This is not about peak oil, or climate change, or economic collapse, although, any or all of those may cause significant problems. This is about building the world you want to live in, whether or not there are problems.

We are all, already, engaged in a set of interactions with the people, and other living things, around us that creates the world we experience. We do not, ever, see all the interactions, and for those interactions we do see, we do not always understand the impact of those interactions on us. For example, we tend to think that we depend on the success of this group or that group, without thinking about how the success of the group depends on all the interactions taking place around and through it. No group exists unless it meets a need in the society and no group exists unless it fulfills a need of its members.

At the API we are not interested in setting up a new group to compete with all the existing groups. We think of ourselves as being members of a community that consists of all the people, and other living things, within our locality. There are, already, groups with resources interested in every aspect of what we want to do. The key is to engage each of those groups in a coordinated effort to meet the needs of more people, and other living things, within the community. We seek to engage every group in our community in developing the know how to organize ourselves to provide for ourselves.

Some of the gardening team got together a couple of days ago and we talked about one such group. The Maple Grove Grange is about a half mile from the API. Don and David B are both members of the Grange and the Grange has resources including a meeting space, a need for new members, existing members who might participate, and a historic commitment to community and husbandry. Except for an anachronistic ritual, they are perfectly situated to support the development of suburban permaculture in our neighborhood. The team discussed our members joining the Grange which would then give us use of the building and insurance for community projects.

Every organization in your neighborhood is a potential resource for your gardening team and the development of community sufficiencies. Every business, religious and fraternal group, and all of their members, benefit from a healthy society, of healthy people, within a healthy environments, based on healthy soils.