I got that, too. However, I noticed that it loaded fine in Firefox whereas I got that error message in Chrome, which is the browser I normally use. Weird. I was going through withdrawals without my daily permies fix!
Lloyd George wrote:I don't worry about the buzzwords...I farm..call it what you will, I will still farm...I am not trying to make a buck off of it...just feed my family, and whoever else it strikes my fancy to feed.
Chris, I understand what you're saying as well, but you're making the assumption that this person is done with his renovation. Maybe he's brand new to gardening in general and is excited but doesn't really know where or how to start - his first thought is, "I need a blank slate!" Maybe the landlord is letting him use the space on the condition that he clean it up. Maybe he saved all that biomass out of frame and is struggling to figure out what to do with it. Who knows? I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I just think that coming down on someone for trying to make their space better (to them), especially when it comes to growing food, is counter-productive to relaying the message of permaculture in general. Everything is an experiment because everyone is dealing with different growing conditions - it is an ongoing learning process to figure out what works best in one's given situation. This young man will likely discover the heat issues you mentioned, and as a result, strive to learn more about gardening and maybe even permaculture approaches. Anyone that is actively trying to know their food more intimately, via permaculture or not, is doing something good in my book.
I think that's a little unfair. The concrete appears old and was probably canopied by all the other foliage growing in from the sides and the one dirt spot that he now has cleared. In order to make use of the concreted area without tearing it all up, he would have to first clear the area and figure out how to implement some sort growing medium, whether it be in containers, deep raised beds, or whatever. Perhaps the "new garden" is the only area that wasn't blanketed in concrete. It appears to be an urban area with limited space. I can't tell whether any of the existing plants were edible, but at least he's trying to still grow food.
Brenda Groth wrote:thanks for the encouragement..I have planted hundreds of trees ..I try to plant 20 or 30 every year on our property..and a lot of them will likely never fruit in my lifetime (61 now) however..if I live to be over 100 I should get some food from them (if I still have enough teeth to eat nuts, right now I still have a full head of teeth)
Dang! 20 or 30 every year? That's impressive! Do you have a master plan of sorts or do you just kinda wing it as you go? Do you prune them all or just let them grow wild?
John Polk wrote:Though many users here are opposed to tilling, one of those mini tillers, such as the Mantis can be very handy. If you ever need to run underground plumbing or elect to a shop, barn, coop or raised bed, they will save you hours of hand digging a trench, especially in heavy clay soils. Also, if you have just had the plot surveyed, run it from stake to stake, and you will have just created a semi-permanent boundary marker line, which will be particularly helpful if you plan on building a living fence as your perimeter fence.
[Disclaimer: this paragraph is my humble opinion...others may/will disagree]
Tilling repeatedly is very harmful, but doing it once on virgin soil, should create a richer tilth that will only get better as time marches on.
They are useful for breaking new ground. For double digging, make one pass, and then shovel all of the loose dirt out. Then fill (or half fill) the hole with compost or green manure (a half-half mixture is probably best...provides both humus and food!). Now make your second pass, (to incorporate the amendments into your subsoil,) then shovel your original, amended soil back on top. The billions of soil creatures that were killed in the process will more than be replaced. The survivors, now in a better environment should more than double the previous population within a season. You have now created a better environment for them. You will have life in your subsoil, which creates a healthier top soil (and will itself become part of your topsoil in a season or two).
That's very interesting, John Polk. I, too, thought that all forms of tilling were a permie no-no, but you provide what seems to be a good argument for doing it just once. For our future gardens at our land, I was just planning to lay down a cardboard kill mulch on the sod this summer/fall, bring in plenty of local mushroom compost to form borderless raised beds, let it mellow over the winter, and then start our first spring garden (I've used this method of letting the compost mellow over winter before, and it worked great). I think this is the fastest way to get up and running quickly (though probably not the cheapest), but it's good to know that your method could be used for future expansion.
Interesting! We already have a few of these tools, so that's a start.
The old golf bag tool caddy is a very clever idea.
We're thinking of getting two smaller chest freezers instead of one big one in order to be able to move them inside during winter for additional heat as well as not waste electricity if we don't have enough to fill a larger one for some part of the year.
