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In this design we will be planting linear-food forests all along the downhill side of each of three hugelkultured swales. What is a hugelkultured swale?
While the tress and shrubs are in the early stages of growing (small) we will use the open space to grow some of our annual vegetables. We will also plant some nitrogen fixing ground covers and dynamic accumulators to help build the soil.
Part 3: 8-13 Weeks of Age (As Adventurers)
Part 2: 4-8 Weeks of Age (As Kids)
Part 1: 0-4 Weeks of Age (As Chicks)
Objective: Raise some chickens for food and to also help with insect, grass and weed control in our 2-acre organic community orchard…!!!
As most of you know, in permaculture design we attempt to:
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.
We will take the experience we do have, plus apply permaculture design principles, while adding in good-ole common sense (with help from some great books, friends and the internet) to work creatively and see what we might 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 worked on a more permanent home/coop.
Why Thermal Mass Rocket Stoves are part of This Permaculture DesignWhereas wood gasification turns wood scrap into a flammable gas to run engines (generating electricity power and heat), a thermal mass rocket stove simple turns scrap wood into heat…. lots of heat…with a lot less wood!!! So, we have included them in our overall design, especially for Earthcamp Village, because they are:
Bottomline: They burn 1/4 of the wood to generate the same heat from a conventional wood stove and the outgases are 90% cleaner as well. The Key? They burn the wood…and…the smoke and gasses! |
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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.
Not long ago, 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 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:
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.
 Here's our aquaponics system. Looking abundant and lush, but it's also hiding something quite interesting.... |
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 Self Irrigating Planter |
I Loved this YouTube Video Frank and his Homemade Grow Boxes Build Your Own Self Irrigating Planter (SIP) Meet Frank Fekonia from Queensland, Australia. Living in a relatively dry climate on a south facing slope he needed to come up with a way of growing bountiful gardens on rocky soil, on steep terrain, and with little water. Similar to the SIP, why not build tall raised beds or planters that conserve water while minimizing the amount of bending over to work the beds. Certainly he could figure out a way to build them for under $200 each. He did better than that. He built over a dozen of them for almost ‘nothink’. I love the creativity of Franks idea. |
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After 10 weeks of dry weather, a great rain soaked our parched yard in early September. I ran outside with my video camera to see how our rain gardens were dealing with the large cracks that had appeared in our bone-dry soil. This short 2.5-minute video will show cracks that you can slide your hand in to, fill with rain water during a downpour. |