(Part 2) Best products from r/Permaculture

The first thing to understand where permaculture is concerned, is that water is your center of gravity. Other people might say that trees are the single most important thing; but trees do not grow without water. You've also got what looks like a natural creek or riverbed there already; that big channel cutting through 288 and 294 etc. So start with that.

Water For Every Farm, by P. A. Yeomans - This is a vitally important book, where Permaculture is concerned. So get it and make sure you read it thoroughly.

Keylines are at the midpoint of a slope. If you're going to do swales, (which of course you are) then I'd probably look at doing them around 306, 318; those sorts of sites, but you will have to get a level and measure it out for yourself, to know for sure.

http://weshareinterests.com/wp-content/uploads/Terrace-Farming-China.jpg

You have lots of lovely natural contours and ditches to work with. Ideally I would want this sort of setup, at 322 going down to about 306-308. You will have to measure out your contours properly, but then you put trees or some sort of vegetation into the slopes, which allows the water to go through and collect at the bottom, but protects you from erosion and mudslides etc. Depending on the crops, you could probably do lines of food forest there if you wanted to of course, as well.

Looking at your elevations shows me a very clear arterial pattern for water throughout the property; the clue is any place where you see virtually no green lines. All of those spots are going to be places where water collects. So all you really need to do is terraces, wherever you see the heaviest concentrations of green lines, at the keyline/mid altitude point. You could potentially end up with big, thick forests all along the slopes leading down to your central river/trench. Make sure these are primarily food plants, and you will have more food than you know what to do with. Maintenance will be minimal, as well; walk in under your overstory occasionally, and do a chop and drop for pruning and to keep the soil going, but as long as your soil is decent and it is getting water, it will practically look after itself. Then take some of your food surplus, compost it, and use it on the soil in your Zone 1 garden.

I would put a house at maybe the 318 site just north of the center of the map, assuming up is north. Having a house down in a hollow is not the safest place, due to the potential for flooding and so on; but at the keyline is advantageous, because you can put a tank or catchment on the top of a hill, and then run a pipe down to the house. Gardens are generally in a radial pattern around the house; referred to as Zone 1. You want deliberate paths along every route where you're going to walk, as well, and this is so that you can exploit the harmonics caused by edge, and stack smallish understory plants (herbs and such) along them.

For a floorplan, you could do an earthship with the elevated part at the northeast end, the sunken/fortified part at the southeast, (you will want to be at the lowest point in summer, in order to stay cool) and the windows/conservatory facing the west side in order to get the midday/afternoon sun.

A problem with this site is that you're not going to get much Zone 3 (farming/animal grazing) out of it, since that needs to be on reasonably gentle slopes, and most of yours are steep. The 326-338 slope near the center might work, though; but that will make your Zone 1 and 2 small. Getting water up there might be annoying, too.

It's hard for me to say much more, because I don't know what your animal movements, wind currents, and potential fire path is on the property. I also don't know what your climate zone is, or what your soil is like, although there seem to be trees all over it, so I'm guessing it's decent. I could probably see a small wind farm in Zone 4 near the upper east edge, for example; the elevation is good, but it depends on what the wind is doing. You will possibly get animals coming through from somewhere, in order to get to the water in your central trench, and you will need to observe their patterns and plan for that as well.

Get a soil sample; know what your mineral ratios are, and then you will know what plants you can put in, and how to fix the nutrients. That will also help you know where to put specific types of animals, because manure can be soil fixing, for instance. Details, details.

I worked for Ben May as a WWOOFer for several months. At the time, he had 3 shire horses and did all his logging and farming with them. His site has some inspiration. We visited him on the weekend as we were on vacation back in Devon and he is up to 6 shire horses now.

Ben Falk, author of The Resilient Farm and Homestead, has some good thoughts on using forest land. He turned me on to the idea of Dehesa style of Agroforestry.

