Pattern Languages: Links between Lesson Plans, Individual Dreams, and Community

A Little History
My name is Chow. I garden and teach lessons for the Outdoor Learning Environment at East Ft Worth Montessori Academy. I've been here for since August of 2011 and this is my first time to teach children about anything. So I did what I knew, look at pattern languages to see how I could leverage their creativity and desires to teach them what they wanted.

In another picture, there is a Community Cultivators Dallas-Ft Worth originating and developing the community has been step one. We're a dispersed group of individuals with miscellaneous talents and gifts. The vital question became, "how do we harness our community assets?"

The previous idea of community assets is next in succession from the individual and their own personal dreams and goals. Although, both can be cultivated simultaneously when the proper resources are injected to develop new patterns.

That should do it.

Onward to the lesson plan.

Table of Contents + Titles
The beauty of education through Outdoor Learning is the adaptiveness we have to focus on what we observe through the children's excitement and participation just as they observe us and the environment to discover knowledge instead of being told or fed the answers. In fewer words, our teaching methods can change within the moment to cater to a particular interest. To organize this self-discovery, the children are equipped with their own journals with a table of contents to structure their documentation of their explorations. Funny thing is I never did that myself until I saw that these children's organizational skills were far superior to mine.

Since August, I've been preparing to teach lessons to these children from my observations of them and my experience in life. Let the teaching begin!

This week, I've been placed to teach 2nd grade classes about a lesson topic of my choice. Naturally, the kids have shown interest in things that are animated. It's irresistible, and it somehow narrows their attention to that life force. At East Ft Worth Montessori (EFWMA), we have chickens, goats, and rabbits. From previous conversations from another Outdoor Learning Educator, the kindergarten class didn't remember anything else she taught except for those three things: chickens, goats, and rabbits. They remember most of the details about the animals but couldn't recall the conversations about weather or anything else that they have covered in the past few months.

Observation: Teach them what they want to know and don't strive too far from that at first

So I decided to add a new addition to complement the other animals and make life easier at our school farm while teaching about a life force that they're somewhat familiar with, earthworms .

The Lesson Plan

It's often assumed that kids do not know much about a particular subject. The case though is that many of them are more familiar than we may know. In economic theory, adverse selection occurs from asymmetrical information for the purchase of goods and services. For example, if you were to buy a used car the dealership has better information at the moment than you do. To cure that, you may take the car in for inspection and determine if its worth their asking price.

For information, it's alleviated by asking the simple question: What Do You Already Know?

From that point you've determined their current understanding or lack of understanding about a particular subject. Many people are misinformed about a particular topic and may not realize it. For instance, many parents are afraid of bees hurting their children or maybe just themselves. In effect, the children become scared in the environment with the sight of bees and do not behave correctly around them increasing their chances of being stung, an unfortunate event for the child and the bee.

At this point, the foundation of knowledge can be steered into a new comfort zone with proper information and time. With certain individuals, changing the paradigm of fear or ignorance may take a different approach.

From the point of their current knowledge base, we can then move towards the next area of participation and involvement: What do You want to Know?

Future based perceptions allow the children to abstractly grasp their thoughts and desires about a particular subject and begin communicating it to the world. In the case of earthworms, the kids were fascinated with how they reproduce.

The beauty of this simple question also allowed me to gauge their interest and alter my lesson to address those wants and move into other areas to show how they complement each other. In this case, the reproduction of earthworms also requires the foundation of knowledge about their habitat, shelter, food, air, water, and so forth.

In this manner, the children can link how the worms reproduce but also need other elements to thrive. Producing baby worms continuously won't be beneficial unless the habitat is conducive for it.

Once I've determined What they Already Know and What they Want to Know, the lesson moves into the area of Observation and Analysis.

Using their prior knowledge and their desires, they can now view an earthworm and see for themselves if they can answer their own questions. In one class period, they may determine new insights, but the likelihood of answering everything is limited to the duration of the lesson, which is not long enough.

