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  • From: Permacltur@aol.com
  • To: "permaculture" <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Barking Frogs Permaculture: Our Annual Letter
  • Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 10:18:48 EDT

Barking Frogs Permaculture Center
Home of Yankee Permaculture and Elfin Permaculture
P.O. Box 52, Sparr FL 32192 USA Email: Permacltur@aol.com
Dear Brothers and Sisters:
Greetings from Barking Frogs Permaculture Center. We are sending our
annual report of permaculture activities a little early this year in order to
let you know about our annual online course that begins in October. Details
follow below.
In the past year, much of the progress has been passive. Finally, most of
the flood waters have receded from unseasonable rains over the winter of
1997-1998. Severe spring and summer drought for the second year in a row has
brought the water table in Black Sink Prairie down to pre-flood levels.
Finally, we can walk the entire pasture without getting wet.
Dan slaughtered our steer early this year. With no animals to eat back
our work, we have been able to plant a number of trees in the pasture area,
mostly on the highest ground, which flooded relatively briefly. These
include Acacia melanoxylon (Blackwood), trials of several jujube varieties,
guava, strawberry guava, and a few goumi bushes. Except for the goumi, we
expect these to tolerate both flooding and drought, once established. A small
grove already exists at the high point, providing some shelter for the more
cold-sensitive species. Lower we have planted Australian tea tree and Chinese
hawthorn, and still lower are rows of hybrid willow and black gum along fence
lines. Eventually, trees will replace fence posts, serving as shade and
shelterbelts, and providing firewood, etc. We have also planted a few bald
cypress in the wettest part of the pasture grown from other trees on the
site. We were too late to get bald cypress from the State this year, but
next year we hope to obtain 100 seedlings to grow to start in nursery beds.
We planted legumes over a section of the pasture this year, mainly annuals,
both to suppress weedy vegetation and improve the soil. This is working quite
well. Winter legume seed is on hand for fall planting, possibly underway
when you read this. Rather than disturb the soil by tillage, we broadcast the
seed onto the sod. Then we mow weeds and grass to cover the seed. This has
worked quite well with both small seeded and large seeded species. We are
hoping for a high rate of spontaneous reseeding, again aided by mowing.
In other areas we have set out a number of Washington hawthorns, Japanese
arrow bamboo, Bambusa multiplex (two varieties), and an as yet unidentified
species of bamboo as initial plantings to shelter the Permaculture Center
from westerly winds. This should improve the performance of bananas, Surinam
cherries and other tropicals in the warm microclimates around the building.
We have also increased our plantings of feijoa to the west and north of the
building, in part for improved shelter and in part for eventual fruit
production. Progress in establishing tree crops has been slow, but we have
set out more figs, mulberries, che, bamboo, plums, citrus, guava, and
strawberry guavas. For the first time, the rate of putting trees into
permanent locations exceeded the rate at which we accumulate them in pots. We
also have successful propagation plots for a number of other species.
Fruit production continues to increase with more citrus, figs, bananas,
mulberries Surinam cherries, papaya, peaches, etc., bearing than in the past.
We have located one cultivar of loquat that Dan successfully grafted to two
seedling trees. We seek additional varieties for the rest of our loquat
seedlings. Experiments with grafting cultivated blueberries to wild
farkleberries have gone well, limited only by a shortage of cultivated
blueberry scion wood. This winter, we hope to find a local blueberry grower
who is willing to exchange Dan’s pruning skills for some scion wood of
several more varieties. Gradually, development of gardening spaces and forest
gardens continues. The place is beginning to look as though permaculturists
live here!
A major improvement for our land was the purchase of about 4 acres of
land that clearly was integral to the rest of the place. Now our plot looks
much less like a jig-saw puzzle piece. Much of the new land is well drained
and will provide more area for fruit and nut trees and additional
possibilities for poultry forage. The “new” land holds a very large
farkleberry grove and many wild plums. Here we can extend the blueberry
grafting program and begin grafting plums. To this end, we have purchased
two outstanding selections of Prunus americana (wild plum) to provide
scionwood for the wild rootstocks. The native trees bear inferior
fruit--even the chickens do not eat them! The additional land also allows
room for planting space-hungry pecans. And it allows us to spare a number of
medium size trees that we were going to cut to make room for fruit trees.
Now we can just work around most of them because we have more space..
The chinampas project has not progressed physically, though we have some
new ideas that evolved during the flooding. We will report more on these
after trials. We have one chinampa bed ready to finish and plant and others
on the verge of development, so to speak, needing only someone to put in
energy. We had arranged for an intern who expressed interest in chinampas,
but he was not able to pursue the internship due to an injury working on his
own garden. We are now considering having work-days where people come to
contribute to the project in exchange for the experience and information. We
might be able to handle up to 10 adults (age 13 or over), perhaps one day
every other month. Another possibility is a local volunteer who may want the
experience. Please contact us if you want to pitch in or if you have
suggestions. The best way is to email Dan at the address above or to write.
We still offer one or two internships to just the right people.
