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Rasili O’Connor (To be) Certified Permaculture Designer

PO Box 933

Lobethal, SA, 5241 Australia

Mobile: 0403 661 529 Phone: (08) 8389 5116

rasilioconnor@gmail.com First Stage Permaculture Design Report A first stage design, using Permaculture Design, designed, in view of Peak Oil and for real fulfilment on many levels, for your sustainable self-sufficient lifestyle. For: Ms Ilisar Ronnoco Property address: 700 Kenton Valley Road, Lobethal 5241 South Australia

Permaculture is, “…conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems…” and,

“… harmonious integration of landscape and people…”, and stems from, “…protracted

and thoughtful observation, rather than protracted and thoughtless labour…”

“Make the least changes that you need to achieve what you want. Don’t cut a tree down unless you have to . . .and I’ve never had to since I’ve adopted that as a principle.” Bill Mollison

“Better 100 hours of research before an hour of construction.” Geoff Lawton

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1. Client wish list 4 2. Proposed budget 3. Reporting stages 5 4. Legalities statement 5. Documentation of the land: 6

a. General description of property i. Recent history of the site

ii. The hill (15.8 acres) iii. The remaining land (2.71 acres)

1. Concreted area 2. Apart from concreted area

iv. Longitude/Latitude v. Elevation

vi. Distances from ocean/sea vii. Property size

viii. Site climate classification, analogue, plant hardiness zone 1. Some useful resources

ix. Summary of statistics (rainfall, temp., etc) 6. Site landscape profile type 14 7. Animals/Birds currently on property 8. Vegetation cover 15

a. Natives (endemic & other) b. Non natives c. Food plants currently on property

9. Soil types for non Habitat Agreement areas 15 a. Concreted area & ideas/solutions b. The rest

10. Water 17 a. Concreted area b. Growing areas c. Water catchment for your property

i. House & carport roof ii. Dam

d. Features already in position i. Pipes

ii. Dam iii. Pond iv. Water tanks next to house/carport v. Water tanks half-way up hill

e. Water options 11. Access 20

a. Features already in position b. Access options

12. Structures 20 a. Features already in position b. Fencing

i. At present ii. Future fencing options

iii. Spring/summer grasses NOW! and future! c. Structural options

i. Current (on shoestring budget) ii. Some future options

13. Slopes 23

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a. Habitat Agreement Hill b. Rest of the land c. Sun angles

14. Sectors 23 a. Sun b. Wind c. Fire: (i) Good, (ii) Concern d. Views

15. Aspects 26 a. House b. Orientation of the slopes

16. Zones 28 17. ‘Fun’ mind map 35 18. ‘Concrete’ mind map 35 19. Summary of elements 36 20. ‘Nooks & Crannies’ (e.g. microclimates) mind map 37 21. House 38

a. Construction (what built of) b. Energy use (current) c. Possible energy solutions d. Water use (in & out)

22. Plants 45 a. General list of species that could be grown on your property b. Food Forest c. Quick list of food plants being grown successfully by nearby locals d. Useful links e. Interesting notes f. Weeds that legally must be removed (under Habitat Agreement)

23. Resources 48 a. Materials on property (most of them) b. Ilisar’s resources: (i) Personal, (ii) Material c. Local resources (beginning list!) d. ‘Free or cheap building/garden materials’ mind map

24. Income generating (some possibilities) 51 a. Things people might need b. Things you could grow &/or produce, & sell

i. In brickwork kilns (dark): Mushrooms; Worms; Shade-loving plants c. Rest of your property: Berries; Flowers; Hurdles; Bees/honey; Mint

specialist; Hiring out your chickens; Moss; Garden windmills; Windsocks d. To generate more bartering/community sharing e. Resources of waste product/s f. Resources of surplus (& Bill Mollison extract) g. Resources of possible unfulfilled demands in area h. Workshops

25. Beginning list of ‘things to be done’ 54 a. Social b. Legal c. Investigate/research d. Physical (on the property)

26. Materials to get hold of 55 27. Future projects when more $, & barter networks developed 55 28. Research to do 56 29. Decisions (soon) 56 30. Appendices 57 31. Some resources – Books & Websites, etc 57

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CLIENT WISH LIST: • Self-sufficiency in food and energy • Transition from fossil fuel dependency, given Peak Oil and a craving for further

fulfilment • Harmonious, comfortable and enjoyable environment • Include fun! • Further moneymaking possibilities from the property • Further linking with local community • Create this design around what’s already there! (For shoestring budget!) • Design Report to be educational, i.e. links, references

Note: I understand that, while you’ve been vegetarian for 40 years (for animal care considerations), you are currently investigating whether this is realistic in a self-sufficient life style. PROPOSED BUDGET Shoestring (!) (pending windfalls!) • $2000 available now • Plus approx $25 per week • Plus wads of cash here and there as the months go by.

A shoestring budget can produce some very innovative and creative results. PURPOSE OF THIS DESIGN Ilisar, the sole resident, has lived on the property for only four months and has recently ploughed her spare savings into the mud brick addition to the house. Although she’s loved the concept of Permaculture for decades (but never actively studied it), she’s now keen to see what the possibilities are in reality, and on a shoestring budget, for her property. She currently works enjoyably part-time editing & proofreading from home (the property). Also, given an extensive background in counselling/therapeutic modalities, she’s currently studying a Counselling Diploma, so she can earn $ from what she has done on a volunteer basis for many years. With this Permaculture Design, she’s interested to discover possibilities for increasing her income and further providing for her needs from her property, and in conjunction/connection with her nearby community. First two years: Most of what’s to be implemented in the first two years will truly be on a shoestring budget (pending some windfalls), e.g. using found objects, materials, recycling material on the property, gleaning from the community//family/friends, etc. After that: Some suggestions for future projects that may need $ capital are welcomed by Ilisar. DESCRIPTION OF DESIGN This design has been put together with 100% response to: (i) Illisar’s huge awareness of the Peak Oil issue, (ii) her energy & creativity and (iii) with appreciation for this interesting, historical decommissioned brickworks property. Illisar lives by, ‘if you’re doing the right stuff, the right stuff comes, and you’re enjoying yourself’. She knows that, as she follows her passions, interests and hunches, more

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opportunities and niches (within community & the property) will emerge. This approach, combined with a shoestring budget, is the basis of this design. It is certainly not a conventional piece of land: lots of it (outside of it’s 15 acres under Habitat Agreement) is covered in cement, and there are three huge decommissioned brick kilns on the property. But, any perceived setbacks have been responded to with joy and enthusiasm, e.g. considering planting eucalypts or nut trees in cracks in the cement to break it up. In summary, this property belongs to an artist who is deeply concerned about Peak Oil and the ramifications of that, and who is keen to create abundance wherever possible on the property, and in participation with her local community. Much of the land is rubble, or clay, or concreted and some areas, scattered around the property have soil. Opportunities for growing food & produce have been uncovered (some already existed) and suggestions for workshops and community involvement have been given. REPORTING STAGES First stage: This report (since our meeting at your property last week) is the first stage, i.e. the outline of the concepts of the design principles that could be applied to your property. If you, Ilisar, are happy with the contents of this first stage concept, we can move to the second and third stages. As I said the other day, please feel free to contact me to talk about anything I’ve described here. This is an ever-evolving process! Second and third stages: In the second stage we’d work together and moderate or tweak the design to further fit your requirements, time constraints, budget, and experience.

The third stage is the production of detailed and specific plans, including plans and budgets for implementation. LEGALITIES Please note: only legal options have been suggested or recommended in this First Stage Report (also, see ‘Beginning list of Things To Be Done, Legal’ below).

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DOCUMENTATION OF THE LAND

Boundary of property ‘L’ shaped property is 700 Kenton Valley Rd

Contours of area General idea of contours of property

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General Description of Property This property, known locally as ‘The Old Brickworks’, is approximately 18 acres in the Adelaide Hills in a very narrow valley about 5 minutes drive from the township of Lobethal, which is approximately one hour’s drive from the centre of Adelaide. The original people (indigenous) of the Lobethal area were the Peramangk. http://lobethal.sa.au/history/indigenous-history and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peramangk Lobethal later became a Lutheran settlement. Interestingly, Lobethal was once called ‘Tweedvale’ as flax was grown and there was a mill. http://lobethal.sa.au/history/european-history Current demographics for Lobethal: http://localstats.qpzm.com.au/stats/sa/adelaide/adelaide-hills/lobethal Recent history of the site There is a lot of clay in the Lobethal & Lenswood valleys and the site of your property was chosen for brickworks in 19XX. Before its construction, the site was a narrow gentle valley. With construction, the site was excavated and in part (almost) levelled, with forays going further and further into the side of the hill, for clay. Eventually they hit quantities of quartz, the bricks started to explode and, to cut a long story short, they went bankrupt. In the late 80’s/early 90’s mine rehabilitation was done (to some extent) with some of the excavation being filled in. When you look at the profile view (see below), the present level of Kenton Valley Road is where the height at which the land once was.

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This photograph shows the height of the original land (where road is above) and the excavated level (below). Original level of the land returns towards south of property.

The hill (15.8 acres) – see ‘Heritage Agreement Proposal’ Approximately … acres of this property is a steep hill with approx 20-year growth natives.

! Everything on this hill above the road/track is under a Habitat Agreement. This hill backs onto Lobethal Bushland Park (separated by a very wide firebreak).

! Below the road/track on this hill, although revegetated with natives, is not part of the Habitat Agreement.

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The remaining land (2.71 acres) The majority of this land has a slope of 0.57 degrees, falling away to a good dam (which drops suddenly into a gully) at the bottom (south east) corner of the property (see ‘SLOPES’ for more detail). Remaining land & dam Basic(!) idea of contours

Concreted area: Left over from the time of the brickworks (decommissioned in 19??), about 1/3rd of this is covered in concrete and 3 decommissioned brickwork kilns in varying states of repair (interesting for their historical value) and possible use (see below ‘Mushrooms’ & ‘Worms’).

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Apart from the concreted area: The other 2/3 of this land consists of a ! pine log, ! mud brick house; grassed land; garden beds; three apple trees; two stands of blackberries; a clump of eucalypts (woodlot); native grasses, bushes and trees; two small sheds; an old one-room brick ‘office’ on the most north western tip; and various free-standing brick walls.

Old one-room brick ‘office’ (with pine tree growing through entrance!)

There are many interesting nooks and crannies on the property, including a couple of gullies cut out of the habitat-protected hill, where building stone and clay was once quarried (most likely pre-brickworks).

Longitude: 34.88° S

Latitude: 138.88° E

Elevation: meters above sea level: Lowest point on property: 488.780m (1603.609 ft)

Highest point on property: 509.438m (1671.383 ft)

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Distance from the ocean:

Distance from west coast @ West Beach (not open ocean) 23.113 miles (37.2klms)

Distance from south coast (open ocean) 46.9 miles (75.47klms)

Property Size: Total property:

Area: 18.51 acres (7.49 ha) Perimeter: 4860.5 ft (1481.5m)

Property minus Habitat Agreement area: Area: 2.71 acres (1.10 ha) Perimeter: 1569.1 ft (478.3m)

Site climate: Koppen-Geiger Climate Classification: Csb - Coastal Mediterranean (sometimes called

Temperate Mediterranean) Csb stands for: ‘Warm temperate, Steppe, Warm Summer’ Koppen major classes classification: Temperate Anywhere on the following map showing Csb colour, will have similar climate to your property:

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World Map of Köppen!Geiger Climate Classificationupdated with CRU TS 2.1 temperature and VASClimO v1.1 precipitation data 1951 to 2000

Main climates

A: equatorial

B: arid

C: warm temperate

D: snow

E: polar

Precipitation

W: desert

S: steppe

f: fully humid

s: summer dry

w: winter dry

m: monsoonal

Temperature

a: hot summer

b: warm summer

c: cool summer

d: extremely continental

h: hot arid

k: cold arid

F: polar frost

T: polar tundra

http://gpcc.dwd.de

http://koeppen-geiger.vu-wien.ac.at

Resolution: 0.5 deg lat/lon Version of April 2006

Kottek, M.,J. Grieser, C. Beck,

B. Rudolf, and F. Rubel,2006: World Map of Köppen-Geiger Climate Classification

updated. Meteorol. Z., 15, 259-263.

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You can adopt Permaculture designs that work well in the following areas: Parts of Serbia, e.g. Metlic & Provo Part of Romania, e.g. Ploiesti Parts of Bulgaria, e.g. Ruse Parts of Ohio, e.g. Marion

Parts of China, e.g. Huangchong Parts of Southern Russia A very thin strip in Chile & Argentina Southern Victoria, Australia

Further work will pin down more of the specific towns/provinces in these regions. Note: Because your land is:

(i) In such a narrow valley (ii) Protected by the hill on the West (iii) Protected by the hill on the neighbouring property to the north, and (iv) Protected by another hill (directly the other side of Kenton Valley Rd) on the East,

there is possibly lower frost and less wind than in many other parts of Lobethal. This winter there were only three frost events, two of these were mild, the third slightly stronger…although a local told me that this has been a mild winter. Further observation will determine any specifics of climate given your sheltered valley.

Australian Plant Hardiness Zone: 3 Cold Zone: 9b (some frost) Heat Zone: 5 (approx 45 days above 30° C) Growing Zone: Warm: between 21-38 weeks above 15° C

(Closer to 21 weeks for your area)

Some useful resources: • Australian National Botanic Gardens

https://www.anbg.gov.au/gardens/research/hort.research/zones.html

• Climate classifications - Australian Bureau of Meteorology http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/climate_averages/climate-classifications/index.jsp

• Climate statistics for Lenswood - very near Lobethal, and similar elevation http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_023801.shtml

• ‘Choosing the right plants for your climate’ http://diggers.com.au/help/climate-maps.aspx

• Up to date climate & climate history for Lobethal: temp, rainfall, etc [Temperature drops about 0.5°C for every 100 metres above sea level. Your property’s approx 200m above Lobethal, so about 1° colder.] http://weather.thewest.yahoo.com.au/local-climate-history/sa/lobethal

Summary of statistics: Biggest rain event (17 April, 1889): 143.5mm Rainfall – highest annual: 1551.3mm Rainfall – lowest annual: 41.5mm (some months being 0.0mm) Temperature – highest: 41.3°C Temperature – lowest: -1.8°C

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Rainfall statistics for Lobethal, 1884 to 2012:

See this link for each month (click on year to see ‘daily’) of each year for Lobethal: http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=139&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_c=&p_stn_num=023726 Highest temperature statistics for Lenswood, 1967 to 1999

See this link for highest temperature for each month of each year for Lenswood: http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=40&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_c=&p_stn_num=023801 Lowest temperature statistics for Lenswood, 1967 to 1999

See this link for lowest temperature for each month of each year for Lenswood: http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=36&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_c=&p_stn_num=023801

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SITE LANDSCAPE PROFILE TYPE This property is one of the classic major landscape profiles, i.e. ‘Humid’.

“The humid landscape is characterised by rounded hills and mountains. Every hill-slope or valley has a mid- line keypoint; above the slope it is steeper, producing a convex profile and below the slope is gentler, with a concave profile. At the top of a valley there is only ever a hilltop or a ridge. It is from these keypoints, top swales are dug on contour in order to harvest water in the landscape.” Geoff Lawton

Variation to this ‘Humid’ landscape profile: A large amount of the 2.71 acres of your land, i.e. the part not under the Habitat Agreement, has been levelled (during construction of the brickworks) to a very gentle slope of 0.57° (so the water does run off).

ANIMALS/BIRDS currently & likely on property• Western Grey Kangaroos – they

sometimes come down to the ‘flat’ and graze.

• Southern Brown Bandicoot • Yellow footed Atechinus • Echidnas • Probable possums & bats given

hollows in old-growth stringybark • Rabbits – under the Tagasaste (Tree

Lucerne)/Blackberry clump & a rabbit burrow in unused compost bay

• Mice • Rats • Saw a huge tan healthy goat wander

through (& up into forest) • Three dogs often happily wander

through together • A black cat frequently walks

through

• Kookaburras • Rosellas • Blue Wrens • Scarlet Robin • Shining Bronze-cuckoo • Brush Bronzewing • Little Wattle bird • Spotted Pandalote • White-throated Treecreeper • White-winged Clough • Painted Button-quail • Bassian Thrush • Native ducks • Water hens • Cranes fly overhead • White cockatoos (sometimes) • Magpies • Blackbirds • Lots of frogs!

