318 – Wheaton Laboratory Update Part 2

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Paul and Jocelyn continue from part one, with their discussion about community, and the big changes at Wheaton Labs. Paul starts off expressing how trial and error are the core of experimentation, and how he’s happy to look at the failures and see how to make changes. They discuss mistakes – and how they are a reality for everyone, and aren’t something that they have a big problem with. Where they discovered mistakes to be an issue was when people would execute things in ways that they were specifically asked not to, causing mistakes to happen that could have been easily avoided, and ultimately ended up costing Paul a lot of money personally.

Paul brings up the necessity for a strong permaculture leader to be out in the field to work with and give direction to the gappers. They discuss the particulars for some of the changes with the ant village and gapper programs and share a few projects they would pay money for to have done.

Jocelyn brings the conversation back to the lack of permaculture leadership. She goes into the kinds of things people have learned at Wheaton Labs, from the simple to the complex, although she expresses much of what people would have learned may have seemed like labour instead of typical learning. Paul elaborates on that point more, going into how the past gapper program lacked structure despite all of the efforts to achieve it.

They go over some of the details of the expectations they felt people who came to Wheaton Labs had, like being able to learn from a permaculture leader while having a resort like experience, which ultimately lead to a lot of disrespectful behaviours, disappointment and failure since that wasn’t the kind of system they had set up. They go over some of the frustrations that took place in the household, and how much time and money was wasted over some of the drama they experienced within the group.

Paul and Jocelyn continue digging deep into the various housekeeping and kitchen issues that inevitably came up atbasecamp, and the different attempts to remedy the different scenarios that would arise.

Jocelyn brings up how a lot of patience is needed to implement permaculture systems without compromising and settling for lesser standards just to get something going, which is something that many people may not have agreed with all the time. Jocelyn also points out that because they were focusing on building infrastructure, gardening wasn’t a priority.

Paul and Jocelyn reinforce how important and beneficial the ant village design will be in solving many of the problems they faced in the past.

They move the conversation on to the point of how they haven’t yet found the right permaculture leaders to come to stay on the property to help it develop, and Paul gives his observations on human psychology.

The podcast continues in part three.

Relevant Threads

Podcast 317 – Wheaton Laboratory Update Part 1
Ant Village and Ant Village Challenge
Wheaton laboratories forum

Credit: Vida Norris

You can discuss this podcast on this thread at Permies.

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