Central Oklahoma Permies

I was just wondering if there are any Permies on here in the central OK area. We are near Shawnee on 6 acres. We have expanded the garden this year by putting in Hugel Kultur beds and we are using the same concept in our raised beds. I have started thinking about putting in a food forest but we have a lot of cedars that would need to be removed. It will get there eventually but I wish we could do things faster!

i live in midwest city and looking forward to moving out east next year

I have 30 acres in Stillwater and hope to start a small scale farm this coming year. This has been a dream of mine for years and it is finally coming to fruition. I have been really impressed with Allan Savory's Holistic Management and I am now getting turned onto permaculture design as I try to set up a production system on my land. Currently I am reading Dave Jacke's Edible Forest Gardens. My wife and I are also building a small cob cottage now as an experiment and we hope to eventually build a larger home in the next few years. I would love to share ideas with anyone here in Oklahoma and see if we can't come up with better ways to produce food.

I'm currently in southern IL. But I'll be moving to just northwest of Cyril, OK. I'd like to collaborate with others. Are there any publications you can key me into which are targeted directly at our region?

Aaron,

Welcome to Oklahoma. What brings you south?

There are many publications dealing with agriculture here in Oklahoma but they are all directed toward big ag. I am still new to this field so there is surely more out there that I am not aware of. Check out thislandpress.com. They also do a radio show on Sundays on KOSU, our local NPR radio station out of Stillwater. I am not sure if you will be able to pick up KOSU in Cyril. Other than that I would look into Transition OKC and the Oklahoma Food COOP. I hope that helps get you started. Look me up when you get to Oklahoma.

Hello Craig, thanks for the suggestions.
After completing the Southern IL Food Network's Farm Beginnings course, my lady and I began to look for land here in earnest. At which point, I was bribed by my family with 10 FREE!!! acres. With the option of buying another contiguous 10 acres each year, to the limit of 160 acres. So as soon as I graduate (and sell my trailer) we're packing up the family and headed south.

i have been going to the framers market and i find that it is a great way to start networking i have not bought land yet but im looking into how much land i need i was even invited out to see a small farm only 13 acrers. i have got lot of information first hand at the farmers market i found out where to get none gmo seeds and every one was really nice. the one we went to was the one at osu so much information and all you have to do is ask. well i liked it alot but it is what im into hope this helps good luck to all

well i went to berry creek farm today it was really neat the farmer larry is a nice guy awancered alot of questions i had. he grow peach trees and vegies he also grows his own chicken feed had a few dogs

Hi! Newbie transplant from northern missouri. what days and where are those farmers markets? We live near Stroud. I am chomping at the bit to get to growing but I have a lot to learn about the area. So far the desert king watermelons are doing good.

Craig Nabors wrote:I have 30 acres in Stillwater and hope to start a small scale farm this coming year. This has been a dream of mine for years and it is finally coming to fruition. I have been really impressed with Allan Savory's Holistic Management and I am now getting turned onto permaculture design as I try to set up a production system on my land. Currently I am reading Dave Jacke's Edible Forest Gardens. My wife and I are also building a small cob cottage now as an experiment and we hope to eventually build a larger home in the next few years. I would love to share ideas with anyone here in Oklahoma and see if we can't come up with better ways to produce food.

Hey Craig, I work on an off grid organic farm about an hour north of Stillwater. I'm starting to implement permaculture techniques this year (hugelkulture, wood chips, solar drip irrigation). My gal and I are also familiar with cob. I would like to know all kinds of info about what you grow, how you water, what varieties do well in our area, etc. There is so much to learn from experience and I've only been at it a few years. We have done a few markets but not Stillwater's because it's quite bureaucratic. Went to school and played in bands there though. Let me know how the summer is going for you thus far.

Newbie to the forum here but live on 40 acres here in southern Oklahoma about 24 miles north of the river. Learning and getting lots of ideas here. Great forum.

Hi, everybody. I'm an OK newcomer (about ten years back) living on 40 acres of my wife's family's land in Seminole county. I'm from a much colder, somewhat wetter climate (sub-arctic boreal forest) so until recently I just grew a few tomatoes and herbs in daily-watered pots and stayed the heck away from the woods, which struck me as a hot arid hellish thicket of thorns (Osage Orange and Honey Locust, greenbrier, overgrown blackberry), weeds, and pain. Nobody has loved this land since before World War II, and except for some leased cattle grazing on the best bits that ended in 2004 or so, it's been left alone to go wild everywhere the oil lessees haven't made gravel access roads or blasted it with spilled saltwater.

