Toko Aakster

So! Let's say you have a rather large chunk of land, and there's a chunk of it that's unsuitable for traditional methods of polyculture & food forests.
Y'know, the whole 'fuit/nut Tree guild and 7 layers of useful plants'

Maybe you have a river that floods frequently, or a low-laying area that becomes a waterlogged floodplain after it rains.
Maybe you have some really dry, rocky areas that are too far away to comfortably irrigate by hand, and the rocks make it hard to earthscape.

Whatever the issue is, I just want to pop in with a reminder:
"Useful for Permaculture" is not limited to "compost, human-food, and livestock food."

Don't forget about non-edible habitats!  

Depending on how much land you're aiming for and WHY it's not working with you - consider creating a native ecosystem that isn't tree-focused.
You could decide to cart in a bunch of soil amendments, or cover the whole place with woodchips.....
Those are great techniques for a specific endgoal, but they're not the only option.

By picking an ecosystem of plants that thrives in the soil type you already have, you don't have to start with soil amendments or earthshaping.
Instead, you skip right to pulling out invasive species & seeding with desirable plants.  

Riparian, Flood-Prone, Boggy-after-rainfall areas

The Arundinaria Rivercane (the only native USA bamboo) once had miles and miles of riverside bamboo forests (called canebrakes) in the southeast USA, and it was an important habitat for hundreds of insects, birds, and small mammals. Several species of butterflies and moth can ONLY grow on rivercane, and there's a species of critically endangered pitcher plant that only grows in rivercane ecosystems... and it's only known to grow in TWO COUNTIES in alabama.

Not only are rivercane culms extremely useful as building material (native americans of the southeast used them frequently in weaving, basketry, and toolmaking of all sorts), they can be made into charcoal for biochar, or just fuel, the sprouts can be eaten, and the leaves are a fantastic source of compostable greens. The Canebrakes are a wonderful sheltered habitat for all sorts of game animals like pheasants and rabbits, the canes themselves are a nutritious fodder for ruminant livestock, and you get to help restore a part of America's nearly-lost ecosystems.  

Their roots prevent erosion better than a tree's, and a proper grove can filter out 99% of all nitrate pollution from the surrounding groundwater. It is an INCREDIBLE water-cleaning plant.

When colonialists arrived on our shores, there's descriptions of rivercanes 'as thick around as a man's thigh' and well over 30 feet tall - but many stands these days are so young that they barely top 10 feet.
You'd also be restoring habitat for migrating native songbirds and insects - About 97-98% of USA rivercane ecosystems have been lost entirely, due to the spread of farming and agriculture.  Restoring even a few square miles of rivercane, using rhizomes from different genetic strains would make a relatively big difference, compared to how few are left.

Uses for permaculture: Biodiversity. Conservation of species. Restoration of ecosystems. Cleaner groundwater. Reduces erosion. Composting, toolmaking, weaving (furniture and baskets!), edible for both humans and farm animals.  

If you have a riverside, or flood-prone area, rivercane is a GREAT permaculture option for the southeast united states.


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Dry, Rocky, Sandy, too-far-away-to-irrigate

Biodiverse grasslands and brushlands,  are also a wonderful addition to your property!
Grasslands which form unslightly mats in the winter, or put out massive blooms of scraggly, dusty flowers may not be the centerpiece for a traditional 'cottage aesthetic' garden, but Grasslands once covered about 40% of the United States. Only 5% of the original habitat remains. They were a huge source of food in the form of seeds & grains, insects, and foragable plants.

There are quite literally hundreds of native wildflowers, grasses, and forbs in the USA which are threatened, or endangered because of habitat loss.

There are many species of ground-nesting birds and pollinating insects whose grassland habitats were disturbed by cattle grazing, agriculture, and mowing. Creating another haven for them in their migration routes - or even a permanent place to live - means you're increasing local biodiversity - and therefore health - of your property's ecosystem.
Plant wildflowers! Plant seed-bearing grasses and forbs! Many herbal foragables thrive in sunny grasslands.
A few keystone plains plants include prarie crabapple, american plum, oak, deerberry, plains sunflower, broom snakeweed, black-eyed susan.... along with pollinator or host plants like milkvetch, ironweed, evening primrose, heliopsis, wingstem, aster, goldenrod and more.  Many grasslands had a few drought-hardy trees scattered throughout - just enough to cast a bit of shade here and there.


