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In this offering, permaculture elder David Holmgren is our guest in discussion with Patrick speaking about this next phase of global energy transition, and thus societal transformation in the local context.
Here’s the audio version (1hr 52mins).
David and Patrick’s hour-long conversation is followed by a compost of goodly questions from community participants who gathered and shared food together for this event. We hope that this long-form drop will aid in your preparations for the coming months.
This event recently took place at the School of Applied Neopeasantry, Tree Elbow University in Djaara Mother Country.
Huge, hug-filled thanks to Jordan Osmond from Folklore Pictures (formally Happen Films) for both the sound and vision.
We’d love to hear from you about your preparations, priorities and musings at this time.
Thanks for this excellent conversation. I have been trialling amaranth, quinoa and buckwheat over the last few years and enjoying the challenge of separating the chaff from the grain. Currently, blowing over a dish with both in produces the best results. I do love doing it but if I grow more as I plan to, it will be very time consuming! Do you – or Woody – have any ingenious analog chaff extracting methods? 😊
Hello Rachel, yes the blow method is what we do too, which means we haven’t scaled up grains either. The most amount of ‘meal’ we produce each year is a few kilos of acorn flour from our oak. Rather than scale up grains we eat far less of them and through subsistence hunting and feral farming we eat more protein these days, and far less carbs. We love buckwheat and acorn pancakes!
Ooooooh thanks for this, I’ve been waiting to hear your voices on the current state of affairs. I’ve got a whole day in the garden and I’m so looking forward to absorbing this information while I have my hands in the earth.
Hope you got nourishment from your garden soils and the conversation, Caroline.
Thank you for your care.
Thanks Narelle!
I wish this was a political discussion in a local and global scale in mainstream media. I needed this and I know many others do too during these times when all media feeds us is dark matter and the escalating situation of climate change and the war in Iran.
I was going to ask the question why this isn’t going on but then I know why this is, it’s politicians and their lobbyists that don’t want this information to get to average Joe cause then they wouldn’t have control over us. If we are self-sufficient they don’t have anything/or much that we need and they can’t control us with it, logic.
Thank you for this, I will take all this with me. And my fav part was when Zeros baby brother or dog cousin (forgot his name) came into picture.
/Sara (Hi from Sweden)
Thanks Sara! If this were a ‘mainstream’ channel the Financial Industrial Complex wouldn’t exist and earth-honouring bioregional societies would be the norm. Instead we currently have permanent war – or, made-made mass death – made by the bankers’ realm, along with the other industrial complexes that governments are subordinate to. This way of being human will die. It is important those of us who see this are working towards the societies we want to bestow for future generations, step by step, soul by soul, and not worrying about the corrupted human experience constructed by colonial-capital-industrial structures and institutions – media, government, science, banking, corporations etc.
Thank you for generously hosting, convening, creating and contributing your insight and wisdom to the important conversation ‘Responses to the predicament…’ I especially loved your invitation to the women to voice their contribution and questions, and the honouring of elderhood. I also liked, so much, reframing the mindset to build the fence.
As someone who grew up in the country (Murray River, mallee country), I miss all the ways we easily created and cared for community. There was so much gifting and trade! My great uncle had a productive vegie patch and sold to the supermarket. We had all of that fresh veg and Grampa kept us well supplied with local stone fruit, grapes, melons that he’d swapped for labour, or a story. Spotlighting for rabbits was a thrill! We fished for Murray cod, netted yabbies and crays. Honey was always on the doorstep, eggs plentiful. My uncle invited many families to plant one row of vines and together they made wine from the combined effort. Grateful that in my memory there was always someone to help fix something, sew or knit a thing. Nothing to get a lift from a to b. Calling in to see someone was commonplace and kept our connections dynamic. Happenchance was part of the flow of things.
From my new home I feel new to the community again, so just starting to forge friendships and new ties.
I’m dreaming of easy, peaceful, joyful transitions back to beautiful ways of being. Whatever the next ‘crisis,’ I want the response to feel as simple and delightful as giving someone a shovel, some seeds and some time.
