according to the 13th permaculture principle:this film was made free to the world by you. thank you. a special thanks to one of the reason we are shooting this film, and we havenãt really touched on it yet,is global climate change. all around the world, as you know,places are experiencing odd weather events. right now, weãre in bangkok, thailand. itãs the end of march, the dry season in thailand,and there is not supposed to be any rain. this, whatãs happening behind me,this stormy kind of weather
is intended for june, july, august,september.but here it's happening in march. this is the new normal in this world. all around the world,wether youãre in south america, in north america, in europe, in asia, people are experiencing weather patternsthat are out of the norm. so, one of the reasons that permacultureis getting so popular right now, growing faster than ever before, on an exponential curve of growth, is because our planet needs it.
itãs time for the important changesthat permaculture has to give. the panya project and rak tamachatpresent most of the students that cometo our pdc courses are really in this wonderful,interesting time in their life, right on the edge,deciding what they want for their life. they have done college,or most of their college life, maybe theyãve entered into a career, and theyãre just thinking,this isnãt really doing it for me. and as far as i'm seeing from the world,itãs not going to get any better.
seeds of permacultureif it's beautiful it's better so theyãre looking for an alternative,they're looking for a way to change whatãs going to play out in their lifes.theyãre trying to take it into their own hands. i quit my job to come to thailand,to learn a bit about buddhism and permaculture... while i care about nutritionand health care... i have a bigger concernabout conservation and sustainability. what weãre doing right now isnãt working... we stopped farmingbecause the land was no good and we wanted it to be a real family thing
like it was with my grandfather,and my great-grandfather. iãm very interested in sustainability. people are becoming lessand less self-sufficient, around the world, these local communities that were previouslygrowing everything themselves and knew how to build their own housesout of natural materials are completely dependent onbig foreign powers and import from other countries... so i guess, i grew up around heaps of trees,and the rain forest, and animals...
i have always had that connection with nature, and so if iãm away from iti feel like somethingãs missing. so what brought me hereis learning about a new culture, the different kind of environmentand habitat, and... iãm staying on a farm in chiang mai, so i want to learn as much as i canin this place, and take it back with me. and see what i can do. one of the challengesthat permaculture has out in front of it is proving to the world that it can bea viable form of profitable agriculture.
through the development of a master planfor your site or your project, itãs possible to really lay outenhancement strategies that make it more likely that youand your project can become profitable. one of the most important aspectsto our ecological farm here is the making of compost,about improving the soil, and constantly bringing more organic matterand more life into the soil. the compost production processis actually really easy. itãs accessible to anyone,it doesnãt take expensive parts, it doesnãt take that much space.all you need are three simple ingredients,
and those ingredients can comefrom any number of sources. weãre going to use brown matter,which on this farm we use corn husk for it because they producea bunch of corn at this farm, and this is kind of tossed asideto be used later. so using corn husks as our brown matter, itãs going to be the high carbon componentof our compost pile. then we need green matter.youãre looking for a green, leafy matter. the green colour in the leaf indicatesthat thereãs still quite a bit of nitrogen left in it. if i was to leave this out in the sunafter a couple of days it would turn brown,
and thatãs indicating that the nitrogenhas been lost into the atmosphere. so we want to cut it fresh,use it fresh in our compost pile. we just had a bunch of weeds around our farm and this morning we went out and collectedthem up and put them in a big pile, and as we add it to the compost pileweãre going to chop it into little bits. we also have a bunchof food scraps from the kitchen that weãre going to layer into the pile as well, and thatãs also considered partof our green component. for the nitrogen component of the compostpile, generally we use manure in the pile.
you can get awaywith using the greens from legume plants, ã«cause theyãre also high in nitrogen,but weãre going to use, in our local area there are lots of cows around,so we just went to some local farmers and got their manure from them. so weãre just usingsome manure out of their cow yards. so weãll layer this in alongwith the green and the brown and add moisture and oxygenand thatãll make our compost pile. all the different countries represented, the place can reachsome kind of resilience...
another important componentto our compost pile is an inoculum of microorganismsfrom the previous compost pile, so weãre going to takesome high quality compost that we produced previouslyand sprinkle it into our pile as weãre making the layers. that way all the bacterial life,all the fungal life, the microorganismsthat are thriving in this pile will be added to that pile and will start just to flourishas we create the right conditions. this is going to make our new compost pile,beautiful and wonderful for our site.
alright, when we got to buildour compost pile we need to get the correct proportionsof our different components. what weãre looking for is a 30:1carbon to nitrogen ratio in our pile. generally weãd do it based on recipesand then adjust your pile as you go. so one of the most common recipes isa 40% brown matter 40% green matter and 20% high nitrogen. so then you layer those in your pile watering it pretty heavilythe entire time and then let it sit.
now, depending onwhat materials youãre using, youãre going to have to adjust that, so what youãre going to need to dois build your pile with the materials you have readily available to youin your area and then see how it goes. if the pile gets too hot,which we often experience here in the tropics because the microbes are so activeand so ready to do their job, that means we havetoo much nitrogen in the pile. so, when you go to turn the pile,we should mix a little bit more carbon matter, that can be saw dust,that can be strips of paper
and that can be our corn husks,thatãs what weãre using here. if your pile is not really doing anything,itãs not really getting hot, it doesnãt seem to be breaking down, that means you donãt have enough nitrogen, so basically get a little bit more manure,or a little bit more of your legume greens and mix those in as your turning the pile. if youãre pile smells completely like sewage,if it just smells like shit, then that is asign that itãs going anaerobic, which meansyou donãt have enough oxygen in the pile.
