This presentation has been going around the "Permaculture World" for the last month. It is amazing. This is a must watch video if you have any interest in repairing our broken ecosystems.
From the TED website:
“Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to
desert,” begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And it's
happening to about two-thirds of the world’s grasslands, accelerating
climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into
social chaos. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now
believes -- and his work so far shows -- that a surprising factor can
protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.
Allan Savory works to promote holistic management in the grasslands of the world
I recently wrote an article about Growing Asian Pears and an article outlining 25 Varieties of Asian Pears. As I was researching information about pollination charts (see tomorrow's post), I came across this video.
Tom Spellman from Dave Wilson Nursery talks about some of the more popular Asian Pear varieties. Great video, only 3 minutes long. Fun stuff!
I recently wrote an article on Sorrel. For a follow-up, I am sharing this video by Green Dean from Eat The Weeds. It is great for helping you identify these plants in the wild, and it give a bit more information on the Rumex species.
Toby Hemenway is the author of Gaia's Garden. This book about homescale Permaculture has been the number one selling Permaculture book for the last five years (I believe). It really is a great book if you have not read it yet.
This video is also a great look at civilization and agriculture and the contrast with Permaculture.
While I do not agree with everything that Toby says here in this lecture, and I may write some articles on that in the future, I really do agree with the overall message.
If you have the time, I highly recommend watching this video.
I have shared the videos by John D. Liu (Hope in a Changing Climate) and Geoff Lawton (Greening the Desert). In this video, which does borrow a lot of footage from Hope in a Changing Climate, both of these Permaculture superstars come together to discuss the future of Permaculture in the world. This is a fantastic video!
The following video was sent to me by my good friend, Jake. This is a fantastic historical and educational video put out by the US Forest Service on the ax, hanging a new handle, sharpening, and working with the ax. There is also good information on the many styles of axes, broadaxes, hatchets, and adzes. This was a perfect video for me as I have been doing a lot more work with firewood, splitting, etc. The host is Bernie Weisgerber, who works for the USDA Forest Service as a historic preservationist. This guy is a genius when it comes to axes and handtools, and he is a great teacher on top of it. If you have any interest in lumberjacking, wood chopping, axes, or history, I would highly recommend watching this video.
During the holiday season, I will be doing quite a bit of traveling. I am also going to slow down and spend time with my family. I'll be posting a few things here and there. They will likely be interesting or fun photos or easy to watch videos, but I will not be writing in-depth or time-consuming research articles for a few weeks. So relax and enjoy the holidays. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Here is yet another great video from Geoff Lawton, the director of the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia. You need to follow the link below and sign-up. The 30+ minute video is well worth it. Very inspirational!
Today is just a quick link to a video. This is an
interesting documentary about honeybees and their decline over the last decade. There is a stong case to be made at placing the blame at the feet of government and agriculture corporations.
From their press release: Whether you are a beekeeper, a conservationist, an ecologist, a food-producer or a parent - please take half an hour to watch this new American video documentary about the global death of honeybees, bumblebees and other pollinators.
This is NOT just about the death of entire bee populations around the world, it is about the potential loss of 30% of our food supply and an all-out assault on the ecosystems of the world: insects, birds, amphibians, bats, fish - everything is threatened by the global distribution of hyper-toxic, neuro-toxic pesticides being applied to over 200 million acres of corn and crops in North America alone.
Following is a link to free videos from a Permaculture Design Course taught by Bill Mollison, the co-founder of Permaculture. Thanks to my long lost friend Jake for sending me this link. The videos are from 1994 and 1995, so over 15 years later they are admittedly a bit dated (with a very corny intro), but the informational content is still high quality and valid... nature doesn't change. You can watch these online or download them and keep them on your computer. Highly recommend watching these if you get the chance.
Joel Salatin, pioneering farmer of sustainable agriculture and icon of the local food movement in the United States, is one of my most inspirational mentors... who I've never met. Here he is in another interview discussing sustainable agriculture and local food. Brilliant, as always.
This video compilation of time-lapse photography from the International Space Station is truly amazing. It is great to watch something that restores the wonder of our natural world.
Not too long ago, I shared this article about Todmorden, a town growing all its own vegetables. Apparently, I was not the only one who thought this was a revolutionary idea. The TED Conference organization who promotes "ideas worth sharing" hosted Pam Warhurst, the motivating person behind this UK town's gardening revolution. I highly recommend taking the 13 minutes to watch this video. This truly is an idea worth sharing.
I am rarely truly amazed by a video any more. That is unfortunate, but it is also all the more remarkable when it does happen. Hope in a Changing Climate amazed me. Regardless of your perspective on why the climate is changing (human created carbon damage, normal earth cycles, etc.), the Earth's climate is changing. This video ignores the controversial aspects of climate change (or global warming/global cooling/global weirding/or whatever they want to call it now...), and shows that there is a real economic, as well as environmental, conservational, agricultural, and societal reason to reverse the damage that has been done to the land. This video shows that there are whole countries working on this, not just some hippies who don't know when to bathe. This video shows that repairing the land to produce viable sustainable and restorative ecosystems that benefit humans and the natural world (this is Permaculture!) can work on a very, very large scale. Inspiring and truly amazing!
