#3 Permaculture Reframes Aging

Aging with Altitude

"Permaculture (the word, coined by Bill Mollison, is a portmanteau of permanent agriculture and permanent culture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems." The concept of building a productive ecosystem includes how people interact with their environment and each other. Melissa Marts, Program Development Administrator for the Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging, explains some of the permaculture principles and applies them to reframe aging. Melissa is a certified permaculture designer and has been practicing design for over 10 years. One principle states to integrate rather than segregate another to use edge and value the marginal. These principles speak to valuing our older adults (and younger too).

Aging with Altitude is recorded in the Pikes Peak region with a focus on topics of aging interest across the country. We talk about both the everyday and novel needs and approaches to age with altitude whether you’re in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida or Leadville, Colorado. The Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging is the producer. Learn more at Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging.

Transcript:

This is Peak Community. The Studio 809 podcast collaborative.

Cynthia Margiotta:

Hello and thank you for listening to Aging with Altitude, a podcast series elevating the issues that matter. This series is produced by the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments Area Agency on Aging. Today we have Melissa Marts, who works for Area Agency on Aging as the Program Development Administrator for almost a year. Welcome to Area Agency on Aging.

Melissa Marts:

Thank you.

Cynthia Margiotta:

Today she is going to talk about permaculture. She is a graduate of the permaculture design class and took that class 11 years ago.

Melissa Marts:

I did, yeah. It's hard to believe it's been 11 years. Permaculture is a huge part of my life and so much so that I have a fabulous certificate in my office that people ask me about it so I'm always excited to be able to share about why I love permaculture and why it is a part of my life, and how I think it matters to age in place.

Cynthia Margiotta:

Nice. Who started permaculture and why?

Melissa Marts:

Great question. It’s two gentlemen who started permaculture, and it was started in the 70s and it came out of Australia. The founder, his name is Bill Mollison. You can check him out online, learn a lot of great information about him. He was a wildlife biologist and so throughout his career he had really had lots of opportunities to observe and interact with nature and see how different species would thrive, others might not thrive. He looked at flora and fauna. He looked super intensely with the eyes of a scientist, and a biologist. Through that he started to realize that there were lots of principles that were happening in nature that if he applied those in his personal life, he would probably have a better existence, just kind of in his own life. The person who joined him on the quest with permaculture was one of his students named David Holmgren. The two guys got together and came up with this kind of way of existing in our world called permaculture. The term comes from the word permanent culture, kind of put together. Realizing that even though permaculture is an evolution in and of itself, the concept is that we're looking at creating a really solid foundation to grow and build from and looking at culture and creating something that really matters, and can be sustainable going forward.

Cynthia Margiotta:

Great, and so then why did you decide to get involved?

Melissa Marts:

My husband and I are really big gardeners. We grow a lot of food. The whole reason that we bought the house that we live in, in the old North End, is because the house was small and the yard was large. So without even realizing it we were kind of taking permaculture principles to heart back when we were in our early 20s and looking for a place to live and settle down. It was important to us to have a space that we felt we could interact with and be a part of it, and you know grow the right types of plants and food on our little piece of land, integrate water into our landscape, integrate sun, and just kind of have a space and utilize as much of our landscape as we could. We didn’t even know that were living and breathing permaculture. One of the things that my husband does that I just love is when it snows, he goes out. He doesn't just scrape the snow off the sidewalk and have it go haphazardly wherever. He creates little snow berms to kind of melt very strategically throughout our property so that we make sure that we utilized that snow as it melts, and that water and that's a permaculture thing. We didn't even know it, and so we were just kind of living and breathing permaculture. A person that I know in our community, her name is Becky Elder, and she owns Blue Planet Earthscapes. She is the perme goddess here in our community, and actually pretty much our whole entire state. She and I met through you know local food and gardening and she told me about thing called permaculture. I said I have got to take part in this. At the time I was actually working for Care and Share Food Bank and so it just was really a great kind of overlap of you know, how do we live in our landscape and do it in a way that's respectful? How do we grow more food? How do we feed people? How do we not produce waste? How do we utilize waste in a different way? So being at this regional food bank, it was just a perfect time to take the course. It was a nine month course and so I kind of laugh about it. It's kind of like you know cultivating a new family and starting over with a 9 month birthing process of this idea, these principles and cultures, and eventually you know, out they come and you just kind of look at the world in a different way as a result of permaculture. So that's why I got involved.

