Permaculture: Re-story Yourself To Restore The Land

How can we better understand (and care for) the world around us? Be more in sync with nature? Become better attuned to what grows and lives in our own backyard? Permaculturist and author Ben Falk offers his candid thoughts on how to do just this. He starts with his own story, explaining how he went from “tree hugger” to where he is today (more than an “environmentalist” in the traditional sense of the word).

He goes over the permaculture zones and other basics for how to best interact with our environment, reviews how to make the most of our resources (yes, even human “waste”), and ultimately how to collaborate with nature for a brighter future for all of us.

Visit Ben’s website: wholesystemsdesign.com

Find Weston A. Price Foundation resources in Spanish.

Check out our sponsors: Optimal Carnivore and Paleo Valley.

—

Listen to the podcast here

Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda Labrada Gore and the regular text is Ben Falk.

Who’s affected by our choices? Downstream, our green lawns, our flushed toilets, and our use of electricity. These all have a ripple effect. How can we re-story ourselves to reconnect with reality and restore the land? This is episode 485 and our guest is Ben Falk. Ben is the Author of the award-winning book, The Resilient Farm and Homestead. He’s the developer of Whole Systems Design, LLC.

Overview Of The Permaculture System

Ben reminds us that we don’t just need to do less bad to make a difference for the land and the planet. We can be agents of positive proactive change. A permaculturist and observer of nature, Ben reminds us of our role in local ecosystems. He discusses, among a number of topics, how to listen and learn from the patterns in nature, how to better collaborate with it, why waste is a resource misplaced, why we shouldn’t build on the most picturesque spot on our property, and how lawns came into vogue instead of productive plots for produce. He also gives an overview of the permaculture zone system and how we can apply it wherever we live as we begin to restore the land.

Before we get into the conversation, I want to remind you that we have resources in Spanish, even a sister podcast called Tradiciones Sabias with hosts Annette and Alberto. Go to WAPF in Español on our homepage of the website, WestonAPrice.org, and find resources, pamphlets, our Instagram account, and our podcast. These are all intended to support your journey if you speak Español. This is Hilda Labrador Gore and you’re tuning in to Wise Traditions.

—

Visit Ben’s website: Whole Systems Design.com

Find Weston A. Price Foundation resources in Spanish

Check out our sponsors:

Optimal Carnivore and Paleo Valley

—

Welcome to Wise Traditions, Ben.

It’s good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Is it true that you were a tree hugger in college? Tell us a little bit about that.

I still am. The term environmentalist has lost its luster for me a little bit. However, I still am truly an environmentalist. It’s not what it used to be that term anyway. This was when Julia Butterfly was sleeping in the redwoods to save all growth trees and earth first came to our campus. I said, “This is what I need to do.” We can’t lose the last half a percent of all growth forest. I still feel that way. I was a rock climber for a long time at that point. It was way into it. I was like, “This is great. I like to live in trees and spend tons of time. I’ll go do that.” I did quit school for a climbing journey. That was before.

After that, I was back at school and I was going to quit school again and go do that. I took a Permaculture course and read Bill Mollison’s Big Black Book. I remember, about three pages in, coming across his sentiment about how we can wave all the signs we want, and resist all we want and oppose systems, but if we’re not producers ourselves and we’re dependent on those same destructive systems to feed us, clothe us, house us, or keep our houses warm, you name it, then we’re just feeding this system with one hand that we fight with the other hand.

That hit home. That left an indelible impression and I realized I needed to do the work myself. I needed to change things from the ground up throughout my life, how I live, and how I met my basic needs because I certainly ate then and I still eat today and still require resources to live. That became the permaculture ecological design path for me to figure out how to be a producing human being that’s contributing to what I need to live in a better way.

While keeping in mind the stewardship of the resources of the planet and so forth. Give us a little bit of an overview of the permaculture system. You have hinted at it in what you just said. Tell us a little bit about how it’s structured. Even the idea of the land zones 1 to 4, for example.

Permaculture is applied in many ways, but one of the core bases for it is thinking of ourselves as active participants, keystone species, and members of our ecosystem. It’s not the conservation idea at all like putting away a bunch of nature, and then the part we use we’ll just abuse. We’re destructive inherently. It’s the antithesis of that.

