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Soil To Self

4/19/2019

1 Comment

 

​Stacking Functions Part 1 – Pawpaw Perfection

​By Emilie Tweardy

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​“Stacking Functions” – we hear the phrase all of the time in the Permaculture world, but what does it really mean?  Is it simply another variation of “two birds with one stone”? It can be used that way, but at it’s best, stacking functions really is a system-wide philosophy.  We look at overall needs on our site and match inputs and outputs in mutually beneficial ways. Over the next few months, I’m going to take you all on a tour of some different designs with awesome and creative function stacking, starting with a design I’m really proud of on my own site.  It began with observations about 3 different elements in our system. But first, a little background on PawPaws.


The Pawpaw is the largest native North American fruit, with loads of benefits to enjoy.  In late summer it produces clusters of a delicious, creamy fruit, it’s shade tolerant, browse resistant, a butterfly host plant and can handle wet feet.  It’s a great tree to plug into those dark corners of the property that you’re looking at and thinking.. what can I put there?? It is flowering now (mid-April), and the flowers are small and dark red, hanging upside down from nearly naked branches as the leaves begin to emerge.  A small, resilient tree that produces heavy yields, it's perfect for the homestead. Now that we know the basics, on to our observations.

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1). We have a challenge on our site, and it’s of our own making.  We process thousands of poultry animals here every year – chickens, turkeys, and ducks.  The water coming out of our outdoor poultry processing facility is full of Nitrogen and nutrients and flows downhill toward a pond on our property that overflows into a crick that feeds into Raccoon Creek, then the Rivanna, then the James, and on out into the Chesapeake Bay.  We don’t want to send all of this extra nutrient into that system so we need a creative solution.


2). One of our small business enterprises is oyster mushroom production.  We’ve frequently got a lot of “spent” mushroom substrate (most often a sawdust and/or grain base/mixture) that is no longer useful in commercial mushroom production, but still has a lot of life left in it to grow and spread.  During our last PDC course, Eli Talbert of Talbert mushrooms was giving a guest lecture and said something that caught my interest. “Mushrooms are just Nitrogen gobblers. Especially oysters, they’ll eat almost anything”. I knew this in principle, but a new lightbulb came on in my head.


3). We have a love of Pawpaws, and are starting to work towards propagating them.  We purchased 20 bare root trees this winter to start a pawpaw patch that we can later graft desirable varieties onto. This way we’ll grow the top notch varieties and produce our own scion wood (mini function stacking) so that we can propagate specific cultivars.  


With these observations we were able to creatively meet a need, reduce our waste, and increase our abundance.  Here’s how: We dug a series of swales going down our hillside next to the processing plant and are in the process of filling them with wood chips to act as a sponge and filter.  There are 4 of them so far, and we intend to add more this summer and extend the system further downhill. The top swale catches the runoff from processing at its Easternmost end, and it’s dug at a very gentle grade so the water moves downhill to the spillover point at the  Westernmost end. The spillover carries the water to the next swale where it enters on the West end and flows gently downhill to the East, where there’s another spillover, and so on. In this way, the water zig zags slowly downhill through these swales and has a lot of time and space to be absorbed and filtered before entering our watershed.   

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But here’s where it gets cool.  Pawpaw flowers have this really cool strategy for reproduction.  They have the dark red, veined appearance of raw meat. And they stink!  They smell of decay, some even say they smell like rotting flesh. These two characteristics attract carrion flies, which are the pawpaw trees’ pollinators.  And guess what enterprise on our farm attracts carrion flies? Poultry processing! Our composting poultry “leftovers” (any guts we can’t use, feathers, skin from peeling the feet, blood etc.) always attract flies, and we’ve located those piles at the top of the swaled.  Aaaand, Pawpaws can handle wet feet. They won’t mind being planted in a place that gets periodic heavy wettings (processing days use a lot of water). Pawpaws also have a deep taproot which will help stabilize the berms on which they’re planted.


And here’s where it gets cooler.  Whenever we have leftover mushroom substrate, we just throw it on top of the wood chips in the swales and let the mycelium “run”.  Those oysters can gobble up all of that rich Nitrogen from our processing days and keep it out of the waterways. We won’t eat those mushrooms, we’ll leave them to keep reproducing.  They’ll also help facilitate a fungal network in the soil, which was recently turned over from grass pasture. This will help the survival of the trees which have evolved in forested ecosystems with a healthy fungal community.  


So our main inputs here are labor and design.  It took a lot of work to dig swales (thanks interns and Spring 2019 U of R PDC Students!) and plant the trees, but the harder bit was establishing the design concept.  Once established, the outputs are huge! Clean water, nutrient absorption, delicious fruit, fungal communities, making use of the flies on site, swale stabilization, shade, aesthetics, scion production, seed production, pollinator hosting (Pawpaws are a butterfly host tree, in fact zebra tail swallowtail butterfly larvae will only feed on Pawpaws and nothing else) and more.


This is just one example of what stacking functions can do when applied on a whole system level in your Permaculture designs.  Stay tuned this summer, we’ll take a look at a lot more interesting and inspiring design examples. Enjoy, and go plant a Pawpaw!

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Soil To Self

4/12/2019

0 Comments

 

Thoughts On An Unexpected Death On The Farm

​By Trevor Piersol

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“When you take responsibility for an animals life, you must also take responsibility for its death” –Emilie Tweardy
I didn’t realize how emotionally connected I had become to my pigs until I had to kill one unexpectedly. A few days ago one of the two pigs we’ve been raising for meat was mortally injured and left paralyzed in half of its body, and after consulting with the vet, we decided to euthanize him. It was solemn and shockingly violent, but thankfully it went very quick. First the vet sedated him, and once he was unconscious, I shot him twice between the eyes with my rifle. Later, alone on the farm, I buried him in the ground with a few heartfelt prayers.
I know we made the right decision, but it doesn’t make it any less heartbreaking. The worst part was seeing the crippled, feverish pig suffer – that’s when I realized how visceral the bond was that I had developed with him over the past few months. It is a strange, new feeling – not like the grief of losing a pet, there were no tears – but more of a heavy sadness that hangs like a weight from my chest.


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This is my families first go at pigs, and one of the things my wife and I are reflecting on now is that our pigs have become a familiar comfort to us – a vibrant part of the interconnected living system of our farm. I knew I would have to butcher them soon, and I had always imagined harvesting them with reverence knowing that they would be recycled to nourish my family and friends. Now I’ve lost that meaning for this pig and I am struggling to make sense of it.  He will feed the soil food web now and next season we will plant a mulberry tree over his grave that someday will feed another generation of pigs. Still, something feels wrong and I have to sit with that for now.
I think I’ve already recognized some lessons from all of this. One is to always have an on-farm plan to butcher in emergencies so the meat can be salvaged. Another is to raise a more resilient breed (it seems like this particular injury is common in Mangalistas). There is an idea I’ve heard that industrial-scale agriculture fosters a society that becomes inured to violence, and that might be true to an extent. But then it must also be true that the experience of raising animals, working alongside of them, and taking responsibility for both their lives and their deaths, makes us take violence more seriously. I know that it has for me.

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Soil To Self

4/5/2019

3 Comments

 

Beyond Meat – Tapping Into Additional Yields From Animals On The Farm

By Betsy Trice 
Peacemeal Farm
Hadensville, VA.  

