How to Grow and Raise 100% of Your Food

Gaye Levy, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

At one time or another, every prepper will ask him or herself: could I become 100% self-reliant in terms of proving food for myself and my family? And most of us will say, no, that is not possible.

Today I would like you to re-think that proposition because, with time, planning, and a bit of luck, it is possible if not always practical. But let me start at the beginning.

Food Production Systems for A Backyard or Small Farm

A few weeks ago I invited some like-minded friends over for a survival meal made from my items in my food storage and a viewing of the DVD: Food Production Systems for a Backyard or Small Farm The four of us watched the DVD from start to finish with many pauses for discussion points and to take notes. So what did we think?

Well first of all, let me say that this is a pretty amazing DVD in that it covers so much in just a couple of hours. And while the DVD itself does not go in to extensive detail about the various topics, the included resource DVD does. Perhaps it is best to start with an outline of the DVD itself plus a 3-minute trailer.


Section 1: Overview

• Why we began this journey
• Soil types and climate of the site

Section 2: Water

• Water sources and qualities of water
• How much water do you need?
• Rain water collection systems
• Wells
• Ponds

Section 3: Garden

• Garden location
• Size – how much area do you need?
• Bio-Intensive gardening overview
• Fertility
• Watering the garden
• Wind
• Sun and shade
• Bugs and insects
• Vegetable varieties and seed saving
• Getting started

Section 4: Rabbits

• Housing and protection
• Watering systems
• Feeding
• Breeds
• Reproduction
• Other resources

Section 5: Home Butchering

• Tools
• Butchering a rabbit
• Tanning hides
• Butchering poultry
• Other animals

Section 6: Poultry

• Chicken breeds
• Feeding
• Watering
• Housing and egg collecting
• Predator protection
• Getting started

Section 7: Dogs

• Why dogs?
• Dog training
• Feeding
• Housing
• Size and breeds
• Final thoughts

Section 8: Perennials: Orchards, Food Forests, and Edible Landscaping

• Locations and micro climates
• Watering
• Fertility
• Using geese for fertility
• Tree varieties
• Planting and care of trees
• Getting started

Section 9: Other Essentials

• Calorie crops
• Solar food dehydration
• Home made herbicide test
• Fire ants
• Injuries
• Hog panels and tee posts
• Water levels and mapping contours
• Rocket stove and hay box cooker
• In The Wake; a manual for outliving civilization
• Propagating leuceana

As you look through these topics, you will see that almost every aspect of food production is covered. From figuring our your water needs, to selecting chickens and your coop, to determining the correct type of fruit trees for your orchard, there are practical tips that every one can embrace. (Personally, though, I did fast forward through the butchering section.)



...MORE HERE...

Converting Urban and Suburban Lands for Growing Food

Peter Ladner

The following is excerpted from The Urban Food Revolution, published by New Society Publishers.

I felt just a little conspicuous walking through the South Side of Chicago; I was the only white person in view since I got off the bus many blocks away. I was headed to Growing Home's Wood Street Urban Farm in the Englewood neighborhood. "You must be going to the garden," a man said to me as I walked past a cluster of friends chilling on a porch a few blocks away from the garden. The garden and I are both relative newcomers to the neighborhood. Its parent organization, Growing Home, was started in 1992 by Les Brown, Director of Policy for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, but this farm has only been around since 2007. It's a beacon of hope and fresh food in a depressed neighborhood with few real food stores. A restaurant I passed on the way, Pappy's Restaurant, featured shrimp, fish, chicken wings, tacos and burritos. A "Fresh Meat" store had nothing but liquor ads in the window.

Hidden at the end of a cul-de-sac in a resolutely residential neighborhood, Wood Street Urban Farm's trim, neat rows of vegetables under hoop-house frames bespeak a new standard of eating and growing local. Through the back of one hoop house, I could see the homes right across the street. This two-third-acre site is a farm, but it is far away from typical farmland.

Three collegiate-looking young people are bunching turnip greens, mint and radishes for an upcoming farmers market on the north side of town. Selling produce at the various farmers markets is just one way the farm makes money to support itself.

The Wood Street Urban Farm provides job training through its non-profit organic agriculture business. Upstairs, in the brand new office building (finished July 2009), the day's training class breaks for an afternoon smoke. These trainees are people with employment barriers who are learning the basics of finding work. They look more like hip young people than farmers, but they're being trained for any job they can get that's food-related. This year has been better than last: one member of the class already has a job. Today's class is trying to figure out how to attract neighbors to the Wednesday veggie stall set up on the premises.

Before the spartan but classy new offices were built, vandalism was an issue with the farm's on-site trailer. Now things are better. In 2008 the farm produced approximately 5,000 pounds of produce; a year later it was double that. Spinach, lettuce, arugula, swiss chard, tomatoes, zucchini, beets, turnips, kale, mustard greens and collards all grow happily in the warm, moist hoop-house climate, oblivious to the traditional urban surroundings.

