Permaculture - Farms of the Future

I just stumbled on this video on permies.com forums and it is pretty good. It focuses on the energy cost and declining world supply and how our food supply is literally in danger. Very nice to see how the host of the show progressed in her understanding of permaculture, and I think we completely underestimate the power of synergy, diversity in plant, animal, insects, and how nature was designed to work. Thinking of the garden of Eden and how God put Adam and Eve there to tend the garden. I just visualize how they must have had a fascinating understanding of these complex systems, and just how stupid we literally have become. Anyway I thought you might enjoy the video.

Permaculture Swale #2 - lining with wood Hugelculture Style

Welcome to another update on the Be Prepared Channel. It has been a very busy day building the second permaculture swale using wood from a tree we cut down this week. I was surprised that that swale consumed most of the top portion of the tree we cut down this week. I also elected to just break down the branches and line the swale with branches, sticks and some of the logs up to about 4-6" in diameter. Once I had the sheet mulch in place and the branches I then started filling the swale with composted horse manure. I have spent a good portion of the day just getting that part done. Once I had that in place it was time to go run to the big box store and spend some money on peat, compost, and vermiculite.

Now I am here to tell you that gardening this way is NOT CHEAP! Anyone with some common sense would just take their time from season to season and build up their compost production, work to put these beds in place from the soil, and things on the property, and worst case they would carefully shop the free listings on Craigslist for fill dirt, leaves, mulch, cardboard boxes etc. That would be the wise thing to do, and just take your time. However with things being the way they are in our economy and job stability being non-existent I feel we have reached that inflection point this year that it will take some "SHOCK and AWE" in my yard to kick start this thing. Not the preferred method, and this is not what I would truly call "Permaculture". True permaculture would use what we have available and promote the systems with what we have on hand and over time we would build a sustainable growing space, but sadly time constraints make that not workable at this point. So shock and awe gardening it is!

So today several trips to the home improvement store for "black gold" and I now have the basic supplies to finish up the second swale in the morning. I will tell you I am tired after all this hauling of stuff all over the yard and at the store and at home. Boy shock and awe gardening is hard work! Not to mention the shock and AWEful feeling my wallet got today. So I think I am close to wrapping up the fun factor here for the day. I may go out and move a few more bags of compost to where I am going to put it in the swale, and some peat too and call it a day. I am posting a video I took earlier today showing the wood branches lining the swale before I started burying it in manure. I will follow up with a video of what it looks like when we have all the layers on it. We will be putting some leaf litter on top, then layer some peat moss, then compost. So I will let you see what it looks like when done. Next on the list this weekend is to setup our conventional raised beds. Looks like that will be the project for tomorrow at this rate. It really is surprising just how much effort it takes to setup the basic infrastructure/framework for a garden. The good news is that the heavy lifting phase is now at the beginning and fortunately this isn't an annual thing. I considering it an investment that will repay us for years to come. Invest in yourself and in tangible things. Prices on everything are going up and the ability to grow safe, healthy, organic foods at your home could offset a substantial portion of your grocery bill which as you know is growing faster than most paychecks. At the rate things are increasing I honestly don't think in will take but a couple of growing seasons to fully repay you for all your effort, costs, and time it took to setup your garden space. So if you haven't decided to put a garden in yet this year what is holding you up?



