Speaker 1: Welcome to the a coort Happen. Here is practical guy
Speaker 1: to make it Puma culture happen wherever you are. I
Speaker 1: am your host for this episode, Andrew of the YouTube
Speaker 1: channel andrewism and I'm joined here with Chris and Jeames
Speaker 1: he Lou. Hello, Hi, thanks for having us, Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. It's the guest. Well, you're gonna walk us
Speaker 1: through this. I'm very excited to learn more about it. Yes,
Speaker 1: so I really see it as a as a key
Speaker 1: component in the restoration of the youth. And so I
Speaker 1: find it necessary that regardless of what direction your individual
Speaker 1: practice is going in, we're we're looking to specialize or whatever.
Speaker 1: Couldn't quoe specialize? I think it's still important to think
Speaker 1: about where food comes from and think about ways that
Speaker 1: we can enhanced and in large our food autonomy, especially
Speaker 1: considering the multi layering crises that you know compounding these days.
Speaker 1: Puma culture was first coined as a tomb by puma
Speaker 1: culturist Bill Mollison. It's a portmanteau of permanent agriculture and
Speaker 1: permanent culture, and it's the conscious design and mainstance of
Speaker 1: agriculturally productive ecosystems which have a diversity, stability and resilience
Speaker 1: of natural ecosystems. It's a way of integrating landscape and
Speaker 1: people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and
Speaker 1: other non material needs in a sustainable way. And just
Speaker 1: to be clear, the concepts, the ideas, the principles that
Speaker 1: make up Puma culture have existed long before Bill Mollison
Speaker 1: was born, have existed in cultures all over the world.
Speaker 1: Bill Molson is just someone who has, I guess given
Speaker 1: it a spin for a modern audience. But these principles,
Speaker 1: these ideas are things that have been in practice for
Speaker 1: thousands of years, tens of thousands, even from the approach
Speaker 1: to land management and settlement designed to the whole systems
Speaker 1: thinking approach to nature which can be seen in a
Speaker 1: lot of animals practices. It has a long history and
Speaker 1: it's one that people who practice Fuma culture today research
Speaker 1: Fuma culture will inevitably uncover in their learning process. However,
Speaker 1: Bill Morrison first coined in the nineties seventies as a
Speaker 1: response to the oil embargoes they were taking place at
Speaker 1: the time, by bringing together the traditional knowledge of a
Speaker 1: vastery of indigenous cultures and combining them with certain modern
Speaker 1: design and layouts. It created a movement that is now
Speaker 1: um spreading across the world from every on every continent. Honestly,
Speaker 1: the way that Puma culture views UM the world views systems.
Speaker 1: It comes with an outlook that recognizes it all biological
Speaker 1: material is a potential energy source. The aim is to
Speaker 1: try to trap energy on your land and to use
Speaker 1: that energy the most efficient way before a degrede to
Speaker 1: create circular economies and cycles of energy. That how for
Speaker 1: actual sustainable agricultural practice, which unfortunately has not been the
Speaker 1: aim of agriculture, especially industrial agriculture, and Superman culture represents
Speaker 1: a challenge to that status school. The ethics of Puma
Speaker 1: culture are primarily focused on care for the earth, that
Speaker 1: being all living and on living things, care for all people.
Speaker 1: They're by promoting self alliance and community responsibility, the sort
Speaker 1: of we all have access to the resources necessary for
Speaker 1: existence and care for community in specifically community that allows
Speaker 1: us to be to think of an approach our society
Speaker 1: in a way that benefits all people in all life,
Speaker 1: recognizing the community is not just our neighbors, It's not
Speaker 1: just the people who live in our city or town.