Permaculture is applied in many ways. One of the core bases for it is thinking of ourselves as active participants, keystone species, and members of our ecosystem.

We can be functional members of our ecosystem as we have been, in some places, quite regeneratively so for thousands of years by putting back as much as we take. Giving back as much value as we extract from the system and help manage the system in a way that’s as abundant, healthy, diverse, and productive as possible.

What you’re saying makes me think about cows, for example. They are munching on the pasture and so forth but they’re also giving back because of their manure and their urine. Even their stomping on the ground is disturbing the soil enough to fertilize it. It happens in nature. The leaves that fall off the oak tree later fertilize and give more life to that tree so it can continue to grow. Why can’t we be a part of that system?

That’s the basis of permaculture. Ecosystems can provide our needs, as well as provide all the needs of all the other members of the system, renewably on an interest. We don’t have to mind the principle of the system. We can live on one of the many byproducts of ecosystem services. We can also benefit those systems through our management and our use. Your example with the cows is a good one.

We’ve come to this very nihilistic understanding of ourselves on Earth in a very linear way. I was a vegan by the way. I say attempted vegan because I don’t think anyone is vegan in that they live without benefiting from and depending upon the lives of animals. We all depend on the lives of animals in myriad ways from the bacteria-producing soil to larger, more complex animals. Even if you think you’re vegan and you’re living off of coconut oil and soy foods, we’re displacing animals at every turn. Even vegetable production kills animals countless times over.

When I say I was an attempted vegan, back in college, I had that idea of let’s do less bad. I hadn’t yet come to an understanding that we can be reciprocating members of the system. Today, with the popularization of fake meat, even electric cars are a good example of this. We have this idea that there’s a free lunch. It’s almost an idea of virtuality that we can exist here without a true cost rather than more of what Wendell Berry voices, probably better than anyone I’ve ever heard, that we can be users but we can use responsibly. We have to look at our use and be honest about it. Not pretend It’s not there but take responsibility for how we use it.

We can work with animals and eat animals and do that in a regenerative manner and a humane manner. Maybe a lot of people don’t want to deal with that idea because there’s a certain challenge in that. No one wants to kill beautiful animals to eat, but if you want to be a member of a poly-cultural ecosystem and not just a monoculture, something diverse and healthy, it has to involve animals and reciprocation, and taking in and putting back.

Can we be these positive producers and part of these polyculture ecosystems as you’re describing even if we live in cities and we don’t get our hands on the dirt?

It’s challenging. We do need more people on the land but I’m not here to say that we all have to be farmers and gardeners. There are viable ways to have cities. We certainly need a billion new gardeners more than we need a million new farmers. We do need a situation where far more of us at least produce some of what we need to live because we need small-scale diverse production systems.

We’re not going to have a reasonable, reciprocal, sustaining, and regenerative human presence here without serious decentralization. That seems to be one of the primary lessons in human history. The more we concentrate, centralize, and move towards empire systems, the slower the feedback loops are, and the more destructive everything tends to be.

With that being said, there’s room for a lot of people in cities and semi-urban, suburban areas if we also get way more people with their hands on the land. That can be in urban areas. I don’t want to say just because you live in an urban area, urban farming, and urban gardening. Urban Ag is huge. There’s plenty of space in a lot of urban cores and around urban areas to involve people. Some of the most productive food-producing systems the world has ever known are in cities, which makes sense because that’s where you have the most fertility. You have the most urine and organic matter contributions by the humans there which drives the system.

I think it was back in the 1700s, there was a period when Paris produced some of the most amount of food per acre that the world has ever seen. Mexico City, when it was Chinampas, was incredibly dense and arguably one of the most productive, I always used it as an example of intensely productive agriculture as well. We need all of it but we especially need most people to get their hands on the soil at least a little bit, and then a bunch of us to do it as a living, as a life way.

Starting With Permaculture Principles

That is so beautiful. I think people are hearing this message. I’m speaking in generalities, but I’ve seen what Joel Salatin calls a homestead tsunami. More people are eager to connect with the land, to know where their food comes from, to opt out of those systems that you said are so big and damaging, and to be a positive agent for collaborating with the ecosystem that we’re in. Talk to us about where you started once you cracked that book and where we can start as well.

