What is Permaculture?

So, these days I get asked a lot on what I am doing, where I'm living, etc, etc. my main response is that I'm living out in permaculture village. Where I usually get the response of what the hell is permaculture? I always have a bit of a problem explaining exactly what it is, but today I stumbled upon a lovely news article explaining what it is all about. This Article (http://www.onegreenplanet.org/lifestyle/why-permaculture-aint-just-about-gardening/) explains that permaculture is not just about growing food. It is about using all your resources around you, to use the land in the most efficient way to help with reducing waste, while using everything at your disposal to create, be it food or structures. Most importantly, permaculture is a way of life, a way to look at the world in the sense of what is re-usable and what is pollution. This way of thinking can lead to great things, such as making a green house out of plastic bottles, as Andrew Douse has done, here is his website on how it is all done (http://andrewdouse.hubpages.com/hub/plasticbottlegreenhouse). This has the benefit of creating a structure, out of something what would be throw out, and the structure helps with the creating of vegetables.

More importantly it leads to a way to look at the world in a way that has been taken away from us, we have become a throw away society that looks at the package things come in rather than looking at how something is made and if we really need what we are buying. The pressure we get from our peers is huge, just looking at what phone your friend has can want you to get the latest and greatest, even though we have a phone that works perfectly well. That is why having a community where we can show of our latest and greatest eco friendly, up-cycled contraptions is absolutely awesome. it makes use of the same behaviour that marketers have been using on us to buy their stuff and lets us use it in a positive way that will not only help benefit us, but also benefit the community as a whole.

While it is true that I do not practice permaculture as much as I would like, just like a lot of people that live in Crystal Waters. I like to think that the community as a whole, thinks in ways to reduce waste, and produce as much as we can where we can.