Wood Street Urban Farm is just one of many new intrusions of agriculture and food production into the urban food revolution landscape. To think of food production in cities as an intrusion is odd. Historically, food has been an integral part of city life; in fact, the first cities came into being to store and protect domesticated agricultural produce. In the developing world, live food is still everywhere in cities. Without that urban produce, many more people would be starving than already are.

Live food--cattle, chickens, orchards, pigs, vegetables--has been a major presence in cities through the ages. Only in very recent years has food production been pushed out beyond the city boundaries and processed food been brought in the back way--through suburban warehouses and hidden loading bays behind centralized supermarkets; now, food magically appears out of trucks, trains, planes and ships from places we know nothing about.

Today's challenge is to bring food back into our cities in a much more visible and tangible way, "past forward" to a 21st century model that feeds on the new technologies and the old reality that everything we eat has to grow somewhere--​the closer, the fresher.

...MORE HERE...

Todmorden grows all of its own vegetables, witnesses improved civic life and reduced crime as a result

Ethan A. Huff
Natural News

When the small British mill town of Todmorden, tucked in between Yorkshire and Lancashire, first began installing fruit and vegetable gardens all around the area as part of the Incredible Edible program, it likely had no idea that the novel, yet simple, concept would make the town a foremost inspirational and self-sustaining model of the future.

Fresh herbs, succulent greens, and tasty fruits can be found growing near civic buildings, college campuses, supermarket parking lots, and various other places. Small garden plots, raised planting beds, and even small soil strips in these areas can be found brimming with fresh produce, all of which are free to anyone who want it, and at any time.

It is all part of a program called Incredible Edible, which was founded by Mary Clear, a local grandmother of ten, and Pam Warhurst, former owner of a local restaurant in town known as Bear Cafe. The duo had a shared goal of making Todmorden the first town in the UK to become completely self-sufficient in food -- and their endeavors have been successful, at least as far as keeping up with demand for produce from locals who want it.

The program so far utilizes 70 large planting beds located all around the town to plant raspberries, apricots, apples, blackcurrants, redcurrants, strawberries, beans, peas, cherries, mint, rosemary, thyme, fennel, potatoes, kale, carrots, lettuce, onions, vegetables, and herbs. Not only did locals quickly catch on and begin taking the produce, but they also generally respect the system and do not take advantage of it.


"If you take a grass verge that was used as a litter bin and a dog toilet and turn it into a place full of herbs and fruit trees, people won't vandalize it. I think we are hard-wired not to damage food," said Warhurst, concerning the notion that offering free fruit and vegetables might lead to abuse or other crimes. She noted, in fact, that quite the opposite has occurred -- the Incredible Edible program has improved community relations, and reduced crime by an incrementally higher amount every single year since it first started.

The program has been so successful, in fact, that many other communities both in the UK and abroad are now interested in starting their own public garden programs as well. Besides improving the sense of community and reducing crime, Incredible Edible has renewed a new sense of appreciation for food and how it is grown, as well as renewed interest in actually growing it among the next generation, which is the envy of many progressive communities around the world.

Sources for this article include:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...

Organic Gardening 101 -- How to Start an Organic Garden

Anthony Gucciardi
Activist Post

One great way to avoid the threat of genetically modified foods, pesticides, and toxic additives is to start your own organic garden.

While the garden can be as large or small as you’d like, the benefit of knowing exactly how your food was prepared, and therefore what is in it, is worth the time and effort.

As you will soon find, it is actually relatively simple to begin your first organic garden.

Organic Gardening Step 1: Planning Your Garden

Before you begin purchasing seeds and deciding on what you’d like to plant, you need to both establish goals for your garden as well as learn about how to effectively avoid low quality seeds and plants. Is your garden intended to feed you and your family for months at a time? If so, it still may be beneficial to start with a smaller garden at first to practice your technique. Regardless of the size, it is crucial that you are using the right seeds. It is preferable that you purchase high quality certified organic seeds that are not genetically modified.

A number of sites exist that provide 100% organic, non-genetically altered seeds for thousands of different plant varieties. You can even find non-GMO seed packs on Amazon for fair prices. The great news is that once you’ve purchased your initial batch of seeds, you can simply utilize the seeds from your new plants in the future to plant more. As for the soil, you may also have to acquire some organic soil if your backyard does not already contain a compost pile or other high-quality soil. If your backyard does contain high-quality soil or compost, you can also opt to use it inside for your window sill potting plants.


Now it is time to determine what you’d like to grow. For your initiation into organic gardening, try one of the 10 plants considered to be the easiest to grow. Whether on your window sill or out back, these 10 nutritious plants will most likely sprout right up without much of a challenge. These include:

Tomatoes

Pea shoots

Beetroot

Lettuce

Mint

Courgettes

Dwarf French Beans

Onions

Strawberries

Dwarf French Beans

Next up, it’s time to decide where you’d like to set your garden.

