Sunday, April 15, 2012

Cranking it up!

First off, I need to say that I will probably never be a good blogger, because life is just too engaging in the "real" world.  However it's not due to boring circumstances... anything but ;)
We have now kicked off a major site development using permaculture principles for the purpose of sustainable food and educational value.  This first part of the site development was a big "keyline" workshop to begin transformation of the land for better water management and a holistic approach to planting sustainable, perennial food ecosystems.  We are making an effort to document this transformation from the start!

The workshop was a very big success!  Mark Shepard led the workshop and was a wealth of knowledge and energy for the application of permaculture principles.  He was also an excellent fit with his focus on larger scale site development.  He is into food production!  Our goals for our development is fairly large scale; almost community scale project.  More on that later...

I owe many thanks to Sustainable Tahlequah and especially Julie Gahn for her tireless efforts to bring this together.  We are also greatly indebted to Leslie Moyer for her expertise with edible plants and general skills    related to trees, plants and local resources.


Mark Shepard did a wonderful job in making the case for Permaculture on a Friday night talk, and then a very productive hands-on workshop to get us going with this big site development project.  The keylines were laid out and with the dozer the large swales and berms were made to manage water runoff for strong tree growth and thriving ecosystem.


We were in a mad rush to get trees in the ground ahead of a good sized storm.  The storm threats of rain kept moving further from us and we were left wondering how much to focus on irrigation vs. planting trees.  The end result is that we got a lot of trees planted and enjoyed a healthy rain this morning.  Our irrigation system is still being built, so we have to be careful to not end up watering more than a thousand trees by hand.  It looks like we'll get it setup in time to keep the job reasonable.


The next step is fencing!  Fencing is one of the most daunting tasks, especially if you live in Cherokee county where your most successful crop is rocks ;)
The fencing plan is in place; we have bought most of the materials; it is expensive, and we need to get it setup before the cows need that pasture.  I'll share pics of the fencing as it goes up.

I am very grateful for the exceptional participation in the talks and the workshops.  It's been a incredible start and we're in this for the long haul!

Thanks!   Mike

8 comments:

  1. Hi Mike, Thanks for doing the blog. It's so helpful to see how it progress. A question: what irrigation system? Are the swales and berms the irrigation system?
    Love the photo of all the water in that swale. But I don't see a swale in the last photo. Sorry if my questions are tedious. I'm just beginning to learn.

    Thanks again.
    Peace,
    Pat

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    1. Thanks! That is a good question. The berms and swales do an excellent job of managing the water flow and irrigation when it rains. When the small trees are first getting established they may need supplemental irrigation during a drought in the summer. Once the roots get deeper, they will be less and less dependent on supplemental irrigation. We are setting up 3 separate ponds as backup irrigation for the small trees. We are using an inexpensive irrigation tape just below the berm next to the tree line where we first cut a slot with a sub-soiler. I'll explain the sub-soiler in future post; but it also helps improve water absorption.

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    2. Thanks Mike. And I also wondered which trees you are planting, though I know they'd be specific to ecosystems. It is so good to be in "conversation" as you do this. Peace, Pat

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    3. We are planting quite a variety. First focus is on "keystone" trees that thrive in this region; nut trees including Pecans, Walnuts, Oaks and Chesnuts. We have a wide range of fruit trees with a heavier weighting of apples and pears. Most of these are now in the ground just below the Swales, like Mark explained in the workshop. Thanks!

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  2. That's son Joey and Kathy (Mrs. Mike) planting trees.. by the way :)

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  3. Pat, some of the other species that Mike and Kathy are planting are filling in some of the other niches in the permaculture "stories". Remember in our class when Scott talked about the tall trees, then the understory trees, then the tall shrubs growing under those, then the shorter shrubs, then the brambles, then the vines, then the herbaceous plants, then the fungus, etc.? Mike & Kathy are really tackling a big planting project and they're planting a pretty big variety of plants that include a lot of plants that fill many of those niches. Some of them include serviceberries (2 varieties), Siberian pea shrub, aronia, crabapple, autumn olive, goumi, Seaberry, beach plum, buffaloberry, chokecherry, rugosa rose, yellowhorn, nannyberry (a type of viburnum), Cornelian cherry (a relative of dogwood). I know Kathy ordered a bunch of herbaceous plants, too! --Leslie

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  4. Thanks Leslie. That's helpful. Kind of mind-blowing. You all are doing a great job at a daunting project. We've had 5.5 inches of rain in the last three days. There is a lot of water standing in the pasture; the creek out of its banks. We never got this last spring; very grateful. Wondering how the projects there are handling the water. Thanks for continuing to share what you're doing and what you're learning.
    Peace,
    Pat

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  5. I wish we had that kind of rain to test the keyline swale system!
    It's all coming along well here, but there's still a lot of work ahead :) For some reason I feel a sense of urgency, but it feels like we're on the right track. I need to think ahead to the next best steps for educational opportunities and workshops.
    We are busily preparing to have the cows in a more intensive grazing regimen along the alleys between the swales. We still have a bit of fencing to finish and water systems. Next, I'll be sharing the solar panels coupled with batteries and DC water pumps for irrigation systems from the ponds.
    Stay in touch!

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