I think Jay said exactly what I was thinking while reading the original post.
I might consider keeping some emergency water jugs in the shade but obvious enough for people who are just desperate, but would rather not vandalize. I think this would be the majority, if for the simple reason of not killing your goose for future use. As a Pacific Crest Trail thru-hiker that is forever thankful to trail angels who leave water and food throughout the mojave sections, providing drinking water in the desert is a great way to make friends.
It was published through Prescott College in 2011, but is not easily accessible or shareable. A friend in the Adventure Education and Adventure Therapy world (Sydney Williams of Hike My Feelings wilderness programs) found it valuable when I shared it with her recently. If you’d like to be one of the few non faculty or family members to read it, enjoy! While my perspective has since evolved, with many contributions from better understanding and practicing permaculture, I figure this 156 pager was a lot of work and will do more good if made easily accessible. I do still standby the central thesis that working to serve nature and others through protecting our shared planet is a powerful way to find oneself and community. I invite your feedback and reflections on your own self realization through service to nature.
I’d encourage any homesteader to take a Wilderness First Aid, or better yet a Wilderness First Responder course. These have paid for themselves many times over for me in reducing medical bills and having a better idea when affirmative care is needed. I also have met wonderful people in then, and they may well become part of your friend and community network, which would be another point of emphasis. Even as a relatively capable guy, I run into things on my homestead that are unsafe or inefficient to do alone all the time. Sometimes these are inherently frustrating, unpleasant jobs that are best done with someone who cannot divorce me so I do not want to ask my wife, who also has her own work to do. Trying to be helpful to my neighbors and community, including letting them know I could and would want to help if they get injured or ill, has paid off many times over as well.
I also endorse big dogs. My pyrenees-akbash has been the best partner in homesteading and food forest establishment I could ask for. He also comes to me and makes me feel better when he senses I am depressed, whereas a gun might end up being a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
Glenn Herbert wrote:If you are in a mild climate, you really don't want a big high-mass heater. A small heater with minimal mass around it would be optimal. If you already have a modern relatively efficient wood stove, it probably doesn't make sense to scrap that and build a new RMH. I would do as you suggested and add a bunch of masonry around but not touching the existing stove.
Thanks for the confirmation. I do try to always burn a hot, clean burning fire based on what I have learned largely on this forum about RMHs. Particularly, I try to create thermosiphons of oxygen rich air over hot coals and get the chimney and stove to the high end of safe (450-600f) before throttling airflow. Doing with more thermal mass would be much better. Any ideas on conveying the wood stove heat to thermal mass more effectively?
I love the idea of a rocket mass heater to use wildfire fuel thinnings and orchard prunings from my property for heating instead of over harvested and laborious or expensive to acquire hardwood. I also hate how any energy I might buy, including wood for heat, tends to come with paying people with environmental values and practices I oppose.
My reasons for not having built one yet are many. My wife is skeptical of it as a priority over other homestead projects that I am more qualified to undertake on my own. The one local person I know who has built one also has told me he doesn’t use his much anymore because in our mild climate (rarely below 25f, but cool and rainy from Nov-April) it tends to easily overheat his house for hours. He does have a cob house that holds a ton of heat and makes his alternate wood stove more efficient as well, but this did take some wind out of my RMH building sails. We also have a top of the line woodstove that came with our house (purchased 2020), and I think my wife would be much more inclined to let me build a hearth around it for thermal mass than to build an RMH. Even so, to do list will have to be cut down before I get to any such project. I should get to that now!
I’d try yarrow tea,, but apparently, brushing your tongue is the most effective way to curb bad breath (from Ologies podcast on coffee, and reducing coffee-breath).
My favorite part of Thanksgiving was always the turkey enchiladas my SoCal raised Mom or Aunt would make the next day. A batch of red and another green. Still may be my favorite meal.
Our Wild Rivers Permaculture Guild went in together on a Ring of Fire Kiln through Kelpie Wilson. It works incredibly well. Once going will rip through tons of brush in a few hours with virtually no visible smoke.
If in the Del Norte-Curry Co. area of NW CA/SW OR, let me know if you would like to put it to good use. We may even be able to organize a biochar burn party. We can also connect landowners with help clearing fuels to make biochar with through our Fire Safe Council.
