The Culture of Permaculture

Being connected to our little home by building it ourselves makes us happy

This is part III of the series; scroll down to read parts I and II.

Does Costa Rica hold the secret to happiness?  According to a number of different studies, Costa Ricans are the happiest people on the planet, with a longer life expectancy than Americans. Over the past weeks, major news outlets such as the New York Times and the BBC have reported on these results.   One figure, called “happy life years,” results from merging average self-reported happiness (where subjects rate their happiness on a ten-point scale) with longevity. Using this system, Costa Rica ranks first, the United States is 19th, and Zimbabwe comes in last.

Another approach combines happiness and life expectancy but adjusts for environmental impact.  Here again, Costa Rica tops the list, achieving contentment in an environmentally sustainable way. The Dominican Republic ranks second, the United States 114th (because of its huge ecological footprint) and again Zimbabwe is last.   One could argue that happiness is linked to the preservation of nature and people’s access to it—Costa Rica has made the protection of biodiversity a top priority with its extensive network of national parks and indigenous reserves.  The country also prohibits private ownership of the coastline, even forcing large hotels to run shuttles across their property to allow locals access to the beach.

We got to check out the Costa Rican health care system up close recently when Louis went to the hospital to get a botfly removed from his belly!  This nasty little jungle pest bites you and lays an egg which grow into a worm-like larva.  His was only about an eighth of an inch long, but apparently if left there they can grow much longer—gross!  However, the experience of the hospital was very positive: the wait wasn’t long, the staff were friendly (joking that the larva they extracted was their new pet) and guess what?  When we were finished and asked for the bill, they laughed and waved goodbye- it was free!  Needless to say, that made us very happy.

As New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof pointed out, another major reason for Costa Rican happiness might be traced to a decision made in 1949 to abolish the national army and invest instead in education.  The investment paid off in many ways: a more stable society free from the violent conflict that has ravaged much of Central America; a narrowing of the gender gap (a few days ago Costa Rica elected its first woman president); and a strong economy that has fostered the effective health care and social systems.

Costa Rican pacifism and biodiversity are both sources of national pride—while waiting in line when we first arrived at the airport on this trip, we enjoyed a video which proclaimed “our army” over footage of leafcutter ants, monkeys and iguanas, and “our navy” over footage of fish and sea turtles.

My family has now been living here for over two months, working on the development of a nascent ecovillage called Tacotal, and examining for ourselves what we need to be happy.  Having stripped down our lives from the comforts and amenities of California to a tent in the jungle with no electricity, we’ve been slowly rebuilding those luxuries and considering what comforts are truly necessary to us.  Last week we moved into our newly-built bamboo and wood casita, which we managed to complete for about $1500. Nearly all of us in the community (now about 15) contributed to making it over the past month, and it’s definitely made me happier to have a little more space and some furniture.

The A-frame casita serves as a two story sleeping and living space for me, Louis, little Lîla and baby Ren.  The roof is a tarp made of a repurposed advertising banner, which works for the dry season but will probably be replaced by something more permanent in May (we see the Kotex logo directly over our heads when we lie in bed).  The floor and some of the framing is laurel, a hardwood that (so we hear) is locally and sustainably harvested. The main framework, deck floor, and ladder are Costa Rican bamboo, and the walls are made of a breathable shade cloth they call zaran.

A next step is to work on getting some more solar power.  At present we’ve got one 56 watt photovoltaic panel for the community, which is not enough to meet all of our needs. We’re working on the design for our own composting toilet nearer to our cabin, which will all serve as the mount  for our own panel (currently somewhere on route from the United States).  More lights at night and a baby monitor so we could go up to hang out in the community kitchen after putting the kids to bed would make me happy.