Speaker 1: It is all the living things that incorporate our surroundings
Speaker 1: and beyond the way that Puman culture approaches um design,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of his emphasis and mimicking how the
Speaker 1: natural world would attempt to stabilize. Of course, these systems
Speaker 1: take thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions
Speaker 1: of years two fully develop and age and reach some
Speaker 1: kind of stable state. But public culture seeks to learn
Speaker 1: from you know, these old growth forests and these healthily ecosystems,
Speaker 1: and accelerate that process to establish things that will last
Speaker 1: generations to established spaces that will provide for the needs
Speaker 1: of people hundreds of years down the line. When it
Speaker 1: comes to approaching pubical to design practically, first things first
Speaker 1: to recognize is that anybody can take part in Puma
Speaker 1: culture design. Anybody can take part in constructing these sources
Speaker 1: of systems, and it can be established. The basic principles
Speaker 1: can be established regardless of your circumstances, your individual climate
Speaker 1: or biosphere, because the principles are based on following what
Speaker 1: nature was doing anyway. One of the first principles involves
Speaker 1: the recognition of the connections in a location, seeing that
Speaker 1: a web is stronger than a single string, meaning that
Speaker 1: all of these different parts. The different moving parts coming
Speaker 1: together create something stronger than if each individual person, each
Speaker 1: individual creature trying to move by itself. It also looks
Speaker 1: at the connection between waste and resources. We all on
Speaker 1: the old adage just says, you know, one man's trash
Speaker 1: is another mantag of treasure, but when it comes to ecosystems,
Speaker 1: we should really be taking it quite literally, because the
Speaker 1: waste of one part of the system directly feeds into
Speaker 1: the resource of another part. Decomposing plants and animals directly
Speaker 1: feed into the fungal networks and flourishing of the next
Speaker 1: generation of plants animals as and in that web, in
Speaker 1: that network. In those connections, we can also recognize for
Speaker 1: principle too, that each element performs multiple functions. If we are,
Speaker 1: for example, keeping chickens, they can be a source of
Speaker 1: eggs and feathers and protein, of course, but they also
Speaker 1: produced mania, and their daily activity helps to aerate the soil,
Speaker 1: and they also provide insect control um allowing your plans
Speaker 1: to food the flourish banana trees. They provide bananas, of course,
Speaker 1: they provide fruit. They also provide starch and mulch, and
Speaker 1: protection and shade and they hold water quite well. Actually,
Speaker 1: when I had taken a puma culture design course a
Speaker 1: couple of months ago, one of the things that I
Speaker 1: had learned from the guy who was running it was
Speaker 1: that he had told his story and he had done
Speaker 1: this this project in Barbarous and in Barbados he was
Speaker 1: called to restore sort of like an old sand mine, um,
Speaker 1: because you run out of sand. Well, it's close running
Speaker 1: out of sand. And so the community that was reliant
Speaker 1: in that sand mine didn't really have any direction, um
Speaker 1: because their economy, their local economy, and so rely and
Speaker 1: on those jobs. When he came in, it's just like
Speaker 1: and you showed the pictures, it's just just very very
Speaker 1: very barren landscape, very dry, very dusty, And I was
Speaker 1: honestly in disbelief that something so dead, so destroyed, something
Speaker 1: so devolved, it could be as radically transformed as he
Speaker 1: had transformed it. Unfortunately, this is a podcast, not a video,
Speaker 1: or otherwise I would show you the pictures. But the
Speaker 1: transformation was stunning. I want of the elements that he
Speaker 1: had used to transform that dry landscape into a lush
Speaker 1: food forest was banana trees, because surprisingly, banana trees are
Speaker 1: very effective well Unsurprisingly, branana trees are very effective act,
Speaker 1: growing quickly and providing shade to other plants, and so
Speaker 1: as these other plants are growing up, they have the
Speaker 1: shaded banana tree to protect them from the harsh sun
Speaker 1: and to the banana trees. While they may not be
Speaker 1: the top doors to the forest in the end, by
Speaker 1: the time the forest is fully established, because plant trees
Speaker 1: don't get that tall, they're still vital in that early
Speaker 1: stage in providing that function of shape that allows the
Speaker 1: rest of the forest to establish itself. That's really cool.
