[HN Gopher] What is permaculture? (2015)
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What is permaculture? (2015)
Author : mooreds
Score : 171 points
Date : 2023-05-09 11:23 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.permaculturedesignmagazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.permaculturedesignmagazine.com)
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| ankaAr wrote:
| I will leave this here if you don't have "land" to grow your own
| crops. It is in Spanish.
|
| The guy is from buenos Aires, doing everything with our selling
| anything and recycling everything with permacultura in mind.
|
| As some of the comments said, it is more about how you see what
| you are doing in relation with others and why.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/@ElRecicladorUrbano/videos
| antoniuschan99 wrote:
| For space constrained you can stack oem aerogarden clones on a
| bookshelf next to the window. It's great for lettuce, herbs, and
| tomatoes.
| cyberax wrote:
| "Permaculture" (n) - growing things in your garden to eat
| alongside supermarket-bought food, while pretending to be a good
| green farmer.
|
| Reality bites. You simply can not grow enough calories to feed
| yourself, in a way that scales to the whole planet. Or even a
| significant part of the planet. You need staple crops such as
| beans, potatoes, wheat that are not fun to grow. You need fixed
| nitrogen and likely phosphorus for fertilizer, unless you happen
| to live on a very good soil.
| awavering wrote:
| Also, beans and potatoes _are_ fun to grow.
| awavering wrote:
| The vast majority of permaculturists don't do it with the goal
| of 100% self-sufficiency. Interdependence is part of the game.
| cyberax wrote:
| How would "interdependence" help? If anything, it makes it
| even worse. Growing enough staples even for yourself and your
| family is hard, growing it for trade is even more
| complicated.
|
| Try it, and pretty soon you need to actually do real
| agriculture.
| carapace wrote:
| I first learned about Permaculture from reading my parent's copy
| of "The Next Whole Earth Catalog", which reviewed Mollison's
| "Permaculture: A Designers' Manual" (which, BTW is one of the
| greatest books on design that I've ever read, not just for
| farms!)
|
| So, to me, it's mixed up with things like Christopher Alexander's
| "Pattern Language", and Bucky Fuller's synergistic "Dymaxion"
| worldview.
|
| Basically, in a nutshell, there is a possible (technically and
| economically feasible) world that's much nicer than ours, just on
| the other side of an imaginary barrier that exists only in the
| human mind. Or so I believe...
|
| We can provide for ourselves the lower levels of Maslow's
| Hierarchy, "Physiological needs" (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs ) in
| a way that is fun, easy, harmonious with other living things,
| deprives no one, etc. "and nobody has to get nailed to anything".
| I don't know if this is true, but I don't see any physical
| reasons why it wouldn't work. (Everybody always says "but what
| about human nature" at this point, and I'll get to that in a
| moment.)
|
| I have finally, at long last, acquired some land with the express
| purpose of testing out this hypothesis. (Twenty acres in N.
| California.) I'm going to employ a mix of Permaculture, Syntropic
| Agriculture, Alexander's Pattern Language, Bucky's ideas, etc.
| and robots and automation to create a kind of bubble of this
| alternate reality, or a time-warp (just a little one) to the Star
| Trek-style future.
|
| Assuming this works out, the idea then is to facilitate more
| people and land living this way. I see this as a kind of economic
| phase change that has to happen (I believe we have to live in
| harmony with Nature or our civilization could collapse.)
|
| If this sounds interesting to you, and you more-or-less have your
| act together and would like to help out, let me know.
| sforman@hushmail.com
|
| - - - -
|
| In re: the "but what about human nature?" argument against the
| possibility of a better world:
|
| First, as I get older I get much less sympathy for that in
| general. Get over your bullshit and act like a decent human
| being. It's not that hard and the rewards are worth the effort.
|
| Second, I suspect that's what's really going on here: this is a
| sim, and the win condition is just not to be quite such a
| shithead. _Good Character_ is the only thing you take with you
| when the game ends, so build it up now while you can!
|
| Third, even though they don't get a lot of fanfare in the mass
| media, there are numerous protocols and techniques for better
| communication and mental and emotional healing. Things like Non-
| Violent Communication, or the Core Transformation Process. I have
| high hopes that the new talking computers will make inexpensive,
| inexhaustible perfect therapists. I think the computers will talk
| us down off the ledge, so to speak.
| suoduandao2 wrote:
| that sounds interesting! I'm in eastern Canada and would more
| likely be helping out on my parents' permaculture homestead or
| planting extra berries in my own suburban yard than helping
| yourself, but if you're documenting the process I'd like to see
| it!
| carapace wrote:
| Oh yeah, I'm going to document the hell out of it. I've got a
| dozen little wi-fi cameras for streaming, etc. I'm also going
| to run the project on a open books basis (another review from
| TNWEC: "Honest Business: A Superior Strategy for Starting and
| Managing Your Own Business" by Salli Rasberry and Michael
| Phillips)
| mythrwy wrote:
| I'm suspicious of permaculture because I had a friend back in the
| early 2000s that got into it with a local group and it seemed
| almost like a cult and they didn't produce enough food to feed a
| couple of hamsters that I saw.
|
| He did buy all the Mollison books and talked about how he was
| going to get land and hire people to do the work. I never figured
| out how he was intending to pay the people with the 20 gallons of
| persimmons he was optimistically going to get.
|
| I'm an agronomist by training so it was especially irritating
| arguing with him having been around at-scale food production, and
| this went on for months as he was totally obsessed.
|
| There are some interesting theories in it. Like catching water on
| a hill with terraces. Which people did in earlier times and maybe
| still do in certain parts of the world. A lot of things that
| people living a simpler life found out a long time ago presented
| as a "system".
|
| My takeaway though is that (as practiced anyway) it's a bit of an
| culty scam, but there are worse ones and people being outside and
| around nature and growing things is in sum a good thing in my
| opinion so maybe I'm being a bit harsh.
|
| Anyway, I don't know everything, but it just doesn't seem
| practical at any scale to provide calories. I'd probably feel
| better about it had I not heard this guy's impractical cultish
| preaching for months. I hope he is doing fine wherever he is and
| got his land in the end.
| vram22 wrote:
| I had posted this comment on HN around 3 years ago, on a related
| thread:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24827234
|
| Some people appreciated it, and one person said it gave them a
| lot of material to work on (downthread).
