# Does anyone have a "food forrest"?



## Spinner (Jul 19, 2003)

I just stumbled across a video by Geoff Lawton and all I can say is WOW! I wish I had learned this stuff long ago. I am going to start planting now so my kids and grandkids can benefit from it. Some plants are good in a couple years, but it takes about 10 years for it become totally self sustaining and supply tons of food.


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## sss3 (Jul 15, 2007)

I, believe; ronbre has a food forest.


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## logbuilder (Jan 31, 2006)

One of the most active permaculture forums is permies.com which was started by Paul Wheaton.

http://www.permies.com/forums

Here is the specific forum on permies.com that should contain info about food forests.

http://www.permies.com/forums/f-116/forest-garden


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## 7thswan (Nov 18, 2008)

Mine started produceing after about 4 years. It's 9 yrs now, IIRC.I have added a couple of apple trees when they came out-Honey Crisp. Also Added extra cherry trees-tart- 3 was not enough. 2 sweets are plenty,but need to be heavly pruned. I am getting 2 more Saskatoon blueberry trees as 1 was not enough and they are not bothered by the new rabbit raiders I have. No wild rabbits was a by-product of having feral cats(they are gone now).
So I'm closeing in on 40 fruit and nut trees. 4 different kinds of grapes. 6 Blueberrys. Blackberrys. 4 different Rasberrys, Heritage, Fall Gold, Red, Black. 3 Northern Kewi. Jersulam Artichokes in many areas of the "yard", Hops, Ruhubarb, Strawberrys, A long Rugosa Rose hedge(rose hips), Camomile patch( it spreads), many countless Herbs and Mints large Comfry patches. I utilize the wild plants that grow esp. Nettles.The area where I used to keep my sheep and goats, is let grow wild, it is full of nettles, motherwort ,burdock ect. I basically have what is called a "Potager" some call it a "cottage garden". Flowers planted among Food. My herbs esp. bring in Honey Bees. I have always wanted them, but am very allergic. My neigbors which do not plant anything ,put in 2 hives near our alfala field. Their Bees come up to my "yard". So I have to deal with Bees anyway and am considering getting them for myself. We have cattle and chickens, my Angora rabbits are in among the plants of "the yard" and they feed off of what I produce all summer and winter. This year, I am going to freeze Everything extra, now that I make food for my 3 large dogs.(I cann our food, and freeze and dehydrate also)My "yard" produces way too much food for just Dh and I. Spring is a big job, plants have to be split and dug, sold or given away. We have a stream and a small pond too.


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## calliemoonbeam (Aug 7, 2007)

I've read some and am very interested in it. After seeing 7thSwan's pictures, I have serious forest garden envy, lol!  

I discovered Geoff Lawton not too long ago too, I love him. I'm with you Spinner, wish I had discovered this stuff a long time ago! Isn't he in Australia or England though? Things are so different there than here, still more like the old ways. We could all learn a lot from the old ways of doing things.


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## 7thswan (Nov 18, 2008)

http://www.pinterest.com/5element1667/garden/

Callie, here is a link to my pintrest board -gardening, lots of potager pictures.


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## K.B. (Sep 7, 2012)

Started mine back in 2011 on ~ 1/2 acre. I have well over a hundred varieties of edibles planted now and I add more each year through barter. 

My climate has a very dry summer, and I don't like to provide a lot of irrigation, so the canopy trees will take quite awhile to grow together. In the meantime, many of the bushes, brambles, vines and lower story of herbaceous plants start producing within a 1-2 years of planting.


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## wunderdarling (Feb 9, 2012)

I would love to see pics of these forests !


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## ovsfarm (Jan 14, 2003)

I have seen some of Lawton's videos and like them. However, when thinking about making the same type of thing for my area, I am not quite sure. We often have late freezes, which completely destroy most fruit crops for the year. Sometimes we have strong drought seasons which causes all vegetation growth to slow to a crawl and not produce nearly as much.

In a way, we do have a bit of a food forest, with multiple varieties of apples, peaches, pears, grapes, blueberries and black raspberries, along with chestnuts, black walnuts, hazelnuts, hickory nuts, and butternuts. They were planted by a previous owner and have gone rather wild under our care (or lack thereof). We also have a few herb patches that we have identified. 

