In a world where less than 1% of the planet’s fresh water is available for human consumption, it is curious to notice how people in overdeveloped countries choose to utilize precious water resources.

I often wonder what our grandchildren’s children will think of industrialized cultures; it is hope that inspires me to imagine them laughing. “Can you believe it?” they’ll say, holding their bellies and bursting with amusement at the ridiculousness of their elders. “They used our precious fresh water to flush their SHIT away!”

Over 884 million people globally lack access to safe water supplies – that is approximately one in eight people living on the planet whose water has been contaminated, generally by human excrement. In fact, over 5,000 people die worldwide everyday from drinking or bathing in water containing contaminants. [1] And we in the U.S. use over 5 million gallons daily just flushing away our waste.

From a health and a resource perspective, it’s hard to imagine a more inefficient system than a water flushing toilet. It contaminates water, and wastes our “waste.”

Anyhow, I digress. This blog posting was inspired by the chore of the day at the Permaculture Research Institute.

It was time to empty the composting toilet system, and I eagerly participated, curious to see how human “waste” could be utilized as a resource – quite a feat for our fecophobic world.

Here’s a quick rundown on how the composting toilet works.

The composting toilet system at the farm is simple; a normal looking bathroom, with two normal looking toilets. Just like any toilet, you pull your pants down, and empty your delivery into the hole that is attached to a chamber below.

(In industrialized cultures, that’s where your relationship with your poo ends – instead of taking responsibility for your shit, you simply flip a button and send it downstream, confident that someone else will take care of it, somewhere…).

Once the delivery is executed (whether yellow or brown), you add a scoop or two of sawdust, a carbon-based material that aids the decomposition process and helps balance out the nitrogen so that (smelly) ammonia isn’t released.

And people keep pooing away in to the chamber below, until it’s full. Then it sits for a few weeks, and meanwhile you switch to using the other toilet. If used properly with the right amount of carbon added, it won’t smell and won’t attract flies.

Simple as that.

When we went in yesterday to empty the chamber, my curiosity had mingled with a bit of dread. But I was determined; I had my gloves on and my nose plugged, prepared to feel the morning’s oatmeal churn…

Alas! I was shocked (dare I say thrilled?) to see that in less than four weeks, the excrement of forty people into a chamber had turned into a rich, humus-looking, stinkless mass – unidentifiable as human waste.

Fellow toilet compost removal technician, Dave, agrees

Granted, it had not yet heated up to the process of destroying all of the potentially dangerous pathogens found in human excrement. That requires a heat of 50-55 degrees Celsius for several hours, easy to accomplish in any hot compost pile. Once the humanure has been decontaminated through a composting process, it is essentially a carbon sponge that can act as a substrate to grow beneficial microorganisms for the soil – a valuable resource for any backyard garden.

Though I am generally in favor of decentralized systems, where we can personally observe how our actions impact our local environment, I’m not necessarily saying that everyone must process their own waste on a household scale.

In fact, there are plenty of examples of sane ways to process effluent on a local scale, such as the Ecological Wastewater Treatment Plant in Arcata, California. The facility utilizes the microorganisms on a plant’s roots to break down pollutants in the water.

Or the Living Machine concept developed by John Todd which also filters sewage solids out of water using plants and their associated bacteria.

Marin County (home sweet home!) is even in the process of piloting a very progressive compost toilet program.

These are all potential models for a semi-centralized, but ecologically sound, waste processing system.

Nonetheless, it’s pretty empowering to know that we can safely and effectively process our own waste, conserve our water for more precious uses, and convert “waste” from a problem to a solution.

And to pick up from my last posting… I feel one step closer to my steak dinner now that I know my poo fertilized the soil that grew the grass that Red ate!

Team Humanure: Mission Accomplished!

For more titillating reading on the topic, you can download (for free!) the entire PDF of the Humanure Handbook. A good book to have on hand in the bathroom.

References:

1. http://www.water.org

Related Reading:

• Phosphorus Matters

It’s taken a while to find the time to sit down and report on Part B of our earthworks here at Rosella Waters, near Cairns in far North Queensland. Phase I Part A was documented whilst the process was taking place. This latest update however will rely on memory and hurried notes made during the process, together with numerous photos. Large excavations such as the two large dams we constructed in part A are considerably easier to direct and far less time consuming than the finer detail work using smaller machinery as we experienced in putting in Part B.

Once again we had an excellent earthmover that came on the recommendation of the guys who did the two large dams. Sparky, as he is known, is a very knowledgeable and experienced earthmover, having spent a great deal of the last 40 odd years driving a 46 tonne excavator, building large scale dams, roads and “opening up new country”, as the saying round here goes. Now he runs a private earthmoving business and has at his disposal an 85HP bobcat and a 4 tonne mini excavator with numerous attachments. All of the following work was done with these two small machines.

The first part of the process in Part B was to construct a gabion rock wall at the very top of our system, in the gully that feeds our two dams. Previously, we had done a catchment analysis and based on the 1000mm of rain we receive per year, we arrived at a figure of 5,000,000 liters moving through it. We used this figure to calculate levels and engineer our spillways, level sill heights, the freeboard on the dam walls, trickle pipes, lock pipes, etc. The gully in question begins on our neighbour’s property. It is fed from the hill behind it and also from the diversion drains the road department puts in on the dirt road leading to our front gate. The catchment is predominately regrowth after being cleared 30 years ago with two dozers and a ball and chain. The catchment area is not a well functioning bio-diverse eco system and as such there is little water infiltration and a lot of sheet flow that brings top soil/sediment run off into our system. During the wet season of 2008 we did a small trial by hand building a rock wall just inside our fence line to get an idea of how much material would be trapped and how long it would take to fill up. After only 3 rain events, the small rock wall was fully backed up with silt 1.5 feet deep and the moisture remained just under the surface of that material well into our dry season. With that experience and the slight scar constructed at the back of the Lap Pool dam during its construction, we decided on a larger than first thought gabion, to (a) repair the damage caused by the construction of the Lap Pool dam (b) trap silt/top soil and sediment, preventing it washing through our system and ultimately ending up on the Great Barrier Reef, and (c) provide a small scale example of a solution to dry eroded gullies, that run like rivers in the wet, utilizing a “waste” product of local agriculture.

The “waste” product I speak of are the mountains of volcanic rock that many farms in the area have piled up in massive windrows. Farmers spend up to $4000 an acre to pull them out in preparation for planting avocados, potatoes, mangoes, bananas, sugar cane, etc. Rosella Waters sits right on the edge on an ancient lava flow so the farms that surround us are littered with such rocks, some as large as a car down to rocks as small as a grapefruit. We approached our neighbours up the top of the hill, who grow avocados and mangos, and who had recently put in a mass planting of new trees. Prior to that they had a 20 tonne excavator and dump truck working for a week to pull every rock out. They followed this by traversing over the land with a pickup and five workers pulling the grapefruit sized ones out by hand. Anyway, they were more than happy for us to go onto their property and select as many rocks as we liked from the windrows, which they had conveniently separated into different sizes.

Gabion rock wall trapping silt/sediment & top soil

The cost in building the gabion was therefore the time for Sparky to load up the individually selected rocks into his tip truck and then place them one by one with a claw on the end of his excavator arm. The process took two days in total and we estimate that it cost us close to $1800 to build. As we had large rocks to work with we decided against both “keying in” the base of the gabion wall into the side of the gully and constructing a net meshing to encase them in.

