Two Interviews with David Holmgren

 

These two interviews with David Holmgren, co originator of the Permaculture concept (along with Bill Mollison), were amongst the first videos I watched on Permaculture, and I still find them inspirational and motivating.

Simple Bucket Mouse Trap

This video demonstrates the principles of the bucket mouse trap I employed around the chicken coop. The only difference is that I used a painters' roller brush instead of the can & wire. The trap is simple, effective and voids the need for poison, dangerous spring traps, etc. There is no need to reset the trap, and once set up, it is easy to transport around. I wrapped my trap in chicken wire to ensure the chickens did not interfere with the bait and mechanism. In addition to relocating the feeder and altering the time of feeding, this eliminated the rodent problem around the coop.

How to Build a Herbal Medicine Spiral: Resources

How- to guides can be found at:
Little Mountain Haven: How to build a herb spiral
The Micro- gardener: 4 steps guide to building a herb spiral

Grow the Revolution!

Killing Fields & The Meatrix

Killing Fields: The True Cost of Europe’s Cheap Meat (2009)

Cheap meat has become a way of life in much of Europe, but the full price is being paid across Latin America as vast soya plantations and their attendant chemicals lead to poisonings and violence. An investigation in Paraguay has discovered that vast plantations of soy, principally grown for use in intensively-farmed animal feed, are responsible for a catalogue of social and ecological problems, including the forced eviction of rural communities, landlessness, poverty, excessive use of pesticides, deforestation and rising food insecurity. For a full report by Andrew Wasley in The Ecologist, click here.

Permaculture: A Quiet Revolution

Henry Kissinger once famously said  “Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.” He also said "If you can't hear the drums of war you must be deaf." The Independent reported in January that some still think Kissinger while in office 'yielded much that was little short of evil' and he has been accused of 'war crimes, crimes against humanity, and … offences against common or customary or international law.'  

Permaculture: A Quiet Revolution is the perfect repost to the psychology of control and dominance that Kissinger and the political class represents. The start of this video quotes Bill Mollison: "I teach Self- reliance, the world's most subversive practice. I teach people how to grow their own food, which is shockingly subversive. So yes, it's seditious, but it's peaceful sedition." 

A Farm For The Future

BBC Natural World (2008-2009: Episode 14 of 16) Duration: 50 minutes

Wildlife film maker Rebecca Hosking investigates how to transform her family's farm in Devon into a low energy farm for the future, and discovers that nature holds the key. With her father close to retirement, Rebecca returns to her family's wildlife-friendly farm in Devon, to become the next generation to farm the land. But last year's high fuel prices were a wake-up call for Rebecca. Realising that all food production in the UK is completely dependent on abundant cheap fossil fuel, particularly oil, she sets out to discover just how secure this oil supply is. Alarmed by the answers, she explores ways of farming without using fossil fuel. With the help of pioneering farmers and growers, Rebecca learns that it is actually nature that holds the key to farming in a low-energy future.

What I like about this episode is not so much the twee, Vaughan Williams 'quintessentially English' flavour, although it is good to see how permaculture ideas can be moulded to a traditional temperate grassland system. I am more impressed at how it logically conveys the intimate level of integration which is possible when small scale, low tech, mixed agriculture design is employed. It makes sense on every level.

Bill Mollison: Global Gardener

Bill Mollison is co- founder of the sustainable agricultural system called Permaculture. In 1991 he made a 4 part series of programs called Global Gardener, which showed how permaculture could be applied to several ecotypes, along with some of the wider principles (community, self reliance, energy & nature conservation, etc). I like this series because it provides a really good overview of how permaculture works; that it is a flexible system, and not a proscriptive 'one size fits all' formula. Plus it has a good feel to it. It puts a smile on wearied faces sick of this deadly industrialised maelstrom of technological food production.