True Nature Design

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The Birth of Regenerative Earth Farm

The Alchemy of Converting Economic Capital to Natural Capital: A journey into for-profit Permaculture

By Warren Brush of Quail Springs Permaculture

In early September 2012, Regenerative Earth Farms, a family inspired and held endeavor, was born with the close of escrow of its first farm investment as part of a strategy to help people convert their economic capital into regenerative natural capital and soil building efforts that contribute to community food resiliency, and social and ecological stability.  Our first farm is ideally situated 2.5 miles from the Pacific Ocean near Santa Barbara, California and is in a unique sub-tropical/Mediterranean micro-climate for optimal growing. It is also near to an ideal consumer constituency to market the type of farm produce, added-value products and services from the farm’s multi-enterprises.  How did this come about you might be asking yourself?

Back in the summer of 2008, a dear friend and I came together to talk about her family investments that were mostly tied up in oil stocks at that point.  She was having this “funny feeling” about the stock market and its inevitable volatility in these times we are in and wanted to discuss possible options of converting the economic based stock into a more stable investment strategy based on natural capital. We dreamed up all sorts of ideas involving permaculture stewardship in converting mono-crop soil extraction farms into regenerative, soil building, multi-enterprise, for-profit endeavors.   As the universe would have it, the timing of the 2008 stock market crash brought our ideas to a rather quick halt when, within six weeks of our conversation, her family had already lost millions of dollars into thin air.

Our Canyon View of the Organic Haas Avocados- Photo By Jesse Smith

The conversation continued and as our experience grew, we had a better grasp of how to efficiently and effectively “flip” a farm into a profitable venture based on three primary directives: ecological, social and economic. We developed a strategy that involved the creative and consciously integrated design principles found in Permaculture, multi-enterprise development with vested entrepreneurs as project managers, direct-to-consumer marketing strategies, and a unique investment return approach that has modest returns backed by the farm and the land herself. 

This first farm was a result of a $2.5 million dollar investment from this family. The property had to meet varied criteria for us to consider it with this investment strategy, including the following:

Farm must have current, positive cash flow with its crops

Must have good and reliable water sources

Crop income must be from wholesale sales

Near to population center with minimum of 300K people and have a portion of those people with moderate incomes

Room for expansion of crops with cable green houses, additional market gardens

Conducive for enterprise expansion

Roadside sales potential

Have some zone 5 wild lands at its edges that could be tended and stewarded

Have multiple living situations for people involved in the day-to-day work

Be family friendly

The ideal farm showed herself to us in late 2011 as real estate prices were still dropping to record lows in the Santa Barbara region.  She is a 49-acre paradise with 22 acres of organic Haas avocados that inhabit a steep slope, 2 acres of Persimmons and 1 acre of Apples as its current crop production that is mostly exported through wholesale buyers.  She also has about 3 acres of bottomland that is irrigated for an eventual market garden and cable houses, a creamery and all its expensive equipment for making cheese, four legal living situations and nearly endless potential.

We developed the business prospectus based on the strengths and weaknesses of this particular property. We first looked at how we could increase the soil biology and increase the efficiency of the farm by integrating living systems into the mono-cropped orchards.  With the avocados, we are instigating a compost tea and mulching system on the steep slopes that work by flaking straw bales and planting understory companion plants through the flakes to hold them in between the tree rows.  These bands of vegetation and mulch will serve as barriers to hold the natural leaf fall and create a protective barrier for the budding soil food web.  This process alone will help to reduce root rot (phytophthora), lessen the amount of water needed for this thirsty crop, and create a supportive understory guild for the avocados.  We will be testing on a small scale, at first, various understory plants like coffee, ginger, comfrey, shitaki mushrooms, guava, cardamom, dragon fruit, dill, goji, cilantro, fennel, and the like.

Our Creamery- Photo by Jesse Smith

We are re-opening the creamery and will begin to develop a small artisan cheese plant.  There are no other cheese plants in our area and we are planning on developing a healthy, local market share of chèvre cheeses. Our plan also calls for egg-mobiles that will work their way through the orchards, offering valuable integrated pest management, fertilization and an important financial contribution through egg and meat production.   It also happens that this property has an existing roadside stand on a well-traveled highway, which we will reopen as a part of our extensive marketing plan to develop consumer direct business for our products. The average farmer usually harvests only about 10% of the food dollar (money spent on the retail price of food) for their produce and we are hoping to change this.  The more we can add value to our products and sell directly to the public, the better the profit margins for our permaculture-based business. 

After developing the initial business prospectus with our daughter Ana Brush and our niece, Makaila Harvan-Thompson, we identified a key position in the operation, which is that of the orchard manager, farm advisor and someone who has helped with the agricultural business design.  We found one in an extraordinary soul, Loren Luyendyk.  He is the founder of the non-profit group, Surfers Without Borders, the owner of Santa Barbara Organics and a good friend and permaculture teacher who I have co-taught with over the years.  Loren has been instrumental in bringing his extensive experience to the project through his years of managing farms, developing nurseries, and in applying permaculture as a designer, educator, consultant and installer.  He immediately understood our plans to develop multiple integrated enterprises as part of our stewardship and economic success.  As a family endeavor involving various people with different experiences and expertise, we have developed a capable, creative and hard working farm team, a strong marketing and product development crew, and good legal and accounting advisors all working together to create this fruitful farm endeavor many of whom are family.

This investment strategy bides well with the increasing needs of our local community in developing its own primary production and processing of basic resources.   Right now, Santa Barbara County residents only spend 5% of their food dollar on local food, the remaining 95%  leaves the region, much of it going into the hands of distributors and big agro-business.  This is untenable and bleeds our local economy with nearly every purchase.  By creating more locally available products and sales avenues for consumers to buy direct from producers, we are a part of creating economic buoyancy and stability for our community where people can be in relationship with that which sustains them.  Ultimately, Regenerative Earth Farms is a bridge helping investors meet their needs with that of our community’s need for enhanced food production systems. 

We know this is the first of many farms we will be part of developing over the coming years as the need is great and the vehicles for soil building, family and community nurturing and economically viable investments are limited at this time. Already, we have a growing list of investors who want to get involved in our endeavor and are ready to put their money where their mouths are…in the localization of healthy, soil building food systems that greatly contribute to the creation of resilient and stable communities.

