Permaculture Principle #9 - Use Small and Slow Solutions
Hi there happy people! I am back after a few weeks on holiday, and this week I am going to talk about Permaculture Principle #9, Use Small and Slow Solutions.
When reading up and focusing on this principle, I found two great quotes that resonates so well with this principle: “The bigger they are, the harder they fall” and “Slow and steady wins the race”. Permaculture, and this principle in particular is all about searching for long lasting sustainable solutions, rather than finding a quick fix for our challenges.
Here’s a few examples of sustainable solutions in contrast to a “quick fix”:
Build your own locally adapted seed bank: This can take a long time to build up, but year by year you will see the difference in the food you are growing and it will be so worth it! It will also increase your self reliance as your bank will grow larger with the years. The “quick fix” for this circumstance would be to buy the first best non organic seed and trying to grow abundant and tasty food from that. It will be a lot harder I promise.
Create a local shared tool shed - This is a great idea for people who wants to save space, money, and recourses used. Yes, it may not be so convenient having to go to the local shed to use the hammer or saw every time, but from a permaculture perspective, it will be very beneficial for a lot of different reasons in the long run.
Build with what you can get your hands on - Instead of always looking for everything at the closest hard ware store, how can we use what is around us in a smart way to not use up valuable recourses? Having a few friends in the construction industry, I have been able to reuse some of their “garbage” for my own projects. Timber from old pallets for example are great to use when create a new seed raising table, or why not for a little cubby for the kids?
Hitchhiking - What a great energy and money saver this is, and also the chance of creating a new friendship! If you travel light and have some time to get to your destination, why not give hitchhiking a try for the next trip?
These examples above are as you have read rather time consuming and maybe not something that is done over a day. I thought I would also mention a few more everyday examples that might cost us a few minutes, but gain us other much more valuable things:
Use the oven rather than the microwave - It will take 10-15 minutes longer to heat the food, but you also don’t have to deal with all the downsides of the microwave (water loss, radiation, etc).
Make your own nut butter - What a revolution this was for me when I started doing this some 10 years ago. Cashew, almond, peanut, you name it! And you only need the one ingredient and a food processor.
Water Filter - I highly recommend investing in a proper water filter system. As mentioned with the other examples, yes it might be a little bit of work depending on what system that is used, but the benefits are so worth it. I am at the point now where I can’t actually drink unfiltered water because of the taste, and that tells me something isn’t right with it. So if you haven’t already, invest in a water filter!
Please let me know if you have any other good ideas relating to this subject, i’d love to hear from you.
See you next week
