Download or read book The Permaculture Promise written by Jono Neiger and published by Storey Publishing. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Permaculture is a sustainability buzzword, but many people wonder what it actually means and why it is relevant. Originally coined by combining the words permanent and agriculture, permaculture has evolved into an optimistic approach connecting all the systems of human life: gardening, housing, transportation, energy, and how we structure our communities. The Permaculture Promise explains in simple terms why permaculture may be the key to unlocking a livable future on our planet. Author Jono Neiger asserts that humans can thrive while simultaneously making Earth healthier and not destroying it. The book shows 22 ways that permaculture can create a better future for all living things. Profiles of people and communities — including an urban dweller who tore up her driveway to create a vegetable garden and a California housing development that dedicates a third of its land to parks, orchards, and gardens — will inspire you to incorporate permaculture principles into your life today.

Download or read book The Permaculture City written by Toby Hemenway and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2015-07-17 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Permaculture is more than just the latest buzzword; it offers positive solutions for many of the environmental and social challenges confronting us. And nowhere are those remedies more needed and desired than in our cities. The Permaculture City provides a new way of thinking about urban living, with practical examples for creating abundant food, energy security, close-knit communities, local and meaningful livelihoods, and sustainable policies in our cities and towns. The same nature-based approach that works so beautifully for growing food—connecting the pieces of the landscape together in harmonious ways—applies perfectly to many of our other needs. Toby Hemenway, one of the leading practitioners and teachers of permaculture design, illuminates a new way forward through examples of edge-pushing innovations, along with a deeply holistic conceptual framework for our cities, towns, and suburbs. The Permaculture City begins in the garden but takes what we have learned there and applies it to a much broader range of human experience; we’re not just gardening plants but people, neighborhoods, and even cultures. Hemenway lays out how permaculture design can help towndwellers solve the challenges of meeting our needs for food, water, shelter, energy, community, and livelihood in sustainable, resilient ways. Readers will find new information on designing the urban home garden and strategies for gardening in community, rethinking our water and energy systems, learning the difference between a “job” and a “livelihood,” and the importance of placemaking and an empowered community. This important book documents the rise of a new sophistication, depth, and diversity in the approaches and thinking of permaculture designers and practitioners. Understanding nature can do more than improve how we grow, make, or consume things; it can also teach us how to cooperate, make decisions, and arrive at good solutions.

Download or read book The Permaculture Handbook written by Peter Bane and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2012-06-01 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Permanent agriculture - abundance by design "The wealth of practical knowledge in The Permaculture Handbook is a welcome addition to North America's canon of books on permaculture design, and will serve other regions as well. Peter Bane's broad and well-tested experience in ecological living will guide homeowners, gardeners, and small farmers toward designing and living in lushly productive and harmonious landscapes." ― Toby Hemenway, author of Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture The Permaculture Handbook is a step-by-step, beautifully illustrated guide to creating resilient and prosperous households and neighborhoods, complemented by extensive case studies of three successful farmsteads and market gardens. This comprehensive manual casts garden farming as both an economic opportunity and a strategy for living well with less money. It shows how, by mimicking the intelligence of nature and applying appropriate technologies such as solar and environmental design, permaculture can: Create an abundance of fresh, nourishing local produce Reduce dependence on expensive, polluting fossil fuels Drought-proof our cities and countryside Convert waste into wealth Permaculture is about working with the earth and with each other to repair the damage of industrial overreach and to enrich the living world that sustains us. The Permaculture Handbook is the definitive, practical North American guide to this revolutionary practice, and is a must-read for anyone concerned about creating food security, resilience and a legacy of abundance rather than depletion.

Download or read book Sustainable Revolution written by Juliana Birnbaum and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Urban gardeners. Native seed-saving collectives. Ecovillage developments. What is the connection between these seemingly disparate groups? The ecological design system of permaculture is the common thread that weaves them into a powerful, potentially revolutionary—or reevolutionary—movement. Permaculture is a philosophy based on common ethics of sustainable cultures throughout history that have designed settlements according to nature's patterns and lived within its bounds. As a movement that has been building momentum for the past 40 years, it now is taking form as a growing network of sites developed with the intention of regenerating local ecologies and economies. Permaculture strategies can be used by individuals, groups, or nations to address basic human needs such as food, water, energy, and housing. As a species, humans are being called forth to evolve, using our collective intelligence to meet the challenges of the future. Yet if we are to survive our collective planetary crisis, we need to revisit history, integrating successful systems from sustainable cultures. To boldly confront our position on the brink of the earth's carrying capacity and make changes that incorporate the wisdom of the past is truly revolutionary. Sustainable Revolution features the work of a worldwide network of visionaries, including journalists, activists, indigenous leaders and permaculturists such as David Holmgren, Vandana Shiva, Charles Eisenstein, Starhawk, Erik Assadourian, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Albert Bates, and Geoff Lawton. This beautifully photographed collection of profiles, interviews, and essays features 60 innovative community-based projects in diverse climates across the planet. Edited by anthropologist Juliana Birnbaum Fox and award-winning activist filmmaker Louis Fox, it can be read as an informal ethnography of an international culture that is modeling solutions on the cutting edge of social and environmental change. The research presented in the book frames the permaculture movement as a significant ally to marginalized groups, such as the urban poor and native communities resisting the pressures of globalization. Sustainable Revolution uplifts and inspires with its amazing array of dynamic activists and thriving, vibrant communities.

