The problem is the solution.

At first, this core permaculture principle was intriguing yet perplexing to me; if my problem was unhealthy soil, for example, how was my solution also unhealthy soil? It didn’t seem to make sense.

But I just wasn’t looking at it in the right way. It’s really about understanding the ways in which multiple problems are actually each other’s solutions, like joining loose ends to create a circle; permaculture is ALL about making connections.

Here are a few ways this has worked for us in recent months:

Problem 1: Need for woodchips
Problem 2: Need for tree maintenance

For the first couple of years spent slowly building our homestead, Nick would run back and forth, back and forth to a free pile of woodchips about five minutes from our house, filling the trunk of his Honda Fit, each trip helping a little but ultimately putting barely a dent in the mountain of woodchips that we needed for sheet mulching, path-making, composting, etc., while using up a lot of time and energy.

Tip: Woodchips are foundational and absolutely KEY in many permaculture designs, at least in our experience. There are often piles of woodchips available for free, if you know where to look, and you can always see whether local tree companies might be willing to dump a load or two.

It was frustrating. We talked about buying a truck, which is still the plan, but we couldn’t make it work at the time. We talked about this while simultaneously talking about how much our big black locust tree in the front yard needed serious maintenance, or how our mature apple and cherry trees in the backyard needed a good haircut. For awhile, we didn’t put the two problems together. (Seems obvious, but that’s life isn’t it? We so often don’t see what’s right in front of us.)

Once it dawned on us that the two problems answered each other, we called around to tree companies in the area, getting a few consultations until we settled on a Native American-owned company that gave us a fair price and promised to take care of our trees while leaving the chips behind.

We ended up with a decent pile of woodchips from our fruit trees, but the black locust was too dense to put through the chipper, the owner told us. But he left us branches from the tree that we would use to make borders, and when we mentioned that we were looking for all the chips we could get, he laughed and said ‘Don’t tell that to a tree guy.’ A few days later, after doing a job in the next town over, he came back and dumped a big, beautiful load of Eucalyptus chips for us.

Tip: Use resources in your community, and don’t underestimate the generosity of others (and be generous yourself!). It’s also worth mentioning that during our sheet mulching process, a post on our local Food Not Lawns chapter‘s Facebook page inquiring about the best place to get cardboard resulted in a kind couple dropping off a huge load of broken down boxes, asking nothing in return. Amazing! And major gratitude to Cooperation Humboldt who kickstarted our front lawn conversion last summer...it truly takes a village.

Collectively, all this bounty allowed us to freshen up and create borders for our existing paths, to finish sheet mulching our entire front and side yard, and to create new paths and garden beds.

Problem 3: Invasive ‘weeds’ in our backyard
Problem 4: Need for laying hens
Problem 5: Scrap materials laying around the yard

We're lucky that our site came with an existing chicken coop that just needed some freshening up, but we needed to make a run before introducing laying hens. Behind the chicken coop is a fence separating our backyard from the neighbors', and next to it is our old garage. In between is a roughly 200 square ft area that was completely swallowed up with weeds.

Tip: Remember that, as they say, the only difference between a weed and a beneficial plant is a judgment – and in our dominant culture, that judgment is most likely deeply flawed. Always get to know the ‘weeds’ on your land and find out what they can tell you about your soil, microclimate, water availability, etc. Plus, many are beneficial! On our land, for example, we identified (using the very helpful iNaturalist app, highly recommend!) sheep’s sorrel, cheeseweed mallow, California bee plant, periwinkle, broad-leaved dock, coastal manroot, bur clover, cut-leaved crane’s bill, and dandelion of course – nearly all of these are edible and/or medicinal!

So, what to do? Making use of edge (another key permaculture principle!), we realized we had three out of four sides already in place for a run, and the weeds would provide plenty for the chickens to eat. So, a little weed pulling and fencing off the fourth side of the run - plus the incorporation of our scrap pallets and things into the coop as shelter spaces, a platform for water, etc. - and we were ready! (A special thank you to my father-in-law for all his help in this process!) I made a social media post about our interest in pullets or grown laying hens, and that night a friend connected us with a woman a few blocks over looking to re-home her two silver Wyandottes and three barred rocks. They’re now all settled in to their new home, happily eating up our ‘weeds,’ and giving us more eggs than we know what to do with. Yes!

