Hello! I’m Cory, geologist turned architectural drafter, turned permaculture designer. I’m also a wife and a mother on a permaculture journey with my family. MyEdible Habitat.com is where I share my knowledge as my family and I use permaculture principles to turn our urban backyard from a patch of brown grass and neglected trees into a bountiful urban food forest.
What is Permaculture?
My guiding framework for this endeavor (turning my backyard into an edible human habitat) is permaculture, which Bill Mollison defined as, “a design system for creating sustainable human environments.” I think of permaculture as a way of life that brings humans back in line with nature, as a functioning part of the ecosystem.
Permaculture is about designing sustainable settlements. It is a philosophy and an approach to land use, which weaves together microclimate, annual and perennial plants, animals, soils, water management, and human needs into intricately connected, productive communities.
Bill Mollison, Reny Mia Slay, 1994
My Path to Permaculture
Read on for the longer story about how I got here, or jump into the site with my first post.
Early Days
I was born in the late 1970’s, the same decade permaculture was born, though I didn’t learn the word until thirty-some years later. I grew up on about an acre of land on Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Front Range. My dad was a botanist and my mom taught special education at an elementary school.
Even though my parents weren’t aware of the word permaculture, they lived in the spirit of it, keeping chickens, and at times turkeys and goats, growing a garden, and they were always mindful of limiting waste and using what we had. My summers were spent climbing high into the upper branches of the big elm in the back, swinging on the long-roped tire swing it supported, and foraging in our backyard raspberry patch and wild plum thicket.
Our Life in Idaho
I’ll fast-forward here through acquiring two degrees, one husband, two kids, and several jobs. Our life was pretty good. I didn’t have much to complain about. But I wasn’t content. We were in the thick of the daily grind that happens with kids and work and tired weekday nights. I was working as an architectural drafter for a small firm in Idaho.
Although I was good at my job and enjoyed it, for the most part, I wasn’t fulfilled. I felt like I was missing something. The work I was doing didn’t necessarily make the world a better place, and it certainly didn’t help solve any of the critical issues we’re currently facing, like climate change, energy descent, and the industrial food supply chain that is making so many of us sick.
Finding Permaculture
Then I found permaculture. I don’t remember exactly what internet search brought me to it, but it probably had to do with growing fruit trees. I spent my spare time reading about permaculture in books and online, watching YouTube videos, and listening to podcasts on the subject.
From then on, I knew that permaculture was going to be part of my future, whether I just lived my life in line with the principles and designed my own future property (we were renting at the time), or I added it to my professional skillset alongside architectural design and drafting. I researched different places to take a permaculture design course (PDC), both in-person courses and Geoff Lawton’s online course. Sadly, the cost of a PDC course and family logistics kept me from taking the plunge and signing up for one.
An Opportunity
So we were living in Idaho, chugging along, doing all the things – kids, work, etc.
Then we had an adventure.
We had lived in three different states, all in the Western United States. All of these have arid or semiarid climates with varying degrees of winter. So I’m used to a dry climate. Either hot and dry or cold and dry, but always dry. So it makes sense that the next place we would move would be to the driest state in the driest country.
Three years before the birth of this blog, when our kids were 11 and 4, Dave applied for a job in Australia. It was a long shot, and we soon put it out of our minds. But a few months later, he got an email and an interview. A few days after that he got the offer.
If he took the job it would be a three-year gig, but accepting would mean uprooting our kids, taking them away from friends and schools they loved. But it was Australia. I didn’t have to think long about it when Dave told me he’d been offered the job. “Yes, let’s do it,” I told him. “Let’s move to Australia!”
So we sold most of our stuff, stored some of it with our parents in Colorado, packed our suitcases, and flew to Australia.
Living in Oz
We moved to Australia, the birthplace of permaculture, and home to its co-originators, David Holmgren and the late Bill Mollison. We’d done it. I felt like the luckiest woman in the world.
Living in Adelaide was pretty amazing. We lived twenty minutes from the beach in one direction, and twenty minutes from the hills and spectacular hiking in the other.
I remember a moment that will always stick with me. One weekend, a couple of weeks after we first arrived, the four of us were hiking up in the hills, necks craned upward as we searched the eucalyptus branches for koalas. It was early June, so the beginning of winter. We stopped in the middle of our hike, way up on a grassy hillside, among the gum trees, and it all sank in: We were in Australia, halfway around the world from home, standing in what felt like paradise.
That was in 2019. We departed the day before Mother’s Day, traveled for 17 hours, and landed the day after Mother’s Day. As a side note, did you know that when you travel from North America to Australia you skip a day? Well, you do. And we happened to skip, of all days, Mother’s Day.