In the News:
China Economist Blasts Dollar Dominance On Eve of G20
Guest Post From Dylan Ratigan:
A List Of 28 Things That Will Make You Think There Is Something Seriously Wrong With The Country
13% Of All US Homes Are Vacant
Stocks Rise After Unemployment Dips To Two-Year Low
Endgame for Global Mercantilism
BAHRAIN: Crackdown continues,
SYRIA: Economic hardship feeds social unrest,
Rising Rates a Boon for Metals
Why States Are Shying Away From ObamaCare’s Health Insurance Exchanges
Don't Believe the Chart, the US Dollar is Dropping Like a Stone
Dimon Says a Hundred Municipalities in U.S. Won’t ‘Make It’ Out of Debt
Hoenig Says Fed Shares Blame for Higher Commodity Prices; Urges Tightening
Qaddafi Defector Shows Regime Crumbling as NATO Takes Charge, Cameron Says
Food Commodities Surge Seen Swamping Consumers With Inflation
Treasuries Set for Two-Week Loss on Signs Fed Won't Extend Bond Purchases
$5 Fees May Be Coming To An ATM Near You
Why Marc Faber Is Such a Bear.
Pentagon:Libyan rebels desperately need help,
Vacant California – California has over 1 million vacant housing units increasing 54 percent in one decade
Springs man's claim to have Obama records starts buzz
The New Colonialism: Washington's Pursuit of World Hegemony
Federal Reserve, forced by court,
WTO panel says Boeing received banned U.S. subsidies
Robert Gates again rules out U.S. ground forces for Libya
Global systemic crisis:
US Economy In The Greater Depression Confirmed By GDP Data
Solar Sunspot Activity and the Financial Markets
LIBYA: THE REBELS RETREAT
Many Jobs Seen as Failing to Meet the Basics
Skunked
THE LIBYA FARCE, CONT'D
Jim Rogers Predicts Soaring Oil Prices
American's feather nests with silver Eagles
Geithner's Blatant Lies at the G20 Meeting; Four-Pronged Solution
Will Greece Be Forced To Sell The Acropolis?
Japan Rebuilds While The Fed Tears Down
Federal Reserve: U.S. Headed for Insolvency
Why Iran Is Sweating Bullets
New Portuguese, Irish economic disclosures deepen European financial struggles
Ohio police, firefighters cite safety concerns,
For federal workers, anxiety over a possible shutdown
Europe relies on U.S. power again
Gates grilled on price of 'illegal war'

Episode 15 - Starting your seeds indoors, outdoors, cold frames, and raised beds

Welcome to another episode of the Be Prepared Channel. Today we talk about starting seed, indoors, outdoors, cold frames. We reference some resources to make your job easier to determine when you should be starting those plants and where. We also discuss raised beds, shortcomings, and things you can do to improve on the raised bed idea. We talk about how to size your beds based on the number of people you are feeding, and start the thinking process on copy gardening(our version of copy canning only with the garden for our food storage plans.

For Last Frost data check out this NOAA site:

NOAA Last Frost Dates and Data

For the expert advise of the Farmers Almanac on when to start seeds both indoors, and outdoors and moon phases:

Farmers Almanac Seed Starting Info

If you decide to put up a cold frame, or greenhouse the key to success may rely on your ability to know the temps outside and in your cold frame/greenhouse. Get an thermometer that keeps track of the maximum temp, and minimum temps and put one outside, and put one in your cold frame/greenhouse. Then track that data. The common wisdom rule of thumb is 6-8 weeks prior to your last frost date is your seed starting dates. Farmers Almanac appears conflict with that thinking a little bit so you will want to get that info from the almanac. If you want to know the history data for temps for prior days in your area check out Weather Underground or Weather.com for that info. This can help you fill in the blanks and compare your temp data with theirs.

I hope you enjoy the episode!

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Episode 14 - Vehicle maintenance and tips to save you money

Welcome to another episode of the Be Prepared Channel. In this podcast we talk about how the global supply chain can affect you and your vehicle. We talk about tips and sources of information that can save you a lot of time, headaches, and money. Recommended things you should know, and things you should consider having on hand in your spares kit for your vehicle. And of course we touch upon upgrades/improvements to your vehicle that potentially could make your car more efficient, and more reliable.