I have seen years when they filled my pantry shelves to overflowing, when I was ready to start throwing peaches at dh if he darkened my kitchen door with yet another 5 gal. bucket of them. And other years when there was very little fruit to be found. Although my "food forest" would be a welcome supplement during hard times, and I am sure we would tend it much more lovingly then, I would hate to have only that to count on for keeping my family alive.

The food forest I would rather cultivate would be one based on wild forest plants that I could relocate to known and easily monitored and defended locations. For example, to relocate some edible roots to a similar habitat, just closer to the house, just past the edge of the woods.

I have also seen way too much poaching and downright stealing lately. I know people who have been anxiously watching a food crop come right up to just a day before the peak of ripeness and readiness for harvest, only to come out the next morning and find it all gone. I am actually rethinking the value of having a lot of land, when it is only practical to "patrol" a small portion of it. There is no way I would be able to watch a section that is 80 acres away from my house. The terrain is very rough around here and it is possible for trespassers to sneak in and get up to all kinds of mischief and out again before they are ever detected or anyone can get to them.


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## Ernie (Jul 22, 2007)

The food forest is an artificial attempt to recreate vertically in a small space what nature does horizontally over a larger space.

I'm supportive of the concept, in theory, but even the staunchest advocates of this do it in a way that I find to be unsustainable over the long run. It's yet to be demonstrated to me that this sort of thing can provide more calories than the same space intensively gardened using renewable compost and for the same level (or less) of energy expended.

Thought of this when I saw my neighbor tilling his garden up a few years back. It was about 300 square foot of ground and he ran that heavy duty tiller over it for about 2 hours. At the end, he'd cleared space for a lot of dormant weed seeds and burned a thousand times more calories than that postage stamp garden was going to produce over the next decade.


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## calliemoonbeam (Aug 7, 2007)

7thswan said:


> http://www.pinterest.com/5element1667/garden/
> 
> Callie, here is a link to my pintrest board -gardening, lots of potager pictures.


Thanks so much! I'll definitely check that out. I'm on a break at school right now, lol, sneaking in here for a minute.


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## Tiempo (May 22, 2008)

7thswan said:


> Mine started produceing after about 4 years. It's 9 yrs now, IIRC.I have added a couple of apple trees when they came out-Honey Crisp. Also Added extra cherry trees-tart- 3 was not enough. 2 sweets are plenty,but need to be heavly pruned. I am getting 2 more Saskatoon blueberry trees as 1 was not enough and they are not bothered by the new rabbit raiders I have. No wild rabbits was a by-product of having feral cats(they are gone now).
> So I'm closeing in on 40 fruit and nut trees. 4 different kinds of grapes. 6 Blueberrys. Blackberrys. 4 different Rasberrys, Heritage, Fall Gold, Red, Black. 3 Northern Kewi. Jersulam Artichokes in many areas of the "yard", Hops, Ruhubarb, Strawberrys, A long Rugosa Rose hedge(rose hips), Camomile patch( it spreads), many countless Herbs and Mints large Comfry patches. I utilize the wild plants that grow esp. Nettles.The area where I used to keep my sheep and goats, is let grow wild, it is full of nettles, motherwort ,burdock ect. I basically have what is called a "Potager" some call it a "cottage garden". Flowers planted among Food. My herbs esp. bring in Honey Bees. I have always wanted them, but am very allergic. My neigbors which do not plant anything ,put in 2 hives near our alfala field. Their Bees come up to my "yard". So I have to deal with Bees anyway and am considering getting them for myself. We have cattle and chickens, my Angora rabbits are in among the plants of "the yard" and they feed off of what I produce all summer and winter. This year, I am going to freeze Everything extra, now that I make food for my 3 large dogs.(I cann our food, and freeze and dehydrate also)My "yard" produces way too much food for just Dh and I. Spring is a big job, plants have to be split and dug, sold or given away. We have a stream and a small pond too.


You're a heck of a gardener Swan :bow:


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## farmerDale (Jan 8, 2011)

I have several hundred acres of "food forests", with great diversity, but God planted them for me.


