Barking Frogs Permaculture: Annual Letter

[Permacltur at aol.com]

Barking Frogs Permaculture Center
Home of Yankee Permaculture and Elfin Permaculture
P.O. Box 52, Sparr FL 32192 USA  Email:  Permacltur at aol.com
Dear Brothers and Sisters:
    Greetings from Barking Frogs Permaculture Center. We are sending our 
annual report of permaculture activities a little early this year in order to 
let you know about our annual online course that begins in October.  Details 
follow below.
    In the past year, much of the progress has been passive. Finally, most of 
the flood waters have receded from unseasonable rains over the winter of 
1997-1998.  Severe spring and summer drought for the second year in a row has 
brought the water table in Black Sink Prairie down to pre-flood levels.  
Finally, we can walk the entire pasture without getting wet.
    Dan slaughtered our steer early this year. With no animals to eat back 
our work,  we have been able to plant a number of trees in the pasture area, 
mostly on the highest ground, which flooded relatively briefly.  These 
include Acacia melanoxylon (Blackwood), trials of several jujube varieties, 
guava, strawberry guava, and a few goumi bushes.  Except for the goumi, we 
expect these to tolerate both flooding and drought, once established. A small 
grove already exists at the high point, providing some shelter for the more 
cold-sensitive species. Lower we have planted Australian tea tree and Chinese 
hawthorn, and still lower are rows of hybrid willow and black gum along fence 
lines.  Eventually, trees will replace fence posts, serving as shade and 
shelterbelts, and providing firewood, etc.  We have also planted a few bald 
cypress in the wettest part of the pasture grown from other trees on the 
site.  We were too late to get bald cypress from the State this year, but 
next year we hope to obtain 100 seedlings to grow to start in nursery beds. 
We planted legumes over a section of the pasture this year, mainly annuals, 
both to suppress weedy vegetation and improve the soil. This is working quite 
well.  Winter legume seed is on hand for fall planting, possibly underway 
when you read this. Rather than disturb the soil by tillage, we broadcast the 
seed onto the sod.  Then we mow weeds and grass to cover the seed.  This has 
worked quite well with both small seeded and large seeded species.  We are 
hoping for a high rate of spontaneous reseeding, again aided by mowing.
    In other areas we have set out a number of Washington hawthorns, Japanese 
arrow bamboo, Bambusa multiplex (two varieties), and an as yet unidentified 
species of bamboo as initial plantings to shelter the Permaculture Center 
from westerly winds.  This should improve the performance of bananas, Surinam 
cherries and other tropicals in the warm microclimates around the building. 
We have also increased our plantings of feijoa to the west and north of the 
building, in part for improved shelter and in part for eventual fruit 
production.  Progress in establishing tree crops has been slow, but we  have 
set out more figs, mulberries, che, bamboo, plums, citrus, guava, and 
strawberry guavas.  For the first time, the rate of putting trees into 
permanent locations exceeded the rate at which we accumulate them in pots. We 
also have successful propagation plots for a number of other species.
    Fruit production continues to increase with more citrus, figs, bananas, 
mulberries Surinam cherries, papaya, peaches, etc., bearing than in the past. 
We have located one cultivar of loquat that Dan successfully grafted to two 
seedling trees. We seek additional varieties for the rest of our loquat 
seedlings.  Experiments with grafting cultivated blueberries to wild 
farkleberries have gone well, limited only by a shortage of cultivated 
blueberry scion wood. This winter, we hope to find a local blueberry grower 
who is willing to exchange Dan’s pruning skills for some scion wood of 
several more varieties. Gradually, development of gardening spaces and forest 
gardens continues.  The place is beginning to look as though permaculturists 
live here!
    A major improvement for our land was the purchase of about 4 acres of 
land that clearly was integral to the rest of the place.  Now our plot looks 
much less like a jig-saw puzzle piece.  Much of the new land is well drained 
and will provide more area for fruit and nut trees and additional 
possibilities for poultry forage.  The “new” land holds a very large 
farkleberry grove and many wild plums.  Here we can extend the blueberry 
grafting program and begin grafting plums.  To this end, we have purchased 
two outstanding selections of Prunus americana  (wild plum) to provide 
scionwood for the wild rootstocks.  The native trees bear inferior 
fruit--even the chickens do not eat them!  The additional land also allows 
room for planting space-hungry pecans.  And it allows us to spare a number of 
medium size trees that we were going to cut to make room for fruit trees.  
Now we can just work around most of them because we have more space..
    The chinampas project has not progressed physically, though we have some 
new ideas that evolved during the flooding. We will report more on these 
after trials.  We have one chinampa bed ready to finish and plant and others 
on the verge of development, so to speak, needing only someone to put in 
energy.  We had arranged for an intern who expressed interest in chinampas, 
but he was not able to pursue the internship due to an injury working on his 
own garden.  We are now considering having work-days where people come to 
contribute to the project in exchange for the experience and information.  We 
might be able to handle up to 10 adults (age 13 or over), perhaps one day 
every other month.  Another possibility is a local volunteer who may want the 
experience.  Please contact us if  you want to pitch in or if  you have 
suggestions.  The best way is to email Dan at the address above or to write. 
We still offer one or two internships to just the right people. 
