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#Post#: 243--------------------------------------------------
What's up at the homestead
By: Cam Date: May 6, 2021, 8:31 pm
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I'm visiting the Stone Baerm Permaculture homestead this summer
to help out and to learn as much as I can about both
permaculture and homesteading.
I've been here just under a week and I am loving it so far. I've
done sheet mulching, started on some hugelkultur beds, milked
some goats (I'm bad at it but improving every time), made
friends with a 25 year old horse, carried some misbehaving baby
goats back to their stalls, and much more. It's a lot of fun. I
find time is more fluid here than in everyday life. There are
chores to do at 11am and 11pm, but other than that there are
very few fixed time commitments. One day can be ultra
productive, getting many things done, and the next can include
several hours of reading and tea.
If any of you are bored or just want to see what's happening
follow this link
HTML https://permies.com/t/160807/Stone-Baerm-Adventures
I'm posting there everyday. So far this experience solidified
the idea in my head that I want to live a life like this. On the
outside it may look 'poor' - limited internet usage, doing
everything frugally to keep bills as low as possible, etc. But
it is rich in many ways 'normal' life is not. There is always
something to do, but there is no one yelling at you to do it.
There is plentiful fresh food to eat. And there is a deeper
connection with nature than you could ever get in the city. It's
a good way of life.
#Post#: 246--------------------------------------------------
Re: What's up at the homestead
By: Phil Potts Date: May 7, 2021, 8:43 pm
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I can't think of a better way to spend summer than enjoying
yourself learning permaculture farming
#Post#: 247--------------------------------------------------
Re: What's up at the homestead
By: Cam Date: May 7, 2021, 9:31 pm
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I can't either, at least for me. Very fulfilling and good for me
to indulge my many, many interests! And building a better world
at the same time.
#Post#: 249--------------------------------------------------
Re: What's up at the homestead
By: Digwe Must Date: May 9, 2021, 9:22 am
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Cam
Congratulations. it is always wonderful to read of someone
discovering permaculture and spending the time necessary to
immerse themselves deeply enough to get it. It's not just
farming or a new way of gardening. It is a design system which
functions well now and is particularly well suited for a
post-collapse world.
I've had trouble with Paul Wheaton in the past, but the folks
that work around him seem to be skilled and dedicated.
Over the last decade or so we've enjoyed having interns on our
place and watching the transformation. The help is valuable, of
course, but the real payoff is watching folks attune to a
different pace and lifestyle.
I assume you've read both Mollison and Holmgren. If I could
have only one book it would be PERMACULTURE A Designers Manual
Best of luck, Cam. Have a great summer.
#Post#: 254--------------------------------------------------
Re: What's up at the homestead
By: Cam Date: May 10, 2021, 12:48 pm
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Thanks! It is a lot of fun. I'm taking a PDC by watching a DVD
set of Geoff Lawton stuff, then I think I'm doing a design for
the property here where I'm living to finish things up.
Permies is not perfect, as I find they reject certain things out
of hand such as GMOs that could actually be quite helpful in
feeding people as collapse progresses. The other phrase toxic
gick that gets thrown around makes me cringe a bit because it
reminds me of the people who don't like 'chemicals' in their
stuff. To a certain extent I get the idea, you know trying to
avoid man-made substances which could be toxic or poisonous, but
I think the idea gets taken way too far.
Other than that woo stuff (I just read Irv Mills' series on
Crunchiness and Woo and it was enlightening - especially the
crunchy woo post) I think Permies is great. Very heavily
moderated but results in a friendly place. Plenty of dedicated
folks there too, and lots of doing versus talking which I like
very much.
I have a basic understanding of systems thinking but I think
this PDC will be very neat. Thanks for the well wishes!
#Post#: 268--------------------------------------------------
Re: What's up at the homestead
By: Eddie Date: May 11, 2021, 9:23 am
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Not all permies are full of woo, but the idea of permaculture
appeals to woo-woo people. Everybody has some kind of bias.
