The international presence of the permaculture movement has always been an inspiration to me and in today’s interview I had the pleasure of talking with Nelson Lebo of the Eco School in Whanganui in the north island of New Zealand. Nelson first reached out to me after hearing about some of our similar experiences on this podcast and I became fascinated with the development of his own farm with the unique factors in his area of New Zealand.

In this interview Neslon speaks in depth about why he prefers to work with severely degraded land rather than pristine ecosystems, and the challenges of “permaculture triage” on a limited budget. From there we explore how he approaches the building and development of systems and models that are replicable and scalable and that also are economically viable. We also talk about adapting to severe weather, the “time” dimension within design, and the urgency of farming as if our children’s lives depend on it

This is a remarkably broad reaching interview, bear with me for the couple minutes of rough audio as Nelson was recording his side from his local public library

Resources:

theecoschool.net

ecothriftylife.com