If you’ve ever watched the PermaScience’s animated short film starring a virtual Geoff Lawton, you’ll remember the words:

“Once you step over the line and you start to operate efficiently, and you start to move in a meaningful direction, something that is even more valuable actually happens: you’ve actually expanded your time within your life… Time is very very large and all your life is being meaningful. And that’s priceless: permaculture as a design-science-way-to-live.”

I’ll never forget the first time I’ve heard this kind of thought in the real life, sitting around a table while having breakfast at Zaytuna farm, PRI Australia, so well it described what I had been feeling since I had decided to take responsibility for my own life. Around me, a group of like-minded fellows was getting ready for a new day of work, being it either with cows & goats, chickens & ducks, veggie gardens, food forest, compost or nursery. A diversity of events and social interactions that “expands time”, and an expanded time that can fit in an increasingly complex diversity. Here’s my personal stepping-over-the-line.

Late 80’s – 2012. Born and raised in the picturesque medieval town of Montagnana, Po Valley (close to Padua for someone who knows a bit about Northeastern Italy, not far from Venice for the “general public”). Lucky enough to have a father that started a commercial vegetable nursery in the early 90’s, where the occasional help given since childhood became an official seasonal occupation after graduation.

2012 – 2013. 3 months in the UK working on an urban organic farm that offers the opportunity to those experiencing disadvantages to learn practical and social skills and to develop trust and self-confidence. 1 month in Ethiopia to reward the time spent by volunteering for an Italian Ngo engaged in the development of self-sufficient villages and communities, based on worker cooperatives, fair economy and financial autonomy. 6 months in Kenya farming organically the traditional way on an island of the Lake Victoria where a 30% HIV rate indirectly caused by a fish-market entirely based on export to Europe makes it clear the urge for an holistic approach baked up by the widespread access to nutrient-rich organic food.

2013-2015. Online PDC taken during the 1 year spent at Zaytuna farm, PRI Australia, followed by 1 year at the Greening the Desert II project, PRI Jordan. In-between an experience with Jude and Michel Fanton, founders of the Seed Savers’ Network. From volunteering, to managing the volunteers, eventually to teaching and consulting, during this “expanded time” I could deal with all the aspects of a fully developed permaculture farm: main crop/kitchen garden, seedling production, hot composting, worm farming, compost toilets, food forests, big and small animals, greywater treatment, alternative building techniques, and the 150+ people that for one reason or the other happened to spend a part of their life there.

Moving forward along the same path, part of the upcoming months will be invested in making permaculture more accessible to Italian-speakers. The intention is to dedicate all myself in furthering the sensitive application of permaculture as a design science and a way of life, cooperating with like-minded people and initiatives to move together toward the definition of this "alternative global nation". Feel free to get in touch.