Life after PDC

I am currently working on several projects right now. Most of them will come to fruition in the spring. I don't want to make any promises at this time, but the projects include some permaculture design, chickens, blacksmith work, gardening in my backyard and potentially doing some community work in the Brightmoor area in preparation for a bigger move one day soon.

Not to be too cryptic about everything, I'll disclose some info on some of these. The foundations for the chicken coop are in…sort of. I plan to break ground on this project after the weather breaks in the spring. Finally… I have the design pretty much planned and now I just have to take the time to complete it. It should be fun once I get started, which will make it a bit easier to complete.

In conjunction with the coop, I am planning on having the gigantic oak tree removed from the middle of my back garden and after that, I'll dig a couple of swales and get some fruit trees started. This will be in addition to increasing the garden space again this year and getting the vegetables in early using cold frames and maybe even the greenhouse chicken coop.

In the meantime, I'm working on building a small blacksmithing operation. At first glance, most of what I'm doing with this is going to look pretty sad. I'm building my forge from found and recycled materials. I got my hands on a boatload of incredibly old tools, some that my grandfather used 70+ years ago. Everything is old and a bit beat up, but we have all the tools and supplies that we need to get started now. The plan is to begin by attempting to forge some knives and cutting tools. We may try to make some of our own blacksmithing tools as well. I'll be posting images and videos as we are going along.

More to come in the next day or so...

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.

Permaculture Certification

  Summer has pretty much passed me by. Between working on the rental house we bought in May and trying to keep up with life I barely had time to go out into the garden and look at the plants this year.
  Some things grew marvelously without me. Other things really needed my attention and, therefore, were not as strong as they could have otherwise been. Here are a couple of pictures:

From Garden

From Garden

Pretty nice, right? And this is what it turned into:

From Garden

From Garden

Jungle...

  I have learned a few things this season, which makes up for the lack of success I achieved in the beds. I think the first lesson I am drawing from this year's garden is that my tomato plants need a bed of their own in which they can just consume all the space. 

  The best thing to come from this summer was my completion of the first of my certifications in Permaculture Design. I was hesitant to take a course online due to the lack of hands on experience. But then in March, Geoff Lawton offered an online certification that promised to be incredibly comprehensive and worth the money. I have to say, it definitely was.

  I submitted my final design on September 26 and I haven't heard anything to tell me there were issues so I'm hoping that means I have a certificate coming in the mail from Australia. I'll post the design elements in my next update.

  So now I have to tear the garden apart and start several large batches of compost from the green materials in the garden and the dead leaves that will shower my yard in the coming weeks. 

  I almost forgot to mention that I also finished a Master Composter class through my local county this summer. So I know everything there is to know about municipal yard waste composting. Fun times!

My ever expanding universe

I have been making some big changes around the garden. I'm adding a new bed and expanding the existing garden space to make a total of about 100 sq ft. I'm also double digging at least one of the spaces to Grow Biointensive standards.

I've uploaded some new pictures into the garden album to show before and after.

In addition to all of this, I'm also in the process of preparing the windows I scavenged to make the greenhouse/chicken coop. I have them mostly cleaned now and I have to replace some of the broken panes and then scrape and seal the entire window. Each one is about 35" x 45", so I figure if I turn them on their sides and stack them vertically, I'll be about half a window too big. Luckily, I have other ones of various sizes that I picked up earlier this year and I think I might just be able to patch them together. The bonus to all of this is that I don't have to purchase any new windows for the entire coop because I have enough for the greenhouse wall as well as the sides of the greenhouse area and the sides of the coop.

My seedlings are doing exceedingly well in the basement under the lights. Too well in fact. I needed to transplant them a week or two ago. I've been hardening them off slowly, but lucky for me I didn't plant them in the beds yet. We frosted for (hopefully) the last time a few nights ago and I have been too lazy to get everything into the ground so nothing of mine died. Some of the members at the GNG weren't so lucky.

I have one of my 2 plots at the GNG prepped and potatoes planted. I attempted to save some strawberry plants that were in the bed already, but the severe heat and no rain we've had this month did not favor them. I think maybe 1/3 survived so I guess we will see what comes of that. I also have strawberries in PVC tubes at the homestead, so we won't be without this year hopefully.

