how did you find out about permies.com?

I YouTube video someone posted on Tumblr.

i found it through the lawn article not even looking for a permaculture site though i was already familiar w/pc and had read a couple books on it.

I hang out on the PRI site, and Paul's chook article sent me over.
I find the influences/inspiration of particular permaculture people in different fora fascinating eg: PRI: Bill Mollison; permies: Sepp Holzer. Of course that's a massive generalisation and there's loads of crossover!
Oops, just realised this is a rather aged thread...

I followed you back here from HT, but I suspect you know this.

I was on the forum at Homestead.org yesterday and someone posted a link to a youtube video about maggots as chicken feed.  I saw this site mentioned and checked it out.  So far I am really enjoying it.  A lot of nice intelligent people.  Keep up the good work and thanks for doing it.

I am a member of a self sufficient forum that I am really out growing.  Paul posts some very informative videos there once in a while.  For a long time I thought he was saying, "If you like this sort of thing join us on the 'FARM' @ permies.com." If not for the farm rather than forum mix up, I would have been here a year ago!

Oh well, better late than never. 

Sally wrote:
I am a member of a self sufficient forum that I am really out growing.  Paul posts some very informative videos there once in a while.  For a long time I thought he was saying, "If you like this sort of thing join us on the 'FARM' @ permies.com." If not for the farm rather than forum mix up, I would have been here a year ago!

Oh well, better late than never. 

x2
Hi Sal! 

Hey BB!

I found out via The Survival Podcast as the host Jack Spirko has mentioned your site a couple times and linked a couple of your youtube videos on either twitter or facebook (can't remember which).

word of mouth over teh webz

I found Paul's video on cast iron cookware when I was researching restoring my grandmother's Griswold skillet.  I've also been a listener of The Survival Podcast for the past six months and heard Jack mention Permies a time or two.

From Jack Spirko over at TSP.

From TSP.

On a crafting website. No, really...

http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=353510.0

Hooray!  You made it, craftylittlemonkey! 

Thank you for the link! It made my day  .

The first time I found this site, I was following random links with a permaculture theme.  I decided not to join at that time.  Random links would include links found on various blogs I read.

The second time I encountered the site, it was promoted on the Ozark-Homestead group at Yahoo.  I believe Paul Hetrick, the group admin, promoted it, and I usually check out anything promoted by Paul.  He usually has decent info.

Chicken Tractors, just my opinion, and in reference to page one on this topic   I would read of people using them, charging ten dollars per bird, and claiming their birds to be free ranged (I'm not dissing this method).  I read about all the bugs the chickens were eating.  I also read people were putting 40 -50 chickens in a rather small area.  I built one 20' long by about 4' wide, and put one hen with 5 baby chicks in it.  Then I sat and watched.  A bug would go in, and the bug would go out.  They may have managed to catch one or two bugs, but that is pushing it.  I moved it around to various locations.   No luck with insects.  The did get a bit of grass but as far as decent protein, no go.  My free range birds (truly free range), catch quite a few insects.  I won't use a tractor and if i did, I certainly would not call my birds free range, and likely I would have to feed them.

I've had chickens for years, usually not feeding them at all. Even in winter they find plenty of food.   When mulberries are ripe, the birds may be found up in the trees harvesting the berries.  Perhaps some folks have lots of insects on their land, and the insects are slow moving?  This method just wouldn't work for me.

The Survival Podcast - great interview a few days back BTW- thanks.

Saw your post of rocket mass heaters on Reddit.  Several people here in NW PA plan on building them this year.

The mullein video.

great video!

I love mullein.

Maybe I will change my name to mullein, but first I have to figure out how to pronounce it.

I searched out "permaculture" in iTunes and, at that time, Paul's was the only one.
I believe richsoil.com was mentioned in the notes so I wandered over, before I actually listened to the podcast, read a couple of articles, and finally clicked the forum link and haven't turned back since.

Paul's rampant cross posting on Backwoods Home Magazine forums brought me here.  Keep up the good work, Paul.

Listening to The Survival Podcast got me inspired to think about this sort of self-sufficency stuff.  My brother owns Mollison's big black book, so I am vaguely familiar with the term 'permaculture'.  Thinking it could be something to learn about, I searched for a podcast on permaculture on iTunes, and recognised Paul Wheaton as "that cool rocket stove guy" from YouTube.

When I decided I wanted to get involved in the self-sufficiency/sustainability conversation rather than just listening, I chose these forums because I didn't think I'd fit in so well with the TSP crowd (while I do own guns, I'm not interested in pointing them at people).

So far, I've got to say it's working out really well - the people here are very helpful and considerate, and I hope as I progress in my own knowledge and journey that I too will be able to contribute to the pool.  Paul, thanks for all that you do.

