Cécile Stelzer Johnson

Angelika Maier wrote:We have this terrible drought right now and sheep are dying of starvation. I think they are so desperate that they damage the paddock beyond repair, digging out the roots. Farms are pretty big here but there is only sheep paddock and very little vegetation. Farmers don't even have gardens or some chooks or an orchard. I wonder apart from the better holding of water on properties could you actually make rain by planting more trees? Farmers complain a lot and it is probably very hard for them, but they do not change the practices.

Planting trees in quantities large enough to make a difference will require willpower at the scale of the nation. You do not indicate how much yearly precipitation you get, just that you are in Australia zone 10, which is pretty darn tropical. (I'm in zone 4b, Central WI.)
So armed with that, I looked it up. There are regional differences, of course "Coastal areas of Queensland, Northern Territory, and Western Australia often experience upwards of 1,500–2,000 mm, with some areas exceeding 3,000 mm (120 inches)."
By comparison, I get and average of 31-32" per year.
So it appears to me that you are not so much low on annual precipitation, but you appear to have a very wet and a very dry season.
Your solution might reside in holding on to the water that you do get. Building underground cisterns like my great grandma had under her house might be your salvation. It would at least allow you to have ample water for you and your animals, maybe even a nice garden?
In the south of France, a whole village would build a cistern for the town and carefully meter that out.
It is not perfect but it's better than having starving sheep
I remember looking up the number of gallons of water you can collect from a regular sized roof. I almost fell off my chair!
"One inch of rain on a 1,000-square-foot roof produces approximately 600 to 623 gallons of water.
and that's just one inch of rain! A cistern can be made of a septic tank or several that are joined. A normal septic tank is about 1,000 to 1,500 gallons so with barely one inch of rain collected from a roof, you are already more than half way up a septic tank full.
The Romans would build their house with a central patio and instead of having the rooves shedding water away, they would have it collected in the middle and down to a large cistern that was mostly covered to prevent bugs and other critters. But, you know, the Romans were really pretty good with that kind of construction!
You did not indicate what sort of soil you have and if it would pay to excavate swells and berms, but if you have more clay, that might help too.

Jason Matthew wrote:Greetings from a newbie,
I am slowly learning about permaculture and have been working my garden in the right direction. I have noticed that we have Chinese silk trees all over the place. I now know that they are classified as an invasive exotic. However, since they are already all over the place, and they fix nitrogen, I would like to use them as companions with my fruit trees. I am thinking I could prune them into a large shrub form and plant them in relative proximity to my semi-dwarf fruit trees. I could probably control the number of pods they produce with fall pruning.
Anyone have a better suggestion? I like the idea of using what is already here.

They do look lovely and apparently could be used as an anti-depressant, so more power to you if they can fertilize your orchard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albizia_julibrissin#:~:text=Description,-Cinnyris%20cupreus%20and&text=Albizia%20julibrissin%20is%20a%20small,16%E2%80%9352%20ft)%20tall.
As an alternative, if you are seeking something not invasive that will feed your trees without help, is false indigo; They make beautiful racemes that last pretty much all season. If you leave them up all winter, they have black pods that make a striking contrast against the white snow... Or you can clip them with a hedge trimmer or mower, but I like to pick the pods an make more...
https://youtu.be/ZHmOoBc4BnM?si=XlZZYygsXnLkrhrC
I love the flowers, so I'm a bit biased.
Other things I like; like a forb, the whole plant disappears in the fall, so it allows me to clean closer under the apple trees, find all the rotten apples. In the spring, I love to see all these strong shoots coming up.
In my sandbox,(Central Wisconsin) it will grow 3-4 ft, so it will not require any pruning. That's a big plus: when you have to prune your fruit trees, the false baptisia will not yet be up, so you can get close, walk all over, and not damage the crowns

Laura Nunes wrote:Dandelion, creeping wood sorrel and lambs quarters. All prolifically self seed and provide an endless supply of animal forage or salad leaves without any effort from me.

For me, my best weed hands down is purslane; It grows without help, tastes great for the whole growing season, and if perchance it grows where I don't want it, I can pull it off (and transplant it elsewhere).
It transplants super easy too!
Because it grows close to the ground in my sandbox, I can tuck it under bushes. it covers the ground nicely so rain droplets can't do damage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portulaca_oleracea
It is definitely not a bad plant!

Timothy Norton wrote:I have chickens that I rotate between paddocks and am still learning when enough is enough in terms of grazing.
I have tried clovers with decent success, but the scratching tends to thin out the stands. I'm at the point where I'm planning on purchasing a cover crop mix and seeing how it tolerates the hens after it gets established. I am trying to remove some garlic mustard, creeping charlie, and a few other less prized plants at the same time.
What are some of your favorite forage plants?

