Hi Leon, thanks for the update. It is funny that I am in Malaysia but our journeys have so many similarities. We tend to a 2 hectare homestead since four years ago. Have two kids, goats, apply some syntropic (our own version) combined with permaculture. No typhoons though! Do keep writing. I write at intotheulu.com but havent been writing much with two kids. Also i am unlearning a lot of stuff and going through a transformation thats hard to verbalise as yet. :)
Hi Thomas! Thanks for reading, always good to connect with others in the same climate. Loved that poem you wrote about your daughter, really beautiful. And very interesting to see that type of button-looking mushroom you were foraging, we are familiar though the ones you showed from the market though, getting lots of them now that it’s rainy season.
Our girl is 6, boy is 3 and expecting another kid in December. Barely staying afloat without much of the efficiency, speed and ease of the industrial economy. To think I am getting a scythe! I enjoyed your quote at the end about "not too efficient". Gentle farming is a new term for me, but it resonates well.
I’ve always disliked labels such as natural farming or permaculture because I want to be flexible to change when something isn’t working for me (but realise I did exactly the same when I labeled myself as a gentle farming). For instance the whole “no-till” thing has never worked for me (and maybe I’m doing it completely wrong as I’ve never read how to do it, maybe I should read “one straw”...?). I did like the gentle quote to though, and I though it was a nice way to live a life with less harm.
“Barely staying afloat”, ah the story of our lives haha. Yeah going from one dilemma to another...Yeah as I read once, this “simple” life is definitely not easy...
it’s definitely a case of changing the way you are as a person and the way you think, rather than trying to get “everything done”.
Mike Hoag has a great diagram of using systems thinking for farming and how you use leverage points to make it easier. The biggest leverage was changing the way you think.
Ok I will check Mike Hoag out, and the Dona video link at the bottom of your article. I agree with you on labels, that's why I am allergic to hard rules (eg cannot till the soil, must mulch, must prepare fertilizer in a particular way, think biodynamic). Ethics and principles seem less likely to change much over time, but the way we apply them do. It would probably take a lot to change your farming to ungentle!
Hi Leon, thanks for the update. It is funny that I am in Malaysia but our journeys have so many similarities. We tend to a 2 hectare homestead since four years ago. Have two kids, goats, apply some syntropic (our own version) combined with permaculture. No typhoons though! Do keep writing. I write at intotheulu.com but havent been writing much with two kids. Also i am unlearning a lot of stuff and going through a transformation thats hard to verbalise as yet. :)
Hi Thomas! Thanks for reading, always good to connect with others in the same climate. Loved that poem you wrote about your daughter, really beautiful. And very interesting to see that type of button-looking mushroom you were foraging, we are familiar though the ones you showed from the market though, getting lots of them now that it’s rainy season.
How old are your kids, my girls are 7 and 10.
Our girl is 6, boy is 3 and expecting another kid in December. Barely staying afloat without much of the efficiency, speed and ease of the industrial economy. To think I am getting a scythe! I enjoyed your quote at the end about "not too efficient". Gentle farming is a new term for me, but it resonates well.
I’ve always disliked labels such as natural farming or permaculture because I want to be flexible to change when something isn’t working for me (but realise I did exactly the same when I labeled myself as a gentle farming). For instance the whole “no-till” thing has never worked for me (and maybe I’m doing it completely wrong as I’ve never read how to do it, maybe I should read “one straw”...?). I did like the gentle quote to though, and I though it was a nice way to live a life with less harm.
“Barely staying afloat”, ah the story of our lives haha. Yeah going from one dilemma to another...Yeah as I read once, this “simple” life is definitely not easy...
it’s definitely a case of changing the way you are as a person and the way you think, rather than trying to get “everything done”.
Mike Hoag has a great diagram of using systems thinking for farming and how you use leverage points to make it easier. The biggest leverage was changing the way you think.
Ok I will check Mike Hoag out, and the Dona video link at the bottom of your article. I agree with you on labels, that's why I am allergic to hard rules (eg cannot till the soil, must mulch, must prepare fertilizer in a particular way, think biodynamic). Ethics and principles seem less likely to change much over time, but the way we apply them do. It would probably take a lot to change your farming to ungentle!