Permaculture Design now Written up

Hi all

It’s been over a month since my last post, and some of you may have thought that I had forgotten about my blog. Far from it.

I am registered for the Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design, and have to submit ten of my designs for assessment. I have been doing this here on the blog, but the pages are currently hidden, until all of the projects are written up. After that, I will change the layout of the blog and all of the designs will be visible.

Wolds Woodland Farming Project April 2012

Just to show you that I have been busy, the link below will take you to the first draft of the overall design for this project. There’s a lot there.

Enjoy

Wolds Woodland Farming Project

and please feel free to add any comments that you have

Deano

Playing with Compost

Today I spent about eight hours building a compost heap. That seems like a long time, but, in true permaculture fashion, we never only do one thing, and every element should perform more than one function. So what was the big deal? Well the start point was this.

This picture was taken yesterday. The right bay was finished compost, the center fairly fresh, and the left is still a bit rough, but will be OK for potatoes, squash, and other summer staples.

This is the last of the finished compost. I could have left it in place, and put the new heap in the middle bay, but the lack of rain has left the top of some of the raised beds dry, and adding the compost will help to stop any topsoil from blowing away.

HAPI Introduction to Permaculture

Today was the fourth and final day of our Introduction to Permaculture Course. I ran this for our group, the Horncastle Area Permaculture Initiative (HAPI), over four Saturdays, and today was the day for the students to present their designs.

HAPI

The course was run at the home of Ali, one of the group, and she was also the client for the design project, which was her garden. Running the course at the venue for the design, allowed us to work through the whole process, in situ. Holding the days, one a month, gave time for everybody to think through what we covered, and also allowed more time for them to work on their designs, which are posted below

Obtaining a Yield from this Blog

This blog has just passsed it’s third birthday. I am now posting less frequently, and that reflects the fact that much of what I’ve written is seasonal, so why post a picture of a bee on willow, when there are already plenty of them on the blog somewhere else, probably this time last year, and the year before? If somebody is searching for a topic, the chances are that they will find what they are looking for in an older post. For those of you who follow the blog, I’m hoping that you will be just as interested in what I’m doing, as in the factual content. I still intend to put up plenty of new material, but it needs to be new, or update a project that is ongoing.

Lots has been going on since I last posted. The most important is that I’ve signed up to do the Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design. One of the early decisions that I’ve had to make is how to present my portfolio for assessment. The assessments are a little way away, but without some planning, the workload could be huge.

I asked a fellow Diploma student if he wanted to design a way of presenting my portfolio for me. That sounds like I was giving him work to do, but one of the criteria upon which you are assessed is how you engage with the wider permaculture network. So me asking him for help, and him giving help, counts as a positive for us both. If he had decided to design a solution as one of his Diploma Design projects, it would also have given him another design to include in his portfolio. This sort of thinking is an example of the permaculture principle ‘Every element should perform more than one function’ (Mollison), or ‘Multiple Outputs’ (Whitefield). So in this case, the help gives each of us credit for engagement, he gets another design to add to his portfolio, and I get a designed solution for my portfolio.

When Darius and I chatted, he made an observation that has led to a whole new way of thinking. I was thinking that I would need a website to display my work, and/or a second blog. My thinking was that a website has a nice hierarchical form, that makes it easy to navigate through. A blog is less easy to find a way through. You can make  a series of pages, but they stand alone. The posts, like this one, are archived in one way. My blog is archived by date. It could be changed, but that would mean a lot of work, and a loss of Search Engine Ranking, whilst the site is indexed again. Starting from scratch seemed like less work. Darius’s input was that my blog was my porfolio, I didn’t need anything else, and that all of the evidence that I would need to present was already there.

All of the information, and all of the pictures here are a large resource. Another permaculture principle is to ‘Catch and Store Energy’ (Holmgren), so that you can use it in times of need. This blog is an example of stored energy, mine, in the form of time, effort, knowledge, pictures, and links. So now that I need it, it’s here to help me. Another permaculture principle is to ‘Obtain a Yield’ (Holmgren). So far, the blog has been my way of sharing what I’ve learnt, but there has not been a significant yield for me so far. The pop up ads that you see are nothing to do with me, they are put up by WordPress, who provide the webspace free. Time for me to Cash in.

