I saw that you also posted in the Humanure toilet vs biogas digester? thread. Did you read all of that before posting this question? There are a lot of good thoughts there. One of the reasons I don't think it isn't done more often is that in order to produce enough cooking fuel for 1 or 2 people, it takes almost 1000lbs of human waste and an adult produces about 1lbs per day so that is a lot of input for very little output. It just isn't a cost effective system for biogas production. Now, if you already have a biodigester set up, it can handle any human waste that you add up to its capacity, but if you just have human waste, you are probably better off composting it via the Humanure method.

With that said, if you do want to go ahead with a human waste system, here is a site with some considerations: http://www.appropedia.org/Biogas_from_human_waste

There are large scale system that have been done, but they are not cheap nor simple. They involve heat treatments systems for the inputs and UV sterilizations for the effluent output. When you say a "large number" how many are you saying?

I agree with Thomas on the gravel part. I would add that I'd put landscape fabric under the gravel to prevent the gravel from sinking down into the sub surface once it becoems muddy. Also, anywhere where you are going to be filling flats, potting, and transplanting, should have a solid surface under it. A plywood platform on top of the gravel works fine for this. But you just want something that will allow you to sweep up debris.

2. Is it possible for "skilled volunteers" to erect?
We do have some money for construction but not a ton. One company gave us a bid that said it would take their crew 3 weeks and cost over $20,000. That is in addition to engineering. We are considering hiring a construction manager and then recruiting the most skilled volunteers that we have. Is this possible or are would we be in over our heads?

I'd get a few more bids. And ask to see their project plan. It might be that you can do the "barn raising" yourself, but higher them to do the plumbing/electrical/etc.

Nick Dee wrote:
If you have any exceptional resources, tips or tricks, it would be appreciated!

Can you be more specific? What questions do you have that you need answers to? I am sure we all have hundreds of exceptional resources, tips, and tricks, but 99% of them might be off topic for what you need.

It all depends... A quick google search tells me that Quispamsis has adopted the National Building Code of Canada. The pretty much means that any non-standard building is not going to get approved by your building permit without some additional work on your part. Basically, you will need to find an architect or structural engineer that will "stamp" your building plans. This essentially tells the building department that they guarantee that the building, according to the plans, will not fall down and create some sort of hazard. I would recommend searching for a local green architects or builders association and try calling around to some of the members and see if any of them have experience in designing earthbag buildings. You can also call your local building department and ask if they have any architects or engineers that they recommend for people wanting to build alternative homes.

From my quick search, it looks like there are a number of builders in Canada that do Rammed earth buildings, which lead me to believe that there is a good way to get those types of buildings approved. Also, you can always do a Post and Beam home and then use earthbag as an infill. The structure is approved due to the tried and true post and beam method and then they don't care what type of material you build your walls out of.

Good Luck!

On the topic of that biogas digester, I started looking into that design, and I found a half dozen very similar digesters for sale on alibaba.com for significantly less. At that price, I'm almost inclined to buy one just to see if it works...

While I imagine that it could digest human waste, I would be concerned with the pathogen content of the resulting fertilizer. Assuming that the total time the material is in the digester is less than a month, I do not think that it would be enough time for harmful pathogens to run their course. And at 66ºF, that isn't sufficient enough heat to kill them either. As per the Humanure handbook, you either need sufficient time or temperature to make the end product safe and this would give you neither. And as per my above post, the biogas you would get from adding your own waste to the digester really wouldn't be worth the effort. Especially considering that you are talking about emptying the bucket everyday rather than waiting for them to get full, the increased risk of exposure to fresh human feces just doesn't seem worth it.

That HomeBiogas digester seems like a really great product and I'd be interested in it for all the things they designed it to digest, but I would not want to put Humanure into that system.

I just had my solar system installed and we got microinverters on ours. The main reason being is that I have modules on both the south and west slopes of my house, and due to the fact that the two sides have vastly different power outputs at different times of day, a central inverter would not properly maximize the power from each. And now that I've been watching my power output for a few weeks, I see that occasionally one or two panels drop around 20% but all the other panels are still maintaining a steady power output. My understanding is that if they were all strung together to a centralized inverter, those low output panels would drag down the output of the whole string. The other benifit is that if we ever have a failure on one of the microinverters, we only have to replace that one which is far cheaper than buying a whole new central inverter. Granted, since I have seven inverters rather than just once, that is 6 more chances for a device failure, but I still think I like those odds.