Bagdersett research corporation is a source of information on various kinds of forestry, particularly hazelnut coppicing. The founder is an academic in agriculture who has developed a very good and productive strain of hazelnut. I think his ideas are VERY realistic as he understands that a sustainable system isn't very sustainable if it involves insane amounts of manual labour! His name is Philip A Rutter.

Another good source of information is New Forest Farm, which is, I believe, in Wisconsin. The owner, Mark Sheperd, has a book called "Restoration Agriculture" which is primarily about trees. There is a community of farmers and writers around him.

Are you familiar with the traditional woodcrafts? Start with wikipedia, articles like coppicing and there many related articles at the bottom. What will pay the bills for you depends entirely upon local markets, so just have a look at as many options as you possibly can!

If I had to hazard a guess, I would replant walnut (for your area). You can harvest some nuts, rent the area to pig farmers to clean up any that you missed, and it makes for good milling wood.

Do you have the money to invest in a dimensional mill? I grew up on Vancouver Island and we spent our free time hiking into the woods and milling up fallen Fir. An alaskan mill is great for this (saves hauling the entire tree out with horses or whatever) and makes the job so much easier. You can literally take high-value lumber out on a trailer behind a quad! Much easier. An alaskan mill has the disadvantage of a HUGE kerf which creates a lot of waste. At the time we had big-bar chainsaws available so it kinda made sense, but if you're starting out, I'd opt for a Mobile Dimension Sawmill mounted on a quad-trailer, or better yet this one. Although woodmizers and other small bandsaws have even smaller kerfs. A small article by some guys in Kentucky.

Full Vigor Forestry: Sustainable Forest Management from the Forest Owner's Point of View would seem like a good read. There is a DVD series

The other search term you can try is "gypo logging", that is what we used to call small scale logging and milling. If you do find any good books or courses, can you please come back with a review or two?

EDIT: A good blog and a 4-page reading list and DVDs < (check out their solar kilns, very cool stuff!)

They grow banana trees and other tropical fruits inside the earthships in Taos, New Mexico. I'm not sure what climate zone that is, but it does get below zero in the winter. The design of the house keeps it 70 degrees inside all winter without heating. You can build an earth sheltered greenhouse in such a way that the surrounding mass of earth absorbs heat during the summer months and releases heat during the winter. It is possible to maintain pretty much whatever temperature you desire by adjusting the average annual temperature inside the greenhouse through venting or earth tubes.

Check out John Hait's book "Passive Annual Heat Storage," he does a really good job of explaining the science behind the concept, and how to build it without making some key mistakes. Here's a link to the book on Amazon:
http://amzn.com/0615905889

It is also possible to use earthworks as "sun traps." Think of a large U shaped berm, maybe 20 feet tall, oriented so the U opens towards the sun/south and with heat absorbing materials around the inside. Large boulders work great for absorbing heat, you can even build a rock wall to reflect light/heat toward the center of the U. In front of the berm you can build a pond to reflect light/heat into the U. All of these elements combine to create a micro-climate in the center of the U that is much warmer than the surrounding environment. I recently went to Paul Wheaton's land, where he is building something like this in hopes of being able to grow a lemon tree in Montana. Sepp Holzer has been growing citrus at high altitude in the Alps for years using these methods.

Another variation is the crater garden, which is exactly that, a large below grade garden in a crater like hole. The humidity from the plants inside the crater raises the temperature of the air, creating a warmer miocro-climate.

There's an out-of-print book simply called "Passive Solar Energy." It's got lots of great information; I bet it will be just what you are looking for as far as the physics of solar energy and thermosiphoning (which is essentially "heated fluid rises because it's less dense than cooler fluid"). I'm an engineer and I really think that book gives you all you need to know to have a basic working knowledge of solar heat gain and how various systems of solar energy capture operate. Here's a list of books I have found helpful and/or interesting in regards to solar energy:

• Passive Solar Energy - The top link is a link to pdf's of the chapters of the book.
  