The volume and more importantly the velocity of the water coming down the gully in this case didn’t necessitate us doing either. Choosing the largest rocks first, we placed each one exactly where we wanted to create a firm base on which to construct the wall. It was built much in the same way as a dam wall is built, starting out wide at the base, six meters in this case, and tapering up to two meters wide at the top. The height of the gabion is nearly three meters. After placing each rock, Sparky would firm it down, swivel it around until it was firmly wedged. This in itself is more difficult than it might seem and does take time, but it is VERY important to get right. In all, the wall required 7 full dump truck loads of rock to construct. Once the main frame of the wall was complete we got another two loads of grapefruit sized rock which we have since placed by hand to smooth out the top of the gabion, thus providing a great access path across the gully that we can push a wheel barrow across, drive an ATV over or lead a goat and cart. To repair the scars at the side of the back of the Lap Pool Dam, just in front of the gabion wall, we placed some large rocks on the ledge and back filled behind the rocks with some top soil we had had set aside from the construction of the two dams. This was immediately cover cropped with cowpea and a crotalaria variety called gambia pea. All of the seed we used to cover crop was bought from a local seed merchant as seconds, which means there is a low strike rate (around 40%) but at $1 per kilo and having used the correct inoculant, we gained excellent coverage and stabilized the area. It’s important to remember that seed is the cheapest herbicide!

The next element we tackled was the overflow swale and spillway connected to the larger Mushroom Dam at the bottom of the property. We decided that after completing the gabion it would be best to start at the bottom of the system and then work our way back towards the front gate so that by the time it was all done, Sparky could load up and head off without risk of doing any damage with his machinery.

The first swale was only fifteen odd meters in length and had a level sill spillway half way along it that would spread the overflow of the system over a 3 meter wide area right on a broad ridge point, making it very safe to discharge and presenting no danger of causing an erosion gully. The construction of this small element proved to be a major turning point in our working relationship with Sparky. In the end it took the best part of a day to complete, due to a number of factors including our newfound language barrier. There were some important miscommunicated terms that needed clarification as we went: level sill spillway, back cut, swale, swale mound, swale dish, bottom of the swale dish and most importantly LEVEL. The idea that we wanted to construct something that didn’t run and was in fact perfectly level and on contour was quite a paradigm shift for Sparky, as in his words he had “spent his whole life draining landscapes” and what we wanted to do was quite the opposite.

The swale needed to be constructed on a steepish slope and we decided that we wanted it to hold 300mm of water in the base and have the top of the swale mound 800mm high – thus a substantial 500mm freeboard on the swale mound. The freeboard on the dam wall is one meter, so if ever there was a chance of water spilling over it would go over the swale mound first. It is unlikely to occur as we have “over engineered” things, but if it did the swale mound can be repaired with a shovel unlike the dam wall! What we soon discovered in constructing the swale was that due to the slope of the land we just wouldn’t have enough material to make the swale mound as high as we wished. The answer was to dig further up the hill from the back cut, as gently as possible, in a 1:1 cut. We didn’t want to dig too far up the hill so we adjusted the level of the swale mound back to 700mm high and with a three-meter long level sill spillway, the swale mound still wouldn’t be at risk.

First swale constructed leading off the Mushroom Dam

The data records for the region showed that the largest single 24-hour rain event in the last 30 years had been 284mm. We rounded this out to 300mm and built the spillway to be able to deal with ½ cubic meter of water per second. Together with another spillway on the swale connected to the opposite side of the dam wall, we have more than ensured the dam wall’s safety. Another safety margin we designed into the system was a 110mm lock pipe set at the bottom of the Mushroom Dam wall. The lock pipe is 27 meters long and goes right through the bottom of the wall. On the outlet side there is a butterfly valve, which can be opened wide in the event that the spillways aren’t coping. At the bottom of our system, and being our primary aquaculture dam, it also means we can drain this dam if needed. The dam also faces West, which is likely to be the direction of any fire entering our property, so in the event of a fire we have the added security of being able to drain 2.5 mega liters of water in that direction.

For ease of construction we built this first swale with the 85HP bobcat, equipped with a 1.7 meter wide tilt bucket. Time is money with earthworks, so we decided to make the swales a bucket width wide. Sparky started by running across the slope with his bucket following the back cut line we had marked out, corresponding to the high water mark of the dam. The spill was flicked down slope forming the first part of the swale mound. Once we had the basic shape and marked the position of the level sill spillway, Sparky used his tilt bucket to scrape beyond the back cut line up the slope to get the material we needed to gain the swale mound height we were after. We also took quite a bit of material from the area leading onto the dam wall, progressively cutting back to smooth out the sharpness of the cut. Sparky did a great job and we can easily drive through this area and up and onto the dam wall, giving us access to the other side of the property. The swale runs dead level at 300mm deep all the way through, from the exit point at the dam to the end of the swale itself. On the final scraping run we asked Sparky to tilt the blade slightly down slope in the swale dish, meaning that water will be predominated into the swale mound during rain events. With our first swale complete, fully seeded and earthmover trained we we’re ready to attack the rest of the design. Together with a mix of gambia pea, cow pea and pigeon pea we also planted sweet potato cuttings, aibika, cassava, pumpkin seeds, etc… giving us full cover leading into the wet. In the last few days we have started to receive our first rains in 9 months, so now we have a good base in which to begin our major plantings.

The next swale was a short one connected to the opposite side of the dam wall. It was constructed in the same fashion and care was taken again to ensure a smooth driveway leading off the dam wall for ease of access. With not much room to play with within our boundary line, the swale was extended right up to the fence line with our neighbours and the three-meter level sill spillway will serve as discharge of excess water into the creek below, and also as access to behind the dam wall and our Zone IV area of the property.

Moving further up the slope, we then tackled the 25-meter long swale connected to the Lap Pool dam. With this swale we had a few important decisions to make. Firstly it was going to be the Lap Pool’s only swale and only level sill spillway, the overflow from this leading to the Mushroom dam. The placement of this level sill was therefore vitally important as it would be the major source of water that fills the Mushroom dam and we also have future plans for structures connected to the 6m x 3m jetty we placed on the dam. We saw the opportunity for the level sill to be a feature and a potential wet/dry growing area, in close proximity to the jetty and eventual cabin connected to it. We decided to step the overflow down into a further two level sills before it entered the Mushroom dam.

The step down spillways leading overflow from the Lap Pool Dam swale into the Mushroom Dam. Jetty posts in waiting.

In this way, we slow down the volume of water, create further edge and add an aesthetic feature in the process. The level ditches are slightly wider than the level sill on the swale itself and together with generous amounts of cover crop seed, we planted clumps of vetiver grass to further stabilize the area and slow down water flow. We used the same technique on all the level sill spillways. With such an abundance of rock at hand and a couple of quite steep spillways to stabilize, we saw this as our best option. On two steep spillways, we planted out clumps of vetiver grass across the slope, starting at the top and offset all the way down. Then we placed rocks from the bottom up, starting with larger rocks in an arc, wider than the spillway, followed by smaller rocks all the way up the spillway wall face. We left a 200mm space around each of the vetiver clumps and now 3 months later we have a very stable, rock wall face to our spillways, with large clumps of green vetiver grass breaking up the brown.

