaker 3: there's Charles w. Chipper, Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry Rowland,
0:49
Speaker 3: and we're all in great moods everybody, because it's stuff
0:53
Speaker 3: you should know. Time. Everything else just falls to the
0:56
Speaker 3: wayside when we record stuff you should know. It's just
1:00
Speaker 3: it's the reason we love doing it. Still, after a
1:02
Speaker 3: thousand episodes.
1:04
Speaker 1: You realize every single listener right now is thinking, why
1:07
Speaker 1: are they in a bad mood? And why is Josh
1:09
Speaker 1: being so weird?
1:10
Speaker 3: I don't think I'm being weird? Am I being? Am
1:12
Speaker 3: I over selling it? I think so oh oh sorry.
1:15
Speaker 1: It makes it sound like we all three were in
1:17
Speaker 1: a big fist fight and then Jerry.
1:19
Speaker 3: Had recorded right, She's like just jammed a Kleenex up
1:23
Speaker 3: her nose to staunch the bleeding.
1:25
Speaker 1: I am recovering a bit because we just got back
1:28
Speaker 1: from New York City.
1:29
Speaker 3: Dude, it has been a week, I know. So we
1:33
Speaker 3: did show a show Sunday, a show Monday, and a
1:35
Speaker 3: show Tuesday, all sold out at the Bellhouse, traveled home Wednesday,
1:40
Speaker 3: and are recording today Thursday.
1:42
Speaker 1: Yes, and I just want to say, there's no way
1:47
Speaker 1: that people will ever hear Tuesday's episode because it was
1:50
Speaker 1: the filthiest thing we've ever done on stage.
1:52
Speaker 3: It was seriously, man, I don't know what got into us.
1:56
Speaker 1: I think it was night three of three, So that
2:01
Speaker 1: is for the three hundred and fifty people in that room. Yeah,
2:04
Speaker 1: I hope they enjoyed it.
2:05
Speaker 3: It was fun. It was fun, and come on out.
2:08
Speaker 3: Whenever we do a live show, you never know if
2:10
Speaker 3: we're just gonna be like, this one's not getting released,
2:12
Speaker 3: let's just go crazy, you know. Especially it was a
2:15
Speaker 3: twenty one and up show, which is.
2:16
Speaker 1: Really well, well that's why we for sure why we
2:18
Speaker 1: did it.
2:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what took the feedback off, you know, And
2:22
Speaker 3: that is saying I think.
2:24
Speaker 1: So put the feedbag on. Take it off.
2:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess so, I guess so it's not really,
2:30
Speaker 3: but we'll just press forward. How about that. Let's do so, Chuck,
2:34
Speaker 3: I know that you know this, but not everybody knows this.
2:37
Speaker 3: I had a personal conversation with one Charles C. Mann,
2:43
Speaker 3: who wrote my favorite book of all time fourteen ninety one,
2:46
Speaker 3: that is correct, And I was talking to mister man
2:50
Speaker 3: and he has a I was talking to him and
2:52
Speaker 3: got a show coming out on Existential Risks eventually, but
2:56
Speaker 3: and he's going to be in it. It's just like
2:58
Speaker 3: interviewed for it. But he has a book coming out
3:00
Speaker 3: this January and it's called The Wizard and the Prophet.
3:03
Speaker 3: Have you heard of it?
3:05
Speaker 1: No? But did you just say that he's going to
3:07
Speaker 1: be part of Existential Risks?
3:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's an Interviewee.
3:11
Speaker 1: That's fantastic.
3:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's going to be pretty I was really psyched
3:14
Speaker 3: to just be able to talk to him, and even
3:16
Speaker 3: better than that, like you know, we were kind of
3:18
Speaker 3: rapping for a few minutes beforehand, and it was just
3:21
Speaker 3: as calm and casual as I had always like envisioned
3:25
Speaker 3: talking to him.
3:26
Speaker 1: That's amazing would be.
3:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a really really neat conversation but he
3:29
Speaker 3: was telling me about the book he has coming out,
3:31
Speaker 3: The Wizard and the Prophet, and it's basically about him
3:36
Speaker 3: trying to find out how we can possibly, or even
3:39
Speaker 3: if it is possible, sustain ten billion people on planet Earth. Yeah,
3:45
Speaker 3: and not just sustained, meaning like you know, keeping him alive,
3:48
Speaker 3: but how could we do it sustain a blee. And
3:51
Speaker 3: he goes back and starts digging in and finds that
3:54
Speaker 3: there's this long standing headbutt between the techno optimists, the
3:59
Speaker 3: people who are like, well, we humans are smart enough
4:02
Speaker 3: to invent our way out of any problem, yeah, and
4:04
Speaker 3: the people who are like, no, we need to really
4:07
Speaker 3: like mitigate a lot of things that we're doing right
4:10
Speaker 3: now to make sure that we actually can keep doing
4:14
Speaker 3: this for the foreseeable future. And part of it is
4:17
Speaker 3: on Norman Borlog.
4:19
Speaker 1: And see the Wizard.
4:20
Speaker 3: He is the Wizard, that's actually absolutely right. The Prophet
4:24
Speaker 3: is a guy named William vote Vogt. I believe his name,
4:28
Speaker 3: and he I don't know nearly as much about him
4:32
Speaker 3: as Norman Borlog, which is to say, I know basically
4:34
Speaker 3: zero about him, but he's the Prophet, so I will
4:36
Speaker 3: know all about him when the book comes out in January.
4:39
Speaker 3: I'm psyched about it. But as I was researching this
4:42
Speaker 3: permaculture article, I was like, you can really see that
4:47
Speaker 3: same headbutt, that same push and pull between people who
4:51
Speaker 3: are saying we need sustainability and other people are like,
4:53
Speaker 3: we need to feed, you know, billions and billions of people,
4:56
Speaker 3: and that really comes together in the debate over permaculture
5:01
Speaker 3: and whether it works or whether it is just just
5:05
Speaker 3: a pie in the sky kind of idea.
5:08
Speaker 1: Well, I have a little something to say. Okay, I
5:11
Speaker 1: am a bit of an IRB. Well not a bit.
5:14
Speaker 1: I'm an urban permaculturist.
5:16
Speaker 3: That's awesome.
5:17
Speaker 1: We had not me as like I don't know much
5:20
Speaker 1: while I do know about this stuff now after researching it,
5:23
Speaker 1: but we are redoing our front and backyards and we
5:27
Speaker 1: hired a permaculture company to do so.
5:31
Speaker 3: Really, the Permaculture Pros.
5:34
Speaker 1: That's not their name, but maybe it should be. Uh yeah,
5:38
Speaker 1: So we're we are like right in the middle of
5:41
Speaker 1: making our small little piece of Atlanta a permaculture urban pum.
5:48
Speaker 3: I know it's hard to say now that I'm saying
5:50
Speaker 3: it out loud.
5:50
Speaker 1: An urban perm habitat if you will, urb perm that's right.
5:55
Speaker 1: So I'll be peppering, you know, little things here and there.
5:59
Speaker 3: I think that would help a lot. Yeah, because permaculture,
6:03
Speaker 3: as it turns out, and I didn't know really anything
6:06
Speaker 3: about it until we started researching this. It is a
6:09
Speaker 3: wooly idea. It's tough to pin down, which is really
6:13
Speaker 3: weird because it's actually a set of design principles meant
6:18
Speaker 3: to grow food for people in a way that's sustainable
6:23
Speaker 3: and not harmful. And it basically stands in contradiction of
6:28
Speaker 3: what you would consider like big modern agriculture, which is
6:32
Speaker 3: we grow one kind of food and we squeeze as
6:35
Speaker 3: much as we possibly can out of it from the
6:37
Speaker 3: ground we have, using as much artificial resources as we
6:41
Speaker 3: possibly need to increase our yield.
6:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's like people throw around the word sustainable
6:47
Speaker 1: or unsustainable, and maybe people sometimes folks don't even stop
6:52
Speaker 1: to think about what that means. Sustainable or I guess
6:55
Speaker 1: we'll start with unsustainable. That means that you are you're
6:58
Speaker 1: depleting resources around you and you are depending very much
7:02
Speaker 1: on bringing in different resources to make that thing work, right,
7:08
Speaker 1: Like you're not just using what's available, Like that's what
7:11
Speaker 1: sustainable would be. You're using what's available. It all works
7:14
Speaker 1: together to ideally sustain itself without saying, well, now I
7:19
Speaker 1: need to bring in this thing from way over here
7:22
Speaker 1: to make these three hundred acres of corn grow.
7:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've got to go burn a bunch of fossil
7:28
Speaker 3: fuels to create nitrogen based fertilizer, and it's not going
7:32
Speaker 3: to attach to the soil very well, so a lot
7:34
Speaker 3: of it will run off and be wasted, and even worse,
7:37
Speaker 3: it'll end up in a pond, which will create an
7:39
Speaker 3: algae bloom which sucks up all of the dissolved oxygen,
7:43
Speaker 3: which creates a fish kill. That's unsustainable. And it's weird
7:48
Speaker 3: because I hadn't really thought about that either, Chuck. But
7:51
Speaker 3: as growing up, as like kids who are sensioned in
7:54
Speaker 3: the nineties, you hear unsustainable and it's just basically in
7:59
Speaker 3: your mind with evil, like almost intentionally malicious acts against
8:04
Speaker 3: the earth, and that's just not necessarily the case. And
8:07
Speaker 3: that's another thing about like Norman Borlog the Wizard. He
8:12
Speaker 3: had the greatest of intentions, but you can also lay
8:15
Speaker 3: at his feet a lot of the ecological problems we're
8:19
Speaker 3: facing right now because of agriculture and the agricultural practices
8:22
Speaker 3: he helped pioneer in order to feed a bunch of people.
8:26
Speaker 3: So there's this tension between unsustainability and sustainability, but it's
8:30
Speaker 3: also a tension between what's realistic and what's not.
8:33
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, it's definitely a little sticky.
8:35
Speaker 3: It is a little sticky.
8:36
Speaker 1: But perma culture basically is trying to create like a harmonious,
8:41
Speaker 1: holistic approach to farming and whether it be a large
8:45
Speaker 1: farm or like in my case, like an urban small
8:50
Speaker 1: urban plot. And like I said, we'll kind of go
8:53
Speaker 1: over both of those through my lens and then through
8:56
Speaker 1: the larger ideas of the farm. And it's it's not
9:00
Speaker 1: like Robert Lamb wrote this article from Stuff to blow
9:02
Speaker 1: your mind. He did a good job with it, always
9:04
Speaker 1: does he does. But he does point out that you shouldn't.
9:09
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to go back
9:11
Speaker 1: to caveman days and like you have to live like
9:13
Speaker 1: tiktook and scavenge the earth. He said, to think of
9:17
Speaker 1: it in terms of a river, like you were a
9:20
Speaker 1: boat floating down a river and you were sustained by
9:25
Speaker 1: that river, but you are also navigating it as well
9:28
Speaker 1: with your rudder.
9:29
Speaker 3: And if you have to pee right now. It just
9:31
Speaker 3: increased tenfold, that's right. So yeah, it's not like just
9:36
Speaker 3: passively taking from the land what it has to offer.
9:40
Speaker 3: There's still management of it, right, Oh yeah, But the
9:43
Speaker 3: idea behind that management of it is managing the land
9:49
Speaker 3: in a way that the land.
9:50
Speaker 1: Is happy with. Yeah, kind of working with what you got.
9:53
Speaker 3: Like you can walk past a dog that's just sitting
9:55
Speaker 3: there looking at you and maybe you know, give it
9:57
Speaker 3: like a wink or something like that, and keep walking.
10:00
Speaker 3: That's passive. But if you stop and scratch it behind
10:03
Speaker 3: the ear, you're managing that dog in a way or
10:06
Speaker 3: something like that. You're at least interacting with it more
10:09
Speaker 3: and the dog likes it. You could also walk past
10:11
Speaker 3: the dog and like poking in the ribs. Yeah, that's
10:14
Speaker 3: interacting with it in a way that the dog wouldn't like.
10:17
Speaker 3: Perma culture is the middle one, right, sure. So you're saying, hey,
10:20
Speaker 3: I want to get something out of you, like a
10:22
Speaker 3: good feeling, so I'm going to scratch it behind the
10:24
Speaker 3: ear earth. And again, like you said, you're doing that
10:27
Speaker 3: by trying to create a system, whether it's your little
10:31
Speaker 3: plot of land or a full scale, industrial sized farm
10:35
Speaker 3: in a way that it has. It's sustainable, meaning it
10:38
Speaker 3: requires as few external inputs as possible. That's right, But sorry,
10:43
Speaker 3: I just need to point it again. It's still being managed.
10:46
Speaker 3: It's still being managed by you, just in a harmonious way.
10:50
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think there is a word for the other
10:52
Speaker 1: thing where you just just let everything do its thing. Right. Yeah,
10:57
Speaker 1: that's nature, maybe like wild or something or rewilding. Have
11:02
Speaker 1: we talked about that.
11:04
Speaker 3: No, we never did. I'm probably wrong anyway, although we
11:07
Speaker 3: also thought we didn't do a cat episode, So who
11:10
Speaker 3: knows if we've talked about it before or not.
11:12
Speaker 1: All right, so this all goes back to Australia and
11:17
Speaker 1: see you in September of next year. Australia. Yep, right, yep,
11:22
Speaker 1: get excited.
11:23
Speaker 3: Oh man, you just sold us a million tickets with
11:26
Speaker 3: that accent, buddy and New Zealand, so you gotta take
11:32
Speaker 3: it better than that.
11:33
Speaker 1: Well no, I'm super excited about going to New Zealand. Okay,
11:36
Speaker 1: I didn't want to not mention.
11:37
Speaker 3: That, you say in New Zealand.
11:39
Speaker 1: In New Zealand. So in Australia in the nineteen seventies,
11:45
Speaker 1: there were a couple of dudes named Bill Mullison and
11:47
Speaker 1: David holmegrin and imagine they were sitting around smoking a
11:51
Speaker 1: joint one night in the version that I have in
11:54
Speaker 1: my head. Oh yeah, when they dreamed up the word
11:57
Speaker 1: permaculture in nineteen seventy eight, which is basically what we've
12:01
Speaker 1: been talking about. This is just put a word on it.
12:04
Speaker 3: Actually two words, permanent and agriculture.
12:07
Speaker 1: Right, good point. They said let's join those up and
12:10
Speaker 1: he said right, and that was it. That's how it
12:14
Speaker 1: went down. And it's a self sustaining alternative to like
12:18
Speaker 1: what you were talking about, which is mass production of
12:21
Speaker 1: a single crop. And there are three basic ethics to
12:24
Speaker 1: the permaculture movement. Yeah, care for the earth, care for
12:28
Speaker 1: the people, and then setting limits on population and consumption.