Charles Kleff wrote:Does anyone have any ideas for projects that would allow people to learn about permaculture concepts where all the materials had to be purchased but could be purchased for under $20.00?

So I think the disconnect here is that there is not going to be a project like that which will teach you permaculture concepts. There are tons of ways that someone who knows permaculture concepts can apply that knowledge to projects to make them cost very little. Permaculture isn't about the projects, it is about doing projects differently. Permaculture isn't about hugelculture, herb spirals, cob building, or growing food, but it can incluse all of those things and more. I can raise chickens, or I can raise chickens according to permaculture concepts. I can plant a garden or I can plant a garden using permaculture concepts. And I can write down the steps for how I raise chickens or plant my garden, and you can copy them exactly, but that doesn't teach you permaculture. And even if you do it my way, it doesn't mean you are necessarily following permaculture concepts becasue part of permaculture is about using the resources you already have which maybe different than what I have.

People need to first learn about permaculture, and then they need to apply it to the projects that they want to do. And there are hundreds of free resources for learning permaculture concepts. And once someone has learned those concepts, they should have no problem coming up with projects that they can do themselves.

For my work laptop, I got rid of my standard second monitor (power draw of about 32W) and switched to a AOC e1659Fwu 16" monitor. It draws power from my USB port and only adds about 6W of draw above the 12W that my laptop already drew.

For my home server, I switched away from my old mini desktop (~60W draw) to a Chromebox M004u which I've installed Linux on to. The draw from that is usually around 15W. I'm not sure on the power consumption from the DSL modem or the router, but I would guess that they are under 10W each. We have a Roku and the TV on a power strip so we can turn them off when not in use, but the combined standby draw of those is around 3W so I don't often bother unless I am going away for an extended time.

We have another laptop that gets used occasionally, but most of our internetting is done from phones or tablets now. More than a few times now I've had to replace cracked screens on these and that saves a lot versus having to buy new devices. My phone is now a 5 year old smart phone that is still ticking. It has been a long time since I really used it as a "smart" device, but for mobile data I can teather my wifi only tablet to it and use that for my on the go computing needs. Not having to upgrade my phone every year is a small part of keeping electronics out of the waste system

To power all this, we have a 3.6kW PV solar system.

Marty Mitchell wrote:After careful thought and much deliberation... I am now considering doing something special with a STUN hive if I ever manage to get the bees stabilized without intervention for at least 3 years(probably more). Who knows how long it will take to get there.

You should also consider that about every 3 to 7 years, the queen will either die or the hive will superseded her, which can result in a dramatically different hive. Depending on the queen and the drones she mates with, that once stable and productive hive could now be very unstable and unproductive. They could be also be dramatically more aggressive. Or it could become so weak that it dies out that following winter. Thinking that a hive is stable becasue it has lasted X amount of time is not the correct way to think about this. Every organism, even super organism such as hives, have their lifespan.

I can just unclip the small box section and remove the pre-cut section of the liner. Then slip in the super and fasten it down with the same spring clips as before. The super it'self will have a quilt section built into it's top as well. Just remember I can do this if the hive ends up inside my shed. There would be no roof.

They will glue that down just like everything else in the hive. Unless you have a material to make the hive out of that propolis and wax cannot adhere to, then there will be no slipping anything in or out. It will require cutting and prying to remove it.

And the fact still remains that solitary bees and bumble bees are by far better pollinators for permaculture farms with a polyculture setup. Honeybees are decent pollinators, but are really only useful if you want the honey. If you aren't looking for honey production, there are zero reasons to choose honeybees over solitary bees or bumble bees.

I tried a tractor with a floor made of 1/2" pvc coated hardware cloth and it never really worked out. The poop had a hard time falling through and I would still have huge piles under the roosts that I needed to either scrape out or squish through. Also, when I added some hens to the flock, I couldn't get them to walk on the mesh. I ended up abandoning the whole idea of a tractor and built a coop and run. The coop floor is dirt with deep bedding. The top 4 feet of the coop, where the roosts are, is enclosed in plywood, but the bottom 18" is hardware cloth to allow for airflow around the bedding. That set up has worked out great.

Kombucha brewing consists of using a culture of both yeast and bacteria. This process first takes the sugar in the brew and converts it to alcohol with yeast (the same why beer is made), and then the bacteria takes that alcohol and converts it to a vinegar. The process isn't perfect and, depending on your culture, you are left with small amounts of both sugar and alcohol afterwards. In my experience, the minute amounts of alcohol is completely overpowered by the vinegar taste and probably the left over unfermented sugars. But it is the exact same type of alcohol, which is to say ethanol.

duane hennon wrote:
are we doing a poor job of presenting Permaculture to the outside world?
was the recent "Permaculture Voices" just preaching to the choir?
will anybody other than a permie ever see or hear any of the talks?

