DEVELOPING THE PIG FIELD - INTEGRATED FOREST FARMING...

Prototype pig feeder bed - sleepers and angle-iron

DEVELOPING THE PIG FIELD
Lots going on here at the moment, including our plans to develop the pig field for food for the pigs and for the Treflach Farm pie business. The pig field is about three acres and we are thinking in terms of four strips for veg: beans, tatties, turnips and leeks. The plan is to keep the pigs off the veg to begin with using electric fence then let them onto what’s left of the veg strips at the end of the season so they can routle up the ground ready for next season. As well as that, we are planning some pig feeder beds which will effectively be mini-forest gardens with fruit or nut trees and perennial planting so that the pigs can either eat whatever falls on the ground or grows out through the gaps. Everything has to be pretty robust to survive pig assault so we will use up a stock of old sleepers for the beds.

They need to stand up to the scratchings of enormous boars and sows too

 INTEGRATED FOREST FARMING
Watching life here on the farm over the last year, I’ve realised how the animals are an important part of the whole system. For example, the woodland that's grazed some of the time is more diverse and also pleasant than the woodland that isn't grazed nearby. The more their behaviour can be controlled, integrated and utilised within the farm the less energy and expense required. The key idea being that the forest is a sustainable system and that a few carefully controlled animals fit into that very well. The more the whole farm develops in the pattern of the forest, the more the farm becomes sustainable ie: no waste, reduced inputs, increased diversity, increased types and quantities of yields, drought/flood/pest resistance, with space for paths, clearings and human settlement.

The pig field, about three acres of some of the best land on the farm

Greening the desert - amazing!

This is a film that Steve Jones often shows on permaculture courses, it never fails to get a few jaws dropping. Geoff Lawton shows how Forest Gardening and permaculture principles were used to create lush vegetation in a dry, salty and very hot situation.

Weeding fields and orchard care

Wes, Ruth, Tom and Bob on the tractor weeding the meadows

 A shot from a few weeks ago - weeding Treflach's meadows by hand before the harvest. There's a huge variety of plants in the fields which makes for rich haylage for winter feeding. There's also docks, thistles, ragwort etc which we don't want, very satisfying to remove these by hand rather than by spraying. Fortunately we've had a few rare dry days here and the harvest is pretty much in after much frantic activity.

Ducks enjoying our work in the orchard

We've also been busy in the orchard looking after the trees and also the forest garden edge planted during previous Forest Gardening courses. Very interesting to see how much the ducks are enjoying rootling about in the fresh mulch - I hadn't thought of them as woodland creatures at all.

Starting a bed for perennials around the base of one of the apple trees.

 

PERENNIAL BEDS
This is an experiment we're trying, making a bed around the base of one of the apple trees for perennials starting with cardboard and horse manure. We plan to plant it up with herbs, maybe a small bush or two and also a climber, kiwi fruit perhaps, to build up diversity and yields and also to help to feed the tree. I'm wondering if this could apply to Janet and Clive's olives...

Courses and Events here at Treflach Farm

Lots happening here on the farm... I'm very excited to be teaching our first Forest Gardening course here, packing it full with talks, slideshows, film clips - including some jaw-dropping stuff on Forest Gardening's powerful application worldwide. Lots of hands on practise of the skills you need as well as observation of a wide variety of woodland here, from ancient Bluebell Wood to the orchard we are renovating. Not to be missed!
Also check out our ENERGY DAY - energy descent, solar, thermal, small scale hydro and an on site demo of anaerobic digestion by Methanogen AND our mini festival, FANDANGO FARM, if you've been rained off other festivals come here for family fun for all - hopefully in the dry!

FULL DETAILS & BOOKING FOR FOREST GARDENING - CLICK HERE

 FULL DETAILS & BOOKING FOR ENERGY DAY - CLICK HERE

FULL DETAILS & BOOKING FOR FANDANGO FARM - CLICK HERE

Urban Permaculture in Reading

How many edible roofs do you know of?
The inspiring RISC roof garden is now mature and giving lots of produce. This one day event with Sector39 will show you the permaculture principles behind it and help you to see similar opportunities that you can take in your own locality - opportunities for growing food and in many other areas of daily life.
More about Sector39 and Forest Gardening
More about RISC - Reading International Solidarity Centre

SECTOR 39 - LATEST COURSE DATES inc the EDIBLE ROOF

24th September 2011 at the RISC roof garden, Reading. Learn about urban permaculture and designing your edible landscape in this stunning, well-established, food forest ON A CITY ROOF. More HERE and see poster below.

More about this amazing garden on the Sector39 blog


All 2011 dates:

JULY 2011
10th Forest Gardening at Treflach

SEPTEMBER 2011
10th, 11th Introduction to Permaculture, Hay Farm
16th, 17th, 18th Introduction to Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening at Sych Pwll: £60
24th Forest Gardening day at RISC: £45

OCTOBER 2011
1st, 2nd W/E 1 Hereford PDC
8th to 22nd two week Permaculture Design Course at Treflach
29th 30th W/E 2 Hereford PDC

NOVEMBER 2011
26th 27th W/E 3 Hereford PDC
 MORE INFO AND BOOKINGS AT SECTOR39.co.uk

Everyday Life On the Edge...

A Permaculture Saying: "If you're not on the edge you're taking up too much space." 

We're on the edge here in Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant alright! Geographically, we're very close to the border with England and also on the edge of the wilderness of the Berwyn mountains.The edge is a good place to be, it's where activity is often concentrated, whether its the edge of woodland, along the coastline or in our bodies through the membranes of the lungs, digestive system etc. In Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant, you could say Steve and I are working at an edge, the one between modern day chemical agri-business and its sustainable successor, Permaculture.

Here in Powys we are surrounded by a beautiful, gently rolling landscape of small, sheep-spattered fields. The bad news is that those lovely fields produce just 2% of the food that is consumed in Powys and generally it costs more to shear those sheep than the wool is worth.Thankfully, the countryside is too hilly to have been put through the full-blown ravages of modern agriculture. It may be hard enough for farms here to make the transition away from oil but easier than it's going to be for some giant patch of the Shropshire plains, borrowed and leased for millions and mortgaged up to the hilt for decades ahead with just two or three people plying endlessly up and down the deserts on giant machines. It's difficult to see how they can make an easy transition to using one sixth of the energy they use at the moment (remembering that fertilisers and pesticides are just another form of energy as well).

The good news is that left to its own devices much of the land would soon revert to forest. (See the work of Chris Dixon.). The thoughtful, Permaculture approach is to work with that natural process and to steer it gently towards what you would like from the land. Instead of a high energy input, monoculture-desert, net loss landscape, the forest can be gardened to give us so much: food, fuel, materials, shelter, shade, water, energy, medicinal herbs, fodder crops for animals as well as fostering bio-diversity and being drought, disease and pest-resistant. And all the time building Earth capital instead of burning it up. (See earlier post about our Permaculture Design Course at Treflach Farm, farm in transition). We are teaching a two week Permaculture Design course again at Treflach from 8th to 21st May 2011, have our next Forest Gardening course on 22nd Jan 2011, and our first ever Treecare course covering pruning, planting and general woodland management is coming up on 5th & 6th Feb 2011. (More details and booking).

!! New Course !! Pruning & Basic Woodland Management for complete beginners onwards

We're really looking forward to working with progressive thinking Ian Steele at Treflach again.

And we are itching to get started on our own land-based project at PenY Garnedd where we will demonstrate all of this on our co-operatively owned 23 acre edge. Latest news is that the sale is going through.