We are at a pivotal time in history where we must stop stealing from our grandchildren to feed ourselves and take responsibility for our lives and the resources we borrow from them.  The time is at hand for us to invest in a manner that gives life and generously supports the generations to come. 

Warren Brush

September 2012

For more information on this project please go to our budding website at: www.regenerativeearth.com and listen to an audio interview with Warren Brush at:

http://www.thepermaculturepodcast.com/2012/profitable-permaculture-with-warren-brush/

Warren Brush is a certified Permaculture designer and teacher as well as a mentor and storyteller. He has worked for over 25 years in inspiring people of all ages to discover, nurture and express their inherent gifts while living in a sustainable manner.  He is co-founder of Quail Springs Permaculture, Sustainable Vocations, Regenerative Earth Farms, Wilderness Youth Project, Trees for Children and his Permaculture design company, True Nature Design.  He works extensively in Permaculture education and sustainable systems design in North America, Africa, Middle East, Europe, and Australia. He has devoted many years to mentoring youth and adults to inspire and equip them to live in a sustainable manner with integrity and a hopeful outlook. His mentoring includes working with those who are former child soldiers, orphans, indigenous peoples, youth from troubled families and situations as well as those youth from other varied and privileged backgrounds. He teaches courses including: Permaculture Design Certification, Introduction to Permaculture, Rainwater Harvesting Systems, Ferro-Cement Tank Building, Compost Toilet Systems, Greywater Solutions, Water for Every Farm, Drought Proofing, Cultural Mentoring,  Food Forestry, and origins skills among other offerings. He can be reached through email at [email protected] or by calling his office at 805-886-7239.

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Permaculture Design Course at Nyumbani Village - Kenya

Concentric Rings of Change  –

The Power of a Single African Permaculture Design Course

By Warren Brush of True Nature Design and Quail Springs Permaculture

Over 700 children, orphaned by the scourge of HIV in East Africa, live here at Nyumbani Village. Nyumbani Village was founded in 2006 by the late Father Angelo D’Agostino with a dream of offering orphaned children love, guidance, and a sustainable existence.

In just four short years, Nyumbani Village, located in the heart of the Akamba traditional tribal area, has become, with the help of local and international partners, an important and successful model for the care of orphaned children and elders.  It has developed an impressive infrastructure that includes site-built housing using mud, cement and tin for nearly 800 people, ecological toilet composting systems, rainwater harvesting, food security, long term natural capital systems, vocational education in woodworking, sewing, metal work, and agriculture.

Two years ago I was contacted by Joseph Ntunyoi, Director of the Nyumbani Village Sustainability Department, and asked to teach the first Permaculture Design Certification Course (PDC) at the village with the goal of inspiring and advancing stable, resilient and sustainable systems of human settlement in Kenya. As my bumpy ride up a rutted red dirt road ended just through the entrance to Nyumbani Village on a warm day in early December 2010, the dream of bringing permaculture to this extraordinary place finally came to fruition.

I was welcomed with open arms by the staff, interns from around the world, visiting consultants, supporters, and especially by the elders and children.  When the elders address you they say, “Wasja,” which means “How are you my child?” and you answer back with a deep sigh that sounds like, “Aaaaahhhhhhh” which means, “I am well Grandmother/Grandfather”.  In this place where so many people have lost family and have seen so much pain and death, there exists a humility and underlying hope that speaks to the language of unconditional love, and years of good and fruitful work.

Our Nyumbani Village Permaculture Design Course attracted a powerful and diverse group of students. From villagers and local Kenyans, to those from as far away as Uganda, Liberia, India, Germany, and America, people came with the goal of bringing useful knowledge and skills back to their communities. 

The combination of their varied backgrounds and visions brought an invaluable depth of understanding and experience to our course. This diverse group of people, their unique constituencies, and their commitment to generating concentric rings of positive change into the heart of the world is the focus of this article. 

In my many travels and courses around the world that I have been teaching, it is the diversity of the participants who are drawn to permaculture design certification course that bring the PDC a foundational layer of learning for all of us. This occurs through the differing viewpoints and experiences that each person brings and shares.  As an instructor, I have learned to call upon this diversity to expand to the edges the subjects I am teaching and to draw the entire class deeper into the subject matter by shifting their focus from patterns to details and back again through the voices of the students. 

I would like to highlight a few of these visionary souls for you to grasp the importance of this work and how permaculture is a crucial weft in the basket of regenerative living around the globe.  It is through these individuals (and many others who I did not highlight in this article) and their community connections that a single PDC in Kenya has a significant impact around the world.  Let me highlight a few of these extraordinary individuals who were a part of the course:

Mohamad A. Mohamad is a young man who was born and raised in the biggest slum in East Africa. He has been a keystone in the formation of an organization called Youth and Farm Self Help Group.  This group is based out of and works in the very heart of the slums of his birth, located in the Kibera District of Nairobi, Kenya.   He has inspired many other young men and youth to tend, plant, nurture, and harvest their future rather than steal for it.  Several years ago, these young folks took over an old dumpsite and have converted it into a productive farm where they both eat and sell their produce and have made a micro-business out of creating a simple toilet and bathing facility.  He has been working for ten years on this crucial endeavor and has been a model for peaceful and ethical action during times of violence and upheaval. During the 2008 election when violence threatened his community he inspired others by living his ethics which beautifully coincide with the Permaculture Ethics: Care of the Earth, Care of the People and only taking a Fair Share.    Their success can be seen at these two links:             http://greendreams.edublogs.org/2009/08/03/kibera-youth-reform-organic-farm-one-year-later/ http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=101078

You can email Mohamad at [email protected].  This group is in need of a laptop computer, digital camera and an external hardrive to be able to share their important and innovative work with the world to help them raise additional funds to buy another piece of land for farming.  If you are inspired to donate one or all of these items, please contact me at [email protected] as I will be seeing Mohamad when I return to Kenya in March of 2011 to help with their permaculture design for the dump site.  

