1. Observe and Interact
The first of 12 permaculture principles is observe and interact. This is about sitting back and looking at what you have before you interact. Take a walk, sit on a rock, get a portable hammock so you can set it up in various places so you observe your land in …
Permaculture Design Principles
The permaculture design principles are a set of tools that we are using to design a more efficient and sustainable homestead. While we are using these principles in a certain way, according to what we have and our climate, these principles can be universally applied to create systems anywhere you …
What is Permaculture?
What is permaculture? Broken down into its parts, permanent agriculture. It is a sustainable living methodology including home, garden, and community. According to Bill Mollison, one of the founders of permaculture, it is, “The conscious design and maintenance of cultivated ecosystems which have the diversity, sustainability, and resilience of natural …
Bushcraft Wood Storage
On the first day of autumn, we built a bushcraft hut for the kids to play in. They got a ton of use out of it, but are now bored with it. They were bored of it until we decided to use it. We had discussed adding a small structure …
Autumn is for Garden Bed Building
My autumn season has been incredibly busy. Cut firewood. Haul materials for new garden beds. Along with all the regular chores of course. I am preparing beds now so that the compost can start to rot in its new home and because the leaves are so numerous in the autumn. …
Cob Rocket Stove Build
We use our cob rocket stove outside half the year for all of our cooking. The other half of the year it’s cold out so we cook on the woodstove inside. We really love the rocket stove, but we could really, really, use another burner. I decided to try to …
Collecting Natural Clay For Building
If you live in an area anything like mine, you have plenty of clay “soil” and hate it. It is terrible for gardening and makes a huge mess when the kids play in it. However, clay is an ingredient in cob, which is an amazing natural building material used for …
Yard Waste Upcycle
This is the fantastic pile of rich yard waste we have to work with: The purpose of this post is to demonstrate how a pile of twisted up “waste” can be useful for so many different things. The pile is tree tops left by the logger and pushed aside, twisting …
Chop and Drop: Weeds for Mulching
I have many areas around the house that are suppossed to be the yard. However, being fresh cut forest, the wild field plants have taken over. I plan to turn these wild plants and excess of trees into mulch. The majority of our lot is wooded, so I don’t feel …
Practice Dome Building
An important part of taking on a project as big as a house, is to practice the building techniques you may want to use. Our plan is to build our home out of cordwood and domes, so when we had the opportunity for the man to go help Freedom’s Phoenix …