What tools we use - Permaculture Principals - Fair Share

The final principle of permaculture, fair shares,  encourages us to consider what is enough?  What should we ethically do if we produce more food than we can eat or store?  How much impact do we have on the wider biosphere, are we well within the carrying capacity of it?  We must carefully consider what is enough for us in our life and encourage others by our example to try and do the same.

We need to curb consumption, hugely, on this finite planet.  We already consume (in the West) more than the earth can replenish.  It's October 2014 so we are nearing that particularly grotesque time in the West, of Thanksgiving (in North America) followed by Christmas, where we will be implored to consume... the simple question to ask yourself is this... Do you need this or are you being manipulated into wanting this?

Consumption isn't only about plastic crap made in some crappy third world export zone, consumption includes your food purchasing habits too.  If you don't reign in your consumption, if you insist on eating whatever you want, whenever you want instead of only consuming what is in season then you can end up adding to the already burgeoning food waste pyramid!

Is this enough? All you can eat whilst others live in poverty is quite simply disgusting!

Cooperation is more important than competition!  I'll share mine if you share yours... actually I'll share mine regardless of whether you share yours, and if any of you have some pickled chillies, please share, we didn't grow any this year and I'm devastated!

 Ultimately our goal is to develop a gift economy.  We try this on a small scale with our vegetable boxes, gifting as much as we can to our friends and neighbours.  This doesn't have to just be produce though, your time and your skills or your labour can be gifted.  If you interact with us in any way shape or form, prepare for that type of interaction; it is more important than the exchange of money.

What tools we use - Permaculture Principals - People care

In the short to medium term we consider the natural next step to focus on the permaculture principal of people care and we will attempt to get more people involved with our project.  We have identified areas that we need help with and areas that we may be able to generate a small revenue stream to help with the overall project.

Volunteering Opportunities - borrowing from the principles of WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities On Organic Farms), we want to encourage people who want to experience and learn about living sustainably on a small holding to come and help.  Our project has no end point and will continuously be evolving per the dictates of the natural ecosystem we inhabit, so ANYTIME is a good time for volunteers to help out.  We have to date, only really accommodated a few friends as volunteers, but the experience illustrated very quickly how much more can be achieved with some willing workers!

We have a plethora of projects that we would like to carry out, but with the limited resources at our disposal, two full-time adults, one part-time adult, two children under four, two goats, seven chickens, one dog, one cat, we must prioritise them in order of importance and need.  For example, as evidenced by previous postings most of the 15-acres was separated into fields for grazing live stock and the legacy of this is barb-wire... lots of it.  We hate barb-wire, a cheap, inhumane and damaging fencing substitute which isn't just aesthetically unpleasant but also hurts whatever comes in contact with it, human and non-human alike!  But, we have to judge whether the time invested in removing it is worthwhile now or should it be put down as a later project?

This list is by no means exhaustive but illustrates some of the projects that we would like to carry out, with some help:
Re-fence the orchard
Remove barbwire
Plant 3 tree-bogs
Plant more hedges
Dig a walipini
Dig more beds
Construct a large polytunnel
Construct some field shelters
Construct platforms to receive both Yurt and bell tents
Make some oak shingles
Re-roof the bread oven
Re-roof the barn
Pull and bundle bracken for thatching
Thatch the pentagon
Build another rocket stove and rocket oven
Construct a deck
Build a steambox for wood bending
Build a couple of outdoor showers
Build an outdoor hot-tub
Construct bird-boxes
Construct a couple of woodland bivouacs

And all of these ideas are on top of the regular seasonal maintenance of a small holding.  Maintaining both annual and perennial beds, planting, cultivating and storing produce.  Feeding, interacting with and collecting any produce from our livestock (even though limited right now).  Selecting, felling, cutting, splitting and storing wood our majority energy source.

