Alex Heffron

Hi Tyler

I don't know a huge amount about market gardening but am currently learning. I don't know anything of John jeavons' work so can't comment on that precisely. But I have been spending time studying Jean-Martin Fortier's approach and that is described as bio intensive but isn't double dig. You dig in the beds to begin and from then on only lightly till and broadfork it. Like you to my mind double digging doesn't make sense from a soil fertility point of view (though of course I could be wrong, just my initial reaction having never really read into it). I too would like to trial Geoff Lawson's chicken tractor on steroids, to generate compost but then I will have the space to do so. Important in the approach Fortier takes is the use of cover crops and green manures as well.

I would consider contacting farmers direct, and have you thought about leasing land? It can be as cheap as £100/acre/yr.

Hello fellow Brits!

First post on permies, been using the forum for a few months now and thought it's time to get involved! Introducing ourselves:

My partner and I are currently planning to pursue a One Planet Development in West Wales (if you've not heard of them you can find out more here - http://www.oneplanetcouncil.org.uk). We're still in the early stages, and currently are looking for land to buy. We think we've found the right place, 10 acres just a few miles from the Lammas eco-village, but won't know until early Sept if our offer will be good enough - fingers crossed!

We're new to permaculture. My partner has spent the last couple of years reading about it. I'm newer to it, having become interested around 6 months ago and since then devouring as many books as possible on the subject! We spent some time on a few permacultured farms for a few days and since then I've been convinced how effective a system it can be. As I write this we're actually sitting on a train to Norwich, where we'll be commencing a two weeks PDC.

We're interested in all things gardening, food systems and security, ecology, agriculture and so on. The other side of things we're learning about at the moment is natural house building - for our OPD we're looking to build a straw bale and cob house - along the lines of the examples on this site - beingsomewhere.net . We completed a week course with Simon and Jasmine, where we learnt about natural house build design from a permaculture point of view, along with basic permaculture principles and techniques and took part in building their new house including stone wall building, basic carpentry, cob wall building, roof laying and so on.

Anyway this is just a post to say hello and introduce ourselves to the community. Echoing others, it would be great to develop a thriving online community for UK permies.