Any land you can set aside and intentionally seed with keystone native plant species - removing invasive species which would choke them out - you're doing yourself a huge benefit. Any time you can build up biodiversity; any crops you grow near that area will benefit.

Not only because you have more pollinating insects, but you'll also have the habitat for insect-eating songbirds, along with falcons, owls, foxes, and snakes which will happily feast on any rodents or squirrels trying to nibble your harvest.
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Conservation & Nationwide Biodiversity

You could even FOCUS on the conservation & genetic diversity to breed endangered plant species, and find some species that suit your 'difficult' piece of land.

The U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) allows for people to collect cuttings and seeds from endangered plants on private property, to propagate, raise, and sell.
The ESA does have one requirement: sellers must apply for a $100 permit from the Fish & Wildlife Service if plants are sold across state lines.
This means that, if you can find a couple people selling endangered plants - you can create a thicket with different genetic strains & improve genetic diversity of a nearly-extinct species. Each new generation of cross-pollinated seeds with new genetic stock growing to adulthood means a stronger species hardiness, and a better ability for them to naturally seed out and spread when planted.

"Some 75 percent of endangered and threatened plant species occur to some extent on private lands, and so their conservation can be significantly affected by activities in those habitats. Private landowners and other citizens can have a positive impact on rare plant conservation, and we encourage them to contact their local Fish and Wildlife Service office, and their State Natural Heritage Program to learn more about what they can do to help." - Gavin Shire, Fish and Wildlife Service


To me at least, Permaculture is more than just food production for you & yours.  
It's about managing the land in such a way that your use of it is sustainable long-term... and even restorative.

=)

Do you have any 'Difficult' land that you don't know what to do with?
Let's brainstorm!

Check out the systems that aquarium enthusiasts use for high-volume filtering! I bet it'd be /perfect/ for acorn leeching.

Aquarists already have established that charcoal filters are fantastic for REMOVING TANNINS. That's why they have all sorts of workarounds to avoid using charcoal in their setups when creating environments for fish that need high-tannin water. (Fish which thrive in swamps and very slow-moving rivers often prefer tannin-heavy water, and it's good for their health)

Idea for acorn leaching:

1 big aquarium
The aquarium has a hole on one side for pouring water out when it reaches a certain height, and on the bottom opposite corner, has an inlet tube connected to a water pump.
The water pump pulls clean water from the Sump tank.

When water is pouring out of the high-up aquarium hole, it is directed through several sieves to remove larger particles (like floating acorns and bits of twigs).
The rough-filtered water then flows into the top of the sump tank.
The sump tank is filled with charcoal.
On the other end of the sump tank is a tube, connected to a water pump, which pushes the water which has made it allll the way through the charcoal filters & is now clean - back into the aquarium tank, to be pushed past the acorns again and leech more tannins out.

The water should stay a little cooler than room-temperature, due to evaporative cooling off the top of the aquarium (if it's open-topped). However this means you'd need to regularly add water back into the system.

If you really need it COLD, some sort of refrigeration thing will be needed. Systems like geothermal heating usually use a supercooled liquid (like liquid nitrogen) to cool off air/water for air conditioning.

Last year I composted overwinter and didn't get the pile hot enough to sterilize seeds.... but apparently it was plenty warm to insulate them from the cold.
In the spring, I used my compost everywhere.... and had dozens of volunteer butternut squash and tomato!

I've been eating SO MUCH squash soup. Giving them away to friends. Stir fries. Squash bread. Drowning in squash.
We canned tomatoes, fried green ones, made salsa and sauces, squash-tomato soup! Also gave away bags and bags to friends, and still ended the year with a PILE of tomatoes which were split or bug-eaten. Now they're rotting into the ground.  *sigh

protip: the tomatoes loved growing where I had used a thick pile of hay to mulch. The tomatoes growing in mostly-rotted-hay-on-dirt THRIVED.

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I've also had avocado pits and lime seeds sprout in the compost during summer. I have a couple avocado trees in small pots now!

We don't really eat lots of sprouts, but in the spring, we do harvest Maple seeds.

