My wife and I are moving to Washington State (specifically the Olympic Penninsula) in a few weeks, and we're really interested in doing some sort of homesteading that uses permaculture as its foundation. We both have some growing experience, but a lot of it is at a hobbyist and theoretical level (ex - gardening in our backyard and theory via classes). Although, to be fair, I think we do a good job with the space that we have.
We'd be really grateful to hear any of your stories about things that you wish you knew when you were first starting. Also, if you have any recommendations for resources that would help a newbie that would be sorely welcome too.
For now, we're looking to keep it simple and just start with vegetables and hopefully mushrooms. Eventually, though I'd love to start raising goats and chickens.
As for our background, I have an engineering background with computers and software and some decent carpentry experience (mostly functional tables, shelving, and framing but no structures yet). I'm actually working on software right now to help farms sell directly to restaurants and other customers so that could come in handy eventually. My wife has a soil science background mostly related to composting, and she has a pretty excellent theoretical knowledge (and some practical experience) with beyond-organic growing methodologies from a series of classes that she took at a local farm in San Diego. We have about 100k saved up so we figure that should give us a good headstart, but it would amazing to hear from the people who've been there already.
