The Sustainable Living Project podcast episode at AKG

I have been a regular listener to the Alternative Kitchen Garden podcast for some time now and when Emma at AKG asked for correspondents to add content to her podcast I jumped at the chance. We are honored to be a part of her effort to help folks build resilience through food growing.

Jacqui and I have recorded the first episode which begins the documentation of our planning process for The Sustainable Living Project in America.

You can find the podcast containing our content here. Please see the transcript below.

“Introduction - Hello this is Robb and Jacqui from the Sustainable Living project. We are in the planning and design stage of establishing an off grid permaculture based lifestyle and educational project in the suburbs of Hickory North Carolina USA. Our goal is to demonstrate that a low impact, resilient but comfortable, healthy, and convenient lifestyle is possible in existing suburban developments. You can keep track of our progress on this podcast and at our blog, Sustainable Living at sustliving.blogspot.com

Initially taken from the joining of the the two words permanent and agriculture, permaculture has evolved to encompass many aspects of sustainable living. Indeed the prime directive of permaculture is that, quote, “the only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children”, unquote. That’s from Permaculture: A Practical Guide for a Sustainable Future published in 1990 by Bill Mollison, a text we are studying for guidance along our path.

We believe that taking responsibility entails addressing the impacts of all aspects of our lives; food, water, shelter, waste, energy, consumption, and travel. We have chosen not to have children which does simplify things somewhat. On the other hand this has freed us up to live higher impact personal lifestyles. Up until now we have enjoyed living in and visiting far flung locations. This has left us with a carbon debt, or as we like to call it carbon karma, that we feel must be paid down. We believe that a permaculture based off grid lifestyle offers us the most effective path to achieve carbon equity.

Along the way we hope to rekindle our connection to natural cycles, build better health by growing and eating our own high quality organic food, establish household scale resilience as a response to the challenges of peak oil and climate change, and also to help build community scale resilience by starting a transition initiative.

Each episode will feature a different permaculture principle and how we are applying it to the design and eventual implementation of our project. We’ll get started with that in the next episode, for now we’ll leave you with The Principle of Cooperation from the aforementioned text by Bill Mollison - “cooperation, not competition, is the very basis of existing life systems and of future survival”

Outro - And that’s about it for this episode. Thanks for listening and until next time visit us at sustliving.blogspot.com”