Maple seeds are edible & tasty in my opinion. You want to harvest in the spring when the whirlydoos are still green, and plump, but haven't started drying out & turning yellow.

If you collect them when they're dry, they'll be bitter like acorns and you'll have to leech them in water.
The smaller ones are sweeter.

It takes a bit of effort to peel them out of their casing, but it's something that can be done mindlessly in bulk, while watching a show or just vibing with a buddy.
The green ones can be roasted with oil and seasoning, steamed like peas, or just eaten raw on a salad or as a snack.

The bitter big or dry ones can be boiled like beans for whatever you'd normally use beans for.

Tbh I'm glad it's a seasonal thing - it's a lot of work to harvest enough whirlydoos and hull them all to make decent snacking.
Def. not a main source of calories for me, but it's still a fun bit of variety when many other crops aren't ready yet.

Hey there!
I lived on a farm out in the country for a long while, and we also hosted many unplanned 'critters compost cabaret.'
There are a couple ways we went about addressing it, with varying results. Depends on how much effort you want to put in.

1) Grab a shovel
Take a shovel out with you, and BURY fresh scraps under the rest of the heap, instead of piling them on top or mixing into the surface.
It adds quite a bit of effort to each instance of composting, so my family got tired of it eventually.

2) Build a structure to hold the compost in
If you don't want to build something out of wood, there's also stakes and chicken wire, or stacked hay bales to create a composting 'box.' The straw/hay will additionally keep the pile insulated & decompose faster. After a year or two, the straw/hay can be mixed into the compost itself, and replaced.
Having an open-top structure won't really prevent critters from getting in, but I've found it usually stops them from EXPLODING the pile everywhere. They might drag a scrap or three out, but that's easy to toss back in.

3) Cover the top
Grab some chickenwire or other small-hole metal fencing and 'sew' (with wire, string, or zip ties) panels together until you have a wire blanket big enough to lay over the pile.  You'll need to lift a side of the 'blanket' every time you need to add more biomass, but it should solve the critter issue neatly.

MOVE THE GARDENING BADGE TO THE END OF THE LIST!
Or add more stuff to the gardening badge so it's comparable to all the others.

The 'Gardening' badge set is the /smallest/ and /most inaccessible/ list, compared to all the other badge lists.
When I was going through PEP and SKIP, I read diligently through the first part in order, and got to the list of topics & task lists. I clicked 'gardening' and... only 6 of the ENTIRE task list are feasible for the small plot of land I have. Three of my six require multi-year tracking. (Calories and landrace seed generations)

Since the VERY FIRST task list appeared to be designed with the assumption that participants already had MANY acres of land to plant seeds on, and access to power equipment or large teams of helpers to build 7' high hugel mounds, I presumed the rest of the list would be likewise laughably inaccessible to a single individual and left the thread without reading further.

8 months of ignoring & skipping over all mention of BBs, SKIP and PEP,  I just now read through the rest of the list and found WAY more approachable tasks in other lists.
Tool care has a huge and beautifully accessible list for someone without a ton of property. That 'Sand' badge has super-simple and easy stuff like 'Sharpen a Knife' and 'Sharpen a Shovel'
Homesteading has 'install a smoke detector'
Textiles has a bunch of stuff that is done in the home & nearly anyone could learn to do in under 30 minutes.
Heck, ALL the other lists have a bunch of tasks to choose from, which are easy & accessible for any type of property owner.

Gardening's sand badge STARTS with a 7' high, 6' long hugelculture. That's terrifying. That's not a beginner step!
Why is the Gardening task list so outrageous in comparison to anything else?


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Ideas for Gardening tasks which are less ridiculous and fulfill the same proof of learning shown in other badges:

Planting Perennials for Permaculture
In this task, the user is asked to select at minimum 5 different species of perennial plants which are NATIVE to their area, and which serve some purpose in their garden.
They must sow at least 20 of each type of seed, and provide pictures at germination, 3 months and 6 months, with long-term survivorship from each type of plant, and also describe what plants they chose & what purpose they hope they will serve in the garden. (Pollinator plants, wildlife food or habitat, edible crop, etc.)
At the 3-month photo, the plants should be in the ground. It is up to the user's discretion whether to direct-sow or begin nursery pots indoors.