Among the other upcoming projects are putting in a polished earthen floor for the main kitchen, which is currently made of loose dirt (imagine our 3 year-old after a day of playing in the kitchen and the way our baby continually drops her toys—ugh!)  Fixing the floor might help reduce the need for building the bike-powered washing machine we’ve been collecting materials for.  We’ve got most of the parts save one key gear that has been hard to get a hold of.   The rest of the community seems somewhat ambivalent about the washing machine, but I’ve got a pressing need, and that is cleaning diapers.

Diapering is a big question for many new parents, and by now between the two kids I think we’ve tried about all the options—disposables, diaper laundering services, compostables, and washing our own.  With Lîla we also started “elimination communication” at six months, teaching her the sign language for “toilet” and having her use the potty at an early age.  Here in the jungle, it just didn’t seem right to use disposables for baby Ren, especially when we have no garbage pickup and have to bring our own garbage into town and find a dumpster. Not to mention the fact that we’re supposed to be starting an ECO-village.  Unfortunately, we’ve learned that the sign language for “toilet” also means “sex from behind” in Costa Rica….

We’ve gone through the suitcase of compostable diapers I dragged down here.  So for now, I’m hand washing the cloth ones in solar-heated hot water, with bio-detergent (imported), soap berries, and limes (both from our land).  We spray off the poop into a special compost pit, which after some time will be full of super rich soil.  It’s what permaculturists call a closed-loop cycle.   And to balance out this fairly unpleasant labor of love, we spend the money we’d use for disposables to pay a local mama to do our other laundry in her machine, so I have time for other things (like making marmalade with some of our million oranges).

For me, happiness is finding that precious overlap between sustainability and comfort, where my family’s needs are met within the boundaries of a healthy ecosystem. And that’s what permaculture is— creating positive, regenerative relationships between humans and the planet.  If Costa Rica has a secret to happiness, perhaps it is in the ways it has put this ethic into practice, for the benefit of its people and its environment.

Yoga on the deck which will become our temporary bedroom

by Juliana Birnbaum Fox

We’ve been here a month now, and I’m actually writing from a hammock with my laptop powered by the sun, underneath a pair of orange trees.  This is our new “living room” in this experiment in outdoor living, outfitted with a log bench, a couple of rocking chairs woven with cord in the local style, and a repurposed buoy that serves as a swing.  A few steps away are kitchen and shower, cross a little bridge to the bathtub/dipping pool, and another few meters is our newly finished wooden platform where soon we’ll be sleeping.  For now it makes a great yoga deck and has a sweet view across the Machuca River valley to a steep hillside dotted with grazing white cows.

A lot of folks have called us “brave” to move out here with our two little daughters, Serenne (5 months) and Lîla (3 years).  From my perspective, parenting here allows me to do basically the same things I’ve been doing at home in Berkeley, but with more of a sense of purpose and alignment with my values.  Whereas in the U.S. I find myself feeling like a somewhat unwilling, slightly apologetic housewife, driving my little ones around, grocery shopping and turning up the heat to stay warm, here I can take care of my family’s needs with a much smaller ecological footprint.  That is, minus the impact of the plane flight here, which is considerable—a subject I’d like to return to in a future post.

Being in the jungle with a pre-crawling baby is easier than it will be when she’s on the move, as I spend much of my time with her in a carrier.  My approach to parenting is strongly inspired by Jean Liedloff’s book The Continuum Concept, which is linked to “attachment parenting” and the resurgence of baby wearing in the U.S.   Liedloff based her book on experiences living with indigenous people in the Amazon and observing their relationships with their babies and children.   She believes that having baby spend the majority of their first year worn close to mama’s body and snuggled close to her at night helps develop an essential sense of security and trust that stays with the child into adulthood.  This concept of “kangaroo care,” and the idea of skin to skin contact as important, especially for newborns, has started to gain credence even in U.S. hospitals.