Nath, who was named by his spiritual community in India, is a young man in his twenties from Germany.   He is one of those young people who give hope to those of us who are older than him (and younger too) that the future is going to be held and guided in a beautiful way by these old souls in young bodies.  He runs a youth organization called AYUDH Amrita Yuva Dharma Dhara, a Sanskrit term which can freely be translated as “the youth which perpetuates the wheel of Dharma(Righteousness).” In Sanskrit “Ayudh” also means Peace. AYUDH’s activities in India include providing food and medical aid to the poor and needy, offering free eye-treatment camps, cleaning hospital compounds, planting trees and conducting antidrug, -alcohol and -tobacco campaigns throughout the country.  They work with thousands of youth and have recently expanded into working with European youth.  He carries a big dose of inspiration that manifests in positive action and attitude.  Learn more about the organization he runs: http://www.ayudh.eu/ Rupal Shah is a born Kenyan of Indian decent.  She is a dynamic woman who is passionate about helping people and the earth and is an important part of the management team that has developed the Amrita Children’s Center which within just a few short months will be housing, educating and loving over 100 orphaned children.  This home is part of a greater organization guided by Amma, the hugging saint, under her umbrella, “Embracing the World”.  To learn more please see: http://www.ammakenya.org/

Gai Cullen is a born Kenyan of British decent and is a real mover and shaker in Kenya and beyond. Through her successful businesses, philanthropic endeavors and the development of conservation trusts she is creating, rehabilitating and preserving vital habitat for Kenya’s myriad wildlife populations.  During our day off in the middle of the PDC, we went out in her small plane and spotted a white cheetah, the only one in existence, among the many other animals that have a permanent home because of her efforts.  Her work is a legacy that will allow for wildlife to be a part of Kenya’s future for generations to come.  Permaculture will be a formidable part of their restoration efforts on a broad-acre scale.  

Stephany Salaita is a vital community resource to her Maasai community.  As a young woman in a patriarchal tribe, she is one of the very few women who has made it to school and persevered on through college.  With her education she could have gone into the city and acquired a well paid job, yet she chose to return to her community to be a coordinator for a youth group called RETO.  They work with young woman who have been raped to offer medical and psychological support services, as well as working to prosecute offenders.  They have education programs to combat FGM (female genital mutilation), and have tree-planting programs to reforest their region to help with rebuilding their badly damaged ecological systems.  She is a dynamic individual who is committed to her tribe and will certainly be a key teacher in permaculture in her community over the coming years. 

David Okware organizes and coordinates a large farmer cooperative of over 8,720 farmers in the Kinguru District of  Uganda.  They work to support this large network of farmers by helping with technology transfer, advisory services, marketing, addressing issues of land degradation, HIV, and climate change, as well as offering enterprise trainings.  If David’s design project during the course is an indicator of what is to come from him, he will certainly be a formidable permaculture designer and teacher in the not so distant future in his homeland of Uganda.

Hawa Kamara is quickly becoming a leader in her Mandingo tribal community in northern Liberia by being one of the few women who have learned to both read and write.     Hawa works with everyday gandhis, a peacemaking NGO in Liberia, to reach out to those in her community who were deeply affected by their recently ended civil war.  She will touch many lives with her understandings and application of Permaculture.

Faith Musyimi is a dynamic Kenyan woman who has helped to develop SASOL, an organization that addresses the issues of water scarcity, food security, poverty and education in her tribal community.  One of their key outreach programs is their sand dam projects that revivify the watersheds by slowing the water and trapping the silt which enhances their ground water recharge of the area wells.   They teach and demonstrate broad-acre tree planting, terracing, community capacity building, and the development of leadership skills in the youth and young adults.    They also have an international mentoring program where they pair local students with European students to share knowledge.  Faith will be a positive change-maker in her community using the permaculture design skills she learned during this course. 

People from all over the world come to Nyumbani Village not only to share their gifts but to gather for their own spirits a sense of what is possible. One visiting Kenyan dignitary shared with the residents and course participants the possibility of reducing their need to cut down the forests by cooking with solar cookers.  Her name is Faustine Odabaand she is known in East Africa as “Solar Mama.”  She teaches people how to live with real-time sunlight to meet their daily needs. Her organization, NAREWAMA (Natural Resources and Waste Management Alliance), promotes and encourages the use of renewable energy and environmental conservation.  She is considered by many to 

be a pioneer in teaching people how to turn waste into profit through re-purposing plastics into woven hats, capes, bags, etc., and converting human waste into fertilizer for growing food.  For more information about her work please email her: [email protected]] 

Concentric Rings of Positive Impacts

On the last day of the course after the students received their certificates, we spent some time developing a mind map of where each student was going to demonstrate their newly acquired skills and understandings of permaculture.  I was completely humbled by the inimitable pathways in which the deep learning that occurred in this PDC is about to make its way out into the world.  It was wonderfully clear that many of the students attending this PDC will each individually touch thousands of lives with Permaculture who will in-turn touch thousands more.  David Okware alone will be able to begin to develop demonstration sites and education programs in Uganda that will soon introduce nearly 9,000 farmers and their families to Permaculture. 

David’s strategy, which I consider the best strategy, is to begin by setting up a demonstration site on his own farm to show the people the ethics and principles in action and the appropriate local methodologies to apply permaculture.  In this way, they see first hand the economic, ecologic and social capital that is developed and yielded in a well-designed Permaculture system.   Each student in this PDC has committed to developing a demonstration example of what they have learned in this course and I can only extrapolate from this that many thousands of lives will be touched in the near future by these individuals and what they have learned and how they will apply it. 

The success of developing a broad concentric ring of influence with a single PDC has been to create a course environment that welcomes and inspires change-makers and leaders to attend and participate together in the learning process.   We have found that there are key understandings to create a course with a powerful concentric ring of change in the world.  They include:

·      Choosing a site for the PDC that has a solid and positive reputation for honoring social and ecological issues and remains in good standing in the community in which it dwells

·      Involve reputable teachers both locally and internationally

·      Have a well designed curriculum with a healthy mixture of lecture, discussion and practicum

·      Ensure that your course registration process is professional and responsive

·      Involve your former students in the marketing and include registered students in sharing about the upcoming course

·      Use testimonials in the advertising from previous courses

·      Arrange for scholarships for key-community organizers who are low-income to be able to attend

·      Write stories about the potential of the course and use them like a press release

·      Answer all inquiries from potential students with questions that lead to dialogue of who they are, what their connections are, and what their motivation is for wanting to know about the course.  Involve this information in developing further marketing outreach

·      Seek sponsorships to underwrite the course costs and involve those connections in helping with marketing

·      If at all possible, make the course an international one.  This lends itself to the broad application of the curriculum and the synergy that can be created by having different perspectives from different locales, socio-economic standing, tribes, educational backgrounds, etc. 

