Joshua Morgan

My 2c
I've done the bare plot already, but my GF family property is heavily wooded. There's already a drive and a place next to theirs I can build on but i have plans of making a rather massive food forest.
My property was once a hay field and the soil was very compacted, there were places where the previous owners burned brush, and dumped piles of gravel for a reason I cant figure out. The piles are gone but a lot was left in/on the soil. To make a garden here I had to move lots of compost/leaf litter to get anything going very well and will continue having to do so for a long time.
On the other property there are cedar trees (a weedy tree here that has destroyed native forest areas and is a huge fire hazard, they are not native). I Will be cutting them down and ripping out as much of the root as I can get. I believe they are slightly allelopathic and might take some time to prepare the area for replacement fruit and support trees. The cedar timber will be used for building materials as well. The surrounding trees are dropping leaves every year and have built up a nice deep black soil so when I replace the cedar the filler fruit tree should have all the moisture and ground cover it needs from the surrounding trees.
Slowly taking down and filling in the cedar areas with food forest spots across the whole 80 acres.
Then if a native tree dies of age/lightning, that area will be filled in as well with production.
I don't want to take down anything native, but will be ready to pounce when nature does it for me.
There is still plenty of room in already cleared area near the houses to grow quite large gardens and places for some fruit trees so I wouldn't have to go hungry waiting on the fruit forest to be at its prime.
This to me seems the best/easiest approach.
Starting with bare ground allows more customization of the land however. It will of course cost more for earthworks and such and you will need to figure out a way to get inputs for compost/mulch.
Also starting bare and building a food forest or healthy productive gardens over time will turn the "useless" property into something more natural and productive which I think is a HUGE positive.
I would say it depends on how much funds you have to start with and how quickly you want the property to be "done"
wooded property is a benefit if you slowly fill openings with production, its a headache if you plan on clearing some/all of it. Which I would suggest not to do except for drives and home location.

I bought 2 "Arapaho Thornless" from a local gardener about 5 years ago, I've decided to move them after planting and of course they came back in the original spot as well. I now have 10 or so plants growing and I think the flavor is just fine.
Maybe the fact that I'm not bleeding or itching makes them taste better but I would say the important bit would be ease of picking and safety for children who might stumble into them.
I think they are worth it and I have tons of native thorned berry plants on this land. I've gotten some huge berries off mine as well.
I'm also unsure of what effort you mention since mine grow like weeds and other than basic pruning/propagating I've done nothing to them and they are growing in the middle of what used to be a hay field with zero prep.
I just stuck them in the "dirt" and they went wild.
I tried transplanting some wild thorned berry plants since they are native and growing on the property, they didn't survive.

Adam Buchler wrote:I recently made several large raised beds...some of them 50+ feet in length. I built them by digging out the foot paths and piling the dirt up adjacent to form several rows of raised beds. However, I over looked the fact that they were not on contour and now a single rain event foods the foot paths very severely. My original plan was to fill up the foot paths with 6-10" of wood chips but now there is too much water. it does drain but very very slowly. It usually rains again before they have a chance to drain. Any suggestions on what I can do to fix this problem. I was going to try to move all that dirt to reorient the beds more to contour, however, now it will be hard to find contour with all those mounds of dirt. please help

I would leave it as is, put some mulch in them anyway and get some waders. All it should do is water your garden for you slowly. If you really don't want it anyway just take a long drill bit and drill down the center of the bottom, hopefully you will get through the compacted/clay area and it will drain.
Over time with mulch in the bottom the problem will solve itself.

I recently done the same in a super flat area that was once part of a hay field but never had problems with it standing water. I don't think there's much contour where I put them if any.

You could also dig a deeper area near it as a small pond and run a pipe underground to your paths to it so they drain into the pond and in heavy rain events when the pond overflowed it would go into your gardens and keep them watered for you.

I still think you should leave them and consider them miniature chinampas.

Yes I knew it was small, I can double the size for sure and make it much deeper. I was just watching a video of a pond that looks the same size with a good number of fish in it. I could probably expand the pond to about an acre if I take the entire rear of the property to near where the creek crosses but that would cost thousands. I was hoping on pulling maybe around a 5lb fish a day worth out of a pond. I don't mind catfish but of course would prefer bass.
I defiantly read that someone should never pull more than 10lb of bass per acre of pond a month! so what your saying proves that wrong by far.
I just don't get how the small little ponds in the videos I saw could produce food fish as well as stated. I am sure they would be smaller than mine if I doubled the size. I have no clue to how this is being done. The fish pond in one of Geoff Lawton's videos is nowhere near 100x100 but in the video he says its going to be a massive production of meat fish.

I'm glad to hear that 1-2 acres would be more than enough for me. Now the problem would be making one that's that big or enlarging the one I have with a maximum width of 200 feet to work with on the width of my property... 100x100 is slightly less than a half acre if my math is right. so at 200 it would need to be 220 for a full acre...
that's a bit more doable than I thought. It would still be an odd bit of a pond being darn near square in the back of the property...

I should talk to some pond builders about if its doable back there.

