Your land would be considered usable by the figures I give because people still need wood for houses, furniture, and paper. In fact, the 5.7 acres I quote assumes that some of that land is occupied by trees for that very purpose.

No land is useless. Even the untillable land yields minerals and metals. Deserts are more than countered by aquaculture and folks who live offshore.

It occurs to me that though it was homesteaded in 1882, my land has never been put to any agricultural use than grazing, it’s always been deemed ‘not worthwhile’ for any other use. Our acreage contributes mightely to the world’s tree population. Does the formula you quoted take into account the world’s untillable acreage and the need we have for forests?

Yeah, I think about all this a lot. I even commented on the updated version of John Seymour’s book at Amazon, so it’s a very small world, eh?

The biggest problem my wife and I have had is that it costs gobs of money to switch from normal methods to permatculture methods if you are starting from scratch. Much more than we thought. So we are going very slowly.

We’re trying to co-plant our fruit orchard using guild methods. We also bought highly disease-resistant fruit varieties in order to keep our need to spray (even organically) down. Despite the fact that all the hardwood cherry trees on our property have always been safe, our little fruiting cherry trees we planted in May got eaten to pieces by Japanese beetles in a single day while we were out on the town. So we put up the traps, did the cheesecloth coverings, and even resorted to a powdering of pyrethrins (as natural an insecticide as is possible.) Co-planting and all the permaculture methods in the world won’t help when you’re fighting an invasion of non-native species that when massed can destroy an entire tree in a day. Will do the milky spore thing this fall, but the cost is exhorbitant for the amount of land we have. I could always sell a kidney, I guess.

Still, I discovered that after a while trees adapt to getting hit hard by the beetles and they produce some chemical as a result that keeps bugs away. I think the very act of damaging the leaves brings on this form of natural response. I’d never noticed this before this year. That’s the kind of thing a natural farmer anticipates that a regular farmer does not. Will put that into play for us next year.

It’s hard to be a permaculture farmer when you start from nothing. We’ll get there eventually, though. My wife is pretty tough about the whole thing and has read every permaculture book there is (while persuading me to do the same.) The farmers around us think we’re nuts, but we’ll carry on as the freaky organic Christians. We’ve always been the square pegs—what can I say?

When John Seymour published “The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency” in 1975, he outlined traditional methods that had been tested over centuries that included crop rotation. He advocated that it was possible to support a family on five acres. However, permaculture, introduces concepts that defy traditional agriculture and have the potential for greater productivity for less work and less interference with nature.

When I speak with others of living in community and being self sufficient in the hope that there will be a spark of mutual recognition, I easily forget that it is permaculture principles that handed me a vivid and viable vision for working the land. And while they are thinking “hoeing potatoes” I am thinking “forest gardening”, while they are not liking the idea of “back breaking ploughing” I am thinking “minimum tillage”. If they are picturing “hours spent weeding” I am seeing a great harvest of dandelions, plantain, coltsfoot, milk thistle and other useful “weeds”.

It sounds as if you are many years and heartaches ahead of me in your dream and it sounds like there has been plenty of blood sweat and tears - literally; but hang in there and I shall be praying and trying to not to get covetous about the progress you have made so far.

We recently joined a subscrition scheme for organic produce. It is very reasonably priced and the sack of seasonal veg is delivered once a week. However, some of it comes from quite far afield and the energy spent bringing it to our door probably cancels out all the good of the organic-ness of it. In truth, I think that the only way to take control of our foods is to be involved in every stage of their production.

I will mourn with you the apparent truth that very few Christians have been turned on to the importance of this. If you need to keep the dream afloat I would recommend tucking into some of the stuff the bruderhof publish. I am currently reading J. Heinrich Arnold’s biography. His father told him, “the goal of your training as a farmer is not merely to prepare you for your own future. All the movements of the past decades will one day converge in a radical awakening of the masses that leads the way to social justice and God’s unity. And so we prepare ourselves to set our little community in the midst of this mighty awakening. We cannot cling to a time when, as now, we are a small circle of people who know eachother intimately. We must be ready to be consumed in a mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit.” The broad horizon of his vision was a key to the bruderhof’s continuing success. I think we are more likely to need this knowledge in the face of persecution and economic exclusion but it is having a God given prophetic context for both the inspiration and the perspiration that is so essential.

Apologies for the length of the comment. I am always wanting to leave comments on your blog but rarely seen to have the time - I am on holiday and at leisure at the moment. All the best with your writing and when you re-emerge, I am sure we can correspond at greater length.

While I was crafting my economic point, you commented and made the same point! Oh well.