However in recent years I've improved my diet (eating more vegetables), lost a lot of weight, and gotten more interested in what grows on this land. I've started to carve walkable paths through the jungle bits, and am paying a lot more attention to to wild edibles. This fall after a chance encounter with a deliciously-bearing Persimmon tree, I got serious about surveying the property for useful trees. I found *dozens* more persimmon trees, plus a huge grove of ancient native pecan trees that are now so overgrown you can't get inside the drip lines without a machete and a chainsaw. I also discovered unexpected delicacies like passion-fruit, after literally stepping on them and wondering what the popping noise was.

Without ever having heard of permaculture, I kept mulling the notion that this land (for all its flaws, which are many -- barren oil production areas, aridity, poor thin soil, a legacy of erosion from poorly-managed grazing leases, thorns on *everything*, ticks, poisonous critters) is green and covered with vegetation. Surely there must be some way for a lazy man (I'm not carrying water buckets) to get useful things to grow beyond the range of his garden hose? My mother was a 1970s back-to-the-lander with a Mother Earth News magazine in one hand and a Rodale Press magazine ("Organic Gardening" or "Prevention") in the other, so I was raised with organic gardening. But it's a lot of work! I got to thinking: can't I just tweak what's already growing, find native species of tasty things that can compete with the weeds and thorns and survive on the limited rain and surface water? I started Googling about that, and it didn't take me long to start discovering permaculture notions.

That was a couple of months ago. I'm still reading and learning, and going out every day to play on the land. Mostly I've been clearing around my most promising pecan tree -- an enormous job with hand tools (all I have). But I'm gearing up to plant a few fruit trees this spring and to start all kinds of drought-tolerant annuals from seed, sneaking them into various little holes in the existing vegetation that I'll create and seeing what, if anything, is capable of thriving. I'm also seeding mulch plants under my pecan tree (clover for the nitrogen, some root veggies to bring up nutrients) and I've got my eye on a spot for a thicket of sand plums if I can get some transplants to take in that location. Baby steps, baby steps, too much to learn and too many years of neglect to address all at once with a pruner and an axe and a shovel and a mattock.

I'm in OKC but am raising pastured pork on leased land in Norman area. I've also got a buck goat and am looking to find him some Kiko girlfriends so we can start a breeding program this year with kidding to happen early next year.

Ma and I live In NE OK on 20 acres we've got goats(mostly they serve as the grounds crew) 25 or so chickens a turkey and various cats and dogs. We've been slowly adding on to our garden/food forrest for the last few years, baby steps, but this year we plan to do some small scale earth works and hugel beds and really kick the food forest up a notch with around 80 trees and various other perennials that we have been purchasing online over the winter. I plan to take the upcoming online PDC that Geoff is putting on at the end of March. Interestingly enough I work for the printing plant that prints This Land, it's a fantastic paper, but I tell you I have been pleasantly surprised to find some permie type articles in another rag you may have heard of called Oklahoma Gazette, we print that one too. Anyhow you can google "off kilter acres" to follow along with what we are up to on our place, if you wish.

Hi, I am in Jones, Ok...and am working towards becoming self sufficient on on 10 acres ..I've got a hugel bed dug, working on swales, and raising talapia fish. This drought has really been tough on me...my well dried up so last summer I had to dig a little deeper, in my pocket and under ground, to get things back on track...I've heard droughts can last 100 years....god I hope not.
Great site and hope to keep coming back.

Does anybody here in Oklahoma know where I can find a publicly accessible population of Arundinaria gigantea (cane) where it would be OK for me to dig some rhizomes for transplanting? The distribution map here shows it just two counties south, but I hate to set off on a road trip hunting for the stuff without any specific tips on where to find it.

Any suggestions gratefully received!

Dan Boone wrote:Does anybody here in Oklahoma know where I can find a publicly accessible population of Arundinaria gigantea (cane) where it would be OK for me to dig some rhizomes for transplanting? The distribution map here shows it just two counties south, but I hate to set off on a road trip hunting for the stuff without any specific tips on where to find it.

