Suuperdad

That's definitely a great question. To be honest we half lucked into this property. When I moved out here I just wanted a place in the country to set deeper roots down with the kids than the suburban place we had. We also just wanted life to slow down a bit. Our selection criteria was a decent house and a bit of land, and that's about it.

After I moved here, I started getting really into learning more about climate change and found this design science called permaculture, and it all started clicking from there. I started planting trees and gardens, and well, got kind of addicted. What started as 4 trees turned into almost 400 the next year, slowly, week by week as I kept planting and planting and planting like some derranged squirrel.

But this piece of land is really ideally suited to a project like this. It's bordered by a river that runs 365 days a year. The water is from an Artesian well, which is a pressurized underground natural aquifer. So the water runs constantly, and we have this free source of constant water.

The land also has many south facing hills, tons of wooded forest around which is great for stuff like grafting wild apple trees for deer, and collection of seed material to expand forest in wild places that are abandoned. It's really a great place of land for this project.

If I were buying a new piece of land to do this on from scratch, I think my highest priority would be a constant source of water like a river or stream. It's not mandatory, but it sure helps get things established faster.

As far as other plants that I started that I wouldn't grow anymore, I would say that I wouldn't focus so hard on growing "weird things". When I started I tried growing a lot of plants that were just outside my zone, such as persimmons. Now, I do that more as a one or two tree hobby thing, and I focus more on plants that are native and, well, have evolved to live and be hardy in my climate over millions of years. There's no point fighting nature when you can just work with nature.

Hey Chris, thanks! Very kind.

When I first started this, well, maybe not the first year, but definitely once I learned about permaculture, I really really REALLY wanted to get animals. Definitely chickens, but also pigs. They are just so incredibly useful.

There's a good saying that if you remove an element from a natural ecosystem, then you must then provide the value that this element was providing. For animals, it's cycling of nutrients in the decomposition cycle via their excrement.

Chickens perform just such a vital role for making healthy compost. A compost pile (such as I run) is tremendously valueable, but running the same material through the stomach of an animal will lead to much more chelated (bio available) nutrient in the resulting compost. This chelation is super critical for plants to be able to access the nutrient in the compost.

Animals, especially chickens, are probably number 1 on my list, but currently we're just so super busy with kids, work, etc. I fear, that even though I hear chickens are super low maintenance, that I wouldn't be an ideal owner right now for them, and I couldn't give them the attention that they deserve.

I also have a philosophy right now that anything I spend my time on must either end up fully automated and passive, be completely self relient and need no further input from me. This is because I feel it's critical that all my time gets spent to planting more trees. And if I put in systems that will require my time, then it will by very nature of it, limit the time I can spend expanding my forest. I would instead rather focusing all my time on expansion, constant unrelenting expansion, and once I hit the limits of what I can do on that front, only then will I start projects that will demand my future time.

For that reason, until life slows down a little bit, I'm going to keep the chickens on the backburner until I can be a good steward to the creatures.

League of legends (game), Warwick is a very powerful jungler in the current patch.

Thanks :_

He was supposed to be smiling

:)

There, now he's happy

Thanks that's so awesome to hear! I love hearing that new people are planting trees because they have seen my content. It makes producing it worthwhile (it certainly isn't financially worthwhile! haha)

How do I plant in 12 inches of wood chips? Do you pull the chips back and plant in the soil? When do you put the chips back on? Right away or do you wait until it grows 12 inches?

Yes, you never plant in the mulch layer, because it will be nitrogen deficient as the carbon breaks down. The soil layer however only has roughly a 1mm top layer that is nitrogen deficient. So it's crucial that you get down to the soil layer for most plants. Stuff like nitrogen fixers like clover can be scattered right onto woodchips because they can access nitrogen from the atmosphere, but most plants will need to be planted in the soil, then recovered as they grow.

As far as when to cover it, just as long as you don't smother it. As it grows just cover around it. For trees, try to leave an inch around them bare, so that you don't encourage boring insects getting to them through the woodchips.

2) I try to get most of my plants local, to support local nurseries and get varieties that grow well in my climate. No real point me ordering trees from say South Carolina and saving a few bucks, but the varieties do poorly in my winters. I'd rather get a cold hardy tree from a local place.

That being said, I've bought from many places before: Treetime, wiffletree, green barn nursery, laurealt, cold hardy fruit and nut trees, grimo nursery, etc.

Edible acres (a fellow youtuber) also runs a nursery. He also has a link to some of his favorite sustainable nursuries in the description of This video here