Intro

          Welcome to The Suburban Bare blog, I hope you are as excited as I am about the future and about the quiet revolution in food production known as Permaculture. Before we get started, I believe a bit of personal history is in order. Since 2005 I have been fascinated by renewable energy and as a result have read hundreds of books, articles, and publications on solar power, passive solar, wind energy, and biomass; everything from basic theory to how to manufacture solar cells and electric generators. I have built hobby solar thermal collectors and small power generators.

          Since 2007 I have kept a home garden that has evolved into a subsistence urban farm and I have amassed a library and knowledge base for home scale organic food production. I began, much like the history of agriculture, taking advantage of built up healthy soil for monoculture production, using synthetic fertilizers when my soil fertility depleted and crops failed, and ultimately left with a desertified plot where nothing but the most aggressive of weeds would grow. To survive, I had to evolve. So in 2010 I began researching organic farming, soil building, polyculture planting, wood coppice, crop rotation, and so on. In 2012 I first heard of Aquaponics however I wrote it off as worthless, as it sounded so much like hydroponics which I had then and have now little faith in. However now my attitude towards aquaponics has made a full 180 after learning how the systems work. Finally in 2013, quite by accident, I stumbled across Bill Mollison's permaculture concept and I have been an advocate since.

          Academically, I'm a student of environmental sociology. Since 2005 I have studied climate and climate change; the history of agriculture as it relates to soil depletion, societal development, social movements, and societal collapse; the destruction of ecosystems and ecological collapse in relation to and caused by human activities. Through my studies, I have found time and again that the problems we face are severe and grave and  the solutions to these problems, though simple, are not often provided or well understood. This is where my hobby and love of permaculture and all things renewable meets my passion for understanding human society and the environment.

          Through this blog and hopefully in combination with Youtube videos, I intend to promote permaculture, aquaponics, and their principles; to address anthropogenic climate change and the coming food shortages and to do so in a manner that is readily accessible to the majority of people, who may not have the time or desire to research these topics as in depth as I have. To be clear, I am not pushing any political agenda, though from time to time I will make commentary on political discourse as it relates to these topics. I believe that after failure to take any serious or significant action to correct climate and social problems that threaten all life on this planet, especially humanity as the quintessential keystone species on this planet, that government action and policy on any level will be wholly inadequate to save our way of life. I believe that the change has to come from you and me, the masses, and though it has to happen immediately in order to avoid serious crisis, I believe we can do it. I operate on scientific fact and not the subjective opinion of representatives who are either ill informed or willfully negligent and entirely willing to argue and blame rather than take responsibility and action towards bettering our future.

          It's time to change the story from one of consumption and planetary domination to one of reciprocity and cooperation. We are not separate from the natural world, we are part of it. We are not islands unto ourselves separate from the world around us, we are integral parts of the whole and our every thought and action bears consequences for the rest of the planet. We are just one of many species on this planet and historically when species cease to serve any vital function or fill any ecological niche they are inevitably eliminated.

          With this in mind, well start from the bottom and work up and out. I hope you enjoyed this brief intro and I look forward to sharing more with you as time goes by. Next week's post will be about soil and why its so important for all terrestrial life.