Diaphanous glow rises from the east as we sink into full solar exposure. Wake up, wake up young ones, the first to rebuke the day for starting the same as it did yesterday. Ignited by morning light, we are given our first few conscious waking seconds, where individuals emerge like skyscrapers.
Hear the chickens? Skipping the yawn, straight into cluck-clucking Seymour’s proverbial “feeeeed me.” Maybe we can find ourselves warmed by their expectance of our presence? We walk over to their 5 star Coop, the ground filled with delicious bugs thriving in a layer of deep mulch and food scraps, inoculated with EM (effective microorganisms) like a perfect dressing for an endless salad bar. We small talk for a few and begin our trail away, but they keep on clucking! Perhaps it is not the hand that feeds whom they adore. It was the pigs after all that led Orwell’s revolution.
Patterns of relationships with contrary intrinsic behaviors require influence at the edges. Edges, full of vibrancy, noise, dynamic relationships. Great areas for observation. One cannot resist them like one cannot resist the seasons. In other words, I will accept that my love for the chickens is a one way street. Gratitude for the eggs, tilling, soil building, waste management program and the timely alarm clock qualities of the bird are still due.
Change, compromise, and the sun, thus far have been established as the reliable constants in this historically repeating planet. What else to do but increase resiliency in your life’s design by stacking functions, grow diversity, and increasing the dynamic relationships of all interacting systems? One can focus and learn from observing and engaging with the relationships and expressions and of patterns, as opposed to individual structure, plants, and animals in a shared space. How they relate with each other and where they are nestled in the equally affected larger community is a basis for whole systems design.
An introduction of my segue from mornings of waking up from my tent on the windward side of the Ko’olau into a Day 4 reflection of the Permaculture Design Course on Green Rows Farm in Waimanalo. 10 of us with diverse backgrounds absorb our multiple instructors approach to giving us tools to grow our toolbox to take on the world. Assessing Flows, Patterns, Functional Analysis against a foundation of ethics, a set of design principles and design attitudes with the effort to design and implement appropriate systems to the site, or let the land share its needs… Observe, Learn, Interact… Go!
And of course every word and concept is sinking in, from understanding geological, cultural and historical implications of the landscape to appropriate technology, grey water systems, and renewable energy installations. Creative vegetative and structural relative placement on site to harness all natural resources goes without saying. This is enriching our brains and we are embodying the technical and imaginative aspect to become part of the global permaculture army. Or something like that. Fortunately, we have designed a reservoir for storing the information overflow to be harvested and recycled through the system at a later date. All part of the design process.
More to come.