Farming can learn from permaculture. Permies can also learn from
good farmers. I don’t know of too many people getting fed an
adequate diet from a food forest. Maybe somebody, but I’ve never
seen it.
Be careful. It looks like you’re setting yourself up for a life
of hard work. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a nice job writing
code?
#Post#: 283--------------------------------------------------
Re: What's up at the homestead
By: Digwe Must Date: May 11, 2021, 8:07 pm
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Cam
Glad you are taking the PDC from Lawton. He is very good
teacher and he had great experience in many very tough
locations. Have you seen his Greening the Desert [i]video?
[/i]In his design work he is a little heavy to earthworks - but
is really one of the best there is.
A quick word of advice from an old man. The ethics. Always
fall back to the Permaculture ethics. Care for the earth. Care
for people. Fair share the surplus. Self regulation. Then
come the principles.
Eddie. How many food forests have you seen? How long have they
been around? How mature are they? What sort of acreage are you
referring to? How do you define adequate diet? Why does a site
have to be a farm or a permaculture site? A place can be both.
Jeavons used to say that with his double dug raised bed
intensive gardening a person could provide a complete vegan diet
on 4,000 sq ft. That would have to be under cover or in a
benign climate allowing successive crops. (He worked in
California.) Being a meat eater, I suppose it would be possible
to add 1,500 sq. ft. or so in millet and feed a few chickens.
In this part of the world an irrigated acre of alfalfa will
yield about 5 tons. Maybe enough for a jersey cow if she never
left her stall. This would seem to me to be the minimum for
providing a complete diet that includes some meat and dairy.
It's very intensive. Most folks can't or won't do it that way.
How many farmers do you know that grow a complete adequate diet?
I know several farmers and do business with them. They all go
to the grocery store. The folks I buy hay from grow all there
own meat, veggies, dairy and fruit. They don't grow grain but
they do sell milk, critters, hay, etc. Does their farm provide
an adequate diet? They don't grow their own wheat. They'd
survive just fine if there was no grain available at the store.
(They do grow some oat hay - they just don't let it mature to
grain.) The guy I buy oats from doesn't even have a vegetable
garden. He works two jobs and farms. All he grows are oats and
barley but he grows a hell of a lot of them. His soil looks
like shit. If there was no food available at the store he'd get
very tired of oats and barley. A huge surplus but not adequate
nutrition on the family level.
Here we do not have the luxury of a long growing season so we
require much more area for the gardens than you all in more
benign climes. After about nine years we are just starting to
get real yield from the trees and seeing the perennials really
establish and spread. Between the perennials and the
self-seeding annuals we don't plant spring greens anymore. They
just come up. On our site it is not practical to grow grain. We
export woody biomass off the site and import hay and some grain
for the critters which rapidly builds soil. It is only now that
we can see which of the different species and varieties we've
planted are best suited for this spot. Having that
determination tells us which to propagate.
This food forest that we are working on will not be mature until
long after I'm dead. At maturity it should indefinitely produce
more than an adequate diet for 6 people without importation.
That is the goal. It should produce from a landscape that is
diverse and resilient. Plenty of fodder, nuts and fruit for the
critters and all the human nutritional needs addressed. It also
has to be fire resistant. The real impoundment of water is a
critical task just begun. That, of course, will also add to the
diversity of crops and diet. At this point we provide all our
vegetable needs and all our fruit needs. We grow all our own
meat (chickens, turkeys, sheep) - but we do import hay and some
grain for them. However, the poultry are getting more of their
food from this place all the time. We are improving sylvan
pasture all the time. We could easily have a milk cow and/or a
couple of milk goats if we had interns interested in it. The
necessary pasture is there. Nut trees generally take a long
time to yield and mature. This makes chestnuts, almonds, hazels,
walnuts, heartnuts anticipated food and fodder but not currently
producing. I believe we have about 550 stems planted with
another 100 in the nursery. About 250 of those are trees. The
rest are shrubs, vines and perennials.