|
| I was only reporting on the work of other well-known
| permaculturists and regenerative farmers , although I have an
| interest in permaculture and had done some organic gardening for
| a few years earlier. But that work I had done (literally hands-
| on) gave me some background and perspective to be able to think
| about their work as they talked about it through their videos,
| which is why I decided to post that comment.
| awhitty wrote:
| I went to a small Montessori school on the Rio Grande while I was
| growing up, and among the other "new age"-y things going on at
| the school, we would spend half a day every week in permaculture
| class. We spent that class doing things like gardening,
| constructing adobe stuff like ovens and a gathering space shaped
| like a turtle (the head formed a pizza oven too - it was really
| cool), collecting eggs from a chicken coop, recycling fibers and
| scrap paper into (very brittle) paper, and making tea out of the
| herbs we grew - mint, chamomile, lavender, etc.
|
| One of the most profound memories I have from that school is of
| Ms. Susan teaching us to say "thank you" to the plants when we
| took a few of their leaves for the tea. We'd look at the plant,
| find some good leaves, pluck 'em off, and then say "thank you"
| and move to the next one. It was kind of an intimate moment to
| share with a mint plant haha. It was probably also very cute for
| the teachers to watch a flock of kids roam around a garden and
| stare intently at some herbs for an hour.
|
| It was the kind of thing that really sinks in when you're a kid.
| I didn't know it wasn't a "normal" kind of education, and I just
| figured, "we take our time and say thank you to the plants when
| take something from them" was a general rule of life that the
| adults follow too. I really cherish those memories now! Sometimes
| I thought they were boring af at the time - learning about
| compositing toilets isn't really priority #1 for a 9 year-old -
| but I hope other kids growing up are taught a similar connection
| to nature today. We've gotta say thank you to the plants!
| tpmx wrote:
| It's messed up for a school to get children to verbally
| apologize to plants. It implies that plants have feelings.
|
| Plants don't have feelings. This is a fact that I hope even
| most green activists on HN agree with, but perhaps not. It
| would explain a lot of otherwise insane activities.
|
| (and of course, you can't discuss this without being downvoted
| to smithereens - in my case to such a level that I am not
| allowed to respond; please do grow up, you lovely mysticists
| who are at all not shutting those who disagree with you)
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Why not be grateful regardless of whether things have
| feelings?
|
| The practice of gratitude is a good one, internally and
| externally, for the living and the inert. We don't have to
| imagine the plants have souls; it's the simple act of
| acknowledgment and appreciation that instills a sense of
| value and importance upon the things that keep us alive.
| badpun wrote:
| They didn't apologize, they expressed gratitude (that's what
| "thank you" means). Although the usage here was debatable, as
| the plant didn't have any say in its leaves being cropped,
| and of course it only makes sense to thank for a deliberate
| act. So, in a way, these children were taught inconsistent
| logic.
| tough wrote:
| It's like when you get a -Thank you for your services- note
| while getting fired or layed off.
|
| lmao
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| It's really fascinating that you appear to register
| 'thanking' as 'apologizing'.
|
| And I thank you for that, as I think it just helped me better
| understand a broad group of the general population I could
| never quite figure out.
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| Could you share your understanding please? I can't quite
| wrap my head around registering thanking as apologizing.
| shagie wrote:
| From the original post:
|
| > One of the most profound memories I have from that
| school is of Ms. Susan teaching us to say "thank you" to
| the plants when we took a few of their leaves for the
| tea. We'd look at the plant, find some good leaves, pluck
| 'em off, and then say "thank you" and move to the next
| one
|
| And the response:
|
| > It's messed up for a school to get children to verbally
| apologize to plants. It implies that plants have
| feelings.
|
| The followup to that is about the confusion/"these are
| the same things" for _thanking_ something being the same
| as apologizing for that same thing - that gratitude is
| the same as remorse.
|
| ---
|
| The difference is:
|
| > Thank you for the leaf that I will use for tea
|
| vs
|
| > I'm sorry that I'm picking your leaf for my own
| enjoyment
|
| The first example here is thanking (a plant) and the
| second example is apologizing for taking action implying
| feeling sorry for the harm caused to the plant.
| wccrawford wrote:
| The original post only talked about thanking the plants.
| The reply only talks about apologizing to the plants.
| Clearly the reply thinks that's the same thing here.
| awhitty wrote:
| Ah, they didn't have us apologize to plants - only to thank
| 'em. It wasn't a guilty thing we did, but it was a lesson to
| appreciate that they were growing and that we could enjoy
| them.
|
| I'm surprised you didn't stop at the idea that it also
| implies plants have hearing and can understand language and
| process some kind of human meaning - I feel like those are
| more absurd than the idea than a plant feels. (More organisms
| on this planet demonstrate something like feelings than the
| capacity to verbally communicate.) But yes, I project the
| idea the plants have something like human feelings, and
| that's definitely a product of that kind of education
| reverberating through my life. It was a kind of spiritual
| lesson, and the school incorporated other spiritual elements
| like performing the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address during
| some school assemblies and camping trips. I'm not confused
| about those as an adult.
|
| I also know that a plant's experience on this planet is alien
| to mine, and it's silly to apply human meaning to what I
| think it's going through. I think our brains have enough
| space to hold these ideas up there though and reflect on
| them, and I think children deserve more than a functionalist
| education. I don't think I'm messed up as a result of that
| education, and I'm living a happy life - fair to say I had a
| heck of a time catching up on math and language in middle
| school though!
| sgu999 wrote:
| They don't learn to apologise to the plants, they just learn
| to be grateful for what they can take for "free". That
| probably doesn't fit into your tiny narrative of "green
| activists" being all shamans who believe plants have
| feelings, so you extrapolate, project and make a fool of
| yourself.
| willismichael wrote:
| Please elaborate.
| geph2021 wrote:
| messed up for a school to get children to verbally apologize
| to plants
|
| interesting that you conflate thanking with apologizing.
| bombcar wrote:
| I remember a sci-fi book where the main character asked the
| robot to do something, and the robot did, and the character
| thanked it. And someone said "why did you thank it? It has no
| feelings and can't understand it." The reply was something
| along the lines of "the thanks comes from me, and if I stop
| doing it for robots I'll stop doing it for people, too,
| eventually."
