Tag Archives: permaculture

Episode-776- Winter Gardening Projects

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Modern Survival| 17 Comments
Episode-776- Winter Gardening Projects [ 1:01:48 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
A Winter Homestead

Photo Credit to lawr88223

Now is the time to get going with your late fall and winter gardening projects and project planning.  Yesterday I went and got another load of compost from the city compost facility.

What I noticed is in the 55 degree weather doing so was a lot more enjoyable, it reinforced something I have always said, cool weather is best for your gardening projects.  So I figured today would be a good time to go over some fall/winter project ideas, including some I am currently working on and have planned.

Join me today as I discuss….

  • The greenhouse is going in this month
  • Why I am rethinking aquaponics
  • Time to trick or treat for organic matter
  • My concept for a seasonal zoned rabbit hutch
  • Cover cropping and pasture creation
  • Thoughts on compost heating systems
  • The rocket mass heated greenhouse
  • A true hidden/survival garden
  • Hugelkultur bed progress to date

Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

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Episode-773- Paleoculture the Orginal Permaculture

Posted on October 28, 2011 by Modern Survival| 46 Comments
Episode-773- Paleoculture the Orginal Permaculture [ 1:07:57 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
The American Bison was the Deffinition of "Sustainable Protien"

The American Bison was the Definition of "Sustainable Protein"

So this week I have been thinking about the paleo lifestyle and how it would fit into a permaculture based system.  Turn out I am not the first person to ask the question and the fit is quite natural.   The last time I spoke on paleo living I brought a lot of the “homesteading components” into it, today I will try to do a bit more.

Permaculture isn’t about growing plants and trees, that is one element to it, it is really a methodology for “whole system design”, encompassing all things for human existence.  Some of these include as energy, housing, economy and capital, community and yes food.  In fact this is why as a survivalist I am so attracted to permaculture, the word means “permanent culture”, in essence it is survivalism.

When you talk about eating a mostly meat based diet (caloric intake) the first thing people often say is “well meat isn’t sustainable”.  As our bodies are made of meat my response to such people would be simply, “if meat isn’t sustainable, humans aren’t sustainable”.  The reality is in my view hunter-gathers were the first permaculturists.

Join me today as I discuss…

  • Some clarification on my last paleo shows, I have not become a food Nazi
  • How humans originally “found food” and figured out it was food
  • From 50 million bison to barbed wire
  • Evaluation of how much land we need for paleo vs carb based living
    • How many people do we have to feed
    • What sources of income can we create
    • Who can we trade with locally
    • What climate type do we have
    • What are our food preferences
    • Can game play a role in the equation
    • What is our topography like
    • What water resources do we have/not have
  • Using annual and perennial crops to support humans directly
  • Using annual and perennial crops to support livestock and/or game
  • Utilizing paddock shifts
  • The best protein sources for small landscapes
    • Chickens
    • Ducks
    • Geese
    • Turkeys
    • Small Hog Breeds
    • Fish
    • Goats and Sheep
  • Sustainability isn’t an individual project but a community based lifestyle

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air

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Episode-771- Ben Falk on Growing Rice in Cold Climates with Permaculture

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Modern Survival| 7 Comments
Episode-771- Ben Falk on Growing Rice in Cold Climates with Permaculture [ 1:00:37 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Ben Falk of WholeSystemsDesign.com

Ben Falk of WholeSystemsDesign.com

Ben Falk developed Whole Systems Design, as a land-based response to biological and cultural extinction and the increasing separation between people and elemental things. Life as a designer, builder, ecologist, tree-tender, and back country traveler continually informs Ben’s integrative approach to developing landscapes and buildings.

His home landscape and the WSD studio site in Vermont’s Mad River Valley serve as a proving ground for the innovative land developments featured in the projects of Whole Systems Design. Ben has studied architecture and landscape architecture at the graduate level and holds a master’s degree in land-use planning and design.

He has taught design courses at the University of Vermont and Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum as well as on permaculture design, microclimate design, and design for climate change. He serves on the Board of Directors and Faculty at the Yestermorrow Design-Build School.  Ben joins us today to discuss growing rice with terraced systems in cold climates along with permaculture design considerations.

Join Ben and I Today as we Discuss…

  • Why grow rice in the first place
  • The methods of hill side agriculture that make a rice system practical
  • Lessons learned by cultivating rice in a climate not know for it
  • Integration of water fowl into a rice based system
  • Pest control via the attraction and introduction of predators
  • What hiring a permaculture design consultant can do for you
  • The most common mistakes people make setting up a site
  • The first things Ben looks at when evaluating a site
  • Several ways you can save yourself thousands of dollars in mistakes when buying land
  • A few uncommon crops and what they can do for your system

 Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

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Episode-765- Useful Small Animals for the Homestead

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Modern Survival| 42 Comments
Episode-765- Useful Small Animals for the Homestead [ 1:14:29 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Okay there is a lot of gloom and doom out there and to be honest some of the crap is really hitting the fan right now.  It will be necessary for me to delve into that world more and more in the coming months/years but I still want to keep some positive and fun stuff coming as well.