There are very few mature food forests in America. Hard to say
they don't work if there aren't any. Also, some folks will
plant 200 sq ft in an urban backyard and call it a food forest.
Permaculture is a lot more than just food forests. But they are
very cool.
I must go plant spuds. Bill Mollison did say not everyone needs
to plant potatoes. Some people are just better at it and they
should grow spuds for the neighbors. Me? I just like it.
#Post#: 286--------------------------------------------------
Re: What's up at the homestead
By: K-Dog Date: May 11, 2021, 9:07 pm
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HTML https://www.rightlivelihoodaward.org/laureates/bill-mollison/
[img]
HTML https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.ZmlxhQyhmCQwPpmaPMeOswAAAA%26pid%3DApi&f=1[/img]
#Post#: 288--------------------------------------------------
Re: What's up at the homestead
By: Cam Date: May 11, 2021, 11:15 pm
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[quote author=Eddie link=topic=22.msg268#msg268 date=1620743028]
Not all permies are full of woo, but the idea of permaculture
appeals to woo-woo people. Everybody has some kind of bias.
Farming can learn from permaculture. Permies can also learn from
good farmers. I don’t know of too many people getting fed an
adequate diet from a food forest. Maybe somebody, but I’ve never
seen it.
Be careful. It looks like you’re setting yourself up for a life
of hard work. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a nice job writing
code?
[/quote]
Gee when you mention the hard work...maybe I will do software
development instead. Or not. I've got minor scoliosis which
leads to chronic minor aches in my midback, and sitting still
for long periods tends to make it worse. So a desk job is not
for me!
Regarding the food forests, Digwe made some good points. As a
food system they take a relatively long time to really 'take
hold' and begin producing, largely because of the woodier plants
like trees and brush that take a lot longer to reach maturity
than say certain annuals. That's not to say one couldn't get
most if not all the necessary food from a food forest, it may
just take longer. But what becomes clearer to me is that growing
all your own food - no matter how you go about it - is very
intensive. Planting, growing, weeding, harvesting, storing, on
top of all the other daily chores people need to do. It
highlights the importance of having a community to depend on. I
see that here at this homestead a lot: buying bales of hay from
a farmer a couple of kilometers away, getting expired meat from
the local grocery store, etc. Stuff that could potentially be
grown on this homestead that would take either too much time,
money, or people to be successful is instead outsourced.
And regarding planting spuds, I think we gotta get on that here.
Lots of big projects on the go so they're on the backburner, but
maybe I can do that. We will see about those taters.
#Post#: 291--------------------------------------------------
Re: What's up at the homestead
By: Eddie Date: May 12, 2021, 4:46 pm
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"This food forest that we are working on will not be mature
until long after I'm dead.”
That’s part of the problem. And after you’re gone, whose to say
it gets to mature? I hope it does, btw.
I have a PDC....I’ve made a design for my own place......and I
grew up on what was left of my grandfather’s farm, which was a
true subsistence farm...
I’ve seen the videos of Geoff Lawton and I’ve read Mollison and
Holmgren. I think the principles of permaculture are great. But
I stand by my statement. I haven’t seen all the food forests in
the world by any stretch of the imagination, but fossil fuels
are what feeds the world today, and without them no amount of
permaculture will sustain anything like what we have now, and
few people are competent to grow enough calories to survive. I
think indoor growing is going to be as important as reclaiming
deserts. Desert reclaimers are going to have their work cut out
for them in the coming days.
I respect anybody who even tries to grow food, anyway they want
to do it. But I live in the real world.
You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to grow anything in these
alkaline limestone canyons of central Texas, btw. We have two
growing seasons. A winter one that has enough freezes to kill
potatoes, and a spring season that gets to hot for tomatoes to
fruit, by May or June.
California is a Garden of Eden, as Woody Guthrie once sang,
compared to here.
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