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## Spinner (Jul 19, 2003)

Yes Calliemoonbeam, he lives in Australia so many of the plants and trees he uses are not native here, but some can grow here. I've been researching a few of them over the past few days. 

K.B. My climate has a long hot dry summer too. But his system shows us how to build swells to catch and store water in the ground. That is what makes it sustainable during dry spells. That's the first thing is to build all the swells and it's the hardest I think. But the whole system depends on it so without making that first investment the rest won't thrive. (Swells are areas where there are natural water runoff during storms, or if you have no watersheds then you can divert water from other places. One of his examples was to divert water from a ditch in front of his property and move it through about 5 or 6 swells he built)

Wunderdarling, do a search on permaculture food forest and you'll find a lot of links. I've been watching videos so haven't found many still shots. Here a few pics I found with a quick search. 

ovsfarm, we are always going to good years and bad years whether we work our butts off or design a relatively work free forest garden. Either way we'll win some/lose some. 

I beg to differ with you Ernie. A food forest has a bit of everything and it works best spread out over a bit of land. It contains long term tall shade trees, medium trees, small trees, bushes, vines, and more. The most important is the water features. The videos I've watched have several areas where they have introduced chickens in some areas, ducks or geese in other areas. They have cattle in some using paddocks with rotational grazing. There's a lot more to it than just an artificial attempt at growing vertically in a small space. I've been viewing food forests that are 11 years old and finally reached the point that they are self sustaining. 

farmerDale, that is exactly the model used to build a self sustaining food forest in a location of choice so we don't have to travel to another place to find what we need.  

One of the videos showed a 10 acre particle of land in the middle east that was totally barren. He turned it into an oasis in two years. The locals laughed at him and his crew when they started, but when they seen the end result, they want to do it too. IIRC the project was called "greening the deserts".


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## jwal10 (Jun 5, 2010)

I have been doing this for 50 years all over the Luckiamute Valley. Started at 8 on our farm and the neighbors. Started with fruit and nut trees. Then planting all kinds of things. Cutting paths to fish the creeks, making small meadows for cannas, planting berries and setting spores for mushrooms. Fence rows, creek banks and small ponds. All the land around us is timberlands. Quail and pheasant habitat. All this has paid off in increased birds and animals, all for the taking....James


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## K.B. (Sep 7, 2012)

Spinner said:


> K.B. My climate has a long hot dry summer too. But his system shows us how to build swells to catch and store water in the ground. That is what makes it sustainable during dry spells. That's the first thing is to build all the swells and it's the hardest I think. But the whole system depends on it so without making that first investment the rest won't thrive. (Swells are areas where there are natural water runoff during storms, or if you have no watersheds then you can divert water from other places. One of his examples was to divert water from a ditch in front of his property and move it through about 5 or 6 swells he built).


Absolutely. Taking advantage of the water that falls during the wet season here is very important. The basic layout of my food forest is laid out using 7 long hugelkultur beds (~100' each) that are built on contour to assist in allowing water to infiltrate the soil.

Lawton's videos are very informative. If you have not watched any of Sepp Holzer's, they also have a lot of good info.


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## Spinner (Jul 19, 2003)

K.B. said:


> ... If you have not watched any of Sepp Holzer's, they also have a lot of good info.


Thanks K.B. I'll probably spend the next few days watching his videos. I'm sold on this system and want to start work on it as soon as I can get my zones established and the plan down on paper. I know it'll take me years to get it finished, if I ever do, but I won't get any of it done if I don't jump in and get started.


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## logbuilder (Jan 31, 2006)

Spinner said:


> Thanks K.B. I'll probably spend the next few days watching his videos. I'm sold on this system and want to start work on it as soon as I can get my zones established and the plan down on paper. I know it'll take me years to get it finished, if I ever do, but I won't get any of it done if I don't jump in and get started.


A quick jump start would be to take a Permaculture Design Course (aka. PDC). Just do a search for your area.


