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Episode-1112- Dave Jacke Workshop and Left Over Questions from the Lawton Interview

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Jessica Peterson of Inside Edge Design joins us today to discuss the coming workshop in Helena Montana with Dave Jacke.  This workshop will be to design the second ever public food forest on a 1.1 acre site managed by the city of Helena, MT.  There are several options for attendees.

I will personally be there for the entire workshop and hope to see many of you guys there with me.  Every person that participates in the entire workshop from beginning to end will be listed as a design team member on the project and receive an electronic copy of the final design.

Next up we had a ton of questions for Geoff Lawton yesterday.  More then I could possibly fit into one interview with him.  As you might imagine Geoff is one of the busiest people on planet earth so I try to be very respectful of his time.  I choose some of the more challenging questions for him yesterday.

Today I will cover some of the questions you guys had that he didn’t have time to cover yesterday.  I will do my best to answer them and will table a few for Geoff’s next appearance.

 Resources for today’s show…

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Comments

Episode-1112- Dave Jacke Workshop and Left Over Questions from the Lawton Interview — 19 Comments

  1. Jack,

    All links for tsp mint go to a site the doesnt work. It states that the servers are being migrated. Is there a new tsp mint address?

    Thanks

  3. I took a 9 day intensive with Dave Jacke last fall. Great course. If you can make time for this class – go.

  5. Thank you for answering my question! After hearing your answer I went out and took a look and what you suggested should work perfectly!

    I found two pond sites on the high side of the driveway that will feed a culvert under the road to a swale on the low side.

    I found a contour line that will work for a swale on the low side of the drive, and following that contour line out about 200 feet I found a great spot for a spillway just uphill from my large blackberry patch that I had planned to install a sort of irrigation system in, so the spillway will take care of that! (last year I had to irrigate the blackberry patch)

    Then downhill a bit from that blackberry patch is a natural little gully where I can put another dam and build a large pond. From there I plotted out a swale that will help establish a pasture area directly behind my house. So once I got that answer from you the whole system kinda laid right out in front of me… I am excited to get started. Thanks again, I will be doing the earthworks this year and will send you more videos on the progress!

    • That is awesome! It is very cool to see people go out and really see their own land with a “permaculture eye”. That is when you begin to become a real master. It is always hardest to design your own property.

  6. Hey Barngeek,
    Just thinking is there a way that you could put a pond as well as a spillway uphill from your blackberry patch. I’m thinking you will need uphill water to hydrate your blackberries. Or are the ponds beside your driveway going to be able to accomplish that job on their own? You must have some dry periods or you wouldn’t have had to irrigate last year. I looked at the video that Jack posted but I am having a little trouble piecing this together in my mind’s eye.

    • Hi Lee,

      That’s a great idea, and I would but the only thing uphill from the blackberries is the county road, as it is I will have to take out some of the blackberries to put in the swale spillway.

      However it just so happens that the county road has a dip just uphill from the blackberries where the water funnels and pools in the ditch, where it sits and soaks in… which I think is the reason there is the huge half acre blackberry patch, it gets all that water from the road run off concentrated on that spot. It’s kinda like an accidental swale.

  7. Jack –
    65″ in a climate that has a lot of EVAPORATION can actually dry out. We get 50-60″ here in Vermont where you were and it does dry out a bit at times. And if it’s too wet, swales are still JUST AS KEY – to get ABOVE the water table.
    We are flooding ourself at times – but that’s ok – because the plants get above it – on the mounds. It’s actually great, because it stores the water for dry periods.
    You are certainly NOT drought proof just because you get 60+ inches of rain a year. The dryer season can always get drier. Climates shift and even a dry windy hot month can drop a water table by 5-8 feet. I’ve seen it. I think you should address that question again. Swales are super key in inundated areas – not just dry areas.
    -Ben

    • @Ben remember this guy is from Florida things are different there. The average depth of the water table in the panhandle is about 6 feet down, people put in wells with an attachment for a garden hose the uses high pressure to drill the bore and you can put in such a well in about 2 hours including the equipment install.

      The rain is also way more equally spaced out across the year, there is no cold season that is anything like what you have, frankly the entire state is a swamp. Swales can have use in such an area but based on the overhead I saw I would never bother. The upgrade forest would do all the conservation necessary in that catchment.

      Swales are great, I love them but they don’t fit every design. The property in question would benefit from them IF the owner intended to cut say 30% or more of the forested land. Without that it just doesn’t look like it would pay off.

      • Sounds reasonable Jack – didn’t know about the forest upslope. But there’s still the issue of getting above the water table – essentially growing a wetland – that’s what our swales in our wet areas do here. They are basically chinampas in this way. Swales as chinampas. And they work awesomely.

  8. About TSP Mint…I think they’ve gone up on their prices as well. I don’t have a problem with that, but they’ve priced themselves out of my market. I haven’t heard Jack talk about that price increase. I was planning to buy 5oz each paycheck. Back to JM Bullion for me.

    • actually, buying 5 ozs with the member’s price is still a good deal, forgot about that

      • Asking price above spot is increasing everywhere Jessie. I physically cannot buy any from my dealer. And even then, his prices were about $7 over spot. I’m still ranting about not being able to get physical silver. So I coined the term “Fractional Silver”, cause the paper and the physical do not match IMHO

        /rant over :0

    • I saw this too. 29.18 when silver is trading for 23.09… thats the decoupling greggory mannarino was talking about.

      • Jake, if you plan to buy at least 5 oz from TSP Mint (3 dollars off each oz), you get a good price break, and then when you use your members discount of 1 dollar off each oz, you get a good deal, still very competitive with other dealers. Although the Buffalos at JM Bullion are the best price around.

  9. There was a question about moving animals in paddocks with swales. A key point is that ANIMALS NATURALLY WALK ON CONTOUR and they can help you pick which contour lines to choose for putting in swales.

  10. The part about using the swales as pathways / roads was break through for me. I never got that until now.

  11. super interesting podcast, but remins me that I still have so much still to learn… I haven’t even graduated from square foot box gardens yet…

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