Documenting Our Search for a Permaculture Designer at York Meadow Farm

In this episode of All Around Growth, we take you through our ongoing journey at York Meadow Farm as we search for the perfect permaculture designer to help bring our vision to life. We explore what permaculture is, how it differs from regenerative agriculture, and why these practices are crucial for sustainable farming.

You'll hear about the four designers and firms we've connected with so far, the challenges of aligning busy schedules, and the excitement of finding the right fit for our 19.62-acre homestead. Plus, Patreon subscribers get an exclusive update on who we’ve talked to and where we stand with each one.

Join us for an insightful episode as we document this important step in our farm's development, share lessons learned, and discuss our next steps toward a more sustainable future.

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Discussion Links:

Maurice Small

Seeking a Permaculture Designer for Our Family Homestead!

Permaculture - Wikipedia

Regenerative agriculture - Wikipedia

WWOOF: World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms

Subscribe to the York Meadow Farm Email Newsletter

Tags: #Permaculture #RegenerativeAgriculture #SustainableFarming #YorkMeadowFarm #Podcast #Homestead #EcoFriendly #PermacultureDesign #PatreonExclusive

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:06

Well, hi there, and welcome back to another episode of the All Around Growth Podcast. My name is Rob Kaiser and I am your host. The title of today's show is Documenting Our Search for a Permaculture Designer at York Meadow Farm. Today is Tuesday, September 3rd, 2024. And in this episode, we dive into our ongoing search for the perfect permaculture designer to help us bring our vision for York Meadow Farm to life. We're going to discuss how this journey began, our progress so far, and what lies ahead as we work to find the right fit for this exciting project. Now, we're not going to find the perfect permaculture designer because there is no perfect, but we're going to talk about uh a number of things today. We're going to talk about how this came to be, uh the journey that got us to where we are, what permaculture is, permaculture versus regenerative agriculture, how we've connected with designers, the ongoing search, and finally a call to action for everybody out there listening, and what you can expect over the next few weeks as we continue on this journey. So, like I said, today is September 3rd, 2024, and I am pleased to announce that we are back on schedule with the Patreon page. And what does that mean? What that means is that all of these podcast episodes are released one week ahead for Patreon subscribers only before they are released to the public. So we had one released last week titled A Show About Nothing. That was released this morning right as I am recording this. So again, if you want some behind the scenes action on this show and you want the ability to connect with other people in ways that most other people out there aren't, go to patreon.com slash allaroundgrowth and check out the options that are available to support the show and join us in our monthly video calls, video chats together, and more. Check us out t.me slash all around growth, join the community there and meet some great people, people who support the show, make new friends. It's a great place to be. So look forward to seeing you there. Now, how did all of this begin? It's it's that's that's a that's a long story in and of itself, but the long and short of it is my parents bought this land a long time ago with the intent to build here, retire here, and that was going to be it. It was going to be they were going to build the retirement home and just have a nice property where the kids could visit, and that was about it. Once they owned the land, they realized that there was tax benefits for keeping the land in and operating as an agricultural property, so they had it farmed the way it had been farmed, leased it out to a farmer for a couple of years. But as they began to see and witness close up how conventional farming took place, they decided that they didn't want that on their property. And a consultation with Maurice Small from City Fresh, who my mom was connected to through her employment at that time, uh encouraged them to think about doing some things for the farmers market. And way back when in 2011 my parents installed the first market garden here, began growing things for the farmers market, and that was it. A couple years later, the blueberry bushes that were planted in 2010, after the consultation with Maurice Small started to produce, and not only did we have annual produce, but we had perennial crops, and that continued evolving over the next few years until I moved back and started assisting with the market garden farmers markets in a number of different ways, and basically here we are 10 years later with a vision to have a functioning homestead in turn instead of a simple retirement property. Alright. For those of you who are listening that don't know, my dad passed away last year, and it is now my mom and I living here. Stay tuned for more changes in terms of what's happening here on the homestead in other ways later down the road, but there's two of us here, we've got frequent visitors, and there's a lot going on. So um over the last year or so, my mom and I have been talking about really taking action on a permaculture designer and and and