Realeyes Farm Permaculture Design – Vision and Goals

This undertaking was inspired by the realization that if the current status quo persists, human life will not be viable in the future on this planet. Permaculture offers us the tools to imagine a world transformed into a permanent healthy ecosystem which provides all our needs. So now that we know where we’re at, and we know where we need to go, it’s a simple matter of getting from point A to point B; navigating any obstacles (inner and outer) that get in our way along this path. This project represents our experiments at finding our way through opening our awareness to the patterns and lessons of the land.

realeyes-handdrawn

The food forest serves as a mother colony of useful plants; a sort of living ark, which useful species will be propagated outwards first to the rest of the land, then to neighbors and the greater community. What use is my retirement savings; what good is raising a child if we allow our life-support systems to fail simply through improper management? Since we have the tools in our hands to do it right, there is no other option but to dedicate all energy and resources to this transformation until the work is done.

This is a space for the relearning of lost skills, and discovery of new ones, rebuilding our connection with the land and one another, the radical relocalization of our resource supply lines, and for reprogramming our patterns of thought and behavior to be in more harmony with the community of life that we’re members of.

Goals:

  • Provide healthy, nutrient dense food for our community
  • Create a plant nursery of useful and well adapted species
  • Host workshops on Nutrition and Permaculture
  • Provide our income from the land sustainably 
  • Protect the existing soil and ecosystems and regenerate the damaged ones
  • Create a mostly self-managing food forest that will exist for millennia, that expands outwards
  • Spread awareness of alternative solutions to meeting our basic needs
  • Put the permaculture lifestyle into practice in our lives, producing more than we consume
  • Provide the information and tools for others to follow this path
  • Be completely off-grid
  • Reduce outside inputs to the system to a bare minimum
  • Be of service to our community
  • Sequester more carbon than we produce
  • Understand and use native and introduced plants responsibly
  • Create structures and systems which can exist and support life permanently
  • Work through any legal barriers to these practices
  • Do a “Needs Assessment” of our community and possible ways to utilize existing ecosystems to meet these needs locally and sustainably (harvest acorns, timber lots etc.)
  • Provide most of the feed for the animals on site
  • Ensure that this land and these systems are maintained and used into the distant future

 

*As always we are way open to input and guidance with this process so please share any thoughts, or constructive criticisms

 

MyBarc
Thanks BARC for composting food waste on our site, providing us with copious free organic matter and feed for pigs and chickens! Let's keep closing the loops!