When I found out we would be living in South Australia, of course, I looked up permaculture farms in the state. That’s when I discovered The Food Forest, owned by Graham and Annemarie Brookman, in Gawler, South Australia. I was thrilled to see that they offered a PDC, however, we arrived too late in the year for me to take the 2019 course. But we had plenty of time, or so I thought.
Later that year my family and I went to The Food Forest’s open day for a tour and an Introduction to Permaculture presentation. It was inspiring and got me jazzed to take their PDC in 2020. Little did I know, a pandemic would throw a monkey wrench in those plans.
A Life-Changing Decision
Near the end of 2019, Dave and I made a decision that I’ll be forever grateful for. We decided to try for a third child. Even though we’d previously chosen to stop after two, being in Australia changed our perspective. Maybe it was the good healthcare over there. Maybe it was how our little adventure seemed to bring us closer as a couple and as a family. Whatever it was, we started trying for another baby.
Then 2020 hit. I still wanted to get my Permaculture Design Certificate, but, like everything else during the pandemic, The Food Forest’s PDC got canceled. I was disappointed about missing out on the course, and also down because, due to the pandemic, our family back in the States wouldn’t be able to visit. Still, we felt fortunate to be living in a place where Covid 19 was taken seriously and outbreaks were handled with diligence, which allowed us to live relatively normal lives compared to our friends and family back home.
In April of 2020 I fell pregnant — yay! — so the remainder of the year we were preoccupied with the pregnancy. Let me tell you — being pregnant at 40 is a whole different story than being pregnant in your 20s or 30s. But I survived and our precious baby girl “Elle” was born in January.
Another Opportunity
Around the same time, another job opportunity came up for Dave. It was another postdoc position, but unlike the one in Australia, this one had the potential for him to move up into a permanent position, and it was in Idaho, so close(ish) to family and old friends.
We decided he would take the job even though it meant leaving Australia a few months shy of our three-year visa ending. It also meant moving from a place where the community was virtually free from Covid 19 to a place with rising numbers.
But we would also be going home, and as much as we loved living in Australia, it would be good to be home again, to reconnect with family, visit friends, and see our beautiful country again.
But What About Getting a PDC?
Before we left, there was one more thing I wanted to do — get my Permaculture Design Certificate. The 2021 PDC at the Food Forest was going to happen, with a few changes due to COVID-19, of course. David Holmgren would still teach segments, although remotely instead of in person. I wanted to sign up. I knew this would likely be my only chance and that I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn’t do it.
But I had a newborn baby at that point. A newborn baby who wouldn’t take a bottle and wanted to eat every one to two hours. She would only be three months old by the time the course started, and The Food Forest was an hour’s drive away from home. L was, and still is, a very happy baby, except in two situations. One is when unfamiliar people hold her. The other is when she has to ride in the car. That baby used to scream her head off every time we put her in her car seat. (Thankfully she’s mostly gotten over that.)
I didn’t know how I was going to make it work, but I had to try. I emailed Annemarie about my situation and got a very encouraging reply from her. Dave was able to take some time off of work to take the kids while I was in class. So I signed up.
And we made it happen. Really, Dave made it happen, and the older two kids helped as well. I’m so grateful to have such a supportive husband and kiddos.
But even with their support, taking a 10-day class with a breastfeeding three-month-old was challenging. Fortunately, Annemarie and Graham were incredibly accommodating. When Dave couldn’t take her because she needed Mum, I was able to wear her in a sling during class so she could feed and nap as she liked.
As it turned out, L wasn’t the only baby attending the course! A couple taking the course together also had a baby girl, only a couple of months older than Elle.
The PDC was an experience of a lifetime. I had a blast there, met a lot of lovely and interesting people, made precious memories, and learned so much. And of course, now I’m certified to do permaculture design work commercially — Woot Woot!
Finding Our Permaculture Property
Not having land, or even a house with a yard, is frustrating when you’re learning about permaculture. This section is about how, after returning from Australia, we went from couch surfing to homeowners. The story involves a lot of nailbiting and a lot of luck. To be real, I still don’t know how we pulled it off.
The Move Back Home
We moved back to the US in mid-July 2021, going from winter chill to a midsummer heatwave. Dave went to Boise to start his new job and look for housing. The kids and I got to stay with Grandma in Colorado and have a bit of a “summer vacation” before we all would move to Boise and the older kids would start school in August.
Looking for a Rental
The plan was to find a rental house or apartment in Boise and over the next year look for a place to buy. But that’s not what happened.
We moved back to the States right at the peak of the housing market in 2021. And we happened to be looking for housing in one of the hottest markets in the country. , just before the start of the school year. Rents were two and a half times higher than the market we were accustomed to from two and a half years prior. Even rentals in smaller towns nearby were prohibitively high.