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I farm because I desire that raw tangible connection to nature, in essence to ourselves.  I also farm because I enjoy producing food that we eat, it makes me feel safe and eating food from the land we work with every day deepens the connection that satisfies my soul.  We produce a variety of things on our farm, but the biggest contribution to our own diet is meat. We easily provide ourselves with all the meat we need. Our meat consists of goat, chicken, beef, and the occasional wild caught deer and even groundhog.  Not only are animals a part of our farm because they provide us with food and income, but also because we enjoy being around and interacting with them and I feel that our life is richer for it. They teach us a lot about communication and intelligence and patience.  By raising the animals we eat we can also be sure that they are treated humanely, live a good life, and that their dispatch is performed with respect and is quick and as low stress as possible. In addition to the meat for our table, animals provide a plethora of additional yields.  Over the past few years I’ve been dabbling with these additional yields, learning how to process different parts and how to enjoy and utilize what they produce. These are some of the ways we tap into the additional yields that our animals provide. Needless to say, nothing on our farm dies in vain.

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Once the meat is cut from the carcass, the bones are boiled down for a nutrient rich broth which is frozen or canned for future use.  I add vinegar to help pull the minerals from the bones into the broth and let it cook for 12-24 hours before straining the bones out. Beyond just using broth as a soup base, it’s a wonderful rich substitute for water when cooking rice, greens, or beans.  
Animal skins are an amazing resource.  Early on, I filled our freezer with beautiful skins that I couldn’t bear to toss out until I taught myself to tan them (with the help of books, articles, youtube, and trial and error).  Tanned animal skins can be made into clothes, bags, blankets, or even just used as home decor with a deep story. I took a 3 day workshop to learn how to make buckskin (the soft supple suede like leather with no hair) – using the brains of the animal, lots of elbow grease, and smoke.  And although I haven’t made anything with my buckskins yet, a skirt is in my very near future. After learning to tan hides for myself I began to offer my services to local hunters who wished to preserve the pelts of their kills. Tanning for others is now a way I bring in a bit of extra income during the winter in the ‘off’ season for the farm.    
Animal skins can also be made into rawhide.  Rawhide is skin that has simply had the hair taken off and then dried.  I’ve salvaged deer hides that would’ve otherwise been tossed from local hunters and made them into beautiful sounding drums by stretching and tying them over hollow forms.  Rawhide can also be cut into a thin strip and used as strong lashing.

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Fat is rendered down into lard for cooking.  Rendering is as easy as cutting pieces of rich white fat from the carcass and melting them down in a pan or crockpot.  The fat is then strained into jars while it is still hot and in liquid form and then cooled and used for cooking throughout the year.  Lard from our goats has become a staple in our kitchen for cooking and it also keeps our cast iron cookware, which we use on a daily basis, well-seasoned.  Lard can also be collected from the top of a pan of fatty broth where it rises and solidifies once it is cooled in the refrigerator. Lard can also be used for making soap (with the other main ingredient being lye).  I’ve made soap from hog lard in the past. ​
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I’ve even collected the fat that is scraped from bear hides in preparation for tanning them for hunters.  Now while I wouldn’t use this for cooking since the skin it is scraped from is fairly dirty, I render it the same way and we use the resulting grease as a boot oil and conditioner for metal tools.  I even used it once to get pine sap out of my hair!!
Hooves from goat and deer are removed and make a lovely sounding rattle to play along with the rawhide drum.  The feet from chicken can be eaten or used with the bones to make broth, but we mostly dehydrate them and utilize them as nutritious dog treats.  
Anything that isn’t utilized is composted and returned to the earth from which it came.     
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To follow Betsy and her work at Peacemeal Farm check her out on Facebook at

https://www.facebook.com/PeacemealFarmVA/ ​
3 Comments

Soil to Self Blog

3/29/2019

4 Comments

 

Permaculture And Faith

​By Victoria Mininger

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I stumbled upon permaculture by accident in 2012. At the time, we were living on ten acres of land in Nelson County and had decided to revisit the task of growing a garden and raising our own animals.
Having been raised on a dairy farm in Northern New Mexico, I had been immersed in all things farming and gardening. Hard work was the motto. The art of self-sufficiency was our way of life and, with a mother raised in the Mennonite faith and tradition, she was a master at growing a large garden and canning/preserving food. To this day, I can still hear the canners rattling and hissing away as yet another batch of tomatoes and green beans were put up for the harsh Rocky Mountain winter ahead.
Years later, as our family settled on our own piece of land, I realized that farming and growing things had never really left my blood. It was like my fingers itched to get into the soil as soon as March and warm spring days hit our patch of grass. However, unlike the rich soil of our tiny, New Mexico town, the soil we encountered was clothes-staining red. It was so heavy with clay that we were at a loss as to how to plant in this new place. We were attempting to successfully raise food on land that had only seen a passing herd of cows. Somehow, we needed a new approach. Enter permaculture.
Through our initial study of permaculture, we quickly figured out that the incorporation of sheet-mulching and organic leaf material from the woods nearby could quickly increase the soil’s fertility to then grow things quite successfully. Permaculture was a whole new way of thinking that took the traditional way of gardening I was raised with and made it a richer, deeper experience.

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I can tell you that there was nothing quite like harvesting our garden that first year. While it was far from a perfect harvest, the fact that we could take a previously unyielding landscape, and see it produce bountifully, was exhilarating. However, the piece that I was not expecting, was how much the practice of permaculture resonated so deeply with my own personal faith practice. As I read more about the 3 ethical pillars of permaculture - the call to Care for the Earth, Care for People and the practice of Fair Share - I was reminded of this Biblical passage from Genesis 1:28;
“And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
As a young girl, I was raised in church with the belief that this creation we see and experience each day has a Creator; a Creator who I could have a personal relationship with and experience, not only through faith, but also through interaction with the world around me. However, as I grew and studied Scripture for myself, I began to
understand that part of that relationship with my Creator was to answer the mandate given in Genesis to care for the earth, people, and animals He had created. In fact, if you’re a student of the Biblical text, you will find other passages that point to this call to care for the earth and God’s people throughout Scripture.

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I’ll be honest and admit that we as a people of faith have not always heeded that call and the ramifications of that neglect are seen in our world today. However, for me to wait on someone else to step up to do what I feel God is saying in my life, is not to live out an active faith, but rather a disobedient one. I embrace the practice of permaculture because I feel it best expresses how I am called to care for the Earth and the people that make up my community and beyond. It is through the practice of permaculture that I feel I can authentically work in harmony with creation and the patterns of nature set forth from the beginning.
As a young girl, I spent enough time outdoors to see those patterns of nature emerge in everything we did on the farm. The coming of new, Spring calves and watching the way a garden grows - from seed to greening plant - with the help of care, water, and sun. It is when we honor these cycles of nature and how they work with one another that we have the opportunity - dare I say privilege - to enrich and heal the land instead of robbing life from it. However, just as much as permaculture and my faith is about the care of the earth, it is more importantly an opportunity for me to care for people in my life well.
Throughout the last 16 years of being a business owner and employer, I have seen how my own practice and understanding of permaculture has impacted the company I own and lead on a daily basis. We are a company that builds things but, more importantly, we strive to build-up people. By focusing on building people through job placement, skill acquisitions, and care for one another as a work community, I also answer the call of caring for people through the lense of my faith. It matters how we treat people, receive them, and choose to care for them beyond just a paycheck. If I truly believe that each person is uniquely created and has infinite worth, then my faith calls me to care for them well by building-up and serving the community God has put in my particular sphere of influence.
As I reflect on all I have learned through the last few years of studying permaculture, this quote from the Scotsman, John Muir, sums it up well for me;
“Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, days in whose light everything seems equally divine, [that open] a thousand windows to show us God.”
May I forever look through the windows of creation to its Creator as I hike the bounty of the Blue Ridge Mountains; as I bend to press my hands into the soil of this valley I call home and care for the people within my greater community.