itãs really important that we donãt allow thecompost pile to go anaerobic. so the best method for that isto acquire a compost thermometer and watch the temperature of the pile. we want to watch the temperatureis going up to about 65∞c. at 65∞c then we want to turn the pile, get more air into it and allow itto go through its process again. if the pile gets to 70∞c, itãs going to startkilling beneficial microbial life. thereãs two main reasonswhy that would happen, one is that the pile is too wet,
which means you just needto add more dry material or spread the pile out a little bitand let it dry out. the other reason why it might be goinganaerobic is that you have too much nitrogen, and so the nitrogen is reacting a lotand eating up all the oxygen really quickly, before it can re-aerate itself. so really important to keep our pilesas an aerated pile. so, with those tricksand over a couple of times of trying it, you should become really comfortableat making a really high quality compost. oh yeah, thereãs one other thing,
if youãre not so concernedabout creating the best quality compost but instead you want to focuson making hot water for showers, you can run a black plastic tubingthrough the pile and then get the pile to get upto those really high temperatures and you can have hot water for weeks. i was travelling in central america,after finishing my studies and i was doingsome ngo work there. as i was working,i met somebody who told me there was a projectwhere he was going to volunteer
where they were tryingto make the houses and make the life with whateverwas available on the land. i was really attracted by going thereand checking out the place. which i did and i staid there for a few days and when i finished my time therei was so pumped for learning more. nursery so i said, if by any chancethereãs any other places in the world where people actually do that, so the guy said yeah,there's plenty of places,
many, many people livingthis kind of life and he gave me the addressof a good friend of his who lived in thailandand organised a lot of workshops, so i wrote him an emailand got a reply right away and very friendly, i felt like i waschatting with a friend right away so directly i thoughtthat was a good place to go to. but i wasnãt aware yetthat i was going to learn even more thingsthan just natural building and learning about like life in general.
which is whatãs happening living in communityand gardening and building and managing waterand electricity, power, anything. itãs like a mini world here. so another thing thatãs interesting in thisarea on a permacutlure point of view is that because weãre very high in altitudeitãs just as if we were going higher in latitude, so from a tropical climatewhere we are at panya, weãre kind of goingto a sub-tropical climate here. therefore it allows people tofeel a bit more of the niches that are in the landscapeand grow more temperate vegetables,
strawberries, spinach,artechoke and asparagus. that allows them to have also a better diversityin the commercial ascpect of view. these vegetables havea bit more value in the market. itãs pretty interestingto see the landscape here, ã«cause itãs a very good example of what workingalong the contour lines of the landscape is. and here theyãre doing gardeningwith the same technique and that allows the nutrients and the water to sink into the soilwherever you grow your vegetables and it prevents from erosion as well.
like working on a slope. whenever we have a big rainit just washes away everything. itãs nothing new and people in chinaand in south east asia in general have been using this terracing systemfor thousands of years and itãs been workingfor thousands of years, so... modern agriculture has changed that and doesnãt work along the contourbecause it doesnãt fit with the big machines, but it makes so much more senseto use these ancient techniques for respecting the landand growing things
in a more appropriate wayaccording to laws of nature. so, this is the permaculture versionof a drive through. we're just eating from the car. the plant we're eating is nasturtium. yeah, we're definetelytaking it back to panya. try to get some cuttings,bring some little seeds and see whatever we can growback at the farm. that's mimi. we call her the little slut.
because every night she sleepswith somebody different, in a different bed. she's been here for a while, but she does a good jobcatching the rats and the mice. so, after a big day of work,i like to have a good shower, and having a simple life doesnãt meanthat we have to get rid of all the comfort. so, this little system here, itãs very very easy to install,itãs just basically a big black tank. itãs our water heating system that allows us to have two hundred literof hot water every night
when we want to take a shower. so itãs very easy, just get a glass in thefront and some insulation on the sides. itãs pretty easy to make, my guess would be in the thinking,probably half a day to make the design, another half a dayto collect the materials, and then probably it needs to takelike two days to build it properly and to make the connections and everything and thanks to the sytem itãs abouttwo hundred liters of water which allows about 20 peopleto take a nice hot shower every evening.
and when we open the tap, the water is fed bygravity, it comes through the tank. and that allows usto all have a nice shower in the evening, after a big muddy day of work. when a client approches usabout having a master plan done for their project we go through a whole series of stepsto make that happen. we start generally with a goals analysisof their site, their family, of their project, of the enterprise thatthey want us to work on. after that we generally do a site analysis, weãll do a visit to the site and spenda number of days up to a week with the client
establishing what arethe preexisting structures on site, what resources are available to the project and what might be useful in termsof moving forward with the design. weãre going to put on top soil, so that way we obviously wonãt losevegetation gardening around our landscaping. but at that point i think you needjust to lay out where youãre going to be. i think you can get tenor twelve of the bungalows... it is a great way to create shade really fastand get something delicious from it. ... we were saying on the swales,
we were speaking aboutif we put the dirt up too high, then in the dry seasonthe water table can drop so far that whatever youãve planted dies. i think that just watching the water, the flows, how is that gonna work out,then observing it. there is actually a principle of permaculturethat says you should go observe for a year. in chiang mai you donãt haveto worry about the blowing rain as much. like you said you have the macro and the microclimate. - yeah- no problem.
but here, youãre going to end up with a... we need more overhangs to protect against that. so thatãs something weãve already learned,it can be a lesson learned. - yeah.- yeah. it's a direct resource fromthe local community right here. every single baht is goingto those people that worked for it, - you didnãt buy anything in tesco lotus.- no. ...to be able to supplythese materials, which is nice! you know, we thought we wantedto support the local environment.
