Permaculture Documentary-01
From Finance to Farmer
This story is a man one who quits job i finance to grow food and develop permaculture food forest
I had to get away to connect with nature but when i wake up every morning, I come here outside and I'm immediately in nature here I don't have that void anymore, I've just got this instant connection and satisfaction
I'm Andrew Martin and today we're here in our permaculture property in the bay of Plenty, New Zealand we've got 5 acres and we've planted hundreds of fruit trees which you'll see later So this is our main garden just close to the house in zone 1 so, yeah, we can say we've got a lot happening here We've got, you know, lots of kale and spinach silver beet, beetroot, bok choy, rhubarb, zucchini And, how I started this is Basically a sheet mulch so I've got some used paper cardboard some manure and some food scraps and then build it up and then just put straw on top and then just planted straight into it and since then I just kept adding to the soil with compost
So, yeah, I studied business I was involved in finance and more specifically in stock market So we used to help people manage their money Whether the organisation are worth we used to manage hundreds of millions of dollars for people.
I think i just did business because it was one of those things that I thought would lead to something And sure, I've been successful in a certain regard given us the wealth to be able to buy some land And that sort of stuff.
But I felt myself being drawn into this materialistic world Because all the people around me had material possessions and it was all this wanting and creating of attachment and wanting, wanting more stuff It can be contagious, this consumerism materialism lifestyle I wasn't from that background.
I'm from a sort of a conservative sort of upbringing Then all of a sudden I'm involved with, you know, guys that are driving luxury cars living in an expensive house in the Sydney suburbs A lot of guys are, you know multimillionaires and... they were trapped into a system and they thought an extra, you know, 10 or 20 or 30 million would make them happier.
And I worked out early on the paste that, that is not the case And I think, a lot of people think that the more money they have, the more happy they're going to be and it just doesn't work... So, the idea is to you know, have native plants mixed among fruit trees so we've got you know, natives here we got a tomatillo here we got marron, and natives We've got a cabbage tree here This is a pine nut
So those are really expensive nuts you get in the supermarket This is one of those that takes about ten years to get any fruit on it or any nuts So that's a long term project. And then we've got, over here, we've got a fig tree.
Which is fruiting quite nicely. And another carob tree here And then for the monarch butterflies We've got a couple of swan plants which they really enjoy real much, so we'd be lucky to see one Here he women now...
There was a lot of little moments of realization I saw a few documentaries and movies that were about some of the bigger picture issues But when you're in the corporate world And you're so busy with your life and achieving certain things I've hard to get off that train Beth, my wife and I we sort of had grown over the corporate lifestyle and the trap of having and wanting more...
So we thought "Ok, let's just cut our ties from what we've known" and... we'd been working for many years We thought "Ok... let's just …start a fresh" So we'd been to New Zealand a number of times previously And we just thought that's a great place to... just start, we'll look at alternatives and live a simpler, more sustainable life And just explore what's out there.
It was then the realization sort of hit home I started to research more read, you know, hundreds of articles and watch hundreds of documentaries and sorts of stuff.
Then I started to really understand : "Wow, We got some serious issues here..." And no one's really talking about this stuff and it's quite scary In here we got our chickens We've got two breeds we've got a brown shader which is these ones here And then over here we've got Aracuna's And over here we have little chicks that have just hatched in the last two days You can see them down here Ok the chicken yard here...
You can see there's lots of weeds and little shrubs and what not and... We've planted some...there was about 10 or 12 feet Java bushes around the edge To give them some protection. There's a walnut tree down there But now you now the chickens love it.
They can get in here and hide under here and escape from predators cause when we first had them, it was cleared and we did have a problem with eagles and hawks so we lost a few chickens Because that was easy for the hawks to see them, then come in and attack them but Now we've...hadn't had a problem. And you wan say there's little hidey house everywhere for the chickens here And they love it in here, they just hide through here and over here, they even lay eggs in the hidey holes and her one here there you go The first thing We did is simplified our life. So once you simplify your life, it frees you up to do a lot of other things.
