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Permaculture, livelihood, design, diversify, polyincome. Many people are unhappy in their jobs and yet most don’t do anything about it.

permaculture, livelihood, design, diversify, polyincome

Discovering permaculture can be the catalyst for us to start considering how we might make that transition to the more positive-impact lifestyle we aspire to. At first it may seem that the only available permaculture livelihoods are as a teacher or food grower, but these are just the visible ‘front end’ of a wide network of inter-dependencies. While teaching and writing are my passion, I currently still manage my own websites, do my own accounts and convene some of my own courses. I gained those skills out of necessity, but would love to be able to call on them from within the permaculture community to free up my time for the things I’m more interested in. So this article shares some ideas and reflections in the hope it will help bring more of you into the permaculture economy.

Companion Planting

Plant Dyes. Growing veg. Bill Molinson. Water storage systems. Designs. Mushroom growing. Wood burning stoves. How To Build Rocket Mass Heaters / Stoves. How To Succeed At Planting Asparagus - Plant Once & Grow For 10-20 Years. Self Sufficiency Magazine Ideas For Living A Self Sufficient Lifestyle How To Succeed At Planting Asparagus – Plant Once & Grow For 10-20 Years August 12, 2014 by Sally Leave a Comment.

How To Succeed At Planting Asparagus - Plant Once & Grow For 10-20 Years

Design & Thinking Movie - Kickstarter Teaser. Build Your Own Rocket Mass Heater.

Permaculture videos

How to Prepare for a Collapse – a Case Study with David Holmgren. BUILDING. Making Hay By Hand: How to Use a Scythe - Tools. Nothing so smells like summer more than a hayfield freshly mown.

Making Hay By Hand: How to Use a Scythe - Tools

Even during winter when you break into those little bundles of summer sunshine, the scent will take you back — and the nutrition will help your flocks and herds thrive. Making hay is something that is universally anticipated by folks living on the land, but for many small holders, the expense of collecting and maintaining all the power equipment used in the modern hay meadow is just too much.

Your options include buying hay, having a custom hay crew hay your place on shares, or making what you need, slowly but surely, by hand. And if you live in town and have just a few rabbits to feed, handmade hay is the only way to go. Making the cut: types of scythes.

Ways to make money

Site mapping. Cider/cider vinegar. Hardy herbaceous perennials - those plant people. Water pumps. Recycling food. Off grid/PP. Edible Perennial Gardening: New Plantings for March and April. The glorious early days of spring – light, bright and filled with hope and promise, send many of us rushing outside to begin sowing and planting.

Edible Perennial Gardening: New Plantings for March and April

I relish the opportunities presented at this time of year, however as there are so many different things I could grow and space is limited I have to choose carefully. I want to use the space available to best effect whilst expanding my horizons. So I tend to stick to my favourites that I know work plus a few new things to try out.

To increase my stock of my favourite perennial vegetables I will be sowing and growing: • Seeds of skirret, scorzonera, Welsh onion, bunching onions, dahlia, wild rocket, leaf beet, asparagus, earth nut pea and a selection of kales including nine star perennial broccoli, red Russian kale, wild cabbage, walking stick kale and trouve Tronchuda. Permaculture – What Is It And Why Is It Important? By Phil Watt: Developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the 1970’s, permaculture has spread wildly throughout the world… The term initially meant ‘permanent agriculture’, however it evolved to also represent ‘permanent culture’.

Permaculture – What Is It And Why Is It Important?

Permaculture is the ethical, scientific and synchronistic design of natural systems to ensure a sustainable philosophy of living. It also aims to facilitate abundance for the future of humanity by producing all the food and materials it needs on a local scale. At its core, permaculture is simply the collaboration of humans and nature in action. Permaculture – What Is It And Why Is It Important?

Plants and trees

Ovens. Tree sap tapping. Grey water bed. Building. Planting seeds. Chicken tractor. House plants. Permie farms. Strawbale Gardening: Why and How. As the name suggests, this is a method of gardening that allows you to grow plants in bales of straw instead of growing directly in the soil.

Strawbale Gardening: Why and How

Why? The first question to answer is, why? It may not seem obvious at first, but there are some definiate advantages of using this method: Bales are easier to work with, since your garden is immediately elevated instead of planting directly into the soil. You don't have to bend over as much as working at ground level, which is an advantage for those with back problems or other physical challenges. When shopping for straw, ask about spoiled bales. If you have soil that is not fit for a traditional garden, this is the perfect answer. Strawbale Gardening: Why and How.

Ovens and stoves

How to Grow Mushrooms on Your Jeans – Organic Gardening – MOTHER EARTH NEWS. Rather than getting rid of that old pair of jeans or composting those spent coffee grounds, consider using them to grow mushrooms instead.

