Mike's random permaculture projects...

I've got bits and pieces all over the forums but not a "here is what I'm doing" thread.

As of now (Spring 2014) I live in a flat in town and work long (like really long) hours and weekend in a school. School holidays we decamp to family and mess around with gardens.

Kent - My parent's place. Old country house, broken up into smaller lots. My folks have

the old formal garden

a wildflower meadow with a few fruit trees

A random patch of woodland... essentiallly scrub left to grow up over about 4 years

A working veggie garden - originally raised beds being transitioned gradually to permie principals

A herb garden

6 acres of pasture/parkland with huge established lime trees.

The "Triangle" - a sliver of land connecting the field to the gardens. Basically a working area for firewood processing, with self-seeded willow coppice.

Short term goals for this land -

get enough firewood put away for the next two winters. We got behind on this in part due to having a baby.

Continue transitioning the veggie garden area to deep mulched polyculture.

Medium Term Goals

Get a well setup, bee friendly apiary running - ultimately I'd like around 10 hives.

Get our local grazier to rotationally graze the big field - reintroduce species to the field, increase grass and sheep yeild and improve soil quality

Control problem species in the field - thistles, "lords and ladies", nettles. Bad prior grazing practices have got this out of balance.

Dramatically expand growing area and perennial plant mixes.

Set up a chicken system, based on compost feeding.

I plant to add to this thread periodically with photos, thoughts, observations etc... as and when I remember. Some to follow this evening if I get my phone charged up.

Can't wait for photos.

For other North American readers, "lime trees" are what we call lindens/basswoods, not the citrus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilia

Funny Brits.

Well, the apiary took a step closer this week with a swarm of bees caught. I managed to get stung and didn't die, so things are looking promising. I'm trying to work out how to promote myself locally as a bee rescue service.

The first two photos are of my experimental wood chip/poly culture patch. As well as fruit trees we have currant bushes, globe artichoke, comfrey, strawberries, walking onions and rhubarb. This spring everything is finally spreading out and filling in. The strawberries have loads of flowers everything is growing vigorously. This is the area I intend to expand considerably.

The final photo is of a bay of our woodshed. Each bay is 8ft by 8ft and stacked around 8ft tall. A single bay should be enough to keep us going for a whole winter. The shed is built with 3 bays, the idea being that we can get far enough ahead that we are always burning dry wood. In previous years we have always stacked the split logs carefully, but this was so time consuming and my parents were just not very good at, so stacks collapsed. This year I have added side panels and we have been just throwing logs in loose - it will probably be a little slower to dry but is much more time efficient for us. The planks were cut freehand with a chainsaw from some wind blown pines.

Looks good; I'm looking forward to seeing your progress.