12:32
Speaker 3: Right. And so Mollison I believe, was a professor at
12:37
Speaker 3: the time and Holmgren was his student, and they split
12:41
Speaker 3: within a few years. They had creative differences, I guess
12:45
Speaker 3: you could kind of call it. They both like pursued permaculture,
12:49
Speaker 3: but through different ways. So Mollison is frequently accused or
12:53
Speaker 3: was I think he may have passed accused of being
12:57
Speaker 3: kind of a dogmatic, charismatic egomaniac maybe where it was
13:04
Speaker 3: like it's more I waey or the haw way. And
13:09
Speaker 3: then that extended to even principles of permaculture, right, like
13:13
Speaker 3: if he said it, it was just that was just true,
13:15
Speaker 3: whereas Hommegren apparently took a little more of a pragmatic
13:20
Speaker 3: approach to studying it, finding out the best practices, discarding
13:24
Speaker 3: the ones that didn't work, even if they were like
13:27
Speaker 3: precious to everybody, including the entire permaculture movement, and movement
13:32
Speaker 3: is actually the right word, because there is like this
13:35
Speaker 3: definite well like Malison put the cult in permaculture, you
13:41
Speaker 3: know what I'm saying, Like, there's definitely an adherency to
13:44
Speaker 3: it that's kind of fervent. You know that the whole
13:47
Speaker 3: movement gets criticized for rightfully or wrongly. Yeah, but they're
13:52
Speaker 3: both kind of I think the fact that they did
13:55
Speaker 3: split probably added to this field even more because there's
13:59
Speaker 3: two different courses of study or of thinking about it
14:02
Speaker 3: at least that were able to develop in tandem.
14:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this stuff is nothing new. They didn't invent
14:09
Speaker 1: this idea because Tuk took in the Gang way back
14:12
Speaker 1: in the ancient days did things like this. They worked
14:15
Speaker 1: with what they had. They didn't have four hundred acres
14:18
Speaker 1: of corn. They did forest farming, they had crop rotation,
14:22
Speaker 1: they composted, they had multiple crops, and they were not
14:27
Speaker 1: just out to be leading pioneers and environmentalism. That was
14:31
Speaker 1: just the way you work the earth back then. And
14:33
Speaker 1: that's a lot of what permaculture is all about is
14:37
Speaker 1: returning to this idea of just sort of doing it
14:42
Speaker 1: the smart right way. And again, this is probably not
14:46
Speaker 1: going to be the thing that feeds the world, but
14:48
Speaker 1: that's not to say you can't have a permaculture movement
14:52
Speaker 1: in farms, in urban permaculture going on.
14:54
Speaker 3: Well, that's one of the things that it gets criticized
14:57
Speaker 3: about is that people who our big time adherents of
15:01
Speaker 3: permaculture do tend to say, like, uh, yeah, this is
15:06
Speaker 3: this is what we need to feed the world, and
15:07
Speaker 3: if we don't do this, then there's not going to
15:10
Speaker 3: be people around to feed because we're going to wreck
15:13
Speaker 3: the earth and die from climate change.
15:15
Speaker 1: Yeah. I get that, but I think I come from
15:18
Speaker 1: the like reality camp, and you're not going to undo
15:21
Speaker 1: conventional modern farming. You're not gonna just completely supplant that anymore.
15:26
Speaker 1: It's kind of too late.
15:28
Speaker 3: I agree with you. I am of the same mindset.
15:32
Speaker 3: I do think though, that you these practices or most
15:36
Speaker 3: of them, should be incorporated as best as possible.
15:39
Speaker 1: Sure, that'd be great.
15:40
Speaker 3: So I think there's a happy medium between you know, big,
15:44
Speaker 3: big time monoculture agriculture and pure permaculture, just because they're
15:51
Speaker 3: both probably unsustainable for what we need, which is to
15:55
Speaker 3: feed a bunch of people in a way that doesn't
15:57
Speaker 3: wreck the earth.
15:57
Speaker 1: Agreed.
15:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm with you, man.
15:59
Speaker 1: Should we take a sure, all right, We're gonna take
16:02
Speaker 1: a little, uh, a little pause for the cause and
16:05
Speaker 1: then come back. That was so corny and sounds like
16:07
Speaker 1: our radio DJ. It was great, and then come back
16:10
Speaker 1: and talk about design principles of permaculture right after this.
16:33
Speaker 3: Okay, you back, We're back. Are we back?
16:36
Speaker 1: I'm back?
16:37
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm back to Jerry. You're back.
16:40
Speaker 1: She's back, She's back.
16:42
Speaker 3: So, like I said early on, Chuck, the permaculture is
16:46
Speaker 3: a little it's a wooly it's a wooly idea. There's
16:48
Speaker 3: so many different definitions of it, and as a results,
16:51
Speaker 3: its image kind of suffers in the mind of rational skeptics. Right, Yes,
16:56
Speaker 3: but I did find one one definition of it that
17:01
Speaker 3: I thought really got the whole point across hit me.
17:05
Speaker 3: The conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive systems which
17:09
Speaker 3: have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. That's
17:14
Speaker 3: a big one. There's a second half even it is
17:17
Speaker 3: the harmonious integration of the landscape with people providing their food, energy, shelter,
17:23
Speaker 3: and other material and non material needs in a sustainable way.
17:26
Speaker 1: That is a great definition.
17:28
Speaker 3: I agree wholeheartedly. And I'm not sure who the actual
17:31
Speaker 3: person who said or wrote it was because it was
17:34
Speaker 3: misattributed to at least three different people. But regardless, it's
17:38
Speaker 3: a great definition.
17:39
Speaker 1: We should just throw your name in there too.
17:40
Speaker 3: Sure, we'll say I said it. So you said you
17:43
Speaker 3: brought up the three basic ethics, right, the care for earth,
17:46
Speaker 3: care for people, and setting limits on population.
17:49
Speaker 1: Correct.
17:49
Speaker 3: Feel like we should kind of go over those a
17:51
Speaker 3: little in depth, don't you think.
17:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, care for earth is it's not just like a
17:58
Speaker 1: lot of this is about plants, of course, but it's
17:59
Speaker 1: also animals and insects and how the air moves through
18:04
Speaker 1: the area, and minerals in the earth, and it's basically
18:09
Speaker 1: respecting all of the things within the ecosystem. Right, How's that.
18:14
Speaker 3: I think that's great care for people, right. So basically
18:19
Speaker 3: that's saying like that there's an importance to community. It's
18:24
Speaker 3: every person isn't just an island, right, and that this
18:27
Speaker 3: is a big one too, that access to resources is
18:30
Speaker 3: a human right and it's easy to take that for granted.
18:35
Speaker 3: You know where in places where you have easy access
18:39
Speaker 3: to land or water or something like that, but in
18:43
Speaker 3: places as diverse as Flint, Michigan, or Central America, they're
18:49
Speaker 3: the access to good stuff like water is highly restricted
18:56
Speaker 3: or the water is just not good. So the idea
18:59
Speaker 3: that everybody's should have easy, cheap, if not free, access
19:02
Speaker 3: to something like clean water is that's a that's a
19:06
Speaker 3: big one. That's it's kind of radical in a weird
19:08
Speaker 3: way these days.
19:10
Speaker 1: Yeah. And as far as limits on population and consumption,
19:12
Speaker 1: Robert puts it as recognizing how you have to reinvest
19:17
Speaker 1: money in surplus labor and energy into caring for the planet.
19:23
Speaker 1: Like it's it's it takes.
19:24
Speaker 3: Work, right, So those are like the three ethics. That's
19:29
Speaker 3: not how you go permaculture. That's just kind of the
19:31
Speaker 3: basis for the designs to permaculture, right, correct. And I
19:37
Speaker 3: think you said that this is this is not new, right,
19:41
Speaker 3: this is something that's been around for a very long time.
19:44
Speaker 3: Or these some of these ideas or the sustainable practices
19:47
Speaker 3: are adopted from like generations and generations of proven techniques, right, yes,
19:53
Speaker 3: which is pretty interesting if you ask me. That's another
19:56
Speaker 3: thing too, if you if you have not read have
19:58
Speaker 3: you read fourteen ninety one yet?
20:00
Speaker 1: Nope?
20:00
Speaker 3: Oh man, you have to read it. It talks about
20:04
Speaker 3: this kind of stuff where like they from just looking
20:07
Speaker 3: into it, they've they've found that there's all these sophisticated
20:12
Speaker 3: land management techniques that were just totally lost to time
20:16
Speaker 3: until archaeologists started discovering them. And at first they didn't
20:20
Speaker 3: even realize what they were looking at, and they'd be like, well,
20:23
Speaker 3: there's a lot of kind of weird hills in this area.
