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Most people have an unconscious feeling that we can´t continue down the path we´re currently on. The supposed abundance witnessed on the shelves of our local grocery store might seem promising, but deep down we know that we can´t continue to outsource our need for food to a system that is so deeply indebted to the quickly depleting reserves of oil and other fossil fuels. We know that something needs to fundamentally change, and most of us understand that this change will most likely require us to get our own hands into the soil to begin to supply at least some of our own nutrition needs.

Before we get into the basics of how to grow your own food, it´s important to reflect on the importance of design. Growing your food in a sustainable way is much more than simply taking some seed, putting it in the ground and hoping something will grow. How we set up our gardens and fields and the principles behind our actions will largely determine if we´re successful growing an autonomous food supply.

PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN

The following principles of design are important when it comes to maintaining the fertility of the soil that grows your food:

– Whatever you take from the soil, you must put back.
– Implement cover crops, mulch, and green manure.
– Rotate your crops on a yearly basis.
– Grow a diversity of plants, not all for food.

Let´s look at each of these design ideas individually:

Whatever you take from the soil, you must put back.

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Water Saving Irrigation Practices

November 29, 2017

WATER SAVING IRRIGATION PRACTICES

Saving water in the soil is without a doubt the easiest and most effective way to manage the water flowing through your land. If you need extra irrigation, however, the water stored up in your soil isn´t easy to access. For irrigation needs, you´ll want to use water that you store in cisterns or tanks. This water can be harvested either from the sky in the form of rain or through capturing water from a spring, river or another source of fresh water.

Irrigation, unfortunately, is one of the most wasteful practices in modern day agriculture. From traditional sprinkler systems to large-scale irrigation by airplane and helicopter, millions of gallons of water are lost each year by irrigating pieces of land where nothing is growing.
For a plant to grow properly, it obviously needs water. That water resource, especially when limited, should be focused on the root area. While sprinkler systems, to name just one example, indiscriminately spray water over entire fields of plants, drip irrigation systems can focus water directly to the root zone of the plant where water is needed.

Drip irrigation systems have been reported to use 80% less water than traditional irrigation practices. Furthermore, since these systems direct water only underneath the plant, fungal diseases caused by excess water accumulating on the leaves can also be avoided. We will briefly look at two easy to set up drip irrigation methods below.

BAMBOO DRIP IRRIGATION

If you have the money, you can purchase drip irrigation systems that include everything from primary lines to secondary lines to emitters. These complete sets are usually pretty reliable though costly, and if treated correctly will last for several years. If you want the easy approach to drip irrigation, you can search the web for any number of drip irrigation systems.

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The Importance of Tree Crops in Sustainable Agriculture

November 27, 2017

THE IMPORTANCE OF TREE CROPS IN SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

Tree Crops are the most common perennial agricultural method. More specifically, orchards are one of the most common and successful forms of perennial agriculture. A well-maintained peach orchard will give you a steady crop for up to 20 years. An apple orchard can last up to 50 years and well-maintained pecan tree may very well continue to produce for up to 150 years. Our agricultural systems have been designed almost exclusively for staple annual crops. However, transitioning into perennial agricultural systems that can produce food staples is one of the challenges we´ll face in the coming years in order to create a sustainable form of agriculture.

THE FUNCTIONS OF A TREE

A perennial agriculture system based on the cultivation of tree crops offers a number of advantages over the traditional annual agriculture methods of staple carbohydrates such as corn and wheat. While these systems to take several years to get established, once production has begun the main body of work is maintenance and harvest. Tree crops such as fruit and nuts, then, can become a staple of our diet without having to till the soil year after year.

Permaculture asks us to find several functions for every element. Trees are perhaps one of the most useful elements in any permaculture design. Some of the functions of a tree agriculture system include:

Harvest: From fruits to nuts to edible leaves and shoots to mushrooms, there are a number of food products that trees can provide.

Mulch: The leaf fall from deciduous trees provides some of the best mulch material for your farm and is fundamental in building overall soil health.

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Climate Change and the Challenge to All Forms of Agriculture

November 23, 2017

CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE CHALLENGE TO ALL FORMS OF AGRICULTURE

We´ve all heard of climate change and probably understand the basics of how excess greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide produced by our society´s burning of fossil fuels is causing the earth´s temperature to rise. We´ve most likely seen maps of what the world will look like when the glaciers and icebergs melt causing the ocean to rise and most of us probably accept that it is a danger to our civilization.