However, they get to answer for themselves, and I only serve as a guide to steer their thoughts to general concrete ideas. For instance, the children were able to identify that the worms enjoy darkness. The following question would then be to determine how do earthworms react to light and have them determine for themselves from their previous knowledge base why they react to light in that manner. Simple answers would be "it dries them out." Great! They're then rewarded with the simple act of holding a worm.

Onwards! From there, I move into the altered lesson plan. The components are dynamic so that I can move to different areas: anatomy, reproduction, habitat, etc. In this way, I can teach the lesson that they wanted to know just as their observations in nature may have taken place outdoors.

So. .

what does this have to do with individual dreams and community assets?

patterns

Individual Dreams and Communal Assets
As an individual, my dreams and goals are to create a world we all want to live in. To determine a plan of action, I would first start by determine What I Already Have and Know.

Much in the same fashion as the lesson plan for the children, I am selecting talents and gifts that are already acquired through my life experience. It's a leverage point to then determine the future state of assets, my dreams. Another way to say dream though is What I Want to Have and Know.

From there, I can seek members of the community, online or local, to determine how I can leverage my current foundation (knowledge and skill set) to reach my desired goals.

Likewise, once an individual can harness this, working within communities is the next step within the succession. Individual goals can be accomplished alone. However community support speeds up the succession through the accumulation of individual foundations and dreams.

Going back to the lesson plan, what does a community have and what does the community want.

Patterns don't have to be complicated. It's like a math problem where you change the variable X to Y, a metaphor to relate those same variables using words, or a piece of art to communicate beauty.

You can search within, or look around only to find very similar if not the same answers.

It's all very funny in the end. It took communities, individuals, and this school to get me to realize how similar and the same they all are.

Community Cultivator FunRaiser

As you may or may not already know, Community Cultivators is at a very important moment of growth and development and we need your help. Over the past year and a half we have done some incredible things together and really made the best of the worst summer in Texas history. Today, we have visions of taking C^2 to the next level and beyond. We seek to develop a new level of community creativity and interactivity that we want you all to be apart of... and we'll all need each others help to get there!

Through the commitment of hard working people such as yourself, we've change many landscapes, shared many meals, moved mountains of mulch and showed how permaculture can be applied even in the most urban of environments. Over the course of this adventure, we've managed to "fund a movement" without any substantial funding. It's incredible to think about all that we've accomplished together!

As we move ahead there are opportunities awaiting us on the horizon that will allow us to expand our services and our ability to cultivate more resilient, healthy and happy communities. Some of these opportunities, however, come at a cost.

As a community, we would still much prefer to find the talent needed to perform this work within the community, people who share our vision and mission and who want to continue to see the community thrive, without having to ask for monetary donations. This is the kind of world we would like to work toward, one where money is the last medium of exchange considered rather than the first.

Sharing the skills for a better community

Here are a few of the skills we are hoping to find within the community:

Web Programer: Someone with a strong knowledge of open source technologies who can help us develop an interactive website that will serve as a tool to help empower individuals to engage with their communities worldwide and cultivate a healthy and cooperative network from which to share ideas and inspiration.

Graphic Designer: Someone who can channel the community feel into an inviting and interactive user interface for our developing website.

Legal Professional: Someone who can provide advice on the best ways to structure and organize C^2 to most effectively actualize our vision and mission. Someone who can help to navigate the legal bureaucracies for the benefit of communities everywhere.

If you feel like you'd like to contribute in any way, even if you don't feel you have the skills mentioned above, please contact support@communitycultivators.org ... your community appreciates any and all support you can lend!

Other ways to lend support

If you'd like to contribute, but time is not your most abundant asset, we understand. We want to make it easy to take part in the cultivation of community no matter what your means or personal situation is.

One of the ways we are trying to raise money, that doesn't cost you any, is to have our community (who are Wheatsville Co-op Owners) choose us for a "Write-in" vote on the "Community Action Wednesday" groups. Simply go to http://wheatsville.coop/election/index.html enter your information, select the board candidates you'd like to vote for, select nine possible Community Action Wednesday groups from the list at the bottom of the page and finally, check the box next to the empty text field and write in Community Cultivators.

With that one simple act, you could help raise $1200 to $2000 plus for your community! What a great opportunity!

