permaculture

Tag: permaculture

CategoriesLifestyle

Futureproofing: How to Actually Invest in Your Future

by Big Calm

“Community is probably the best investment you can make.” ~ Charles Eisenstein

When we hear the word “investing,” most of us think about financial wealth—savings accounts, stock portfolios, or retirement funds. While financial capital is undeniably important, it is far from the only form of wealth that ensures resilience and fulfillment in life.

True resilience—what allows us to thrive no matter what challenges arise—is built by nurturing all the forms of wealth that sustain us as individuals, families, and communities. Aside from financial capital, there are 7 other kinds of wealth:

Social Capital

This is your network of relationships—family, friends, and community—and is a profound source of comfort, support and opportunity. 

Cultural Capital

The shared values, ethics, traditions, and knowledge that strengthen communities and provide a sense of identity. In the case of permaculture (and as a permaculture-guided community, Big Calm) shared ethics include: 

  • Earth Care: preserving and nurturing the natural world, reducing consumption and minimizing human impact to maintain biodiversity
  • People Care: ensuring the well-being of individuals and communities through cooperation, fairness, and shared prosperity 
  • Fair Share: the equitable distribution of resources and surplus

Material Capital

The physical goods and resources you and/or your community own—homes, tools, and equipment—that can sustain individual/community needs or help build a self-reliance.

Intellectual Capital

Knowledge and skills are assets that cannot be taken away. Investing in education, training, and the curiosity to keep learning pays dividends in adaptability and innovation.

Living Capital

This refers to the natural systems we rely on: soil health, clean water, air quality, and biodiversity. Often undervalued in traditional economic systems, these resources are critical to survival.

Spiritual Capital

A sense of purpose and connection to something greater than oneself fosters resilience during life’s inevitable challenges and helps us navigate uncertainty.

Experiential Capital

Life is the sum of our experiences. Traveling, creating art, or spending time in nature expands our horizons and enriches our sense of what it means to live well.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

Our modern systems are designed to prioritize financial wealth above all else, but that model is failing us. Economic uncertainty, environmental degradation, and social disconnection have shown us that focusing on financial returns alone is not sustainable. Resilience comes from diversifying our portfolios with positions in all 8 kinds of capital, for example:

  • Build Connections: Volunteer in your community, host gatherings, and participate in collaborative projects to strengthen social capital.
  • Care for Nature: Plant a garden, restore native habitats, or support conservation efforts
  • Learn Continuously: Pick up new skills or hobbies that align with your values to build self-reliance and enhance well being
  • Simplify Ownership: Invest in quality tools and resources rather than accumulating unnecessary possessions
  • Create Culture: Tell stories, share your traditions and create new ones

When we expand our understanding of wealth, we free ourselves from the treadmill of accumulating money at the expense of everything else. Instead, we create lives that are rich in relationships, knowledge, and purpose—a wealth that no market crash can erode. It’s the cumulative effect of nurturing all forms of capital that leads to a resilient and fulfilling life.

CategoriesLifestyle

The Herd of Cats

by Big Calm

Big Calm cofounder Steve Hardy once ran a disaster and emergency management tech startup and would regularly speak at events about black swans, uncertainty, emergence, applied improv, resilience, and antifragility – all subjects that are even more pertinent today and that crossover to permaculture and tiny homesteading.

So, rummaging through the archives, here is a recording of that talk: The Herd of Cats: How Entrepreneurs, Improvisers, and Disaster Managers Approach an Uncertain World.

If you enjoyed this theme, here are a few other links – beginning with the wonderful Pablo Suarez of the International Red Cross/Crescent’s Climate Center speaking about harnessing humour.

Be sure to also check out our post outlining The Adaptive Cycle, which pairs nicely with this thoughtful reflection by Paul Chefurka on Finding the Gift in the darkness (audio here).

CategoriesLifestyle

The Myth of Self-Reliance: Why True Resilience Is Only Found in Community

by Big Calm

The term self-reliance brings to mind a lone homesteader living off-grid in a home built with reclaimed materials. They harvest their rainwater; capture and store energy with a solar panel and a battery; and grow and preserve their own food. They may have a wood stove to cook and heat their home with, and have probably amassed a lot of tools and equipment (a freezer, an axe, canning jars) to enable their lifestyle.

