Saving Money & Wasting Less

Lesson 8: Putting it together

Permaculture

Permaculture is a term coined by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren to describe a system of permanent agriculture/permanent culture. It is a system that can be applied to an apartment with only a small balcony on which to grow food, to large farms or ranches, and to everything in between (see, for example the Earth User's Guide to Permaculture by Rosemary Morrow, and the Permaculture websites http://www.permaculture.com/ and http://www.permaculture.net/).

In a permaculture garden or back yard, once the system is set up and fully planted, each element has several functions, and parts of the system support each other. It is possible to leave a permaculture garden for several weeks, and return to find the garden better than you left it, even though it has had no human help or intervention.

A permaculture system certainly saves the Earth and it will save you money. In fact, with an average sized garden it is possible for a small family to be totally self-sufficient in food, with very little effort once the system is set up.

Permaculture is a step beyond organic gardening or farming, because it is a system of ethics, rather than a system of farming or gardening. The ethics of permaculture are:

• Care for the Earth.
• Care for people.
• Distribute surplus.
• Reduce consumption.

There are many strategies and techniques that can be used to achieve these ethical goals, but they all share in common that you start by studying and observing the place you are in, and design the permaculture system to suit the environment rather than trying to enforce a system on the environment. All permaculture systems feature a huge amount of diversity, and extensive use of perennial plants, and they all aim to produce sustainable soils that do not need artificial chemicals or fertilisers, since plants are grown to fulfill the functions of these chemicals.

If you wish to save money and save the Earth, then the principles and ethics of permaculture will help you to do both, even if you decide to adopt only a few of its ideas. Consider adopting its ethics as part of how you live:

Care for the Earth

Care for the Earth in everything you do. Limit your environmental footprint by polluting less, consuming less, wasting less, repairing/re-using/recycling more.

Care for people

When you practice voluntary simplicity and learn how to live on less, you will almost certainly find you have more time. Your priorities will also change. You will no longer be craving the latest gadget or the newest technological advance, and will begin to crave opportunities to care for family, friends, neighbours, and will look for opportunities to volunteer to help others in need.

Distribute surplus

At first sight you might think that this contradicts the aims of this course if you interpret distribute surplus as give away surplus. After all, aren't we trying to save money here? Why not sell surpluses? There is a view, expressed in Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn and elsewhere, that our culture's problems started when food began to be locked up, because until that point food was free for everyone to take as they needed. Food being locked up meant that some people had the key and others did not. Those with no means of accessing the food had to work for an employer in return for food, or the means to purchase it. It was the beginning of power, kingdoms, politics, and wars.

As a practitioner of voluntary simplicity, I have found that giving away surpluses has advantages that I would lose by selling my surpluses. I give away eggs, for example (since my permaculture system includes a small flock of hens and a rooster - even though I live on the edge of a city).

My neighbours were initially uneasy about taking eggs, and really wanted to pay for them. In these economic rationalist times, it seems that everyone is supposed to be obsessed with making money, and it made them suspicious and uncomfortable when I wasn't. It's a strange reaction to being given something!

My neighbours soon found a way out of their discomfort. One neighbour gives me boxes of peaches when she has a glut from her tree. Another comes around sometimes with a freshly baked herb loaf. A third occasionally gives me a bottle of wine (which he gets free from his work at a vineyard). All of them throw green waste over the fence for my little flock to eat.

I often sit on my patio and hear my neighbours 'chatting' to the hens, and they're always delighted when there are young chicks being raised. The simple act of giving away eggs has enriched my relationships with family and friends, but especially with my neighbours in ways I could never have imagined. They don't even complain about the rooster.

Reduce consumption

This course has covered many ways in which you can reduce consumption, especially of goods you don't need, don't really want, and which only add to the useless clutter. Naturally, this also saves money and the Earth. The simple acts of thinking about what you buy, saving up for things you want instead of buying them on credit, and so on, can free you of unnecessary consumption. You can begin to feel like a citizen again, instead of a 'consumer'.

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