You’re listening to Unite and Heal America and KABC 790. This is Matt Matern, your host.

As you may know your host Matt Matern of Unite and Heal America is also the founder of Matern Law Group, their team of experienced employment, consumer and environmental attorneys are dedicated to leveling the playing field by giving everyone access to the highest quality legal representation contact 844 MLG for you, that’s 844 MLG for you or 8446544968446544968.

Hello, this is Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern. My name is Max Sloves. I’m the guest host for today. And, like one of the themes you’ll see in this show, and Unite and Heal with America with Matt Matern is precisely that that theme of unity and healing in times of great division, seeking out the people who can bring us together in common cause one of those common causes is the environment.

So we have with us today Bruce Horwitz, of Ripe Landscapes, who is going to discuss one way to approach our relationship on an individual and community level to the environment. And that is through permaculture. Bruce, welcome to the show.

Hi, it’s a pleasure to be here.

Bruce, I thought we’d start off with the very basics just the word permaculture. I think for some people, it’s it’s a regular part of their, their vocabulary. For a lot of people, it’s probably something that’s not super well defined. How can we describe what Permaculture is?

Well, that is a big question, actually, because Permaculture is many things, and it is also a very specific thing. So I’ll talk a little bit about the root of the world of the word. So it came from the idea of how can we create a permanent agriculture, ie an indefinitely sustainable agriculture?

And it’s evolved into basically how can we create a permanent culture an indefinitely sustainable culture? And I can tell you a little bit about the origin of the whole modality, and then explain a little bit of what it is to get started. How’s that sound?

Sounds great.

Okay, so you got to we got to rewind back to the 70s. And there is an Australian professor named Bill Mollison, from Tasmania, who in a past life was a forester, and a rain forest ecologist. And during his time observing the tropical rainforest, which is the most productive ecosystem on the planet, he started pondering, why are we growing food just at one level was so much work in so many inputs, how come we’re not growing food, like the rain forest does, which doesn’t need any inputs, it doesn’t need fertilizer, it doesn’t need irrigation.

And it’s incredibly abundant. It’s growing food at all these different levels. Like if you imagine a rain forest, a rain forest has biomass leaves, plant matter, flowers, vines, all kinds of stuff growing at all these different levels. So it’s amazingly abundant in a three dimensional way. And as compared to agriculture, which is like a field of cabbage is just growing right at the ground level, right?

So he started thinking, well, how come we’re not growing food, like a forest grows food, but we’re not growing food and all these different levels. In a way that’s self sustaining, where it’s actually fertilizing and irrigating itself and shading, and shading itself. And different plants are finding their niche, and they’re supporting each other, and they’re all producing all these different functions.

And at the same time, actually, what, what, what he discovered and what he realized is they’re also providing ecosystem services. So they’re also I mean, if you think about a forest, it’s also producing loads of oxygen. It is sequestering carbon and all the biomass, it’s, it’s creating soil. It’s slowly percolating water into the landscape and recharging aquifers.

So it’s basically this incredibly positive environmental feature that exists naturally and in fact, it’s what all ecosystems tend towards as they as they tried to create forests in the tropical rainforest being the most productive one, which he was familiar with. So he decided to design an agriculture based on that map at all. So instead of just being a one level, kind of two dimensional agriculture, it was the idea of creating a mixture of perennial plants like fruit trees, bushes, vines, with annual plants, like the vegetables that we like to eat, and stacking them in in all these multiple levels.

And so he and a graduate student named David Holmgren started to experiment with this idea. And what they discovered is that it works and it, but they also realize it totally went against the grain. It was it was absolutely completely different than our modern conception of agriculture, which is a bunch of very neat fields with tractors going through them, and spraying fertilizers, and spraying pesticides and applying fertilizers.

So they started in a really small scale, like, how can we create these what they called plant assemblies, or polycultures. Where, for example, in the tropics, you might have some banana trees with papayas, with pineapples, with some perennial chili peppers, and then a ground cover of peanuts or something. And basically, for people who are on the cutting edge of agriculture, and who were at this time realizing that mainstream agriculture was causing a lot of problems.

