For many homesteaders, buying enough seeds for a large garden is a major expense. But it doesn't have to be. There are many resources available for free or low-cost seeds mailed to your door. Here is the most comprehensive list of places to get free seeds anywhere on the internet.
Companion planting is a permaculture technique that increases garden yield and productivity by planting different crops in the same bed. Choosing good companions to plant together while avoiding bad combinations is the key to getting the most out of you land this year. Here is a chart of common crops with their good companions and pairing to avoid ---
Chickens are the favorite snack of many a wild predator. One of the most common questions I see is whether groundhogs are possibly eating your chickens or eggs. If you are raising chickens and have groundhogs in your area, this short article is for you.
When I first decided to make permaculture my full-time job, I spent a lot of time looking around for opportunities to make a living using permaculture design. With so people out there laid off from work, I decided to publish a list of what I've found to be a good idea. Here are 9 opportunities to make money with a permaculture business, and one **bonus** idea which could be huge in the near future.
While planning for my own permaculture forest garden, I needed to know exactly how far apart to plant my trees. Since the answer isn't easy to find online, I decided to write a simple, clear explanation of how far to space trees in your orchard.
With my permaculture food forest well underway, I went the route that is increasingly popular in the community, a duck pond for biofiltration and fertigation. Here is my experience on how to build a permaculture duck pond.
Sitting down to plan my next year's permaculture garden and build my food forest, I wondered what crops work best as permaculture cover crops. After doing my research, these are the most productive ground cover plants you should be putting in your permaculture garden or food forest.
Joel Salatin style pastured poultry is an increasingly popular method used by farmers and homesteaders who raise healthy organic chickens. This method allows chickens to forage the land naturally. But how much land does a pastured poultry flock actually need?
I often find myself with piles of brush, looking for creative ways to leverage this fruit of my labor to the fullest. After searching for a better way, I found somethings to do with brush that made me stop just burning it, and I'll never go back.
There are a lot of recommendations out there about how to keep deer out of the garden, but I find that many of them don't really work. Or they work for a while before the deer wise up. These are the methods that I found work and work for good.
Until now, advancement in the human race has been largely a haphazard collection of minor improvements, leading to ever increasing knowledge fragmentation and specialization. All of our technology, laws, and customs have become so complex that it is difficult for any to understand more than just a tiny fragment of what is going on.
From the outset, it may seem that Off Grid or Permaculture is a regressive ideology, seeking out the past rather than the future. In reality, history teaches us that the methodologies of the homesteader or the only way to ensure that technology persists and grows in to the future. Lets take a walk though the past and dream of an amazing off grid future.
To some the idea of becoming self-sufficient seems silly, or even overly paranoid. But, only a bit of tentative research in to the topic shows that developing the ability to live without the grid is a prudent move. The expectation that our age of abundance can last indefinitely has been repeatedly proved foolish in the annals of history. But, beyond even that, the tonic of self-reliance and personal responsibility holds the promise of even greater years to come.
One of the biggest fallacies of modern culture is the rise if disposable culture. The fact is that cheap limited use items are frequently more expensive in terms of resources and overall expense is a fact that is keenly felt by those seeking to limit their dependence on external inputs. Only when we see everything as a valuable resource, and see every piece of trash as a failing of our skills and creativity, can the possibility for true independence of an off grid lifestyle immerse.
Nature lover & tinkerer. Daniel moved from a city apartment to a 12'x12' tree house and never looked back.
