Reading Time: 3 minutesOne of my clients recently bought 20 acres of land in the humid subtropics. As you can see, the land is beautiful, lush, and green, with diverse topography (i.e., not flat) and a lot of potential: He bought it primarily to establish his self-reliant homestead, where he could live off-grid, enjoy nature and the abundance […]
Reading Time: 2 minutesI have a quick permaculture design tip for your today. If you are growing a garden you’ll want to check it out. As you are probably aware, one of the considerations for your garden is that it receives ample amount of sunshine. Most vegetables need about 8 hours of sun per day to produce a […]
Reading Time: 3 minutesYou’ve probably heard this one before: “Orient your greenhouse directly to the south.” But what if I told you the perfect orientation isn’t exactly south at all? Heresy, you say? Stick with me—I’ll break it down for you. When it comes to greenhouses, sun exposure is king. Think of a greenhouse as a giant solar […]
Reading Time: 4 minutesAny of these sound familiar? “We essentially have a blank canvas that we want to optimize, to the best of our abilities, as this is our forever home.” “I need a good, broad-stroke food plan for what is now a blank slate.” “I have a lot of ideas of what I would like to do […]
Reading Time: 3 minutesSomewhere up the family tree, my forebears must have offended a hag coven or something… Behold our ancestral curse: The limestone bedrock. My land is in the mountainous part of Croatia, a region characterized by this particularly challenging landscape feature that has determined the destinies of many generations of farmers before me. On the one […]
Reading Time: 9 minutes Tall order? Read on and watch me *demo* it. Earlier this week, I showed you what designing the whole farm layout looks like, and now I’ll zoom in on one aspect: designing a food forest with swales. 5 minutes for Part I, 15 minutes for Part II, and DONE! Food forests, in the context of […]
Reading Time: 20 minutes When I was a kid, my brother and I used to enjoy the winter weather at my grandparents’ farm in the mountains. In a beautiful interplay of natural forces, throughout the winter and early spring we would play in half a meter of snow, walk on frozen lakes and then run from the floodwaters once […]