I'm getting ready to do my
PDC (yay!) in July, reading
Ben Falk's Resilient Farm and Homestead. Some of the thinking part is really great--getting better thinking about your goals at the start of things, coordinating self and site rather than overreaching.
So, I had an impulse to post a
thread and seek input.
I've been actively focused on making improvements to site for 4 years now, and lived here 5 (did a bit of experimental growing the first year too).
My sectors (outside influences) (Too long, don't read?):
--housemates (varying levels of goofiness about permaculture/"eco-scaledness", all at least care about the planet)
--ownership/power structure is uneven: one landlord, the rest of us rent, but one of us is partnered with the landlord
--government: laws forbid open
compost piles and (I believe) graywater or blackwater systems (
poop and waste
water), but permit up to 6
chicken, selling of agricultural products, and
beekeeping and require all water that falls on the
land to be captured within the land--in other words, a strange mix of progressive and not
--neighbors fairly friendly, somewhat disposed to communal gathering and most have some kind of garden, but not sure my idea for putting a
trellis over the street will be met with enthusiasm or looks of terror. (It's a dead-end street, very quiet, and a private drive technically, so we could do whatever we wanted as long as trash trucks can still get under it, or else we'd have to roll our trash bins down to the corner)
--square footage of land is 2400 square feet, minus the house
--lots of shade in the back
yard (northeast side of house) where the growing space is about 25'x40': sugar maple, white pine,
--slight slope, some of it toward the house, a bit away; and now, a
berm in the back yard that mostly keeps water on the land but has a bit of a gap at one point (my lack of understanding at the time I built it)
--2 fruit
trees (paw paw) planted 3 1/2 years ago from saplings, 2 hazelnuts from saplings ditto, and then one paw paw planted one 1/2 years ago from more mature sapling
--landlord's friend has agreement to use of front garden (southwest side of house).
--landlord's family member when visiting has strong opinions and expressed criticism about the use of the space
--one house member wanting to have barbecue's and gatherings in back yard, and landlord to have it be a playspace for grandchildren
--lead in soil (between 450parts per million and 640ppm, depending where you test. Years of compost on top of it have perhaps mitigated this, and soil has not been retested in those areas.
I realize this list is getting really long, and maybe less is more.
My goals:
--to have fun
--sustainability (if I'm destroying tomorrow that's not fun today)
--to live by my values--ecologically, especially. have
carbon and water
footprint be less than or equal to my share of the pie of what's
sustainable. To produce no waste.
--locally, hyperlocally grown food
--to be involved in my food production and my output management
--to learn
--to leave the place more ecological than I found it and pass on what I've learned to the next person who lives here after me, whether that means after my lifetime or (seems more likely) after I move out to a place with more land-to-people ratio.
Also, I had a big (4')
hugel bed, in the back yard, badly made, too much
wood to dirt, and under the pine tree (kinda the only place it would fit, since I'd made a mini one over on the other side), and so it got too little rain and mainly served the function of housing squirrels rent free. This did not completely resolve the Somerville housing crisis. I did manage to save the comfreys' lives this way (they'd been dying, and I always thought it takes a nuclear weapon to kill a comfrey) with the elevation it provided giving them a little more life.
I can see
Sepp Holzer saying to Paul Wheaton, "Get out!" which would make a good theme for a horror movie, wouldn't it? but I am not Paul Wheaton, my goals aren't as clear as his--at any rate, even if I were that clear, I'd want to be making the best use of where I am that I can. Ideas welcome. Thanks, team!