Useful URL's to sites referenced in this podcast:
cleanmpg.com (hypermiler central!)
eccomodder.com (the modder's home for all things you can tweak)
insightcentral.net (Home for the Honda Insight, my current project car)
tdiclub.com (home for all things turbo diesel in the car world)
edmunds.com (great place for consumer reviews on vehicles so you can get an idea of what the common failure or problems are with any vehicle, one you own, or one your planning to buy)

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In the News:
Obama fails 'Nixon to China' budget moment
Top 10 Dying Industries
Fed to Name Banks That Sought Funding During Crisis
Threats Claim Nuclear Bombs Hidden All Over U.S.
Going Broke: Treasury Down to $58.6B in Cash
Obama in 2002: Toppling Brutal Dictator a 'Dumb War'
When Gold Becomes Money Again
Home Price Declines Deepen in Major US Markets
Gadhafi Push Tests the Coalition Strategy
CIA Operatives Are Aiding Rebels
Radiation Traces Found in U.S. Milk
The Inflation Knuckleball
Massive Capital Wave Approaches Gold
G-20 Criticism of Fed Easing May Be Muted at Meeting in China
Ohio House passes collective bargaining bill
Lawmakers Resume Testy Budget Talks to Avert Shutdown
Real Estate Crash Catches Up to U.S. Municipalities
Japan Weighs Entombing Nuclear Plant on Chain Reaction Risk
Bill Gross Says Treasuries Have Little Value, Echoing Buffett
Qaddafi Forces Gain on Rebels as His Foreign Minister Quits
Wisconsin Anti-Union Law Faces New Hurdle
How Low Will Home Prices Go?
Big Banks Lose: Mortgage Risk Retention Doesn't Expire
As Housing Recovery Lags, Rental Business Set to Boom
Chinese demand powers global gold market
Gold, silver still influenced by Japan gloom
Obama signs secret order giving the CIA the green light
Arming Libya rebels not allowed by UN resolutions
Obama calls for cut in US oil imports by a third
Israel fears the alternative if Syria's Assad falls
CIA officers in Libya are aiding rebels, U.S. officials say
Case-Shiller: Home Price Double-Dip Materializing
MBA Expresses "Profound Concern" Over Risk Retention Proposals
Obama authorizes secret help for Libya rebels
Fed drains $750 million of reserves via reverse repo
Ohio Legislature approves bill limiting bargaining rights
Stricken Portugal 'lacks the cash to meet debt payments'
A New Plan for Homeowners That Protects Taxpayers, Too
Greenspan and Barofsky on Mending the Financial System
The New American Ghost Towns
Microsoft’s Odd Couple
In Libya, CIA is gathering intelligence on rebels
Syria's Assad offers no concessions, blames protests on 'big conspiracy'

Product Review: Palram Cold Frame Single

Here is the promised video review of the Palram Cold Frame that I purchased for doing my starter plants this year. I purchased 3 of these, but in hindsight I would like a "do over". Here is my review of this product:

Permaculture Plant Guilds - My own learning and planning of our tree guilds

Welcome to another episode of the Be Prepared Channel. Today I am thinking about the next steps as I am thinking through the planning and placement of beds, plants, trees on my little postage stamp lot. Permaculture is new to me and really only heard about it somewhat a year or so ago on Jack Spirko's show The Survival Podcast. Jack does an awesome job every day and brings a lot of great content to the community. Knowing how much work it is to do a simple podcast, or to put up some video is really overwhelming and Jack somehow manages to knock it out every day. Well Jack was the one that really brought permaculture into my own world. I was already focusing and learning all I could about organic gardening and just getting my head wrapped around that shift in thinking. One of the things that becomes obvious as you look at organics and trying to integrate conventional wisdom of growing things with organics is that we honestly create a great deal of work for ourselves. We transport in materials, and soil supplements, we spend a lot of time and effort trying to create soil and an environment for growing plants that requires a lot of work. Jack said one day on his show... STOP DIGGING! And that we are just creating work for ourselves. That got my attention, but didn't really push me to the next steps of understanding more fully what that meant.

So here is the podcast for today's topic. See some of my notes and ramblings below and some of the video clips that might make permaculture clearer if it is new to you.

