Steve MacGregor

I’m looking for names of experienced permaculture designers in Northern NM. The project will be to design a 10 acre farm in Abiquiú.

I’m looking for experienced practitioners only.

Local folks with established networks preferred.

Thanks!

We have a 10 month old baby boy who spends lots of time with me in the garden on a site that is not near our home. Now that the Georgia summer heat and humidity is on its way, I need to keep the mosquitoes off of him and give him a place to safely play that he can't escape from. I was thinking of getting some sort of tent, but thought it would be prudent to see what other people are doing or have tried.

You may want to look toward the permaculture folks in Jacksonville, Florida. They have a thriving group there, worlds more than what we have here in Atlanta. I'm not sure they are all on Permies, but it wouldn't surprise me. http://www.meetup.com/PermacultureJax/

Has any one ever done deep composting in your garden? What I mean by this is the ideal we have is to dig a hole 18 to 24 inches deep put In the stuff we want to compost and cover with dirt.We think this will improve the nutrients in the soil as well as bring the minerals from deeper down up to the surface and also be a place to add the new worms into the garden bed.

This is exactly what I do, but not in the pathways. I compost directly in the beds where I want the nutrients and bacterial love, either in-between plantings in poor soil or to create new beds. Avocados and egg shells are more trouble than they are worth, but everything else decomposes nicely, including fish scraps. If I don't get 10"-12" of dirt over the top (wood chips don't count) the critters have take-out. The results have always exceeded my expectations.

In the 6'-7' hugels I put in 13 months ago I seem to have lost about a quarter to a third of the height. In places where the logs were very tightly stacked, less.

Shaz Jameson wrote:there is a thing about have big open windows into the living room looking out onto the road. It seems people don't mind, to us as expats it's a bit weird.

We lived there for a number of years when I was a teenager, and also thought it was strange behavior. One of the neighbors told us that only people with something to hide obscured their windows. It is a cultural thing that you may want to take into account before planting anything big.

Thanks for the tip on the Key overalls. I ordered the wrong size in Dickies, so I replaced them with Key brand overalls based on the mentions on this thread. I'm VERY happy with them. Having worn dickies for the past couple of years, I really do like these a lot better. My phone actually fits in the front pocket, and the Epi pens fit perfectly on the side. The only thing they are missing is dirt, grease, and a little sawdust in the pockets!

Three years ago I found out I was allergic to a whole bunch of things, including corn and corn derivatives. The deodorant I was using at the time was giving me anaphylactic reactions, so I stopped using it (of course!). A friend told me about using zinc oxide. For a while I was able to use a tube of zinc oxide I got from from the local pharmacy, but after a while my sensitivity to the allergens increased and I started reacting to the ingredients in the pharmacy zinc oxide. This gave me the push to start making it myself. Zinc oxide powder (http://www.amazon.com/Zinc-Oxide-Powder-Quality-Resealable/dp/B003IGOL8U), olive oil, and either bee's wax or shea butter is all you need. Shea butter is what I used because that's what I had on hand that I knew wasn't going to try and kill me. I tried it with some essential oils, but reacted to that, so I mixed up a plain batch. Just a dab under the arms after a shower. It lasts the better part of a week if you don't scrub it off every day with soap. I use it at most once per week. You can find recipes online for diaper rash cream, zinc oxide or sun block. Use them to figure out the basic ratios, omit all the irrelevant junk, and make something simple and pure.