How to Grow Mushrooms on Your Jeans – Organic Gardening – MOTHER EARTH NEWS

Mycologist Tradd Cotter has been researching innovative mushroom cultivation practices for more than 20 years. In his new book, Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation , he takes “organic” one step further by introducing an entirely new way of thinking—one that looks at the potential to grow mushrooms on just about anything, just about anywhere, and by anyone.

Books

Seed saving guidelines. What Is Permaculture?: Organic Gardening. Combining the best of natural landscaping and edible landscaping, permaculture aims for a site that sustains itself and the gardener.

What Is Permaculture?: Organic Gardening

The ultimate purpose of permaculture is to develop a site until it meets all the needs of its inhabitants, including food, shelter, fuel, and entertainment. (The word permaculture was coined in the mid-1970s by two Australians, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren.) While it’s the rare home gardener who can follow permaculture principles to the ultimate degree, most can borrow ideas from permaculture to create a new way of landscaping based on production and usefulness. Gardening and Permaculture Permaculture emphasizes the use of native plants or those that are well adapted to your local area.

Plant things you like, but make sure they have a purpose and somehow benefit the landscape. Disease-prone plants such as hybrid tea roses and plants that need lots of watering or other pampering are not good permaculture candidates.

Orchard planning & planting.

Compost toilets. How to Make a Biodegradable Willow Wreath…easy and free! 19 Oct Cut a range of willow stems, including Dogwood and any other bendy shrubs or woods you can easily access and lay them on the floor to grade them in length.

How to Make a Biodegradable Willow Wreath…easy and free!

Take a long length of green willow and made a circle, twisting the spare of the length around the circle. Following this, insert another long length as you can see, and twist this around the circle. Twisting long lengths to start the circle, strengthens the hoop and makes it easier to follow on with shorter pieces. 101 PERMACULTURE DESIGNS, downloadable imgur album.

Hugelkultur basics hugelkultur basics sheet mulching basics.

101 PERMACULTURE DESIGNS, downloadable imgur album

Window farms

Recipes. .facebook 1412442684695. Weaving a wicker basket; the most comprehensive basket tutorial on the internet- jonsbushcraft.com. It is a joy to harvest your own Willow from the countryside to make such baskets; and there are many types out there. However, not all Willow is suitable for basket making, many types are too brittle and will snap when bent to the extremes needed for basket weaving.

If I find some shoots of Willow growing in the countryside (often in overgrown hedgerows) I simply fold a stem at 90 degrees; if it snaps then it's not right for basketry... continue searching for a different variety. I have found that often the types of Willow with colourful bark such as reds, yellows and oranges are sometimes the best types. If your Willow is freshly picked then you will ideally need to Dry it; Baskets made from freshly cut Willow will shrink and the weave becomes loose later on, this is because Willow shrinks the most the first time it dries out.

It may take a few weeks to dry completely.

Funding

A Vegetable Garden That Waters Itself — Build It Easily, for Free. The hardest thing about gardening is remembering to water regularly. A sprinkler systems solves the problem but can be expensive. This method is so easy — anyone can start a vegetable garden — no fancy sprinkler system required. And did we mention it’s free? Learn how to get all your neighbors to grow food in their front yard. Recycle repurpose. Urban Vertical Garden Built From 100's Of Soda Bottles. As part of an innovative partnership called Home Sweet Home (Lar Doce Lar) between multidisciplinary design firm Rosenbaum and TV producer Luciano Huck, the teams went through dozens of Brazilian homes doing dramatic makeovers of interior and exterior spaces. On their 48th home Rosenbaum designed a pretty amazing vertical garden that was suspended in a narrow walkway just outside the house.

Reponse to the garden was so huge the firm quickly released design schematics (in Portugese) detailing how to build one. Perennial Vegetables: Years of Bounty. Perennial vegetables—crops that you plant just once and harvest year after year—are relatively rare in North American gardens. With the exception of asparagus, rhubarb and artichokes, most gardeners are probably unaware of the tasty, extremely low-maintenance bounty that can be harvested when many annual crops aren’t available. A Brief History of Perennial Crops According to Perennial Vegetables by Eric Toensmeier, most North American gardening and farming traditions come from Europe, where there are very few perennial crops except fruits and nuts.

Cold and temperate Eurasian agriculture centered around livestock, annual grains and legumes, and early European settlers to North America simply brought their seeds and their cultivation methods with them, including draft animals for plowing up the soil every year. However, in more temperate and tropical areas of the world, including much of North America, perennial root, starch and fruit crops were actively bred, selected and cultivated. 11. We like it wild: bottle gardens. Why winter is a smart time to garden. Before you settle down to your long winter's nap, there's something you should do before dozing off. Take advantage of year-end plant sales, select a few choice plants and plant them in the garden. How to become a composting guru.