I was recently in a large store with a pharmacy filling a prescription and while I was waiting and bored, I went to check out the magazine rack.

I don’t read magazines.  I feel the information in them is nearly always useless and in almost every case the article is written about a problem that only purchasing their sponsors product will solve.  I feel my life is richer the less things I buy.  I feel the more we do for ourselves, the better off we’ll be.  We gain an identity when we create, improve and maintain which is far superior to the consumer identity so many of us (myself included) have.

I guess the point of this rant is don’t look to magazines for answers or solutions.  In fact, don’t look to anything which is sponsor supported for answers.  They all have a bias towards their sponsor’s product and who knows if it’s total crap or not.  If you need help with your garden, there are very brilliant people out there who would love nothing more than to share their knowledge for free.  Not all of them are right, but there are heaps of people out there sharing different techniques to do the same thing. Find someone that makes sense to you and try things for yourself.

You WILL find people that have ideas that may be contradictory to what you were brought up to believe, and to me those are by far the most interesting and usually right ones.

My reason for bringing this up is, permaculture is something that relies on very little outside input.  Done correctly, you shouldn’t need to purchase very much to keep your land going, and the thing you may need to purchase are things like seeds, straw, compost, etc.  Things you won’t find in a magazine or on a commercial.

Thanks for reading and please let me know your thoughts on this.

Caleb