This is an admirable feat, but in reality, this brave soul will never be completely self-reliant because of their hidden dependencies: at some point a company manufactured those upcycled building materials, solar panel and battery, and all the other equipment this off-gridder relies on. Even if they were to “reset the self-reliance clock” once everything needed for this lifestyle is obtained, complete self-reliance has a shelf life. The freezer may short out, canning jars may break, appendicitis may strike. 

This individual may have a lot of knowledge, tools and skills, but they don’t have all of them. 

Does this mean we should abandon our self-reliance goals? Not at all. Instead, it’s important to understand that true self-reliance, paradoxically, is only possible through interdependence with others.

One of the 12 permaculture principles is “Integrate Rather Than Segregate,” or to foster connections between elements (including humans!) to increase synergy and efficiency. Humans are inherently social beings who thrive in collaboration. A functional, connected community shares resources, distributes labour, and collectively tackles challenges. This model mirrors nature, where ecosystems rely on diverse species working together for mutual benefit. One community member might specialize in gardening, while another provides carpentry or medicinal knowledge. Together, they create a resilient and sustainable network that no individual could achieve alone.

By building relationships, sharing resources, and fostering cooperation, we can create resilient communities that allow everyone to flourish. True self-reliance isn’t about isolation; it’s about embracing the power of connection.

A green plan emerges from the black ashes of a wildfire
CategoriesLifestyle

Resilience: The Adaptive Cycle

by Big Calm

This infinity loop is called the Adaptive Cycle. It was first developed to explain the life cycle of forests, and is the most powerfully simple way to describe resilience.

More than just bouncing back from adversity, resilience is a loop – constant and in multitudes. Once you see it this way you’ll see it everywhere – in life, relationships, career, industry, projects, and nature.

There are four phases (sometimes referred to as: r, K, Ω, and α) to the Adaptive Cycle.

Let’s start with perhaps the most pleasant one. This is a young forest, a true love, a growing scale-up, a newly elected government, the beginning of a new job. It’s the phase where we’ve found something special and want to run with it.

We then progress up the front loop. It’s on the front loop that we’re strongest, happiest, and most constructive. Life is beautiful on the front loop.

The next phase is success, maximized and extended by standardization and optimization. There’s comfort with the status quo, but also some signs of complacency and decay. This is an industry’s best quarter, an athlete’s top performance, a lifetime achievement award, a mature forest.

We like this phase so much that we often do everything we can to avoid moving beyond it. We lose adaptive capacity and fall into the Rigidity Trap. It’s here that we see big corporate bail-outs, Blockbuster ignoring Netflix, in-it-for-the-kids marriages, climate change denial.

All good things eventually come to an end – one way or another. There comes a moment of disruption, often not of our choosing. Injury, death, break-up, divorce, disaster, downturn, revolution, even good things like invention, retirement, or winning the lotto. A before and after.

Next comes the release phase, when everything just falls apart (unless you’re the disruptor). There’s a period of denial and mourning, of coping and confusion. What was isn’t and what will hasn’t. Uncertainty abounds.

Then, following some acceptance of a new reality, we try to make sense of our place in it. This can move surprisingly fast or painfully slow, but regardless – beware – the beast is in the back loop. This climb can be very difficult, lonely, and hopeless.

The fourth phase is where we begin to regain hope. Exciting possibilities emerge – often many of them! Vegetation pushes through the burnt forest floor. Individuals date, create, and try new things. Startups start up. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

The most promising of those possibilities go on to where we started, where winners get the nourishment they need to thrive. But if they don’t, those ideas risk falling into the Poverty Trap. Startups need capital, relationships need time, books need editing, forests need water.

Adaptive Cycles can be micro and personal, like writing a new song or grieving the loss of a pet. Or they can be macro and global, like the birth of cryptocurrency or the extinction of species. They can move slowly like human rights movements, or quickly like an improv scene.