  
• The Passive Solar Energy Book - VERY in-depth on passive solar theory, design, and construction.
  
  
• Solar Air Heating Systems - Another design and construction book, specifically about solar air heating.
  
  
  
• The Solar Greenhouse Book - Name says it all. It's all about passive solar greenhouses.
  
  
• A Golden Thread - Really interesting book about how man has worked with the sun in building design through the history of civilization.
  
  
  For earthships/earth-sheltered homes, I recommend these books:
  
  
• Earth-Sheltered Housing Design - One of the most detailed and complete books on earth-sheltering available. Not earthships, but the same ideas apply.
  
  
• Earth-Sheltered Houses - Another essential book for earth-sheltering houses. Author has built several of his own and remains an authority in the subject as well as cordwood building, for which he has also written books.
  
  
• Earth-Sheltered Solar Greenhouses - Combines two subjects for a very Permaculture-appropriate building technique.
  
  
• Earthship Vol I and II - Needs no explaining.
  
  
  From my experience in university studying fluid dynamics, I recommend not going any deeper into the subject than what you would find in the solar energy books I listed above. The subject is math-heavy, and the academic study of the topic is not going to help you with what you are interested in with permaculture. It's kind of like studying the abstract physics/math of electromagnetism when all you want to do is wire a house.
  
  Hope this helps!

You'd need to scrub the gas. When it first comes out of the generator, it will likely be full of extra CO2, a lot of water vapor, some H2S, and a few other minor byproducts that the bacterial colony makes. These gases make up about 50% of the raw biogas. While you can use raw biogas for cooking (might be sooty, smelly, and not as hot of a flame), running an engine off raw biogas will likely not work for very long. H2S alongside water vapor and metal will condense sulfur all over the inside of your engine. Luckily, scrubbing gas isn't too hard.


There are many biogas scrubbing options out there, but the one I liked the best was using a packed water column. Essentially, you feed the raw biogas through a fitting into the bottom of a tall pipe (6" pvc or something similar) several feet long, before it exits through another fitting at the top of the pipe. The inside of that pipe is packed with irregularly shaped objects with a lot of surface area, preferably made of plastic or some other non metal. Water is constantly flowing from another fitting at the top of the pipe. It covers the irregularly shaped objects as it travels to the bottom, where it flows through another fitting and into a garden bed for irrigation.

The reason this works is that CO2 and H2S (Hydrogen Sulfide gas will kill you, so it's a good idea to scrub it out) dissolve into water WAY more easily than methane...Like orders of magnitude easier. So, when your raw biogas has a huge surface area of water all around it, those two unwanted gasses are selectively dissolved into that water, leaving you with a much higher proportion of methane. I have read that a packed water column can increase methane percent to nearly 95%.

Doing a biogas setup sounds like a lot of fun, but it really is a bit larger of an undertaking if you intend on using the gas for anything except occasional cooking. I have done a lot of studying on the topic. The single most helpful resource was a book called "The Biogas Handbook" by David House. It can be found fairly cheap, or do as I did and check it out from a nearby library (Had to do interlibrary loan to find a copy, but it was still free).