For me, it was finding permaculture and ecological design and this realization that we don’t have to try to do less bad. We can be members of the system and do good. I don’t have to go on my wilderness trips and look away from all the horror. When I come back, it’s like going to confession and just using food and other resources that I’m not taking responsibility for.

We say in permaculture, “Start where you are.” That’s one of the key permaculture principles. It could be in cities. It could be in a suburban yard. You drive around the suburbs. I was just visiting family in Connecticut and New Jersey. The amount of food that can be grown in these areas. There’s essentially no food production. It’s astounding. Sunny yards and millions of them around the United States. Instead, we’re up-ticking our cancer rates by applying herbicides and all sorts of pesticides to make it look a certain way.

One of the key permaculture principles is to start where you are.

The fruit is so low-hanging. It’s hitting us in the face. We just have to be not terribly stupid at some point to start saying, “Do we want to keep pumping the cancer industry or do we want to do the opposite?” I don’t know what’s going to take. For people who get it, they start making a garden. It’s to make a raised bed and start planting garlic. Do the basic things, something right outside your kitchen door. Even on a balcony. You can grow potatoes and tomatoes in a pot.

The cascading effects of growing one thing will lead to lots of good things. Whether it’s growing other things or realizing you can do other things you didn’t realize you could do. It’s magical to put a seed in the ground and then eat off the plant that that seed produced. It’s truly astounding. Tiny onion seed. You can barely see the smaller poppy seed. It makes a beautiful onion. It’s to partner with magical forces to grow food. That has a cascade of benefits for everyone. Never mind physical. The psychological benefits alone are worth it for that. We can start where we are.

Can you dive into that a little bit, the psychological benefits and the numerous benefits for our health? I know that in your book you call that zone zero like starting with us. What are some of those benefits that we can enjoy as we start to get our hands dirty and plan and grow things?

There’s so much. There’s a body of research out there. Not that we need that research, but there are tons of great resources out there to look up like the different studies and ways that they’re figuring out a benefits view, but we all know it. Those of us who do it tend to of some of these effects. As I mentioned before, empowerment. We start to realize, “We can do all sorts of things.” When you can work with a seed and do this magic trick of making a 7-foot high tomato plant that’s full of rich tomatoes from rainfall and some soil and sunshine. You can do a lot of other things too.

Empowerment is a big one and observation skills. Your ability to grow a plant or take care of an animal, grow food, and tend to land effectively. It’s dependent on your awareness and your observation, the keenness of your observation skills. You’re practicing those. Those transfer to every other part of your life. You tend to flex muscles. You tend to use that muscle better for all types of applications, and beauty.

I’m looking out right now at a 40-foot sweet cherry tree that I planted about twelve years ago in full flower. That wasn’t there when I moved here. There’s a beauty yield flowing into my house. There’s a plum next to it and a plum over there and currants. Everything else is starting to flower. A lilac is about the blossom. The Asian pair is full of flowers.

You can’t underestimate the power of beauty by itself fulfilling your space that you live with beautiful things. We tend to forget that if you have fruits that flowers. There are so many ornamental plants that are been bred not to fruit because they make a mess of our neat suburban yards. All fruiting plants have to flower or they’re not going to fruit. They’re all flowering plants too. They’re all incredibly ornamental.

That sounds so encouraging to the spirit. You’re right, we overlook the power of that. We look out our windows, some of us who live in cities. We see cars, fire hydrants, and trash cans and we’re missing this beauty that you’re describing. As you said, even in cities, there are gardens and land. We can get creative. I know in my city, in particular where I live, there are rooftop gardens. It’s fun to see all that can be grown and enjoyed growing on a rooftop in a city building. It’s wild.

Even in cities, we can create gardens and green spaces. Rooftop gardens harness sun and heat, offering physical and psychological benefits.

It’s massive. You have so much sun and so much heat to work with. In some places, may be too much heat. In a lot of the cold climates, rooftops are some of the best microclimates to work with. There is a myriad. Never mind the physical health benefits that cross over into psychological benefits. We’re starting to understand that when you increase your nutrient density, you’re helping your mental wellness. That by itself is massive.

