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HABSTINE NEWS
Thursday, Aug. 6, 2020 — Shelton-Mason County Journal - Page A—13
What do you com
compost from your animals, woodlot
and garden as well as your groceries?
Do you conserve moisture with wood
chips and use your gray water? Here on
Harstine Island, that also means you’re en-
, couraging.mushrooms and therefore bees.
. And depending on the wood chips you’re
using, you might also be fertilizing with
leached nitrogen. ,
You might already be a ’ permacultur-
ist, but it’s scaled more toward a spectrum
than an either/or position and sometimes
it’s purely accidental.
Jacqueline Freeman might not have intended to
thin her slug-population by stacking rocks in cairns.
She might have been trying to make neat work of
double—digging her soil; trench and pile soil, deeply
loosen the compacted trench bottom, then amend
the pile with compost and replace it. The excluded
rocks look'best in piles or bordering beds. When she
noticed that garter snakes were sheltering under the
rocks and emerging to eat the slugs that had been
denuding her beets, she realized she had done what
permaculture calls “function stacking.”
She had improved her garden beds, removed
rocks, and created habitat for a natural predator of
a superabundant and invasive pest.
Pest control in permaculture takes many forms.
Wood vinegar, a byproduct of charcoal production,
can be used to control pests such as cabbage worm.
Effective microorganisms (EM) are believed to im-
prove nutrient density, crop health and resilience,
but‘like many folk practices, your mileage may vary.
Anybody who has planted perennials-or tree crops
has committed permaculture. The degree of commit-
ment extends if the perennial is edible, and that
means tasty to more than humans.
“Earth care, people care, fair share” is a basic per-
maculture doctrine, so deer have just as much right
If you compost, are the inputs to your
By ALEX
FETHIERE
post? You may be a permaculturist
to your tree collards. Just protect them so
deer browse won’t kill them.
What makes perennial tree collards a
permaculture plant is not just their yearly
crop of big, tender purple leaves. Its resis-
tance to Our slugs and deer means freedom
from sprays and traps. Most important, it
creates community. A cutting can be made
of any branch with five leaf nodes, rooted,
and given away. Permaculture borrowed
from barter economies, so pay it forward.
In a sense, permaculture takes the best
' low-impact, broad-benefit ideas from ev-
erywhere and braids them into a permanent culture
stronger than its strands. The Three Sisters model
of planting beans, squash and corn together is pres-
ent in many indigenous lifeways, but the Iroquois
Confederacy gave it a cute name and good story.
Similarly, permaculture was coined by some non—
indigenous Australians in the 19605, but the concept
stood on the shoulders of giants, and the autonomy
built into its practices has broad appeal.
Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms in Virginia shows
permaculture is profitably scalable in grass-based,
direct-marketed animal husbandry.
Ben Falk restored an exhausted 10-acre hill farm
in Vermont and built a thriving consulting business
eventually becoming the nation’s biggest supplier of
sea berries. Toby Hemenway (rest in peace) applied
permaculture to the Pacific Northwest in his 2009
book “Gaia’s Garden” which became a classic and is
currently in its second edition. And mushroom mes-
siah Paul Stamets runs his visionary mycelial em-
pire out of our very own Shelton.
What these very different people have in common
includes emphaSis on .localism, resilience, regen-
erative systems, and self-reliance. Libertarians like
Jack Spirko of “Survival Podcast” have taken per-
maculture to living in preparedness:
“If times get tough, or even if they don’t.” Such
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A garden cairn provides a hiding place for garter
snakes, which eat slugs and other pests before
they eat plants. Journal photo by Alex Fetheire
messages are particularly compelling in these times
of pandemic, protest and upheaval.~ ,
Although you may be uncertain about the future
there is yet so much we can do.
Participate in local seed exchanges, like at East
Side Urban Farm & Feed in Olympia. Produce and
share compost, and Campost tea or donate materials
to those who produce them.
Waste less and reuse more.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without,”
has outlived the Great Depression. Buy from farm-
ers markets, or direct sales or community supported
agriculture.
Grow pollinator gardens and build houses for ma-
son bees and bats. Raise chickens for eggs and soil
building. We already do some of these things, but in
community and dialogue we can best direct our ef-
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