Organic Gardening Step 2: Setting Your Garden

Whether it’s in your window sill in a few small- to large-sized pots or your back yard, it’s time to analyze a few key factors when it comes to placing your garden. Keeping your size goals in mind, it’s time to determine the best place for your new organic garden. If it’s an herb or vegetable garden you’ve got in mind, you’ll need a site that gets at least six hours of sun per day. It is also important to make sure that there is sufficient drainage for wherever you place the plant. If your prospective area receives a large quantity of rain that is not easily drained and rerouted, then that is less than optimal and you may want to consider changing the setting. Herbs and vegetables prefer well-drained soil. If it’s an ornamental bed, consider placing it where you can enjoy it from inside your house as well.

Once you have picked a site, observe it for a day for two. Examine how many hours of sun it gets on a daily basis, and the intensity of the sunshine. You can even test out the soil you are using with 3 simple tests.

To determine the type of soil you are working with, take a handful of moist soil from your garden, and give it a firm squeeze. Then, open your hand. One of three things will happen:

1. It will hold its shape, and when you gently poke it, it will crumble. This means you have optimal quality soil.
2. It will hold its shape, and, when poked, the soil still sits stubbornly in your hand. This indicates that you have clay-based soil.
3. It will fall apart as soon as you open your hand. This means you have sandy soil.

If the quality of your soil is poor, then you can either bring your gardening indoors or purchase some organic soil to augment your current soil.

Organic Gardening Step 3: Planting

Once you have your plants, dig a hole just as deep and at least twice as wide as the root ball of your plant. Place your plant in the prepared area, and backfill with the soil you just removed. Tamp it in, and make sure to water it thoroughly. A thoroughly watered root ball will help your plant adjust better to its new surroundings and help to avoid transplant shock.

After situating all of your plants, make sure that if you are outdoor gardening to give your entire garden a 3-inch thick layer of organic mulch to prevent weeds while simultaneously retaining soil moisture. This can include shredded bark, hay, chopped leaves, or grass clippings.

Congratulations, you have completed your first course in organic gardening! More information, guides, and techniques will be released periodically to help you maintain your garden and utilize little-known tips to maximize production and quality without harsh chemicals.

Explore More:

1. Cost of Organic Food Verses Conventional | Paying for Health
2. Radioactive Strontium Detected at Fukushima Plant
3. How to Know if Your Food is Conventional, Organic, or Genetically Modified
4. Chart Reveals Organic Food Companies Often Owned by Mega Corporations
5. Health Alert: 32% of Organic Produce Contains Rocket Fuel Chemical

Please visit Natural Society for more great health news and vaccine information.

MOBILE DESIGN LAB AT OWS - Permaculture

Occupy Wall Street: The humble hash tag that could.

This social and cultural EVOLUTION is taking root in hundreds of cities across the planet and showing little sign of losing momentum.

In Zucotti Park (NYC), site of the first OCCUPATION, there are inspiring stories emerging.

At every corner of the park is the exchange and the fomentation of ideas.

Over the coming months, One Pack Productions and Seismologik Media will showcase some of the amazing people who are creating actions which can inspire people to practice being the change they wish to see in the world.

mobiledesignlab.org

Economic Warfare 101 for the Masses

An updated primer on Economic Warfare for ordinary people to use against The Powers that Be.

Philip Brennan | PhilipBrennan.net | 6 October 2011:

I am writing this post as a simple guide for the ordinary man and woman on the street – this is not going to be an in-depth discussion or paper on Economic Warfare that you might find in a dusty University library somewhere, but a practical guide giving practical steps that anyone can use to hit back at our Criminal Governments and the Banking Mafia where it hurts – in their pockets.

The first step in Economic Warfare for the Masses is possibly the hardest, and is something to be worked towards slowly as you do all the other things – pay off or repudiate all your debts. The biggest power that both governments and corporations weld over us is debt. Debt is the great controller of the masses, as it is because of debt that people find themselves trapped in jobs which make other people rich instead of going off to do their own thing to make themselves comfortable and well off in life.

If you believe that your debts were fraudulently put upon you, which with fractional reserve banking is a very strong legal possibility, repudiate them. In mortgages collateral is secured against the principle in order for it to be lawful. The collateral you put up for that mortgage, the house you were buying, exists and can be drawn upon to pay off the debt. The Principle, however, has no collateral with which the bank can draw upon because it was invented out of thin air as you signed the dotted line on the mortgage papers, so cannot be considered as lawful collateral with regards to the creation of the Principle. The money that they have loaned you is fraudulent. Ergo, the debt (mortgage) is also fraudulent. You have put up Lawful collateral on the Principle but they have not.

Credit card debt is also fraudulent upon the card issuers part, as the money only comes into existence the moment you draw upon it – there is no gold or silver backing up that loan, no collateral, ergo, the loan is fraudulent upon the Credit card issuers part. Ergo, you have no lawful requirement to pay that fraudulent loan back. It can be lawfully repudiated.

Having no overdrafts is also a good idea, so paying them off as soon as is humanly possible is a priority.

