Permaculture San Joaquin – Colombia
On this site we keep track of our progress developing a Permaculture education centre
Yesterday we posted the article Technology Cannot Save Civilization. Today we follow up with a fresh and clarifying look at that one alternative to bringing our earth back in balance that is all around us and still goes unnoticed too much: Nature! Let’s compare how humans use energy with how nature cycles it. Big insights hidden in plain view: Energy In Nature.
Published today, a new article, the first of three, where we look at the ways humans have influenced our planet, compared to how nature has created it over millions of years before humans showed up. These three pieces are meant to make you think about our activities and attitudes at a deeper level. Part one is up now, the other two will be added over the next days.
Technology Cannot Save Civilization.
Last Monday night we were hit by a severe rainstorm causing landslides all around our farm. Read about it here.
Observation is of great importance for any Permaculture project. At the end of the 2015/16 El Niño we could reflect on how nature responded to the greatest drought in our area in decades. Read about it here.
We’re happy to announce that Permaculture San Joaquin is now a member of the World Permaculture Association (WPA). We fit in their category Projects, and we are now part of a growing family in the Permaculture Laboratories Network (PLN). Each laboratory in this network has a name specific for their location. We’re located in a rural part of Colombia, not too far from the capital Bogota, with a climate that alternates between wet and dry seasons. We are named “Rural Wet-Dry Tropics Permaculture Laboratory”.
How people use the word ‘weeds’ as a negative descriptor of a huge and very varied group of plants already indicates we’re falling prey to over simplistic thinking once again. To consider many plants as totally unwanted shows a denial of how nature functions. Weeds are nature’s answer to disturbed or destroyed ecosystems. Nature does not recognize unwanted plants, she only sees function.
An unused field, next to our dams, full of a diverse collection of weeds.
Every disturbance of vegetation is met with a reaction, be it fire, compaction of the ground, plowing, erosion or anything else and weeds are the first emergency responders. Continue reading Weeds
Last Saturday, Bill Mollison, the man who founded the Permaculture movement, died. An outpouring of testimonies on the significance of his work by hundreds, if not thousands, of people followed. A memorial page for him on Facebook flooded with comments about how Bill changed people’s thinking (and through that their life) within a day after the page opened and more are posted every hour. There is a growing consciousness that these changes in thinking and working are way overdue. I think we’re witnessing an epic shift taking place and his death might very well be what will make us come together to make a major push towards a new paradigm for our planet.
With the internet we have access to enormous amounts of information. So much even that it is almost paralyzing. How can we find a focus for what we read, look at, think about and work on? Continue reading We Need To Act
A few days ago we were in La Mesa for some groceries, and the talk of the week there was all about water… Because there wasn’t any. La Mesa has no drinking water as the last effect of El Niño. Most of our neighbors are in a similar situation. Nobody here is really prepared for extremes in the weather. We’re a little proud that our dams still have water so we can irrigate our gardens every day. As a result we got some carrots, a cabbage leaf and a squash for lunch and dinner today. In our water tanks we still have over 6000 liters of drinking water. We are slowly starting to get somewhere.
We’re all a bit lazy sometimes and to be honest our choice to apply Permaculture was also slightly based on a wish for (future) laziness. If nature functions so well on earth, we can all setup our lives for nature to do most work leaving only a bit of maintenance and harvesting for us to do.
Permaculture San Joaquin - Colombia 