My name is hard to pronounce, so feel free to call me Uncle Rice. I have videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/UncleRice00?
I grew up with Mother Earth News and the basics of composting and urban back yard farming in Lake Stevens, WA and the LA area. I remember being taught about the nurse logs in the Olympic National forest in school. I remember hearing about a book on companion planting as a kid. I theorized there should be a way to grow food by building something more akin to an ecosystem than the standard method, but I also remember hearing about all the failing farms when I was a kid in the 80s and was always told you needed massive amounts of land and money to start a profitable farm. Now that I've run across permaculture, I'm thinking they were wrong.
I learned about permaculture after clicking on a YouTube video labeled "Rocket Stove". I was sure is would be something ridiculous, but I was bored and clicked. It was a door to a rabbit hole to Permaculture. It turns out I grew up doing about half of the permaculture stuff already, now it's just time to take it to the next level on this dry bed of sand I call home.
I also grew up fixing cars so I am also a car guy.