I do think there is a huge disconnect between the permie world and the rest of the world. I have an uncle who is a Ag scientist who constantly talks about how GMOs are going to save the world. I try asking him about they will solve things like topsoil destruction, aquafir depletion, and ag industry pollution. He acknowledges that they are issues, but is absolutely convinced that biochemists and the such will solve those issues before they destroy us. When I try to point out examples of farmers who are solving those problems with permaculture techniques, he dismisses them with a: "Well that works on small farms, but you can't scale that to feed the world."

He, like most of the world, needs to see more than just demonstration farms doing this. The people who make the decisions on how our society will move forward need data that shows that permaculture can produce more calories per acre on a large scale. But that data doesn't exist. And the attitude from permies I've gotten when I've tried to find such data in the past was completely dismissive. The thought process seems to be that eventually those doubters will eventually come to hte same conclusions as we have, and it isn't worth our time to try and demonstrate our points before then. I think this is the completely wrong attitude. I think we need to work on making our points undeniable with hard data that proves that permacutlture can feed the world and do so without destroying our ecosystem.

I did see the lower vent you had, but you really do not want a vent in the hive during winter, which is when you are going to need it to prevent the mold issues. Vents in hives during winter create chimney effects, especially in the your case where the hive is going to be inside and the entrance will be exposed to the outside temperatures. And a chimney effect in a hive is a great way to kill the bees. Good bees will seal it off, but then you end up with the mold issues in winter again until you go to clear out all the rotting dead bees in the bottom of the hive. And once you break their seal, you create the chimney again, and once the bees are balled up for winter, they can't go fix it. If you want a low maintenance hive, skip the vents and stick with a bottom entrance.

Sorry I was not more clear on the entrance size. A 9mm hole, or even a series of holes, is not enough of an entrance. Bees naturally look for a minimum entrance size of 0.75 to 1.5 sq in. (this sort of thing is covered in the book Honeybee Democracy and you should seriously consider reading this before you design a hive.) The long narrow entrances on Langstroth, Warre, and Perone hives all achieve this while preventing mice infiltraction. The large round entrances you see on many top bar hives require hardware cloth screens to be put over them to keep mice out. Once again, if you want a low maintenance hive, I would stick with the proven entrance designs on standard hives. The langstroth entrance and a standard entrance reducer is a really good way to go.

As far as cracked/scratched wood: Bees will just seal any interior cracks up with propolis and any on the outside will just lead to early rot. Think of the hive as a single organism similar to your body. You don't want edge effect inside your body, and the bees don't either. On the otherh and, placing a beehive on the edge of an ecosystem is a great idea, but not inside the hive. Bees are very clean. Per your drawings, any organisms/items you put in the hive will be covered in propolis or wax to prevent any chance of contamination. Really... Just don't do that.

Here is what I'd do: Get a 12 foot 2x16. Cut four 30" pieces and four 5.75" pieces. The 30" pieces come together as your body and give you a interior space of 98 liters (much better than what you had at 59 liters) and the 5.75" pieces will be your quilt box. Cut a 3/8" by 4" slit in the bottom of one of the sides as your entrance. Done.

Both Warre and Perone hives have bottom entrances. I stopped using top entrances on my top bar hives becasue I found that the bees can't clear out the crap that falls to the bottom of the hive effectively, and then come winter, it collects condensation and grows mold. It is fine to have a top entrance as a secondary, but make sure the bottom entrance is the main one. Your desire to eliminate the need for them to walk through the detritus will actually promote unhygienic behavior. Also, bees do not require a landing board as you have drawn. People have added those becasue we think they should have a nice flat area to land on. The bees don't care. Plus it gives mice a better leverage spot for pushing them selves into the entrance.

A side note on preventing mice... Mice can fit through any hole that their skull can fit through. The smallest dimension of a mouse skull is about 10mm. An entrance of 9mm high, as on the Perone hives, keeps mice out of the hive while allowing ample room for the bees. I've modified my top bar and Warre hives to have similar sized entrances after having mouse problems and this fixed it.

Personally, I dislike viewing windows. They create a lot of condensation and that leads to mold. As far as exterior rigid insulation, I tried it once. That hive had a lot of moisture issues and I assumed it was becasue the insulation doesn't let the wood evaporate moisture normally. This is also why I don't paint my hives.

