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Why A Turtlehead?
Why A Turtlehead?
The White Turtlehead (Chelone glabra) is the primary host plant to the Baltimore Checkerspot butterfly (Euphydryas phaeton). The butterflies, Maryland's official state insect, are now imperiled with state conservation rank of S2. They have become increasingly rare due to loss of habitat and climate change. Ohio has become part of their flight range with more favorable temperatures.
Like the butterfly, the sites we have roots in are spread across both states. Our migrations are likewise, often seasonally driven.
This Permaculture grows from taproots of caring for Earth and waters. It interweaves like mycelium webs of connection and care between people, valuing the marginal. It consistently flows towards fair share, forms of mutual aid, and respecting the limits and capacities of this world around us, the containers we must work within.
The work entails life-boating towards survival and seeking new directions through abeyance, for both other species and forms of knowledge. This green work is Sanctuary, and it is good dirt beneath one's fingernails.
Turtlehead Permaculture
Is really just a small partnership.
In terms of formal Permaculture training and study (the PDC- Permaculture Design Certificate, workshops, etc.), we're Queer and Woman-guided.
Disability is part of our backgrounds and we bring our whole selves to these workings.
We recognize Permaculture is a set of ecologically based design systems that can be brought to many areas of life and relationships, (never 'just' gardens.)
Permaculture is revolution disguised as organic gardening.
- Graham Burnett
Our Herstory/History
Our Herstory/History
How do we trace backwards towards how we came to be here now?
Did these Permaculture ways of knowing begin:
While camping as a child and being awestruck by National and State Park rangers sharing a snake as she was about to shed or in touching the softness of a fox's ear?
Was it collecting fossils from limestone, and understanding that these cliffs were once a sea floor?
Was it learning in a working farm, and relying upon solar panels?
Reading Buckminster Fuller in a school library?
Watching a fierce thunderstorm at night, crossing Arizona?
Starting pots of sunflower seeds?
Eating from community gardens and the shelf of cookbooks the co-ops used?
Standing before an Audrey Flack sculpture?
Or kayaking on the Chesapeake?
Raising our first growing dome with friends?
Or coming to know Frank Lloyd Wright homes?
How do we know what we know, and how do we bring that to this work?
Do we trace it to classes and site visits, both running under the word "Permaculture," or is it something deeper, something about the process of learning how to bake bread, or dig clay and gather natural glazes for ceramic pots? Is it in how we care for one another?
We'd argue, it's both/and.
What we do
What we do
We rewild, and at times create, spaces centered on abundance (a-bunny-dance) supporting species survival while in so many different senses, feeding one another and all those we care for.
Who we are
Who we are
Turtlehead is just the two of us, we're in a long term committed relationship, growing together.
Sabina
Sabina
Sabina fell down the Permaculture rabbit hole many decades back, but started being more intentional about delving into the study these last few years. She earned her Permaculture design certificate (PDC) in '24, and has done a number of different Permaculture related bits of coursework.
The dance between water and land fascinates her. Plants: herbal, edible, and all their uses, for dyes and structures and the like, inform her landscapes. The connections between components in a design determine its strength. You may find her with a field guide to mushrooms, or searching for seeds.
Mike
Mike
Mike is happiest when he's connecting rain barrels in sequence, building a hungry bunny exclusion bit of fencing, running the numbers on the charging curve on the EV or our solar system. He enjoys the act of making something just plain work.
He's also tech support, both in hands on hardware and lots of different digital ways, and often helps with editing.
In meaningful ways, he makes it all possible.
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