having a concrete and definitive plan that we can implement and uh begin implementing incrementally because we we've been talking about having livestock out here, you know, chickens and sheep, but the thing is we don't really have any uh irrigation systems in place, and we're not sure about order of operations and what you know what what to do, when to do it, and it's all overwhelming. And basically what what has been happening uh over the past few years is a bit of analysis paralysis, and while I have a PDC, uh, you know, a certificate from a permaculture design course, uh, it really doesn't mean anything because I've been here for so long that I I can't see the forest for the trees, if you will, and I think there's a lot of value to gaining some outside uh input and getting different eyes on the property, and mom is in agreement with that. So we made some recent well, we wrote a blog post, shared that on social media, and you know, called for help from our community. And on a blog post that was published on October 5th, which I'll link to in the show notes, it read, Hello friends, welcome to York Meadow Farm, a small family-owned farm and homestead in the early stages of development. While we've owned this land for nearly 20 years and have been active at farmers markets since 2011, we are still in the beginning phases of long-term cooperative homestead planning. We are excited to embark on a journey to make our 19.62 acre property more sustainable and productive. Our land is a diverse mix of natural beauty and potential, featuring 10 acres of woodland, a one-acre pond, 1.5 acres currently in market gardens, approximately 4 to 5 acres of pasture, and 3 to 4 acres of lawn surrounding a cozy log cabin and a pole barnslash warehouse. Now, our market garden is this is our current vision and current operations. Our market garden is managed by a dedicated tenant farmer who cultivates the land with care and expertise. Additionally, we operate a small fermented food business from our USDA certified commercial kitchen located in the warehouse. This space includes a small walk-in cooler vital for our current homestead operations. We have a history of working with the Natural Resources Conservation Service Environmental Quality Incentives Program, EQIP, on high tunnel projects, which has provided us with valuable experience for future sustainable farming practices. Now we are seeking assistance in developing a comprehensive design plan for the homestead and beginning to take action. York Meadow Farm also offers all natural bath and body products made with beeswax, natural oils, plant butters, pure essential oils, herbs, and spices. We have spent years meticulously crafting recipes to develop mild skin nourishing products, and there is potential for this operation to grow for the right person interested in learning more about soap making and small business. Now, our goals and opportunities. We aim to optimize productivity and sustainability on our homestead by establishing livestock such as poultry, rabbits, pigs, and sheep, welcoming additional tenant farmers, participating in worldwide opportunities on organic farms, and offering Airbnb or Hip Camp stays for work trade arrangements. Some of you may be wondering what worldwide what worldwide opportunities on organic farms is or the Woofer program. I will link to that in the show notes so that you can learn more. But yeah, feel free to check that out. I'll link to Airbnb and Hip Camp in the show notes as well, so that you can learn more about what it is that we are talking about. Now, by creating these opportunities, we hope to build a vibrant community of like-minded individuals passionate about sustainable living and farming. What we're looking for: experience and expertise in permaculture design, the ability to create a long-term sustainable plan for our property, and innovative ideas for irrigation and other sustainable and regenerative farming practices. Next steps would be once we have a completed design, our immediate focus will be on installing an irrigation system sourced from our pond. This project is crucial for ensuring our market gardens and pastures thrive, especially during dry seasons. And then there's finally a call to action in this blog post. If you or someone you know has the skills and passion to help us on this journey, we'd love to hear from you. Please share your contact information in the comments below or send us a direct message. Your expertise and insights will be invaluable as we continue to grow our homestead. Thank you for your support and for being part of our journey towards sustainability and growth. And then a call to action to follow us on social media to stay updated on our progress here at York Meadow Farm. So that's where we're at. And we included a number of different words in there, right? We included permaculture, we talked about regenerative agriculture, we talked about sustainability. So I want to talk about a couple of things and explain what permaculture is and its core principles, and why permaculture is crucial for creating sustainable, self-sufficient systems on our farm. And then I want to talk a little bit about permaculture versus regenerative agriculture, and in a sense, break down the differences and similarities between permaculture and regenerative agriculture, and how each approach can be applied to the development here at the farm. Now, what I'm gonna do for this is simply read some of what Wikipedia has to say. Okay, so according to