Speaker 1: It's very very very cool. I will all pictures after.
Speaker 1: It's like a place people could see them online like Instagram.
Speaker 1: They could look up or something. Yes, so um, if
Speaker 1: you go on Wassamaki Puma culture dot org. I believe
Speaker 1: he has the pictures up there that will be w
Speaker 1: E S A M A k I Puma culture dot org.
Speaker 1: And if I remember correctly, he has the pictures on there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Was it like a sand mine A four or something? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a sand mine. Yeah. Jeez, wow, it looks
Speaker 1: like there's no goodness in the soil. And the first
Speaker 1: one and then yeah yeah at the end to go
Speaker 1: back into the recording aspect. When it came to that project,
Speaker 1: A large part of it was just getting that life
Speaker 1: in the soil. So they were taken. They were getting
Speaker 1: mulch and manua from wherever they could get it, just
Speaker 1: to give some life for that soil. They would grow
Speaker 1: sitting like hardy, fast growing plants and then chop them
Speaker 1: down after they had grew in sufficiently so they would
Speaker 1: die right where they lay and provide nutrients to the soil.
Speaker 1: And that process was what helps to build up that
Speaker 1: soil even before you started planting the bananas and other stuff.
Speaker 1: And were they able like you're saying, they were getting
Speaker 1: some of that stuff wherever they could get it, like,
Speaker 1: and were they able to get that that was it
Speaker 1: like considered a waste product? I guess better people they
Speaker 1: got it from. And so like I know, I have
Speaker 1: chickens and they obviously produced like manure, and I'll put
Speaker 1: some of it in my like vegetables to the grad
Speaker 1: but I'll just give it to anyone else who wants it.
Speaker 1: It is that a thing that they were able to
Speaker 1: do there. Yeah, I think people are donated um and
Speaker 1: I mean I would assume at least and turned I
Speaker 1: don't know what the case is in Barbados, but in
Speaker 1: turn that they are bush trucks which pass every once
Speaker 1: in a while to collect whatever, you know, branches and
Speaker 1: cut grass and whatever people have put out um from
Speaker 1: their yard work or whatever. So I would assume that
Speaker 1: they would have asked the bush truck people to you know,
Speaker 1: bring some of that stuff to the site to help out,
Speaker 1: because a lot of people, you know, they just put
Speaker 1: that in front of the yard waiting for the bush
Speaker 1: struck to pass. And so a lot of very good
Speaker 1: potential sources of like UM ecosystem building, that sort of
Speaker 1: that so called waste really resources gets wasted when it
Speaker 1: could really see um, a lot of these kinds of projects. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very cool. Yeah, yes, something that like I don't
Speaker 1: know if if you ever read UN documents about like
Speaker 1: stopping climate change, like they always have a giant section
Speaker 1: about circular about circular economy stuff, but about sort of
Speaker 1: I mean basically doing this stuff and then nothing ever
Speaker 1: happens and no one ever does it, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's really cool that like this is a place
Speaker 1: where those ideas which like are if there's if we
Speaker 1: are going to survive as a species with like most
Speaker 1: of us alive and doing well, we're going to have
Speaker 1: to do exactly getting implemented. I'm I'm kind of reminded
Speaker 1: just on this sort of topic. I've i in Rwanda
Speaker 1: and February, and one of the things that really struck
Speaker 1: me with this system of agriculture that they've devised where um,
Speaker 1: they have paddies that they grow rice right like submerged,
Speaker 1: and then in there there are living fish and then
Speaker 1: above them they are like little hutches with rabbits and
Speaker 1: so like the rabbit manure helps to fertilize what's growing beneath,
Speaker 1: and then like it's this kind of circular thing where
Speaker 1: I think they can feed some of the things that
Speaker 1: they cut off the plant to the rabbits and it's
Speaker 1: sort of like and the fish will help keep the
Speaker 1: water clean. I think that like filter fish. I can't
Speaker 1: quite plant to keep it clean for the fish. It
Speaker 1: was fascinating. I was like, this is amazing, Like they're
Speaker 1: not as opposed to I grew up on a farm
Speaker 1: and like I'm very familiar with some of the larger
Speaker 1: arable sort of grain like grains in the UK, and
Speaker 1: how you're relying on a ton of exogenous inputs, which
Speaker 1: I was just so impressed with the fact that they
Speaker 1: devised a system that didn't require those exactly exactly you
Speaker 1: really want to. Of course you might, we will have
Speaker 1: to get external sources, especially in the beginning as you're
Speaker 1: trying to establish the system. But the aim is really
Speaker 1: to have this system continuously establishing itself and expanding itself
Speaker 1: and maintaining itself. Yeah, would it be a system that
Speaker 1: works mostly uh, with like a plant based food stuff?
