Today is the day of firsts! Days of sitting back and observing ... in
this case observing my first two Permaculture designs which have been
planted where I currently work at Aberdeen Farm in Staatsburg, NY, part
of the beautiful Hudson River Valley. This is our first year of
commercial production and we only produce honey and maple syrup for sale
at the moment but we also raise goats, chickens and vegetables (get
some at www.aberdeenfarmmaple.com if you'd like and enjoy enjoy enjoy).
The amazing people that I work for/with have agreed to give this
Permaculture thing a go. The first design was based on a classic guild:
the apple tree guild. (For those new to Permaculture, a guild is a group
of plants that work well together or are 'companion plants.' In this
case, we have apple trees which in most cases are sprayed down with
loads of pesticides, even organic apples are usually treated with
linseed oil to prevent pests (mainly tree borers those JERKS!) but our
goal here is to not have to treat them with anything (as well as grow as
much food in the allotted space as possible, never till, mulch or weed
and have a system that is for the most part self sufficient). So I got
my hands on this book which I really recommend, even though the price is
a bit steep (and believe me, I'm frugal) its really worth it. You can buy it from the publisher here: Tagari Publications
I also took a Permaculture workshop through NOFA NY (Northeastern Organic Farmers Association which is an AWESOME organization and you can check them out here: NOFA-NY. I will talk more about them later.) I drew a map of the area that we were planning on planting with a rough topographical outline so I could see how the water roll off was. We had some hard rains and I noticed a few spots that also seemed to develop 'puddles.' All pretty important stuff. So the first thing that I did with this new information was try to figure out which plants would be helpful to the apple trees and which would make their lives harder and what amounts of water and sun they all call for. Next post will be what I came up with cause I gotta get back outside. Thanks for reading!!! (yes the third exclamation point was necessary.)