Wikipedia, permaculture is an approach to land management and settlement design that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using whole systems thinking. It applies these principles in fields such as regenerative agriculture, town planning, rewilding, and community resilience. The term was coined in 1978 by Bill Mullison and David Holmgren, who formulated the concept in opposition to modern industrialized methods, instead adopting a more traditional or quote natural approach to agriculture. Permaculture has been criticized as being poorly defined and unscientific. Critics have pushed for less resilience on anecdote and extrapolation from ecological first principles in favor of peer-reviewed research to substantiate productivity claims and to clarify methodology. Peter Harper from the Center for Alternative Technology suggests that most of what passes for permaculture has no relevance to real problems. Defenders of permaculture reply that it lacks the resources of industrial agriculture, but that there is reliable evidence for each of Holmgren's principles. Now here's a little bit of history and background on permaculture. In 1911, Franklin Hiram King wrote Farmers of 40 Centuries, or Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan, describing farming practices of East Asia designed for, quote, permanent agriculture. In 1929, Joseph Russell Smith appended King's term as the subtitle for Tree Crops, a permanent agriculture, which he wrote in response to widespread deforestation, plow agriculture, and erosion in the eastern mountains and hill regions of the United States. He proposed the planting of tree fruits and nuts as human and animal food crops that could stabilize watersheds and restore soil health. Smith saw the world as an interrelated whole and suggested mixed system of trees with understory crops. This book inspired individuals such as Toyohiko Kagawa, who pioneered forest farming in Japan in the 1930s, and another pioneer, George Washington Carver, advocated for practices now common in permaculture, including the use of crop rotation to restore nitrogen in the soil and repair damaged farmland, and his work at the Tuskegee Institute between 1896 and his death in 1947. In his 1964 book, Water for Every Farm, the Australian agronomist and engineer P. A. Yeomans advanced a definition of permanent agriculture as one that can be sustained indefinitely. Yeomans introduced both an observation-based approach to land use in Australia in the 1940s and in the 1950s, the key line design as a way of managing the supply and distribution of water in semi-arid regions. Other influences include Stuart Brand's works, Ruth Stout, and Esther Dean's, who pioneered no-dig gardening, and Masonobu Fukuoka, who in the late 1930s in Japan began advocating no-till orchards and gardens and natural farming. Now in the late 1960s, Bill Mullison, a senior lecturer in environmental psychology at the University of Tasmania, and David Holmgren, a graduate student at the Tasmanian College of Advanced Education, started developing ideas about stable agricultural systems on the southern Australian island of Tasmania. Their recognition of the unsustainable nature of modern industrialized methods and their inspiration from Tasmanian Aboriginal and other traditional practices were critical to their formulation of permaculture. In their view, industrialized methods were highly dependent on non-renewable resources and were additionally poisoning land and water, reducing biodiversity and removing billions of tons of topsoil from previously fertile landscapes. They responded with permaculture. This term was first made public with the publication of their 1978 book Permaculture One. Quote Permaculture 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. That's a quote from Bill Mullison. And now following the publication of Permaculture One, Mullison responded to widespread enthusiasm for the work by traveling and teaching a three-week program that became known as the permaculture design course. It addressed the application of permaculture design to growing in major climatic and soil conditions, to the use of renewable energy and natural building methods, and to quote, invisible structures of human society. He found ready audiences in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Britain, and Europe, and from 1985 also reached the Indian subcontinent and southern Africa. By the early 1980s, the concept had broadened from agricultural systems towards sustainable human habitats and the first international international permaculture convergence, a gathering of graduates of the PDC held in Australia, and the curriculum was formalized and its format shortened to two weeks. After permaculture won, Mullison further refined and developed the ideas while designing hundreds of properties. This led to the 1988 publication of his global reference work, Permaculture, a Designer's Manual. Mullison encouraged graduates to become teachers and set up their own institutes and demonstration sites. Critics suggest that this success weakened permaculture's social aspirations of moving away from industrial social forms. They argue that the self-help model, akin to franchising, has had the effect of creating market-focused social relationships that the originators initially opposed. Now, there are three foundational ethics on which permaculture builds, and one is care of the earth, provision for all life systems to continue and multiply, two, care of the people, provision