yeah, thatãs cool. should we go...? - wow! that's cool, actually.- that's very useful in the garden. - a lot of baby worms.- there's like ten worms in one handful! we always find themin the compost at panya, always! you can feed them to the chickens. ultimately with the master plan what weãre looking foris to achieve our holistic goals. we want the economics of the site to be in line
we want the ecology of the siteto be continuously improving, we want the personal needsof the residents there to be met. in the fields behind me, weãre implementinga combination of orchard fruit forests and alley croppingcorn systems over here. one of the first steps weãre going to dowith this is to put in swales. about 600 meters of swales, three contoured lines of swales,will be put in behind me in the coming months. and those swells primarilyare intended to sink in all the water that falls during the rainy seasonand benefit the land throughout the year.
that water will penetrate the soil and be held down in the water table and be accessible to theplants throughout the year. the benefits of the infiltrationof the water from the swales system will be felt on this land and beyond. additional water into the water table and accessible waterto all the plants on site will bring a lot more greenery to thisland throughout the dry season. itãs just incredibleto see the amount of growth
thatãs taking placein a short nine month period here. i mean, this was just cornfieldsnine months ago. iãm surrounded by a sea of legume trees. fixing nitrogen, creating shade and even providing food for the community here. this plant here is pigeon pea. it is one of the permaculture all starsin the tropical climate. we can eat the shoots of the plant,we can eat the seeds of the plant, and all the while itãs fixing nitrogen.
thereãs edibles around me, thereãs young fruit trees around me, and basically for as far as i cansee on this land is a water harvesting swale that over the course of the last 9 monthshas probably harvested an area of 20 millionliters of water. perfect. through the implementationof these enhancement strategies weãre looking to reduce erosion, to build healtier soil,to increase yelds and in turn to make it more profitablefor the farmers here.
ever since they discovered this pilea couple of days ago, we find ourselves returning here often, mostly because it has the most densemicrobial life of any soil on the farm. yeah, thatãs true, itãs a wonderful resource of microbes, especially here,theyãre starting, new farm, they need it to build soilto really improve soil fertility. and we would expect that this pilehas the best microbial life because it provides the best environmenton the farm for those microbes. it has all the food that these microbes need
and the cover on topis protecting it from the sun and holding the moisture inside. so the microbes in here have everythingthey need to be growing and flourishing. and, they haven't really touchedthis pile in two years, so, it hasn't been turnedlike the agricultural fields, so there is no disturbance for the microbesand they can just grow freely. we were invited here to teach about the soils, and set up a basic soil biology lab,
which is really exciting for us, because the soil is something that nobodyreally even talks about or understands. and it's just so important, because there is so much lifeunderneath the soil. in one teaspoon of good healthy soil, there areover one billion bacteria, 900 feet of fungi,50.000 protozoa and several dozen nematodes. it is feeding the plant, right? so, we all have this idea that we needthe nitrogen in the fertilisers,
to feed the plants to make them grow but for millenia mother naturehas been feeding the plants, making everything on earth growwithout our input. and it's the soil microbes which do that. the plants have a relationshipwith the soil microbes, which allows themto obtain all the nutrients that the plants need in the soil. the microbes help producegood soil structure, they cycle various nutrients,such as nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorus...
they interact with each otherat the root zone of the plant and provide all the nutritionthe plant needs. so, we all know that the plantundergoes photosynthesis, the sun hits it, there's the chloroplasts,they create these sugars... and we all think that's what it usesto make itself grow. but really a plant is takingmore than half of that, like 60% of all the energythat it makes from the sun and it's feeding itthrough this root exudates to the microrganisms in the soil.
these little guys use these fungi,these bacteria, they can't photosythesize, so they rely on the plantto get all the food that it needs. but there is a little tradegoing on here, so in exchange for the sugarsthat the plant is giving it, the soil microbes are providing the foodthat the plant needs to grow. it's really importantto understand the difference between an orchardand a food forest. an orchard is a kind ofless intensively managed area,
usually it's larger in sizeand focuses on one or two species. with the whole purpose beinghigh production of those one or two speciesto send to market. a food forest is usuallymuch smaller in area, a little bit more extensively managed, it has multi-funtions, it has many morefunctions than an orchard does. so, once this food forest is finished, we hope to have mimicked many of the layersof the forest, of a natural forest, including the trees, shrubs,herbs and vine layers.
what we're actually doing here,right now, is trying to take the orchardand turning it into a food forest. we've actively tilled this land, we are going to alley cropin the meantime, until this trees growquite a bit bigger, and currently we are adding indifferent herbs and vegetables, to the understorey of the trees. right now, they're planting cassava cuttings. cassava is a pretty incredible plant,
in that it's so versatile in tropics, it can grow in a desert situation,it can grow in a really wet situation. it's not the most nutricious food item, but it is a security plant. we look at it if there'ssome sort of emergency, if there is a huge drought, or if there is a hurricane that wipes outall the fruit crops off the trees, we can still dig upthese giant roots of cassava and get the needed calories.
one of the featuresthat is missing from this orchard, an important featureto transition it into food forest, is the addition of legumes. legumes are a classification of plant that the vast majority of themfix nitrogen into the soil. it's really important. throughan interaction with bacteria in the soil the bacteria is able to pull nitrogenout of the air and put it into the soil. this is a huge boon for us. some of the important speciesthat we're going to use
in the legume family are gliricidia,gliricidia is a really great tropical legume, that you can plant by cuttings. very similar to the cassavaplantings back here, you can just chop itin a little one foot lenghts, and as long as you plant itthe right way up, it will grow. another great one is leucaena. leucaena grows around herereally commonly. some of the thai people consider it a pest, but the multiple functions of leucaenamake it well worth planting it out here.
