Author Archives: Bill Wilson

Chickens for the Orchard (and for Dinner)

Posted on by Bill Wilson

Objective:  
Raise some chickens for food and to also help with insect, grass and weed pressure in our 2-acre community orchard…!!!

As most of you know, in permaculture design we attempt to:

  1. garner the greatest amount or number of yields
  2. from the minimum amount of work 
  3. while creating no waste (at least minimal)
  4. and restoring the environment.

Let’s see what additional benefits we can obtain from this project other than just the insect, grass and weed-removal help from 100 chickens.  This will be our chicken saga as it reveals itself in real time.   We’re always learning too and raising this many chickens at once, and in this way, is stretching us some.  But we will take the bit of experience we do have, plus apply permaculture design principles while adding in good-ole common sense (with help from some great books and the internet) to work creatively and to see what we can come up with.

It all starts with an order of 100 chicks (multi-heritage breeds from McMurry) that Hayden and Cameron (our two work/study intern students) selected. All were delivered through the U.S. mail. All survived. Hayden created a safe and warm habitat from a yard-storage container, a heat lamp and some old boards and fencing. This structure lasted almost 2 weeks before they outgrew it. During this time we work on a more permanent home.

  Continue reading →

Connect Africa Hub – A Permaculture Design

Posted on by Bill Wilson

Illustration of the Final Design

Permaculture Design Course Graduates - Summer 2011 - Stelle, IL

 Context:

Grant Shadden took his PDC Training with us – summer 2011.  While here, he shared about his upcoming 2-month trip to Africa to support the work of the Connect Africa hub. 

We were all moved by the work of this organization and by Grant’s, and his wife Paige’s, devotion to assist in the work there.  Grant was actually taking this training in order to come up with a design for this organization and a 20-acre site they want to develop.  

As such, we made the decision to assist him by making it one of the final design projects for the PDC Course.  4 other students self-selected themselves to work on this design with Grant. 

Continue reading →

Burning Wood to “Cool” an Entire Lodge

Posted on by Bill Wilson

Arbor Day’s Lied Lodge:
It is Air Conditioned with Current Sunlight (i.e. Scrap Wood)

Becky at the Fuelwood Energy Plant, one of the places we'll be touring during the March PDC.

 

In our last post we talked about thermal mass rocket stoves and the great benefit they held by being able to heat our homes using current sunlight in the form of firewood.  (The sunlight energy stored in coal, oil and natural gas is millions of years old.) With these stoves we consume as little as 1/4 the amount of firewood it would take to heat the same amount of space with a traditional wood stove.  This is a huge savings in energy consumed for the same results.

Last February, Becky and I visited Lied Lodge and were surprised to discover that they not only heated their water and the Lodge with scrap-chipped wood, but they also air-condition the entire Lodge using the same fires…!!!   How can this be? Continue reading →

Thermal Mass Rocket Stoves on our Minds…

Posted on by Bill Wilson

The exhaust system of Bev and Wayne's stove before cobbing it over into a bench for heat extraction. More pictures at bottom of this post.

Early this fall, our friends and neighbors, Bev and Wayne, started to build a thermal mass rocket stove in their living room.  Wayne took one of our PDC courses not long ago and was inspired by the rocket stove concept (See the illustration and links below).

Bev and Wayne have been sharing their adventure with us and we are very excited about the possibilities.

Imagine having a wood burning stove in your home that:

  1. Burns less than 1/4 the amount of wood you typically burn
     
  2. Keeps you as warm or warmer
     
  3. Allows you to easily burn sticks, twigs and branches instead of just large chunks of firewood.
     
  4. Burns cleaner than any wood stove ever made

The big thing for us, living here on the prairie in Illinois surrounded not by woods or forests but by corn and bean fields, is the very real shortage of easily available firewood.  

What I am talking about are the large hardwood trees with trunks and large branches which are typically chainsawed to length and then split to fit into a wood burning stove.  All of this tonage of wood then needs to be hauled out of the woods, dumped or stacked somewhere, then loaded back into a truck for delivery to be driven to someone’s home (a lot more energy) and then unloaded and stacked again for winter use.

