Renewable Resources: Solutions for Homestead Problems (5th Permaculture Principle)

What are renewable resources on the homestead and how can they be applied to our most common challenges? Every homestead faces problems but not every homesteader has the cash to simply run out and purchase a ready-made solution that may or may not work. Today’s article covers the fifth principle of permaculture, which is to use and value renewable resources – AKA, natural or biological solutions. We’ve included real examples from our own homestead of issues we face all the time – hot summers, feed bills, lack of equipment – that are more easily and readily solved by the application of natural principles and renewable resources.

Homesteading has its vagaries like any other worthwhile endeavor and sometimes it can be hard to keep up. Despite what it might look like on Pinterest or Instagram, we don’t all homestead on perfect land while living in a flawless farmhouse. We all have problems that need solutions!

As I write this, my family has been displaced for going on three years, living in about 600 square feet of tiny house on a friend’s farm where we’re just squatting. While I’m grateful beyond measure to have shelter and good friends, to say that it’s been a challenging time for my homesteader’s heart would be an understatement.

Natural Rhythms on the Homestead

Still, with all its ups and downs, the self-sufficient lifestyle is a rhythm of worthy and worthwhile sacrifices. Veggies aren’t the only things that are grown around here. The people grow most of all.

That’s probably because everything we do in homestead living establishes relationships of some kind or other. The homestead family that works together, grows together.

But so, too, does the homesteader who tends her flocks and fields. Each effort spent deepens her connection to the land, the plants, and the animals – and theirs in turn to her.

This give and take, feeding and being nourished, gives us experience with the cadence of nature. Every comes and goes in cycles; everything that decays, renews again.

Permaculture & Renewable Resources on the Homestead

The rhythm of nature, or the cycle of nature is something we pay special attention to in permaculture design and application. If you’re new to the word permaculture, never fear!

We have a series of articles that explain permaculture principles in homesteader-speak. Their purpose is to illuminate in simple detail how and why permaculture is relevant to every homesteader no matter where you live or the size of your homestead.

In our article, Plan a Permaculture Layout, we briefly define permaculture,

…Permaculture is the combination of the words permanent and agriculture. It was developed as a way of teaching people how to create sustainable gardens and farms. Which means that permaculture teaches us how to grow food and create abundance in ways that are:

self-sustaining, or regenerative

environmentally and human friendly

and which create abundant yields, or harvests

It does this in large measure by mimicking what nature does. For example, a forest will keep its soil covered in pine needles, sticks, and other scat. We do the same in our gardens using basically the same materials but we call it mulch and compost.

Permaculture has 12 principles and 3 ethics that guide its execution. We are slowly translating those ideas into homesteader-speak with this series of article. You’re reading number five in the series.

For Further Permaculture Reading Try:

Plan a Permaculture Homestead Layout

Permaculture Zones on the Homestead

Efficient Energy Storage Systems on the Homestead (Principle #2)

Permaculture Principle #5 – Use & Value Renewable Resources

The principle of using and valuing renewable resources is intrinsic in permaculture practice, as well as homesteading and any other DIY-centered mentality.

This principle essentially says that, if there’s a problem to be solved, the best solution is going to be the one that is:

easy to access (local to you)
cheap (doesn’t require much, if any, capital*)
simple to understand and repair or redesign

This last point is of special importance! Renewable, or natural resources, when applied as solutions to homestead problems are usually the easiest to use and even fix if something goes haywire down the line.

*Capital as defined in permaculture includes financial capital like cash. However, it also encompasses assets like experience, time, labor, emotional energy and more. A solution may not cost you dollars but it can rob you of time and labor if it turns out to be poor.

Commercial solutions – as in products to purchase – will almost always require cash, of course.

What Are Renewable Resources – What Does That Phrase Mean?

Another way to describe renewable resources is to say that these solutions are natural, meaning found in the natural world. You could also call these resources biological.

Since the natural world is hardwired to create systems – elements working in tandem with each other to take care of each others needs – we call these resources renewable. That is, they are naturally designed to sustain themselves without input from, for example, people.

