Nicole Faires

Here’s what we’re doing at Faires Farms lately....

Wed, 30 May 2012 14:47:00 -0700

Here’s what we’re doing at Faires Farms lately. Permaculture month is almost over, and so is my month-long project of a duck house and hugelkultur bed for the duck garden. It took me a while because I’m also doing all of the above. The 100’ high tunnel was added, which was much more difficult than the 40’ tunnels because it is so much taller. This tunnel cost us about $0.50 per square foot for about 2160 square feet and is made of wood and PVC pipe. The actual growing area is 1050 square feet because of 18” wide pathways. We reinforced the pipe inside with more 2x4s. It’s the beginning of June and we’re harvesting carrots, snow peas, kale, cilantro, escarole, green onions, microgreens, broccoli raab, beets and radishes.

Providence farm #duncan (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 26 May 2012 11:36:27 -0700

Providence farm #duncan (Taken with instagram)

Farm ladies rule (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 25 May 2012 15:29:17 -0700

Farm ladies rule (Taken with instagram)

Goodbye broccoli (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 25 May 2012 15:28:01 -0700

Goodbye broccoli (Taken with instagram)

I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people.

Sat, 19 May 2012 14:11:09 -0700

A key piece of irrigation. (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 19 May 2012 14:02:46 -0700

A key piece of irrigation. (Taken with instagram)

Lots of kohlrabi (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 19 May 2012 14:01:44 -0700

Lots of kohlrabi (Taken with instagram)

The 70 foot high tunnel is definitely an upgrade. (Taken with...

Sat, 19 May 2012 14:00:41 -0700

The 70 foot high tunnel is definitely an upgrade. (Taken with instagram)

Kale and beans (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 19 May 2012 13:59:49 -0700

Kale and beans (Taken with instagram)

A whole lotta snow peas (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 19 May 2012 13:58:50 -0700

A whole lotta snow peas (Taken with instagram)

Sorrento raab broccoli (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 19 May 2012 13:57:29 -0700

Sorrento raab broccoli (Taken with instagram)

All four tunnels. (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 19 May 2012 13:55:50 -0700

All four tunnels. (Taken with instagram)

Greenhouse 2 nasturtiums, carrots, kohlrabi etc. (Taken with...

Sat, 19 May 2012 13:53:46 -0700

Greenhouse 2 nasturtiums, carrots, kohlrabi etc. (Taken with instagram)

The start of a hugelkultur bed for the duck garden. (Taken with...

Sat, 19 May 2012 13:51:51 -0700

The start of a hugelkultur bed for the duck garden. (Taken with instagram)

Self portrait of a farmer. (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 19 May 2012 13:49:47 -0700

Self portrait of a farmer. (Taken with instagram)

#2: No PDC Needed Study Group - The Zones

Sun, 13 May 2012 19:54:14 -0700

It’s already the 13th of May! Some of you picked a permaculture project and many more of you have been lurking and waiting for more information. Before we talk about today’s topic, the Zones, I want to show you how my own project is going. Remember my sad duck area? Significant progress has been made.

First there was cleanup and some dirt moved around the bathtub:

Then today we began building the duck house:

Looks better already! The next step is to finish the duck house, and then I’m going to create some very small hugelkultur beds around the perimeter to grow flowers and plants to attract bugs for the ducks to eat. Then I’ll introduce duckweed to the bathtub and it should be pretty much ready for ducks.

So let’s get down to the topic of the day - Zones. In permaculture design, zones are the key to being organized. Basically, your property is divided into areas based on how often you have to go and work there, and partly based on topography. In a sustainable lifestyle, you have to do a lot more work. It’s inevitably less convenient to grow your own food and make the things you need, creating more labor for you and taking up your time. When you start to do it, you begin to realize that you can save SO much time and work by finding little ways to be more efficient. For example, we have plastic covers over our 14 low tunnels held down with hundreds of sandbags. Every time we water they have to be moved to the side which takes FOREVER. Originally we uncovered one row at a time, but we realized that we could uncover two at a time if we uncoverd them facing each other. This cut our time down by half. We later found that because of the volume of PVC we ended up buying over the long term, we could have afforded full greenhouses which don’t need to be uncovered. This was a design flaw on our part that has used up hundreds of hours of time and worn us out.