I have used hugelkulture beds for these purposes before, up to 7ft in height. Sepp Holzer and Paul Wheaton have done much larger. They settle, but vegetation grown on them will make a nice weather break.
Allowing for drainage of potential flood waters—with all its debris—and for cold air, would be major considerations for me. A 1%+ grade for drainage around the hugel would be needed.
Another consideration might be how the ideal wind diffuser blocks about 60% of the air flow, not all of it. Behind a complete obstruction, air turbulence is increased relative to 60%. A full wall also requires much greater strength.
I would try to put as much curve and undulation as possible into the structure as possible to diffuse the wind’s force rather than try to straight up block it. Parallel straight lines create wind tunnels, and straigth walls are sails.
More diverse soil constituents will usually work better. Any habitat with more diverse food and shelter will have more biodiversity than those with less. I would be concerned about biocide contamination with most straw though.
Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:BTW if you're interested in studying, in learning more on a certain subject ... and it's a subject that's taught in college/university ... you still don't have to go to college.
I found out that by 'studying' yourself, in your spare time, by reading books and articles (most of them can be found on the internet) you can learn so very much! You can go on learning about interesting subjects for all of your life, in fact even for all eternity (there will always be more to learn about!) :-)
I think independent study is great and I continue to do so myself, but I still think the intellectual community is the most beneficial aspect of college. I remember my Taoism professor describing and then demonstrating in her great course why texts like the Tao Te Ching are not really meant to be read in solitude by a monk in a cave. Conversation and synthesis of the ideas is integral to these works’ value. This is actually a theme of The Seven Taoist Masters, and I also think is an aspect of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. I think this is also a big part of the Permies’ value. Being together in person has its own value as well, and some of my greatest realizations happened in laughter filled dorm room debates and camping trips with college friends.
25yrs ago, my higher education policy professor Dad encouraged me upon going off to college to study a wide range of subjects. The PhD and Master’s students he worked with that had specialized early on were intellectually inflexible and less resilient.
When it came time to choose a major, he said fundamental and broadly applicable fields like physics and philosophy would be the best foundation, and any worthwhile employer would see these as indicators of an intelligent, inquisitive problem solver. I was already into philosophy and anthropology, so I followed those interests. I went on to get a master’s in adventure education with a focus on Wilderness Service Learning as a mode of self realization.
None of these degrees led to me making much money by American standards. Still, what I learned and who I met while getting them have helped me see through a lot of expensive BS, live a great life, and likely saved me hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of wasted hours. I am debt free with beautiful land, a nest egg and a big garden. I may have been able to learn some of what I did in college just independently reading, but I would have missed out on the learning community that I gained much more from. At a good school, we learn more from other students than we do from teachers and texts. Of course, this should not cost a parent a year+ worth of their income per student, but more people engaging in dynamic learning communities would be a good thing for society.
Welcome Dave. Some context for where you are (region, zone, elevation, precipitation) helps get better answers, and that can be put in your profile (upper left of post) or signature (bottom of post).
I would also suspect deer, which eat my grapes off the fenceline they grow on. Deer can jump anything short of 8ft. They will not jump a double fence 4ft tall and 4ft apart, as they do jot have good depth perception. Elk are our biggest herbivore issue here, as they can jump anything short of 14ft and can also knock down most fences. You’d know if it was elk.
At my friend’s Willamette Valley vineyard, heatwaves followed by wind can knock grapes and desiccated leaves off, but yours do not look heat stressed or even that far along into fall color. Young, stressed grapes—particularly grafted rather than self-rooted—will drop fruit and foliage with drought. That doesn’t look like your issue though. On that note however, my friend has had much better hang time through these stressors than his neighbors, likely because of his regenerative practices with minimal soil disturbance, interspersed tree plantings, self-rooted vines, and many of his are over 40yrs old.
It looks like something that could not reach the top wire grazed on it. Some regenerative vineyards have started using short legged sheep to do weed management and leaf thinning very similarly to what looks like happened at your place, of course timed to not take all the grapes.
A Regenerative Agriculture Podcast covered a very interesting experience by a broad acre forage and seed crop farmer-rancher who saw impressive results and resilience in self sowing brassicas on untilled land.