I think of my chickens as an army of Attila the hun: anything that is planted, they will scratch to death. I have noticed that they will not touch Agastache hyssop... if they can get something else. But they may still scratch it, just for the perverse pleasure of killing stuff! I swear!
Nepeta is another  they do not care for, so that's what they *don't* like so much. But it doesn't help.
They have an area where they really like to stay, and that area has no grass: they do a lot of dustbathing in it. They do have access to grass, tall, bunching Wisconsin grass (about 50+ft away) but if I want to give them clover, I would have to either grow it outside of their pasture or keep an area fenced where they cannot grow until it's good enough to forage.
I have done that before, and it kinda worked: The clover grew like crazy. tall lush green growth. Then I let them loose on it: It was gone in 2 days!
So to give them something green, I grow comfrey *outside* of their pasture. They also get all the weeds we pull from the garden. I don't have a bagging mower, only a mulch mower, or I would go once in a while and bag some grass. I have a Ryobi hedge trimmer that I'm thinking of putting in a frame so I can 'mow' what I plant in the pasture, then rake and give to them. It is that or buying a bagging mower, and that's just not in the budget now.
I have seen a system where you lay a frame on the ground and plant it but keep some sort of wire over it: they can pick what is sticking up above but they cannot scratch  the plants out of the ground. The wire has to stay 2 or 3" above the ground and be narrow enough that they can't claw at it.
That might be OK if you have a small area and not many chickens, but a large pasture isn't workable. I am thinking of making a few frames and just growing grass or clover (cut and come again type of vegetation).
My garden is at least 300 ft from the chicken yard (bad planning on my part), but I really would like to put all my "Attilas" in the garden at the end of the season to till, till, till. (Attilas, after all. Yeah. It's a lame joke)
I did have all my extra roosters (in a hoop house there, and it worked well but I didn't have enough roosters to really till the whole thing. They did a great job where they worked, though.
(I decided to incubate my own last year, and about 50% always come out roos, so)...
My girls do a great job in the orchard, eating the fallen fruit and cleaning close to the tree trunks at the end of the season. They are especially good around my 6 aronias, which were very bushy, so I really had a tough time cleaning around them. but my girls did a splendid job there.
To transfer them to a different part of your property, I've seen some hoop tunnels that I think might be workable, but if you have layers, be ready to either let them out later in the day or go egg hunting every afternoon.
Those are my solutions to keep them pastured and eating enough green stuff. It's still a work in progress and I hope to find better ways.

I remember some old rugs my mother in law used to make herself.
They required a home made loom (Really a rectangle in the shape/size of the rug to be made with hooks all around if I remember right. I think then she used a really strong string to go up and down the long way, hooking the string on opposite ends as she went. (I wish I remembered what kind she used, but it looked like the type of string used to tie a roast together. It was really strong.
Grandma always had a trove of old clothes that could no longer be patched. She would cut them in long narrow strands that she would twist for added strength. That also stopped the unraveling. She would start at one corner and weave the twisted strands until she ran out. Then, she would just do a double knot with the next twisted strand until the rug was done. These multicolored rugs were nothing fancy to look at, but we could wipe our feet, dry a wet pet, toss it in the wash and put it to dry on the line. She had maybe half a dozen. She also used those to wash the floors with.
That production was a great win-win: using old clothes that could not even be given away and she made a rug or two, every now and then. When they would start falling apart, they went in the garden alleys where they would slowly decompose. Remember that in those days, there were a lot more clothes made of cotton.
For a while, you could even find some of these rugs locally, but I guess not enough money could be made from selling those. I have not seen one in ages, but I still have one I cherish in the garage, to wipe my feet. I used some to cover my caged tomatoes in a frost too.
It's a pity they are no longer sold. The fibers used today are made of so many things, I'm not sure they could be used the same way.

Kristine Keeney wrote:In answer to some of the questions:
While 9 inches is something you do see, I have experimented; my flock seems to like a solid 12 inches per bird. Sometimes they'll all pack together to save heat, but they like to have the space to sit apart. More space is never a bad thing.

I've seen a "2-foot rule" being mentioned in perch spacing. The perches need to start at least 2 feet from the ground, and have rungs spaced about 2 feet apart if you're making a ladder-type perch, or a 2-foot space between perches to allow the birds a chance to sit without their heads in someone else's tail.
You could probably get away with less space between perches if your birds are smaller than the average full-sized chicken, but 2 feet seems reasonable for my flock.

It's also suggested that you stop perches somewhere below 2 feet of the top of your shelter, too.
I have made perches that were too close to the wire. My poor cockerels, who tried to roost there, just looked sad, all hunched over trying to avoid smushing their feathers and combs into the top of their shelter.

The 2-foot rule, or its equivalent in meters - .61meters, is a good one, even if it's very generic.