Speaker 1: So I guess that seems generally most Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, manya,
Speaker 1: that's a really powerful source of fertilizer. And I think
Speaker 1: you can keep animals without you know, eating them or
Speaker 1: using them anyway, if you just want to, you know,
Speaker 1: because they make good companions and stuff as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's but yeah, yeah, I would say a plant focused
Speaker 1: system could definitely. But and to sort of rhyme or
Speaker 1: align with principle too, which said that each element performs
Speaker 1: multiple functions. It's also important to have each function supported
Speaker 1: by multiple elements, right, So you don't want to get
Speaker 1: all your food from one source. You want to have
Speaker 1: a mix of trees and roots and short crops and cultivates.
Speaker 1: I mean having all your food coming from one source
Speaker 1: is basically what we do now with you know, these
Speaker 1: mono cultures, with these this industrial farming that has these
Speaker 1: fields and fields and fields that are so susceptible to
Speaker 1: pests and disease that we have to basically drenched them
Speaker 1: with chemicals just a lot and to survive. Because and
Speaker 1: the same guy who did the course, he explains it
Speaker 1: me like this. He said that when there's a system
Speaker 1: in nature and it's not in balance, they basically send
Speaker 1: out a signal saying, eight, this is not in balance,
Speaker 1: come and fix it. And so these so called pests,
Speaker 1: these bugs and stuff, they come to these aberrations, these
Speaker 1: freaks of nature, these massive fields of crops, and recognizing
Speaker 1: that this is not sustainable um establishments in the landscape,
Speaker 1: they try to try to optimize. Right, he calls them.
Speaker 1: He doesn't call them pests. He calls them optimizers. So
Speaker 1: if you have, for example, uh, excessive amount of a
Speaker 1: certain test in your system, something's wrong with that system
Speaker 1: because those so called pests, those optimizers are only able
Speaker 1: to flood your system because they don't have the mechanism.
Speaker 1: System doesn't have the mechanisms in place to keep them
Speaker 1: in check. So you don't have the fauna, the larger
Speaker 1: insects and stuff in your system that will keep those
Speaker 1: pests in check. There's an imbalance in place, and that's
Speaker 1: something that needs to be rectified, and there are different
Speaker 1: ways to rectify depend on this situation. Another example, and
Speaker 1: this isn't um from the pooma culture pom culture course.