it's a fodder for animals,it fixes nitrogen in the soil, it's a great chop and dropnitrogen fixing plant because you chop itduring the rainy season, chop it up into little bits,put it around these fruit trees and by just a few months later,the sprouts are growing big again and by the dry season, it's putting up enough shadeto keep these trees healthy and happy. a third great nitrogen fixing plant, which we're actually planting today,is the pigeon pea.
i can't wait to just be ableto come out here and pick my own jackfruitsand durians and star apples. and jujubes and atemoias, soursops,these jackfruits, oranges, pomelos, pineapples on the ground,jamaican cherry and... oh, when the durian seasoncomes around, it will be so good! loquats, surinam cherries,mangosteens, the queen of fruit. lychee and mangos... okay, beautiful. so, i'm sitting in this little shop here,in the village of hua ka teng thai
and i'm having a beer with a couple of localsand a couple of people from the farm, kind of talking about how we are goingto plant the food forest, what species we are going to put in, what different layers we can achieve. and... trying to strategize abouthow exactly to get it going. and i raised my eyes upand i was looking out into the yard while i was thinking... they've got a food forestgoing right here! in the yard.
that's really beautiful,we should walk out there. do you harvest and eatfrom your garden everyday? yes, i eat from there every day. the garden does not have pesticides. it grows organically. that's good! thank you. you're welcome. after a closer examinationof this woman's yard, i can identify at least12 varieties of edible,
almost all perennials, that are existingin this backyard food forest. straight behind me here is the over-story ofthis area, is the jackfruit tree. a tree that produces more fruit,in terms of kilos per year, than any other fruit on the planet. beyond the jackfruit tree,which is actually in the neighbours yard, we can see what they call 'gluay hom' in thai, which the western style banana,the big long ones. thereãs actually jackfruits on the tree, i can see about tenof them just in the lower branches. as we come closer here,we've got papaya growing.
a nice thai papaya. also, as you start to walkaround this garden, there's a coupledifferent varieties of eggplants. here is the thai style eggplant,a little round version. and right here, look closer, are the longer versions,a little bit closer to the western style. these ones have gone beyondthe best point of eating, but they can still be saved for seeds. this is lemongrass. i'm sure it's used almost every dayin the family's cooking.
there's more of the traditionalthai banana behind us. there's actually a couplesmall bunches of them, they're kind of like a littlelady fingers style bananas, smaller, much more flavourfulthan the bananas we have in the west. you can see, beyond these little papayas here, you can see a little bunchof bananas up on the tree there. and as we turn around that way,we've got the kaffir lime. this plant is used often in thai cooking,in the coconut milk soup. they use this and theyoften fry it with peanuts and other things.
really amazing, delicious herb. kind of in the ground here,in the wetter area of the yard. this wet loving plant called pandenas. which is used often in... it's this plant here. used often in dessertsand herbal drinks in thailand. some others hanging from the tree up here. they look like little, small perennial cucumberson it that you can eat, but what's mostly eaten in thailandis just the shoots off of this plant.
so, i don't know how many i just named,but there's close to 12. and another one, which i saw popping upin the corner over there, which i don't even think they've planted,is some emerand. probably just a weedfor this family, but totally pickable and ediblein their stir fries. beautiful! if we can get our food forest to lookhalf as good, we're golden. now they have about six familiesas members of the network that is regularly bringing their products here to sell
and also the villagers in the village, they buy these products here, they just buy some amounts that they need,something they like to eat not everything that they produce. we don't drive our own produceindividually into town. everybody shares a spaceon the truck for their produce. if we go alone, it is not worth the costof gas because the market is far. if we sell it locallywe can only sell so much. local neighbours could still buyfrom each other here.
but again, we cannot sell outall the crops locally. also, our gardens do not always yield enough. so everyone gathers their cropson the truck to the market. at the market everyone hasan allotted space for their products. if we go individually there's notenough space for all of us. we will be selling in cramped conditionsbecause the market is small. so, she's been doing thisfor 7 years already, growing organic and selling organic products. and she said it changed her life as well,
because she's become healthier,both her mind and her body. because she really enjoyswhen she goes to her garden because she doesn't haveto be careful of all the chemicals, she never has to use the gloves in,like, working and she enjoys seeing things grow,seeing the product of her work. she just feels like itãs healthier,mentally and physically. pun pun project is very involvedin our community jo, who inspired me,is the reason why pun pun is involved. he made me change for the better.
with jo's help i rallied peopleto stop using chemical fertilizers. however, there wasn't much change. when jo came,he was a crucial turning point for us locals. if jo wasn't here, we wouldn't considerstopping the use of chemical fertilizers, because we don't have enough patience. since joe lived here, he is my sourceof insipiratio whenever i am down. when i meet jo, i would have the energyto rally people. after he taught us self-reliance. the next priority for most of uswas our children.
since we live in a rural area and don't have money for our kids'english lessons. this can hinder our children's english skillswhen they attend school later on. but when our community has foreignersfrom pun pun and panya over, kids learn not to be afraidto interact with them. in addition, they also learnto speak english! nowadays when our kids go into the city, they speak better english than city kids. this is something that we didn't expectfrom panya and pun pun.
our children can learn englishand are not afraid of westeners. as you have noticed them interactingwith foreigners casually. so, we have looked at howa food forest is made and if you haven't gotenough space for it, a forest, you can always make a gardenin your backyard. so, when people think of gardening, they might think of food, maybe soil,maybe even hard work. for me, when i think of gardening,i think empowerment, because my garden is a littlemini-revolution in itself.