Thicker wood is a good idea, but with 2" walls with a 12"x12" exterior dimension only leaves an 8"x8" cavity. That is not big enough. Plus, you are going to have a hard time finding wood with a finished thickness of 2". In the US atleast, standard lumber is actually 1/2" less than it says it is. So if you were planning on using 2x12's, they are actually 1.5"x11.5". You'd have to get 4x12's which are actually 3.5" thick and very expensive. But if you wanted to take your wall thicknesses down to 1.5" you would probably have more than ample wall thickness for your needs. But on a 12x12 foot print, that still only leaves a 9x9 cavity, which is still to small.

To be honest, when I first saw your drawings, I said to my self, why doesn't he just build a Warre hive? In my opinion, none of the changes you've made over the standard Warre hive, beside the thicker wood, really will provide much benefit.

Under normal circumstances I wouldn't recommend a perone hive to a new keeper either. Given that Perone only started widely publishing his plans in 2010, anyone who has has a hive survive a couple of years at this point in time is doing just fine in my opinion. The problem is that most beekeepers are not willing to try one due to all the regulations mandating removable frames. With only a handful of keeps actually trying the hives out, it is hard to collect enough data points to say one way or another. But I did recommend it in this case, becasue if you are going to try and create a STUN type hive, Langstroth, Top Bar, and Warre hives probably won't cut it. Perone seems to me to be the best bet.

If he were willing to put the effort into it, I would first recommend Marty spend a few years keeping bees in proven hive designs before deciding he needs to invent something new. It is only with that experience that I think one can actually design a new type of hive. We see this all the time over in the Rocket Mass Heater forum where new tinkerers pop up and say they want to design a "new" RHM that does something different. The advice over there is always the same: Buy the book first, build a few proven designs, and then try innovating. That would be my same advice here.

As far as breeding, after I stopped buying package bees, I bought a few nucs of Varroa Sensitive Hygiene Bees from a local breeder. Since then, I've only added hives by either making splits or catching swarms with bait hives. The only active part I take in the breeding process is culling hives that are having issues to make sure that they aren't putting out drones that have less than acceptable genetics.

Heaf makes some interesting points, although I have a hard time placing my self exactly in any of his categories. For me, honeybees are only useful to me if I can take honey from them. I am all in favor of doing so in ways that are least harmful or stressful to them, but without the honey they are of no use to me. As I have said before, if pollination is all I want, other types of pollinators are better. I'd be happy to have them around if they want to fill a cavity in a tree, but I see no point in building them hives unless I plan on getting honey out of it.

David, I practice treatment-free, non-manipulation beekeeping becasue I also feel the way you do. I never advocated eliminating feral bees. But I also think that "wanting them to invade more" is not the right way either. Today's honeybee has already been manipulated just as tomatoes, apples, chickens or goats have been manipulated. It is not in anyway anti-permaculture to choose genetic lines of plants and animals that better work in our systems. I assume you agree unless you think we should go back to eating only the orginal wild nightshade plant or breeding only Wild Jungle Fowl. And that is all I do. I select hives that best deal with the parasites and diseases. I have also spent spend the last 5 years catching wild swarms (away from known beekeepers to avoid getting commercially bred bees) and in my experience, the feral haves are not any better at dealing with parasites and diseases. I believe that in working with the bees to help choose the best hives that can deal with parasites and diseases on their own is the fastest way to end industrialized bee keeping.

And I want to help Marty avoid participation in that system too. And to that point:

Marty, if you want to build a hive that avoids maintenance and chemicals, you would be hard pressed to make a better hive than the Perone Hive. Perone spend years researching bees and various hives and using his hives as a starting point would be a great thing I think. I also highly suggest reading Honeybee Democracy and At The Hive Entrance to better understand bees and their needs.

I think bees are a great way to encourage children. Attached is a picture of my daughter standing in front of a few of my Warre hives!

As far as pollination of your fruits, garden, and wildflowers. As I said before, honey bees are not your best option here. Of course, they don't hurt, but it is unlikely that your efforts will result in thousand bees visiting my yard every day. Honeybees will forage up to three miles away, and they are much more inclined to skip your yard and fly a few houses down to the neighbor that has a huge yard full of dandelions or clover. They like to find large swaths of the same plant and forage on those en mass. During their winter and early spring flights they will absolutely stick to local plants and such in your yard, but by the time your garden and fruit trees are in full swing, they will have found other sources of forage. For backyard gardeners, mason bees and bumble bees are they way to go becasue they have foraging rangers in the range of hundreds of yards rather than miles.

