Old hammy

Spray the inside of the silo with spray on insulation, then you wont get the condensation between the straw and the metal.

If you want to build a "sustainable" home, I would recommend you avoid the use of petro-chemical spray foams. Even the "bio-based" or "soy-based" foams rely heavily on petroleum based chemicals for the polyol portion of the foam. If you are planning to build a structure within a structure (a house within a silo) then consider a design that uses the steel skin of the silo as a rain-screen for the inner strucutre. The air spce provided by the rain screen will allow condensation on the back of steel to either drain or evaporate without direct contact with the interior structure.

I am concerned with structural and permit issues and think I am going to plan the house all out and have an architect make blueprints and sign on the design.  Will this help in getting a permit?

This will almost certainly help you with the permit process. I'm not sure an architect will sign off on your drawings however. For liability reasons most architects will not sign off on anything they haven't designed themselves.

hard to live up to this definition if the sun boils away all the water on the planet, nevermind that entropy is nipping at our heels.  still, we may as well shoot to make the next billion years as pleasant as possible.

I think entropy is more than nipping at our heels. I think we're up to our nostrils in it.

I was reading in that county they required a permit for pond digging over X amount of yards. Since I do not own heavy equipment the idea was to do it the old fashioned way. Since this land is semi-desert I would assume building swales would be similar as the pond situation in regards to a permit.

Sometimes it's easier to just feign ignorance and beg forgiveness than do your homework and ask permission.

What do you think "organic" means?  Or "sustainable"?

"Organic" is a practice that is more "sustainable" than industrial agriculture because of it's reliance on recycling amoung other things. In this sense "organic" is the thing we do and "sustainability" is a benchmark for evaluation.
"Sustainable" is a very easily defined term (it's definition has been published in a dictionary for quite some time).
If there is confusion or mis-understanding over the term "sustainability" then it is probably because someone has either accidentally or purposely mis-used the term. "Sustainable" is not synonymous with "green".
I recently abandoned use of the term "green" because of it's inherent vagueness. "Green" is an umbrella term that describes -loosely- consideration for ecology or environment while leaving -too much- room for interpretation. Consequently "green" has become a very popular marketting term since it's meaning is vague enough to be moulded into almost anything.
In my mind, "sustainability" avoids the trap that "green" falls into precisely because it has such a well established and simple definition (if one takes the time to read it).

Context makes a lot of difference.

It certainly does, but that is not a strike against "sustainability". Almost anything in human experience (knowingly or not) is subjected to contextual evaluation. All this means is that there is not a "one size fits all" solution to living sustainably.

It really bothers me when products are sold as accessories to the dream that mid-century style consumerist culture might go on forever.

I agree completely. From this point of view, "sustainability" might be the only good benchmark there is.
Our global society derives somewhere on the order of 40% of it's entire energy requirement from oil and 95% of our transportation systems require the use of oil. The use of oil is by definition unsustainable and so is any aspect of our civilization that requires oil as an input. The same can be said about any non-renewable resource: Coal, natural gas, phosporus, copper, rare-earth minerals, the list goes on and on.

Thanks.

I would keep the tank in a dark, cool place if possible.

Perhaps what I'm talking about is not permaculture as you would have it defined, but I would disagree. If a piece of land is designed using keyline plows, keyline design, dams that doulbe as acquacuture, sustainable horticultural techniques, alley cropping, kugelkultur beds, etc., is it not at least somewhat permaculture? At which point does it go from being not permaculture to actual permaculture? How many techniques, tools and knowledge must I incorporate from your personal permaculture "canon" to qualify as being a true believer?

In my opinion, ethics are a very important aspect of permaculture design and cannot be overlooked without moving away from the concept of permaculture. For example there was some small discussion about yields earlier. One must be very clear about what constitutes a yield and the ethics of conservation and respect for nature are guiding principals in this regard. As tel jetson suggested, I don't think any permie would necessarily object to the widespread application of permaculture but again, the ethics ARE important.

Thank you for this, and I agree that we are on the verge of upheavals that will fundamentally change our unsustainable lifestyle. To me, that sounds like a fantastic business opportunity, and being out in front of the curve with a sustainable business premised on and inspired by permaculture is a fantastic way to capitalize on this.

This statement (for example) makes me uneasy. Maybe it's just the choice of words but a capitalistic implementation of permaculture technique (in my mind) must at some point violate the ethical pricipals of permaculture that make it one of the few best hopes for  sustainable civilization. The ROI in a permaculture project is that the humans involved get to subsist off the land in question for generations upon generations while only advancing the material wealth of their society in accordance with the constraints of a sustainable yield. I don't know many MBAs but the few that I do would probably view a business plan like this very narrowly.
As I said earlier, I just don't believe permaculture can be used to salvage the present status quo while still calling it permaculture. There are just to many people in the world and many of those consider it a birth-right to consume their share a thousand-fold or more. My guess is you'd end up using permaculture technique simply as a more efficient means of producing consumable biomass while never attaining sustainability. That's just my opinion though.

So, please people, I don't want a discussion of why we shouldn't do it. Your objections are duly noted. Presuming these objections are going to be disregarded, how could it practically be implicated?

At the risk of sounding contrarian, I believe it is the idea of "industrialized" permaculture that is a pipe dream. Why? The consumer's "needs" in our present day society could never even remotely be satisfied within the constraints of a permaculture "yield". Impossible.
In Bill Mollison's "A designer's manual" he states: "...our concern in permaculture is that this essential base yield is sustainable." and "...we must concentrate on productive use, which implies that the energy used is turned into biological growth and held as basic living material in the global ecosystem."
Creating IPods from a permaculture yield is not sustainable because the energy withdrawl is too great. Consumer goods are sink-holes for energy. Entropic bodies we throw in the trash when they no longer suit our "needs". Until this practice of making things so that their embodied energies are thrown into a landfill is changed, then nothing will change.

I just don't believe that the world, as it is currently arranged, is going to return to producing its own food on an individual level. And that is the benefit of the division of labour: I don't need to spend all my time growing my own food, so I have time to pursue other things. That aspect of human behaviour is not going to change anytime soon, so we're going to need to find better ways of feeding the world.

The energy withdrawls from the natural world by modern society are so great and so unsustainable we are on the verge of a global energy crisis. In your "real world" most people may not want to change or debase themselves to the level of growing their own food (let alone use their own poop to grow it) but soon there may be no other option. We're running out of time. There is a convergence of sustainability issues taking place all around us that threaten to topple our existing way of life and more. I'll repeat, there is no possible way that our present excessively consumeristic way of life can be salvaged within the context of permaculture. Your best hope for salvaging this way of life is in the stars. Hope that there are still energy and material resources available in enough quantity so that technology will give us the means to drain the natural resources of the asteroid belt, other planets and the sun. I, however, am doubtful this will ever come to pass.

I'm not sure about leasing but there are many outfitters around here that provide lodging and guided hunts for those willing to pay for it... This time of year there's no shortage of Americans driving through on their way to hunt bear, deer or moose and the outfitters make a lot of money off of them. If you had the experience to guide maybe a bed & breakfast plus guided hunt could bring in some money too.

Here's a link to a documentry about bees. Economics may be partly responsible for the decline of the honey bee.
Once again it seems humans have tried to better a natural process and maximize productivity for our own ends only to find out that we didn't understand what we were doing.
http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/natureofthings/2010/bees/