I would not have thought of the carboys -- but I definitely want to make different wine varieties.
Wow, that is really beautiful! In terms of where your plants have come from, have you mostly purchased them (and then divided them if perennials), started from seed, or been gifted plants from neighbor gardens? My garden is a mixture of store-bought plants and cuttings/divisions pilfered from neighbors (with permission of course) that I know will grow great since the conditions are essentially the same, but it's nowhere near the size/extent of yours. Your grounds seem somewhat wild but in an organized and tidy kind of way. I don't see one bare patch of dirt. Do you mulch? Are some of the garden areas in mounds? Do you irrigate or just let things fend for themselves?
I'd like to know what tools you cannot live without on your homestead and what you use them for. Also, what tools do you regret purchasing and why? Not limited to just gardening - anything homestead-related really - and doesn't have to be a manual tool... could also be in the form of living creatures, such as draft horses, mules, LGDs... and could also be tools not used in their traditional sense.
Scythe?
Hori hori knife?
Push reel mower?
Big expensive wood chipper?
ATV?
Fingernail clippers?
Firearm?
Camera?
This subject might be a little too broad, but I know we're going to need to purchase some tools we don't already have once we get out to our homestead, so in order to increase the odds of making wise purchasing decisions, I'd like to hear what has worked well for other people and what hasn't.
That is very interesting that you don't bring in any outside mulch. Do you only have grass clippings to use? How much area are you able to harvest in clippings? I was planning on mulching primarily with (bought) straw since it's cheap and abundant near our homestead, but maybe I should consider tackling our grownup pasture area as a source instead.
We are planning to site our future pig pasture on part of our farm that is uphill from our main spring as well as the main buildings (two cabins and two sheds) on our land. This is partly because the site has a mature chestnut tree, two black walnut trees, and two mature apple trees as well as another spring adjacent to it that can be used to provide water for the piggies. It also gets ample sun for growing fodder crops. All our usable acreage for animals is hill/mountainside, with the main buildings at the bottom of the hollow. We are in mountainous NE TN where it rains regularly year round. We will probably only raise 4 to 6 hogs per year but will likely start with just 2 until we get some experience under our belts. What methods have y'all used to manage the runoff that occurs from animal waste? Do you clean up after the livestock (in this case, pigs) each day/week and compost it immediately? Is there some sort of runoff barrier that can be used?
Mike Turner wrote:One of the hallmarks of a Fukuoka style vegetable garden is that many (most) of the vegetables self-seed themselves and eventually evolve into half-wild landraces adapted to the local growing conditions and pests.
That's the direction I have been taking my South Carolina zone 7 garden, allowing strong, healthy specimens of non-hybrid vegetable plants to scatter seed for the next generation of veggies. I'm trying to build up the population of dormant veggie seeds in the soil so an increasing proportion of the "weed" seedlings that pop up in the beds will be half-wild vegetables.
So far, I have had great success with carrots, seed matured and scattered in late spring remains dormant all through the heat of the summer and germinates when the temps cool off in late summer.
Lemon cucumber is also self seedling well, this summer's lemon cuc production was all produced by self sown seedlings that came up at the proper time in the spring for cucs to start growing and beat all of my seeded cucs to maturity.
Matt's Wild Cherry tomato has completely naturalized in my garden, coming up everywhere. I just weed them out from whichever parts of the garden that I don't want cherry tomatoes to grow. They have even spread into the local pasture where they provide quick snacks when I pass by. They also come up in the cold frames and grow slowly all winter long producing by far my earliest spring tomatoes, weeks ahead of the transplanted tomatoes.
Leaf amaranth is another that I haven't had to seed for the last few years, coming up every spring on its own and corn salad, its winter counterpart, does the same in the fall for winter greens.
Lettuce is starting to become a self-sown half-wild winter annual in the garden, producing some interesting variants as it adapts to local conditions. Last winter one lettuce plant went through 8F lows unprotected with no damage and turned into a monster in the spring, producing seven 5 to 8 feet high flowering stalks in late spring/early summer. Its progeny are starting to pop up now around the garden.