I'm taking my PDC online this summer. I know how oxymoronic it sounds to take a class on permaculture design over the internet, but it was a good deal and Geoff Lawton is teaching it. I'm into the third week now and I have to admit, there is a lot about the subject that I don't know yet. I've been independently studying this for over a year now, but permaculture is still an amazingly complex philosophy.

Here are a couple of before images of the garden:

From Garden

From Garden

Rain Barrel Instructions

It has come to my attention that several people want to know just how I made my rain barrels. I think I have enough in the way of pictures to thoroughly explain this with little confusion, but just in case, I will take more pictures of the process when I get some new barrels and add them later.

To begin, you find a barrel. You cannot use just any barrel if you plan on 1.) keeping your plants alive and healthy or 2.) consuming the products of your specific plants. Basically what I'm talking about is getting your hands on "food grade" barrels. These can be 55 gallon blue drums that have held vegetables, pickles, water...or they might be brand new and have never contained anything. I prefer pickle barrels, which can be obtained conveniently nearby and are definitely safe to use.

There are just a few simple steps to consider before you are all set. Once you have the barrel chosen, you have to get a few parts from your local hardware store to make everything work. Since this project is purely objective, you can decide how best to make your barrel function. I choose to go cheap and simple so this is what I buy:

1 - "Food grade" barrel (55-58 gallons)

From Permaculture

1 - Brass 1/2" hose bib (faucet to get water out the bottom)

From Permaculture

1 - Brass 3/4"x1/2" hose adapter (overflow connector)

From Permaculture

2 - Electrical conduit nuts (To hold the faucet and overflow)

From Permaculture

4 - Reducing washers

From Permaculture

1 - Tube of silicone waterproof sealer

From Permaculture

1 - Can of spray on, non-toxic shellac

From Permaculture

Once you have all of this, you bore 2 holes in the barrel. Depending on where you want your overflow to go, you can either line these holes up (one near the top of the barrel and one very close to the bottom) or you can offset the overflow to redirect the runoff water. Since I was setting my barrels up in series to collect more water, I set my overflow 90 degrees to the left of my spigot.

From Permaculture

In this picture, you can see that once the barrel is up on the stand, the faucet will drop water away from the house, but the overflow will direct water from the top of the barrel into the one next to it.

The top of the barrel is also something to consider. Some systems I've seen have a sealed assembly to get water from the downspout into the barrel.

From Permaculture

The problem that I have with a sealed system is that I have a giant oak tree that canvases most of my back yard and part of my roof. If any amount of leaf matter was to fall into the gutter and go down the spout, it would be a task to take everything apart to clear a clog. I opted to have an open top system and to set my downspout to simply dump water onto the barrel's lid like this:

From Permaculture

By boring holes all the way around, I assure even drainage and collection and then I finished the lid by stretching some fiberglass screen underneath the lid before screwing it on. The water isn't "filtered" but it does come through quite clear of debris.

Now comes the tricky part: assembly. After you bore your holes for the faucet and the overflow, you take a washer on the outside and one on the inside followed by a nut on the inside of each. I also used the silicone to seal the washers so there was no leaking around the threads of the hose adapter or the hose bib. Finally, I spray shellac on the inside of each fixture to prevent any major corrosion of the steel nuts and washers. I only recently made this discovery after using my barrels for a season and seeing the terrible rust that these nuts and washers build up. They aren't made for this kind of wet situation so there is no coating or galvanization to them. You might be able to find these supplies in a stainless or galvanized version, but I doubt they will be as inexpensive.

Here is a picture of another barrel I did next to my garden:

From Permaculture

I aligned the spigot and overflow on this one since there were already holes in the tank. I also had no major plans to set this one up in a series, so it made sense to line them up. Here is a close up of the assembled hose bib:

From Permaculture

Not too shabby if you are careful when you bore the holes.

And there you have it. Now for the price. You can buy barrels like these or fancier starting around $50 or $60 and going up to as much as $200 or more. I paid $20 for the barrel and about another $10 for the metal supplies. The tube of silicone was about $4 and the can of shellac ran me $8, but remember that you use very little of both and therefore the total cost of such an item is negligible. 

