“Permaculture gives us a toolkit for moving from a culture of fear and scarcity to one of love and abundance.” -Toby Hemenway
The winter solstice, with its corresponding shortest length of daylight and longest period of night came and went this week, marking the official first day of winter by calendar. However, our winter began a couple weeks prior, for all intents and purposes, with the weather releasing substantial amounts of cold and snow. Still, the winter solstice always feels a relevant signifier to the rhythms and cycles of the seasons of life and nature, giving opportunity with less daylight to work for pausing and reflecting on the past year’s labors, successes, and failures, as well as hopes and plans for the upcoming growing season. Practically speaking, I feel better knowing each day will get a little longer and lighter for the next half-way trip around the sun for us in the Northern Hemisphere, and in the meantime supplementing with vitamin D helps to keep my mood up.
The mood-boosting effects of vitamin D aside, this week brought sadness to the permaculture community at news of the illness and death of Toby Hemenway at the age of 64, leaving the permaculture movement to mourn the loss of one of its significantly contributing thought leaders and authors. His books, Gaia’s Garden: a Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, and The Permaculture City: Regenerative Design for Urban, Suburban and Town Resilience, have inspired and equipped many new and seasoned permaculture practitioners to action. Personally, Gaia’s Garden was the first book I read after initially learning about permaculture, and was very formative and timely for me in a season of life where I had become cynical and angry in learning of the depths of exploitation of people and resources, along with other forms of systemic injustice. Hemenway’s work in part helped to inform and focus my energy into acting towards a solutions-based lifestyle, and I will always be thankful to God for that gift. Still to this day, after reading many more books on permaculture and regenerative design practices, I would recommend Gaia’s Garden above most others for its clarified and concise details, and his ability to take complexity and present it into approachable action steps for people starting on their permaculture journey. To buy it, you can go here: https://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-Guide-Home-Scale-Permaculture/dp/1603580298/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482450066&sr=8-1&keywords=Gaia%27s+Garden
We who have been, and will continue to be inspired and educated from Toby Hemenway’s works can honor him by continuing to transform literal landscapes as well as the landscape of our human collective conscious through both action and conversation. Sometimes that can even be by engaging in simple tasks, like repairing 5 gallon bucket handles with used baling twine, keeping both items out of the landfill and in service on a regenerative permaculture farm. This was the topic for our weekly YouTube video, which can be found below, and is one of the small expressions of how Hemenway’s legacy will live on.
Blessings,
Grant