Indeed: 2ft from the ground is best: the young ones can jump up this height and you want them roosting, which is their normal inclination, as soon as possible. I have 2 perches at that level, then 4 perches, then 4 perches on a 3rd level.
I also totally agree on having enough room for each bird on the same perch: yep, they are cosy in the winter, but when the heat is suffocating, they need their space or they may start pecking at each other.
On what the perch is made of:  anything of a size that will conform to their feet so they can grip it comfortably and regular enough that they don't have one foot higher than the other all night, so nice and level.
PVC is nice and regular, but round and slippery: I have PVC bars in front of the laying boxes so they can jump up and see if the nest is occupied but not so cozy that they spend the night there (or they may poop in the nest boxes as a couple of them are inclined to do anyway!). Branches would be more natural but it's hard to find the right size and length that will be solid enough, straight enough and not too knobby so you can work with it.
I have settled on 2X4s on a 45 degree slant: They hook their feet on the upper edge, which means that the poop will fall in a predictable location, and since I use poop boards, it makes harvesting the poop a lot easier. I have 8 ft perches screwed on a strong stand alone frame in the middle of the coop so I can go all around.  I have 8 perches, 8ft each  on 3 levels for a total for 40 birds. Using poop board under the perches has the added advantage that because you can harvest the poop (like once a week for 40 birds), the floor litter remains clean and fresh  pretty much all winter.
The floor litter gets more dusty than dirty and when so, when I get rid of it, it is still fluffy enough that I can use it as mulch in the garden or around trees.
The happiness and comfort of the girls is always my first consideration: When they are happy, I'm happy. Even in the middle of winter and without light, they keep laying like crazy. I have 5 roos, (which is too many and I plan to dispatch 2 or 3 of them). Most days, I get 30-34 eggs, which is pretty good.
They are a mix of Cuckoo Marans and Rhode Island Reds which I incubated, so 2 good laying breeds mixed.

Stacie Bear wrote:Hello carrot lovers. I came across your question, being new here, and finding so many things to read! (endless amounts - HA!) Finally taking the time to respond to something for once! I appreciate this site! I only recently came across it.. wondering where this had been all my days! HA!

Welcome to permies, Stacie. Good tips.

The honeycomb blinds work so much better than anything else. In zone 4b Central WI, we are going to get very cold weather, and in the summer it's going to be hot.
We have the double cell and I now wish we had spent the extra money for the triple cell.
So, the cost: yes, they are costly especially for larger windows, but consider that:
1- They will last a long time.
2- you can use them in all 4 seasons.
3- you can open them daily if you have a warm spell and would like to take advantage of the sun and also remove the gunk at the bottom of your window. (Yep. yuck, but it can be a concern)
4-removing the window cover all the time to suit the weather outside is annoying.
5-you won't need storage place for the off-season.
But because it is expensive, this is my suggestion: spend the money to do one window at a time as soon as you buy/build the house, budgeting  smartly, starting with the north windows (In the northern hemisphere, of course) then the East, West and South.
Also, make very sure, if you buy at Home Depot or similar outfit where you just give them the measurements and they make it to spec, to let them do the measuring: (If they don't fit, they will have to fix the mistake. If you make the mistake, well, you eat the loss!
There are times, though when we just don't have the money to buy the best and we have to make do.
In that case, I'd go to Goodwill or a thrift shop and get the biggest, thickest quilt that will cover the window past the wood frame. Use 2 pieces of wood, one at the top, one at the bottom and carefully screw the quilt to the top and the bottom of the window. It is amazing how a thick quilt, well extended will protect you from the cold, but you must go past the frame, because most of the heat loss happens at the window's edge.

Ann Galloway wrote:Thank you for your post. We the People need  to come together and support this kind of net working and community building. Are you getting groups together for alternative building methods, a community of helping and educating others. Ann 505 986-0568. I have been  researching  info requirements regarding moving to Montana. I am wanting to build 6 ft below the surface home and green house in a dome. There is a guy in Montana with an underground green house that was blind sided by  gov. with a tremendous  amount of requirements and expenses. Anyone have good deals on land and suggestions? I would love to hear from you.
Sincerely,
Ann

Welcome to Permies, Ann!
I wish I could help you with suggestions on where to buy...

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:When I dig sunroots, I immediately wash them and store in plastic. Due to that, the skin stays soft and tender when I eat them, so I don't  peel.

Neat trick for not having to peel them, but the skins don't really bother me.
I store them dirty and in the crisper of a fridge I have in the garage or in a plastic bucket. (I tried once washing them and sticking them in a plastic bag and they rotted. I must have had a compromised tuber. It was a liquefied mess. Yuck!).
Central WI is a big area for potatoes, which are stored fridge cold with 90% humidity in great big dark sheds. Sunroots store quite well that way.. They do carrots that way too. When you think of it, that's pretty much the ideal conditions of a good root cellar..