As far as bees as a deterrent, you might guess what my take on that is based on the same picture of my daughter. Bees, when they leave the hive, immediately fly up to well above head height and take off. I've had people in my yard not even realize that there were beehives right there until I pointed it out to them. Bees are not a good deterrent system!

But regardless, keep on doing what you want. All I am doing is trying to best understand your needs and try to provide the best advice I can to help you get what you want. I am still confused about your desire to "want them to invade more" becasue I don't see how that helps us or the bees, but that is my experience. I am sure you will form your own opinion once you have your experiences with bees. Have fun!

Sorry if I came across as less than excited about your enthusiasm. Re-reading what I wrote it sounded it much more negative than I intended.

When you say, "every bit helps", who or what are you trying to help? The honey bee is not in danger of going extinct. There are escaped "wild" honey bees all over north america that are dong fine. They are not in danger and they don't need your help. You are right in saying that nature is the best at selecting what is best for her. What makes you think she need help here? When people are saying that honeybees are in danger, they are generally referring to commercially kept bees. You say nothing will change your mind about this, but, based on what I've read in your posts, I am not sure you understand the actual problem. We don't actually need more honeybees. For backyard gardeners and permaculture farms, honeybees are not even the best pollinator. I jst want to understand what you think the problem is so that I, and others can maybe give you the best advice to achieve your goals.

If you are not planning on harvesting the honey, how does the hive increase your resiliency? Mason bees, bubble bees, and other native pollinators are actually much better pollinators for most small to medium gardens/farms. My honeybees pretty much completely ignore my garden. If you want to make sure you achieve good pollination, it is the Mason and bubble bees that will do that for you. Honeybees really don't add much to that. They are good at making honey.

I don't get the reasoning behind "wanting them to invade more". If it were the case that they were better at performing some function than the native bees are, then I could understand. The only thing that they are better at are producing honey, and you have stated that you are not all that interested in honey. So what is you reason to want more honeybees for?

I am glad you are not offended, but I am trying to understand what your end goals are in creating the STUN hive. I really don't think it is a waste of time to review these sorts of questions. I just want to make sure we are all on the same page here and I am just trying to highlight some things I think that may have been assumed that might be incorrect.

So, as a beekeeper I get tons of people asking me about keeping bees "to help the bees, not for the honey"... Every time, I tell them not to do this. Here is why:

The crisis we face with the honeybee die-offs is that our industrial agriculture system is dependent on them for production. With commercial beekeepers losing so many hives per year, our food system becomes endangered unless we can find a way to stop the die offs. But there is absolutely no reason why getting one more urban or suburban beekeeper, or one hundred more, or one thousand more, will solve this problem. In fact, it can make it worse in may ways that others here have already alluded too. Unless you are actively working to select genetic populations that are better than the genetics that are already out there and getting those bee lines to the commercial beekeepers, you are not "helping". We here at permies take the different approach and say that we don't necessarily need to save the honeybees (although we can work them in our systems in sustainable ways), which are not naturally part of our systems in North America, but we should instead move away from the industrial agriculture system that is dependent on they honeybee.

But putting out a "STUN" type hives with the explicit hope of having it swarm only does damage. Not only will you probably have marginal-at-best genetics that will not help those of us who are trying to breed better bees, but your swarms will be competing for forage with native pollinators that are already at risk. And the the real disaster for our ecosystem would be to loose those native pollinators.

If you really want to help, plant more forage for pollinators. Early blooming and late blooming nectar plants are the best best. MORE SEED BOMBS PLEASE!!! Again, just having more honey bee hives will not have the effect of "saving the honeybee" nor will it help our industrial agriculture system.

If I were you, I wouldn't compost it. That stuff is far more valuable as mulch than anything else.

I think it is possible to stop composting once you reach a certain level of permie-ness, but that for most people, in most situations, composting is a realistic solution. In my adult life, I started composting when I lived in an apartment where there was no yard waste bin. I built myself a worm bin and started putting food scraps and house plant trimmings in there. It worked, but it had problems, and my wife hated it. But I kept it around for years becasue I had no better option while I was renting. When I finally bought a house, I was able to start a real bin, but raccoons, opossums, and rodents forced me to keep using the worm bin for my food scraps. I tried burying the stuff too, a la Ruth Stout, but unless I was putting it at least a 6 inch into the soil, beneath the mulch, the critters would still find it and dig it up. And finding a new stop to digging that decent size of a hole every day was as much work as securing a compost bin and turning it constantly. And I am lazy too.