Speaker 1: Another example was the this I believe someone was talking
Speaker 1: about the presence of wolves in some of the parks
Speaker 1: in in the US and how reintroducing those wolves did
Speaker 1: so much to regulate the rest of the ecosystem, the
Speaker 1: ripple effects that had an the rest of the ecosystem
Speaker 1: um stabilizing the day of populations, and stabilizing um the
Speaker 1: beaver populations, and stabilizing all these other different plants and
Speaker 1: animal species that you would think are not even connected
Speaker 1: to the wolves, but still their presence played in a
Speaker 1: significant rule in maintaining that balance. Yeah. Go go watch
Speaker 1: how wolves change rivers. It's literally five minutes and it rules. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. It's just like the concept of rewilding. Is
Speaker 1: that what would that be a similar thing? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: rewilding is basically it's Puma culture had to be more
Speaker 1: focused on sustaining human communities in you know, in a
Speaker 1: balance with the rest of the natural world, whereas Rewilding
Speaker 1: is more focused on helping to rebuild ecosystems outside of
Speaker 1: the human sphere. He says, I understand it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes me no sense to me. So with principle three,
Speaker 1: which was three or trate, was that each function should
Speaker 1: be supported by multiple elements. You don't want to get
Speaker 1: all your food from one source. You just want to
Speaker 1: grow like rows and rows of trees or rows and
Speaker 1: rows of corn. You want to grow a mix of
Speaker 1: trees and roots and short crops and cultivars and all
Speaker 1: these different species and variations that would make up like
Speaker 1: an actual forest. The food forest is approach that a
Speaker 1: lot of prima culturists would advocate. And within a food forest,
Speaker 1: you would have I believe, seven major groups, this sort
Speaker 1: of seven levels that creator sort of a beneficial system.
Speaker 1: On the top layer, you have the canopy, which consists
Speaker 1: of large fruits and nut trees. They provide the most
Speaker 1: shade and they keep the whole area will climb into
Speaker 1: the area stable. On that second layer, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: the low tree layer, which has the dwarf fruit trees.
Speaker 1: The smaller fruit trees would fall under the canopy. On
Speaker 1: the third layer, you would have the shrub layer where
Speaker 1: would grow you know, your berries and other small you
Speaker 1: know plants. And below that you have the hoobeceous layer
Speaker 1: where you would grow different houbs and spices and things
Speaker 1: like that. And then below that you have your root vegetables,
Speaker 1: and below that you have well, you can't really go
Speaker 1: below the root vegetables, but next to those three vegetables
Speaker 1: you would want to grow your soil surface crops, your
Speaker 1: ground cover, um like they're certain running beans and stuff
Speaker 1: that would help to create a groundcover which protects the
Speaker 1: soil and prevents the establishment of undesirable plants which we
Speaker 1: quote wheats. And then finally, the seventh layer is the
Speaker 1: vertical layer, which consists of the climb us and vines.
Speaker 1: It would establish themselves on the low tree layer and
Speaker 1: the canopy. So if you have that sort of food
Speaker 1: forest system in place, with all those seven layers, you're
Speaker 1: not getting each function supported by one element to getting
Speaker 1: it supported by many elements. The same goal is for water.
Speaker 1: You want to get all your water source coming from
Speaker 1: just like the pipes and whatever water the government sends you.
Speaker 1: You want to have water coming from the rain if possible.
Speaker 1: You might want to tap into the water table, or
Speaker 1: you might want to depend on your situation, you might
Speaker 1: have extreme or you might be on a hill, in
Speaker 1: which case you'd have water flowing down and you want
Speaker 1: to find ways to trap that water and to conserve
Speaker 1: that water so that is distributed throughout your system. Unlike
Speaker 1: regular home garden. Part of the aim of a puma
Speaker 1: culture um system is that it just like in nature,
Speaker 1: waters itself. It takes care of itself, and so you're
Speaker 1: going to have to want You're gonna want to have
Speaker 1: all sources of different sources of water elements in place
Speaker 1: to provide that water. The same goes for energy. You
Speaker 1: would want to get all the energy from one source.
Speaker 1: You want to combine you know, human power, animal power,
Speaker 1: hydro electricity if possible, soul of power if possible. Basically,
Speaker 1: redundancy is very important. Redundancy is very important, and I'll
Speaker 1: see it again for emphasis. Redundancy is very important. The
Speaker 1: next principle, principle number four is if you want to
Speaker 1: approach puma culture with energy efficiency in mind, particularly your
Speaker 1: own energy. So on the more practical side of things,
Speaker 1: if you you might want to do what my mentor
Speaker 1: my guide had done, which was a zone and sector analysis.
Speaker 1: So basically, you draw like a map of your space.
