In my formative teen years I was reading books such as Bradford Angier’s One Acre & Security about how to live simply off the land. These books set the direction for my life. I won’t recap what the book is about – follow the link if you’re interested – I mostly wanted to know what readers would do if they had a small piece of land in the country. What type of house would you build? Would you build a barn? A shop? Dig a pond? Grow a garden? Start a home-based business? What would you do?
permaculture
Compost in Place
People have asked about our lack of compost piles and bins at our new homestead. Here’s an overview of the composting method we’re using on our forest garden. Compost happens no matter what approach you use. We prefer no till gardening — get out of the way and let nature take care of things. Simply spread soil amendments on the garden as time and money allow and then let it break down naturally. The following article from Dave’s Garden explains the process in more detail.
CHEAP Pallet Raised Bed Garden
“How to make raised beds out of free wood pallets. Important note: If you aren’t using a perforated liner, or something that allows water to drain, you’ll need to, carefully, put holes in your plastic after stapling it to your pallets.”
No dig garden construction
“A quick video on the steps involved in constructing a no dig garden bed. You do not have to follow the video specifically, you can use different materials – just follow the general pattern of construction.
Lessons Learned In The Garden
“I love to spend time working the living earth. There is joy to be found in coaxing life from seeds and nourishing that life to bring beauty to our home and food to our table. When I was young my parents believed that boys who were busy working were also boys who would have little … Read more
Natural Farming (Zero Farming)
This is very, very bad news for Monsanto, pesticide, herbicide and chemical fertilizer companies. I won’t shed a tear for them.