Hi I am Justin Dolan.
Today, I am going to give you a small tour
of Saint Michael's Sustainable Community.
Our community is more than sustainable.
It is run by permaculture country club.
All of our buildings, our grounds,
our gardens, our lifestyle,
is based around permaculture.
One of the main things we do is a living roof.
A living roof helps us keep our houses cool,
helps us save energy,
and it gives the environment
a place for more animals.
It quiets the area down
and gives a more permanant house.
A living roof lasts a lot longer
than a traditional, conventional roof.
One of our main focuses
in the community is water.
The entire first floor of this building over here
is based around a water tank.
This water tank is filled up from rain water
from the house above us.
We can use that water to fill up our pool.
In fact, before our community
actually had running piped water
through the whole community,
we actually had a salt water
swimming pool, filled just off of our springs.
Even the design of our deck
is made to help pull water into the ground.
These channels here are letting us
catch the rain water in our rainy season.
Put it in the ground
where it can flow downstream
to actually feed our gardens below
us in the dryer season.
This, plus biomas in the soil helps
us retain a lot of moisture
and allows us to grow an extra
30 to 40 days more than a regular
growing cycle without additional water.
The houses have coverings
on the sides of them and the front of them.
When those plants transpire the water.
When that water goes from a liquid to a gas,
that chemical process actually
drops the temperature of the water.
Not to mention, your house
is completely in shade.
If you parked your car out in the sun,
then parked it in the shade,
you will notice a huge difference
between right here in the sun
and right over here in the shade.
It is about 12-15 degrees cooler right here.
It is a huge difference and it is free.
We send our grey water for
our sinks and our showers
to actually come through
these plants and filter it.
When that water comes out,
we get the extra benefit of a cooler micro climate.
To keep the bugs away
without using chemicals,
we plant lots of strong herbs
around our community.
These are citronella plants over here.
Citronella is one of the main
ingredients in most bug sprays.
Having it around your house saves
you the trouble of going out and buying it,
putting it on, and worrying about it.
We also grow lemon grass on the other side,
lots of basil, lots of really strong herbs.
Anything that will help keep
the bugs away from this area.
We try to plant those herbs in this zone,
our zone 1 in permaculture terms.
The spot closest to the house.
We also have swales,
and gardens, and a terrace we are
going to show you too.
Let me start taking you over there.
(water running)
Our landscape is a huge feature for us.
We like to have as many edible
and medicinal plants and useful
plants we can in the landscape.
This is a yuca (cassava).
It is like a potato.
The saragundi is an excellent
medicinal plant for arthritis,
inflammation, and bug bites.
We have tons of basil.
This is a holy basil, a tulsi here,
lemon grass, papayas, kumquats.
The bougainvillea we have,
this beautiful, bright red leaf
is actually an excellent medicine for fevers.
Our passion fruit are coming through.
You just walk outside
if you are hungry and just pick
something up and eat it
if you can hold on to it.
We have a lot of plants just
because they bring in pollinators.
We use those around our black water.
Each property has their own
banana circle where, if you have
any compost, any paper, food,
instead of putting that into a landfill,
you can throw it in your circle here
and we will get good gardening dirt out of it
that will enrich our gardens in a few months.
This beautiful plant here is hoja sen.
An excellent plant if you are constipated,
or if you have been poisoned,
you can take a lot of this.
It will help you evacuate your
system very quickly.
Here, several types of orchids.
(sounds of walking)
From the other side of our house,
we go into a food forest.
This whole area here is planted
with hundreds of different types of fruit trees, coffee, yuca,
anything we can find that we can
grow in the tropics,
which is just about anything
that can handle hot weather.
It grows well here and we are
spreading that into the forest system
in a manner that supports forest life.
[sounds of walking]
This is the Mauser Foundation for Sustainability.
Their roof collects the rain water
that goes to tanks in every side of the house.
When these tanks are filled up,
we let gravity take them downstream.
We use that water for our gardens.
Down below here we have several
types of coffee on the edge.
Lots of yuca, lots of fruits.
To keep our garden as sustainable as possible,
we use a natural means to keep the bugs out.
All of our gardens are surrounded
by lemon grass,
other strong smelling grasses
like this one here.
This is Sani-Pine.
It is a natural disinfectant for your floors
smells just like floor cleaner.
It has got a lemony scent to it,
but bugs hate it.
They hit this barrier of Sani-Pine
and it gives us a little extra protection.