it's a way for us to workfrom the grass roots and really cut the ties betweenthese big business and agro business which causes all thisenvironmental degradation. and if every dollar that i'm spendingis saying, "i support you", then i'm just not willing to supportsupermarket chains. so it also means a lot about nutritionfor me as well. when i searched the world for what wasthe healthiest thing to put into my body, and i read and readand i found in every book, it always went backto the healthiest thing you can eat,
it is somethingthat is picked directly from a plant and put directly into your mouth. healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy humans. it's also really cheap. you know, you can grow a lot of foodin a very small area for not much money. pharmaceutical companies use the garden,the herbs and spices and the root plants that are growing right in our garden beds. they put loads of chemicals inand dilute lots of fossil fuels and sell it to us, where we have got itgrowing in our own garden beds!
so let's just cut that tie all together. so if we think about gardenswe can think cheap, we can think easy,you can meet your neighbours, you can meet your local communityby learning from the garden, learning from your surroundings. and it's fun! so much fun to garden! watching things grow can be really beautiful. so, here in the tropics there's a few really goodstrategies that you can use in your garden. one would be mulch.
everything is kept in the biomass in the tropics, so we need to cover our soilwith as much organic matter as you can. and that can be straw,or you can grow your own mulch lemon grass or comfrey... throw anything onto the soil,as long as it's covered. another one would be water. so, when we're facing the wetand dry seasons of the tropics, we have to really designaround our water systems. so one good water strategy in the tropics
is using swales or planting on contour,like geoffroy was speaking about. another good strategy isusing drip line irrigation, which you would placeunderneath the mulch, that waters the plants exactly, because we are trying to reduce,reuse and recycle as much water as we can. so you can also use things like grey water, that's a really great use of grey water,is in your garden beds. another good strategyin tropical gardening is weed barriers. so, in the tropics we have huge burstsof growth in the wet season.
and they're all there for a reason. in permaculture we thinkthat the problem is the solution, so we look at the weed and we think"how can that be our solution?" and a lot of weeds are doingthe things that we want them to do, covering the soil and protecting it. which gives us the amazing plants. so, covering the soil would bethe first thing that you would do when you're trying to stopthe weeds coming up. so that comes back to mulch again,that cuts down a lot of our weeding needs.
and you can also plant weed barriers, so put things around the edgesof your garden, that can stop the weeds from coming in. that can be logs, or bricks, or rocks, or anything. or you can plant weed barriers. and that way you've got veg and thingsgrowing around the edge of your garden that you can harvest from as well. things like comfrey, again lemongrass,calla lilies, daylilies, edible flowers... plant them around the edges of your garden
and you will have extra thingsto harvest from and stop the weeds. there's a couple of permaculture plantsthat i love to use in the tropics. one is comfrey. comfrey is one of my favourites! it's an amazing, amazing plant.it can do so many things, as i said before with the weed barriers,really good, grows in a big clump, so it stops any weed from coming in. it's also what we call a dynamic accumulator. so it sends tap roots really deep down in the soil,
and holds up a lot of nutrientsthat are not acceptable for other plants and stores them in reallyconcentrated forms in the leaves. then when the plant dies downat the end of the season the nutrients become accessibleto all the other plants around. so that's really super good for the plants. and because it hasso high nutrients in the leaves, it is really good for making weed teas, so you just ferment it in water and then spray itonto your garden, diluted. and it's just like a little fertilizer.
you can also use it as a compost accelerator. if you put it in your compost,it makes it go way faster. even just a few leaves does the trick. it's also a medicinal plant,they call it knitbone in some places. the roman soldiers never used it march in war,unless they had comfery and garlic. those are the two antiseptic, antibacterial,anti-amazingness of plants. the other really good plant that we usein tropical permaculture is neem, and this is a really good pioneer plant. christian probably spoke a bit in the food forestabout plants that pioneer up.
it's a really fast growing tree, and it's also very medicinal,the indians eat like 5 leaves a day. a neem leaf a day keeps the doctor away. it's really bitter, but amazingfor every part of your body. bulding immunity, immune system,it's really good for digestion, you can even use the branchesto brush your teeth with. you can get oil from the leavesand from the fruit and from that you can make shampoos,you can make detergents, and it can get rid of things like lice and fleas,so it's excellent for your animals too.
and because it's such a bitter leaf, it's a really good insecticide,a natural insecticide. you can turn it into a sprayand keep all the bugs away. and because of that you can also use itas a mulch on your garden, and that prevents pest and thingsfrom coming into your garden as well. so both of these plants are my favourites. grey water is somethingthat we can utilize to the extreme, there's so many nutrients and amazing thingsthat come from grey water. and grey water is anythingthat comes from your kitchen sink,
your shower, your bathroom sink. black water comes from your toilet. from your kitchen, you put a grease trapand then directly into your banana circle, so you can be washingyour plates in the evening time, and watering your banana circlewhich is right at your door. and banana circle is a beautiful wayof using tropical permaculture. to make a banana circle,you basically dig a mulch pitch, fill that mulch, organic matter,cardboard, newspaper, rice husk... anything that can decompose downand feed the microbes and the worms below.
then you plant bananasaround the outside of the circle, and those grow down and their rootsform like a net underneath, and that holds the whole thing togetherand supports it in a beautiful structured way. then from there, we add loads of guilds,we stack in the amazing plants, so we can plant papayas, or mulberries,or coconuts, all amongst there, and then we can plant ground coversof sweet potato and taro, and yams, we can plant beans to climb upand support the papayas. so we can make this a very abundant systemof tropical permaculture, that is like an ecosystem within itself.