Last by not least


Throughout the past year and a half you have helped us grow and expand in ways that we could have never expected. Your contributions of time and energy have been invaluable to the community and have allowed us to literally transform peoples lives. In order to help us keep the fun going, we need your help... Help us raise the FUN by raising some FUND$!

Integration of Concepts and Ideas: The Chicken, Black Soldier Fly, Earthworm Composter

Permaculture can be continually and infinitely expanded on the developments of systems and the combinations of systems.

I've been recently reading up on the integration of black soldier fly (Hermetia ilucens) and earthworms such as red wigglers (Eisenia fetida). Referring back to the permaculture chicken, it is beneficial to determine the necessities, habits, behaviors, intrinsic traits and so on of the organism.

To integrate black soldier fly and worms requires the same concept. After considering the process, it can become clear what are the hurdles that need to be addressed to move out of the limitation of the impossible, to the possible, experimentation and trials and finally the reality.

Black Soldier Fly enjoy temperatures of 90-94 degrees Fahrenheit while Eisenia fetida enjoy temperatures ranging from 70-84 degrees for optimum health. Furthermore, black soldier fly effluent attracts the female fly to lay eggs there. If earthworms are to coexist in this environment, they have to endure the temperature extremes. The liquid effluent from the soldier fly also creates a dilemma if the worm castings are desired for garden beds.

These limitations present the dynamic of what needs to be considered for this integration to be successful, and there lies an answer (in the title). Lets consider the life cycles of the black soldier fly.

Black soldier fly can reduce food and manure by 95% within a day. Containers are also created so that the soldier fly are self-harvesting as the mature pupae search for ground to metamorph into the adult fly and reproduce.

Since they are self-harvesting, black soldier fly can feed themselves to a flock of chickens who will then form a package of fertilizer for our earthworms to digest into rich castings. In the picture below, the BSF bin can be placed next to the coop. It is missing a ramp for the pupae to travel to their fatal death. Some can be saved to ensure that the populations of Black Soldier Fly larvae remain adequate for chicken feed or expansion.

There does lie another issue of the chicken manure being too hot and the habit of chickens to eat insects such as worms. This can be turned into a benefit and an opportunity.

Eisenia fetida is preferred due to its nature of processing large amounts of food. However, chicken manure is rich in nitrogen and will spark a compost pile when added with water and carbon sources such as paper and cardboard in a worm bin. Furthermore, we don't want our worm populations to dwindle as open chicken feed.

To cure these ailments, we can seperate the worm bin into seperate areas based on the temperature. One region will be for hot activated compost, warm compost, and cool worm castings. We then create a barrier between our chickens and the worms so we can allow the worms to happily multiply and reproduce while still having the chicken manure drop below to be composted.

By simply mapping the resources of each of these organisms we can move toward potential systems that cater to the ecological and economic success through permaculture. Although this does not entirely address the integration of black soldier fly and earth worms, it can still be separately integrated and complimented. For example, food sources such as duckweed for fish in an aquaponic system are separate from the fish or animal source since they can be diminished if not readily available, endangered, or shifted from optimum conditions (temperature, habitat, etc).

Furthermore, the effluent from black soldier can still be utilized to enhance earthworm health and vitality. Collection bins to collect the black soldier fly effluent can be dumped into the earthworm bin and further digested. Since the chickens are above the earth worm bin, they will work to prevent the infiltration of black soldier fly into our worm bins. This also can be partnered during a season of the year when the black soldier fly is not or cannot reproduce along its life cycle.

Other potentials exist as well to create further possibilities. For example, the chickens can be positioned above an aquaculture system where their manure will feed bottom feeders who feed plants through an aquaponic system.

The next evolution is to integrate these concepts within our social realm so that the disciplines of ecology, economics and sociology are utilized to create new potentials for solving world problems. The next post will provide a framework to cure the social diseases of our society (such as poverty and its associated ailments) by using these methods to create the foundation of our well being.

Preparing the Soil for Community Cultivation

Soil, Light, Darkness, and the Cool Refreshing Gift of Water.
In all, they are supporters of life.