20:26
Speaker 3: It's otherwise pretty flat. And then they realized, oh wait,
20:29
Speaker 3: this is entire system of berms that used to be planted,
20:33
Speaker 3: and in between the berms were aquaculture ponds where they
20:36
Speaker 3: raised fish, and they were just doing all this sophisticated
20:39
Speaker 3: stuff that no one had any idea. That book is
20:42
Speaker 3: just all about chasing that stuff down and figuring it out.
20:45
Speaker 3: So good Chuck. One day you'll read it right, of course. Yeah.
20:49
Speaker 1: So before the break, I promised some design principles and
20:53
Speaker 1: there are believe like ten of these in our article.
20:57
Speaker 1: And it breaks down like this, and this is this
21:01
Speaker 1: is talking about a farm, but we have incorporated in
21:04
Speaker 1: this company that's come in as incorporating these most of
21:07
Speaker 1: these same principles within like a place as small as
21:10
Speaker 1: our backyard, for instance, zones. We have divided our yard
21:14
Speaker 1: up into zones now. And basically in the case of
21:17
Speaker 1: a farm, it's a little bit different. They divide areas
21:20
Speaker 1: into zones based on based on the in all this stuff,
21:25
Speaker 1: it's just sort of makes sense and it's all seems
21:28
Speaker 1: like it would be intuitive and how Tiktook would have
21:30
Speaker 1: done it. So it divides into zones based on how
21:33
Speaker 1: much attention certain things need on the farm and what
21:36
Speaker 1: does it require out of people in the different areas.
21:40
Speaker 1: And so if you think of it as a circle,
21:42
Speaker 1: you got your farm in the center. So obviously the
21:45
Speaker 1: stuff that needed the most attention would be closest to
21:49
Speaker 1: the center where the people are. And then as you
21:52
Speaker 1: go out and out, the activity decreases like the human activity,
21:57
Speaker 1: and things are allowed like trees to grow a little
22:01
Speaker 1: more wildly.
22:02
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, So like the zone is kind of like
22:04
Speaker 3: ripples in a pond or something, right there, concentric circles, yeah,
22:10
Speaker 3: radiating from the center. And I guess the center is
22:12
Speaker 3: the actual farmer in this case, your house. Uh yeah, okay,
22:17
Speaker 3: so that's understandable enough. And then you look into something
22:22
Speaker 3: called sectors, and that's kind of similar, it seems like,
22:26
Speaker 3: but it's actually not. With sectors. Again, the center of
22:29
Speaker 3: the whole, the whole permaculture land or whatever, is the
22:35
Speaker 3: farm where the people live or whatever. And then the
22:40
Speaker 3: the zone the sectors radiate outwards, so the whole thing
22:44
Speaker 3: is one big circle around the center, but this time
22:47
Speaker 3: it's sliced into like like pizza slices.
22:49
Speaker 1: Basically, all right, I'm hungry enough.
22:53
Speaker 3: Okay, So but with that, so that doesn't mean like
22:55
Speaker 3: you do sectors or zones. These are two different ways
22:59
Speaker 3: of looking at the land that will overlay one another. Right,
23:04
Speaker 3: And I've seen a couple of places that recommend if
23:07
Speaker 3: you're setting up a permaculture farm, you want to spend
23:11
Speaker 3: basically an entire year doing nothing but observing. Don't plant anything,
23:16
Speaker 3: don't cut anything down, don't dig upond, don't do anything
23:19
Speaker 3: like that, just observe, figure out where the sun is
23:23
Speaker 3: at different parts of the year, where does the wind
23:25
Speaker 3: come from, where does the water go. Are there pollutants
23:29
Speaker 3: that come onto the property that you need to to,
23:33
Speaker 3: you know, manage where do the animals, Like if there's
23:36
Speaker 3: deer that come in and eat the garden, like, where
23:39
Speaker 3: would they be coming from? And so that's what you
23:42
Speaker 3: base the sectors on, and then that creates kind of
23:47
Speaker 3: like this underlying map beneath the zones. Does that make sense?
23:52
Speaker 1: Yes?
23:52
Speaker 3: Okay? And I got that one right, Yeah, I think so? Okay.
23:56
Speaker 1: I mean I'm sure a permaculture expert would say, oh boys, right.
24:02
Speaker 1: Relative locations another important part of permaculture. That is basically
24:08
Speaker 1: designing things and again in a way that makes sense
24:11
Speaker 1: relative to one another. So the great example that Robert
24:14
Speaker 1: gives is is planning a crop downhill from a pond.
24:18
Speaker 1: That way it's downhill, you don't need to install a
24:21
Speaker 1: pump system. The whole idea of sustainability and so if
24:24
Speaker 1: you can have the stuff you need to water downhill
24:27
Speaker 1: from your water, then you have just created a sustainable environment.
24:31
Speaker 3: Right, And that one is there's it's an actual design principle,
24:37
Speaker 3: like David Holmgren came up with twelve of them. One
24:40
Speaker 3: of them was called integrate rather than segregate, and that
24:42
Speaker 3: one's definitely part of that.
24:44
Speaker 1: That's right.
24:45
Speaker 3: There's also having single elements with multiple functions, right, Yes,
24:50
Speaker 3: So going back to that, like a pond example, a
24:54
Speaker 3: pond also not only serves as a source for irrigation,
24:58
Speaker 3: but it's also a water source for your live stock,
25:01
Speaker 3: and depending on where you put it, it also acts
25:03
Speaker 3: as a barrier between your live stock and the edge
25:06
Speaker 3: of your property.
25:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you don't even need a fence because cows
25:10
Speaker 1: aren't going to swim across the pond.
25:12
Speaker 3: No, you try to find one doing it, they won't
25:14
Speaker 3: do it.
25:16
Speaker 1: Or a hedge, a hedge lovely hedge connect as a
25:19
Speaker 1: wind block, things like.
25:20
Speaker 3: That, right, And it can also produce seeds that your
25:24
Speaker 3: chicken seed.
25:25
Speaker 1: Right right, or shade if you need shade.
25:27
Speaker 3: Right, and so all that I mean that just makes
25:29
Speaker 3: total sense. Of course you want to do that. But
25:31
Speaker 3: when you stop and think about the fact that they
25:35
Speaker 3: don't do this on big modern farms, like this stuff
25:38
Speaker 3: is not that's just wasted area where you could be
25:41
Speaker 3: planting more corn. You know, what I mean.
25:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they don't do Most people don't think about
25:45
Speaker 1: this when they're designing their home backyards either. They want
25:49
Speaker 1: they just say this looks pretty. That looks pretty, and
25:53
Speaker 1: it may be laid out in such a way that
25:55
Speaker 1: it's completely unharmonious and working against each other at times. Right,
26:02
Speaker 1: why is that thing dying? It's so pretty? It's like, well,
26:05
Speaker 1: it's not, it's not where it should be.
26:08
Speaker 3: Another permaculture principle that stands in stark opposition to monoculture
26:12
Speaker 3: is having a single thing have just one function, or
26:19
Speaker 3: have okay, a bunch of different things serving as failsafes
26:23
Speaker 3: to one another. You see what I'm saying. Right, So,
26:26
Speaker 3: like that pond can also provide water, right, so it's
26:31
Speaker 3: a it's a water reservoir. But you may also have
26:35
Speaker 3: rain barrels on site as well. So you have all
26:37
Speaker 3: these different things serving multiple functions but also serving backups
26:41
Speaker 3: to the functions that they share with one another. And again,
26:45
Speaker 3: this is the idea that you're doing this if you
26:50
Speaker 3: take the time to diversify, Like this is where the
26:53
Speaker 3: idea that you you shouldn't put all of your eggs
26:55
Speaker 3: in one basket. It came from the farm. Yeah, and
26:58
Speaker 3: this is this, like some of these principles are just
27:01
Speaker 3: getting back to that very simple maxim which is you
27:05
Speaker 3: have to diversify, and the more you diversify, the better
27:07
Speaker 3: off you're gonna be. If something befalls, like if an
27:10
Speaker 3: avian flu wipes out your chicken flock, well, if all
27:13
Speaker 3: you do is raise chickens, you're ruined. Your family's going
27:17
Speaker 3: to starve, you're gonna lose all of your money, and
27:19
Speaker 3: the farm's gonna be taken from you. If chickens are
27:21
Speaker 3: just one part of a larger holistic farm you have
27:25
Speaker 3: going on, then you lose your chickens, and that's awful,
27:28
Speaker 3: but you still have You know, you can cut off
27:31
Speaker 3: a cow's foot and chew on that for the winter.
