iPermie: How to permaculture your urban lifestyle

by Bob Waldrop

iPermie is a good-life design guide for Millennials, Boomers, and Generation X.It contains strategies, tools, and techniques to help you prepare a permaculture design for your life so you can navigate the cardinal threats of peak oil, climate instability, economic irrationality, and political criminality. It is an almanac of useful information and permaculture self-study guide.iPermie is a work of love and sorrow.It flows from love for people, love for the planet, and love for the future. It is informed by sorrow for people, sorrow for the planet, and sorrow for the future. This book offers a comprehensive, holistic view of the signs of these times and lays out a path towards a better way ot living that can be accessed by anyone with the will to do some thinking, observing, and planning.This book is about hope – it's about how we can create self-fulfilling prophecies of a better world, where we care for people, care for the planet, and have a care for the future.This book is about empowerment. Far too many of us feel powerless in the face of the gigantic forces at work in this world. We don't understand the power we retain within and we certainly don't want to trust ourselves. This book will help you understand that everything that you need is already within you. Sure, you may need some details, skills, and etc., but you already have the most important things you need for the future. We begin our journey as you and I learn to trust ourselves.This book is not a litany of scary stories. It has a few -- everyone likes a little adrenalin rush now and then -- but that's not the theme.Permaculture can help you design your life so that you will experience more beauty, health, happiness, freedom, security, and cooperation, with less work, consumption, injustice, conflict, stress, danger, and waste.There is a definite focus throughout the iPermie text on what people can do to care for the earth, care for people, and have a care for the future without spending big piles of cash. Indeed, besides the sustainability aspects, iPermie could be considered a manual of "champagne living on a beer budget," which is to say, "How to have a great life without spending lots of money and going deeply into debt."Permaculture, as a design system, works every bit as well for people in cities as it does for those in rural areas. It is not primarily about growing food or using perennial plants in landscapes. It is about designing ways to live in accordance with the permaculture ethics, so that we care for people, care for the planet, and have a care for the future as we design and embrace voluntary limits on consumption and ensure that surplus circulates and does not centralize or concentrate.More than 1,000 pages, 14 sections, 245 chapters, and 388,000+ words.

1629 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 9, 2013

Reviews

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been interested in Permaculture for 10 years now. I've read most of the popular books on the topic: everything by Bill Mollsion, Forest Gardening, Gaia's Garden, etc, etc. However, as a city dweller who may never own much land myself, I have found most of the books pretty useless for my personal life. I can't grow a huge Permaculture homestead (and I would argue that most people can't!), but I want to live a sustainable lifestyle with Permaculture ethics guiding me. Then came along iPermie! This book is packed with inspiration for living a more ethical, sustainable life, along with practical tips and steps to getting to that point, even in the city. At such a low price, with literally thousands of pages, it is an incredible value!

Bob Waldrop has devoted a big chunk of his life to living the life described in this book as well as helping others to do the same. He is both an average, native Oklahoman and a true hero at the same time, providing support to the poor of Oklahoma City every week while also building systems and structures to make Oklahoma a more sustainable, just place to live. I'm truly grateful for all he has done, including the work he has put into this amazing book.

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much information. I don't think I will ever actually be finished with this book. The reason there isn't a paper copy out is because it would have been over a thousand pages long. This is a really great reference book for anyone interested in what permaculture really means.I got to see Bob speak at the wildcrafting festival In Coyle Oklahoma. He has a vast amount of knowledge and is so humble and an incredibly nice dude. The book isn't very well written, but that's not really the point. The information invaluable particularly for people who live in an urban setting and don't have a ton of land or a homestead.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is both comprehensive and superficial. That being said, I haven't found any permaculture books I really like despite liking the idea.