Soil bacteria, fungi, and insects infiltrate every niche and space in the underworld creating a rich soup of goodness for our plants known as humus (grow chick peas or garbanzo beans with herbs and spices to make hummus). Which leaves us with the fatal question of how do you prepare the soil?

It depends but this post is about Community in relation to soil and gardening. (Give me some time and I'll write about soil another day.)

When it comes to the development of human necessities and other luxuries, the main limiting factor is people. To build homes, install gardens, or to establish community, all require willing and capable individuals to establish, maintain, and develop the communal link to succeed in any feat.

By doing so, infinite opportunities and networks form much like the mycelial network of fungi with plants roots and all other soil life. This extension enables the necessities for human development and growth to become a reality through our communal imaginations.

The fatal question is how do we develop the necessary links to actualize this potential?
To conquer this feat, it helps to look at the history of mankind's relationships to each other and the evolution or succession of empathy that is occurring.

In comparison to Permaculture Design methods, the development of sustainable and prolific ecosystems are guides in co-creating the landscapes we dream of. In the same way, communities can be guided towards similar outcomes through our observation and analysis of our past, present, and potential way of life.

Looking into Past Communal Relations
A great video and speech that opened my eyes to the development of human relationships is a Renaissance Society of America video on the Empathic Civilization.

Jeremy Rifkin describes the communal relations that have advanced with time. We have evolved from relating to our blood ties and viewing others outside of our family as alien. In time, as knowledge and information became prolific after the advent of agricultural irrigation we developed a new type of empathy through religious ties. As communities developed, new relations formed to create nations.

(Listen and watch to the program if you wish to get further details. Lets move on.)

Co-Creating the Community of Today for Tomorrow
Much as tribes coalesced to create new potentials, we are on a new stage today, a world of communal networks and relations. It begins by realizing that our blood ties are to each other and everything in this world (even our beliefs and ideas) are very much the same when expressed through peaceful actions and gestures instead of abstract words and ideas.

Disintegrating our own personal wants and focusing on our necessities is bridging the gaps between individuals and organizations. As an example, schools are beginning to partner with outside organizations to create the environment conducive for youth development with the benefit of academic and personal success in life for all parties involved. Furthermore, nonprofit organizations are finding methods of infiltrating the for profit world to add ethical elements into the business world.

Elements and design features of co-creating a successful community partnership are dynamic just like ecological systems, which can be terraformed in a number of ways.

Understand that It is Inevitable
Yes, Community Cultivation and Networks are inevitable just as nature will create prolific ecological systems with time. If left alone to it's own wits, it'll happen naturally just as the soil built itself up without any outside influences and actions and will do so with or without you or us. It'll just happen a lot later in our frame of time. (Estimated 100-400 years to build a centimeter of topsoil)

In a permaculture design, it's essential to sit back and watch the elements unfold. Allocation of personal needs and desires, climate, landforms, soil, plant and animal life, and more, all contribute to the formation of ideas for a particular area. In a similar fashion, understanding the dynamics of a community and its resources are pertinent in creating successful partnerships for particular projects. It could be beneficial to take the time to map community assets and networks while observing the societal dynamics. It's not going to be the same for a city as it is for a rural area. In relation to gardening, the desert is going to need more development and potential work than the tropics.

Design and Implementation of Community Cultivation
Developing relations and networks takes time just as it does to build the soil. There is a saying that the first year a garden sleeps, the second year it creeps, and the third year it leaps.

An important lesson I learned from Community Cultivators and educating children is to make it fun and interactive. Many times, I believed that the community around me and the children were at fault for not participating in an event or a lesson. Ultimately at the end of the activity, I began to look at myself.

In a similar fashion to gardening and farming, people often view nature as the enemy. The diseases, pests, and ailments that are affect our landscapes are often blamed on natural systems when it is us who are at fault for destroying the soil foundation. Do not be hasty to blame others or yourself. It's all a learning process.

With the appropriate lessons, the internal development of yourself will encourage the motivation and action to get yourself into the playing field as well as the passion to communicate and develop it within others. As the relations grow, the processes and ideas will naturally flow to achieve the feats and developments that are essential for a community base, which means don't set any expectations.