Name That Weed
Choose a heavily 'weedy' patch of garden, at least 10 square feet. Your goal is to fully weed this garden so your desirable plants have space to grow.
You will be showing before and after pictures, along with a picture of all the weeds you pulled, spread out on a tarp or other high-contrast surface so the plants variety can be seen. With these pictures, you will include a list of scientific & common names of all the plants you pulled as 'weeds', and their possible positive permaculture uses.

Many Types of Composting
Build at least 4 types of composting systems. Take pictures of their creation, use, and finished compost being pulled from each system.
1) Direct Composting - Ruth stout - Bury under mulch, direct in ground.
2) Vermiculture - Build a layered worm bin
3) Cold Composting - Lasagna layers & leave it
4) Hot Composting- Demonstrate with a thermometer that the pile got hot
5) Tumbler Composting - A drum, silo, or other container which can be periodically turned/twisted to mix materials inside
6) Liquid Composting - Fermenting plant biomass in a large container of water, producing sludge and nutrient tea.
7) EMO composting - Bokashi Bin

Cutting Cultivation
Take cuttings of (at least) 5 different species of plants. Show 1-month and 3-month update pictures of these at least 10 plants started from cuttings successfully growing in the ground.

Buried for later
Dig a hole that is at least 3ft long and 2ft wide, and bury wood & green plant biomass in it. Cover the hole. You have the tiniest of mounds, for later.
It's not a massive hugel mound, but it starts them thinking about the idea that wood can act as a sponge.

Insect Kingdom
Take pictures of 25 different species of insects. Provide their name, what they eat, what eats them, and what other role they fill in the local ecosystem.
(A higher level of Insect Kingdom for a higher-level badge could be 'photograph and ID 100 different species')

Tiniest Food Forest
You'll need: 100 square feet of space to turn into a mini food 'forest'
Start with a fruit tree. Grow plants to fit into all 7 layers. Provide a list of what plants you're using, what layer they fit into, and how you plan to utilize them in this system.

Uprooted
Successfully transplant 10 mature plants from their original established spot, to somewhere at least 10 feet away. Show before and after pics, and a 1-month update to show it survived the move. Plants must go from ground to ground - not starting in a pot.
A higher badge level for Uprooted could be 'Successfully move a tree sapling at least 5 feet in height'

Extra Edibles
The plants we grow in a traditional vegetable garden are often grown for 1 thing, but actually have several different edible parts!
Identify 3 edible plant parts you previously did not consider adding to your diet, on a plant normally grown for food.
Prepare these & try them. How did you like it?
(Examples: Bean vines & greens, Squash flower, Pumpkin greens, grape leaves, watermelon rinds, etc.)

From the brink of death
Go to a garden center or nursery. Buy 3 of the most sickly, dying, pathetic-looking plants you can find.
Rehabilitate them to the point where they are in the ground & thriving.
Show 'point of purchase', 1-month, and 3-month updates.


Plague Doctor
Photograph & identify 5 types of plant disease. Explain what causes it, and what can be done to fix it.
Successfully 'cure' three plants with unique diseases.

Noticed Nibbles
Time to become a PPI - Private PLANT investigator.
Photograph 5 examples of insect-damaged plants, and find the bug that did it.  

Soil samples
Figure out your soil composition using a jar & water.  Make a list of 10 plants that would do well in that kind of soil composition. Make a list of 10 plants who would not do well at all.

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surely, SURELY, there are more topics to learn about gardening than 'hugelculture, plant fruit trees, mulch, and save seeds' <-- because that sums up about 90% of the  'gardening' tasks.

Especially for people who are still learning, giving them tasks that they can LEARN from will only help. Stuff like:

- improving biodiversity on purpose
- identifying plants & insects
- different propagation methods
- how to move mature plants without killing them
- different ways to utilize biomass
- Expand their idea of what 'edible' means, before diving into foraging.
- What it means to build a food forest. What 'forest layers' even are!
- How to notice & identify & treat disease outbreak in plants.
- How to notice & identify pest damage

and so on.