Speaker 1: You outline your daily patterns and the energies that come
Speaker 1: from outside your site, like wind and rain and flood
Speaker 1: and fire and pollution and noise and smells and all
Speaker 1: these different things. You want to look at how you
Speaker 1: move through your space. You want to look at how
Speaker 1: the sunshine passes over your space. You want to look
Speaker 1: at the view, and you want to try to harness
Speaker 1: those good energies, whether it be the rain or wind
Speaker 1: or whatever it maybe the sun and plant Accordingly, you
Speaker 1: don't want to have sun sensitive plants on like the
Speaker 1: south side of your property, of your space wherever the spaces,
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't want to have plants that need a
Speaker 1: lot of sun in the shade. You also want to
Speaker 1: divvy up your your space. Once you've done that map
Speaker 1: of your space, you want to divvy it up into zoons.
Speaker 1: So right first zone not be your immediate live in space.
Speaker 1: The second zone would have an intensive kitchen garden start
Speaker 1: first Soon it would be a place of consumption and
Speaker 1: processing of whatever it is that your system is producing.
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily have to be a house. It could
Speaker 1: be uh community kitchen, or it can be uh campus clubhouse.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It could be any space that you're
Speaker 1: using for consumption and processing. The next zone is going
Speaker 1: to be intensive kitchen garden. It's a place where you
Speaker 1: would want to grow the plants that cycle through more quickly, UM,
Speaker 1: the spices and the herbs and the different things that
Speaker 1: you would use on a regular basis. The next zone
Speaker 1: would want to have its focus on local support, community support,
Speaker 1: and surplus. So this zone UM, the first zone is
Speaker 1: actually technically zone zero. The second zoneer zone one as
Speaker 1: a Zone two, which is that sort of local support
Speaker 1: space that orchard is. We want to grow um, your
Speaker 1: fruit trees, your ornamentals, UM, I want to raise raise
Speaker 1: animals there, and you basically wanted to be a space
Speaker 1: where you can provide for the local community, separate and
Speaker 1: apart from your own produce. Zone three would also have
Speaker 1: the emphasis on production. Zone three probably the space where
Speaker 1: you have your main crops, the crops you spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time focusing on. Zone four would also have
Speaker 1: a lot of investment in establishing a sustainable sort of
Speaker 1: life cycle um for more long term plants, and Zone
Speaker 1: five would be a space of wilderness, of forest of
Speaker 1: wildlife corridors that allow species of free wilding even within
Speaker 1: your mall constructed site. Having your system split into zones
Speaker 1: helps you to reduce the amount of work that you
Speaker 1: put in, the amount of resources use, the amount of
Speaker 1: maintenance you'll need, and it also helps you to boost
Speaker 1: to yields and to recycle resources most effectively. The fifth
Speaker 1: principle is the use of biological resources natural insecticides, timber,
Speaker 1: nitrogen fixers, whatever the case may be, you want to
Speaker 1: be using the systems that have evolved to fulfill those rules.
Speaker 1: To fulfill those rules, you may or may not be
Speaker 1: afraid of certain creatures. I myself, personally, I don't like
Speaker 1: frogs or toads, or really I don't like most animals personally,
Speaker 1: I just survivee with them. However, Comma, I recognize the
Speaker 1: importance right, So frogs and bats and snakes, all of
Speaker 1: these creatures helped provide like a stable system. Whether it
Speaker 1: be snakes dealing with um crats or bats stealing with insects,
Speaker 1: or frogs also dealing with insects. You men want to
Speaker 1: use companion planting as well. Um, like the three Sisters method,
Speaker 1: which is a combination of beans, corn, and what's the
Speaker 1: third one again with squashes, right, and squash, and that
Speaker 1: would help to establish you know itself and maintain itself.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like a microcosm of the Broada Puma
Speaker 1: culture concept and one that has been in practice funititive years.