Download or read book Surviving Collapse written by Christina Ergas and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-16 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As major environmental crises loom, Christina Ergas makes the argument in Surviving Collapse that one possible way forward is a radical sustainable development that turns the focus from monetary gain to social and ecological regeneration and transformation. Employing qualitative and cross-national comparative methods, Ergas examines two alternative, community-scale, socioecological models of development: the first is a grassroots urban ecovillage in the Pacific Northwest, United States, while the second is a government-subsidized, but cooperatively run, urban farm in Havana, Cuba. While neither are panaceas, they prioritize social and ecological efficiency and subsume economic rationality towards those ends. Featuring cases that not only allow us to synthesize their strengths but evaluate their weaknesses, Surviving Collapse reveals a multitude of varied paths toward reaching radical urban sustainability and empowers us all to imagine, and possibly build, more resilient futures.

Download or read book The Permaculture Handbook written by Peter Bane and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2012-06-26 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A step-by-step guide to creating resilient and prosperous households introduces permaculture as a practical way to live well with less money, convert waste into wealth, and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

Download or read book Integral Ecology written by Sean Esbjorn-Hargens, Ph.D. and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2011-03-08 with total page 835 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today there is a bewildering diversity of views on ecology and the natural environment. With more than two hundred distinct and valuable perspectives on the natural world—and with scientists, economists, ethicists, activists, philosophers, and others often taking completely different stances on the issues—how can we come to agreement to solve our toughest environmental problems? In response to this pressing need, Integral Ecology unites valuable insights from multiple perspectives into a comprehensive theoretical framework—one that can be put to use right now. The framework is based on Integral Theory, as well as Ken Wilber’s AQAL model, and is the result of over a decade of research exploring the myriad perspectives on ecology available to us today and their respective methodologies. Dozens of real-life applications and examples of this framework currently in use are examined, including three in-depth case studies: work with marine fisheries in Hawai’i, strategies of eco-activists to protect Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest, and a study of community development in El Salvador. In addition, eighteen personal practices of transformation are provided for you to increase your own integral ecological awareness. Integral Ecology provides the most sophisticated application and extension of Integral Theory available today, and as such it serves as a template for any truly integral effort.

Download or read book Edible Paradise written by Vera Greutink and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Vera's 15 years of experience as an organic no-dig gardener demonstrates that gardens can be beautiful and productive. She provides a vast amount of accessible information with gorgeous photographs to show you how to grow vegetables, herbs and flowers all year. Make your fragrant and abundant veggie patch centre stage by incorporating cut flowers with herbs, brassicas, and peas. Or plant a potager garden! The many examples of polycultures will help you create edible paradises everywhere, large or small, on patios, balconies, windowsills, allotments, community and school gardens, front and back gardens, and anywhere else you can grow." -- page 4 of cover.

Download or read book Building Your Permaculture Property written by Rob Avis and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The best person to design the property of your dreams is you. This book gives you the tools to succeed. Building Your Permaculture Property offers a revolutionary holistic method to overcome overwhelm in the complex process of resilient land design. It distills the authors' decades of experience as engineers, farmers, educators, and consultants into a five-step process complete with principles, practices, templates, and workflow tools to help you: Clarify your vision, values, and resources Diagnose your land and resources for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats Design your land and resources to meet your vision and values Implement the right design to enhance your strengths and improve your weakest resource Establish benchmarks to monitor the sustainability and success of your development. When designing a regenerative permaculture property, too many land stewards suffer from option paralysis, a lack of integrated holistic design, fruitless trial-and-error attempts, wasted money, and the frustration that results from too much information and no context. Building Your Permaculture Property is the essential guide for everyone looking to cut through the noise and establish an ecologically regenerative, financially sustainable, enjoyable, and thriving permaculture property, anywhere in the world.

Download or read book Permaculture written by David Holmgren and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this challenging work, leading permaculture expert David Holmgren questions whether mainstream concepts of sustainability dodge the critical issue of global energy peak, and asks if there are ways to live within nature's limits whilst providing a secure future for our children and justice for everyone.

