So many pieces of land at the garden scale are limited in their flexibility. But the idea of where to put paths, compost areas, more natural areas, and so on, are scalable, I'd expect. Looking forward to seeing what comes next!
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Yep, I totally agree. Thanks for your input and encouragement.
This series would likely be better under permaculture or even agriculture. But I was trying to work with you guys and put the first tag in a category that you were using and would help with curation.
The Regrarian Platform is focused on broadacre farming. It's like an agricultural business oriented permaculture system, I suppose. That's one of the challenges of just permaculture. One can pursue permaculture from an altruistic perspective, but it's only sustainable if they either grow at least enough to feed themselves (or sell and buy needed diverse foods) or if they have a job that can allow them to continue feeding their system. There's nothing wrong with that at all. A lot of great things are being done that way and some folks are making a decent living doing so (as Luz has pointed out a few times). But if someone wants to make a living at it, they need to step back and take a more holistic approach.
Regrarians approaches the farmer and tells him there's a better way, on multiple levels. The result will be healthier soil and true regenerative properties (not merely sustainable, but constantly improving), including the bottom line = a system that is growing in health and production to be handed down to their children, rather than a degraded dirt farm. There's no way to get this to farmers without economy being a part of the system. Economy is toward the end of our series, but a necessity for this sort of approach.
So, to get back to your point, the scale of permanency here applies equally on any scale, as a foundation. But it may be that much of it is simply set aside, especially for a home gardener or even small community garden. If you have fences, then our article on fencing (coming up) may not be of any use at all. And the fencing we speak of is usually either for keeping animals out or moving them through a managed grazing pattern (a huge aspect of regenerative agriculture). These things are often not necessary in a garden that already has perimeter fencing.
I may consider a permaculture series too. This series focuses more on the things I understand well though, which is more focused on overall structure.
Thanks for such a thoughful reply, @anotherjoe. Please keep tagging with gardening, especially for those posts that easily translate to the smaller scale. Folks with chickens and other animals will probably appreciate your upcoming post on fencing. And your comment here is the basis for a really great post - or several - on how to apply larger-scale concepts to the smaller scale.
I enjoy reading your posts for the larger-scale, although they are more for ranching and sustainable agriculture. The situation with soil in this country (and elsewhere) is really a problem. So much erosion. I see the return of road-edge to road-edge farming where I grew up in Kansas and cringe.
in cyber space and paper planning visionary modeling one can certainly make rearrangements more easily than IRL. the Earth turns so there's no reason why various parts of Earth wouldn't be mobile as well. just takes a will and that will needs be practical to be efficient/economical. so get an inventory of what you have to work with, then come up with the best use of the land and somehow include potentials from neighboring lands in due time as well as a rating system for how difficult relocation of some aspects are. compost heaps are easy to move. buildings, bridges and paved roads, not so much. but with mobile buildings/bridges that doesn't have to be the case.
makes me think that using mobile aspects is best when a total inventory hasn't been done to establish best locations. then replacement with permanent structures and let new people use the mobile items as hand me downs to get them started.
My own approach fits your model pretty good, @anantasesadas. I keep everything (except my house) flexible. It's helped a lot as my understanding of my land - and my intended uses of the land - have changed over the years.