Humankind is here, at the convergence of multiple disruptive events caused by late-stage capitalism, major political/cultural shifts, and climate change. There was a before and there will be an after this macro moment in time.

We are immersed in uncertainty and we should know to expect some difficult times ahead before seeing the hopeful light of new order at the end of the tunnel. As they say, the only way out is through.

What makes the Adaptive Cycle such a powerful visual is that the front loop crosses the back loop. It’s the intersection of the strong and capable with the weak and vulnerable – positions everyone is in at various times – that makes community an x-factor for resilience.

Resilience isn’t just bouncing back to normal. It’s ensemble sense-making. It’s an assortment of emerging adaptive cycles – from hopeless to hopeful, creative to confused, weakness to strength, helper to helped. Resilience is a knowing embrace of the emerging uncertain.

Adapted from a Twitter thread originally published on April 19, 2020.

Pictured: New growth emerging from ground charred the previous summer by the 5992 hectare Trozzo Creek wildfire in 2021.

Lush green garden and greenhouse
CategoriesLifestyle

Raised Garden

by Big Calm

The community garden at Big Calm was once a certified organic operation. Untended for a few years, grasses and weeds encroached on increasingly packed ground. 

Garden with creeping buttercup

Despite rich, black soil with mammoth earthworms, last year’s harvest was underwhelming, so this spring we set out to restore the garden to glory. Here’s a chronicle of the steps we took to what’s shaping up to be a great bounty of homegrown veggies.

As soon as the snow melted and the ground thawed in early April, we rented a rototiller and tilled the garden. Now, permaculture purists can be religiously no-till – and for good reason: it can damage precious, vibrant soil.

Tilled garden with dark, rich, wet soil

But our clay-heavy soil was becoming too packed to plant in, so we made a one-time exception and broke it up. It was a muddy job.

Man rototilling a muddy garden

We then immediately covered it up with black plastic sheets to choke out the grasses and weeds (like creeping buttercup) before they took hold. These sheets stayed on for seven weeks.

Garden space covered with black plastic

In the meantime, we bought cement planter blocks and 8′ 2″x6″ untreated cedar boards to construct as the frame for raised beds. (We considered buying planter kits and metal brackets but found the blocks+boards approach both more economical and more flexible to future adjustments.) We mapped out various layouts using Smart Gardener to visualize pathways and optimize planting space. Foregoing rows, we went with an attractive courtyard plan.

Cedar boards outline future raised garden beds

We marked off where the beds would go and then scraped the topsoil into the future aisles, being mindful to maintain a slight slope towards the gully running along the west side of the garden. We met countless beautiful earthworms during this labour.

Scraped topsoil next to future raised garden beds

The raised beds themselves were built in layers. The base was tape- and ink-free cardboard we had collected over the winter. On top of that was some compost (well-aged horse manure from the property’s previous owner), soil, more compost, more soil, and finally a straw mulch. We worked quickly to ensure that the soil didn’t dry out in the sun.

Raised garden beds with newly added soil

One of the biggest efforts was removing or burying a couple boulders found along the way. Now you see it…

Large boulder partially protruding into a garden path

Now you don’t…

Smooth path next to raised garden beds

We completed the build in one long weekend in early June (a bit later than we’d normally plant the garden). Next, it was time to plant. Abby had collected seeds, identified companion plants, and planted a mix of lettuce, kale, radishes, carrots, peas, potatoes, beans, squash, zucchini, corn, tomatoes, green onions, beets and a variety of pollinator-friendly flowers. We laid down some wood chips (made on site from the branch piles left from last year’s fire mitigation work) in the walkways and added some trellises for the beans and peas.

A woman plants in raised garden beds covered in straw

Two gardeners smile in a garden they built

Across the property, we planted a couple dozen trees and bushes gifted by the West Kootenay Permaculture Coop: white mulberry, hazelnut, chestnut, black walnut, honey locust, bur oak, weeping willow, aronia berry, blueberry, raspberry and honeysuckle.

Woman plants a Bur Oak tree in a meadow

We also, finally, found a greenhouse cover to put on an old car shelter frame that came with the property. This will help us extend the growing season.

