permaculture

["Carrie Shepard" <outlikeelijah@gbronline.com>]

As a recent subscriber, I am looking for advice/consulting on a direction to
go.  My hubby works fulltime and we have a mortgage and some credit card
debt.  Whatever I do on our property has to result in a monetary increase of
some sort to help pay the bills and buy more feed for my animals.  I so
already sell extra eggs and milk and a bit of kefir weekly.  I've been
working on my gardening to figure out how much I have to plant to grow as
much of our own foods as we can and hope to grow enough to sell the extra
produce eventually.  I've been trying to learn how and plan for growing more
of my animal feed also.  Last year I grew some mangels for the first time
and the goats milk was super sweet while I fed them just one huge mangel a
day till I ran out.  I'd have to have a lot more space planted in mangels to
keep that going, but the taste of the milk was definitely worth the effort.
I have grown more sunflowers and jerusalem artichokes this year also.

I give informal tours of our property and have been trying to prioritize
making labels and signs to help people begin to develop relationships with
these creatures and creations and also to help me remember to mention what
has become obvious to me.  I had a friend say to me "wow, I've never seen a
bell pepper ON the plant before."  Then her next comment as I picked one and
handed it to her was "wow, it smells so good, you can't smell the ones in
the supermarket."   I'm convinced that these tours have the potential to
really encourage people and change their lives for the better when they
implement what they've seen here at their own home.

The stacking concept of running ducks and geese in the orchard works really
well and takes very little extra feed.  I'm sure that when the trees are all
mature and producing more that it will not take any outside input of extra
feed, but till then it takes some purchased feed, which means to me that the
duck eggs or extra ducks must be sold to pay for that feed.  The birds
really have kept the bermuda grass down and helped with bad bugs.

I've been thinking that I'd like to have a formal seed display for people
who visit to shop from and that that combined with any produce that they
purchase would be payment for my time.  When I say payment for my time, I
suppose I'm really meaning payment to help cover our costs of living.  I do
these things, gardening, milking, building animal shelters, and tours
without demanding any payment, but realistically it is not feasible at this
stage for me to do so without there being a monetary re-couping of my costs.
Perhaps as my permaculture skills and understanding improve, I won't have as
many outside costs, but for now, I have to buy things like waterers, feed,
additional herbs and essential oils for animal health, fencing, etc...
Seeds and trees and shrubs cost money initially don't they?

Looking for encouragement and ideas for more directions,
Carrie