An Introduction To Intracyclic Dynamics

The idea of intracyclic dynamics is very old, ancient in fact. It involves creating sustainable cycles of food production, then finding ways to integrate the cycles into each other. Perhaps the best way to describe it is by using an example:

> A rabbitry is built. It house 2 breeding pairs of rabbits. The rabbits eat vegetables and hay and produce meat and fur, they excrete high nitrogen manure that is caught on trays positioned below the cages.
> At some interval the manure is collected and placed in a composte pile and a worm bed. The composte is ammended and amps up the nutrition value of the composte with nitrogen and trace minerals, and the worms in the worm bed eat the manure and produce a highly prized soil enricher.
> The composte can be used to suppliment the worm's diet, and it can be used to amend vegetable garden soil. It can be used to make "tea" and used to feed any other plants as a spray or from a watering can. The worm castings can also be used as a highly nutritious soil ammendment for plants.
> Some of the vegetables are harvested, used raw or dried, to feed the rabbits. The tops and unused leaves and stems can be fed into the composte pile, while the nutritious parts can feed the rabbits. The worms can be supplied to the garden to benefit the soils, as well as used in an aquaponics system to feed the fish.
> The fish are harvested and a small portion dried, ground and added to the rabbit food to increase the protien portion of the rabbits diet.
> The some of the rabbit offspring are harvested and their intrails are fed back in the composte pile.
> There might also be a water catchment system that both waters the rabbits, worm bin and garden, though not to much feedback applies to it.

As you can see the individual cycles are established then interlinked to support a more effective total outcome. The human, or steward, taps the cycles to feed and cloth himself. The more cycles you can establish the more you can possibly interlink to create a richer and healthier environment. As I stated before, to some extent our ancesters-maybe as close as our fathers, grad fathers or great grandfathers lived this way though I suspect they never had a need to write it, it was probably established in them from an early age. Spreading manure on the hay fields, harvesting the hay and feeding it to the cattle which make more manure is an early example.

Though enjoying its own philosophy and methodology Permaculture is very much like this- utilizing and combining natural processes (cycles) to effect a positive multiplying effect on the whole.

I beleive that with some preplanning and work an entire farm could be developed using this intracyclic dynamic. I will supply some diagrams at another posting.

Tony
Pensacola