For most people, however, we suffer from a cognitive dissonance that doesn´t allow us to make meaningful changes to our way of life-based on the knowledge that we have. Though the reports and predictions by climate scientists are certainly frightening, they seem like far away and distant possibilities. The 1-2 degrees of temperature change sure don´t feel that extreme, especially as we relax in our air-conditioned homes or drive to work in our air-conditioned cars.

In case you haven´t heard enough of the doomsday facts and figures, here are a few more figures from NASA to put into perspective how far climate change has advanced:

– The loss of ice in Greenland has doubled between 1996 and 2005.
– The ice cover in the Arctic decreases by 13.4% every decade.
– 9 of the 10 warmest years have occurred since the year 2000.
– Carbon dioxide levels in the air are at their highest level in 650,000 years.
– The sea will rise between 7 and 23 inches by the end of this century.

Over 100 million people who live in coastal areas will purportedly be affected by the rising sea levels caused by global warming leading to a serious demographic crisis of climate refugees.

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Can a House be a Sustainable Part of the Landscape?

November 22, 2017

CAN A HOUSE BE A SUSTAINABLE PART OF THE LANDSCAPE?

The modern-day housing industry is notorious for leaving out any and all elements of design. Most home contractors design the houses they build around a minimum square footage (the more, the better) and a price range in the several hundred-thousand-dollar range. These houses are designed behind desks or in offices without ever setting foot on the actual piece of land where the home is to be built.

The actual piece of land where the home is to be built is a side thought at best. If there is some element that presents a disturbance, the bulldozer can be hired for $50 an hour and get rid of any problem whether it be a small hill, a large tree, standing water, etc. In most cases, the first step of any home construction involves bringing in tractors and backhoes to rip out any vegetation and create a level piece of wasteland.

A superficial coat of green grass supported by heavy applications of chemical fertilizer mask the fact that the house that is eventually built is sitting upon an ecological wasteland of infertility.

In permaculture, the process of design asks us to take into account how the different elements we place on a given piece of land can function together and interact in such a way as to contribute to the overall systemic resilience and health of that piece of land. The underlying goal for all permacultural design processes is ecosystemic health and abundance. The underlying goal for the industrial construction industry is higher profit margins.

Let´s consider the example of the direction in which a house is angled when built. For traditional construction, this is a side thought at best.

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Propagation Techniques

November 20, 2017

PROPAGATION TECHNIQUES

Establishing a tree-based perennial agriculture system can cost a lot of money, especially if you´re planning on buying $30 dollar bagged fruit trees at your local orchard. Luckily, you can propagate many of the trees you are planning to plant by yourself. One of the easiest and best known ways to propagate many different trees, bushes, and other perennial plants is through planting seeds. Many nitrogen-fixing trees and bushes can easily be grown from seed, but other species are best propagated through other vegetative techniques that we will introduce below.

GRAFTING, LAYERING, AND AIR GRAFTING

Grafting is a horticultural technique whereby tissues of plants are joined so as to continue their growth together. The upper part of the combined plant is called the scion while the lower part is called the rootstock. Since most fruit and nut trees won´t grow true to seed (meaning that the seed from the Gala apple you grow will produce fruit that doesn´t resemble Gala apples at all), the way to reproduce a certain type of fruit or nut that you like is through grafting.

Let´s say that you have an old crab apple tree on your land that produces small, sour fruits that no one but the birds enjoys. You can graft a bud or a small branch from a delicious, heirloom apple tree on your grandma´s old farm onto that Crab Apple tree. If done correctly and the cambium layer (or green layer inside the bark) of the two species are touching, that bud or branch will grow into an heirloom apple bearing tree. There are several different types of grafting methods you can use including cleft grafts, bud grafts, whip and tongue, etc. While it does take practice for a graft to be successful, the good news is that once you master the art of grafting, you can reproduce all the fruit and nut trees you need for your land.

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The Mindset of Monoculture

November 15, 2017

THE MINDSET OF MONOCULTURE

Since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, it has been fairly easy to fall into the mindset of monoculture. The lure of big machines offering us power and control; making our lives easier in some senses, but more complicated in others; has led us into an all-encompassing embrace of the mindset and paradigm that made the modern-day world possible.

