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How to Make Connections of the things of your homestead for 100% Sustainability
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Intro to Permaculture Lesson #2
From the book, Intro to Permaculture by Bill Mollison…
“The core of permaculture is design. Design is the connection between things. It’s the very opposite of what we’re taught in school. Education takes everything and pulls it apart and makes no connections at all. Permaculture makes the connection because as soon as you’ve got the connection you can feed the chicken from the tree.” -Bill Mollison
In this lesson, I’ll teach you how to make the connections between the elements of your place.
Examples of good placement:
Houses and livestock are set below water sources so water can be gravity fed. (Remember my everflow waterer for the chickens)(http://bit.ly/2Oew5nS).
Privacy barriers are placed to give privacy without blocking the winter sun
The garden is placed between the house and the chickens so garden waste can be collected on the way to chickens, including weeds, bugs, old or extra produce. In the same way, the chicken manure could be distributed from the chickens to the garden.
I’ve developed the chicken garden miracle (http://bit.ly/2UfDkQe) where I place chickens in the garden to prepare it, move them out, plant and bring them back to clean it up and start again.
The idea here is to meet the needs of one element by the yields of another.
Typical elements include the house, the garden(s) and chicken(s) or small animals like rabbits.
QUESTION:
What are the desired elements of your farm?
I suggest drawing or finding pics of your wanted elements and begin moving these about on paper where you think they could be placed. Remember, it’s much easier to make a mistake on paper than in real life.
HERE are my element print outs, if you like. Thank you Ben C. 😉 (http://bit.ly/2jAv8nv)
Remember, every element should be placed according to its function.
Let’s take a plant for example…
Think about all the different possible functions of a plant…
windbreak – north side of my house or north side of the chickens
privacy – between me and my neighbors
trellis – near the house for food or out in a sacred place
fire control – where we’d see fire coming from
mulch – in our gardens or orchards where we need mulch
food – near the house
animal forage – where the animals are
fuel – out away, but still accessible.
erosion control – where erosion is likely to occur.
wildlife habitat – way out
climate buffer – shade trees
soil conditioner – improves the soil
INVALUABLE Permaculture Plant and Tree Resource (http://bit.ly/2iqJV7N)
What you’ll want to do is a functional analysis of each of your elements.
Let’s do one on chickens as an example to show you how.
FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF A CHICKEN
1st – Ask yourself what’s the basic need of the chicken? Observe, research, be mentored.
For Chickens, my article, “7 Essentials for Keeping Your Flock Alive and Happy.” is (http://bit.ly/1YzfwPZ) is helpful in figuring out what chickens need.
2nd – Write out those needs.
– shelter
– grit
– dust
– water
– air
– food
– other chickens
3rd – Write out what the chicken gives
– eggs
– meat
– feathers
– manure
– methane
– scratching
– foraging
– flying
– fighting
4th – Make the connections. If we’ve done this same thing for other elements like the house or garden we realize that the house needs food and the garden needs fertilizing.
BAM! There’s just one connection, so trying to place those so they compliment each other.
Let’s do one more element. The Garden.
Needs:
Fertilizer
Mulch
Water
Gives:
leaves
seeds
vegetables
Notice that chickens can give most of what the garden needs.
Manure for fertilizer
Help to spread mulch
If chickens water is nearby, water can be given to the garden when cleaning out their water
See that the chicken can use most of what the garden gives
Leaves for bedding
Seeds and vegetables for eating
Conclusion:
Quick Win – Print out my elements, draw them or cut out some from a magazine and begin to play around with your homestead to see how things might work together.
Now that you’ve learned to make the connection you have a very powerful tool to improve your homestead.
It may not feel like you’re getting anything done when you sit down to design, but I assure you it’s much easier to make a mistake on paper than in real life.
Go ahead and make a rough map of where you think your elements should go. Feel free to play around with this. And, yes, of course, bad and disproportionate chicken scratch drawings are just fine 😉
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