Dan is also discussing workshops in Mexico with three different women,
one of whom, Blanca Dominguez, has a high success record of organizing
teaching for us there. This could lead to visits and work with the
Chinamperos of Xochomilco, who manage the last of the traditional chinampas
there. Dan is also working with Blanca via email to support permaculture
development in some of the very arid areas of Mexico. We have interest in
Africa and South America in chinampas training, but like the Xochomilco trip,
nothing has proceeded because there is no money for it. By next year, we may
have some interesting news to report about our support of the development of
permaculture in South Africa.
The paddy development is part of the chinampas development design, so
that too has been on hold. However we did buy some inexpensive “kiddie”
swimming pools that work well for trials and we have increased our supply of
rice seed and water chestnut stocks in this way. (The kiddie pools are also
great for rearing 50-100 baby-chicks as they are cheap, easy to clean,
spacious, and have no corners where chicks are likely to smother one another.)
Progress on the permaculture center has been at a standstill, with
virtually nothing new since our previous letter. We have important
renovations to complete and repairs to make, and hopefully we will be able to
report these done next year. Again, intern or volunteer help would make a
large difference. We did make some progress in the on-site residence,
completing storage and adding an air-conditioner to Cynthia’s office there.
Program wise, our annual Permaculture Design Correspondence Course via
email continues to be our major teaching activity. The course runs between 20
and 26 weeks, depending on the needs of the particular group. To learn about
the course, email us at <Permacltur@aol.com>. Ask for a course protocol and
reading list. We do not charge extra for permaculture course graduates who
wish to do advanced work in any of our programs. The next course begins
October 24.
In August, for the first time we hybridized the online course with live
instruction. We gave our 10-day Permaculture Design Intensive in Northern
California at the home of Birdsong Sundstrom. Birdsong took instruction on
the email course and is meeting the design project requirement in the live
program. We have been very satisfied with results of the email course, but
there is no substitute for walking the land with students. The live program
also features access to thousands of slides, well beyond what is practical
for visual support via email. Student design work in both formats has been
outstanding, and we have every reason to believe that the hybrid surpasses
any other training to date. Birdsong presents the final report from the live
workshop in the next online course.
The online course continues to evolve in other ways. We have now
implemented a policy of carrying students through at least two course cycles
at no additional tuition charge. Students are expected to complete all basic
work in the first cycle, except that sometimes a final revision of the
student design may be submitted in the next course. In the second cycle,
students better understand the total permaculture concept and better perceive
the merit of course components. This is more or less a formalizing of what
we were doing with a large percentage of students anyway. Students say that
a second cycle is extremely helpful. Improvements in the design report are
very obvious, hard evidence that this is the way to go. At the same time,
new students benefit from the perspective of older students. Also, we
require all design projects carried to the next course to be submitted in the
first segment, before students starting in that course begin their design
work. We believe that this clarifies the scope and quality of the design
requirements much earlier, helping students better define their project and
work more efficiently. By treating the course as repeating cycles rather
than taking the industrial input/out model, we think we go even further in
demonstrating permaculture principles through the course design itself.
Willem Smuts of South Africa is now officially a teacher in the online
course. Willem has participated in every email course since we began them,
well earning his position. Willem and Elfin permaculture have agreed in
princple to design and teaching collaborations in Africa and elsewhere, as
well. Dan’s daughter Cassandra will be a teaching assistant in the next
course. Her lifelong exposure to permaculture and related concepts and her
present life raising a family close to the land in rural Vermont are bound to
enrich the course.
During the past year we continued to give a few local talks on
permaculture. We do not put on live workshops or talks unless some local
person or group invites us to do so.
Our outreach over the internet expanded with active involvement in email
discussion groups, notably the Purdue NewCrops list and the North American
Fruit Explorers (NAFEX) list. We continued to field questions on the
permaculture lists and some less active involvement in other lists such as
solar cooking, the ECHO mutual aid list for development workers, etc. We
consider this form of service very effective. Dan also continues his
permaculture column in the NAFEX publication POMONA.
Once again, not all was progress. We continued to update our pamphlets
and papers. But our serial publications, The International Permaculture
Solutions Journal and Permaculture Review, Overview, and Digest, remained on
the back burner with only small progress made toward getting out an issue of
either. We also need badly to document our permaculture design, for which we
hope to attract a suitable intern. We did publish Vol. VII of our directory,
TRIP (The Resources of International Permaculture.)
Again this year, our lives continue to be blessed. Cynthia’s work as
faculty at the University of Florida College of Nursing has been successful
and rewarding. This fall she launched a new course on alternative therapies
that has been very well received. We got to meet our second grandchild, Emery
Hemenway Brush, in November, and in August we met our latest grandchild,
Katherine Covielo during our California teaching trip
We invite you to pass the word about our consulting, email course and
internships. A workshop or course on site is a very economical way to get
permaculture design work and training for your own place. And this is a good
time to be thinking about getting presents for the Solstice season holidays.
Please check out our order form to see if there is something you would like
to give, maybe to yourself. A few days of permaculture consulting or an
on-site workshop can be an especially valuable gift to a homeowner or
homesteader.
We know that most of you are also working hard for Mother Earth in many
ways. We thank you for your efforts and look to join forces when appropriate.
For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway
Cynthia Hemenway

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