Earth

This post has been in my mind since I saw a wonderful program ABC TV. The program “Rare Chicken Rescue” has two themes, one is depression and the other is about rescuing rare chicken breeds. Both subjects are interesting however it was the role that keeping chickens played in rescuing Mark Tully from depression that really struck a chord.

When we lived on the North Coast of NSW we kept about 20 odd chickens and 3 ducks. Watching this mob of birds going about their daily activities was a source of endless fascination for us. If you slow down and observe with curiosity their individual characters become more apparent. Chickens have an astonishing range of movements and noises when they allowed to follow their natural patterns. I can easily understand how watching the birds can bring someone out of a downward spiral and gradually lead to some relief from symptoms of depression.

As anyone who has allowed chooks to free range around their garden will know, they have an uncanny sense of which beds to head for to disperse carefully mulched delicate plants. Roosters also seem to be able to get over just about any fence and into a vege garden.

One of the experiments we trialled was the use of “Chook Tractors”. This is an idea popularised by Bill Mollison in the Permaculture books. The version we used was a chook dome made of poly pipe and chicken wire, that was rotated over half a dozen circular vege beds (as described by Linda Woodrow in The Permaculture Home Garden). One additional benefit of the dome was that it was easy to sit next to and watch the chickens go about their business.

Resources

Finding Optimism - an award winning blog aimed at helping depression suffers and their helpers, also links to their excellent software package for the Mac that provides an easy way to maintain a daily record of your mental health symptoms and the various triggers that are associated with with them.

The Ecologist is one of the great journals of the green movement and has recently gone through the transformation from print to online. This makes access to its stimulating content much easier.

Click here to read about an interesting prototype building just opened at Bath university that uses pre-fabricated wall panels filled with straw.

The Bath University Balehaus project site is worth a look.

When will we have access to locally produced building products like this in Australia I wonder ?

Here is a design for a traditional chicken ark. This is from Charles Hayward’s 1940 book “Carpentry for Beginners” which has still a useful reference as it shows hand tool methods (even better is “Cabinet Making for Beginners”).

Click here for the full PDF -> How to build a chicken ark

Since my post about chickens which mentioned the Linda Woodrow inspired chook dome. I have noticed that people are searching in google for information about chicken tractors. This post provides a few more links to information on this subject.
The Chicken Tractor gallery has over 140 pictures with many different types shown. As the construction skills required are very basic, a good picture will often be enough for you to build your own using materials to hand.

DIY

• Build a chicken tractor from old pallets (video)
• How not to build a chicken tractor (video)

Commercial Chicken Tractors

before Permaculture they were generally just known as moveable coops or arks)

• McCallum Chicken Tractor
• Royal Rooster

General Chook Matters

• Backyard Chickens - check out the coops section.
• Alanna Moore has written widely about keeping chickens, one popular title is Backyard Poultry - Naturally, available at Green Harvest Books. She also writes a very popular column in Earth Garden magazine.
• Automatic Feeders

Eating Locally: Backyard Chickens at Treehugger.com. Keeping chickens in the urban backyards was commonplace in Australia during the depression and war years and is making a welcome comeback. I wonder how many people are actually able to kill and eat their chickens. I have tried and it takes some getting used to!. Having the chooks for eggs alone is the easier route and very worthwhile as we have posted about before.

This chook post has it all - video, pictures, domes and self feeders. Also some great insight into the chicken management practises at Milkwood Permaculture.

Attack of the Wolf Mountain Chickens

(Via Milkwood Permaculture.)

Back in 2013 a couple of filmmakers bravely took on the risk of making a high quality movie about the Permaculture movement in North America. Once they had shot the footage, they launched a kickstarter project to raise funds to complete the project last year. The movie, Inhabit was recently released. Its available from Vimeo and also through the Yekra project, an innovative distribution channel that enables media creators to sell their product without having to deal with the traditional players.

Humanity is more than ever threatened by its own actions; we hear a lot about the need to minimize footprints and to reduce our impact. But what if our footprints were beneficial? What if we could meet human needs while increasing the health and well-being of our planet? This is the premise behind permaculture: a design process based on the replication of patterns found in nature. INHABIT explores the many environmental issues facing us today and examines solutions that are being applied using the ecological design lens of permaculture. Focused mostly on the Northeastern and Midwestern regions of the United States, Inhabit provides an intimate look at permaculture peoples and practices ranging from rural, suburban, and urban landscapes.

