EAST MONTPELIER – Permaculture fans from Quebec to New Jersey, and as far as Texas and India, flocked to All Together Now for the 5th annual Northeastern Permaculture Convergence (NPC) for workshops, discussions, a fourth of July square dance, two nights of camping, and one important focus – permaculture.  The focus is creating an ecological, socially equitable, perhaps harmonious, society.  But what does it mean to create a harmonious society, and what the heck is permaculture?!

It’s not what I first thought.  Permaculture is not the name of a froofy hair magazine.

Permaculture was started as an approach to permanent (sustainable) agriculture, and has evolved into a method for designing landscapes and structures which mimic the patterns found in nature to yield an abundance of food, fiber, materials, and energy for provision of local needs.

If you’re starting out like I did, you’re finding your way out of the salon, confused, perhaps a little embarrassed, yet at least sure of one thing now: that permaculture is not a hair-curling society or froofy magazine.  OK.  A design methodology?  Something to do with agriculture?

Here’s a permaculture favorite: the food forest, a hybrid of woods and orchard, diverse woodland ecosystem and productive agricultural land.  Food forests, also called edible forest gardens, are promising solutions for local food security and sustainability.  Requiring minimal external inputs (fertilizer, etc.) and being completely perennial, forest gardening could be the most sustainable form of agriculture we know of.  NPC included visits to three local food forests.

Permaculture is not the food forest itself, but the method of designing the food forest, a greywater pond for energy and water efficiency, an herb and salad garden conveniently outside the kitchen door, windows on buildings’ southern sides shaded from the sun in summer and soaking in warmth in winter, and an endless list of possibilities.  Central in permaculture are three ethics: Earth-care, human-care, and fair-share (what you learned in kindergarten.)

As a design science, permaculture can essentially be applied to anything.  At NPC, presenters discussed the permaculture of Zen, the yoga of permaculture, financial permaculture, and, as liberation ecologist Rafter T. Sass commented while leading a workshop, “the permaculture of getting my mail.”  Some people believe it’s important to stay focused on permaculture’s root in agriculture and Rafter’s joke highlights this notion, lest the newcomer wander from salon, to mortgage company, to ashram in search of permaculture truth.

“Sometimes we think we know the solutions to everything,” Rafter joked during his workshop.  They’re overflowing with them, indeed, yet many of the solutions need solutions before they can start solving.  Rafter’s workshop addressed this with strategies for expanding the grassroots social movement around permaculture. Reflecting on that, I’m not sure if the grassroots are what need focus.

As permaculture provides a framework for finding ecological solutions for meeting human needs, its’ experts are posed as the most needed consultants right now.  Permaculture is grassroots already, and its’ practitioners may be shading themselves out with their own modesty.  It’s time for a marketing campaign: “Permaculture – Designing Sustainability.”

Let’s take two permaculture principles – integrate rather than segregate and obtain a yield – and apply them here.   Generally, permaculturists could all make better livings through permaculture.  Likewise, permaculture could be used for solving much more of the world’s dilemmas.  If permaculturists were to document their grassroots work and develop professional portfolios – websites or otherwise – they would start gaining the necessary credibility to become the social/ecological consultants the world needs so desperately.  The portfolio, as documentation of their expertise, would help them integrate grassroots work into professional careers, obtain a yield, and further spread ecological vitality.

Sustainability is a bubbling topic these days, particularly in Vermont, and permaculture has a lot to offer here.  The 5th annual NPC was an inspiring weekend of hardworking idealists taking pragmatic steps and celebrating together.  Don’t fret if you missed it, however, because the Village Building Convergence is coming up at the end of August and will be another event leapfrogging towards an ecological future.

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