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VEGETATION COVER Natives (endemic and other) Your land (as you already know!) has much of it covered with endemic & native trees, shrubs and grasses & plants, including Messmate Stringybark, Golden Wattle, Wire Rapier Sedge, and Native Cherries (see appendix ‘Plant Inventory of Heritage Agreement area’), reeds. There’s a large tree fern at the entrance to one of the brick kilns (bricks missing in roof above, allowing light). Non-native Gorse Broom Blackberry Moss (possibly native) Bramble roses (various) Vetch Paspalum Jonquil

Clover Non-native grass (various) Miniature daffodils Jonquil Cape Tulip Capeweed Deadly Nightshade Sour Sob Tagasaste - Tree Lucerne (fire-retardant) *

$!http://greenharvest.com.au/PoultrySupplies/TreeLucerneGrowingInformation.html Link below: ‘Weed Identification – Adelaide and Mt Lofty Ranges’ (NRM) http://www.weeds.org.au/cgi-bin/weedident.cgi?tpl=region.tpl&state=sa&s=0&region=aml Food plants on property now I’ve listed the following because you said, “I don’t have a garden”. Just reminding you of how much is actually already there now…much of it now self-seeding: Apple trees x 5 Fig x 2 Nectarine Fennel Sage Wormwood Lavender Parsley (lots) Strawberry (lots) Chives (lots)

Silver beet Rhubarb Broccoli Kale Blackberry patches x 2 1 nectarine tree Thai mint Cologne mint Potatoes

SOIL TYPES The non Habitat Agreement section: Much of this land was cleared to the subsoil level during the construction of the brickworks. Most of this subsoil consists of clay (which is why this site was chosen as a brickworks). Concreted area:

About half an acre of this is covered in steel reinforced concrete. Thankfully, some of this concrete has cracks, allowing rainwater to enter; debris has collected with the result that native and non-native grasses are beginning to grow (in those cracks).

For this First Stage Report, I have done some preliminary enquires regarding the feasibility of lifting the concrete. Here are some opinions I’ve garnered so far:

(i) “It’s impossible to lift it, it’s 14 inches thick and it’s steel reinforced!”

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(ii) “There’s no way it could be lifted. You could, though, build gardens on top, e.g. wicking beds…hundreds of ‘em!”

(iii) “Some eucalypt tree seeds could be sprinkled in the cracks to get some gum trees growing; they’d eventually crack up the concrete, their roots making their way around the steel reinforcement.”

(iv) And, http://www.familyhandyman.com/masonry/concrete-repair/concrete-demolition-tools-and-tips/view-all#step1

Obviously the concrete issue needs further investigation and discussion. It may cost $ to get professional advice. (In the Stage 2 Report, I would do more research around the concrete issue.) Given the shoestring budget for now, some wicking beds could be constructed on top of the concrete. The concrete will hold a lot of warmth in the summer so this may have some bearing on what can be grown in the wicking beds; other possibilities on ‘Concrete Mind Map’.

Wicking bed

Picture credit: urbanfoodgarden.org

Picture credit: permaculturenews.org

‘How to create a wicking bed in a foam box’ & ‘How to create a wicking bed in a raised garden’ (scroll down for both) http://www.communitywebs.org/nrcgawler/wicking-beds.php Beginning ideas for passively breaking up the concrete:

• I am keen to investigate whether there’s any possibility of any food-bearing trees, e.g. nut trees(?) that could break up the concrete in the way some eucalypts could (see above). Possibly not but, you never know. And/or

• Allowing a few eucalypts to grow in the cracks, eventually using them for coppicing (rocket fuel firewood) and whenever possible, lifting the cracked concrete (bit by bit over the years) and planting fruit/nut trees and building soil for garden beds.

Rest of the non Habitat Agreement section, i.e. where you can grow stuff!

The rest of this part of your land has: (i) Garden beds made with compost, mulch, etc. These beds are now approx

only approximately 14cm deep and need building up again. ! The pH of these beds is 8! ! The soil content is 50% sand, 40% black loam, 10% black

silt (ii) Area below track on hill (non-Habitat Agreement): pH 6! & pH 7 (iii) Northern Food Forest designated area: pH 6!. Soil content: 40% clay,

10% clay silt, 50% sand (iv) Mound in front of dam (2nd Food Forest): pH 6!, 7, & 9 (dam was

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dredged & put on top of parts of mound a few years ago, so different areas of soil).

(v) The remainder is rubble (brickworks days) & soil built up over decades from leaf litter, dead branches, sediment, debris, etc: pH 7!

(vi) North eastern and eastern perimeter: pH 8 WATER Concreted area: Because there is slight slope on this concreted area, there is a lot of water runoff when it rains. This collects into various drains, including a barely noticed one (a square of rusted metal flush to the ground) outside your main living area, which then run into your dam. This drain is part of the huge three-pipe runoff system on your property (all of which goes to your dam). Also, there are a lot of cracks in the concrete, so some water is replenishing the aquifer. Rest of the growing areas: Water collects in various spots of your property. These would be ideal places to put in small ponds (there is ample clay!) (see below in ‘water options’). Water catchment for your property: House & carport roof (joined) = 274m" Dam: Catchment area = 29,971m" Biggest 24hr rain event = 143.5mm (0.1435M) So: 29,971 x 0.1435 = 4300.8 4300.8 x 1,000 (litres) ÷ 24 ÷ 60 ÷60 = 49.8 litres per second This means that, in the biggest known rain event to date, approximately 50 litres of water per second would be entering your dam. You can visualise this by imagining 50 litre-bottles of water passing before your eyes in one second! That’s a lot of water. No wonder they built three huge pipes 12”; 14”; and the one used as an overflow from your dam is 2 feet wide! Water features already in position Pipes: Because this site was excavated to become a brickworks site, i.e. the slope was reduced and the natural curve of the valley made almost (but not quite!) flat, a large amount of effort was put in to making sure water would drain from the property (otherwise it would have been like a soup bowl). In view of this: there are large three pipes (in some places, these are clay pipes, 12 to 24 inches in diameter, which run underground on the property (one of them going under the kitchen…you can lift a latch on your kitchen floor and hear/watch water rushing when it rains!), all directing flow to the dam on your property. Dam: There is a lovely long-shaped dam, approximately 472.6m" (don’t know yet how deep), on the south (almost lowest) end of the property (further south below your dam is also under Habitat Agreement). It is surrounded by reeds and (at present, end of August) is at maximum fill. Water sources:

(i) A huge three-pipe system (designed at the time of the brickworks to take water off the excavated land) that starts as the overflow from your northern neighbour’s dam, and

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(ii) Spring fed

The dam has a very large concrete runoff pipe which feeds directly off the property. This water then goes down the hill, alongside Kenton Valley Road (see below in ‘Water options’) and ends up in the Onkaparinga Water Catchment.

Pond: A small pond in zone 1 directly in front of house (this could be enlarged and it needs re-lining with clay…it seeps away a few days after heavy rain).

Water tanks:

• Three water tanks next to carport and house. These are filled by the house & carport rooves (joined).

• Two water tanks halfway up the (habitat-protected) hill. These have water pumped up to them (with the electric pump) from the lower water tanks. Water can also be pumped from up from the dam (with the petrol pump). Both of these pumps have been tested and work well.

Water options

! Downpipe: o Downpipe from NE corner of your house’s roof leads to a drain at NE

corner of your house and is piped to your dam. This water can easily be sent to your north & east kitchen gardens and be a collection place for water for chickens.

o Downpipe from SE corner of your house’s roof goes down to the (concreted) ground (and evaporates). This water could also easily be channelled to gardens.

! Dam has a very large runoff pipe (built during its Brickworks days). The water from this pipe goes off the property and ends up in the Onkaparinga Catchment. The

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possibilities of capturing some of this run-off could be explored, (although the area directly below the dam is also under Habitat Agreement).

o Can investigate depths for plantings for fish, etc (see image):

! At present, water is pumped (using mains electricity &/or petrol) up to one of the top

header tanks. Although you’ve said you only need to pump water up there once every three months, for about 3 hours, if Peak Oil becomes a reality in Lobethal, another source of pressured water needs to be organised. One of the simplest possibilities I’ve come up with so far is:

o Erecting a shelter above the header tanks on the hill, for roof rainwater-collection, thereby having both tanks filled passively.

o Also, a hand pump &/or solar-powered pump are options. ! Collecting water runoff from Kenton Valley Rd, for berries, etc along east boundary of

property. Need to find out whether legal or not (Adelaide Hills Council). ! Huge underground water runoff pipe system: investigate how to tap into this water.

The entrances to this water are all open, so easily accessed. ! Swales:

(i) Food Forest area (north east corner) ! Ponds: There are various places where water collects on your property. These may be

ideal places to put small ponds: " At bottom of smallest water tank (near carport), there’s often overflow

during rain. There’s rubble on the ground there and a tiny trench leading to the dam. A little pond feature could be built for enjoyment and habitat.

" Near storage shed (on concrete and beyond) " A little hollow area diagonally southeast of storage shed " On east side of property, below Kenton Valley Rd there’s a little spot " At bottom of piled up grassed mound to south of driveway " At bottom of Heritage Agreement hill (good for fire-retardation)

! Small wetland or shallow pond: Just southwest of the storage shed, there’s a shallow area, approximately 10m!, which stays wet long after it has rained. This could be made into a wetland or shallow pond.

! 44gallon drums: o Near compost bays: on one of the nearby wood-shelters, there’s a ‘roof’ of

tied down corrugated iron (no gutter). A 44gallon drum could be put there to collect rainwater for easy watering of compost bays.

o Roof of tool shed (near kitchen garden) is sloped and has a gutter with few inches of downpipe. A 44gallon drum could be put there for easy hand watering of nearby plants, etc.

! Grey water: Put in a system for using your grey water (kitchen sink, bathroom, laundry). You may need to lift some concrete to do this. Video below shows an urban greywater, reedbed system (Geoff Lawton presenting) http://www.ecofilms.com.au/building-an-urban-greywater-reedbed/

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This example is from Bulgaria (!) Until more cash is available, even just a greywater hose (cheap from hardware store) could be attached to out-pipe of your washing machine on washing days (noting your washing machine is water-efficient).

ACCESS Features already in position The driveway from Kenton Valley Road gives good access to: (i) the house carport, (ii) part of Zone 1 garden, (iii) the woodsheds, (iv) the brickwork kilns and (v) the road/track that divides the Habitat Agreement area of hill from non Habitat Agreement section below it (this track goes to the two water tanks on hill, and further; this road track has small trees growing in the middle and needs clearing urgently. The property can also be accessed (for special or emergency situations) from the northern next-door property’s access dirt road. There is also a huge firebreak between your property and Lobethal Bushland Park. Access options The access you have is good. There is no need for further access to be developed. STRUCTURES Features already in position:

• Compost bays x 3 • Two sheds (one potting, one for storage) • Big brick structure, very high walls, no roof (can be converted to chicken coop) • Three-sided brick wall structure, with no roof • Two? brick three-sided, roofed wood shelters • One tiny corrugated iron shelter (currently used for kindling) • One small hay shelter (on Zone 1) • Three huge, massive brick kilns • Three long brick, concrete & steel trenches (things could be grown in them) • 1 house (! pine log, ! mud brick new extension) • New carport (roof connects with house roof for rainwater collection) • Five water tanks (2 large & 1 small attached to carport; 2 at midway point on hill) • One one-roomed brick ‘dwelling?’ (circa 40’s?), no glass in windows, has fireplace • Wooden fence between house (presently small) lawn and next portion of garden • One dam

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• One pond • Three underground pipes (some 12 inch, 14 inch diameter and concreted) going from

northern neighbours dam overflow right through to under your house in kitchen and into the dam.

Fencing At present:

There is very little good fencing on your land and the cost of constructing them would be prohibitive (given ‘shoestring’ budget).

The size of the un-concreted part of the non habitat-protected area is possibly too small to keep a goat or Dexter (small) cow but there is the possibility that some links can be made with nearby dairy farmers for milk swap with some of your produce so, at present, fencing is not an issue.

Any animals you do keep, e.g. chickens, ducks, could be contained with a movable fence. Future fencing options: If $ become available for the concrete to be lifted, and for building &/or growing fencing, there may be some creative ways of including either a goat and kid, or a Dexter (miniature breed) cow and calf. [Especially if one of the brickworks (as shelter) proves, after building inspection, to be stable.] For Dexter (miniature) cows, a local source is ‘Lyndcroft Dexter Stud’ at Woodside. www.lyndcroft.com

Spring/Summer grasses – this season! (NOW) Until your swales and legume crops are in place and, given the huge amount of rain in the past two months (July & August), the fast-approaching spring grasses are going to be an issue. Apparently, these grasses can grow to chest height if not managed and would then be a fire-hazard. One option is to source the loan of some goats or sheep, or alpacas (next door?), and restrain them with a movable electric fence, to chomp down the grass (and manure as they go). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyNQNyBbZTA Moveable electric fences can be purchased through Coopers Mt Torrens Rural Store. (‘Coopers’ is a long held family business and is well thought of in your local community.) Another solution is to use chook tractors for chickens, or ducks, or geese (depending on your preference) with a movable chicken fence. Example of moveable chicken fence: https://www.omlet.co.uk/shop/chicken_keeping/omlet_chicken_fencing/ Lots of different chook tractors: http://thecitychicken.com/tractors.html Strawbale chicken coop one can build. Excellent info re: collecting water from roof, water nipples, downhill nutrient flow, etc: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV_imNBF0mg Video showing moveable chook tunnels to get chickens from one place to another http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlyV8fA6R_Q#t=130

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Stationery chook tunnel (interesting!) http://permaculturenews.org/2012/07/18/veg-design-solutions-part-ii-the-magical-chicken-tunnel/#more-7787 Structural possibilities Current (shoestring! ! ):

• For chicken o Chicken coop:

" Using the high-walled brick construction across from hay shelter, or " Building one with the stack of mud bricks

o Chook tractor (or purchase/get hold of moveable fence) o Chook tunnels

• Trellis for north-facing windows in front of mud-brick part of house (for fire-retardant summer shade/winter sun vines) (see below* for position on house). Huge open sky view in winter vs. shade in summer

• Wicking beds for on top of concrete (zone 2) • Greywater reed bed filtering system • Ponds (where water gathers) • Swales (for food forest) • Trellis (Jasmine?) in front of water tanks (so south-facing window view from bedroom

‘beautified’) • Trellis (uprights are already there) to block view of car in carport from south-facing

door when open in summer.

*Position for possible trellis for north-facing main living room

Some future ($ &/or barter) options:

• Worm farms in brick kiln/s (pending building inspection & market research) • Shelving in brick kilns for mushroom production (pending building inspection &

market research) • Insulation trellis for south wall of house (40% efficient against heat escape)

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SLOPES

Habitat Agreement hill = 38.66° Rest of majority of the land = 0.57° Note: On land with a very minor slope, you don’t need a very high swale in order to back up a lot of water. The flatter the land, the less material needs to be dug out - in order to get a deeper amount of water, you end up with excess material…so, something can be done with that material, can shape something nearby. Paraphrased from Geoff Lawton.

Area NW of non-habitat protected area (for Food Forest): 4.72° Mound in front of dam: 22° Part of hill that is not under Habitat Agreement (below track): 38.66° Earth walls NE & E of property (where excavated from original height of land): 60° - 80° SUN ANGLE Summer equinox @ 12noon: 78.62° Winter equinox @ 12noon: 31.62° Even though most of your property has less direct sun in the early morning and late afternoon, due to the size of the habitat-protected hill, this does not affect the day-length for your plants.

SECTORS Sun Summer Solstice (& 12noon) Winter Solstice (& 12noon)

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Wind The image below shows the mean wind speed over a 30yr period. (Lenswood Research Centre is very close to your property and has similar elevation as your property.)

Summer wind speeds & directions: The image below shows the wind speeds and directions in February (most extreme in Feb) over a 30yr period at Lenswood. I’ll explain to you how these ‘wind roses’ work…quite simple once you peruse an enlarged image. NB: the hottest winds in summer come from the NNW (from our Australian deserts).

Winter wind speeds & directions: The image below shows the wind speeds and directions in July (most extreme in July) over a 30yr period at Lenswood.

