Introducing the Permaculture flower
The Core of Permaculture are three ethics (People Care, Earth Care, Setting limits to consumption) and the twelve design principles by David Holmgren.
Additionally there are seven different domains that are required to create sustainable (agri-)culture. These domains a represented in the Permaculture Flower.
Analysis Tool - Permaculture Flower
I want to share all my projects I worked on during this cycle (no matter if documented or not). With the help of the permaculture flower I can add my projects to different domains and analyse in which domains I already worked in detail and which domains were under-represented during this cycle. This helps to get an holistic and permacultural impression of my project work.
Health and Spiritual Well-Being
- holistic pregnancy and motherhood (includes homebirth, tried out many different techniques that support a healthy pregnancy (yoga every morning, nutrition, acupuncture, craneo sacral (when our daughter was already born). This project is documented in OP 2 and for the Design I used the Medicine Wheel (Wikipedia Link).
The main Outcomes: documented my personal transition, shared valuable knowledge about pregnancy in our blog - working on personal development by following daily rituals, and applied for a specific time frame the techniques I learned in different books about personal growth (yoga, master of my mind: setting priorities, reaching focused my goals, life now, be grateful, positive thoughts, visualization, write critically). This project has no conscious design process and is not documented.
- outlined in the LIPD that I will work towards being a natural health professional (holistic medicine). Main Outcome: learned a lot about the medical use of plants, learned how to produce high-quality tinctures
Building
- Tiny House – partly documented in Youtube, no conscious Design process, Planning, Designing and implementing the construction of our Tiny House
- created a rough design for our property. This project is documented in OP4 using the permaculture process „SADIM“. There we planned to use a small version of the contour line design to hold water and build soil on the steep south slope.
- in process are various detailed designs for our property such as a sewage treatment plant, an area for children, water catching technologies, design of the vegetable garden and the insect meadow.
- the company where my partner is working asked me to do a design for the main company square. For this design, I used the Design Process SADIM, but so far only until the phase of „Design“. This project is also well-documented and I will share it in one of my future Ops.
Finances and Economis
This is one of the areas where my partner and me try to actively work on, so far we are right in the process of:
- designing our sustainable (herb-)business that generates in longterm 50-75% of our family income. This project is documented but not edited. So far we have not used a known design process. I just can describe the process backwards. That will be part of another OP.
- contacted local partners like the community-supported-agriculture we are soon part of
- my partner Fabian invests some of his income ethically
- we travelled to different farms as wwoffers to get impressions on how farms can work
Tools & Technologies
- we use all resources that are available on our property, e.g. black plastic foil that we found in our woods for covering the grass where we want to create garden beds.
- planning a sewage treatment plant, design is in process, but we re-negotiated this project to next winter
Education & Culture
- Global Facilitator – was a guided course, designed one day for pupil. Not documented
- writing our blog- not documented, no Design process, Outcome: wrote various articles
- planning a workshop for the local kindergarden on our property in 2020, this project needs to be designed in detail during winter 2019/20
Land Tenure & Community Governance
- during the production of OP2 & OP3 we lived in partly intentional communities
- finding our home place was a long intuitive process where we spend a lot of energy on. This project was partly documented and follows an intuitive design process.
- we could deliver herbs to the association called „Kräuterland BW“. This association is organized like a cooperative
Land & Natural Stewardship
- actively experimented with the creation of a herb field/garden on our property. This project is partly documented and uses the Design process SADIM. The Outcome in the first year: 36 different herb species and a rich harvest of leaves and flowers.
- designed a vegetable garden for a higher degree of self-sufficiency (design and documentation in progress). The main Outcomes of our first season were different vegetables, although we did not spend a lot of attention to care for the garden. A good concept (for crop rotation and intercropping is needed)
- since late spring 2018 I learn to take care of bees in a natural/alternative way. I critically reflect about the main apiarist practices and experiment with my bee-hive. The project is documented in OP2 and also through our Youtube channel. So far it does not have a conscious design process, but I love to use the Kolbs Model in this project.
- from the 01.01.2020 we are switching officially to an organic agriculture. So we can sell in year 2023 officially organic products. I we have luck, we can sell our products without a switching time of three years directly organically.
Evaluation my Projects with the Help of the Permaculture Flower
At the beginning of my analysis, I was not sure how balanced my project work over time has been and I thought that I will identify some gaps. After my project analysis, I think that my project work was actually very balanced. I recognized that every project has an emphasis and while working on that project I just focus on one or two domains, the domains change as the project changes. For example, at the moment I work a lot in the domain of „Land & Natural Stewardship“ and not very much in the domain of „Education & Culture“ but this always depends on the relevancy of the projects. I know that in the year 2020 it gets more and more important to organize some workshops and education days for children and adults, so I will spend more attention on this domain when the time is ripe.
Fields I Worked In: Cumulative Field Analysis
To get an overview in which different topics and fields I have mainly dealt with in my cycle, I have created a table "Cumulative Field Analysis" (see below).
There are many "nature-related" fields and only a few others.
I need to be aware of where and how I work because this can give me valuable insights into the future. For example, I would like to combine two or three areas and thus develop a unique combination for our "future business".
Cummulative Assessment of my Analytical Skills (Optional)
The skills required to solve problems are known as analytical skills. They refer to the ability to collect and analyze information, problem-solve and make decisions. Analytical skills are used when detecting patterns, brainstorming, observing, interpreting data, integrating new information, theorizing, and making decisions based on multiple factors and options available.
Throughout my Action Learning Cycle, I applied unconsciously analytical skills during project work.
In the following I will list the most relevant analytical skills I used during this cycle:
- Effective research: Gathering the right information from the right sources is not always easy. My Action Learning Cycle 2 was very research-intensive, through all the transitions we went through. Starting with research about holistic pregnancy/motherhood, going over finding our temporary result for a home (the result of my research was the planning and implementation of building a Tiny House), and looking for a place where we want to settle (first Austria, then our property). Arriving on our new place more specific research started about herbs and building up a business.
- The key to effective research is to filter what is relevant and what is not. A focused attitude supported me as a researcher
- Data analysis: After collecting information the ultimate next step is to analyze this information. A critical attitude (critical thinking) helped me to detect patterns in a volume of information.
- Efficient problem solving: The first step is to identify a problem, then critical analysis and a rational deduction will help to solve it. We faced a lot of problems (or name it challenges) during this Action Learning cycle e.g. Having no homeplace for our family or being not allowed to live on the property. But the most efficient and practical solution could be found with
- Creative Thinking: Being a creative thinker means for me that a person can see a problem from a different point of view than the „normal“. Thinking outside the black box is creative thinking. Inside the black box is the norm, whereas outside can be drawn new connections and new solutions can be found. With the help of Creative Thinking, we designed our home (a Tiny House) and looked for our future place in different places in Europe.
Analytical skills I want to spend more attention in my next cycle:
- Reporting: A written report on the effectiveness of a particular event such as a political campaign
- Communication: I am naturally not very strong in expressing myself through communication. Without communication, we are unable to make our ideas/vision/work heard. Especially I want to work on Public Relations, which is the management of communication to the public. Developing a good connection between the public and our business is important for our longterm-success.
Resource Reference for this Page
Graphic - Permaculture Flower - Created by David Holmgren
Graphic- Cumulative Field Analysis - Created by Carolina Jakobi using Libre office calculator