Welcome to Our Permaculture Homestead
After 13 years of researching “doomsday preppers” and homesteading for my apocalyptic novel, We Can Save Us All, I realized I had none of the survival skills I’d been writing about. I wanted to change that. Without becoming a total weirdo.
We began preparing our home to survive a grid-down situation, and dove into homesteading projects to inform our new lifestyle.
Here’s what happened next…
Permaculture Homesteading How-Tos and Articles
How To Build a DIY Solar Water Heater
At the start of pool season, Jack got it in his head that we could heat up the water with some combination of pumps and tubing and buckets and fire. He gets a lot of these ideas—they keep him up at night—and sometimes he organically shifts to a new project or else I can redirect his energies, but this one stuck around for weeks. He kept presenting me with new hand-drawn schematics and eventually I had to admit, "I. DON'T. KNOW. HOW. TO. DO. ANY. OF. THAT." Nevertheless, he persisted.
How To Build a DIY Mud Kitchen Using Wood Pallets
Jack and I wanted to make something for Rose's 3rd birthday, and we settled on this DIY mud kitchen because the girl loves to cook. We used salvaged wood pallets, and a few other inexpensive materials, here’s a step-by-step.
How to Plant Your First Spring Vegetable Garden
Here’s our Spring, Summer and Fall plans. Feel free to use these plans but note that we are growing in Central Virginia, Zone 7A, so Google your growing zone as these plants may or may not work well in other regions.
How to Build Raised Garden Beds
On the last day I *went shopping* before quarantining in mid-March, my impulse buy was a bunch of lumber. I remember thinking it might be the last day I'd be allowed out of my house for a while. I called our local hardware store/lumber yard and asked if they were still open. “Today we are, but who knows if we will be tomorrow,” they said, which in hindsight was both true and an excellent piece of salesmanship.
11 Steps to Installing Residential Solar Panels
We started this process about a year ago and we’re somewhere around Step 9 here, but this is a basic breakdown of the path we followed, with some links to outside resources as well as more in-depth content on this site. Here’s what we did…
Core Maps #2: The Permaculture Sun Map
Now that we have our Base Map, the next step is to create a Sun Map. The idea is to figure out the best and worst areas for growing food, and, in our case, siting solar panels.
Core Maps #1: The Permaculture Base Map
Map #1 is the "Permaculture Base Map." This is our starting point, a way to get our arms around what currently exists on your property and a baseline upon which to build for the future. Before even attempting this foundational piece it’s important to gather some existing raw materials.
