Ozearth Blog

Permaculture with Patrick, Earthships with (among others) Kevan, Superadobe with Janos, Lajos & Julian

Chloe and I have just returned from a three week intensive learning stint. Chloe went to London for (the beginning of) an earthbag build: a triple dome playspace at an infant’s school, bermed into the earth for sound insulation (the school is about 10 minutes from Heathrow).

Meanwhile, I did a gig with the Radio Choir in Paris, then went to Gloucestershire for a 72-hour intensive PDC, then joined Chloe in London for the build.

Patrick’s PDC

… was fantastic. We worked for 6 hours each day for 12 days, with a weekend off in the middle. It was an excellent balance between learning about the stuff you’d expect (water and sun, soil and compost, gardens and forests, livestock and wildlife, and a whole session on Willow coppice!), some stuff which doesn’t tend to be to be associated with Permaculture (architecture, energy – including embodied energy and lifecycle analysis) and some things which are absolutely vital to any Permaculture system but tend to be rather overlooked in the scheme of things (community organisation, nonviolent communication, listening to the landscape).

For the uninitiated, Permaculture is about working with naturally occurring systems to create human-habitable environments that are self-sustaining, resilient and in harmony with the ecosphere. Permaculture design has been being carried out by various bods for thousands of years, but the term was coined by Bill Mollison. Mollison’s starting point was creating food systems that mimicked nature – that is to say, systems that were infinitely sustainable, self-supporting, and biodiverse, but that have been tweaked to make them maximally useful to humans for eating.

Some of the elements of a Permaculture garden design (and this list is far from exhaustive!) might be:

• observation – getting to know your environment intimately, and allowing that knowledge to inform your design choices, so that you’re working to the strengths of your environment
• “stacking” (that is to say, planting multiple layers of plants in a single space) for greater output
• “zoning” (whereby the elements of your garden that need greater attention are closer to the centre of the design – normally a home) for greater attention – because the best fertiliser is the gardener’s shadow!
• “sectoring” (whereby you plant appropriately for altitude, slope, orientation, rainfall, wind, microclimate etc)
• (gravity-fed) rainwater catchment for rehydrating the land, watering plants and creating ponds and even springs
• improving soil using limited or no-till, composting and mulching techniques
• creating polycultures: planting a wide variety of plants in mixtures, for biodiversity (and to confuse pests)
• seedsaving, propagation from cuttings and perennial vegetable growing
• experiments in alternatives to cereals – particularly nuts
• integrating rather than ghettoising wild and native plants – it turns out that doing so is frequently highly beneficial to your edible plants anyway
• non-chemical pest and disease control – for example, using chickens under orchards to control codlin moth at the larval stage
• looking for multiple outputs from each input: a chicken will not only control your codlin moth, it will also provide you with eggs, meat (if you want it), manure, and ground preparation
• fostering beneficial relationships: seeking multiple outputs can be seen as one method of doing this. Another way is to match the outputs to the inputs of your design: the urine from your composting toilet will make the reeds in your reedbed grow like mad; the reeds can then be used for mulch and / or as a building or craft material

But once you start thinking in terms of these systems, you see that Permaculture principles can also be applied to other things, like building design:

• again, zoning and sectoring for minimum energy use for maximum comfort and benefit to a house’s inhabitants – good examples are planning for gravity-fed water systems and solar-passive home design
• again, beneficial relationships – for example, using a grapevine against an equator-facing greenhouse will make the sunloving grapevine very happy, will block out the harshest of the summer sun during the warm months, and will also give you grapes!
• working with the land: for example, using renewable, local, abundant, low-embodied-energy building materials for genuinely sustainable buildings

From there, you can start to think about Permaculture principles in terms of communities – the consensus among Permaculturists is that “self-sufficiency” at a household-by-household level is simply unfeasible, and that greater sustainability and resilience is to be found in community systems, where skills and resources are shared, with some measure of generalisation (eg: everyone might know how to garden) but certain specialisations as well (farriers, engine-repairers, technologists, weavers, shearers, butchers etc).