27:34
Speaker 1: You know where the chicken and the eggs in the
27:36
Speaker 1: basket comes from, right way that little Bobby Joe going
27:40
Speaker 1: out to get the chicken eggs one morning, taking one basket.
27:45
Speaker 1: He says, Paw, I got them, don't fret. And then
27:49
Speaker 1: he trips on the way back and breaks all his
27:50
Speaker 1: eggs and Pa says, put all the chicken eggs in
27:54
Speaker 1: one basket. Now I ain't got no eggs. Yeah, And
27:58
Speaker 1: then Bobby Joe says, well, then paw have more kids
28:01
Speaker 1: or get more baskets.
28:02
Speaker 3: That's right, and that happened in December of eighteen forty
28:05
Speaker 3: two in Georgia.
28:08
Speaker 1: That's right. Those were my relatives.
28:10
Speaker 3: That was a great way. They chalked tall.
28:12
Speaker 1: No, no, no, this is from the other side of
28:14
Speaker 1: the family.
28:14
Speaker 3: The other side. Okay, yes, that's canna say, the redneck side.
28:19
Speaker 1: Energy efficiency is a big deal using energy efficient designs,
28:23
Speaker 1: whether or not you're straight up using like wind power
28:27
Speaker 1: or solar, or you can just simply, like I said,
28:30
Speaker 1: build things in a way where you have natural wind
28:32
Speaker 1: breaks built in or places to allow the wind to
28:35
Speaker 1: come through and spread seed and stuff like that.
28:38
Speaker 3: Right, My favorite dude of all is the biological resources.
28:43
Speaker 1: Let's hear it.
28:44
Speaker 3: So it's just basically using nature to help solve the
28:48
Speaker 3: problems that you have. Right. So mollusin one of the
28:52
Speaker 3: creators of it. What is his first name begain Bill
28:55
Speaker 3: Bill Mullison. He had a saying, you don't have a
28:58
Speaker 3: snail problem, you have a duct of fish, which is
29:01
Speaker 3: to say.
29:01
Speaker 1: That that shirt too.
29:04
Speaker 3: It was for a little while it was almost outsold
29:07
Speaker 3: gas grass or you know, yeah, right, but The premise
29:14
Speaker 3: of it is that if you are over rum with stils,
29:17
Speaker 3: get more ducks, because the ducks are going to eat
29:19
Speaker 3: the snails. And it's fine. It's good to have ducks
29:22
Speaker 3: because they do other stuff too, like they walk around
29:24
Speaker 3: and poop all over your property, fertilizing it as they're
29:28
Speaker 3: doing it. Right, So the just to kind of take
29:32
Speaker 3: a take a step back and look at it like, okay,
29:33
Speaker 3: what how just say like what would nature do? That's
29:37
Speaker 3: a great way to solve your problems through permaculture. Another
29:41
Speaker 3: one is using pigs or chickens to till the ground
29:47
Speaker 3: and to actually rotate where you plant crops every year,
29:50
Speaker 3: and so this year's pig pen is next year's crop
29:54
Speaker 3: land because you can move the pigs onto another area
29:58
Speaker 3: and they'll turn it all muddy and turn it up
30:00
Speaker 3: and get it ready for planting, just like they did
30:03
Speaker 3: for this year's cropland that you're using now.
30:05
Speaker 1: Pretty great insects too, Yeah, very big thing to bring
30:09
Speaker 1: in the right kinds of plants, to attract the right
30:11
Speaker 1: kinds of insects, to take care of the wrong kinds
30:14
Speaker 1: of insects. Right, but great, I love it.
30:18
Speaker 3: This raises an issue though, too one of the criticisms
30:20
Speaker 3: of permacultures. It's like, well, where are you going to
30:24
Speaker 3: bring in those insects from? Right? So, if, for example,
30:27
Speaker 3: if you order ladybugs online, it can actually be really
30:31
Speaker 3: bad for the ladybugs that live in your area because
30:34
Speaker 3: if they are lab raised or farm raised ladybugs, they
30:37
Speaker 3: very frequently carry a parasite that you're bringing now into
30:42
Speaker 3: your neighborhood, and you can wipe out the existing native
30:46
Speaker 3: ladybug population. So what do you do?
30:48
Speaker 1: Well?
30:48
Speaker 3: The permaculture way would be to say, I need to
30:51
Speaker 3: attract more native ladybugs because I got aphids on my
30:54
Speaker 3: lemon trees. So how do I do that? Well, you
30:58
Speaker 3: just plant more high pollinating plants like sunflowers, and voila,
31:04
Speaker 3: native ladybugs parasite free love it.
31:08
Speaker 1: I didn't know people bought ladybugs online. Yeah, that's a thing.
31:12
Speaker 3: I know that because I've had aphids before I looked
31:14
Speaker 3: into it.
31:15
Speaker 1: You said, duck, I got aphids at my lemon tree.
31:19
Speaker 1: It's a come here shot. Plant succession is another design principle.
31:25
Speaker 1: If you think about how land was before people were
31:30
Speaker 1: messing around with it. In a natural scene, things would
31:34
Speaker 1: just sort of grow and develop as they as nature intended,
31:38
Speaker 1: and fields might be barren and then grow into weeds,
31:43
Speaker 1: and that that might eventually grow into plants that may
31:46
Speaker 1: eventually grow into trees, and then what do you know,
31:49
Speaker 1: you have a forest.
31:52
Speaker 3: Right, So Robert makes the case like that's apparently the
31:54
Speaker 3: natural progression of a temperate area. Yeah, if you leave
31:58
Speaker 3: it alone for long enough, it's going to into a force.
32:00
Speaker 3: I didn't realize that. I guess it makes sense. So
32:03
Speaker 3: this is basically saying, well, how can we how can
32:06
Speaker 3: we do that if that's the way the plant, if
32:07
Speaker 3: that's the way the area wants to be, how can
32:10
Speaker 3: we accommodate that while also getting you know, food staples
32:16
Speaker 3: from that too.
32:18
Speaker 1: Right.
32:19
Speaker 3: There's also nutrient recycling, which is basically composting. And I
32:22
Speaker 3: was thinking the other day I don't answer enough when
32:26
Speaker 3: asked what my favorite episode is. Composting is definitely up there.
32:30
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that was a great one. All right, if
32:33
Speaker 3: you're digging this episode at all, go listen to composting
32:36
Speaker 3: if you haven't already, it's a good one.
32:38
Speaker 1: Yeah. And finally, diversity raising multiple crops, having different kinds
32:45
Speaker 1: of animals. Like we said, we've kind of been beaten
32:47
Speaker 1: up on corn. But that's the idea is to not
32:50
Speaker 1: have you know, a thousand acres of a thing and
32:53
Speaker 1: have many different things. So, like you said, the benefits there.
32:57
Speaker 1: If something comes along that is an illness to a crop,
33:01
Speaker 1: you're not wiped out completely, right, you know.
33:05
Speaker 3: So speaking of wiping out, let's take a break for
33:08
Speaker 3: a second. Okay, well you wiped out. I'm a little
33:11
Speaker 3: wiped I need to regenerate here. Okay, Okay, we'll be
33:13
Speaker 3: right back. Okay, we're back. I'm feeling restored.
