Section 00: The Basics of Permaculture

Section List of Chapters

00011 Permaculture in 37 words — Short and most succinct commentary.

00021 Hacking permaculture in 350 words — The 378,000 words of this book are commentary on this chapter.

00031 Warnings — It's not as if this is a risk-free endeavor.

00041 Necessary Beginning Info — Getting a good start helps later on. iPermie! jargon and more.

00051 The invitation of permaculture — The work will be worth the result. How to become intentional about your life and why this is important. A preview of the design process — Observe, Study, Evaluate, Design, Implement (OSEDI). What we know. What we don't know. What we can't know. The importance of wisdom. Why we praxis.

00061 About iPermie! — How this book is organized and some suggestions on using it as a tool to learn permaculture design and hack a plan for your life.

00071 Design your personal permaculture learning experience — We learn design by doing design and here's your first assignment.

00081 Learning Community — Why a learning community is important and helpful and how you can find or start one.

00091 Why is this necessary? — You probably know the answer to this already but a little review never hurt anyone.

00101 Four housemen of the modern apocalypse — Here there be scary stories.

00111 Why you should care — Your only choices are to design your own life or have someone else design your life for you. Will you take the red or the blue pill?

00121 Prerequisites of Permaculture — Long and thoughtful observation. Trust yourself. Embrace a holistic way of seeing the world. Respect creation.

00131 How to permaculture your urban lifestyle — Urban areas are the modern permaculture frontier and will make or break the temporal future of humanity and this planet.

00141 How to permaculture your college lifestyle — You can do more permaculture on campus than you think possible if you design carefully and organize your fellow students for action. How to permaculturally occupy your campus.

00151 Vision of the Future — A fictional look at a city informed by permaculture ethics, principles, strategies, tools, and techniques. iPermie says: "Let's make this a real place."

00161 Lifestyle Inventory: How and Why — Here's a plan for long and thoughtful observation of the situation. It's not the only observation plan but if you don't do this method, you need to develop your own.

00171 Maps and your Lifestyle Inventory — The map may not be the actual territory, but maps sure are useful in permaculture design.

00181 Life Inventory Questions — A detailed list of questions to answer that adds up to a thorough observation of your life.

00191 Your design choices: accidental or intentional — More on your design choices. Replicating natural processes with human systems.

00201 A design for your life — What is a permaculture design? While much of permaculture design work to date has been for individual landscape sites (houses, farms, etc.), the iPermie focus is to design a plan for your life. Aspects, components, and sections of a design report.

00211 Permaculture Ethics — Care for people, care for the planet, care for the future (by being aware of limits and ensuring that surplus circulates in the community).

00221 Principles of Permaculture — We avoid reinventing wheels and flat tires by careful observation of what works and what doesn't work. Lists of general principles. No, there isn't one list of permaculture principles, there are many. Nature is diverse. Did you think permaculture, which aims to mimic nature, would not itself be diverse?

00231 Concepts in Design — Self regulation and sustainability. Sources of work and pollution. Resources as energy storages. Entropy, chaos, disorder, diversity.

00241 Patterns in Design — One thing always leads to another. You can never do just one thing. Energy always follows the patterns set for it. You can't get a good end from a bad pattern. Types of patterns. Patterns in motion. Boundaries and edge effects. Timing is everything. A language of patterns. Lots of deep thinking here.

00251 Design Methods — Ten techniques to use for permaculture design. Use all of them or none of them or some combination thereof. The benefits of a comprehensive, holistic approach to design.

00261 Design Toolbox — More tools to help you do permaculture design.

00271 Needs and yields chart — One of the more important tools used in permaculture design.

00271.1 Needs and yields spreadsheet — Download this spreadsheet at http://www.ipermie.net/.

00281 Zones and Sectors — A place for everything and everything in its place. Fire, sun, wind, weather, climate, grid energies, fetched energies, invisible energies, and more.

00291 Permaculture wisdom sayings — Traditions received from our elders.

00301 Classic city-scapes — Features common to urban areas everywhere.

00301.1 Arid landscapes — The features, opportunities, and problems of arid landscapes. Download at http://www.ipermie.net/ .

00301.2 Humid landscapes — The features, opportunities, and problems of humid landscapes. Download at http://www.ipermie.net/ .

00301.3 Island landscapes — The features, opportunities, and problems of island landscapes. Download at http://www.ipermie.net/.

00311 Entropy and Affinity — Since everything is always falling apart, you might as well take advantage of the process. Same thing for affinity except that it's about the tendency of things (and people) to clump together.

00321 Diversity — All about the importance of a diversity of beneficial connections in your life.

00331 Appropriate Scale — Should you build a nuclear reactor to power your house? Choosing the right size strategy, tool, technique, or element for the situation. Why this is critical.

00341 A Permaculture Fable — Appropriate Scale, Entropy, Affinity, and Diversity went into a pub owned by Permaculture Designer. A story about the Trouble with Entropies.

00351 Type 1 errors and their necessary avoidance — Avoid anything that causes more work than it's worth or that puts you or anyone else at risk.

00361 Systems thinking and permaculture — This is the really big picture. Why it is necessary and why it is hard. Practice is required! As is praxis!

00371 A hierarchy of goods, betters, bests — A guide to making choices. Appropriate next steps. Solving problems with succession.

00381 The Process of Permaculture Design — Draws everything thus far in iPermie together into one continuous design narrative. Bonus information: the spiral of intervention and lists of testing questions.

00391 Extension fact sheets — A place to get good information, in person, in writing, and online. But discernment is necessary.

00401 Additional resources — Books to help you along the road. For website links, visit http://www.ipermie.net/.

00411 Design challenges — Three challenges to get your started on your road towards permaculture design.

00421 About Bob Waldrop — Who is this guy who wrote and compiled all this information? A beginning answer. More is revealed as you read the text.

00431 Acknowledgements — Persons and places who were part of my iPermie journey.