Honora Holmes introduction

I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm excited to find these forums. Gardening is my passion. I love it. I've been gardening for 20 years this year and my hopes and dreams all involve gardens. I was introduced to permaculture 4 or 5 years ago via Gaia's Garden, Sepp Holzer's youtube videos (I got his new book for Christmas) and Fukuoka. I have an acre of hilly land in North Georgia with my husband, 6 kids, 2 goats, 4 cats, many chickens and ducks and one lone loud guinea hen. I always thought I wanted a lot of land. But at this point what I'm really hoping for is to take my hilly acre of poor Georgia clay and turn it into a mini food paradise. I like the challenge of taking something crappy and turning it into something beautiful.

I have experimented with hugelkultur beds and swales. My front yard is one steep hill and I'm working on terracing it by hand and putting in hugelkultur beds. It's awful soil and next to nothing besides dandelions and sorrel grows in it. But we've planted a lot of fruit trees and berry bushes and I'm slowing working on transforming it. It's been amazing to watch the change in areas that were basically bare dirt and are now lush and green. I realized today reading Sepp's new book that I'm not putting my swales in at the wrong angle though and I need to adjust things. :/ I battle deer so I'm having to fence in part of my gardens as well. I'm also using pvc pipe frames like mini hoop houses over raised beds. I put plastic on them in the winter to grow more food and then deer netting in the summer to keep out deer, cats, ducks and chickens. Right now animal pests are one of my biggest problems. I'm trying to figure out how to handle the terraces/swales on the front hill. I need to plant things that most animals will leave alone. Last year I started off with potatoes and lots of greens.

Our back 1/5 of an acre is wooded. But we back up to a highway that is clearing a swathe of land and that will include that 1/5 of an acre. I plan to try and terrace it and put in a food forest and maybe fence ducks in there. We really enjoy our ducks and they are much better foragers than our chickens have been.

Anyway, I'm glad to meet everyone and look forward to learning and talking to other people who share my interests!

Welcome Honora! Nice to hear about all your critters and projects--I look forward to more!

Hello Honora, nice to have you on board You seem to have your plans pretty well worked out and I'm sure that your children and animals enjoy the paradise that you're creating.

Thanks for welcome, Jocelyn and Alison!

Welcome Honora.

It is nice to see somebody that is not looking for that 'perfect' site to work with.

Anybody could follow Adam through the Garden of Eden, duh. To achieve success on a mediocre site is a true accomplishment. I think the rewards would be more greatly appreciated.

Besides, who amongst us can afford property in the perfect locale? It wouldn't really be ours for the first few decades, while the mortgage lender held the paper.

Thanks, John. I know it's all too easy to think that if I only had X, Y and Z it'd solve my problems. I'm hoping making the most of what we have will provide that real sense of accomplishment like you said.

Having an abundance of money can solve many problems.
However, it creates its own problem: because of it, many have forgotten how to solve our own problems!