Building a resilient homestead of your own

“Imagine inheriting a food forest,” farmer and author Ben Falk suggests in The Resilient Farm and Homestead: an Innovative Permaculture and Whole Systems Design Approach.

And although Falk does eventually go on to describe exactly how one would go about creating a low-maintenance, edible forest garden, the idea he poses ignites a greater question – what does it mean to leave a legacy and what will our children inherit on this earth?

In an uncertain future with a declining economy in a world of rapidly disappearing natural resources, is accumulating individual wealth the best and most ethical inheritance for us to leave to our children?

Wealth of nations

For Falk, the key ensuring the livelihood of future generations is not by amassing and passing down wealth in the traditional monetary sense, but by growing and creating your own thriving farm and homestead based on the concepts of regeneration and resilience – starting today.

Whereas some books on permaculture take a more theoretical approach, Falk’s manual is rooted in direct personal experience, adding an element of credibility occasionally lacking in manuals that rely on theoretical knowledge and second-hand accounts. It is essentially a case study that describes what has worked and not worked for Falk and his team over the last decade at the Whole Systems Research Farm in Vermont. The term permaculture is introduced early on as a “design approach and framework for problem solving,” and although Falk uses the language of permaculture and its ideas throughout the work, more detail into the movement and specific principles itself is omitted in favor of Falk’s direct, practical experience.

Early in the book, Falk creates a sense of urgency that now is the time to take responsibility for the future, and he describes how the long-term approach of creating a resilient and regenerative farm can and will sustain future generations.

Subsequent chapters of the book give the reader the tools needed for creating such a farm and homestead, starting with the design process and moving deeper into chapters on specific topics such as water and earthworks, food crops and regeneration for the long haul.

Learning from mistakes

Most helpful, Falk includes what failed on his farm along with what has worked – for example, Falk continues to work on creating the perfect potting soil mix and has yet to attain the germination rate he would like to see (I can relate). As someone with prior knowledge of permaculture, the manual presents some new-to-me concepts (such as tall grass grazing as a method of building soil) and sparked many new ideas (here’s one: the exciting possibility of growing my own staple crop of rice on the East Coast!).

Many of the lessons learned are most applicable to those living in a similar climate to the Whole Systems Farm in Vermont; however, the farm’s thriving ecosystem has been created on marginal land, and Falk stresses that the concepts can be transferred to other locations where only marginal land is available and creative solutions are needed. Falk also does a good job of breaking up the text of the manual by providing useful photos, graphs and anecdotes, as well appendices providing checklists and definitions of words and concepts.

Falk encourages a shift from consumer to producer by replacing dependency with self-reliance. Permaculture is used as the lens for making this shift, a tool of empowerment that allows individuals to cultivate their own nutrient-dense food and create a productive and meaningful lifestyle despite ever-changing circumstances. The steps to make this transition are presented concretely and candidly. Ultimately, Falk is describing a transformation that starts within each person and inevitably extends to family, home, the land, the community and finally future generations.

“Be confident, try stuff”

More than a just manual, this book inspires action, self-reliance and a kind of empowerment that can only be felt when you willingly tie yourself to a piece of land and begin to truly engage with the earth. Our current reality is constantly changing. There is no guarantee that the world will look as it does now in a year, much less ten or twenty. More often than I would like, this thought paralyzes me and fills me with a sense of helplessness.

This book combats such a fatalistic view of the future by taking a positive, action-based approach. Perhaps this quote of Falk’s sums it up best – “be confident, try stuff.“ And today is a great day to start.

A Virginia native, Jenna Clarke recently joined the ranks of women who grow food in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley. She is the Marketing & Outreach Coordinator for Project GROWS, a youth-oriented educational farm based in Verona, Virginia, as well as a fellow at the Allegheny Mountain School. Homepage image of rice paddies courtesy of Whole Systems Research Farm.

– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2013/07/building-a-resilient-homestead-of-your-own/#sthash.OYhgfG33.dpuf

7 Comments on "Building a resilient homestead of your own"

J-Gav on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 12:38 pm 



Not easy for everybody to carry through on but it sounds like good advice.

BillT on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 1:45 pm 



Many are going to be shocked and hurt when they dig up their lawn and plant those heirloom seeds they have in storage. Even gardening requires years of practice and a lot of learning. And when the voles (or your local pest) gets to what does grow, just before you wanted to harvest…lol.

I am anxious to get to the farm, and start much of the above,in a few years. I have the experience. I just need to make the move. If you have never eaten an heirloom tomato, grown in good, fertile soil, and left hang until it was actually ripe, you have not had a real tomato. That product called a tomato you buy in the supermarket is like eating cardboard instead of prime sirloin.

If you live in a city and have a window box, plant 2 tomatoes instead of flowers and get a start on survival. ^_^

rollin on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 1:47 pm 



We need to shrink our farms and provide more for the rest of nature. Maybe this is a way to do it.

GregT on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 3:31 pm 



Rollin,

We do not provide for nature, nature provides for us.

We need to shrink our economies, in order to allow nature to regenerate itself. Permaculture is about living with the earth, sustainably. The Earth is not a human ‘resource base’, and as long as we keep thinking of it as such, the further we will continue to destroy it.

Jerry McManus on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 5:07 pm 



All very well and good, but the question that consistently never gets asked by the transition folks is this:

What good is a lifeboat such as a farm or garden, no matter how “sustainable”, if you are surrounded by millions of starving people?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating a bunker filled with guns ‘n ammo. I just wish people had a better grasp of the magnitude of the predicament we face. Then maybe we could start asking the right questions.

Such as: “How did the native american tribes manage to maintain their lands and lifestyles for thousands of years?”

Until then, I can report first hand that there is nothing better than a day in the garden to take your mind off things…

IanC on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 7:39 pm 



Couldn’t agree more. “Farms” around our place are huge monocultures and certainly not intensively farmed with permaculture principles. The diversity, care, and resiliency of Permaculture is truly the only way forward… if we all want to eat and survive.

socrates1fan on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 9:05 pm 



Jerry- The use of a garden is training yourself.

I have a garden that produces decent yields, but it is only 5 feet from the sidewalk and I know that in a food shortage that garden would be stripped of its recognizable plants.

However, I’ve gathered such a good amount of information and understanding of agriculture that I now have the skills necessary to raise vegetables and crops wherever I may end up.

The man/woman that knows how to garden and raise food will be far better off than those who cannot.

I recommend looking into growing unfamiliar plants (and not blabbing to your neighbors about it). Potatoes for example, are highly unrecognizable to many people in my neighborhood who would go after the tomatoes and cucumbers first.

Planting relatively unrecognizable crops in discreet locations is also beneficial as well as a good understanding of edible wild crops (for around the city, the woods will be flooded with foragers but many will overlook the weeds growing in the city).