When you say 'they died', are you talking about the existing old hazel plants, or the new stem cuttings that you tried to plant by the ducks?
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When pruning back an adult tree for any purpose, including coppicing, you never want to remove 1/3 of the branch mass at a time. (Like, within the same season) - if you want it to live.
If the old hazel haven't been coppiced in over 5 years, and you tried cutting them down to the base.... yeah, I bet that'd kill the poor things. Most adult trees have a rough time surviving being cut down.

When starting from an adult tree, even if it had been coppiced a decade ago, you have to get it used to putting out young branches from lower on the trunk, before you can cut the trunk down lower.
This means cutting a couple big branches down each year. After several years, all of the upper branching should be gone, and you're left with a trunk that has young branches growing out of it.  
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Re-reading your post, I'm not certain we're using the same terminology.

Coppicing is the technique of taking a young, already-established tree and cutting it down every 3-5 years, so that it puts up new branches as 'trunks'.
A 'coppice' is a plant on which coppicing has been done.

If you want to start a 'coppice' of hazel by your ducks, you first have to propagate your hazel, and just... plant hazel. Get an established hazel plant growing first.
You aren't starting a coppice at first, you're just starting a new plant.
You can't really coppice it until after the plant has been established for a few years. It NEEDS a lot of strong, healthy roots to survive being cut back.

So... start by getting hazel or willow trees growing in those spots. Don't worry about coppicing until those plants are rigorously growing.

Hello!
I'm not entirely sure what kind of construction style you're actually aiming for with the floor.
Is there any way you could show some drawing diagrams of what you're envisioning, or describe it again in a different way?
What do you mean by 'Natural Floor'?

Because right now it sounds like you're building pier-and-beam, which generally comes with a crawlspace.... but later you talk about filling up that space with insulation and asking if stone infill is a support structure... and then talk about burying floor joists?

This is what I picture when you say you have piers:

^ There's the deep-set piers that go at the 4 corners, and sometimes around the outer perimeter of the house. You can add a stone/masonry wall around the outer perimeter to stabilize, and then there are smaller piers just sunk a bit into the earth directly under the house where frost (usually) can't reach, which supports the other floor beams.

We were thinking of building a stone and lime mortar “Walls” connecting the piers and putting our base plate on top of that
The base plate should be braced primarily on the piers themselves.
If you want to add walls, or solid footings to help support the base plate beams to prevent future sagging, that's good! (see pic above) But, the primary weight bearing should be on the Piers. That's the point of them.

Do we need to dig a trench for the stone walls and do gravel first as a drainage solution if we have good berm and slope away from the exterior on all sides?

ALWAYS have extra drainage, regardless of other berm and slope. Under-house drainage is often for water pressure pushing water up through the earth, not just direct rainfall from above. Make sure the grading of the under-house earth also slopes toward whatever drainage channels you have, so water won't pool if it does get under there.
Adding well-draining stone, proper under-house grading and some drain pipes/channels to divert water to outside is essential, yes.


Is using the existing piers and essentially stone “infill” beneath the base plate an acceptable support structure if there will be windows and strawbale insulation
What stone infill? I thought you were building stone walls.

If floor joists of some kind are necessary to tie the walls to one another, would burying them in the earthen floor be acceptable?
You don't want to bury wood as a general rule, and you want to minimize dirt-to-wood contact. Timber is usually up on steel or stone/concrete to keep it off the ground, with a barrier between wood & cement to reduce water wicking & rotting, if you want the build to last a very long time.
As I said earlier, the area under your house can become wet because of hydrostatic pressure - nearby rainfall pushes water through the earth sideways, not just down - and so it can seep under your house and into any dirt it touches. This is why cracking or poorly sealed basements can leak water during rainfall - the entire earth is getting filled with water, and the walls need to resist the immense pressure of thousands of gallons pushing sideways against it in the earth. Like a reverse-pool.

Moisture wicking into straw bales MUST be avoided at all costs with straw bale construction - they rot easily, and the heat generated by the decomposition process can get intense enough that it reaches the ignition point for straw - lighting the walls themselves on fire. Barn fires are often started because someone took wet hay or straw and piled it with the dry stuff.