| awhitty wrote:
| And here I am burning tokens on my GPT prompts with please-
| and-thank-yous in 2023 haha
| [deleted]
| colordrops wrote:
| Did they say thanks to the chickens as well?
| agumonkey wrote:
| birth of the kfcism religion
| [deleted]
| akira2501 wrote:
| Every time I feed them. Chickens are generally inscrutable..
| but the noises they make when the food comes out definitely
| sound like unrestrained joy.
| eschneider wrote:
| Individual chickens definitely have personalities which
| you'll get to know if you spend enough time with them.
| awhitty wrote:
| Haha, I have to assume so, but honestly I didn't spend much
| time in the chicken coop because I thought it smelled bad.
| I'm not sure where the eggs went, also. And yea, on
| reflection, it probably wasn't, like, above-board to have
| kids working with live animals in school? I remember a friend
| getting pecked by a chicken once. This was a pretty agg-y
| area in New Mexico and most everyone I grew up with had at
| least some animals on their land, so it wasn't unusual.
| markdown wrote:
| > it probably wasn't, like, above-board to have kids
| working with live animals in school.
|
| These days there are American children as young as 13
| washing down slaughterhouses on school nights and
| sleepwalking to school. In a nation where child labor of
| this kind is completely legal, I think it's fair to say
| that a few chickens at school is just fine.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/feds-
| find-100-children-...
| jaggederest wrote:
| > And yea, on reflection, it probably wasn't, like, above-
| board to have kids working with live animals in school?
|
| How will children learn to care for and appreciate animals
| if they don't interact with them? I think, rather than "not
| above-board", it's vital.
| rcoveson wrote:
| But what about the allergens? The risk of salmonella?
| Have you seen the damage an angy chicken can do with
| those claws? I've heard that Avian Influenza is on the
| rise again. Can't they just learn about chickens on their
| EduTablets?
|
| ...is what I imagine I'd hear at the Parent/Teacher
| conferences leading up to the average public school's
| field trip to a local farm.
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| Why wouldn't you? Anyway, I don't think schools with farms in
| the US regularly harvest poultry or livestock for their
| students.
| colordrops wrote:
| They mention directly that they collected eggs from the
| coup.
| msla wrote:
| > They mention directly that they collected eggs from the
| coup.
|
| And if they thanked their chickens more often, the
| chickens wouldn't have staged a coup.
| ecnahc515 wrote:
| This reminds me of the lessons from the book "Ishmael" by
| Daniel Quinn. One of the main characters is teaching another
| lessons throughout the book using a Montessori approach. One of
| the big lessons is to only take what you need, and to
| appreciate these things we take for granted. I highly recommend
| it if you haven't read it already.
| throw8383833jj wrote:
| that sounds like a fantastic way to grow up. I wish I could
| raise my kid in this kind of community. permaculture has so
| much to offer people.
| viraj_shah wrote:
| I am surprised and not surprised to see this here. I often see
| themes of burnout, wanting to get back to nature, existential
| questions surrounding tech and similar here on HN.
|
| I took a permaculture class earlier this year, after having
| researched it on the sidelines for a few years. It started from
| looking at sustainability, agriculture, homesteading (wanting to
| "leave it all behind") and blossomed into a wonderful learning
| experience about a philosophy where I felt a little more at home.
| It was great. It introduced me to a few really cool friends whose
| values largely aligned with mine. Anyone interested in this,
| please feel free to reach out.
| tremon wrote:
| I don't think it has necessarily to do with burnout, or even
| with the more general notion "city-dwellers feel detached from
| nature so they romanticize it". Apart from that, there is also
| the entrepreneurial spirit (as well as the hacker spirit) of
| wanting to do things yourself, either because you think you can
| do better or because you want to decrease your reliance on
| others. And those are very well represented here.
| qubex wrote:
| Permaculture is one of the ideas that fascinates me most.
| qubex wrote:
| What course did you take, and where, if I may be so
| intrusive... you did mention to "reach out" if interested! I
| also arrived at being fascinated by the concept by ideas of
| sustainability and "getting away from it all".
| oh_sigh wrote:
| If you follow the link to his homepage in his profile, there
| is a link to book a 30 minute meeting with him.
| Jedd wrote:
| Search for people running PDC's - Permaculture Design Courses
| - in your area. These are variably well monitored /
| established syllabus, usually run for 5 days or so. I'm sure
| there's one-day intro courses, but I suspect you'd get a lot
| more variability, and obviously a lot less value.
|
| Most practicing permaculturists I've bumped into _tend_ to
| eschew the woo, as it were, but you may want to validate that
| before signing up to any particular course. (These branches
| of study can attract certain types of people.)
|
| I did a PDC here in Sydney AU about 15 years ago, and like GP
| I found it a hugely interesting and engaging process. (The
| one I went to was run by a lass who had studied under Bill
| Mollison, which was kind of funky, but as a rule the material
| covered is much more practical, rational, etc - than
| deferential / by association to the two guys that kicked it
| off.)
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| For permaculture I first need land, and its expensive where I
| live (I can't go too far as I'm on 2 wheels without engine), so
| I'm still saving for a few more years before planting fig,
| persimmon, medlar, citrus, orange native trees, peppers, and all
| easy to grow things, and sleeping around that in a small box!
| mooreds wrote:
| I took a permaculture course a while back and the instructor
| addressed that specific issue. He said (paraphrasing): you can
| buy really good tools and learn to use them, you can learn to
| identify and grow annuals and smaller plants, you can keep
| worms, you can observe and build invisible structures, all
| without land.
|
| Sure, keep saving to buy land, but don't forget it is something
| you can practice in the middle of the city too.
| CapstanRoller wrote:
| Have you considered "guerrilla gardening" and repurposing
| wasted space around you? Buying a large amount of personal land
| is not a prerequisite.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_gardening
| bovermyer wrote:
| Permaculture is fascinating. I'm interested in how it behaves on
| a macro scale, though; what would happen to the wider ecosystem
| if you had a town full of permaculture lots instead of grass
| yards?
| KaiserPro wrote:
| a whole town, depending on how things are done would look a bit
| different, but would handle different too.
