A day at the fair...

Today was the first full day of the first ever Denver County Fair. I spent most of the day working at a few booths, one was a craft and gardening group I belong to and the other was the Denver Handmade Alliance. There were a ton of craft, sewing and other hand goods booths. After my shifts I spent a bunch of time walking around, checking out all the fair had to offer, and you know what? There were quite a few gardening and urban homesteading booths but not a single one about permaculture. Not one.

Now I believe very strongly in growing where you live, eating local foods, heirloom seed propagation and community gardening projects, but what is the point if you are not creating a more permanent structure or mature eco-system. By removing the plants at the end of the growing season, either through harvest, complete die back or tilling, you take away the entire life of the garden. Animals and insects no longer have homes. The soil no longer has any protection and is completely at the mercy of the elements. All that fertility is washed away, micro-organism colonies die off and the other soil life has to scramble to find other nutrient rich soils. Is it any wonder that we then think that our soil is terrible?

Nothing is more sad to me than walking by a garden that is simply bare earth. Plants bring life and keep it cycling through the ground and through the air we breathe. Native plant species, which most gardeners have come to regard as weeds, fix minerals and nutrients in order for more permanent perennials, bushy plants and trees to root and thrive. Building a foundation, and keeping it, should be our main goals as gardeners. Would you spend a whole year building a house, foundation, walls, a roof, only to tear it down in the fall and start building all over in the spring? No, and if you ever met someone who was doing that I'm sure the first thing that would come to your mind would be, Man that person must be crazy, why do they tear their house down and rebuild it year after year? That is precisely how I feel about most modern gardening.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are some urban homesteaders who practice permaculture, and probably some other home gardeners who do as well but none of them are talking about it. We need to break down this communication gap in order to move to the next level of sustainability. There is no sustainability with out permanent garden agriculture. Fertilizing with anything other than compost is not sustainable. Trucking in soil is not sustainable. I am even willing to go so far as to say that permanent raised beds are not sustainable, even if they are made from recycled building materials. The only way to achieve sustainability to to enrich the soil itself. By building soil life, you build life above ground.

Permaculture is not a buzz word, it is the world. Mother nature does not create eco-systems only to destroy them every fall. We need to take a cue from the world around us. We are a part of nature, not separate from it, so we should start acting like it.