permaculture

[Armed With A Mind Armed With A Mind <armedwithamind@hotmail.com>]

Thanks for the replies,

 

Let me expand a bit on my situation; I'm fairly confident in my abilities to 
amend the soil properly and have been working with sheet mulching techniques 
for a few years now (using mostly woodchips, wood ashes, leaves, soil from 
the paths, compost teas, and grass clippings in various combinations). I'm 
heavily influenced by the 'one straw revolution', veganic farming, and 
natural farming in general, though I am no purist and do use animal manures 
sparingly as we keep horses here for recreation and eventually logging. 
(little does our young draft cross Amelie realize) I have also read the 
Mollison series, some of 'Edible Forest Gardens' by David Jacke, and Gaia's 
Garden by Toby Hemenway.  I am somewhat mystified about swales in terms of 
how to best place them in my situation. My farm is located in a flood plain 
and except for the high-points at the southwest corner and the northeast side 
of the property, the water table is extremely high, with standing water on 
many areas of the property this fall and I see this as our biggest limiting 
factor. Look at me, complaining about having too much water. Some of you must 
want to slap me right now. So since swales are mostly used to trap water in 
dry areas, how can I best use them in a wet area? The soil is mostly a sandy 
loam a small percentage of clay, and ranges from that to more of a sandbox 
type soil as it slopes very gently down east towards a lake which is about 2 
kilometres from the edge of the property. On the eastern half of the property 
I can easily dig down about 4 feet into nothing but tan coloured loamy sand, 
and then hit limestone type gravel. 

 

The vegetation is split up into about 30 acres of young forest, and 70 acres 
of hay (alfalfa and, timothy mostly) The dominant tree species are (in 
general order of most to least prominent) eastern white cedar, white (paper) 
birch, balsam poplar, white ash, american beech, basswood, large tooth aspen, 
the ever-opportunistic european buckthorn, a pure stand of scots pine that is 
being decimated by disease , and a few windbreak rows of mature sugar maple. 
Other notable tree populations are willow, staghorn sumac, , manitoba maple, 
wild apple. 

 

The dominant bushes/shrubs/brambles are choke cherry, dogwood (oh if only I 
could market dogwood I'd be free of money troubles), wild raspberry, 
gooseberry, blackberry, wild grape, black currant, and I've found one 
highbush cranberry next to one black locust that is technically on my 
neighbors property. I've also found what I think to be one witch hazel bush 
but maybe its that one that looks like witch hazel, which I can never 
remember the name of.  If anyone wants clarification with scientific names I 
can dig them up. I can't give much info about understory plants because I 
haven't had the pleasure of experiencing the farm prior to early fall but 
what I've seen so far is; wild strawberry, aster, bracken fern, poison ivy, 
lots of different types of mosses and of course grasses, some small 
scatterings of thistle, jewel weed (aka spotted touch me not), tiny amount of 
asparagus, cattails, black eyed susan, and probably several more I'm 
forgetting.

 

I plan to plant according to the zone template, and sectioning off the two 
houses to plant them into prime examples of what one could to convert a 
suburban sized yard  into a fairly self sufficient kitchen garden. We'd like 
to bring in the public and other farmers as much as possible to educate and 
illuminate them to the ways of permaculture, which is barely a whisper around 
these parts.

 

Our plans for the land in the outer zones are still in the forming stages but 
we are nothing if not open and ambitious. The one thing we have started is a 
small planting of  four strawberry beds at 4' X 25' in a zig zag pattern. 
Over the next two years I forsee us focusing on starting between 2-5 acres of 
mixed mostly perennial and self seeding vegetables, establishing more 
strawberry beds, planting out some of the indigenous gooseberry, blackberry 
and raspberry into sunnier spots with trellis and better soil, going big on 
asparagus, and maybe doing U-picks of the aforementioned. Also planting 
several cedar dominant windbreaks due to the high amount of young cedar 
cramming our woods, and the apparent need for several more windbreaks on the 
property. Ideally all of the above would be planted in suntrap fashion, and 
filling in the suntraps once we somehow scrape money together for fruit and 
nut trees which probably won't happen for two to four years unfortunately. A 
hardy kiwi or grape maze is another dream of mine. We have a friend nearby 
who has a soap making business so we plan to cater her herbal needs and maybe 
expand to supplying nearby herbalists or tea companies depending on demand.

 

I would like to establish the orchards in a forest garden type pattern 
instead of strict rows, incorporating as many and as wide a variety of 
marketable crops in all the forest levels from root zone to upper canopy. The 
plan for the fruit trees is to focus on a few types of pears, apples, and 
trial other types to see what works, as I understand most don't like wet feet 
all the time. Maybe swales and/or individual mounds could mediate this 
factor? We have two vietnamese pot-bellied pigs as pets and would like to get 
some ducks and/or chickens for pets and are planning to run them in an 
electric fenced tractor system to establish new gardens and clean up the 
orchard leftovers and weeds.

 

 As soon as possible I would like to plant an alley crop system in the hay 
fields we wish to keep with something like walnut mixed with a nurse crop 
(does anyone know if alders are juglone tolerant?) or some other suitable 
hardwood either for nuts or high quality timber. That will be determined once 
I talk to local mills and explore the marketablility of nuts. I'd also like 
to plant a mixed red and sugar maple stand for eventual syrup production (I'm 
only 28 so it should be possible in my lifetime). Canada has loans 
specifically tailored to finance sugar bush stands so hopefully I can take 
advantage of that. I'm also starting to look into growing goldenseal on our 
forest floor but my government has some restrictions regarding it that I have 
to look into. Why they want to restrict the growing of an endangered native 
species I cannot understand...

 

We have one small pond near the south central edge of the property that is 
maybe 60-80 feet in diameter which has a willow on the south edge, and a 
sparse population of cattails, with an island in the middle. It'd be neat to 
get some watercress, and duck potato (arrowhead?) planted in there.

 

As I said, we are early in the planning stages and I realize that these are 
ambitious plans which may not all see the light of day but is it not better 
to think big and start small?  

 

Travis

 

PS- in an earlier post someone mentioned about mistakes within the mollison 
permaculture book or books. Could someone elabourate on that please, or am I 
opening a can of worms that I should leave shut?

 

 

 
> From: mtriplett@bctonline.com
> To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:23:25 -0800
> Subject: Re: [permaculture] Greetings
> 
> That depends. What are your goals/objectives? And where do you & your
> ground stand in relation to those goals/objectives?
> 
> Mitch Triplett
> Tri-Pearl Family Forest
> Member - CCFFA/OSWA & OTFS
> Associate Member - FSC
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
> [mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Armed With A
> Mind Armed With A Mind
> Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2009 6:20 PM
> To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: [permaculture] Greetings
> 
> 
> I just wanted to say hello and introduce myself as I'm new to this place. My
> name is Travis Philp, I'm from Ontario Canada, and I just purchased a farm
> in November so I'm itching to get planting in the spring. I hope I'm in line
> with putting it out there that I'd love to hear any advice in the vein of '
> If I could do one thing over again...'
> 
> 
> 
> Travis
> 
> 
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