Kansas City Area

T Sousley,

Glad you found the group. Welcome!

All,

I'm hosting a rocket mass heater workshop that will be taught by Jim Schalles of Tallgrass Vernacular.

Here's the Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/833818113413038/

Three days of hands on experience and fun at Hebron Acres in Kearney, Missouri, June 10-12. Free on-site camping. Read the Facebook event for more details.

Hello Kc area Permies People! This will be our first year permaculturing pasture and would love some input on doing so. What are some good fruit and legume trees that do really good in this area? Have you noticed some good companion planting setups both garden and food forest? Do you have any favorite meat or egg chickens? Where can I get a good deal on a wind turbine! And if anyone is pruning their fruit trees or berry bushes would you mind if I try to root the cuttings? Thank you and may the permaculture be with you..........Always.

Allen,
Sorry for the delay in response.

Legume trees: false indigo, redbud

Planting guilds: comfrey is a good one to add to nearly any application (some exceptions). I plant comfrey and flowers under several species of fruit trees and out on swales.

Trees I'm planting on swales: hazelnut, pecan, false indigo, redbud, black chokeberry, elderberry (some others I can't remember at the moment).
I also toss out a couple variety of low-growing peas on the swale berms to serve as a partial ground cover and to fix nitrogen.

We just started our chicken (egg) operation and ordered 13 barred Plymouth Rock chickens and 13 buff Orpington chickens from Cackle Hatchery in Lebanon, Mo. We were pleased with our first order from them. As of today, we're almost four weeks into the process, so we don't expect eggs any sooner than late Aug., early Sept. Meat birds we're going to order next year will be the Cornish Cross.

Do you mind disclosing your general location?

Also, be sure to find us on Facebook, too. We have a Kansas City homesteaders group there: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1707573296152799/

We have decided to sell one of our acreages in Holt, Missouri. It is 10 acres.

The acreage has a good deal of the initial phase of the food forest design installed. The pasture has been laying fallow -- this will be the third summer. It's producing well to support livestock and the earthworm count has dramatically increased. There are apple trees, grape vines, gobs of comfrey, lots of mulberry, three large swales two installed with dozens of fruit and nut trees on them along with supporting nitrogen fixers. There is also the start of an additional polyculture orchard with a couple of dozen fruit trees. The swales are harvesting water very nicely. Neighbors on either side of the property are very friendly and helpful. The property sits just off the Holt exit on I-35 so it's very easy to get into Kearney, Liberty or KC very quickly. Though there is a newly installed hightunnel on the property, that will likely be related to our current homestead. I have a complete permaculture design document describing the property. I can email that to anyone who is interested. There is municipal water and electric and gas at the paved street frontage. It lays very nicely for someone wanting to build a homestead.

This is a great opportunity for someone to get a jump start on a new place with some things already installed. We're wanting to sell to reduce our chores a bit. Having two acreages about 9 miles apart is probably best for someone who is not also working full time. So, with some sadness, we've decided to sell this 10-acre little slice of goodness. I'd prefer to sell it to a permie who knows the value of the work I've already done there. So, I'm only going to post it here in permies.com and in our FB group. If it doesn't sell after a while, I'll widen the listing.

The Google Earth image attached shows the layout of the land. I have topo map available for someone who is making serious inquiry.

Hope to hear from you all.

Hi Allen,

Welcome to the group. I recommend Cornish Cross for Meat chickens. At this time I really don't believe there is a great cross-over breed that converts feed efficiently and isn't too tough by the time you cook and eat it. We incubate/ hatch chicks each year and have kept a number of roosters for the freezer each batch. I have 6 now that were born in February and they will still only dress out to be 3.5 lbs each if i'm lucky. I feed them twice a day and the free range through out the day. The cornish cross i tractor for 9 to 10 weeks before butchering.

In regards to the wind turbine. I went deep down that rabbit hole and actually bought one about a year and half ago. I was preparing to set it up when i finally ran legitimate numbers and realized that it would never pay for itself. The cost of the turbine is expensive, then a good tower is equally costly. The turbine should be quite high above any structure or surrounding trees to capture prevailing winds or it will be even less efficient and take longer to payback. The other issue with having a turbine to low is turbulent air which causes premature wear on the unit. Then you have to determine which voltage of turbine you want to run. If you stick with 12V you have to pay a ton for heavy gauge wire to transfer the power effectively to your controller setup and battery bank. If you go with a higher voltage unit all the components are more expensive including your inverters, plus you will have to think about setting up your battery bank a bit differently. All in all i love the concept of wind power, but the situation must be just right for it to really make sense.

Check out my website at http://midwesthomesteadsolutions.com and shoot my any questions you may have via my contact page.

Hi all.

I'm relatively new in the area, and have a place in Emporia.

We have 120 acres out north of Americus that we're looking at building an off-grid home on in the next couple of years. Trying hard to find ways to lower the cost of going off-grid though, and have found a few small projects that will certainly help.