Here again, any number of Permaculture principles come into play. A few examples:

• observation / listening: teasing out community interactions and incorporating that knowledge into an intentional community design
• finding non-poisonous ways of managing conflict (the community equivalent of pest control?)
• zone: for example, finding alternatives to travelling long distances to work; car-sharing for the journeys that remain necessary
• beneficial relationships: sharing, swapping, community activities (barnraisings / permablitzes etc), barter, co-operatives…

In short, Permaculture can be applied to just about any aspect of living. In fact, I reckon you could characterise a PDC as laying the groundwork for a different way of thinking about – well, life. In 72 hours, a Permaculture Design Certificate Course should give you the groundwork for thinking about, and creating, a genuinely sustainable, resilient life. Dare I say: beats Uni all hollow…

The course was held at Ragman’s Lane farm, in the Forest of Dean. This is a Permaculture farm specialising in mushroom logs and juice-producing apple orchards; they also have a Community Supported Agriculture scheme going on, and as well as hosting Patrick’s PDCs and Sustainable Land Use course each year, they also host a range of other sustainability-related workshops, courses and meetings. Being interested in Mycology ourselves, the mushroom log part of their enterprise was particularly interesting. I had great chats with Matt, the farm manager, about (among other things) how he got arrested at a logging protest in Tassie, near Cygnet!

We were primarily taught by Patrick, his wife Cathy, and Sarah Pugh, a big mover in the Transition movement and in Bristol Permaculture.

There were seventeen of us attending the course, aged between twenty and sixty, from absolutely all walks of life (ranging from builders to gardeners, architects to healers, students to educators, musicians to drug rehabilitation workers, artists to forest managers); some own land, some rent flats without so much as a balcony, one girl (Cecile) is squatting a disused farm in the Netherlands. There was a solid Benelux contingent (counting myself and Mariska, who’s an expatriate living in the UK, there were 7 dutch speakers!), and other participants from as far afield as the US and Sweden. Considering how different we all are, we got on astonishingly well together. Cathal (the Irish contingent, and a three-ring circus in his own right – reminded me of my own dear Chloe in that respect!) tried to make us argue, but didn’t have a lot of success. Almost every night there was music and jokes and a campfire – outdoor merriment was greatly aided by unceasing fabulous weather. Wonderful, organic, fresh food was prepared by the formidable Christina, Patrick’s sister, whose Nut Roast in particular was one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten.

We did two field trips: the first was to Architype,
an ecologically-aware architectural firm. Their history, their HQ (a cleverly renovated barn) and their projects both past and present were certainly very impressive, but rather more monumental, business-as-usual and wood-heavy than was altogether interesting to me.

The second field trip was to Grange Village, a Biodynamic garden as part of a Camphill community. Our host was a seriously high-octane man, and his achievement with the garden, as well as his knowledge both of horticulture in general and biodynamics in particular, was awesome.

Biodynamics is an intriguing business. The emphasis on planting in line with astronomical phenomena is certainly very interesting; when our guy started talking about some of the quite bizarre preparations with which he treats his crops, I’m afraid my internal sceptic’s alarm bells began to ring. However, having spent a couple of hours rushing all over his 5 acre plot, it’s difficult to argue with his results: gloriously healthy and productive plants growing on incredibly steep land, in rows which controversially run up and downslope rather than being terraced. He showed us what the soil had been like before he started working with it – heavy red clay – and what it was like afterwards – crumbly, moisture-holding, friable soil.

As part of the course we also did a mock design project. We were able to choose between a garden design and a broadscale (10 acre) design; guess which one I chose!

During the preceding week, we had each learned how to measure the length of our own paces, and how to use both an a-frame and a bunyip for mapping contour. At the start of the design project, we were given a very small, somewhat outdated map. The first job was to check the stated scale of the map (it wasn’t right!), find a scale that was both reasonably handy and would still allow us to fit the map on the page (we ended up with 1:500, yay for us!), enlarge the map, and survey and add in the changes to the map.

