Joel Salatin: how to chose farmland

Milkwood writes…

“Where should I buy land? Where’s a good area? What should I be looking for in a landscape? …”

See what Nick Ritar and Joel Salatin has to say about it.

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Easy-Grow Vegetables

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The Garden – The Permaculture Song

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The most profitable plants in your vegetable garden

The Cheap Vegetable Gardener writes…

“It may be impossible to put a price on the satisfaction of bringing in a basket of produce fresh from your garden.  As well as the enhanced flavors from having truly fresh produce from your garden compared to that of your local supermarket.  Though when I was harvesting my potatoes this summer with my daughter I did have the thought, “Would it have been smarter for me to grow something else in this space?”  I estimate out of the 4-5 square feet I used for these plants I probably got about $4-5 worth of potatoes.

I did a little research first to determine yields of various plants per square foot and secondly what the value (organic supermarket prices USD) of the yielded produce at harvest.  Given I am a city dweller with a fairly small footprint for my vegetable garden (about 30-35 square feet) making decisions on what to buy at the supermarket and what to grow in the garden may be a huge money saver…”

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Determining your USDA hardiness zone

The USDA hardiness zones are based the average annual minimum temperature that occurs in an area. So, even if you don’t live in the U.S., you can probably come up with your approximate zone using this chart.

source

 

Hardiness Zone Chart
Annual Minimum Temperature
Zone	Farenheit	Centigrade
1	below -50 F	below -45.6 C
2a	-50/-45 F	-42.8/-45.5 C
2b	-45/-40 F	-42.7/-40.0 C
3a	-40/-35 F	-40.0/-37.3 C
3b	-35/-30 F	-37.2/-34.5 C
4a	-30/-25 F	-34.4/-31.7 C
4b	-25/-20 F	-31.6/-28.9 C
5a	-20/-15 F	-28.8/-26.2 C
5b	-15/-10 F	-26.1/-23.4 C
6a	-10/- 5 F	-23.3/-20.6 C
6b	– 5/ 0 F	-20.5/-17.8 C
7a	0/+ 5 F	-17.7/-15.0 C
7b	+ 5/+10 F	-15.0/-12.3 C
8a	+10/+15 F	-12.2/- 9.5 C
8b	+15/+20 F	– 9.4/- 6.7 C
9a	+20/+25 F	– 6.6/- 3.9 C
9b	+25/+30 F	– 3.8/- 1.2 C
10a	+30/+35 F	– 1.1/+ 1.6 C
10b	+35/+40 F	+ 1.7/+ 4.4 C
11	above +40 F	above +4.5 C

 

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Permaculture Guilds

temperate climate permaculture writes…

“A guild, according to Webster’s Dictionary, is an association of people with similar interests or pursuits, also, or more particularly, a guild is a medieval association of merchants or craftsmen.  The word guild comes from the Old English and means Payment or Tribute.

Historically, for example, a carpenter could pay tribute to join a carpenter’s guild.  He would then be protected by the society of fellow carpenters… protected from price gouging, unfair trade, etc. and protected from others stealing their “secrets”, i.e. skills or “tradesecrets”.  This is where a lot of the secret societies were initially formed (like the Masons… initially, stonemasons).  That carpenter could then focus on being the best carpenter he could be while making a good living for himself and his family.  But enough of the history…”

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RawBale Chicken House Design

milkwood.net writes…

“Within the Gravity Chicken Run, we needed a place for our chickens that was warm in winter and cool in summer. We also wanted it to be super easy to clean, cheap to build, and easy to keep our chickens healthy long term. So we came up with a design called the RawBale Chicken House.

Making a chicken house is a bit like being able to build your own fort all over again. Except now that you’re big, you have more skills to make something that will be not only exciting, but also useful and enduring…”

source

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