Greenhouse frame with geotextile floor

Greenhouse with white cover

With Abby’s diligent weeding, watering, and TLC, the garden is thriving and the community is enjoying daily salads and smoothies made of fresh-picked greens, delicious tomatoes, and earthy potatoes. There are few things more satisfying in life than growing your own food!

bright red tomatoes on the vine peas on the pod

Lavender, echinacea and daylily

green rural garden

Our next project, which we’re starting on now, is to build out and integrate rainwater harvesting, storage, and drip irrigation systems to passively feed the garden next year. (The IBC totes pictured below are wrapped in the black plastic that covered the garden in the spring.) More on that later.

Two wrapped IBC totes under an awning

mini excavator on new driveway
CategoriesDevelopment

Project Update (Year-end 2022)

by Big Calm

2022 ended much as it began – with a big dump of snow and a deep freeze. Tough reminders that homesteading and tiny house winterization aren’t easy.

But in between the extremes this year, we enjoyed a quiet, steadily productive year at Big Calm. We ticked through a lot of core to-do’s – including:

Selective Logging – We worked with Acreshakerr, the best of the best, to carefully cull the property’s woods of dangerous leaners, open up some grown-in trails, and generally clean up fuels for wildfire mitigation.

forest trail

Driveway – We also rebuilt much of the kilometre-long driveway leading up to Big Calm. Straightened, widened, ditched, and smoothed with 96 loads of gravel, it is a big improvement on access. (It’s still strange to see the FedEx truck come around now.)

roller packer on long rural roadlandscaping feature

Campaign – One of the bummers of the year was launching an equity crowdfunding campaign on Equivesto just as the world was starting to talk inflation and recession. Investors stayed sidelined, slowing our community buildout plans.

Shangri-loft – After a series of supply-chain delays and more than a few painting/flooring/trimming all-nighters, the property’s centrepiece, the Shangri-loft, was finally completed.

partially finished room with wood stovewoman painting by window

Garden – It was a cool, wet spring this year. Despite the slow start, we made positive inroads with the garden – learning a little bit more about what grows where. The winners: tomatoes, potatoes, pumpkins, apples, and some very happy sunflowers.

yellow tomatoessunflower on sunny day

Getaway Guests – We opened up bookings for The Pocket Getaway in mid-April and, aside from an odd lull in June, we were pretty much booked solid until fall. And so many heart-warming notes left in the guestbook!

compliments on guest signtiny house in winter wonderland

Tow-ins – And of course in 2022 we welcomed our first long-term residents and their two beautiful new pro-built tiny houses – Petrichor and Marillian – to Big Calm!

tiny house in distance tiny house at night

Be sure to sign up to our newsletter and follow us online for continued updates. Best wishes for a happy and healthy 2023!

laptop in hammock

Aerial view of a rural field with earthworks
CategoriesDevelopment

Project Update (Year-end 2021)

by Big Calm

2021 wasn’t an easy year in which to build a project like Big Calm. Slow bureaucrats, busy contractors, wildfire evacuation (just as crews mobilized), supply chain hold-ups (from septic field sand and insulation to doors and appliances), and, oh yeah, that persistent pandemic thing.

Despite all that, we’ve made good progress on the project. Here are some photos of the work done to date.

Power, water, and tech lines were trenched out to the Shangri-loft (which will eventually serve as the shared community space). This includes stubs for a well and future solar array.

A snowy open trench with conduits

Septic tanks were placed at the Shangri-loft and the Type 2 community septic field was excavated and, with the long awaited delivery of sand, partially activated. This is the biggest component of the whole project.

Aerial view of septic field excavation in field Construction of a rural septic field

Earthworks were also completed on two fully serviced tiny house pads – one by the old homesteader cabin and one by the Shangri-loft. The former is now home to The Pocket Getaway and the latter is reserved for the arrival of our first long-term renter this spring.

Aerial view of mini excavator grading a pad

Much of our focus this fall has been on the Shangri-loft itself; renovating a beautiful, unfinished post-and-bean barn-loft that will be Big Calm‘s centrepiece common area (laundry, bike/ski storage, social space). Work included shoring up its foundation, framing in a bathroom and kitchen upstairs and a laundry room downstairs, and, currently, implementing various electrical and mechanical systems.