(the video is at the end...)
FROM THE BBC PRESS RELEASE FOR HOPE IN A CHANGING CLIMATE:
...a new documentary on BBC World optimistically reframes the debate on global warming. Illustrating that large, decimated eco-systems can be restored,Hope in a Changing Climate, which will have a special screening at COP15 [the 15th Conference on Climate Change], reveals success stories from Ethiopia, Rwanda and China which prove that bringing large areas back from environmental ruin is possible, and key to stabilising the earth’s climate, eradicating poverty and making sustainable agriculture a reality.
The programme documents the remarkably successful efforts of local people to restore denuded, degraded ecosystems – transforming them into verdant, life-sustaining environments which enable people to break free from entrenched poverty. The film contains breathtaking before and after footage of large-scale restoration projects. Presented by John D. Liu, founder of the Environmental Education Media Project (EEMP) and creator of the film Lessons of the Loess Plateau, the new programme is directed by Jeremy Bristow from the BBC, the award-winning producer of the acclaimed David Attenborough seriesThe Truth about Climate Change.
The area of restoration on the Loess Plateau in China is the size of Belgium and thousands of years of subsistence farming had made it barren and unfertile. In 1995 The Chinese Government, with support from The World Bank, took drastic action to rehabilitate the plateau, and local people – seen as both perpetuators and victims of the devastation – became part of the solution.
John D. Liu has been visiting the area for the past fifteen years and in Hope in a Changing Climate travels back to find astounding results. He said: “Human impact on the climate is not simply from the flagrant emission of carbon dioxide and began long before industrial scale emissions. Carbon disequilibrium is a symptom of a larger systemic failure – we are reducing biodiversity, and this has altered fundamental earth processes that we rely on for life. We must act as a species to restore ecosystem function wherever it has been disrupted. We know what is needed; we know it works; and we know from the history of other civilizations that have collapsed what the consequences are of failing to act – and quickly.”
The film uncovers the dramatic impact of similar projects in Ethiopia and Rwanda. Once the scene of devastating droughts in 1984, Ethiopia has used the same approach as that in China to begin bringing areas of arid land back to productivity and ecological balance. In Rwanda, where ecological degradation from over-farming of wetland areas saw the near failure of the country’s hydro-electricity supply, the Government has undertaken a similar project and seen vast improvements.
Dr Joe Smith is The Open University’s lead academic for the programme and says: “With climate change projected to hit the poorest people in the developing world worst of all ecological restoration projects are key to ensuring that future generations have security. What is refreshing about this film is that developing world scientists and policy-makers take centre stage in devising responses to environmental problems. The film also shows how ordinary people in China, Rwanda and Ethiopia play a key role in restoring and protecting their environment. It can feel disempowering to look at global issues such as climate change or biodiversity loss; but the breath-taking before and after footage from these projects shows that imaginative research and policy can generate solutions on the ground.”
Hope in a Changing Climateis produced with support from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), The Open University, The Rockefeller Foundation, the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture and The World Bank. The film will also be made available on The Open University’s new Creative Climate website, www.open.ac.uk/creativeclimate, which documents diverse experiences of climate change across the globe. In addition, EEMP and the George Mason University Center for Climate & Society have organised a network of research centres and nongovernmental organizations around the world to host facilitated stakeholder discussions around the themes of the film.
A couple of months ago, I wrote an article about Comfrey (Symphytum species).
Literally the next day, this video was published by Paul Wheaton over at Permies.com. It is a great compilation of interviews of people speaking about this plant. Watch for Toby Hemenway, the author of Gaia's Garden - an excellent book on backyard permaculture.
The following video is an amazing look at some of the most common plant pollinators (bees, hummingbirds, butterflies, flies, and bats). Stunning slow-motion videography with a peaceful soundtrack combines to make a breathtaking video. I highly recommend you take 4 minutes to watch this. About three-quarters through, there is a bat that is flying, eating, and nursing its pup... all at the same time!
I first saw these videos on the Subsistence Pattern blog. These videos tell the story of the Guytons "who started planting their food forest in 1998 on two acres of bare land in Riverton, New Zealand. This style of gardening was new to Southland so their neighbours did not approve. Now it is an established food forest with hundreds of different plant species. Fruit and nut trees, berries and herbs and wild plants all blended together in a productive and sustainable way."
To me, these videos (especially the first) are inspiring...
This is another great video by Paul Wheaton from Permies.com.
This video takes on a tour of Michael Pilarski's Edible Food Forest. The forest is only a few years old, but there is an amazing amount of diversity. The video is less than 15 minutes and well worth the time.
Here is a great couple of videos on a Permaculture project that was started at the University of Massachusetts. They designed and created a Permaculture Garden just outside the dining hall on campus.
Very well done video that focuses more on the why of the project. It deals with the motivation and excitement of the project. Unfortunately, it doesn't go into a whole lot of detail... the stuff that I really like, but it is a fun video either way.
There are only two parts so far. The third is yet to be published!