So we tend to simply thought "Ok,
What will we tend to afford ?"
and live inside that limit which means frees you up loads additional,
so... Down size and small homes is great as a result of it provides folks the liberty to....to make decisions about their lives And that's sort of what we've done. We've consciously made that effort not to live outside our means And once you do that it's really powerful so I always wanted a pond and a lot of permaculture people talk about ponds and everyone has pond and it's functional, it's got some great uses So the idea is I built this pond to feed the beds which are actually under about 2 feet of grass at the moment so what happened is I thought like I'm gonna...
I'll just have a go digging the pond. And i started digging it out and i just kept going for a couple of hours and then after four hours i had a pretty big hole it's probably a meter and a half deep And then the second day, I just kept going and dug down And...within two days about 4 or 5 hours each day, I had a pond !
And then, I just... got a liner and place it within the lake and that i could not believe my luck ensuing day, it banded down rain and so the lake was full thus in 2 days I've gone from having no pond To a completely full pond, which is awesome. Apart from working on the garden, that takes a good part of my day I also for a few blogs and have written a few books and... i also consult with business local government and community groups on helping raise awareness around some of the big picture issues
So I do what they call as a vulnerability assessment So once i analyse the data and identify gaps, then i come up with recommendations For councils to move to a more sustainable model. I'm fortunate...
I'm in a position to be able to do this A lot of people who don't have the luxury of being able to have time to... research and...come up with ideas and solutions so...
That's what I'm trying to achieve I saw a documentary back in 2007 called A Crude awakening that was talking about the oil shock and resource depletion on peak oil And that really got me interested in the whole energy side of things I read lots of books on energy and watched lots of documentaries and lots of articles And it just seemed that permaculture kept popping up as a solution.
Then I started to research permaculture and realized that It was an integrated approach to how we're living So at the moment, our current society... It's a fragmented approach to living So everything's compartmentalised or separated whereas permaculture is a holistic approach to how we're living.
It integrates food, environment with your lifestyle and taking care of, you know, people, the planet the natural resources So I really... That really... hit home and I just really thought that was... that was one of the solutions for moving forward Over here we've got some grapes and we've had these in for about a year and a half and this is our first decent yield of grapes as you can see here and what we do so we let the next door neighbour graze our front two patties and in return, I can go over to her place and I get some pine needles which the blueberries love cause they love acidic soil so I just sprinkle the bleb the pine needles around the blueberries so it helps mulch them and help give them nutrients and it also keep the weeds down.
So what I'm trying to... I do mow and i don't like it but I just try to mow the paths also Um... side the paths So what we do is we leave all the... all the weeds and the ground cover, there cause it... You know, i hate to waste the resource But what I like to do is just walk up when I'm out in the garden and just pick a bit of weed and just dropped around there it gives it a... I gives a bit of a top up and a bit of a feed and then, you know, it just protects it from the From evaporation and you know, it's just consent soil building So a lot of people come over to our property and have a look around they go
"what about all your fruit trees ?"
"Do you get pests and stuff, like bird that eat them ?"
I say yea positive however we do not mind that you just recognize we tend to weren't here initial and you recognize we're a section of nature and you recognize We've had....we have comments from other people that live around near us On the farms and they say they can't believe how much wildlife and birdlife is here and their properties just, you know, a few hundred meters away have almost no wildlife or birdlife so you know we're attracting birdlife and wildlife Through just letting nature be as opposed to wanting to control it. Start growing food that's where a lot of this... these initiatives start.
Food is central to the way we live our health, and our whole ecosystem and environment so if we can start doing something small like even if you If you just live in the suburbia and you got a small block you can start growing food Even if you're in an apartment you can you know windowsills, pots whatever you can start, and that's the first step once you engage with growing and experiencing nature Then things start to happen to you and it's like a like a flower it starts, you know growing, getting bigger and then that leads to something else. So get out there and explore because there are options We just have to have the capacity to realize that we're not stuck and we can change and just... just do it !
