Permaculture & Agroforestry with Mark Shepard

Yesterday I went to a workshop on Permaculture and Agroforestry with Mark Shepard. We spent the morning in "class" listening to Mark talk and show a power point presentation and then spent the afternoon at Radical Roots Farm applying the things Mark talked about in the morning.

The things I remember and wrote down are:

• Permaculture is a process, not a set of practices.
• Look at the big patterns.
• Do precise planning so that you can do a small amount of work that has a huge impact and lasts a long time.
• Utilize the Keyline system of water management - find the natural flow of the water and then plan everything around that. This made so much sense to me after spending way too much money trying to keep our plants watered during the drought part of the summer. I am realizing that developing our water plan is one of the most important things we need to do for our garden to be sustainable. We put in about 10 rain barrels last fall, so it will be interesting to use that system, but the keyline water system using swales should also be very helpful because it works uses the water that lands all over the yard, not just in the rain barrels. The idea is to slow the water down and spread it out.
• Patterns are derived from the keyline of the water system.
• Use water as a resource instead of trying to get it to go "away."
• Permaculture is a verb - get plants in the ground.

Being at Radical Roots Farm and listening to Amy Batchman talk about her plans was really inspiring to me. What helped me the most is that even though Amy is a much more experienced farmer than I am, she still doesn't know exactly what she wants to do and there are still a lot of issues around the farm that she needs to solve. Her openness was very generous and it pulled me more into this larger process that we are all a part of. It also made me realize that all of this is an ongoing problem solving process and that I don't need to have everything solved or know everything to be part of it. That was refreshing to me. So, thanks Amy!!

Today I planted some tomatoes to put under the grow lights. I know I'm sort of late getting them started, but I wanted to get them planted anyway. I also transplanted some raspberries because I put them in the middle of the yard when I first planted them! Every time I look at that batch of raspberries in the middle of the yard I think, "What was I doing?" But it's OK. I'm transplanting the shoots to the side of the yard and am looking forward to a whole new raspberry patch in the future! In the meantime, the raspberries are really tasty and I'm just glad they are coming up and growing. It's so satisfying to have the perennial plants come up! I just love it.

It felt good to get out and work today - am getting hooked back into being in the garden and can't wait to get out again! Yay!

Here is a link that tells about Mark's farm:

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-11-12/mark-shepherds-106-acre-permaculture-farm-viola-wisconsin

Got Started - A Bit

OK, so I did get out last weekend and planted a bed of lettuce and some sugar snap peas. The weather has been really nice, but I've been tired after work and just haven't been able to get outside. It's like I want to want to, but just can't seem to jump in. I'm sort of overwhelmed because we started lots of beds and now I know how much work it's going to be to keep up with them, keep the weeds out, keep things watered in August...

I'm looking forward to the strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, rhubarb...all the things I don't have to plant this year!

Saul has spent this week gathering a lot of wood from a fallen tree that was cut down by the village. The pieces of wood are cut just the right length for our wood stove, although we still need to split it. He called the village and they said we could have the wood. It's a lot of work to load it in the pick-up and then stack it in our yard and then split it, but it's free wood! And our bills are so much lower now that we heat with wood. And it's recycling because this tree fell during a storm and now we can use it for fuel. So, it's sort of groovy. When we heat with wood we really have a grasp on the labor it takes to create our heat and I like that. I like that we have to work to heat our house instead of just moving the thermostat up which takes no work - or thought - at all. I like that every time we want to be warmer we have to clean the ashes out of the stove, crumple paper, get kindling, bring wood in the house, put the wood in the stove, and light the match. It takes all those steps plus all the work Saul is doing to gather and split the wood. It keeps us conscious of our energy consumption on a whole new level because we have to put out energy to stay warm.

