Jeff Lawton - Construct a Food Forest

This link is well worth watching... quite long.. around 1hr 22 min... but we're talking ecological engineering here.

http://doomsteaddiary.blogspot.com/2009/03/full-length-permaculture-video.html

Greenhouse

E-Bay has produced again. A greenhouse/conservatory I bid on a couple of weeks ago, and lost, came back to me because the first buyer has let down the purchaser. I'm thrilled to bits and just on my way to collect it.

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It's in pieces of course, so I'll have the worlds biggest mechano puzzle putting it together. Still I've got the photo as a guide.

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It's going to go in front of one of the old out-buildings we're "doing up", so I'll get not only somewhere for my seed planting and propagation, but also free solar heating for the outbuilding... a permaculture classic method.

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Speaking of solar heating; I had a salesman for one of the solar heating companies around yesterday. When I first contacted the company, I told the receptionist that I wasn't ready to buy. I just wanted to talk to someone about the options, but they just can't resist the urge to go for the hard sell. Consequently, the saleman, who might well have had a sale if he'd showed a bit of patience, has defineitly lost the sale through trying too hard. Meanwhile, I have found out what I wanted to know as background information and I'm going to go away and crunch some numbers on how much of a saving we might make on our hot water.

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NB. I'm not even considering the electircity generating version of solar energy. It currently has a pay-back period of about thirty to forty years..... simply not practical or economic.

March; out like a lamb.

Glorious day: warm spring sunshine and just a hint of cool in the breeze. Absolutely no question of staying indoors. We were both out in the garden all day.

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We cleared up another of the areas left to rack and ruin by the previous occupants; all overgrown with thistles and nettles with, what at first appeared to be, some polythene sheeting amoung the weeds.

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It turned out to have been, long ago, an old polytunnel. Everything was collapsed to ground level and overgrown with turf. It was a complete bugger to dig out.

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Still, by the end of the day you could see where we had been. The bulk of the plastic is out anf burned. The usual assortment of stones, brinks and strange random bits of metal were dug out and sorted. We finally managed to get the lawnmower over the area. We'll treat is as law for while until the weeds are under control and then take it from there.

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The E-Bay shredder works a treat. Super machine. All the old tree prunigns are now on the compost heap.

Soil Testing

Early March.... two solid weeks of glorious spring weather.
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So I set out to take advantage of the molehills and start seeding them with my grass/wildflower "For clay soils and wetlands" mix. Also over the areas where the turf and a lot of the topsoil has been trampled out of existence.
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And I resolved that this week I would start my survey of the land.... depth of topsoil (if any!!) type (clay, loam etc) and pH.
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Sodd's Law immediately strikes. The weather turns very windy and with a bitter Northern bite to it.
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Result, my seeds were carried off by the wind, and as I pulled out my carefully assembled and lovingly laminated map of the farm, complete with penned in notes, half a dozen raindrops splodged down onto it and wiped out half my annotations.
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So those jobs will have to wait until the weather clears up.
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On the positive side, E-Bay has now produced a strimmer and a shredder, so I can work on the build up of my compost heaps. I've already got a great stack of tree prunings to work on, plus all the areas where weeds have run riot. not that I want rid of the nettles.... but I do want them under control..... along with the thistles, which are truly out of hand.
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I saw a video on You-Tube a few days ago, showing how a hot shower was run off a compost heap over some months. It's got me wondering if I can get myself a free heated greenhouse run from compost-power. Watch this space.....
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My comfrey arrived yesterday. Fifty bit of chopped off root. The weather won't allow me to plant them, so I've just popeed them into a bit of soil in a seed tray to get them going.

Ducks

Just walked the dogs up by the pond. It looks as thought there is a pair of wild ducks, mallards, starting to nest up there. As I approached with the dogs they flew up together and starting circling. They didn't fly away, but they only came down again until we moved on.
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I hope they stay. I can't stay entirely out of their way unfortunately, so there're going to have to get used to me.
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If they do stay, they will really have an ideal home and nursery; a pond entirely to themselves and twenty odd acres of rough scrubland as a feeding area.

Bare Soil

There's a definite problem on the farmland with bare soil. This is a combination of mole hills and areas where sheer footfall, sheep, vehicles or humans, has stripped away the turf.
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Consequently, thistles are staging a complete take-over bid on the farm. There's thousands of them.
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So I've bought a mixed grass/wildflower seed meadow mixture for wetlands. Everywhere I see naked earth, I'm sowing a little of the seed mixture.
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Next I have to tackle the thistles I've already got.......

A Perfect Storm by 2030

And here are the morning's headlines from The Guardian and the BBC

"Food, water and energy shortages will unleash public unrest and international conflict, Professor John Beddington will tell a conference tomorrow.

A "perfect storm" of food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration as people flee from the worst-affected regions, the UK government's chief scientist will warn tomorrow"