No! This article has nothing to do with the movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, it has more to do with permaculture!
One of the things you can be involved in with your local permaculture group is the “permablitz”, which may also be referred to as just a ‘blitz. This is where permaculture people descend on someone’s back (or front) yard with picks and shovels and implements of destruction to make it into a more productive space. It is generally carried out in line with a plan devised by the owners, or by an experienced permaculturist at the owner’s request. With our group these can happen anywhere in western Sydney and the lower Blue Mountains and we organise them once a month.
However, an idea came from our president Greg at a committee meeting that we could have a more local, less formal association of our members who would get together as required to help each other out. After some discussion these groups were called “permapods” or more usually abbreviated to just “pod”. The people in theses pods would be local to each other, ideally on the same street but at least in the same community.
Needless to say I was interested in getting a pod going, but where do you start? It seemed to me that likeminded people who you got along well with should work. About the same time discussions were being carried on about pods, I was working on the “learning circle” program with two other couples in our permaculture group that Linda and I both liked. It seemed fairly obvious that we could form a pod.
The downside was that one family was over 30km away from us and the other was almost 25 km away in another direction. In the end another family not part of the original program also came into the pod and they were closer still but not quite 20km away. This was not local! In the end we all knew and liked each other so we decided to give it a go.
My concern that just selecting people by locality would be too “artificial” and the social dynamic would be missing, the end result being that the pod would not endure. So to that end we created a pod with permaculture friends, which I believe will be more long lived because we already have a relationship with them.
Once we decided to form our pod we got together at one of the “podders” houses on a Saturday afternoon to work out the logistics. After working out how things would work, we ate together, which is a nice thing to do and a good thing to create community.
What we came up with was pretty simple –
- We would get together on the third Sunday of the month. (Yeah I know, it was supposed to be less formal, but in the discussions we figured if we allocated a day we would do it, otherwise we might not get together at all)
- It would be for a couple of hours (in practice it could be anywhere from a couple of hours to most of the day)
- We would get together on a rotating roster at each other’s place in turn.
- The work would consist of whatever the resident pod members required at the time.
- There would be food supplied by the resident pod member after work was completed (morning or afternoon tea, lunch or whatever.)
We have now been operating for about a year and in most cases we have been getting together monthly, but sometimes the date has had to be changed when someone is unavailable for the agreed one. The work has been varied, from cleaning out a shed to moving firewood, assisting with planning a tiny house and even running a water line to a garden area and cleaning out garden beds.
The social aspect has also been important. We are getting work done for the resident pod member but it is also lots of fun working together to help out other people. We also get to see things finished that would be difficult for a single person or family and the mix of skills which we have in the pod can mean a better finish to the job.
All in all it has been a very successful and rewarding experience which we all intend to carry on into the future.
