2020 Convergence Cancelled

2020 Wisconsin Permaculture Convergence Cancelled

Due to the current pandemic, the WPC planning team has decided to cancel this year’s Convergence. We apologize for the late notice but like many, things have been interesting. We look forward to a Convergence in 2021. We hope everyone is staying safe and thinking about what resilience looks in our communities and homesteads.

Zero Waste is a goal that is Ethical

Zero Waste is a goal that is “Ethical, economical, efficient and visionary,” as defied by the Zero Waste International Alliance (ZWIA) (also, how couldn't you love the acronym ZWIA?) Zero waste can guide people in changing their lifestyles and practices to emulate sustainable natural cycles, where all discarded materials are designed to become resources for others to use and not burn or bury them.

As we organize the fifth annual Wisconsin Permaculture Convergence, I am thinking about the unintended waste stream that is developed by this (and any other) event, and what we as organizers and attendees can do to reduce (or eliminate?) waste ultimately destined for a landfill. This blog suggests some of the permaculture principles that may inform us as we move toward such a goal.

The most obvious is Principle Six: Produce no Waste. By valuing and making use of all the resources that are available to us, nothing goes to waste.

The icon of the worm represents one of the most effective recyclers of organic materials, converting plant and animal ‘waste’ into valuable plant food. The proverb “a stitch in time saves nine” reminds us that timely maintenance prevents waste, while “waste not, want not” reminds us that it’s easy to be wasteful in times of abundance, but this waste can be a cause of hardship later.

I am also reminded of principle five: Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services. This principle reminds us to make the best use of nature’s abundance to reduce our consumptive behavior and dependence on non-renewable resources.

The horse icon represents both a renewable service and renewable resource. It can be used to pull a cart, plough or log and it can even be eaten – though a non-consuming use is preferred over a consuming one. The proverb “let nature take its course” reminds us that control over nature through excessive resource use and high technology is not only expensive, but can have a negative effect on our environment

But before we aim for a Wisconsin Permaculture Convergence that “produces no waste" or "Use and value renewable resources and services", I think we have to keep two principles in mind this year; "Observe and Interact" and "Use Small and Slow Solutions."

Image from David Holmgren's book "12 Principles of Permaculture"

When we observe and interact, we take the time to engage with nature or a situation such as an event and design solutions that suit the particular situation. The icon for this design principle represents a person ‘becoming’ a tree. In observing nature and the situations we are in, it is important to take different perspectives to help understand what is going on with the various elements in the system. The proverb “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” reminds us that we place our own values on what we observe, yet in nature, there is no right or wrong, only different.

My memories of the last four convergences are that we have not generated a tremendous amount of waste. However, I know that we have had bags of trash, recycling and compostables (and some of each contaminated in with the other) that had to go somewhere. Additionally, in thinking to past convergence events, I have no knowledge of the waste stream the catering situation generated.

So while the idea of a zero waste event is extremely appealing to me, and there may be ways that we can eliminate or redirect more “waste” this year, our task as an organizing team and as participants is to observe and interact with this year’s event and with our waste stream to see what options there are to further reduce and ultimately eliminate waste by redirecting it to useful purposes for future events.

Image from David Holmgren's book "12 Principles of Permaculture"

And in order not to drive ourselves to frustration, or attempt to put actions in place that actually aren’t useful or practical, or have unintended downstream consequences, the last permaculture principle to follow is number nine, "Use small and slow solutions.”

Small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, making better use of local resources and produce more sustainable outcomes. The snail is both small and slow, it carries its home on its back and can withdraw to defend itself when threatened. The proverb “the bigger they are, the harder they fall” reminds us of the disadvantages of excessive size and growth while “slow and steady wins the race” encourages patience while reflecting on a common truth in nature and society.

I look forward to observing with you, to thinking about producing no waste, to use the waste resources we have for other purposes, to taking small steps and observing and interacting with nature and our waste to work toward small and slow solutions for this and future permaculture convergences.

Joshua Feyen is part of the organizing team for the Wisconsin Permaculture Convergence. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin where him and his partner tend their intensive urban lot which is home to chickens and a large variety of annual and perennial plants.

Interested in attending the 2018 Wisconsin Permaculture Convergence? 

2018 Wisconsin Permaculture Convergence Poster

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Interested in attending the 2018 Wisconsin Permaculture Convergence? 

WATER: Always on my mind.

Water has been on my mind quite often these days. In my commitment to staying true to the ethics and principles of permaculture design, I have been in the observation phase of a 30 acre landscape in Ontonagon, MI which I recently cooperatively purchased with family. We are currently in the second year of observation with minimal interaction to care for the life already on the landscape.

We have made only one major change to the landscape before completing this observation phase; adding a well with a hand pump. The well was dug late last fall, and the hand pump was just delivered. It should be put onto the well within the next few weeks. After that, we wait for the test results from the Western Upper Peninsula Health Department to let us know the quality of our water. Here's hoping!