“In this episode, John and Brad discuss:
Brad’s shift from conventional hay work to regenerative farming
No-till seed production for brassicas and alfalfa with better germination
Epigenetic seed adaptations for local resilience
Livestock integration for soil health and direct meat sales
Direct-to-consumer marketing with consistent, local products
The role of soil health in sustainable farming and stewardship”
You probably already know this, but I’d make sure to have a slight grade away from structures for 10+ft to ensure drainage. As mentioned above, a pond, swale, or rain garden that provides soil for grading the lawn could also catch french drain runoff to infiltrate. In fire prone areas like mine, roof runoff going to a wetland or well hydrated garden around the house (at least 6ft away from structure) can be a good approach.
Hi Francisco, and a warm welcome to permies. My friend Forrest is the owner-operator-vintner of Schaad Cellars. He has self-rooted grapes dry farmed organically since around 1980 on Schaad Hill, near Newberg. He increased the vineyard acreage from 5 to 10 acres between 2007 and 2014, which I helped with a bit and have provided permaculture informed advice since. He also helps manage his extended family’s August Cellars, which is adjacent to the vineyard and where he processes his grapes.
The grapes looked and tasted great this year. Due to being self rooted and dry farmed with permaculture informed farming practices, they were able to hang and gain acid complexity for a week or two longer than most. This is likely due to deeper roots in biodiverse soil in my opinion. The sorters said his grapes looked like the best they saw this year, and often that seems to be the case.
I think his wine is very underpriced for the quality and love Forrest, and his dad Fish before him, put into it.
If looking for help achieving similar results, or for other permaculture design, consulting or education needs in the PNW or Northern California, PM or contact me at: OldGrowthEdibleLandscapes@gmail.com
Dundee Hills AVA produces some of the world’s best wine in my opinion, and apparently in the view of many more qualified than I. My oldest friend has a vineyard just north in Chehalem Mtn AVA where I have helped do everything from planting to picking, and it is a wonderful growing climate. I hope you find a great buyer!
Alpaca manure is some of the best. It does not burn plants when used within reason, but it likely would also contribute minimal heating to the pile. Lower temp composts are generally slower and more prone to residual weed seeds, but are more biodiverse.
Ben Zumeta wrote:Statistics indicate whitewater boating is similarly dangerous to driving. Similarly, alcohol and other coordination and risk assessment impairing drugs, low light conditions, and bad weather increase the risk for both similarly. Learning how to drive or paddle safely, and identifying when it is not safe to do either, is also an effective way to reduce risk. I would not want to force anyone onto whitewater who doesn’t want to try it, but the drive to the put-in is as dangerous as most boating trips get.
I beg to differ. I have breaks and steering wheel to my disposal in my car. No such things on a "paddle boat" Sorry, I just had to say it
I encourage no one to take risks they do not see as worthwhile, but statistics show similar risks, which I learned in my Swiftwater Rescue course from someone very serious about safety. Skills similarly important to safe boating can be learned in a similar amount of time as those for driving. Of course physical fitness is more important, but I have seen paunchy dudes and small women dance in whitewater with remarkably little exertion. In a car, you have a lot more metal, speed, mass, and other drivers to worry about than in river sports. Water is very powerful and must be respected, and Both have inherent risks that are statistically similar. Of course you are unlikely to need to get someone to the hospital or school via whitewater raft or kayak. However, the places you can see with these boats are often much more beautiful and serene than anything reachable by car. Sorry, I just had to say it.
Statistics indicate whitewater boating is similarly dangerous to driving. Similarly, alcohol and other coordination and risk assessment impairing drugs, low light conditions, and bad weather increase the risk for both similarly. Learning how to drive or paddle safely, and identifying when it is not safe to do either, is also an effective way to reduce risk. I would not want to force anyone onto whitewater who doesn’t want to try it, but the drive to the put-in is as dangerous as most boating trips get.
A good friend owns the company, and I guide with them as much as I can on the beautiful Smith River in NW California. This is the largest undammed watershed in the lower 48, and has some of the best boating in North America. Ask for me if you want a permaculture oriented guide.
I do more kayak guiding than rafting, but can do both on class 3 and below (main stem and sections of Middle Fork). We have other guides who are better on the big class 4-5 stuff (North Fork, South Fork, and Middle Fork Gorge). I have learned a lot from those guides though, as several are world class boaters who love to share their skills and knowledge. They have helped me get through much more challenging sections than I would have otherwise attempted, and these are some of the most beautiful places I have ever been. I can say with confidence no river has more awesome swimming holes than the Smith.
