John Champagne with produce harvested for the Bega Market. Photos: Supplied.
John Champagne lives and breathes permaculture. In 1994, he and his wife, Sharon, and four children moved from suburban Melbourne to a degraded 4.5-hectare (11-acre) cattle property in Brogo. It took four years to build their mud-brick home.
Now he is reaping the fruits of his labour, literally, through more than 80 species of fruiting trees. He waters them with designed earthworks and treated greywater from the house, while composting worms turn human manure into worm castings for the trees.
Permaculture is more than gardening. At its core is systems thinking.
“It’s about the application of ethical principles to meet basic human needs on a finite planet,” John says.
John’s father studied agriculture in Belgium. His interest in what other farmers were doing resulted in an extensive library on topics such as biodynamics, which John grew up reading.
He was a teenager when the concept of permaculture was introduced in 1978 by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren through their book Permaculture One.
“It sparked an immediate interest. I thought, ‘Why aren’t we doing this?”
In the early 1990s, John learnt there were permaculture courses. He completed the 12-day intensive course.
“I was growing veggies and we wanted to shift from dependent consumers to responsible producers,” he says. “The permaculture course put it all together in some intelligent framework on how to do that and gave me a confident idea about what to think about in resettlement.”
John Champagne leading an open day at Brogo Permaculture Gardens.
The property had no power or water. John and Sharon installed a completely off-grid system and started collecting water, planting trees and growing vegetables. They used permaculture design principles to be a food producer and build an energy-efficient family home.
“We were naive. It was a real leap of faith selling your house and quitting your job,” John says. “We saw many attempt it who didn’t make it. It wasn’t an easy journey.”
Over the years, they have had geese, ducks and chickens, plus goats that helped clear blackberries from the gullies.
”We have never had a drop of poison on the land.”
The property does not have the capacity for livestock, and John and Sharon do not grow grains.
“It is a case of growing community self-reliance rather than individual self-sufficiency,” John says.
He sells excess produce through the Bega farmers’ market, his daughter’s vegetarian cafe in Bega and the Canberra Food Box for larger volumes. Sharon bottles, dries and preserves. They give some produce away to community pantries. They want to keep it as local as possible.
Starting out was hard work, but now John’s workload varies during the year.
“As the system matures, my input into maintaining it is less and less and the yield increases.”
John and Sharon say their biggest achievement is bringing up five children.
“We never forced it on them. They just absorbed it as normal,” John says. “It has stood them in good stead. They all have a good understanding of resources and the big-picture stuff.”
John and Sharon Champagne with their five children.
Early on, John met permaculture co-originator David Holmgren. He told John they needed demonstration sites as on-the-ground examples of permaculture. He had just started inviting people in to see his place. John and Sharon now hold open days at their property.
“It has become a demonstration site,” John says. “That was our big want, and each year it is still maturing.”
Interest in permaculture is growing, particularly among the middle class and more mature women, but it is applicable to all ages and life stages.
Sharon has found permaculture a useful systems thinking tool.
“The principles don’t just apply to gardening and growing. They can apply to every system in life,” she says. “You can still apply permaculture design even if you don’t grow food.”
John says it is a thinking tool that finds the right questions. The principles can be applied to everything from sorting out your fridge to your relationship with your mother-in-law.
Permaculture is particularly relevant now. It advocates that the closer food is consumed to where it is produced, the better.
“It is localising instead of globalisation driven by cheap energy and oil,” John says.
“We have a civilisation that is attached to oil and doesn’t know how to go without it, which comes back to why Bill and David got together. If we keep on going like this, we will need seven planet Earths and oil was a big part of that.
”How can we stay on this planet using renewable resources rather than finite ones that will run out?”
