#4 Inspired by Permaculture
Tonight #4 and I went to a movie about Permaculture featuring the father of the term himself, Bill Mollison.? As we drove home afterward down the dark, snowy highway, I asked #4 (who isn’t particularly drawn to plants or gardening) if there had been anything at all in the movie that had interested him.? He said not really, although the movie did give him an idea.
He decided that next summer when we go back to the mountain to pick huckleberries, he would save 4 huckleberries and plant them in “a little tiny pot.”? Then he imagines they would grow into little huckleberry bushes that he could grow in his room in the window right by his bed where they would get plenty of light.? He would be able to harvest them to his heart’s delight and get all the huckleberries he could want.
He asked me whether whether huckleberry bushes die in the fall so that he would need to save 4 berries from his first crop in order to plant the next one.? I assured him that huckleberries live through the winter.? He commented that maybe people shouldn’t eat huckleberries since they poop in toilets, thus putting the huckeberry seeds out of commission so the plants can’t reproduce.? I said that might be a problem if it was mainly people that ate most of the huckleberries.? We agreed that if it was mostly bears and birds that ate huckleberries, the seeds would be better taken care of.
The other things that interested him in the movie was how an outhouse ultimately provided cooking gas for a kitchen, and a similar system was devised on a farm where pigs were raised.? He says he REALLY wants a straw bale house because he would have big, deep window sills in his room.? The windows would face east, in a holy manner, but would have foil lined shades that would roll down to block out the holy sun when he wanted to sleep in late.