The Little Way of Gardening: Discovering Permaculture

Looking out of the window I can see the hedge that lines the driveway and, beyond that, a mass of garden, weeds, trees, and shrubs. Threatening dark clouds loom on the horizon. It can’t decide if it’s going to rain or not. The gray and blue and black of the sky is punctuated by towering pines, honey locusts, and weeping willows. The chickens are snug in the coop with a rain tarp over them―just in case―and I hope that the woodchucks that seem to have taken up permanent residence here, in the Farwell Road garden, will stop dropping by for a salad bar lunch.

No matter how many years go by, the beauty of this place never seems to get old.

This is the place my parents bought when they were first married. They’ve never moved.

It was here, on this property, that my love for the outdoors and my first intuitions about “tilling and keeping” the land were fostered. It’s not a farm. It’s an old historic New England house that sits on a few acres of land: a large backyard, and at least as much forest, tipping down to the old Boston & Maine railroad tracks, right along the Merrimack River. Almost every weekend I can remember, my parents worked on projects related to the house (it was a real fixer-upper) or the landscape. My mother has a wonderful eye for flowers and always has lovely beds scattered around the property. My father started our vegetable garden. He always begins the seeds indoors, while the chill is still in the air.

When I was young, if I wasn’t doing school work, I was almost certainly outdoors. Spring, summer, fall, winter―my four siblings and I always found a way to play, whatever the weather. Memories of hot summer days at a lake, adventures in the woods with my dad, sledding down the treacherous back hill (which was strictly forbidden, as it was full of trees, making the fun all the better in our eyes and deviating my brother’s septum at least once). This is where New England got deep into my bones. The topography, the landscape, the colors, the smells. . . and it was all ours, it was what we had been given. Tromping down the railroad tracks, riding the “horse tree,” collecting “bootle-beetles,” spotting owls, foxes, raccoons, hawks and other wildlife, standing in the middle of the woods looking upward and around and feeling so small, so free and so safe: These were the impressions that captured my imagination and inspired my love for the world in its wild and unadulterated state.

It was probably in my early college years that my interest in cultivating the land (and not just enjoying its beautiful natural state) was first kindled. There wasn’t any big or monumental reason for this. I just liked it. I liked being outside and working after a long year of being in the classroom. I liked being a part of what my parents were working on. I liked feeling the ground under me―I hate gardening in shoes and unless there is poison ivy or chicken poop around, I am barefoot!―and the hot sky above me. I liked the quiet and the head space that it afforded to me. I wanted to learn everything I could about agriculture, the best way to grow things, and help make something beautiful.

Oddly (or not so oddly) enough, it was during my graduate studies in theology that my interest in sustainable agricultural models and humane animal husbandry practices blossomed. Everything that I was taught (particularly metaphysics and bioethics) made so much sense and helped me to articulate concepts that I had merely intuited before. If being is gift, that changes everything. God’s creation is the physical, visible manifestation of His Love, and the forerunner of Incarnate Love Himself. “Heaven and earth are full of the glory of the Lord.” God is always-already holding everything in existence, at every moment giving all being life. As the Byzantine Liturgy sings, “He is everywhere present and filling all things.” Far from a strange form of pantheism, this vision brings creation to its rightful place in the hierarchy of being, and shows the supreme dignity of the role of man in bringing the things of the earth to their true final end. The world, and all of creation, is God’s gift to humankind, to tend, keep, and till. There is a mutual relation of dependence (within a hierarchy) between man and the land. On the one hand, we are dependent on the land to bring forth our food. Yet in order to bring forth that food, the land is dependent on man to cultivate it and guide its growth. This is only one of many “theo-ag” concepts that made me passionate about agriculture. In a way, cultivating land is a participation in the ongoing work of creation, and, in that sense, it is an experience of the Divine.

It was a dear friend from graduate school who introduced me to the whole world of permaculture. After graduate school she and I both taught theology (though in different places) yet we both took every chance we could to learn more and be involved in agriculture. In fact, that summer I volunteered at a local organic CSA farm. After graduate school, we both taught theology but took every chance we could to learn and be involved in agriculture. That summer I volunteered at a local organic CSA farm. She called and asked if I wanted to join her in getting trained and certified as a permaculture designer. It would involve webinars, a textbook, and spending ten days in a tent in Illinois in the dead of summer. Of course I agreed.

Permaculture is defined in many ways, though the term itself originated as a combination of the words “permanent”[i] and “agriculture.” It is basically a way of going about agriculture in “closed-loop,”[ii] permanent, sustainable systems―the idea being that the more permanent the structures, the healthier the soil, the healthier the land, the healthier the animals, and the healthier the people. One of its common catch-phrases is: “Care of Earth, Care of People, Care of the Future.” There are several defining characteristics of a permaculture system: for example, the goal of maximizing yield while minimizing human effort. This requires attentiveness to the patterns of nature, the particularities of your place, and mimicking it as closely as possible for the benefit of all involved. It’s important to note that much of what permaculture offers is simply a retrieval of wise, traditional practices that have gone on for centuries, and have been obscured by modern agricultural practices. However, permaculture also offers innovation in certain techniques and methods that better fit the contemporary situation, as well as providing principles that pave the way for genuinely original practices.

Keep reading! Click here for a review of the popular More-with-Less Cookbook, and its sequel Living More with Less.