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Soil To Self

3/22/2019

1 Comment

 

​Rope A Dope Style - A Case Study In Creative Use and Response To Change

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How many of y’all hear Gerald Levert looping in your head right now behind that title?  Or have visions of the Mayweather vs Mcgregor fight last year? As a 90’s kid with an appreciation for combat sports, I could say a whole lot about both.  But this blog is not a nostalgic ride through my childhood, it’s about permaculture and farming.
And farming is a blood sport.  
Why then the Rope A Dope?  
For those not familiar with the Rope A Dope concept, it comes out of the boxing tradition.  The Rope A Dope was made famous by Ali. At its simplest, it is a strategy in boxing where the boxer appears weak, by doing so, invites his opponent to fire off a flurry of ineffective punches. The boxer is on the ropes, which allows the rope to absorb the shock of the punch.   In this scenario it appears as though the boxer is being beaten badly, only to turn the fight in their favor quickly at the right moment with a well-placed blow on a tired opponent. Ali beat Foreman (a heavily favored opponent) with this strategy. The fight is up on youtube - every time I watch it I get goosebumps.  
In permaculture, we often find ourselves in systems where we are over matched.  
I’m on the ropes.  
For the last decade, I’ve been vegetable farming at the market scale.  I started out building a not for profit farm and then transitioned to build my own small farm.  I have learned much.
The seasons on an intensive small scale vegetable operation are long, brutal, and rewarding.  Revenue can be extensive, but profit, in the early years especially - is sparse. It’s not uncommon to watch the thin margin on the season disappear in one night in a clandestine orgiastic Roman style feast at the hands of the local whistle pig community (that’s groundhogs for those not from the valley).  Excess consumption is not unique to the human sector. I have come to love hunting the beasts down with a crossbow, literally counting the dollars saved with each kill.


Photo from left to right: the farm a decade ago, an overhead of the farm now, a picture of the lower field that is now flooded.  
Some seasons are difficult,
Some seasons will sink you.  
We live in a valley, peppered with microclimates.  
Last year, in my corner of my county, my site received almost 80 inches of rain.   We average 36 inches a year.
In all of my design work on the site, I never imagined this much water.   The perennial systems performed well, but the annual systems, on which I depend for income, failed.
By July, my neighbor’s property sprung a spring, and a creek developed that ran across my driveway into my lower fields.  9 months later as I’m writing this, there is still water running across my driveway. And my lower field has been underwater since last summer.  
Feedback, not failure.
What do I do?  
I could lease extra land off-farm, and push forward through the barriers refusing to change the direction I set ten years ago.  
This would require pouring more resources, human calories, gasoline, infrastructure - money - into keeping the dream alive.  
Instead, I lean on my training.  
In permaculture, we look at the goals of a project, our ethics, and the 12 principles to evaluate a design.  
In the middle of this crisis, both existential and financial,  the two principles that provided the most relevant support in our evaluation were; obtain a yield and creatively use and respond to change.  We asked ourselves the questions, what are our goals? What are our yields?
Our goals point towards connection, sustainability, and financial stability.
The vegetable operation isn’t cutting it.   
After years of pushing sometimes 60 hours a week, I am 40 years old, broke and facing an effort to salvage an unsustainable project.
This cold analysis is hard.  Permaculture is not for the brittle spirit.
But, it is freeing.  
My next step is to point positive.  What do I have?
I have a killer homestead.  Professional grade paid-for infrastructure, tools, and equipment and deep knowledge of plant systems - I have my formal training in counseling, deep roots in a community that I am native to, and passion for medicinal and useful perennials.   
By focusing on what I have, rather than what I’ve lost.  By applying my assets to goals of the project plus hard climate realities I am able to move forward.   
What it looks like.
It’s time to stop the vegetable hustle.  My site is no longer appropriate for it, nor my familial context.  I am in the midst of pivoting toward a more perennial system and utilizing my present infrastructure to grow out and produce medicinal and edible landscaping nursery stock.  In addition, I can lean on my formal training as a mental health counselor to find off-farm work that supports resilience in human sectors in my community and my family.
Psychologically, this moment creates an opportunity to re-brand.  Our new name is Moonstone Plant Company.
Zora Neale Hurston - the anthropologist and writer once described strength as like being a rock or a blade of grass.  The rock is hard but worn down and broken by water, whereas the blade of grass is unfazed and yielding - strong - when confronted by the elements.  (Students of Taoism/Ch’an Buddhism may recognize this idea. I love the thought of Hurston reading Lao Tzu.)
In permaculture, we can’t be hard rocks, breaking ourselves against uncontrollable sectors.  
At the end of the day, rather than moving forward stubbornly only to crumble like last Christmas’ peanut brittle, turn to permaculture principles, ethics, and the design process as the structure for a thoughtful, relaxed, and flowing decision making process.   This is the seat of resilience.
We must change.
When you find your project at this moment do three things.
  1. Remember your goals, ethics, and principles
  2. Re-engage the design process, focusing hard on analysis and yields (shout out to Emilie’s blog post last week)  
  3. Point positive.  (Focus on what you’ve got, not what you’ve lost.)
And after licking my wounds for a couple of weeks while making this decision, a funny thought emerges.   The hardest thing I have to do now is change my Instagram handle.
Small price - big yield
Find the leverage point in the system.  
Projects stumble - shit goes sour, just remember the Rope -A- Dope.  

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1 Comment

Soil To Self

3/15/2019

13 Comments

 


The Permaculture Toolkit - An Intentional Design Process

​By Emilie Tweardy

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Permaculture gives us a toolkit for moving from a culture of fear and scarcity to one of love and abundance
-Toby Hemenway

This quote speaks deeply to me because I’ve always seen Permaculture as a toolkit.  A common Permaculture frustration is the absence of a specific working definition. Ask any 10 Permaculturists and you’ll get 10 different definitions. In fact, in recent months, I discovered a new personal favorite straight from the mouth of the godfather himself (Bill Mollison) calling Permaculture “the rational man’s approach to not shitting in his bed”.  This off-the-cuff approach to a definition is common in the Permaculture world because it’s just such a broad field. The idea of intentional design can (and should) apply to anything you’d like, so how do we pare it down to an elevator pitch? Hence, the toolkit analogy. There are hard skills, soft skills, precision skills, broad skills. Permaculture as a system is the structure - the whole kit.  The techniques themselves are the tools inside.


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The study of Permaculture is best approached from the bird’s eye view, or “Pattern Level”.  Over time, we zoom in to look from a worm’s eye view - what we call the “Details Level”. The pattern informs the details; the context makes sense of the minutia.  And what we at SPI emphasize overall, is that in our world the “human sector” (in permaculture, ‘sectors’ refer to the energies flowing across a site or through a project.  We study a myriad of sectors - wind, water, sun, human. etc.) is the foundation for all observations, techniques and applications. After all, we’re living in the Anthropocene Era now - even geologists (in labeling current time as the anthropocene) recognize that the study of the Earth at current time deserves an underlayment of anthropology, it simply cannot be escaped.  We must take into account the effect of humankind on anything and everything we do. From community design on down to garden design.

