Introduction to our Homestead

My family and I live on a homestead in the Pacific Northwest. My desire to raise food and improve the ecology of the land comes from the near financial collapse of 2008. If the banking system had shut down the transportation system would have stalled as well. If it had, goods would have stopped moving. Grocery stores shelves would have been bare in hours. Therefore, I self-reflected on how I was living and how I could be more prepared for disasters. One thing, among many, that I noticed was that I was producing no food for my family nor was there much in my house.

For the last 20 years, my wife and I have read books like Fast Food Nation and Omnivore's Dilemma, watched documentaries like Food Inc, and read 1000s of articles related to health and food. We noticed that modern agriculture is terrible for the environment. Yet, we had not been doing anything to change our lifestyles to move even an inch away from these systems.

In my research, I also stumbled on permaculture as a design science and took the certification. Being an engineer and architect, the permaculture methodology made perfect sense. In a nutshell the goal of permaculture is to pattern existing nature, so that it provides resources and improves the environment; thus, providing future generations with a better environment. In addition to permaculture, I also took a Master Gardeners course from the local college extension.

This is our second homestead attempt. With our previous property I planted quite a few guilds of plants and worked on learning to function stack them. Function stacking is the act of finding multiple synergistic relationships between plants and animals. For instance, planting a guild with a black locust, Arkansas black apple, huckleberry, Comfrey and clover performs many functions. The locust and clover fix nitrogen in the soil for the apple, Comfrey and huckleberry. Pollination and habitat is provided by all plants at different times of the year. Comfrey is a dynamic accumulator, basically it unlocks minerals in the soil and brings them to its leaves which die back in the fall. Those minerals are then on the surface as mulch where other plants can easily uptake them. Comfrey is also a medicinal plant. The apple and huckleberry provide food. Finally, the locust can be coppiced for firewood; it is one of the highest BTU woods on the planet as well as rot resistant.

Permaculture teaches the use of animals in the system for the workers. Nature evolved with plants and animals. Unfortunately, animals and plants are isolated in modern agriculture systems. When animals are removed, humans must now do the work of the animals. For instance, grass is hardy and a great biomass plant, but humans can’t digest it. Therefore, humans create millions of lawn mowers and millions of more hours of human existence is spent on mowing grass. An herbivore like a cow, sheep or horse will gladly spend most of their time eating that grass and fertilizing it for you.

A favorite design idea from permaculture is “The problem is the solution.” This statement conveys that a perceived problem is a solution to another problem. For instance, we have tons of slugs. Most people want them removed because they eat plants. How much time and cost is spent putting down pellets or picking them because they are a problem? Let’s rephrase the problem as, “I have a surplus of slugs, what can I do with them?” Now the mind can come up with answers like duck feed. I can grow an “exotic” meat and egg that is rare to find in a store or restaurant. Moving the ducks to the slug area also reduces the time of picking the slugs because the duck will hunt the slugs for food. This idea is applicable other facets of life not just gardening. Our society tends to be fixated on problems instead of implementing solutions.

The reason my family and I have a homestead is to implement everything discussed above. I am trying to build bio-diversity and raise food. It also teaches me about nature and involves a lot of fun and at times frustrating problem solving opportunities.

We are working on planting guilds to accomplish multiple goals. Every plant that is placed on the property must serve at least 3 purposes. Examples of purposes are food production, fuel, nitrogen fixing, pollination, mulch, medicine and habitat. Some of the perennials I have planted are strawberries, blueberries, elderberries, almonds, cherries, apples, plums, peaches, currents, gooseberry, goumi, autumn olives, plums, pears, kiwis, grapes, lingonberries and walnuts. I am trying to plant a large variety to see what does the best in this area.

In the front in my house I have planted a flower and herb garden. I started this area with bulbs; having early (tulip), mid (lilly) and late season bulbs (gladiolus) in the ground. Then planted around the bulbs herbs like thyme, sage, chives and oregano as ground cover and low shrubs. Finally, I mixed in pineapple guava, salal and lupine (nitrogen fixing flower).
Our animals have multiple purposes or jobs. Chickens and ducks provide us eggs, clean up bugs and slugs, eat food waste and fertilize land. All animals fertilize, including humans; males have an easy time adding a 13-1-1 liquid fertilizer to the land. My wife also has her horses. We have rabbits that have been more of pets since we have not bred them yet. Our dogs provide many features, protection for the property, alerting, and companionship. Our cats are hunters that keep down mice and rats. Finally, we caught a swarm of bees this year and they provide pollination. We are a hands off type of bee keeper, so don’t have a lot of plans to collect the honey.

Animals do require management. They are free spirited and not the brightest for they are reactionary. The first two years on the property has led to a ton of fencing and our biggest infrastructure expense. Fencing and electro fencing contain animals to areas fairly well, but they can still get out or damage an improper installed fence. For instance, a horse might decide to scratch themselves on a fence and bend it up. Since fencing takes a while to put up and is costly, we ended keeping the animals in areas too long. They ate it to the ground until nothing was left. A lack of fencing also led to a raid by coyotes where we lost 70% of the bird flock. Another reason the coyotes hit was that we broke a rule of always having small animals with larger animals so the birds had no protection. Also, when birds are kept with larger animals they eat the flies off the larger animals.

Behind our barn I planted a raised bed garden area. This has been less successful, which is okay because I see perennials and animals providing more food in the long term. I have had good luck with cabbage, peas and beans. Zucchini and spaghetti squash have done okay. The rest has not grown well for me in this new location. A reason why the garden isn’t doing so well is because I haven’t moved my home office out to the barn. Therefore, my garden sits in a Zone 3 which by its nature and is not visited all that often.