Cynthia Margiotta:

You mentioned principles. What are the principles of permaculture?

Melissa Marts:

Yeah, so there are actually 12 of them. I'm actually only going to mention 6, but I'm going to encourage listeners to check out permacultureprinciples.com on the Internet. You can see all 12 of them on the Internet there. You could also look at Blue Planet Earthscapes, our local leader here in Colorado Springs in the Pikes Peak region. She also mentions all 12 of them, but for the sake of time and interest I'm going to talk about six of them. These are kind of the ones that rise to the top for me. I think also mean a lot for the aging sector as well.

The first one is called observe and interact. That's kind of what my husband and I were doing, but we didn't really realize it. When we bought our property, well it's not really a piece of property. It's a little lot in the downtown Colorado Springs area, but it is a larger lot than most which is what we were looking for. When we first moved in, we just kind of took some time and sat in our yard and sat in our house and said what do we like? What works? What doesn't work? How are we going to you know, make this our permanent place? So we just observed and interacted with our landscape in a way that was just kind of very natural for us. I think for some other people too, it's really natural, but for others it might not be. You might have the tendency to just kind of jump in and want to tear things up. You saw a picture in a magazine, and you want it to look just like that. With permaculture, you know, we kind of shy away from that and really want to say, you know, where does the sun come up in the yard? Where does the wind blow through? At Care and Share the wind was a huge problem. Care and Share Food Bank is located on the east side of Colorado Springs. The wind out there is fierce, so when we were looking at building gardens at the food bank we had to really spend a lot of time observing and interacting. And of course from an aging perspective, it's super important and just fine to sit back, slow down, observe what's happening in your space in your world, and then you know, slowly kind of take steps to interact. So I love that principle.

Another principle is about catching and storing energy. Again as people grow older what do we want to have more of? We want to have more energy to do things so it's kind of fun to think about this principle. You know, from the perspective on aging of how can we interact in our landscape and actually catch more energy, store more energy, feel more vibrant, to be able to get involved in life. Which is one of the things about permaculture that's super important. It's not necessarily just about how do we interact and grow food, how do we create a garden or those kinds of things. It's actually also about how do we create a community and economy together. So catching and storing energy can also be about, you know, interacting with other people, creating community. It's not just about ecosystems or wildlife biologists or any of that. What Bill Mollison and David Holmgren did was create this way of life that is much bigger than just gardening. With catching and storing energy kind of garden perspective, is you do want to be able to plant your landscape so that you can catch energy, store energy, utilized it. So my husband's example with the snow berms is really important because instead of just letting that water melt off haphazardly, he would really direct it to go to certain places and really controlled it. So it's about catching and storing that energy. So kind of a fun piece.

Then a third really important principle is about obtaining a yield. So whatever you do in permaculture, growing food, making friends, whatever it is. You want to obtain some type of yield because you want to be able to be giving back and producing and creating. So obtaining a yield is really important.

I'm saving the best for last so I'm going to talk about another one here which is, and I think again really applies to aging creatively, use and respond to change. When you look at the landscape, when you look at a community, you know change is there all the time, but so often we're frustrated by it. It drives us crazy. It makes us angry. Permaculture really encourages you to look at change in a positive light. Use it for your benefit and respond to it. Don't be so you know, stuck in the mud so to speak, but be able embrace, get in with the flow. Be part of that change and embrace that change. I don't have a really good example of that right now, but I may come back to it before the talk is over.

