andyappleseed McCoy

I know there are others out there... but I'm not finding a whole lot on the humanities/cultural-works side of permaculture.

Here's a little poem I wrote yesterday: http://umbellularia.com/2011/01/the-y-garden/

What do ya'll think?  Can you point me towards other folks taking more abstract or conceptual approaches to expressing permaculture values?

Edit: Good call on the category move.  ops:  I hadn't seen this board down here.  Wish it was more active though...

Hey folks, I hope this isn't too far afield or self-promotional for the forum, but I'm making a fun music video of a very permaculturey bent, and need to collect as many more photos as I can in the next few days. 

Photos of people having fun in the garden would be superb.

Read more here: http://umbellularia.com/2011/01/hey-nature-kids-quick-action/

Thanks!
Andy

PS: My Lake Cty. site plans are slowly progressing, I think we're figuring some stuff out...

While native pollinators should certainly be supported an encouraged (the Xerces Society and their Pollinator Conservation Handbook are great), honeybees are not just great pollinators but an extremely joyful addition to the garden as well.

Really, even if you never once are to collect honey from them, there is so much enjoyment and inspiration in the energetic buzzing and rich caramel-beeswax air that waft off a warm hive.  Also, I often describe beekeeping as a very meditative and spiritually calming practice, in the patience and care and respect you must show while handling bees.

And top bar hives (as opposed to the Langstroth frame hives used for commercial honey production) are wonderful in their simplicity.   You definitely don't need to drop $400+ for kits or prebuilts like ChristyHemenway is trying to sell, a hive can be made from scrap, to your own specifications, with just a bit of construction acumen.  Back in antiquity they were just draping sticks across clay pots for bees to build comb on.  Collect a bit of sweet reward in the spring once the bees made it through the winter and the flowers are blooming again.  Maybe I'll write up a guide to hive building, one day...

FieldHippieFruit: as far as "planting" a bee-made hive on the land, that's essentially what building a top bar hive is all about.  Honeybees are typically cavity nesters, so all you need to do is provide a swarm with a sufficient cavity of their liking, they will set right about at building comb within.  Potentially, this could even be a hollow log, if you have one laying about and really want to inhibit human access to the colony... (Top bar beekeeping is outwardly similar looking but very different than Langstroth beekeeping with its frames of sometimes artificial comb.)

Here are a couple hives, designed and built by some of us Santa Cruz kids, that sit out next to the porch.  It is so great to hang out on the couch by the bees on a sunny day.  That's Rallo the beedog--he loves bees too!

I'm not sure what the criteria for a "best is the world" garden are, but I've found the Alan Chadwick Garden here in Santa Cruz on the University of California campus to be quite inspirational.  (Though I haven't worked there.)

Alan Chadwick (now dead) deserves much more recognition (I guess he didn't write much?) for his influence on sustainable agriculture.  He was tutored by the immense Rudolph Steiner of biodynamic fame. The biointensive/French intensive gardening styles that Chadwick championed I certainly would not describe as permacultural in the same vain as I would Fukuoka, but very effective and sustainable in their own way they are.

The plants in the Chadwick Garden, all of them intensely green and vibrant with aliveness, are quite a testament to what a deep and beautiful soil can support.  This is a lovely, lovely garden.  The incredible tilth here is the product of decades of dedicated labor, intensive and disruptive (think: perpetual double digging of beds).  This does suggest only limited applicability of these methods to a permaculture, but also proves that where these methods are indeed applicable, they are so very applicable.

Also, as noted in Rain Tenaqiya's great West Coast Food Forestry book, the Chadwick garden is functionally somewhat food foresty in its interplanting of small fruit trees above and between annual beds.

A quick search and I dug up a clip of the master himself ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdMeyywc2xo) as well as a cheesily produced tv segment that shows the current garden and some of its techniques ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_c2qzGLLHc)

Great ideas... the rope fence... lupines...  I've just included some photos of the site up at the beginning of the thread for those interested...

Paul: Really enjoyed reading your blog on live stakes and in-ground cutting propagation.  Just stuck some willow and alder cuttings into a wet spot in my front yard for fun. 

Hope to get up to the Lake Cty. site shortly and hike around for useful local propagable plant material.  I recall seeing redbud grow just offsite, but I'm reading that this legume isn't an N-fixer...

Wow, this forum is great.  Thanks everyone for the advice!  Taking it all into careful consideration.

A little more information about the site:  We've got access to 12 acres of a roughly south-facing slope in Lake County, California.  Blessed to be almost directly bordering National Forest land, but we'll need to deal with the attendant problems of abundant wildlife as well.  Numbers game will be tough.  I'm also a bit concerned about releasing aggressive colonizers near all that open space...  Any suggestions of good cover seed for this climate? 

I like Soil's suggestion of just mulching the existing weedstock...I hope to get up there again soon and gather a better impression of what annuals are already established.  Also very interested in a description of the string fence that's helped you deter deer.

Plankl: any references for info on using seed balls to build soil?  Does Fukuoka write on this?

Yes, it's probably even more important to put in shrubs and trees now (which I supposed we'll fence off until well established) along with the swale digging.  But I don't have a nursery stock on hand, and budget is very low.  We're just a couple of kids right out of college very lucky to have been granted this parcel to work with.  Bare root trees don't really show up until January right?  Anyone know of any sources for cheap/free perennials that could go in the ground right now or as soon as the rains start?

Pretty much an open canvas at this point that I'd like to turn into a permacultural wonderland of a homestead.  I've been doing tons of reading on design (Hemenway, Mollison, etc.), but the possibilities still seem endless.  So any suggestions about resources and techniques relevant to this locale/climate/site are still welcomed.

Here's some climate data, hardly know what to do with it, though: http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/cgibin/climchoice.pl?county=06033&state=ca

I've got a dry, rocky, clayey, steep hillside in coastal California (think oak savannah, but at a steep pitch) where I want to start improving the soil this winter.

However, this is heavy deer/elk country, and I'm worried that planting oats, rye, vetch, clover, etc. will just establish my lot as a salad bar and make future plantings (trees, etc.) even more difficult.

Other challenges: no water on site at this time (though municipal water may be an option in the future) and I won't be able to visit the lot and manage it frequently.

I'm thinking that some swale-digging/terracing will be a good start towards fertility, but will cover cropping these earthworks be worthwhile?  And how far into the rainy season should I broadcast seed if I want it to germinate solely by rainfall?

Quite new to this, any advice is appreciated, thanks.