You are brave enough to stand all winter without becoming a tourist! That is fine to be focussed on one project....
Living myself in an island with mild winters (I can grow bananas) and in a "town" where it can also snow up there.... in the end we are also brave to live here in winter, because we - at least I - do not heat (I by far prefer carbon in the soil...)!
And believe me, cold is about adaptation, and you loose some adaptation when you live in an ever-spring!
Maybe I missed it. Has cheesemaking been addressed? I think that's at least two separate subheadings: soft cheeses and hard cheeses, each with different levels of difficulty based on level of bacterial activity and aging required.
Yeah, it's looking like beekeeping will get combined with Animal Care. I'm really interested in seeing how that badge pans out, because it covers SO MUCH. Will people need to learn all the different animals, or basic care and then specialize in a type of animal in the higher levels or what?
It's kind of like the Textile Badge---there's just SO MUCH included in there (textiles has upholstery, mattress and tent making, basketry, knitting, crochet, leather-working, felting, weaving, growing and processing and spinning fibre, and sewing and quilting )
What happened to the magazine? I loved every issue and looked forward to getting each one. I gotta say, when I received the UK mother magazine instead, I felt disappointed. Not that it isn't a fabulous publication; I read it at the library and enjoy it very much, I just felt the loss of the North American version. Whatever the reason(s), I just wanted to thank you for the great issues and let you know that I really enjoyed it while it lasted.
I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that seedballs are most often made in the winter or spring for spring dispersal. I would advise exposing your seeds needing stratification to cold temps prior to incorporating them into the seedballs.
I think you're right - seedballs distributed in the fall or early winter (in a moist cool climate) will have so much rain hit them that the clay will spread out too much to help. The compost or manure/clay mixture will help and I'm sure much depends on local conditions.
love that - and you could do a green roof on it too in fact, I feel another project coming on.....
I have a long narrow brush pile on my allotment, mostly willow stems, tucked behind the row of willows that I have to cut down every other year.
I also have several smallish stacks of bricks that are always teeming with bugs if i have to move them The plan is that I won't need to once I've finished organising the plot!
Jesse, that is very rad idea!
I too am a fellow bmx trail builder, and have had simailr thoughts. For the past ten years I have been practicing permaculter without even knowing it. Good luck with your project! If your ever in the north east, holler at me.
A pov of our trails for others that might want to see what a world class set of bmx trails looks like.
Crispy Sesame beef (keto/low carb friendly recipe here). With our own beef and locally foraged oyster mushrooms.
I've been slowly cutting up an 80 foot black birch that fell on the path to my apiary. DH mentioned he found oysters on that tree last year and lo and behold they were back! Half on the part that fell and half on the remaining stump. They were a little dried out which is surprising considering how much rain we've had. They were maybe better a little dry though. They absorbed lots of butter and were a little crisp.
Hi, Pamela Rempel and Laurie Branson, why don't you write a review of the book for us on permies.com. It would be nice if you could share your impression on the book with us.
Why don't you use the acorns scale for reviews, starting your revies like this: I give this book .. out of 10 acorns. where we use a scale from 0 to 10 to give our impressions on the book.
to learn more on the acorns scale follow this link:
acorns scale for books
[I bought a small kerosene stove. It is TINY....barely 8 inches tall. It will run for about 8 hours on 1 pint of kerosene. I put my dutch oven over it and let beans or a roast cook in the summer so I don't heat up the house. Do a lot of my summer cooking on it actually.
Rhys Firth wrote:other than three feedlots in the entire country, which export all their product (to where? guess, three letters, starts with U ends with A).
If you see a cut of New Zealand beef in your local store, that is grass fed.
Unless it came from one of the aforementioned three feedlots
Hey Guys, it's been a long time in the making, but I finally finished
some of the cooking videos Chef Seth and I made at the RMH
Innovators Event in September.
You can watch the first 5 videos here, with more to come:
+1 on leaving it. It will be shaded out by succession. Iceplant is a good pioneer for hot, dry, relatively frost-free sites. Besides reducing evaporation, the high water content can help re-radiate stored heat on cold nights better than a dry mulch (water stores heat more efficiently than rock.)
This is awesome and I can't wait to hear more about lunches and suppers!
Oh, and FIANCEE !! Woo hoo! Mazeltov!