Tip: If you're on social media, use it to your advantage! Post about what you're looking for, ask questions etc. in local permaculture groups, Food Not Lawns chapters, relevant nonprofits - you never know what connections might be made! And Facebook Marketplace has been a surprisingly useful source for plants, tools, etc.

Problem 6: Intense energy in Covid-19 days
Problem 7: Grass, grass, everywhere

As a new mother, when I see that my seven-month-old daughter is restless or unsettled, I think about how I can resituate her energy – if she’s fidgety, maybe she’d like to dance or jump. If she seems bored, maybe a walk outside.

In this uncertain time of coronavirus, climate crisis, long-overdue demands for social justice, and rapid shifts in consciousness, most of us are feeling a lot of wildly fluctuating energies and emotions. When we’re experiencing an influx of intense energy, we need a place to direct it, to ground it, to move it so that it doesn’t get stuck in our bodies. For me, over the last few months, that’s been connecting to the land. When I’m walking in circles, emotions surging through my body, I take myself outside and put my hands into the earth. Often times I don’t have a plan, necessarily, I just pick a place to start (pulling out grass, it turns out, is very satisfying - there’s nothing more radical than grabbing something by the root) and see where it leads me. And it’s led me to some pretty beautiful places.

Tip: Working in the garden can be meditation in motion. Make sure to breathe. :)

There are countless examples of how the problem is the solution, or, in my preferred framing, multiple problems becoming each other’s solutions, taking stray ends and closing the loops (hey, another key permaculture principle!). These are just a few. But by making these fairly simple connections, we’ve been able to spend these last months sheet mulching, completing our front lawn conversion, creating tons of new space for native plants (which we’ve been using to make healing tinctures and hydrosols – stay tuned!), watching our baby daughter delight in our chicken friends, and eating delicious, super nutritious eggs from our own backyard.

Until next time - wishing you peace and sending you love, from our homestead to yours,
Laura
for more recent writings, visit laurabjohnson.com

   'In cultivating loving-kindness, we learn first to be honest, loving, and compassionate toward ourselves. Rather than nurturing self-denigration, we begin to cultivate a clear-seeing kindness. Sometimes we feel good and strong. Sometimes we feel inadequate and weak. But like mother-love, maitri is unconditional; no matter how we feel, we can aspire that we be happy. We can learn to act and think in ways that sow seeds of our future well-being. Gradually, we become more aware about what causes happiness  as well as what causes distress. Without loving-kindness for ourselves, it is difficult, if not impossible, to genuinely feel it for others.'
-Pema Chodron
​
On this heart-centered day, we might practice cultivating loving-kindness for our selves, first; for a beloved one, or beloved ones; for our community, however large or small the scale; and for all beings, all life in this world.
 
Begin in a comfortable seat, lying down, or in a nurturing heart-opening restorative yoga pose such as supta baddha konasana.
 
Begin to settle into this space, letting go of what came before and what comes next, gathering all parts of your self here and now. Notice the earth beneath you, supporting you, and in that awareness of support begin to release any sensation of tightness or resistance, grateful for that which holds you here in this space.
 
Take three deep inhales through the nose, and exhales from the mouth.
 
Allow a full yet natural breath to return, maintaining your connection to it; observe the belly as it softly rises and softly falls.
 
Notice thoughts as they arise, and each time that you notice simply return gently to the breath, to the body, to this moment, without judgment or critique or analysis, with gratitude for noticing and the ability to return.
 
Begin to introduce metta, or loving-kindness, phrases, aligning each phrase with each breath.
 
Start first with your self, with the understanding that we cannot love or care for others well, or to our full capacity, without loving and caring first for our own hearts:
 
May I be happy and peaceful.
May I be healthy and strong.
May I be safe and protected
From inner and outer harm.
May I be loved.
May I live with ease and grace.
 
(repeat these phrases to yourself, at your own pace, aligned with breath)
 
From here, maintaining this sweetness toward self, move to nurture loving-kindness for a being or beings dear to you – your mother, your partner, your friend, your children, your dog or cat:
 
May they be happy and peaceful.
May they be healthy and strong.
May they be safe and protected
From inner and outer harm.
May they be loved.
May they live with ease and grace.
 
(repeat these phrases to yourself, at your own pace, aligned with breath)
 
Next, expand still outward to envelop your community with loving-kindness. Identify a community for which you would like to practice, which resonates with you in this moment. Perhaps your school or neighborhood, your town or city, your region of the country, or a particular group of which you are a part:
 
May we be happy and peaceful.
May we be healthy and strong.
May we be safe and protected
From inner and outer harm.
May we be loved.
May we live with ease and grace.
 
