Steven Smallwood

Hello fellow farming people. Thank you for responding to my post and giving me thinking material as I get into actually doing permaculture. Here are some photos of what has been going on. Hope to get some more responses and ideas if any come to mind. So far we (my brother, my fiance, my dad, and my grandfather) have built a place to store hay and straw for donkeys and an overhang for them to take shelter in; brought in 2 truckloads of sweet potatoes; brought in four truckloads of mulch (mostly sticks and leaves, not many wood chips); gathered wood for a pretty big hugelkultur, made it, mulched it, and planted it with two kinds of mint (one found growing wild and another citrus one), lavender, rosemarry, and a flower I forget the name of; mulched the asian pear tree, dug out the creek quite a bit to match our first ideas of a layout for the area; and taken from material from the pond bottom to put around some trees and in the hugelkultur.

We started the hugelkultur before I read that it would be bad because of all the ground squirrels and gophers, so we went ahead and finished it as an experiment. The first hugelkultur is in a moist and shady area, right by the creek, but in the spot that gets the most sunlight. It seems like the gophers and ground squirrels take far less interest in the moist areas of the property. What do you think?

We are just getting into finding perennials to plant and making some orders for seeds. Our next huge step is going to be renting a backhoe for a few days to put in swales wherever we have the time to put them in.
Abandoning the hugelkultur for now at least until the gopher population is distracted with another plant (do you think there is a plant we can grow in great great quantities to pacify the gopher population?), we are thinking to make all of the swales into sunken beds. Is it better to make them sunken beds, or make them normal swales and put sunken beds between each swale? The temperature has been so nice this week. Highs below 80 all week.

Going to dinner. I will post again and reply to anything I missed tonight. Thanks again.

Rotton Log to add to pile for first hugelkultur

Eunhee (my fiance) by the unfinished hugel 1

Again by the hugel

Unfinished hugel another shot

Eunhee by hugel AGAIN! (unfinished).


One load of mulch for the hugel

Pictures of finished, mulched, and planted hugelkultur. Sorry, it's dark here.







Shed for donkey food and a shelter

Papa putting finishing touches on donkey feed shed/donkey shelter

Eunhee (my fiance) with papa's hat

Asian pear tree little fruits

Finished mulching the asian pear tree (haven't spread the mulch yet)

Digging soil from creek into hugel

Creek by hugel

This is my second time posting. Last time, I was not on the property I would be working with. Now, I am here for the summer, then leaving for a short break in August, and then coming back to live here.
I have taken pictures of the property to give a sense of what I have to this forum. I would love to hear suggestions after you read what I briefly have to say.

What is here:
1. A large pond with catfish, bullfrogs, and tons of weeds.
2. An active spring, possibly two active springs.
3. Huge boulders, the size of cars.
4. Sweet potatoes by the truckload, 10 dollars for a massive pile.
5. Dry, sandy, hard dirt.
6. 3 female donkeys with their babies, two of them male and one female.
7. Mulch or compost at $5 a yard. Takes about 30 minutes to drive to get it, an hour total, so the cost is kind of high considering gas.
8. 7 acres total of land.
9. A small bobcat machine.
10. A composting barrel.
11. Some wood, not a lot of wood.
12. General tools for most tasks.
The property is intensely grazed by donkeys on one end, the biggest end. I released the donkeys to the other end yesterday to stay there for a while. It's so dry here, so my grandpa has the donkeys living here to eat everything and prevent wildfire from coming on to this property.

Questions:
1. I have lots of sweet potatoes. I got one truckload for the donkeys to eat and another that I was thinking of composting. My friend told my I should compost it in place, just laying it flat and mulching over the top. Should I put these on top of hugelkulturs or inside?
2. What is the best use for sweet potatoes that you can think of?
3. The soil here is sandy and dry and hard. When I build a hugelkultur, can I use this soil as it is? Gather wood, pile it up, and put the soil into/onto it?
4. My grandpa made a garden patch. It's irrigates with hoses and labor intensive, and it's not doing well. What should I do with it?
5. There are HORDES of groundhogs and squirrels here. I am thinking once the property is holding water and abundant with vegetation, there will be plenty of food to share, and other species will control them. What should I do? What species pray on groundhogs? It seems they love the dry rock hard soil because it makes their tunnels uniform. Any advice is great.
6. I started to rake out weeds from the pond. I am thinking of using it with the sweet potatoes to make a nice compost. What do you think about removing greens from the pond?
7. How can I improve the soil, in general?
8. I am putting my life into this property. I want to change it all into producing land. I'm 23, no health problems, just back from living in a huge city for over 2 years. I would like to get fruit trees growing as soon as possible. I am thinking of planning out everywhere I want to dig swales, and piling wood everywhere I am going to want hugelkulturs, then renting equipment to move the earth in one or two days. What do you think?