Your property is quite protected from wind, given the three-sided (& almost four-sided) valley it’s in. From what I’ve observed over this past winter, often when the wind is strong, it is so in the upper trees but down where your house and growing areas are, it’s much calmer. Given the high hill, the wind is possibly doing a loop onto your property, but the valley may be so narrow that it changes the effect of this. Further observation will assist in determining if there are any strong wind spots on your growing area and house.

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An example of what could be happening:

Ribbon or wind socks: to get an ongoing sense of what’s happening with the wind, put up some pieces of ribbon around your property (eventually making wind socks if you like), where possible in view of windows, so you can see direction & intensity of wind. Fire If or when we move to Stage Two of this report, more extensive fire research can be done regarding your property, e.g.:

(i) A cross-section cut of a tree to analyse the fire-frequency & direction onto your property (p.213, 5 Design Manual, Bill Mollison)

(ii) You or I would talk with neighbours to ask about the fire history. (iii) This property did not burn in Ash Wednesday fire (any reason?)

Summary for now: The hottest summer winds on your property come from the NNW (from the deserts). If there was a fire in Lobethal Bushland Park, even though there is a huge firebreak, it could jump it and would at the top of your ridge in seconds. It would then travel down the hill (although slower) to your house. It would be rare for a fire to come from the SE but it could happen. Good: Houses in valleys (your house) are safer than houses on ridges. Concern: Given your property has eucalypts on three sides (some nearer and some much further), and given the main eucalypt forest exists where the hottest winds come from, the advice I have sought says: if a fire is in the district…get out of there. Your fire sector is N, S, E & W, with the main concern being west (beginning only 8.2m from your house). The new growth eucalypt forest on your habitat-protected hill is extremely flammable and there is a fair amount of debris below the trees (mostly fallen branches and fallen wattle trees). If a fire were to break out there, the strong SE wind would be blowing the fire up the hill rather than down towards your house. At the same time, for safety (the wind does not always come from the southeast), I’m including in this design:

(i) Removal of wattle trees below the track, i.e. from where Habitat Agreement ends (ii) Planting of fire-retardant trees and plants (e.g. walnut trees), all along below the

track, to enable further protection between your house and the eucalypt forest. (iii) Keep the large Tagasaste bush (Tree Lucerne). It is a fire-retardant!

From CFS website: Plants with broad fleshy leaves and/or high salt content burn less readily than those with fine hard leaves (sclerophyll). Plants with significant amounts of volatile oils, like the eucalypt family (which includes gums and

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tea trees), should be avoided close to dwellings. The influence of plant form is a lot more subjective: low growing plants and ground covers are better than shrubs; plants with dense foliage are better than those with open airy crowns; plants that don’t retain dead material are better than those that hold up lots of fuel; plants with smooth bark are better than those with stringy or ribbon bark.

‘Preparing your property for bushfire’ (This is a MUST read.) http://www.cfs.sa.gov.au/site/prepare_act_survive_2012/prepare/preparing_your_property_for_bushfire.jsp and ‘Landscaping’ (for fire safety) http://www.cfs.sa.gov.au/site/prepare_act_survive_2012/prepare/preparing_your_property_for_bushfire/landscaping.jsp Views Views are good for 360° (except view of carport from south-facing door.)

!! Sector summary:

ASPECTS House The living areas of your house have a solar aspect, i.e. face almost true north, making them warmer in winter (than they would be if facing south), and hotter in summer. The bedrooms (& counselling room, & music room) are cool in summer but, at present, cold in winter. Orientation of the slopes The non habitat-protected section (i.e. the main growing areas) of your property also has a

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solar aspect (faces almost true north). This will allow any frosts in winter to thaw fairly quickly. The slope at the north of your property faces southeast; the growing areas at each side: one faces east, the other faces west; the sides of the mound semi-circling your dam face north, south, east and west. In summary: Most faces N, some S, some E, and some W.

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ZONES Zone 1! !Already exists:

!To add &/or change:

!House

Solar pump glasshouse to where door & smaller window is in front of main living area

Trellis to front of big window of main (mud brick) living area (if you decide to forfeit view)

Trellis to north-facing side of water tanks outside bedroom window (jasmine?)

Trellis to screen view of car under carport from south-facing door when open in summer (green gooseberries? they like shade)

Solar cooking area

See also ‘House – Possible Solutions’

Garden beds only 14cm of topsoil Build soil. Do lots of chop-&-drop (see **** below). Re-do borders where necessary Make into double-reach beds Enclose from rabbits & kangaroos Add rockeries, etc for habitat (stumpy tail lizards eat snails & slugs!)

Two different species apple trees (both good producers). One is outside kitchen window, providing lovely view from workspace & cooling in summer, warmer in winter

Prune (when time right)

Hay shelter Make more structurally sound (it’s leaning at present, but stopped by a big shrub)

Little tool shed Good

Downpipe from NE corner of house Feed to gardens, or place 44 gallon drum Very high, very long brick-walled structure (across from hay shelter)

Make the high-brick-wall structure into a chicken coop & worm farm area

Add chickens!

Can grow wormwood & other medicinals in here for chickens (I’ll explain re roof)

North-facing open porch Good

Lawn Make most or all of the lawn into vegetable garden

Leaky pots (if wanted) in garden for easy, slow watering

Keep a strip of lawn for lying down. Can turn it into pennyroyal or other groundcover

Small pond

Enlarge the pond (water gathers there anyway) and create lots of edge (I’ll

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explain!).

Also, see ## below.

Grow garlic around the pond (a squeeze of garlic kills mosquito larvae – frogs are good but not enough). Introduce ‘back-swimmers’ if they are good in this climate.

Stones so frogs can get in & out

Add fish! [See ** below]

Add rocks and plants for fish

Add a bird stand for manuring into pond

Ensure enough oxygen

Grow edibles, e.g. watercress

(Unused) solar hot water panel Reconnect for household hot water or make an outside, fun, bath area.

Diagonal brick structure (solar hot water panel mounted on it, facing north)

(See above)

A hammock ! !ZONE 2! !Already exists:!! To add &/or change:!!Compost bays x 4 To fast track soil build up, find a contractor

to drop off grass clippings.

Add an 18-day Berkely Method mound next to these.

Greywater gravel & reed bed, leading to south of free-standing brick wall & a small pond

Garden bed east of house - flowers for selling (jonquils, daffodils, tulips already growing easily), or pumpkins & melons

Create warm growing areas (microclimates) against free-standing brick walls

Freestanding brick walls x 3 (i) Plant nursery (ii) experiment with spice growing in hot area.

Lawn with few small shrubs & wooden (open style) fence

Turn lawn into growing area, e.g. cucumbers. Use wooden fence as trellis for low growing plants (berries for home eating?)

About half-an-acre of cracked concrete Wicking beds (one idea). Also, see ‘Concrete Mind Map’, e.g. bees/honey, solar drying.

4 x brick, concrete and iron trenches – 8 metres long x 900mm deep x 400mm wide

Wet area joins on south side of them

Use as wicking beds(!) ! Grow bamboo in one for building & stakes Encourage this for watering part of beds or turn into a pond.

3 x garden beds (one has potatoes) Build soil (mulch, etc). More potatoes. Pumpkins, etc

Old swing frame & large old fashioned Make swing seat, oil wood on roundabout

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roundabout seesaw seesaw, enjoy! Trampoline frame

Could be made into fenced garden (from rabbits and kangaroos)

Rectangle of land, mostly rubble with moss & short grasses (rabbits graze there)

Hugelkultur mounds on the rubbly area (lots of branches lying around) http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/

3 large brick kilns Inside: pending building inspection outcome, grow mushrooms, worm farms Outside walls: huge areas of microclimate for taking advantage of.

1 small good-bearing nectarine Nurture

One tall, very healthy eucalypt (approx 50 metres)

Lots of dropped branches - gather

!ZONE 3! !Already there:!! To add &/or change:!!North of house! !Storage shed (with power) Storage shed – fix gutter & so can collect

water, e.g. 44 gallon drum

North side of storage shed has small apple tree intertwined with a grape vine

Nurture

One-roomed ex-brickworks ‘office’ with fireplace (no glass in windows)

Repair one-roomed ex-brickworks ‘office’ (if repairable) could be used for WWOOFers. http://www.wwoof.com.au/ (pending public liability insurance) or if not, a smokehouse

Some young eucalypts (approx 4 yrs old) &

Wattle trees (spindly ones)

Swales with Food Forest (see ***** below). Also, swales gather leaf litter, etc further building soil even on clay! (Thank goodness!)

Chickens can regularly come in eventually

4 year-old eucalypts: could keep as shade till other trees established, then keep as coppice [see *** below]

Black wattle - investigate uses & which ones to keep.

Large Tagasaste (fire-retardant & good fodder) & Blackberry (rabbits live under these joined bushes)

Encourage spread of the Tagasaste, all the way down to just before house. Investigate fencing rabbits in(!)

North, & east corner, & east edges of property: 40° - 90° slopes (where excavation was done), and

15ft wide almost flat area all along east side. Black wattle & native shrubs growing here &

Berries along north & east corner, including Seaberry. Consider some Casuarinas on outer edge (good companion of Blueberries & nitrogen fixer, & phosphorus, & further screen from slight car noise).

Chickens can go in this area at times

Given very rubbly & so much wood lying around, can use Hugelkultur mounds (you &

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there. I can throw ideas around for what to grow)

North west mesh fence Espaliered, e.g. Quince, Cherry

1 apple tree (next to gate entrance from Kenton Valley Rd)

Good producer. Prune when time right.

3 x wood shelters (2 brick, 1 wood) All good

West of house!(below the track on hill)!$%&'!&'!()&*!!"#$%&$'()#!!

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10(?) year-old eucalypts

!Cut eucalypts to coppice trees (to reduce fire-hazard)

Plant lush trees, e.g. walnut (slope seems very stable)

Plant fire-retardant ground covers (flowering given honey production idea?) !

Wattle! Cut or remove wattle trees (to reduce fire-hazard)!

Low native shrubs & grasses Slash shrubs & graze grasses (see below)

Shallow gully at bottom of hill, funnels water to big pipe opening (to dam) – also, water collects

NB: Put in small ponds where water collects at bottom of hill, could even encourage a long one

FIRE SECTOR cont. MORE SOLUTIONS: ~ Collect fallen timber as kindling / fuel for

home heating/cooking ~ Use poultry to scratch and till the litter; this

speeds up the decomposition & fertilises ~ Well mown or grazed grasses are good so:

- Encourage grazing animals like the kangaroos or geese into the area with food supplements

(Ref: the above lines from * see below), or - Hire/borrow a goat and use moveable electric fence.

~ Plant fire-retardant, i.e. lush varieties of nut, fruit, & other trees & ground cover (see appendix ‘CFS Fire retardant plant list’ & ****** below)

South of house:!! Dam

Lots of reeds at circumference

Yabbies

+),-.!/#0!&*1%!2&)(.3.,4!56.,7859!:&:.;!

Pontoon for humans Pontoon for habitat More plants at different depths Floating (plant) island for habitat Stand for birds in centre (droppings into dam, good for fish) Hook for rotting stuff for maggots to drop in for fish to eat Harvest some of reeds for mulch Any fish in there now?

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Add fish [see below **] Consider eels (unless already there) Put mesh on huge outflow pipe so fish don’t wash out Ensure enough shade for fish Ensure enough oxygen if level goes down in summer

Semi-circle shaped large mound (5ft high, 22° slope) with:

Thick long grasses (fire-hazard), broom & gorse

Water collects on north side of mound and soaks in, like a swale.

Two 20ft thin eucalypt trees!

Borrow & tether goat/s to chew or, if possible given slope, moveable fence for chickens to eat & manure, then plant up straight away. Plant a Food Forest here; trees will be extra buffer on (cold) south of house. Take advantage of this & dig it deeper. Coppice the eucalypts

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Blackberry on flat section (just east of dam) A tethered or moveable fenced goat would eat this down (few days)

Small flat section just below that – thick grasses

Graze & enhance beauty for ‘being’/resting, e.g. plant pennyroyal for scent !

1 apple tree (good producer) Prune to easy reach height, when time right

Large Native Cranberry (I think!) Bush at bottom of north of mound!

Encourage it (good fire-retardant & bees, habitat, etc)

Small amount of wattle (NW of dam) Cut wattle for fire protection. Plant something fire-retardant in its place.

3 x water tanks

Carport (roof joined to house roof)

1 4x5 metre rectangle of contained soil & gravel

1 garden bed with small peppercorn tree & jonquils

!ZONE 4! !Already there:!! To add &/or change:!!Woodlot – eucalypt – approx 20 year-old trees!

Gather some of the fallen branches (for fire-prevention & firewood)!!Bring chickens in regularly, with moveable fence

Large native shrubs – Melaleuca (Tea Tree), good windbreak for house!

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Lots of lush thistle (below shrubs) – warm, possibly humid, spot!

Prevalence of thistles can indicate compaction; they harvest copper & iron from the soil

Lovely sheltered microclimate – research (it’s on list) what to plant where thistles are!!

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!ZONE 5 (Habitat Agreement)! !Already there:!! To add &/or change:!!Approximately 15 acres of land under Habitat Agreement, including:

‘The Grotto’ – small old quarry; lovely place to just ‘be’

South highest point: view & old growth trees

Ruins of a brick house (no roof), overgrown!

Keep Gorse infestation under control

Lift some of the dropped branches for firewood, etc. Good for fire protection (although, have been told: if a fire came through, it would mostly be in the canopy (and fast). Leave some for habitat.

Just enjoyment !!Two water tanks halfway up hill (water pressure for house)!!

#$%&'%(!)*'$!(++,!,+(!)-'%(!.+&&%.'*+/!

Road/track to water tanks and property boundary!

Clear the track (has small trees growing on it)!!

!0!1%,2!$''3244)))53%(6-.7&'7(%8+7'$%(/$*9$&-/:85*/,+4;+7(/-&4<78$,*(%5$'6!! ** Endemic to South Australia, worth considering for inclusion in dam & ponds (these are all small): Murray rainbowfish (Melanotaenia fluviatilis) Flatheaded gudgeon (Philypnodon grandiceps) Carp gudgeon (Hypseleotris kluningeri) Galaxias (Galaxias sp.) and Purple spotted gudgeons (Morgurnda adspersa). See: http://www.backyards4wildlife.com.au/uploads/BFW%20FS%20-%20Native%20Fish.pdf A bigger endemic to Adelaide & Mt Lofty Range freshwater fish is the River Blackfish. It is endangered, research was being done but funding may have run out. It was suggested by DEWNR that we look into the Freshwater Fish Action Plan (see link below) for further info about this fish and other possible species. http://www.environment.sa.gov.au/managing-natural-resources/Plants_Animals/Threatened_species_ecological_communities/Conservation_status_of_threatened_species/State Do not use Plague Minnow (Gambusia holbrooki), formerly known as ‘mosquitofish’ (see link below): http://www.backyards4wildlife.com.au/uploads/BFW%20FS%20-%20Native%20Fish.pdf NB: If not using endemic, can do but must get clearance from the minister(!) – advice given by Lobethal DEWNR. *** Coppice: ‘Firewood Crops’ http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNAAP479.pdf This link has a list of eucalypts that respond well to coppicing (haven’t found a SA list yet): http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/forestry/private-land-forestry/pruning-thinning-harvesting/managing-coppice-in-eucalypt-plantations Image below from http://dorsettreeworx.co.uk/services.php

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**** Chop-&-Drop: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cztZHSpWKHw ***** ‘9 Layers of the Food Forest’: http://tcpermaculture.com/site/2013/05/27/nine-layers-of-the-edible-forest-garden/ and, ‘Establishing a Food Forest’ DVD (Geoff Lawton), Eco Films

‘Planting under trees’ http://chriscondello.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/practical-permaculture-planting-under-fruit-trees/

I have pegged out two of your swales for Food Forest. Photograph shows part of one, & the trusty A-frame !

****** CFS (Country Fire Service) Fire retardant plants fact sheet and open first item: http://www.google.com.au/?gws_rd=cr&ei=eopDUpH_AsX9lAW-pIG4Cg#q=CFS+fire+retardant+ ## Ponds: https://sites.google.com/site/permaship1/permaculture-practice/permaculture-pond

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‘Fun’ ideas!

‘Concrete’ ideas (just some!)

