Chad Hellwinckel, Knoxville Permaculture Guild

Chad Hellwinckel’s work as a research scientist in the University of Tennessee’s College of Agriculture, studying energy usage and alternatives to petroleum-based sources while he recently completed a doctorate in geography, has connected the dots between our reliance on oil, global supplies of the resource and how we might function and survive in a world where current lifestyles and habits are no longer sustainable or even possible.

To prepare for a future wherein the habits and systems we currently take for granted may not exist, Hellwinckel and his wife Tracie started the Knoxville Permaculture Guild to create a network for locals interested in learning more about working with the land and environment to maximize potential for human sustenance and survival. He discussed permaculture concepts, peak oil theory and local efforts toward sustainability in a recent interview with Knoxville Voice.

Tell me about the origins of the Knoxville Permaculture Guild.

Me and my wife started it in July after I took a two-week course in Indiana from Peter Bing. I’ve been involved in permaculture and peak oil theory for a while but I took that course and it motivated me to come back here and start the Guild. [Bing] said there have been 1 million permaculture design graduates in the world and the developed world is lagging behind the non-developed world or the under-developed world. There are a lot of guilds in cities all over the country and we had our first meeting in July, so it’s really in the formation stage right now.

We’re having monthly meetings to get into people’s backyards and see what they’re doing. We decided the goal of the Guild is to get as many good examples of permaculture practices in use in people’s yards, homes and land to act as an example for others to see it and replicate it in their own yards. But my study of the energy issue at UT led to my concern and my search for answers and permaculture thought about where people are putting things in the ground and spreading it through connections. Building it up from there seems a lot more do-able than trying to do anything from the top-down, government-down.

What is permaculture?

That’s a hard concept to describe. David Holmgren is one of the founders of the term back in the ’70s and he declined to even define it for 10 years, but permaculture is the science of design of human managed or built environments to meet all human needs through a web of interconnections that minimize energy use and human toil while maximizing food and human services per unit of area. That’s the official definition.

Permaculture encompasses rainwater catchment, gray water filtration, aquaculture and small ponds in your yard where you raise fish and mussels and clams and possibly a home for a duck that also eats bugs out of your garden whereas a chicken would scratch up your yard, sheet mulch gardening where you’re mulching instead of tilling the soil, composting your kitchen waste and human waste, edible forest landscaping where you design a forest of perennial trees and shrubs in different layers that are easier to take care of.

So all those things fall under permaculture, but permaculture is more of a design practice where all these things are connected together. It’s really about the connections, because everything in permaculture design has at least three applications and reasons for it to be there and all those connections work so the system as a whole gives you a lot more productivity and gains than if they were all separate.

What do you mean by the design having three applications?

For instance, you take a compost bin, you’re getting rid of your waste and the compost is being used in your garden to fertilize your garden and you could have the compost for chickens to scratch around it. Whenever you think of changing the design of the land, think of three good reasons why the practice is used. Like I put up an arbor in my backyard and the arbor is to hold my hammock so I can rest, have a grapevine grow up it, and… I guess I haven’t thought of the third one yet, I’m new to this (laughs).