Live What You Love
By Heather Lynne, European Centre

It is early in the morning. You have just risen from a sweet slumber. With a smile you grab your boots and yank them on. Opening the door, the sun pours in, and you walk out. You may believe, as you maneuver through the land under the tall windblown trees with wildness cradling your steps, that this is just another forest you have been hiking through. A forest full of forage for the wild animals, overgrowth just waiting to be discovered. While this is all very true, it happens to also be a farm, a garden that lives and works together in a sustainable way to feed all animals both wild and tame. Every member of the community gets a bite. I see you there behind the tree looking perplexed at the simplicity of nature and the complexity of what we call permaculture farming.

"Permaculture seeks to design sustainable lifestyles based on conditions unique to each place and designed according to the same principles by which nature integrates other species into her ecosystems," according to one website devoted to this subject. (Hemenway, Dan; http://www.permaculture.net). Bill Mollison, an Australian farmer from Tasmania and the father of permaculture, said it best, in 1989, "Permaculture really starts with an ethic, it involves earth care, concern of the whole system and its species. So we actually devise model systems and much of the design is drawn from nature. The end result that we aim for is to produce a system that is ecologically sound and economically profitable. It can get as simple or as sophisticated as you like."

Combining technology and the instinctive skills of listening to nature, learning from it, and then using both these skills to farm the land is all permaculture really is. Ah, but the gardens are beautiful. You can feel the difference between this type of farming and fields of acres and acres of just desert and rows of lettuce in between. As a consumer, you can taste the difference between conventional farming and sustainable farming, this would be organic produce.

No farmhand of permaculture could ever say it is paradise. The work is easier knowing that I am helping to support a community and farm that is struggling economically, as small farms often are, all in the name of living what you love.

As I settle here in the valley of southern Spain's mountains here at Finca la Mohea farm - 100 miles from Malaga and 20 miles above Genalgual - getting down and dirty once again, living what I love in the land of farming. I have everything I need out here. I have plenty of work, plenty to eat, and a place to nap under the canopy - and the most important thing - a good warm feeling in my belly, as you do after drinking a cup of hot tea, that stems from the knowledge that I am working with the land and not against it.