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Summary of elements included in this design (all described throughout this report): a. Food Forest & swales

b. 2nd Food Forest (mound near dam)

c. Chickens & brick chicken house

d. Moveable chicken house &

moveable fence

e. Trellis for north facing main room

f. Glassed in sun room for section of

north face

g. Fun elements (though it’s all fun!),

e.g. outdoor bath, shallow tubs for

getting wet in summer, fire pit, earth

paints, wind harps

h. Mushroom growing (in brick kilns)

i. Worm farming (in brick kilns)

j. Bees (to be investigated)

k. Double reach garden beds

l. Plant nursery

m. Zone 2 gardens

n. Wicking beds & those trenches

o. Hugelkultur piles

p. Brick kiln ‘office’

q. Brick kilns (inside & out)

r. Compost area

s. Greywater filtering system

t. Existing pond (zone 1)

u. Extra ponds

v. Using woodlot grasses to feed

chickens &/or Dexter cow & calf

w. Berries

x. Espaliered trees on north boundary

y. Extend grape vine on trellis

z. Area under large apple tree by gate

aa. Big (tall) three-sided brick structure

with no roof (faces east)

bb. Dam

cc. Coppice

dd. Rocket Mass Fuel water heater &

Rocket Mass Fuel stove

ee. Cool air from large pipe under

kitchen floor

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More nooks & crannies (microclimates, etc) to take advantage of if/when wanted…and there are more!

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HOUSE Construction: One half is pine logs and bricks (built in the 19XX’s); the other half is mud brick (built very recently). The floors are brick, concrete, and unglazed tiles. The ceilings are insulated. The house & carport rooves are connected. There is an open roof overhand or porch along most of the north-facing front. The roof is corrugated iron. Energy: Mud brick has good thermal mass and, given your house’s northerly aspect (faces the sun) the mud brick part of your house (main living area, bedroom and music room) is warm in winter and cool in summer. Good description of ‘thermal mass’: http://www.sustainability.vic.gov.au/resources/documents/thermal_mass.pdf The other part of your house (dining, kitchen, counselling room, spare room, bathroom & laundry) is built of well-insulated (between the logs) pine log with a brick divider wall between the kitchen/dining areas and other rooms. Pine log and brick also have thermal mass. The south-facing rooms tend to be fairly cold in winter at night (much warmer than outside though!), but pleasantly cool in summer. Most of the north face of your house has an open porch with an overhang so all of the windows and glass doors are sheltered from the summer sun, therefore cooler in summer. I notice it also blocks the winter sun (see below ‘more heating possibilities’). There is an east-facing window also in the kitchen; this allows winter sun to enter at times. All the windows on the south facing side of your house (bedroom, counselling room, music room, spare room & laundry) are small. This is good for keeping warmer in winter than would otherwise be. There is shelter over your south-facing door that is joined to the carport (so lots of shelter). This will allow cooled air to flow into your house on summer days. The floor of your house is a mix of concrete, unglazed tiles, and bricks. All of these materials have good thermal mass so, good for storing heat from fires. They tend to be cold in winter (unless sunlight has fallen on them &/or the room has been heated by combustion stove fire or Rocket Fuel Mass heater) NB. FIRE SECTOR: The west of your house is your main fire sector and this begins only 8.2 metres from your house. As well as what’s suggested in the zone table (Zone 3, above), some fire reduction solutions need to be added to your house as well, e.g. gutters kept free of leaves (possibly with mesh), lush vines grown over roof, lush vines on trellis in front of main living room, (leafy during fire season).

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ENERGY NOW USED

Paid by For Possible SOLUTIONS

Gas

$ - Your time/energy generating them!

Hot water (Re) attach your solar water heater or build a Rocket Mass Fuel Water Heater http://permaculturenews.org/2013/05/20/how-to-build-a-rocket-stove-mass-water-heater/

Gas $ Stove/oven Install Rocket Mass Fuel stove Firewood Small stuff: your property

Time & energy gathering, chopping, storing, bringing in

Slow combustion ‘stove’ heating in living area; Wood fired oven/stove heating in kitchen/dining area

Sell your new Spectrum Classic Wood (combustion) ‘stove’. Build/install a Rocket Mass Fuel heater, or Kachel oven or even a Kang in living room & one of these (cooking varieties) in kitchen (all can use coppice or fallen branches). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX34QhcKqBk Above link: Rocket stove, oven, heater all-in-one! http://www.permies.com/ Above link: loads of info re Rocket Mass Fuel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4usXIAoy9us Above link: shows tiny amount of wood used for Rocket Mass Fuel stove. Attach a solar pump glasshouse to part of main living area that has open porch. (*See photograph below for position on house.) Here’s an example: http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Sunspace/DougSolarGreenhouse.htm

Firewood Big stuff: Lobethal Wood Yard ($210 per ton)

$, Diesel, time & energy travelling, picking & lifting it, storing it, bringing it in (it’s heavy!)

As above

Electricity

$ Heating in bathroom (energy efficient heater)

Eventually, install a rocket mass fuel heater (could combine with heating the water)

Electricity

$ Lighting, computers When $ available, consider solar panels, or DIY solar panels, on roof: http://www.permaculture.co.uk/readers-solutions/making-diy-solar-panels-your-grid-home

Electricity! $! Fridge/freezer! Sell your fridge/freezer (! of your fridge is freezer, yet you barely use it). Purchase bar fridge & create cold storage area, e.g. root cellar: http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/diy-root-cellar.html

Electricity

$ Water tank pump When $ available, consider a small solar panel & a back-up hand pump

Petrol

$ Dam pump As above

Diesel $ Car Bicycle for local; Future: pony & buggy (?)

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Immediate energy saving tips: ! In winter:

o Your slow combustion ‘stove’ in main living area: ! Get hold of a small camp oven (the barber/camping store in Lobethal

sells them) and cook food in it, inside the slow combustion stove! ! Remove the gold ‘grill’ on top of slow combustion stove and use that

as a (slow-cooking) hot plate. ! For summer:

o Look into solar cooking (outside). Here’s just one version: http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2008/12/09/2441851.htm

o Although you don’t use air conditioning (great! IMHO), unglazed pots can be used for cooling the air while cooling drinking water at the same time &/or trays with damp charcoal placed near incoming breeze.

o Mentioned above but…your amazing latch on floor in kitchen, tunnels cool air into house.

! Summer & winter: o Although your porch roof is beautifully built, given it stops sunlight entering

in winter, consider idea of turning it into a trellised area (for fire-retardant deciduous vines, i.e. shade in summer, sunlight in winter), though this could increase weathering on house – more information needed.

! Your gas cooker in kitchen: ! Look into 3 tier saucepans - cooking the whole meal but only using

one gas ring. ! Refrigeration:

o Consider pot-in-pot refrigeration. Here’s just some information: http://permaculturenews.org/2008/08/11/a-refrigerator-that-runs-without-electricity/

* Suggested position, on part of north face of your house, for solar pump glasshouse

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Some heating options:

Rocket Stove Hot Water System Picture credit: Geoff Lawton Online Permaculture Design Course

Kang (Chinese) room & bed heater, stove & acetone, wood oil, etc collector, all-in-one! Picture credit: Geoff Lawton Online Permaculture Design Course

Kachel oven (Kachelofen) Picture credit: Geoff Lawton Online Permaculture Design Course

Tiled Kachel oven (Kachelofen) Picture credit: http://www.mrshea.com/images/shea_pics/pics.htm

More heating options:

! If you want very cosy rooms on south face of house, you could look into insulating the south face of your house. Just one possibility is a trellis of ivy (not against the walls, but with a gap). I have looked into this but would need to do more research. More ideas for heating your south-facing side of house, e.g. reflectors, trombe wall: http://permaculturetokyo.blogspot.com.au/2007/01/retrofitting-for-passive-solar.html

Immediate heating options:

! Drafts: put a thin flap onto where the two north facing doors meet – a draft comes in when wind blowing or when cold outside. Put under-door flaps at bottom of sliding doors in main living area.

! Bedroom (south-facing mud brick end of house): keep door open on winter nights, to allow heat from heated living room to warm the room. Put thick curtains up on south & north windows; keep south-facing window curtained during winter (no sunlight falls on it).

! Main living area: put a rectangle of insulation (e.g. foam) into small glass window next to south-facing door. Can be removed in summer.

! Windows: o North facing: Put thick curtains on all windows and doors on front of house,

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i.e. north facing (they are quite large), so can easily be opened during sunny winter days and closed at night to retain heat. Allow for removal of curtains in summer (your views are beautiful).

o South facing: Put up thick curtains on all south-facing rooms (these windows are much smaller).

! South facing rooms: consider putting rugs in each of these rooms. That, and thick curtains or, even, removable foam insulation for each window (they’re small), plus having door open to heated dining or living rooms will allow for cosier rooms.

Some cooling possibilities:

Solar Chimney Picture credit: Geoff Lawton’s Online Permaculture Design Course

Root cellar (one example) Picture credit: Treehugger.com

! Build trellis for north face of mud brick end of house (living room) and plant succulent

vines (fire-retardant) for shade in summer. Immediate cooling options: ! You actually have a solar chimney (image above) of sorts! Raising the latch on floor in

your kitchen allows cool air to flow in. ! Install fly-screen doors on south facing door (enough windows on north facing side) to

allow airflow. Water in: Your house catches all of it’s own water (see above in ‘Water’) Water out: At present, your greywater (from kitchen sink, bathroom & laundry) goes straight out to sewerage. This water could be kept on the property and used (see above in ‘Water Options’) Toilet When more $ &/or barter networks are established, you could consider installing a compost toilet. Below are just a couple of the many designs that are around:

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I’ve been recommended the ‘Minimus Compost Toilet’ and the ‘Farallon Compost Toilet’ (design plans available). Fun video showing a couple of home built compost toilets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJgQyG_-pJg&feature=player_embedded Views • Most of house: the views are beautiful– long views, trees, big open sky, and close

views, e.g. apple tree, kitchen gardens, bird. (Exquisite view from main living area window, so not suggesting heat-pump glasshouse, although it is an option.)

• Bedroom window: south-facing window looks straight onto water tanks. Solution: put up a trellis and grow, e.g. Jasmine (scent, visual, sound in wind)

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GENERAL LIST OF SPECIES THAT COULD BE GROWN ON PROPERTY (Further to our conversation about perennials, pioneer plants, & nitrogen fixers)

~ More extensive lists in links below ~

Ensure lots of bee & butterfly attracting plants available ~ Ensure to plant early, mid, & late varieties (for extended supply)

Trees Annuals Nitrogen fixers & Green manures Vines &/or for Trellises Apple Broccoli Clover Grapes Pear Spinach Vetch Kiwifruit Nectarine Silver beet Broad bean Passion fruit Citrus Onions Alfalfa Jasmine Loquat Cabbages Winter rye Beans Feijoa Corn Hog Peanut Gourds Pomegranate Zucchini Miracle Tree (maybe!) Chokos Plum Pumpkins Ground Nut Hops (e.g. for kids pillows) Avocado (yes!) Squash Russian Pea Shrub Hazelnuts (see *** below) Cucumber Spanish Broom Water plants (ponds / dam) Chestnut Lettuces Seaberry (Sea Buckthorn) Reeds Walnut Beans Nettles Watercress Fig Peas Honey Locust Water Spinach Olive Leaks Barrel Medic Water chestnuts Cherry Turnip (for Italian salads) Sub Clover Water celery (not in dam) Mulberry (grape companion) Melons Lucerne ‘Sequel’ Waterlily ‘Paul Hariot’ Willow (if allowed) White & Red Clover Lebanese Cress

Lucerne ‘Hunter River’ Untropical Banana Tree (see * below)

PERENNIALS &/or SELF SEEDERS Buckwheat

Take advantage of aquatic plants, they are big producers.

Honey locust Parsley Fenugreek Korean nut pine Fennel (control) Peas Aromatic pest-confusers Quince Scorzonera Beans, including Broad Beans Onion Bunya pine Jerusalem Artichoke Lupin Garlic Macadamia (see *** below) Perennial Onion Chilli Herbs/Spices Kale

Marigold

Sage Yacon Berries / Bushes Flowers / colour Thyme Oca Loganberry Mustard Winter Savory Chinese Artichoke Strawberry Dill Perennial Basil Tree Onion Mulberry e.g. Pendula Fennel Oregano Spring Onion Cranberry Candytuft Mints Potato Elderberry Yarrow Marjoram Chives Red currant Poached Eggplant (flower) Tarragon Sweet Potato Seaberry Calendula

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Rosemary Leafy & Stem Blueberry French Marigolds (strong!) Salad Burnet Running Spinach Blackcurrant Tansy Lady’s Mantle Rhubarb Gooseberry (see *** below) Stevia (Sugarleaf) Chilean Rhubarb Cape Gooseberry Angelica Asparagus Goji Berry (wolfberry) Caraway Perpetual Spinach Raspberry Celery Herb Mustard Plants Corriander Rocket Ground covers Dill Chinese Cabbage Pennyroyal Chamomile Gotu Cola Creeping Boobialla (fire retardant)

Lots of companion planting works well! But pretty sure you know that already. There are new discoveries constantly being made about this. Worth keeping an eye on & I can assist in Stage Two

Rue Chicory Miners Lettuce Lovage Perennial Rocket Native violet (fire-retardant) Chervil French Sorrel Nasturtium Curry Plant Warrigal Greens (& for mulch) Parsley [s.s] Edible Weeds Lemongrass Miscellaneous Bugle weed Rosemary Flax Corn salad Yarrow Sunflower Dandelion Horseradish Forage Sorghum Good King Henry

Explore possibility for: White Sapote Sapodillas Guava (see *** below) (See South Australian Rare Fruit Society: http://www.rarefruit-sa.org.au/Fruited.htm )

Comfrey Hops Orache Japanese Mugwort Cardoons (eat stem) Sorrel Lemon Balm Succulents (fire retardant) Dock Lavender Nettles Thai Basil

Sorghum (feed chickens the grain) Marshmallow (root, etc)

Capos Tansey Mushrooms/fungi Comfrey Clumping plants King Stropharia (edible) Wormwood Bamboo Marigold Lemon Grass

Keep some dropped wood around place for fungi to grow

Radium Weed (see ****)

Excellent sources of unusual fruit and nut trees in Southern Australia include:

Sunraysia Nurseries (near SA) http://www.sunraysianurseries.com.au/

Perry’s Fruit & Nut Nursery http://www.perrysfruitnursery.com.au/

* Untropical banana tree: http://www.banana-tree.com/ColdHardyBananaTree.html

** Raspberry varieties: Everbearer, autumn; Heritage, late summer; Canby, early; Chiliwack, late; Skeena, early summer; Nootka, mid season; Willamette, summer

*** Hazelnuts (& Macadamia, & Guava, & Gooseberries) growing well in Adelaide Hills: http://nirvanaorganicfarm.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/its-raining-hazelnuts.html Huge potential for hazelnuts in Australia (currently, most are imported): http://hazelnuts.org.au/static/

**** Radium Weed (powerful medicinal): http://www.radiumweed.com.au/

Good info re specific species for South Australia, see this (Food Forest, Gawler): http://www.foodforest.com.au/fact-sheets/fruit-and-nut-trees/growing-fruit-and-nuts/

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FOOD FOREST For excellent introduction to Food Forests, see the video, ‘Establishing a Food Forest’, Geoff Lawton

From: http://tcpermaculture.com/site/plant-index/

A pear tree plant guild or layering

http://www.permacultureglobal.com/posts/2188

Some references for plants on list below:

* Pea trees & Pea Shrubs http://tcpermaculture.com/site/2013/05/13/permaculture-plants-pea-trees/ ** Hog Peanut http://tcpermaculture.com/site/2013/05/07/permaculture-plants-hog-peanut/ *** Camas http://tcpermaculture.com/site/2013/04/13/permaculture-plants-camas/ **** Skirret http://www.tcpermaculture.blogspot.pt/2012/02/permaculture-plants-skirret.html ***** Hops http://www.tcpermaculture.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/permaculture-plants-hops.html Sauteed hop shoots: http://meelsmeals.blogspot.com.au/2011/04/sauteed-hop-shoots.html ****** Red Lentils (Lens Culinaris) http://www.pfaf.org/user/plant.aspx?LatinName=Lens+culinaris

“Food Forests are about minimum amount of work going in, for maximum amount of product coming out.”

Your Food Forest – some possibilities (Stage 2 Report will list the species of these that are specific to your climate & situation.)