I grew up super conventional. My parents were maybe a little more health conscious than some. My father is a doctor, but we were very conventional. We grew up on margarine and not nutrient-dense foods. Coming into that in the last 15 and 20 years, you notice the difference in your day-to-day life. It is strong. If I leave that diet because I’m traveling, you notice that too. You get more sensitive to all aspects.

How Lawns Contribute To Cancer

Speaking of diet and health, earlier, you were talking about cancer. Were you just using hyperbole? How are our lawns or our habits contributing to the incidence of cancer in the US?

We’re applying millions of pounds of known carcinogens to our yards to do things like get rid of dandelions. Just so we don’t have any dandelions in our yard, we’re willing to increase how many of us die of cancer. There’s a direct link. None of this is controversial. We are killing ourselves to at least some extent, whether it’s thousands of people or more a year or hundreds. It’s probably in the thousands just so that we don’t have any dandelions in our yard or any broad leaves.

Most of these herbicides are to reduce or kill broadleaf plants, plantain, dandelion, and everything else that’s trying to decompact and add calcium and do other things to the soil. They’re there because they’re trying to fix the soil, so to speak. They’re trying to improve and regenerate. That’s what nature does. That’s where diversity comes in. We have such a command control mental complex. It’s pathological that we want it to look a certain way that we’re willing to at least forget that we’re making ourselves sick and even increasing our incidence of death and suffering to have an image of a yard replicated.

Coming up, Ben explains where the concept of green lawns came from, and why it’s something of a status symbol today.

—

Go to Amazon.com/optimalcarnivore and use the code Weston10 to save 10% on all products.

Go to PaleoValley.com/Wise to get 15% off your first order.

—

I wonder where that came from, that idea that we should have green grass in front and back of our house and that’s it.

There have been a lot of studies done in landscape architecture school that I went to for graduate programs. My graduate degree is in landscape design and site planning. We looked into that a bit and there have been works since then in many years produced. They think it descended from Europe, from pasture, controlling nature, and having an open field, which was originally only made by grazing animals.

At some point, it became a status symbol. If you didn’t have to have something growing in your yard and you just had grass, you were very well off. There’s a certain neatness, purity, and aesthetic. There are a lot of reasons that it became very popular. Whatever it is, it took hold in America more radically than anywhere else. Fortunately, this isn’t nearly as insane in most of the world. I’ve heard from people even in Western Europe that wealthy areas were like, “We mow our lawn.” No one is going to spray chemicals on their lawn. They don’t take it that seriously.

Here, we do it for the same reason we drive a certain car and we dress a certain way. It’s inextricably woven into like, “I’m a respectable person.” It’s a status thing like, “Look at my yard. It’s not a mess.” Even people who don’t care about their yard. It’s like, “I’m not going to have my place look like a mess and have that reflect on me.” It’s very woven into status and we’re big on that in this country.

Jeopardizing our health at the same time, which is so unfortunate. We’re missing an opportunity to provide abundance not just to our families, but to others. I’ve heard of some gardening movements where they are encouraging people to turn their lawns into food forests. They’re providing for the people in their community as well. It goes beyond just feeding your family. People end up with so many vegetables or let’s say squash that they have to give them away and they’re happy to do so.

When you taste a tomato, it’s very easy to grow out of your yard. You know immediately that’s the best tomato you’ve ever had when it’s twenty minutes old or one minute old because your child just grabbed it on the way in after school. “Can you go pick a couple of red tomatoes on your way in?” It’s in salad and dinner now. Those connections are powerful beyond measure when we involve ourselves in those day-to-day actions.

Imagine a child who grows up with a garden versus a child who grows up with no concept that food can come from land or ground where the sun shines and where it rains in their front yard. A lot of children think food comes from the grocery store now. A level of literacy. Never even mind eco-literacy, but true literacy of being a planetary citizen. A garden is an incredible springboard for basic literacy.

Highlighting Our Connections With Nature

I’m smiling because I’m thinking about how I live near a zoo. In the zoo, they have a farm section because I guess people don’t know what cows look like or chickens and so forth. It’s funny, but maybe it’s good because maybe it’s getting people to realize, “This is what could end up on my plate or this is where we get eggs,” because kids in the city don’t know.