Back on the Lap Pool swale we asked Sparky to dig ½ meter deep x 1 meter long x ½ meter wide ditches within the swale dish itself. These ditches will hold water for longer than the rest of the 300mm deep swale and as such become growing zones for some wet crops. We now have these ditches planted out with Taro, with water chestnuts on the edges, all of which is shaded by bananas growing at the inside edge of the swale mound.

Lap Pool swale with newly planted Taro and water chestnuts in the pits and banana on the edges.

Again the whole swale was cover cropped with cowpea, Gambia pea, pigeon pea and dotted with cassava, Aibika, sweet potato and pumpkins. The larger long-term support species and variety of fruit and nut trees are now ready to be planted. We had considered putting all of plantings in at the same time but with no rain at all for close to 9 months we decided to get cover crops and shorter term nitrogen fixers going and wait for the beginning of the first rains before putting them in. The earthworks couldn’t be put back to a more appropriate time due to the availability of machinery.

The rice paddy system was by far the biggest challenge. To look at now, it seems all we have done is push a little dirt up to make a wall and dig a couple of holes for the ducks to live near. In a sense that’s true, but the process of constructing the 1:300 diversion drain from the Lap Pool dam to a duck pond connected to a rice paddy (the overflow of which runs along a diversion drain with a 20mm fall over 20 meters, to another duck pond connected to another rice paddy, the discharge of which drops down into a 25 meter long bio-filter which is itself a level sill spillway), dropping water into the Mushroom dam wasn’t that simple! Plus, the overflow of the second duck pond, leads to a short swale with level spillway that drops down to a 20-meter long swale, the spillway of which also drops into the bio-filter before being discharged into the Mushroom dam. Phew.

The rice paddies with bio-filter below. The beach area is on the edge of the Mushroom Dam with the back side of the Lap Pool Dam wall behind it.

A great deal of gravel road base material was taken out of the rice paddy area and we used this to repair/construct a proper ringed access road, our main access road on the property. The road has now been graded correctly so that water will run into drains leading along side it directed to water storages. On the road we have placed 150mm x 50mm x 4 meter long blue gum planks in sets of two, 4 inches apart, at an angle across the road, every 10-12 meters. We first heard of this idea from Rainbow Valley Farm in New Zealand who has the same system on much steeper roads. As water runs over the road it only has a short distance to run before it drops down into these drains that run across the road at a slight angle. By not allowing the water to build up speed over the road surface the material stays on the road rather than down the bottom of the hill, with obvious benefits.

The diversion drain leading to the 1st duck pond needed to fall at 1:300 and be set low enough in the Lap Pool dam so that it was the first water to leave the dam as it filled. We can regulate this fact by capping the end of the 150mm pipe. The level at which we set the150mm diversion pipe was 450mm below the high water mark of the dam which also corresponds to the level of the level sill spillway. That is 150mm lower than the depth of the swale and the level at which water exits the dam into the swale. As I said, setting the pipe at that level ensures we can control when the water heads to the duck ponds. We have a 30,000 L concrete water tank connected to our shed with approximately 100,000 L of potential roof catchment. We needed to decide what to do with the extra 70,000L. In a minor brain wave, we came up with the idea to pipe the overflow through a 90mm pipe down the side of the tank, under the road and into the 150mm diversion pipe with a t-piece. At the entry point into to first duck pond, we have rocked the spill and next to the 150mm diversion drain pipe we have another 150mm pipe under the road that collects all the water in the drain running alongside the road. At the end of the drain along the side of the road we have dug a meter deep silt trap, concreted the base and placed a grill over the top. This will keep silt out of the duck ponds and provide another source of potting mix from the material that does ultimately come from the road.

The main issue we faced with the levels we were dealing with was to get the duck ponds as high up the slope as we could, leaving us room to put in the proposed rice paddies. The duck ponds would end up being quite small as a result and have a 800mm slope at the back of them from the ridge road. We saw this back slope as another opportunity to be creative and decided to step this down in 300mm wide ledges to the high water level of the ponds. The end result is a duck pond amphitheatre on both ponds! This stepped area will be fully planted out with duck habitat and forage, shading the ponds in the process.

Duck ponds at the back of the paddies, connected by a diversion drain. The amphitheatres at the back of the ponds are well cover cropped and stable.

The two ponds are connected by a diversion drain that runs from 1st pond to 2nd pond, with a 20mm fall over its 20-meter length. This isn’t a great deal of fall, but it’s enough. It has meant we have been able to keep the 2nd pond up as high a possible to give us room for the paddy below. The water from the duck ponds are released into the paddies by way of gates we picked up from an old rice farmer up here. They used to grow two crops a season using the channel that leads from Tinaroo Dam as a source of their water. One of the reasons they gave it up was when the cost of water went from $8 p/ML to $18 p/ML. Now they flood irrigate sugar cane instead. We swapped the four gates for a case of beer and made metal plates that slide into the 3mm gap in the concrete gates, to control the flow of water. The same gates are used at the exit end of the paddies, to discharge the nutrient rich water into the bio-filter below before it heads to the Mushroom dam.

The bio-filter that acts a level sill, taking nutrient rich water from the paddies as well as the swale in the background at the base of the chicken tractor system, overflows into the Mushroom Dam.

The two paddies are separated by a meter wide bund and surrounded by a meter wide, meter high bund with a slight grade. All of this will become a growing zone for duck forage, mulch and some soft fruits such as pawpaw and banana. The meter high bunds, once planted out, will become a living fence keeping the ducks in the paddies during the rice-growing season. We plan to grow rice using the integrated rice and duck growing system I had learnt whilst living with Takao Furuno and his family in Japan. Takao is a social entrepreneur with the world economic forum with his rice duck growing system and has an excellent book out through Tagari publications titled “The Power of Duck”.

The short swale connected to the second duck pond drops down into a longer swale, which will form part of our chicken tractor system. This 20 meter long swale lies at the bottom of the contour chicken runs and borders the Mushroom dam. It’ll take excess nutrients from the chicken system and grow some large trees on the north side of the dam, providing shade. Due to this swale being constructed on less of a slope than the first, it was built with the four tonne excavator. Working from the downward side of the swale, the bucket cut on the back cut line and the spill was dropped to create the swale mound. Following Sparky along with the laser we ensured that the swale dish was 200mm level all along. It doesn’t need to be within a mm but it does help to make the dish as level as possible so as to get an even distribution of water along the swale in lesser rain fall events. Obviously the best way to check that level is to fill the completed swale with water and adjust accordingly with a shovel. It is cheaper to do this in your own time than to pay $100 an hour for a 4 tonne excavator to do it.

“Hairy Harry” stands tall on the island at the back of the Keyhole Dam.

The final element to put in was the Keyhole dam at the entrance to our property. We named this pond the Keyhole, as it is the key to the system that connects water on both sides of the property. The Keyhole sits on a central ridge that dissects the property and the idea was to create a small water storage in our Zone 2 area that can move water through either the system described above or to future water storages on the river side of the property, or both. We decided how large a storage of water we wanted and marked out the approximate position of the dam wall for Sparky to follow. We set a target level for our high water and corresponded this to the position of the two swales that were to direct water to the Keyhole via 150mm pipes placed under the access road. The wall was built using the bobcat, layering wetted clay followed by numerous track rolls with the same machine. Using the excavator to dig the hole of the dam, material was mixed using the tilt bucket with me standing close by, hose in hand, making sure there was the right amount of moisture to make the clay bond. Dam and pond walls are all about compaction and with enough of the right clay, a little mixing if the material is good and bad, and the correct amount of moisture, things should seal. We decided to create a small island at the back of the Keyhole as an aesthetic feature, duck habitat and for the fact that the palm we’ve named “Hairy Harry” was too good looking to lose.

