Category Archives: Articles

Spring Rains Fill Our Earthworks Multiple Times

Posted on by Bill Wilson

While the city of Chicago was shutting down due to too much rain last week just 60 miles north of us, the swales, ponds, berms and rain we have put in around our home and in Stelle did their job of filling up and holding water back from the creeks.  Over several days they will slowly release that water into the water table rather than let it run down into our creeks and rivers all at once.  

In this hugelkultured swale, both the ditch and the wood in the berm are holding rain water.

In this hugelkultured , both the ditch and the wood in the berm are holding rain water.

The water we are holding back will eventually make it to our creeks and rivers anyway, but it will do so slowly… and over a long period of time… thus trickle-feeding our creeks and rivers all year round.  This is the way a normal hydrological cycle works. Continue reading →

Plant Guilds

Posted on by Milton Dixon

Free Plant Guilds eBooklet

Plant Guilds eBooklet

Bryce Ruddock - Midwest Permaculture's Official Plant Guy

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Join Bryce for an
All Day Workshop on Plant Guilds

August 17, 2013
At Midwest Permaculture – Stelle, IL

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Rocket Stove Workshop

Posted on by Milton Dixon

Learn to Make A Thermal Mass Rocket Stove

Students will Build and Fire-up a Thermal Mass Rocket Stove in a Single Day -

See our current  list of Rocket Stove Workshops for additional

Price – $95 - Includes Workshop and Lunch. At Midwest Permaculture in Stelle, IL
(Limit 24 Students per Workshop) Next Workshop: June 9, 2013

Standard wood stoves waste much of the heat and wood energy when they burn, with much of it going up the chimney as hot smoke. A burns more efficiently – converting nearly all of the fuel into CO2 and water, including the smoke. It also stores it’s thermal energy in a “battery”,  a bench that stores the heat from the fire and releases it slowly over the course of the day.  The stove can burn both logs and scrap wood and the best part is, it can heat the same space as a regular wood stove with 1/4 of the wood! Continue reading →

Is taking a Permaculture Course Worth It?

Posted on by Milton Dixon

Is taking a Permaculture Course Worth It? When I think back on my own experiences of taking a Permaculture Design Course () and look at the knowledge, skills and path that I am now on as a result, I would have to say that taking a permaculture course is absolutely a worthwhile experience. It has propelled me to where I am today and I would highly recommend it to most anyone.

Hugelkultured Swale Digging at Stelle PDC

First it’s useful to step back for a moment and look at the larger picture. When we take the systems that are available in the mainstream today for providing for ourselves , we can easily recognize that they are not caring for the planet, people, or the future. In fact, the situation is getting worse. These systems which manifest as the standard strategies for providing for oneself — such as going to college, getting a job, buying a house, driving a car and even shopping for necessary items — are breaking down. The price of college far outpaces inflation and for most isn’t an option without taking on crushing student debt. The economy is shedding jobs, manufacturing has followed cheap labor across the seas, government and business are paring down to the bone, and millions are unemployed and have given up looking for work. The housing market has crashed and threatens to collapse much further with the inventory of empty homes that no one can afford. The price of owning a car is climbing, with gasoline alone tripling in price in the last decade. Long supply chains, easily disrupted, bring us all the things around us, most of it is unnecessary junk or designed to fail in less than two years. The quality and safety of our food is highly doubtful. And the list goes on.

What is needed is not to trash the systems that are still providing for us, but instead  to enable each person to establish other systems capable of taking up the slack, ensure that they are ethical, resilient,  robust, and that most of all they meet the needs of people without being a detriment to the planet or the future. This is where the Permaculture Design Course comes in.

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Introducing Rusty, Midwest Permaculture Intern Summer/Fall 2012

Posted on by rustythompson

This post is made by one of our students as part of their Work/Study Internship.       

Me at Midwest Permaculture – on break!

My name is Russell Thompson; I was born in the United Arab Emirates (that’s in the Middle East) with Spina Bifida (a birth defect that causes spinal cord malformation). The doctors there didn’t treat infants until they were three months old, so they told my parents they would leave me in a corner to die, but I believe and was always told that God had other plans for me, and so did my parents. My father’s company arranged our flight out of there and we arrived in Texas within 48 hours of my birth where I received surgeries to save my life. Since then I’ve grown up in a loving Christian family; my father works for an oil company and because of this we have lived in Missouri, Indiana, Oklahoma, Scotland, Turkey and Texas.

I thought nothing about sustainable living or health until my mother was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (aka MS, a disease that deteriorates the nervous system) She started treating it conventionally with interferon shots, but she just knew there had to be a better way. Her research has led the whole family to take a closer look at holistic health and sustainable living. She has been living without any symptoms of MS for 7 years now.
Continue reading →

Capturing and Storing Energy with Homemade Chokecherry Wine

Posted on by Sarah Spotten

This post is made by one of our students as part of their PDC Completion Home Correspondence Course.