Now for the easier stuff. While you are getting yourself out of debt there are several other lawful things you can do to make life unpleasant for the Banking Mafia. The first thing is to invest in a home safe / deposit box – you should have one already for your birth certificates and other legal documents – one that is fire proof for up to an hour. You have not got one? Well, you had better get one.

As you get paid each month take out almost all your money apart from that which you need to pay direct debits with and put it in that safe. While your money is in the bank the Banking Mafia are making money loaning that money out whether or not they decide to pay you any interest upon your account. Also, that money is loaned out in such a way as to again be fraudulent through Fractional Reserve Banking. While that money is in hard cash, either in your wallet or in your home safe / deposit box, the Banking Mafia cannot use it. Money in your hand is worth NOTHING to them.

If you do not like having lots of cash in the house there is no reason why you cannot take what you don’t use at the end of each month and putting it into silver coins. They also take up less room in your home safe and hold their value much better than cash does. Or join a local Credit Union if you have one.

Mass boycotts also work if you can sell the idea to enough people. Coca-Cola is a good one to boycott for two reasons: 1. Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve Bank has a major stake in it and 2. it is the weakest company in the NYSE top 100. If enough of you boycott Coca-Cola for long enough there is a fair chance that its share price will drop 10% or more – once this happens the short sellers will then be short-selling the hell out of it, and then its value will drop even further. This will hurt the likes of Ben Bernanke in their own pockets. Get the bastards where it really hurts.

Join in with like minded individuals and rent out land to grow your own vegetables on. In the UK we still have some allotments. Or if you have a large back yard turn half of it over to food production. While times are good you can save yourself some money with nice fresh home-grown vegetables, and in the hard times at least you won’t starve. Also, start supporting the little guys and move as much money away from the supermarket giants as you can – corner stores, farmers markets, co-operatives are all good sources of food and the money stays within the local community and not in the pockets of major share holders. Finally, only buy what you need on a weekly or daily basis. People waste so much food because they buy far too much during their monthly shops and it goes off before they get to use it. Also, some of the best fresh meat I have seen locally comes from my local Halal store, and not from Tescos or ASDA-Walmart. You can get just the right amount for your needs from them, and their beef and lamb is usually very lean – more so than I have seen in a lot of supermarkets. So they don’t sell bacon? That’s what your local corner shop is for.

Start buying local again wherever you can. This might mean eating food in season rather than relying upon exported foods. Here in the UK we still produce 60% of our own food, but that is still not enough for real food security. We need to be producing at least 80% of our own food before we can say that our food supply is secure should something really bad happens – like a war or drought that prevents us importing food from abroad.

The basic idea is to starve the mega-corporations from as much money as you possibly can, and to keep that money circulating within your local community. This will eventually create more jobs in your local communities as well, as if there is suddenly a demand for a local green-grocers selling fresh local produce in your area, some bright spark will do it. That bright spark could be you.

The final part of our Economic Warfare against the governments, mega-corporations and the Banking Mafia is to break consumerist habits. Do you really need the latest iPhone or Android device? Do you really need that foreign holiday? Do you really need such an extensive wardrobe? Do you have to buy loads of cheap tacky shit from China and the Far East?

Meanwhile it is time to go up against the Banking Mafia and our Criminal Governments up close and personal – the time for sitting down and bitching about how badly we’re being screwed over is done. Those of you in America reading this already know about the “Occupy” protests in the US. Here in the UK we’re starting them too. Occupy Manchester is already live. Occupy the London Stock Exchange starts on the 15 of October. There are already many “Occupy” protests all over the European Union and United States to join in with or support – Madrid in Spain, Athens in Greece, Paris in France, Boston, Phoenix, New York, Seattle, San Francisco and others in the United States.

It is time we started fighting back against our Criminal Governments and the Banking Mafia.

The New Economy – Local Food And Energy Will Fix The Economy In 1 Year Or Less

It doesn’t take a genius to see what’s wrong with this economy and some clear and concise steps we can all take to improve the economy immediately.

While reading Slow Money, (If you don't know about Slow Money, it means we all start spending money locally deliberately. It doesn't matter how much, 1% will help ensure that local food producers are able to make a living at producing food, which secures food production) - the realization hit me – we are hemorrhaging money from this country with every drop of gas and oil we buy and burn. Some estimates are in the Billion$ a day! This money could be going to seeing to it your neighbor has a job, doesn’t loose their house at a devalued market and therefore devalue yours. And you get good health and make new friends in the process.

How to start? It’s easy! The money you usually spend on gas every week can go for buying a bike, among other things. Maybe its only $10 a week that you can cut back on gas, maybe its $129 a week, but the important thing is- only you can stop the hemorrhaging of money out of this country. If we all start making the effort to stop this blood bath – the lives we save may be our own. It might sound idealist, but every president in office in the last 30 years has told us we must stop our addiction to gas. . .and we didn’t listen and not all of us are listening now.