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## Astrid (Nov 13, 2010)

Yes. We have trees and shrubs planted with nitrogen fixing shrubs (siberian pea and autumn olive) in between. The leaves fall and feed the soil and the roots supply nitrogen to non nitrogen fixing trees. We have raspberry, blackberry, tayberry, currant, gooseberry, serviceberry, hawthorne, sea buckthorn, hazelnuts, apple, pear, plum, medlar, cherry, chestnut, mountain ash, manchurian apricot, nanking cherry, mulberry. We also have a host of perennial vegetables. We have nettles, several different varieties of sorrel, asparagus, rhubarb, ramps, ramsons, red and white welsh onions, and self seeding annuals. 

We are working on raising all of the food for our animals as well. The siberian pea is a good one as are hazelnuts and chestnuts. Pigs especially love those. 

The best way to start is to start. Look at your land and see what areas are dry. There, you need to work on ways of maximizing water to that area. Look and see what areas of your land are moist. We have to deal with tons of rain so we have created swales to drain the water into a pond which has fish as well as duckweed, licorice, marshmallow and many other growing in and around the pond. Swales are land features to help direct water to or away from an area. You can find tons of resources on how to best work with your land.


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## 7thswan (Nov 18, 2008)

Speeking of low areas. I have a spot where I usally plant corn and some vineing crops. We are on a hill and it is a small spot that is flat before it continues to go downhill. My latest fascination is natural pools. I had never seen one, and sinse I did, there is no going back. My only problem is that dh places all the round bales for winters use on the spot once the frost hits. I'll have to "change" his mind about that somehow.For those that have never seen one- a picture. They do not need chemicals ,nature does the work. Usally they have much veg. planted, such as cattails, lillys, ect around the edges.


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## Ernie (Jul 22, 2007)

Spinner said:


> Thanks K.B. I'll probably spend the next few days watching his videos. I'm sold on this system and want to start work on it as soon as I can get my zones established and the plan down on paper. I know it'll take me years to get it finished, if I ever do, but I won't get any of it done if I don't jump in and get started.


I can see you're committed to researching this and that isn't a bad thing ...

But consider the basic flaw in permaculture ... they believe energy can be channeled from outward zones towards the human center for consumption.

I propose that the sustainable model is exactly opposite that. Energy flows _from _the human center in the form of humanure for composting material and labor required to set up the zones (and maintain them). 

Permaculture assumes that agriculture can be done in a natural and sustainable way, when any view we take of the natural world shows us that agriculture is _anathema_ to nature. Granted, there are various forms of agriculture which more or less soften the blow to nature, but all methods of agriculture are simply an attempt to ignore or suspend natural laws of energy production in the natural landscape for the benefit of humans.

We practice a very hybrid model of agriculture here. We lean heavily on our livestock for food and as a means of converting non-edible grasses and native plants into edible substances. Our garden is sustained by humanure and the humanure is returned back into the gardens. Energy and nutrients from outside of that circle add to its fertility, not detract.


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## bowdonkey (Oct 6, 2007)

jwal10 said:


> I have been doing this for 50 years all over the Luckiamute Valley. Started at 8 on our farm and the neighbors. Started with fruit and nut trees. Then planting all kinds of things. Cutting paths to fish the creeks, making small meadows for cannas, planting berries and setting spores for mushrooms. Fence rows, creek banks and small ponds. All the land around us is timberlands. Quail and pheasant habitat. All this has paid off in increased birds and animals, all for the taking....James


Yes, this can be done anywhere, not just your own property.


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## Spinner (Jul 19, 2003)

Ernie said:


> I can see you're committed to researching this and that isn't a bad thing ... Thank You
> 
> But consider the basic flaw in permaculture ... they believe energy can be channeled from outward zones towards the human center for consumption.
> 
> ...


Are you assuming that permaculture and agriculture are the same? Permaculture is finding natures answer to a problem instead of designing a man made &#8220;cure&#8221; that in the long run creates a worse problem. 

In permaculture (at least the type I&#8217;m studying) there is almost zero cultivating and fertilizing once the system is in place. The small amount of cultivating and fertilizing that occurs is done by chickens and other animals. Humans build the water features, but once the system is complete, there is very little upkeep on the entire system. It&#8217;s almost like planting a garden and never needing to weed and water it, only harvest when the abundance of it is ready. 

I've only just discovered a man who does they with GRAINS too. Can you imagine harvesting wheat or rice without plowing and planting every year? I haven't studied his system yet, but it's in the queue. 