Once the Keyhole was built with a 400mm freeboard on it, we set about marking the back cuts of the two swales that were to connect to it. The Mediterranean swale (so named due to quite granite soils in that part of the property) leads out towards the header tank and drops its spill down into the Lap Pool dam. It is connected to the Keyhole via a 150mm pipe, under the road with a slight 20mm drop towards the pond so as to not get stagnant water sitting in the pipe.

The Mediterranean swale connects to the Keyhole Dam via a 150mm pipe under the main access road. The level sill spills water into the Lap Pool Dam below.

The end of the pipe can be capped, if we wish to keep water in the Keyhole dam and direct any overflow via the 150mm pipe under the road on the other side that connects the Council swale to the same dam. We called that one the Council swale because its main catchment comes from a slight improvement to the dirt road the council recently graded. It was graded sloping towards our fence with no drain so in large rain events we would get large sheet flows of water moving through the landscape causing unnecessary erosion. We asked Sparky if he wouldn’t mind creating a little spoon drain 100 meters up to the neighbours gate entrance and directing that water through the culvert under our road entrance. The five meters beyond the culvert to our fence line continued as a drain before entering our property where it then becomes a level swale directing a substantial volume of water through the 150mm pipe, under the road, into the Keyhole dam and ultimately through our entire system.

Considering the volume of material we are likely to receive from the dirt road, we placed a 200mm deep x three-meter wide silt trap just inside the fence line. This can be dug out by hand when necessary. The level sill spillway of this Council swale directs overflow to a gully, which in future may become a dam or a large gabion, subject to future test holes to check for clay content.
Either pipe in either swale can be capped to control the direction of water movement through our system. This small dam feature is something we are really happy with for its aesthetic beauty and complex simplicity in functionality.

This spoon drain runs 100 meters long and will direct a large amount of water through our system via the Council swale that connects the Keyhole Dam.

For our first major earthworks the complexity involved in the design was substantial. It was quite a big undertaking, made even more so by the birth of our second son Dylan smack bang in the middle of it all. At this point I must give special recognition to my darling wife Georgie who at 41 weeks pregnant, kept us fed and watered, took all the photos and spent considerable time standing there with FRED ( Forever Ridiculous Electronic Device) i.e. the lazer level staff and receiver, in 33′C tropical heat. We took close to a year observing the site, designing, listening and talking to others, re-designing and planning the earthworks and the immediate repair work after they’re done. Once the earthworks began, concept became reality and the two can be quite different no matter how good the planning. Each evening after Sparky had left we spent time talking things over and making decisions for the next day’s work. We gave our laser level a really good working over, it has been a great investment; I don’t imagine we could have done all that we did without it.

Now that the mainframe infrastructure is in place, a little water is in the dams and the site is green with cover crops, the system has literally come alive. From seemingly nowhere frogs have descended upon the water storages attracting ever-increasing numbers of birds. The place must look like a red-light sale at a discount store – a hydrated green oasis in an otherwise dry landscape.

Overlooking the system from the header tank. A transformed landscape.

A natural spring we knew existed has started to recharge with the water in the swales from irrigating the cover crops. It moves through the sub-soil leaking out into the side of the dam. Our hope is that this recharged system will help to keep the water level more constant in the Mushroom dam by offsetting any evaporation.

In all, the earthworks took close to two months to complete from start to finish with a total of 16 days of actual earthworks involved. With the start of our seasonal wet season rains upon us, the next three months or more will be spent busily planting, planting and more planting. We know Sparky is coming back when the wet really hits – we made a pact to sit down with a beer together in the pouring rain and watch the system operate in full flight. Through a local NRM group we are also planning an open day, for local farmers to come and see the system. These major earthworks are just the start of a great adventure in the development of our Permaculture demonstration site for the wet/dry tropics of Northern Australia, Rosella Waters.

Here’s an idea that should be embraced and championed by all earth repair advocates: The Buffalo Commons.

The Buffalo Commons is a conceptual proposal to create a vast nature preserve by returning 139,000 square miles (360,000 km2) of the drier portion of the Great Plains to native prairie, and by reintroducing the buffalo, or American Bison, that once grazed the short grass prairie.

The proposal originated with Frank J. Popper and Deborah Popper, who argued in a 1987 essay (PDF) that the current use of the drier parts of the plains for agriculture is not sustainable. The authors viewed the historic European-American settlement of the Plains States as hampered by lack of understanding of the ecology and an example of the "Tragedy of the Commons". Many people in potentially affected states resisted the concept during the 1990s:

There once were over 400 million acres of wild prairie grasslands in the central part of North America. The backbone of the Buffalo Commons movement is the work — over a period of decades — to re-establish and re-connect prairie wildland reserves and ecological corridors large enough for bison and all other native prairie wildlife to survive and roam freely, over great, connected distances, while simultaneously restoring the health and sustainability of our communities wherever possible so that both land and people may prosper for a very long time. Future generations may choose to expand these reserves and corridors, as the new culture of caring and belonging we have started today becomes an integral, ingrained part of life in the world of tomorrow, especially as extensive grasslands become needed to help absorb carbon from the atmosphere. (Highly biodiverse native prairies are excellent carbon sequesters.) – Buffalo Commons

It’s fascinating material and an idea worth entertaining, to say the least. The Poppers propose that a significant portion of the region be gradually shifted from farming and ranching use. They envision an area of native grassland, of perhaps 10 or 20 million acres (40,000 or 80,000 km²) in size.

Further Reading:

• From Wikipedia
• The Buffalo Commons as Regional Metaphor and Geographic Method, by Drs. Deborah E. Popper and Frank J. Popper

But, imagine if the annual crops we rely on the most, grains and pulses, could be made to grow perennially instead. No end/beginning of year ploughing, no annual replanting, etc. It would save enormous amounts of time and energy on cultivation and planting, and allow soils to remain undisturbed for longer, with immense benefits to soil life, structure, organic matter and carbon content.

The video below highlights this out-of-the-box permaculture thinking. The Land Institute in Kansas has been working solidly on engineering annuals into perennials (by way of natural plant breeding – not by gene gun). They take ancient wild, perennial varieties of grains, and cross them with their modern annual counterparts, and repeat, and repeat, until they end up with a harvestable product from a plant that doesn’t have to be resown every year. Or at least that’s the aim. This is still a work in progress, but their purpose is "to develop an agricultural system with the ecological stability of the prairie and a grain yield comparable to that from annual crops".

The implications/benefits of this are hard to exaggerate – both in terms of energy/time expenditure for farmers, but also in terms of the health/structure of soil that doesn’t have to be cultivated nearly so often and the potential biodiversity (stability) that could be achieved with mixes of these polycultures.

With populations growing, the gap between nature’s way, and ‘our’ way, needs closing. We must find ways to eat that don’t undermine the very resources of soil, water and air that that eating depends on. This is the kind of ‘genetic engineering’ that I can endorse, and is the kind of research for the public good that should be aided by all governments that give a hoot about the future.