Green Camping -in order to accommodate our volunteers and perhaps to generate a little income from non-volunteers we would like to develop and offer opportunities to "green camp" or "glamping", to use contemporary vernacular!  We have a number of locations around the fifteen acres that offer differing views, experience different sounds and offer some quiet retreat.  keep reading this blog as we develop those sites, we may even poll you for which locations are the most favourable!  But we do need to prepare these sites to provide facilities for those staying with us, which of course requires us to complete some of the above-mentioned projects.  We are not deterred by these challenges, we take inspiration from some really quite beautiful sites that we have seen, but would like ours to be individual and unique to La Fieffe.

https://www.coolcamping.co.uk/campsites/uk/wales/mid-wales/powys/1004-wye-glamping

http://www.rocombevalleyretreat.co.uk/rocombe_valley_retreat_glamping_yurts/accomodation_on_the_farm.html

https://www.coolcamping.co.uk/campsites/luxury

Permaculture Tasters - both Jess and I hold a Permaculture Design Certificate and along with my brother, Shands, we use these principles to help us plan and develop La Fieffe.  We aren't prepared right now to offer full P.D.C. courses but we would certainly welcome those wanting an introduction to Permaculture to visit.  We are all passionate about permaculture, organic growing, biodynamic gardening and the future of these practices in a world that is experiencing a steep decline in soil fertility.

Woodland Management -based on the principles espoused by the The Conservation Volunteers and the writings of Ben Law, we are trying to manage a small acre and a half of woodland and numerous hedgerows in a sustainable manner.  Our primary focus at this early stage is an energy supply, but this will, over time spread to include more complex woodland management and use.  We also, as far as possible, try to manage this with manual hand tools only, so we depend upon axes, cross-cut saws, billhooks, bowsaws and splitting mauls to process our wood.

These aren't actually our tools, ours are better :~)

The longer we carry out this management, the more confident we become, the more challenging projects we undertake.  Eventually we would hope to be able to manufacture our own structures, whether it is a simple tipi or a more complex yurt.

 

Community Supported Agriculture - in the UK, CSA's are popular as farmers or small-holders for instance can receive a more stable and secure income and closer connection with their community, and consumers can benefit by eating fresh healthy food, feeling more connected to the land where their food is grown and learning new skills.  Consumers benefit from receiving fresh food from a known source; the environmental benefits of fewer 'food miles', less packaging and ecologically sensitive farming with improved animal welfare is also achieved; for the small-holder (us) we receive a fair return on products that we supply direct to the community, we also have a closer involvement with the local community and hopefully receive help with labour (voluntarism)... hopefully!

http://sustainableag.ca.uky.edu/csafaqs/

http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/cat-community-supported-agriculture.html

Taken a step further we can encourage our community to set up their own niches so that La Fieffe doesn't produce everything, but one neighbour who has south facing valley maybe grows tomatoes and peppers and another neighbour with a large field  grows grains for making flour... that's the essence of community self-reliance, encouraging, supporting and building resilience and a collective pool of shared resources.

What tools we use - Permaculture Principals - Earth Care

We will avoid the Permaculture definition of Earth Care/Care of Earth and define this in terms of what we are actually trying to achieve at La Fieffe. These aren’t prioritised in any particular order, as far as we are concerned each of these are as important as the next. I will take a look at each one and advise on what we are attempting to do.

Soil Improvement - healthy soils are a complex mix of worms, bacteria and beneficial fungi.  These soils promote good plant growth and typically have fewer problems with pests and diseases. Improving soil condition needn't be the reserve of master gardeners or horticultural specialists.  Your soil is hungry for organic matter which can include, paper/card, weeds, grass clippings, manure, hair and kitchen scraps.  As these break down the nutrients from them are made available to growing plants and the action of decomposition improves the soil structure allowing free movement of air and water.  This soil also becomes better at holding onto both nutrients and water acting like a sponge for both.

(These images above are typical of most of La Fieffe at the time of buying it, devoid of anything other then over-grazed grass.)

So, what is the simplest action you can take to improve your soil?  Compost.  Give your compost pile a name and treat it like a pet.  You feed it with a mixture of organic materials ensuring your mix of carbon and nitrogen are kept in balance.  Too much carbon and you will not create enough heat, too much nitrogen and you will create too much heat leading to a gaseous emission of ammonia!  Treat it like a science experiment and you should be able to achieve admirable results in no time.

(In this picture you can see a mixture of cover cropping and mulching taking place.)

Other soil improvement strategies can include the planting of legumes or green manures and plenty or mulching.  Plants like peas and beans belong to a family of vegetables that "fix" nitrogen with the assistance of a beneficial bacteria called rhizobium.  Nitrogen is taken from the air in the soil and "fixed" on nodules that the bacteria live within.  Couple this with the planting of a fast growing "cover" crop like mustard or clover and a good amount of winter mulching or your beds, you will improve the organic matter, beneficial organisms and earthworm activity in your soil; you improve the soils moisture retention and it's ability to prevent erosion; you provide habitat, nectar and pollen for beneficial insects which in turn will reduce your pests; with any luck this dual approach will lead to persistent weeds being smothered.