Companion planting is an important part of the system. A good example is the way legume plants and trees are used. They provide the nitrogen instead of planting a cover crop to plow under for nitrogen. 

Rotational grazing keeps pastures from being under or over grazed. I didn&#8217;t know that under grazing can be just as bad as over grazing. In permaculture you keep the animals moving similar to the way animals roam in the wilds so they don&#8217;t over graze an area. They are always eating the highest quality and leave the area without decimating it. By the time they are rotated back, that pasture has totally recuperated and in need of their &#8220;harvesting&#8221; again. It cuts the winter supplemental feed tremendously, at least it does here in the south, I&#8217;ve not studied the effects in the north. 

This only scratches the surface. It&#8217;s a wonderful system but it would take pages and pages over days and weeks to explain it all. I currently have 78 hours of study into it and I&#8217;m still at the first stage of preparing my own property. 

A favorite saying I&#8217;ve read is Bill Mollison&#8217;s much quoted &#8220;You don&#8217;t have a slug problem, you have a duck deficiency." I'm starting to look at the world in a much different way.


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## Spinner (Jul 19, 2003)

I forgot to add... permaculture does NOT replace the kitchen garden. You still have to plant your salad veggies, corn, etc. permaculture is mainly fruits, berries, some veggies, but mostly trees and bushes.


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## Ernie (Jul 22, 2007)

SOME permaculture is different than "agriculture", but a lot of it is not. I've been a member on Permies for awhile (though I mostly just lurk there now) and been listening to podcasts and reading their books for years.

There's good designs and there's bad ones. 

Also ... and here's the rub ... those guys who make a living selling permaculture as an idea ... the designs they show you took a team of probably 20 interns to pull off. Do you have interns on your farm? Otherwise known as "slave labor"? 

I like fruit and nut trees and I have planted (and continue to plant) as many as I can. But I have to be mindful that those trees need the continuous hand of man here. If they grew well on their own (permanently, as in permaculture), then they would already be here. Instead we have the thirsty mesquite and scrub oak.


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## ovsfarm (Jan 14, 2003)

How do the swales function to channel water to other areas during a drought when there just isn't any run off to be collected? 

That usually isn't our problem - it is very hot and humid with lots of rainfall normally. But when we do have a drought season, it can be a severe one and all the natural sources of water dry up (natural springs, most creeks, all small ponds, etc.) We have even had it get so dry that the exposed river banks start caving in and riverfront property becomes endangered.

I like the idea of what in my area is called "wild simulated" agriculture. Which amounts to helping nature along a bit by doing things like replacing or deepening natural leaf cover that might have been washed away or disturbed by animals, cutting back an undesirable mid-sized plant that would shade out a more desirable lower one, rigging up a few shiny spinners to deter the local deer population from grazing on a certain area, possibly providing a bit of extra moisture during a dry germination season, or perhaps throwing up a few hay bales or piling leaves and sticks to create a wind break to keep temps up just a bit higher in a certain area. And especially, making sure that seeds get disbursed and planted, not eaten or blown away. So tampering with nature, but trying to work within natural parameters rather than adding a bunch of external inputs.

I have been toying around with trying to relocate some desired edible species to a more convenient distance from my house, and setting up a couple of "cache plots" out in my deep woods areas. No, these would not be the most luscious and palatable foods ever imagined, but they would be things that could keep body and soul together. 

I have a friend, a professional herbologist who has tried to do the same with some of her "wild" herb patches, but her focus is on testing a sampling of her plants each year and making sure to propagate the most potent and reliable ones while letting the others dwindle back to about 1/3 of the plot. After 4 years of doing this, she has developed some plant lines that are incredibly packed with nutrients and active ingredients. It didn't take long at all to start seeing a difference. Interesting enough, it is not always the largest plants that have the best potency.


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## K.B. (Sep 7, 2012)

ovsfarm said:


> How do the swales function to channel water to other areas during a drought when there just isn't any run off to be collected?


There is no "instant fix" for dealing with drought. A design for managing water needs to be part of a system that works over time to manage both average conditions and both extremes (drought and flood) of the precipitation range for an area.