We have to highlight connections. If we’re going to learn to live well and make good decisions, it has to start with information. Understanding exactly what is reality. Where do things come from? Where do they go? We flush the toilet. Where does that go? Who am I peeing on when I go to the bathroom in the toilet? That pee is going on to someone. When I say someone, I mean animals and plants. Not just people, but sometimes people too. Who’s downstream?

I remember when I was in high school, I was big into the Sierra Club back then. There was a little sticker you could print out. You put it next to a light switch. It said, “In the silence of a darkened room, you can hear the sound of a thousand rivers whispering their thanks.” Connecting our use of electricity with hydroelectric power and dams. That basic understanding for me, at some point, came second nature. I was into that in my sophomore in high school.

If we help people draw those connections, we can’t not remember when we turn on the lights. That power is coming from somewhere. It has a cost. We flush the toilet. It’s going somewhere. We have something brought to our house by the FedEx guy. That cardboard box came from a forest or someplace that was a forest. These are our linkages with the world. Whether we ignore them or not, they’re real. That’s why a big part of working with the land is to re-story ourselves back into reality, to re-weave ourselves back into the connections that we have, but we’ve forgotten. They’re there whether we ignore them or not.

Everything we use has a cost. From turning on a light to flushing the toilet, our actions have impacts. Let’s reweave our connection with nature.

That’s a good point. I’m thinking about the power of observation that you mentioned earlier. That’s an important principle of permaculture. It’s seeing what’s around you. Even if maybe before someone starts a garden, perhaps they could begin to reconnect or restore themselves by going to parks, going to places where nature is abundant, experiencing it, and remembering that we’re meant to be a part of nature and not apart from it.

That’s one of the biggest psychological benefits of reweaving ourselves through gardening, farming, and foraging in any way that we connect with our landscape in a non-extractive way, in a way that requires some listening and some paying attention. One of the biggest benefits there is that we recognize that we belong.

By doing that, at some point, we come to the realization that we belong to this place. We’re not some exception to the species. We’re just bad and we shouldn’t be here. We’re always harming. We are the song Sparrow or the Woodthrush or the Woodchuck or the American Frog that’s in my American toad in my ponds singing. We’re meant to be here too.

That’s so encouraging because there are people who say, “We’re the ones that are the virus on the planet.” I’ve heard that thing. I’m like, “That’s so sad to look at humankind like that.”

If we start to feel that way and I at times have in my life feel that we are the blight on the planet. You look around and all the craps are caused by human beings. If we start to believe that’s all we’re capable of and that’s what we are innately doing, that’s who we are, we can’t do completely better than that, and we can’t be a truly contributing member as natural of a presence in this planet as the songbird and the beaver and the hawk, then we’re toast.

That’s not a viable philosophy to think that we can only be damaging. That is a philosophy that will cause massive levels of depression among a population that believes that, or even thinks that might be true. That would lead to incredible levels of anxiety, angst, and depression. We know that from studies now, but it’s obvious.

Addressing Environmental Anxiety

It’s like you’re hearing this burden. It’s like I’m in the way of what nature could do if I weren’t here. Speaking of burden, when you were talking earlier about how the cardboard came from a tree and how we’re peeing on someone down the street or whatever, I started thinking, does that carry its level of anxiety? Are you any fun at parties? I want to know.

I have fun at parties but what I’ve found is that, and understanding that connections, there is a burden there but there’s something cool about it. It allows you to say, “Let’s fix that so we can do something about that.” We can have our urine go to feed plants. It doesn’t have to get flushed down the river system going into Lake Champlain and contribute to the algal blooms in Lake Champlain.

That’s something we’ve done in our own life. We can do a gray water system, which we have, and fertilize plants. Pollution can be toxic. Waste is a resource misplaced, as we say in ecology design. Waste is a resource misplaced. Waste truly usually is some form of fertilizer, but it’s a pollutant when we dump it into water. Especially with human waste, feces, and urine.

It’s simply a nutrient source that is perfect for plants, but it’s only a waste product when we pipe it out to river systems and oceans. Every one of these facts of the situation that we can make ourselves aware of, as you brought up. It’s only a burden and anxiety creating if we don’t do something about it. If we say, “I can fix that or at least can improve that situation,” all of a sudden, it’s not great news in itself, but it’s great news that we can do so much about it.

