Class 2: Adding to Tradition

Class 2 notes by Carmen L.

We began our second PDC class with the Elm Dance, expressions of gratitude, re-introductions and then exercises focused on our learning intentions and setting forth community agreements in response to “How do we as a group begin to behave as a learning community to support our best possible outcomes?”

Our homework was to create a learning affirmation so here’s mine:  I effortlessly grow organic produce to feed myself and community!

My experience with organic gardening has been based on the biointensive method, a 4,000-year-old Chinese tradition practiced by my grandfather and which involves lots of muscle power to dig 2 feet deep into the ground.  In deeply prepared garden beds, water enters soil more easily and plant roots can penetrate further down into compost-enriched soil (instead of needing to spread out in search of water and nutrients) so plants can be spaced more closely.  According to John Jeavons, we can produce up to 4 times more food by using this method than an equivalent shallow bed planted in rows.

Growing up Chinese meant that I followed my grandfather’s tradition of gardening in our backyard in Hawaii, where we raised most of the food that we ate.  In Chinese culture, food is so important that we greet one another by asking, “Have you eaten yet?”  In fact, my happiest childhood memories are coming home from school to snack on plants picked from our garden—sugar cane, bananas, mangoes, papayas, tangerines, etc.  Growing up Chinese also meant that we ate lots of fresh vegetables and nothing was wasted so food scraps went to the compost pile.

Because eating fresh produce has been so nourishing to my well-being, I wanted to get involved in food security issues.  One way was to go to developing countries to promote small-scale, biointensive gardening.  In Tanzania, we worked primarily with women who lost their husbands from AIDS/HIV, malaria or other infectious diseases; it was a real challenge for the women to do digging work because this reminded them of burying their deceased loved ones or sometimes illness would compromise their strength to do so.  While biointensive gardening has a proven track record, I wanted to explore alternatives so I searched “no dig gardening” on the internet.

I was fascinated to learn about Sydney gardener Esther Dean’s No-Dig Garden, which eliminates the need for backbreaking work by building a garden above ground with layers of organic matter.  This led me to the permaculture work of her fellow Australian Bill Mollison.  I want to learn all I can to apply permaculture design principles to let nature do its work J!

While Sage and Jay asked us to tap into our “inner wisdom” during discussions about what is permaculture (designing systems to mimic relationships found in natural ecologies) and its ecological ethics (Care for Earth, Care for People, Return of Fair Share), I often felt like tabula rasa (blank slate) as I have spent much of my working adult life in an unnatural environment that I need to re-learn our natural environment.  For 15 years, I have worked with U.S.-based employers to establish and maintain employee benefit plans based on governing labor and tax laws, collectively known as the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).  As these man-made laws reflect compromises made by politicians, they are subject to many exceptions (or “loopholes”) and frequent revisions.  Even practitioners can get frustrated with the intricacies of ERISA, which is also known as Every Ridiculous Idea Since Adam.

I was relieved when Sage and Jay handed out the list of 28 permaculture design principles as I would not have guessed them all.  But as usual, they weren’t going to make it so easy as they asked us to partner with a classmate to act out the principles in charade!

We viewed Global Gardener, a film showing Permaculture founder Bill Mollison creating gardens in the tropics, dry lands and urban areas.  It was inspiring to see how permaculture principles are applied in places as diverse as Australia, India, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Germany and U.S.A. (including Village Homes in Davis, CA)—to great success when we follow the universal laws of nature.

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