In this manner, we were able to create a leverage point for the permaculture teachings and their application to reach far and wide into the fabric of myriad constituencies, cultures and bioregions with very little overall energy expenditure. I realized that the very design of this course was working with the principle of making the “most amount of change with the least amount of energy input.”  A well designed and strategically attended Permaculture Design Course is a keystone in creating a worldwide network of the local application of the ethics and principles of permaculture.  Let’s each of us support the growing of our capacity as an international grassroots campaign by supporting a strong PDC teacher network and certification process so that millions upon millions of PDC graduates in the future will be the fruit of our efforts now. 

I will be returning to Kenya in March of 2011 to teach another  Permaculture Design Course at Badilishi Ecovillage.  If you or someone you know may be interested in attending this international course, please send an inquiry to [email protected].  I am also working on raising the funds to underwrite the expenses of the course and several design consultancies around Kenya and have received a generous matching grant. Every penny up to $9,000 that is donated will be matched by a private foundation to cover course costs and my travel expenses so the course fees paid by higher income international students can go directly to supporting local student scholarship funds.  Please consider making a donation to this campaign by going to the following link: http://truenatuedesign.chipin.com/permaculture-in-kenya-and-uganda

Or make a tax-deductible donation through Quail Springs 501c3 non-profit organization by clicking here and designating the funds to Permaculture in Africa: https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=12781

In Growing Peace,

Warren Brush

P.S. I want to offer a special gratitude for everyday gandhis and the Tomchin Family Foundation for supporting these highly effective efforts that are touching thousands of lives in East Africa and for their continued belief in bringing peace to the world through permaculture education and demonstration. 

Warren Brush is a certified Permaculture designer and teacher as well as a mentor and storyteller. He has worked for over 20 years in inspiring people of all ages to discover, nurture and express their inherent gifts while living in a sustainable manner.  He is co-founder of Quail Springs Learning Oasis & Permaculture Farm, Wilderness Youth Project, Mentoring for Peace, Trees for Children and his Permaculture design company, True Nature Design.  He works extensively in Permaculture education and sustainable systems design in North America and in Africa. He can be reached through email at [email protected] or by calling his office at 805-886-7239.

www.quailsprings.org    

www.treesforchildren.org

www.permaculturedesign.us

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Permaculture Courses Coming Up in Rural Kenya

Kenya Permaculture Design Courses with Warren Brush December 6-19, 2010 (Nyumbani Village) March 4-18, 2011 (Badilisha EcoVillage)

You can help support the teaching of aPermaculture Design Certification Course in Kenya at Nyumbani Village in December of 2010 and in Badilisha EcoVillage in March of 2011.

Make a donation today on ChipIn (http://truenatuedesign.chipin.com/permaculture-for-kenya). Or register to take your Permaculture Design Course in rural Kenya by emailing [email protected]. Learn how to design for stability, resilience, and abundance in a village in Kenya that is dedicated to sustainability and community health. Nyumbani Village, in the Kitui District 2-hours from Nairobi, is home to hundreds of elders and children who were orphaned by family members who have died of HIV/AIDS. Badilisha EcoVillage, on Rusinga Island in Lake Victoria, operates orphan feeding programs, local scholarship funds, women's empowerment and family adoption programs. These courses will be facilitated by Warren Brush, the co-founder of Quail Springs Permaculture Farm and True Nature Design, with local teachers. Details are on the flyer at (http://quailsprings.org/KenyaPDCs.pdf)

Please donate today, or sign up to attend a course, to help these important courses flourish! Thank you kindly.

******************************************* More on Nyumbani Village and Badilisha EcoVillage:

Nyumbani Village's vision is creating a self-sustaining community to serve orphans and elders who have been left behind by the lost generation of the HIV pandemic. The Village provides a family-like setting for orphaned children under the stewardship of elderly adults and seeks to ensure that the children receive love, sustenance, health-care, holistic education and culture transfer, aiming at their physical, psychosocial and spiritual development, and, at the same time, providing holistic care and support for the grandparents in their later years. Through group homes and community services, the Village seeks to harness the energy of youth and the maturity of elders to create new blended families that foster healing, hope and opportunity. The village also seeks to ensure that the residents in the surrounding communities reach a certain level of self-reliance through the Village sustainability program.Nyumbani Village stands on one thousand acres of land donated by the Kitui District County Council. The Village is located 3 hours East of Nairobi. The site is within the poorest division in the Kitui District and has a high incidence of HIV and a high number of HIV orphans. When complete, the Village will accommodate approximately 1000 orphans and 100 grandparents living in 100 dwelling units each with a grandparent and 8 - 10 children.

Badilisha EcoVillage has been organized to make a valuable contribution to the social, economic, emotional, mental, spiritual and physical health of Rusinga Island, Kenya. It is our vision to achieve this through the following departments:

EARTH CARE: Establish and maintain a community in and from which Earth Care and environmental conservation will be supported in all thinkable aspects. Grow food on basis of perm culture, to establish a resource centre, to organize research and outreach programs and develop ecotourism. Promote new and cutting edge technology to improve the living conditions within the community.

SCHOOL POOL: Is a collection of support for local schools to be empowered to create change. Badilisha will work in partnership with schools to assist with resources, student and teacher scholarships, feeding programs for orphans and funding for projects that improve the educational environment.

FAMILY SPONSORSHIP: Create a sponsor network around the world to enable families to become productive and active members of the community. Families will be supported with aid to create income, pay school fees, improve food production and shelter until they become self-sufficient and self-reliant.HIV/AIDS: Generate actions towards reduction of the pandemic HIV/AIDS, and to restore self-confidence in people who suffer from this.