I mean, we have to remember this is the this is the era of Silent Spring by Rachel Carlson, which was a wake up call of the use of pesticides. This was the era after this widespread implementation of the so called green revolution in the so called developing world where it was a big shift from sustainable, small farming to bigger kind of macro farming using that model that was heavily dependent on inputs like fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides.

And so this was a revolution kind of forward in a sense that it was thinking beyond what was what was already there. But actually, it was also the way that small farmers, in a lot of places in the world, were actually already doing this before the Green Revolution. So if you went to a backyard in Vietnam, or in or a small plot in Mexico, for example, you would see them growing plants and polycultures.

One example is the Three Sisters guild that a lot of us have heard about, which is corn, beans, and squash, which is traditional American Way to Grow to grow corn, but you don’t just grow corn, you also grow squash and you go breed, you grow beans, and the beans are climbing up the corn.

So they’re using the corn as a trellis. And but they’re also fixing nitrogen, because beans are nitrogen fixers. So they’re providing nitrogen for the corn. And then the squash is a ground cover, which is covering the ground and helping keep the moisture in. So I mean, that’s kind of it in a nutshell, so to speak. So it’s just a revolution in agriculture into a very three dimensional, what we call a stacked Impact System.

And how it started to evolve as they is they decided that they would just start running trainings. And they would take these trainings to parts of the world that really needed this. So they started doing trainings in Africa, in Asia, places where there was a lot of food insecurity. And they started having these incredible results with areas.

For example, in India, which were becoming desertified. Through their transition to more mainstream agriculture, they were able to rebuild soil, replenish aquifers, basically reverse drought conditions actually. And, and they created so they wanted this to be really grassroots movement. So they created these certifications, this Permaculture Design certification, which is like a two or three course, actually teach those, and I’ll talk about one that I have coming up at the end of the show.

And he started teaching those, and then training teachers to become teachers. So the students became teachers, trained more students. And it’s really spread from being a very small kind of, you know, fringe movement where people who were into organic agriculture started hearing about it and taking these trainings and realizing, Oh, my God, there’s even better than organic agriculture are these perennial polyculture systems.

Because you’re really, you’re able to grow so much more food, and you’re able to do it in a way that’s really beneficial for the environment. And now it’s really it’s spread all over the place. And then the evolution to a permanent culture was that the principles because what they did is they derived a set of principles that guides this is a very simple set of principles, and a set of ethics that guide the whole system.

And then they realized that these principles and ethics were actually applicable to all all facets of life they were applicable to how you build homes, how you heat or cool homes. How you build villages, so it’s so it expanded from being permanent agriculture to permanent culture. So it’s a modality that’s started very grassroots was about a better way of doing agriculture, and is really spread into a worldwide movement of a lifestyle of basically, you know, I’m kind of going through it and I’m hyper blitzing something that’s a big topic.

But it’s become a lifestyle movement of how do we become hyper local? And start to and how do we engage with our environment, because if you create these polycultures, you actually have to become a part of it. So what you’re doing is you’re you’re basically creating a cultivated ecosystem. So you’re planting all these plants around you maybe doing some ponds, putting in some greenhouses, maybe building a house and just the right place.

So suddenly, you’ve got an ecosystem that you need to manage. Because you’ve got all these food plants and you’re all it’s not just food, you’re also producing fiber medicine and building materials. And it just became this really big lifestyle movement, which we’ll talk more about.

Bruce, he raised so many issues in that, that expos, a or permaculture, that that I find really provocative that I want to dig more into. We’ll take a break now. And we’ll be back in a moment to explore some of these issues, permaculture as something on a plant level, but something on a human level as well. Something that is both environmental and social. And we’ll do that when we come back. This is Max Sloves sitting in for Matern on Unite and Heal America.

Hello, this is Max Sloves I’m sitting in for Matt Matern on Unite and Heal Americaand we’re speaking today with Bruce Horowitz about permaculture. So Bruce, in the last segment, you gave us an overview on on permaculture. What it is, and not just what it is, but some of the different things that it can eat.

