Projects Blog

We can’t change anyone else’s land to keep the flood water from sweeping down the hill but we can change our land. We placed it high on the hill so it will drain down hill into our farm. We used tires to make a solid terrace with the extra dirt. The pond is sealed with…

Cover Crops The basic idea of cover crops is to keep something living with leaves covering the ground and roots holding the soil to prevent the soil from getting washed away. Stacking functions is the permaculture way of saying kill two birds with one stone or preferably three or four birds! What can cover crops…

Tanks are awesome but expensive. For a tank to be installed first a solid, flat foundation needs to be poured. Then the piping and tank attached to a metal roof. The tanks have to have a solid foundation or they will break. Sometimes they break even with a solid foundation. If the job is to…

A terraced garden we made in Hawai’i. The foreground shows the final terraced and banana, coconut mulched garden. Swales and terracing are used to catch water. Swales are when ditches following the contour of a hill are dug and the dirt is mounded downhill. Often ally cropping is done on top of the swale to…

Agroforestry is a beautiful way to produce crops. The essence is to create a usable forest. The forested hilltops capture rain and the roots allow it to flow underground making its way downhill over a matter of months rather than minutes as runoff.  To create a forest we look at the canopy and fill up…

Lighting and passive cooling go hand in hand in our home.  The front windows let in light and air. The air gets sucked out through the stacked roof. We arranged the roof so when the sun sets it bounces off the metal roof giving excellent lighting until the sun is below the horizon.   Wine…

Organic Matter is carbon containing compounds. The benefits of organic matter are improving soil structure, improving water holding capacity, increasing nutrient holding capacity, capturing carbon, and increasing beneficial microorganisms.  Tilling exposes soil organic matter to sunlight which burns it off. Biochar is the addition of charcoal to a soil. These are stable carbon compounds that…

We have only an inch to two inches of top soil. Erosion means death to the future. There are two main ways erosion happens, wind and rain. However there are also numerous factors that influence this happening such as land use. Wind Wind is easily dealt with. We planted nitrogen fixing trees and shrubs for…

When it rains it pours. There is little worse than looking out over a barren dry landscape, having nothing to drink, and remembering all the rain that, a month ago, washed away neighbors seedlings and soil. There is often adequate water but uncaptured it causes devastating erosion followed by thirst. There are numerous ways it…

Rocket stoves prevent deforestation and lung cancer. Wait, What? Rocket stoves save fuel helping to minimize deforestation and saving women hours of labor finding firewood. They also trap heat inside the earthen or brick burning chamber. This causes the firewood to burn hot like charcoal. This minimizes smoke, and lung cancer, and keeps the fuel…