Seminole winter squash/pumpkin self seeds and it is just a matter of thinning the many seedlings down to those plants I allow to grow to maturity.
I have started domesticating wild garlic in my garden for use in the fall and winter, taking advantage of a hardy edible weed.
Other then that, I had some self-seeding success with pole beans, cowpeas, adzuki beans, and various types of onions (green ,bulbing, anual, and perennial).
It'll be interesting to see where this experiment goes, but its getting to the point where many of the seedlings that appear in a bed when I harvest or remove a crop are self sown vegetables whose seeds are released from dormancy along with the weeds once the root competition of the extablished crop is removed.
Mike, I'd be interested to know how your ongoing self-seeding experiments are progressing...
Jeanine Gurley wrote:I eat eggs ONLY from 'backyard' chickens so I know what a good egg tastes like. Just recently I got some eggs from a friend who's hens live primarily in the woods. They do venture out in to the yard but tend to stay near the edge of the trees or deeper in the brush.
Those eggs were the best eggs I have ever had bar none! I don't know if it had anything to do with them living in the woods or not but it definitely got my attention and I will be thinking about that as my new chicks get older.
That's very interesting! I'm glad to know my pseudo-plan seems viable. Does she utilize dogs to keep them safe or are predators not an issue for her?
Our St. Bernard actually watches diligently over our two pet chickens now (whenever he's outside), so I'm hoping to integrate some sort of perimeter for him to patrol into wherever I end up putting them (and see how well he does with more than just two). I definitely plan to use paddocks for rotation. Thanks for the feedback, y'all.
I'd like to know if anyone out there keeps their chickens primarily in a forested area of their property as opposed to a more open, pasture-type setting (I tried searching the site briefly but didn't see anything relevant - feel free to point me to a previous post if you know of one). I've read that chickens were originally tropical forest birds, and it seems logical that they would have better access to protein-rich food like bugs and worms and whatnot on a forest floor than in a grassy field (I don't have anything to back this up with), which is usually what I think of when I imagine happy, free-ranging chickens. I've begun to think that this idealistic picture is not really ideal for chickens at all. I have two pet chickens at my current residential neighborhood abode, and they tend to gravitate toward the bushier, shadier, treed part of the parcel (although I must divulge that I don't have any grass/lawn anyway). Once we move to our homestead, I intend to keep layers and broilers and am contemplating fencing in an area that includes some measure of forest, if not all.
Makes sense. Good to know that what you're saying works in practice, not just in theory. Do you have to irrigate? We want to incorporate swales in order to avoid the need for irrigation. I've been told by the locals that no one irrigates anyway (apparently, it's just not really necessary because of our consistent rainfall), except maybe in very late summer if it's dry, but I want to avoid putting any unnecessary pressure on our spring.
Do you find that the top of your garden is noticeably drier than the bottom or is that a non-issue?
If you have more pictures of your garden, I would enjoy seeing them because it looks similar to what we want to do. It's been challenging to find pictures of gardens on slopes where the beds haven't been leveled (and used expensive materials to do so).
Thanks in advance for your input!
No dryness noted in any parts of the garden during regular rainfalls but even in times of drought, the garden seems to stay pretty evenly moist/dry.
When I first moved there I built raised bed structures but found they were too cumbersome to work in and around, so I removed the boards and just used raised beds without borders and implemented the permanent, green pathways to define the rows and to keep the raised bed soils where they were most needed.
This pic will show some of those bed borders and the garden in mid growth...
This was a single yellow squash plant at the foot of the garden that year.
Can't see much in this one but you get the idea....gardening got better after I removed the borders and planted the clover all over the garden and started over with just raised beds without borders.
Thank you! This is very helpful. I've actually found many of your permies entries to be informative and applicable to what we want to do (not trying to be stalker-ish or anything).
Mitsy McGoo wrote:
Our future garden area at our homestead is almost all sloped (we're in upper east TN), and I'm concerned that the compost I bring in for my raised beds will erode if I don't use some sort of hard barrier (I wanted to do borderless raised beds).