And a few things really leapt out at me one was you, what you described to me sounded essentially like like fruits, vegetables, plants, in and of themselves collaborating and creating. So the plants are creating their own collaborations, the plants are creating their own synergies once you set them up properly. And that actually sounds like less work for humans. Is that Is that accurate?

I mean, what like once you once you get these systems up and running? Is it is it more efficient? And we’re kind of almost more hands off? Or or does it take more? More attention? More awareness? More more care?

Yeah, I would say it definitely requires care. But in the well, there’s two distinctions I want to make. One is that, yes, these plants are doing a lot of the work for you. And that is one of the principles of permaculture is let nature do the heavy lifting. So it is it is it requires attention to design, how you set up these systems, you do have to monitor them, you do have to manage them. Eventually, the idea would be that the most of the work you’re doing is harvesting.

Eventually, once these systems reach maturity, and they’re highly productive, really, you’re just wandering around harvesting a huge abundance of food, or medicine or building materials. That said, there is a slight difference in that, for example, in a traditional, non traditional in a modern agriculture system, there’s a huge reliance on a lot of machinery.

So you would have tractors and plows and your island berry pickers and things that are very mechanized, using a lot of fossil fuels. And we know about, you know, the impact of that, right. And also, the use of those machines is really deleterious on the land itself. You know, they’re basically losing a lot of soil compacting soil. You know, there’s a lot of infiltration of chemicals and things in aquifers into watersheds.

So because permaculture has a little bit more, actually a lot more of an emphasis on doing things by hand. It doesn’t mean you can’t use machines. So a lot of times we’ll use tractors and bulldozers to establish a system, but then we want to shift over to a non fossil fuel related system. So in that sense, it might appear that there’s a little bit more work because you actually have to engage you have to be out there observing and interacting with the system.

But it’s a different kind of work, because we’re not, we’re not jumping on tractors, and there’s so much embodied energy and embodied impacts in just driving a tractor, for example. And so we’re doing things in a more organic sort of human scale way. So I would say that it’s, over time, a system would require less work.

But it requires engagement. And for me, this is the deeper, deeper level of permaculture, which is that if you’ve built an ecosystem around you to meet your needs, you have to participate with it. And for me, that’s actually, I mean, that’s the job description of being a human being actually, that we’ve sort of, we’ve lost in our modern world in our division of labor, modern era, and I think there’s something very embedded in the human DNA about really engaging with your environment in a way that’s beneficial. And that benefits you.

So if you’ve planted a whole bunch of fruit and nut trees, and some timber, bamboo, and a bunch of medicinal herbs and a lot of flowers, and you have different supporting plants in there that are going to create mulch, or fix nitrogen, or create shade, or just create habitat or beauty, you’re going to need to get in there and do some management of that system.

And now in that management system, there’s, you can have multiple yields, you can go out one day, and you can end up with a basket of nuts, a basket of fruit, some bamboo to build something with a bunch of medicine, a bouquet of flowers for your sweetheart. And so you know, you’re out there engaging with the environment.

But the cool thing is, in my, in my experience is, yes, there’s work but a lot of it is so enjoyable, that it doesn’t feel like work, when you’re out there picking flowers for your sweetheart or harvesting certain medicinals or whatever it’s like, it’s like a little more work in moments.

And it’s definitely, you know, it takes a lot more work for example, too, you know, I have a bunch of grapes or my place and I’m, I made wine last year. So for me to make wine was a lot of work, compared to like going to the store and just buying a bottle of wine.

So in that sense, it was more work. But you know, it was the real deal. Like I’m interacting, these are grapes that I grew this are grapes that I had a preschool going here at my school, the kids stomped on the grapes and had so much fun. And you know, so it’s like, it. It’s real life is what it is.

I mean, I just think of my own family and friends, every single person I know who who’s ever just grown anything that they actually ended up eating. Like, you can’t replicate that, that that expression of pride. Yeah, a friend of mine is, uh, you know, he’s like this Wall Street banker, and he grew his own cucumbers, he’s like, this is my cucumber, you know, I made this ad or I grew this and I ate it, you know.

