From fast lane to a simple life of watching herbs dry and more

By Becky Gillette – To visit the 12-acre homestead of Richard and Jane Pille north of Holiday Island is a compelling lesson in how one couple have turned strong feelings about the need to protect the environment into a lifestyle built around principles of sustainability.

“I like the simple life,” Jane said. “I like to raise my own food. I like the rhythm of the seasons. I enjoy hanging clothes to dry on a line outside. To me, that kind of lifestyle with a low carbon footprint is really satisfying.”

She spends a lot of time gardening, tending chickens and walking the property with her border collie, Bess. Richard is busy, too, keeping up the property up and installing 48 solar panels on the barn to generate all the electricity they use, as well as nearly enough for their nearby businesses.

Their homestead is designed around principles of permaculture, which they describe as a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single-product system.

“Permaculture is providing a means of regeneration of the Earth,” Richard said.

Their mentors are permaculture authors Bill Mollison, David Holmgren and Brad Lancaster.

“All pioneers and mentors, much of what we do here comes directly from or is influenced by these folks who promote the Native way of life, respect for the Earth, self, and those around you,” Richard said. He is Lakota, and grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

Both like learning. “There are always new ways of preparing and preserving food,” Jane said. “Fermenting foods is one of the oldest ways of preserving food, and one that is becoming more popular now. It is healthy and tasty. And we have 45 chickens that are just starting to lay. My chickens are probably the most spoiled creatures on Earth. We sprout greens for them in winter so eggs are nice and orange and tasty, and so our hens have a complete fresh diet year around. I have a large group of people I supply eggs to.”

She is also very interesting in preserving the future. That started decades ago when she read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

“I was really affected by the fact we were poisoning ourselves and acting like it is okay,” she said. “A lot of people are still doing that. There need to be conclaves of people looking at it a different way and finding things that work but don’t harm the Earth. That’s what we’re trying to do here, present another possibility to people.”

They bought this property because in addition to a cypress log house, it had a barn, shop, good-sized deer-fenced garden, and a deep well.

Earlier in life Richard worked as an “imagineer” for Disneyworld in Orlando where he was inspired by the gardeners.

“They are into sustainable gardening there because it is all magic,” he said. “They can’t be there while the public is visiting, so systems they put together are truly self-sustaining. They grow plants from all over the world. When I met Jane, she was just such an avid gardener. We got into landscaping our property in Springfield into a sustainable situation, a little oasis in the center of the city. It was just fun.”

Then it got more involved for him. He was asking himself questions like: What is valuable in life?

“I was watching our culture of consumption where no one produces much of anything,” Richard said. “We decided to make our way of life different. Permaculture and sustainability are what are important. It makes for a very simple life. When you put a seed in the ground and watch it grow, it makes you feel good about yourself every single day. It’s a really a peaceful way to live. It isn’t about wanting something bigger and better.”

Their homestead is filled with examples of green living. They bought a used curved-glass greenhouse to attach to their home that is used to grow food in winter, start seedlings in spring, and heat the house. The island in the kitchen was made from old seed storage cabinets. Cypress from an 1801 barn was used to make bookshelves.

Rainwater is harvested off the buildings and pumped to a 2,600-gallon storage tank at the highest point of the property to provide water to irrigate extensive gardens and orchards. Their property is landscaped with swales that retain storm water. They grow a number of different types of mushrooms, as well.

Herbs are dried in the house for use year around, and the kitchen pantry is filled with foods preserved from their garden. They fertilize with rabbit manure and winter cover crops, and add large quantities of mulch to the garden that feeds the soil.

“We are experimenting with our first hoop house or high tunnel,” Jane said. “I’m excited about what can grow in there without any additional heat. Putting the infrastructure together to have a sustainable farm has taken somewhat longer than expected. We have tried to build these different systems that support each other. Sometimes they have worked and sometimes they haven’t. But the whole place is becoming a sustainable system where the earth is always being nurtured instead of being drained by chemicals and overuse. The whole methodology is towards polyculture instead of monoculture. Just watching that be successful is pretty exciting.”

Richard said permaculture isn’t just about growing your own food.

“The culture part of it also has to do with being good neighbors and having meaningful exchanges with the people you live with – not just your neighbors, but the whole society we live in,” he said. “It is about finding value in all those things that are sustainable and supporting and encouraging that in other people. It all has to do with using natural resources, optimizing what you have and making a life out of it.

“My focus right now is really having everyone understand how badly we need each other. My thesis is that no matter what goes on with the federal government, if we recognize each individual’s value and support each other in our daily lives, that is a permaculture. We have to recognize other’s value. That is not always easy.”