permaculture

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

I appreciate the responses and good wishes, and yes I will be taking it slow 
due to monetary constraints if nothing else. I will do my best to resist the 
urge to rush long term crops in the ground, like mulberries and walnuts etc. 
until zone one is established and I've got a better acquantance and 
understanding with the land. I've learned that lesson the hard way while 
involved in planning a nearby community garden.

 

This winter I will be doing a lot of research and tentative planning, and I'm 
lucky to have the luxury of a nearby school of natural resources college 
library. While a student there I was amazed to find books like the One Straw 
Revolution, Robert Harts Forest Garden book, Mollisons full series of 
permaculture manuals, Gaia's Garden, Gardening and horticultural books of all 
kinds, several Agroforestry books, and even several of the Permaculture 
Activist magazines hidden away in the older periodicals section. I may well 
become known as the phantom of the Fleming College library. I would love to 
take a permaculture design course but I don't know how I could scrape the 
money together for it. We have so many expenses to worry about with this farm 
that every spare penny so far is going to paying the bills. 

 

Thanks for the advice Tripp and Mitch. And Tripp, as per your question; "do 
you like people?  You seem like a fairly gregarious fellow.  Just be honest 
about that aspect of the future. " I'm not sure what you mean by the last 
part but I am far from gregarious and was a loner and outcast through most of 
my childhood. I have been trying to be more sociable for the last 8 years or 
so, and have had some success but feel I have a long way to go. On the one 
hand I do like people in general but on the other, I see what most of us are 
doing to the planet and I view us as a cancer-like entity. I'd say that I do 
like people in general and at the end of the day we are a part of nature and 
are simply filling our role, whatever that may be. 


When it comes to swales, when I said before that I was mystified, I suppose I 
used the wrong word. I think I have a basic understanding of the function and 
theory but no real world experience with it so I am nervous to start plotting 
and digging away only to realize I messed up. Luckily my zone one is 
relatively flat and low lying (laying?) so I won't need to worry about 
putting swales in there. Jeff Lawtons Youtube videos "Greening the Desert" 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sohI6vnWZmk  gave me a much better 
understanding of how they work but then I watched his video on 'water 
harvesting' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPrfNVzDNME&feature=related, read 
a few websites talking about swales, and I became a bit overwhelmed at how 
technical it can get. I also can't find anything with any detail about swales 
used on land with a high water table. 

 

Lawrence, thanks for the list of uses for those species. I've definetly 
thought along the same lines. As to your suggestion of starting a plant 
nursery, there is a native plant nursery 2 km's down the road so I don't 
think I want to 'cut their grass'  and start my own nursery. There may be a 
possibility of some sort of consignment deal with them to provide plant stock 
that they don't have. 

 

To answer a few of your questions and uncertainties... Manitoba maple or Acer 
negundo is a species of maple native to North America. Box Elder, Boxelder 
Maple, and Maple Ash are its other most common names according to wikipedia. 
It is a vigorously spreading species who's seedlings pop up in droves on 
lawns and gardens around central ontario. The wood is too weak for carpentry 
but would make decent firewood. Balsam poplar is fast growing, and can be 
used as firewood. The wild apple trees on my property are real apples, of 
different cultivar types. They are mixed in the hedge rows seemingly randomly 
and I've counted only 7 of them, all probably planted by birds, squirrels, or 
farm workers who tossed their cores aside. They are all very mature and 
gangly and I plan to practice pruning on them, and to feed the apples to the 
farm animals as most of them are wormy and not so tasty. A funny thing 
happened with some of the apples; squirrels took a few and skewered them onto 
pine tree branches and left them there for later eating. My girlfriend joked 
that we've discovered a new species of pineapple...

 

A question for the group about wild strawberries... I wonder how best to go 
about working with them. They are heavily populated in one of our hay fields 
so my instinct is to dig shallow paths to designate beds, weed out the 
grasses, and mulch heavily. Or it may work out that if I can get to the patch 
early enough in the spring, that I can just mulch around the plants and 
suppress the grass that way. Luckily there are old hay bales on the edge of 
the field that I could use as the mulch. Does this latter idea sound feasible 
as long as I periodically refresh the mulch layer?

 

Hi Isabel. Establishing Chinampas are definetly in the plans if we get some 
more ponds dug or expand the existing one. And don't worry as far as tilling 
goes...I pretty much have a phobia of tilling and my success with sheet 
mulching has convinced me to stick with no-tillage, except maybe when it 
comes to our hay fields. Some of our hay fields need reseeding and we'd like 
to have hay without alfalfa due to the high protein content causing hoof 
problems in horses that aren't worked very hard. I'm wondering if I simply 
hand broadcast grasses like timothy early enough and thick enough, if it will 
eventually crowd out the alfalfa. Does anyone have experience similar to this 
or have literature that talks about it? All this being said, I am intrigued 
by the Yeomans Keyline plow, especially after seeing it in action on youtube. 
Our farm will rely on people power out of necessity and we plan to have 
several interns at various levels of committment from one-offs to a full 
season. There is a sustainable agriculture course starting up at the 
aforementioned Fleming College of Natural Resources and I'm trying to 
collaborate with them. We'll see how it goes.

 

Again, thanks for the support and advice,

 

Travis 

 


 
                                          
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