So I think like, that’s just kind of like a micro example of what what I’ve seen, just in day to day relations with my own friends and family and in what you’re describing sounds like really building upon it. And that’s what I heard in your first description of, of permaculture an evolution of our relationship as individuals, to the world around us, I think there’s a lot of discourse on environmentalism, a lot of discourse on climate change.

And a lot of it, even if you study, it can still leave you feeling very detached from the actual things we’re talking about. And what I find very provocative of what you’re presenting is a way to develop attachment, develop engagement. So that, you know, kind of these eight amorphous terms that we throw around like environment are not amorphous anymore. They’re they’re things that you’re touching with your hands.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I would say it’s extremely empowering to be aware that you have just sequestered carbon yourself on your land in your backyard. You’ve just created more topsoil, while growing all this amazing food, like your friend with his cucumbers. And you know, of course Permaculture is really trying to be a little more intensive and intentional.

And, you know, you might have 100 or 200 cucumbers in your Permaculture system, ideally, although some years you never know and you’ve got that’s part of the participation is observing what works and what doesn’t work. But I would say yes, it’s extremely empowering, in that it’s a hands on DIY. Do it yourself, get your hands already, anyone can do it anywhere, kind of modality.

And it really, you know, there’s a, there’s a great quote, I think it’s by Graham Barnett, which says, Permaculture is a revolution disguised as organic gardening. So it’s a revolution of how you engage with the world.

It seems like another thing that struck me is like a lot of what you’re discussing, it seems like this radical Back to the Future type of approach to living our lives that you think about the dramatic changes that have taken place in the 20th century through the present. And, and they’re not really reflective of the grand arc of human experience.

And there’s a lot of wisdom in the human experience that preceded the 20th century. And a lot of what I hear you talking about is reconnecting and rediscovering that wisdom. And just understanding how things evolved the way they did without so many external inputs, that, that maybe weren’t necessary, that you help us in certain ways, but maybe have kind of obscured or, and clouded our knowledge in other ways.

Well, I would definitely agree with what you just said. Which is that, you know, if you look at all the progress for the modern world, people are people feel more disconnected than ever. For the so called progress in so much of the progress is, you know, in, you know.

I mean, if you look at the industrial era, which is like, what about 1850, which is, you know, there was some some great labor saving inventions, you know, to have like, the steam driven engine, and you could suddenly build trains and have tractors in them, you can have automobiles, there’s all these great improvements.

But, you know, then the, the lifestyle changes that went alongside it. Suddenly, people are driving to some job, and maybe they don’t even like that job. And then they’re living very disconnected from their neighbors. And so there’s just been a lot of disconnection from nature and from each other, with this with this sense of progress.

And I think what permaculture does is it gets you back in touch, you know, right to the earth, right, wherever you are. And then, you know, the thing that I like to say is, you know, it’s really fun to do this, but it’s more fun to do with friends. So and it’s more you know, a lot of permaculture is about resilience, and we start to realize that it’s only resilient if we actually have more people than just ourselves doing it together.

Yeah, I’d like to talk with you more about about the communal aspect of permaculture and we come back from break. This is Max Sloves sitting in for Matthew Matern. I’m speaking with Bruce Hrowitz with Ripe landscapes. We’ll be back in a moment.

As you may know, your host Matt Matern of Unite and Heal America is also the founder of Matern Law Group, their team of experienced employment consumer and environmental attorneys are dedicated to leveling the playing field by giving everyone access to the highest quality legal representation contact 844 MLG for you, that’s 844 MLG for you or 8446544968446544968.

Hello, this is Max Sloves sitting in for Matthew Matern on Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern. I’m speaking today with Bruce Horwitz, of ripe landscapes about permaculture. Bruce, in our in our last segment, we discussed the like the concept of how are the ways in which permaculture and create connection on an individual level between an individual person and environment but also we started to touch on how it can build connection on a communal level. What are some of the ways in which or how are some of the ways in which permaculture can develop community between people?