We’re not listening to the sound of jobs leaving the country. We’re not listening to the tent cities popping up around the country and the homeless people living out of their cars or standing roadside begging. We’re not listening to the unemployed or under-employed. What we are listening to is the voice over the tubes telling us we deserve our freedom, we “deserve” our ability of each be independently mobile. This message is a strangle hold on our ideals when it conflicts with our common goals and ideals of real freedom – the ability to not work, not have affordable healthy food and reasonable priced energy.

But its not all bad- we get some nice benefits! Here’s a few ways we can rebuild our country that are easy –

• Ø Ride share to work with a neighbor;
• Ø Clean out the bike out of the garage and ride it once or twice a week;
• Ø Walk to shops, work and entertainment;
• Ø Work a day or two from home; or
• Ø Take low cost public transportation.
• Ø Some people are using “neighborhood vehicles” so they divide the cost of insurances, maintenance as well as gas.

Don’t know how to organize any of these? Print this out and share with someone who is complaining about the economy. Send them to this website - ChrisMartenson.com. Here we are all working on the solutions and many of us find solutions and share them. Share the Slow Money concept with them - We can use the Slow Money concept to rebuild our cities and communities with the money we save.

How best to spent this money? Start buying local food and invest in local energy. These are the 2 resources you will not want to be without. Doing this will build community and strengthen your ties to it. You will find resources you never knew you had and gain knowledge shared by others. Others will quickly join because frankly, no man is an island.

1. Find your local farmers markets and local growers.
   1. Learn to grow some of your own food. And learn to put away some for rainy days. You can start by watching DIRT-the Movie. (also available on NetFlix.) Or if you are limited by space, check out "If you can feed Your Family with Aqua-ponics" here.
2. Use your newly found money to build your own solar, wind or hydropower. Install back up wood heat and meet your local wood suppliers.
   1. Solar may still be high priced, but it comes in handy when other sources of power are not available. Check out more on solar here.
   2. Wind is also high priced, but again, any power is useful when no other power is available. However, many units can be home-made so the cost is greatly reduced. Click here for more info on wind options
   3. Hydropower is still one of the best options as energy if you have any flowing water available. It is a fairly constant source of energy and batteries may not be required. Like wind energy, home-made units can be made. Click here for some hydropower options.
   4. Wood heat use is expected to increase in use by 600% over the next few years. Yet, we do not have enough wood to fill the needs of this type of demand. Without better burn technology, we risk de-foresting our lands. One of the ways we can conserve our wood is to burn it more efficiently. The Rocket Mass Heater is one way to get more heat from less wood. Some estimates are 90% more heat (from the same amount of wood). The JetStove is another heavy metal pre-fab unit. Both units create a Taurus burn which burn off smoke and that creates more heat. Both units can convert to heat water, cook, dry foods and more.
3. Conserve. Conserve. Conserve.
   1. Conserve at Home Click for ideas on easy ways to save time and energy.
   2. Conserve with food At Least think about turning the water guzzling high maintenance lawns into edible landscaping or at least plant a low maintenance, naturally short growing no mow grasses. Planting a landscape of edibles like fruit trees, strawberries or even zucchini can give you a lot of satisfaction and be a source of healthy food.
   3. Conserve in Transportation Energy!

Local Food and Energy – Make it the Cornish Way. And do it soon – we need to make things better fast.

Low Impact Woodland Home

You are looking at pictures of a house I built for our family in Wales. It was built by myself and my father in law with help from passers by and visiting friends. 4 months after starting we were moved in and cosy. I estimate 1000-1500 man hours and £3000 put in to this point. Not really so much in house buying terms (roughly £60/sq m excluding labour).

The house was built with maximum regard for the environment and by reciprocation gives us a unique opportunity to live close to nature. Being your own (have a go) architect is a lot of fun and allows you to create and enjoy something which is part of yourself and the land rather than, at worst, a mass produced box designed for maximum profit and convenience of the construction industry. Building from natural materials does away with producers profits and the cocktail of carcinogenic poisons that fill most modern buildings.

Some key points of the design and construction:

• Dug into hillside for low visual impact and shelter
• Stone and mud from diggings used for retaining walls, foundations etc.
• Frame of oak thinnings (spare wood) from surrounding woodland
• Reciprocal roof rafters are structurally and aesthaetically fantastic and very easy to do
• Straw bales in floor, walls and roof for super-insulation and easy building
• Plastic sheet and mud/turf roof for low impact and ease
• Lime plaster on walls is breathable and low energy to manufacture (compared to cement)
• Reclaimed (scrap) wood for floors and fittings
• Anything you could possibly want is in a rubbish pile somewhere (windows, burner, plumbing, wiring...)
• Woodburner for heating - renewable and locally plentiful
• Flue goes through big stone/plaster lump to retain and slowly release heat
• Fridge is cooled by air coming underground through foundations
• Skylight in roof lets in natural feeling light
• Solar panels for lighting, music and computing
• Water by gravity from nearby spring
• Compost toilet
• Roof water collects in pond for garden etc.

