To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org, permaculture@openpermaculture.org
Subject: [permaculture] Farm design online
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 10:13:32 -0700
Hello.
I've recently uploaded an interactive form of our farm design to our
website, and I'd really appreciate feedback from other permies on it,
both on the content and the usability of the GIS program it is made for.
When I first became interested in permaculture ~15 years ago, site plans
were hard to come by, and as the internet grew, I was hoping that we'd
see more and more plans online. Well, they're still pretty hard to come
by, but here's my contribution to the Open Source permaculture movement.
There are several ways to view the farm plan. By far the funnest is to
download the free (but big) ArcReader program from ESRI and download the
zip file from our website. This gives you a mini-GIS (geographic
information system) of the farm, letting you turn on and off layers,
zoom and query details of individual layers. Sadly, Mac is not supported.
The alternative for Mac users and low-bandwidth people is to download
the PDFs that are posted there. Less interactive, but more used.
-invisible structures, networks, and nodes are not included. I'm still
trying to map out the visible ones, and the symbology for an invisible
structure is going to take some thought.
-my personal interests lie in the design and implementation of zones 3,
4, and facilitating 5. People looking for detailed information on zones
1-2 may be disappointed by the lack of detail. Rest assured, it's
coming. Let me know you're interested, and that may light a fire under
my butt to do it sooner.
-off site, but nearby resources are not included. Rest assured the
swimming hole, hilltop lookout, and neighbor's scrap metal heap will be
mapped.
-zonation is fluid, and subject to change. Like all things.
Cheers, and thanks,
Rich
Mossback Farm
PS Thanks to folks on the Portland Permaculture Guild listserv
(http://pdxpermaculture.org/) who helped me to fine tune some of the
distribution details.