******************************************* About Warren Brush, Permaculture Designer and Educator Warren Brush is a Permaculture Designer and Educator working mostly in North America and Africa, founder of True Nature Design, and co-founder of Quail Springs Learning Oasis and Permaculture Farm and Trees for Children. For more than 20 years, Warren has helped empower thousands of people in their discovery of sustainable living and respect for land and communities. He teaches courses including: Permaculture Certification, Rainwater Harvesting Systems, Ferro-Cement Tank Building, Compost Toilet Systems, Greywater Solutions, Water for Every Farm, Drought Proofing, Cultural Mentoring, Introduction to Permaculture Systems, Corporation Sole Formation, Various Origins Skills, Food Forestry, among other offerings.

Learn more about the organizations directed by Warren: Quail Springs Learning Oasis and Permaculture Farm, www.quailsprings.org, a 450-acre arid land Permaculture demonstration and educational center located in the southern California mountains. True Nature Design, www.permaculturedesign.us, is Warren's Permaculture design and education company.

Learn more about organizations and projects co-founded by Warren: Trees for Children, www.treesforchildren.org, is an organization that teaches youth how to plant trees in ways that contribute to their community's resilience and stability. It also raises funds for tree planting projects. Mentoring for Peace, www.mentoring4peace.com, is a research project that is discovering the nature of how to mentor our children to be peacemakers with broad concentric rings of influence. Wilderness Youth Project, www.wyp.org, a youth centered organization that mentors youth in learning nature observation and origins skills.

*******************************************

Please make a donation today to support Permaculture education in Kenya at ChipIn (http://truenatuedesign.chipin.com/permaculture-for-kenya) Contact to register to take your Permaculture Design Course in rural Kenya: Kolmi Majumdar, email [email protected] or phone [phone].

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Permaculture Resiliency Project with the San Bushmen in the Kalahari By Warren Brush

In a land of contrast, mystery and years of imperialism, a small village of over three-hundred people on the edge of the Kalahari in Namibia germinated a new permaculture resiliency project in January of 2012.  In talking with the headman of the village, he shared that their people, the San Bushmen, have lived in harmony with the land as hunter gatherers for eons.  They are often cited as the first peoples of Africa and very likely all of humanity may have descended from their ranks many millennia ago[i].  

The village elder sadly shared that colonialism destroyed the San migratory way of life, a hunter gatherer tradition that was sustainable for thousands of years.  He told us that they were no longer allowed to roam freely and trophy hunters destroyed the vast herds of game that formed their principal supply of food. Both Black and White farmers alike built up huge herds of cattle that destroyed the ecology of the Kalahari and subsequently the foods that had been their staple diet.  They soon found they had to work for the farmers to be able to feed their families and hence a cycle of poverty and separation from their cultural roots ensued. 

Although rarely recognized in the histories of the west, a similar unfolding of separation from our ancestral sustainable way of living has been a part of all our stories at some point in our history.  Somewhere deep in our bones we can truly empathize with the plight of these people.  The village of Vergenoeg came to be out of the displacement of the San and that of the Damara peoples who eventually had to settle to survive.  You can see and feel the the years of gathered grief that are evident in the very fabric of the village in both prominent and subtle ways.  Yet, their are vast cultural roots that keep the people cohesive in their plight for a sustainable future. 

Seven years ago an inspired Canadian named Kimberly Cornish, visited the village and fell in love with the land and the people and felt that she could eventually facilitate some positive and lasting projects to help the people remember their gifts and build their capacity and resilience and that of the land.  Ever since then she has been building her skill set and experiences to prepare her for this vision that has led up to this project. 

Kimberly and I met when I when I was teaching a PDC at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in the summer of 2010 when she and her mother took the course.  She had mentioned then the dream she held of bringing Permaculture to Vergenoeg.   With help from her friends, some Rotary Clubs and her own savings, Kimberly put together this project that hit the ground in Namibia in January of 2012.   This project is now flourishing because of her determination and ability to navigate the details of such a far reaching vision.

Kim brought me in to teach and facilitate the basics of permaculture design and to facilitate hands-on learning with the villagers in the building of a ferro-cement rainwater harvesting tank and catchment system, creating earthworks that reticulate water into their plantings, designing and planting a food forest that could serve as a research project for the region and building greywater systems that grow food.  Our work to see the project through was cut out for us.

When we arrived at the village we were immediately welcomed with open arms as we were approaching them differently than other westerners, groups and organizations had in the past.  We were clear with them that this was not an “aid” project as what we were sharing was the same information and skills that I teach in Southern California, Europe, Australia, the Middle East and other all over Africa.   I shared that we are all essentially in the same boat of needing to harmonize our patterns of living with those of nature.  I also began by sharing that all the ethics and principles of permaculture I, too, am living at my home project called Quail Springs Permaculture in the mountains of Southern California.  They were excited that I also know how to live beautifully in “mud” buildings, use compost toilets, grew our food, have a food forest research project, store water in myriad ways, raise livestock, and tend the land as a steward of place and people.

We also acknowledged that the wisdoms that they carried were important for us to learn from and to bring home to our ailing ecologies and often isolated “village-less” people in North America.  This project was truly one of exchange and sharing.

The immediate issues that we felt we could contribute to were related to the health of the people and the sustainability of their supporting ecologies.   Over time, the people of Vergenoeg have developed a diet that is less diversified and is nutrient deficient and which has created a dependency for money as they have to buy much of their food from sources far away.  This was a major factor potentially causing instability for the village and on their individual health as evidenced by people with diabetes, cancer, and other diet related ailments.  These factors are also similar ones we are finding in the West.  Other issues we observed had to do with high salinity of their “bore hole” water, erosion gullies within the village, toilet latrines that were unhealthy, children and young mothers with hair loss ,a general lack of gardens, and a deficiency in knowing how to prepare foods they did have growing like sweet potato greens. 

Their knowledge of livestock tending is amazing and they have many goats, cattle and chickens that are in wonderful health and the landscape is not suffering overall from their animal management practices.   Their animal husbandry skills certainly are rooted in their understanding of the patterns in the landscape that came from their history as hunter gatherers.  They know how to read the land and the bordering forest was in relative good health compared to other parts of the country.