|
| First, assuming that people are growing all sorts of things,
| and not trying to monoculture, you will get an explosion in
| different kinds of insects and their predators.
|
| Second, you should get an explosion of colour
|
| thirdly, assuming the growth of trees, creepers and other
| vines, coolers daytime temperatures, and reduced winds
|
| fourthly, and possibly more importantly, much higher water
| retention.
| tspike wrote:
| I'd have a hard time thinking of a more wonderful experiment to
| run.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Every estimate I've seen points to a minimum requirement of ~1
| hectare of arable land to feed one human for one year (on a
| minimal vegetarian diet) and that estimate assumes highly
| productive soils and minimal crop loss due to insects, drought,
| or flood.
|
| The idea with permaculture is that you minimize (ideally
| eliminate) the need for fertilizer, herbicide and pesticide
| imports using effective composting and crop rotation
| (biological nitrogen fixation) and integrated pest management
| (raising insects that eat crop pests etc.) and water recycling
| systems and so on.
|
| Scaling this approach to tens of thousands of acres for
| reliably feeding even a medium-sized city seems challenging,
| but there appear to be some 1000-acre permaculture farms out
| there. However, yields are likely to be lower per acre with
| this approach as practices like using high fertilizer imports
| to allow double-cropping don't fit the permaculture model.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| It's worth noting that permaculture is not just about farming
| or homesteading. The point is mostly to have a balanced
| ecology that humans can live in. You can still have large
| farms, small farms, or no farms, and do permaculture.
|
| The big mistake we made was building large cities that
| required moving or reshaping the land, water, animals and
| plants to support large cities. There really should not be
| this many humans in the world, and certainly not with as many
| huge cities as we have. We're becoming a species dependent on
| a synthetic environment.
| kamray23 wrote:
| I find this idea of a "synthetic environment" kind of
| strange in a way. We crossed that line twelve thousand
| years ago when we started large-scale farming. That alone
| was a transformation of nature which immensely upset the
| previous natural order and caused human population to rise
| immensely. But I wouldn't really consider that artificial
| in a major way, and on some level we're also part of
| nature. I don't think we are any more artificial in
| building cities than bees are in building their hives.
| There is a difference, but not one which matters for this
| conversation, though I will mention that that difference
| has to do with the fact that we picture an idea in our
| heads before projecting it into reality through labour.
|
| I don't think it's healthy to see the world as a struggle
| between the natural and artificial, because it's so hard to
| properly define. Humans are natural, making tools is in our
| nature, so is constructing shelter. I think the proper way
| to see the world is as this unity, humans exist within
| nature and act to transform it, as does every other animal
| species on this planet. The ecosystem would look wildly
| different did termites and bees not transform it for their
| own benefit, and similarly it is humans who transform
| nature in their own ways for their own benefit.
|
| This does not mean unconditional support for human
| activity. Glass, concrete, and steel towers and spreading
| suburbs are terrible transformations of nature. They are
| terrible because of their destructive potential for no
| gain, they are unsustainable by nature, they upset the
| balance in a way which makes the land less fertile, less
| capable of supporting life in general let alone humans, and
| in the long term are a loss not only for natural diversity
| but for the human species as well. There exists a rift due
| to industrial agriculture where humans take from the earth
| and give back to it from the mountains and the bedrock
| while pushing waste into the oceans, which is unsustainable
| and which has and will lead to ecological collapses. This
| is but one part, industry in general, pollution, the carbon
| cycle, land use change and associated environmental
| effects, it all acts to lower the carrying capacity of this
| Earth in the long term. This is how I believe it is best to
| critique transformations of nature in this manner, because
| terms are easy to define, the unsustainability is
| scientifically provable, you have no such ambiguities as
| when you talk about artificial and natural as two entirely
| separate concepts.
|
| This also gets you out of very bad ways of thinking. There
| is no "natural carrying capacity" for this planet except
| what it currently has. There is likely a theoretical
| maximum and some day we might hit it. What's clear is that
| we haven't hit it yet, we just fail to push the current
| carrying capacity by transforming nature in an
| unsustainable fashion for short-term benefit. You can no
| longer say things like "There really should not be this
| many humans in the world", since it's plainly not true.
| There are supposed to be exactly as many humans as there
| are, because humans naturally transform nature to support
| themselves. It is our own nature, our species being, to
| take those gifts of nature and use them to transform them,
| through our own labour, into products which are use-values
| to ourselves. This is just as it is the nature of bees to
| pollinate and build hives, the nature of woodland animals
| to eat their hives and the flowers they pollinate, and the
| nature of elephants to topple trees to create for
| themselves a grassland instead of a forest.
|
| It is not that there are too many humans, even with our
| unsustainable practices this planet easily currently
| produces enough food for ten billion to live well-off. It
| is not that there is artificial and natural, to make
| natural artificial is natural, because to transform nature
| is human nature. It is our current, wasteful and
| unsustainable transformation of nature, no different to
| those transformations that took place twelve thousand years
| ago except in its unsustainability, which has been been
| sucking the life out of this planet. But as humans, we have
| the unique ability to both imagine and then through labour
| project that ideal into reality, to once again transform
| what was natural to something which suits our needs. Our
| needs are, in the long term, sustainably keeping at the
| very least ten billion people alive, and permaculture is
| one of the ways in which we can both imagine that and start
| to bring it into fruition. However, our own relations and
| structures might prevent a total change in our
| transformation of nature in its present state, which is why
| political action is as important, if not more so, than
| homesteading or community gardens.
|
| Idk man, I don't think overpopulation is an issue and I
| despise imagining that there is something uniquely bad
| about artificial things and that they are somehow different
| from nature. They are nature, their creation is our nature,
| and we ourselves are creations of nature. It's only how we
| have in the last few millenia, really even few centuries,
| been doing those transformations which is the true issue.
|
| End of insane HN rant I guess. There's obviously no
| infinite growth, but we're also far from overpopulation.
| The world is not a Malthusian nightmare, it's not that
| resources cause population to explode and conditions to
| worsen, we can see that in the richer nations of the Earth
| where instead resources cause population to drop after a
| point. We'll naturally reach our peak well within the
| theoretical maximum carrying capacity of the Earth, that's
| my point. Permaculture is one important step on that path.