This was done first to ensure that one of the water sources available was potable to be able to live on the landscape all year. This action taken was done for the purpose of research. It was the only physical change made to the landscape, so far, and it was done to discover the quality of one of our water sources.

Water was also a key element in our choosing and purchasing of the landscape in Ontonagon. We first chose the Ontonagon area because this region is called a banana belt, a slightly warmer region, and is surrounded by regions that are called a snowbelt in where they see heavy snowfall in the winter, also known as, lake-effect snow. Although we appreciate snow, we weren't sure we wanted to handle as much snow as they get in the surrounding areas.

Before purchasing, we also researched the area well depths to be able to gauge an approximate depth for our own well. As we found out last fall, our estimate was close. We also researched water quality in the area to find out if we might face any issues.  We saw none in the local area, but are still awaiting the final results of our own water source. Area well depths which were mostly under 200', water tables as low as six inches, and good water quality were some of the main reasons that led us to this area.

We also looked into the geography and geology of the area which helped to understand the water moving in, on and through this landscape. All of this information was found on publicly funded websites. A little online research can reveal much about a landscape including area water table levels, water qualities, soil types, soil compositions, bedrock, local plant life, and so much more without even seeing it.

When we did first see this landscape, we were experiencing it in a drier season with lower rainfalls and snowfalls over the past couple years. And now, we have seen it in one of it's wettest seasons over the past year. This has actually been a gift to us as it gives us the experience to be able to design for both dry and wet seasons.

Our most recent experience included a few big storms with heavy rain events over a couple days which revealed much about our landscape and the area water cycle. Our area did not receive as much rain as the surrounding areas - much like it is in winter with less snow. A few areas around us even experienced extreme flooding in where roads were washed away.

At that same time we were camping in a tent which stayed dry inside, plus we were on a high spot in a clearing in the woods. We experienced a beautiful light show by the hundreds of lightning bugs flying around right before the rain event. They lit up the somewhat dark night as the moon and setting sun were sharing the same sky. We also noticed that during the stillness between the rainfall is when many different bugs became very active, such as, mosquitoes, many kinds of flies, and dragon flies.

Once the rains cleared, the sun came out between the clouds, and a slight breeze moved through; those bugs became less active and others came alive. We also observed the other various life forms in nature that were hiding from the rain and became active again once the rains stopped. Experiencing this water cycle event also revealed to us the many other life cycles in and on our landscape.

Water, simply put, is one oxygen element bonded with two hydrogen elements. It comes in many forms and has it's own cycle on this planet. Water aids in the creation of life yet also has the capacity to destroy it just the same. Water is the essence of all life.... Water is life... but Water can also be death.

Because water holds the power of life and death, it is important to our survival to learn and understand it. If we do so, we can design our landscapes so that water is aiding life more than it destroys it. Water is the most abundant chemical compound on this earth and in our universe. It's importance in our lives is clear and we must always keep that in the forefronts of our minds when designing our lives and landscapes.

Just a little bit about my journey with water....

Your permaculture friend,

Effie J Truchon

Effie Trucheon is part of the organizing team for the Wisconsin Permaculture Convergence. She lives in West Allis, Wisconsin where she is active in her community. Effie is the owner of Permaculture Designs by Effie and offers design and consultation services.

Observe & Interact

I came to learn of permaculture following my third year of graduate studies in a rural Vermont community.  The concept entered my consciousness at a community meeting of farmers bitterly devastated by the August 2011 tropical storm Irene.  Families had lost everything.  Our community writhed in the reality that such destruction was likely to be the new reality unless society were to abruptly change the course of its relationship to the natural world; many community members were also coping with the profound reality that insurance companies would fight their settlement claims at every opportunity.  While this alone precluded numerous farms from planting crops ever again, the several feet of newly deposited toxic sludge on their soils secured the same fate for many more.  Yet, at this meeting one older gentleman, who had grown food crops for local coops for far longer than I had been alive, spoke passionately of hope.  This man declaimed of endless opportunity as if he had just harvested a record bumper crop securing his own retirement.  Yet his farm, too, had suffered the wrath of Irene.  

https://yestermorrow.org/blog/post-irene-update

From behind this aged but sturdy man’s quintessential Vermont beard came concepts of regenerative design, resilience planning, and water reticulation.  Fascinated, I connected with my community to learning more about the both the vision for their future and also the specifics of what a transition must look like to take a community from devastation to regeneration.  Purposefully attending the meeting to inform folks of their possible legal strategies for recourse against their insurance companies, I left intrigued by a seemingly powerful ecological approach to community restoration of both the land and the economy.  Further, I left profoundly inspired by the hopeful energy of so many in the face of such hardship.  It wasn’t until a full year later shortly after completing my studies, when my own family faced losing our Wisconsin family farm to the socially contrived malaise that is the destructive economic storm of urban sprawl and development that I circled back to the memories of that meeting.  If permaculture was to rebuild that community network of farms, then couldn’t it also stand to defend our family’s farm from this looming threat?  Now with family on board, I dove into the permaculture rabbit hole excitedly gathering information and engaging with what I now realize is a global community of regenerative agriculturalists.  With my brother, who is now running the family farm with his remarkable wife, we began to feverishly take in as much as we could on the subject.  We would read for days, run out to the fields to build a hugelkulture bed, return sweaty, tired and ready to read some more.  We literally stuffed our minds with as much information as we could, constantly toeing the line of analysis paralysis.  Alas, the third-generation farm remains in the family and supports while being supported by his family and our community is myriad ways. 