Find our more here.

The ABC just ran an interesting spotlight (video – or transcript here if you prefer) where we learn that one of Yeomans’ properties, ‘Yobarnie’, in Richmond, north of Sydney, is facing ‘development’ that would turn this important historical demonstration site into a housing estate. In the 1950s and ’60s the site attracted busloads of people on weekend tours where observers could see the transformation his methods effected and learn about their implementation.

Yeomans’ methods, which have heavily influenced permaculture design systems, are increasingly seen today as having tremendous potential to not only increase agricultural productivity but also to have a significant impact on reducing atmospheric CO2 concentrations through increasing soil carbon levels.

It’s a sad day when such a site, with not only such historical significance, but also present relevance, would be paved over.

For good measure, here’s a YouTube clip of Darren Doherty showing the before and after effect of a single keyline plowing on his property.

Resources:

• Keyline Plowing with Compost Tea Application
• The Keyline Plan by P. A. Yeomans
• The Challenge of Landscape by P. A. Yeomans
• The City Forest by P. A. Yeomans

Download: You’ll see the option to download the 913 megabyte MP4 file at bottom right side of this page.

YouTube: The video can also be watched on YouTube, in four segments, here, here, here and here.

Greening the Desert II (including Part I) – Greening the Middle East
(Duration: 36 mins)
Tips for playing: If it’s slow to load, turn off High Definition (HD) on the player.
If you still have problems, click play (on low or high def) and then after it’s started,
click on pause. The video will then continue to buffer into your computer.
Play once fully loaded.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank Kelly Kellogg at this juncture. Kelly donated initial funding that enabled the purchase of the land for the Jordan Valley Permaculture Project site (aka ‘Greening the Desert – the Sequel’). But, upon watching the Greening the Desert Part II video, Kelly was inspired to donate an additional $20,000. These gifts are very encouraging to us as we try to solve problems at source (teach a man to fish…). Others who may feel inspired to donate to help us move this work forward faster can do so here.

A little background on the video follows:

Children in a school playground, Al Jawfa, Jordan Valley

When there’s no soil, no water, no shade, and where the sun beats down on you to the tune of over 50°C (122°F), the word ‘poverty’ begins to take on a whole new meaning. It is distinct and surreal. It’s a land of dust, flies, intense heat and almost complete dependency on supply lines outside of ones control. This is the remains of what was once called the ‘fertile crescent’. It is the result of thousands of years of abuse. It is a glimpse at a world where the environment – whose services provide for all human need – has all but completely abandoned us. This is a glimpse at the world our consumer society is inexorably moving towards, as our exponential-growth culture gorges itself at ever-increasing rates.

The original Greening the Desert video clip has been watched hundreds of thousands of times and has been posted to countless blogs and web pages in the datasphere. Although only five minutes long, it has inspired people around the globe, daring the lucid ones amongst us, those who can see the writing on the wall, to begin to hope and believe in an abundant future – a future where our survival doesn’t have to be based on undermining and depleting the very resources of soil, water, phosphorus, etc. that we depend on. The work profiled in that clip demonstrates that humanity can be a positive element within the biosphere. Man doesn’t have to destroy. Man can repair.

In the clip at top I introduce you today to Greening the Desert II. I shot the footage for this video last month (October 2009) and edited it on location in the Dead Sea Valley in Jordan – the lowest place on earth, at 400 metres below sea level. Much of it was shot in or near the village of Al Jawfa where I stayed, which is effectively a Palestinian refugee camp that has morphed over the decades since 1948 into something resembling a functional small town. It was first shown to delegates of the ninth International Permaculture Conference (IPC9) in Malawi, Africa at the very beginning of November and is now being released for general consumption. The video will take you to the original Greening the Desert site, letting you see its present condition after six years of neglect when funding ran out in 2003. You’ll also be introduced to our new project site – the Jordan Valley Permaculture Project, aka ‘Greening the Desert, the Sequel’ – and see some of the spin-off effects within Jordan from the influence of the original site; promises of much more to come.

The work we’re undertaking in Jordan is in accordance with what we call the ‘Permaculture Master Plan‘, where the project’s future is assured through funding from running educational courses. Project sites thus become self-sufficient, and self-replicating.

Geoff Lawton instructs students in a school yard in Jordan, one that PRI has
just created and begun the implementation of a design for, so its
many children can see, experience and learn permaculture first hand

Through this work we envision thousands of educational demonstration sites worldwide – all inspiring and teaching communities around them how to begin to tackle at root the massive challenges we now face after decades of short-term profit-based thinking has all but ‘consumed’ our planet and dismantled the social constructs that the human race has always depended on for its survival. Through this work we see desertification stopped in its tracks, and reversed. We see this century’s dire water issues getting resolved. We see productive work for millions in bypassing the irrelevant efforts of our ‘leaders’, to instead build a new kind of culture – a culture based on cooperative effort and learning. It’s a culture where its members have regained a sense of their place in creation, where they become land-based stewards of remaining resources; creating a culture where we at last find ultimate satisfaction – promoting and building peace and low-carbon, relocalised, community-based prosperity.

We have many such ‘Master Plan’ projects in various stages of development worldwide, and a steady stream of enquiries from people around the globe wanting to get involved and help widen this cooperative network. Perhaps it’s time you took a look at Permaculture? After all, do you have something more worthwhile to do?

Jordan Valley

Geoff Lawton and Darren Doherty are the two highest profile people in Australian Permaculture when it comes to broadacre water harvesting earthworks. They’ve both had success in some very tough environments, and yet it’s interesting that their styles are quite different, particularly when it comes to infiltration strategies.

This article is a short comparison of their approaches, along with an idea I had recently for amalgamating the benefits of each.

To help illustrate, I’ve put a set of boundaries on a section of a topographic map (figure 1.1). 

Figure 1.1 – Base Map

I realise that both Geoff and Darren would be salivating as they looked up the hill at the potential dam sites above, but I’ve deliberately left them out of the equation to keep things simple and limit the comparison to their infiltration strategies.

Similarly, although I haven’t marked it in, each of them would put in a small dam/wetland/silt-trap in each of the valleys to dissipate the flow coming on site and prevent their mounds blowing out.

Geoff Lawton’s approach

Geoff’s style for infiltrating water into the landscape is to use swales (often connected to dams but that’s another story). His aim is to catch water as high as he can in the landscape and use the dead level swale to spread the water across the length of the land. This water is held in the swale, giving it time to infiltrate into the soil, and it then plumes downhill, recharging the ground water for the benefit of trees planted below (figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1 – Soil water movement after swale infiltration
See this animation for more details

He often builds his swales with a bulldozer, resulting in a large capacity (eg a bulldozer blade wide and deep as in figure 2.2 – the back and front walls are battered on the subsequent passes).

 
Figure 2.2 - Front view of a bulldozer building a swale 

This is well suited to the sub-tropics where 50-100mm events are common and also in arid areas where the few rain events that occur can be a deluge. A large volume of water is held in the swale, giving it time to infiltrate into the landscape, for the benefit of the trees planted below.

A design constant we can work with is that water flows at 90 degrees to contour, both above and below the soil surface. Each large red dot in figure 2.3 represents an even amount of water that has infiltrated along the length of the swale. The red lines show the path that the water takes as it moves down through the soil profile.