Any suggestions gratefully received!

There is a lot of it in the Coyle area, we routinely go foraging for it in Jackie Dill's wildcrafting group (more info on the outings at http://www.oklahomawildcrafting.com/ )

I live in Moore on 0.8 acres ... we moved here from southern California in late 2005. It was after that when I learned about permaculture and soon realized that if I wanted to do anything much in my HOA community that 1) it had to be ornamental as well as edible and 2) (more importantly) attitudes about food production needed to change. So in 2010 I started this website.

My yard projects are doing fairly well, after quite a few setbacks. The tornado didn't help much ... I had one new tree literally disappear, it had just been planted and is probably in the next county somewhere. But it's been a remarkably mild spring and my other trees and plantings are doing great, if I can only keep up with the weeds ...

Last summer I failed pretty intensely at most of my plantings in the area I'm trying to turn into a food forest. Lack of water, a surplus of nibbling browsers, and rather astonishing weed competition combined to kill pretty much everything I planted, except for a few young trees that I was able to water, mulch, and protect from nibblers.

This year I'm trying to get some patches of cover crops going to give the nibblers some alternatives to my plantings and to help with weed suppression and soil improvement. I've been doing a lot of soil working in small patches where I'm planting a lot of tree seeds, and I'm working cover crop seeds into those planting areas so that even if the tree seeds fail or get eaten/browsed, my work will at least create patches of cover crops instead of the weeds (last year ragweed was king at my place) that normally flourish.

My problem has been finding cover crop seeds on the scale of "a few pounds". Gardener-sized retail packaging is too expensive, and "feed/seed store" places around here tend to sell by the fifty-pound-sack direct to farmers, without even bothering with retail storefronts or smaller quantities. What little planting I've done has perforce been with seeds from small-scale mail order (clover seeds), culinary seeds (mustards, grocery-story sprouting seeds of daikon and a few other things) and a few food grains and legumes. Those have all been on the order of a few ounces each, and it hasn't been enough for the scale I am working at.

I know I could find a feed/seed store in OKC or Tulsa that could meet my needs and sell seed by the pound from a retail storefront, but I don't get there often and I'm usually with other people who aren't interested in this errand.

The purpose of this post is to tell folks here in central Oklahoma that I've found a decent source in Shawnee. S & S Farm Center, on Beard Ave in Shawnee, near the big white Shawnee Mills facility by the railroad tracks, has a pretty good variety of seeds in open 50-pound sacks for sale by the pound, or pre-bagged on site in one and five pound bags. They have about six different kinds of clover, forage radish, a turnip, field peas, rapeseed, sugar beet, hairy vetch, a couple different kinds of ryegrass, a field corn, and probably half a dozen things I'm forgetting. The most expensive thing I saw was the Durhanna Clover and the sugar beet seed, both of which were in the $6-$7 per pound range. The cheapest was the field peas, which were a buck a pound. I spent about twenty bucks and came away with a ridiculous volume of seeds that I've been wanting.

They also sell a good range of heavy galvanized hardware cloth (and chicken wire) in various sizes, mostly packaged in small rolls 10' to 25' long. I got some for making tree protection devices.

The rest of the store is heavy on pet supplies, horsey stuff, and sacks of feed for various farm critters. Despite being a fairly small store the selection seemed better than at the Atwoods stores I've visited in Ada and Norman and Shawnee. Way less large tools and equipment and random housewares, but a very deep inventory on the stuff for feeding and caring for and doctoring your animals.

This is a great idea, Dan, thanks for the tip!

Greetings Okies, We're in our second year on an acre in downtown Newcastle. Our dream is to have a garden large enough to call it a community garden and involve our neighbors. But now that I've been looking into permaculture I've been expanding my horizons.

We've got clay and dust - so last year was 3 raised lasagna garden beds and this year is a 25x25' patch that has layers of mulch, hay, and leaf clippings. I'll add some more soil and manure when the snow gives way to decent temps.

We had some great results last year except that we didn't plant enough okra, beans, or cucumbers to have more than a handful at a time. The squash, zucchini, tomatoes, eggplant, and spaghetti squash did great.

