Heidi Beckwith

Moving to the US is an impossibility to me, and it has nothing to do with money, that would not be an issue. I just have always had the feeling that if I ever go to that continent I will die there.

You do realize that if you stay in Europe you will also die there?  

I'm not sure if you're including it or not Matt but please don't forget Urban applications and social permaculture. I live and work in an urban area and have taught public school there for 7 years. I love the idea of a workbook which facilitates choice and context specific learning. There are some great exercises like mapping your purchases and transportation which would be especially relevant. And remember that if you expect the kids to understand something and you guide them there everyone is amazed to see what they can grasp. Also, I think you might get better recption in the mainstream if you consciously plan for tie-ins to more traditional curriculum and skills. Especially reading, writing and math skills as those seem to be most lacking in relevancy to real life, at least in the inner city. And that means a lack of motivation for students. I can see a workbook like this being used in schools to create cross curricular units.

I once went to Mark Shepard's place and he uses a double bottom plow to make swales. If you can borrow a tractor, and have your on-contour stakes already in, the swale making doesn't need to take so long or be expensive. I would personally do the swale plowing in the fall, reseed the flop over of soil left by the plow, and watch it grow in the winter rains. Mark gets about 40 inches of rain a year, and plows about every 5 yards or so if I remember right. He also uses keyline plowing, which has a book written about it. Another strategy that he uses is a subsoiler. It opens up the soil so that when rain hits the soil the rain goes deeper, instead of sliding off of hardpan.

For all of your urbanites and surburbanites, I have a question. Approximately what percentage of your diet do you get from your urban/suburban lot? How big is the lot? And how many people does it feed? (I decided not to make the question about calories, I think that might be too difficult to calculate.)

I'm trying to see how much of my diet I can get from my own yard, and how much is realistic. Of course long term plantings sometimes produce a lot more calories per acre than annuals, and they take a long time to produce at peak rates, so an average analysis is difficult, but I would like to grow over 50% of my food and am wondering how viable this is.

Thanks!

I think nuts are a great resource. I have walnut trees, grow sunflowers, and am planning on planting hazelnuts. All of these have high oil content. However, I would recommend hazelnuts due to the fact that they are perennial and produce quickly in comparison with walnuts.

Here's another oil press that I don't think has been linked to. http://www.easyoilpress.com/ Don't know if it's any good.

Thank you Mr. Jeffries for your reply. You did not state in either of your posts whether or not you send people somewhere else to learn, but I hope you do. Learning is an important part of any profession. The people that come to you are obviously impressed with your skills, so hopefully they have a chance to learn them somewhere.

Thank you Mr. Klaus for pointing out that I did not make myself clear about which costs I was describing. Of course education needs to cost money and/or time and labor. In my experience people don't value what they don't pay for. I was trying to speak to the costs of lost productivity, danger, and loss of crops, as some of the farmers had mentioned. Anyone being trained in any field will make mistakes, normally huge mistakes, and it will cost the educator, but there are still people who do it. Here are a few. I don't know of their quality, I have only personally visited one of these examples, but hopefully these are resources that can be passed on to the people who want to learn.

http://www.pieranch.org/
http://www.forestag.com/‎
http://www.polyfacefarms.com/‎
http://www.communitycrops.org/farm/

Dear Farmers,
I stumbled upon this thread because the title interested me and was shocked by some of your responses. As a teacher I know that when I take student teachers they will make huge mistakes that cost me the teacher a lot. But I still believe in spreading good teaching regardless of the cost; Like Rufus, I believe that the future needs it.

I understand that feeding bellies is different than molding minds. I understand that the risk could be greater. I am also incredibly grateful that there are many organizations and farms out there that are are willing to mold the next generation of farmers regardless of the cost. It might be more useful to point people to others who are more willing to be helpful and have a larger vision for the future instead of writing against those who don't pay attention and cause hardship.

I currently live in Spain (for a few more months) but I own a home in Omaha which I'm slowly adding some permaculture touches to. So far I have swales, fruit trees, garden areas, water catchments, and I plan to add some nut trees, get my guilds built up, get chickens, and in ground water catchments within the next few years.

If you haven't heard of Gus Van Roenn, he does some design work in the area, and also there is a permaculture garden in North Omaha in the Gifford Park neighborhood (which also has its own CSA).

Also there's the Transition group of Omaha (Look for them on facebook). They hold meetings once a month to talk about solutions to the oil crisis. (At least that was my impression of the group from one visit and some emails).

Oh, and there's a local food movement growing, the magazine Edible Omaha is a great resource in learning about that. At Metro and Iowa Western they have classes in small farming, and even wanted to have a PDC.

Hope that was of some help.

I'd love to keep in touch as Omaha is my home, and I plan on being back soon.

I think those sound good, although I would mix in a bit of raspberry with them. I haven't had any suckering with my black jewel raspberries, (but I've only had them for 2 years, so I can't say that this will always be the case) many people complain that raspberries sucker. With raspberries you would also have a few spines to keep animals in. My black jewels are in quite a bit of shade and produce wonderfully. Elderberries are quite thick, so I think they would make excellent fences, and in my experience they attract a lot of birds. I don't have any idea about hazelnuts as I don't have them yet. I would also try to get a nitrogen fixing plant to start off your other plants, although they generally need full sun, so that might be tough in your situation.

I don't have any experience with northern prickly pears, but being in zone 5, I am very interested if there are any that are edible, so keep us posted.

I have heard of another application of the plants though and that is their ability to absorb excrement. I read it in the book "El loro en el limonero"(A Parrot In The Pepper Tree) by Chris Stewart. On page 86 he talks about how people use it in southern Spain as a kind of outhouse. Does anyone have any experience with this? It seems slightly dangerous .

Heidi