This has been posted elsewhere on the forum, but I like the story of the man who farms water as an example of successful water management.
http://ag.arizona.edu/oals/ALN/aln46/lancaster.html

Brad Lancasters books on working with drylands are well worth reading for people interested in this kind of thing.

Everyone see permaculture differently. To me, one of the main benefits of permaculture is a the integration of various systems that get better with time rather than decay and require maintenance.


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## jwal10 (Jun 5, 2010)

My fruit trees have never been fertilized. I cut the grass and clover IF the goats don't keep it eaten down enough to become a fire hazzard. I plant sweet corn and green beans in the woods. I plant wild rice in my pond and other wetlands. It does rain a lot here but not during the summer months. I do water a few new plants and trees a couple of times the first year, during the real hot times if planted out in the hot sun. Peas and vetch reseed themselves and add nitrogen. I also grow in raised beds and well mulched conventional garden spaces....James


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## 7thswan (Nov 18, 2008)

I do not fertilize eather trees eather,our soil is wounderful. I do put compost on everything else. I built the same type of garden at another place, but it was pure sand. It was so much work to tend the soil,esp because our animals were 10 miles away.I had raised beds there also, and lost count at 17 truckloads of compost the first year. I even made a bog garden,just for plants that like it wet. The neighbor kids called me "The jungle Lady". My newest endeavor will be mushrooms. They will be kept under a Birch tree near the greenhouse.
Soon, I will be starting to plant at our Log cabin up-north. Sand,ugh. I'll be battleing deer, a hard battle sinse we won't be there enough.


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## elkhound (May 30, 2006)

[YOUTUBE]h____eFhuQs[/YOUTUBE]


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## elkhound (May 30, 2006)

geoff lawton will let you see free vids if you sign up on his website.he doesnt sell or spam you either he only emails you when he puts up a new video.

http://www.geofflawton.com


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## elkhound (May 30, 2006)

[YOUTUBE]AAG6mtIYAgY[/YOUTUBE]


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## elkhound (May 30, 2006)

i have posted many many videos about all of this spinner if you search my post here. also dont overlook the value of the river cottage videos....if you can still see any of them as it shows many examples of homesteading and actually how to use products we produce...in my opinion many fall short in that area of what actually to do with raw materials and goods.


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## elkhound (May 30, 2006)

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## elkhound (May 30, 2006)

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## elkhound (May 30, 2006)

youtube is better than drugs.....lol.....watch and learn and see examples.


i am a visual person....i can watch somebody do stuff and then duplicate it often.


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## elkhound (May 30, 2006)

ben faulk has had great success here in states.


[YOUTUBE]FxPlrTJf1Oc[/YOUTUBE]


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## elkhound (May 30, 2006)

*Surviving Collapse Designing your way to Abundance from Geoff Lawton *



this is a great example of what anyone can do.



[YOUTUBE]rj34EscpIP4[/YOUTUBE]


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## elkhound (May 30, 2006)

this is myrtle beach, s.c. 


[YOUTUBE]ELqvYRtCnNc[/YOUTUBE]


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## elkhound (May 30, 2006)

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## elkhound (May 30, 2006)

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## Spinner (Jul 19, 2003)

Thank you elkhound for all the videos. I was going to say that earlier, but I got side tracked watching a couple of them. 

I've naturally had the same ideas that I'm learning about in the permaculture courses (I'm in my 2nd class now). This makes me believe even stronger in the system cause it came so natural to me. 

I'm using Geoff Lawtons system with chickens having them prepare small areas that will be restructured with swales and planting.

The more I learn, the more sure I am that I'm on the right path.


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## K.B. (Sep 7, 2012)

Several different perspectives in the video below:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixx1c3RSw_8[/ame]

I like the description and style of the food forest shown at 37:15 - 43:00 minutes.


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## Buffy in Dallas (May 10, 2002)

Ernie said:


> But consider the basic flaw in permaculture ... they believe energy can be channeled from outward zones towards the human center for consumption.
> 
> I propose that the sustainable model is exactly opposite that. Energy flows _from _the human center in the form of humanure for composting material and labor required to set up the zones (and maintain them).
> 
> ...


