Were our grandparents permaculture farmers?

[Moindreffor]

by looking a little we find descriptions of what permaculture would be and following a discussion with a friend this afternoon we came to ben "that's what my grandfather was doing"

ok, at my grandfather’s there was no fed up, he didn’t make mounds and he digged his vegetable garden, but there was everything else, a corner for making hay, chickens, rabbits, dry toilets, no bathroom, no freezer, very few or no purchases of vegetables, seed harvest, a tank for rainwater etc etc ...

so permacultor before time?

by watching videos of permaculturists we come across young thirties who did not know our grandparents and this time, so are they not marveling at their discovery which is in fact only the mode of our grandparents' classic life?

[Did67]

Compared to the various initiations of discussion on permaculture here, I think that we must try, as always, to clarify the concepts!

a) "Permaculture" as conceived by Mollison and Holmgren is NOT a gardening technique - or cultivation!

The poor must turn in their grave when they see all that is published as nonsense by deviating this term, and reducing it to a "technique of market gardening, or gardening"! It is the Citroën father reduced to a wiper !!!

b) Permaculture is an attempt to live by minimizing negative impacts on the environment (and people's lives - health, etc.) and to maximize the noble aspects of a civilization: social relations, mutual aid, etc. . It is a philosophy of life !!!

It is the famous "flower" which encompasses all organizational aspects, health, education, culture, protection of the earth, etc ...

2019-03-30_09h02_57 perma.png

c) The true translation of "permaculture" would be "sustainable civilization"... Culture in the sense of" cultivating the land "is rather" cropping "or" to grow "in English.

d) Therefore, I think that in France - given our average level of English - the discussion is piped!

e) Our grandparents were "green" by necessity: to survive, they had no choice; fertilizers and pesticides and machinery had not been invented ... Mutual aid, as always when there are no social mechanisms ("social security"), were a condition of survival. But it was, in part, suffered. I knew that time when we ALWAYS gave a hand to the sick neighbor, or in the shit. While calling him lazy, incapable, drunk or whatever with my back turned. And sometimes - not always, there were also friends! - by being very contemptuous of him.

I think there is a lot of naivety and idealism in the idolatry of our "so green grandparents". For me, it's story-telling !!!

The proof: when the fertilizers and pesticides arrived, they threw themselves on them. There wasn't a cop or even an agricultural advisor behind every farmer to force him to use them. The advisers came much later! Even though it was their downfall - which they didn't know - they pounced on them. And they led the life very hard to the pioneers of "organic", who, for their part, saw the limits of this system, and refused to submit to the dictates of emerging input companies ("agro-capitalism").

e) I'm not going any further. You understood me, I think.

So no, our grandparents were not "permaculture". They had nothing of the idealism and humanism of the founders of "permaculture", who carried an "idealistic" political project, a "better world because it was green" ... Our grandparents were not not "baba-cools" (if I can use that portmanteau to keep it simple). The founders of permaculture yes!

Mollison's bio according to Wikipedia:

"Born in 1928 in Stanley (Tasmania), Bill Mollison left school at 15 and made a living from odd jobs. From 1954, he worked as a biologist for 9 years in the Australian bush for an environmental organization, then 3 years as a marine biologist for the Australian government, then in 1966 he returned to school and still saw odd jobs, before earning his degree in biogeography and becoming a professor at the University of Tasmania where he created the department of Environmental Psychology.

In 1974, Bill Mollison developed the concept of permaculture with David Holmgren. Since 1978, he has devoted all his time to the development of permaculture and in 1981, for his work on permaculture, he received the Alternative Nobel Prize. "

Holmgren's bio:

David Holmgren was born in the state of Western Australia. His parents having been very active in the anti-Vietnam war movement, he was quickly exposed to political activism, which served as the basis for his own environmental commitment. After obtaining his high school diploma, he decided to spend a year on the road hitchhiking, and it was in this context that he realized the extent of the movement "back to Earth ". In 1974, he moved to Tasmania to study environmental design at the University of Advanced Education in Hobart, where he met Bill Mollison, who was then a lecturer at the University of Tasmania.

So I think we are doubly wrong.

This is of course only my perception of things ... So necessarily very questionable!

