Permaculture Homesteading in Nepal: A Story of Community Connection, with Zac Barton of Almost Heaven Farms

Continuing with our ongoing series on homesteading I wanted to talk to someone with a bit more of a similar experience to my own. More than once now I’ve found myself in a new country and starting to build a permaculture inspired, self-sufficient, homestead lifestyle. There are a lot of unique challenges and difficulties when operating in a new place, a different country, or a whole new continent. Zac Barton contacted me a while ago after listening to this podcast to tell me about his own story of settling in a foreign place to pursue the permaculture dream and I felt compelled to share it with you in this episode. Zac first went to visit Nepal back in 2005 on a short volunteering trip and immediately fell in love with the country and the people there. Since then he has worked with a diverse group of projects through the Kamala Foundation which he founded, all based around ecosystem abundance and healthy community building. In this episode we talk about the climate, land and cultural context of Nepal which has fascinated me for a long time. Zac also talks a lot about the challenges he had in getting his homestead and permaculture teaching site off the ground, as well as the influence and impact that it’s had on his surrounding community. Just as importantly he shares the impact and influence that the community has had on him and how it has informed and altered his own goals.  Homesteading in a foreign country is a topic that I really love, not only because I’ve lived it myself a few times, but because every region has its own traditions of working the land and rich knowledge bases to draw from and inform a healthy relationship with the local ecology and communities. If you’re listening to this and have your own foreign permaculture story to share, please tell me about it.