Looking back with new words to place in context, I see that what my family was engaged in at that time is embodied in the principles of permaculture.  In 2002, David Holmgren, co-founder of Permaculture, published a book that concretely articulated twelve working principles for permaculture design. 

In Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, Holmgren synthesized what for many years stood as a list of amorphous speculations, loosely developed theories, and sometimes euphemistic words that served to loosely guide the designer towards a cohesive work product.  This new set of principles has, with time, become the new “conceptual lens” focusing the work of designers and the greater permaculture community on better design.  Observe & Interact is the first of these principles.

As Peter Bane writes in The Permaculture Handbook: Garden Farming for Town and Country (2012), “[g]athering information is the beginning of any design, design the beginning of any responsible action.”  This is the essence of Holmgren’s first principle.  Through observation of and interaction with a landscape or social structure, the designer is able to pick up bits of information, discover clues, and begin to understand the natural indicators and metrics that will inform good design.  A “protracted and thoughtful” relationship with a system, as Bill Mollison points out, is one that requires an ethical awareness that the observer is both a part of the system and a means of intervention with that system.  It also, quite powerfully, acquaints the observer with the presence of pattern.  The awareness of system patterns opens the door to increasingly effective system intervention.

                                 Season's end at Three Brothers Farm

A thoughtful and protracted relationship with a system inherently results in a heightened awareness, and even a spiritual connection with one’s place.  It is a relationship that not only forms the foundation of good system design, but also enables an ongoing and deep understanding of the health and wellbeing of that system.  One might even say that observing and interacting with systems is what causes one to fall in love with and then actively nurture love for a place. 

With my academic background in environmental law and policy, I find myself thinking about and studying the subject through the conceptual lens of the principles of permaculture.  Instead of looking at a law and/or policy on its face, I am far more interested by the trends of movement of the law and policy; I am interested in where the contemporary legal frameworks are situated in the historical context over time.  By understanding where the law has been you can more accurately understand and anticipate where it may be going.  This reveals, in a sense, a hierarchy of potential intervention.  If, say, one legal doctrine is trending favorably towards environmental health, community sovereignty, and independence, while another is trending divergently towards subjugation, dependence and degradation then perhaps more resources ought to be directed towards intervening in the trend of the latter doctrine and fewer towards the earlier.  It is true that similar to a protracted and thoughtful relationship with a visible landscape, an engaged kinship with our social, or invisible, structures yields analogous results.
           

So how does one observe and interact? Naturalist John Muir Laws articulates three prompts to facilitate deep observation and thoughtful interaction in a student new to the idea.  He proposes one articulate their observation verbally to themselves as “I notice… I wonder… and it reminds me of…” Using these prompts, Laws suggests, “keeps observations in conscious working memory long enough for your own brain to convert them to long term memories.”  It is those long term memories the serve as the basis for pattern recognition.  So whether we are applying the skill of observation to our social systems, our physical systems or both, it is critical that we bring a curious, open mind willing to learn intellectually, emotionally and spiritually as we engage deeper with our context.  It is curiosity after all, that brought formulaically minded third year law student to embrace a new and deeper relationship with not only the law, but also the entire natural world.
           

Going on seven years after the community wreckage of tropical storm Irene in Vermont, reports from my former community are positive.  There are several new locally owned businesses that vigorously support the regenerating network of farms and collectively work to build resiliency both ecologically and socially.  

The community rallied behind farmsunsuccessful in their struggle with rapacious insurance companies and many have rebuilt to remain as integral threads of that community’s vibrant fabric.  My own protracted and thoughtful engagement with that community has gifted me the resonant feeling of home when I think of it, even six years after relocating.

I would like to conclude with words Vandana Shiva shared at the 2017 International Permaculture Convergence in India where she professed to a room of designers “our work will become more relevant the deeper the greed becomes. Our work will become more relevant the deeper the ecological crises becomes.”  I share, with the same hopeful vision of the hardened, quintessentially bearded Vermonter who stood in the face of havoc and despair to enunciate to powerful vision for moving forward, that we ought, then, to boldly embrace a shared goal of our own work’s future irrelevance.

Chris Gutschenritter is a member of the Wisconsin Permaculture Convergence Planning Team. He currently lives on his family farm in Oconomowoc, Wi and employs his legal, planning and teaching experience to support his community's growing local food network.