Hence today we are going to focus on homesteading and animals that can feed us, protect our property or provide us with other benefits.  The list we will cover today includes some “traditional small livestock”, some wild game and some other stuff people don’t usually think of.

So what happened to chickens?  They get a token mention but as everyone thinks of chickens first we are focusing elsewhere today.

Join me today as we discuss…

  • What makes an animal useful for our homestead
    • Produces food
    • Produces functional by products
    • Produces useful waste
    • Performs a useful function
    • Provides entertainment
    • Supports other systems
  • Some useful and easy to care for livestock
    • Dogs
    • Rabbits
    • Small Swine
    • Squirrels, Raccoons and other small wildlife
    • Bees (mason and conventional)
    • Ducks
    • Fish – tilapia, catfish, trout, crayfish, frogs, etc.
    • Worms and insects
    • Goats and sheep
    • Pigeons and Quail

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

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Episode-762- Tom Haile on Serving in the Peace Corps

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Modern Survival| 13 Comments
Episode-762- Tom Haile on Serving in the Peace Corps [ 1:00:49 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Tom Haile in Madagascar

Tom Haile in Madagascar

Tom is a Texas native growing up in Katy Texas. He doesn’t remember leaving Texas until being at least old enough to buy a beer.   He started a career in software development in 2000 but tired of it and joined the Peace Corps in 2007.

After returning in 2009 he continued a career of software development in Austin Texas. His experience as an environment volunteer in the third world has given him a new perspective on humanity.

I think many people feel the Peace Corps is made up of nothing but peacenick hippies who want to escape reality for a few years before joining the corporate grind.  While serving in Honduras in 1991 building roads as a solider in the US Army I knew several Peace Corps members.

They lived in tougher conditions then I did, they had no way to defend themselves and were largely on the same mission, to help people in need.  My hope is Tom’s experience will expand the listener’s mind today on what service in the Corps is really all about and how valuable it is in helping others and perhaps someday helping us right here at home during hard times.

Join us today as we discuss…

  • The three primary objectives of the Peace Corps
  • What you get out of serving in the Corps
  • Individual skill sets in the third world such as
    • Growing rice
    • Building clay and mud ovens
    • Teaching language skills
    • Erosion control
    • Gardening/Permaculture
    • Raising poultry
    • Medical care in absence of doctors
    • Building community
    • Solar cooking
    • Building nurseries for tree cultivation
  • The way taxes can begin at a city level almost in an extortionist way
  • Theft and punishment thereof in the third world
  • Road construction in rural Madagascar (roads are a luxury in the 3rd world)

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

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Episode-722- Bill Wilson on Permaculture’s Guiding Principles

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Modern Survival| 6 Comments
Episode-722- Bill Wilson on Permaculture's Guiding Principles [ 1:15:04 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Bill Wilson of Midwest Permaculture

Bill Wilson of Midwest Permaculture

Today we welcome back a great prior guest, Bill Wilson of Midwest Permaculture.  Bill’s entire life is dedicated to teaching and practicing permaculture.

Bill is an amazing guy that followed his dream, walked away from a career and created something special.  He has a special gift for making some of permaculture’s more complex components easy to understand and an unstoppable passion for teaching and spreading the word that no matter what the problem may be, we can find a solution utilizing a sustainable methodology.

Midwest Permaculture guides their students in how to develop the observational skills, the knowledge, and the practical information to create sustainable landscapes and communities — to develop more permanent cultures. Students are trained to explore how to consciously provide all of the goods and services we need while also developing ways to leave the planet in better condition than when we arrived on it.

In Bill’s words, “If each successive generation left the planet in better condition, we would be living in a more ideal world today. ”

Join Us today as We Discuss

  • How Bill went from truck driver to permaculture
  • How the Midwest PDC saves people time
  • What you gain in taking a PDC
  • Permaculture’s Prime Directive
  • The three ethics
    • Care of the earth
    • Care of people
    • Return of surplus
  • Principles of permaculture design in practice

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

 

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Episode-720- An Interview with Jason Fields of The Urban Farming Guys

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Modern Survival| 12 Comments
Episode-720- An Interview with Jason Fields of The Urban Farming Guys [ 46:33 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Urban Farming Guys Explain Aquaponics

Today Jason Fields joins us from The Urban Farming Guys.  Jason is part of a group of about 20 families who have purposefully uprooted from out of their comfortable suburban homes.  They then relocated to one of the worst neighborhoods in Kansas City with the goal of transforming it.

Each family has purchased a home within a 5 block radius of each other and put down in order to change lives and improve a community.  Every family maintains a personal garden and actively works together on numerous community projects, such as green houses, a developing community center, raising chickens and more.

