“It was the voice in my head that told me to do the permaculture diploma.”

As much as I observe back over these past six years there is no other reason for me doing the diploma other than the voice in my head told me to. Don’t get me wrong, I do not always listen to this voice, I do have some control over my thoughts. It’s just those thoughts that come with a feeling, a sense of adventure, a kind of mystery. So, you could say this was always going to be a quest, a journey of learning and self-discovery. 

In 2017 I was running around like a mad man; I was having more crazy design ideas than I could keep up with. This was when Geoff Lawton was over in England to attend the Permaculture National Convergence which took place in September at Ilkley, West Yorkshire. Before this event, he was touring the country visiting permaculture projects. I can’t remember exactly where I saw it, but I spotted Geoff was going to be visiting Horton Community Farm in Bradford followed by a talk the Sunday before the convergence. At the time I knew Horton quite well, after a quick internet search I discovered the community farm was a little further up the road from an Ayurvedic clinic I had been to several times. I contacted the organiser Charlie and the next thing I’m helping set up the room for the talk after the farm visit.

What I’m going to describe next is one of those moments where every time you see somebody you are reminded of something amusing only to you. Just before Geoff was to give his talk, he was looking for some water to drink. No problem I had a large bottle of water with me, so I put it on the table and thought nothing more of it. As he was in mid-flow through his talk, he paused to get a drink of water. Well, his face was a picture, as soon as he swallowed the water, in a moment of panic he looked directly at his wife and said there was something wrong with the water. I suddenly released that I forgot to mention that there was a very small amount of sea salt in the water, I’ve been drinking distilled water for years and always use a little sea salt to remineralize it. Fair play to Geoff, he certainly has good taste buds. Oddly his thirst suddenly went away. 

The following weekend I was at the Permaculture National Convergence, and I gave Geoff a big knowing smile.

I don’t tend to go to gatherings and events like this, they always make me feel a bit odd as if I should not be there, and that I’ve sneaked in over the fence. That said, I came away from this event with the idea to help set up a design with a few people. This was great, lots of people were interested until a few weeks later when the interest slowed and then it seemed to be just me. Another reminder for me not to attend events.

November 2017 brought the biggest shake-up to my life with the sudden death of a very close friend. Justin died of a heart attack aged 40. 

It took me until November 2020 to submit my first permaculture design to Wilf. The craziness that had fuelled me well in 2017 was long gone. My life had changed considerably in a matter of three years. Not long after Justin died of a heart attack, I had a general health check and was diagnosed with familial hypercholesterolemia which is an inherited condition that causes high levels of LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol beginning at birth, and heart attacks at an early age. I also bought my first house and had all the stress that comes as part of that package, fortunately, the stress was free, unlike everything else.

Even though I had not submitted any designs to Wilf during this period, I was busy working on a few designs that needed to be done as part of the house project, I just hadn’t managed to get around to the final writing up process.

 

2016

As this is the observation section and I’m trying to shed light on why I took this diploma it would be good to go back to 2016. It was early June when I emailed my list of ten designs over the Wilf and a month later, I began to add a bit of a framework to them.

Below I have shared a description of the intended designs followed by my plan of action.

 

Breaking open the story was a play of words inspired by Daniel Pinchbeck’s book, Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism. Included in this design idea is a seed that would grow into a full design having little resemblance to the original. Following the branch of the mind map for this topic is a new network called: Richmond and Dales P/N (Permaculture Network). Eventually, this would be shorted to Richmond Permaculture Network and became; Diploma design eight. At least I got to use the words psychedelic journey in my diploma. Back then if I only knew what was to come in the approaching years breaking open the story world come to represent a six-year psychedelic journey like no other.

Edible home and Garden, this is quite interesting “turning our new home and garden into a zone of food abundance,” I didn’t start looking for a house until February 2017, but this became the influence for five of my final designs: Foraging Garden; Kitchen Garden; Soil Fertility; Kitchen Garden Reloaded; and Rainwater Harvesting. Included in one of the branches of the mind map is a mention of the allotment. I’ll cover this one more in the research section, but the Allotment becomes an important retrospective diploma design. The Small Space Garden Design proposal in the original ten, this design should also be included here due to the same five designs all relate to this one. 

Another design idea was “moving home”, nothing more than just that, I had no more information to give at the time regarding this idea but would go on to become my first real-time design. This house buying design,  moved quickly but took me a while to finish writing it up.

Two original design ideas that never made it any further than ideas were, “we are what we wear” along with “living in the movement”. No point talking about these other than even after six years I think there is still a design worth putting together for each.

There were two other original designs that also never really made it into full designs, but elements of them ended up in the forage design. These are, “Teas to make you smile” and “eat more for less”. I say elements because they both had foraging as a key part of the design when I was thinking about them. Okay, I’m probably stretching it a bit including these designs into the forage design but hay, why not?  

Other than the learning pathway which I’ll talk about next, the only other design that did incarnate in the final ten designs albeit with a new title was, “stress management”. Observing now what I wrote back in 2016 the bones of this design appeared from the beginning. This was to become the forage design. Probably my most important design but I think this with each of my designs as I’m working on them. Of course, I know that this design the “learning Pathway” is my most important design.  

So, we now observe my thoughts from 2016 on the “learning pathway, the story of my story.” The mind map for this design reads as if I was writing in code at the time. It’s a bit nonsensical but I can pick out the key elements that became important throughout these past six years. Taking courses, building websites, reading, and listening to podcasts. The amount of time I’ve spent sitting in front of the thing I’m typing these words on building websites is ridiculous. Most of this work just got deleted never to be used, whole websites have come and gone with nobody ever seeing them. I’m not a web developer just a tinkerer who gets a bit obsessed trying to make a website look like how I want it, this takes me far too long.  During this diploma, I’ve also taken a few WordPress courses, a mind map course, and social media courses, I’ve done more online courses than enough. Just the same as listening to podcasts. I’ve managed to break this addiction but then got hooked on audiobooks. I’m still working through this addiction by listening to audiobooks on addiction.

 

Conclusion of the first ten design ideas

 

“My name is Stephen, and I’m addicted to research.”

The prominent word for most designs was “research”. I might be observing somebody obsessed with research here if I was viewing myself from the outside. This could explain the next section of this FORAGE design framework. It now makes perfect sense why I had so much difficulty with other design frameworks, then I discovered PRIME with a beautiful section titled “research”. I gelled with this framework straightaway, and now I know why. When I came up with a framework of my own, I also needed to have a whole section for research. I have never really thought about this until now, it makes perfect sense, or highlights the fact that I’m just on the autism spectrum.

This aside, after taking the time to revisit my first design ideas I do not feel as embarrassed about them as I have been whenever I’ve glanced at them in the past. Admittedly the names I came up with could have been a little better, but the underlying original thoughts were well-meaning, nonetheless.  

 

To help evaluate the information gained so far I’ll use the SWOC Analysis tool in the form of a mind map. SWOC is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Challenges.

Throughout my diploma this has been a great tool in helping me to set out the thoughts running around in my head. I like the simplicity of it and was the first design tool I bonded with. This is the first time I’ve used it in the mind map format and visually works well.