| Neo-Malthusians and genocidal maniacs and eco-fascists
| disgust me to no end.
| CapstanRoller wrote:
| The thing people don't realize is that we waste so much space
| and resources on useless crap.
|
| 1 hectate per person is easy to get in any suburban
| neighborhood if everyone can agree that a stable healthy food
| supply is more important than endless lawns or empty lots.
|
| The resources are all there, we just grossly misallocate and
| squander them.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| I've always been wary of the permaculture community. Firstly, a
| lot of the things advanced by them are simply not scalable to the
| entire human race. They will say stuff like "it's practically
| free to have all this free food I grew on my lawn", while
| ignoring the massive amount of labor they put in, the waste
| product that they managed to scavenge, and the infrastructure
| they pay little to no taxes for. It's not even clear to me that
| "Big Age" is even a bad thing, seeing that their massive
| economies of scale allow them to produce more for less(money,
| environmental impact) than smaller farmers. Failure to realize
| this lead to the dumb memes about how global supply chains are
| supposedly bad, without realizing that having many small
| factories around the world would actually be more environmentally
| harmful than shipping products to where they can best be
| processed. I'm sympathetic to fears about long term
| sustainability and skepticism about globalism, but I generally
| don't like the type of stuff they advocate for. I generally agree
| with calls for increased regulation and a reduction in waste
| though.
| throw8383833jj wrote:
| there are many things that absolutely are scalable to the
| entire human race, at least outside of the city. Permaculture
| asks nothing of you but your effort. The "massive amount of
| labor put in is what's needed to produce that amount of food.
| It's only in rich countries where people can produce food for
| much less labor (by working a high paying job and buying the
| food at the market). there are many countries where people are
| much better off growing their own food, rather than working at
| a minimum wage job and buying the same food.
|
| You should watch John Jai on Youtube. He's in thailand a
| country where the GDP per capita is a fraction of the US and
| yet he has more land, 3 small paid off huts and enough food to
| raise 4 kids all with plenty of time left over to read books.
| "Life is easy" he says, not bragging about his riches but
| rather to let people know about an alternative way of living.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| I agree that permaculture might be an option for some people,
| but the difference isn't gdp, it's that there are no
| productive things to do in many of these low income
| countries. If their economy advances enough they'll find that
| working a job provides more for them.
| CapstanRoller wrote:
| >It's not even clear to me that "Big Age" is even a bad thing,
| seeing that their massive economies of scale allow them to
| produce more for less(money, environmental impact)
|
| Big Ag is extremely destructive to the environment, because it
| doesn't respect existing environments & ecosystems, instead
| seeing them as a blank canvas for terraforming and imposing
| industrial processes.
|
| Where are you getting the idea that Big Ag has less
| environmental impact than a backyard garden???
|
| >They will say stuff like "it's practically free to have all
| this free food I grew on my lawn", while ignoring the massive
| amount of labor they put in,
|
| It doesn't require much labor. That's one of the main points --
| permaculture is about working with nature rather than against
| it. Instead of tilling and pumping soil full of mined
| fertilizer, you use the natural processes appropriate for your
| local environment to support your crops. When properly applied,
| permaculture is about _minimal effort_.
|
| >the waste product that they managed to scavenge,
|
| Yes, that's also the point of permaculture: diverting waste
| streams and closing loops. For example, composting is a great
| way to make high-quality soil while diverting food waste from
| the landfill where it would anaerobically rot and generate
| methane. Permaculture can (and should) be low effort.
|
| >and the infrastructure they pay little to no taxes for.
|
| Huh? Where are you getting the idea that permaculture
| encourages resource theft and tax avoidance?
| zeroCalories wrote:
| >Where are you getting the idea that Big Ag has less
| environmental impact than a backyard garden???
|
| Most studies I've seen suggest that the larger the farming
| operation, the more efficiently it's able to use resources.
| Most of those were small/organic farms instead of a backyard
| garden, but I don't see many reasons to think it would be
| better.
|
| >When properly applied, permaculture is about minimal effort.
|
| You still put in more effort than most people. Someone
| working a median wage job will be able to buy more food in
| the time it takes you to maintain your garden. The only
| exception are the very poor.
|
| >Yes, that's also the point of permaculture: diverting waste
| streams and closing loops.
|
| Diverting waste is good, but when scaled up it won't be
| sufficient. You won't be able to get free fertilizer from
| people that prune trees because everyone will want it, and
| that's assuming a lot of this waste would still even be
| produced in an environmentally conscious world. You will most
| likely need to produce all of it on your own.
|
| >Huh? Where are you getting the idea that permaculture
| encourages resource theft and tax avoidance?
|
| To be fair, this is just from the permaculture people that I
| know. Many of them work very little and pay nothing in taxes,
| use medicare, and are still well off because a lot of their
| labor is untaxable. They live in suburbs and the country
| where stuff like roads and water are provided to them at a
| loss to society.
| kamray23 wrote:
| Firstly, I absolutely agree with both people here. Industrial
| agriculture is large-scale enough to be able to use
| everything with extreme efficiency. Secondly, modern
| industrial agricultural practices result in the
| transformation of nature into an unsustainable hell-scape
| which will collapse in on itself within a few centuries at
| the latest.
|
| But I don't think you should consider humans as separate from
| nature, there is evil to being artificial and there is no
| evil to sometimes going against nature. Humans are, by their
| nature, a species who take natural fruits and labour upon
| them to transform them, to give them a new use-value. That is
| a, if not even the, universal constant which has held through
| every age of human (pre)history. Humans, just as bees or
| termites or elephants or trees, transform nature by our
| nature. Everything natural is artificial and everything
| artificial is natural. To transform nature, to bend it and to
| change it is our species being, it is part of our role in
| nature to transform it as do countless other species.
| However, unlike those guided by pure instinct, we have both
| the ability to imagine and project through labour that ideal
| into reality. Importantly, that's not really any more
| artificial than a beehive is, artificial is not a very well
| defined concept or in any way scientifically useful. Once
| again, it is part of our natural role, our nature, to
| transform nature around us. When we do transform nature in
| major ways, we speak for the trees, as much as destroy them.
| However, our societal development has led us into a
| transformation of nature which is wasteful and unsustainable.
