Over the last week or so I have been moderately obsessed by a Facebook application – Farmville, a game where you raise crops and animals and in which you can only really be successful if you connect with other farmers.

Yesterday I connected with enough ‘neighbors’ to upgrade my little starter farm to a homestead, and this morning I thought it would be fun to try and redesign my patch along permaculture lines.

The screenshot above shows my little forest garden – I have collected all of the exotic fruit trees (bananas, figs, dates, peaches and passionfruits so far) into a corner of the plot, and added a grove of citrus in the middle. There’s a picnic table and shaded seating area in the citrus grove, to encourage foraging and an appreciation of the lovely citrusy wafts that come from the grove when the breeze blows through. A fruit stall has been set up to sell surplus produce locally, and there’s a bicycle for carbon neutal transport around the farm. Log piles offer homes to wildlife and also a chance to grow some mushrooms (although it’s not an option in the game yet!).

Elsewhere on the farm, the animals are kept in tree-lined enclosures that offer some shade, opportunities for tree fodder to broaden their diet and a way to turn their waste products (which you don’t see!) into a resource and fertilize the fruit trees.

The boggy area next to the duck pond is now a rice paddy, and the ducks are helping to keep down the weeds and pests. The sheep are keeping the grass down in the orchard of temperate fruit trees (apples, cherries, plum and pears) and although there is currently no option to build or buy a chicken tractor, the chickens are roaming around and eating weeds and bugs around the farm.

It’s only a bit of fun, and there has been more than one suggestion that I am a bit sad for playing, but the truth is that most people have never heard of permaculture, or think that it’s hippy-trippy or find it intimidating, when the truth is that it’s simply a way of putting more thought into the design of farms (and gardens, and cities and any sort of system really) to make them more sustainable and efficient. If you’re looking for solutions to our looming food crisis, then it’s a good place to start.

If you’re on Facebook and would like to come and say hello, or become a Farmville neigbor then this is me.