Download or read book The Permaculture Market Garden written by Zach Loeks and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The illustrated guide to profitable, vibrant and sustainable permaculture-based market gardening Permaculture tends to be very much in the domain of home gardeners and property owners. But what if we could take it all a step further, and merge the fields of permaculture and market gardening? In The Permaculture Market Garden , author Zach Loeks brings together his passion for sustainable permaculture food production systems and beautiful, vibrant illustrations to provide a highly visual guide to the smooth integration of permaculture into the market garden, in ways that are scalable to specific situations. Profiling crops and ecosystem-based techniques, Loeks demonstrates a profitable, sustainable and approachable model for the future of market gardening. Along the way, Loeks introduces his own system of PermaBeds, season extension techniques, intensive and rotational interplanting, in-depth discussions on soil health, and more, bringing activities, designs and prospects of farming to life through illustrations, so the reader can be immersed within the world of permaculture farming. Playful, informative and curious, inspiring and beautiful and packed with accessible practical information, The Permaculture Market Garden will inspire both the seasoned market gardener as well as anyone aspiring to start a business. Zach Loeks is a market gardener, farm consultant and educator living in the Ottawa Valley. Winner of two regional awards for sustainability and innovation in agriculture, he shares his expertise in farming, design and business through a successful series of on-farm workshops, conferences and schools, as well as a successful year-round CSA.

Download or read book The Resilient Farm and Homestead Revised and Expanded Edition written by Ben Falk and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2024-02-08 with total page 713 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This is one of the most practical, down-to-earth, dirt-under-the-fingernails, comprehensive explanations of all things homesteading and small farming. Whether you’re just dreaming or an old hand, Ben Falk’s longer experience horizon is invaluable.”—Joel Salatin, cofounder, Polyface Farm; author of Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal Informed by twenty years of successful land management and the professional design experience of his pioneering firm Whole Systems Design, LLC, author Ben Falk updates his classic text and delivers the definitive twenty-first century systems thinking manual in self-reliance—sure to empower readers to prioritize projects, make positive lifestyle decisions, and take strategic steps toward a regenerative future. In The Resilient Farm and Homestead, Revised and Expanded Edition Falk describes how he has transformed a degraded hillside in the frigid Vermont climate into a thriving, biodiverse Eden that now provides year-round abundance for his family and community. First published in 2013, The Resilient Farm and Homestead is a comprehensive how-to guide for building durable and productive land-based systems through the reciprocal interplay of humans and the natural world. In the ten years since he first published this seminal work, Falk has deepened his wisdom in harnessing nature-based solutions for increasingly challenging times, including addressing severe climate disruptions like drought and flood conditions. The book covers every strategy Falk and his team have tested on the Whole Systems Research Farms over the past two decades and includes detailed information on earthworks, gravity-fed water systems, soil fertility management, growing nutrient-dense food and medicine, fuelwood production, agroforestry, managed grazing, and much more. Complete with full-color photography and detailed design drawings, The Resilient Farm and Homestead, Revised and Expanded Edition includes new information on: Designing greenhouses and microclimates Reinvigorating human health and embodying a vigorous lifestyle Raising children on a homestead Creating failure-proof and resilient energy systems Focusing on permaculture beekeeping Cultivating proven cold climate plants Overcoming analysis paralysis and mastering the art of knowing where to start and when to take strategic risks And much, much more! In an age that feels defined by disconnection, disease, and decline, The Resilient Farm and Homestead, Revised and Expanded Edition offers a roadmap to conquering uncertainty, maximizing efficiency, and creating a bountiful, manageable landscape that will endure. “Essential reading for the serious prepper as well as for everyone interested in creating a more resilient lifestyle.”—Carol Deppe, author of The Resilient Gardener “This intelligent, challenging book, rooted somewhere between back-to-the-land idealism and radical survivalism, sees resilience as both planting and building for the use of future generations, but also as preparing food, water, shelter, and the human body and psyche for the onset of any imaginable extreme emergency. . . . The result is a comprehensive, open-ended, theoretical and practical system for a post-carbon-dependent life.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review of first edition)

Download or read book Paradise Lot written by Eric Toensmeier and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2013-02-08 with total page 1 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Eric Toensmeier and Jonathan Bates moved into a duplex in a run-down part of Holyoke, Massachusetts, the tenth-of-an-acre lot was barren ground and bad soil, peppered with broken pieces of concrete, asphalt, and brick. The two friends got to work designing what would become not just another urban farm, but a "permaculture paradise" replete with perennial broccoli, paw paws, bananas, and moringa—all told, more than two hundred low-maintenance edible plants in an innovative food forest on a small city lot. The garden—intended to function like a natural ecosystem with the plants themselves providing most of the garden's needs for fertility, pest control, and weed suppression—also features an edible water garden, a year-round unheated greenhouse, tropical crops, urban poultry, and even silkworms. In telling the story of Paradise Lot, Toensmeier explains the principles and practices of permaculture, the choice of exotic and unusual food plants, the techniques of design and cultivation, and, of course, the adventures, mistakes, and do-overs in the process. Packed full of detailed, useful information about designing a highly productive permaculture garden, Paradise Lot is also a funny and charming story of two single guys, both plant nerds, with a wild plan: to realize the garden of their dreams and meet women to share it with. Amazingly, on both counts, they succeed.

