Permaculture Design Exercise

  These are the images and a short description of my final design exercise in my certification course. I am hoping that I don't get an email from the institute telling me that I have issues with my design. The way I understand it, if I don't hear from them, I'll have my certificate within a couple of weeks.

  I chose a piece of property that I may one day be able to develop, since it is family land. It belongs to my grandfather.

  The total property is 40 acres or about 16.5 hectares. The boundaries form an upside down L shape and there is a small creek that runs through the middle of the property year-round. There is a house on the site, along with several outbuilding structures near the main road. There is a small marshy area in the NW corner of the property and lots of wooded land around the borders.

  I chose to place a new house site in one of the empty grassy fields, SW of the existing house, because of the contours within that field and the access to water and other resources. Building an earth-sheltered house into the side of a hill works better because you can add features to the house using the elevation change of the hill that help with the natural cooling and heating cycles of the year. being on a hill also provides me with a much broader sun exposure during the winter months and that is important for both the greenhouse and the solar array I will be implementing to provide power to the house and outbuildings.

  My current design establishes an approx. 2000 sq ft house, a 625 sq ft animal shed, a 150 sq ft blacksmith shop and a small chicken coop near the house. The house itself will be earth-sheltered and be made of primarily wood harvested from the property and cob or cob mixed with other recycled materials. This is kind of the way they build earthships, except earthships are way more extravagant than you need for everyday living. The other outbuildings will use either timber and cob or timber, cob and recycled bricks. The only thing I would build using newly acquired materials is the blacksmith forge, which would be composed primarily of refractory bricks, surrounded by cob.

  There is a 625 sq ft (these numbers are not set in stone and only came from the fact that I used a specific scale on the grid paper to make sure everything would fit to scale) kitchen garden just outside of the house to the West, with an herb spiral next to it. These will supply the house with all sorts of everyday needs in both herb and vegetable produce. The main crop garden is in Zone 2 and measures about 10,000 sq ft. This is where you grow all of your crops needed for year round living. huge amounts of root crops for winter root cellar storage are grown here as well as the long germinating varieties of beans and corn and tomatoes and squash...etc. The kitchen garden is composed of a lot of greens and small everyday meal plants, where the main garden grows the large plants that we harvest and preserve or freeze.

  There are several food forest sites all over the property where we grow fruit trees along swale mounds and understory berry bushes and other edibles. I have designed 3 dams on the property as well to attempt to harness the water on the site so that I can pump some to the house and use the rest for irrigation and possibly even aquaculture (fish) one day. The stuff in the bottom of a fish pond is about the most amazing fertilizer you can find anywhere.

  I think that about covers it. There is plenty more that I could say, but I'll just post the images and you'll get the point I think.

From Permaculture

This is an actual topographic image of the site with the boundaries superimposed.

From Permaculture

This is my design. It is definitely subject to change since this is my first attempt ever.

From Permaculture

An image of the house site with the outbuildings. Hopefully it isn't hard to understand.

From Permaculture

Finally, some of that food forest I was talking about. This picture also shows one of my designed dams.

  With any luck, I'll be doing this kind of thing for a living within the next year or so. The design aspect is only one of many in permaculture. I also get to go out into the field and survey and move earth to build dams and swales. There is home design and building. And, of course, I'll also be doing some blacksmithing and selling my products to people online and locally.