33:35
Speaker 1: Chuck, good, Well, you took a nap on my shoulder
33:37
Speaker 1: and that always helps.
33:38
Speaker 3: I got a little jewel on your sleeve.
33:41
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, no big deal.
33:43
Speaker 3: Okay. So when when you're talking about this, like design
33:47
Speaker 3: principles are great and good and they are really interesting
33:51
Speaker 3: to me. I think ecology is incredibly fascinating. But there
33:56
Speaker 3: are to actually feed people, you have to take them
34:00
Speaker 3: into action and like do something. And people have been
34:04
Speaker 3: trying this right to varying degrees of success, and more importantly,
34:09
Speaker 3: to varying degrees of scientific study. I ran across a
34:13
Speaker 3: professor in I believe, the UK at a place called
34:16
Speaker 3: Schumacher College. Her name is Bethin Stagg, and she I
34:21
Speaker 3: get the impression Schumacher College is a little crunchy. I
34:25
Speaker 3: think they're the fighting granola, little hippiepy just a tad.
34:30
Speaker 3: But one of the things they teach is permaculture, and
34:32
Speaker 3: so beth and Stag, one of the professors there, I
34:35
Speaker 3: basically studied this permaculture next to traditional like gardening plots
34:44
Speaker 3: that are the same size, they're they're like, everything's the same,
34:48
Speaker 3: the amount of wind and rain and sun they're getting.
34:51
Speaker 3: The difference is one is one is cultivated in a
34:54
Speaker 3: through permaculture methods. The other one's more just like traditional gardening,
34:58
Speaker 3: like go buy fertilizer and stuff like that. Who won
35:01
Speaker 3: it depends on your definition of one.
35:03
Speaker 1: Well, which one was lying dead in a field afterward
35:08
Speaker 1: the regular gardener.
35:09
Speaker 3: They both got a couple of good licks in on
35:11
Speaker 3: one another. Ultimately, I think most people would say that
35:14
Speaker 3: the traditional gardening or the normal modern gardening method one.
35:20
Speaker 3: The reason why it won was because for one hundred
35:23
Speaker 3: for every hundred square meters of land, it yielded thirteen
35:28
Speaker 3: kilograms of edible food. The permaculture one yielded two point
35:34
Speaker 3: three kilograms per one hundred meters, so far, far far
35:38
Speaker 3: less food was grown. But there's a couple of things
35:41
Speaker 3: you got to point out here. There was also far,
35:44
Speaker 3: far far less time put into the permaculture plot, because
35:48
Speaker 3: that's one of the tenets of permaculture. It's just like
35:51
Speaker 3: plant this stuff and then just forget about it. You're
35:53
Speaker 3: not ever supposed to mess with it again except to
35:56
Speaker 3: harvest stuff. There's an emphasis on perennials rather than annuals.
36:00
Speaker 3: There's far less inputs that are meant to be made
36:02
Speaker 3: into it. It's just supposed to be like a little
36:05
Speaker 3: engine you build and then start and it just keeps
36:08
Speaker 3: going forever. Yeah, so far less time and far less
36:11
Speaker 3: effort on the permaculture side, so it kind of wins
36:14
Speaker 3: in that respect, right. But then also there was over
36:17
Speaker 3: this three year study there were also at least one
36:20
Speaker 3: year where the weather was really bad, and so the
36:24
Speaker 3: normal modern gardening suffered as a result, whereas the permaculture one,
36:29
Speaker 3: which was more diversified, had about the same yield as
36:33
Speaker 3: the other years. So they both won. They're all winners.
36:38
Speaker 3: It's like a soccer game.
36:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think the idea too, is it's not
36:41
Speaker 1: like like that's the kind of tests that should be
36:45
Speaker 1: carried out over one hundred years.
36:46
Speaker 3: Almost yes.
36:48
Speaker 1: And the whole point is though still that permaculture is
36:50
Speaker 1: not like they're not saying we will shall create more
36:53
Speaker 1: yield than any other farm. That's not the whole point.
36:57
Speaker 3: Again, though it depends on who you talk to. There
36:59
Speaker 3: are but definitely permaculture adherents out there who think that
37:02
Speaker 3: anyone who doesn't use permaculture is an idiot who's ruining
37:06
Speaker 3: the planet and this is the way.
37:08
Speaker 1: No, I'm not saying that. But are they saying that
37:10
Speaker 1: they can they can provide more yield the conventional farming.
37:13
Speaker 3: I think if you backed them into a corner, they
37:16
Speaker 3: would probably hedge that. But I think that when they're
37:19
Speaker 3: amongst themselves they may yes.
37:21
Speaker 1: Okay, like you guys totally know we can't okay, we
37:26
Speaker 1: just won't talk about it.
37:27
Speaker 3: Shut up, Simon.
37:30
Speaker 1: So there are people doing this to varying degrees all
37:33
Speaker 1: over the world. Whether or not is if you have
37:35
Speaker 1: a full scale permaculture farm, then you are almost one
37:42
Speaker 1: likely to be a pulm permaculture activist or an educator.
37:47
Speaker 1: It's not something you're doing lightly. You may also be
37:51
Speaker 1: someone who's like, well, you know, I'm part of my
37:53
Speaker 1: part of my farm here I'm doing in such a
37:56
Speaker 1: manner part of it. I'm not. But there are things
38:00
Speaker 1: that you can do even at your own home, like
38:04
Speaker 1: a forest garden.
38:05
Speaker 3: Well that that's like what permaculture seems to really be
38:09
Speaker 3: best at is backyard gardening. Yeah, so tell them about
38:14
Speaker 3: the forest garden, because I found this fascinating. Man.
38:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, if you've got a if you have
38:19
Speaker 1: a back lawn that is just a big grass lawn.
38:23
Speaker 1: And you know, during our grass episode, we we didn't
38:26
Speaker 1: get preachy, but a lot of people will say, like,
38:29
Speaker 1: that's the worst thing you can do is just to
38:30
Speaker 1: have a huge flat thing of grass, right as far
38:34
Speaker 1: as what's good for the earth, And that's a total
38:38
Speaker 1: I mean once in that I think I remember we
38:40
Speaker 1: talked about that literally being just like an American creation
38:43
Speaker 1: in the fifties or something.
38:45
Speaker 3: No, it was even that than that. Yeah, but yeah,
38:48
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure it was pretty American. Yeah, maybe English.
38:51
Speaker 1: So a forest garden is a food garden that you
38:55
Speaker 1: build or plant. You build it out of wood and
38:59
Speaker 1: iron in your backyard that imitates a natural forest. So
39:04
Speaker 1: you're trying to sort of replicate what you might find
39:06
Speaker 1: in that natural setting in your yard. And this is gonna,
39:10
Speaker 1: like you said, make things a little easier on you
39:13
Speaker 1: because you're not gonna have to rotate crops or till
39:16
Speaker 1: like you normally would, and everything's just sort of working together.
39:22
Speaker 1: And Robert has sort of a four part example for layers,
39:26
Speaker 1: if you will, starting with trees, which are gonna obviously
39:30
Speaker 1: the biggest thing in that forest garden. They're gonna eat
39:34
Speaker 1: most of that sunlight. But they're also gonna let dapple
39:38
Speaker 1: light through, which can be great growing conditions for certain things.
39:42
Speaker 3: Right, So there's you're gonna grow things like blackberries or
39:47
Speaker 3: leaf lettuce or strawberries, any vines that are shade loving
39:52
Speaker 3: that that produce food. But the point of this is
39:56
Speaker 3: like the tree isn't just like, well, here's a tree,
39:58
Speaker 3: isn't that great. It's like the tree also provides stability
40:03
Speaker 3: for the vine to climb up right right, like you said,
40:06
Speaker 3: it provides shade for these shade loving plants. And I
40:10
Speaker 3: guess the point And I didn't really see anywhere explained
40:14
Speaker 3: why people do this. I know it's like an ancient
40:17
Speaker 3: technique from South America, I believe, like in the Brazilian rainforest.