As an example, many community gardens here in Dallas-Ft Worth have created the idea that a garden will be prolific and abundant in the first harvest or season. This assumption creates a mind frame that expects the garden to yield phenomenal results. Although this can happen with proper planning and implementation, if there are shortcomings that are not communicated people can get discouraged and dissuaded to continue the project or to continue their journey in gardening while the "masters" stay behind to maintain it themselves. This single idea has created more work at some of these locations for annual gardening, to find new gardeners, or persuade the dissuaded ones to come back. Instead of having a community garden, they manifested a working farm with high expectations.

Likewise, community cultivation is an ongoing process that requires time, energy, and love. Given these essential resources, the development is left to infinite opportunities. Just like the food forest (paradise), we can cultivate the foundations to actualize the unlimited potential of ourselves through each other and create self-sustainable loving relationships that cater to all of our necessities and more. In fewer words, community cultivation is the pure joy of over abundance within cooperation and collaboration.

Enjoy every moment of it.

A Day of CommUnity

Join us for a day of CommUnity on the passing of 10 years since 9/11.

A Day of CommUnity is a collective fundraiser presented by LoveATX benefiting local community organizations (see list below). We will be...

* providing a place for local community and organizations to connect and share
* sharing information about healthy, creative, conscious, and sustainable living
* encouraging involvement and collaboration within the local community

The LoveATX mission is to empower the Austin community and support local economy. A Day of CommUnity will feature Austin-local organizations and artists creating a healthy, conscious, and sustainable culture. We believe real change comes when well informed individuals confront their responsibility to develop well informed masses.

"A dream you dream together is reality" - John Lennon

Start your Sunday with guided meditation, breathing, and yoga from 12pm-1pm.

Local Speakers:

* David McCully from Evolver Austin - Energetics and importance of community, building a culture based on ecological values and creative collaboration.
* John Edwards from Urban Patchwork Neighborhood Farms - Urban farms, CSAs, and ideas for developing communities.
* Chris Pearson of DIYthemes - Your abundant potential with proper use of technology, start your website now.
* Austin Time Exchange Network - community program, enables individuals to exchange services with one another by sharing skills within a network of people in Austin.
* more to come... stay tuned!

Local Organizations:

* Community Cultivators - Helping individuals realize the abundant potential of community through the cultivation of ~ mind, body and soil (aquaponics display & more).
* Creation Flame - meditation, art, healing, and eco-friendly open source construction.
* The S.H.I.R.E. Institute - Sustainable Habitats Incorporating Renewable Education.
* Backyard Transfarmers - Connecting the dots for urban farming - Aquaponics R&D
* Austin Time Exchange Network - community program, enables individuals to exchange services with one another by sharing skills within a network of locals.
* Austin Center for Holistic Healing and Yoga - Creating space within and around.
* Love Tribe - Engaged in a spiritual and ecological work that is grounded in our bodies, helping to germinate a new, more sustainable culture based on abundance, vitality and sharing.  or
* Ashram 5 Monks - consciousness, Kirtan, Bhakti yoga.
* Scene Machine - community owned and operated art/performance label and venue management cooperative
* Dois El Gato Tees -unique conscientious t-shirts for unique conscientious creatures.
* EcoSteve - Inspiration for progress & "I make Austin weird" tees.

Workshops coming soon... check back to sign up for workshops!

Event will include:
*Local Food Vendors
*Local Artists
*Local Performers (music, poetry, circus)
*Workshops (yoga, meditation, holistic health, sustainable methods)
*Activities for all ages

Suggested $10 donation (no one turned away)
$5 to LoveATX and costs and $5 to additional local organization of your choice! See below.

Choose from:
*Community Cultivators
*Creation Flame
*The New S.H.I.R.E. Institute

If you are interested in providing a workshop/presentation or representing your organization please email LoveATX at loveatxproject@gmail.com.

