Nicholas Peshman

Hi Dan,
I fully agree with you. My flock will only go from shade spot to shade spot due to the coverage from above (so hawks etc don't get them) and they move as quickly as possibly between spots. generally but particularly when I put them in the tractor I spread their food on the ground as well to encourage the digging and searching.

R. Steele Thank you for that channel I am watching it now this should help greatly.

Thank you for all the responses. It's good to know the density of chickens that Geoff uses. It's also good to know what kind of soil Justin was putting his on. I had a feeling thats what was happening when he said the can go up to 6 inches. In any case I have an unlimited access to horse manure and of course my chickens are producing a bit of their own from the coop. I can put some of the horse manure in for the chickens to spread out they are really good at that. But I'm thinking I might want to compost it all first. Is that something yall would agree with?

I am not necessarily trying to get all this area done this season was hoping I could do it incrementally with the chickens and just go as far as they could take me. I was just hoping that there was enough tillage for the covercrops to get started so that I could even start the cycle that was mentioned by William above. Can't do that if the covercrops won't grow.

Hello fellow permies. I hve what might be a fairly basic question. I have a sizable area, approx 2-3 acres worth, that I would like to start preparing the soil with a cover crop for the first few years while I decide on which plants, their arrangement and grow out the areas. The cover crop mix I have decided on is a mixture of sunflower, buckwheat, cowpea, and clovers. Now I also have a bunch of chickens (22 of them) and I would like to employ them if possible. I have looked, read and researched and it seems that Justin Rhodes has done this as has Geoff Lawton. The both have said and "shown" that if you put the chickens in an area they will devegetate and liightly till the surface and you can plant seed afterward. I believe the number Mr Rhodes gives is about 50 sqft per chicken if the chicken stays in the same area for a few weeks. Now I have tried this. I have built a 50 sqft chicken tractor and placed the chickens in the same area for several weeks the best they were able to do was to deveg the area and pack the clay a little harder. I tried to broadcast the seed and tried seedballs after the chickens were through neither took. I had to doubledig the area and reseed and things took and started growing after that. Am I missing something? The soil is pretty much clay where I live and I was hoping to avoid the use of a tiller even for a one time thing. On the other hand double digging 3 acres doesn't seem practical either. how can I or is it even possible to get the chickens to do this for me as does Geoff and Justin?

For me it is much faster using sketchup (I have built and used cnc and 3d printers using sketchup) for the design/mapping itself thats not the issue. The problem I have is taking what is in sketchup and translating it to the physical ground in a fairly precise manner. Precise to me here +- 6-12" " across the entire property. For example in the screenshots below I used google earth to give me a satelite image and plotted things out. Now when I went to apply it to the back yard and started to measure things out turns out that there is about a 3 -4 foot difference in the length of what google says was there and what was. I believe this came from the angle of the satellite. Anyhow, I went back and adjusted the image best I could to reflect what my measured values were but things weren't lining up. That was all this spring and since I had trees and stuff already on order the whole plan has been kinda messed up and things need to be re-inputted and a new plan created. It was only my first attempt so not going to give up on it but clearly what I was doing wasn't working out either and while the backyard if its off or lopsided I don't care as its meant to be more natural and chaotic looking when I do the front of my suburban property I want/need it to look professional. So I get the design principles patterns/ philosophies and how to create the plans (yes I know the plan below has shortcommings) but the transition from the paper/screen to the ground is what perplexes me.

I am having a hard time properly mapping my suburban backyard onto paper to further design it with proper polycultures then to take the design and plot it again in the real world. The several attempts I have made using compasses and google have always been a few to several feet off. I am not sure of a good method for this scale. What do all of you suggest? Any suggested reading? How on earth do they do plantings with detailed design like the clocks etc.

Have always been i terested in this. I knew a fuy who used pure wvo to run hos jetta. One winter he filtered it with some heat and put it into his tank still warm. The next day it had solidified in his engine block. Was a couple grand to revuild the engine. After that he never used heat during filtering and always mixed in a bit of diesel with it.

Id like to thank each of you for your replies. I have gone ahead and put in a small swale. I have placed it to take advatange of the output of the downspout and it runs perfectly on contour between the trees. Im looking forward to the first rain to see how well it works.

The only other advantage i can see is to more evenly spread the draimage from the downspouts on that corner of the house.

I have a .25 acre suburban plot that I was wanting to start a little forest garden on. I have some preexisting fruit trees in a rectangular strip that I would like to work with as well by building guilds below them. These trees are on a side of the property that has a decent slope to it, a 3ft change going the short way at one end and then flattens and almost twists the long way. Additionally there is a gentle slope from the flat side to the slope side about a foot and a half. The size of the strip in question is about 6' x 40' The soil is very clayey where we live as well. That said when it rains there are no gullies or streams that form and everything appears to get absorbed into the ground the way it is but does pool in depressions during heavy rains. With all of that does it make sense to put in a couple small swales? Or would it be better to just install the organic matter since the water is absorbed for the most part anyway? Thank you all for your responses in advance and please let me know if a drawing or something else can help explain the situation better.