Main tools used: chainsaw, hammer and 1 inch chisel, little else really. Oh and by the way I am not a builder or carpenter, my experience is only having a go at one similar house 2yrs before and a bit of mucking around inbetween. This kind of building is accessible to anyone. My main relevant skills were being able bodied, having self belief and perseverence and a mate or two to give a lift now and again.

This building is one part of a low-impact or permaculture approach to life. This sort of life is about living in harmony with both the natural world and ourselves, doing things simply and using appropriate levels of technology. These sort of low cost, natural buildings have a place not only in their own sustainability, but also in their potential to provide affordable housing which allows people access to land and the opportunity to lead more simple, sustainable lives. For example this house was made to house our family whilst we worked in the woodland surrounding the house doing ecological woodland management and setting up a forest garden, things that would have been impossible had we had to pay a regular rent or mortgage. To read more about why we did it and why this is an important option to meet the challenges of climate change and peak oil, click here.

Would you like to learn more about this sort of building and gain practical experience? Why not join us on another exciting building project. There will be opportunities for everyone of all abilities and areas of interest. Click here for more details.

Permaculture: A Quiet Revolution — An Interview with Bill Mollison

By Scott London

Bill Mollison calls himself a field biologist and itinerant teacher. But it would be more accurate to describe him as an instigator. When he published Permaculture One in 1978, he launched an international land-use movement many regard as subversive, even revolutionary.

Permaculture — from permanent and agriculture — is an integrated design philosophy that encompasses gardening, architecture, horticulture, ecology, even money management and community design. The basic approach is to create sustainable systems that provide for their own needs and recycle their waste.

Bill Mollison

Mollison developed permaculture after spending decades in the rainforests and deserts of Australia studying ecosystems. He observed that plants naturally group themselves in mutually beneficial communities. He used this idea to develop a different approach to agriculture and community design, one that seeks to place the right elements together so they sustain and support each other.

Today his ideas have spread and taken root in almost every country on the globe. Permaculture is now being practiced in the rainforests of South America, in the Kalahari desert, in the arctic north of Scandinavia, and in communities all over North America. In New Mexico, for example, farmers have used permaculture to transform hard-packed dirt lots into lush gardens and tree orchards without using any heavy machinery. In Davis, California, one community uses bath and laundry water to flush toilets and irrigate gardens. In Toronto, a team of architects has created a design for an urban infill house that doesn't tap into city water or sewage infrastructure and that costs only a few hundred dollars a year to operate.

While Mollison is still unknown to most Americans, he is a national icon down under. He has been named Australia’s "Man of the Year" and in 1981 he received the prestigious Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, for his work developing and promoting permaculture.

I sat down with him to discuss his innovative design philosophy. We met over the course of two afternoons in Santa Barbara in conjunction with an intensive two-week course he teaches each year in Ojai. A short, round man with a white beard and a big smile, he is one of the most affable and good-natured people I’ve met. An inveterate raconteur, he seems to have a story — or a bad joke — for every occasion. His comments are often rounded out by a hearty and infectious laugh.

Scott London: A reviewer once described your teachings as "seditious."

Bill Mollison: Yes, it was very perceptive. I teach self-reliance, the world's most subversive practice. I teach people how to grow their own food, which is shockingly subversive. So, yes, it’s seditious. But it’s peaceful sedition.

London: When did you begin teaching permaculture?

Mollison: In the early 1970s, it dawned on me that no one had ever applied design to agriculture. When I realized it, the hairs went up on the back of my neck. It was so strange. We’d had agriculture for 7,000 years, and we’d been losing for 7,000 years — everything was turning into desert. So I wondered, can we build systems that obey ecological principles? We know what they are, we just never apply them. Ecologists never apply good ecology to their gardens. Architects never understand the transmission of heat in buildings. And physicists live in houses with demented energy systems. It’s curious that we never apply what we know to how we actually live.

London: It tells us something about our current environmental problems.

Mollison: It does. I remember the Club of Rome report in 1967 which said that the deterioration of the environment was inevitable due to population growth and overconsumption of resources. After reading that, I thought, "People are so stupid and so destructive — we can do nothing for them." So I withdrew from society. I thought I would leave and just sit on a hill and watch it collapse.

The ethics are simple: care of the earth, care of people, and reinvestment in those ends.

It took me about three weeks before I realized that I had to get back and fight. [Laughs] You know, you have to get out in order to want to get back in.

London: Is that when the idea of permaculture was born?

Mollison: It actually goes back to 1959. I was in the Tasmanian rain forest studying the interaction between browsing marsupials and forest regeneration. We weren’t having a lot of success regenerating forests with a big marsupial population. So I created a simple system with 23 woody plant species, of which only four were dominant, and only two real browsing marsupials. It was a very flexible system based on the interactions of components, not types of species. It occurred to me one evening that we could build systems that worked better than that one.

