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 …

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.  …

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 …

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 …

Introducing the newest page on Homestead Houligan: The Cordwood and Dome Home  In preparation for building our forever house, we spend hours drawing and calculating and planning details.  This helps to work through possible design flaws and make sure we include all the things we want.  I will continue to …

One of the issues we have here on the homestead is keeping food cold.  We have a cooler that goes through tons of ice all summer.   Then during the winter the food freezes.  We plan to put in a root cellar this year for sure, but what if we could …