Frank Voi

My glass has very light scratches that I believe is from using an incorrect scrubbing pad in the past. Will this solution work for that or is it only for damage caused by heat from the fire like in the video?

My damage isn’t a cloudy haze like in the video, but more like micro scratches. Here’s the best photo I could take of it (very hard to focus the phone camera on the scratches rather than the fire, so I’ve circled it): https://ibb.co/pLjnZcC

I am interested in how worms interact normally with conventional septic systems? Do they clean out the septic bed?

We’ve got 5 acres that we are introducing sheep, goats and chickens to, as well as an orchard and veggie garden. I keep coming across people digging ponds on their properties and I wanted to ask, at a high level, what the benefits are if you already have wells (we’ve got two good producing wells)?

Hi all,

I am new to this, so forgive me if this is a silly question. I keep reading about the benefits of comfrey in regenerating soil, but try as I might all I can find for sale are little clippings rather than seeds, so I am not sure how I could plant enough in my 3+ acres of pasture to get this going in any real way.

Any suggestions? I am in Canada.

Nancy Reading wrote:Hi Frank (belated) welcome to Permies! Hope the purchase went smoothly and you are now at your new home. Well done!
It sounds like you do have a blank slate there. What will be your main challenges: short season, cool winters, lack of rain in growing season? In my case it's wind and shallow acidic compacted soil.
You'll find you want to do everything, but do take time to just observe and sometimes it is surprising what you find out that makes your life easier. Also start small! I'm not one for following my own advice here either, although I did plant my tree field over 7 years or so.
Can I respectfully suggest that with that many animals on 5 acres you will need to buy in a lot of feed, which will make you more dependent on outside inputs. It might be better to concentrate on fewer (say pigs and ducks, or sheep and chickens) and organise barter for other meat if you want. This is said from one who has no livestock and it might be you are already an expert husbandsman. I never fancied the responsibility - where there is livestock there is deadstock and they are a tie than means taking any time away is much more difficult.

Hi Nancy,

The purchase went smoothly! We've been super busy and loving every second of it. Here's what we've done so far:

1) We found a source of wood chips and had four truck loads (each around 6 yards) delivered. I am working on sourcing a grass whip to cut through some areas of particularly high grass where we want our future vegetable garden to be. As soon as this is cut down (with clippings left in place), we'll cover in the wood chips. I've used a bunch of the chips already to cover areas of the property that were particularly barren from past over grazing.

2) We converted part of the shop into a chicken coop and this morning our flock arrived - 12 hens and 1 rooster!

3) We are in talks with someone to have her horses graze the land. This time we'll rotate between the different areas, to avoid overgrazing.

Not bad for 13 days on the land (including moving day!).

To answer your questions, our main challenge will likely be cold winters (there can be cold snaps below -30C. Not for long but pretty consistently 1 - 3 weeks worth spread throughout the winter), and hot, dry summers (we've been over 35C for the last week). For the winters, I think we just deal with this via planting to the hardiness zone. For the summers, I think the wood chips will help to shield the ground and maintain moisture rather than the current situation to date, which has been letting the soil bake into dirt in the intense sun.

I appreciate your advice and I agree. We won't add new animals of our own until next year and then only one species at a time. We are happy with our chickens for now, and if we can get a deal to get horses rotating in the fields, that's a bonus.

Hello all,

We are Frank and Jess and our two (soon to be three!) children. We’ve just bought a 5 acre property in Cranbrook, British Columbia at the southern end of the Canadian Rockies. Originally we are from Ontario but we spent the last three years travelling coast to coast (to coast to coast… long story!) across this beautiful country in search of the “Goldilocks” property for us - the “just right” property in the “just right” town that we had confidence we’d find in our travels.

Once we found this property, we knew we’d found our winner. It is a rectangle oriented due north-south, with a house at the north end surrounded by trees and the southern approximately 2/3 is wide open field that the current owners allow a neighbour to graze a few horses on, meaning we have a largely blank slate to work with - both a blessing and a bit of a curse, as we can do whatever we want, but everything seems a bit daunting since we are starting largely from scratch.

We close on the purchase on July 15th. As in *this Friday*!

Here’s our hopes and dreams for this property: we want to tightly integrate vegetables, berry bushes and a fruit orchard with animals (chickens/ducks/geese, some pigs, sheep and goats) into one positive impact homestead where we can build the soil, harvest the rain for as much of our use as possible, and have as light a touch on the environment as we can.

Our plan, and we are 100% hoping to hear your comments and critiques, is as follows:

1) we’ve been reading The Holistic Orchard and want to get started on building the fungal base needed to support an orchard and berry bushes, so we’ve sourced via landscapers effectively as much wood chips as we want (not necessarily all Ramial wood chips, nor all deciduous, but beggars can’t be choosers and we are hoping this isn’t a major issue - please correct us if you feel otherwise!) and hope to get this laid in the future orchard area as soon as possible. We’ll augment this by dumping grass clippings so there is “green” balancing The “brown” of the wood chips to hopefully speed up the compost in place. Thoughts?

2) we’ll find a suitable area for a vegetable garden near the orchard this year but likely leave the Current cover as-is until the spring when we will cut it down and lightly till in place, and then start with vegetable plantings in rows.

3) I plan to build a chicken coop so we can get chickens this year to help work the soil and eat and ticks, etc.

4) over the winter I plan to design and obtain permits for a barn so first thing in the spring we can get construction started on that and get animals to help enliven the soil and add some biodiversity to the farm.

5) from the base established above, figure out the next steps and where changes have to be made. Iterate, iterate, iterate.

Your thoughts and opinions are certainly welcome!

Thanks!
Frank & Jess