Understanding our connections with nature isn’t a burden. It’s empowering. Let’s fix what we can and improve our environment.

I remember when I was in ecological design class with John Todd. He said, “The good news is, it’s so bad right now. We’re doing things in such a stupid way that it’s easy to improve the situation.” You could all be inspired to go out there. It’s very easy to start and fix things because it’s all so stupid the way we’re doing things. It’s like, “Mow your lawn once every week and a half or two weeks instead of every four days.” Save twice your money and cause half the pollution. Have many more pollinators. Easy things.

That is encouraging. I love that. Speaking of easy things, I want to talk a little bit about starting because a friend of mine bought some property. She is going to build, put a well on the property, and do such things. I was surprised when I looked at your book that you talked about how people shouldn’t set their home on the most picturesque spot on their property. Why is that?

That spot is not usually so picturesque. If it’s raw land and you find the spot that’s just like, “This is the power spot and the property is so beautiful,” we say in permaculture, don’t potentially put a building there. Probably don’t put a building there because it’s so nice as it is. Where can you improve by potentially putting a building? How do you preserve those amazing spots of a site that are often undermined?

However, not always by putting a house or another building. How can you improve another spot on the property, which may be a bit degraded or poor soil, or have another reason that building there isn’t such a bad thing to do? That gets at the heart of preserving the best things about a site. The first rule of intelligent tinkering is not to lose the parts, as Aldo Leopold said.

If one of those parts would be, “This is an amazing spot,” leave that. You maybe can’t improve on that or it may take some years. Whereas a spot that’s not so amazing, let’s try to improve on that. Permaculture and regeneration systems in general are best in places that are damaged and not totally intact, which unfortunately is most of the world now. We like to say, “Don’t do permaculture in an old-growth forest.” What do you do in old-growth forest? Be very quiet. Walk lightly. Visit. Don’t do stuff there. Don’t even think of any tools. Go to listen, learn, and hear the patterns that work to get the download. We want to do our work in the endless numbers of degraded places in the world.

Your challenge to listen and not necessarily look for the most ideal spot reminds me of a failed attempt to build some highway or road in the Amazon, in Brazil, I believe. The people that had this idea were doing the opposite of what you’re talking about. They went in with their big equipment and their bulldozers and tried to get started, then the rainy season came. Do you know that jungle grew all over their equipment? They had to give up their plan because the jungle had the final word, but they weren’t listening. That’s a valuable word for us to go in and get the lay of the land before we start anything.

The patterns are all there. We have to see what they are and let them guide our work and our design. That’s what permaculture is all about.

Understanding Permaculture Zones

Let’s come full circle to where we were at the beginning when I was asking you about the zones. Would that be helpful for the audience to know about zones 1 through 4?

I think so. The permaculture zone system is one of the few pieces of permaculture that universally apply no matter where you are in the world. They’re prescriptive. They apply to any context. There are zones 0 through 5. Zone 0 is you, your body-mind system, and the human beings themselves. Zone one is in your house or just outside your house. The physical places you inhabit very often and you interact with them every day multiple times.

That’s where you put things that take a lot of care, like a little salad garden outside your kitchen door or a greenhouse where you might be watering it a couple of times a day. Things that need a lot of tending. Usually, your driveway is there. Where most of us live, we park our car in zone 1, or a workshop. As you get further out in the zone like zones 2, 3, and 4, are systems where you use less of the time. Do they need your care like an orchard?

You may work there 2 to 5 times a year. That’s zone 2 or 3 probably. Certain pasture and animal systems are zones 2, 3, and 4. Chickens might be zone 1 or 2. You’re interacting with a lot of razing fields. Maybe that’s more like 2 or 3. A woodlot is zone 4. I go into my woodlot, harvest firewood, and saw logs a couple of times a year. It’s very lightly managed. I go forage there for mushrooms.

Zone 5 is unmanaged land. It’s like that old-growth forest example. We walk there. Maybe we do some light foraging, but we’re not changing. We’re not trying to manage the system. It’s the base datum of reality. That’s another quote from Aldo Leopold. That’s our basis in which to understand all the other systems in a lot of ways to see an unmanaged system. That zone 0 through 5 is the gradient in which we are participating to various levels of intensity.