| These are very scientifically useful concepts and things like
| sustainability can be experimented upon and proven. Imagining
| alternative transformations is the first step to projecting
| them into reality, to transforming nature once again in a way
| which has a long-term benefit for us all. There do however
| exist major economic barriers which can never be broken which
| prohibit permaculture on any real scale, though that's only
| true as long as the economy is as it is now. Beside the point
| for now. My point is that it is not useful to consider ideal
| and badly defined concepts like artificial and natural and a
| struggle between the two. It is much more useful to think in
| terms of our nature, how our nature and labour is governed by
| our society, how by our nature of transforming nature that
| leads to the current unsustainable mode of life, and then
| think about what needs to be done within that more
| explanative framework to imagine not only unreachable ideals
| but to project them into reachable ideals in the real,
| material world.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I mean yes and no.
|
| Permaculture has a much higher yeild, per unit of land compared
| to traditional western arible. The reasons are not really well
| understood. Possibly attention to pest levels, mixed crops, and
| much healthier soils (with a fucktonne of mushroom webs)
|
| but permaculture isn't much different to subsistence farming.
|
| But, the flip side is that industrial movement of food has
| stopped, limited or reduced the effect of localised famines.
|
| There is a much mire equitable medium
| zeroCalories wrote:
| Land usage isn't a good metric, especially because land in
| the countryside is plentiful. This is another thing that
| pisses me off about permaculture people, they encourage
| inefficient use of land in urban environments, leading to a
| whole bunch of other problems, including higher land value,
| more need for cars, and MORE environmentally and economically
| draining suburbs. I don't want a community garden in my most
| important economic areas, I want housing and workplaces.
| vintermann wrote:
| > ignoring the massive amount of labor they put in
|
| I thought the whole point of permaculture was exploring
| tradeoffs between labour and space (i.e, that "yield per acre"
| of a small intensively managed gardening plot is surprisingly
| good, and conversely you can trade effort for yield with
| "forest garden" type stuff that requires less maintenance).
| zeroCalories wrote:
| I don't believe them, but I'll start my own farm if it can
| earn me anywhere near 50$/hr in profit.
| baremetal wrote:
| I am currently building a permaculture farm. Continuing to dig
| out a pond here in about 30 minutes.
| markus23 wrote:
| Great to see that Permaculture is on-topic on Hacker News! We are
| developing an app to make Permaculture easier
| https://permaplant.net/
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Interesting, there is also
| https://wiki.ecohackerfarm.org/powerplant:start
| LikeAnElephant wrote:
| FYI I get a security error when going to the https of your
| site. I get an Apache message when going to http. Can't wait to
| check it out though once it's up!
| kubb wrote:
| Getting into permaculture is great, you just need a piece of
| land. You won't be able to feed yourself just from your balcony.
|
| And contrary to what some people believe, it matters what kind of
| soil you have how much water, and what climate you're in.
|
| I'd honestly just quit my job and do that, a shame that my
| partner couldn't be further from that desire for a different
| life.
| eikenberry wrote:
| If you didn't work, how would you pay your property taxes?
| justrealist wrote:
| If you're really just trying to cover property tax, set aside
| half your acreage and let a nearby farmer harvest hay. On
| reasonably productive land, splitting the cash will cover
| taxes.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Sell books on permaculture...
| kubb wrote:
| 3 acres of land in the US cost $15K on average. A property
| tax with a 1% rate is $150 per year. You could earn that by
| selling 20kg of tomatoes. You should be able to grow a tonne
| in the right soil with the right climate.
|
| Of course in the permaculture you'd try to plant various
| species, but you should be able to earn $150 by selling them.
| eikenberry wrote:
| I guess I'm to used to city life with 10K+ property taxes
| to consider that it could be so low. So yeah.. that
| wouldn't be much of an issue.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > And contrary to what some people believe, it matters what
| kind of soil you have how much water, and what climate you're
| in.
|
| This is what the "but we don't need to farm animals, it's a
| waste, we can just eat the plants instead" crowd don't get.
|
| You can't eat the kind of plants you can grow, where people
| grow plants to raise animals.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| This is a half-truth at best. The places where you can _only_
| grow inedible crops are extremely marginal environments and
| they usually can 't support economical densities. These are
| pretty unique environments like the northern plains and
| northern central Asia where only a small percentage of the
| livestock population lives. Even here, livestock are usually
| fed to the extent that the land can support and then
| additional feed is provided with crops grown in less marginal
| environments. For finishing, that's almost entirely human
| edible crops like corn, sorghum and oats (even if the
| specific varietals aren't considered edible).
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Or, you know, most of the UK, and in particular Scotland,
| where most of the farmland is hill grazing.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Are you kidding? Most of the UK is _phenomenal_ for
| crops, practically a garden of Eden. Do you think
| megafarms in Kent or even Herefordshire are on
| particularly marginal land?
|
| Yes, the Scottish Highlands are a marginal environment,
| but that's reflected in how many cattle they have. There
| are some 20m cattle in the UK. 1.7m are in Scotland. I
| couldn't find specific numbers for the highland counties,
| but only ~15k of those are highland breeds. That's also
| what I saw in Scotland. Lots of farms and ranches down
| south, very small villages with huge ranges/low densities
| up north.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Yes, and the thing you'll notice is that anything that's
| remotely viable for arable farming is used for just that.
|
| Even large-scale industrial farms still rotate pasture,
| though, because otherwise the soil gets spectacularly
| fucked up within about four years.
|
| Without cows, everyone would starve.
| phreeza wrote:
| In principle it is right that it makes sense to use animals
| to get the optimal amount of calories out of marginal land
| that can't be used to directly grow edible plants. The
| current state of agriculture is very far removed from that
| optimum though.
| roboben wrote:
| Most fun thing about permaculture is the fact that no one is
| making money from actually applying it but rather just selling
| courses, books and other media. It's funny since the first thing
| you learn about it, is that you don't need to spend a lot of
| money doing it.
|
| Beside that, permaculture is nothing more than a framework for
| systems design. Can be applied to much more than your garden.
| debacle wrote:
| A few people are making money from it, but they're content to
| make money. The majority of people doing homesteading are:
|
| 1. At-home farmers who are eating healthier, but paying for the
| privilege.
