This isn’t new.

In fact, this is the oldest system ever!

Have you ever tried to remove a forest? If you stopped mowing your lawn, what would happen?

You would see volunteer trees cropping up, wildflowers blooming, wildlife returning, and an abundance of different plant varieties appearing in place of the uniform green grass. Everything returns to nature - you, me, and both our precious lawns. Nature does not conform to our standards of clean cut lawns, and the unfortunate reality is our grocery store isn’t supplied by natural processes.

This is natural.

The reality of modern agriculture is that it strives for uniform monocultures of a specific crop. This practice destroys ecosystems of diverse plants, animals, and systems. In order to maintain a corn field, the natural systems that build soil, manage pests, provide habitats for wildlife, and self-regulate must be ripped out and replaced by a heavily, consistently maintained field of one crop. Monocultures - or fields of one specific crop - are a man-made system that is entirely unsustainable. If left alone, they would return to nature and diversity very quickly.

Unfortunately, monocultures produce the vast majority of our foods today. They destroy the environment by eroding soil through tillage, removing natural habitats for animals, degrade the soil year after year, and fight nature every step of the way. Worse yet, the products of these methods provide less nutrition and taste worse than anything you could grow at home!

It doesn’t have to be this way.

We have examples of highly productive, diverse, balanced, and regenerative systems all around us: forests. If we observe nature and follow its example, we can create systems that produce our foods, fuels, medicines, and fibers which require little maintenance and can not easily be destroyed. With some upfront effort, we can start the flywheel of productivity that will continue on even after we are gone, producing an abundance of resources and repairing some of the damage done by widespread traditional agriculture around us.

And we can do it on any scale, locally - like right in your back yard.

This is the easy way.

To build a road, you must cut or burn down forests. To maintain it, you cut the grass with growth inhibiting chemicals to prevent trees from growing back. If you leave it alone, it will return to a forest full of diverse populations of plants, fungus, microbial life, rich soil, and wild animals.

It takes some effort and an open mind to break our unnatural cycles and get the right systems in place, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. However, once the flywheel is spinning, this system will feed into itself with little intervention, producing more resources than you can ever use.

By stopping to observe nature, we can begin to understand the blueprints that will stick around without our intervention for decades and centuries.

If you plan correctly, your system will outlive you.

The idea is to start with the most permanent systems first:

1. Climate: We have little control over our local climate. Wherever you choose to start this flywheel, understand the broader area and how your microclimate will play into your plans.

2. Landshapes: Whether you’re on a hill or a flat plain, the shape of the land affects how water flows across your land. And this is important because water is the source of all life. Some strategy and foresight here can make a big impact on how you retain or shed water. Consider your water needs and shape your area to soak it in.

3. Water: Where does your water come from? Broadly speaking, our aquifers are depleting quickly. Learn how to collect the rain the lands on your property and sequester it into the land.

4. Roads: How will you access your forest? Roads and paths are an important element to consider when talking about levels of permanence because they are critical for harvesting and maintenance, and once you start planting trees, it’s difficult to move them. Plan how you will access your land and build this into the map early.

5. Trees: Think about the network of life in a forest. Roots spread out and intertangle under your feet. They drop leaves that turn to rich soil. They support a host of species and niches of wildlife and other plants beneath. Sunlight dapples the overstory, understory, and herbs, shrubs, vines, and roots beneath. These are the most permanent natural structure in a forest, but it is the foundation for a diversity of soil and life. Look at the diversity of a forest and get as broad a diversity of tree species as possible to help manage pests, create symbiosis, and make a resilient system of positive interactions.

6. Structures: Only after trees are planned can structures like houses, barns, sheds, coops, and other structures find their place. Trees, roads, water, landshapes, and climate all affect where structures should go, and when orchestrated properly, will provide shelter and support for structures that we need to maintain and support our systems.

7. Fences and subdivisions: Animals are an important part of the system because they provide many services to the system. Chickens, turkeys, ducks, sheep, pigs, cows, goats, and other livestock can graze on your cover crops, prune your trees, add nutrients to your soil, manage your pests, aerate the earth, and provide their usual products and services to boot. Managing where your animals graze with some strategy, rotationally grazing many plots, and understanding how important they are to the cycles of nature is critical.

8. Soil: While it is the foundation of all life, it is also the least permanent. Soil erodes very quickly in the vacuum of monoculture and tillage. There are a plethora of practices you can easily implement to build the soil such as cover crops, compost teas, mulching - you name it. Soil should be a rich complex network of life and death - growth and decomposition in constant flux and succession. This cycle provides the basis from which all other plants and animals can take hold and thrive.

Plan using this system of permanence. Understand the resources and conditions available to you in order of which is hardest to control, starting with the hardest first. You can’t easily move soil and build earthworks to retain water after you’ve built fences and planted trees.

In this manner, you can take a lawn and strategically transform it into a self-sustaining, regenerative forest of productive system of perennials, trees, and animals that can easily be harvested with very little external input.

The upfront effort is only necessary because humans have already caused so much destruction to the environment. We have built up debt and need to pay it off to return it to sustainable productivity. But when this is done, you have a system that will heal and balance itself and feed back incredible value for decades or centuries after we’ve returned to dust. It will require a lot of work to rip it out, minimal effort to maintain, and your main job will be harvesting the bounty now available to you.