Sometimes a season of adverse weather events can be so overwhelming, it can be difficult to pick yourself up and dust yourself off. But this is the time of year to do exactly that.
With the peak of winter behind us, August usually brings a few more patches of welcome sunlight, inviting us back outside with the promise of a new growing season.
But before we pull on the boots on The Food Farm, we always take a moment to go back to foundations that we built this place on: permaculture.
We find lots of inspiration, resilience, and strength in permaculture, which I’ve often heard described as a “mindset toolkit” – a phrase that I love. The principles of permaculture provide wonderful ways to approach the challenges and opportunities that we encounter. Whether you’re familiar with permaculture or you’re completely new to the concept, it’s always worth exploring the principles to learn new ways to manage your land holistically.
So how do we apply this to growing food on our small farm, in a way that ensures we have success no matter what the upcoming season throws at us? Through the 12 permaculture principles.
David Holmgren’s 12 permaculture principles are designed to be universal, but their applications differ depending on place and context.
Below, I explore the 12 principles and how I’ve applied them on The Food Farm.
1. Observe and interact
Observation is the most powerful tool you have. When you’re present you can see, smell, hear, feel and taste changes, even very small ones. I think I almost subconsciously record changes now, so well do I know this piece of land. Get outside, off your tractor or motorbike, take your shoes off and your earplugs out. Have a moment to be still. Create the space and time to notice. Keep a diary or a journal and record what you experience. Over the years, you’ll notice some extraordinary patterns and gain some deep understanding of your special place. We’ve made so many decisions by noticing the smallest things, such where the house blocks the sun on the shortest day of the year. We make sure to never plant winter crops in these places.
2. Capture and store energy
Sayings such as “make hay while the sun shines” are a reminder that there are ebbs and flows when growing your own food. We never assume that just because we got a bumper crop of a fruit (as an example) this year, that it will happen again next year. Seldom does that work out. We are always preserving enough to keep us going for at least two years if quantities allow. This ensures we have abundant food at times when yields are low.
3. Obtain a yield
This principle highlights the importance of having something to show for your hard work. No matter what systems you have in place, you should be harvesting something in order to sustain your efforts on your permaculture journey.
4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback
I’ve learnt so much more from my failings than from my successes. And sometimes it’s the big failures that allow me to unlock another level of understanding. If I’m feeling defeated by something, I zoom out. This can allow some perspective and a chance to realise that there are always lessons to be learned, and always solutions to be found.
5. Use and value renewables
This doesn’t just apply to energy, but any renewable resource on your property. Perennials, for instance, create a more resilient food system because they don’t have to be replanted each year. This is most obvious during early spring when perennials such as globe artichokes and asparagus can provide a yield at a time when it’s too cold for annuals to get away.
6. Produce no waste
Very little goes to waste here. Many materials around the property can be repurposed, especially trees and structures that are damaged. We’ve used old corrugated iron and timber to build everything from a milking shed to a pātaka (storage house). Kitchen scraps and manure can be turned into compost, which nurtures the health of your soil.
7. Design from patterns to details
Observe the patterns around your property and let them inform how you design spaces. For instance, to combat the rampant couchgrass, we’ve planted big-leaved comfrey to help shade it out and constructed our paths with bark mulch.
8. Integrate rather than segregate
Your garden and property is part of a network. Support diverse ecosystems and they’re far more likely to survive a shock. This is something I’ve observed for years – the sum is simply more than its parts. We plant a huge number of flowers amongst our vegetables as an example. By mixing things up you’ll confuse pests and increase your chances of something surviving.
9. Use small and slow solutions
If you’re building up your property, you don’t have to achieve everything at once or right away. Trying to do everything at once can be demoralising if it doesn’t work. Celebrate your little wins and chip away at something. After the Kaikoura Earthquake, our property was susceptible to regular flooding. We therefore carried out a redesign of our garden, raising our beds and implementing a no-dig system. This required a lot of manual labour and more compost than we could produce. So we did it bit by bit. Every bed we completed we’d celebrate by acknowledging what we were harvesting from it, and how much better it was than the previous season.
10. Value diversity
One of the biggest changes in the last 18 years is that we now accept there will be losses each year because of the extremes of weather. We plan for these losses. They are not failures, they just are. In response to this shift, we’ve employed the theory of “lots of little”, with plenty of succession planting in different parts of the farm, rather than big areas of a single crop.
11. Use edges and value the marginal
The spaces where different areas meet are often incredibly productive and busy. Think pond edges or the edges of native bushes. How can you encourage biodiversity in these spaces? What might you be able to encourage or plant there?
12. Creatively use and respond to change
Perhaps the most useful permaculture principle for modern times. Change is inevitable. It’s not what happens to us, but how we respond to it. It’s a reminder that our reaction can be creative and really imaginative. It’s the moment to step into the “what if” space.•