So far, we have a half dozen chickens, and when we do build, we have some designs for some very cool wind turbines that we can build ourselves for power, since wind seems to be rather in abundance here.

I'd love to connect with any other off-grid type people in the Emporia area, if there are any.

Thanks everyone!

Low-Budget Off-Grid is my blog to record my experiences.

i am way far down in south central kansas just of i35 about 17 miles from the oklahoma state line.  having a hard time down here finding any permies or even anyone that has ever heard the word permaculture.  also having a hard time finding any local information such as native plants and where to find most of the plants and or seeds that everyone talks about.  i had sent a message to the kaw permaculture facebook page about 3 weeks ago and have heard nothing back from them.  the local county extension may be a big help to big agro monoculture growing people but as much as they tried to help they just didn't have the information i was looking for.  and all the nurserys i have checkout so far are more into chemically controlled ornate garden stuff.
any help would surely be appreciated.

lisa goodspeed wrote:also having a hard time finding any local information such as native plants and where to find most of the plants and or seeds that everyone talks about.  i had sent a message to the kaw permaculture facebook page about 3 weeks ago and have heard nothing back from them.  the local county extension may be a big help to big agro monoculture growing people but as much as they tried to help they just didn't have the information i was looking for.  and all the nurserys i have checkout so far are more into chemically controlled ornate garden stuff.
any help would surely be appreciated.

My family has property is in central MO, and my parents have found a lot of native things at the Missouri Wildflowers Nursery. It's in Jefferson City, but I'm pretty sure they ship. Very likely not a low-cost option for getting a lot of things established, but it might give you some ideas.

Yet another thread I don't know how I missed...
Hi! I'm about 130 miles south of Kansas City, closer to Springfield. I do make it up to KC sometimes, I have family there, and would LOVE to connect with any Permie types in the area, especially nearer to me in the south. I don't do facebook, so I'm not on that group. I get PM here and it goes to my email, so I do notice it.

I bought 4 acres of land in a small town, and am working on getting a house there, and my infrastructures in. Been a rocky road with codes issues, and tractor theft, and a lot of chaos. I wrote two big threads on what I'm doing Gardens in My Mind: the land  and Maison du Bricolage: the house  and would love to hear comments on my plans, I have never taken a PDC, and may have missed some factors that would matter in this climate (I moved here from the desert, the climate shock/education is still ongoing!)
Good to meet you all!
Pearl

As before, welcome Pearl. I'll try to remember that you don't use FB and send you an instant message when we plan to get together.

Okay, all you Missouri permies, weigh in on Pearl's plan she posted in the Gardens in My Mind thread she linked to.

Belated welcome Pearl, I've read your housing thread before, although it may have been a year. In KC myself, and hoping one day to convince my wife to move down towards the Springfield area... haven't taken a PDC, and never been a gardener, but looking to meet others into permaculture and more eco sustainable ways of living, especially around the KC/Western MO area. So far, I've only met Dan Grubbs and Daryl Pierce, and talked on the phone with Beau... but, I'd really like to see if we can't get folks helping each other with projects and networking/fellowshipping more. My dream at this point is to one day get some land down your way somewhere on a hill, and build an wofati/Oehler-style house before retirement. Hopefully while my kids are still at home, and have something established to leave them, along with a food forest and productive animal systems!

Leif

Hey Leif! Good to meet you!
If you are thinking about moving this way, consider the things I put in this post Pearl's post in Roadtrip to the Ozarks thread about the weather patterns and soil issues. That said, I love it here :) Quite a bit of climate and culture shock since I came out of the desert, but it's been worth it, and I'm still glad I moved, even with all the rain this spring!

Hey there Pearl, I have enjoyed that thread before... I’ve read a fair bit on here while lurking the last 2 years or so... I’m not dead set on Ozarks area, but that is my strongest contender currently. I DO want to stay in Missouri if at all possible since I like the laws here better than most other states. I think if we could find something remote enough but not TOO remote! near KC, the wife would be happiest, but not too sure where else to look that is affordable and yet has low property tax/no restrictions.

I just did some reading on bonap.org and wildflowersearch.org and it appears that the Kansas City area might be one of the best places in the United States to find all of the lost annual seed crops of the Eastern Agricultural Complex together in one place. These include little barley (Hordeum pusillum), erect knotweed (Polygonum erectum), sumpweed (Iva annua), maygrass (Phalaris caroliniana), and pitseed goosefoot (Chenopodium berlandieri). Additionally, wild, annual sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) and woolly beans (Strophostyles helvola) should be present in the general area of Kansas City. Based on what information is available on wildflower search, these annual plants should be common growing as weeds in disturbed areas including open storm ditches, vacant lots, roadsides, railroads, and disturbed river plains. For more information, see my thread on the Eastern Agricultural Complex crops. https://permies.com/t/120420/Eastern-Agricultural-Complex-EAC#970932