Mollison has said: Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labour; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system..
The juice of jewelweed is a traditional remedy for all sorts of skin ailments including poison ivy. An oft-repeated folk saying, Wherever poison ivy is found, jewelweed grows close by. To use it, you can simply crush the leaves and rub it on the itchy places.
Most people get the rash from touching leaves, while gardening, hiking, or looking for a ball lost in the weeds. From a tool, from a pet, from clothing: from anything that has touched any of these plants. Using a weed eater to remove poison ivy will result in spraying your legs with poison ivy. If you are bare-legged and get scratches while splattered with sap from poison ivy, you may be headed to the emergency room. The most dangerous way to come into contact with poison ivy, oak, or sumac is by breathing smoke from a fire burning any of those plants. This happens often in California brush fires. But people have gotten very sick from breathing smoke from campfires and fireplaces where these plants are burned.