Another principle is use small and slow solutions. Again, it kind of goes back to that beginning principle that I mentioned about observing and interacting. We don't have to go in and change things overnight. We don't have to go in and drastically address things. There are times where that does need to happen. You know, timing wise right now in our country we of course, are facing hurricanes and so there are times where a hurricane is going to come in and devastate the landscape, and how do we respond to that? Afterwards there are going to be some immediate fast things that people have to do in order to recover from that hurricane, but yet it's also OK to take a step back and say let's really look at some smaller solutions, some slower things that we might be able to implement. Be patient with what we might do. I think that's also important with aging you know, to go ahead and take a deep breath, take a step back. It's OK to think about small solutions and slower solutions and to take time and be at peace with things.

The last of my six principles that I'm bringing up, which is my favorite, is using the edge and valuing the marginal. So from an ecology or landscape perspective, what Bill Mollison and David Holmgren would observe in nature was those places where the natural landscape was making a change. You might be in a water estuary and so you might have the ocean water coming in, and you might have river water coming out, and when you look at those places there's an edge that's happening. It's kind of the margin. It's the edge and they said the greatest biodiversity in nature happens at these edges. Whether you’re in an ocean, whether you're in the mountains in the different tundra, you know when you look at the flora and fauna that are in those places, you'll see the highest level of biodiversity in those areas. From a landscaping perspective, you want to create edge. You want to create biodiversity. You want to have different types of changes in your garden that value that edge and the margins. But also in culture. I feel like we want to value the edge and we want to value the marginal. When we you know, want to have everything homogeneous, when we want to shut certain aspects of the world out and just be in our own space, we're not creating biodiversity. We're not creating growth. We're not creating evolution and so for me, of the 12 principles, that one is one that is with me pretty much every single day. So here is this permaculture way of being. I took the class 11 years ago, it is with me every single day of my life. I think about it, and even with this new job that I have that I've been in for almost a year, many of the permaculture principles rise to the top here supporting a new community around aging. It's really been wonderful.

Cynthia Margiotta:

Wonderful, and I'm especially interested in some of the more direct things that some of our aging community can do. Some of the simple specifics maybe?

Melissa Marts:

I really think that with permaculture, the great part about it is encouraging people to get out of whatever space they are in. So if a person is used to being inside, in their home, we really want to encourage people to get outside and get engaged in the environment outside. That may be hard for folks, but the good news about permaculture is it's about slow small solutions. You don't have to go out and do a huge change today you know start out small. Start out by just heading out and maybe getting a flowerpot that you can grow some flowers on your front porch, and you know, just enjoy being outside on your front stoop and watching some flowers grow. Just really, really simple changes even in your inside environment. There's ways to integrate permaculture ideas in inside your home. It could be introducing plants into your house just so that you get that biodiversity inside your home. One of the things that is really beneficial for folks from a visual perspective, is to have the different types of textures that plants bring, to be able to look at and focus and pay attention to with plants. Even just bringing some plants into their home could be a slow, small change, can benefit vision. As well as just kind of circulating the air in the house a little bit better.

Cynthia Margiotta:

Maybe even to the point where they sit out on that front porch, and visit with neighbors walking their dogs.

Melissa Marts:

Exactly. I appreciate the outdoors so much, but I do understand that it's not for everybody. So I want to be respectful, because again, that gets to that principle that for me, I think you know, I want to live every day, which is valuing marginal using the edge. I do want to be appreciative of people who have different lifestyle choices and things they are comfortable doing, but I love the idea of encouraging people to be outside and to take in what our outside environment has to share with us. And, while they’re there, hopefully interacting with some people. It’s really important, and huge part of permaculture is building community with others. There are intentional permaculture communities all over the world, where it is a little bit “commune-y.” People have purchased land and come together, and they work on the 12 different principles as a community of people. Here in El Paso County, we're a little looser than that. We have a community of permaculturists. We don't all live together but we do get together and have potlucks and share ideas and resources with each other. It is a way of life and we do appreciate the community that other people bring. So for a person who finds themselves isolated and alone and getting older and feeling really frustrated, I love that image of them literally going out, sitting in a chair on their front porch or on their front stoop, and you never know who's going to walk by. And they've got a little plant that they're tending and caring for and all of a sudden that sidewalk that was the edge of their world now has created some biodiversity because some other people have walked by, and they've said hello. I think that’s really great, and I think it's fun to think that some of these lessons all came from a wildlife biologist who took his observations and learnings and has created this whole entire way of life.

