i am new to the site and just wanted to say hello.  i live in southcentral kansas.  got started learning about permaculture from a link to the free online course larry korn? does.  have watched quite a few of the vids but got bored and started exploring the net for more info.  finally found paul, thank goodness, and this sight.  i grew up in rural montana.  love montana mountains.  my husband is from louisiana.  he got to montana via the air force.  we have lived together both places and have found a very happy medium here in kansas.  we don't currently have any land of our own but are looking for some close to where we are now.  i have been learning and experimenting with different gardenning techniques as much as i can living in town with regulations.  unfortunately anything not contained in a defined garden must be kept under 12 inches.  i have a few health issues that keep me from working hard at it everyday but do what i can when i can.  when we got here the only plants in the yard were this terrible grass  that invades everything, a couple of old maples in the front yard, a very old seeming katulpa tree with no worms, and flowers for show.  the ground was very hard packed.  my great accomplishment in the 4 years we have been here is fixing the soil.  i started out not knowing what the heck i was doing, hauling alot out and hauling alot of compost in from the town compost pile.  no more of that.  i know better now.  this year i am starting a small hugelbed, continuing work or maybe finishing a small greenhouse pond idea thingie, and hopefully producing food in the garden.  my goal where i am now is to make the back yard produce such that our roommate can get himself food whenever he wants.  he is 65 and mentally disabled.  he is learning about growing food and giggles like a 5 year old whenever he gets to help and gets a job welldone when he has done good.  he says he wants to stay at least part time, when we move to wherever we finally do, so i want to make it easier for him to be able to eat when we are not here.  it is a crazy situation.  so back to my accomplishment with the soil.  using raised beds and such we went from 2 inches of standing water the first year after the july rains, with completely dry dirt just 4-6 inches down, to no standing water last year and no dryness underground.  it is finally soaking in.  we also went from no worms to worms in every shovelful even if i am digging a new piece up.  i hope to someday make it up to check out wheaton labs and hopefully a chance to meet paul. we try to make it to montana at least once a year to visit family and camp in the mountains. would love to do a pdc there someday.  more immediately i would love to meet anyone closer to us and maybe help them out to get some experience and hands on knowledge closer to my own climate zone.

Welcome! I'm up in Ohio, so probably too far away. But, that's pretty awesome that you got your soil to reverse from the prices of desertification, as I heard it described by Alan Savory.

thanks.  i didn't know what i was doing or how quickly it would change.  i started with pretty decent dirt, it was just so compacted.  we love to fish and use worms and crawlers mostly so every time we got home from a trip i would dump all the leftovers into a garden bed or compost pile.  i probably did way more work digging and hauling stuff around then i needed to, and felt like i was getting nowhere.  i use my hands to dig alot so i really can see and feel the soil.  this year i finally feel like i am getting somewhere.  the moment i realized how much my ground has changed really made all the mess i think my back yard is very much worth it.

Yeah, we all do a certain amount of heavy hauling until we figure out an easier method. I worked for two years trying to design a complicated compost bin before I realized a stupidly simple design.

i am doing alot more chop and drop.  i will also start putting what i would normally put in a compost pile from the kitchen in the hugle garden once it starts getting established this spring.  last year i felt i was doing alot of work and getting nowhere, but this year i am starting to see some of the results of all my hard work.  it is so awesome