Inputs include air, water, sunshine, labor, seeds, mulch, and end with outputs, i.e., vegetables, flowers, grains and wastes.

Steady state refers to the rate at which inputs are transformed into outputs through time. A few decades back, steady state was the name of credible theory for the formation of the universe. It stated that the universe was in a continuous state of creation that was complemented by continuous destruction and hence was sustainable through time. As I understand it, the most scientifically credible theory for the universe today is not sustainable through time. It describes a universe that came in with a bang and will go out with a collapse--making it, perhaps, an appropriate model for industrial civilization.

The big bang might also be an appropriate seasonal model for industrial farming and many people’s idea of gardening. It starts in the spring with a flurry of energetic activity: plowing, fertilizing, planting and ends in the fall with the plowing under of all the macrolife, save a few transitory blackbirds, in the fall. And if each macroorganism is associated with a dozen microorganisms, those go too. Many of these organisms are essential for the health of agricultural ecosystems and starting each field from scratch each year forces the farmer into micromanaging problems--often with interventions that create more problems than they immediately solve.

I was first introduced to steady state as it applies to gardening and farming by Jerry Douglas, resident gardener at the Finegold Creek Institute in the Sierra foothills below Yosemite National Park. Jerry came as close to anyone I have ever known to living self-sufficiently off the land by requiring only $25 a month for needs that came from outside his garden. “One of Nature’s most profound laws”, said Jerry, “is steadfast ongoingness. If you accurately want to obey and cooperate with the law, God will initiate you in His steady state society and you will experience a feeling of wellbeing that will be steadfast and ongoing.”

One of Jerry’s steady state practices was go into a nearby pasture with a wheelbarrow every morning to gather manure. Another was to irrigate his squash hills with gallon jugs of water he carried in a wooden wheelbarrow. He’d invert the jugs into gallon nursery cans buried in the hills. Jerry ate tortillas every day of meal he ground from his own corn and made his tofu once a week. He rarely left his garden and once extracted a promise from me to not intervene by taking him to town for medical attention if I should ever find him critically ill.

In my own case, I’m spared the chore of gathering manure by Evan, a commercial gardener, who fills a dump cart or two I keep in front of the house with grass clippings four days a week. I’ve identified planting as the critical chore of the horticulturally inclined agriculturalist and I plant, if not every day, at least on a daily basis while the season is appropriate. Once committed to daily planting, the remainder of the garden system is pushed or pulled to conform. Seed flats get started on a weekly basis and, as growing season may permit, the garden always has things ready to sell and ready to eat.

Successive plantings of the same crop, such as beans, result in enhanced complexity--and I’m speaking here of the complexity that results from having crops in different stages of maturity. It’s well known in agricultural circles that insect or disease problems can be avoided by planting early or late but if we are planting a hundred crops it’s hard to keep track of such detailed information for every crop. The easy way around this is to plant regularly and continuously through the window of time the crop can be successfully planted--and I think it’s a good idea to bracket that a bit with an extra early or extra late planting. I never worry about some losses. An extra early planting of beans may yield a poor harvest but it’s quite possible that the weak early crop, being more subject to insect and disease problems, will attract the predators and parasites that protect later plantings. We have seasons where temperatures run several degrees above the averages and bracketed plantings will take advantage of that. Here, university extension recommends planting beans in April through July which, at two plantings a month, would allow for eight plantings and, by going a bit into March and August, could be extended to ten.

With a variety of plantings on every bed, I find it satisfying to compare my beds to whole organisms; the different species representing the various organs and tissues of which living things are composed. The comparison works well for societies too, each going through the same stages of rise, robustness, decline and fall that individuals do. I may say to myself, “these beds represent my children” (my own range in ages from teens to late 30s), “and here’s about where I am” as I eye a bed in one stage or another of visible decline.

When I walk along the alleyways beside beds approaching their zenith and feel their power, I sometimes wonder if the old philosophers may have been right about there being a mysterious vital force in back of it all. But in reality it’s probably little more than the power of logarithmic growth as the bed approaches carrying capacity. This is the same logarithmic growth our population is experiencing but there is no way this growth can ever last. Although there’s no end to the number of times a number can be doubled, there is an end to the amount of space we can take up on this planet. Considering that half the world’s photosynthesis is used to support human life, there’s not room for another doubling.

Perhaps as much as five-sixths of the earth’s human carrying capacity depends on oil. As oil production peaks then dwindles, industrial civilization will go the way of summer flowers. This is coming to pass much sooner than a lot of people think. An alternative to endless growth is the steady state economy as proposed by Herman Daly. Here, social advancement is measured in increased leisure instead of increased consumption. The whole systems practitioner, knowing that enough is enough, applies increased productivity (through technology, more efficient organization and the advantages of self-organization) to doing less labor in the garden and is thereby better able to serve her culture and her community. Some of Dr. Daly’s papers can be read at www.dieoff.org.