Closed cycles are a nice idea but in practice you are always losing nutrients through leaching, crop export and mineralisation of nitrogen back into the air. Cropping spaces can't support themselves in terms of fertility, and while cover crops can help with a lot soil carbon and to a lesser extent nitrogen the minerals are going to become a limiting factor in time if you are taking a crop off the land. Often things seem to be going fine for years until some key mineral runs short. Traditionally land was in fallow about 4/5 of the time as weedy pasture over a long period does a lot more good for the soil than a cover crop of 2-3 species for one short season. Trees are important for bringing up minerals as well but difficult to incorporate directly with cropping spaces (animals that browse trees then transport manure like goats are ideal for that). The modern biointensive methods like Jeavons rely on heavy imports of fertility as manure/compost/mulch plus irrigation. The older methods that aren't so input intensive are mostly lost today it seems. I'm experimenting with zero/low input systems here and it is doable but requires more skill than just pumping everything up with water and fertiliser.
There are a few books on growing grains on a small scale
https://www.amazon.com.au/Homegrown-Whole-Grains-Harvest-Barley-ebook/dp/B003PGQK50
https://www.amazon.com.au/Small-Scale-Grain-Raising-Processing-Nutritious-ebook/dp/B005OCTJ3S
The trouble with grains is how dependent they are on local seasonal cycles since they need moisture to grow but dry weather to ripen and harvest successfully. Each species has its own specific preferences for soil and climate (with specific strains for low input conditions necessary beyond that, with the genetics of those old landraces mostly lost as well) and then on top of that each species has its own tricks and equipment for sowing, growing, harvesting, processing and storing. There is a reason why most traditional agricultural regions had just one dominant staple crop and maybe one or two minor ones to complement it.
If you live in a warm humid zone like I do then grains are pretty much off the menu since we get rainy weather at pretty much any time of year, so half the time the crop is ruined (if the birds and rats don't get it first, another disadvantage of growing grains on a small scale). Tuber crops are our better bet but outside the warmer zones the species choice is a lot more limited. With increasing climate instability grain growing might become more marginal even for the industrial farmers.
Keep dreaming and planning- I redesigned my place a few dozen times for years before I moved onto it full time and could put things into practice, but the plans are still changing on a regular basis.

I think that Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability by Holmgren is the best. It focuses on permaculture theoretically (but not in a boring way). A lot of permaculture books are basically gardening/farming books with a permaculture slant. This book is actually about permaculture itself - what it is, how to use it, and why to use it. All 12 Principles are explained in detail so you can apply them creatively on your own.

The Permaculture City by Hemenway just came out this year and it is fantastic. If you currently live in an apartment, city, or suburbs, I HIGHLY suggest reading this book. Most permaculture books will bum you out a bit if you don't have a yard. The Permaculture City really made me appreciate where I am and made me feel like permaculture is possible for everyone in every situation.

Looby Macnamera's People & Permaculture is really amazing. I consider it a must-read, especially if the social aspects of permaculture pique your interest. I also think it's important if you live in a city, as people are the most abundant resource in a city.

Hi! I've spent the past few days watching some online videos offered for free as part of a sustainability conference for anyone interested in managing or working on small farms. The conference website: www.smallfarmsummit.org . (The conference has finished, however. I just wanted to provide the source of my information.) One of the participants, Zach Wolf, delivered a video called, "Your Relationship to Soil Fertility Management." At the end, he mentioned these texts as sources for more information and research:

• [Soil Science Simplified] (http://www.amazon.com/Soil-Science-Simplified-Neal-Eash/dp/0813818230)
  
  
• [The Art of Balancing Soil Nutrients: A Practical Guide to Interpreting Soil Tests] (http://www.amazon.com/Art-Balancing-Soil-Nutrients-Interpreting/dp/1601730322/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427136013&sr=1-1&keywords=The+art+of+balancing+soil+nutrients)
  
  
• [Marschner's Mineral Nutrition of Higher Plants, Third Edition] (http://www.amazon.com/Marschners-Mineral-Nutrition-Higher-Plants/dp/0123849055/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427136123&sr=1-1&keywords=mineral+nutrition+of+higher+plants)
  
  
• [The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies Are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Soil-Will-Save-Scientists/dp/1609615549/ref=pd_rhf_dp_s_cp_3_9S4X?ie=UTF8&refRID=0X6WRFG59DYAVGMZW3WM)
  
  
• [The Farm as Ecosystem] (http://www.amazon.com/Farm-as-Ecosystem-Jerry-Brunetti/dp/1601730411/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1427390978&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Farm+as+an+Ecosystem)
  
  I haven't read any of them yet. I hope they are of some help to you. :)