I agree and disagree. Pure Permaculture isn't about setting it up then consuming. Its about creating an ecosystem with humans as a part of the system. The trees, plants, animals feed us ("energy can be channeled from outward zones towards the human center for consumption") and we give energy back like you said "in the form of humanure for composting material and labor required to set up the zones (and maintain them)". It's a circle.
It sounds like you are practicing permaculture.

I just took Geoff Lawton's Online Permaculture Design Course. I just can't recommend it enough! It was wonderful! His videos are great too!

As advice to anyone just starting up. Make sure you put up the structure first (ponds, swales, hugelkultur beds) before planting trees. Otherwise its like trying to decorate your bathroom before you have the walls up.


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## Spinner (Jul 19, 2003)

I have to get busy now. I have several more fruit trees coming soon. I ordered them before I decided to go with the food forest system. I have plenty of seed for the small nitrogen fixing cover crops. I'm working on a barter with a neighbor to get him to bring over his dozer and build the swales for me. I really want to plant the trees on the lower side of a swale. If not, then they'll go into pots for the first year. I have a few fruit trees established that I'll have to work around. I hope they won't be right in the way. In addition to the food forest, I've found a new way to do my kitchen garden. It starts with a border of small tree branches laid out in a large rectangle. Then a tarp put down as a water liner. I only want the water to be about 3 inches deep. It's kind of like an extremely shallow swimming pool. lol Then the plants go in pots that set in the water. The pots can be made from landscape fabric, or those reusable walmart bags. A float valve can be used so a garden hose can be connected and automatically keep the water at the proper level. I've seen pics of some systems that are amazing.


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## Buffy in Dallas (May 10, 2002)

Spinner said:


> I've found a new way to do my kitchen garden. It starts with a border of small tree branches laid out in a large rectangle. Then a tarp put down as a water liner. I only want the water to be about 3 inches deep. It's kind of like an extremely shallow swimming pool. lol Then the plants go in pots that set in the water. The pots can be made from landscape fabric, or those reusable walmart bags. A float valve can be used so a garden hose can be connected and automatically keep the water at the proper level. I've seen pics of some systems that are amazing.


That sounds really interesting. Do you know what this method is called? I'd love to google it and see if there are youtube videos of it.


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## Spinner (Jul 19, 2003)

Buffy, I got the idea on a facebook group I belong to. If you do a youtube search on Larry Hall you'll find several videos with his systems. I'm doing my own cheap version of his kiddie pool system.


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## Spinner (Jul 19, 2003)

This video explains it well, I think it's my favorite of all the videos I've seen. 
[YOUTUBE][ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rj34EscpIP4[/ame][/YOUTUBE]


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## Danaus29 (Sep 12, 2005)

After years of fighting with dh about this concept he has finally come on board and decided it's a great plan. (Grrrr, 20 years behind now. I could have had productive sugar maples in that time!) So we plan on ripping out honeysuckle and multiflora rose again and instead of leaving the area open (really, so more can grow???? Yeah, good idea) it will be replanted with shrubs and small trees that have food and /or medicinal value. I've got half an acre of slightly wooded land with which I can work. 

I can't believe anyone would use a tiller on a 300 square foot garden. My 900 square foot garden hasn't seen a tiller since I've been working it. And there are 2 smaller gardens which can't be tilled without causing serious erosion problems. Yet planted and tended properly they would be extremely productive. (I really need to quit my day job! LOL)


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## Oldcountryboy (Feb 23, 2008)

I've lived with a forest garden behind my house almost all of my life. It has walnut, pecan, acorn, and hickory nut trees everywhere. Several varieties of fruit trees such as Mulberry, Hackberry, and wild plum trees. Wild grape vines and passion fruit vines grow all around. Occasionally I find wild mushrooms, wild onions, poke, and lambsquatter greens. A creek runs through it where I catch crawdads, fish, and in early spring I find some young tender watercress. And then I get a variety of meat off of it. Lots of squirrels, a few rabbits, and occasionally a deer. 

When I was a little kid growing up around here there was a lot of natural forest gardens everywhere. But for some reason, everyone keeps bulldozing it all off. Then they complain about the high prices of grocery! Don't make sense does it?


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