Please take a look at the pictures here. Thanks for taking time to write your thoughts down, they are extremely valuable to me right now.

Pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/80529326@N07/

I said "It might be okay to fast, eating a lot of greens, for a month or two a year," but I should have just left out fast. To me, a fast can be any sustained calorie restriction. Thailand, wow. I've never been there, but on the wall in front of me I'm staring at pictures my fiance took while traveling in Thailand and Laos for 6 months. She loved it there... The only tropical climate I've ever been to is the Philippines. I had a great time though, for two weeks. I was not raw, then, so I took for granted what could have been my heaven. Where are you headed next? How long are you traveling?

EDIT: I don't know why there is some confusion, now pondering this... When you said "Personally, I would neither wish to fast for two months every year, nor would it be possible to live off only greens without embracing lots of fat due to their low calories content," I thought you meant fasting while eating greens was not possible. Now I read it again and think you were talking about two things: fasting and eating only greens. I get it now... And I was talking about one thing, a "greens only fast."

Yeah, I suppose I will need to eat some imported fruit. As far as the fasting goes, well, it is possible. I've myself done an extended green juice only fast. Greens themselves would provide even more than juice alone, though I could combine the two. A few people I know have done month long leafy green and vegetable juice fast, and there are many I have read about doing upwards of 90 day green juice only fasts. I remember when I was a child, my mom did a 60 day water only fast. You are right, it would be uncomfortable to be forced to do every year. Hey, I am in South Korea, where are you?

"Rustic," I'm happy to see a reply here. Thanks for taking the time.

My name is spelled Steven, and I am not that person you know. I have not been through your website enough to investigate whether you have a permaculture. Where do you live? I'm going through the site you posted. I think I have read some here before. I saw your questions to Geoff, and his brief answer. My climate is *going to be* growing zone 7a. I am looking to find out if there are people living on high fruit diets through not-so-harsh winters, without drying food. It might be okay to fast, eating a lot of greens, for a month or two a year. Maybe a way to schedule a serious fast into the calender. I'm looking for technical information, such as plants grown, what to grow together, etc. I know little.

Thank you, and nice to meet you.

Creating this post to see if there are any people out there who eat only raw vegan food, like the 80/10/10 diet, or another variation. Green smoothies, sprouts, nuts seeds, lots of fruit, big salads, etc. I am interested to know where you live, what kind of crops you grow, how you do in the winter, if you use greenhouses-- basically anything! I am not developing my property yet, but I will be beginning summer of 2012. Seems a slim chance, but please respond if you are raw!

Steven

I would like to see some pictures of these giant beds as well.

Steven

"Deep inside everyone of us is a call to the wild," he says broodingly. He then adds in many simple words: "Much of the impatience, discontent or violence around us is due to a lack of opportunity to reconnect with where we came from. For sanity and generosity of spirit, we should be able to witness nature at its unceasing, rejuvenating work."

What a great story. Thank you for posting this.

yukkuri_kame wrote:
These folks claim to be picking apples in Riverside from June through February.  Thinking of ordering some benchgrafts from them this year.  Inexpensive way to get a bunch of trees. 

http://www.kuffelcreek.com/apples.htm

I spent a few hours on this website yesterday and am thinking of buying apple trees from them. However, they suggest for people in the North to buy from Trees of Antiquity. Trees of antiquity are much more expensive, though, so I am not sure what to do.

H Ludi Tyler wrote:
The difficulty with that approach, I think, might be that you won't know what will grow until you start learning to garden.  It's taking me many years to learn what will grow here and how to grow it. I didn't learn it from a book.  Not to say books aren't useful and I'm sure Carol's book is great, everyone seems to love it.  But her growing conditions are very different from mine.   

I have a plan of what I want to grow, and I think my granfather will know what will grow, but now that I know there is another permaculture farm in Mariposa, I will try to see if I can learn from them.