[Moindreffor]

you have a very pessimistic vision of the lifestyle of your grandparents, and I may be too optimistic of mine, but we do not have the same past nor the same regional origin, what you describe I cannot find in my memory

the ch'ti are renowned for their conviviality, mutual aid in my region was not forced, we often worked the vegetable gardens in family, we took turns digging the brother's garden, then the brother-in-law's and so on , they were often large families

of course i'm not talking about farmers, (where I completely agree with you i have examples in my family too) i have no memory of my grandfather using fertilizers other than those produced by his animals, chickens, pigeons and rabbits

he also never cultivated tomatoes and therefore no Bordeaux mixture, maybe a little sulfur,

on the other hand, indeed, the next generation, that of my father, is more like what you describe and that was the next point in our discussion yesterday with my friend, the next generation was the one where we had to succeed and that was any price and there it was the headlong rush

I don't think their lifestyle was affected, and even if they weren't baba-cool, my summer vacation with my grandparents was pretty cool , harvesting vegetables, canning, making jams, I was a master in clafoutis I was going to make it with my grandmother's friends, my great pride of the time ...
it was the short circuit butter, milk, wheat for the hens at the farm opposite, the little coop for cheese some cookies, chocolate, canned sardines, exotic fruits bananas, orange, butcher in the square, they never had a car and yet never lacked for anything

maybe my grandfather was a man apart, because he was content with simple things and had only the ambition to live happily

reading the article cited in the other post on the visit to the farm of the Australian founder of permaculture, I find that my grandfather was doing much better in terms of food production, both plant and animal

maybe I idealize my childhood memories

[Did67]

There are surely differences. Individual. The "temperament" of each other.

You should also know that I come from a very poor part of Alsace ("Alsace Bossue", geographically located on the Lorraine side, near the "Pays de Bitche" long famous for its military camp).

I am also talking about families of small "subsistence" farmers, even if my father had added an "income-generating" activity (two, exactly: production of market gardeners / flowers and lumberjack in winter).

The idea of ​​famine was always present. A hailstorm, or the rain that did not come and it was reactivated !!!

Later, my father would even be a farmer, adding to all this a job in the factory ... His 42 hours in the factory, he said he would rest !!! Everything was clean. The flat floor. No feet to lift. Heated in winter ...

At home, it has never been misery. But always the hassle in the sense of "too much work", in the sense of "we are still late for this or that ...", continuous days from 5 am to dark night (so 22:30 pm in summer).

I'm not going to complain, because it is one of the roots of the "lazy man's vegetable garden": having a lot while doing little! The crisis of adolescence, in what it can have oppositional, at 55 years!

I am not complaining especially insofar as, very young, it was clear to me: to come out on top. The school of the Republic has been a lift. And the "grognards of the Republic" (these officials - teacher s - now so hated) real fathers of substitution. Saviors! They knew how to "guide": they made the file, had a drink with the father, then used their authority to say "Sign here, Mr. Helmstetter". Here I am! They are vivid memories. I'm on the verge of tears in my eyes chatting this !!!

I knew mutual aid. And also neighborhood conflicts for a simple goat who had escaped and had damaged the neighboring garden. Which spanned two generations. One family did not get along with another. Of course, there was friendship. But not only, did I mean!

I don't know why, I can't equate this to Mollison / Holmgren-style permaculture. It is, for me, another world!

Intuitively (beyond the arguments advanced above).

I may be wrong.

It is a singular story, at the heart of the guts that I am telling there.

[Moindreffor]

There are surely differences. Individual. The "temperament" of each other.

You should also know that I come from a very poor part of Alsace ("Alsace Bossue", geographically located on the Lorraine side, near the "Pays de Bitche" long famous for its military camp).

I am also talking about families of small "subsistence" farmers, even if my father had added an "income-generating" activity (two, exactly: production of market gardeners / flowers and lumberjack in winter).

The idea of ​​famine was always present. A hailstorm, or the rain that did not come and it was reactivated !!!

Later, my father would even be a farmer, adding to all this a job in the factory ... His 42 hours in the factory, he said he would rest !!! Everything was clean. The flat floor. No feet to lift. Heated in winter ...

At home, it has never been misery. But always the hassle in the sense of "too much work", in the sense of "we are still late for this or that ...", continuous days from 5 am to dark night (so 22:30 pm in summer).

I'm not going to complain, because it is one of the roots of the "lazy man's vegetable garden": having a lot while doing little! The crisis of adolescence, in what it can have oppositional, at 55 years!

I am not complaining especially insofar as, very young, it was clear to me: to come out on top. The school of the Republic has been a lift. And the "grognards of the Republic" (these officials - teacher s - now so hated) real fathers of substitution. Saviors! They knew how to "guide": they made the file, had a drink with the father, then used their authority to say "Sign here, Mr. Helmstetter". Here I am! They are vivid memories. I'm on the verge of tears in my eyes chatting this !!!

I knew mutual aid. And also neighborhood conflicts for a simple goat who had escaped and had damaged the neighboring garden. Which spanned two generations. One family did not get along with another. Of course, there was friendship. But not only, did I mean!

I don't know why, I can't equate this to Mollison / Holmgren-style permaculture. It is, for me, another world!

Intuitively (beyond the arguments advanced above).