I love Andrew's story because it contradicts a belief that underpins our society : that only large amounts of money and having expensive material possessions are what lead to happiness.
We've been fad this lie by businesses and governments in order to make profit and to perpetuate the growth economy that's contributing to the destruction of the earth By each one of us refusing to believe this story our society tells us Together we can create a world where the deep satisfaction we all desire comes from our connexion with community and nature rather than from material possessions in the face of the crisis the world is facing today a new way of being is emerging where we're connected to nature and exist in harmony with all other forms of life and it's up to us to pioneer the transition to this deeply satisfying, nourishing and truly sustainable way of life I definitely feel happier and less stressed. When you work in a corporate world, it's very competitive and I'll tell you, there's not much competition out here apart from a few weeds Which i get upset with.
But now I've learnt to let go and now I eat some of the weeds I definitely feel better and I feel more flexible I don't have any actual pains anymore And I just feel more connected and more lively. I eat much healthy now I don't eat any processed foods We have lot of vegetarian meals and it's all fresh, organic produced So we also live a less consumerist lifestyle So we don't need as much stuff So I haven't got this constant craving for more and more things to make me feel satisfied or happy This lifestyle working on the land and... doing permaculture It feels more rewarding and like I'm putting something back with a lot of... current society it's take take take And with this sort of lifestyle I feel like this is long term I'm putting something back. So their you have it.
We have homegrown salad fruit salad, grain salad and some eggs and I can't believe still that I don't have to go to the supermarket. We've grown all this ourselves in just 3 years. I'm still amazed.
So anyone can do it So hope you'll enjoy the first of many films in this series and this project wouldn't be happening at all if it wasn't for the generous support of our crowdfunding backers. So thanks so much to everyone who donated.
And I wish to mention a special many thanks to the simplicity institute, friends little homes, archangel Albertson, Lou Rids dale, and Quentin Wilson.
If you wanna find out more about the project, you can click here and it will take you through to our website Or if you wanna watch another film about a permaculture farm, you can click here. So thanks for watching guys and I'll see you all in the next film.
Permaculture Documentary-02
Living a Radically Simple Life with the help of Permaculture
The story I guess we're telling is our household and community transition away from what I've called a hyper-techno-civility.
Cultures that foreground ecological knowledge and background technology are those that are actually property and we do the entire opposite. we have a tendency to are creatures of place and if we have a tendency to don't become creatures of place once more we'll fully carry off each place forever species.
Which may be a quarter-acre permaculture plot that we've been functioning on for regarding ten years.
It was a bare, denuded, bulldozed plot and we saw the potential of it and also the affordability of it. And are very privileged to be able to live here in this part of the world but also to have access toa bit of land.
It was step-by-step, there's been lots of little things or hundreds of little things that we've given up. We talk about the pivotal moment, we call it the bin-liner moment. So we had a rubbish bin, we had our compost, and our worm farm scraps and our chook scraps and Zero our dog got the other scraps. We'd put things in the rubbish bin and it was always in a bin-liner and then one day we realized that we didn't need a bin line rat all and that was a big moment just realizing what we didn't need and what we could go without. All of a sudden was like 'wow we don't need this' and 'what else can we give up?' and then it was trying to live without plastic and then it was wow we don't really need supermarkets and then cars.
The average Australian car costs around$15,000 a year with depreciation, wear-and-tear, petrol, licences, insurance, etc factored everything in.
