The Green Report: permaculture

Showing posts with label permaculture. Show all posts

Monday, July 15, 2013

Willits, Middle Fork eel river Yolla Bolly time, and living off grid...

For the 4th of July, i decided to head up where a good friend of mine Jeremy Byrd, resides comfortably up on a mountain just out side of Willits CA. Jeremy and i took our first year of RDNA together, and his family is about to start practicing permaculture in Ecuador.

The mountain he lives on is a part of a herbal medicine school on a property called Motherland run by a really great woman named Donna. she has a beautiful mixed veggie, flower, herbs, and perennials, and is just mostly boarded by BLM land on the other side of the mountain, and the southern most start of the Yolla Bolly wilderness is right at her back door. the valley preceding with the mountain road we drove up seemed to have a solid little community very well connected and all aiming to be very much off grid.

Jeremy's 12x12 with attached deck, sunken bath tub, outdoor shower, and outhouse.

the tiny lofted house Jeremy was staying at had a sunken-in-the-deck tub, an outdoor shower, and an enclosed outhouse. the place was pretty roomy, had a built in passive cold storage box, a pretty sweet mini fridge, a gas heater, on demand hot water, an electric cook top and big passive solar windows to keep the well built, and very well insulated little 12ftx12ftx12ft house.

his electric is entirely off of a larger off grid system, with large solar panels up on the side of the hill where the veggie garden is, feeding down to a workshop that stores the batteries and runs power down to Jermey's little 12x12. the system in the winter only has to be juiced up for a couple of hours throughout the whole winter just to restore the water based battery system that is replicated throughout the property, including the system over by the little house we stayed the night in.

The one and only Jeremy living the days.

Running the generator is maybe a few gallons of gas, and in my opinion is a good back up and one could store a pretty sweet stash of gas for the extra kick. There is a guy down the road, Jeremy says, that runs a Takahashi shop with some pretty serious equipment entirely off his solar array system, and the rest of his homestead. the neibors dream apparently is to be able to eventually create a mini grid and run lines down the valley road and help hook into the rest of the mountain on maybe 5-10 privately owned homesteads. pretty cool. as you can see in the picture of the outside of his house, he runs in at peak winter once a month or so to town to fill the two small propane tanks you see in the background. very impressive and promising to see a simple design working so well. all of the water also comes from a well that was drilled at the TOP of the mountain.

else where on the trip we took a hot drive up through round valley and up into the eel river forks that come from the Yolla Bolly wilderness. we finally found the perfect part of the river not muddied from the freak storms we had the night before, and swam amongst salmon fingerlings very much alone, peaceful, and happy to have finally got in the water. here are some photos from that journey.

also are the photos of the small trailer converted into tiny home with its own solar rig and the same set up as Jeremy.


Old Rail line on the eel.

our final swim spot

our small trailer quite exposed to the wilderness and sunrise.

the attached deck and further back a covered outdoor shower, and out house.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

orchard part 2

Meredith and Penny sorting through what we need for the Stone Fruit food forest

The Trees!

so after a nice car ride down to the central valley near Modesto Ca, Penny, James, Danny and Liam went to Dave Wilson Nursery to pick up our 100 fruit trees. their operation is epic, around 7 million total and 3 million went out this season all over the country to nurseries, stores, and businesses. we now have a huge pile of assorted fruit and nut trees!

as you can see below, and after the previous post, we made quick work of the second half of our banana belt that contains our first mostly Meyer lemon food forest, and left the two apples for a little gateway into our new 28 tree packed stone fruit zone!

Meredith and Danny in deep thought with an aprium.

Liam getting down with a peach

+Danny Vitali getting after his path through the peach haven


reclaimed concrete stone wall! this path will continue up past those two trees and up further into that golden light coming through just yonder

After Danny and i placed flags, we began the tree digging! soon after our first couple of holes, we discovered this wall, apparently the old driveway from long ago used as a retaining wall! i decided to uncover the whole, and plant tyme into it. it will now serve as a foot path and an intersection up into our wild life trail and the upper orchard where ole "Pedro" the massive walnut will grow.

before!

after!

we worked quick for a day, and about 7 of us got 28 trees in, uncovered an old stone wall, cut in 3 separate paths, mulched main path, and trees.... we were stoked to be finally planting and out of the winter blues! the last couple of days we have been prepping the upper orchard that will mainly comprise of apples, pears and some more stone fruits (since we are a little heavy on those) stay tuned, much more to come!

chicken helping out with planting some lavender at the base of our lemon food forest.

new orchard part 1

Well a lot has been happening on the farm here at RDI, we have been taking out the old orchard, an honor in its own right since it only really happens every 20 years or so! and what happens when you get donated 100 trees from Dave Wilson nursery? you install a new orchard... another opportunity that only comes around so often as well! we have a happy and interesting mix of mostly stone fruits (apricots, plums, peaches, nectarines, pluots, apriums, and cherries) and of course some apples and pears. we also got 6 genetic dwarf trees that will stay about 6 ft max! the process has been really fun to learn our root stocks, our tree hardiness, and the on going experiment that our varieties that were picked out by Dave Wilson staff will do well in our cooler but mild coastal environment. it will be a on-going relationship with Wilson staff since they want to use us as a test orchard for their almost 3 million tree operation that has been hand grafting their stock since 1930s. wow. below are some before pictures and the start of the installation!

looking east towards the upper orchard- notice a pile of wood directly ahead... all fruit wood!

the new stone fruit orchard- one of these trees has come out where a path now runs east.

this is looking right where that middle apple was in that upper photograph! digging holes for our new stone fruits!

