Episode-722- Bill Wilson on Permaculture’s Guiding Principles
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Today we welcome back a great prior guest, Bill Wilson of Midwest Permaculture. Bill’s entire life is dedicated to teaching and practicing permaculture.
Bill is an amazing guy that followed his dream, walked away from a career and created something special. He has a special gift for making some of permaculture’s more complex components easy to understand and an unstoppable passion for teaching and spreading the word that no matter what the problem may be, we can find a solution utilizing a sustainable methodology.
Midwest Permaculture guides their students in how to develop the observational skills, the knowledge, and the practical information to create sustainable landscapes and communities — to develop more permanent cultures. Students are trained to explore how to consciously provide all of the goods and services we need while also developing ways to leave the planet in better condition than when we arrived on it.
In Bill’s words, “If each successive generation left the planet in better condition, we would be living in a more ideal world today. ”
Join Us today as We Discuss
- How Bill went from truck driver to permaculture
- How the Midwest PDC saves people time
- What you gain in taking a PDC
- Permaculture’s Prime Directive
- The three ethics
- Care of the earth
- Care of people
- Return of surplus
- Principles of permaculture design in practice
Additional Resources for Today’s Show
- Members Support Brigade
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- Join Our Forum
- Safecastle Royal – (sponsor of the day)
- MURS Radio – (sponsor of the day)
- Midwest Permaculture
- Midwest Permaculture on Facebook
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Haha, if any of you do happen to fear change and happen to win the lottery, I’d be glad to help make sure nothing changes 🙂
You know, I play the lottery regularly just on the remote chance that we could actually hit it — plus, the cost is minimal considering that I always pack lunches to work, brew my own coffee, grow a huge garden and am generally true to my Scots-Irish heritage of frugality (IOW a cheap bastard).
Just last night I jokingly said to my wife, “I have to check and see if my retirement plan came through.” Then, I thought about it for a second and said that the only thing different between if I hit the lottery or not was the timing and scale of my “retirement plan” — that both basically involved converting our house to greater energy efficiency and spending time in homesteading/farming activities.
I guess this just goes to show that even if you hit the lottery things still don’t really have to change all that much. 😀
I like that’s its a fully encompassing life philosophy. You don’t hear as much about that, but to me, that’s much more to the point than just good gardening principles.
I love shows like this, such great info!
I remember hearing a great fact once (it may have been on your show, I can’t remember) that the average tribal society spends about 15 hours each week working. The rest of their time is spent doing enjoyable leisure activities.
Funny that we spend so much time working so we’ll have money to spend on leisure activities that we have no time for the activities themselves!!
Anyway, great show once again!
Great show today.
You hit on a good point, and I would like to thank you, Jack. My initial understanding of permaculture was wrong. It was explained to me by an “eco-hippie” that had so politicized the concept, essentially stating that it was the keystone an effective world government. I was presented incomprehensible psudo-facts that didn’t hold up to even basic logic.
After listening to your shows centered on the subject over the past few years, I now realize the person who had introduced me to permaculture knew as little about it as they evidently knew about anything else (nothing at all). I began with a strong bias against the very idea of permaculture. You shows have shown me that it’s not only a good system, it’s a system I’ve been unwittingly using for years. That’s not to say that I’m incredibly insightful I just happened to figure it all out on my own. I see now its a system based on very rudimentary logic and observation, it’s all pretty common sense stuff.
One hemp-wearing vegan nut-job almost prevented me from learning about one of the most empowering pieces of knowledge I can use in my daily life. Thanks for setting me straight on the subject.
Good Show as always. Jack, when you do take Bill’s course, you should do the Survival Podcast from there and interview students on what they learned, why they are taking the course, what their plans are etc. Might be interesting to get a sense of the demographic diversity that is interested in permaculture and the trends that are shaping up and driving people to these same conclusions about the unsustainability of modern society.