Straylight Hatfield

Greetings all,

What would you think of as the absolutely most essential and important fact or aspect about permaculture to include in a brief intro talk? I'm looking for personal favorites, not no-brainers. What most important bit gets too often overlooked? What quote or fact, little story or other tid-bit encapsulates the spirit of a permaculture approach in a way a curious jogger might find interesting? I'm asking here because I seem on the way to giving short talks about permaculture and know that many here have experience and opinions on how such a thing could be done exceptionally.

For context, I'm a Southwest Washington State (Lewis County) Master Gardener about to start a demo garden space at Fort Borst Park in Centralia and have decided to start a Permaculture demonstration site. The site has four pear trees and neighbors the Native Plants demo space, which I'll also be taking on and expanding. In throwing around ideas with one of the demo garden leads, I agreed to teach a class "some day" that will be me standing in front of the site and talking for less than half and hour without much possibility for visual aid. One day, I'll have a class room space with Powerpoint and I certainly know of plenty of good resources, but to start I'll probaby hand out a little tri-fold and give a brief talk designed to introduce the word and concept to the kind of person who is interested in gardening but may never have heard of permaculture. I must include a good reading list, which I have found discussed on this forum, also a few good definitions of the term, which I have favorite candidates for but am open to suggestions on. I don't see how I can leave out the ubiquitous list of principles. I'll otherwise focus the talk on what I have done and why. I just saw the site this morning, so I have some research and brainstorming to do. But I thought it would be a good start to open my ears to the experts.

Thoughts?

Congratulations on your decision to raise rabbits!  Welcome to the fun!  I hope it is not bad form to recommend an additional forum.  This one at Homesteading Today called "Raising Rabbits for Profit" has excellent stickies on natural feeding and you're likely to find local guidance and resources: http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/forumdisplay.php?f=14

And I second the advice to keep quiet about raising rabbits, at all.  When I was first starting out, I was so proud and I thought the ecologically minded would "get it," but I lost friends.  I made the mistake of bringing a bunny in to work with me to be cooed over by co-workers and, enroute, strangers who knew nothing about me except that I had a bunny with me were directly hostile.  I was even asked if I was taking the bunny to be experimented on by scientists.

Finally, I have had great success with a colony.  Most notably, the "rape" stopped. When I kept males and females separately and introduced two in a neutral setting, the poor female's whimpering was heartbreaking.  Keeping the genders in the same space, even just a 4 x 8, the rabbits bonded and breeding became consentual. That's in addition to more frequent kindles and overall happier rabbits.


Good luck!

Wow!  Thank you all for your time!  So much food for thought and direction for study!

And Deston thank you for the offer of extension info. Our land is between Vader and Ryderwood on SR 506.  We're almost exactly half way on the 6 mile stretch. Feel free to email me at brittobiason@gmail.com, especially if you need clearer info on the location.  Thanks again!

I'm reading up on natives and studying with the WSU Master Gardener trainee program to meet locals and learn in a county-specific way, but we really have only just arrived.  Actions that perserve flexibility are the only ones I'm thinking of performing immediately.  I'd like to think of any ideas at this point as being "hopes" and to base future actions on a soild understanding of pertinent legalities (hoping for a large pond) as well as informed observation. That said, we have noticed blackberries popping up fast enough for some concern.  There's also scotchbroom near the road which I am grateful for as a screen, but do not want to be overrun by.  A yellow flower is quite rampant. It shoots up to about three feet high by fall.  I may have found it under "rattlesnake flower" in a natives database, but wasn't convinced.  It certainly does stick to you as you walk by and then shake a seed pod to make a rattling sound.  I'll be doing some research, that's for sure!

This thread has proved very infomative for me.  It's been easy to turn a blind eye to the question of pasture maintenance, (when well, spetic and solar concerns were pressing,) but seeing it as the earliest stage of our future development is actually very inspiring. It will be good to feel truly intentional in inaction as well as in action.

Thanks again!
Straylight

I do have the means to mow, including a scythe, which may be necessary for the taller weeds.  It's good to know cutting helps with sucession! Thanks!

I am intending to cultivate a diverse forest garden with an emphasis on natives.  My assumption is/was that leaving the blank slate/pasture alone for a few years would have no worse effect than to provide some extra habitat for wildlife and allow succession to begin turning the land into a forest for me.

I am sure this has been discussed, so any links to old threads I couldn't find would be appreciated.  Fresh answers would be even better.

Context: My partner and I purchased, installed the required utilities, and moved onto 7.5 acres of very compressed pasture that had been used for horses for years.  By the time we had jumped through all the hoops and moved in, the grass and weeds were quite high and a low priority.  We're in Southwest Washington state, if that helps.

We're still in the observation phase of our permaculture designs and I'd like to leave the land alone until I have more detailed plans.  I am devoting some attention to it now because the elderly neighbor who we bought the property from has asked what we're trying to accomplish with these questionable land management practices.  I think he's just trying to be helpful and isn't actually likely to lodge complaints, but it's spurring me to do my homework and make sure I'm not going to regret leaving the land to its own devices. 