Having done all that (and it was definitely something of a challenge!) we then moved on to site survey. Site survey takes in such things as microclimate, soil type, sources of water, access and slope (essentially, which are the flat bit and which are the steep bits).

The third step was to interview the mock client – which was Patrick in this case, and find out what he wanted.

Then it was back to the site to see what could be put where to make the design happen. My team of five spent a good half a day shuttling back and forth between the drawing board and the field
which was fictively ours for the designing, tossing up house sites, possible land use strategies, and so on.

The fifth step was to put together a presentation incorporating an implementation plan. No doubt it will surprise no-one that I did most of the talking during my group’s presentation – and it’s all a blur! I cannot remember what I said at all, or if it made any sense.

The two and a half days during which we were working on the project were – well, SHORT, would be the first word that leaps to mind. They were also mindblowing, hard, fun, complicated, exhilarating, exhausting and really really educational. I look forward to the design of our own OzEarth hub with not a little trepidation, but am glad to know that the time pressure at least will be somewhat less!

The “Earthship Inspirations” conference

This took place in Brighton (sadly not at the Brighton Earthship pictured – we tried, but the site was locked!), on the free weekend between the two weeks of the PDC. I went back to London for a night, and then Chloe and I boarded the train and went off for the day.

Despite an unpromising-looking venue, the conference was just excellent. They had a range of perspectives, from Earthships that had been built:

• as a professional proof of concept (Normandy)
• by the owner (Valencia)
• with University co-operation, with a lot of instruments incorporated to measure indoor and outdoor temparatures, humidity, dew-points and so forth (Brighton),
• as part of a green community project (Zwolle),
• with enormous community support, which tragically didn’t prevent the half-finished structure being burnt down by vandals (Greenhead Moss)
• breaking a lot of the “Earthship” rules but still coming up with a cracking design (Groundhouse)

The pace was fast, the presenters all had a wealth of excellent information to share, the attendees asked good questions. A few of the most interesting things for us were:

• There was a general consensus that the fundamental Earthship design needed to be tweaked in cool maritime climates, in particular to incorporate floor insulation and to eliminate cold bridging
• Over and over again, it came up that community engagement and support is absolutely essential, not only for getting help with your build, but even prior to that, for securing planning permission and general support for your project.

Earthbuilding in London

I was only at the Earthbag build in Hounslow for a couple of days. We did some bagging or foundation layers (other than the fact that it was punishingly hot, I was pleasantly surprised by how straightforward and relatively non-backbreaking bagging is!) learnt a bit about vapour barriers, learned what sort of consistency the earth needs to be at to be good for bagging, learned that the bags work well with the curvature of the domes in one orientation and decidedly not in the other. I also learned how to use the chains to measure out the different arcs necessary to form that classic, strong “egg-shape”. Chloe, who had been there longer, has also learned how to operate various heavy machinery, how to lay the barbed wire “mortar”, and various other things, but I’ll let her write about that herself!

And now we’re back.

Chloe has gone back for another stint at De Hortus in Amsterdam; her mum and partner are currently visiting, which is lovely; we are inching ever slowly forward toward completion of the renovation (kitchen, floors throughout, double doors and double glazing to go). The next “big rocks”:

For Chloe: finalise the details of her impending next foray into learning, which we’re hoping will encompass more earthbuilding of various kinds, and possibly a major foray into high-intensity food-growing.

For me: get the dog’s papers in order (a nightmarish 7 month process) and do a major update of the Apex boys’ website.

Happily, I have a lot of unallocated time in the next few weeks during the Radio choir’s Summer hiatus. Of course, what I really want to do with that time is write a piece of music which has been bubbling away at the back of my head for the last two months… inspiration is great, but often inconveniently timed, I find!

Have a great, green summer, all.