For thousands of years, we collectively labored away at a lifestyle that was completely vulnerable to the elements of nature. Months of hard work growing the crops we needed to survive could be wiped out in one fell swoop by an extended drought or an unmanageable pest problem. A simple bacterial infection could lead to death and citywide plagues were a common occurrence.

When the Industrial Revolution rolled around, we began to find that our vulnerability could be reduced through trusting in a paradigm that promised to control the natural world and direct it for our own use. All we had to do was trust that the masters of capital and wealth would continue to find ways to keep us on the path of progress and growth.

While the spoils of that growth have hardly been fairly shared and distributed, the vast majority of us have come to believe wholeheartedly in the industrial-capitalist growth paradigm which has reached every corner of the globe. From downtown Manhattan to the tiniest villages in Malawi, many of us have come to believe that the only viable path forward is through embracing a worldview and lifestyle that originated in Europe and has reached its most powerful manifestations in the United States.

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PERENNIAL POLYCULTURES AND THE RICHNESS OF DIVERSITY

November 13, 2017

PERENNIAL POLYCULTURES AND THE RICHNESS OF DIVERSITY

THE WAY NATURE PROVIDES

Imagine walking down a country road. On one side of the road, you see acres and acres of corn grown in neat rows. On the other side of the road stands an old-growth forest filled with towering trees and a thick underbrush. If you were to ask anyone which side of the road produced the most food, almost everyone would say that the cornfield is a symbol of abundance; and while the forest might be pretty, it is simply not productive.

We have been taught that food can only be grown in orderly rows and that the wildness of nature might be pretty but simply can´t provide for our well-being and sustenance. Imagine, now, that you turn off that country road and begin to walk through the old growth forest. Underneath a pine tree, you might find thousands of pine nuts scattered on the ground. Oyster and shitake mushrooms sprout from decaying logs while a flush of morel mushrooms blooms in a patch of fallen leaves.

A wild blueberry bush provides fresh fruit in a clearing while currants grow well in the shade of the larger trees. You might even come across a gnarly, old apple tree providing an abundant crop. The thick forest provides a great habitat for deer, turkey, and other tasty wildlife as well. Hundreds of other less known edible greens may make up part of the ground cover of the forest floor.

Nature always tends towards abundance, though it may not be the neat and orderly abundance that we see in the cornfield. The production of edible foodstuffs in an old growth forest may very well outcompete the cornfield on a calorie by calorie basis.

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A Primer on Raising Goats

November 7, 2017

Goats have gotten a reputation as one of the peskiest, most irritating, and bothersome farm animals. Images of “Billy” goats eating tin cans or tearing clothing off the line as it dries have been commonplace for several generations. While raising goats certainly does come with its own set of challenges, many of the supposed challenges to raising goats can be adequately dealt with through proper design that best utilizes the inherent tendencies of goats when interacting with a farm ecosystem.

Goats can be a fairly simple animal to raise as long as you keep them in the right conditions that take into account some of their innate habits. Goats have a reputation as animals that eat anything from tin cans to underwear and if you leave a goat unattended in your yard, you will come home to find pretty much all of your vegetation either gone or well mowed back.

As with all animals, there are different breeds of goats with different characteristics and personalities. Some breeds of goats are better for milk production while other excel at producing meat. Goat cheese and other dairy products (yogurt, etc.) can bring a pretty price as a specialty product in a niche market. Goat milk is also often used as one of the main ingredients in a number of beauty products such as soaps and lotions because of its nourishing properties.

For people with very small pieces of land, the Nigerian Dwarf goat breed is a good choice. They produce a decent amount of milk but, because of their size, need less room for foraging. Another quality option for people with more space is the Nubian breed. This goat has long floppy ears and produces milk with the highest fat content which makes it a great option for people wanting to produce cheese or other milk-based products.

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No-Till Farming For Healthier Soil and Lifestyles

November 7, 2017

NO-TILL FARMING FOR HEALTHIER SOIL AND LIFESTYLES

Masanobu Fukuoka, the late Japanese farmer, developed a unique farming system he called “Natural Farming.” Trying to replicate what he saw in Nature, Fukuoka´s no till system allowed the soil to continually grow in fertility. Through the use of mulch and cover crops, this system effectively allows for continuous harvests of crop rotations, eliminates weeds and builds healthy top soil allowing for organic food production that is ecologically sustainable.