I learned about the site through your blog which I found by searching on itunes. I called myself a "permie", so I laughed when I saw it was the title of your forums.

i found out about permies through your podcast. i found out about your podcast from The Survival Podcast. I found out about the Survival Podcast from The Paleo Solution podcast. I found out about the Paleo Solution Podcast after reading up on going gluten free. I went gluten free after reading Wheat Belly. I found out about Wheat Belly on boingboing.com. I found out about boingboing from my friend Geoff Gordon. I met Geoff Gordon at an IHOP in Newton MA. IHOP was a major reason why I eventually had to go gluten free. I could write a book like this. I could title the book "How Random Occurrences Saved My Life."

Via a google search for the term 'permaculture'. I stuck around because I like the color scheme. Seriously.

The people here all live up to the 'be nice' rule in addition to being a wealth of knowledge and thus was history made.

The chicken paddock article

The chicken paddock article - me too

Searched podcasts for the word permaculture.

Searched youtube for the word permaculture.

Watched every Paul Wheaton video and listened to every podcast, and finally...

Went to permies.com

Not sure what took me so long.

First the lawn care article. Then for a while every google search for organic gardening eventually brought me back here.

I found out about permaculture while doing a farming techniques project for my AP Environmental Science class, and I wanted to learn more and came across some of Paul's videos on YouTube which led me to permies.com

i like this sort of thing

With me it all started with wild persimmons and pecans.

The realization that wild fruit and nut trees were the happiest and most productive plants on the property gave me the notion that I should stop wasting so much energy on failed experiments in conventional gardening. Instread, I thought, why not nurture the happy wild food plants and trees I already have, and find more things like them that can thrive here without extreme daily care?

Shared this notion with some smart friends, one of whom said "oh, I have some books on that, you want them?" She ended up handing me a British book on forest gardens and Gaia's Garden, where I first saw the word "permaculture".

So, after that I was Googling a lot of "forest garden" and permaculture searches. And I kept landing here, which seemed to be the only place where people were discussing the stuff I was searching for.

i searched google for "stout system" and found this site maybe three results down

I found out from my local permaculture list, Portland Permaculture Guild.
John S
PDX OR

paul wheaton wrote:How did you find us? 

I'm new here, as of today. Hi, everyone. I found this site because I've been searching for sites that offer examples of repurposing, re-use, upcycling (and so on) of components, materials, structures - with relevance to living outside of city and town. I've cobbled together lists sources and made them known on other sites (homesteadingtoday.com, sufficientself.com, toolfools-talk... among others). I've located a fair number of good pages and sites by putting certain search strings into Google images. Today I used permaculture along with repurpose- bingo!

I'm a longtime homesteader, and although I have friends who explicitly think of themselves as Permaculturists (or "permies"), I have not done so. Though I think I've incorporated a lot of the principles into my life and my home place. (I'd been doing alot of p/c things before I'd heard of p/c.)

I suppose this is why I'd used many other search strings in Google before today. But I'm glad I found the Permies.com site now.

I had independently come up with the notion that if gardening here is hard (which it can be) then I needed to focus on finding stuff that would grow better under these conditions instead of working harder at changing and controlling the conditions. A learned friend heard me babbling about planting more fruits and nuts like the wild ones that are happy here, and said "that sounds like permaculture, I've got a book you might like" and handed me Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemingway.

So after that, all my fruit and nut tree searches were tending to include "+permaculture" as a search term, which made Permies.com start popping up repeatedly.

paul wheaton wrote:How did you find us? 

I aim to read everything available about landrace gardening. I do routine Internet searches to keep abreast of the conversation. There were several threads about me and about landrace gardening on permies.com, so eventually I joined the conversation. Thanks Ann & Victor.

Pretty sure I found Permies when searching about permaculture...though I'm not quite certain if I found out about permaculture through permies. I was doing a lot of web searches when we were property hunting, and I know permies came up a lot. I think I really started noticing that I was reading a lot of permies threads when I was doing searches for how to garden on a north-facing slope. That's when I joined, too. The main thing I loved about permies is that there was a wealth of accessible, free permaculture information. I couldn't really find that anywhere else on the web!

EDIT: So, I really wanted to try to figure out the process that led me to permaculture and to permies, and I think I figured it out! My husband and I watched Food.inc (it was free on Hulu), as we were already interested in consuming healthy food. There we found out about Polyface farms, and how Salitin rotated the chickens after the cows and thought, "Hey, we could do that!" I'm pretty sure that's how I learned about permaculture, especially as I was doing web searches on how to set up a paddock-shift system, and how much property I'd need to do it (I found Paul's article on it during that time). I've got a Word document from February 2012 of me planning chicken/sheep paddocks, and how much property I'd need for it. Over at least two years, I continued doing web searches on permaculture and finding useful stuff in your videos and forums, and so I ended up joining, specifically to find out about growing food on a north-facing slope.

I know I joined because there are so many really knowledgeable people here who really do help others figure out how to "do permaculture." I love how many really experienced and knowledgeable people are on here, helping others. I think, more than anything, that's the biggest draw to permies.

And, looking back, it looks like a good way to get people who don't even know permaculture exists to learn about permaculture, is by having it mentioned and shown on some big box movie that's free on Hulu...