Framing inside a barn-loft areaInsulation and drywalling in-progressFramed in mechanical room in barn

We’ve been part of Starlink’s beta rollout since March and have been very pleased with internet connectivity on-site.

The fiery summer stunted some of our permaculture plans – at least those in the garden. Nonetheless, we enjoyed a tasty harvest of potatoes, carrots, and Jerusalem artichokes. And we had time to observe – where the water flows, the wind blows, the plants grow, and the animals roam.

So what’s next? In 2022, we plan to grade the access road, extend earthworks out to the community pad sites, install the well, and finish the remaining phases of the septic system. We are working on investment financing to accelerate the buildout to meet the very high level of renter interest.

We’re optimistic for the new year and are looking forward to the community starting to take shape. Be sure to sign up to our newsletter and follow us online for continued updates.

A blue tiny house sits in a peaceful verdant meadow
CategoriesDevelopment,  Lifestyle,  Tiny Homes

The Bigger Picture on Tiny Homesteads

by Big Calm

When we first contemplated building a tiny home community in the Slocan Valley, we thought a lot about how it would impact, and ideally, benefit both the land and the larger community.

Environmental Impact

Earlier this year, I was working on a project to support the region’s licensed cannabis producers, and had the honour and privilege to participate in cultural sensitivity training by members of the Sinixt First Nation, on whose land we work and reside. I learned of Whuplak’n, a Sinixt law that guides us to take care of the land, water, air and all living things. If we take care of the land, it takes care of us: all decisions should be informed through this process of what is in the best interest of all living things. 

Big Calm is aligned with this law. We want to take care of the land so it takes care of us.

Minimal Development, Modest Community

We purchased the property we call Big Calm because it was already ideal for a pocket neighbourhood, with no clearing or major earthworks required. The only development work needed involves smoothing the driveway, drilling a groundwater well, servicing each (gravel) tiny home pad, and installing a septic system. Despite the significant cost, we opted for a Type 2 septic system, which has half the footprint of a Type 1 system and generates much cleaner effluent. In this case, as in many others, eco-minded choices come at a higher cost, but to us, it’s worth it. 

The community will be situated on roughly three of our 30+ acres. Guidelines for RV park developments recommend 10 units per acre, which translates to 30 units for our community space. We decided on only 10. Water is our most precious resource, and after consulting with a civil engineer, we determined that 10 tiny homes is both conservative as well as sustainable. Of course, the other benefit of having only 10 pads is that we can truly offer tiny homesteads, with plenty of space and privacy, with the comfort of a community not too far away.

Tiny Home Living

It’s intuitive that tiny homes take up a smaller footprint than conventional homes and generally use less electricity and water, of which the average Canadian uses 330 litres per day. Tiny house dweller and blogger Joshua Engberg determined that his daily water use was just over 66 litres, about 20% of the average Canadian’s use. In terms of electricity, the average Canadian uses 13,891 kWh per year, while a tiny home uses only 1,515 kWh per year, or about 11% the national per capita average. Based on these statistics, 10 tiny homes would use roughly the same amount of water as two conventional homes and about the same amount of electricity as one conventional home.

And, that doesn’t take into account the electricity- and water-saving measures we, and future tiny homesteaders, plan to employ. Not surprisingly, the majority of individuals interested in living at Big Calm also plan to install solar panels on their tiny homes, which will complement the large solar array we plan to install in the mid-term. Even though tiny homes have a small water catchment area, prospective tiny homesteaders still want to harvest as much water as they can. We’ve also heard from folks planning to have compost toilets in their tiny home, which can save more than 25,000 litres of water per person per year!

Maria Saxton, a doctor of environmental design and planning, conducted a study to measure how downsizing to a tiny home influences downstream environmental impacts. She found that the average ecological footprint required to support a tiny home dweller for one year was about 9.5 acres, compared with 17.3 acres for an individual living in a conventional home, a decrease of 45%. She adds that the impacts are even further-reaching:

“On average, every major component of downsizers’ lifestyles, including food, transportation, and consumption of goods and services, was positively influenced.

