SolarPunk Permaculture Sam Betteridge

The thoughts continue to pile up as I prepare for a new education endeavour. Let’s Get Dis.

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Community

I’m writing this text for Community. I’m writing this text for the Earth System.

I’m writing this text for the gardeners, market growers, forest fillers, regen rangers, loggers, land clearers, guerillas and grand scale permaculturalist of our planet.

Without community, we have nothing in common.

In this tale of forest thoughts, we have relished in the joy and wonder of abundance that be
by-products of our carbon gardens.
In learning to create from scratch, we have created a garden to which others are no match.

The gardener as archetype has been discovered.
For no longer do you mine country.
You cultivate country for community using the tools of nature.

It is common to bring produce produced in pounds to market places and areas of gathering. The foods and abundance we create in our carbon gardens fills our soils with the beautiful gases necessary for life on our earth, in exchange for our breath.
Not only do we share our carbon gardens with one another, we share this earth system with one another.
Whether you like it or not, you can't help but share your carbon garden with those who you love and care for.
The clean air they create, the rain they draw in. Their soils that physically fill our souls.

For those who are happiest in times upon biophilic berms.

When your toes meet the trophic networks working tirelessly beneath us trying to keep us all connected.

Remember: Keep calm and start a carbon garden.

Do it for all of us.

Do it now.

-------- @mr.betteridge

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Preservation

“All that yield. ALL OF THAT FOOOD!
So much produce and beauty to preserve.” - I think to myself.

There are no preservatives in the aisle of your syntropic agroforest. Not the store-bought shelf types anyway. This is good! We like it this way. A system in syntropy is a system of self-sorting.
More or less preserving its own beauty over time, a carbon garden doesn't need much upkeep in the department of pretty. Gaia sure knows how to put on a show.

But food on the other hand can last a long time if you know how to preserve it in a form most valuable.
The fridge will only work for a while. Beyond a few weeks, give or take months, depending on how cold you can get a self-contained box. Looking for other methods of storage will be in order.

In a carbon garden, one of the best ways to preserve the abundance of yields is to preserve it back into your soil reserve.
Food for your face is also food for the forest. Whether it's a half-sunk parsnip feeding the rhizosphere or a fried lettuce leaf from too much star time. The best way to preserve any life is by providing a source of nutrients back to the earth to which it grew.

This is regenerative agriculture.

Hold on… didn't you just say food and edibles? I thought you were going to tell me to place my chopped radish in a jar of vinegar?
Yes - you can do that.

But remember.

This is a carbon garden.

Our focus throughout this gardening adventure has been on carbon construction and sequestration.
Ultimately, life creates more life in a carbon garden.

By focussing more on how the system functions we ensure a continual cycle of exponential growth.

Get this right first and you can chow down on sauerkraut for centuries to come.

--------- @mr.betteridge

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Edible Carbon Gardens
Ever since your run-in with the forest mage, you've been racking your brain tryna remember seeing any limes in the forest.

After a few days, the thought gradually catches up with you - *There aren't usually that many edible species in a natural growth forest system. Not many you know of with limes anyway.
In our day and age, fruits, along with nuts and timbers and fibres and edible foods and medicines, are usually grown in orchards or greenhouses, or in properly managed, straight-line farms.
And often this is for logical reasons. Growing edible foods for populations of humans that eat a couple of times a day on average is no easy feat. You want to be organised so you can keep up to date with the latest growth patterns, nutrient holding capacities and an array of other water and sunlight-related data points.
But these food factories. And I mean quite literally, factories.
Are often designed to function like the robot arms on C-Deck. Incredible feats of engineering as they are, they're rarely running on truly regenerative software.

The fact is.

We can model our carbon gardens the way our forests do naturally.

Which also means we can leverage the Gaian algorithm to produce an abundant edible carbon garden...

If the hangover from your mojito had any silver linings, it's the pounding memory of brollies in the bushes.
If the genie's blue aura still bedazzles your subconscious with his loud proclamations of soil protection.
If that crazy little nymph hadn't knocked your knees into nursery mode.

Then I guess you wouldn’t know what to do by now.

But because you've been collecting observational data over many moons, you're probably beginning to realise you’ve got yourself a pretty valuable and practical tool kit to start your own edible carbon garden.

The type that can and will feed you and your community for good.
-------- @mr.betteridge

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Stratification
Picture me this. - A garden full of umbrellas.

Umbrellas are exactly how the forest mage wants you to think of trees.
When you first stumble upon his buttress root, he looks at you with such an intensity, you wonder if he is of this time.
His intensity also lets you know his forest observations are legit.
The old guy brings forth a wisdom that you only get from watching how the rain falls w/ the sun over spans of time unmeasured.
…And this is his general message.

*Seedlings. Shaded they must be.
Treat da trees lyk be dem brollies.
Must stack shuzoku thru space w/ time.
Treat da trees lyk be dem brollies.
Elders bring cover 2 youngies at our feet.
Treat da trees lyk be dem brollies.
Muvah Gaia casts her eye on all and every1.
Treat da trees lyk be dem brollies.*

Your mind-meld breaks free and you hear the sound of a fax machine nearby.
You look at the printout now in your hands.

Translation: Stratification 101.
Make sure plant species are stacked in space and time.
Use the fast-growing upper strata to nurse the young slower-growing lower strata.
Integrate your nursery into the carbon system.

“Are you Vulcan, bro?” You ask, panting and out of breath.

He shakes his head and offers you a small mojito, the one with those little umbrellas in it.

--------- @mr.betteridge

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Nursery

Nursery work is plant work. If you're working or playing w/ plants, you're in the nursery game.
Now the genie is off your back and you've begun pushing solar panels into the sky via billions of little green blades. You look around at the iridescent green magic carpet beyond your toes.
Seems bare, right. Seems like you need some plants to grow. Make it a little more… bushy.

I’ll tell you a tale that got me thinking about growing plants and setting up nurseries to do so. 

I was in the forest one day thinking to myself...

“*Dude, it takes a loooonnng time for a forest system to build and produce its own topsoil.
It's also taking a looooong time to build that compost in my 440L bays.”

“Carbon production in terms of time is slower than the forever spiral of our galactic expanse.” I hear, murmuring faintly at my feet.

“WTF!?” I exclaimed with a stiffened stare in the midline of my mind.
*BONK* - I wince and grab my knee!
“Ooft! What the hell are you doing?”

She looked up to me and said;
“Here, use these.” - Dropping a small timber on my toes.
“If you've only got a bit of compost going and a bunch of twigs, you can make a hugelkultur!”
- She exclaimed in her strange raspy accent.

Hey!? Hugel Vulture? - I reply.

A hugelkultur! You idiot. Just collect a bunch of twigs and off-cuttings from pruned trees. You can even throw in some weeds ya pulled from the front path ya dummy. - She grumbled.

“Righto mate, calm down. I hear ya.”

“And when you're done, stack that stuff on the floor and drop ya half-arsed compost on top, followed by some of that cardboard ya pulled out the bin ya filthy animal!” - She ordered.

“Is it just me or are you getting progressively more angry as this conversation continues.”

“Just shut-up and hugelkultur wouldya maaan!” - she blasted with an erratic edge.

“Ok. sure. Will do. Aaahh... Can I ask one more question?”
“I haven't got all day.”

“Should I have something to cover the cardboard? Will that help sweat and break the cardboard down for the worms in the compost?”

“Ya grew all this grass didn't yeh?”
--------- @mr.betteridge

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