That was a remarkable revelation. Ever so often in your life — perhaps once a decade — you have a revelation. If you are an aborigine, that defines your age. You only have a revelation once every age, no matter what your chronological age. If you’re lucky, you have three good revelations in a lifetime.

Because I was an educator, I realized that if I didn’t teach it, it wouldn’t go anywhere. So I started to develop design instructions based on passive knowledge and I wrote a book about it called Permaculture One. To my horror, everybody was interested in it. [Laughs] I got thousands of letters saying, "You’ve articulated something that I’ve had in my mind for years," and "You’ve put something into my hands which I can use."

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New Book Takes the Scary Out of Gardening: Turns Out Growing Your Own Food Is Really Easy

As NASA reported in 2005, lawns now constitute "the single largest irrigated crop in America," taking up at least three times the acreage we devote to irrigated corn. Has any nation in the history of mankind ever squandered so many resources to cultivate so much vegetation of such dubious value?

Meanwhile, we currently grow less than 2 percent of our own food.

"This," Michele Owens declares in her just-published Grow the Good Life: Why a Vegetable Garden Will Make You Happy, Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise, "is not yet enough of a revolution to satisfy me."

Owens, who cofounded and contributes regularly to the uber-popular, highly respected GardenRant blog, is a self-taught amateur gardener. And that may be why her book is one of the best manifesto/memoirs so far this century on growing your own veggies.

With nearly two decades of experience under her own backyard greenbelt, Owens makes the case that the simple act of growing food is just that -- simple. "Years of vegetable gardening have turned me into a complete minimalist who uses nothing besides shovel, seeds and mulch."

Finally, a Bittman for the backyard! Owens also manages to distill the essence of vegetable gardening into a breezy precept that carries just a whiff of Owed de Pollan: "...give your crops lots of sun, fertile soil, and sufficient water."

Of course, this kind of admirably concise advice is so simple, Owens admits, that it's "hardly enough to fill a page or two, let alone a book."

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4 Best Methods for Off-the-Grid Food Production

Activist Post

For most of us producing all of our own food is just a fantasy. It evokes visions of multiple acres of fertile land, long work days, and expensive machinery. However, none of these are necessary to achieve self-sufficient food production.

There are many gardening techniques that can produce an abundance of food for you and your family without requiring a lot of space, money or equipment. What each of these methods will require is your time, but not the dawn-to-dusk work hours associated with farming.

Rather, you will need time to study and practice these methods and other food preparation skills such as learning to mill your own wheat or corn flour to make breads, tortillas, pastas from scratch, or learning to can, pickle, or preserve food in all its forms.


Your diet should also be considered when planning for the best self-sufficient food production method. Do you need meat and dairy products? How much grains do you require? Yes, in order fully produce all of your food off-the-grid, you may have to make changes to your current diet if your resources are limited. Some may view these as dietary sacrifices, yet the folks that can claim a high level of food self-reliance will all claim their diet is far healthier than the average American.

With dedication and proper planning, everyone has the ability to survive the looming food crisis by producing their own food. None of the following methods should necessarily be considered by itself. Each offers unique techniques that can be mixed and matched for the best results. Their optimal application depends on calculations of your property size, climate zone, or your budget and time constraints.

Here are the 4 best food production methods for self-reliance:


1. Permaculture Gardening: Permaculture is where you design an entire edible habitat based on the natural capital of your setting. Then, place plants to methodically balance the soil, water, and pests. For instance, a nitrogen fixing plant may be planted next to a nitrogen hungry plant, which may sit next to an ornamental that deters predators, and so on. Permaculture gardening re-creates nature by using a large variety of plants while incorporating as many different animals as feasible like chickens, goats, ducks, and bees. You may also see features like vertical gardening and aquaculture ponds in permaculture designs depending on the space available. Utilizing this method is not expensive, but requires a lot of know-how and trial and error. Permaculture gardening can produce massive abundance. See the amazing video below for a real-world example of going off-the-grid in suburbia:



2. Aquaponics: Aquaponics is a interdependent hybrid system of aquaculture and hydroponic gardening. Vegetable and herbs grow in soil-less containers that are fed with waste water from the aquaculture pools. The plants feast on the bacteria from fish waste and return the water to the fish in a purified state. These systems can be as big or as small as you wish and can potentially produce large amounts of fish and vegetables. When done properly, very little if any additional fertilizer or chemicals are needed, just fish food. Aquaponics can also be applied indoors, either in a greenhouse setting or with grow lights. The video below is a good description of the benefits of Aquaponics.



