Amy Hutton

Thanks for all the great advice! I love how the permaculture community is so generous about sharing good ideas.

Unfortunately, I'm not only broke, but haven't a square inch of land to my name (bad news for perennial planting). Which is, of course, why I'm on here. Lonely landed gentlemen, where you at?

Fortunately, the land I'm leasing (4 ac, 1 yr crop share lease) has a pretty good perennial ecosystem already in place and just needs a little livestock therapy. No need to replace the native grassland with edible species as long as I've got ruminants on my team Someday, when I've got a longer term land situation, I'll build another food forest, but for now I'll focus on what I'm good at and sell some meat!

Francis - I like your paddock design and will be excited to hear what works best! I've experimented with mostly annual crops for livestock and had a really lovely time with it. It's awesome to delegate harvesting, tilling, and mulching to creatures who are thrilled to do it! This year I'm lacking the irrigation necessary to do the annuals I've had luck with in the past, so I'm feeding local waste products and fodder. Not ideal, but I'm just a one woman show and have to hold a job to fund my business start up costs. What are your local predators? Mine give me hell (and an excess of corpses), and I've had a heck of a time sorting out the best fencing options. Do you have any good tricks? I recently saw a Ted Talk about this kid in Africa who invented some moving blinking, lights to stave off lions. I'm considering experimenting with it if my 10,000V and welded wire prove inadequate again.


Matthew - I appreciate that you're assuming I have the foggiest clue how to post a picture! Me and computers are definitely not on such intimate terms for amazing feats of jpg attachment.
My hogs and poultry are penned together and follow a week after the goats, to utilize the fresh regrowth. The rabbits are in tractors and I pretty much put them where ever needs a mow. Some breeds of hog are less aggressive rooters than others, so I'd imagine you could rotate them on chicken forage without much damage if you moved them fast enough.

Happy Monday!

The Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute (Jerome Osentowski) is in Basalt. I don't believe there's a growing permies community, but I could be wrong!

Glad someone's on the same page, and thanks for the well wishes Matthew

Francis, I'm so relieved to hear you don't have a beard and would love to talk farming. I wish I had access to venison, but I currently don't know how to hunt anything undomesticated, which is a terribly sad state to be in! I've been working on my foraging skills, but yikes it's hard to learn from a book. I definitely ate some poisonous vetch last summer. So sticking mostly with stuff I grow myself until I find me a mentor.

Yeah, my farm IS very animal-heavy. I endured a rather rough year of toil on a veggie farm, and decided it wasn't for me. I love rotating happy animals on delicious pasture though. What's your chicken paddock system?

~Amy

Hello!

This is my first year running a farm of my own in a small mountain town of Colorado, raising goats, hogs, poultry, bunnies and worms. Just looking for someone to have great conversations and share my passion with!

I also teach sustainable agriculture at the community college and vet tech in the winter months. I have a pack of border collies (just 2, but some days it feels more like 6!) and a green mustang filly, so I spend A LOT of time running and hiking and riding and training and playing. A reformed vegan, I slaughter my own livestock and eat paleo, but I'm not masochistic - I'll always make an exception for good tacos! I'm very attracted to intellect, creativity, and a fast murph/marathon/crit Not particularly 420 friendly, much prefer hard-working doers to crazy-bearded dreamers.

Look forward to meeting some of you!

~Amy

Not sure if this would be up your ally, but I'm looking for an intern or two. We're in Carbondale Colorado and are developing the sustainable agriculture program at an educational farm (a branch of Aspen Center for Environmental Studies). It's mostly demonstrational and small scale, and we have a variety of livestock rotating on pasture, a forest garden, hoop house, and community garden. We can't offer pay or housing this year (I'm really hopeful we will next year), so are probably looking for local students, but if you can afford it, it's a chance to learn everything we've learned farming and also develop any projects to explore your own interests. We both have our PDCs, I completed teacher training, and Caitlin used to work at CRIMPI, so there's lots of permaculture going on! Here's the link:

http://www.aspennature.org/work-aces/positions-available-now/rbr-sustainable-agriculture-apprenticeship

Best of luck!

~Amy

Hello Josh!

Joe couldn't have said it better! Midwest Permaculture was absolutely the best educational experience I have ever had! Anyone can teach you the principles of permaculture design, but at MWP they are truly walking the walk and create an engaging and inspiring learning environment. After my 2008 course, I went back for the teacher's training last fall, and was again blown away by the quality of the course and wonderful connections I made with the instructors and other students. In the PDC we toured local sites practicing permaculture around Stelle and also in Chicago, worked on some projects ourselves, and learned about many examples in the classroom, so I think you'd gain lots of applicable knowledge to take back to Wisconsin.

I actually took the first third of a PDC taught by a group in Colorado before taking the MWP course, and the difference was astronomical. I could have easily read a few books and watched a few youtube videos for all that I took from the Colorado PDC. I don't remember anything about the other students and very little about the instructors. MWP's course, on the other hand, gave me the confidence and conviction I needed to change careers and become a farmer! Hope that was helpful, and best of luck with your PDC!

~Amy