Patrik Schumann

Ulla that all looks great!  At 1¼" over two-three stretches we had just enough rain to fill the small tanks (only 1200gals) but not enough to wet the soil deep.  Seeded more carrot, beet, onions, chickpea, asparagus, fava, but nothing up yet.  On the other side mustard flowering, more nettle, some fava & peas but no sign of the other undercrops.  Just reached seed & water disappointment again & turned to find Eric Toensmeier, his new online resource on perennial edible leaf trees + his old book on perennial vegetables.  Peaches & apple flowered, grapes & mulberry leafing, figs budding, apricots resting.  Enjoying last of the guavas & first of the mustard gomen with Ethiopian berebere.  Getting ready for some wet & green relief on my chainsaw vacation in NY, developing individual tree precision forestry from GIS/ LIDAR to release thinning & selection harvest & shifting forest composition for better future across real acreage, though family won't be able to keep up the watering & growing efforts much here in San Diego.  

I'm working some rural lands seasonally, but we're still stuck living in big city a few more years.  My decades-long search for our own eco-place on the land/ in an eco-community includes within biking distance of a train station.   We have our bikepacking setups, started exploring the rapidly growing rail-trails movement, & now I'm looking at rail-pedalling pack-frames for intact abandoned lines.  

In New Mexico my longtime base there are only two active stops in view, in my immediate family's southern California none really, in my birth family's southern New York one or two, in my wife's homeland Chile it's complicated & unreliable now due to past major retreat & planned modest revival of single main line capital to middle south, in my grandmother's homeland Spain world-class high-speed network big cities to several intermediate & numerous slow rural routes while most urbanised country in EU & countryside largely abandoned, in my homeland Germany around hometown the greenest city in EU great integration bus-trolley-commuter-distance trains but noticeable & remarkable deterioration in service not to mention high cost of living.  

Probably best to dream of astronomical Switzerland while realising affordable Spain.  Big picture, long term, anything else I can see from my vantage point seems literally out of reach, unworkable, precarious to me.  

We recently returned from a EURail Pass trip through Spain, France, Switzerland, & Germany.  It was a revelation.

Even though I grew up in England hopping trains, frequently with bike, took an InterRail Pass summer through EU end of high school, crossed Pakistan & China by train, jumped trains both in China & Cuba, + trained in Alaska.  In USA we have most often  taken the train to visit relatives from Newark airport, NJ, to Port Jervis, NY, gateway to upper Delaware river & southern Catskill uplands.  

High speed trains between big cities, slower chugs & getting dropped off between stations in empty quarters/ rewilding regions & switched to bus to get around an accident, the seamless frequent comfortable Swiss Rail network extended by bus to every mountain village.  We even camped one night at the edge of wilderness with electric trains frequently & quietly gliding by within 100' (Rhätische Bahn!).  Had numerous routes, options & flexibility, + internet; covered a lot of ground & saw byways; met various interesting people.  

My only regret was for last minute temporary reasons we couldn't follow through with the integral bikepacking component of that family trip.  

Hello, Hope you're well.  Checking in.  Got our overgrown fallow, excess biomass, full raintanks in hand in time to seed winter crops (alliums, greens, pulses).  For lack of rain to start it all up I had to tap into our dry season water storage (12,000 gals).  Now have lots of nettle, mustard, arugula, but alliums & pulses didn't come up well.  Good harvest of guava.  Everything else just hanging on, even gophers desperate in collapsing tunnels.  Half way through this wet season I've used ½ of next dry season water.  The dry soil all round & at depth is wicking it away.  Starting to think of abandoning this season's attempt to go rain-water only + just mulching & fallowing.  Brought forward plans to finish whole house gray-water (just enough, intermittent filling but relentless batching & even poorer quality than conveyed-water) to keep Subsistence Hedge/ Edible Plantscape alive.  What's up with y'all?