So, zones help you prevent design flaws like this and make being sustainable and self-sufficient dramatically easier. Here are the five zones:

Zone 0 - the house. This is where you spend the most time, so it includes the greenhouse attached to your house and the shade patio/outdoor kitchen.

Zone 1 - the garden right by the house and other things you use daily. This is the garden where you will spend the bulk of your time, and it should be right outside your door so you can pick from it all the time. This zone might also have a tool shed, small pond and some fruit trees depending on how big your property is. Water collection would help facilitate watering the garden.

Zone 2 - this is the area just beyond the perimeter of your kitchen garden. It is where you would keep your compost, and grow staples like potatoes or grains. You would keep chickens or ducks here. In the city this is probably as far as your property would extend.

Zone 3 - this is the area that you don’t have to go quite as often because it’s further away. The gardens here would be perennials, living mulches, windbreaks and firebreaks. You might keep some goats out here, and beehives. If you are growing a cash crop, this is where you would do it. It’s an area that you grow stuff in, but only stuff that uses up lots of space and takes less daily attention.

Zone 4 - this is your rural woodlot, edible forest garden, pig foraging, large pond area. This is where you can develop large tree plantings and long term projects.

Zone 5 - this is the wilderness. Even a small property should have a Zone 5, a small area that you simply allow to return to its natural state. It’s difficult to just not mess with it, but that’s the goal. This area helps you by attracting beneficial insects and allowing wild creatures a safe harbor rather than foraging in your garden.

Some people are a little confused about the difference between Zone 1 and 2. Zone 1 is really the perimeter of your house and only spans the space it takes to throw on some flip flops and meander through in five minutes. It should be as packed with edible plants as possible, and the more your grow here in every spare inch, the more time and effort you will save. This garden should be well mulched between plants and on pathways. Zone 2 is where the stinky stuff goes. On a small lot, you would grow some fruit trees here, possibly a hedge, and some edible shrubs like raspberries. This area would be mulched too, but everything is bigger and more spread out so it takes less attention to detail.

So that’s it. The Zones. It’s a struggle for me to do things efficiently because my food is grown on a completely different property right now, but it is also a cash crop. I treat the barn like Zone 1, and the small pond is right by it. The ducks will utilize that and provide me with compost. The compost pile is on the other side of the barn, but we got an old fridge that will act as a large insulated vermicomposting bin inside the barn. The barn also has the one water source so everything branches off from that. Even though I don’t own it and have to drive there, I still find that having an understanding of the zones is so valuable.

How many people have a little greenhouse at the back end of the property where it gets all forgotten, stinky compost by their back door, and an apple tree causing problems against the side of the house? These are terrible design flaws that can be easily fixed if the simple zone system is followed.

So now that you understand the zones, how does that affect your project or inspire a new one?

“If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is 'God is crying.' And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is 'Probably because of something you did.'”

Sat, 12 May 2012 18:24:07 -0700

This seems like something that needs to be at the top of my to do list.

PDC assignment...from NewFoundFolk

Tue, 08 May 2012 20:15:00 -0700

NewFoundFolk submitted their project:

OK, I live in an old house where the landlord has cut it up into 6 suites. There is a lot of land to use as good garden space for veggie production but a lack of good soil. I have seen the compost bin become a rat feeding bin. It doesn’t break anything down. The soil is that it does produce is pretty fowl because people put whatever they want in there( stickers from the fruit, bones, twist ties, you name it) I think for my project I would like to create a compost that is large enough for everyone in the house to use. Also to inform them of how to use it (i think some people think its like a magic box they can put anything in). It’s under a tree so it never really gets warm either..

As I see it-an over abundance of compostable material going to waste, paired with a lack of soil.

Hows that?

I’ll leave a comment, you should too! Have ideas?