Well, I mean permaculture is a non-partisan activity. First of all that is rare in today’s…

Yes.

So you know, and I mean I do think that you know when I mean I I’m kind of a an interesting breed I call myself a bleeding heart Libertarian. So I would say that matter.

I think you just described that matter. I don’t I don’t want to speak for Big “L” bleeding heart libertarians. You I mean, everyone else is that, you know, everyone cares about the environment really. And so everyone, everyone wants a good environment for their kids. You know, everyone wants clean water, clean air.

I think at this point, just about everybody is realizing that we need to make some changes as a, as a society, really on a global level. And so, for example, a lot of like what I’ve noticed, for example, you know, I have a little urban farmstead. And I do a little CSA, which is a community supported agriculture thing where people buy boxes of food for me on a weekly basis. And I have a lot of friends who are a little bit bigger scale, who go to farmers markets, and they sell their food to farmers markets.

So farmers markets are a great place for people to connect with their food and connect with each other. And if you go to almost any town that has a good farmers market, you can see that becomes a social hub. And more and more farmers are starting to integrate permaculture practices into their farming, that’s what I’ve noticed. So you know, people who are doing organic farming, start to realize that Well, I can get better yields, if I start doing things in a more poly cultural way.

So if I integrate some fruit trees in for shade, and some berry bushes that I don’t have to just have those, I could have some kale growing under those fruit trees or bushes, I could have strawberries there, I could have blackberries growing up them. So I’ve noticed a trend of more permaculture in the smaller unit farming movement.

And then that leads to more food at farmer’s markets and more people going to farmers markets, which I think of this incredible way to build community around food because and you know, we I think we’ve all noticed in the last 10, 20, 30 years, the local food movement has just started to explode. And really when when COVID hit, for example, everyone started gardening, you couldn’t even find any seeds, because people’s natural response to crisis was, Oh, I better secure my food. What happens if there’s no food in the supermarket tomorrow?

So I think there’s been a new awareness about local food. And I know, I mean, I’m in a little farmers program here. And like, everyone’s CSA is like doubled in the last two years. And so and for example, in my courses, my protocols, of course, have never had more people signing up than ever.

So I think there’s, there’s an awareness when this crisis comes opportunity for people to become more aware of food, being the central component of life really, obviously, but it’s also the central component of your local economy, or even your security on your land. If you you know, just I’ve noticed more and more people turning up lawns and putting in gardens, I mean, I get more work than ever, just, you know, transforming people’s backyards into little mini permaculture systems.

Because they, you know, people are tired of, they realize why I’ve gotten this land, I could be doing something instead of just having a lawn here. So I install permaculture systems in people’s backyards. So you know, My motto is, is saving the world, one backyard at a time with permaculture. As far as my Ripe Landscapes business goes.

That’s why I’m so glad that you brought up you brought up COVID because that was one of the things that crossed my mind before we started speaking was that so many people turn to gardening in one way or another during COVID. And, and whether that affected people reaching out to you for consultation?

Oh, I mean, more than ever, really. I mean, at first not so much because people are scared people are socially isolated by the lockdowns and the mass of the distancing and stuff and now people are reaching out to me left and right. Because they want to grow their food and they’ve heard that Permaculture is a really efficient way.

I mean, I advertise my business as you know, highly productive low maintenance systems. So that that touches on what you mentioned before about less work. And, and like I said in terms of just my little farm part, which is just a small part of my Permaculture system is a market garden and some of that some of that is in rows because it makes sense but I have fruit trees interplanted for shade, I have different flowers on the edges to attract pollinators and, and for beauty and to crazy bouquets, et cetera.

And like that, that is going gangbusters in terms of the demand just for local, organic or beyond. I mean, my produce is what I call beyond organic produce. And, you know, and then in terms of actually building community on a bigger level, I’m involved with some intentional community projects.

And I would say almost any intentional community slash ego village that you would run into, they’re doing some form of permaculture because there’s, there’s almost anyone who really wants to kind of get out of the mainstream matrix in terms of living in a house, in a suburb with a nuclear family model and is interested in living in community is going to realize that we need to get our food together.

