If you know something about permaculture, you know that it is guided by a set of ethics and principles. The principles, in particular, help you look at your land and your life through the lens of natural systems. One of the permaculture principles that I appreciate the most is “Self-regulate and Accept Feedback”. It is a principle to live by beyond just the garden but applies so beautifully to the relationship we take every season to the land we are privileged enough to steward.
Every year, we get information from the successes and failures that we have in a garden. When we accept the feedback, it helps us in making a plan for the following season. It’s a good reminder that to engage in gardening and homesteading is to enter into a dynamic relationship between you and the soil, plants, pollinators, wind and rain. It’s a relationship where there are some patterns that you can count on but other factors that our outside your control. Our role as stewards is to get quiet, accept the feedback and have it inform and shift how we might approach the relationship next year.
So click above to hear my top five lessons from this season’s garden. I encourage you to reflect back on your gardening season and to take note of what worked and what didn’t this season. This will help you make a plan for next spring!