Natural Small Batch Cheesemaking A Year in an Off-Grid Kitchen Backyard Dairy Goats My website @NourishingPermaculture
A build too cool to miss:Mike's GreenhouseA great example:Joseph's Garden
All the soil info you'll ever need:
Redhawk's excellent soil-building series
Some places need to be wild
'Theoretically this level of creeping Orwellian dynamics should ramp up our awareness, but what happens instead is that each alert becomes less and less effective because we're incredibly stupid.' - Jerry Holkins
Iterations are fine, we don't have to be perfect
My 2nd Location:Florida HardinessZone:10 AHS:10 GDD:8500 Rainfall:2in/mth winter, 8in/mth summer, Soil:Sand pH8 Flat
S Bengi wrote:Focus on just 2.5 acres right around the house.
Herb garden, then vegetable garden, then fruit tree garden
D Nikolls wrote:Once you have a truck, a trailer for it is really great bang for your buck. One that can handle a small winch to drag things onto it it even better. I have used my dumping flatbed trailer to salvage mobile home frames and intact sheds, with just a comealong, hi-lift jack, and a big steel prybar.
Build firewood storage on skids and drag it somewhere else if you change your mind!
Fallon Wilson wrote:Hey Neighbour! As been stated start small and follow the zones. Start with Zone zero which is your house. Plant your veggie gardens right around the immediate vicinity of the house for easy access. Ive noticed the land here is rocky with a fine coat of topsoil. We're going with Hugulkultur and Ruth Stout methods for our beds. If you're logging your own wood you'll want an atv, small tractor or truck to haul it. We may have a person who could build your covered porch. Im sending you a purple moosage right away. :)
Eric Hanson wrote:Chantal,
What a beautiful patch of land!
So taking care of that much land without a tractor or atv or something similar will be a challenge. You mentioned that you want to be able to move logs. Have you considered a log arch? A log arch is a device that can slide over a log at it’s midpoint and then levered up and rolled rather easily by hand. You might consider a company called logrite.com that specializes in these devices. Also you might also consider a winch. There are hand operated ones (those will be slow and laborious), battery powered and gas powered. Obviously, the gas models will pull the heaviest loads and last the longest, but the battery ones are coming along well.
I wish you luck and would love to hear how your plans work out.
Eric
Trace Oswald wrote:My advice is to start small, cheap, and slow. Follow the zone method, and start right outside the door of your house. Maybe start a small herbs and greens garden right outside. I would start a small veggie garden for things you eat right now. Maybe make one or two or three fruit tree guilds. To get started, buying your fruit trees is fastest and easiest. Use natives that you can move from another part of your property if you can for support plants. Plant some pollinator plants from seed or from free cuttings. Put in a rock pile or two, and maybe a couple brush or wood piles to get some diversity near your fruit trees guilds. Set aside an hour or two each day of the weekend or whatever works with your schedule to clean up some trash. You may find that once you get started, you want to keep going. That's fine as long as you want to keep going, but don't try to finish it all in a big hurry. It takes time to build soil, get infrastructure in place, build outbuildings, establish water systems. Don't put undue pressure on yourself and try to remember to enjoy the process, not just batter yourself to reach a goal.
Some places need to be wild
M. Phelps wrote:you never know what you might find in the areas with garbage
i know some people who go old bottle hunting
the pick up truck will help with moving logs/firewood
have you seen any of the threads about hugelkultur?
i might make my first one this season....if i get around to it
maybe a rocket mass heater so you dont need to collect nearly as much firewood
over a hundred acres is a lot with no equipment.. starting closest to the home would be good
i would like to make a junk pole fence like they have been to protect mu garden
i have too many plans also....
Kate Downham wrote:Welcome to Permies : )
Wild blueberries! Sounds like you have a nice place there.
Everyone's going to have a different opinion about tools. We log for our own cooking wood/firewood supply and all we've used has been a chainsaw (with sharpener) and a garden cart.
For veggie garden placement, usually we'd try to get it as close to the house as possible. I have my herb garden right near our door, and our veggie gardens close by, further away I might have patches of things I plant once a season and don't need to tend to except for one harvest at the end.
If there's places that have protection from wind or that warm up more quickly in spring sometimes it's worth starting things there even if it is a bit further away, but gardens close to the house are more likely to get harvested often and get more attention than ones further away.
Chantal Post wrote:
D Nikolls wrote:Once you have a truck, a trailer for it is really great bang for your buck. One that can handle a small winch to drag things onto it it even better. I have used my dumping flatbed trailer to salvage mobile home frames and intact sheds, with just a comealong, hi-lift jack, and a big steel prybar.
Build firewood storage on skids and drag it somewhere else if you change your mind!
Love the idea of the storage on skids. I think with the winds we have here, things have to be ankered to the ground. I have had pallets flying around. It's not a nice sight. I research the trailer with the winch. Great idea. Cheers.
'Theoretically this level of creeping Orwellian dynamics should ramp up our awareness, but what happens instead is that each alert becomes less and less effective because we're incredibly stupid.' - Jerry Holkins
A build too cool to miss:Mike's GreenhouseA great example:Joseph's Garden
All the soil info you'll ever need:
Redhawk's excellent soil-building series
Some places need to be wild
Eric Hanson wrote:Chantal,
If it were me I would plant a little bit more than potatoes and onions, but your instincts are spot on. Do keep it simple the first year lest you get you get overwhelmed by weeding and other garden maintenance tasks. Just as a thought, consider some leafy greens (Spinach, kale, Romain Lettuce, etc.) and tomatoes. I selected these two crops simply because you can get a more varied diet, add more nutrients to your diet, and for tomatoes especially, add a warm season crop.
Your second bed need not be huge, as you can get plenty of greens from a small space and tomatoes can be prolific producers. HOWEVER, if you do add a second, small bed, consider how it will work into your overall garden scheme. Would you want to expand your bed next year? What crops might you put there? How would cropping rotation look like? Etc.
BTW, looks like you have very sandy soil. Do/how will you amend the soil. In particular I am thinking about getting nitrogen and carbon in the soil. Just curious.
Good Luck and stay safe,
Eric
Some places need to be wild