Inner Workings

I promised some of you a peek inside the buildings. 

Popcorn on the cob is delicious, but if you reuse the brown paper bag in the microwave,
it starts the whole thing on fire... oops

Catherine has a great potting shed that we can use to get our seeds started this year

Another view of the potting shed and various tools

We may have to replace the plastic on the shed since it's a bit ripped

Lodge after Neal sanded and applied polyurethane to the floors

Kitchen view with all of our stuff out of the way

Had to put our stuff on the shelves and out of the way

View of the loft from the front door

The wood stove really heats up the place

Lower barn where I believe Jersey cows were originally kept

Catherine's family kept pigs in here at one point

Now it's being used for storage

Freezer Chickens

Well, it wasn't pretty, but we finally harvested eleven of our laying hens. This brings our total number of laying hens down to 25 (yeah... if you do the math you realize that we always had one more chicken than we thought... oops).

Catherine's friend, Rose, helped us pick out the ones she thought were least likely to be laying (she did pretty well, too... only 2 out of the 11 had formed eggs in them). Then she came back the next day and taught our "Motley Crew" (her words, not mine) how to properly harvest chickens. The whole process took about four hours from start to finish.

Many thanks to our friends for all the help! Enjoy the pictures below... don't worry, I won't post the more gruesome photos :)

Pat and Catherine learning the ropes

Waiting...

I think this is the heart

Lots of friends helping out

From Patterns to Details

Planting bulbs and mulching

One thing that Neal and I learned in our permaculture design course was to start with the big picture before worrying about the smaller details. We used this principle when planning our network of fruit and nut tree guilds. Our big picture goal is to rely mainly on perennial foods that are able to fill the needs of the other plants in the area with minimal human intervention.

This last year in the gardens at Casa Maria, we were providing for many of the plants' needs by hand. For example, we needed to mulch the bed to keep out weeds and slow water loss (so we carried loads of straw and leaves to the raised beds at different times during the season. Ugh.) Another need of those finicky annuals was nutrients- so we carried buckets of compost to our raised beds. (Hey- it was great for building arm muscles, but we'd like to create a system that eventually provides for itself.)

Raking takes forever!
There must be a better way...

Here are some the plants we've put to use in our garden so far:
Major calorie providing perennial plant: apple, pear, oak, hazelnut, nanny berry
Grass suppressing bulbs: Daffodils and Garlic
Mulch: Comfrey, rhubarb
Nitrogen fixers: Bundleflower. Hopefully clover and chicory later
Beneficial insect attractors: Hope to plant yarrow, lemon balm, alfalfa, and buckwheat

The patterns from nature that we decided implemented so far were the web and circular patterns. We planted the trees in a network that we hope fill provide a food forest in a few years. (Think of the support and strength in a spider's web or mycelium). Around each tree we mulched and placed supportive plants below the circle of the plant's drip line.

A network of polyculture circles

We want to see if we can get away from the traditional method of gardening in large squares or rectangles with a path between every row of plants... We are concerned that it seems efficient at first because of the ease of having like plants by each other and that tractors can easily navigate the rows, but in the long run we might be able to conserve more water on our land and take advantage of positive plant interactions if we use other designs. We'll try it out and let you know!

Pastured Poultry

Neal burying a chicken that didn't make it into the coop at night
(opossum or racoon attack)

With about 35 chickens eating 1/4 pound of feed each per day, we go through a 50 pound bag of feed in just 6 days. Those bags are $23 each. So we are paying $3.83 per day for our chickens just on feed alone. Our flock lays between 12-15 eggs/day. If we chose to sell our eggs, we would need to charge at least $4/dozen. This does not factor in electricity (for the fence and for the lights to keep our hens producing in the winter), straw for the bedding, cost of purchasing the birds themselves ($4-5 each for grown hens), or construction materials. It also does not pay us for the time spent letting the chickens in/out of the coop, collecting/cleaning the eggs, and feeding/watering. My hope is to significantly reduce the cost of feed at least during spring/summer/and fall.

Here are some things we learned from Permaculturist, Paul Wheaton who runs the blog Permies.com

"The jungle comes complete with polyculture foods all year long. Greens, bugs, fruits, grains and more. Mostly fresh. Something we cannot do all year because we have winter. Most chicken feeds eliminate three out of four of these - leaving only grain. And that grain is dried grain - not fresh. Since we have learned that grain alone makes for a sickly chicken, "chicken feed" also contains dried legumes and a vitamin/mineral mix that contains the vitamins and minerals that we are aware of that we think chickens need. I see people build massive, elaborate stuff for raising chickens that deprive them of fresh foods or bugs even in the summer. Or natural sunlight. Or have them standing in their own poop all day. Or, worse, the chickens are killed by predators."