I wonder about produce share/swap points near train stations, or donkeys coming in from Daylesford – ha ha!
Thanks for holding the light to building practical, purposeful and meaningful life in a way that is robust and catching, so that we recognise unnecessary noise and confusion for what it is.
Thank you. Much love to you all.
What a rich portrait of your past years, Sheri, and only a short arm’s length to reach back to. Beautiful!
My favourite line: ‘The political diversity that exists on this hill is all dissolved through a goat’. Love it! Now I needs me a goat. That and passing a pumpkin or beer over the fence. Excellent discussion and thank you as always!
Thanks Pete, glad that lit you up. Sending our love north east to you mob.
Great talk thank you for recording it, if only I lived in Daylesford!
Thanks Vanessa, wishing you deep community wherever you are.
Thanks for sharing such a rich conversation. I’m curious about which low yield/ low disease potato David is referring to, is it kiplers maybe, or some landrace? I would love to get some if so. Thanks
We reckon he’s talking about purple Congo potatoes, which are nicely weedy in gardens in these parts, including our own.
David Holmgren’s and Patrick Jones’ discussion has been my Muse since April 22. Thank you for sharing two very profound views on historical patterns and future possibilities. I agree that growing food, collecting water and building community are essential skills that enrich our lives now and in the unknowable future.
My “preparations and priorities” relate to building soil and fertility with compost and legumes. Instead of over planting for food storage, I am enriching my soil “bank account” for future needs.
In the community where I live, people under-value home grown organic food at this time. This won’t be the case forever so I keep practicing by growing a complete garden to keep up my skills. I share fruit when the crop is good. The corn, beans, squash and herbs I keep for our annual household use (though I cook up tamale pies using homegrown staples for friends going through difficult times).
Thank you David, Patrick, Meg, Woody, and Jordan for sharing your talents, life experiences and knowledge. This site is a treasure!
Thanks for sharing some of your responses and lifeways, Amy. We love, ‘enriching my soil bank account’ and your use of ‘tamale pies’ to enhance ‘homegrown staples’. Gratitude for the simple things that nourish and energise us. Undervaluing home grown food, or food that doesn’t come wrapped in plastic and branded, will no doubt soon be a thing of the past.
Quick question – David says something at the start of the talk that is cut off a little – and uses a word I couldn’t hear – referring to the need for there to be a greater grouping than a small household. Can anyone hear what he says, right at the beginning – ‘…survive is ???? households….” there is a word there that I can’t hear.
Thanks in advance x
… got it ! “Larger Households!”
Great! We have posted it anyway in case others would like that opening quote. 😀
Hello Cath, we used this quote from David up front to begin the video, but it appears later with more context. Here is the entire quote: “The evidence from history is that the way ordinary people survive and even thrive through difficult times is larger households. It’s the most significant thing; that all of our structures throughout the world are too big to be sustainable (globalised), but our households are too small. Too few people on average living together. Now whether that’s a family or some recombinant household, that’s how I’m absolutely confident will be the prime strategy by which people adapt to difficult times.”
For whatvever reason, this reminds me of accounts from China that peasants visiting one another would dutifully weigh their poo if they needed to leave a deposit so that they might be repaid on a return reciprocal visit at a later date. Poo as currency.
While a funny idea it is likewise sobering to think of a community clinging so desperately to soil fertility. Amusingly, I told some teenagers this story one day and they proffered that ‘surely there’d be an app for that these days’ to save the fuss of weighing.
Yeah, nightsoil is the black gold of a resilient future, and will again replace the short-lived black gold of crude oil.
It’s always reassuring and inspiring to hear from David on these issues. Thanks for a great discussion. I’ve always thought that Patrick is a natural interviewer. He should have his own podcast!
Thanks Colby, David certainly is a calm elder. Patrick and Meg often interview others or are interviewed by others as well. We both love these yarns and publish them here as podcasts and sometimes as videos. Thanks for listening!