Figure 2.3 Swale infiltration (red) path

Natural water flow in the landscape

A natural pattern in the landscape is that valleys are moist whereas ridges are dry. You can see this in the vegetation in any undulating National Park you go walking in, with lush, moisture loving plants in the valleys, and dry sclerophyll forest on the ridges.

In figure 3.1, each large blue dot represents an even amount of rainwater that has infiltrated into the land above our boundary. The dotted lines show the path that the water takes (90 degrees to contour) as it moves down through the soil profile. This image clearly illustrating why it is that the ridges are much drier than the valleys.

Figure 3.1 – Movement of soil moisture

Darren’s argument against swales in some instances

In figure 4.1 below, I’ve overlayed the swale infiltration path (figure 2.2) over the top of the rainfall infiltration (figure 3.1). As you’ll notice, the swale tends to direct far more water towards the valleys and hasn’t really fixed the issue of our dry ridgelines.

Figure 4.1 Swale infiltration (red) in relation to moisture entering site (light blue)

Recognising this issue, Darren prefers to set out tree lines using a keyline pattern. In this aerial shot of George Howson’s agroforestry property, ‘Dalpura’ (figure 4.2), the tree mounds aren’t on contour but rather they gently slope away from the valleys (the naturally moist areas) towards the ridges (the naturally dry areas), therefore aiming to even out the moisture levels across the landscape.

Figure 4.2 Dalpura tree lines from above

He creates his tree lines using a ripper and mounder, common in forestry plantings, which have a small gutter on the upper and lower sides which help to direct the water.  This is a cheaper and more fuel efficient option than a bulldozer or excavator, and works well in climates where rainfall events are generally consistent but small, such as in many temperate landscapes.

The green dots and arrows in figure 4.3 indicate the infiltration of the keyline mound during a small event. Water has been directed away from the valleys and encouraged to infiltrate on the ridge instead. You’ll notice that when combined with the water naturally moving down through the landscape from above, the moisture distribution is far more even than in the swale in figure 4.1

Figure 4.3 – Keyline mound infiltration (green) in a small rain event

Despite the obvious benefits, one downside I see to this approach is that the gutters on the sides of the tree mounds have a relatively small water holding capacity. If the landscape has dried out significantly, for instance during a long drought, it’s highly possible that the soils will become hydrophobic, and therefore there will be little water infiltrating as it travels along the gutters. During a large rain event, which occasionally come during the summer when moisture is most needed, due to the small capacity of the gutters, only a small amount of water will be held and given time to infiltrate. The rest will spill over the mound and down the ridge (figure 4.4). This would particularly be the case where there is a large catchment above as in the example used.

Figure 4.4 – Keyline mound overflow during a large rain event

(Note: At this point, I should mention that despite Darren’s mounds being smaller than Geoff’s swales, he places one for every line of trees, meaning that water infiltrates right at the base of each tree. Also, in the widescale forestry example of figure 4.2, the pasture in between the rows has been ripped using a keyline plow, which further increases the infiltration capacity. Similarly, when water does spill, it is in the best place possible – right up on the ridge where the water will fan out and have further opportunity to infiltrate)

The comparison in brief

Geoff’s swales – hold plenty of water in a large event but distribute the water less evenly in the landscape below

Darren’s keyline mounds – distributes soil water more evenly across the land, but holds and infiltrates less during a large event.

The keyline swale

With the benefits of each in mind, I came up with a hybrid, which you could call a keyline-swale.

It’s built just like a swale, set out on contour, except that the base of the swale isn’t level, rather it slopes from the valley out towards the ridges.

To build the keyline-swale, pegs are set out on contour. Starting at the ridge, a mark is made on each peg, rising at 1 in 500 towards the valleys. This is the guide for the blade depth (figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1 – Side section view of a bulldozer building a keyline swale

During a small rainfall event (figures 5.2 & 5.3), water is directed along the trench from the valleys to the ridges, where it infiltrates in a very similar pattern to Darren’s keyline mound.

Figure 5.2 Side section of a keyline swale during a small rain event

Figure 5.3 – Keyline swale (dark blue) infiltrating during a small rain event

During a large event, the water would fill up along the length like Geoff’s large swale, however the water depth wouldn’t be constant. One possible benefit of having a greater depth of water out on the ridges is that there will be more pressure here, causing water to infiltrate at a faster rate than it will in the valleys (figures 5.4 5.5). As the water level drops, it will of course infiltrate the remaining water on the ridge.

