14 Minutes of Paradise - What it's like to live in a permaculture food forest

My transition from Clueless Suburbanite to Permaculture and ecology-aware member of humanity has been a long one. It's a journey that started a few decades ago, but really started in earnest about 10 years ago. I felt a calling to something more meaningful. I felt the call of the forest.

Permaculture isn't something that needs to happen in a large scale. It's something that can happen in an apartment in the city. I visited my brother this past week (because my father is in Toronto General hospital for quadruple bypass surgery), and stayed there with him, my mother, my sister, and came together as a family to support our patriarch, and the best father a kid could have.

In the city, every day, I saw opportunity for permaculture. Even down on Bloor street in Toronto... for community groups to join, for park-edges to guerilla plant, for integration of energy, resiliency and community spaces, even on rooftops. There is so much opportunity to drive change, even inside North America's 4th largest city (bet you didn't know that!).

My own personal path towards permaculture was to move further out of the suburbs, just on the urban/rural fringe, and buy 4 acres of property (2 of which is a swamp), and just start planting. I turned dead grass into a lush vibrant food forest. I turned a dry dead hill into an ecosystem pond, and beating heart of the entire system.

... But more, I changed nearly every aspect of my life, to minimize consumption, minimize waste, maximize resiliency, maximize natural resources. Many sacrifices on what many people consider luxury "normalities" of a modern life. I still have a computer and internet (but mostly only so that I can broadcast this message to everyone)... We shop at garage sales and upcycle everything we can. I wear clothes until it's socially awkward (and my wife secretly throws it in the garbage). I basically don't spend money. Like... ever. We grow a significant portion of our own food, and we are conscious of where we buy what we need. We support local business always. We pay more for things, even though it's more inconvenient. If we want something, we try to wait a month to see if we still need it, and only THEN buy it. We eliminate impulse buying completely.

I track and find free things on the internet. Wood left at the side of the road can become emergency heat in the winter, a heart of a new hugenkulture bed, or even just habitat for insects when thrown on the ground. We grow our food focusing on how to bring in other life to enjoy it with us. We access loss to them. We accept nibbled greens. No, we CHERISH nibbled greens.

Simplifying your life is step 1 to becoming alive. Sacrificing what you think makes you happy, is the true path to happiness. Here is 14 minutes of what all my sacrifices and hard work have brought me and my family. Here is 14 minutes of a what it's like to live inside permaculture paradise.

Please consider starting your journey. Share this message with your loved ones and friends. This is the path to salvation for our planet. It's NOT too late, but it's getting very close. We MUST re-integrate human civilization and nature, and we must do it immediately. The time for analysis paralysis is over. Our time is running out, if we do not change drastically and right now.

And this is what that change looks like.

(It's better in every conceivable way.)

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Channels we support:

Moving to the country to start a new life. Young Family trades sodgrass for a horse farm over at Barn Boots and Country Roots: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRevkfe3phDB0bKeJ1wW2Yw

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Music credits:

Epidemic sound: https://www.epidemicsound.com/referral/qfqvpi/

Closer by Jay Someday | https://soundcloud.com/jaysomeday
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