Moving through a Permaculture Design Courses (PDCs), students learn hard skills like tree plantings, soil sampling, client interviews, map making, mushroom cultivation, grafting, intensive gardening and so much more. Stocking the toolkit.  This is the easy part, frankly - collecting merit badges for all our skills. Nothing gets a group excited like digging in the dirt! And, we all get to know each other in the process. Oddly enough, that’s the hard part. Tensions arise, energies flow, bonds are made, strengthened, made stronger again by sharing and vulnerability and a common experience.  This may sound like a metaphor for a drum circle, but the reality is that this simple process of group learning develops intimacy; it supports fundamental human needs. In this ever-connected world of electronic “followers”, “likes”, and “friends”, we see an increasing need for real-world sharing and connection. The struggle is real! That “fear and scarcity” that Hemenway references is just as human as it is economic. We emphasize and explore this in our classes for a number of reasons, but most importantly, we model, learn and practice these skills because they are absolutely crucial tools in the toolkit for successful design.  As Dave Jacke says, “90% of all Permaculture projects that fail, fail due to poor design in the human sector.”

As we get to know each other, the “human ecosystem” of the classroom unfolds.  We become guilded into useful groups and subgroups as we navigate our own Human Sector experience.  There are unique flora and fauna represented by the individuals present. We may have teenage college students, 70 yr old retirees, businesswomen and men, entrepreneurs, execs, stay at home parents, massage therapists and construction workers, all in one room.  Any one person might hold several of those titles at the same time. The cooperative learning experience then unfolds as a result of all the people in the room coming together, stepping up to the experience and leaning into the recognition that we are all in this together.  We begin to see how we meet each other’s needs. What would happen if we were stranded on an island together? Where are the holes in our knowledge base? What skills are being lost from our communities altogether? How do we identify these strengths and challenges in our projects and for our clients?  How do we meet them with grace and understanding, and ultimately - with elegant solutions? Enter the intentional design process. It’s a way to pull all of our skills together and make sense of a situation, whether it’s an office space or a backyard.

Over time, we fill the toolkit with strategies for strength and resilience.  And while we learn these skills for independence, we continue to dig into the importance of dependence, not on fossil fuels or electronics, but on each other.  We can’t all specialize in everything. We don’t all have grazing lands, we don’t all have mechanical skills, we don’t all have computer savvy. How can we come together to fill those gaps for each other?  How can we use the human sector to elevate our design? To enhance our lives? This human sector focus turns all of the other tools into useful equipment, not just blunt instruments. After all, what’s the point of building a community garden with no community?  No food forest is meant to feed a single individual. And drilling deeper into skill building and design savvy, we always, always, always return to Principle #1 - Observation and Interaction. If you’re not awake and involved, if you’re not participating, the cycle is broken.  Permaculture design requires engagement. It’s as simple as that.

It’s not uncommon to see a Perma-newbie on a message board saying “Permaculture has all the answers!  We can use it for anything!”. At first glance, this sounds so incredibly pretentious, but they’ve hit on something - Permaculture does have many answers, because it’s rooted in observation, adjusts to accommodate feedback, and includes everybody.  And when you utilize everybody’s strengths - you can find all the answers.  Or at least a lot of them.

But without the design process, Permaculture is just a pile of tools. Mollison famously warned against PDC grads just being “a bunch of woo-woos spinning around in circles”. And it’s a fair criticism.  Permaculture can easily be an echo chamber of environmental enthusiasts, and gardeners, natural builders, non-violent communicators, edible landscapers, artists and more. But even Mollison, the founder himself, wasn’t afraid to call it out. Because that’s the heart of the design process - we never stop observing, we recognize feedback, and we re-evaluate as-needed.  Permaculture in practice is an evolution. This design process gives us a structure to hold all of the tools, and a method to the way that we use them.

So when people frown on day 1 of a course when we say “this is not a gardening class”, I lean in.  When people roll their eyes as we use Hemenway's talk of “love and abundance”, I get excited. Bring on the skeptics!  These folks have the most transformative experiences of anyone because the Permaculture design system actually values and validates them and their opinions.  We use an intentional design process because we look at all elements together - skeptics included. We design for people AND the environment, and we make each one better in the process.  The toolkit is massive and growing all the time, and none of it holds together without the process. And because we are growing with intention, we aren’t just tools, but instruments, tuned to a purpose, playing together.  Hell, we’re a symphony for change! Ok... maybe I’m getting carried away. But the moral of the story is that Permaculturists walking the walk aren’t just woo woos spinning in circles. We’re a community spiraling towards abundance, and it’s all by design.

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13 Comments

Soil To Self

3/8/2019

2 Comments

 

Towards a Permaculture Kitchen: Culinary Techniques for Reducing Waste ​

​By Tom Parfitt

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With the exception of the past five years, my entire career was spent working in kitchens. I worked my way up from a beer-soaked dishwasher, to a sous chef in a celebrated bistro, to the head chef of my own market and catering company. I spent time in a tiny 8 table restaurant, a large award winning five-diamond hotel, and I spent almost a decade teaching culinary arts, baking and pastry arts, nutrition and food science, and food service management. Even today as a stay-at-home-dad and fledgling homesteader, a good portion of my day revolves around preparing food for my family of six.
Throughout the years I’ve seen it all - drunken chefs barely making it through a shift right up to a Michelin starred chef orchestrating a kitchen brigade with the finesse of a distinguished maestro. I’ve cooked through services standing in a half inch of dirty water and I’ve worked in an immaculate open kitchen where one crumb on the floor was too many. Throughout all my unique experiences with kitchen culture, there has always been one common thread: kitchens produce an amazing amount of waste. The lessons I’ve learned in professional kitchens translate well to meal planning and preparation at home and I’d like to share some of the techniques I use to create a more streamlined and less wasteful permaculture kitchen. Our time, energy, and food resources are valuable and often wasted but with a little know-how and a bit of good design, we can begin to slowly and simply reduce our waste streams.

Teaching culinary school clued me into a couple of things: my kitchen philosophy is driven by techniques and my students are predisposed to think in terms of specific recipes. In general, their mindset is so entrenched in the detail that I had to provide written recipes for everything we made together. But instilling a technique-based philosophy was important to their success.
Technique-based cooking frees us up to use what’s on hand instead of making special trips to the store to purchase specific ingredients. This saves time, fuel, and encourages us to use the food that is already in the house, minimizing food waste. It allows for improvisation and seasonal cookery - so we’re not spending valuable time searching for out-of-season vegetables and we don’t scrap the idea of a new flavor combination because one ingredient is missing. I guarantee that the bulgogi will taste just as good if it’s marinated in garlic and onion chives as it would if we used the traditional green onions.  Who knows, maybe swapping out the herbs will create a magic formula that makes it truly next level!
Here are four easy techniques to start adding to your culinary repertoire: Getting away from a recipe mindset and using cooking methods to make countless dishes, cooking from the pantry, full-value cooking, and making energy multitask.

