accidental permaculture

Which came first?  The egg or my realization that the principles of permaculture were right under my nose all the time.  The way my family carried out farming practices actually had a name.  Now those practices that we have continued, and added to, have even more designations:  frugal, green, sustainable, and organic.  Does that make me cool, or just finally in step with everyone else?  I don’t know the answer.  I do know we don’t fit the criteria for each of those designations.  Frugality comes from being cheap and not wasteful.  I patch my jeans, because I want to spend my money on something else like books.  My cattle don’t care if I look like a rag bag.  I make soap from their fat, because I like it and I don’t want to waste any part of their lives.  They trust me, how dare I be frivolous with their gifts.  Every task that we carry out here on the farm should accomplish more than the name of the particular chore.  We don’t just cut down a tree to heat with wood – we clean up storm damage, or take out diseased trees.  That wood provides exercise, heat and a way to prepare our food.  I love my trees  – in life and death. 

Every single thing on our farm, wild or domestic, bought or made, predator  or prey, has a place here.  Finding the balance in those things is the hard part.

 

 

 
The cows are eating hay in the barn, where we can bed them and gather the manure.  The plywood that makes up the platform where the hay is placed, has holes drilled in it for when we use that same plywood for a chute to load butcher pigs in the trailer.

What filters out of those holes is nutrient rich seeds and tender tidbits of forbs from our hayfields.  I gather this to supplement the hens.  They love scratching through this and finding goodies that are only visible to them.

So where does the cycle start?  We cut the hay from grazing paddocks that we drop out of the grazing sequence.    The hay is then fed to the cows in the winter, the seeds then go to the compost via cow or chicken manure, and then the compost is spread on the pastures and the cycle begins again.  Or really the cycle continues to flow.  Each step of the way is just as important as the other.  Leave the grass tall at the fence and hedgerows, give the voles, birds, and rabbits a place to live and do their part.  The hawks, owls, coyotes and even our cats need a place to hunt.  Otherwise, they might be tempted to eat our chickens.  The benefits of a biological farm are too great to list in a simple blog post.  But food for thought.

A snowy wintry day is perfect for contemplating my place and time on this piece of land.  Leave my mark, but not too much of a mark.  Watch, observe, learn and take action or no action.

I love the winter, it is a time of rest.  I don’t care for the cold, but without the cold, the land would get no rest.  We are forced to stop and just caretake.  Feed the fires, feed the stock, and sort through the stored food. 

In the summer we are too busy, trying not to waste daylight, growing and harvesting - continual movement.  I barely get to see the crows that nest on Pepper Mountain near here.  They are busy too.  In the winter though, they stop morning and night before they flock together and head for the nest.  They scratch through the cow and horse manure and get what they need, and they delight us with their calls and clicks.  When we had the huge laying flock, we had a crow that mimicked the roosters.  He sounded like a cartoon rooster.  I haven’t heard him for a while.  But I listen every morning and night. 

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