I eventually got chickens and thought "Finally! No more dealing with this compost mess!", but it seems my chickens are not the voracious scrap-eaters that everyone else's are. They would pick through what they wanted and leave what they did not. The left overs attracted critters. Plus, I was left with the issue of either having the left overs scattered across my yard where it was unsightly, or across the floor of the chicken run, but then the various critters seemed to double up on their efforts to dig their way into my coop, which was not acceptable.

Maybe if I had pigs, I could finally achieve this ideal of "No composting" but so far, it had not worked. I have reverted to composting my food scraps in this dual chambered compost tumbler. Why it works for me: It keeps the critters out. It takes 10 seconds to turn it and I don't mind doing it even if it is raining (I live in Seattle so it is often raining). There is no digging involved. And the best thing of all is that my wife doesn't hate it. The chickens love scratching through the finished product once it comes out and hunting all the bugs that have taken up residence.

I know it is another piece of plastic and I am not happy about that. But my alternative, at this point in the permie path, is to pay to have my food scraps hauled off to a commercial facility, and I am not willing to do that. I think the idea of "no composting" is a good ideal to reach for, but it is not realistic for everyone. I also think scaring people off by telling them that they send 95% of the carbon and nitrogen up into the atmosphere is not helpful or useful. I do not think made up numbers are something that should be promoted here. I have seen badly managed compost piles (some of which were my own piles) lose maybe 25% to 40% of their mass, but never more than half. If the goal is to come up with realistic solutions, then we should also take care to state realistic problems.

Thanks Livia, Do you know if any of those CSA are specifically doing permaculture? My problem is not finding farms or CSA's, but finding out out which ones are "beyond organic". I am hoping for people who have actually visited farms or contacted them to see which ones are more than just conventional organic farms. But thanks for the link.

Deb Stephens wrote:OR those of using aluminum -- like Alzheimers.

Aluminum is actually quite safe. Any bare aluminum quickly forms an oxidized coating that is non-reactive to anything in your food. The only way to remove this is using metal scrubbers while cleaning. And even then, the oxidation re-forms within a short time after the bare metal gets exposed.

The fear over aluminum dates back to the 60's and 70's when they were trying to figure out what caused some brain diseases. Aluminum does turn up in higher amounts than normal in some autopsy studies of Alzheimer's patients, but not in all. There have been no conclusive studies that show where this aluminum comes from either, so trying to eliminate some sources is not necessarily a worthwhile effort. All we have is correlation data, which proves nothing. But we do know that trace amounts of aluminum are in many of our foods, and that is a far more likely source if it is a problem. The Alzheimer's Association even puts on it's page now that Aluminum is not a cause.

If it were me, I'd get the aluminum one, and just make sure not to use anything like steel wool to clean it with so you never have to worry about removing the oxidation layer. Jut make sure that the aluminum one doesn't have a plastic coating, which is the case with some aluminum water bottles. Those usually do have things like BPA in them.

John Saltveit wrote:Tom,
Karen Tillou's place does sell food. I have bought food from them. You can buy food from them at the People's Market at 20th near Clinton.
John S
PDX OR

Does she have a website or some other listing of what she sells? The only thing I can find on her is www.homeorchardsociety.org which only seems to offer nursury products. Seeing as I am in Seattle, I probably won't be buying from them, but if there are others in the Portland area, it would be nice to give them some way to get in contact with her. The first few pages of google results are not turning anything up.

Thank you Jocelyn for that list! I will check some of those out!

John, Both Karen Tillou's and the Bullock Bros run nurseries, not farms. My hope is to find places I can buy food from, not food plants.

My problem with CSAs is that many of them get their food from multiple farms (or even traditional produce suppliers) and it is hard to research which ones are good and which ones are not so good. Many of the organic farms around me freely use "organic" pesticides and fungicides, which is a big no no on my list. I can, and have, used search engines to find local farms that advertise themselves as organic or sustainable, but most are only as organic as the law requires them to be to maintain their certification. I am looking for farms that are "beyond organic" and I have not found any that advertise them selves that way which is why I wanted to reach out the the community and ask if anyone knew of hidden gems out there...

It hit me today that I have not been doing all I can to support local permaculture farms. I still buy far too much of my food from the supermarket and I'd like to change that. I had always intended to spend some weekends during the spring and summers seasons to go around and visit farms and find ones I really want to do business with, but another year has gone by and I haven't done this. But I figure this would be a great topic to crowd-source, since I suspect there are others around here that have already done some of this investigative work.