So basically, for about $30 you can have a terra cotta like barrel containing 55-58 gallons of water to use on anything you need to water.

Now I will add some info to answer frequently asked questions.

You don't get enough pressure from these to run a sprayer. These barrels, even raised up a few feet are better for filling watering cans than for spraying a flower bed. The only system I have found to work reasonably well is to attach a soaker hose to the barrel. There is enough pressure build-up to force a small amount of water out of the soaker into a garden evenly. Think of it this way: your house faucet has between 40 and 60 psi coming out. For every 2.5 feet you raise a rain barrel, you get 1 psi. Raised 10 feet, you get 4 lbs of pressure...yeah.

In a heavy rain that lasts a couple hours, you can easily fill a 55 gallon barrel. This depends on the size of roof you are draining into the barrel, but most of the time, if you connect to a long gutter, you have a lot of water collection happening.

At the pace of 1-2 psi, it can take a pretty significant amount of watering to empty 55 gallons. When you are using a barrel to water your garden, you tend to be directing the water onto the most important areas, the base of the plants. This means no over watering or wasted water from a sprinkler, so the water tends to go a bit farther than you would think.

I raise my barrels up for both convenience as well as extra pressure. You also may have to take the grade or slope of your property into account when placing your barrels. If your garden is uphill from your barrels and you want to use a hose, you may run into pressure problems since the end of the hose needs to be lower than the connection to the barrel. You can build stands for your barrels like I have, or you can simply set them up on cinder blocks. The options are limited only by your imagination. I just saw this picture online, showing a really nice setup:

From Permaculture

So there you have it. I hope this guide is helpful and I will be updating the pictures soon to provide close up step-by-step images to compliment the directions.

One book down...

I finished Introduction to Permaculture this morning. What a life changing book. There aren't many you can say that about and really mean, but this one is definitely in the top 3 books I've ever read.

My next literary venture is Bill Mollison's Permaculture One: A Perennial Agriculture for Human Settlement. I also have Permaculture: A Designer's Manual being delivered tomorrow. My next move is to finish my rain barrels to completion and then I'll move on to more advanced elements.

From Stuff I Found

I planted nearly everything in the garden yesterday. This year, the list looks something like:
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Cabbage
Cucumbers
Peapods
Green and Yellow Beans
Sweet Peppers
Roma Tomatoes
Celery
Kohlrabi
Carrots
Parsnips
Radishes
White Onions
Green Onions

Not too shabby, if it all grows. I used some older seed when starting the tray indoors, but I bought some new stuff for the root veggies and other plants I started outside. I haven't had much luck keeping my seeds from one season to the next. Perhaps I need a better place to store them.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

Just a quick update here. I finally edited the albums in Picasa. There are 3 new ones and one or two of the older ones got a facelift. Now you can view all the garden images in the Garden album, the home projects in the Home Projects album and (my personal favorite), the permaculture projects in the Permaculture album. Basically, I made it easier to find what you may be looking for at any given time. Of course this totally ruins many of the previous links I had posted to images, so disregard those older posts that have links in them.

I'm nearly finished with Bill Mollison's Introduction to Permaculture which means Permaculture One is in my near future. So far I have learned many ways to adapt our current living situation into an ideal permaculture solution. The big problem with implementing many of these ideas is the money it will take to build things like greenhouses and chicken coops. We are getting the gardens and yard together now, so it shouldn't be long before we can concentrate on other things. One step at a time, right?

Finally, I finished the new vegetable garden beds. Here is a "before" and "after" comparison.

Before--

From Garden

After--

From Garden

It is a bit difficult to really get the idea of how the original looked, due largely to the fact that I took rather inadequate pictures, but you can kind of visualize it. Now I have 4 trough-style lettuce boxes to rebuild and hang from the 4x4 posts and I'm totally finished.

Project completion feels sooo good!