And you know, it’s the same thing as when COVID had people realize that when you get our food together, and so I really think that local food is the key, because it builds local economies. And I think that having food growing in your landscape, and of course, it’s not just food, it’s medicine. It’s fiber, it’s building materials.

And also, you know, permaculture, as I said, it’s not just about food, it, you know, it’s this set of principles. And it’s the set of ethics, but the principles are, you know, for example, if you were going to lay out an eco village, you would use permaculture principles to create efficient design, because Permaculture is really all about, like, you know, and this really touches on what you said, it’s really about efficient use of energy and efficient harvest of resources.

So if you are going to lay out an intentional community, you would use permaculture principles to decide where the houses go, where the solar panels go, where the ponds go, where the communal sod goes. I mean, permaculture would inform your overall design, because it’s really actually and I didn’t mention this, but it’s a design modality.

It’s about how do you design a piece of land? How do you design your life? How do you design a system, a society really using some principles that are very universal, what in they’re called from that natural systems, because nature is incredibly efficient if we look at how nature evolves, like if we go back to that tropical rainforest. But if we look at any kind of natural system, I mean, we’re talking about almost 5 million years of R&D to become maximally efficient.

So if it so permaculture called out these principles from natural systems, and it turns out natural systems are elegant and intelligent, and efficient. And so we can use those principles to design our human systems, whether it’s agriculture, the layout of a town, or a city, or a village, or an eco village. Or even like your house, or your living room, or your kitchen, these principles are universal. And what they do is they allow for ease of movement, efficient harvesting of energy efficient use of energy. And the cool thing is, there’s no straight lines, in permaculture, it’s very curvy, it’s very elegant, it’s, it’s very beautiful, because that’s how nature is, you don’t see a lot of straight lines in nature, you see nature, nature has this very elegant beauty to it, and also a very human scale, to the way nature grows.

And also the way the speed that nature does, you know, there’s some sayings like, nature does not hurry, but everything gets done, right. That’s like an ancient Chinese proverb. And so, when we start applying permaculture, to the design of any aspect of our life, we start to scale things in a way that our nervous systems are already adapted to. And so you might find yourself biking more rather than going 75 on the highway.

Or you might find yourself walking more or spending more time out in your garden, these things are all good for your nervous system. They’re good for you just you know, they’re just healthy. And so a lot of the things that we’ve gotten used to in modern society, I think I would call them mal adaptations. And we’re all doing it, we all got to get from A to Z super fast.

And we jump in our cars and we zoom away and we go on the freeway, but really our nervous systems are not actually set for that. And it once we start getting out in nature, and we start tuning into the bio rhythms of nature, I believe that that’s will create more happiness and health for us. Not only to an end our environment, it’s just it’s more of like, we become less separate from our environment by by living and doing permaculture who’s in our next segment.

I want to build on what you were just talking about, I want to talk about how we get people more connected to their environment through permaculture and other modalities, how we can use leverage permaculture to bring environment to people that would not maybe consider their their where they live to be an environmental landscape and then also talk about how you and Ripe Landscapes approach to these things and the services that you offer.

So we’ll do that in the next segment. For now, we’ll take a break. I’m Max Sloves sitting in for Matt Matern on Unite and Heal America in conversation with Bruce Horowitz of Ripe Landscapes. We’ll be back in a moment.

As you may know, your host Matt Matern of Unite and Heal America is also the founder of Matern Law Group, their team of experienced employment, consumer and environmental attorneys are dedicated to leveling the playing field by giving everyone access to the highest quality legal representation contact 844 MLG for you, that’s 844 MLG for you, or 8446544968446544968.

This is Max Sloves. I’m sitting in for Matt Matern today on Unite and Heal America. We’re speaking with Bruce Horowitz of Ripe Landscapes about permaculture. Bruce, with one of the things that you were describing was how permaculture can get people back to nature. But people live in different places. S

o you have people in very rural environments, people live in your classic American suburbia. And then, you know, I mean, some would say the most environmental thing is for people is for infill for people to concentrate in urban environments. Are there particular places where Permaculture is best suited? What are some of the different ways that permaculture can be explored in these different different types of places that people tend to congregate and lift?