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So finally I did watch Geoff Lawton's Greening the Desert and the follow up videos posted on this permaculture experiment that transformed a desert space into a growing, thriving microclimate in the desert. That really got my attention and then I started digging for more videos on YouTube to help me crash course on this concept. Here is one of those videos on greening the desert:



Bill Mollison the cofounder of Permaculture did this show called "The Grave Danger of Falling Food" that was also an eye opener. Here is part 1 of 5 of that show:



Now once you get your interest up and start thinking about it then it starts to make you realize that conventional wisdom on how we plant and grow things might just be a bigger part of the problem than we realize and that in order for nature to be sustainable there are stacking functions of plant, animal, bacteria, micro organisms, insects, people, and the environment that make things work. In other words everything requires something else as a helper, companion, supporter in order for things to work and work effectively. Our conventional way of thinking in mono crops, or single plant species is not duplicated often in nature and with good reason. So today I want to talk about what I am learning and attempting to understand which is call plant guilds. In this case I am specifically focusing on tree guilds for my own lawn space. There are lots of conversations about this topic on permies.com, and you can get a crash course primer in the book called Gaia's Garden. I don't pretend to understand a fraction of what I need to know on this topic and one of the biggest challenges I face is the very limited land space I have to put these guilds. So I am still trying to figure out tree spacing, and that will dictate on my little landscape the location of these trees.

Lessons from the 3 sisters(or is that 4?):
Honestly I can vaguely remember being taught something about the 3 sisters guild and that native Americans taught settlers about this relationship of plants. The 3 sisters are corn, squash, and beans. This intentional design offers several things to each plant. First corn offers shade, and a trellis for climbing beans, and it has been discovered that the roots of the corn release compounds into the soil that actually feed the bacteria that the beans use to accumulate nitrogen. Squash also provides weed suppression, shade, keeps the soil cooler, and helps retain moisture. Now it has been found that there might have been a 4th sister in this planting arrangement. The 3 sisters brought in animal, plant, and bacterial elements, but the 4th sister introduces beneficial insects. This forth plant is the Rocky Mountain Bee Plant. This plant is found near Indian Anasazi settlements and many have noted that anyplace you find this plant it is near former human settlements. So it is believed that the use of this plan is wide spread. It is a tall purple flower that attracts pollinators, the leaves, flowers, and seed pods are edible. The Inca and other new world peoples used the plant Amaranth as the 4th sister. The stacking, inter-relationships that these plants represent make each plant stronger. A university study of the 3 sisters showed that when calculating caloric production of a mono culture of corn vs the 3 sisters that the 3 sisters produced 20% more calories for the same space. So we start to see how a monoculture of plantings strips soils of nutrients, the plants do not get the help that they need, and aren't as productive as if we combine them with complementary plants.

To be honest as I read this in Gaia's Garden it just clicked and makes sense. The challenge in my space is to figure out how many different ways we can use guilds, and complimentary plants in a limited space. I do plan to have some conventional raised beds this year for growing things, but I will be starting the experimentation with guilds in various places in my landscape. The combination of these guild relationships can reduce the work needed, improve growing and fertility for the plants involved, and hopefully start to form a sustainable food forest in the process.

What has me bothered?
Small space and trying to shoehorn big things into it! So my big focus at the moment is trees, shrubs, and bushes in this landscape and making guilds part of that makeup. Then once I have the placement, and large plant choices made then I will know what other space I will have to work with as this layout develops. So I am thinking about trees and common guilds.

So it appears when teaching permaculture the common thing to teach on these guilds is to start off with something simple so as to explain it more clearly. This starting point is typically an apple tree guild. What is an apple tree guild? It is a tree and the companion plants that one should grow around a tree. Each one providing that stacking function of supporting and enhancing each other.