While the indigenous families – observed often saw mama carrying her baby, she would usually have him or her in a sling or wrap so that hands could be free for work, even while nursing.  Yet when mama tired of carrying baby, the extended family and community were often available and interested in spending time with the little one.  This way of raising children feels right and sensible to me, in contrast to the way I feel when I’m home alone with my baby all day, isolated and trying to stay sane, and driving my toddler to and from preschool.

So far, even though the number of us living at Tacotal is small, my reality has been much closer to that of the indigenous mama, and I love that.  There are lots of hands to hold baby and tell stories or show plants and animals to Lîla.  The one major issue is that little Serenne’s thermostat is set to North America, so she has been really hot since being here.  In the heat of the day when it seems too hot to wear her, I put her in her play gym in the kitchen and give her lots of little baths.  She is just as cheerful as she’s always been most of the time, and I’ve been giving her little tastes of our bananas (we’ve harvested a big bunch from one of our trees since arriving) in anticipation of starting her on solid foods in a few weeks.  She doesn’t seem to know what to do with the banana yet but is very interested in the new taste.

I wrote earlier that we’re able to meet our needs with a smaller ecological footprint, and want to discuss a few of the systems that make that true.  One major difference from life at home is being off the power grid and away from municipal garbage and sewage lines .  I can honestly say I enjoy my daily visit to our composting toilet here, up on a breezy hillside and built of bamboo, wood, and recycled materials.  It has a small area in front for pee that separates it from the poop, which allows the “humanure” to dry out and prevents bad odor.  Instead of flushing, we put a few cups of sawdust in to complete our mission and close the loop (food to poop back to soil where we grow more food). 

Stephen demonstrates how to 'flush' the composting toilet

With no garbage pickup here, we are very aware of the waste we create, and in fact I’m looking right now at the border of our “living room,” marked with green glass wine bottles.  Since we don’t have a fridge, we buy more dry bulk items with less packaging.  We separate out organic waste for the worm compost, leftovers that feed the chickens, and citrus for the regular compost.  Packaging is separated into plastic, glass and metals which can be recycled and paper and cardboard is used for kindling in the wood stove.  Another ingenious little system which was put into place since we last visited involves creating building material—mass that can be built into an earthen wall—by stuffing small plastic and cellophane bags that can’t be reused into empty plastic bottles.

Of course, a major difference from home and one of my favorite parts of being here is the lack of driving.  I especially dislike trying to get two kids in and out of their carseats several times a day and fighting the traffic in the Bay Area.  The road in here is so rough that you need a good reason to drive out—riding a horse or walking is actually more comfortable.  With the number of folks living here, we each only would need to leave every few weeks for groceries, though most of us probably venture out once or twice a week to get supplies, go to a restaurant, or visit the beach (about 30 minutes from the end of our bumpy road to the first Pacific beach at Tarcoles.  Since I want Lîla to be able to learn more Spanish and have a chance to interact with more kids (there is presently just one other kid here, her good friend Jazz), we’ll be driving a bit more often when the two of them start school next month.  Unless we find a school accessible by horse!

by Juliana Birnbaum Fox

The family in front of our jungle kitchen

Up until now, we’ve collected stories from around the world on this Culture of Permaculture blog—reports back from inspiring sites that we feel are in some way demonstrating solutions to the serious social and environmental crises our generation faces.  The posts have included profiles of places that my family and like-minded collaborators have visited and conversations we’ve had on topics such as community, ecological design, and living in balance with natural systems. 

Our goal is to publish a tabletop-style book (read more about the Sustainable   [R]evolution book project here) that showcases these design solutions in practice around the world, from urban community gardens to indigenous villages to permaculture centers.  As an anthropologist, I’ve been writing and editing the manuscript from an ethnographic perspective, looking at these places as evidence of an emerging, international culture of sustainable living. 