1. Canopy/tall trees Persian Silk Tree (Mimosa); Honey Locust; Walnut 2. Smaller trees/large shrubs/ Hazelnut, pear, nectarine, mulberry, lime, lemon, orange, grapefruit, cherry, avocado, feijoa 3. Shrubs Chestnut, Goji berry, seaberry, blueberry, gooseberries, pigmy pea shrub*, cape gooseberry 4. Herbaceous Borage, chicory, comfrey, horseradish, yarrow, vetch, Echinacea, nettles. Research which flowers/colour. 5. Groundcovers/creepers Creeping blueberry, mints, vetch (Vicia), sorrel, groundcover raspberry, hog peanut** 6. Underground Horseradish, ground nut, camas***, skirret**** 7. Vertical/Vines Hog peanut** (also climbs), hardy kiwi, hops***** at edge, vetch, e.g. red lentils (Lens Culinaris)****** 8. Aquatic/wetland Water lotus, water chestnut, reeds (can be eaten) 9. Mycelial/Fungal King Stropharia, Shaggy Mane, others will appear. Also, underground fungi networks will also develop

“You can walk away from an established Food Forest & leave it for 10 yrs, & come back & get ! a hectare maintained in 1 day with 1 person with a sharp knife or a machete!” Geoff Lawton

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Some food plants locals (nearby) are growing successfully: Chestnuts, Walnuts, Apples, Nectarines, Lemons, Limes, Oranges, Grapefruit, Raspberries, Mulberry, Figs, Blueberries, Grapes (wine), Potatoes, Avocados (at Ashborne), Olives, Parsley, Sage, Lavender. South Australia State Flora Catalogue – all natives, including reeds – very extensive listing: http://www.environment.sa.gov.au/our-places/State_Flora/Catalogue Below are extensive lists of plants for Temperate Climate (constantly updated). You can then ‘click’ each plant for details: http://tcpermaculture.com/site/plant-index/ Nitrogen fixers: http://www.tcpermaculture.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/plants-nitrogen-fixers.html Aromatic Pest Confusers: http://www.tcpermaculture.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/aromatic-pest-confusers-for-temperate.html ‘Food from Perennial(ising) Plants in Temperate Climate Australia’ (Permaculture Research Institute) [Also, good info in here about growing perennial(ising) cherry tomatoes] http://permaculturenews.org/2013/08/21/food-from-perennialising-plants-in-temperate-climate-australia-for-july-2013/ ‘Plants for a Future’ (data base) http://www.pfaf.org/user/default.aspx ‘The Open Wiki-base for Practical Plants’ http://practicalplants.org/wiki/Practical_Plants ‘Permaculture Plants – A Selection’ by Jeff Nugent & Julia Boniface Type into Google ‘Permaculture plants a selection pdf’ and it’s there (31Mb) Interesting notes: ~ Avocados will not ripen until picked; they can stay (stored!) on tree March – Sept. ~ Mulberries can be pollarded. Weeds that ‘legally’ must be removed from the area under Habitat Agreement (& remainder of your property):

! Gorse ! ! http://www.eattheweeds.com/ulex-europaeus-edible-gorse-or-furze-pas-2/

• Methods for removal: " Pull new growth in winter when ground soft, and " Cut and swab the rest

(Interesting info about gorse, including a recipe for Gorse Wine!): ! ! http://www.eattheweeds.com/ulex-europaeus-edible-gorse-or-furze-pas-2/!

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RESOURCES

Some of the material resources on the property now • Large stack of mud bricks • Huge numbers of bricks scattered in various places • Plastic down pipe (various lengths) • Piping (various types) • Various building materials (e.g. window frames with screens, planks of wood) • Huge slabs of concrete resulting from lifting it (if that’s the solution) • Many fired clay tiles • Two types of sand, small amounts, in little bricked bays on right of tool shed • Solar hot water heater (pipes not connected) but works (two large glass panels, facing

sun, with metal tubing encased in metal) • Large weathered work table • 2 x 1 metre square large upside down weathered crates

Some of your personal & material resources Personal resources: • Clear communicator • Enjoys people (& encouraging

people’s abilities)

• Writing skills. Diploma of Professional Editing & Proofreading

• Computer skills (research & word-processing)

• Transcribing skills • Skilled at conflict resolution • Loves research (for real application) • Loves ‘making things happen’ • Enjoys discovering & tapping into

available resources, e.g. sections of Council

• Grant-writing ability (having recently procured grant for Burra Creek Revegetation Group project)

• Counselling skills including: (i) facilitating healing from trauma; (ii) facilitating goal generating, setting &achieving, using, e.g. mind-mapping, non-dominant hand-writing/drawing. Currently studying Diploma of Counselling

• Tenacity: ability to ‘follow through’ (even if the going gets ‘tough’)

• Good at creative use of $ • Likes doing/making useful things with

hands • Creative thinker • Open-minded (e.g. vegetarian 40 yrs &

comfortable exploring whether realistic in her Permaculture system)

• Loves learning • Very at home in nature • Brings creativity, joy, intelligence, fun

& aliveness to the table • Connects effortlessly with children • ! Daughter, son-in-law (very keen on

creative gardening), two grandsons. ! • Loads of energy • Beautiful voice • Beautiful music skills (including

simple instrument-making • Fluid dancer

Material resources: • Good strong diesel wagon • Two iMac computers (desktop &

laptop) • High quality music recording

equipment • High quality (and light) PA system • Tool box • Axes • New small chain saw • New handmade sickle knife

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Some of the Local Resources

• Notice boards: o Outside Amberlight Café (see below) o Outside Lobethal Newsagency

• Lobethal IGA: e.g. constant supply of cardboard boxes

• Lobethal Community Market (open Saturdays and Sunday). ! Place to sell/swap produce ! Fantastic meeting place (large table & chair area), coffee, etc ! Frank & Rosemary (see below) have a 2nd small stall there

• Onkaparinga (Lobethal) Woollen Mills ! All sorts of local small businesses housed in there ! Onkaparinga (Lobethal) Woollen Mills Museum

• Frank & Rosemary’s Fruit & Vegetable stall about 3klms from your property on your road (Kenton Valley Rd). Frank & Rosemary (Southern Italians) are very community minded. They’re keen to sell as much organically produced produce as possible; at present they’re only able to access about 1/3 organic, e.g. they bring free-range biodynamic eggs in from Kangaroo Island, so would happily procure them closer. They also sell locally produced (gourmet quality) processed produce, e.g. chocolate, wine.

• Amberlight Café, Lobethal: Lovely woman (& family) there may be interested to buy organic produce, primary and processed. She is very open to all sorts of community-based possibilities/events at her (large & cosy) café.

• Pony manure: A property two properties down the road towards Lobethal has a constant supply of free bagged up pony manure. Also, can bring trailer or car Mon, Wed, & Friday.

• Local old-fashioned hall in Lobethal with cinema; possibly has a large meeting area, if needed in future. Potential to show educational films there!

• Gumeracha Monthly Market (7.8 klms)

• Gumeracha Community Centre (7.8 klms)

• Woodside Community Centre

• Woodside Monthly Market (including second-hand tools) Very active market (8.4 klms)

• Woodside Library (& Adelaide Hills Council sub-office) very friendly, helpful staff

• Woodside Lions Shed (extremely cheap tools, furniture, bric-a-brac). This is a hive of community get-together every Saturday morning. Fantastic atmosphere.

•

• Mt Pleasant Natural Resource Centre & Farmers Market (very active).

• Mt Pleasant ‘Recreate’ (at back of Mt Pleasant Library): community-based: make & sell items from recycled goods; workshops; community garden. Although Recreate is approximately ! an hour’s drive away, they are keen to link with anyone wanting to do things at Gumeracha Community Centre (nearer to you).

• Lobethal Bushland Park – given this backs onto your property. Possibilities for combining tours of your property (as example of Permaculture in action), the brickworks, and the huge tree stumps in LBP showing what once existed in our forests.

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• Nearby businesses (on Kenton Valley Rd): Hughes Building Contractors (large); Australian Dried Fruits (small); Lobethal Sheet Metal (small).

• Neighbours: o Two properties directly north of yours in a long line, (i) John, been there 23

years, (ii) ? o Property after that, they farm alpacas. They also sell walnuts from front of

house when in season. Dean said they get about 50 kilos from their walnut tree.

o Julie & Jo (Croatian): traders in second hand goods; live further up Kenton Valley Road. Julie interested in Permaculture but doesn’t know a lot about it as yet. They have a large area at Lobethal Woollen Mill Market.

o To the south, directly next door, bulls. Property after that, lots of Shetland Ponies. Constant supply of bagged up free horse manure mixed with straw out front.

o Many other small farms nearby in all directions.

• Lobethal NRM (Natural Resources Management) Ph: (08) 8389 5900

• Lobethal Lutheran School http://www.lobelu.sa.edu.au/

• Two second hand shops in Lobethal

• Mt Barker Organic Food Market (shop)

• Mt Barker animal feed stock supplier (name?) Next to Mt Barker Organics (above). Lots of stuff thrown out near entrance, e.g. pallets, old cages.

• Mt Barker Community Market

• Windmill On The Hill – Hahndorf (Shop connected to Hahndorf tip)

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INCOME GENERATING (some possibilities) !"#$%&'!()*(+)!,$&#-!%))./!$%&!'()!*!+'(!,-'.(/0%-1!02./3!4565!7%-8/2%9/!:/44!,4;%7<3!&/4=&;!9-%)&+0/!!"#$%&'!0*1!2*1+.!&3*4!56*3!(3*.12)7!5!')++/!!

In the brick kilns: Mushrooms Mushroom Cultivation ! ! http://www.daenvis.org/technology/Mushroom.htm

‘The Great Mushroom Experiment’ (a person experimenting with growing & selling ideas)

! http://beat-unemployment.com/?p=283 Mushrooms Cash Crops From Farm Wastes ! ! http://plenty.150m.com/My_Links_Pages/low_tech_mushrooms01.html ‘Permaculture with a Mycological Twist’

http://milkwood.net/2012/05/23/permaculture-with-a-mycological-twist/ Worms (in the brick kilns, i.e. sheltered from sun):

• Worms • Worm castings • Worm tea • Worm farms

Some useful links: ‘Worm Bin/Chicken Poo Compost Catcher’

http://permaculturenews.org/2013/03/20/worm-bin-and-chicken-poop-compost-catch/

‘Everything you need to know about composting with worms’ http://permaculturenews.org/2011/04/02/everything-you-need-to-know-about-composting-with-worms/ ‘Money from farming worms’ http://working-worms.com/content/view/37/59/ ‘100 ways to make money with composting worms’ (this person hadn’t gotten very far yet, but has generate a lot of ideas): http://wormdiaries.organic-raised-bed-gardening.com/2011/04/19/shazam-100-ways-to-make-money-with-composting-worms/ ‘Yelm Earthworm & Castings’ http://yelmworms.com/vermiculture/

Shade-loving plants? (e.g. large tree fern presently growing in one) Rest of your property

Berries You can grow, e.g. raspberries that have different fruiting seasons (so a longer

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selling season) Seaberry (Sea Buckthorn) Really look into this one. Very nutritional & nitrogen-fixing. http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca/speccrop/publications/documents/seabuckthorn_may2001.pdf Flowers: tulips and daffodils grow easily on your property; there’s a cemetery just up the road! ‘Hurdles’ Fences, windbreaks, etc made from coppice. ‘Hurdles’ can sell per vertical foot. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U08AiNxq17Q Bees / honey Given there’s, (i) so much almost flat concrete and, (ii) 15 acres of land under Habitat Agreement, meaning possibly a lot of flowering natives! Mint specialist There are so many different mints and they’re easy to grow & propagate from, e.g. Chocolate mint, Pennyroyal. Hiring out your chickens If/when you make a moveable chicken shelter & get hold of movable electric fence, you could hire them out to ‘do what they do’. Moss Lots of moss grows on your property – investigate whether it can be sold or if there’s a product from it. Garden windmills for scaring rabbits, etc; easy to make Windsocks for people to understand the wind in different parts of their property

To generate more bartering/community sharing: You could start a local LETS group and encourage community sharing. This way you can possibly get things like a small pontoon built for the dam, and you can barter for services and goods you have to offer. !!"#$%&'"#($)(*+#,"(-&$.%',/()$&("0+1-2"3(

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In Australia, a friend of ours went around the city looking at all the chestnut trees and selecting good chestnut trees for grafting. He suddenly realized he had looked at three or four thousand chest- nut trees. So! There were already a lot of chestnuts in the city! He then went around to the owners and offered them a wholesale price for their chestnuts, which in Australia is $2 a pound. They were all quite happy, because hardly any of them wanted more than a couple of buckets of chestnuts, while their trees produced hundreds of pounds. I first met him when he was up into the second year gathering chestnuts, and he had sold $70,000 worth of chestnuts that year, retail, which enabled him to buy a farm and start grafting chestnuts. Then he started to sell grafted chestnuts. He had a selection of thousands of trees to graft from. He has now developed the most successful grafting techniques in the town, and he is selling his grafted chestnut trees off at $15 each. I suggested to him that he also freeze a large quantity of selected seed. He has made a special study of grafting. You graft chestnut according to the color

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of the nuts. There are dark brown and light tan and medium tan nuts. It is no good trying to graft a dark brown nut tree onto a light tan stock. So he sets out all his stock from dark brown nuts from his good dark brown trees, and he grafts to them. His success rate just went out of sight. That was something that nobody had ever taught him, and I don't think it has ever been recorded. He selects good seed, that he knows produces good chestnuts. He sells it to us cheap, and everybody can grow nuts at home. Further, this man is suggesting to people who have room that they plant a chestnut tree. He gives them the tree, providing they contract their excess nuts to him. He has no trouble if people move, in talking to the next owner and saying, "I'll buy your chestnuts." He has made a specialty of the chestnut. Yet, he started off without ever owning a chestnut tree. He is presently very well off. There are oranges & lemons & grapefruits in many peopleʼs gardens (one just up the road from you) where the fruit just drops to the ground. Certain products can be made from these, e.g. become a producer of marmalade and citrus (peel) firelighters!

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Beginning list of ‘things to do’: A lovely way to go is…start small, e.g. from house outwards, and build on successes.

Social:

• Set up a local LETS group. • Investigate idea of joining Bartercard. • Investigate (Internet searches, etc) whether anyone local using Permaculture

design, or organic or biodynamic farming (for possible farm-link, e.g. swapping one of your products for milk).

Legal:

• Find out if legal to collect water from runoff from Kenton Valley Rd for berries. (See ‘Water, Options’ above)

• Building inspection for Brickwork kilns regarding feasibility of using for, e.g. growing mushrooms.

• Public Liability, e.g. for WWOOFers, public • Absolute clarity about what required for land under Habitat Agreement

Investigate:

• Is there a local market for: o Mushrooms? o Dried &/or processed mushrooms? o Worms, &/or worm farms, &/or worm castings, &/or worm juice?

• Concrete issue (see below in ‘Physical’) • Dam (see below in ‘Physical’)

Physical (on the property)

• Dam: o Investigate:

! Depth of your dam (already place) ! What’s at floor of dam ! Whether fish exist in dam (yabbies are in there)

" If no…get some in there! o Build bird stand in dam (for manuring) o Put up hook for rotting stuff (the dropped maggots feed the fish!) o Build small pontoon for humans.

• Pruning: In summer (see References ‘Organic Gardening’) prune the 3 apple trees to standing harvesting height.

• Concrete on Zone 2 area – removal possibilities: (i) further investigate what’s involved re lifting - see, e.g. http://www.familyhandyman.com/masonry/concrete-repair/concrete-demolition-tools-and-tips/view-all#step1 (ii) get quote for professional job, (iii) enlist a group of helpers, (iv) leave it to trees to break it up – investigate whether nut trees would do similar to eucalypts (see above). Investigate whether the concrete creates a very hot region for the bees (if you choose to keep bees), or ok.

• Chicken shed: build shelter rooves, etc to join those three freestanding brick walls, to create chicken shed and another shelter (to use for?).

• Build a mobile chicken house & solar panel on roof (if using electric moveable fence). 50m or net fence covers 150m of ground.

• Plant nursery: turn big west-facing brick structure into a plant nursery (can cover roof in plastic or with lush trellised vines).