What are some farms in the Pacific Northwest that you have visited and think are worth supporting? If you have any info on how they run their farm, whether it be no-till, bio-dynamic, veganic, that would all be great to know. Are they a Restoration Ag style farm? Do they use Keyline Design? What else are they doing on their farm that makes them special? Let us know the farms you support and why we should support them too!

Justin, I've heard a few people claim that sprouted seeds contain more protein, but my understanding was that the amount of protein is not actually increased, but just that the starches are consumed by the growing sprout, so the protein to starch ratio left in the seed is higher. This thinking seems to be confirmed by several other sources on sprouting seeds and also including my homebrewing experience, where grains are malted (sprouted before being roasted), to convert the starches to sugars, not proteins.

Do you (or anyone else for that matter) have any info on the starches actually being converted to protein, so that the amount of protein in the seed actually increases?

Marie,

You can do that kind of search pretty easily. if you go to Google and type in "site:permies.com climbing rose for north wall" you will only get results from permies.com.

Katrin, The store that hosted that video has a great selection of wood carving knives. I have one of their stores just a few miles from my house and it is really fun to just walk in there and look at all the amazing tools they have. But you can also order from them online! http://www.woodcraft.com/category/HT115-03/carving-knives.aspx?pagesize=100

Your outdoor wood boiler is probably your best option at this point. Rocket stoves were not intended to do this type of work, but there are people who have proposed ideas and are working on better solutions, but I have not seen anything ready for prime time yet. If you've got the time to experiment, then I'd say go for it because we need more people working on this. If you really want to use woodchips, you might consider starting with the freely available FEMA Wood Gasifier Plans and seeing how you can use the resulting gas to heat water in a mostly off the shelf water heater. It would take some effort to design an automated feed and starting mechanism for the gasifier, but many of the commercial gasifier systems have this, but I don't think there are any open sourced versions out there.

4sqft per bird in the coop, 10sqft per bird in the run is the minimum. The smaller your run, the more often you will need to rotate them.

The reason why I never bothered with trying to produce biogas from my composting toilet is due to the fact that it takes 1000 lbs of human waste produces about 0.6 cubic meters of biogas (enough cooking fuel for about 1 to 2 persons). A family of four makes ~4lbs of waste per day, it would take a better part of a year to collect enough to put into a digester. It just is not worth the effort.

So here is my suggestions based on everything I've seen from people here:

White level:

* Have at least two hives of Bees
* Organic treatments only, limited sugar feeding only at installation, organic wax foundation or foundation-less, organic untreated and unpainted wood hives
* Minimal hive manipulations and no queen manipulation or Royal Jelly production or drone culling
* At least one year of weekly hive entrance observation notes
* Researches bee centered beekeeping (Suggestions:At The Hive Entrance, Beekeeping For All, Natural Beekeeping with the Warre Hive by David Heaf, The Barefoot Beekeeper by P. J. Chandler, Honeybee Democracy by Thomas D. Seeley, Watch documentary Queen of the Sun, Take Sacred Apiculture (or other bee class) from Jacqueline Freeman at Friendly Haven Rise Farm)

Green level

* Treatment free, no sugar feeding, and no foundation outside of original nucs
* No smoke during hive examinations
* Make two splits from your existing hives.
* Capture at least one swarm in a bait hive.
* Produce enough honey and wax to meet your own annual needs
* Tries at least two types of hives
* Researches bee centered hives
* Put up a Mason Bee nesting box or other habitat for native pollinators

Brown level

* Tries at least 3 different types of hives
* No foundation in any hives
* Locally bred or wild survivor bees only
* Propagation by swarms only; catch at least three swarms in a season
* Produce enough honey and wax to meet the annual needs of two households
* Be able to describe all the different major nectar flows in your area and know the characteristics of each type of honey.
* Put up at least one Mason Bee nesting box for each honey bee hive you have.

Black level

* Have at least one hive that has survived 5 seasons without any treatments or queen manipulations.
* Produce enough honey and wax to meet the annual needs of five households.
* Have at least one beekeeping apprentice
* Use Bee Lining to locate a wild bee hive and use bait hives to capture at least one swarm from it.
* Provide and maintain natural spaces for native pollinators.

Langstroth hives don't have to be any heavier than other hives. If you only use medium or shallow boxes, rather than the deeps, then they aren't any heavier than a Warre box. And you can run a langstroth hive with or without foundation the same way as any other hive. The fact the people commonly don't know these things is one good reason to make people use each type of hive. They all have their pros and cons, and exposure to each is the only way one would know what will work in any given situation.