LoveATX is a project of LoveUnity Foundation, a local start-up nonprofit. Read more here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/LoveUnity-Foundation/130787056993169?ref=ts

Consensus, Community and Addiction

Our ability to cultivate the reality we seek is determined by our ability to communicate constructively. Community is the result of a conversation and, by the very nature of this conversation, community is inherently multi-dimensional. We all have different stories to tell and we all see reality through a different set of lenses. The variety of these perspectives is both the greatest challenge and the greatest opportunity for the cultivation of CommUnity. In this way, 'Community' can be seen as the 'Communicational Unity', otherwise know as consensus.

The complexities of communicational unity increases with each additional perspective. Thus the inherent challenges of consensus decision making. At the same time, each new perspective brings new opportunities to make decisions based on a more clear and holistic interpretation of our collective reality.

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes." - Walt Whitman

In this way, new perspectives add value and build better models for our collective reality. Now let us consider, we are approaching a world population of 7 billion people. Furthermore, many of us are beginning to recognize our interdependence, not only with 6.9 billion other people but with the vast diversity of organisms in our environment as well. Indeed, even our own bodies are made up of more bacteria than human cells. Taken further, what we consider to be our cells are actually a cooperative union of a verity of different bacteria. How then can we hope to make decisions that are considerate of such vast diverse perspectives?

Often we find it difficult to even consider ourselves completely. That pint of ice cream sure tastes good! But the impacts it has on our body is rarely taken into consideration, that is... until that perspective is illuminated through a visit to our doctor or a shameful moment on the bathroom scale. "Ugh, how did we let ourselves get so out of control?"

"Earth provides enough for everyones need, but not everyones greed" - Mahatma Gandhi

Ecologically, we find ourselves in a similar state to one who's "let themselves go". At first it tasted so sweet, how were we to know these indulgences would result in ecological dis-ease? Sure, there have been cells of the body along the way that were warning us to put down the ice cream or, at the very least, to moderate our consumption. But the perspective that our choices were leading toward self-destructive abuse were not illuminated or heeded in time to avert the onset of what now amounts to a compulsive addiction.

Today, with the conditions of our global dis-ease becoming so apparent we can no longer turn a blind eye, our collective challenge is to put down the ice cream and motivate the rest of our body to get off the couch and exercise, before it's too late.

"A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

This is where we have to make a choice about how we make decisions. Are we going to yield to and continue enabling those parts of us that just want one more bite while other parts of this figurative body are screaming for a return to a more healthy lifestyle? Apparently, there are enough cells left in our crucial nerve centers that crave the continuation of our consumption, irrespective of the result. And, just as with any new exercise routine, the desires of our addiction only become louder as we struggle for remedy.

In time, the parts of us that are addicted to unhealthy behavior can be re-trained to appreciate and even encourage healthy behavior. But that reality may still be some ways off. For now, it's going to take a serious amount of motivation to convince our addicted cells that it is time to get off the couch and shape up.

"We may think there is willpower involved, but more likely... change is due to want-power. Wanting the new addiction more than the old one. Wanting the new me in preference to the person I am now." - George A. Sheehan

With the behaviors of addiction, we often find ourselves in what can only be described as a pattern circular communication. The conversation spins around, no conclusions are reached, no decisions made, and little action is taken other than to continue to satisfy our craving for that which we are addicted. For the health of our collective body, it's important that we recognize when these patterns are occurring and cut them short. There is no need to waste any more time trying to convince the addicted part of ourselves what needs to happen. We will be thanking ourselves later. In the meantime, we can expect to throw a violent fit in protest of the initial discomfort of this dramatic redirection of our energies.

As a result, some might conclude that we can never find consensus with the irrational parts of ourselves however, with this I must disagree. Through constructive communication and the conviction (as well as clear evidence) that what we are doing, however painful, is part of the process of healing, consensus can eventually be restored.

"There are no bosses, only coordinators of information" - Helen Samuels

It's starts with small circles of community like Tierra Viva in Mexico City that reach consensus, even on a small scale, and move in a constructive direction, despite the enormity of obstacles and challenges they face. Empowered with the knowledge that they are providing a service that is creating real and tangible benefits for their community, they do not look to leaders to guide their decisions. They merely allow their actions to speak for them, and the proof is in the preverbal pudding (not to be confused with that tasty ice cream - if you can excuse my over use of this analogy).

