Meadow:
A Permaculture Story

I grew up where the rusty brown smell of sulfur from the gas burn-off of oil wells mulched in the air with the dripping black odor of ancient raw crude being drawn up into the 21st century. Dairy farms, cornfields, and patchwork clear-cut state land surrounded the valley that is West Branch, Michigan

Around the back of the cul-de-sac subdivision of my childhood was a pair of ponds with a mucky path through the center. From this isthmus I conducted amphibian research. Directly behind one of these pools was the best sandbox a kid could ask for. The back of the sand dune box was bordered by a crumbling barbed wire fence. On the other side, Bracken fern and White Pine had their fingers in the sand and their toes in the meadow. This small strip of land was bordered by a small plot of Red Pine in rows, a seasonal stream that grew into a small jungle every July, and a hill that overlooked a larger expanse of meadow speckled with oil wells. My friend Timmer lived on the other side of the jungle river through a brief stand of Birch trees.

At eight years old, I had discovered the perfect place to just be. At times, I imagined Timmer and I sleeping in stick shelters or tree forts, fishing in the ponds, foraging around the jungle-stream, or even tending a garden. I was unaware that twenty years later I would be drawing on this experience while envisioning an ideal life – one which would start with a small farm and include dwelling harmoniously with my natural surroundings.

Somehow, studying art in college brought me to understand the important differences between conventional growing methods and organics. At one point, the mountains called to me and I embarked on a journey illuminated by ideas like activism, Buddhism, community supported agriculture (CSA), and the quest for sustainability. Ideas seemed to seek me out, present themselves with a handshake and a grin, and then absorb into my skin like liquid sunshine. I became closer to understanding how my farm/community/communal ideals that grew in the meadow behind my sand dune box might actually work.

Long conversations with friends beneath the star-filled Oregon night sparked a renewal of my interest in different farm and community ideas. On my way out of Eugene, headed to La Vida Nueva, Costa Rica, a friend of my soul handed me a heavy, textbook-sized, black tome entitled Permaculture: A Designer's Manual by Bill Mollison. "You might need this while you're away," she said. Bill Mollison, one of the original minds that defined Permaculture sums up his vision as follows:

"Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action; of looking at systems in all their functions rather than asking only one yield of them and of allowing systems to demonstrate their own evolutions."

For the next two years, the ideas, suggestions, and guidelines in Mollison's work helped me as I became a part-time tropical gardener, part-time landscaper, part-time home and site planner, and part-time surfer. Steve and I experimented with those ideas and cultivated our own. We built an in-line water filtration system into our water supply using layers of local river rock, sand, and crushed seashells. We designed keyhole garden plots surrounding the house and planned for successive plantings of perennials food crops. The layers included banana plants or papaya trees in the middle, sweet potato and taro surrounding the banana and leaving a path to the center, pineapple and ginger next, and spinach, oregano, and basil to be easily harvested from the outside. We terraced the front hillsides with small stone and boulder walls and engineered the drainage from each terraced bed to flow downhill to the next one. Life vibrated at an incredibly intense frequency. I slept in a hammock and woke to howler monkeys grunting and barking behind the house each morning.

Whenever I would visit Michigan – especially when I first moved back to be closer to my family – the world at large would scare me. It is easy for the more progressively minded to be comfortable in places like Eugene or certain communities in Central America. Bigger events like the Oregon County Fair would not only have recycling available, but compost buckets as well. La Peninsula Secreto in Costa Rica had a very strong international community with a heavy focus on harmony with the land. Permaculture, or permacultura, was a word I heard spoken often around me. Coming back to Michigan felt like going downhill backwards on a bicycle. People around me weren't recycling because it was too difficult, others didn't know what compost was or what to do with it after it had broken down. Coming home was a culture shock.

I recently visited my childhood neighborhood. There is a driveway of compacted gravel running between the two ponds now. The homeowners park their car in my sand dune box, now covered in concrete. Their family room juts back into memories of my home base, my first intentional community, my first Permaculture project. While this feels like the backwards bicycle has started to wobble, moments away from crashing, I am developing my vision to notice places to pull over and rest – to regain balance and direction.

I can see this future taking shape through our local food co-ops, participation in local CSA's, and especially in networking events like the annual Bioneers Conference. Permaculture will not be our savior, but it is a practice and description of what saving ourselves looks like. It looks like the opportunity to observe nature and learn from it. It tastes like eating from forest gardens: pears, apples and peaches from the lower trees; juneberries, Goumi berries, currants, and bush cherries from the shrub layers; wild leeks, Chicory, Sea Kale, and mints from the perennials. It is fluid like drinking, bathing and providing water to gardens through systems of rainwater catchments, cisterns, swales and pools. It feels refreshing like recharging in the shade of taller trees. It is warm like a home heated from coppiced firewood in rocket stoves.

Permaculture takes people, cooperation, passion, ideas, integrity, and the will to follow through. We are all in this together, and I am ready to be a part of the pack that is pushing back up the hill. With any luck, future generations will view the landscape from the top of this hill and see a field – with a pond on one side and a stream on the other, surrounded by the sharp, warm and spicy smell of Bracken fern and meadow grass.

Jayson Spaulding is a landscaper in Traverse City working on manifesting the initiation of a Permaculture project that has been in the visioning process for nearly thirty years.

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