Matt Tracy

Hi #permaculture friends. If you're in Zone 7 or 8 (especially the Southeast US), I'm now offering my list of 100 favorite and easy #Foodforest plants for a small donation. Warning: includes some annuals :) Info here: silverbranchpermaculture.org/food-forest-... #forestgarden #perennials

Weeds aren’t the enemy—bad land management is. Some plants belong, others need to go. We let the land tell us what’s needed. Clover stays. Tree of heaven? Gone. The best farms aren’t weed-free, they’re *weed-smart.* #SyntropicForestry

Lost words, lost worlds.

"Bärenschliffe" means "bear polishes". It's the word for cave rocks smoothed to marble by bears rubbing on or past them over thousands of years.

This one from Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave, Southwest France, has a bear drawn on it.

.. I think we lose a lot of the story when we say "Permaculture "is" indigenous knowledge" . Permaculture could not have happened without indigenous knowledge, but that's not the only stream that feeds it.

... it emphasized design techniques that are very much a product of Systems Theory - which again, has resonance with some indigenous teachings, but also seems uniquely emergent from a modern context (the 1970s).

Yes, we need more attribution and respect to indigenous cultures in PC, but ...

... but under all this, I think we miss a lot about Permaculture when we ignore the context it arose in: a response to 1970s concerns about ecological collapse. It emphasized a lot of rapid restoration techniques that mostly would be unneeded by indigenous cultures centuries ago. And...

... the patterns repackaged from European cultural lifeways, like hugulkultur or coppice agroforestry.

And there are many natural building or land techniques that have resonance with indigenous (land-based, generational) people, but could only have arisen with a waste stream or fossil fuels...

Respectfully, I think it's an overstatement to say that's all it is. A lot of it is repackaged and that needs to be acknowledged. But a lot of the design system and patterns are very much Permaculture's own unique modern or post-modern creation. And I'd be curious how you'd apply this to ...

Hi! #permaculture designer and teacher here. Thanks for starting this :)

Stop treating trees like decorations. They’re windbreaks, nutrient pumps, moisture managers, carbon banks, and food producers. Put them back in the landscape where they belong. #agroecology

The Shorter the Better for the Years Ahead 🤔
#Permaculture #LocalFood #Tariffs #WNC

Hi Maddy! I'm sitting a few feet from the most recent US issue of the magazine in our local library in Southwest Virginia :) I always enjoy it. Thanks for all you've done to create it.

One vote for Apios Americana - shade-tolerant, perennial, nitrogen-fixing vine plant with edible (and tasty) tubers and beautiful flowers. Needs a trellis (or a tree to grow up!): plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/apios...

ahem "have" predicted

Whatever these horrors are with #doge, they only apply so much as we agree that we are a society based on money and technology. To the degree that you can leave money and technology behind - and learn to trust the earth, your ancestors, and your neighbors - the machine loses its power over you.

Smartphones are addictive but they are not compulsory. You can live without the internet. Really. You can. Growing food can be hard but it's not as hard as working to pay for it. And streaming media is just paying someone to do your imagining for you.

These corporations are what they are because we have lost the ability to live without them. As the machine gets uglier each day, we still always have the choice to learn to live in ways that do not feed the machine. Collectively, we made Elon Musk and Donald Trump. It is time to leave them.

Some might say this is privilege talking. I say it's necessity. An easier change for the wealthy to make (in many ways... except that the wealthy tend to be terrible at learning cooperation!), but a change that none of us can afford to put off forever.

#Permaculture gives us a way to do something more powerful than resisting the horror of the week. We create another kind of power. If a few selfish people are going to steal all the money, let's stop valuing money. If they're going to gut our jobs, let's stop relying on jobs.

To everyone absorbed by the terrifying details of the news, I humbly suggest: forget the details. If you can do something to stop it, OK. But either way: this is that collapse. Don't get distracted. It was always going to be ugly. We had a society propped up by resources that are going away.

Hi friends. So, the founders of #permaculture has predicted collapse for a long time. And they didn't worry too much about the specifics. They said, this will happen and the more of us that have relearned how to cooperate with earth and each other, the better off we'll all be.

Knowing that the plant was there to help, she decided to let it grow in patches and harvest to make medicine.

When I teach #permaculture, this is most of what I hope people understand. She figured it out on her own. The earth is wise. We need to stop our addiction to control. We need to listen.

One of my new #permaculture clients was fighting an intense "invasive" weed, spending hours removing it. But then she slowed down. She identified it and researched it. It turned it out it was a traditional medicine valued for health challenges that people in her life were struggling with.

I do want the friction of debate if it stays grounded and doesn't create more random division in this rapidly fragmenting time. But is this the way to get it? How weird that our desire to challenge and be challenged get penned in these tiny boxes and pointed like spears at strangers who are human.

Like, really. I could go pick fights with everyone posting about sustainable agriculture because I often have a different perspective. But what is it for? What changes? Whose attention am I taking? Maybe that person gets worked up, acts more stressed with their family later.. for what?

As someone new to social media (yep, in 2025), the scariest thing about it for me is that I find myself wanting to argue with people I've never met.

Like, what IS this? No "Hi" first, no introduction, no context... the stranger IS their idea and to me, I AM my disagreement.

Had the pleasure of visiting two #permaculture clients in eastern NC this weekend.

Every time I do this, some part of my hope for humanity is restored.

There are good people all over coming back to what's real. They're valuing the weeds. They're weaving community. They are doing it every day.

Apprenticing to the earth means we obey an inviolable teacher. The source of all that we have and a harsh mentor if we value our ideas more than reality. I hear this in Bill's voice. So simple. Do what makes sense or die, he says without a trace of cruelty or spite. He loves like a lion.

... and something I love about Fukuoka's One Straw Revolution story. He had a personal epiphany that mainstream society was wrong. He applied the epiphany to shaping a citrus grove. A bunch of the trees died. He listened. The trees and the soil shaped him. They refined his thoughts to truth.

... this contrasts with the arrogant defiance of Silicon Valley oligarchs / "disruption" bs because everything we do must ultimately report to Earth. We have a boss. She accepts no bullshit. She breaks our ideas in the wind or burns them into ash. That is what grounds permaculture....