a great way to take that even one step further, is to cut the distance betweenthe house and the banana circle by actually creating a banana circle shower. so you can stand in amongstyour amazing ecosystem of food, and shower directly underthis beautiful banana circle, knowing that the water that you pour on yourself is feeding directly downinto these plants beneat you, and then feeding you. so we can create this beautiful ecosystemsand microclimates right at our doorstep
for a crazy amount of abundance. this is our little participation on how to solvesome of the biggest problems in the world. it's the humanure toilet. this one we call it the rocket toilet. so the way that it works:you come up the stairs, you do your little business,and cover it with some rice husk. rice husk is the mostlocally available organic material. the goal of it is just to cover your business, so that it doesn't smell,it doesn't attract the flies,
people come and go,come and go, come and go... we have good food here,so they come quite often. and once it's full,we just put the lid on, leave it for one year,and then we open the little door on the side, and we've got black gold. and how this really helps to savebig problems in the world, is that by using no water at all we don't have to clean water to use to flush, at the same time we get free fertilizer.
and the more people come here,and the more fertilizer we have for our land. so we really like to have many people around,it's plenty of fertilizer for our fruit trees. so, if it's made properly, this is a systemthat is actually very clean. there shouldn't be any fecal matteror any kind of patogens by the end of the fermentation,and only good matter of compost. but here, because we are an education center, to make sure that we don't spreadany disease or anything, we never use this kindof compost in our veggie garden, we only use it around the treesin the food forest.
it's important to have to keep it quite dry,that's what really makes the difference, and a long lasting process,it's like a long fermentation, which helps braking down anythingthat could be harmful for us. you might want to considerhaving some worms around. because if you think of inputs and outputsof having warms in a farm, and i'm not talking about the earthworms, i'm talking about these little guys here, these guys are called the red rigglers. they're the ones that love to livein nice, fresh vegetables.
they'll eat all your leftover foodand transform that into worm cast, which is a very nice, strong fertilizer,very high in nitrogen. and you also get the worm juice,which you can just dilute with water, and use as a fertilizer as well. the worms double their populationwithin a few weeks, that will allow you to have extra worms and with these extra worms,you can also feed them to your chickens. that's going to be always a nice treat for them. so there is no wastewith having worms around in a farm.
out here in the fields,amongst the fruit trees, taking soil samples and things... it's easy to forget about moneyand not think about it. but money is an important part of our lives. when we consider money and profit,and economic yield on a permaculture site we have to look at itfrom a couple different angles. we don't separate necessarily the enterpriseof the family from the family life itself. so, we can look at a reductionin costs to the family life similarly to an increasein profits from the enterprise.
so what we're trying to dowith permaculture systems here, is both to reduce our costs,to reduce our fuel usage, to reduce the cost of all the implementsand machinery that we need on site, to reduce the cost of labour, to reduce our inputs like pesticides,fertilizers, those kind of things. reduce them down very low, while at the same time producing a productthat's of higher quality. the organic and permaculture grown producecan get a much higher cost in the market. we can seek out in niche markets,
we can approach restaurants,we can approach hotels, we can approach csa,community supported agriculture products, and see if our product can be sold through those avenues. one of the principlesof permaculture is multifunctionality. we're constantly thinking about howall the resources we have on site can be used in different ways. and when one stops being useful in one way,it can be turned into something else. for example, not far from me over here,there's a row of jackfruit trees. a healthy mature tree can easily produceover 500 kg of fruit in a year.
that jackfruit tree can live to 800 years old. and at the end of its lifeit's a high quality timber. that timber can then becut down and put into a house that will last multiple generations. when that house is ready to come down,when the wood starts to rot out, that wood can be pulled downand made into a chair, made into a piece of furniture. and when that chair starts to fall apart, that would can then be usedas kinding in the fire.
and then, when that fire is out,we can take the ash from that, put that ash in our compost pile,and mixed it back into our gardens, and grow another jackfruit tree with it. this is the way we want to think in permaculture. it's already inside of us, inside of us. it's only been in the last 50-60 yearsthat we've lost this knowledge, you know. it's inside of us and i teach it,and then i see it, people are so fast, they learn so fast,they enjoy it so much as they go. and i really do think that it's only overthe last 50 or 60 years that it's been lost.
before that... you know, my grandfather builthis own house at the weekends, whilst having a job during the week. and... i think people have a fear about it, have a fear that they haveto employ somebody to do it for them, that they can't do it themselves.we're told that we can't do it ourselves. and... it's really not the case, you know, we can. and if you put your own energy into it, it becomes something different,you've invested... it becomes like a piece of art,you've invested a piece of yourself in it.
it has so much more,you enjoy it so much more. scrape back the excess,rather than having it under full and keep it... so wait until they're over fulland then scrape back the excess. yeah, fill them all. keep all the buckets clean as we come back. there are many styles of natural building and the one that we choosedepends on the local context, it depends on the local materials available. permaculture tries to draw from local,traditional and indigenous knowledge,
and combine that with modern,appropriate technology. concrete or cement has its placein natural building. but from permaculture point of view, we want to use it very mindfully,and in the right places, and as minimum as possible. and it's very different working with the adobe as opposed to concrete or cement,which is a distructive system and in permaculture we're lookingto move away to supporting distructive systems. the style that we have chosenfor this building is the adobe.
