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The Permaculture Vine

The Permaculture Vine

著者： Cormac - The Permaculture Vine
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 We interview permaculture designers, practitioners and educators on how they discovered permaculture, and how they are doing in their permaculture careers and businesses.

cormacharkin.substack.comCormac Harkin 出世 就職活動 経済学
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  • 110. Harvest Reflections & Winter Designs

    110. Harvest Reflections & Winter Designs
    2025/10/03
    Join The Permaculture Vine free Skool community for connection and learning: https://www.skool.com/vine-permaculture-7207/aboutIn Episode 110 of the Permaculture Vine podcast Cormac, Lindsay and Graham chat about their harvest yields and upcoming design work while addressing a growing concern about artificial intelligence in their field.Physical Labour and Tree RestorationGraham’s autumn has cantered on an intensive tree replanting project at a solar farm adjacent to his Michigan property. The job involves correcting improper installation work—1,122 trees were planted with metal cages and burlap left intact around root balls, causing widespread tree death. His team has been working 13-14 hour days removing dead trees, digging new holes, and properly installing replacements. By the recording date, 350 trees were planted and tagged, with Graham noting the physical challenge of keeping pace with Azure, Lindsay’s 36-year-old partner who’s been operating the heavy machinery.The project illustrates a common problem in large-scale installations: contractors unfamiliar with proper tree planting techniques can create more problems than they solve. The burlap and wire cages, meant to be temporary supports, prevented root expansion and essentially strangled the trees.Harvest OutcomesGraham reported exceptional yields this year, attributing much of the success to having additional help on the property. His harvest included first-time production from aronia berries, honey berries, and golden raspberries—all bearing fruit in their first year in the ground. His asparagus bed, planted with 1,000 crowns, exceeded expectations by producing thumb-thick spears in its second year rather than the pencil-thin stalks typically expected. The plants even produced an unusual fall flush following late-season rain and fertilization.Other significant harvests included several hundred pounds of garlic, a couple hundred pounds of potatoes, 40-50 butternut squash, and abundant fruit from seven-year-old cherry trees. Graham’s experiment with Cabernet Sauvignon wine grapes succeeded despite conventional wisdom that Michigan’s climate wouldn’t provide sufficient heat for proper flavour development.Lindsay’s harvest was constrained by an impending move—her parents are selling their property in spring, so she and Azure excavated her entire food forest and potted the plants. She processed beets into kraut and preserved garlic in vodka for tincture. With her daughter moving out and plans to spend extended time in Central America, she’s not planting for next season.Cormac in Ireland reported a “mast year”—a term for exceptional nut production—with abundant chestnuts and apples, though his pear harvest came late.The Winter Design WindowWinter represents prime design season for northern permaculture practitioners. Graham explained that from mid-November through mid-April, outdoor work essentially stops in Michigan as the ground freezes two to three feet deep. This period allows designers to focus on client projects, planning, and indoor work.Current design prospects include two campus health clinics seeking to produce food for their communities, potential projects in the US Virgin Islands and Bahamas, and continued work on intentional community development. Lindsay is developing business structures that bridge traditional corporate models with private membership associations, researching share structures and sociocracy for community projects.She’s also exploring new technology for design presentation, particularly VR and 3D modelling using LIDAR mapping. The goal is to show clients not just what a design looks like initially, but how it will develop over time—a challenge Graham identified as one of the hardest aspects of design communication.The AI ProblemThe conversation took a pointed turn when discussing artificial intelligence in permaculture. Cormac raised concerns about AI-generated content appearing in permaculture circles, citing examples of guilds showing apples and strawberries fruiting simultaneously—an impossibility since strawberries fruit in early season and apples late. He also encountered Facebook groups using AI bots to stimulate conversations, essentially training AI systems on human responses without participants’ knowledge.Graham was direct: “I’m sorry, I don’t want to teach a robot how to do my job anymore. I want to keep what I enjoy for myself and my friends in permaculture.”Lindsay added that AI imagery in project presentations immediately raises red flags for her—it signals conceptual work that may never materialize rather than grounded, practical plans. She’s positioning her upcoming permaculture design certification course as explicitly “written by a human” to distinguish it from AI-generated content.The group agreed that AI has limited appropriate uses—Graham finds it helpful for meeting notes and action item lists—but its application to design work removes ...
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    58 分
  • 109. From Medical Doctors to Permaculture Practitioners: The Thistle Thorne Story

