When I was five years old, in 1976, my parents moved our family of five from our safe, stable and economically viable lives just outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to a 140 acre farm overlooking the rolling hills of Western Wisconsin's Driftless region where we threw safety, stability and economic viability out the barn door. What I got in return was a tremendous sense of self reliance, which is not self-sufficiency, a conversation we could have at the convergence coming up in September. My family also got to meet and learn from our new neighbors and others who recently moved to the area, because in those days, and in those parts, there was no Amazon and no one had every piece of equipment or every bit of knowledge required to cultivate the land and care for livestock. This is a long way to say that little did I know our move introduced me to my first permacuture community and principles and I didn't even know it.