By Jeff Carter

Permaculture is a term widely attributed to two Australians, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, who began moving the idea ahead in Tasmania in the late 1960s and ’70s. Holmgren in his book, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, laid out 12 design principles which include interacting with the ecosystems around us, capturing and storing energy, producing no waste, embracing small systems that evolve gradually and valuing diversity, including marginal areas. It’s a way to save the world really. People can be engaged in food production that doesn’t require a net contribution of outside energy and build the potential of their resource – the soil – at the same time. Over the past two decades, I’ve attended various permaculture talks in places like the Guelph Organic Conference. Often, however, it seems prescriptive models are chosen and attempts made to transfer them to an unsuitable location with varying degrees of success. An example is the “keyline” theory of water management which may have a place in some locales but often appears to be a fruitless exercise in shifting earth. Then there’s the way permaculture is sometimes presented – as a concept that’s new. In actuality, permaculture is something that was widely embraced by the farming community well before the term was coined. That continues still, though most of today’s agriculture is hurtling down the destructive path of exploitation in which dollars determine direction rather than consideration for future generations. My family’s farm was one of those places where the equilibrium of the permaculture approach was once embraced, though imperfectly. There was an aerial photograph taken around 1950 – around the time my grandparents had acquired their 8N tractor. It shows the edge of a woodlot and a series of small fields devoted to pasture, hay and crops and obvious signs of multiple livestock species which I know included cattle, hogs, poultry and horses. There was also an orchard and gardening area covering perhaps three or four acres. I’ve managed to continue the family tradition of gardening, though in a small way. It provides me with a certain fluency in the language of permaculture to chat with people like Ben Caesar at Fiddlehead Nursery in Grey County. The Grey County farmer includes annuals in his gardening effort but focuses primarily on perennial plants which he correctly recognizes as an under-utilized resource. Making his top 10 list are sorrel, sea kale, Chinese artichoke, Caucasian spinach, Hylotelephium telephium or stone crop, Jerusalem artichoke, hostas, udo, day lilies and Japanese parsley. There’s a couple others Caesar might consider: black raspberries and Egyptian walking onions. Black raspberries which are indigenous to North America and grow wild along fence rows in Ontario but the fruit is often less than desirable. I chose a commercially-adapted line from an area nursery. It has performed well for the past 20-odd years. The canes produce fruit for close to two weeks in late spring, early summer. From our 20-by-five-foot patch, which we routinely mulch with leaves and add a bit of compost to, we harvest up to a full colander per day. I haven’t needed netting. The birds have left them alone except for one particularly dry year. The biggest headaches are removing the fruiting canes after the harvest is complete and keeping the trellis system maintained. Egyptian walking onions may have even more potential. I’ve written about them here before but have learned a few more things over the past couple years. They can be started from one of the little onions that grow at the top of the plants or by transplanting the underground portion which I do now on a regular schedule. I now have three patches. The oldest has been in the ground for three years; I’ll harvest the top onions this year and the entire underground portion early next spring. A second patch was established last year and should start producing plenty of top onions in a few weeks. The third patch I just started this spring. The top onions can be consumed summer and fall but leave the underground section alone until spring or, depending on your location, during the winter. With warmer temperatures, the underground portion becomes extremely hot to the point of being inedible.◊