Speaker 1: The sixth principle is the practice of energy cycling, trapping
Speaker 1: sunlight through greenhouses, making the most used basically out of
Speaker 1: the energy that flews through your system before it leaves
Speaker 1: your system, recycling the organic matter that passes three system
Speaker 1: so that produces no real waste. UM. When I was
Speaker 1: at the site at the Puma culture forest, I witnessed
Speaker 1: compost toilet for the first time and was immediately grossed
Speaker 1: up by the concept. However, Comma upon being blown away
Speaker 1: by the product of those compost to that I changed
Speaker 1: my tune very quickly. And although I would not I
Speaker 1: probably would not use a compost toilet on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: I think it has some benefit, um, because we're flushing
Speaker 1: away some some real power, some real nutrition stuff. UM.
Speaker 1: Of course, there are risks associated with using human mania.
Speaker 1: But the process that he had put in place involved
Speaker 1: using in human waste um and then for every certain
Speaker 1: amount of human waste, you would dump sawdust on top
Speaker 1: of it. And that sawdust helps to deal with the
Speaker 1: smell um so much so that I actually didn't smell
Speaker 1: anything when I opened up those those compost toilets. But
Speaker 1: it also helps to create that balance between the carbon
Speaker 1: and the nitrogen that is required for compost. And so
Speaker 1: after that, after a tub has been filled compostor the
Speaker 1: tub has been filled, he seals it up, leaves it
Speaker 1: for a year to break down, and by the time
Speaker 1: it comes out, it's just like regular soil. However, of
Speaker 1: course safety prequestions, I believe he only uses it for
Speaker 1: his orchards, so only like fruit trees and other kinds
Speaker 1: of trees. I spent a lot of time so far
Speaker 1: discussing these sort of larger systems where you know, I'm
Speaker 1: basically assuming you have several acres of land like this
Speaker 1: guy does. I don't have several acres of land. I
Speaker 1: don't have an inch of land um, and I feel
Speaker 1: like a lot of people listening don't. So there are
Speaker 1: elements that you can incorporate on the small scale such
Speaker 1: as grew boxes. You can have deep litter beds, you
Speaker 1: can have aquaculture systems, and that's actually one of the
Speaker 1: things that he Foost established um which is like a
Speaker 1: series of aquaculture systems, and it's actually one of the
Speaker 1: main focuses of his project to this day. But I
Speaker 1: was quite surprised as to the yield that could be
Speaker 1: produced from something as simple as a couple of pipes
Speaker 1: put together with some to me to plants grown out
Speaker 1: of it. So I mean, don't underestimate yourself or this
Speaker 1: pace available to you, because it might not be able
Speaker 1: to plant the whole forest, but you can do a
Speaker 1: little something. Coming back to the food forest concept, the
Speaker 1: eighth principle is the use of natural plant succession and stack.
Speaker 1: It you are a group plants together, they would give
Speaker 1: a continual production over time and both the short term
Speaker 1: and long term. And like I established, you want to
Speaker 1: have those layers in place, the roots, divines, the trees, etcetera.
Speaker 1: The ninth principle encourages diversity, encourages polyculture, which is something
Speaker 1: that I'm sure you would have picked up on by now.
Speaker 1: The tenth principle is increasing the edge within a system.