I am not finding info on building walls on this type of timber framed “porch” that don’t involve building a deck. A deck would also tie the walls to each other. But we are hoping to do a natural floor and avoid a wooden deck/floor structure
This doesn't make sense to me. Deck and porch are the same thing. Please explain, or use different terminology.

strawbale insulation ( these will be cut out of 9 inches not 18)
^ That's not going to work. Cutting the bales in half lengthwise will make them fall apart instantly. That's not suitable for building a wall.
For areas with lots of windows, you can use Leichtlehm, or “light clay.”  It's basically straw mixed with clay mud, which is applied into a form and tamped down like a less-intensive rammed earth. (Rammed straw?)
It can be used to create thin exterior or interior walls, insulation and ceiling panels between rafters, or insulation below adobe floors. The straw/clay provides less insulation than bales, but offers greater flexibility in constructing walls of different widths

Hey there!
I do not have experience with Zebu.
I do have some experience with highland cows!


They're not as TINY as Zebu, but they're way more manageable compared to a longhorn, angus, hereford, or other standard cattle breed.
Proportionally smaller pasture requirements,

They have a wonderful temperament - very friendly toward people, clever, and easy to train. Almost never aggressive.
All the highland cows and bulls I've worked with have LOVED getting brushed and groomed, though brushing their winter fur is not usually necessary as a health measure.
They're also very expressive, so in the rare instance that they are annoyed, they communicate it clearly.
They're very suited to colder climates like Delaware with their shaggy winter fur, and are generally low-maintenance (except for their hooves)
They also do very well in low-input and organic feeding systems: primarily pasture works just fine if you want to raise them for beef.
Well-suited for pulling small carts, tbh they're my favorite kind of cattle <3

I may be biased, but there are some cons:
- Does not like confinement. They really need a pasture to roam around in, and get anxious & stressed if you keep them in a barn stall for more than a few days. Some are more sensitive to this than others.  
- High maintenance hooves. Their breed is used to rocky mountainsides and hardpacked earth. Walking on very soft and loamy pastures all the time can mess up their feet.
- Trouble with ticks/lice in the summer. Thick fur means pests have an easier time getting established & are harder to get rid of.
- Poor tolerance to heat. Even their summer coat is pretty thick. Delaware summers should be totally fine tho, I'm used to Kentucky summers.

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If you're dead set on the miniature cow, I believe there are miniature highland cows.

TIMEFRAME is important.
In permaculture, we usually look at our soil amending plan on the scale of years, not just a couple seasons.

Like Lila said: Fast usually isn't Cheap. Additionally 'Cheap' doesn't mean 'Low Effort'  - Doing something in a short amount of time isn't quite the same as doing it 'easily.'

You mentioned leaves & rotting logs. Both of those are high-carbon and decompose slowly. They help soil structure and water retention and make healthier soil in the long run and ARE important, but if you ONLY put carbon in an area, and not corresponding nitrogen to help break it down quickly, it'll be sooooo sloooowwwwww to decompose.
They need other good rottable stuff to go fast. Stuff that turns sludgy and nasty smelling when it rots. That's the green stuff you gotta mix with your browns, so your soil can feast as fast as it can.

It's about feeding the life in your soil - not feeding your plants. You feed the soil, the soil feeds your plants.

The soil life is what eats rocks and slurps up organic stuff and poops out nutritious plant food.
Feed the worms, the fungus, the beetles and protozoa. Feed the bacteria!
Your friends in the soil enjoy manure. They LOVE decay and fermentation. They feast on things like rotting meat and plants.

Make them a cozy home for them with a big pile of woodchips -  it's insulated from the cold and scorching heat, and holds the moisture in after it rains, so they don't shrivel up.

Cultivate your soil ecosystem - spoil them with rottable goods like you'd spoil your pets with treats!
Get a big barrel, fill it with water, and let green weeds FERMENT for weeks, then treat your soil to some tasty sips!
Rotting meat and spoiled leftovers? Bury it.
Found a dead animal? Bury it.
Stale dogfood? Bury it.
Rain-spoiled hay from a local farmer, coffee grounds from a local cafe

Your neighbors left out leaves and lawn trimmings? Swipe them, chop 'em up, and bury them. Or just pile them in a big heap where you want to garden. Turn the whole garden into your compost pile for a year.

Become someone who LOVES seeing rot and fungus and decay, because that means you found something you can feed to your yard!

Congrats you've adopted several trillion individual life forms. They're your pets now, and they have a nifty side-effect of making plants grow real good.

Feed your babies.