Cynthia Margiotta:

What an exciting adventure you’ve been on. I like it a lot, so I have another question. So you do relate this to helping in the aging community, and that’s important with little steps that make a huge difference for folks. Sometimes our seniors feel isolated, stay in their homes, get lonely. I think it's a great idea. Another question I have would be, is there something as an individual I can do? You make me think of a few things in my home that I want to do. Is there a little thing you can think of?

Melissa Marts:

I think a nice start would be for people to get on the Internet and take a look at what permaculture means. Check out some of the different websites that are out there. Kind of take a little step out and learn what some of the principles are. See which one resonates with you. It’s interesting to see what the different ones are. There's 12 of them. Chances are when a person checks into it they'll find numerous that they're like Oh my gosh, I do this every day. Then to look at the 12 principles together and see where your one principle is fitting in and how you can continue to evolve your life to introduce other principles and other ways of interacting in your world in a way that is very peaceful, sustainable, and just really lovely. As I'm sitting here talking on the podcast, I am using my hands and I'm drawing this circle with my hands because the principles are presented usually in a way that it's kind of like a globe, and they're presented in a circle. Even the principles themselves are in little circles. There's this kind of ongoing symbolism of the circle of life and evolution of change. We're all in this together and again I think that that's just a really great piece to contemplate, it provokes. Especially people who might find themselves alone to realize that they might not have to be so alone. Again back to you know, what things can folks do. One, is getting on the Internet, checking out the different principles. I think taking stock of what the resources are in their life right now. What are some of the things that are giving them energy and feeding them the right kind of good feelings that make them want to get up in the day, get up in the morning, and kind of get out there and kind of taking stock of what those pieces are in their life. I hate to think that it might be a television show that comes on, but that could very well be the reality for some folks. I would love to think that it's more about the view that they take in when they look out their window, their cup of coffee that they’re filling themselves up with in the morning. Just taking stock of those things that give them good energy, and be respectful of that, and appreciate that. Then take a few minutes to think about what pieces they might want to change and think a little bit about how they might be able to bring some of those changes into their life. A couple little, independent things there. And to be patient. Change doesn't have to happen overnight. It doesn't have to happen quickly, but just be purposeful and meaningful with the things that they're thinking about and contemplating.

Cynthia Margiotta:

My last question is who should folks contact if they're interested? You mentioned a website. Do you know the specific website that we can give folks?

Melissa Marts:

Yeah so you know, for people who are listening outside of the Pikes Peak region, there is a website called permacultureprinciples.com. Again, permacultureprinciples.com. And it's a great kind of introductory place to look at some information. There's another website permies.com which is a little bit more on the kind of “culty-feeling” a little bit. They have a lot of interactive groups that are talking and sharing information, but it really is a great resource to kind of get a feel for the depth of permaculture. And in your own community chances are there is a permaculture community right where you live. For people to be able to dig a little bit deeper maybe talk to their gardening centers or extension offices and ask them if they know about permaculture because like I mentioned here in the Pikes Peak region, we have a permaculture potluck every month. Folks get together and you don't have to have gone through the permaculture programs to be a part of that, you can just be interested and come and meet some amazing people who are doing really great things. Here in the Pikes Peak region, but also a really great resource all over, is our blueplanetearthscapes.com and that is Becky Elder. She is the woman who teaches the permaculture course here in the Pikes Peak region. She brings people from all over the world to that program to teach and she does a great job. There are other permaculture courses around the country that people could tap into, but here, you know, just to go check out her website and see the kinds of things that she talks about, how she implements permaculture on an everyday basis in her life would be great to check out for sure.

Cynthia Margiotta:

Great. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for meeting with us Melissa. If you have any questions, please contact one of those websites or even go to your gardening center. Thank you very much.

Before we go, just want to give a nod to our good friends at Stargazer’s Theater and Events Center. It’s a warm and welcome place for concerts, screenings, and community events. Check out the schedule at stargazerstheater.com