It made me wonder how anybody can afford to live there. Now that I’ve been here a while I understand that a lot of people can’t. The number of homeless people and run down — and I mean falling-apart-rundown, not just needs-a-new-coat-of-paint-rundown — rental homes is heartbreaking. But I digress. I’ll save this rant for another time.
So, we found our family split, living ten hours apart, with no prospects for housing at hand, and the start of school rapidly approaching. What were we going to do? Enroll the kids in school in Colorado and keep living with my mom while Dave lived and worked in Boise? That seemed like the only viable option, but even that wasn’t viable because Dave was staying in Airbnb apartments which weren’t sustainable for more than a couple of weeks. And even though my mom was happy for us to stay, having us was not easy on her. We had to figure something out, and the sooner the better.
Looking to Buy
An old colleague’s neighbor turned out to be a realtor and a really good one. Thanks, Alyssa, if you’re reading. She helped us look for a rental at first but when that wasn’t working out, she suggested we look at buying instead. She sent us a few listings and took Dave to look at them in person. One we really liked. It was in a great location, close to Dave’s work and on the greenbelt so he could easily ride his bike in. It was small, but charming and had a nice studio space in half of the garage. And, the asking price was within our budget.
Our Offer
Despite our better judgment, we started to fall in love with the house. We quickly got prequalified for a mortgage and started the documents to make an offer. Because it was a seller’s market, we were advised to bid high, and we did. Our offer was 50K over the asking price and at the top of our budget. We also wrote up a letter to go with our offer, introducing our family and talking about why we loved the house and how it was such a great fit for our family.
We signed the papers and waited for Monday, the day the owners were accepting offers. That weekend felt like an eternity.
Monday morning came, and, before our offer was even submitted, we heard that someone else bid much higher than we did. We almost didn’t bother submitting our offer. But at the eleventh hour, we decided to submit it anyway, just in case. So we did, and then we waited.
On Tuesday, we got the news. Our bid was not accepted. Come to find out, the winning bid was for 100K over the asking price, and in cash. It was disappointing, but we’d known from the beginning that it was highly unlikely to get the first house we put an offer on.
By then we were really starting to panic. School would start in less than a month and we still had no place to live. We’d found ourselves in a situation where we had tremendous pressure to buy, with very few options to choose from. We were at the mercy of the market and the sellers. Meanwhile, we were still paying for Dave to live in an Airbnb in Boise, which was astronomically expensive. I worried that we’d make a poor decision out of desperation that would haunt us for years to come.
A Bit of Luck
One thing that happened, that really saved us from hemorrhaging our savings, was one of Dave’s co-workers offered to let him stay with them temporarily. That took a huge financial burden and stress off of us. Thank you, Mark and Janet, if you ever read this! But that, too, wasn’t a long-term option. Our family needed to be together.
Our Second Offer
Alyssa kept looking for houses for us and every day I would check for new listings. Everything that came by was either too far away, too small for the five of us, or out of our budget. Many were all of the above.
We had to consider living farther away and Dave commuting to work. It wasn’t the lifestyle we wanted, but it would be better than living in two different states. So we widened our search area.
One Thursday morning I saw a listing for a house that looked good for us. It was within biking distance from Dave’s work, in a good school zone, and in our price range. I texted Dave the listing and he arranged to view it the next day. It only had two bedrooms, but it did have an unfinished basement to work with. The yard was big enough, and a blank canvas for permaculture installations galore.
We decided to put in an offer on it. Again, we went significantly above the asking price and included a personal letter. Again, we waited.
Soon we heard from our realtor. We weren’t the highest bidder, but the owner wanted to give us a chance to raise our offer. It was a stretch, but we agreed. Our revised offer was accepted! Woo hoo! Of course, we still had a month of nerves as the appraisal and inspections happened, but in the end, it worked out. Today we are happy homeowners!
It turns out that even after increasing our bid we weren’t the highest bidders, but the seller appreciated our letter and preferred that a family bought the place over investors. We are immensely grateful for his decision.
So we found a house to buy after only our second offer, which was incredibly lucky the way the market is. Did we overpay? Definitely. But our mortgage payment is significantly lower than what we would be paying to rent even a two-bedroom apartment. And now we are homeowners, free to do with our property what we want.
Next Steps
Thus begins the next chapter of our life, building an urban permaculture food forest. Our story continues with this blog, so jump to my first post, Starting a Permacultured Life, to continue the adventure with us and learn along the way.
Updates
Here is a collection of update posts chronicling our property, the Boise Food Forest (BFF) and our urban permaculture life.