Tomorrow I am going to an all day workshop about permaculture. Really, I just want to sleep in, but I'm sure I will really enjoy it when I get there. Part of the reason we started this blog is because we are just normal people who work and are raising a child and we don't do gardening, organic farming, canning, drying - you know all that stuff - all the time. A lot of our time is taken up with all kinds of other things, but we want to learn about how to live a more sustainable lifestyle. We experience on a regular basis how difficult it is to do that with the schedule we have. The hectic nature of life is probably the reason a lot of people don't make changes and it keeps us from moving as quickly on all this as we would like to. So, we just take it a bit at a time and do as much as we think we can. We also eat pizza and watch movies some Friday and Saturday evenings because we just need to veg after a busy week. Like I said, we are just normal people - not your radical types - and yet... It's all a balance.

So, that's what's up this week. In the garden - not much - lettuce and peas. In the overall scope of things - Saul has made lots of progress on our wood supply for next year and the year after. Tomorrow the permaculture workshop...and Mollie's lacrosse games and practices after school, my work with 60 middle school students every day, Saul's work with college students 4 afternoons/nights a week, Mollie's homework and work on her script with Cora...

Life in this modern world... Would we want to live in a more agrarian culture? Sometimes I wish our lives centered more around planting and harvesting, around a celebration of the seasons, around an awareness of the importance of water, sunlight, and soil quality. But what would it be like to live without some of our modern conveniences? What would it be like to have a life span of 45 years - or 25 years for women like it was in Ohio in the early 1800's. I think it's important to live the life we are living now with an awareness and an understanding of agrarian and indigenous cultures, but not with an idealistic, nostalgic viewpoint.

Getting Started

I am having a really hard time getting started with the garden this year. I don't feel very motivated to get out in the yard and I don't quite know where I want to begin. It is nice to look through the blog posts and see how lovely the garden looked last year and the year before.

I know that I don't want to plant as many annuals this year and I only want to plant the things I have had a lot of success with: squash, cucumbers, basil and tomatoes, lettuce. I haven't had the greatest luck with tomatoes, but they just taste GOOD that it's worth planting some. I'm interested to see what perennials are going to come up and I mostly want to plant edible perennials this year. It's just so nice to see them coming up in the spring and to know that you don't have to go out and plant them! Our asparagus didn't come up last year and I'm wondering what will happen with it this year. It will be disappointing if it died, but I guess that's part of the learning curve. WHAT I am supposed to learn from dead asparagus I don't know for sure, but I'm sure I am supposed to learn something.

I planted lots of raspberries along the edge of the yard this year, so my taste buds are anxiously, excitedly awaiting to see how they will grow. And I'm even more excited to eat them, but am not anxious about that. Watching raspberries grow is not one of my hobbies - just so ya know...

I "forgot" to harvest the Jerusalem Artichokes this year - well, in reality, I don't know when they are supposed to be harvested. Maybe I should go out and check them. They might be very tasty right now. They are sort of hard to cook because they have to be cleaned really well, which is a pain, and I haven't wanted to take the time when there is so much tasty food I can get from the grocery store. That's why I "forgot" to harvest then. I'm also too lazy sometimes. Well, I am still making a psychological transition...

We got a lot of rain barrels last fall, so I'm excited (Why do I keep saying "excited"? I'm really NOT that excited! Curious maybe.) to see how they work and how much water we get from them. We seem to have a sort of drought in Ohio in August and the plants are not so happy about it. I don't want to have to spend so much money on water to keep all the beautiful plants alive, so I'm really excited (there I go again -what is with me?) to see how the rain barrels are going to help.

We are going to have a base map made of our property. It will measure and label all the areas of the yard, the trees, bushes, current garden spaces, buildings, etc. We will be able to use this for planning our edible forest garden. So, maybe that's why I'm a bit stuck - I want to get the base map made and then really do some planning instead of just jumping in and creating a lot of back breaking work for myself.

In the meantime, I'm on spring break and am looking forward to digging in the earth this week.

The other thing that's really on my mind is that I just got my hair cut and I am now in the, "Oh, my God, what have I done?" stage. Funny how our experience with our hair largely determines our mood for the day - or week, or month. I don't really like that, but it's true. So, wish me a good hair day tomorrow and maybe I'll get out and garden...