Guest Blogger: Permaculture Designer Jeff Adams

USU Extension Sustainability is working to help everyday people live more healthy, happy and sustainable lives. This is the eighteenth of a series of posts that features real people who are making real changes in their lives to be more sustainable.

This month we are featuring Permaculture Designer Jeff Adams of Terrasophia LLC.  Read on to learn about Jeff’s work in permaculture design, how he views sustainability, resiliency and other terms, as well as what he thinks is special about his current town of Moab, UT.

You are a permaculture designer. If you were in an elevator with someone, and they asked “what is permaculture?” How would you answer?

Permaculture is a whole systems design process based on ecological principles, science, and traditional knowledge and guided by three ethics: care for the earth, care for people, and fair share/return the surplus. As a design process, permaculture is often first applied to gardening and farming, though its applicability extends to business development, community planning, our personal lives and nearly every facet of life.

It says on your website that you build "capacity to regenerate the health of our watersheds by engaging community members through hands-on education projects and ecological design services.” Can you elaborate a little on what you do and why it is important? 

My primary focus is education for action. There are many shovel-ready solutions available for addressing the myriad of issues facing society and our ecosystems.  Part of what I see as lacking is an awareness of these solutions combined with an ability to think in terms of ecosystems and watersheds. My efforts are focused on expanding awareness and cultivating skillsets to generate context-specific solutions, as well as designing physical projects and developing high visibility demonstration projects that provide immediate and on-going benefits. Often I hear talk about big, expensive strategies to address our challenges, and I feel that there is a growing place and need for many small and simple strategies done at scale. The cumulative impacts of many small solutions add up to huge potential, and with this redundancy and distributed capacity there is more resiliency to disturbances and changes.  Through my work I support non-profits, businesses, and individuals in developing programs and projects to expand the application and skillsets in watershed regeneration and permaculture.

What motivated you to start working in this area? 

Since I was a child I have had a strong connection with nature, growing up on the edge of the woods, near the salt marshes and beaches of Cape Cod, MA. My mom always gardened and some of my earliest work was landscaping. For a number of years I worked on a “mow, blow, and go” landscape crew, going to the same yards week after week and coming home at the end of the day covered in grass clippings and smelling like 2-stroke engine exhaust. I enjoyed working outside and the projects where we built stonewalls or a new patio, but knew there had to be something more. When I moved out to Humboldt, CA for university I discovered the philosophy and practice of Appropriate Technology and eventually got turned on to permaculture. I instantly recognized I had found my path and my calling, and for the past 16 years now I have actively pursued the development of my knowledge, skills and experience in the field and opportunities for supporting and educating others to do likewise.

How do you differentiate between sustainability, permaculture, regenerative design, and resiliency – or are they the same thing to you?

I see these terms as part of a spectrum of design, where Sustainability is seeking to keep things going, while Permaculture and Regenerative Design (which are pretty much synonymous to me) seek to create or enhance the capacity for self-renewal with a goal of producing more than is consumed. I see Resiliency as a desired characteristic of ecosystems and communities that allows for a response to changes or disturbances without loss of essential functions. Resiliency can be enhanced through design where redundancy and distributed capacity for performance of essential functions and services is emphasized.

What are some projects you will be working on this year that excite you? 

This is going to be a great year. I am excited to be working locally with the Canyonlands Watershed Council on developing a Watershed Resiliency Stewards program and we currently have received grant funding to inventory landscaping on public facilities and prioritize these for retrofitting for multiple benefits. I am also collaborating on creating a permaculture park in downtown Moab that will showcase watershed resilient landscape practices while creating a place for people to relax and connect with each other and nature. Part of my summer will be spent continuing to work on a wetlands stabilization and restoration project in the Carson National Forest in NM, in collaboration with the Quivira Coalition and some other great practitioners. And I am in the early stages of collaboration on the Navajo Nation to start a watershed regeneration and permaculture project with the local community. There will also be an assortment of permaculture design and watershed projects, which is really encouraging to see the interest and demand growing around the West.

Your travels eventually brought you to Moab, UT, where you are settled for the time being. What do you find special about this place? 

Moab and the Spanish Valley are a really special and unique place. I really like being able to look up at the La Sal mountains and know that is where our water supply comes from. The character of the Moab area is also really appealing to me - a small town with ample opportunities to explore diverse natural settings, Mill Creek cutting through town with a bike path along the lower reaches, and large agricultural tracts mixed in with the urbanized and residential areas. And most importantly there is a great community of like-minded people here, with the potential to retrofit our landscapes and infrastructure for increased resiliency and local self-reliance really feeling very potent!