Paige Wyatt

Yeah, we only cut the dead branches from our trees in part to help them be more healthy and also to keep the dead branches from falling on our heads!

PS. I don't see where to update my profile for where I live etc. The profile page doesn't have much in it besides password and email and a bunch of preferences.

Thank you Miles for the links and Jay thank you as well. I want to comment on the ferel cats. These are rescued ferel cats that have been fixed and need homes. A vet friend does this instead of putting them to sleep. People bring them in and he fixes them for free and then finds homes for them. We like having kitties around because they are sweet and they keep the rat population down which can be quite a nuisance where we live. It seems to me that if the cats already exist, needs homes and do provide some critter control that it isn't against the permie way?

Thank you Dale for the info. I'm glad I can use oak because I have plenty of it. I'll search around for some poplar and some other woods that are better for the top of the bed. We have pine but apparently that's not good to use?

Has anyone used Oak? I'm guessing it might not be the best but we have a ton of oak and can trim the dead wood and fairly easily get started with hugelkulture. If oak doesn't work at all it's going to take a while to find the right wood!

Any suggestions would be awesome!!!

I just discovered hugelkultur this past week and am EXTREMLEY excited! My question is gophers. I haven't seen very much mention of what to do about gophers. We have a really bad problem with it on our 5 acre piece of earth. I'm hoping to add more ferrel kitties in the future as the two I have around my yurt have at least eradicated the tail slapping rats that used to live her....uhg! I really don't like living with rats! Yuk! Do I still need to put aviary wire under the mounds? I'm imagining that I do but I'm not sure how far to bring it up the sides of the mounds if I do. And would the gophers just climb up the outside of the mound. Hmmmm.....any experience/info would be helpful!

Thanks!

Hi folks!

I'm new to permaculture and am getting really excited about the possibilities. I have a small slope in front of the yurt I live in that gets the best sun near my dwelling. It is over run with poison oak. I'm struggling with what to do with it. I did manage to have a fireman who is immune to poison oak chainsaw it down to the ground. I don't like decimating the landscape however I really want to grow my food in that little patch of sun so I can have a lighter footprint on the rest of the planet. I have been toying with the idea of laying down cardboard and layering leaves and mulch and then topsoil to just choke it out. Problem with this idea is that it's got a bit of a slope to it and without a retaining wall it will all just slide down hill. Soooo....I need to get at least some sort of retaining wall in at the bottom of the slope to catch what wants to come down hill. I discovered hugelkultur last night and wondered if I could put a hugelkulture mound at the bottom to make a retaining wall of sorts and then do the cardboard layering trick.

I tried to put my goats on the project but they wanted to eat everything but the poison oak and they gave their people poison oak so I abandoned the goat mower idea.

Any words of wisdom or ideas for me would be so greatly appreciated!!!