I'm looking forward to adding some beneficial insect attracting flowers and doing some companion planting. I've had very little luck finding internet info on which plants do best in Zone 7 / Oklahoma. I welcome all ideas!!

Good to meet you all!

Hi, Bert, welcome to Permies!

About half way through last summer I got a dehydrator and discovered a way to make really tasty kale chips. I was congratulating myself on having planted a surplus of kale, and right then a bug infestation showed up and ate all of my kale plants down to nothing.

Moral: you never can be sure you planted enough of anything!

Hello Oklahoma Central Permies

It all started when I couldn't afford a lousy $4 for a bag of nitrogen ....

That was many years ago. The nitrogen never hit the ground. I have great soil on a residential property a stone's throw from Stillwater. After tinkering for a few years, my favorite garden plots are:

hugelkulture beds
swales and berms

I recently leveled this 1/6th acre by hand and am starting from scratch with a site plan. I have gentle erosion problems. Swales. Berms. Trees. Shrubs. Sometimes I wonder if a spring will not pop up after so many years because all the storm water run off from three sides of the problem flow under and over the soil.

A huge elm tree rests below my storm shelter. We must use a sump pump to keep it down to 1/4" of water on the floor. It's a great example of natural water retention. I try to imagine the entire lot in this fashion with the right growies and swales and berms on contour.

Hopefully, this year, I'll be able to implement some grey water diversion, rainwater capture for potable water and gardening on contour.

My biggest challenge is that my grading is all over the place.

Happy permie!

Hi fellow central Oklahoma permies.  This is my first post on Permies.com, and I just found this site a few days ago. I live in southeast central Oklahoma, at the very top of Pontotoc county, just north and west of a small community known as Byng. I grew up in the woods and around livestock and have gardened for as long as I can remember. I've been experimenting with my own versions of sheet mulching, hugelkultur and composting from a very young age, and just recently, in the last couple of years, even found out that permaculture was a thing.  My Dad and Granddad and Great granddad were all unorthodox agriculturalists. We just have funny ideas all the time about how things could be done, cheaper, more naturally and more efficiently. None of us ever liked fertilizers and refused to use pesticides.  My Dad tells me my Great granddad, who was an ag prof. at OSU, oddly enough, had the strangest ideas of all, just some really unorthodox notions.

When I was in my 20s I traveled Asia, and got to see how things are grown in India and China. This made me both more and less afraid of using urine and human feces. I now know how it can be done well and how not to do it (got dysentery twice). I also brought back a bunch of seeds for my favorite Chinese vegetables. For the past three years I have been adapting Yard long beans, bitter melon, winter melon, Shanghai greens, 2 different types of onions and 4 different types of cabbages to the Oklahoma climate with a good amount of success. I've collected a ton of seeds (especially Chinese cabbage seeds) if anyone wants to try.

Welcome KC King

Seems you have a wealth of knowledge to be sharing.  I look forward to reading some of your posts.

I posted a hefty message earlier only to discover this site read it as "you chose to close your account"  I guess it's not working well.  

Speak soon

bon

bonnie bright wrote:Hello Oklahoma Central Permies

It all started when I couldn't afford a lousy $4 for a bag of nitrogen ....  

That was many years ago.  The nitrogen never hit the ground.  I have great soil on a residential property a stone's throw from Stillwater.  After tinkering for a few years, my favorite garden plots are:

hugelkulture beds
swales and berms

I recently leveled this 1/6th acre by hand and am starting from scratch with a site plan.  I have gentle erosion problems.  Swales. Berms. Trees. Shrubs.  Sometimes I wonder if a spring will not pop up after so many years because all the storm water run off from three sides of the problem flow under and over the soil.  

A huge elm tree rests below my storm shelter.  We must use a sump pump to keep it down to 1/4" of water on the floor.  It's a great example of natural water retention.  I try to imagine the entire lot in this fashion with the right growies and swales and berms on contour.  

Hopefully, this year, I'll be able to implement some grey water diversion, rainwater capture for potable water and gardening on contour.  

My biggest challenge is that my grading is all over the place.

Happy permie!

I am in Norman and working on that kind of budget.  I've been interested in permaculture for over a decade and finally said forget it, money or not, I'm doing this.  Working of sourcing plants or seeds.