Join us today as we discuss…

  • How 20 families dropped a crime rate just by showing up
  • Linking up with neighborhood associations and watches
  • Getting rid of drug dealers the easy way
  • How community gardens are instilling a sense of pride
  • Making your own methane with a bio digester
  • Storing your bio gas to use for cooking and heating
  • Getting items to create biogas from for free
  • Growing over 1000 tilapia in an area the size of a small room
  • The sacrifices associated with this type of project and the rewards

Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

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Episode-711- Lessons from The Man Who Stopped the Desert

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Modern Survival| 21 Comments
Episode-711- Lessons from The Man Who Stopped the Desert [ 1:01:00 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Yacouba Sawadogo is the Man Who Stopped the Desert

Yacouba Sawadogo, can not write, he was never classically educated, he received no help from any government programs but this one man has done more for the people in the ‘Sahel’ region of Africa than any other person or group of people combined.

How?  In some real ways, simply by digging holes!  He uses a method of growing called a zai.

Soil is essential to life on earth. But much of the world’s soil has become degraded and useless. As the global demand for food grows, millions of pounds and the latest technological advances have been invested in attempts to improve soil quality.

Leading scientists and agriculturalists from around the world strive against growing world hunger to find the means to bring exhausted soils back into production, but it seems that a peasant farmer from one of the poorest countries on earth has finally achieved what these experts dreamt of; halting the desert.

Join me today as we discuss…

  • Who is Yacouba Sawadogo
  • Some remarkable similarities he has to Bill Mollison
  • Why problems we think are unique to us are not
    • Resistance to new ideas
    • Hostility when they begin to work
    • The trials of “imminent domain”
    • Food is our greatest need
  • The Zai and how it works
    • 5000 – 10000 holes per acre
    • Incorporate organic matter – compost – manure
    • Create low rock walls on contour
    • Prep in the dry season
    • Grow crops but grow forest as well
    • Utilizes termites
  • Ways I think it can be improved
    • Incorporate equipment
    • Practice more poly culture
    • Increase depth
    • Utilize mulch
    • Incorporate true swales
  • Great wisdom about survival From Yacoba
    • Noting makes people nasty faster than insecurity
    • You can’t preserve your wealth by running away
    • We must solve the food problem first
    • If you cut 10 trees a day and plant none in a year you are doomed
    • Leaders are shaped by circumstance and choice
    • Food sovereignty saves societies

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

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Episode-710- Holly Hirshberg from The Dinner Garden

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Modern Survival| 10 Comments
Episode-710- Holly Hirshberg from The Dinner Garden [ 54:30 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Holly Hirshberg founder of DinnerGarden.org

In 2008, in the midst of a crumbling economy, Holly Hirshberg came up with a plan to help families and communities could weather the tough times by growing produce themselves.  Much like the Victory Gardens of the First and Second World Wars, these “Dinner Gardens” would allow people to stretch their food budgets and enhance their nutritional intake.   Individuals and families could have greater food security and take a direct part in that effort.

To help people achieve their gardens, Holly started at the beginning: providing people with vegetable seeds, free of charge.  Step two was supporting their efforts with gardening information and tips for cheap gardening in the space they had available.   She envisioned a nation where front lawns, empty lots, medians, parks, schools, churches, and community centers devoted space to fruit and vegetable gardens.

Holly often states ,”The Dinner Garden isn’t just about the seeds, It is about giving people hope. It is about showing people another way to live. The Dinner Garden is creating communities where families spend time together in a productive way and children learn that they can create something beautiful and useful to their family.”

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

 

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Episode-699- Marjory Wildcraft on Producing Your Own Food

Posted on July 11, 2011 by Modern Survival| 21 Comments
Episode-699- Marjory Wildcraft on Producing Your Own Food [ 1:15:38 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Note – Today’s show was originally supposed to air on Wednesday last week.  Due to an error it is airing today, so the episode numbers and dates in the audio won’t match.  Today’s show though is now officially Episode 699.  We will do a listener calls show tomorrow and a feedback show on Wednesday to make up for last weeks missed shows.

Today Marjory Wildcraft of Back Yard Food Production joins us to discuss taking control of your own food supply with home growing, small livestock and community building.

Not long ago humans fed themselves, provided for their on needs and were largely self sufficient. They knew how to feed themselves, how to take care of animals, what to plant and what to do when something went wrong. Marjory’s DVD, “Food Production Systems for a Backyard or Small Farm” is your guide to recapturing that lost knowledge.

Marjory is a nationally recognized expert in organic backyard food production.  She is the creator of a widely acclaimed video tutorial titled Food Production Systems for a Backyard or Small Farm.  Marjory teaches people with no gardening or agricultural experience, how to successfully grow healthy, vibrant, life-giving nutritious food.

Her DVD is endorsed and carried by such notables as The Permaculture Activist, Acre’s USA, John Jeavons and Ecology Action’s premier seed and tool company Bountiful Gardens, SurvivalBlog.com and The Weston-Price Nutrition Foundation.

She has been featured as a guest on a diversity of national radio shows such as Coast to Coast AM, “The Power Hour” with Joyce Riley, and the Patrick Timpone show.

Join us today as we discuss…

  • Getting started from zero with food production
  • Growing herbs
  • Composting
  • Rabbits vs chicken for meat production
  • The “secret to a green thumb”
  • Guns and gardening
  • How hard times are on the way but you don’t have to participate

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

 

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