Kitchen commander will be a wonderful opportunity for the right person. It's just that there's not a whole hell of a lot of people in Montana, and then those of us that don't live in Montana have some misconceptions about what it's like there.
You'd be a short trip away from Missoula, folks! Look into it, it's a lovely city. Also, don't freak out about the winter. If you've been living east of the Rockies, you've already experienced more winter than they did at Wheaton Laboratories this year. Yes it snows, no, it's not like Chicago, or even Boston this year.
1) I'd third(or whatever) this: going by the description, a Tim is worth way more than 3k a month. Double or triple that sounds more like it. Definitely impacts scaling.
2) There are things where 35 relatively unskilled folks and 1 good manager can absolutely do more than, say, 2 Tims. Harvest, clearing areas... Things where they can all work on the same task in the same area. The biggest problems I see with this are that:
a) Getting the yield out of those unskilled folks requires the full attention of said manager
b) There isn't always work like this available, so the 35 unskilled are far less useful much of the time
It seems to me like the potato-village could be used to make sure that when you have something that would benefit from thrown bodies at it... you have bodies on hand, ready to be thrown.
The other way around would be like what Danny is saying about boot-camps; do this as a 'surge' sort of thing, where you run that sort of bootcamp X times per summer, and use them to bang out the things that benefit from lots of bodies in those weeks, while minimizing the unskilled-person-days outside those surges. Getting income from people doing labour for you should really take the sting out of inefficiencies...
*If* you can count on those bodies showing up for your surges, the latter is probably more economical?
3) What about implementing some sort of pre-qualifying process? For some things, the bar seems to be, 'listened to 90% of the podcasts'; something quicker and more basic could be applied to even the entry level folks, IE:
Applicants must tick here to confirm that they have:
-Watched this tool-care video
-Watched this video providing an overview of work expectations, living conditions, etc
-Successfully done 20 pushups and 20 situps within 2 minutes
-The ability to distinguish a chicken from a labradoodle
This could be adjusted to raise/lower the bar, depending on how applicant volume is meshing with space/infrastructure/other capacity considerations. Requires someone to find/make the content, but after that basically zero time... Wouldn't expect it to be as effective as the more hands-on tool-preserving options, but maybe worthwhile anyhow.
Seth Peterson wrote:
Specifically I'd like to know...
how you collected information?
How you got the opportunity to write a book?
How you published?
What were your biggest lessons?
How long did it take you?
What recommendations do you have for newbie authors?
Did you have to pay out of pocket?
Had you always wanted to write a book? We're you born into it, achieve it, or have it thrust upon you?
Info on hardcopy publishing vs. Digital.
Hi Seth, happy to share my thoughts on these great questions-
-The information came out of my experience, which came out of a combination of vast amounts of research coupled with hands-on experimentation over the years.
-The opportunity came about because I have down time in the winter, so I had the free time to invest in this massive project.
-I self published through CreateSpace, an Amazon affiliate. The reason for this is the share of profits that I would receive. Early on, I contacted Acres USA, the largest publisher of organic agricultural books. They were very interested and offered me a publishing contract. They were great folks, for sure. But they just couldn't offer me enough of the royalties from sales to make writing a viable endeavor for me. Self publishing is a lot more work, but I can actually earn a high enough percentage of the retail price to make this project viable.
-Biggest lesson is that writing is the easy part, editing is the real work. Have as precise an outline as possible when you start, as this will greatly simplify the editing. Also, it is the page formatting, especially with pictures, that becomes a professional's nightmare. Text alone is simple. Adding a ton of images or figures means you will likely need paid professional help. Keep it simple!
-It took me just over a year from the inspiration to publishing. Though I couldn't work on the book for a good six months during that time during the farming season.
-For newbie authors my advice is write about what you know and are passionate about. Find other books that you like the format of, and seek to emulate their style. Know what you are trying to create before you get started.
-There are no out of pocket expenses self-publishing through CreateSpace. It was just my time (hundreds and hundreds of unpaid hours) that I had to 'pay' up front.
-I have know that I wanted to write since I was a teenager. I love to write. I never imagined that my first book would be about dairy farming, but that's life!
-You don't really have to choose between electronic or print with CreateSpace. My book is available through kindle or as a paperback. Publishing has gotten a lot easier over the past few years. Now it is a sales game, rather than a publishing game. Gotta sell those books!
Good luck Seth! Write us a book! I know you have the knowledge and the inspiration!