(Careful management leads to improvement in soil condition which leads to production of healthy organic produce.)

Organic Food - one of the key principals of growing organic food is health.  Organically grown produce has more antioxidants, fewer pesticides (if any) and less cadmium (a toxic heavy metal).  In fact a recent study by Newcastle University found that in terms of the antioxidants you’re getting, a total switch to organic crops could be equivalent to adding another portion or two of fruit and veg to your daily diet! (http://blog.journals.cambridge.org/2014/07/new-study-finds-significant-differences-between-organic-and-non-organic-food/)

 (This image above shows palm kale, an extremely nutrient rich brassica with a legume to help the soil condition and a fast growing and insect attracting nasturtium.)

(Apart from my gorgeous daughter, you can see raspberries and strawberries on the left foreground, corn, sunflowers, beans and squash left background and more palm kale on the right foreground.)

(It's important to attract the beneficial predators, in this example, the human child Freya has been attracted by lupinus.)

By striving to grow organic produce, your actions are improving the health of the soil, the health of the animals grazing it, the health of the humans eating from it and the health of the greater ecosystem too.

Sustainable woodmanship - We only have 1.5 acres of, mainly, beech woodland, but if we carefully identify already stooling plants we can sustainably manage our small woodland area indefinitely.  This identification process is not the biggest challenge we face...

(The biggest challenge is getting the processed timber out of the valley, just take a closer look at the image above and below.)

(Processing a stool in the winter has made us pretty hardy, Shands in this picture modelling the very fashionable red head cover and matching hoody!)

(This is the same stool as in the image previous, Freya adding 'scale' to the picture.)

(Danny, our first 'volunteer' ahem, using a four foot cross cut saw to process our wood, in unison with me of course.)

The majority of the wood we process will be used as a fuel source as our entire house is run on it.  Heating, cooking and hot water all get their energy from wood.  Some of it though, is selected due to it's straightness (if that's a word), for our impromptu building follys as evidenced in previous posts.

(The more time you spend in the woodland, the more little lads and lasses you come across.)

Hedgerows - Biodiversity has a natural tendency to increase; an accumulation of plants, insects, beetles, reptiles, amphibians, small mammals and birds will quickly fill ecological niches and develop a food chain. More plants mean more food, which means more insects, more birds, more reptiles, more mammals, which means more balance. Hedgerows play a hugely important role in supporting this biodiversity growth.

(These two pictures, above and below,  illustrate the type of hedgerow we find on and around our land.  It is stunning and needs our help to protect it.)

Sadly, as is evidenced by this report, http://www.hedgelink.org.uk/files/Hedgelink%20-%20Report%20Visit%20to%20Normandy%20May%202010.pdf, hedgerows are taking a pasting in Normandie!  But, by now you must be getting a feel for the Palmers of La Fieffe and we are intending to "buck the trend" and do all we can to improve existing hedgerows and plant some new ones too.

(Freya preparing the 'nursery' for its first little 'uns)

(The willow growth after 12-months.)

(Hazel and hawthorn in this image.)

(Both these images, above and below, were taken last weekend after 18-months of growth in our nursery.)

 

We intend to take the plants growing in the previous picture and combine them with some shrub-like plants (raspberries, blackberries for example) and develop them into new hedgerows.

(Above and below show 'building up' where we think hedges would be best located to protect plants and create micro-climates.)

 

(Above and below show a mixture of plants that we are using, this is the most developed of our hedges.)

Provide a surplus - we recognise how lucky we are to live where we do and the choices we make each year on what we should grow always leaves us with surplus food.  It's not hard to give away such beautiful produce, we are very proud of what we produce and know that those that eat it will benefit from the nutrient dense foods.  If there is anything you struggle to find in the area and want us to grow it for you, please ask... we may say yes!

(In both these images there are a number of veg growing, see how many you can identify!)

(Onions curing in the sun.)

(Kale)

(Plump raspberries.)

(The three sisters.)

(Our first garlic crop.)

(Sharing the surplus with friends and neighbours, above and below.)

(And not forgetting organic free-range eggs... delicious.)

Next, what tools we use, Care of People.