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  1. Searing-In a New Mindset- Using One Cooking Method to Make Countless Dishes   
One of my favorite cooking methods is searing meat and making a pan sauce. There are actually several cooking techniques combined to make this quick and easy meal preparation: Searing, Deglazing, Reducing, and Emulsifying. Don’t let those terms make you think this is complicated - it’s super easy.  One of the more famous examples of this method is chicken piccata, which essentially goes as follows:
Sear seasoned chicken breast cutlets in olive oil on both sides until browned and almost cooked through.  Add a tad more oil into the pan and cook minced garlic in the same pan. Deglaze the pan with white wine and chicken stock, making sure to dissolve the delicious brown bits that are stuck to the pan.  Reduce the liquid until it’s almost gone and stir in cold butter little by little until a sauce forms. Add capers, lemon juice and flat leaf parsley and then season with salt and pepper.

Once we cook something like Chicken Piccata, we could think of it as adding a single recipe to our repertoire - but if we switch gears, we can think of it as a method to utilize the food we have on hand to make countless flavor combinations.

Step one -  look in the fridge and see what we have on hand.  
Step two, formulate a plan for specific ingredients.
Step three - cook!

Almost any piece of meat that you would consider throwing on the grill can be seared and cooked through. You can make any type of pan sauce by deglazing the pan with stock and/or wine, swirling in butter, and stirring in some herbs.  Maybe next time, instead of olive oil, capers, and lemon we can use a sesame oil/grapeseed oil blend, ginger, mirin, and green onions. By switching out the ingredients we’ve made a completely different meal using the same technique. Little by little we can add techniques to our repertoire and a whole world of improvisational cooking is ours to experiment with! You can follow the same line of thinking and apply different flavors combinations to other methods of cooking such as braises, roasts, soups, sautees, and so much more.

2. Cooking From the Pantry
  1. Buying in Bulk
Purchasing and storing rice, quinoa, pasta, etc. in bulk can save us money.  It can also reduce our carbon footprint by reducing trips to the store as well as the amount of packaging we buy and discard. It really comes in handy when the roads are covered in ice and we need to get dinner on the table. Whole and bulk spices from an Indian or Pakistani grocer are infinitely cheaper and tastier than the powdered spices from the big-box grocery store. Whole spices last longer because they have much less surface area exposed. Simply toast spices (coriander, cumin, or fennel seed, for example) in a dry pan until they are several shades darker and then grind them in a mortar and pestle or in a coffee grinder.

B. Using Whole Ingredients to Make your Own Specialty Mixes
Learning to make ingredients can help as well. For example, lots of southern biscuit makers swear by White Lily Flour because it makes an extremely tender biscuit that also stays together. Knowing a bit about flour and how it reacts to water can help us understand. Water links together the characteristically elastic gluten-forming proteins in flour and the higher the protein count, the tougher the resulting product will be. However, a bit of protein is necessary for structure. White Lily flour strikes a good balance between tender and sturdy and is about 8% protein. So if we mix half cake flour (7%) with an all-purpose flour (about 9 to 10%) we can approximate the ever important protein levels of biscuit flour. We really don’t need to know all about flour proteins to make a substitute ingredient -  simply do an internet search for substitutes and we can save ourselves from stocking specialty items. Now, our AP flour and Cake flour are more multi-functional. The same could be said for things like garlic-salt (garlic powder and salt mixed in it’s own little container!?) and lemon pepper. For lemon pepper we could just mix salt, pepper, and lemon zest. It’s more wholesome than the premixed stuff which is full of citric acid, and other free flowing agents. Actually, I suggest zesting all citrus fruit. Even if we don’t plan to use the zest right away it can be frozen and used later - in pie crust, scones, soups, spice rubs (it’s great on salmon), drinks, and so much more! There is so much value in that marginal fruit “waste.”

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3. Full-Value Cooking
Speaking of valuing the marginal, I’ve watched so many vegetable stems and usable parts of meat get thrown right into the trash. Whole tops of peppers, broccoli stems, asparagus stems, peach pits and skins, carrot tops - all have value. Here are a few techniques for maximizing the value of your food.

A. Using the Less Prized Portion of Vegetables
We can micro-dice pepper scraps, zucchini ends, onion tops, the tougher outer layers of brussels sprouts, etc. and sautee them for use into a wonton filling, rice pilaf, goat cheese spread, or into ricotta cheese for ravioli filling. I like to julienne and pickle broccoli and cauliflower stems for a sour note in salads. I love cooking beets in vinegar and honey and then serving them over their own stems and greens with a little cheese crumbled on top.

B. Pureeing Scraps and Adding Them To Sauces
One way to use scraps and disguise vegetables for picky eaters at the same time iis to puree and hide carrot peelings, mushrooms stems, etc. and mix it into pasta sauce. Carrot tops, beet greens, and radish greens are great in pestos and smoothies.

C. Steeping In The Flavors
Peach pits and skin can be steeped into cream for a delicious ice cream or custard base as can coffee grounds - espresso creme brulee with churros anyone? This technique is never ending - chive stems steeped in milk and added to mashed potatoes, roasted Hatch Chile skins steeped in cream and used to make green chile queso, and on and on.
 
D. Using Less Valued Meat Scraps
One of the most tragic waste streams is usable meat scraps. These animals gave their lives for our sustenance so the least we can do is utilize them wisely. Of course we can use chicken bones, beef bones, as well as shrimp, crab and lobster shells for stocks and broths, which are the basis of countless soups, braises, and sauces. We can also save chicken fat to cook with or enrich rice dishes, beef fat and tough chine meat can be made into ground beef. Chicken skin tacos - enough said!
 
There are levels of usefulness when it comes to “waste”, so let’s starting with eating it when possible. Of course not all food waste is edible or palatable, but it typically has value anyway. We can’t eat rosemary stems but we can certainly use them to smoke fish or to skewer and grill chicken. And we can always vermicompost, compost, or feed animals with food waste.
 
4. Making Energy Multitask

Beyond food waste we can better use resources while we cook by making energy work for us in multiple ways - through batch cooking, by capturing escaping energy and valuing/using would-by “waste” and by making meal-prep a bonding experience.
 
A. Batch Cooking
By cooking in batches we can save fuel, wash water, and personal energy. It takes much less energy to cook twice or three times the amount we need for a meal, as it does to cook the same meal three separate times. Batch cooking and then freezing portions of prepared meals comes in handy and we all need a night off from cooking and washing dishes.
B. Capturing Escaping Energy
Boiling a big pot of water to make pasta uses quite a bit of electricity or gas and there is a good deal of heat energy going unused as steam escapes off of the pot. There are several ways we could we use that energy: we could steam dumplings, veggies for the week or even fish or shellfish in a bamboo steamer, right on top of the pot while the pasta cooks. We can also blanch veggies in the hot water before we cook the pasta. When the cooking is done  we could use the pasta water for making stocks or simply watering plants. Similarly, potato water is great for making gravy and actually increases the volume of the yield.     
There are other energies that go unused in a kitchen, such as a cooling but still warm oven. This heat can be used to proof sourdough bread for the bulk fermentation stage, or for drying herbs, breadcrumbs, and more.
 
C. Stacking Functions - Turning Meal Prep Into Teaching and Bonding Time

Yet another waste stream is wasted opportunity. Kids can easily be integrated into the cooking process (ginger can be peeled with a spoon - great for really young kids!). We can also invite friends and share the experience of learning from each other and bonding as we cook. From my personal experience, my children are way more likely to try new foods if they’ve had a hand in preparing them. I love seeing their pride as they present their dishes. My three year old made breakfast potatoes the other day and all his sisters liked his small batch better than the ones I cooked - success!

