Permaculture is a rather strange sounding word and I often try a variety of ways of explaining it to people. Provision of examples of things like swales and chicken tractors help, but then people often get the idea that Permaculture is only about farming or gardening. Permaculture is a comprehensive design methodology for all kinds of systems. Permaculture can be applied to businesses, to education, to food production, to energy services, to water management, home and building construction, community development and a whole lot more.
Five minute explanations of Permaculture won’t always work(although sometimes they do). What we strive to do is to establish better relationships with our fellow human beings in order to galvanize the spread and implementation of Permaculture on a wider scale . That is the fundamental idea of Murujan Permaculture Design: To establish better human relationships.
Our First Clients
Our first clients are a charming couple in Malaysia. Their lovely and spacious home is not very far from Kuala Lumpur.
They are great hosts and often have guests from all parts of the world and it helps that between them they speak Arabic, Mandarin, Italian, English and Malay.
They have been interested in organic farming for some time and have already hosted a number of wwoofers. They love the idea of Permaculture and want to maximize the application of Permaculture to their home and property. They would like to earn some additional income by occasionally serving as a homestay. They also have a dream to build an orphanage on a portion of their land that would accommodate between 15 to 20 children. They hope that the design of the orphanage itself and the garden and food systems on the land would nourish the children’s understanding of gardening and nature.
With this understanding of the client’s desires, Murujan Permaculture Design would like to work with them over the long term to achieve the following goals:
1. To add an herb spiral, kitchen garden and food forest among other beneficial features.
2. To introduce rainwater harvesting, solar power, and other sustainable energy systems to the home
3. To host Permaculture teachers and courses and take advantage of the resultant synergies
3. To help create a website that will serve as a portal to register and transact with home-stay guests, wwoofers, and Permaculture students.
4. To use revenues and accumulated design ideas from hosted Permaculture Design Courses to eventually build an orphanage that will nurture the children’s minds, spirits and bodies.
5. To live happily ever after, growing and learning with the system.
By hosting Permaculture Design Courses and other training courses at the property, we hope to draw in lots of external energies and creativity to help them bring their dreams to fruition.
We plan to host the first Permaculture Design Course there in January 2012 with teacher Mustafa Fatih Bakir. We already have many registrations so please register quickly if you are interested.
Go to this post for more information and to register online.
The great thing about the place is that it already has many of the raw ingredients; application of Permaculture design should easily propel it into a world class eco-homestay powered by Permaculture.
Once developed the site will serve as a useful demonstration site and example for homes and businesses in Kuala Lumpur and its suburbs.
The photos below give a glimpse of the potential of the site:
Pulasan or “twist” fruit gets its name because the way it is opened is by twisting the skin, the fruit tastes mellow and refreshing and has an edible seed that tastes similar to chestnut.
Plenty of rain, ripe to be harvested. The property currently has a simple rain harvesting system that can be improved to provide more useful access to this abundant resource.
This is the spacious hall where indoor teaching sessions for the Permaculture Design Course take place.
A couple of guineafowl scamper beneath a tree. Guineafowl are just one of the many unique varieties of animals living on the property.
The entirety of the property totals about 2 acres, this is a view of the vast front yard populated with banana palms.
These Chinese Geese are some the of the toughest security guards I’ve ever encountered!
The house has a number of comfortable guest rooms to accommodate Permaculture Design Course Students and WWoofers.
The hosts provide excellent home cooked meals ranging from local dishes to western favorites and the occasional Chinese or Arabic specialty.
Murujan 