PROBLEMS WITH TILL AGRICULTURE

Farmers have been tilling the soil for 10,000 years. It is what exemplifies the occupation of those who make their living from the land. Tilling the soil allowed humanity to produce higher concentrations of food in one place giving rise to the denser populations of city centers and eventually the development of modern civilization as we know it. However, tilling the soil also brought with it a whole host of undesirable effects, including erosion and the loss of the microbial life of the soil. Some studies have linked the fall of major civilizations such as the Mayans of Mesoamerica to the over farming of the land which eventually led to a decreasing soil capacity.

By tilling the soil year after year, the microscopic life of billions of creatures in the top three inches of the soil is essentially killed off. What’s left over is a barren, lifeless medium incapable of offering the nutrients plants need to grow and offer us their fruit. Furthermore, the more we till the soil, the more we leave the precious humus that is the life-sustaining “skin” of our planet vulnerable to the elements of wind and rain. The erosion of top soil caused by tilling and the “baring” of the soil has led to soil compaction, loss of fertility, poor drainage, and problems with plant reproduction.

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WHAT ANIMALS AND A BARN OFFER TO PERMACULTURE DESIGN

November 1, 2017

WHAT ANIMALS AND A BARN OFFER TO PERMACULTURE DESIGN

THE IMPORTANCE OF ANIMALS IN PERMACULTURE LANDSCAPES

Our agrarian past reminds us that farming without animals is like trying to drive a car without gasoline. While crop rotations, cover crops and periodically maintaining the land fallow were some strategies our grandparents used for keeping the farm productive, the dairy cow, the flock of chickens, and the few hogs were the guarantee of the continued fertility of the fields.

When done on a correct scale, raising animals on a small piece of land offers balance and sustained fertility while also offering quality food products. Animals eat from pastures and other waste products from the land while offering fertility and numerous food products for us humans. The function of animals in an industrialized concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) is simply to produce protein as fast as possible. On a small, permaculture landscape, however, animals (as an element of the overall system) offer several functions, including:

– Food/Protein
– Fertility
– Natural Cultivation/Tilling of the Soil
– Weed Control
– Diversification
– Companionship

Raising small animals around the world is often listed as a primary cause of deforestation, erosion, and a whole host of other ecological problems. When designed correctly, animals do contribute to overall system health.

A good parallel from the natural world is the bison herds that once roamed the Great Plains. The Native American population lived in harmony with the buffalo population which was estimated to be several million strong. The buffalo provided the native peoples as their primary food source and a source of clothing and shelter. Buffalo bones were even commonly used as kitchen and cooking utensils.

The buffalo, however, didn´t only contribute to the health and well-being of the local human population but also were the principal caretakers of the ecological balance of the prairie ecosystem over which they roamed.

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The Importance of Pasture: How to Take Advantage of What Animals Bring to the Farm

October 30, 2017

THE IMPORTANCE OF PASTURE: HOW TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF WHAT ANIMALS BRING TO THE FARM

While barns are important on any farm, keeping animals on pasture is almost always the better option. Pasture raised animals are usually much healthier and the meat and other animal based food products they offer come with much more nutrients when those animals are raised in a natural setting.

From a humanist and ethical standpoint, animals that are allowed to live outside for the majority of their lives are much happier and live healthier lives. Instead of being pent up in tiny pens, they are allowed to roam and forage for their own food and create their own natural defenses instead of being pumped full of antibiotics and other medicines.

From a practical standpoint, a well-maintained pasture design allows us to take advantage of the innate tendencies that animals have to graze, forage, scratch, or root the land below them. Of course, animal manure spread out over the landscape is also an important source of nutrients for the land itself, reincorporating fertility to the land while improving overall soil quality in a natural process.

Unfortunately, overgrazing of the land has been the main cause of much land degradation over the years. This has mostly been due to keeping way too many animals on a small patch of land and also because of a lack of proper maintenance of pasture land. Rotating your farm animals through a carefully designed system of paddocks is one of the best strategies to sustainably maintain pasture while also offering your animals some of the best grazing land available.