That’s not to say that people don’t have a vital role to play in our stewardships in the natural world! However, it does mean that if we all happened to disappear tomorrow, the elements already arranged in these self-sustaining systems would still be performing their functions for years to come.

How grateful I am that nature so abundantly shares her methods, these arrangements of systems, with us so that we can learn from and adopt them!

If we can learn to successfully observe them, that is.

Homestead Problems & Solutions

The first thing we need to do before we even try to identify natural solutions for homestead issues is to learn to observe the homestead and all of its parts. That’s probably why the first principle of permaculture is: Observe and Interact.

Observing and getting involved in the natural world of the homestead allow us to do a number of useful things, one of which is to support and even duplicate the natural processes and systems that are already functioning successfully on our land.

Once we see how well nature manages her own “household”, we can more easily adopt her systems.

This process is called biomimicry – or mimicking what we see in nature – and is explained more fully in our first permaculture principle article Observe & Interact: Biomimicry on the Homestead.

To show how these renewable resources found in the natural world can help solve everyday homestead challenges, I’m going to take you through a list of examples that I hope will resonate with every homestead reader in some way or other.

Renewable Resources from the Natural World to Solve Homestead Challenges

There’s usually a commercially available solution to a homestead problem. For example, if you have too many cucumber beetles in the garden, you can go buy the recommended insecticidal solution.

After all, you might ask yourself, isn’t it easier to simply purchase a product, apply it, and walk away?

I suppose the answer to that question lies inside the question itself: How do you define and quantify “easy”?

A Garden Example

What might seem easy – the spray-on insecticide from our example above – can have several possible results.

The insecticide works and you never see another cucumber beetle in the garden again. Let me know if that’s actually ever happened for you because it never did for me back in the days when I was using those commercially available garden products. (Even the organic ones.)
The insecticide seems to work for a time but the beetles eventually come back, and in fact seem to come back stronger. You end up working harder to eradicate the buggers than before. As added insult, the stuff you sprayed seems to have killed or scared off your pollinators, like bees and butterflies.
You don’t observe any change in the garden at all. This is usually the result of a faulty product or one that’s too old to be viable.

Have any of these scenarios played out in your garden?

Here are some other things to think about:

Since garden centers only sell insecticides to people with money to burn, maybe it’s in our best interest to see if we can find a cheaper way to solve the issue.

Also, since it turns out that if we go the insecticidal route, we’ll probably have to make multiple applications against the bad bugs, maybe it would be a good idea to find a solution that we only have to apply once. There simply has to be a better way!

Permaculture founder Bill Mollison once said:

Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.

Some Reasons to Seek a Natural Solution

It seems easier to me to find a solution that is:

easy to access (local to us)
cheap (doesn’t require much, if any, capital*)
simple to understand

Remember that list from before? Alrighty, let’s get started discussing some of these renewable resources, homestead problems, and natural solutions!

Renewable Resource #1 – The Sun

The sun is a huge nuclear reactor in the sky that shines down on us for free. People have been harvesting its energy since the beginning of time! Here are a just a few of the things that the sun can do on the homestead:

Dry clothes without an electric dryer
Heat water in a solar water heater
Dehydrate food in a solar dehydrator or solar oven
Cook food in a solar oven
Heat your home with passive solar design, including solar tubes and skylights
Charge a brick or cobb wall (including inside the home) with heat to radiate out to plants, animals, and people
Reflect heat and light from a pond to surrounding plants (Sepp Holzer does this very well!)
Grow fruits and vegetables in the garden
Sanitizes (as with laundry on a clothesline) and provides Vitamin D for our bodies

These are just a few other the functions the sun performs on the homestead, besides simply being the source of all life on the earth.

FYI, the best way to track how the sun moves across your property to capitalize on its free energy is to draw a sector map of your homestead. A sector map illustrates the various external forces that come onto your land – like the sun, wind, and wildlife.

–>> Visit our article to learn to Draw a Permaculture Sector Map for the Homestead <<-–

The Power of the Sun Vs. Solar Power

When we think of solar application in a homestead setting, we often think of solar panel technology to power tools and homes. However, this tech comes with a few drawbacks that make it a non-renewable resource in many ways.

