Planning and Goals

Mini Cordwood House: No Waste

Building a house and living in a house both produce large amounts of waste.  Not our house!  This will be as close to a no waste as possible and our finished house will produce no where near what a conventional home might produce. Since we are using almost all natural …

Food Forest
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6. Produce No Waste

The next permaculture principle is produce no waste.  No wasting things can be anything from recycling to being efficient and not wasting time.  Much of the “waste” we produce can be used for other things with just a little creativity. One of the most obvious sources of waste is simply …

Materials
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Mini Cordwood House Plans: Why Natural Building

One of the more commonly seen natural homes out there is the Hobbit House.  Thank you to Being Somewhere for the photos. Natural homes, in my opinion, are the most beautiful homes you coud build.  When our house is done, it will be beautiful just because it is a natural …

Building

Mini Cordwood House: For Practice

Our dream home is a fairly complex natural home with lots of fun additions like an attached green house and an amazing masonry stove as the centerpiece of the home.  This house will take a lot of skills to build.  A lot of skills that we do not currently have.  …

Food Forest
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3. Obtain a Yield

The most obvious example of “obtain a yield” is to grow food.  You do work planting, growing, maintaining, and harvesting a garden to get a yeild.  Amazing food that you can eat and then store the excess to eat through the winter.  Simple, right? We can make it a little …

Off Grid Utilities
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Mini Cordwood House Plans: Energy Efficiency

Being energy efficient is a must for us here on the homestead.  We don’t have the time to waste energy.  This is going to be very important to keep in mind when we build our cordwood house this spring. The most important energy in our home build is heat.  We …

Food Forest
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2. Catch and Store Energy

The second permacuture principle is catch and store energy.  When you think of “catch and store energy,” solar power tends to be the first thing that comes to mind.  This is a great start, but energy that can be caught and stored can be so much more than just solar. …

Planning and Goals
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Mini Cordwood House Planning: Gathering Materials

The last post I did was about observing and interacting with your environment and I talked a lot about finding free resources on our land to do various projects.  The greatest project so far is going to be salvaging materials to build a cordwood house.  Here’s the story of the …

Food Forest
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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 …

Bugs
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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 …