I saw this headline a few days ago:

Indiana Will Be Home to Largest Solar Farm in the U.S. Covering 13000 Acres

And it made me wonder, why not stack functions, grow food under the solar panels? It’s happening elsewhere, and even has a name: AGRIVOLTAICS.

“Stack functions” is a permaculture principle referred to in my exopermaculture posts.

What is permaculture? PERMACULTURE IS RELATIONSHIPS. To one who practices permaculture, everything is related, above to below, inside to outside. This truth is in stark contrast to the disease of isolation/separation that, thanks to the scientistic “method” of analysis without synthesis, has thoroughly infiltrated our culture to the point where, as Mattias Desmet says, a hypnotic Covid spell has been successfully cast over billions of lonely, chronically anxious, disconnected souls by drumming out an endless blaring barage of fear, fear, F.E.A.R. (False Evidence Appearing Real) porn.

Permaculture. Permanent culture. Not the fake, incessant “progress” we were indoctrinated to aspire to, by lording over both nature and other human beings.

Permaculture. Permanent. Regenerative. The way nature herself works,  where “all waste is food.” Trees take in CO2 and breathe out O2. Animals (including humans) breathe in O2 and breathe out CO2. We need each other. Not just within species, but across species.

The patterns of lung and tree are essentially identical, and mirror, for example, the branching of a river. Nature’s designs are “fractal.” Nature knows what she’s doing.

In nature’s world, we need each other. We are inextricably connected to all embodied beings, on all levels.

Which is what Masanobu Fukuoko (born 1914) in Japan discovered, when he was 25, and decided to leave his career as a research scientist, return to his family farm, and learn from nature. The results are documented philosophically in his 1978 book “One Straw Revolution.”

A few quotes:

Permaculture takes advantage of nature’s ways to “stack functions” deliberately as in, for example, this Fruit Tree Guild.

Another example of stacking, this simple structure:

 

Last night, we at Green Acres Permaculture Village gathered for a short meeting, wherein I mentioned that we’re going to receive six visitors on Thursday, coming in sets of two, at different hours, from near and far away. They all want to know how we are doing it. How to live a connected life, not just with each other, but with the earth under our feet. Our tiny, suburban, retrofit, intergenerational template for a new, interconnected culture — “growing community from the ground up” — has been an object of contemplation by others all along — as a sort of curiosity. But:

Ever since the Covid Con cast its poisoned spell over the world, our way of living and thinking and learning has become more and more compelling to more and more people. At this point, I’d say we average at least three “tours” each month, as people, near and far, begin to realize that the only way we are going to “defeat” the “virus” is to re-member our everlasting interrelationship with both each other and the whole of embodied life.

Joseph, one of our young podmates, mentioned that he would like to see a Green Acres podcast. I suggested that he spearhead it. “Gladly” he replied. Another young podmate, Aya, loved the idea, and added that all her friends want to live like we do, that the millennial generation know that this is what is needed. GOOD!

P.S. Both of these young ones are new arrivals, within the past three months. May they, may we all, both near and far, live long and prosper!