Oakhaven Permaculture Center

Making Use of Natural Connections

Hesperus, Colorado · By Rachel Turiel Hinds

In another time and place Tom Riesing crunched numbers on Wall Street. Christie Berven taught elementary school. Since meeting in 1998, the two have become born-again zealots for their cause: soil, earthworms, beet greens. Tom and Christie are the creators of Oakhaven Permaculture Center, tucked into the Gambel oaks and lichen-covered rocks at 8,700 feet at the mouth of La Plata Canyon near Durango, Colorado. It consists of a 2,200-square-foot greenhouse, outdoor gardens, ponds, chickens, and the ever-watchful gazes of its creators.

Christie is high-energy exuberance and fire. She pins you with her eyes, talking so fast you hope she remembers to breathe. Tom is stone quarried from a deep, still place in the earth. His movements are slow and calculated, as are the thoughts he expresses. At the ages of fifty-seven and sixty-six, respectively, Christie and Tom are starting a new sort of family, and certainly a new sort of life.

Tom explains in his practical way that permaculture is an agricultural movement. It’s a term coined by Bill Mollison of Tasmania based on the phrase “permanent agriculture,” and has come to encompass the idea of a sustainable culture and economy through working with nature. Christie holds up a banner she made that bears the heading Permaculture. A circle on the inside holds the word ethics. Radiating out from it are four phrases: Care of the earth. Care of all beings. Share the surplus. Aware of the limitations of the earth.

Christie asks, “Have you ever seen a mountain meadow?” She points north to the La Plata Mountains, which cradle many such meadows. “There is a synergistic relationship happening. Some plants are taller than others, and those that need protection from the sun will grow near the taller plants. No one rototills, no one fertilizes; the leaves die in the fall and cover the ground, protecting it from the sun and adding nutrients. We study these natural systems so we can care for and benefit from the earth with similar ease and efficiency.”

The permaculturist believes in working with the natural features of the land to produce more with less work. If you’ve got a cold spot in your house, create a root cellar. If you’ve got a slope, grow moisture-loving plants at the bottom where rainwater will collect. If you’ve got oak trees where you want a garden, trim their limbs and use them as trellises to grow grapes, hops, and fruitful vines.

Put into practice, permaculture harnesses and recycles free water and energy. In this spirit, Tom and Christie collect rainwater and snow on the north side of their seventy-two-foot-long greenhouse, channeling it inside where it warms up in a large pond and then is used to water their plants. Heat, too, is sacred, and every bit possible is collected, stored, and re-released. Any tilling of the soil is done by earthworms, chickens, ants, and snakes, all of which are welcome in the greenhouse and outdoor garden spaces. To prepare a new bed in fall, Tom and Christie lay down cardboard, “which the earthworms love to eat,” Christie says. That is topped off with six inches of manure and a thick layer of straw. When the rain and snow come, they help decompose the “compost sandwich” and keep the worms hydrated. By spring, all the work is done and they’re left with a foot of excellent planting medium.

Tom decries farming practices in California, where great acres of strawberries are grown. “First they spray the land with methyl bromide, killing everything. Then they add fertilizer to support life.” “It’s all backwards!” Christie exclaims. “They’re killing the insects, fungi, and microscopic organisms that naturally build and fertilize the soil. Plus it’s too much work.”

A basic principle of permaculture is to produce more than what you put in and to have each element of the design perform at least three functions. Tom and Christie’s greenhouse pond illustrates this ideal. Its mass of water and concrete absorb heat during the day and radiate it at night. The pond holds and warms water for the plants, and increases humidity, which the plants love. “There’s so much moisture in here you need an umbrella,” Christie says. The algae that grows in the pond is scooped out and given to the plants as fertilizer.

In the middle of winter the greenhouse is like a temperate coastal farm. Fragrant Nicotiana flowers grow more than head-high, plump figs droop toward the ground, and a thigh-high mound of calendula seems to wave hello with its yellow and orange, sand dollar-sized blossoms. “Fairies live here,” Christie announces matter-of-factly as Tom plucks dill, arugula, and beet greens to sample. Tom, Christie, and a motley, generous crew of friends and students from nearby Fort Lewis College built the greenhouse. It is heated at night, though only to forty degrees. Despite the chilly evening temperatures, tomatoes and chili peppers are steadily turning from green to red. Christie points out how the tomatoes grow in winter: low to the ground to conserve heat. “The plants are brilliant!” she observes.

Tom and Christie have big plans. They want to build a center for classes and workshops on permaculture design and sustainable building, eating, and living. It is a labor of love, says the ever-expressive Christie, grinning and grabbing Tom by the arm. “We’re a perma-couple, Tommy and me, and all we need is lovage.”

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This is one of many stories from the Four Corners region that were printed in A New Plateau: Sustaining the Lands and Peoples of Canyon Country, edited by Peter Friederici and Rose Houk. This book was a project of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University and Renewing the Countryside, with assistance from the Museum of Northern Arizona. A New Plateau can be purchased at the Renewing the Countryside online bookstore or the Northern Arizona University bookstore, or request it at your local bookstore.

Chris Berven, cberven@oakhavenpc.org