Our gardens are either cut in
on terraces like this,
where they are perfectly flat
That flatness help us catch
the water, catch the topsoil,
and let that sink in.
If we did not have these terraces,
and we did not have our swales cut on contour,
our water would run to a local
stream and right out to the ocean,
which is only 3 1/2 km away.
By contouring the earth to suck in
the water and hold it inside,
the water will actually give us a lot
better growing conditions and put
the water in the ground where
it is best for us.
(sounds of walking)
This tall grass is sugar cane here.
We also grow nonis,
an excellent healthy fruit, along with....
Wow, there are so many different fruits.
There are over 100 altogether.
We would take a long time going over the list.
Let me show you our aquaponics,
something that is really new to permaculture.
Our aquaponics is a combination
of not just the regular aquaponics,
but also farmaponics.
We want to take the living essence of the soil,
We want to get soil with its own
ecosystem into our food production
because when you have a good healthy soil,
you have good healthy plants.
If you do not have the healthy soil,
you cannot have the best plants.
One of the main things we put in our soil
is effective microorganisms.
Actually, types of funguses
and things that are actually living,
things that people are scared of,
but if you have a good fungus in your soil,
that good fungus will actually fight a bad fungus.
When it comes in,
it will actually save your plants.
It will make them stronger,
help them get more water.
This water here is rain water
from our rooftop collection.
Our farmaponics is completely
based on free energy.
We use the rain to fill it,
gravity to move it through the system.
Our water hyacinth here
are actually filter plants
These plants can actually take the
waste of the fish, the carbon dioxide
and turn in back into oxygen for them.
We also use this for our molt.
This stuff grows so fast.
We can put this in our compost
and actually make soil.
Which is another one of the great
products of farmaponics.
Most people think farmaponics,
aquaponics, hydroponics, you get
fish, and vegetables.
We get fish, vegetables, and more good soil.
The better we have our soil,
the better we have for food production.
Basically when it comes to life on earth,
if it was not for that thin layer of topsoil,
we would not be alive at all.
These fish have a couple ways of getting fed.
We throw them our scraps.
There is a light actually under water
that is solar powered.
At night time that light turns on,
it draws bugs into the water,
and the fish get a fresh feast of those snacks.
All the fish waste goes by gravity
to our aquaponics system
in this greenhouse here.
[sounds of screen opening]
Our greenhouse is set up on a
model of nature.
It is very much left to its own.
We only have one person plus myself
to manage 100 acres of farm
and cattle and building and construction.
It is important for us to have this as
low energy as possible.
and as low work energy as possible.
We can just come in here, turn a valve open,
and everything gets watered.
One of the herbs that grow
in our aquaponics is gotu kola.
Gotu kola is an excellent herb
for a tonic, for your brain, for blood circulation.
It is delicious in salads.
We have plenty of other salad greens:
spinaches, turmeric, gingers, katuk,
beans, peppers, all kinds of things over here,
asparagus, a lot more peppers.
They all come from basically
from the trash,
the waste of the fish,
the waste of our food.
Even this aquaponics was built
from the waste of construction.
All these tubes, these boards,
this plastic was all left over
from a construction project that we
just upcycled it into our food production.
To keep our aquaponics as free
from pests as possible,
we line the outside with chickens.
I will go and show you that in a minute.
We raise our beds up a little higher
off the ground sometimes.
Some foods do a lot better when
there are no bugs around them.
There are a lot less bugs when you
go up 5 feet in the air.
Some bugs like to crawl on the ground.
Not too many bugs like to jump up
onto a 5 foot raised bed.
Our next stop is where we keep our chickens.
Also known as the Castille de Gallitas.
Our chickens or gallitas are great in many aspects.
They eat our bugs.
They keep our garden safe.
We throw them our leftover food.
And they give us fresh eggs.
like really fresh eggs.
There is no need to refrigerate them.
We come in here during the day,
visit our little friends,
[chicken sounds]
and leave with usually one egg per chicken, almost.
We get about 300 eggs per year per chicken.
The most important thing is their food.
If you keep your chickens healthy,
they will give you a lot more eggs
and a lot better quality eggs.
One of the secrets is when we give them
our trash, our leftover organic food,
we will let it ferment.
We put it in a 5 gallon bucket,
let it sit there for a week or so,
and then throw it to the chickens.
The digestive track of the chickens is really short.
Having digested food actually lets
it be more absorbant.