Speaker 1: By creating unique niches that allow for the more rare,
Speaker 1: the more vulnerable corners of life to sustain themselves. And
Speaker 1: I think that's something that a lot of pumic culturists
Speaker 1: do in terms of establishing their own systems. They have
Speaker 1: like a special focus or certain passion project to certain
Speaker 1: species that they just love and want to see flourish,
Speaker 1: and so they create these niches within their systems that
Speaker 1: allow allow for those creatures to flourish. Principal eleven employers
Speaker 1: that you observe natural patterns. Nature rarely goes in a
Speaker 1: street line, and you may want to make that pattern,
Speaker 1: whether be spirals or waves or branches, whether it be
Speaker 1: patterns over time from you know, the week to the
Speaker 1: month of the year to repeating patterns in the weather
Speaker 1: or the seasons. You want to be observing these patterns
Speaker 1: and adjusting system continually. The early parts of establishing a
Speaker 1: puma culture system is certainly the most difficult part, but
Speaker 1: even five to ten years down the line, when the
Speaker 1: system is more established, more self sustaining, he still want
Speaker 1: to be playing that role of tweaking it as you
Speaker 1: go along, and I think that's something that more people
Speaker 1: need to recognize about humanity. We didn't just bring on
Speaker 1: to hear like some sort of alien parasite leaching off
Speaker 1: of the youth. Right, We just like every other animal,
Speaker 1: like every other creature on this planet, have a role
Speaker 1: to play in the ecosystems we inhabit. Unfortunately, a lot
Speaker 1: of that activity has been destructive because of how all
Speaker 1: as socio economic system has been structured. But that's something
Speaker 1: we have a role and change, and part of that
Speaker 1: is recognizing that we are stewards, so we we can
Speaker 1: be good words. We can't help to facilitate the flourishing
Speaker 1: of life. We don't have to be grim reapers upon
Speaker 1: the systems that we are a part of. And so
Speaker 1: even as you're late, couldn't quote in these long term
Speaker 1: projects twenty years, thirty years, you're still going to be
Speaker 1: tweaking and cultivating and hopefully expanding these systems over time.
Speaker 1: Principle twelve reminds us we gotta pay attention to the
Speaker 1: scale of these systems, to the long term of these systems,
Speaker 1: recognizing that this is something you want to establish over generations.
Speaker 1: And finally, principle number thirteen is be positive experiments small,
Speaker 1: learning from your mistakes, scale up bringing more people get involved,
Speaker 1: get more of your community, of your social circle, of
Speaker 1: your family, of your affinity group, of whatever the case is,
Speaker 1: gonna be get more people involved, UM in imagining this complex, beautiful,
Speaker 1: revolutionary project. We have a long way to go, but
Speaker 1: a lot of progress could be made in a short
Speaker 1: space of time, and a lot of projects already going on.
Speaker 1: With this ended mind, I would suggest just going on,
Speaker 1: I really and just switching for the different Poma culture
Speaker 1: projects happening around the world, whether it be the food
Speaker 1: forests that Jeff Lawtern is working to establish in Morocco,
Speaker 1: or the puma culture Pumablitz systems that people are putting
Speaker 1: in place in Australia, and or the greening the Sahara
Speaker 1: projects in the Shill region across Africa, or the many
Speaker 1: small skilled projects taking place and large scale projects taking
Speaker 1: place across the America's a lot of people put it
Speaker 1: in this work, and there's a large community UM willing
Speaker 1: and able to support as you hopefully embark upon this journey.
Speaker 1: That's about it for me. Yeah, that's that's fascinating and
Speaker 1: I'm really interesting this stuff. I think. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: massively missing in our discussion about like I don't know
Speaker 1: how to phrase this rightly, but like making a better world,
Speaker 1: just to give it a really broad sort of phrasing.
Speaker 1: And when we often think about like political discourse, and
Speaker 1: when we think about political systems, but without food systems,
Speaker 1: we really like the hierarchy of needs is not satisfied, right,
Speaker 1: And I think that folks listening can make a really
Speaker 1: positive change really really quickly and in their own lives
Speaker 1: and spaces if they sort of spend some time with
Speaker 1: this stuff. Yeah, absolutely, and it's cool. I think, um
Speaker 1: an important to to reference at like so much of this,
Speaker 1: Like we're like the person you named a start who
Speaker 1: name I'm sorry I've forgotten, but like, um, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's important to a reference that these are Indigenous ways
Speaker 1: of knowing and doing and being and living, and like
Speaker 1: you said, they've existed for millennia, and like going back
Speaker 1: to that is good as part of the largest sort
Speaker 1: of way of respecting indigenous cultures and land rights and
Speaker 1: all the other things. For me to be