The first thing that strikes you about the movie are the beauty of the opening scenes, its apparent from the start that the movie will have high production values.

Its engaging and interesting throughout. I particularly enjoyed seeing the homesteads and gardens and hearing from people like Ben Falk and Eric Tonismeier whose books I have found to be valuable and inspiring resources.

Its well worth the $10 to see mature examples of permaculature designs in both rural and urban settings.

INHABIT: A Permaculture Perspective from Inhabit Films on Vimeo.

In a previous post I wrote about the positive experience we were having taking part in Geoff Lawton’s Online Permaculture course. Having completed all the online lessons and the quiz we are now working on the practical assignment which is due by the end of August.

The course continues to stimulate us and our enthusiasm for the material remains strong. Even on evenings when we were tired from a busy day the prospect of some “Geoff time” was appealing and we had little trouble keeping up the momentum and staying more or less in line with the proposed course outline.

The course is well structured and its clear that Geoff has given it many times. His great depth of experience serves to ground the potentially abstract materials and to “keep it real”¹. For me the only time this focus was lost was in the final section “Creating an Alternative Society”. Geoff still had plenty of relevant experience to relate however the videos for this section felt looser and had a more rambling character than the bulk of the course. For students at the end of an intense two weeks this is probably a relief as Geoff kicks back and the amount of material being relayed eases off.

Random notes

• As we start on the practical exercise, studying maps and design options on paper and then taking that onto a plot of land has been revealing and exciting

• We didn’t make extensive use of the forums however whenever we had a question we could usually find someone else had already asked it. My wife and I watched all the video’s together and effectively formed a small team, this was very valuable as we continued to discuss the course content beyond the time spent “in lectures”.

• The regular uploads of videos with answers to participants questions are excellent and provided an opportunity for him to reinforce core concepts

• The course included a DVD set with all of the lectures plus the full set of DVD’s previously created by Geoff. So far we have watched a few of these and I can see they will be a very valuable resource

• While being very positive about the online course, I can see that the regular on the ground practical work integrated into the learning experience of an onsite course along with a gifted teacher and located at a well developed demonstration site would have many benefits. The quality of the teacher, the depth of their experience and their ability to communicate this would be a key factor in deciding which course to take

• Key learning - the mainframe design. The course has transformed the way we view landscape and has us spotting dam sites and swale opportunities everywhere. Walking around the site we are using for our practical assignment, a place we had visited many times before, revealed a completely new landscape potential to us. Geoff says the course will permanently change the way you view the world and I believe he is right.

I am with but she's a girl, being a fan of Douglas Adam's book Last Chance to See. As I am also in interested in scripting and other geekery, this post hit all the right notes.

Our local Megapodes are known as Bush (or Brush) Turkey's and can destroy a productive vege path in seconds.

After years of exposure to Permaculture and having spent several years a decade ago implementing a disparate set of its common patterns at our previous property in Northern NSW, I am now taking a much deeper dive into it after enrolling in Geoff Lawton’s Online Permaculture Design Course. Its been running a few weeks now and my partner and I are both finding it a revelation. So many concepts and themes that we had previously read about but not really understood are suddenly making sense. Geoff’s an excellent teacher and the online format works perfectly for a couple of introverted types. We can take our time and review material as we go.

There were elements of classic internet marketing1 wrapped around the promotion of the course that had me a little worried, those concerns have proven groundless and I can understand that using the marketing approaches that work makes sense when your goal is to get this material out to the widest audience and in a sustainable way.

As a taster, check out this video Absolute in Abundance, they will want your email address however if you are at all interested in this stuff you will get a steady stream of really good links and content as a result.

I would highly recommend that anyone who has been interested in doing a PDC but not found the time or the right teacher consider taking one of Geoff’s courses.

Meanwhile, check out the many videos and resources that are freely available at the Permaculture Research Institute. The links to several excellent related documentaries can also be found here. The site is an aggregator of several of my favourite authors including George Monbiot who has a new book - Feral - A manifesto for rewilding the world.

Surfers interested in Permaculture should enjoy this chat with Geoff about the links between surfing and permaculture.