Hi Andy, so good to find your stuff on Substack. I followed a while back on FB but quality pages like yours just get lost amongst the distraction. And I’m not a podcast listener so am happy to see that you’re writing.
Love your review of swales, admittedly I hoped there was going to be more of a dig at GL but the memes will have to do.
Over here in the Philippines people love their swales. I’m not sure what they’re expecting them to do. They just like copying out of the “permaculture toolbox” and applying it to our tropical soils and our extremely heavy rainfalls and expect what?
I had an ex-friend go and do GL’s 2 week course over in Australia and then he came back and wanted to design my property. After his PDC he had know idea how to do basic mapping with triangulation but his resulting design had swales over most of my property including right adjacent to the top of a fairly precarious cliff face. Nothing else in the design, just swales.
I ended up going and doing a PDC after quite a few years of being quite against it and the cult-y guru vibes I sometimes got from it. However I was already by this stage quite familiar with a lot of the good permaculture texts. My teacher wouldn’t even discuss swales. Too advanced and much easier, much less energy intensive solutions.
Anyways, good to see you here and I’ll try to have a read of your other stuff
Hi Andy, so good to find your stuff on Substack. I followed a while back on FB but quality pages like yours just get lost amongst the distraction. And I’m not a podcast listener so am happy to see that you’re writing.
Love your review of swales, admittedly I hoped there was going to be more of a dig at GL but the memes will have to do.
Over here in the Philippines people love their swales. I’m not sure what they’re expecting them to do. They just like copying out of the “permaculture toolbox” and applying it to our tropical soils and our extremely heavy rainfalls and expect what?
I had an ex-friend go and do GL’s 2 week course over in Australia and then he came back and wanted to design my property. After his PDC he had know idea how to do basic mapping with triangulation but his resulting design had swales over most of my property including right adjacent to the top of a fairly precarious cliff face. Nothing else in the design, just swales.
I ended up going and doing a PDC after quite a few years of being quite against it and the cult-y guru vibes I sometimes got from it. However I was already by this stage quite familiar with a lot of the good permaculture texts. My teacher wouldn’t even discuss swales. Too advanced and much easier, much less energy intensive solutions.
Anyways, good to see you here and I’ll try to have a read of your other stuff
Awesome, thank you! Glad you found it!