for people to access those resources necessary for their existence, and three setting limits to population and consumption by governing our own needs, we can set resources aside to further the above principles. Now that third ethic was Mullison's 1988 formulation and um was changed later by David Holmgren to redistribution and sharing the surplus or something to that effect. But it's important to note that uh originally it was setting limits to p population and consumption, which one could just simply understand as moderation. Okay, so I'm gonna stop right there. Uh the Wikipedia article continues to sh share more information on the foundational Ethics, theory, design principles, guilds, zones, the edge effect, common practices within permaculture, such as hugaculture, sheet mulching, no-till gardening, cropping practices, rainwater harvesting, compost production, so on and so on and so on and so on. Okay. Now let's read a little bit about regenerative agriculture and then kind of do a quick compare-contrast. Regenerative agriculture is a, again, this is from Wikipedia. Regenerative agriculture is a conservation and rehabilitation approach to food and farming practices. It focuses on topsoil regeneration, increasing biodiversity, improving the water cycle, enhancing ecosystem services, supporting biosequestration, increasing resilience to climate change, and strengthening the health and vitality of farm soil. Regenerative agriculture is not a specific practice. It combines a variety of sustainable agricultural techniques. Practices include maximal recycling of farm waste and adding composted material from non-farm sources. Regenerative agriculture on small farms and gardens is based on permaculture, agroecology, agroforestry, restoration ecology, key line design, and holistic management. Large farms are also increasingly adopting regenerative techniques using no-till and or reduced till practices. As soil health improves, input requirements may decrease and crop yields may increase as soils are more resilient to extreme weather and harbor fewer pests and pathogens. Regenerative agriculture mitigates climate change through carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere and sequestration. Along with the reduction of carbon emissions, carbon sequestration is gaining popularity in agriculture and individuals as well as groups are taking action to fight climate change. Now a little bit of history on regenerative agriculture. Origins. Regenerative agriculture is based on various agricultural and ecological practices with a particular emphasis on minimal soil disturbance and the practice of composting. Maynard Murray had similar ideas using sea minerals. His work led to innovations in no-till practices such as slash and mulch in tropical regions. Sheep mulching is a regenerative agriculture practice that smothers weeds and adds nutrients to the soil below. In the early 1980s, the Rodale Institute began using the term regenerative agriculture. Rodale Publishing formed the Regenerative Agriculture Association, which began publishing regenerative agriculture books in 1987 and 1988. Quote By marching forward under the banner of sustainability, we are, in effect, continuing to hamper ourselves by not accepting a challenging enough goal. I am not against the word sustainable, rather I favor regenerative agriculture. And that is from Robert Rodale. However, the institute stopped using the term in the late 1980s and it only appeared sporadically in 2005 and 2008 until they released a white paper in 2014 titled Regenerative Organic Agriculture and Climate Change. The paper's summary states we could sequester more than 100% of current annual CO2 emissions with a switch to common and inexpensive organic management practices, which we term regenerative organic agriculture. The paper described similar agricultural practices like crop rotation, compost application, and reduced tillage that are similar to organic agriculture methods. In 2002, Storm Cunningham documented the beginning of what he called restorative agriculture in his first book, The Restoration Economy. Cunningham defined restorative agriculture as a technique that rebuilds the quantity and quality of topsoil while also restoring local biodiversity, especially native pollinators, and watershed function. Easy for me to say again, restorative agriculture was one of the eight sectors of restorative development, industries, and disciplines in the restoration economy. Now, again, I'm going to stop there because you can read more in the link in the show notes on recent developments in regenerative agriculture, principles in regenerative agriculture, notable depth, notable definitions of those principles, practices, and environmental impacts and all sorts of things, criticisms of it and all of that. Now, there are a lot of similarities between permaculture and regenerative agriculture. In short, I think permaculture embraces more of a social component than regenerative agriculture. And based on my own experience, about ten years ago, there seemed to be uh a bit of a a rift in these communities, and some people very much began to identify with the permaculture side of things, and other people began to identify with the regenerative agriculture side of things, or basically the terminologies and the whatever ideology they presumed in their own heads uh each of those terms consisted of. There was some common phrasing of, you know, permaculture type people being either purple or