3. Greenhouses: If you live in a region of the world with harsh winters, then a greenhouse will be essential for food self-sufficiency. Obviously, a greenhouse alone is not a strategy for full food production unless it is a large facility. Typically it can be viewed as a compliment to other gardening methods. In fact, the Dervaes family in the first video above uses a greenhouse to clone and start seedlings even though they live in Southern California. There are great designs and greenhouse starter kits available online. Below is a brief video on the benefits of greenhouse gardening:



4. Indoor Grow Rooms: Indoor growing is typically done with grow lights and hydroponics. Some people have sun-rooms in their homes which can basically act as a fancier greenhouse. However, for this section we'll focus on indoor hydroponics. This method of growing is certainly not the cheapest way to produce food, yet it is a steadfast method especially where weather and other elements can hinder food self-sufficiency. Indoor hydroponics requires grow lights such as LEDs, CFLs, or HPSs, along with tubing, drainage, fertilizer and ventilation. However, even a small space can produce fantastic yields for leafy vegetables, herbs, tomatoes, sprouts, and much more. To make this method fully off the grid find the most energy efficient grow lights possible and think about getting a solar generator to offset the electric costs. Below is a video about indoor plant lighting:

Reasons to Get Digging

Gardening is an integral part of simple living and a growing number of people are getting down in the dirt. According to a National Gardening Association survey, food gardening was the only category of lawn and garden activity that saw a significant increase in household participation and spending in 2009. Food gardening participation increased by 14% while the total spent increased by 21% over 2008 levels. The Association defines food gardening as including vegetable gardening, fruit trees, growing berries, and herb gardening.

But if you’ve never really grown anything edible, you may be wondering why, exactly, so many people think gardening is so important.

Let’s see…

1. Gardening can save money. As long as you avoid the mindless, consumerist gardening gizmos and contraptions that fill the pages of gardening catalogs ($400 rainbarrels? Are you kidding me?), growing your own vegetables will save you money. Keep it simple sweetie, aim to use the energies and resources that are flowing through your property for free and you will come out ahead.

2. Gardening beats inflation. Even if you buy seedlings and seeds every year, growing some percentage of your own food will beat the inflationary spiral of food prices that’s sure to hit as peak oil begins to be felt. (Our entire industrial food system is based on oil; supplies are leveling out and will soon begin to decline.)

3. Gardening gets you back in touch with nature. When you’re outside, digging in the dirt or transplanting your seedlings, you become much more aware of the life that surrounds you. Birds sing, bees buzz, earthworms work the earth. Turns out humans aren’t the center of the universe after all.

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Health Ranger's predictions for 2011 - 2012

What's ahead for 2011 - 2012? This time in human history promises to bring forth more changes than any other similar duration of time known to our civilization. I believe the changes that will occur in the next two years will rock the foundations of our economies, governments and belief systems. In the end, after considerable turmoil, I see a great expansion of human consciousness and a maturing of the human race. Here are the details...

More people growing their own food

Beginning in 2011 and continuing for many years beyond, we will see an explosion in the number of people growing their own food. People see the big trends in the food supply fast approaching: GMO contamination of crops, the loss of local food production due to FDA interference, the crackdown on small farmers, and even disruptions in the global food supply.

Increased awareness of natural remedies and health freedom

The natural health community will achieve significant victories over the next two years in awakening people to natural remedies, medicinal herbs and the core ideas of health freedom. The monopolistic pushers of pharmaceuticals are fighting a desperate, losing battle to try to keep people ignorant, but they will lose that fight and natural medicine will ultimately emerge as the healing method of choice for an increasing number of people

More people waking up to reality

Today, most people are sleepwalking through their lives, functioning as cogs in a giant machine of which they have no knowledge and no control. Over the next two years, that will significantly change. More and more people will be awakened into a state of awareness. They will realize that living out their lives working mundane jobs, watching television, eating junk food and taking pharmaceuticals is not fulfilling their true purpose in life, and many will seek a higher purpose.

Long-term predictions

• Over the next decade, I predict a disappearing "health middle class" and a great divide between the healthy and the sick. The healthy, you see, are consuming superfoods, getting sunshine on their skin and taking nutritional supplements on a daily basis. The unhealthy are eating processed foods, taking prescription medications and following the advice of their ignorant doctors even if it kills them. There will be fewer people of "average" health in America in the coming years. The masses will gravitate toward disease and sickness while the informed few (such as NaturalNews readers, raw food vegans, superfood fans and so on) will get healthier and more productive.

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How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Earth, but Not Civilization

By Toby Hemenway
Author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture (2d Ed.)

The revised and updated edition also features a new chapter on urban permaculture, designed especially for people in cities and suburbs who have very limited growing space. Whatever size yard or garden you have to work with, you can apply basic permaculture principles to make it more diverse, more natural, more productive, and more beautiful. Best of all, once it’s established, an ecological garden will reduce or eliminate most of the backbreaking work that’s needed to maintain the typical lawn and garden.

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nicholasschoolatduke | 22 September 2010 | 39 likes, 2 dislikes

Hemenway is a frequent teacher, consultant and lecturer on permaculture and ecological design throughout the U.S. and other countries. His writing has appeared in magazines such as Natural Home, Whole Earth Review and American Gardener. He is an adjunct professor in the School of Graduate Education at Portland State University, a Scholar-in-Residence at Pacific University, and a biologist consultant for the Biomimicry Guild.

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