Building Your Permaculture Property

Foreword by Geoff Lawton
Preface

Introduction
The Problem with Permaculture
You Need a Process (Not a Prescription)
About This Book and the Companion Website
Your Very First Practice: Get an Accountability Partner

Step 0: Inspect Your Paradigm
The Gorilla in the Room
The Upward and Downward Spirals
Takota's Story: The Coen Permaculture Farm Upward Spiral
Practices for Step 0: Inspect Your Paradigm

Step 1: Clarify Your Vision, Values, and Resources
What Do You Have?
What Is Right?
Takota's Story: Two Paths to the Same Cliff
What Do You Want?
Walking Through a Field of Landmines Blinded by a Scarf
Be Careful What You Wish For
Practices for Step 1: Clarify
Takota's Story: Buckets of Well-being

Step 2: Diagnose Your Resources for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats
Takota's Story: Don't Skip Your Diagnosis!
A Watershed of Information
Takota's Story: Growing Up a Carpenter
Two Stages of Diagnosis
Black Swans
Takota's Story: Black Swan Dam
The Value of Digital Mapping and Open Data
Practices for Step 2: Diagnose

Step 3: Design Your Resources to Meet Your Vision and Values
Why Design?
What Design Is Not
Takota's Story: To Swale or Subsoil?
Form, Timing, Placement, and Scale
Takota's Story: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Creating a Permaculture Design
Practices for Step 3: Design

Step 4: Implement the Right Design That Will Most Improve Your Weakest Resource
What Is Your Birdshot?
What Is Your Slug?
Pull the Trigger
Good, Bad, and Ugly Decisions
Takota's Story: The Bazooka Approach
Practices for Step 4: Implement
Takota's Story: My Best Advice for Solving Any Problem

Step 5: Monitor Your Resources for Indicators of Well-being or Suffering
The Push and Pull of Life
Monitoring Your Resources
Takota's Story: Monitoring for Mastitis
Takota's Story: Building My Own Permaculture Property
Takota's Story: An Ecosystem Disguised as a Farm
Practices for Step 5: Monitor
The Solution to a Sisyphean Task
Putting It All Together
Your Very Last Practice: Your Permaculture Property Planner

Afterword: The Land Needs Us to Live Differently Here

Glossary
Notes
Index
About the Authors
About New Society Publishers