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Field Trip to the western Seirra foot hills

Road Trip to pottery land-

Mr. Danny Vitali and i recently took a trip to a part of california i fell in love with- the western Seirra Foot hills, near Angels Camp/Jackson/San Andreas. we went to visit a friend Maya who i took RDNA with last year, and her sculptures she has been working on. Maya has been staying with an awesome guy, Kern. these photos are of his pottery studio, homestead and property. it is beautiful country there, really cool community, beautiful sugar pine, ponderosa, manzenita and rolling golden foot hills out near gold country. his gardens are beautiful, and danny and i work traded and did a little other work for Kern while hanging with his awesome community he is building. some what of a renaissance man, he has built his mother a rad rammed earth house, a sauna, a beautiful pottery studio with solar hot water heat, a house, and a really rad seed bank that he shares with his community. land is available and cheap. Maya has been looking around and tempting me with prospects.

My ideal scene would be to find some land up there, spend my time here at RDI on the coast for a few years while i visit and slowly improve the land over time turning it into a permie heaven. it was a area of California i had not even imagined to exist, and cant wait to go back and visit. Kern is wanting to install a food forest/orchard this coming winter so if i am not doing that here at RDI and have a moment, i will try and visit again. i was hooked.

Pottery studio

Maya and her nail sculpture

Kerns Kiln

the gardens

More Gardens

A small shed/greenhouse space off Kerns awesome Terrace garden.

Kerns Pottery studio with solar hot water panels

the amazing farm next door to Kerns place

the house, moving the drum set to prepare for a party

in other news, just a few weeks ago Olivia and i took a walk up the wish creek watershed here on the land and took a magical mystery tour through the two head waters. it was fern covered, oaked and bay tree heaven. here are some photos of the upper water shed here at RDI, as well as the top ridge that we made it up to looking west towards the ocean. Enjoy!

up in the thick of it

beautiful bay

fern gully

looking down the west ridge towards the beach

looking down the valley, this is commonweal- the trees are hiding the property! way off on the horizon is just south of SF city.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

The Universe is not Personal::No Attachments

field of gold- wheat at 30 seconds, pin hole camera 120mm

The universe is not personal-

Or so we hope. This has been a big theme in life over the last few months. what does the universe have in store for us that we cannot infinitely dream? how does it move around us and set us on these paths we could not yet predict?

for some of us humans these paths fall into our laps- they are chosen, fabricated, morphed, molded, kneaded, and sometimes simply form by happenstance. but the universe is not personal. it moves and sways, for eons to come, as well as eons past. it moves around our little blue planet with almost no care to what or who we are, silently, yet chaotically violent in its nature. it is peaceful too.

but why is this important? because for all our short stints on this tiny blue dot in the vast order of the universal realm we have one very important thing to remember- the universe is also very unforgiving. galaxies collide in a whirlwind of gas, suns, and solar systems without a single star being destroyed. whole stars them selves are dying and being birthed in "star nurseries" and far off galaxies. at any given point our whole existence can be swept under the galactic rug with one gravitational swoop of an asteroid, or a simple solar storm that could fry the very ozone or life from our planet.

so wait... again why is this important? because. it is. it is because we only have one small life to live and one very very important piece of galactic treasure- earth. and the minute we stop being the objectifying observer that separates them selves from the very intrinsic bond we have with nature and the universe, then in that very moment, can we see how precious and important our very contained and fragile little home is.

So no Attachments. let go, fully embrace your existence, and recognize that you only get one chance to live, and leave life and its home (planet, ecology, etc) better then you found it. because in the end what matters is what you leave behind for others to enjoy, have a chance to live as well, and as free as all of us. let go and let in the universe and see our selves as all the future past generations. then maybe we can live in harmony with the very ecology of the universe.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

september happenings and design course

Just a little preview of what has been moving on the farm and in west Marin over the last few weeks. we had a 64 student Permaculture Design Course come through for a two week intensive. got to travel to the heirloom seed expo in Santa Rosa. it was also the start of the 9 month RDNA program that is kicked off with the two week intensive so it was great having all my favorite second year cultural mentors around. they were a big help with the on site needs through the intensive! thank you! enjoy the photos, more detail to come on specific events. also is a home made wild crafted bench that i put together. good stuff
many hands make light work in our water lab to see how water moves on the land