This entry marks the beginning of a new era of this research.  Instead of simply visiting these sites, we have the incredible opportunity to create one.   About two years ago, my family decided to join a group of people who formed a collective to buy 55 acres of land in Costa Rica.  Many of the members of the group knew each other from an annual Burning Man camp they were part of; some, like us, were connected through Stephen Brooks.  Stephen is the ever-optimistic and energetic creative force behind Punta Mona, a permaculture center on the Carribean side of Costa Rica, and Kopali Organics, a natural and fair trade food company.  His unmatched networking abilities and experience living and working in Costa Rica made it possible for 33 people- American, Costa Rican and Mexican—to come together and ante up to be part of the community we named Tacotal. 

Most contributed money ($12,500 per ¼ “pod”, with 8 pods total); a few contributed sweat equity with jobs ranging from accounting to construction and engineering.  We use the pod system to organize ourselves and make decisions, and together the 8 pods form a legal corporation which officially owns the land.  Since it has not been subdivided as of now, none of us actually own our individual home sites.  We’re all in this together, for better or worse.  This is part of what allowed the price tag to be so low—many of the costs associated with buying land here come from the expenses of subdividing.  It creates a different sort of community too, one based much more on trust and long-term involvement, as selling shares is somewhat complicated in this setup.

Tacotal is the local name for the incredibly resilient, fast-growing vegetation that comes up after land has been cleared.  As one of our community members pointed out yesterday at a meeting, Tacotal is the start of the forest that perpetually regenerates: pure potential.

The first banana harvest since our arrival

It feels like this year, we’re starting to gain some momentum and make bigger strides toward the realization of that potential.  When the opportunity to purchase the land came up two years back, we needed to move quickly.  At that time, the majority of the community members were not ready to make the move to the land permanently.   So Tacotal has faced the complexity of being a largely virtual community, except the month or so around our annual meeting, which has drawn about half to three-quarters of the members to the land.  Much of what has been built and planted was done by a handful of members who could devote more time and energy.  This includes several Ticos (Costa Ricans) who live in the capital, San Jose, and came on weekends, sometimes organizing permaculture workshops or other courses that brought helping hands to the land.

That brings me to our location—we’re on the Rio Machuca (one of the best features of the land as it allows us to go for a swim in various pools and little waterfalls) about an hour from San Jose and 30 minutes to the Central Pacific Coast and the Jaco area.  It feels tropical and jungle-forested but drier than a rainforest.  The town of Atenas isn’t far, and its climate has been called the best in the world by NASA and National Geographic.  The nearest town to us is San Mateo de Orotina, only a couple of miles away, but as of now our road is in a state that requires at least 15 minutes to navigate those few bumpy miles.

Because of this, ironically, our first step in establishing our eco-life here was buying an SUV!  This was hard to bring ourselves to as people who have rallied against the awful American propensity for huge gas guzzlers that are only used to drive on nice smooth roads.  Anyway you can’t access our land here without a serious 4 x 4.  At least we got a diesel and have plans to convert it to veggie oil…  after much research we ended up going for a Nissan Terrano, bought through a website called crautos.com and with the help of our Tico friends.  It’s been handling the road really well so far.

Arriving at San Jose airport-- it's hard to travel light with two kids!

 A crazy synchronicity with the Nissan- not sure what this is evidence of besides globalization and some kind of law of attraction.  The car appears to have been made for sale in Japan—it has Japanese writing on it in several places.  In 1998, I lived in Japan in a small city called Asahikawa, in the northernmost island of Hokkaido, working as an English teacher.  When I looked carefully at the writing on the car, I saw the kanji for Asahikawa—I think it came from a dealer there, of all places!

