Permaculture binds everything together – kitchen scraps go into compost bins which feed chickens which then help cultivate gardens by eating insects and producing manure for fertilization purposes.
Nature provides us with many renewable services such as sunlight and rainfall that we can harness with permaculture to meet our needs. By harnessing these natural resources for use when needed, these precious natural resources are captured for use at just the right time and place.
Energy
Permaculture principles can help your homestead become more self-sufficient and less dependent on outside resources, while creating sustainable practices and working with nature rather than against it. Permaculture is a system for designing and building landscapes which take into account their natural environments, merging permanent agriculture with horticulture alongside environmental ethics and design principles to form systems which are “more resilient, productive, and healthy”, as described by Bill Mollison’s book Permaculture One.
Catch and Store Energy This principle involves harnessing resources available during specific seasons – such as rainwater or solar electricity – for use during dry times to reduce wastefulness and fossil fuel usage, thus decreasing your carbon footprint.
At its core, renewable energy harvesting involves using various techniques and tools to extract as much renewable energy from your site as possible – for instance by creating puddle palaces to catch runaway water, wind towers and solar farms to harness solar power, or cooking with wood from firepits on site or turning excess warmth from greenhouses into hot water that can be used to heat your home or wash clothes.
Integrate and Don’t Segregate
Integrating ecological relationships is all about cultivating them between plants, soil organisms and people who use your land, according to Peter Harper. This provides more resilience, sustainability and community connection with one another resulting in stronger senses of purpose for all those involved in your land management efforts.
Bring this principle into the garden or homestead easily by looking for ways to form interlinked systems. Planting crops that require similar amounts of effort or resources close together makes it easier to keep up with them; similarly, creating guilds of fruit trees or other vegetation in which each provides benefits to one another can maximize productivity.
Applying permaculture principles to a log cabin is an engaging and creative way of building, growing, and living on your land. Permaculture principles can be implemented into almost any setting from small gardens to whole properties – it provides an effective means of creating and maintaining an attractive yet eco-friendly homestead.
Water
Permaculture gardens must take into account and respect water as one of their key resources, using natural rainfall and sources like rooftop rain barrels, rain barrels, ponds or any other means possible to maximize usage of this valuable natural resource.
Permaculture principles focus on creating self-regulating systems with minimal maintenance needs, helping homeowners significantly lower water usage and costs while simultaneously conserving soil structure and supporting biodiversity. These methods may even lower overall costs!
These systems can include an assortment of plants, animals and natural elements that create healthy microclimates. Planting perennial crops provides an alternative food source while minimizing the need for costly fertilizers or pesticides.
Introduce livestock gradually. Start off small with animals like chickens or rabbits so you can learn animal care on a small scale and how the livestock integrate into the permaculture ecosystem before gradually expanding to larger livestock such as goats and cows.
Permaculture gardens use waste minimization principles to take advantage of natural and human waste products to turn them into useful resources for the garden. For instance, chicken poop can be turned into garden mulch or composted to nourish plants, while greywater from household and garden plumbing fixtures can be utilized as irrigation water and wood chips or sawdust can be used as mulch or to cultivate mushrooms.
Diversity refers to the idea that no single element should dominate its surrounding space; each contributes towards improving overall garden function and health. Integrating thermal mass such as stone or earth into structures allows them to soak up solar energy during the day and release it at night – eliminating artificial heating or cooling requirements and thus decreasing dependence on artificial heating or cooling solutions. Permaculture designer Bill Mollison refers to this phenomenon as the “earth oven effect.” Homeowners can apply the concept to their homes as well, with thick walls helping maintain stable temperatures without the need for air conditioning or heaters. Furthermore, windows can act as solar collectors, collecting sunlight throughout the day before slowly releasing it back out again later on.
Food
Log cabins have long been utilized as residential dwellings, with traditional methods involving interlocking notches to create strong structures. While advancements in materials and designs have provided more options, log cabins remain popular due to their comfort and aesthetic value.
Permaculture principles can help you design an ideal log cabin while also incorporating sustainable practices. One of the six key principles is understanding symbiotic relationships – where every element provides benefits to other elements in the system – just as nature does in natural ecosystems.
Another principle essential to permaculture gardens and farms is the concept of reinvesting surplus. This means that any food, water or other resource produced must return more than what was put in to it – this helps ensure these resources will still be available in the future.
An example of how this principle plays out would be growing perennials like comfrey, nettles and borage that provide a steady source of organic material that can be used to make fertilizer tea, mulch or add nutrients to compost piles – cutting down on costly fertilizers and pesticides and helping the local community as a result.
The final principle is the ethic of people care, which ensures all members of a community have their basic needs of food, water, and shelter met. To accomplish this, sustainable farming practices can be utilized while working alongside other members to fulfill these requirements.
Permaculture is an application of principles applicable to any lifestyle. By emphasizing sustainability, growing a food forest, and recycling all resources you use efficiently, permaculture helps create an environment which will last generations into the future. By understanding its six principles you can begin designing your own sustainable homestead.
Shelter
Permaculture gardening philosophy seeks to strike a balance between nature and human settlements while emphasizing community involvement and sustainability. Furthermore, permaculture principles enable us to see the larger picture when it comes to sustainable living – using them can not only benefit ourselves, but also enhance environmental conditions.
Permaculture principles can be applied to almost every aspect of our daily lives, from cooking in our kitchens to designing gardens and landscapes. One such principle, catch-and-store energy capture and storage, means permaculturalists try to collect roof runoff for reuse which reduces our need for outside sources of energy as well as providing emergency sources of water supply in case of emergencies.
Permaculture implements its catch and store energy concept by harnessing sunlight to heat or cool buildings or other structures, eliminating external heating/cooling costs that can add up over time.
Permaculture relies on using waste products as part of its principles, including turning graywater into garden irrigation or wood chips into mushroom cultivation medium. By recycling waste products into useable forms like these, less is sent to landfills while increasing soil nutrients.
Permaculture also promotes agroforestry, an approach which integrates wild and domestic animals into farmland systems to create food forests for both humans and wildlife while also conserving biodiversity, according to Ellis in a 2018 Re-enchantment blog post.
Other permaculture principles involve making use of marginalized communities and the edges of land. For example, Kamau Walton from Charm City Farms discussed building puddle palaces to harvest rainwater for cultivation of soil, and encourage young people to create guilds; groups of plants which serve various functions including pest resistance, water absorption, soil improvement and shade. In 2016 video.
Permaculture offers many advantages to those who embrace its ethics and principles, making our planet more sustainable, healthy, and happier – an aim which all of us can work toward together.