Fred Morgan wrote:
It is generally easy to find out what grows well in your area. Just visit the local gardening clubs. Master gardeners will know what grows, nearly like weeds, and what doesn't.  And neighbors can tell you as well.

No reason to have to work too hard on the basics, you can experiment when you aren't starving.

Great ideas.. yes, I will grow first what grows like weeds, then expand to other things I want to experiment with.

kazron wrote:
learned about this at a pdc i went to in july:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horned_melon

grew in northeast missouri, maybe it can grow out by mariposa?  it stayed in their root cellar through december.  you don't need fruit to be attached to trees year-round, just be able to keep it in un-pasteurized.

Well, it says it will grow in California. I lived in Missouri for most of my life. I think it will grow in Mariposa-- plenty of sun and heat there. I love melons. My favorite melon is this one: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Korean_melon. They are as small as baseballs with thin yellow skin. The taste is so sweet and unoffensive in any way, I ate them every day all summer long. I proved to myself that I could never get tired of them. Because of those melons, I ordered quite a few seeds to try new melons. Melons have to be one of the best foods on our planet.

jacque greenleaf wrote:
Take a look at Eliot Coleman's Winter Harvest Handbook. In your climate, I think you could grow all your greens and quite a few veggies over the winter in a polytunnel. Given your diet preferences, with sufficient nuts and tree and berry fruit stored up, I think you really could grow just about all your annual food requirements in that climate zone.

It will take a few years to get there, though.

You might also want to read Carol Deppe's The Resilient Gardener, for her approach to deciding what to grow. Her choices for food staples will not be yours, but following her thought process will help you clarify your priorities. Get it from a library, and then decide whether it is worth it to you to buy it.

Also, see bountifulgardens.org. They are not real far from you, and offer a lot of practical advice as to what and how to be mostly food self-sufficient.

Since you are new at this, you will significantly truncate your learning curve by spending some of your cash on workshops. See http://www.growbiointensive.org/

Those resources will get you going on the gardening part of your project. But permaculture is much larger than gardening/farming. Start with Toby Hemenway's Gaia's Garden, which will get you going on the design aspects of your project.

You can do this.

"A passionate advocate for the revival of small-scale sustainable farming, Coleman provides a practical model for supplying fresh, locally grown produce during the winter season, even in climates where conventional wisdom says it “just can’t be done.”

Looking into this book, it seems like a good purchase. There's a kindle edition, so I will get it that way. Thanks for the two suggestions. bountifulgardens.org looks great as well and I will probably buy a batch of seeds from them. Gaia's Garden happens to be one of the books I own, and am still digesting it-- there is so much information. "You can do this:" thanks a lot, I hope I can. I do plan to do a garden when I get to the property, plant trees, and put up a greenhouse. You are right, I have almost no experience. I will be calling on the help of some others, mainly my brother who is a true gardener, also interested in learning permaculture and sustainable living, and my grandfather-- he has farmed and gardened his whole life.

Fred Morgan wrote:
A few things, learned the hard way. Go for a walk about, and see what is working for your neighbors. Not so much those who are growing large, monocrop, but those who have food growing for their own use. Especially watch them, how they work. Even if you disagree with their methods, there is a lot to learn, for example, if you see everyone using lime, you can assume you are going to have to deal with acid soil.

Also, older people may well have lots of ideas, and free plants, to share with you. And they have time, many of them, to show you what often is assumed in books. For example, did you know, if you have a long enough growing period, you can use the suckers from tomato plants, to start new tomato plants...

The book by Sepp Holtzer (if I spelled that right), is really good in explain you have to learn to work with nature, not against.

It isn't so much about technical knowledge, as about opening your eyes, and watching what is happening around you, and taking the time to learn, experiment.

The first book I read was Sepp Holzer's book. I got a lot of inspiration from hearing about his methods and his farm, but yeah, it did not seem like there were a lot of technical pointers. I am reading it again to try and solidify exactly how he does certain things. I would eventually like to have animals like he does, older breeds, and be able to grow as prolifically.. he is so inspiring. I will take your advice and Sepp's and be as observant as I can.

hubert cumberdale wrote:
send a private message to Glenn Kangiser, he lives in mariposa and has an amazing permaculture property.

fresh greens are no problem in the late fall, winter and spring, but summer is tough without irrigation. you also have to eat other greens. considering you lived in korea im assuming your familiar with sweet potato greens. they are a great summer green for the foothills. you can also rely on edible greens that grow in water sources. though water quality becomes an issue for me when eating water plants.

fruit is not a problem, these hills are full of fruit.

