Permaculture

Lately I have been reading a book called Gia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway. Permaculture is a sustainable design theory/practice that uses systems set up in ecology for design and development. I guess you can say it is growth/farming/gardening the way God intended.

My faith influences every aspect of my life. How food is grown and the way we build and develop is very important to me because we are using and abusing resources that God created. I feel that learning about ecology and applying it to my designs, aiming to restore healthy ecosystems and providing food for both humans and animals, is an extension of my religion. Permaculture is important to me because it resembles the system set up by God and I do not think that we can create a better program for design/development/farming than the One who created the world developed in His infinite wisdom.

I am very interested in merging my faith and interest in permaculture in a way that helps others. I would love to teach other people about healthy growth because we are taking care of God’s green earth while we are on it. He has given us so much and we should be responsible with it. I am not sure how I will merge these two passions of mine but I do know that I need to practice it before I can teach it. At the moment my “expertise” is non-existant. I have watched a few introductory videos on youtube and started reading this book. My mom and I are going to sign up for weekend classes that will lead us to a certification in permaculture design. I hope to apply what I know to my garden designs and begin influencing people to garden in such a way that promotes the health of the soil and ecosystem while enjoying a beautiful lush garden (actually Permaculture has been used to turn the desert into a near tropical forest – if people are willing to educate themselves and be patient while implementing the practice, they will find that they get much better results than traditional gardening practices).

So for now I am continuing on with the reading…hopefully God will direct me to an interesting idea that I can use to educate others on both permaculture, ecology, and the good news of Christ.

Peace and Blessings.