(repeat these phrases to yourself, at your own pace, aligned with breath)
 
And now, spread this light and love still outward until it reaches all beings in every corner of the world, human and more-than-human. Envision in your mind’s eye, in whatever form comes to you, the whole world held and supported in loving-kindness:
 
May all beings be happy and peaceful.
May all beings be healthy and strong.
May all beings be safe and protected
From inner and outer harm.
May all beings be loved.
May all beings live with ease and grace.
 
(repeat these phrases to yourself, at your own pace, aligned with breath)
 
As you practice for all beings, feel from your heart space the connection that you’ve established at each scale – the loving-kindness that intertwines your self, your beloved ones, your community, and all beings. Understand that this connection is always present, that we are deeply and inextricably related; that loving-kindness for self is loving-kindness for world, and loving-kindness for world is loving-kindness for self.
 
dedicated to my teacher, Samantha Akers

'People romanticize their plans but dread the execution.
The magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding.'

I came across this quote the other day and was struck by the truth of it. As I go about my days doing the things I 'have to do,' I romanticize all the things I will do when I have the time: I'll cook or bake, I'll get some new native plants in the ground, I'll help put in another raised bed, I'll journal or write a blog post or essay, I'll play music, I'll meditate and practice yoga, I'll rest, I'll breathe, I'll do nothing at all.

But when the time comes, I have a sneaky habit of turning even the things I long to do into a chore, into a 'have to do,' a rift that leads quickly to an underlying discomfort, a quiet anxiety, an inability to be fully with what is, a stuckness or restlessness, a self-critique or judgment or fear.

It's these times that dropping into my breath and connecting with my body, with sensation, with the reality and truth of the moment, helps me to drop story lines, to interrupt thoughts stuck on a loop, to allow my breath to remind me to breathe, to drop into my heart, to touch into gratitude for what is. I like to align my inhales and exhales with phrases offered by Thich Nhat Hanh:

'Breathing in I calm my body, breathing out I smile; dwelling in the present moment, I know this is a wonderful moment.'

Meditation is often thought of as something requiring a mat, a pillow or blanket, a silent house, a clean space, a clear schedule. And how lovely it is when all of these things are available to us at once - and how rare. If we put off our connection to moment and self until all of these elements align, when we make 'breathe' and 'be still' and 'be present' items on the to-do list, future tasks, we'll likely not get to them very often, if at all.

But in truth we can practice meditation at any time - while cleaning or showering, emailing or driving, walking or gardening or cooking. And once we've tapped into the present moment, once we've become aware of our thoughts and perhaps allowed them to clear, if only for a moment, we may find ourselves being led quietly and gracefully into what is actually needed most - whether it's delving into the to-do list or feeling something we've been pushing away and allowing it to pass or connecting with a person or animal or plant or place...maybe it even leads us into that meditation on the mat after all.

Perhaps this is what is meant by finding the flow; perhaps it's magic.

Today I felt that familiar underlying struggle and allowed it to serve as a reminder to breathe, to drop the story line, to notice habitual thoughts, to feel what was needed in the moment...which for me this afternoon was baking granola - one of my favorite things to do, once I can get myself there.

And then I allowed the process of baking to be my meditation.

__________________________

I notice my breath as I remove from the shelf mason jars filled with oats and pecans and almonds, with pumpkin seeds and shredded coconut and dried cranberries. I draw my awareness to each of these ingredients, noticing their colors and textures, the sounds they make as I combine them together in my mixing bowl, the way they blend as I stir.

I notice when my mind wanders from these sensations and I've drifted into auto-pilot, going through the motions without really being there. Perhaps I notice where my mind has gone (resisting the tendency to get lost in self-study), but more importantly I simply return gently to my breath, to my body, to sensation of standing in my kitchen making granola on this lovely on-the-cusp-of-fall day, of my feet rooted to the earth beneath me, of temperature and feel of air on my skin, of music playing softly and the sway of my body, of light pouring in through the window, of colors and patterns and textures outside. As I do I feel in my heart a quiet surge of recognition, of gratitude.

