My 1/8 acre

Here are some of the misses and hits that have been going down on my postage stamp...

Somebody's Christmas tree blew into the yard about the time I learned about hugelkultur and herb spirals so of course I stuck it in the ground and made a hugel-herb-spiral out of it...

Since I was also learning about a-frames and swales, clearly the spiral needed to be attached to a hugel-swale somehow...

and the hugel-swale+spiral is planted and doubles as my first ever garden...

Then this started happening...

The neighbor kids seem to prefer to hang out in the budding jungle...

Looks good Jesse, well done

time for more hugelkultur and paddocks and chickens...

Somewhere in there, a RMH started happening. You can read about that here: my RMH thread

That pretty well catches things up to real time. This season will see lots of trees, berries, companion plants, and soil building...

Awesome work. Quick questions-Can you please explain the Willow jar? Is it for bees?

What is under the trampoline?

Aaron, the plan is to brew a batch of homemade rooting hormone something like this random blog post about making rooting hormone. I did it last year for some of my transplants and it seemed to help.

Jeanine, funny only a permie would ask such a thing. I've been mentally grinding on that one for over a year now. MUST MAKE USE OF THE BIG HOLE. Currently I'm retooling that area. Making the hole deeper then a bunch of gravel will be going in. I'm hoping to create a type of air well effect and channel any h20 to an even deeper hole yet to be dug.

Aaron Festa wrote:Quick questions-Can you please explain the Willow jar?

now it looks like this:

WOW Jesse that is a permaculture explosion ! How much time does this cover from start to now?

Love the trampoline idea. The kids don't have so far to fall that way.

The very first pics were taken on Dec 21. 2012. You know the end of the world and all. May of 2013 the first growies went in. I suppose this year is officially the second season.

Jessie thanks for the education on the willow jars.

Today I tried my hand at cutting the bottoms off of mason jars in an effort to create homemade cloches. The results weren't as good as the Green Power Science guy's...



...but good enough for my purposes in the garden. I'll test run them tomorrow.

Also, since I was "DIYing", I went ahead and whipped up some soil cubes too.

Jesse Biggs wrote:Today I tried my hand at cutting the bottoms off of mason jars in an effort to create homemade cloches

When I was a chef, we sometimes relaxed with sharp, hot, dangerous activities
Our maitre'd used to 'sabre' champaign bottles, but that's a bit ridiculous.
I mean, what if you smash it and all the champaign....
So I don't know about taking the tops off wine bottles, but in the bad old days, I was pretty good at taking the bottoms off.
The 'chef on a quiet night' way:
Take a bottle, jar or whatever.
A) Pour boiling water into the glass vessel-only 1/2 inch or so.
B) Make the kitchenhand do something else and take over the sink. Add an inch or so of cold water
Dunk A) into B) by about 1/2 inch
Drop a heavy knife-sharpening steel down the neck/from the top into the sink
The bottom glass bottom should drop out cleanly.

Um... Yes... I will be trying that tonight!

Ha! that reminds me of the old town drunk growing up. He used to put a little water in one of his empties, open hand pop it on the top and the bottom would blow out! Small town entertainment!

It's been a while. A lot has happened including the arrival of our first eggs...

I've been working on some drawings so I can convey my vision to friends and family who fear I've completely "lost it":

there are 7 of these...

I hope to be here by the end of next season:

Maybe that'll help folks make more sense when they go in the back and see this mess...

Oh, and the cover crops are coming on in the chicken paddocks...

Looking great Jesse !

That is awesome and inspiring. Keep the photos coming. What part of the country are you in?

this was awesome to see the progress from start to finish! When I showed this thread to my wife she said "See, they're doing it with kids."

John if you look at the text block in the first "drawing" posted. You'll see some info on my location.

wow, Jesse, I'm really impressed and inspired! You know, when your kids get sick of the trampoline you could use that space as a pond/water storage, put fish in there...

Also what program did you use for your drawings?

Another question I was examining your chicken coop, (I'm in the process of designing the elusive perfect chicken coop) yours looks really good, could you explain the design for me?

Thanks Betty. The drawings were mostly done in Adobe Illustrator. I used some hand sketches scanned in and sketchup to get proportions close to accurate, but mixed them all together in Illustrator.

To date I only have one "coop". It was built almost 100% from extra materials I had laying around. Well that's an exaggeration. I had purchased some metal roofing with the intent of doing some kind of covered paddock pavilions and was pleased to find a source at $0.50 per sq ft. The rest is pallets, scrap wood, old hardware, and left over fence stain so I get less flack from the HOA (fingers crossed).

Basically, I have a metal roof at a 45 degree angle so the chickens can't sit on it, with an even higher flat roof over the whole. The nesting boxes are under the shed roof, and the roosts are up high under the flat roof. I'm sure that's confusing. It's 2 pieces... high flat roof with no walls only posts and roosts underneath... tucked under that and facing the roosts, angled roof with nesting boxes underneath. Hope that helps.

Yesterday a good friend found a young injured sage grouse in his yard. We decided to put it in one of my unused paddocks to see if some protection and water would be enough for it to get back up to speed.

While we were getting things set up, a morning dove that's been hanging around decided to show our little buddy how to use the watering dish.

Fluffy butts pointed skyward!

Time to feed our natural yeast start. It's a special treat for the hens when there's extra. They clean the bowl with extreme prejudice then turn it into the best eggs around. Systems feeding systems feeding systems!

Great project and great job
congratulations from Finland

You are doing some amazing work there. Looks great

It's been a day or two since I posted here. By way of an update, I'm still plugging away... now deep into the 3rd season...

I am so impressed! I love how you've planned it out and then implemented it. Congrats on your successes so far!