Permaculture, Jasper hall style
I've been working for 7 weeks on a community that tries to grow food using permaculture. The community has about 20 adults and even more children, yet there are only 3 members who grow food, with the help of us volunteers of course.
This is the path from the main house to the dome, where volunteers sleep. The kitchen was also crammed on the outside of it too, because a new kitchen was being made. The new kitchen was completed while I was here.
Here is one of the residents, Teneal, cooking in the new kitchen.
Here is one of the projects we worked on. The big leaved little plants in the foreground are elephant ear. We planted these under a large compost heap, and the idea is that you can just pick the elephant ear and throw it straight onto the compost. The elephant ear would also keep grass down meaning it wouldn't need wippersnipping. The building you can see in the background is one of the compost toilets. There are several compost toilets dotted around the community. However, the community often puts it in working compost piles within a few months, and I have been asked to spread rancid smelling compost on vegetables. Compost toilets are supposed to be left in their own compost bin for at least 6 months, until it smells like... compost, not rotten poo, so I let them know.
Here's another area I've done quite a lot of work. Volunteer coordinator role switched hands while I was here, to a very keen enthusiastic guy, Ryan. We made these swales by first weeding, putting the weeds on the swales. Then we put cardboard on top of the weeds and then compost (containing more cardboard, toilet compost and lots of not even rotten sticks) on top of that. We then planted things by digging down as far as we could go - hopefully to soil level - with our hands, These tomato plants were pretty wilted when I put them in, some of them had their leaves all stuck together they were so parched, and I didn't hold much hope for them. However, here they are now, bounced back and looking good. The swales are made this way because we're in a rainy area. Water can run off a swale and down to the next one, meaning the plants don't get rotten. In dry climates plants would be planted in dips to make sure they got all the water they could. Plants were often planted together too - basil grows well with tomatoes, but today we planted lettuces around them.
2 compost piles, complete with cardboard in one. These composting techniques are quite different from what I'm used to in the UK, where we will pile a large amount of green leafy matter, food scraps etc, and then take compost from the bottom where it has rotted through. We don't put large sticks or cardboard in our compost heaps because they take a lot longer to rot down.
Here are is one of the water holes. When I arrived it didn't have a fence around it, so I helped Russ, another resident, putting posts into the ground, stretching wire around it with a special tool that will pull it really tight, and then attaching chicken wire to it. We also planted the little trees in the plastic protection. The pipe you can see snaking along comes from our sink, dirty water from it goes direct to something in our garden, watering it and providing nutrients at the same time.
The community keeps 3 pigs, who's job is to live in a patch of overgrown land and churn it all up on their look out for food. You can see 2 pigs in this picture if you look closely. So far they have slaughtered one pig, which is now in the freezer and every so often we have a meat feast. In my 7 week stay the pigs lived in 3 different patches and churned up the earth and weeds very well. Of course this has the added advantage that the pigs lead a very healthy natural life.
Here we've taken the pigs out of the land and planted it up with lettuces, cabbages, cauliflowers and broccoli.
That's all for now, I might post a little more about what we did later.
This is the path from the main house to the dome, where volunteers sleep. The kitchen was also crammed on the outside of it too, because a new kitchen was being made. The new kitchen was completed while I was here.
Here is one of the residents, Teneal, cooking in the new kitchen.
Here is one of the projects we worked on. The big leaved little plants in the foreground are elephant ear. We planted these under a large compost heap, and the idea is that you can just pick the elephant ear and throw it straight onto the compost. The elephant ear would also keep grass down meaning it wouldn't need wippersnipping. The building you can see in the background is one of the compost toilets. There are several compost toilets dotted around the community. However, the community often puts it in working compost piles within a few months, and I have been asked to spread rancid smelling compost on vegetables. Compost toilets are supposed to be left in their own compost bin for at least 6 months, until it smells like... compost, not rotten poo, so I let them know.
Here's another area I've done quite a lot of work. Volunteer coordinator role switched hands while I was here, to a very keen enthusiastic guy, Ryan. We made these swales by first weeding, putting the weeds on the swales. Then we put cardboard on top of the weeds and then compost (containing more cardboard, toilet compost and lots of not even rotten sticks) on top of that. We then planted things by digging down as far as we could go - hopefully to soil level - with our hands, These tomato plants were pretty wilted when I put them in, some of them had their leaves all stuck together they were so parched, and I didn't hold much hope for them. However, here they are now, bounced back and looking good. The swales are made this way because we're in a rainy area. Water can run off a swale and down to the next one, meaning the plants don't get rotten. In dry climates plants would be planted in dips to make sure they got all the water they could. Plants were often planted together too - basil grows well with tomatoes, but today we planted lettuces around them.
2 compost piles, complete with cardboard in one. These composting techniques are quite different from what I'm used to in the UK, where we will pile a large amount of green leafy matter, food scraps etc, and then take compost from the bottom where it has rotted through. We don't put large sticks or cardboard in our compost heaps because they take a lot longer to rot down.
Here are is one of the water holes. When I arrived it didn't have a fence around it, so I helped Russ, another resident, putting posts into the ground, stretching wire around it with a special tool that will pull it really tight, and then attaching chicken wire to it. We also planted the little trees in the plastic protection. The pipe you can see snaking along comes from our sink, dirty water from it goes direct to something in our garden, watering it and providing nutrients at the same time.
The community keeps 3 pigs, who's job is to live in a patch of overgrown land and churn it all up on their look out for food. You can see 2 pigs in this picture if you look closely. So far they have slaughtered one pig, which is now in the freezer and every so often we have a meat feast. In my 7 week stay the pigs lived in 3 different patches and churned up the earth and weeds very well. Of course this has the added advantage that the pigs lead a very healthy natural life.
Here we've taken the pigs out of the land and planted it up with lettuces, cabbages, cauliflowers and broccoli.
That's all for now, I might post a little more about what we did later.