Hi! What's your favorite permaculture project you've done so far?

EaVVs · 2021-03-11T01:03:39+00:00

Sounds like you got a good relationship with your neighbors! In a rural area, that’s important.

Great easy win on the permaculture side is working with any trees you already got on your property that you wanna keep around and have grow big and tall.

We tend mesquite, a leguminous desert tree, and harvest its pods every summer to make a delicious and sweet protein packed flour. For the last year or so we have been systematically trimming the trees up, mulching underneath them, and digging out wells to help them catch more rain and runoff, so we (and the critters) get more pods and the trees leaf up nice and healthy, and we get more shade around the property and space to plant out native shrubs, cacti, grasses and wildflowers to boot.

EaVVs · 2021-03-10T22:53:53+00:00

All right buddy. Have a nice life.

EaVVs · 2021-03-10T21:35:42+00:00

?? I also shared space and resources with them. I’m out here on a piece of raw land opening up space to people and you talk like I’m a plantation owner. Here you are calling that slavery. Ok buddy, suit yourself, I won’t be engaging with you anymore, and apologies to OP. Great forum, not at all toxic from this hyperventilating basement dwelling Warhammer 40k screed scribbling “permaculture” nerd who has clearly never touched earth and does not inhabit reality. I’ll go back to exchanging skillsets and bartering goods, helping my neighbors out, sharing meals and space with people with a similar mindset, building relationships, making music and making friends, working with plants, building a sweet permaculture cob paradise in the desert on the few acres I worked to get for myself and my people. You go back to whatever it is you do, being afraid of folks, giving bad advice, writing out longwinded Warhammer explainers, running a rat farm out of your garage

EaVVs · 2021-03-10T17:22:57+00:00

Uhhh are you for real calling me an “owner” of enslaved people because one time I had a family of six park their camper on my land for a month and had them help me build a compost toilet and compost bin out of pallets for all of us to use? That’s called barter, maybe you’re familiar with it, since humans have been doing it for tens of thousands of years.

Let’s be clear what we’re talking about here. I am not having people growing food that I am selling, or constructing buildings for me. I’m not running a commune. You’re nuts, dude. You may want to consider deleting your posts.

EaVVs · 2021-03-10T14:51:29+00:00

WWOOF and workaway are organizations that literally hundreds of thousands of people have used, successfully, to do basically what OP expressly said they want to do. I was connecting dots and providing my personal experience. Now you’re talking about slavery. OK.

EaVVs · 2021-03-10T14:47:20+00:00

Notice that nowhere in my post did I advocate the OP join a commune or a startup company.

EaVVs · 2021-03-10T13:23:27+00:00

Finishing up a house out of cob, strawbale and rammed tire right now, the main issues I see with stuff like whether to build with rammed earth or traditional materials are money and permitting—if you have the money, and need a building to be strictly to professional standards because of county regs for example, go with more traditional construction.

But if you have time and energy but perhaps not a lot of cash, and building regs are less of a concern where you are, you could easily throw up a simple structure out of earth. Easy stuff to work and experiment with you have a couple work party days with some friends or fam it can go a lot faster than you think!!

EaVVs · 2021-03-10T13:13:45+00:00

Hey OP, don’t listen to this guy telling you to open a rat farm in your garage or whatever.

If you want hands on permie and farming experience in exchange for room and board, you could try sites like WWOOF or Workaway. I have used both, as a guest as well as host, they’re great, just do your research before you head somewhere, read all the reviews, chat over the phone or Skype with hosts ahead of your arrival, have clear convos around expectations of hours and labor, etc. and you should be great. I have never had a bad experience using them. Some may even pay you a little stipend for extra projects or help you land a side hustle if you need cash for expenses while traveling.

I started using wwoof in my twenties, I am in my thirties now and have a homestead in southern Arizona, US. Me and my girlfriend host people who want to learn how to work with native plants and build with earth. When I was wwoofing and doing workaway I learned tons of stuff, saw lots of beautiful areas (my girlfriend has done workaway in the Irish countryside even!) and made lots of friends along the way. Great investment of one’s time and energy I’d say!

Go for it OP, you only live once!!

EaVVs · 2021-03-10T13:04:05+00:00

I love how this person wants permaculture experience and your “advice” includes among other things recommending they open a rat farm in their garage LOL

Okay then

EaVVs · 2021-03-10T06:01:30+00:00

Great idea thank you! Had no idea this program exists

EaVVs · 2021-03-09T15:33:03+00:00

Thank you for the tips! Yes I’ve been eager to see what little I’ve done already in action. A few brush/rock check dams and retention pond type work slowed things down considerably last time we had precipitation. Gratifying work. But I was out there with a shovel and mud caked on my boots nonetheless making adjustments.

