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Anne Miller wrote:Teaching folks how to add organic matter to their soils. Organic matter could be compost, leaves, coffee grounds, etc.
Teaching how to use mulch to retain moisture.
Learning to grow mushrooms.
Learning about native plants and drought resistant plants.
Maybe teaching rain harvesting ...
Anne Miller wrote:
Greening the dessert at Dead Sea Valley with Geoff Lawton:
Permaculture Garden survive volcanic eruption:
Anne Miller wrote:Are you looking to work with a classroom of folks face to face or conduct just something an individual can do online by themselves?
I have occasionally signed up for the individual type classes though at the time my computer was not compatible with their platform so I never do that.
Doing something on Zoom or a similar platform might be doable.
Robert Ray wrote:Are you thinking like a Zoom or Facebook live class? Perhaps someone here had experience had Covid online teaching experience and could offer what platform they used. Perhaps there is a homeschooling app or platform that could be used. I do agree with tone and no pre-planned humor. Things happen live so unforeseen humor is or can be appreciated.
Jack Edmondson wrote:I have never used an altimeter and don't know the sensitivity of one. Here is what I would recommend. find a countour line that intersects or touches a known point on the property. Perhaps it is a road or a fenceline. Use the intersection of the contour line and the known spot as your starting point. Using whatever technology you chose (A frame, bunyip line, laser level, altimeter...) mark this spot as ZERO. Decide the interval you want. +1 foot, 20 meters of elevation, etc... Measure out horizontally left and right of your zero point, staking as you go. Now you have a zero line contour flagged on the ground. From your zero line it is simply a matter of measuring a set amount of drop or gain from this line to begin establishing one's next contour. Work horizontally on level (contour) left and right and you have a second and a third.
Of course you can also just pick any random spot on the property and use this technique. Once you have a zero line established at some point you will be able to find correlation with a mapped intersection of a contour line. Then you can calibrate by measuring drop or rise to your zero line. and add or subtract that number from the mapped elevation.
Dave de Basque wrote:I think contour maps and staking things out on the ground serve different purposes and it's best to let each do its work independently.
Contour maps are good for laying things out, making a design (at your desk) of a property you may not know very well, or understanding more clearly what's going on at and around a property you are familiar with. And you can pencil out some ideas that later inform how you look at the property when you visit. Being super-precise is not usually what you're after, though I absolutely love 0.25m contour lines, I find it gives me an almost spiritual connection with the land.
Of course, garbage in, garbage out, you need really good survey/LIDAR data to generate 1-foot contours. You don't say where in Spain you are, but you may have really good aerial survey data done by your Autonomous Community. Here in the Basque Country we have 1-meter-resolution LIDAR surveys of the whole country, every inch. That's great to work with and you can generate fairly accurate 0.25m contour lines from that. Or very accurate 1m contours. I don't know if you use map-making software at all, QGIS for instance is free but the learning curve can be steep.
Staking things out on the ground I would only do in the spots where I intend to build something dead level -- a swale, a house pad, a body of water, a section of path or road... I would not waste time trying to get any of this to line up with a line on the map unless there was a good reason to. The map is much less accurate than what you do on the ground.
A nice low-tech tool for running out contours on the ground is the water level, I think the Australians call it a Bunyan level. You need a couple of identical 1.5- or 2-m sticks, a few meters of transparent tubing, water or tea, some zip ties, a ruler, a permanent marker, and a companion. Run each end of the tubing along a stick and zip tie it in place firmly but without blocking off flow inside the tube, don't put a zip tie right at the bottom. You want a length of tubing between the sticks that corresponds to how you are going to flag out the contour line - 1m, 2m, 3m, 5m..., your choice depending on the complexity of the terrain and your needs. Stand the sticks-with-tube up next to each other on a level surface. Fill the tube with water (or tea for visibility) up to about eye level on the sticks. Mark the water level (which will of course be identical) with the marker on each end of the tube. So now you can run out a contour line on the land. Set a stick on the ground and put a flag (thin metal stick with a colo(u)red flag on the end) in right there. Your companion goes out with the other stick (without spilling any water of course), and finds the place where the water goes exactly up to the marked line when she sets the stick on the ground like you. That is level. She puts a flag in the ground to mark the spot, and then you take your stick ahead of her to mark the next spot. And so on until you're done.
The water level also works to stake out something you're going to build with a certain fall, say a drainage ditch that you want to lose -1.5m evelation over 100m run. So every 2 meters it will lose 3 cm. In that case you make three marks on each side of the tube, one where the water is level, and the other two 1.5 cm higher and lower than that on the tube (so exactly 3 cm between the top and bottom marks). So you set the first stick and flag it, companion moves with the other stick out 2m and slightly down to the place where the water reaches the top mark. And for the first person the water level will have descended to the bottom mark. That's the 3cm-difference you want. Flag and then repeat as in the other example.
I love stuff like that, but of course you can be "modern" and get a laser level or a transit level or whatever you want, ha, ha...
Does any of this help?