They can get more minerals
and more of what they need
out of our food if it is fermented.
They have got a hole to go outside at night.
Not only do they just go outside,
they also eat up all of our bugs
outside our chicken coop,
which is caged in.
It is also a planting area.
These chickens will eat up the bugs,
scratch up the ground,
they will eat up the weeds, the seed for the weeds,
When they are done,
we have a perfect place to plant our crops.
Here, we actually have trees around there.
These are all Moringa trees
and some beans out there
and a few citrus fruits.
Anytime a bug comes in here
to eat some beans
or some of our food out here,
the chickens will go and eat those
bugs and turn them into eggs.
This tube here is actually a water tube.
It is actually rain water.
The chickens hit these little nipples
here and can drink the rain water.
Having a low energy input
is really important to us
because labor is expensive
and time is valuable.
With permaculture, we want to
maximize our time in the hammock,
maximize our time with our families,
do as little work as possible
and get the best food as possible.
By using all these permaculture techniques
we are able to do that.
Let me show you some of our
exotic fruit trees.
[door closing]
One of the first things we did
when we came to this property
is plant as many fruit trees as we can.
We have got some of the largest
fruits in the world,
some of the most exotic fruits in the world.
These are jackfruit here.
These things are extremely nutritious.
There is so much fruit per tree,
you can feed more than one family
just by having one tree.
[walking]
We also grow cashews.
The seed is actually on the outside,
below the fruit.
You actually bite into this fruit here.
It is a little astringent.
If you are wondering why
cashews are so expensive,
it is because each one of these
seeds is only one nut.
They are surrounded by urushiol.
It is the same ingredient in poison ivy
so you cannot really get these things out
without actually wiping off all that urushiol,
or actually heating it up to burn it off.
We also get a fruit out of it.
Sorry about that.
This side over here is Moringa.
We also have disc golf.
Disc golf, well because golf
is really horrible for the world, for the environment.
Disc golf, as you can see,
we do not have to cut the grass.
We use large discs instead of a ball.
The rules are the same.
You just get your disc in the basket.
As soon as you hit the chains,
it should just fall right in there.
With our disc golf,
we are able to bring sustainability
and regenerative agriculture
to more people
because disc golf is a fast growing sport.
It is for everyone.
Unlike golf, where you have to be rich
and have a lot of money and a lot of time,
anyone can play disc golf.
Now, I will take you up and show
you some of our roof top gardens.
All of our gardens are on
either a swale or a terrace.
It has to catch the water, catch the topsoil.
It produces higher quality food.
It is close to the house.
It uses less water.
Over time these swales,
these gardens will get better.
Unlike conventional agriculture
where it will be more and more damage.
Our purpose here, with the soil,
is to build a better soil
every time we do a new garden
and have a new crop.
For our community,
we have a huge community kitchen,
large community area.
Our plans are to actually spread
permaculture through the world,
starting right here.
For people that want to have a house
that has all the permaculture principles
already built into your house.
All you grey water, your black water,
living landscape, already put into your property.
It comes free in our community
just because our community
is for people that want to have
a regenerative and healthy future.
We dehydrate. We have large parties.
We grow and cook our own food here.
It is really a great place
if you are really into good food.
We compost and sort all of our recyclables.
We upcycle.
We have a large spring behind this tree here.
It is a Higueron.
It is a type of fig that is excellent
for the birds you see scavenging around.
The reason it is so big is for the water.
If I have natural water on our property,
our survivability, our sustainability,
our value all goes up.
This living roof is only about a month old.
We are already getting tomatoes
and sweet peppers out of it.
The roofs are made to last
and made to hold a lot of weight.
This roof will last as long as dirt lasts.
We have fresh peppers
and tomatoes coming in.
More than enough tomatoes for one family,
but part of our community is to
have more than enough
for every single person here.
And sell a little extra.
If you want to get involved in permaculture,
a lot of the things that we do here
can be done in the city.
Or if you want to take the easy way,
have it all done for you.
Every single property that we build
and design here comes with free edible landscaping,
all the architecture for sustainability you need.
It is where there is grey water,
black water, living landscaping,
a house that uses far less energy
than the conventional house.
It all comes with it.
You can do that by moving
to a neighborhood like this,
moving to this neighborhood,
or putting permaculture practices
into your own neighborhood and house.
Thanks for your time.
We hope you see you here soon.
Subtitles by the Amara.org community