the adobe has been used for thousands of years, it's available to all,it's earth underneath our feet. it's fun to do and it can be done by anybody. you don't want more than 30% clay in the mix. the majority of the mix is sandor some kind of binder. but you can use coconut fiber,or animal hair, or chopped straw. so we can see the people behind me here,they're adding water to the pit. we want to get the water proportions correct,so there's not too much water. if thereãs too much, when we lift the forms,the bricks are going to slump,
and if there is not enough,we will have trouble lifting the forms up. a lot of people tend to puttoo much clay into their bricks. and if there is too much clay,they will crack, they will come apart, because the clay will expand when wetand contract when dry. we dry it out in the sun and it will go very hardand make solid brick to use. you don't want the bricks to dry out too fast, we put straw over them,so they dry nice and slowly. in this case we're using shade cloththat we'll later use on the nursery on site. when working with natural materials,we don't need to use much safety gear,
because it's very kind to us. as opposed to workingwith concrete or cement, we need gloves, if we spend all day working with cement,we're going to have blisters the next day, our hands are going to dry out. working with the earth is beautiful.it feels so natural. get your fingers in there, steve.but it's all muddy! and run it through, because that's exactlywhat termites are looking for. them little pockets that they send out. the guys they find it and they come backand expand on that hole.
here in the tropics you wantto design towards staying cool and dry, also thinking about rains. a lot of this relates to the roof design. we want big overhangs on our roofs, to protect our wallsfrom the rain and the elements. also, it multi-functionly shades our wallsto keep the interior of the house cool. we want to have openings in the roof, so the air can flow through the houseand create updrafts, which keeps the house nice and cool.
maintenance has to be doneafter the monsoon season here in the tropics. and that could be re-plastering a wall, or often putting another lime washon to protect from the rain, also to patch up some damage that may have been causedby strong winds and rain during that time of year. that can be done togetherwith the family or a group of friends, and be an enjoyable experience.but some maintenance is always necessary. one of the projects herewithin the community we're really excited about is the earthen baking oven.
earthen ovens really bring community together,they bring people together. it connects us with our food source,it connects us with the elements of the earth. you know, we've built this oven usingthe resources around us, using clay and sand. so, this oven is being builtnot only to give these students an introduction to natural building, a first hand experienceof working with the materials, and the resources that are just outside of ourdoor, that are all around us, but also because we are so excited to be bakingbread, making pizzas, and roasting a turkeythat we've raised on the farm here.
we're putting our oven here in this area, that will become a really beautiful,kind of garden patio, sitting area, for people to come together and relax,and rejuvinate and have good conversation, and prepare food,and it's going to bea gathering place for celebration. it's going to be surrounded by gardens and edible fruits you can go and pickthe herbs putting on your bread and your pizza. it's going to create a very beautiful space. earth ovens are also super efficient. using all three types of heat,
being radiant heat from the sun, convectional heat,which is warm air circulating through, and conductive heat,itãs like frying an egg on a frying pan. most conventional modern ovens useonly one type of heat, being convectional heat. and that can leave a lotof air pockets, cool air pockets, so that you don't get a as even as a baking. with the earthen oven you have the radiant heatbeing stored in the thick earthen walls going back into the oven. we also have a thermal layer,an insulative layer,
so that heat is not lost to the outside. the heath goes backinto the center of the oven. inside the warm air is circulating,itãs really steam filled air so you get this moist baking environmentwhich really creates nice loafs of bread. then you also get the conductive heathfrom the fire being built right on the bricks, and the bricks warm upat such a hot temperature that the bread or the pizzaor the turkey is roasted, is baking from below so these three types of heathcreate a really even, efficient environment for whatever you may be baking.
a step i really like to dois prep all my materials, a lot of times we are gettingour clay from big piles or excavation sites or holes we dug and it might have chunks,clay clots in there, stones and pebbles. working with a sifted material is so much nicer. you're going to get a better product, you're notgoing to get air pockets and rock pockets, where heat can get in and kind of burst openthe area. sand is also a good thing to sift,a lot of sand has rock chunks in it. so, sifting material is greatand a really nice step to include.
so when it gets to be... you're happy with all theseams and eveness, we're just going to let it sit. donãt go over it too much. i know i repeat that,but it's so easy to just keep going over and over. itãs really detrimental for the... it's not as good for the clay. and remember, your ovenis your own creative expression so make it beautifuland put a lot of love into it. permaculture is about an assembly of elements. it's about how elements fit togetherand how they relate to one another.
and one of the most important elementsin any permaculture design is how the community fits into the design work. so today we have a very unique opportunityto incorporate elements in a community that we never had before. through the internet and just living in large cities,we're able to find people of like minds and assemble communities much more dynamicallythat we ever have been able to before. my teacher christian sent an email out invitingall the previous students to this new project, we didn't have a name for it at the time,but i jumped on it. i was at home at the time,
and couldn't really handle the idea of stayingin the developed world with intelligent people and watching all the problemsand no solutions in sight. so, i came here to learn what i could learnand i have been here for 11 months now. about 2 years ago i was stillin my final term of high school and the project i gave myselfwas an in-depth study into native americans because i've always loved them in terms of likethe way that they were part of nature, it sounded amazing to meand it sounded like a fairy tale. i did all the research that i could,i read so many books on it and i ended up wantingto study all the aspects of the culture
and actually try implementingthe way they built shelters and the way they made firewithout matches, that kind of thing. and i started with fire, and ended up spending the whole monthtrying to make fire without matches. but the point of that is that i havea very deep passion for these indigenous people who were around before technology and all that. not that technology is evil,i'm not one of those people, but it's just... there's just something very beautiful to meabout that ancient lifestyle. if i reflect about on that time,now, two years later,
it's pretty amazing to think about the kindof things that i've learned just by being here and living a very real experience and before when i was reading these booksand it was all very fantastical and it seemed like this dreamthat i could never achieve while i was living in a prep schooldormitory in st. louis, missouri it all seemed so far to my reachand in just 2 short years i'm here. as an example, this community here, i have beenhere now for little over a month, and i see this as one of those oppportunities. kind of the age old problem in society nowis people working their life away for retirement
and then they realise they have workedtheir life away for retirement. so it's not a very healthy way to live. and it's very easy to avoid it, if you just acceptthat you can't really control time. and time controls you more, and you have to workwith it, you know, just accept it. we've been here now 8 daysand the transition has been huge. for me, personally. so much so that i almost can't rememberwhat was going through my head 8 days ago. i know that, for me as a nurse, and travelling around the worldand seeing what we're doing
not only to ourselves but the planet is... has been almost overwelming, to the point i've been stuck,not able to move forward, even not really surewhat direction i want to go in. and really pretty bummed outand depressed about it. travelling to placesto provide health care to people and realizing that corporationsgot there ahead of me and they're drinking sodaand their teeth are rotting out in the middle of the amazon.
i mean, it's been a crippling feeling, and so... to come here and in 8 daysloose a feeling that i've had for 15 years is... that's pretty mind blowing actually. i feel empowered. i feel like i can take the knowledgethat we've learned and go back to these placesi am so passionate about going and working with the masai and giving themthe tools that i've been given. you know, it didn't take that long. obviously i don't have anyas much practical experience that i need,
but the knowledge is there now. and i'm really really excitednot to feel terrible. i'm really excited to actually feel like really positive changes are possiblewithout that much effort. i think there are many great examples of this kindof work happening all across the world today. personally, where i'm from, austin, texas, i've seen amazing changesin development within the community there. in just a short... 6 months i witnessed oneneighborhood go from a lot of scepticism, drug and violence to an excitingand revolutionary kind of development,
where people were coming outinto their front yards and sharing food that they had madeand food they had grown and contributing and taking partin the development of their community and within that same time frame, those elementsthat were distablizing the community, literally went away on their own accord. i just thought like, how can i make this happen? and so i'm starting with food. i just really like good produce,
so i started looking into how to growyour own food in a very efficient way. that's why i came across permaculture. permaculture is pretty much...everything i would say. it's just about life. so, i cannot just look at having good food,i have to look at everything. to be fulfilled in life. permaculture also includes communities,so that conquers the next part. i want to create something nice for everybody,that everybody can benefit from, instead of trying to focus on a careerthat is just about me but not about anybody else.
where i'm going to end up i don't know,but that's the beauty of it. just being in the moment and stop trying tocontrol. just work witheverything around you. that's a... you cannot force anything. you can try to force things,but you're just going to create the opposite. all of our mistakes,all of our great things we've done, the mistakes we've made,it's just been part fo the process. i don't regret any of it for a second, because i know i've learneda lot more from mistakes than from doing things the right way.
everything is connected and everythingis an opportunity to improve and to grow. to be better. we live in a very exciting time and we have a lot of opportunities available to usto share and contribute to a healthy and sustainable world and we're going to be able to do that best throughassembling communities work together. that's what a lot of it is about, it's building and creating fertile groundfor the community to establish itself. and through that process,permaculture and these other elements
that we talk about within permaculture designbegin to establish themselves. what is the life that i want to live? how do i want it to look? how do i want to relate to the people around me? how do i want to spend my time and spend my days? what do i want included in my daily,monthly, yearly, set of activities? for me personally,i want a life that is socially engaged. i want a life that's full of really amazing,wonderful relationships. i want to be ableto express my love on a daily basis.
i want time to be able to play my guitar. i want time to be ableto sit in the morning and have silence. this is what i want in my life. i'm going to use permaculture ideas,permaculture principles, to design around this to create that lifestyle. i look at our society in general and i'm reallyconfused by the choices that people are making. it's kind of the normal choices to makebut they don't make any sense to me. i really wonder, are these the choicesthat we would really make if we were really designing our own lives?
each of us, i believe, can sit downand think clearly about what we want in the world. i've got a new permaculture principlethat i would like to add to the permacutlure community,to add to the list of principles. it's a principle that i have discoveredover the years of the panya project, over the years of travelling around, my time in anumber of different projects around the planet, and i think it's really importantfor all of us to bring it in. i think, actually,that most of us have experienced it, just like all the other permaculture principles. from what i have experienced in my life,if the area around me is beautiful,
if things are put away,if we keep things clean, if there's some beautiful flowers,if the gardens are nice then my life is more wonderful. i also see that when people come and visit the farmand want to learn about permaculture they see that also if it's beautiful, it's better. oh wait, that's better. do you want me here? oh it's starting to rain.
happy mudding!don't use that one either. happy mudding! i gotta see that again! we are finding ourselvesin the midst of northern tailand. where the weather is dryer than aridand where birds and crickets make all the noises. here we are at rak tamachat,trying to bring about some sort of permaculture plan. a year ago today there was nothing but dry desert. but now, but now! as we will discover, there's fruit falling from thetrees and humans are making love next to the pond.
you will love it. here we go. i'm david attenborough. perfect plant for our swale... tops... we're not going to get too deep into gardeningin this movie because it's about to rain. and we need to get out of here soon. sorry it's really hard for me to focus. i'm here talking about gardeningon top of a building in the middle of bangkok. what am i doing here? this is a perfect place to garden.
in fact, we think more people shoulddo gardening on top of their buildings. can you imaginewhat this city would look like if all the buildingswere covered in gardenbeds and indigenous forest species producing fruitfor the people in those buildings. we can do that! in the next film that we're making, we're going to work on a permaculture filmabout urban permaculture. if you have a great idea,or a way than you can help, visit www.seedsofpermaclture.organd help with our fundraiser.