Figure 5.4 – Keyline swale full

Figure 5.5 – Keyline swale (dark blue) infiltrating during a large rain event

If this was a temperate climate where large rainfall events are rare, on this landscape I would go for a keyline swale at the very top of the property, and then use Darren’s keyline mounds parallel to this down the slope. This means you’ll get the benefits of water being infiltrated at the base of each of the tree rows (by the mounds), hydration of the ridgelines, while also capturing any large flows that enter the property, infiltrating them right at the top of the slope.

~~~~~~~~

Cam Wilson runs Forest Edge Permaculture Design, a Melbourne based consultancy offering permaculture Design, Education and Implementation. See the website for more details.

Read the first installments here.

Part IV: Re-Inventing the Herbicide Tank – Giving Destructive Equipment New Purpose

Compost tea brewing requires the use of specialist equipment. Especially when you intend to apply tea to hectares of paddocks. In my case, I’ll be making tea using a 1000L brewer supplied by Trust Nature Pty Ltd. The brewer tank is a little large to mount on the keyline plow, so an ‘application’ tank is required. This is a smaller tank, fitted with a pump and plumbing necessary for application during keyline plowing.

I’ve opted to retrofit an old herbicide spraying unit, giving it a new life in the plant friendly business. As this tank has been previously used with poison, it is necessary to sterilise it. Otherwise our precious microbes will not survive their journey into the soil. To accomplish this, we dilute a 50% hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) mix – 5% solution to water. That is, 5 lts of H2O2 solution (50% mix) with 100 lts water. Running through the pump and tank, and then flush with clean water. The unit is now ready for retrofitting.

A few specifications to begin. The tank is a 200L herbicide stray unit, fitted with a small ‘Shurflo’ 12 volt diaphragm pump that is capable of discharging (with open flow) 5.3 lts of tea per minute under 60psi. The existing tubing I have chosen to completely replace, plumbing an entirely new set of lines optimised for the plow. While I’m still in the construction stage, it’s currently impossible to tell whether this pump will have the necessary capacity. Only testing will determine this. It’s a standard kind, and upgrading the pump doesn’t present any issues.

Since the original unit was fitted with only a single hose with trigger gun applicator, I’ve had to reconsider the tubing completely. With seperate tube lines running to each shank and a ground spray line, it is necessary to fit each line with its own flow control tap. This will be necessary to adjust the pressure between secondary lines off the main flow line. Otherwise some tube lines would receive greater flow than others.

For this flow control system, I’ve settled on inexpensive garden variety irrigation valves (available from any hardware store), plumbed on 12mm plastic tubing. One for each keyline plow shank, and another for an above ground foliar spray line. I’ve also plumbed a tank return line for master flow control (should I have too much pressure).

The next stage will involve running a sequence of tests to ‘calibrate’ the flow valves. Once set, they will distribute the correct dose of compost tea for each shank into the soil and over foliage. Setting these taps involves running the unit while timing the output and volume for each tube line. When they all output the same volume in the same time period, the system is calibrated.

Part V: Farm Like a Gardener

A wise piece of advice; “garden like a farmer and farm like a gardener”. That’s great, but how does one do this on a practical level?

If you are an organic gardener who tends to a modest 10 x 10 meter vegetable garden and you hear that a little soil inoculum in the form of ‘compost tea’ would do your patch wonders, I’m sure your response would be something along the lines of “what a good idea!, I might just do that…”

But what if you are a farmer with 100 acres of pasture, and you hear the same suggestion?

[ LONG SILENCE ]

One answer to this common silence is now clear. While this method certainly isn’t the only means of ‘farming like a gardener’, it is an invaluable tool in the box. As Paul Taylor says “… [keyline + compost tea] is cutting edge technology that has the potential of being [one of] the most advanced systems to date”.

This is exciting farming and land stewardship. On a personal note, I hope you’re enjoying this series of articles. For this entry, I’ll simply finish with a sequence of photos from my work today…

Healthy Soil : Accept No Substitutes.

Bubbling Away

You might notice the addition of the Yeomans ’seed boots’ which has been employed to deliver the precious soil inoculant. These are steel tubes mounted on each shank tool groove, as seen clearly in the photo below.

Part VI: The Final Prototype – Direct Injection

The keyline plow / compost tea injection system is now undergoing trials. The plow rig can be seen in the photo below. While I’m already planning several enhancements to this system, I’m very pleased with the current outcome.

Injecting Compost Tea Directly into the Rhizosphere

Establishing Injection Depth

An important consideration of keyline plowing is present root depth. This can be assessed by simply digging a hole with a shovel. Once we establish the depth of the pasture root systems, we can ‘dial in’ the shank digging depth to penetrate the soil just beneath the current root depth. This progressive deepening of the soil profile over successive treatments is what keyline plowing is all about. Re-activating and converting the subsoil material into fertile topsoil in step with plant growth.

When including compost tea injection in this method, we’re also able ‘dial in’ the shank boot delivery tube to inject compost tea directly into the rhizosphere (even has the shank’s actual digging tip cuts below this zone). The rhizosphere is a ‘narrow region of soil that is directly influenced by root secretions and associated soil microorganisms’ 1.

Re-populating the Soil

In this way, our efforts to re-populate the soil with beneficial organisms are given the best chance at success, since this region of the soil profile is the most active biologically and in terms of nutrient exchange, the most vibrant. Conditions critical for healthy plant growth and the propagation of soil life.

Additionally, by carefully accessing soil conditions and choosing the right time for treatments, our introduced biota are given a superb start in their new enviroment. They quickly establish themselves and set about stablising the ecology of the soil – something that is essential for the soil to function correctly if our expectation is vigorous plant growth.

The Keyline Plow : As Seen In Action

Thanks for your interest in keyline & compost tea. To view more photos and watch a video of the plow system, please visit the following address :

http://picasaweb.google.com/TaranakiFarm

All photographs © Craig Mackintosh

On my recent trip to the Bill Mollison/Geoff Lawton course in Melbourne, that I forced myself to miss so I could go on site visits in the area, Cam Wilson kindly offered to be my guide – giving me very knowledgeable insights into the places we visited. As well as the Dalpura Farm site we just posted about and giving me the heads up on Angelo the Wizard, covered in this post, Cam took me to see the very cool stuff he’s doing on an urban block currently under his expert control in the ‘burbs of Melbourne.

Cam’s garden is rich in biodiversity, yet purposeful placement and organisation
makes for a very aesthetic retreat – one you truly feel a lure to spend time in

Cam has that kind of a quiet, understated personality that inspires confidence. He said his garden "should be worth a look". Being a Permaculture instructor – running regular PDCs – and being one of the main guys helping get the Permablitz movement off the ground, I was keen to do exactly that.

Cam uses a broadfork to aerate the orchard soil, stimulating microbial life and
soil building, whilst chickens get busy maintaining the section through their
irrepressible behaviours and their manure

The section is rather generous – three quarters of an acre all up, leaving a full quarter acre to garden once you subtract the house and garage. Cam and Jesse take care of the place for Kim and Clive, who are currently doing international Permaculture project aid work in Africa. Rather than leave their home to grow musty and the yard to turn rapidly into a candidate for a small scale carbon offset venture, Kim and Clive thoughtfully placed their own hard working pioneer species in their garden – namely, Cam Wilson!

Distractions of colour and fragrance, as well as beneficial host plants with
multiple purposes, all make it very difficult for ‘pests’ to become an issue.
Healthy soil, means healthy plants, which also repels pest attack.

And, what would you do once when you’ve successfully roped an expert Permaculturist into house sitting at your place? Well, you give him a budget, a big thumbs up, and tell him to let his creative knowhow loose on the place in whatever way he wishes, of course!

And so he has.

The original mainframe design of the section was done by Dan Palmer and Cam Wilson (placing the swaled orchard, chook system and raised kitchen bed), before Cam was invited to move in and take it further. Cam has since designed and implemented the terraces, the food forest, a very cool and functional water feature, and more.

Next-in-line plants wait their turn….

Everything about Cam’s work is ordered. Raised beds are on contour to ensure passive water filtration, and, with the whole yard sloping, plants like yarrow (achillea millefolium) are planted on the downward side to act as dynamic bio accumulators – collecting and storing the downward flow of nutrients, where they can later be pulled and returned to the beds as mulch.

Yarrow, bottom, mops up nutrients that leach through the garden

Grapes are being planted to run along wires above paths, where they’ll cut light intensity in the hot summer months, before dropping their leaves as mulch in autumn, and thus allowing full winter sunshine through during the colder months.

Cam checks the temperature of his compost pile

Nasturtium flowers add colour and a peppery tang to salads