So our first week here was tied up with finding and buying the car, and trying to figure out the intricacies of getting cell phone/internet service—this has been complex and is still pending.   We also managed to set up a mailbox, get mattresses, and learn a little bit about the layout of San Jose.  It’s a major challenge getting around there as there are no real addresses—no house/building numbers and just a handful of named or numbered streets (and you’re super lucky if they are marked even if they do have a name!)  Directions are something like this:  “Go past the church, make a left, you’ll see a panaderia on the right, go 200 meters past that to the sleeping dog and make a U turn—don’t go the wrong way down the unmarked one way street…”

We finally made it to the farm about 10 days ago and this is the first time I’ve had a minute at an Internet café to post.  Tacotal is dripping with oranges at the moment and we’re making a ton of juice and have made a few attempts at marmalade.  There are also a ton of bananas in four different varieties and lots and lots of limes—I made a tasty banana ceviche last week which we learned about at a San Jose restaurant, they call it Guinean Ceviche.

Lila juicing oranges

 Since we were here last the place has obtained a dog and we hear there have been no snake sightings in a while which makes us all breathe a sigh of relief.  We’ve been staying in one of the star plate domes which went up since we last visited, and working on building the cabin that we will stay in for these months while we are building our “real” house.  Our daughter Lîla, who will be three in a couple of days, is having a great time taking care of the chickens, looking for lizards and butterflies, and swinging on the rope swing…

I will sign off for now and next time write more about the permaculture systems at Tacotal and the challenges of parenting in the jungle.

 by Rebecca Williams 

Rice field with composting toilet at the PCCJ

Many graduates of the PCCJ courses continue to return to Fujino to live and have created a thriving community centered around sustainable lifestyles and alternative thinking. Home to a Steiner school, a vigorous Transition Town movement, co-housing organizations, a multitude of artists and the Permaculture Center itself, Fujino is a community of people and organizations who share a desire to affect change in Japan.“

The permaculture movement is growing in Japan because people are looking for connection. For people who don’t know what to do, permaculture is a good way for them to take action in their lives,” says Junko Nakazono, co-founder of the Transition Town movement in Fujino.

Today about 75% of the Japanese population live in cities, with rural areas continuing to suffer socially and economically from urban drift. With Japan importing roughly 60% of its food, food security has become one of the hot political issues of the day and can be said to be one reason why many young Japanese have started to embrace permaculture. In August 2009, the Democratic Party of Japan ended the 53 year near consecutive reign of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, with food security as one of its main talking points. The DPJ’s goal is to increase food self-sufficiency to 50% in 10 years, and to 60% in the next 20. This election saw the mobilization of a usually despondent young Japanese electorate said to be responsible for the power shift.

“Japan relies too much on imports. It’s scary! Young people have to learn how to grow their own food,” says Taka Yamamoto, a worker at PCCJ. More than 70% of Japan’s working farmers are over 60 years old and nearly half are over 70. The graying of Japan’s agricultural sector has caused the area of abandoned or idle agricultural farmland to steadily increase since 1985 standing today at 3800 sq.km. (1520 sq.mi.). In 88% of cases, the land was abandoned because the owners said they were too old to work it.

Garden chicken house at the Permaculture Center of Japan

PCCJ founder Kiyokazu Shidara was once a rice farmer in Niigata Prefecture but grew disillusioned with the common use of pesticides and herbicides. He became interested in organic agriculture and went on to study Agricultural Anthropology at the University of Georgia. While living with a tribe in Africa conducting anthropological research, he learned ways of living that were more deeply connected with nature and became determined to practice permaculture in Japan.

 “More than 60% of Japan is forest land. Nature is there, but we don’t have any relationship with it,” says Shidara. Since opening the Center at Fujino in 1996, Shidara has continued to expand his permaculture vision with 3 other branches: Nagano in 2004, Kansai in 2005 and Kyushu in 2008. He is also currently working on establishing an Urban Permaculture Center in Kobe. “I’m not asking people to move from cities, but to change their lifestyles,” Shidara says. “Our grandmothers and grandfathers lived permaculture, but we have abandoned that way of life.”