    Dan is also discussing workshops in Mexico with three different women, 
one of whom, Blanca Dominguez, has a high success record of organizing 
teaching for us there. This could lead to visits and work with the 
Chinamperos of Xochomilco, who manage the last of the traditional chinampas 
there. Dan is also working with Blanca via email to support permaculture 
development in some of the very arid areas of Mexico. We have interest in 
Africa and South America in chinampas training, but like the Xochomilco trip, 
nothing has proceeded because there is no money for it.  By next year, we may 
have some interesting news to report about our support of the development of 
permaculture in South Africa.
    The paddy development is part of the chinampas development design, so 
that too has been on hold.  However we did buy some inexpensive “kiddie” 
swimming pools that work well for trials and we have increased our supply of 
rice seed and water chestnut stocks in this way.  (The kiddie pools are also 
great for rearing 50-100 baby-chicks as they are cheap, easy to clean, 
spacious, and have no corners where chicks are likely to smother one another.)
    Progress on the permaculture center has been at a standstill, with 
virtually nothing new since our previous letter.  We have important 
renovations to complete and repairs to make, and hopefully we will be able to 
report these done next year.  Again, intern or volunteer help would make a 
large difference.  We did make some progress in the on-site residence, 
completing storage and adding an air-conditioner to Cynthia’s office there. 
    Program wise, our annual Permaculture Design Correspondence Course via 
email continues to be our major teaching activity. The course runs between 20 
and 26 weeks, depending on the needs of the particular group. To learn about 
the course, email us at <Permacltur at aol.com>. Ask for a course protocol and 
reading list. We do not charge extra for permaculture course graduates who 
wish to do advanced work in any of our programs. The next course begins 
October 24.
    In August, for the first time we hybridized the online course with live 
instruction. We gave our 10-day Permaculture Design Intensive in Northern 
California at the home of Birdsong Sundstrom.  Birdsong took instruction on 
the email course and is meeting the design project requirement in the live 
program.  We have been very satisfied with results of the email course, but 
there is no substitute for walking the land with students.  The live program 
also features access to thousands of slides, well beyond what is practical 
for visual support via email.  Student design work in both formats has been 
outstanding, and we have every reason to believe that the hybrid surpasses 
any other training to date.  Birdsong presents the final report from the live 
workshop in the next online course.
    The online course continues to evolve in other ways.  We have now 
implemented a policy of carrying students through at least two course cycles 
at no additional tuition charge.  Students are expected to complete all basic 
work in the first cycle, except that sometimes a final revision of the 
student design may be submitted in the next course.  In the second cycle, 
students better understand the total permaculture concept and better perceive 
the merit of course components.  This is more or less a formalizing of what 
we were doing with a large percentage of students anyway.  Students say that 
a second cycle is extremely helpful.  Improvements in the design report are 
very obvious, hard evidence that this is the way to go.  At the same time, 
new students benefit from the perspective of older students.  Also, we 
require all design projects carried to the next course to be submitted in the 
first segment, before students starting in that course begin their design 
work.  We believe that this clarifies the scope and quality of the design 
requirements much earlier, helping students better define their project and 
work more efficiently.  By treating the course as repeating cycles rather 
than taking the industrial input/out model, we think we go even further in 
demonstrating permaculture principles through the course design itself. 
Willem Smuts of South Africa is now officially a teacher in the online 
course.  Willem has participated in every email course since we began them, 
well earning his position. Willem and Elfin permaculture have agreed in 
princple to design and teaching collaborations in Africa and elsewhere, as 
well.  Dan’s daughter Cassandra will be a teaching assistant in the next 
course. Her lifelong exposure to permaculture and related concepts and her 
present life raising a family close to the land in rural Vermont are bound to 
enrich the course.
    During the past year we continued to give a few local talks on 
permaculture. We do not put on live workshops or talks unless some local 
person or group invites us to do so. 
    Our outreach over the internet expanded with active involvement in email 
discussion groups, notably the Purdue NewCrops list and the North American 
Fruit Explorers (NAFEX) list.  We continued to field questions on the 
permaculture lists and some less active involvement in other lists such as 
solar cooking, the ECHO mutual aid list for development workers, etc.  We 
consider this form of service very effective.  Dan also continues his 
permaculture column in the NAFEX publication POMONA.  
    Once again, not all was progress. We continued to update our pamphlets 
and papers. But our serial publications, The International Permaculture 
Solutions Journal  and Permaculture Review, Overview, and Digest, remained on 
the back burner with only small progress made toward getting out an issue of 
either.  We also need badly to document our permaculture design, for which we 
hope to attract a suitable intern.  We did publish Vol. VII of our directory, 
TRIP (The Resources of International Permaculture.)
    Again this year, our lives continue to be blessed. Cynthia’s work as 
faculty at the University of Florida College of Nursing has been successful 
and rewarding. This fall she launched a new course on alternative therapies 
that has been very well received. We got to meet our second grandchild, Emery 
Hemenway Brush, in November, and in August we met our latest grandchild, 
Katherine Covielo during our California teaching trip
    We invite you to pass the word about our consulting, email course and 
internships. A workshop or course on site is a very economical way to get 
permaculture design work and training for your own place.  And this is a good 
time to be thinking about getting presents for the Solstice season holidays.  
Please check out our order form to see if there is something you would like 
to give, maybe to yourself. A few days of permaculture consulting or an 
on-site workshop can be an especially valuable gift to a homeowner or 
homesteader.
    We know that most of you are also working hard for Mother Earth in many 
ways.  We thank you for your efforts and look to join forces when appropriate.
For Mother Earth,  Dan Hemenway                                               
                     Cynthia Hemenway