Why Permaculture is the way of the future?
How can we live happier, healthier, more sustainable lives? By re-connecting with Nature, the wisest of all teachers. Permaculture is a design system based on mindful observation of Nature’s ways and applying those principles to designing human settlements.
The main ethics of Permaculture are:
- Care of the Earth
- Care of the People
- Return of surplus to the first two
The only way we are going to be able to inhabit the Earth indefinitely is by restoring the balance between the man and the land.
Why do We write?
Everyone eats. With every purchase we cast our vote for the kinds of products we demand. If more people understood the hazards of chemically-treated GM foods, surely they would vote differently. If people actually realised the speed at which we are wiping out Earth’s resources, surely they would want to make more sustainable choices…But how? What concrete actions can we take today? Those are exactly the kinds of questions we are aiming to answer, to ourselves and to anyone who is interested.
We live in a world of information over-abundance and digital noise. There are loads of sustainable living resources on the web, but if you don’t know what you are looking for, it’s easy to get lost. Our goal is to filter and organise this information, as well as add to it by sharing our own experiences and learnings. This website is the resource we wish we had when we were starting out, and now it is our goal to put it in front of as many people as would listen.
Our Story
We’ve lived in cities our whole lives. In blissful ignorance we turned on the tap every morning and accepted the clean water as something “given”. Year after year we happily purchased our groceries at supermarkets, which had at least 5 options for each of the items on our shopping list, no matter the season. Strawberries in winter? No problem!
But then something happened. Knowledge happened. We’ve watched “Story of Stuff” and “Foodmatters”; We’ve stumbled upon the definition of Permaculture on the Wiki…and we began to wonder about our consumption choices. After we’ve dined on a meal of all organic local produce, our grocery-presented vegetables seemed to have lost all their flavour. We started to look for a change and we heard the “call of the wild.”
Distant childhood memories began to rise, recollections of our summer trips to the dacha (that’s what a country-house in Russia is called). At the dacha we grew our vegetables, fished in the lake and cooked our meals on a firewood stove. Electricity and running water hadn’t reached our settlement back then; it was in its first years. Those were some of the happiest times of our lives!
When did we stop caring about origins and quality of our food? When did we agree to deplete the planet that feeds us?
We desperately wanted to turn our lives on a more sustainable and healthy path, but we felt helpless at first. Can two people really make a difference? Yes, absolutely yes! We began to discover local community gardens and farmer’s markets, and we realised that there ARE alternatives to buying from corporate giants. We are just two people, but we discovered there are many-many others who share these views. Together, we make a difference every time we choose farmer’s market over importer’s market.
That is how we arrived at Permaculture. We became fascinated by the simplicity of solutions it offers. It’s just common sense. Nature had billions of years to work out her answers, and all we need to do is observe and re-create. Permaculture strategies can be applied to anything, from garden design to website design to planning your next vacation. It just works.
Join us on our journey of discovering new ways to be. If you come across a resource that you think would benefit the Permaculture community, please share it with everyone by e-mailing me the link.
What is this website anyway?
If you are web-savvy, this formula may help you understand the vision for the website.
PermaCultured = Blog + Online Magazine + Tumblr
It’s a Blog because we roam the web in search of green ideas and trends, which we then post to this website.
It’s an Online Magazine because we write articles on topics that we think would be useful to gardeners. We document Permaculture-related events we attend, and create write-ups and galleries of inspiring resources.
Tumblr is a micro-blogging platform, where people collect and share bits of interesting information around the web. We are doing some of that with quotes and videos.