Hannah Rishel

Wow!  Thank you!!

Lana, Your post of 4 months ago included:   "We're thinking about buying a tiny house, hopefully next year, if we can swing it financially, and hopefully find a piece of land someone wouldn't mind sharing with us for some rent while we look around for our own land (I would love to connect with other permies in the area!)."    Have you found somewhere to land yet in the Pacific Northwest?  If not---I live one county south of Lewis County, in Cowlitz County.   A neighbor has 96 acres he wants to share, and is working to create an ecovillage.  I sent him a screen shot of your post, and can send you a private message of his reply.  It would be great to meet you!  Hannah Rishel, west of Longview WA

My husband and I have lived west of Longview for three years, practicing various aspects of  permaculture.  We're not off grid.  But we seriously contemplated building a rocket mass heater.  The Cowlitz County building inspection department would not permit it.  I was told by someone else in Permies.com that no county in the state permits them.  Maybe if you're not dealing with house loans, mortgages, and possible future resale it would not be a necessary consideration.

We have a nearly identical house configuration and situation of need for heating it----preferably from a RMH in the basement.  Thank you so much for the excellent description of your project, and the encouragement to us to go ahead with our plans/hopes.  

Thank you all for your prompt and insightful replies!  I took an online PDC course in about 2015 from Geoff Lawton, then an Advanced PDC course at Bullocks' Permaculture Homestead in August 2019, with certificates from both.  My husband and I have utilized much from both courses plus lots of other reading & exploration, in two very different settings (high desert in the SW United States, and near-coast in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S.).  I've made a modest permaculture design for a son's front yard, otherwise have only designed for our own homesteads.  Now another son, an architect, has asked his dad and me to design, or apprentice in designing around a commercial/residential building he (and the afore-mentioned brother) designed in a Portland Oregon suburb, which is a 1 to 1.5 hour drive from home.  There is some city improvement grant-type funding, and the first question of our son is really simply to get an estimate of what to tell the city that the landscape/permaculture design might cost.  We're not landscape architects.  There is a firm I could simply refer him to--of landscape architects with permaculture design expertise, who practice in Portland.  But it would be cool to get our own feet wet in collaborating with our sons, whose goal is to develop environmentally responsible/sustainable design capacity.  So all of your input on my question is welcome!  Hannah

That's my question. If this is already covered in a particular forum or thread, please tell me how to find the discussion. Thank you

r ranson wrote:Outside permies, I know about 2 people who would be interested in those, and maybe another four who wouldn't but I would give it to anyway.

But I'm practising to become a hermit.  I don't know many people.  I'm probably not the target audience.

Learning about this book and the consultative process of developing a kickstarter has been fascinating.  I want to buy the physical book, or contribute to the kickstarter to get it, or whatever.  As to practicing to being a hermit:  me too, except except except.….it is so important to reach out and connect with others.  To realize and then act as if we are all one human family.  To learn from others in this family, and to share the unique insights with others.  

Hannah

Maarten Smet wrote:My biggest concern would be compaction of the current soil by adding new soil, suffocating the tree roots as they no longer can get oxygen. I would just add enough cardboard/paper to kill of the grass/moss and just enough wood chips/mulch to keep the cardboard/paper from flying away with the wind.

M

On sheet mulching--I live just a bit further south than James Landreth, west of Longview, WA, and am just over a year into implementing/learning permaculture in this region.  Last May we planted a number of mostly-native shrubs, ground cover, and a few trees, mostly in a nice big yard of lovely green grass.  I filled a wheelbarrow with water, soaked cardboard in it, laid it down around the plants--overlapping, and covered with 3-4 inches of grass clippings from lawn mowing.  At that time, grass was the most-available mulch.  By now the mulch has decomposed.  After wind had dropped many small douglas fir branches, our neighbor who has lived in the area for decades told me that after I pull whatever grass or other plants that have grown through or on the mulch layer, to mulch it all with the fir branches/needles  and the grass won't come back.  So that's what I'm trying.

Around our old fruit trees, we've mulched with bark removed from firewood.  I want to cover the grass with cardboard and mulch out farther, to the driplines or beyond, and plant companion/support/layers of plants under and around these trees.  thank you all for the lists of plants.         Hannah

Thanks James, for such a good description of the region very close to where my husband and I moved to 16 months ago--west of Longview, in Cowlitz County just south of Lewis County.  Do any of you from this area know of any permaculture books specific to what works in SW Washington, West of the Cascades, or the Pacific Northwest?   I have Gaia's Garden and Steve Solomon's "Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades," but am still looking for more that joins what works with gardening into what works in permaculture here.  Thanks.  

Daron, thanks for all the useful information I've discovered from you so far.  I stumbled into the "Cascadia" forum a couple of days ago then into this one about your (and perhaps other people) writing one or more books.  I would definitely buy a good book on "Permaculture in the Pacific Northwest," or west of the Cascades, or SW Washington.  Print books work better in general for me, and I'd pay $15-30 or maybe more if very useful.  My husband and I moved from NE Arizona (high, dry, hot, cold, and windy on the Colorado Plateau at 5,000 feet) to near Longview WA in Sept. of 2017.  We had both taken PDC courses online while in Arizona, and focused our learning on that environment.  There was helpful information from here, there and everywhere but it was hard to find details on just where we lived an our circumstances.  Now I feel in a similar position.  In the Walapa hills west of Longview we live in a very different environment, which is far more ideal for growing than the high desert, yet finding the specifics on "what works here" is elusive. And in our 60s, we lack the energy of youth to invest massive effort and time into endless experiments ourselves.  I've searched and searched for a BOOK specific to this part of the world.  "Gaia's Garden" perhaps comes the closest, but is written for a widespread audience and doesn't answer certain questions specific to HERE. Steve Solomon's "Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades" is great but lacks specific consideration of permaculture concepts (except its central focus on organic gardening).  And it cites important reasons NOT to mulch (mainly massive slug and earwig populations--which we have now experienced in our first year of gardening after I'd covered the garden a year ago with cardboard and wood chips). He also describes the region's phenomenon of Symphylans which wipe out tender roots of annual crops planted in the same garden area for 3 years or so.  Anyway--in brief, I'd love to find a book on what DOES work, for growing food and for living in, growing in, and fostering nature.  Perhaps you could not only do your own writing but get permission to include the expertise and real-life examples of others who have contributed to Permies.com, to compile a very useful region-specific book for those of us learning how to start and get going in the pacific northwest. Thank you.