• Turn lawn directly in front of house into a Zone 1 garden (using chook tractor)

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• Put up rabbit and kangaroo proof fence around Zone 1 gardens • Track up hill: at present it has new trees growing in middle of it. Urgent. • Investigate structure of compost bays on the property, make sturdier if needed. • So you can have more good soil ASAP, get good compost piles happening, e.g.

Berkley 18 Day Compost method http://deepgreenpermaculture.com/diy-instructions/hot-compost-composting-in-18-days/

• Make the tiny corrugated iron shelter (currently used for kindling) more structurally sound

• Make the hay shelter more structurally sound • Organise rooves, on above two items, so can collect rain water • Start sawing/gathering dropped branches from around the place (lots!) for

firewood & Hugelkultur • Line bottom of pond with clay (from property) • Cut back overgrown bramble in big three-sided east-facing brick structure • New ponds: create where water currently collecting (see ‘Water Options’) • Wicking beds: make those long trenches into wicking beds - start a bit at a time! • Clear the road/track going up the hill (urgent) • Gorse: on Habitat Agreement section; me personally, I’d borrow a goat & tether

next to gorse during day. Would not take long & much more manageable then. • Put 44gallon drum below toolshed downpipe. • Put a 44gallon drum near woodshed/compost bays for water collection. • Collecting cuttings, seeds, seedlings from local area & beyond • Propagating!

Materials to get hold of:

• Bamboo (for building with, trellises, stakes, etc). People often beg to have the stuff cut and taken away.

• Mesh (for chook tractor, etc, etc). Sometimes thrown out as hard rubbish. • Planks of wood • Old bath for worms • For wicking beds (for now):

! Foam boxes ! PVC pipe ! Gravel ! Shade cloth

• For building Rocket Mass Fuel heaters/stove: ! Fire bricks ! Sand ! Clay (on property!) ! Duct ! 55 gallon barrel ! 30 gallon barrel ! Perlite ! High temperature thermometer

• Cuttings, seeds (beg, borrow or steal!)

Some possible future project (when more $ & barter networks developed): 1. Get building inspector to investigate safety/viability of using the brickworks for cottage

industry purpose, e.g. mushroom growing, and worm farming. 2. Grey water plumbed for use in toilet.

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Research to do: • Solar stuff

! Cost of solar panels these days? ! Making own solar panels? (See link above in ‘energy’ section)

• Trellis ! If porch roof was turned to open trellis, would this allow weathering

of house (i.e. little protection from rain)? • Pending outcome of building inspection:

! Could a Dexter cow (miniature) and calf fit on this land (pending building inspection for brick kilns, i.e. possible shelter)?

! Is there any waste product from mushroom production that could be sold?

! Any possibilities for growing (& selling) shade-loving plants? • Water:

! Is it possible to collect any of the runoff from neighbour’s dam? (It goes into a huge open drain then a pipe underground on your property)?

! Is there any usefulness for watering the mound (given ‘only’ habitat-protected below it)? If so, investigate possibility for capturing runoff from the pipe from your dam.

! Investigate how to capture water from the huge underground pipe water runoff system.

• Depths of your dam? At edges & centre, etc. • Pond stuff

! Are ‘back-swimmers’ (for added mosquito control) good in this climate?

• Plant stuff ! Which varieties of Raspberry good for your specific area? Possibly

the autumn-fruiting varieties. (Ask neighbours?) ! What species of wattle is it that grows on your property? Can this

species be used as fodder? Can seeds from this species be eaten? Can the bark from this species be used for tanning? Etc!

! What would grow well where lush thistles are below shrubs south of woodlot?

! Is there a market for coppice? You will have a lot. ! Can the wattle bark on your type of wattle be used for tanning?

• Concrete: ! Can nut trees break up concrete (rather than eucalypts)?

• Trenches: ! What would you like to grow in those (as wicking beds)? (Or, other

use? Let’s brainstorm!) • Bees:

! Are there enough native flowering plants to sustain bees (given 15 acres under Habitat Agreement) & if so, how many bee hives?

Decisions (soon): • Want to add trellis (north) window of main living room?

o If so, what vine/s would you like? (See plant list - must be fire retardant) • Want to pay to get building inspection done for brick kilns?

o If yes, and the outcome is good ! Market research for viability of selling mushrooms ! Market research for viability of selling worm products

• Do you want to do market research for viability of selling berries (or berry

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products)? • Do you want to consider the idea of bees/honey? • Concrete:

o Want to get quote for removal of concrete? o Or go the passive way only? (Outlined above)

• What would you like to grow below shrubs at base of woodlot (microclimate)? (I can give possibilities).

Appendices: • ‘CFS fire retardant plant list’ • ‘Plant Inventory for Heritage Agreement site’ (this property) • ‘Tips’. This document has tips, extracts, etc

Some Resources – Books & Websites: Peak Oil:

! Richard Heinberg (Peak Oil) http://richardheinberg.com/

! ‘Peak Oil: Richard Heinberg 2013 BCEA keynote’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JY2AcFEcrc

! James Howard Kunstler (Peak Oil) http://kunstler.com/

! Transition Network http://www.transitionnetwork.org/

Bill Mollison’s pamphlet series (transcribed & edited from a 1981 Permaculture course): http://www.permacultureproject.com/resources-2/bill-mollison-permaculture-pamphlets/

‘5 Acre Abundance on a Budget’, presented by Geoff Lawton:

http://www.geofflawton.com/sq/25498-5-acre-abundance-on-a-budget

Eco Films Australia http://www.ecofilms.com.au/ (lots of fantastic, inspiring& informative

films available here)

Plants

Veg2Table (these people are in Lobethal, so know the climate & what grows here!) https://www.facebook.com/veg2table.au?hc_location=stream

Plants from Southern Chile (data base) http://www.chileflora.com/Florachilena/FloraEnglish/PIC_SOUTHERN_PLANTS_0.php

Seaberry http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca/speccrop/publications/documents/seabuckthorn_may2001.pdf

‘Nirvana Organic Farm & Produce’ - Kiwifruit, Berries, Nuts, etc – Adelaide Hills. Many workshops available & tours

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http://nirvanaorganicfarm.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/kiwifruit-harvest.html

Logisolar (local builder of solar dryers – fruit, etc) http://pres-

free.com.au/shop/index.php?main_page=page&id=25&zenid=3b92c680e20665bcf5754bd54f5efae6

Some Permaculture sites

Permaculture Research Institute http://www.permaculturenews.org/

Permies.com (started by Paul Wheaton) http://www.permies.com/

David Holmgren (co-founder of Permaculture) http://holmgren.com.au/

The Food Forest - Gawler, South Australia http://www.foodforest.com.au/

‘Permaculture Tools’ http://permaculturetools.com.au

‘Tagari Publications’ http://www.tagari.com/

‘Worldwide Permaculture Network’ http://www.permacultureglobal.com/

Books (in my library, you’re welcome to peruse!):

‘Backyard Self Sufficiency’ Jackie French

‘Gardening on a Shoestring’ Helen McKerral

‘One Magic Square’ Lolo Houbein (she started Trees For Life)

‘Organic Gardening’ Peter Bennett

‘Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond’ Brad Lancaster

‘Permaculture Manual’, Bill Mollison

‘Seed Savers’ Handbook’ Michel & Jude Fanton

‘The Permaculture Book of Ferment & Human Nutrition’ Bill Mollison

‘The Mother Earth News Handbook of Homemade Power’ (found in 2nd hand shop!)

Various ‘Grass Roots’ & ‘Earth Garden’ magazines

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Outside house: 3. House 4. Carport 5. Water tanks x 3 15. Pond, aquatic plants, frogs, etc 33. Hay shelter & 44 gallon drum water collect 35c & d. Apple trees 36. Fence with trellised berries, etc for house 37. Glass solar pump room 38. Trellis for lush vines to house 46. Various double reach kitchen garden beds 49 Tool shed & water collection 53. Greywater filter system 54. Jasmine trellis to screen tanks & scent bedroom 55. Vine to screen carport view 62. Old solar water heat panel, & outdoor bath (fun) 69. Solar panels 73. Radium Weed (medicinal) patch 74. Tap 77. Mud room door (to laundry) 78. Open covered porch 79. Solar cooking area

Inside house: Rocket Mass Fuel water heater Rocket Mass Fuel stove Rocket Mass Fuel heat Underground pipe (cool air – summer) Glass solar pump room into house (warm – winter) For more, see Stage One Report, Zone 1

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Tips, extracts, etc Pete’s White Oil Recipe (for scale on plants, e.g. citrus): 1 Cup cooking oil ! cup water 1 tsp detergent Shake together. Dilute @ 40 parts water to 1 part mixture Spray onto and under leaves Frogs (This is from Bill’s design pamphlet)

Compost

! Remember that stuff about compost on the ABC Permaculture gardening DVD. Very simple.

! To keep cone composters (compost bins) healthy, say, if they get wet and sour: add couple handfuls of lime, some manure, some dry material…then give it a good mix around with a pitchfork (just inside the bin is fine).

Worms ! One handful of worm castings to 9 litres of water in a watering can,

applied fortnightly to vegetable gardens, ‘really keeps them pumping along’.

Adrian of Boys from the Bush said: ! A mirror at entrance to chicken shed will stop crows going in (maybe

a hanging mirror) ! Those little windmill things you get at shows deter rabbits, etc. Need

to move them every now and then. ! A rubber snake (moved around) will deter cockatoos (I think he said)

and other ‘pests’. o Josh on ABC video undercuts the eucalypt to let in more light for understory

shrubs(!) He chips the eucalypt prunings. Anything too big…firewood.

It is nice to have a couple of little ponds in zone one, littlefour foot ponds, and one of those very close to a path. That'sthe one with the watercress. That is a pond from which youcan take pounds and pounds of food.

It is full of tadpoles. This is frog city. Five or six gallons oftadpoles, and brother, you have many friends. It is really easytoo, to select the frog you want. If you want frogs in the top ofthe trees, you take the frog eggs from the water surface. If youwant frogs in the cabbages, you take eggs from mid-water; andif you want frogs running around in your mulch eating slugs,you have to scrape your pond bottom.

The reason is this: Your high life tadpoles, your tree frogtadpoles, are those tadpoles that are free swimmers, and tad-poles stratify in the water as the frogs stratify in the environ-ment. Those tree frog tadpoles are buoyant, they will not sink.The frogs that burrow and scrub around in the leaf litter, havesinking tadpoles

12. They have to swim hard to rise in the water,

and don't very often do so. They live in the pond as the frogslive on land, down in the mulch. So you just make your deci-sions.

If you send children out after tadpoles, they only bring inhigh-living frogs, because they never get down to these bottomtadpoles. Those tadpoles in the base have heavily pigmentedtails, and the frogs also are heavily pigmented frogs. Thesetadpoles have changeable colors and so do the frogs. Theyadopt the color of their surroundings. Big tree frogs climbmaybe 80 feet from the ground. Medium size tree frogs oc-cupy the shrubs and bushes, and little tree frogs are the onesthat sit in your cabbages.

Within zone one, if you are doing mulch gardening, it is fullymulched. There is no bare soil. If you are a triple deep digger, itis fully made into beds. All those methods produce good veg-etables. We will not make you choose a method. It dependsupon what suits you. I'm lazy--full mulch suits me. You are vig-orous, triple digging suits you. Triple digging suits you now be-cause you are young. Full mulching, you will grow into. So tech-nique is not a fixed thing. It is something appropriate to occa-sion, to sources, to age, inclination and conviction. Mostly, it's acase of conviction. Well, it doesn't hurt to let people have theirconvictions sometimes--if they are harmless convictions.

That's the annual garden. There are really two classes ofplants in the annual garden--those that you continually pick, orpick frequently and those that you harvest once or just a fewtimes. The first group includes mainly the soft herbs, and thethings that are yielding frequently, like broccoli, parsley, andmost of the salad greens. If you don't cut the heads frombroccoli, you lose production. If you have a broccoli around thecorner, often half of it goes to seed before you get to it.

The other class of vegetable you eliminate when you do har-vest them. They are your tubers, roots, head vegetables. Celeryfalls in between, depending on your habits. We always put cel-ery on the paths, because we always just take two stalks. Inever in my life used more than two stalks of celery at a time. Iknow people who grow celery in bunches and cut it right off. Tothem, celery is a head plant. To me it is a plucking plant. Thosethings you pluck closely follow your pathways; those things youcut off lay behind them. There is nothing more stupid than wad-ing through a patch of cabbages to get to parsley, and nothingmore logical than bordering paths with parsley, so that younever tread into the other area except maybe once or twice inits life. Design where your plants are to go, so your garden canbe fully mulched with high turnover, mainly annuals, someperennials, some biennials.

This garden is under constant invasion. It is very attractive toweeds and running things. So once you have decided its bor-ders, you might very well border it. Select border plants fromthose that do not permit invaders to penetrate them. You maystill leave little areas unplanned, into which people can extend, if 12. This probably does not apply to tadpoles everywhere. - DH

they want, or into which they put things that are aestheticallyimportant.

In zone two, unless you have extraordinary resources, thereis no way that you are going to continue a fully mulched garden.Two of us mulchers went to Orange Bathurse AgriculturalCollege and laid two different mulch gardens for the agricul-tural students to look at, and to weigh and measure againsttheir clean-till gardens. Ours was so good that the vegetablestasted better than theirs, produced a lot more. One chap wenthome and applied nine acres of it!

It is a common thing for people to build a house and thenhunt for a garden site. Having found a place for a garden, theymake one there. They build a glass house somewhere, andtheir chicken house. By this time they are worn out. They haveto cart their manure to the garden. They lay out an orchardsomewhere, and they are desperately trying to get it pruned.They didn't ever have enough time or sufficient understandingto enable them to put anything together.

People will have a little house on a residential block, sur-rounded by flowers and lawn and shrubbery. Behind the house,way back in a corner, hidden by some discreet trellis, they burnthings and cultivate a modest vegetable garden.

You recognize that pattern. It is so universal that to move acabbage to this lawn is a cause for total neighborhood con-sternation. A man in Tasmania moved four cabbages out on hisnature strip. The council sent two trucks and seven men andhad them removed. The truck pulled up, the men hopped out,took long handled shovels, dug out his cabbages, threw a cou-ple in each of the trucks, stood there for a while and had acouple of cigarettes. That act of defiance by one citizen wasformally wiped out with a great show of force. To plant cab-bages on the nature strip was just indecent of him, totally in-decent.

Why should it be indecent to make practical use of the forehalf of your property or around your house where people cansee it? Why is it low status to use that area? The condition re-ally has one origin, and that is peculiar to England and to thewhole British landscape ethic. The British tradition has pro-duced the whole profession of landscape designers in theEnglish speaking world, and much of the non-English speakingworld. Where landscape gardeners have never existed, thisseparation doesn't exist. What you are really looking at here isa tiny little British country estate, designed for people who hadservants. The tradition has moved right into the cities, and rightdown to quarter acre patches. It has become a cultural statussymbol to present a non-productive facade.

Lawns are interesting. Remember, there were lawns beforethere were lawnmowers. In India there are lawns today wherethere are no lawnmowers. I took a photograph of the lawn be-ing cut on the Taj Mahal. Thirty-six widows moved forward ontheir knees, cutting the grass with their little knives. Lawn is asalute to power.

The nuclear family these days is smaller, yet the house isbigger. The childless couple are flat out keeping up with thissituation. As well as being the lord and lady of the house, theyare often the sole caretakers of the whole property. They are inan awful trap, really. They don't use any of that lawn. They don'thave any time to go out there and enjoy it. This is the wholebasis of landscape architecture. It is a symbol of status.

Well, many people have started to ignore it. I have a friendwho has brought the whole design forward in front of hishouse, and it has spilled out onto the council strip. Out in thestreet you are wading through pumpkins. Another instance--Iwas walking up a street in Perth one day, and suddenly in onecorner the whole area came to life. Beans and peas and allsorts of vines were growing along the footpaths and up thetrees. It looked like a real Eden in this desert of status.

In the Davis village project you have a very beautiful land-scape, with nearly 90% of it of some use. But not quite all of it.We don't need to have everything to be utilitarian. There is no

It is nice to have a couple of little ponds in zone one, littlefour foot ponds, and one of those very close to a path. That'sthe one with the watercress. That is a pond from which youcan take pounds and pounds of food.