 

As a whole, I found that after downsizing, people were more likely to eat less energy-intensive food products and adopt more environmentally conscious eating habits, such as eating more locally and growing more of their own food. Participants traveled less by car, motorcycle, bus, train, and airplane, and drove more fuel-efficient cars than they did before downsizing.

 

They also purchased substantially fewer items, recycled more plastic and paper, and generated less trash. In sum, I found that downsizing was an important step toward reducing ecological footprints and encouraging pro-environmental behaviors.”

Permaculture-Guided

Climate change is an overwhelming issue for everybody. What I love about permaculture is that it is a way for individuals to do their part to care for the earth. Permaculture doesn’t aim to be merely sustainable, it aims to be regenerative. It builds soil, captures carbon, promotes biodiversity and produces food in a way that isn’t destructive. 

We have grand permaculture-related plans for Big Calm. We envision pollinator gardens, a food forest and a greenhouse to extend the growing season. Permaculture is a means by which we can give back to the land, become more self reliant and create community bonds. We are thrilled that everyone we’ve spoken to can’t wait to get their hands dirty!

Community Impact

When we first conceived the concept of Big Calm, we wanted to ensure that it would have a positive impact on the larger community. Affordable housing in this part of BC is a complex issue that will require institutional support and substantial funding to address, and is not an affordable undertaking by us regular folks, unfortunately. 

In an article on the investment needed for dedicated affordable housing Marc Lee, Senior Economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, says:

“A housing commitment to build 11,400 units a year for a decade translates into an annual public investment of about $3 billion ($250,000 per unit construction and related cost), assuming public land owned by local governments or the provincial government is contributed.”

Despite not having the substantial capital required to take on the issue of affordable housing, Big Calm can still have a positive impact. In an article in The Tyee, Guy Dauncey, author of Journey to the Future: A Better World is Possible, posed eight solutions to Canada’s housing crisis. One of them was the development of new villages. He says:

“Many younger people want more than an affordable home. They also want to live sustainably with a strong sense of community. They want to build a sharing economy, with a lighter footprint on the Earth. They want to build their own eco-villages and tiny home villages.

 

An eco-village places more emphasis on sociable, pedestrian-friendly designs, habitat protection and solar energy and passive homes than a conventional development. We should train people how to become their own developers, forming eco-village development co-operatives, raising the money needed and navigating the complex world of zoning and development approval.”

My only gripe with this is that it’s not just younger people, it’s people of all ages, including families, independents, and a large proportion of individuals who are retired or planning to retire soon and want to live a more sustainable lifestyle.

Because Big Calm is attracting remote workers–who will bring their jobs with them–to new residential units, we will not exacerbate the issue of lack of affordable housing. We believe we can have a positive economic impact on the community: we hope our modest project–which is being developed by local contractors; tradespeople; and civil, structural and geotechnical engineers–will potentially relieve some pressure on the middle-market. Not to mention that the Big Calm community will volunteer at local events and support businesses by shopping locally.

“More people are now wanting to relocate to the valley, recognizing it for the gem that it is.” 
– Slocan Valley Economic Development coordinator (Valley Voice, October 8, 2020)

We are thrilled with the calibre and diversity of individuals interested in Big Calm, as well as their desire to contribute not just to the Big Calm community, but to the larger community as well. We’ve heard from individuals who want to share their knowledge of / expertise in laughter yoga, leadership, mindfulness, movement, art, group building, positive therapy, meditation/guided visualization, permaculture, gardening, photography/videography, presentation development, detoxing, raw vegan cuisine, mental wellness, and close community living. We’ve had the pleasure to meet a semi-retired midwife, financial analyst, insurance underwriter, soil scientist, leadership coach and yoga instructor, among others. A desire to live sustainably, care for the land and be part of a supportive community is the common thread that unites them.  

Do you have any other ideas that would help us positively impact the environment, the community and the larger Slocan Valley Community? Please share them with us at hello@bigcalm.ca.

Photo by Arwin Basdew on Unsplash