Permaculture Design in Hanoi

Having spent some time thinking about Permaculture design with the students of the Human Ecology Practice Area (HEPA) I have decided to start taking steps toward a Permaculture design house where I live in Hanoi.

Permaculture creates sustainable household and agriculture systems, modeled after natural ecosystems, that minimize waste, human labor, and energy input through synergistic design and engineering. It emphasizes patterns of natural landscapes functions and species and organizes the various elements of farm and household systems to mimic them. It does this by looking closely at the relationships created among these elements.

The primary components of a Permaculture home are simple and easy, it is really about saving energy and resources. - This will soon be a home where the wastes are recycled into nutrition for the soil which in turn feeds the people in the house. Also, things will be arranged so that it can all feed itself - this will make it do-able and fun.

So far I have only made a few small changes.

The kitchen compost lives up on the balcony above the back garden in a 5 gallon bucket with holes in the bottom so that it drips onto the hanging plants and large potted plants below as it rots. Soon I'll put in a composting toilet on the top floor and make sure we use it with loads of leaves and so-on to make a high carbon slow rotting compost for later use in the banana circles around the house.

The folks at CulturalREcyclists, have a great video about a Permaculture teacher with an amazing example of it right on her property www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI-2DFRb1iY

Green Harvest has a great piece on 'City Permaculture: Sustainable Living in Small Spaces' about urban permaculture, garden layouts, orchards, home garden, structures, woodlots and animal systems greenharvest.com.au/books/permaculture_and_ecovillages.html

Mandatory Compost in San Francisco

'I left my heart in San Francisco. High on a hill, it calls to me.
The morning fog may chill the air - I don't care.
My love waits there in San Francisco
above the blue and windy sea!'
- Dean Martin

Though I have been away for a few years I still feel close to San Francisco. I left a lot of friends, my bike, my surfboard and my heart there. It is a city which represents the progresss toward the Ecotopia dream of my youth. San Francisco is a beacon of progressive policies and steps toward a sustainable relationship between humans and the environment.

Before I go beekeeping this morning I wanted to congratulate that great city on yet another step toward that ideal: This morning I read Gavin Newsom's June 23rd article on Greenbiz.com. He has signed in a tough new law that all businesses and individuals in the city must now compost their waste. All this in the interest of meeting the goal of zero waste by 2020.

'It will take time, but I believe mandatory composting will spread across the country -
improving the air we breathe and reducing our need for landfills.'
-Mayor Gavin Newsom

More Information about San Francisco Recycling Programs.

IFOAM Growing Organic Useful Composting Links page.

IFOAM Growing Organic Pages on Soil Fertility and Plant Cultivation.

Cory's Dr Green Blog Posts:
Small is Beautiful
Give Organic a Chance
Beekeeping
No Work Farming
Growing Organic

Visit Farmers for the Future

Waste Not Want Not

The current practice of burning excess corn and other grains to keep the market prices up, making fuel and making CAFO meat with resources which could otherwise be fed to hungry people is a travesty. Gross misuses and inefficiencies in the food production and transportation systems waste many precious calories that could otherwise be fed to hungry people. Many are calling these systemic problems a crisis of democracy.

On farm and off, being more efficient about how we treat and eat our food can help us with many aspects of the current ecological and economic crises. Why trash it when you can compost it? Why compost it when you can eat it? Somewhere around 20 percent of municipal waste is organic kitchen waste. A lot of what makes it into the bin is edible and with a simple recipe can be made into more tasty food. Breakfast this morning, for example, is bread pudding and tea. The bread was hard as a rock in the back of the bread box - 4 eggs, half a liter of milk, nutmeg, sugar, cinnamon and 20 minutes at 200 degrees we had bread pudding.

We also made a stock for potato leek soup made from the cut off bits of vegetables. The outside leaves of cabbage, the stems of kale, the garlic bits and the rest can all make for a nutritious and delicious soup stock. It feels so much better to put a little boiled mass in the compost rather than all that food, and the worms go nuts over it.

More information and resources: Save Food Stop Waste is an initiative in Australia to get people using food more efficiently. Using Kitchen Scraps is an informative how-to article on Bukisa.

Cory's Dr Green Blog Posts:
Small is Beautiful
Give Organic a Chance
Beekeeping
No Work Farming
Growing Organic