For me, it means looking carefully at the categories and tags that I use, so that posts that include permaculture principles, or relate the Diploma in some way, are eay to find. A bit of work there, will help overcome any navigation problems. I also need to go through all of the old posts, add permaculture/diploma tags, and small comments that relate the content to permaculture in general,and the diploma process in particular. that will take a bit of time, but probably not as much as starting from scratch.

For you, I hope that there will be little difference. There will be  a bit more permaculture stuff than there has been, but that reflects it’s growing importance to me. Most posts will also make reference to any permaculture principles that are relevant, and may include references to the diploma criteria. As each of my portfolio designs are recorded, I will post them as separate pages, which you will be able to read, and comment on.

I’m enjoying the diploma work so far, and hope that you will enjoy reading about it too.

 

Take care

 

Deano

LAND Project Demonstration Site

It’s official.

I can announce that we are now an official demonstration site for the Permaculture Association (UK), LAND Project.

You can read about the LAND Demonstration Project on the Pe.rmaculture Association website.

Our page is titled the Wolds Woodland Farming Project, which you can read by following the link text at the beginning of this sentence.

What this means is that we will now give tours for groups/individuals, with prior arrangement, so if you want to come for a walk around, follow the link to the page on the Permaculture Association site, get our contact details, and come for a tour.

Hope to see you soon.

 

Deano

Permaculture – Zoning for Bees

Hi All

I haven’t been idle in the evenings. I recently wrote two articles on the Worldwide Permaculture Network, the most recent was about the use of the Permaculture tool of Zoning, in relation to planting trees and plants to produce pollen and nectar for bee forage.

Listening to Plants

Before you think that I’ve finally crossed the threshold from eccentric, to dangerous, I’m not actually writing about plants speaking, or making sounds, more like being open to learn from what you see. I was going to use the title, Permaculture Principles – Observe and Interact, but I did that at this time last year HERE. So I’ve gone for something a little bit different in the title, even if the thrust of the post is the same.

Today I was potting on seedlings of the Amur Cork tree (Phellodendrum Amurensis). The seeds were sown last year, in a 12 inch shallow terracotta pot, and have been outside, unprotected, all Winter. I wasn’t sure if they had survived, but had not seen any evidence of dieback on the stems. I’m growing them for my bees, as the trees are a good source of nectar, flowering in June, and I can also harvest wood for fuel. However it was what I saw inside the pot that gave me the incentive to write this post.

The Worldwide Permaculture Network

Hi All

I’ve just signed up to the Worldwide Permaculture Network. This project is an interactive database designed to showcase Permaculture people and projects.

Permaculture Teachers

With little chance of planting trees, I’ve started doing some chores, and a bit of research. I found this clip on the Permaculture Research Institute Blog. It has Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton chatting during a Permaculture convergence. It’s worth a watch, and Bill Mollison is really funny. The link below takes you to the article, and the clip can be accessed from there.

PERMACULTURE LINK

One of the things that came across strongly for me was the discussion of the number of teachers that they were aiming to produce, as a measure of their success. I wonder what the ratio is here in the UK. I get the impression that there are more students wanting to teach here, but I have no figures to base that on. Just a feeling.

The other thing that resonated with me was Geoff’s comment about ‘Rampancy’, and regretting not putting enough in after seeing a Forest Garden that Bill had planted. I’m cramming a lot of trees into a relatively small space, so appreciated his insight.

I hope that you enjoy the clip, and will get some Forest Garden pictures posted, as soon as the planting for this year is complete.

Take Care

Deano

Permaculture Design for the Sustainable Smallholding

This post is a signpost to a new page that I’m working on. It is the Pictures, Design and Plans page, which you can access through the top bar of the blog . The reason for this post is that I cannot add tags to a page, so that anyone searching using tags/keywords might miss the page, but will find this post.

The page outlines the elements of the design, my use of patterning, and edge, the elements that I have included, some of the Permaculture Principles that have informed the design.

It includes pictures of the overall design, and schematics of the Coppice and Orchard, and Forest Garden.

Check it out

HERE

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