Part of our PDC design is to craft a vision statement for our project. My project is just a piece of the whole, and not a comprehensive plan for the 'stead, but I was moved to write this:
Vision Statement
To create a retreat community that will serve as an enduring model for small scale sustainable living in an environment of declining energy and severe climate change, using principles of permaculture and transition.
To create a place of physical and spiritual refuge, that combines recreation and comfort with systems for producing abundant food and water.
To create a retreat where writers and artists, and artisans can reside and produce their work without requiring major inputs of energy or money from outside sources.
Sounds promising. What sort of place do you have?
Because we are geared that way, and it is the most 'free' approach, I am attempting to demonstrate how a family unit can survive off of 1/5th of an acre using permaculture principles.
http://futurereferencefarm.blogspot.com/
Our project is in it's early stages of course, but it is moving along nicely.
We have several tropical fruits that we grow in our sun room. Outside we have McIntosh and Arkansas Black Spur Apples, Elberta Peaches, Nectarines, Stanly and Victoria Plumbs, Moonglow and D'Anjour Pears, Apricot, Bing and Black Cherries, Cherry Plumbs, Hazelnut and Almonds. Also, Blueberries, Red and White Raspberries, Blackberries, Goji Berries, HoneyBerries and Hairless Kiwi. Most are still very young.
We have a perennial garden that currently includes Horse Radish, Sun Chokes and Artichokes as well as a small Asparagus bed.
We have three large growing beds for annuals. We are learning all of the processes we can for long term survival, preserving as much of the harvest as possible by either drying or jarring. We save seeds as well.
We also have chickens which are great for fertilizer, but we are not yet at the point where we are keeping the chickens sustainably. We need to buy their feed because we have to keep them in their corral while the plants mature to a point where the chickens will not be a danger. After the plants are matured they can forage for most of their diet. Also we will eventually need a rooster so they will start reproducing.
The other thing which I am saving for now is a well and metal roofing for rainwater collection. We are reliant on city and irrigation water at this point.
I'm sort of like a John the Baptist of Doom, crying out in the wilderness, trying to get my tribe to get ready for the big change that's coming. Or maybe more like the Kevin Costner character in Field of Dreams. My family doesn't quite get it yet. But I'm building it, and I believe that they will come. Or come around, at least.
At the moment my efforts are split. I have several experimental gardening projects at my house. A wicking bed, a keyhole garden, and currently I have 8 raised beds which are my variation of the square foot style, but deeper, with wood and cardboard on the bottom to make them work like a hugelkulture bed. I also have my emergency food stash there and a pool that holds 25 or 30 thousand gallons of water.
I am mostly still raising annuals, but an asparagus bed is on my to-do list, and I'm interested in trying sunchokes here too. My belief is that with a little attention to the weather, that many annuals can be kept alive indefinitely here. I do have some of my large family involved in the gardens, and they are eager to get chickens, but I have to figure out how to fly them under the HOA radar. I have 8/10 of an acre with some tree cover that blocks the street view. I might try it soon. Chickens are very popular here, and a fight is going on in the city right now over the rules for raising chickens inside the city limits. I live outside the city, but have a very tough HOA and rich asshole neighbors who want to keep their property values up.
The piece of property I refer to as the 'stead (short for toothstead, a moniker given by RE and the denizens here) is a 38 acre parcel with live water about fifty miles outside of the city out in the ranch country. That's my field of dreams, really. I am slowly but surely getting it ready to receive permanent tenants, which I hope will include me and some of my family, and become a nexus for building a local transition type community. When it is fully realized it will be energy self-sufficient for the mid-term (25 to 50 years expected from solar PVs). There is approximately ten acres of deep bottomland that can be farmed, and the rest is basically goat pasture.
Currently I'm getting ready to renovate the existing cabin out there and build a solar outdoor shower. I'm also beginning to work on a master permaculture design for the entire place. My PDC project is an upslope water catchment plan that uses swales, rock terraces and check dams to divert some of the water that feeds a big dry wash. I have two such dry creeks that I hope to turn into beautiful water features that harvest rain.
I am now propagating fig trees from cuttings that I'm getting off some scraggly old, old plants that the pioneer ranchers planted on the place over 100 years a go, and which have proven their ability to resist drought. I hope to plant many of them on the edges. My place has some wonderful edge, some mature forest with dozens of ancient pecan trees, and a few walnuts.
I have an old hoop house that I hope will someday be a place to grow winter greens and house an aquaponics set-up.
My plans are long term out there, but I hope to be living out there and able to unplug from the matrix almost entirely within the next ten or so years. If fast collapse happens, my plans will have to be adjusted. I am trying to collect as much of what I need now as I can afford to . Much of my power generating equipment is warehoused at the moment, and I'm still acquiring some of the parts.
I have a well, and I am also getting the parts to convert it to a solar pump jack that can run it off panels with no battery.
Eventually there will be another house or two out there, but right now i am trying to dream up the right kind of barn/studio/workshop that can be functional and esthetic. I intend to start building that within the next several months.