Permacuture: The Back to Eden Revolution and Paul Gautschi

Today I arrived home from work, tired as I often am after a long day of work and a forty-five minute commute.  I was also somewhat depressed.  Day after day of drought—still, cold inversion air on the valley floor holding in pollution, even here in this big, open rural valley, over seventy miles from the population of the Wasatch front.

But when I arrived in my drive, I found five doe and a buck.  My driveway circles in past the old barn yard and makes a big J ending at my house.  The deer were on the inside of that J and just watched as I drove by, circled around and got out of the car on the other-side of them.  They watched me carefully, just in case, but we have built a relationship.  During the deer hunt, they crowd right around my house, strip my grapevine between the house and front walk free of the last grapes and leaves.  This fall they even ate the pansies in a pot on my front porch.

I use to fight them, throw rocks and profanities at them, as they do love to pull up bulbs and strip the bark off trees.   Then last fall, I decided the most significant thing about Dry Creek is the abundance of deer and wild turkey.  Wildlife is what makes here here.

Of course, the deer are not going to leave if I toss rocks and swear at them.  But, they did use to run.  And I haven’t found any more damage to my plants since I decided to make friends.  All that has changed is that I’m angry less often and I can get a lot closer to them.  There also seem to be more buck.  I don’t know if that is because of my changed relationship or not, but I’d like to think so.

Permaculture, according to Bill Mollison, “is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system."

Dry Creek belonged to the deer long before it ever belonged to my family.  Someday, I want a large botanical garden here of small, diverse ecosystems, mixing edibles with decorative plants in ways that are festive, whimsical and practical.  But however I do that, these designs will have to leave room for the turkey and the deer.  There is nothing I could add to this landscape that could compare with the deer.  They give meaning to here.

Pemaculture, which I’m just learning, like Buddhism, emphasizes stillness—learning from nature and implementing the same processes only at an excelled speed—rather than laboring against nature.  One of the first steps to understanding permaculture is to comprehend that the true roll of the gardener is grow soil.   If the soil is good, plants take care of themselves.  I’m in the preschool stages of this education and I spent way too much time watering last summer because I hadn’t mulched enough during the fall, but I’m learning.

“Grandpa’s Orchard” at Dry Creek last spring—Because this is part of the old barn yard and the natural composting that goes with that—scatterings of hay, straw, piles of dung, etc.—soil is good here.  The trick is to speed up that process over the rest of the property, where topsoil is shallow to nonexistent.

Enjoy this video of the “Back to Eden” farm and begin learning permaculture for yourself.

Paul Gautschi--He's a little outwardly closer to God than many of us are comfortable with, but he knows his stuff. If you want to know how to build soil, he's your new guru, no matter your crede.