On a brighter note its a good amount above the rest of the property so if I wanted gravity irrigation it would be easily doable.

Jack Edmondson wrote:Joshua,

The pond is a bit on the small side to have a substantial amount of 'free forage' fish. However, it is plenty big to raise catfish. They have the highest ratio of turning grain into protein than any animal and will eat anything...literally. No pond is too small to have 'some' fish, so it is really a matter of raising what you can for food or fun.

As far as the 5 acres, I can call BS. I have a couple of 1-2 acres ponds in the area that don't get fished much. I can pull 4-10 lbs of fish a day out of those lakes and I am not a fisherman. The fish are underfed. County agent says I need to pull about 30 #'s of little fish out of the water to reduce the pressure on the food source, if I want bigger bass. If 30#s of 'excess' fish can come out of a 2 acre pond, I don't believe a person needs 5 acres for a steady supply of fish.

I've done lots of research and everywhere I look people tell me I need a 5 acre pond to have a good amount of edible fish.
Yet I see videos of Ben Falk's Vermont homestead on 10 acres with ponds that LOOK smaller than my current one with small mouth bass in them.
Here is the cattle mud-hole that was on this property when I bought it:





I know its not nearly deep enough and its roughly 50 foot wide and 100 foot or so long when full. Its only a few feet deep though and its in the most slimy clay Oklahoma has.

This is in central Oklahoma and there are very few trees near the pond so evap is a huge problem.
I can cure that easily and I know it needs to be deepened.
Its dead right now except for a billion tadpoles and skeeters.
I can make it a bit wider maybe around 100x100 but my property is a looooong strip only 360 feet wide (total of 5 acres) and being at the tippy top of the property at the very back on the north end and the dam being on the south I'm restricted on all 4 sides unless I move the dam more south.
I'm wondering if I should simply use it as catchment or is it something I can use after some work to have enough fish to supply me all I can eat?

Jd Gonzalez wrote:Here's an option, "straw book swales" it includes digging small swales on contour and filling them with "straw books" that are nothing more than sections of a square bale of hay. They act as sediment catchers (slows the water, slows erosion and will decompose adding organic matter to the slope) Add cover to the slope, wood chips, leaf mulch, and groundcover plants. Native grasses and sedges with deep roots and planted on countour come to mind also. Good luck!

http://permadesign.com/video#strawbookswales

That's a neat design, first I've seen of that. I have a few other places where that kind of thing would work for sure.
This area I guess no mater what I'm probably looking at moving lots of dirt to at least fill in the giant earth cracks.

Miles Flansburg wrote:Welcome to permies Joshua!

Do you have access to any heavy equipment, such as a backhoe? Or will you be doing any work done, by hand?

How much wood can you get your hands on? Anything from Logs to chips.

Well that's what I'm hoping to find out really, I usually do everything by hand but if what is needed is major earth moving I might could find a fairly cheap local with equipment.

I do have tons and tons of tree logs/branches to work with. I have fell some dead trees also a few that were just in terrible places. (I planted 2 fruit trees for every live tree I cut down.)

As you can see in the pictures there's ONE tree on the edge of the ravine that's teetering over and will eventually fall as well.

Dale Hodgins wrote:You should fix this damage in consultation with whichever authority is empowered to protect that creek. They'll know what works in your situation and you'll avoid later trouble. If you act independently, you may be blamed for the whole mess. There are usually free resources available to landowners who work to improve or rehabilitate a waterway.

I live in "nobody gives a hoot" Oklahoma USA.
I'm Unable to find even a name of this creek much less a group overseeing/protecting it or others.
Lakes sure but creeks and ponds are DIY anything as far as I can tell.
I'm fairly sure that kinda thing does not exist in my neck of the woods. Would be nice though.

Hello all, I've been reading up on Permaculture for about a year now since I've bought my own place on 5 acres. I Just finished a 1250sqft garden to start my property transformation.
However the previous owners had a tiny pond built on the other side of a deep creek that splits the property in two. Doing so they bulldozed the edge of the creek on both sides to allow for the machines to cross.
One side is sloped but not eroding so bad. It does need work as well but the side closest to my home is the worst and more immediate to be worked with. The land is red dirt and clay after about 2 foot of decent earth, and just as you reach the edge of the creek it drops off at about a 35-40 slope.
The rainwater we have gotten in the ways of drought-flood-drought-flood have dug out deep trenches in the slope, some as deep as 2 feet. *see link/photo* The pictures do it no justice. In all its maybe 50 feet of slope but its very steep. My mower wont make it up the slope at all and even my dirtbike needs man-handling to get up it. I was curious to know what others think my plan of attack should be for this area, I would like to be able to drive my pickup to the other side as I'm planning on converting the rear 2 acres into a small orchard. but worst case I would like to be able to walk/bike without worry of breaking a leg.
I know of swales, but they dont really help me traverse the area. Some people have told me to just dump gravel down the part I want to dive/walk but that's a huge expense I cant be bothered with right now and I doubt that will help at all with future erosion. I have a lot of 'can do' but not a lot of 'start here'. Any ideas?







The red lines are my property boundaries.