If you make the beds at a 90 degree angle to the slope, you could make them level on top, (so one side is raised more than the other). That would be a first stop to erosion. Another is using a borderline of strong plants that keep the wind and rain from eroding to much. You could make a bigger windbarrier outside the beds at the side of the strongest winds, and use smaller barrierplants around the beds.
I understand what you're saying and considered that, but I worried that the shallower part of the bed would be too shallow and unusable. I think it's one of those things where I won't really know until I start digging. I do think using some sort of perennial with a heavily tangled root system as a barrier is a good idea. I'm probably making it a bigger issue than it really is, but I just don't want to truck in loads of compost, only to see it all wash away in the first heavy rain!
Jay Green wrote:We do a white dutch clover and grass mix but mostly we try to promote the clover more than the grass. I simply LOVE having permanent pathways in the garden of nice, soft moisture saving green. No dirty shoes, can get in the garden even after a rain, can get on my knees without the pain of dirt clods and rocks imprinting my skin.
This is a pic of one of my gardens before spring planting. Will have to take a pic of this year's garden and post it as well.
So, in this picture, the green parts are the paths, not the beds?
Also, I noticed that your garden is on a pretty good slope. Have you had any issues with erosion? Our future garden area at our homestead is almost all sloped (we're in upper east TN), and I'm concerned that the compost I bring in for my raised beds will erode if I don't use some sort of hard barrier (I wanted to do borderless raised beds).
Yes, the green parts are what was left after I tilled the rest of the clover in to make beds for planting. Before tilling, the whole garden looked like the pathways.
No issues with erosion whatsoever if you leave no ground bare...anything bare either gets planted to a ground cover or mulched heavily while bedding plants are growing. Immediately after the garden is through all the tilled areas are replanted to ground cover or covered deeply in mulch.
The permanent pathways of clover/grass keeps the soils from traveling, even in hard rains, while the added tilth of the tilled-in cover crop helps the rain to absorb instead of run off. Planting crossways on a slope insures any runoff just makes its way to the next bed and the next and the next. By the time it gets to the bottom of the garden it is well absorbed into the pathways or raised beds.
Makes sense. Good to know that what you're saying works in practice, not just in theory. Do you have to irrigate? We want to incorporate swales in order to avoid the need for irrigation. I've been told by the locals that no one irrigates anyway (apparently, it's just not really necessary because of our consistent rainfall), except maybe in very late summer if it's dry, but I want to avoid putting any unnecessary pressure on our spring.
Do you find that the top of your garden is noticeably drier than the bottom or is that a non-issue?
If you have more pictures of your garden, I would enjoy seeing them because it looks similar to what we want to do. It's been challenging to find pictures of gardens on slopes where the beds haven't been leveled (and used expensive materials to do so).
Jay Green wrote:We do a white dutch clover and grass mix but mostly we try to promote the clover more than the grass. I simply LOVE having permanent pathways in the garden of nice, soft moisture saving green. No dirty shoes, can get in the garden even after a rain, can get on my knees without the pain of dirt clods and rocks imprinting my skin.
This is a pic of one of my gardens before spring planting. Will have to take a pic of this year's garden and post it as well.
So, in this picture, the green parts are the paths, not the beds?
Also, I noticed that your garden is on a pretty good slope. Have you had any issues with erosion? Our future garden area at our homestead is almost all sloped (we're in upper east TN), and I'm concerned that the compost I bring in for my raised beds will erode if I don't use some sort of hard barrier (I wanted to do borderless raised beds).
Mike Turner wrote:I maintain bamboo groves in my sheep pastures. On their own they provide summer shade, winter shelter from the wind, and bamboo shoots in the spring for the sheep to eat. I fence the sheep out of the main groves during the spring shooting season so the shoots forming there can grow, allowing the sheep to eat any shoots coming up outside of the fence to prevent it spreading. In the winter after the sheep have eaten down all of the stockpiled grass, I'll cut poles out of the grove and let the sheep strip the leaves off them. These poles will later find a use in the vegetable garden for pea sticks, bean trellises and the like. Once I have cut all of the poles I need for the season, I'll use a rope and weight to pull the top of the springy canes down to where the sheep can reach them to browse the leaves. A day or two later, after they have been denuded of leaves, I'll release them to pop back up and re-leaf themselves in the spring.