Hey folks i would love some feedback from anyone who has been to a Holzer event in the Past. What could have been done to enrich your personal experience?
For this course I am hoping to have lots of material for different potential projects. Log hive building, Mushroom inoculation, Tree planting, Seed mix creation, Terrace and retention space construction. spring casing. Then with some direction Students will be unleashed on a project of their choice.
While at the kramterhoff two years ago, Sepp's son, showe
d us a raised bed hugel culture combo system. So instead of 6 inch or one foot boards for a raised bed, these were four feet high, wooden, raised beds. He then filled them with logs and soil to make hugelkultures. Ther were som many advantages: you didn't have to bend over to pick or weed, no dogs could jump on the beds and dig them up, and it's a hugelkultur!
Or, instead of American raised beds, do hugelkultur. The height and incline factor stops all manner of animals and people from walking on them, etc.
Andrew,
I live in the east bay, and have taken that class as well as others, multiple times. Great stuff. of course, I took the class back when Ken Litchfield was giving it. So I am curious about the new teacher and new syllabus.
I also know lots of beekeepers, so I may be able to help put you into contact. The question is what do you mean by natural beekeeper, since definitions vary widely.
Seth, thank you so much for this link, I've been wanting to read this book for years, but the steep price prevented me from pursuing it. I even tried to borrow the book through an interlibrary loan once, but the other library refused to loan it out because the book was so rare and valuable! I can tell David Arora, author of Mushrooms Demystified, has a copy of Mushrooms, Russia and History!
paul wheaton wrote:Things have evolved quickly. Right now I am looking at "white badge" level would be the sort of thing that a smart, hard working person at a really tough school would have completed in the first year.
"Green" would represent completing the second year and "brown" would represent completing the third year.
To get "PEP1" would mean having completed the "brown" level in about 18 things, the "green" level in a dozen things and the "white" level in a dozen things. Over the next few months I hope to make a list of exactly what those things are.
Part of what I'm thinking is that if I certify somebody as PEP1 and then they get hired by "Bob" and Bob tells me "this person sucks!" then I want to have powerful confidence that the problem is Bob and not the PEP1 person.
Paul - the way the above reads could be interpreted as around 60 years of full time study! (18 brown levels at 3 years each). I know that is not your intention, but if you are hoping for a full time conscientious person to reach PEP1 in three years the individual levels of brown need to be balanced accordingly. Some of the levels seem way over to top ambitious in terms of time, especially if they are only a fragment of what an individual needs to accomplish in that year.
Perhaps a way of balancing it might be to ask "How many days labour is this?" The labour might end up spread out over a year (in the case of gardening where you obviously need to look at growing seasons) or might all come at once (eg earthworks where you hire a digger for a week and lay out 500m of swales on contour).
Lets say that a white belt needs one week of "full time" study - it would then be feasible for many people to get white belt across PEP1 in a single year, perhaps while also maintaining their day jobs.
Then Green belt might be 2 weeks and brown 3 weeks
This balances out to roughly 3 years of "PEP1 Study Time"
You can then look at proposals for what should be in each PEP element and work out where the time sinks are. For example - I posted in a thread about earthworks a little while ago where one of the proposals was "gleying a small pond with pigs" for the white belt level with a bunch of other stuff. Now gleying takes months during which time the pigs need feeding/tending etc... that time isn't furthering the learning of earthworks but if you spend 20 minutes a day on pig care to get your earthworks whitebelt then the time allowance is rapidly swallowed up. Similarly if hugelculture is in earthworks... do we then need a year long growing aspect to it, with all the plant propagation care and harvesting associated?
Now it may well be that different elements have different time demands based on the nature of the material and the time required to become proficient - but a week of full time application on any one element should get most people up to a reasonable minimum standard if the material is well chosen (and not a massive unnecessary time sink).
It seems to me that the heater is only half the story, for full permaculture design we should also cook off of the RMH as well, to save resources and use it for multiple functions. This then would tie into the food prep pep1.
White belt: use a rocket stove/heater to cook something and to dry preserve something.
Green belt: learn to cook various ways (steaming, stewing, etc.) and preserve a new way (smoking, canning), cook for one season on an RMH (regularly not exclusively) for at least one person
Brown belt: cook regularly on a rocket mass stove/heater for one year, for at least our people.
)
in fact, I feel another project coming on.....