Continue reading →

6-Day Family Friendly Training

Posted on by Bill Wilson

6-day “Hands-on” Training - August 2011
Held at Midwest Permaculture in our Sustainably Oriented Community of Stelle, IL
We expect to be offering a ‘family friendly’ training every summer.  See Here for Details

 This Training is also Stage 2 or our 3-Stage PDC Certificate Course 
6 Students stayed on for the 5-day PDC Completion Training and earned their permaculture certificate.

This was our first training that fully welcomed families with children. Four families joined us along with 12 other individuals. Bottom-line... it worked out really well!

 

 “I so appreciated having families and their children in the course. 
It really added to the wonderful dynamic.” 
Kate – College Student 

 

Continue reading →

What A Difference A Path Makes – Before & After

Posted on by Bill Wilson


Before

As I am doing my year-end clean-up and organizing of my computer files, I came across these two pictures of our front yard (Midwest Permaculture – Bill and Becky Wilson). Here is how the yard looked the spring following the digging of the rain gardens which we did in late October.

 

After

And here it is in June after we dug in the paths and covered them and the raised beds (our keyhole gardens) with shredded hardwood bark mulch. The mulch gives the yard a more finished look while also helping to hold in moisture and add organic matter to the soil. Because this is the front yard we felt it was important for it to look more ‘landscaped’ being located in a suburban setting. If we are going to help mainstream to see the value of permaculture, we will have to make it look nice as well as be functional & productive. 

Becky and I are strong advocates of making pathways a priority as well. They not only make it easier to get around the yard but they really help define space which helps the mind to organize what to do where. 

The plants in the foreground are sweet potatoes. The vines grew all the way down into the rain gardens and whenever it rained and they filled with water, the vines would float on the surface like water lilies. It was lovely.

Becky and I would like to wish you all a wonderful holiday season. We look forward to sharing much with you in 2012.

All the best…. Bill Wilson

 

 

Water Wheel Pump

Posted on by Bill Wilson

This is just too cool…!

How many people live near a running creek, but the creek sits low enough on their property that there is no good way to get the water up on to the land for irrigation or for a small pond without running electricity for a pump?  This simple, homemade device will do the trick.

Of note, the water pump wheel will lift water 2 to 8 times higher than the diameter of the wheel.  Basically, the more loops you have in the wheel the higher and farther you can ‘pump’ the water.  However, the more loops in the wheel makes the wheel heaver and harder to turn, so one needs a larger or faster running creek to do the work.  Regardless, there appears to be a happy median, and to move any amount of water uphill on a piece of property gives one a very valuable resource to work with.  

Here is a link to a simple article about how the water wheel pump works and how to build one.

Just had to share this with you…. Bill Wilson

Cal-Earth – The PDC Portion of the Combined Earth Building and Permaculture Training

Posted on by Bill Wilson
Week 2 - The Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course.
(Click here for Photos of Week 1)

 
We not only taught this course to 24 students from around the world (Europe, Middle East, Africa) but we also trained 7 of Cal-Earth’s staff. and 2 of their interns. Nader Khalili was just months away from hosting the first PDC course at Cal-Earth when he unexpectedly passed in 2008. To honor their father and the 20th anniversary of Cal-Earth, Dastan and Sheefteh Khalili, Nader’s children, invited us to deliver our PDC course.  As Ian Lodge (director at Cal-Earth) told us , “the hard work of proving the viability of superadobe structures is done.  It’s now time to look at the total environment, to see how much better the buildings and the land around them can function together to benefit the people living in them.”
Continue reading →

Cal-Earth (The Earth-Building Portion of our Combined Trainings)

Posted on by Bill Wilson

Week 1 – The Super-Adobe Building Training

(When you’re done Viewing, Click Here for the Photo Summary
of the Second Part (permaculture) of this Combined Training)

 We just recently completed the first 4 days of our joint earth-building and permaculture design certificate course in conjunction with, and hosted at, the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (Cal-Earth).  There are about 30 students taking the combined training.  Because it is November, we are having some pretty cold nights and days here on the desert.Cal-Earth is located just outside of Hesperia, CA. where the San Bernardino Mountains meet the Mojave Desert.  They get 7 inches of rainfall per year, the majority of which falls during the winter months.  The famed Joshua tree is the dominant over-story tree on the landscape.  Some of these desert pioneers can be a thousand years old. 
  Continue reading →