Permacultural for Bourton on the Water villagers

First thing first, I would like to thank Fundition for giving me the opportunity to start my own campaign and more precisely to give me the courage to do it.

Introducing myself. I am Alexandra, living in Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, located in England. I have a degree in agricultural and I’ve worked with my father in his agricultural business for like 2 years now. But he got sick since last year and now he isn’t able to work in the fields anymore and he decided to give me the authorities to take all the decisions concerning this business.

I’ve always dreamt of doing the agriculture in my own way, and I think my father just gave me the opportunity to do it. I did think a lot about this project but I haven’t had the courage to actually do it until now.

What is my dream?

My dream is to start an agricultural business but it will be different from the traditional industrial agriculture that everybody knows about.

I want to start a permaculture agriculture, thus helping my father, the environment and my village.

Permaculture isn’t what you think it is.

Permaculture became a trend few years ago so people are assuming that we, farmers, are following a trend, but the fact is, permaculture isn’t something new, it actually started in 1978.

It is actually a philosophy and an ethic, so it is basically a lifestyle. In fact, it is actually what attracted me into permaculture.

Permaculture is and isn’t:

Permaculture isn’t agroecology. Permaculture is a way to produce and live in a self-sufficiency way, by respecting the environment and the culture. With this method of doing agriculture, we have to learn about the ecosystem and how it is working, and also get the expertise of the traditional way of doing agriculture. Learning all of these is a way of respecting the ecosystem and making great productions without harming the environment.

Permaculture is a way to not have any waste. This agricultural method is focusing on the fact that it is exploiting every single thing that the environment is giving to us. It means that we are using shadowing places but also sunny places, because some plants need to be in a more darker places and some plants need more lights. We are using everything in our hands and everything that the earth is giving to us to produce.

Permaculture teaches you to fully use all the places that you have. That means we have to think about how to thicken and intensify the production on small areas.

Going beyond my village.

I hope that my campaign will help others to get to know and to understand more about permacultural agriculture. It could help lots of small villages with lots of elderly. Also it could help to produce more without harming the environment, making it a win-win situation.