David Holmgren’s second principle of permaculture is “Catch and store energy” (Holmgren, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, Holmgren Design Services, 2002), often described with the proverb, “Make hay while the sun shines.”  The idea of this principle is that we should be alert for and take advantage of opportunities to capture energy and slow down its flow through the landscape around us, thus ensuring a steady flow of energy through the system rather than an ebb and flow.  One illustration of this principle is the pattern of any water drainage – for example, when the mountains above a river remain forested, the river flows at a more constant and predictable level year-round.  But when the forests are clear-cut, the river floods extensively during the rainy season and can run dry during the dry season or a drought – both situations devastating for human settlements and for the local .  The saga of the Loess Plateau in China (denuded and desertified after centuries of overgrazing and deforestation) illustrates this phenomenon well, with the upshot being that the people living in some parts of the Loess Plateau are now working to reforest their high places, improving the vegetation, soil and water in the entire watershed in a domino effect begun simply by capturing and storing water (energy) higher on the landscape and slowing down its movement.

Chokecherries as harvested from the bush:

Chokecherries

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The Ecology of the Aquarium – And How It Led Me to Permaculture

Posted on by Sarah Spotten

This post is made by one of our students as part of their PDC Completion Home Correspondence Course.

“…my fish tanks were essentially wastelands!”

I have had an aquarium (or two) in continuous operation since 2004 – a large goldfish tank and a small betta tank. However, between 2004 and 2010, my aquariums were really “fish tanks” by advanced aquarium hobbyists’ standards – meaning that they were focused on fish, with an artificial, decorative environment. Plastic and silk plants, plastic gravel substrate, and heavy mechanical and chemical (activated carbon) filtration were all in play in my tanks, even if I did use the occasional decorative natural stone or gravel. The “artificial, decorative environment” is a very common setup that is condoned by pet stores, aquarium stores, common knowledge and popular culture.

Goldfish aquarium

About the closest I got to an “” in my fish tanks was to utilize – as all aquariums and fish tanks do – biological filtration via nitrogen-cycling bacteria as part of my filtration system (converting harmful ammonia from the fish’s waste to less-harmful nitrate). Also, various volunteer species of algae would spontaneously appear over the years, which I usually scrubbed off the glass and fake plants in order to keep the tank “clean.” These fish tanks were fairly high-maintenance, in that they required weekly water changes, monthly algae eradication, and frequent cleaning of the filter media and moving parts – all standard recommendations for aquarium maintenance. But from an ecological and biodiversity standpoint, my fish tanks were essentially wastelands!    Continue reading →

Plant ID Walk: Table Rock (mesa)

Posted on by Sarah Spotten

This post is made by one of our students as part of their PDC Completion Home Correspondence Course.

My husband and I took a walk one day in early summer up to the top of a on his parents’ land near Springs, called Table Rock.  The environment on top of the is very dry, very rocky, and very windy, and as a result much of the flora hugs the ground closely.  It is the first place on the ~80-acre parcel of land to dry out in the summer.  There are small caves and splits in the rock at the top that create wildlife habitat and microclimates.  A lot of wildlife calls Table Rock home, including mountain lions, bats, deer, foxes, raccoons, hawks, and falcons.  In a permaculture design, the marginal land on top of Table Rock and its steep sides would be best left to nature as Zone 5.

Here is a sampling of some of the plants found on Table Rock:

Stonecrop (Sedum stenopetalum):

Stonecrop (Sedum stenopetalum)

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What Edibles Do People Grow in Colorado?

Posted on by Sarah Spotten

This post is made by one of our students as part of their PDC Completion Home Correspondence Course.

Garden plot on the high plains of Colorado
One of the best ways to gather information about what grows in your area is to speak with longtime residents who know the whims of the climate and who have gardened in your area for many years.  My father-in-law, Mike, has lived and gardened at 7,300’ elevation near Springs, for over 25 years.  As we toured his annual garden plot on the summer solstice, he shared some of his observations and notes on growing vegetables on the high plains of eastern .

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Plant ID Walk: Around the Pasture

Posted on by Sarah Spotten

This post is made by one of our students as part of their PDC Completion Home Correspondence Course.

My husband’s parents raise Scottish Highland cattle on the high plains of .  Besides the grasses that the cattle eat, there are many interesting “weeds” and other plants growing in the pastures.  In this hot and dry year, as spring officially became summer in June, the pasture grasses had already gotten too sparse for the Highlands to be able to feed themselves, they are now being fed with hay and off the pasture so that it can recover.  Meanwhile, most of the native (and non-native) “weeds” in the pasture, more drought-tolerant than the grasses, are still thriving.

Here is a sampling of some of the plants found in an example pastureland on the high plains of Colorado:

Miner’s candle (Cryptantha virgata):

Miner's candle (Cryptantha virgata)

Continue reading →