Spring on the mountain is when connections become visible.
And if you spend enough years paying attention to Nature, you begin noticing something else. Healthy systems are built through relationships; not through dominance, control, or uniformity. They are built through connection.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about that old phrase: The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. As estrangements grow across this country—political, religious, cultural, even familial—I’m seeing new kinds of chosen connection forming in response. People are building intentional community again. They are seeking spaces rooted in pluralism, hospitality, mutual aid, and presence. They are finding each other outside the structures that once demanded loyalty through fear, shame, or conformity.
Permaculture teaches something similar.
People often ask me:
“How do you garden with chickens?”
“How do you deal with bugs?”
“How do you keep predators away?”
The assumption behind those questions is usually the same: identify the problem and eliminate it. But ecology doesn’t work that way.
One of the first lessons in permaculture is to avoid disrupting cycles unnecessarily. The more violently we disturb an ecology, the more we create conditions for opportunists and imbalance. Rototill a field and you wake dormant weed seeds. Destroy predator habitat and prey populations explode. Overcorrect for one imbalance and another emerges immediately behind it. The human instinct is to grab a sledgehammer, when oftentimes we need a scalpel.
So instead of declaring war on aphids, we divert them. Early spring mustard greens and bolting radishes become sacrificial attractors that protect summer crops. Instead of fencing and dominating every inch of space from predators, we establish balance points.
Around young seedling starts we use what I call “The Three C’s”: cloches, covers, and collars. Plastic jugs become miniature greenhouses. AG fabric protects seedlings from frost, bugs, and opportunistic chickens. Black plastic collars suppress weeds and preserve moisture around vulnerable transplants.
With poultry, we don’t endlessly punish scratching behavior. Chickens scratch because chickens are supposed to scratch. So we work with the behavior instead of against it. Freshly seeded areas are temporarily covered. New plants are protected with logs, limbs, and stones until roots establish themselves strongly enough to withstand disruption.
Resilience emerges not from domination, but from thoughtful relationship. People are often surprised to learn how few outside inputs we actually require to run this ranch. We don’t operate from a livestock-centric mindset where animals exist primarily as production units. We operate from a land-centric ecology-building mindset where the animals contribute to the health of the meadow.
The alpacas are here because they keep us in a meadow architecture and prevent succession back to secondary growth forest. Their fiber is a bonus. Chickens and turkeys renovate pasture and interrupt bug cycles; eggs and meat are a bonus.
Even animals considered predators or a nuisance have purpose. Instead of trying to eradicate coyotes, bobcats, rabbits, or pigeons, we design around them. Bramble corridors, rotational fencing, buffer zones, and habitat stacking help move wildlife around the ranch rather than through it.
We manage microbes the same way.
Healthy soil-food-web systems reduce disease pressure naturally. Standing water is interrupted before mosquito cycles explode. A rainwater micro-pond develop algae, snails, fish, and beneficial bacteria that support the larger ecology, and even serves probiotic good bacteria to alpacas that drink it. Nature solves most problems long before human intervention becomes necessary, if we learn to stop interrupting every process.
That lesson feels increasingly relevant beyond the ranch. Right now, America is experiencing enormous disturbance. Institutions are being dismantled. Communities are fragmenting. Religious extremism is attempting to consolidate power through fear and exclusion. The loudest voices insist that uniformity equals unity.
But, healthy systems do not thrive through forced sameness. Monocultures collapse easily. It is Diversity that creates resilience. Permaculture understands this instinctively. Meadows are stronger than sterile lawns. Ecologies survive because many species occupy many niches simultaneously. Balance emerges from interdependence. Human communities are no different.
What I see happening right now beneath all the national noise is not simply division. I see reorganization. I see people quietly finding one another. Chosen families are forming and mutual support systems are emerging. New community networks are replacing brittle old hierarchies where we assumed neighbors shared common values.
The estrangements are real. Some relationships cannot survive authoritarianism, cruelty, or ideological radicalization intact. History shows us this repeatedly. But nature also teaches that pruning is not always destruction, sometimes it is preparation for healthier growth.
People sometimes ask why I spend so much time sharing content online about the ranch, the animals, the systems. It is because awareness builds connection, and connection builds community. We created this place not around the question, “What can we extract?” but around the question, “What can we help grow?”
