permaculture

The conventional methods of putting the garden away involve pulling up your hard-grown plants and tilling your soil. While this method works for a few seasons, permaculture has a longer-term view of soil health. Tilling the soil destroys much of the delicate soil structures that allow for high levels of biodiversity. There are little pockets of water and air in the soil where nutrient-carrying mycorrhizal fungi can grow and beneficial insects can reside.

“Respect your elders”

The Roots of Permaculture 

“Although the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.”

This is us:

We as a species evolved with the planet. The way we eat, the way our metabolic processes function, even the way our brains work in relation to our eco-cultural environment. The human race has a habit called anthropomorphism: to apply human characteristics to things that are not. At first glance this seems a little arrogant, certainly, an egocentrically asserted assumption, but…is it really? How can you shame a habit maintained by an entire species that just wants to understand.

Thirty years ago and about eighteen miles from Aspen, Colorado, Jerome Osentowski built a “hoop house,” a tunnel made of polyethylene that heats up due to solar radiation. He had in mind a greenhouse and kept adding to it with recycled steel and other materials. Over the years, his original hoop house design expanded into five greenhouses that now produce food via climates ranging from Zones 6 through 12.