Zero One : A taste of paradise.

I’m just coming back from a too short and so sweet adventure! For twelve days, I’ve been experiencing gardening on a just-getting-started permaculture land in Kauai. This land is called Zero One. At this very moment, three lovely people are living there in permanence: Jackson, Agustin and Mea, who have been such good hosts, and became good friends!

I said I’ve been experiencing gardening, but it has been so much more! It’s even more about pure and simple friendship and abundance. Abundance of food and of beauties from Mother Nature, and abundance of love and joyful moments, from such a giver community. Everyday has brought its lot of awe moments. I've simply fallen in love. With the island, with the people, with the way I was living it.

Permaculture is a type of agriculture that reproduces the relationship patterns occurring in natural ecologies. Its approach maximizes the results and minimizes the efforts of work, while providing for a human settlement's needs. See my previous post concerning permaculture HERE!

Permaculture takes an observation time equaling the working time and the enjoying time. It is one third of each, and oh, how we love that! It takes observing time to identify the natural resources given by the earth, and the needs of the land and of its inhabitants. But when comes the time to work and once the system is launched, things change so quickly, and the main word is “abundance”! And how we love this too! It is a give and take relationship with Mother Nature. She gives us a good soil, we plant it, she waters it, we harvest its results and feed her back with the yummy wastes, and it all start again. Full circle. Permaculture usually makes babies: it most of the time becomes a similar relationship of give and take with the neighborhood as well. What goes around comes around! Live in peace and harmony with every kinds of beings surrounding you, give them love without any expectations for returns, and watch out how you’ll be fulfilled with happiness!

Mama Felicia, from the home school garden Akamai Backyard, teaching us how to prepare and replant the Taro, a native plant, from which we can cook the root.

The team, leaving Akamai Backyard with all the Felicia's gifts to Zero One's gardens. Thank you Felicia!

Thus, Zero One is just popping out right now. It has had its first observation time, and I’ve been arriving there right into the real big “action time”! While I’ve been there, in just a couple of days, we created so much! Take a look to Jackson’s post RIGHT HERE: I promise you’ll be amazed! One day, we received a truck load of 30 cubic yards of compost and mulch, which we transformed, almost by magic, into two big and three medium gardens, plus into a couple more of smallest ones all around some trees. And how all this happened? In only five days or so, while connecting with some other friends and neighbors who came by to give a hand, on their way to the beach with their surfboards, and by using no machinery nor electric tools!! Isn’t it wonderful?! Just using our hands, our heart, shovels, forks, a wheel barrel and a "oo bar", which is a tool (like a heavy metal rod) used by the natives to dig and plant. It felt so good to have done all that in listening to the birds singing, to the wind blowing and sometimes the thin rain falling. Aaaaah! We could hear the enjoyment of each of us by the sound of our deep breath intakes or singings/whistlings. Nobody has been rushing, we all had so much fun in doing it and we shared a lot. Each day, we even had time to go to the beach, to practice our balance on the "slack-line", to go in town for some special needs, or to go for a walk of harvests (everywhere we were going, fruits trees were surrounding us: mangos, papayas, litchis, passion fruits, bananas. What have I said before? ABUNDANCE!! Yes!).

The Chalice garden (at its first step) is the first and biggest garden I've been working on. 

The first step to make your new garden: a few layers of cardboard (best if chickens have been previously pooping on it!). Give it a good shower, then cover it with green wastes and/or dried palm leaves. Cover it with a layer of compost, then with a layer of mulch. Ideally, repeat these two last layers if you are planting veggies that need a deep rooting. Finish it all by emphazing the outlines with nice logs or rocks. There is your new garden, as quick as to snap fingers, without any digging! Wow, that feels good, man! :D

The WiFi garden

I feel so much recharged and healthy! And I am so confident into a much better future! My role is not only to keep doing my best to do my part in this universe, but also to convince you about how much we would all gain in starting permaculture lands everywhere around us, across the world! How we would all gain in producing no pollution, and even working on reducing the one made by others. How we would all gain in generating NO WASTE (yeah, this is one more amazing fact on Zero One: the production of waste is ZERO! Damn, it feels so good!), and in producing compost. Gain in buying and eating locally and organic. Gain in making wise choices for our purchases, to recycle or compost every single little thing. How many wins are in this situation, tell me? I assure you that it doesn’t take more time and energy, and it even makes you feel so fulfilled! It improves our world, it improves relationships, it reduces our life cost, and it even gives us the time to enjoy life! What more can we ask for?

Do not wait! It only belongs to each of us to use those great powers! Let’s change things and make a better world. Each of us! With our own two hands… and our heart!

PEACE. LOVE. HAPPINESS.
MAY WE ALL LIVE IN THE ABUNDANCE!

Forever grateful to Jesse, Jackson, Mea and Justin to have given me the opportunity to live and share this experience! Thank you Felicia to have shared all your knowledge!
Other thank yous go to you, Tiana and Amanda, for your friendship and your contagious joyfulness! JP, Riki, Stephanie, Indi (who else in "i" am I missing?!): you all are special and lovely people!
I love you all! You all have been such givers! Aloha and Mahalo! ♥