For example, solar power technology requires a lot of equipment to use, much of which is sourced from overseas (for U.S. buyers). Some components are produced with guiding ethics that might not be to your liking.

Additionally, they cost money! Moreover, this is a technology that many of us don’t have the skill set to set up, repair, and maintain on our own.

For some homesteaders, solar panels may still be part of our design and we choose to use them with our eyes open to the drawbacks, as well as the blessings. However, solar panels aren’t technically a renewable resource in the strictest sense.

For a homestead example of how to replace solar panel heating with a more renewable resource, please visit our article: Efficient Energy Storage on the Homestead under the “2 Laws of Thermodynamics for Homesteaders” section. (Don’t be intimidated by the physics, this is a super simple example!)

Renewable Resource #2 – Water

Nothing grows or lives without water on this planet – we all need it! It’s so fundamental to life, that water is usually the first thing we analyze when doing a permaculture homestead design.

Learning to capture, harvest, slow, and use every drop of water that comes onto the homestead can save us so much time, energy, effort, and even money. In permaculture, you often hear the following phrase in regards to water,

Slow, Spread, and Sink!

As my permaculture design mentor, Morag Gamble reminds her students, we’re essentially learning how to plant water in the landscape, much like we would a fruit tree or a tomato plant.

Here are a just a few of the things that water can do on the homestead:

Fill rain barrels (or use any rainwater collection method) to water the garden
Stored in ponds in the landscape for watering and livestock
Captured in totes or cisterns to provide water for coops, barns, and even the home
Stored in the landscape in rain gardens and swales
Captured in the garden in mulch and compost to keep the garden soil moist without irrigation equipment
Provide for aquaponics or stocked fish ponds
Be recycled from the home and into the garden with gray water system design

The goal for any homestead where water is concerned is to use every drop we can before it leaves the homestead. When we design around this goal, we also protect the surrounding environment from problems like excessive rain runoff and erosion.

Renewable Resources #3 – Plants

Plants are some of our biggest assets on the homestead, especially perennial plants with their expansive root systems and hardy survival rates. Plants can be grown from seed or purchased plant starts. There are also many ways to propagate plants for free as with stem and root cuttings, layering, and division.

Here are a just a few of the things that plants can do on the homestead:

Produce food for people and animals
Attract beneficial beneficial pollinators
Entice beneficial insects which will consume or detract pest insects
Feed the soil through their root systems (and therefore other plants) with nitrogen, carbon, other nutrients
Produce more soil food in the form of living mulch, aka green manure crops
Be used to create natural dyes
Produce wellness plants like herbs which can be used in herbal preparations and even cosmetics and herbal soaps
Provide shade for livestock and homes in the form of trees, bushes, and vines
Create windbreaks when designed and planted strategically in the landscape

My personal favorite, and probably yours too, is that plants take in our carbon dioxide and breathe out our priceless oxygen. Plants are life-giving and sustaining on many levels so surround yourself with them on the homestead!

—>>>For a more detailed discussion of perennial plant value on the homestead, please visit our article Obtain a Yield: Increase Homestead Garden Harvests (permaculture principle #3) under the “Understand Annuals & Perennials for Planting & Scheduling Harvests” section.

—>>>For more practical examples of natural solutions for homestead problems, please visit the article below where we cover four different areas of concern: the garden, land, livestock, and the home.

<<<—Natural Solutions for Homestead Problems—>>>

What Renewable Resources Could be Used to Replace Nonrenewable Ones?

Here’s another way to look at this idea – examples of renewable resources being used instead of nonrenewable ones:

Line drying system instead of an electric clothes dryer.
Vegetable garden instead of the grocery store produce section.
Similarly, eating seasonally available foods instead of imported foods.
Livestock to control weeds and insects instead of herbicides and insecticides.
Ducks or sheep to mow the lawn instead of a lawn mower.
Gathering leaves and grass clippings to create mulch for the garden instead of bagging and disposing of these items and purchasing garden mulch.
Chickens and pigs turn heavy compost materials to create compost instead of you laboriously turning it.
Rain barrel water collection and rain garden designs instead of allowing all water to go down gutters or run off site.
Vines, trees, and other botanical shade sources instead of shade cloth, fans, and air conditioning.
Garden gray water recycling design instead of sending gray water into municipal waste water systems.
Bucket composting toilet system instead a sceptic system.