|
| 2. People who are quiet because they're actually making very
| good money doing what they're doing.
|
| 3. People who haven't quite grasped that permaculture and/or
| homesteading are still farming, and farming is still hard work
| despite how blog-friendly you make it.
|
| 4. People trying to sell their "next best thing" marketing to
| hopeful mommmy bloggers.
|
| I am currently a #1 hoping to become a #2 eventually. Online, I
| predominantly follow #2s and they never try and sell me
| classes, PDFs, etc, because they're busy making money farming.
| hksh wrote:
| Could you link to some of the #2s you follow?
| debacle wrote:
| People making a living:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@gregjudyregenerativerancher
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@savvydirtfarmer
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@JustaFewAcresFarm
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@PeteKanarisGreenDreamsFL
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@MikesBackyardNursery
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@FraserValleyRoseFarm
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@edibleacres
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@regenerativeagriculture
|
| Hobbyists, but doing it right:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@Selfsufficientme
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@simplifygardening
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@GardenerScott
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@RedToolHouse
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@MySelfReliance
|
| Some of these folks do sponsored content, usually widgets
| or toys or something, but they're pretty up front about it.
| A few of them I follow religiously, others I choose which
| videos I'd prefer to watch.
| beembeem wrote:
| Oh this is what you meant - making a living through
| permaculture. Can confirm that SelfSufficientMe strikes
| me as a great dude with engaging content.
| ry4nolson wrote:
| The Gardening Channel With James Prigioni is another
| great channel.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/jamesprigioni
| blisterpeanuts wrote:
| Also, Justin Rhodes and Joel Salatin youtube channels.
| Joel focuses on poultry, and Justin also raises pigs and
| cows. Both are heavily into permaculture.
|
| I only have a few backyard chickens, but I'm trying to
| apply their principles where I can. It's scalable,
| luckily.
| CapstanRoller wrote:
| Why is money the main goal? If you see everything through
| that lens, then of course permaculture seems incoherent.
|
| If money is a primary concern, why grow food at all? Just
| strip-mine your land instead, or simply engage in real-estate
| speculation and landlordism.
| vintermann wrote:
| If you buy actually valuable expensive input from the
| outside world for making food, you should sell actually
| valuable output to make it worth it. Otherwise it isn't
| sustainable.
|
| Sure, making money on things that aren't actually valuable
| is all too easy, but that would defeat the point.
| "Economy", formal and informal, seems to be a big and
| acknowledged part of permaculture culture.
| gafferongames wrote:
| The whole point of permaculture is to not require
| expensive inputs.
| suoduandao2 wrote:
| Applied to much more than your garden is very true. I related
| all the principles of permaculture to my jiujitsu class. Hard
| to say if they helped, since I already had been practicing them
| in a different 'bundle', but definitely speaks to how universal
| they are in systems with complexity and feedback.
| alisson wrote:
| I know a few people that make very good money applying
| permaculture principles. Not because they are applying the
| principles, but because they are very good at selling their
| produce and services. They know how to get to their target
| audience, specially people with more money to spend. I think
| this is true for any kind of agriculture or business.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| > no one is making money
|
| your comment makes me think of
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35847327
|
| Permaculture is mostly about growing food for yourself and
| local friends
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| People joke about the fact that you're not really saving any
| money doing this vs buying the produce at the store, and they
| might be right, but it's not about the price of food, it's
| about learning the knowledge needed to grow your own. It kind
| of freaks me out that 98% of the US population would starve
| if our ag system seriously broke down. We could seriously use
| some resiliency there.
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| Oh you save a ton of money on produce and it's higher
| quality _. I save seeds and don 't have to buy new seed
| every year. I use woodchips, leaf compost, manure compost
| and whatever else free I can get close by. My neighbor has
| a huge pile of woodchips that he's offered so I've been
| using those instead.
|
| This week I harvested morels which the local grocery store
| sells fresh for like $40/lb.
|
| _There is a catch, and that catch is you eat whatever is in
| season. It does require getting creative with recipes. I
| live in zone 6B and have fresh greens from April -
| December. Winter squash will store well into the spring.
| Nuts in the shell will last years. I have black walnuts
| that I harvested in 2019 that still taste great.
| throw8383833jj wrote:
| whether or not you save money and how much you save depends
| on how much your regular job pays. Sure, a google software
| engineer will be better off just buying all their food. but
| someone working a minimum wage job, will be much better off
| growing their own fruit trees. Here are some quick
| calculations/back of the napkin. with an average harvest
| labor of 3 apples per minute, that would produce 180
| organic apples per hour or 40 lbs/hour or about 80$ worth
| of fruit per hour, not including time spend watering,
| pruning, irrigation and mulching (if done). Organic Berries
| on the other hand are 4-10 times more expensive, thus even
| giving some engineers a run for their money!
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| Pretty good assessment. I have the potential to be
| earning a high hourly rate but I don't count my time
| gardening as a loss because I enjoy it most of the time.
| I also can grow different things than I can find in the
| store and that's hard to put a price on.
| throw8383833jj wrote:
| plus you know it's organic, whereas the grocery store's
| "organic" label sometimes has some give to it. Some
| wheats for example, aren't entirely organic.
| saalweachter wrote:
| I mean, resiliency, yes, I am all for resiliency, besides
| "produce enough food for everyone", "be able to continue
| producing enough food for everyone despite 5- or 6-sigma
| disasters" is the most important thing for an agricultural
| system to do.
|
| But, like, why would the agricultural system break down? If
| that's a possibility in your society, maybe ask why that is
| and try to fix it, rather than trying to have everyone go
| back to subsistence farming.
| CapstanRoller wrote:
| The agricultural system doesn't need to break down in
| order for us to realize it's deeply damaging and
| unsustainable. Ideally we'd realize this and change our
| ways _before_ breaks down -- that 's why permaculture
| exists.
|
| You're confusing permaculture with prepping.
| lmm wrote:
| > The agricultural system doesn't need to break down in
| order for us to realize it's deeply damaging and
| unsustainable. Ideally we'd realize this and change our
| ways before breaks down -- that's why permaculture
| exists.
|
| I'm pretty sure the systemic fix isn't going to be
| everyone having their own backyard plot.
