Welcome Jenni Blackmore author of Permaculture For the Rest of Us

Photo Source: Jenni's Website

This week Jenni Blackmore will be joining us to talk about all sorts of topics regarding small farming.

There are four copies of her book, Permaculture For the Rest of Us up for grabs.

Jenni will be stopping by on the forum over the next few days answering questions and joining in discussions.

From now through this Friday, any posts in this forum, ie the small farm forum, could be selected to win.

To win, you must use a name that follows our naming policy and you must have your email set up in Paul's Daily-ish email.

The winner will be notified by email and must respond within 24 hours.

Posts in this thread won't count, but please feel free to say hi to Jenni and make her feel welcome!

Hi Jenni. Welcome to the forum (I'm kinda new myself). I look forward to checking out your book. It looks like it was written with "people like me" in mind.

Hi Joseph, Everyone seems to be enjoying my book so far and I hope you will also. I think the climate conditions we experience are quite different - I'm farming on the chilly, damp coast of Nova Scotia and I believe the climate in Haiti is much hotter and drier for much of the year. Even so the same principles work equally well for both and this flexibility is one of the (many) things I love about Permaculture.

Hi Jenni,

I haven't read your book but I'm certainly interested. I'm currently farming in Eastern Ontario.

Hi Alain, where about in Eastern Ontario do you farm? I'm a little familiar with the Port Perry area. It looks like really good land in some areas and it's really sad to see so many beautiful old farms being sold off and turned into sub-divisions. The argument being that people have to live somewhere with no mention that they also have to eat. Heartbreaking and also very scary!

welcome.

Hi Jenni! I'm looking forward to this conversation. Most subdivisions have small plots and it would be cool if those bluegrass checkerboards turned into patches of permiculture.

Those bluegrass checker boards you mention drive me nuts too. Especially the ones that aren't graced by a single dandelion. I often think those poor little flowers must be saying, "But what did we do?" I live in a fishing community, not good farmland but a generation or so ago sizeable families ate well off an acre or two. Now most of those old homesteads have giant lawns surrounding them which demand weekly trimming by sit-on mowers. I'm not sure what is worse, the wasted potential for beautiful fresh food, or the fact that the knowledge to grow such food no longer exists in the majority of these homes. I believe this unlearning of rudimentary food growing will be a huge problem when people need to get serious about being more self-sufficient.

Hi Jenni, welcome! I look forward to your discussion. I'm in a suburb with .4 acres. I don't think I can get to small farm size, but hope to do what I can. I'm looking into raising Quail this spring, as they are capable of living with less space and are quieter than chickens.

Welcome, Jenni! I'm reading your book and LOVE it ;) I was delighted to see that copper mesh works for your slugs. I saw it mentioned here in only one comment, and then looked it up on Amazon... used mainly to stuff into wall holes. And now I learn it works for you.... I'm off to get some... and finish your delightful and sooo educational and ingenious book ;)

Hi Bradley! With four acres I'm sure you will be able to develop a most amazing small farm. I just takes time and yes, a certain amount of hard work. But it's also very satisfying and you meet so many wonderful, like-minded people along the way. I think of QuackaDoodle Farm as a micro-farm as we're on slightly than one acre but even so we produce a sizeable portion of our food. We aim for sixty percent and quite often I serve a meal that is 100% home grown - these are particularly satisfying in more ways than one!

It'll be interesting to hear how you go on raising quail. We have never tried them and in fact I have never had a quail egg even though I believe they are very nutritious. We did have guinea hens once, for a short time. I had been sent to the local farm auction specifically to pick up a few extra laying hens but, much like Jack in Jack and the Bean Stalk, I was waylaid by a wily old farm in the parking lot and I arrived home with eighteen guinea hens instead of the six laying hens I was tasked to buy They are bizarre and extremely narcissistic birds (probably just as well as the have that look that only a mother could love) and they love to parade back on forth admiring their reflection in any shining surface such as the windshield of a car! Our adventures with guinea hens were abruptly terminated by a weasel but the story lives on as a reminder why I am not allowed around livestock sales unsupervised. One last word, in favour of guinea hens, they are said to be a brilliant deterrent for ticks.

Hi Nancy! Glad you're enjoying my book. It was fun to write and even more fun to live the experiences (well, most of the time) that led to the writing of the book.

Copper mesh works to keep slugs out of the garden, yes, but they seem to be really savvy when it comes to finding a slight break in the copper 'fence' or any place where they can slither under the mesh without having to come in contact with it, so it does need to be carefully installed.

In my experience the ultimate 'silver bullet' for slugs is ducks. I also live close to a constantly replenished source of crushed clam shells, thanks to the local clam diggers who dump them at the end of a going-nowhere track. I like to hedge my bets with some of these sprinkled around particularly vulnerable seedlings. Diatomaceous earth works equally well I'm told but it's certainly not comparable price wise.

Hi. I really have small farm I think. 1/2a. With 1/3 at least is with buildings & trees. Next problem it floods occasionally, not into either houses jus barns up to 2/3 of the land. 3x in 40y has it been that severe.