We've been talking permaculture in these parts for a while now. Our owlets are well versed, having been guinea pigs for our Seedlings e-course, and living with two passionate permie parents, they've totally picked up the lingo. It's hilarious, and pretty amazing to watch how they absorb it so intuitively when we begin talking. And it's an awesome moment when you realise they're getting it, growing with it. Everything's going to be ok with earth stewards like them in the ranks.
Two years ago, this week exactly, I completed a Permaculture Design Certificate here in Hobart. For me, it was pretty life changing. Like a positive way of re-framing what we already do; connecting the dots so that we can create the kind of community and world we hope to live in. It was a huge, awesome period of growth for me. I discovered it was all about gardening and community and nature and mindfulness and so very much more. Intrigued by my learning experience, Owletpapa undertook his PDC last year, and right now, as I type, he's completing his Permaculture Teacher Training with Rosemary Morrow and a bunch of other incrediblepassionate permie peeps. It's a perfect fit for him and his ecological brain and somewhat outgoing nature. We're sitting up late into the night talking, debriefing and planning and wondering where this all might go… How we can implement permaculture thinking more fully into our lives. And casting our eyes over our permaculture design (or designs rather, as we've got one each!), and seeing how we're going with implementing that.
On the practical side of things, our permaculture design is probably one third of the way implemented. We're slow and lazy gardeners, but motivated by bursts of work between bush walks and work days. We have a chook orchard and a small food forest that are going gangbusters. The veggie spiral is bubbling away as we experiment with crop rotation, succession, guild planting and a whole lot of soil improvement. We've slowed the flow of water and nutrients from our garden, created topsoil where there was none, and learnt so much. But we have a heap more lawn to convert into productive space. There's that back corner that's just made for a studio of some sort if we can forego the Hill's Hoist. The front verandah could do with some sort of pergola to grow grapes up and we need to move the side gate. Bees will be arriving in Spring and I'm hoping ducks won't be too far off. The house is another matter entirely, with lots of improvements to be made and water harvesting to be improved. The front garden is yet to be touched, although it's an established mostly-indigenous garden now. Although not as fast as we'd like, it's getting there.
One of my favourite permaculture principles is Use Small and Slow Solutions. Our current group of Seedlings are looking at it now and hopefully finding some comfort in it too in their busy family-filled days. It's the one that reminds you to just work on things one bite at a time. Things will get done eventually and by slowing down, playing, working, observing, you can appreciate the process so much more. Only realising further down the track what you've achieved. Much like parenting owlets. You just need to trust the process.
Spots are filling up now for our third season of Spiral Garden Seedlings. In the interests of slowing things down, we're changing the format this Winter. We'll be working through just one principle each week so our families can really get stuck into it deeply, or just pick one thing to do on the weekends. Family time. So far, just one shy of 60 families have joined us for the course. We're super thrilled that some of them want to come back and do it all over again this time. In amongst our Seedlings families have been green thumbs, gardening novices, permaculture designers and teachers, homeschoolers, unschoolers, educators and we're estimating about 300 children - fabulous earth stewards. We're so grateful for the opportunity to share our work and our passion with each of them, seeing families connect and work together. Yep. It's going to be ok.
~ Lauren. xx
This post was originally published on our personal blog, Owlet.