40:21
Speaker 3: It's used to great impact.
40:24
Speaker 1: What the trees.
40:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, agro forestry basically is what it's called. But I
40:30
Speaker 3: didn't really see what the benefits of it are, especially
40:34
Speaker 3: if it limits you to shade loving food plants, right,
40:38
Speaker 3: because there's plenty of food plants out there that don't
40:41
Speaker 3: love shade. Isn't that correct?
40:42
Speaker 1: Yeah? It will, I guess. Let me talk about what
40:45
Speaker 1: we're doing. Okay, So this lady came in and she's
40:49
Speaker 1: a company owner, and she takes a look at our
40:52
Speaker 1: yard and she's basically instead of saying, hey, let's plant
40:56
Speaker 1: a tree that will take twenty years to grow to
40:59
Speaker 1: provide whatever shade and then go, she's like, let's look
41:03
Speaker 1: at what you got now, because Atlanta is an urban
41:05
Speaker 1: forest on its own, as you know, and there are
41:09
Speaker 1: trees everywhere. So we had existing trees and stuff, and
41:12
Speaker 1: she basically just sort of looks at everything, draws up
41:15
Speaker 1: a design, and then comes back to us and said,
41:18
Speaker 1: here's what we're gonna do. And that she's working mainly
41:21
Speaker 1: with Emily because this was sort of her initiative and
41:23
Speaker 1: she knew more about it than I did, and Emily
41:26
Speaker 1: is more of the gardener in the family.
41:27
Speaker 3: Way to go, Emily.
41:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I was on board, you know, and I
41:30
Speaker 1: was sitting in on these meetings, going this sounds great,
41:32
Speaker 1: this sounds great. So she would say, all right, you
41:35
Speaker 1: have shade over here, so why don't we think about
41:37
Speaker 1: this here like blueberry bushes, This is where you might
41:40
Speaker 1: want to think about putting your herbs and downwind from
41:44
Speaker 1: there because of how the way the wind blows through
41:46
Speaker 1: your yard. You might want to think about this there,
41:49
Speaker 1: and we can move. Like we had certain things that
41:51
Speaker 1: we wanted to keep, like some azaleas and some roses
41:54
Speaker 1: and things, and she was like, we got to move
41:55
Speaker 1: those because they're not in the right place. So we'll
41:58
Speaker 1: put that over here, move this over there, and then
42:01
Speaker 1: before you know it, she's drawn a schematic for a
42:04
Speaker 1: sustainable backyard that all works together. And you know, the
42:09
Speaker 1: insects from the one plant are close to the where
42:13
Speaker 1: they need to be to help kill insects that affect
42:16
Speaker 1: the other plant. And you know, I wish, I, well,
42:19
Speaker 1: it's probably great to get two wonky over my yard,
42:21
Speaker 1: but it just all works together in harmony, and we're
42:25
Speaker 1: doing it in stages. The main thing, the big, big
42:29
Speaker 1: change that we've done aside from rearranging and planting new things.
42:32
Speaker 1: Is we got a cistern finally, so we have a big,
42:37
Speaker 1: huge geez. I don't even know how many gallons. I
42:40
Speaker 1: want to say, like five hundred gallon. No, it's large.
42:44
Speaker 3: Wow.
42:45
Speaker 1: I mean it's as big as.
42:47
Speaker 3: That's above ground swimming pool. I think you're describing.
42:51
Speaker 1: Is that too many gallons?
42:52
Speaker 3: Five hundred that's a lot, I don't know.
42:55
Speaker 1: Let's say this. It is as big as a it's
42:58
Speaker 1: like half as big as a Volk wagon beetle.
43:01
Speaker 3: Wow, it's large.
43:03
Speaker 1: So this is under our deck, so it's not an
43:06
Speaker 1: iore or anything. All the gutters in the house, all
43:10
Speaker 1: the water that falls onto our roof is fed into
43:13
Speaker 1: the cistern. And then that cistern has pipes that they
43:17
Speaker 1: trenched and they go all underground throughout the whole yard
43:21
Speaker 1: and just sort of leech water where it needs to be.
43:24
Speaker 1: And then there's also a couple of pumps. We didn't
43:27
Speaker 1: have spigots in our backyard. We still don't. It's been awful,
43:31
Speaker 1: you know, we haven't had We've had to run like
43:33
Speaker 1: hundreds of feet of hose every time we wanted to
43:36
Speaker 1: water anything, and it just feels wasteful anyway, And so
43:40
Speaker 1: we didn't have backyards pigots. And now we have these
43:42
Speaker 1: two posts with the little pumps and it's sort of
43:46
Speaker 1: gravity fed in a way, like if the cistern is
43:48
Speaker 1: full and you turn that pump on, it'll water will
43:52
Speaker 1: flow some. But then we have an actual pump installed
43:55
Speaker 1: on the cistern to where we can actually use a
43:58
Speaker 1: sprinkler if we want to.
43:59
Speaker 3: But but the the pump is squirrel run by a
44:03
Speaker 3: hamster whale, right which and it's it's located in the
44:08
Speaker 3: chestnut tree, so it's going to attract the squirrels anyway.
44:11
Speaker 1: No, it's sadly it does run an electricity. I wish
44:14
Speaker 1: it was hooked up to solar, but we're not that
44:16
Speaker 1: far along yet.
44:17
Speaker 3: That's pretty cool though. Man, that's a that's a neat
44:19
Speaker 3: prope plane you got there.
44:21
Speaker 1: It's pretty awesome. And guess what we have a swale?
44:25
Speaker 3: Oh? I was hoping we were going to be able
44:26
Speaker 3: to talk about swales. Yeahales.
44:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, Robert did include this in his article, but I
44:30
Speaker 1: sent you a thing on swales. And we have a swale,
44:32
Speaker 1: which is to say, in the back right corner of
44:35
Speaker 1: our yard. Now we have a tiny pond. It's only
44:39
Speaker 1: about five feet across by five feet across, and it
44:44
Speaker 1: is round and it has a like a round berm
44:47
Speaker 1: around it, so you know, it's like a little hill
44:51
Speaker 1: and a swale. The definition of a swale it is
44:54
Speaker 1: a is a level ditch that has dug across whatever
44:58
Speaker 1: site you're in with the purpose of stopping the flow
45:01
Speaker 1: of water in order to make the water slowly filter
45:03
Speaker 1: into the land instead of rushing over it. And the
45:06
Speaker 1: idea there is is that most people design their yards
45:12
Speaker 1: so water won't accumulate and it will run It's graded
45:15
Speaker 1: in such a way that rain water will just run
45:17
Speaker 1: off of it as quickly as possible, right, And that's
45:21
Speaker 1: you know, that's very wasteful, and that's not how the ground.
45:23
Speaker 1: The ground is supposed to accept the water. I know
45:26
Speaker 1: that sounds so hippy, but in an ideal situation, the
45:30
Speaker 1: ground accepts the water into it and it's not dry
45:33
Speaker 1: a day later. It is actually feeding the ground. And
45:37
Speaker 1: so this swale now has a runoff from the cistern.
45:44
Speaker 1: So when the cistern gets too full, the water will
45:47
Speaker 1: then run out into the swale and just sort of
45:49
Speaker 1: slowly leach into the ground around it, or if we
45:52
Speaker 1: get just tons of tons of rain, obviously the swale
45:54
Speaker 1: will collect it and the water will leach into the
45:56
Speaker 1: ground around it.
45:57
Speaker 3: That is very cool. That is swale.
45:59
Speaker 1: It hit a super swale, but it was an important part.
46:03
Speaker 1: Like when this lady came over, she's like, well, you
46:04
Speaker 1: got to have a swale.
46:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like swales are my biggest seller.
46:09
Speaker 1: And right now it's not the most attractive thing in
46:11
Speaker 1: the world. But over time we're planning. Instead of grass
46:15
Speaker 1: in between everything, or even mault, we're doing groundcover. I
46:18
Speaker 1: can't remember the specific variety, but groundcover or malta the
46:23
Speaker 1: two most sustainable ways to treat your yard period.
46:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes sense because the multual breakdown right, degrade
46:32
Speaker 3: and become nutrients.
46:34
Speaker 1: Yeah. So's it's pretty neat, Like we got a good scene.
46:36
Speaker 1: It's going to be years in the making.
46:39
Speaker 3: Well that's another thing too. I mean like you got
46:41
Speaker 3: to be very patient with this kind of stuff.
46:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great man.
46:47
Speaker 3: Anywhere there are and I'm wondering you seem to have
46:51
Speaker 3: a pretty realistic approach to permaculture though, like you're not
46:54
Speaker 3: going to save the world with your backyard. It sounds
46:56
Speaker 3: like but it's certainly not hurting some of the issues
47:00
Speaker 3: that the world is facing right now.
47:02
Speaker 1: We're just trying to create our own little sustainable habitat.
47:05
Speaker 3: So there are we should mention some criticisms of permaculture.
47:09
Speaker 3: A lot of criticisms of permaculture, we should say, but
47:13
Speaker 3: they you know, we've kind of hit on a couple
47:15
Speaker 3: of them. But the big one probably is that it's
47:18
Speaker 3: not rigorously tested scientifically enough that it's just kind of
47:23
Speaker 3: taken like, oh, yeah, that would work intuitively, and then
47:26
Speaker 3: that it's just left at that in a lot of ways.
47:29
Speaker 3: So there are people like Beth and Stagg who I mentioned,
47:32
Speaker 3: and other people around the world who are starting to
47:35
Speaker 3: apply science to these things to say this one works,
47:38
Speaker 3: let's keep at it, this one works better if you
47:41
Speaker 3: do it this way, or this one doesn't work at all,
47:43
Speaker 3: don't waste your time. And as long as they're doing that,
47:48
Speaker 3: permaculture deserves any respect it can get because it really
47:53
Speaker 3: is again, intuitively, it makes a lot of sense, but
47:57
Speaker 3: that doesn't necessarily mean it's true in fact, which is
48:00
Speaker 3: why you got to study that kind of thing.
48:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the other thing that I saw in the
48:03
Speaker 1: Roberts article that did make sense to me. Was one
48:06
Speaker 1: of the criticisms was to Mollison himself because he apparently
48:10
Speaker 1: had a stress on bringing in exotic plants, and that
48:14
Speaker 1: goes counter to everything that our lady for her company
48:19
Speaker 1: talked about. She is all about native plants, like only
48:23
Speaker 1: native plants.
48:24
Speaker 3: And Mollison's response was, well, we've already screwed up the
48:27
Speaker 3: earth so bad that we're not trying to preserve ecosystems
48:30
Speaker 3: as they are, specifically where we're trying to make them
48:35
Speaker 3: better through management. And it's like, actually, just contradicted everything
48:40
Speaker 3: you said back in nineteen seventy eight. And I think
48:43
Speaker 3: that's a pretty good example of from what I understand
48:45
Speaker 3: of that guy. He's like, well, this is what I'm
48:47
Speaker 3: saying now, so this is true, gotcha, you know what
48:49
Speaker 3: I mean? That's just and I've never met him, never
48:52
Speaker 3: heard him speak anything like that, just from reading about him.
48:54
Speaker 3: That's the impression that I have, gotcha. So to the
48:57
Speaker 3: Mulson family, sorry, if that's all right, You anything else?
49:03
Speaker 1: Got nothing else? You'll have to come over in two years.
49:07
Speaker 3: I I'll take you upon.
49:09
Speaker 1: I want you to see it now.
49:10
Speaker 3: I've been waiting for this invitation for ten years.
49:13
Speaker 1: Well, it's going to be twelve total.
49:15
Speaker 3: Twelve total. All right, If you want to know more
49:18
Speaker 3: about permaculture, you can type that word into the search
49:21
Speaker 3: bar how stuff works. And since I said search bar,
49:24
Speaker 3: it's time for listener mail.
49:27
Speaker 1: I'm going to call this harrowing story from a fashion
49:31
Speaker 1: design intern. Yeah, it's a good one, and I got
49:34
Speaker 1: her permission. Hey, guys, listen to internships. I wanted to
49:37
Speaker 1: say thanks for addressing this issue. When I was in college,
49:40
Speaker 1: I went to work or I wanted to work in
49:41
Speaker 1: the fashion industry, and the internship process was very difficult
49:45
Speaker 1: and exploitive. I managed to somehow get an internship without
49:48
Speaker 1: any connections, which felt nearly impossible, and worked my first
49:51
Speaker 1: gig for a top designer, and she did not name
49:56
Speaker 1: the designer. In a follow up email, she did, but
49:59
Speaker 1: then said, maybe don't read it.
50:00
Speaker 3: Okay, but it's a top designer okay.
50:03
Speaker 1: Not only was the internship unpaid in one of the
50:06
Speaker 1: most expensive cities in the world, but I was also
50:09
Speaker 1: expected to wear an all black, fashionable wardrobe at all times,
50:14
Speaker 1: so I had to find housing in New York by
50:16
Speaker 1: all new clothes. Luckily, my parents were able to help
50:19
Speaker 1: me out there, but I hated how prohibitive the whole
50:21
Speaker 1: thing was. While I was with that designer, the condin
50:25
Speaker 1: Nass lawsuits were going on, and I remember people saying
50:28
Speaker 1: the lawsuit was just another example of stereotypical millennial entitlement.
50:33
Speaker 1: That's obviously not the case, because, as you mentioned, it's
50:36
Speaker 1: a social issue. Because of my internship, I was able
50:39
Speaker 1: to get more experiences in the fashion industry and eventually
50:42
Speaker 1: a full time job in New York after I graduated.
50:45
Speaker 1: Everyone I work with now had unpaid fashion internships, and
50:48
Speaker 1: almost everyone I work with as white, upper class and
50:51
Speaker 1: from a good school. Unpaid internships have led to bigger
50:54
Speaker 1: problems and diversity that I think really have hurt the
50:57
Speaker 1: fashion industry. You always hear about how retail and department
51:01
Speaker 1: stores are dying. Well, all the companies are run by old, white,
51:05
Speaker 1: straight dudes, and we lack a variety of perspectives which
51:08
Speaker 1: prevents innovation. I'm glad I had internships and I learned
51:12
Speaker 1: a lot, but I think the internship market really needs
51:15
Speaker 1: to change, So thanks again for addressing this. A lot
51:18
Speaker 1: of people listen to your podcast and reevaluate how they
51:21
Speaker 1: do things at their own companies and that is from Gail.
51:24
Speaker 3: Thanks a lot, Gail. Nice one.
51:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, well there be good one.
51:26
Speaker 3: Actually, if you want to get in touch with us,
51:29
Speaker 3: like Gail did, you can tweat to us. I'm at
51:31
Speaker 3: sysk podcast, or at Josh M. Clark, Chuck's at Charles W.
51:35
Speaker 3: Chuck Bryant on Facebook and at Stuff you Should Know
51:39
Speaker 3: on Facebook. I'm on there too somewhere, although I'm not
51:41
Speaker 3: sure where. You can send us all an email, including
51:44
Speaker 3: Jerry J. E. Ri I to Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks
51:49
Speaker 3: dot com and in the meantime, hanging out with us
51:51
Speaker 3: at our home on the web, Stuff youshould Know dot com.
51:58
Speaker 2: For more on this and thousands of US or topics,
52:00
Speaker 2: visit HowStuffWorks dot com.
52:08
Speaker 3: M HM