I allow myself to be embraced by the soulful smells of maple syrup and olive oil, brown sugar and honey and vanilla, cardamom and cinnamon, sea salt and lemon zest as they warm and simmer and bubble and meld together. I allow these sensations to draw me back to the moment with its beauty and truth as again and again my mind tries to escape the present, tries to make or review my to-do list, tries to replay a previous conversation or interaction or lecture and come up with a different outcome. I resist the tendency to judge my mind for its antics, to associate my self with my thoughts, instead just allowing the breath to bring me back, again and again, over and over.

I taste the warm aromatic mixture before I pour it over my oats and nuts and seeds, allowing for this moment of joy and delight; I consider the origins of each ingredient and its connection to place and people and process, I consider my own connection to place and people and process, I remember that everything is connected; I watch as this recognition fills me with love.

I try to relish in the pauses between steps in the process, to resist filling those spaces with quick tasks, to let go of the urge to check email or social media, to allow myself to be still, remembering that to rest and to pause in a culture that prizes exhaustion and constant busy-ness is a radical act. I am aware of the warm, earthy aroma filling my kitchen and my house and my body; I breathe it in, I breathe it out.

I feel the warmth of the oven, I feel the heat as I stir, I taste and really taste,
I feel the sensation of nourishment and abundance and warmth in my body,
and for everything I am grateful.

___________________________

This isn't quite a post about permaculture per se, but yet it is because it is focused on ideas of relations and connection, which are at the heart of the philosophy of permaculture; as Toby Hemenway (2000) writes, permaculture focuses less on “objects themselves than on the careful design of relationships among them – interconnections – that will create a healthy, sustainable whole” (5). It is a dharma talk (my first ever!) that I delivered this spring as an assignment for my 200-hour yoga teacher training. Yoga joins permaculture as one of the core philosophies and practices of my life, my ritual practices of connection and relation. And so I thought I would share this with you all, here. <3

In thinking about the notion of the true, authentic self, my thoughts often drift to a perhaps unexpected place – to the 1997 film ‘Contact,' which is a film adaptation of Carl Sagan’s novel by the same name. Some of you might remember this movie…a scientist, played by Jodie Foster, finds evidence of extraterrestrial life and is chosen to make first contact. The signals coming from the extraterrestrial life contain plans for a transport machine for a single occupant that will allow Jodie Foster to reach them. The plans contain no mention of safety features such as a seat for the passenger, a harness, even a seat belt, but the team constructing the machine insists on putting them in. So when the departure date arrives Jodie Foster enters the machine’s pod, which is dropped through four rapidly spinning rings, causing the pod to travel through a series of wormholes. Of course in the end the big question is whether she traveled anywhere or not, because from the spectator’s perspective the pod fell right through in a matter of seconds, but to her she traveled through space and time and experienced this encounter with great consciousness that she defends through faith even when it seems there’s no scientific proof. But before all that there’s this scene that I always think about in which Jodie Foster is dropping through these wormholes, she’s very securely strapped into the seat, which is shaking aggressively, more and more violently, and at the last minute she unhooks herself from the harness, the safety belts, the chair, and she is immediately still, floating peacefully, while not two seconds later the chair she was sitting in is ripped from the floor and is sucked violently to the ceiling of the pod, with a force that would surely have harmed her.
 
And I always think back to this scene…about the things that we think we need to keep us safe, whether we believe these things ourselves or we’re told that we need them by others, by our parents who want to keep us safe as children, by society that turns us into citizens of consumption. And this notion that through layers of padding, through safety belts and harnesses, things that we cling to, whether that be harmful relationships or self-image or beliefs or addiction, they weigh us down and distort our true selves, muffling them, suffocating them. But like the sun on a cloudy, rainy day, it’s always there, whether we see it or not.
 
Understanding the true self, the pure self, is to understand that all we need is already within us, that at our core we are supreme consciousness, we are truly light and love. That is our true nature. But there is a story or myth in our dominant culture that veils this truth, that is really in fact comprised of the opposite of this truth. That we are flawed and need to be fixed, that we aren’t good enough, that we need this possession or that one, that one day when we’ve finally made enough money or consumed enough things or our house is big enough, then we’ll be happy.
 
But by adding this padding, these layers upon layers, we’re weighing ourselves down, we’re distorting the nature of consciousness, and we’re doing so because we’re afraid. I truly believe that at the root of all of the elements that distort the truth of our inner nature – violence or non-truthfulness, stealing and excess and possessiveness (the yamas), is fear. We’re afraid that we won’t be good enough, that we’ll fail, that we won’t be loved, that we’ll look silly, and this paralyzes us, suffocates us. If we turn to the niyamas – purity, contentment, self-discipline, inner exploration, and surrender – what is needed in each case is the overcoming of fear, letting go of all of the weights and the patterns and the clinging that fear has motivated in us.