We all made the decision to become beekeepers before we had bees, so the journey does start there. I think what the White Belt level should represent is what we all think the right starting point should be. For me, that is knowing how to observe bees without prying into their hive and how to care for bees without treatments. If people have those tools before they get bees, they will be far better off. I think the White Belt level should end with them getting bees and observing them through a full year. Since you don't obtain a yield from a hive until the second season anyway, this shouldn't be hard.

We should also thing of calling this PEP1: Honey Beekeeping, since we are not covering anything about the other types of bees here (unless we want to make that part of the levels also).

David Livingston wrote:I hear what you are saying Tom but I worry about being prescriptive as there are lots of good stuff out there. Two of the books you suggest - honey bee democracy and "at the hive entrance" are great but are more descriptive of bee behavior rather than how to keep bees.

The reason I suggested those two books is exactly because I feel that modern beekeeping has become too much about "keeping bees" and not enough about "observing bees". The first permaculture principle is to observe and interact and I think that is what we should be teaching new permie beekeepers to do. To many books jump right in to hive manipulations and doing so, before you have really observed the bees, is not good for the bees.

Should we differentiate between such books and those that talk about a type of hive such as Abbé Warrés' , "Apiculture pour tous", David Heafs " Natural Beekeeping with the Warré Hive" ( frankly a much better read ) or the Bare Foot Beekeeper by Phil Chandler ( Top bar Hives ). The latter two are about encouraging people not only to keep bees but in such a way to put the bee at the" centre" of bee keeping not honey production . What should be included in reading and what does not matter will depend on where you live what sort of hives you will have and who you have found to mentor you - if anyone . For instance I am not aware of anyone writing a Book about Oscar Perones hives although something may be available in Spanish

Now that you mention it, I think it would be good to have the requirement that they try Langstroth, Warre, Top Bar, and Perones hives at least once each. I am not so much advocating for assigning reading material that will teach them how to keep bees, but give them the tools so they can learn from bees on how to best integrate them into our systems.

Who would be foolish enough to keep bees without reading up on the subject first ? ............. ok .ok I accept there are fools out there but they are quite obvious if you know what I mean .

What did you think of my other suggestions ?

I spend a lot of time out at the beekeeping forum at reddit.com, and far too often I see threads of people saying something like "I saw a youtube video on catching swarms and I caught this swarm of bees... now what do I do?" There are way to many people who are getting the advice of:

1)buy a begginners kit
2)order a package from California/Florida
3)feed sugar/medicate
4)YOU ARE A BEEKEEPER!!!

I would like to see this PEP1 be an alternative to that. And in as much, I did like your suggestions. I think the only thing to add would be the inclusion of more permie skillset development at the White Belt level so that they are set up to succeed at the higher levels. I know from experience how frustrating it is to go from treating bees to being treatment free.

I do like the idea of requiring certain reading for the White Level. In addition to Beekeeping For All, I think both Honeybee Democracy and At the Hive Entrance were both integral for me moving to treatment free beekeeping. Also, having them identify their major local nectar flows would be a good exercise. And for Brown or Black Belt level, learning Bee Lining as a way to find wild hives so you can place out swarm traps is an important skill also.

Have you had your soil tested for nutrient deficiencies out or are you just assuming? Cover crops are great for getting more carbon into soils that have been over tilled and the carbon has been depleted. Tap roots are great for bringing nutrients up from deep soils. Fungal and bacterial systems are good for breaking down compacted surface soils into bio available nutrients. You need the latter, and the best way to do that is mulching. Perennial cover crops will out compete your annuals, and you will end up having to either hand weed them out, or till the soil.

So you really want a perennial cover crop? That would be a crop that doesn't ever die off. How would you plan on planting your annual crops in the midst of the perennial cover?

Going down the lots of mulch route is better. If you need more organic material in your soil, you can do a single annual cover crop, and when that is done, pile on 3 to 6 inches of mulch on top. Use the chop and drop method, keep adding mulch, and you should not need any more cover crops ever.

I would look for existing farms, where the owners want to convert to permaculture. Think "Extreme Makeover Home Permaculture Edition". Use the money for earthworks, water works, food forests, etc. How quickly can you take a traditional farm can convert it to a Polyface Farm like system? Show people how to set up a silvopasture with a blue sky budget, and then end the show with, how it could be done more frugally. Bonus points if by the end of the process, it can be demonstrated that the farm now produces more food with less energy inputs, and makes the farmer more money.