Download or read book The Promise of Religious Naturalism written by Michael S. Hogue and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2010-12-28 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Promise of Religious Naturalism explores religious naturalism as a distinctly promising form of contemporary religious ethics. Examining how religious naturalism responds to the challenges of recent religious transformations and ecological peril worldwide, author Michael Hogue argues that religious naturalism is emerging as an increasingly plausible and potentially rewarding form of religious moral life. Beginning with an introduction of religious naturalism in the larger context of religious and ethical theories, the book undertakes the first extended study of the works of religious naturalists Loyal Rue, Donald Crosby, Jerome Stone, and Ursula Goodenough. Hogue pays particular attention to the ethical components of religious naturalism in relation to religious pluralism and ecological issues.

Download or read book A Safe and Sustainable World written by Nancy Jack Todd and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2012-07-16 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late sixties, as the world was waking to a need for Earth Day, a pioneering group founded a small non-profit research and education organization they called the New Alchemy Institute. Their aim was to explore the ways a safer and more sustainable world could be created. In the ensuing years, along with scientists, agriculturists, and a host of enthusiastic amateurs and friends, they set out to discover new ways that basic human needs--in the form of food, shelter, and energy--could be met. A Safe and Sustainable World is the story of that journey, as it was and as it continues to be. The dynamics and the resilience of the living world were the Institute's model and the inspiration for their research. Central to their efforts then and now is, along with science, a spiritual quest for a more harmonious human role in our planet's future. The results of this work have now entered mainstream science through the emerging discipline of ecological design. Nancy Jack Todd not only relates a fascinating journey from lofty ideals through the hard realities encountered in learning how to actually grow food, harness the energy of the sun and wind, and design green architecture. She also introduces us to some of the heroes and mentors who played a vital role in those efforts as well, from Buckminster Fuller to Margaret Mead. The early work of the Institute culminated in the design and building of two bioshelters--large greenhouse-like independent structures called Arks, that provided the setting for much of the research to follow. Successfully proving through the Institute's designs and investigations that basic land sustainability is achievable, John Todd and the author founded a second non-profit research group, Ocean Arks International. Here they applied the New Alchemy's natural systems thinking to restoring polluted waters with the invention and implementation of biologically based living technologies called Ecomachines and Pond and Lake Restorers. A Safe and Sustainable World demonstrates what has and can be done--it also looks to what must be done to integrate human ingenuity and the four billion or so years of evolutionary intelligence of the natural world into healthy, decentralized, locally dreams hard won--and hope.

Download or read book Why We Need to Be Wild written by Jessica Carew Kraft and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2023-08-22 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the tradition of the best immersive journalism." –A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically A bold examination of how Paleolithic wisdom could solve our 21st century problems Jessica Carew Kraft, an urban wife and mom of two, was firmly rooted in the modern world, complete with a high-powered career in tech and the sneaking suspicion that her lifestyle was preventing her and her family from truly thriving. Determined to find a better way, Jessica quit her job and set out to learn about "rewilding" from people who reject the comforts and convenience of civilization by using ancient tools and skills to survive. Along the way, she learned how to turn sticks into fire, stones into axes, and bones into tools for harvesting wild food—and found an entire community walking the path back from our technology-focused, anxiety-ridden way of life to a simpler, more human experience. Weaving deep research and reportage with her own personal journey, Jessica tells the remarkable story of the potential benefits rewilding has for us and our planet, and questions what it truly means to be a human in today's world. For readers of A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century and Hunt, Gather, Parent, Why We Need to Be Wild is a thought-provoking, unforgettable narrative that illuminates how we survived in the past, how we live now, and how each of us can choose to thrive in the years ahead. "Kraft shows us how we could all benefit from being a little less civilized." —Tiffany Shlain, author of 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week

Download or read book States of Health and Welfare written by M. E. Witherick and published by Nelson Thornes. This book was released on 2002 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: EPICS brings a fresh approach to topics of current interest, allowing students to acquire an up-to-date and in-depth understanding of geographical issues. Each topic provides a wide range of detailed case studies and offers an integrated approach to all aspects of geographical study.