So Scott and I went over what to discuss for the permaculture class and wanted to share here our plans. We want to make the class about development ideas...meaning we want you guys to hear what our ultimate desires are, see the challenges we face, then collaborate together on how to proceed. We plan on living here for at least 15 more years. We want to switch our flowerbeds to native plants, with the flowerbeds in the backyard being for edibles and medicinals...the flowerbeds in the front yard are pretty good for now, but well take ideas! We want a greenhouse/nursery. We also want to expand our area for the chickens. When it comes to food self-reliance, we would like to maximize that as much as possible, of course. We do not desire to only grow native plants for food production. The challenges we face are a steep hill that is behind the house. We are already having erosion issues, and it doesnt help that our saltwater pool drains on this hill. Another challenge is that we have about $2,500 worth of home improvements that take priority right now, so money will be limited for this next year or so. Some benefits include that we have a huge and empty front yard and a fairly sizeable side yard. Also, we are interested in solar, but we want to wait until the states net metering program is more robust. Also, the city of Brandon is very strict about maintaining the area as residential, so we are guaranteed at least for the time being to be working with our current conditions within the community and surrounding area. Our resources include leaf litter and grass clippings, a dairy where we get manure, a cotton gin for cotton hulls, the neighbors horse manure, and the Byram landfill compost. Were thinking we can budget about $200/month, in addition to the $2,500 of home improvements. One idea were prioritizing right is to fix the erosion issue on the hill behind the house. We live on top of a hill with no water body on the property. So obviously, we need to work on capturing as much water as possible onsite. Our next priority would be to switch the backyard flowerbeds to edible and medicinal plants. We are putting in stone borders for almost all our flowerbeds, which will be a great help since we will be using a lot of manure for our soil amendments this next year or so. We will still have some wood structures that line our flowerbeds in the backyard so we may need to take a look at that before piling a lot of fairly fresh manure in them. Any and all ideas prior to and during the class will be great! Be thinking of what we can do to make our property productive for us and the community! Thanks, yall!
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 02:26:07 +0000
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