Thresholds

I knew the word "Permaculture" as long ago as the late seventies, and had a vague idea of the concept before then. That doesn't give me bragging rights -- it's just that the idea's been floating around throughout my adult life. Masanobu Fukuoka's "One Straw Revolution" and the New Alchemy Institute were examples.

We crossed some kind of threshold, though, maybe three or four years ago, a threshold which made it possible for me, a preoccupied and stressed middle-aged householder, to get some of the nuts and bolts from people who really knew how it's done. When I say what I'm doing on my inner-city lot in Minneapolis is "Permaculture," I still get more blank looks than not, but the fact that there's one more example points to the next threshold. That's the one when people in South Minneapolis link my site with the guy on Portland, the couple over by Ann Sullivan Middle School, and some character out in the sticks, and they realize that there is a way for us to live on our photosynthetic income.