I also lead bike trips through the adjacent old growth redwoods and coastal forests. I am a solid boater, but I do prefer to stick to class 3 and below on my own. I specialize more in nature interpretation, with experience as a ranger and educator. I also have a master’s in adventure ed focused on wilderness service learning.
I am working on putting together a permaculture oriented river trip and workshop this October in partnership with Redwood Rides, the Wild Rivers Permaculture Guild, and the nature based performance art, activism and empowerment non profit Dirt and Glitter. It will be on the class 1-2 Redwood Run, with a side hike amongst some of the tallest trees on Earth in one of the largest extant areas of old growth and the world’s highest biomass ecosystem.
The Smith river is as beautiful as any I have ever seen. It is an excellent place to observe the dynamics of water, land and life coevolving, with endless lessons for permaculture design. The old growth redwood forest can also teach us a great deal about how to live in a place longterm, as some of the trunks are 2,000yrs old with root systems over 6,000 (as old as the climate has been conducive to their survival). Amidst the redwoods and along the river lies the remnants of the oldest continually inhabited settlement in North America, a Tolowa village 10-12,000 yrs old. The Tolowa, and the Yurok to the south along the Klamath River, stewarded these forests, waters and the fish they support for millennia. They stewarded expanses of unmatched forests and immense fish runs alongside a higher human population density than we have now.
I can only hope to convey a small portion of what I have learned from this place and its stewards, and I learn or notice something new on every trip. I also learn a great deal from guests’ and students’ insights.
To paraphrase John Hodgman, one of my favorite podcaster-humorists, “paying attention to all the bad things happening, then getting angry and sad, didn’t seem to be helping make them stop”.
I have heard other wise folks point out that if an event is “newsworthy”, it is almost always very novel, unlikely, and far away. So why worry about it? We generally do not have reliable, non-corporate local news anymore, so the likelihood something on the news will be locally relevant is even lower.
In general, I doubt it could be good for our psyche or society to be able to instantly find the worst things that happened in the world today at the click of a link.
Looks like a lovely spot. Near my kitchen door, I like to grow herbs, greens and fruits with a long harvest seasons and which I use most often. Thyme and other mediterranean herbs, garlic chives, walking onion for its greens and shallot like bulbs, tree collards as a primary green, strawberries and raspberries that fruit over multiple or long seasons have become perennial or self replicating in my zone 1 garden. Other things I’d like to grow don’t necessarily thrive in my very challenging native soil, but those plants above are a good, hearty base for me where I have built hugel terraces and provided ample compost (4-12”).
Two, hands down. Well, maybe one hand down because in addition to many other massive advantages, a two wheeled barrow can be easily moved one handed. Two wheelers can move 2-4x the mass with much less strain, as one doesn’t have to hold the entire weight balancing it. The extra weight of a second wheel is tiny compared to the benefits of balance. If you want the one wheel experience, just tilt it to get the joy of holding the entire load up. Using a two wheeler is much less work for any substantial amount of mass. I say this having moved hundreds of yards of material with two-wheelers, and having several single wheelers fall apart at the worst possible times.
I absolutely hate single wheelers, and if I were a conspiracy theorist would suspect they are the brainchild of some maniacally misanthropic orthopedist. A single wheeler kills your back and shoulders, and the just falls apart from the strain of the force one has to exert on it holding any substantial load up. Honestly, I think a one wheeled American style barrow is one of the poorest designed tools I can imagine. I would rather just carry buckets or a harvest bag. Maybe if all one is moving is lettuce or feathers down exceedingly narrow paths, it might have a purpose. Even so, it is prone to tipping with the slightest bump onto whatever one is growing beside those narrow paths. A two wheeler still fits down any path that is comfortable to walk down. A path so narrow it warrants a single wheeler has no space for airflow and plants to grow.