The course and our hands-on projects were held at a community compound that is a part of a hostel where about 80 children live, many of them orphans.  We decided that this was the most needed place to start as so many lives could immediately be positively affected by this work and the children themselves could be immersed in the projects.  We began the practicum part of the course by identifying places where waste could be converted to resources.  The kitchen waste water was our first project.  We identified the patterns of where and how often the “waste” water was being emptied, then designed a greywater mulch garden with a banana overstory and about six other food plants that included a sweet potato ground cover.  This is where we introduced the process and benefits of mulching and maintaining our water resources on our land for as long as possible so to perform as many duties as possible.  The people immediately “got” it and had some “ah-ha” moments while we worked together to build this simple but effective system. 

Our next project was to identify the site of where we would develop a research food forest garden and locate a rainwater capture and storage systems.  This included both a gutter system on the roof of the girls dormitory and a ferro-cement 5000 liter tank, swales and water diversion for us to pick up water from outside the compound.

I must share that the ferro-cement tank building project really brought us together and created a synergy in the course.  People were so proud of what they were building.  Each day relatives, friends and co-workers of the people in the course would come to see what the people were building.  Everyone in the course played a role, even the elders who would sit in chairs at the edge of the building site and in their presence, gave license for this project to be done.  The grandmothers gladly lent their life energy and helped with the most difficult parts of the tank building.  It took six full days to build the tank, spread out over ten days of teaching and other land projects.

Out of this ferro-cement project and one that I facilitated in Liberia a few years ago, I am developing a step-by-step manual of how to build and maintain a functional, non-toxic and long lasting ferro-cement tank, especially for most the people who live in non first-world scenarios.  It will include a very detailed description of each step of the process, materials list, tool list, labor and time estimates, anecdotal information that can help someone build one from the manual, and other resources for someone wanting to build one for themselves, for their project(s) or their community.  If you are interested in getting the details for this, please send me an email and I will get it to you when we finish the manual.  

We learned about water and how to store it in the soil for it to feed their gardens and plantings long beyond the rains of the wet seasons.  We built an A-frame level then mapped out swales and diversion drains to best capture runoff from their landscape.  These earthworks were the foundation of the planting of the food forest.  In one afternoon we planted a diverse food forest that is a part of our ongoing research project to develop productive food growing  schemes for the people of the Kalahari that mimic the stability and resilience of a natural forest.  Over 60 species of food and support species were planted into the initial system this time around. 

The workshop was enlivened by the full participation of five students from the Polytechnic of Namibia in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia.  Their professor, Dr. Ibo Zimmermann, who was trained by Bill Mollison himself (one of the founder’s of Permaculture) over 25 years ago when Bill came to Africa.  We observed that having the Polytechnic students learning alongside the villagers really gave the village a boost as they realized that what they were learning was for everyone, not just the San.  Everyone, villagers and Polytechnic students alike, expressed how permaculture was needed in their lives and communities and made so much sense for these unpredictable times.  The Polytechnic has committed to continue to be a part of the project and will be a local resource for the community there.  They will return in August of 2012 to continue to build capacity, assist and help decipher the feedback that the systems we have installed offer over the coming seasons.

This project has become the genesis of the development of the Permaculture Research Institute of Namibia.  We are planning to convene a full permaculture design certification course in 2013 that will be held at the Polytechnic of Namibia in Windhoek that will be open to international students as well as people from all over Africa and especially Namibia.  In the meantime, the unfolding of permaculture continues at Vergenoeg which you can follow and contribute to on their website at www.permaculturenamibia.org or you can email Kimberly Cornish, the project coordinator, at: [email protected]

The whole experience was filmed by Ei Ei Khin, a creative spirit, budding film-maker and Permaculturist who will be putting together videos from the journey for other people to learn and be inspired from.  Thank you Ei Ei for documenting this important work. 

On the last day we were in the village, we knew that the project had truly found success and a deep and lasting root.  The children, on their own accord, after observing the women washing clothes and throwing the water out as waste, got right to building a greywater mulch basin for the clothes washing area.  They did it from start to finish on their own.   When the children get it you know it will go out to the entire community.  We also had a thunderstorm the night before that filled the ferro-cement tank we built about 1/3rd full which we were able to drink the sweet rainwater and use it for making the final lime plaster for the tank.  A gratifying ending for the first phase of this vital project to say the least!

My gratitude goes out to the people of Vergenoeg for their welcoming and their re-membering of how to live in a harmonic with nature and for being a budding example for us all in how to live simply and beautifully.  I am also grateful for the way that they embraced permaculture which will truly support them in their quest to help themselves live in a way that not only respects their rich ancestry but may provide a healthy and stable future for generations of their people to come.

Warren Brush

March 3, 2012

Special Permaculture Course Announcement For People Interested in International Development

Warren Brush and an all star cast of permaculture instructors including Julius Piti, Cathe’ Fish, Tom Cole, Jeannette Acosta, Andrew Jones, Loren Luyendyk, among others, will be teaching a full Permaculture Design Certification Course for people working in International Development each June at Quail Springs Permaculture.  To see the flyer go to this link.  Register today as there is limited space available.

Warren Brush is a certified Permaculture designer and teacher as well as a mentor and storyteller. He has worked for over 25 years in inspiring people of all ages to discover, nurture and express their inherent gifts while living in a sustainable manner.  He is co-founder of Quail Springs Permaculture, Sustainable Vocations, Wilderness Youth Project, Trees for Children and his Permaculture design company, True Nature Design.  He works extensively in Permaculture education and sustainable systems design in North America, Africa, Middle East, Europe, and Australia. He has devoted many years to mentoring youth and adults to inspire and equip them to live in a sustainable manner with integrity and a hopeful outlook.  His mentoring includes working with those who are former child soldiers, orphans, indigenous peoples, youth from troubled families and situations as well as those youth from other varied and privileged backgrounds.He teaches courses including: Permaculture Design Certification, Rainwater Harvesting Systems, Ferro-Cement Tank Building, Compost Toilet Systems, Greywater Solutions, Water for Every Farm, Drought Proofing, Cultural Mentoring, Introduction to Permaculture Systems, Corporation Sole Formation, Food Forestry, and origins skills among other offerings. He can be reached through email at [email protected] by calling his office at 805-886-7239.