We could do this all day! What would you add to the list?

Is it Ever Appropriate to Use Non-Renewable Resources on the Homestead?

First of all, it’s your homestead, so you get to say what’s appropriate and what isn’t for your family. Don’t let other people’s strong judgement effect you negatively.

It’s important to listen to viewpoints that are different from our own because we so often find that there’s a lot of wisdom we hadn’t considered before in their ideas. Plus, experience! We all have varied experiences that can be so helpful to share with each other.

Even the with the people who haven’t found a way to appropriately share their passions and ideas without causing offense, simply try to hear what’s good in the feedback you get. Is there something there that will benefit your homestead and family?

You Don’t Need My Permission, But…

Going along with that, and realizing you don’t need my permission, it can be practical to use non-renewable resources to solve homestead problems at times.

In striving to become self-sustaining, what we’re really doing is establishing relationships and cycles that will care for themselves and each other with as little management from us as possible. In short, we need as much as possible on the homestead to take care of itself because we don’t have time or energy to micro-manage everything!

On a new homestead, it’s important to consider these connections and relationships early in the design process so we can plan with/around them. If the needs of each element are being met as they grow up together on the homestead, the systems will be self-sustaining in the long run, even if they need a little extra help getting started.

If we need to use non-biological inputs, we can, especially as the systems are getting established.

To read more on this topic, visit our article: No-Till Gardening with Power Equipment?

An Example From My Homestead

For example, I have a low point on my land to which water naturally runs down from the top of the property. I’d like to turn this spot into a seasonal pond and use a mini-ex to dig it out instead of using a shovel.

Similarly, I plant to build a straw bale and cobb house but I will use a truck to transport the bales and a digging machine to create a house foundation and loose the clay for the cob mix. I can even use the extra clay and dirt from the pond for cobb mixture or I can add it to my garden areas.

Either way, I can use a large machine to move the heavy dirt where I need it to be. I don’t have to own this machine either, since they are available for rent. They do require heavy inputs of fuel and capital (rental fee), but they save me time and labor that makes the exchange worth it to me. Especially because I’m not purchasing new equipment but instead using what has already been purchased by someone else.

These non-biological aides help the design mature more quickly. Most have a biological equivalent that is slower or more difficult to use. These tools speed things up.

Often that compromise is worth it; often it isn’t. Be prepared to be elastic and honest in your assessment of each scenario on the homestead.

Homework & The Most Important Question to Ask

The follow up suggested assignment for this permaculture principle is to first ask yourself the most important question to help you identify renewable resources on your homestead that can help with the challenges you will be facing this year. Here’s the question:

What does nature already do and enjoy doing that you can put to work for you;
not by extortion, but by allowing it do naturally do its thing?

Get our your homestead journal or make a list on a scrap piece of paper of all the challenges coming up on the homestead this year. Make this one column.

Then, on the other side of the paper, start brainstorming possible solutions to these issues that could be solved or partially solved with a renewable resource or natural system already in place on the homestead.

I suggest you make categories for each set of lists:

Personal
Kitchen
Livestock
Garden
Finances

You can branch out from these and narrow them down into smaller subtopics. For example, if you start with the garden, smaller subtopics could be:

Vegetables to grow
Fruit to grow
Compost
Mulch
Cover crops
Pollinator plants
Herbs
Built structures – like fencing, garden beds, trellises, etc.
Swales and all water collection/retention/direction

To make things easier, you can join our newsletter family to download and print these worksheets that can help you brainstorm these ideas in an organized way. You can slip these right into your homestead journal when they’re completed for constant reference. You can also print more any time you need them.

FYI, if you’re already a member of our newsletter family, these worksheets will be in the free newsletter library. The access information for the library is at the bottom of every email newsletter.