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The Need to Limit Energy Use

October 25, 2017

THE NEED TO LIMIT ENERGY USE

ENERGY: AN ADDICTION OR A NECESSITY?

Energy is arguably the most defining aspect of industrial civilization. For the first couple hundred thousand years of human existence, our ability to affect the world around us was limited by the amount of energy the human body can produce. It is estimated that, on average, a fit laborer can produce about 75 Watts of energy over an eight hour period. To those of us not familiar with energy terms, let it suffice to say that´s not very much energy, at least compared to modern day usage.

Though the elites of past civilizations were able to harness vast amounts of human energy (usually through slavery) in order to build astounding civilizations (think of the Roman aqueducts and the Egyptian pyramids), the majority of our ancestors lived lives that were constrained by the limits imposed by the places and conditions where they lived. They simply didn´t have enough human energy to drastically change the world.

Many scientists who study the history of evolution consider that it was only a matter of time before our species was to make the leap into the world-altering people that we´ve become. A self-conscious brain capable of understanding the world around us coupled with a rotatable thumb that allowed us to modify our surroundings was a combination that undoubtedly was to lead us into the modern civilization that defines us.

When our ancestors first discovered how to harness the power of the steam engine in the early 1800´s something changed in our world. For the first time ever, we were able to harness a power dozens of times greater than what we could produce from our own bodies or from the domestication of horses and other draft animals.

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The Importance of Guilds and Nitrogen Fixers

October 22, 2017

THE IMPORTANCE OF GUILDS AND NITROGEN FIXERS

How is it that the natural world provides excessive abundance while not relying on any external sources of nutrients? Nature produces her own fertility needs, firstly through accumulating organic matter on the soil surface which protects the soil, adds to the layer of humus, and stimulates the biological activity of the soil. The natural world, however, also takes advantage of the abundance of nitrogen in the air to supply plants with one of the most important nutrients they need. Our air is made up of almost 70% nitrogen, and almost all plants need major amounts of nitrogen for healthy growth. Nature, then, was left with the question of how to take the nitrogen from the air and deposit it in the soil where plants could use it.

Nitrogen fixing plants have the ability to absorb the nitrogen in the air through their leaves and “fix” the nitrogen in the soil through nodules that grow on their roots. Leguminous plants such as beans and peas do this as well as many other different types of trees, bushes, and shrubs. If you have ever pulled up a bean plant by accident when weeding your garden, you may have noticed many small white nodules sticking to the roots of that plant. Those nodules are pure nitrogen and are contributing to the growth of the plant and to the overall soil health. When that bean plant dies, the nitrogen in the nodules stays in the soil. With nitrogen-fixing trees and bushes, pruning the branches causes the tree to “shed” some of its root systems. The nitrogen nodules “fixed” onto those roots are then released into the surrounding soil for other plants to take advantage of.

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The Perks of Raising Chickens

October 16, 2017

THE PERKS OF RAISING CHICKENS

For many people who have grown interested in gaining a certain sense of autonomy through taking responsibility for growing a part of their own food, a simple backyard garden or even a container garden on your window will is considered a good place to start. Making the leap from growing tomatoes and peppers to raising a small flock of chickens, however, is a step that not everyone is ready to take.

For some reason, raising chickens (or other small farm animals) is considered to be something that farmers do, even though almost all of our grandparents kept a small flock wandering around the house, no matter where they lived. Whether you live on a 100-acre farm on in a crowded suburban neighborhood, raising chickens brings a number of important benefits.

Chickens should belong on every farm, every backyard, and every urban rooftop. Instead of caging chickens in pestilent CAFO housing where they´re pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics if every family would keep just a couple chickens, they would receive more than enough eggs and meat every year.

Chickens are a descendant of a jungle fowl that humans domesticated thousands of years ago. They are omnivores and traditionally survived by scratching the soil in search of insects, seeds, and other small animals. They also feed on the leaves and roots of certain plants. Chickens, when given the right conditions, can feed themselves on the land where they live.

While commercial chicken feed is made from grain that farmers dedicate millions of acres to growing, if every suburban family simply fenced in their backyards, they could raise a large flock of chicken without any sort of outside inputs. The current “organic” movement specializes in free-range chickens meaning chickens that instead of being caged are allowed to freely roam to gather a lot of their own nutrients.

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