How can a new entity like Permaculture Living Lands Trust best serve the need to redesign our human relationship to land and water? 

​

We have been meeting with and interviewing people who are each, in their own way, redesigning for resiliency in their communities and bioregions: permaculture designers and natural builders;  agro foresters and tree crop nursery people; foragers and agroecologists; conservationists and commoners.  This is an ongoing process, and we hope to expand these conversations.  You can listen to some of them on our Permaculture Perspectives podcast, in collaboration with the Center for Bioregional Living. 

​

As we learn about what needs our friends and colleagues are facing in their communities and bioregions, especially related to stewarding the land and water commons, we are learning how best to serve those needs. As a result, we have centered our founding work on two foundational programs:

​

Planning, Designing, Installing

​

How can we co-create  multi-generational, high quality food and water supplies in the food sheds and watersheds of the bioregions we call home?  

​

- Watershed and Food shed Assessments - we are developing food shed and watershed assessments in the Roundout Creek / Walkill Creek Watersheds of the Hudson Valley of upstate New York to identify the potential for communities to meet more of  their food, water, and energy needs at the bioregional level and in harmony with local ecologies. 

​

- Riparian Food Forest Plantings - we collaborate on riparian food forest plantings enhanced with native and hybrid edible tree crops as public/private partnerships. This began with a pilot project along a tributary of Esopus Creek, also in the Hudson Valley, with the Ulster County Environmental Office and the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation’s “Trees for Tribs” program. We are now working to assist in maintaining these sites and replicate this approach locally and in other bioregions to help establish landscape-scale community food forests that balance healthy foods and clean water supplies with ecological restoration.  

​

- Community Educational Farms - landscape-scale agroforestry / agroecology,  community food forests and forest gardens will require many skilled stewards with land-based, hands-on training. In recognition of this need, we are planning and designing Community Educational Farms centered on tree crop and native plant  nurseries offering apprenticeships and incubating cooperative businesses to carry out this important, multigenerational work. Training up locally-adapted people to raise  locally-adapted plants for locally-adapted food systems.

​

Protecting, Stewarding

​

What type of land tenure is needed as the basis for new, more resilient ecologies, societies, and economies? 

 

- Decolonizing Conservation Easements - in the greater Minneapolis area of western Wisconsin we are thrilled to hold a cultural and agricultural conservation easement protecting over 50 acres of a lakefront permaculture/agroforestry farm. This easement addresses the legacy of colonialism, and is part of a land return project and cultural continuity commons created by and for communities of color. This is another important and replicable model for long-term protection of multigenerational plantings for posterity, and reconnecting with traditional ecological knowledge and ceremonial use of land. 

​

- Tree Crop Repositories - there is an incredible wealth of tree crop agriculture nurseries, orchards, and groves and improved varieties of native nut and fruit trees that have been carefully selected and tended to for much of the last century. Who will inherit this shared wealth? As the co-creators of these useful trees reach elder status, we are meeting with them, walking the land together, listening to their visions, and offering them guidance so that these collections can be permanently protected and stewarded as a legacy for the communities and bioregions where they grow. These are the kind of well-adapted genetics that will seed the community food forests we all need as we shift to Local Living Economies.  
​

Get Involved!

​

We all get to be Solutionaries…revolutionaries with solutions to living well on Earth.  We aren’t here to be consumers - we are all ecological  designers and producers. All hands on deck! 

​

As Permaculture Living Lands Trust emerges, we join a world of vibrant changemakers who are collectively writing the new human story of reciprocity. Together we are replacing the old story of extraction and exploitation, so that we may all live well on Earth and with each other. 

​

We invite you to join us in creating a new land commons for agroforestry / agroecology in support of thriving, biodiverse foodsheds and watersheds where you live. 

​

If you are called to action, to become a Solutionary for a Permaculture Commons, to   liberate the land in service of biodiverse foodsheds and watersheds, to protect tree crop repositories and create riparian food forest buffers…then consider this your invitation to join us in building the Permaculture Living Lands Trust momentum!  

Learn about actions you can take WITH us on projects as they emerge. 

​

Contribute your energy by making a seed gift of ideas, time, or funds to build on the commitment our generous founding donors have made. 

​

Share your stories of land access, land security, and land sovereignty in the places where you live and work. 

Share this story with those who feel the call to action so we may all live well within the Earth Commons!