    109. From Medical Doctors to Permaculture Practitioners: The Thistle Thorne Story
    2025/10/02
    The Unexpected Path to PermacultureNot every permaculture journey starts in a garden. For Marina and Alexander, founders of Thistle Thorne Permaculture, it began in the sterile halls of medicine—with a growing sense that something was missing.As Marina recalls, “After we were already medical doctors, we were unsatisfied with our career. And we wanted something that we could really dedicate our lives to that was meaningful.”Alexander’s search for meaning led him down an unexpected path. “I was searching about health and the systematic or universal aspects of health. And I came across about these discussions and research about soil health and human health.”This curiosity introduced him to Masanobu Fukuoka, the Japanese farmer and philosopher whose revolutionary “One Straw Revolution” challenged everything he thought he knew about agriculture.“I read his books and I was amazed. And I was wondering, like, that’s amazing. How can we go? How can I do it?”Fukuoka’s work opened the door, but it was Bill Mollison’s comprehensive permaculture texts that provided the roadmap. “When I researched further, I found Bill Mollison’s book. Because Bill Mollison, especially in introduction in Permaculture 2 and 1, he talks a lot about Fukuoka,” Alexander explains.Soon they were watching recordings from 2002: “There is an old PDC course recorded by Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton. Yeah, with a young Geoff Lawton. And we did this course first.”The couple made a decision that would change everything: they would leave medicine behind and become permaculturists.Education and RealityMarina and Alexander enrolled in Geoff Lawton’s year-long online PDC course. While they found it valuable, they quickly realized something crucial about the limitations of theoretical learning.“We did the online PDC one year course. It was very, very good. Like we learned a lot,” Marina shares. “Maybe we had another expectation. We thought it would be more practical, but it’s very theoretical and very based on the book.”She continues, “We really think that you can only understand the important points when you really need theory in daily life. So we really had clear to us that we should start something so that we could really learn.”This realization led them to Austria for a three-month internship at what they believed would be a permaculture farm. The experience proved eye-opening—but not in the way they expected.“Actually when we came there, it was really organic, but it was not permaculture anymore,” Marina explains. “The owners, they did a permaculture course a long time ago and they didn’t implement actually many, many permaculture principles.”Fresh from their PDC training, Marina and Alexander could see countless opportunities. “As the course, the PDC was so fresh in our heads, we could see so many opportunities to implement permaculture systems.”Marina reflects on the experience: “They had so much work that in our vision was unnecessary and they could really implement systems that would work for itself like flywheels.”The experience taught them a valuable lesson about resistance to change in traditional farming communities. As Alexander observed, “We learned that people from the countryside, they are very rooted in old ways. So many times they have difficulty to break free from these old patterns.”Rather than seeing this as a setback, the couple recognized an opportunity. “Then we decided, OK, maybe we need to do our own stuff. Like we don’t have to wait for someone to do it so that we can learn. We can just start by ourselves,” Marina concludes.The Backyard RevolutionAfter their internship, Marina and Alexander faced a practical question. “That takes us to a very important question, like how do you afford life while you change careers and plans,” Alexander notes. “Of course, we had like savings from our previous life and we had a plan, like if we needed to, we would search for a part-time job.”More importantly, they had to decide their focus. “We were thinking about how do we want to go about permaculture,” Alexander recalls, listing various possibilities from conservation to large-scale farming.“But we decided to go about the backyard,” he states simply.Why backyards? “We based on Bill Mollison and Geoff Lotto as well, they say basically that backyards are a golden opportunity. Like they start with small trials and expand.”The couple had learned about research supporting this approach. As Alexander explains, “There is this research about how productive a site is. And they found out that between, I think, 100 meters and 5,000... they say that’s the most productive size of a farm because you can have the input, the human input, to create the interaction, interactions between the elements, to multiply the yield.”Marina adds context about their philosophy: “Like we see the garden as an ecology that sustains itself and it’s like a ...
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    42 分
  • 108. Grant Payne: Balancing Permaculture and Production at Christine Acre Farms

    108. Grant Payne: Balancing Permaculture and Production at Christine Acre Farms
    2025/09/23

    In this episode of the Permaculture Vine Podcast, host Cormac Harkin sits down with Grant Payne, the innovative mind behind Christine Acre Farms. Grant shares his inspiring journey from a high school graduate to a passionate farmer embracing permaculture principles. Discover how he creatively utilizes IBC containers for sustainable farming, balances commercial and personal agricultural goals, and navigates the challenges of starting a farm from scratch. Tune in for a deep dive into the world of permaculture, resilience, and the future of sustainable farming.



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    48 分
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