www.quailsprings.org

www.sustainablevocations.org

www.permaculturedesign.us

[i] Gill, Victoria (1 May 2009). "Africa's genetic secrets unlocked"(online edition). BBC World News (British Broadcasting Corporation). Retrieved 2009-09-03

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Permaculture and the Western Syndrome

Presenting their designs as a part of our Permaculture Design Course in 2008 in Liberia

For tens of thousands of years intact peoples from around the world have been intricately woven into the fabric of the landscape that nourishes them.  Culture itself has sprung from the land through the people’s relationship with all that sustains them.  This is not as esoteric as it sounds…Imagine a group of people who live in a particular watershed with a distinct mix and availability of flora and fauna, weather patterns, sun angles, sound resonance, distance to other bio-regions, etc. Everyday necessity would be provided for by these and other more subtle structures and influences that would provide unique implements for survival, foods, hunting practices, shelters, musical instruments, honoring practices, ceremonies and stories.  These peoples have known the origins stories of all that give them life, this in turn became the foundation of true, intact culture where the land would express itself very tangibly through the people

Then came, what one of my elders have called, the Western Syndrome. For thousands of years there has been a syndrome (We call it a SYNDROME because the definition of the word describes it perfectly; syn·drome n, a group of things or events that form a recognizable pattern, especially of something undesirable) that has moved around the earth consuming intact cultures by replacing our rooted stories with distant tales and a commerce that carries no responsibility for the land that sustains it.  And now, the story of broken-hearted people who have no origins place who move continually west to flee their oppressors only to find they have become the oppressor themselves of the intact peoples they encounter in their flight.  This story has repeated itself in untold ways for millennia and it runs deep in most of our blood and bone as it plays itself out in our daily lives and worldviews around the world. This syndrome is not just carried or transmitted by one particular grouping of people defined by race, creed, or color but has affected and been purported by us all and continues to do so.

In my Permaculture education and design work in the West African country of Liberia, I have found myself often in a face-off with the Western Syndrome in its quest to cull life from communities to gain a profit, mostly for large western corporations. I soon found that one of my roles as a permaculture educator coming from the so-called “developed” world was to dispel the myth that the “western world” only leads to a glorious future.  In Liberia, many of the people, young and old, will adopt nearly anything “western” as a personal sign of status and progressiveness.    Where I was first confronted with the reality of this is when I went to visit one of the student’s midwifery clinic, which was close to where I was facilitating a permaculture design course. 

When I arrived at the clinic, which was well made of mud bricks and palm thatching, there were women, some pregnant, others with babies and children all about on benches, playing, sitting next to a cooking fire, and others were weaving baskets as they they shared stories, laughed and tended to the little ones.  One particular woman was walking about with a spray can pumping away to keep the spray mist constant on all the leaves of the plants that were all about.  My curiosity hoped it was a compost tea she was using to fertigate the plants, yet my intuition knew differently, so I went to see what the magic concoction was that was so necessary to spray around this clinic for women and children.  It was DDT.  I was shocked.  As I read the label on the can she was re-supplying her sprayer with, it only had the warning, “fatal if swallowed” and the name of an American Chemical Company.   My heart sank in the dark reality of standing face to face with the Western Syndrome.

I asked the woman who was spraying the DDT what her reasons for spraying were and if she knew about the repercussions of using this biocide.  She replied, “We have to use it to kill the bugger-bug which destroys our crops.  They have got so bad since the war that we have no choice but to use most of the few dollars we make to buy this chemical or we lose our food.”  She also shared that she knew it would make her sick if she drank the chemical, but nothing else. 

Later that day in our Permaculture Design class, consisting of 25 students, some of whom were respected elders in their community others who were barely adults and all who are from a wide range of backgrounds in education, traditions, tribes, languages, and beliefs, I asked them, “who is this bugger-bug.”   It was as if I had incited the devil itself as the translator shared in the common tribal language my question.  Everyone stirred, some even grew fiery red in the face as they explained how the losses of their crops from this little beast could mean the difference between life and death for whole families and communities.  They also shared how they were told that they should spray to kill mosquitoes that bring them malaria.  When I asked them about the DDT they used, they spoke to it as a type of savior, yet a costly one for people who on average make $2 a day for 8-10 hours of hard labor.  None of them knew anything of the long-term travesties that are caused by this chemical and why it is illegal to use in most “western” countries in the world including the country of origin of the one found at the midwifery clinic, the USA.

I spent some time gathering some information about DDT to better inform them and myself of the chronic effects of this toxic substance.  I shared the gamut of research that detailed how DDT is an endocrine disruptor and has other chronic effects on the nervous system, kidneys, liver, the reproductive and immune system, it is a carcinogen that contributes to cancer and is one of the nine persistent organic pollutants, which more importantly for the midwifery clinic, accumulates most intensively in mammals in the mother’s milk.  Needless to say, they were horrified. 

When everyone began to settle down a bit, one elder asked the very important and relevant question, “So what else can we do about the Bugger-Bug if we don’t use DDT?”  I certainly did not have the answers, as often I don’t when it comes to regional knowledge of place.  So in full Permaculture style, I replied, “Let’s go ask the Bugger-Bug?”  So right then and there, with very quizzical looks abounding, we all got up from our makeshift classroom and went out into the adjoining landscape to ask the bugger-bug what can we do to survive together.

We all walked together into a recently cleared area of rainforest where the debris had been burned-off and the land was laid bare and exposed other than where there were patches of mono-cropped maize and cassava.   The bugger-bug abounded busily gathering leaf material from the crops and bringing it back to their growing mound in the middle of the clear-cut.  We found that their mounds were rich in detritus and bird manures and seedlings of the native forest were sprouting all around it.  Their growing mound looked like a miniature forest mountain rich in diversity and nutrient.

We then left the middle of the clear-cut and went to the edge of this mono-cropped farm where the forest and the maize intermingled and to everyone’s surprise, the bugger-bug was significantly less prevalent and the damage to the crop was minimal.  In-fact, anywhere we went that had diversity of plant species with a mulch layer on the ground there was minimal damage by the bugger-bug.