When I worked in the Laguna mountains at an environmental ed camp, we learned and taught about manzanitas being a key native peoples’ apothecary plant. The berries are delicious and do make a great tea. It is so tasty one might come to realize the hard way they can be a cathartic laxative in high enough dosage. They are apparently good for many other GI ailments too. The leaves are a natural antiseptic, and chewing them will help heal mouth sores and upper respiratory ailments. They will also make a person produce a very funny face, as they are very bitter, reminiscent of campho-phenique cold sore medication. The leaves can also make a decent toothbrush substitute in a backpacking pinch. Of course, take care when trusting anyone on the internet telling you to put something novel in your mouth!
Send some rain over here please! No significant rain (1/3” total) since May 12th, and we had a few dry weeks before that. Normally we’d get 12-15” in May (got 3”) and 6” in June got 1/3”). This was after 100” in the cold season before planting was possible. On the bright side, tree fruit that we can water off grid has been especially flavorful. The only real solution to this increasingly weird and bipolar climate seems to be biodiversity and undulating the landscape to make diverse soil moisture pockets.
I live off grid on 25 beautiful acres in NW California witht my wife who I met while we were both thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. While I love it most of the time and am very fortunate, off-grid life is not as care free as one might think! Hiring any help has an extra cost to get them here and up to speed on our systems, so I am our gardener, landscaper, plumber and electrician (for most aspects), garbage man, propane and diesel delivery guy, diesel mechanic (a bad one who hates it), emergency medical responder, wildfire preparedness guy…and I am only really good at a couple of these things. Doing them all makes me not great at any of them. Again, we have a great life, but living off-grid is not exactly easier or less expensive!
The woody debris quickly (1-2yrs here) becomes fungally rich well drained but highly absorbent soil for the plants in surrounding beds to root into. It holds 1/3 its volume in water. If you are worried about the wood floating, then an overflow perforated pipe or sill would prevent that. The system I described in the post referred to above has handled 10” (25cm) days of rain with no such floating woody debris problems. The main risk anyhow would be in the first flush of rain hitting dry wood. Once it is waterlogged, it will not float off. Topping up with more woodchips as the paths decompose and sink a bit is not much work.
Provide 1% gradient for water flow around any hugel bed and it will not float off. Of course, I would not recommend building dams with wood…leave that to beavers.
After I helped convince him of its benefits for my other garden plants, a viticulturist friend in the Willamette Valley in Oregon used primarily compost tea in getting a biodynamic vineyard he managed to produce 4x as much usable Chardonnay, when mildew was their primary problem. The owners complained that he made them work to sell so much more wine.
I would recommend making Johnson Su style for grapes as it is the best for beneficial fungi that will out compete and consume the mildew, as well as boost the plants’ natural defences. As that method takes a year, I would buy the best fungally rich compost you can for the interim, looking for woody debris as its primary feed stock. Quality is key, but if its good compost it only takes about 2L to make a 200L batch for foliar spray. TeaLab has good recipes, but I would not add food to the brew for grapes. Rock dust and kelp can be helpful. If you cannot aerate, an extract will also help but may not stick to leaves as well. One spray on fallen leaves in autumn and then 3x+ in spring through early summer is a good regimen.
I have also had great success (95% reduction in mildew and nearly as much for botrytis) using horsetail (equisetum) tea. Either fill a bucket with the horsetail then top with water and wait 2 weeks. If urgent, boil a kettle of water, turn of heat, add horsetail to water line, and steep for 30min. Either brew method should be diluted at least 4:1 and up to 20:1, and sprayed on foliage top and bottom til dripping.
If wildfire is a risk, gutters can be a major vector for building ignition. Covered ones are safer, but going gutter free is the safest.
If you can just grade the ground to provide the easiest possible path for water to your infiltration basins, the pipe may be largely unnecessary. At the property in the link above, I probably could have forgone the pipe between the beds and just filled with coarse woody debris then topped with wood chips. Roman era British Isle fortifications had such woody debris filled trenches that outlasted their occupation and rock or pipe based drainages. I would also skip the geotextile, as most are plastic based and bound to become forever trash mixed into your soil. Just wood would be a much less expensive, longer lasting, more effective and absorbent in my experience and research.
Beneficial nematodes and BT (Bacillus Thurengensis) would be my first thoughts. I would also ask him what the point of gardening is if we are just going to spread poisons all around our yard and home. Most basic cellular processes are shared by all living things, and so most chemicals that hurt one species harm us all.
