I am an organizer for our local
sustainable skills meetup group, I do wish there was someone there who could help me. I give more advice there than I get. I have a good friend who is a professor at the local university, but he is so busy with his work and his own
land that I haven't gotten much help from him. Having been a busy person myself, I avoid bugging busy people. I have gotten in touch with one of his students who has a
Permaculture Design Certificate, but he also is quite busy. The thing of it is, these people and others like them have worked hard for their knowledge and I hesitate to demand that they give me their time and input for free. I have asked once, then twice seasons later, and then I dropped it.
I have read extensively on
Permaculture, biodynamics, natural farming etc. and I believe wholeheartedly that it is the way to go. In practice however, there are some things that continue to stump me.
I have about 3 acres, some field, some orchard, a tiny bit of woods. It is mostly flat-ish and there is good rainfall and decent soil.
The biggest obstacles I face are aggressive invasive allelopathic weeds and shortage of money. In the past our farm has been the home to a successful CSA program which used conventional organic practices, but running it takes more time than I have with twin babies, so the money coming in is minimal. Wothout the income, I have to figure out how much capital to put into fencing, animals, seeds,
trees, mulch and other inputs. Some things can be found for free, and I do try.
I have asked a few questions on these forums and have gotten some good advice, but to understand what I have and what I am facing, it seems like being here is the best way.
There are a lot of people with PDCs, how many places are there that could afford "a lot" of money to both pay a designer and put systems into place. Even
Sepp Holzer advocates using an excavator to set up a system. THis stuff costs money. All the answers to my weed issues involve either a lot of outside inputs or more work than I can do by myself. One of the flaws in the theories, it seems to me, is that initial start up labor and costs seem to be passed off too easily.
One thing I am doing is holding 3 week long workshops this summer on plant identification/edible and useful plants/Permaculture and natural farming in practice. I will be working with some wwoofers and others t implement some ideas, but really I can't afford to keep even wwoofers all summer. I do still have some room for attendees if anone is interested.
I wonder if there is someone out there who wants practical
experience putting a PDA into action, who would like to solve real world problems by applying the theories. I could afford something, even if it is just room and board and a beach/hiking vacation. We have location in spades for that.
I can give more specifics about what I need if you have specific questions.