Tierra Viva is not alone. There are several other examples of the successful application of motivated and informed action followed by inclusive communication. The City Repair Project in Portland, Oregon is perhaps one of the most direct illustrations of how this approach can produce positive outcomes and even result in a consensus with the less than rational parts of our culture.

Community is cultivated through Communicational Unity (i.e. consensus). A consensus typically begins on small scale (just a few pushups to get started). If the outcome of the community's actions result in clear benefit, and the conversation remains constructive and inclusive, the community has the opportunity to broaden not only the scope of its impact but also its perspective. And, as our perspectives increase, our decisions become more informed. Before we know it, we've developed a rigorous workout that is challenging, invigorating and healthful.

We can't wait for someone else to do this work for us. We have an obligation to get off the couch and take control of our future. Don't waste time looking for consensus... cultivate it. The new you awaits!

The Principle of Self-Regulation and the Litterless Box

"The purpose of a functional and self-regulating design is to place elements or components in such a way that each serves the needs and accepts the products, of other elements. (Mollison 1988, pg 37)"

In Permaculture, this one principle inspires to create a system that requires the least input for the most gain. It also encompasses true analysis of certain elements and could potentially eliminate the need for unnecessary labor and energy.

Take for example the Permaculture Chicken. The chicken has needs: food, water, shelter, grit. It has intrinsic characteristics and behavious: breed, colour, flying, scratching. Lastly, it produces elements: eggs, manure, CO2. These factors require careful analysis and consideration when planning a site or an area for chickens to thrive.

Designing around these elements will also give us an easier time when it comes to the least amount of maintenance possible.

So imagine, the manure could be scooped up and thrown into a compost bin, but instead why not put the compost bin beneath them. Even better, why not incorporate another element to eat the manure. You could put the chickens above a fish tank and allow the manure to drop in and feed the fish. The nutrient rich water could then be used to water plants. Another element that can be incorporated are worms. The manure can drop down to feed the worms.

However. . If you do use worms you have to remember that chickens scratch. This will cause them to dig up the ground and find the worms and eat them. How do you remedy this? You put another barrier where they can't reach the worms and where the manure can easily drop down to feed them. If you wanted to, you can remove the barrier and let the chickens feast on a product that they helped create.

So. ..

This principle is universal. It can be extended to any element even dogs and cats.

Here's an example with cats. A behavior of our feline friends is that they'll scratch up potted plants and do their business in it, piss and poop. People get frustrated with this and they go to extreme measures to fight it. Furthermore, they spend money buying cat litter and other miscellaneous things to keep the litter box smelling and looking nice. They even buy mechanized tools to clean the box for them, which ends up scaring our furry friends to a shitless state.

Going back to the chicken example, why not integrate existing elements to eat and take care of the elements that cats produce?

Here's our prototype. The Black Cat Collective in Ft Worth including myself came up with the idea of creating a litterless box.

Step 1. Get a box and fill it up with some leaves and bulky materials for bedding material for some earth worms.












Step 2. Fill it in with Earthwroms preferably Red Wigglers. They eat manure (yummy)










Step 3. Fill in the bed with compost and then aromatic herbs. If you put in plants, think about their needs. Some will do fine in shade and some do better in sun.












Step 4. Take away the kitty litter box and see it if works. We're trying it out right now and will post updates on the progress.

If you want to purchase one, we'll have a product in a few weeks.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, this design is utilizing not just the poop, but the urine as well. The plants should help to absorb the urine and use the urea as a fertilizer source. We'll most likely also dig the poop into the soil so the worms will get to it. A friend within the collective mentioned cats pooping in drier type soils, so the top part is lightly mulched to provide a dry surface. Hopefully, this will keep the worm bin moist, prevent the plants from drying out too much, and allow our cat friends to do the dirty inside the bin.

References:
Mollison, Bill. Permaculture: a Designers' Manual. Tyalgum: Tagari Publications, 1996. Print.