Okay! I am going to message him. Great news there is someone I can message on here who lives in Mariposa. They don't sell the sweet potato greens here, from what I have seen. Is that common in Korea, to eat sweet potato greens? I have bought every green I could find here, but never from sweet potatoes. "These hills are full of fruit." Great... Where do you live?

Leila Rich wrote:
Hi Steven,
I have about 100m square of plantable land. That's about 1080 square ft.  A workable amount of space if I utilise it well, but my tree choices are limited by space, more than climate.
Grass is pretty greedy stuff. Grass roots are generally shallow and compete with tree feeder-roots for water (lots and lots of water)  and nutrients.
Grass makes good mulch and compost food, but I don't want it growing at my place! I score grass clippings from the lawn guys when I need it.
I'll jump in on your question to John about blueberries...there is no way to change the ph permanently.
My place is dry, sandy, sunny and on the alkaline side. Blueberries would die or be utterly miserable!  Do you know you ph? Be warned, home tests are very unreliable.

You have so little space, wow. Hmm, feeder roots. So, smaller roots, short lived, in the top area of the soil. I did not know about those either. Makes sense though, like trees are picking up the leaves they drop as a meal. So interesting. Okay, well, with the blueberries, I hope I can find soil on the property that is acidic. I think there are trees around that will make some areas acidic. I actually do not even know that right now.

yukkuri_kame wrote:
Not sure how cold it gets where you are.  Is anyone growing avocados area?  If not, what about lemons, as they have similar temp requirements?

If it is warm enough to do avos, it is possible to have them ripening year-round.  Getting the right mix of species is key.  Haas has a very long season, but other varieties will be needed for the summer/fall months.  Further, avos store very well in the fridge prior to ripening.  They are a decent source of calories, fat & protein in a raw diet.

Late apples should store well through the winter.  Asian Pear should ripen quite late.  

Avocados. When I first gained interest in moving up to my property there, I looked into avocados. I think it may be too cold for avocados. Could someone else weigh in on this? I may just have to ask someone who lives there. If I could choose one tree to work well that probably will not, it would be avocados. I love avocados. They are $3.50 here, so I barely get to eat them. I do eat asian pears a lot, though, usually every day (they're everywhere right now). Ah, I'm hungry now.

Fred Morgan wrote:
Perhaps another bit of advice, go with what is the easiest, and learn to like eating it. Hunger makes a great appetite stimulant and it is better to have plenty of something you aren't crazy about, than nothing of something you love.

Add in the more difficult things, when you have plenty of calories.

I have been reading "The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times" by

Carol Deppe recently and I think she does a good job helping people think straight about supporting yourself. After all, before you learn to garden, you sort of need to know what to grow as well. It isn't exactly a permaculture book, but well worth reading in regards to what to focus on.

A case in point. I like potatoes, they don't like me, and they sure don't like growing in tropical lowlands. Total failure so far. Well, better to think, "why eat potatoes?" Chinese yams grow in our area wild (they have naturalized, all I have to do is go harvest them. Would you believe it took me a while before I started to do this? Also yuca is very good, so is lots of other things that taste very good, and serve the same purpose.

Regarding blueberries. Rather doubtful I will ever be able to grow them, but guava grows all over the place, and is an even better antioxidant than blueberries.

Just as you might find it a challenge to grow pineapples, coconuts, bananas, cacao (think chocolate), coffee, and many other tropical foods, I can't grow what you can grow easily, or most of you, like cauliflower, for example, or potatoes. Learn to live where you are, which means like what grows there, naturally.

It is tempting while browsing the internet to think of what I will be growing based on everything I see, but I do plan to eat as much as possible from what grows naturally in Mariposa. I imagined you would be able to grow most anything in the tropics. I guess the soil is just too warm for some plants? I think I would rather always have bananas, pineapples, coconuts, guavas, and other tropical fruits, than always have apples, peaches, persimmons, and other similar fruits. The tropical fruits are the best.. you're lucky.