That's NRMA and RACV figures and then the Australian Bureau of Statistics quoted a few years ago that the average household has just over two cars so effectively the average household in Australia is spending $30,000 on car use We will go to just a kilometre up the road, we've got to look the local tip where we get a lot of our materials to build our buildings, we get a lot of our firewood that's just discarded there and we bring it back and chop it up we we do that on bikes with bike trailers. And then over the last year we've turned off the gas to the house so we did have gas hot water, gas heating, and a gas stove top to cook with and then it was slowly like we actually don't need those things at all. We were putting the other things in place over a number of years. So to have a wood heater in the house which can heat our hot water, cook our food, and dry our clothes, and heat the home. Going while not is really oral communication yes to different things. thus going while not cars means that I don't have to be a regular builder like i used to be ten years past. I can actually stay at home, grow vegetables, co-home-school Woody, I also run a bush school.
So you're pretty much five days week in the household and community economy, I'm pretty much seven days a week. And so I work two days a week for David Holmgren in his office doing publicity and admin duties. We have this small mortgage which is part of the big global monetary economy and we service that mortgage with a little shack that we've built which is called the permit love shack bandit's on Airbnb. Our household income is under $30,000 so it's considerably lower than the poverty line and we feel we live extremely richly because we have tame.
At the instant our bank is our woodpile and our cellar at this point of the year and our seed bank and things like that. however our information bank can never be abstracted unless, you know, till we tend to die.
So teaching our kids that the most important economy is relationships and our knowledges and those knowledge sand those relationships have nothing whatsoever to do with money, makes us extremely resilient for the things that we face in the future and therefore we feel empowered. So money to us is not wealth at all. Wealth is time, time-richness, family time, community time, and knowledges, accruing knowledges.
There's over probably 150 species here locally including mushrooms, plants, and animals that - mostly feral or weed species - that we incorporate into our diet every day. We haven't eaten out of the supermarket industrial food system for 8 or 9 years. We can't be self-sustaining here on a quarter-acre and though we have a tendency to might we have a tendency to would not wish to be.
we have a tendency to name it in terms of community-sufficiency not self-reliance.
So there's lots of battering and gift exchanging that happens with other community friends. We're members of a food co-op. We hold regular working bees at the community gardens and while they're not high productive gardens, they are learning and social spaces.
Each day is an adventure and I think having a child in the house, for Woody to wakeup and he throws himself at the world. How bag's that? I've been using a knife since I was three. And I said to him last week as I Was putting him to bed 'how did it feel to be to be you today?'
'how did it feel to be living your life?' and he said 'Mum it was beautiful'. So I think just having a child to remind you, yes we're exhausted at the end of each day from working so hard but just having that childlike wonder as a reminder. There's no doubting our privilege in this situation. We're privileged to have quarter of a nacre of land on Dja Dja Wurrung country I think the responsibility people who have historical privilege have is to live better, is to learn and pay respects to Dja Dja Wurrung culture, local Aboriginal culture, is to live responsibly and with low carbon or positive carbon impacts, and look after the the world and plant for the next generations.
It fills us with joy to live with that amongst all the gloom and all the terrible things going on. For us it does make a difference to live like this. With every bit of salt that add to the cabbage it makes a difference, for every shovel in the ground it makes a differences.
This is not for everyone this isjust however we're selecting to measure and the way we're responding to the planet. that is very necessary that we have a tendency to area unit simply a response to the difficulty of our time.
And it might not be meaningful for other people who are mapping out for themselves how they're going to live a carbon positive future, but for us this feels wonderful, this feels resilient, this feels important, and this feels vital. Yeah vital and this feels like a very rich life for us to live.
Permaculture Documentary-03
Inspiring women Growing a huge amount of food in her city through permaculture gardening
Is it attainable turn outs to supply to provide a important quantity of produce on a reasonably customary sized urban block?
I guess the answer is: Yes!
It is absolutely possible.
Humans have always connected to their landscape through food.
One of the items that is thus concerning about the state that we're in at the instant is such a big amount of folks area unit losing that connection to the land.
that the plummery has been AN experiment in however will we tend to regain that affiliation to food within the city?