Your basic elements of a apple tree(or substitute any fruit tree here) is:
1. Central element(apple tree)
2. Grass supressing bulb plants
3. Insect and bird attracting plants
4. Mulch plants
5. Nitrogen accumulators
6. Nitrogen fixers
7. Soil fumigants and pest repellants
8. Habitat Nooks

So as we begin to assemble our first guilds here on my urban homestead we will try to share some video and explain what we are seeing and learning in this process. I hope you find this interesting and helpful as we will continue to share what we are learning as we put together some of our own plant/tree guilds.


In the News:
Well my intention for the news section was to draw some attention to some of my favorite sites and maybe send some traffic their way since my goal with this blog is to only inform and help people, and share my experiences along the way. My intention isn't to be a "news" site, but a how to, show it, demonstrate it, review it, and of course laugh at it blog. However it appears that some folks felt that even though I was crediting sites for the great news content, providing the URL's, and promoting my favorite sites that I was somehow stealing even though this is a not for profit blog and there is no business entity involved. So I decided to modify my code and just start grabbing public domain URL's with the news and will not credit anyone and avoid the worry completely. I can grab the news from all over the web and boil it down to post it here. This avoids any further worries of theft since I am not republishing any content from other sites, but simply posting the URL's which anyone can find anywhere on the internet. I hope this satisfies those that contacted me concerned about stealing and theft. Here is the newly boiled down list of headlines without any distinction of where it comes from or any redirects to other sites. It is sad that I am apparently not allowed to promote places I enjoy and hope that you will too, but I guess that is the strange world we live in today.

A Look at Case-Shiller, by Metro Area
Where Are Americans Most Miserable?
Broke And Getting Broker:
Home Price Declines Deepen in Major US Markets
More on How Inflation Turns Us Into Con Artists
The Inflation Knuckleball
March LPS Mortgage Monitor Report:
World War II Did Not End the Great Depression
11.4% of all U.S. homes are vacant
Consumers jittery about inflation and income
Utah: Forget dollars. How about gold?
Home prices near a double dip
The Unites States Possesses the Largest Energy Resources on Earth
Hedge Funds are About to Undress
At Plant, a Choice Between Bad, Worse
Allies Intensify Call for Gadhafi to Step Down
Amid Rebels, 'Flickers' of al Qaeda
How Can America Create Wealth If Our Industrial Base Is Destroyed?
Will Financial Problems In Portugal
Wow That Was Fast! Libyan Rebels
The Libyan Folly
Next U.S. Terror Attack Might Come From New Toys:
US house prices continue dramatic fall
Obama not ruling out Libya arms
Buffett Says Buy Businesses Over Long-Term Bond
Criticism of Fed Easing 'So Yesterday' as G-20 Meets in Nanjing
Dying Banks Kept Alive
Gold and silver consolidating at new highs
Radiation, Japan and the Marshall Islands
Obama Raises American Hypocrisy to Higher Level
Greenspan warns on Dodd-Frank reforms
Home prices fall across US
Opec set for $1,000bn [One TRILLION dollars] in export revenues
Long-Term Bearish on China and the US
Gaddafi issues defiant challenge to Libya conference in London
Japan may have lost race to save nuclear reactor
Syrian president sacks cabinet in effort to quell protests
US consumers use savings to pay for basics
How China Manipulates Its Currency
Republicans Don't Want the Deficit 'Crisis to Go to Waste'
Roy Moore Runs for President
Drop in home prices in January raises fear of double dip
Wisconsin judge halts state from moving forward
Cash for Clunkers 2: The Return of Government Motors
'Freelance Jihadists' join Libyan rebels
Housing-bust damage spreads
Team Obama, world police

Episode 12 - When the world is going to heck - Stay Focused

Welcome to another episode of The Be Prepared Channel podcast. Today we talk about staying focused on our priorities as the world is going to heck around us. We talk about the work we are doing on the homestead, swales, directing runoff to swales and our yard space. We talk about the use of trees, gutters, cold frames, and of course some prepper technology we should all have which is something that is extremely high tech, renewable, solar... and you gotta get one... It's called a clothesline!

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