It is full of tadpoles. This is frog city. Five or six gallons oftadpoles, and brother, you have many friends. It is really easytoo, to select the frog you want. If you want frogs in the top ofthe trees, you take the frog eggs from the water surface. If youwant frogs in the cabbages, you take eggs from mid-water; andif you want frogs running around in your mulch eating slugs,you have to scrape your pond bottom.

The reason is this: Your high life tadpoles, your tree frogtadpoles, are those tadpoles that are free swimmers, and tad-poles stratify in the water as the frogs stratify in the environ-ment. Those tree frog tadpoles are buoyant, they will not sink.The frogs that burrow and scrub around in the leaf litter, havesinking tadpoles

12. They have to swim hard to rise in the water,

and don't very often do so. They live in the pond as the frogslive on land, down in the mulch. So you just make your deci-sions.

If you send children out after tadpoles, they only bring inhigh-living frogs, because they never get down to these bottomtadpoles. Those tadpoles in the base have heavily pigmentedtails, and the frogs also are heavily pigmented frogs. Thesetadpoles have changeable colors and so do the frogs. Theyadopt the color of their surroundings. Big tree frogs climbmaybe 80 feet from the ground. Medium size tree frogs oc-cupy the shrubs and bushes, and little tree frogs are the onesthat sit in your cabbages.

Within zone one, if you are doing mulch gardening, it is fullymulched. There is no bare soil. If you are a triple deep digger, itis fully made into beds. All those methods produce good veg-etables. We will not make you choose a method. It dependsupon what suits you. I'm lazy--full mulch suits me. You are vig-orous, triple digging suits you. Triple digging suits you now be-cause you are young. Full mulching, you will grow into. So tech-nique is not a fixed thing. It is something appropriate to occa-sion, to sources, to age, inclination and conviction. Mostly, it's acase of conviction. Well, it doesn't hurt to let people have theirconvictions sometimes--if they are harmless convictions.

That's the annual garden. There are really two classes ofplants in the annual garden--those that you continually pick, orpick frequently and those that you harvest once or just a fewtimes. The first group includes mainly the soft herbs, and thethings that are yielding frequently, like broccoli, parsley, andmost of the salad greens. If you don't cut the heads frombroccoli, you lose production. If you have a broccoli around thecorner, often half of it goes to seed before you get to it.

The other class of vegetable you eliminate when you do har-vest them. They are your tubers, roots, head vegetables. Celeryfalls in between, depending on your habits. We always put cel-ery on the paths, because we always just take two stalks. Inever in my life used more than two stalks of celery at a time. Iknow people who grow celery in bunches and cut it right off. Tothem, celery is a head plant. To me it is a plucking plant. Thosethings you pluck closely follow your pathways; those things youcut off lay behind them. There is nothing more stupid than wad-ing through a patch of cabbages to get to parsley, and nothingmore logical than bordering paths with parsley, so that younever tread into the other area except maybe once or twice inits life. Design where your plants are to go, so your garden canbe fully mulched with high turnover, mainly annuals, someperennials, some biennials.

This garden is under constant invasion. It is very attractive toweeds and running things. So once you have decided its bor-ders, you might very well border it. Select border plants fromthose that do not permit invaders to penetrate them. You maystill leave little areas unplanned, into which people can extend, if 12. This probably does not apply to tadpoles everywhere. - DH

they want, or into which they put things that are aestheticallyimportant.

In zone two, unless you have extraordinary resources, thereis no way that you are going to continue a fully mulched garden.Two of us mulchers went to Orange Bathurse AgriculturalCollege and laid two different mulch gardens for the agricul-tural students to look at, and to weigh and measure againsttheir clean-till gardens. Ours was so good that the vegetablestasted better than theirs, produced a lot more. One chap wenthome and applied nine acres of it!

It is a common thing for people to build a house and thenhunt for a garden site. Having found a place for a garden, theymake one there. They build a glass house somewhere, andtheir chicken house. By this time they are worn out. They haveto cart their manure to the garden. They lay out an orchardsomewhere, and they are desperately trying to get it pruned.They didn't ever have enough time or sufficient understandingto enable them to put anything together.

People will have a little house on a residential block, sur-rounded by flowers and lawn and shrubbery. Behind the house,way back in a corner, hidden by some discreet trellis, they burnthings and cultivate a modest vegetable garden.

You recognize that pattern. It is so universal that to move acabbage to this lawn is a cause for total neighborhood con-sternation. A man in Tasmania moved four cabbages out on hisnature strip. The council sent two trucks and seven men andhad them removed. The truck pulled up, the men hopped out,took long handled shovels, dug out his cabbages, threw a cou-ple in each of the trucks, stood there for a while and had acouple of cigarettes. That act of defiance by one citizen wasformally wiped out with a great show of force. To plant cab-bages on the nature strip was just indecent of him, totally in-decent.

Why should it be indecent to make practical use of the forehalf of your property or around your house where people cansee it? Why is it low status to use that area? The condition re-ally has one origin, and that is peculiar to England and to thewhole British landscape ethic. The British tradition has pro-duced the whole profession of landscape designers in theEnglish speaking world, and much of the non-English speakingworld. Where landscape gardeners have never existed, thisseparation doesn't exist. What you are really looking at here isa tiny little British country estate, designed for people who hadservants. The tradition has moved right into the cities, and rightdown to quarter acre patches. It has become a cultural statussymbol to present a non-productive facade.

Lawns are interesting. Remember, there were lawns beforethere were lawnmowers. In India there are lawns today wherethere are no lawnmowers. I took a photograph of the lawn be-ing cut on the Taj Mahal. Thirty-six widows moved forward ontheir knees, cutting the grass with their little knives. Lawn is asalute to power.

The nuclear family these days is smaller, yet the house isbigger. The childless couple are flat out keeping up with thissituation. As well as being the lord and lady of the house, theyare often the sole caretakers of the whole property. They are inan awful trap, really. They don't use any of that lawn. They don'thave any time to go out there and enjoy it. This is the wholebasis of landscape architecture. It is a symbol of status.

Well, many people have started to ignore it. I have a friendwho has brought the whole design forward in front of hishouse, and it has spilled out onto the council strip. Out in thestreet you are wading through pumpkins. Another instance--Iwas walking up a street in Perth one day, and suddenly in onecorner the whole area came to life. Beans and peas and allsorts of vines were growing along the footpaths and up thetrees. It looked like a real Eden in this desert of status.

In the Davis village project you have a very beautiful land-scape, with nearly 90% of it of some use. But not quite all of it.We don't need to have everything to be utilitarian. There is no

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o Tyres make useful root guards. It is important to cut out the underside so that roots don’t get bound up.

o Chickens: Rue, Wormwood ! See p.11 Bill’s Design pamphlet for great innovative stuff re combo

of chickens in zone 2 but accessible (including their fallen manure from chook shed) to zone 1 garden.

o Fences, walls, trellises, etc: Josh on ABC video espaliers: ! Almonds ! Pomegranates (he says both not usually espaliered but they work

well). He’s got them on the outside trellis of the chicken yard (his is urban).

! Mulberries – ‘Hicks Fancy’ not quite as tasty but very prolific – perfect for a living fence.

! Passionfruit ! Olives (!)

o Fences cont. ! You can use big hooks if wanted, and hang the trellising material

(e.g. old rusty steel big-square mesh) ! Josh uses cut strips of old tyre inner tubing to tie trees to trellises

o Miscellaneous o Apple trees: (from Bill’s Design pamphlet, a subscript by D.H.). It’s about

places to plant apple trees so you DO NOT have to prune because they DO NOT over produce in those placements(!):

o For plants that like a different type of soil, e.g. blueberries, you can put them in a pot (that’s just one idea…say, for an urban area).

o Ways to contain plants ! For plants whose roots tend to run rampant, you can put in pieces of

corrugated iron vertically, right next to the plant, to stop the roots going further.

! Remember…lemon grass is good for containing plants whose roots, e.g. those with rhizomes, run rampant.

! For mints, you can plant them between a rock and a hard place, e.g. between a big rock and a path…that contains them.

! See p.10 of Bill’s Design pamphlet for VERY good info about barrier plants for zone 1 gardens, e.g. Jerusalem artichoke. He gives reasons for planting those border things.

o Nasturtiums are good to plant because their root system likes to interfere with anything that looks like white fly. They have a communal root exchange with things like tomatoes.

o Marigolds good to have all over the place o Flowers tend to keep pest insects at bay (or keep things balanced)

o Ways to attract animals, insects, reptiles &/or repel(!) o You can have really tiny ponds for frogs o Remember those insect attracting/breeding things on diagram in Bill’s

manual. o (From Bill’s Design pamphlet): He’s talking about a spiral garden with a

pond. Note the ‘split open a plastic bag, put it in the bottom and fill it with dirt’ for the pond.

pines march into the field, and into the ponds. Once we observethe way things accumulate, possibly we can predict how muchwill accumulate, and from where, and in what time.

Learn to wander a bit through that landscape, which is howMike Corbett led the bulldozer into his new settlement at Davis.He marched ahead of the blade, and he said to the bulldozerdriver, "We are going to make swales. I don't know how to do it,so let it be!" The whole settlement is patterned on Corbett'swander on foot, stopping sometimes to look at the Earth, andthen marching on, wandering through, looking back. That hasbeen an extraordinarily effective wander. Many energies havecome out of that little wander. So what I am saying to you is, doa drunken walk through your site, if nothing else. The flatteryour site, the more appropriate is the drunken walk. That's noway to string fences, but within the site, once the boundariesare set, you can elaborate these things in this manner.

I don't want to leave this area alone I keep toying with it. Itgives me lots of wonder.

In any case, I have designed with it. There are two ways thatyou can use it. You can carve it into the existing structure, or, ifno structure pre-exists, you can superimpose it. I think we mayarrive at something that looks like a scarp, the way a scarpends up once it starts to retreat. A scarp doesn't retreat inline; it is intricately broken, throwing out ledges, pinching offislands, the desert buttes and towers. This situation is veryeasy to maintain because that is the way Nature would bedoing it. Too often. you get a corps of land engineers who willhop down through the desert and straighten everything out,make it right. Now the desert is in trouble; because it reallydidn't want that. Eventually, it breaks that constraint, breaks likea wild horse and plunges. Where we have structures, if we im-itate the flux, we will get a much more easily maintained design,as well as having all these advantages of edge harmonics.

The botanists cannot tell you any of these things that wewant to know. What is the harmonic of tea-trees along aswamp? That is why we have to write our own species index.Nothing published is going to be of use to us. We are not in-terested in the number of nuts per square foot.

There is God, giving an actual report on what He (sic) did. Inthe beginning there was nothing. The Earth was void. So whatHe did was strike off differences, to say, "There are watersabove, and waters beneath." Before He did this, there was nodifference. But now He has done it. He has divided the watersabove from the waters below. Now He can place any numberof events. He has a place in the void where He can start. AsAlmighty, He can make the rules. Any event that takes place onan equipotential surface will leave stresses in the media, andthe media will rush to relieve stresses. Media interacting withmedia through the event will create an end event--like that! Itlooks like a tree! So from then on, a series of phenomena re-sult.

Now we take over. We are doing this. We can start at anypoint on the sphere (Earth), and the results show at any oppo-site point on that sphere. It is becoming predictable. This partof a root system feeds this part of a tree crown.

So here is another way of thinking about things, particularlyabout the thrust of the event into the media. If you look at manytrees, you see them spiraling through the landscape. Startingat the point of germination, they advance through the hills andinto the sea. That enables you to read landscapes as to origin.It enables you to place anything that lies within such a placeaccurately. Think about a tree in terms of how suited it is to theenvironment in which you place it. You link what was previouslya set of disparate phenomena in different disciplines into asingle theoretical framework. It is pattern recognition.

Pattern RecognitionThat is why certain things bug you and keep nibbling at the

edge of your consciousness. You keep plateauing along, accu-mulating more examples. Then it impacts, and you get that

"about to sneeze" feeling. The examples are getting so numer-ous that you are about to recognize the pattern. People havetried to assemble a set of patterns. Very few of those peoplepresent us with the heart of the pattern, that which fits to-gether all the circumstances.

The only reason why you have to prune apple trees is thatthey mature too fast. The trees fruit too early and cannot sup-port the weight of the fruit. Therefore you might care to adjustthings so that you no longer have to prune. You do that byworking away on one or another of these media. You can makeit more difficult or less difficult here or there. Once you get thatadjustment right, you are going to know how to do it.Furthermore, as soon as you look at a situation, you can im-mediately read from the tree itself whether somebody haswork to do there or not.

23

These are tools for creating edges. I am not much inter-ested in laying around worshiping these tools or in putting themon charts and admiring them. I am very interested in going outthere and working with them, imperfect though I find theminitially. The more you work with them, the better they work foryou.

I was lying in bed one night looking at the ceiling, and I wasfiguring--the problem with these patterns is that the are all two-dimensional: they don't end in the air or go down into theground. The image of a sea shell came to me. Well, shells as-sume that shape for a reason. It efficiently stacks much diges-tion into a little space. So I thought, "Well, why don't we makeour gardens go up in the air and down in the ground?" Wenever think of that. We get the string and rake everything outand make it level, and we do all the patterns on the flat, and ifthe garden wasn't level to start with, we soon level it.

A ziggurat is a holy spiral that ascends a tower. You can seethem all over the Persian plains. Some of them function asbrick kilns. But some of them are holy places. Get a paper andcut a spiral in it, then lift it at the center. Up comes this littleflat part. To prop it, you have to make little rough walls to keepyour path in the air. Make a little rock cairn, and then wind thespirals up around the cairn. The next day I went out to the gar-den and built a ziggurat about six feet across at the base. I saidto myself, "Why should it not go on burrowing down in theEarth, too?" It would give a completely different environment.The end of it could hold water. I built the whole thing in anafternoon.

23. In my observation, apple trees do not require pruning on the forest edge,particularly the shade edge (the north edge in the Northern Hemisphere.) Appletrees growing on the north sides of forests, or city buildings for that matter,never overproduce. Of course, because we want heavy production, we placethem where they will overproduce, in the open. The point that Bill makesthroughout these pamphlets is that we care more about total production of theentire design than about individual yield per tree. If the tree grows at a northedge, or surrounded by forest that has overtaken it, it needs no pruning orfertilizer. The main job is to collect the apples. The yield per tree is lowcompared to a commercial orchard. The yield per hour of labor or dollars ofmanagement input is exceedingly high, however, by the same comparison. Asa component of forest or shelter belt that has its own yield and justification, theyield per unit area is infinite because we have taken up no extra space. (Anynumber divided by zero is infinity). Note that observing the apple tree in a wildstate gives us one more design option. Not everyone has a forest or shelterbelt. An elderly person may not want to climb apple trees at the edge of a forestto harvest, but find that a small, espalier tree growing up the face of his or herhouse is very suitable. While the actual labor per apple is high, the time may beincidental to other activities, such as enjoying the garden, watching over infantgrandchildren playing in a sandbox, or simply pinched going out to the mail boxand back. The labor is very light. And if it is not taken from other activities, butmerely done incidental to other activities, the actual lost time in labor is zero,again an infinite yield per hour lost to preferred activities. Furthermore, if oneenjoys caring for an apple tree, possibly a pleached arbor over a back doorwalk to an outdoor eating area, the labor is actually a yield, so long as wedesign the amount of work required within the limits of pleasure. - DH.I had designed a variety of micro-climates, shaded and semi-shaded niches here and there, and bright, hot sunny places tothe west and east. It is now a pretty little bed. It probably paysto use fairly permanent plants in this kind of bed. It is superblyadapted for culinary herbs. You have different drainages fromgroup to group, different heats and shade. Well, about fourmonths after I built it, I suddenly realized what an idiot I was. Ifound I had forgotten that I had two surfaces. It is possible alsoto grow out the sides of it, as well as on the flat. I tried tocompute how many feet I've got into this. I think it is about 51feet of row, which is quite a lot. There are no inter-row prob-lems. You get much parsley and chives and thyme, with a littlerosemary on top, and tarragon and other things down a littleway. Maybe two of them would contain enough varieties to sat-isfy the most finicky cook. It could have all the herbs you com-monly use.

It fits neatly outside the door, and is aesthetic. For the pond,just split open a plastic bag, put it in the bottom and fill it withdirt. You can grow a lot of watercress there.