Is it attainable turn outs to supply to provide a important quantity of produce on a reasonably customary sized urban block?
I guess the answer is: Yes!
It is absolutely possible.
My name is Kat Lavers, I live at a place called The Plummery, which is a typical quite small suburban block on Wurundjeri country about six kilometres from the centre of Melbourne, Australia.
I live here with my partner Dannyand also very regular Woofers, people who come and stay with us and learn in exchange for board and food.
The block is 280 square meters, which includes the house and some quite large areas that are not currently producing food. The food-producing area is about a hundred square meters, so a 10x10 meter square.
In 2018 we harvested 428 kilos of herbs, vegetables, fruits, and eggs from this small space. That amount of production has been enough to supply two adults and regular guests with almost all of our fresh produce, not just in summer but in the entire year. I've been on the site for 10 years.
When we first arrived it was a very rundown house, the garden was full of ornamental plants, it had lots of lawn, so we had a lot of work to do.
We've used a process called permaculture design to really get the most out of the space that we're living in. We've taken the time to observe the site, think about all the different seasonal implications of where we are, think about our own needs as humans, and how to really make the site as elegant a design as possible so that we get more out than we put in, in terms of our effort and time.
I've tried to work out what's the optimum arrangement of vegetables to plant together in each bed so that they are all producing well and not competing with each other.
So we do plant really densely and we have a tight rotation system. We keep our quails in an aviary where they have concrete paving underneath and then a layer of mulch that becomes compost over time, something called a deep litter system.
Quail are also really quiet animals, which is a huge advantage in small city blocks where you've got neighbours close by. And most importantly for me this is a really really ethical solution where the quail have got something to scratch around in looking for bugs.
For me it's really important if I am going to eat animal products that those animals have the best life that we can possibly give them.
So we're not self-sufficient and we're not really aiming to be self-sufficient here, what we are aiming for is community dependence. We're aiming to have most of our diet coming from either this household or within our bio region.
So of course we're not self-sufficient in things like grain and dairy and oil, so we aim to source those from producers that are as local as possible and people that are managing land in a way that inconsistent with having a future.
My main financial gain comes from working for a neighbourhood council in Melbourne's West running a program that teaches folks about organic husbandry and permaculture.
I'm also a freelance permaculture teacher designer, educator, facilitator. Many people when I explain how much food we're growing here think we must be full-time farmers, you know, slaving away in the garden to produce a little bowl of tomatoes, but it's just not the caseate all and in fact we think that we spend about 4 hours a week on average to grow that amount of food, which is a lot less than I expected it to be, to be honest.
What does take a lot of time is setting up these systems, so implementing the design and also learning the skills to grow food. Even then, that has all happened for us in the last five or six years.
It's actually quite achievable if you do want to prioritize that in your own life. So lots of people tell me, 'Oh this so exciting, I wish I could do that at home but I just don't know really where to start.
I don't feel like I've got a lot of time.' And so one of the best things you can do if you're getting started is just start really small, start with a square meter; observe that, look after it.
You'll actually get more produce out of a smaller garden that you're managing and tending well than you will out of a huge garden that runs away and that you can't observe properly. It's really important that we start to build a bit more resilience into our cities and foodies just one of the ways that we can build a level of resilience from those larger systems. We know we have sometimes got crises going on, large floods, bushfires, let alone occasional economic instability.
In those times one in every of the things that becomes most important, of course, is access to recent turn out, and the town would possibly ne'er feed itself fully in recent turn out however we have a tendency to caned a buffer, we can do something which minimizes the packaging, the transport, the fuel use, the chemical use, all the impact that comes along with conventionally produced foods. And something that to be honest brings us great joy while we're doing it, as well.
Permaculture Documentary-04
A scarcity of drinking water
In this few year, these villages are facing a drinking water problem. Now you can see the ample of water. In just one year? Just in 45 days, Not one year.
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