The Demo Site

My friend Jeremiah Kidd and I tagged teamed today during a morning presentation at Santa Fe’s Water Summit. He owns San Isidro Permaculture and I own Santa Fe Permaculture, so one might think that there would be at least an undertone of competition between us. Fortunately, one of permaculture’s first principles reflects the “cooperation, not competition, is the driving force of nature” theory, so we had a great time trading bits of knowledge, experience, advice, and perhaps even a smidgen of myth. Not only did we learn a thing or two from each other, it seemed that folks in the audience were able to get a lot of burning questions answered in a short period of time.

Since much of the conference was about cistern systems, we focused mostly on passive water-harvesting techniques like pumice wicks, French drains, swales, bale swales, book swales, gabions, check dams, and the importance of mulching. We even dove into the way in which microclimates play an undeniable role in both water conservation and water harvesting: Windbreaks and shade prevent evaporation. Rocks, heated during the day and suddenly chilled by the desert night, can release a significant amount of precipitation—making it relatively easy to squeeze water from a stone. It’s one of the ways that the native people here survived for centuries, and it’s one that most people in our modern culture almost never consider and rarely employ in a conscious manner.