I may be wrong.

It is a singular story, at the heart of the guts that I am telling there.

yes so here we compare two worlds, for my part it was the family of railway workers, the runners (homing pigeons) the parts of cards, not great wealth either but not misery, my grandmother in weaving and my great -father roadmender to the SNCF, there actually no climatic hazards, a life of modest workers

[to be chafoin]

Certainly in their time everything was recycled and traded or traded in a fairly short circuit and social relations were what they were but in any case they were followed. My grandparents may have had strong vegetable gardens in the countryside, but what is certain is that they did not make mounds! more or less sure: did not try to draw the perimeter of the plots according to rounded shapes ... They surely had less concern for aesthetics-boo in their gardening but, although I have no clear memories of it, their vegetable garden should not be less beautiful or pleasant. Nor should they try to occupy the soil permanently with different crops ...

[Did67]

yes so here we compare two worlds, for my part it was the family of railway workers, the runners (homing pigeons) the parts of cards, not great wealth either but not misery, my grandmother in weaving and my great -father roadmender to the SNCF, there actually no climatic hazards, a life of modest workers

I think, in fact, that it was "another world": it is not for nothing that the dream, in a family like mine, was to become a railway worker, or postman ... With already a " social organization "(ah, the gardens of the railway workers! With a network to obtain seeds, etc ...), sometimes the benefits of years of social (union) struggles ... Already" monetary "income (from money, what; not too much, but enough) ... Sometimes, already leisure (a word that my parents did not know! The maximum, for them: a family celebration with cousins ​​in Moselle - one day, after the morning milking; a neighbor who helped out with the evening milking; I have experienced this once or twice in their LIFE!) ... In short, it was already PROGRESS !!!

[Moindreffor]

yes so here we compare two worlds, for my part it was the family of railway workers, the runners (homing pigeons) the parts of cards, not great wealth either but not misery, my grandmother in weaving and my great -father roadmender to the SNCF, there actually no climatic hazards, a life of modest workers

I think, in fact, that it was "another world": it is not for nothing that the dream, in a family like mine, was to become a railway worker, or postman ... With already a " social organization "(ah, the gardens of the railway workers! With a network to obtain seeds, etc ...), sometimes the benefits of years of social (union) struggles ... Already" monetary "income (from money, what; not too much, but enough) ... Sometimes, already leisure (a word that my parents did not know! The maximum, for them: a family celebration with cousins ​​in Moselle - one day, after the morning milking; a neighbor who helped out with the evening milking; I have experienced this once or twice in their LIFE!) ... In short, it was already PROGRESS !!!

yes indeed when i talk about our grandparents with other people around me and when we approach gardening, it all comes back to us in memory, the craft package of railway seeds, collective memory
indeed a salary even modest but constant, it is a clear advantage on an income which depends on the vagaries of the weather
in the north with industrialization (unions), weaving, mines, bistros, couloneux, ducasses, and balls, there was a social bond, so we can really talk about another world

[Stef72]

Hello,

being a little younger, my grandparents - farmers on both sides - knew the arrival of pesticides and fertilizers on all sides and abused it abundantly ... I have cases of diseases which I find suspicious, I will not be surprised that it is related to agricultural products ... but we will never know now.
and I find similarities with what Didier said above: mutual aid, yes, but human relationships which could be complicated because of trifles ... I would like to believe that they had a knowledge of nature more push, but I do not see activism or search for serenity or symbiosis with nature.

When I met organic farmers hired for the first time a little over 10 years ago, it was a little culture shock for me to see that people could see things a little differently, to have the worry of preserve nature while working in the agricultural environment ...

[Moindreffor]

Hello,

being a little younger, my grandparents - farmers on both sides - knew the arrival of pesticides and fertilizers on all sides and abused it abundantly ... I have cases of diseases which I find suspicious, I will not be surprised that it is related to agricultural products ... but we will never know now.
and I find similarities with what Didier said above: mutual aid, yes, but human relationships which could be complicated because of trifles ... I would like to believe that they had a knowledge of nature more push, but I do not see activism or search for serenity or symbiosis with nature.

When I met organic farmers hired for the first time a little over 10 years ago, it was a little culture shock for me to see that people could see things a little differently, have the worry of preserve nature while working in the agricultural environment ...

yes the arrival of chemical farming was a shock for the agricultural world, with the post war discourse that it was necessary to feed the people therefore to produce and with that the hope of better incomes
organic, is indeed a refusal of all this chemistry to return to what there was before, but in the non-agricultural world around the same time we did not use all these products "yet", it is well after with the generation that follows when women started to work, that time is running out that we always wanted to save more time and that chemistry has offered individuals what it had already offered to farmers
so I'm talking about our grandparents outside the agricultural world