Cowboy is the daddy and one of the borrowed sheep. Well, I’m a shepard now. My flock is small, just three ewes, but I’m also able to borrow three more to make it a larger flock. So far it’s been really satisfying. I head out to check on them once a day, making sure they have enough pasture, set up my next moves, check their water, and make sure they have enough salt. My draft grazing plan. I’ve got a draft plan to move them through the food forest at the cooperative. White is where they’ve been. Red is approximate future paddocks. Blue are the alleys that some of the other coop members will be ..read more

I’ve herd people ask similar questions. Basically they amount to “I have dreams of permaculture, how do I pursue them?” The perennial permaculture advice is “it depends”. Every person’s journey is different. Take a breath. Then start looking around you. What is possible now? How can you start investing in yourself and your projects? What can you learn that will help you along the way? How con you connect with people around you? How can you increase the possibilities? In what ways is your current thinking limited? What if it’s hiding possibilities from you? For many years I lived in Chicago in ..read more

Meet Vulcan, a katahdin dorper mix sheep. When he grows up he’ll be the ram of his flock. I’m hoping he’ll add a nice bit of genetic diversity, keep the future generations healthy. The post Meet Vulcan appeared first on Permaculture Productions LLC ..read more

What will life be like in the future? We will mostly live by what is around us. Things that come from afar will be special. Tools, knives and raw materials. Probably some books and musical instruments. Food, shelter, energy, waste, water, would all be taken care of locally. That is my vision. One way or another it’s where we are going. How impoverished we will be someday. If that is our destination how do we invest in it? The post A Glimpse of the Future appeared first on Permaculture Productions LLC ..read more

Hierarchy is a type of control. It disrupt the natural order of things, usually using large quantities of energy to do so, placing the beings that are the object of control in a state of stress, which denies one or more of their needs, products, behaviors, or intrinsic characteristics, so that their usual outcomes accrue to the controllers benefit. Here I describe hierarchy as a clearly negative thing, I have heard some protest at it being used in a negative way. I would suggest that in those instances it would be better to use words like network, position, scale, or even relationship. Hierar ..read more

8 forms of capital, originally published on Appleseed Permaculture and written by Ethan Roland & Gregory Landua in 2011, has become a core permaculture methodology. As an analytical tool it can help us map flows and exchanges between ourselves and the rest of the world. It broadens our focus from money alone, helping us see the wealth of connections that exist around us.  Briefly, the eight forms are: Social capital, such as influence and connections.  Material capital, non-living physical objects, both raw and processed  Financial capital, currencies and other tools of th ..read more

I finished up the new sheep shelter. Based on Justin Rhodes sheepshaw, it is a huge improvement over the beast that I originally created for them. There are still some tweaks to do, like mineral feeders, water buckets, and a windbreak but they can wait. The post Sheep Shelter appeared first on Permaculture Productions LLC ..read more