By using cooking methods instead of recipes, cooking from a smart pantry, changing our mindset to full-value cooking, and making energy multitask for us, we can waste less food, energy, and opportunities. What techniques do you think are important to setting yourself free from the details of recipe preparation?


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2 Comments

Soil To Self

2/26/2019

1 Comment

 

Time-Based Currency pt 2.  Let’s Not Throw The Baby Out With The Bathwater or Towards A Case For Time Banks

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“If the drinking is bitter, become the wine.”  -Rilke

Awesome.  I started contributing to this blog as a way of thinking out loud about ideas that fall under the big tent of Permaculture.  As Permaculturalists we are a proud and passionate lot given to soap boxy moments around our favorite ideas. (There is a joke in here about permacults).  

Hilariously, I can imagine what it would have been like to be in a permaculture design course around the Y2k thing.  I can also recall my own fevered moments of self-righteousness. For instance, years ago on a particularly strange day inspired by the seduction of abundance through leisure articulated in the Bill Mollison aphorism “let the designer become the recliner” I found myself espousing forcefully the belief that we are approaching the end of work.  A real techno-eco paradise.
The thought was not so much A Rifkinesque end of work analysis but a post-scarcity call to action to stop work altogether.  An attempt to construct an early aught style drop-out culture where participation in the economy was considered collaborating with an abstract evil known as mainstream capitalist society.  
The thought was not well-formed.
I beat that drum with the passion of a post-scarcity evangelist.
What an asshole I was.  Fortunately, I left grad school and became a father.  
That ended that experiment.
The cool thing about conceptualizing this blog as “thinking out loud” is that the writer gets feedback and a chance to revise and build on ideas.  Aside from the excitement of knowing someone out there is reading, (I didn’t think there was), I heard from many people. Some of y’all hate my previous piece about time banks and saw it as an inappropriate take down of a treasured effort by communities to make the world better.  Some of y'all asked me what a time bank was, some of y'all laughed and asked, "Why now?  Time banks haven’t been relevant since 2008."  Meanwhile, some of y’all love the piece, having experienced a similar worry with time banks in your own community.  All fair points - and I love this diversity of opinion.

First, let me answer the question:  What are time banks?

In 1980 Edgar Cahn started thinking about ways to link untapped social capacity to unmet social needs.  One idea coming out of this effort was time banking. This is simply a mode of exchange that lets people swap time and skill instead of money.  In a time bank economy, when a person spends one hour helping another person they receive credit. When that person needs help from someone else than they use their credits to get help.   For example, If a car-less carpenter needs a ride, they can accumulate credit by working on someone’s deck and exchange the credit for rides from another member. Early on this idea represented a way to create a more equitable and inclusive future by valuing work and skills that the dollar doesn’t value.  

Nationally, time banks continue to flourish in some small communities and struggle in others but, with few exceptions, they’ve operated at a tiny scale.  In the last few years interest in them has waned.  However, I anticipate relevancy of this idea being catapulted quickly into the national consciousness as a result of Andrew Yang who is running in the Democratic primaries for the 2020 presidential candidacy.  
As I’m writing this the Freakonomics podcast is on NPR and Andrew Yang and his platform is the main focus of the episode.
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/andrew-yang/

Y’all should listen to it.  Soon, time banks will no longer be a fringe effort at social equity executed on small scales in local economies by spirited and smart people, but an idea oozing into the consciousness of every American through a gigantic-scale platform like the U.S. election.
There’s that and then there is the economy.  
A few years ago An SPI course toured an off-grid farm project in Virginia.  
The year was 2016, oil was cheap, the recovery was bounding forward at full clip.  The farmer was asked by a student in our group how he felt about the future. He commented that he was very scared for the future.  What we need, he said, was another oil crisis to wake people up.  
I'm not asking for a crisis of any kind.  When shit goes south people get hurt real bad, Woke AF takes no prisoners.
Though the farmer did have a point.  There is a correlation between novel ideas and fear.  Arguably, we are in the middle of a time of general prosperity in this country.  A decade ago, in permaculture courses, everyone seemed to be clad in thrift store attire duct taped at the splitting seams.   Now, it’s that bastion of textile superhero do-goodness, Patagonia, that is the dominant brand, paired with a side of Smartwool socks.   These are fat times indeed.


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“Always predict the worst and you’ll be hailed as a prophet.” Replied the great satirist Tom Lehrer when asked why he was so popular.
Here is my contribution to our collective pessimism.  
There is some indication that we are on the doorstep of another crisis.  If one is to listen to Yang’s analysis or read Jeremy Rifkin’s 1995 book - The End Of Work - we are in a time where millions of jobs will be lost to automation without much opportunity for retraining.  Resources will remain locked up, while jobs, scarce. It is a time to re-imagine yield. Time banks might be an interesting way forward.

Now, I’ve gotten ahead of myself and I need to end this on a high note.  With a scan of the timebanks.org website, one finds suggestions to have time bank meetings that are monthly potlucks and to create group time bank projects that are limited only by the imagination.  Potlucks, seed swaps, community wellness days or volunteer work parties strike me as robust events that get a great deal of work done for non-profits and time bank members. More importantly, they serve as gathering spaces where core values can be exchanged and articulated and relationships built.  
This is something time banks do well.  
It keeps people in the game.  Long after the exchange of currency dissolves, there is still a group of people and anytime there is a group of people coming together around shared values, there is a chance for intimacy.
I live in the same community I grew up in.  Wes Jackson’s imperative to “find a place and become native!” is an afterthought for my family.  I was born into a network of people, I grew up with them, and for the most part, things haven’t changed.  For others who move to the valley or experience life on the margins in a new community, a connection can be tougher.  Sometimes churches are the answer and other times it’s the school system or sports.  Still, for many, especially those seeking alternative answers to struggles that the mainstream solutions seem to come up short on, time banks can be a great relief.  
I wish I could keep going on about the feel-goods around the concept of time-based currency.  But, for now, I’m out of time. In part 3, I’ll dive deeper into the analysis of what time banks do well and attempt to integrate this into what we teach at SPI:  The 8 forms of capital.


This is the second installment of a four-part piece on time-based currency and permaculture economics.  Stay-tuned y’all, it’s getting fun.

For more information on Cahn - a fascinating man.  Check out this 2018 Forbes article.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/devinthorpe/2018/03/21/time-banking-helps-build-individuals-organizations-and-communities/#6824a5965ba4

And more info.

​https://timebanks.org/


1 Comment

Soil To Self

2/22/2019

1 Comment

 

Permaculture Plants Part 2.  A Mid-Atlantic Food Forest Cheat Sheet

​By Trevor Piersol

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Expanding Island Food Forest at VSDB Educational Farm in Staunton, Virginia. 'Liberty' Apple surrounded by Echinacea Purpurea, Sea Kale, Red-Veined Sorrel, Chamomile, Goumi, Mountain Mint, Egyptian Walking Onion, Horseradish and more. (Photo by Trevor Piersol)

Food Forests or Edible Forest Gardens are a VAST topic - and one of the things we strive to do in our teaching at SPI is to simplify Permaculture to make it as practical and applicable to our students as possible. In this vein, I've come up with a "Mid-Atlantic Food Forest Cheat Sheet" to help you get off on the right foot with your Food Forest design dreams.