Okay, well, I like to say that you can do permaculture anywhere. Because feeling you’re gonna say that, and I’m very glad you did. Okay. So, nature exists everywhere. Even if you live in an apartment and you have a potted plant, you could start doing permaculture and your potted plant. And you in the suburbs, suburbs, you know are maybe one of the best places you actually to actually do permaculture.

They’re one of the founders, David Holmgren has a whole movement called retro suburbia, which is about retrofitting the suburbs into small homesteads, and integrating like, you know, city blocks or suburban blocks into more permaculture kind of systems. So, I mean, the one thing I’ve noticed is that everyone has an affinity towards plants, I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody who didn’t have at least a potted plant, or a shrub in their front yard or backyard.

So it’s really about choosing what you’re going to grow. And then engaging with it. And what I’ve found, for example, is that that engagement encourages other people around you to do it. For example, about 10 years ago, I moved into an apartment. And it was like a little four plaques. I, you know, for various reasons ended up there for for about a year and a half. And I immediately started gardening the parking strips out by the road.

So I put in some, some garden beds there, and I put up a greenhouse in the parking lot. And the incredible thing started happening that all these other people in this apartment complex who weren’t growing any other word, they weren’t growing food, suddenly they were like, Hey, what are you doing there? Oh, wow, how can I help?

You know, and like, next thing I knew, like everyone was out there gardening together, because and the kids were like, Hey, can I have that carrot, and these are kids are like living in a candy. And so it was like, it was like a reawakening of something that was already in them from their DNA. And so I really believe that you can do it anywhere. And you know, even if you’re in a super dense city, there are community gardens everywhere.

So even if just getting involved with a community garden and growing food, I think the first step, I mean for me when I first got into permaculture, and it’s 25 years ago, I had no idea about growing food. So I just grew like one I was living in San Francisco at the time, I grew one potted plant. And I was like wow, there’s something magical just like that Wall Street financial guy growing that cucumber, there is something magical about planting a seed, nurturing it, seeing it grow and then getting a harvest from it.

And it’s like, is that Jack in the beanstalk moment that I think it is hardwired in us to do that. So we are gardeners I really believe that the blueprint that we have as human beings is that our job description is to be gardeners of this beautiful planet. And then you know, like I said permaculture can help. It can inform the design of anything I mean literally from like, you know, the dashboard of your car, you can apply permaculture principles and put things in a different spot.

You know, based on something we call zonation, which is like zone one or two Things You use the most often to zone five, which you never use. So like anybody can do permaculture anywhere, and it’s like a snowball effect, you start doing it, and then you want to do more, and then you’ll just, you know, you’ll just be led because I really believe that nature is our ally.

And there are forces and sort of beings that we’re not aware of that are encouraging us to make this shift back to really being stewards of this planet, taking care of the environment. And and I really do think it could bring everyone together, because there’s so much work to do on this planet. Like, if we everyone got together and just decided to tackle the climate change, all we’d have to do is just plant a bunch of permaculture systems everywhere.

And we could handle it, we don’t need any big fancy solutions, it could be a complete grassroots solution. And in fact, I’ve done some studying around this, which is that if you get a certain percentage of people doing something that spreads to everyone, it’s like the 100th Monkey theory. And so I think if we got 25% of the planet doing permaculture and remember, a lot of people like small farmers in Mexico or Vietnam or summer, they’re still doing it, they never stopped.

So if we got 25% of the planet doing this, suddenly everyone were doing it, climate change would be solved. We’d all be happy, healthier, and we’d all be having fun growing food with our neighbors.

Let’s do it. You know, I cuz I think we overcomplicated it. You know, and and I think what you’ve described to me is because I think a lot of times we get the perception that we have to give something up to pursue a new solution. And what you’ve described, it’s like, you don’t stop doing anything you do. But you can add this into your life.