South Florida is happening!  Especially for year-round growing, tropicals/ rare fruit, sidewalk gleaning.  Take your people to the Fruit & Spice Park, Fairchild Gardens, growers markets, maybe one day Grimal Grove to see possibilities.  Some local farms & CSAs have training apprenticeships.  Growing skills more important than own land.  If you're measuring the yard, something might be within immediate reach.  0.039ac according to Jeavons bio-intensive + Duhon crop-mix is enough to provide complete annual nutrition for one adult.  See also:

Robin Greenfield
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX4kq4QfYRA

Pete Kanaris: Jim K
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m63xqA7kXHU&pp=ygUUZ3JlZW4gZHJlYW1zIGZsb3JpZGE%3D

Happy Growing!

Enviable situation.  I used to farm peoples' back yards.  You're better off than having to remove ornamental plantscape &  landscape fabric or plastic, wait out degradation of chemicals.  Swales to distribute roof runoff, light-moderate compost till, winter-spring cover &/or crops, moderate mulch, starts in spring, then heavy mulch to supress weeds/ hold moisture/ buffer temps/ feed microbes among anything that volunteers/ comes up/ you've planted.  Legumes over manure.  Garlic!

Hey Dave, Heard that shout.  Did you find what you were looking for?  I had so many wonderful & formative experiences in that area over a fairly short time with intermittent revisits & further discoveries.  It inspired & propelled me onward to great lengths & distant places, holding onto a long deep root which always feels like pulling home when I return, & happening upon any memory or reminder releases a nostalgic cascade.  I sure wish I'd been able to organise a group of people to buy that mountain & a half ranch at the north end of the Black Range, that sweet homestead property in Ballinger Canyon, or even the jailhouse place in Glenwood.  Good hunting to you!

The Desert of Tabernas in Almeria, Spain, has capers, growing out of rock walls along the dry river bed, large & green when everything else is dry & brown.

Someone gave me a copy decades ago, saying it seemed much like work I had already been pursuing.  I've loved it, carried it around the world, occasionally delving into parts, kind of like the Tao Te Ching.  

I've encountered rather more practical info involving real life trade-offs in various other formats: experienced folks, demonstration projects, comparative assessments, trial & error, disparate fields & oblique situations.  

But I wouldn't let go of it & I revere Mollison for having brought it all together in one conceptual framework & guidebook, even more so for getting the second generation, of Permaculture doers, going whose specific works I was most exposed to.  

Maybe wait for one to come along as a gift & reward for having gotten there along your own path.  

You can eat a seed library - I myself did & would start there!  

I've not really tried, yet, to grow all our food, but I've been steadily over many years been approaching being able to provide complete family nutrition if we should need or choose it.  

We have been on inner-city lots offering only 4500sf of growspace, first continental high desert then coastal sub-tropics, with poor soil, poor & expensive water, insufficient rain + increasing drought/ intermittent inundation, unreliable & volatile growing season/ deep cold winter at first homestead & heavy pest pressure/ bone dry long summer at the other.  The rainy seasons are opposite, & the palette of plants quite different.  

My strategy has been earthworks & rainwater catchment, soil building, perennials first, edible natives/ Subsistence Hedge, adapted fruit/ nut/ berry with annuals under/ among/ between Edible Plantscape, collecting old rare & breeding new specific, some nursery & starts propagation/ cooperative/ CSA operations.  

The first homestead has been in others' care for a decade-long fallow while we developed the second, which we've just returned to find fallow/ prematurely auto-irrigated/ over-grown after the apprentice disappeared during our sabbatical/ worldschooling/ pilgrimage year, when we were exploring our third startup in yet another climate plus possibilities overseas.  

We're happy to be back to our beds & our foods, especially as in our absence we've reached self-sufficiency in biomass, returned to mostly full raintanks (whole year whole site+), once re-wetted have volunteer crops coming up, & are ready to go rainwater only!   The dream is seasonal nomadism, though since leaving first homestead we've not yet found nor been able to foster mutually-supportive community of like-minded folks!