Matt gave us a tour of his homestead, and I wish I'd taken pictures then, because it was beautiful, clear, and sunny. But I ended up taking pictures after some clouds and a bit of rain rolled in. Still, you can get an idea of some of the permaculture awesomeness Matt's got going on here.
Look at those good chickens tractoring around, laying eggs in predictable spots, eating some bugs and some growies and plenty of kitchen scraps, pooping on the pastures, not pooping on the porch, and not even demulching or uprooting garden beds.
Matt finds moving their tractor to a fresh spot a couple times a week works better for him than trying to build chicken-proof fences around his paddocks.
Sheep and dexter cows browse and graze on about nine acres, moving between five permanentish paddocks, two of which are seasonally subdivided into dozens more by modular temporary electric fences. While a living fence is developing in parts, most of the fencing on the land is field fence or woven wire on cedar posts, shored up in spots by electric, and shored up in other spots by firewood stacked under sheds. These woodsheds along the fenceline further stack functions by helping to keep the posts dry, and when stacked with cordwood serve as an especially effective barrier, even for escape artist livestock guardian dogs.
Lots of water here on the olympic peninsula, and Matt's reshaping of the landscape is making better and better use of this aquatic abundance to produce food for a diverse array of lifeforms.
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