And I think to me, that’s that’s sort of the win-win to to permaculture is that is it there’s, you haven’t described anything, that’s a huge sacrifice, you’ve described a lot of gains, you’ve described a lot of things that are added to your life. In terms of, you know, individual interaction with the environment, producing food for yourself, and the joy that comes from that aesthetic.

You know, everyone I know who has some form of permaculture or is growing food in any way in their own home. One of the things that’s really striking about is how beautiful it is. You’re not paying a landscaper to to do these kind of like random things, you just use growing food. And there’s kind of an inherent beauty to that. That all makes sense. Yeah.

I you know, you totally nailed it. It’s really it’s like an add-on thing. I mean, you know, I would say the only thing you might need to give up is a couple of shows on TV, you know, a couple of Netflix binges to go out and plant up a bunch of food or, you know, plant up a little food for us because we can we call these things food for these pie cultures. We call them either forest gardens or food forests. But they can be really small.

You could just have like one fruit tree and one blueberry bush and some country and rosemary and something like that. But yeah, you know, you got it requires just starting and doing it. There’s so many YouTubes out there right now. So anyone Permaculture is, you know, if you just want to get the basics, you can, how can you help? Okay, so you can find so much information online, the way that I help is if people hire me to like help them set up a system.

So that’s what I do in when I’m working in Ripe Landscapes. And you know, I’ve done some big designs for retreat centers, I’ve worked with some Eco villages. So you know, anyone out there wants to start an eco village or retreat center, get in touch with me. But also just backyards. Sometimes it’s just a little foam console.

But usually it’s like going and seeing it I do different levels of consults for you know, and I’m getting a lot of work doing this lately, where you’re just like, wow, I want to grow some food. And I want to like, why my landscape to be beautiful and tied to this lawn. And they hire me and I just give them some ideas of what they can do. Check out their soil, figure out basically putting things in the right place is really what Permaculture is all about.

And then I teach more in depth. Plans for people who are really ready for the huge personal paradigm shift is how I put it if you’re ready for a revolution in terms of how you see the world and you’re ready to really get an operating system. That’s the super upgraded ecological operating system of oh my god, I heard about permaculture I watched some YouTubes This is how I want to live. This is what I want to do with my life.

I want to spend my life putting, you know, making permaculture systems where I can raise my own food. I can, you know, have medicine I can do this with a bunch of people. So we teach Something called Permaculture Design certification courses. And do about two of these a year. It’s like a two or three week immersive course we have wider coming up on the Big Island of Hawaii November 1 through the 21st It’s at a place called Kumakahi Village, kumukahivillage.com.

There’s information about it there. Um, you can come there camp out with your friends, it’s like the most fun you’ll ever have in your life. And then my company, Ripe Landscapes.com I’m available for consults. I do travel. I you know, I live in Bellingham Washington.

So I’m mainly focused on Pacific Northwest in Hawaii, but, you know, look me up, send me an email, [email protected]. I’m, I’m always happy to talk about this. And always happy to point you in the direction of a local permaculture list, or give you some advice or you know, help you created the site or even village of your dreams.

I’ve been on your website and I there’s this diagram that shows how you walk people through your system of design. And just just that diagram alone is so fun to look at how you know, there’s there’s all these starts and stops have of input and assessment on what what works, but also what the person wants.

And I can only imagine how fantastic it will be to join you in in the Big Island of Hawaii for for your training at the criminal coffee village.

Bruce, I have so much more that I want to ask you and dive into. But for now, I’ll just say thank you. I really enjoyed this conversation and learning about permaculture and what you do.

It was my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

All right, this was Max Sloves sitting in for Matthew Matern. Speaking with Bruce Horowitz of Ripe Landscapes. Do go to his website, rawpermaculture.org and look for his training on the Big Island of Kumakahi Village. Until next time, thank you so much.

As you may know, your host Matt Matern of Unite and Heal America is also the founder of Matern Law Group, their team of experienced employment consumer and environmental attorneys are dedicated to leveling the playing field by giving everyone access to the highest quality legal representation contact 844 MLG for you, that’s 844 MLG for you or 8446544968446544968.