Jenx Murphy wrote:What if you tried tying the chicken wire to the trees instead of stapling it? I haven't done this for deer fencing but I have tied chicken wire to other kinds of fencing to keep small varmints from going under it.
Loop some plastic straw bale type or other durable twine through the fencing at top and bottom around the tree. Overlap and lace together when you get to the end of a roll. Might be stronger and it's kinder to the trees.
I may be misinterpreting the above quote, and tree species, bark texture and toughness, and age are factors. I am sure Jenx’ intentions are good. Still, tying anything like rope, twine or wire around a tree can girdle the bark, then cambium. The cambium transports water and nutrients and is where much of its cell division occurs, making it essential for the tree’s survival. More than 1/3 of the circumference of a tree’s cambium getting girdled could kill a tree. This is why hammocks and other rigging on trees in National Parks is supposed to be as wide and soft as possible, and should be temporary. With a fence, wind and animals will work that rope back and forth, girdling the tree.
I have stapled and bolted into living trees for use as fence posts where it seemed less damaging than the process of putting in a post. They did bleed sap, but after five years, the trees still look as healthy as they were before, and have largely healed over the eye bolts. I also have made tree guards between the fence wire and tree with sections of corrugated 4” plastic drain pipe. Akin to the old method of supplementing copper with a hammered in penny or copper coated nail driven into a copper deficient tree, I might consider using bolts or fencing staples that are galvanized or coated with a mineral deficient in your soil.
I agree with those points. In addition, planting grids with straight paths create wind tunnels and erosion highways. They are also maddening to make on uneven ground, which is pretty much anywhere that wasn’t created by a flood or heavy equipment. Grids look much worse when any one part is off, such as when some plants inevitably die. Getting a grid right will also take longer and cost the client more for a less resilient end produt.
On your point of weakening resilience to pests who can see your grid of food for them from a mile away, I am reminded of my time working on a Wilderness restoration crew in the Mojave and Sonoran desert. Our main goal was removing illegal roads into Wilderness that were created and maintained by ATVs trampling vegetation. Signs and obvious barricades just invited target practice and winches to destroy them. Werealized just how much a straight line stands out like a sore thumb in nature. Just randomly scattering rocks and “frankenbushes” (half buried dead branches in a tree shape) around the road disrupted the linearity and camouflaged the road. Where we did this random scattering well, it was much less work than other methods and the roads disappeared visually. If they went unused long enough, if atv- users didn’t notice them, plants could reestablish in the shade of the frankenbushes and rock piles, These also caught wind-born seeds.
This positive feedback loop is similar to the pest dynamics in a garden. When a pest has to look around harder for food in a diverse, mosaic garden, it is less likely to feast and procreate exponentially, and easier for more prevalent predators to manage for us. Grids are pest buffets
Deer have poor depth perception and won’t jump where they cannot judge the landing’s safety. So it can be easier and more effective to do a double fence with fencing runs 4ft apart and 4ft tall. You can use the in between for a path and/or plantings. Chicken wire may be too week, and they could just kick or lean on it to break through, so I’d consider woven wire fencing instead.
I have used partially charred wood in hugels, with seemingly good results. I’d be concerned about gick (plastic, accelerants, etc) having been burned in there before. If that is not a concern, I might consider reducing the amount of concentrated ash, maybe with a leaf blower. The acidity of your soil and the ph preference of plants you want to grow would be a consideration too, as ash will make it more alkaline.
Ben Zumeta wrote:After seeing the hard work of firefighters and burn crews, as well as volunteering on a pile burn crew for several days this spring...
Hey Ben, I am curious what volunteering on that pile burn crew was like? I am familiar with volunteer trail maintenance workdays. You start the day with a quick safety briefing and then get on with it. Was it similar to that? Or did they want you to do training before the day of the work?
The safety briefing occurred about filling and lighting drip torches. During this, several on the crew smoked cigarettes as they filled their torches with a gas-diesel mix, and the crew lead spilled about a cup of fuel on his pants. They did work hard though and were nice people.
My vintner friend Forrest uses his farm’s walnuts for dyes on his Schaad Cellars’ wine labels. I could pass along the questions for you. Let me know. The wine and beyond organic, dry farming practices are also top-notch in my opinion.
Sorry, I just had to say it