Any advice?

Thanks in advance!

I'd like to say thank you to everyone who has chimed in.  I'm really looking forward to this year's plantings.  Every day the idea of reading a book in a forest garden of friendly rabbits seems less like a pipe dream and more like an eventuality.

Happy Holidays!

Has anyone here planned gardens for rabbits to live in?

I keep a pastured colony of rabbits on a 1/2 acre protected by an electric fence. I would love to plant mature trees and shrubs in the colony for the rabbit's comfort and to draw visual attention away from the storm shelters which are not as beautiful as they are functional.  There is already a separated pen within the colony that I was planning on planting with bunny grub of the vegetable kind, and it would be a safe place for me to start a set of shrub and tree experiments to give supervised access to.

I know apple trees, hackberries and sunflowers would be much appreciated and I feel safe giving the bunnies access to them, but what about serviceberries? Or evergreen natives? Siberian pea shrubs? One serious concern is that lists of bunny-hazardous plants can never be considered exhaustive.  While my bunnies are intelligent foragers and probably would not blindly eat poisonous or caustic plants the way that caged rabbits might, I feel a strong responsibility not to introduce strongly scented or otherwise irritating plants.

I imagine serious thought and experimentation will be illuminating, but I like to appeal to the wise, experienced, and creative during the research phase of such projects.

Any thoughts you might have would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!
Straylight

I really feel for you in wanting to leave the city.  Not long ago, I was living in Seattle and waiting for a land deal to go through. Though not an expert, I have some relatively recent experience.   

For land hunting, I like www.themlsonline.com.  Questions to ask about parcels of interest include how much of it has been known to flood and how much is within a protective buffer zone of wetlands. I wasted a lot of time considering parcels that had minimal portions of legally usable land. 

Another thing to watch out for in cheap parcels are electrical towers.  I'm not sure what legalities are involved in grazing beneath them, but I suspect the area immediately around them might not be usable for various reasons. They aren't always mentioned in short parcel descriptions.

I wish I could remember the soil survey site that describes the slopes and percentages of loam, sand, and clay for all of Washington State.  I want to say it was affiliated with Thurston County. Though we found out that "well-drained" soil may still puddle to a surprising degree.

As for my story, it comes with a warning. My partner and I came to our homesteading project having done extensive research, but were still repeatedly bitten in the butt for being under-informed about the gnarly details.
We hunted, bought a parcel, moved onto it in a hurry and are still playing catch-up. If I had it to do over again, I would plan on spending a year or more land hunting, a year or more to ensure the purchase goes through, a year or more for septic and well installation. It's possible for it all to happen much more quickly, but I found every step took longer than promised and involved potential irreversible loss. Rushing cost us and the stress was beyond anything I have known.

Long story short, I wish I had approached with a greater respect for the fact that to develop land is to risk discovering you have bought land that will never be legally livable.

For instance:

Plan on >$30,000 for septic and well, though of course it will depend a lot on details. Even though our parcel is plenty wet, the first well drilled was "dry."  That means it wasn't pumping a gallon a minute of clear water, which is the minimum for our county. We had to apply for a second drilling permit, pay to fill the unusable hole, and wait with gnawed fingernails to see if the second hole would be any better. Another surprise was the need of a pump house as a place to join the septic, well and electric. This would be the heart of the system and it's placement would effect all designs thereafter.  These were designs we had hoped to slowly evolve.  Our off-grid intentions complicated everything further, as 12volt pumps are outside the knowledge base of most septic designers and there simply may not be a model that meets code.  Our solar set-up had to be ramped up far beyond our realistic needs to accommodate the heavy-duty pump that meets code for septic.  One would like to think a person could just buy land, set up humanure compost and collect rainwater. Nope.

If I were still in Seattle, I'd rent a place with a garden on a good busline to my job.  It wouldn't even necessarily be cheaper to be on the outskirts of the city, if you are willing to live with a homeowner who is renting a room. If your employer will pay for the ferry, it is luxurious and cheap to rent on Vashon Island.  It's deliciously woodsy and there is a strong community of organic gardeners there. It would not be unheard of to have yard work pay a portion of the rent. In any case, I would buy land, map it, dream, plan and develop all from the comfort of a stable home and life.

I sincerely wish you the best of fortune and success with your five year plan.  For the record, I could not be happier with the land we bought and love more each day.  I am sure you will find the adventure as ultimately rewarding as I have and hope my story has not been in any way discouraging.

Cheers!
Straylight

firm member of Group B, here. I live on 8 acres so flat I can see the doors of my very few neighbors.  My boyfriend is made very uncomfortable by my casual squatting, as it might--even from a distance--be obvious what was what when I stand back up and do the zipper.  We are relatively new here and so...

I keep a pee bladder (like they have in boating shops) in the greenhouse.  It's warm and the walk to the compost pile immediately after is a logical step. Plus, the frequency of greenhouse visits means I keep the space very well tended.  I even considered keeping the bladder somewhere that gets neglected, to encourage maintenance.