Essentially this is a list of Food Forest plants that I have found are most suitable to our region and to the diversity of a Food Forest system - that is low-maintenance, multi-functional, and native when possible (shout out to Ryan's blog "Plantin' Ain't Easy!). Most importantly, the cultivars chosen are disease resistant to most of our local diseases (for example, I like to plant Apple cultivars that are resistant to the "Big 3" apple diseases - Fireblight, Apple Scap, and Cedar Apple Rust). I've also arranged the fruit trees by fruiting window to make efficient layout easier, ala Stefan Sobkowiak's "Grocery Aisle Concept" at Miracle Farms in Quebec. This cheat sheet is useful whether you are planting out a large-scale "linear guild" orchard or a small-scale "expanding island" orchard. Also, I've thrown in some planting and maintenance tips just for the heck of it - because why go through all of the work and money of getting your orchard started if you aren't able to take care of the plants!

One last note - for the sake of easy maintenance you'll notice I like to simplify my Food Forests to include only Tree, Shrub, and Herbaceous layers. The more adventurous orchardist might want to throw in vines, groundcovers, fungi, etc. - but I like to start with small and slow solutions. I also tend to exclude a whole host of perennial plants from my Food Forest which I find require specialized maintenance strategies - think raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, seabuckthorn, pawpaws, American persimmons, and figs, to name a few. I haven't forgotten those gems but in general I like to plant them together in blocks interspersed throughout the farm, not in my orchard rows. As always, this is an ever-evolving document, but hopefully, it will help you avoid some of the mistakes I've made over the years. Enjoy!

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Linear Guild planted on contour with alley cropping of annuals.  Species, Arkansas Black Apple, Aronia, Goumi, Rhubarb, Echinacea, Comfrey ,Bee Balm, Locust, Serviceberry, Sorrel. Fennel and Cilantro in the alleys.  (Photo by Ryan Blosser)




Mid-Atlantic Food Forest Cheat Sheet
 By Trevor Piersol
 

The Tree Layer (Species/Cultivar by Approximate Harvest Date)

July Harvest
  • Peaches: Burbank July Elberta, Early White Giant, Patio Peach
  • Sour Cherries: North Star, Danube, Surefire, Nanking Cherry

August Harvest
  • Peaches: Blushing Star, Intrepid, Contender
  • Beach Plums: Jersey
  • Apples: William’s Pride, Pristine, Dayton
  • European Pear: Ayer’s

Early September Harvest
  • Apples: Empire, Priscilla, Pixie Crunch
  • European Pears: Blake’s Pride
  • Asian Pears: Shinseki, Hosui, Kosui

Late September Harvest
  • Apples: Liberty, Redfree, Jonafree
  • European Pears: Shenandoah, Potomac, Magness
  • Asian Pears: Shinko, Chojuro

October Harvest
  • Apples: Freedom, Enterprise, Goldrush, Arkansas Black, Sundance
  • Asian Pears: Korean Giant, Seuri
  • Asian Persimmon: Nikita’s Gift, Roseyanka, Ichi Ki Kei Jiro, Hana Fuyu, and others

November Harvest
  • Che (Seedless)
  • Jujube


Tree Rootstock Recommendations

In general, I recommend semi-dwarf or semi-standard rootstock. Dwarf rootstocks will bear fruit sooner but are more fragile and shorter-lived.

Apple Rootstocks
  • Dwarf: Geveva Series (make sure to choose fire blight resistant Genevas)
  • Semi-Dwarf: M7

Asian and European Pear Rootstocks
  • Semi-Dwarf: OHxF 333

Cherry Rootstocks
  • Dwarf: Gisela 3

Peach Rootstocks
  • Dwarf: Citation
  • Semi-dwarf: St. Julian A

Asian Persimmon Rootstocks
  • Semi-dwarf: D. Lotus


The Fruiting Shrub Layer

I like to plant 2-3 fruiting shrubs around or between each tree. The shrubs selected are all fairly easy to grow and will have a height and spread of about 4-7 feet.

  • Jostaberry
  • Black Currant (Titania, Consort)
  • Aronia (Viking, Nero)
  • Nanking Cherry
  • Cornelian Cherry
  • Serviceberry (Thiessen)
  • Goumi


Nitrogen-fixing Shrubs

Although I see it as optional, it is nice to plant at least one Nitrogen-Fixing shrub around or between each tree. All will grow to about 12’Hx12’W with the exception of the Goumi which is 6’Hx6’W. Here are a few that are well adapted to the Mid-Atlantic.

  • Indigobush – Amorpha fruticosa (native)
  • Smooth Alder – Alnus serrulata (native)
  • Siberian Pea Shrub
  • Goumi
  • Seaberry aka Seabuckthorn


The Herbaceous Layer

Herbaceous plants are interspersed around the base of each tree or within the linear guild rows. Make sure to mix up species and also plant along edges and in sunny, open sections. Many double as beneficial insect attractants that also produce a nice yield of culinary and medicinal herbs/vegetables. Below are some of my favorites.

  • Yarrow (native)
  • Bee Balm (native)
  • Mountain Mint (native)
  • New England Aster (native)
  • Echinacea purpurea (native)
  • Blue Vervain (native)
  • Angelica archangelica
  • Sweet Cicely
  • Comfrey
  • Rhubarb
  • Garlic Chives
  • Peppermint, Spearmint, etc.
  • Egyptian Walking Onion
  • Sea Kale
  • Perennial Sorrel
  • Creeping Thyme
  • Roman Chamomile


Planting and Maintenance

When you are ready to plant make sure you follow proper planting protocols: digging a large planting hole, pruning damaged roots and spreading them out evenly, and not planting too shallow or too deep. Bare-root planting in fall or spring is much more successful than summer planting. I like to dunk the plant roots in a mycorrhizal inoculant slurry before planting
https://bio-organics.com/product/mycorrhizal-root-dip-inoculant/. I also amend each tree planting hole with approximately 2 lbs. azomite (for micronutrients) and 2 lbs. rock phosphate, mixed evenly into the soil.

Once trees are planted they will need an average of 1” of rain per week to get established. They also need a weed-free zone maintained around the drip line at all times. Dwarf trees will need to be tied to a stake. The cheapest option I’ve found is a ¾-inch EMT electrical conduit. Sink the stake 2-inches from the trunk of the tree on the upwind side and then fasten the tree to the stake using a flexible tree lock.

A tree guard placed around the trunk of the tree at the base is essential for preventing rabbits and voles from girdling the tree (I like the see-through mesh variety), and branch tips must be protected from deer browse with some sort of fencing/exclusion barrier. Proper training from the outset is important to minimize corrective pruning later on. Seasonal pruning is recommended to encourage proper airflow and branch distribution and maximize fruiting.


Pest and Disease Management

There’s no doubt that growing fruit trees organically in the Mid-Atlantic is a challenge. We’ve already gotten part of the way there by choosing disease resistant cultivars and creating diversity in the Food Forest. From there you can choose to target problems with organic sprays or experiment with pro-biotic and holistic sprays like effective microbes and neem oil. To learn more about holistic sprays I recommend Michael Phillips’ book “The Holistic Orchard.”


Sources for Plant Material

Here are some online nurseries I recommend for bare-root trees and shrubs: Raintree Nursery, Cummins Nursery (especially for apples on Geneva rootstock), and Burnt Ridge Nursery. Stark Brothers is a great source for dwarf fruit trees although they do not specify rootstock. Edible Landscaping in Afton, VA is the go-to place for Asian Persimmons and Paw Paws. Nourse Farms is a great source for berries. For herbaceous perennials try sourcing from local nurseries or starting from seed. You can also order in plug trays of herbaceous plants online from Richter’s.