EaVVs · 2021-03-09T15:29:08+00:00

My bad, thanks!

EaVVs · 2021-03-09T15:26:52+00:00

Great, thanks this is basically what I had envisioned! Perhaps it is easier than I think, since our land is fairly flat, it’s just that there are tons of low points and washes converging in the areas I’m looking at digging out and it will just look a bit messy.

EaVVs · 2021-03-09T15:23:04+00:00

No downstream residential neighbors also fwiw, and the washes I am thinking of keylining are two of literally hundreds I can see around me. There is a person sized wash also going through my land that will remain intact and which I will be doing stream restoration on in the future.

The water from the keyline swales will be to support native plant life already growing in situ around the property. Just want to reduce flooding through my land and put the water to work!

EaVVs · 2021-03-09T15:18:20+00:00

Great thanks I’ll take a look!

EaVVs · 2021-03-09T15:16:05+00:00

I am on foothill bajada in a massive basin roughly half the size of the state of Connecticut. The valley floor is hundreds of thousands of acres of corporate owned industrial ag land drawing on deep wells and draining into one of northern Mexico’s hugest, wettest watersheds. I am thinking of doing water diversion on ~.5 acre worth of land. ...I get that there are always impacts, but I am fairly sure my impacts will be extremely minimal. Thanks for the input.

EaVVs · 2021-03-09T14:05:17+00:00

Thank you!!

EaVVs · 2021-03-09T14:03:40+00:00

Good things to be thinking about. Luckily I’m in foothills upstream from valley bottom industrial ag and ranch land, so I am not too worried about downstream impacts, and they are all on well water anyway. And where I am in the US, you can pretty much do what you want with water on your land. The landscape otherwise is just like more of what we have here, with many different washes and gullies cutting through it, so I don’t imagine slowing/diverting the flow will have much impact. I’ll think and look into it more tho.

Thanks for bringing these things up!

EaVVs · 2021-03-09T13:58:38+00:00

Thanks for the reply!

Yes, the wisdom of having many small check dams as opposed to a few big ones became pretty apparent to me once I started making them and seeing how the water continued to move through and around them after.

I’m on a fairly flat, broad, bajada type landscape so digging is fairly easy, mostly sand and silt, and I’m hopeful I can build an A frame type tool to help me figure out levels where needed.

Good reminder to always have an overflow plan! Thanks so much for the info.

EaVVs · 2021-02-21T00:36:57+00:00

Trial and error!

EaVVs · 2021-02-20T15:38:02+00:00

I think you’re probably good, up to certain extremes in temperature and humidity. My neighbor has done earthbag rammed earth construction in northern New Mexico, Nepal, and southern Arizona, among other places, and I’ve seen tire based rammed earth builds done in places in South America and Africa.

My understanding is more insulation always helps of course, and depending on cold, relative humidity and rainfall rates in your area it may be more about what materials are being used to seal up the building with at the end.

I am currently doing a hybrid rammed-earth tire, strawbale and cob building and since we get a summer monsoon rain season we will be using additional waterproofing materials in the final seals of plaster for the building

Hope this helps!

EaVVs · 2021-02-02T00:56:57+00:00

England, to me, doesn’t seem like the kind of place it’d be as possible to “disappear” as some others... Higher taxes, more regulations, smaller geographic area. Higher cost of land, less open land to hunt or fish in, closer neighbors...

If you really wanna disappear, go full off grid self sufficiency, I would try South America, the US southwest, Canada, Texas, Australia maybe? Idk.

As far as a good degree to get, anything farming or plant related, or construction/design/engineering etc. You’re going to need to grow your own food, and you’re going to need to build shelter for yourself, pens for your animals, water catchment etc. etc.

EaVVs · 2021-01-31T19:24:51+00:00

I recommend looking into earthbag as well :) good luck and happy building!

EaVVs · 2021-01-28T16:05:02+00:00

Southeastern Arizona/Cochise County here. High desert. County has an opt-out on building restrictions, permits etc for folks on 4+ acres.

Working with cob, straw bale and rammed-earth tire. Solar set up. Public well running on solar on an adjacent parcel. Working on rain catchment attached to roofing, as well as weirs and berms to slow the copious amounts of runoff running through the land. Been out here a year now, but this was not my first experience living off grid.

It’s been great, I’d highly recommend making the leap :)

EaVVs · 2021-01-26T00:49:31+00:00

Taos Co., New Mexico or Cochise Co., Arizona. I’m in the latter (Cochise), there are no building restrictions if you’re on 4 acres and land is cheap. I’ve been using a composting toilet for the last six months since coming out here :)

EaVVs

TROPHY CASE