I visited in mid-winter – but would love to take a lengthy wander, preferably at lunch time, through the orchard in summer and autumn months, when your average fruit preserver would be getting frantic with vacuum sealed jars. You’ve got persimmons, plum, apricot, pomegranate, olive, peach, nectarine, pear, apple, fig, orange, lemon, grapefruit, mandarin, hazelnut and mulberry. Interplanted support species – for nitrogen fixing and/or biomass – include tagasaste (Chamaecytisus palmensis), Acacia floribunda, subterranean clover, white clover, vetch, broad beans, oats and wheat during winter, along with nasturtium and comfrey for chop and drop.

Yarrow swings through the larder

Comfrey works well here, with its deep root system bringing nutrients up to the surface from depths that regular grass never could. Nasturtium is used in many places, also acting as a nutrient accumulator and a great ground cover – protecting against erosion, improving soil structure and providing beneficial insect habitat. (Hoverflies love ‘em.) Excess growth is simply broken off and put around fruit trees, or eaten!

Chunky wood chips make for guilt-free, comfortable walking along paths – holding moisture, absorbing pressure to reduce compaction, and ultimately converting into rich, dark humus.

Even the laundry gets a great view

The latest addition is what will ultimately become a gorgeous and still practical centrepiece for the yard – a pond fed by a cascading series of infiltration basins that slow-soak water through to a number of newly planted trees.

Those of you interested to combine urban water harvesting and food forest establishment with yard landscaping will find Cam’s detailed article on how and why he built this invaluable.

Despite the garden still being in full establishment mode – i.e. quite new, being only two growing seasons in since initial designs – it was producing a good amount of food already, and my visit six weeks ago was right at the trailing end of winter. Cam and Jesse have been at the site only since January, and Cam has put in an average of one day per week into the garden. For what you’re getting in return, base costs look modest:

• Huge worm farm – $250
• 4 main terraces – $2000 (should last at least 50 years)
• Greenhouse – $700
• Food forest plants – $400 (mainly fruit trees and shrubs and some of the herbs). Cam grew most of the under-storey himself from seeds, cuttings and divisions.

Cam’s already taunting me by email with descriptions of how it looks now that spring is in full swing. I can’t wait to check it out again. In the meantime, I asked Cam to give us all a few tips from his storehouse of knowledge – be sure to check them out below.

Worth a look it was Cam!

A wise person once said that soil is not only more complex than we know, it is more complex than we can ever know! The good news is humans have lately achieved a level of practically applicable knowledge and experience in soil biology to be absolutely capable of massive, positive impacts on sustainable soil use world-wide! It is undoubtedly true that we’ll never know everything, but no matter – we already know enough to get very, very busy!

Renowned microbiologist Dr. Elaine Ingham kicked off the West coast leg of the first-of-its-kind Carbon Economy Course with a powerful three-day learning-fest centered on the soil food web. The bionics of biology, miracles of super-charged soils, blessings of extra-strength compost, and explosive results of super-activated compost teas were all on abundant offer in this powerful course. Such topics sparked a highly-charged, enlivening energy in the ‘brain-food-web’ of the attending students, while setting an inspired tone for the modules to follow in the series!

Thirty seven enthusiastic soil nerds, garden-geeks, and other ecologically minded farmers, permaculturists, and assorted agrarian adventurers from all over the US and beyond (many from all parts of California, Colorado and as far as Vermont) converged at the beautiful Orella Ranch for a full complement of complex food web inter-dynamics, mind-blowing biological success stories, rigorous scientific data, and no shortage of classic, coastal California sunsets overlooking the rippling Pacific (this radiance was rivaled only by the continual ‘light-bulbs’ popping on above the heads of the students in class!).

Orella Ranch, California coast

Dr. Ingham is President and Director of Research of Soil Food Web, Inc.; a successful commercial lab (with locations in Australia, Canada, South Africa and the US) which analyses soil and tea samples for their clientele, as well as providing consultation on using biology to vastly increase soil and plant health and promote a sustainable permanent agriculture. Clients include everyone from backyard gardeners to ranchers to 5,000 hectare farms and beyond (SFW, Inc. has worked with growers on over 2 million acres). A prolific author of cutting-edge research in the area of soil biology, Dr. Ingham is also a very engaging speaker and energetic teacher who is never more excited than when sharing her wealth of knowledge with students in the courses she offers regularly.

Talk about “Care of EARTH!” Most would agree this first of the Permaculture ethics begins quite literally with the small ‘e’ earth itself; soil. In this spirit, the Orella SFW course started off with a detailed introduction to the massive variety of soil organisms, from bacteria and fungi, through protozoans and nematodes, and on through the food web into micro and macro-arthopods and earthworms (An excellent condensed introduction to these can be found in Dr. Ingham’s Soil Biology Primer—a USDA publication). Along the way students learned about how the various organisms function in soils to:

• produce good soil structure
• cycle various nutrients (nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorous, etc.) and make them available to plants
• interact with each other and with the root zones of plants
• provide nutrition to plants in the right places, at the right times and in the right amounts
• improve water holding capacity and aeration
• reduce compaction
• eliminate any need for pesticides or inorganic fertilizers
• greatly reduce water use (often, up to 70% reductions)
• increase both plant yields and topsoil

All of this, along with much more learning–about the affects of aerobic vs. anaerobic soil conditions, bacterial to fungal biomass ratios in the various ecosystems of the world, as well as the steps needed to move from a conventional industrial farming model to a biological and sustainable one—was only the first half!

Next, Dr. Ingham took the increasingly energized class through a detailed and well researched explanation of creating lively composts, brimming with the good biology needed in the soils and by the plants. This included different recipes for different scales and contexts, ways to tilt your composts towards bacterial or fungal dominance depending on your needs, as well as worm-composts and general vermiculture.

Finally the course dug into the topic of using good composts to brew excellent compost teas! From teas to extracts and soil drenches, Dr. Ingham took the class through the process, explaining how to best get life—and the precise life that you want–exploding in your tea bucket, vat, or tank, and from there out into your soil, or onto your plants. In the process students were exposed to amazing slides and explanations of the various and fascinating forms of life we want to see and identify in our teas and extracts when sampling them under the microscope. By course end, having been very well ‘inoculated’ and ‘activated’ with this valuable information, everyone was itching to get brewing!

A few additional ‘light-bulb’ sparking tidbits from this excellent course:

• There is life in soils as deep down into the earth’s core as humans have sampled—16 miles! There are even bacteria adapted to a habitat of molten lava!
• Organic matter holds TEN TIMES its weight in water, and there is no upper limit to the amount of organic matter a soil can hold! 100% not impossible.
• A healthy soil will have 50,000 protozoa per gram/teaspoon. These will collectively eat 500 million bacteria (per gram) every day (about 10,000 bacteria per protozoan), releasing 400 million molecules of Nitrogen (per gram, per day), typically right in the root zone!
• Standard soil tests measure only 1% of the total pool of soil nutrient (which is the ‘soluble fraction’ existing precisely at the time of sampling). This 1% fraction gives no information about the rate of nutrient cycling and replenishment provided by the soil biology from the remaining fraction. There is, therefore, no relationship – zero – between the numbers these standard lab tests will give you and the nutrients that end up in your plants! With the right biology in your soils plants will tend to have access to all major nutritional needs regardless of ‘low’ soluble fractions shown on standard lab tests.
• Using good soil biology can even eliminate the need for the very ancient practice of crop rotation! No disease, no need to rotate. Continual nutrient supply, no need to rotate. Therefore, one need never till again, saving time, energy and money, while increasing surplus topsoil, yields and other profit margins!
• Who doesn’t like CHOCOLATE! A well made, finished compost – likely to have all the ‘good guy’ food-web organisms we want – can be COLOR checked against a 70% cocoa chocolate bar. That is the ideal color we want to aim for in our composts and even topsoils. Check it out and enjoy!

Thank you, Dr. Ingham, for your tireless efforts and kudos to the good folks at Quail Springs and Orella Ranch who are jointly organizing and convening this leading-edge series. Congratulations on a very successful start! See the links to these organizations to learn more or to donate in support of their ongoing efforts to bring sustainable land management practices to a wider audience. Also, see the Soil Food Web, Inc. website for updates on future SFW courses or to purchase Dr. Ingham’s books or lectures (on cd) and learn even more of this fascinating and powerful information.

Next up in the Orella hosted West coast Carbon Economy Series: Sustainable Land Management with Kirk Gadzia (Holistic Management – Resource Management Services) and Darren Doherty (Keyline Design, Broadacre Permaculture – Permaculture.biz ). See you there!

Owen Hablutzel performs international work in Permaculture design, consultation, speaking, and education. He is a director of the Permaculture Research Institute, USA, and can be reached at owen (at) permacultureusa.org