|
| > You're confusing permaculture with prepping.
|
| Well, if you're talking about "98% of the US population
| would starve" that's absolutely prepper talk.
| badpun wrote:
| Many permaculturists would probably starve too. It's pretty
| hard for a person with a backyard to consistently produce
| the 2500+ kcal needed per day, and also process and store
| it so that it's available outside of harvest season as
| well.
| vintermann wrote:
| Doing genealogy, my ancestors were surprisingly good at
| that sort of thing. Then they learned to read and studied
| farming practices and stuff and got _much_ better at it.
|
| Of course it depends on the size of your backyard, and
| how long, and critically on trade networks/community.
| CapstanRoller wrote:
| The goal isn't to have one person produce all that for
| themselves, or about back-breaking labor.
|
| Permaculture encourages community, not hyper-
| individualism. It's about working with nature rather than
| against it, and directing the benefits of it to everyone.
| blisterpeanuts wrote:
| I think some of these folks who are on several acres, and
| who have poultry, cattle, pigs, and extensive gardens,
| will likely not starve.
|
| But life will be hard, once the fuel and electricity run
| out, even the ones who are totally off grid with solar
| and storage batteries. Just basic stuff like screws,
| pumps, pipes, tools, not to mention medical care,
| pharmaceuticals etc.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Not starve if left to their own devices. But if they're
| anywhere even close to a city or town, or a group of
| other people who don't have those things, they better be
| prepared to defend it.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| In fairness, some permaculture people talk about this,
| for example, food forests which can produce an impressive
| amount of food which a city dweller would not recognise
| or know how to cook even if they did. If you have a large
| enough food forest then you could be providing some kind
| of subsistence living long after someone came for your
| cows, sheep and pigs.
| [deleted]
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I find it fascinating. It's somewhere between a brilliant
| insight into the human species relationship with the other
| inhabitants of our planet and utter snake oil sold to new-agey
| people to be applied in utterly unsuitable conditions.
| CapstanRoller wrote:
| What part of permaculture is "snake oil"? Please be specific.
| rakoo wrote:
| > Beside that, permaculture is nothing more than a framework
| for systems design. Can be applied to much more than your
| garden.
|
| And people do: http://permacomputing.net/
| 1827163 wrote:
| I just discovered composting using Oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus
| Ostreatus). It can handle food waste and also human/animal waste
| too. It colonizes the waste really fast when it's warm. No need
| for a septic tank.
|
| Yes I have a small hut in the woods, with electricity and
| Internet via fiber optic cable from a house nearby. There's a
| waterproof WiFi access point mounted outside the hut on a pole,
| with a surprisingly long range.
|
| Recovering burnout victim here too, by the way.
| woile wrote:
| Interesting, I grow Oyster mushrooms from used coffee beans. I
| really like giving an extra purpose to so many beans consumed.
| 1827163 wrote:
| I have a whole 70 litre dust bin that contains spawn and
| waste organic matter, and it's all turned white and fluffy as
| the mycelium has colonized everything. And once it's full I
| can then use the mycelium to start even more colonies on
| collected tree leaves and branches. It kind of grows
| exponentially in size. I just keep producing more and more of
| it....
|
| When you grow large quantities of mycelium this way, it
| generates its own internal heat, I've found it to be warm
| inside. So that makes it grow faster than it would if it were
| at ambient temperature.
|
| Also the large amount of spawn easily overruns any other
| fungi that might contaminate the bin, such as green mold,
| before it has time to spread. The oyster mushroom fungus is a
| very aggressive colonizer which will eventually outrun green
| mold with time, but this can take a while.
| tstrimple wrote:
| All of my mushroom experiments have ended in mold. I wonder
| if I just need a more aggressive fungi.
| 1827163 wrote:
| Increase the ratio of spawn to substrate, and ensure that
| it's mixed very evenly, as that will increase the surface
| area for growth. So it will colonize faster.
|
| If you're growing it in a jar, ensure that you make a
| couple of tiny airholes in the lid. The fungus needs
| oxygen to grow. But if the holes are too big then fungus
| gnats can get in, and you will find maggots in the
| mycelium, which you don't wont.
|
| Also if you have a moldy jar, leave it for a couple of
| months. You might find the mushroom fungus has overrun
| the mold eventually.
|
| And finally, Oyster mushrooms can't grow on pine
| woodchips, by the way.
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| What's your climate like?
| 1827163 wrote:
| I live in the United Kingdom, summers are quite warm with
| most days above 20C, winters ~10C or so, rarely you get
| frost.
| goda90 wrote:
| I've been dreaming of a way to compost my dog's waste. It's
| against city ordinance, and widely discouraged for standard
| compost bins. Mushrooms could be an interesting approach. But
| the city ordinance stands. And handling it in the deep Midwest
| USA winters would be difficult.
| peteradio wrote:
| Honestly, why bother? Its hard to imagine it would amount to
| a good product.
| goda90 wrote:
| I have two larger dogs who produce a fair amount. It just
| feels wrong to be putting several pounds of biodegradable
| matter into a plastic bag to be sent to the landfill each
| week. I've also thought of installing an outdoor sewage
| drain to let me dump it into the city sewers instead, since
| the sewage treatment plant will process it in a better way
| than the landfill.
| peteradio wrote:
| I compost my dogs waste but basically have no intention
| to do anything with it ... ever. Just dig a hole and drop
| in the turds. Trying to do anything with it seems like
| finding a piece of uranium in the woods and thinking you
| got a good power source.
| 1827163 wrote:
| Yes, I changed my mind and agree with you now. And
| consider it nuclear waste.
| 1827163 wrote:
| The mushrooms are not suitable for human consumption, but
| in the process of breaking down the waste, the fungus
| destroys most pathogens present. Then you can use the spent
| mycelium as high grade garden compost, to be spread on the
| soil to enrich it.
| peteradio wrote:
| What kind of guarantees are you making here? Can I half
| ass this half assed described process and expect to avoid
| all pathogens?
| 1827163 wrote:
| As usual, it's bad wording there on my part. I'll update
| it to replace "any pathogens" with "most pathogens".
|
| Wait, I can make some more changes, but I'm so tired,
| having been in front of a computer almost continuously
| for more than 16 hours today.
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