C Murphy

My goal with chickens eventually is to have a run that is parallel to my garden fence - along the exterior. Our grass constantly invades the garden and I am hoping that a chicken patrol will help keep it down. The run will open up to the garden at a few points so they can be let in to tidy up when necessary.

All at once, and late - october/Nov when everything else has winded down. But I mainly harvest my apples for cider.

If you're specifically looking for natural building techniques, you might consider light straw clay. You could probably get away with a 6inch thick wall, especially in your relatively mild climate. It can be much thinner than strawbale, requires less straw, but more clay (which you will probably be able to find locally!).

The book 'Essential Light Straw Clay Construction' will give you all you need to get started. 'This Cob House' has some videos on YouTube to help you understand the basic concept.

That's awesome! My goal was 5gals of blackberry this year. I personally freeze mine more than dry, and I always make a couple quarts of lacto fermented blackberries in a 2% brine. So good on pancakes in the dead of winter. This year I'm adding some to our cider, too. It's a shame that they don't get picked more!

I do.. she's wonderful!

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:I need to serve some bees an eviction notice. They moved into the eaves of my house and can't stay there. But I can't bear to poison them. Perhaps I could issue a relocation notice? Is there a particular uniform to wear and a ritual I might observe?

I recently listened to an episode of the Agroforestry Podcast (Forest Honey from Horizontal Hives) and the interviewee described a great technique for collecting honey bees that have swarmed. May help them relocate!

Hear hear. I'm not interested in any of that stuff, either. Every new tech fad is just a way to part you with your money, or your information!

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:C Murphy, we live in interesting times. Your location and ability to grow and ship fresh veg may be of national importance very soon. We have the resilience and the will to push past the current nonsense. My 2c.

Thanks, I happen to agree with you! Almost all our apples are currently shipped in from Washington. No reason they can't be grown right here. We also have a burgeoning craft cider movement that is pretty exciting!

Ulla Bisgaard wrote:While we don’t have as much room as you do, we do have a food forest plus a raised bed garden. The food forest is 3300 square feet, where I am growing mediterranean and sub, tropical fruits and vegetables.
In the food forest I have a wide variety of trees, shrubs and ground cover. The top layer is a pecan tree, cashew tree, prickly pear and palm trees, some being bananas. Eventually my Barbados cherry will also get up there. The middle layer is plum trees, guava, lemons, elderberries,  tangerines and peaches. The shrub layer is Natal plums, tree collards, hibiscus, roses, rock roses, borage, coffee, cardamom, tea, raspberries, blackberries, pineapples, artichoke and currants. The bottom layer has strawberries, and a mix of herbs, onions, cassava, rams, wild garlic, bayleave,  clover medicinal flowers. For vines I grow black pepper, sweet potatoes, melons and passion fruit.
It has taken us almost 9 years to get to this point. We starts with some raised beds to grow annual and to start perennials in. Once the perennials out grew the raised beds, they were moved to the food forest. As the years passed, we added more and more raised beds, so we now have 20 of them. Out of those 5 are full of perennial vegetables and heat sensitive herbs and plants.
Have you thought about making the food forest into a tourist attraction and educational spot? I give tours several times a year, teaching people about permaculture, food production, pest control and wildlife management. I am sure that schools would love to visit as well.
As for cash crops for restaurants I would recommend mushrooms, herbs, dandelion leaves, dead nettle, and edible flowers. I know several people who do that mix, and earns a lot that way.
Last, I would recommend you do your planning on paper first. Did you take the permaculture design course?
I didn’t and have regretted it. Instead I used a program called garden planner 2, which works great, for our small homestead.

The paper plan is definitely happening! My fiancée is about to get her horticulture red seal so very good at making garden plans. She may get a PDC as well.

As for the tours and such, I would consider it, but farms and permie stuff isn't that out of the ordinary on our little island (there is a very public Food Forest run by the local conservation society). We are really focused more on growing food. Your property sounds great!

Anne Miller wrote:We do small wildlife food plots and a large sunflower garden.

This is what we use:

https://permies.com/t/120293/garden-scale-drill-seeder#970283

https://permies.com/t/59219/permaculture/Seed-Drill-Broadcast

https://permies.com/t/108805/seeder-Ruth-Stout-method

Cool, thanks!