It’s very easy to see when people put their veggie garden out and it should be zone 3, far from their house. Good luck. That veggie garden is going to become full of leaves and not produce much. You have to put a veggie garden in zone 1. These patterns are reliable. You want to honor them if you want to be successful on your site. The sites that work well are taking these zones into account, whether people have articulated them or not.

I was going to ask is this why perhaps some people get overwhelmed and want to throw in the towel when they start their homestead or their garden because they’re not even aware of this system or this framework and they’re doing it willy-nilly? I have a friend who once called herself the accidental gardener because somehow, she did it all wrong, but it still turned out okay.

You do see a lot of people burn out and it is easy to get overwhelmed because you do things like put a veggie garden way out of the way where you have to remember, “I got to go out there and weed or it’s not going to work as a system,” and set things up in ways that require more management than would otherwise be necessary. You want to start right outside where your kitchen is, and the door that goes outside from there is the best place to start.

Hopefully, that’s a sunny place. It isn’t always for a lot of people, but in the best homes and homesteads, it is. There’s sun there and you start with a raised bed right there in most climates and start with a salad garden. Grow some herbs, which are super expensive to buy. They’re so much better and more abundant if you grow thyme, oregano, cilantro, and rosemary right outside your kitchen door. Some salad greens there. Maybe garlic if you’re just starting out. It’s the easiest thing you can grow in most places.

Work outward from there. Take it step by step and get good at each step before expanding. It’s easy to throw too much at the wall and try to do too much. You end up undermining your own mental health because you’re overwhelmed or your marriage. It’s easy to have a cascade of problems if you stress yourself out and get overwhelmed.

One Thing To Improve Health

You don’t want to take that New Year’s resolution approach of like, “I’m going to do this every single day. I’m going to plant all the things like.” Let’s start small and where we are, as you suggested. This has been an amazing conversation. We’ll put all of the pertinent links so people can find your book and the resources that you have to offer. I want to ask you, if the audience could do one thing to improve their health, what would you recommend that they do?

Getting outside would be maybe the first one I could think of. If you don’t grow anything, grow something. Do something that gets you outside and go jump in a cold creek. Maybe that’s three.

I love it, though. I’m going to try to do all three. Thank you so much for your time. It’s been a pleasure.

Thank you.

—

Our guest was Ben Falk. Visit his website Whole Systems Design to learn more. I am Hilda Labrada Gore, the host and producer of this show for the Weston A. Price Foundation.

Now for a show review from PinkoPal100. “Thank you. I may not agree with everything on this podcast 100%, but I’m confident that the host and guests are doing what they can to get the truth out about nutrition and healthy living. I’m so grateful for this resource. This podcast along with good books like Gut and Physiology Syndrome, as well as Nourishing Traditions have helped me heal my anovulatory cycles and given me real improvement for the first time on my infertility journey. I’ve had three normal-length cycles after nearly three years of only 1 to 2 cycles a year. I’m grateful for the wisdom shared on this podcast as it has helped me support my body to heal through proper nutrition.”

PinkoPal100, thank you so much for this review. These stories are what keep us going. We want to make a difference in your health. We’re so excited to put the wisdom of our ancestors out to bear in modern life. Thank you too for tuning in, my friend. If you’d like to leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, please do. The more reviews we have, the more attractive the show will be to prospective listeners. Thank you once again for tuning in. Stay well, my friend, and remember to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the sun.

About Ben Falk

Ben developed Whole Systems Design, LLC as a land-based response to biological and cultural extinction and the increasing separation between people and elemental things. Life as a designer, builder, ecologist, tree-tender, and backcountry traveler continually informs Ben’s integrative approach to developing landscapes and buildings. His home landscape and the WSD studio site in Vermont’s Mad River Valley serve as a proving ground for the regenerative land developments featured in the projects of Whole Systems Design. Ben studied architecture and landscape architecture at the graduate level and holds a master’s degree in land-use planning and design. He has conducted more than 650 site development and land inspection consultations across the US and abroad, and has facilitated dozens of courses on property selection, permaculture design, and resilient systems. He has given keynote addresses and presented dozens of workshops at venues ranging from Bioneers to the Omega Institute. Ben is the author of the award-winning book The Resilient Farm and Homestead (Chelsea Green, 2013, 2024).