brown, meaning, you know, they're either hippies or you know, quote, practical people, um embracing the terms and doing things instead of you know living in this ideal ideological world, uh not really doing anything, just talking about whatever. And um it's it's it's it's kind of stupid, okay? Um so the bottom line is I'm a proponent of permaculture, I'm a proponent of taking action, and um you know, call it what you want, permaculture, regenerative agriculture. Um I don't particularly care, but I'm not one to sit around and you know mentally masturbate about you know the differences between the two. I'm more interested in talking about the common ground and the solutions that they provide to the problems that we have, in particular here at York Meadow Farm, which is not having a comprehensive plan that provides action steps that we can take over time to build this property into something sustainable and more regenerative for the long term. So after that blog post and sharing on social media, we connected with several different permaculture uh and regenerative agriculture designers as they themselves choose to label what they do and their work a little bit differently, um, whether it's permaculture or regenerative agriculture. Again, I think in large part they're doing very similar things, but they choose different terms, and that is fine because I don't care. I am interested in the results that they can deliver instead of the words they use to uh define themselves. Um if you are interested in who we have talked to and the current status uh with them, then uh that is something that I will be sharing with Patreon subscribers only at this point in time. Eventually it will be revealed who we have selected on this journey to work with uh for the design in the long term. But if you want to learn more about the journey itself, who we're talking to, the struggles and challenges that we are experiencing specifically, then you've got to become a Patreon subscriber, and you can do so at patreon.com slash allaroundgrowth, where I will be shedding light on the designers themselves, the firms that we've been working with, and who and why we have chosen to work with. So yeah, check it out. Patreon.com slash allaroundgrowth. Uh, I've had several phone calls with people, done a little bit of work online with people, and the search continues at this point because some of the people that we've been trying to connect with have either been actively working on projects, hosting courses, or just simply been on vacation with families. So um we have yet to connect with about half of the designers that we've we we've contacted, but uh we we've contacted four, feel good about all four. Uh each have uh positive aspects to them, uh each have negative aspects to them, and um it's just it's important to talk to each of them, go over the project in depth and in detail, um because this is something that's going to serve us for the rest of my life and the life of any children I may have, nieces, nephews, and generations to come. You know, so it's it's it's it's it's critical to find the right fit and put the time in to make sure that the person that we work with is the right person. So um the it's it's exciting, it's challenging, and um we're gonna continue looking for and talking with all of the people that we've talked with thus far to ensure that we've got that right fit. So again, if you want to you know keep updated on this project, then check out the blog post in the show notes below. Um follow us on social media at Yorkmeadow Farm. You can learn more on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter to a lesser extent. Um but ultimately, you know, check out Yorkmeadowfarm.com, sign up for the newsletter at Yorkmeadowfarm.com slash newsletter, and that is a great way to get the updates as they come sooner than people will find out on social media. Also, you know, if you like this episode and you want to, you know, share it uh with people via social media, yeah, please do so. That that's uh that's great. Leave a five-star review on your podcast player of choice. It all helps us grow all around and it helps bring and generate traffic to the website, uh, which is inevitably going to be York Meadow Farm. I'm working on tying all-around growth into the York Meadow Farm website. The the the show isn't simply sponsored by York Meadow Farm. It's recorded here, it's where I live, it's i York Meadow Farm has become my life. And that's going to simply be the the where the show is hosted. Homestead specific episodes are going to be publicly available, and we're going to eventually work on creating a subscriber type of approach within the website itself on top of what's going on at Patreon. So however you right now the best way to support the show is patreon.com slash allaroundgrowth. Stand by for updates as everything continues to grow and evolve here at the homestead. And um, you know, again, check out Patreon for exclude exclusive updates and early access to content just like this. So if you have recommendations or connections that uh are relevant to permaculture and regenerative agriculture, send them my way. But uh please consider supporting us on Patreon, following us on social media, and again, thank you for your support and involvement in this journey, and I look forward to sharing what we've got coming up and our our our progress on this journey with you in the future. Thanks for listening today. This is Rob Kaiser. Have a wonderful week ahead. God bless you.