Favorite Quotes from Bill Mollison, Father of Permaculture, and Others

Posted in Healthy Food & Agriculture on March 25th, 2015 by dhawkinsmo

“To empower the powerless and ‘create a million villages’ to replace nation states is the only safe future for the preservation of the biosphere.” –Bill Mollison, PDM, Preface

“To accumulate wealth, power or land beyond one’s needs in a limited world is to be truly immoral, be it as an individual, an institution, or a nation-state.” –Bill Mollison, PDM, p. 1

“We know how to solve every food, clean energy and sensible shelter problem in every climate … the tragic reality is that very few sustainable systems are designed or applied by those who hold power, and the reason for this is obvious and simple: to let people arrange their own food, energy and shelter is to lose economic and political control over them.” –Bill Mollison, Father of the Modern Permaculture Movement, PDM, p. 506

“I do not, in my lifetime, or that of my children’s children, foresee a world where there are no eroded soils, stripped forests, famine or poverty, but I do see a way in which we can spend our lives towards earth repair. If and when the whole world is secure, we have won a right to explore space, and the oceans. Until we have demonstrated that we can establish a productive and secure earth society, we do not belong anywhere else, nor (I suspect) would we be welcome elsewhere.” –Bill Mollison, PDM, p. 508

“The very concept of land ownership is ludicrous …” –Bill Mollison, PDM, p. 545

“Trees are responsible for 3/4 of all rains” –Bill Mollison, Father of the Permaculture Movement (Video #5)

“Few people muck around in earth, and when on international flights, I often find I have the only decently dirty fingernails.” –Bill Mollison, PDM

“Not only is the tree the great engine of production, but its present triumphant agricultural rivals, the grains, are really weaklings.”
–J. Russell Smith, one time professor at the Wharton School of Economics in “Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture” a permaculture classic, which until now I had only heard about from Permaculture leaders. Now I get to read it. It’s online and free! http://soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010175.tree%20crops.pdf

“Unfortunately, our Graeco-Roman western linear reductionist systematized fragmented disconnected parts-oriented individualized culture does not make these critters happy. And it considers anyone who reaches for such a goal to be a lunatic.” –Joel Salatin

Converting My Land to Permaculture Design

Posted in Healthy Food & Agriculture on March 9th, 2015 by dhawkinsmo

HawkinsLand_TopoSatI’ve decided to apply Permaculture Design Principles to my little 10 acre patch of land which used to be farmed for corn and soybeans. I planted it in tall fescue in about 2003 before I had any knowledge of permaculture and it has terraces and a couple of drains which were placed by the row crop farmer long before I owned it. I currently have a small temporary dwelling back in the woods and I would like to have some rotationally grazed animals this year if possible. Of course, water catchment is my first priority, then planning for beltways of trees would be next. I have been following the work of Darren Doherty and I’m a bit familiar with Geoff Lawton’s work as well. Today I was alerted to a man who has a hybrid model for land development – a mix of the features of both Darren and Geoff’s work. His name is Cam Wilson and his blog article is HERE. My land is pictured above. The yellow outline is my little 10 acre patch and I have superimposed contour lines on the property. However, the contour lines may be old, possibly done prior to the terracing by the row crop farmer pervious to me.

America: Land of the (sort of) Free

Posted in Christianity/America, Politics on March 7th, 2015 by dhawkinsmo

Shocking as it may sound, I have come to believe that “America, the Land of the Free … ” is at best a HALF TRUTH. We are “sort of” free. “Relatively” free, compared to say, Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. But compared to the Native Americans of the 18th Century Haudenosaunee Confederacy, we are not nearly so free. My skepticism comes from studying “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey used to famously say. Charles Mann has written a fascinating book entitled “1491” which covers some of this, lost my original copy, then bought it again last week. I was alerted to the book by a former intern for Joel Salatin. While I don’t prefer Joel’s method of raising chickens for meat, I think his method for producing eggs is brilliant … and his writing is brilliant. Joel is a prolific reader and a fantastic writer. So I am interested in any book Joel writes and in some books recommended by people close to him. Let me give you a taste of what I am talking about from Mann’s book. More to come on this topic another day.

Benjamin Franklin wrote …

“When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and makes one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading him ever to return. And that this is not natural [only to Indians], but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived awhile among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet within a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of Life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.”

(Letter to Peter Collinson May 9, 1753) LINK HERE