This reminds me of one of my cats, Gillian, well really all of my four animals, but Gillian in particular was a 6-year-old tiny black cat that we adopted at the Humane Society in Eugene, she was the longest resident and was in a room by herself because she didn’t get along with the other cats, and she had never been adopted because every time visitors went in to see her she’d end up swatting them. I could tell immediately that she was so full of love, but she was so afraid…she came from a neglectful home, had her long hair shaved off because it was so matted when they found her. And so we adopted her and for weeks she hid under our futon…sometimes I could make contact with her, and I could literally see the love brimming up in her, and then her immediate reaction to that sensation was fear, fear of letting go of the walls she’d built up to protect her, and she’d immediately swat me. Now it’s been two years this month and she is just this ball of love, she sleeps on my back, she follows me everywhere, and she’s just proof that at the core of all beings is love, love, love, and that we distort it out of fear.
 
All of my animals have similar stories, and I’m sure many of you have similar stories, whether it’s with animals or plants or humans. And it’s the truth that this applies to humans as well that our culture distorts; there’s this myth of human nature, that it’s human nature to be greedy and selfish and to consume and to be apathetic. I hear this from my students constantly, I do an exercise with all of my classes at the beginning of a new semester from a framework called ‘The Work that Reconnects’ from spiritual ecologist Joana Macy, in which I ask them to share with a partner, among other things, what they love about being alive and what breaks their hearts about the world. And when asked to share what breaks their heart about the world, without fail someone always says ‘humans,’ followed by greed, selfishness, apathy, qualities that they link to humans. And what I try to encourage them to think about over the course of the semester is the implications of that belief…if it’s human nature to be greedy and selfish and apathetic, then we have no hope. But what if that story isn’t true, what if human nature is consciousness and love and connection and relations, what if all we have to do is remove the false beliefs and patterns and structures that distort our view of the truth.

This is truly my belief, this is what motivates me to teach and to want to expand my teaching to yoga, and what brings me back to my mat and my practice to help me remember these truths, because they can be so elusive, this game of hide and seek, and that’s why it’s so vital, why I have so much gratitude for yoga and the tangible philosophies and practices it gives us to return again and again to this truth and to ourselves and to the potential for a new paradigm of humanity, a shift in consciousness that the world desperately needs.

Hemenway, Toby. Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture. Hartford: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2009.

I've been thinking about permaculture lately in the context of rhythms, relations, and what Anna Tsing calls 'polyphonic assemblages.' I'm reading her recent book 'The Mushroom at the End of the World' (2015), and if you're familiar with Anna Tsing you won't be surprised that it has my brain exploding all over every other paragraph - Tsing is incredible. And while this book is not about permaculture per se, it is in the sense that it is concerned with our collaborative survival, with pracarity and encounter, with livability and emergence, with creativity and imagination.

Tsing writes:

'Since the time of the plantation, commercial agriculture has aimed to segregate a single crop and work toward its simultaneous ripening for a coordinated harvest. But other kinds of farming have multiple rhythms... These rhythms were (plants') relations to human harvests; if we add other relations, for example, to pollinators or other plants, rhythms multiply. The polyphonic assemblage is the gathering of these rhythms as they result from world-making projects, human and not human" (2015, 24).

Boom, brain explosion (she's sneaky like that).

So all week I've been reflecting on permaculture as polyphonic assemblage, as layered rhythms of world-making projects. And I can't really think of a better way to explain it - permaculture is about (re)making livable worlds, at all scales, by  gathering together multiple ways of being.

Permaculture is the process of re-imagining spaces - from doorstep to yard, home to community, state to planet - using principles and practices designed for innovative ecological regeneration and productive (not as defined by capitalism) landscapes that place collaboration and relationship at the center. It emerged as a way to think about creating human landscapes that mimic nature, and it applies broadly from designing yardscapes and farmscapes to shifting cultural and socio-political landscapes, to rethinking how humans exist in and relate to the world. 

Permaculture as (re)making livable worlds at all scales through the gathering of multiple ways of being...doesn't that just so perfectly encapsulate the task - the radical opportunity - that we face right at this moment?

That makes us excited.

Tsing, A. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton University Press.