Here's a list of the typical ways to raise chickens and Paul Wheaton's thoughts on each:


• factory- Poor ratings on vegetation, bug access, natural habitat, poop cleaning, work, confinement, and food cost factors. This is the typical way grocery store eggs are produced, unless specifically specified otherwise.
• coop and run- Same factors rate from poor to moderate depending on size of run and level of vegetation. This is how our chickens are raised in the city. They get access to our kitchen scraps most days though.
• chicken tractor- Same factors rated poorly except for poop cleaning. This seems like a lot of daily work to me.
• truly free range- Moderate to good ratings on everything except poop cleaning (the chickens will poop in unfortunate places-- like the porch, yuck) and work (they may wipe out your gardens, dog food, mulch, etc creating extra chores for you) We might consider this, but we live quite close to the highway and I'm not convinced the chickens are sufficiently scared of the asphalt.
• pastured poultry pens- Poor to moderate rating on all factors except poop cleaning (perfect score there). Have to move the whole pen twice a day and only cuts feed bill by 20%. Seems like more work than our current system.
• pastured poultry paddocks- Possibility for perfect scores on all factors if done right. This is the model for which we are striving. No current plans to create a moveable chicken coop, though it would cut down on straw usage and also poop cleaning.


"... there are four temporary paddocks and a draggable (portable) micro-coop. The chickens spend 7 to 10 days in a paddock. Each area rests from the chickens at least 28 days. Each paddock is loaded with people food and chicken food. When the time comes to move the chickens, set up the new paddock and then create an opening between the two paddocks. Drag the micro-coop to the new paddock and the chickens will run to the fresh forage. Close the new paddock and take down the old paddock."

Here is what we learned from Paul Wheaton about growing your own chicken feed and having the hens harvest it themselves: 

• You can pay someone to grow grains for you to feed the chickens (expensive) or you could grow the grains yourself and dry them for use later (labor intensive) or you can plant perennials and self-seeding annuals that the chickens can forage themselves. We have started doing this but so far we are keeping the chickens out of our freshly mulched plantings. They seem to LOVE digging under piles of leaves for worms... so they will have to wait to reach the newly planted stuff.
• There are many examples of foods that both people and hens enjoy eating. Some that we may try are: amaranth, comfrey, purslane (did so well during the drought this year!), sunflowers, and swiss chard (this did so well in the city during the heat/drought).
• Paul suggests harvesting a crop and then letting the chickens forage what you don't take/ what falls on the ground. We think this will work especially well with the fruits. We'll take the ones that we like and leave them the seconds/thirds.... they can also have the ones with the bugs.

Our situation is a bit different than Paul's in that we have a stationary chicken coop instead of a mobile one. However, we have already started trying out paddock rotations with 2 lengths of electric fencing. We've found that the chickens spend more time outside when their paddock includes the big maple or evergreen tree. Also, when we rotate the pen every week or so, only closest area of grass to the coop gets eaten/scratched down to dirt. Eventually, we will let the chickens forage around our permaculture guilds (after the plants have established themselves). So far, if both of us help, it takes about an hour to move the whole fence. This is mostly because we'll get the fence moved halfway and then decide to change the layout again. Hehe... so some room for improvement in decreasing that time. We will let you know how it goes as our system matures.

Pen Rotation #1
A few chickens are brave enough to forage the weed pile

Pen Rotation #1
Allows access to small evergreen and large maple tree

Some plantings out of reach of the chickens

This is how our pastured poultry pen is working right now:

This is how we want it to look in a year or two:

Beginnings

The back of the barn

Welcome to our new permaculture and homesteading blog. We hope to share our adventures as we move to our friend's home in the country.

What the heck is permaculture? In short, it combines the best aspects of nature (food production through a well-balanced system) and agriculture (copious amounts of easily digestible food). Started by Bill Mollison and David Holgrem, its 12 design principles include:

1. Observe and Interact
2. Catch and Store Energy
3. Obtain a yield
4. Accept feedback and apply self regulation
5. Value renewable resources
6. Produce no waste
7. Design from patterns to details
8. Integrate rather than segregate
9. Small and slow solutions
10. Use and value diversity
11. Use the edges and margins
12. Creatively use and respond to change

We hope to refer back to these principles as we describe our farm endeavours. As far as homesteading goes, we have been inspired by the Radical Homemakers movement, and as such, we hope to have one or both of us working at least part-time from home to support ourselves.

Happy reading! Enjoy some of these first glimpses of the farm.

The old corn crib

First glimpses of the farm

I think this is a maple tree

Our first attempt at a small electric fence

Garage

Back of the barn

The farmhouse

The chicken coop

The shed (first third is the lodge where Neal & I will stay)

Barn and potting shed

"Tree pose"

Willow Tree