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1 Comment

Soil To Self

2/6/2019

0 Comments

 

Permaculture Plants Pt. 1. Plantin' Ain't Easy (Re-enchant The Landscape!)

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A friend of mine once said that “peoplin' ain't easy”.  Having spent more than a decade in the mental health field-boy do I know this to be true.  I used to say I left my "real" job as a community counselor in order to work with plants because plants are easier.  
I was wrong.
My colleague likes to remind me of a quote from the writer and permaculturalist Starhawk, that “permaculture is the art of relationships”.  The more time I spend working with plants the more this idea is brought into focus. As a planter and grower, I am guilty of a Pollanesque botany-of-desire species selection in my own projects.   What is the plant's function? Do I like the plant? And then there is still that question.
What IS a permaculture plant?
And why are we slow to provide plant lists in our courses?  I can imagine biting BuzzFeed's style and using this blog for listicles with titles like "10 of the best perennials every permaculture student needs to know about."  That would up our readership. Here is another "The Six Most Appropriate Plants For Your Permaculture Design."
Not only would these lists be wrong, but they would be arrogant, and not only would they be arrogant but they would be vain. In all things, permaculture included - arrogance is helpful until it becomes vanity - tip of the cap to my man Merwin.

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As an educator, It can be a delight to hover in that ambiguous space of pattern and concepts with the hopes that anyone reaching for a plant list does some of the preliminary research and work on their own to start building plant knowledge and competencies.  I can remember the first several years I really dug into the material, falling asleep night after night with nursery and seed catalogs splayed out on my chest until I had memorized all of them.
Then what do we do?
I turned to the elders of our discipline.  
For example, Mark Shepards STUN (Sheer Total Utter Neglect) method of species selection is fun to write about but expensive once you ground truth it.  I've spent thousands of dollars on plants that have passed into their next life.
And then there is Dave Jacke-straight up genius-his two-volume encyclopedia on the subject is an invaluable addition to what we do. On the other hand, that shit is overwhelming.  I can remember dreaming of field grafting Korean nut pine onto all of my white pines after reading and confronting the shocking amount of information in his tome. Read, but plant simply when starting out.   In the end, it’s not about lists, though that is a place to start. It’s about experimenting with what works on your site based on your goals, and then diving deep into the relationship.
But What DO you do?  

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below is a list - it's not exhaustive, it's sparse.  It's based on our experience in our specific region - Shenandoah Valley - where winter temps get down to zero.  More importantly, these are plants we have developed relationships with. As you make your lists for your own projects, take the time to get to know your species. "Plantin' ain't easy,"  but it's fun.

   What makes a plant a permaculture plant?  Just three things:
  1. Low maintenance
  2. Multifunctional
  3. Native when possible.  

For Medicine

Comfrey - At some point, this plant might begin to be played out, but it’s so damn helpful and easy.  Not only is it great for the soil and acts as a wonderful barrier plant but when mashed up and boiled becomes an incredibly healing poultice.  I’ve had gigantic swollen elbows rendered healed from long soaks. I dream of one day taking a bath in the stuff to relieve the stiffening that is happening to my aging body.  Another great use is boiling down the plant material and letting it cool to be used as a rooting agent for propagation!

Tulsi - Another favorite-It gets hot in the field in July.  And nothing cuts the heat like a cold glass of Tulsi or Holy Basil.  One of my favorite aspects of the plant is that it self seeds. Once it throws seed you never have to plant again.  Just walk the patch in the spring and smell the unmistakable perfume of Tulsi wafting up from the soil.

Yarrow - natures bandaid-It’s an incredible resource for those too often moments when a harvest knife nicks a finger.  Of course, follow up with some electrical tape around the wound-one must remember to not bleed on the food.

Elderberry - I could write a book about elderberry I love the plant so much.  My journey with plants began with a passionate interest in the mystery of healing plants. Before learning to grow, harvest and use Elderberry I was enamored with the folklore around the plant and immediately promised myself to incorporate the charisma of the plant into my own system.  One of my favorite poets Peter Lamborn Wilson likes to exclaim: “We must re-enchant the landscape!” and Elderberry does this. If one is to fall asleep beneath elderberry then a person dreams of fairies. I can remember the joy of watching my young daughter dance around the elder bush with fairy wings on.  She was just playing, little did she know her play had aligned quite neatly with traditional folklore. Perhaps, however, the most practical of the old stories recommend planting the Elderberry among the healing herbs. The Elder, it is said, is the keeper of medicine and teaches the medicinal plant how to be themselves.  On a less abstract note, the use of Elderberry is a true blue winter health elixir. The antiviral properties of Elder make for an excellent daily syrup to keep the sniffles away. And it tastes great! In keeping with the re-enchant the landscape theme I recommend the Black Lace Elder but make sure you pair it with an Emerald Lace Elderberry in order to have proper pollination.  

For Easy Fruit

Pawpaw - A great joy of the early fall is trekking through the forest in search of pawpaw patches.  When planting on your homestead we recommend great varieties like Shenandoah. Michael Judd has a pawpaw book coming out and we can’t wait to get our hands on it!  

Persimmon - Most people cringe when we mention Persimmon, but I”m telling you they are super easy to grow.  And some of the hybrid’s and Asian cultivars are excellent tasting. Nikita’s Gift is highly recommended.   

Arkansas Black Apple - Apples are tough in the Mid-Atlantic region especially here in the Shenandoah Valley.  There are many disease-resistant varieties like Liberty, William’s Pride, and Enterprise. However, My favorite tasting and the one that seems to be the toughest and lowest maintenance is the Arkansas Black.


Patio Peach - Peaches are a roll of the dice in our bioregion.  From insect pressure and disease to the dreaded late frosts here in the Valley, the fruit can be finicky.  The Patio Peach is not going to bring money into the system, but as a homestead peach for out of hand eating in July, it can’t be beaten.  This tree consistently is loaded with peaches and has needed zero maintenance in my system.

Asian Pear - For productive fruit production in your homestead this is the way to go.  Very little disease pressure and consistent fruiting. Shinko seems to be the most prolific but on wet years the fruit will split.  You can go from counting on having all of those canned pears at harvest to losing 60% of the harvest after a big rain. Korean Giant and Hosui have been our favorites at the homestead.

​Gooseberry - I put the gooseberry on here because it’s my children’s favorite.  It fruits early and young and provides hours of entertainment for the kids while they surgically pick the berries around the thorns.  Be careful with white pines in the neighborhood, however. White Pine Blister rust can take them out with the quickness - and Ribes like Gooseberry are often the culprit.  


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For Firewood


Black Locust
Black Cherry

I include the above trees together under the firewood category for one reason.  They are excellent when used in a coppiced hedge system. I like to plant either tree on 8 inch or one-foot centers.  After about 3 or 4 years, the tree can be cut down only to resprout from the trunk. By planting close together and strategically cutting every third tree every year, one can have a continual hedge and a supply of great wood small enough not to have to split for burning.  In addition, locust is nitrogen fixing and produces sweet-smelling edible flowers. Black Cherry is an excellent wood to have in the homestead for furniture making as the homestead ages.

To be continued.  


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    Daniel Firth Griffith
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    ​Victoria Mininger
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