We finally ventured deeper into the forest to observe how the bugger-lived there in a natural setting and found that they were so diminished in numbers within the forest that we had a difficult time finding any damage at all from them on the understory plants.  They seemed to only be feasting on the leaf drop from the canopy trees and had significantly less numbers than in the clear-cut areas.

In true detective fashion we then assembled our observations and clues that we gathered and low and behold, a story of a true forest stewardship emerged.  Our little bugger-bug was a “keystone” pioneer in the forest regeneration process.  It seemed that this termite would live peacefully in the forest until the time where a complete devastation of the forest occurred, then it would spring into action to assist the forest in rebuilding its structure.  Its numbers would increase and then they would search out plants, especially unhealthy stands of plants, to begin its soil building mound-raising process.  As their mounds grew from their efficient gathering, they would soon be the highest point in the landscape where birds of all sorts would perch.  Thanks to the birds, their mounds were seeded with myriad types of plant life and from there, the forest would regenerate outward in concentric ring-like patterns.  

The spell of the bugger-bug had been broken.  We excitedly went back into class where we applied our new learning into the design of a food growing system that incorporated diversity in both annuals and perennials, layering in both space and time, and deep mulching that is most analogous to the structure of a natural forest.  We then began building our demonstration farm using these practices learned from our bugger-bug teacher.  One elder shared with me while pointing to their 150-foot high ancestral tree, “I will give thanks to these little bugs for I know without them we would not have our forests.”

At the very root of Permaculture is the knowing that we must live in integrity with the world which sustains us.  The Western Syndrome cunningly distorts our ability to take responsibility for our lives through the many faces of globalization and often leaves us barren of integrity whether we are aware of it or not.  The bugger-bug story illustrates that with our work as Permaculture teachers and designers, we have a duty to honestly read the pattern languages around us and incorporate them into the conscious design of how we live in support of that which gives life.     

Warren Brushis a certified Permaculture designer and educator as well as a mentor and storyteller. He has worked for over 20 years in inspiring people of all ages to discover, nurture and express their inherent gifts while living in a sustainable manner.  He is co-founder of Quail Springs Learning Oasis & Permaculture Farm (a few of their offerings include: Permaculture Design Certification courses for Youth called Sustainable Vocations, PDC for Adults and Sustainable Aid Courses among many other offerings), Wilderness Youth Project, Mentoring for Peace, and Trees for Children.  He works extensively in Permaculture education and sustainable systems design in North America and in Africa through his design firm, True Nature Design. He can be reached through email at [email protected] or by calling his office at 805-886-7239.

  www.quailsprings.org

www.sustainablevocations.org

www.mentoring4peace.com   

www.treesforchildren.org

www.truenaturedesign.net

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Rainwater Harvesting as a Vocational Training

Building Ferro-Cement Rainwater Harvest Tanks as Vocational Training

Some of the twenty participants of a Rainwater Harvest Ferro-Cement Tank building workshop in Voinjama, Liberia, West Africa working with me on the steel framework

Sunday, November 23, 2008 Rainwater may be the only reliable and healthful source of water for most of us around the world as pollution, toxicity, disease, and its scarcity plague our water supplies not only in the "2/3rds world" but, increasingly in the ecologically impoverished industrial world.

I am here in Northern Liberia with good friend and Permaculture colleague, Paul Swenson, where we have just finished teaching a two-week intensive training for ex-combatants and war affected young and old from many of the local tribes. The people of this region have recently found peace after a brutal civil war that lasted for nearly 14 years and everyday gandhis, a peacebuilding organization, has once again graciously brought us here to weave permaculture within the fabric of their work. The training was intensive both physically and mentally as we made a 1,250 gallon ferro-cement rainwater harvest storage tank from design to a finished and functional tank.

Mixing cement plaster of one part cement to three parts sifted sand using gauge boxes, shovels and sweat Notice the trellis structure we installed on earlier trips to cool the house during the hot dry season

We also designed and built rainwater harvesting bio- swales as part of a larger on-the-ground exercise in designing a two acre farm. We learned together how to work with water and understand its many uses and functions. We practically looked at how to slow water's traverse down the face of the landscape by spreading it widely through out the land and then sinking it into the ground using contour swales, mulch and appropriate plantings when the 100 plus inches of rain occur in the wet season to assuage the lack of water that follows in the dry season.

This is our hand-drawn Permaculture Design for the adjacent property to where we built the tank and is owned by the peacebuilding group everyday gandhis. It is a two acre property that will be a local demonstration site of Permaculture in action During the wet season, Cholera is a life threatening reality that flows with the effluent that enters the water stream with daily downpours. Up until now, the United Nations has been putting millions of dollars into early warning and treatment of cholera and pittance toward rainwater harvest systems. It is ironical that when the cleanest water available to us is in abundance many die and suffer from lack of healthy drinking water. This design flaw is easily ameliorated by the sensible design of simple rainwater harvest systems coupled with compost toilet systems that turn waste into food....not into pollution. This training gave nearly twenty people the opportunity to learn how to design, site and build a tank that could last up to fifty years in providing for their community's health, well being and stability.

Paul Swenson and Jolla working the rendering process on the inside of the tank We ran out of time this trip to teach compost toilet building but are hopeful that we will return in the spring to teach another hands-on workshop on how to build a simple thermophyllic system to handle their toilet nutrients so they become useful in their soil building processe, rather than disease in their communities. We hope our work with everyday gandhis, our sponsoring organization, will continue in providing Permaculturetraining for this region of the world as part of their overall peacebuilding strategy for the region. It is through their generosity and community connection that Permaculture has been able to set its roots in this remote community in Northern Liberia.

Putting on the render coat, Lassana Kamara was our quality control man for this process of the tank construction Both Paul and I extend our gratitude to the people of Voinjama, Liberia for their incredible kindness, graciousness and willingness to embrace Permaculture while teaching us so much about culture and community. Water is life and we hope that our work in helping to store this precious resource in your community has honored your traditions and magnanimous hospitality. Thank you!

In Growing Peace, Warren Brush [email protected]