First Post - Permaculture

A lot has happened in the last few months. We finally managed to move to the farm last August and then had a brief couple of months of glorious sunshine before Winter moved in.

And of course Sodd's Law says that in the year when you've no central heating and the lighting is dodgy, that's when you get the coldest Winter for a generation.

Ye Gods but it was cold. I almost gave up cooking because it was so bitter in the kitchen that if I stayed in there long enough to cook, my fingers were so cold that it hurt.

But now Spring is, if not here, at least poking its head around the corner.

And last week I watched a TV program I considered truly revolutionary; "A Farm for the Future", by Rebecca Hoskin (famous for persuading her home town to do away with plastic bags)part of the BBC's Natural world series. Why they tucked away an important program like this in some out of the way spot on BBC2 is beyond me. They should have put it Prime Time BBC1 and shouted from the rooftops that everyone should watch it.

I see from the "Points of view" postings that there's plenty out there besides myself who think this way, and there were a number of requests to release it as a DVD.

So what was it about? Click on this for the Mail On-Line accompanying article, "Now my farm will teach the world to live without oil"

The starting point for Rebecca's argument is that experts in the field are all agreed that the "peak oil" point (i.e. "the point when the maximum rate of global oil extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline.") is all but upon us, if we have not even reached it already. From that point, oil production will fall by around 2-3% per year.

And our entire agricultural system is completely dependent on oil. What will we eat when we can't rely on oil?

I'll not go into vast detail here. She explains it much better than I, and you would be better to read the article link above. But the answer put forward is a method of farming very different to what we now use: Permaculture

And this is where I become suddenly excited. Because is where I can genuinely contribute and do something truly useful.

Our farm is not large, a little over 60 acres. But it is ideal for this form of farming, some will call it gardening.

Permaculture is a form of agriculture in which rather than relying on traditional methods of ploughing, planting and harvesting fields, the land becomes permanently planted with useful plants, in layers from ground cover to tree tops and including shrub layers and the under-soil beneficial fungi.

Land used in this way is vastly more fertile and productive than when used in the traditional way.

And moving away from monocultures means that such plantings are robust against disease and pest. The rise of a new wheat virus could currently wipe out major portions of the world's/humanity's food supply, because only limited numbers of varieties of wheat are grown. But no one pest or disease could destroy a developed permaculture system of many species. Some plants might fail, but others would survive. The eggs are in several baskets.

And so, my beautiful Gloucestershire farm is going to "go permaculture".

I've a lot of reading to do, and some courses to attend. I've been walking the fields and hill marking out in my mind where are the ditches and the ancient trees? Where are the marshy areas? Where might the marshes be developed into ponds and how can the water be most usefully be used for the environment? How can I extend the fruit orchards? Where should I plant trees to firm up land slippage?

I'm working on it.