 Permaculture in Japan has come on the heels of a general ‘Farming Boom’ where young people are becoming more and more interested in growing their own food and creating their own lifestyles. Hyakusho, a Japanese word that historically meant ‘ordinary people’ and therefore ‘farmers’, is now being reclaimed to mean ‘100 skills’ or roughly, ‘self-sufficiency’. It has come to have a pejorative meaning in the modern era, but is now often used as a rallying cry for Japanese wanting to change their reliance on consuming foreign goods.

“Everyone should be able to support their own lives with their own skills; I ask people to just get one more skill”, says Shidara. Passionate about practical change through grass roots action, Shidara and his Permaculture Center of Japan are training the next generation of Japanese farmer/activists to remake the countryside and the country. “The time for teaching permaculture is over. We have to create an original and efficient culture now.”

This is the latest from our Sustainable [R]evolution collaborator/photojournalist Craig Mackintosh, who has travelled to Jordan with permaculture teachers Geoff and Nadia Lawton.

Students from many countries study permaculture in Jordan

Geoff, Nadia and I are currently stationed a stone’s throw from the Dead Sea in the Jordan Valley. At 400 metres below sea level, this is the lowest place on earth. Geoff and Nadia are teaching a Permaculture Design Certificate course (PDC) to 35 students from many different countries. With this course, and other previous Permaculture Research Institute efforts in the region, we have a really good wedge of influence in what is effectively the hub of the middle east – the very open-bordered country of Jordan. Although we have a few ‘westerners’ here, the bulk of the students are from either Jordan or surrounding nations – like Palestine, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Qatar, Afghanistan, Turkey and even a couple of slightly further afield train passengers from Bulgaria. Other students come from Australia, Italy, UK, USA, Singapore and China. It’s been great getting to know them. A story could be told about many of these people alone.

(More… )

by Craig Mackintosh, Sustainable [R]evolution photojournalist at large

Last time I spoke about the world’s largest earthworks project – an incredible and unrivalled example of large scale water harvesting. Today we continue the tale, highlighting the beautiful and practical Kuttam Pokuna, or Twin Pools, found at Anuradhapura in north-central Sri Lanka.

Read story here.

Okay, the elephant has nothing to do with the story below (except that it’s also large in scale), but it is an appropriate way to let you all know of my whereabouts, and to explain my lack of posting of late (and it’s a great way to get your attention…). I’m currently in Sri Lanka working on the Sustainable (R)evolution book project.

by Craig Mackintosh

Let not even a drop of rain water go to the sea without benefiting man – Parakrama Bahu the Great, King of Sri Lanka, 1153–1186 AD

Much of Sri Lanka’s ancient water harvesting system is still in use right now – helping make it the largely food-self-sufficient country it is today, on land that would otherwise be predominantly bone dry.

Read the full article from Sustainable [R]evolution contributing writer Craig Mackintosh here.

Culture of Permaculture photojournalist Craig Mackintosh has relocated to Geoff and Nadia Lawton’s Zaytuna Farm in New South Wales, Australia, from where he’ll be travelling near and far documenting the most inspiring permaculture sites in the world. Check out the article below for more on how this 72-year-old woman implemented permaculture systems and transformed her home into an oasis.

This Aussie elder transformed her home into a permaculture oasis

Rosina Buckman tells me she’s 72 years old. She looks honest enough, so I’ll take her at her word, but her youthful spirit and energetic stride did give me a moment of pause. And more than that – her urban homestead was overflowing with clear evidence of passionate and fruitful labours that belie her age. I’m not the only one that’s impressed either, as the Sunshine Coast Council have just presented Rosina with one of their 2009 Living Smart awards – she’s their ‘Edible Landscape Winner’.

Rosina, a New Zealander by birth, lives in Tewantin, a small suburb on the fringes of Noosa – a tourist hot-spot on the Sunshine Coast in south-east Queensland. This is a land of ululant lorikeets and cackling kookaburras. The bird life in particular seem intoxicated with life, and nature in general seems jubilant – either optimistic, or just plain carefree, in the face of all we humans are throwing at it.

Click here to read more: