Permaculture at Findhorn. Maria Cooper, Craig Gibsone and Morag Gamble

welcome to the sense making in a changing world podcast where we explore the kind of thinking we need to navigate a positive way forward i'm your host maura gamble permaculture educator and global ambassador filmmaker eco villager food forester mother practitioner all-round lover of thinking communicating and acting regeneratively for a long time it's been clear to me that to shift trajectory to a thriving one planet way of life we first need to shift our thinking the way we perceive ourselves in relation to nature self and community is the core so this is true now more than ever and even the way change is changing is changing unprecedented changes are happening all around us at a rapid pace so how do we make sense of this to know which way to turn to know what action to focus on so our efforts are worthwhile and nourishing and are working towards resilience regeneration and reconnection what better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation in this podcast i'll share conversations with my friends and colleagues people who inspire and challenge me in their ways of thinking connecting and acting these wonderful people are thinkers doers activists scholars writers leaders farmers educators people whose work informs permaculture and spark the imagination of what a post covered climate resilient socially just future could look like their ideas and projects help us to make sense in this changing world to compost and digest the ideas and to nurture the fertile ground for new ideas connections and actions together we'll open up conversations in the world of permaculture design regenerative thinking community action earth repair eco-literacy and much more i can't wait to share these conversations with you over the last three decades of personally making sense of the multiple crises we face i always return to the practical and positive world of permaculture with its ethics of earth care people care and fair share i've seen firsthand how adaptable and responsive it can be in all contexts from urban to rural from refugee camps to suburbs it helps people make sense of what's happening around them and to learn accessible design tools to shape their habitat positively and to contribute to cultural and ecological regeneration this is why i've created the permaculture educators program to help thousands of people to become permaculture teachers everywhere through an interactive online dual certificate of permaculture design and teaching we sponsor global perma-youth programs women's self-help groups in the global south and teens in refugee camps so anyway this podcast is sponsored by the permaculture education institute and our permaculture educators program if you'd like to find more about permaculture i've created a four-part permaculture video series to explain what permaculture is and and also how you can make it your livelihood as well as your way of life we'd love to invite you to join our wonderfully inspiring friendly and supportive global learning community so i welcome you to share each of these conversations and i'd also like to suggest you create a local conversation circle to explore the ideas shared in each show and discuss together how this makes sense in your local community and environment i'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which i meet and speak with you today the gubby guppy people and pay my respects to their elders past present and emerging this week you're in for a treat on sense making in a changing world podcast come with me on a walk and talk through the iconic finn horne community in scotland with the finhon college permaculture teacher maria cooper exploring how permaculture is applied and discover a beautiful permaculture garden and life philosophy at the home of craig gibson an elder of the finnhorn community permaculture here is love in action both maria and craig shared deep insights throughout this walk and talk about living a permaculture way of life and of growing abundance in a cool climate and having fresh food year-round originally from australia craig has been a central figure in the development of permaculture and eco village education at fintorn and has lived at fintorn for 50 years maria moved more recently to finton and she's deeply involved in the transition and permaculture movements locally and internationally and runs now the permaculture design courses and eco village design education programs at fintorn so i hope you enjoy this conversation with maria and craig exploring what is permaculture at the findhorn community in scotland [Music] hi it's maura gamble from our permaculture life and the permaculture education institute and i'm here at the fintorn community in scotland with mariette cooper and maria has been here for some time and she's actually recently brought into the community but the reason why i really wanted to speak with her is because maria is living at the moment in one of the more established permaculture gardens that exists here um in the community and she is also part of the teaching team teaching permaculture so i come with a few questions formerly and i'm we could or could not go in those directions it doesn't really matter but what i do want to ask maria was what does permaculture mean in the context of finton in this community how how permaculture kind of manifests in terms of education here within the community and maybe any particular ways in which you teach it because one of the things that i do a lot of is mentoring permaculture teachers and so i'm always fascinated by ways of teaching yeah and approaches to teaching that relate to to different communities and different groups so that that's kind of one and then the other thing is a very practical thing about what does permaculture look like in this cool part of scotland so let's let's kind of take a wander up and um yeah so maybe first just and and also you know what is it the dream to permaculture in the first instance oh that's that's a good place to start um because i found permaculture just by accident right and in terms of i was just looking to volunteer on a farm somewhere and i happened to come to a permaculture place and i thought that was normal farming so i was really lucky because actually my background my both my parents are academics and i didn't really grow up with any form of nature connection or practices where we would grow any food where did you grow up in sweden and sweden right yeah so um so i came at it from quite an ideological perspective i guess that i studied politics and i wanted to find some form of solutions that would work for people on a local level that um also weren't imposing a specific type of theory or framework or um i was very much into postcolonialism so how can we find ways that people can express themselves and design their local environment without being like an imposed structure on them yeah so that's how i came into permaculture and for me now it's very much an expression of life and we're here at a conference actually climate change and consciousness and somebody yesterday said something great about permaculture is she said they're fundamentally unreasonable no i was shocked when she said that i was thinking oh my gosh what's she gonna say is that gonna kind of shatter my world but then she went on and i went oh yeah fantastic so her point was sort of that these people permaculturist if you want um don't accept the status quo as the only way it can be and that there is we can create our reality around us yeah and for me that's so important and the uh i grow my own food and i have a permaculture garden and that sense of connection with the land and of co-creating my body and my brain and the energy that flows through me with the environment i'm in and seeing and sensing feels extremely important and also somehow it's it's the only thing according to my conscience that i can also feel this and it's okay to teach others um in terms of how they relate with their life so why is that just happy to stop yeah talk about that for a minute because i think that's a really important point um [Music] there's because there's so much emphasis on observation on um listening to if it's the land if it's a land-based project but also here in finton we're a spiritual community so it's going within and listening to whatever our intuition is saying whatever the group setting is saying what the energy of the group is saying and being informed by that rather than imposing some form of solution that somebody developed out there that's not the right it's not one thing it's not a recipe it's yeah it's kind of a it's an approach it's a philosophy it's a there's an ethic and it yeah and it looks different where wherever you are doesn't it yeah definitely yeah definitely i love when we're walking through an eco village and always use cars we're gonna get to the garden soon i just thought it'd be a nice thing to actually on our journey to have this conversation and then we arrive and we talk more practically so yeah um i think that's a really important point about permaculture and teaching it because often i've heard you know different people oh there's the bikes see there are bikes too and there's the other thing that i really like about here that's something that my son noticed too was the electric car sharing and um yeah so yes so hopefully we'll get a chance to do a bit of an exploration of some of those things as well yeah in terms of teaching of teaching permaculture the idea sometimes this is criticism about teaching permaculture in you know places like africa or in various communities and it's another form of colonialism as you're saying so i mean my approach has been to to not necessarily teach in those places but to support and mentor teachers that are from those places yeah and that's kind of where i feel because it is that that contextualizes it and as we heard this morning all the projects in there from the various indigenous communities and people from different parts of the world they kind of all at the foundation of them they all said permaculture is what they needed and i and i felt quite i know i was really taken by that because it's something that is so very practical and so very grounded but so central yeah you know in an approach yeah to actually address what people actually really do fundamentally need in so many different places whether you're in the middle of new york or whether you're in senegal yeah yeah definitely yeah and there's uh vandashiva was another speaker at the conference here and she talked about our fossilized mind or fossil fuel mindset that we have gotten into and fundamentally it's something about a disconnect between our lifestyle and the land around us yeah and that we have we live in theories and in our brains and actually but what happens when we start to become a bit more practical in our everyday life and it doesn't have to be growing your own food but just engaging with the environment around us somehow and noticing that we are part of it yes and interacting with it and i i seriously believe it changes our minds and it's not necessarily teaching as go out and everybody has to watch in exactly the same way you know not at all it's much more about the attitude of permaculture that i love of i'm just being there sensing what is what is it that wants to come through your life in this particular place and being able to work with it a cow wants to come through at this particular moment yeah that's absolutely true so we're about to enter into your oh so before we go into your garden area maybe a little bit about here at finton which is a very established community it's been here for a long time and has didn't start out as an eco village no but has emerged into one i think would you say that or maybe almost something about eco villages have emerged out of it as well or there's been some form of confidence so it's a funny community in the sense that it's really an unintentional community rather than an intentional community and it started with the founders coming to a caravan park and living here and gardening because they didn't have any jobs and wanted to grow their food and they had very strong spiritual practices and would live their lives and garden according to the guidance that they received and meditation and in a mindful lifestyle and they were extremely successful in growing the people and also there was some form of connection with some people called it god something some people call it something bigger than themselves that they were trying to manifest here and it attracted a lot of people so very organically it started to grow and we are still quite a confusing community in that there are probably about 40 or 50 different organizations here so how many people living here love do you think that's really hard to say so um probably maybe about 400 people living here in the park so the old caravan park yep and there are different ways that people own their homes or not and there are different organizations that have some of their buildings and this co-housing yeah yeah so all kinds of things but then there are so many people who are in our bio region because of us and live in the fintorn village which we actually stole our name from and the neighboring villages and the local town and we have another campus in time the clinton which was an old victorian hotel so part of our community lives there so i don't know i mean i think there are thousands in in the local area who are connected interesting but we can't really no yeah and that's fascinating isn't it that it's that is not just a particular place defined by a particular boundary yeah that it's an idea yeah it's a concept really isn't it yeah it is and a set of relationships that have formed around particular actions particular practices yeah particular way of being so that's wonderful and there are so many people around the world who are part of some form of network of fintorn yeah i feel connected with fendor i heard about zinton before i was five because i'm pretty sure my mum had the finton book on the bookshelves from the day it was published and i remember looking through this book and hearing magical stories as a child it was this magical place and so when i first time i came to england when i was 23 it was kind of like my these sort of late gap year gapies weren't really the thing back then so i was kind of like like a late gap year and i came to there's three key places i wanted to come in in the uk one was schumacher college where i ended up staying for about a year i was meant to be there for five weeks and then um here and i think the center of alternative technology really practical stuff and so it's kind of been an inspiration since then and i've been involved in eco villages and permaculture ever since that time part partly of of of coming here so i'm interested to know that wasn't the beginning of this place not like crystal waters crystal waters was founded on the principles and ethics of permaculture and i've been that's where i live now it's an eco village based on permaculture principles in australia where did permaculture come to meet finn tom yeah that's a great question and well there was this spiritual impulse that really was part of the creation of the community one of the core principles i guess in that is co-creating with nature and somehow very early on it's recognized that nature has an intelligence that we can collaborate with and and we are part of and can we um find that connection again and and for me that is also permaculture yeah um but at the time there was no talk about it and oh it's falling down we're having a microphone moment maybe we just put it on your sweater there yeah lovely and then um there was this impulse about what would a planetary village look like so in the 80s i believe before i was born so i'm not quite sure but there was this idea of can can this become a planetary village and then we live in a way that makes sense for the whole planet and and a lot of ecological thinking came out of that and the first building schools that we had here came from that impulse of how do we actually build in our village in a way that respects the planet yeah and out of that the idea of um eco villages emerged and we started realizing oh there are lots of places around the world that are doing the same thing about trying to explore what is it to live in a sustainable or regenerative village consciously um and creating it for ourselves and and so that's where the eco village of the place came but even now i mean there are people here saying no we're not an eco village we're first and foremost the spiritual community and some people here say this is completely a permaculture settlement in terms of all of our renewable energies and the way we built our houses and the way we collaborate we have our local currency all of that yes it's permaculture and others say absolutely not we are not very good is that interesting it's a different frame of reference isn't it and you know in the end we i have to admit that permaculture is one language yep to describe something that we're trying to do and there are so many different languages and and it's okay and somehow the diversity of this place makes us resilient so we're not just attached to the permaculture paradigm and we bring in people who have never heard about permaculture we can learn from them something and in the end paradoxically for me that is permaculture so anyway so we've now arrived can we just do a little bit of a turnaround here because we're we're in an interesting part of finton yeah can you tell us a little bit about this little section yeah of um the fenton so this is the barrel houses um they're not actually barrels the official name is whiskey vats but they're they were used in the whiskey distilling industry which is very tied to the economy around yeah yeah yeah so from in local distilleries and they're they're part of the process and the alcohol is stored in these big towns um during the distilling and um there was a moment when i roger who lives in this barrel here that were just behind us um he was visiting a cooperage somewhere where these were just in store because they've been replaced by steel stainless steels a cooperage yeah with cooper yeah so it's cooper and somebody is from traditional right i like to think so you know no but these people have made barrels yeah okay right and so he was there looking for some wood and they said oh by the way we have these big vats and roger has a brilliant idea that oh i could actually live in one yeah so they became the kind of tiny house um yeah and this one so we might go in and sure let's do that okay how long have you been living in a barrel house about two and a half years or something like that so i rent a room from craig who's one of the he calls himself a feral elder of the community and he's from australia he's from australia originally a very long time but he's uh yeah he calls himself a feral elder and he's um also a bush gardener that's what he says and i've i thought he was doing interesting things in terms of permaculture yeah so i asked him if i could move into his house and do his garden yeah right and so you teach together the pharmaceutical courses yeah with another person yeah that's why i did meet her she's lives in another co-housing food yeah i just decided i accidentally went to house i was looking for a bike for monty my six-year-old and we were told that someone up there had it we went to the wrong house but it was actually the white house because i got to meet her okay that was wonderful and another thing that happened while i was looking for a bike for monty i came across someone who said oh no worries i'll put it out through the internal network that connects all the mothers and um and then i was walking five minutes later i was walking down the street and someone said are you the lady who's walking looking for a little bike and so five minutes great networking he's wonderful yeah so i'm going to follow you in here we are corrected with microphones but i think we can kind of manage to go through the gates together get caught in the apple blossom yeah that's gorgeous isn't it yeah do you want to go into the house or should we go into the garden should you go through the garden first actually we'll go through it through here and then we'll come in so maybe maybe actually if i do go first because then you're behind me okay so here we're coming into the house oh i'm sorry um well this barrel house has expanded uh quite a lot since it was first built so the original viral is up here and then we have washing hanging in the ceiling can we go up the stairs we could go up the stairs yeah okay wow that's beautiful yes that's a reciprocal frame roof that's you know ironically held up by gravity somehow yeah that's amazing isn't it with a beautiful the skyline at the top yeah and so that's the bed up there as well yeah and the front door was over there i don't know if you will be able to find it that's it there we go there's the front door yeah and so under the bed there's just some storage like a closet yeah and a toilet and shower yes it's free i'll just do a little yeah we can spin around yeah so this was the original whiskey bowl whiskey bat yes yeah so the here under the washing those were the doors out to the garden yeah okay and then there was a little kitchen over there yeah and um and this is the living room yeah very very compact yeah simple housing which is fantastic and i think this whole idea of having tiny houses and expanding houses like houses that can be adapted over in a time house that i built module by module and each of the modules is connected by a little walkway which means that they can also be separated again which means that you know say when maya or you get older and say i'd like to have an apartment we can kind of split it up a bit which could be interesting or someone else it doesn't have to be the kids i don't have to assume that they're going to stay there although they've already told me which bits they are having so should we walk through to a new yeah i'll try not to get attached to a chair this time on the way through yeah so this bit here is now the kitchen and dining area so the uh crane expanded his house as his family grew he had two kids and um and he's actually similar to what you're describing we have about seven external doors okay so each bedroom has an external door so that you have your independence yeah very nice and that's how you can live in your space as well yeah yeah it works really well and this is our shared kitchen space and we have a wood stove and bring in all of our own wood and i love the nice yellow roof that's the kind of my walls yeah it's great and bright and there's a solar tube here because something that does happen when you sort of expand your house like that is that here at some point there was uh south-facing windows where we were just standing yeah but since craig built yet another bedroom and also a studio upstairs we lost that part of the kitchen yeah so this became a bit cave-like that we put in this tube and they're so effective it's so beautiful isn't it it's reflecting the sunlight outside so it brings some light directly into the table here you can see just how much brightness there is here yeah fantastic and then you've got bedrooms down in that way mm-hmm which way should we go for that um outside well i think craig having lunch today shall we go and see if she likes to be on camera you can you can get a shot of our wine cellar slash storage on the way if you want whoopsie sorry hi hello i'm wondering if you might join us you're having lunch okay beautiful we've just been out the front through the main house and thought we'd come out to the garden and thank you so yeah we make all of our own wine and gems and chutneys and ferments and it's all a mix of everything and quite chaotic and wow so what do you make your wines from um mostly fruit fruit wise yeah like black currants raspberries plums cherries yeah we also in our living machine the biological wastewater treatment plant that we have here in the community we have a big grape vine so we actually make some grape wine as well which is nice and then the ferments that you've got they're mostly different kinds of sauerkraut um from our cabbages but also lacto-fermenting jerusalem artichokes is the best way i think to eat jerusalem artichokes and they're not so farty man that's all always very important yeah it's not like the pre-digestion right yeah yeah absolutely yeah that's great yeah okay so all right i'm gonna go up the stairs you're going first yeah just turn the camera around so we can start to see that we're this is the rooftop up here we were actually walking on the roof the other day oh yeah we could go up so what's the roof made of and why did you choose that material craig it's hopper because we'll have to go to the industry we need to get nice and close with the mic okay well you should answer it oh careful of mine yeah yeah i see your drink it's copper because the whiskey barrel comes from the whiskey industry and if you go into the things there's these big copper steels yeah so we thought we would emulate that um it was cheap once but it's no longer here yeah i know but the other part of the roof is corrugated iron it's very australian mate isn't yeah i had to have a corrugated roof yeah otherwise i can't go to sleep at night i've got to hear the rain on the road oh yeah yeah that's right there's something very special about that isn't it yeah do you like the water for drinking out off these rooms as well yeah see that tank over there oh yeah i do now that's uh that goes into the kitchen and all of our domestic water drinking and cooking water comes yeah yeah yeah you just have a cap in the kitchen and that size is enough for your because it's scotland it rains it means all the time of course he's me thinking you know i've got 50 000 liters to half my rooms at home yeah it's the same on the farm we had six months without water yeah so it's a different design criteria so i guess that's why i'm when i wanted to come to your garden because the kinds of things that we think about in the subtropics or in australia even in you know melbourne or sydney is very different from you know up here in scotland so what are the what are the specifics about doing permaculture here that you've both worked out to be really very useful well i mean just for instance behind us here when maria will take you in this shed here that's my wood supply i go through eight tons of wood which i cut and haul and split because we heat eight months of the year yeah with wood yeah to keep this baby going uh so that's a big you know we don't have to worry about that kind of heating no not at all just a tiny bit our biggest challenge up here is that in the winter time the sun rises just over there and sets just over here it goes four hours of sunlight in the 80s summertime right now soon well the sun will be setting over there somewhere in the north and uh rising in and it's 18 hours of sunlight yeah so we get this incredible change of uh climate so four hours of sunlight he's exaggerating i mean literally some days no sunshine at all rather than just grey cloud yep with a six hour glip above the horizon because anyway and what's your garden look like at that time uh it looks like desolation row yeah i don't agree because the other thing here because we're close to the sea is that we don't get that heavy frost so we can actually keep things going through the winter which things go which things feed you through the winter so we we keep all of our parsnips and carrots and potatoes in the ground so we're still harvesting potatoes from last year and all of our greens kales broccolis brussels sprouts we're still harvesting that end of april which is just crazy this is supposed to be our hungry gap time yeah um so so you're eating the leaves of the broccolis and things as well yeah yeah yeah everything and the flowers yeah nice everything's going to flower right now and they're they're fantastic to eat yeah yeah i noticed we've been making lots of those um the purple broccoli is that a particular one that works better up here or i just know that everyone's been using it or is it just a purple writing seems to be more resilient than the kind of head head ones and you can get several crops out of them which is what we like and we have quite a few kales and sort of broccoli mixes that just self-seed around the garden and you know they're not the pur one that we first planted at one point they cross pollinated but they're so really tasty and the leaves we put in wild salads beautiful and the the flowers now are delicious so your ragged deck is another wild crazy russian kale it's all over the place yeah yeah and nettles don't forget them of course i mean it's all time and also wild garlic and all sorts of things it's everywhere so you know i see in your garden something that i relate to a lot in terms of a garden that is diverse perennial self-seeding mixed it's like an ecological system that's operating in and of itself but it's very different from many of the kind of organic gardens that you see around scotland and england which are very much still rows and beds and and lots of lots of open space without anything growing in them and so how do you encourage people to to this way of growing food here because it seems to be such an entrenched mindset about that type of way of growing so because i've heard stuff i've heard stuff things like well you have to give things space to get light you can't have mulch because the soil gets you know to the plugs get into yes so there's lots of reasons that i'm hearing why all of the things that you're doing could not work but yet i see around me that they're working beautifully well first of all the chickens are feral they're throughout the garden so we don't you know like bill said what is it slug deficiency no no slug problem duct deficiency yeah but we have the same with chickens the chickens do all of that they clean up a lot of the weeds they scavenge and so that's a key part of getting this thing going and to give up control that's very interesting and that's where the spiritual element again comes in you know that's what i see in my gardening that is so much more about my inner process of wanting to be in control of something and can i consciously let go of that and let nature do whatever is going to happen there and trusting in nature yeah yeah well there's a lot of in finland a lot of people talk about working with the nature spirits whereas actually what i do in maria i think we talk about working with the spirit of nature you know because there's this anthropomorphication of spiritual so-called entities that are floating through your garden everywhere was actually it's everywhere it's an oh you know what's what's a rainforest yeah it's a a living being yeah and the soil is the soil is yeah yeah but i think in terms of how to tell people that it works or that um because we have many people here say oh your garden looks so messy and what do you use cardboard and disaster and it's something about just being inviting and getting people to come in and to share our surplus yeah and because i can imagine you would have an enormous amount of support yeah give it away yeah so we give a lot away and we also with all the programs that come through our first teaching method is to just take them out into garden into the garden and harvest things and eat things and make teas and just see the diversity of it all and start appreciating it and that awakens the interest to then start learning the methods and i think what you just said that very simply too just doing different things like making tea straight from your garden and using it in a different way as opposed to it simply being you know carrots and potatoes and cabbages which is the concept you know yeah general concept of what a garden is in a cool climate i'm gathering the other part that i like too is that you know everybody's looking for woofers and volunteers in their garden all the time and actually i look for the plants of the volunteers the garden is full of plants they've all planted themselves i mean get on with it and people said what can you do with that thing over there that alconet and i said well it's great for compost it's beautiful for bees um and the chickens eat it in the winter but they say but it'll run out of control i said well is it you know it's not uh and the two here we can do a lot of mixture you can see that all the fruit trees when you go down through it there's 15 different fruit trees mixed up with vegetables but they're not in a desert desert desiccated no decimated designated areas so it's letting it be yeah and trying to a natural system doesn't have that kind of order that's right but i make holes in it everywhere or so does maria too we both and we plant little patches that's kind of like what happens in in nature isn't it like something dies and then to create that new annual little spot and that's kind of the first things that come up and yeah it moves and shifts and yeah and if i if we have i have to keep using if we have little patches all over the place the butterflies will attack one patch of brassicas yeah but they'll leave the other one alone yeah so actually that's there that's fair shares you know how how can the garden be shared with all the other species as well as humans yeah but you have to let go of your mindset because gardening magazines to me you know they're they're like some type of fashion magazine where you you can't achieve that sort of standard of stuff not without enormous amount of input and resources so kind of that concept from permaculture which is about yield it gets blown out of proportion there because it's only when you step back so much and and allow nature to do most of the work that you do get that level of yield isn't it yeah it's unlimited it is unlimited yield everything has got a function and i think a lot but maria myself and another good friend at the different times of the year so many of the so-called weeds those naughty plants are actually medicinal yeah they're cleansers they're purifiers and and it's staggering yeah people come here to harvest them at the right time of the year but they won't let them be in their gardens and it's interesting too another thing i i've noticed is people ask me a lot about about yield about well how much produce do you grow in your garden so that i can measure whether one technique's better than another i've never measured it i can't measure it because it's it just i pick a leaf from this i pick a leaf from that and it keeps growing and it's going for years and it self seeds you know one plant has ten thousand seeds which spread out and i give them away and who knows how many more plants have come and so i i find that a little bit challenging the measuring side and sitting down at a meal and saying hey 80 yeah right yeah that's how we measure every day it's that type of measurement i'm not going to put it on a scale and i made this amount of money or whatever it might be it's constantly feeding me and feeding friends and feeding chickens and feeding birds and yeah it goes on and on so you you both teach permaculture here together and do you have courses but you also have people coming in just do you do is it part of the experience weeks as well here if you're lucky enough to have one of us it's your vocalizers facilitators but we also yeah people randomly come through yeah and we're at land center so is that do you want to say something about the landscape that's a new thing yeah so the permaculture association here in the uk they have a network says um if i can remember land activity and network demonstration centers or something something like that yeah learning learning is an advance sorry and so we try to be open and just let people come through if they're interested in permaculture or in this lifestyle and we give tours and mostly it's just sort of sitting down and having a cup of tea together and getting to know one another a bit yeah and that's a lot of our teaching at least what i'm picking up from craig is around just being authentic and yourself and um being open for a conversation here comes some chickens i want some food if i can with the microphone i'm going to open that part there you can and i can continue because i've got a mic but here comes a chicken maybe we've got some peas we'll see if they like them from the community center i estimate approximately six to seven hundred people are coming through this place ever a year i think that's a lot that's great yeah constant yeah and it's not so much teaching from my perspective it's just experience i mean this looks cluttered and messy out here but i've had the home group from the conference here twice this week and they love the space because these birds turn up yeah and it's sort of they relax and look particularly with the house too the house isn't it's a permaculture house it's built out of waste yeah and it's comfortable and cozy and people walk in and go yeah instead of having oh do i take my shoes off or can i go here or can i go there yeah i think and and i think too just the simple thing about opening up your home space yeah you know that it is this is this is how i live this is this is real and it works and i love it and this is this is the different systems i use if people want to know the technical stuff this is my approach if they want to know the philosophical approach and they can kind of see it all just being and you're being in it and relaxing into it and i think people will come in and go i like a bit of that yeah kind of here yeah it looks like a mess but there's a pizza oven in there and there's a grill there and very soon this is the this is the kitchen for the summer yeah but just that thing about inviting people into our home and our everyday lives and it's also then it's not imposing so much this is how you have to do permaculture it's more i'm here to share my approach and take from it what you will and that sort of what i'm picking up more and more i think is that meta skill of being able to be so uh grounded and authentic and just offering something as to and not necessarily saying that it must be taught in this specific way or using these words but it's actually coming from me inside of me and my truth and also i guess too that when i know your place has been here for a long time it's quite well developed but i'm sure you showed people as you're in process as well oh no i mean i built this place with people yeah right i mean i built the whole garden because the people come and so i say pick this up and carry this over there and when we have a course okay we'll do a little bit of ecological building we'll do a bit of composting we'll do a bit of eating we'll have a full sort of featured experience of what that's like and people say again oh but like you said how much food do you produce i say i'm not sure i just eat it every day but how much time do you spend in the garden and i go i don't know i don't calculate how much time i spend in the garden when i have a group we go through the garden and work and the garden looks after itself if i'm not there yeah so it's not oh my goodness i have to go again oh oh no i have to go to work in the garden yeah it's a joy to go out there and just wander through it yeah and i think bill's thing i love the designer becomes a recliner you know and that is the most important part where is it does it yeah we have this little other little thing that we throw in if it's not fun it's not sustainable so if you're struggling with a garden and it's not fun then don't do it okay find something that's enjoyable but the other part of garden can be great fun yeah and particularly for kids yes yeah and it's the attitude thing coming in again like how do you teach an attitude you can't you can just embody it and invite people into it right and so i'm so glad you shared that because a lot of people who who watch these films are in the process of becoming permaculture teachers themselves or journeying towards that and to know that it doesn't have to be you don't have to be in a finnish center or you don't have to have a finished project but the process of involving people on your journey and sharing with them what you know and it doesn't have to be a whole full permaculture design course or anything it's just sharing your experience of living in this in this way yeah whatever it is that you feel you're able to share yeah and the most important for me is to show people what doesn't work or what which is a bit of work in process possibly yeah and it's never complete don't share the mistakes too oh wow yeah so many mistakes yeah but i'm okay as i build the house part of it's falling down that's okay it doesn't have to be finished no that's right yeah yeah that's great yeah thank you i didn't get to introduce you properly on to the film so this is craig craig gisborne g'day where did you grow up i know you grew up in australia i grew up in the south west of australia on a small isolated farm no electricity no septic tank i mean any all of that stuff no no modern facilities so how did you end up in finton from there the classic australian thing you have to go overseas to grow up type of thing so i came to europe as a raw redneck australian really and was blown away because i realized i was i wasn't british i know i'm australian but what is australian uh what's my culture so i was looking for my culture and lucky i always became a hippie that was the bet one of the best and from there i contracted cancer early on and i went and cured myself by going into meditative retreats uh and then in that process i came to findhorn and they had the mindset here heart yeah this is good but uh i mean this is the journey and i think it's that relationship with the garden yeah in that same thing i'm not going at it from here i'm going at it from here and i'm reaching out to it [Music] so yep i'm still a child at heart in that context um and you've been here for how many years now 50. wow and permaculture is only well i look at finn horn on as a large settlement and it's full of permaculture features you know from all of the windmills and the waste treatment plants and the ecological houses and some forms of gardening so you can see it there but most people don't but where there's very very little permaculture being practiced in here again because we don't like to uh name what we are yeah you know we're we're spiritual but that's and for me permaculture is a spiritual path because i'm not sure where it came from but it's all about observation bill or whoever did said you've got to observe the land yeah but the spiritual things you've got to observe yourself yeah you know what what am i feeling uh what am i projecting you know do i enjoy it or don't i enjoy it you know do i like this person do i don't like this person and that's the biggest test yeah anyway here i am thank you thank you so much for opening your garden and your and your heart and your and your lunch time [Laughter] well should we continue to wander through yeah go through the jungle great thank you all right leave you to it that's a good question fintorn garden or jungle very good question let's go and find out okay we'll come this way so we'll go through here i might just go ahead so you can come around you can see the beautiful house behind we should also do a bit of a time check because we also do need to get back to the conference yeah we do do you have a what's five past two already oh is it okay oh my gosh this is so beautiful just walking through the space already yes maybe we see something somewhere around here yeah um if you can you see something yeah so here uh a lot of the gardeners fruit trees um interspersed with perennial uh vegetables this is cartoon so i've learned about cartoons since i've been here and i think i'm gonna have to they're great bring it into my system um and also we use these as medicine because they're great bitters the meat for making yeah yeah digestive infusions and so a lot of our garden is around our fruit trees and we plant annuals or perennials under them and around them and a lot of self-seeding um herbs and wild greens and one of the main self-seeding type of vegetables that you so a lot of different kinds of kale yeah okay broccoli what you can see here a lot of sweet sicily yep that comes up all over the place and um jack and the hedge obviously and we have a lot of lovely nettles and ground alder and these sort of greens that could be annoying but actually they're great in this hungry gap and we make soups in there actually fantastic and yeah i try to sort of collaborate with the fruit trees a lot and i grow all my um runner beans up plum trees for example and that helps both the beans and the plums yeah so that's the sort of thing of starting to behind the pond yeah tell us what's going on yeah and so the plant pond obviously is habitat for lots of frogs and toads and youths and the chickens drink out of it um do you have any food growing in there or is it it's mostly as a habitat there was at some point some some watercress somewhere but i think it's decided to do something else as things do you know there are raspberries around and it's beautiful and for me the exciting thing about the garden as well as about how do i live in it so we're just coming up here to it's still covered right now but there's my bathtub i'll turn around here so i can see that yeah okay so that's your window yeah and that's your bathroom and when you look out through the bathroom you can see your bus and it was just you know it's this thing about um responding to change in some kind of creative way and uh we had to take out the bathtub from the bathroom because there was a leak and the wood was rotting so i just thought okay but it's actually really nice to have baths outside yeah so just put it in the garden instead and i've got it hooked up to the hot water just in the bathroom yeah so i can actually turn on the tap here and have a hot bath and it's just being in the garden in in that way as it is nourishing me on a personal level and the raspberries growing here so i can lie in my bathtub eating raspberries just chilling and it becomes my sort of self-nurturing place it's not just a place where i have to go and grow yeah that's wrong so i go to relax in my garden and to hang out and obviously that gives me that connection as well i'm much happier being in the garden then and it's a beautiful gun i mean i i don't know if you can see from from from from this picture but behind this is just this beautiful um flowering lush green abundance yeah and it just seems so much food growing in this garden and beautiful healthy plants that don't seem to be at all bug eaten or bothered there's so much diversity in here and um its own has its own balance and i was just wondering what's going on in this geodesic domain actually yeah this dome was built just as an experiment really um because i thought it was fun to play around with the calculations um so for craig's birthday one year um again because if it's not fun it's not sustainable so i've brought together lots of people who like craig and he likes them and we did a surprise work project for him and we built this dome out of hazel that's been growing in the garden and we just i found some more plastic pipe that we made the connectors out of excellent and i cover it in the summer with plastic and i grow sweet corn and lastly i grew quinoa in there and just experiments very nice because what we do need here is quite a lot of protected growing space for those a bit more sensitive species is this your garden down here yes i mean we've only gone through a little bit oh my gosh a lot more all right okay and i know that there was even more but that became part of a a new co-house project yeah that's right oh wow it just keeps going and going because it keeps going so just as we're walking through it because i know we do need to get back to the conference um but as we're walking just one tell us what what's what where's what's going on we can see a compost toilet um because i also grew up in sweden this is a big part of my culture isn't it yeah what do you mean it's a part of your culture really yeah in sweden many families have some form of summer home in the mountains or on the coast and they're often still quite sort of cut off yeah and they would still have complex toilets what type of compost this is really simple so one thing i'm learning here is that there's um rather than get it perfect the first time yeah and just wait years in order to get anything done i'm just starting to do things slowly and then i refine them as i go along because i thought it was important to have a compost toilet to demonstrate the kind of recycling of nutrients and the closed loop systems yeah so this is basically a toilet seat and under a toilet seat there's a bucket right and that's it and the batteries and we emptied it onto the compost and we compost it for a couple of years and then it goes on to shrubs and trees and yeah great so cool it's so simple and in sweden what's the type of compost toilet oh there's so many different ones actually just a big hole in the ground and then plant a tree on top yeah yeah okay yeah and here obviously there are lots of black currant bushes red currants over there that's the chicken shack i'm gonna go back around again without getting people dizzy here we go okay so over this way here yes i get this behind all that kind of rubble of pots and interesting things you could use in the garden so the chickens run very free so we haven't managed that yeah we have lots of fences okay and they're to keep the chickens out rather than to keep them in yeah because somehow chickens have rights too and they it's really interesting oh we're going past the greenhouse by the way yeah sure let's do that it's really interesting to to notice how the chickens self-regulate in their own sort of social context yeah and that's happens when they are just free and roaming some neighbors get a bit pissed off i think so so this is why we have um fences around here to keep the chickens in your garden no no no to keep them out of our vegetables oh no i mean the chicken this next building over there isn't neighbors so there's some yeah that's keeping the chickens on this side oh no it's it's no the chickens go out and they're going to chicken and they raid people's gardens and bird feeders but he wants to be for deer actually that's what they have here so here is our greenhouse right here so that's um our winter greens um that are going to flower now so this is a very it's productive all year round and red mustard spinaches yeah and a lot of itself seeds again and some of it is sown and we've got really healthy lettuces all year round and you know we always have fresh salad and soon we'll have to um start planting tomatoes in amongst all of us um and then as the tomatoes grow and we harvest we we cut off the branches of at the bottom of the stem and start growing next year's winter greens under okay great so it just keeps going it keeps going and you keep nourishing the soil yeah compost and manure we have very sandy soil we're basically on sand so um several times a year we add a compost look at them i mean i'm just this plant here what is this lovely one love it this is an an older form of celery yeah and it's just spectacular it is huge yeah and the soil looks amazing yeah from coming from sand so it has great craig hasn't always been here he hasn't spent 50 years on this side how long is this side well what we're seeing here yeah is about four or five years old yes so because there was a building project next to us this was all flat and compacted like a dirt road and you wouldn't you wouldn't even and begin to imagine that now by the absolute lusciousness of the grace and this basically uh just adding compost several times a year and i do a lot of sheet mulching yeah um and and letting things grow yeah and so a lot of companion planting is what they do too which i think helps especially with all our brassicas yeah and so i mean in in terms of companion planting though i mean i i've found in my garment just because it is such a diversity but the whole thing is one big companion planting yeah so what what are the sorts of things that you found work for you in this context and amongst your brassicas as companions um well so what tends to happen for me is i propagate a few of my herbs like rosemary and mint and things like that and then i move them around a bit yeah so and chamomile actually so here we have a lot of brussels sprouts that are now going to flower i don't know if you can see them yeah and they had chamomile growing all through them as well as calendula and and it kind of just goes wild which is great and and we'll see if it comes up next year or not but that's all right because i i have it propagated and i'll plant out with my things the next time where i plants looks like yeah and that was that sign danger permaculture what's buried there no there's nothing there's some form of electric cable we scratched out the cable permacultures that's wonderful so should we go this way we can go out here all right again you can come in and out of the garden in many different ways yeah and so you've that's a fully mulched fully planted yeah fully diverse self-seeding perennial polycultural garden yeah but we do annuals as well we need a few annuals um are they mostly self seating are you mostly no i propagate so yeah so because also we like that and i'd say uh maybe sometimes we when we buy lemons from france and spain okay and we buy avocados sometimes and ginger but otherwise you don't buy any vegetables so and there are some things that i really like to eat you know i like leeks for example do examples yeah look oh here are the chickens by the way but they're in our neighbor's garden there and your neighbors how do they agree with that your chickens well i my strategy is that i'm trying to grow as many flowers as they possibly can in the garden that look pretty yeah and that seems to offset the chicken so how did the chickens annoy people do they um are they eating their food or is it just that they scratch them all there i think i think it's sometimes they in people's bodies or they're miranda that's kind of a bit of a gift really though miranda not so much history um well i'm not i'm not sure i i think i guess you could share with them something yes yeah produce yeah yeah of course so we can share eggs and we share a lot we have so many greens it never stops so we do give a lot of things away so within your neighborhood there do you often have people over or is it more broadly that people connect is it sort of like like like a little cluster thing or is it yeah no it's i think it's broader like i mean it's not the community isn't that big so it's like a five-minute walk from one end of the other yeah but um do you often have do you often eat together i know you have this yeah community meals but in your own yeah we my friends over and sometimes we have our neighbors come around that's also very very nice but people are here in so many different ways as well so many people are traveling a lot or you know aren't around but there we also have a neighbor who's really into biodynamics so we share if we make preparations we share so she sometimes gives to us and we have another neighbor who's really interested in birds and we have a blackbird nesting just english i see that in the sun so we we feed our black bird together there's olive you know and you've you've like i said right at the very start you've just recently bought i mean the process in the process of buying so where abouts is that and what's the process of buying into a place like that how does that work very interesting so there's one part of the community that we have left to develop and basically is at the moment is owned by a community company that was formed by community members a development company so um so and they are this company with shareholders and they're selling off plots of land to individuals so we have all kinds of criteria but you know we as an individual buying the land you need to make sure it's for community benefit and and there's still people don't trust that process necessarily so there's a lot of um emotions around it and people are concerned that maybe it will it will be a development that they don't have control over so when you say said it has to be for community development that means you buy a piece of land but what you do on it has to be for community benefit is that what you mean and well if you can prove that you will do something for community benefit you will be prioritized i think in terms of buying but you don't have to you can't also just buy it for yourself yes but if you can show that you're a committed community member yeah then you will also have priority in terrorism so this is his first team with the cash on the table no because we have had developments like that here and what we've seen is huge houses with absentee landlords and that doesn't work very well either so we're trying to learn from the past so there is a selection process yeah based on how you present as a contributor to the community yeah into the land and your your contribution that you proposed is so yeah i'm looking at one of the plots is going to be an off-grid plot hopefully if we get planning permission from the council which is a whole other story and so i'm looking at developing a form of eco village demonstration site because we have a lot of technology both kind of physical technology but also social technology our sustainability that have been developed here and it can be difficult coming into fintorn to be able to see what what is it where is the eco village people ask sometimes and that's we we experience the same at crystal waters too you know that they come in and yeah it's like where you know you come to the front and it sort of seems a little bit dead unless there's an event happening yeah and just to have that openness that interaction that point of connection where people can see all the different parts yeah my hand's getting really tight i'm just gonna shift that there we go yeah yeah and there's also something about so i want to have it as a demonstration side but also live in it and especially um for young people to be able to come in as woofers or volunteers and live in this demonstration center to also um sort of internally experience the lifestyle and how that works and feels and what are the challenges and have um because again coming back to the vandana shivas and what she was saying about her fossilized mindset i think that the only way we can really work with it is by putting our physical bodies in different environments and having the physical body experience a different lifestyle that might perhaps also inform our brains and how our brains work and so for me that's an important part of an of e-commerce demonstration and especially for young people to come through because it can be difficult as a young person coming to the community yeah either you pay a lot of money to go on a program yeah or you have to know somebody here already yes you can you know cost you so i think we shared a kind of desire to find a way to support young people here to not only experience it but to find a way into these places yeah and um yeah it's something that i'm really quite passionate about doing back home investor waters and i'm kind of seeing a shift already happening because a lot of the young people who grew up at christopher who went away and they are coming back and saying we really want to try to find a way more yeah for this to happen and then our friends can can also come here and live here and we can turn this place into a really vibrant dynamic place and and i also think that places like this are really important kind of like hubs or bases or beacons of hope for the young people on the streets at the moment yeah that we need to see ourselves in that bigger picture rather than just as a place where where we can live comfortably oh for sure and i think we have a really big responsibility in these communities yeah i see it almost as a you know an act of service somehow to be able to host and to give experience of this grounded lifestyle yeah and i mean i'm very active in the climate movement and i've worked in refugee camps and a lot of activism happens quite a lot in a headspace actually and then it gets very emotional and for me it's been so helpful to also feel that connection with a grounded lifestyle so there's not or i guess that i know the experience of living according to the values i'm trying to promote yes and and it felt really awful to be completely honest to be on the streets shouting for climate action and trying to get corporations to do something about it and at the same time being dependent on those corporations and somehow that tension inside me was and i'm not saying you know everybody can live and grow their own vegetables but at least i have a space where you can come and experience it for a while be part of it and internalize it i think so but also that there is the opportunity to have that you know the opportunity to explore that authentic connection and what it really is because i was the same when i was a teenager i was out on the streets yelling about the issues that were really important that time in every generation has issues yeah that they're fighting and i ca i said popped out the other end and i hid away i think for almost a year i think i was telling you the other day and i didn't really speak to many people because i was really looking if not that then what yeah yeah i was so disappointed with humanity yeah and i was thinking what so how are we to live where we can live with with love and compassion and and and hope and and make a positive way forward and that's kind of when i started to explore permaculture in a much deeper way and as you said that kind of seems to be able to ground yourself yeah and and something that come that was on the on the gate of the garden he is like loving action yeah that's what it is really yeah you know and it's about caring about all the bigger issues yeah making a difference in those through our daily actions in reality and supporting the activists who are out there kind of you know finding the fires yeah simultaneously and it's all connected yes it's not doing one thing or another but how can it all inform us to make better choices yeah so thank you so much for the time you've taken to walking around your garden and your community and i know there's so so much more i'm hoping that maybe i might be able to go for a bit of a wander later on and if that's okay to walk around with my camera and chat about the things that that i've noticed i've sort of taken notes in my mind about things you've said as we've walked around before yeah so thank you so much so that's all for today thanks so much for joining us head on over to my youtube channel the links below and then you'll be able to watch this conversation but also make sure that you subscribe because that way you'll be notified of all new films that come out and also the release of the extended tour of la mas eco village where we go into the landscape and the common spaces too and also you'll get notified of all the new all the new interviews and conversations that come out so thanks again for joining us have a great week and i'll see you next time you

Channel: Morag Gamble : Our Permaculture Life

Views: 8,317

Keywords: findhorn ecovillage, findhorn tour, ecovillage, sustainable living, sustainable architecture, sustainable development goals, sustainable development goals (sdgs), sustainable living for beginners, david holmgren, ecovillage design education, ecovillage uk, findhorn foundation, experience week

Id: XJpPQ0gCFo8

Length: 71min 41sec (4301 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 17 2020