Mike, I've read your comments about growing bamboo in sheep pastures before; this method intrigues me. I'd be interested to know a little more detail, such as your climate zone, what else your sheep eat in addition to the bamboo, how many sheep you have per acre, what type of sheep you have, and what type(s) of bamboo you grow. We would like to raise just a few sheep for our household use on as little supplemental feed as possible in addition to not needing to bale hay. We're in zone 6b in upper east Tennessee.
My girlfriend and I are looking to take the jump and finally buy land within the next year or so. I wanted to ask what factors you personally would consider when purchasing land. Here's what I can think of off the top of my head-
total price
price per acre
total acreage
seclusion
distance from nearest town
population of area
slope
what property was previously used for
any water source
taxes
Am I missing anything important that you would consider?
Also- how would you rank these in importance? Would the lack of south facing slope be an absolute deal breaker? Would you only buy land where you are completely secluded? I personally think my list is arranged from most to least important, simply because I wrote down what came to mind first.
Thanks for your help!
Our requirements were as follows:
- at least 20 acres in a mountainous region
- primarily south facing (we live on a north-facing mountain now, and deep, dark winters suck)
- total privacy from neighbors
- low property tax rate
- no restrictions
- extremely rural
- end of road location
- a dependable water source (creek, well, river, etc)
- something that we could afford to buy while still owning our current house and move onto at a later time
- a habitable structure (a tiny trailer would have been fine as long as it wasn't super trashed)
- hot summers and warm spring and fall
- financeable if not cheap enough to pay cash for
- few social services (= lower taxes)
- friendly people (not a deal breaker and hard to judge anyway)
- somewhat of a blank slate, meaning not a bunch of junked cars or oodles of trash to remove (not a deal breaker)
- four seasons but not buckets of snow (not a deal breaker)
Factors that we did not deem important:
- poverty rate
- employment rate
- crime rate
- quality of schools
- existing fencing, ponds, barns or other farm infrastructure
- proximity to friends and family (we are close with our family and will miss seeing them regularly but are also very independent and can thrive on just occasional visits)
We looked at desert land (NV and AZ), the Ozarks (NW Arkansas and southern Missouri), western North Carolina, West Virginia, SW Virginia, northern Georgia, SE Kentucky, and eastern TN. While I love the peace of the desert, building a homestead in an arid climate seemed like an exceedingly daunting task. The Ozarks were pretty but not quite mountainous enough. NC was too expensive per acre. Couldn't find anything we really loved in WV or GA. We needed to be able to research property assessments and boundary lines online, and some counties in VA and most of KY do not have this data available. We also needed to be able to see any potential property in aerial views from Google or Bing maps. We needed to be able to do 95% of our research of a listing from a computer and then spend the money to fly out and see it ourselves if had serious potential (foregoing traditional "vacations" for several years and utilizing FF miles).
We closed on the second of two properties we looked at in person in eastern Tennessee. It is in an extremely impoverished county (2nd poorest in TN) that has a lot of pill use and meth problems. There's a junkyard a half mile down the road. And another one two miles away. It is a dining desert to say the least. It is most definitely the Bible Belt, and we might have to start going to a real church (as opposed to my backyard "church"). We will need to drive at least 30 minutes for a decent meal out. An hour for home/farm supplies. These things don't matter to us. There are no jobs, so we plan to engage in a variety of self-employment endeavors and find the best ones that work for us coupled with and extreme take on frugality. Everyone we have met has been incredibly friendly. Our neighbor watches out for our place. People have randomly invited us into their homes for a home-cooked meal not knowing any more than our names. We've been asked if we need financial help from folks much, much poorer than us. Our land was tended to as a hunting spot (was farmed more than 20 years ago) and is a blank slate waiting for our future gardens and animals. Our tiny cabin is water tight and cozy with a wood stove but plenty big enough for just us two. While our land may not be perfect for everyone, it is lush and beautiful and just perfect for us, waiting to be sculpted into our shangri-la. We can't wait to move to our homestead this summer.
I sincerely hope you find what you're looking for!