I was really pleased with that. It condensed space, it reducedintercrop, cut down plant competition. Every plant has plenty ofroot space and plenty of climbing space. And it relieved the aw-ful monotony of the flattened out landscape.

Another example is a circle-garden. I think we should pay alot more attention to the advantages of these geometries, andthe appropriateness of them. I wouldn't advise anyone to gospiraling all over their garden, or circling all over their garden,or wandering all over their garden. I think there are both ap-propriate and inappropriate geometries. I merely wanted topoint out to you the elegance of that open spiral in a flatlandsituation.

24

When you play with a site design, play with patterns. I believeone may play mainly with curvilinear patterns. Because, when

24. Note that the spiral garden increases edge and edge effect, amplifying thepotential for diversity. The circle garden decreases edge, so that the garden canbe watered from a single drip point in the center. There are other effects, suchas wind interaction, as well. -- DH.

you start to draw winds, like the winds that circle around thehouse, you have started a pattern that may logically be contin-ued. You will find that you have designed other conditions thatyou can favorably use.

The aborigines were taught European gardening. As soon assupervision was withdrawn, their gardens began a subtlechange. I regret that I never made a drawing of one of thosegardens. It was made of little mounds, little lips, and lookingdown on it, you could see patterns there that took on all sortsof totemic shapes. I was delighted with it. I thought I never sawanything so non-European. It was growing very well, too.

As for the garden, the only Earth shaping they had done wasin terms of ceremony. They have many ceremonial stonepatterns. If you show them how to grow vegetables and don'timpress a shape on them, away they go into their totemicpatterning, because that is the only way they have ever shapedthe Earth. I should have made a plan of that garden. You haveall seen that model of an herb garden from Findhorn, with itsspokes and circles. You come in here from geometry. Anotherplace to come in from is time. All of these things are differentdimensions of stacking. There are truly three dimensions,which are totally different elements. You have the primitivebeginnings of time stacking when you put lettuce under polebeans, and get the lettuce out before the pole beans shade thelettuce.

There are far more sophisticated ways to slide the timescale into overlapping frames. Fukuoka deals with time stack-ing. What we observe in Nature is a set of successional ele-ments. The whole jargon of ecology deals with what happensas time accumulates.

The British devised a system of high farming in which theydivided pastures after the animals had been on them a fewyears. The proper rotation was, I think, every seven years. Thepasture was plowed and put into a high nutrient demand crop,a green crop or something, followed by a grain crop, followedby a root crop, followed by maybe even a fallow year. It wasthen returned to grazing. That was a sustainable agriculture. Ittook them seven years. The got a variable crop out of it. Thisrequires a band leader and an orchestra. They had to have afarm history, somebody who knew the system and was pre-pared to continue it. It all presumed continuity on the land,which is what everybody used to assume happened.

That system didn't really do anything much about time. It is amatter of technique, rather than time. What Fukuoka did was tolift these years and set them on top of each other. He didn'thave to fallow, because he never removed the main part of thecrop from the soil. He stacked his legumes with his grains,with his ducks, and with his frogs. He set his livestock in hiscrop at certain times instead of having a livestock site and acrop site. He stacked different crops together. He went onestep further. He started the next crop before the last crop wasfinished. Besides pushing sequences on top of each other, healso pushed sequences into each other. In monsoon lands, theyhave grasses that grow right to the ceiling of this room. Theydry and fall. At that point, the cattlemen burn them. Thosegrasses form a massive amount of material as they lie thick onthe ground. The crowns and roots are there below the ground,ready to sprout with the next rain. Just before the rains, apermaculturist in South Queensland ran across the whole areawith a roller and sowed it to rye. This produced an enormousrye crop in country where it would be hopeless to cultivate thatland to grow rye. With cultivation, he would have lost all the dirtas soon as it rained. Moreover, he would never have defeatedthat horrible complex of plants with rye. He had read Fukuoka.He was perfectly happy with the rye crop. I suggested that hego into millet, after his rye, roll the rye down and plant millet.

All of this is very new. Fukuoka's book was published [inEnglish] in November, 1978; it was reviewed and got on themarket by 1979. People started to understand it by 1980. It is1981.

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o Put a soft little turtle (not snapping) in the pond in zone 1…they eat worms and slugs (do I want them to eat the worms??)

Seeds: Keep seeds from food you eat, etc – just on the window sill. When you have a lot, at end of summer, pack in sawdust & put in a box outside. The rain falls on them, frost. Every now and then have a peek. Soon as shoots appear, plant them out. (Mollison)

1. Jack Russels (dogs) fantastic for catching rats. 2. Chickens love to eat mice...can catch them in a live trap then let go in chicken area. :( 3. Rat Terrier (dog) 4. Mice: Take a piece of sponge and put some peppermint oil in it for keeping them out of some smaller places. ie vehicle etc

Mollison: Well, if I go to an old Greek lady sitting in a vineyard and ask, “Why have you planted roses among your grapes?” she will say to me, “Because the rose is the doctor of the grape. If you don’t plant roses, the grapes get ill.” That doesn’t do me a lot of good. But if I can find out that the rose exudes a certain root chemical that is taken up by the grape root which in turn repels the white fly (which is the scientific way of saying the same thing), then I have something very useful.

Traditional knowledge is always of that nature. I know a Filipino man who always plants a chili and four beans in the same hole as the banana root. I asked him, “Why do you plant a chili with the banana?” And he said, “Don’t you know that you must always plant these things together.” Well, I worked out that the beans fix the nitrogen and the chili prevents beetles from attacking the banana root. And that works very well. Mollison: Yeah, that’s a bind. If you look at America, there’s more land cleared than will ever be used to grow food and maybe we need 2% of the cleared land that now exists to grow all the food we need. That’s a fair estimate. Some people say 4% in England or somewhere. You could close 96% of the farms down or 98% depending on which way you’re growing your food. Just reforest the whole thing again. The next step is what the Japanese have taken on wholesale: to do nearly all your marketing via consumer-producer coops. So you have maybe three farmers to supply 150 homes. In Japan, that’s nearly the only way food is marketed, so all the consumers know their farmers; they even know the birthdays of their children. All the farmers know their consumers as well. They support each other like crazy. You’ll never win them away from each other. And it’s all organic, straight from the farm to you. So I think it’s the future of food. The future of food is here. At the same time that the future of food is here and you can say that Japan is the way that food will be distributed in the future and that Vietnam has set the basis of how food will be produced in the future-it’s adopted total organic systems-you’ve got some other force which in a sense appears to be evil, like Aventis and some of the other big seed companies who are introducing genetically modified organisms on a broad scale and deliberately polluting other crops with their pollen. So they’ve just made a statement: if you don’t want to eat genetically modified food, you’ve got to stop eating now because we’ve spread it so widely that you’re going to get it, when we already know that some of the animals fed on genetically modified potato are showing gross deformities. So the evil people are trying to spread their evil and they’re very rich. At the same time, everybody else is trying to get good food locally produced. So we’re in kind of a desperate battle. It’s the last battle too, because if they win, it’s the end of all of us. So, in a sense, we have to win. I say this, if it sounds simple

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or not: it’s too late to fail. So the systems you take up should be systems that work. You just have to be a serious thinking person doing things which are going to work. For making hot water: “So what you do is run water pipes through a box of black sand. If your sand isn't black, you blacken it. Put some glass on top of it. What you have is something far more efficient than these metal collectors. You have a fantastic transmission of heat, end- less hot water, at no cost.” Bill Mollison (discovered when walking on a beach, barefoot, on dark sand – hot!!)

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Here’s Geoff’s recipe for the daub (again, this is not for eating):

1. First mix on top of bamboo: Cob = 3 parts soil, 1 part river sand, 1 part bamboo leaves, 1 part water, apply by hand.

2. Second mix on top of bamboo: Chaff Render = 3 parts sieved soil, I part river sand, 1 part shredded bamboo leaves, 1 part water, apply with a trowel.

3. Top mix: Lime Plaster = 1 part hydrated lime paste, 2 parts white silica sand, applied with a trowel, and smooth off when half dry with a damp sponge.

4. Wet wall down before each mix is applied. Various forms of wattle and daub buildings have been built on every continent over thousands of years. Many of them have stood for centuries. Using these materials in the right way you can create fire resistant walls which will also wick water outwards, ensuring healthy dryness. Having some flex, these walls can also be much safer in quake-prone regions than concrete and brick, and, depending on how built and where placed, they can provide excellent thermal mass properties to keep your inside space warm in winter and cool in summer.

Perhaps you’ll find an application where you can make use of this simple, sustainable building practice? Grow your own buildings! It doesn’t need to cost the earth to build…. Making history – Shelter – Wattle and daub http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIJlFBAAjvE Bamboo wattle and daub http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRxJ_Low-dQ &&

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&&Re above image: Paul Hetrick This doesn't work well in many situations--like flat land or when you're growing very tall or very small trees. In one of the PDC classes on Youtube, somebody ask Mollison about sizing and placing swales. His reply was: Find the highest point on your land. Come down three feet. Put a swale that is 3 feet wide and two feet deep on contour. Drop down another 6 feet and put in an other one. Keep doing that every 6 feet of elevation drop. In less than a minute, I learned more about sizing and placing swales than in 2 PDCs and a ton and a half of books. Re: Questionaires, etc: Michael Jacobsen So the questionnaire is intended to be informational as much as it is to learn from. Tricky. I suppose you could pose questions along the lines of "Are you aware of technique X?" Where technique X is replaced with virtually anything. "Are you aware of the technique called Hugelkulture?" "Are you aware of the concept of Wicking Beds?" "Are you familiar with the tree-growing system known as Swales?" "What do you know about silvopasturing?" "Are you aware of the technique known as Companion Planting?" Things along those lines. That would get you responses likely ranging from "nothing" to page and a half long manifestos on the benefits of whatever that person knows a good bit about. TBH I'm not that big of a fan of questionnaires like that though, I find it better to make informational brochures on each topic and offer them for a small fee. (To cover paper, ink and environmental costs.) However, those sorts of questionnaires can work and be beneficial. I would just limit the number of questions of the "informative" sort. If you want to go more free-form and just gain ideas and knowledge from people for integrating into your system then you'll likely want questions in the vein of "What vegetables/herbs/fruit do you use in your day-to-day cooking?", "How do you presently obtain your vegetables and herbs?", "How often does your local farmers market run?", "Do you grow a garden? If so, how much space do you presently set aside for it?", "If you garden, do you save your seeds from the plants you grow or do you buy new seeds?", "What vegetable/fruit do you eat that not many around you know even exist?", "Do you presently wildcraft? (aka Wild Foraging)" Those types of questions will get you more targeted answers to learn about what sort of local resources you have to deal with. You may have old ladies who've been gardening for decades and have locally adapted varieties of common or even uncommon plants that will outperform just about anything on the market simply because they've adapted to the local biotope.

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I hope that helps get the creative, question-asking juices flowing for you. Best of luck, Finja! Good info on this re Fire stuff (from: http://www.permaculturesouthernhighlands.info/journal/bushfire.htm

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&&&Thistles (what prevalence of thistles means) When the pH goes out, on either side, e.g. compaction and lots of manure, you can get a lock up (deficiency) of iron and copper and this is when thistles (spiky with purple 'hats' on top) come up. That is, thistles are able to 'harvest' iron and copper when it's mostly unavailable. Therefore, their bodies are high in iron and copper. It's not because iron and copper is unavailable in the soil, it's just that it's 'locked out' due to the pH in that particular soil.

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&In the city of Adelaide, there is a man running 9,000 sheep, which is a very respectable amount of sheep. Each of these sheep rents out at $6 a week. He will place the sheep in your overgrown yard or somewhere at $6 a week. He shears it and drenches it. He owns a shearing shed in the suburbs, and a pickup truck and trailer, and he goes around and brings them in lots of one hundred or two hundred, shears them, and goes back out and drops them off again. The demand exceeds his supply. Adelaide, and many of our areas, do not allow homeowners to have wild grass because of the fire hazard. It is quite expensive in rough ground to have someone mow and clean it up. So this man leads sheep in to reduce that fire danger. They get a sheep for a week at a price they would pay a man for an hour. And a sheep working for you in this situa- tion does a lot more than a man. It is up to the property owner to fence the sheep. !

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There is another person who was a clerk in the city. An eight-acre farm in the hills, with a modest little house, was for sale. The previous owner had died. The city clerk had just enough money to put the deposit down on this property. He wanted to get out of the city, yet he was terrified to get out. This property was just at the limit where he could drive to his job. So he bought the property on a Tuesday, and went to work on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. On Friday, when he came home, he looked around the garden. It looked pretty wild. There was nothing much that he could see to eat in there. So he de- termined to clean this garden so that he could get organized. He arose in the morning, took his tools, and was about to make a hole in this horrible mess, when a gentleman walked in, well dressed in a suit. The gentleman said,

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"Can I cut my flowers?" The man asked, "Who are you?" The gentleman said, "Well, I am an undertaker, and I had an arrangement with the former owner to get our flowers here each weekend." So the gentleman gave him a check for $50 and wandered into that mess and came out with armsfull of flowers. That happened three times that weekend. This city clerk never went to work again. The previous owner had established a system so that every month of the year there were flowers. He died rich. How much does it require to get out of the city? It all de- pends on how clever you are at discovering the needs in the surrounding area. You might just grow water chestnuts. It is up to your ingenuity. You can think big and have a thousand head of cattle, or 2,000 chickens. Or you can make a very good living and go around the world once a year on half an acre. ;*%,!%,!5+4<!=%))!"4))%,4$>,!-#<-*)(3!3%3)('?!@B(+<#/2)32+(!54+!C+0#$!&+(#,!

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."4$(J!-4,,%0%)%3%(,6 In Australia, a friend of ours went around the city looking at all the chestnut trees and selecting good chestnut trees for grafting. He suddenly realized he had looked at three or four thousand chest- nut trees. So! There were already a lot of chestnuts in the city! He then went around to the owners and offered them a wholesale price for their chestnuts, which in Australia is $2 a pound. They were all quite happy, because hardly any of them wanted more than a couple of buckets of chestnuts, while their trees produced hundreds of pounds. I first met him when he was up into the second year gathering chestnuts, and he had sold $70,000 worth of chestnuts that year, retail, which enabled him to buy a farm and start grafting chestnuts. Then he started to sell grafted chestnuts. He had a selection of thousands of trees to graft from. He has now developed the most successful grafting techniques in the town, and he is selling his grafted chestnut trees off at $15 each. I suggested to him that he also freeze a large quantity of selected seed. He has made a special study of grafting. You graft chestnut according to the color of the nuts. There are dark brown and light tan and medium tan nuts. It is no good trying to graft a dark brown nut tree onto a light tan stock. So he sets out all his stock from dark brown nuts from his good dark brown trees, and he grafts to them. His success rate just went out of sight. That was something that nobody had ever taught him, and I don't think it has ever been recorded. He selects good seed, that he knows produces good chestnuts. He sells it to us cheap, and everybody can grow nuts at home. Further, this man is suggesting to people who have room that they plant a chestnut tree. He gives them the tree, providing they contract their excess nuts to him. He has no trouble if people move, in talking to the next owner and saying, "I'll buy your chestnuts." He has made a specialty of the chestnut. Yet, he started off without ever owning a chestnut tree. He is presently very well off. Within the city of Melbourne, and within the city of San Francisco, there are about half a million citrus trees in peo- ple's back yards. Most of that fruit falls to the ground. In San Francisco, Jamie Jobb has started collecting this unwanted fruit. He gives it away. In the city of Adelaide, there is a man running 9,000 sheep, which is a very respectable amount of sheep. Each of these sheep rents out at $6 a week. He will place the sheep in your overgrown yard or somewhere at $6 a week. He shears it and drenches it. He owns a shearing shed in the suburbs, and a pickup truck and trailer, and he goes around and brings them in lots of one hundred or two hundred, shears them, and goes back out and drops them off again. The demand exceeds his supply.

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Adelaide, and many of our areas, do not allow homeowners to have wild grass because of the fire hazard. It is quite expensive in rough ground to have someone mow and clean it up. So this man leads sheep in to reduce that fire danger. They get a sheep for a week at a price they would pay a man for an hour. And a sheep working for you in this situa- tion does a lot more than a man. It is up to the property owner to fence the sheep. This is an entirely different urban strategy. You look upon the city as a farm that already exists. It has very large areas for grazing. It always has plenty of surplus fruits and nuts, and all you have to do is organize it.