“I hope some animal never bores a hole in my head and lays its eggs in my brain, because later you might think you're having a good idea but it's just eggs hatching.”

Mon, 07 May 2012 17:46:03 -0700

Is that a bad thing? Eggs = win.

#1: No PDC Needed Study Group First Topic!

Wed, 02 May 2012 11:32:22 -0700

Topic: The Permaculture Principles

Ok it’s the 2nd of May and not the 1st. But it’s not my fault! Tumblr was down yesterday for me and I’m sorry about that. Here we go!

I think the first thing we should talk about is The Permaculture Principles. Normally there are 12 of them, and they can be a little confusing. Fortunately for you, I have created my own set of Permaculture principles. I call them Permaculture Lets Impalas Make Pudding, or P.L.I.M.P. There will be a lot of acronyms in this study group, most of them nonsense.

My version has condensed the 12 principles down to 7. They mean the same thing, but they are just…well…easier:

1. Every thing is connected to and supported by everything else.

2. Every thing, or element, should serve many functions. Students of design usually learn to make things look nice and be functional at the same time, but permaculture focuses on function alone.

3. Functional design is sustainable and provides a useful product or surplus. If it doesn’t, it creates pollution and work. Pollution is an overabundance of a resource, or something that is simply not used. Work results when one element doesn’t help another element.

4. Permaculture maximizes the useful energy in any system (or, put another way, decreases the waste of energy).

5. Successful design serves the needs of people and provides many useful connections between elements, or diversity.

6. If there is pollution, then the system goes into chaos.

7. Societies, systems, and human lives are wasted in disorder and opposition. To stop this vicious cycle, we only use what we can return to the soil and build harmony (cooperation) into the functional organization of a system.

(From The Ultimate Guide to Permaculture)

As we go through this month and do our projects, we will come back to these 7 principles and measure ourselves up to them. Today, we are focusing on Principle 1: Everything is connected. That’s where you come in, and that means homework.

The first thing you’ll need to think about is your project. Look around your environment, and think about one aspect of it that maybe doesn’t measure up to the 7 principles. Sometimes it’s difficult to know where to start, but you can start out by analyzing the basic elements: air, water, food, electricity, heat, etc. Are you wasting a lot of water? What kind of electricity do you rely on? How is your home heated? How do you cook? If you don’t have a lot of time, make sure you don’t start out focusing on something big that would require you to remodel your entire house. Target it down to something small. Once you target something that could be improved, we need to translate it into a project. Don’t worry if you can’t figure out what you want to do - ask for help!

If you are a super go-getter and already know what you want to do, grab your camera and take a picture of the thing you want to make better. Submit your project idea with the photo and description and press the Submit button at the top of the page. Keep in mind that we are skipping a LOT of permaculture information at this moment. The idea is to launch into a project and talk about how we can use permaculture principles as we design it and go along so we can learn hands-on. So don’t worry if you feel like you don’t know what you are doing. Just pick a small problem and we’ll figure out how to fix it later.

I also have some questions for you to answer, which you can do really quickly so there’s no excuses:

1. Do you feel connected to everything else? If not, why do you think that is?

2. What is biggest creator of pollution and work in your own life right now?

3. Would you state any of these 7 principles a different way? If so, how would you say it?

Leave a comment here on this post or on Facebook and answer them!

Let me show you my project for the month. Here’s this space I have that I think might be good for ducks:

Doesn’t it look awful? It’s muddy, there’s not much dirt there, and nothing much grows there. We’ve been throwing rocks around that bathtub with the idea that ducks will go there in the future, but it’s still not something I would feel happy putting a duck in.

If this were to be a duck home that follows permaculture principles, it would be able to grow food for the ducks to decrease the work. The duck waste would be able to be used in some way. As it stands, I think duck poop would just make that bathtub hideous. This system would just create pollution and work for me. I’ve targeted a problem, so now I have to design a solution.

Feel free to comment on my horrible duck home and make suggestions as well. I’m excited to see all of the ideas all y’all think up. :) Let’s get connected!