One of Permaculture’s most dedicated activists and organizers, Ali Sharif, passed away on August 12, 2017, waiting for a heart transplant in a hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa. More than 30 years ago, Sharif attended a Permaculture design course taught by Permaculture founder, Bill Mollison, on Whidbey Island in Washington. As the course drew to an end, Mollison asked each graduate what they would do with the new knowledge they’d […]

If you live in an inner city surrounded by concrete and pavement, growing your own herbs for your kitchen and personal use is one of the easiest ways to start growing your own food. An herb spiral is a simple, practical, and almost fool-proof method to fill your kitchen with the scents of fresh herbs. Why Should You Grow Herbs? There are numerous benefits to growing your own herb garden. […]

Call them gumboots. Call them Wellingtons or Wellies. Call them rubber boots, rain boots, or galoshes. What we are talking about is waterproof foot protection, and there are times when a good pair can just feel absolutely essential: heading out to feed the animals on cold and rainy evenings, harvesting taro or rice from the muddy banks, and apparently doing surgery (for anyone to whom that applies). When buying things, […]

Most home interiors these days are constructed with commercially made drywall. The days when plastering was a dignified occupation of skilled workers who passed down their art from master to apprentice have long since passed. Drywall, aside from being rather simple and unattractive, can also be filled with enormous amounts of dangerous chemicals. Natural plasters are a way to create a beautiful home interior that won’t leach chemicals into the […]

Global warming gets all the hype lately in the discussion on our impact on the environment, and while it is a huge problem it tends to push the littering and plastic problems to the background. Every year the world use enough plastic to circle the globe four times. And, if that isn’t bad enough only about five percent of the plastic gets recovered. Plastic accounts for around ten percent of […]

More and more people in today’s world are beginning to realize that the old adage: “You are what you eat” to be true. The industrialization of our food industry has led to a number of serious health problems including the skyrocketing of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. As people begin to wake up to the negative health effects of eating highly processed foods, they are also finding that there is […]

20%-30% of the waste that ends up in landfills should have been composted. To many people, this fact doesn’t sound too detrimental because they believe an overused fallacy that organic material just erodes away naturally and works it’s way back into the Earth, just via the landfill. While organic materials do deteriorate much quicker than processed materials like plastics, their place in landfills gives off a potent greenhouse gas called […]

This article is aimed at providing tips to businesses within agricultural supply chains on how to create a sustainable workforce and improve sustainability to gain a competitive advantage. Businesses are made up of people. The thinking that is being encouraged in this article is to focus on the people (within businesses) and use them to create clean processes for business sustainability. Let’s simply think of agricultural supply chains as comprising […]

While everyone knows about blueberries, strawberries, and other more common types of berries, elderberry trees and bushes are relatively unfamiliar to the common person. The somewhat strange clusters of berries are often considered to be “food for the birds” and most people pass up on the opportunity to cultivate this unique tree crop that has dozens of uses. From a homemade immune system boosting syrup, to port-like wine, to a […]

The last post, I spent some time dispelling the 3 main myths around permaculture consulting. (You can read it here). This time, we’ll delve into 4 reasons why a business in the regenerative field might fail to produce the right livelihood for its operator: Failure Reason 1: Not Understanding Value Many businesses within the regenerative niche (consultants using permaculture, regenerative designers, landscapers, and ecological farmers) don’t understand their value. I […]