I completed the last 8 feet of the fence today. It's nice to be able to cross that off the list. The final piece doesn't match exactly, but I can't be too picky since I bought my supplies at different times from different stores. Like most of my projects, it isn't professional, but I'm satisfied. Now I have some grading to do to the yard near the fence and eventually I will attempt to grow grass back there.

I have a small part of the garden extension in progress now. I dug my root bed hole 10" deep and I built a cedar box to contain the amended soil. This, paired with the 8" high walls of the raised bed will provide 18" of good growing soil for carrots, radishes, onions and either parsnips or turnips this summer. I also just acquired a 5 foot tall upright chest freezer for storing all our frozen veggies at the end of the season. I got my grid set up in my primary bed and I transplanted the garlic that came back from last summer.

The next image updates will show the grid in the primary bed as well as the new raised beds I'm in process with now. In the meantime, I have to get some seed in the ground in the next week or so and then keep my fingers crossed for no hard freezes after the sprouts start. I have a couple of cucumber plants and about 7 tomatoes as well as a small variety of herbs growing under my shop light in the basement.

I think the seed tray warmer has been both a blessing and a curse. While it does seem to be making the plants grow well, it causes the moisture to leave the peat quite quickly, making it a bit of a chore for me to keep them all watered. I plan to find a way of rectifying this situation in the future, but for now I just check everyday.

Here are the pictures of the fence:

Before:

From Stuff I Made

After first section:

From Stuff I Made

Finished product:

From Stuff I Made

I am now 43 pages through the total 178 (not included appendices) in the Introduction to Permaculture and my mind is just swimming. There are events in life that cause a person to change the way they look at the world...reading this book is one of those events for me. Everywhere I look I see the layout of the landscape and think about how each element connects with it surrounding elements. Learning about this stuff has truly been life altering for me.

Fence Progress/Permaculture Study

  The fence is coming along swimmingly. I got 12 feet of the total 20 finished and leveled. I opted to do 12 feet all at once instead of splitting it up into 2 - 8 foot sections and a 4 foot section because I had 12 foot 1x6s already and I found it to be much easier to level one large piece than several small ones as I have done before on other fences.

  Once I get the 20 foot section finished, I will put up a gate perpendicular to the rear fence and I may even build a temporary fence across the 12 feet of cement left from the garage. Here are a few pictures:

From Stuff I Made

From Stuff I Made

  12 feet down, only 8 to go...and then possibly 4 more...and then possibly 12 more.

  My final note:

I recently decided to do some deeper research on this "permaculture" topic and found that there is a farm near Sydney, Australia that teaches the method during a 2 week course. In reading the farm's website I found out that they use a book called Introduction to Permaculture as their textbook for the course. Amazon doesn't sell this book, but some of the marketplace vendors do so I ordered it. It ran around $40 and I have to say, it was worth every penny. The author is Bill Mollison, the man who coined the term "permaculture" and the information within the book is simply mind-boggling. He has at least two other books devoted completely to the idea of building self-sustaining systems and this farm in Australia teaches his methods through practice. Anyway, here is a picture of me loving the book:

From Stuff I Found

  I haven't found a part of this book I don't like yet. My hope is to one day implement as much of this theory into my everyday practices as possible and maybe even teach it to local urban farmers and even possibly the environmental sustainability commission here in Ferndale.

  My next update will provide some information about the square foot gardening plan for this year. I've already posted images of my beds in the Stuff I Made album. I am getting close to splitting the albums up due to the variety of work I am doing around the house now. There was never a need to have things separated before, but I need to archive some old stuff and separate the house projects from the permaculture plan and the gardening. So that is what is coming.

A new vocab word

I recently found an interesting article on this blog. The word "permaculture" came up and, of course, it made me a little more than curious. I suppose this is what I am striving for, even though I never knew there was a word for it. The idea that we all need to build structures and agricultural systems that are based on nature. When you look at the way America grows its food and builds its cities, there is very little "natural" influence. It's almost as if we are trying to ignore nature because of its asymmetry or chaotic habits.

Asymmetry and chaos are the reasons I love the natural world! Check out the post and let me know what you think.

P.S. I hate wikipedia because it is impossible to verify the factual content of the information, but it is often the easiest place to find great info...its a paradox.