Matthew Swainston

+ Follow
since Jan 21, 2015
Merit badge: bb list bbv list
Biography
I'm a Father, a Husband, a Student, a Craftsman, a Farmer, a Mercenary in the SCA/EMP, I love every thing I do with a passion

Well, I am a lot of things
~ Father of 3 (2 girls, 1 boy)
~ Husband
~ Student (if I can't learn something new )
~ Farmer (or at least that’s what most people say, I have goats, pigs, chickens, a vary large veggie garden, and small orchard)
~ Wood worker
~ Armourer (yes, real armour)
~ SCA/EMP Heavy Combat Mercenary
~ History buff (almost anything before 1900)
~ Ukulele player (not great, but I can play most songs if you give me the tabs)

I enjoy camping, hiking, fishing, playing with my kids/dogs, fighting, and figuring out projects. My idea of a great day is being able to sit down and just work on a project all day, make progress and figure it out, but not finish it.

I know lots of people say this, but I think I was born in the wrong century.
For More
Home, Washington -Zone 8b- PNW
Apples and Likes
Apples
Total received
In last 30 days
0
Forums and Threads

Recent posts by Matthew Swainston

I'm not sure if this is the right spot for this question or not but here it goes.
I am going to be doing several largish infrastructure projects on my property in the next 2 years, I would like to be able to have workshops connected to these projects at my place (if nothing else then to spread the "gospel of permaculture").
I don't want this to just be a ploy for free labor, I want people to actually come away with some useful skills and a better understanding of what permaculture is.

Now here is my question (or group of questions)
~ How should I lay out the day/weekends
~ How much time should be devoted to each part (Intro, how and why, tools, techniques, hands on, etc...)
~ How much written material (handouts) should I provide, and what kinds
~ Should I approach it with a larger global concept (we are doing this to save the environment and make the world and better place and hears how) or the more Simplified approach (I want to do this the save money and you can too)
9 years ago
Sorry i didn't indicate it on the map north is the top of the map. The land with the swamp is currently owned by a bank, and is undeveloped.

on the right of my drive way is me vegetable garden at the top, then the orchard (~15 different fruit trees + berry bushes and other things), then a winter pasture for my pigs at the bottom.
on the left of my drive is my septic field/chicken pastures (my county doesn't count them as livestock for some reason so i don't have to waist the space of the septic field) at the top, but the bottom past that flattens out for about 20 feet before the road. I could divert my runoff in to there and put in a pond or huggle bed there.

I could also divert some of the run off into the property I'm managing into a pond to irrigate
9 years ago
I like the idea of the "swoosh" beds but sadly would not be able to do it because most of the area (more then a few feet off the road) is other peoples properties. There is quite a bit of run of, the majority of it comes off of my property and next door neighbors property.

I'm planing on putting in several ditches across my drive way to mitigate some of the run off and send it in to my orchard, currently I have one ditch running diagonally across the end of my drive way linking into a ditch running along side the road feeding all the run off into at swamp at the end of the road away from my property, but if you want to get technical I own the property that the road leading to the county road is on (sort makes a tail for my odd kite shaped property) I cant do much with it thats why i was originally thinking huggle beds or something like that and I could plant things that would still help me like bee forage and/or native berries.
9 years ago
I live on a small farm roughly 2.5 acres in a small neighbor hood, being the nice guy that I am (and they only one with anything close to heavy equipment) I maintain our 2 roads (only a few hundred feet total), I have a small tractor and a box scraper but just wondering if there was some better equipment that I should be looking for, also what do you guys think of running short huggle beds down the sides of the the roads.
9 years ago