One of the major reasons Emma and I were excited about visiting Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, a place we’ve been to numerous times (as this country is more or less our base), earlier this year was that there are several developed permaculture sites there. These are spots that have been operating long enough to have productive trees and, as well, have been developed by people who’ve been at the game for a while. It’s not a stage we’ve seen as often as we’d like to.
All of our time as permaculture enthusiasts has been spent working on other people’s plots. More often than not, we are looked to, in this capacity, as the “experts” (something we openly sniffle and giggle about). Just the same, we have usually started (or continued) these projects with a set of circumstances not conducive to permaculture design. People love the idea of zones but are more interested in annual crops and in having the garden over there, in that out-of-the-way spot, to “see how it goes.”
At the lake, we were particularly keen to visit a long-time resident, Shad, who has got his own site in a village called Tzununa. Our friends had visited not long ago and come back impressed with his swale and pond system, as well as totting some legume seeds that looked familiar (pigeon peas). Shad is known pretty well around the lake and has become somewhat of a man in demand. Even so, with little more than an email from strangers, he made plans to meet us and took time out to give us a tour.
Where We Began
One of the things that happens nine-point-something times out of ten when volunteering on farms is that they are early and/or struggling in their conception. Beginning growers (of which I consider myself only partially removed) tend to end up in over their heads to the extent that volunteers are left to come up with their own ideas. Ultimately, many of the places we’ve seen have become a hodge-podge of unfinished and abandoned projects, to which we’ve no doubt contributed.
We met Shad at a farmers’ market that happens every Saturday at the hostel—shout out to our friends Dave and Deedle at La Iguana Perdida!—where we always stay. He showed up with a cooler full of fresh goat milk and ginger beer in recycled bottles, as well as some mixed cooking greens and mixed salad greens harvested (and “triple-washed”) that morning. We stood chatting for likely a couple of hours, stepping aside when the occasional customer came through. Before leaving, he gave about half his milk to locals who’d come to sell their crops. One lady gave him some red bananas in return.
Shad has worked at many spots around the lake, often in the capacity of designer and creator of permaculture gardens. He worked at IMAP, a permaculture institute in another village on Lake Atitlan, and still conducts design courses in conjunction with it. However, a few years ago, he found his piece of property, a great spot with a continuous water source flowing by it, and began his own thing: Atitlan Organics. He’d also felt the grind of working for others people, more interested in the label of permaculture but less inclined to actual permaculture designs.
Second-Rate Reduction
In our attempts at design, Emma and I have always brushed up against conflicting ideals. We’ve built swales, hugelkultur mounds, sheet mulch gardens, banana circles and countless raised beds. We’ve whipped up herb spirals, container gardens, and numerous compost bins. We’ve come up with all sorts of water collection/natural irrigation systems, mulching our eyeballs out with organic matter taken from neighbors’ lawns, roadsides, and trash bins. It has been fun and interesting but, ultimately, something of a disappointment.
At first, for us, two travelers hot and heavy into our design manuals and course videos, this was an amazing opportunity. We were given the chance to experiment with many of the techniques we’d stumbled upon. We got to put our research into practice, learning and failing. We got to wow people with a growing knowledge, the ability to build garden for next to nothing (cost-wise), and pictures of previous accomplishments. We even started making some meager money from it all.
However, as Shad concurred, it’s a difficult thing to design with obstacles, to feel that constant tug inside suggesting it’d be better another way or this way probably won’t be successful in the end. For us, it has grown increasingly harder to pour our hearts into the next project, while we continue to wonder about the fate of the previous one. And, it’s here—on other people’s farms, for other people’s farms—where we’ve reached, where Shad also reached, a serious personal dilemma: To design or not to design.
The Other Side
For Emma and I, the solution is somewhat simple and somewhat shocking: After about a decade of traveling and working, we have to settle down somewhere, get a plot of our own. And, we’ve come to the point of wanting to do so. The prospect of building from the ground up, something we are and aren’t completely prepared for (who is ever fully prepared), has become more exciting than traveling, the preferred adventure, so to speak. Now, we just have to find the right place.
Shad did something similar, and he is well into his project. He’s focused on small animal husbandry, specifically with chickens and goats, collecting eggs, milk, and meat from them. He’s got them interacting with the landscape, thick gardens of fruit trees and vegetables that, after harvest, get turned and tilled by the chickens. He’s produced kilos upon kilos of produce and is feeding his family, selling enough to have a bit of spending cash. Looking at his farm is exciting because he’s done it his way.
Of course, he’s still being asked to have a look at such-and-such property for his advice. His reputation now precedes him such that, when we would mention permaculture around the lake, people would typically ask if we’d seen Shad’s property. And, at the market that day, we got to see how he handles it, something so sensible: Rather than working on other people’s property, he tells them to come visit his, and they can talk about how it works, where it’s going, and how to do something similar.
The Final Result
That statement, the ability to deliver that invitation, to a farm built around permaculture principles rather than adopting a technique or two for some garden beds, seems the missing ingredient. We have talked and talked to owners about water catchments, renewable energy, perennial plants, organic matter and eco-construction, but it just doesn’t seem to resonate fully. The walls of what has been never give way to what could be, and in the end, it’s not our choice to make. The place isn’t ours.
Shad has been through this. He knows it isn’t his, but he now has a sounding board—a farm of his own—from which to voice his opinions. Want to know what he thinks should be done to a property—for real—then look at his. He’ll share the seeds you need. He’ll tell you and show you how to get it done (he was offering a free three-day mini-course at the end of the week). But, the days of loosely piecing projects together for other people were behind him.
As for us, there is a lot in store in the coming years. We’ve just begun seriously looking for land. We’ve finally gotten to that point of wanting to experiment on a deeper level, with all systems a go rather than carving out tiny spaces of green here and there, hoping they have enough to get by on when we are gone. It’s the only way, we’ve discovered, to discover just how far we can go with permaculture and how exactly it is that we want to do it.
